On our arrival I had a good
look at her heavy, white face, as deeply pitted with smallpox as a
solitaire board, and I wondered if she hailed from Moscow or
Margate. She was tightly surrounded by strenuous and palpitating
ladies and all the blinds were up. Seeing no vacant seat near her,
I sat down upon a low, stuffed chair in the window. After making a
substantial tea, she was seen to give a sobbing and convulsive
shudder, which caused the greatest excitement; the company closed
up round her in a circle of sympathy and concern. When pressed to
say why her bust had heaved and eyelids flickered, she replied:
"A murderer has passed below our windows." The awe-struck ladies
questioned her reverently but ardently as to how she knew and what
she felt. Had she visualised him? Would she recognise the guilty
one if she saw him and, after recognising him, feel it on her
conscience if she did not give him up to the law? One lady
proposed that we should all go round to the nearest police-station
and added that a case of this kind, if proved, would do more to
dispell doubts on spirits than all the successful raps, taps,
turns and tables. Being the only person in the window at the time,
I strained my eyes up and down Brook Street to see the murderer,
but there was not a creature in sight.
Madame Blavatsky turned out to be an audacious swindler.
To return to Chatsworth: our host, the Duke of Devonshire, was a
man whose like we shall never see again; he stood by himself and
could have come from no country in the world but England.
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