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Page 13
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 M�ller
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.
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