Wild Talent (7 page)

“Perhaps we should sing,” one of the old ladies in black suggested. “Oh yes, ‘The Power of Love Enchanting',” said her friend. She led off, and everyone joined in.

“Now we are to clasp hands . . . ” said the second old lady — the other chiming in “ . . . and we should remove our gloves.” Again we obliged.

For a while there was silence. I sat between Alexandra and one of the fashionable ladies, grasping their warm, sticky hands in mine.

Then, in that dim, uncertain light, we saw the tambourine rise of its own accord from where it rested on the chest of drawers, and float gently ceilingward as though wafted on a draught of air. At the same time the accordion gave forth a few desultory chords. From behind the curtain — and presumably from within the cabinet where Mrs. Brown sat entranced — there came a low, hoarse groan, and a kind of gurgle. Then unexpectedly a male voice said, “My dear, are you there?”

At once the first old lady replied, “My dear William, indeed I am here. Where are you? Are you speaking from the Other Side?”

“I am,” said the voice. “And I have come to say that you need have no concerns about me, for this is a very pleasant place, and I am most happily situated.”

At which news the old lady gave a cry of pure joy. And I thought to myself,
Well, that is easily enough done, Mrs.

Brown need only be clever enough to disguise her voice,
and she could be anyone's dead relative.

But then there came instead the sweet, piping voice of a young child, asking “Is my mother there?” The sad-faced young woman gave a gasping cry and half-rose from her chair. “My baby, my baby!” she called out. But one of the elderly ladies put her hand on the mother's shoulder to restrain her, saying, quite sharply, “You must never enter the cabinet while the medium is in trance. To do so, could kill her.” She added, more kindly, “You must not be distressed, my dear. Your child is happy and content in the spirit world.”

But the poor young woman, still grasping the hands of her neighbours, strained forward across the table as though desperate to reach her dead child. And I thought, if this was deception, as surely it must be, it was a cruel trick indeed to play upon that anguished mother.

Then the curtain stirred as though a gust of air had caught it, and the candles flickered out. Hand in hand we all sat damply waiting. And then in that stifling dark there appeared an apparition, human in form, but with only the vaguest suggestion of a face, and bathed in a shimmering, otherworldly light. From head to foot it glowed like quicksilver, marshfire, ghostlight. Frail luminous threads trailed behind it; and all down one side, from shoulder to waist, was a vivid crimson slash.

The apparition spoke in a hollow, sepulchral voice — the voice, one imagined, of a soul that that was lost in the black void beyond the grave. “I have been most grievously wounded,” it declared, and there was a world of sorrow and recrimination in those words. “In the bloom of my youth I was cut down, and died of my wound, and now my spirit knows no ease.”

“My word,” said Mr. Barker, “that's rather effective. I wonder how she does it?”

“There must be a secret compartment,” whispered Mr. Grenville-Smith. One of the ladies of fashion gave him a stern look, and shushed him with a finger to her lips.

Then the military gentleman spoke. “Spirit, tell us your name.”

“I have no name. I am a nameless spirit wandering in the void.”

“An initial, then,” the military gentleman persisted, as cheerfully as if this were a game of charades.

Once again that desolate, disembodied voice: “The letter is G.”

Suddenly I could not breathe. My heart thudded against my ribs. A wave of nausea rose into my throat, and I felt darkness sweeping over me. I sensed that heavy oak table rocking on its legs like the flimsiest of washstands. Everything seemed to be shifting, tilting; I heard a rushing like a strong wind, (
how can that be
, I thought in my confusion,
when the windows are tight shut
?) the sound of glass or china smashing, a series of loud thumps, voices crying out in alarm. And then I must have fainted dead away.

I woke to find myself lying with my head in Alexandra's lap. Someone had undone the top buttons of my blouse, and Dr. Elliot was holding a vial of smelling salts to my nose.

The military gentleman was saying with apparent puzzlement to a now wide awake Mrs. Brown, “I cannot think why the young lady was so upset. As sure as I stand here, that was the ghost of my old comrade-in-arms Henry Gordon, dead these thirty-three years of a sabre wound at Balaclava.”

But he was wrong. I knew the name of that awful spirit as surely as I knew my own.

It was George who had come to show me the fatal wound I had inflicted upon him; George who had come to accuse the murderess who had taken his life.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

July 9

The worst is not, so long as we can say, “this is the worst.”
My father used to quote that, when everything in our lives seemed to gang agley. It comes from
King Lear,
and it means, I suppose, that as long as we still have our wits, and breath to speak, we have not come to the worst place of all.

Yet how can I believe that worse is still to come? There is no pretending now that George's wound was a small one, quickly healed. For certain he is dead, and by my hand. And am I any less a murderess, not remembering how I came to strike the blow?

Nor do I remember much of yesterday, after waking in confusion from my faint. I recollect Mrs. Brown, the medium, looking pale and discomposed, I suppose because of the disturbance I had caused, and perhaps also because her china candlesticks were smashed. I remember the odd way that Alexandra looked down at me, as I first came round. And I remember the kindness and concern in Mr. Grenville-Smith's eyes, as he gave me his arm and helped me to a cab. But I deserve neither his good opinion nor his friendship. I shrink from the thought that he might one day learn the truth.

July 15

I can scarcely bear to write of what happened yesterday, it gave me such a fright. After dinner HPB was vigorously holding forth on the Spirit World to the usual gathering of visitors, when she broke off with a kind of shudder in mid-sentence. Her next words so shocked me so that I nearly cried out. She said, “
A murderer has just passed below our
window.”

A ripple of excitement ran round the room, and everyone turned to stare at HPB. Lady Asquith, who was sitting near the window, looked out at the street, but said she could see no one. My heart was thudding wildly as I waited for HPB to turn accusing eyes in my direction. This was a woman who could see what was invisible to others, who could peer into the darkest corners of my heart. Surely she must suspect that the murderer, far from being in the street outside, was under her very roof.

All last night I lay awake, listening to the clock strike the hours, fearful of what the morning might bring, and yet HPB has said nothing. Perhaps she is only biding her time, because for the moment I am useful to her. But she is not a patient woman, and she has no tolerance for mistakes. Suppose one day she should fly into a rage with me, as she does sometimes with Mr. Bertram? There are names she could call me far worse than the ones she calls poor Mr. Bert.

How foolish I was, to think I could find refuge in a city where no one knew me, nor cared what I once was.

July 21

Now that Madame Zhelihovsky and her daughter have arrived HPB seems in much better spirits, and I believe her health has also improved a little. It is hard to be downhearted in the younger Vera's presence. She is such a blithe and carefree young woman, quick to laugh, and every bit as pretty as the Countess described her. Needless to say she is much admired by the gentlemen of the household, and has especially caught the eye of one of HPB's protégés, Mr. Charlie Johnston. He has just graduated from Dublin University, and is to leave for Bengal in the autumn, but in the meantime is spending every possible moment at Lansdowne Road. Of course, this romance has greatly annoyed HPB, as she is much opposed to the whole institution of marriage.

At barely seventeen, it seems, she married General Blavatsky, a man three times her age. When at the altar the priest said, “Thou shalt honour and obey thy husband,” HPB clenched her teeth and muttered, “Surely I shall
not.”
And promptly ran away to Central Asia.

All the same, I believe that Mr. Johnston and Miss Z. will marry. He is as handsome and clever as she is charming, and it is clear that they dote upon one another. But I felt a little melancholy this evening, as I watched the two of them stroll through the garden arm in arm. I remembered how, when I looked in Edith's mirror for the face of my future husband, there was naught to see but darkness.

Meanwhile, next month we are expecting a Colonel Olcott, who is coming from America to see HPB on some contentious matters of Theosophical business, which I will not attempt to explain. All these things seem to conspire against the timely completion of the book.

August 26

It's weeks since I have written in this journal. I think sometimes it would be better not to write at all, so there will be no record of this awful summer. The entire household is caught up in HPB's frantic efforts to prepare
The Secret
Doctrine
. This vast work is soon to be published, and still she makes changes and additions, until we are all driven to distraction. Some of the corrections are HPB's own, but others appear on her desk as pages of foolscap covered with notes in blue pencil handwriting — the work, we are told, of the Tibetan Master Koot Hoomi, delivered by astral post office.

To make matters worse, HPB herself is unwell. She suffers from a great many ills, any one of which, says Mr. Archie, would kill an ordinary woman. In consequence she flies into tantrums for the most trivial of reasons.

Yesterday one of the foolscap sheets from Master Koot Hoomi was misplaced, and by afternoon, in spite of all our efforts, still had not been discovered. Just as we were sitting down to our tea, the two Messrs. Keightley, the Countess, Mr. Mead and myself, HPB came raging out of her study to demand why we had given up the search. “Here you all are, lazing about, doing nothing, and without this information it is quite impossible for me to continue!”

Mr. Archie said mildly, “We will continue to look, HPB, as soon as we have had our tea. Surely the paper cannot have vanished quite as mysteriously as it appeared.”

This seemed to enrage HPB still further, and now, to my dismay, she turned her fury upon me. “You, Miss Guthrie! Why do you sit there like a flapdoodle? Do you imagine you are being paid to gossip and eat toast?” I must have turned bright red in my embarrassment and confusion. Though she constantly berates poor Mr. Bert, HPB had never before spoken to me in this manner, and I was speechless with mortification. Though I half-rose to my feet, thinking to leave the table and continue the search, HPB would not be mollified.

“Here am I, day and night bent over my desk, wearing holes in the elbows of my sleeves, surrounded by flapdoodles, and as for you, Miss Guthrie, you are the most useless of all.” And then she called me some names I would blush to write in this book. Even the steward, in my days as a bondager, had not so belittled and abused me. My throat felt tight, my eyes prickled. And then anger overcame humiliation. This woman I had so much admired now seemed to me a selfish, foul-tempered, ungrateful old harridan. Murderess I might be; but like everyone in the household, I had missed meals, lost sleep, laboured to exhaustion for her sake. I felt quite dizzy and sick with indignation.

HPB had worked herself into frenzy. She would not leave off shouting at me. All at once the teacups began to rattle in their saucers, and the milk jug, of its own accord, jiggled about on its tray and overturned. The open jam pot flew off the table, dragging the tablecloth after it, and almost landed in Mr. Archie's lap.

In the sudden silence we looked at one another in dismay. HPB, meanwhile, was staring at me as though it were I and not herself who had drenched the tablecloth and splotched the India rug with strawberry jam. Next time, I thought, she may aim the jam pot straight at my head.

Now it seemed sure that I would be turned out of the house to fend for myself. And at that moment I did not much care.

CHAPTER TWELVE

September 30

L
ooking back over my last entry, I realize how distraught I must have been to write those melodramatic lines. But here I am still at Lansdowne Road, and little has changed, except for the ever-increasing pace of work. Nothing more has been said of the incident of the flying jam pot which caused me so much distress, nor have any more murderers passed beneath the window.

I have not seen Alexandra for some time. She has written to say that she is occupied with her Oriental studies — though it is clear that she is also spending a good deal of time in the unsettling company of M. Villemain. Dear Alexandra! She is so worldly, and so eager to embrace every kind of experience. And yet sometimes I feel older than she, and much less innocent. When she shares her secrets I can only listen and offer none in return; for surely even Alexandra would shrink away in horror should I confess what I have done.

In her letter she relates another curious adventure with M. Villemain into what she calls the Unknown, the
Inconnu.
She writes in French, for she is not as fluent in English on the page as she is in speech. It is a long letter, but with the help of a dictionary from HPB's study I have been translating it, a little at a time, as an exercise, and now I will transcribe it into this journal.