Love Eternal — Chapter 06 Part 1
“Let us sit round the table and talk,” said Madame Riennes.
Thereon the whole party moved into the recess where was the flower-pot that has been mentioned, which Miss Ogilvy took away.
They seated themselves round the little table upon which it had stood.
Godfrey, lingering behind, found, whether by design or accident, that the only place left for him was the arm-chair which he hesitated to occupy.
“Be seated, young Monsieur,” said the formidable Madame in bell-like tones, whereon he collapsed into the chair.
“Sister Helen,” she went on, “draw the curtain, it is more private so; yes, and the blind that there may be no unholy glare.
” Miss Ogilvy, who seemed to be entirely under Madame’s thumb, obeyed.
Now to all intents and purposes they were in a tiny, shadowed room cut off from the main apartment.
“Take that talisman from your neck and give it to young Monsieur Knight,” commanded Madame.
“But I gave it to her, and do not want it back,” ventured Godfrey, who was growing alarmed.
“Do what I say,” she said sternly, and he found himself holding the relic.
“Now, young Monsieur, look me in the eyes a little and listen.
I
request of you that holding that black, engraved stone in your hand, you will be so good as to throw your soul, do you understand, your soul, back, back, _back_ and tell us where it come from, who have it, what part it play in their life, and everything about it.
” “How am I to know?
” asked Godfrey, with indignation.
Then suddenly everything before him faded, and he saw himself standing in a desert by a lump of black rock, at which a brown man clad only in a waist cloth and a kind of peaked straw hat, was striking with an instrument that seemed to be half chisel and half hammer, fashioned apparently from bronze, or perhaps of greenish-coloured flint.
Presently the brown man, who had a squint in one eye and a hurt toe that was bound round with something, picked up a piece of the black rock that he had knocked off, and surveyed it with evident satisfaction.
Then the scene vanished.
Godfrey told it with interest to the audience who were apparently also interested.
“The finding of the stone,” said Madame.
“Continue, young Monsieur.
” Another vision rose before Godfrey’s mind.
He beheld a low room having a kind of verandah, roofed with reeds, and beyond it a little courtyard enclosed by a wall of grey-coloured mud bricks, out of some of which stuck pieces of straw.
This courtyard opened onto a narrow street where many oddly-clothed people walked up and down, some of whom wore peaked caps.
A little man, old and grey, sat with the fragment of black rock on a low table before him, which Godfrey knew to be the same stone that he had already seen.
By him lay graving tools, and he was engaged in polishing the stone, now covered with figures and writing, by help of a stick, a piece of rough cloth and oil.
A young man with a curly beard walked into the little courtyard, and to him the old fellow delivered the engraved stone with obeisances, receiving payment in some curious currency.
Then followed picture upon picture in all of which the talisman appeared in the hands of sundry of its owners.
Some of these pictures had to do with love, some with religious ceremonies, and some with war.
One, too, with its sale, perhaps in a time of siege or scarcity, for a small loaf of black-looking bread, by an aged woman who wept at parting with it.
After this he saw an Arab-looking man finding the stone amongst the crumbling remains of a brick wall that showed signs of having been burnt, which wall he was knocking down with a pick-axe to allow water to flow down an irrigation channel on his garden.
Presently a person who wore a turban and was girt about with a large scimitar, rode by, and to him the man showed, and finally presented the stone, which the Saracen placed in the folds of his turban.
The next scene was of this man engaged in battle with a knight clad in mail.
The battle was a very fine one, which Godfrey described with much gusto.
It ended in the knight killing the Eastern man and hacking off his head with a sword.
This violent proceeding disarranged the turban out of which fell the black stone.
The knight picked it up and hid it about him.
Next Godfrey saw this same knight, grown into an old man and being borne on a bier to burial, clad in the same armour that he had worn in the battle.
Upon his breast hung the black stone which had now a hole bored through the top of it.
Lastly there came a picture of the old sexton finding the talisman among the bones of the knight, and giving it to himself, Godfrey, then a small boy, after which everything passed away.
“I guess that either our young friend here has got the vision, or that he will make a first-class novelist,” said Colonel Josiah Smith.
“Any way, if you care to part with that talisman, Miss Ogilvy, I will be glad to give you five hundred dollars for it on the chance of his integrity.
” She smiled and shook her head, stretching out her hand to recover the Gnostic charm.
“Be silent, Brother Josiah Smith,” exclaimed Madame Riennes, angrily.
“If this were imposture, should I not have discovered it?
It is good vision—psychometry is the right term—though of a humbler order such as might be expected from a beginner.
Still, there is hope, there is hope.
Let us see, now.
Young gentleman, be so good as to look me in the eye.
” Much against his will Godfrey found himself bound to obey, and looked her “in the eye.
” A few moments later he felt dizzy, and after that he remembered no more.
When Godfrey awoke again the curtain was drawn, the blinds were pulled up and the butler was bringing in tea.
Miss Ogilvy sat by his side, looking at him rather anxiously, while the others were conversing together in a somewhat excited fashion.
“It is splendid, splendid!
” Madame was saying.
“We have discovered a pearl beyond price, a great treasure.
Hush!
he awakes.
” Godfrey, who experienced a curious feeling of exhaustion and of emptiness of brain, yawned and apologized for having fallen asleep, whereon the professor and the colonel both assured him that it was quite natural on so warm a day.
Only Madame Riennes smiled like a sphinx, and asked him if his dreams were pleasant.
To this he replied that he remembered none.
Miss Ogilvy, however, who looked rather anxious and guilty, did not speak at all, but busied herself with the tea which Godfrey thought very strong when he drank it.
However, it refreshed him wonderfully, which, as it contained some invigorating essence, was not strange.
So did the walk in the beautiful garden which he took afterwards, just before the carriage came to drive him back to Kleindorf.
Re-entering the drawing-room to say goodbye, he found the party engaged listening to the contents of a number of sheets of paper closely written in pencil, which were being read to them by Colonel Josiah Smith, who made corrections from time to time.
“_Au revoir_, my young brother,” said Madame Riennes, making some mysterious sign before she took his hand in her fat, cold fingers, “you will come again next Sunday, will you not?
” “I don’t know,” he answered awkwardly, for he felt afraid of this lady, and did not wish to see her next Sunday.
“Oh!
but I do, young brother.
You will come, because it gives me so much pleasure to see you,” she replied, staring at him with her strange eyes.
Then Godfrey knew that he would come because he must.
“Why does that lady call me ‘young brother’?
” he asked Miss Ogilvy, who accompanied him to the hall.
“Oh!
because it is a way she has.
You may have noticed that she called me ‘sister’.
” “I don’t think that I shall call _her_ sister,” he remarked with decision.
“She is too alarming.
” “Not really when you come to know her, for she has the kindest heart and is wonderfully gifted.
” “Gifts which make people tell others that they are going to die are not pleasant, Miss Ogilvy.
” She shivered a little.
“If her spirit—I mean the truth—comes to her, she must speak it, I suppose.
By the way, Godfrey, don’t say anything about this talisman and the story you told of it, at Kleindorf, or in writing home.
” “Why not?
” “Oh!
because people like your dear old Pasteur, and clergymen generally, are so apt to misunderstand.
They think that there is only one way of learning things beyond, and that every other must be wrong.
Also I am sure that your friend, Isobel Blake, would laugh at you.
” “I don’t write to Isobel,” he exclaimed setting his lips.
“But you may later,” she said smiling.
“At any rate you will promise, won’t you?
” “Yes, if you wish it, Miss Ogilvy, though I can’t see what it matters.
That kind of nonsense often comes into my head when I touch old things.
Isobel says that it is because I have too much imagination.
” “Imagination!
Ah!
what is imagination?
Well, goodbye, Godfrey, the carriage will come for you at the same time next Sunday.
Perhaps, too, I shall see you before then, as I am going to call upon Madame Boiset.
” Then he went, feeling rather uncomfortable, and yet interested, though what it was that interested him he did not quite know.
That night he dreamed that Madame Riennes stood by his bed watching him with her burning eyes.
It was an unpleasant dream.
He kept his word.
When the Boiset family, especially Madame, cross-examined him as to the details of his visit to Miss Ogilvy, he merely described the splendours of that opulent establishment and the intellectual character of its guests.
Of their mystic attributes he said nothing at all, only adding that Miss Ogilvy proposed to do herself the honour of calling at the Maison Blanche, as the Boisets’ house was called.
About the middle of the week Miss Ogilvy arrived and, as Madame had taken care to be at home in expectation of her visit, was entertained to tea.
Afterwards she visited the observatory, which interested her much, and had a long talk with the curious old Pasteur, who also interested her in his way, for as she afterwards remarked to Godfrey, one does not often meet an embodiment of human goodness and charity.
When he replied that the latter quality was lacking to the Pasteur where Roman Catholics were concerned, she only smiled and said that every jewel had its flaw; nothing was quite perfect in the world.
In the end she asked Madame and Juliette to come to lunch with her, leaving out Godfrey, because, as she said, she knew that he would be engaged at his studies with the Pasteur.
She explained also that she did not ask them to come with him on Sunday because they would be taken up with their religious duties, a remark at which Juliette made what the French call a “mouth,” and Madame smiled faintly.
In due course she and her daughter went to lunch and returned delighted, having found themselves fellow-guests of some of the most notable people in Lucerne, though not those whom Miss Ogilvy entertained on Sundays.
Needless to say from that time forward Godfrey’s intimacy with this charming and wealthy hostess was in every way encouraged by the Boiset family.
The course of this intimacy does not need any very long description.
Every Sunday after church the well-appointed carriage and pair appeared and bore Godfrey away to luncheon at the Villa Ogilvy.
Here he always met Madame Riennes, Colonel Josiah Smith, and Professor Petersen; also occasionally one or two others with whom these seemed to be sufficiently intimate to admit of their addressing them as “Brother” or “Sister.
” Soon Godfrey came to understand that they were all members of some kind of semi-secret society, though what this might be he could not quite ascertain.
All he made sure of was that it had to do with matters which were not of this world.
Nothing concerning mundane affairs, however important or interesting, seemed to appeal to them; all their conversation was directed towards what might be called spiritual problems, reincarnations, Karmas (it took him a long time to understand what a Karma is), astral shapes, mediumship, telepathic influences, celestial guides, and the rest.
At first this talk with its jargon of words which he did not comprehend, bored him considerably, but by degrees he felt that he was being drawn into a vortex, and began to understand its drift.
Even while it was enigmatic it acquired a kind of unholy attraction for him, and he began to seek out its secret meaning in which he found that company ready instructors.
“Young brother,” said Madame Riennes, “we deal with the things not of the body, but of the soul.
The body, what is it?
In a few years it will be dust and ashes, but the soul—it is eternal—and all those stars you study are its inheritance, and you and I, if we cultivate our spiritual parts, shall rule in them.
” Then she would roll her big eyes and become in a way magnificent, so that Godfrey forgot her ugliness and the repulsion with which she inspired him.
In the end his outlook on life and the world became different, and this not so much because of what he learned from his esoteric teachers, as through some change in his internal self.
He grew to appreciate the vastness of things and the infinite possibilities of existence.
Indeed, his spiritual education was a fitting pendant to his physical study of the heavens, peopled with unnumbered worlds, each of them the home, doubtless, of an infinite variety of life, and each of them keeping its awful secrets locked in its floating orb.
He trembled in presence of the stupendous Whole, of which thus by degrees he became aware, and though it frightened him, thought with pity of the busy millions of mankind to whom such mysteries are nothing at all; who are lost in their business or idleness, in their eating, drinking, sleeping, love-making, and general satisfaction of the instincts which they possess in common with every other animal.
The yearning for wisdom, the desire to know, entered his young heart and possessed it, as once these did that of Solomon, to such a degree indeed, that standing on the threshold of his days, he would have paid them all away, and with them his share in this warm and breathing world, could he have been assured that in exchange he would receive the key of the treasure-house of the Infinite.
Such an attitude was neither healthy nor natural to a normal, vigorous lad just entering upon manhood, and, as will be seen, it did not endure.
Like everything else, it had its causes.
His astronomical studies were one of these, but a deeper reason was to be found in those Sunday séances at the Villa Ogilvy.
For a long while Godfrey did not know what happened to him on these occasions.
The party sat round the little table, talking of wonderful things; Madame Riennes looked at him and sometimes took his hand, which he did not like, and then he remembered no more until he woke up, feeling tired, and yet in a way exhilarated, for with the mysteries of hypnotic sleep he was not yet acquainted.
Nor did it occur to him that he was being used as a medium by certain of the most advanced spiritualists in the world.
