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Ebook has 496 lines and 33550 words, and 10 pages

The Mystery of a Turkish Bath, by Rita.

An extraordinarily beautiful woman appears one day in the turkish bath, and the women already in there are quite fascinated by her. But there is another guest in the hotel, a Colonel Estcourt, who, it turns out had known this woman since childhood. Indeed it had been expected that they would one day wed, but instead she had gone off and married an elderly, but fabulously wealthy, Russian prince.

Various demonstrations of her occult powers make the guests, both men and women, realise that the beautiful Princess is someone with very special gifts, which one or two of them would like to learn more about. But in the very process of the ensuing teach-in, more things happen than had been bargained for, and both the Colonel and the Princess end up lifeless. The Mystery deepens.

If you like this sort of thing it is a very good novel, but if you are not happy to read about the occult, you should leave it severely alone.

THE FIRST ROOM.

"I take them for rheumatic gout," said a slight, dark-haired woman to her neighbour, as she leant back in a low lounging-chair, and sipped some water an attendant had just brought her. "You would not suppose I suffered from such a complaint, would you?"--and she held up a small arched foot, with a scarcely perceptible swelling in the larger joint. She laughed somewhat affectedly, and the neighbour, who was fat and coarse, and had decided gouty symptoms herself, looked at her with something of the contempt an invalid elephant might be supposed to bestow on a buzzing fly.

"You made that remark the last time you were here," she said; "and I told you, if you suffered from a suppressed form of the disease, it would be all the worse for you. Much better for it to come out--my doctor says."

There was no doubt about the disease having "come out" in the person of the speaker. It had "come out" in her face, which was brilliantly rubicund; in her hands, and ankles and feet, which were a distressful spectacle of "knobs" and "bumps" of an exaggerated phrenological type-- perhaps also in her temper, which was fierce and fiery as her complexion, as most of the frequenters of the Baths knew, and the attendants also, to their cost.

The small, dark lady, with the arched feet, lapsed into sulky silence, and let her eyes wander over the room to see if anyone she knew was there.

The Baths were of an extensive and sumptuous description--fitted up with almost oriental luxury and comfort, and attached to a monster hotel, built by an enterprising Company of speculators, at an English winter resort, in Hampshire.

The Company had proudly hoped that lavish expenditure, a beautiful situation, and the disinterested recommendation of fashionable physicians, would induce English people to discover that there were spots and places in their own land as healthy and convenient as Auvergne, or Wiesbaden, or the Riviera. But though the coast views were fine, and the scenery picturesque, and the monster hotel itself stood on a commanding eminence, surrounded by darkly-beautiful pine woods, and was fitted up with every luxury of modern civilisation, including every specimen of Bath that human ingenuity had devised, the Company looked blankly at the returns on their balance-sheet, and one or two Directors murmured audible complaints at special Board meetings, against the fashionable physicians who had not acted up to their promises, or proved deserving of the substantial bonus which had been more than hinted at, as a reward for recommended patients.

On this December morning, some half-dozen ladies, of various ages and stability of person, and all suffering, in a greater or less degree, from various fashionable complaints--such as neuralgia, indigestion, rheumatism, or its aristocratic cousin, rheumatic-gout--were in Room Number One of the Turkish Bath.

The female form is generally supposed to be "divine," and poets and painters have, from time immemorial, rhapsodised over "beauty unadorned." It is probable that such poets and painters have never been gratified by such a vision of feminine charms as Room Number One presented.

She was grudgingly but universally acknowledged to be the best-dressed woman in the hotel--except, of course, when she was in the Turkish Baths, which unfortunately reduced its frequenters to one level of apparelling, a garment which made up in simplicity for any lack of elegance.

The shape was always the same--viz., short in the skirt, low in the neck, and bare as to sleeves. The material was generally pink cotton, or white with a red border.

Mrs Jefferson was quite American enough to have "notions" on dress, more or less original and extravagant. Finding her companion was unusually silent this morning, she gave up her thoughts to the devising of a special toilet for the Bath.

She knitted her brows with a vigour demanded by so absorbing a subject: the white head-cloth fell off, and she felt that her fringe was all out of curl and lay straight on her forehead in most unbecoming fashion. That also would have to be considered in the question of costume--a head-dress which should combine use and ornament. The idea of having only a wet, white rag on one's head! No wonder people looked "objects!" Perhaps it would be better to coil the hair about the brow and have no fringe, or at least only a few loose locks that would look equally well, straight or curled.

Mrs Ray Jefferson's thoughts had not prevented her from taking stock of the other inmates of the room. One or two were lying on couches, but most of them seemed to prefer the low comfortable chairs, that were like rocking-chairs without the rockers.

No one spoke. They looked solemn and suffering, and appeared intent merely on the symptoms of distilled moisture on the visible portion of their persons.

"I think," said Mrs Jefferson, "I shall go into the second room. I can stand some more heat."

She made the remark, abstractedly, in the direction of her neighbour, who only looked at her in a bored and ill-tempered fashion, as befitted one who had gout without arched feet to display as compensation.

"You and I are the only hotel people here," went on Mrs Jefferson, as she took up the glass of water and the head-cloth preparatory to moving away. Then she laughed again as she looked at her companion's flushed countenance and generally distressed appearance. "What a comfort," she said, "that we won't look quite such objects at dinner-time! I always find a bath improves my complexion, don't you?"

Mrs Markham gave an impatient grunt. "As if it mattered what one looks like in a bath!" she said. "Do you Americans live in public all your lives? You seem to be always thinking of your clothes, or your looks!"

Mrs Jefferson opened her lips to reply with suitable indignation, but the words were cut short by a gasp of astonishment, and lost themselves in one wondering, long-drawn monosyllable--"My--!"

The gouty sufferer also looked up, and in the direction of the doorway, and though she said nothing, her eyes expressed as much surprise as was compatible with a sluggish temperament, and a disposition to cavil at most things and persons that were presented to her notice.

The object on which the two pairs of feminine eyes rested was only the figure of a woman standing between the thick oriental curtains that partitioned off the dressing from the shampooing and douche rooms.

A woman--but a woman so beautiful that she held even her own sex dumb with admiration. She was tall, but not too tall for perfect grace; and slender, but with the slenderness of some young pictured goddess. She was dark, too, but with a pale clear skin that was more lovely than any dead blonde whiteness; and to crown her charms, she had long rippling hair of jet black hue that was parted from her brow and fell like a veil to her delicate arched feet, and through which the serious, darkly-- glowing eyes looked straight at the wondering faces before her.

The pause she made before entering was brief, but not so brief that every eye there had not scanned enviously and wonderingly her perfect beauty--from the clear-cut, exquisite face and bare, beautifully--shaped arms, to the graceful ankles, gleaming white as sculptured marble through the veiling hair.

Mrs Jefferson first recovered speech.

"Who is she?" she whispered eagerly. "Not at our hotel I think. Looks like a walking advertisement of a new hair restorer. She'd be a fortune to them if she'd have her photograph taken so!"

The newcomer meanwhile advanced and took one of the chairs near Mrs Jefferson. That lady suffered strongly from the curiosity that is characteristic of her admirable nation. She re-seated herself for the purpose of studying the strange vision, and, not being in the least degree afflicted with English reticence, she set the ball of conversation going by an immediate remark:

"Had any of these baths before?"

The person addressed looked at her with grave and serious eyes.

"No," she said; and her voice was singularly clear and sweet, but with something foreign in the slow accentuation of words. "I only arrived at this hotel last night."

"Oh!" said Mrs Jefferson, "is that so? I thought I hadn't seen you before. Come for your health?"

"Yes," said the stranger, accepting a glass of water from the attendant, who had just come forward.

"Not gout, I suppose?" suggested Mrs Jefferson, conscious that there were arched feet in the world even more exquisite in shape and size than her own.

"Gout! Oh, no!" said the stranger, smiling faintly. "They say my nerves are not strong. I sleep badly, I am easily startled, and easily fatigued." She paused a moment, and one delicate hand, glittering with rings, pushed back the dark weight of rippling hair from her brow. "I have had a great mental shock," she said, quietly. "Such things require time... one cannot easily forget..."

Her eyes had grown dreamy and abstracted. The hand that had pushed back her heavy hair fell on her lap. She looked at it and its shining rings, and Mrs Jefferson's sharp glance followed hers. Was there a plain gold circlet among that glittering array?--was the beautiful stranger wife or maiden?

"If any man saw her now!" she thought involuntarily. "My! I wouldn't give much for his peace of mind afterwards! What owls she makes us all look!"

"Nerves are queer things," she said aloud. "Can't say I'm much troubled with them, except here," and she moved her foot explanatorily. "Just that joint. It's agony sometimes. Suppressed gout, you know. You wouldn't think so to look at it, would you?"

"That the gout was--suppressed? certainly I should," answered the stranger, smiling. "There is no external sign of it. I always thought gout meant large lumps, and swellings of the joints."

"It is not often that people do sympathise with illness," said the beautiful woman. "When we ourselves are well, we think suffering can't be so very great after all, and when we are ill we are quite sure no one else has to bear so much pain. Human nature is essentially selfish. It is a natural incident of living at all that we should estimate our own life as more important than our neighbours."

"Well," laughed Mrs Jefferson, "if we sacrificed it to them, it might be a doubtful benefit. I often thank my stars I wasn't born in the age of martyrs. If J. had been, I'm sure the very sight of the rack or the faggot would have made me swear anything."

"The history of religions is a very curious history," said the stranger in her low clear tones. "Looked at dispassionately, it has done very little for mankind in general, save to prove one fundamental truth that is more significant than any doctrine or dogma. That truth is the inherent need in all humanity of something to worship. From the highest to the lowest degrees of civilisation that need has made itself the exponent of external forms. It is the kernel of all religions."

"A kernel that is surrounded with a very hard shell," said Mrs Jefferson glibly. She liked discussions, and was accustomed to say she could talk on any subject--having indeed come from a country where women did talk on any subject, whether they were acquainted, with it or not. "I don't think there is much spirituality in any modern religion," she went on. "I surmise it's dead. Science has got the upper hand of theology and means to keep it. People are not content now-a-days with being told `you must believe so and so.' They want a reason for believing. You're not a Romanist, are you?" she added suddenly.

"I--oh no," said the stranger with a faint smile.

"I'm glad of that, for I was just going to say that the Church of Rome has done more to retard rational and spiritual progress than any other. I don't believe in the voice of man barring the way to inquiry. God made man, and, as far as I have ever been able to learn, He made them all on one pattern. The offices and dignities they give themselves won't make them one whit greater or more important in His eyes."

"You are a democrat, I see," said the beautiful woman, looking gravely and scrutinisingly at the eager flushed face, with its ruffled damp curls, and quick restless eyes.

"Well," said Mrs Jefferson, "I don't exactly know what I am. My views are liberal on most subjects. I've travelled a good bit, and I think that enlarges the mind. I've just run over to have a look at England. Our people are laughing at her pretty well. The Gladstone party have made a lovely hash of affairs haven't they? But perhaps you don't care for politics, being foreign."

"Oh, yes, I do," answered her strange companion. "And I am specially interested in English politics," she added. "Like yourself I was curious to see a nation who seemed determined to court their own shame, and to deify the being whose career is signally marked by obloquy and disaster."

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