The Mystery of a Turkish Bath Part 2

"Well, I'm blessed with a pretty fair capacity for enjoying all that comes in my way," said the little American, frankly. "I like studying human nature, even though I'm not clever enough to describe it. It's like the critics, you know, who find it so powerful easy to cut up a book, yet couldn't write one themselves to save their lives. Phew-ew!

how hot it is here! How do you contrive to look so cool?"

"I can stand a great deal of heat," answered the other, tranquilly. "I have Eastern blood in my veins, on my mother's side. Is that the hottest room?" she added, nodding in the direction of the third doorway.

"Yes. I suppose you won't go there? I never dare put my nose inside.

It's enough to scorch the skin off you."

"I don't suppose it can be hotter than the rooms in the East," answered the stranger, as she rose and moved towards it. She stood for a moment looking in, then turned back and smiled at her late companion. "Oh, I can bear it," she said, and disappeared from sight.

The little American pouted and looked disturbed. "What a shame! I had ever so many more things to ask her," she said, "and to think, after all, I don't know her name, or even to what country she belongs, and I did so want the whole story pat for the _table d'hote_ dinner to-night... Ready to be shampooed?--oh, yes, Morrison; I'm just about 'done through;' I'm glad you can take me first."

She rose abruptly and followed the attendant past the flushed and perspiring groups who were still comparing notes as to different ailments and degrees of moisture, occasionally holding out their arms for mutual inspection.

"I wonder," she said to herself, "how that one woman manages to look so different. Why, we get uglier and uglier, and she only more and more beautiful. Perhaps she's a Rosicrucian!"

CHAPTER THREE.

THE COOLING ROOM.

A long room, down the centre of which ran a row of couches; on either side were the dressing-rooms, curtained off from the main apartment by curtains of dark Oriental blue, bordered with dull red. In the large bay window stood the dressing-tables and mirrors.

Mrs Ray Jefferson had it all to herself, as, wrapped in an enormous sheet of Turkish towelling, she emerged from the processes of shampooing and douche. She laid herself down on one of the couches, and the attendant, Morrison, threw another Turkish wrap over her, and left her to the enjoyment of the coffee she had ordered, and which was placed on one of the numerous small tables scattered about.

According to all rules of the baths, she should have rested calmly and patiently on that couch, until such time as she was cool enough to don her ordinary attire, but the little American, was of a restless and impatient disposition, and of all things hated to be inactive.

The attendant had scarcely left the room before she raised herself to a sitting position, and took a survey of her appearance in one of the mirrors. It did not appear to be very satisfactory. She turned abruptly away and reached some magazines from an adjoining table. Armed with these she once more sought her couch, and after tossing two or three contemptuously aside, she at last seemed to find one periodical that interested her. She grew so absorbed in its contents, that she scarcely heard the entrance of the beautiful woman who had so interested her, and who now took the next couch to her own, and lay down in an att.i.tude of indolent grace that was quite in keeping with her appearance.

"You seem interested," she remarked, as she glanced at the absorbed face of her neighbour.

Mrs Jefferson looked up sharply. "Well," she said, turning the magazine round to read its t.i.tle. "This is about the queerest story I ever read. I wish people wouldn't write improbabilities that no one can swallow."

"The question is rather what is an improbability?" answered her companion. "It is only a matter of the capacity of the age to receive what is new. A few years ago electricity was improbable, yet look at the telegraph and the telephone. Still further back, who would have believed that railways would exist above ground and under ground, and mock at the difficulties of rivers and mountains? What have you discovered strange enough to be called 'improbable'?"

"Oh! it's a story of a man who gets out of his own body and does all sorts of queer things, and then goes back to it again, just when he pleases. Finally, he falls in love with a woman as queer as himself, and finding he has a rival, he just gets rid of him by force of will-power. However, the day they are to be married, the woman is found dead in her bed. It appears that she also could get out of her body when she felt inclined, but she did it once too often, and couldn't get back in time, so they buried her, at least they buried one of her bodies; as far as I can make out she had _two_."

"And you think that improbable?" questioned the stranger calmly.

Her beautiful deep eyes were looking straight into the flushed excited face beside her. Mrs Ray Jefferson met their gaze, and was conscious of an odd little unaccountable thrill.

"Certainly I do," she said. "Who could believe that anyone can jump in or out of their skin just as the fancy takes them?"

The stranger's beautiful lips grew scornful. "Oh!" she said, "if you like to put the subject in that light, it may well look ridiculous and impossible. Ignorance is always more or less arrogant. It is man's habit to fancy that all creation was made for him. There are few things of which he is so utterly ignorant, and of which he thinks so little, as that mystery of _himself_ incarnated in the temporary prison-house of flesh and blood. Did he once realise what he might be--did he ever raise his eyes from the glow-worm light of earth to the stupendous glories of the sun of wisdom, he would know better than to cavil at what you call 'improbable.' For in nature all things are possible, but man has neither time nor patience to trace out their mysteries, or seek in their development the key to those mysteries."

"Gracious sakes," muttered Mrs Jefferson to herself in alarm. "I'm sure she's a Rosicrucian or something of that sort. It's interesting, but uncanny. I'm quite out of my depth. I don't know what she means.

Do you really mean to say," she added aloud, "that this story might be true; that you have two bodies and can slip from one to the other?"

A dark frown crept over the beautiful face. "You talk as foolishly as a child," she said with contempt. "You know nothing of the subject you are discussing, therefore anything I might say would sound incomprehensible. The grossness of the flesh stifles and kills the subtle workings of the spirit. To you life is only a pleasure ground, and the more your own personal satisfaction is obtainable, the more you cling to its spurious enjoyments. If you once cut yourself adrift from such follies, your eyes would be opened, your senses quickened, and you would recognise possibilities and marvels that now are no more to you than sunlight to the blind worm that burrows in the ground." She stretched out her hand and took the book from the pa.s.sive hand of her astounded companion, and glanced rapidly over its pages.

"'Light in Darkness.' Ah, truly it is needed," she said, her eyes kindling, her face glowing, until her beauty seemed more than mortal.

"But we shall never reach it till we learn to master the senses, to cut the chains of worldly prejudice and conventionalism. They are bold teachers, these," and she tossed the magazine back to the still silent critic of its contents. "You would do well," she said, "to make yourself acquainted with some of these subjects. I think you would find them more interesting than ball-rooms and Paris toilettes."

Mrs Jefferson recovered her tongue at that slight to her beloved vanities.

"Tastes differ," she said coolly. "I'm very well content with the world as it is and with myself as I am. I don't believe any good ever comes of prying into subjects we're not intended to know anything about."

"I might ask you," said the stranger, with visible contempt, "how you are so surely convinced of what we are intended to know, and what not?

There is no hard and fast rule laid down for us that I am aware of."

"Oh!" stammered Mrs Jefferson, with some confusion, "I'm sure the Bible says that somewhere. 'Thus far shalt thou go and no further,' you know.

It is arrogant to attempt to penetrate the mysteries of the other world. When we go there we shall know them soon enough."

"How glibly you nineteenth-century Christians talk of the 'other world,'" cried the beautiful woman, with contempt. She tossed back the weight of her rich hair and sat up, looking like an inspired prophetess.

"Yet you acknowledge you know nothing of it. Your priests cannot explain it, so they take refuge in the plea that inquiry is presumptuous. Science cannot explain it. Reason falters at the threshold before the stumbling-block of its long-cherished ignorance whose only legacy has been Fear. And it is all because you live in falsehood--because you are false to your _inner_ life, and think only of the outer; because you are all in chains of superst.i.tion--of worldly bondage, of family prejudices, and, above all, of self-delusion."

"Have you come to preach to us, then?" asked the little American superciliously. "There is little use in decrying a private or national disease unless you are provided with a remedy."

"If an angel from Heaven came down to preach you would not believe!"

said the stranger, growing suddenly calm as she sank back on her pillow.

"No, I have no mission. I am only one who has looked out on life and learnt its bitter truths, and seen its vanity and folly repeated, with scarce a variation, in countless human lives."

"Well," said the American, "the fact of that repet.i.tion seems rather as if it were a law of human lives, don't it? We find ourselves in this world, and we must do as others do, and live as others live. Of course, I've read of people giving up all sorts of pleasures and comforts in this life for sake of another, but to me it seems only a mild form of madness. For instance, there's this new sect that's sprung up, who are going to revolutionise all creation--well, I've read heaps of their books, I've spoken even to some of their members, but I confess Theosophy seems as much of a jumble as any other creed. Look at their priests, their _yogis_, and _chelas_, and such-like humbugs! They say their Buddha is as divine as our Christ. Maybe he is--to them! But what strikes me is the absurdity of trying to get into another life while one has to live this. Fasting and sitting under a tree, and starving out all fleshly desires and impulses until the human body, instead of being handsome and muscular as Nature intended it to be, becomes a withered skeleton, subsisting on a few beans and a cup of water. Why, anybody could see visions and dream dreams, that lived a life like that even for a year! But I want to know what's the good of it? I suppose if we get out of our natural life before our time, our place can't be ready for us in our next Karma, or whatever they call it.

So we would martyrise ourselves to no purpose. These sort of people seem to me to be trying to steal a march over others, wanting to get a stage further on the road before the natural term of earth-life is over.

A nice world this would be if we were all at that game."

"You have certainly read to some purpose," said the stranger ironically.

"It is interesting to hear the deepest philosophy that has ever occupied the human mind summed up and dismissed as ridiculous. Let me, however, first point out a few mistakes in your judgment of this new 'sect' as you call it. In the first place it is not a sect in the common acceptation of the word, but rather a universal philosophy embracing all creeds, ranks, and denominations of men. It lays not the slightest stress on any of its followers martyrising their bodies as you so glibly describe. You might just as well say that the Christian religion is only carried out by monks and nuns, because certain enthusiasts prefer to cut themselves adrift from the vanities of life.

In all ages and in all religions there have been such enthusiasts. Even the prophets in your own Bible were men of this description, living in caves, subsisting only on the fruits and seeds of the earth, and giving themselves up to visions and dreams. What else have your canonised Saints done? Yet they are worshipped by a vast community of _apparently_ sensible beings, as holy. It only shows that there are certain minds capable of penetrating the uselessness of a purely worldly existence, and finding it too hard to live a double life, that is to say, spiritual and material (a life only possible to the modern clergy), they seek refuge in seclusion and leave that outer life to those whom it satisfies and suits. As to the selfishness of such isolation, that is a matter no alien mind can quite determine, for the greatest Example of the religious life was strangely indifferent to human ties, nor ever displayed the weakness of human affection for earthly relatives, thus seeming to show that it is no sin to sacrifice earthly ties for a higher and holier existence. The disciples of the great Brotherhood are voluntary enthusiasts, free from the claims of human relationship, and offering themselves simply _as_ disciples. They wrong no one by their choice. As for your last remark about endeavouring to steal a march on our fellow-men by seeking a higher place in the next state of existence, before we have done with this, I can only ask you to study something of the laws and doctrines of theosophical philosophy before deciding such an event is possible."

"Do you know much about them?" asked Mrs Jefferson curiously.

"I know that they teach man the truest sense of his own responsibility.

They prove to him an inexorable law by which he may lift himself from the level of the brute to the majesty of the G.o.d he now blindly worships."

"But so does Christianity," exclaimed Mrs Jefferson astounded.

For the first time the stranger laughed.

"And is not true Christianity the highest and purest philosophy?" she said. "Only it is preached--not practised. Can you tell me that a single Christian land in this nineteenth century era is one whit purer or better in its spiritual or moral character than was Jerusalem a thousand years ago? Does it influence commerce, trade, governments, laws--even civilisation? If it did, not one rule or law that binds the rotten fabric of civilised life together would stand for a single moment. Why? Because no one would lie; no one would cheat; no one would murder, either wholesale because of country prejudices, or retail because of private animosities. Everyone would be honest, charitable, merciful, and unselfish. You cling to a Faith that is almost barren of good works. You propagate it among ignorant savages whom you first rob of their lands, and then convert with guns and brandy bottles. How much of the reception of Christianity is due to the _latter_ I will leave to the revelations of the first honest missionary whose report is not indebted to his income from the Society, a prospective pension, and his own personal weakness for the laudation of his fellow men. Show me a human being who can be honest to a conviction in the face of scorn and mockery, who never sought his _own_ interest in the profession he embraced, but only the good of others for whom that profession was ostensibly established; who would speak truth in the Courts of Law, the House of Legislature, and the _salons_ of Society; who would write--not for empty praise but from conviction--and follow art simply and purely to enn.o.ble the mind, not pander to the l.u.s.t of the eye and the greed of gold. Show me such men and such a nation, and I will acknowledge _there_ Christianity has found its seat and fulfilled the purpose of its founder!"

"Oh," said the American, shrugging her shoulders with contempt, "of course, you are talking arrant nonsense! The thing's impossible. The world can't be turned into a monastery, and as long as people live they will always be overreaching each other, and deceiving each other. It's not possible to be perfectly honest, or perfectly truthful."

"Then," said the stranger quietly, as she sank back on her cushions, "do not blame even the poor _Yogi_ under his tree if he has turned away sick and disgusted with the shams and vileness, and hypocrisies and evil, of the so-called civilised world. Remember that the country that holds him and thousands as foolish and superst.i.tious, is the country that your boasted, civilisation has wrested from his race, and that _your_ example as a Christian nation is ever before his eyes. Let his conduct determine it's influence!"

"Well," said Mrs Jefferson, "talk of sermons in stones! Here's one in baths! I should like to know who you are. Seems to me you know everything, and have read everything, and seen most everything on the face of the earth. So few women begin to think of anything serious till they've forgotten their looks, that you must excuse my calling you an anomaly. Now do tell me you'll change your mind and join us to-night in the drawing-room. It's quite as selfish as _Yogaism_ to keep talents like yours in the background."