The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (10 page)

"You can also see the reason of Black's love of speed; it
waked dim memories of his last contact with the soul he was
seeking. If he could retrace his steps to the point where he
swooped into space he would be able to pick up the trail of the
woman of his desire. He was prompted to reproduce as nearly as
possible the conditions in which he had last known her.

"As I have already told you, the memories woke, and Black
set forth on his quest for the woman he had been mated with life
after life, and having seen in the occult records their repeated
union, I knew it was only a matter of time till they came
together, and I sincerely hoped that she, too, would remember
the past and be free to marry him. If she had not, we should have
had, as I warned you, a very nasty mess. These spiritual ties are
the devil.

"Now, I expect you wonder what chance it was that brought
Elaine Tyndall to me. I knew, as I told you, that sooner or later
their paths would meet. Well, I placed myself mentally at the
point of their meeting; consequently as time drew near, they
converged upon me, and it was my privilege to steer them to
harbour."

"But what about Miss Tyndall and her delusions?" I inquired.

"It looked to you like a commonplace case of old maid's
insanity, didn't it?" said Taverner. "But the girl's self-possession
and absence of fear led me to suspect something more; she was
so very definite and impersonal in her attitude towards her
delusions. So I arranged for her to come down to Hindhead and
let me try whether or not I could see what she saw.

"What we saw you yourself know; it was Black shaken out of
his body by the shock of the accident and drawn to her by the
intensity of his longing, not at all an uncommon phenomenon; I
have often seen it."

"How did you manage to get Black to re-enter his body,
provided he had ever been out of it?"

"When Elaine touched his body, the soul of Black realized
that it could meet her in the flesh, and so sought to re-enter its
own body, but the vitality was so low it could not manage it. If
the girl had not held him in her arms as she did, he would have
died, but he lived on her vitality till he was able to build up his
own."

"I can see the psychological end of it," I said, "but how do
you account for the chances that brought them together? Why
should Miss Tyndall have become restless and made for the
Portsmouth road, timing her arrival to fit in with Black's
passing?"

Taverner looked up at the stars that were just beginning to
show in the darkening sky.

"Ask Them," he said. "The ancients knew what they were
about when they cast horoscopes."

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The Soul that would Not be Born

Contrary to his usual custom, Taverner did not insist on
seeing his patient alone, for the sufficient reason that no
information could be extracted from her. It was to the mother, a
Mrs. Cailey, we turned for the case history, and she, poor
anxious woman, gave us such scanty details as an onlooker
might observe; but of the viewpoint and feelings of the patient
we learnt nothing, for there was nothing to learn.

She sat before us in the big leather armchair; her body was a
tenement for the soul of a princess, but it was, alas, untenanted.
The fine dark eyes, utterly expressionless, looked into space
while we discussed her as if she had been an inanimate object,
which practically she was.

"She was never like ordinary children," said the mother.
"When they put her in my arms after she was born she looked up
at me with the most extraordinary expression in her eyes; they
were not a baby's eyes at all, Doctor, they were the eyes of a
woman, and an experienced woman too. She didn't cry, she
never made a sound, but she looked as if she had all the troubles
of the world upon her shoulders. That baby's face was a tragedy;
perhaps she knew what was coming."

"Perhaps she did," said Taverner.

"In a few hours, however," continued the mother, "she
looked quite like an ordinary baby, but from that time to this she
has never changed, except in her body."

We looked at the girl in the chair, and she gazed back at us
with the unblinking stolidity of a very young infant.

"We have taken her to everybody we could hear of, but

they all say the same--that it is a hopeless case of mental
deficiency; but when we heard of you, we thought you might say
something different. We knew that your methods were not like
those of most doctors. It does seem strange that it should be
impossible to do anything for her. We passed some children
playing in the street as we came here in the car--bonny, bright
little things, but in such rags and dirt. Why is it that those, whose
mothers can do so little for them, should be so splendid, and
Mona, for whom we would do anything, should be--as she is?"

The poor woman's eyes filled with tears, and neither
Taverner nor I could reply.

"I will take her down to my nursing home and keep her under
observation for a time, if you wish," said Taverner. "If the brain
is at fault, I can do nothing, but if it is the mind itself that has
failed to develop I might attempt the cure. These deficiency
cases are so inaccessible--it is like ringing up on the telephone
when the subscriber will not answer. If one could attract her
attention, something might be done; the crux of the matter lies in
the establishment of communications."

When they had gone, I turned to Taverner and said:

"What hope have you in dealing with a case like that?"

"I cannot tell you just yet," he replied; "I shall have to find
out what her previous incarnations have been. I invariably find
that congenital troubles originate in a former life. Then I shall
have to work out her horoscope and see whether the conditions
are ripe for the paying off of whatever debt she may have
incurred in a previous life. Do you still think I am a queer sort of
charlatan, or are you beginning to get used to my ways?"

"I have long ceased to be astonished at anything," I replied.
"I should accept the devil, horns, hoofs and tail, if you undertook
to prescribe for him."

Taverner chuckled.

"With regard to our present case, I am of the opinion that we
shall find the law of reincarnation is the one we

shall have to look to. Now tell me this Rhodes--supposing
reincarnation is not a fact, supposing this life is the beginning
and end of our existence and at its conclusion we proceed to
flames or harps according to the use we have made of it, how do
you account for Mona Cailey's condition? What did she do in
the few hours between her birth and the onset of her disease to
bring down such a judgement on herself? And at the end of her
life, can she justly be said to have deserved hell or earned
Heaven?"

"I don't know," said I.

"But supposing my theory is right; then, if we can recover the
record of her past, we shall be able to find the cause of her
present condition, and having found the cause we may be able to
remedy it. At any rate, let us try.

"Would you like to see how I recover the records? I use
various methods; sometimes I get them by hypnotizing the
patients or by crystal-gazing, and sometimes I read them from
the subconscious mind of Nature. You know, we believe that
every thought and impulse in the world is recorded in the
Akashic Records. It is like consulting a reference library. I am
going to use the latter method in the present case."

In a few moments, by methods known to himself, Taverner
had shut out all outward impressions from his mind, and was
concentrated upon the inner vision.

Confused mental pictures evidently danced before his eyes;
then he got the focus and began to describe what he saw while I
took down notes.

Egyptian and Grecian lives were dismissed with a few words;
these were not what he sought; he was merely working his way
down through the ages, but I gathered that we were dealing with
a soul of ancient lineage and great opportunities. Life after life
we heard the tale of royal birth or initiation into the priesthood,
and yet, in its present life, the girl's soul was cut off from all
communication with its physical vehicle. I wondered what abuse
of opportunity had led to such a sentence of solitary confinement
in the cell of its body.

Then we came to the level we sought, Italy in the fifteenth
century, as it turned out. "Daughter of the reigning duke--." I
could not catch the name of his principality. "Her younger sister
was beloved by Giovanni Sigmundi; she contrived to win the
affections of her sister's lover, and then, a richer suitor offering
for her own hand, she betrayed Sigmundi to his enemies in order
to be free of his importunities."

"A true daughter of the Renaissance," said Taverner when he
had returned to normal consciousness and read my notes, for he
seldom retained any memory of what transpired during his
subconscious states. "Now I think we can guess the cause of the
trouble. I wonder whether you are aware of the mental processes
that precede birth? Just before birth the soul sees a
cinematograph film (as it were) of its future life; not all the
details, but the broad outlines which are determined by its fate;
these things it cannot alter, but according to its reaction to them,
so will its future lives be planned. Thus it is that although we
cannot alter our fate in this life, our future lies entirely in our
own hands.

"Now we know the record, we can guess what manner of fate
lies upon this girl. She owes a life debt to a man and a woman;
the suffering she caused recoils upon her. There is no need for a
specialized hell; each soul builds its own."

"But she is not suffering," I said; "she is merely in a passive
condition. The only one who suffers is the mother."

"Ah," said Taverner, "therein lies the crux of the whole
matter. When she had that brief glimpse of what lay before her,
she rebelled against her fate and tried to repudiate her debt; her
soul refused to take up the heavy burden. It was this momentary
flash of knowledge which gave her eyes their strange,
unchildlike look which so startled her mother."

"Do people always have this foreknowledge?" I asked.

"They always have that glimpse, but its memory usually

lies dormant. Some people have vague premonitions,
however, and occult training tends to recover these lost
memories, together with others belonging to previous lives."

"Having found out the cause of Miss Cailey's trouble, what
can you do to cure her?"

"Very little," said Taverner. "I can only wait and watch her.
When the time is ripe for the settlement of the balance, the other
actors in the old tragedy will come along and unconsciously
claim the payment of their debt. She will be given the
opportunity of making restitution and going on her way
fate-free. If she is unable to fulfil it, then she will be taken out of
life and rapidly forced back into it again for another attempt, but
I think (since she has been brought to me) her soul is to be given
another chance of entering its body. We will see."