The Chicago epoch began a year later. The true nature of its causes
never lay quite clearly in the mind of Bean. There was, first, an
entirely new Uncle Bunker whom he had never seen, but whom he at once
liked very much. He was a younger, more beautiful uncle, with a gay,
light manner and expensive clothing. He wore a magnificent gold watch
and chain, and jewelled rings flashed from his white fingers as he, in
absent moments, daintily passed a small pocket-comb through the meshes
of his lustrous brown side-whiskers. Little Bean knew that he did
something on a board in Chicago; that he "operated" on the Board of
Trade was the accustomed phrasing. He liked the word, and tried to
picture what "operating" might mean in relation to a board.
The good people of Wellsville regarded this uncle with quite all the
respect so flashing a figure deserved. Not so the two other Uncle
Bunkers from over Walnut Shade way. Their first known agreement, voiced
of this financier, was in saying something wise about a fool and his
money.
Later, and perhaps for the last time on earth, they agreed once more.
That was when the news of his marriage came to them--for what was she?
Nothing but his landlady's daughter! Snip of a girl that helped her
mother run a cheap Chicago boarding-house! Him that could have taken his
pick, if he was going to be a fool and tie himself up! You could bet
that the pair had "worked" him, that mother and the girl; landed him for
his money, that was plain! Well, he'd made his bed!
Bean was not slow to liken this uncle to his mother, who had also
"made her bed." He had at first a misty notion that the bride might
a little resemble his father, a notion happily dispelled when he saw
her. For the pair came to Wellsville. It was a sort of honeymoon
combined vaguely with business. The bride was wonderfully pretty,
Bean thought; dark and dainty and laughing, forever talking the most
irresistible "baby-talk" to her adoring mate. Her name for him was
"Boo'ful."
Bean at once fell deeply in love with this bride, a passion that was to
endure beyond the life of most such affairs. She professed an
infatuation equal to his own, and regretted that an immediate marriage,
which he timidly advocated in the course of their first interview, was
not practicable. That she was frivolous, light-minded, and would never
settle down to be a good worker, was a village verdict he scorned. Who
would have her otherwise? Not he, nor the adoring Boo'ful, it is
certain. He determined to go to live at her house, and, strangely
enough--for these sudden plans of his were most often discouraged--the
thing seemed feasible. For one thing, his father was going to bring home
a new mother; a lady, he gathered, who had not only settled down to be a
good worker, but who, in espousing his father, would curiously not marry
beneath her. Without being told so, he had absorbed from his first
mother a conviction that this was possible to but few women. He felt a
little glow of pride for his father in this affair.
Another matter that seemed to bear on his going away was that this
brilliant and human Uncle Bunker was a "trustee." Not only a trustee,
but _his_ trustee; his very own, like his shell, or anything. This led
to his discovery that he had money. His mother, it seemed, had left it
to him; Bunker money that the two older uncles had sought and failed to
divert from her on the occasion of her wedding one below her station.
Money! and the capable Uncle Bunker as trustee of that money! Money one
could buy things with! He was pleasantly conscious of being rather
important under the glance of familiars. Even his father spoke formal
words of counsel to him, as if a gulf was between them--his father now
bereft of all Bunker prestige, legal or social.
And the new uncle was to "educate" him, though this was to be paid for
out of that money of his very own. He was rudely shocked to learn that
you had to pay money to go to school. Loathing school as he did, to pay
money for your own torture--money that would buy things--seemed
unutterably silly. But despite this inbecility the prospect retained its
glamour.
He would have suffered punishments even worse than school for the
privilege of existing near that beautiful bride, whom he was now
calling, at her especial request, "Aunt Clara." She readily understood
any affair that he chose to explain to her; understood about his shell
and said it was the most beautiful thing in all the world. She
understood, too, and was deeply sympathetic about Skipper, the dog.
Skipper was one of a series of puppies that Bean had appropriated from
the public highway. Some had shamefully deserted him after a little time
of pampering. Others, and these were the several that had howled
untimely in the far night, had mysteriously disappeared. Bean had
sometimes a hurt suspicion that his father knew more than he cared to
tell about these vanishings. But Skipper had stayed and had not howled.
Buffeted wastrel of a thousand casual amours, soft-haired, confiding,
ungainly, he was rich in understanding if not in beauty. And yet he must
be left. Even the discriminating and ever-just Aunt Clara felt that
Skipper would not do well in a great city. Of course she was not clumsy
enough to suggest that there were other dogs in the world, as did her
less discerning husband. But she said that it would come out all right,
and Bean trusted her. She knew, too, what would happen on his first
night away, and came softly to his bed and solaced him as he lay crying
for Skipper.
Those first Chicago days were rich in flavour. The city was a marvel of
many terrors, a place of weird sounds, strange shapes and swift
movements, among which--having been made timid by much adversity--you
had need to be very, very careful if your hand was in no one's. The
house itself was wonderful: a house of real brick and very lofty. If you
started in the basement you could go "upstairs" three distinct times in
it before you reached the top. He had never imagined such a house for
any but kings to live in. Within were many rooms; he hardly could count
them all; and regal furnishings, gay with colour; and, permeating it
all, a most appetizing odour of cooked food, eloquent tale of long-eaten
banquets, able reminder of those to come.
Out beside the front door was a rather dingy sign that said "Boarders
Wanted." His deduction after reading the sign was that the person who
wanted the boarders was Aunt Clara's mother. She was like Aunt Clara in
that she was dark and small, but in nothing else. She did not wear
pretty dresses nor laugh nor address baby talk to "Boo'ful." She was
very old and not nice to look at, Bean thought; and an uneasy woman, not
knowing how to be quiet. Mostly she worked in the kitchen, after a hasty
morning tour of the house to "do" the rooms. Bean was much surprised to
learn that her name, too, was Clara. She did not look at all like any
one whose name would be Clara.
And presently there was to be a house even more magnificent than this,
where they would all live together and where, so they jested, the old
Clara wouldn't know what to do, because there would be nothing to do.
The house would be ready just as soon as Boo'ful made his "next turn,"
and that was so near in time that there was already a fascinating
picture of the lines of the house, white lines on blue paper, over which
Boo'ful and Aunt Clara spent many an evening in loving dispute. It
seemed that you could change the house by merely changing those lines.
Sometimes they put a curve into the main stairway or doubled the area of
stained-glass window in the music-room; sometimes it was a mere detail
of alteration in the butler's pantry, or the coachman's room over the
stable. The old Clara displayed no interest in these details. She seemed
to be content to go on wanting boarders.
This was not, as he saw it, an unlovely want. It surrounded her with gay
companions at meal-time; they were "like one big family," as one of the
number would frequently observe. He was the one that most often set them
all to laughing by his talk like that of a German who speaks English
imperfectly, which he didn't have to do at all. It was only
make-believe, but very funny.
After this joyous group and his Aunt Clara, who really came first, his
preference in humans was for a lady who lived two doors away. If you
rang her bell she might be one of three persons. It depended on what you
were looking for. She might be the manicure and chiropodist whose sign
was displayed; she might be Madam Wanda, the world-renowned clairvoyant,
sittings from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M., Advice on Love, Marriage and Business;
sign also displayed; or she might be merely Mrs. Jackson, with a choice
front room for a single gentleman, as declared by the third sign. In any
case she was a smiling, plump lady with a capable blue eye and abundant
dark hair that was smooth and shiny.
It was in company with his uncle that he first made her acquaintance.
His uncle knew all that one need know about Love and Marriage, but it
seemed that his knowledge of Business could be extended. There were
times when only the gifts of a world-renowned clairvoyant could enable
one to say what May wheat was going to do.
The acquaintance, lightly enough begun, ripened soon to intimacy, and so
were the eyes of Bean first opened to mysteries that would later affect
his life so vitally. He was soon carrying wood and coal up the back
stairs of Mrs. Jackson, in return for which the lady ministered to him
in her professional capacities. At their first important session on a
rainy Saturday of leisure she trimmed and polished each of his ten
finger-nails, told his past, present and future--he was going to cross
water and there was a dark gentleman he had need to beware of--and
suggested that his feet might need attention.
He squirmingly demurred at this last operation, and successfully
resisted it. But the bonds of their friendship were sealed over a light
collation which she served. She was a vegetarian, she told him. You
couldn't get on to a high spiritual plane if you ate the corpses of
murdered animals. But her food seemed sufficing and she drank beer which
he brought her in a neat pitcher from the cheerful store on the corner
where they sold such things. Beer, she explained to him, was a strictly
vegetable product, though not the thing for growing boys. The young must
discriminate, even among vegetables.
They liked each other well and in a little time he had absorbed the
simple tale of her activities. When you rented rooms, people sometimes
left without paying you. So had gone Professor de Lavigne, the
chiropodist; so had vanished the original Madam Wanda. They had left
their signs, and nothing else. The rest was simple after you had been
seeing how they did it--a little practice with a nail-file, a little
observation of parties that came in with crêpe on, to whom you said,
"Standing right there I see some one near and dear to you that has
lately passed on to the spirit land"; or male parties that looked all
fussed up and worried, to whom you said that the deal was coming out all
right, only they were always to act on their first impulse and look out
for a man with kind of brownish hair who carried a gold watch and
sometimes wore gloves. She said it was strange how she could "hit it"
sometimes, especially where there were initials in the hats they left
outside in the hall, or a name inside the overcoat pocket. It was
wonderful what she had been able to tell parties for a dollar.
Bean cared little for these details, but he was excited by the theory
back of them; a world from which the unseen spirits of the dead will
counsel and guide us in our daily affairs if we will listen. It was a
new terror added to a world of terrors--they were all about you,
striving with futile hands to touch you, whispering words of cheer or
warning to your deaf ears.
Mrs. Jackson herself believed it implicitly and went each week to
consult one or another of the more advanced mediums. The last one had
seen the spirit of her Aunt Mary, a deceased person so remote in time
that she had been clean forgotten. But it was a valuable pointer. When
you come to think about it, at least seven parties out of ten, if they
were any way along in years, had a dead Aunt Mary. And it was best to go
to the good ones. Mrs. Jackson admitted that. You paid more, but you got
more.
Uncle Bunker became of this opinion very soon. What Mrs. Jackson
disclosed to him about May wheat had seemed to be hardly worth the
dollar she asked. He began going to the good ones, and Bean gathered
that even their superior gifts left something to be desired. The
brilliant uncle began to accustom his home circle to frowns. Bean and
the older Clara (she was beginning to complain about not sleeping and a
pain in her side) were sensible of this change, but the younger Clara
only pouted when she noticed it at all, prettily accusing her splendid
consort of not caring for her as he had once professed to. She spent
more time over her hair and shopped extensively for feminine trappings.
Then one day his uncle came home, a slinking wreck of beauty, and told
Aunt Clara that all was lost save honour. Bean heard the interesting
announcement, and gathered, after a question from his aunt, that his own
patrimony had been a part of that all which was lost save honour. He
heard his uncle add tearfully that one shot would end it now.
He was frightened by this, but his Aunt Clara seemed not to be. He heard
her say, "There, there! Did a nassy ol' martet do adainst 'ums!" And
later she was seen to take him up tea and toast and chicken.
* * * * *
The years seemed to march more swiftly then--school and growing and
little changes in the house. Boo'ful never fired the shot that would
have ended all. The older Clara inconsequently died and the frivolous
Clara took her place in the kitchen. She had not corrected her light
manner, but slowly she changed with the years until she was almost as
faded as the old Clara had been. More ambitious, however, and working to
better purpose. They went to a new and finer house that would hold more
boarders; and the sign, which was lettered in gold, said, "Boarders
Taken," a far more dignified sign than the old with its frank appeal of
"Boarders Wanted." That new sign intimated a noble condescension.
Aunt Clara had not only settled down to be a worker, but she had proved
to be a manager. Boo'ful actually performed little services about the
house, staying in the kitchen at meal-time to carve and help serve the
food. Aunt Clara had been unexpected adamant in the matter of his taking
a fine revenge on the market that had gone against him. She refused to
provide the very modest sum he pleaded for to this end, and as the two
old Uncle Bunkers were equally obdurate--they said they had known when
he married that flutter-budget just how he would end--his leisure was
never seriously menaced.
Aunt Clara was especially firm about the money because of the
considerable life-insurance premium she soon began to pay. It was her
whim that little Bean had not been of competent years to lose all save
honour, and she had discovered a life-insurance company whose officers
were mad enough to compute Boo'ful's loss to the world in dollars and
cents. He was, in fact, considered an excellent risk. He did not fade
after the manner of the busy Aunt Clara, that gay little wretch whose
girlish graces lingered on incongruously--like jests upon a tombstone.
Bean grew to college years. Aunt Clara had been insistent about the
college; it was to be the best business college in Chicago. Bean
matriculated without formality and studied stenography and typewriting.
Aunt Clara had been afraid that he might "get in" with a fast college
set and learn to drink and smoke and gamble. It may be admitted that he
wished to do just these things, but he had observed the effects of
drink, his one experience with tobacco remained all too vivid, and
gambling required more capital than the car fare he was usually provided
with. Besides, you came to a bad end if you gambled. It led to other
things.
Nor would he, on the public street, join with any number of his class in
the college yell. He was afraid a policeman would arrest him. Even in
the more mature years of a comparatively blameless life he remained
afraid of policemen, and never passed one without a tremor. All of which
conduced to his efficiency as a student. When others fled to their
questionable pleasures he was as likely as not to remain in his chair
before a typewriter, pounding out again and again, "_The swift brown fox
jumps over the lazy dog--_" a dramatic enough situation ingeniously
worded to utilize nearly all the letters of our alphabet.
At last he was pronounced competent, received a diploma (which Aunt
Clara framed handsomely and hung in her own room beside the pastel
portrait of Boo'ful in his opulent prime) and took up a man's work.
* * * * *
The veil that hangs between mortal eyes and the Infinite had many times
been pierced for him by the able Mrs. Jackson. He was now to enter
another and more significant stage of his spiritual development.
His first employer was a noble-looking old man, white-bearded, and vast
of brow, who came to be a boarder at Aunt Clara's. He was a believer in
the cult of theosophy and specialized on reincarnation. Neither word was
luminous to Bean, but he learned that the old gentleman was writing a
book and would need an amanuensis. They agreed upon terms and the work
began. The book was a romance entitled, "Glimpses Through the Veil of
Time," and it was to tell of a soul's adventures through a prolonged
series of reincarnations. So much Bean grasped. The terminology of the
author was more difficult. When you have chiefly learned to write, "Your
favour of the 11th inst. came duly to hand and in reply we beg to
state--" it is confusing to be switched to such words as
"anthropogenesis" and to chapter headings like "Substituting Variable
Quantities for Fixed Extraordinary Theoretic Possibilities." Even when
the author meant to be most lucid Bean found him not too easy. "In order
to simplify the theory of the Karmic cycle," dictated the white-bearded
one for his Introduction, "let us think of the subplanes of the astral
plane as horizontal divisions, and of the types of matter belonging to
the seven great planetary Logoi as perpendicular divisions crossing
these others at right angles."
What Bean made of this in transcribing his notes need not be told. What
is solely important is that, as the tale progressed, he became
enthralled by the doctrine of reincarnation. It was of minor consequence
that he became expert in shorthand.
Had he lived before, would he live again? There must be a way to know.
"Alclytus," began an early chapter of the tale, "was born this time in
21976 B.C. in a male body as the son of a king, in what is now the
Telugu country not far from Masulipatam. He was proficient in riding,
shooting, swimming and the sports of his race. When he came of age he
married Surya, the daughter of a neighbouring rajah and they were very
happy together in their religious studies--"
Had he, Bunker Bean, perhaps once espoused the daughter of a rajah, and
been happy in religious studies with her? Had he, perchance, been even
the rajah himself? Why not?
The romance was never finished. A worried son of the old gentleman
appeared one day, alleged that he had run off from a good home where he
was kindly treated, and by mild force carried him back. But he had
performed his allotted part in Bean's life.
A few books had been left and these were read. Death was a recurring
incident in an endless life. Wise men he saw had found this an answer to
all problems--founders of religions and philosophies--Buddha,
Pythagoras, Plato, the Christ. Wise moderns had accepted it, Max Müller
and Hume and Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, Lessing. Bean could not appraise
these authorities, but the names somehow sounded convincing and the men
had seemed to think that reincarnation was the only doctrine of
immortality a philosopher could consider.
It remained, then, to explore the Karmic past of Bunker Bean; not in any
mood of lightness. A verse quoted by the old man had given him pause:
"Who toiled a slave may come anew a prince
For gentle worthiness and merit won;
Who ruled a king may wander earth in rags
For things done and undone."
What might he have been? For ruling once as a king, a bad king, was he
now merely Bunker Bean, not precisely roaming the earth in rags, but
sidling timidly through its terrors, disbelieving in himself, afraid of
policemen, afraid of life?
So he confronted and considered the thing, fascinated by its vistas as
once he had been by the shell. If it were true that we cast away our
worn bodies and ever reclothe ourselves with new, why should not the
right member of Mrs. Jackson's profession one day unfold to him his
beginningless past?