Tramping on Life Part 92

Dineen, Van Maarden and I were together much. And the latter found more delight in the time when he could discuss freely and unacademically with me than when he was invited to formal teas and dinners by the weightier members of the faculty and community.

It was psychic research that we particularly discussed. Van Maarden was the greatest scholar in the Mystic, the Occult, the Spiritualistic that I have ever met. He claimed to be able to go out of the body at will and see what any friend was up to at any time, in any out-of-the-way place in the world....

When I jested that such a faculty might sometimes prove embarra.s.sing to his friends, he laughed and slapped me on the back.

Dineen was a queer little chap. He roomed de luxe at the Bellman House.

One night, during a cyclone that swept the town and the adjacent country, a fragment of roof was lifted off the hostelry in which he dwelt. The women-servants and waitresses were thrown into a panic. One, who collapsed on a lounge in the upstairs hall, swore that Dineen had felt of her leg as she lay there. A scandal was started. I know that Dineen, in his European fas.h.i.+on, was free with his hands, when he meant no harm. He had merely laid his hand on the girl's leg, in friendly fas.h.i.+on, and asked if she was hurt.

But the nasty Puritan mind of the community went to work, and the story was hawked about that Professor Dineen, taking advantage of the cyclone, had tried to "feel the girl up."

This, and the fact that he had been a friend of mine (after my forthcoming scandal it counted strongly against him) later effected in his being requested to resign from the faculty.

But the real cause of the brilliant, strange man's persecution was the jealousy of the dean of the philosophical department of the former's real ability.

"We must do more for this man than we have ... he is a genius ... he has not enough money to return to Europe on....

"He has written a curious, mad play called _Iistral_ ... one dealing with psychic phenomena, which we ought to put on....

"That way we'll net him three or four hundred dollars."

It was Dineen who spoke.

We chanced to be walking up the Hill together.

The school cheer-leader was tall and statuesque, and his voice was deep and resonant ... but, though pleased with his stature and his vocal qualifications, Van Maarden decided on me to play the lead in his abnormal play.... I did not possess as fine a voice, but I knew the mystics almost as well as he did.... I believed in spiritism, and would be accordantly sympathetic with the author's ideas....

The rehearsal of the play progressed. Van Maarden, receiving' from Dineen's own personal bank-account a substantial advance on the expected receipts from the two performances, returned East, and sailed away for Holland.

But an intimate friend of Penton Baxter's, before he left, he related to me many fine things about the latter, and spoke in special admiration of his wife, Hildreth.

I rehea.r.s.ed and rehea.r.s.ed.

I fought and fought with the directress, a teacher of elocution, who tried to make me mouth my words in the old style.

She swore that she would get rid of me as Iistral (p.r.o.nounced Eestral), if it were not for the fact that it would seriously embarra.s.s her to try others for the part, the time of production being so near.

Dineen upbraided me for being insubordinate....

I asked Dineen please to believe in me, and watch results.

My idea of acting was to go into the part, be burned alive by it ... to recite my lines naturally.

I was proud of myself. I was to act as lead in a play by a world-celebrated author, in its premier American production.

The story of it was that of a young poet-student, Iistral ... eccentric ... a sensitive ... who had, while tutoring the children of a count, fallen in love with the countess, his wife ... on the discovery of the liaison, she had committed suicide in a lake on their private grounds....

The play opened up with the young student, Iistral, come back home, after the wife's death....

The tragedy had affected him strangely.

He wore a Hindoo robe, let his beard grow like a Yogi ... was irritated with the unimaginative, self-seeking smugness of the grown-ups.

He found in Lisel, a little niece of his, the wise, innocent, illuminated imagination of childhood. And he a.s.sociated with her, teaching her the mystic meanings of flowers in the garden.

But he lived for one thing only--the coming of the voice of Egeria, as he called the spirit of the dead countess....

Her voice came to him continually ... preluded by strains of music ...

he lived from day to day with her lovely speech, a clairaudient.

As long as nothing material was involved, he was regarded as merely a gentle eccentric ... by his relatives and the bourgeoisie....

But as soon as word came that he had inherited a fortune through the death of a rich uncle in America--the att.i.tude of the people around him changed. His relatives began intriguing to have him declared insane.

But the village burgomaster, ordinarily decent, saw through their artifices....

Goaded and goaded, finally Iistral a.s.sailed his pestering relatives with a shovel with which he was working among the gentle flowers in the garden ... at his customary task of tending them with Lisel....

And now the burgomaster, bribed, had reason to adjudge him insane.

And Iistral was dragged off, wailing, to the asylum.

With my clothes in literal rags I went through the rehearsals, attended cla.s.ses, kept up my athletics....

Often I woke up in the night, crying out, with tears rolling down my cheeks, the lines of unhappy Iistral ... the spirit-woman Egeria grew real as flesh and blood to me....

"Egeria! Egeria!--"

I woke, time and again, and heard my own voice, like the voice of another, calling her name in the dark.

"You mustn't take the play so desperately ... remember it's just a play ... you rehea.r.s.e as if the whole thing were a part of your life."

"Some of the boys," I replied, "some of the football boys lost ten or twelve pounds in our Thanksgiving game at Kansas City last fall ... why do you rebuke me for taking art and beauty as seriously as athletes take a football match?"