There was a murmur, vague, spontaneous, or doubtful, according to the amount of comprehension excited by the question.
"It is a pity," resumed the Princess, "that it is not more generally understood. What is the difficulty? I learnt it in my childhood just as your English children learn their catechism. You have taken up the doctrine of Evolution very strongly, but Karma is its very leading law, so to speak. Man is perpetually working out and developing afresh the energies, aspirations, and character with which his spirit was originally endowed. He becomes, as it were, the product of the better part of himself, that struggles to the surface again and again during periods of incarceration in the flesh."
"Then you would convey that we all live over and over again?"
"Most certainly. It is the only rational way to account for the injustice, the sorrows, and the miseries of earth. It gives long opportunities for the modification of character; it acts as retribution to the evil and the vicious and the selfish; it gives a far deeper sense of responsibility than the shallow acceptance of mere creeds, because a man's good or evil deeds become a series of actions with inevitable consequences. If you teach him that he can throw off the results of a bad life, and of all it has entailed upon his fellow man, by a brief spell of penitence, or a blind, irrational faith in the sacrifice of a Being he has neglected and ignored during the greater part of that life, you really are only pandering to the selfish and cowardly side of his nature."
A little shudder ran through the group at these bold words. Mrs Ray Jefferson lifted her head and cast glances of triumph about, as one who should say, "I told you she would shock you all!"
There was scarcely a man or woman there who did not attend church on Sundays, and who had not managed to make a comfortable compact between the tenets of religion and the demands of social and worldly pleasures. Not one who, if taken to task on the momentous subject of a spiritual future, could have given any rational explanation of why he or she held certain vague ideas on the subject of salvation, or put off the deeper consideration of the subject to some indefinite period when they would have had their fill of vanities, and lost either the means or the desire to pursue them.
And yet there was a subtle _frou-frou_ of rustling skirts as the women drew slightly away, and a decided appearance of discomfort on the faces of the men, to whom an unpleasant truth was suddenly and sharply conveyed, and who found themselves strangely powerless to combat, or argue out its real meaning.
CHAPTER NINE.
DISCUSSION.
Colonel Estcourt came to the rescue.
"No doubt," he said, "the subject and this view of the subject seems a little strange to our friends here. We must remember they have not been accustomed to hear it freely discussed, as we have."
"It _is_ strange," said Mrs Jefferson, rallying her energies, "but we should not shirk its consideration for that reason. I quite agree with Madame Zairoff that people don't think half seriously enough of their real natures, the mysterious inner _something_ which we all feel we possess, but whose voice we stifle in the din of the world. And yet," 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, assured 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 refreshing. 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 shell-like pink, and fell away from her bare lovely arms to the hem of her floating draperies. She looked like some goddess 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 disassociated with marriage--the prose that is to the delicate subtle beauty of love, what the rough touch is to the wings of the butterfly, 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?"