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?"
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_.