Wild Talent (12 page)

Alexandra

CHAPTER TWENTY

Twelfth Night, 1889

T
he holly wreath has been taken down from the door; the Christmas cards tied up in ribbon and tucked away in drawers. At home in the Borders, in the long dark days that lie ahead, I would have much to occupy my time: grain sacks to mend, dung to spread on the cold fields, straw to bunch up to make shelters for the lambing. Here, though the Countess finds small tasks for me, I have too much leisure for thinking of the past, and dwelling on the uncertainties that lie ahead.

The year has not begun well for Madame Blavatsky. The Theosophists are in a state of disarray, with HPB in London, and Colonel Olcott in America, battling each other for control. HPB has expelled from the Society both the president of the Blavatsky Lodge and one of the lady members, Miss Mabel Collins, on the grounds that they were flirting For good measure, she has expelled an American lady for gossiping about it. Now Miss Collins is suing HPB for libel. HPB seems to quite enjoy banishing people —M r. Willie Yeats says she is like a cat let loose in a cage of canaries.

All the same, her health is continuing to fail. She works as hard as ever, sitting at a little table in her study, scribbling occult symbols in chalk on the green baize cover; but she tells us she feels like a poor sick donkey dragging a cart of rocks uphill. “Not only am I betrayed by this rotten, worn-out body,” she announced the other morning, “but by the cruel slander of my friends.”

Much as
The Secret Doctrine
has been praised in Theosophist circles, the critics have not been kind. The Keightleys, who have been keeping watch for reviews, are becoming quite discouraged.
The New York Times
has called the book unreadable and incomprehensible, and
Scienc
e magazine has called it a great contribution to comic literature. Distinguished orientalists have attacked her scholarship, and the editor of the
Religio-Philosophical
Review
, from whom HPB expected better, talks about her “extravagant absurdities”.

Worse yet, it seems that the Himalayan masters have abandoned her. The tinkling of astral bells, and the rapping on tables that she calls the psychic telegraph, have fallen silent. Lamp flames no longer flare up of their own accord after they have been put out. A wind cold as a gust from the Himalayan peaks no longer blows through HPB's overheated rooms, nor does the inexplicable odour of incense. The broken cuckoo clock in her study no longer greets visitors with peculiar sighs and groans, and no written messages from the Mahatma appear on her cluttered desk.

“The Masters are angry with me,” HPB tells us sadly. “I must have made some error that offended them.”

Our most frequent visitor is Dr. Mennell, looking sombre as he increases her strychnia prescriptions.

And now, at this worst possible time, Dr. Oliver Lodge is coming to Lansdowne Road to investigate HPB's ability to perform miracles. Dr. Lodge, who like Tom is a member of the Psychical Research Society, is interested in all manner of psychic occurrences. He is also a distinguished physicist, an expert in the study of electrical currents. It is a pity he did not choose to visit when Madame Blavatsky was in better health, for a good report could do much to restore her reputation. What a rebuke to her enemies, if a respected Doctor of Science can be persuaded of her powers! But suppose he, like so many others, decides that she is a fraud?

Countess Constance seems more than usually tired and distracted. “We must do whatever we can to help our dear Madame Helena through this trying time,” she told me with an anxious smile; and I understood well enough her unspoken message.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

February 14

T
hough I know that Mr. Grenville Smith — (no,) Tom — is once again busy with his work at the university, still I have found myself listening for the doorknocker every weekend on the chance that he might have returned to London. I even thought of finding some pretext to visit the bookshop on Oxford Street, in the faint and foolish hope of finding him there.

Now, in this dreariest part of midwinter, with a sickroom atmosphere descended upon the house and little work to do, I have found my spirits very low. But then today a note was hand-delivered to our door.

My dear Miss Jean Guthrie, you have languished far too long in Madame Blavatsky's haunted drawing-room. I fear I may discover you all wan and pale and listless as a Gothic heroine. Be that as it may, I am in London till Sunday evening, and planning a visit to the Zoological Gardens. I would be most pleased to have your company. May I call round to fetch you, Sunday at ten?

Tom

How quickly a few words can lift one from the depths of melancholy to the heights of joy!

February 17

Tom came this morning by cab to fetch me, and we set out through streets that as usual were muffled in fog. Then, as we came to Regent Park and the entrance to the Zoological Gardens, a pale winter sun broke through, and the shapes of trees and buildings gradually revealed themselves. “A fine morning after all,” said Tom, as he signed the members' book at the gate. “What splendid luck!”

And so with the day before us, we strolled along the Broad Walk, stopping first to admire the lions. On Sundays the gardens are only open to members of the Zoological Society, and so, said Tom, there was not the usual throng of spectators crowding around the lion house, jostling for a better view. After that came the sea lions' pond, and then the conservatory where the monkeys live. Tom told me all the names of the various sorts of monkeys, and the countries from which they came. As I watched them at their lively play, like so many naughty children, I could see why Professor Darwin says they are the ancestors of us all.

(That seems more likely than HPB's idea that we are evolved from super-beings who once inhabited the lost continents of Lemuria and Atlantis.)

Then we went through a tunnel into another part of the Gardens, to see the elephants and rhinoceroses, the hippopotami and giraffes. Exciting though it was, to observe them close at hand, it made me sad to think how these great beasts, who once had roamed the wide plains of Africa, must be confined in a London park. When I said this to Tom, he nodded, and I guessed that he felt much the same.

“If all goes well,” he told me, “I hope soon enough to observe them in their natural surroundings.”

“In Africa?”

“Indeed, in Africa, and what an adventure that will be! But you, Jeannie, have you thought that one day you would like to travel?”

No one else, not even the much-travelled HPB, had ever asked me such a question. But Tom seemed to be inquiring out of genuine interest. My first instinct was to say, “I've found my way from Scotland to London, and that was quite adventure enough!” But then I remembered my pleasure and excitement when I first discovered the travel journals in my father's library. What romantic visions were conjured up, as I read of Arabia Felix, and the Mountains of the Moon, and Petra, the Rose-Red City half as old as time. That was when I was very young, not yet suspecting what the future held, so that all things seemed possible. “Sometimes,” I told Tom. “But only in daydreams. I can't imagine such a thing could ever come about.”

“One never knows for certain what may lie ahead.” Tom offered me his arm as we went down some steps, and I had the foolish thought — quickly put out of mind — that to passers by we might seem like a courting couple. Tom said, “If your mind is made up, if you want something badly enough . . . I was meant to go into the army, or the clergy, or heaven help me, law. And instead I chose zoology.” He added, with a grin, “My father was not well pleased.”

I had once imagined all scholars to be pale and thin and stooped from biding too much indoors. But Tom is not yet a professor, and he seems more at home in the woods and fields where his research takes him, than in a stuffy lecture hall. And when I stole a sidelong glance and saw the sun glinting all gold in his yellow hair, though I tried hard to think about the birds and beasts in their cages, it was lines from the Song of Solomon that rose to mind. They were words I had loved when I was but a young lass still at home, and full of dreams.
His mouth is most sweet; yea,
he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my
friend, O daughters of Jerusalem
.

And if that makes me shameless, well, we cannot help our private thoughts.

Presently, when Tom looked at his pocket watch, we saw that it was well past luncheon, and so we decided instead on an early tea in the refreshment room.

“What a pleasant day this had been,” I said, when we had settled ourselves at a table and given our order. “It was most kind of you to invite me.”

“The pleasure is all mine. And I felt it my duty to rescue a fair maiden from the dragon's lair.”

I laughed. “Madame Blavatsky is not really a dragon,” I said, “though at first I thought her so. She has been kind enough to me in her own way. Truth to tell, she is just a very sick old woman. And who would not be bad-tempered, plagued by ill health, and exhausted by overwork?”

“And tormented by her critics. It cannot be pleasant to be called a fraud, a forger and an imposter.”

“But the members of your Psychical Research Society — do they agree she is a fraud?”

“She may well be. Certainly Richard Hodgson was convinced of it. All these miracles she performs — the astral bells, the letters appearing out of nowhere, the magically vanishing and re-appearing objects — all those can be managed by secret compartments, by clever accomplices, by simple sleight of hand.”

“And yet . . . ”

He set down his teacup, waiting for me to continue. But what was it that I wished to say? That when you lived day in and day out at Lansdowne Road, you saw and heard things that could not easily be explained? Or that I had discovered powers in myself as inexplicable as any of HPB's?

I found I could not finish the thought. I asked, instead, “And you, Tom? What do you believe?”

He was silent for a moment, as though considering his reply. Then he said, “A scientist is meant to keep an open mind. There is so much in this world that we have yet to discover. I would like very much to believe that Madame Blavatsky's talents are real. I understand that Dr. Lodge is planning to do his own investigation. If he is convinced of her authenticity, think what possibilities, what new areas of research that would open up! But if indeed she is a fraud, then she is no better than any of the so-called psychics and mediums who have set up shop all over London to delude the innocent, by taking advantage of their naiveté and their grief. And those I consider ordinary criminals, who deserve to answer before a magistrate for their misdeeds.”

At those words my mouth went suddenly dry, so that I could scarcely swallow my mouthful of watercress sandwich. I am not a fraud —I know I am not — but nonetheless if I have murdered George then in the eyes of all the world I am a criminal. How terrible, in the midst of such happiness, to be reminded that one day I may have to answer for my crime. These past weeks, with some time to reflect, I have told myself that perhaps George was not dead after all, but only injured, and it was my guilt that made me see his vengeful ghost in the medium's parlour. But, nonetheless, his wound was real enough —I saw the blood and heard his shouts of pain, — so I am still a criminal, though perhaps I might not hang.

Tom is kind and sweet-natured, and does not seem to mind a jot that I am not a beauty, and unfashionably dressed, and humbly born. But he would mind a great deal if he knew that the girl who sat before him eating scones and drinking China tea was an ordinary criminal, who one day must answer for her misdeeds.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

A
lexandra writes at length from 30 boulevard Saint-Michel:

“As you will have surmised from my last letter, life with the Paris Theosophists leaves much to be desired. I have already described their awful food (fortunately there is a cheap restaurant just down the street) and their scholarship is little better. They pretend to read the
Bhagavad-Gita
by comparing the Sanskrit word for word with a French translation, with no regard for grammar. And then they sit around for hours on hard chairs, meditating — until (so I'm told) their spirits leave their bodies and rise towards higher planes of existence. When my landlord M. Jourdan claps his hands and says ‘
Rentrez',
the disembodied spirits must return to their fleshly envelopes, which by now I think are getting very stiff and cold. One can only hope that all the spirits find their way back to their proper owners!”

Apparently the Theosophists of Paris believe themselves descended from ancestral beings who once inhabited the moon. “As you can imagine, it is hard not to laugh,” writes Alexandra, “but they are very serious in their beliefs and I must try not to give offense.”

I suspect that the Bohemian life is losing its charm for Alexandra. She adds that the Theosophists like to set out at midnight and wander through the streets of Paris until three or four in the morning. Then, “sustained by many cups of
café noir,
they talk until dawn.” Alexandra is studying Sanskrit at the Collège de France with a Tibetan scholar, Professor Foucaux ( though I expect all those sleepless nights are making it difficult for her to concentrate). Listening to him, she says, she has become more than ever determined to visit the Forbidden Kingdom. “So few Europeans have ever travelled there, not even the Professor himself.” (Madame Blavatsky's Himalayan travels, we are both convinced, are a figment of her imagination!)