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:
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