Strangely enough he was extremely happy in doing these things. Although the Hotel del Coronado was only a five minutes' walk from the bungalow it offered no attraction to him. Barring a daily dip in the ocean and the occasional necessity for going over to San Diego, he could not be persuaded to leave the grounds.
Winter wore away, and with the approach of spring the invalid emerged from the shadow of death; and old dog Tray remained at his post. Among Mr. Saltus' most marked characteristics were two fears,—that of losing his luggage and getting some contagious disease. In neither case could any amount of reasoning touch him. The luggage complex put him to no end of inconvenience at times. When trunks could not be taken in a taxi, he frequently insisted upon driving with the express-man to the railway station. Then fear put out tentacles. Would the luggage be put on the train? If it was, would it be carried past its destination? Every railroad journey found him wandering like an earthbound spirit between his seat and the luggage van. It was a form of obsession. Many a time he would greet me in the morning with the announcement:—
"I had a terrible nightmare last night. What do you suppose it was?"
"That you had lost your trunks," was the first and usually the correct reply.
"Yes, I had lost them. They dematerialized and I was wandering through the train and express vans till I went mad. Then I awoke. It was awful."
Toward the end of his life, when Theosophy had done its work for him, and he realized that all possessions are anchors and encumbrances, this fear became modified,—but he never quite overcame it. It was the same with disease, or rather contagion. Having a horror of all forms of illness, he had the subconscious idea that if there was anything to be caught he would be in for it.
When in his last days he was so desperately ill with gastritis, he looked upon it as karma striking him in the face for shrinking as he had from others. Myself excepted, he rushed from people who were ill as from an earthquake.
This particular spring an epidemic of bubonic plague broke out in San Francisco. It was supposed to have been carried there by rats from China. As cats eat rats they also came under the ban of suspicion. The newspapers dripped with it. Mr. Saltus read them with horror. Ships from San Francisco might dock at San Diego. He had more nightmares. Behind him as he sought his lost luggage an army of rodents followed. There was no talking him out of it. The plague with all its attendant complications was hovering above us.
Coronado has a large winter colony as well as permanent residents,—eastern people who come in for the season and take houses. Their departure often means a number of homeless and discarded cats. Mr. Saltus was shocked by the cruelty of this. One of the vagrants with particularly long whiskers and a piteous miaw I had nicknamed "Jean Valjean." Where he slept was his own secret, but where he ate was usually out of my hand. When not referring to him by his name, Mr. Saltus called him "the table boarder," and he concerned himself not a little over Jean's well being.
Rumours of the bubonic plague changed that in an instant, and Jean became overnight the dangerous carrier of the most deadly germs, unfit for the society of humans and to be driven from the door. It was too ridiculous for argument. To have yielded an inch to Mr. Saltus in such a thing would have forfeited my mental ascendency forever, an exceedingly bad thing for him in every way. Had he been yielded to less during his formative years it would have been a blessing both to himself and to others, and would have made possible a little yielding to him in later life. As it was, it was hazardous to give in, even if he had a certain amount of right on his side. When he had none, it was suicidal.