CHAPTER FOUR: The Yahi-Bahi Oriental Society of Mrs.
Rasselyer-Brown
Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown lived on Plutoria Avenue in a vast
sandstone palace, in which she held those fashionable
entertainments which have made the name of Rasselyer-Brown
what it is. Mr. Rasselyer-Brown lived there also.
The exterior of the house was more or less a model of
the facade of an Italian palazzo of the sixteenth century.
If one questioned Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown at dinner in regard
to this (which was only a fair return for drinking five
dollar champagne), she answered that the facade was
cinquecentisti, but that it reproduced also the Saracenic
mullioned window of the Siennese School. But if the guest
said later in the evening to Mr. Rasselyer-Brown that he
understood that his house was cinquecentisti, he answered
that he guessed it was. After which remark and an interval
of silence, Mr. Rasselyer-Brown would probably ask the
guest if he was dry.
So from that one can tell exactly the sort of people the
Rasselyer-Browns were.
In other words, Mr. Rasselyer-Brown was a severe handicap
to Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown. He was more than that; the word
isn't strong enough. He was, as Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown
herself confessed to her confidential circle of three
hundred friends, a drag. He was also a tie, and a weight,
and a burden, and in Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's religious
moments a crucifix. Even in the early years of their
married life, some twenty or twenty-five years ago, her
husband had been a drag on her by being in the coal and
wood business. It is hard for a woman to have to realize
that her husband is making a fortune out of coal and wood
and that people know it. It ties one down. What a woman
wants most of all-this, of course, is merely a quotation
from Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's own thoughts as expressed to
her three hundred friends-is room to expand, to grow.
The hardest thing in the world is to be stifled: and
there is nothing more stifling than a husband who doesn't
know a Giotto from a Carlo Dolci, but who can distinguish
nut coal from egg and is never asked to dinner without
talking about the furnace.
These, of course, were early trials. They had passed to
some extent, or were, at any rate, garlanded with the
roses of time.
But the drag remained.
Even when the retail coal and wood stage was long since
over, it was hard to have to put up with a husband who
owned a coal mine and who bought pulp forests instead of
illuminated missals of the twelfth century. A coal mine
is a dreadful thing at a dinner-table. It humbles one so
before one's guests.
It wouldn't have been so bad--this Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown
herself admitted--if Mr. Rasselyer-Brown did anything.
This phrase should be clearly understood. It meant if
there was any one thing that he did. For instance if he
had only collected anything. Thus, there was Mr. Lucullus
Fyshe, who made soda-water, but at the same time everybody
knew that he had the best collection of broken Italian
furniture on the continent; there wasn't a sound piece
among the lot.
And there was the similar example of old Mr. Feathertop.
He didn't exactly collect things; he repudiated the name.
He was wont to say, "Don't call me a collector, I'm not.
I simply pick things up. Just where I happen to be, Rome,
Warsaw, Bucharest, anywhere"--and it is to be noted what
fine places these are to happen to be. And to think that
Mr. Rasselyer-Brown would never put his foot outside of
the United States! Whereas Mr. Feathertop would come back
from what he called a run to Europe, and everybody would
learn in a week that he had picked up the back of a violin
in Dresden (actually discovered it in a violin shop),
and the lid of an Etruscan kettle (he had lighted on it,
by pure chance, in a kettle shop in Etruria), and Mrs.
Rasselyer-Brown would feel faint with despair at the
nonentity of her husband.
So one can understand how heavy her burden was.
"My dear," she often said to her bosom friend, Miss Snagg,
"I shouldn't mind things so much" (the things she wouldn't
mind were, let us say, the two million dollars of standing
timber which Brown Limited, the ominous business name of
Mr. Rasselyer-Brown, were buying that year) "if Mr.
Rasselyer-Brown did anything. But he does nothing. Every
morning after breakfast off to his wretched office, and
never back till dinner, and in the evening nothing but
his club, or some business meeting. One would think he
would have more ambition. How I wish I had been a man."
It was certainly a shame.
So it came that, in almost everything she undertook Mrs.
Rasselyer-Brown had to act without the least help from
her husband. Every Wednesday, for instance, when the
Dante Club met at her house (they selected four lines
each week to meditate on, and then discussed them at
lunch), Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown had to carry the whole
burden of it-her very phrase, "the whole burden"--alone.
Anyone who has carried four lines of Dante through a
Moselle lunch knows what a weight it is.
In all these things her husband was useless, quite useless.
It is not right to be ashamed of one's husband. And to
do her justice, Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown always explained to
her three hundred intimates that she was not ashamed of
him; in fact, that she refused to be. But it was hard to
see him brought into comparison at their own table with
superior men. Put him, for instance, beside Mr. Sikleigh
Snoop, the sex-poet, and where was he? Nowhere. He couldn't
even understand what Mr. Snoop was saying. And when Mr.
Snoop would stand on the hearth-rug with a cup of tea
balanced in his hand, and discuss whether sex was or was
not the dominant note in Botticelli, Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown
would be skulking in a corner in his ill-fitting dress
suit. His wife would often catch with an agonized ear
such scraps of talk as, "When I was first in the coal
and wood business," or, "It's a coal that burns quicker
than egg, but it hasn't the heating power of nut," or
even in a low undertone the words, "If you're feeling
dry while he's reading--" And this at a time when everybody
in the room ought to have been listening to Mr. Snoop.
Nor was even this the whole burden of Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown.
There was another part of it which was perhaps more real,
though Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown herself never put it into
words. In fact, of this part of her burden she never
spoke, even to her bosom friend Miss Snagg; nor did she
talk about it to the ladies of the Dante Club, nor did
she make speeches on it to the members of the Women's
Afternoon Art Society. nor to the Monday Bridge Club.
But the members of the Bridge Club and the Art Society
and the Dante Club all talked about it among themselves.
Stated very simply, it was this: Mr. Rasselyer-Brown
drank. It was not meant that he was a drunkard or that
he drank too much, or anything of that sort. He drank.
That was all.
There was no excess about it. Mr. Rasselyer-Brown, of
course, began the day with an eye-opener--and after all,
what alert man does not wish his eyes well open in the
morning? He followed it usually just before breakfast
with a bracer--and what wiser precaution can a businessman
take than to brace his breakfast? On his way to business
he generally had his motor stopped at the Grand Palaver
for a moment, if it was a raw day, and dropped in and
took something to keep out the damp. If it was a cold
day he took something to keep out the cold, and if it
was one of those clear, sunny days that are so dangerous
to the system he took whatever the bartender (a recognized
health expert) suggested to tone the system up. After
which he could sit down in his office and transact more
business, and bigger business, in coal, charcoal, wood,
pulp, pulpwood, and woodpulp, in two hours than any other
man in the business could in a week. Naturally so. For
he was braced, and propped, and toned up, and his eyes
had been opened, and his brain cleared, till outside of
very big business, indeed, few men were on a footing with
him.
In fact, it was business itself which had compelled Mr.
Rasselyer-Brown to drink. It is all very well for a junior
clerk on twenty dollars a week to do his work on sandwiches
and malted milk. In big business it is not possible. When
a man begins to rise in business, as Mr. Rasselyer-Brown
had begun twenty-five years ago, he finds that if he
wants to succeed he must cut malted milk clear out. In
any position of responsibility a man has got to drink.
No really big deal can be put through without it. If two
keen men, sharp as flint, get together to make a deal in
which each intends to outdo the other, the only way to
succeed is for them to adjourn to some such place as the
luncheon-room of the Mausoleum Club and both get partially
drunk. This is what is called the personal element in
business. And, beside it, plodding industry is nowhere.
Most of all do these principles hold true in such manly
out-of-door enterprises as the forest and timber business,
where one deals constantly with chief rangers, and
pathfinders, and wood-stalkers, whose very names seem to
suggest a horn of whiskey under a hemlock tree.
But--let it be repeated and carefully understood--there
was no excess about Mr. Rasselyer-Brown's drinking.
Indeed, whatever he might be compelled to take during
the day, and at the Mausoleum Club in the evening, after
his return from his club at night Mr. Rasselyer-Brown
made it a fixed rule to take nothing. He might, perhaps,
as he passed into the house, step into the dining-room
and take a very small drink at the sideboard. But this
he counted as part of the return itself, and not after
it. And he might, if his brain were over-fatigued, drop
down later in the night in his pajamas and dressing-gown
when the house was quiet, and compose his mind with a
brandy and water, or something suitable to the stillness
of the hour. But this was not really a drink. Mr.
Rasselyer-Brown called it a nip; and of course any man
may need a nip at a time when he would scorn a drink.
But after all, a woman may find herself again in her
daughter. There, at least, is consolation. For, as Mrs.
Rasselyer-Brown herself admitted, her daughter, Dulphemia,
was herself again. There were, of course, differences,
certain differences of face and appearance. Mr. Snoop
had expressed this fact exquisitely when he said that it
was the difference between a Burne-Jones and a Dante
Gabriel Rossetti. But even at that the mother and daughter
were so alike that people, certain people, were constantly
mistaking them on the street. And as everybody that
mistook them was apt to be asked to dine on five-dollar
champagne there was plenty of temptation towards error.
There is no doubt that Dulphemia Rasselyer-Brown was a
girl of remarkable character and intellect. So is any
girl who has beautiful golden hair parted in thick bands
on her forehead, and deep blue eyes soft as an Italian
sky.
Even the oldest and most serious men in town admitted
that in talking to her they were aware of a grasp, a
reach, a depth that surprised them. Thus old Judge
Longerstill, who talked to her at dinner for an hour on
the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission,
felt sure from the way in which she looked up in his face
at intervals and said, "How interesting!" that she had
the mind of a lawyer. And Mr. Brace, the consulting
engineer, who showed her on the table-cloth at dessert
with three forks and a spoon the method in which the
overflow of the spillway of the Gatun Dam is regulated,
felt assured, from the way she leaned her face on her
hand sideways and said, "How extraordinary!" that she
had the brain of an engineer. Similarly foreign visitors
to the social circles of the city were delighted with
her. Viscount FitzThistle, who explained to Dulphemia
for half an hour the intricacies of the Irish situation,
was captivated at the quick grasp she showed by asking
him at the end, without a second's hesitation, "And which
are the Nationalists?"
This kind of thing represents female intellect in its
best form. Every man that is really a man is willing to
recognize it at once. As to the young men, of course
they flocked to the Rasselyer-Brown residence in shoals.
There were batches of them every Sunday afternoon at five
o'clock, encased in long black frock-coats, sitting very
rigidly in upright chairs, trying to drink tea with one
hand. One might see athletic young college men of the
football team trying hard to talk about Italian music;
and Italian tenors from the Grand Opera doing their best
to talk about college football. There were young men in
business talking about art, and young men in art talking
about religion, and young clergymen talking about business.
Because, of course, the Rasselyer-Brown residence was
the kind of cultivated home where people of education
and taste are at liberty to talk about things they don't
know, and to utter freely ideas that they haven't got.
It was only now and again, when one of the professors
from the college across the avenue came booming into the
room, that the whole conversation was pulverized into
dust under the hammer of accurate knowledge.
The whole process was what was called, by those who
understood such things, a salon. Many people said that
Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's afternoons at home were exactly
like the delightful salons of the eighteenth century:
and whether the gatherings were or were not salons of
the eighteenth century, there is no doubt that Mr.
Rasselyer-Brown, under whose care certain favoured guests
dropped quietly into the back alcove of the dining-room,
did his best to put the gathering on a par with the best
saloons of the twentieth.
Now it so happened that there had come a singularly slack
moment in the social life of the City. The Grand Opera
had sung itself into a huge deficit and closed. There
remained nothing of it except the efforts of a committee
of ladies to raise enough money to enable Signor Puffi
to leave town, and the generous attempt of another
committee to gather funds in order to keep Signor Pasti
in the City. Beyond this, opera was dead, though the fact
that the deficit was nearly twice as large as it had been
the year before showed that public interest in music was
increasing. It was indeed a singularly trying time of
the year. It was too early to go to Europe; and too late
to go to Bermuda. It was too warm to go south, and yet
still too cold to go north. In fact, one was almost
compelled to stay at home--which was dreadful.
As a result Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown and her three hundred
friends moved backwards and forwards on Plutoria Avenue,
seeking novelty in vain. They washed in waves of silk
from tango teas to bridge afternoons. They poured in
liquid avalanches of colour into crowded receptions, and
they sat in glittering rows and listened to lectures on
the enfranchisement of the female sex. But for the moment
all was weariness.
Now it happened, whether by accident or design, that just
at this moment of general ennui Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown and
her three hundred friends first heard of the presence in
the city of Mr. Yahi-Bahi, the celebrated Oriental mystic.
He was so celebrated that nobody even thought of asking
who he was or where he came from. They merely told one
another, and repeated it, that he was the celebrated
Yahi-Bahi. They added for those who needed the knowledge
that the name was pronounced Yahhy-Bahhy, and that the
doctrine taught by Mr. Yahi-Bahi was Boohooism. This
latter. if anyone inquired further, was explained to be
a form of Shoodooism, only rather more intense. In fact,
it was esoteric--on receipt of which information everybody
remarked at once how infinitely superior the Oriental
peoples are to ourselves.
Now as Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown was always a leader in
everything that was done in the best circles on Plutoria
Avenue, she was naturally among the first to visit Mr.
Yahi-Bahi.
"My dear," she said, in describing afterwards her experience
to her bosom friend, Miss Snagg, "it was most interesting.
We drove away down to the queerest part of the City, and
went to the strangest little house imaginable, up the
narrowest stairs one ever saw--quite Eastern, in fact,
just like a scene out of the Koran."
"How fascinating!" said Miss Snagg. But as a matter of
fact, if Mr. Yahi-Bahi's house had been inhabited, as it
might have been, by a streetcar conductor or a railway
brakesman, Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown wouldn't have thought it
in any way peculiar or fascinating.
"It was all hung with curtains inside," she went on,
"with figures of snakes and Indian gods, perfectly weird."
"And did you see Mr. Yahi-Bahi?" asked Miss Snagg.
"Oh no, my dear. I only saw his assistant Mr. Ram Spudd;
such a queer little round man, a Bengalee, I believe. He
put his back against a curtain and spread out his arms
sideways and wouldn't let me pass. He said that Mr.
Yahi-Bahi was in meditation and mustn't be disturbed."
"How delightful!" echoed Miss Snagg.
But in reality Mr. Yahi-Bahi was sitting behind the
curtain eating a ten-cent can of pork and beans.
"What I like most about eastern people," went on Mrs.
Rasselyer-Brown, "is their wonderful delicacy of feeling.
After I had explained about my invitation to Mr. Yahi-Bahi
to come and speak to us on Boohooism, and was going away,
I took a dollar bill out of my purse and laid it on the
table. You should have seen the way Mr. Ram Spudd took
it. He made the deepest salaam and said, 'Isis guard you,
beautiful lady.' Such perfect courtesy, and yet with the
air of scorning the money. As I passed out I couldn't
help slipping another dollar into his hand, and he took
it as if utterly unaware of it, and muttered, 'Osiris
keep you, O flower of women!' And as I got into the motor
I gave him another dollar and he said, 'Osis and Osiris
both prolong your existence, O lily of the ricefield,'
and after he had said it he stood beside the door of the
motor and waited without moving till I left. He had such
a strange, rapt look, as if he were still expecting
something!"
"How exquisite!" murmured Miss Snagg. It was her business
in life to murmur such things as this for Mrs.
Rasselyer-Brown. On the whole, reckoning Grand Opera
tickets and dinners, she did very well out of it.
"Is it not?" said Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown. "So different
from our men. I felt so ashamed of my chauffeur, our new
man, you know; he seemed such a contrast beside Ram Spudd.
The rude way in which the opened the door, and the rude
way in which he climbed on to his own seat, and the
rudeness with which he turned on the power--I felt
positively ashamed. And he so managed it--I am sure he
did it on purpose--that the car splashed a lot of mud
over Mr. Spudd as it started."
Yet, oddly enough, the opinion of other people on this
new chauffeur, that of Miss Dulphemia Rasselyer-Brown
herself, for example, to whose service he was specially
attached, was very different.
The great recommendation of him in the eyes of Miss
Dulphemia and her friends, and the thing that gave him
a touch of mystery was--and what higher qualification
can a chauffeur want?--that he didn't look like a chauffeur
at all.
"My dear Dulphie," whispered Miss Philippa Furlong, the
rector's sister (who was at that moment Dulphemia's second
self), as they sat behind the new chauffeur, "don't tell
me that he is a chauffeur, because he isn't. He can
chauffe, of course, but that's nothing."
For the new chauffeur had a bronzed face, hard as metal,
and a stern eye; and when he put on a chauffeur's overcoat
some how it seemed to turn into a military greatcoat;
and even when he put on the round cloth cap of his
profession it was converted straightway into a military
shako. And by Miss Dulphemia and her friends it was
presently reported--or was invented?--that he had served
in the Philippines; which explained at once the scar upon
his forehead, which must have been received at Iloilo,
or Huila-Huila, or some other suitable place.
But what affected Miss Dulphemia Brown herself was the
splendid rudeness of the chauffeur's manner. It was so
different from that of the young men of the salon. Thus,
when Mr. Sikleigh Snoop handed her into the car at any
time he would dance about saying, "Allow me," and "Permit
me," and would dive forward to arrange the robes. But
the Philippine chauffeur merely swung the door open and
said to Dulphemia, "Get in," and then slammed it.
This, of course, sent a thrill up the spine and through
the imagination of Miss Dulphemia Rasselyer-Brown, because
it showed that the chauffeur was a gentleman in disguise.
She thought it very probable that he was a British
nobleman, a younger son, very wild, of a ducal family;
and she had her own theories as to why he had entered
the service of the Rasselyer-Browns. To be quite candid
about it, she expected that the Philippine chauffeur
meant to elope with her, and every time he drove her from
a dinner or a dance she sat back luxuriously, wishing
and expecting the elopement to begin.
But for the time being the interest of Dulphemia, as of
everybody else that was anybody at all, centred round
Mr. Yahi-Bahi and the new cult of Boohooism.
After the visit of Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown a great number
of ladies, also in motors, drove down to the house of
Mr. Yahi-Bahi. And all of them, whether they saw Mr.
Yahi-Bahi himself or his Bengalee assistant, Mr. Ram
Spudd, came back delighted.
"Such exquisite tact!" said one. "Such delicacy! As I
was about to go I laid a five dollar gold piece on the
edge of the little table. Mr. Spudd scarcely seemed to
see it. He murmured, 'Osiris help you!' and pointed to
the ceiling. I raised my eyes instinctively, and when I
lowered them the money had disappeared. I think he must
have caused it to vanish."
"Oh, I'm sure he did," said the listener.
Others came back with wonderful stories of Mr. Yahi-Bahi's
occult powers, especially his marvellous gift of reading
the future.
Mrs. Buncomhearst, who had just lost her third husband--by
divorce--had received from Mr. Yahi-Bahi a glimpse into
the future that was almost uncanny in its exactness. She
had asked for a divination, and Mr. Yahi-Bahi had effected
one by causing her to lay six ten-dollar pieces on the
table arranged in the form of a mystic serpent. Over
these he had bent and peered deeply, as if seeking to
unravel their meaning, and finally he had given her the
prophecy, "Many things are yet to happen before others
begin."
"How does he do it?" asked everybody.
As a result of all this it naturally came about that Mr.
Yahi-Bahi and Mr. Ram Spudd were invited to appear at
the residence of Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown; and it was understood
that steps would be taken to form a special society, to
be known as the Yahi-Bahi Oriental Society.
Mr. Sikleigh Snoop, the sex-poet, was the leading spirit
in the organization. He had a special fitness for the
task: he had actually resided in India. In fact, he had
spent six weeks there on a stop-over ticket of a
round-the-world 635 dollar steamship pilgrimage; and he
knew the whole country from Jehumbapore in Bhootal to
Jehumbalabad in the Carnatic. So he was looked upon as
a great authority on India, China, Mongolia, and all such
places, by the ladies of Plutoria Avenue.
Next in importance was Mrs. Buncomhearst, who became
later, by a perfectly natural process, the president of
the society. She was already president of the Daughters
of the Revolution, a society confined exclusively to the
descendants of Washington's officers and others; she was
also president of the Sisters of England, an organization
limited exclusively to women born in England and elsewhere;
of the Daughters of Kossuth, made up solely of Hungarians
and friends of Hungary and other nations; and of the
Circle of Franz Joseph, which was composed exclusively
of the partisans, and others, of Austria. In fact, ever
since she had lost her third husband, Mrs. Buncomhearst
had thrown herself--that was her phrase--into outside
activities. Her one wish was, on her own statement, to
lose herself. So very naturally Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown
looked at once to Mrs. Buncomhearst to preside over the
meetings of the new society.
The large dining-room at the Rasselyer-Browns' had been
cleared out as a sort of auditorium, and in it some fifty
or sixty of Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's more intimate friends
had gathered. The whole meeting was composed of ladies,
except for the presence of one or two men who represented
special cases. There was, of course, little Mr. Spillikins,
with his vacuous face and football hair, who was there,
as everybody knew, on account of Dulphemia; and there
was old Judge Longerstill, who sat leaning on a gold-headed
stick with his head sideways, trying to hear some fraction
of what was being said. He came to the gathering in the
hope that it would prove a likely place for seconding a
vote of thanks and saying a few words--half an hour's
talk, perhaps--on the constitution of the United States.
Failing that, he felt sure that at least someone would
call him "this eminent old gentleman," and even that was
better than staying at home.
But for the most part the audience was composed of women,
and they sat in a little buzz of conversation waiting
for Mr. Yahi-Bahi.
"I wonder," called Mrs. Buncomhearst from the chair, "if
some lady would be good enough to write minutes? Miss
Snagg, I wonder if you would be kind enough to write
minutes? Could you?"
"I shall be delighted," said Miss Snagg, "but I'm afraid
there's hardly time to write them before we begin, is
there?"
"Oh, but it would be all right to write them afterwards,"
chorussed several ladies who understood such things;
"it's quite often done that way."
"And I should like to move that we vote a constitution,"
said a stout lady with a double eye-glass.
"Is that carried?" said Mrs. Buncomhearst. "All those in
favour please signify."
Nobody stirred.
"Carried," said the president. "And perhaps you would be
good enough, Mrs. Fyshe," she said, turning towards the
stout lady, "to write the constitution."
"Do you think it necessary to write it?" said Mrs. Fyshe.
"I should like to move, if I may, that I almost wonder
whether it is necessary to write the constitution--unless,
of course, anybody thinks that we really ought to."
"Ladies," said the president, "you have heard the motion.
All those against it--"
There was no sign.
"All those in favour of it--"
There was still no sign.
"Lost," she said.
Then, looking across at the clock on the mantel-piece,
and realizing that Mr. Yahi-Bahi must have been delayed
and that something must be done, she said:
"And now, ladies, as we have in our midst a most eminent
gentleman who probably has thought more deeply about
constitutions than--"
All eyes turned at once towards Judge Longerstill, but
as fortune had it at this very moment Mr. Sikleigh Snoop
entered, followed by Mr. Yahi-Bahi and Mr. Ram Spudd.
Mr. Yahi-Bahi was tall. His drooping Oriental costume
made him taller still. He had a long brown face and liquid
brown eyes of such depth that when he turned them full
upon the ladies before him a shiver of interest and
apprehension followed in the track of his glance.
"My dear," said Miss Snagg afterwards, "he seemed simply
to see right through us."
This was correct. He did.
Mr. Ram Spudd presented a contrast to his superior. He
was short and round, with a dimpled mahogany face and
eyes that twinkled in it like little puddles of molasses.
His head was bound in a turban and his body was swathed
in so many bands and sashes that he looked almost circular.
The clothes of both Mr. Yahi-Bahi and Ram Spudd were
covered with the mystic signs of Buddha and the seven
serpents of Vishnu.
It was impossible, of course, for Mr. Yahi-Bahi or Mr.
Ram Spudd to address the audience. Their knowledge of
English was known to be too slight for that. Their
communications were expressed entirely through the medium
of Mr. Snoop, and even he explained afterwards that it
was very difficult. The only languages of India which he
was able to speak, he said, with any fluency were Gargamic
and Gumaic both of these being old Dravidian dialects
with only two hundred and three words in each, and hence
in themselves very difficult to converse in. Mr. Yahi-Bahi
answered in what Mr. Snoop understood to be the Iramic
of the Vedas, a very rich language, but one which
unfortunately he did not understand. The dilemma is one
familiar to all Oriental scholars.
All of this Mr. Snoop explained in the opening speech
which he proceeded to make. And after this he went on to
disclose, amid deep interest, the general nature of the
cult of Boohooism. He said that they could best understand
it if he told them that its central doctrine was that of
Bahee. Indeed, the first aim of all followers of the cult
was to attain to Bahee. Anybody who could spend a certain
number of hours each day, say sixteen, in silent meditation
on Boohooism would find his mind gradually reaching a
condition of Bahee. The chief aim of Bahee itself was
sacrifice: a true follower of the cult must be willing
to sacrifice his friends, or his relatives, and even
strangers, in order to reach Bahee. In this way one was
able fully to realize oneself and enter into the Higher
Indifference. Beyond this, further meditation and
fasting--by which was meant living solely on fish, fruit,
wine, and meat--one presently attained to complete Swaraj
or Control of Self, and might in time pass into the
absolute Nirvana, or the Negation of Emptiness, the
supreme goal of Boohooism.
As a first step to all this, Mr. Snoop explained, each
neophyte or candidate for holiness must, after searching
his own heart, send ten dollars to Mr. Yahi-Bahi. Gold,
it appeared, was recognized in the cult of Boohooism as
typifying the three chief virtues, whereas silver or
paper money did not; even national banknotes were only
regarded as do or, a halfway palliation; and outside
currencies such as Canadian or Mexican bills were looked
upon as entirely boo, or contemptible. The Oriental view
of money, said Mr. Snoop, was far superior to our own,
but it also might be attained by deep thought, and, as
a beginning, by sending ten dollars to Mr. Yahi-Bahi.
After this Mr. Snoop, in conclusion, read a very beautiful
Hindu poem, translating it as he went along. It began,
"O cow, standing beside the Ganges, and apparently without
visible occupation," and it was voted exquisite by all
who heard it The absence of rhyme and the entire removal
of ideas marked it as far beyond anything reached as yet
by Occidental culture
When Mr. Snoop had concluded, the president called upon
Judge Longerstill for a few words of thanks, which he
gave, followed by a brief talk on the constitution of
the United States.
After this the society was declared constituted, Mr.
Yahi-Bahi made four salaams, one to each point of the
compass, and the meeting dispersed.
And that evening, over fifty dinner tables, everybody
discussed the nature of Bahee, and tried in vain to
explain it to men too stupid to understand.
Now it so happened that on the very afternoon of this
meeting at Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's, the Philippine chauffeur
did a strange and peculiar thing. He first asked Mr.
Rasselyer-Brown for a few hours' leave of absence to
attend the funeral of his mother in-law. This was a
request which Mr. Rasselyer-Brown, on principle, never
refused to a man-servant.
Whereupon, the Philippine chauffeur, no longer attired
as one, visited the residence of Mr. Yahi-Bahi. He let
himself in with a marvellous little key which he produced
from a very wonderful bunch of such. He was in the house
for nearly half an hour, and when he emerged, the notebook
in his breast pocket, had there been an eye to read it,
would have been seen to be filled with stranger details
in regard to Oriental mysticism than even Mr. Yahi-Bahi
had given to the world. So strange were they that before
the Philippine chauffeur returned to the Rasselyer-Brown
residence he telegraphed certain and sundry parts of them
to New York. But why he should have addressed them to
the head of a detective bureau instead of to a college
of Oriental research it passes the imagination to conceive.
But as the chauffeur duly reappeared at motor-time in
the evening the incident passed unnoticed.
It is beyond the scope of the present narrative to trace
the progress of Boohooism during the splendid but brief
career of the Yahi-Bahi Oriental Society. There could be
no doubt of its success. Its principles appealed with
great strength to all the more cultivated among the ladies
of Plutoria Avenue. There was something in the Oriental
mysticism of its doctrines which rendered previous belief
stale and puerile. The practice of the sacred rites began
at once. The ladies' counters of the Plutorian banks were
inundated with requests for ten-dollar pieces in exchange
for banknotes. At dinner in the best houses nothing was
eaten except a thin soup (or bru), followed by fish,
succeeded by meat or by game, especially such birds as
are particularly pleasing to Buddha, as the partridge,
the pheasant, and the woodcock. After this, except for
fruits and wine, the principle of Swaraj, or denial of
self, was rigidly imposed. Special Oriental dinners of
this sort were given, followed by listening to the reading
of Oriental poetry, with closed eyes and with the mind
as far as possible in a state of Stoj, or Negation of
Thought.
By this means the general doctrine of Boohooism spread
rapidly. Indeed, a great many of the members of the
society soon attained to a stage of Bahee, or the Higher
Indifference, that it would have been hard to equal
outside of Juggapore or Jumbumbabad. For example, when
Mrs. Buncomhearst learned of the remarriage of her second
husband--she had lost him three years before, owing to
a difference of opinion on the emancipation of women--she
showed the most complete Bahee possible. And when Miss
Snagg learned that her brother in Venezuela had died--a
very sudden death brought on by drinking rum for seventeen
years--and had left her ten thousand dollars, the Bahee
which she exhibited almost amounted to Nirvana.
In fact, the very general dissemination of the Oriental
idea became more and more noticeable with each week that
passed. Some members attained to so complete a Bahee, or
Higher Indifference, that they even ceased to attend the
meetings of the society; others reached a Swaraj, or
Control of Self, so great that they no longer read its
pamphlets; while others again actually passed into Nirvana,
to a Complete Negation of Self, so rapidly that they did
not even pay their subscriptions.
But features of this sort, of course, are familiar wherever
a successful occult creed makes its way against the
prejudices of the multitude.
The really notable part of the whole experience was the
marvellous demonstration of occult power which attended
the final seance of the society, the true nature of which
is still wrapped in mystery.
For some weeks it had been rumoured that a very special
feat or demonstration of power by Mr. Yahi-Bahi was under
contemplation. In fact, the rapid spread of Swaraj and
of Nirvana among the members rendered such a feat highly
desirable. Just what form the demonstration would take
was for some time a matter of doubt. It was whispered at
first that Mr. Yahi-Bahi would attempt the mysterious
eastern rite of burying Ram Spudd alive in the garden of
the Rasselyer-Brown residence and leaving him there in
a state of Stoj, or Suspended Inanition, for eight days.
But this project was abandoned, owing to some doubt,
apparently, in the mind of Mr. Ram Spudd as to his astral
fitness for the high state of Stoj necessitated by the
experiment.
At last it became known to the members of the Poosh, or
Inner Circle, under the seal of confidence, that Mr.
Yahi-Bahi would attempt nothing less than the supreme
feat of occultism, namely, a reincarnation, or more
correctly a reastralization of Buddha.
The members of the Inner Circle shivered with a luxurious
sense of mystery when they heard of it.
"Has it ever been done before?" they asked of Mr. Snoop.
"Only a few times," he said; "once, I believe, by Jam-bum,
the famous Yogi of the Carnatic; once, perhaps twice, by
Boohoo, the founder of the sect. But it is looked upon
as extremely rare. Mr. Yahi tells me that the great danger
is that, if the slightest part of the formula is incorrectly
observed, the person attempting the astralization is
swallowed up into nothingness. However, he declares
himself willing to try."
The seance was to take place at Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's
residence, and was to be at midnight.
"At midnight!" said each member in surprise. And the
answer was, "Yes, at midnight. You see, midnight here is
exactly midday in Allahabad in India."
This explanation was, of course, ample. "Midnight,"
repeated everybody to everybody else, "is exactly midday
in Allahabad." That made things perfectly clear. Whereas
if midnight had been midday in Timbuctoo the whole
situation would have been different.
Each of the ladies was requested to bring to the seance
some ornament of gold; but it must be plain gold, without
any setting of stones.
It was known already that, according to the cult of
Boohooism, gold, plain gold, is the seat of the three
virtues-beauty, wisdom and grace. Therefore, according
to the creed of Boohooism, anyone who has enough gold,
plain gold, is endowed with these virtues and is all
right. All that is needed is to have enough of it; the
virtues follow as a consequence.
But for the great experiment the gold used must not be
set with stones, with the one exception of rubies, which
are known to be endowed with the three attributes of
Hindu worship, modesty, loquacity, and pomposity.
In the present case it was found that as a number of
ladies had nothing but gold ornaments set with diamonds,
a second exception was made; especially as Mr. Yahi-Bahi,
on appeal, decided that diamonds, though less pleasing
to Buddha than rubies, possessed the secondary Hindu
virtues of divisibility, movability, and disposability.
On the evening in question the residence of Mrs. Rasselyer
Brown might have been observed at midnight wrapped in
utter darkness. No lights were shown. A single taper,
brought by Ram Spudd from the Taj Mohal, and resembling
in its outer texture those sold at the five-and-ten store
near Mr. Spudd's residence, burned on a small table in
the vast dining-room. The servants had been sent upstairs
and expressly enjoined to retire at half past ten.
Moreover, Mr. Rasselyer-Brown had had to attend that
evening, at the Mausoleum Club, a meeting of the trustees
of the Church of St. Asaph, and he had come home at eleven
o'clock, as he always did after diocesan work of this
sort, quite used up; in fact, so fatigued that he had
gone upstairs to his own suite of rooms sideways, his
knees bending under him. So utterly used up was he with
his church work that, as far as any interest in what
might be going on in his own residence, he had attained
to a state of Bahee, or Higher Indifference, that even
Buddha might have envied.
The guests, as had been arranged, arrived noiselessly
and on foot. All motors were left at least a block away.
They made their way up the steps of the darkened house,
and were admitted without ringing, the door opening
silently in front of them. Mr. Yahi-Bahi and Mr. Ram
Spudd, who had arrived on foot carrying a large parcel,
were already there, and were behind a screen in the
darkened room, reported to be in meditation.
At a whispered word from Mr. Snoop, who did duty at the
door, all furs and wraps were discarded in the hall and
laid in a pile. Then the guests passed silently into the
great dining room. There was no light in it except the
dim taper which stood on a little table. On this table
each guest, as instructed, laid an ornament of gold, and
at the same time was uttered in a low voice the word
Ksvoo. This means, "O Buddha, I herewith lay my unworthy
offering at thy feet; take it and keep it for ever." It
was explained that this was only a form.
"What is he doing?" whispered the assembled guests as
they saw Mr. Yahi-Bahi pass across the darkened room and
stand in front of the sideboard.
"Hush!" said Mr. Snoop; "he's laying the propitiatory
offering for Buddha."
"It's an Indian rite," whispered Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown.
Mr. Yahi-Bahi could be seen dimly moving to and fro in
front of the sideboard. There was a faint clinking of
glass.
"He has to set out a glass of Burmese brandy, powdered
over with nutmeg and aromatics," whispered Mrs.
Rasselyer-Brown. "I had the greatest hunt to get it all
for him. He said that nothing but Burmese brandy would
do, because in the Hindu religion the god can only be
invoked with Burmese brandy, or, failing that, Hennessy's
with three stars, which is not entirely displeasing to
Buddha."
"The aromatics," whispered Mr. Snoop, "are supposed to
waft a perfume or incense to reach the nostrils of the
god. The glass of propitiatory wine and the aromatic
spices are mentioned in the Vishnu-Buddayat."
Mr. Yahi-Bahi, his preparations completed, was now seen
to stand in front of the sideboard bowing deeply four
times in an Oriental salaam. The light of the single
taper had by this time burned so dim that his movements
were vague and uncertain. His body cast great flickering
shadows on the half-seen wall. From his throat there
issued a low wail in which the word wah! wah! could be
distinguished.
The excitement was intense.
"What does wah mean?" whispered Mr. Spillikins.
"Hush!" said Mr. Snoop; "it means, 'O Buddha, wherever
thou art in thy lofty Nirvana, descend yet once in astral
form before our eyes!'"
Mr. Yahi-Bahi rose. He was seen to place one finger on
his lips and then, silently moving across the room, he
disappeared behind the screen. Of what Mr. Ram Spudd was
doing during this period there is no record. It was
presumed that he was still praying.
The stillness was now absolute.
"We must wait in perfect silence," whispered Mr. Snoop
from the extreme tips of his lips.
Everybody sat in strained intensity, silent, looking
towards the vague outline of the sideboard.
The minutes passed. No one moved. All were spellbound in
expectancy.
Still the minutes passed. The taper had flickered down
till the great room was almost in darkness.
Could it be that by some neglect in the preparations,
the substitution perhaps of the wrong brandy, the
astralization could not be effected?
But no.
Quite suddenly, it seemed, everybody in the darkened room
was aware of a presence. That was the word as afterwards
repeated in a hundred confidential discussions. A presence.
One couldn't call it a body. It wasn't. It was a figure,
an astral form, a presence.
"Buddha!" they gasped as they looked at it.
Just how the figure entered the room, the spectators
could never afterwards agree. Some thought it appeared
through the wall, deliberately astralizing itself as it
passed through the bricks. Others seemed to have seen it
pass in at the farther door of the room, as if it had
astralized itself at the foot of the stairs in the back
of the hall outside.
Be that as it may, there it stood before them, the
astralized shape of the Indian deity, so that to every
lip there rose the half-articulated word, "Buddha"; or
at least to every lip except that of Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown.
From her there came no sound.
The figure as afterwards described was attired in a long
shirak, such as is worn by the Grand Llama of Tibet, and
resembling, if the comparison were not profane, a modern
dressing-gown. The legs, if one might so call them, of
the apparition were enwrapped in loose punjahamas, a word
which is said to be the origin of the modern pyjamas;
while the feet, if they were feet, were encased in loose
slippers.
Buddha moved slowly across the room. Arrived at the
sideboard the astral figure paused, and even in the
uncertain light Buddha was seen to raise and drink the
propitiatory offering. That much was perfectly clear.
Whether Buddha spoke or not is doubtful. Certain of the
spectators thought that he said, 'Must a fagotnit', which
is Hindustanee for "Blessings on this house." To Mrs.
Rasselyer-Brown's distracted mind it seemed as if Buddha
said, "I must have forgotten it" But this wild fancy she
never breathed to a soul.
Silently Buddha recrossed the room, slowly wiping one
arm across his mouth after the Hindu gesture of farewell.
For perhaps a full minute after the disappearance of
Buddha not a soul moved. Then quite suddenly Mrs.
Rasselyer-Brown, unable to stand the tension any longer,
pressed an electric switch and the whole room was flooded
with light.
There sat the affrighted guests staring at one another
with pale faces.
But, to the amazement and horror of all, the little table
in the centre stood empty-not a single gem, not a fraction
of the gold that had lain upon it was left. All had
disappeared.
The truth seemed to burst upon everyone at once. There
was no doubt of what had happened.
The gold and the jewels had been deastralized. Under the
occult power of the vision they had been demonetized,
engulfed into the astral plane along with the vanishing
Buddha.
Filled with the sense of horror still to come, somebody
pulled aside the little screen. They fully expected to
find the lifeless bodies of Mr. Yahi-Bahi and the faithful
Ram Spudd. What they saw before them was more dreadful
still. The outer Oriental garments of the two devotees
lay strewn upon the floor. The long sash of Yahi-Bahi
and the thick turban of Ram Spudd were side by side near
them; almost sickening in its repulsive realism was the
thick black head of hair of the junior devotee, apparently
torn from his scalp as if by lightning and bearing a
horrible resemblance to the cast-off wig of an actor.
The truth was too plain.
"They are engulfed!" cried a dozen voices at once.
It was realized in a flash that Yahi-Bahi and Ram Spudd
had paid the penalty of their daring with their lives.
Through some fatal neglect, against which they had fairly
warned the participants of the seance, the two Orientals
had been carried bodily in the astral plane.
"How dreadful!" murmured Mr. Snoop. "We must have made
some awful error."
"Are they deastralized?" murmured Mrs. Buncomhearst.
"Not a doubt of it," said Mr. Snoop.
And then another voice in the group was heard to say,
"We must hush it up. We can't have it known!"
On which a chorus of voices joined in, everybody urging
that it must be hushed up.
"Couldn't you try to reastralize them?" said somebody to
Mr. Snoop.
"No, no," said Mr. Snoop, still shaking. "Better not try
to. We must hush it up if we can."
And the general assent to this sentiment showed that,
after all, the principles of Bahee, or Indifference to
Others, had taken a real root in the society.
"Hush it up," cried everybody, and there was a general
move towards the hall.
"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Mrs. Buncomhearst; "our wraps!"
"Deastralized!" said the guests.
There was a moment of further consternation as everybody
gazed at the spot where the ill-fated pile of furs and
wraps had lain.
"Never mind," said everybody, "let's go without them--don't
stay. Just think if the police should--"
And at the word police, all of a sudden there was heard
in the street the clanging of a bell and the racing gallop
of the horses of the police patrol wagon.
"The police!" cried everybody. "Hush it up! Hush it up!"
For of course the principles of Bahee are not known to
the police.
In another moment the doorbell of the house rang with a
long and violent peal, and in a second as it seemed, the
whole hall was filled with bulky figures uniformed in
blue.
"It's all right, Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown," cried a loud,
firm voice from the sidewalk. "We have them both. Everything
is here. We got them before they'd gone a block. But if
you don't mind, the police must get a couple of names
for witnesses in the warrant."
It was the Philippine chauffeur. But he was no longer
attired as such. He wore the uniform of an inspector of
police, and there was the metal badge of the Detective
Department now ostentatiously outside his coat.
And beside him, one on each side of him, there stood the
deastralized forms of Yahi-Bahi and Ram Spudd. They wore
long overcoats, doubtless the contents of the magic
parcels, and the Philippine chauffeur had a grip of iron
on the neck of each as they stood. Mr. Spudd had lost
his Oriental hair, and the face of Mr. Yahi-Bahi, perhaps
in the struggle which had taken place, had been scraped
white in patches.
They were making no attempt to break away. Indeed, Mr.
Spudd, with that complete Bahee, or Submission to Fate,
which is attained only by long services in state
penitentiaries, was smiling and smoking a cigarette.
"We were waiting for them," explained a tall police
officer to the two or three ladies who now gathered round
him with a return of courage. "They had the stuff in a
hand-cart and were pushing it away. The chief caught them
at the corner, and rang the patrol from there. You'll
find everything all right, I think, ladies," he added,
as a burly assistant was seen carrying an armload of furs
up the steps.
Somehow many of the ladies realized at the moment what
cheery, safe, reliable people policemen in blue are, and
what a friendly, familiar shelter they offer against the
wiles of Oriental occultism.
"Are they old criminals?" someone asked.
"Yes, ma'am. They've worked this same thing in four cities
already, and both of them have done time, and lots of
it. They've only been out six months. No need to worry
over them," he concluded with a shrug of the shoulders.
So the furs were restored and the gold and the jewels
parcelled out among the owners, and in due course Mr.
Yahi-Bahi and Mr. Ram Spudd were lifted up into the patrol
wagon where they seated themselves with a composure worthy
of the best traditions of Jehumbabah and Bahoolapore. In
fact, Mr. Spudd was heard to address the police as "boys,"
and to remark that they had "got them good" that time.
So the seance ended and the guests vanished, and the
Yahi-Bahi Society terminated itself without even a vote
of dissolution.
And in all the later confidential discussions of the
episode only one point of mysticism remained. After they
had time really to reflect on it, free from all danger
of arrest, the members of the society realized that on
one point the police were entirely off the truth of
things. For Mr. Yahi-Bahi, whether a thief or not, and
whether he came from the Orient, or, as the police said,
from Missouri, had actually succeeded in reastralizing
Buddha.
Nor was anyone more emphatic on this point than Mrs.
Rasselyer-Brown herself.
"For after all," she said, "if it was not Buddha, who
was it?"
And the question was never answered.
