Pat Imson's ideal was an odd one—detachment; the desire to avoid all ties that must bring him back to future incarnations on the earth, to eschew making fresh Karma, in a word. He considered himself an "old soul," and was rather weary of it all—of existence and development, that is. To take no part in life meant to escape from those tangles for whose unravelling the law of rebirth dragged the soul back again and again. To sow no Causes was to have no harvest of Effects to reap with toil and perspiration. Action, of course, there must be, but "indifference to results of action" was the secret. Imson, none the less, was always entangled with wives and children. Having divorced one wife, and been divorced by another, he had recently married a third; a flock of children streamed behind him; he was a good father, if a strange husband.
"It's old Karma I have to work off," he would explain, referring to the wives. "If I avoid the experience I shall only have to come back again. There's no good shirking old Karma." He gave this explanation to the wives themselves, not only to his friends. "Face it and it's done with, worked off, you see." That is, it had to be done nicely, kindly, generously.
An entire absence of the sense of humour was, of course, his natural gift, yet a certain quaint wisdom helped to fill the dangerous vacuum. He was known usually as "Pat."
"Come on, Pat," said Povey, making room for him at his side. "How's Karma? We're just talking about LeVallon and the Studio business. What do you make of it? You were there, weren't you?" The others listened, attentively, for Imson had a reputation for "seeing true."
"I saw it, yes," replied Imson, ordering his dinner with indifference—soup, fried potatoes, salad, cheese and coffee—but declining the offered wine. The group waited for his next remark, but none was forthcoming. He sat crumbling his bread into the soup and stirring the mixture with his spoon.
"Did you see the light about him, Mr. Imson?" asked Miss Lance. "The brilliant aura of golden yellow that he wore? I thought—it sounds exaggerated, I know—but to me it seemed even brighter than the lightning. Did you notice it?"
"Well," said Imson slowly, putting his spoon down. "I'm not often clairvoyant, you know. I did notice, however, a sort of radiance about him. But with hair like that, it's difficult to be certain——"
"Full of lovely patterns," said Mrs. Towzer. "Geometrical patterns."
"Like astrological designs," mentioned Miss Milligan. "He's Leo, of course—fire."
"Almost as though he brought or caused the lightning—as if it actually emanated out of his atmosphere somehow," claimed Miss Lance, for it was her conversation after all.