The Mystery of a Turkish Bath

Mrs Jefferson looked highly gratified. "Oh, Madame Zairoff," she cried, "I'd give up everything in the world to have your wonderful gifts." "Even Worth's gowns?" said the princess, smiling. "What about the pleasant vanities we talked so much about?" "Oh, bother the vanities. I've found out life can be much more interesting than when it's merely frivolous," said the American, heartily. "Is there anything I _could_ do to become an occultist?" Colonel Estcourt laughed outright. "My dear Mrs Jefferson," he said, "the life is not by any means easy, or gratifying. I think you had better consider it carefully, and weigh it well in the balance with the `creations' of Worth, and the magnificence of your diamonds, for somehow the two things won't pull together, and you haven't even learnt the A B C of occult science yet." "No," she said, seating herself, "I suppose not. Well, please begin my lesson." "This will not be a lesson," he said, gravely, "only an illustration. May I ask you all to be seated?" They took various chairs and seats, and the princess threw herself on the couch, nestling back among her favourite white bear-skins, with a smile on her lips. Colonel Estcourt removed a rose-shaded lamp from the stand, and placed it behind her, so that the light should not shine directly into her eyes. They were all watching her intently in the full expectation of something to be done or said that was mysterious and awe-inspiring. Colonel Estcourt then seated himself on a chair opposite the couch. For a moment their eyes met and lingered in the gaze, then hers closed softly, and she seemed to sleep as peacefully and gently as a child in its cradle. No one spoke. Suddenly a voice broke the stillness--clear, sweet, and sonorous--the voice of the sleeper, though her lips scarcely moved, nor did the placid expression of her face change. "What you desire to know is the storied wisdom of past ages, the fruits of the deepest and most earnest research of which human minds are capable. These fruits have only been gathered after long and painful study, after severe training of every spiritual faculty, and the repression of all lower material inclinations and desires. There is but one among all who listen to me now, capable of undertaking such study, or undergoing such an ordeal. The day is at hand when he may choose it, if he will. They who bid me speak now, are willing that you should learn some lesson to benefit yourselves, and your fellow men. They say to you, oh Poet, `Perfect those gifts of your higher nature--yet be not of them vainglorious, since, humanly speaking, they are not yours, but lent for a purpose, and the brief space of earth-life.' Look upon every beautiful thought, every gift of expression, as the direction of One who has dowered you with the possibility of opening other eyes to the beauty, and other minds to the understanding of such expression. Remember there is a great truth in your favourite lines that _Karma_ is `the total of a soul.' `The things it did, the thoughts it had, the Self it wove, with woof of viewless time, crossed on the warp invisible of acts.' "There is another listener here--one who has wrestled with the secrets of Nature. To him I say, `Be not over vain of the triumph gained by simple accident of discovery. Turn that discovery to better uses than the mere amassing of wealth. Let the poor, the sick, the needy, gain health and happiness from your hands, and let their voices bless you for good wrought amongst them. For nothing is so pitiful and so abhorrent, as the worship of wealth, and the selfishness that eats like a corroding poison into the purer metal of the rich man's nature. Your wealth will only bring you happiness in so far as you use it to benefit others less fortunate though equally deserving. It is given you as a trial, not as a reward.'--To you, oh Cynic, this message have I also: `Your eyes see but through a veil of dulled and vainglorious senses. Some truths you have learned, but in the passage through your mind they take the colour and shape of a distorted and embittered fancy. You have a work to do, and influence to do it; but your _will_ must become humble, and then you will learn the sweets of true knowledge, and be able to disseminate truth and wisdom. Now you absorb it into your own mind, for your own satisfaction, and for the poor triumph of discouraging those of lower mental stature, and of natures lighter and grosser than your own. To the true Prophet and the true Philosopher, he himself is insignificant before the great truths he has learnt, and his personal identity willingly sinks into obscurity, so only that these truths may live.'" For a moment she ceased, and the different faces looked curiously uncomfortable and startled at so keen a vivisection of their inner natures. Mrs Ray Jefferson, however, feeling that she had been left out in the cold, and anxious for a special message to herself, broke the spell of silence. "Have you nothing to say to me, Princess?" she asked beseechingly. Then the beautiful head moved restlessly to and fro, and the face grew less placid and child-like. She began to speak, but now the words came in quick disjointed fragments. "They are standing beside you," she said. "I must go. You may come with us, but not Julian. Keep Julian away... keep Julian away--" "What does she mean?" cried Mrs Jefferson, turning pale. "And--oh gracious!" she cried to her husband, "look at Colonel Estcourt. Is he going to faint?" All eyes turned on the Colonel. He lay back on his chair white and gasping. "My God," he cried in a stifled voice. "My power is gone. I can't hold her. I can't keep her back." "She is speaking again," cried Mrs Jefferson, in low, terrified accents. "Oh, I don't half like this. I wish we had never come." Then a great awe and stillness fell upon them, and, despite their terror and their dread, every ear strained to catch the quick disjointed words that fell from those strange lips. "I am there... How still the streets are, and the snow--how fast it falls. How they crowd round the palace gate to-night. Stay the horses, Ivan, I will speak... Do not fear, my friends, your lives are safe. I promise it... What is this? My rooms? How lonely they seem to-night. `Alone?' Yes, I am always alone. No lover's step has ever echoed through this cloistered silence. Alone and sad. Ah! how I have suffered here... What do they say? It will be over soon, it will be over--soon. One more battle to win. Let me summon all my courage now. I have faced ordeals before. I have forgotten woman's fears, and laid aside woman's scruples. Am I not pure? Am I not brave? Yet why do I tremble? One weakness is still unconquered, one human love burns true and deep and steadfast in my heart. I cannot cast it out. I _will_ not; not even at your bidding; not even to make my task easier. "A step in the silence... Who dares to cross my chambers? Courage, my heart. There on the threshold stand my White Guard. Why should I fear? Courage! courage--" Like one carved in stone Julian Estcourt sat and listened. The dumb misery of a terrible expectance held every faculty in its iron grasp. Was his dread to be realised? It seemed so, for all control was gone; a higher power had seized the reins. She had escaped him, and an awful horror was upon him lest he, in his folly and shortsightedness, had assembled these people here only to be witnesses of the degradation of the peerless creature he had so worshipped and so loved. Spell-bound they sat and listened. The rose-light from the lamps falling upon their white, set faces, and the quivering tension of their silent lips. The voice of the sleeper went ruthlessly on. Scene for scene, word for word, Julian Estcourt lived over again through the wild dread and horror of his Dream. Scene for scene, word for word, those wondering startled listeners saw it reproduced, though to them it was scarce intelligible. At last, she reached the point where his endurance had snapped beneath the strain of terror, but now his every force was numbed--his will seemed paralysed. One feeble helpless effort he made to lock those lips into silence, to chain back the self-betrayal of that unconscious speech. But love had made him weak, and passion had stifled the acute, unerring faculties that once had bent her to his will. He was powerless. He could only sit there dumbly--stupidly--listening for what he felt was sure as the death stroke of the headsman to his doomed victim. Again she spoke. "The steps approach--yet what is this? _They_ are no longer on the threshold. I am alone--alone--yet what new power is mine! My brain seems to dilate! Space can scarce confine me! All fear has gone! And it is thus you would have me yield to your brutal force, your drunken, degraded senses! Back, rash intruder, touch me not if you value life!" Then, while still they gazed and listened, the beautiful figure rose slowly from its nest of snowy furs; rose and stood in its wonderful, indolent, voluptuous grace, upright before those dazed and awe-struck eyes. But a change came over the quiet beauty of the face. It seemed as if some hidden flame had sprung to life and flashed and quivered in the wide-opened eyes and convulsed features. They saw a shiver, such as shakes the sea before the blast of the coming tempest, bend and sway the perfect form... Once, twice, her lips opened, but no words came. At last she seemed to force the channels of speech, but the low sweet music of her voice was harsh and jangled with passion. "My answer? Take it, ravisher and murderer of innocence and youth! Die! in your crimes--Die!" She stretched out her arm. There came a hoarse cry, a crash, a heavy fall. Julian Estcourt lay upon the floor, white and senseless as the dead. CHAPTER FIFTEEN. EXPIATION. A severe attack of her "suppressed" enemy, and a nervous headache, the result of the shock of the previous evening, had driven Mrs Ray Jefferson to the Turkish bath as early as ten o'clock the morning after that strange exhibition of Clairvoyance. She had the rooms all to herself, and as she leant back in her comfortable chair and dabbled her pretty bare feet in warm water; she reflected in a troubled and disjointed fashion over all that had occurred since that eventful morning when the beautiful "mystery" had appeared before her standing in that curtained archway, which indeed looked a prosaic enough portal, and not by any means the sort of threshold for the development of occult science, or psychical marvels. "She's completely unsettled me," she murmured plaintively. "How I wish I had never gone to her rooms last night. And that poor Colonel Estcourt--I wonder if he'll ever recover--they say he's never moved nor spoken since they took him away last night. I wonder what she really meant, and if she did kill that man she spoke of. I don't think it's possible. I expect she only _willed_ it, and that's not murder. Ugh!" and she shuddered even in the warmth of the hot room where she had selected to go first. "If the story leaks out--though I hope to goodness it won't--how delighted that horrid Mrs Masterman will be. She never liked her. Well I'm--if that isn't the princess herself coming in! Her trance doesn't seem to have hurt her." Slowly and languidly through the open doorway, the beautiful figure swept in and up to the smaller chamber where sat the little American. As Mrs Ray Jefferson looked at her, she became conscious of some subtle intangible change that had shadowed, as it were, the marvellous beauty of her face and form. Her large deep eyes had lost their lustre, her