XXI. Annie Besant

“One soul that went out alone into the darkness and on the other side found Light, that struggled through storm and on the other side found Peace.”

Annie Besant.

On our arrival at Adelaide—how different from that of barely two years ago, when I was so merry, so full of youth and glowing hopes—we are driven to the hotel. Our rooms are ready and luncheon is set in the little sitting-room adjoining. Allan has anticipated everything. Will his watchful love, his tender forethought attend me always like this?

I place myself under his guidance, even as I surrender my will to his. I am borne along by the current of his desire, as a leaf is swept by the tempest.

I had grown so weary of my solitude, of the utter forlornness of my outlook. It is sweet to feel this protecting love, enveloping and watching over me even from afar.

He will be here soon, my handsome lover, in two days, three at the most. Then, forgetting everything, the world and its empty conventions, its superficial duties, we shall set forth for the land of my dreams, Ceylon, with its palms and pearls; India, with its palaces and strange temples.

After a few hours’ rest, the rays of the setting sun gleaming on the sea whereon is Allan’s yacht, lure me to the balcony. The heavens are ablaze as with fire. Clouds of reddish violet are massed against the background of gold, and the red disc of the sun is sinking rapidly into the waves. While I am seeking intently for a glimpse of the green ray of the legend, the presage of happiness—love is making me superstitious—a familiar voice, the clear sonorous tones of Dick Power falls upon my ear.

“Daisy, the baby is awake, come quickly and take her.”

My first impulse is to rush through the half-opened French window whence Dick’s voice issues.

They are here, my dear Gwylata friends, and with them the little one of whose birth they wrote me some months ago, and whom they wished to name after me. But a second thought piercing my heart like an arrow, makes me recoil. How can I explain my presence at this hotel, where my rooms have been taken by Allan. How can I tell them that I am awaiting my lover, and that the luxury around me is the price of my shame. A wave of hot blood mounts to my forehead as the thought presents itself to me. This, then, is the future a forbidden love will entail! Constrained to hide from all those I have known and loved, to blush before the daughter of my uncle’s employé! And will not some echo of my guilt reach Hector, saddening his last years of suffering, bringing remorse for having left me to the perils of life. I close the window gently, drawing the thick curtains, but the sight of the formal sitting-room, and the numerous boxes Barker has had sent from the shops in order that I may select an outfit for a long voyage, the aspect of this prim, enigmatical woman, who, under a veneer of respect conceals perhaps contempt, and who probably laughs and jests about me with the hotel servants, all revolt me.

I am stifling. I cannot breathe here. A short walk in the fresh air for a few minutes, lost in a crowd of strangers, will help me to regain composure, tranquillity.

Declining Barker’s companionship, I leave the hotel and mingle with the throng streaming from the railway station opposite, and find myself in the main artery, King William-street, I remember. I force myself to note details—the straight, wide thoroughfare, suggestive, as in many new towns, of a great future, looks cheerful and animated under the electric lights. The flower and fruit shops and the brilliantly illuminated hotel bars are open to the happy-looking folk hurrying along, citizens of a free and rich country. It is the boulevard of this city of the Antipodes, a treeless boulevard true, but with wide pavements covered with verandahs as a shield from the ardent sun. Its temples adorn the street corners—monumental banks erected for the cult of the Golden Calf. Higher up two twin towers are detached against the dark sapphire sky. Twice I ascend and descend the street, striving to get away from my thoughts; to forget myself if only for a moment, in the interest of watching the night life of the Australian city, new to me, for I know only the tranquil evening stillness of the Bush. In Melbourne I never found courage to go out alone after daylight.

A blare of instruments from one of the cross streets! It is the Salvation Army, calling to repentant sinners. Well! I don’t want to repent. Besides, the appeal is too noisy. It may touch less exacting natures. What can it offer me?

Opposite the Post Office, the Town Hall displays its illuminated facade. A big poster bears a well-known name—Annie Besant.

It is the name of the celebrated woman whose eloquence Mrs. Clarke, my dear Kate, used to extol.

Large capitals announce the title of the evening’s lecture—Re-incarnation.

Who knows! Perhaps it may solve the mystery of my dreams, and those haunting resemblances. I enter. The room is already full; only under the balcony are there some empty seats. Two young girls make room for me. I gaze round. The audience is in some respects an extraordinary one. More than 2000 people, belonging to all classes of society, are packed closely together without distinction of rank. The clock strikes eight. A young man with ascetic features and the brow of a thinker introduces the lecturer in a few words. Everything about her is white, the snowy hair, the long statuesque folds of her dress, even her flesh has the purity and transparency of alabaster. Her voice is pure, clear and resonant, filling the great hall. In simple, lucid language, she gives a brief outline of the principles of that ancient science of which she is the modern exponent, the basic unity of religions, the brotherhood of Man, the Law of Justice controlling the universe, human perfectibility built up from the germ which, descending from its Divine source, re-ascends to God, fully developed and perfected. Then confining herself to the theme of the evening, she explains the doctrine of re-incarnation, its antiquity, its philosophy, the belief in it by all the ancient nations of the earth and by modern countries of the Orient, by many of the great minds in past ages, and by poets and thinkers of later centuries. Above all, she depicts it as the only reasonable solution of the great enigmas of evil and seeming injustice.

In concise phrases she continues:—

“Every man is a living spirit; he is part of the life of the supreme, he is the offspring of Deity. As sparks come forth from a fire, so comes he forth from the Divine Spirit. He comes to earth to learn. All are equally ignorant when plunged into human life. Ignorance is the only original sin, and it is not criminal but inevitable. As the powers of the Deity within him are unfolded he grows into the stature of the Perfect Man. Passing out of the first human life, ignorant, helpless, having committed what we should call crimes, but which were no crimes, to that new soul without knowledge to distinguish between good and evil, but were only experiences—the man passes into the intermediate world. There he learns that these things are not the best to do because they bring trouble on the other side. He takes his cravings and his passions with him; he is tormented by them until they are worn out, starved out, and then he passes on to a higher world, where everything in him of good is nourished and increased; then back to earth he comes again with the gained experience, the added knowledge to learn further lessons, every life adding some necessary experience, every re-birth bringing with it larger and wider powers, learning righteousness by the suffering that treads on the heels of evil, learning compassion by the sorrow which is endured under the yoke of oppression, learning all lessons by experience and transmuting them into character until perfection is reached, until the Perfect Man shines out in all the splendour of man become divine.

“Then compulsory re-incarnation is over; unless the man returns as Saviour he passes on, all earth’s lessons learnt, into wider life and more splendid opportunities.”

How can I give an idea of the impression these vivid words leave upon me?

If I could only give back to them the sound of that voice vibrating with emotion, alternately convincing and dominating, but more than all, restore the accents of truth, of profound conviction, which distinguish the woman who believes, the Seer who knows!

Is it a mirage, the play of my imagination, or the magnetic influences of these thousands of hearts and spirits strained towards her in the tense and breathless silence of the vast hall?

Is it the involuntary effort with which my whole being rushes forth to receive the message of Faith and Hope which her marvellous voice carries to my heart, filled with dark forebodings? I am oblivious to all but that white figure, majestic, almost superhuman in its spiritual strength. A light seems to envelop her, radiating as in an aureole.

Yes, it is the true evangel she preaches, the Gospel of Love, taught by the Christ to his brothers, but broadened, expanded, enfolding all Humanity as it toils upward, life on life, towards its final goal.

The voice of the orator drops as she explains simply and lucidly how the contradictions of life, and the presence of evil, are consequent upon the different ages of the souls born into the world. She dwells on the widely divergent ideals of morality, which, obviously, cannot be the same for the infant souls of the criminal and the savage, and for the man of genius, the saint, and seer, those elder brothers of humanity.

The final proof of the doctrine interests me keenly—that strange memory of past existences, glimpsed by some only in intermittent flashes, but to others recalled and recognised as the links of a complete and continuous chain throughout the ages.

She cites the words of Edward Carpenter, a poet, too little known—“Every pain that I suffered in one body became a power which I wielded in the next,” and those of Christ, “Be perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.”

She points out the mockery of this mandate when applied to only one short life.

“But,” she resumes, “He who spoke knew there was time enough; knew that you could grow from strength to strength; knew that divine perfection is your destiny, and urged you to step forward on the road that leads thereto.

“... Oh, if I could tell you what it was to come out of all the struggle and misery in London, and to know that it was not hopeless, and that those miserable drunken men and women, those children of wretchedness and vice, were only babes in the beginning of their long life!... What joy to think that one could help them in their upward climb, quicken their progress, inspire them with hope—that one could say to the criminal, ‘My brother, where you are I was myself; and as for the saints above us, we shall both grow up to take our stand where they now stand in the eternal life.’

“Compare this doctrine with the other two theories of life, and apply this key to the turning of the locks of human misery and human ignorance. Study, think for yourself, and you will see that it is true.... It will become for you what it has been to thousands of us, the chasing away of darkness, the dawn of light, the rising of the sun ... until every child of man shall have grown to the fulness of the stature of the Christ.”⁠

The orator leaves the hall in a reverent silence which no one dares break by a single note of applause. For one moment these thousands have caught a glimpse of the ideal of perfected humanity. A great wave of emotion has encompassed them, too deep, too holy to find expression in word or movement. It is apparent in the dilated eyes, in the pallor of the transfigured faces, which, for a moment, have vibrated with the mystic tremor.

For an hour and a half the lecturer has spoken, holding her audience in the grasp of her wonderful magnetism, not a murmur, not a sound, save the impassioned voice penetrating, convincing, dominating all hearts, even if only for a moment, with the great Hope. Perhaps on the majority the impressions will be fleeting, but I am fired with the wish to learn, to know. The thirst of science is burning in my veins.

At the door some small tables are littered with books. I take those which some one, a member of the society, judging by her sympathetic smile, holds out to me.

I have spent the night reading, and this morning I am writing to her who has torn aside for me a corner of the veil.