Part 4 (2/2)
”Do you really believe that?” Paul inquired, half incredulously.
”I know it. With me it is not a matter of speculation; it is a matter of knowledge.”
”Then let me ask you why it is that the greatest power in the world, which is undoubtedly money, so often fails of this end?”
Ah Ben refilled his pipe, then raked a coal out of the fire with the bowl and pressed it firmly down upon the tobacco, and then said, reflectively:
”You are mistaken. Money does confer happiness to the full limit of its power, but this limit is quickly reached--first, because man's ambitions and desires grow faster than his wealth, or reach out into channels that wealth can never compa.s.s, or, and princ.i.p.ally, because wealth is an impersonal power and not a direct one. Give the earth to a single man, and it would never enable him to change his appearance or alter one of his mental characteristics, nor to do one single thing he could not have accomplished before--it giving him the power to make others do his will; and so long as his will is not beyond the power of others to do, he is to that extent happy. But to be really happy, a man must have _personal power_. Wealth is not power. Power is lodged in the individuality.”
”I don't know whether I quite understand you,” said Paul.
Ah Ben looked at him searchingly with his luminous, deep-set eyes.
”Can gold restore an idiot's mind,” he inquired, ”or a cripple the use of his limbs? Would a mountain of gold add one iota to the power of your soul? And yet it is gold that men have labored for since the earth was made. Could they once understand its real limitations? What a different planet we should have!”
”That is all very well,” answered Henley; ”but this personal power of which you speak is born in a man, and is not to be acquired by anything he can do; whereas, the battle for wealth can be fought in a field open to all.”
”There again I must beg to differ from you,” said Ah Ben. ”There is a law for the acquirement of this soul-power which is as fixed and certain as the law of gravitation; and when a man has once gained it, he has no more use for worldly wealth than he has for the drainings of a sewer.”
”Do you mean to say that by a course of life--”
”I do, and it is this: _Self-control is the law of psychic power_.”
”Then, according to your theory, the better mastery a man has over himself, the more he can accomplish and the greater his happiness?”
”I go still further,” the old man continued. ”I claim that _self-control is the only source of happiness, and that he who can control his body--and by this I mean his eyes, his nerves, his tongue, his appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions--can control other men; but he who is master of his mind, his thoughts, his desires, his emotions, has the world in a sling. Such a man is all powerful; there is nothing he can not accomplish; there is no force that can stand against him_.”
The fire had died out, save for a few glowing embers, but Ah Ben's singular face seemed to draw unto itself what light there was, and to hold Henley's eyes in a kind of mesmeric fascination. He had put off going to bed for the sole purpose of gaining some knowledge of the house and its inmates; and yet now, with apparently nothing to hinder his investigations, he felt an unaccountable diffidence about making the inquiries. An impression that the man was a mind-reader had doubtless increased this embarra.s.sment, and yet he had had no evidence of this kind, nor anything to indicate such a fact beyond the keen, penetrating power of those marvelous eyes. Paul felt that there was a mental chasm, deep and wide and impa.s.sable, that yawned between him and the strange individual before him. Such stupendous power of will as lodged within that brain could sport with the forces of nature, suspend or reverse the action of law, disintegrate matter, or create it. At least such was the impression which Mr. Henley had received.
It was past midnight before a movement was made for bed, and when Ah Ben brought a lighted candle, inquiring if everything in the bedchamber had been satisfactory, Paul was about to reply in the affirmative, when he suddenly remembered the staircase in the closet.
”I was about to forget,” he said, ”but would you mind explaining the object of a very peculiar staircase I discovered in the closet of my room?”
”This house is old,” Ah Ben replied simply. ”It was built when the State was a colony and full of Indians. The stairway communicating with the lower floor was doubtless intended as a means of escape. I had not thought of this annoying you, but can readily see how it might. You shall be removed to another room at once.”
”_Removed_?” exclaimed Paul. ”My dear sir, I had no intention of making such a suggestion. The most I thought of asking for was a bolt for the door, or scuttle; but since your explanation I do not wish either.”
They bade each other good night, and Paul undertook to find his room alone, declining Ah Ben's offer to accompany him. But the house was full of strange pa.s.sages and unexpected stairways, making the task more difficult than he had expected. After wandering about he found himself stopped by a dead wall, at least so it had looked, but suddenly directly before him stood Ah Ben.
”I thought you might need my a.s.sistance,” he said quietly; and then without appearing to notice Henley's astonishment, led the way to his room.
When Paul found himself alone, he became conscious of a growing curiosity concerning the stairs in the closet. He opened the door and looked in, and then quietly lifted the scuttle by the ring. He peered down into the darkness, but, as the stairs were winding, could discern nothing for more than a half dozen steps below. He listened, but the house was perfectly quiet, Ah Ben's retreating footsteps having died upon the air. Somehow he half doubted the story which the old man had told him about the original intention of the stairway as a means of escape. It seemed improbable, and dated back to such a remote period that he could not help feeling distrustful. Candle in hand, he commenced to descend, looking carefully where he placed his feet. As everywhere else, the woodwork was worm-eaten, and the timbers set up a dismal creaking under the weight of his body, but he had undertaken to investigate the meaning of this architectural eccentricity, and would not now turn back. On he crept, noiselessly as possible, adown the twisting stairs, carefully looking ahead for pitfalls and unsuspected developments. Once he paused, thinking he heard the distant tread of a foot, but the sound died away, and he resumed his course. Some of the steps were so broken and rotten that extreme caution was necessary to avoid falling. At last he reached the ground, and found himself at the bottom of a square well, around the four walls of which the stairs had been built. He was facing a ma.s.sive door, which occupied one of the sides of the well. Paul tried the lock, but it was so old and rust-eaten that it refused to move.
There was no other outlet, and the place was narrow and damp. He looked wistfully at the solitary door, feeling a vague suspicion that it barred the entrance to a mystery, and resolved to return at some future time, when not so hara.s.sed with sleepiness and the fatigues of travel, and make another effort to open it. Paul looked above, and as he did so a gust of air swept down the narrow opening and blew out his light; at the same instant he heard the fall of the scuttle and realized that he was shut in.
”Trapped! and by my own cursed curiosity,” he muttered, as he commenced groping his way up in the darkness. But it was not so easy as he had supposed. Twice he slipped his foot into a rotten hole, and once the stairs trembled so violently that he thought they were about to fall. Nevertheless he reached the top, as he realized when his head came in contact with the trap-door, upon the other side of which he pictured Ah Ben standing with an amused smile. Henley placed his shoulder against the door, and to his amazement found that it opened quite easily. He then procured a light, and having satisfied himself that there had never been the slightest intention to entrap him, the door having simply fallen, he went hurriedly to bed.
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