“Madame, the message of your inner spirit, as conveyed first through the electric medium of your brain, and then through the magnetism of your touch, told me of an ‘elsewhere.’ I may not personally or positively know of any ‘elsewhere,’ than this present state of being,—but your interior Self expects an ‘elsewhere,’—apparently knows of it better than I do, and conveys that impression and knowledge to me, apart from any consideration as to whether I may be fitted to understand or receive it.”
These words were heard with evident astonishment by the little group of people who stood by, listening.
“Dear me! How ve—ry curious!” murmured Lady Melthorpe.—“And we have always looked upon dear Madame Vassilius as quite a free-thinker,”—here she smiled apologetically, as Irene lifted her serious eyes and looked at her steadily—“I mean, as regards the next world and all those interesting subjects. In some of her books, for instance, she is terribly severe on the clergy.”
“Not more so than many of them deserve, I am sure,” said El-Râmi with sudden heat and asperity.—“It was not Christ’s intention, I believe, that the preachers of His Gospel should drink and hunt, and make love to their neighbours’ wives ad libitum, which is what a great many of them do. The lives of the clergy nowadays offer very few worthy examples to the laity.”
Lady Melthorpe coughed delicately and warningly. She did not like plain speaking,—she had a “pet clergyman” of her own,—moreover, she had been bred up in the provinces among “county” folk, some of whom still believe that at one period of the world’s history “God” was always wanting the blood of bulls and goats to smell “as a sweet savour in His nostrils.” She herself preferred to believe in the possibility of the Deity’s having “nostrils,” rather than take the trouble to consider the effect of His majestic Thought as evinced in the supremely perfect order of the planets and solar systems.
El-Râmi, however, went on regardlessly.
“Free-thinkers,” he said, “are for the most part truth-seekers. If everybody gave way to the foolish credulity attained to by the believers in the ‘Mahatmas’ for instance, what an idiotic condition the world would be in! We want free-thinkers,—as many as we can get,—to help us to distinguish between the false and the true. We want to separate the Actual from the Seeming in our lives,—and there is so much Seeming and so little Actual that the process is difficult.”
“Why, dat is nonsense!” said the Baroness von Denkwald. “Mit a Fact, zere is no mistake—you prove him. See!” and she took up a silver penholder from the table near her.—“Here is a pen,—mit ink it is used to write—zere is what you call ze Actual.”
El-Râmi smiled.
“Believe me, my dear Madame, it is only a pen so long as you elect to view it in that light. Allow me!”—and he took it from her hand, fixing his eyes upon her the while. “Will you place the tips of your fingers—the fingers of the left hand—yes—so! on my wrist? Thank you!”—this, as she obeyed with a rather vague smile on her big fat face.—“Now you will let me have the satisfaction of offering you this spray of lilies—the first of the season,” and he gravely extended the silver penholder.—“Is not the odour delicious?”