Perkins, the Fakeer

"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 songWas sounding o'er me when I wokeTo 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!"

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.

I had begun to feel faint.

"Won't you be seated–ah–Mr. Yamama?" I asked, hoping that he would observe my indisposition. Even as I spoke, I lost sight of him. The lights went out of a sudden, and a sharp, exquisite pain shot through me. I was surrounded by a fathomless gloom, as if the universe had turned black at a word. I was conscious, but seemingly alone in a dark void. For a moment only was I cognizant of self. Then there came a flash of dazzling light, and I knew no more.

My testimony is at an end. A week has passed since Caroline and I awoke one morning to find our souls transposed. We are still confined to our rooms, suffering, our physician tells us, from acute nervous prostration. But "Richard's himself again!" When we recovered our senses–for Caroline had fainted at the moment when Yamama dissappeared from my sight–we found ourselves restored to our respective bodies; but the shock of our psychical interchange had left us physically weak and depressed.

I have not yet had the energy to compare notes with Caroline in regard to our uncanny experiences. But, fearing that my memory might play me false, I have relieved the tedium of my convalescence by jotting down the foregoing presentment, in the hope, as I have said before, that the data may prove of interest to minds more erudite than mine and my wife's.

Jenkins has returned from Hoboken–or wherever he went–and I have had him remove my beard. It had become a horror to me. Suzanne is very attentive to Caroline, and seems to have recovered her spirits.

One significant fact I have reserved for the last. It has caused me much uneasiness, not unmingled with a sense of relief. Jones has not been seen since the night of our weird dinner-party. No trace of him has been found. I have advertised for a butler, but have not yet received an application that appealed to me in my present supersensitive condition. What I want is a butler as unlike Jones as possible. Unfortunately, he was a pattern of his kind. But I hate the very thought of him, and so I shall drop my pen at this point and watch Suzanne and Caroline through the open door. I think I shall try to get down to the club to-morrow to see the boys.

II.

How Chopin Came to Remsen

There cometh evil to my house,And none of ye have wit to help me knowWhat the great gods portend sending me this.THE LIGHT OF ASIA.

CHAPTER I.

CHOPIN'S OPUS 47

It brings an instinct from some other sphere,For its fine senses are familiar all,And with the unconscious habit of a dream,It calls and they obey.N. P. WILLIS.

It has been with the greatest reluctance that I have agreed to submit to the public all the details, so far as they are known to me, of my husband's seemingly miraculous change from an average man into a genius. Poor Tom! He was so happy as a phlegmatic, well-balanced, common-place lawyer and clubman, devoted to his wife, his profession and his friends! But now, alas, his amazing eccentricities demand from me a presentation of his case that shall change censure into sympathy and malicious gossip into either silence or truth.

I am forced to admit at the outset that Tom is justified in attributing his present predicament to my own fondness for music. He had protested, gently but firmly, against the series of musicals that I had planned to give last season.

"They'll be an awful nuisance, my dear," he had remarked, gloomily, gazing at me appealingly across the table at which we were dining en tête-à-tête. "Why not substitute bridge whist in place of the music? Why will you insist on asking a crowd of people who don't care a rap for anything but ragtime to listen to your high-priced soloists? A musical, Winifred, is both expensive and tiresome."

"What a Philistine you are, Tom!" I exclaimed, protestingly, knowing, however, that my dear old pachyderm would not wince at the epithet I had hurled at him across the board. Tom's vocabulary is not large, and possesses a legal rather than a Biblical flavor.

"What's a Philistine?" he asked, indifferently. "If it's a fellow who objects to inviting a lot o' people that he doesn't like to listen to a lot o' playing and singing that they don't like, well, then, I'm it. But what's the use of my getting out an injunction? If you've made up your mind to give these musicals, Winifred, I might as well quash my appeal. I've no standing in this court."

One of the advantages of living with a man for ten years is that one is eventually confronted by a most fascinating problem. "Why did I marry him?" is the question that adds a keen zest to existence. We derive a new interest in life from the hope that the future may provide us with an answer to this query. I can remember now, to my sorrow, that I gazed across the table at Tom's heavy, immobile face, and longed for some radical, perhaps supernatural, change in the man that should render him more congenial to me, more sympathetic, less practical, matter-of-fact, commonplace. A moment later I felt ashamed of myself for the disloyalty of my wish. It may be that subsequent events were preordained as a punishment to me for the internal discontent to which I had temporarily succumbed.

"Tom doesn't look quite fat, my dear," remarked Mrs. Jack Van Corlear to me early in the evening of my first–and last–musical. "Is he working too hard? Jack tells me that Tom has been made counsel for the Pepper and Salt Trust."

"It's not that," I answered, lightly, glancing at Tom and noting the unusual pallor of his too fleshy face. "He's expecting an evening of torture, you know. He hates music. He can't tell a nocturne from a ballade–and they both torment him. But he's an awfully good fellow, isn't he? See, he's trying to talk to Signor Turino. I hope he'll remember that Verdi didn't write 'Lohengrin.' I've been coaching Tom for several days, but it's hard, my dear Mrs. Jack, to make a man who doesn't play or sing a note remember that the Moonlight Sonata is not from Gounod's 'Faust,' and that it's bad form to ask Mlle. Vanoni if she admires 'Florodora.'"

My duties as hostess and the pronounced success of the earlier numbers of my program led me presently to forget Tom's existence. He had been cruelly unjust to my guests in asserting that they would prefer ragtime to the classics. The applause that had rewarded the efforts of both Turino and Vanoni had been spontaneous and genuine. Signorina Molatti had created an actual furor with her violin solo, intensified, no doubt, by her marvelous beauty. It was Molatti's success that presently recalled Tom to my reluctant consciousness. As the dark-eyed, fervid young woman responded smilingly to an insistent encore, I caught a glimpse of my unimpressionable husband, standing erect at the rear of the crowded music-room and watching the girl's every movement with eyes alight with interest and approval. I had not seen his unresponsive countenance so animated before in years. Mrs. Jack Van Corlear had followed my glance, and a mischievous smile was in her face as she leaned toward me.

"Perhaps Tom is more musical than you imagine, my dear," she whispered, maliciously.

"Do you think it's the violin?" I returned, laughingly, ashamed of the feeling of annoyance that her playful pin-prick had given me.

Jealous of Tom! The idea was too absurd. I had so often wished to be, but his devotion to me had always been chronic and incurable. "It's really bad form," I had once said to him; "your indifference to other women, Tom, causes comment. Overemphasis is always vulgar. You underscore our conjugal bliss, my dear boy, in a way that has become a kind of silent reproach to other people. You must really have a mild flirtation now and then, Tom."

It seemed to me that the vivacious Molatti had noted Tom's too apparent enthusiasm, for she smiled and nodded to him as she made ready to coax her Cremona into giving her silent auditors new proof of her most amazing genius. I, a lover of music, had been carried into unknown, blissful realms by the magic of her bow, my whole being throbbing with the joy of strange, weird harmonies that lured my errant soul away from earth, away from my duties as a hostess, my worries as a wife. I came back to my music-room with a thump. Something unusual, out of the common, was taking place, but at first I could not concentrate my faculties in a way to put me in touch with my environment. Presently I realized that Signorina Molatti had left the dais and–could I believe my senses?–that Tom brazenly, nonchalantly, before the gaze of two hundred wondering eyes, had seated himself at the piano.

"What's the matter with him?" whispered Mrs. Van Corlear to me in an awe-struck tone.

"Wait," I answered, irrelevantly; "maybe he won't do it."

"Do what?" she returned, almost hysterically.

"I don't know," I gasped; and the thought flashed through my mind that possibly Tom had been drinking.

There lay the hush of expectancy on the astonished throng. Here and there furtive glances were cast at my program cards in search of Tom's name on a little list made up wholly of world-famous artists. But the large majority of my guests knew as well as I that Tom had never touched a piano in his life, that his ignorance of music was as pronounced as his detestation of it. But he might have been a Paderewski in his total absence of all awkwardness or self-consciousness as he sat motionless at the instrument for a moment, coolly surveying us all, in very truth like a master musician sure of himself and rejoicing in the delight that he was about to vouchsafe to his auditors.

I cannot recall now without a shudder the sensation that cut through my every nerve as Tom raised his large, pudgy hands above the keyboard, his small, gray eyes turned toward the ceiling just above my throbbing head. He looked at that instant like the very incarnation of Philistinism poised to hurl down destruction upon the center of all harmonies.

"It's revenge," I groaned, under my breath, and felt Mrs. Jack's cold hand creep into mine.

Down came the paws of Nemesis, and lo, the injustice that I had done to Tom was revealed to me. His touch was masterly. I could not have been more amazed had I seen an elephant threading a needle. The whole episode was strangely blended of the uncanny and realistic. I found myself noting the angle at which Tom held his chin. He always raised it thus when his man shaved him, his head thrown back and his eyes half-closed.

Then gradually it dawned on me that I was taking keen delight in his rendition of that marvelous ballade in A flat major that Chopin dedicated to Mlle. de Noailles. There is nothing more thoroughly Chopinesque in all the master's works than this perfect exposition of the refined in art. Tom's rendering of the lovely theme in F major, one of the most delicate in the world of music, thrilled me with startled admiration. But a chill came over me. What would he do with the section in C sharp minor, with its inverted dominant pedal in the right hand while the left is carrying on the theme? Without both skill and passion on the part of the performer the interpretation of this passage is certain to be commonplace. But hardly had this doubt assailed me when I knew that Tom had triumphed over every obstacle of technique and temperament, that he was approaching the harmonic grandeur of the finale with the poise and power of genius in full control of itself and its medium.

I have never fainted. Swooning went out of fashion long before my time, and I am devoted to the modern cult of self-control, but if it hadn't been for Mrs. Jack, who is really fond of me at times, I think that the last bar of Tom's Opus 47 would have seen my finish. The room had begun to whirl in a circle, like a merry-go-round in evening dress, when she steadied me by whispering:

"It's all right, my dear. Tom wins by four lengths, well in hand."

I came to myself in the very center of a storm of applause. Our guests had forgotten the conventionalities pertaining to a will-ordered musical. The men were on their feet, cheering. The women waved fans and handkerchiefs, and pelted Tom with violets and roses. The poor fellow sat at the piano in a half-dazed condition. A bunch of flowers, deftly thrown, struck him on the forehead, and he put his gifted hand to his brow as if he had just been recalled to consciousness.

"Encore! Encore!" cried our guests. Turino was gesticulating frantically, while Mlle. Vanoni and Signorina Molatti smiled and clapped their hands in exaggerated ecstasy.

I was worried by the expression that had come into Tom's face, and made my way quickly toward the piano.

"Aren't you well, my dear?" I asked, bending toward him, while the uproar behind me decreased a bit.

"What have I been doing, Winifred?" he asked, sheepishly, like one who wakens from a dream. "Get one of your damned dagos to sing, will you? I've got to have a drink or die!"

Standing erect abruptly, Tom cast a defiant glance at the chattering throng behind me and hurriedly made his way through a side door from the music-room. As I turned away from the piano I saw that Signorina Molatti's eyes were fixed upon his retreating figure with an expression that my worldly wisdom could not interpret. There was more of wonder than of admiration in her gaze, a gleam of questioning and longing that might, it seemed to me, readily flame into hot anger.

CHAPTER II.

REMSEN CONFRONTS A MYSTERY

From memories that come not and go not;Like music once heard by an earThat cannot forget or reclaim it;A something so shy it would shame itTo make it a show.JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

After saying good-night to the last of my guests, who had expressed regret at the rumor that my husband was seriously indisposed, I hurried to the smoking-room, having learned that Tom had fled thither as a refuge from the curious and the congratulatory. As I came upon him he was alternately puffing a cigar and sipping a brandy-and-soda. On the instant the conflicting emotions that had beset me during the evening became a wave of anger, sweeping over me with irresistible force.

"Why have you deceived me, Tom Remsen?" I cried, sinking into a chair and resting my aching head against its back, as I scanned his pale, weary countenance attentively. "You have always pretended that you had no knowledge of music. I have heard you say that you could not whistle even a bar of 'Yankee Doodle' correctly. What a poseur you have been! And to-night, in a vulgar, theatrical way you suddenly exhibit the most astonishing talent. There is not an amateur in the world, Tom, who can interpret Chopin with such sympathy, such perfection of technique, such reserved power as you displayed this evening. You have placed me in a ridiculous position, and I can't conceive of any reasonable motive for your unnatural reticence. Why, Tom–answer me!–why have you concealed from me the fact that you are an accomplished–yes, a brilliant musician? Think of all the pleasure that we have lost in the last ten years by your deception and falsehoods–for that's what they were, Tom!" My voice broke a little, and I felt the tears creeping toward my eyes. "You have been cruel, Tom! Knowing my passionate love for music, why did you choose to hide a talent that would have drawn us so close together? And your revelation! It was the very refinement of brutality, Tom Remsen, to place me in such an awkward attitude! How could I explain my ignorance of your genius to our friends? They must consider me either a fool or a liar. As for what they think of you, Tom–"

"Stop it, Winifred!" cried my husband, hoarsely, putting up a hand protestingly. "I've had enough. I can't stand anything more to-night. If I tried to tell you the truth you wouldn't believe it, so you'd better leave me. I'll smoke another cigar. I'll never get to sleep again, I fear."