Specialists diagnosed his trouble as Reynous disease, an affliction most unusual in this part of the world,—of slow growth, but leading inevitably to a wheeled chair. The prospect appalled him. My father had been confined to one for many years, and Mr. Saltus knew what it meant.
"Karma has taken my legs from under me," he exclaimed again and again.
I invented cases of cure for him, but in my absence one day he consulted a physician, who had not been coached in the matter, and he told him the truth. The blow was terrific. Realizing that he must keep his mind occupied or go under, he started to write "The Paliser Case." The plot was not new. It was "The Perfume of Eros" in a new frock. He was not writing so much to create as to fight the constant pain in his legs. His condition was an embarrassing one to his pride. When the pain attacked him, he had to sit down there and then, or fall down. To be compelled to rest on copings, doorsteps or curbstones, as the case might be, was tragic, and yet it was more tragic to remain a prisoner in the house. My mother gave him a small camp chair, and this upon occasions he took with him in case of emergencies.
One specialist after another was called, for between the indigestion and his legs, he was in perpetual torture. Rebellious at first, at what seemed a tragic and trivial end to his eventful life, Mr. Saltus brought his philosophy into concrete use, realizing that the lesson of patience was what he needed most, and was now in a position to acquire. With the acceptance of his afflictions as karma, and adjusting his mind to the idea of the wheeled chair, it lost its power to hurt him. Removing from my bureau a card I had stuck in the glass, he put it in his. It was a quotation from the Gitâ, which read:—"Taking as equal pleasure and pain, gain or loss, victory or defeat, thou shalt not incur sin." From that hour he complained no longer, although complications and sorrow piled on in rapid succession.
Before telling of them, another incident should be given in its proper sequence. In giving some of Mr. Saltus' clothes to a tailor for pressing, a letter fell out of one of the pockets. It was a note from his Los Angeles friend Miss S——, of whom he had told me that he had lost all trace. Sent from abroad, it was directed to the Manhattan Club. It was not the simple note or the friendship which angered me at the moment, but his stupid and needless denials regarding it. Although I knew, better than anyone else could have done, how impossible it was for him to face momentary unpleasantness, this was too much. I went to him and said,
"Well, Snipps, you are a clever prevaricator, but in this you have been a plain ass. A spineless jellyfish must give place to it. Judas and Ananias combined could take lessons from you with profit. Here you are ready to cross the river Styx and take the remnants of a misspent life into Avitchi." (The lower astral plane. Its lessons and condition were a subject which tormented Mr. Saltus more than a little. Darkness always appalled him, and he dreaded detention there.)
It was a cruel thrust on my part, said on the impulse of the moment. Mr. Saltus went white to the lips.
"That you can say such a thing over nothing!" he gasped. "I could not risk the reminders of Dorothy S——, which you would have treated me to had I told you."
His usual comeback about the "subordinate entity" and the "submerged It," failed him then. The lower astral plane with all its horrors, then uppermost in his mind, was recalled by my chance remark. He went off into hysterics, of so serious a nature that it ended by his going to bed. Complicating his other disabilities was heart trouble, and he was taking nitroglycerine at the time. There was nothing to do but put a sponge over the incident and make light of it.
This I did, so convincingly that a few days later he began to call:—