|THE deck of the _Violetta_ had resumed its ordinary domestic look.
True, no Dolores lay on the carpet, no Georgiana pecked and scratched in
the scuppers. At some distance apart on his rug, his basket behind him,
in deep abstraction, sat Ram Nad.
Ram Nad had absent-mindedness down to a science. He could roll up his
eyeballs and go off like a bullet. When not abstracted he usually
played jackstraws. What recondite connection there was between him and
jackstraws I never made out, but I suspected it was the delicate sleight
of hand required, and the practice it gave him, which fastened him to
that Occidental game. Certainly I would back him against any jackstraw
player--But there never was such a jackstraw player before. The laws of
physics were nothing to him. Gravitation in jackstraws he ignored.
Sadler, Susannah, and I were in conversation under the awning, but Mrs.
Ulswater sat a long time silent.
“Doctor,” she said at last, “do you think Ram Nad could have Georgiana
and Dolores in his basket?”
Susannah started. On me too the idea had a certain volcanic effect.
“Why suppose so?” I said. “Is there evidence? Have you a subtle
instinct? Does he look a shade more virtuous than usual? If he does, it
would go to prove he has been accumulating sin. But does he? He looks
to be precisely as usual. Why suppose they didn't go overboard? Why not
adopt my theory and Susannah's of Dolores' pathetic departure?”
“I suppose they did.”
Mrs. Ulswater sighed, and was silent for some moments before she went
on:
“But if Ram Nad churned them into his basket the way he does with
things, after what I've told him, it's flat disobedience, and I won't
stand it from a heathen. Georgiana never would go on deck when the wind
blew, and they were both in the cabin the night before the water spouts.
Of course if I accused him of it, and it wasn't so, he'd be perfectly
crushing. He'd be crushing if it _was_ true, for that matter. But
somehow I don't see how it could have happened, and I won't have Ram Nad
getting the best of me. I wish you'd see if you can find out.”
Now if anything suits my temperament and talent, it is wily diplomacy,
and the worming out of another man by devious ways the carefully guarded
secret of his soul. I took a camp stool and sat down before Ram Nad.
He was abstracted behind the whites of his rolled-up eyes. I said with
subtle suavity:
“Wake up, you old Cingalese snake of a juggler!”
Ram Nad came out of infinity, and answered with welcoming gesture:
“Imbecile, why do you trouble me?”
“Where,” I said, “are Georgiana and Dolores, you depraved and disgusting
pundit?”
“How do I know, pig?”
But this limpid flow of pure reason was not, it seemed to me, really
headed for Ram Nad's soul secret. I skilfully shifted the attack.
“Why, in this way you might have an idea, illustrious. As I understand
your theory of everything, it's this: The entire universe, you say, is
only a general idea which has the misfortune to be particularised in
spots. Normally, it's just an abstract conception, but parts of the
conception have somehow blundered into a curious condition called
concreteness. A very distressing condition, very. Bless my soul!
Concreteness is an awful catastrophe.”
“As you state it so, it may be so stated,” said Ram Nad.
“Now then, if any person then, such as Georgiana or Dolores, either
tragically, or peacefully, or in any manner whatever, becomes dead, you
say of them, simply: They have returned to generality; they are no more
separately existent; they are rid of the burden of identity; they have,
so to speak, disappeared in that airy original mixture again. Such would
be your description of the case.”
“You possess some misunderstood fragments of truth, O brother,” said Ram
Nad.
“Very good. But see here! When you churn things in that remarkable
basket of yours, and they are gone, and I ask: 'Where are they?' you
invariably say: 'They have become general ideas.' When I ask why I
can't see or touch them, you answer, 'General ideas are not visible or
tangible, but are of the mind purely.' Sometimes, at this point, I have
perhaps ejaculated, 'Gammon!' I apologise. Sometimes, on the other hand,
you have exclaimed, 'Imbecile!' I forgive. The question is this:
What's the difference between being generalised in a basket, and being
generalised by drowning? Are they not the same? Or do you follow my
argument, illustrious?”
Ram Nad considered.
“This is a worthy inquiry, O brother. It may be your mind is at
last becoming capable of thought? But how shall I answer. Is there a
difference? Should I not answer that there is none?”
“There can't be, Ram Nad, there can't be!” I exclaimed. “Reason proves
it. Then, see here! Why can't you, then, restore Georgiana and Dolores?
It's all the same, for reason proves it.”
If there did, as I fancied, for an instant pass over Ram Nad's
patriarchal face, into his meditative eyes, an expression, if not of
cunning, at least of a certain pleasant humanity, it vanished quickly.
“You have yourself answered,” he said.
“The difference is this: if the cat and hen of inquiry had been
generalised here by me, I could so restore them; but because they are
drowned, I am not able. Therefore the question is answered.”
“I see. That was the point. I thought maybe you could--a pardonable
mistake--your talents are so extraordinary. I thought you might be a
resurrectionist on the side. You'll excuse me, I'm sure.”
Ram Nad withdrew again behind the whites of his eyes, and I returned to
the awning, reflecting. Ram Nad had lacked hypnotic subjects since Mrs.
Ulswater put her foot down on his fixing any human inhabitant of the
_Violetta_ that way.
But it struck me I'd never known a man with so fine an outfit for
casuistry as Ram Nad, such a liquid and euphuistic term for slaughter
and theft, such philosophic refinement in the practical process. Thus:
you generalise your neighbour's watch. It becomes an abstract idea, and
belongs to the original nebulous unity of pure conception. You go around
the corner and concentrate your mind on the idea till it's particular
again. You get about the same watch. Maybe not. Pretty similar. It
seemed so to me.
“I pass,” I said to Mrs. Ulswater. “Who plays next? Ram Nad's got 'em,
that's my penetrative opinion; but he can bluff like a fire engine.”
“I'm going to give him a piece of my mind,” said Mrs. Ulswater,
indignantly.
“Why, my dear,” I said, “I don't believe it would fetch them. I believe
Ram Nad could put even a piece of your mind into his basket, and churn
it to a harmless generality. I do indeed. Your play, Sadler.”
“Spank him,” murmured Sadler, sleepily.
“Ha! King Ogel! Hum! Why didn't we induce Ram Nad to generalise that
king? Mightn't it have had a sort of--shall I say?--a refining effect,
a deodourising effect? Well, maybe not. Spanking was, in his case,
I should say, bracing, suggestive; as applied to a king, I admit its
point. But, now, as applied to a patriarch, I should draw the line, I
really should. Your turn, Susannah.”
Susannah sprang up and started across the deck toward Ram Nad. We
watched her in silence, in expectation. She stood before him a moment
conversing, then dragged the conical basket around in front of him, and
of her own accord climbed into it. This was interesting. We all three
arose and drew near them, while Ram Nad covered the opening with a
corner of his loose garments, and fell to that familiar procedure
resembling the motion by which, with fork or spoon, the energetic
housewife blends and fuses the delicately organised egg into a yellow
somewhat, an inorganic mess.
Wherein Ram Nad's skill or secret consisted, its scientific theory,
I did not--I do not now--profess or expect to know. I call him an A1
magician, and pass the deal. Did it consist in hypnotic deception of the
observer? I incline to that idea, on account of the element of gammon
therein. Was it some unusual sleight of hand? Was it a knowledge and
control of some occult but natural law? I have at times leaned to that
hypothesis, only to return again either to gammon or the pleasant repose
of a gaseous doubt. He appeared to be able on request, with any object
not too large to go into his absorbent basket, there to dissolve the
said object into nothing. You could look into the basket. You could feel
with the hand. You could search Ram Nad's clothes, or comb his beard.
You would come to the end of ultimate wisdom, and conclude to pass the
deal. Then, on request, he would reproduce the object.
Susannah is not a large object; she is about the size of Mrs. Ulswater.
“You're sure she isn't taking any harm?” said Mrs. Ulswater, peering
into the mysteriously empty basket. “What on earth did you do with her?
Well, she's not there. Fetch her out.”
Ram Nad covered the opening, churned a bit, and then rolled up the
whites of his eyes and concentrated his mind.
“Stuff!” said Mrs. Ulswater, “You're pretending.”
“Show not knowledge to a woman,” said Ram Nad, politely, “but
indulgence.”
“Fiddlesticks!”
He turned the basket upside down. Mrs. Ulswater tipped it over.
By the sacred Bo Tree, by the antiseptic waters of Benares, what is the
wisdom of the East against the logic of Susannah?
“Susannah!” I cried. Sadler and I clasped hands and danced, glorious and
flamboyant, in the circular manner of a “ring-round-rosy.”
“Susannah, hosannah!” I cried, and Sadler chaunted:
“Ram Nad, you're a son of a gun, tralala,
Ram Nad, if that isn't one, tralala,
On you I don't happen to know,”
and continued, chaunting:
“You'd better quit sinning of sins, tralala,
Or you'll maybe be breaking your shins, tralala,
On things you don't happen to know.”
For there on the deck, smiling quaintly, sat Susannah! There, clasped,
one in each of her arms, were Georgiana and Dolores!
Ram Nad rose silently. Martyred meekness was the foundation of his
facial expression. Dignity and charity were its fringes and decorations.
He went forward among the sailors.
Calm was restored. Susannah explained. She had thought that, if Ram Nad
had put Georgiana and Dolores in some sort of place, and if he did
the same thing to her, perhaps she would be in the same place, and
why shouldn't she find them? Such was Susannah's logic, simple, yet
transcendental. Questioned on the matter of being churned, she said that
she began to feel very comfortable and soft, and then something like
custard, and then like custard that was all around everywhere; that is,
she was both custard herself and contained in custard; and so, reaching
out in the custard of which she consisted, she caught hold of Georgiana
and Dolores. So far Susannah. Such is all the evidence bearing on this
singular event.
“Susannah,” I said, “I like your analysis. Do you happen to feel
anything in the nature of a ballad beginning to--to root around inside
you? Because--here is the point. This ballad, as it stands, of Georgiana
and Dolores, you see----”
“That!” said Susannah, scornfully, “that's no good now. It isn't so.”