"It won't do, of course," I murmured, presently. "We must use diplomacy,
not force, in dealing with this Oriental nuisance. Perhaps Yamama will
find little Van Tromp sufficiently amusing to enable us to escape
detection. I'm inclined to think that Van Tromp is the outward and
visible sign of a love-sick tadpole. His sister, the debutante, is not
so bad. I suppose she'll fall to Edgerton at dinner?"
"We must have a rehearsal, you and I," remarked Caroline, gruffly. "I
escort Mrs. Edgerton, of course, and you'll take Van Tromp's arm. You'll
like that."
"Do you see these violets--ah--Reginald?" I cried, dramatically, making
a gesture toward Van Tromp's floral offering, now bedecking my corsage.
"He sent them to you. What was Van Romeo's little game? You were to
wear the violets to-night, if you really meant what you said to him at
the Cromptons' dance. As you always mean what you say, my dear, I have
hung out the sign of your--ah--veracity, so to speak. There's more to
come, of course. There's a poem, for one thing. I'll read it aloud
when we get our coffee."
I saw that my heavy face was flushed and that my eyes glowed with anger
as I glanced upward at my wife. She strode toward me menacingly, and
laid a heavy hand upon her bare shoulder. Seizing Van Tromp's violets,
before I could recover from my astonishment, she tore them from their
fastenings, and hurled them toward a remote corner of the drawing-room.
"You carry a joke too far," she growled, menacingly. "If you dare to
read that poem I'll--I'll tell Yamama the whole story when he comes. I
know what to say to him, and he'll do what I ask him to do. I give you
fair warning."
I fell back in my chair, cold and disheartened. My worst suspicions
seemed to be confirmed. Caroline was in league, as I had feared, with
that sunburnt fakir from the Far East! At that moment, Jones entered
the room.
"Mr. and Mrs. Edgerton," he announced, and, an instant later, "Miss Van
Tromp, Mr. Van Tromp."
*CHAPTER XI.*
*A DINNER AND A DISCUSSION.*
Yesterday This Day's Madness did prepare:
To-morrow's Silence, Triumph, or Despair.
Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why.
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.
_--Omar Khayyam_.
It is always, under the best of conditions, uncertain how a dinner-party
will "go off." People are not unlike the ingredients of a
salad-dressing. The smoothness of the dressing depends upon a mysterious
chemical affinity that is recognized by the salad-maker but never wholly
understood. All the arts are closely related to each other. A
dinner-party, a salad-dressing or an epic poem demands creative effort,
and is successful in so far as its creator has made an effective fusion
of its separate parts.
Caroline had been inclined to believe that her fame as a dinner-giver
was no more than her due. She had reached an altitude as a triumphant
hostess from which she could make experiments of a more or less
interesting kind. She enjoyed bringing together around our board
seemingly antagonistic social molecules to see if they would fuse. She
had planned to-night's dinner much as a chemist prepares his materials
for a novel combination. Edgerton and Mrs. Edgerton, Van Tromp and Miss
Van Tromp formed the basis for an experiment that might produce either a
perfume or an explosion.
What the result would have been had Caroline's effort not been hampered
by a soul-transposition that made many things awkward to us that were
unobserved by our guests, I cannot say. A large portion of the function,
especially its earlier stages, is a blur and a buzz in my memory. It had
been like this from the first, whenever I had come into the butler's
sphere of influence. Van Tromp and Edgerton were not especially
terrifying. I knew their limitations. But Jones impressed me as a
mystery, concealing in a wooden exterior most frightful possibilities
for mischief. I did not fully recover my self-control, if such it could
be called, until after the fish had been served. By that time, the
situation in the dining-room was about as follows:
Caroline, playing the role of host, was doing nicely, but was, I feared,
inclined to over-act the part a bit. Little Van Tromp, a blue-eyed,
insignificant-looking man, with a tender mustache, pointed blond beard
and too much hair on his head, was lowspirited and inclined to wander in
his talk. He would glance at my corsage, and then cast a reproachful,
languishing glance at Caroline's eyes, into which I found it possible,
now and then, to throw an expression of coquetry that revived the poet's
drooping spirits for a time. Mrs. Edgerton, a handsome mondaine, was
always self-poised, animated and self-satisfied. Miss Van Tromp, unlike
her sister, Mrs. Taunton, was petite, vivacious and rather pretty, but
somewhat in awe of her brother's genius. Edgerton was a typical New
Yorker of the prosperous type, possessing blood, breeding and a pleasing
exterior.
Mrs. Edgerton thought that I looked somewhat fagged.
"I've had such a busy day, don't you know--ah--my dear," I exclaimed,
glancing at my face across the table, and flushing at the gleam of
merriment that Caroline flashed at me from my eyes.
"You and Mrs. Edgerton really do too much," commented Edgerton,
politely. "We are apt to underestimate a woman's cares and burdens,
Reggie," he added, addressing Caroline.
"Indeed we are," Caroline asserted, readily, in my deep voice. "I'm
inclined to think, Edgerton," she continued, giving a splendid imitation
of my most impressive manner, "that we do scant justice to our wives,
while we are forever harping upon our own importance."
"Hear! hear!" cried little Van Tromp, playfully. I manfully resisted an
inclination to hurl a wine-glass at his too picturesque head.
Mrs. Edgerton smiled at me. "What has happened to Mr. Stevens,
Caroline?" she cried, jocosely. "Unless my memory is at fault, I have
heard him say that you and I are 'long on leisure and short on work.'"
"An epigram!" piped the poet, rolling his eyes in exaggerated rapture.
"Did I ever make that remark?" I heard my voice asking in surprise.
"I'm afraid, Mrs. Edgerton, that you have misrepresented the source of
what Mr. Van Tromp has mistaken for an epigram. It sounds to me, who
never said it, more like a Wall street bull."
"I can't bear that," I ventured, in Caroline's merriest tones, and Miss
Van Tromp giggled.
"The point at issue, as I understand it," began Edgerton, genially, "is
whether Reggie is making a confession. Did you cry 'Peccavi!' old man?"
"You are as great a sinner in this matter as I am," answered Caroline,
seriously, looking at Edgerton. "How often have I heard you complain of
overwork, my dear fellow! They were saying at the club this afternoon
that you seldom reached there before four o'clock."
A flush came into Edgerton's face, and Mrs. Edgerton laughed aloud.
"Betrayed! betrayed!" she exclaimed, gleefully. "Reggie has deserted
you, hubbie dear."
"This is absolutely shocking!" cried Miss Van Tromp. "I shall never
marry."
"Let us change the subject," I suggested, suppressing a shudder as Jones
glided past me. "We have become a horrible warning to our two unmarried
guests--ah--Reginald."
"I am not easily frightened, Mrs. Stevens," the poet dared to say,
looking at me courageously.
"Discretion is the better part of bachelorhood," I retorted, and Van
Romeo collapsed at once.
"I am so excited at the prospect of meeting Yamama," said Mrs. Edgerton,
presently. "He says such wonderful things!"
"And does 'em, too," I murmured, under my breath, and flashing a glance
at my smiling face across the table.
"What does he say?" asked Miss Van Tromp, with youthful curiosity.
"Oh, I can't begin to tell you," protested Mrs. Edgerton, and then
began: "He says that poetry suffices; that he cannot understand why
prose was invented."
"Hear! hear!" cried little Van Tromp, with enthusiasm.
"He abhors egotism. Intellectual self-satisfaction is hideous, he
says."
"He ought to know," I exclaimed, and Caroline had the audacity to laugh.
"Go on, Mrs. Edgerton," cried the Van Tromps with one voice.
"Yamama tells us that our Western world is not only self-satisfied, but
ignorant. We are contented with half-truths. Science makes a
discovery, as it imagines, and, behold! it is something that the East
has known for ages."
"But how about the famine in India?" asked Edgerton, argumentatively.
"If they know so much, these Eastern wise men, why don't they make grain
grow in a dry season? They are great frauds, eh, Reggie?"
"I don't agree with you, Edgerton," I heard my voice in answer. "You
fail to get their point of view."
"Betrayed again, Edgerton," laughed the poet.
"What's their point of view?" grumbled Edgerton, casting a glance of
surprise at Caroline.
"If you believed in reincarnation," exclaimed my wife, in my somewhat
overbearing manner, "you would look upon death as merely a
stepping-stone to a higher existence. A famine, don't you see, helps a
large number of souls up the spiral."
"Mr. Stevens has become a theosophist," cried Mrs. Edgerton, in
exaggerated amazement.
"How perfectly lovely," commented Miss Van Tromp, somewhat irrelevantly.
I saw Jones pouring wine at the poet's corner, and I thought that his
hand trembled. I'm sure that my voice was unsteady as I remarked:
"But--ah--Reginald, what about snakes and--ah--frogs? Starvation is bad
enough, but you aren't going up a spiral if you are changed into
something that squirms and crawls."
"It's not like climbing a ladder," answered my voice, authoritatively.
"You may go down, now and then, but as the ages pass the general trend
is upward."
"It's awfully interesting," reflected Miss Van Tromp, aloud. "But how
is it done?"
"It isn't done!" exclaimed Edgerton, almost angrily, "it's only
half-baked. Of all the absurd nonsense that is talked this Oriental
mysticism is the worst. That's why I was glad to get this man Yamama to
come here this evening. I want to prove to Mrs. Edgerton that he's just
about as significant as a Bab ballad."
"Do you think that Yamama will be inclined to do--ah--stunts, Mr.
Edgerton?" I faltered, catching the butler's eye, and wondering why
Caroline's toes got cold so easily.
"What do you mean by stunts, my dear?" Caroline asked, using my voice,
rather sternly. "Yamama, I imagine, would not understand the word. He
is not here to play tricks."
"What is he here for--ah--my dear?" I asked, in a falsetto that was too
shrill to be good form. Mrs. Edgerton looked annoyed, and Edgerton
said, half-apologetically:
"Really, Mrs. Stevens, I thought that you would be glad to have Yamama
come to us to-night. Frankly, I wanted to make a closer study of the
man, and your husband assured me that it would be pleasing to you to
have him here."
"Don't think me inhospitable and ungrateful, Mr. Edgerton," I began in
Caroline's smoothest manner. "I shall enjoy meeting Yamama, of course.
But do you really think that a man who prefers poetry to prose can be
trusted?"
Van Tromp gasped and glanced furtively at Caroline. The latter raised
her wine-glass, smiled at me gaily, and I heard my voice crying:
"Here's to you, my dear, good as you are!"
"What are you staring at, Jones?" I asked, angrily, turning sharply
toward the butler. He continued his task of serving the course without
noticing my reproof. My wife and guests were gazing at me in surprise.
"A toast! A toast!" cried little Van Tromp, almost hysterically.
Edgerton laughed aloud. "Let us drink to the mysterious East," he
suggested, like one who bore an olive branch in his hand.
"To the secrets of the Orient and Yamama!" amended Caroline, showing my
teeth to me in a cruel smile.
"Yamama! Yamama!" murmured my guests.
As we sipped our wine, I glanced at Jones. There was a flush on his
phlegmatic face, but he appeared to be paying no attention to anything
but his duties.
*CHAPTER XII.*
*YAMAMA AND RELEASE.*
Then dimness passed upon me, and that song
Was sounding o'er me when I woke
To be a pilgrim on the nether earth.
--_Dean Alford_.
On our return to the drawing-room, I found myself annoyed by the
attention of little Van Tromp and appalled by the imminent advent of
Yamama. A new and most distressing dread had crept into my errant soul.
I had begun to think that I should come to hate my wife, unless she
altered at once her mode of procedure. The fear was upon me that she
had enjoyed the day's experience sufficiently to tempt her to make
existing conditions permanent. Angry as I was with her, I realized that
diplomacy was a better tool at present than denunciation.
"I must speak to her at once," I mused aloud, glancing at my manly,
patrician, well-groomed outward seeming as Caroline stood at the further
end of the room, chatting with Miss Van Tromp and the Edgertons. An
exclamation beside me convinced me that little Van Tromp was very
wide-awake.
"Shall I take you to her, Mrs. Stevens? There is no sacrifice that I
would not make for you. You would go to Mrs. Edgerton?"
"Mrs. Edgerton?" I exclaimed, somewhat dazed for the moment. "No; I was
referring to--ah--Reginald. Tell him I want to see him, will you, old
man? These infernal skirts are such a nuisance!"
The poet's eloquent eyes recalled me to my senses. He was gazing at me
in amazement, evidently wondering if I had drunk too deep a toast to
Yamama.
"What a pitiable fate is mine!" murmured Van Romeo, gloomily. "I have
been dreaming of this moment for days, and, lo! you destroy my happiness
by a word. Chasing a rainbow is so much more delightful that summoning
your lesser half!"
"Lesser half, indeed!" I could not refrain from saying, bitterly. "My
three-quarters, or more. Look here, Van Tromp, if you don't move more
rapidly I shall read those silly verses of yours to Yamama when he
arrives, and he'll turn you into a green-and-yellow parrot. Good
heavens, man, it's too late! There he is!"
[Illustration: "Unannounced and unattended, Yamama glided into the
drawing-room."]
Unannounced and unattended, Yamama glided into the drawing-room. I
recognized him at a glance, and Caroline's bosom heaved with a conflict
of emotions. Little Van Tromp had jumped to his feet.
"Isn't he stunning?" he exclaimed most unpoetically.
Yamama was, indeed, pleasing to the eye. His light-brown complexion,
dark brilliant eyes and gorgeous costume made a picture that gave an
Oriental splendor to our drawing-room. He stood motionless for a
moment, half-way between Caroline and me. Suddenly it flashed upon me
that I had a duty to perform. Caroline and I reached Yamama at the same
time.
"It was so kind of you to come to us," I heard Caroline saying to the
adept. "Mrs. Stevens was overjoyed to hear that you had consented to
honor us."
Yamama's black, fathomless eyes smiled at me, like deep, dark pools
touched by sunshine. A chill ran through me, but I found strength to
say, falteringly:
"Glad to see you, Mr.--ah--Yamama. We're so interested--ah--Reginald
and I--in Bhesotericuddhism! Glad to see you! Aren't we--ah--Reggie?"
I suspected that Caroline chuckled behind my beard. I am sure that the
smile in Yamama's eyes deepened.
We had grouped ourselves around the adept, who stood calm, picturesque,
silent, in the center of the room; the majesty and mystery of the
brooding East seeming to fill the universe of a sudden. It was as some
priceless Oriental rug had become on the instant not merely an ornament,
but a creation of infinite psychical significance.
"Does he talk?" Edgerton whispered to me, and I glanced at him,
reprovingly. Mrs. Edgerton was gazing, awestruck, at Yamama.
Presently, the adept spoke, in a voice that drove from my fevered mind
all thoughts of frogs, snakes and tadpoles.
"Man is composed of seven principles, a unit, but capable of partial
separation."
"Well, rather!" I could not refrain from saying, but Yamama ignored my
rudeness. He went on impressively, while the group surrounding him
listened eagerly, fascinated by his appearance and manner.
"The evolutionary process demands a number of planets, corresponding to
the seven principles. On each of these planets a long series of lives is
required before a full circuit is made."
"How wildly exciting!" cried Miss Van Tromp. Yamama smiled,
indulgently. Then he said:
"Before reaching the perfection attainable, every soul must pass through
many minor circuits. We are said to be in the middle of the fifth
circuit of our fourth round, and the evolution of this circuit began
about a million years ago."
"It knocks the Ferris Wheel silly," I overheard Edgerton mutter to
himself, and I felt an unaccountable anger at his flippancy.
"I should so like to ask you a question," faltered Miss Van Tromp, and
Yamama bowed his inspired head, resignedly.
"How soon do we come back after we die?"
"When a man dies," answered the adept, in his low, soft, musical voice,
"his ego holds the impetus of his earthly desires until they are purged
away from that higher self, which then passes into a spiritual state,
when all the psychic and spiritual forces it has generated during the
earthly life are unfolded. It progresses on those planes until the
dormant physical impulses assert themselves, and curve the soul around
to another incarnation, whose form is the resultant of the earlier
lives."
"That's easy," muttered Edgerton, at my shoulder.
"I've often felt that way," exclaimed Van Tromp, gazing ecstatically at
Yamama.
"Are you making converts?" asked Mrs. Edgerton.
A haughty smile, dark-red streaked with white against a brown
background, the whole lighted by two eyes of marvelous power, met our
gaze.
"Only by soul itself is soul perceived," answered Yamama, somewhat
irrelevantly, I thought.
"You're out, my dear," whispered Edgerton, playfully, to his wife.
"May I trouble you, my dear sir," began Van Tromp, pompously--"may I
trouble you to explain to a mind darkened by Occidental erudition why it
is that the West is so blind to the mighty truths that you teach?"
"That's a touchdown," muttered Edgerton.
Yamama gazed fixedly at the poet for a time. Then he said:
"The West is not blind to the mighty truths of which you speak. You
only imagine that you do not see them. Your great thinkers have taught
what we teach. Schopenhauer, Lessing, Hegel, Leibnitz, Herder, Fichte
the younger, are with us. Your great poets sing the eternal verities.
It is nothing new, that which I bring to you from the East."
"Is there--ah--any reason to fear," I dared to ask, "that when
we--ah--change around again--I mean--ah--get reincarnated, you see, that
we become--ah--frogs or--or snakes--that is, if we don't--ah--so to
speak, stay put?"
My voice had been gradually ascending Caroline's scale until it hit the
interrogation mark in a sharp falsetto. As Yamama's eyes met mine I
thought for an instant that I had been struck by lightning. What his
strange glance--cutting through me until I knew that I had no secrets
left--meant I had no way of determining. I was like a rabbit fascinated
by an anaconda.
"There is salvation for him whose self disappears before truth, whose
will is bent upon what he ought to do, whose sole desire is the
performance of his duty. The root of all evil is ignorance." Thus
spake Yamama, whether in answer to my question I could not decide.
"What's the matter with the love of money?" asked Edgerton, in an
unconventional tone of voice. His bump of reverence is not well
developed.
"'Tis but a small part of the ignorance that enfolds you like a
worthless garment," answered the adept, coldly.
"That's one on me," I heard Edgerton mutter, while Mrs. Edgerton
laughed, softly.
"The Enlightened One," went on Yamama, literally in a brown study, "saw
the four noble truths which point out the path that leads to Nirvana or
the extinction of self."
"Good eye!" murmured Edgerton, and his wife whispered "Hush!"
As I glanced at Caroline, I saw that my face had undergone a change.
She was watching the adept with my eyes, but the expression on my
countenance was wholly her own.
"The attainment of truth," continued Yamama, "is possible only when self
is recognized as an illusion. Righteousness can be practiced only when
we have freed our mind from the passion of egotism. Perfect peace can
dwell only where all vanity has disappeared."
"I've known that for years," exclaimed Van Tromp, brushing his hair back
from his forehead in a self-conscious way.