 Following instructions which I had left at the club to be delivered to him immediately upon his return, Dave picked me up at my home in a new, high-priced car, and we drove out to a high way cafe. There, in a private dining room, undisturbed by the presence of others, I had opportunity to study my old friend. Surely some miraculous change had taken place in him. His countenance allowed with health and vitality and his calm, poised bearing inspired wonderful admiration and confidence. But while I felt perfectly at ease in his company, I also felt the force of some presence in him that I could neither understand nor describe. Whatever it was, it had the effect of putting one at ease and yet had the tendency to command respect for something one did not understand. While I felt greatly relieved after the excitement of the previous day, yet I found difficulty in concealing the emotions that surged up within me, for I felt satisfied and convinced that he had something that I sorely needed and I had the strangest fear lest something might occur even then to prevent my getting it. He broke a momentary silence that seemed hours to me by asking, “Tom, do I look any different than the day I left?” I had to admit that he was both a revelation and a mystery to me. He continued, “It was in a theatre in London that I met the man, or the Master, as he is called, that I am deeply grateful for the privilege of calling my friend. Tom, you didn’t know that I left here determined to end it all. I had made such a mess of my affairs. But I feared to live and I feared to die. I couldn’t rest. To keep moving was my only relief. I guess I was what the world would call a hopeless case. “As I look back upon that evening in London, how well I now realize that my utter despondency and the intense longing to find something to relieve me drew me and my dear friend together. I had decided upon a regular orchestra seat, but discovered that for some unexplainable reason I had ordered a box and found myself seated beside my friend. Extraordinary happenings, such as this, occur frequently to many of us and are explained away, because of our ignorance, as merely coincidences. But I know differently now. “I could feel that my uneasiness attracted his attention. The wonderful radiance of his countenance assured that he was an unusual personage and I felt an instinctive urge to open my heart to him. The remark, ‘I am sorely troubled,’ uttered by a character upon the stage started our acquaintance. I replied ‘so am I,’ in just a whisper, but my friend heard it and turning to me he asked, ‘are you troubled?’ I nodded my head in response and you may believe me or not, but almost immediately I was at ease. Something seemed to tell me that I had the good fortune of being in the presence of one of those great spiritual people of whom I had read quite a bit in earlier years. “I felt convinced that I had met my deliverer, and at the close of the performance was overjoyed at his invitation to accompany him to a nearby café. I noticed that the attention of those in the café was drawn toward him as we entered and that the management was noticeably respectful and courteous toward him. Having convinced myself that this man possessed some sort of magical power, I determined to ask him all the questions that I could think of and with his permission make notes of his answers. “Learning that he was taking a steamer for New York the next day, I asked if I might accompany him, to which he assented. At the conclusion of our talk I observed that he merely wrote his initials on the bill and as we stepped outside to call a cab I questioned him regarding this and he admitted that he was not known there, as this was his first visit to the place, but he assured me that they would be paid, adding, ‘I did this to show you that man in his right domain controls every situation.’ I was still puzzled, but carried the subject no further, hoping that it would all be made plain to me later. “That night, as I lay in a doze, the events of the evening kept passing through my mind and at times I found it difficult in realizing that my good fortune was real, rather than the illusion of a dream. That night I had the first peaceful sleep in months.” |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||