You also resent the apparent absurdity of entrusting H.S.O. with a mission you find him unfit for, in London at any rate — socially and intellectually. Well — some day, perchance, you may also learn that you were equally wrong in this, as in many other things. Coming results may teach you a bitter lesson.
And now to the latest development, to the proof that you were not "unjustly treated" — as you complain in your letter — tho' you have treated both H.S.O. and H.P.B. in a very cruel way. Your greatest grievance is caused by your perplexity. It is agonizing — you say — to be ever kept in the dark, etc. You feel profoundly hurt at what you choose to call an evident and growing "unfriendliness, the change of tone" and so on. You are mistaken from first to last. There was neither "unfriendliness," nor any change of feeling. You simply mistook M.'s natural brusqueness whenever he speaks or writes seriously.
As for my short remarks about you to H.P.B., who appealed to me and who was in her right — you never thought of the real and true reason; I had no time; I could hardly give a passing thought to yourself or the L.L. As well said by her,
"No one has ever thought of accusing you of any intentional wrong" — to either ourselves or chelas. As to an unintentional one — happily prevented in time by me — there was one certainly: carelessness. You never thought of the difference between the constitution of a Bengali and that of an Englishman, the power of endurance of one, and the same power in the other. Mohini was left for days in a very cold room without a fireplace. He never uttered one word of complaint, and I had to protect him from a serious illness, to give him my time and attention, to him I so needed to bring about certain results, to him who had sacrificed everything for me. . . . Hence, M.'s tone you complain of. Now you have it explained, that you were not "unjustly treated" but simply had to submit to a remark which it was impossible for you to avoid, since the mistake might have happened again. Then you deny there ever was any spite in you against K. Very well; call it by any other name you like; yet it was a feeling that interfered with strict justice, and made O. commit a still worse blunder than he had already committed — but which was allowed to take its course for it suited our purposes, and did no great harm except to himself — alone, who was so ungenerously snubbed for it. You accuse him of having done mischief to your Society and perhaps, "irretrievably"? Where is the harm done?. . . You are again mistaken. It is your nerves that made you write to H.P.B. words I would you had never uttered — for your own sake. Shall I prove to you — at any rate in one case — how utterly unjust you have been in suspecting either of them, of having either complained or told falsehoods to us about you? I trust, however, that you will never repeat what I will tell you: i.e. who it was (or might have been but was not, for she came too late) — my innocent informer about Mohini. You are at liberty to verify it one day, but I would not have that most excellent woman feel discomforted or miserable on my account. It was Mme. Gebhard whom I had promised to visit subjectively. I saw her one morning, when I was busy with Mohini making him impermeable — descending the stairs. She had heard his teeth chatter, as he was also coming down from the floor above. She knew he was still in his little fireless room days after Olcott had gone and when he might have been easily placed in the next room. She had stopped to wait for him and as I looked into her I heard the words pronounced mentally: "Well, well. . . if his Master only knew! . . ." and then stopping on the landing she asked him if he would not have some additional warm clothing and such other kind words. "His master — knew" and had already remedied the evil; and knowing also, that it was unintentional — felt no "unfriendliness" at the time for he knows Europeans too well to expect from them more than they can give. Nor was it the only mute reproach I found addressed to you in Mme. Gebhard's heart, as in the minds of several others of your friends: — and it is but right that you should know it — remembering that like yourself they judge nearly everything on appearance.