CHAPTER IX.
THE CLIMAX OF THEOSOPHIC BROTHERHOOD.
“To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity.”—Theosophical Society, Object I.
“Pestling a poisoned poison behind his crimson lights!”—“Maud.”
THE “MASTER WILL PROVIDE” MISSIVE.
We left the president of the Theosophical Society staring at the impression of his own “flap-doodle” seal on that which purported to be a missive from the Mahatma.
The purport of the missive was precisely what the prescient Judge had foretold. Colonel Olcott was not to sell the Blavatsky jewels, as the money would be provided.
Having shown it to a brother member, the Colonel replaced it in the envelope, and went off to have a few words with Mr. William Q. Judge.
He remarked to Judge that he had missed a certain brass seal from among Madame Blavatsky’s relics, and described the Panjab seal and the story of its making; not mentioning, however, the name of the exact city where it was made. Had Judge seen the seal?
Judge answered in the negative. Upon which the Colonel remarked meaningly (I quote his own account) that he “hoped no scoundrel would get possession of it, and use it to give colour to bogus Mahatma messages,” adding that he would at once recognise an impression from the seal.
He did not mention that he had looked for and found the missive in the envelope.
After two days he looked into the envelope for that missive again. It was gone!
Some judicious hand had removed it. “Judicious,” says the Dictionary, “literally: of or pertaining to a Judge.” Colonel Olcott concluded with some assurance that the hand which had removed that missive, the hand which had put it there, and the hand which had written it, were one and the same hand, and that hand William Q. Judge’s. That is a conclusion which we must leave the two gentlemen to settle between them. ***** But note the sequel. The writer of the missive, whoever he was, was as good as his word.
When the Convention in due course was held, it was announced that a donation had been contributed towards the expenses in a peculiar way.
There had appeared to one of the brethren one afternoon a dark and mysterious Oriental figure, who gave no name, but deposited two Bank of England £10 notes (from Tibet?), which were backed with the familiar red cryptograph, after which he, like Mr. Lewis Carroll’s Snark, “softly and silently vanished away.”
It will not surprise the astute reader to learn that the brother favoured with this substantial spectre was William Q. Judge.
Well, there was the £20, and the vice-president’s reputation as an occultist stood higher than ever. There was a time, years before, when the society had made much of a similar vision of its president’s, one which, the Colonel used to explain, had first assured him of the truth of Madame Blavatsky’s doctrines. On his asking for a sign, the Colonel’s figure, which was, of course, like Mr. Judge’s, the “astral body” of a Mahatma, had materialised its turban, and disappeared into several yards of substantial textile fabric. “And here,” the Colonel was wont to conclude the story, “here, you see, is the turban!”—whipping it from his coat-tail pocket. Ah! that was in the palmy eighties. But now where was he? What was a chela who conjured up a turban beside one who could conjure up £20 hard cash—“on the table,” as Hilda Wangel would say?
In a word, Colonel Olcott was altogether thrown into the shade by this bold stroke, and had not even the face to suggest that perhaps Mr. Judge’s story was only a donor’s graceful way of conveying assistance from his own pocket. The Colonel pulled rather a sour face, however, over the heavy sum with which the society’s chest was debited when Mr. Judge’s expenses at the Convention came to be paid. For, Judge having attended in his official capacity, it was the Colonel’s treasury at Adyar which had to foot the bill. Personally, I consider the miracles cheap at the price.
This reminds me of the matter of Madame Blavatsky’s Rosicrucian jewel, in which also the Mahatma stole an amusing march on the Colonel. This was a pendant set with gems, which had the property of changing colour with every change in Madame’s health—so she and the faithful Olcott used to swear. The Colonel had his own ideas about the future of this mystic gewgaw; but what was his disgust on getting to Avenue-road to learn that the Master had sent a message for it to be given to Judge, and that Mrs. Besant had accordingly handed it over! Nor was the Colonel’s chagrin lightened by the fact that the forgetful Mahatma attempted (through Judge, of course) to put him off the track of the jewel by a message to quite another effect—an exceedingly misleading message.
For all I know, the gift was as valueless intrinsically as the brass seal; but Theosophically it was a distinct score for Mr. Judge and his Mahatma thus to amalgamate the two mystic apparatuses in one firm’s hands, so to speak. ***** THE “INNER GROUP” MISSIVE.
After the passages described above, Mr. Judge’s Mahatma was chary of subjecting any more epistolary efforts to the eye of Colonel Olcott. And he seems to have become more cautious altogether. In the following September, however, he succumbed to the temptation of intervening again in the administration of the society. A letter with the usual trimmings was enclosed to the Inner Group, bearing upon its constitution and future changes, in one of Mr. Judge’s on the same subject and in the same sense (September 14).
Just at this time Colonel Olcott was visiting America, en route for Japan, where he was to teach the Buddhists their own religion in a flying visit. He took the opportunity of making some more pointed representations to Mr. Judge on the vagaries of his Master.
The result was prompt and significant.
During the very next month Mrs. Besant, then preparing for her trip to India, received a cablegram from the vice-president in America to this effect:—
You are desired not to go to India remain where you are grave danger Olcott await further particulars by an early mail.
THE “GRAVE DANGER OLCOTT” MISSIVE.
At Avenue-road this mysterious telegram was at first read in the sense, “Grave danger to Olcott.” The President was just then due at Tokyo, and there was a report of an earthquake thereabouts. For a while there was a great flutter over this convincing case of Mahatmic prescience. When, however, the “early mail” arrived with Mr. Judge’s explanatory letter, quite a different complexion was put on the telegram. After reading this letter, and one from the inevitable Mahatma which Mr. Judge enclosed, the conclusion of the Inner Group was that the “grave danger” against which the Master warned Mrs. Besant was “from Olcott.” The Tibetan founder of the society, in short, warned Mrs. Besant against imperilling her safety in the neighbourhood of its president!
The Mahatma had declared war on Colonel Olcott.
This was the first shot in the campaign.
But what could this danger from Colonel Olcott be? Mr. Judge and his Mahatma left that darkly vague. Some of their friends in England dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s for them. It is hardly credible, but the suggestion was nothing less preposterous than that Colonel Olcott intended to poison Mrs. Besant!
I have no great veneration for Colonel Olcott’s character, and none at all for his intelligence; but I frankly apologise to him for having to mention this astounding nonsense in connexion with his name. I mention it simply in order to explain one of the documents which follow, and to throw a light on the minds of the colleagues who made or believed the charge; and I suppose I need scarcely add that I attach to it no other value whatever. Colonel Olcott is about as remote as it is possible to conceive from the sort of stuff of which murderers are made. I am sure he never had and never will have any more intention to poison Mrs. Besant, or anybody else, than the Man in the Moon. Having said so much to make any misunderstanding impossible, I return to the suspicions or pretended suspicions of the Colonel’s professed “Brothers.”
Positively, the only material which these ladies and gentlemen had to work on was an innocent conversation of the Colonel’s with a friend on the subject of poisons, Indian and other, which took place at a date when Mrs. Besant was not yet even a member of the society! The “evidence”—save the mark!—was such as ordinary non-Theesophical folk would not give even a dog a bad name on. But Mahatmas and their friends are different, and Mr. Judge’s Mahatma was well served. For this trivial episode, buzzed about from mouth to mouth in connexion with the sinister hints of “Mahatma M,” sufficed to make this monstrous charge against their president currently believed at Avenue-road, for some weeks at least, by the very inmost and governing circle of his colleagues, with Mrs. Besant at their head!
A belief once discarded, it is easy to deny that it ever existed. But this particular belief, or half-belief, showed itself in action. Mrs. Besant deferred her visit to India, and to impatient Indian disciples wrote that “Master had forbidden her to come,” and “till that order was countermanded” she would not budge.
Now just pause a moment, and enjoy the exquisite irony of this unique situation. The Theosophic Society was to be “the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Mankind.” At this moment, taking the three chief exponents of this new Brotherliness, the president believed the vice-president to be fabricating bogus documents; the vice-president apparently believed the president to have designs to poison the high-priestess; and the high-priestess, having these two beliefs to choose from, coquetted at least, as we have seen, with the more heinous of the two.
Other Theosophists appear from their course of action to have accomplished the intellectual feat of believing both.