The Mystery of a Turkish Bath Part 7

she added, sighing pathetically as she looked at the great Worth's 'creation,'--"the vanities are very pleasant. Why should we turn anchorites?"

"There is not the slightest necessity to do that," said the princess, smiling at the unuttered thought she had read in that glance. "Far from it. The gravest duties of life are generally those that meet us in the world, and are called forth by our actions in that world. All lives are not meant to be isolated, and certainly none for the whole period of earth life. A person would have to be very sure that he was _free_ to cut himself adrift from his fellows before he would even be permitted to do it."

"Permitted!" echoed Mrs Jefferson, rather vaguely. "But by whom?"

"The teachers of occult science," answered the Princess Zairoff.

"But who are they?" exclaimed the little American.

"That I cannot tell you," she answered, gravely. "They exist, and their influence is already beginning to make itself felt. But it would be a poor triumph to unveil the highest wisdom that humanity can ever learn, in order to satisfy the idle and the curious, and the lovers of marvels.

Those who desire to learn can always do so, but nothing is forced upon you, or even obtruded. I should not have opened my lips on the subject had you not expressed a desire to hear something about it."

"I suppose," said Mrs Jefferson, eagerly, "you yourself are a believer in occultism?"

"Madame Zairoff is a great deal more than that," said Colonel Estcourt; "she is one of its most earnest students and most ardent votaries. If you knew half of her marvellous powers you would congratulate yourselves upon being permitted to receive her, unless, indeed," he added, with a questioning glance at the beautiful woman beside him, "she has a fancy to make converts."

The men became eager of entreaties to her so made, but the women held back a little.

Princess Zairoff, however, a.s.sured them she had no intention of proselytising. "It is quite true I am deeply interested in this subject," she said, "but I should be sorry to bore you all with my views, or the reasons for my holding those views. Psychic inquiry demands a great deal more than cursory study. There are many mysteries of nature that men have looked upon as enigmas, until patience and research have solved them for them. Then they marvel how they could have been blind so long! Magnetism, spiritualism, and clairvoyance have all their mystical, as well as their explicable, side. It is only because they don't readily lend themselves to the comprehension of our material nature, that we try to scoff them into the limbo of absurdity and imposture."

"Ah," said Mrs Jefferson. "Talking of clairvoyance, _that_ I do believe in. I knew a coloured woman in America--the way that woman would tell you things--it was enough to make your flesh creep! She'd just go quietly off to sleep, and you might ask her anything you liked, and she'd tell you; and it was all as true as possible."

The princess met Julian Estcourt's eyes, and smiled strangely. Mrs Jefferson caught the glance.

"Perhaps," she said, "you're a clairvoyant?"

"I used to be," she said, gravely. "Perhaps my faculties have grown blunted, for want of use. They are far from being as keen as they were in India. However," and she smiled at the circle of faces, "I wonder if any of you would believe me if I told you what you were talking about at dinner time. First of all, you must remember, your conversation could not have been betrayed to me by my friend, as he was not there, and that my rooms are on the opposite wing to the dining saloon. Well, you discussed different phases of spiritualism. This lady," she indicated Mrs Masterman, "gave her experiences of imposture; you," looking at Mrs Jefferson, "combated those experiences by your own, and this gentleman."--she smiled at the cynical individual, who was hovering on the outskirts of the circle--"silenced you all by reducing your theories to strong commonsense facts. Shall I quote his own words? After the rate people have been running after spiritual phenomena, they are absolutely refres.h.i.+ng. He said that it was an intensely humiliating idea to find oneself at the beck and call of any other human being when you imagined you had done with this life."

"Good gracious!" almost screamed Mrs Jefferson, "but how on earth did you hear all this? It's positively alarming."

"Well," said the princess, still smiling at the pale and conscience-stricken faces, "you see I have a--faculty shall I call it?-- that enables me to hear and see anything I am curious about, or interested in. I don't believe I could even explain how I do it; but it seems easy and natural enough to myself. I only paid you a brief visit to-night, more that I might have a little bit of proof to give you, that the powers I spoke of do exist, and are capable of being trained to almost any extent, if the motives for developing them are good. Have I convinced you?"

She rose as she spoke, and stood facing them in her beautiful indolent grace. She was garbed in some white soft stuff, which floated round her like a cloud, the wide hanging sleeves were lined with faint sh.e.l.l-like pink, and fell away from her bare lovely arms to the hem of her floating draperies. She looked like some G.o.ddess of mythology, rather than a living woman, and as Julian Estcourt gazed at her he felt a sudden thrill of awe.

Could that more than mortal beauty ever really be his--his in the common prose of possession that can never be disa.s.sociated with marriage--the prose that is to the delicate subtle beauty of love, what the rough touch is to the wings of the b.u.t.terfly, the bloom of the grape?

For a moment the thought seemed like sacrilege. He could have fallen at her feet in a sudden adoration of the divine beauty and purity of embodied womanhood. "If ever she has lived before," he said in his heart, "it must have been as a vestal virgin, or a martyred saint.

Where in the world is such another woman?"

The voice of the cynical philosopher broke on his ear and disturbed his thoughts. "Madame, it is my humble opinion that you could convince us of anything you desired. Happy are those who have so charming a disciple to expound their doctrines, happier still the fortunate few to whom those doctrines are to be expounded by lips so lovely and a heart so wise."

Ere the circle had quite recovered from its astonishment at hearing a speech so flattering uttered by their surly Diogenes, they had parted to make way for the beautiful stranger, and the last gleam of her snowy robes had floated through the doorway, as a cloud melts into the darkness of descending night.

There was a sort of long-drawn breath, a feeling as of long tension suddenly set free, a turning as if by one accord to one another. Then-- well, then all the tongues leaped into action, and for the remainder of that evening, like Thackeray's folk "At the Springs," they talked, and they talked, _and they talked_.

CHAPTER TEN.

PREMONITION.

When the Princess Zairoff was in the privacy of her own boudoir, she turned to Colonel Estcourt in a sudden appeal:

"Why did you make me go, Julian?" she said. "I knew I should only shock them. I can't ever put up with that languid ignorant curiosity."

"I think it will do them good to be shocked," he said, with a smile.

"Give them something to think of beside their ailments. And I had a special reason," he went on with a deeper note of tenderness in his voice--"I do not wish you to shut yourself away as you have been doing.

You will grow morbid and dissatisfied with life. I want you to take a healthy interest in it once again."

She had thrown herself on a low cus.h.i.+oned lounge before the bright wood fire. He took a chair beside her. She seemed to lapse into profound thought, and he watched her beautiful grave face with adoring eyes.

"I wish," she said suddenly, "one could live a free, simple, uncriticised life. Do you remember the old days among the wild hills?

The cool grey dawns... the sharp sweet air... the long gallops over the rough roads by the rice fields... the strange temples... the songs of the snake-charmers? Ah, we were happy then, Julian, happier than we ever realised."

"May we not be still happier?" he said earnestly. "Life has a graver and a wider meaning, it is true, but that should only give us a deeper power of appreciation."

A strange smile touched her lips; a smile of mystery, and of dreamy, unfathomable regret.

"We shall never be happier," she said, "than we were then. I have always felt that... yes, I know what you would ask. Did I love you then? Yes, Julian, with all my heart and soul... and yet--and yet--I could have been nothing more to you than a sister, a friend. There was a purpose in my marriage."

She ceased speaking. For a moment her eyes closed, her head sank back wearily on the soft cus.h.i.+ons.

Presently she opened them, and met his anxious gaze. "No, I did not faint," she said. "But, why I know not, that sense of blankness and dizziness always comes over me when I speak on that subject. There is something I wish, yet dread, to remember--but, just as I am on the point of grasping it, there is a blank."

"Do not speak of that time," he said pa.s.sionately. "I hate to think you were the wife of that man--it was sacrilege... you--my pure-souled G.o.ddess."

"He was a bad man," she said. "But, up to a certain point, I could always escape and defy him. He was a coward at heart, and he was afraid of me."

Then suddenly she stretched out her arm and touched his shoulder with a timid, caressing movement. "You need not be jealous of those years, my beloved," she said softly. "No man would, who knew them and valued them for what they were to me."

He sank on his knees, and folded his arms about her. "Ah, queen of mine," he said, "it is only natural that I should be jealous of the lightest touch, or look, or word, that were once another's privilege.

Therein lies the only sting in my happiness--"

"Does not that prove it is of earth--earthly?" she said, as her deep mournful eyes looked back to his own. "I believe, Julian, it would be better, even now, if we were to part. I have always that dread upon my soul, that I am destined to bring you suffering--misfortune--"

"Bring me what you will," he interrupted pa.s.sionately, "but do not speak of parting! Rather suffering and trial at your hands, oh, my life's love, than the greatest peace and prosperity from any other woman's!"

"I wish you loved me less," she said sadly. "But I am not forbidden to accept your love now; only, I have warned you, do not forget. And now--" she added suddenly: "Put me to sleep... it is so long, so long, since I have known real rest, such as you used to give me."

He rose slowly and stood beside her, as she nestled back amidst her cus.h.i.+ons. A strange calm and chill seemed to fold him in its peace, and the throbbing fires of pain and longing died slowly out of vein and pulse. He laid one hand gently on the beautiful white brow; his eyes met hers, and the glance seemed like a command. The lids drooped, the long, soft lashes fell like a fringe on the delicate, flushed cheek.

One long, sobbing breath left her lips; then a beautiful serenity and calm seemed to enfold her. Like a statue, she lay there, motionless, stirless; lifeless, one would have thought, save for the faint regular breath that stole forth from the parted lips.

Julian Estcourt stood for a moment in perfect silence by her side. Then he moved away, and, drawing aside the _portieres_ which separated the boudoir from the adjoining room, he called softly to her maid.

"Felicie," he said, "your mistress will sleep for two hours; see that she is not disturbed."

Once out in the cool night-air, Julian Estcourt gave the rein to thought and memory. The march of events had been rapid. It seemed difficult to realise that he really stood in the light of an accepted lover to the woman who, but the previous day, he deemed at the other end of the world... difficult to realise that she loved him--and had loved him through all the blank, desolate years of absence and suffering they had both endured.