The Mystery of a Turkish Bath
change, if you should repent--Oh! to lose your love now would kill me!"
She laid her hand on his bowed head. "Rest assured you shall not lose
_that_," she said in her low thrilling voice. "No, Julian, that is not
the danger--it threatens me, not you. There will be no change on my
part, not so far as my love is concerned. Will that assurance satisfy
you?"
"You need not ask that, beloved? But why disturb our peace? If I am
content--"
"There must be no secret between your soul and mine," she said solemnly.
"For what, think you, is your power granted, but that I may answer to
it, that I may lead you on the road--and that you, for me, may throw
open the portals?"
"In the future," he said eagerly, "I am content to do your will. But
not now--not to draw the veil from our buried miseries. Let them be as
dead things--out of sight and mind."
"You know," she said, "that nothing dies--not a life, or an act, or a
thought. You may put the past out of sight, but it lives still--lives
in its hidden crimes, its secret sins, its evil and its good--lives to
haunt and shape our future, let that future dream as it will of
forgetfulness."
He rose from his knees, his face was still pale, but his eyes glowed
like living fire.
"When will you wed me, Estarah?" he asked, abruptly.
The soft colour flushed her cheek. Her eyes drooped.
"My heart is yours," she said. "My life lives but in the shadow of your
own. Why should I withhold--this poor gift?"
She placed her hand in his, and let him draw her to his heart. "I will
wed you when you will," she said, "but only if you yield to my
condition. It is an easy one, Julian. Why do you fear?"
Ah--why? He could not answer that question to his own heart, much less
to hers. He could not paint the shuddering horror which had forced him
to veil his eyes and shrink aghast from that last scene in his Dream.
Yet when he looked down on her in her pure womanly beauty, and felt the
clinging tenderness of her arms, and knew that among all the world of
men who had worshipped and wooed her, he alone had kept his place and
awakened a response of tenderness, he felt his heart thrill and glow
with sudden strength and pride.
"It shall be as you wish," he said. "On the night that heralds our
bridal morn, I promise, if my power be still the same, that I will do
your bidding."
She lifted her face. It was radiant with a strange mysterious joy. "At
last," she said, brokenly--"at last I shall know. Every page of my life
will be clear. Heart to heart, soul to soul, so we shall stand, oh,
beloved! You and I, with senses purified, with no secret unshared, with
spirits unfettered and souls at rest, so shall we greet our bridal morn.
For this did I brave the ordeal, for this have I faced almost the
bitterness of death--but the trial is almost over--the goal is almost
reached. Go, now, my life's beloved, lest indeed my heart should break
beneath its weight of joy! Go; but fear not. I am yours for ever in
the life we know, and in the deep Unknown beyond I shall claim you
still!"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
THE DREAM INTERPRETED.
For some days no one in the hotel saw the Princess Zairoff. But her
influence seemed to have left a distinct impression, judging from the
run on Buddhist literature at the different circulating libraries of the
town. The "Occult World", "Isis Unveiled," and "Esoteric Buddhism" were
in great demand; so were various works on Mesmerism, Clairvoyance, and
Occult Science.
The poet plunged into "Zanoni," which he had read in the days of his
boyhood as one reads a fairy-tale, and he and Mrs Ray Jefferson, being
the greatest enthusiasts, held long and learned and quite unintelligible
discussions over these mysterious subjects, with a view to being able to
hold their own with the beautiful proselytiser when she should deign to
come amongst them all once more.
The weather had changed, and kept the invalids indoors, so there was
plenty of time for "serious reading," as Mrs Jefferson called it.
They took to calling the Princess "the Eastern mystery," and were quite
certain that she must be gifted with abnormal powers. Mrs Jefferson
related the story of her appearance in the doorway, her belief in it
having long since been substantiated by Colonel Estcourt's reluctant
admission that the Princess was certainly attired in a white silk gown,
bordered and trimmed with white fur, when he went up to her rooms that
evening.
Mrs Masterman alone held out, and scoffed audibly at the mystic
literature, and what she called the "insane jabber" that went on in the
drawing-room every evening.
"Psychic phenomena, indeed!" the worthy lady would snort. "Don't talk
to me about such rubbish! It's just as bad as the mediums and the slate
writers."
"Dear madam," pleaded the gentle voice of the enamoured poet, "do not, I
pray you, confound these great mysteries with the strain of Human Error
running through their attempted explanation--an explanation only
intended to bring them down to the level of our material understandings.
Let me persuade you to read that most exquisite poem `The Light of
Asia.'"
"Light of your grandmother!" exclaimed Mrs Masterman with sublime
contempt.
"I fear," lamented the poet, "it never was granted to her. She lived in
a benighted age. She had not our privileges."
"And a very good thing too," said the purple-visaged dowager wrathfully.
"Privileges indeed! Fine privileges, if honest, sober-minded
Christians are to learn the way to Heaven from heathens and idolaters.
You are all just as bad as those people Saint Paul speaks of, who were
always running after some new thing. I'm happy to say my Bible and my
Church are good enough for me. I don't want a new religion at my time
of life."
"The teachers in the Church are so very frequently our intellectual
inferiors," murmured the poet, "that they only excite commiseration, or
amusement."
"Well, I suppose they know their business," snapped Mrs Masterman, "I'm
sure no man would go into the Church if he didn't feel a call, and the
fact of his doing so and taking up that life should be enough to prevent
any right-minded person from ridiculing mere human frailties of voice
and manner and appearance."
"Unfortunately," murmured the poet, "I have been at college with several
embryo parsons. But to the best of my recollection the only `special'
call they had for the _office_ was the call of some earthly relative or
friend who had a comfortable living at his disposal. It seems to me--I
may be wrong, of course--but it really does seem to me that we have
quite reversed the old order of religious ministration. At first every
worldly consideration, even the necessaries of life, were given up by
those who undertook the office. Now, the office is only undertaken
_for_ the worldly considerations, and the necessities of life--"
"Oh," cried Mrs Masterman, losing her temper, which even at the best of
times was exceedingly hard to keep. "You go off, young man, to your
`Lights of Asia,' and all your other idolatrous rubbish. The truth is
this foreign woman has bewitched you all, and will end in making you
heathens like herself. Thank goodness I've too much sense to listen to
her. It's my belief she'll turn out a murderess, or a fire worshipper,
or something of that sort before we've seen the last of her. I don't
like mysterious persons! If she hadn't had big eyes, and a straight
nose, and a figure like those Venuses and creatures who hold the lamps
in the corridors, no one here would have troubled their heads about
her!"
And she swept away contemptuously, leaving the poet utterly aghast at
her last indignant speech. He repeated it to Mrs Ray Jefferson, who
was reclining in a rocking-chair, endeavouring to comprehend "The Light
of Asia." The endeavour, however, was not very successful, and she
hailed the approach of the poet with delight. His account of the
conversation filled her with wrath and indignation. The feelings might
have been partially due to Mrs Masterman's remembered snubs on the
matter of "feet," and "suppressed gout," at the Turkish Bath. They
certainly rose strongly to the occasion, and, with the help of sundry
powerful Americanisms, gave a very fair display of vituperative
eloquence.
The poet was more and more convinced that there was only one perfect
woman in the world, and that was the beautiful creature whom he had
apostrophised in sonnets as:--
"Mysterious Mystery, whose bright sad eyes,
Wild as the roe, and deep with undreamt dreams."
Etcetera, etcetera.
So he listened and sighed, and in a low and plaintive voice, significant
of hidden woe and much "soul suffering," to quote from another effusion,
he read to her fragments of the "Light of Asia," which she could not in
the least comprehend, but which she bluntly criticised as "not half bad
to listen to if you felt drowsy."
"Oh, but I do wish the Princess would come down," she said at last in
the intervals of a "selection."
"I've such hundreds of questions to ask her. Seems to me she dropped
the seed in pretty fruitful soil the other night, for we're all just
`gone' on occultism. Only we don't know anything about it. Ah, there's
Colonel Estcourt, I'll ask him if it's possible to have her down this
evening. I don't mind which body she comes in: the Astral or the
ordinary. In fact, I think I should prefer the former. Colonel!" she
called out, raising her voice. "Come here, I want to speak to you."
She put her request to him as he obeyed her summons, and put it with an
earnestness and fervour that showed it was sincere, and not the formula
of idle curiosity.
"I don't know," he said, "if it will be possible, but, if the princess
consents, I will arrange that two or three of you shall have an
opportunity of witnessing how really marvellous her powers are. She
never makes a display or show of them, for reasons which you cannot yet
understand, but, if she consents, I should like you, Mrs Jefferson, and
my young friend here (smiling at the poet's excited face), and one or
two other people interested in the matter, to come up to her boudoir
this evening. I will just send up a note and ask."
"I could just worship you, Colonel," cried the little American,
ecstatically. "It's real good of you to offer such a glorious treat to
us."
"Do not thank me yet," he said, smiling; "you do not know whether you
will be received."
At the same moment there came a sound in the air above their heads--
soft, clear, vibrating--like the faint echo of a silver bell.
Mrs Jefferson started, the poet turned pale. Colonel Estcourt looked
at them gravely.
"It is the answer," he said. "You may come. She will receive us. Who
else do you wish to invite?"
"Oh, my husband, if I may," cried Mrs Jefferson, eagerly, "and
Diogenes--he's so solid and sensible. His imagination never plays
tricks with him."
"Very well," said Colonel Estcourt, "bring them also."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Princess Zairoff was seated in her boudoir reading, as the party
filed in, headed by Colonel Estcourt.
She rose and greeted them with the same sweet and gracious manner that
had so charmed Mrs Jefferson.
"I know why you are here," she said, as the little American burst into
vivacious explanations. "I am quite ready to do anything Julian wishes.
You know--or, perhaps, you do not know--that he trained my
_clairvoyante_ faculties long ago. They are natural to me, I suppose;
but you do not require to be told that even natural gifts are capable of
training and improving to almost any extent." She turned to Mrs
Jefferson. "You have some power," she said, "you saw me the other
night. No one else did."