THE TRANSMIGRATIONS OF TARVER
I SHOULD never have thought it of a man not only called John Robinson, but who looked the name so completely. True, he had been born abroad in a land of mystery, but with that he had nothing to do. Owing to a series of circumstances over which Robinson exerted no control whatever, he first saw daylight on a Thibetan tableland, and, what is more, did not return to his mother-country until he was one-and-twenty years of age; but there was little to suggest these facts about him. He had the most purely British middle-class manners, instincts, appetites and mould of mind that ever I saw. For ten years I knew him intimately, and never guessed that anything in the least uncommon lurked beneath his fat exterior. I even respected him. Hedwelt alone with an unmarried sister but little older than himself and he went to business in the City daily. After travelling upon the same omnibus with him every morning, winter and summer, for five years, the English reserve of the man thawed, and we grew acquainted. He was a giant in stature, I am undersized; he had an extraordinary amount of physical courage, I possess none; he, indeed, differed from me in a thousand ways, and that was doubtless the reason why we became such firm friends. Our political opinions, moreover, were tinged by the same morning journal, and when similar views on great questions of the day bind men together, it often happens that warm if not lasting friendships are the result. Of course, I never asked for the key of Robinson’s mystery; I did not so much as dream that he had a mystery. Once only might I have read some indication of a side to his character that I had not guessed at; but I never really grasped the significance of certain remarks uttered by him on his way to town one morning, though they surprised me at the time. Having read, with some interest, a leading article on occult theosophy—which approached that belief in a disrespectful spirit—Robinson spoke.
“What fools men are!” he said. “How can this poor penny-a-liner possibly know what he is talking about? Just listen: ‘Mahatmas are a figment to bolster a cause which human wisdom has agreed to pronounce unsound.’ There’s bosh for you!”
I recollected his early life in Thibet.
“You, who dwelt in a Mahatma country, ought to know,” I said.
“I do,” he answered. “Mahatmas may not be as common as rabbits, but they exist, and what’s more, they can do a great many remarkable things.”
“But,” I said, “nothing to the purpose?”
“On the contrary,” he answered, “they achieve much good in a quiet way. The secrets of Nature are in their grasp. It argues something in their favour that they have not turned the world upside down years ago. Their self-control is the most remarkable thing about them.”
“You astound me, Robinson,” I replied. “Is it possible that you harbour friendly opinions towards esoteric Buddhism and kindred fantastic conceits of vain men?”
“Nothing fantastic or vain about it,” he answered. “I am an esoteric Buddhist myself.”
I nearly fell off the omnibus from sheer surprise. Robinson had all the outward appearance of a churchwarden or sidesman. You might have wagered money that he wore a frock-coat on Sundays, and got the people nicely seated in some place of modern worship, and handed round a plate or a bag at the appointed time. And yet he turned out to be an esoteric Buddhist.
“You never told me this,” I said.
“Why should I?” he asked, very reasonably. “Wise men don’t blaze abroad their opinions for nothing. I don’t know what you are for that matter, and I don’t want to.”
Nevertheless, I told him, and he said that I might as well pursue that idea as any other. Then he resumed his newspaper.
Time passed, and I forgot the matter, and was contented to feel that Robinson had high morals and even refined instincts for such a large man. I came to know him well and went home with him to tea and made the acquaintance of his sister. He told me privately that she was a saintly woman who had seen sorrow and just missed matrimony by a hair’s breadth.
“But,” he said, “I am anxious to see hermarried. She is only hovering on forty now and will make a good man happy yet.”
For my part I doubted it. Miss Robinson was a painfully plain person, and so abundantly proportioned in every direction physically, that I was conscious of cutting a figure almost ludicrous when sitting beside her. Personally, though Robinson always declared that she “hovered near forty,” my opinion rather inclined me to suspect that she was fluttering past forty-five and that rapidly. She wanted a husband and hope was not dead. I saw nothing saintly in her myself. She struck me as being a trifle vulgar. I could not imagine a man was living in London or the suburbs who would have married her in cold blood.
After I had visited at their little house near Regent’s Park on two or three occasions, Robinson came to smoke a pipe with me at my bachelor diggings. During that evening our friendship advanced by leaps and bounds. We were both communicative and emptied a bottle of whisky and called each other by our Christian names for the first time, and gave each other a great deal of sound advice. By the way, can an esoteric Buddhist have a Christian name?
“You should marry,” said Robinson.
It wanted only fifteen minutes of midnight when he said it. I laughed.
“Bless you, John,” I said, “such good things are not for me. Why, I’m nearer fifty than you’d guess, and a confirmed bachelor, sir!”
“What’s your opinion of Primrose?” he asked abruptly.
Primrose was his sister. I think I never heard of a woman with a more unsuitable name. It made me uncomfortable to observe how Robinson thus coupled the suggestion of my taking a wife with this question as to my opinion of his sister.
“You are fortunate to have such a sister,” I said.
You cannot tell the truth to a comparative stranger about his sister, unless the truth is polite.
“I’m glad you think so,” answered Robinson. “I happen to know she entertains a very genuine admiration for you. She marvelled only yesterday at tea that no woman had ever won you. She said you must have made a good many hearts ache in your time.”
As a matter of fact I was refused, unconditionally, by a stock-jobber’s second daughter when I was thirty-two, and that is the onlyglimmer of romance which ever crossed my path. But I did not tell Robinson this. I merely said that his sister was a kind soul.
“Can you picture her a wife?” asked Robinson.
“Very easily,” I answered, which was untrue.
“Can you picture heryourwife?” asked Robinson.
The bad taste of such a question appears upon the surface of it.
“No,” I said, and then added like a fool, “Miss Robinson will aspire to a younger cavalier, and one worthier of her than I. She’d never look at an old fossil like Thomas Tarver.”
“Yes, she would,” said Robinson, winking. “Faint heart never won fair lady, you know. Go in and win, my son!”
I attributed it to the whisky, for Robinson was usually refined up to a certain point. To fling his own sister down another man’s throat in this way struck me as being not nice.
I fought to change the conversation, and ultimately succeeded. Presently he went home, and on the following day asked me if I would meet him that evening with his sister at the Zoological Gardens. We often went thither in summer-time to drink a cup of tea and gazeupon the various wonders of animal creation gathered there.
“The Lion House at six-thirty,” said Robinson, and I replied that I would not fail him.
How little I foresaw my evening’s amusement! How far from the wildest nightmare flights of my imagination was the nature of that entertainment which the man John Robinson arranged for me at the Zoological Society’s Gardens.
When I arrived he was waiting in the Lion House, and I felt a relief to see that Primrose Robinson had not accompanied him.
“Sit here,” he said. “I want to talk to you seriously, Tarver.”
Now, the great beasts in the Lion House always affect my nerves. I know they cannot get out and all that sort of thing, but the unexpected so often happens; accidents will occur; and besides, as I explained to Robinson when asking him to step with me into the air, the spectacle of lions and tigers at feeding time is anything but pleasing to the possessor of a delicate appetite.
But Robinson said the spot would answer our purpose well. He was moody and preoccupied; he showed no interest in anything. Then, when I had grown weary of trying to make him talk, he suddenly began on a painful subject.
“Primrose was bitterly disappointed not to come. She always counts the days and hours between your visits. I won’t disguise the fact, Tarver; she’s grown to be very fond of you.”
What could I say? While I was reflecting he proceeded:
“She’d make a grand wife. Her interests are at my heart too. It’s a great opportunity. Why don’t you take your luck and thank your stars for it?”
I here broke into a perspiration.
“My dear Robinson,” I said, “you must really forgive me, but these affairs cannot be arranged like a transaction on ’Change.”
“She loves you,” said Robinson. “Her heart has gone out to you.”
“But, my dear fellow, love wants two hearts to beat as one.”
“Blessed if I know how anybody can help loving her,” said Robinson.
“You see, no man has the power to direct another’s feelings in the matter,” I explained.
Then he made a most extraordinary remark.
“Well, it’s no good beating about the bush, Tarver, so I’ll be frank. My sister wants to marry you; I want you to marry her and make her a home——”
“And let you be free of her?” I interrupted hotly.
He felt the thrust and winced, but proceeded:
“I wish you to marry her. What is more, I insist upon it. Youshallmarry her.”
I lack pluck as a rule, but a worm will turn at times. I said I would be eternally lost if I did.
“Bad language won’t help you,” he continued quietly. “Listen and judge for yourself if I threaten without power. You will recollect that I did not leave Thibet until I came of age. For one-and-twenty years I studied the wisdom of the land. Briefly, a Mahatma, whose pretensions and learning it would be idle to question, took a fancy to me, and imparted not a little of his knowledge on absurdly easy terms. I never counted to employ it. Self-control, indeed, was the first great lesson he taught me. But all information is useful. I wish you to marry my sister. Will you or will you not?”
I thought he was merely trying to frighten me, so dared him to do his worst. I purposely expressed myself with some severity.
“Don’t think I fear your tomfoolery,” I said. “If you’re a Mahatma, you ought to be locked up with all the other wild beasts. That for you! You won’t alarm me, I promise you!”
Here I snapped my thumb and finger under his nose.
Hardly were the words out of my mouth when Robinson, looking round to see that nobody was within earshot, made use of a word of some twelve syllables, which I had never heard before. A second afterwards I found myself, to my horror, inside the bars of the Bengal tiger’s house. This was not all. Looking round wildly, I observed that the tiger had disappeared, and, on raising my voice to cry for help, a hideous roar thundered through the building, but no human sound left my lips. Then I realised what had happened.I was the tiger!Robinson had transferred myegointo this brute beast. I, Thomas Tarver, found my immortal soul shut up within the frame of the most savage monster an inscrutable Providence ever designed. I looked out of its eyes; I strode here and there; I lifted giant paws, and, raising myself on my hind legs, gazedthrough my bars at Robinson. He was sitting where I had left him, and there opposite, limp in its chair, looking more like a respectably dressed Guy Fawkes than anything, reposed my mortal shell.
“For God’s sake come here!” I said; but only a tigerish whimper sounded through the den. However, Robinson understood it and stepped to the bar.
“You do look a fool!” he remarked. Then he explained the fiendish thing he had done.
“You see, a tiger doesn’t run a soul, Tarver, so I’ve just drawn yours out of your wretched carcase and popped it into this creature. Now, for all practical purposes you’re a Bengal tiger, and you’ll have to remain one until you grow reasonable. I rather fancy you’ll be fed at four.”
If I could have got out at that moment, Mahatma or no Mahatma, Robinson would have had a painful experience. I was, honestly, as angry as a man or beast can be. I spoke hotly. I said things I should not have said under any other conditions. Robinson understood me, but other visitors saw nothing but a big tiger in a raging temper.
Presently my poor shell fell off its chair, and a crowd collected and Robinson explained tothe people that my heart was weak. Then I saw myself carried away under the direction of the demon who had called himself my friend. Nobody paid any attention to me myself. I was left with nothing to do for twenty-four hours but reflect upon my position and eat a piece of dead horse. Why I did not go mad I shall never understand. Presently a tigress came out of the inner den, and I felt myself trembling in every limb. She took little notice of me, but finding I made no effort to eat my dinner, consumed it herself when my back was turned. Heaven only knows what she thought had happened to me. But she left me alone, for which I thanked her. I walked up and down for long, weary hours; I tried to speak to the keepers; I impressed several spectators with my hopeless appearance. The infant mind often sees deeper than an adult intelligence, and a little girl it was who read my anguish in my eyes.
“What a poor, dear, unhappy old tiger!” she said, and flung me a currant bun.
“You little fool!” exclaimed her mother, “that was for the elephant. Tigers don’t eat buns!”
But they do under some conditions. My tiger’s appetite was keen. I ate that bun, andI even regretted the dead horse before closing time. That night I found myself driven into a small sleeping-den—alone I was thankful to see—and when silence fell I put my paws over my head and tried to grasp the situation. Here was I—a reasonable human soul—chained in this awful living prison. I might have been back in Bengal too for all the use my fellow-creatures could be. Then a grey rat hopped into my den. It came fearlessly up, cocked its whiskers and spoke. Needless to say that this rat was Robinson, or rather Robinson’s astral embodiment.
“Well,” he asked, “how do you find yourself? Variety is charming, eh? But you’re a poor thing in tigers.”
I put my paw on him.
“Now,” I said, “restore me instantly, or I’ll crush you.”
“No,” answered Robinson, “you won’t; you’ll crush a grey rat—that’s all. You can’t touch me, any more than they’d hurt you if they shot this tiger. You may like to hear the news. We’ve taken your carcase back to your diggings. Several doctors have examined you, and they are divided in their opinions. Some say you are dead; others fancy it is a case of trance. Primrose went down and weptover you, and kissed your pallid cheek. She says it doesn’t matter now who knows her secret passion, as you have gone. A devoted woman, Tarver!”
Nothing annoyed me more on that terrible day than the mental spectacle of Primrose Robinson dropping tears on me and fussing about my bachelor rooms.
“I suppose you’ll marry her all right now?” asked Robinson.
“I won’t,” I answered. “I defy you and your devilish accomplishments. Providence isn’t going to let this outrage go on for ever. Something will be sure to happen, and the moment I’m restored I’ll summon you, if it costs me every farthing I’ve got in the world.”
“The only thing that can happen,” said Robinson, “is this: I shall hurry you on. There are worse tenements than tigers. You’ll have to give in; it’s only a question of time. You’ll go to sleep presently and when you wake you’ll find yourself the adjutant stork. He happens to be moulting just now, too—a sight for the gods, my boy! I’ll look you up again in the course of a day or two. Till then, ta-ta, Tarver.”
He was gone with a whisk of his tail, and despite the bold front I had put on before him,I broke down, shed bitter tears, and I suppose finally went to sleep on my sawdust.
Next morning I woke to find Robinson’s prediction verified. I gazed gloomily at my hideous future through the eyes of an adjutant stork—a bird in poor feather—a piteous, comic object that made even the professional attendants laugh as they passed me. The public poured forth their wit upon me; the human misery in my eye merely served to accentuate the proportions of my beak, the length of my legs, the general air of ruin and decay which characterised me. I tried to talk again, believing all birds possessed the power; but I found that an adjutant stork does not. Doubtless Robinson knew this. He did not manifest himself that day, but on the following evening, after office hours, he arrived in the form of a house-sparrow and sat upon the edge of a bath where I was standing on one leg—that being, so I found, the most comfortable position.
“Great Scott!” he chirruped, “you look as if you’d seen trouble and no mistake! How goes it?”
“Devil!” I answered. “Tell me how long this loathsome tragedy is to last.”
“All depends on you, Tarver. Primrose goesdown every day to look at you and weep over you. The doctors are still undecided. Two hold out that you are alive, but all the others say you’re dead as a herring. I tell them I think you live.”
“Is there no alternative except a union with Miss Robinson?”
“None, Tarver. I’ve no hesitation in saying this: the marriage was made in heaven.”
“In Thibet, more likely,” I replied, not without acerbity.
“Has Providence taken any steps yet?” he asked civilly.
The question gave me fresh courage.
“No, but do your worst,” I answered; “I still have hope. You cannot rob me of life; you cannot alter my destiny.”
“True,” he admitted, “I cannot; but I can give you about the worst time in these Gardens any man ever endured even in imagination. The day after to-morrow is Bank Holiday. Just you wait and see where you come in then!”
After which threat he flew off.
I may as well say at once that on the August Bank Holiday of the present year I was a camel—one that carries children about. How many enjoyed exercise at my expense I cannot say; I only know that the tortures of the day appeared endless. I had lived a thousand years of physical anguish before the sun set. Then I was marched back to my stall with a sore hump and a sick heart. The ingenuity of my tormentor was more than human. I shall shudder to my dying day when I hear esoteric Buddhism mentioned, and it ages me even now to read or hear the name of Robinson. After the camel episode I had comparative leisure as a kangaroo, and then, upon the sudden arrival of an Australian ornithorhynchus at the Gardens, Robinson transferred me to this uncanny nightmare. On the occasion of my becoming the infant hippopotamus he accosted me again in the shape of the new giraffe, and told me that all the doctors, save one only, now considered that I was a dead man.
“There’s been a deal of correspondence in theLancet,” he said, “and the consensus ofscientific opinion now inclines to the conclusion that you have passed away. The Directors of the Westminster Aquarium wanted you for a side-show, but your executors declined to accept the terms offered.”
“I should hope so!” I answered.
“Primrose has lost two stone and a half since your extinction,” he proceeded. “I need hardly tell you that she is ignorant of the truth.”
I made no answer and he became personal.
“You’re going strong, I suppose?”
“I’m going mad,” I answered.
“Providence not much to the front yet?”
“No,” I replied. “The ways of Providence are beyond our comprehension. But one thing has struck me, that come what may to me,youwill not go unpunished. I’d rather be in my fix than yours. You’ll probably have all eternity in which to regret this abominable performance.”
He showed no dismay.
“You are an obstinate soul, Tarver, and a pluckier man than I thought. But you’ll have to cut it—you’ll have to cave in. We’ll try what a few hours in the python will do for you. And all this fuss because you won’t marry a good woman.”
“You call it fuss!” I screamed indignantly.But then, thinking that my excitement was caused by hunger, the keepers came and led me to my parent, by which I mean the maternal hippopotamus.
There are things that cannot be written.
As a python I ate live rabbits and lived the ordinary disgusting life of that reptile. The animals into which I migrated, having no conscious existence of their own, were powerless to resent their visitor. Not one of my hosts appeared aware of my presence, not one showed the least concern about me. From the python I passed on to the tarantula, and after abandoning that atrocious insect, I became a monkey. This was a last refinement of cruelty on the part of Robinson, for he had heard more than once my openly expressed dislike of these beasts. Moreover, I was very unattractive; and yet a gleam of hope animated me under this affliction, for I conceived that with a pencil and paper I might now explain my position to some sympathetic third person. But though the public offered me many things, a pencil and paper were not amongst them. My companions, seeming to know that something was amiss, bullied me, cuffed me, pulled my tail, pretended to catch fleas on me, and generally made my life purgatory; while, tocrown all, an ape’s intelligence being apparently superior to that of most other animals, the beast I inhabited evidently felt that he was out of sorts. I cannot say what he thought was wrong with him or how he explained the problem, but he had a will of his own, and evil passions, and a bad disposition—all of which I found myself powerless to keep in check. After two days of this infernal life Robinson dropped in again and I was thankful to hear him speak from the throat of a spider monkey; for my spirit was broken, I could wait for Providence no longer. I had, in fact, determined to yield.
Robinson sidled up to me with a nut in his cheek, winked wickedly, put a paw on my shoulder and spoke.
“Gay doings in this department, eh, Tarver?”
“We needn’t discuss them,” I said. “I give in. I will marry your sister.”
“That’s awkward,” he answered. “In fact, you’ve run the time too fine, old man. You can’t now. Why, when I came home from town to-day and kissed Primrose as usual and asked her what she’d been doing, d’you know what she said?”
“It doesn’t interest me.”
“Yes, I think it will, Tarver. She answered, with a sob, that she had been strewing pale lilies on your grave.”
“On mywhat!” I screamed.
“Your grave, dear old boy! The last doctor gave in three days ago, and as the whole committee were then of one opinion, there seemed naturally nothing to do but to inter you. The people at your office sent a wreath of cheap hardy annuals, and your executors told me to-day that you had cut up rather better than they expected. You notice I choose to appear in this black monkey; that is a compliment to you. In fact, you’re dead, Tarver—dead as a door-nail. It’s your own fault, and be blessed if I know what programme to arrange for you now.”
Of course I saw that it was no good asking to go back to my earthly tabernacle if the wretched thing was six feet underground. That must simply mean being buried alive. I looked at Robinson speechlessly, and I think my expression touched him, for he spoke again.
“Poor old bounder! No, no; I’m getting at you, my son. It isn’t as bad as all that, really. I wouldn’t let ’em bury you. But the position must come to a climax pretty soon. Your landlady’s getting sick of it, and your nephew—theyoungster to whom you have left everything—is simply clamouring to have you buried.”
Even marriage with Primrose Robinson presented a bright picture compared to the last.
“I tell you, then, that I will give in; I will wed Miss Robinson; I will do as you desire; only let me get back. I’m evidently wanted at home. I shall lose my official appointment and everything,” I said.
“All right,” answered Robinson, cheerfully. “They’re going to measure you for your last resting-place to-night, so if you start sharp you’ll be there in time to see some fun. Are you ready to go?”
Before I had replied to this ironical question, I found myself at home in bed, while several medical men were in the room, all talking at once.
“It’s murder, I tell you,” said one.
Whereupon I sat up and asked for brandy-and-water.
I should write no more, but it is only fair to explain how matters ultimately fell out. As a man of honour I offered my heart and hand to Primrose Robinson in due course; and sherefused them! She admitted that she had loved me once, but even she drew the line at catalepsy, and she declined absolutely to marry a man who might fall into a trance at any moment. So her brother’s esoteric machinations on her behalf really defeated his own object. At least, thus it appeared to me. Providence seldom really fails, only it takes its own time, and from the point of view of a business man, is dilatory and too casual. Providence, in fact, exhibits those faults that attach to any monopoly.
Six months after these unparalleled events I met Robinson in the City, and he asked me to lunch with him, an invitation which I accepted, feeling it better to run no more risks. He talked of the past, and said:
“I suppose you thought that when dear Primrose declined you she gave you the true reason for so doing?”
“Yes,” I answered, “it struck me that Providence came in there.”
“Not at all,” he said. “She had found another and a better man. They were thrown together during the period of your temporary extinction. In his case it was love at first sight. A fine young fellow. I like him.”
“Who?” I asked with interest.
“Your nephew, the young man who will inherit your little property.”
“Never! He raised heaven and earth to have me buried. I have cut him out of my will,” I replied.
“Yes, I know,” said Robinson, “but, if you think of it quietly and take my advice, you will put him back again. As my brother-in-law he will have claims on me.”
Of course I put him back, but I didn’t go to the wedding; and when they sent cake I flung it into the dustbin; and if Robinson dies before I do, I shall change my will again.
So let there be no more nonsense about not believing in Mahatmas. The things exist, and nearer than Thibet too. There is one of them on the Stock Exchange, at any rate, and his name is John Robinson. Tax him and he will probably deny it; but don’t push him too far, or you may find out the truth of my assertion to your cost.