Author: Anya Seton
Category: Literature
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“I have,” said Akananda quietly, “seen several cases of suspended animation in India, some Yogis can do it at will. In old-fashioned Western medical terms, this is a form of catalepsy.”
“Indeed.” Foster’s irritation subsided. “Sorry I blew up, but I’m only an overworked G.P. and I’ve never seen anything like this. If she does recover, what about brain damage? And what the devil do we do with the young woman in the meantime?”
“I don’t know the prognosis,” said Akananda sighing. “We must get a neuropsychiatrist down. I recommend Sir Arthur Moore, and he should be summoned at once. As to Lady Marsdon, we can only keep her warm, and perhaps try cortisone. Sir Arthur may have other ideas.”
“Yes.” Foster was relieved. Fellow seemed sound enough, anyway, nothing more to be done at the moment, except get on to Arthur Moore, then get himself back to surgery where he was long overdue.
When Foster and the matron had left, Akananda put his thin bronze hand gently on Celia’s forehead, which was cold and moist. The remaining nurse stared suspiciously.
Akananda shut his eyes and concentrated on receiving some impression from Celia’s brain. At first he felt nothing but a dense, velvety blackness.
“Celia Marsdon,” said Akananda silently, “where are you now?”
He waited, while enfolding himself with her in the dead blackness, until he suddenly felt a tingle in his hand. The tingle ran up his arm, and a scene, tiny and sharp as a stage setting viewed through the wrong end of binoculars, slid into his mind. He saw a hilltop, crowned by greenery, chestnuts, oak; he saw the distinctive shape of their leaves, and beneath them, the glossy dark green of holly. There was a gray, mossy stone wall encircling the trees, and the ruins of a chapel against the wall. He knew it was a chapel because of the lancet windowframes and the rugged stone cross over the portal. A thatched wooden hut was attached to the chapel’s south wall, its door hung slack on leather hinges. Two figures stood just outside on the trampled grass. One was a monk in black robes; there was a knotted scourge around his waist, and his head was bent to show a round shaven tonsure of short dark hair around the circular patch. The monk’s arms were around a girl in a blue skirt and laced bodice. The girl’s curling, tumbling yellow hair fell to her hips, except where some strands shone golden over the monk’s black cloth sleeves. The two were frozen still as a colored photograph; unlike a photograph the little scene vibrated with emotion—a frenzied longing and desperation. Then the scene disappeared.
“Doctor!” repeated the young nurse, as she had already done twice.
The Hindu opened his eyes to see a pert, disapproving face under a starched white coif. “Yes, what is it, Nurse?” he said.
“There’s a phone call from Medfield, the Duchess of Drewton wants to speak to you.”
Akananda nodded, slowly composing himself. “Very well, where’s the telephone—at the desk? Don’t touch or disturb her, will you?” He indicated Celia.
The nurse gave him a scornful look. “No fear,” she said. “Touching her will be the undertaker’s job next.”
Akananda spoke on the telephone with Myra, then found Lily Taylor waiting miserably in the hall.
“I’m going back to Medfield for a bit,” he said. “Poor lady,” he exclaimed as he saw her face. “Come back with me and take some rest. There’s nothing to do for your daughter at present.” He hesitated, but knowing that of all the people involved in the crisis, Lily alone would partially understand, he added, “I think that Lady Marsdon, due to some great shock, has been jerked back into the past, her past life, and Sir Richard’s, and for that matter, yours and mine. It was then that the violent emotions and actions were initiated, those which are inexorably showing their results today.”
Lily clutched his arm. “But how can we stop it? Celia’s dying. Oh, God, I don’t understand . . .” She covered her face with her hands.
“We must stop it, or at least, with divine mercy we may stop it.” He spoke with more assurance than he felt. For now, according to the Duchess’s phone call, Sir Richard, too . . . He put his arm around Lily, and hurried her to the car.
Myra awaited them on Medfield’s doorstep; Nanny just behind her.
“I’m so relieved to see you, Doctor Akananda,” Myra spoke fervently. During the last half hour she had come to share the old Scotswoman’s anxiety, and also her odd faith in the Hindu. “Richard’s still locked in. I went to the schoolroom door myself. There’s no sound. Do hurry!”
Akananda inclined his head. “But I must be alone. Will you all please wait downstairs.” He indicated the drawing room, where there was a murmur of subdued voices. Myra put her arm around Lily, who was swaying. Akananda mounted the great staircase to his bedroom, while Nanny respectfully and stubbornly followed him three steps behind. She waited by the closed door while the Hindu, inside, purified his mind for the struggle. He chanted very low, words from the Athrava-Veda.
“As day and night are not afraid, nor ever suffer loss or harm, Even so my spirit, Fear not thou . . . As what hath been and what shall be fear not, nor suffer loss or harm, Even so, my spirit, fear not thou.”
Akananda waited until the quiet English bedroom dissolved around him into golden-white light—the illumination of compassionate wisdom—as he raised his arms with touching palms in the universal gesture of prayer. He arose and opened his bedroom door. He nodded without surprise at Nanny’s eager expectant face.
“We will go to the schoolroom,” he said.
The schoolroom door was wide open when they arrived, and Richard was sitting at one of the old desks writing. Nanny gasped and ran to him.
“Oh, Maister-r Dick! Thank God. Ye frighted me.”
Richard looked at her somberly and shrugged. “I’m not twelve years old now, Nanny, and am better equipped to face unpleasant events. You have come from the hospital?” he addressed Akananda. “How is Celia?” His tone was coldly detached. “I presume she’s in hospital, since I heard an ambulance.”
“She is very ill, indeed, Sir Richard, unconscious. You must go to her.”
“Has she asked for me, or indeed, perhaps for Harry Jones?”
Akananda was as shocked as the old nurse was by the tone and implication.
“Good Lor-rd, lad,” Nanny cried, grasping Richard’s arm. “She’s no conscious, she’s near deid, ye mun see her, ’tis your wife!”
Richard stood up and drew back. “I’ve done Celia quite enough harm already. It’s better that we never meet again. Her mother will look after her, and will, of course, engage the best medical attention.”
There was silence. Akananda noted that the crucifix and the candles had disappeared from the little alcove, even while he sought for the guidance and wisdom he had felt a few minutes earlier—wisdom to combat the inflexibilities, distortions and cruelties of the human will.
“What do you propose to do, Sir Richard?” he asked quietly.
“Rid my house of people, everyone connected with these past months of my disastrous marriage. I wish to live henceforth quite alone, as long as I choose to live.”
“Ye’ve gone daft,” Nanny whispered, tears spilling down her cheeks. “M’ puir bairn, ye’ve gone daft. Tis the cairse fra the Chronicle ye read sae often i’ the library, the auld fearfu’ deeds’re come back on ye.”
“Bah!” Richard exploded. “Morbid claptrap! I shall never think of the past again. The book is closed.”
“That, Sir Richard,” said Akananda sternly, “in your case is impossible. Circumstances have reproduced themselves in this life so that you may have a chance to redeem the mistakes of your past one. You and Lady Marsdon both. At present you are compounding the evil.”
Richard raised his chin. “I don’t in the least understand you, Dr. Akananda, nor wish to listen to you further. Nanny, will you direct the servants to make up the red bedroom in the east wing. I’ll move there until all of Lady Marsdon’s effects have been cleared out and I am alone at Medfield Place.” He walked from the schoolroom and down the passage tow
ards the east wing.
The two disparate beings, a Hindu doctor and a Scottish nanny, looked at each other, helpless and dismayed.
“He’s no truly heartless and cruel, sir,” she said. “I’ve ne’er seen him lak this.” She fished a handkerchief from her pocket and mopped her eyes. “Ye hear-rd him, ‘as lang as I choose to live’—Oh, Doctor-r.”
“I know,” he answered. “Will you show me the book you spoke of, the Chronicle?”
“Aye,” she said, and led the way down the back stairs to the library.
Akananda carried the heavy volume to the lectern under the stained glass window. He studied the entry Nanny pointed out. He traced the Elizabethan writing carefully with his brown index finger, while certainty grew within him. Here was the key, which he was not yet quite able to turn, though while he held himself receptive he caught glimpses of past realities which he had hitherto felt only in flashes of intuition, precognition, and buried waves from Celia’s psyche.
“Ightham Mote.” He nodded, then looked sharply again at the reference to its Tudor owners. “Sir Chris; Allen & his vexatious ladye . . . she hath a mad wolfish eye”—as he stared at this there came to him the image of Edna Simpson, the polka-dotted bulk, as she had sat at dinner last night glaring at Celia—later doting on Sir Richard. That identification seemed probable; somehow had the woman last night echoed her old crime. But how? He shook his head. Gropings and perplexities. Tragedy enough right now, and more to come, unless . . .
He was aware of the anxious bird-eyes watching him. “Yes,” he sighed, “here are many clues, if we could relive the whole, see clear what happened . . .”
“Could ye do that?” asked Nanny eagerly. “Mak’ them see the past?”
Akananda shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve no miraculous powers. Yet, there are drugs and, perhaps, hypnosis . . . not Sir Richard, he’s closed himself in, but possibly—Lady Marsdon.”
“There was an auld wise woman, lived across the bur-rn from our cot when I was a lass, she could do it, mak’ ye see the past i’ the smoke o’ the tur-rf fire. She stopped Jemmie McCleod from murthering his brother that way, when she showed him he’d done it afore, back i’ the time o’ the Bruce, an’ ended up kicking on the gallows.”
He gave Nanny an appreciative look. The Gaelic blood accepted these things as naturally as did the Indian, and it was the crass blind materialism of the Western world in general which it was his hope to penetrate.
“Anither thing Meg did,” Nanny went on breathlessly, “though the meeenister and Mother-r’d ne’er believe. Ma wee sister Annie was bor-rn blind, ’twas dreedfu’ sad to see her gropin’ and stumblin’, and so bonny in other ways. The meenister said ’twas the will o’ God, which I thought verra unjust. But one nicht, Meg, she showed me i’ the turf smoke, Annie had been a verra cruel woman once and burr-rned out a man’s een wi’ a red hot poker. So now she suffered the blindness.”
Akananda gave Nanny a brief smile. “Yes, sometimes the punishment exactly fits the crime, but mostly we are not able to see such conclusive results. We’re dealing with great mysteries, you know.”
“Aye,” said Nanny, “we are her-re in con-fusion, and I’m sore afear-rd.”
“Try not to worry,” he said. “You had better follow Sir Richard’s orders, since there is no reaching through to him now.”
They left the library and Akananda went to the drawing room.
“Sir Richard is quite all right,” he said to the circle of raised faces, “but he does wish to be alone.”
Igor and Harry murmured conventional banalities—they had become very bored by the wait. Myra jumped up, conscious of anticlimax.
“Well, so much the better, let’s get going,” she said to the two men. “Good-bye, Mrs. Taylor, I do hope Celia is soon recovered.” She shook Lily’s limp hand. “Good-bye, Sue,” she said to the girl, who looked disappointed. The house party was ending in such a flat, sad way, and nobody would tell her anything. “Give me a ring in town before you fly home,” added Myra kindly. “I’ll introduce you to some presentable young men.”
Myra, Harry and Igor hurried away. The remaining three in the drawing room heard the departing purr of the Bentley, the diminishing crunch of gravel on the drive.
“I must hurry back to Celia,” Lily murmured, taking a sip of cold coffee, then pushing the cup away. “Richard will come with me, of course.”
Akananda sat down on an urn-backed Sheraton chair and folded his hands. “Mrs. Taylor, I must talk to you.”
The weight in Lily’s chest grew heavier, but she understood him. She turned to the girl. “Sue, dear, will you take a message to the vicar, tell them Celia’s fallen sick and won’t be at the Flower Guild meeting tomorrow. They may, however, count on the usual hampers of roses for St. John’s Day.”
Sue nodded slowly. “Okay, Cousin Lily, be glad to.” She trailed disconsolately out of the drawing room.
Lily’s anxious blue gaze returned to the Hindu. “What is it with Richard?” she asked, very low. “He’s not really all right, is he?”
“No,” said Akananda. “I must tell you, Mrs. Taylor, that he wants to repudiate his marriage, that he wishes every evidence of it removed from Medfield, which I am afraid includes you and little Sue. He has encased himself in steel. Nothing will alter his decision.”
She gasped. “Has he gone crazy?”
“Not medically insane,” said Akananda.
“But he loved Celia, I know he did. And she’s dying—a husband can’t act this way, it’s not—it’s not decent!”
Akananda smiled sadly. “Violent emotions are never decent, Mrs. Taylor. They’re blind forces, often strong enough to carry beyond one lifetime.”
“It couldn’t be,” said Lily, putting her hand to her eyes. “Just because Celia flirted some with Sir Harry, and she was strange last night—but nothing makes sense. Oh, I feel so miserably helpless.” She gasped, pulling a handkerchief from her handbag. “I don’t mean to cry, doesn’t do any good, but if I could understand what’s happened to us . . .”
Akananda rose and walked to the window. He looked out towards the dark green line of the Downs against the serene blue sky. Mysterious and timeless, as remote from shifting human passions as the blissful state of Samadhi which he had always longed to enter. And could not, for he was not yet liberated from attachment and debt. He too was bound on the wheel of Karma.
He turned back to the weeping woman, and touched her shoulder. “I’m nearly as much in the dark as you are, but with your permission I’d like to make an experiment on your daughter, after I’ve conferred with Arthur Moore.” And if she lives, he added to himself.
“Anything,” she whispered. “Anything you think would help.”
“By the way,” said Akananda quietly, “what’s become of the Simpsons?”
Lily started. “I don’t know. I’d forgotten them. Can they still be here?”
“I think so.” His sensitized perceptions were aware of a black focus inside the house, a sinister vortex like a sluggish whirlpool in an inky tarn. “No, you wait,” he said to Lily. “I’ll deal with this.”
He went up to the Simpsons’ door and knocked.
“Coom in, then,” said a woman’s voice. Akananda obeyed, and paused on the threshold, struck by a scene which would have been ludicrous, if he had not been so conscious of evil.
Edna—red and sweaty-faced, her hair rumpled into little damp horns—was on her feet, struggling to hook her foundation garment, while George helped her tug.
“Lumme!” she cried angrily, “I thought you were the maid!” She clutched a Japanese kimono around her billowing flesh.
“Sorry, Mrs. Simpson.” Akananda bowed slightly. “Mrs. Taylor asked me to see how you were doing. Perhaps you didn’t know that there’ve been grave troubles at Medfield today. The other guests have left.”
Except for a dull headache, Edna had largely recovered from the effects of the tincture, and had decided that the dimly remembered events of last nig
ht were another of those bad dreams she suffered from. It also now occurred to her that the nigger whom she had hitherto hardly noticed spoke excellent University English, quite BBC, and seemed to be on intimate terms with the Marsdons. She arranged the kimono with some dignity and spoke genteelly.
“Lady Marsdon is ill? Yes, Mr. Simpson told me.” She indicated George who had retired behind the bed and was gazing at his wife with a mixture of bewilderment and relief. You’d never believe how Edna’d looked an hour ago. Strong-minded she was, after all, his Edna. Something to be leaned on; even though rough and irritable at times, she gave him strength. These past hours were best forgotten.
“I’ve been quaite ill m’self,” said Edna. “So awkward in a strange house, but Ai’m sure I’ve given no trooble. If Sir Richard and Mrs. Taylor are downhearted, we’ll stay on and cheer them up, won’t we, George?”
Akananda controlled his face and his exasperation at the incredible strength of blind stupidity and malice. He could see around the woman her muddy, dark aura, with its zigzag flashes of crimson. And he knew that she was as unconscious of the evil forces emanating from her as was her husband, or for that matter, her victims—Celia, Richard and Lily.
“Mrs. Taylor is off to hospital to be with her daughter,” he said repressively, “and Sir Richard is unwell. We’ll look up a train, and someone can drive you into Lewes.”
“Indeed . . .” Edna’s stubborn jaw squared, but she found herself unable to protest as she wanted to, or marshal convincing arguments for staying near Sir Richard.
“To be sure, Doctor,” said George. “We’ll be packed in a jiffy, won’t we, m’dear?”
Akananda, watching with the clairvoyance which he could sometimes command, saw a change in the little solicitor’s aura, which had been faint and gray. As Simpson spoke to his wife a rosy tinge suffused it, while more amazing still, the angry reds lightened around Edna. There’s actually some love between them! Akananda thought. At the same time he had a shock of precognition about Edna. He saw devouring flames leaping around a bloated, screaming face. He shuddered and spoke in a kinder tone.