She flushed at that. I felt bad about saying it. But I caught a glance from Bill that heartened me. And the Demoiselle’s eyes would have repaid me for any remorse—if I hadn’t just then felt stir that inexplicable hot hatred, and knew quite definitely now that fear did lurk within it. She laid her hand lightly on mine. It had a curious tingling warmth. At the touch, the strange repulsion vanished. I realized her beauty with an almost painful acuteness. She said:
“You love the old things. It is because you are of the ancient blood—the blood of Armorica. Do you remember—”
My cocktail went splashing to the floor. Bill said:
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Alan. That was awkward of me. Briggs, bring Dr. Caranac another.”
I said:
“That’s all right, Bill.”
I hoped I said it easily, because deep in me was anger, wondering how long it had been between that “remember” of the Demoiselle’s and the overturning of my glass. When she had said it, the tingling warmth of her had seemed to concentrate itself into a point of fire, a spark that shot up my arm into my brain. And instead of the pleasant candle-lighted room, I saw a vast plain covered with huge stones arranged in ordered aisles all marching to a central circle of monoliths within which was a gigantic cairn. I knew it to be Carnac, that place of mystery of the Druids and before them of a forgotten people, from which my family had derived its name, changed only by the addition of a syllable during the centuries. But it was not the Carnac I had known when in Brittany. This place was younger; its standing stones upright, in place; not yet gnawed by the teeth of untold centuries. There were people, hundreds of them, marching along the avenues to the monolithed circle. And although I knew that it was daylight, a blackness seemed to hover over the crypt that was the circle’s heart. Nor could I see the ocean. Where it should have been, and far away, were tall towers of gray and red stone, misty outlines of walls as of a great city. And as I stood there, long and long it seemed to me, slowly the fear crept up my heart like a rising tide. With it crept, side by side, cold, implacable hatred and rage.
I had heard Bill speaking—and was back in the room. The fear was gone. The wrath had remained.
I looked into the face of the Demoiselle Dahut. I thought I read triumph there, and a subtle amusement. I was quite sure of what had happened, and that there was no need of answering her interrupted question—if it had been interrupted. She knew. It was hypnotism of sorts, suggestion raised to the nth degree. I thought that if Bill were right in his suspicions, the Demoiselle Dahut had not been very wise to play a card like this so soon—either that, or damned sure of herself. I closed my mind quickly to that thought.
Bill, Lowell, and de Keradel were talking, Helen listening and watching me out of the corner of her eye. I whispered to the Demoiselle:
“I knew a witch-doctor down in Zululand who could do that same thing, Demoiselle de Keradel. He called the trick ‘sending out the soul.’ He was not so beautiful as you are; perhaps that is why he had to take so much more time to do it.”
I was about to add that she had been as swift as the striking of a deadly snake, but held that back.
She did not trouble to deny. She asked:
“Is that all you think—Alain de Carnac?”
I laughed:
“No, I think that your voice is also of the sea.”
And so it was; the softest, sweetest contralto I’d ever heard—low and murmurous and lulling, like the whisper of waves on a long smooth beach.
She said:
“But is that a compliment then? Many times you have compared me to the sea tonight. Is not the sea treacherous?”
“Yes,” I said, and let her make what she would of that answer. She did not seem offended.
The dinner went on with talk of this and that. It was a good dinner, and so was the wine. The butler kept my glass filled so faithfully that I wondered whether Bill had given him orders. The Demoiselle was cosmopolitan in her points of view, witty, undeniably charming—to use that much misused word. She had the gift of being able to be what her conversation implied she was. There was nothing exotic, nothing mysterious about her now. She was only a modern, well-informed, cultivated young woman of extraordinary beauty. Helen was delightful. There wasn’t a single thing for me to grow unpleasantly argumentative about, nor discourteous, nor insulting. I thought Bill was looking a bit puzzled; disconcerted—like a prophet who has foretold some happening which shows not the slightest sign of materializing. If de Keradel was interested in Dick’s death, there was nothing to show it. For some time Lowell and he had been absorbed in low-toned discussion to the exclusion of the rest of us. Suddenly I heard Lowell say:
“But surely you do not believe in the objective reality of such beings?”
The question brought me sharply to attention. I remembered Dick’s torn note—he had wanted Bill to consider something as objective instead of subjective; I saw that Bill was listening intently. The Demoiselle’s eyes were upon Lowell, faint amusement in them.
De Keradel answered:
“I know they are objective.”
Dr. Lowell asked, incredulously:
“You believe that these creatures, these demons—actually existed?”
“And still exist,” said de Keradel. “Reproduce the exact conditions under which those who had the ancient wisdom evoked these beings—forces, presences, powers, call them what you will—and the doors shall open and They come through. That Bright One the Egyptians named Isis will stand before us as of old, challenging us to lift Her veil. And that Dark Power stronger than She, whom the Egyptians named Set and Typhon, but who had another name in the shrines of an older and wiser race—It will make Itself manifest. Yes, Dr. Lowell, and still others will come through the opened doors to teach us, to counsel us, to aid and obey us—”
“Or to command us, my father,” said the Demoiselle, almost tenderly.
“Or to command us,” echoed de Keradel, mechanically; some of the color had drained from his face, and I thought there was fear in the glance he gave his daughter.
I touched Bill’s foot with mine, and felt an encouraging pressure. I raised my wine and squinted through it at de Keradel. I said, irritatingly explanatory:
“Dr. de Keradel is a true showman. If one provides the right theater, the right scenery, the right supporting cast, the right music and script and cues—the right demons or whatnot bounce out from the wings as the stars of the show. Well, I have seen some rather creditable illusions produced under such conditions. Real enough to deceive most amateurs—”
De Keradel’s eyes dilated; he half rose from his chair; he whispered:
“Amateur! Do you imply that I am an amateur?”
I said, urbanely, still looking at my glass:
“Not at all. I said you were a showman.”
He mastered his anger with difficulty; he said to Lowell:
“They are not illusions, Dr. Lowell. There is a pattern, a formula, to be observed. Is there anything more rigid than that formula by which the Catholic Church establishes communion with its God? The chanting, the prayers, the gestures—even the intonation of the prayers—all are fixed. Is not every ritual—Mohammedan, Buddhist, Shintoist, every act of worship throughout the world, in all religions—as rigidly prescribed? The mind of man recognizes that only by exact formula can it touch the minds that are not human. It is memory of an ancient wisdom, Dr. Caranac—but of that no more now. I tell you again that what comes upon my stage is not illusion.”
I asked: “How do you know?”
He answered, quietly: “I do know.”
Dr. Lowell said, placatingly: “Extremely strange, extremely realistic visions can be induced by combinations of sounds, odors, movements, and colors. There even seem to be combinations which can create in different subjects approximately the same visions—establish similar emotional rhythms. But I have never had evidence that these visions were anything but subjective.”
He paused, and I saw his hands clench, the knuckles
whiten; he said, slowly:
“Except—once.”
De Keradel was watching him, the clenched hands could not have escaped his notice. He asked: “And that once?”
Lowell answered, with a curious harshness: “I have no evidence.”
De Keradel went on: “But there is another element in this evocation which is not of the stage—nor of the showman, Dr. Caranac. It is, to use a chemical term, a catalyst. The necessary element to bring about a required result—itself remaining untouched and unchanged. It is a human element—a woman or man or child—who is en rapport with the Being evoked. Of such was the Pythoness at Delphi, who upon her tripod threw herself open to the God and spoke with his voice. Of such were the Priestesses of Isis of the Egyptians, and of Ishtar of the Babylonians—themselves the one and the same. Of such was the Priestess of Hecate, Goddess of Hell, whose secret rites were lost until I rediscovered them. Of such was the warrior-king who was Priest of tentacled Khalk-ru, the Kraken God of the Uighurs, and of such was that strange priest at whose summoning came the Black God of the Scyths, in the form of a monstrous frog—”
Bill broke in:
“But these worships are of the far-distant past. Surely, none has believed in them for many a century. Therefore this peculiar line of priests and priestesses must long ago have died out. How today could one be found?”
I thought the Demoiselle shot de Keradel a warning look, and was about to speak. He ignored her, swept away by this idea that ruled him, forced to expound, to justify, it. He said:
“But you are wrong. They do live. They live in the brains of those who sprang from them. They sleep in the brains of their descendants. They sleep until one comes who knows how to awaken them. And to that awakener—what reward! Not the golden and glittering trash in the tomb of some Tut-ankh-Amen, not the sterile loot of some Genghis Khan, or of Attila…shining pebbles and worthless metal…playthings. But storehouses of memories, hives of knowledge—knowledge that sets its possessor so high above all other men that he is as a god.”
I said, politely:
“I’d like to be a god for a time. Where can I find such storehouse? Or open such hive? It would be worth a few stings to become a god.”
The veins throbbed in his temples; he said:
“You mock! Nevertheless, I will give you a hint. Once Dr. Charcot hypnotized a girl who had long been a subject of his experiments. He sent her deeper into the hypnotic sleep than ever he had dared before with any subject. Suddenly he heard another voice than hers coming from her throat. It was a man’s voice, the rough voice of a French peasant. He questioned that voice. It told him many things—things the girl could not possibly have known. The voice spoke of incidents of the Jacquerie. And the Jacquerie was six hundred years before. Dr. Charcot took down what that voice told him. Later, he investigated, minutely. He verified. He traced the girl’s parentage. She had come straight down from a leader of that peasant uprising. He tried again. He pushed past that voice to another. And this voice, a woman’s, told him of things that had happened a thousand years ago. Told them in intimate detail, as one who had been a spectator of these happenings. And again he investigated. And again he found that what the voice had told him was true.”
I asked, even more politely:
“And have we now arrived at transmigration of souls?”
He answered, violently:
“You dare to mock! What Charcot did was to pierce through veil upon veil of memory for a thousand years. I have gone further than that. I have gone back through the veils of memory not one thousand years. I have gone back ten thousand. I, de Keradel, tell you so.”
Lowell said:
“But Dr. de Keradel—memory is not carried by the germ plasm. Physical characteristics, weaknesses, predilections, coloration, shape, and so on—yes. The son of a violinist can inherit his father’s hands, his talent, his ear—but not the memory of the notes that his father played. Not his father’s memories.”
De Keradel said:
“You are wrong. Those memories can be carried. In the brain. Or rather, in that which uses the brain as its instrument. I do not say that every one inherits these memories of their ancestors. Brains are not standardized. Nature is not a uniform workman. In some, the cells that carry these memories seem to be lacking. In others they are incomplete, blurred, having many hiatuses. But in others, a few, they are complete, the records clear, to be read like a printed book if the needle of consciousness, the eye of consciousness, can be turned upon them.”
He ignored me; to Dr. Lowell he said with intense earnestness:
“I tell you, Dr. Lowell, that this is so—in spite of all that has been written of the germ plasm, the chromosomes, the genes—the little carriers of heredity. I tell you that I have proved it to be so. And I tell you that there are minds in which are memories that go back and back to a time when man was not yet man. Back to the memories of his ape-like forefathers. Back further even than that—to the first amphibians who crawled out of the sea and began the long climb up the ladder of evolution to become what we are today.”
I had no desire now to interrupt, no desire to anger—the man’s intensity of belief was too strong. He said:
“Dr. Caranac has spoken, contemptuously, of the transmigration of souls. I say that man can imagine nothing that cannot be, and that he who speaks contemptuously of any belief is therefore an ignorant man. I say that it is this inheritance of memories which is at the bottom of the belief in reincarnation—perhaps the belief in immortality. Let me take an illustration from one of your modern toys—the phonograph. What we call consciousness is a needle that, running along the dimension of time, records upon certain cells its experiences. Quite as the recording needle of a phonograph does upon the master disks. It can run this needle back over these cells after they have been stored away, turning the graphs upon them into memories. Hearing again, seeing again, living again, the experiences recorded on them. Not always can the consciousness find one of these disks it seeks. Then we say that we have forgotten. Sometimes the graphs are not deep cut enough, the disks blurred—and then we say memory is hazy, incomplete.
“The ancestral memories, the ancient disks, are stored in another part of the brain, away from those that carry the memories of this life. Obviously this must be so, else there would be confusion, and the human animal would be hampered by intrusion of memories having no relation to his present environment. In the ancient days, when life was simpler and the environment not so complex, the two sets of memories were closer. That is why we say that ancient man relied more upon his ‘intuitions’ and less upon reason. That is why primitive men today do the same. But as time went on, and life grew more complex, those who depended less upon the ancestral memories than those which dealt with the problems of their own time—those were the ones with the better chance to survive. Once the cleavage had begun, it must perforce have continued rapidly—like all such evolutionary processes.
“Nature does not like to lose entirely anything it has once created. Therefore it is that at a certain stage of its development the human embryo has the gills of the fish, and at a later stage the hair of the ape. And, therefore, it is that in certain men and women today, these storehouses of ancient memories are fully stocked—to be opened, Dr. Caranac, and having been opened, to be read.”
I smiled and drank another glass of wine.
Lowell said:
“That is all strongly suggestive, Dr. de Keradel. If your theory is correct, then these inherited memories would without doubt appear as former lives to those who could recall them. They could be a basis of the doctrine of transmigration of souls, of reincarnation. How else could the primitive mind account for them?”
De Keradel said:
“They explain many things—the thought of the Chinese that unless a man has a son, he dies indeed. The folk saying—‘A man lives in his children—’”
Lowell said:
“The new born bee knows precisely the law and duties of the hive. It does not ha
ve to be taught to fan, to clean, to mix the pollen and the nectar into the jellies that produce the queen and the drone, the different jelly that is placed in the cell of the worker. None teaches it the complex duties of the hive. The knowledge, the memory, is in the egg, the wriggler, the nymph. It is true, too, of the ants, and of many insects. But it is not true of man, nor of any other mammal.”
De Keradel said:
“It is true also of man.”
CHAPTER IV
THE LOST CITY OF YS
There was a devil of a lot of truth in what de Keradel had said. I had come across manifestations of that same ancestral memory in odd corners of the earth. I had been burning to corroborate him, despite that excusable dig of his at my ignorance. I would have liked to talk to him as one investigator to another.
Instead I drained my glass and said severely: “Briggs—I have not had a drink for five minutes,” and then to the table in general: “Just a moment. Let us be logical. Anything so important as the soul and its travels deserves the fullest consideration. Dr. de Keradel began this discussion by asserting the objective existence of what the showman produced. That is correct, Dr. de Keradel?”
He answered, stiffly: “Yes.”
I said: “Dr. de Keradel then adduced certain experiments of Dr. Charcot in hypnotism. Those cases are not convincing to me. In the South Seas, in Africa, in Kamchatka, I have heard the most arrant fakirs speak not in two or three but in half a dozen voices. It is a well-known fact that a hypnotized subject will sometimes speak in different voices. It is quite as well known that a schizoid, a case of multiple personality, will speak in voices ranging from high soprano to bass. And all this without ancestral memories being involved.
“It is a symptom of their condition. Nothing more. Am I right, Dr. Lowell?”
The A. Merritt Megapack Page 180