He broke off abruptly. A certain look of disturbance and perplexity came into his deep grey eyes.
“Unless what?” queried Mrs Jefferson, sharply. “You look as if you saw a vision. Unless she’s committed a crime, were you going to say? She talked of some tragedy—something that had upset her life, and affected her mental equilibrium.”
“She said—that?” His face grew suddenly very pale. The firm mouth quivered beneath the fair thick moustache that shaded it.
“Yes,” said Mrs Jefferson. “Do tell, Colonel. What is it you suspect? A mystery—a secret crime? My, that would be interesting.”
“Suspect!” he said, almost fiercely. “How should I suspect? What do you mean? I was only wondering if indeed she possessed one of those rare minds, sufficient for their own happiness, and living an inner life of which the world knows nothing, and which, even if it knew, it could not comprehend.”
“Ah,” said Mrs Jefferson, quickly. “Now this gets interesting. That’s just the sort of way she talked, and I confess I got a bit out of my depth. But you, Colonel, you’ve come from the very land of it all. Do sit down and explain. Is the world going to be turned upside down? Are we to have a new religion, or rather an old one brought to light, that will upset what we’ve been hugging as truth for the last eighteen hundred years. We’ve been pretty crazy over spiritualism on our side of the water, but I guess this new philosophy can just make our mediums and séance-givers take a back seat. Isn’t that so?”
“My dear madam,” answered Colonel Estcourt, gravely, “you really must not call upon me to expound the doctrines of the East to the scoffers of the West. I know a little—a very little—of this school of philosophy; but I am not vain enough to attempt an explanation of its profound wisdom. The mysteries of Nature demand the deepest and most earnest consideration of the human mind. Do you think I could presume to rattle off a few explanations or give the key to certain problems just to satisfy the vague curiosity of an idle hour. I will only say one thing—it is a thing that cannot be too often repeated and thoroughly kept in memory. Every life has to live out itself, and work out for itself the higher mysteries that are shut within its own consciousness. No one can do that for it, any more than they could take its love, or its sorrows, or its misfortunes away, and bear them in its place. If humanity took that truth to heart, and lived according to the higher instead of the lower instincts, the world would be a very different place.”
“But,” objected a pretty feminine voice in the back-ground, “what about the obligations of position and society? I suppose the ‘higher instinct’ would tell us that amusements are a waste of time—vanity and vexation in fact—yet even they have a good result, they give employment, and help other folk to live. And it’s a pleasant relief to be gay and frivolous. It’s awfully fatiguing to be grave and good. Just look at us on Sundays. We’re all more or less cross and disagreeable, and I’m sure no clergyman could honestly say that he wasn’t heartily sick of droning and intoning that same eternal form embodied in the Church Service.”
“The higher life,” said Colonel Estcourt, gravely, “is not a matter of form. Far from it. It is an unceasing and inexhaustible pursuit; it has infinite gradations, and is full of infinite possibilities. Its tendency is to elevate all that is best, and eliminate all that is worst, in man.”
“Oh!” cried Mrs Jefferson with rapture, “I’m sure you ought to meet my ‘Mystery.’ That’s just her sort of talk. I must say it sounds beautiful; but I shouldn’t think it was practicable. It’s a very hard thing to change people’s ideas. When they’ve held them a certain time they get used to them, and don’t like the trouble of altering.”