Wild Talent (8 page)

“My dear Jeanne,” (Alexandra writes)

“M. Villemain has been shut up in his room for several weeks, engaged in mysterious occult practices. Now that he has emerged, he looks so wraithlike that we are all concerned for his health. I decided he might benefit from a little fresh air and exercise. Also, I am anxious to learn more from him about this business of the peculiar painting that can entrap the onlooker. And so I asked him if he would like to come with me to visit the Crystal Palace outside London, where there are concerts and dramatic entertainments. Somewhat to my surprise, he agreed. We made plans to leave early and spend the whole day.

“But I had forgotten how quickly these autumn fogs descend. I woke to find the city shrouded in mist. By the time we were ready to leave the fog had not lifted. ‘
Quel
dommage
,' said M. Villemain, and proposed that we wait for a better day. However, I had set my mind on this expedition.

‘This is England,' I pointed out. ‘There may not be a better day.' At the station we could scarcely make out the shapes of the carriages. ‘Surely the afternoon will be fine,' I said by way of encouragement. And so we boarded the phantom train, and set out through a veiled and mysterious landscape.

“M. Villemain — who can be a very dull companion — seemed lost in his own thoughts.”

(Ah, so the intriguing M. Villemain has turned out to be not quite so
intéressant
after all!) But to continue the story:

“There was nothing to be seen through the windows, and lulled by the swaying of the carriage, I must have drifted off. I woke suddenly as the whistle sounded and the train came to a sudden stop. Looking out, I saw that the fog had lifted. But where were we?”

When Alexandra asked a man on the platform, “Is this the Crystal Palace station?” he gave her a very strange look and shouted to the conductor, who told them to get off the train as fast as they could. “How you will smile, Jeanne, when I tell you that this sophisticated traveller had fallen fast asleep on an express train bound for Edinburgh!”

The train whistled and went on its way. Alexandra and M. Villemain were left standing alone on the platform in an autumn drizzle, with no idea where they were, waiting for an evening train that would take them back to London. The ticket office was closed, and the countryside was deserted.

“Not a tea shop nor even a farmhouse to be seen. And it had begun to rain harder, and so we huddled in glum silence on a bench under the porch roof. I was cold, and hungry, and feeling both foolish and thoroughly annoyed.

‘Well, here is an adventure,' I said to M. Villemain. To which he responded in a mournful tone, ‘Perhaps we are dead.'

“I stared at him. ‘Dead? Whatever are you talking about?'

“‘We could be dead and not even know it. Why would an express train stop for no apparent reason and set us down in this desolate place?'

“Surely he was not serious! I said that there must have been an obstacle on the track.

He replied, in a voice heavy with foreboding, ‘It happened in exactly that way to a member of our Gnostic Society.'”

And then M. Villemain told Alexandra this extraordinary tale. It seems that a man was on a holiday trip with his wife and young son when their train inexplicably stopped. They could hear and see nothing: all the outside world was hidden by a thick white fog. To the man's surprise his wife took the child's hand and began to lead him from the carriage. Not sure what to do, the man followed his wife, who seemed to know exactly where she was going. When they came to a hedge, the mother and child somehow found their way to the other side; but the man could not follow, for his way was barred by a tangle of thorny branches. As he sought desperately for a way through, he heard a voice calling out, “You are not expected.” Beyond the hedge he could see, growing ever more distant, the vague shapes of his wife and son, but it was impossible to reach them. A great weariness overcame him, and as he drifted out of consciousness he heard a far-off voice repeating, “You are not expected.”

When he awoke he was in a hospital. It seemed that he and his family had been in a terrible train crash. The mother and child had passed into another world, where they were expected. In spite of his serious injuries the husband would recover, and so he could not break through that thorny hedge into the world beyond.

Alexandra said, in a joking way, “Well, you and I, M. Villemain, I believe we are not yet expected.” But she was astonished to realize that he was in deadly earnest.

“All this is most intriguing,”she writes, “and I mean to study further the various theories about the afterworld, and the spirits of the dead. In meantime, however, since we would be so late getting back to London, I proposed to buy M. Villemain a good dinner in a restaurant, for there would be no hope of getting anything to eat at the Supreme Gnosis.”

In any event, Villemain now seemed in a mood to speak of occult matters, so Alexandra seized the opportunity to question him about the strange incident of the painting.

Why, she wondered, was he afraid that she would be drawn into his painted landscape?

And in reply he began another story, as strange as the first.

A woman — like Villemain an initiate into the occult arts — was viewing a painting of an African landscape, an oasis with palm trees.

As she looked into the painting, she became lightheaded, and it seemed to her that she had somehow entered the painting and was walking among the palm trees, under the hot equatorial sun. For a while she wandered about in the desert, wiping her face with her handkerchief. Suddenly the light changed, she felt a violent shock, and she found herself in the artist's studio, where it seemed she had fainted. She went to take out her handkerchief, but could not find it. Then she looked at the painting. There was the missing handkerchief, clearly painted into the picture, at the foot of a palm tree where she had dropped it. .

“Ever since,” Alexandra continues, “I have been puzzling about the explanation. Was it merely a collective hallucination? Villemain himself, and others who have seen the painting, swear that previously, no handkerchief had appeared in the scene; but from then on it was clearly visible. It makes me think, Jeanne, that there is much we have not yet discovered about our world.

“Villemain has offered a theory, and I will try to explain as best I can. He says that every landscape in the real world, and even a painted landscape, has its counterpart on the astral plane. So, for example, if an artist paints a picture of a meadow or heath, he has not only created a design on canvas, he has also created a heath or a meadow on that other plane of existence. And herein, said Villemain, the danger lies: each of us also has an astral counterpart, a kind of insubstantial twin. If we are not careful, that astral form could be seized and held captive by this other world that exists on the edge of our own.

“Needless to say, all this makes me wish to explore the subject further. And so, although we did not see the Crystal Palace, the day was not a total loss; and before we took a cab back to our lodgings, we found an excellent Italian restaurant and I bought M. Villemain the fine dinner I had promised.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

October 7

T
hough the Messrs. Keightley feared the book would never see completion, at last the preface is written, and the first volume of
The Secret Doctrine
has gone to press, with Volume II ,
Anthropogenesis,
to follow in December. At Saturday's At Home there was a great air of celebration, and also of relief.

Miss Vera and Mr. Johnston are to be married, with HPB's grudging approval. Once she gave up grumbling and calling them flapdoodles, she offered to make arrangements for the wedding at the Russian Church, and even plans to attend the ceremony.

However, their romance has caused an uproar in Theosophical circles. It seems that when Mr. Charlie Johnston first joined the Society he saw it as a sort of holy vocation, swearing never to marry, and encouraging all the male Theosophists to do the same. Mr. Willie Yeats finds this very amusing, and he teases Mr. Johnston at every opportunity. . One night when Miss Vera was not present, Mr. Yeats remarked, “And to think, Charlie — were it not for love, you could have become a Mahatma!”

Meanwhile, Mr. Yeats has got together a committee to perform experiments based on Theosophical writings. Somewhere he read that if you burned a flower to ashes, and then set the ashes out in the moonlight for several nights, the ghost of the flower would appear. Since coming to Lansdowne Road I have learned that many improbable things may be possible. Still, I do not think this experiment will succeed.

He has also got hold of some indigo powder which supposedly has special properties, and has asked the members of his committee to put it under their pillows, and record their dreams. I am relieved that he has not asked me to do this. I would not wish to relive the dreams that sometimes come to me in restless sleep: stones falling from the air; footsteps echoing behind me on an empty street; an endless railway journey, rushing into fog and night; and too often, the apparition of George's wounded and accusing ghost.

We had not seen the two gentlemen from the Psychical Research Society for some time, but on Saturday they joined us for an early tea. As they were about to take their leave, Mr. Grenville-Smith surprised me by saying, “You are quite pale, Miss Guthrie. HPB has kept you slaving far too long over that manuscript. You look in desperate need of fresh air.” And then — still greater surprise — he invited me on a Sunday afternoon excursion to Hampstead Heath, to see the autumn colours.

Truth to tell, I was quite flustered, scarcely knowing how to reply — would it be thought improper, in London, to set out unchaperoned? But the Countess gave me an encouraging smile, saying “What a splendid idea! It will put the roses back in your cheeks.” And so, yesterday being fine and clear, we went by omnibus, and spent the whole of the afternoon walking on the Heath.

Though not as fashionable as Hyde Park, the Heath seems very popular on a Sunday with courting couples. Everywhere we saw young women in beribboned bonnets, walking out with their young men on their afternoons off. Wandering across the autumnal meadows and along the woodland paths carpeted with golden leaves, I could almost imagine myself in the Borders once again; and I was happier than I have been for many weeks. Though all the same it disturbed me to see men offering rides on poor starved looking donkeys — these Londoners seem to care very little for the treatment of their animals — and I said so to Mr. Grenville-Smith.

I was not sure why Mr. Grenville-Smith had invited me, but I could not imagine it was merely for the pleasure of my company, for I have so little conversation to offer, and he is accustomed to the clever talk of Cambridge folk, and it seems is a landed gentleman besides. But come to that he does not talk a great deal in any case, seeming content enough to stroll by my side in the misty October light. Once though, he turned to me with a smile, saying, “Your hair, Miss Guthrie . . . ” and I put up an anxious hand to my head, wondering if my sailor hat was askew, or my plaits, as they often did, had come unfastened. But then he pointed to a maple along the path ahead, bright with autumn reddish-gold. “Look,” he said, “the leaves are exactly the colour of your hair!”

For a while we watched the kite-flyers, climbed to the top of Parliament Hill, and saw all of London spread out before us.

I must confess that I took great pleasure in
his
company, friendly and undemanding as it was. I guessed that it was my place to make conversation, and so I asked, “Are you also a professor of zoology, like Dr. Barker?”

He laughed. “Someday, perhaps. With a great deal of luck. At present I'm merely a research fellow — a much less evolved species. But I work with Dr. Barker, and it was he who interested me in the Society for Psychical Research.”

“And what is it exactly that the Society researches?”

“Well, in the main, four areas: astral appearances, transportation of physical substances by occult means, precipitation of letters, and occult sounds and voices. So as you see, your Madame Blavatsky is a veritable motherlode of research material, since she claims to practise all four.”

“And is she a fraud, as Dr. Barker says?”

“Ah, Miss Guthrie, on that question the jury is still out. I respect Professor Barker's opinion as a scholar and a scientist. On the other hand, it's always best to keep an open mind. This is why we continue to gather evidence.”

And that of course was no answer at all, but I could see I would have to be content with it.

“But what of you, Miss Guthrie? Do you have plans for the future? Do you mean to stay on at Lansdowne Road?”

“As long as Madame Blavatsky has work for me. But once this enormous book of hers is published, I may no longer be needed.”

“And then?”

And then? It is a question I often ask myself, when Madame B. grows so impatient that she threatens to cast us all out into the street; or when she is so ill, and so in despair, that we cannot believe she will ever complete the work.

“Perhaps . . . ” What could I tell him? “Perhaps I will find some work in a bookshop, or with a publisher . . . ”

“And would you enjoy that sort of work?”

“I think I might.” And then, because he was gazing at me so attentively, with such friendly interest, I grew bolder. “Once a long time ago I imagined I would like to write my own books, to be an author.”

I feared he might laugh at that foolish notion, but instead, he said, “Only once a long time ago? Miss Guthrie, I hope you have not given up that ambition.”

That threw me into confusion. “I don't know . . . one day, possibly. But I don't mean the kind that Madame Blavatsky writes. I think I would like to write books . . . ”

“That people actually want to read?” he finished for me. And I had to laugh, because that was precisely the thought in my mind.