Mystery of a Turkish Bath — Expiation

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

EXPIATION.

A severe attack of her "suppressed" enemy, and a nervous headache, the result of the shock of the previous evening, had driven Mrs Ray Jefferson to the Turkish bath as early as ten o'clock the morning after that strange exhibition of Clairvoyance.

She had the rooms all to herself, and as she leant back in her comfortable chair and dabbled her pretty bare feet in warm water; she reflected in a troubled and disjointed fashion over all that had occurred since that eventful morning when the beautiful "mystery" had appeared before her standing in that curtained archway, which indeed looked a prosaic enough portal, and not by any means the sort of threshold for the development of occult science, or psychical marvels.

"She's completely unsettled me," she murmured plaintively.

"How I wish I had never gone to her rooms last night.

And that poor Colonel Estcourt--I wonder if he'll ever recover--they say he's never moved nor spoken since they took him away last night.

I wonder what she really meant, and if she did kill that man she spoke of.

I don't think it's possible.

I expect she only _willed_ it, and that's not murder.

Ugh!"

and she shuddered even in the warmth of the hot room where she had selected to go first.

"If the story leaks out--though I hope to goodness it won't--how delighted that horrid Mrs Masterman will be.

She never liked her.

Well I'm--if that isn't the princess herself coming in!

Her trance doesn't seem to have hurt her."

Slowly and languidly through the open doorway, the beautiful figure swept in and up to the smaller chamber where sat the little American.

As Mrs Ray Jefferson looked at her, she became conscious of some subtle intangible change that had shadowed, as it were, the marvellous beauty of her face and form.

Her large deep eyes had lost their lustre, her clear creamy skin looked dull and opaque.

Even the magnificent hair seemed to have been robbed of its sheen, and here and there amidst its masses gleamed a silvery thread.

Up to this moment her age had been a matter of much speculation, varying from eighteen to twenty-six.

Now one would have said unhesitatingly that she was a woman of at least thirty years, and a woman who did not carry those years lightly.

She sat down by Mrs Jefferson, and spoke in a low nervous voice.

"I knew I should find you here," she said.

"I want your help.

I think you have always been my friend here.

Do me one service.

Tell me what occurred in my room last night."

"Do you mean to say?"

asked Mrs Jefferson, amazed, "that you don't know?"

"Should I ask if I did?"

she said, mournfully.

"A great weight and terror are on my soul--yet I cannot explain them.

In some of my trances I keep the memory of all I see; in some I lose it.

I know nothing of what I said last night after you spoke and I parted from Julian.

It was your voice that came between us.

You have great psychic power; but it is undeveloped."

"Good gracious!"

cried Mrs Jefferson; "then, if I'm responsible for what happened last night, I'll have nothing more to do with Occultism as long as I live."

"I can't tell why it was," resumed the Princess, mournfully.

"The chain of communication broke, and I got away, and my great dread was that Julian should suffer."

"Well, your dread is realised," said Mrs Jefferson.

"Don't you know he's very ill?"

She started, and grew deadly white.

"Ill--Julian!

No; I did not know.

What is it?

--serious do they say?"

"Very.

Some shock to the brain.

You know he was far from strong.

He was only home from India on sick leave."

The princess was silent for a moment.

Her face looked inexpressibly mournful.

Involuntarily her hand went to her heart, and she looked at Mrs Jefferson with sad, appealing eyes.

"I have suffered a great deal," she said, slowly.

"I only bore it for his sake--for the hope they gave me that one day we should meet, and love, and taste the happiness of life together.

Tell me, was it anything I said or revealed that shocked him?"

"Well--I guess so," said the little American, uneasily.

"Of course, to us it was all mysterious; but he seemed to make it out, and at last, when you rose up and stretched out your arm and cried out, `Die!

in your crimes--_die_!'

the Colonel just gave a sort of gasp, and crash went his chair, and he lay there on the floor like a dead creature.

We were all finely scared, I can tell you.

The odd part was that you went to sleep again like a child, just as simply and quietly as possible, and my husband and the poet, and poor old Diogenes, they got the Colonel to his room, and laid him on the bed, and we sent for a doctor, and he's not conscious yet.

That's all I can tell you."

The Princess Zairoff leant back on her chair white and silent.

She asked no more questions.

Presently an attendant appeared with obsequious inquiries.

The princess suddenly shivered.

"Ask them," she said, abruptly, "to bring up the temperature to 300 degrees, I am cold."

"Cold!"

Mrs Jefferson stared.

"I guess it's as well I came here first," she said, "for certainly I can't stand it 50 degrees hotter than it is at present.

I'll go into the second room.

You see I'm reversing the usual order this morning.

Three, two, one, instead of one, two, three.

I'll sit just here by the door, so that we can still talk if you wish.

I look like a boiled lobster, I'm sure."

Princess Zairoff said nothing.

But when the American had withdrawn, she threw herself down on a couch near the wall.

By choosing it she was out of sight of anyone in the adjoining room, though able to converse if she wished.

That she did not wish was very evident.

No sooner was she alone than an expression of intense anguish came over her face.

Her hands locked themselves together, an agony far beyond the weakness of tears was in her beautiful eyes.

"I have lost him," she cried, in a stifled whisper.

"Lost him for ever...

and it was for this we were brought together...

For this I was commanded to learn the secret of my failure.

Yes, I, who thought myself so wise, have failed...

Failed at the crucial test, because my passions governed me...

because my heart was weak, for sake of love...

Oh, my lost strength--my lost self-restraint...

Must I again tread the weary road...

and only overcome to fail again?"

She turned aside and hid her face in her hands, while all that dusky veil of rippling hair fell over her like a cloud.

"I am so human still," she moaned--"so human that, woman-like, I deceived myself, and dreamt of love perfected here, when I might have known--I might have known...

But, oh, to lose him thus!

To stand before his eyes shamed, sin-stricken, criminal--I cannot bear that--it is beyond my strength..."

A new fierce passion seemed suddenly to take possession of her soul.

She raised herself once more, and the old lovely light and splendour glowed in her eyes.

"There is but one way to win his forgiveness," she cried breathlessly.

"He will pity me then...

his heart will soften...

he will remember what I said on that strange happy night when once again we met...

I am but a woman who loves.

Earth holds no weaker thing...

and I loved you, Julian...

you only--you alone!

always--always--always.

Men live for love--a woman can but die.

For the life I took I give my own--it is just...

Yet if but once, oh, beloved, I could see your pitying eyes, and hear your tender voice...

and know that you--forgave..."

The light faded from her face once more.

Only a hunted, despairing creature leaned back on that solitary couch.

A voice came shrilly from the outer room: "Are you all right, Princess?

Can you really bear that heat?"

Monotonously--vaguely--her own voice replied: "I am all right--I do not even feel the heat."

Then, all again grew still, and her eyes closed, and her heart beat in a dull, laboured way.

Once more the shrill voice reached her; but it sounded far off, and indistinct: "I hope you won't go off to sleep, like you did the last time, Princess; you frightened me terribly."

The effort to reply was harder to make; yet once again the slow, sweet voice vibrated through the hushed and stifling heat: "I shall not sleep--do not be alarmed."

Five minutes later, when Mrs Ray Jefferson lifted her eyes from an examination of her suffering foot, she was surprised to see the Princess standing in the archway of the further room, exactly as she had done on the first occasion of her visiting the Baths.

"Are you going?"

she called out.

"How is it I never saw you pass through the room?"

There was no answer--only the deep, wonderful eyes looked mournfully back at her, and, even as she met the gaze, the form seemed to fade away--the archway was vacant.

With a faint cry, Mrs Jefferson sprang to her feet, and rushed into the inner room.

The intense heat stifled, and drove her back; but not before she saw the Princess lying on the couch, where she had left her...

lying with closed eyes and folded hands; while on her pale, sad lips a faint smile seemed still to shed its lingering life.

The frantic calls of the terrified woman summoned the attendants.

In a moment, that motionless figure was lifted and carried into the adjoining chamber.

But human science and human aid were powerless before a greater Mystery than the Princess Zairoff had embodied.

The "Mystery of Death!"

THE END.

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