CHAPTER III.
IN PRIMORDIAL BIOGEN.
His penance done, the Mystic of Kankakee presented himself once moreat the soda fountain. He was paler, slimmer and altogether moreeffective than before. He was faultlessly groomed in pearl gray. Hishead was held high--by an immaculate collar. He was shod in patentleathers, and white spats peeped chastely below his upturned trousers.His gloved hand grasped the middle of a large cane for support.
"Do you, William K. Vanderhook, hope or expect to marry ImogeneSilesia Sheets?"
Young Mr. Vanderhook, who was replenishing the soda fountain, startledfor the moment, dropped a large chunk of ice, thereby overturningseveral bottles of syrup.
"If--So--You--Must--Re--lin--quish--Her."
"Now, what are you givin' me?" growled Bill, as he turned upon hischum, and as he did so snapped the cover of the soda fountain withunnecessary violence.
"Merely this," said Alonzo Leffingwell, slightly raising hismonotone,--"You persuaded me to break my vow. You inveigled me intolooking upon woman. I had warned you, pleaded with you to let me outof this. You heeded not. I hinted at penalties. You sneered. You didnot believe me. You insisted. I yielded. But you have assumed theconsequences. You have defied Destiny. But my unsophisticated friend,you have bound yourself to accept the results. You played with Fate.The law is relentless. Rash boy, you have invoked dire karmicconsequences."
"Well, what in the name of--the higher foolology--are you driving at?"snapped Bill, quite out of patience.
"This, my once friend, this"--and Lonnie now well started, talkedstraight on. "Through my higher comprehension of primordialprinciples, and by my occult manipulations of certain astral forces(quite unknown to such as you), I erstwhile learned the most profoundfact in nature. I was, as we say in our cult, able to visionize mySoul Mate. The doors of the future, as it were, lifted from theirhinges, and--Aha! you start. You tremble. You sense my secret. Youperceive the mystical meaning of my metaphysical meanderings."
Alonzo Leffingwell paused, gazing fixedly at Bill, who was nownervously rinsing the glasses.
"You have guessed," and the Mystic's voice fell to a sharp whisper."Miss Sheets is SHE,--she whom I cognized in the astral. She is _not_your affinity, but _mine_. Did you not perceive that we needed nointroduction? Our higher selves responded to the law; hence myagitation, and your--your--KARMA."
Bill Vanderhook stopped short, straightened himself. He quit tinkeringwith the stock.
Continued Lonnie remorselessly,--
"Knowing, as I do, that our union is inevitable in the course ofevolutionary processes, I thought best so to inform you, and as itwere, take her off your hands. You are, I trust, too wise to attemptany interference with the immutable."
Bill Vanderhook stared at his chum for a minute, and then broke into abig, loud laugh. "Well, at least you're candid," he said--"more sothan most fellows who find their affinities,"--and he carelesslymopped off the marble slab. "At the same time,"--and his voiceroughened--"you'll excuse me for saying that you're off your base, andthat I hold the age over your astral informant, whatever his degree ofasininity."
"And you mean to say that you will not relinquish her? That you willdefy the decrees of nature? That you will violate the principles ofprimordial biogen? That you will ignore the 'Harmonics of Evolution?'"And Alonzo's eyes again rested on the labels of the soda fountain.
"To the first,--Nit. To the secondly, thirdly and fourthly,--Yep. Now,you get it?"--and Bill looked very tired.
"O, earthy and unillumined!" murmured the pale, youngenthusiast,--"would that I could but for a moment open up to yourclouded understanding the mystical and unintelligible explications ofone whom I, even I, acknowledge to be a deeper, more profound and moremysterious Mystic than MYSELF.
"What you need, O, dense, chaotic soul, is--EX-PLI-CA-TION,Explication that will Explain. Hear me, poor groveler amid therudimentary manifestations of matter. Harken to me ere it be too late.Hear me, O, my boyhood's chum. Hear the words of misty meaning whichhave flowed in boundless streams from this modern Mystic, thatFar-Off-One in Manhattan Isle. These are the words of one upon whosewisdom I feed, the words of one who KNOWS, and--and--I whisper to youin secret, one who admits that he is--a--_Mystic_.
"Hear him, William--you who trifle with solemn things--you who denythese primordial, protoplasmic affinities. Hide your head inconfusion. Hear him whose utterances no man can interpret. Hear himwhose explications are as explicit, as limpid, as lucid, ascrystalline, as clear, as the broad light of day at midnight's holyhour.
"Turn with me to our most luminous and incomprehensible text book. Youwill find at page numbered 288, commencing, I think, near the middleof the page, the following inspired words, viz.,--
[1]"'The spiritual espousal, wherein humanity is united with the Lord,is not only catholic, including all the elements in a human word, but,whatever may be its heavenly consummation, is, in its earthlyexpression and as a visible manifestation, a limited estate, involvingconditions such as attend all other espousals: on the Bride's part adestination separating her from the Bridegroom, and in many waysseeming a contradiction of her inmost desire for Him, so that shebecomes a poor starveling, a distraught and desolate Psyche, bereft ofLove; and on the part of the Bridegroom a running after her, as if inanswer to some great need and hunger developed in her desolation, asif He had indulged her aversion that He might follow her into herdarkest hiding, standing at her door and knocking while His locks arewet with the cold dews of her night--He also having veiled Hisessential might and brightness lest she should be dismayed at Hiscoming, yet retaining enough of his original majesty that she may seeHim as the one altogether lovely, the wonderful.'
[Footnote 1: "A Study of Death," by Henry Mills Alden; late editorHarper's Magazine.]
"Here in this one simple sentence of only one hundred and eighty-fourshort, brief, curt, compact, concise, terse, pithy, diffuse, verbose,prolix, copious, flowing, digressive, excursive, discursive,pleonastic and periphrastic words, with at least nine out of every tenof which you should be familiar, there are enough possibilities ofmeaning, and lack of meaning, to keep your benighted intellect busyguessing for the balance of your natural life.
"But dark as is your intellectual vision, you can not fail to note thefrequent occurrence of such significant words as 'Bride,''Bridegroom,' 'espousal,' 'united,' 'heavenly consummation,''destination,' 'desolate Psyche,' 'Love,' 'indulged,' 'originalmajesty,' 'altogether lovely,' and 'wonderful.'
"You can not fail to note that in this wonderful revelation of thepossibilities of a single sentence, the personal pronouns 'He' and'Him' always begin with a capital 'H.' Can you further doubt that thisrefers to ME? Can you further protest that this union of ME and MINEis not an essential part of the great plan and purpose of the CosmicIntelligence to whom alone I acknowledge equality?
"But if, perchance, there yet remains a lingering doubt, then listenonce more to this inspired Mystic; for at page 197 he says,--
"'In the ascent of life, desire seems to compel its cosmic partner,as hunger its victim, suspending that operation of physical andchemical forces proper to them outside of this dominion of vitality;in its descent these forces more and more tend to resume their properaction, until finally they bring into their own domain the structurethey have served; their hardening of the walls of life's outwardtemple, begun for protection, has gone on to the extreme of fragilityand destruction--an office as kindly as any they have performed.'
"And once more, O, my benighted friend, at page 185 he again says,--
"'In this complex hierarchy of Nature discrete accords are sustained,so that they fall not into indifference and confusion; degrees ofexcellence are marked--of truth, beauty and goodness; individualsequestration and tranquillity are secured, and for each life away--its own that no other can take, and yet open to accordantintimacies and correspondences; and in the psychical involvement lifeacquires a feeling of itself and a conscious control, the liberty ofits dwelling.'
"And yet ag
ain at page 108,--
"'As these organic capacities are deepened inwardly, representing intheir sphering and involution and convolution the synthetic action ofcosmic envelopment from the beginning, the desire which has thusshaped itself by intussusception, expressing its postulation, isoutwardly a flame of increase, ascending also while it is crescentuntil it reaches the culminant point of its physiological term, whereit--'"
"Hold up there. Close that valve a minute. Put on the lid," roaredBill, "and tell me in the name of all specialized idiocy what you'reat. If you can't untangle yourself with four thousand languages deadand alive, then you better go chase yourself into cosmic nebulosity.
"If this is your Ex--pli--ca--tion--, and if this is your only excusefor involuting yourself into an introconvertible, double-back-actiondictionary, then, says I, t'mud with your mysticism. And nowhereafter, when you want to 'explicate' you go out to the harmlessward where they've got whole bunches of just such as your oldManhattan misfit mutt.
"You go out there and talk to your own brand of mystics. Don't youtalk shop here. I'm in the drug business and I know a little bit aboutmedicine, but I'll be everlastingly lost in a cosmological fog if I'dknow how to prescribe for symptoms like yours. The kind of microbesthat manifest through the gray matter of a mystic are not identifiedin these mundane dispensatories.
"Now, you hear me a minute, Mr. Alonzo Leffingwell--INEXPLICABLEmystic and all around D--P--of every old degree, you want to get rightout of Kankakee and lose no time. The state of Illinois makes our citythe center of only _ordinary_ aberrations; it does not provide wardsfor such illuminated inanities as you at this minute have beenexplicating.
"I say, my friend, you go get some bars and lock yourself up. Go sinkyourself in a tank of formaline and then will the tank to thescientific department of the institution. This, I say, would never bemisunderstood by anybody who knew you. It would be a contribution toscience, an aid to education, and an example to the young. And thiswould be the only good excuse you could ever give to society forhaving been on the top side of the earth."
"Unhappy trifler, you will regret your selfishness," murmured theoccultist, less in anger than sorrow. "But I have done. I leave you toyour destiny. I leave you to your own conscience. This will cost youcycles of expiation. You have forfeited your possibilities. Had youresigned her in accordance with the law, all had been well. But yourpersistence shall react upon your own head,--and now farewell. I leaveyou, to return no more,--at least not this afternoon. I shall seek thelady. It rests with her. If possible I shall save her from the saderror of marrying you. I shall save her from herself. I shall lift herup to ME, and in this wise I may perhaps save her from other and verydisagreeable reincarnations."
Bill Vanderhook picked his hat off the peg, carefully selected a bigcigar, lighted it, took a whiff and then replied sardonically,--"Well,Mr. Dianzy Chooanzy, and suppose she won't affin, what then?"
"Then, O, then,"--lisped Lonnie as he leaned upon the show-case as iffor support,--"I shall be compelled to wait through several cycles,perhaps, until she has worked out the necessary karma and attained toME."
"But see here," persisted Bill. "I thought that you gurus and gnanisand you astral fellows generally took the bachelor's degree the veryfirst inning. I thought you were clean off the market. I've alwaysheard that matrimony was quite outside the mystic foul lines."
"Right,"--answered Lonnie,--"that is, as you understand mysticism,marriage is forbidden, except a gentleman discovers his very own. Andeven then,"--and his voice quavered,--"he must not even get engageduntil she who is his in primordial biogen shall attain to an equalillumination. This frequently postpones the happy day for ages."
"Well, now, that's a horse of another color,"--and Bill heaved a sighof relief. "This is most likely one of those postponed cases. Anyway,I was solid up to last night, but if you don't mind waiting a coupleof thousand years I haven't any objections,"--and the generous youngdruggist let fizz a glass of mineral water.
"Thanks, awfully,"--murmured Lonnie, but whether for the permission orthe apollinaris was not quite clear. He sipped the sparkling waterwith suggestive mournfulness.
"Being chained to the material," he added, "it is very possible shemay even prefer you to ME. The fleshly veil which yet so thicklyclothes her higher principles, may obscure ME to her innerconsciousness; in which case I must temporarily resign her. I may notclaim her for several brief earth lives yet. For all this I am fullyprepared. And should she not cognize ME for what I AM, I shall henceto India, and there, by contemplation in the sacred cave I shallastralize. I shall return again, and keep watch over her."
"Well, well, well,--that's quite an idea, isn't it!"--responded Bill."No,"--as Lonnie felt in his vest pocket--tentatively,--"it's mytreat. The plan you mention isn't more'n half bad--kind o' lets us allout without any hard feelings. I know it will suit Imogene to a T.Come back from India any time--in the astral. You'll find thelatch-string out."
"You forget," returned the Mystic mildly, even sadly, "thatONE--WHO--KNOWS requires neither latch-string nor pass key.
"Such an one, as I AM--TO--BECOME, neither asks admission nor visitsby invitation. These are they who function in the Universal and whoseatomic particles respond to the WILL. These are they whose levitationsare uncircumscribed, who moveth by Desire and where they listeth. IfI go shall I return again? And if so, from whence and for why? And whoshall let me in? Aha! Ah-ha!"
Saying which the wise man of Kankakee turned, went softly out the doorand gliding down Asylum Avenue sought the abode of the fascinatingTypewriter.
A Maiden so fair and a Guru so slight Conversed as they sat on the green: Alonzo the Seer was the name of the wight, And the maid was the Fair Imogene.