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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ghosts I Have Seen, by Violet Tweedale
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ghosts I Have Seen
+       And Other Psychic Experiences
+
+Author: Violet Tweedale
+
+Release Date: May 23, 2012 [EBook #39769]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GHOSTS I HAVE SEEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+GHOSTS I HAVE SEEN
+
+AND OTHER PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES
+
+BY
+
+VIOLET TWEEDALE
+
+
+NEW YORK
+FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+PUBLISHERS
+
+_Copyright, 1919, by_
+FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                                    PAGE
+
+I "SILK DRESS" AND "RUMPUS"                                   1
+
+II THE GHOST OF BROUGHTON HALL                               14
+
+III CURIOUS PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES                              33
+
+IV EAST END DAYS AND NIGHTS                                  48
+
+V THE MAN IN THE MARYLEBONE ROAD                             66
+
+VI THE GHOST OF PRINCE CHARLIE                               74
+
+VII PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS                                   91
+
+VIII SOME STRANGE EVENTS                                     98
+
+IX POMPEY AND THE DUCHESS                                   114
+
+X THE INVISIBLE HANDS                                       124
+
+XI DAWNS                                                    133
+
+XII PEACOCK'S FEATHERS--THE SKELETON HAND AT MONTE CARLO    146
+
+XIII I COMMIT MURDER                                        157
+
+XIV THE ANGEL OF LOURDES                                    175
+
+XV THE WRAITH OF THE ARMY GENTLEMAN                         184
+
+XVI AN AUSTRIAN ADVENTURE                                   197
+
+XVII ACROSS THE THRESHOLD                                   211
+
+XVIII HAUNTED ROOMS                                         221
+
+XIX "THE NEW JEANNE D'ARC"                                  241
+
+XX HAUNTED HOUSES--"CASTEL A MARE"                          251
+
+XXI THE SEQUEL                                              263
+
+XXII THE HAUNTED LODGE                                      276
+
+XXIII AURAS                                                 291
+
+XXIV ADIEU                                                  307
+
+
+
+
+GHOSTS I HAVE SEEN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+"SILK DRESS" AND "RUMPUS"
+
+
+From the terrible conditions of the present I have turned back to the
+past, for a little joy and a great deliverance.
+
+In the present one lives no longer from day to day, but from hour to
+hour, and even a fleeting memory of the joys that are no more refreshes
+the soul--wearied, and fainting with a pallid anxiety that wraith-like
+envelops the whole being in a thrall of sadness.
+
+To-day I heard music which I had known and loved in the happy, careless
+long ago, and whilst I was lost in a dream of half-forgotten bliss I
+smelt the fragrance of mimosa flower. I cannot describe the sensations
+of joy that thrilled through my whole being. An involuntary moving of
+the spirit, an emergence into a dream world, described by the Greeks as
+"ecstasy." The music fashioned the invisible link, and I was back again
+on a hillside where the mimosa grew in native abundance. Now, one thinks
+of France only as a hideous battle plain, but memory, the true
+dispensator of time, is never bound by years. She keeps ever fresh, in
+glowing colors, those ideal moments that gather up the utter joys of
+life into one divine sheaf of memory.
+
+It is not only for its great uses that we must have memory, but for its
+joys. It rends the gray veil shrouding present existence, and shows us
+life as what it really is. A phantasmagoria of wonder, wrapped in
+mystery.
+
+The day of miracles is not past, it never will be past, but if you want
+miracles you must have the power of seeing them.
+
+I have written in this book of the miracles I have seen. Some of them
+any one can see, others are reserved for the delectation of the few.
+
+I have written of strange visitants from other realms, and of that vivid
+illumination which at moments lays bare the hidden springs of life, when
+the spirit emerges beyond the limit of human thought, and familiar
+things, beyond the horizon of life, and touches a sphere beyond
+immortality. It is a condition that the grave has nothing to do with, a
+beholding beyond the frontiers of the soul.
+
+I have written of the spiritual life, for without this spiritual life a
+palace would be no wider than a tomb. The vastness of the spirit world
+defies description. It can choose its own pathways, and any one of these
+long, long roads leading to the great mysteries.
+
+It is now almost universally acknowledged that psychic experiences, of a
+specific nature, occur at certain times to certain people, that are not
+explicable by any known science. Generally, they are experiences which
+point to the continuity of the human consciousness with a wider
+spiritual environment, from which the normal man is shut off.
+
+A few such experiences that have come to me I record.
+
+I hope that I have never tried to convince others of the truth of these
+experiences. If I have done so it has been unconsciously done. I am
+absolutely persuaded that such phenomena can only become convincing when
+personally experienced. Such matters ought not to be accepted on
+hearsay. It is mere folly for one woman to attempt to demonstrate to
+another the existence of the human soul. The most that A can communicate
+to B, of any part of her own experiences, is so much of it as is common
+to the experiences of both.
+
+I have proved conclusively to my own consciousness that I am linked up
+with a wider consciousness from which, at times, such experiences flow
+in.
+
+I know my soul to be in touch with a greater soul, which at moments
+enters into communication with me, and opens out a vastness which it is
+impossible to translate into words, and which annihilates space and
+time.
+
+I have had my vision, and I know. Therefore I am quite unmoved by
+criticism or ridicule.
+
+I believe that what has come to me will come to all, and there is no
+need to hurry the process. We are simply a tiny part of a whole, which
+has neither beginning nor end. We live in a universe which is infinite
+in time and space, which has always existed in some form, and will go on
+in some form for ever. The discovery of the law of the indestructibility
+of matter has proved this beyond a doubt.
+
+At some second in time our Universe will be dissolved into new systems,
+for the life of a solar system lasts only a second in eternity, but that
+need not worry us yet. There is lots of time for man to realize his
+soul, and all will doubtless do so at some moment in their many earth
+lives.
+
+The classic idea is that the Golden Age lies in the past, but the Stoic
+doctrine of recurring cycles in the ages of the world seems to suggest
+that the Golden Age may return.
+
+There are people to-day who ask, "Is this the end of the world?"
+
+More probably it is the end of an age. The harvest may be ripe for the
+sickle to be thrust in. The opposition of good and evil may have reached
+their fullest manifestation. It may be the hour in eternity for a
+complete readjustment of the little ant-hills we call great nations.
+
+We know the rise and fall of nations to be an historical fact,
+apparently based on an immutable law. This recurring phenomenon cannot
+be explained, though there are theories. Possibly the true one may be
+found in the failure or compliance to respond to the challenge: "Advance
+to a higher spiritual plane or perish." It may be that the right of
+continuance depends upon the answer to that challenge.
+
+What brought about the decline of those mighty civilizations whose
+monuments of antiquity seem to mock our pride? What insidious disease
+brought about the fall of Rome? The beauty and inspiration of Greece was
+arrested by some swift decay, and the giant temples and Pyramids of
+Egypt, and the Mounds of Mesopotamia, testify to a grandeur far
+surpassing ours.
+
+In the world's morning time, before the mists began to clear, we can
+trace the rise and fall of a score of mighty Empires. From out their
+present tombs of tragic silence arise figures, colossal sculptured
+figures, with faces and forms of commanding power. Assyrians, a mighty
+race, leaving behind whole libraries of record, chiseled upon
+indestructible pages. The lost arts of three thousand years ago.
+
+Earlier still the earth resounded to the thunder of Xenophon's
+thousands, and the chariots of Persia sweeping after them. Lying deeper
+still in the shroud of antiquity the Pharaohs emerge as mighty
+conquerors, and we can dimly discern in the Empire of the Chaldeans the
+movement of a gorgeous civilization, and the majestic figures of men
+versed in mystic, and, to us, unknown lore. In Italy, memorials of a
+refined people, who were precursors of Roman power, have been found,
+forms of perfect grace in delicate vases and coins of gold and silver.
+The old Etruscan art is traced back to the Assyrians' sculpture. The
+snowy crown of ancient Greece budded and bloomed in the mighty halls of
+Assyria's splendor, hundreds of years before Christ. No phantom world
+could furnish a mightier or more resplendent host.
+
+Reading of those proud and mighty civilizations brings the simple life
+of the Nazarene very near to us in years, it also shows us how quickly
+great splendors are sanded over by the hands of time. The British Museum
+holds the sculptured records of twenty-five hundred years. Whilst the
+flames, kindled by the mob of Christian monks, from the great
+Alexandrian library rose to Heaven, the temple fronts of the Pharaohs,
+the Pyramids, the Sphinx, loomed out of the conflagration. The impotent
+torches of the fanatics were powerless against such imperishable
+records. What of our records? Will these ancient civilizations be
+remembered when the fame of modern nations has vanished utterly? Which
+has the best chance of enduring in the future? The paper and pasteboard
+of to-day, or the monuments of stone, to which the Monarchs of bygone
+Empires entrusted the history of their unsurpassed grandeur?
+
+"If thou hadst known in this thy day, even thou, the things which belong
+to thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes."
+
+This is the epitaph written across the tombs of all nations now
+crumbling into dust.
+
+"The things which belong to thy peace." The things which never die or
+fade, whose continuity is never broken, the Divine seeds that cannot
+perish, the things which are immortal. The winged soul in its æon-long
+pilgrimages through eternity to home.
+
+I find it easy to write to-day upon psychic subjects, for everywhere I
+discern the dawn of what Conan Doyle, in his deeply interesting book,
+calls "The new revelation."
+
+To one who, for the last forty years, has been immersed in all branches
+of occult research, the change of view that has come over the world in
+four years is very remarkable. Every one is now interested in the human
+soul, and all that appertains to it. The speeding up in the number of
+psychic experiences coming to light is enormous. So often now I come
+across "the last man in the world to see or hear anything" who has just
+been accorded a startling experience, and the rank skeptic is becoming a
+thing of the past.
+
+Whilst sitting in solitude it is interesting to let one's thoughts slip
+back to childhood, and trace the present life in the mirror of the old.
+I discover that in the immediate now there is nothing new, but only that
+which has its symbol in the old. I seem to get only the much clearer
+vision of what once was vague and cloudy, or wholly unconsidered by the
+mind of youth.
+
+In that garden of memory I can set old happenings in a new light, and
+measure my slow footprints in the age-long journey behind me. Two facts
+emerge from out such musings. Firstly, the journey of my soul takes a
+spiral path, which at intervals brings me face to face with the old
+things that I have learned to modernize by dressing in fresh thought
+forms, as new perceptions are won. Perceptions prophetic of the greater
+capacity for attainment when the Divine Power is permitted to unfold
+itself without let or hindrance.
+
+Secondly, the further on the soul journeys the more solitary the road
+becomes. One by one the old companion pilgrims drop away. Perhaps it is
+that on that long, lone trail the traveler must be free.
+
+Very early in my life came the consciousness that everywhere about me,
+in the infinitely above, in the infinitely below, permeating heart, mind
+and soul, is life--endless, eternal.
+
+On this shoreless ocean of existence, without form or name, the soul is
+afloat. Birth and death are the tides, the ebb and flow of the ocean of
+life. The human soul is but a ripple on the sea of existence, and
+phenomenal life is but a flash in the eternity of eternities. All the
+teeming lives of effort around us, all the travail and suffering to
+which humanity is destined, are ordained for the great purpose of soul
+evolution. God sets the balance at every grave. That which distinguishes
+every man is the vast dower of our nature, eventually the same to all,
+the passing incidents of station, fortune, talent, are mere surface
+varieties.
+
+I find in my mind the existence of something illimitably beyond mind,
+doubtless a common experience. I do not know what that something is, but
+it is very real, and it invariably shows me how cribbed, cabined and
+confined this life really is. I cannot even tell what it is that
+confines me. I only know that there is a limitless world full of
+infinite possibilities all around me. I seem always to have known this,
+but I cannot grasp it. True, at rare intervals, I catch a glimpse
+through a rift in the clouds, then they close again.
+
+At such moments I experience an ecstasy of heart sweet happiness, so
+marvelously sweet, so pure, so near Divine with its deep wordless
+thoughts of infinite beauty. Such regions are not so much impenetrable
+as ineffable. They are glimpses gained at some great altitude, from
+which I can look down on the mortal pageant and behold mysteries in
+which I take no part, but by which I am encircled, as an island, by
+infinity. Such are luminous and splendid moments, when the soul beholds
+the world in its real mystic beauty. It is the hour of transfiguration,
+in which the veil drops from the heart and the film from the eyes, so
+that we see life as God means it to be.
+
+Often, as a mere child, when lying awake in those nights, whose
+stillness have a quality of awe, the silence would be broken by weird,
+barbaric songs which wafted a sense of old, wild adventurous life, and
+in a curious quality of mystery I saw violet mountains sleeping in
+sunlight, above a sea of amethyst. Childish visions, but sacred nights.
+Very many years passed before I understood them.
+
+On hot velvety nights in June a curious scent of smoke would come to me,
+the measured hollow beating of bells, and a tremulous far-away piping.
+Years after, I stood alone one evening on the slopes of Etna, amid the
+pale asphodels and the desolation of tumbling lava fields, and I heard
+the pipes of Pan, the reed pipe of the herd boy, and linked the past
+with the present. Again, passing through a region where the smoke rose
+from the charcoal burners' fires the scent of an ancient memory came
+vaporing up, the unfamiliar scent that puzzled my childhood, and I was
+away in a flash, to wait for the soul to free herself and return from
+the world's edge.
+
+I had to journey further east before I heard again at dawn the ring of
+camel bells as a caravan broke camp, and then I understood the visions
+of my youth, as I listened to the measured hollow beating, and watched a
+strange medley of eastern traffic trail away across the desert.
+
+Sometimes, when the nursery clock seemed to tick more loudly than usual,
+I saw a gigantic water-wheel, and behind it massive rocks with the hewn
+tombs of ancient kings, and beyond them lay distant glamorous mountains,
+white sails creeping amid warm purple isles, set in a gulf of turquoise.
+Sometimes I have dreamed holy things, and waked to find myself over-awed
+by the sublimity of the vision and the glory of the Universe.
+
+So many of those childish visions I have identified in later life, but
+there is one which eludes me. It is a great white road leading to the
+farther east, and I see it drenched in white sunlight. Tinkling mule
+trains pass along it, and I know now it is in some way connected with
+Ida that saw ancient Troy, and the Capital of Pontus, the seat of
+Mithridates' Court, and the Empire of Trebizond. Some day, who knows, I
+may walk upon it.
+
+Looking back I can recollect nothing psychic happening to me before the
+age of six. I can fix that date upon which I became actually aware of
+the other world. It all happened through "Silk dress" and "Rumpus."
+
+I slept in a bed in one corner, and my younger brother slept in another
+corner. The room was large, and at the top of a modern, quite ordinary,
+town house. Two flights of stairs ran down to the ground floor. "Silk
+dress" was something we were extremely interested in, but I cannot
+recollect that we were ever in the least afraid.
+
+When we first became aware of "silk dress" I do not know, but in looking
+back across those many years I think that in the beginning we must have
+accepted "it" as something or somebody "real." Only after several
+experiences did it dawn upon us that "it" was not real. By then we had
+passed beyond the stage when we might have felt fear. After we had gone
+to bed we were left quite alone in the dark, and the nurses went down to
+supper. The younger children slept in another room. It was during such
+periods of silence that "silk dress" began its ascent.
+
+Just as we were dropping off to sleep one of us would murmur drowsily,
+"Here comes silk dress." Then we lay quite still, very wide awake again
+and listened intently.
+
+From far down on the ground floor we heard footsteps quietly and
+methodically ascending, and the rustle of a silk dress. We could hear
+quite distinctly when "it" arrived at the first floor, which was
+occupied by our parents, then "it" passed on to the next flight of
+stairs leading to our floor.
+
+The sound of footsteps and the rustle of the silk dress became more and
+more clearly audible as "it" drew ever nearer. We could tell the second
+at which "it" passed from the last step on to the corridor which led
+past our half-open door. Then there was a thrilling moment or two, when
+the tip-tap of shoes, and the swish of silk on the linoleum was quite
+loud, but the footsteps never halted. They always swept past the
+half-closed door, and went on into a small room beyond, which was used
+for storing boxes. Then dead silence fell again.
+
+In those days we never heard the word "ghost" mentioned, yet I cannot
+recollect thinking of "silk dress" as anything but a visitor from the
+other world. We talked of "it" freely in the household, but probably
+because we expressed no fear, no one seemed in the least interested. On
+wakeful nights we occupied ourselves in waiting for "it," and on wet
+nights we could not hear "it" clearly because the rain pattered so
+loudly on a large skylight outside our door. What interested us
+enormously was the fact that we never heard "it" descend again. How "it"
+got down in order to mount once more was a great puzzle.
+
+"Rumpus" was quite another matter, quite another order of manifestation.
+"Rumpus" always began when we were sound asleep, and "Rumpus" always
+wide awakened us. "They" came at longer intervals, about every ten days,
+whilst "it" came on most nights. During the summer mornings in the
+North, when one could often read a book in the light of a one a. m.
+dawn, "they" were very interesting, because when "their" hour, five a.
+m., arrived the room was flooded with sunshine. In winter mornings, when
+the room was in black darkness, we were merely bored, and cross at being
+roused, and we simply lay still and endured "them" till they had quite
+finished. But in the summer mornings we always sat up in bed and
+intently watched something we never saw.
+
+When "Rumpus" roused us brusquely from our slumbers it was by means of a
+demoniac pandemonium. The room was in possession of "them," and "they"
+crashed, and banged, and tossed about the furniture in the most reckless
+fashion. Crash went the wardrobe, bang went one chair after another,
+hurtling across the room. Crash went wardrobe back into its place again,
+clang went the fire-irons. Rushing collisions, and rappings on the
+window-panes, thuds on the floor, rattlings and clatterings of crockery,
+jingling of brass, creakings and groanings of expostulation from the old
+sofa, clanking of the fireguard, a veritable tornado of noise, enough
+surely to awaken the dead, yet out of the living it only awakened--us.
+No one else in the house ever heard it, and our vivid descriptions were,
+perhaps, naturally attributed to nightmare.
+
+We, of course, knew that it was nothing of the sort. We were, indeed,
+very wide awake during the ten to fifteen minutes the pandemonium
+continued, and our eyes were kept darting from side to side following
+the track of the noises, as they grew in volume and intensity. Creak,
+groan, crash! No mistaking the spot where that deafening sound came
+from. That was the old mahogany wardrobe being hurled face downwards on
+the floor, but whilst our eyes were riveted on its statuesque and utter
+immobility jingle, clank, from the fender, where the fire-irons
+commenced to jig. A wildly confused uproar over all the room, then boom,
+thud, beneath us, and our beds shivered convulsively, and sent thrills
+of wild excitement coursing through our nerves.
+
+Suddenly the tumult would cease. The mystery lay in the fact that we
+never saw anything move, though we distinctly heard everything moving,
+and could feel our beds reel beneath us.
+
+I have no explanations to offer of those happenings. They are very
+clearly fixed in my objective memory, and when we were both grown up,
+and had finally left that house my brother used often to say to me, "Do
+you remember 'Silk Dress' and 'Rumpus'?"
+
+Such recollections crowd back upon me now, with many other images of
+childhood. No sooner do I recollect one than another emerges like a
+shining cloud from below the horizon. Where have they been lying hidden
+during all those flying years? They have dwelt deep down in the eternal
+memory, the heart of God which beats in all humanity. Within that heart
+are stored æonic treasures. They lie ever in wait to be bidden arise and
+cross the threshold.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE GHOST OF BROUGHTON HALL
+
+
+I was about six years old when my family moved to a brand new house in
+Claremont Crescent, that had just been erected on the outskirts of
+Edinburgh. There were still some green fields unbuilt upon, and some
+fine old trees left standing close to us, and those were still included
+in a triangular group of three grand old Manors--Broughton Hall, Powder
+Hall, and Logie Green. All three had the reputation of being badly
+haunted. The first named stood almost within a stone's throw of our end
+of the Crescent, and was occupied by an ancient family named Walker, who
+had held the property for generations. They still existed as a very
+charming relic of Scotch antiquity, and they had always been friends of
+our family.
+
+The house from the outside was very grim and forbidding-looking. It was
+hidden from the eyes of the curious behind very high walls, and was
+entered upon by two huge gates, always kept closed.
+
+Inside, the house was most interesting and attractive. There were many
+closed rooms and winding staircases, and odd steps in long, dark
+corridors, but the rooms that were lived in were beautiful of their
+kind. There were desks with secret drawers, wonderful pieces of
+Chippendale, tenderly cared for, quantities of rare old china and cut
+glass, and on the walls hung glorious Romneys and Hoppners, which
+fetched huge prices at Christie's when the household was finally broken
+up by death.
+
+The family consisted of three sisters, Fanny, Hope, and Kitty, the
+latter a widow, named Mrs. Chew. There were two brothers, Adam and John.
+The former lived with his sisters. John was a minister, and only paid
+visits. There was a nephew, the heir, William Stephens, who also paid
+long visits to the Hall. Though, at the date of which I speak, about
+1870, he must have been at least sixty, he was always referred to as
+"the Laddie."
+
+The three sisters occupied distinct positions in the house. Mrs. Chew
+acted as cook, though servants were kept, and she always sat in the
+kitchen, only coming "through" to the dining-room for her meals. Miss
+Hope was the worldly member of the family. She had been to London Town,
+and could not be relied upon to stop at home. She looked after the
+polishing of the furniture, the old glass and china. Miss Fanny was the
+lady of the family. She always sat in the best parlor. Every one waited
+on her, and she was never permitted to do anything for herself.
+
+She dressed for the part in thick, black satin, with, in winter, a white
+silk embroidered Chinese shawl, and, in summer, old Brussels lace.
+Across her forehead was a band of black velvet, with a pear-shaped pearl
+depending between the eyebrows. Over her snow-white hair was flung a
+piece of old lace surmounting a wreath of artificial flowers. Her
+claw-like hands were covered by lace mittens and many rings. I saw her
+constantly, and she was always idle. I never saw her read, or sew, or
+knit, and often I wondered what she thought about, as she sat there
+always in the same chair, year in year out, and with no companion but a
+large gray parrot. True, her surroundings were delightful. From her
+chair near the fire she could look out on the quaint old garden, always
+full of flowers, and she could glance around her at the many beautiful
+objects the room contained.
+
+I especially admired one Hoppner. The subject was a beautiful woman,
+with a mass of powdered hair, seated by an open window. Her cheek was
+supported in her hand, and at her elbow was a quaint little wicker cage
+containing a bird. I think the artist meant to suggest that both were
+captives. Though quite well in health, Miss Fanny never left the house,
+even to walk in the garden.
+
+My father and I went very often to call upon those curious old people,
+who were so utterly out of touch with modern life, backward though life
+was then in the Northern Capital. We arrived at all sorts of hours, but
+refreshments were always produced. An amazingly rich cake, and fruity
+old port, served in large quarter-pint cut-glass rummers. It was not
+considered polite to refuse those offerings, which were always kept in a
+corner cupboard, and served by Mrs. Chew, who emerged from the kitchen,
+or Miss Hope, who left her housework to greet us.
+
+Though Broughton Hall was commonly reputed to be haunted, no one seemed
+to know what form the ghost took. I was great friends with Mr. Adam, a
+majestic, clean-shaven old man, who carried his chin very high above an
+enormous black silk stock, and often I tried to draw him on the subject
+of the ghost, but without success. He took it very seriously, and warned
+me that "I wouldn't be any the better for having seen it. Besides," he
+always concluded, "it's a family affair." The sisters were even more
+uncommunicative.
+
+My father and I were profoundly interested in this ghost. There was
+something about the whole establishment that was extremely promising,
+from the ghost-hunter point of view. The consequence of this was that we
+were always on the prowl. Nothing discouraged us, and we spared neither
+time nor trouble. There is no research which requires such infinite
+patience as psychic research. Several years passed before the great
+moment arrived, and when it did arrive it was all over in about four
+minutes.
+
+My father had a way of suddenly looking up from his work and saying,
+"Let's go to Broughton Hall." I would at once rise, and together we
+would pass out into the night, without either hats or coats. Very
+eccentric, it may be said, but then we frankly were very eccentric. We
+would steal away together around the Crescent, and down the road till we
+reached the great gates. Very softly we opened and closed them, and
+keeping well in the shadow of the trees and bushes we would creep round
+the silent house.
+
+I cannot describe the thrill of those nocturnal adventures. It was all
+so eerie, so full of vague, terrifying possibilities. I don't know what
+we expected to see, and we were generally back again in our own house in
+half an hour; but one night our patience really was rewarded.
+
+It was November, dry, but wild and bitterly cold. Billowy white snow
+clouds scudding before a brisk north wind threw us alternately into
+light and darkness, as they covered and uncovered the face of the full
+moon. We had emerged from our house about half-past nine, and had
+reached the back of Broughton Hall. The house was shrouded in darkness
+and dead silence, every blind was close drawn, and the suggestion was
+one of utter emptiness. My father and I were walking apart, I being
+right under the shadow of the walls, whilst he was in the middle of the
+paved court, which had neither hedge nor walls, but met the edge of the
+field running up to it.
+
+Suddenly I heard him whisper "Hush!" though we never did utter a word
+whilst close to the house. His arm was pointing in front of him. I
+stared ahead, and then I saw, clearly lit by the moon, a woman who had
+apparently just rounded the corner of the house. She was running hard,
+straight towards us, and her feet made no sound on the round cobble
+stones.
+
+Terror suddenly seized me, and I darted across to my father, and got
+well behind him, seizing him firmly round the waist. The woman came on,
+rushing wildly. She had nearly reached us, and I was almost thrown over
+as my father faced her, and backed to allow her to pass. I peeped round
+him, and saw a woman, ghastly pale, and distraught-looking, clad in a
+white nightdress. Two long strands of black hair streamed out behind
+her, and her bare arms were outstretched in front. In a flash she had
+passed, and absolutely silently, and I found myself lying on the ground
+alone, and my father vanishing in hot pursuit.
+
+Needless to say I very quickly picked myself up again, and joined the
+chase. Terror lent me wings, and in a minute or two I came up with him,
+standing breathless by the gate.
+
+"Vanished into thin air just as I reached her. That's always the way.
+You can't catch them," he said.
+
+We made a little détour before going home, in order to discuss the
+great event. We had no doubt that we had seen a genuine apparition. We
+knew all the occupants of the Hall, and the woman had vanished in the
+open, and in full flight, just as my father had come up alongside her.
+He cautioned me against mentioning our adventure to any one, and I kept
+silence until years after, when Broughton Hall was pulled down and its
+inmates were all dead.
+
+Before going on to our next ghostly adventure I will say a few words
+about my father, Robert Chambers, who in those days was something of a
+celebrity, and a very remarkable man.
+
+In appearance he was very handsome, extremely tall and well built, and
+with features that were well-nigh perfect. It was the fashion in his
+time to wear the hair rather long, and his was dark and very curly. He
+always dressed well, in the style of the country gentleman, rather than
+as a town dweller.
+
+In character he was extremely independent, and was utterly indifferent
+to two things--money and public opinion. His intellect was
+extraordinary, and it was commonly said that he knew a great deal about
+most things, and something about all things.
+
+In Scotland, in those days, it was not considered necessary to trouble
+about the education of girls. No one ever tried to educate me,
+consequently at a very early age I was absolutely free to devote myself
+entirely to my father, and we were inseparable. Our intercourse was not
+that of father and daughter. It was that of confidential friends of an
+equal age. At that period my mother was more or less of an invalid, and
+had her own attendants.
+
+My father and I went every morning at ten o'clock to the old business
+house of W. and R. Chambers, in the High Street of Edinburgh, and
+remained there till half-past two, when we walked home together,
+sometimes paying a call or two on the way. Though a mere uneducated
+child I helped him in his literary work, and at odd hours committed to
+memory many poets. We returned to four o'clock dinner, the correct hour
+in those days, and at six o'clock a porter arrived with my father's bag,
+containing manuscripts to be read and selected for _Chambers' Journal_.
+From six p. m. till midnight he worked at reading manuscript, not typed
+then, and proof correcting.
+
+Twice a week we went to the theater--there was only one in Edinburgh
+then. It was managed by a hard working couple, Mr. and Mrs. Howard, who
+sometimes filled up a week by acting themselves. I am bound to say we
+spent most of our time in the Green Room, and I knew every turn and
+twist behind the curtain. This turned out to be lucky for us.
+
+One night we went to a performance given by the Arthur Sullivan Company,
+and about halfway through a cry of "Fire" was raised. Great masses of
+burning stuff began to drop from the ceiling down into the auditorium.
+Instantly there was a panic, and a terrible stampede, and my father and
+I leaned forward, protecting our heads behind the backs of the stalls in
+front, whilst the mad rush climbed over us. When all was clear in front
+of us we made our way to the back of the stage, and escaped quite
+easily. I looked behind me, and I can see now the dense mass of
+struggling humanity wedged in the doorway.
+
+I remained safely with Mrs. Howard whilst my father ran around to the
+front and helped to extricate the dead. The theater was burned to the
+ground, but was very rapidly built up again.
+
+My first literary effort must here be recorded. I collaborated with
+Professor Andrew Wilson in writing the pantomime of "Ali Baba and the
+Forty Thieves."
+
+Andrew Wilson was Professor of Natural Science, and an extremely
+versatile person--a passionate love of the drama was added to his many
+scientific attainments. We wrote the dialogue together, in one long
+revelry of laughter, and I was responsible for the words of the songs.
+As a literary effort I can only describe it as appalling. The pantomime
+was, however, a great success. The audacity of our utter incompetence
+proved highly successful, and the critics justly described it as "The
+funniest Pantomime in Scotland." No wonder the audience laughed from
+start to finish.
+
+My father always called at once upon any celebrity who happened to be
+passing through the city, and thus I became acquainted with many
+interesting and amusing people. Henry Irving was amongst the number. We
+always called upon him on our way to business, a little before ten. If
+he was playing for a week we called on him every morning, and often
+looked into the Green Room at night. He and my father were great
+friends, and at the hour of our visit he was always propped up in bed
+having breakfast. I used to perch on the bed whilst the two men talked.
+Irving's nightshirt interested me (pyjamas had not come in then). It was
+white cambric with two enormous double frills down the front, and quite
+a pierrot ruffle round his neck. He was profoundly interested in the
+occult, and told me that a ghost he had once seen had suggested to him a
+particular action of his whilst playing in "The Bells." At the moment
+when he parted the curtains, and looked wildly out, shouting hoarsely,
+"The Bells, the Bells."
+
+Through Irving we came to know the Baroness Burdett Coutts, his ardent
+admirer. She was very kind to me, and presented me with a green silk
+dress, but I always thought her a very melancholy woman, even when
+entertaining many interesting people in her celebrated corner house in
+Piccadilly, with its white china parrot swinging in the window. She was
+much attached to my father, and treated him with a humble and touching
+deference.
+
+Robert Chambers was a very keen sportsman, who fortunately did not
+require much practice to keep up his game. He held championships in golf
+and bowling. He was too ardent a naturalist and ornithologist to care
+for shooting, but he was an expert angler. He was also a born actor and
+mimic, and used to keep a Green Room in roars by "taking off" any of
+"the profession" called for, and I never heard a better ventriloquist.
+He adored music, and played the flute well. As a platform speaker he was
+extremely fluent and perfectly at ease.
+
+His indifference to money resulted in his never having a penny in his
+pocket at night, no matter how much he took with him in the morning, and
+one of my tasks was to prevent his being fleeced by those who lay in
+wait for him. He took any amount of trouble over impecunious and
+incompetent authors, and constantly re-wrote their work for them in
+order to make it fit for publication. He was a unique editor, and his
+labors in the cause of charity were strenuous, secret, and, I fear,
+rather indiscriminate.
+
+During this period of my life, the head of the house, William Chambers,
+was still living, with his quaint old wife, in the West End of
+Edinburgh. William, who had survived his more versatile brother, Robert
+(my grandfather), was a little shriveled-up old man, with a dry and
+severe manner. Most people were afraid of him, few liked him, but I got
+on with him famously. I have always been extremely proud of the fact
+that he rose from nothing to great wealth. There must be something fine
+in a man, who, as a lad, rose at four a. m. to read classics to an
+intelligent baker, whilst the batch of bread was being baked, and who
+gladly accepted as payment a copper or a roll.
+
+William and Robert Chambers had left their widowed mother to fend for
+themselves. The family was at the lowest financial ebb. Much money had
+been spent on the French refugees who flocked into Scotland in 1810, and
+there was nothing to spare now. We were originally French, like so very
+many of the old Scotch families. The first of us in history is recorded
+as Guillaume de la Chaumbre, who, as the most prominent man in Peebles,
+signed the Ragman Roll in 1296. My people had always lived in the dales
+of the Tweed, so very appropriately I married a man called Tweedale.
+
+Towards the end of his life William Chambers amused himself by spending
+many thousands on the restoration of St. Giles' Cathedral, an historic
+church which had fallen into great disrepair. This was a time of great
+interest for me, and I used to spend hours helping the workmen to gather
+up the thousands of human skulls that paved the church to a good depth.
+There were tombs laid bare of many celebrated people of the long ago,
+and these had to be identified, and carefully kept intact, until finally
+given a safer resting-place.
+
+William Chambers had been offered a baronetcy some years previously, but
+he refused it. He told me he did not consider it a dignified thing for a
+man of letters to bear any other honor than that accorded to brain power
+by a benefited world. He and his brother Robert were the pioneers of
+cheap and good educational literature for the laboring man, and the
+avidity with which this literature, "Chambers' Information for the
+People," was consumed, appeared to be a fitting reward. In those days it
+was an unheard-of thing for a publisher to be honored by a title. Now,
+however, on the eve of the re-opening of St. Giles' Cathedral, Her
+Majesty, Queen Victoria, commanded William Chambers to accept a
+baronetcy. The old couple were much agitated, but had to submit, and the
+Queen announced her intention of performing the opening ceremony.
+
+When the day arrived William Chambers lay dead in his house, and my
+father and I took the place of the old couple. The Queen was indisposed,
+and Lord Aberdeen took her place.
+
+After the ceremony both Lord Aberdeen and Lord Rosebery urged upon my
+father to take up the baronetcy, more especially as he was his uncle's
+heir, but this he utterly refused to do.
+
+Old Lady Chambers, the widow, discarded her title immediately and
+remained Mrs. Chambers till the day of her death.
+
+It must have been at least a month after William Chambers' death that he
+visited me in a very vivid dream. I dreamed that he was standing beside
+my bed, and suddenly he bent over me and whispered in my ear, "I've left
+you all my money." On waking I had totally forgotten the dream, but
+later in the day an old servant of ours said to me, "I saw the wraith
+of your Uncle William last night, but he had nothing to say to me."
+
+Then my dream flashed back to me. A day or two afterwards I said
+suddenly to the old family lawyer, "Was there ever a question of Uncle
+William leaving his money to me?"
+
+The dry answer was, "Yes! at one time there was a question of that." I
+could never extract anything further from him on the subject.
+
+Though now possessed of considerable wealth my father made no difference
+in his mode of life, and he continued to work just as hard as ever, and
+to give away large sums of money. He never wanted anything for himself,
+but was always ready to give to others. He had a great love of precious
+stones, and always carried about little packets of diamonds, which
+looked like packets of chemists' powders. Had I desired I could have
+loaded myself with jewels. He never denied me anything and we continued
+our close companionship, the only difference now being we took some
+holidays in the form of afternoons off.
+
+On one of these occasions we saw our second ghost.
+
+We went to pay a visit to a very old woman, whose name I cannot
+remember. She lived alone with one servant in an ancient dwelling in
+Inveresk. The house was a large one, and was enclosed by very high
+walls, which entirely isolated it from the busy streets that surrounded
+it. The original old garden remained, in all its beauty, and the rooms
+were full of quaint heirlooms.
+
+We were always made very welcome, and the servant at once produced a
+delicious tea, consisting of fresh baked scones, butter made of real
+cream--margarine being not then invented--home-made strawberry jam, and
+home-laid eggs. Russian eggs were not then imported.
+
+I must here interpose that deliciously innocent telegram sent by an
+Aberdeen merchant in the first days of the Great War, and which set all
+England and Scotland mad to see the fur and snow-clad Russian troops
+passing through to the Front. The telegram ran as follows:--
+
+    "Twenty thousand Russians arrived."
+
+The twenty thousand Muscovites were only twenty thousand stale eggs, but
+Lord Kitchener's order was, "Let it stand."
+
+To return to my story.
+
+One glorious late spring evening we were seated at tea, and the window
+was thrown wide to the perfumed garden, where lilacs, and wallflowers,
+and lilies of the valley rioted gloriously. The birds were in full song
+in this peaceful sanctuary, which might have been a hundred miles away
+from a town. My father had put his invariable question to the old woman,
+"Have you seen her again?" Sometimes the answer was Yes, sometimes No. I
+gathered that this question referred to the old woman's dead daughter,
+her only child. This daughter had been violently insane for many years
+and had remained under her mother's protection. She had died some years
+previously, at the age of fifty-five, having endured a terribly long
+martyrdom.
+
+Suddenly my father broke off the conversation.
+
+"My God! there she is!" He half rose from his chair and stared through
+the open window. I looked in the same direction. A woman was strolling
+aimlessly along the path just outside. There was a curious uncertainty
+about her movements. She walked like a blind person, who has neither
+stick nor arm to guide her. Strangely enough I never thought of
+connecting this woman with the ghost of the mad daughter. She looked so
+natural, so commonplace. Her hollow face was quite gray, and her dark
+hair was drawn tightly back from it, and rolled in an ugly knob behind.
+Her dress was of some dark material, her boots were of cloth, and her
+hands and arms were rolled up in a stuff apron she wore.
+
+There she was, vacantly wandering in the garden, in the lovely spring
+evening, with the blackbirds and thrushes singing their hearts out all
+around her, and I did not comprehend why such an ordinary, unattractive
+looking person should so deeply interest my father.
+
+I turned round to say something to the old woman, then I instantly
+understood. She had gone down on her knees, and had hidden herself by
+throwing the end of the tablecloth over her head.
+
+Then I turned my eyes back to the apparition. I don't suppose she was
+visible for more than four minutes. I remember my father uttering
+consoling words to the effect that "she's gone," and helping the old
+woman into her chair again, when we resumed our tea and conversation, as
+if nothing unusual had occurred.
+
+Looking back upon these incidents I contrast the infinite trouble we
+took in our hunt for ghosts, with present-day psychical research. I
+think of the innumerable half hours we spent at Broughton Hall, and only
+once were we rewarded by seeing anything. We visited the old woman at
+Inveresk whenever we found time. There was nothing in the least
+inspiring or interesting in her conversation, yet to us there was an
+unspeakable charm about her outward circumstances.
+
+There was the spiritual charm of the silent old house, with its
+vibrating memories of the long departed. The charm of the cloistered
+peace, amidst which the woman lived and dreamed, shut away from the
+world by the high walls. It was a retreat in which to meditate, and that
+always appealed to me. A dwelling with a beautiful view has a great
+charm, but it draws the thoughts always outward to the external. Still,
+when I pass a quiet old homestead, hidden away in its own flowery old
+garden from the eyes of the world, it attracts me far more than the
+far-flung grandeur of many a stately English mansion.
+
+Only in such retreats of ancient peace can the thoughts be turned
+continuously inward, to their true bourne--the temple of the living God.
+
+I seem to have been born with an ingrained belief in the enormous virtue
+of renunciation. Self-sacrifice, I am certain, is the foundation stone
+upon which is built the moral progress of man. I had occasion to prove
+this for myself at a comparatively early age. My mother suddenly became
+much more ailing than usual, and began to suffer a great deal of pain. A
+consultation of doctors was called by our own family physician, and two
+of the greatest surgeons in Edinburgh arrived one morning at our house.
+
+After about an hour they came into the room in which I awaited them.
+Their faces were very grave. They informed me, as kindly as they could,
+that they had arrived at the unanimous opinion that my mother was
+suffering from internal cancer, and that she might possibly live another
+six months. Our own doctor confessed that he had long suspected this,
+and the two surgeons corroborated his opinion. There was no doubt in
+their minds, as the disease had openly declared itself.
+
+I took this shock in perfect silence for a minute or two, then I decided
+upon my first course of action. I asked them in the meanwhile to keep
+this matter secret from every one, even from my father.
+
+To this they rather demurred, saying that it was only right that he
+should know the truth, and that he would certainly question them. I then
+urged that our family doctor had known of this, and had hidden his
+knowledge up to to-day. It would be easy enough for him to go on hiding
+the truth for a short time longer.
+
+The doctors sought to know my reason for this secrecy; it would do no
+good, the truth would have to come out. I could give no reason. I had no
+reason, only a very strong instinct, and I wanted time. I asked for a
+fortnight, after which I would myself inform my father of the nature of
+my mother's malady.
+
+They agreed to this, doubtless much relieved that so unpleasant a task
+was removed to other shoulders, and they went away.
+
+That night I did not sleep. I had too much to think out. My mother must
+not die. I had to form some plan to save her, if it were humanly
+possible. She was absolutely necessary, I considered, to the younger
+children. She would be required for some years yet. My life was wholly
+given up to my father, I had become necessary to him, and this left me
+no time to mother the young ones. His health was not of the best. A
+curious tendency to hemorrhage kept him constantly weak. If he had a
+tooth drawn bleeding would continue for days after. He needed all my
+attention.
+
+At that particular time I possessed something--never mind what--that
+meant more to me than anything else in the whole wide world. It was the
+greatest thing I had in life. I decided before morning that with this,
+my one great possession, I would strike a bargain with the Almighty. I
+would give Him a fortnight to consider it. I would offer Him the
+greatest thing in my life in exchange for my mother's life.
+
+Quite conceivably He might refuse to consider the proposition, in which
+case I stood to lose everything. I could never again recover what I
+proposed to risk, but I came to the deliberate conclusion that it was
+worth it. The case demanded a desperate remedy.
+
+Having made up my mind, I went about the business in the crudest and
+most practical manner. I set aside certain odd half hours during the
+coming fortnight, in which I would state my case. I wanted God to have
+every opportunity of considering my suggestion on its simple merits.
+
+I began by pointing out to Him why it was so necessary that my mother
+should live, and then I went on to say that He might be sure I asked
+nothing for myself. I proposed to give in exchange for my mother's life
+the greatest thing I possessed on earth, a thing that doubtless was of
+little interest to Him, but nevertheless meant a very great deal to
+me--in fact, my all. I really had nothing else of any value to offer.
+
+Now, in thus addressing the Almighty, I was not acting as a primitive
+savage, for I had considered the subject of Deity for several years, and
+had studied most of the great theologians. I addressed Him thus as a
+Spirit of too supreme a potency, of too extraneous a mentality and
+majesty, to be addressed in any other terms but plain downright
+reasoning. Elaborate and propitiatory words were good enough for earthly
+princelets, but ridiculous when offered up to the Supreme Creative
+Power. That was my way of looking at it, and I began at once to carry
+out my plan. There was no time to lose. Meanwhile, no living soul, save
+the doctors, knew of my secret.
+
+At the end of the second day my mother was free from pain. At the end of
+the first week she was recovering rapidly. The family doctor was
+intensely puzzled, but still adhered to his original conviction. On the
+eighth day I ceased my half-hourly reasoning with God. I merely thanked
+Him for concluding the bargain. He had accepted my sacrifice, the
+greatest I could make, and there that matter ended. I felt, without the
+smallest irreverence, that we were quits.
+
+At the end of the month the two great surgeons returned, at our own
+doctor's request. I awaited them with perfect assurance and
+tranquillity. When they came in to me they still looked perturbed. They
+told me that they had examined my mother, and found all traces of the
+malady had disappeared. They could not account for it, they reiterated
+their former diagnosis, dwelling upon certain facts, in very natural
+self-justification. They expressed, in the very kindest manner, their
+deep regret for all the suffering and anxiety they must have caused me,
+and said how very lucky it was that no one had been made aware of their
+original convictions, save myself. The case was extraordinary, abnormal,
+there was nothing more to say. Then they went away for the last time.
+
+My father was greatly puzzled at their refusing to accept any fee, and
+to the day of his death our own doctor, whenever he found me alone,
+referred to the case as the most marvelous he had ever come across. My
+mother quite regained her health, and died many years after from lung
+trouble.
+
+One other great sacrifice I had to make a year or two after. My father
+was entirely confined to bed with a severe attack of internal
+hemorrhage, and at the same time my youngest sister was threatened with
+consumption. She was ordered to go to the South of France immediately.
+
+It was decided that I must go with her, as she could not be trusted to
+strangers. My mother, absolutely restored to health, would be left with
+my father, who had also a good nurse valet.
+
+My father and I bade each other farewell one early morning in February,
+1888. We knew we would not meet again on earth.
+
+Only one other curious incident do I remember in connection with that
+town house we lived in. On the night of the 28th December we were all
+assembled in the library, most of us were reading, and a violent wind
+storm was howling round the house. Suddenly my father laid down the
+proof sheets he was correcting, and took out his watch. Then he turned
+to us and said: "At this moment, seven fifteen, on Sunday the 28th of
+December, 1879, something terrible has happened. I think a bridge must
+be down."
+
+The next day we learned that the Tay Bridge had been blown down at that
+very hour, and the train and its occupants hurled to death in the waters
+below.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+CURIOUS PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES
+
+
+After my father's death I began to live a much more independent life. I
+was financially independent, and I proceeded to London, where I felt I
+would have a wider range of intellectual companionship. I lived in
+hotels and dispensed with all chaperonage, thus leaving myself free to
+join my mother on the Riviera in the early spring months.
+
+I never cared for dancing, and always having had the companionship of
+people who were years older than myself, I had made few girl friends. My
+first cousin, Lady Campbell, wife of Sir Guy Campbell, Bart., 60th
+Rifles, and another first cousin, Menie Muriel Dowie, were the only two
+I really saw much of.
+
+Lady Campbell was, and is, a very attractive woman, possessed of great
+charm of manner. Exceedingly cultured and intelligent, she is also an
+artist to her finger tips. As girls we used to be fond of attending
+Queen Victoria's Drawing-rooms. A bevy of us would take lunch with us in
+the carriages, and thoroughly enjoy our day out. I was the last woman to
+kiss the hand of Queen Victoria at a Drawing-room. I was stopped by a
+Court official just as I was moving forward, and told to wait as "Her
+Majesty is going to withdraw." The present Dowager Queen Alexandra, as
+Princess of Wales, then took her place. On this occasion I heard the
+Queen say, "Let this lady pass." I was then told to proceed.
+
+Being very tall I had always a certain difficulty in getting down low
+enough to kiss the tiny Queen's hand. After I had passed, and as I
+backed out of "the presence," I saw Her Majesty being assisted out of
+the queer little half chair, half stool she used. She never held another
+Drawing-room, and I regret that, being abroad, I had not the honor of
+making a last curtsy to the little coffin as it passed through the
+streets of London.
+
+Menie Muriel Dowie was a brilliant bohemian, as can be gathered by those
+who have read her book, "A Girl in the Carpathians." I have never known
+any woman who was possessed of so many natural talents. She is as much
+at home in skilled and polished diplomacy as in practical agriculture.
+She has always been a great traveler, yet a delicate woman. Only her
+indomitable spirit kept her going in her youth, as it still does in her
+beautiful house in Green Street, and her model farm in Gloucestershire.
+
+My greatest older friends were Mrs. Lynn Linton, the novelist, Browning,
+the poet, Lord Leighton, the painter, and Mrs. Proctor, widow of Barry
+Cornwall, and mother of Adelaide Proctor, the poet. All people old
+enough to be my parents.
+
+I had a great admiration for Mrs. Lynn Linton's strong, cold intellect;
+it was so invigorating, and she was so self-reliant, an uncommon thing
+for a woman to be in those days. We had long arguments over matters
+occult, but I never could make the least impression upon her strong
+materialism. "I won't leave this earth even with you," she used to
+protest. She was a great friend and admirer of my aunt, Lady Priestley,
+also a woman of very fine intellect, who devoted herself to scientific
+pursuits. Had she been a man, or had she lived in the present day, when
+woman has at last come into her own, she would have made a very strong
+mark.
+
+Robert Browning, whom I had known for some years, used to drop in very
+often to have a chat, and I rejoiced in him exceedingly as a born mystic
+of a high order. We often discussed the possibility of his work being
+directed from the other side, and we argued as to whether he received
+inspiration from various quarters, or whether he was the beloved of some
+poet of a former age, who, active still in the spirit world, expressed
+his great thoughts through Robert Browning on earth. So many people at
+that time frankly said they could not understand Browning's poetry, and
+this I told him was to be attributed to lack of the mystic perception.
+Now that mysticism has so enormously developed, his work is much more
+comprehensive to the world.
+
+I had alas! only one year of really close friendship with him, for he
+died the year after I came to London.
+
+One curious thing Browning told me.
+
+He dropped in one night to see me, after dinner at a house where
+Millais, the painter, had been one of the guests.
+
+"Johnnie Millais told me an odd thing to-night," he said. "He's
+constantly seeing figures appearing and disappearing on the face of the
+canvas he's working upon."
+
+"What sort of figures?" I asked.
+
+Browning shot out his cuff.
+
+"Here they are. I knew you'd be interested, so I took them down for you.
+Better write them down for yourself, but don't mention the subject to
+him or any of his family."
+
+I fetched a piece of paper and copied from Browning's cuff.
+
+"13. 1.8.9.6. The figures don't always come in that order," he said,
+"but more often than not they do. The 13 always comes up as 13, but he's
+seen 9.6.1.8. What do you make of it?"
+
+"At present nothing, but the future may throw light upon the
+phenomenon," I answered.
+
+I never mentioned this occurrence to any one, and, indeed, forgot all
+about it till some years after Millais' death, when I came upon my notes
+in an old box. I then realized that the great painter had been looking
+upon the dates of his own death. He died on August 13th, 1896.
+
+One night some one, I have not the least idea who, came to me in my
+sleep and bade me take up pencil and paper, and write to dictation.
+Still sound asleep I did as I was bidden. I always kept writing
+materials by my bedside.
+
+In the morning I remembered nothing of this till my eye fell upon some
+sheets of paper. The writing upon them was mine, but very big and
+untidy. Then I recollected the command I had received in the night and
+eagerly read what I had written. Here it is. I gave Browning a copy as
+he was so deeply interested--
+
+     "A solitary cottage stood on the edge of a bleak moorland. The sun
+     sank behind the low horizon, and left marshy pools glowing like
+     living opals. A stream of homeward flying rooks made a streak of
+     indigo across the topaz sky where gauzy wind-riven clouds floated
+     westward. The sacred hush of eventide brooded under the calm wings
+     of night.
+
+     "Out on the waste wandered the Angel of 'Sleep,' and the Angel of
+     'Death' with arms fraternally entwined, and whilst the brotherly
+     genii embraced each other, night stole down with velvet footfall,
+     and the green stars peered forth.
+
+     "Then the Angel of Sleep shook from out his hands the invisible
+     grains of slumber, and bade the night wind waft them o'er the
+     world. And soon the child in its cradle, the tired mother, the aged
+     man, and the pain-laden woman were at peace. The curfew tolled out
+     from the distant hamlet and then was still.
+
+     "Inside the cottage a rushlight burned faintly, indicating the
+     poverty of the room, and illuminating the death-like features of
+     the boy who lay on the bed. By his side, worn out, sat the father,
+     his horny hand clasped in that of his child.
+
+     "And the two brother Angels advanced, hand in hand, and peered in
+     at the window, and the Angel of Sleep said: 'Behold how gracious a
+     thing it is, that we can visit this humble dwelling and scatter
+     grains of slumber around, and send oblivion to the weary watcher. I
+     am beloved and courted by all. How merciful is our vocation.' And
+     silently he entered the room.
+
+     "He kissed the eyelids of the weary watcher, and as he did so some
+     grains fell from out the wreath of scarlet poppies that lay like
+     drops of blood upon his brow.
+
+     "But the Angel of Death sat without, his pallid face shrouded in
+     the sable of his wings.
+
+     "And he spake to the Angel of Sleep, 'Of a truth thou art happy and
+     beloved. The welcome guest of all, whereas I am shunned, the door
+     is barred as against a secret foe, and I am counted the enemy of
+     the world.'
+
+     "But the Angel of Sleep wiped away the immortal tears from the dark
+     and mournful eyes of his brother Death.
+
+     "'Are we not children born of the one Father?' said he, 'and do not
+     the good call thee friend, and the lonely, the homeless, the weary
+     laden bless thy hallowed name when they wake in Paradise.'
+
+     "And the Angel of Death unfurled his sable wings and took heart.
+     And as Lucifer the light-bringer paled in the violet Heavens he
+     silently entered the dwelling. With his golden scythe he cut the
+     silver cord of life, and gathered the child to his faithful bosom."
+
+The evenings I most enjoyed were those I spent in the studio of Felix
+Moscheles, the great apostle of peace. There one met all the genius and
+talent in London, and any genius of foreign nationality who happened to
+be visiting England. The cosmopolitan element always attracted me, and I
+went to several frankly revolutionary houses, where red ties flaunted,
+and where those Russian Nihilists found a welcome who were constantly
+rushing over here to escape Siberia. Through them I learned to
+understand what the real woes of Russia were, and to expect the present
+revolution as the inevitable result of brutal repression and
+misgovernment.
+
+During one winter at Nice I renewed my acquaintance with one of the most
+remarkable mystics of modern times, Marie, Countess of Caithness and
+Duchesse de Pomar.
+
+I had first met her in Edinburgh in 1872 when she was on the eve of her
+second marriage with Lord Caithness. My father and mother attended her
+very quiet wedding. Now we met again many years after at her beautiful
+home, the Palais Tiranty, Nice. Lady Caithness was widowed for the
+second time, Lord Caithness having died in 1881, and lived alone with
+her devoted son, the Duc de Pomar. She had a magnificent home in Paris,
+"Holyrood," Avenue Wagram. This house contained a large lecture hall
+filled with gilt chairs, and hung round with fine pictures. Leading from
+this hall down a flight of marble stairs one came to a chapel or séance
+room, used for direct communication with the spirit of Mary Stuart, and
+said to have been built "under the Queen's instructions."
+
+This presupposes Queen Mary to be still on "the other side." Other
+occultists maintain that she has reincarnated again in the person of a
+very old Empress, who still lives on earth.
+
+It has been often said of Lady Caithness that she believed herself to be
+the reincarnation of Mary Stuart. During all the years I knew her
+intimately I never heard her even hint at such a belief, and the fact
+that she believed herself to be in touch with the Queen on "the other
+side" precludes in my opinion the possibility of her having formed such
+a conception.
+
+What may have given rise to the suggestion was the fact that she dressed
+after the fashion of the Scottish Queen, and was surrounded by "Mary
+relics." Also, there is no doubt that she had a deeply sympathetic
+interest in the unfortunate Queen, and had elevated her memory into what
+amounted almost to a religion. In the chapel there is a full length
+lovely portrait of Mary, which is so lighted and arranged that it gives
+the impression of a living woman. Leading out of the dining-room was the
+bedroom of Lady Caithness, a sumptuous apartment. The bed was a state
+bed, plumes of ostrich feathers uprose at each corner. At one end was a
+crown, and behind the pillows was a fresco painting representing Jacob's
+Ladder, with a multitude of angels ascending and descending. Often Lady
+Caithness received in bed, as was the habit of the French Queens of
+former days.
+
+The jewels possessed by Lady Caithness were the most gorgeous I have
+ever seen. Nothing worn by crowned heads, at the many English Courts I
+have attended, were comparable to them. I can remember an Edinburgh
+jeweler inviting my father and me to inspect some diamonds belonging to
+her that he was cleaning. There was a long chain of huge diamonds
+reaching to the knees, with a cross attached, which no casual observer,
+not possessing the jeweler's guarantee as we did, would have believed to
+be genuine. When standing receiving her guests in the beautiful salons
+of the Palais Tiranty, clad in crimson velvet, she looked a very
+wonderful figure, for she possessed exceptional personal beauty as well.
+
+As may be supposed, a woman of such commanding presence who was known to
+possess a deep interest in the occult, could secure the services of the
+best mediums the world over. I sat with her through many séances,
+successful, barren, and indifferent, conducted by mediums of various
+nationalities. I remember one conducted by a South American medium,
+where the "controls" became very noisy and troublesome, and threatened
+to do serious damage. The medium could not be roused out of the trance
+she had fallen into, and it had really become necessary to put an end to
+the performance. She was a very big, heavy woman, and had sunk half off
+her chair on to the floor. I suggested to Lady Caithness that if we
+could drag or carry her into another room matters might then quiet down,
+but I added dubiously, "She must be a great weight."
+
+Lady Caithness replied with a smile: "Try. You'll probably find her very
+light indeed."
+
+I did try, and this was the only time in my life that I had the
+opportunity of proving to myself how tremendously a medium loses weight
+whilst genuine manifestations are in progress. I found it quite easy to
+lift this woman, who in ordinary circumstances must have weighed at
+least twelve or thirteen stone.
+
+Sir William Crookes has given to the world a very interesting account of
+his work in weighing mediums, before and during materialization. He
+always found that a great decrease in weight took place during the
+materializations, proving how enormous is the drain on the strength of
+the medium. Such evidence is most valuable, as coming from our greatest
+chemist.
+
+On this particular night I had no doubt as to the genuineness of the
+medium. Had she been a fraud she would have stopped the séance at once,
+on seeing how annoyed Lady Caithness was. She had every reason to
+conciliate her, and was greatly distressed to hear that her services
+would no longer be required. The troublesome spirits followed her into
+the next room, but gradually subsided as we succeeded in bringing the
+woman back out of her trance.
+
+I used to go very often to the theater at Nice with Lady Caithness. She
+had her own box, and often invited Don Carlos of Spain, and other
+distinguished personages, to accompany her. One night we went to hear
+the incomparable Judic. We were only a party of three, the third being
+Prince Valori.
+
+The Prince was then a man past middle age. He suggested a magnificent
+ruin, retaining as he did the battered remains of great good looks, and
+it was plain to see that his valet was exceedingly skillful. He
+possessed also a European reputation for heiress hunting, but to the day
+of his death he never succeeded in catching one, though it was said he
+had pursued his quarry in all parts of the world. Perhaps the figure he
+placed upon his ancient lineage and his personal charm was too high;
+perhaps he had begun his quest too late in life, though the position of
+a widowed Princess Valori would certainly not have been without
+attraction. I attributed his single blessedness to quite a different
+cause.
+
+That night, whilst my attention was fixed on the stage, I became dimly
+aware that some one had entered our box, but until the song was over I
+did not turn round to look who it was. We always had visitors coming and
+going. When at last I did glance round I saw nothing remarkable. Only a
+man in fancy dress seated behind Valori, a man whom I had never seen
+before.
+
+At that period Nice went mad during the winter season. The most
+extravagant amusements were entered into with a wild zest, by the very
+cosmopolitan society of extremely wealthy people. There were fancy
+dress balls every night somewhere, and no one thought it strange to see
+bands of revelers in fancy costume walking about the streets and
+thronging the cafés at all hours of the night.
+
+I was not therefore astonished to see this man in fancy dress, leaning
+familiarly over the back of Prince Valori's chair. He was a very thin
+man, with very long, thin legs, and he was dressed entirely in chocolate
+brown--a sort of close-fitting cowl was drawn over his head, and his
+curious long, impish face was made more weird by small, sharply pointed
+ears rising on each side of his head. He appeared to have "got himself
+up" to look like a satyr, or some such mythical monstrosity. He was not
+introduced to me at the moment, and other people entering our box whom I
+knew, I forgot about him. When the box cleared before the next act I
+noticed he had gone.
+
+A week or so after this I went to a fancy dress ball given by a Russian
+friend of mine--Princess Lina Galitzine. There was a great crowd, and a
+number of Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses, some of whom had driven long
+distances from their villas and hotels in Mentone, Monte Carlo, and
+Beaulieu, etc. I soon saw Prince Valori making his way towards me,
+dressed very magnificently, in a French costume of the eighteenth
+century. By his side moved the man in brown.
+
+Now that I saw "the satyr" under brilliant light he struck me at once as
+something peculiar. His walk was alone sufficient to attract attention.
+He strutted on tiptoes, with a curious jerk with every step he made.
+Those who remember Henry Irving's peculiar walk may form some idea of
+"the satyr's" movements. They were Irving's immensely exaggerated. I
+concluded that Valori was bringing him up to present him to me, but
+such proved not to be his intention. Valori shook hands, coolly
+requested the young American to whom I was talking to move off and find
+some one to dance with, and seated himself in the vacated chair. "The
+satyr" stood by his side and said nothing. I thought this very odd, and
+glancing, whenever I could do so unobserved, at the silent brown figure,
+I began to feel uneasy and shivery. It was impossible, whilst he stood
+there listening to all we said, to ask Valori who he was, and no mention
+was made of him.
+
+As soon as I could I escaped to talk to some one else, and for an hour
+or two I avoided both. During this time I asked several people who "the
+satyr" was, but no one seemed to have noticed him in the crowd. At last,
+when seated at supper with the late James Gordon Bennett, who did not
+usually go to balls, but had looked in here for half an hour for some
+purpose of his own, I found myself seated next to a very charming Pole,
+married to a Russian, the Princess Schehoffskoi. I knew her to be a
+genuine mystic, one of the group who first instituted spiritualism into
+the Russian Court circles. I seized an opportunity, whilst Gordon
+Bennett was occupied with some one else, to ask her who the brown satyr
+was who had attached himself to Valori.
+
+She was at once absorbed in the question, and, lowering her voice, she
+said, "Why, how interesting! Don't you know that is his 'Familiar' who
+is constantly in attendance upon him. People say they became attached
+whilst he was attending a 'Sabbath' in the Vosges, and he can't get rid
+of it."
+
+"A Sabbath!" I echoed blankly.
+
+"Yes! Surely you have heard of a 'Witch's Sabbath.' They still hold them
+at Lutzei, and each person receives a 'Familiar.' Those 'Sabbaths' are
+the most appalling orgies and hideously blasphemous. The 'Familiars'
+have names--Minette, Verdelet, etc. I had an ancestor who owned a
+'Familiar' called Sainte Buisson. His name was de Laski. Of course, he
+was a Pole, and a Prince of Siradia, and he came across Dr. Dee, the
+necromancer of Queen Elizabeth's time. They seem to have entered into a
+sort of partnership."
+
+All this the Princess told me quite seriously, and I found out later
+from her that Satanism or devil worship was largely practiced in France.
+It is interesting to note that the names of the French war mascots of
+the moment are all taken from the names of well-known "Familiars" in
+occult lore.
+
+"Then the 'satyr' attached to Valori is not human flesh and blood; how
+horrible!" I whispered back. "Have many people seen him? Is he always
+there?"
+
+The Princess nodded, "The clairvoyantes here all know about it, and I
+myself have seen him, not here, but in Paris. I shall go in search of
+Valori directly after supper."
+
+"And I shall go home to bed," I answered.
+
+The next morning I met Valori, alone, on the Promenade des Anglais. He
+turned and strolled by my side, and I determined to put a straight
+question. After a little trivial conversation I said, "By the way, who
+is that brown man, dressed like a Satyr, who has been with you lately?"
+
+I watched Valori's face as I put the question, and as I saw the change
+that came over it I felt very sorry and ashamed of having spoken. He
+looked so utterly dejected and miserable.
+
+"You also?" he muttered, then fell to silence.
+
+I gathered that the same question had been put to him before, and I
+hastened to reassure him. "Don't answer. My question was impertinent;
+let us speak of other things," I said hastily, but he remained silent,
+staring down at the ground. Then suddenly he said--
+
+"I am not the only one in the world so afflicted."
+
+I did not pursue the subject. His words were true. That evening I
+received a large bouquet of Russian violets, and on a card was written
+the following French proverb:--"La réputation d'un homme est comme son
+ombre, qui tantôt le suit et tantôt le précède; quelquefois elle est
+plus longue et quelquefois plus courte que lui."
+
+At that time the whole Riviera was swarming with professional
+clairvoyantes, and it soon "got wind" that Prince Valori's "Familiar"
+was walking about with him. He treated the matter almost as lightly as a
+distinguished English General treated his "Familiar."
+
+The Englishman, General Elliot, who commanded the forces in Scotland,
+was a very well-known society man, about twenty-five years ago. He had a
+name for his Familiar, "Wononi," and used actually to speak aloud with
+him in the middle of a dinner-party. The General occupied a very
+distinguished position, not only in his profession, but in the social
+world, and to look at he was the very last man that one would associate
+with matters occult.
+
+In 1895 Marie, Duchesse de Pomar and Countess of Caithness, died. She
+had the right to claim burial in Holyrood Chapel, and a very simple
+stone marks her last resting-place. To her I owe the warmest friendship
+of my life, for it was in her opera box I met the present Lady Treowen,
+born a daughter of Lord Albert Conynghame, who afterwards became the
+first Lord Londesborough. To the many who know and love her, Albertina
+Treowen represents a type of perfect breeding, alas! fast becoming
+extinct in these days. She has lived the reality of noblesse oblige, has
+the rare gift of perfect friendship, and combines a rare refinement of
+mind with strong moral courage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+EAST END DAYS AND NIGHTS
+
+
+If we had found the golden thread of meaning which gives coherence to
+the whole; if we had been taught as our religion that every man and
+woman was receiving the strictest justice at the Divine hands, and that
+our conditions to-day were exactly those our former lives entitled us
+to, how different would be our outlook on life. As it is, men have
+fallen away in their bitter discontent from a God in whose justice they
+have ceased to believe, and of whose impartiality they see no sign.
+
+I doubt if any religion extant has claimed such a wide diversity in its
+adherents as Christianity. Calvin, Knox, Torquemada, the Archbishop of
+Canterbury, and Kaiser Wilhelm. Mr. Gladstone, and Czar Nicolas. The
+Pope of Rome, and Spurgeon. Even those nine names, which might be
+multiplied indefinitely, show us diametrically opposed readings of the
+same faith.
+
+It would be of enormous benefit to us if we studied all the great
+religions, and separated from each the obviously false from the true,
+and appropriated the latter. The Bible would gain enormously in value if
+studied in conjunction with other sacred books written before the advent
+of Christ.
+
+A careful study of the ancient faiths will reveal a wonderful
+similarity. We are beginning to break down the limitations which have
+been presumptuously cast around the conceptions of the Divine teachings.
+We begin to see that not only in Palestine, but in all the world, and
+amongst all peoples, God has been revealing Himself to the hearts of
+men.
+
+It is always folly for the orthodox to hold up hands in holy horror at
+the views of the unorthodox. It is a selfish standpoint, and makes
+matters no better. Doubt does not spring from the wish to doubt. It
+arises solely from the play of the mind on the facts of daily life
+surrounding us. The truth remains, that, unless the Church recovers
+those vital doctrines that she has lost, and which alone make life
+rational to the intelligent, she will be finally abandoned when the
+present generation dies out.
+
+We can never rest content with a faith which flatly contradicts the
+facts of life which surround us, and press in on us from every side in
+our daily existence. We hold that what we undoubtedly find in life ought
+to have its complement in religion. The searching temper of our vast
+sacrifices in war are thrusting faith down to primitive bed-rock.
+Orthodoxies and heterodoxies will not matter much now. What will matter
+will be honesty, effectiveness, and a rational explanation of life. For
+nineteen hundred years we have professed the religion of what others
+said about Christ. Now the hour is approaching when we must try the
+religion of what Christ said about us and the world.
+
+I was always of a very inquiring turn of mind, and I had abandoned
+orthodoxy before I was twenty. I had read everything I could lay my
+hands on, and I emerged after a year or two, an out-and-out agnostic, in
+the popular sense of the term.
+
+I had, however, no intention of remaining in that condition. I was
+convinced there must be some link between Science and Religion, and that
+a just God, worthy of all worship, was to be found, if only I knew where
+to seek. I can look back on this crude stage of my life, and see what a
+nuisance I must have been, with my defiant disbelief and constant
+questioning. I became an ardent truth-seeker, but my demands, I can now
+realize, grew out of my palpitating desire to reduce the world of
+disorder to the likeness of a supreme and beneficent Creator. If God be
+just and good, then what is the explanation of this hideous discrepancy
+in human lives?
+
+Following on this came the question: "Is it possible that a just God is
+going to judge us, one and all, on our miserable record of three score
+years and ten?"
+
+"Whatsoever ye soweth that shall ye reap." So the criminal and the
+savage were to be judged by their deeds, though, through no fault of
+their own, they were born under circumstances which precluded any
+glimmer of light to shine in on their darkness. "Ah!" but I was told,
+"God will make it up to them hereafter. Of course, He won't judge them
+as He will judge you."
+
+This seemed to me pure nonsense. I could not understand a God who
+arranged His creation so badly. Whilst in London I started out on a
+search for truth.
+
+Amongst those who accorded me interviews were Cardinal Newman and the
+late Archdeacon Liddon. The former was exquisitely sympathetic and
+patient, but he gave me no mental satisfaction. I helped him for some
+weeks in the great dock strike, and then we drifted apart for ever.
+Liddon listened patiently, then told me flatly he could not solve the
+mysteries I sought to probe. I also was accorded an unsatisfactory
+interview with Basil Wilberforce. After a lapse of thirty years we met
+again, though I never recalled to him the visit I had paid him in my
+youth, being sure he must have forgotten all about it. I found him
+enormously changed mentally. He had outgrown all resemblance to his
+former mental self.
+
+At that early period some one happened to mention to me that a certain
+Madame Blavatsky had just arrived in London, bringing with her a new
+religion. My curiosity was at once fired, and I set off to call upon
+her.
+
+I shall never forget that first interview with a much maligned woman,
+whom I rapidly came to know intimately and love dearly. She was seated
+in a great armchair, with a table by her side on which lay tobacco and
+cigarette paper. Whilst she spoke her exquisite taper fingers
+automatically rolled cigarettes. She was dressed in a loose black robe,
+and on her crinkly gray hair she wore a black shawl. Her face was pure
+Kalmuk, and a network of fine wrinkles covered it. Her eyes, large and
+pale green, dominated the countenance--wonderful eyes in their
+arresting, dreamy mysticism.
+
+I asked her to explain her new religion, and she answered that hers was
+the very oldest extant, and formed the belief of five hundred million
+souls. I inquired how it was that this stupendous fact had not yet
+touched Christendom, and her reply was that there had never been any
+interference with Christian thought. Though judge of all, Christianity
+had been judged by none. The rise of Japan was a factor of immense
+potency, and in time would open out a new era in the comprehension of
+East by West. Then the meaning would flash upon the churches of the
+words, "Neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem."
+
+I explained to her my difficulties, which she proceeded to solve by
+expounding the doctrines of reincarnation and Karma. They jumped
+instantly to my reason. I there and then found the Just God, of whom I
+had been in search. From that day to this I have never had reason to
+swerve from those beliefs. The older I grow, the more experience I
+gather, the more I read, the more confirmed do I become in the belief
+that such provide the only rational explanation of this life, the only
+natural hope in the world to come.
+
+I have offered those beliefs to very many people whom I discovered to be
+on the same quest as I had been. I have never once had them rejected by
+any serious truth-seeker, and I have seen them passed on and on by these
+people to others, forming enormous ramifications which became lost to
+view in the passage of time and their own magnitude.
+
+In these early days there was little literature available for the
+student, but the circle of clever brains which rapidly surrounded
+Blavatsky set to work with a will under her guidance, and now, after the
+lapse of thirty years, there is an enormous literature always commanding
+a wide sale, and the little circle that gathered round "the old lady"
+has swollen into very many thousands.
+
+What was the secret of Helena Petrovski Blavatsky's instant success? I
+have no doubt that it lay in her power to give to the West the Eastern
+answers to those problems which the Church has lost.
+
+In her way Blavatsky was a true missioner. "Go forth on your journey for
+the weal and the welfare of all people, out of compassion for the world
+and the welfare of angels and mortals," was the command given by the
+Lord Buddha to his disciples, and Christ, following the universal ideal,
+five hundred years later, commanded, "Go ye into all the world and
+preach the Gospel of the whole Creation."
+
+I began to study those, to me, new doctrines at once, and I also took up
+their occult side, no light task, but one of absorbing interest. Not
+till then did I fully realize that in no one human life could that long,
+long path be trodden, in no new-born soul could be developed those
+divine possibilities of which I could catch but a fleeting illusive
+vision.
+
+"Thou canst not travel in the Path before thou hast become the Path
+itself." Did not the Christ warn his followers that the Path must be
+trodden more or less alone? "Forsake all and follow Me." So, also in the
+Bhagavad Gita it is written: "Abandoning all duties come unto me alone
+for shelter. Sorrow not, I will liberate thee from thy sins."
+
+"The secret doctrine" written by Blavatsky proved a mine of wealth, and
+I read the volumes through seven times in seven different keys. The
+works of A. P. Sinnett, text books then, and now brought up to date by
+expanding knowledge, were extremely helpful. For advanced students "The
+Growth of the Soul" is unsurpassed. A very short time elapsed before
+mental food was supplied for practically every branch of mysticism and
+occult development, and students flocked into headquarters from all
+parts of the world.
+
+It is interesting to remember the two adjoining villas in Avenue Road,
+St. John's Wood, where we used to congregate to study, and hear lectures
+thirty years ago, and to look now on the stately buildings in Tavistock
+Square. They are designed by the great architect Lutyens, whose wife,
+Lady Emily, is an ardent theosophist. I am glad that I have lived to see
+these doctrines take firm root in the West, and grow so amazingly that
+in all cities they are now held by vast numbers, and even in cases where
+they have not been finally adopted they are acknowledged to be the only
+logical conclusion for those who desire to possess a rational belief. I
+am glad that I can look back with love and profound gratitude to Helena
+P. Blavatsky, the woman who grafted on the West the wisdom of the ages.
+I have no doubt that she is enabled to see the mighty structure raised
+on her small beginnings, and doubtless she has met on "the other side"
+men and women whose debt to her is equally as great as mine.
+
+Blavatsky began by exploding the theory that men are born equal. If this
+one life were all, then this great error ought, in common justice, to be
+absolute truth, and every man should possess common rights in the
+community, and one man ought to be as good as another. If every soul
+born to-day is a fresh creation, who will in the course of time pass
+away from this life for ever, then why is it that one is only fitted to
+obey, whilst another is eminently fitted to rule? One is born with a
+tendency to vice and crime, another to virtue and honesty. One is born a
+genius, another is born to idiocy. How, she asked, could a firm social
+foundation ever be built up on this utter disregard of nature? How
+treat, as having right to equal power, the wise and the ignorant, the
+criminal and the saint? Yet, if man be born but once it would be very
+unjust to build on any other foundation.
+
+Re-incarnation implies the evolution of the soul, and it makes the
+equality of man a delusion. In evolution time plays the greatest part,
+and through evolution humanity is climbing. "Souls while eternal in
+their essence are of different ages in their individuality."
+
+Many of us must know people who though quite old in years are children
+in mind. Men and women who having arrived at three score years and ten
+are still utterly childish and inconsequent. They are young souls who
+have had the experiences of very few earth lives. Again, we all know
+children who seem born abnormally old. Infant prodigies, musicians,
+calculators, painters who have brought over their genius from a former
+life.
+
+I remember once meeting with a curious experience, which is not very
+easy to describe. It was an experience more of feeling than of seeing.
+
+I was standing in Milan Cathedral. In front of me and behind was
+gathered a crowd of peasants. High Mass was being celebrated, and all
+the seats were occupied.
+
+After a few moments I began to feel a curious sensation of being
+intently watched. Some penetrating influence was probing me through and
+through, with a quiet but intensely powerful directness. I had the
+sensation that my soul was being stripped bare. I looked round, but
+could see nothing to account for my sensation. Every one seemed intent
+on their devotions. I began to wonder if some malicious old peasant was
+throwing over me the spell of the evil eye, but again my feelings were
+not conscious of an evil intent; it was more an absorbed speculation
+directed towards me. Some one was probing my soul, speculating on my
+spiritual worth or worthlessness, with an intensely earnest yet cold
+calculation.
+
+Just in front of me stood a peasant woman of the poorest class. Her back
+was towards me, and over her shoulder hung a baby of not more than a
+year old. Suddenly I met the eyes of the child full. Then I knew. As a
+psychological experience it was most interesting, but it sent a little
+thrill of creepiness through me.
+
+The baby did not withdraw its gaze, but continued leisurely to look me
+through and through. The eyes were large and gray, the expression that
+of a contemplative savant, with a faint dash of irony in their glance. I
+do not pretend to be anything but what is now called "psychic," but I am
+certain that those windows of the soul, with that age-long experience
+flooding out of them, would have arrested the most material person. My
+husband, who is accustomed to my "flights of imagination," was very much
+struck by that look of maturity, that suggestion of æonic knowledge.
+
+Blavatsky taught me to look on man as an evolving entity, in whose life
+career births and deaths are recurring incidents. Birth and death begin
+and end only a single chapter in the book of life. She taught me that we
+cannot evade inexorable destiny. I made my present in my past. To-day I
+am making my future. In proportion as I outwear my past, and change my
+present abysmal ignorance into knowledge, so shall I become free.
+
+I have often heard Blavatsky called a charlatan, and I am bound to say
+that her impish behavior often gave grounds for this description. She
+was foolishly intolerant of the many smart West End ladies who arrived
+in flocks, demanding to see spooks, masters, elementals, anything, in
+fact, in the way of phenomena.
+
+Madame Blavatsky was a born conjuror. Her wonderful fingers were made
+for jugglers' tricks, and I have seen her often use them for that
+purpose. I well remember my amazement upon the first occasion on which
+she exhibited her occult powers, spurious and genuine.
+
+I was sitting alone with her one afternoon, when the cards of Jessica,
+Lady Sykes, the late Duchess of Montrose and the Honorable Mrs. S.----
+(still living) were brought in to her. She said she would receive the
+ladies at once, and they were ushered in. They explained that they had
+heard of her new religion, and her marvelous occult powers. They hoped
+she would afford them a little exhibition of what she could do.
+
+Madame Blavatsky had not moved out of her chair. She was suavity itself,
+and whilst conversing she rolled cigarettes for her visitors and invited
+them to smoke. She concluded that they were not particularly interested
+in the old faith which the young West called new; what they really were
+keen about was phenomena.
+
+That was so, responded the ladies, and the burly Duchess inquired if
+Madame ever gave racing tips, or lucky numbers for Monte Carlo?
+
+Madame disclaimed having any such knowledge, but she was willing to
+afford them a few moments' amusement. Would one of the ladies suggest
+something she would like done?
+
+Lady Sykes produced a pack of cards from her pocket, and held them out
+to Madame Blavatsky, who shook her head.
+
+"First remove the marked cards," she said.
+
+Lady Sykes laughed and replied, "Which are they?"
+
+Madame Blavatsky told her, without a second's hesitation. This charmed
+the ladies. It seemed a good beginning.
+
+"Make that basket of tobacco jump about," suggested one of them.
+
+The next moment the basket had vanished. I don't know where it went, I
+only know it disappeared by trickery, that the ladies looked for it
+everywhere, even under Madame Blavatsky's ample skirts, and that
+suddenly it reappeared upon its usual table. A little more jugglery
+followed and some psychometry, which was excellent, then the ladies
+departed, apparently well satisfied with the entertainment.
+
+When I was once more alone with Madame Blavatsky, she turned to me with
+a wry smile and said, "Would you have me throw pearls before swine?"
+
+I asked her if all she had done was pure trickery.
+
+"Not all, but most of it," she unblushingly replied, "but now I will
+give you something lovely and real."
+
+For a moment or two she was silent, covering her eyes with her hand,
+then a sound caught my ear. I can only describe what I heard as fairy
+music, exquisitely dainty and original. It seemed to proceed from
+somewhere just between the floor and the ceiling, and it moved about to
+different corners of the room. There was a crystal innocence in the
+music, which suggested the dance of joyous children at play.
+
+"Now I will give you the music of life," said Madame Blavatsky.
+
+For a moment or two there fell a trance-like silence. The twilight was
+creeping into the room, and seemed to bring with it a tingling
+expectancy. Then it seemed to me that something entered from without,
+and brought with it utterly new conditions, something incredible,
+unimagined and beyond the bounds of reason.
+
+Some one was singing, a distant melody was creeping nearer, yet I was
+aware it had never been distant, it was only becoming louder.
+
+I suddenly felt afraid of myself. The air about me was ringing with
+vibrations of weird, unearthly music, seemingly as much around me as it
+was above and behind me. It had no whereabouts, it was unlocatable. As I
+listened my whole body quivered with wild elation, and the sensation of
+the unforeseen.
+
+There was rhythm in the music, yet it was unlike anything I had ever
+heard before. It sounded like a Pastorale, and it held a call to which
+my whole being wildly responded.
+
+Who was the player, and what was his instrument? He might have been a
+flautist, and he played with a catching lilt, a luxurious abandon that
+was an incarnation of Nature. It caught me suddenly away to green
+Sicilian hills, where the pipes of unseen players echo down the mountain
+sides, as the pipes of Pan once echoed through the rugged gorges and
+purple vales of Hellas and Thrace.
+
+Alluring though the music was, and replete with the hot fever of life,
+it carried with it a thrill of dread. Its sweetness was cloying, its
+tenderness was sensuous. A balmy scent crept through the room, of wild
+thyme, of herbs, of asphodel and the muscadine of the wine press. It
+enwrapt me like an odorous vapor.
+
+The sounds began to take shape, and gradually mold themselves into
+words. I knew I was being courted with subtlety, and urged to fly out of
+my house of life and join the Saturnalia Regna. The player was speaking
+a language which I understood, as I had understood no tongue before. It
+was my true native tongue that spoke in the wild ringing lilt, and I
+could not but give ear to its enchantments and the ecstasy of its joy.
+
+My soul seemed to strain at the leash. Should I let go? Like a powerful
+opiate the allurement enfolded me, yet from out its thrall a small
+insistent voice whispered "Caution! Where will you be led: supposing you
+yield your will, would it ever be yours again?"
+
+Now my brain was seized with a sense of panic and weakness. The music
+suddenly seemed replete with gay sinfulness and insolent conquest. It
+spoke the secrets which the nature myth so often murmurs to those who
+live amid great silences, of those dread mysteries of the spirit which
+yet invest it with such glory and wonderment.
+
+With a violent reaction of fear I rose suddenly, and as I did so the
+whole scene was swept from out the range of my senses. I was back once
+more in Blavatsky's room with the creeping twilight and the far off
+hoarse roar of London stealing in at the open window. I glanced at
+Madame Blavatsky. She had sunk down in her chair, and she lay huddled up
+in deep trance. She had floated out with the music into a sea of earthly
+oblivion. Between her fingers she held a small Russian cross.
+
+I knew that she had thrust me back to the world which still claimed me,
+and I went quietly out of the house into the streets of London.
+
+On another occasion when I was alone with Madame Blavatsky she suddenly
+broke off our conversation by lapsing into another language, which I
+supposed to be Hindustanee. She appeared to be addressing some one else,
+and on looking over my shoulder I saw we were no longer alone. A man
+stood in the middle of the room. I was sure he had not entered by the
+door, window or chimney, and as I looked at him in some astonishment, he
+salaamed to Madame Blavatsky, and replied to her in the same language in
+which she had addressed him.
+
+I rose at once to leave her, and as I bade her good-by she whispered to
+me, "Do not mention this." The man did not seem aware of my presence; he
+took no notice of me as I left the room. He was dark in color and very
+sad looking, and his dress was a long, black cloak and a soft black hat
+which he did not remove, pulled well over his eyes.
+
+I found out that evening that none of the general staff were aware of
+his arrival, and I saw him no more.
+
+I remember clearly the first night that Annie Besant came to
+headquarters as an interested inquirer. She arrived with the socialist,
+Herbert Burrows. Madame Blavatsky told me she was destined to take a
+very great part in the future Theosophical movement. At that time such a
+thing seemed incredible, yet it has come to pass.
+
+About this period I went to live in the East End of London, Haggerston
+and Whitechapel, where I had a night shelter of my own. There I saw into
+what surroundings children were born, how they grow up, and how their
+parents live and die. I have seen so much of the lives of the outcast
+poor that I can feel nothing but the most passionate pity for them,
+even though I can now look upon them as souls just beginning to climb
+the ladder of evolution.
+
+My night shelter was for women only, and was purposely of the roughest
+description. The floor was bare concrete, and round the walls were heaps
+of millers' sacks I had bought cheap, owing to mice having eaten holes
+in them.
+
+According to our laws the legal age at which a girl can marry is
+thirteen, and I used to get many of these girl wives in for the night,
+as their lawful husbands used to turn them out of doors. I discovered
+that it was no uncommon practice for a man to buy one of those children
+from the parents for a few pence, the parents' consent being necessary.
+The marriage was solemnized, and the child wife was used only as a
+drudge to slave for the husband and his mistress, who was of a more
+suitable age to become his mate.
+
+I used to be very much troubled by women in the throes of delirium
+tremens. They would come in quite quietly when the shelter opened,
+strip, pick up a sack and get into it, and then lie down and at once go
+to sleep. After a few hours' dead slumber they would get up, raving mad,
+and disturb all the other sleepers. The reason of this peculiar form of
+D. T. was explained to me by a doctor in the neighborhood. The publicans
+kept a pail behind the bar, into which was thrown the dregs of every
+species of liquor sold during the day. This concoction was distributed
+cheap at closing time, and its effects were cumulative.
+
+One night I had a curious experience. The room was unusually quiet, and
+I had closed my eyes, but I was not asleep. I opened them, and, in the
+bright light of one unshaded gas jet, I saw a dark figure moving. Its
+back was towards me, and I instantly thought a plain clothes policeman
+had entered, no unusual occurrence, without my hearing him. In these
+days detectives used often to escort the West End ladies on slumming
+expeditions, and they usually called on me. Then I saw this figure was
+clad in dark robes, and was very tall. Again I thought, this is some old
+Jew who has crept in, and I was just about to rise and eject him, when
+something suddenly stopped me.
+
+_I saw through him and beyond him._ I then and there realized that
+feeling of hair of one's head rising on one's scalp is no mere figment
+of speech.
+
+The figure moved softly round the room, it made no sound whatever, and
+as it came to each sleeper it bent down, as if closely scrutinizing each
+face. It occurred to me that it was looking for some one. I began to
+dread the moment when the search was over, and the figure would turn its
+face towards me. I felt that my hair had turned into the quills of a
+porcupine. I wanted to shut my eyes, but dared not. Then before that
+quest was over, the figure straightened itself and turned full towards
+me. My fears instantly fell away from me like a fallen mantle, for
+though I knew the visitor had come from the other side, there was
+something so profoundly sad in the pale weary face, that compassion
+quite eclipsed fear. Another second and it had vanished.
+
+I lived in Whitechapel during the dread visitation of "Jack the Ripper,"
+and all women at once adopted the habit of walking in the middle of the
+road amongst the horses and carts. Fortunately there were no motors in
+those days to add to the confusion. When we came to the house or alley
+we wished to enter, we made a sudden dash for it.
+
+One night I had occasion to pass the entire night by the bedside of a
+dying prostitute. She lived in one of four rooms, all occupied by the
+same class, and all opening into a court not larger than ten feet by
+ten. I suppose I must have been very tired, for I fell asleep, and about
+five a. m. I woke and found I was alone, the woman was dead. I went out
+into the court, hearing a sudden noise of excited voices, and discovered
+that "Jack" had been at work in the adjoining room, only separated from
+mine by a match-board partition. Portions of the unfortunate woman were
+neatly arranged on a deal table. I had heard absolutely nothing. Later
+on that same day I revisited the scene, and found a curious contrast.
+Seeing his way to a cheap furnished lodging, a coster had married his
+donah in a hurry, and the wedding breakfast was being eaten off the
+blood-stained table!
+
+It was in those days that I developed into a convinced Suffragist. I saw
+that until men and women came together to improve and mold our
+civilization, very little improvement could be expected. The son of the
+bondwoman is not on a level with the son of the free woman, and we saw
+that the struggle must go on until we were accorded the right to govern
+our own lives.
+
+I could always see the anti's point of view, for, had I thought only of
+my own position as an isolated unit, a vote would have seemed to me a
+needless responsibility. No social worker who has penetrated to the
+depths can maintain this attitude, and so, in company with all other
+women workers, I entered on the crusade which has just terminated in
+victory. Much as I dislike militancy, I am convinced that it hastened
+our victory by very many years, by bringing the subject before the
+world. Also the enormous number of idle and, formerly, indifferent
+women, who have rushed into work in answer to their country's call, has
+helped our cause enormously. I have invariably found that directly a
+woman enters the ranks of active labor, her views, however strongly they
+have been opposed to us, at once swing round. Once a woman _proves for
+herself_ the disabilities under which we labor, she is at once
+converted. To the very many women who suffered acute physical torture
+during the militant campaign, our easy victory must seem passing
+strange.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MAN IN THE MARYLEBONE ROAD
+
+
+It is thirty years ago since I became a convert to Spiritualism. At that
+time I made up my mind that I would attend fifty séances, and if, out of
+that number, I did not come across one that I could be absolutely
+certain was genuine I would attend no more. Spiritualism, in itself,
+never interested me, but I was determined to see for myself if there was
+really anything in it.
+
+I attended twenty-nine séances before I happened on one that was
+absolutely convincing. Several had been almost convincing, but a
+loophole for fraud had remained, and so long as that was the case I
+persevered.
+
+I went one summer morning to see an old man who lived in the Marylebone
+Road. I was shown up into a sunny little room on the first floor. It had
+neither carpet, curtains nor window blind, and it looked on the street.
+The furniture consisted of a plain, uncovered deal table in the middle
+of a clean planked floor, and eight plain uncovered deal chairs were
+ranged round the walls. The room was utterly destitute of ornament,
+there was not even a clock, and I was the only occupant.
+
+Soon the old man entered, a very ordinary looking person, and civilly
+asked what I wanted.
+
+I said that I understood he was possessed of psychic powers, and I would
+like to see an exhibition of them.
+
+He smiled and answered, "My fee is two-and-six for a quarter of an
+hour. Choose your own phenomenon, and I'll see what I can do."
+
+I was puzzled at first, and looked round the bare walls for inspiration.
+There was not even a photograph or picture. Then suddenly I thought of
+something rather silly.
+
+"Please make those four chairs opposite to us cross the floor and mount
+on to the table," I said.
+
+The old man drew his chair quite close to mine, "Then give me your
+hand." I removed my glove and did as he asked.
+
+He looked, not at the chairs, but into my face, and I at once warned
+him.
+
+"I am no good as a subject for hypnotism, so it is useless to try."
+
+He laughed and answered, "I am not a hypnotist, but I see you have
+power. You may as well lend me some. You are young, and I am old."
+
+At that second my attention was distracted by a grating sound, and I
+forgot all about my companion. I saw the four chairs leave the wall and
+advance towards the table, in exactly the position, and tilted forward,
+they would be in if a human hand was dragging them across the floor.
+There appeared to be four invisible hands at the work. Then, one by one,
+they were neatly balanced, one on the top of the other, on the table.
+
+When the manifestation was complete I remembered the old man, and looked
+round at him. He was watching the business, as keenly interested as I
+was.
+
+"Good boys! good boys," I heard him murmur.
+
+"How is it done?" I asked him.
+
+He shrugged. "The Petris (spirits) do it. I don't."
+
+"Then ask 'the Petris' to put the chairs neatly back again."
+
+"The Petris" performed this feat very expeditiously, and I paid
+two-and-sixpence and departed. There was no loophole here for fraud, not
+a wire, or string, or any human manipulation, and I was not hypnotized.
+I never have been. For that sort of test I had seen enough.
+
+Shortly after I witnessed a materialization in broad daylight. I was
+free to move about the room, and stand by the medium as she lay bound
+and deeply entranced. I was free to make any examinations I pleased,
+whilst others present conversed with the spirit, and I left the house
+absolutely convinced of the genuineness of that phenomenon.
+
+That was the last test séance I attended, and for years afterwards I did
+not interest myself in spiritualism, nor did I attend many private
+sittings.
+
+Towards the close of the South African War I was ordered from "the other
+side" to begin again, but on different lines. I was ordered to be a
+medium.
+
+A man whom I barely knew, and who had passed over, wished to communicate
+with his people. This put me in a quandary. I hardly knew his people,
+and their social position was not such as could be treated
+unceremoniously by a casual acquaintance. I had never heard that they
+were interested in "other side" subjects. The very little I knew of them
+suggested quite the reverse.
+
+I consulted with my husband. "One cannot," I argued, "go up to people
+who are almost strangers and tell them their son wishes to communicate
+with them through me."
+
+My husband quite saw the difficulty, but it had always happened that
+when any one wished to communicate with us, and we paid no attention, we
+were given no peace till we did take heed, and sat down with an Ouija
+board to receive the message. He therefore proposed that we should
+consult Mr. A. P. Sinnett, now such a well-known writer on Occultism,
+and an old friend of ours. We therefore laid the matter before him.
+
+His reply was uncompromising.
+
+"Do as you are told from the other side. It is not for you to question
+or consider the social consequences to yourselves."
+
+This advice we immediately followed, and we were met with the utmost
+kindness and sympathetic understanding. Sittings were arranged,
+communication established. Test questions were put, which we did not
+understand, but which were satisfactory to the questioners, and for many
+years the sittings continued until the "other side" made arrangements
+for a change of mediums and I was set free for other work. I say, set
+free, because during all those years we had held ourselves entirely at
+the disposal of this wonderful spirit, who communicated through me, and
+it is no exaggeration to say that our daily lives, our worldly plans,
+entirely depended upon his wishes. He had his own work to do, and our
+earth lives were always arranged to suit his convenience.
+
+About the same time as the above experience began my husband was
+disturbed by noises in his library, and he came to the conclusion that
+some one had something to say and was determined to say it. One evening,
+when the disturbance prevented serious reading, we sat down with the
+Ouija board. The result was as follows--
+
+A spirit who purported to be a well-known soldier of fortune who had
+lately committed suicide, desired to give a message. This astonished us,
+as we had known him only slightly, and we wondered why he had chosen to
+bestow his attentions on us. He said he was very unhappy because he owed
+a certain sum of money to a friend, whom I will call B. This money B.
+could have refunded to him if he would communicate with a certain London
+address, which the departed soldier gave us in full.
+
+We knew B., and knew that he had been a close friend of the departed. We
+also knew that B. was on the Gold Coast. We promised, however, to send
+him the message, and that was the last we ever heard of the soldier.
+
+My husband wrote to B. on the Gold Coast simply giving him the message
+and leaving it at that. We were sure B. was an absolute skeptic. He was!
+and did nothing till his return to England three years later, when he
+applied at the address which he happened to have kept, and received his
+money.
+
+I first became interested in Occultism, not only through my own very
+early experiences, but through hearing as a mere child that my
+grandfather, Robert the younger of the two well-known publishing
+brothers, W. and R. Chambers, had investigated spiritualism to his
+entire satisfaction.
+
+In those days, about 1860, scientific men did not trouble about occult
+subjects, which were deemed beneath their notice. Science was so
+strictly orthodox that my grandfather published his "Vestiges of
+Creation" anonymously. It created an enormous sensation, and upon that
+book and the writings of Lamarck, Darwin founded his "Origin of
+Species." Robert Chambers determined to go to America and investigate
+for himself the reported marvelous happenings there. He had sittings
+with all the renowned mediums, bringing to bear upon their phenomena the
+acumen of his scientific mind, and he returned to Europe a convinced
+believer. He carried on regular sittings with Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall
+and other intellectuals, and with General Drayson, then a young beginner
+who went very far in his investigations before he died.
+
+About the year 1885 I happened to be staying at Hawarden with Mr. and
+Mrs. Gladstone, and the only other guest, outside the family party, was
+the late Canon Malcolm McColl, through whose instrumentality I became a
+member of the Psychical Society.
+
+McColl was a most interesting personality, a leading light on matters
+occult, and a famous recounter of ghost stories. He was also _persona
+grata_ in the Gladstone household, and Mrs. Gladstone often spoke to me
+of their deep love for him.
+
+I forget now what led up to the subject, but one night, when we were
+sitting talking, I told Mr. Gladstone that my grandfather, Robert
+Chambers, had been a convinced spiritualist. The Canon at once tried to
+draw the G.O.M., and to our mutual amazement his arguments in favor of
+the return of the disembodied soul to earth were met by concurring short
+ejaculations, such as "Of course! Naturally! Why, certainly!"
+
+Then quite suddenly Mr. Gladstone began to prove to us that the old
+Biblical scribes were convinced spiritualists. From his intimate
+knowledge of the Bible he quoted text after text in support of his
+contention. "Here He worked no wonders because the people were wanting
+in faith," he compared to the present day medium's difficulty in
+working with skeptics. When Christ asked, "Who has touched Me? Much
+virtue has passed out of Me," He but spoke as many a modern healer
+speaks on feeling a failure of power. "Try the spirits whether they be
+of God," is what all spiritualists of to-day should practice rigorously.
+
+Conan Doyle, in his book, "The New Revelation," touches upon those
+facts, and it was only on reading his book with profound interest that I
+remembered the impressive talk I had so many years ago with Mr.
+Gladstone. As Conan Doyle truly says, "The early Christian Church was
+saturated with spiritualism."
+
+What, it may be asked, is the value to a woman of psychic experiences,
+whose reality may be convincing to herself, but never to others?
+
+Firstly, there is this enormous value for me, that certain psychic
+experiences I have had make a future existence, after so-called death, a
+certainty.
+
+Secondly, other varieties of psychic phenomena have furnished me with
+unmistakable proof that I possess an immortal soul.
+
+Thirdly, still other varieties of experiences have provided me with the
+implicit belief in a God, who is in actual touch with Humanity.
+
+Again, all soul experiences, begotten from out the supreme mystery of
+Being, show us that our real life is not contained in our present normal
+consciousness, but in a vastly wider, grander plane, which, as yet, is
+but dimly sensed by the few.
+
+Those who have bathed in "the light invisible" can bring glory to those
+in gloom. They visit, but no longer live in the day. Their glory is in
+the night, when they walk with the Immortals, and bear with them the
+golden lamps of life eternal. Those who have realized the powers within,
+powers which not only are the pillars of infinite harmony, but the
+mainspring of eternal life, have builded on a rock which no tempest can
+destroy.
+
+
+    "'Tis time
+    New hopes should animate the world,
+    New light should dawn from new revealings to a race
+        Weighed down so long."
+
+                         PARACELSUS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE GHOST OF PRINCE CHARLIE
+
+
+Scotland in the autumn of the pre-war days was a very gay place. The big
+country houses were filled with shooting parties, and for the Autumn
+Meetings, Ayr races, Perth races, and games, The Inverness Gathering,
+etc. The dates were so arranged that one could go the round, and thus
+dance through several weeks. I used to go regularly to Inverness, and
+afterwards visit friends in the surrounding neighborhood. One of the
+most delightful houses to visit was Tarbat, belonging to the Countess of
+Cromartie. Any one who has read her unique books must have come to the
+conclusion that Lady Cromartie is a mystic of no ordinary type, but only
+those who know her intimately are aware how predominating in her
+character is this inborn mysticism.
+
+I first remember the two sisters, Lady Sibell and Lady Constance
+Mackenzie, hanging on to their father's arms as they walked about
+Folkestone. They were then tiny tots, and I was staying with their
+mother, the beautiful Lilian, daughter of Lord Macdonald of the Isles.
+Beautiful was the only word to describe Lord Cromartie's wife--and Lily
+seemed the most suitable name that could have been bestowed upon her.
+She was intensely musical and interested in ghosts. Born the daughter of
+a Highland chieftain she understood how to live the life of a great
+Scottish noblewoman. She was always very kind to me, and I used to stay
+with her very often.
+
+In 1893 Lord Cromartie died, and his eldest daughter, Lady Sibell,
+became Countess of Cromartie in her own right--the title going in the
+female line. As a child the young Countess had been a great reader. I
+remember she used often to be missing, and found in some quiet room
+buried in a book. To this day she has the faculty of so absorbing
+herself in a book that no amount of talking and noise in the room
+penetrates her ears. Lady Constance was quite different, devoted to
+out-of-door life, and I shall never forget how adoring the old people on
+the properties were to her, and how she loved them. One sterling and
+unusual quality she had. I never heard her say an unkind word of any
+one.
+
+In 1899 the Countess of Cromartie married Major, now Colonel Blunt, and
+she has three fine children, two boys and a girl.
+
+One of the most remarkable facts about her is her agelessness. She never
+alters with the years. Her white delicate skin, her girlish figure and
+dark glowing eyes, always retain their look of extreme youth.
+
+I have said that her mysticism must at once become apparent to the
+readers of her books, but to those, who like myself have known her from
+childhood, her psychic powers have always been extraordinary.
+
+I remember one autumn staying at Tarbat with only a very few other
+guests, I forget now who they all were. It had been a dead, still day.
+One of those sad, brooding days one gets so often in the north. In the
+afternoon, when we were out walking, Lady Cromartie said suddenly to me
+and a Miss Drummond, whom we were both very fond of, "There is going to
+be an earthquake to-night."
+
+We received this piece of information as a joke, and I thought nothing
+more of the matter till tea-time, when a gorgeous sunset was
+illuminating the heavens. As we were standing at the window looking out
+at it we were all startled by a tremendous roar, more like a very loud
+peal of thunder than anything else, yet we knew, by the look of the sky,
+that it could not have been thunder. Every one offered a different
+opinion as to what the noise could mean, but Lady Cromartie calmly said,
+"The noise is in the earth, not in the sky; it is the forerunner of the
+earthquake."
+
+We now began to take this earthquake business more seriously. Sibell
+Drummond, also very psychic, said she knew the noise came from the
+interior of the earth, and that very early that morning she had heard
+the same sound, only much more distant. We asked Lady Cromartie how she
+could possibly tell that an earthquake was coming. Such convulsions are
+not common enough in Scotland to admit of lucky guesses.
+
+"I can tell those things of Nature; something in me is akin to them,"
+she explained. "It is quite certain this earthquake will come before
+morning."
+
+As the sun went down the quiet weather changed, and by bed-time it was
+blowing such a gale that we forgot all about Lady Cromartie's prophecy.
+At one o'clock in the morning, when we were all asleep, the earthquake
+arrived, and awakened us all instantly. My bed rocked, and the china
+clattered, and I heard a big picture near my bed move out from the wall
+and go back again. Some of us got up, but there was only the one sharp
+shock. In the morning we heard that considerable damage had been done.
+Several houses and stables had been razed to the ground, and some
+animals killed and people injured.
+
+Another curious incident I remember happening during a visit to Tarbat.
+
+At breakfast one morning Lady Cromartie told us that she had a very
+vivid dream just before daylight. She dreamed that if she went into a
+certain room in the house she would find some jewels that had been
+hidden there. She seemed to have been told this in her sleep by some one
+she did not know. The room was indicated, but not the spot where the
+jewels lay. The present Duke of Argyll, always keenly alive to psychic
+phenomena, was of our party, and he at once proposed that directly after
+we had finished breakfast we should all proceed to the room, rarely
+used, but formerly a business room, and make a thorough search.
+
+By the way, I cannot refrain here from suggesting what a wonderful book
+of Scottish ghost stories the Duke could give us if he chose. His
+repertoire was endless and most thrilling, and he knew how to tell a
+ghost story.
+
+After breakfast we adjourned to the room indicated in the dream, and
+began our search. The only likely place seemed a large bookcase, full of
+books, with cupboards beneath. All the doors were locked and keyless. A
+pause ensued whilst keys were fetched from the housekeeper's room, and
+for a long time we could find nothing to fit the doors, but at last we
+were rewarded. The cupboards below were opened, disclosing a quantity of
+rubbish. Old books, estate maps, fishing tackle, every sort of thing,
+but no jewels.
+
+At last the Duke, down on his knees fumbling amongst the dust, drew
+forth two tin japanned boxes. He shook them, and the thumping inside
+proved that they were not empty. The trouble was they also were locked
+and keyless. Again there was a scramble to fit keys. We were all on the
+tiptoe of excited expectation.
+
+At last both boxes were opened, and there lay the jewels. Fine,
+old-fashioned pieces that had lain there, who knows for how long, and
+probably had belonged to Lady Cromartie's grandmother, "the Countess
+Duchess" 3rd Duchess of Sutherland.
+
+Still another reminiscence of beautiful Tarbat.
+
+Lady Cromartie asked me to join a shooting party she and Major Blunt
+were giving, to meet Prince Arthur of Connaught.
+
+I arrived one evening in wild winter weather. There had been a heavy
+snowstorm, and the sky looked as if there was considerably more to come.
+I found all the other guests had already arrived, and we were a very
+merry party. It was Prince Arthur's first "shoot" in the far North, and
+his first experience of what Scotland could provide in the way of autumn
+weather, and he was glad to avail himself of a thick woolen sweater of
+mine, which I was proud to present to him. He was perfectly charming to
+us all, and there was, owing to his simplicity, no sense of stiffness
+introduced into our party. That evening, after dinner, he was strolling
+round the room, looking at the pictures, and he paused opposite a framed
+letter, written by Prince Charles Edward during the '45 to the Lord
+Cromartie of that time, who was his earnest supporter.
+
+"Why!" exclaimed Prince Arthur, "that letter is written by 'The
+Pretender,' isn't it?"
+
+There was no answer. A thrill of horror ran through the breasts of the
+ardent Jacobites present. Dead silence reigned.
+
+Then I could stand it no longer. "Please, sir," I said, "we all call him
+Prince Charles Edward Stuart."
+
+Prince Arthur turned round laughingly. "I beg his pardon and all of
+yours," he exclaimed in the most charming manner, and the hearts of all
+the outraged Jacobites warmed to him at once.
+
+I was just about to creep into bed, very late that night, and very tired
+after my long, cold journey in a desperately sluggish train, when Lady
+Cromartie peeped in at my door. Her wonderful dark eyes were ablaze, and
+I knew at once she had something psychic to tell me. Her eyes looked
+like nothing else in the world but her eyes, when she is on the track of
+a ghost, or one of her "other side" experiences.
+
+"I have just seen Prince Charles Edward," she announced.
+
+I took her firmly by the arm. Prince Charles Edward means a very great
+deal to me, and I don't let anything pass me by that concerns his
+beloved memory.
+
+"Tell me quick. Where did you see him?" I asked.
+
+"I was just going to get into bed when I saw him standing looking at me,
+at the far end of the room. He was smiling, and as I stared back at him
+he slowly crossed the floor, his smiling face always turned to me, and
+vanished through the wall," was Lady Cromartie's answer.
+
+Then I told her of a certain feeling I had experienced earlier in the
+evening. At the moment when our Jacobite hearts were stung to deep,
+though fleeting resentment, we had formed a thought form, powerful
+enough to reach the spirit of Bonny Prince Charlie on "the other side."
+Our spirits had called on him, and he had heard and responded. Why not?
+If we believe in the immortality of the soul, the soul of Prince Charles
+Edward surely lives. Where? On the Astral plane, where the souls of all
+must go to divest themselves of the lower passions of earth, and the
+veil between the Physical plane and the Astral plane is wearing very
+thin in these days.
+
+For many of us there are rents through which we are permitted to see the
+old friends who are not lost but gone before, and who await us in a
+sphere where we in turn will await the coming of those who follow after.
+Indeed, the time does not now seem to be so far distant when so-called
+death will be pushed one stage further back, and the transference of the
+soul from earth to the Astral plane will no longer be treated as
+severance. What then will be termed the severance we now call death? It
+will be the passing of the cleansed soul from the Astral plane to the
+Heaven world, for a period of blissful rest before the life urge compels
+the reincarnating ego to take on once more the veil of flesh, in a
+transient human world.
+
+I doubt if it is possible for an English person to comprehend what it
+means to be a Jacobite. One is born a Jacobite or one is not. I was born
+a Jacobite, and I never lose my passionate love and regret for the
+sufferings and sorrows of Prince Charles Edward. No female figure in the
+past attracts me so much as does Flora MacDonald. Had I lived during the
+'45 I would have worn the white cockade, and parted with my last "shift"
+for the love of Bonny Prince Charlie. All very ridiculous, many may say,
+but there it is. That is what it means to be born a Jacobite.
+
+My grandfather was an ardent Jacobite, and consorted largely with old
+Jacobite families. The Sobieski Stuarts often made their home with him.
+Grand looking men of striking physique and good looks. Robert Chambers
+used to tell a story of the ghost Piper of Fingask; the property of a
+fine old Jacobite, Sir Peter Murray Threipland. The baronetcy is now
+extinct.
+
+One night, whilst my grandfather was visiting Sir Peter, they were
+sitting at supper in the old dining-hall. The two old sisters of Sir
+Peter, Eliza and Jessie, were present. Suddenly the faint strain of the
+pipes was heard in the distance, surely no uncommon sound in Scotland,
+where every Laird has his own piper to play round the dining-table, yet
+a sudden silence fell upon the little party of four. All ears were
+listening intently, and straining eyes were blank to all but the
+evidence of hearing. The noise grew louder, the piper seemed to be
+mounting the stone staircase, yet his brogues made no sound as he
+ascended.
+
+Sir Peter dropped his head down into his arms folded upon the table. He
+sought to hide the fear in his old eyes. The women sat as if chiseled
+out of granite, gray to the lips. The piper of Fingask had come for one
+of them. Which? Now the piper of death was drawing very near, the skirl
+of his pipes had nearly reached the door. In another moment, with a full
+blast of triumph that beat about their ears as it surged into the hall,
+he had passed, and had begun his ascent to the ramparts. The skirl was
+dying away into a wail. Miss Eliza spoke: "He's come for you, Jessie."
+There was no response. The piper of Fingask was playing a "Last Lament"
+now, as he swung round the ramparts.
+
+True enough he had come for Miss Jessie, and very shortly after she
+obeyed the call.
+
+To this day there are men and women who never forget to offer up their
+passionate regret for Prince Charles before they sleep. I know of one
+old Scottish house where his memory is an ever-present, ever-living
+thing. The shadowy old room is consecrated to him. On the walls hang
+portraits of him, and trophies of the '15 and the '45 stand round in
+glass cases. On one table lies a worn, white cockade, yellow with age,
+and a lock of fair hair clasped by a band of blackened pearls. In a tall
+slender glass there is always, in summer-time, a single white rose.
+
+Above is the portrait of the idol of the present house, who gave in the
+past of their all in life and treasure, for the cause they hold so
+sacred, so dear. I cannot look upon that gay, careless, handsome face
+without the tears rising to my eyes. His eyes smile into mine.
+Involuntarily I bend before him. What was the power in you, Prince
+Charles Edward Stuart, that drew from countless women and men that wild
+unswerving devotion? Which made light of terrible hardships, which
+followed you faithfully through glen and corrie? What is that power
+which you still exert over those to whom your name is but a memory, but
+who still, when they think on you or look upon your pictured face, cry
+silently in their hearts for the lost House of Stuart? "Oh! waes me for
+Prince Charlie!"
+
+One must be Scotch to understand that the Union did nothing to unite
+England and Scotland. To the Scottish plowman the Englishman is still a
+foreigner, whom he dislikes. Scotch and English servants do not work
+well in the same house. To us, Mary Queen of Scots lived "only the
+other day." When the House of Stuart passed from us our history ended.
+
+Our old houses are full of ghosts, the atmosphere is saturated with the
+tragic history of the past, the very skies seem to brood in melancholy
+over the soil, where so many wild bloody scenes were enacted. To the
+Psychic, Scotland is a land not yet emerged from the dour savagery of
+the past. Once, on visiting an historic old castle, my host pointed out
+to me a group of seven old trees standing close to the entrance.
+
+"Seven skeletons lie there," he said. "My grandfather went after a
+neighboring clan who had raided his cattle. He brought back seven men
+with halters round their necks and strung them up to those trees. Holes
+were dug beneath, and they all dropped into them by degrees, and then
+the earth was shoveled over them again."
+
+What will become of all those grand old places in the future? They are
+so costly to maintain. I think of all those lying around our own
+Aberdeenshire home; Fyvie Castle, a great stately pile, beautiful to
+look upon always, but more especially so when the red fires of a winter
+sunset blaze upon its many windows, and turn to rose the mantling snow
+on battlements and towers, whilst all around is wrapped in a garment of
+spotless white: House of Monymusk, Craigston Castle, Craigievar.
+
+I have just mentioned a few, all have their ghosts, and some have a
+curse upon them.
+
+A friend of ours came to see us, not very long ago, and told us of a
+horrible experience he had been through recently.
+
+He had been visiting a great house in the North, noted in Scottish
+history. The new Laird had only entered into possession during the last
+few years, on the death of a near relative, who had died from excessive
+drinking, the Scotchman's curse. Our friend had heard that this dead
+Laird "walked," but he had not met any one who had actually seen his
+ghost. After spending a pleasant evening with his host, and going
+through many reminiscences of his former visits to the house, and to the
+late Laird, who in spite of his fatal propensities had been a gallant
+gentleman and a great sportsman, our friend retired to bed.
+
+The room he slept in was a large one, and the bed faced the door, and a
+washstand stood on one side of it. He remembered the room, having slept
+in it on former occasions. He was roused in the night by some one rather
+noisily fumbling at the handle of his door, which was not locked. He sat
+up in bed and called out, "Who is it?"
+
+There was a full moon riding in a clear, frosty sky, and the room was
+only in semi-darkness. He stared at the door, which at that moment burst
+open, and standing in the aperture was a man, the dead Laird. Outside,
+was a long corridor with several windows, through which the moonlight
+poured. Against this silvery background stood the huge figure of the
+late Laird. He leaned forward, supporting himself by holding with both
+hands to the framework of the door, and with a glowering, half-drunken
+stare his eyes were fixed on the startled occupant of the bed.
+
+A panic seized our friend, who felt that if that menacing figure
+advanced into the room he would go mad. There was only one door, and no
+other means of escape, and very stealthily he slid to the opposite side
+of the bed, and reaching out, seized the water-bottle on his washstand.
+
+This action did not pass unnoticed by his terrible visitor. Suddenly
+relaxing his hold on the doorposts, he dropped down on his knees, and
+began rapidly crawling on all fours towards the bed, his inflamed eyes
+blazing with anger.
+
+Our friend did not wait for his arrival. With a blood-curdling yell he
+hurled the water-bottle full at his old friend, and leaping from the
+other side of the bed tore to the door and fled down the passage, as if
+pursued by a pack of devils. Hardly knowing what he did, he battered
+with his hands on the door of the room he knew to be occupied by his
+host and hostess, shouting out at the same time a call for assistance.
+Then he heard the voice of the wife saying to the husband, "It's
+Charlie. Open the door. I believe he's seen poor Angus."
+
+He had indeed seen "poor Angus," and for the last time, he assured us.
+Old friendship could not stand the test of so horrible an apparition.
+The room was empty when he returned to it with his host. Angus had gone
+back again to the land of the shadows, and only the scattered fragments
+of the water-bottle remained as a souvenir of his visit.
+
+Several servants had seen Angus, and it was difficult to keep the house
+staffed. One old housemaid, who had been in the family many years, had
+seen him frequently, and had even ventured to remonstrate with her
+former master, bidding him go back to his shroud and sleep peacefully in
+his grave like a respectable man, but apparently to no purpose. Angus
+preferred to "walk" and to terrify all to whom he had the power to show
+himself.
+
+Speaking of the Duke of Argyll has reminded me of some curious
+occurrences in connection with Lord Colin Campbell. At one time of my
+life, soon after my father's death, I saw a good deal of him. He was
+then studying law and intended later to practice in India. This plan he
+carried out, and in India he died, the result of a chill.
+
+Lord Colin was a very interesting man, a keen geologist and something of
+an artist. There were few subjects he was not interested in, and though
+somewhat shy of the subject, he had a decided aptitude for ghosts.
+
+One day in London he brought to my house a small gold cross fixed to a
+slab of gray marble, and asked me if I would keep it for him. He
+explained that it was an exact reproduction of the old stone cross of
+Inverary. He was then living in Argyll Lodge, Campden Hill, and I said I
+should have thought there was room enough for it there. I could not
+understand why he brought it to me. He looked uneasy and said he wished
+to get rid of it out of the house. When pressed to say why, he confessed
+that there was something uncanny about it. He thought it made him "see
+things," and he added, "Garry hates it."
+
+Garry was a fine, sable collie, devoted to his master and he to it.
+Garry had the misfortune to break his leg, and this caused Lord Colin
+acute distress. The leg was set, and the dog lay in a large clothes
+basket, and eventually got well. Garry was just recovering when Lord
+Colin brought me the cross.
+
+He became more expansive in a few moments, and said that he had seen a
+figure bending over the cross, as if to examine it. The figure had a
+hood, and he thought it must be the ghost of a monk. He had seen this
+many times, and Garry often growled, and his hair bristled at the very
+moment when his master caught sight of the apparition. Anything that
+distressed the dog must be removed, and knowing how interested I was in
+ghosts he had brought the cross to me.
+
+Of course I was delighted to have a chance of witnessing psychic
+phenomena of any kind, but alas, though I kept the cross for years, and
+only sent it lately to the present Duke, I never saw anything in
+connection with it.
+
+I did, however, see something interesting in connection with Lord Colin.
+
+One hot June evening, in London, I was sitting alone by the open window.
+The day had been very exhausting; it was one of those hot spells that
+come so often before regular summer sets in, and I was glad to rest
+quietly and do nothing.
+
+The street was wonderfully quiet at that hour, nine o'clock, when all
+the world of fashion was dining, and the daylight was strong enough to
+read by, had I so desired. Suddenly my attention was attracted by a
+slight noise behind me, and glancing round at the open door I saw that
+Lord Colin and his dog had just entered the room, as was their habit,
+unannounced. In his hand he carried a huge bunch of white and mauve
+lilac blossoms. I had not expected him that evening, but I was very
+pleased to see him, and exclaimed, "Why, Colin, what a glorious bouquet!
+I can smell it already."
+
+He was smiling as he and his dog moved up the long room towards me, but
+he said nothing. I had risen and held out my hand, but when about
+halfway across the floor both he and the dog vanished entirely and quite
+suddenly.
+
+I shall never forget my utter amazement and consternation. I could not
+disbelieve the evidence of my own senses, for I was absolutely certain
+I could still smell the lilac, and I had no doubt whatever that I had
+seen Lord Colin and his dog.
+
+I sat down again and fell to considering the extraordinary circumstance.
+I was perfectly well and normal, I had not been thinking of Lord Colin,
+and yet in the midst of other thoughts a sound had attracted my
+attention, and looking round I had seen him enter with his dog. For the
+space of quite two minutes both had been visible. I got up again and
+timed the whole affair by my wrist watch. The room I sat in was very
+long. I was at one end, and the door at the other. It took me just one
+minute to walk leisurely forward over the ground they had covered,
+before they vanished from my sight.
+
+I sat down again and began to wonder if Lord Colin was ill, or was he
+dead, and why was he carrying lilacs? 'Phones were uncommon things in
+those days; I had no means of communication with Argyll Lodge.
+
+For an hour I sat considering the wonderful vividness of my curious
+experience. The daylight had faded into a close, soft twilight, but I
+wanted no artificial light. Then just as ten o'clock was striking I
+heard a voice in the hall below; a voice I was sure was Lord Colin's,
+and he was answered by one of my servants. Steps sounded on the stairs,
+and in another moment in he walked with Garry, and in his hand he
+carried a big bunch of white and mauve lilacs.
+
+I stood staring at him in the dim twilight. Was this the real man and
+dog at last?
+
+"I know it's awfully late to pay a call, but I thought you would like
+some lilac," he exclaimed; "it's so lovely in our garden just now," and
+he held out the flowers.
+
+I took them and bade him be seated. Garry came to me and rested his nose
+on my lap. For a moment I could not speak.
+
+"Aren't you well?" asked Colin.
+
+Then I recovered myself, but I did not tell him what had happened only
+an hour before. As we talked I discovered that he had intended to come
+at nine o'clock, and was just starting when a relative arrived and
+detained him.
+
+On another occasion he told me of a curious dream he had as a boy.
+
+Queen Victoria came to Inverary to pay a visit to the Duke and Duchess
+of Argyll, Lord Colin's parents, and it was arranged that the young sons
+of the house should act as pages to Her Majesty. The night of the day on
+which the Queen arrived, Colin dreamed that some one whom he did not
+know came to him and said, "To-morrow the Queen will give you twenty
+shillings."
+
+When the boy wakened up in the morning he remembered this dream, and all
+day long he was on the outlook for its fulfillment. The hours passed,
+but though he was often in her presence and kept as close to her as he
+dared, the Queen never produced her purse. Just before reëntering the
+house towards evening, she suddenly turned to John Brown, her constant
+attendant, and said something which Colin did not catch. What was his
+joy on perceiving that surly henchman extract from a shabby old purse a
+filthy Scotch one pound note, which he handed to Her Majesty.
+
+"My little Colin, here is a present for you," said the Queen, and making
+his best bow the boy accepted the gift. His dream had come true.
+
+John Brown was the terror of all the great nobles whom the Queen was
+pleased to visit. Her Majesty took him everywhere with her, and he was
+her closest attendant. Born of the humblest Scotch parents on the Estate
+of Balmoral, he died in the position of a potentate in a royal
+residence. His manners were terribly rough and objectionable, and his
+behavior to the gentlemen with whom he constantly came into contact was
+insulting to the last degree. He had one invariable habit. When the
+Queen paid a visit naturally her honored host was in waiting to hand her
+out of her carriage. Brown contrived to nip down from his perch at the
+back of the carriage, just at a certain moment, and with a violent push
+thrust aside the prince, duke or peer who sought to do honor to the
+Sovereign.
+
+Some of the gentlemen about the Court paid him very liberally, not for
+civility, but simply to desist from his habitual insults, and it has
+been said that Disraeli discovered some method of conciliation, but
+Brown took an absolute pleasure in insulting all who had occasion to
+approach Her Majesty. Latterly he drank very heavily, and when he died,
+to the unutterable relief of all and sundry he bequeathed all his
+savings and possessions, even the watch he wore, to Her Majesty. His
+many poor relatives living in cottages on the estate never saw a penny
+of his money, nor so much as a button from his doublet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS
+
+
+We are all of us, in this world, strangers and pilgrims, and to each
+human being, in turn, and in varied ways, comes the knowledge, "A
+stranger with Thee and a sojourner as all my Fathers were."
+
+Like ships that pass in the night "we exchange signals with one
+another," and pass on our different ways through the ocean of life. I
+think it is the sea that most clearly brings home to me the transitory
+nature of our pilgrimage. Leaning over the side of a ship in mid ocean,
+and watching a trail of smoke from another ship on the horizon, I am
+always impelled to wonder about its human cargo. Who and what are they,
+and for what distant shores are they bound? Again one sweeps the far
+horizons only to find them empty of aught but a vast tumbling expanse of
+waters. Then, without warning, we are wrapped in a dense blanket of fog.
+The sirens sound insistently, and are at once answered by ships on every
+side. It is startling to find there are many so near, but utterly
+invisible. In a few minutes we have emerged again into distance and
+clear skies, and again there is nothing that meets the eye but the empty
+watery expanse.
+
+Looking back on my life I can recall many meetings with fellow pilgrims
+that apparently were purely accidental, yet they left their mark upon
+my life. Meetings such as those, when two souls thrown together by the
+force of circumstances, in quiet far-away places; or in the marts of the
+world, become in a few short hours like old and tried friends. How often
+have I heard it said, even after one short hour, "I feel as if I had
+known you all my life." Such I look upon as epochs in my pilgrimage,
+milestones and guiding stars on my life's road. Yet the limitations of
+such epochs are obvious enough. Time on earth is circumscribed, still
+there is subconsciously the instant recognition of two kindred souls who
+hear and remember, who instinctively know that once, perchance many
+times before, they have landed together on the shores of time, from the
+storm-tossed bark of life.
+
+It seems strange that those chance meetings should have no continuity. I
+remember one such meeting in the East, and how utterly by chance it
+seemed to come about. It lasted for three days, yet after three hours I
+knew more of my fellow pilgrim and he of me than we would have known of
+each other in three months at home. We were both quite alone, but I
+remember his recalling the pre-Buddha words written a thousand years
+before the coming of the Christ: "Thou shalt not separate thy Being from
+Being, and the rest, but merge the ocean in the drop, the drop within
+the ocean. So shalt thou be in full accord with all that lives, bear
+love to men as though they were thy brother pupils, disciples of one
+teacher, the sons of one sweet mother."
+
+When we bade each other good-by and I boarded my ship we told each other
+we would meet again, but instinctively we knew we never should. I have
+forgotten his name, but all else I can remember very clearly, and the
+wonderful comradeship two souls, drifting together for a second in time,
+can give each other. He gave me the sufi mysticism of Omar Khayyam, and
+I can still see the English face burnt dark with eastern suns, under the
+snowy turban, and the brilliant parrot swinging on a palm bough above
+his head. I can still hear the low grave voice reciting the quatrains of
+Persia's astronomer poet, written a thousand years ago. They fitted in
+with our surroundings:--
+
+    "There was a door to which I found no key.
+    There was a veil past which I could not see!
+    Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
+    There seemed, and then no more of Me and Thee."
+
+I suppose we all have many such recollections in our lives, and it is
+impossible (for me) to believe them to be a mere matter of chance, for,
+always on parting, I have been conscious that I have received some
+lasting good, or it has mercifully chanced that I have been able to help
+a stranger and pilgrim on a difficult way.
+
+Again, I remember another interesting meeting. A woman was sitting alone
+on a bench in the outskirts of Cairo, and her worn face was turned to
+the dying fires of sunset. She was very shabby and poor looking, and
+obviously she was a European. In my casual glance I caught something
+familiar, and after going on some paces I felt a compelling force
+bidding me return. I sat down beside her and at once spoke to her. I
+knew who she was when she turned her face to me, and the hideous
+contrast of her past and her present appalled me. She does not know
+to-day that I am aware of her real identity. She is in England, and all
+now is well with her. One can always, as the pre-Buddhist taught us,
+"Point out the way however dim and lost amongst the Host, as does the
+evening star to those who tread their path in darkness."
+
+Again, it is strange to tell why unknown pilgrims should leave their
+mark upon us for all earthly time, pilgrims to whom one has never
+spoken, and of whom one knows nothing. When I was quite a child I passed
+every day through a very quiet and well-to-do street of dwelling-houses.
+At a window behind two flower-pots, sat a woman whom I supposed to be
+sewing, though her hands were hidden from view. I can see her as clearly
+now as I saw her then, over forty years ago in the northern capital. The
+pale, tragic profile, the down-drooped eyelids, the meekly-banded hair.
+I used to wonder about her constantly. She possessed me, and interested
+me at that time more than anything else in my life. Even to this day she
+comes unbidden into my mind at frequent intervals.
+
+Again from my bedroom window in Belgrade I used to watch another woman.
+She came out on her balcony twice a day, always at the same hours. She
+put her hands on the rails, and turned her dark, southern face up to the
+skies, and there she would stand for an hour, gazing fixedly above. I
+never once saw her eyes drop to the busy street below, and once a
+prisoner, dragging his heavy chains behind him, paused and looked up and
+cried out to her for bread. She appeared not to hear him, her rigid
+attitude never relaxed.
+
+It is the thoughts of such pilgrims, as one conjectures them to be, that
+form the interest, or perhaps it really is something more, a far-off
+kinship, stretching invisible threads down through the ages. With both
+those women I had a feeling of kinship. I had picked them out of the
+world's crowd, because of some silent influence they exerted over me,
+the lingering power of some far back, forgotten touch, which had once
+drawn us together. I know that in my life I had met those "that I have
+loved long since and lost awhile."
+
+For me there was purpose in those "stars" that shine through my life, as
+looking back they show me where I had arrived at the moment of their
+uprising, and their rays pierce the penumbra shadows wherein the soul
+lies hid. Each star showed me the lees in the cup of destiny, brought to
+me a new revelation of soul, and elucidated for me something of the
+mystery of life.
+
+Again, surely there is Divine purpose in those islets of friendship
+which jewel-like stud the gray vesture of ordinary existence. They are
+close, warm, and utterly sincere, often for many long years, then they
+are suddenly sundered by the inrush of some invading force which cuts
+them off in their full bloom. Sometimes the Master Death bids them pass
+on, sometimes the break comes by some utterly trivial, yet inexorable
+fiat of human destiny.
+
+In the clash of human interests it must needs be that pain must come to
+some. Life cannot be all serenity and peace to the pilgrims who toil
+upon its stormy way, its _via dolorosa_. Such crises teach us the just
+attitude that should prevail in all such trials and circumstances. Amiel
+says, "There is one wrong man is not bound to punish, that of which he
+himself is the victim. Such a wrong is to be healed, not avenged." For
+hate there is but one antidote--love. The art of forgetfulness is not
+yet a science, but to forget the evil one has but to remember the good.
+Love knows neither saint nor sinner, for she seeks in every heart the
+hidden gem of good. She thinks no ill, because she knows the trials of
+each one are penalty enough for deeds already done. Neither in the case
+of Death's intervention, nor in the case of human misunderstanding
+should there be sorrow for lost friendships, though there must
+inevitably be regret.
+
+Love brings with it suffering, for all who love suffer with those they
+love. Unkindness and injustices are hard to bear, and the loss of those
+we love is a bitter pain, but those whose hearts are great enough still
+find others on whom to lavish love. Are there not many who need it, and
+are there not great rewards for those who have love to spare. To be
+required, to be appealed to, and turned to as a help and refuge. Such
+are the prizes for those whose hearts are always alight with love, who
+from one flame can kindle many.
+
+When death looses the silver cord, and souls seem torn asunder for ever
+more, there will be sadness of spirit. When a break comes, perhaps
+through third-party treachery, there may come the sense of eternal
+severance, but is it eternal? I doubt it. More probably there lies
+before us an existence of clearer judgment and understanding, of vaster
+possibilities, in which we shall know, even as also we are known. Though
+now we see each other through a glass darkly, a day will come when we
+shall no longer see in part, but face to face. When faith, hope and love
+shall be reunited, and we shall realize that the greatest of these three
+is love, which suffereth long, and is kind and thinketh no evil.
+
+Again, there are these loves in one's life, some fleeting, some
+lasting, that are too sacred to write of, and of which one never speaks.
+The joys and sorrows they brought, the prose or poesy of our intercourse
+are graven deep on the heart. Whether it be they still walk by our side,
+or have gone west to rest after labor, we must learn to say with the
+pre-Buddhists of old time: "Do not grieve for the living or the dead.
+Never did I not exist for you... nor will any one of us ever hereafter
+cease to be."
+
+Such sacramental hours sanctify the variety of our lot, combine the
+pathos of love and death, and stretch through the corridors of memory
+into the hush and shadow of the haunted past; where all the mystery of
+such hours seem gathered for inspiration. There linger the symbols of
+our sojourn here. How potent, yet how fragmentary they are! The scent of
+a flower, the long embrace, the hand held out in vain, the flash of
+recognition, the chime of the clock which altered the course of the
+pilgrimage. The meek hands folded on the still breast. Such symbols
+abide with us like the image of a Divine form, some echo of immortal
+music, some lingering word of angels. Their cadences come ever back to
+us from infinite distances, ghostly chords and evanescent. Harmonies
+which come and go too fitfully for apprehension.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+SOME STRANGE EVENTS
+
+
+After my marriage my husband and I passed some time in the United States
+and Canada; we then returned to England and took a place in
+Cambridgeshire. We were both very fond of racing, and attended all the
+meetings at Newmarket.
+
+One day I drove by appointment to the house of a neighbor who had asked
+me to meet Miss Catherine Bates, author of that interesting book, "Seen
+and Unseen."
+
+Just before I started my husband, half in fun, and knowing Miss Bates to
+be a psychic, said, "Ask her what horse is going to win the
+Cambridgeshire."
+
+I promised to put the question and drove off. I had a most interesting
+visit, but I totally forgot to ask Miss Bates for the winner of the
+coming race.
+
+It was not until I was seated in the victoria, exchanging a few parting
+words with the two ladies standing in the doorway to bid me good-by,
+that I suddenly recollected my husband's request. As the horses were
+starting I called out to Miss Bates--
+
+"Tell me what's going to win 'The Cambridgeshire?'"
+
+The answer was prompt and clear:
+
+"Marco to win, ---- for a place." (I regret I cannot remember the name
+of the second horse.)
+
+As I drove away I waved my thanks, and directly I got home I told my
+husband--"Marco to win, ---- for a place."
+
+He was much interested in this "tip" from so well-known a psychic, and
+of course we backed "Marco to win and ---- for a place" for all we were
+worth. I wish I could remember the odds. I only know that they were
+"long."
+
+The event duly came off, and I wrote to Miss Bates thanking her for the
+good turn she had done us.
+
+Her reply astounded me.
+
+She began by saying she had not heard me put any question to her
+regarding the winner of the Cambridgeshire, and went on to say that she
+knew nothing about racing, and knew none of the horses' names, therefore
+it was impossible that she could have given me the "tip."
+
+Her hostess cared nothing for racing, and was as ignorant as she was
+upon the subject, but she did remember hearing me call out to Miss
+Bates, "What's going to win the Cambridgeshire?"
+
+I then questioned our coachman and footman. Both distinctly remembered
+my calling out the question, and both, keen on racing, listened for the
+reply, but they heard none.
+
+Where did that answer come from? I cannot tell. Was some spirit
+interested in racing hovering near? Did he contrive to drop the "tip"
+into my mind, open at that moment and eager to catch the response?
+
+A year after the event I have recounted above, I was resting one
+afternoon in the summer-time. I had been ill, and was not yet strong
+enough to lead an ordinary life, and I was lying on a sofa in a top
+floor room. The room immediately beneath me was the drawing-room, and
+the weather being hot all the windows were wide open. The house we
+inhabited was quite isolated in its own park, and the village was about
+half a mile distant. My husband was from home, and I was alone in that
+particular part of the house, the servants' quarters being at the back,
+and shut off from the rest.
+
+Out of the absolute quiet suddenly came the sound of music. Some one was
+playing my piano in the drawing-room below. This, in itself, caused me
+irritation, but no surprise. I was not well enough to entertain callers
+at tea, due in half an hour, and I had given orders that I would see no
+one, but it had happened before that the musical neighbors had called,
+and whilst waiting for me had sat down to the piano.
+
+I was too annoyed to hasten downstairs. I lay waiting for the butler to
+come to me and inform me why my orders had been disobeyed. Meanwhile I
+listened to the music, and wondered greatly who the brilliant pianist
+could be. I did not recognize the music, but it sounded quite modern,
+and requiring a great amount of technique. The player was, however, a
+most brilliant performer, who had acquired considerable skill.
+"Evidently a professional," I thought, and wondered all the more who it
+could possibly be.
+
+Still there were no signs of the ascending butler, and time continued to
+pass. I began to feel obstinate, and determined to remain where I was,
+until I was correctly informed of the caller's identity.
+
+The music steadily continued, every note borne to my ears as clearly as
+if I had been in the room with the performer. "Very wonderful music, but
+soulless," I concluded, and though my curiosity was growing every
+moment my obstinacy prevailed, and I remained where I was. At last,
+after quite twenty minutes, the music suddenly stopped; it broke off in
+the middle of a movement.
+
+I rose at once, and went downstairs feeling very cross. I pushed open
+the drawing-room door and entered. It was absolutely empty, but the
+piano, which had not been opened for several weeks, was open now. I went
+to the window which commanded the avenue; not a soul was in sight. Then
+I rang the bell, and when the butler entered the following dialogue took
+place:----
+
+"Who was the caller who has just been?"
+
+"There have been no callers to-day, madam."
+
+"But surely you heard the piano being played?"
+
+"We heard a lot of music, but we thought it was you playing, madam."
+
+"Then you all heard it?"
+
+"All of us in the hall heard it, madam."
+
+I left it at that. Suddenly it came to me that I had better not push my
+inquiries further. Until that second it had never occurred to me that
+the performer might be a disembodied spirit.
+
+The butler did not leave the matter alone, but made every inquiry at the
+Lodge, and also of the out-door servants, but nothing came of it. No one
+had seen a stranger, and the silver was intact. My maid told me some
+time afterwards that the household had shaken down to the conviction
+that I had really been the performer, and that my recent illness had
+caused me to forget the fact. I let this conviction remain unshaken, but
+I marveled at the lack of musical discrimination my household displayed.
+The disparity between my strumming and the brilliant execution of my
+spirit guest was so vast that I could not even feel flattered by their
+mistake.
+
+A year or two after we took a cottage on the Thames, and there, during
+our summer visits, I had an uncomfortable time.
+
+There was something wrong with the sideboard end of the dining-room. For
+a long time I could not make out what it was. My attention was
+constantly being attracted to the spot. If I passed the door I thought
+instantly of the sideboard. In plain language, I was constantly being
+invited, by some invisible person, to come in and have a drink. If I was
+putting anything away in the sideboard the suggestion was always very
+strong. On the outside stood a tantalus of spirits and soda water, ready
+to refresh any calling boating men. Inside the cupboards were wine
+decanters.
+
+I always resisted the suggestion, I suppose because I did not happen to
+want anything to drink--for years I have been a total abstainer, and at
+the time I certainly did not realize the menace of those suggestions.
+
+Now and again I caught sight of a small oblong gray cloud hovering in
+front of the sideboard but it was not till many months afterwards that I
+saw something much more definite. The gray shadow had become the clearly
+defined shade of a small woman. She hovered about the spot in a
+wavering, undecided manner. It was apparent that she was seeking
+something. One day, in a flash, I recognized the truth, the suggestion
+came from her. She was inviting me to drink with her.
+
+My husband and I set to work to find out who this unfortunate woman had
+been when she dwelt on earth. We discovered a very sad story. She had
+been a celebrity of the half world, and I had actually seen her in the
+flesh. She had traveled to Monte Carlo one winter in the next sleeping
+compartment to ours, and she had lived for some years in our riverside
+cottage. Latterly she had fallen an incurable victim to drinking, and
+had died of it. Poor little soul; my heart went out to her in deepest
+pity, but I was glad to leave the cottage forever, when in 1898 we went
+to live at my husband's place, Balquholly, Aberdeenshire.
+
+Some people, perhaps once in their lives, become sensitive enough to
+recognize a visitor from the Astral plane. If the occasion is not
+repeated they believe themselves to have been victims of hallucinations.
+Others find themselves seeing and hearing, with increasing frequency,
+something to which those around them are blind and deaf. They realize,
+in fact, that they are in touch with the Astral plane, the region lying
+next to our world of dense matter, and often some Astral entity on the
+lowest levels of that plane is continuously striving to work through
+their mediumship. The world is very far from realizing this danger. What
+are those entities working for?
+
+The man or woman who has led a decently pure life on earth will have no
+attraction to the lowest levels, contiguous with earth, of the Astral
+plane, and will, at so-called death, pass swiftly through it. But, alas!
+the vast majority have by no means freed themselves from all lower
+desires before passing over, and it takes a considerable time before the
+evil forces generated on earth work themselves out on "the other side."
+
+The length of man's detention on the lower level will depend entirely
+on the earthly life he has lived, and the quality of the desires he has
+indulged in.
+
+The desires of a drunkard, a debaucher, are as strong after death as
+before. The present Bishop of London made that very clear in one of his
+Easter addresses, but the subject finds it impossible, without a
+physical body, to gratify his lusts. Occasionally it can be done in a
+vicarious manner, when he is able to seize on a like minded person and
+obsess him or her, or when he finds a medium who consciously or
+unconsciously panders to his desires. For this reason I hold it to be
+imperative for safety's sake, that every genuine medium should be a
+total abstainer.
+
+How often one is asked the question: "What is a medium?"
+
+It is a difficult question to answer in a few words. I should put it
+thus----
+
+A medium is one whose principles, physical, mental, spiritual, are so
+loosely bound together that an Astral entity can draw from him without
+difficulty the matter it requires for manifestation. The very essence of
+mediumship is the ready separability of the principles.
+
+In the case of the poor little woman I have mentioned, she was fortunate
+enough not to meet with (in me) a sensitive, through whom her passion
+could be vicariously gratified.
+
+Such unfulfilled desires gradually burn themselves out, and the
+suffering caused in the process no doubt goes to work off evil Karma
+generated in the past life. It is the soul that desires, the body is but
+the tool to grasp the desire, and after death old lusts crowd upon the
+departed. Thirsty with no throat; sensual with no body to grip the foul
+desire, soon it is learned that the worst evils and the hardest to undo
+have been woven out of the mind.
+
+Here is another story or two relating to one of the most puzzling
+mysteries in ghost lore--the phenomena of temporary hauntings.
+
+Why do ghosts suddenly take possession of a house with which, in their
+incarnate days, they have had no connection?
+
+Such ghosts differ from those only seen once. They take up their abode
+in a dwelling which has absolutely no traditions of haunting. They will
+be seen and heard on many occasions, for a few months, possibly for a
+few years. They will then suddenly depart, and be seen or heard no more.
+
+Such apparitions cannot readily be traced to any defunct friend or
+member of the family. They have no known connection with the house in
+which they appear, and no one can form the faintest conception why they
+should suddenly elect to "walk" within those four walls, which hitherto
+have been normal and free from "other side" visitors.
+
+A case of this description happened to my youngest brother, who, before
+he bought his present country house, lived in a detached, new building,
+not far from the Dean Bridge, in Edinburgh.
+
+He had occupied this house for some years previous to his experience,
+and had neither heard nor seen anything of a spooky nature. The
+manifestation only lasted for a few weeks. Nothing in the form of a
+ghost was seen, but much was heard.
+
+I will give the story in my brother's own words:
+
+"On a certain evening, a year or two ago, I went out after dinner to
+visit some friends, and returned home about half-past eleven.
+
+"Not feeling inclined to go to bed, I took up a book and sat down to
+read for half an hour.
+
+"About a quarter-past midnight I suddenly became aware that stealthy
+footsteps were coming upstairs. Looking at my watch I thought it very
+strange that any of the maids should be still up at such a late hour.
+
+"The door was well ajar, and I arose from my chair, listening intently,
+as I crossed the room. The footsteps were now quite distinct, and I knew
+at once they were not those of any woman. They were the stealthy
+footsteps of a man, and naturally I at once concluded that he was a
+burglar.
+
+"I calculated swiftly that he would either enter the room in which I
+stood, or he would go on and up the next flight of stairs to the
+bedrooms. In any case, he had to be faced and caught. I realized that,
+and I much regretted I had nothing at hand which would help me, should
+he prove to be armed.
+
+"There was, however, no time for further thought. Every second brought
+him nearer, and taking up a position just behind the door, I waited till
+he arrived on the landing, and until he came to the spot when he must
+either turn in, or go on upstairs.
+
+"The moment came, almost at once. With a sudden bound I sprang out to
+close with him. Lo! and behold! nothing was to be seen! Nothing was now
+to be heard, except the ticking of a clock.
+
+"I stood still and absolutely astounded. The footsteps had been no trick
+of imagination, I was very sure of that. Had I not heard them stealthily
+beginning the ascent of the stairs, and grow louder the nearer they
+approached me?
+
+"I mopped my brow. Would any self-respecting burglar have come on, and
+up a lighted staircase, and along a landing towards a room which he must
+have known was still occupied, as the light shone through the half-open
+door? Are burglars ever as rash as that?
+
+"Then I reminded myself that as there was no burglar in the case my
+speculations were mere waste of time.
+
+"I put out the lights, and went to bed in a very uncomfortable frame of
+mind.
+
+"The next day, when I returned home from business, my housekeeper
+informed me that a strange man had been walking about the house. She had
+not seen him, though she had looked for him--that was the curious part
+of it, but she had heard him quite distinctly, several times, and she
+didn't like it one little bit. Not that she was frightened! Oh! dear no,
+but it was uncanny, and she thought she had better tell me. I thanked
+her and assured her that there was nothing to fear. The house was quite
+new, and uncanny things never happen in new houses. I advised her not to
+mention the subject to any one but me, and told her that I was not going
+out again that evening.
+
+"After dinner I settled down in my room, to wait for the footsteps I
+instinctively felt sure would return. I kept the lights burning on
+stairs and landing, and set the door half open, placing my chair in such
+a position that I could see any one who passed outside the room on the
+landing. This time I did not think of arming myself. I had come to the
+firm conclusion that the sounds came from no person living in the flesh.
+As no house adjoined mine I had no 'next door' on which to lay the
+blame for the disturbance.
+
+"Sure enough, about an hour earlier this time, the unknown, unseen
+visitor began his ascent of my staircase. I cannot describe my feelings
+during those moments of waiting for 'it' to pass. I can only say they
+were intensely unpleasant, and I hope I may never again have to confess
+myself to be a wretched coward. A burglar would at that moment have
+appeared to me in the guise of a dear friend.
+
+"However, the thing had to be faced, there was no one else that I could
+put onto the job, and so I simply sat still and waited, with my eyes
+fixed on the landing outside. The steps came on, distinct enough, and
+growing nearer and louder. They arrived on the landing, they reached my
+door, they passed, and proceeded to mount the next flight of steps to
+the bedrooms. I had seen absolutely nothing.
+
+"I rose and walked out on to the landing, and looked up at the brightly
+lit staircase. I could mark, by the sound, the progress made by those
+invisible feet. They passed on to the bedroom floor, and with heartfelt
+gratitude I heard them enter, not mine, but an empty room. I heard
+nothing more that night. Presumably the ghost remained quietly in his
+comfortable quarters.
+
+"The next day came more complaints from the housekeeper. The 'strange
+man' not only promenaded the house at intervals, but he had the
+impertinence to ring several bells. I wondered if a whisky and soda left
+casually on his dressing-table would appease his thirst for summoning
+the servants in this irritating fashion.
+
+"For some days after this we were left in peace, and I began to hope
+that 'it' had betaken itself to the house of some other chap, but no
+such luck!
+
+"One evening I was in the dining-room decanting some wine before dinner.
+It was just seven o'clock, when I heard 'its' footsteps again. This time
+they were coming downstairs. I went to the door and looked out. There
+was no one to be seen. I reëntered the dining-room and shut 'it' out. I
+suppose 'it' had been having a rest in the bedroom. I trusted 'it' meant
+to have a night out.
+
+"A moment or two later I heard a click near the fireplace, and looking
+towards the spot whence this sound came, I saw the handle of the bell
+being pulled back. In another second the bell rang.
+
+"When the maid answered it I was ready for her.
+
+"'Oh! don't you know what that is?' I inquired with mild sarcasm. 'Only
+mice crossing the wires. Nothing to be frightened of in that, is there?'
+
+"I stuck to this all through the weeks that followed. The maids ceased
+to answer the bells, and went early to bed in a bunch. They no longer
+required rooms to themselves.
+
+"In a few months the trouble stopped as suddenly as it had begun. 'It'
+had evidently found other quarters more to 'its' liking. The mice were
+equally obliging. They ceased running across the wires."
+
+What theory will explain this species of haunting which is quite common?
+May it not be that this disembodied entity attached itself to my brother
+whilst he was out, and like a lost dog followed him home? There must be
+countless entities wandering about all over this globe, seeking an
+abiding-place for their restless souls. People who find themselves as
+bereft of friends on the other side of death, as they were in earth
+life. Those who have friends here have doubtless friends there.
+
+In old days we used to think of a post-mortem abode as somewhere in the
+skies. Some even mentioned a receiving station in the bowels of the
+earth. Now I find that the majority of educated people have come to
+regard so-called death as merely a change of consciousness, and the
+immediate post-mortem sphere of our activities to be a region
+interpenetrating this earth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A county neighbor of ours in Aberdeenshire told me of a very tantalizing
+experience he had a very few years ago of temporary haunting. This was a
+case of seeing, not hearing.
+
+The time was late autumn, and his family had gone south for the winter,
+leaving him alone for a week or two to finish up the shooting.
+
+One night, immediately after he had dined, he ran upstairs to his
+bedroom to fetch something. On coming out of his room again, what was
+his astonishment to see, walking in front of him, a tall young lady,
+very smartly dressed in the height of the prevailing fashion. She wore
+black satin, cut very low and without sleeves, and she moved very
+quietly along the passage, and proceeded to go downstairs. She never
+turned her elaborately coiffed head, and he could not see her face. He
+followed, too speechless with amazement to address her. Who on earth
+could she be? Where was she going? Nine o'clock at night; only two old
+servants in the house! In the depth of the country, and nine miles away
+from anywhere! And this charming young lady who so unexpectedly had made
+her appearance to brighten his solitude!
+
+What a surprising adventure! The situation was piquant to say the least
+of it.
+
+He followed immediately behind the attractive vision. He even wondered
+what room he would have prepared for her. So absolutely real did she
+look, that not for a second did he doubt she was ordinary flesh and
+blood.
+
+When describing her afterwards to me he said, "I can assure you I saw
+the actual white flesh of her bare arms and shoulders. I was close
+behind her."
+
+The lady moved composedly on, walking with supple grace and perfect
+self-possession. She was not in the least hurried or flustered. She
+reached the bottom of the stairs, and he had a momentary fear that she
+would make for the front door, where surely a Rolls Royce would be
+awaiting her. Not so! She walked straight into the dining-room. He
+followed.
+
+As he entered the door she had gained the opposite end of the room,
+where the sideboard stood.
+
+For a second she stood still, turned and glanced round at him with an
+enchanting smile of delicate raillery. Then she deliberately walked
+through the sideboard and wall beyond, and was lost to sight.
+
+The beholder of this ghost had never seen anything of the sort before,
+and was, if anything, a disbeliever in psychic phenomena. He is a
+perfectly healthy, normal country gentleman, whose principal hobby is
+sport, and who prefers a country life out of doors to the life of an
+intellectual student.
+
+Needless to say the occurrence puzzled him beyond measure. He could not
+"place" the lady, and was certain that he had never seen her before. Her
+dress proclaimed her to be absolutely modern.
+
+Though in roundabout ways he tried to find out if any woman, answering
+to her description, was visiting at the time in any of the neighboring
+country houses, he failed entirely to get any result.
+
+Being rather shy of the chaff he knew would be indulged in at his
+expense, he mentioned the incident to no one. He took careful notes of
+date, time, and other particulars, and kept a strict watch, but the lady
+appeared no more during his stay, and before Christmas he went south to
+rejoin his family.
+
+He did not forget the experience. When the following autumn came round
+he found himself again in the North, under exactly similar
+circumstances. Eagerly he anticipated the anniversary of his first
+ghost. He was waiting for her on the landing outside his bedroom door,
+and suddenly she sprang into sight from nowhere. To-night he had
+determined to lay hold of her, but he calculated without his ghost. She
+sped downstairs, this time as if she was well aware that he was in
+pursuit. They gained the dining-room almost neck to neck, and this time
+she made no pause before slipping through the wall. She simply looked
+back at him over her shoulder, and smiled at him enchantingly,
+provokingly. Then he found himself alone.
+
+The following year was blank. She came no more.
+
+Why did she come to that house, with which, it is certain, she had no
+connection? Why did she only appear twice, and both times on the same
+date?
+
+Such are the questions one asks in vain, but such fugitive visions
+suggest the whisperings of a voice which calls out in the wilderness,
+and leads through life's enigmas to the final awakening.
+
+There are visions of beauty to which we are blind, and joyous harmonies
+we do not hear. There are depths of feeling we have not plumbed, and
+heights we have not aspired to, yet I am sure if we but place ourselves
+in a simple attitude of receptiveness, we will draw nearer to the glory
+of the unseen, and Nature's finer forces will draw nearer to us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+POMPEY AND THE DUCHESS
+
+
+Have animals souls?
+
+I unhesitatingly answer "Yes."
+
+If my dog has not a soul then neither have I--my dreams of immortality
+are merely a delusion. I base my belief upon the God-like qualities
+found in animals--the highest quality of all, love, pure, and
+unadulterated by self-seeking.
+
+The oldest scriptures of the world tell us that when wild animals die
+their life flows back into a group soul, a mass, as it were, of
+undifferentiated life essence. As the animal becomes domesticated, as a
+dog or cat learns to live with man, shares in his joys and sorrows, to
+be his constant companion, then it advances rapidly in evolution. It is
+developing human qualities, and in due time will no more return to merge
+in the group soul, but be born into the human family. A lowly human
+family it is true, a primitive savage to begin with, but that animal has
+passed one of the most important milestones on the long, lone trail. It
+will never more return to the world in the form of the beast, henceforth
+it will commence its slow ascent from the most elementary human body to
+the exalted heights of a god. They tell us in the East: "First a stone,
+then a plant, then an animal, then a man, and finally a God." This is
+how the wisdom of the East understands Divine evolution.
+
+Cases where the ghosts of animals have been seen are becoming quite
+common. Before describing the astral apparitions of some of our animals,
+I will recall a very interesting case which was investigated in recent
+years at Ballechin, Perthshire. The accounts of the Ballechin hauntings
+are contained in a big volume, but at present I am only concerned in the
+four-footed ghosts that were seen. The trouble began upon the death of
+the eccentric owner, old Major Stewart, in 1876. He had frequently
+stated his intention of haunting the place after his death, and,
+furthermore, had asserted his determination to "walk" in the form of one
+of his many dogs, a favorite black spaniel.
+
+The family, anxious, as they thought, to be on the safe side, had all
+the pack, numbering fourteen, destroyed at the death of their master,
+but this wholesale slaughter of the innocents proved of no avail.
+
+The first intimation of its futility was immediately apparent. The wife
+of the old Major's nephew and heir was seated one day adding up accounts
+in the dead man's study, when the room was suddenly invaded by the old
+doggy smell, and an unseen dog pushed distinctly up against her.
+
+Many other unpleasant incidents followed after, but the really great
+happenings did not begin till 1896, when a shooting tenant, after a week
+or two, was compelled to quit the house, and forfeit the considerable
+rent he had paid in advance.
+
+The above fact came to the notice of that inveterate ghost-hunter, the
+late Marquis of Bute, and he, and several other members of the Psychical
+Society, hired the house, and went into residence. _The Times_ of June,
+1897, contains elaborate details of the various experiences and the
+names of the investigators.
+
+The phenomena they describe are very startling, but perhaps the most
+unnerving specter was the frequent appearance of a black spaniel, which
+was seen by numerous persons. One member of the party had brought a
+black spaniel of his own. He saw it run across the room, when at that
+moment the real dog--his own--entered and began to fraternize with the
+ghost dog.
+
+Two ladies occupying the same bedroom had a curious experience. A pet
+dog on the end of the bed began to whine, and looking to where its eyes
+were fixed they saw, not the black spaniel, but two black paws on the
+table by the bed.
+
+Various other sorts of dogs were seen by many people. The black spaniel
+by no means had the monopoly, and dogs, purposely brought by the
+investigators to aid them in their elucidation of the mystery, made
+friends or exhibited mistrust of the pack of ghost dogs haunting both
+house and grounds.
+
+Twice in my life I have seen the wraith of our own dogs, "Pompey" and
+"Triff." Pompey was a big brindled bulldog of terrifying aspect and
+angelic nature. My husband and I adored him, and his death caused us
+great grief. Indeed, the whole household mourned him long and deeply.
+One day, about ten days after his death, I suddenly caught sight of him
+walking in front of me down the avenue.
+
+On the spur of the moment I called him by name, then he vanished.
+
+I mentioned this occurrence to my maid, who at once told me the
+kitchenmaid had seen him in exactly the same place.
+
+When alive on earth "Pompey" had a habit of stealing into a guest's room
+when the early tea was brought up. He would lie in wait in a dark
+corner and then attempt to enter behind the maid or valet. When the door
+was shut again he would emerge from his hiding-place, and attempt to
+leap on the bed. He was exceedingly gentle and affectionate, but
+externally he was so forbidding that his offers of friendship were not
+always accepted, and he was a great weight.
+
+One day a Mrs. Shelton came to stay with us, and the next morning asked
+to have her room changed, because "Pompey" had kept walking round her
+bed all night, and she had not been able to sleep. She was sure it was
+"Pompey," because she recognized his peculiar, heavy, slithering
+movements.
+
+Some time after this Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland, came to pay us a
+visit. She had been very overworked, and needed a complete rest. She
+brought with her a maid and a small French bulldog, and she and the maid
+occupied a suite of three rooms, two bedrooms and a bathroom, shut off
+from the rest of the house by a heavy swing door.
+
+The French bulldog was accustomed to sleep in the maid's room. We had no
+dog left of our own. The beautiful Duchess went to bed about half-past
+ten; she was very tired and ought to have slept well, but she didn't.
+
+In the night she was awakened by what she took to be her own bulldog
+prowling round her bed, yet its footsteps sounded strangely heavy.
+
+She knew nothing about "Pompey's" ghostly visits; we had been careful
+not to mention them.
+
+When she came downstairs the next morning she told us what a disturbed
+night she had passed through. She was awakened soon after midnight by
+the restless movements of a bulldog round her bed. She did not doubt it
+was her own dog, that owing to the forgetfulness of her maid had been
+left asleep under her bed. She called it, and at the same time switched
+on the light, but could see no signs of any dog at all. Rather puzzled,
+but concluding that she must have been mistaken, she composed herself to
+sleep once more.
+
+Before very long the noise began again. A bulldog with its heavy,
+slouching tread was moving about round her bed.
+
+This time the Duchess got up, and made a thorough search of her room,
+but could see nothing in the shape of any animal. Yet so convinced was
+she that a dog had been in the room, that she determined to look into
+her maid's room to see if her own dog was there.
+
+She opened her maid's door, which was shut, and went into the room. The
+woman was asleep, and on the bed at her feet slept the French bulldog.
+
+There was nothing to be done but to go back to her own bed once more,
+and try to sleep in spite of the disturbances.
+
+This was the story the Duchess told us, and added to me, "If he comes
+again to-night I shall come along to your room and rouse you."
+
+It did not come again. The peculiarity of "Pompey's" visits was that
+they only occurred once to each stranger, though he came several times
+to me, as was but natural.
+
+We honored his memory by raising to him a large granite headstone, on
+which was inscribed--
+
+    "Soft lies the turf on one who finds his rest,
+    Here, on our common Mother's ample breast,
+    Unstained by meanness, avarice and pride,
+    He never flattered and he never lied.
+    No gluttonous excess his slumbers broke,
+    No burning alcohol, no stifling smoke.
+    He ne'er intrigued a rival to displace,
+    He ran, but never betted on a race.
+    Content with harmless sports and moderate food,
+    Boundless in love, and faith and gratitude.
+    Happy the man, if there be any such,
+    Of whom his epitaph can say as much.
+
+                    "On this spot
+          are deposited the remains of one
+        who possessed beauty without vanity,
+              strength without insolence,
+              courage without ferocity,
+      and all the virtues of man without his vices.
+    This praise, which would be unmeaning flattery
+            if inscribed over human ashes,
+         is but a just tribute to the memory of
+                     'Pompey' a dog.
+         Born 1891.                Died 1902."
+
+Our next dog, "Triff," was a very handsome sable collie. Of course, we
+became devoted to him, and when he also passed away we felt very
+desolate without him.
+
+For a long time I never could feel that he had left me. Though I could
+not see him, I used to speak to him, just as if I could see the dear
+presence I so strongly felt. It was hard that I never could catch a
+glimpse of him, because others did. The butler saw him many times, and
+my maid caught sight of him twice.
+
+One often reads in ghost books of abnormal animal-like creatures being
+seen by psychics, but it is rare to meet with living individuals who can
+testify to such personal experiences.
+
+I remember Lilian, Countess of Cromartie, telling me of a strange
+incident that once happened to her.
+
+She was walking alone one bright summer morning in Windsor Great Park.
+Suddenly she saw an amazing looking creature loping slowly towards her.
+It resembled an enormous hare. That is to say, its legs and head were
+those of a hare, but its size was that of a goat, and its horned head
+was half-goat, half-hare. This creature, loping without any fear, and
+with a hare's movement straight towards her, caused her to pause. She
+stood still and breathlessly waited its approach. It passed quite close
+to her, and as it did so she struck at it with her parasol. Instantly it
+disappeared.
+
+Princess Frederica of Hanover, always intensely interested in psychic
+phenomena, and herself no tyro in psychic knowledge, told me many years
+ago that she had seen several different sorts of abnormal animals, quite
+unknown to this earth, and under circumstances which left no doubt as to
+their actual existence.
+
+Many years ago there was much talk amongst a certain set of an
+experience that had come to a foreign Grand Duchess and her husband, who
+spent much of their time in England. This couple were traveling in the
+wilds of Greece, and one night they wandered out together on to a bare
+mountain side. Sitting down to rest they were enjoying the beauty and
+utter loneliness of the moonlit scene, when they suddenly heard the
+galloping of many horses' hoofs approaching them. This astonished them
+greatly, as they were in so wild and unfrequented a part of the country.
+There was no road near them, and it seemed strange to hear horses
+galloping so fast on such rough ground at night, even though there was a
+moon.
+
+Husband and wife stood up immediately in order to show themselves. The
+sound suggested a headlong rush, and they feared that in another second
+a whole regiment might ride over them.
+
+They had not long to wait. A troop of creatures, half-men, half-horses,
+tore past them, helter-skelter. Fleet and sure-footed they thundered by,
+and they brought with them the most wonderful sense of joy and
+exhilaration. Neither the Grand Duchess nor her husband felt the
+smallest fear; on the contrary, both were seized by a wild elation, a
+desire to be one of that splendid legion. The thundering of their hoofs
+spread over the hills, and died away into the distance.
+
+On returning to their camp the husband and wife found an uproar.
+Something had gone wrong with the Greek servants, who were shivering
+with terror, and struggling with equally terrified horses to prevent a
+stampede. All that could be learned from the Greeks was that they had
+heard something, something known of and greatly feared.
+
+I happened to hear the Grand Duchess tell of her weird experience, and I
+have often wondered in later years if Algernon Blackwood had also heard
+the story, and founded upon it his fascinating book, "The Centaur."
+
+There were several people in the room whilst the Grand Duchess was
+unfolding, in the most impressive manner, this strange event. Amongst
+them was the first Lady Henry Grosvenor, born Miss Erskine Wemyss of
+Wemyss Castle.
+
+She told us that when a child of seven years old, she had passed through
+some minutes of such absolute terror, that as long as she lived she
+would never forget the experience.
+
+With another child, and a nurse in attendance, she was playing one
+summer morning out of doors. After a little while the nurse rose from
+her seat amongst the heather, and wandered away a short distance, out of
+sight but not out of hearing.
+
+A few moments after the two little girls heard some bushes behind them
+rustling, and a huge creature, half-goat, half-man, emerged and
+leisurely crossing the road in front of them plunged into the woods
+beyond and was lost to sight. Both children were thrown into a paroxysm
+of terror, and screamed loudly. The nurse ran back to them, and when
+told what was the matter scolded them for their foolish fancies. No such
+animal existed, such as they described, an animal much bigger than a
+goat, that walked upright, and had but two legs, and two hoofs, that was
+covered with shaggy brown hair from the waist downward, and had the
+smooth skin of a man from the waist upward!
+
+The nurse bade them come home at once, and as they gained the road Miss
+Wemyss pointed down into the dust. Clearly defined was the track of a
+two-hoofed creature that had crossed at that spot. The nurse stared for
+a moment or two, then with one accord they all ran. She never took her
+charges near that spot again.
+
+Lady Henry said that the memory of that experience was so firmly grafted
+on her mind that she could always recall with perfect clarity the exact
+appearance of this appalling creature. In after years, when grown up,
+she realized from pictures that what she had seen was a Faun or Satyr.
+Such pictures or statues always sent a thrill of horror through her. She
+attributed this apparition to the fact that she and her companion were
+playing close to the site of a Roman camp, and the road was an old Roman
+road.
+
+She went on to say that the Grand Duchess had given her courage to tell
+this incredible story. It was as absolutely real to her as was the
+passing of the Centaurs to the Grand Duchess.
+
+The whole scene stood out in brilliant light as a picture before her,
+whenever she thought of it, which she very often did. She never
+mentioned it to any one, as she felt that no one would believe her. She
+could always smell again the scent of summer, and the odor of pine
+trees, and hear the trickling of water from a tiny stream. She could
+always see a wide, white road, ribbon-like stretching away to the
+horizon. Then, suddenly, she and her young companion stood face to face
+with a presence, a hideous, unspeakable shape, that was neither man nor
+beast.
+
+She believed that there was a real world beyond the glamour and vision
+of our ordinary senses, and sometimes this veil was lifted for a few
+seconds. She believed that much of the tradition of mythical creatures
+represented solid fact, and that it was possible there were failures of
+creation still extant. Again, might there not be races fallen out of
+evolution, but retaining as a survival certain powers that to us appear
+miraculous. A very gifted being was Miminie Erskine Wemyss, who married
+Lord Henry Grosvenor. One of my earliest memories is the thrill her
+beauty gave me when first I saw her, as she walked into church, a silver
+prayer-book, slung on a silver chain, depending from her arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE INVISIBLE HANDS
+
+
+All through my life there have come to me moments never to be forgotten.
+Often the incidents that so deeply impressed me were utterly trivial in
+themselves, still they were sacramental, inasmuch as they proved to me,
+absolutely and conclusively, the immortality of the soul, and the power
+possessed by the soul after so-called death to concern itself with
+terrestrial happenings. Such moments are sacramental, in the sense that
+Nature is sacramental, in its showing forth of God's glory, and the
+manifestation of His handiwork.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was sitting near the library window, reading, in the fading light of a
+quiet November afternoon. It was one of those utterly still, mournful
+days, with a gray, brooding sky, save where, in the west, a pale
+primrose sunset was bathing the horizon in light. I was reading "Man and
+the Universe," by Sir Oliver Lodge, and had arrived at page 137, which
+ends Chapter VI.
+
+In those days, the year was 1908, I always tried to arrange at least one
+week of perfect quiet for the study of a new book which I had just
+ordered. I would calculate on which day the post would bring it to my
+country home, and I would arrange my life accordingly. This may sound
+rather ridiculous, but the truth is that a book like "Man and the
+Universe" is such a pure intellectual treat to me, that I like to gloat
+over it, to taste it slowly, and imbibe it gradually. I try to spin out
+the joy of it as long as possible by reading slowly, and thinking over
+the problems presented.
+
+At last I put the book down on a table by my side. I was in no hurry. It
+lay on its back, open, the pages uppermost; just where I had stopped
+reading. I fell to wondering on the words I had just read.
+
+"A reformer must not be in haste. The kingdom cometh not by observation,
+but by secret working as of leaven. Nor must he advocate any compromise
+repugnant to an enlightened conscience. Bigotry must die, but it must
+die a natural, not a violent death. Would that the leaders in Church and
+State had always been able to receive an impatient enthusiast in the
+spirit of the lines--
+
+    "Dreamer of dreams! no taunt is in our sadness,
+    What e'er our fears our hearts are with your cause,
+    God's mills grind slow; and thoughtless haste were madness,
+    To gain Heaven's ends we dare not break Heaven's laws."
+
+I must have sat thinking for quite ten minutes when my attention was
+suddenly attracted by a sound. The sound of paper leaves being rustled.
+The room was so dead still that the faintest sound would have called my
+attention, but this sound was by no means faint. I turned my head and
+looked at the book I had been reading, because, from it, unmistakably
+the noise proceeded.
+
+I beheld a most enthralling phenomenon. Unseen hands were turning over
+the pages.
+
+A thrill of intense excitement ran through me, and I stared at the book
+in breathless interest. The hands seemed to be searching for some
+particular passage. The number of the page upon which the passage was
+printed was not, apparently, known to the searcher. I will try to
+describe what actually happened.
+
+Several leaves of the book were turned over rather rapidly, each leaf
+making the usual sound which accompanies such an ordinary physical
+action. Then, as if fearing that the passage required had been
+overlooked or passed by, several leaves were turned back again.
+
+This manifestation continued for at least ten minutes, and I could see
+nothing but the pages of the book being turned quite methodically, as by
+a human hand.
+
+At moments there was rather a long pause in the search, and at the first
+pause I thought the demonstration might be over, but once again the
+invisible entity resumed the search, and I found myself saying, "He
+found something there that interested him. That is why he stopped." For
+no reason I can give I felt certain my visitor was a male spirit.
+
+On the second pause in the search occurring I had no doubt that again he
+had found something that interested him. The whole manifestation was
+very leisurely and wonderfully human. As I sat watching the book being
+manipulated by unseen fingers, every smallest action suggested design.
+One could not doubt as to what was taking place. At length there came a
+pause longer than usual. The book lay flat on its back wide open. There
+was now no quiver of the leaves. The invisible entity had found what he
+wanted and gone.
+
+I curbed my curiosity for five minutes more, then feeling convinced
+that I was again alone I stretched out my hand, took the book and,
+rising, carried it close to the window.
+
+There was still enough light to read by, and the leaves were open at
+pages 172-173.
+
+I had only read as far as page 137.
+
+I scanned them eagerly, and at once discovered that a mark had been made
+on the margin of page 172. A long cross had been placed against a
+paragraph. The mark was such as might have been made by a sharp
+finger-nail. The words marked were--
+
+"I want to make the distinct assertion that a really existing thing
+never perishes, but only changes its form."
+
+To-day the mark is as clearly visible on the page as on the day it was
+made. I can form no conjecture as to who the entity was, but he
+certainly knew the contents of the book. No one watching the search
+could doubt that, or that he was desirous of impressing upon the readers
+of the book a certain fact stated therein, which must have previously
+attracted his attention.
+
+In the year 1900 we took a house for the winter months in the West End
+of London.
+
+It was a small house though joined on either side by great mansions, and
+once upon a time it had actually been a farmhouse standing amid smiling
+fields.
+
+It retained many relics of its ancient origin in fine oak paneling and
+quaint nooks and corners, and had been for many of its latter years the
+town residence of a man whose type had practically died out, the perfect
+type of our old English aristocracy.
+
+The bedroom I occupied was exceedingly comfortable and warm. The bed,
+placed against the wall, was exactly opposite to the fireplace, so that
+lying on my right side I looked straight at the fire and could see the
+whole room.
+
+I was constantly on the alert, as I knew how full of history such a
+house must be, but for several weeks I neither saw nor heard anything in
+the least unusual.
+
+One night, quite unexpectedly, a change occurred. I no longer had the
+room to myself. A stranger occupied it with me.
+
+It was a cold, snowy night, and I was lying in bed facing the fire and
+courting sleep, when I heard a sudden noise which was totally different
+to the sounds made by the dying fire. Take a large sheet of stiff
+writing paper in your hand and crush it up between your fingers and you
+will hear the sound I heard. Quite a loud and distinct noise if you
+happen to be in a very quiet room, at an hour when all the household has
+retired to bed.
+
+Naturally, I instantly opened my eyes and looked out into the room,
+which was lit brightly enough by the fire to make all the objects it
+contained quite distinct.
+
+An armchair was drawn up close to the fire; half an hour before I had
+been seated in it warming my toes before getting into bed; now it was
+again filled.
+
+In it sat a man turned sideways towards me. He was lying back with his
+legs stretched straight out in front of him towards the fire. One of his
+arms hung over the arm of the chair, and in his clenched hand was a
+large piece of paper or parchment.
+
+His finely cut profile was clearly outlined, he was clean shaven, and he
+stared into the fire, his chin sunk in a high black stock.
+
+His hair was powdered and tied behind by a large black bow, and he wore
+bright blue cloth knee breeches, white stockings, silver buckled shoes,
+and many gold buttons on his blue coat. I did not take in all those
+details at once; I had ample leisure to do so later. For, I suppose, a
+full two minutes, I stared very hard at him, and lay very still, knowing
+full well I was looking at a ghost. Then very cautiously I drew the
+bedclothes over my head, and shut out the startling vision. I was
+invaded by wild panic.
+
+I have never been one of those timid women who are frightened by their
+own shadows. I require to be face to face with a tangible danger before
+I put faith in its existence, yet, I confess that at that moment I knew
+what actual fear meant. My heart beat thickly, then seemed to stop, and
+I was instantly bathed in cold perspiration. I knew that the servants
+were all in bed two flights of stairs below me, and my husband was out
+of London, so no calling for help was any use. I therefore forced a sort
+of spurious desperate courage, and began to be angry with myself for
+being thus afraid when no cause for fear existed. I treated myself to a
+scornful lecture. "You who profess to know all about ghosts, you who
+have actually seen several ghosts, you coward to quail before this one!
+Don't you know perfectly well that he won't hurt you, that he has a
+perfect right to sit in that chair, and that it is your duty to speak to
+him should he show any desire for conversation?"
+
+"I am so terribly alone," pleaded my other self in feeble self-defense.
+
+"Well, what of it? If the whole household was in the room what could
+they do? You are not a child. Uncover your head and look the specter
+boldly in the face."
+
+The stillness and hush of deep night, at the hour when sleepers slumber
+soundest, was upon the house. The traffic of London was muffled in a
+heavy fall of snow. I could hear nothing but the feeble crackling of the
+expiring fire in the grate, but gradually I rallied my courage and
+faculties and peeped stealthily out.
+
+There sat that dark form between me and the fire; there he lay in an
+attitude of moody carelessness, watching the cooling embers as they
+faded from scarlet to pink, from pink to yellow, and then fell tinkling
+into heaps of white ashes. No statue was ever stiller. He did not move
+in the least, but sat more like an effigy of a man carved out of stone
+than a creature of flesh and blood.
+
+I closed my eyes and re-opened them, to test the fact whether I was
+awake or asleep and dreaming. No, I was broad wake and the room was
+still fairly well lit, and there sat the phantom before the fire, the
+proud, well-set head with its powdered curls distinctly visible in the
+red glow of the firelight. I should think an hour must have passed thus,
+whilst I gazed at the figure before me, taking in every detail. There
+was no indication that he knew or cared for my presence. The figure sat
+like a stone.
+
+I came to the conclusion that the phantom was about thirty years of age,
+and a sailor who had lived in the days of Nelson, judging by his clothes
+and the pictures I had seen. I noticed particularly his hand clenched on
+the paper. A white hand, with strong cruel-looking fingers. There is so
+much character in hands. The face may be drilled into a mere mask, but
+hands tell tales of their owners. I could imagine the hand that had
+crushed the paper closing murderously on the throat of an adversary, or
+gripped hard on the hilt of a dagger.
+
+There were moments when the awful inertia of the figure began to play
+havoc with my nerves, when I would have given anything to make that
+impassive form move from out its dreary attitude of sullen brooding;
+anything to cause the profile of the face, with all its gloom and pride,
+to turn and front me, so that I might know the worst. But the figure
+never turned, never stirred, but sat with stately head bowed under a
+weight of thought.
+
+Now and again a little flame would spurt up and glitter on his shoe
+buckles, his brass buttons, but the fire was dying now, and gradually
+the figure became more and more indistinct.
+
+Then I slept. I had been feeling drowsy for some time, and fought
+against it. I had violently resisted sleep, feeling a great repugnance
+to losing consciousness whilst the specter still sat there, but the
+blank force of sleep at length overpowered me. When I awoke the cold
+gray morning light was stealing feebly in through the window. The chair
+was empty. The figure was gone.
+
+The next night I went to bed full of courage, but I was left alone. If
+the sailor returned it was not until after I had gone to sleep.
+
+A week later he came back. One moment the chair was empty, the next
+moment with one wild heart throb I opened my eyes at the sound of
+crackling paper, and the chair was filled. There he sat in his brooding
+sullen attitude and continued so to sit till slumber vanquished me.
+After that I saw him at constant intervals.
+
+By this time I had entirely rid myself of all fear. I did not even
+desire to change my room which would have been very inconvenient, and I
+dreaded alarming the household and being left alone to conduct the
+domestic duties. But though no longer afraid those constant visits began
+to get on my nerves, and I consulted a Catholic friend who was always
+sympathetic to the occult side of life.
+
+She said at once that this spirit should be exorcised and set free from
+the bondage of earth, and that she had an old friend, a Franciscan monk,
+who was known to be a powerful exorcist. She offered to arrange the
+matter, and I gladly accepted her suggestion.
+
+It was on an early spring afternoon that Father Reginald Buckler came to
+the house. In his white habit, sandaled feet and shorn crown, he looked
+an incongruous figure in that fashionable locality already beginning its
+social entertainments in view of the season's approach. He was a
+charming, courteous old man, who took his mission very seriously. After
+a few words of explanation we mounted to the bedroom floor.
+
+There were four doors opening on to the little landing, and without
+asking which of the doors led to the haunted chamber, he turned the
+handle of the right one and entered. Still he put no question, but at
+once proceeded with the Service of Exorcism.
+
+Sprinkling the four corners of the room with Holy Water, he bade me
+kneel down in the middle. Then he raised his Crucifix and offered up
+prayers for the repose of the earth-bound soul, that he might be loosed
+and set free.
+
+For five weeks longer we remained in the house, but I never saw the
+sailor again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+DAWNS
+
+
+We have been given many wonderful dawns this winter, and I have used
+them eagerly as a cleansing of the war-weary mind and distracted soul.
+In such ethereal apparitional dawns one walks with the Eternal, and all
+temporal things fade away. Those pale silver daybreaks have a rapture of
+their own, they suggest a fresh creation straight from the looms of God.
+When the hours of day have drawn on the flaming sunset, that exquisitely
+serene emotion of virgin tranquillity will have passed away, and the
+horizon will be lurid and grand beneath a grave frowning sadness
+gathered from the scenes of earth they have brooded over.
+
+Such dawns beckon imperiously to the pilgrim, to leave the shelter of
+the roof-tree, and come forth to walk with the immortals whilst the
+Morning Star, the light-bringer, still shines, a white gold radiance in
+the heavens, and the distance is still dissolved in veils of pearl and
+opal.
+
+Such daybreaks always rouse in me the urge for wider thought, for the
+broad day of the mind. Out of the limitless beyond comes the certain
+knowledge of a something unimagined, lying just outside human thought. I
+am sure there is so much not yet imagined, something more than mere
+existence.
+
+There is a wine of happiness in tranquil daybreak, and an aloofness from
+life that urges one to seek for that which is beyond comprehension. The
+draught exalts the soul, and quickens it with unquenchable fire, until
+the world falls away, far from one, as day wells out of still darkness.
+Only at such moments do we reach the true horizon.
+
+Again, there is an amnesty in such dawns, a glory of release from the
+house of bondage. In the great silences, life, as we know it, is remote,
+and the immensity is a magic that draws the soul, fusing it in a strange
+passion, so that whatever fulfillment our existence holds is summed in
+that hour of solitude.
+
+A pale wash of translucent gold is thrown across land and sea. On the
+far horizon a ship is set in relief, against a core of crimson flame
+which heralds the sun. A dove coos softly, and on a bare branch a thrush
+thrills in waves of sound, seeking in the universal ether to reproduce
+its divine instinct in other feathered hearts that are attuned to its
+melody.
+
+Such joys as these are transitory, and never wholly possessed. They pass
+the enclosures of life, and bring one nearer to the beating heart of
+truth. The agonizing fear of losing hold on them is, in itself, the
+cause of their dispersal. It is the same at rare moments of
+semi-consciousness, when one has actually laid hold of a genuine astral
+experience--and knows it. Then comes the frantic endeavor to hold on--to
+pin the moment fast and tight, till the whole vision is absorbed. The
+soul seems to hold its breath! How often, with bitter disappointment I
+have rushed reluctantly into full waking consciousness--and only half
+the story told. Fragmentary though such moments are their potency is
+such that they endure through time. Thank God, that whilst the wedlock
+of body and soul still holds undissolved there is scope for such joys.
+They are uncommunicable, and may not be shared with others at will, and
+they tell the soul that she is not of creation and cannot be contained
+by law. At such hours she learns the truth, that she passes for a brief
+span into the limited, from out the limitless whence she came. At such
+sacramental hours one can pray the prayer of Socrates, offered up by the
+banks of the Illissus:
+
+"O Beloved God of the forests and flocks and all ye Divinities of this
+place, grant me to become beautiful in the inner man, and that whatever
+outward things I have may be at peace with those within. May I deem the
+wise man rich, and may I have so much wealth, and so much only, as a
+good man can manage to enjoy.
+
+"Do we need anything else, Phædrus? For myself I have prayed enough."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How many people now recall fragments of former lives! Ask the next man
+you meet if he has any recollections of former existences, and be sure
+he will not eye you askance as a fugitive from Bedlam. He may smile and
+shake his head, and regret to say he isn't psychic, but he won't ask you
+what on earth you mean. This is how we have progressed towards truth in
+the last thirty years. The truth of reincarnation is being quietly
+accepted by the West and is now openly preached from many pulpits. If
+God is love, who could reconcile with any comprehensive idea of justice
+and law in the world the lives and experiences of common humanity? How
+reconcile the births taking place in one single day in their vast
+diversity, by the hell for the criminal, born, nurtured and killed in
+crime, who never had a chance, and Heaven for the happily born, who
+need never have a temptation? What is the Divine Law lying behind this
+seeming hideous injustice? Undoubtedly the continuous evolution of the
+soul in bodies of matter. Men are looking now to the scheme of organic
+evolution to provide the field for spiritual evolution. They are finding
+it in the depths of their own consciousness.
+
+I chanced upon one of those fragments of a past life, those islets in
+eternity in a strange way. I was paying a visit to a stranger in
+Cambridgeshire, and whilst awaiting her entry I walked round the room
+looking at some lovely water-colored sketches that hung upon the walls.
+When their owner entered, and after a few minutes' conversation, I said,
+"How beautiful those Sicilian scenes are!"
+
+She looked pleased and answered: "I'm so glad you recognize them. I
+painted them. When were you last in Sicily?"
+
+I had never at that time been in Sicily. I told her so, but I could not
+tell a stranger that suddenly there had dawned upon me a keen
+recollection of the country I had certainly been in, though not in this
+life. The paintings, of course, dealt with a restricted field, but as I
+looked at them one by one I saw mentally a wide landscape in which each
+picture formed but a tiny spot. One I remember was a painting of a
+wonderfully perfect temple, which occupied the whole space of the
+picture. As I looked at it I saw wide rolling plains, and a wide expanse
+of blue sea. This I later recognized in Girgenti.
+
+A month or two afterwards my husband and I went to Sicily for the
+winter, and, as I had expected, the island was perfectly familiar to me.
+I knew exactly round which bend of the hill I should find a temple, but
+Syracuse was really my spiritual home. It was there that I had played
+out one of my many life dramas, and many incidents returned to me as I
+wandered over the hills, and gathered maiden-hair ferns in the twilight
+of the empty tombs.
+
+Once I opened my eyes on Stromboli, one of the Æolian or Lipari Isles.
+Instantly I felt a passion of love for it, an intuition of spiritual
+delight which is utterly irreducible to terms. I have looked upon it
+since, and always with an adoration impossible to paint with pen or
+pencil. I have for weeks anticipated the moment when I should see it
+again. It means something to me far beyond what the eye can see, the
+tongue relate, and it is this something lying betwixt rhapsody and
+lament which draws me by a tenuous chain of thought right back into the
+womb of time, where buried memory stirs in its long sleep.
+
+Stromboli, so the ancient poets tell us, was the home of the fiery god,
+Vulcan. That explains much to me, but it unfolds a secret none may
+learn.
+
+It was in a flaming dawn that I first saw Stromboli rising from amid the
+numerous isles surrounding it. From its cone shot a great plume of
+smoke, like a giant ostrich feather, silver tinted. In its ethereal
+loveliness it seemed to float in the void, half of earth, half of
+heaven.
+
+Neither bondage of words, nor the cold scrutiny of reason can impinge
+upon a scene which draws the soul away upon a celestial pilgrimage. Free
+and elate, she passes beyond the frontiers of life, and like the echoes
+of the sea when a shell is held to the ear, she hears the pulse of earth
+beat far away in unfathomable distance. The marvel of the uncreated
+consumes her in a trance of unincarnate passion.
+
+Those who have once adventured on such pilgrimages are never quite the
+same again. They become children of "the Divine unrest." They have
+experienced a moment in which earth and flesh dissolve, in which law is
+not, in which creeds and covenants find no place, and the hold upon
+common life with its moving mirages is blotted out. Time and space are
+annulled, the æon and the second are one. The soul unswathed, has risen
+from the tomb where the life urge has laid it, and is aglow with the
+transcendental fires of eternal being. In after days the soul learns to
+set barriers against such visitants. One must not look upon the other
+side of the moon too often, for fear one is drawn away from home and
+kindred. The time is not yet, but it will surely come.
+
+One other curious happening I must relate. Years ago, one autumn when I
+was in the far north there came a magnificent visitation of falling
+stars and many aerolites dropped to earth. The display was predicted,
+and I was on the lookout. It came in a rain of gold and seemingly from
+all points of the compass. For hours I watched a sight far more
+marvelous than anything I had anticipated.
+
+When at last I reluctantly went to bed I had a strange dream or, rather,
+astral experience. I was a Hungarian gipsy, the head or queen of an
+enormous clan. I heard wild Hungarian music, and saw enormous crowds of
+my people gathered round me. They were very savage and picturesque, and
+a ceremony was proceeding.
+
+On the ground, and in the center of a great ring of people, stood a
+large bowl filled with blood. I stood in front of it and watched the
+swearing in of new adherents to my clan, by means of the "blood
+covenant." The blood that filled the bowl had been drawn from the veins
+of my people, and the new adherents were each required to drink from it
+and swear their allegiance. Only one thing troubled me all through what
+seemed a long ceremony. My feet caused me pain, and I was aware that
+they were bare, as were the feet of all my people.
+
+So vivid was the dream that I could visualize my whole life as I lived
+it on the plains of Hungary, and the scenery surrounding me was lit up
+by a glorious sunset. There were hundreds of horses grazing loose, as
+far as the eye could reach, and flocks of enormous white geese, amid
+which great storks strutted.
+
+Suddenly I awoke with the acute pain in my feet uppermost in my mind. I
+found myself clad only in my nightgown, walking bare-footed on the rough
+gravel paths of the garden, whence I had watched the stellar display. I
+had been walking in my sleep, and the sudden unaccustomed stony hardness
+of the path under my bare feet had awakened in me the recollection of a
+past life, in which I had lived, a wild nomad in southern Hungary.
+
+This is the one and only occasion in my life in which I have known
+somnambulism. Luckily my memory did not fail me on waking and, some time
+after, when I was able to revisit the scenes of that long ago pilgrimage
+I was quite familiar with my surroundings.
+
+Buda Pest and the lands lying southward were then my home, a roving home
+and tent life of infinite variety.
+
+Thus the dead of vanished years are disguised in the present living.
+
+I have no doubt that many people who have not had the interesting
+experience of remembering one or more of their former incarnations have
+been able through some trivial incident to recollect happenings long
+vanished from their memory. Sometimes the scent of a flower, the glimpse
+of a scene, a chance word or expression will vividly recall some episode
+lying hidden for many years in the subconsciousness. Again it will be
+pulled over the threshold from past to present, from the storehouse of
+the eternal memory into the everyday working consciousness or mind.
+
+This is not a book for scientists. I will therefore go into no elaborate
+metaphysics, but will sketch as simply as I can what I mean by
+subconsciousness. I use the term for the region or zone within us which
+stores up the residues of past thoughts and experiences. Scientists tell
+us there are three realms of mind, the super-conscious, the conscious,
+the subconscious. The conscious mind is what we commonly use. It belongs
+purely to the objective world, and its instruments are the five senses.
+The subconscious mind is the storehouse for experiences on the human
+plane of man's long past. The super-consciousness is independent of the
+five senses. It is a faculty of perception closely akin to the One force
+in the Universe, which is inseparably related to all created things. It
+possesses the attributes of Infinity, is indestructible, immortal,
+undying. We may forget a fact for many years, then suddenly we remember
+it. I believe it has come back to us again across the threshold from the
+subconscious region to our consciousness or mind which is open to
+everyday observation.
+
+I have become convinced, by personal experience, of the existence in us
+of this region below the threshold of our ordinary conscious life. When
+I was young there were many problems I wished to solve, and in this
+effort human aid often failed me. My plan was to "sleep on" a problem,
+ardently desiring before "dropping off" that an answer might be accorded
+me. I suppose this desire was of the nature of prayer, though addressed
+to no Deity. Almost invariably the solution was clear and unmistakable
+to me in the morning.
+
+I lost this great advantage at the age of twenty-one, but even now I can
+sometimes "get at" a solution by leaving the question severely alone,
+after turning it well over in my mind. The solution will suddenly pop
+up, often weeks after I have tried to get at it, and when it comes
+there, it arrives apropos of nothing, so to speak. It simply dawns in
+the thick of quite other subjects, which happen at the moment to occupy
+my mind.
+
+Though I can no more demonstrate to others the existence of the
+subconsciousness than I can prove the existence of the immortal soul, I
+have got sufficient proof to satisfy myself, and I believe the same
+knowledge is open to many of us. Within our being are sympathetic chords
+that can vibrate to all the symphonies of Nature. There are visions of
+beauty and depths of feeling which may be seen and felt, if heart and
+mind are open to the higher influences. The finer forces of Nature, and
+her immutable laws, are ready to draw nigh to us if we desire to welcome
+them, and are eager to place ourselves in harmony with the Infinite
+Source of being. We are in the keeping of the best and highest, and
+whatever things are pure, whatsoever things are beautiful, whatsoever
+things are true and high and holy will gravitate towards us in
+proportion to the degree we desire them. The mysterious gift of
+existence is in itself a beckoning ideal, and a foregleam of the final
+awakening that will surely be ours.
+
+Now what does the subconsciousness contain?
+
+Firstly, I believe it to be permeated by Deity, and the Divine
+indwelling. It is the seat of Genius. I believe a genius to be one who
+is capable of drawing from the contents of his subconsciousness that
+which outwardly appears as a creation. It is said that genius creates
+and talent copies. I believe that a man becomes great when he represents
+the results of countless lives in his individuality, and each life is an
+arc of the infinite life of the Universe. The man with æons of
+experience behind him is infinitely more _en rapport_ with his
+subconsciousness than those younger, more immature souls who have as yet
+experienced few earth lives and who constitute the bulk of humanity.
+
+The eternal mind finds its home in the subconsciousness, by which I mean
+that nothing is really forgotten by man. This lapse of memory is the
+passing of the subject from the ordinary mind into the subconsciousness,
+whence it may later be recovered again. The memory of all our former
+incarnations I believe to lie hidden in the subconsciousness. It is from
+this region or zone that one gets sudden uprushes of memory, and such
+uprushes are induced by stumbling on a chance link between the two zones
+of consciousness.
+
+Some chance incident, such as the presence of my bare feet upon the
+rough gravel, touches a correspondence on the other side of the
+threshold, and lays bare old scenes to the observation of the ordinary
+mind. It is noteworthy that the matter contained in this up-rushing is
+recognized first, and the means which brought about the uprush is
+recognized secondly.
+
+I believe there is a vital communication between consciousness and
+subconsciousness which could be enormously developed and utilized by
+practice. The age in which we live has produced the most marvelous
+triumphs of mind over matter. Access to the subconsciousness is becoming
+commoner and simpler. We have broken in and harnessed material forces in
+a manner undreamt of fifty years ago. Yet there is an alas! a fact which
+detracts from all our legitimate pride in our achievement--the base uses
+to which our triumphs have been put. The whole of our inventive power
+has been turned against the life that gave it birth. The parents are
+being consumed by their own offspring.... Matter evolved out of spirit
+has threatened destruction to the latter.
+
+The threshold between our ordinary consciousness and the region of
+subconsciousness seems to me like a bridge which is rarely used, and
+which separates the country known from the country unknown. I live in
+the country known, but if I can touch a button at my end I can get a
+response instantaneously transmitted from the country unknown. The
+trouble is to find the button. At present I only press it at long
+intervals and by the merest chance. Still it is something of an
+achievement to have convinced one's self that such a region actually
+does exist.
+
+I believe this subconsciousness of ours is in direct contact with the
+Great Creative Power. "It is God that worketh" in man, and its vital
+communications are hidden in the infinite eternity. Says a Sufi ideal:
+"To abide in God after passing away is the work of the perfect man, who
+not only journeys to God--passes from plurality to unity--but in and
+with God--continuing in the unitive state he returns with God (his
+subconscious self) to the phenomenal world from which he sets out, and
+manifests unity in plurality."
+
+Though at present, to all outward seeming, the evolution of the beast is
+consummated, there is a something that flatly contradicts this apparent
+certainty. That something is man's subconsciousness, and the Divinity it
+enshrouds, and which fiercely and irrevocably is set against the
+bestiality into which he is plunged. War has never been so universally
+hated as it now is. It is in this vital fact, which cannot be too
+strongly emphasized, that our future hope lies.
+
+I believe this vital fact to be so strong that entire regeneration is a
+certainty. Where hitherto this force has lain dormant or been dispersed,
+disunited and weak in spiritual utterance, it is now a collective force
+concentrated in millions of lives. All over the earth it is now gathered
+_en masse_, and that stupendous aggregate, vivified, sharpened, and
+intensely accentuated by untold suffering will revolutionize all former
+weak and fatalistic acquiescence in the inevitability of war. Millions
+of men have descended into hell, they are there now, but they will arise
+again from amongst the dead, and ascend one day into the Heaven of
+peace, and thence they will judge the quick and the dead by a new
+standard. The standard of the God within, whose voice has been heard at
+last from out the din of battle. It is the same God who has said to the
+East:--
+
+"Have perseverance as one who dost forever more endure. Thy shadows
+(physical bodies) live and vanish, that which is in thee shall live
+forever, that which in thee knows is not of fleeting life, it is the
+man that was, that is, that will be, for whom the hour shall never
+strike."
+
+To-day we all use, in some cases automatically, the powers and aptitudes
+developed in us in the long and painful evolution of the physical form.
+As evolution proceeds we will gain a vastly greater control over the
+subconsciousness, and in æons to come "in the flight of the alone to the
+alone" union will be achieved. The two will be merged in one.
+
+The Lord Buddha has said that to enter Nirvana is to become fully
+conscious of our fundamental oneness with the universal life.
+
+"I and my Father are one." Christ's sense of oneness with the Father was
+essentially Nirvanic.
+
+We have not yet accustomed ourselves to think of evolution in any terms
+but the material, as a power inherent in matter, Darwin's physical
+evolution stood for pure materialism. Bergson now carries us a step
+farther. He introduces us to a spiritual principle. His creative
+evolution is a spiritual activity seeking freedom of expression in
+matter. Darwin's struggle for existence is by Bergson transmuted into
+life, expressing itself through material forms, and life and matter are
+in constant conflict. Again he points out that the spiritual principle,
+life, has not "had it all its own way." It has experienced checks, but
+in two modes of activity it has succeeded, in instinct and intelligence.
+Thus he draws for us the grandiose upward sweep of a Divine activity.
+Curbed, it is true, by the crust of matter, but finding ever higher
+capacities, and higher expression towards that ultimate reality which is
+creative life and to me is union with that higher self lying in the
+subconsciousness of all men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+PEACOCK'S FEATHERS--THE SKELETON HAND AT MONTE CARLO
+
+
+A sea voyage once provided me with a wonderfully lucky experience,
+inasmuch as it saved me from an extremely bad accident.
+
+I was returning quite alone from the East in a ship crammed full of
+women and children, most of them soldiers' wives and families going home
+to escape the hot weather. Many of them were attended by ayahs.
+
+Two days out we ran into a raging storm, and everything was battened
+down. Owing to the weather, and the excessive crowding, the conditions
+below soon became very unpleasant, and I asked the captain if I might
+take possession of the ladies' summer drawing-room on the upper deck and
+close to the bridge. Seeing that it would not be used by any one else
+for some time to come he kindly agreed, and I at once settled myself in
+my eyrie with a few books, and prepared for some days of solitude.
+
+But as the storm did not abate the suffering women and children below
+claimed my attention. They were confined in an atmosphere which was
+appalling, they were all terribly ill and utterly helpless. The mothers
+were unable to attend to their children, most of whom were infants, and
+the ayahs suffered horribly. Having no cabins they lay groaning on the
+floors of the corridors, drenched with water as the ship was awash from
+stem to stern, and tossed hither and thither as she rolled heavily.
+
+It was never easy to descend from my perch aloft, but the sufferers had
+to be aided, and day after day I never knew a dry moment till I lay down
+at night. So far the summer drawing-room remained fairly water-tight in
+spite of being swept continually by heavy seas, but the noise of the
+elements was absolutely deafening, and when the captain called upon me
+we had to shout in each other's ears.
+
+With his connivance I got a shelter rigged up on what appeared to be the
+only dry spot on board. It was about twelve feet square and walled in
+with sailcloth, and there the sailors helped to carry a number of tiny
+children. They were to remain there during the best hours of the day,
+until their mothers and nurses were capable of attending to them once
+more.
+
+I took charge at first and found my task no light one. The babies did
+not seem to appreciate my blandishments. They cried persistently, but
+luckily their voices were drowned in the roaring of the wind.
+
+At last a cabin boy chanced to look in, and at once sized up the
+situation. He signaled to me that he knew of something that would ease
+the tension and then he disappeared. In five minutes he was back
+brandishing a large bunch of peacock's feathers. These he shook in the
+face of each infant in turn, at the same time making the most hideous
+grimaces at them. It was an anxious moment for me, but luckily the
+effect was electrical. The babies suddenly forgot to yell, they stiffly
+maintained their equilibrium and stared in a sort of indignant
+amazement. Then, gradually, as the boy kept going round the circle
+repeating the process, smiles and dimples began to appear, and in five
+minutes more the whole crêche was laughing.
+
+I applied for permission to annex that boy; he was indeed a treasure,
+and the joy in the peacock's feathers never palled. His gutta-percha
+face had an infinite variety of expression, which he could instantly
+turn on to suit all occasions. It was a fascinating sight to see him
+going round the group feeding each baby out of the same bottle, one of
+the old-fashioned horrors with a long indiarubber tube and teat. Those
+infants who had contemptuously rejected all my offers of nourishment now
+sat expectantly agape waiting their turn. The scene always reminded me
+of the artificial feeding of fowls, by the man who goes round the pens
+squirting liquid down each gaping throat.
+
+When we landed at Marseilles there was a wonderful parting between the
+babies and the cabin boy. They clung to him to the last, and howled
+dismally when they were carried off by their haggard mothers.
+
+One night, during the height of the storm I was asleep on the fixed red
+velvet seat running round the walls of the summer drawing-room. I lay
+just under a porthole, to which was attached a rope. The other end of
+the rope was tied round my arm to prevent my being thrown to the floor
+by the rolling of the ship.
+
+At five o'clock in the morning I was suddenly awakened by hearing my
+husband's voice shouting in my ear. (My husband not being on board, but
+in our home in the North of Scotland.)
+
+"Sit up! Sit up!" shouted his voice commandingly.
+
+Considerably startled I threw myself into a sitting position, and as I
+did so a gigantic wave shattered the porthole, and the heavy fragments
+of glass fell on to the pillow where a second before my face had lain.
+
+Of course, the water poured in and over me in volumes, and stopped my
+wrist watch at five a. m., but I had got used to salt water, and in a
+few minutes the weary captain had waded in, and was disentangling me
+from my rope and congratulating me on my lucky escape.
+
+I told him how it was that I had escaped, and he was not in the least
+skeptical. On the contrary, he said that he had known some curious
+things happen in his time, for which there was no accounting; but he
+always kept a black cat on board.
+
+Had the safety of his ship not claimed his whole attention I believe he
+would have told me some of his experiences, but when, at last, the
+weather abated he was too much in need of rest to be bothered by any
+one.
+
+My husband had no knowledge of the service he had rendered me. At five
+a. m. that morning he was asleep at home, and had no premonition of
+danger, or any recollection on waking of the rôle his astral counterpart
+had undoubtedly played.
+
+What is this astral counterpart of man? His soul and spirit dwells in a
+shroud of flesh, and the feat of getting out of that shroud of flesh at
+will is the aim of all occultists. It is to the astral world they go,
+soul and spirit encased in the astral sheath we term the astral body.
+
+During sleep, or in trance, when the normal physical senses are in
+abeyance, when the body is unconscious in sleep, the mind continues to
+act in the realm corresponding to the suggestions given when awake. The
+world at large is open to the highly developed man, and he will
+sometimes bring back from his astral plane expeditions memories of what
+he has seen and heard.
+
+In deep slumber the physical body in healthful repose remains where it
+has lain down to rest, but the man's higher principles, the astral body
+encasing the soul and spirit, is invariably withdrawn, and in
+underdeveloped persons hovers in the immediate neighborhood. In such
+cases the higher principles, the astral body, soul and spirit of St.
+Paul's Gospel, are not sufficiently developed to roam, and remain near
+the physical body in a brooding sleep. All cultured persons in the
+present day have their astral senses fairly well developed, and have the
+power during sleep to go where they will, but as yet few have the power
+to retain the memory of it when returning to the body.
+
+In some cases the astral man during sleep is specially attracted to some
+one point, and he invariably travels towards it; in other cases he will
+drift aimlessly about on the astral currents, meeting with experience of
+all sorts and with people in a similar condition whom he knows. Is there
+anything very extraordinary in all this, and is not the condition of
+deep unconscious sleep a demonstration in itself that the physical
+consciousness has departed elsewhere? As it is no longer functioning on
+the Physical plane clearly it has found another realm in which it can
+temporarily exercise its activities.
+
+My husband once had a rather interesting experience of his own, on the
+Astral plane. He was in bed and asleep on the Physical plane, and he
+believes that the time must have been between eleven p. m. and twelve a.
+m. He simply became aware that he was functioning consciously on the
+Astral plane, and was intensely interested.
+
+He found himself in a strange house of medium size, and he was floating
+at the top of a flight of stairs leading to an ordinary entrance hall
+below. At the foot of the stairs hung a lighted lamp, and below the lamp
+stood a man and woman, who were apparently exchanging a word or two
+before bidding each other good-night.
+
+My husband instantly conceived the idea of testing and proving his
+belief, that he was consciously afloat on the Astral plane. If this
+belief was true, then he ought to be able to pass through the couple
+standing below, without their being in the least aware of his presence.
+
+In a flash he was downstairs, and his belief stood the test. His
+imponderable astral body passed without feeling or shock through two
+ponderable bodies of flesh and blood, and he was out on the other side.
+The excitement of the adventure awakened him, and he brought back to the
+Physical plane a clear recollection of all that had happened.
+
+When one thinks of it, the possible presence of total strangers in one's
+house is rather alarming. Luckily for us such wanderers rarely bring
+back to waking consciousness the memory of their nocturnal escapades.
+When we are more advanced in "other side" knowledge we will doubtless
+refrain from intruding upon the privacy of our neighbors' dwellings, and
+confine our attentions to realms which are free to all.
+
+It is curious how constantly one hears of the ghosts of priests and
+monks being seen. I have not met any one yet who has encountered the
+wraith of an Anglican parson, or a Nonconformist preacher. I wonder why?
+I presume the latter do sometimes "walk."
+
+Once upon a time, when we were in Rome, my husband and I went to keep an
+appointment with Monsignor Stonor, who was a great celebrity, and an
+extremely handsome and charming man. We were being shown upstairs by a
+servant, and the hour was eleven o'clock on a sunny spring day. I was
+walking first, my husband following, and at the top of the stairs,
+coming slowly downward, was an old priest carrying a huge portfolio,
+under which he seemed to be staggering. He passed the servant, and as he
+neared me I noticed that the cassock which he wore was torn in great
+rents in several places. His gray hair hung on his shoulders, though his
+crown was shaven, and his face was the color of old ivory.
+
+I moved slightly to give him and his burden room to pass, and as he did
+so our eyes met. His were very strange. They were exactly like points of
+live flame.
+
+Something about his whole presence struck me as so weird that I turned
+involuntarily and looked back.
+
+As I did so, I saw my husband walk straight through him. My husband saw
+nothing. Then I knew and understood.
+
+I did not mention this incident to Monsignor Stonor, but some time after
+I met his sister, Viscountess Clifden, at Monte Carlo. She was an
+intimate friend of mine, and one day when an opportunity offered I told
+her the little story, and asked her if she had ever met with anything of
+the sort herself. She replied that personally, she had not, but she had
+heard that several people encountered at different times the old priest
+in her brother's rooms, though he himself had seen nothing of this
+apparition.
+
+Lady Clifden enjoyed nothing more than a little flutter at the tables.
+She never missed a single day during her long sojourns at Monte Carlo.
+
+Every one knows that the Anglican church-goers in the Principality hurry
+from church to gaming rooms in order to stake on the numbers of the
+hymns. Lady Clifden used also to hurry from Mass with any numbers she
+had caught up, and she considered Sunday her lucky day. Suddenly her
+luck changed.
+
+She told me that on the previous Sunday she had just pulled off a nice
+little coup, and was about to grasp it, when, to her horror she saw a
+skeleton hand stretched forth. Before she could collect her scattered
+senses the skeleton hand had raked in her gold. Where that gold had gone
+to worried and puzzled her dreadfully. So it did me! I never heard the
+last of it. She could not get over her loss.
+
+It was no use suggesting that the hand had belonged to one of the
+emaciated harpies who prey upon the unwary. Lady Clifden knew all about
+them, and was a match for the whole gang, had they attacked her. She
+insisted that the hand that had grasped her gold had neither skin nor
+flesh upon it, and that she had seen the two bare arm bones from wrist
+to elbow. We compromised on the suggestion of a third party that it must
+have been the devil himself, and that the heat he is supposed to
+engender had melted the gold entirely away.
+
+Monte Carlo is a very interesting place for the clairvoyant to be in,
+more especially if her vision extends to seeing auras. Perhaps nowhere
+on earth are the basest human passions more swiftly and violently
+aroused, and several times, when some tragedy was being enacted, or some
+enormous coup was being brought off, I have been unable to see details,
+because they were hidden within a dense envelop of dark crimson clouds.
+
+In the rooms a crowd collects swiftly, and from a hundred human auras,
+all gathered in one compact mass, stream forth emanations of the basest
+description. Cupidity, envy, revenge, lust of the vilest, despair, ruin,
+death.
+
+I remember being met one night by a friend in the Attrium who was very
+excited. "Hurry up," she cried, "the double Duchess has broken the bank
+and is still playing."
+
+I went into the gambling rooms, and looked for the table at which the
+Duchess of Devonshire was staking. I knew she would attract a big crowd
+if she was winning.
+
+I found the table easily enough, not because it was surrounded by a
+crowd of people, but because it was hidden by a dark and dense crimson
+fog.
+
+With patience I got through this fog, and watched the handsome Duchess
+of Devonshire, formerly Duchess of Manchester, and born a Hanoverian,
+playing with a great quantity of gold, and a pile of thousand franc
+notes. By bending low down, almost level with the table, I found I got
+completely out of the fog, and could see clearly underneath it.
+
+One night there was a rush outside, and a huge ring formed to watch "a
+scrap" taking place between two celebrated members of _la haute
+cocotterie de Paris_.
+
+They were fighting with formidable hatpins, and I understood that the
+prey they fought over was Leopold, King of the Belgians.
+
+I ran with the crowd, the gambling rooms emptied in a twinkling, for the
+combat took place in the Casino Square. I squeezed through the excited
+mob till I got behind the backers of both parties, who were holding the
+ring and defying the police.
+
+It was a wonderful sight to witness the combined play of flaming red
+auras, shot through with vivid flashes like lightning, and blazing
+jewels.
+
+The duel ended with a few scratches, much tearing of gorgeous raiment
+and disheveled hair.
+
+How interesting it was to the mystic to feel the psychology of that
+crowd, and see the thin veneer of civilization stripped off, leaving
+nothing but the human tiger and ape. Both ladies were eventually led off
+the arena by the police, not, be it understood, to the police-station,
+but to their own sumptuous apartments. All the time they shrieked and
+chattered like infuriated macaws, and between the shrieks they
+administered resounding smacks upon the cheeks of their patient escort.
+
+Monte Carlo was a wonderful place in those days, in which to study human
+nature at its best and worst. In latter years it has become meretricious
+and shabby, and the old magnificence is seen no more. Fifteen to twenty
+years ago all that was greatest in Europe, Asia, and the Americas,
+congregated there, and crowned heads mingled freely with the scum of the
+earth. Constant _habitués_ were the Duchess of Devonshire, and her son,
+Lord Charles Montague; the Duchess of Montrose, known to the ring at
+Newmarket as "Bobs," and always the personification, to listen to and
+look at, of a Thames bargee. Leopold of Belgium, Ferdinand of Bulgaria,
+Grand Dukes of Russia, potentates from India, all hobnobbing together
+and gambling heavily.
+
+I often wonder now what has befallen those brilliant stars of the
+half-world firmament. Emmeline d'Alençon with her "bobbed" hair, and
+her passionate love of animals and birds. The demure Jeanne Ray, who
+came out every morning to her garden gate, and distributed food to the
+crowd of paupers and cripples. I have seen peasants kiss the hem of her
+dress as she walked on an afternoon along the Promenade des Anglais. The
+beautiful, soulless Mérode, the fierce, stately Otero, and many others
+who thought nothing of wearing fifty to a hundred thousand pounds' worth
+of jewels on one evening.
+
+Where are they now? If living they are old! Old! a word more dreaded by
+their class than death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+I COMMIT MURDER
+
+
+I will now relate a very unpleasant experience that befell me thirty
+years ago, but which has by no means exhausted itself in the passage of
+years. It still, at long intervals, recurs to me as vividly as when
+first I passed through the painful hours of its unfoldment.
+
+It was the month of July, and I was making a tour by road through a
+portion of Scotland, driving my own horse. I was accompanied by a groom
+and a maid.
+
+One evening we arrived at a well-known inn on Deeside, where I had
+arranged to pass a couple of nights. I found my room ready for me, an
+ordinary hotel bedroom, and after supper I retired very early to bed,
+feeling very sleepy after a long day in the open air.
+
+Towards morning I had a vision. I was a woman who had committed the
+crime of murder; and I went in hourly terror of discovery and arrest, as
+the police were actively in search of the criminal. Up to the present I
+had succeeded in evading them, and no shadow of suspicion had yet fallen
+upon me, but I lived in constant haunting dread that sooner or later
+some chance clue would direct their attention to me, and I should be
+arrested and brought up for trial.
+
+I had no clue in the vision as to how the murder had been committed. My
+victim was a man, and a sensation, vague and cloudy, suggested that a
+quick poison was the mode of destruction I used, but I never gathered
+why I murdered him, or what relation, if any, he was to me.
+
+The vision was confined to my miserable sensations of fear of detection,
+and the trouble was that I seemed utterly powerless to keep away from
+the scene of my crime, a large mansion in the West End of London.
+
+Not only did I haunt the outside of the house, but I had several times
+contrived to penetrate into the interior without being discovered, the
+house having stood empty since the crime.
+
+It was a dark, foggy night when I determined again to effect an
+entrance, and I listened intently in the street before darting up to the
+front door and fitting my key in the lock. There was not a sound, and I
+found myself in the interior with the door softly closed behind me.
+
+I carried a candle, which I was about to light, when I saw that the
+large hall was not in its usual darkness. A dim light burned in a
+pendant globe, and looking round I perceived abundant evidences that the
+house was again occupied. Several pairs of men's gloves were neatly
+folded on the hall table, and a man's silk hat was neatly covered with a
+cloth. There was not the faintest sound to be heard in the house, and
+the hour was between eleven and midnight.
+
+Very softly I crept up the wide staircase. My heart was beating
+tumultuously, and I was in an agony of apprehension. On the first
+corridor I entered the room where I had concealed the body of the man I
+had murdered. I had dragged it there and hidden it in a great dress
+wardrobe. I opened the wardrobe door and found the interior had been
+filled with women's clothes, they were swathed in linen sheets. Amongst
+them I began to search with both hands, but, of course, found no signs
+of the body, which had long since been removed. However, in some
+unaccountable way the action of searching seemed to comfort me, and soon
+I turned to retrace my steps and gain the street once more.
+
+At that second I heard some one approaching, and quick as thought I
+slipped into the wardrobe and pulled the door close. Some one entered
+the room and then left it again. In a few more moments the house was
+again silent as the grave, and I began to creep downstairs very softly.
+
+When halfway down, at a bend which brought me in full view of the hall
+and the front door in the background, I stopped short at a sound.
+
+Some one was about to enter, some one was fumbling with a latch key at
+the other side of that door. Another moment and that some one would
+enter and I would be discovered. There was but one chance. Whoever it
+was might not come upstairs. He or she might strike off to the left of
+the hall, where a corridor ran to that end of the house.
+
+I cannot attempt to describe my agonizing terror of suspense, yet I did
+not lose my presence of mind. Instantaneously I decided what to do,
+should the one about to enter elect to come straight upstairs.
+
+I hastily lit my candle, carefully shading it with my hand, and
+crouching low I peered through the banisters, towards the front door. It
+opened, and a man entered, middle-aged, well dressed, a gentleman, and
+an utter stranger to me.
+
+He closed the door and turned the key, but drew no bolts. Then he threw
+off a heavy coat, and placed his hat and gloves on the table. My heart
+beat to suffocation, as I waited to see which way he would go. He was
+whistling softly to himself and, turning, began to walk across the hall,
+heading for the stairs.
+
+Then the moment for action came. I knew now I should have to pass him in
+order to make my escape. I threw myself into the tragic pose of a
+somnambulist. I wore a long floating cloak, and I knew my face was white
+as death, and my eyes wide with sheer terror.
+
+With both hands, one of which held the lighted candle, outstretched
+gropingly, with distraught gaze fixed in wild vacancy, I slipped
+silently down the few remaining steps and sped noiselessly in my soft
+shoes straight across the hall towards him.
+
+Though I never turned my eyes upon him I was aware that he had stopped
+dead short, and was staring at me in startled amazement. Then fear
+suddenly invaded him, I could feel it. He fell back as if to let me
+pass, as I glided silently nearer to him and to the door.
+
+He was backing away from me now, then in another instant, he had turned
+and fled along the corridor. One more moment and I was safely outside,
+on the pavement.
+
+I woke up to a brilliant summer morning pouring in at my open window,
+but I was in no mood to enjoy its loveliness. I was bathed in cold
+perspiration, I was shivering with pure unadulterated fear. I was
+prostrate with the violent revulsion of feeling, from acute dread of
+discovery to partial immunity on gaining the street and escaping from
+the house. The vividness of every detail was crystal clear, and attended
+by all the violent emotions such an adventure and escape would
+naturally arouse in me, had they happened in the world of realities.
+
+It was hours before I could shake off the horror of the vision, and I
+left the hotel that day. Nothing would induce me ever to pass another
+night under that roof.
+
+I had no recurrence of the vision till three months after, then it came
+again, with all its attendant horrors, when I was asleep in my own bed
+at home. This was succeeded at long intervals by a vision of my
+condition of mind as an undiscovered criminal, always evading detection,
+but without the vision of my return to the scene of the crime. During
+the last thirty years I have had recurrences of the complete and partial
+vision, but at long intervals.
+
+A few years ago I happened to be standing with my host in an enormous
+stone hall, in one of the greatest houses in England. We were discussing
+the house, and its uncomfortable vastness. There were suites of
+apartments in outlying parts where whole families might hide for days if
+housemaids were careless. To reach the dining and drawing-rooms from the
+bedrooms, if one was tired, was a real weariness.
+
+We were looking up at the great gallery, running round the hall. It was
+reached by four wide flights of stairs at different corners, and it was
+full of all sorts of recesses, and massive pieces of old furniture and
+screens. On the spur of the moment I said to my host, "Wouldn't it be
+uncanny if we were to see a strange face looking down on us?"
+
+To my surprise, he answered: "Oh! that has often happened. I've often
+seen strangers looking down. At one time I took them to be inquisitive
+members of my own household, whom I didn't know by sight, and one day I
+complained about it, to the housekeeper. She looked very much disturbed
+and told me she had seen the same thing herself. The house is opened on
+certain days to the public, and she was half inclined to think one of
+the visitors had escaped from the crowd, and hidden herself for several
+days, as it was not on a public day that the figure was seen."
+
+"Is it always the same figure?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, no," replied my host. "Always a different one, and always some one
+quite ordinary and modern looking. The strictest orders are given that
+none of the servants' friends are to be allowed in this part of the
+house, and the housekeeper has always been with us and is thoroughly
+trustworthy. The fact remains an unsolved mystery."
+
+The housekeeper was a very agreeable old woman of the real,
+old-fashioned type. Very rustling in the evening, in a rich silk gown,
+and wearing some fine piece of jewelry presented to her by one or other
+of the crowned heads who had visited the famous house. I had asked her
+before I left about these mysterious appearances, and she had no
+explanation to offer. She had ascertained beyond a shadow of a doubt,
+that they had nothing to do with the household.
+
+"They were always just ordinary looking men and women, such as one meets
+in the streets every day. Sometimes they seem to have hats on, sometimes
+their heads appear uncovered," she explained.
+
+This fits in with a belief I have always held that we constantly rub
+shoulders with the disembodied, without being in the least aware of it.
+As the Bishop of London once said: "We will find ourselves exactly the
+same persons ten minutes after death as we were ten minutes before
+death."
+
+There are many occasions when we cannot express feeling in intellectual
+terms owing to the poverty of language. One's life not being a matter of
+intellectual perception, but a conscious experience, little of it can be
+made known. The mystic life is really incommunicable.
+
+We regard the Universe through the lens of five very imperfect senses,
+conscious all the time that there are certainly many more mediums for
+the expression of consciousness.
+
+Perception is a manifestation of consciousness, and varies enormously in
+individuals, ranging often above and beneath the normal. Undoubtedly
+perception can be enormously extended by practice, not only in seeing
+material objects, but in approaching the borderland of other worlds.
+
+The sight of the Psychic or Medium is not so much vision as a
+consciousness of the thoughts and feelings of others. It is a sensation
+rather than a process of thinking, sensation not as we commonly accept
+the term, but sensation through which mental objects are realized with
+as great a clarity of vision as physical objects are seen with the naked
+eye.
+
+This intuitive vision is near akin to ordinary physical vision, inasmuch
+as the object seen has a real concrete existence. The Psychic feels
+vibrations and absorbs them.
+
+My explanation of my vision in the Highland inn is that the actual
+criminal had slept the night before in the room I occupied, and
+happening to be mediumistic I at once began to absorb the vibrations,
+and became steeped in all the circumstances, environment, and
+conditions thrown off by the criminal in connection with the crime.
+
+The vibrations were intensely strong, and still fresh and concentrated.
+I absorbed them so fully that still at times they steal back across the
+threshold of my subconsciousness, the vehicle which registers and
+retains all impressions.
+
+During sleep, when one is off guard, the gate is often ajar, and old
+memories and incidents steal through, and range at will through the
+ordinary consciousness.
+
+In daily, normal existence the mind is merely a whirlpool, but
+undoubtedly the criminal would concentrate mentally on every detail of
+her crime. There would be a focalization of her mind; a concentration of
+her whole mental faculties upon this one single subject, and when the
+mental force is reduced from its normal, dissipated condition into
+coherency, its power is unlimited. It is possible to catch a physical
+disease by sleeping in an infected bed. It is quite as easy to catch a
+mental disease by the same means. Many emotions are highly contagious,
+notably fear. All are invisible to human sight, and there is rarely any
+warning. A Psychic may sense something unpleasant before infection is
+established. In fact, this often happens to quite normal individuals.
+Something in the atmosphere of a place conveys a warning, is unpleasant
+or uncongenial and it is avoided. If a warning was conveyed to me in the
+Highland inn I was too tired to heed it.
+
+At one time in my life I saw a great deal of two intimate and charming
+friends, Lord and Lady Wynford. Alas! both have now passed over.
+
+Lady Wynford was born Caroline Baillie of Dochfour, and owing to her
+Scotch blood, and her relationship with many of our great Scotch
+families, she was profoundly interested in ghosts. Lord Wynford, on the
+contrary, had an absolute horror of the subject, and always left the
+room whilst it was under discussion. Though very dissimilar, husband and
+wife were the best of friends. She was very handsome and a brilliant
+woman of the world. He was shy, retiring, and deeply religious. A
+perfect example of a true gentleman of the old school, and an aristocrat
+to his finger-tips. I was devoted to them both, and they were very kind
+to me in giving me their warm friendship, though at the time of which I
+write I was only a girl of about twenty years old.
+
+At that period the great topic of conversation amongst ghost-hunters was
+Glamis Castle, the most celebrated of all haunted houses. No ghost book
+is ever considered complete without reference to this celebrated Castle,
+and the story usually narrated is, that in the secret room some abnormal
+horror lived, and that the heir, Lord Glamis, and the factor, had to be
+told of its existence by the Earl of Strathmore in person. This
+information was of so terrible a nature that it changed not only the
+lives of those two men, but even their personal appearance. They grew
+aged and haggard in a single night.
+
+This story was readily discussed in old days by members of the
+Strathmore family, who were just as keen as outsiders were to probe the
+mystery. To-day it is universally believed that the monstrosity is at
+last laid to rest, and that though other ghosts still walk the Castle,
+the worst has departed forever.
+
+I went one afternoon to see the Wynfords in the hotel in which they
+stayed whilst in Scotland, and found Lady Reay with them. She was a
+wonderful woman in her way, and preserved her youth up till very late in
+life. Lord Wynford was not present, and Lady Wynford at once greeted me
+by exclaiming, "We are going to stay at Glamis next week, and Lady Reay
+has been there and seen a ghost."
+
+"But not _the_ ghost," admitted Lady Reay.
+
+"Then what did you see?" I inquired.
+
+She then told the following story, which has a sequel:--
+
+"I had been in the Castle for three nights and much to my satisfaction
+seen absolutely nothing. We were a very cheery party, and every one was
+frightfully thrilled and nervously expectant, but we were very careful
+not to breathe the word 'ghost' before our host and hostess.
+
+"On the fourth night I was awakened by a moaning sound in my room, and I
+opened my eyes. The room was in total darkness, but I saw something very
+bright near the door. I shut my eyes instantly, and pulled the
+bedclothes over my head in a paroxysm of fear. I longed to light my
+candles, but didn't dare, and the moaning continued, and I thought I
+should go quite mad.
+
+"At last I ventured to peep out again. I saw a woman dressed exactly
+like Mary Tudor, in her pictures, and she was wandering round the walls,
+flinging herself against them, like a bird against the bars of a cage,
+and beating her hands upon the walls, and all the time she moaned
+horribly. I'm sure she was the ghost of a mad woman. Her face and form
+were lit up exactly like a picture thrown upon a magic lantern screen,
+and every detail of her dress was clearly defined.
+
+"Luckily she never looked at me, or I should have screamed, and I
+thought of Lord and Lady I. sleeping in the next room to mine, and
+wondered how I could reach them. I was really too terrified to move, and
+the ghost kept more or less to that part of the room where the door was
+situated.
+
+"I must have lain there awake for two or three hours, sometimes with my
+head buried under the clothes, sometimes peeping out, when at last the
+moaning suddenly stopped. I opened my eyes. Thank God, I was alone. The
+ghost had departed.
+
+"I lay with wide open eyes till daybreak. Then the first thing I did was
+to run to the mirror to see if my hair had turned white. Mercifully it
+hadn't, but I looked an awful wreck.
+
+"I told just a few people what I had seen, and contrived to get a wire
+sent me before lunch. Early in the afternoon I was on the way to
+Edinburgh."
+
+Such was the story Lady Reay related.
+
+Thirteen years later Captain Eric Streatfield, who was a nephew of Lord
+Strathmore, and an intimate friend of my husband, told me exactly the
+same story. He was a boy of six at the time, when the lady of Tudor days
+appeared moaning in his room, and he said he would never forget the
+misery of the night he passed. He was very much interested in hearing
+that Lady Reay had gone through the same experience. He told me another
+extraordinary story.
+
+Whilst, as a school boy, he was visiting at Glamis Castle with his
+parents, he noticed that they began to behave in rather a peculiar
+manner. They were often consulting alone with one another, and
+constantly scanning the sky from their bedroom window, which adjoined
+his. For two or three days this sort of thing went on, and he caught
+queer fragments of conversation whispered between them, such as, "It
+doesn't always happen. We might be spared this year, the power must die
+out some day."
+
+At last one evening his father called him into his room, where his
+mother stood by the open window. In his hand his father held an open
+watch.
+
+His mother bade him look out, and tell them what sort of night it was.
+He replied that it was fine, and still and cold, and the stars were
+beginning to appear.
+
+His father then said, "We want you to take particular note of the
+weather, for in another moment you may witness a remarkable change.
+Probably you will see a furious tempest."
+
+Eric could not make head or tail of this. He wondered if his parents had
+gone mad, but glancing at his mother he noticed that she looked
+strangely pale and anxious.
+
+Then the storm burst, with such terrific suddenness and fury that it
+terrified him. A howling tempest, accompanied by blinding lightning and
+deafening thunder, rushed down upon them from an absolutely clear sky.
+
+His mother knelt down by the bed, and he thought that she was praying.
+
+When Eric asked for an explanation he was told that when he was grown up
+one would be given him. Unfortunately the moment never came. An aunt had
+told him that the storm was peculiarly to do with Glamis, and was
+something that could not be explained.
+
+Lord and Lady Wynford paid their visit to Glamis, and I looked forward
+eagerly to their return in a week's time. I went to see them the day
+after their arrival back again, and was met by Lady Wynford alone.
+Before I could question her she began to speak of the visit.
+
+"I don't want you even to mention the word Glamis to Wynford," she said
+very gravely. "He's had a great shock, and he's in a very queer state of
+mind."
+
+She paused, and I ventured to ask, "But what sort of shock?"
+
+Then she gave me the following account:--
+
+"Wynford and I occupied adjoining bedrooms. We were having a delightful
+time. Glorious weather, and a lot of very pleasant people. I really
+forgot all about there being any ghost. We were out all day, and very
+sleepy at night, and I never heard or saw a thing that was unusual.
+
+"Two nights before we left something happened to Wynford. He came into
+my room and awakened me at seven o'clock in the morning. He was fully
+dressed, and he looked dreadfully upset and serious. He said he had
+something to tell me, and he wished to get it over, and then he would
+try not to think of it any more. I was certain then that he had seen or
+heard something terrible, and I waited with the greatest impatience for
+him to continue. He seemed confronted with some great difficulty, but
+after a long pause he said--
+
+"'You know that I have always disbelieved in the supernatural. I have
+never believed that God would permit such things to come to pass as I
+have heard lightly described. I was wrong. Such awful experiences are
+possible. I know it to my own cost, and I pray God I may never pass such
+a night again as that which I have just come through. I have not slept
+for a moment. I feel I must tell you this, in fact, it is necessary that
+I tell you, because I am going to extract a promise from you. A promise
+that you will never mention in my hearing the name of this house, or the
+terrible subject with which its name is connected.'
+
+"I was speechless for a few minutes with perplexed amazement. I had
+never heard Wynford speak like that, nor had I ever seen him so terribly
+upset.
+
+"'But,' I said at last, 'aren't you going to tell me what has so
+unnerved you?'
+
+"He began pacing up and down the room. 'Good God, no,' he exclaimed, 'I
+couldn't even begin to tell you. I have no words that would have any
+meaning or expression. Don't you understand, there is no language to
+convey such happenings from one to the other. They are seen, felt,
+heard! They cannot be uttered. There are some things on earth I know of
+now, that may not be related to the spoken word. Perhaps between a man
+and his God, but not even between you and me.'
+
+"We were silent again for some minutes, during which he continued to
+pace the room, his head drooped on his breast. I was really seriously
+alarmed. I even feared for his reason, and I couldn't form the smallest
+conjecture as to what had been the nature of his experiences. I was
+quite convinced of one thing. What he had seen was no ordinary ghost,
+like Lady Reay's Tudor Lady. She might have amazed him, but it required
+something much more terrible and awe-inspiring to have reduced him to
+such a condition of mental misery and desolation.
+
+"I wanted to comfort him, to sympathize with him, but something about
+him held me at arm's length. It was his soul that was suffering, and
+with his soul a man must wrestle alone. I felt that his deep religious
+convictions of a lifetime had been violently dislocated, for all I knew
+shattered entirely, and I felt profound compassion for him. I may have
+had doubts, on many points. I confess to being a worldly skeptic, but
+Wynford's faith has always been so pure and childlike, and I have
+striven never to jar him on religious subjects. Now I feel as if
+somehow, everything that he has ever had has been taken away from him.
+
+"At last I said, 'Don't you think we had better leave to-day? We can
+easily make some excuse.'
+
+"He stopped and looked straight at me, so strangely.
+
+"'No, I can't leave to-day. I must stay another night here. There is
+something I must do. Now will you give me your promise never to mention
+this subject to me again? We may not be alone together again to-day. I
+want to get it over. Promise.'
+
+"I gave him my promise at once. I dared not have opposed him. I was
+horribly frightened. He went out of the room at once, and I lay thinking
+and shivering with dread. 'What was it he had to do? Why could we not
+leave to-day?' It was all so mysterious.
+
+"Well! the day passed in an ordinary manner, and if Wynford was more
+grave than usual I don't think any one noticed it. Then came the night I
+so dreaded. Of course I didn't sleep at first, I was too anxious, and I
+heard him come up to his room half an hour after I did. The door between
+our rooms was closed, and I lay awake listening intently. I heard him
+moving about; I supposed he was undressing, and his man never sits up
+for him. Then after a time there were occasional creaks which I knew
+came from an armchair, and I knew that he had not gone to bed.
+
+"I suppose I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I was aware
+of was Wynford's voice. He was speaking to some one, and seemed to be in
+the middle of a conversation. When he ceased speaking I strained my ears
+to catch a reply. I could hear no words, only his voice. Then a reply
+did come, and it simply froze the blood in my body, and I felt bathed in
+ice, and had to put my finger between my teeth, they chattered so
+horribly.
+
+"The reply was a hoarse whisper, a sort of rasping, grating undertone,
+that was not so much a whisper as an inability to speak in any other
+voice. There was something almost inhuman in those harsh, vibrating, yet
+husky words, spoken too low for me to catch. I knew at once that no
+guest, no member of the family, spoke like that, and I could not
+conceive that it could be a servant. What could Wynford have to say to
+any servant of Lord Strathmore?
+
+"A clock somewhere in the Castle struck three. No; I was certain that
+the presence with him, whatever else it might be, was no human being
+dwelling under the roof of Glamis.
+
+"At times they seemed to hold an argument; sometimes Wynford's voice was
+sharp and decisive, at other times it was utterly weary and despondent.
+I dreaded what the effect might be upon him of this awful night, but I
+could do nothing but lie shivering in bed, and pray for the morning.
+
+"How long it went on for I can't say, but the conviction came to me
+suddenly that Wynford had begun to pray. His voice was raised, and now
+and again I fancied I could hear words. The rasping whisper came now
+only in short, sharp interjections or expostulations, I don't know
+which. The even flow of Wynford's words went quietly on, and I began to
+be certain that he was praying for the being who spoke with that
+terrible whisper. It occurred to me that he might even be trying to
+exorcise some unclean spirit.
+
+"At last a silence fell. Wynford stopped praying, and I hoped that the
+terrible interview was at an end. Then it began again, and for quite an
+hour the prayers went on, with long periods of silence in between. I
+heard no more of the terrible, husky whisper.
+
+"I fell asleep again and did not awake till my maid brought me early
+tea. No sooner had she gone than Wynford entered, fully dressed. Though
+he looked desperately tired and wan, he seemed quite composed, and as if
+some weight had been removed from off him. He said he was going for a
+stroll before breakfast, and, of course, I remembered my promise and put
+no questions. I have come to the conclusion that a hundred people may
+stay any length of time at Glamis and see or hear nothing. The hundred
+and first may receive such a shock to the nervous system that he never
+really recovers from it."
+
+Such was the mysterious story that Lady Wynford unfolded. I saw her
+husband the next day, but beyond being graver than usual in his manner I
+detected no difference in him. He never referred, even in the most
+indirect way, to his visit, but he must have inferred by my silence that
+I had been warned not to mention the subject. Many others must, however,
+have done so, for every one, who at that period passed a night under
+Glamis Castle roof, was eagerly questioned by friends and acquaintances
+on their return.
+
+The only occasion on which I visited Glamis was on the night of a ball,
+given in honor of the Crown Prince of Sweden. The curiosity of the
+guests was held in check by servants being stationed at certain doors,
+and entrances to corridors and staircases, to inform rude explorers that
+they could not pass. It is hard to believe that such a course of action
+was necessary, but I personally watched little parties being turned back
+towards the ballroom and sitting-out-rooms, showing that intense
+curiosity may even prove stronger than good breeding.
+
+What Wynford saw that night will never be known, but one fact remains.
+It left so deep an impression upon him that he was never the same man
+again. He became graver and more wrapped up in his own thoughts month by
+month, and the change that ended in his death his wife attributed to
+those nights passed in Glamis Castle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE ANGEL OF LOURDES
+
+
+One lovely summer evening I was standing in a hotel bedroom, washing my
+hands. I was in Lourdes, and I was pondering upon a certain long flight
+of stone steps that I could see quite clearly from my window. At the top
+of the steps, which were cut in the face of the wooded hillside, stood a
+great Calvary, and from dawn till darkness pilgrims made the hard ascent
+upon their knees. The stones were worn and grooved by the stream of
+human beings making their painful way to the foot of the Cross.
+
+The atmosphere of Lourdes is very impressive to the Psychic. One
+breathes the concentrated essence of prayer. No one goes there who is
+not on prayer intent, and in the public streets, gardens and churches
+one comes across kneeling figures lost in Divine contemplation. No one
+heeds them; all are on a like mission, and sometimes men and women stand
+for hours with outstretched arms. Human crosses, oblivious to all, lost
+in a mystic rapture which takes count of neither time nor place.
+
+I turned my head towards the window. The sun had just set behind the
+mountains, and the sky was illuminated by a rosy afterglow. Down in the
+valley the shadows were beginning to lengthen, but I could still see the
+Calvary on the hillside, and the dark human stream slowly moving up the
+stony way, the _Via Dolorosa_ of the Cross.
+
+At that moment the sense of a presence swung into my field of
+consciousness, and contracted my vague faculties to focus. Something
+moving in the sky above caught my eye.
+
+How shall I describe the sight?
+
+I saw an angel floating above the mountains.
+
+The figure, wingless, yet floating in erect grace, was of great size,
+and wrapped entirely in cloudy gray. The head was bare and slightly
+bent, as if looking down on earth. The movements were smooth and
+gliding, as a feather floats in the wind. The distance was too great--I
+judged about a quarter of a mile--for me to distinguish the features,
+but owing to its great size the figure was clearly visible and deeply
+inspiring.
+
+It was a vision on which none could look intently without feeling the
+weight of a mighty awe. It gathered up the wandering emotions of the
+heart, and all a lifetime's ideals of beauty, grandeur, sublimity, in
+one serene presentation.
+
+The vision floated on majestically, across the valley and the little
+town with its praying multitudes. In about three minutes It had passed,
+and was lost in the pearly mists of the gathering night.
+
+And whilst the vision lasted I was acutely conscious of that innumerable
+concourse of kneeling forms below, all struggling upwards to the Cross.
+
+It seems to me that the devout, of other faiths than that of Rome, lose
+much by not taking advantage of Lourdes. For many years, thousands of
+pilgrims from all corners of the earth have bent their steps towards the
+shrine, and poured out their souls in a passion of supplication. This
+tremendous concentration of faith, love and fervent adoration, often
+ecstatic thanksgiving for answered prayer, must find an echo in the
+Heaven World to which they are sent.
+
+It is so easy at Lourdes to feel that the Throne of Grace has been
+actually reached, because one can sense the pathway, the ladder made by
+human love, praise and faith, down which, I doubt not, the Angels of God
+are always passing. It is easier to concentrate the mind in a place
+where religious thought has been poured out for many years, because one
+insensibly becomes calmed, and tranquilized, and aided by the atmosphere
+thousands of others have created.
+
+At Lourdes there is nothing to attract the scoffer, and thousands of
+hearts filled with reverence and devotion reënforce each year the
+already powerful vibrations, and leave the place the better and richer
+for their presence.
+
+How few people realize that they have never seen themselves? How many
+can tell what they really look like?
+
+A very, very few can, and I am amongst the number.
+
+I wakened one morning in summer, and opened my eyes on my sunlit bedroom
+at home. Instantly I saw something which thrilled me with vivid
+interest. I saw myself!
+
+I was emerging out of a corner of the room, and composedly approaching
+the bed. There was no doubt as to recognition. I knew instantly I was
+looking on my own face for the first time, and it was something of a
+shock to discover that I was more or less of a stranger to myself. I saw
+how false a looking-glass can be. I had not begun to know myself.
+
+With absorbed interest I stared very hard, in my intense desire to
+imprint on my memory my own image. I approached the bed, and as I did
+so, I seemed to shrink, fade, and waver. Then suddenly I vanished--into
+my recumbent body.
+
+For a few minutes afterwards I was too concerned with my physical
+condition to ponder on the vision of my real self. I was tossing
+violently in the bed, in an inner distraughtness which was most
+disturbing. Then, as my nervous system began to calm down, I strove to
+imprint on my memory the recollection of what I really looked like.
+
+My face, even in the wonder of those few moments in which I had seen it,
+expressed emotions I had never seemed to know. Nothing was as I had
+believed it to be. All the traits that went to form my character needed
+readjusting, and all seemed curiously imperfect. I could not remember
+how I was clothed, though I had seen myself from head to foot. I suppose
+I was too engrossed in studying my face to think of my body.
+
+The vision left me with a blank sense of utter disillusionment and
+failure. Nothing in me was finished or complete. My expression suggested
+a character which was horribly crude, imperfect and rudimentary. Looking
+at myself afterwards in the mirror, I came to the conclusion that it
+lied, or that in waking life I wear a mask.
+
+It is salutary to behold one's spiritual portrait, a thing not visible
+to the mind alone but to the physical sight. In a flash comes the
+knowledge that dwelling in us are forces, not yet grasped by mortal
+mind, that cry for recognition. There have been moments in all lives, I
+believe, when a glimpse is caught of the Olympian heights to which it is
+possible to rise. Glimpses, alas! of the evanescent thing we know
+ourselves in truth to be.
+
+Sometimes, on the Astral plane, it happens that friends meet under
+strange circumstances, and one figures largely in the doings of another.
+The memory of those nocturnal adventures is brought through and clearly
+recollected in the morning.
+
+One such occurrence I will relate, and it is peculiar and unusual.
+
+An old friend of ours, a man who has devoted his life to the development
+of his spiritual faculties (not to be confused with the development of
+mediumship and phenomena), had a series of dreams in which he appeared
+to be two people. He himself was the same tall, slender man he is in
+daily life, but in this psychic experience a much smaller man moved
+always on his left side, and somehow seemed to symbolize his waking
+personality.
+
+The central figure in one of these unusual experiences was a young man
+who was unknown to our friend, and who had died abroad. His body had
+been embalmed and brought home for burial, and our friend had been shown
+photographs of him, and had also communicated with him through automatic
+writing. This much was imprinted on his physical memory.
+
+Now, whilst lying asleep one night, the spiritual counterpart of our
+friend became aware that the body of the young man was exposed and could
+be seen. His companion, or other self, the shorter man who moved by his
+side, shrank back with horror from such a suggestion, just as our friend
+would instinctively have done in waking consciousness, but he himself
+was determined to see the body, and went straight through a door facing
+him, into a room where it was lying on a low table.
+
+Now comes the moment when I began to figure in this experience. I was
+standing on the opposite side of the table, making vigorous passes over
+the young man's body, which appeared to be fashioned out of pinkish
+clay. The trunk and legs looked as though I had roughly modeled them
+with my hands. The head was more highly finished. It was sharp and
+distinct in outline, and our friend recognized it instantly as being a
+representation of the young man whose portraits he had seen. He stared
+at the face with great interest, and taking up a cloth, gently wiped the
+cheek where a fleck of foam lay. This action seemed to vivify the body,
+for it began to mutter and murmur indistinctly. Apparently it was alive,
+and not dead.
+
+Our friend relates that this discovery gave him such a shock that he
+lost the thread of memory which he was bringing back to his physical
+body on the bed. The next moment he woke up. My recollection, a
+perfectly clear one, of these happenings, was that he simply vanished
+from the scene, leaving me alone with the body, which I continued to
+manipulate.
+
+Afterwards, through automatic writing, our friend was told by the
+departed young man, that this astral vision signified the collecting of
+etheric matter to fashion a body in which he could function on etheric
+planes.
+
+On another occasion our friend had the experience of walking about on
+the other side with the young man, who was dressed in an ordinary tweed
+suit, and being taken by him to various acquaintances, to whom he was
+introduced. With the exception of the above experience, he believes that
+this was the first time he had ever seen him. The interesting point of
+both experiences is, that both I and our friend brought back on waking,
+a clear and similar recollection of the episode in which we were jointly
+concerned.
+
+This friend of ours is a disciple of "The Flaming Heart," called by
+Catholics "The Sacred Heart." He writes to me thus:--
+
+"I see now more clearly than before that the Christ self within uses its
+powers as a whole, just as the personal man uses intellect, will, and
+feeling, all three being energized by love, which is the element of
+interest in the several activities."
+
+"So the self of love works out and manifests as--
+
+    Love and Life         Beauty.
+    Love and Power        Goodness.
+    Love and Knowledge    Wisdom.
+
+"The Love element saves us from wrong living, wrong doing or wrong
+thinking. So we go from strength to strength, by yielding the lower self
+to the transmuting power of the Higher."
+
+It was long before I came to understand the full significance of the
+Flaming Heart. It was plain to see what its realization meant to our
+friend. He radiates an extraordinary serenity of mind, an atmosphere of
+strength and peace, a calm in the midst of storm which apparently
+nothing can shake. Pre-eminently, when in his presence, one is conscious
+of a commanding power which will only be used for exalted purposes. This
+clear subjection of the lower self, to the transmuting power of the
+Higher self, has worked such marvels in him that one longs to grasp the
+secret of his success.
+
+A few years passed, and still the heart of the mystery eluded me. This
+year, 1918, it came to me in a flash.
+
+The experience I am about to relate may have happened to many others. To
+me, it was a tremendous revelation.
+
+I was kneeling one morning in front of the Altar, at Early Celebration.
+I have always felt, through the Eucharist, the possibility of great
+spiritual development, and often there comes to me at such moments, a
+mystical response to the inner mysteries of the Sacrament. I have never
+looked for supernatural happenings, hallucinations, or psychic
+excitements, but my spiritual instincts are always alive and craving
+satisfaction. This they have never before received in any really lasting
+degree.
+
+Now came a new Divine illumination.
+
+Two clergymen were officiating at the celebration. I had just received
+the bread from the one, and had raised my head and hands to receive the
+cup from the other, when suddenly I went quite blind.
+
+The vicar, who was moving towards me, was blotted out. I stared at a
+black veil utterly impenetrable, and I was aware of a tremendous
+internal dislocation. My heart beat tumultuously, and felt as if thrust
+out of place. Then my sight was restored.
+
+I saw before me, not the man, bearing in his hands the chalice, but a
+flaming heart of fire, from which radiated out living, scintillating
+streams of golden light. They filled the background with their quivering
+radiance, and I was conscious of shrinking back, and bowing my head as
+the supernal vision approached me and enveloped me in Its aura.
+
+The cup had been transmuted by Divine alchemy into the Flaming Heart of
+love's sacrifice, and I was given to taste of the living waters of Life.
+
+For a few minutes I was quite unconscious of where I was. I had been,
+indeed, caught up into the seventh Heaven. I know now that I acted
+mechanically, and to outward semblance I behaved in the orthodox manner,
+but when I raised my head again the vicar had passed on and the vision
+had vanished. Nothing had happened to distract the attention of others.
+
+I returned to my seat conscious that I had been taught the meaning and
+marvelous significance of the Flaming Heart. I understood the words of
+the great mystic, St. John.
+
+     "In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
+
+     "And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness overcame
+     it not.
+
+     "There was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man,
+     coming into the world."
+
+I know that the Flaming Heart of Divinity dwells in the breasts of all
+humanity, that the soul is no empty shell, but the shrine of the Divine
+Presence, and that Presence is the Guide and Light of Life.
+
+I have seen revealed the inner mystery of the sacramental life. Through
+a rift in the veil of the material, the hidden life of eternity was
+symbolized for me in the Flaming Heart, the true Eucharistic Mystery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE WRAITH OF THE ARMY GENTLEMAN
+
+
+To some people life is an unspeakable tragedy; to others it is a mere
+farce. To all it is a profound mystery.
+
+What am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going? What is this
+mysterious ego that thinks and acts?
+
+From Darwin we learn that the human body has taken a million years to
+evolve its present form. Is it logical to suppose that there is no
+scheme of evolution for the immortal soul, in which it can preserve its
+individuality through the ages? The mills of God grind slowly, and what
+is seventy or eighty years in eternity, in which we develop the highest
+and most complex organism we can conceive of--the Soul?
+
+Five hundred and thirty-five years B. C. Pythagoras was teaching the
+reincarnation of the immortal soul in his celebrated school. Plato,
+Socrates, Aristotle, Philo, Virgil, Cicero, Euclid, the Egyptians and
+the Hindoos taught the same doctrine. In the days of Christ the
+transmigration of souls was an accepted belief, and in 250 A. D. Origen,
+the greatest of the Christian Fathers, was still teaching the same
+doctrine. Justin Martyr recognized the presence of the Logos in Jesus,
+and Socrates and Clement of Alexandria affirmed that the same philosophy
+had brought the Greeks to Christ. To this day it remains the belief of
+three-fourths of the human race.
+
+In our country, though a rapidly growing faith, Buddhism fails to
+command the attention it otherwise would, for two reasons. Firstly, we
+have never been a religious-minded people, and are now very much less so
+than formerly. What are loosely termed religious subjects interest a
+very few, and bore intensely the great majority. Out of our forty-four
+million souls, a mere handful are interested in a future life. The rest
+prefer not to take the problem into consideration, though they are ready
+to accept a small dose of conventional religion, ready-made and
+pre-digested. Secondly, faith in the transmigration of souls in a
+succession of physical bodies only becomes an urgent mental necessity, a
+vitally necessary explanation of life's inequalities, to those who mix
+with the outcast poor. Such persons are again comparatively few, and, to
+those of them who think, life without reincarnation is simply an
+incomprehensible and chaotic puzzle.
+
+Once the faith is grasped that life between birth and death is only a
+tiny fragment of the æons allotted to us, in which to develop
+spiritually, divine harmony; love and justice reappear. Only thus can
+one see light. But if the tardy growth of this all-sufficient
+illumination is slow to take root, it must be remembered that to the
+ordinary, well-to-do person it makes no appeal.
+
+"Am I my brother's keeper?" is generally answered in the negative, and
+the hypocritical rejoinder, covering a mountain of selfishness, that it
+is an impertinence to pry into the lives of the poor, is the facile
+excuse for sitting at ease and cozening the conscience into the belief
+that the poor are God's affair. Even the devout and pious, who may feel
+deep compassion for the sorrow of the destitute, have no spur to prick
+their mental apathy, unless they mix freely and constantly with the
+poor and oppressed. Only then will come the perplexed question: Where
+can I see in all this overwhelming misery the Divine hand of love and
+justice?
+
+The Christ who established his Brotherhood with us, by proclaiming God
+the Universal Father, told us that "Before Abraham was, I am," and I
+suppose that most people, who accept anything, accept the pre-existence
+of Christ. Yet how few of us can remember anything of our own past
+lives, and how merciful it is that we cannot. How utterly overwhelming
+such memory would be! The future is as carefully hidden from us as the
+past, yet our previous lives have been by no means unfruitful.
+
+The experiences we have gathered in the past years of this life are
+nearly all forgotten, yet our development has gone on, and the records
+are stored in the subconsciousness, sometimes to be pulled across the
+threshold and displayed in a complete panorama before the dying eyes.
+The statements to this effect made by those who have been resuscitated
+when at the point of death by drowning, are too numerous to be discarded
+as mere fables.
+
+Undoubtedly we all contain the germs of sin at birth, but few educated
+people now accept the statements that we are born sinful because our
+parents sinned, or because of the moral delinquencies of those of Eden.
+Certainly we all bear the consequences of others' sins, but the cruel
+injustice of a God who deliberately punishes present humanity for the
+sins of past humanity is too revolting a conception of the Creator to
+gain acceptance to-day.
+
+This very fact shows that we have advanced spiritually. So base a
+conception of the Almighty is violently repugnant to serious thinkers.
+The intuitive consciousness of man postulates the over-ruling spirit as
+a power representing perfect justice and love, and the innate instinct
+to believe that we ourselves are in some mysterious way akin to this
+Divine Ideal keeps ever alive the belief in our Divine origin.
+
+What is the grand apotheosis of each human life? The Christ spirit; a
+scheme of regenerative redemption, simple, natural, yet superlatively
+grand.
+
+If one asks whether the orbs in space take precedence of personal will
+and intelligence, or personal will and intelligence take precedence of
+the orbs in space, one has only to ask whether builders or buildings
+have priority. Do pictures originate the artist? do books originate the
+author? If one begins to study with a belief in spirit as power and
+cause, one can account for all things, but to start with matter as a
+foundation is to fail absolutely to account for either matter or spirit.
+
+In some infinite womb the vital Heavens, the visible Universe must have
+existed before time was. We see all elements have their affinities, all
+stars their course, all atoms their polarity. We see the wheel of
+Ezekiel symbolizing the whole scheme and fabric of Nature.
+
+Heaven works not only with stupendous immensities but with small
+minorities. Atoms of unutterable minuteness are streaming into the
+unseen atmosphere every second from the souls and bodies of the human
+race. When the soul seeks, aspires after God, the most vital of all
+atoms go forth with the breath, as light from the sun to the earth.
+Surely we and our angel kindred inhabit one house of which the most
+distant provinces are in touch with the center of all. Heaven and earth
+are bridged by the spirit ladder of love, and the soul can inbreathe the
+spirit of God as the body inbreathes oxygen.
+
+The contemplative mind beholds every day the passage of things invisible
+into sight, the transfer of the seen into the unseen, and all is
+natural. The life throb of the palpable world is a pulsation going forth
+every instant from the eternal energy, drawing out by an ethereal medium
+from the invisible and intangible, that which is visible and tangible.
+
+I will speak now of the passage of a thing invisible into sight. How, to
+me, it became so I cannot tell. I don't know.
+
+One summer evening my husband and I were occupying two communicating
+bedrooms in a London hotel, contiguous with one of the great railway
+stations. We had to make an early start in the morning, and had come
+there to be near our train.
+
+I awakened in the early morning hours. The gray dawn was just beginning
+to show through the bars of the Venetian blinds lowered before the two
+windows. Those bars had not been adjusted, and they also admitted a
+rather bright light from a street lamp. I judged it to be somewhere
+about four o'clock, but I did not look at my watch. I was too
+pre-occupied in looking at something else.
+
+My bare arm was stretched outside the coverlet, and I was aware that
+what had awakened me was a cold wind blowing on my skin. The furniture
+of the room was dimly outlined, and at first I vaguely threw my
+half-open eyes around without perceiving anything unusual, but gradually
+my senses, shaking off their drowsiness, became aware of movement
+between the bed and the window. Something tall and gray was wavering
+like a pillar of smoke betwixt me and the struggling daylight. I closed
+my eyes again with a creepy feeling, a disinclination to look again, but
+my bare arm, which still lay outside the coverlet, received another
+intimation that roused me to keen alertness. A chill wind was blowing
+over my skin.
+
+I drew in my arm hastily, and opened my eyes. That tall gray something
+had approached much nearer to me, and now I could distinguish with
+perfect clearness the figure of a man, but such a wavering, fluid form
+that one moment seemed on the point of dissolving into thin air, and the
+next moment gathering itself together again in clear cut outline.
+
+For what seemed to me a long time I stared at the gray apparition. I
+felt a cold fear, a rigid horror creep over me, and but for the
+recollection of my husband's nearness, and the open door between us, I
+might have fainted from pure terror. I thought of calling to him, but
+something sinister in that wavering shadow made me desist. At times the
+form came quite close to the bed, but I could never see the face
+clearly; it was vague and undetermined in outline, in fact, not
+completely materialized. Not for a second did that wavering movement
+cease, that floating, shimmering motion 'twixt bed and window, of what I
+knew to be the ghost of a man.
+
+How long this unpleasant state of things continued I do not know. I was
+perfectly well aware that a ghost should be addressed in sympathetic
+terms, should be asked if any human help can be rendered, but at the
+time it never once occurred to me to speak. Gradually, as I watched that
+retreating then advancing form, at moments opaque, then almost
+transparent, I lost consciousness and fell asleep again.
+
+I was awakened a few hours later by a loud knocking at my door. I slid
+instantly out of bed, turned the key, and was confronted by the
+chambermaid, bringing my early tea.
+
+"Who was the man who killed himself in this room?"
+
+Luckily, the woman did not drop the tray, as I hurled at her this abrupt
+question. She set the tea down on a table and turned to me a scared
+face, as she answered by another question:
+
+"How ever did you find out that?"
+
+"Never mind how I found out. Please answer me. I won't get you into
+trouble," I said firmly.
+
+"It was an army gentleman. He shot himself here the night before last.
+That's all I know," was her subdued answer.
+
+Poor "army gentleman"! So you were revisiting the scene of your last
+tragedy, or had you ever left that confined space between four walls
+which witnessed the supreme mental agony of the suicide?
+
+What had prompted me to put that sudden question to the chambermaid? I
+could not tell. In the moment of waking, slipping out of bed and opening
+the door, no recollection had come to me of my earlier experience, but
+betwixt that experience and my abrupt waking at her knock knowledge must
+have been somehow afforded me of the tragedy. I knew a man had done
+himself to death in that room shortly before I occupied it.
+
+A day or two afterwards I read an account of the inquest held upon the
+body. A rankling sense of unjust treatment had preyed upon his brain.
+
+Suicide whilst of unsound mind was the verdict. Poor "army gentleman," I
+fear I could have been of little service to you, even if I had opened
+up some form of communication between myself and your disembodied soul!
+
+When one remembers how many persons occupy even one room in a hotel in
+twelve months, it seems natural that psychic phenomena should be common
+to such houses. Undoubtedly many tragedies must be enacted in every
+hotel within a comparatively short space of time, and one may, in utter
+unconsciousness, occupy a bedroom in which, but the night before, murder
+or suicide has taken place.
+
+Some years ago, I had occasion to pass a night in one of the big West
+End hotels of London. It was very full, and I had to be content with a
+very indifferent room on the main entrance floor, and looking to the
+back. The window had iron bars in front of it, through which one could
+slip one's head, but not one's shoulders. The reason for the bars was
+obvious. A wide mews ran on a level with this floor of the house, and
+failing this obstruction any one could have stepped with perfect ease
+from the pavement into the room.
+
+Thrusting my head through the bars I could see from end to end of the
+mews. On the left there was no exit, on the right was a narrow lane
+running down the side of the hotel, and leading into the main
+thoroughfare. The mews seemed very quiet, clean and respectable, and for
+one night only I decided that the room would do. I was very tired after
+passing two nights in a train, and went early to bed and fell asleep at
+once.
+
+I ascertained afterwards that I had been sleeping for five hours, when I
+was suddenly awakened by a loud noise of scuffling feet, accompanied by
+a gurgling choking sound, as if some one was struggling to find
+utterance, to gain breath.
+
+To be awakened by a noise out of a sound sleep is always a startling,
+uncomfortable experience. If the astral body has been wandering far
+afield, it has to return to the physical body in far too great a hurry
+for comfort. There is always more or less of a dislocating jar under
+such circumstances. The startled sensation is greatly accentuated when,
+in place of waking to dead silence, one awakens to unaccountable and
+very unpleasant sounds.
+
+I lay perfectly still, with every nerve tingling, and every muscle taut,
+and listened intently. The noise came from the window which was shut,
+and my heart began to beat more thickly with a dread and terror which
+had neither form nor shape. Slowly I remembered the mews outside, and
+felt instantly thankful that because of its proximity I had shut the
+window, instead of sleeping with it wide open, as is my custom.
+
+Was murder taking place out there? What was that hideous, choking sound,
+that surged in with guttural gasps from out the darkness, and which
+suggested nothing so much as a frenzied struggle of loathing and
+agonized fear?
+
+I lay shuddering and quaking as with the grip of ague. My imagination
+instantly constructed the scene so vividly suggested by the nature of
+the sounds. A man's hands were on the throat of a woman, and he was
+deliberately strangling the life out of her struggling body. I was sick
+with unspeakable agonies of dread, and for quite five minutes I could
+not summon force or motion to my limbs.
+
+If some unfortunate was being done to death it was clearly my duty to
+run to the window and give the alarm by shrieking "murder," but now I
+began to wonder if that awful struggle was taking place outside or just
+inside my room. Though the mews was well lit my blind was drawn down,
+and the room was in darkness, except for a faint reflection shining in
+from a street lamp. I had only to stretch out my hand in order to switch
+on a light above my bed, but a paralysis of fear held me.
+
+That noise of infinite pain, of frantic, dying agony, those convulsive,
+ghastly groans and scuffling of feet, and wrestling, writhing bodies,
+were spell-binding beyond the power of human conception, and the most
+awe-inspiring fantasy. I tried to reason with myself, but the horror
+scattered all reasoning, yet a sense of duty, of natural humanity, and
+anger with my own fears, kept tugging at me. It seemed as if the sounds
+were losing force, were beginning to die out. I was lying still in
+abject terror, whilst a fellow-creature was being deliberately done to
+death.
+
+A blind fury with myself, and the murderer, suddenly superseded fear.
+Without turning on the light I jumped out of bed, and knocking up
+against the furniture in my haste, I dashed towards the faint light
+coming in from the street. In another moment I had thrust aside the
+blind, and thrown the window wide. I know I shouted out something; I
+have no idea what. I thrust my head out between the iron bars, and
+looked to right and left. I could see absolutely nothing. The street was
+quite empty, and so well lit that I could see from end to end of it.
+
+I drew in my head, and stood there silently, and quivering still with
+excitement, as one does when awakened with the broken fragments of an
+evil dream.
+
+Then, suddenly, a sensation of bristling fear took possession of me once
+more, unreasoning and unreasonable fear, clutching at my heart with a
+grip of ice. The noise had not ceased, it continued more faintly, and it
+came from a corner of my room to the right of the window. Murder had
+been done in the room in which I now stood, and was being re-enacted
+now. The certainty rushed on me with the force of a whirlwind.
+
+I was dimly conscious of human voices in the mews, of a window being
+thrown open. My cry had awakened other sleepers. I left my window open,
+and let the blind fall before it. Then I crept softly across to the
+opposite side of the room, whence the dying sound proceeded. The victim
+was almost dead. I could hear nothing but a gasping, rattling sigh, and
+then silence. The silence of death.
+
+I was roused from my trance of horror by the measured tread of a
+policeman outside. I heard him speaking with others, then, seeing
+nothing to account for the disturbance in the mews, he went away again,
+and I fell asleep from utter mental exhaustion.
+
+When I awoke the sun was in the room, and I looked towards the corner
+where the tragedy of the darkness had been enacted. How peaceful and
+innocent the room now looked, in the light of a cheerful summer morning,
+and how thankful I was to know that I would be far away from it in a
+very few hours.
+
+Yet another hotel story comes to me as I write.
+
+My sister and her husband came to Torquay to spend a couple of nights
+and took rooms in one of the principal hotels. They had not announced
+their arrival beforehand, and the manageress took them upstairs to see
+several vacant rooms. There was one not shown to them, but the door was
+wide open, and my sister seeing that it was unoccupied walked in, and
+said she preferred it to any of the others, because of its particular
+view.
+
+For some unknown reason the manageress was greatly against their taking
+it; she raised every sort of objection, but my sister was firm, and
+finally the luggage was carried up and she began to unpack, whilst her
+husband went down to order tea.
+
+After a few minutes, and whilst she was on her knees beside the trunk,
+she heard some one moving in the room behind her, but she could see
+nothing. It occurred to her, however, that some tragedy might have taken
+place in that particular room, which would explain the reluctance of the
+manageress to let them hire it. Not being of a nervous disposition, my
+sister thought no more of the matter, and went downstairs to join her
+husband.
+
+That night she was awakened by something, she never knew what, but on
+opening her eyes she saw a rather disturbing vision. Close to the door
+stood the figure of a man, looking straight towards her. His figure was
+brilliantly luminous, and stood out clearly and distinctly in the
+darkness of the room.
+
+She awakened her husband, who sat up in bed and stared back at the
+figure. He saw it as clearly and distinctly as his wife saw it, and for
+some considerable time they watched it, until it gradually faded out.
+
+What is so sad is that they did not address this ghost. They had every
+opportunity, for at the same hour the same figure appeared the next
+night. It never tried to approach them: it simply stood there quietly
+for about an hour, and then vanished. Probably it was the wraith of a
+suicide. The fact remains that very few people do address the ghosts
+they see. Even if they are not afraid, it never seems to occur to seers
+that to speak to the disembodied might be a very kind and helpful thing
+to do.
+
+On their return home my brother-in-law told this story to some friends
+at his Club, and a stranger who was present said that he was aware there
+was a haunted room in that Torquay hotel, for he knew some one else who
+had seen it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+AN AUSTRIAN ADVENTURE
+
+
+Only once did I ever see an elemental of the terrifying type, and I have
+no desire to repeat the experience.
+
+Several years ago I was traveling alone on my way to Bohemia. With me,
+in the railway carriage, I had an aluminum traveler's typewriter,
+enclosed in, and fastened down to a leather case. I had also a large
+leather dispatch box, containing several chapters of a new novel I was
+writing, and which I meant to finish whilst abroad.
+
+At the last moment, just as I was starting on my journey, a friend had
+given me a small Russian ikon, and I had put that in the box with my
+writing materials.
+
+On reaching the frontier into Austria, I got out with the other
+travelers, carrying the typewriter in my hand to ensure its safety. A
+porter brought along the dispatch box, and the luggage from the van to
+the Custom House.
+
+I had nothing to declare and said so, but when the officials came to
+look at the typewriter and the contents of the dispatch box, their civil
+attitude changed, and I was curtly told that I would have to remain
+behind, in order that a more thorough examination might be made.
+
+There was little use in expostulating, no one took the smallest notice
+of any explanations I made, and I had the unhappy fate to behold all my
+fellow travelers stream out onto the platform, and make for the waiting
+train, and the growing conviction that they would proceed on their
+journey without me.
+
+When alone with the officials I had the field to myself, and I explained
+that I was a British subject, and a British novelist, but they merely
+looked at me with the same blend of incredulity my fellow countrymen so
+often favor me with, when they accidentally discover that I am
+synonymous with the writer, Violet Tweedale.
+
+How well I know the look and the words accompanying it: "Are you Violet
+Tweedale, the novelist? Well! who'd have thought it? I never would have
+guessed."
+
+Their expression says plainly enough, "You don't look capable of writing
+out a laundry bill, far less a novel."
+
+Seeing that my statements made no impression upon the Customs officials,
+I resigned myself to an unknown fate, and in a few moments, looking
+through the open door, I had the misery of seeing my train glide out of
+the station, leaving me behind.
+
+An animated conversation now began which occupied at least ten minutes,
+and my typewriter and dispatch box were subjected to a most rigid
+scrutiny. I kept on imploring the officials not to break the typewriter,
+but they paid no heed, and at last, after playing about with it for some
+time, they requested me to give them an exhibition of its powers. Alas!
+it was too late. The machine was thoroughly upset with the rough
+fingering it had been subjected to, and I could not get it to work.
+
+I saw that this fact was set down as another black mark of suspicion
+against me, and they then began another long discussion upon the ikon. I
+began to be so bored and tired that I sat down on my trunk, lit a
+cigarette, and attempted to preserve a certain amount of outward calm,
+whilst mentally I raged furiously within.
+
+I noticed that a messenger had been sent out of the room, but could not
+catch the object of his errand. When all chattering and gesticulating
+together, they abandoned ordinary German, and fell into a dialect of
+their own which I could not understand.
+
+In a few moments the messenger returned with two more officials, and a
+waiter from the station restaurant. The waiter was given a chapter of my
+novel--each chapter had an ordinary exercise book to itself--and told to
+translate my English into German.
+
+I presume he honestly tried to do his best, but the translation bore no
+resemblance to the original. Even the officials soon wearied of the
+fumbled nonsense, and the waiter was sent away.
+
+Then the head official informed me that I might continue my journey by
+the next train, but I must consider myself under arrest, till further
+information concerning my business and identity was obtained. He
+informed me, finally, that I was a Russian spy.
+
+I retaliated by informing him that I was a British subject. That my
+husband was at that moment in Bavaria, and directly I could communicate
+with him he would obtain my release through our Embassy at Vienna. Never
+did I regret anything more than my own stupidity in having left my
+much-viséd passport behind me in England.
+
+The typewriter was then closed down, tied with string and heavily
+sealed. I was ordered to carry it myself, and place it in the very
+center of an empty luggage wagon.
+
+As I complied it flashed upon me that they had never seen a typewriter
+before, and suspected it to be a sort of infernal machine. My dispatch
+box disappeared altogether, and I got into a first-class carriage,
+accompanied by two very smart attendants. They wore cocked hats, much
+gold braid, and many gold buttons, and they each carried a sword and a
+revolver, with which to shoot me, I presume, if I tried to run away.
+
+We three were not alone in the carriage. In a corner sat a dark man with
+a small black mustache, and smoking a very long cigar. He was neatly
+dressed in a long dust coat, and on his smooth black hair he wore a
+brown Homburg hat. In one dark eye was a single monocle, through which
+he regarded me with a mild surprise.
+
+I saw at once that if I was to be burdened with the constant society of
+my two officials for several days, the only thing to do was to make
+friends with them. The circumstances had not arisen through any fault of
+theirs, and they had to obey the orders of their superiors. Both were
+men who looked between the age of thirty to forty, and they had quite
+pleasant faces. I began by offering them cigarettes from my case--no
+Customs officials object to enough tobacco being carried to last out a
+journey--and they accepted my civility with profuse thanks.
+
+The man in the corner still regarded us from time to time with interest,
+and when we had finished our cigarettes he leaned forward and most
+politely offered us each a big cigar. The voice of this person so
+amazed me that in refusing with thanks, and saying I never smoked
+cigars, I looked very closely at him. The voice was that of a cultured
+gentlewoman, and that was exactly what this person turned out to be. Not
+a man, but a woman dressed exactly to resemble a man. When she stood up
+I saw that she wore a divided skirt, and by the manner in which my
+guards addressed her when they accepted her cigars, I knew that she was
+some great personage. Later on I discovered that she was a member of the
+Imperial House of Austria. She spoke English perfectly, and I explained
+my position, which seemed to amuse her immensely. We found that we had
+mutual friends, and we were chattering most amicably when I reached my
+destination.
+
+Evidently a wire had preceded us, for other officials were waiting on
+the platform to take possession of the typewriter, and I said good-by to
+it, as I thought, forever.
+
+The amazement of the hotel manager may be imagined when he saw me arrive
+under escort. Though I had engaged my rooms he had never seen me before,
+and I was secretly uneasy lest he should refuse to take me in under the
+circumstances, but my attendants appeared to possess unlimited
+authority. I was shown into a good bedroom at the very end of the
+corridor. The manager spoke perfect English, and I explained my position
+from my point of view. He was quite civil, but I thought rather
+non-committal. He evidently did not like the situation, but at that
+moment I had a stroke of luck.
+
+There entered the head waiter, carrying the usual paper of
+identification which one always fills in abroad. His face was quite
+familiar to me. I never forget a face, but I cannot always fit a name to
+it. Where had I seen this man before? Then in a flash I remembered. It
+was in Egypt.
+
+When I had filled the paper, both men remaining in the room, I recalled
+myself to his memory, and the occasions when he had waited upon some
+members of our royal family, to whose table I had been bidden. These
+occasions had been of comparatively recent happening, and though
+possibly not being quite sure in his recollection of me, he remembered
+our royal family perfectly, and several little personal incidents that
+had occurred whilst we were all in the same hotel.
+
+For instance, there had been a very brilliant ball given at the hotel,
+and the royalties had looked on for several hours, and included me in
+their circle. This man had been specially detailed to wait upon the
+circle, all the evening.
+
+This conversation produced a great effect upon the manager, who
+volunteered to make matters as easy as he could for me, till the Embassy
+moved. The officials would sit by the door, and not at my table during
+meals, and they would be accommodated with chairs in the corridor by the
+top of the staircase, instead of outside my bedroom door. He regretted
+that they would closely follow me whenever I went out, but doubtless I
+would communicate with my husband at once, and the mistake would soon be
+corrected.
+
+After I had had some tea, I began to feel quite light-hearted, and I
+unpacked and wrote to my husband in Bavaria.
+
+That night when I went to bed I locked my door securely, and composed
+myself to sleep after a tiring and disturbing day. I had been in a
+railway "sleeper" all the night before, and though I sleep like a top in
+a train, I am always unusually sleepy on the following night in bed.
+
+It was summer-time, and very hot weather, and my blinds were drawn up
+and the window thrown wide open. No houses faced me; I looked out on a
+big public garden.
+
+I was soon fast asleep, but was awakened again by some noise in the
+room. I lay still for a little, listening intently, all the unpleasant
+incidents of the past day rushing back upon me. The noise was not
+continuous, but now and again came the sound of something soft, dragging
+about the floor. The room was fairly light, with the glow of a waning
+moon, and I judged the hour to be between two and three o'clock.
+
+At last I determined to ascertain what produced this curious sound. I
+had an electric light over my bed, and I sat up and suddenly switched it
+on.
+
+Then I realized with horror that I was in the presence of something I
+had never encountered before, but had often read and heard of. An
+elemental of a malignant type, and of grotesque form.
+
+Just for an instant I saw nothing but what looked like an enormous
+pillow, but suddenly out of this grayish-green pillow emerged a head of
+frog-like shape, and two bright yellow eyes were fixed on mine. I
+suppose I was too terrified even to remember what my sensations were. A
+sort of paralysis of fear and horror held me spellbound. There it
+squatted, thrusting out its misshapen head, its yellow eyes regarding me
+fixedly. I have no idea how long it remained there, or how long we
+continued to gaze at one another, but I gradually became aware that it
+was receding from view. It grew smaller and smaller, and dimmer and
+more indistinct, till at length it vanished altogether.
+
+Elliott O'Donnell mentions in one of his books having seen such
+creatures, and of having had a number of such cases reported to him, but
+generally as the forerunners of illness. To such phantasms he has given
+the name of "Morbas," and he believes that certain apparitions are
+symbolical of certain diseases "if not the actual creators of the
+bacilli from which these diseases arise." This seems to me to be a
+reasonable explanation of such phenomena, but in my case there was no
+disease in question. I was perfectly well at the time, and remained so.
+It is possible, however, that a sick person might have occupied my room
+the night before. One never knows in hotels, and I had not then read
+O'Donnell's explanation and made no inquiries. Many of the experiences
+related in his deeply interesting books are no doubt regarded as
+fiction, but I know that they are cases common to very many psychics.
+
+For some time I lay awake, fearful of a recurrence of the horrible
+phenomenon, but gradually sleep overcame me, and I did not wake again
+till seven o'clock on a lovely summer morning.
+
+That day I took two long walks, closely followed by my escort. They
+walked immediately behind me, and often we stopped to converse, or to
+sit down to rest and smoke a cigarette together. They told me all their
+family history, and about their wives and children, and really they made
+themselves as agreeable as they possibly could. In the afternoon we
+climbed up the mountains to one of the many cafés, and had chocolate and
+cakes, which they thoroughly enjoyed. When I finally went back to the
+hotel for the night they complained of being tired, and hoped I would
+not walk so far on the morrow. Their idea of enjoyment was the usual
+foreign custom of taking a seat outside a street café, and sitting there
+hour after hour idly watching the passers-by, smoking endless cigarettes
+and drinking beer.
+
+That night I prepared myself for a recurrence of the abnormal phenomenon
+I had witnessed, and gathered up all my courage, and decided to attack
+it with the Sacred command. For a long time I lay awake, but nothing
+happened, and finally I fell asleep.
+
+I awoke to pandemonium. My room was in a hub-bub of high-pitched noise.
+Screams of glee and frolic, shouts of thin laughter, and pattering feet
+with little thuds interspersed. The sounds were all pitched in an
+unknown key. They can best be described as ordinary sounds intensely
+rarefied, and pitched in so high a treble that they had run out of the
+scale altogether.
+
+It was a much darker night, and very hot. Thunder clouds hung over the
+town, and now and again there was a gleam of lightning and a mutter of
+distant thunder. I peeped over the edge of the bed, but could see
+nothing. The noises continued with unabated merriment. A hundred
+creatures of sorts apparently were playing round me.
+
+Summoning all my courage I sat up and switched on the light. What I saw
+must read like pure nonsense to the majority, but nevertheless I mean to
+record facts as they happened to me.
+
+About a dozen small forms, half-man, half-animal, were playing leap-frog
+round the room. They were about three feet in height, some slightly
+smaller, and though their bodies, legs and feet were human, their heads
+resembled apes.
+
+I forgot all about being afraid, they were so amazingly grotesque, and
+they were so thoroughly happy. One would go down on all fours, and the
+creatures immediately behind him would leap his back, and so on down the
+chain, and all the while they kept up that shrill, high-pitched note of
+intense enjoyment.
+
+I have come to the conclusion that it was the light that finally put an
+end to their revels. They took no heed of me, but gradually their
+energies flagged, they faded and became blurred in outline; one by one
+they simply went out like sparks until not one was left.
+
+Though I occupied that room for a month I was never disturbed again.
+Perfect quiet reigned for the rest of my stay.
+
+At the end of five days a police official came to call upon me, and
+informed me that my identity had been perfectly established by the
+British Embassy at Vienna, and that my escort was now withdrawn. He also
+begged to return my typewriter, rendered utterly useless I discovered,
+to my great dismay, and the dispatch box arrived intact the next
+morning.
+
+I have no explanation to offer of the phenomena I have described. They
+belong to the many unsolved mysteries that constantly surround us. It
+will be said that my mind was in an excited and abnormal condition owing
+to my adventures in the Customs House, and that I probably imagined the
+scene instead of really seeing the creatures I have described.
+
+I agree that probably my mental faculties, for the time being, were
+possibly abnormal, but I hold that when the consciousness is in an
+abnormal condition it is naturally much easier to see the abnormal. At
+ordinary times the veil of the flesh seems denser, and the consciousness
+much less acute.
+
+The question seems to me to hang more on the query--do such creatures
+actually exist, than on the argument did I, or did I not see them? There
+are creatures living in the physical world quite as horrible to look
+upon as the astral entities I saw. The octopus and some apes, for
+instance. Innumerable people of unimpeachable veracity have testified to
+seeing grotesque and hideous creatures, which can only be placed in the
+category of astral denizens, and in that category I place the phenomena
+I certainly witnessed on two successive nights.
+
+The following story has been given to me by a barrister who kindly
+allows me to give his name:
+
+    E. F. WILLIAMS, B.A.
+    Trinity College, Cambridge.
+
+"It is clear that Needle Jim was murdered by the proprietor, Corbett of
+the Tally Ho, and that his wraith haunted the spot. Horses appear to be
+as sensitive as dogs are to apparitions, and there are several instances
+on record where horses have been the means of bringing murder to light.
+
+"It is a difficult matter, indeed, to be asked to write a ghost story if
+you do not believe in ghosts; however, I will endeavor to relate the
+nearest approach to one which has come within my knowledge.
+
+"The winter of the year 1849 was an exceptionally severe one, very heavy
+falls of snow and deep drifts in many places, especially in the
+neighborhood of Worcester, near which the scene of my story lies.
+
+"It was, in those days, the custom of packmen as they were called, to
+travel around the country with various assortments of goods--calling at
+the various farmhouses and cottages offering their wares for sale; some
+would have cutlery, some laces and ribbons, but the packman with whom we
+are concerned carried pins, needles, and such like, hailing from
+Redditch, where they are manufactured. He used to go his round four
+times a year, and was known by the name of Needle Jim.
+
+"About the beginning of January, in spite of the snow, Jim left
+Worcester for Upper Onslow, Clayton and Broadway, with a view of going
+to Cleobury Mortimer, Wyn Forest, and back to Redditch. Apparently he
+was seen at Onslow and Clayton, but after that, there was no further
+trace of him.
+
+"Now at the village of Broadway, there is a little cider house called
+the Tally Ho, and a few cottages. The road is narrow, with three very
+sharp corners, protected only from a very steep dingle by an ill-kept,
+low, out-of-repair hedge--very dangerous on a dark night. The old
+proprietor of the inn, named Corbett, lived there with his old wife, and
+was in the poorest of circumstances, the customers at the inn not being
+very numerous. Nothing more was heard of Needle Jim.
+
+"Now opposite the Tally Ho, on the far bank of the dingle, was a piece
+of ground facing the south, and old Corbett thought it would make an
+excellent cherry orchard. So the hitherto impecunious Corbett bought a
+portion, and when he had bought it he fenced it round, and from the
+opposite side it looked exactly the shape of a coffin, and the coffin
+piece it is called to this day.
+
+"At the time of which I am writing, if was permissible after a man had
+been hung, for his relatives to take the body away home for burial. One
+day, two men arrived at the Tally Ho, with such a body fastened across
+the back of a horse; tying up the horse they went into the inn for some
+refreshment, shortly to be called out by a woman who said the horse,
+burden and all, had jumped over the hedge into the dingle and was lying
+at the bottom. They hurried down and there found the horse with his neck
+broken and his ghastly burden under him. It was a curious fact that
+after the disappearance of Needle Jim, horses approaching this corner
+broke into heavy sweats and showed great signs of fear, and a number of
+people preferred to travel by the longer route, _via_ the Hundred Horse.
+
+"Some years ago some alterations were being made to the front of an old
+hotel in a little country town about five miles from the scenes depicted
+above, and on raising the large flagstone of the bottom step, there was
+discovered the skeleton of a man with his skull smashed. The old folks
+declared it must be the body of the missing packman; anyhow, after the
+discovery, the spirit or ghost seems to have departed from the precincts
+of the Tally Ho.
+
+"Now I am not a believer in ghosts or their allies, but when I was a
+small boy I went on my pony accompanied by two servants, who were taking
+a parcel to a house next door to the Tally Ho, and whilst they were
+inside the house, all at once the pony snorted and started full gallop
+for home as hard as he could go; we parted company going down a steep
+hill, and I have often thought it was a good thing for me we did, for if
+he had bolted into his stable (which he did do) I should probably have
+had my head smashed, as the doorway was very low.
+
+"Still, I do not believe in ghosts, I think it is more convenient not
+to!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+ACROSS THE THRESHOLD
+
+
+Once upon a time I had an interesting experience showing how often one
+may be in the presence of the disembodied without being in the least
+aware of the fact.
+
+It was a bright, cold day in October, with a biting wind and brilliant
+sunshine. About midday I was walking up a long avenue leading to a great
+house. On either side of me, for a mile or so, lay flat, open grass
+country, pasturages full of grazing cattle. The trees bordering the
+avenue stood at about thirty feet apart; they were gigantic beeches of
+considerable age. Their silvery trunks of wide girth were smooth and
+straight, and in no way impeded the view on all sides. The avenue was
+wide and straight and bordered by grass out of which the trees sprang.
+
+As I turned in at the lodge gate I noticed, without any particular
+interest, a woman walking in front of me, but in a very few moments I
+began to pay more attention to her obvious peculiarities. She was about
+twenty-five to thirty feet ahead of me, moving in the same direction,
+and the view I had of her back began to puzzle me. On that decidedly
+chilly morning she wore a white muslin dress, a material never used out
+of doors even in summer in that northern clime. Over her shoulders
+floated something mauve and flimsy, and on her head was what looked like
+an old-fashioned poke-bonnet.
+
+Her back looked young, and yet she was a creature of a bygone century,
+and knowing every one within a twenty-mile radius of where I walked I
+speculated as to who she could possibly be.
+
+Perhaps what puzzled me most was how she had managed to avoid the
+attention of the village children, who would at once have been alive to
+the novelty of her whole appearance. I looked forward to hearing all
+about her at the big house, and as seemed highly probable, meeting her
+face to face and obtaining an introduction to her.
+
+Then it suddenly occurred to me to overtake her and pass her; we were
+both walking very slowly. I at once quickened my steps, but somehow I
+never seemed to gain on her. Even this did not rouse in me the faintest
+suspicion of being in the presence of a disembodied soul, it merely
+sharpened my curiosity and urged me to greater efforts.
+
+I moved from the road to the grass which I calculated would deaden the
+sound of my footsteps, then I began to run.
+
+Still no success! The lady never turned her head to right or left, but
+was clearly aware of my pursuit, for apparently without the least effort
+she kept her distance from me.
+
+At the moment when I was feeling rather baffled and very much puzzled I
+caught sight of my friend, N., in the distance coming to meet me. "Ah!"
+I thought, as I at once slowed down to draw breath, "she will have to
+pass her and she'll tell me what her face is like."
+
+I kept eyes and attention closely fixed on the two figures as they drew
+nearer and nearer to one another. Now the stranger appeared to be
+exactly at an equal distance between us, when, lo! she simply vanished
+as utterly and entirely as the electric light one switches off in a
+room. One second there she was, perfectly and clearly visible, the next
+second, there she was not. I looked foolishly around, though I knew that
+neither to right or left was there any hiding-place, moreover my eyes
+had been fully upon her when she vanished, flicked out--
+
+How well I remember N. running up to me and without any greeting, we
+both simultaneously burst out--
+
+"Did you see her?"
+
+N. told me that the inside of the poke-bonnet was empty. The lady had no
+face.
+
+Of course we gazed around and searched behind the boles of the trees,
+but we were both aware how foolish any such proceeding was, for we had
+both been staring hard at her when she disappeared.
+
+There was a bygone tragedy connected with that part of the avenue, but
+on discussing the matter with the owner of the great house we all had to
+come reluctantly to the conclusion that the woman we had seen had no
+connection with that story. A former Lady Dalrymple had been murdered by
+one of her servants in the avenue about a hundred years previously, but
+the portraits of the deceased and the lady we had seen bore not the
+smallest resemblance. It was said that "Lady Dalrymple walked"--a tall,
+massive figure clad in a dark, heavy cloak sprinkled with snow. She had
+been done to death one January night in a snowstorm which had hidden her
+remains for several days.
+
+The apparition we had seen was that of a very slender girl or young
+woman. The interesting fact that I wish to emphasize is that had this
+young drama in muslin turned aside, slipped through the light fence,
+and struck off across the fields it would never have occurred to either
+N. or me that she was not physical. We would have speculated as to who
+she was, but out of common civility we would not have followed her. We
+would have made casual inquiries as to who she was, simply out of
+curiosity aroused by her peculiar attire, and then the trifling incident
+would have been forgotten.
+
+That sudden vanishing has rooted the experience firmly in my mind, and I
+have long since become convinced that the little story I have just told
+is an extremely common one. I believe such disembodied spirits are
+constantly with us, and that many of us see them, pass them in the
+streets, stand beside them in crowds, and accept them perfectly
+naturally as physical entities in no way different from what we are
+ourselves.
+
+Many people believe that our faculties have a limit beyond which we
+cannot go, but this is certainly not so, as it is now proved that some
+people have the X-ray sight by nature and can see far more than others.
+This faculty has nothing to do with keenness of sight, it is a question
+of sight which is able to respond to different series of vibrations.
+Undoubtedly there are many entities about us who do not reflect rays of
+light that we can see, yet who may reflect those other rays of rates of
+vibration which can be photographed.
+
+It is extremely difficult for the average person to grasp the reality of
+that which we cannot see with our physical eyes, and to realize how very
+partial our sight is, yet science continually demonstrates to us worlds
+of teeming life of whose very existence we should be ignorant so far as
+our senses are concerned.
+
+What ought clearly to be grasped is the fact that we are not separated
+from the so-called dead, save by the limitation of our consciences. We
+have not lost those gone before, we have only lost the power to see
+them, and very occasionally that power is restored to us, by what means
+we know not. All visible things are the result of invisible causes, and
+doubtless those denizens of the subtler worlds come amongst us with a
+distinct purpose in view. Sometimes that purpose can be traced to
+remorse, revenge, a quest, a strong attraction to the scene of a crime,
+but in many other cases no object can be discerned.
+
+The condition of the observer is constantly found to be absolutely
+normal. The mental conditions of both myself and N. were, as far as we
+could tell, quite normal. Our mental activity was no greater, no more
+vivid or more accurate than usual, yet we both saw an object that was
+beyond normal sense and rational vision.
+
+The fact that so often there is no connecting link between the
+apparition and his or her surroundings induces me to believe that we are
+everywhere surrounded by the denizens of the other world, and on rare
+occasions we catch a glimpse of them.
+
+Here is another utterly trivial story which emphasizes the above
+suggestion.
+
+I was lunching with my husband in a house built within the last fifty
+years. The only former occupants were known to us. We were discussing a
+letter I had that morning received and I said: "I'll go and fetch it for
+you to read." I rose and left the dining-room, and pushed open the
+half-closed door of the adjoining drawing-room.
+
+What was my astonishment to behold standing in the middle of the floor
+a tall, dark man, a total stranger. He stood exactly between the door
+and a large bow window, through which poured a flood of sunshine, and I
+paused involuntarily and stared at him. Not that there was anything the
+least peculiar about him, and, indeed, his air of great respectability
+instantly banished the flashing thought of "Burglar."
+
+The stranger returned my stare with perfect composure, and in a second
+or two during which we regarded each other I had time to observe his
+appearance. He was well dressed, all in black, with a modern, black
+broadcloth frockcoat buttoned close. He was very tall and strongly
+built, his face was sallow and heavy featured, and he wore a short,
+black beard. I bowed and addressed him:
+
+"I'm sorry! I didn't know any one was waiting. Do you wish to see me or
+my husband?" I said politely.
+
+The man made no reply, but at once began to glide, not walk, towards a
+closed glass door leading to a conservatory on the left. His eyes never
+left mine. Without opening the door he passed through it and vanished.
+
+Then I realized and darted after him, throwing open the door and staring
+beyond. Nothing! Nothing physical could have passed through a glass door
+without shattering it, and that is all there is to this story. The man
+had no connection with us nor, so far as we could learn, with the former
+occupants of the house.
+
+A very old friend of mine, Mrs. Sinclair, wife of the late Sir
+Tollemache Sinclair's second son, told me of an experience she and her
+mother once had when visiting a cousin, Major Fetherston Dilke, of
+Maxstoke Castle, Warwickshire. The Castle is ancient and surrounded by
+a moat, and within the moat lies a tennis court. In order to reach their
+rooms on the ground floor, Mrs. Sinclair and her mother had to pass
+through a great stone hall filled with fine old oak and armor. Beyond
+that their way lay through the remains of an old chapel, which once had
+been extensively damaged by fire.
+
+One evening after playing tennis till rather late, Mrs. Sinclair and her
+mother hastened indoors to change for dinner. As they passed through the
+chapel Mrs. Sinclair saw her mother suddenly shrink back against the
+wall; at the same time she exclaimed, "Oh, May, stand aside and let that
+person pass."
+
+Mrs. Sinclair looked round, but could see no one. Again her mother cried
+out insistently:
+
+"Oh, do let her pass."
+
+"But no one is here," Mrs. Sinclair assured her. Then seeing that her
+mother looked terrified she took her by the arm and hurried her to their
+rooms.
+
+When the door was shut Mrs. Sinclair tried to soothe her mother's
+agitation, and asked her what she had seen, and why she was so
+disturbed.
+
+Her mother replied: "There was a young woman in the corner who was
+trying hard to escape observation, and the sight of her gave me the most
+uncomfortable feeling. She was not a maidservant, and wore no cap. She
+was dressed in a mauve print gown with a violet sprig upon it. She might
+have been a needle-woman." Mrs. Sinclair calmed her mother as well as
+she could, and they went down to dinner together.
+
+During the meal what was her horror to hear her mother say to their
+host, "Oh, William, I feel sure there are ghosts in the Castle. I've
+seen one to-night."
+
+There was a most uncomfortable silence after this, and Major Fetherston
+Dilke looked terribly agitated.
+
+After dinner, when the ladies were alone in the drawing-room, Mrs. Dilke
+asked Mrs. Sinclair what they had seen, and on being told she explained
+that before a death in the family a certain housekeeper, who had been
+murdered, always haunted the chapel, and in consequence of this warning
+always coming true her husband was exceedingly nervous of this
+apparition. Nothing more was said upon the subject during Mrs.
+Sinclair's stay, but before the end of the year Major Fetherston Dilke
+lay dead.
+
+Such warnings are very common, and very hard to understand. They suggest
+that the apparition knows of the approaching death of a certain person,
+and that it has the power to make itself visible to certain persons, at
+certain times. Why this warning should be given is a baffling mystery.
+Again, why did not Mrs. Sinclair see this ghost when her mother so
+plainly saw it?
+
+The fact is that all sorts of most unlikely persons see apparitions,
+even the rankest unbeliever and the most matter-of-fact individual, and
+they generally see them at most unexpected moments.
+
+I remember one day walking along a country road, and seeing a dog-cart
+in the distance coming towards me. As it drew nearer I saw that it
+contained (the late) Lord Wemyss, and on recognizing me he drew up and
+jumped down.
+
+"I've got a confession to make to you," he said. "I wouldn't tell any
+one else for the world. I'd have the life chaffed out of me. I've
+actually seen a ghost."
+
+"I'm not in the least surprised. Why shouldn't you see a ghost?" I
+retorted.
+
+"Well! I never believed in them, and I didn't think I was the sort of
+man who'd ever see one. Now, if it had been Arthur Balfour there would
+have been nothing in it. He's a member of the Psychical Society, and all
+that sort of thing."
+
+"But being a member of the Psychical Society does not predispose one to
+see ghosts," I expostulated, but Lord Wemyss remained very puzzled.
+
+He told me that when about half a mile from his own front door at
+Gosford, East Lothian, he saw a man walking in front of him in the same
+direction, going towards the house. In a vague sort of way he wondered
+for a moment where this man had suddenly sprung from, as he had not
+noticed him before, but there was nothing unusual in his appearance to
+arouse curiosity. He was a stranger and looked like a foreman in his
+Sunday clothes.
+
+Lord Wemyss walked on, always keeping about ten yards between himself
+and the stranger. At a certain point he fully expected he would strike
+off by a path leading to the servants' and tradesmen's entrance, but
+rather to his surprise, the man did no such thing. He pursued an
+undeviating course towards the main entrance, and on observing this Lord
+Wemyss became more interested, and looked at him more closely.
+
+Still there was something remarkable to be observed, and concluding that
+the man, being a stranger, did not know of any other entrance, he
+quickened his steps in order to come up with him. In this he failed--the
+man kept his distance, and just as he reached the door he vanished from
+sight.
+
+I tried hard to persuade Lord Wemyss to tell this story to Mr. Balfour,
+who was so intimate a friend, but I believe he never did so. The
+interest lies in the long time, during a half-mile walk, in which the
+ghost was under observation, also in the fact that until the man
+disappeared on the doorstep Lord Wemyss had never suspected that the
+stranger was other than ordinary flesh and blood.
+
+So many people have confided their ghost stories to me, and swore me to
+secrecy, that I am convinced such experiences are very common, and only
+remain hidden either from fear of being laughed at or from being thought
+to suffer from hallucinations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+HAUNTED ROOMS
+
+
+How is it that one can "feel" a room is haunted? What is it that gives
+one the strong impression that there is something unpleasant about a
+certain room, a something that sets it apart, as a place to be avoided?
+
+The mind operates with the senses. It receives impressions through the
+air as sound, or through the ether as sight, and so forth. Through the
+various senses we catch the vibrations of consciousness belonging to our
+environment, near or far. Psychically developed persons possess an
+increase of sensibility which enables them to see, hear, and feel more
+acutely than most people. Wherever some great mental disturbance has
+taken place, wherever overwhelming sorrow, hatred, pain, terror, or any
+kind of violent passion has been felt, an impression of a very marked
+character has been imprinted on the astral light. So strong is this
+impression that often persons possessing but the first glimmer of the
+psychic faculty are deeply impressed by it. But a slight temporary
+increase of sensibility would enable them to visualize the whole scene.
+That such impressions should be imprinted on the astral light is no more
+wonderful than ordinary photography, or the impression of the human
+voice upon the cylinders of a gramophone.
+
+To me, a haunted room is always full of shadows. That is how I see it.
+That is one of several ways by which I distinguish it from other rooms.
+Other people do not always see these shadows, and the room may actually
+be flooded with sunshine when I enter it for the first time. This makes
+no difference to what I see. The shadows are there, despite the
+sunshine.
+
+There are long-drawn-out shadows, which seem to take their rise in the
+corners of the room, and creep across the floor. They are not
+motionless, but in constant vibration and re-formation, like smoke
+drifts. Such shadows are not of a uniform gray, but tinged by dull
+colors, dark red, sulphur yellow, muddy brown. In a haunted room there
+is always a shadow above one's head. A hovering cloud between the
+ceiling and midway to the floor.
+
+Then there are the sensations I feel when entering a haunted room.
+Little shivers run through me, and what I take to be nervous excitation
+sets all my spine jangling, and the tiny nerve threads quivering. The
+sensation of icy cold water trickling down my back is most unpleasant.
+
+At times a profound melancholy falls upon me, often blended with a
+poignant compassion for some one, I know not whom. At other times a
+sensation of violent repulsion invades my being, which has actually, in
+some cases, produced physical sickness. Again, there is the helpless
+feeling, and that is the hardest to bear of all such psychic
+disturbances. The feeling that something is about to occur in that room
+which I will be powerless to ward off.
+
+What can one do when paying a visit if one is ushered into a bedroom by
+one's hostess which one instantly knows to be "unhealthful"? I cannot
+find a better word to describe many a haunted room. This experience has
+several times happened to me, and unless I know my hostess very well, I
+am obliged to sleep in this unhealthful atmosphere.
+
+On one occasion I was invited to dine and sleep with some old friends,
+who had taken on lease an old castle in the neighborhood of St. Andrews,
+where I happened to be staying. They had only been in residence for a
+month or two, an old brother and an old sister, whom I had known all my
+life.
+
+In spite of this long friendship they were not the sort of people to
+whom I could have said, "Would you mind giving me another room? The one
+you have selected for me is haunted, and if I remain in it I will have
+no sleep. I shall not even dare to try to sleep, but shall have to keep
+awake all night to ward off the evil." They would have been both shocked
+and indignant at such a suggestion, and probably have concluded that I
+had gone stark staring mad.
+
+I had accepted a seat in a carriage belonging to some friends in St.
+Andrews, who were also going to the castle to dine, but who were
+returning to sleep in their own homes in the town.
+
+It was twilight when we drove up the long avenue, and caught a first
+glimpse of the exterior. A typical old Scotch castle, very large, with
+high-peaked roofs and pepper-box turrets, and all built of gray stone.
+
+About an hour before dinner I was conducted to my room. My evening dress
+was already spread upon the bed, and the housemaid was arranging my
+toilet articles on the dressing-table.
+
+"I think you will be comfortable here, my dear," said my kind hostess,
+and I thanked her with a sinking heart as she went away.
+
+As the housemaid prepared to follow her I said, "Am I the only person
+sleeping on this floor?"
+
+She answered, "You are the only one in this wing, miss."
+
+"It is a very large house, I suppose?"
+
+"Twenty-six bedrooms," answered the housemaid, "but we've shut up most
+of them. This one has such a good view that Miss Young thought it ought
+to be used." With that she went away, and I looked round.
+
+Six lighted candles and a big wood fire seemed only to accentuate the
+profound gloom and depression of the large, irregular room. The very
+first thing I did was to throw a towel over the face of the mirror on
+the dressing-table. Then I investigated every nook and corner.
+
+There was a powdering closet formed in a pepper-box turret. The carpet
+of the room stopped short at its door, and inside the boards looked
+loose and uneven. I fetched a candle and soon discovered that the
+floorboards lifted up quite easily, and beneath them was a black yawning
+hole, an _oubliette_, through which wretched prisoners were cast in days
+not so long ago.
+
+I replaced the boards, telling myself that in the morning I would have a
+look at the outside of this black shaft. It probably ended, as most of
+such places did end in the old Scotch castles, in a big dungeon
+underground.
+
+Inside my big room there were sloping ceilings, and great beams, and an
+enormous fireplace had been bricked up to suit more modern requirements.
+There were two doors, the one I had entered by and another which was
+locked and keyless. The window, with the view, was hidden by heavy red
+curtains, and the atmosphere was musty and dank, like that of a vault.
+
+As I stared around me I could not help thinking what an unfortunate
+thing it is to be born without any imagination. Any one possessed of a
+spark of that quality would have hesitated before putting a young guest
+into so gloomy a chamber, the only room occupied in that wing.
+
+"No sleep possible here," I told myself grimly, as I began to dress.
+Then I set myself to "feel after" what was really wrong with the room.
+Supposing I did fall asleep, what would happen? Would some one come and
+try to strangle me in the night? That had actually happened to many
+people. Would I suddenly awake to the fact that some one unseen was
+pulling off the bedclothes? That was also a trick common to ghostly
+visitants.
+
+Gradually I gathered impressions, very unpleasant ones. I became
+positively certain that I was being watched intently. Some one, present
+in the room, though unseen by me, was watching my every movement. That
+some one violently resented my occupation of the room, was intensely
+hostile, and meant to make things nasty for me later on that night.
+Wherever I moved I felt that malignant eyes followed me, and I kept
+glancing over my shoulder at every crack of the furniture, and the
+scratching of a mouse in the wainscot. It was in the stretches of dead
+silence that the presence became most imminent, most menacing, and I had
+a strong instinct to set my back against the wall and face right out
+into the room.
+
+Again I was confronted by the mirror problem. I had become certain that
+it must remain covered. If I looked into its surface I knew I would see
+something horrible. Something kept whispering to me, "Never mind how you
+look, never mind if your bodice is all awry, or your skirt all askew, or
+your hair all bulging out on one side. Don't uncover the mirror if you
+value your sanity. What there is to be seen can only become visible in
+the mirror. Don't worry after explanations, or why this should or how it
+could be. Do as I tell you. Keep the mirror covered and when you come up
+to bed keep your back to the wall."
+
+Dressing was a very rapid process that night, and when completed, so far
+as circumstances would allow, I found I still had twenty minutes to wait
+until the dinner gong would ring. I sat down with my back against the
+wall, and surveyed the depressing apartment with a gloomy anticipation.
+Where was that stealthy watcher, whose baleful eyes I felt were fixed
+upon me? I could see nothing. I could only feel acutely that I was not
+alone, and that I was "in for" an awful night.
+
+Oh! to get away, and leave that malignant unseen watcher in undisputed
+possession of his dismal abode! I was quite certain of the gender! Then
+a chance of deliverance flashed over me. I could return after dinner to
+St. Andrews with the friends who had brought me. But I had accepted the
+invitation to stay the night. What possible excuse could I make for
+cutting short my visit? In this case the truth was no use; in fact,
+worse than useless. Not only would my host and hostess utterly fail to
+understand what I was talking about, but they would be exceedingly
+indignant, and look upon me as absolutely insane.
+
+As falsehood had to be resorted to, I surely could invent some plausible
+excuse that would hurt no one's feelings, but the only excuse I could
+think of was illness. I must tell my hostess that I feared I was "in
+for" an illness of some sort, and the wisest thing to do was to drive
+back to St. Andrews and be laid up in my own bed. The most hospitable
+person would rather not have a sick guest under her roof. The excuse I
+proposed to make seemed to me to be the one most likely to be accepted
+without much fuss.
+
+I did not determine upon this plan without a certain amount of wavering.
+"After all," I told myself, "it is only for one night, and what can this
+entity do but give you a very creepy and disturbed night. You will have
+to sit up against the wall, and defend yourself by the power of the
+Cross, bidding it begone, in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the
+Holy Ghost. This you may have to do many times, but the night won't last
+forever, and you had best try to make the best of things, and not risk
+offending old friends."
+
+It did seem hard that I dared not tell the truth. Had the entity been in
+the flesh how easy it would have been. Who has not, at some time or
+another in her life, found herself unwittingly to be an unwelcome guest,
+and made to feel "if you don't go away at once you will regret it"?
+Sometimes one comes across persons who for some private reason dread
+being overlooked, or who love their hermitage so dearly that they refuse
+to be amiable, to even the most swiftly passing guest. Old people are
+often like that, every one knows, or has known, of such people in the
+flesh. Yet how few believe that such unpleasant traits persist just as
+strongly after so-called death, as before. What should suddenly change a
+man's whole disposition the moment he "shuffles off this mortal coil"?
+
+I felt I was now in the presence of one who dreaded being overlooked,
+and who sought to get rid of me by every device in his power.
+
+Whilst thinking thus my mind was irrevocably made up for me.
+
+My attention was suddenly drawn towards a soft stealthy noise. Padded
+footsteps. Something had come near, and was creeping warily round in
+front of me. I felt the eyes upon me. I was being regarded more closely.
+What was about to follow?
+
+I leapt to my feet, and raising my arm made the sign of the Cross. "I
+bid you begone, in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."
+
+There was a moment's pause of utter silence. The atmosphere struck
+suddenly chill as ice. A curious sensation of emptiness crept over the
+room. I was alone, but for how long would I remain alone?
+
+I hurried downstairs and tried to play my part, and during the course of
+the evening I told my falsehoods as naturally as I could. At half-past
+ten I drove off to St. Andrews with a light heart, and an utter
+indifference to the consequences.
+
+I believe that my falsehoods did not, however, "go down," for I never
+was asked again to that house.
+
+Perhaps it was as well, for I certainly never would have set foot in it
+again, and I had sacrificed the truth quite sufficiently upon this one
+occasion.
+
+I had no difficulty in finding out what sort of reputation the castle
+bore. Every one agreed that it was haunted. I asked one elderly woman
+who had lived all her life in St. Andrews, and who knew the whole
+country intimately, what she thought of S. Castle.
+
+"Horrible, haunted old place. I can't think how the Youngs could have
+taken it," she replied.
+
+"But what sort of ghosts haunt it?" I asked.
+
+"Old Sir James and his son. They were in league with the Devil, and the
+son, another James, used to murder people and throw them down into the
+dungeon. He was beheaded in the reign of Charles the First."
+
+"Have you known any one who has ever seen anything?" I persisted.
+
+"No, but my father remembered as a young man seeing a pile of human
+bones being removed from the dungeon, and buried in the churchyard. The
+late people lived to be very old, and always kept Sir James' wing shut
+up. Now the place has changed hands, and probably the Youngs will never
+be disturbed. They are installed in the most modern part of the house,
+and won't need to use the haunted wing."
+
+It must not be supposed that all haunted houses or rooms are unpleasant
+to live in. People in the flesh are either pleasant or unpleasant,
+disturbing or tranquil to live with, and so it is with their astral
+counterparts. When they elect to haunt the scenes of their old
+activities some ghosts are so inoffensive that they can be lived with
+under the most tranquil conditions.
+
+One autumn we took a shooting lodge in the far North of Scotland, and
+though I recognized at once that it was frequented by an entity from the
+"other side," I experienced no uneasy feelings whatever.
+
+We had not been in residence longer than three hours before this ghost
+put in an appearance.
+
+We were in a lively confusion of unpacking and settling down. Several
+large trunks had been carried upstairs, and set down on a wide corridor
+on to which the bedrooms opened.
+
+I was on my knees unpacking one of those trunks, our dog "Pompey" was
+seated beside me superintending matters, and my maid was standing at my
+side waiting to carry various articles into the different rooms. The
+hour was midday, and the early autumn sunshine flooded the house.
+
+Suddenly "Pompey" growled, and turned towards the staircase, with all
+his hair bristling. I also looked round and saw a tall, quite ordinary
+man mounting the staircase.
+
+I thought nothing of this, supposing him to be the factor whom we
+expected, and I rose to my feet at once. He came on along the corridor
+straight towards us, and looking directly at us, but when within about
+ten feet from where we stood he suddenly vanished.
+
+I heard my maid give a sharp exclamation, and at the same instant
+"Pompey" made a furious dash at the spot, and growling angrily began to
+pursue something invisible to us, down the stairs.
+
+I followed as quickly as I could. I feared "Pompey" would be lost if he
+ran out into the deer forest surrounding us on all sides. I caught him
+at the deer fence, edging the vegetable garden, and induced him with
+some difficulty to return to the house.
+
+My maid and I compared notes. What I had seen accorded exactly with what
+she had seen. She soon got over her uncomfortable experience, and though
+I never saw this entity again, I often felt him near me. He was,
+however, of so colorless a personality, that he never proved in the
+least disturbing to any one in the house.
+
+At the time of which I write the Astral Plane was not so generally
+recognized as an actual residential quarter as it is now. In these days
+a halfway house for the soul was not considered necessary for
+Protestants. They either went direct to heaven or hell, according to
+their manner of life on earth. The Catholics alone had their Purgatory,
+to which the departed souls repaired, there to slough off the passions
+of earth and fit themselves for higher realms.
+
+Purgatory and the Astral Plane mean the same thing now to the vast
+majority of thinkers. A halfway house for the soul. A condition of
+consciousness interpenetrating this earth, which may actually be visited
+under certain conditions by those still possessing a physical body, an
+abode so contiguous to this world as to make the words of the Poet
+literally true--
+
+"All houses wherein men have lived and died are haunted houses."
+
+In these days I used to get severely chaffed on the subject of the
+Astral Plane. Frivolous young things would say to me, "Hello! been on
+the Astral Plane lately?"
+
+One day I was undergoing a certain amount of good-natured chaff from a
+number of young people at Dunrobin Castle. I defended my beliefs
+vigorously, and at last the present Lady Londonderry, then Miss Chaplin,
+the Duke's niece, challenged me to pick out the haunted room in the
+Castle.
+
+I had never at that time been in any part of the building save in one
+bedroom, and the public rooms. I at once took up the challenge, and the
+Duke remarked that I had my work cut out for me, as several of the rooms
+had a reputation for being haunted.
+
+I replied that I would undertake to pick out a room where life was still
+actively carried on by those who had suffered something terrible on that
+spot in the past, and who were now denizens of the Astral Plane.
+
+A small crowd of us then started, led by Miss Chaplin, and we went from
+room to room. She opened the door and remained with the others on the
+threshold. I walked into each room alone and gathered impressions.
+
+In several of the rooms I felt the presence of astral entities, but
+nothing of a strong or unpleasant nature. At last we came to a room
+occupied by a maid, sitting alone, sewing, and I felt instantly that my
+quest was at an end.
+
+There was a sharp atmosphere of anguish that was quite unmistakable;
+some ghastly tragedy had taken place within those four walls, but I said
+nothing before the sewing woman. I felt drawn towards the window, the
+trouble was centered there. If I remember rightly, the room was high up,
+and overlooking, not the sea, but a paved courtyard.
+
+I walked back to the others with my finger on my lip, and Miss Chaplin
+closed the door behind me.
+
+"We need not go any further; that is the haunted room," I said, in a low
+voice that could not reach the woman inside.
+
+"You're right. You've found it," was the answer.
+
+I heard the story when we went downstairs, but I can only recollect that
+it had to do with a Lady Sutherland, who had been brutally flung out of
+the window.
+
+I will now relate a curious incident of haunting by elementals, and it
+will be seen that such hauntings may quite easily appear to the ordinary
+observer as an abnormal occurrence to which no clue can be given.
+
+What is an elemental? It is only when the mystic has advanced in her
+studies that she discovers how manifold evolution is, and how small a
+part humanity really fills in the economy of nature.
+
+When the microscope is used myriads of germs of life, unsuspected by us,
+are revealed; even so the invisible planes connected with this earth
+contain myriads of forms of life, of whose existence most of us are
+unconscious. When we read of a "good or bad elemental" it must always
+be either an artificial entity, or one of the many varieties of nature
+spirits that is meant. I will deal now with a case of the artificial
+variety.
+
+Such elementals are formed out of the elemental essence lying behind the
+mineral kingdom. It is the monadic essence, or material used in
+creation, or it may be called the outpouring of Divine force into
+matter. This elemental essence is marvelously sensitive to human
+thought, however fleeting. It responds instantly to the vibrations set
+up consciously or unconsciously by human will or desire. The influence
+of thought can mold a living force, good or evil, into an existence,
+evanescent or lasting. Such shapes possess a certain appropriateness to
+the character of the desire which calls them into existence, though they
+generally possess distortions, either unpleasant or terrifying.
+
+Persons who play with, or use for some malign purpose, Black Magic,
+generally have a swarm of such semi-intelligent entities surrounding
+them, and professional Black Magicians can call artificial elementals of
+great power into existence, and use them for their fell designs.
+
+As a rule, however, the enormous inchoate mass of entities, known as
+elementals, are beings of human thought creation, created in no
+malicious spirit, but more often the result of curiosity, and tampering
+with a very dangerous power, as yet little understood. The amateur
+magician on passing over to the other side by no means loses his taste
+for the grotesque and abnormal, and often continues to play pranks on
+those left behind, by means of the dangerous powers he has acquired
+whilst on earth.
+
+I was visiting some old friends in the South of England. Some years
+before they had succeeded to a fine inheritance, and it was the first
+time that I had stayed with them in that house. I did not experience any
+uncomfortable sensations in the bedroom appointed to me. It was early
+summer-time when there is but a short spell of darkness, and I was on
+such intimate terms with my hostess, herself a psychic, that I had only
+to say I disliked the atmosphere of my bedroom, to have it changed.
+
+The former mistress of the house had been a very remarkable woman whom I
+had known intimately. She was brilliantly clever and accomplished, and
+charming to talk to, but unfortunately she took a vivid interest in
+occultism of the wrong sort--in Black Magic. Anything to do with spells,
+witchcraft, elementals, incantations, attracted her enormously, and she
+had a very considerable knowledge of the subject. I have no doubt she
+could have worked a great deal of mischief had she been so inclined, but
+luckily her designs were more impish than malign.
+
+I often warned her that there was undoubted danger in such researches,
+and that she was certain to attract about her elementals of a most
+undesirable kind, but my warnings went unheeded, and to the time of her
+death her interest in the dark subject never flagged.
+
+She had not died in the house I had come to stay in, but it occurred to
+me as I dressed for dinner that I was in her old bedroom.
+
+This suggestion came to me suddenly, and to the accompaniment of a
+sound. A sound more felt than heard, a sound known to the spirit rather
+than to the ear; a tiptoe silence hovering on the brink of sound's
+threshold.
+
+My surroundings gave a very pleasant impression. A glorious sunset was
+flooding the west. My room was full of golden light, and the window was
+flung wide to the warm summer air. There was nothing to be recorded
+either ghostly or uncanny, yet something was present which made me
+uncomfortable. Strange thoughts, bizarre fancies, found lodgment in my
+mind, and I stood rigid, listening intently. The room was full of
+secrets. They seemed suddenly to creep forth and whisper together.
+
+There it was again! that soft echo of a sound which was like no other
+sound. An eerie, uncanny sensation crept down my spine, a strange,
+undefinable feeling of uncertainty, not yet amounting to fear. I moved
+towards the corner of the room, whence the sound proceeded, and as I
+approached, out of that corner dropped down a huge gray moth, a second
+dropped down after it, and both lay with outstretched wings on the white
+coverlet of the bed.
+
+Now I have always had a peculiar antipathy to moths, the big furry sort.
+I can handle a spider, and bear with a black beetle, but with big woolly
+moths I cannot live happily. I saw one once under a microscope, and it
+was covered with horrid looking parasites. I am aware that other
+creatures are similarly afflicted, but this microscopic vision
+accentuated my horror of all big moths. They seem to me repulsive,
+sinister, and uncanny creatures. The curious thing is that though I
+dislike them they adore me, and I always know that if there is one in my
+parish it will find me out.
+
+On this occasion I felt a very natural desire to laugh at myself. Of
+course, the creatures had at once discovered me, and this was all that
+had resulted from my uncomfortable sensations. A feeling of scorn swept
+over me. Two moths had rustled softly. Could anything be more banal,
+more commonplace? I flung a towel over them, and finished dressing. Then
+I rang for the housemaid.
+
+When she came I told her she must accomplish the destruction of the
+occupants of my bed. I could see no moths flying about outside, but
+nevertheless the window must be kept closed till I opened it again in
+the dark, before getting into bed.
+
+She told me that she was always particular to close the windows before
+bringing in a light, as the bats were a nuisance. I assured her that I
+had no objection to a room full of bats, but I could not sleep in a room
+full of moths. She promised to look about the room whilst it was still
+light, and destroy any she found. I closed the window myself and went
+down to dinner.
+
+We were but three women present; my hostess, myself, and a friend of
+ours, and we spent a delightful evening together talking of old times.
+
+That night, before beginning to undress, I blew out my candle, and
+throwing up the window I stood looking forth upon enchantment. It was
+still light, with a luster that filled all space, and it seemed wicked
+to shut out such beauty. Westward the stars were pale, but southward one
+great dull red star shone low down on the horizon. The owls were
+haunting the gardens with their banshee notes. It was a night for the
+revelation of the fairy folk, elves and pixies, fauns and dryads,
+elfins, nymphs and satyrs. A night when she tells her secrets to her
+lovers in the psalmody of nature, when the spirits of earth, fire, air,
+and water utter softly to human souls, if they will but incline the ear
+to hearken to the message.
+
+If I want a definition of God I shall go, not to the bell and the book,
+but to a starlit, fragrant garden, where I can look long and deep into
+the passion of Creation's eyes. I will be as the old gray poet who
+wrote--
+
+    "I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
+    I call the earth and sea, half hid by the night.
+    Press close magnetic, nourishing night,
+    Night of the South wind, night of the large, few stars."
+
+Across the hushed magic came silver sweet the strokes of eleven from the
+village church, and the spell was broken. I closed the window, lit my
+candles, and prepared for bed.
+
+Just before extinguishing my lights, and re-opening the window, I
+carried a candle to the side of the bed with a box of matches. What was
+my horror on discovering that the turned-down bed and both pillows were
+liberally strewn with enormous gray moths. The sight was extraordinary,
+I literally could not believe my eyes. I stood there staring, and
+mechanically counting them. Twenty--thirty. I turned back to the
+dressing-table with the candle still in my hand. What was I to do? If I
+had the courage to destroy them, what sort of condition would the bed be
+in after?
+
+I am writing of actual facts, and without the least exaggeration. The
+smallest of those moths must have been quite an inch long in their fat
+gray bodies, and quite three inches long across the wings. I thought I
+knew most moths by sight and name, but I had never seen any like these
+before. What depressed me most was the fact that moths are attracted by
+candle-light. I had been burning four candles for quite twenty minutes,
+and not a moth had forsaken the bed for the flame. I was positively
+certain that they had not flown in whilst I stood in the dark of the
+open window. They were far too big and numerous to have escaped
+observation. What was I to do? I could not use that bed, and I now felt
+a strong repulsion for the room. I regretted deeply that the household
+must all be in bed, because I knew that no description I could give
+would convey anything like actuality, and the truth was certain to
+appear wild exaggeration.
+
+I made up my mind at once. I knew there were several unoccupied rooms on
+either side of me, and taking my lighted candle I placed it, still lit,
+in a basin on the marble-topped washstand. It should remain lit all
+night, and in the morning I would come to search for victims. The other
+candles I extinguished, all but one to take with me, and leaving the
+window still shut I softly left the room. I entered the next bedroom and
+approached the bed. Of course, there were no sheets, but the white dust
+sheet covering the blankets was spotless--there was not a moth to be
+seen anywhere. Blowing out my candle I opened the window, and getting
+into bed between the blankets I was soon fast asleep.
+
+I awakened to glorious sunshine, and looked at my wrist watch, which I
+had placed beside my bed. Six o'clock and a lovely warm summer morning.
+
+I jumped out of bed, full of curiosity regarding my visitors of
+over-night, and returned to my own room. Not a trace of a moth to be
+seen anywhere. The candle had burnt itself out, no singed wings or
+blackened bodies lay near. The window was shut. I threw it wide, and
+then I went round the room shaking curtains, looking behind pictures,
+and climbing on a chair I examined the top of the wardrobe. Not the
+faintest signs of the great gray drove of the night before. Where could
+they all have vanished to?
+
+I gave it up, and got into my own bed, to await the advent of my early
+tea. I hated having to tell the housemaid that I had been driven into
+another room, but I knew she would find out the fact for herself. She
+was obviously incredulous, and assured me she had thoroughly searched
+the room, and seen but two winged creatures; those she had removed from
+the bed. I had seen for myself when coming to bed that the window had
+remained shut. She had often seen one or two brown moths in the rooms at
+night, but she owned that never before had she seen huge gray ones.
+
+The matter was left at that, and during the day I told my hostess of my
+adventure, and she at once ordered the room I had slept in to be
+prepared for me, in case I might encounter the same difficulties again.
+I dressed for dinner in the moth-room, without catching sight of one.
+When bedtime came we three women all entered the room together.
+
+On approaching the bed, and looking down on it, no one spoke for a
+moment. Then my fellow guest exclaimed:
+
+"Well, I must say that if I had not seen this with my own eyes I never
+would have believed it."
+
+The bed was liberally sprinkled with large gray moths.
+
+My hostess shivered. "Come away, and let us shut the door. It's too
+horrible," she said.
+
+During the remainder of my visit I was perfectly comfortable in my new
+room, and the curious fact must be stated that after I had left the
+moth-room the moths forsook it too. I could discern a pitying
+incredulity in the housemaid's attitude towards me afterwards. She had
+seen but two, and she did not believe in the drove.
+
+My hostess and friend who had witnessed the phenomenon at once agreed
+that there was something more in it than an entomological curiosity. I
+would have given much for the opinion of a naturalist. What, I wonder,
+would he have made of that fat, gray flock sprinkling the bed? What
+species of moth would he have declared them to be?
+
+I have searched in many books since and never found anything the least
+resembling them, and I retain my original, firm belief that they were
+nothing more or less than a flock of elementals, sent forth as a
+practical joke by a practiced magician on the other side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+"THE NEW JEANNE D'ARC"
+
+
+Before writing on the above subject, which is proving to-day of
+absorbing interest to a very large number of people, Protestant as well
+as Catholic, I will point out a curious fact that is occultly connected
+with it.
+
+At certain periods in our normal life, certain subjects lying quite
+outside our earthly experience begin quite suddenly to be talked of and
+written upon. No one knows why, no one, outside occultism, can even form
+a conjecture why such subjects should suddenly obsess the brains of a
+considerable number of persons, why they should crop up in the most
+unexpected places, or why they should form the foundations of a
+considerable mass of literature.
+
+It would appear as if they were floating in the air at some particular
+time, and masses of people catch them up like germs, and carry them
+about until their power is exhausted.
+
+I will give an instance. In the years just before the war "The Great God
+Pan" drifted across our mental horizon and was at once drawn into our
+aura.
+
+No one knows anything about "The Great God Pan." He is supposed to
+belong to mythology, but novelists of distinction at once began to write
+upon him, not one after the other, but simultaneously. I read at least
+three thrilling novels in which he figured largely, and I myself was
+impelled to write a novel upon the same subject.
+
+I began the book knowing nothing of the god, beyond what I could gather
+from the London Library, and Frazer's "Golden Bough," but as I proceeded
+I was conscious of new information drifting in from without, and on
+finishing the book I found that other authors had been at work on the
+same subject.
+
+"The Great God Pan" appeared on the stage, and a popular actress sang a
+song about him. One heard his name mentioned constantly in society, and
+hideous stories were told of him in Bohemian art circles. He was the
+bugbear of the séance room, journalists mentioned him in quite serious
+articles, and I once heard his name spoken from a pulpit.
+
+The bare fact of this seemingly inconsequent disease (for it almost
+amounted to a disease with us) drifting into our stolid British
+atmosphere was not curious to the occultist, who is aware that at
+certain times, certain subjects are flooded in on us from "the other
+side" by those who have our welfare at heart.
+
+I never heard any explanation of why Pan should have come here to play
+quite an important part in our mental lives, or why he should have
+obsessed so many of us for about a couple of years. The more one
+discovered about him the less one liked him, but psychics are led to
+believe that there are many schemes of evolution hovering about us, and
+interpenetrating our own, though not visible to our normal
+consciousness.
+
+It may therefore be that "The Great God Pan" did actually come into our
+atmosphere, and thus his individuality impressed itself upon those whose
+minds were plastic to such impressions. Possibly he arrived on this
+earth much as an aerolite arrives, drawn out of his own orbit by the
+superior attraction of this globe.
+
+"The Great God Pan" was, what might be termed, the forerunner of the
+devil's reincarnation. The belief in a personal devil was rapidly dying
+out amongst us, in spite of "The Sorrows of Satan," and the belief in
+"The Prince of this World" so insisted upon throughout the Old and New
+Testaments.
+
+There is no more engrossing subject for the occultist to indulge in than
+gathering together every verse in the Bible dealing with "The Evil One,"
+and trying, with the aid of ancient traditions, to piece a coherent
+story together. When one gets a certain distance in the study one comes
+to the conclusion that there is a great deal more in it than meets the
+eye. It is a vast subject, and I think the most profoundly occult
+mystery extant and undeciphered.
+
+The devil now occupies a prominent position in the collective thought of
+the nation. An enormous number of people believe now in his existence,
+who would have scorned the bare idea before 1916. It was in that year
+that he began to loom large in the beliefs of quite materially minded
+people, and his advent into actual, active existence at once complicated
+matters terribly.
+
+Said a well-known writer to me, "I think there is something in it. It's
+very tiresome. I was just beginning to settle down in my beliefs, now
+I'm all upset again by this conception of a personal adversary to the
+Supreme Ruler."
+
+In the early weeks of 1917 a new impression drifted in on us.
+
+Some angel came down and stirred the pool of the world, and left with us
+"The Sacred Heart."
+
+"The Sacred Heart" was the forerunner of "The New Jeanne d'Arc," Claire
+Ferchaud.
+
+There is nothing that has more astonished the Catholic world than
+hearing "The Sacred Heart" talked of by Protestants, and actually
+adopted by them as a sacred symbol. Hitherto it has been exclusively a
+part of Catholic worship.
+
+There was such a demand for the little metal "Sacred Heart" images (a
+figure of the Christ, with hands outstretched and a flaming heart at His
+breast), that can be carried about in the pocket, that they were not to
+be bought in England, and were hard to procure abroad. Enormous numbers
+had been sent to the front by persons belonging to all denominations,
+who treasured one of their own at home. Very suddenly "The Sacred Heart"
+became an object of veneration amongst thousands to whom Roman
+Catholicism was anathema.
+
+Then came the demand from France that "The Sacred Heart" should be
+placed above the tricolor.
+
+I had not heard of Claire Ferchaud before the beginning of 1918, though
+her Divine Mission began about six years previously.
+
+Occultists began to speak of her amongst themselves as one who would yet
+save France. This hope was never lost sight of in the country's darkest
+hours. Now there is a steadily growing demand amongst the educated
+British public to learn all that can be known about this girl who has
+been called "The New Joan of Arc."
+
+In 1916 she was summoned to appear before an Ecclesiastical Commission
+at Poitiers in the same room in which "The Maid of Orleans" was
+interrogated, before being placed at the head of the Army of
+deliverance.
+
+Both Claire Ferchaud and her communications were subjected to the
+strictest scrutiny. The result was entirely in her favor. Her writings
+were examined by Father Vaudrious, D.D., M.S.D., who declared them
+inspired, and equal to those of St. Catherine of Sienna and St. Teresa.
+Finally they were taken to Rome, and submitted to a commission appointed
+by the Holy See. The result being that she was ordered to continue her
+mission. The writings deal with devotion to "The Sacred Heart" and the
+dignity of priesthood.
+
+One is irresistibly reminded of the opening scenes at Lourdes, whilst
+Bernadette Soubirons was alive, in 1858. Again, one cannot but recall a
+certain similarity betwixt certain events in the life of the Maid of
+Orleans and the events taking place now in the life of Claire Ferchaud.
+
+Claire is a girl twenty-two years old, the daughter of a peasant
+proprietor in the village of Ranfillières, a mile from Lublande, Deux
+Sèvres Dept., France. Her parents are alive, and she has two sisters and
+three brothers. The father and one brother fought during the war,
+another brother was a prisoner, and the youngest assists on the farm.
+One of the sisters works on the farm, and the eldest sister is a
+réligieuse at the community of La Sagesse.
+
+Claire was tending her father's flocks when the first great revelation
+came to her nine years ago; then she was but thirteen years old. She had
+crept into a thicket to read, and suddenly the Divine Master appeared to
+her and bade her lay down her book. He told her she had been chosen for
+a Divine Mission, and that He would guide and instruct her. He showed
+her "The Sacred Heart" covered with wounds.
+
+On recounting her vision to her priest, she was treated with coldness
+and disbelief, and on her telling him two years later that Our Lord
+daily appeared to her in Holy Communion she was treated still more
+coldly.
+
+Until he himself received a sign he maintained an attitude of utter
+disbelief. What happened soon after whilst he was celebrating Holy Mass,
+entirely convinced him.
+
+At that particular part of the Canon when the priest divides the Sacred
+Species he saw blood issue from the Sacred Host. Nor was this all. A
+week afterwards he observed Claire Ferchaud in a trance in his own
+church, and he saw her using a handkerchief as if wiping some object in
+front of her, which he could not see. Blood stains appeared on the
+handkerchief, and increased as she repeated the action.
+
+Filled with amazement he sought later for an explanation, and she told
+him.
+
+"Our Lord appeared before me suffering greatly because of the terrible
+sins of the world, and He asked me to do for Him what Veronica did on
+the road to Calvary. To wipe away the bloody sweat that trickled down
+His face. I saw the Sacred Heart, riddled with wounds, and the deepest
+wound of all was inflicted by France, the eldest daughter of the Church,
+on whom He had lavished so deep a love. Once before He appeared to me
+walking upon ears of corn which He crushed to powder."
+
+The priest after hearing this explanation took the handkerchief to the
+bishop, who listened to the wonderful story with sympathetic attention.
+He examined the blood-stained handkerchief minutely, and sent for a nun.
+"If," he said, "the stains are what they are represented to be they
+cannot be washed out."
+
+The bishop put the matter to the test, and watched the nun endeavoring
+to remove the stains. It was all in vain, and the bishop standing by his
+own test declared the mission of Claire Ferchaud to be Divine.
+
+Every night, between eleven and twelve o'clock, Claire beholds
+apparitions, and receives the sacred teaching that was promised, and it
+was in 1916 that she was ordered to Poitiers to undergo
+cross-examination.
+
+Unfortunately the further development of Claire Ferchaud's mission
+cannot yet be communicated to the world, but in time it will be, and
+very startling and wonderful it will seem.
+
+Meanwhile she encountered very strong opposition. With considerable
+difficulty the Deputy of Vendée arranged a meeting between Claire and M.
+Poincaré. Claire implored him to permit the emblem of the Sacred Heart
+to be placed on the Standards of France, as the one condition of
+success. Unfortunately M. Poincaré had to refuse, owing to political
+reasons, though as proof of her mission she disclosed an incident only
+known to him which happened after the victory of the Marne.
+
+The same adverse influence operated at her interview with M. Clemenceau.
+This appointment was arranged by the Archbishop of Rheims, Cardinal
+Lucon. The Archbishop implored M. Clemenceau to fix a day of public
+intercession for France. This also the Prime Minister of France had
+reluctantly to refuse.
+
+It is openly stated that before the later French successes the emblem of
+the Sacred Heart was secretly sewn upon the flags of France, and it is
+also affirmed that General Foch is a devoted lover of the Sacred Heart,
+and bears its emblem with him wherever he goes.
+
+Great changes have come about in the village where Claire Ferchaud
+dwells. Formerly a sleepy, neglected little place, it is now converted
+into a scene of the greatest activity.
+
+From all parts of France the pilgrims come--some on foot, having walked
+many miles, some in motors and horse-driven vehicles. Hundreds of
+soldiers find their way there, and it is estimated that from fifteen to
+twenty thousand people pass through Lublande in a month.
+
+With the consent of her bishop, Claire Ferchaud has formed a small
+community of nine, and is now established in a temporary convent
+adjacent to her parish church at Lublande. It is believed that her
+Divine Mission will be accomplished in 1922, and that she will then be
+released from earthly life.
+
+Claire has predicted a stormy period for France after peace has been
+signed. According to her prophecy there will be violent unrest until
+rulers arise who possess firm religious convictions. At the beginning of
+the war she affirmed that the French Army would never prosper until the
+troops were commanded by a true son of the Church. This affirmation she
+claimed to receive from a Divine source. When Maréchal Foch took over
+the supreme command she was satisfied that victory, so far as the French
+arms were concerned, was assured.
+
+As all the world knows, and as all may learn who read Hyndman's life of
+his old friend Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France, like the
+majority of his colleagues, is frankly atheistical. Claire Ferchaud
+claims to have received the Divine intimation that until this condition
+of mind is superseded by a public acknowledgment of a supreme divine
+power, a supreme arbiter over the destinies of the world, the affairs of
+France can never prosper. She predicts that in 1922 rulers will arise
+who will bow before a Power superior to their own human energies.
+
+The first part of her prophecy has come true. A man of God won his way
+to the front, and saved France and the Allies at the darkest hour of
+their tribulation.
+
+The supreme command was vested in a man of profound religious
+convictions, who carried his beliefs and observances openly into the
+arena of war.
+
+I translate the words written lately to me by one who has served under
+Ferdinand Foch. They throw a brilliant light upon a great soul.
+
+"I can see him now, alone and unattended, at an hour when the Church of
+Cassel was deserted, praying and seeking comfort in the great sorrow, of
+which he never spoke. He had lost his only son, and one of his daughters
+was widowed. In spite of his indomitable energy there was about him an
+air of profound melancholy and sadness.
+
+"At certain moments his eyes seemed to say, 'I approach the twilight of
+my life in the consciousness of being a good servant who will repose in
+the peace of God. My faith in life eternal, in a good God, has sustained
+me in my hardest hours. Prayer has illumined my soul. See to it, you
+young men of France, who are without a great ideal, without any
+conception of the spiritual side of life, there can be nothing for you
+but discouragement and feebleness. We demand of you great sacrifices to
+the end. Accept those sacrifices as I accept mine, who believe that
+spirit must prevail over matter.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+HAUNTED HOUSES--"CASTEL A MARE"
+
+
+I have never yet met any one who was not interested in haunted houses.
+Even the most blatant skeptic always wants to "hear all about it,"
+though he has predetermined to treat the story with his habitual
+scoffing incredulity. Of all the departments of psychical research none
+commands more general interest than a "spooky" house, and there are few
+people who cannot name a dwelling which has acquired the reputation for
+being haunted by denizens of the other world.
+
+Of course, any house that falls into serious disrepair, and remains
+unoccupied for some long period, any dwelling whose owner permits decay
+to proceed unchecked, and dilapidation to run its course, at once
+suggests the thought to the beholder, "what a haunted looking old
+place," and rumor, in such cases, quickly supplies all the old
+phenomena, even though tradition be totally absent. Tramps are always on
+the lookout for such shelters, and their damped-down fires catch the eye
+of some scared rustic who happens to be passing in the dark. Rats and
+the winds of heaven play hide-and-seek through the deserted rooms and
+corridors, and owls find sanctuary in the surrounding gardens. Their
+cries, varying from the exultant shriek to the mournful wail, add a
+weird suggestiveness to the abiding melancholy of such abandoned
+habitations.
+
+There is so much talk nowadays of hauntings and ghosts, that it seems
+strange we should know so very little about them. I have never heard a
+really convincing explanation of why ghosts should haunt certain houses,
+and I have no explanation of my own to offer. If ghosts could be
+commanded, if one could be sure of witnessing certain phenomena that
+have been elaborately described to one, then there might be the ghost of
+a chance of advantageous investigation. No such opportunities seem to be
+afforded the investigator. He may watch for months and see nothing, yet
+the elusive wraith may turn up before several witnesses on the very
+night after he has abandoned his quest out of sheer boredom and
+discouragement.
+
+Some seven years ago, whilst wintering in Torquay, I heard a great deal
+of gossip about a villa on the Warberries, which was reputed to be badly
+haunted. For the last forty to fifty years nobody, it was said, had been
+able to live in it for any length of time. Several people asserted that
+they had heard screams coming from it as they passed along the high
+road, and no occupant had ever been able to keep a door shut or even
+locked.
+
+The house is at present being pulled down, therefore I commit no
+indiscretion in describing the phenomena connected with it.
+
+"Castel a Mare" is situated in what house agents would describe as "a
+highly residential quarter." It is surrounded by numerous villas,
+inhabited by people who are all very "well to do," and who make Torquay
+their permanent home. The majority of these villas lie right back from
+the road, and are hidden in their own luxuriant gardens, but the
+haunted house is one of several whose back premises open straight on to
+the road.
+
+No dwelling could have looked more commonplace or uninteresting. It was
+built in the form of a high box, three storied. It was hideous and
+inartistic in the extreme, but along its frontage looking towards the
+sea and hidden from the road, there ran a wide balcony on to which the
+second floor rooms opened, and from there the view over the garden was
+charming. When I first went to look at it, dilapidation had set in.
+Jackdaws and starlings were busy in the chimneys, the paint was peeling
+off the walls, and most of the windows were broken. Year after year
+those windows were mended, but they never remained intact for more than
+a week, and during the war there has been no attempt at renewal. Even
+the agents' boards, "To be let or sold" dropped one by one from their
+stems, as if in sheer weariness of so fruitless an announcement.
+
+It was not long before I obtained the loan of the keys, and proceeded to
+"take the atmosphere." It was decidedly unhealthful, I concluded, though
+I neither heard nor saw anything unusual during the hour I spent alone
+in quietly wandering through the deserted rooms. I found no trace of
+tramps, and all the closed windows were thickly cobwebbed _inside_, an
+important fact to notice in psychic research. I fixed upon the bathroom
+and one other small room, as the _foci_ of the trouble, and left the
+house with no other strong impression than that my movements had been
+closely watched, by some one unseen by me. It was no uncommon sight in
+pre-war days to see several smart motor cars drawn up at the gate.
+Frivolous parties of explorers in search of a thrill drove in from the
+surrounding neighborhood, and romped gayly through the house and out
+again, and I discovered that several of those visitors had distinctly
+felt that they were being followed about and watched.
+
+My husband and I were naturally much interested in this haunted
+dwelling, so accessible, and so near to our own house. We determined
+that if we could make friends with the owner we would do a little
+investigation on our own. Numerous people, on the plea that the house
+might suit them as a residence, got the loan of the keys, and spent an
+hour or two inside the place, wandering about the house and garden, but
+the owner was getting tired of this rush of spurious house-hunters. He
+was beginning to ask for _bona fides_, so we determined honestly to
+state our purpose.
+
+The proprietor was an old builder who owned several other houses. He
+received me very civilly, even gratefully. He would willingly give us
+the keys for as long a period as we required them. "Castel a Mare"
+brought him extreme bad luck; he longed to be rid of it, and he added
+that after our investigations, if my husband could give the house a
+clean bill of health it would be of enormous benefit to him, in enabling
+him to let or sell it. He did not seem very hopeful, but stated it to be
+his opinion that the hauntings were all nonsense, and that the screams
+people heard were the cries of some peacocks that lived in a property
+not far off. This sounded very reasonable, and I promised him that if we
+could honestly state that the house was perfectly unhealthful, we would
+permit our conclusions to be made public.
+
+My husband and I decided that the hour one p. m. till two p. m. would be
+the quietest and least conspicuous time in which to investigate.
+Doubtless the night would have been better still, but it would have
+created too much excitement in the neighborhood, and callers to see "how
+we were bearing up" would have defeated our object. Between one and two
+all Torquay would be lunching, and we could easily slip in unobserved,
+and we would require neither lights nor warm comforts.
+
+We started at once, my husband keeping the keys, and making himself
+responsible for the doors. Though the window-panes were badly broken
+there were no openings large enough to admit a small child, and, as I
+have said, the network of cobwebs within was evidence that no human
+being entered the house by the windows. The front door lock was in good
+order, and so were most of the other locks in the house. We shut
+ourselves in, and after a thorough examination of the premises we
+mounted to the first floor. Three rooms opened on to it, belonging to
+the principal bedroom--a smaller room and a bathroom opening out of the
+big bedroom. My husband closed all the doors, and we sat down on the
+lower steps of the bare staircase leading to the floor above. That day
+we drew an absolute blank, and at two o'clock we closed every door in
+the house, and just inside the front door we made a careless looking
+arrangement of twigs, dead leaves, pieces of straw and dust, which could
+not fail to betray the passing of human feet, should anybody possess a
+duplicate key to the front door and enter by that means.
+
+The second day we found our twig and straw arrangements intact, but not
+a single door was shut, all were thrown defiantly wide. This seemed
+rather promising and we went upstairs to our seat on the steps, and
+carefully reclosing the doors immediately in front of us, sat down to
+await events.
+
+Quite half an hour must have passed when suddenly a click made us both
+look up. The handle of the door, but a couple of yards distant from me,
+leading into the small room, was turning, and the door quietly opened
+wide enough to admit the passing of a human being. It was a bright sunny
+day, and one could see the brass knob turning round quite distinctly. We
+saw no form of any sort, and the door remained half open. For perhaps a
+couple of moments we awaited developments, then our attention was
+suddenly switched off the door by the sound of hurrying footsteps
+running along the bare boards on the corridor above us. My husband
+rushed up and searched each empty room, but neither saw anything nor
+heard anything more. Before leaving the house we shut all doors, and
+locked all that would lock. Such was the meager extent of our second
+day's investigations.
+
+On the third day the doors were all found wide flung. No door opened
+before our eyes as on our former visit, but a brushing sound was heard
+ascending the stairs, as if from some one pressing close against the
+wall.
+
+For about a fortnight nothing happened beyond what I have recounted, but
+I was strongly conscious that we were being watched. The most
+unhealthful spots were the bathroom, a servants' room entered by a
+staircase leading from the kitchen, and the stable, a small building
+immediately to the right of the house. The bathroom was in great
+disrepair, long strips of paper hung from the walls, and an air of
+profound depression pervaded it. Obviously it had once been merely a
+large cupboard, and it had a window admitting light from a passage
+behind it.
+
+We had never once failed to find every door which we had closed thrown
+wide on our return, and one day we locked the bathroom, and removing the
+key we looked about for some spot in which to secrete it. On that floor
+was nothing large enough to hide even so small an object as a key, so we
+took it downstairs to the dining-room. In a corner lay a rag of linoleum
+about six inches square, under this we placed the bathroom key and left
+the house.
+
+That afternoon a house agent called and asked for the loan of the keys.
+He told us that a brave widow, who knew the history of the house,
+thought it might suit her to live in, and he proposed to take her over
+it and point out its charms. He would return the keys to us directly
+afterwards. I took advantage of this occasion to say to the agent that
+probably the screams some people had heard proceeded from the peacocks
+in the neighborhood.
+
+He shook his head and answered, "We hoped that might prove to be the
+case, but we have ascertained that it is not so." He seemed despondent
+about the place, even though what we had to tell him was as yet nothing
+very formidable or exciting. What we did not tell him was that we had
+locked up the bathroom, and hidden the key. We left him to discover that
+fact for himself.
+
+He returned with the keys in about an hour, and I asked him what the
+widow thought of "Castel a Mare."
+
+"She thinks something might be made of it. The cheapness attracts her,"
+he answered.
+
+"But it will need so much doing to it," I demurred. "What did she think
+of the bathroom?"
+
+"She said it only needed cleaning and repapering. The bath itself she
+found in good enough condition."
+
+So the bathroom door was open, in spite of our having locked it and
+hidden the key!
+
+After the agent had gone we went to the house. Every door stood wide.
+The bathroom key was still in its hiding-place, and the door open. We
+replaced the key. The ghosts laughed to scorn such securities as locks
+and keys.
+
+For a month or two we pursued our investigations, then we returned the
+keys to the owner. Though we had seen and heard so little it was
+impossible to give the house a clean bill of health, and the old builder
+was much cast down. A few days afterwards we received a letter from him
+offering us the house as a free gift. It would pay him to be rid of the
+ground rent, and the place was as useless to him as to any one else. We
+thanked him and refused the gift.
+
+About this period I was lucky enough to get into touch with a former
+tenant of "Castel a Mare," and this lady most kindly gave me many
+details of her residence there. About thirty years ago she occupied it
+with her father and mother, and they were the last family to live in it
+for any length of time, and for many years it has remained empty.
+
+Soon after their arrival this family discovered that there was something
+very much amiss with their new residence. The house, the garden, and the
+stable were decidedly uncanny, but it was some time before they would
+admit, even to themselves, that the strange happenings were of a
+supernatural order.
+
+The phenomena fell under three headings: a piercing scream heard
+continually, at any hour and during all seasons; continuous steps
+running along corridors, and up and down stairs; constant lockings of
+doors by unseen hands.
+
+The scream was decidedly the most unnerving of the various phenomena.
+The family lived in constant dread of it. Sometimes it came from the
+garden, sometimes from inside the house. One morning whilst they sat at
+breakfast, they were violently startled by this horrible sound coming
+from the inner hall, just outside the room in which they sat. It took
+but a moment to throw open the door, but, as usual, there was nothing to
+be seen.
+
+On another occasion the family doctor had just arrived at the front
+door, and was about to ring, when he was startled by the scream coming
+from inside the house. This doctor still lives in the neighborhood, and
+is one of many people who can bear witness to the fact.
+
+The footsteps of unseen people kept the family pretty busy. They were
+always running to the doors to see who was hurrying past, and up and
+down stairs. Very soon the drawing-room became extremely uncomfortable,
+and practically uninhabitable. It was always full of unseen people
+moving about. The lady of the house never felt herself alone, and when
+she found herself locked into her own room, the behavior of her astral
+guests seemed to her to have become intolerable. The master of the house
+no more escaped these attentions than did the rest of the inhabitants,
+and finally all keys had to be removed from all doors.
+
+One night some guests, after getting into bed, heard some one open the
+door of their room and enter. Astonishment kept them silent, and in a
+minute or two their visitor quietly withdrew and closed the door again.
+They concluded that it must have been their hostess, and that thinking
+they were asleep she had not spoken, yet still they thought the incident
+very strange. The next morning they discovered that no member of the
+household had entered their room.
+
+On another occasion a lady who had come to help nurse a sick sister saw,
+one night, a strange woman dressed in black velvet walk downstairs.
+
+Animals fared badly at "Castel a Mare." A large dog belonging to the
+family was often found cowering and growling in abject fear of something
+visible to it, but not to the human inhabitants, and the harness horse
+showed such an invincible objection to its stable, that it could only be
+got in by backing.
+
+Later on I was told that a member of the Psychical Society had visited
+"Castel a Mare," and had pronounced the garden to be more haunted than
+the house.
+
+It is interesting to note how absolutely untenable badly haunted houses
+become. No matter how skeptical, how resolutely material the tenants may
+be, the phenomena wear them down to a humble surrender at last. After
+all, what can people do but quit a residence which is constantly showing
+incontrovertible evidence that it is possessed by numerous unseen
+entities that defy analysis?
+
+Every one is interested in getting rid of this weird disturbance, but
+how to do it? The skeptic is resolute in unmasking the fraud, but finds
+himself balked by intangibility. He hears the scream at his door, and
+rushes to arrest the miscreant, but sees no one to grapple with.
+Domestic difficulties become acute. No warning is given, no wages asked.
+The servants decamp, too scared to care for anything but putting
+distance between themselves and the nameless dread. Visitors begin to
+fight shy of the house. They have heard the screams.
+
+Month after month the master of the house, thinking of his rent, and his
+reputation for sanity, and what the loss of both would mean to him,
+clings to skepticism as his only hope and refuge. He is not going to be
+driven forth by any such stuff and nonsense as ghosts! Why! there are no
+such things! "Seen things? heard things?" Well, yes, he has, but, of
+course, there must be some rational explanation. A man who has fought
+for king and country is not going to be defeated and put to flight by a
+pack of silly women's stories. He will soon get to the bottom of the
+whole affair, then woe betide the practical joker!
+
+When alone he racks his brains in vain. He is furious with himself for
+having heard the scream, and tells himself he must be "going dotty." He
+is puzzled, baffled, irritated, but more determined than ever to "stick
+it out." Who can the "joker" be who is demoralizing his household, who
+has even dared to lock him into his own room? He thinks of his wife and
+family, and of their shattered nerves; he thinks of his terrified
+servants, and of his dog, which can no longer be persuaded to enter the
+house. He feels he must look elsewhere for the disturber of his peace.
+But where? He keeps careful watch unknown (as he thinks) to his family.
+The steps approach him, pass close to him, then die away in the
+distance, leaving him fuming, impotent. He finds it necessary to wipe
+his brow, which enrages him still more. At dead of night he watches on
+the staircase, with all lights full on.
+
+Silence, utter silence! Absolutely nothing to be seen or heard. He
+thinks of going to bed. He always said the whole thing was "tommy rot."
+The deathly silence is suddenly rent by a piercing scream at his very
+elbow, and he leaps to his feet, growling out an oath below his breath.
+He looks wildly round on every side of him. Nothing! Something strange
+is happening to his head. He passes his hand over his hair. It seems to
+be creeping along his scalp, and he thinks of the quills of a porcupine.
+"What the devil is he to do?" "Go to bed," answers inclination, "you're
+doing no good here. Yes! Go to bed; that's the sensible thing to do."
+
+The next morning every one asks him if he heard "it." He acknowledges to
+himself that his temper is becoming vile.
+
+The day comes when he is left alone with his family. The staff has fled
+and he feels rather broken.
+
+At last he gives in, and agrees to seek another home, but it is not to
+the ghosts he gives in, but to the nervous fancies of a pack of silly
+women. He feels wonderfully light-hearted, however, now that his mind is
+made up, and a glow of magnanimity pervades him. "If you do a thing at
+all do it well and _at once_," he tells himself, and promptly hires
+another house in another neighborhood.
+
+When questioned by his men friends he laughs. The man in the street
+might understand certain things that he could tell, but the man in the
+club, never! "All tommy rot, my dear chap, but my wife got nervous, and
+the servants! You know what they are. Scared by the scratch of a mouse.
+For the women's sake I thought it best to quit. You know what women are,
+when they once get an idea into their heads!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE SEQUEL
+
+
+In 1917 a friend rang me up and asked me if I would form one of a party
+of investigation at "Castel a Mare." The services of a medium had been
+secured, and a soldier on leave, who was deeply immersed in psychic
+research, was in high hopes of getting some genuine results.
+
+I accepted the invitation because a certain incident had once more
+roused my curiosity in the haunted house.
+
+During our investigations I had been disappointed at not hearing the
+much-talked-of scream, the more so after learning from the former
+tenants how very often they had heard it. When I did at last hear it I
+was walking past the house on a very hot summer morning, about eleven
+o'clock. I was not thinking of the house, and had just passed it on my
+way home, when a piercing scream arrested my attention. I wheeled round
+instantly; there was not a doubt as to where the scream came from, but
+unfortunately, though there were people on the road, there was no one
+near enough to bear witness. The scream appeared to come from some one
+in abject terror, and would have arrested the attention of any one who
+happened to be passing. I mean that had no haunted house stood there,
+had the scream proceeded from any other villa, I am sure that any
+passer-by would have halted wonderingly, and awaited further
+developments.
+
+"Castel a Mare" lay in absolute silence, under the blazing sunshine, and
+in a minute or two I walked on. I could now understand what it must have
+meant to live in that house, in constant dread of that weird and hideous
+sound resounding through the rooms or garden.
+
+This incident made me eager to join my friend's party, and on reaching
+the house I found a small crowd assembled.
+
+The medium, myself, and four other women. The soldier, and an elderly
+and burly builder belonging to the neighborhood, who was interested in
+psychic research. Eight persons in all.
+
+As there was no chair or furniture of any description in the house, we
+carried in a small empty box from a rubbish heap outside, and followed
+the medium through the rooms. She elected to remain in the large
+bedroom, on the first floor, out of which opened the bathroom, and she
+sat down on the box and leaned her back against the wall, whilst we
+lounged about the room and awaited events. It was a sunny summer
+afternoon, and the many broken panes of glass throughout the house
+admitted plenty of air.
+
+After some minutes it was plain to see that the medium had fallen into a
+trance. Her eyes were closed, and she lay back as if in sound sleep.
+Time passed, nothing happened, we were all rather silent, as I had
+warned the party that though we were in a room at the side of the house
+farthest from the road, our voices could plainly be heard by passers-by,
+and we wanted no interference.
+
+Just as we were all beginning to feel rather bored and tired of
+standing, the medium sprang to her feet with surprising agility, pouring
+out a volume of violent language. Her voice had taken on the deep
+growling tones of an infuriated man, who advanced menacingly towards
+those of us who were nearest to him. In harsh, threatening voice he
+demanded to know what right we had to intrude on his privacy.
+
+There was a general scattering of the scared party before this
+unlooked-for attack, and the soldier gave it as his opinion that the
+medium was now controlled by the spirit of a very violent male entity. I
+had no doubt upon the point.
+
+Then commenced so very unpleasant a scene that I had no doubt also of
+the medium's genuineness. No charlatan, dependent upon fraudulent
+mediumship for her daily bread, would have made herself so intensely
+obnoxious as did this frail little woman. I found myself saying, "Never
+again. This isn't good enough."
+
+The entity that controlled her possessed superhuman strength. His voice
+was like the bellow of a bull, as he told us to be gone, or he would
+throw us out himself, and his language was shocking.
+
+I had warned the medium on entering the house that we must be as quiet
+as possible, or we would have the police walking in on us. Now I
+expected any moment to see a policeman, or some male stranger arrive on
+the scene, and demand to know what was the matter.
+
+The majority of our party were keeping at a safe distance, but suddenly
+the control rushed full tilt at the soldier, who had stood his ground,
+and attacking him with a tigerish fury drew blood at once. The big
+builder and I rushed forward to his aid. The rest of the party forsook
+us and fled, pell-mell, out of the house and into the garden. Glancing
+through a window, near which we fought, I saw below a row of scared
+faces staring up in awed wonder.
+
+The scene being enacted was really amazing. This frail little creature
+threw us off like feathers, and drove us foot by foot before her, always
+heading us off the bathroom. We tried to stand our ground, and dodge her
+furious lunges, but she was too much for us. After a desperate scuffle,
+which lasted quite seven or eight minutes, and resulted in much torn
+clothing, she drove us out of the room and on to the landing. Then
+suddenly, without warning, the entity seemed to evacuate the body he had
+controlled, and the medium went down with a crash and lay at our feet,
+just a little crumpled disheveled heap.
+
+For some considerable time I thought that she was dead. Her lips were
+blue, and I could feel no pulse. We had neither water nor brandy with
+which to revive her, and we decided to carry her down into the garden
+and see what fresh air would do. Though villas stood all round us, the
+foliage of the trees gave us absolute privacy, and we laid her flat on
+the lawn. There, after about ten minutes, she gradually regained her
+consciousness, and seemingly none the worse for her experiences she sat
+up and asked what had happened.
+
+We did not give her the truth in its entirety, and contrived to account
+for the blood-stained soldier and the torn clothing, without unduly
+shocking and distressing her. We then dispersed; the medium walking off
+as if nothing whatever had occurred to deplete her strength.
+
+Some days after this the soldier begged for another experiment with the
+medium. He had no doubts as to her genuineness, and he was sure that if
+we tried again we would get further developments. She was willing to
+try again, and so was the builder, but with one exception the rest of
+the party refused to have anything more to do with the unpleasant
+affair, and the one exception stipulated to remain in the garden. She
+very wisely remarked that if she came into the house there was no
+knowing what entity might not attach itself to her, and return home with
+her, and she was not going to risk it. Of course this real danger always
+had to be counted upon in such investigations, but as the men of the
+party desired a woman to accompany the medium, I consented, and we
+entered the house once more, a reduced party of four.
+
+After the medium had remained entranced for some minutes, the same male
+entity again controlled her. The same violence, the same attacks began
+once more, but this time we were better prepared to defend ourselves.
+The soldier and the stalwart builder warded off the attacks, and tried
+conciliatory expostulations, but all to no purpose. Then the soldier,
+who seemed to have considerable experience in such matters, tried a
+system of exorcising, sternly bidding the malignant entity depart. There
+ensued a very curious spiritual conflict between the exorcist and the
+entity, in which sometimes it seemed as if one, then the other, was
+about to triumph.
+
+Those wavering moments were useful in giving us breathing space from the
+assaults, and at length having failed, as we desired, to get into the
+bathroom, we drove him back against the wall at the far end of the room.
+Finally the exorcist triumphed, and the medium collapsed on the floor,
+as the strength of the control left her.
+
+For a few moments we allowed the crumpled up little heap to remain
+where she lay, whilst we mopped our brows and regained our breath. The
+soldier had brought a flask of brandy which we proposed to administer to
+the unconscious medium, but quite suddenly a new development began.
+
+She raised her head, and still crouching on the floor with closed eyes
+she began to cry bitterly. Wailing, and moaning, and uttering
+inarticulate words, she had become the picture of absolute woe.
+
+"Another entity has got hold of her," announced the soldier. It
+certainly appeared to be so.
+
+All signs of violence had gone. The medium had become a heart-broken
+woman.
+
+We raised her to her feet, her condition was pitiable, but her words
+became more coherent.
+
+"Poor master! On the bed. Help him! Help him!" she moaned, and pointed
+to one side of the room. Again and again she indicated, by clenching her
+hands on her throat, that death by strangulation was the culmination of
+some terrible tragedy that had been enacted in that room.
+
+She wandered, in a desolate manner, about the floor, wringing her hands,
+the tears pouring down her cheeks, whilst she pointed to the bed, then
+towards the bathroom with shuddering horror.
+
+Suddenly we were startled out of our compassionate sympathy by a
+piercing scream, and my thoughts flew instantly to the experiences of
+the former tenants, and what I myself had heard in passing on that June
+morning of the former year.
+
+The medium had turned at bay, and began a frantic encounter with some
+entity unseen by us. Wildly she wrestled and fought, as if for her life,
+whilst she emitted piercing shrieks for "help." We rushed to the
+rescue, dragging her away from her invisible assailant, but a
+disembodied fighter has a considerable pull over a fighter in the flesh,
+who possesses something tangible that can be seized. I placed the medium
+behind me, with her back to the wall, but though I pressed her close she
+continued to fight, and I had to defend myself as well as defend her.
+Her assailant was undoubtedly the first terrible entity which had
+controlled her. At intervals she gasped out, "Terrible doctor--will kill
+me--he's killed master--help! help!"
+
+Gradually she ceased to fight. The soldier was exorcising with all his
+force, and was gaining power; finally he triumphed, inasmuch as he
+banished the "terrible doctor."
+
+The medium was, however, still under the control of the broken-hearted
+entity, and began again to wander about the room. We extracted from her
+further details. An approximate date of the tragedy. Her master's name,
+that he was mentally deficient when the murder took place. She was a
+maidservant in the house, and after witnessing the crime she appeared to
+have shared her master's fate, though by what means we could not
+determine. The doctor was a resident physician of foreign origin.
+
+At last we induced her to enter the bathroom, which she seemed to dread,
+and there she fell to lamenting over the dead body of her master, which
+had lain hidden there when the room was used as a large cupboard. It was
+a very painful scene, which was ended abruptly by her falling down
+insensible.
+
+She had collapsed in an awkward corner, but at last we lifted her out,
+and carried her downstairs to the garden. When I tried to revive her
+with brandy I found that her teeth were tightly clenched. I then tried
+artificial respiration, as I could feel no pulse. Gradually she came
+back to life, quietly, calmly, and in total ignorance of what had
+occurred. The most amazing thing was that she showed no signs whatever
+of exhaustion or mental fatigue. We were all dead beat, but not so the
+fragile-looking little medium, though externally she looked terribly
+disheveled and draggled.
+
+This was the last time I set foot in the haunted house, which is now
+being demolished, but I still had to experience more of its odd
+phenomena.
+
+The date and names the medium had given us were later on verified by
+means of a record of villa residents, which for many years had been kept
+in the town of Torquay.
+
+There is no one left now who has any interest in verifying a tragic
+story supposed to have been enacted about fifty years ago. It must be
+left in the realms of psychic research, by which means it was dragged to
+light. Certain it is that no such murder came to the knowledge of those
+who were alive then, and live still in Torquay.
+
+If there is any truth in the story it falls under the category of
+undiscovered crimes. The murderer was able somehow to hide his
+iniquities, and escape suspicion and punishment. I do not know if it is
+intended to build another house on the same site. I hope not, for it is
+very probable that a new residence would share the fate of the old.
+Bricks and mortar are no impediment to the free passage of the
+disembodied, and there is no reason why they should not elect to
+manifest for an indefinite period of time.
+
+There can be no doubt that the scream was an actual fact. There are so
+many people living who heard it, and are willing to testify to the
+horror of it. Amongst those living people are former tenants, who for
+long bore the nervous strain of its constant recurrence.
+
+There remains one other weird incident in connection with "Castel a
+Mare" which I will now try to describe.
+
+In the winter of 1917 I was engaged in war work which took me out at
+night. Like every other coast town Torquay was plunged at sunset into
+deepest darkness, save when the moon defied the authorities. The road
+leading from the nearest tramcar to our house was not lit at all, and
+one had to stumble along as best one could, even electric torches being
+forbidden.
+
+I was returning home one very dark, still night about a quarter past
+ten, and being very tired I was walking very slowly. Owing to the inky
+darkness I thought it best to walk in the middle of the road, in order
+to avoid the inequalities in the footpath at each garden entrance to the
+villas. At that hour there was no traffic, and not a soul about.
+
+Suddenly my steps were arrested by a loud knocking on a window-pane, and
+I collected my thoughts and tried to take my bearings. The sound came
+from the left, where two or three villas stand close to the road. All I
+could distinguish was a denser blot of black against the dense
+surroundings, but by making certain calculations I recognized that I
+stood outside "Castel a Mare." The knocking on the pane lasted only a
+moment or two, and was insistent and peremptory. I jumped to the instant
+conclusion that some one was having "a lark" inside, and was trying to
+"get a rise" out of me. I was too tired to be bothered, and moved on
+again with a strong inclination towards my own warm bed, when the
+knocking rang out more peremptory than ever. It seemed to say "Stop!
+don't go on. I have something to say to you." Involuntarily I stood
+still again, and wished that some human being would pass along the road.
+I really would not have cared who it was, policeman, soldier,
+maidservant. I would have laid hold of them and said, "Do you hear that
+knocking? It comes from the haunted house."
+
+Alas! no one did come. The night lay like an inky pall all about me,
+silent as the grave, save for that commanding order to stop which was
+rapped upon a window-pane whenever I attempted to move on.
+
+Though the being who thus sought to detain me could not possibly
+distinguish who I was, or whether my gender was male or female, he could
+certainly hear my footsteps as I walked, and the cool inconsequence of
+his behavior began to nettle me. I was about to move resolutely on when
+I heard something else. This time something really thrilling!
+
+Peal after peal of light laughter, accompanied by flying feet. But such
+laughter! Thin, high treble laughter, right away up and out of the
+scale, and apparently proceeding from many persons. Such flying feet!
+racing, pattering, rushing feet, light as those of the trained athlete.
+I stood enthralled with wonder, for in the pitch-black darkness of that
+house surely no human feet could avoid disaster. They were rushing up
+and down that steep, bare wooden staircase that I knew so well, and the
+laughter and the swift-winged feet sounded now from the ground floor,
+then could be clearly traced ascending, till they reached the third and
+last floor. Tearing along the empty corridors, they began the breakneck
+descent again to the bottom, a pell-mell, wild rush of demented demons
+chasing each other. That is what it sounded like.
+
+I must have stood there for quite ten minutes, longing intensely for
+some one to share in my experiences, but Torquay had gone to bed, and I
+felt it was time for me to do likewise.
+
+What could I make of the affair? Nothing! Rats? Rats don't laugh. Human
+beings having a rag and trying to scare the neighborhood? No human being
+could have run up and down that staircase in such profound darkness. It
+would have been a case of crawling up with a firm hand on the banister
+rail.
+
+I gave up trying to think and turned resolutely away. As I did so the
+knocking began again upon the window-pane.
+
+"Do stop; oh! don't go away. Stop! stop!" it seemed to call after me
+insistently as I quickened my footsteps and gradually outdistanced the
+imperious demand.
+
+What explanation have I to offer? None! The hallucinations of a tired
+woman? That may do for the general public, but not for me. You see, I
+was the person who heard it.
+
+There are many haunted houses that are quite habitable, such as Hampton
+Court Palace, etc. Where the apparition keeps strictly to an
+anniversary, or where the phenomena are mild and inoffensive, their
+presence can be endured with a certain amount of equanimity. The point
+really lies in this. Are the ghosts who haunt a dwelling indifferent to,
+or hostile to, the presence of their companions in the flesh? If the
+situation is according to the latter, then the ghosts will certainly
+score. They will rid themselves of the human inhabitants by a
+wearing-down nerve pressure, which cannot be fought against with any
+chance of success. If the ghosts are shy or indifferent, wrapped up in
+their own concerns and containing themselves in a world of their own,
+then there is no reason why the incarnate and discarnate should not live
+peacefully together.
+
+To-day, February 27th, 1919, I read the following in the _Morning
+Post_:--
+
+"Haunted or disturbed properties. A lady who has deeply studied this
+subject and possesses unusual powers will find out the history of the
+trouble and undertake to remedy it. Houses with persistent bad luck can
+often be freed from the influence. Strictest confidence. Social
+references asked and offered."
+
+What would our grandparents have thought of this means of turning an
+honest penny? I have no doubt the lady "possessing the unusual powers"
+will be employed, and in many cases she will be successful. In the
+majority of cases I venture to say that she will fail, simply because
+the majority of cases are too elusive to be dealt with by human means.
+How would this lady treat the "Castel a Mare" scream? How would she deal
+with the next story I am going to relate?
+
+It is a simple matter to compile a book of thrilling ghost stories if
+direct evidence is not given, if names of persons and places are
+suppressed.
+
+I claim that my stories have a special interest and value, because I
+have tried to restrict them to such as can be attested to by living
+persons, closely related to me either by friendship or by family ties.
+In a very few instances I have been obliged for obvious reasons to
+suppress the names of houses and hotels. In these cases I am ready
+personally to supply full information to genuine students of the occult,
+if they are willing to approach me privately.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE HAUNTED LODGE
+
+
+A considerable number of people are alive who can testify to the truth
+of the facts I now narrate. I regret that I have not been able to
+investigate this case personally, but I hope to do so before very long.
+
+In the spring of 1901, my sister and her husband, Major Stewart, rented
+an old shooting lodge in Argyllshire. The place was charmingly situated,
+the shooting and fishing excellent, and the scenery around was noted for
+its romantic beauty.
+
+Though the main portion of the house was old, a new wing had been added
+for the sleeping accommodation of servants, and this arrangement shut
+them off at night from the ancient part of the dwelling. The original
+kitchen still remained in use.
+
+The servants had been sent on in advance to prepare the lodge, and when
+Major and Mrs. Stewart arrived they were at once confronted with the
+information that the place bore a very evil reputation. The villagers
+had not hesitated to prime the maids with all sorts of creepy stories,
+eminently calculated to cause their precipitate departure. Luckily for
+the master and mistress the maids had been with them for some years, and
+were neither of a timid age nor disposition, so the household settled
+comfortably down, in those long spring and summer days, which in the
+north means practically no darkness.
+
+My sister had banished the alleged hauntings from her mind, and probably
+the maids had done likewise, for all was going quietly and well, when
+suddenly, after a week's residence, there came a rude reminder.
+
+Major and Mrs. Stewart were both awakened one night by unmistakable
+sounds of very noisy burglars, who appeared to have broken into the
+house through the kitchen quarters. The major lit a candle, and looked
+at his watch. It was just on midnight. What puzzled them both was the
+noise the intruders made. Burglars naturally tread softly and
+stealthily, but these men stamped about in heavy boots, and were engaged
+in throwing about heavy articles. There seemed to be quite a number of
+accomplices involved in the enterprise, and they displayed an amazing
+indifference to detection.
+
+My sister and her husband decided that events could not be left to take
+their course. This matter must be looked into. The major armed himself
+with a loaded revolver. My sister armed herself with a lighted candle
+and a box of matches, and together they crept softly downstairs on their
+way to the kitchen.
+
+All this time the noises continued. Stamping of heavy feet, crashing
+down of heavy weights, but on the way downstairs a first glimmering that
+the supernatural came into this affair began to dawn upon my sister. She
+became aware that an invisible presence was following them.
+
+The noises continued as they cautiously and silently crept towards the
+kitchen. As they reached the door, suddenly utter silence fell. Inside
+nothing was disarranged. There were no signs of burglars, everything was
+as usual.
+
+Considerably mystified Major and Mrs. Stewart returned to bed, and were
+not disturbed again that night.
+
+The next day, about four o'clock in the afternoon, the same sounds began
+again. This time the noise was easily located in one of the unused
+bedrooms on the top floor of the house. Heavily shod men were tramping
+about the floor overhead, throwing down heavy boxes and making a
+considerable disturbance.
+
+Major and Mrs. Stewart ascended on tiptoe, and when outside the closed
+door listened intently. There was no mistake this time. Nothing could
+sound more human than the activity going on inside that room. Half a
+dozen men at least were in possession of it, and those men had to be
+confronted. Luckily they had no means of escape. This time they really
+would be caught.
+
+After a few minutes of silent listening the major, whose hand was on the
+knob, threw open the door and bounded into the room.
+
+Instant silence--nothing--not even the whisk of a defiant rat's tail!
+
+The husband and wife sat down and stared at one another in utter
+bewilderment. The bright spring daylight seemed to mock them as it
+flooded every chink and cranny.
+
+Shortly after this occurrence three guests came to stay, two women and a
+man. They were given bedrooms on the top floor, but the room whence the
+disturbance had come was left severely alone. The household, with one
+accord, welcomed their advent as a pleasant distraction, and it was
+unanimously agreed that they should be kept in absolute ignorance of
+what had taken place.
+
+The next morning the three guests all had the same story to tell, of
+having had no sleep. Heavily booted men kept passing their doors, and
+heavy articles were flung about in adjacent rooms. They had spent a
+night of terror. No one had possessed sufficient courage to look out
+into the corridor, along which the men were passing, and they had kept
+lights burning in their rooms till full daybreak. They refused to sleep
+again upon that floor.
+
+My sister moved them down to the second floor, on which she herself
+slept, and a thorough investigation of the house, outside and inside,
+was made. No conclusion was come to.
+
+The noises continued on the following night, but being overhead, and
+more distant, they were more endurable.
+
+A second male guest now arrived, and the assembled household waited in
+breathless interest to see how the ghosts would affect him. Nothing
+whatever was told to him, and he was lodged in a bedroom immediately
+underneath the noisy one.
+
+The next morning, after all had passed a disturbed night, it was found
+that some of the noises had proceeded from the new guest. He had carried
+some of his blankets out into the garden and had slept there. He
+remained on, but refused to sleep in the house, and a tent was rigged up
+for him outside. He stated that the disturbances were too much for his
+nerves, though he had no idea what they were. His behavior, on the first
+night, in retiring to the garden, was meant as a strong protest against
+such treatment of a tired guest. His temper had got the upper hand of
+him, after fruitless efforts to sleep, and, finally, he had tramped
+downstairs with an armful of blankets, anticipating many apologies next
+morning from host and hostess, and a peaceful night to follow.
+
+The following day a new maid arrived. She slept in the old part of the
+house, and shortly afterwards asked my sister if the house was haunted,
+as she had been kept awake by "heavy people running past her door with
+naked feet."
+
+By this time it was only the influence of the staid old servants which
+prevented the younger ones from taking flight. My sister and her husband
+were not alarmed, they were profoundly interested.
+
+The summer passed on, and there were days and weeks when nothing was
+heard, then quite suddenly the disturbances would begin again. As the
+noises sounded so very human it was extremely difficult to believe that
+they really did not proceed from incarnate beings, and my sister told me
+that time after time, as she listened, she would say to herself, "Now,
+beyond a shadow of doubt there are men in that room." She would creep
+upstairs, listen for some time with her hand on the door-knob--then
+suddenly throw it open--to find nothing. She never wearied of trying to
+surprise those invisible men.
+
+At times when her husband was away from home, she would spend the entire
+night in an obstinate attempt to solve the mystery. When she had no
+guests, and the servants were asleep in their new wing, she would awake
+to the noise. Taking her candle she would mount on bare, silent feet to
+the floor above, and listen at the door, often for half an hour at a
+time. She had no fear, but intense curiosity. It was easy to trace what
+was going on in the room. Men were packing, moving heavy boxes, throwing
+down heavy articles, walking about the floor with ponderous tread. First
+they would be at one end of the room, then move on to the other.
+Sometimes they approached so near the door behind which she stood, that
+she expected to see it open, and to be confronted by several burly
+ruffians. She would rush suddenly in, candle in hand, only to be
+received in sudden, utter silence. Not even the scurry of a scared
+mouse. After half an hour of patient waiting within the room, she would
+leave it, close the door, and sit down on the staircase. In a few
+moments the disturbance was again in full swing.
+
+Were I writing an account of these hauntings for the Psychical Society I
+should go into the most minute details; suffice it here to say, that
+during all this time every sort of investigation had been carried out by
+practical men and women, who had personally heard the disturbances, and
+who were keenly interested in the phenomena.
+
+Rats were, of course, the first natural suggestion, but no one put forth
+this theory after having once, with their own ears, heard the
+disturbances. No one could advance any rational conclusion. The whole
+affair was baffling in the extreme.
+
+It would have been simple enough to leave the place and forfeit the
+rent, but my sister and her husband loved the sport and the beauty of
+the surroundings, and were determined to remain, unless anything worse
+developed. No one ever saw anything unpleasant, or even suggestive of
+the supernatural, and the whole household had become more or less
+indifferent to the noises. They brought no harm to anybody, and might be
+safely ignored.
+
+Mrs. Stewart had four Pomeranian dogs which did not produce a calming
+effect upon their human companions. They were constantly seeing things,
+bristling and showing every sign of terror. Into the noisy room they
+refused to go, and they objected to being left a moment alone. They
+slept in my sister's bedroom.
+
+One night she was alone in the old house. Major Stewart had gone on
+business to Edinburgh, and the servants had retired to bed in their own
+wing. Mrs. Stewart was sitting in the smoking-room, reading an
+interesting novel by the light of a lamp. A good fire burned, and the
+four Poms were asleep on the hearth-rug. The door was slightly ajar, and
+outside it ran a short corridor.
+
+Suddenly, at its far end a terrible noise arose. A very different noise
+to anything that had been heard before, and one so blood-curdling that
+Mrs. Stewart at last knew the meaning of mortal fear.
+
+Two men were fighting desperately, swaying and wrestling, and snarling
+fiercely like two tigers locked in deathly combat. She glanced at the
+dogs. They were sitting up, staring with terrified eyes at the door,
+their bodies quivering, their little fangs showing. Then--with a
+bound--they were off, tearing for dear life along the corridor towards
+the stairs.
+
+It was a situation that demanded considerable nerve. Impossible to sit
+there alone in the dead of night, and listen to that hideous din, but a
+few yards from the door. She must follow the dogs as swiftly as she
+dared.
+
+She took up the lamp and moved stealthily to the door. The corridor was
+in complete darkness, and in that darkness the two men fought
+desperately, and below their breath they raved, groaned, blasphemed,
+incoherently. One long drawn out babel of breathless discord.
+
+In an overwhelming rush of terror Mrs. Stewart made a dash for the
+stairs, but while still in the corridor she heard flying feet
+approaching her from the end she was trying to reach. She shrank back
+against the wall, the flying feet passed in a wild tempestuous rush, and
+as they did so the lamp was struck violently out of her hand, and she
+was left in complete darkness.
+
+She reached her bedroom and locked the door, then she lighted the
+candles and looked for the dogs. She found them huddled together in
+abject terror under her bed.
+
+The next day my sister called upon the lady who owned the place, and
+recounting her experiences asked to be told the origin of the hauntings.
+She was told the following story:--
+
+Many years previously a farmer, who was a widower, lived in the lodge
+with an only son, who was grown up. The old farmer married again, a
+pretty young girl, and the son fell in love with his stepmother. A
+quarrel ensued, and a desperate conflict, in which the father stabbed
+his son to death.
+
+The Stewarts did not leave the haunted lodge till some long time after
+the events I have narrated; in fact, my sister inhabited it after her
+husband died, during a stay in the South of England.
+
+It is difficult to form any conjecture as to the actual cause of the
+disturbances. How do ghosts contrive to make such a noise? The common
+answer would be, "They were astral noises heard clairaudiently." But was
+every one in the house clairaudient? It is possible, but most unlikely.
+When the noises began every one under that roof heard them, and
+continued to hear them till they ceased.
+
+The lodge is still to let, so perhaps the mystery may yet be unraveled.
+Will a member of the Psychical Society not try his luck? The rent is
+low, the sport, of more than one kind, is excellent.
+
+In the course of time my widowed sister married again, and her second
+husband has given me a curious and gruesome story of an experience which
+came to him whilst he was still a bachelor. I will give it in his own
+words:--
+
+"About fourteen years ago I retired from the London Stock Exchange, and
+owing to ill health I was advised by my doctor to take a long sea
+voyage. This advice I followed, and much benefited by rest and sea air I
+returned to London, after an absence of nine months.
+
+"Always having lived an active life I could not contemplate settling
+down in utter idleness, and I consulted my solicitor on the subject of
+work.
+
+"He told me that a client of his had just bought a flourishing and
+well-known mill in North Wales. He proposed to run it for a time alone,
+and then turn it into a company or syndicate, as he had not sufficient
+capital of his own to ensure its ultimate success. In due time, my
+solicitor gave me a letter of introduction to this man, and I went to
+stay at his house close to the mill, which he had just bought.
+
+"It was a rambling old place, which in the good old days had been a
+coaching inn. Owing to bad management the landlord had failed, and for
+many years it had stood empty and 'to let.' It was a queer idea, I
+thought, to turn a coaching inn into a private residence, more
+especially as I soon heard that it had a very evil reputation.
+
+"Though I made many inquiries in the neighborhood I could never get
+anything more definite than that there was some evil influence in the
+house. Every one who lived in it came to a bad or violent end. I
+concluded that its proximity to his work caused the mill owner to
+purchase it, and I thought no more of the matter.
+
+"If I was favorably impressed, my intention was to put a certain amount
+of capital into the concern and learn the trade, but after staying for a
+few days with the mill owner, I came to the conclusion that I would have
+nothing to do with so odd a person.
+
+"He was of medium height and very thin, with rather straggling hair
+turning gray, and a sallow, hollow-cheeked face. He had a curious habit
+of glancing suddenly behind him, as if some one had just tapped him on
+the shoulder, and several other little traits bespoke an extreme
+nervousness of disposition.
+
+"One night I entered a room where he happened to be, and discovered him
+staring at himself in a mirror. I suppose I exhibited some surprise, for
+he wheeled round on me and cried, 'Well! how do you think I am looking?'
+
+"Had I answered truthfully I should have said, 'Stark, staring mad.' His
+face was ghastly pale, and his eyes were blazing. I made some careless
+reply, and shortly afterwards left the house to play a game of billiards
+with some acquaintances I had made. There I was given some interesting
+information. The mill owner was a declared bankrupt.
+
+"I returned to the house at ten o'clock, and at once retired to bed,
+without again seeing my unfortunate host.
+
+"The next morning I was awakened at half-past seven by my hostess
+knocking at my door, and inquiring if I had seen anything of her
+husband. I replied that I had seen nothing of him, but if she was
+anxious I would dress quickly and have a look round for him. This offer
+she accepted with gratitude. The station was not far distant, and she
+suggested that he might have taken the train to Manchester. Would I go
+and make inquiries?
+
+"I was soon on the way, and interviewed a porter, who informed me he had
+seen the mill owner about an hour ago, not on the platform, but staring
+at the rails. The man had watched him, thinking his behavior suspicious,
+and remembering the evil reputation of his dwelling, but after a while
+he had turned away, and was last seen walking rapidly off in the
+direction of his own home.
+
+"I went back and reported what I had heard, and the very anxious wife
+suggested that I should snatch a hasty breakfast and then make inquiries
+at a farm a mile off, which was also their property. This I readily
+consented to do. I was extremely sorry for the poor woman, and though
+she did not make a confidant of me, I could see she was consumed with
+anxiety.
+
+"My errand was quite fruitless, nothing was known of the master, no one
+had seen him, and back I went to the mill house, feeling by this time
+that probably the wife had every cause for her anxiety.
+
+"I saw nothing of her when I entered. I looked into every room on the
+ground floor, and was just going to ring for a servant, when I fancied I
+heard a faint cry.
+
+"I went out into the hall and listened intently. The voice was calling
+from somewhere below the ground, and I thought at once of the huge
+cellars I had been shown, where once the good old ale had been brewed
+and stored. I ran to the door which led to the cellars; it was open, and
+then I clearly heard a woman's voice crying, 'Oh! bring a knife! bring
+a knife quickly!'
+
+"I darted back into the dining-room and caught up the first knife I
+could find, a ham carver, then hastened to the door and began descending
+the dark stairs.
+
+"The cellars were fairly well lighted by two grated windows, and a
+horrible sight met my eyes. There stood the wife, bending under the
+weight of her husband, who was suspended by a rope round his neck from
+the great beam overhead. One glance at the hideously distorted face, the
+glazed eyes protruding from their sockets, the gaping mouth and swollen
+tongue, told me the worst.
+
+"Hastily I severed the rope, and the wife and her dead husband sank to
+the ground together.
+
+"There was little to be done. We laid the corpse flat on the stone
+floor, and I persuaded her to leave it and come upstairs with me, and
+wait for the arrival of the doctor and police. This she consented to do.
+She was very quiet and composed, a curious apathy of indifference
+possessed her, and I would far rather have seen her in floods of natural
+tears.
+
+"By evening the house had fallen into a dead silence. The doctor had
+pronounced life to be extinct, and the corpse had been carried up to an
+unused bedroom immediately over the smoking-room. The police found that
+the mill owner had committed suicide by hanging. He had jumped off a
+stone slab, after having adjusted the rope to the beam and his own
+throat. With the exception of an old nurse who was devoted to her
+mistress, the servants all departed in a body, and the house was left
+brooding under a weight of intolerable depression.
+
+"I did not blame the servants. As a matter of fact, there was nothing I
+would have liked better than to quit the mill house there and then, and
+never set foot in it again, but I had the desolate widow to consider. I
+could not leave her alone, whilst there was still the smallest
+possibility of my being of use. Added to this I had the queerest feeling
+that she required protection, though from what I would have been at a
+loss to say.
+
+"Another feeling, which I combated violently, was a sensation of being
+mocked and jeered at by some unseen entity. I was being urged to get out
+of the house, to recognize my own impotence, to mind my own business,
+and when I metaphorically replied, 'Get thee behind me, Satan,' I could
+have sworn I heard a sly laugh.
+
+"Of course I told myself all this was but the result of a shock to the
+nerves, and I was not going to pay any attention to it, so despite my
+intense longing to run out of the house I settled down with the daily
+paper, a cigarette, and a novel in the smoking-room, and resolutely
+turned my thoughts away from the tragedy.
+
+"The widow, and her old nurse, who had promised me not to leave her
+mistress for a moment, had retired together for the night, so I felt
+satisfied, so far as they were concerned.
+
+"I suppose I must have dozed off, for I was suddenly roused broad awake
+by footsteps overhead, in the room where the corpse lay. I sat up
+straight and listened intently. Were my nerves playing tricks with me?
+No; certainly not. There was no mistaking that sound for hallucination.
+It was perfectly clear and distinct. A man was walking about overhead,
+and the only man save myself within these walls had hanged himself by
+the neck until he was dead. There it was--the sound. A man's footsteps
+pacing slowly up and down the floor of the bedroom above, from end to
+end, backwards and forwards.
+
+"I considered what I had better do. I was sure the widow and the old
+nurse were in the bedroom, quite at the other end of the house. Probably
+they were both asleep. I hoped so. What had I better do--nothing? Yet
+this inaction irked me. My curiosity was intense. The supernatural had
+never occupied much of my thoughts, but now it began to do so. Those
+steps must proceed from the supernatural. There was no other
+explanation. I was the only live man in the house.
+
+"At last I could stand it no longer. I jumped up and proceeded upstairs.
+The lights had been left to me to extinguish; they were still on, and I
+saw at once that the door of the bedroom was open.
+
+"I entered the room, lit the gas and searched every corner. No living
+thing was present. The dead man lay in rigid lines beneath a sheet. I
+left the room again in darkness, and carefully closing the door I went
+softly along to the widow's room, and knocked very gently.
+
+"The old nurse came to the door. She told me her mistress was asleep,
+and that the doctor had given her a sleeping draught. Neither of them
+had left the room since they entered it to go to bed, more than an hour
+ago.
+
+"I went downstairs again and took up the newspaper, but almost
+immediately the footsteps began once more overhead, in the room where
+the dead man lay.
+
+"The sound was soft and stealthy at first, then it grew louder. The same
+footsteps moving about the floor, up and down, up and down. I am not
+ashamed to say that I felt a cold sweat break out all over me. I could
+not stand that sound any longer. I made up my mind to go to bed.
+
+"I removed my shoes and turned out the light. As I did so I could have
+sworn I heard a sly, low laugh behind me. I crept upstairs. The door of
+that horrible room was again open. With a shaking hand I closed it, and
+hurried to my bedroom, locking the door at once.
+
+"The next day I told my experiences to one of the acquaintances I had
+made, and he volunteered to come in and keep me company until the
+funeral was over. I gladly accepted his offer. I did not hear the
+footsteps again. I conclude because the widow was sitting with us on the
+following nights, and the ghost had no desire to terrify her."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+AURAS
+
+
+I was born with the power to see auras, and I had attained to quite a
+grown-up age before I discovered that every one could not see them.
+
+What is an aura? You will see them glittering round the heads of saints,
+and of The Christ in church windows. You will see them painted round the
+head of the Blessed Virgin, round the head of the Infant she holds, but,
+indeed, auras are the property of all, however humble and lowly. Nothing
+that has life, be the spark ever so faint, is without its astral
+counterpart, its tenuous surrounding atmosphere. Science has
+demonstrated this. Auras have now been photographed.
+
+Habitual seeing of human auras has made me no more or less observant of
+them than I am of the human face. If I am asked by any one to say what
+her aura looks like, I do so to the best of my ability, but at that
+complacent moment it is a very tame affair, much like the aura that any
+one may see surrounding a lighted candle. A medley of prismatic hues, no
+color predominating.
+
+Where auras become really interesting is in a room full of people. I
+look down to the far end of the room where a group is seated talking. I
+cannot hear what they are saying, but I can tell at once whether the
+conversation is harmonious or otherwise.
+
+Often there will be one member of the group whose aura is very
+disturbed. It will emit flashes of brilliant red as he talks vehemently.
+The aura of the man he is addressing has turned a sulky, leaden gray.
+
+A woman who is sitting listening has an aura of intense boredom. The
+colors are all there, but they have become faded, and the extreme tips
+droop dejectedly, like so many wilted blades of grass.
+
+The biggest aura I ever saw was that of the late Mr. Sexton, a great
+orator whom I once heard in the House of Commons. Some people have mean,
+tight little auras, others have great spreading haloes of brilliant
+light. I met with a very unusual aura quite lately.
+
+A young woman, Miss L., came to tea with me, a charming, cultured woman,
+whose profession it is to keep a large girls' school. She is much
+interested in occult matters, and we "got upon" the subject of a rather
+wonderful case of spiritualism of which she knows the details--the
+medium being a young girl whom I will call "Elsie."
+
+Whilst I was talking to Miss L. I could not help observing something
+very peculiar in her aura; it was all lopsided. In place of being a
+complete circle around her head, it had a huge bulge out to the left. I
+had never before seen an aura like that, and it interested me greatly.
+
+Just before leaving she mentioned auras, and asked me what hers was
+like.
+
+I told her honestly that it was peculiar, lopsided, and bulging on one
+side.
+
+She laughed and said she knew that, because "Elsie" always chaffed her
+about it, saying, "You wear your halo all awry." This was very
+interesting confirmation of my power to see auras correctly. I don't
+know "Elsie," I don't even know her name, which has been kept a secret,
+but we evidently see Miss L.'s aura in exactly the same peculiar form.
+
+The other day I was sitting reading by the window, and as I moved in my
+chair I caught sight, "with the tail of my eye," of something bright at
+the other end of the room. A patch of light about a foot deep, and two
+feet long was coming from behind the edge of a tall screen that hid a
+door. I rose and walked out of the room. Behind the screen was a maid,
+whom I had not heard enter the open door. She was busy over some quiet
+work, and it was her aura that I had seen, though she herself was hidden
+from view.
+
+Once before in my life my attention has been drawn to the aura of one
+whom I could not at the moment see in the flesh.
+
+I happened to be passing a glove shop in the south of France, and as I
+strolled slowly past the door a blaze of yellow gold inside the shop
+caught my eye, and attracted my attention. I paused at once and looked
+through the open door. This great golden aura belonged to the Empress
+Elizabeth of Austria, who was standing at the counter. Her back was
+turned towards me, and I stood for a minute watching this aura of a
+woman whose restless imagination, and passionate love for the bitter
+wine of liberty, brought her finally to an absolutely fitting death. I
+believe she would have chosen this death before all others, for at heart
+she was a born anarchist. She fell painlessly by the dagger of
+anarchism.
+
+One effect of being able to see auras is that they fix certain incidents
+firmly in the mind. I remember one such incident very clearly. I was
+staying at Hawarden with the Gladstones whilst the Irish troubles of
+'82 were at their height. One afternoon we were all assembled on the
+lawn having tea; Mr. Gladstone was standing rather apart, his hands full
+of papers, which had just been brought to him. I saw him unfold what
+looked like a large poster, glance at it, then suddenly he dashed it to
+the ground and stamped viciously upon it. I heard him give vent to some
+exclamations of intense anger, but had I heard nothing I could not have
+failed to know he was desperately annoyed over something, for he was
+suddenly wrapped in a brilliant crimson cloud, through which sharp
+flashes like lightning darted hither and thither. He was "seeing red."
+
+I remember Mrs. Gladstone murmuring something about "posters being torn
+down in Ireland," but I was too thrilled over her husband's aura to pay
+much heed to what she said. I shall never forget that scene, and the
+practical disappearance of Mr. Gladstone in the enveloping folds of a
+great red cloud. In a minute or two he emerged, and resumed his habitual
+aura, which extended to about two and a half feet beyond his head, and
+was largely tinged with purple.
+
+At Hawarden Church on Sunday, whilst he read the lessons, I watched his
+aura with much interest, because it changed so continuously, and I
+discovered that this change arose out of his absorption in what he read.
+Only one little example can I remember to illustrate what I mean. "And
+the heart of Pharaoh was hardened and he would not let the people go."
+
+In reading those words aloud Mr. Gladstone's aura deepened to red, and I
+saw he was very indignant with Pharaoh's behavior. During the sermon he
+sat facing us in our pew, and in a chair just beneath the pulpit, and I
+could tell by watching his aura just how he felt about the discourse.
+
+Later on, just after the tragic murders by the Fenians in Phoenix Park
+of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Bourke, I received a note from Mrs.
+Gladstone, asking me to go to breakfast with them in their London house
+in Buckingham Gate. When I arrived the first person I saw was Lady
+Frederick Cavendish, calm and composed, and bearing her loss with quiet
+stoicism, but the atmosphere of the house was very different from that
+of Hawarden. A gloom was over all, and for the first time I noticed that
+Mr. Gladstone's aura was depressed and tired. Its vigorous vibrations
+had considerably slowed down, like a jet of flame that had been turned
+low, and the extremities drooped dejectedly.
+
+Though crimson red is the color of anger, there is a beautiful soft rose
+which is the color of love. The "green-eyed monster" of jealousy history
+has handed down to us from the ancient seers, also the "jaundiced"
+appearance of envy. A gloomy, grumbling person has a very leaden gray
+atmosphere, and one who has "a fit of the blues" shows he is "off color"
+in his dull, muddy blue aura. But there is a beautiful sky-blue to be
+seen in the auras of many artists and scientists. Very material, earthly
+people have generally a deep, dull orange tinge in their astral
+envelope, and there is a glorious golden yellow surrounding the heads of
+the spiritually joyful and highly intellectual. Purple is the color of
+power, greatness. Children have an aura of crystal whiteness, which
+develops color after the age of seven.
+
+I remember the aura of Frederic Myers very well. A large and intensely
+spiritual halo. He is the only man I can remember in those days--about
+'92-'96--as having an aura within an aura, though this phenomenon is now
+becoming more marked. "A rainbow was about his head," those words
+explain exactly what I mean. About a foot above his head circled a pure
+rainbow, and this beautiful decoration looked as if it were superimposed
+upon the original aura, which streamed out far above it. I have only as
+yet, in these later years, seen this rainbow above the heads of two
+people: one alive, Miss Maud Roydon, one alas! gone west--the
+incomparable Elsie Inglis. I conclude it means a degree of
+self-sacrificing spirituality, which as yet has been attained to by very
+few. Indeed, I would venture further, and assert that it stands for a
+certain initiation conferred upon "the beloved" by the Masters of
+Wisdom.
+
+King Edward was blessed by a very fine aura of constantly changing
+colors. I remember once noticing this in the most unspiritual of
+environments, and whilst the King was still Prince of Wales.
+
+We were on Newmarket Heath, and His Majesty came up to me and said, "I
+hear you are married." After a few minutes of friendly conversation,
+which had taken an amusingly domestic turn, he said to me, "Now, how
+much has your husband got a year?"
+
+There was nothing in the question but the most friendly interest; still,
+it will naturally seem strange that he should have possessed the
+faintest curiosity as to the financial situation of so humble a member
+of his people.
+
+Whilst he put the question, and waited for the answer, his whole aura
+and atmosphere deepened and intensified. He was actually interested in
+my answer, and this I have always believed was the fundamental reason
+of his great popularity. The power he possessed of throwing himself
+heart and soul into the trivial, as into the great things of life. He
+was intensely human, with a genuine fund of sympathy for the ordinary
+affairs of life. He liked to know the domestic conditions of those whom
+he honored with his friendship, and the first time I ever spoke to him,
+at a dance given by the Rothschilds in Piccadilly, I saw at once that
+the natural human simplicities of life absorbed him absolutely whilst
+under discussion. Though a man who would not tolerate a liberty, the
+easiest way to get on with him when alone, was to confide in him any
+personal difficulty, and to forget who he was, always providing that one
+had the good breeding to remember instantly that he was the king when
+speaking to him in public.
+
+The most occult day (to use the popular expression) I ever spent was the
+26th June, 1902, the day of the postponed Coronation. I shall never
+forget that warm summer day of stupendous gloom, and oppressive
+darkness. There was something more than meteorology in that leaden pall
+that hid the skies, and enveloped the whole of London. Even the densest
+materialists were uneasy, startled and inquiring, for putting aside that
+mighty aura of sorrow and gloom rising up to heaven from the hearts of
+millions, there was, as it were, the response of heaven herself. That
+dark and mournful response Nature assumed, when wrapping herself in a
+shroud of leaden darkness she brooded over the city, like the pall of
+death itself. That day the mystic walked in a dream, enmeshed in the
+warp of great occult happenings being woven out in the loom of Karmic
+fatality. It was impossible to settle down to doing anything. One just
+"sat about," living every moment intensely.
+
+Once, when presenting a girl at Court, during the present reign, I
+noticed what a very striking aura John Burns possesses. This girl
+naturally wished to see all she could, so we went to the Palace very
+early, and found a seat in the Throne Room, close to where the King and
+Queen would sit later on. In a short time celebrities began to stroll
+into the royal circles, divided from us by a cord. First came the
+present Lord Grey of Falloden, and then came Mr. John Burns, resplendent
+in dark blue knee breeches and gold-embroidered coat. He moved about
+quite familiarly inside the holy of holies, speaking first to one, then
+another of the gathering little crowd. Being so close to him I observed
+him with unusual interest. His aura is very large, and what I can only
+describe as massive, and already it was tinged by the gray veil of
+disappointment. I have seen him several times since, and the veil has
+become more opaque. What interested me so profoundly in him that night
+were the contrasts I knew to exist in his life, and which must have
+profoundly influenced his outlook on human existence.
+
+One afternoon I was walking alone up Piccadilly. There had been rumors
+of coming riots, but no one in the West End gave any credence to such
+silly stories, and the streets were full of the usual gay throng, intent
+on amusement.
+
+Suddenly, as I walked along, a youth on a bicycle dashed past the
+pavement, shouting something I could not catch. More men on bicycles
+followed. The promenaders began to "sit up and take notice." Carriage
+horses were being smartly whipped up, and women began to scurry
+nervously.
+
+Then it seemed to me I could hear something above the roar of the
+ordinary traffic, a hoarse prolonged shout. Servants now appeared on
+doorsteps, and looked about anxiously for non-existent policemen, others
+began closing outside shutters before windows. Just as I reached the
+Naval and Military Club I saw that the servants had come out, and were
+about to close both great gates--"In" and "Out." One of these men
+pointed up the street and advised me at once to seek cover, and I saw in
+the dim distance what looked like a mighty crowd advancing.
+
+In a second I had darted through the gates, and was safely inside before
+they closed upon the approaching mob.
+
+I have only a very confused memory of what happened after. Of kindly
+attentions from the members. Of women's shrieks as their carriages were
+stopped, and their valuables taken from them. Of the deafening roar of
+furious male voices, crashings of glass windows, howls of savage
+exultation, as a hosier's shop close by fell victim to the rioters, the
+clatter of hoofs from terrified horses. I could see nothing, but the
+battering upon the club gates added tenfold to the terrifying din. The
+members withdrew, taking me with them, to the house, and prepared to
+hold it against the furious mob, should the gates give way.
+
+Such wild moments are not easily forgotten, and why I looked upon John
+Burns that night at Court with such a peculiar interest was because he
+led that riot, and suffered imprisonment for so doing.
+
+Looking upon him in Court dress, in the royal enclosure, on intimate
+terms with the great of the world, though perhaps not the great of the
+earth, knowing him to hold high office in the government, I marked the
+change. Then throwing back my mind to those poignant hours in the past,
+which he had created, I felt that nothing is too extraordinary to belong
+to the careers of some men; they live through several lives in one.
+Their Karma is so crowded with stirring events, in the working out of
+the past, in the makings of the future, that nothing human can be any
+longer strange to them. The auras of such men are naturally great,
+because such contrasts of light and shade only come in the lives of men
+possessed of great and lofty ideals.
+
+For some years little has been heard of the former idol of Battersea. He
+is facing west now, though a ray or two of dawning light may still touch
+him in the near future. That wild idealism which comes to men who keep
+their eyes fixed upon a dawn so long in coming, fades out behind the
+veil of disillusion, as the days come not, and the years draw nigh with
+no pleasure in them. Man's ingratitude to man is one of the cruelest
+tests imposed upon the soul of idealism. The soul that can bear it
+without a tinge of cynicism has risen to mighty heights.
+
+Such grandeur of soul was possessed by Elsie Inglis. So impregnated was
+she with pure love of humanity, that when her own country virtually
+turned its back upon her, this irreparable disgrace, brought upon
+themselves by her own people, cast no shadow upon her soul. In the years
+before the war I often noted her lovely aura as I sat amongst an
+audience, and watched her on a platform fighting woman's battle.
+
+After the war broke out I only saw her once, by the merest chance. It
+was then I marked that a rainbow was now about her head, and I knew at
+once that tremendous events were in store for her, though the British
+Government had refused her services. Ah! the poor little cramped mind of
+England's officialism! yet has not this very poverty of imagination,
+this iron-bound worship of worn-out tradition, brought to birth an
+internationalism which could never have been ours without it? It drove
+forth hundreds, thousands of ardent souls, to other lands. Rejected by
+their own, they clasped the pierced hands of strangers, and laid down
+their own incomparably gallant lives at the foot of a cross, whereon
+hung those who had at length become their brothers through a commune of
+agony.
+
+Elsie Inglis received no honor or decoration from the people, or the
+"Great of England." Only the body, worn very thin in the service of
+humanity, was at last honored in death. Knowing the woman, and the stuff
+she was made of, one can only feel intensely this was all as it should
+have been. To offer Elsie Inglis a medal would have been a sacrilege.
+"Hands off such souls as hers," is the cry one's every instinct rings
+forth to the "bauble worshipers" of this world. Besides, and this is a
+very great besides, those who go with a rainbow about their heads are
+not destined for earthly honors. They have taken the great step, they
+have received the great Initiation, a jewel in the blazing crown of
+eternity, and for them no more are the laurel wreaths that perish. In
+justice to those throned on high on earth, the above should be
+remembered. If it is with Elsie Inglis, as I fully believe, she would
+have understood that for her God and Mammon were eternally divorced,
+and any attempt at worldly recognition would have been frustrated by
+"The Lords of Eternal Light and Wisdom," whose chosen disciple she had
+become.
+
+The psychology of the people is a very interesting and curious study, to
+the aura seer. The analysis of the collective mind awaits some great
+writer who will give us a book of absorbing interest. Those who can see
+auras have a great advantage, if they are public speakers. During the
+period of my life, when I had a great deal of political platform work, I
+was always very sensitive to my audiences, because I could see how they
+were taking my remarks. I have always found big audiences of the people
+very colorless in the main. Flashes of bright color would be apparent
+all over the hall, but there was no sustained glow. Whilst sitting on
+some one else's platform, often that of a great orator, I have marked
+exactly the same phenomenon. The soul of the people is still young and
+childlike. It has the indifference of extreme youth, the forgetfulness
+and ingratitude of extreme youth.
+
+I look back upon the fall of Parnell and Dilke, great minds whose
+earthly careers were destroyed by the people. All the world knows why.
+To-day I look on the "perpetrators" of the Gallipoli and Mesopotamia
+tragedies, and I see they have all gone up higher in the esteem of the
+people. They have risen in the world, and are looked upon as ripe for
+even higher office. The poor human brain reels before such anomalies. I
+was in London when the Gallipoli reports were given to the public. They
+shook me to the very foundation of my being. I think they were given out
+towards the end of the week, because I remember saying to myself, "on
+Sunday morning the British working man and woman will read all this
+abomination of desolation and crime in their Sunday paper."
+
+Purposely I strolled about the London parks in the lovely afternoon of
+that Sunday. Crowds were there, reading, courting, sleeping. I went home
+realizing that no one cared. The collective aura of the people was as
+serene and indifferent as ever.
+
+I have come to think more kindly of our people's pathetic indifference,
+because I am sure it is the indifference of very young souls, who have
+passed through but few incarnations, and "know not what they do." I see
+them exploited by the politicians, given a rag doll to amuse themselves
+with, anything will do, from the big loaf to the "Kayzer," and sent to
+the polls hugging their golliwog, but I doubt the returning troops being
+so easily amused and deluded.
+
+The state of the Universe is the expression of man's desire, and man is
+really the builder of his own body, that "house not made with hands,"
+though in his youthful ignorance he attributes both to an over-ruling
+intelligence, whom he alternately blesses and curses. When men learn
+that they must work with, and not against the mental laws, they will no
+longer ask why God permits the world to be so full of misery. They will
+cease to erect a scapegoat, because they will have learned that they are
+the makers of their own misery or happiness.
+
+Many people seem to think that the power to see auras must be very
+useful in helping one to distinguish between friends and foes, but such
+is not really the case. Auras exemplify individual character, not
+individual predilections, and some of my friends being very bad
+characters, indeed, have shocking auras. I had one great friend who, at
+the beginning of our acquaintance, spent much of his time in prison,
+which was really a blessing for his ill-used wife. His aura was
+literally in tatters, just a little irregular circle of rags and
+patches.
+
+I had just succeeded in making him sober, by insisting constantly and
+most seriously that he was "a cut above the public-house," and much too
+superior a man to mix with such degraded companions, when the war broke
+out. He went to the front, and on his first return to Blighty, badly
+gassed, he came at once to see me. I really felt a sort of personal
+pride in him, and an actual sense of personal possession in his
+enormously grown aura. It was clear evidence of his sprouting soul. He
+went back to France, but was wounded and again gassed, and this time his
+return was final, as he was of no further use.
+
+For a few months he did odd jobs with great difficulty, then, finally,
+he succumbed to pneumonia. I was very proud indeed of his aura as I sat
+beside his bed, his hand in mine. There was real love in my heart for
+him that day. Here, indeed, was an infant soul that had begun to develop
+on the right road, and the tattered aura of rags and patches had become
+a neatly trimmed little halo round his poor tired head.
+
+So he went west, and his broken body, wrapped in the British flag, went
+to a soldier's grave, and a firing party gave him the Last Post.
+
+His wife returned home to find that her neighbors, anxious to celebrate
+the occasion, had brought their best china and had arranged a tea-party.
+As we sat down, she turned to me and said:
+
+"Well, thank God, my man's been buried like a gentleman."
+
+When I came to think it over I arrived at the conclusion that "the worst
+character in the slums" had not done so badly with his life, after all.
+He had died like a gentleman. The British Flag is a strange case of
+transubstantiation. At first, just so many pieces of common material
+sold across a counter. Fashioned into the emblem of our Nation it
+becomes a sacred symbol, taken kneeling like a sacrament, which indeed
+it has become. What better shroud could any man ask for?
+
+I am sorry that I have had no opportunity of seeing President Wilson's
+aura, the man who has turned his face towards a heavenly ideal, and is
+scattering the seed amongst all the nations. When a man sets out on such
+a long radiant path, he will carry visibly in the daylight an
+illuminated brow. He has brought to us the vision without which the
+people perish.
+
+The life of the heart has always meant much more to me than the life of
+the head. The rebel by nature can only be held by love, and I have been
+blest by twenty-eight years of perfect union with one who has given me
+love for love, faith for faith, and complete intellectual understanding.
+My life has also been wonderfully gifted by staunchest friends, who have
+loved me through sunshine and storm, and who still clasp hands with me
+across continents and seas.
+
+I suppose I must have enemies. They say every one has, but they have
+never made me aware of their enmity, perhaps because there is no room in
+a very full heart to receive aught but love. If I were to single apart
+one outstanding feature in my life, it would be the wonderful kindness
+and friendship that has been given to me. Ah! how easy that makes it to
+write lovingly of others.
+
+Behind all this lies the master passion of the born mystic for
+liberation. The constant ache and urge for real freedom, and power to be
+victorious over all circumstances. At home in all scenes, restful in all
+fortunes. There is the urge of the soul for universality of contact with
+all humanity, independent of race, color or creed. The urge of the
+spirit to smash the confines which pinion it down to earth.
+
+I think it is really the urge of reincarnating life still clinging to
+me. The knowledge that my immortal soul must return to the House of
+Bondage, until perfection is reached, and there is the going out no more
+from the Father's House, from a freedom which has become supreme.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+ADIEU
+
+
+To-day there are many, an ever-swelling number, who behold with joy the
+gates ajar, who standing in the twilight catch momentary glimpses of
+dawn upon the horizon of time, who know by personal experience that they
+have come into touch with a region where vast schemes are conceived, and
+universal laws of boundless magnitude connected with the soul's eternal
+pilgrimage are carried out.
+
+Again, there are others, timid, shrinking souls to whom, by a mere
+chance combination of circumstances, a glimpse has been shown which is
+none too welcome. Such affrighted ones drop the eyelids from the
+startling vision. They will have none of it, and they are free to accept
+or reject, go on, or stand still.
+
+Others, again, have actually been born with that super-normal sight
+which can discern the workings behind the drop scene shrouding the
+stupendous drama of cosmic government.
+
+I have long been conscious that the veil has worn very thin between
+myself and another world lying around me. As the years draw swiftly on,
+and every second thrown back into eternity brings me nearer to blessed
+deliverance I find the rents in the veil grow more numerous. They bring
+single shining moments, which reveal the spirit of life, its motives and
+consecration.
+
+Through the driving storm wrack there will come quite suddenly a
+brilliant heavenly glimpse. It never lasts long, but long enough to show
+me reality. Something of the vastness of cosmos and the pathetic
+minuteness of this earth, just a speck of star dust in the palm of God,
+an atom of world stuff swinging in boundless space.
+
+Something of the reality of those shining ones who guide the progression
+of natural order, embodiments of resistless energy and of stateliest
+imperial mien.
+
+Glimpses that show to me what was in the mind of the great Christian
+Mystic when he wrote of a mighty angel: "A rainbow was upon his head,
+and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire."
+
+Behind such visions extend vast ranges of being, quite outside my ken,
+yet, nevertheless, speaking to me of things, for the expression of which
+no words have yet been coined. Infinitely greater than anything that can
+be said. Significant in meaning beyond expression, and far transcending
+imagination.
+
+Such glimpses show to me lives that as compared with ours, are as ours
+to the tiniest insect afloat for an hour on the breath of the south
+wind. Lives which ordain the fateful hour when the rise and fall of
+empires, the destruction of nations, and the clash of worlds, and their
+cosmic significance in world history shall begin or end. Where things
+life promised but never gave come to full fruition.
+
+Other glimpses and echoes from the Great Beyond bring to me the answer
+to a problem, a few notes and a new melody, a new energy of hope and
+love, an inspiration from the Great Brotherhood, whose lowliest
+disciple I am, whose work to establish the Brotherhood, the true
+affinity of humanity upon earth I hold most dear, most high.
+
+In the present dark hour all the world is drinking of one chalice, its
+wine the life outpoured for others. All humanity is partaking of one
+bread, a body which has most truly and literally being given to be
+broken. Death has left many songs unsung, a myriad graves are filled,
+youth is blighted in the bud, in this white winter men call death, and
+its cup is pressed close to the lips of love. Many are the hopes that
+lie folded away in the quiet cemetery of the heart, where we lay flowers
+of tender reminiscence. Yet, this sacrament of fellowship which is
+eclipsed in the awful impoverishment of human life will one day be
+swelled by the return of the young, fallen on the Field of Honor,
+glorified and purified for their God-appointed work in evolution.
+
+Perhaps I have gone a few steps farther than most people into the
+mysterious beyond, come nearer reading the great riddle, for the
+creature who is not afraid of thought and worldly condemnation, who is
+not afraid of solitude or ridicule, will soon come near the truth, will
+quickly catch the incommunicable thrill of advancing destinies. She will
+cease to live under the despotism of days, the tyranny of years. She
+will know that the swiftest touch cannot put a finger on the present,
+and that there is but one recorder of time, the great star clock of the
+sky.
+
+The symbol of life is the Circle, not the Straight line, and each of us
+lives over again the story of humanity, as in the shadow of pre-natal
+gloom we repeat the physical evolution of the race. The increase of
+knowledge but widens the horizon of the unknown promised land, to which
+we are moving onward and upward throughout the ages.
+
+However far the mind travels there is always deep down in the soul
+stores of information awaiting transference to the surface of
+consciousness. Rich mines of knowledge are there awaiting the day when
+they will be uncovered, waiting in patience the day when some Divine
+Adventurer will search for them and bring them to light.
+
+However great its aspirations the soul but looks out upon an illimitable
+horizon, and sees the human pilgrimage as a long Emmæus walk, with
+hearts burning by the way. Always must there be mystery in life, because
+life is spiritual, not material. The presence of mystery in life is the
+presence of God, and the infinity of God shows that mystery must always
+exist.
+
+Such glimpses beyond the veil are all transfiguring. They exalt the
+heart in a single flash to a glow point, and show the soul of the
+Universe in the incandescent crucible of the eternal. In a deeply
+beshadowed time such visions tell us all that we need know, and it is
+this: God is with us and in us. Though obscure for the moment His
+transcendence stands outside the change and flux of time, and His awful
+sovereignty sways irresistibly the tides of human circumstances.
+
+Hours must come when the pen falls from the nerveless fingers, the task
+is left undone, when the weary cry goes up, "There is nothing we can
+do!" We have been doing for so many thousand years, the years which the
+locusts hath eaten. What have we achieved?
+
+When such hours come, as come they must, is there nothing to fall back
+upon but this awful confession of failure, this haunting undertone of
+all our mortal life that many ages have not hushed?
+
+Surely, yes! There is always for the mystic the unmeasured immensity of
+soul land to explore, that Great Beyond and within which is infinite,
+eternal, and of which we are all a part.
+
+Ah! but it may be said, all are not mystics, to which I would reply, all
+who desire can be mystics. For what, after all, is a mystic, but one who
+enters into possession of the inner life? One who becomes fully aware of
+her self-consciousness, and who gains thereby new faculties and
+enlightenment. It places her in touch with that supreme reality which
+some call God and some The Great Creative Power. The mystic knows that
+power is to be found within through identification and submergence with
+the Primordial Force which constitutes the ocean of life. She can always
+pass the sky and clouds of earth, and enter the great, deep, real world
+outside. It is always possible to her to seek a fairer world where the
+only things that matter are the eternal verities, which should be taken
+kneeling, like a sacrament.
+
+    Love and life which is Beauty.
+    Love and power which is Goodness.
+    Love and knowledge which is Wisdom.
+
+The Road of the Flaming Sacred Heart is strewn with insight, kindness
+and sympathy, which gives eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, and a
+voice to the dumb! It is paved with love that serves the humble and
+defends the disinherited. Bravely it walks the _Via Dolorosa_, and it
+"Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, its reward
+to know the love of God, unutterable even to them that know."
+
+The Mystic can face the future without fear, for the power has been
+given her to take her soul, and like a carrier dove, loose it into
+space, to speed away into the fathomless, the everlasting, the voiceless
+deep whose silence is the "Welcome Home" of God.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ghosts I Have Seen, by Violet Tweedale
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+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ghosts I Have Seen, by Violet Tweedale.
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ghosts I Have Seen, by Violet Tweedale
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ghosts I Have Seen
+       And Other Psychic Experiences
+
+Author: Violet Tweedale
+
+Release Date: May 23, 2012 [EBook #39769]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GHOSTS I HAVE SEEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 415px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="415" height="650" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h1>GHOSTS I HAVE SEEN</h1>
+
+<h2>AND OTHER PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES</h2>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>VIOLET TWEEDALE</h2>
+
+
+<p class="center">
+NEW YORK<br />
+FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY<br />
+PUBLISHERS<br />
+<br />
+<i>Copyright, 1919, by</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Frederick A. Stokes Company</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>All rights reserved</i><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+CHAPTER                                                       <span class="tocnum">PAGE</span><br />
+<br />
+I <span class="smcap">"Silk Dress" and "Rumpus"</span>                                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></span><br />
+<br />
+II <span class="smcap">The Ghost of Broughton Hall</span>                              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_14'>14</a></span><br />
+<br />
+III <span class="smcap">Curious Psychic Experiences</span>                             <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_33'>33</a></span><br />
+<br />
+IV <span class="smcap">East End Days and Nights</span>                                 <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_48'>48</a></span><br />
+<br />
+V <span class="smcap">The Man in the Marylebone Road</span>                            <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_66'>66</a></span><br />
+<br />
+VI <span class="smcap">The Ghost of Prince Charlie</span>                              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_74'>74</a></span><br />
+<br />
+VII <span class="smcap">Pilgrims and Strangers</span>                                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_91'>91</a></span><br />
+<br />
+VIII <span class="smcap">Some Strange Events</span>                                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_98'>98</a></span><br />
+<br />
+IX <span class="smcap">Pompey and the Duchess</span>                                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_114'>114</a></span><br />
+<br />
+X <span class="smcap">The Invisible Hands</span>                                      <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_124'>124</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XI <span class="smcap">Dawns</span>                                                   <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_133'>133</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XII <span class="smcap">Peacock's Feathers&mdash;The Skeleton Hand at Monte Carlo</span>   <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_146'>146</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XIII <span class="smcap">I Commit Murder</span>                                       <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_157'>157</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XIV <span class="smcap">The Angel of Lourdes</span>                                   <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_175'>175</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XV <span class="smcap">The Wraith of the Army Gentleman</span>                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_184'>184</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XVI <span class="smcap">An Austrian Adventure</span>                                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_197'>197</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XVII <span class="smcap">Across the Threshold</span>                                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_211'>211</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XVIII <span class="smcap">Haunted Rooms</span>                                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_221'>221</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XIX <span class="smcap">"The New Jeanne D'Arc"</span>                                 <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_241'>241</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XX <span class="smcap">Haunted Houses&mdash;"Castel A Mare"</span>                         <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_251'>251</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXI <span class="smcap">The Sequel</span>                                             <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_263'>263</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXII <span class="smcap">The Haunted Lodge</span>                                     <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_276'>276</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXIII <span class="smcap">Auras</span>                                                <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_291'>291</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXIV <span class="smcap">Adieu</span>                                                 <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_307'>307</a></span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2>GHOSTS I HAVE SEEN</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>"SILK DRESS" AND "RUMPUS"</h3>
+
+
+<p>From the terrible conditions of the present I have turned back to the
+past, for a little joy and a great deliverance.</p>
+
+<p>In the present one lives no longer from day to day, but from hour to
+hour, and even a fleeting memory of the joys that are no more refreshes
+the soul&mdash;wearied, and fainting with a pallid anxiety that wraith-like
+envelops the whole being in a thrall of sadness.</p>
+
+<p>To-day I heard music which I had known and loved in the happy, careless
+long ago, and whilst I was lost in a dream of half-forgotten bliss I
+smelt the fragrance of mimosa flower. I cannot describe the sensations
+of joy that thrilled through my whole being. An involuntary moving of
+the spirit, an emergence into a dream world, described by the Greeks as
+"ecstasy." The music fashioned the invisible link, and I was back again
+on a hillside where the mimosa grew in native abundance. Now, one thinks
+of France only as a hideous battle plain, but memory, the true
+dispensator of time, is never bound by years. She keeps ever fresh, in
+glowing colors, those ideal moments that gather up the utter joys of
+life into one divine sheaf of memory.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is not only for its great uses that we must have memory, but for its
+joys. It rends the gray veil shrouding present existence, and shows us
+life as what it really is. A phantasmagoria of wonder, wrapped in
+mystery.</p>
+
+<p>The day of miracles is not past, it never will be past, but if you want
+miracles you must have the power of seeing them.</p>
+
+<p>I have written in this book of the miracles I have seen. Some of them
+any one can see, others are reserved for the delectation of the few.</p>
+
+<p>I have written of strange visitants from other realms, and of that vivid
+illumination which at moments lays bare the hidden springs of life, when
+the spirit emerges beyond the limit of human thought, and familiar
+things, beyond the horizon of life, and touches a sphere beyond
+immortality. It is a condition that the grave has nothing to do with, a
+beholding beyond the frontiers of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>I have written of the spiritual life, for without this spiritual life a
+palace would be no wider than a tomb. The vastness of the spirit world
+defies description. It can choose its own pathways, and any one of these
+long, long roads leading to the great mysteries.</p>
+
+<p>It is now almost universally acknowledged that psychic experiences, of a
+specific nature, occur at certain times to certain people, that are not
+explicable by any known science. Generally, they are experiences which
+point to the continuity of the human consciousness with a wider
+spiritual environment, from which the normal man is shut off.</p>
+
+<p>A few such experiences that have come to me I record.</p>
+
+<p>I hope that I have never tried to convince others<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> of the truth of these
+experiences. If I have done so it has been unconsciously done. I am
+absolutely persuaded that such phenomena can only become convincing when
+personally experienced. Such matters ought not to be accepted on
+hearsay. It is mere folly for one woman to attempt to demonstrate to
+another the existence of the human soul. The most that A can communicate
+to B, of any part of her own experiences, is so much of it as is common
+to the experiences of both.</p>
+
+<p>I have proved conclusively to my own consciousness that I am linked up
+with a wider consciousness from which, at times, such experiences flow
+in.</p>
+
+<p>I know my soul to be in touch with a greater soul, which at moments
+enters into communication with me, and opens out a vastness which it is
+impossible to translate into words, and which annihilates space and
+time.</p>
+
+<p>I have had my vision, and I know. Therefore I am quite unmoved by
+criticism or ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that what has come to me will come to all, and there is no
+need to hurry the process. We are simply a tiny part of a whole, which
+has neither beginning nor end. We live in a universe which is infinite
+in time and space, which has always existed in some form, and will go on
+in some form for ever. The discovery of the law of the indestructibility
+of matter has proved this beyond a doubt.</p>
+
+<p>At some second in time our Universe will be dissolved into new systems,
+for the life of a solar system lasts only a second in eternity, but that
+need not worry us yet. There is lots of time for man to realize his
+soul, and all will doubtless do so at some moment in their many earth
+lives.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The classic idea is that the Golden Age lies in the past, but the Stoic
+doctrine of recurring cycles in the ages of the world seems to suggest
+that the Golden Age may return.</p>
+
+<p>There are people to-day who ask, "Is this the end of the world?"</p>
+
+<p>More probably it is the end of an age. The harvest may be ripe for the
+sickle to be thrust in. The opposition of good and evil may have reached
+their fullest manifestation. It may be the hour in eternity for a
+complete readjustment of the little ant-hills we call great nations.</p>
+
+<p>We know the rise and fall of nations to be an historical fact,
+apparently based on an immutable law. This recurring phenomenon cannot
+be explained, though there are theories. Possibly the true one may be
+found in the failure or compliance to respond to the challenge: "Advance
+to a higher spiritual plane or perish." It may be that the right of
+continuance depends upon the answer to that challenge.</p>
+
+<p>What brought about the decline of those mighty civilizations whose
+monuments of antiquity seem to mock our pride? What insidious disease
+brought about the fall of Rome? The beauty and inspiration of Greece was
+arrested by some swift decay, and the giant temples and Pyramids of
+Egypt, and the Mounds of Mesopotamia, testify to a grandeur far
+surpassing ours.</p>
+
+<p>In the world's morning time, before the mists began to clear, we can
+trace the rise and fall of a score of mighty Empires. From out their
+present tombs of tragic silence arise figures, colossal sculptured
+figures, with faces and forms of commanding power. Assyrians, a mighty
+race, leaving behind whole libraries<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> of record, chiseled upon
+indestructible pages. The lost arts of three thousand years ago.</p>
+
+<p>Earlier still the earth resounded to the thunder of Xenophon's
+thousands, and the chariots of Persia sweeping after them. Lying deeper
+still in the shroud of antiquity the Pharaohs emerge as mighty
+conquerors, and we can dimly discern in the Empire of the Chaldeans the
+movement of a gorgeous civilization, and the majestic figures of men
+versed in mystic, and, to us, unknown lore. In Italy, memorials of a
+refined people, who were precursors of Roman power, have been found,
+forms of perfect grace in delicate vases and coins of gold and silver.
+The old Etruscan art is traced back to the Assyrians' sculpture. The
+snowy crown of ancient Greece budded and bloomed in the mighty halls of
+Assyria's splendor, hundreds of years before Christ. No phantom world
+could furnish a mightier or more resplendent host.</p>
+
+<p>Reading of those proud and mighty civilizations brings the simple life
+of the Nazarene very near to us in years, it also shows us how quickly
+great splendors are sanded over by the hands of time. The British Museum
+holds the sculptured records of twenty-five hundred years. Whilst the
+flames, kindled by the mob of Christian monks, from the great
+Alexandrian library rose to Heaven, the temple fronts of the Pharaohs,
+the Pyramids, the Sphinx, loomed out of the conflagration. The impotent
+torches of the fanatics were powerless against such imperishable
+records. What of our records? Will these ancient civilizations be
+remembered when the fame of modern nations has vanished utterly? Which
+has the best chance of enduring in the future? The paper and pasteboard
+of to-day, or the monuments of stone, to which the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> Monarchs of bygone
+Empires entrusted the history of their unsurpassed grandeur?</p>
+
+<p>"If thou hadst known in this thy day, even thou, the things which belong
+to thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes."</p>
+
+<p>This is the epitaph written across the tombs of all nations now
+crumbling into dust.</p>
+
+<p>"The things which belong to thy peace." The things which never die or
+fade, whose continuity is never broken, the Divine seeds that cannot
+perish, the things which are immortal. The winged soul in its &aelig;on-long
+pilgrimages through eternity to home.</p>
+
+<p>I find it easy to write to-day upon psychic subjects, for everywhere I
+discern the dawn of what Conan Doyle, in his deeply interesting book,
+calls "The new revelation."</p>
+
+<p>To one who, for the last forty years, has been immersed in all branches
+of occult research, the change of view that has come over the world in
+four years is very remarkable. Every one is now interested in the human
+soul, and all that appertains to it. The speeding up in the number of
+psychic experiences coming to light is enormous. So often now I come
+across "the last man in the world to see or hear anything" who has just
+been accorded a startling experience, and the rank skeptic is becoming a
+thing of the past.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst sitting in solitude it is interesting to let one's thoughts slip
+back to childhood, and trace the present life in the mirror of the old.
+I discover that in the immediate now there is nothing new, but only that
+which has its symbol in the old. I seem to get only the much clearer
+vision of what once was vague and cloudy, or wholly unconsidered by the
+mind of youth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In that garden of memory I can set old happenings in a new light, and
+measure my slow footprints in the age-long journey behind me. Two facts
+emerge from out such musings. Firstly, the journey of my soul takes a
+spiral path, which at intervals brings me face to face with the old
+things that I have learned to modernize by dressing in fresh thought
+forms, as new perceptions are won. Perceptions prophetic of the greater
+capacity for attainment when the Divine Power is permitted to unfold
+itself without let or hindrance.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, the further on the soul journeys the more solitary the road
+becomes. One by one the old companion pilgrims drop away. Perhaps it is
+that on that long, lone trail the traveler must be free.</p>
+
+<p>Very early in my life came the consciousness that everywhere about me,
+in the infinitely above, in the infinitely below, permeating heart, mind
+and soul, is life&mdash;endless, eternal.</p>
+
+<p>On this shoreless ocean of existence, without form or name, the soul is
+afloat. Birth and death are the tides, the ebb and flow of the ocean of
+life. The human soul is but a ripple on the sea of existence, and
+phenomenal life is but a flash in the eternity of eternities. All the
+teeming lives of effort around us, all the travail and suffering to
+which humanity is destined, are ordained for the great purpose of soul
+evolution. God sets the balance at every grave. That which distinguishes
+every man is the vast dower of our nature, eventually the same to all,
+the passing incidents of station, fortune, talent, are mere surface
+varieties.</p>
+
+<p>I find in my mind the existence of something illimitably beyond mind,
+doubtless a common experience. I do not know what that something is, but
+it is very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> real, and it invariably shows me how cribbed, cabined and
+confined this life really is. I cannot even tell what it is that
+confines me. I only know that there is a limitless world full of
+infinite possibilities all around me. I seem always to have known this,
+but I cannot grasp it. True, at rare intervals, I catch a glimpse
+through a rift in the clouds, then they close again.</p>
+
+<p>At such moments I experience an ecstasy of heart sweet happiness, so
+marvelously sweet, so pure, so near Divine with its deep wordless
+thoughts of infinite beauty. Such regions are not so much impenetrable
+as ineffable. They are glimpses gained at some great altitude, from
+which I can look down on the mortal pageant and behold mysteries in
+which I take no part, but by which I am encircled, as an island, by
+infinity. Such are luminous and splendid moments, when the soul beholds
+the world in its real mystic beauty. It is the hour of transfiguration,
+in which the veil drops from the heart and the film from the eyes, so
+that we see life as God means it to be.</p>
+
+<p>Often, as a mere child, when lying awake in those nights, whose
+stillness have a quality of awe, the silence would be broken by weird,
+barbaric songs which wafted a sense of old, wild adventurous life, and
+in a curious quality of mystery I saw violet mountains sleeping in
+sunlight, above a sea of amethyst. Childish visions, but sacred nights.
+Very many years passed before I understood them.</p>
+
+<p>On hot velvety nights in June a curious scent of smoke would come to me,
+the measured hollow beating of bells, and a tremulous far-away piping.
+Years after, I stood alone one evening on the slopes of Etna, amid the
+pale asphodels and the desolation of tumbling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> lava fields, and I heard
+the pipes of Pan, the reed pipe of the herd boy, and linked the past
+with the present. Again, passing through a region where the smoke rose
+from the charcoal burners' fires the scent of an ancient memory came
+vaporing up, the unfamiliar scent that puzzled my childhood, and I was
+away in a flash, to wait for the soul to free herself and return from
+the world's edge.</p>
+
+<p>I had to journey further east before I heard again at dawn the ring of
+camel bells as a caravan broke camp, and then I understood the visions
+of my youth, as I listened to the measured hollow beating, and watched a
+strange medley of eastern traffic trail away across the desert.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, when the nursery clock seemed to tick more loudly than usual,
+I saw a gigantic water-wheel, and behind it massive rocks with the hewn
+tombs of ancient kings, and beyond them lay distant glamorous mountains,
+white sails creeping amid warm purple isles, set in a gulf of turquoise.
+Sometimes I have dreamed holy things, and waked to find myself over-awed
+by the sublimity of the vision and the glory of the Universe.</p>
+
+<p>So many of those childish visions I have identified in later life, but
+there is one which eludes me. It is a great white road leading to the
+farther east, and I see it drenched in white sunlight. Tinkling mule
+trains pass along it, and I know now it is in some way connected with
+Ida that saw ancient Troy, and the Capital of Pontus, the seat of
+Mithridates' Court, and the Empire of Trebizond. Some day, who knows, I
+may walk upon it.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back I can recollect nothing psychic happening to me before the
+age of six. I can fix that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> date upon which I became actually aware of
+the other world. It all happened through "Silk dress" and "Rumpus."</p>
+
+<p>I slept in a bed in one corner, and my younger brother slept in another
+corner. The room was large, and at the top of a modern, quite ordinary,
+town house. Two flights of stairs ran down to the ground floor. "Silk
+dress" was something we were extremely interested in, but I cannot
+recollect that we were ever in the least afraid.</p>
+
+<p>When we first became aware of "silk dress" I do not know, but in looking
+back across those many years I think that in the beginning we must have
+accepted "it" as something or somebody "real." Only after several
+experiences did it dawn upon us that "it" was not real. By then we had
+passed beyond the stage when we might have felt fear. After we had gone
+to bed we were left quite alone in the dark, and the nurses went down to
+supper. The younger children slept in another room. It was during such
+periods of silence that "silk dress" began its ascent.</p>
+
+<p>Just as we were dropping off to sleep one of us would murmur drowsily,
+"Here comes silk dress." Then we lay quite still, very wide awake again
+and listened intently.</p>
+
+<p>From far down on the ground floor we heard footsteps quietly and
+methodically ascending, and the rustle of a silk dress. We could hear
+quite distinctly when "it" arrived at the first floor, which was
+occupied by our parents, then "it" passed on to the next flight of
+stairs leading to our floor.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of footsteps and the rustle of the silk dress became more and
+more clearly audible as "it" drew ever nearer. We could tell the second
+at which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> "it" passed from the last step on to the corridor which led
+past our half-open door. Then there was a thrilling moment or two, when
+the tip-tap of shoes, and the swish of silk on the linoleum was quite
+loud, but the footsteps never halted. They always swept past the
+half-closed door, and went on into a small room beyond, which was used
+for storing boxes. Then dead silence fell again.</p>
+
+<p>In those days we never heard the word "ghost" mentioned, yet I cannot
+recollect thinking of "silk dress" as anything but a visitor from the
+other world. We talked of "it" freely in the household, but probably
+because we expressed no fear, no one seemed in the least interested. On
+wakeful nights we occupied ourselves in waiting for "it," and on wet
+nights we could not hear "it" clearly because the rain pattered so
+loudly on a large skylight outside our door. What interested us
+enormously was the fact that we never heard "it" descend again. How "it"
+got down in order to mount once more was a great puzzle.</p>
+
+<p>"Rumpus" was quite another matter, quite another order of manifestation.
+"Rumpus" always began when we were sound asleep, and "Rumpus" always
+wide awakened us. "They" came at longer intervals, about every ten days,
+whilst "it" came on most nights. During the summer mornings in the
+North, when one could often read a book in the light of a one a. m.
+dawn, "they" were very interesting, because when "their" hour, five a.
+m., arrived the room was flooded with sunshine. In winter mornings, when
+the room was in black darkness, we were merely bored, and cross at being
+roused, and we simply lay still and endured "them" till they had quite
+finished. But in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> summer mornings we always sat up in bed and
+intently watched something we never saw.</p>
+
+<p>When "Rumpus" roused us brusquely from our slumbers it was by means of a
+demoniac pandemonium. The room was in possession of "them," and "they"
+crashed, and banged, and tossed about the furniture in the most reckless
+fashion. Crash went the wardrobe, bang went one chair after another,
+hurtling across the room. Crash went wardrobe back into its place again,
+clang went the fire-irons. Rushing collisions, and rappings on the
+window-panes, thuds on the floor, rattlings and clatterings of crockery,
+jingling of brass, creakings and groanings of expostulation from the old
+sofa, clanking of the fireguard, a veritable tornado of noise, enough
+surely to awaken the dead, yet out of the living it only awakened&mdash;us.
+No one else in the house ever heard it, and our vivid descriptions were,
+perhaps, naturally attributed to nightmare.</p>
+
+<p>We, of course, knew that it was nothing of the sort. We were, indeed,
+very wide awake during the ten to fifteen minutes the pandemonium
+continued, and our eyes were kept darting from side to side following
+the track of the noises, as they grew in volume and intensity. Creak,
+groan, crash! No mistaking the spot where that deafening sound came
+from. That was the old mahogany wardrobe being hurled face downwards on
+the floor, but whilst our eyes were riveted on its statuesque and utter
+immobility jingle, clank, from the fender, where the fire-irons
+commenced to jig. A wildly confused uproar over all the room, then boom,
+thud, beneath us, and our beds shivered convulsively, and sent thrills
+of wild excitement coursing through our nerves.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the tumult would cease. The mystery lay in the fact that we
+never saw anything move, though we distinctly heard everything moving,
+and could feel our beds reel beneath us.</p>
+
+<p>I have no explanations to offer of those happenings. They are very
+clearly fixed in my objective memory, and when we were both grown up,
+and had finally left that house my brother used often to say to me, "Do
+you remember 'Silk Dress' and 'Rumpus'?"</p>
+
+<p>Such recollections crowd back upon me now, with many other images of
+childhood. No sooner do I recollect one than another emerges like a
+shining cloud from below the horizon. Where have they been lying hidden
+during all those flying years? They have dwelt deep down in the eternal
+memory, the heart of God which beats in all humanity. Within that heart
+are stored &aelig;onic treasures. They lie ever in wait to be bidden arise and
+cross the threshold.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GHOST OF BROUGHTON HALL</h3>
+
+
+<p>I was about six years old when my family moved to a brand new house in
+Claremont Crescent, that had just been erected on the outskirts of
+Edinburgh. There were still some green fields unbuilt upon, and some
+fine old trees left standing close to us, and those were still included
+in a triangular group of three grand old Manors&mdash;Broughton Hall, Powder
+Hall, and Logie Green. All three had the reputation of being badly
+haunted. The first named stood almost within a stone's throw of our end
+of the Crescent, and was occupied by an ancient family named Walker, who
+had held the property for generations. They still existed as a very
+charming relic of Scotch antiquity, and they had always been friends of
+our family.</p>
+
+<p>The house from the outside was very grim and forbidding-looking. It was
+hidden from the eyes of the curious behind very high walls, and was
+entered upon by two huge gates, always kept closed.</p>
+
+<p>Inside, the house was most interesting and attractive. There were many
+closed rooms and winding staircases, and odd steps in long, dark
+corridors, but the rooms that were lived in were beautiful of their
+kind. There were desks with secret drawers, wonderful pieces of
+Chippendale, tenderly cared for, quantities of rare old china and cut
+glass, and on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> walls hung glorious Romneys and Hoppners, which
+fetched huge prices at Christie's when the household was finally broken
+up by death.</p>
+
+<p>The family consisted of three sisters, Fanny, Hope, and Kitty, the
+latter a widow, named Mrs. Chew. There were two brothers, Adam and John.
+The former lived with his sisters. John was a minister, and only paid
+visits. There was a nephew, the heir, William Stephens, who also paid
+long visits to the Hall. Though, at the date of which I speak, about
+1870, he must have been at least sixty, he was always referred to as
+"the Laddie."</p>
+
+<p>The three sisters occupied distinct positions in the house. Mrs. Chew
+acted as cook, though servants were kept, and she always sat in the
+kitchen, only coming "through" to the dining-room for her meals. Miss
+Hope was the worldly member of the family. She had been to London Town,
+and could not be relied upon to stop at home. She looked after the
+polishing of the furniture, the old glass and china. Miss Fanny was the
+lady of the family. She always sat in the best parlor. Every one waited
+on her, and she was never permitted to do anything for herself.</p>
+
+<p>She dressed for the part in thick, black satin, with, in winter, a white
+silk embroidered Chinese shawl, and, in summer, old Brussels lace.
+Across her forehead was a band of black velvet, with a pear-shaped pearl
+depending between the eyebrows. Over her snow-white hair was flung a
+piece of old lace surmounting a wreath of artificial flowers. Her
+claw-like hands were covered by lace mittens and many rings. I saw her
+constantly, and she was always idle. I never saw her read, or sew, or
+knit, and often I wondered what she thought about, as she sat there
+always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> in the same chair, year in year out, and with no companion but a
+large gray parrot. True, her surroundings were delightful. From her
+chair near the fire she could look out on the quaint old garden, always
+full of flowers, and she could glance around her at the many beautiful
+objects the room contained.</p>
+
+<p>I especially admired one Hoppner. The subject was a beautiful woman,
+with a mass of powdered hair, seated by an open window. Her cheek was
+supported in her hand, and at her elbow was a quaint little wicker cage
+containing a bird. I think the artist meant to suggest that both were
+captives. Though quite well in health, Miss Fanny never left the house,
+even to walk in the garden.</p>
+
+<p>My father and I went very often to call upon those curious old people,
+who were so utterly out of touch with modern life, backward though life
+was then in the Northern Capital. We arrived at all sorts of hours, but
+refreshments were always produced. An amazingly rich cake, and fruity
+old port, served in large quarter-pint cut-glass rummers. It was not
+considered polite to refuse those offerings, which were always kept in a
+corner cupboard, and served by Mrs. Chew, who emerged from the kitchen,
+or Miss Hope, who left her housework to greet us.</p>
+
+<p>Though Broughton Hall was commonly reputed to be haunted, no one seemed
+to know what form the ghost took. I was great friends with Mr. Adam, a
+majestic, clean-shaven old man, who carried his chin very high above an
+enormous black silk stock, and often I tried to draw him on the subject
+of the ghost, but without success. He took it very seriously, and warned
+me that "I wouldn't be any the better for having seen it. Besides," he
+always concluded, "it's a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> family affair." The sisters were even more
+uncommunicative.</p>
+
+<p>My father and I were profoundly interested in this ghost. There was
+something about the whole establishment that was extremely promising,
+from the ghost-hunter point of view. The consequence of this was that we
+were always on the prowl. Nothing discouraged us, and we spared neither
+time nor trouble. There is no research which requires such infinite
+patience as psychic research. Several years passed before the great
+moment arrived, and when it did arrive it was all over in about four
+minutes.</p>
+
+<p>My father had a way of suddenly looking up from his work and saying,
+"Let's go to Broughton Hall." I would at once rise, and together we
+would pass out into the night, without either hats or coats. Very
+eccentric, it may be said, but then we frankly were very eccentric. We
+would steal away together around the Crescent, and down the road till we
+reached the great gates. Very softly we opened and closed them, and
+keeping well in the shadow of the trees and bushes we would creep round
+the silent house.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot describe the thrill of those nocturnal adventures. It was all
+so eerie, so full of vague, terrifying possibilities. I don't know what
+we expected to see, and we were generally back again in our own house in
+half an hour; but one night our patience really was rewarded.</p>
+
+<p>It was November, dry, but wild and bitterly cold. Billowy white snow
+clouds scudding before a brisk north wind threw us alternately into
+light and darkness, as they covered and uncovered the face of the full
+moon. We had emerged from our house about half-past nine, and had
+reached the back of Broughton<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> Hall. The house was shrouded in darkness
+and dead silence, every blind was close drawn, and the suggestion was
+one of utter emptiness. My father and I were walking apart, I being
+right under the shadow of the walls, whilst he was in the middle of the
+paved court, which had neither hedge nor walls, but met the edge of the
+field running up to it.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly I heard him whisper "Hush!" though we never did utter a word
+whilst close to the house. His arm was pointing in front of him. I
+stared ahead, and then I saw, clearly lit by the moon, a woman who had
+apparently just rounded the corner of the house. She was running hard,
+straight towards us, and her feet made no sound on the round cobble
+stones.</p>
+
+<p>Terror suddenly seized me, and I darted across to my father, and got
+well behind him, seizing him firmly round the waist. The woman came on,
+rushing wildly. She had nearly reached us, and I was almost thrown over
+as my father faced her, and backed to allow her to pass. I peeped round
+him, and saw a woman, ghastly pale, and distraught-looking, clad in a
+white nightdress. Two long strands of black hair streamed out behind
+her, and her bare arms were outstretched in front. In a flash she had
+passed, and absolutely silently, and I found myself lying on the ground
+alone, and my father vanishing in hot pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>Needless to say I very quickly picked myself up again, and joined the
+chase. Terror lent me wings, and in a minute or two I came up with him,
+standing breathless by the gate.</p>
+
+<p>"Vanished into thin air just as I reached her. That's always the way.
+You can't catch them," he said.</p>
+
+<p>We made a little d&eacute;tour before going home, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> order to discuss the
+great event. We had no doubt that we had seen a genuine apparition. We
+knew all the occupants of the Hall, and the woman had vanished in the
+open, and in full flight, just as my father had come up alongside her.
+He cautioned me against mentioning our adventure to any one, and I kept
+silence until years after, when Broughton Hall was pulled down and its
+inmates were all dead.</p>
+
+<p>Before going on to our next ghostly adventure I will say a few words
+about my father, Robert Chambers, who in those days was something of a
+celebrity, and a very remarkable man.</p>
+
+<p>In appearance he was very handsome, extremely tall and well built, and
+with features that were well-nigh perfect. It was the fashion in his
+time to wear the hair rather long, and his was dark and very curly. He
+always dressed well, in the style of the country gentleman, rather than
+as a town dweller.</p>
+
+<p>In character he was extremely independent, and was utterly indifferent
+to two things&mdash;money and public opinion. His intellect was
+extraordinary, and it was commonly said that he knew a great deal about
+most things, and something about all things.</p>
+
+<p>In Scotland, in those days, it was not considered necessary to trouble
+about the education of girls. No one ever tried to educate me,
+consequently at a very early age I was absolutely free to devote myself
+entirely to my father, and we were inseparable. Our intercourse was not
+that of father and daughter. It was that of confidential friends of an
+equal age. At that period my mother was more or less of an invalid, and
+had her own attendants.</p>
+
+<p>My father and I went every morning at ten o'clock to the old business
+house of W. and R. Chambers, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> the High Street of Edinburgh, and
+remained there till half-past two, when we walked home together,
+sometimes paying a call or two on the way. Though a mere uneducated
+child I helped him in his literary work, and at odd hours committed to
+memory many poets. We returned to four o'clock dinner, the correct hour
+in those days, and at six o'clock a porter arrived with my father's bag,
+containing manuscripts to be read and selected for <i>Chambers' Journal</i>.
+From six p. m. till midnight he worked at reading manuscript, not typed
+then, and proof correcting.</p>
+
+<p>Twice a week we went to the theater&mdash;there was only one in Edinburgh
+then. It was managed by a hard working couple, Mr. and Mrs. Howard, who
+sometimes filled up a week by acting themselves. I am bound to say we
+spent most of our time in the Green Room, and I knew every turn and
+twist behind the curtain. This turned out to be lucky for us.</p>
+
+<p>One night we went to a performance given by the Arthur Sullivan Company,
+and about halfway through a cry of "Fire" was raised. Great masses of
+burning stuff began to drop from the ceiling down into the auditorium.
+Instantly there was a panic, and a terrible stampede, and my father and
+I leaned forward, protecting our heads behind the backs of the stalls in
+front, whilst the mad rush climbed over us. When all was clear in front
+of us we made our way to the back of the stage, and escaped quite
+easily. I looked behind me, and I can see now the dense mass of
+struggling humanity wedged in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>I remained safely with Mrs. Howard whilst my father ran around to the
+front and helped to extricate the dead. The theater was burned to the
+ground, but was very rapidly built up again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>My first literary effort must here be recorded. I collaborated with
+Professor Andrew Wilson in writing the pantomime of "Ali Baba and the
+Forty Thieves."</p>
+
+<p>Andrew Wilson was Professor of Natural Science, and an extremely
+versatile person&mdash;a passionate love of the drama was added to his many
+scientific attainments. We wrote the dialogue together, in one long
+revelry of laughter, and I was responsible for the words of the songs.
+As a literary effort I can only describe it as appalling. The pantomime
+was, however, a great success. The audacity of our utter incompetence
+proved highly successful, and the critics justly described it as "The
+funniest Pantomime in Scotland." No wonder the audience laughed from
+start to finish.</p>
+
+<p>My father always called at once upon any celebrity who happened to be
+passing through the city, and thus I became acquainted with many
+interesting and amusing people. Henry Irving was amongst the number. We
+always called upon him on our way to business, a little before ten. If
+he was playing for a week we called on him every morning, and often
+looked into the Green Room at night. He and my father were great
+friends, and at the hour of our visit he was always propped up in bed
+having breakfast. I used to perch on the bed whilst the two men talked.
+Irving's nightshirt interested me (pyjamas had not come in then). It was
+white cambric with two enormous double frills down the front, and quite
+a pierrot ruffle round his neck. He was profoundly interested in the
+occult, and told me that a ghost he had once seen had suggested to him a
+particular action of his whilst playing in "The Bells." At the moment
+when he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> parted the curtains, and looked wildly out, shouting hoarsely,
+"The Bells, the Bells."</p>
+
+<p>Through Irving we came to know the Baroness Burdett Coutts, his ardent
+admirer. She was very kind to me, and presented me with a green silk
+dress, but I always thought her a very melancholy woman, even when
+entertaining many interesting people in her celebrated corner house in
+Piccadilly, with its white china parrot swinging in the window. She was
+much attached to my father, and treated him with a humble and touching
+deference.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Chambers was a very keen sportsman, who fortunately did not
+require much practice to keep up his game. He held championships in golf
+and bowling. He was too ardent a naturalist and ornithologist to care
+for shooting, but he was an expert angler. He was also a born actor and
+mimic, and used to keep a Green Room in roars by "taking off" any of
+"the profession" called for, and I never heard a better ventriloquist.
+He adored music, and played the flute well. As a platform speaker he was
+extremely fluent and perfectly at ease.</p>
+
+<p>His indifference to money resulted in his never having a penny in his
+pocket at night, no matter how much he took with him in the morning, and
+one of my tasks was to prevent his being fleeced by those who lay in
+wait for him. He took any amount of trouble over impecunious and
+incompetent authors, and constantly re-wrote their work for them in
+order to make it fit for publication. He was a unique editor, and his
+labors in the cause of charity were strenuous, secret, and, I fear,
+rather indiscriminate.</p>
+
+<p>During this period of my life, the head of the house, William Chambers,
+was still living, with his quaint<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> old wife, in the West End of
+Edinburgh. William, who had survived his more versatile brother, Robert
+(my grandfather), was a little shriveled-up old man, with a dry and
+severe manner. Most people were afraid of him, few liked him, but I got
+on with him famously. I have always been extremely proud of the fact
+that he rose from nothing to great wealth. There must be something fine
+in a man, who, as a lad, rose at four a. m. to read classics to an
+intelligent baker, whilst the batch of bread was being baked, and who
+gladly accepted as payment a copper or a roll.</p>
+
+<p>William and Robert Chambers had left their widowed mother to fend for
+themselves. The family was at the lowest financial ebb. Much money had
+been spent on the French refugees who flocked into Scotland in 1810, and
+there was nothing to spare now. We were originally French, like so very
+many of the old Scotch families. The first of us in history is recorded
+as Guillaume de la Chaumbre, who, as the most prominent man in Peebles,
+signed the Ragman Roll in 1296. My people had always lived in the dales
+of the Tweed, so very appropriately I married a man called Tweedale.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of his life William Chambers amused himself by spending
+many thousands on the restoration of St. Giles' Cathedral, an historic
+church which had fallen into great disrepair. This was a time of great
+interest for me, and I used to spend hours helping the workmen to gather
+up the thousands of human skulls that paved the church to a good depth.
+There were tombs laid bare of many celebrated people of the long ago,
+and these had to be identified, and carefully kept intact, until finally
+given a safer resting-place.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>William Chambers had been offered a baronetcy some years previously, but
+he refused it. He told me he did not consider it a dignified thing for a
+man of letters to bear any other honor than that accorded to brain power
+by a benefited world. He and his brother Robert were the pioneers of
+cheap and good educational literature for the laboring man, and the
+avidity with which this literature, "Chambers' Information for the
+People," was consumed, appeared to be a fitting reward. In those days it
+was an unheard-of thing for a publisher to be honored by a title. Now,
+however, on the eve of the re-opening of St. Giles' Cathedral, Her
+Majesty, Queen Victoria, commanded William Chambers to accept a
+baronetcy. The old couple were much agitated, but had to submit, and the
+Queen announced her intention of performing the opening ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>When the day arrived William Chambers lay dead in his house, and my
+father and I took the place of the old couple. The Queen was indisposed,
+and Lord Aberdeen took her place.</p>
+
+<p>After the ceremony both Lord Aberdeen and Lord Rosebery urged upon my
+father to take up the baronetcy, more especially as he was his uncle's
+heir, but this he utterly refused to do.</p>
+
+<p>Old Lady Chambers, the widow, discarded her title immediately and
+remained Mrs. Chambers till the day of her death.</p>
+
+<p>It must have been at least a month after William Chambers' death that he
+visited me in a very vivid dream. I dreamed that he was standing beside
+my bed, and suddenly he bent over me and whispered in my ear, "I've left
+you all my money." On waking I had totally forgotten the dream, but
+later in the day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> an old servant of ours said to me, "I saw the wraith
+of your Uncle William last night, but he had nothing to say to me."</p>
+
+<p>Then my dream flashed back to me. A day or two afterwards I said
+suddenly to the old family lawyer, "Was there ever a question of Uncle
+William leaving his money to me?"</p>
+
+<p>The dry answer was, "Yes! at one time there was a question of that." I
+could never extract anything further from him on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>Though now possessed of considerable wealth my father made no difference
+in his mode of life, and he continued to work just as hard as ever, and
+to give away large sums of money. He never wanted anything for himself,
+but was always ready to give to others. He had a great love of precious
+stones, and always carried about little packets of diamonds, which
+looked like packets of chemists' powders. Had I desired I could have
+loaded myself with jewels. He never denied me anything and we continued
+our close companionship, the only difference now being we took some
+holidays in the form of afternoons off.</p>
+
+<p>On one of these occasions we saw our second ghost.</p>
+
+<p>We went to pay a visit to a very old woman, whose name I cannot
+remember. She lived alone with one servant in an ancient dwelling in
+Inveresk. The house was a large one, and was enclosed by very high
+walls, which entirely isolated it from the busy streets that surrounded
+it. The original old garden remained, in all its beauty, and the rooms
+were full of quaint heirlooms.</p>
+
+<p>We were always made very welcome, and the servant at once produced a
+delicious tea, consisting of fresh baked scones, butter made of real
+cream&mdash;margarine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> being not then invented&mdash;home-made strawberry jam, and
+home-laid eggs. Russian eggs were not then imported.</p>
+
+<p>I must here interpose that deliciously innocent telegram sent by an
+Aberdeen merchant in the first days of the Great War, and which set all
+England and Scotland mad to see the fur and snow-clad Russian troops
+passing through to the Front. The telegram ran as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Twenty thousand Russians arrived."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The twenty thousand Muscovites were only twenty thousand stale eggs, but
+Lord Kitchener's order was, "Let it stand."</p>
+
+<p>To return to my story.</p>
+
+<p>One glorious late spring evening we were seated at tea, and the window
+was thrown wide to the perfumed garden, where lilacs, and wallflowers,
+and lilies of the valley rioted gloriously. The birds were in full song
+in this peaceful sanctuary, which might have been a hundred miles away
+from a town. My father had put his invariable question to the old woman,
+"Have you seen her again?" Sometimes the answer was Yes, sometimes No. I
+gathered that this question referred to the old woman's dead daughter,
+her only child. This daughter had been violently insane for many years
+and had remained under her mother's protection. She had died some years
+previously, at the age of fifty-five, having endured a terribly long
+martyrdom.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly my father broke off the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"My God! there she is!" He half rose from his chair and stared through
+the open window. I looked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> in the same direction. A woman was strolling
+aimlessly along the path just outside. There was a curious uncertainty
+about her movements. She walked like a blind person, who has neither
+stick nor arm to guide her. Strangely enough I never thought of
+connecting this woman with the ghost of the mad daughter. She looked so
+natural, so commonplace. Her hollow face was quite gray, and her dark
+hair was drawn tightly back from it, and rolled in an ugly knob behind.
+Her dress was of some dark material, her boots were of cloth, and her
+hands and arms were rolled up in a stuff apron she wore.</p>
+
+<p>There she was, vacantly wandering in the garden, in the lovely spring
+evening, with the blackbirds and thrushes singing their hearts out all
+around her, and I did not comprehend why such an ordinary, unattractive
+looking person should so deeply interest my father.</p>
+
+<p>I turned round to say something to the old woman, then I instantly
+understood. She had gone down on her knees, and had hidden herself by
+throwing the end of the tablecloth over her head.</p>
+
+<p>Then I turned my eyes back to the apparition. I don't suppose she was
+visible for more than four minutes. I remember my father uttering
+consoling words to the effect that "she's gone," and helping the old
+woman into her chair again, when we resumed our tea and conversation, as
+if nothing unusual had occurred.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back upon these incidents I contrast the infinite trouble we
+took in our hunt for ghosts, with present-day psychical research. I
+think of the innumerable half hours we spent at Broughton Hall, and only
+once were we rewarded by seeing anything.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> We visited the old woman at
+Inveresk whenever we found time. There was nothing in the least
+inspiring or interesting in her conversation, yet to us there was an
+unspeakable charm about her outward circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>There was the spiritual charm of the silent old house, with its
+vibrating memories of the long departed. The charm of the cloistered
+peace, amidst which the woman lived and dreamed, shut away from the
+world by the high walls. It was a retreat in which to meditate, and that
+always appealed to me. A dwelling with a beautiful view has a great
+charm, but it draws the thoughts always outward to the external. Still,
+when I pass a quiet old homestead, hidden away in its own flowery old
+garden from the eyes of the world, it attracts me far more than the
+far-flung grandeur of many a stately English mansion.</p>
+
+<p>Only in such retreats of ancient peace can the thoughts be turned
+continuously inward, to their true bourne&mdash;the temple of the living God.</p>
+
+<p>I seem to have been born with an ingrained belief in the enormous virtue
+of renunciation. Self-sacrifice, I am certain, is the foundation stone
+upon which is built the moral progress of man. I had occasion to prove
+this for myself at a comparatively early age. My mother suddenly became
+much more ailing than usual, and began to suffer a great deal of pain. A
+consultation of doctors was called by our own family physician, and two
+of the greatest surgeons in Edinburgh arrived one morning at our house.</p>
+
+<p>After about an hour they came into the room in which I awaited them.
+Their faces were very grave. They informed me, as kindly as they could,
+that they had arrived at the unanimous opinion that my mother<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> was
+suffering from internal cancer, and that she might possibly live another
+six months. Our own doctor confessed that he had long suspected this,
+and the two surgeons corroborated his opinion. There was no doubt in
+their minds, as the disease had openly declared itself.</p>
+
+<p>I took this shock in perfect silence for a minute or two, then I decided
+upon my first course of action. I asked them in the meanwhile to keep
+this matter secret from every one, even from my father.</p>
+
+<p>To this they rather demurred, saying that it was only right that he
+should know the truth, and that he would certainly question them. I then
+urged that our family doctor had known of this, and had hidden his
+knowledge up to to-day. It would be easy enough for him to go on hiding
+the truth for a short time longer.</p>
+
+<p>The doctors sought to know my reason for this secrecy; it would do no
+good, the truth would have to come out. I could give no reason. I had no
+reason, only a very strong instinct, and I wanted time. I asked for a
+fortnight, after which I would myself inform my father of the nature of
+my mother's malady.</p>
+
+<p>They agreed to this, doubtless much relieved that so unpleasant a task
+was removed to other shoulders, and they went away.</p>
+
+<p>That night I did not sleep. I had too much to think out. My mother must
+not die. I had to form some plan to save her, if it were humanly
+possible. She was absolutely necessary, I considered, to the younger
+children. She would be required for some years yet. My life was wholly
+given up to my father, I had become necessary to him, and this left me
+no time to mother the young ones. His health was not of the best. A
+curious tendency to hemorrhage kept<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> him constantly weak. If he had a
+tooth drawn bleeding would continue for days after. He needed all my
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>At that particular time I possessed something&mdash;never mind what&mdash;that
+meant more to me than anything else in the whole wide world. It was the
+greatest thing I had in life. I decided before morning that with this,
+my one great possession, I would strike a bargain with the Almighty. I
+would give Him a fortnight to consider it. I would offer Him the
+greatest thing in my life in exchange for my mother's life.</p>
+
+<p>Quite conceivably He might refuse to consider the proposition, in which
+case I stood to lose everything. I could never again recover what I
+proposed to risk, but I came to the deliberate conclusion that it was
+worth it. The case demanded a desperate remedy.</p>
+
+<p>Having made up my mind, I went about the business in the crudest and
+most practical manner. I set aside certain odd half hours during the
+coming fortnight, in which I would state my case. I wanted God to have
+every opportunity of considering my suggestion on its simple merits.</p>
+
+<p>I began by pointing out to Him why it was so necessary that my mother
+should live, and then I went on to say that He might be sure I asked
+nothing for myself. I proposed to give in exchange for my mother's life
+the greatest thing I possessed on earth, a thing that doubtless was of
+little interest to Him, but nevertheless meant a very great deal to
+me&mdash;in fact, my all. I really had nothing else of any value to offer.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in thus addressing the Almighty, I was not acting as a primitive
+savage, for I had considered the subject of Deity for several years, and
+had studied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> most of the great theologians. I addressed Him thus as a
+Spirit of too supreme a potency, of too extraneous a mentality and
+majesty, to be addressed in any other terms but plain downright
+reasoning. Elaborate and propitiatory words were good enough for earthly
+princelets, but ridiculous when offered up to the Supreme Creative
+Power. That was my way of looking at it, and I began at once to carry
+out my plan. There was no time to lose. Meanwhile, no living soul, save
+the doctors, knew of my secret.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the second day my mother was free from pain. At the end of
+the first week she was recovering rapidly. The family doctor was
+intensely puzzled, but still adhered to his original conviction. On the
+eighth day I ceased my half-hourly reasoning with God. I merely thanked
+Him for concluding the bargain. He had accepted my sacrifice, the
+greatest I could make, and there that matter ended. I felt, without the
+smallest irreverence, that we were quits.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the month the two great surgeons returned, at our own
+doctor's request. I awaited them with perfect assurance and
+tranquillity. When they came in to me they still looked perturbed. They
+told me that they had examined my mother, and found all traces of the
+malady had disappeared. They could not account for it, they reiterated
+their former diagnosis, dwelling upon certain facts, in very natural
+self-justification. They expressed, in the very kindest manner, their
+deep regret for all the suffering and anxiety they must have caused me,
+and said how very lucky it was that no one had been made aware of their
+original convictions, save myself. The case was extraordinary, abnormal,
+there was nothing more to say. Then they went away for the last time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>My father was greatly puzzled at their refusing to accept any fee, and
+to the day of his death our own doctor, whenever he found me alone,
+referred to the case as the most marvelous he had ever come across. My
+mother quite regained her health, and died many years after from lung
+trouble.</p>
+
+<p>One other great sacrifice I had to make a year or two after. My father
+was entirely confined to bed with a severe attack of internal
+hemorrhage, and at the same time my youngest sister was threatened with
+consumption. She was ordered to go to the South of France immediately.</p>
+
+<p>It was decided that I must go with her, as she could not be trusted to
+strangers. My mother, absolutely restored to health, would be left with
+my father, who had also a good nurse valet.</p>
+
+<p>My father and I bade each other farewell one early morning in February,
+1888. We knew we would not meet again on earth.</p>
+
+<p>Only one other curious incident do I remember in connection with that
+town house we lived in. On the night of the 28th December we were all
+assembled in the library, most of us were reading, and a violent wind
+storm was howling round the house. Suddenly my father laid down the
+proof sheets he was correcting, and took out his watch. Then he turned
+to us and said: "At this moment, seven fifteen, on Sunday the 28th of
+December, 1879, something terrible has happened. I think a bridge must
+be down."</p>
+
+<p>The next day we learned that the Tay Bridge had been blown down at that
+very hour, and the train and its occupants hurled to death in the waters
+below.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>CURIOUS PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES</h3>
+
+
+<p>After my father's death I began to live a much more independent life. I
+was financially independent, and I proceeded to London, where I felt I
+would have a wider range of intellectual companionship. I lived in
+hotels and dispensed with all chaperonage, thus leaving myself free to
+join my mother on the Riviera in the early spring months.</p>
+
+<p>I never cared for dancing, and always having had the companionship of
+people who were years older than myself, I had made few girl friends. My
+first cousin, Lady Campbell, wife of Sir Guy Campbell, Bart., 60th
+Rifles, and another first cousin, Menie Muriel Dowie, were the only two
+I really saw much of.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Campbell was, and is, a very attractive woman, possessed of great
+charm of manner. Exceedingly cultured and intelligent, she is also an
+artist to her finger tips. As girls we used to be fond of attending
+Queen Victoria's Drawing-rooms. A bevy of us would take lunch with us in
+the carriages, and thoroughly enjoy our day out. I was the last woman to
+kiss the hand of Queen Victoria at a Drawing-room. I was stopped by a
+Court official just as I was moving forward, and told to wait as "Her
+Majesty is going to withdraw." The present Dowager Queen Alexandra, as
+Princess of Wales, then took her place. On<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> this occasion I heard the
+Queen say, "Let this lady pass." I was then told to proceed.</p>
+
+<p>Being very tall I had always a certain difficulty in getting down low
+enough to kiss the tiny Queen's hand. After I had passed, and as I
+backed out of "the presence," I saw Her Majesty being assisted out of
+the queer little half chair, half stool she used. She never held another
+Drawing-room, and I regret that, being abroad, I had not the honor of
+making a last curtsy to the little coffin as it passed through the
+streets of London.</p>
+
+<p>Menie Muriel Dowie was a brilliant bohemian, as can be gathered by those
+who have read her book, "A Girl in the Carpathians." I have never known
+any woman who was possessed of so many natural talents. She is as much
+at home in skilled and polished diplomacy as in practical agriculture.
+She has always been a great traveler, yet a delicate woman. Only her
+indomitable spirit kept her going in her youth, as it still does in her
+beautiful house in Green Street, and her model farm in Gloucestershire.</p>
+
+<p>My greatest older friends were Mrs. Lynn Linton, the novelist, Browning,
+the poet, Lord Leighton, the painter, and Mrs. Proctor, widow of Barry
+Cornwall, and mother of Adelaide Proctor, the poet. All people old
+enough to be my parents.</p>
+
+<p>I had a great admiration for Mrs. Lynn Linton's strong, cold intellect;
+it was so invigorating, and she was so self-reliant, an uncommon thing
+for a woman to be in those days. We had long arguments over matters
+occult, but I never could make the least impression upon her strong
+materialism. "I won't leave this earth even with you," she used to
+protest. She was a great friend and admirer of my aunt, Lady<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> Priestley,
+also a woman of very fine intellect, who devoted herself to scientific
+pursuits. Had she been a man, or had she lived in the present day, when
+woman has at last come into her own, she would have made a very strong
+mark.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Browning, whom I had known for some years, used to drop in very
+often to have a chat, and I rejoiced in him exceedingly as a born mystic
+of a high order. We often discussed the possibility of his work being
+directed from the other side, and we argued as to whether he received
+inspiration from various quarters, or whether he was the beloved of some
+poet of a former age, who, active still in the spirit world, expressed
+his great thoughts through Robert Browning on earth. So many people at
+that time frankly said they could not understand Browning's poetry, and
+this I told him was to be attributed to lack of the mystic perception.
+Now that mysticism has so enormously developed, his work is much more
+comprehensive to the world.</p>
+
+<p>I had alas! only one year of really close friendship with him, for he
+died the year after I came to London.</p>
+
+<p>One curious thing Browning told me.</p>
+
+<p>He dropped in one night to see me, after dinner at a house where
+Millais, the painter, had been one of the guests.</p>
+
+<p>"Johnnie Millais told me an odd thing to-night," he said. "He's
+constantly seeing figures appearing and disappearing on the face of the
+canvas he's working upon."</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of figures?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>Browning shot out his cuff.</p>
+
+<p>"Here they are. I knew you'd be interested, so I took them down for you.
+Better write them down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> for yourself, but don't mention the subject to
+him or any of his family."</p>
+
+<p>I fetched a piece of paper and copied from Browning's cuff.</p>
+
+<p>"13. 1.8.9.6. The figures don't always come in that order," he said,
+"but more often than not they do. The 13 always comes up as 13, but he's
+seen 9.6.1.8. What do you make of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"At present nothing, but the future may throw light upon the
+phenomenon," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>I never mentioned this occurrence to any one, and, indeed, forgot all
+about it till some years after Millais' death, when I came upon my notes
+in an old box. I then realized that the great painter had been looking
+upon the dates of his own death. He died on August 13th, 1896.</p>
+
+<p>One night some one, I have not the least idea who, came to me in my
+sleep and bade me take up pencil and paper, and write to dictation.
+Still sound asleep I did as I was bidden. I always kept writing
+materials by my bedside.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning I remembered nothing of this till my eye fell upon some
+sheets of paper. The writing upon them was mine, but very big and
+untidy. Then I recollected the command I had received in the night and
+eagerly read what I had written. Here it is. I gave Browning a copy as
+he was so deeply interested&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"A solitary cottage stood on the edge of a bleak moorland. The sun
+sank behind the low horizon, and left marshy pools glowing like
+living opals. A stream of homeward flying rooks made a streak of
+indigo across the topaz sky where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> gauzy wind-riven clouds floated
+westward. The sacred hush of eventide brooded under the calm wings
+of night.</p>
+
+<p>"Out on the waste wandered the Angel of 'Sleep,' and the Angel of
+'Death' with arms fraternally entwined, and whilst the brotherly
+genii embraced each other, night stole down with velvet footfall,
+and the green stars peered forth.</p>
+
+<p>"Then the Angel of Sleep shook from out his hands the invisible
+grains of slumber, and bade the night wind waft them o'er the
+world. And soon the child in its cradle, the tired mother, the aged
+man, and the pain-laden woman were at peace. The curfew tolled out
+from the distant hamlet and then was still.</p>
+
+<p>"Inside the cottage a rushlight burned faintly, indicating the
+poverty of the room, and illuminating the death-like features of
+the boy who lay on the bed. By his side, worn out, sat the father,
+his horny hand clasped in that of his child.</p>
+
+<p>"And the two brother Angels advanced, hand in hand, and peered in
+at the window, and the Angel of Sleep said: 'Behold how gracious a
+thing it is, that we can visit this humble dwelling and scatter
+grains of slumber around, and send oblivion to the weary watcher. I
+am beloved and courted by all. How merciful is our vocation.' And
+silently he entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>"He kissed the eyelids of the weary watcher, and as he did so some
+grains fell from out the wreath of scarlet poppies that lay like
+drops of blood upon his brow.</p>
+
+<p>"But the Angel of Death sat without, his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> pallid face shrouded in
+the sable of his wings.</p>
+
+<p>"And he spake to the Angel of Sleep, 'Of a truth thou art happy and
+beloved. The welcome guest of all, whereas I am shunned, the door
+is barred as against a secret foe, and I am counted the enemy of
+the world.'</p>
+
+<p>"But the Angel of Sleep wiped away the immortal tears from the dark
+and mournful eyes of his brother Death.</p>
+
+<p>"'Are we not children born of the one Father?' said he, 'and do not
+the good call thee friend, and the lonely, the homeless, the weary
+laden bless thy hallowed name when they wake in Paradise.'</p>
+
+<p>"And the Angel of Death unfurled his sable wings and took heart.
+And as Lucifer the light-bringer paled in the violet Heavens he
+silently entered the dwelling. With his golden scythe he cut the
+silver cord of life, and gathered the child to his faithful bosom."</p></div>
+
+<p>The evenings I most enjoyed were those I spent in the studio of Felix
+Moscheles, the great apostle of peace. There one met all the genius and
+talent in London, and any genius of foreign nationality who happened to
+be visiting England. The cosmopolitan element always attracted me, and I
+went to several frankly revolutionary houses, where red ties flaunted,
+and where those Russian Nihilists found a welcome who were constantly
+rushing over here to escape Siberia. Through them I learned to
+understand what the real woes of Russia were, and to expect the present
+revolution as the inevitable result of brutal repression and
+misgovernment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>During one winter at Nice I renewed my acquaintance with one of the most
+remarkable mystics of modern times, Marie, Countess of Caithness and
+Duchesse de Pomar.</p>
+
+<p>I had first met her in Edinburgh in 1872 when she was on the eve of her
+second marriage with Lord Caithness. My father and mother attended her
+very quiet wedding. Now we met again many years after at her beautiful
+home, the Palais Tiranty, Nice. Lady Caithness was widowed for the
+second time, Lord Caithness having died in 1881, and lived alone with
+her devoted son, the Duc de Pomar. She had a magnificent home in Paris,
+"Holyrood," Avenue Wagram. This house contained a large lecture hall
+filled with gilt chairs, and hung round with fine pictures. Leading from
+this hall down a flight of marble stairs one came to a chapel or s&eacute;ance
+room, used for direct communication with the spirit of Mary Stuart, and
+said to have been built "under the Queen's instructions."</p>
+
+<p>This presupposes Queen Mary to be still on "the other side." Other
+occultists maintain that she has reincarnated again in the person of a
+very old Empress, who still lives on earth.</p>
+
+<p>It has been often said of Lady Caithness that she believed herself to be
+the reincarnation of Mary Stuart. During all the years I knew her
+intimately I never heard her even hint at such a belief, and the fact
+that she believed herself to be in touch with the Queen on "the other
+side" precludes in my opinion the possibility of her having formed such
+a conception.</p>
+
+<p>What may have given rise to the suggestion was the fact that she dressed
+after the fashion of the Scottish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> Queen, and was surrounded by "Mary
+relics." Also, there is no doubt that she had a deeply sympathetic
+interest in the unfortunate Queen, and had elevated her memory into what
+amounted almost to a religion. In the chapel there is a full length
+lovely portrait of Mary, which is so lighted and arranged that it gives
+the impression of a living woman. Leading out of the dining-room was the
+bedroom of Lady Caithness, a sumptuous apartment. The bed was a state
+bed, plumes of ostrich feathers uprose at each corner. At one end was a
+crown, and behind the pillows was a fresco painting representing Jacob's
+Ladder, with a multitude of angels ascending and descending. Often Lady
+Caithness received in bed, as was the habit of the French Queens of
+former days.</p>
+
+<p>The jewels possessed by Lady Caithness were the most gorgeous I have
+ever seen. Nothing worn by crowned heads, at the many English Courts I
+have attended, were comparable to them. I can remember an Edinburgh
+jeweler inviting my father and me to inspect some diamonds belonging to
+her that he was cleaning. There was a long chain of huge diamonds
+reaching to the knees, with a cross attached, which no casual observer,
+not possessing the jeweler's guarantee as we did, would have believed to
+be genuine. When standing receiving her guests in the beautiful salons
+of the Palais Tiranty, clad in crimson velvet, she looked a very
+wonderful figure, for she possessed exceptional personal beauty as well.</p>
+
+<p>As may be supposed, a woman of such commanding presence who was known to
+possess a deep interest in the occult, could secure the services of the
+best mediums the world over. I sat with her through many s&eacute;ances,
+successful, barren, and indifferent,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> conducted by mediums of various
+nationalities. I remember one conducted by a South American medium,
+where the "controls" became very noisy and troublesome, and threatened
+to do serious damage. The medium could not be roused out of the trance
+she had fallen into, and it had really become necessary to put an end to
+the performance. She was a very big, heavy woman, and had sunk half off
+her chair on to the floor. I suggested to Lady Caithness that if we
+could drag or carry her into another room matters might then quiet down,
+but I added dubiously, "She must be a great weight."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Caithness replied with a smile: "Try. You'll probably find her very
+light indeed."</p>
+
+<p>I did try, and this was the only time in my life that I had the
+opportunity of proving to myself how tremendously a medium loses weight
+whilst genuine manifestations are in progress. I found it quite easy to
+lift this woman, who in ordinary circumstances must have weighed at
+least twelve or thirteen stone.</p>
+
+<p>Sir William Crookes has given to the world a very interesting account of
+his work in weighing mediums, before and during materialization. He
+always found that a great decrease in weight took place during the
+materializations, proving how enormous is the drain on the strength of
+the medium. Such evidence is most valuable, as coming from our greatest
+chemist.</p>
+
+<p>On this particular night I had no doubt as to the genuineness of the
+medium. Had she been a fraud she would have stopped the s&eacute;ance at once,
+on seeing how annoyed Lady Caithness was. She had every reason to
+conciliate her, and was greatly distressed to hear that her services
+would no longer be required. The troublesome spirits followed her into
+the next<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> room, but gradually subsided as we succeeded in bringing the
+woman back out of her trance.</p>
+
+<p>I used to go very often to the theater at Nice with Lady Caithness. She
+had her own box, and often invited Don Carlos of Spain, and other
+distinguished personages, to accompany her. One night we went to hear
+the incomparable Judic. We were only a party of three, the third being
+Prince Valori.</p>
+
+<p>The Prince was then a man past middle age. He suggested a magnificent
+ruin, retaining as he did the battered remains of great good looks, and
+it was plain to see that his valet was exceedingly skillful. He
+possessed also a European reputation for heiress hunting, but to the day
+of his death he never succeeded in catching one, though it was said he
+had pursued his quarry in all parts of the world. Perhaps the figure he
+placed upon his ancient lineage and his personal charm was too high;
+perhaps he had begun his quest too late in life, though the position of
+a widowed Princess Valori would certainly not have been without
+attraction. I attributed his single blessedness to quite a different
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>That night, whilst my attention was fixed on the stage, I became dimly
+aware that some one had entered our box, but until the song was over I
+did not turn round to look who it was. We always had visitors coming and
+going. When at last I did glance round I saw nothing remarkable. Only a
+man in fancy dress seated behind Valori, a man whom I had never seen
+before.</p>
+
+<p>At that period Nice went mad during the winter season. The most
+extravagant amusements were entered into with a wild zest, by the very
+cosmopolitan society of extremely wealthy people. There were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> fancy
+dress balls every night somewhere, and no one thought it strange to see
+bands of revelers in fancy costume walking about the streets and
+thronging the caf&eacute;s at all hours of the night.</p>
+
+<p>I was not therefore astonished to see this man in fancy dress, leaning
+familiarly over the back of Prince Valori's chair. He was a very thin
+man, with very long, thin legs, and he was dressed entirely in chocolate
+brown&mdash;a sort of close-fitting cowl was drawn over his head, and his
+curious long, impish face was made more weird by small, sharply pointed
+ears rising on each side of his head. He appeared to have "got himself
+up" to look like a satyr, or some such mythical monstrosity. He was not
+introduced to me at the moment, and other people entering our box whom I
+knew, I forgot about him. When the box cleared before the next act I
+noticed he had gone.</p>
+
+<p>A week or so after this I went to a fancy dress ball given by a Russian
+friend of mine&mdash;Princess Lina Galitzine. There was a great crowd, and a
+number of Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses, some of whom had driven long
+distances from their villas and hotels in Mentone, Monte Carlo, and
+Beaulieu, etc. I soon saw Prince Valori making his way towards me,
+dressed very magnificently, in a French costume of the eighteenth
+century. By his side moved the man in brown.</p>
+
+<p>Now that I saw "the satyr" under brilliant light he struck me at once as
+something peculiar. His walk was alone sufficient to attract attention.
+He strutted on tiptoes, with a curious jerk with every step he made.
+Those who remember Henry Irving's peculiar walk may form some idea of
+"the satyr's" movements. They were Irving's immensely exaggerated. I
+concluded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> that Valori was bringing him up to present him to me, but
+such proved not to be his intention. Valori shook hands, coolly
+requested the young American to whom I was talking to move off and find
+some one to dance with, and seated himself in the vacated chair. "The
+satyr" stood by his side and said nothing. I thought this very odd, and
+glancing, whenever I could do so unobserved, at the silent brown figure,
+I began to feel uneasy and shivery. It was impossible, whilst he stood
+there listening to all we said, to ask Valori who he was, and no mention
+was made of him.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as I could I escaped to talk to some one else, and for an hour
+or two I avoided both. During this time I asked several people who "the
+satyr" was, but no one seemed to have noticed him in the crowd. At last,
+when seated at supper with the late James Gordon Bennett, who did not
+usually go to balls, but had looked in here for half an hour for some
+purpose of his own, I found myself seated next to a very charming Pole,
+married to a Russian, the Princess Schehoffskoi. I knew her to be a
+genuine mystic, one of the group who first instituted spiritualism into
+the Russian Court circles. I seized an opportunity, whilst Gordon
+Bennett was occupied with some one else, to ask her who the brown satyr
+was who had attached himself to Valori.</p>
+
+<p>She was at once absorbed in the question, and, lowering her voice, she
+said, "Why, how interesting! Don't you know that is his 'Familiar' who
+is constantly in attendance upon him. People say they became attached
+whilst he was attending a 'Sabbath' in the Vosges, and he can't get rid
+of it."</p>
+
+<p>"A Sabbath!" I echoed blankly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes! Surely you have heard of a 'Witch's Sabbath.' They still hold them
+at Lutzei, and each person receives a 'Familiar.' Those 'Sabbaths' are
+the most appalling orgies and hideously blasphemous. The 'Familiars'
+have names&mdash;Minette, Verdelet, etc. I had an ancestor who owned a
+'Familiar' called Sainte Buisson. His name was de Laski. Of course, he
+was a Pole, and a Prince of Siradia, and he came across Dr. Dee, the
+necromancer of Queen Elizabeth's time. They seem to have entered into a
+sort of partnership."</p>
+
+<p>All this the Princess told me quite seriously, and I found out later
+from her that Satanism or devil worship was largely practiced in France.
+It is interesting to note that the names of the French war mascots of
+the moment are all taken from the names of well-known "Familiars" in
+occult lore.</p>
+
+<p>"Then the 'satyr' attached to Valori is not human flesh and blood; how
+horrible!" I whispered back. "Have many people seen him? Is he always
+there?"</p>
+
+<p>The Princess nodded, "The clairvoyantes here all know about it, and I
+myself have seen him, not here, but in Paris. I shall go in search of
+Valori directly after supper."</p>
+
+<p>"And I shall go home to bed," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning I met Valori, alone, on the Promenade des Anglais. He
+turned and strolled by my side, and I determined to put a straight
+question. After a little trivial conversation I said, "By the way, who
+is that brown man, dressed like a Satyr, who has been with you lately?"</p>
+
+<p>I watched Valori's face as I put the question, and as I saw the change
+that came over it I felt very sorry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> and ashamed of having spoken. He
+looked so utterly dejected and miserable.</p>
+
+<p>"You also?" he muttered, then fell to silence.</p>
+
+<p>I gathered that the same question had been put to him before, and I
+hastened to reassure him. "Don't answer. My question was impertinent;
+let us speak of other things," I said hastily, but he remained silent,
+staring down at the ground. Then suddenly he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I am not the only one in the world so afflicted."</p>
+
+<p>I did not pursue the subject. His words were true. That evening I
+received a large bouquet of Russian violets, and on a card was written
+the following French proverb:&mdash;"La r&eacute;putation d'un homme est comme son
+ombre, qui tant&ocirc;t le suit et tant&ocirc;t le pr&eacute;c&egrave;de; quelquefois elle est
+plus longue et quelquefois plus courte que lui."</p>
+
+<p>At that time the whole Riviera was swarming with professional
+clairvoyantes, and it soon "got wind" that Prince Valori's "Familiar"
+was walking about with him. He treated the matter almost as lightly as a
+distinguished English General treated his "Familiar."</p>
+
+<p>The Englishman, General Elliot, who commanded the forces in Scotland,
+was a very well-known society man, about twenty-five years ago. He had a
+name for his Familiar, "Wononi," and used actually to speak aloud with
+him in the middle of a dinner-party. The General occupied a very
+distinguished position, not only in his profession, but in the social
+world, and to look at he was the very last man that one would associate
+with matters occult.</p>
+
+<p>In 1895 Marie, Duchesse de Pomar and Countess of Caithness, died. She
+had the right to claim burial in Holyrood Chapel, and a very simple
+stone marks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> her last resting-place. To her I owe the warmest friendship
+of my life, for it was in her opera box I met the present Lady Treowen,
+born a daughter of Lord Albert Conynghame, who afterwards became the
+first Lord Londesborough. To the many who know and love her, Albertina
+Treowen represents a type of perfect breeding, alas! fast becoming
+extinct in these days. She has lived the reality of noblesse oblige, has
+the rare gift of perfect friendship, and combines a rare refinement of
+mind with strong moral courage.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>EAST END DAYS AND NIGHTS</h3>
+
+
+<p>If we had found the golden thread of meaning which gives coherence to
+the whole; if we had been taught as our religion that every man and
+woman was receiving the strictest justice at the Divine hands, and that
+our conditions to-day were exactly those our former lives entitled us
+to, how different would be our outlook on life. As it is, men have
+fallen away in their bitter discontent from a God in whose justice they
+have ceased to believe, and of whose impartiality they see no sign.</p>
+
+<p>I doubt if any religion extant has claimed such a wide diversity in its
+adherents as Christianity. Calvin, Knox, Torquemada, the Archbishop of
+Canterbury, and Kaiser Wilhelm. Mr. Gladstone, and Czar Nicolas. The
+Pope of Rome, and Spurgeon. Even those nine names, which might be
+multiplied indefinitely, show us diametrically opposed readings of the
+same faith.</p>
+
+<p>It would be of enormous benefit to us if we studied all the great
+religions, and separated from each the obviously false from the true,
+and appropriated the latter. The Bible would gain enormously in value if
+studied in conjunction with other sacred books written before the advent
+of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>A careful study of the ancient faiths will reveal a wonderful
+similarity. We are beginning to break<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> down the limitations which have
+been presumptuously cast around the conceptions of the Divine teachings.
+We begin to see that not only in Palestine, but in all the world, and
+amongst all peoples, God has been revealing Himself to the hearts of
+men.</p>
+
+<p>It is always folly for the orthodox to hold up hands in holy horror at
+the views of the unorthodox. It is a selfish standpoint, and makes
+matters no better. Doubt does not spring from the wish to doubt. It
+arises solely from the play of the mind on the facts of daily life
+surrounding us. The truth remains, that, unless the Church recovers
+those vital doctrines that she has lost, and which alone make life
+rational to the intelligent, she will be finally abandoned when the
+present generation dies out.</p>
+
+<p>We can never rest content with a faith which flatly contradicts the
+facts of life which surround us, and press in on us from every side in
+our daily existence. We hold that what we undoubtedly find in life ought
+to have its complement in religion. The searching temper of our vast
+sacrifices in war are thrusting faith down to primitive bed-rock.
+Orthodoxies and heterodoxies will not matter much now. What will matter
+will be honesty, effectiveness, and a rational explanation of life. For
+nineteen hundred years we have professed the religion of what others
+said about Christ. Now the hour is approaching when we must try the
+religion of what Christ said about us and the world.</p>
+
+<p>I was always of a very inquiring turn of mind, and I had abandoned
+orthodoxy before I was twenty. I had read everything I could lay my
+hands on, and I emerged after a year or two, an out-and-out agnostic, in
+the popular sense of the term.</p>
+
+<p>I had, however, no intention of remaining in that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> condition. I was
+convinced there must be some link between Science and Religion, and that
+a just God, worthy of all worship, was to be found, if only I knew where
+to seek. I can look back on this crude stage of my life, and see what a
+nuisance I must have been, with my defiant disbelief and constant
+questioning. I became an ardent truth-seeker, but my demands, I can now
+realize, grew out of my palpitating desire to reduce the world of
+disorder to the likeness of a supreme and beneficent Creator. If God be
+just and good, then what is the explanation of this hideous discrepancy
+in human lives?</p>
+
+<p>Following on this came the question: "Is it possible that a just God is
+going to judge us, one and all, on our miserable record of three score
+years and ten?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whatsoever ye soweth that shall ye reap." So the criminal and the
+savage were to be judged by their deeds, though, through no fault of
+their own, they were born under circumstances which precluded any
+glimmer of light to shine in on their darkness. "Ah!" but I was told,
+"God will make it up to them hereafter. Of course, He won't judge them
+as He will judge you."</p>
+
+<p>This seemed to me pure nonsense. I could not understand a God who
+arranged His creation so badly. Whilst in London I started out on a
+search for truth.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst those who accorded me interviews were Cardinal Newman and the
+late Archdeacon Liddon. The former was exquisitely sympathetic and
+patient, but he gave me no mental satisfaction. I helped him for some
+weeks in the great dock strike, and then we drifted apart for ever.
+Liddon listened patiently, then told me flatly he could not solve the
+mysteries I sought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> to probe. I also was accorded an unsatisfactory
+interview with Basil Wilberforce. After a lapse of thirty years we met
+again, though I never recalled to him the visit I had paid him in my
+youth, being sure he must have forgotten all about it. I found him
+enormously changed mentally. He had outgrown all resemblance to his
+former mental self.</p>
+
+<p>At that early period some one happened to mention to me that a certain
+Madame Blavatsky had just arrived in London, bringing with her a new
+religion. My curiosity was at once fired, and I set off to call upon
+her.</p>
+
+<p>I shall never forget that first interview with a much maligned woman,
+whom I rapidly came to know intimately and love dearly. She was seated
+in a great armchair, with a table by her side on which lay tobacco and
+cigarette paper. Whilst she spoke her exquisite taper fingers
+automatically rolled cigarettes. She was dressed in a loose black robe,
+and on her crinkly gray hair she wore a black shawl. Her face was pure
+Kalmuk, and a network of fine wrinkles covered it. Her eyes, large and
+pale green, dominated the countenance&mdash;wonderful eyes in their
+arresting, dreamy mysticism.</p>
+
+<p>I asked her to explain her new religion, and she answered that hers was
+the very oldest extant, and formed the belief of five hundred million
+souls. I inquired how it was that this stupendous fact had not yet
+touched Christendom, and her reply was that there had never been any
+interference with Christian thought. Though judge of all, Christianity
+had been judged by none. The rise of Japan was a factor of immense
+potency, and in time would open out a new era in the comprehension of
+East by West. Then the meaning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> would flash upon the churches of the
+words, "Neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem."</p>
+
+<p>I explained to her my difficulties, which she proceeded to solve by
+expounding the doctrines of reincarnation and Karma. They jumped
+instantly to my reason. I there and then found the Just God, of whom I
+had been in search. From that day to this I have never had reason to
+swerve from those beliefs. The older I grow, the more experience I
+gather, the more I read, the more confirmed do I become in the belief
+that such provide the only rational explanation of this life, the only
+natural hope in the world to come.</p>
+
+<p>I have offered those beliefs to very many people whom I discovered to be
+on the same quest as I had been. I have never once had them rejected by
+any serious truth-seeker, and I have seen them passed on and on by these
+people to others, forming enormous ramifications which became lost to
+view in the passage of time and their own magnitude.</p>
+
+<p>In these early days there was little literature available for the
+student, but the circle of clever brains which rapidly surrounded
+Blavatsky set to work with a will under her guidance, and now, after the
+lapse of thirty years, there is an enormous literature always commanding
+a wide sale, and the little circle that gathered round "the old lady"
+has swollen into very many thousands.</p>
+
+<p>What was the secret of Helena Petrovski Blavatsky's instant success? I
+have no doubt that it lay in her power to give to the West the Eastern
+answers to those problems which the Church has lost.</p>
+
+<p>In her way Blavatsky was a true missioner. "Go forth on your journey for
+the weal and the welfare of all people, out of compassion for the world
+and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> welfare of angels and mortals," was the command given by the
+Lord Buddha to his disciples, and Christ, following the universal ideal,
+five hundred years later, commanded, "Go ye into all the world and
+preach the Gospel of the whole Creation."</p>
+
+<p>I began to study those, to me, new doctrines at once, and I also took up
+their occult side, no light task, but one of absorbing interest. Not
+till then did I fully realize that in no one human life could that long,
+long path be trodden, in no new-born soul could be developed those
+divine possibilities of which I could catch but a fleeting illusive
+vision.</p>
+
+<p>"Thou canst not travel in the Path before thou hast become the Path
+itself." Did not the Christ warn his followers that the Path must be
+trodden more or less alone? "Forsake all and follow Me." So, also in the
+Bhagavad Gita it is written: "Abandoning all duties come unto me alone
+for shelter. Sorrow not, I will liberate thee from thy sins."</p>
+
+<p>"The secret doctrine" written by Blavatsky proved a mine of wealth, and
+I read the volumes through seven times in seven different keys. The
+works of A. P. Sinnett, text books then, and now brought up to date by
+expanding knowledge, were extremely helpful. For advanced students "The
+Growth of the Soul" is unsurpassed. A very short time elapsed before
+mental food was supplied for practically every branch of mysticism and
+occult development, and students flocked into headquarters from all
+parts of the world.</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting to remember the two adjoining villas in Avenue Road,
+St. John's Wood, where we used to congregate to study, and hear lectures
+thirty years ago, and to look now on the stately buildings in Tavistock
+Square. They are designed by the great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> architect Lutyens, whose wife,
+Lady Emily, is an ardent theosophist. I am glad that I have lived to see
+these doctrines take firm root in the West, and grow so amazingly that
+in all cities they are now held by vast numbers, and even in cases where
+they have not been finally adopted they are acknowledged to be the only
+logical conclusion for those who desire to possess a rational belief. I
+am glad that I can look back with love and profound gratitude to Helena
+P. Blavatsky, the woman who grafted on the West the wisdom of the ages.
+I have no doubt that she is enabled to see the mighty structure raised
+on her small beginnings, and doubtless she has met on "the other side"
+men and women whose debt to her is equally as great as mine.</p>
+
+<p>Blavatsky began by exploding the theory that men are born equal. If this
+one life were all, then this great error ought, in common justice, to be
+absolute truth, and every man should possess common rights in the
+community, and one man ought to be as good as another. If every soul
+born to-day is a fresh creation, who will in the course of time pass
+away from this life for ever, then why is it that one is only fitted to
+obey, whilst another is eminently fitted to rule? One is born with a
+tendency to vice and crime, another to virtue and honesty. One is born a
+genius, another is born to idiocy. How, she asked, could a firm social
+foundation ever be built up on this utter disregard of nature? How
+treat, as having right to equal power, the wise and the ignorant, the
+criminal and the saint? Yet, if man be born but once it would be very
+unjust to build on any other foundation.</p>
+
+<p>Re-incarnation implies the evolution of the soul, and it makes the
+equality of man a delusion. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> evolution time plays the greatest part,
+and through evolution humanity is climbing. "Souls while eternal in
+their essence are of different ages in their individuality."</p>
+
+<p>Many of us must know people who though quite old in years are children
+in mind. Men and women who having arrived at three score years and ten
+are still utterly childish and inconsequent. They are young souls who
+have had the experiences of very few earth lives. Again, we all know
+children who seem born abnormally old. Infant prodigies, musicians,
+calculators, painters who have brought over their genius from a former
+life.</p>
+
+<p>I remember once meeting with a curious experience, which is not very
+easy to describe. It was an experience more of feeling than of seeing.</p>
+
+<p>I was standing in Milan Cathedral. In front of me and behind was
+gathered a crowd of peasants. High Mass was being celebrated, and all
+the seats were occupied.</p>
+
+<p>After a few moments I began to feel a curious sensation of being
+intently watched. Some penetrating influence was probing me through and
+through, with a quiet but intensely powerful directness. I had the
+sensation that my soul was being stripped bare. I looked round, but
+could see nothing to account for my sensation. Every one seemed intent
+on their devotions. I began to wonder if some malicious old peasant was
+throwing over me the spell of the evil eye, but again my feelings were
+not conscious of an evil intent; it was more an absorbed speculation
+directed towards me. Some one was probing my soul, speculating on my
+spiritual worth or worthlessness, with an intensely earnest yet cold
+calculation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Just in front of me stood a peasant woman of the poorest class. Her back
+was towards me, and over her shoulder hung a baby of not more than a
+year old. Suddenly I met the eyes of the child full. Then I knew. As a
+psychological experience it was most interesting, but it sent a little
+thrill of creepiness through me.</p>
+
+<p>The baby did not withdraw its gaze, but continued leisurely to look me
+through and through. The eyes were large and gray, the expression that
+of a contemplative savant, with a faint dash of irony in their glance. I
+do not pretend to be anything but what is now called "psychic," but I am
+certain that those windows of the soul, with that age-long experience
+flooding out of them, would have arrested the most material person. My
+husband, who is accustomed to my "flights of imagination," was very much
+struck by that look of maturity, that suggestion of &aelig;onic knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Blavatsky taught me to look on man as an evolving entity, in whose life
+career births and deaths are recurring incidents. Birth and death begin
+and end only a single chapter in the book of life. She taught me that we
+cannot evade inexorable destiny. I made my present in my past. To-day I
+am making my future. In proportion as I outwear my past, and change my
+present abysmal ignorance into knowledge, so shall I become free.</p>
+
+<p>I have often heard Blavatsky called a charlatan, and I am bound to say
+that her impish behavior often gave grounds for this description. She
+was foolishly intolerant of the many smart West End ladies who arrived
+in flocks, demanding to see spooks, masters,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> elementals, anything, in
+fact, in the way of phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Blavatsky was a born conjuror. Her wonderful fingers were made
+for jugglers' tricks, and I have seen her often use them for that
+purpose. I well remember my amazement upon the first occasion on which
+she exhibited her occult powers, spurious and genuine.</p>
+
+<p>I was sitting alone with her one afternoon, when the cards of Jessica,
+Lady Sykes, the late Duchess of Montrose and the Honorable Mrs. S.&mdash;&mdash;
+(still living) were brought in to her. She said she would receive the
+ladies at once, and they were ushered in. They explained that they had
+heard of her new religion, and her marvelous occult powers. They hoped
+she would afford them a little exhibition of what she could do.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Blavatsky had not moved out of her chair. She was suavity itself,
+and whilst conversing she rolled cigarettes for her visitors and invited
+them to smoke. She concluded that they were not particularly interested
+in the old faith which the young West called new; what they really were
+keen about was phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>That was so, responded the ladies, and the burly Duchess inquired if
+Madame ever gave racing tips, or lucky numbers for Monte Carlo?</p>
+
+<p>Madame disclaimed having any such knowledge, but she was willing to
+afford them a few moments' amusement. Would one of the ladies suggest
+something she would like done?</p>
+
+<p>Lady Sykes produced a pack of cards from her pocket, and held them out
+to Madame Blavatsky, who shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"First remove the marked cards," she said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lady Sykes laughed and replied, "Which are they?"</p>
+
+<p>Madame Blavatsky told her, without a second's hesitation. This charmed
+the ladies. It seemed a good beginning.</p>
+
+<p>"Make that basket of tobacco jump about," suggested one of them.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment the basket had vanished. I don't know where it went, I
+only know it disappeared by trickery, that the ladies looked for it
+everywhere, even under Madame Blavatsky's ample skirts, and that
+suddenly it reappeared upon its usual table. A little more jugglery
+followed and some psychometry, which was excellent, then the ladies
+departed, apparently well satisfied with the entertainment.</p>
+
+<p>When I was once more alone with Madame Blavatsky, she turned to me with
+a wry smile and said, "Would you have me throw pearls before swine?"</p>
+
+<p>I asked her if all she had done was pure trickery.</p>
+
+<p>"Not all, but most of it," she unblushingly replied, "but now I will
+give you something lovely and real."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment or two she was silent, covering her eyes with her hand,
+then a sound caught my ear. I can only describe what I heard as fairy
+music, exquisitely dainty and original. It seemed to proceed from
+somewhere just between the floor and the ceiling, and it moved about to
+different corners of the room. There was a crystal innocence in the
+music, which suggested the dance of joyous children at play.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I will give you the music of life," said Madame Blavatsky.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment or two there fell a trance-like silence. The twilight was
+creeping into the room, and seemed to bring with it a tingling
+expectancy. Then it seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> to me that something entered from without,
+and brought with it utterly new conditions, something incredible,
+unimagined and beyond the bounds of reason.</p>
+
+<p>Some one was singing, a distant melody was creeping nearer, yet I was
+aware it had never been distant, it was only becoming louder.</p>
+
+<p>I suddenly felt afraid of myself. The air about me was ringing with
+vibrations of weird, unearthly music, seemingly as much around me as it
+was above and behind me. It had no whereabouts, it was unlocatable. As I
+listened my whole body quivered with wild elation, and the sensation of
+the unforeseen.</p>
+
+<p>There was rhythm in the music, yet it was unlike anything I had ever
+heard before. It sounded like a Pastorale, and it held a call to which
+my whole being wildly responded.</p>
+
+<p>Who was the player, and what was his instrument? He might have been a
+flautist, and he played with a catching lilt, a luxurious abandon that
+was an incarnation of Nature. It caught me suddenly away to green
+Sicilian hills, where the pipes of unseen players echo down the mountain
+sides, as the pipes of Pan once echoed through the rugged gorges and
+purple vales of Hellas and Thrace.</p>
+
+<p>Alluring though the music was, and replete with the hot fever of life,
+it carried with it a thrill of dread. Its sweetness was cloying, its
+tenderness was sensuous. A balmy scent crept through the room, of wild
+thyme, of herbs, of asphodel and the muscadine of the wine press. It
+enwrapt me like an odorous vapor.</p>
+
+<p>The sounds began to take shape, and gradually mold themselves into
+words. I knew I was being courted with subtlety, and urged to fly out of
+my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> house of life and join the Saturnalia Regna. The player was speaking
+a language which I understood, as I had understood no tongue before. It
+was my true native tongue that spoke in the wild ringing lilt, and I
+could not but give ear to its enchantments and the ecstasy of its joy.</p>
+
+<p>My soul seemed to strain at the leash. Should I let go? Like a powerful
+opiate the allurement enfolded me, yet from out its thrall a small
+insistent voice whispered "Caution! Where will you be led: supposing you
+yield your will, would it ever be yours again?"</p>
+
+<p>Now my brain was seized with a sense of panic and weakness. The music
+suddenly seemed replete with gay sinfulness and insolent conquest. It
+spoke the secrets which the nature myth so often murmurs to those who
+live amid great silences, of those dread mysteries of the spirit which
+yet invest it with such glory and wonderment.</p>
+
+<p>With a violent reaction of fear I rose suddenly, and as I did so the
+whole scene was swept from out the range of my senses. I was back once
+more in Blavatsky's room with the creeping twilight and the far off
+hoarse roar of London stealing in at the open window. I glanced at
+Madame Blavatsky. She had sunk down in her chair, and she lay huddled up
+in deep trance. She had floated out with the music into a sea of earthly
+oblivion. Between her fingers she held a small Russian cross.</p>
+
+<p>I knew that she had thrust me back to the world which still claimed me,
+and I went quietly out of the house into the streets of London.</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion when I was alone with Madame<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> Blavatsky she suddenly
+broke off our conversation by lapsing into another language, which I
+supposed to be Hindustanee. She appeared to be addressing some one else,
+and on looking over my shoulder I saw we were no longer alone. A man
+stood in the middle of the room. I was sure he had not entered by the
+door, window or chimney, and as I looked at him in some astonishment, he
+salaamed to Madame Blavatsky, and replied to her in the same language in
+which she had addressed him.</p>
+
+<p>I rose at once to leave her, and as I bade her good-by she whispered to
+me, "Do not mention this." The man did not seem aware of my presence; he
+took no notice of me as I left the room. He was dark in color and very
+sad looking, and his dress was a long, black cloak and a soft black hat
+which he did not remove, pulled well over his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>I found out that evening that none of the general staff were aware of
+his arrival, and I saw him no more.</p>
+
+<p>I remember clearly the first night that Annie Besant came to
+headquarters as an interested inquirer. She arrived with the socialist,
+Herbert Burrows. Madame Blavatsky told me she was destined to take a
+very great part in the future Theosophical movement. At that time such a
+thing seemed incredible, yet it has come to pass.</p>
+
+<p>About this period I went to live in the East End of London, Haggerston
+and Whitechapel, where I had a night shelter of my own. There I saw into
+what surroundings children were born, how they grow up, and how their
+parents live and die. I have seen so much of the lives of the outcast
+poor that I can feel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> nothing but the most passionate pity for them,
+even though I can now look upon them as souls just beginning to climb
+the ladder of evolution.</p>
+
+<p>My night shelter was for women only, and was purposely of the roughest
+description. The floor was bare concrete, and round the walls were heaps
+of millers' sacks I had bought cheap, owing to mice having eaten holes
+in them.</p>
+
+<p>According to our laws the legal age at which a girl can marry is
+thirteen, and I used to get many of these girl wives in for the night,
+as their lawful husbands used to turn them out of doors. I discovered
+that it was no uncommon practice for a man to buy one of those children
+from the parents for a few pence, the parents' consent being necessary.
+The marriage was solemnized, and the child wife was used only as a
+drudge to slave for the husband and his mistress, who was of a more
+suitable age to become his mate.</p>
+
+<p>I used to be very much troubled by women in the throes of delirium
+tremens. They would come in quite quietly when the shelter opened,
+strip, pick up a sack and get into it, and then lie down and at once go
+to sleep. After a few hours' dead slumber they would get up, raving mad,
+and disturb all the other sleepers. The reason of this peculiar form of
+D. T. was explained to me by a doctor in the neighborhood. The publicans
+kept a pail behind the bar, into which was thrown the dregs of every
+species of liquor sold during the day. This concoction was distributed
+cheap at closing time, and its effects were cumulative.</p>
+
+<p>One night I had a curious experience. The room was unusually quiet, and
+I had closed my eyes, but I was not asleep. I opened them, and, in the
+bright light of one unshaded gas jet, I saw a dark figure moving.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> Its
+back was towards me, and I instantly thought a plain clothes policeman
+had entered, no unusual occurrence, without my hearing him. In these
+days detectives used often to escort the West End ladies on slumming
+expeditions, and they usually called on me. Then I saw this figure was
+clad in dark robes, and was very tall. Again I thought, this is some old
+Jew who has crept in, and I was just about to rise and eject him, when
+something suddenly stopped me.</p>
+
+<p><i>I saw through him and beyond him.</i> I then and there realized that
+feeling of hair of one's head rising on one's scalp is no mere figment
+of speech.</p>
+
+<p>The figure moved softly round the room, it made no sound whatever, and
+as it came to each sleeper it bent down, as if closely scrutinizing each
+face. It occurred to me that it was looking for some one. I began to
+dread the moment when the search was over, and the figure would turn its
+face towards me. I felt that my hair had turned into the quills of a
+porcupine. I wanted to shut my eyes, but dared not. Then before that
+quest was over, the figure straightened itself and turned full towards
+me. My fears instantly fell away from me like a fallen mantle, for
+though I knew the visitor had come from the other side, there was
+something so profoundly sad in the pale weary face, that compassion
+quite eclipsed fear. Another second and it had vanished.</p>
+
+<p>I lived in Whitechapel during the dread visitation of "Jack the Ripper,"
+and all women at once adopted the habit of walking in the middle of the
+road amongst the horses and carts. Fortunately there were no motors in
+those days to add to the confusion. When we came to the house or alley
+we wished to enter, we made a sudden dash for it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One night I had occasion to pass the entire night by the bedside of a
+dying prostitute. She lived in one of four rooms, all occupied by the
+same class, and all opening into a court not larger than ten feet by
+ten. I suppose I must have been very tired, for I fell asleep, and about
+five a. m. I woke and found I was alone, the woman was dead. I went out
+into the court, hearing a sudden noise of excited voices, and discovered
+that "Jack" had been at work in the adjoining room, only separated from
+mine by a match-board partition. Portions of the unfortunate woman were
+neatly arranged on a deal table. I had heard absolutely nothing. Later
+on that same day I revisited the scene, and found a curious contrast.
+Seeing his way to a cheap furnished lodging, a coster had married his
+donah in a hurry, and the wedding breakfast was being eaten off the
+blood-stained table!</p>
+
+<p>It was in those days that I developed into a convinced Suffragist. I saw
+that until men and women came together to improve and mold our
+civilization, very little improvement could be expected. The son of the
+bondwoman is not on a level with the son of the free woman, and we saw
+that the struggle must go on until we were accorded the right to govern
+our own lives.</p>
+
+<p>I could always see the anti's point of view, for, had I thought only of
+my own position as an isolated unit, a vote would have seemed to me a
+needless responsibility. No social worker who has penetrated to the
+depths can maintain this attitude, and so, in company with all other
+women workers, I entered on the crusade which has just terminated in
+victory. Much as I dislike militancy, I am convinced that it hastened
+our victory by very many years, by bringing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> the subject before the
+world. Also the enormous number of idle and, formerly, indifferent
+women, who have rushed into work in answer to their country's call, has
+helped our cause enormously. I have invariably found that directly a
+woman enters the ranks of active labor, her views, however strongly they
+have been opposed to us, at once swing round. Once a woman <i>proves for
+herself</i> the disabilities under which we labor, she is at once
+converted. To the very many women who suffered acute physical torture
+during the militant campaign, our easy victory must seem passing
+strange.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MAN IN THE MARYLEBONE ROAD</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is thirty years ago since I became a convert to Spiritualism. At that
+time I made up my mind that I would attend fifty s&eacute;ances, and if, out of
+that number, I did not come across one that I could be absolutely
+certain was genuine I would attend no more. Spiritualism, in itself,
+never interested me, but I was determined to see for myself if there was
+really anything in it.</p>
+
+<p>I attended twenty-nine s&eacute;ances before I happened on one that was
+absolutely convincing. Several had been almost convincing, but a
+loophole for fraud had remained, and so long as that was the case I
+persevered.</p>
+
+<p>I went one summer morning to see an old man who lived in the Marylebone
+Road. I was shown up into a sunny little room on the first floor. It had
+neither carpet, curtains nor window blind, and it looked on the street.
+The furniture consisted of a plain, uncovered deal table in the middle
+of a clean planked floor, and eight plain uncovered deal chairs were
+ranged round the walls. The room was utterly destitute of ornament,
+there was not even a clock, and I was the only occupant.</p>
+
+<p>Soon the old man entered, a very ordinary looking person, and civilly
+asked what I wanted.</p>
+
+<p>I said that I understood he was possessed of psychic powers, and I would
+like to see an exhibition of them.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled and answered, "My fee is two-and-six<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> for a quarter of an
+hour. Choose your own phenomenon, and I'll see what I can do."</p>
+
+<p>I was puzzled at first, and looked round the bare walls for inspiration.
+There was not even a photograph or picture. Then suddenly I thought of
+something rather silly.</p>
+
+<p>"Please make those four chairs opposite to us cross the floor and mount
+on to the table," I said.</p>
+
+<p>The old man drew his chair quite close to mine, "Then give me your
+hand." I removed my glove and did as he asked.</p>
+
+<p>He looked, not at the chairs, but into my face, and I at once warned
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am no good as a subject for hypnotism, so it is useless to try."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed and answered, "I am not a hypnotist, but I see you have
+power. You may as well lend me some. You are young, and I am old."</p>
+
+<p>At that second my attention was distracted by a grating sound, and I
+forgot all about my companion. I saw the four chairs leave the wall and
+advance towards the table, in exactly the position, and tilted forward,
+they would be in if a human hand was dragging them across the floor.
+There appeared to be four invisible hands at the work. Then, one by one,
+they were neatly balanced, one on the top of the other, on the table.</p>
+
+<p>When the manifestation was complete I remembered the old man, and looked
+round at him. He was watching the business, as keenly interested as I
+was.</p>
+
+<p>"Good boys! good boys," I heard him murmur.</p>
+
+<p>"How is it done?" I asked him.</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged. "The Petris (spirits) do it. I don't."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Then ask 'the Petris' to put the chairs neatly back again."</p>
+
+<p>"The Petris" performed this feat very expeditiously, and I paid
+two-and-sixpence and departed. There was no loophole here for fraud, not
+a wire, or string, or any human manipulation, and I was not hypnotized.
+I never have been. For that sort of test I had seen enough.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after I witnessed a materialization in broad daylight. I was
+free to move about the room, and stand by the medium as she lay bound
+and deeply entranced. I was free to make any examinations I pleased,
+whilst others present conversed with the spirit, and I left the house
+absolutely convinced of the genuineness of that phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p>That was the last test s&eacute;ance I attended, and for years afterwards I did
+not interest myself in spiritualism, nor did I attend many private
+sittings.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the close of the South African War I was ordered from "the other
+side" to begin again, but on different lines. I was ordered to be a
+medium.</p>
+
+<p>A man whom I barely knew, and who had passed over, wished to communicate
+with his people. This put me in a quandary. I hardly knew his people,
+and their social position was not such as could be treated
+unceremoniously by a casual acquaintance. I had never heard that they
+were interested in "other side" subjects. The very little I knew of them
+suggested quite the reverse.</p>
+
+<p>I consulted with my husband. "One cannot," I argued, "go up to people
+who are almost strangers and tell them their son wishes to communicate
+with them through me."</p>
+
+<p>My husband quite saw the difficulty, but it had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> always happened that
+when any one wished to communicate with us, and we paid no attention, we
+were given no peace till we did take heed, and sat down with an Ouija
+board to receive the message. He therefore proposed that we should
+consult Mr. A. P. Sinnett, now such a well-known writer on Occultism,
+and an old friend of ours. We therefore laid the matter before him.</p>
+
+<p>His reply was uncompromising.</p>
+
+<p>"Do as you are told from the other side. It is not for you to question
+or consider the social consequences to yourselves."</p>
+
+<p>This advice we immediately followed, and we were met with the utmost
+kindness and sympathetic understanding. Sittings were arranged,
+communication established. Test questions were put, which we did not
+understand, but which were satisfactory to the questioners, and for many
+years the sittings continued until the "other side" made arrangements
+for a change of mediums and I was set free for other work. I say, set
+free, because during all those years we had held ourselves entirely at
+the disposal of this wonderful spirit, who communicated through me, and
+it is no exaggeration to say that our daily lives, our worldly plans,
+entirely depended upon his wishes. He had his own work to do, and our
+earth lives were always arranged to suit his convenience.</p>
+
+<p>About the same time as the above experience began my husband was
+disturbed by noises in his library, and he came to the conclusion that
+some one had something to say and was determined to say it. One evening,
+when the disturbance prevented serious reading, we sat down with the
+Ouija board. The result was as follows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A spirit who purported to be a well-known soldier of fortune who had
+lately committed suicide, desired to give a message. This astonished us,
+as we had known him only slightly, and we wondered why he had chosen to
+bestow his attentions on us. He said he was very unhappy because he owed
+a certain sum of money to a friend, whom I will call B. This money B.
+could have refunded to him if he would communicate with a certain London
+address, which the departed soldier gave us in full.</p>
+
+<p>We knew B., and knew that he had been a close friend of the departed. We
+also knew that B. was on the Gold Coast. We promised, however, to send
+him the message, and that was the last we ever heard of the soldier.</p>
+
+<p>My husband wrote to B. on the Gold Coast simply giving him the message
+and leaving it at that. We were sure B. was an absolute skeptic. He was!
+and did nothing till his return to England three years later, when he
+applied at the address which he happened to have kept, and received his
+money.</p>
+
+<p>I first became interested in Occultism, not only through my own very
+early experiences, but through hearing as a mere child that my
+grandfather, Robert the younger of the two well-known publishing
+brothers, W. and R. Chambers, had investigated spiritualism to his
+entire satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>In those days, about 1860, scientific men did not trouble about occult
+subjects, which were deemed beneath their notice. Science was so
+strictly orthodox that my grandfather published his "Vestiges of
+Creation" anonymously. It created an enormous sensation, and upon that
+book and the writings of Lamarck, Darwin founded his "Origin of
+Species." Robert<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> Chambers determined to go to America and investigate
+for himself the reported marvelous happenings there. He had sittings
+with all the renowned mediums, bringing to bear upon their phenomena the
+acumen of his scientific mind, and he returned to Europe a convinced
+believer. He carried on regular sittings with Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall
+and other intellectuals, and with General Drayson, then a young beginner
+who went very far in his investigations before he died.</p>
+
+<p>About the year 1885 I happened to be staying at Hawarden with Mr. and
+Mrs. Gladstone, and the only other guest, outside the family party, was
+the late Canon Malcolm McColl, through whose instrumentality I became a
+member of the Psychical Society.</p>
+
+<p>McColl was a most interesting personality, a leading light on matters
+occult, and a famous recounter of ghost stories. He was also <i>persona
+grata</i> in the Gladstone household, and Mrs. Gladstone often spoke to me
+of their deep love for him.</p>
+
+<p>I forget now what led up to the subject, but one night, when we were
+sitting talking, I told Mr. Gladstone that my grandfather, Robert
+Chambers, had been a convinced spiritualist. The Canon at once tried to
+draw the G.O.M., and to our mutual amazement his arguments in favor of
+the return of the disembodied soul to earth were met by concurring short
+ejaculations, such as "Of course! Naturally! Why, certainly!"</p>
+
+<p>Then quite suddenly Mr. Gladstone began to prove to us that the old
+Biblical scribes were convinced spiritualists. From his intimate
+knowledge of the Bible he quoted text after text in support of his
+contention. "Here He worked no wonders because the people were wanting
+in faith," he compared to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> present day medium's difficulty in
+working with skeptics. When Christ asked, "Who has touched Me? Much
+virtue has passed out of Me," He but spoke as many a modern healer
+speaks on feeling a failure of power. "Try the spirits whether they be
+of God," is what all spiritualists of to-day should practice rigorously.</p>
+
+<p>Conan Doyle, in his book, "The New Revelation," touches upon those
+facts, and it was only on reading his book with profound interest that I
+remembered the impressive talk I had so many years ago with Mr.
+Gladstone. As Conan Doyle truly says, "The early Christian Church was
+saturated with spiritualism."</p>
+
+<p>What, it may be asked, is the value to a woman of psychic experiences,
+whose reality may be convincing to herself, but never to others?</p>
+
+<p>Firstly, there is this enormous value for me, that certain psychic
+experiences I have had make a future existence, after so-called death, a
+certainty.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, other varieties of psychic phenomena have furnished me with
+unmistakable proof that I possess an immortal soul.</p>
+
+<p>Thirdly, still other varieties of experiences have provided me with the
+implicit belief in a God, who is in actual touch with Humanity.</p>
+
+<p>Again, all soul experiences, begotten from out the supreme mystery of
+Being, show us that our real life is not contained in our present normal
+consciousness, but in a vastly wider, grander plane, which, as yet, is
+but dimly sensed by the few.</p>
+
+<p>Those who have bathed in "the light invisible" can bring glory to those
+in gloom. They visit, but no longer live in the day. Their glory is in
+the night,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> when they walk with the Immortals, and bear with them the
+golden lamps of life eternal. Those who have realized the powers within,
+powers which not only are the pillars of infinite harmony, but the
+mainspring of eternal life, have builded on a rock which no tempest can
+destroy.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Tis time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">New hopes should animate the world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">New light should dawn from new revealings to a race<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Weighed down so long."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16"><span class="smcap">Paracelsus.</span><br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GHOST OF PRINCE CHARLIE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Scotland in the autumn of the pre-war days was a very gay place. The big
+country houses were filled with shooting parties, and for the Autumn
+Meetings, Ayr races, Perth races, and games, The Inverness Gathering,
+etc. The dates were so arranged that one could go the round, and thus
+dance through several weeks. I used to go regularly to Inverness, and
+afterwards visit friends in the surrounding neighborhood. One of the
+most delightful houses to visit was Tarbat, belonging to the Countess of
+Cromartie. Any one who has read her unique books must have come to the
+conclusion that Lady Cromartie is a mystic of no ordinary type, but only
+those who know her intimately are aware how predominating in her
+character is this inborn mysticism.</p>
+
+<p>I first remember the two sisters, Lady Sibell and Lady Constance
+Mackenzie, hanging on to their father's arms as they walked about
+Folkestone. They were then tiny tots, and I was staying with their
+mother, the beautiful Lilian, daughter of Lord Macdonald of the Isles.
+Beautiful was the only word to describe Lord Cromartie's wife&mdash;and Lily
+seemed the most suitable name that could have been bestowed upon her.
+She was intensely musical and interested in ghosts. Born the daughter of
+a Highland chieftain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> she understood how to live the life of a great
+Scottish noblewoman. She was always very kind to me, and I used to stay
+with her very often.</p>
+
+<p>In 1893 Lord Cromartie died, and his eldest daughter, Lady Sibell,
+became Countess of Cromartie in her own right&mdash;the title going in the
+female line. As a child the young Countess had been a great reader. I
+remember she used often to be missing, and found in some quiet room
+buried in a book. To this day she has the faculty of so absorbing
+herself in a book that no amount of talking and noise in the room
+penetrates her ears. Lady Constance was quite different, devoted to
+out-of-door life, and I shall never forget how adoring the old people on
+the properties were to her, and how she loved them. One sterling and
+unusual quality she had. I never heard her say an unkind word of any
+one.</p>
+
+<p>In 1899 the Countess of Cromartie married Major, now Colonel Blunt, and
+she has three fine children, two boys and a girl.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most remarkable facts about her is her agelessness. She never
+alters with the years. Her white delicate skin, her girlish figure and
+dark glowing eyes, always retain their look of extreme youth.</p>
+
+<p>I have said that her mysticism must at once become apparent to the
+readers of her books, but to those, who like myself have known her from
+childhood, her psychic powers have always been extraordinary.</p>
+
+<p>I remember one autumn staying at Tarbat with only a very few other
+guests, I forget now who they all were. It had been a dead, still day.
+One of those sad, brooding days one gets so often in the north. In the
+afternoon, when we were out walking, Lady Cromartie said suddenly to me
+and a Miss Drummond,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> whom we were both very fond of, "There is going to
+be an earthquake to-night."</p>
+
+<p>We received this piece of information as a joke, and I thought nothing
+more of the matter till tea-time, when a gorgeous sunset was
+illuminating the heavens. As we were standing at the window looking out
+at it we were all startled by a tremendous roar, more like a very loud
+peal of thunder than anything else, yet we knew, by the look of the sky,
+that it could not have been thunder. Every one offered a different
+opinion as to what the noise could mean, but Lady Cromartie calmly said,
+"The noise is in the earth, not in the sky; it is the forerunner of the
+earthquake."</p>
+
+<p>We now began to take this earthquake business more seriously. Sibell
+Drummond, also very psychic, said she knew the noise came from the
+interior of the earth, and that very early that morning she had heard
+the same sound, only much more distant. We asked Lady Cromartie how she
+could possibly tell that an earthquake was coming. Such convulsions are
+not common enough in Scotland to admit of lucky guesses.</p>
+
+<p>"I can tell those things of Nature; something in me is akin to them,"
+she explained. "It is quite certain this earthquake will come before
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>As the sun went down the quiet weather changed, and by bed-time it was
+blowing such a gale that we forgot all about Lady Cromartie's prophecy.
+At one o'clock in the morning, when we were all asleep, the earthquake
+arrived, and awakened us all instantly. My bed rocked, and the china
+clattered, and I heard a big picture near my bed move out from the wall
+and go back again. Some of us got up, but there was only the one sharp
+shock. In the morning we heard that considerable damage had been done.
+Several<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> houses and stables had been razed to the ground, and some
+animals killed and people injured.</p>
+
+<p>Another curious incident I remember happening during a visit to Tarbat.</p>
+
+<p>At breakfast one morning Lady Cromartie told us that she had a very
+vivid dream just before daylight. She dreamed that if she went into a
+certain room in the house she would find some jewels that had been
+hidden there. She seemed to have been told this in her sleep by some one
+she did not know. The room was indicated, but not the spot where the
+jewels lay. The present Duke of Argyll, always keenly alive to psychic
+phenomena, was of our party, and he at once proposed that directly after
+we had finished breakfast we should all proceed to the room, rarely
+used, but formerly a business room, and make a thorough search.</p>
+
+<p>By the way, I cannot refrain here from suggesting what a wonderful book
+of Scottish ghost stories the Duke could give us if he chose. His
+repertoire was endless and most thrilling, and he knew how to tell a
+ghost story.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast we adjourned to the room indicated in the dream, and
+began our search. The only likely place seemed a large bookcase, full of
+books, with cupboards beneath. All the doors were locked and keyless. A
+pause ensued whilst keys were fetched from the housekeeper's room, and
+for a long time we could find nothing to fit the doors, but at last we
+were rewarded. The cupboards below were opened, disclosing a quantity of
+rubbish. Old books, estate maps, fishing tackle, every sort of thing,
+but no jewels.</p>
+
+<p>At last the Duke, down on his knees fumbling amongst the dust, drew
+forth two tin japanned boxes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> He shook them, and the thumping inside
+proved that they were not empty. The trouble was they also were locked
+and keyless. Again there was a scramble to fit keys. We were all on the
+tiptoe of excited expectation.</p>
+
+<p>At last both boxes were opened, and there lay the jewels. Fine,
+old-fashioned pieces that had lain there, who knows for how long, and
+probably had belonged to Lady Cromartie's grandmother, "the Countess
+Duchess" 3rd Duchess of Sutherland.</p>
+
+<p>Still another reminiscence of beautiful Tarbat.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Cromartie asked me to join a shooting party she and Major Blunt
+were giving, to meet Prince Arthur of Connaught.</p>
+
+<p>I arrived one evening in wild winter weather. There had been a heavy
+snowstorm, and the sky looked as if there was considerably more to come.
+I found all the other guests had already arrived, and we were a very
+merry party. It was Prince Arthur's first "shoot" in the far North, and
+his first experience of what Scotland could provide in the way of autumn
+weather, and he was glad to avail himself of a thick woolen sweater of
+mine, which I was proud to present to him. He was perfectly charming to
+us all, and there was, owing to his simplicity, no sense of stiffness
+introduced into our party. That evening, after dinner, he was strolling
+round the room, looking at the pictures, and he paused opposite a framed
+letter, written by Prince Charles Edward during the '45 to the Lord
+Cromartie of that time, who was his earnest supporter.</p>
+
+<p>"Why!" exclaimed Prince Arthur, "that letter is written by 'The
+Pretender,' isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer. A thrill of horror ran<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> through the breasts of the
+ardent Jacobites present. Dead silence reigned.</p>
+
+<p>Then I could stand it no longer. "Please, sir," I said, "we all call him
+Prince Charles Edward Stuart."</p>
+
+<p>Prince Arthur turned round laughingly. "I beg his pardon and all of
+yours," he exclaimed in the most charming manner, and the hearts of all
+the outraged Jacobites warmed to him at once.</p>
+
+<p>I was just about to creep into bed, very late that night, and very tired
+after my long, cold journey in a desperately sluggish train, when Lady
+Cromartie peeped in at my door. Her wonderful dark eyes were ablaze, and
+I knew at once she had something psychic to tell me. Her eyes looked
+like nothing else in the world but her eyes, when she is on the track of
+a ghost, or one of her "other side" experiences.</p>
+
+<p>"I have just seen Prince Charles Edward," she announced.</p>
+
+<p>I took her firmly by the arm. Prince Charles Edward means a very great
+deal to me, and I don't let anything pass me by that concerns his
+beloved memory.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me quick. Where did you see him?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I was just going to get into bed when I saw him standing looking at me,
+at the far end of the room. He was smiling, and as I stared back at him
+he slowly crossed the floor, his smiling face always turned to me, and
+vanished through the wall," was Lady Cromartie's answer.</p>
+
+<p>Then I told her of a certain feeling I had experienced earlier in the
+evening. At the moment when our Jacobite hearts were stung to deep,
+though fleeting resentment, we had formed a thought form, powerful
+enough to reach the spirit of Bonny Prince Charlie<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> on "the other side."
+Our spirits had called on him, and he had heard and responded. Why not?
+If we believe in the immortality of the soul, the soul of Prince Charles
+Edward surely lives. Where? On the Astral plane, where the souls of all
+must go to divest themselves of the lower passions of earth, and the
+veil between the Physical plane and the Astral plane is wearing very
+thin in these days.</p>
+
+<p>For many of us there are rents through which we are permitted to see the
+old friends who are not lost but gone before, and who await us in a
+sphere where we in turn will await the coming of those who follow after.
+Indeed, the time does not now seem to be so far distant when so-called
+death will be pushed one stage further back, and the transference of the
+soul from earth to the Astral plane will no longer be treated as
+severance. What then will be termed the severance we now call death? It
+will be the passing of the cleansed soul from the Astral plane to the
+Heaven world, for a period of blissful rest before the life urge compels
+the reincarnating ego to take on once more the veil of flesh, in a
+transient human world.</p>
+
+<p>I doubt if it is possible for an English person to comprehend what it
+means to be a Jacobite. One is born a Jacobite or one is not. I was born
+a Jacobite, and I never lose my passionate love and regret for the
+sufferings and sorrows of Prince Charles Edward. No female figure in the
+past attracts me so much as does Flora MacDonald. Had I lived during the
+'45 I would have worn the white cockade, and parted with my last "shift"
+for the love of Bonny Prince Charlie. All very ridiculous, many may say,
+but there it is. That is what it means to be born a Jacobite.</p>
+
+<p>My grandfather was an ardent Jacobite, and consorted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> largely with old
+Jacobite families. The Sobieski Stuarts often made their home with him.
+Grand looking men of striking physique and good looks. Robert Chambers
+used to tell a story of the ghost Piper of Fingask; the property of a
+fine old Jacobite, Sir Peter Murray Threipland. The baronetcy is now
+extinct.</p>
+
+<p>One night, whilst my grandfather was visiting Sir Peter, they were
+sitting at supper in the old dining-hall. The two old sisters of Sir
+Peter, Eliza and Jessie, were present. Suddenly the faint strain of the
+pipes was heard in the distance, surely no uncommon sound in Scotland,
+where every Laird has his own piper to play round the dining-table, yet
+a sudden silence fell upon the little party of four. All ears were
+listening intently, and straining eyes were blank to all but the
+evidence of hearing. The noise grew louder, the piper seemed to be
+mounting the stone staircase, yet his brogues made no sound as he
+ascended.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Peter dropped his head down into his arms folded upon the table. He
+sought to hide the fear in his old eyes. The women sat as if chiseled
+out of granite, gray to the lips. The piper of Fingask had come for one
+of them. Which? Now the piper of death was drawing very near, the skirl
+of his pipes had nearly reached the door. In another moment, with a full
+blast of triumph that beat about their ears as it surged into the hall,
+he had passed, and had begun his ascent to the ramparts. The skirl was
+dying away into a wail. Miss Eliza spoke: "He's come for you, Jessie."
+There was no response. The piper of Fingask was playing a "Last Lament"
+now, as he swung round the ramparts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>True enough he had come for Miss Jessie, and very shortly after she
+obeyed the call.</p>
+
+<p>To this day there are men and women who never forget to offer up their
+passionate regret for Prince Charles before they sleep. I know of one
+old Scottish house where his memory is an ever-present, ever-living
+thing. The shadowy old room is consecrated to him. On the walls hang
+portraits of him, and trophies of the '15 and the '45 stand round in
+glass cases. On one table lies a worn, white cockade, yellow with age,
+and a lock of fair hair clasped by a band of blackened pearls. In a tall
+slender glass there is always, in summer-time, a single white rose.</p>
+
+<p>Above is the portrait of the idol of the present house, who gave in the
+past of their all in life and treasure, for the cause they hold so
+sacred, so dear. I cannot look upon that gay, careless, handsome face
+without the tears rising to my eyes. His eyes smile into mine.
+Involuntarily I bend before him. What was the power in you, Prince
+Charles Edward Stuart, that drew from countless women and men that wild
+unswerving devotion? Which made light of terrible hardships, which
+followed you faithfully through glen and corrie? What is that power
+which you still exert over those to whom your name is but a memory, but
+who still, when they think on you or look upon your pictured face, cry
+silently in their hearts for the lost House of Stuart? "Oh! waes me for
+Prince Charlie!"</p>
+
+<p>One must be Scotch to understand that the Union did nothing to unite
+England and Scotland. To the Scottish plowman the Englishman is still a
+foreigner, whom he dislikes. Scotch and English servants do not work
+well in the same house. To us, Mary Queen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> of Scots lived "only the
+other day." When the House of Stuart passed from us our history ended.</p>
+
+<p>Our old houses are full of ghosts, the atmosphere is saturated with the
+tragic history of the past, the very skies seem to brood in melancholy
+over the soil, where so many wild bloody scenes were enacted. To the
+Psychic, Scotland is a land not yet emerged from the dour savagery of
+the past. Once, on visiting an historic old castle, my host pointed out
+to me a group of seven old trees standing close to the entrance.</p>
+
+<p>"Seven skeletons lie there," he said. "My grandfather went after a
+neighboring clan who had raided his cattle. He brought back seven men
+with halters round their necks and strung them up to those trees. Holes
+were dug beneath, and they all dropped into them by degrees, and then
+the earth was shoveled over them again."</p>
+
+<p>What will become of all those grand old places in the future? They are
+so costly to maintain. I think of all those lying around our own
+Aberdeenshire home; Fyvie Castle, a great stately pile, beautiful to
+look upon always, but more especially so when the red fires of a winter
+sunset blaze upon its many windows, and turn to rose the mantling snow
+on battlements and towers, whilst all around is wrapped in a garment of
+spotless white: House of Monymusk, Craigston Castle, Craigievar.</p>
+
+<p>I have just mentioned a few, all have their ghosts, and some have a
+curse upon them.</p>
+
+<p>A friend of ours came to see us, not very long ago, and told us of a
+horrible experience he had been through recently.</p>
+
+<p>He had been visiting a great house in the North, noted in Scottish
+history. The new Laird had only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> entered into possession during the last
+few years, on the death of a near relative, who had died from excessive
+drinking, the Scotchman's curse. Our friend had heard that this dead
+Laird "walked," but he had not met any one who had actually seen his
+ghost. After spending a pleasant evening with his host, and going
+through many reminiscences of his former visits to the house, and to the
+late Laird, who in spite of his fatal propensities had been a gallant
+gentleman and a great sportsman, our friend retired to bed.</p>
+
+<p>The room he slept in was a large one, and the bed faced the door, and a
+washstand stood on one side of it. He remembered the room, having slept
+in it on former occasions. He was roused in the night by some one rather
+noisily fumbling at the handle of his door, which was not locked. He sat
+up in bed and called out, "Who is it?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a full moon riding in a clear, frosty sky, and the room was
+only in semi-darkness. He stared at the door, which at that moment burst
+open, and standing in the aperture was a man, the dead Laird. Outside,
+was a long corridor with several windows, through which the moonlight
+poured. Against this silvery background stood the huge figure of the
+late Laird. He leaned forward, supporting himself by holding with both
+hands to the framework of the door, and with a glowering, half-drunken
+stare his eyes were fixed on the startled occupant of the bed.</p>
+
+<p>A panic seized our friend, who felt that if that menacing figure
+advanced into the room he would go mad. There was only one door, and no
+other means of escape, and very stealthily he slid to the opposite side
+of the bed, and reaching out, seized the water-bottle on his washstand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This action did not pass unnoticed by his terrible visitor. Suddenly
+relaxing his hold on the doorposts, he dropped down on his knees, and
+began rapidly crawling on all fours towards the bed, his inflamed eyes
+blazing with anger.</p>
+
+<p>Our friend did not wait for his arrival. With a blood-curdling yell he
+hurled the water-bottle full at his old friend, and leaping from the
+other side of the bed tore to the door and fled down the passage, as if
+pursued by a pack of devils. Hardly knowing what he did, he battered
+with his hands on the door of the room he knew to be occupied by his
+host and hostess, shouting out at the same time a call for assistance.
+Then he heard the voice of the wife saying to the husband, "It's
+Charlie. Open the door. I believe he's seen poor Angus."</p>
+
+<p>He had indeed seen "poor Angus," and for the last time, he assured us.
+Old friendship could not stand the test of so horrible an apparition.
+The room was empty when he returned to it with his host. Angus had gone
+back again to the land of the shadows, and only the scattered fragments
+of the water-bottle remained as a souvenir of his visit.</p>
+
+<p>Several servants had seen Angus, and it was difficult to keep the house
+staffed. One old housemaid, who had been in the family many years, had
+seen him frequently, and had even ventured to remonstrate with her
+former master, bidding him go back to his shroud and sleep peacefully in
+his grave like a respectable man, but apparently to no purpose. Angus
+preferred to "walk" and to terrify all to whom he had the power to show
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking of the Duke of Argyll has reminded me of some curious
+occurrences in connection with Lord<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> Colin Campbell. At one time of my
+life, soon after my father's death, I saw a good deal of him. He was
+then studying law and intended later to practice in India. This plan he
+carried out, and in India he died, the result of a chill.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Colin was a very interesting man, a keen geologist and something of
+an artist. There were few subjects he was not interested in, and though
+somewhat shy of the subject, he had a decided aptitude for ghosts.</p>
+
+<p>One day in London he brought to my house a small gold cross fixed to a
+slab of gray marble, and asked me if I would keep it for him. He
+explained that it was an exact reproduction of the old stone cross of
+Inverary. He was then living in Argyll Lodge, Campden Hill, and I said I
+should have thought there was room enough for it there. I could not
+understand why he brought it to me. He looked uneasy and said he wished
+to get rid of it out of the house. When pressed to say why, he confessed
+that there was something uncanny about it. He thought it made him "see
+things," and he added, "Garry hates it."</p>
+
+<p>Garry was a fine, sable collie, devoted to his master and he to it.
+Garry had the misfortune to break his leg, and this caused Lord Colin
+acute distress. The leg was set, and the dog lay in a large clothes
+basket, and eventually got well. Garry was just recovering when Lord
+Colin brought me the cross.</p>
+
+<p>He became more expansive in a few moments, and said that he had seen a
+figure bending over the cross, as if to examine it. The figure had a
+hood, and he thought it must be the ghost of a monk. He had seen this
+many times, and Garry often growled, and his hair bristled at the very
+moment when his master caught<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> sight of the apparition. Anything that
+distressed the dog must be removed, and knowing how interested I was in
+ghosts he had brought the cross to me.</p>
+
+<p>Of course I was delighted to have a chance of witnessing psychic
+phenomena of any kind, but alas, though I kept the cross for years, and
+only sent it lately to the present Duke, I never saw anything in
+connection with it.</p>
+
+<p>I did, however, see something interesting in connection with Lord Colin.</p>
+
+<p>One hot June evening, in London, I was sitting alone by the open window.
+The day had been very exhausting; it was one of those hot spells that
+come so often before regular summer sets in, and I was glad to rest
+quietly and do nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The street was wonderfully quiet at that hour, nine o'clock, when all
+the world of fashion was dining, and the daylight was strong enough to
+read by, had I so desired. Suddenly my attention was attracted by a
+slight noise behind me, and glancing round at the open door I saw that
+Lord Colin and his dog had just entered the room, as was their habit,
+unannounced. In his hand he carried a huge bunch of white and mauve
+lilac blossoms. I had not expected him that evening, but I was very
+pleased to see him, and exclaimed, "Why, Colin, what a glorious bouquet!
+I can smell it already."</p>
+
+<p>He was smiling as he and his dog moved up the long room towards me, but
+he said nothing. I had risen and held out my hand, but when about
+halfway across the floor both he and the dog vanished entirely and quite
+suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>I shall never forget my utter amazement and consternation. I could not
+disbelieve the evidence of my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> own senses, for I was absolutely certain
+I could still smell the lilac, and I had no doubt whatever that I had
+seen Lord Colin and his dog.</p>
+
+<p>I sat down again and fell to considering the extraordinary circumstance.
+I was perfectly well and normal, I had not been thinking of Lord Colin,
+and yet in the midst of other thoughts a sound had attracted my
+attention, and looking round I had seen him enter with his dog. For the
+space of quite two minutes both had been visible. I got up again and
+timed the whole affair by my wrist watch. The room I sat in was very
+long. I was at one end, and the door at the other. It took me just one
+minute to walk leisurely forward over the ground they had covered,
+before they vanished from my sight.</p>
+
+<p>I sat down again and began to wonder if Lord Colin was ill, or was he
+dead, and why was he carrying lilacs? 'Phones were uncommon things in
+those days; I had no means of communication with Argyll Lodge.</p>
+
+<p>For an hour I sat considering the wonderful vividness of my curious
+experience. The daylight had faded into a close, soft twilight, but I
+wanted no artificial light. Then just as ten o'clock was striking I
+heard a voice in the hall below; a voice I was sure was Lord Colin's,
+and he was answered by one of my servants. Steps sounded on the stairs,
+and in another moment in he walked with Garry, and in his hand he
+carried a big bunch of white and mauve lilacs.</p>
+
+<p>I stood staring at him in the dim twilight. Was this the real man and
+dog at last?</p>
+
+<p>"I know it's awfully late to pay a call, but I thought you would like
+some lilac," he exclaimed; "it's so lovely in our garden just now," and
+he held out the flowers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I took them and bade him be seated. Garry came to me and rested his nose
+on my lap. For a moment I could not speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you well?" asked Colin.</p>
+
+<p>Then I recovered myself, but I did not tell him what had happened only
+an hour before. As we talked I discovered that he had intended to come
+at nine o'clock, and was just starting when a relative arrived and
+detained him.</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion he told me of a curious dream he had as a boy.</p>
+
+<p>Queen Victoria came to Inverary to pay a visit to the Duke and Duchess
+of Argyll, Lord Colin's parents, and it was arranged that the young sons
+of the house should act as pages to Her Majesty. The night of the day on
+which the Queen arrived, Colin dreamed that some one whom he did not
+know came to him and said, "To-morrow the Queen will give you twenty
+shillings."</p>
+
+<p>When the boy wakened up in the morning he remembered this dream, and all
+day long he was on the outlook for its fulfillment. The hours passed,
+but though he was often in her presence and kept as close to her as he
+dared, the Queen never produced her purse. Just before re&euml;ntering the
+house towards evening, she suddenly turned to John Brown, her constant
+attendant, and said something which Colin did not catch. What was his
+joy on perceiving that surly henchman extract from a shabby old purse a
+filthy Scotch one pound note, which he handed to Her Majesty.</p>
+
+<p>"My little Colin, here is a present for you," said the Queen, and making
+his best bow the boy accepted the gift. His dream had come true.</p>
+
+<p>John Brown was the terror of all the great nobles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> whom the Queen was
+pleased to visit. Her Majesty took him everywhere with her, and he was
+her closest attendant. Born of the humblest Scotch parents on the Estate
+of Balmoral, he died in the position of a potentate in a royal
+residence. His manners were terribly rough and objectionable, and his
+behavior to the gentlemen with whom he constantly came into contact was
+insulting to the last degree. He had one invariable habit. When the
+Queen paid a visit naturally her honored host was in waiting to hand her
+out of her carriage. Brown contrived to nip down from his perch at the
+back of the carriage, just at a certain moment, and with a violent push
+thrust aside the prince, duke or peer who sought to do honor to the
+Sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the gentlemen about the Court paid him very liberally, not for
+civility, but simply to desist from his habitual insults, and it has
+been said that Disraeli discovered some method of conciliation, but
+Brown took an absolute pleasure in insulting all who had occasion to
+approach Her Majesty. Latterly he drank very heavily, and when he died,
+to the unutterable relief of all and sundry he bequeathed all his
+savings and possessions, even the watch he wore, to Her Majesty. His
+many poor relatives living in cottages on the estate never saw a penny
+of his money, nor so much as a button from his doublet.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS</h3>
+
+
+<p>We are all of us, in this world, strangers and pilgrims, and to each
+human being, in turn, and in varied ways, comes the knowledge, "A
+stranger with Thee and a sojourner as all my Fathers were."</p>
+
+<p>Like ships that pass in the night "we exchange signals with one
+another," and pass on our different ways through the ocean of life. I
+think it is the sea that most clearly brings home to me the transitory
+nature of our pilgrimage. Leaning over the side of a ship in mid ocean,
+and watching a trail of smoke from another ship on the horizon, I am
+always impelled to wonder about its human cargo. Who and what are they,
+and for what distant shores are they bound? Again one sweeps the far
+horizons only to find them empty of aught but a vast tumbling expanse of
+waters. Then, without warning, we are wrapped in a dense blanket of fog.
+The sirens sound insistently, and are at once answered by ships on every
+side. It is startling to find there are many so near, but utterly
+invisible. In a few minutes we have emerged again into distance and
+clear skies, and again there is nothing that meets the eye but the empty
+watery expanse.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back on my life I can recall many meetings with fellow pilgrims
+that apparently were purely accidental,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> yet they left their mark upon
+my life. Meetings such as those, when two souls thrown together by the
+force of circumstances, in quiet far-away places; or in the marts of the
+world, become in a few short hours like old and tried friends. How often
+have I heard it said, even after one short hour, "I feel as if I had
+known you all my life." Such I look upon as epochs in my pilgrimage,
+milestones and guiding stars on my life's road. Yet the limitations of
+such epochs are obvious enough. Time on earth is circumscribed, still
+there is subconsciously the instant recognition of two kindred souls who
+hear and remember, who instinctively know that once, perchance many
+times before, they have landed together on the shores of time, from the
+storm-tossed bark of life.</p>
+
+<p>It seems strange that those chance meetings should have no continuity. I
+remember one such meeting in the East, and how utterly by chance it
+seemed to come about. It lasted for three days, yet after three hours I
+knew more of my fellow pilgrim and he of me than we would have known of
+each other in three months at home. We were both quite alone, but I
+remember his recalling the pre-Buddha words written a thousand years
+before the coming of the Christ: "Thou shalt not separate thy Being from
+Being, and the rest, but merge the ocean in the drop, the drop within
+the ocean. So shalt thou be in full accord with all that lives, bear
+love to men as though they were thy brother pupils, disciples of one
+teacher, the sons of one sweet mother."</p>
+
+<p>When we bade each other good-by and I boarded my ship we told each other
+we would meet again, but instinctively we knew we never should. I have
+forgotten his name, but all else I can remember very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> clearly, and the
+wonderful comradeship two souls, drifting together for a second in time,
+can give each other. He gave me the sufi mysticism of Omar Khayyam, and
+I can still see the English face burnt dark with eastern suns, under the
+snowy turban, and the brilliant parrot swinging on a palm bough above
+his head. I can still hear the low grave voice reciting the quatrains of
+Persia's astronomer poet, written a thousand years ago. They fitted in
+with our surroundings:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"There was a door to which I found no key.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was a veil past which I could not see!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There seemed, and then no more of Me and Thee."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I suppose we all have many such recollections in our lives, and it is
+impossible (for me) to believe them to be a mere matter of chance, for,
+always on parting, I have been conscious that I have received some
+lasting good, or it has mercifully chanced that I have been able to help
+a stranger and pilgrim on a difficult way.</p>
+
+<p>Again, I remember another interesting meeting. A woman was sitting alone
+on a bench in the outskirts of Cairo, and her worn face was turned to
+the dying fires of sunset. She was very shabby and poor looking, and
+obviously she was a European. In my casual glance I caught something
+familiar, and after going on some paces I felt a compelling force
+bidding me return. I sat down beside her and at once spoke to her. I
+knew who she was when she turned her face to me, and the hideous
+contrast of her past and her present appalled me. She does not know
+to-day that I am aware of her real identity. She is in England,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> and all
+now is well with her. One can always, as the pre-Buddhist taught us,
+"Point out the way however dim and lost amongst the Host, as does the
+evening star to those who tread their path in darkness."</p>
+
+<p>Again, it is strange to tell why unknown pilgrims should leave their
+mark upon us for all earthly time, pilgrims to whom one has never
+spoken, and of whom one knows nothing. When I was quite a child I passed
+every day through a very quiet and well-to-do street of dwelling-houses.
+At a window behind two flower-pots, sat a woman whom I supposed to be
+sewing, though her hands were hidden from view. I can see her as clearly
+now as I saw her then, over forty years ago in the northern capital. The
+pale, tragic profile, the down-drooped eyelids, the meekly-banded hair.
+I used to wonder about her constantly. She possessed me, and interested
+me at that time more than anything else in my life. Even to this day she
+comes unbidden into my mind at frequent intervals.</p>
+
+<p>Again from my bedroom window in Belgrade I used to watch another woman.
+She came out on her balcony twice a day, always at the same hours. She
+put her hands on the rails, and turned her dark, southern face up to the
+skies, and there she would stand for an hour, gazing fixedly above. I
+never once saw her eyes drop to the busy street below, and once a
+prisoner, dragging his heavy chains behind him, paused and looked up and
+cried out to her for bread. She appeared not to hear him, her rigid
+attitude never relaxed.</p>
+
+<p>It is the thoughts of such pilgrims, as one conjectures them to be, that
+form the interest, or perhaps it really is something more, a far-off
+kinship, stretching invisible threads down through the ages. With<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> both
+those women I had a feeling of kinship. I had picked them out of the
+world's crowd, because of some silent influence they exerted over me,
+the lingering power of some far back, forgotten touch, which had once
+drawn us together. I know that in my life I had met those "that I have
+loved long since and lost awhile."</p>
+
+<p>For me there was purpose in those "stars" that shine through my life, as
+looking back they show me where I had arrived at the moment of their
+uprising, and their rays pierce the penumbra shadows wherein the soul
+lies hid. Each star showed me the lees in the cup of destiny, brought to
+me a new revelation of soul, and elucidated for me something of the
+mystery of life.</p>
+
+<p>Again, surely there is Divine purpose in those islets of friendship
+which jewel-like stud the gray vesture of ordinary existence. They are
+close, warm, and utterly sincere, often for many long years, then they
+are suddenly sundered by the inrush of some invading force which cuts
+them off in their full bloom. Sometimes the Master Death bids them pass
+on, sometimes the break comes by some utterly trivial, yet inexorable
+fiat of human destiny.</p>
+
+<p>In the clash of human interests it must needs be that pain must come to
+some. Life cannot be all serenity and peace to the pilgrims who toil
+upon its stormy way, its <i>via dolorosa</i>. Such crises teach us the just
+attitude that should prevail in all such trials and circumstances. Amiel
+says, "There is one wrong man is not bound to punish, that of which he
+himself is the victim. Such a wrong is to be healed, not avenged." For
+hate there is but one antidote&mdash;love. The art of forgetfulness is not
+yet a science, but to forget the evil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> one has but to remember the good.
+Love knows neither saint nor sinner, for she seeks in every heart the
+hidden gem of good. She thinks no ill, because she knows the trials of
+each one are penalty enough for deeds already done. Neither in the case
+of Death's intervention, nor in the case of human misunderstanding
+should there be sorrow for lost friendships, though there must
+inevitably be regret.</p>
+
+<p>Love brings with it suffering, for all who love suffer with those they
+love. Unkindness and injustices are hard to bear, and the loss of those
+we love is a bitter pain, but those whose hearts are great enough still
+find others on whom to lavish love. Are there not many who need it, and
+are there not great rewards for those who have love to spare. To be
+required, to be appealed to, and turned to as a help and refuge. Such
+are the prizes for those whose hearts are always alight with love, who
+from one flame can kindle many.</p>
+
+<p>When death looses the silver cord, and souls seem torn asunder for ever
+more, there will be sadness of spirit. When a break comes, perhaps
+through third-party treachery, there may come the sense of eternal
+severance, but is it eternal? I doubt it. More probably there lies
+before us an existence of clearer judgment and understanding, of vaster
+possibilities, in which we shall know, even as also we are known. Though
+now we see each other through a glass darkly, a day will come when we
+shall no longer see in part, but face to face. When faith, hope and love
+shall be reunited, and we shall realize that the greatest of these three
+is love, which suffereth long, and is kind and thinketh no evil.</p>
+
+<p>Again, there are these loves in one's life, some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> fleeting, some
+lasting, that are too sacred to write of, and of which one never speaks.
+The joys and sorrows they brought, the prose or poesy of our intercourse
+are graven deep on the heart. Whether it be they still walk by our side,
+or have gone west to rest after labor, we must learn to say with the
+pre-Buddhists of old time: "Do not grieve for the living or the dead.
+Never did I not exist for you... nor will any one of us ever hereafter
+cease to be."</p>
+
+<p>Such sacramental hours sanctify the variety of our lot, combine the
+pathos of love and death, and stretch through the corridors of memory
+into the hush and shadow of the haunted past; where all the mystery of
+such hours seem gathered for inspiration. There linger the symbols of
+our sojourn here. How potent, yet how fragmentary they are! The scent of
+a flower, the long embrace, the hand held out in vain, the flash of
+recognition, the chime of the clock which altered the course of the
+pilgrimage. The meek hands folded on the still breast. Such symbols
+abide with us like the image of a Divine form, some echo of immortal
+music, some lingering word of angels. Their cadences come ever back to
+us from infinite distances, ghostly chords and evanescent. Harmonies
+which come and go too fitfully for apprehension.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>SOME STRANGE EVENTS</h3>
+
+
+<p>After my marriage my husband and I passed some time in the United States
+and Canada; we then returned to England and took a place in
+Cambridgeshire. We were both very fond of racing, and attended all the
+meetings at Newmarket.</p>
+
+<p>One day I drove by appointment to the house of a neighbor who had asked
+me to meet Miss Catherine Bates, author of that interesting book, "Seen
+and Unseen."</p>
+
+<p>Just before I started my husband, half in fun, and knowing Miss Bates to
+be a psychic, said, "Ask her what horse is going to win the
+Cambridgeshire."</p>
+
+<p>I promised to put the question and drove off. I had a most interesting
+visit, but I totally forgot to ask Miss Bates for the winner of the
+coming race.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until I was seated in the victoria, exchanging a few parting
+words with the two ladies standing in the doorway to bid me good-by,
+that I suddenly recollected my husband's request. As the horses were
+starting I called out to Miss Bates&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me what's going to win 'The Cambridgeshire?'"</p>
+
+<p>The answer was prompt and clear:</p>
+
+<p>"Marco to win, &mdash;&mdash; for a place." (I regret I cannot remember the name
+of the second horse.)</p>
+
+<p>As I drove away I waved my thanks, and directly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> I got home I told my
+husband&mdash;"Marco to win, &mdash;&mdash; for a place."</p>
+
+<p>He was much interested in this "tip" from so well-known a psychic, and
+of course we backed "Marco to win and &mdash;&mdash; for a place" for all we were
+worth. I wish I could remember the odds. I only know that they were
+"long."</p>
+
+<p>The event duly came off, and I wrote to Miss Bates thanking her for the
+good turn she had done us.</p>
+
+<p>Her reply astounded me.</p>
+
+<p>She began by saying she had not heard me put any question to her
+regarding the winner of the Cambridgeshire, and went on to say that she
+knew nothing about racing, and knew none of the horses' names, therefore
+it was impossible that she could have given me the "tip."</p>
+
+<p>Her hostess cared nothing for racing, and was as ignorant as she was
+upon the subject, but she did remember hearing me call out to Miss
+Bates, "What's going to win the Cambridgeshire?"</p>
+
+<p>I then questioned our coachman and footman. Both distinctly remembered
+my calling out the question, and both, keen on racing, listened for the
+reply, but they heard none.</p>
+
+<p>Where did that answer come from? I cannot tell. Was some spirit
+interested in racing hovering near? Did he contrive to drop the "tip"
+into my mind, open at that moment and eager to catch the response?</p>
+
+<p>A year after the event I have recounted above, I was resting one
+afternoon in the summer-time. I had been ill, and was not yet strong
+enough to lead an ordinary life, and I was lying on a sofa in a top
+floor room. The room immediately beneath me was the drawing-room, and
+the weather being hot all the windows were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> wide open. The house we
+inhabited was quite isolated in its own park, and the village was about
+half a mile distant. My husband was from home, and I was alone in that
+particular part of the house, the servants' quarters being at the back,
+and shut off from the rest.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the absolute quiet suddenly came the sound of music. Some one was
+playing my piano in the drawing-room below. This, in itself, caused me
+irritation, but no surprise. I was not well enough to entertain callers
+at tea, due in half an hour, and I had given orders that I would see no
+one, but it had happened before that the musical neighbors had called,
+and whilst waiting for me had sat down to the piano.</p>
+
+<p>I was too annoyed to hasten downstairs. I lay waiting for the butler to
+come to me and inform me why my orders had been disobeyed. Meanwhile I
+listened to the music, and wondered greatly who the brilliant pianist
+could be. I did not recognize the music, but it sounded quite modern,
+and requiring a great amount of technique. The player was, however, a
+most brilliant performer, who had acquired considerable skill.
+"Evidently a professional," I thought, and wondered all the more who it
+could possibly be.</p>
+
+<p>Still there were no signs of the ascending butler, and time continued to
+pass. I began to feel obstinate, and determined to remain where I was,
+until I was correctly informed of the caller's identity.</p>
+
+<p>The music steadily continued, every note borne to my ears as clearly as
+if I had been in the room with the performer. "Very wonderful music, but
+soulless," I concluded, and though my curiosity was growing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> every
+moment my obstinacy prevailed, and I remained where I was. At last,
+after quite twenty minutes, the music suddenly stopped; it broke off in
+the middle of a movement.</p>
+
+<p>I rose at once, and went downstairs feeling very cross. I pushed open
+the drawing-room door and entered. It was absolutely empty, but the
+piano, which had not been opened for several weeks, was open now. I went
+to the window which commanded the avenue; not a soul was in sight. Then
+I rang the bell, and when the butler entered the following dialogue took
+place:&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Who was the caller who has just been?"</p>
+
+<p>"There have been no callers to-day, madam."</p>
+
+<p>"But surely you heard the piano being played?"</p>
+
+<p>"We heard a lot of music, but we thought it was you playing, madam."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you all heard it?"</p>
+
+<p>"All of us in the hall heard it, madam."</p>
+
+<p>I left it at that. Suddenly it came to me that I had better not push my
+inquiries further. Until that second it had never occurred to me that
+the performer might be a disembodied spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The butler did not leave the matter alone, but made every inquiry at the
+Lodge, and also of the out-door servants, but nothing came of it. No one
+had seen a stranger, and the silver was intact. My maid told me some
+time afterwards that the household had shaken down to the conviction
+that I had really been the performer, and that my recent illness had
+caused me to forget the fact. I let this conviction remain unshaken, but
+I marveled at the lack of musical discrimination my household displayed.
+The disparity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> between my strumming and the brilliant execution of my
+spirit guest was so vast that I could not even feel flattered by their
+mistake.</p>
+
+<p>A year or two after we took a cottage on the Thames, and there, during
+our summer visits, I had an uncomfortable time.</p>
+
+<p>There was something wrong with the sideboard end of the dining-room. For
+a long time I could not make out what it was. My attention was
+constantly being attracted to the spot. If I passed the door I thought
+instantly of the sideboard. In plain language, I was constantly being
+invited, by some invisible person, to come in and have a drink. If I was
+putting anything away in the sideboard the suggestion was always very
+strong. On the outside stood a tantalus of spirits and soda water, ready
+to refresh any calling boating men. Inside the cupboards were wine
+decanters.</p>
+
+<p>I always resisted the suggestion, I suppose because I did not happen to
+want anything to drink&mdash;for years I have been a total abstainer, and at
+the time I certainly did not realize the menace of those suggestions.</p>
+
+<p>Now and again I caught sight of a small oblong gray cloud hovering in
+front of the sideboard but it was not till many months afterwards that I
+saw something much more definite. The gray shadow had become the clearly
+defined shade of a small woman. She hovered about the spot in a
+wavering, undecided manner. It was apparent that she was seeking
+something. One day, in a flash, I recognized the truth, the suggestion
+came from her. She was inviting me to drink with her.</p>
+
+<p>My husband and I set to work to find out who this unfortunate woman had
+been when she dwelt on earth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> We discovered a very sad story. She had
+been a celebrity of the half world, and I had actually seen her in the
+flesh. She had traveled to Monte Carlo one winter in the next sleeping
+compartment to ours, and she had lived for some years in our riverside
+cottage. Latterly she had fallen an incurable victim to drinking, and
+had died of it. Poor little soul; my heart went out to her in deepest
+pity, but I was glad to leave the cottage forever, when in 1898 we went
+to live at my husband's place, Balquholly, Aberdeenshire.</p>
+
+<p>Some people, perhaps once in their lives, become sensitive enough to
+recognize a visitor from the Astral plane. If the occasion is not
+repeated they believe themselves to have been victims of hallucinations.
+Others find themselves seeing and hearing, with increasing frequency,
+something to which those around them are blind and deaf. They realize,
+in fact, that they are in touch with the Astral plane, the region lying
+next to our world of dense matter, and often some Astral entity on the
+lowest levels of that plane is continuously striving to work through
+their mediumship. The world is very far from realizing this danger. What
+are those entities working for?</p>
+
+<p>The man or woman who has led a decently pure life on earth will have no
+attraction to the lowest levels, contiguous with earth, of the Astral
+plane, and will, at so-called death, pass swiftly through it. But, alas!
+the vast majority have by no means freed themselves from all lower
+desires before passing over, and it takes a considerable time before the
+evil forces generated on earth work themselves out on "the other side."</p>
+
+<p>The length of man's detention on the lower level<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> will depend entirely
+on the earthly life he has lived, and the quality of the desires he has
+indulged in.</p>
+
+<p>The desires of a drunkard, a debaucher, are as strong after death as
+before. The present Bishop of London made that very clear in one of his
+Easter addresses, but the subject finds it impossible, without a
+physical body, to gratify his lusts. Occasionally it can be done in a
+vicarious manner, when he is able to seize on a like minded person and
+obsess him or her, or when he finds a medium who consciously or
+unconsciously panders to his desires. For this reason I hold it to be
+imperative for safety's sake, that every genuine medium should be a
+total abstainer.</p>
+
+<p>How often one is asked the question: "What is a medium?"</p>
+
+<p>It is a difficult question to answer in a few words. I should put it
+thus&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A medium is one whose principles, physical, mental, spiritual, are so
+loosely bound together that an Astral entity can draw from him without
+difficulty the matter it requires for manifestation. The very essence of
+mediumship is the ready separability of the principles.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of the poor little woman I have mentioned, she was fortunate
+enough not to meet with (in me) a sensitive, through whom her passion
+could be vicariously gratified.</p>
+
+<p>Such unfulfilled desires gradually burn themselves out, and the
+suffering caused in the process no doubt goes to work off evil Karma
+generated in the past life. It is the soul that desires, the body is but
+the tool to grasp the desire, and after death old lusts crowd upon the
+departed. Thirsty with no throat; sensual with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> no body to grip the foul
+desire, soon it is learned that the worst evils and the hardest to undo
+have been woven out of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>Here is another story or two relating to one of the most puzzling
+mysteries in ghost lore&mdash;the phenomena of temporary hauntings.</p>
+
+<p>Why do ghosts suddenly take possession of a house with which, in their
+incarnate days, they have had no connection?</p>
+
+<p>Such ghosts differ from those only seen once. They take up their abode
+in a dwelling which has absolutely no traditions of haunting. They will
+be seen and heard on many occasions, for a few months, possibly for a
+few years. They will then suddenly depart, and be seen or heard no more.</p>
+
+<p>Such apparitions cannot readily be traced to any defunct friend or
+member of the family. They have no known connection with the house in
+which they appear, and no one can form the faintest conception why they
+should suddenly elect to "walk" within those four walls, which hitherto
+have been normal and free from "other side" visitors.</p>
+
+<p>A case of this description happened to my youngest brother, who, before
+he bought his present country house, lived in a detached, new building,
+not far from the Dean Bridge, in Edinburgh.</p>
+
+<p>He had occupied this house for some years previous to his experience,
+and had neither heard nor seen anything of a spooky nature. The
+manifestation only lasted for a few weeks. Nothing in the form of a
+ghost was seen, but much was heard.</p>
+
+<p>I will give the story in my brother's own words:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"On a certain evening, a year or two ago, I went out after dinner to
+visit some friends, and returned home about half-past eleven.</p>
+
+<p>"Not feeling inclined to go to bed, I took up a book and sat down to
+read for half an hour.</p>
+
+<p>"About a quarter-past midnight I suddenly became aware that stealthy
+footsteps were coming upstairs. Looking at my watch I thought it very
+strange that any of the maids should be still up at such a late hour.</p>
+
+<p>"The door was well ajar, and I arose from my chair, listening intently,
+as I crossed the room. The footsteps were now quite distinct, and I knew
+at once they were not those of any woman. They were the stealthy
+footsteps of a man, and naturally I at once concluded that he was a
+burglar.</p>
+
+<p>"I calculated swiftly that he would either enter the room in which I
+stood, or he would go on and up the next flight of stairs to the
+bedrooms. In any case, he had to be faced and caught. I realized that,
+and I much regretted I had nothing at hand which would help me, should
+he prove to be armed.</p>
+
+<p>"There was, however, no time for further thought. Every second brought
+him nearer, and taking up a position just behind the door, I waited till
+he arrived on the landing, and until he came to the spot when he must
+either turn in, or go on upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>"The moment came, almost at once. With a sudden bound I sprang out to
+close with him. Lo! and behold! nothing was to be seen! Nothing was now
+to be heard, except the ticking of a clock.</p>
+
+<p>"I stood still and absolutely astounded. The footsteps had been no trick
+of imagination, I was very sure of that. Had I not heard them stealthily
+beginning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> the ascent of the stairs, and grow louder the nearer they
+approached me?</p>
+
+<p>"I mopped my brow. Would any self-respecting burglar have come on, and
+up a lighted staircase, and along a landing towards a room which he must
+have known was still occupied, as the light shone through the half-open
+door? Are burglars ever as rash as that?</p>
+
+<p>"Then I reminded myself that as there was no burglar in the case my
+speculations were mere waste of time.</p>
+
+<p>"I put out the lights, and went to bed in a very uncomfortable frame of
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>"The next day, when I returned home from business, my housekeeper
+informed me that a strange man had been walking about the house. She had
+not seen him, though she had looked for him&mdash;that was the curious part
+of it, but she had heard him quite distinctly, several times, and she
+didn't like it one little bit. Not that she was frightened! Oh! dear no,
+but it was uncanny, and she thought she had better tell me. I thanked
+her and assured her that there was nothing to fear. The house was quite
+new, and uncanny things never happen in new houses. I advised her not to
+mention the subject to any one but me, and told her that I was not going
+out again that evening.</p>
+
+<p>"After dinner I settled down in my room, to wait for the footsteps I
+instinctively felt sure would return. I kept the lights burning on
+stairs and landing, and set the door half open, placing my chair in such
+a position that I could see any one who passed outside the room on the
+landing. This time I did not think of arming myself. I had come to the
+firm conclusion that the sounds came from no person living in the flesh.
+As<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> no house adjoined mine I had no 'next door' on which to lay the
+blame for the disturbance.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure enough, about an hour earlier this time, the unknown, unseen
+visitor began his ascent of my staircase. I cannot describe my feelings
+during those moments of waiting for 'it' to pass. I can only say they
+were intensely unpleasant, and I hope I may never again have to confess
+myself to be a wretched coward. A burglar would at that moment have
+appeared to me in the guise of a dear friend.</p>
+
+<p>"However, the thing had to be faced, there was no one else that I could
+put onto the job, and so I simply sat still and waited, with my eyes
+fixed on the landing outside. The steps came on, distinct enough, and
+growing nearer and louder. They arrived on the landing, they reached my
+door, they passed, and proceeded to mount the next flight of steps to
+the bedrooms. I had seen absolutely nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"I rose and walked out on to the landing, and looked up at the brightly
+lit staircase. I could mark, by the sound, the progress made by those
+invisible feet. They passed on to the bedroom floor, and with heartfelt
+gratitude I heard them enter, not mine, but an empty room. I heard
+nothing more that night. Presumably the ghost remained quietly in his
+comfortable quarters.</p>
+
+<p>"The next day came more complaints from the housekeeper. The 'strange
+man' not only promenaded the house at intervals, but he had the
+impertinence to ring several bells. I wondered if a whisky and soda left
+casually on his dressing-table would appease his thirst for summoning
+the servants in this irritating fashion.</p>
+
+<p>"For some days after this we were left in peace, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> I began to hope
+that 'it' had betaken itself to the house of some other chap, but no
+such luck!</p>
+
+<p>"One evening I was in the dining-room decanting some wine before dinner.
+It was just seven o'clock, when I heard 'its' footsteps again. This time
+they were coming downstairs. I went to the door and looked out. There
+was no one to be seen. I re&euml;ntered the dining-room and shut 'it' out. I
+suppose 'it' had been having a rest in the bedroom. I trusted 'it' meant
+to have a night out.</p>
+
+<p>"A moment or two later I heard a click near the fireplace, and looking
+towards the spot whence this sound came, I saw the handle of the bell
+being pulled back. In another second the bell rang.</p>
+
+<p>"When the maid answered it I was ready for her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh! don't you know what that is?' I inquired with mild sarcasm. 'Only
+mice crossing the wires. Nothing to be frightened of in that, is there?'</p>
+
+<p>"I stuck to this all through the weeks that followed. The maids ceased
+to answer the bells, and went early to bed in a bunch. They no longer
+required rooms to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"In a few months the trouble stopped as suddenly as it had begun. 'It'
+had evidently found other quarters more to 'its' liking. The mice were
+equally obliging. They ceased running across the wires."</p>
+
+<p>What theory will explain this species of haunting which is quite common?
+May it not be that this disembodied entity attached itself to my brother
+whilst he was out, and like a lost dog followed him home? There must be
+countless entities wandering about all over this globe, seeking an
+abiding-place for their restless souls. People who find themselves as
+bereft of friends on the other side of death, as they were in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> earth
+life. Those who have friends here have doubtless friends there.</p>
+
+<p>In old days we used to think of a post-mortem abode as somewhere in the
+skies. Some even mentioned a receiving station in the bowels of the
+earth. Now I find that the majority of educated people have come to
+regard so-called death as merely a change of consciousness, and the
+immediate post-mortem sphere of our activities to be a region
+interpenetrating this earth.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A county neighbor of ours in Aberdeenshire told me of a very tantalizing
+experience he had a very few years ago of temporary haunting. This was a
+case of seeing, not hearing.</p>
+
+<p>The time was late autumn, and his family had gone south for the winter,
+leaving him alone for a week or two to finish up the shooting.</p>
+
+<p>One night, immediately after he had dined, he ran upstairs to his
+bedroom to fetch something. On coming out of his room again, what was
+his astonishment to see, walking in front of him, a tall young lady,
+very smartly dressed in the height of the prevailing fashion. She wore
+black satin, cut very low and without sleeves, and she moved very
+quietly along the passage, and proceeded to go downstairs. She never
+turned her elaborately coiffed head, and he could not see her face. He
+followed, too speechless with amazement to address her. Who on earth
+could she be? Where was she going? Nine o'clock at night; only two old
+servants in the house! In the depth of the country, and nine miles away
+from anywhere! And this charming young lady who so unexpectedly had made
+her appearance to brighten his solitude!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>What a surprising adventure! The situation was piquant to say the least
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>He followed immediately behind the attractive vision. He even wondered
+what room he would have prepared for her. So absolutely real did she
+look, that not for a second did he doubt she was ordinary flesh and
+blood.</p>
+
+<p>When describing her afterwards to me he said, "I can assure you I saw
+the actual white flesh of her bare arms and shoulders. I was close
+behind her."</p>
+
+<p>The lady moved composedly on, walking with supple grace and perfect
+self-possession. She was not in the least hurried or flustered. She
+reached the bottom of the stairs, and he had a momentary fear that she
+would make for the front door, where surely a Rolls Royce would be
+awaiting her. Not so! She walked straight into the dining-room. He
+followed.</p>
+
+<p>As he entered the door she had gained the opposite end of the room,
+where the sideboard stood.</p>
+
+<p>For a second she stood still, turned and glanced round at him with an
+enchanting smile of delicate raillery. Then she deliberately walked
+through the sideboard and wall beyond, and was lost to sight.</p>
+
+<p>The beholder of this ghost had never seen anything of the sort before,
+and was, if anything, a disbeliever in psychic phenomena. He is a
+perfectly healthy, normal country gentleman, whose principal hobby is
+sport, and who prefers a country life out of doors to the life of an
+intellectual student.</p>
+
+<p>Needless to say the occurrence puzzled him beyond measure. He could not
+"place" the lady, and was certain that he had never seen her before. Her
+dress proclaimed her to be absolutely modern.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Though in roundabout ways he tried to find out if any woman, answering
+to her description, was visiting at the time in any of the neighboring
+country houses, he failed entirely to get any result.</p>
+
+<p>Being rather shy of the chaff he knew would be indulged in at his
+expense, he mentioned the incident to no one. He took careful notes of
+date, time, and other particulars, and kept a strict watch, but the lady
+appeared no more during his stay, and before Christmas he went south to
+rejoin his family.</p>
+
+<p>He did not forget the experience. When the following autumn came round
+he found himself again in the North, under exactly similar
+circumstances. Eagerly he anticipated the anniversary of his first
+ghost. He was waiting for her on the landing outside his bedroom door,
+and suddenly she sprang into sight from nowhere. To-night he had
+determined to lay hold of her, but he calculated without his ghost. She
+sped downstairs, this time as if she was well aware that he was in
+pursuit. They gained the dining-room almost neck to neck, and this time
+she made no pause before slipping through the wall. She simply looked
+back at him over her shoulder, and smiled at him enchantingly,
+provokingly. Then he found himself alone.</p>
+
+<p>The following year was blank. She came no more.</p>
+
+<p>Why did she come to that house, with which, it is certain, she had no
+connection? Why did she only appear twice, and both times on the same
+date?</p>
+
+<p>Such are the questions one asks in vain, but such fugitive visions
+suggest the whisperings of a voice which calls out in the wilderness,
+and leads through life's enigmas to the final awakening.</p>
+
+<p>There are visions of beauty to which we are blind,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> and joyous harmonies
+we do not hear. There are depths of feeling we have not plumbed, and
+heights we have not aspired to, yet I am sure if we but place ourselves
+in a simple attitude of receptiveness, we will draw nearer to the glory
+of the unseen, and Nature's finer forces will draw nearer to us.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>POMPEY AND THE DUCHESS</h3>
+
+
+<p>Have animals souls?</p>
+
+<p>I unhesitatingly answer "Yes."</p>
+
+<p>If my dog has not a soul then neither have I&mdash;my dreams of immortality
+are merely a delusion. I base my belief upon the God-like qualities
+found in animals&mdash;the highest quality of all, love, pure, and
+unadulterated by self-seeking.</p>
+
+<p>The oldest scriptures of the world tell us that when wild animals die
+their life flows back into a group soul, a mass, as it were, of
+undifferentiated life essence. As the animal becomes domesticated, as a
+dog or cat learns to live with man, shares in his joys and sorrows, to
+be his constant companion, then it advances rapidly in evolution. It is
+developing human qualities, and in due time will no more return to merge
+in the group soul, but be born into the human family. A lowly human
+family it is true, a primitive savage to begin with, but that animal has
+passed one of the most important milestones on the long, lone trail. It
+will never more return to the world in the form of the beast, henceforth
+it will commence its slow ascent from the most elementary human body to
+the exalted heights of a god. They tell us in the East: "First a stone,
+then a plant, then an animal, then a man, and finally a God." This is
+how the wisdom of the East understands Divine evolution.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Cases where the ghosts of animals have been seen are becoming quite
+common. Before describing the astral apparitions of some of our animals,
+I will recall a very interesting case which was investigated in recent
+years at Ballechin, Perthshire. The accounts of the Ballechin hauntings
+are contained in a big volume, but at present I am only concerned in the
+four-footed ghosts that were seen. The trouble began upon the death of
+the eccentric owner, old Major Stewart, in 1876. He had frequently
+stated his intention of haunting the place after his death, and,
+furthermore, had asserted his determination to "walk" in the form of one
+of his many dogs, a favorite black spaniel.</p>
+
+<p>The family, anxious, as they thought, to be on the safe side, had all
+the pack, numbering fourteen, destroyed at the death of their master,
+but this wholesale slaughter of the innocents proved of no avail.</p>
+
+<p>The first intimation of its futility was immediately apparent. The wife
+of the old Major's nephew and heir was seated one day adding up accounts
+in the dead man's study, when the room was suddenly invaded by the old
+doggy smell, and an unseen dog pushed distinctly up against her.</p>
+
+<p>Many other unpleasant incidents followed after, but the really great
+happenings did not begin till 1896, when a shooting tenant, after a week
+or two, was compelled to quit the house, and forfeit the considerable
+rent he had paid in advance.</p>
+
+<p>The above fact came to the notice of that inveterate ghost-hunter, the
+late Marquis of Bute, and he, and several other members of the Psychical
+Society, hired the house, and went into residence. <i>The Times</i> of June,
+1897, contains elaborate details of the various experiences and the
+names of the investigators.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The phenomena they describe are very startling, but perhaps the most
+unnerving specter was the frequent appearance of a black spaniel, which
+was seen by numerous persons. One member of the party had brought a
+black spaniel of his own. He saw it run across the room, when at that
+moment the real dog&mdash;his own&mdash;entered and began to fraternize with the
+ghost dog.</p>
+
+<p>Two ladies occupying the same bedroom had a curious experience. A pet
+dog on the end of the bed began to whine, and looking to where its eyes
+were fixed they saw, not the black spaniel, but two black paws on the
+table by the bed.</p>
+
+<p>Various other sorts of dogs were seen by many people. The black spaniel
+by no means had the monopoly, and dogs, purposely brought by the
+investigators to aid them in their elucidation of the mystery, made
+friends or exhibited mistrust of the pack of ghost dogs haunting both
+house and grounds.</p>
+
+<p>Twice in my life I have seen the wraith of our own dogs, "Pompey" and
+"Triff." Pompey was a big brindled bulldog of terrifying aspect and
+angelic nature. My husband and I adored him, and his death caused us
+great grief. Indeed, the whole household mourned him long and deeply.
+One day, about ten days after his death, I suddenly caught sight of him
+walking in front of me down the avenue.</p>
+
+<p>On the spur of the moment I called him by name, then he vanished.</p>
+
+<p>I mentioned this occurrence to my maid, who at once told me the
+kitchenmaid had seen him in exactly the same place.</p>
+
+<p>When alive on earth "Pompey" had a habit of stealing into a guest's room
+when the early tea was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> brought up. He would lie in wait in a dark
+corner and then attempt to enter behind the maid or valet. When the door
+was shut again he would emerge from his hiding-place, and attempt to
+leap on the bed. He was exceedingly gentle and affectionate, but
+externally he was so forbidding that his offers of friendship were not
+always accepted, and he was a great weight.</p>
+
+<p>One day a Mrs. Shelton came to stay with us, and the next morning asked
+to have her room changed, because "Pompey" had kept walking round her
+bed all night, and she had not been able to sleep. She was sure it was
+"Pompey," because she recognized his peculiar, heavy, slithering
+movements.</p>
+
+<p>Some time after this Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland, came to pay us a
+visit. She had been very overworked, and needed a complete rest. She
+brought with her a maid and a small French bulldog, and she and the maid
+occupied a suite of three rooms, two bedrooms and a bathroom, shut off
+from the rest of the house by a heavy swing door.</p>
+
+<p>The French bulldog was accustomed to sleep in the maid's room. We had no
+dog left of our own. The beautiful Duchess went to bed about half-past
+ten; she was very tired and ought to have slept well, but she didn't.</p>
+
+<p>In the night she was awakened by what she took to be her own bulldog
+prowling round her bed, yet its footsteps sounded strangely heavy.</p>
+
+<p>She knew nothing about "Pompey's" ghostly visits; we had been careful
+not to mention them.</p>
+
+<p>When she came downstairs the next morning she told us what a disturbed
+night she had passed through. She was awakened soon after midnight by
+the restless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> movements of a bulldog round her bed. She did not doubt it
+was her own dog, that owing to the forgetfulness of her maid had been
+left asleep under her bed. She called it, and at the same time switched
+on the light, but could see no signs of any dog at all. Rather puzzled,
+but concluding that she must have been mistaken, she composed herself to
+sleep once more.</p>
+
+<p>Before very long the noise began again. A bulldog with its heavy,
+slouching tread was moving about round her bed.</p>
+
+<p>This time the Duchess got up, and made a thorough search of her room,
+but could see nothing in the shape of any animal. Yet so convinced was
+she that a dog had been in the room, that she determined to look into
+her maid's room to see if her own dog was there.</p>
+
+<p>She opened her maid's door, which was shut, and went into the room. The
+woman was asleep, and on the bed at her feet slept the French bulldog.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing to be done but to go back to her own bed once more,
+and try to sleep in spite of the disturbances.</p>
+
+<p>This was the story the Duchess told us, and added to me, "If he comes
+again to-night I shall come along to your room and rouse you."</p>
+
+<p>It did not come again. The peculiarity of "Pompey's" visits was that
+they only occurred once to each stranger, though he came several times
+to me, as was but natural.</p>
+
+<p>We honored his memory by raising to him a large granite headstone, on
+which was inscribed&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Soft lies the turf on one who finds his rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here, on our common Mother's ample breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unstained by meanness, avarice and pride,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He never flattered and he never lied.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No gluttonous excess his slumbers broke,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No burning alcohol, no stifling smoke.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He ne'er intrigued a rival to displace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He ran, but never betted on a race.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Content with harmless sports and moderate food,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Boundless in love, and faith and gratitude.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Happy the man, if there be any such,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of whom his epitaph can say as much.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">"On this spot<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">are deposited the remains of one<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">who possessed beauty without vanity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">strength without insolence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">courage without ferocity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">and all the virtues of man without his vices.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This praise, which would be unmeaning flattery<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">if inscribed over human ashes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i5">is but a just tribute to the memory of<br /></span>
+<span class="i17">'Pompey' a dog.<br /></span>
+<span class="i5">Born 1891.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Died 1902."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Our next dog, "Triff," was a very handsome sable collie. Of course, we
+became devoted to him, and when he also passed away we felt very
+desolate without him.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time I never could feel that he had left me. Though I could
+not see him, I used to speak to him, just as if I could see the dear
+presence I so strongly felt. It was hard that I never could catch a
+glimpse of him, because others did. The butler saw him many times, and
+my maid caught sight of him twice.</p>
+
+<p>One often reads in ghost books of abnormal animal-like creatures being
+seen by psychics, but it is rare to meet with living individuals who can
+testify to such personal experiences.</p>
+
+<p>I remember Lilian, Countess of Cromartie, telling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> me of a strange
+incident that once happened to her.</p>
+
+<p>She was walking alone one bright summer morning in Windsor Great Park.
+Suddenly she saw an amazing looking creature loping slowly towards her.
+It resembled an enormous hare. That is to say, its legs and head were
+those of a hare, but its size was that of a goat, and its horned head
+was half-goat, half-hare. This creature, loping without any fear, and
+with a hare's movement straight towards her, caused her to pause. She
+stood still and breathlessly waited its approach. It passed quite close
+to her, and as it did so she struck at it with her parasol. Instantly it
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Princess Frederica of Hanover, always intensely interested in psychic
+phenomena, and herself no tyro in psychic knowledge, told me many years
+ago that she had seen several different sorts of abnormal animals, quite
+unknown to this earth, and under circumstances which left no doubt as to
+their actual existence.</p>
+
+<p>Many years ago there was much talk amongst a certain set of an
+experience that had come to a foreign Grand Duchess and her husband, who
+spent much of their time in England. This couple were traveling in the
+wilds of Greece, and one night they wandered out together on to a bare
+mountain side. Sitting down to rest they were enjoying the beauty and
+utter loneliness of the moonlit scene, when they suddenly heard the
+galloping of many horses' hoofs approaching them. This astonished them
+greatly, as they were in so wild and unfrequented a part of the country.
+There was no road near them, and it seemed strange to hear horses
+galloping so fast on such rough ground at night, even though there was a
+moon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Husband and wife stood up immediately in order to show themselves. The
+sound suggested a headlong rush, and they feared that in another second
+a whole regiment might ride over them.</p>
+
+<p>They had not long to wait. A troop of creatures, half-men, half-horses,
+tore past them, helter-skelter. Fleet and sure-footed they thundered by,
+and they brought with them the most wonderful sense of joy and
+exhilaration. Neither the Grand Duchess nor her husband felt the
+smallest fear; on the contrary, both were seized by a wild elation, a
+desire to be one of that splendid legion. The thundering of their hoofs
+spread over the hills, and died away into the distance.</p>
+
+<p>On returning to their camp the husband and wife found an uproar.
+Something had gone wrong with the Greek servants, who were shivering
+with terror, and struggling with equally terrified horses to prevent a
+stampede. All that could be learned from the Greeks was that they had
+heard something, something known of and greatly feared.</p>
+
+<p>I happened to hear the Grand Duchess tell of her weird experience, and I
+have often wondered in later years if Algernon Blackwood had also heard
+the story, and founded upon it his fascinating book, "The Centaur."</p>
+
+<p>There were several people in the room whilst the Grand Duchess was
+unfolding, in the most impressive manner, this strange event. Amongst
+them was the first Lady Henry Grosvenor, born Miss Erskine Wemyss of
+Wemyss Castle.</p>
+
+<p>She told us that when a child of seven years old, she had passed through
+some minutes of such absolute terror, that as long as she lived she
+would never forget the experience.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With another child, and a nurse in attendance, she was playing one
+summer morning out of doors. After a little while the nurse rose from
+her seat amongst the heather, and wandered away a short distance, out of
+sight but not out of hearing.</p>
+
+<p>A few moments after the two little girls heard some bushes behind them
+rustling, and a huge creature, half-goat, half-man, emerged and
+leisurely crossing the road in front of them plunged into the woods
+beyond and was lost to sight. Both children were thrown into a paroxysm
+of terror, and screamed loudly. The nurse ran back to them, and when
+told what was the matter scolded them for their foolish fancies. No such
+animal existed, such as they described, an animal much bigger than a
+goat, that walked upright, and had but two legs, and two hoofs, that was
+covered with shaggy brown hair from the waist downward, and had the
+smooth skin of a man from the waist upward!</p>
+
+<p>The nurse bade them come home at once, and as they gained the road Miss
+Wemyss pointed down into the dust. Clearly defined was the track of a
+two-hoofed creature that had crossed at that spot. The nurse stared for
+a moment or two, then with one accord they all ran. She never took her
+charges near that spot again.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Henry said that the memory of that experience was so firmly grafted
+on her mind that she could always recall with perfect clarity the exact
+appearance of this appalling creature. In after years, when grown up,
+she realized from pictures that what she had seen was a Faun or Satyr.
+Such pictures or statues always sent a thrill of horror through her. She
+attributed this apparition to the fact that she and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> her companion were
+playing close to the site of a Roman camp, and the road was an old Roman
+road.</p>
+
+<p>She went on to say that the Grand Duchess had given her courage to tell
+this incredible story. It was as absolutely real to her as was the
+passing of the Centaurs to the Grand Duchess.</p>
+
+<p>The whole scene stood out in brilliant light as a picture before her,
+whenever she thought of it, which she very often did. She never
+mentioned it to any one, as she felt that no one would believe her. She
+could always smell again the scent of summer, and the odor of pine
+trees, and hear the trickling of water from a tiny stream. She could
+always see a wide, white road, ribbon-like stretching away to the
+horizon. Then, suddenly, she and her young companion stood face to face
+with a presence, a hideous, unspeakable shape, that was neither man nor
+beast.</p>
+
+<p>She believed that there was a real world beyond the glamour and vision
+of our ordinary senses, and sometimes this veil was lifted for a few
+seconds. She believed that much of the tradition of mythical creatures
+represented solid fact, and that it was possible there were failures of
+creation still extant. Again, might there not be races fallen out of
+evolution, but retaining as a survival certain powers that to us appear
+miraculous. A very gifted being was Miminie Erskine Wemyss, who married
+Lord Henry Grosvenor. One of my earliest memories is the thrill her
+beauty gave me when first I saw her, as she walked into church, a silver
+prayer-book, slung on a silver chain, depending from her arm.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>THE INVISIBLE HANDS</h3>
+
+
+<p>All through my life there have come to me moments never to be forgotten.
+Often the incidents that so deeply impressed me were utterly trivial in
+themselves, still they were sacramental, inasmuch as they proved to me,
+absolutely and conclusively, the immortality of the soul, and the power
+possessed by the soul after so-called death to concern itself with
+terrestrial happenings. Such moments are sacramental, in the sense that
+Nature is sacramental, in its showing forth of God's glory, and the
+manifestation of His handiwork.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I was sitting near the library window, reading, in the fading light of a
+quiet November afternoon. It was one of those utterly still, mournful
+days, with a gray, brooding sky, save where, in the west, a pale
+primrose sunset was bathing the horizon in light. I was reading "Man and
+the Universe," by Sir Oliver Lodge, and had arrived at page 137, which
+ends Chapter VI.</p>
+
+<p>In those days, the year was 1908, I always tried to arrange at least one
+week of perfect quiet for the study of a new book which I had just
+ordered. I would calculate on which day the post would bring it to my
+country home, and I would arrange my life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> accordingly. This may sound
+rather ridiculous, but the truth is that a book like "Man and the
+Universe" is such a pure intellectual treat to me, that I like to gloat
+over it, to taste it slowly, and imbibe it gradually. I try to spin out
+the joy of it as long as possible by reading slowly, and thinking over
+the problems presented.</p>
+
+<p>At last I put the book down on a table by my side. I was in no hurry. It
+lay on its back, open, the pages uppermost; just where I had stopped
+reading. I fell to wondering on the words I had just read.</p>
+
+<p>"A reformer must not be in haste. The kingdom cometh not by observation,
+but by secret working as of leaven. Nor must he advocate any compromise
+repugnant to an enlightened conscience. Bigotry must die, but it must
+die a natural, not a violent death. Would that the leaders in Church and
+State had always been able to receive an impatient enthusiast in the
+spirit of the lines&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Dreamer of dreams! no taunt is in our sadness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What e'er our fears our hearts are with your cause,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God's mills grind slow; and thoughtless haste were madness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To gain Heaven's ends we dare not break Heaven's laws."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I must have sat thinking for quite ten minutes when my attention was
+suddenly attracted by a sound. The sound of paper leaves being rustled.
+The room was so dead still that the faintest sound would have called my
+attention, but this sound was by no means faint. I turned my head and
+looked at the book I had been reading, because, from it, unmistakably
+the noise proceeded.</p>
+
+<p>I beheld a most enthralling phenomenon. Unseen hands were turning over
+the pages.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A thrill of intense excitement ran through me, and I stared at the book
+in breathless interest. The hands seemed to be searching for some
+particular passage. The number of the page upon which the passage was
+printed was not, apparently, known to the searcher. I will try to
+describe what actually happened.</p>
+
+<p>Several leaves of the book were turned over rather rapidly, each leaf
+making the usual sound which accompanies such an ordinary physical
+action. Then, as if fearing that the passage required had been
+overlooked or passed by, several leaves were turned back again.</p>
+
+<p>This manifestation continued for at least ten minutes, and I could see
+nothing but the pages of the book being turned quite methodically, as by
+a human hand.</p>
+
+<p>At moments there was rather a long pause in the search, and at the first
+pause I thought the demonstration might be over, but once again the
+invisible entity resumed the search, and I found myself saying, "He
+found something there that interested him. That is why he stopped." For
+no reason I can give I felt certain my visitor was a male spirit.</p>
+
+<p>On the second pause in the search occurring I had no doubt that again he
+had found something that interested him. The whole manifestation was
+very leisurely and wonderfully human. As I sat watching the book being
+manipulated by unseen fingers, every smallest action suggested design.
+One could not doubt as to what was taking place. At length there came a
+pause longer than usual. The book lay flat on its back wide open. There
+was now no quiver of the leaves. The invisible entity had found what he
+wanted and gone.</p>
+
+<p>I curbed my curiosity for five minutes more, then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> feeling convinced
+that I was again alone I stretched out my hand, took the book and,
+rising, carried it close to the window.</p>
+
+<p>There was still enough light to read by, and the leaves were open at
+pages 172-173.</p>
+
+<p>I had only read as far as page 137.</p>
+
+<p>I scanned them eagerly, and at once discovered that a mark had been made
+on the margin of page 172. A long cross had been placed against a
+paragraph. The mark was such as might have been made by a sharp
+finger-nail. The words marked were&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I want to make the distinct assertion that a really existing thing
+never perishes, but only changes its form."</p>
+
+<p>To-day the mark is as clearly visible on the page as on the day it was
+made. I can form no conjecture as to who the entity was, but he
+certainly knew the contents of the book. No one watching the search
+could doubt that, or that he was desirous of impressing upon the readers
+of the book a certain fact stated therein, which must have previously
+attracted his attention.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1900 we took a house for the winter months in the West End
+of London.</p>
+
+<p>It was a small house though joined on either side by great mansions, and
+once upon a time it had actually been a farmhouse standing amid smiling
+fields.</p>
+
+<p>It retained many relics of its ancient origin in fine oak paneling and
+quaint nooks and corners, and had been for many of its latter years the
+town residence of a man whose type had practically died out, the perfect
+type of our old English aristocracy.</p>
+
+<p>The bedroom I occupied was exceedingly comfortable and warm. The bed,
+placed against the wall,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> was exactly opposite to the fireplace, so that
+lying on my right side I looked straight at the fire and could see the
+whole room.</p>
+
+<p>I was constantly on the alert, as I knew how full of history such a
+house must be, but for several weeks I neither saw nor heard anything in
+the least unusual.</p>
+
+<p>One night, quite unexpectedly, a change occurred. I no longer had the
+room to myself. A stranger occupied it with me.</p>
+
+<p>It was a cold, snowy night, and I was lying in bed facing the fire and
+courting sleep, when I heard a sudden noise which was totally different
+to the sounds made by the dying fire. Take a large sheet of stiff
+writing paper in your hand and crush it up between your fingers and you
+will hear the sound I heard. Quite a loud and distinct noise if you
+happen to be in a very quiet room, at an hour when all the household has
+retired to bed.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, I instantly opened my eyes and looked out into the room,
+which was lit brightly enough by the fire to make all the objects it
+contained quite distinct.</p>
+
+<p>An armchair was drawn up close to the fire; half an hour before I had
+been seated in it warming my toes before getting into bed; now it was
+again filled.</p>
+
+<p>In it sat a man turned sideways towards me. He was lying back with his
+legs stretched straight out in front of him towards the fire. One of his
+arms hung over the arm of the chair, and in his clenched hand was a
+large piece of paper or parchment.</p>
+
+<p>His finely cut profile was clearly outlined, he was clean shaven, and he
+stared into the fire, his chin sunk in a high black stock.</p>
+
+<p>His hair was powdered and tied behind by a large<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> black bow, and he wore
+bright blue cloth knee breeches, white stockings, silver buckled shoes,
+and many gold buttons on his blue coat. I did not take in all those
+details at once; I had ample leisure to do so later. For, I suppose, a
+full two minutes, I stared very hard at him, and lay very still, knowing
+full well I was looking at a ghost. Then very cautiously I drew the
+bedclothes over my head, and shut out the startling vision. I was
+invaded by wild panic.</p>
+
+<p>I have never been one of those timid women who are frightened by their
+own shadows. I require to be face to face with a tangible danger before
+I put faith in its existence, yet, I confess that at that moment I knew
+what actual fear meant. My heart beat thickly, then seemed to stop, and
+I was instantly bathed in cold perspiration. I knew that the servants
+were all in bed two flights of stairs below me, and my husband was out
+of London, so no calling for help was any use. I therefore forced a sort
+of spurious desperate courage, and began to be angry with myself for
+being thus afraid when no cause for fear existed. I treated myself to a
+scornful lecture. "You who profess to know all about ghosts, you who
+have actually seen several ghosts, you coward to quail before this one!
+Don't you know perfectly well that he won't hurt you, that he has a
+perfect right to sit in that chair, and that it is your duty to speak to
+him should he show any desire for conversation?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am so terribly alone," pleaded my other self in feeble self-defense.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what of it? If the whole household was in the room what could
+they do? You are not a child. Uncover your head and look the specter
+boldly in the face."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The stillness and hush of deep night, at the hour when sleepers slumber
+soundest, was upon the house. The traffic of London was muffled in a
+heavy fall of snow. I could hear nothing but the feeble crackling of the
+expiring fire in the grate, but gradually I rallied my courage and
+faculties and peeped stealthily out.</p>
+
+<p>There sat that dark form between me and the fire; there he lay in an
+attitude of moody carelessness, watching the cooling embers as they
+faded from scarlet to pink, from pink to yellow, and then fell tinkling
+into heaps of white ashes. No statue was ever stiller. He did not move
+in the least, but sat more like an effigy of a man carved out of stone
+than a creature of flesh and blood.</p>
+
+<p>I closed my eyes and re-opened them, to test the fact whether I was
+awake or asleep and dreaming. No, I was broad wake and the room was
+still fairly well lit, and there sat the phantom before the fire, the
+proud, well-set head with its powdered curls distinctly visible in the
+red glow of the firelight. I should think an hour must have passed thus,
+whilst I gazed at the figure before me, taking in every detail. There
+was no indication that he knew or cared for my presence. The figure sat
+like a stone.</p>
+
+<p>I came to the conclusion that the phantom was about thirty years of age,
+and a sailor who had lived in the days of Nelson, judging by his clothes
+and the pictures I had seen. I noticed particularly his hand clenched on
+the paper. A white hand, with strong cruel-looking fingers. There is so
+much character in hands. The face may be drilled into a mere mask, but
+hands tell tales of their owners. I could imagine the hand that had
+crushed the paper closing murderously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> on the throat of an adversary, or
+gripped hard on the hilt of a dagger.</p>
+
+<p>There were moments when the awful inertia of the figure began to play
+havoc with my nerves, when I would have given anything to make that
+impassive form move from out its dreary attitude of sullen brooding;
+anything to cause the profile of the face, with all its gloom and pride,
+to turn and front me, so that I might know the worst. But the figure
+never turned, never stirred, but sat with stately head bowed under a
+weight of thought.</p>
+
+<p>Now and again a little flame would spurt up and glitter on his shoe
+buckles, his brass buttons, but the fire was dying now, and gradually
+the figure became more and more indistinct.</p>
+
+<p>Then I slept. I had been feeling drowsy for some time, and fought
+against it. I had violently resisted sleep, feeling a great repugnance
+to losing consciousness whilst the specter still sat there, but the
+blank force of sleep at length overpowered me. When I awoke the cold
+gray morning light was stealing feebly in through the window. The chair
+was empty. The figure was gone.</p>
+
+<p>The next night I went to bed full of courage, but I was left alone. If
+the sailor returned it was not until after I had gone to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>A week later he came back. One moment the chair was empty, the next
+moment with one wild heart throb I opened my eyes at the sound of
+crackling paper, and the chair was filled. There he sat in his brooding
+sullen attitude and continued so to sit till slumber vanquished me.
+After that I saw him at constant intervals.</p>
+
+<p>By this time I had entirely rid myself of all fear.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> I did not even
+desire to change my room which would have been very inconvenient, and I
+dreaded alarming the household and being left alone to conduct the
+domestic duties. But though no longer afraid those constant visits began
+to get on my nerves, and I consulted a Catholic friend who was always
+sympathetic to the occult side of life.</p>
+
+<p>She said at once that this spirit should be exorcised and set free from
+the bondage of earth, and that she had an old friend, a Franciscan monk,
+who was known to be a powerful exorcist. She offered to arrange the
+matter, and I gladly accepted her suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>It was on an early spring afternoon that Father Reginald Buckler came to
+the house. In his white habit, sandaled feet and shorn crown, he looked
+an incongruous figure in that fashionable locality already beginning its
+social entertainments in view of the season's approach. He was a
+charming, courteous old man, who took his mission very seriously. After
+a few words of explanation we mounted to the bedroom floor.</p>
+
+<p>There were four doors opening on to the little landing, and without
+asking which of the doors led to the haunted chamber, he turned the
+handle of the right one and entered. Still he put no question, but at
+once proceeded with the Service of Exorcism.</p>
+
+<p>Sprinkling the four corners of the room with Holy Water, he bade me
+kneel down in the middle. Then he raised his Crucifix and offered up
+prayers for the repose of the earth-bound soul, that he might be loosed
+and set free.</p>
+
+<p>For five weeks longer we remained in the house, but I never saw the
+sailor again.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>DAWNS</h3>
+
+
+<p>We have been given many wonderful dawns this winter, and I have used
+them eagerly as a cleansing of the war-weary mind and distracted soul.
+In such ethereal apparitional dawns one walks with the Eternal, and all
+temporal things fade away. Those pale silver daybreaks have a rapture of
+their own, they suggest a fresh creation straight from the looms of God.
+When the hours of day have drawn on the flaming sunset, that exquisitely
+serene emotion of virgin tranquillity will have passed away, and the
+horizon will be lurid and grand beneath a grave frowning sadness
+gathered from the scenes of earth they have brooded over.</p>
+
+<p>Such dawns beckon imperiously to the pilgrim, to leave the shelter of
+the roof-tree, and come forth to walk with the immortals whilst the
+Morning Star, the light-bringer, still shines, a white gold radiance in
+the heavens, and the distance is still dissolved in veils of pearl and
+opal.</p>
+
+<p>Such daybreaks always rouse in me the urge for wider thought, for the
+broad day of the mind. Out of the limitless beyond comes the certain
+knowledge of a something unimagined, lying just outside human thought. I
+am sure there is so much not yet imagined, something more than mere
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>There is a wine of happiness in tranquil daybreak, and an aloofness from
+life that urges one to seek for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> that which is beyond comprehension. The
+draught exalts the soul, and quickens it with unquenchable fire, until
+the world falls away, far from one, as day wells out of still darkness.
+Only at such moments do we reach the true horizon.</p>
+
+<p>Again, there is an amnesty in such dawns, a glory of release from the
+house of bondage. In the great silences, life, as we know it, is remote,
+and the immensity is a magic that draws the soul, fusing it in a strange
+passion, so that whatever fulfillment our existence holds is summed in
+that hour of solitude.</p>
+
+<p>A pale wash of translucent gold is thrown across land and sea. On the
+far horizon a ship is set in relief, against a core of crimson flame
+which heralds the sun. A dove coos softly, and on a bare branch a thrush
+thrills in waves of sound, seeking in the universal ether to reproduce
+its divine instinct in other feathered hearts that are attuned to its
+melody.</p>
+
+<p>Such joys as these are transitory, and never wholly possessed. They pass
+the enclosures of life, and bring one nearer to the beating heart of
+truth. The agonizing fear of losing hold on them is, in itself, the
+cause of their dispersal. It is the same at rare moments of
+semi-consciousness, when one has actually laid hold of a genuine astral
+experience&mdash;and knows it. Then comes the frantic endeavor to hold on&mdash;to
+pin the moment fast and tight, till the whole vision is absorbed. The
+soul seems to hold its breath! How often, with bitter disappointment I
+have rushed reluctantly into full waking consciousness&mdash;and only half
+the story told. Fragmentary though such moments are their potency is
+such that they endure through time. Thank God, that whilst the wedlock
+of body and soul still holds undissolved there is scope for such joys.
+They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> are uncommunicable, and may not be shared with others at will, and
+they tell the soul that she is not of creation and cannot be contained
+by law. At such hours she learns the truth, that she passes for a brief
+span into the limited, from out the limitless whence she came. At such
+sacramental hours one can pray the prayer of Socrates, offered up by the
+banks of the Illissus:</p>
+
+<p>"O Beloved God of the forests and flocks and all ye Divinities of this
+place, grant me to become beautiful in the inner man, and that whatever
+outward things I have may be at peace with those within. May I deem the
+wise man rich, and may I have so much wealth, and so much only, as a
+good man can manage to enjoy.</p>
+
+<p>"Do we need anything else, Ph&aelig;drus? For myself I have prayed enough."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>How many people now recall fragments of former lives! Ask the next man
+you meet if he has any recollections of former existences, and be sure
+he will not eye you askance as a fugitive from Bedlam. He may smile and
+shake his head, and regret to say he isn't psychic, but he won't ask you
+what on earth you mean. This is how we have progressed towards truth in
+the last thirty years. The truth of reincarnation is being quietly
+accepted by the West and is now openly preached from many pulpits. If
+God is love, who could reconcile with any comprehensive idea of justice
+and law in the world the lives and experiences of common humanity? How
+reconcile the births taking place in one single day in their vast
+diversity, by the hell for the criminal, born, nurtured and killed in
+crime, who never had a chance, and Heaven for the happily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> born, who
+need never have a temptation? What is the Divine Law lying behind this
+seeming hideous injustice? Undoubtedly the continuous evolution of the
+soul in bodies of matter. Men are looking now to the scheme of organic
+evolution to provide the field for spiritual evolution. They are finding
+it in the depths of their own consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>I chanced upon one of those fragments of a past life, those islets in
+eternity in a strange way. I was paying a visit to a stranger in
+Cambridgeshire, and whilst awaiting her entry I walked round the room
+looking at some lovely water-colored sketches that hung upon the walls.
+When their owner entered, and after a few minutes' conversation, I said,
+"How beautiful those Sicilian scenes are!"</p>
+
+<p>She looked pleased and answered: "I'm so glad you recognize them. I
+painted them. When were you last in Sicily?"</p>
+
+<p>I had never at that time been in Sicily. I told her so, but I could not
+tell a stranger that suddenly there had dawned upon me a keen
+recollection of the country I had certainly been in, though not in this
+life. The paintings, of course, dealt with a restricted field, but as I
+looked at them one by one I saw mentally a wide landscape in which each
+picture formed but a tiny spot. One I remember was a painting of a
+wonderfully perfect temple, which occupied the whole space of the
+picture. As I looked at it I saw wide rolling plains, and a wide expanse
+of blue sea. This I later recognized in Girgenti.</p>
+
+<p>A month or two afterwards my husband and I went to Sicily for the
+winter, and, as I had expected, the island was perfectly familiar to me.
+I knew exactly round which bend of the hill I should find a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> temple, but
+Syracuse was really my spiritual home. It was there that I had played
+out one of my many life dramas, and many incidents returned to me as I
+wandered over the hills, and gathered maiden-hair ferns in the twilight
+of the empty tombs.</p>
+
+<p>Once I opened my eyes on Stromboli, one of the &AElig;olian or Lipari Isles.
+Instantly I felt a passion of love for it, an intuition of spiritual
+delight which is utterly irreducible to terms. I have looked upon it
+since, and always with an adoration impossible to paint with pen or
+pencil. I have for weeks anticipated the moment when I should see it
+again. It means something to me far beyond what the eye can see, the
+tongue relate, and it is this something lying betwixt rhapsody and
+lament which draws me by a tenuous chain of thought right back into the
+womb of time, where buried memory stirs in its long sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Stromboli, so the ancient poets tell us, was the home of the fiery god,
+Vulcan. That explains much to me, but it unfolds a secret none may
+learn.</p>
+
+<p>It was in a flaming dawn that I first saw Stromboli rising from amid the
+numerous isles surrounding it. From its cone shot a great plume of
+smoke, like a giant ostrich feather, silver tinted. In its ethereal
+loveliness it seemed to float in the void, half of earth, half of
+heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Neither bondage of words, nor the cold scrutiny of reason can impinge
+upon a scene which draws the soul away upon a celestial pilgrimage. Free
+and elate, she passes beyond the frontiers of life, and like the echoes
+of the sea when a shell is held to the ear, she hears the pulse of earth
+beat far away in unfathomable distance. The marvel of the uncreated
+consumes her in a trance of unincarnate passion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Those who have once adventured on such pilgrimages are never quite the
+same again. They become children of "the Divine unrest." They have
+experienced a moment in which earth and flesh dissolve, in which law is
+not, in which creeds and covenants find no place, and the hold upon
+common life with its moving mirages is blotted out. Time and space are
+annulled, the &aelig;on and the second are one. The soul unswathed, has risen
+from the tomb where the life urge has laid it, and is aglow with the
+transcendental fires of eternal being. In after days the soul learns to
+set barriers against such visitants. One must not look upon the other
+side of the moon too often, for fear one is drawn away from home and
+kindred. The time is not yet, but it will surely come.</p>
+
+<p>One other curious happening I must relate. Years ago, one autumn when I
+was in the far north there came a magnificent visitation of falling
+stars and many aerolites dropped to earth. The display was predicted,
+and I was on the lookout. It came in a rain of gold and seemingly from
+all points of the compass. For hours I watched a sight far more
+marvelous than anything I had anticipated.</p>
+
+<p>When at last I reluctantly went to bed I had a strange dream or, rather,
+astral experience. I was a Hungarian gipsy, the head or queen of an
+enormous clan. I heard wild Hungarian music, and saw enormous crowds of
+my people gathered round me. They were very savage and picturesque, and
+a ceremony was proceeding.</p>
+
+<p>On the ground, and in the center of a great ring of people, stood a
+large bowl filled with blood. I stood in front of it and watched the
+swearing in of new adherents to my clan, by means of the "blood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+covenant." The blood that filled the bowl had been drawn from the veins
+of my people, and the new adherents were each required to drink from it
+and swear their allegiance. Only one thing troubled me all through what
+seemed a long ceremony. My feet caused me pain, and I was aware that
+they were bare, as were the feet of all my people.</p>
+
+<p>So vivid was the dream that I could visualize my whole life as I lived
+it on the plains of Hungary, and the scenery surrounding me was lit up
+by a glorious sunset. There were hundreds of horses grazing loose, as
+far as the eye could reach, and flocks of enormous white geese, amid
+which great storks strutted.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly I awoke with the acute pain in my feet uppermost in my mind. I
+found myself clad only in my nightgown, walking bare-footed on the rough
+gravel paths of the garden, whence I had watched the stellar display. I
+had been walking in my sleep, and the sudden unaccustomed stony hardness
+of the path under my bare feet had awakened in me the recollection of a
+past life, in which I had lived, a wild nomad in southern Hungary.</p>
+
+<p>This is the one and only occasion in my life in which I have known
+somnambulism. Luckily my memory did not fail me on waking and, some time
+after, when I was able to revisit the scenes of that long ago pilgrimage
+I was quite familiar with my surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>Buda Pest and the lands lying southward were then my home, a roving home
+and tent life of infinite variety.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the dead of vanished years are disguised in the present living.</p>
+
+<p>I have no doubt that many people who have not had the interesting
+experience of remembering one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> or more of their former incarnations have
+been able through some trivial incident to recollect happenings long
+vanished from their memory. Sometimes the scent of a flower, the glimpse
+of a scene, a chance word or expression will vividly recall some episode
+lying hidden for many years in the subconsciousness. Again it will be
+pulled over the threshold from past to present, from the storehouse of
+the eternal memory into the everyday working consciousness or mind.</p>
+
+<p>This is not a book for scientists. I will therefore go into no elaborate
+metaphysics, but will sketch as simply as I can what I mean by
+subconsciousness. I use the term for the region or zone within us which
+stores up the residues of past thoughts and experiences. Scientists tell
+us there are three realms of mind, the super-conscious, the conscious,
+the subconscious. The conscious mind is what we commonly use. It belongs
+purely to the objective world, and its instruments are the five senses.
+The subconscious mind is the storehouse for experiences on the human
+plane of man's long past. The super-consciousness is independent of the
+five senses. It is a faculty of perception closely akin to the One force
+in the Universe, which is inseparably related to all created things. It
+possesses the attributes of Infinity, is indestructible, immortal,
+undying. We may forget a fact for many years, then suddenly we remember
+it. I believe it has come back to us again across the threshold from the
+subconscious region to our consciousness or mind which is open to
+everyday observation.</p>
+
+<p>I have become convinced, by personal experience, of the existence in us
+of this region below the threshold of our ordinary conscious life. When
+I was young there were many problems I wished to solve, and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> this
+effort human aid often failed me. My plan was to "sleep on" a problem,
+ardently desiring before "dropping off" that an answer might be accorded
+me. I suppose this desire was of the nature of prayer, though addressed
+to no Deity. Almost invariably the solution was clear and unmistakable
+to me in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>I lost this great advantage at the age of twenty-one, but even now I can
+sometimes "get at" a solution by leaving the question severely alone,
+after turning it well over in my mind. The solution will suddenly pop
+up, often weeks after I have tried to get at it, and when it comes
+there, it arrives apropos of nothing, so to speak. It simply dawns in
+the thick of quite other subjects, which happen at the moment to occupy
+my mind.</p>
+
+<p>Though I can no more demonstrate to others the existence of the
+subconsciousness than I can prove the existence of the immortal soul, I
+have got sufficient proof to satisfy myself, and I believe the same
+knowledge is open to many of us. Within our being are sympathetic chords
+that can vibrate to all the symphonies of Nature. There are visions of
+beauty and depths of feeling which may be seen and felt, if heart and
+mind are open to the higher influences. The finer forces of Nature, and
+her immutable laws, are ready to draw nigh to us if we desire to welcome
+them, and are eager to place ourselves in harmony with the Infinite
+Source of being. We are in the keeping of the best and highest, and
+whatever things are pure, whatsoever things are beautiful, whatsoever
+things are true and high and holy will gravitate towards us in
+proportion to the degree we desire them. The mysterious gift of
+existence is in itself a beckoning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> ideal, and a foregleam of the final
+awakening that will surely be ours.</p>
+
+<p>Now what does the subconsciousness contain?</p>
+
+<p>Firstly, I believe it to be permeated by Deity, and the Divine
+indwelling. It is the seat of Genius. I believe a genius to be one who
+is capable of drawing from the contents of his subconsciousness that
+which outwardly appears as a creation. It is said that genius creates
+and talent copies. I believe that a man becomes great when he represents
+the results of countless lives in his individuality, and each life is an
+arc of the infinite life of the Universe. The man with &aelig;ons of
+experience behind him is infinitely more <i>en rapport</i> with his
+subconsciousness than those younger, more immature souls who have as yet
+experienced few earth lives and who constitute the bulk of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>The eternal mind finds its home in the subconsciousness, by which I mean
+that nothing is really forgotten by man. This lapse of memory is the
+passing of the subject from the ordinary mind into the subconsciousness,
+whence it may later be recovered again. The memory of all our former
+incarnations I believe to lie hidden in the subconsciousness. It is from
+this region or zone that one gets sudden uprushes of memory, and such
+uprushes are induced by stumbling on a chance link between the two zones
+of consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Some chance incident, such as the presence of my bare feet upon the
+rough gravel, touches a correspondence on the other side of the
+threshold, and lays bare old scenes to the observation of the ordinary
+mind. It is noteworthy that the matter contained in this up-rushing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> is
+recognized first, and the means which brought about the uprush is
+recognized secondly.</p>
+
+<p>I believe there is a vital communication between consciousness and
+subconsciousness which could be enormously developed and utilized by
+practice. The age in which we live has produced the most marvelous
+triumphs of mind over matter. Access to the subconsciousness is becoming
+commoner and simpler. We have broken in and harnessed material forces in
+a manner undreamt of fifty years ago. Yet there is an alas! a fact which
+detracts from all our legitimate pride in our achievement&mdash;the base uses
+to which our triumphs have been put. The whole of our inventive power
+has been turned against the life that gave it birth. The parents are
+being consumed by their own offspring.... Matter evolved out of spirit
+has threatened destruction to the latter.</p>
+
+<p>The threshold between our ordinary consciousness and the region of
+subconsciousness seems to me like a bridge which is rarely used, and
+which separates the country known from the country unknown. I live in
+the country known, but if I can touch a button at my end I can get a
+response instantaneously transmitted from the country unknown. The
+trouble is to find the button. At present I only press it at long
+intervals and by the merest chance. Still it is something of an
+achievement to have convinced one's self that such a region actually
+does exist.</p>
+
+<p>I believe this subconsciousness of ours is in direct contact with the
+Great Creative Power. "It is God that worketh" in man, and its vital
+communications are hidden in the infinite eternity. Says a Sufi ideal:
+"To abide in God after passing away is the work of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> the perfect man, who
+not only journeys to God&mdash;passes from plurality to unity&mdash;but in and
+with God&mdash;continuing in the unitive state he returns with God (his
+subconscious self) to the phenomenal world from which he sets out, and
+manifests unity in plurality."</p>
+
+<p>Though at present, to all outward seeming, the evolution of the beast is
+consummated, there is a something that flatly contradicts this apparent
+certainty. That something is man's subconsciousness, and the Divinity it
+enshrouds, and which fiercely and irrevocably is set against the
+bestiality into which he is plunged. War has never been so universally
+hated as it now is. It is in this vital fact, which cannot be too
+strongly emphasized, that our future hope lies.</p>
+
+<p>I believe this vital fact to be so strong that entire regeneration is a
+certainty. Where hitherto this force has lain dormant or been dispersed,
+disunited and weak in spiritual utterance, it is now a collective force
+concentrated in millions of lives. All over the earth it is now gathered
+<i>en masse</i>, and that stupendous aggregate, vivified, sharpened, and
+intensely accentuated by untold suffering will revolutionize all former
+weak and fatalistic acquiescence in the inevitability of war. Millions
+of men have descended into hell, they are there now, but they will arise
+again from amongst the dead, and ascend one day into the Heaven of
+peace, and thence they will judge the quick and the dead by a new
+standard. The standard of the God within, whose voice has been heard at
+last from out the din of battle. It is the same God who has said to the
+East:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Have perseverance as one who dost forever more endure. Thy shadows
+(physical bodies) live and vanish, that which is in thee shall live
+forever, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> which in thee knows is not of fleeting life, it is the
+man that was, that is, that will be, for whom the hour shall never
+strike."</p>
+
+<p>To-day we all use, in some cases automatically, the powers and aptitudes
+developed in us in the long and painful evolution of the physical form.
+As evolution proceeds we will gain a vastly greater control over the
+subconsciousness, and in &aelig;ons to come "in the flight of the alone to the
+alone" union will be achieved. The two will be merged in one.</p>
+
+<p>The Lord Buddha has said that to enter Nirvana is to become fully
+conscious of our fundamental oneness with the universal life.</p>
+
+<p>"I and my Father are one." Christ's sense of oneness with the Father was
+essentially Nirvanic.</p>
+
+<p>We have not yet accustomed ourselves to think of evolution in any terms
+but the material, as a power inherent in matter, Darwin's physical
+evolution stood for pure materialism. Bergson now carries us a step
+farther. He introduces us to a spiritual principle. His creative
+evolution is a spiritual activity seeking freedom of expression in
+matter. Darwin's struggle for existence is by Bergson transmuted into
+life, expressing itself through material forms, and life and matter are
+in constant conflict. Again he points out that the spiritual principle,
+life, has not "had it all its own way." It has experienced checks, but
+in two modes of activity it has succeeded, in instinct and intelligence.
+Thus he draws for us the grandiose upward sweep of a Divine activity.
+Curbed, it is true, by the crust of matter, but finding ever higher
+capacities, and higher expression towards that ultimate reality which is
+creative life and to me is union with that higher self lying in the
+subconsciousness of all men.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>PEACOCK'S FEATHERS&mdash;THE SKELETON HAND AT MONTE CARLO</h3>
+
+
+<p>A sea voyage once provided me with a wonderfully lucky experience,
+inasmuch as it saved me from an extremely bad accident.</p>
+
+<p>I was returning quite alone from the East in a ship crammed full of
+women and children, most of them soldiers' wives and families going home
+to escape the hot weather. Many of them were attended by ayahs.</p>
+
+<p>Two days out we ran into a raging storm, and everything was battened
+down. Owing to the weather, and the excessive crowding, the conditions
+below soon became very unpleasant, and I asked the captain if I might
+take possession of the ladies' summer drawing-room on the upper deck and
+close to the bridge. Seeing that it would not be used by any one else
+for some time to come he kindly agreed, and I at once settled myself in
+my eyrie with a few books, and prepared for some days of solitude.</p>
+
+<p>But as the storm did not abate the suffering women and children below
+claimed my attention. They were confined in an atmosphere which was
+appalling, they were all terribly ill and utterly helpless. The mothers
+were unable to attend to their children, most of whom were infants, and
+the ayahs suffered horribly. Having no cabins they lay groaning on the
+floors of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> corridors, drenched with water as the ship was awash from
+stem to stern, and tossed hither and thither as she rolled heavily.</p>
+
+<p>It was never easy to descend from my perch aloft, but the sufferers had
+to be aided, and day after day I never knew a dry moment till I lay down
+at night. So far the summer drawing-room remained fairly water-tight in
+spite of being swept continually by heavy seas, but the noise of the
+elements was absolutely deafening, and when the captain called upon me
+we had to shout in each other's ears.</p>
+
+<p>With his connivance I got a shelter rigged up on what appeared to be the
+only dry spot on board. It was about twelve feet square and walled in
+with sailcloth, and there the sailors helped to carry a number of tiny
+children. They were to remain there during the best hours of the day,
+until their mothers and nurses were capable of attending to them once
+more.</p>
+
+<p>I took charge at first and found my task no light one. The babies did
+not seem to appreciate my blandishments. They cried persistently, but
+luckily their voices were drowned in the roaring of the wind.</p>
+
+<p>At last a cabin boy chanced to look in, and at once sized up the
+situation. He signaled to me that he knew of something that would ease
+the tension and then he disappeared. In five minutes he was back
+brandishing a large bunch of peacock's feathers. These he shook in the
+face of each infant in turn, at the same time making the most hideous
+grimaces at them. It was an anxious moment for me, but luckily the
+effect was electrical. The babies suddenly forgot to yell, they stiffly
+maintained their equilibrium and stared in a sort of indignant
+amazement. Then, gradually, as the boy kept going round the circle
+repeating the process,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> smiles and dimples began to appear, and in five
+minutes more the whole cr&ecirc;che was laughing.</p>
+
+<p>I applied for permission to annex that boy; he was indeed a treasure,
+and the joy in the peacock's feathers never palled. His gutta-percha
+face had an infinite variety of expression, which he could instantly
+turn on to suit all occasions. It was a fascinating sight to see him
+going round the group feeding each baby out of the same bottle, one of
+the old-fashioned horrors with a long indiarubber tube and teat. Those
+infants who had contemptuously rejected all my offers of nourishment now
+sat expectantly agape waiting their turn. The scene always reminded me
+of the artificial feeding of fowls, by the man who goes round the pens
+squirting liquid down each gaping throat.</p>
+
+<p>When we landed at Marseilles there was a wonderful parting between the
+babies and the cabin boy. They clung to him to the last, and howled
+dismally when they were carried off by their haggard mothers.</p>
+
+<p>One night, during the height of the storm I was asleep on the fixed red
+velvet seat running round the walls of the summer drawing-room. I lay
+just under a porthole, to which was attached a rope. The other end of
+the rope was tied round my arm to prevent my being thrown to the floor
+by the rolling of the ship.</p>
+
+<p>At five o'clock in the morning I was suddenly awakened by hearing my
+husband's voice shouting in my ear. (My husband not being on board, but
+in our home in the North of Scotland.)</p>
+
+<p>"Sit up! Sit up!" shouted his voice commandingly.</p>
+
+<p>Considerably startled I threw myself into a sitting position, and as I
+did so a gigantic wave shattered the porthole, and the heavy fragments
+of glass fell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> on to the pillow where a second before my face had lain.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, the water poured in and over me in volumes, and stopped my
+wrist watch at five a. m., but I had got used to salt water, and in a
+few minutes the weary captain had waded in, and was disentangling me
+from my rope and congratulating me on my lucky escape.</p>
+
+<p>I told him how it was that I had escaped, and he was not in the least
+skeptical. On the contrary, he said that he had known some curious
+things happen in his time, for which there was no accounting; but he
+always kept a black cat on board.</p>
+
+<p>Had the safety of his ship not claimed his whole attention I believe he
+would have told me some of his experiences, but when, at last, the
+weather abated he was too much in need of rest to be bothered by any
+one.</p>
+
+<p>My husband had no knowledge of the service he had rendered me. At five
+a. m. that morning he was asleep at home, and had no premonition of
+danger, or any recollection on waking of the r&ocirc;le his astral counterpart
+had undoubtedly played.</p>
+
+<p>What is this astral counterpart of man? His soul and spirit dwells in a
+shroud of flesh, and the feat of getting out of that shroud of flesh at
+will is the aim of all occultists. It is to the astral world they go,
+soul and spirit encased in the astral sheath we term the astral body.</p>
+
+<p>During sleep, or in trance, when the normal physical senses are in
+abeyance, when the body is unconscious in sleep, the mind continues to
+act in the realm corresponding to the suggestions given when awake. The
+world at large is open to the highly developed man, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> he will
+sometimes bring back from his astral plane expeditions memories of what
+he has seen and heard.</p>
+
+<p>In deep slumber the physical body in healthful repose remains where it
+has lain down to rest, but the man's higher principles, the astral body
+encasing the soul and spirit, is invariably withdrawn, and in
+underdeveloped persons hovers in the immediate neighborhood. In such
+cases the higher principles, the astral body, soul and spirit of St.
+Paul's Gospel, are not sufficiently developed to roam, and remain near
+the physical body in a brooding sleep. All cultured persons in the
+present day have their astral senses fairly well developed, and have the
+power during sleep to go where they will, but as yet few have the power
+to retain the memory of it when returning to the body.</p>
+
+<p>In some cases the astral man during sleep is specially attracted to some
+one point, and he invariably travels towards it; in other cases he will
+drift aimlessly about on the astral currents, meeting with experience of
+all sorts and with people in a similar condition whom he knows. Is there
+anything very extraordinary in all this, and is not the condition of
+deep unconscious sleep a demonstration in itself that the physical
+consciousness has departed elsewhere? As it is no longer functioning on
+the Physical plane clearly it has found another realm in which it can
+temporarily exercise its activities.</p>
+
+<p>My husband once had a rather interesting experience of his own, on the
+Astral plane. He was in bed and asleep on the Physical plane, and he
+believes that the time must have been between eleven p. m. and twelve a.
+m. He simply became aware that he was functioning consciously on the
+Astral plane, and was intensely interested.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He found himself in a strange house of medium size, and he was floating
+at the top of a flight of stairs leading to an ordinary entrance hall
+below. At the foot of the stairs hung a lighted lamp, and below the lamp
+stood a man and woman, who were apparently exchanging a word or two
+before bidding each other good-night.</p>
+
+<p>My husband instantly conceived the idea of testing and proving his
+belief, that he was consciously afloat on the Astral plane. If this
+belief was true, then he ought to be able to pass through the couple
+standing below, without their being in the least aware of his presence.</p>
+
+<p>In a flash he was downstairs, and his belief stood the test. His
+imponderable astral body passed without feeling or shock through two
+ponderable bodies of flesh and blood, and he was out on the other side.
+The excitement of the adventure awakened him, and he brought back to the
+Physical plane a clear recollection of all that had happened.</p>
+
+<p>When one thinks of it, the possible presence of total strangers in one's
+house is rather alarming. Luckily for us such wanderers rarely bring
+back to waking consciousness the memory of their nocturnal escapades.
+When we are more advanced in "other side" knowledge we will doubtless
+refrain from intruding upon the privacy of our neighbors' dwellings, and
+confine our attentions to realms which are free to all.</p>
+
+<p>It is curious how constantly one hears of the ghosts of priests and
+monks being seen. I have not met any one yet who has encountered the
+wraith of an Anglican parson, or a Nonconformist preacher. I wonder why?
+I presume the latter do sometimes "walk."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Once upon a time, when we were in Rome, my husband and I went to keep an
+appointment with Monsignor Stonor, who was a great celebrity, and an
+extremely handsome and charming man. We were being shown upstairs by a
+servant, and the hour was eleven o'clock on a sunny spring day. I was
+walking first, my husband following, and at the top of the stairs,
+coming slowly downward, was an old priest carrying a huge portfolio,
+under which he seemed to be staggering. He passed the servant, and as he
+neared me I noticed that the cassock which he wore was torn in great
+rents in several places. His gray hair hung on his shoulders, though his
+crown was shaven, and his face was the color of old ivory.</p>
+
+<p>I moved slightly to give him and his burden room to pass, and as he did
+so our eyes met. His were very strange. They were exactly like points of
+live flame.</p>
+
+<p>Something about his whole presence struck me as so weird that I turned
+involuntarily and looked back.</p>
+
+<p>As I did so, I saw my husband walk straight through him. My husband saw
+nothing. Then I knew and understood.</p>
+
+<p>I did not mention this incident to Monsignor Stonor, but some time after
+I met his sister, Viscountess Clifden, at Monte Carlo. She was an
+intimate friend of mine, and one day when an opportunity offered I told
+her the little story, and asked her if she had ever met with anything of
+the sort herself. She replied that personally, she had not, but she had
+heard that several people encountered at different times the old priest
+in her brother's rooms, though he himself had seen nothing of this
+apparition.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Clifden enjoyed nothing more than a little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> flutter at the tables.
+She never missed a single day during her long sojourns at Monte Carlo.</p>
+
+<p>Every one knows that the Anglican church-goers in the Principality hurry
+from church to gaming rooms in order to stake on the numbers of the
+hymns. Lady Clifden used also to hurry from Mass with any numbers she
+had caught up, and she considered Sunday her lucky day. Suddenly her
+luck changed.</p>
+
+<p>She told me that on the previous Sunday she had just pulled off a nice
+little coup, and was about to grasp it, when, to her horror she saw a
+skeleton hand stretched forth. Before she could collect her scattered
+senses the skeleton hand had raked in her gold. Where that gold had gone
+to worried and puzzled her dreadfully. So it did me! I never heard the
+last of it. She could not get over her loss.</p>
+
+<p>It was no use suggesting that the hand had belonged to one of the
+emaciated harpies who prey upon the unwary. Lady Clifden knew all about
+them, and was a match for the whole gang, had they attacked her. She
+insisted that the hand that had grasped her gold had neither skin nor
+flesh upon it, and that she had seen the two bare arm bones from wrist
+to elbow. We compromised on the suggestion of a third party that it must
+have been the devil himself, and that the heat he is supposed to
+engender had melted the gold entirely away.</p>
+
+<p>Monte Carlo is a very interesting place for the clairvoyant to be in,
+more especially if her vision extends to seeing auras. Perhaps nowhere
+on earth are the basest human passions more swiftly and violently
+aroused, and several times, when some tragedy was being enacted, or some
+enormous coup was being brought off, I have been unable to see details,
+because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> they were hidden within a dense envelop of dark crimson clouds.</p>
+
+<p>In the rooms a crowd collects swiftly, and from a hundred human auras,
+all gathered in one compact mass, stream forth emanations of the basest
+description. Cupidity, envy, revenge, lust of the vilest, despair, ruin,
+death.</p>
+
+<p>I remember being met one night by a friend in the Attrium who was very
+excited. "Hurry up," she cried, "the double Duchess has broken the bank
+and is still playing."</p>
+
+<p>I went into the gambling rooms, and looked for the table at which the
+Duchess of Devonshire was staking. I knew she would attract a big crowd
+if she was winning.</p>
+
+<p>I found the table easily enough, not because it was surrounded by a
+crowd of people, but because it was hidden by a dark and dense crimson
+fog.</p>
+
+<p>With patience I got through this fog, and watched the handsome Duchess
+of Devonshire, formerly Duchess of Manchester, and born a Hanoverian,
+playing with a great quantity of gold, and a pile of thousand franc
+notes. By bending low down, almost level with the table, I found I got
+completely out of the fog, and could see clearly underneath it.</p>
+
+<p>One night there was a rush outside, and a huge ring formed to watch "a
+scrap" taking place between two celebrated members of <i>la haute
+cocotterie de Paris</i>.</p>
+
+<p>They were fighting with formidable hatpins, and I understood that the
+prey they fought over was Leopold, King of the Belgians.</p>
+
+<p>I ran with the crowd, the gambling rooms emptied in a twinkling, for the
+combat took place in the Casino Square. I squeezed through the excited
+mob till I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> got behind the backers of both parties, who were holding the
+ring and defying the police.</p>
+
+<p>It was a wonderful sight to witness the combined play of flaming red
+auras, shot through with vivid flashes like lightning, and blazing
+jewels.</p>
+
+<p>The duel ended with a few scratches, much tearing of gorgeous raiment
+and disheveled hair.</p>
+
+<p>How interesting it was to the mystic to feel the psychology of that
+crowd, and see the thin veneer of civilization stripped off, leaving
+nothing but the human tiger and ape. Both ladies were eventually led off
+the arena by the police, not, be it understood, to the police-station,
+but to their own sumptuous apartments. All the time they shrieked and
+chattered like infuriated macaws, and between the shrieks they
+administered resounding smacks upon the cheeks of their patient escort.</p>
+
+<p>Monte Carlo was a wonderful place in those days, in which to study human
+nature at its best and worst. In latter years it has become meretricious
+and shabby, and the old magnificence is seen no more. Fifteen to twenty
+years ago all that was greatest in Europe, Asia, and the Americas,
+congregated there, and crowned heads mingled freely with the scum of the
+earth. Constant <i>habitu&eacute;s</i> were the Duchess of Devonshire, and her son,
+Lord Charles Montague; the Duchess of Montrose, known to the ring at
+Newmarket as "Bobs," and always the personification, to listen to and
+look at, of a Thames bargee. Leopold of Belgium, Ferdinand of Bulgaria,
+Grand Dukes of Russia, potentates from India, all hobnobbing together
+and gambling heavily.</p>
+
+<p>I often wonder now what has befallen those brilliant stars of the
+half-world firmament. Emmeline d'Alen&ccedil;on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> with her "bobbed" hair, and
+her passionate love of animals and birds. The demure Jeanne Ray, who
+came out every morning to her garden gate, and distributed food to the
+crowd of paupers and cripples. I have seen peasants kiss the hem of her
+dress as she walked on an afternoon along the Promenade des Anglais. The
+beautiful, soulless M&eacute;rode, the fierce, stately Otero, and many others
+who thought nothing of wearing fifty to a hundred thousand pounds' worth
+of jewels on one evening.</p>
+
+<p>Where are they now? If living they are old! Old! a word more dreaded by
+their class than death.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>I COMMIT MURDER</h3>
+
+
+<p>I will now relate a very unpleasant experience that befell me thirty
+years ago, but which has by no means exhausted itself in the passage of
+years. It still, at long intervals, recurs to me as vividly as when
+first I passed through the painful hours of its unfoldment.</p>
+
+<p>It was the month of July, and I was making a tour by road through a
+portion of Scotland, driving my own horse. I was accompanied by a groom
+and a maid.</p>
+
+<p>One evening we arrived at a well-known inn on Deeside, where I had
+arranged to pass a couple of nights. I found my room ready for me, an
+ordinary hotel bedroom, and after supper I retired very early to bed,
+feeling very sleepy after a long day in the open air.</p>
+
+<p>Towards morning I had a vision. I was a woman who had committed the
+crime of murder; and I went in hourly terror of discovery and arrest, as
+the police were actively in search of the criminal. Up to the present I
+had succeeded in evading them, and no shadow of suspicion had yet fallen
+upon me, but I lived in constant haunting dread that sooner or later
+some chance clue would direct their attention to me, and I should be
+arrested and brought up for trial.</p>
+
+<p>I had no clue in the vision as to how the murder<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> had been committed. My
+victim was a man, and a sensation, vague and cloudy, suggested that a
+quick poison was the mode of destruction I used, but I never gathered
+why I murdered him, or what relation, if any, he was to me.</p>
+
+<p>The vision was confined to my miserable sensations of fear of detection,
+and the trouble was that I seemed utterly powerless to keep away from
+the scene of my crime, a large mansion in the West End of London.</p>
+
+<p>Not only did I haunt the outside of the house, but I had several times
+contrived to penetrate into the interior without being discovered, the
+house having stood empty since the crime.</p>
+
+<p>It was a dark, foggy night when I determined again to effect an
+entrance, and I listened intently in the street before darting up to the
+front door and fitting my key in the lock. There was not a sound, and I
+found myself in the interior with the door softly closed behind me.</p>
+
+<p>I carried a candle, which I was about to light, when I saw that the
+large hall was not in its usual darkness. A dim light burned in a
+pendant globe, and looking round I perceived abundant evidences that the
+house was again occupied. Several pairs of men's gloves were neatly
+folded on the hall table, and a man's silk hat was neatly covered with a
+cloth. There was not the faintest sound to be heard in the house, and
+the hour was between eleven and midnight.</p>
+
+<p>Very softly I crept up the wide staircase. My heart was beating
+tumultuously, and I was in an agony of apprehension. On the first
+corridor I entered the room where I had concealed the body of the man I
+had murdered. I had dragged it there and hidden it in a great dress
+wardrobe. I opened the wardrobe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> door and found the interior had been
+filled with women's clothes, they were swathed in linen sheets. Amongst
+them I began to search with both hands, but, of course, found no signs
+of the body, which had long since been removed. However, in some
+unaccountable way the action of searching seemed to comfort me, and soon
+I turned to retrace my steps and gain the street once more.</p>
+
+<p>At that second I heard some one approaching, and quick as thought I
+slipped into the wardrobe and pulled the door close. Some one entered
+the room and then left it again. In a few more moments the house was
+again silent as the grave, and I began to creep downstairs very softly.</p>
+
+<p>When halfway down, at a bend which brought me in full view of the hall
+and the front door in the background, I stopped short at a sound.</p>
+
+<p>Some one was about to enter, some one was fumbling with a latch key at
+the other side of that door. Another moment and that some one would
+enter and I would be discovered. There was but one chance. Whoever it
+was might not come upstairs. He or she might strike off to the left of
+the hall, where a corridor ran to that end of the house.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot attempt to describe my agonizing terror of suspense, yet I did
+not lose my presence of mind. Instantaneously I decided what to do,
+should the one about to enter elect to come straight upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>I hastily lit my candle, carefully shading it with my hand, and
+crouching low I peered through the banisters, towards the front door. It
+opened, and a man entered, middle-aged, well dressed, a gentleman, and
+an utter stranger to me.</p>
+
+<p>He closed the door and turned the key, but drew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> no bolts. Then he threw
+off a heavy coat, and placed his hat and gloves on the table. My heart
+beat to suffocation, as I waited to see which way he would go. He was
+whistling softly to himself and, turning, began to walk across the hall,
+heading for the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Then the moment for action came. I knew now I should have to pass him in
+order to make my escape. I threw myself into the tragic pose of a
+somnambulist. I wore a long floating cloak, and I knew my face was white
+as death, and my eyes wide with sheer terror.</p>
+
+<p>With both hands, one of which held the lighted candle, outstretched
+gropingly, with distraught gaze fixed in wild vacancy, I slipped
+silently down the few remaining steps and sped noiselessly in my soft
+shoes straight across the hall towards him.</p>
+
+<p>Though I never turned my eyes upon him I was aware that he had stopped
+dead short, and was staring at me in startled amazement. Then fear
+suddenly invaded him, I could feel it. He fell back as if to let me
+pass, as I glided silently nearer to him and to the door.</p>
+
+<p>He was backing away from me now, then in another instant, he had turned
+and fled along the corridor. One more moment and I was safely outside,
+on the pavement.</p>
+
+<p>I woke up to a brilliant summer morning pouring in at my open window,
+but I was in no mood to enjoy its loveliness. I was bathed in cold
+perspiration, I was shivering with pure unadulterated fear. I was
+prostrate with the violent revulsion of feeling, from acute dread of
+discovery to partial immunity on gaining the street and escaping from
+the house. The vividness of every detail was crystal clear, and attended
+by all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> the violent emotions such an adventure and escape would
+naturally arouse in me, had they happened in the world of realities.</p>
+
+<p>It was hours before I could shake off the horror of the vision, and I
+left the hotel that day. Nothing would induce me ever to pass another
+night under that roof.</p>
+
+<p>I had no recurrence of the vision till three months after, then it came
+again, with all its attendant horrors, when I was asleep in my own bed
+at home. This was succeeded at long intervals by a vision of my
+condition of mind as an undiscovered criminal, always evading detection,
+but without the vision of my return to the scene of the crime. During
+the last thirty years I have had recurrences of the complete and partial
+vision, but at long intervals.</p>
+
+<p>A few years ago I happened to be standing with my host in an enormous
+stone hall, in one of the greatest houses in England. We were discussing
+the house, and its uncomfortable vastness. There were suites of
+apartments in outlying parts where whole families might hide for days if
+housemaids were careless. To reach the dining and drawing-rooms from the
+bedrooms, if one was tired, was a real weariness.</p>
+
+<p>We were looking up at the great gallery, running round the hall. It was
+reached by four wide flights of stairs at different corners, and it was
+full of all sorts of recesses, and massive pieces of old furniture and
+screens. On the spur of the moment I said to my host, "Wouldn't it be
+uncanny if we were to see a strange face looking down on us?"</p>
+
+<p>To my surprise, he answered: "Oh! that has often happened. I've often
+seen strangers looking down. At one time I took them to be inquisitive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+members of my own household, whom I didn't know by sight, and one day I
+complained about it, to the housekeeper. She looked very much disturbed
+and told me she had seen the same thing herself. The house is opened on
+certain days to the public, and she was half inclined to think one of
+the visitors had escaped from the crowd, and hidden herself for several
+days, as it was not on a public day that the figure was seen."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it always the same figure?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," replied my host. "Always a different one, and always some one
+quite ordinary and modern looking. The strictest orders are given that
+none of the servants' friends are to be allowed in this part of the
+house, and the housekeeper has always been with us and is thoroughly
+trustworthy. The fact remains an unsolved mystery."</p>
+
+<p>The housekeeper was a very agreeable old woman of the real,
+old-fashioned type. Very rustling in the evening, in a rich silk gown,
+and wearing some fine piece of jewelry presented to her by one or other
+of the crowned heads who had visited the famous house. I had asked her
+before I left about these mysterious appearances, and she had no
+explanation to offer. She had ascertained beyond a shadow of a doubt,
+that they had nothing to do with the household.</p>
+
+<p>"They were always just ordinary looking men and women, such as one meets
+in the streets every day. Sometimes they seem to have hats on, sometimes
+their heads appear uncovered," she explained.</p>
+
+<p>This fits in with a belief I have always held that we constantly rub
+shoulders with the disembodied, without being in the least aware of it.
+As the Bishop of London once said: "We will find ourselves exactly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> the
+same persons ten minutes after death as we were ten minutes before
+death."</p>
+
+<p>There are many occasions when we cannot express feeling in intellectual
+terms owing to the poverty of language. One's life not being a matter of
+intellectual perception, but a conscious experience, little of it can be
+made known. The mystic life is really incommunicable.</p>
+
+<p>We regard the Universe through the lens of five very imperfect senses,
+conscious all the time that there are certainly many more mediums for
+the expression of consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Perception is a manifestation of consciousness, and varies enormously in
+individuals, ranging often above and beneath the normal. Undoubtedly
+perception can be enormously extended by practice, not only in seeing
+material objects, but in approaching the borderland of other worlds.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of the Psychic or Medium is not so much vision as a
+consciousness of the thoughts and feelings of others. It is a sensation
+rather than a process of thinking, sensation not as we commonly accept
+the term, but sensation through which mental objects are realized with
+as great a clarity of vision as physical objects are seen with the naked
+eye.</p>
+
+<p>This intuitive vision is near akin to ordinary physical vision, inasmuch
+as the object seen has a real concrete existence. The Psychic feels
+vibrations and absorbs them.</p>
+
+<p>My explanation of my vision in the Highland inn is that the actual
+criminal had slept the night before in the room I occupied, and
+happening to be mediumistic I at once began to absorb the vibrations,
+and became steeped in all the circumstances, environment, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+conditions thrown off by the criminal in connection with the crime.</p>
+
+<p>The vibrations were intensely strong, and still fresh and concentrated.
+I absorbed them so fully that still at times they steal back across the
+threshold of my subconsciousness, the vehicle which registers and
+retains all impressions.</p>
+
+<p>During sleep, when one is off guard, the gate is often ajar, and old
+memories and incidents steal through, and range at will through the
+ordinary consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>In daily, normal existence the mind is merely a whirlpool, but
+undoubtedly the criminal would concentrate mentally on every detail of
+her crime. There would be a focalization of her mind; a concentration of
+her whole mental faculties upon this one single subject, and when the
+mental force is reduced from its normal, dissipated condition into
+coherency, its power is unlimited. It is possible to catch a physical
+disease by sleeping in an infected bed. It is quite as easy to catch a
+mental disease by the same means. Many emotions are highly contagious,
+notably fear. All are invisible to human sight, and there is rarely any
+warning. A Psychic may sense something unpleasant before infection is
+established. In fact, this often happens to quite normal individuals.
+Something in the atmosphere of a place conveys a warning, is unpleasant
+or uncongenial and it is avoided. If a warning was conveyed to me in the
+Highland inn I was too tired to heed it.</p>
+
+<p>At one time in my life I saw a great deal of two intimate and charming
+friends, Lord and Lady Wynford. Alas! both have now passed over.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Wynford was born Caroline Baillie of Dochfour,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> and owing to her
+Scotch blood, and her relationship with many of our great Scotch
+families, she was profoundly interested in ghosts. Lord Wynford, on the
+contrary, had an absolute horror of the subject, and always left the
+room whilst it was under discussion. Though very dissimilar, husband and
+wife were the best of friends. She was very handsome and a brilliant
+woman of the world. He was shy, retiring, and deeply religious. A
+perfect example of a true gentleman of the old school, and an aristocrat
+to his finger-tips. I was devoted to them both, and they were very kind
+to me in giving me their warm friendship, though at the time of which I
+write I was only a girl of about twenty years old.</p>
+
+<p>At that period the great topic of conversation amongst ghost-hunters was
+Glamis Castle, the most celebrated of all haunted houses. No ghost book
+is ever considered complete without reference to this celebrated Castle,
+and the story usually narrated is, that in the secret room some abnormal
+horror lived, and that the heir, Lord Glamis, and the factor, had to be
+told of its existence by the Earl of Strathmore in person. This
+information was of so terrible a nature that it changed not only the
+lives of those two men, but even their personal appearance. They grew
+aged and haggard in a single night.</p>
+
+<p>This story was readily discussed in old days by members of the
+Strathmore family, who were just as keen as outsiders were to probe the
+mystery. To-day it is universally believed that the monstrosity is at
+last laid to rest, and that though other ghosts still walk the Castle,
+the worst has departed forever.</p>
+
+<p>I went one afternoon to see the Wynfords in the hotel in which they
+stayed whilst in Scotland, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> found Lady Reay with them. She was a
+wonderful woman in her way, and preserved her youth up till very late in
+life. Lord Wynford was not present, and Lady Wynford at once greeted me
+by exclaiming, "We are going to stay at Glamis next week, and Lady Reay
+has been there and seen a ghost."</p>
+
+<p>"But not <i>the</i> ghost," admitted Lady Reay.</p>
+
+<p>"Then what did you see?" I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>She then told the following story, which has a sequel:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I had been in the Castle for three nights and much to my satisfaction
+seen absolutely nothing. We were a very cheery party, and every one was
+frightfully thrilled and nervously expectant, but we were very careful
+not to breathe the word 'ghost' before our host and hostess.</p>
+
+<p>"On the fourth night I was awakened by a moaning sound in my room, and I
+opened my eyes. The room was in total darkness, but I saw something very
+bright near the door. I shut my eyes instantly, and pulled the
+bedclothes over my head in a paroxysm of fear. I longed to light my
+candles, but didn't dare, and the moaning continued, and I thought I
+should go quite mad.</p>
+
+<p>"At last I ventured to peep out again. I saw a woman dressed exactly
+like Mary Tudor, in her pictures, and she was wandering round the walls,
+flinging herself against them, like a bird against the bars of a cage,
+and beating her hands upon the walls, and all the time she moaned
+horribly. I'm sure she was the ghost of a mad woman. Her face and form
+were lit up exactly like a picture thrown upon a magic lantern screen,
+and every detail of her dress was clearly defined.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Luckily she never looked at me, or I should have screamed, and I
+thought of Lord and Lady I. sleeping in the next room to mine, and
+wondered how I could reach them. I was really too terrified to move, and
+the ghost kept more or less to that part of the room where the door was
+situated.</p>
+
+<p>"I must have lain there awake for two or three hours, sometimes with my
+head buried under the clothes, sometimes peeping out, when at last the
+moaning suddenly stopped. I opened my eyes. Thank God, I was alone. The
+ghost had departed.</p>
+
+<p>"I lay with wide open eyes till daybreak. Then the first thing I did was
+to run to the mirror to see if my hair had turned white. Mercifully it
+hadn't, but I looked an awful wreck.</p>
+
+<p>"I told just a few people what I had seen, and contrived to get a wire
+sent me before lunch. Early in the afternoon I was on the way to
+Edinburgh."</p>
+
+<p>Such was the story Lady Reay related.</p>
+
+<p>Thirteen years later Captain Eric Streatfield, who was a nephew of Lord
+Strathmore, and an intimate friend of my husband, told me exactly the
+same story. He was a boy of six at the time, when the lady of Tudor days
+appeared moaning in his room, and he said he would never forget the
+misery of the night he passed. He was very much interested in hearing
+that Lady Reay had gone through the same experience. He told me another
+extraordinary story.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst, as a school boy, he was visiting at Glamis Castle with his
+parents, he noticed that they began to behave in rather a peculiar
+manner. They were often consulting alone with one another, and
+constantly scanning the sky from their bedroom window, which adjoined
+his. For two or three days this sort of thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> went on, and he caught
+queer fragments of conversation whispered between them, such as, "It
+doesn't always happen. We might be spared this year, the power must die
+out some day."</p>
+
+<p>At last one evening his father called him into his room, where his
+mother stood by the open window. In his hand his father held an open
+watch.</p>
+
+<p>His mother bade him look out, and tell them what sort of night it was.
+He replied that it was fine, and still and cold, and the stars were
+beginning to appear.</p>
+
+<p>His father then said, "We want you to take particular note of the
+weather, for in another moment you may witness a remarkable change.
+Probably you will see a furious tempest."</p>
+
+<p>Eric could not make head or tail of this. He wondered if his parents had
+gone mad, but glancing at his mother he noticed that she looked
+strangely pale and anxious.</p>
+
+<p>Then the storm burst, with such terrific suddenness and fury that it
+terrified him. A howling tempest, accompanied by blinding lightning and
+deafening thunder, rushed down upon them from an absolutely clear sky.</p>
+
+<p>His mother knelt down by the bed, and he thought that she was praying.</p>
+
+<p>When Eric asked for an explanation he was told that when he was grown up
+one would be given him. Unfortunately the moment never came. An aunt had
+told him that the storm was peculiarly to do with Glamis, and was
+something that could not be explained.</p>
+
+<p>Lord and Lady Wynford paid their visit to Glamis, and I looked forward
+eagerly to their return in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> week's time. I went to see them the day
+after their arrival back again, and was met by Lady Wynford alone.
+Before I could question her she began to speak of the visit.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want you even to mention the word Glamis to Wynford," she said
+very gravely. "He's had a great shock, and he's in a very queer state of
+mind."</p>
+
+<p>She paused, and I ventured to ask, "But what sort of shock?"</p>
+
+<p>Then she gave me the following account:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Wynford and I occupied adjoining bedrooms. We were having a delightful
+time. Glorious weather, and a lot of very pleasant people. I really
+forgot all about there being any ghost. We were out all day, and very
+sleepy at night, and I never heard or saw a thing that was unusual.</p>
+
+<p>"Two nights before we left something happened to Wynford. He came into
+my room and awakened me at seven o'clock in the morning. He was fully
+dressed, and he looked dreadfully upset and serious. He said he had
+something to tell me, and he wished to get it over, and then he would
+try not to think of it any more. I was certain then that he had seen or
+heard something terrible, and I waited with the greatest impatience for
+him to continue. He seemed confronted with some great difficulty, but
+after a long pause he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'You know that I have always disbelieved in the supernatural. I have
+never believed that God would permit such things to come to pass as I
+have heard lightly described. I was wrong. Such awful experiences are
+possible. I know it to my own cost, and I pray God I may never pass such
+a night again as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> that which I have just come through. I have not slept
+for a moment. I feel I must tell you this, in fact, it is necessary that
+I tell you, because I am going to extract a promise from you. A promise
+that you will never mention in my hearing the name of this house, or the
+terrible subject with which its name is connected.'</p>
+
+<p>"I was speechless for a few minutes with perplexed amazement. I had
+never heard Wynford speak like that, nor had I ever seen him so terribly
+upset.</p>
+
+<p>"'But,' I said at last, 'aren't you going to tell me what has so
+unnerved you?'</p>
+
+<p>"He began pacing up and down the room. 'Good God, no,' he exclaimed, 'I
+couldn't even begin to tell you. I have no words that would have any
+meaning or expression. Don't you understand, there is no language to
+convey such happenings from one to the other. They are seen, felt,
+heard! They cannot be uttered. There are some things on earth I know of
+now, that may not be related to the spoken word. Perhaps between a man
+and his God, but not even between you and me.'</p>
+
+<p>"We were silent again for some minutes, during which he continued to
+pace the room, his head drooped on his breast. I was really seriously
+alarmed. I even feared for his reason, and I couldn't form the smallest
+conjecture as to what had been the nature of his experiences. I was
+quite convinced of one thing. What he had seen was no ordinary ghost,
+like Lady Reay's Tudor Lady. She might have amazed him, but it required
+something much more terrible and awe-inspiring to have reduced him to
+such a condition of mental misery and desolation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to comfort him, to sympathize with him, but something about
+him held me at arm's length. It was his soul that was suffering, and
+with his soul a man must wrestle alone. I felt that his deep religious
+convictions of a lifetime had been violently dislocated, for all I knew
+shattered entirely, and I felt profound compassion for him. I may have
+had doubts, on many points. I confess to being a worldly skeptic, but
+Wynford's faith has always been so pure and childlike, and I have
+striven never to jar him on religious subjects. Now I feel as if
+somehow, everything that he has ever had has been taken away from him.</p>
+
+<p>"At last I said, 'Don't you think we had better leave to-day? We can
+easily make some excuse.'</p>
+
+<p>"He stopped and looked straight at me, so strangely.</p>
+
+<p>"'No, I can't leave to-day. I must stay another night here. There is
+something I must do. Now will you give me your promise never to mention
+this subject to me again? We may not be alone together again to-day. I
+want to get it over. Promise.'</p>
+
+<p>"I gave him my promise at once. I dared not have opposed him. I was
+horribly frightened. He went out of the room at once, and I lay thinking
+and shivering with dread. 'What was it he had to do? Why could we not
+leave to-day?' It was all so mysterious.</p>
+
+<p>"Well! the day passed in an ordinary manner, and if Wynford was more
+grave than usual I don't think any one noticed it. Then came the night I
+so dreaded. Of course I didn't sleep at first, I was too anxious, and I
+heard him come up to his room half an hour after I did. The door between
+our rooms was closed, and I lay awake listening intently. I heard him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+moving about; I supposed he was undressing, and his man never sits up
+for him. Then after a time there were occasional creaks which I knew
+came from an armchair, and I knew that he had not gone to bed.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I was aware
+of was Wynford's voice. He was speaking to some one, and seemed to be in
+the middle of a conversation. When he ceased speaking I strained my ears
+to catch a reply. I could hear no words, only his voice. Then a reply
+did come, and it simply froze the blood in my body, and I felt bathed in
+ice, and had to put my finger between my teeth, they chattered so
+horribly.</p>
+
+<p>"The reply was a hoarse whisper, a sort of rasping, grating undertone,
+that was not so much a whisper as an inability to speak in any other
+voice. There was something almost inhuman in those harsh, vibrating, yet
+husky words, spoken too low for me to catch. I knew at once that no
+guest, no member of the family, spoke like that, and I could not
+conceive that it could be a servant. What could Wynford have to say to
+any servant of Lord Strathmore?</p>
+
+<p>"A clock somewhere in the Castle struck three. No; I was certain that
+the presence with him, whatever else it might be, was no human being
+dwelling under the roof of Glamis.</p>
+
+<p>"At times they seemed to hold an argument; sometimes Wynford's voice was
+sharp and decisive, at other times it was utterly weary and despondent.
+I dreaded what the effect might be upon him of this awful night, but I
+could do nothing but lie shivering in bed, and pray for the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"How long it went on for I can't say, but the conviction came to me
+suddenly that Wynford had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> begun to pray. His voice was raised, and now
+and again I fancied I could hear words. The rasping whisper came now
+only in short, sharp interjections or expostulations, I don't know
+which. The even flow of Wynford's words went quietly on, and I began to
+be certain that he was praying for the being who spoke with that
+terrible whisper. It occurred to me that he might even be trying to
+exorcise some unclean spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"At last a silence fell. Wynford stopped praying, and I hoped that the
+terrible interview was at an end. Then it began again, and for quite an
+hour the prayers went on, with long periods of silence in between. I
+heard no more of the terrible, husky whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"I fell asleep again and did not awake till my maid brought me early
+tea. No sooner had she gone than Wynford entered, fully dressed. Though
+he looked desperately tired and wan, he seemed quite composed, and as if
+some weight had been removed from off him. He said he was going for a
+stroll before breakfast, and, of course, I remembered my promise and put
+no questions. I have come to the conclusion that a hundred people may
+stay any length of time at Glamis and see or hear nothing. The hundred
+and first may receive such a shock to the nervous system that he never
+really recovers from it."</p>
+
+<p>Such was the mysterious story that Lady Wynford unfolded. I saw her
+husband the next day, but beyond being graver than usual in his manner I
+detected no difference in him. He never referred, even in the most
+indirect way, to his visit, but he must have inferred by my silence that
+I had been warned not to mention the subject. Many others must, however,
+have done<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> so, for every one, who at that period passed a night under
+Glamis Castle roof, was eagerly questioned by friends and acquaintances
+on their return.</p>
+
+<p>The only occasion on which I visited Glamis was on the night of a ball,
+given in honor of the Crown Prince of Sweden. The curiosity of the
+guests was held in check by servants being stationed at certain doors,
+and entrances to corridors and staircases, to inform rude explorers that
+they could not pass. It is hard to believe that such a course of action
+was necessary, but I personally watched little parties being turned back
+towards the ballroom and sitting-out-rooms, showing that intense
+curiosity may even prove stronger than good breeding.</p>
+
+<p>What Wynford saw that night will never be known, but one fact remains.
+It left so deep an impression upon him that he was never the same man
+again. He became graver and more wrapped up in his own thoughts month by
+month, and the change that ended in his death his wife attributed to
+those nights passed in Glamis Castle.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ANGEL OF LOURDES</h3>
+
+
+<p>One lovely summer evening I was standing in a hotel bedroom, washing my
+hands. I was in Lourdes, and I was pondering upon a certain long flight
+of stone steps that I could see quite clearly from my window. At the top
+of the steps, which were cut in the face of the wooded hillside, stood a
+great Calvary, and from dawn till darkness pilgrims made the hard ascent
+upon their knees. The stones were worn and grooved by the stream of
+human beings making their painful way to the foot of the Cross.</p>
+
+<p>The atmosphere of Lourdes is very impressive to the Psychic. One
+breathes the concentrated essence of prayer. No one goes there who is
+not on prayer intent, and in the public streets, gardens and churches
+one comes across kneeling figures lost in Divine contemplation. No one
+heeds them; all are on a like mission, and sometimes men and women stand
+for hours with outstretched arms. Human crosses, oblivious to all, lost
+in a mystic rapture which takes count of neither time nor place.</p>
+
+<p>I turned my head towards the window. The sun had just set behind the
+mountains, and the sky was illuminated by a rosy afterglow. Down in the
+valley the shadows were beginning to lengthen, but I could still see the
+Calvary on the hillside, and the dark human stream slowly moving up the
+stony way, the <i>Via Dolorosa</i> of the Cross.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At that moment the sense of a presence swung into my field of
+consciousness, and contracted my vague faculties to focus. Something
+moving in the sky above caught my eye.</p>
+
+<p>How shall I describe the sight?</p>
+
+<p>I saw an angel floating above the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>The figure, wingless, yet floating in erect grace, was of great size,
+and wrapped entirely in cloudy gray. The head was bare and slightly
+bent, as if looking down on earth. The movements were smooth and
+gliding, as a feather floats in the wind. The distance was too great&mdash;I
+judged about a quarter of a mile&mdash;for me to distinguish the features,
+but owing to its great size the figure was clearly visible and deeply
+inspiring.</p>
+
+<p>It was a vision on which none could look intently without feeling the
+weight of a mighty awe. It gathered up the wandering emotions of the
+heart, and all a lifetime's ideals of beauty, grandeur, sublimity, in
+one serene presentation.</p>
+
+<p>The vision floated on majestically, across the valley and the little
+town with its praying multitudes. In about three minutes It had passed,
+and was lost in the pearly mists of the gathering night.</p>
+
+<p>And whilst the vision lasted I was acutely conscious of that innumerable
+concourse of kneeling forms below, all struggling upwards to the Cross.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me that the devout, of other faiths than that of Rome, lose
+much by not taking advantage of Lourdes. For many years, thousands of
+pilgrims from all corners of the earth have bent their steps towards the
+shrine, and poured out their souls in a passion of supplication. This
+tremendous concentration of faith, love and fervent adoration, often
+ecstatic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> thanksgiving for answered prayer, must find an echo in the
+Heaven World to which they are sent.</p>
+
+<p>It is so easy at Lourdes to feel that the Throne of Grace has been
+actually reached, because one can sense the pathway, the ladder made by
+human love, praise and faith, down which, I doubt not, the Angels of God
+are always passing. It is easier to concentrate the mind in a place
+where religious thought has been poured out for many years, because one
+insensibly becomes calmed, and tranquilized, and aided by the atmosphere
+thousands of others have created.</p>
+
+<p>At Lourdes there is nothing to attract the scoffer, and thousands of
+hearts filled with reverence and devotion re&euml;nforce each year the
+already powerful vibrations, and leave the place the better and richer
+for their presence.</p>
+
+<p>How few people realize that they have never seen themselves? How many
+can tell what they really look like?</p>
+
+<p>A very, very few can, and I am amongst the number.</p>
+
+<p>I wakened one morning in summer, and opened my eyes on my sunlit bedroom
+at home. Instantly I saw something which thrilled me with vivid
+interest. I saw myself!</p>
+
+<p>I was emerging out of a corner of the room, and composedly approaching
+the bed. There was no doubt as to recognition. I knew instantly I was
+looking on my own face for the first time, and it was something of a
+shock to discover that I was more or less of a stranger to myself. I saw
+how false a looking-glass can be. I had not begun to know myself.</p>
+
+<p>With absorbed interest I stared very hard, in my intense desire to
+imprint on my memory my own image.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> I approached the bed, and as I did
+so, I seemed to shrink, fade, and waver. Then suddenly I vanished&mdash;into
+my recumbent body.</p>
+
+<p>For a few minutes afterwards I was too concerned with my physical
+condition to ponder on the vision of my real self. I was tossing
+violently in the bed, in an inner distraughtness which was most
+disturbing. Then, as my nervous system began to calm down, I strove to
+imprint on my memory the recollection of what I really looked like.</p>
+
+<p>My face, even in the wonder of those few moments in which I had seen it,
+expressed emotions I had never seemed to know. Nothing was as I had
+believed it to be. All the traits that went to form my character needed
+readjusting, and all seemed curiously imperfect. I could not remember
+how I was clothed, though I had seen myself from head to foot. I suppose
+I was too engrossed in studying my face to think of my body.</p>
+
+<p>The vision left me with a blank sense of utter disillusionment and
+failure. Nothing in me was finished or complete. My expression suggested
+a character which was horribly crude, imperfect and rudimentary. Looking
+at myself afterwards in the mirror, I came to the conclusion that it
+lied, or that in waking life I wear a mask.</p>
+
+<p>It is salutary to behold one's spiritual portrait, a thing not visible
+to the mind alone but to the physical sight. In a flash comes the
+knowledge that dwelling in us are forces, not yet grasped by mortal
+mind, that cry for recognition. There have been moments in all lives, I
+believe, when a glimpse is caught of the Olympian heights to which it is
+possible to rise. Glimpses, alas! of the evanescent thing we know
+ourselves in truth to be.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, on the Astral plane, it happens that friends meet under
+strange circumstances, and one figures largely in the doings of another.
+The memory of those nocturnal adventures is brought through and clearly
+recollected in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>One such occurrence I will relate, and it is peculiar and unusual.</p>
+
+<p>An old friend of ours, a man who has devoted his life to the development
+of his spiritual faculties (not to be confused with the development of
+mediumship and phenomena), had a series of dreams in which he appeared
+to be two people. He himself was the same tall, slender man he is in
+daily life, but in this psychic experience a much smaller man moved
+always on his left side, and somehow seemed to symbolize his waking
+personality.</p>
+
+<p>The central figure in one of these unusual experiences was a young man
+who was unknown to our friend, and who had died abroad. His body had
+been embalmed and brought home for burial, and our friend had been shown
+photographs of him, and had also communicated with him through automatic
+writing. This much was imprinted on his physical memory.</p>
+
+<p>Now, whilst lying asleep one night, the spiritual counterpart of our
+friend became aware that the body of the young man was exposed and could
+be seen. His companion, or other self, the shorter man who moved by his
+side, shrank back with horror from such a suggestion, just as our friend
+would instinctively have done in waking consciousness, but he himself
+was determined to see the body, and went straight through a door facing
+him, into a room where it was lying on a low table.</p>
+
+<p>Now comes the moment when I began to figure in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> this experience. I was
+standing on the opposite side of the table, making vigorous passes over
+the young man's body, which appeared to be fashioned out of pinkish
+clay. The trunk and legs looked as though I had roughly modeled them
+with my hands. The head was more highly finished. It was sharp and
+distinct in outline, and our friend recognized it instantly as being a
+representation of the young man whose portraits he had seen. He stared
+at the face with great interest, and taking up a cloth, gently wiped the
+cheek where a fleck of foam lay. This action seemed to vivify the body,
+for it began to mutter and murmur indistinctly. Apparently it was alive,
+and not dead.</p>
+
+<p>Our friend relates that this discovery gave him such a shock that he
+lost the thread of memory which he was bringing back to his physical
+body on the bed. The next moment he woke up. My recollection, a
+perfectly clear one, of these happenings, was that he simply vanished
+from the scene, leaving me alone with the body, which I continued to
+manipulate.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards, through automatic writing, our friend was told by the
+departed young man, that this astral vision signified the collecting of
+etheric matter to fashion a body in which he could function on etheric
+planes.</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion our friend had the experience of walking about on
+the other side with the young man, who was dressed in an ordinary tweed
+suit, and being taken by him to various acquaintances, to whom he was
+introduced. With the exception of the above experience, he believes that
+this was the first time he had ever seen him. The interesting point of
+both experiences is, that both I and our friend brought back<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> on waking,
+a clear and similar recollection of the episode in which we were jointly
+concerned.</p>
+
+<p>This friend of ours is a disciple of "The Flaming Heart," called by
+Catholics "The Sacred Heart." He writes to me thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I see now more clearly than before that the Christ self within uses its
+powers as a whole, just as the personal man uses intellect, will, and
+feeling, all three being energized by love, which is the element of
+interest in the several activities."</p>
+
+<p>"So the self of love works out and manifests as&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="10" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>Love and Life</td><td align='left'>Beauty.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Love and Power</td><td align='left'>Goodness.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Love and Knowledge</td><td align='left'>Wisdom.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>"The Love element saves us from wrong living, wrong doing or wrong
+thinking. So we go from strength to strength, by yielding the lower self
+to the transmuting power of the Higher."</p>
+
+<p>It was long before I came to understand the full significance of the
+Flaming Heart. It was plain to see what its realization meant to our
+friend. He radiates an extraordinary serenity of mind, an atmosphere of
+strength and peace, a calm in the midst of storm which apparently
+nothing can shake. Pre-eminently, when in his presence, one is conscious
+of a commanding power which will only be used for exalted purposes. This
+clear subjection of the lower self, to the transmuting power of the
+Higher self, has worked such marvels in him that one longs to grasp the
+secret of his success.</p>
+
+<p>A few years passed, and still the heart of the mystery eluded me. This
+year, 1918, it came to me in a flash.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The experience I am about to relate may have happened to many others. To
+me, it was a tremendous revelation.</p>
+
+<p>I was kneeling one morning in front of the Altar, at Early Celebration.
+I have always felt, through the Eucharist, the possibility of great
+spiritual development, and often there comes to me at such moments, a
+mystical response to the inner mysteries of the Sacrament. I have never
+looked for supernatural happenings, hallucinations, or psychic
+excitements, but my spiritual instincts are always alive and craving
+satisfaction. This they have never before received in any really lasting
+degree.</p>
+
+<p>Now came a new Divine illumination.</p>
+
+<p>Two clergymen were officiating at the celebration. I had just received
+the bread from the one, and had raised my head and hands to receive the
+cup from the other, when suddenly I went quite blind.</p>
+
+<p>The vicar, who was moving towards me, was blotted out. I stared at a
+black veil utterly impenetrable, and I was aware of a tremendous
+internal dislocation. My heart beat tumultuously, and felt as if thrust
+out of place. Then my sight was restored.</p>
+
+<p>I saw before me, not the man, bearing in his hands the chalice, but a
+flaming heart of fire, from which radiated out living, scintillating
+streams of golden light. They filled the background with their quivering
+radiance, and I was conscious of shrinking back, and bowing my head as
+the supernal vision approached me and enveloped me in Its aura.</p>
+
+<p>The cup had been transmuted by Divine alchemy into the Flaming Heart of
+love's sacrifice, and I was given to taste of the living waters of Life.</p>
+
+<p>For a few minutes I was quite unconscious of where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> I was. I had been,
+indeed, caught up into the seventh Heaven. I know now that I acted
+mechanically, and to outward semblance I behaved in the orthodox manner,
+but when I raised my head again the vicar had passed on and the vision
+had vanished. Nothing had happened to distract the attention of others.</p>
+
+<p>I returned to my seat conscious that I had been taught the meaning and
+marvelous significance of the Flaming Heart. I understood the words of
+the great mystic, St. John.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"In him was life; and the life was the light of men.</p>
+
+<p>"And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness overcame
+it not.</p>
+
+<p>"There was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man,
+coming into the world."</p></div>
+
+<p>I know that the Flaming Heart of Divinity dwells in the breasts of all
+humanity, that the soul is no empty shell, but the shrine of the Divine
+Presence, and that Presence is the Guide and Light of Life.</p>
+
+<p>I have seen revealed the inner mystery of the sacramental life. Through
+a rift in the veil of the material, the hidden life of eternity was
+symbolized for me in the Flaming Heart, the true Eucharistic Mystery.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WRAITH OF THE ARMY GENTLEMAN</h3>
+
+
+<p>To some people life is an unspeakable tragedy; to others it is a mere
+farce. To all it is a profound mystery.</p>
+
+<p>What am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going? What is this
+mysterious ego that thinks and acts?</p>
+
+<p>From Darwin we learn that the human body has taken a million years to
+evolve its present form. Is it logical to suppose that there is no
+scheme of evolution for the immortal soul, in which it can preserve its
+individuality through the ages? The mills of God grind slowly, and what
+is seventy or eighty years in eternity, in which we develop the highest
+and most complex organism we can conceive of&mdash;the Soul?</p>
+
+<p>Five hundred and thirty-five years <span class="smcap">B. C.</span> Pythagoras was teaching the
+reincarnation of the immortal soul in his celebrated school. Plato,
+Socrates, Aristotle, Philo, Virgil, Cicero, Euclid, the Egyptians and
+the Hindoos taught the same doctrine. In the days of Christ the
+transmigration of souls was an accepted belief, and in 250 <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> Origen,
+the greatest of the Christian Fathers, was still teaching the same
+doctrine. Justin Martyr recognized the presence of the Logos in Jesus,
+and Socrates and Clement of Alexandria affirmed that the same philosophy
+had brought the Greeks to Christ. To this day it remains the belief of
+three-fourths of the human race.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In our country, though a rapidly growing faith, Buddhism fails to
+command the attention it otherwise would, for two reasons. Firstly, we
+have never been a religious-minded people, and are now very much less so
+than formerly. What are loosely termed religious subjects interest a
+very few, and bore intensely the great majority. Out of our forty-four
+million souls, a mere handful are interested in a future life. The rest
+prefer not to take the problem into consideration, though they are ready
+to accept a small dose of conventional religion, ready-made and
+pre-digested. Secondly, faith in the transmigration of souls in a
+succession of physical bodies only becomes an urgent mental necessity, a
+vitally necessary explanation of life's inequalities, to those who mix
+with the outcast poor. Such persons are again comparatively few, and, to
+those of them who think, life without reincarnation is simply an
+incomprehensible and chaotic puzzle.</p>
+
+<p>Once the faith is grasped that life between birth and death is only a
+tiny fragment of the &aelig;ons allotted to us, in which to develop
+spiritually, divine harmony; love and justice reappear. Only thus can
+one see light. But if the tardy growth of this all-sufficient
+illumination is slow to take root, it must be remembered that to the
+ordinary, well-to-do person it makes no appeal.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I my brother's keeper?" is generally answered in the negative, and
+the hypocritical rejoinder, covering a mountain of selfishness, that it
+is an impertinence to pry into the lives of the poor, is the facile
+excuse for sitting at ease and cozening the conscience into the belief
+that the poor are God's affair. Even the devout and pious, who may feel
+deep compassion for the sorrow of the destitute, have no spur to prick
+their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> mental apathy, unless they mix freely and constantly with the
+poor and oppressed. Only then will come the perplexed question: Where
+can I see in all this overwhelming misery the Divine hand of love and
+justice?</p>
+
+<p>The Christ who established his Brotherhood with us, by proclaiming God
+the Universal Father, told us that "Before Abraham was, I am," and I
+suppose that most people, who accept anything, accept the pre-existence
+of Christ. Yet how few of us can remember anything of our own past
+lives, and how merciful it is that we cannot. How utterly overwhelming
+such memory would be! The future is as carefully hidden from us as the
+past, yet our previous lives have been by no means unfruitful.</p>
+
+<p>The experiences we have gathered in the past years of this life are
+nearly all forgotten, yet our development has gone on, and the records
+are stored in the subconsciousness, sometimes to be pulled across the
+threshold and displayed in a complete panorama before the dying eyes.
+The statements to this effect made by those who have been resuscitated
+when at the point of death by drowning, are too numerous to be discarded
+as mere fables.</p>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly we all contain the germs of sin at birth, but few educated
+people now accept the statements that we are born sinful because our
+parents sinned, or because of the moral delinquencies of those of Eden.
+Certainly we all bear the consequences of others' sins, but the cruel
+injustice of a God who deliberately punishes present humanity for the
+sins of past humanity is too revolting a conception of the Creator to
+gain acceptance to-day.</p>
+
+<p>This very fact shows that we have advanced spiritually. So base a
+conception of the Almighty is violently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> repugnant to serious thinkers.
+The intuitive consciousness of man postulates the over-ruling spirit as
+a power representing perfect justice and love, and the innate instinct
+to believe that we ourselves are in some mysterious way akin to this
+Divine Ideal keeps ever alive the belief in our Divine origin.</p>
+
+<p>What is the grand apotheosis of each human life? The Christ spirit; a
+scheme of regenerative redemption, simple, natural, yet superlatively
+grand.</p>
+
+<p>If one asks whether the orbs in space take precedence of personal will
+and intelligence, or personal will and intelligence take precedence of
+the orbs in space, one has only to ask whether builders or buildings
+have priority. Do pictures originate the artist? do books originate the
+author? If one begins to study with a belief in spirit as power and
+cause, one can account for all things, but to start with matter as a
+foundation is to fail absolutely to account for either matter or spirit.</p>
+
+<p>In some infinite womb the vital Heavens, the visible Universe must have
+existed before time was. We see all elements have their affinities, all
+stars their course, all atoms their polarity. We see the wheel of
+Ezekiel symbolizing the whole scheme and fabric of Nature.</p>
+
+<p>Heaven works not only with stupendous immensities but with small
+minorities. Atoms of unutterable minuteness are streaming into the
+unseen atmosphere every second from the souls and bodies of the human
+race. When the soul seeks, aspires after God, the most vital of all
+atoms go forth with the breath, as light from the sun to the earth.
+Surely we and our angel kindred inhabit one house of which the most
+distant provinces are in touch with the center of all. Heaven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> and earth
+are bridged by the spirit ladder of love, and the soul can inbreathe the
+spirit of God as the body inbreathes oxygen.</p>
+
+<p>The contemplative mind beholds every day the passage of things invisible
+into sight, the transfer of the seen into the unseen, and all is
+natural. The life throb of the palpable world is a pulsation going forth
+every instant from the eternal energy, drawing out by an ethereal medium
+from the invisible and intangible, that which is visible and tangible.</p>
+
+<p>I will speak now of the passage of a thing invisible into sight. How, to
+me, it became so I cannot tell. I don't know.</p>
+
+<p>One summer evening my husband and I were occupying two communicating
+bedrooms in a London hotel, contiguous with one of the great railway
+stations. We had to make an early start in the morning, and had come
+there to be near our train.</p>
+
+<p>I awakened in the early morning hours. The gray dawn was just beginning
+to show through the bars of the Venetian blinds lowered before the two
+windows. Those bars had not been adjusted, and they also admitted a
+rather bright light from a street lamp. I judged it to be somewhere
+about four o'clock, but I did not look at my watch. I was too
+pre-occupied in looking at something else.</p>
+
+<p>My bare arm was stretched outside the coverlet, and I was aware that
+what had awakened me was a cold wind blowing on my skin. The furniture
+of the room was dimly outlined, and at first I vaguely threw my
+half-open eyes around without perceiving anything unusual, but gradually
+my senses, shaking off their drowsiness, became aware of movement
+between the bed and the window. Something tall and gray was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> wavering
+like a pillar of smoke betwixt me and the struggling daylight. I closed
+my eyes again with a creepy feeling, a disinclination to look again, but
+my bare arm, which still lay outside the coverlet, received another
+intimation that roused me to keen alertness. A chill wind was blowing
+over my skin.</p>
+
+<p>I drew in my arm hastily, and opened my eyes. That tall gray something
+had approached much nearer to me, and now I could distinguish with
+perfect clearness the figure of a man, but such a wavering, fluid form
+that one moment seemed on the point of dissolving into thin air, and the
+next moment gathering itself together again in clear cut outline.</p>
+
+<p>For what seemed to me a long time I stared at the gray apparition. I
+felt a cold fear, a rigid horror creep over me, and but for the
+recollection of my husband's nearness, and the open door between us, I
+might have fainted from pure terror. I thought of calling to him, but
+something sinister in that wavering shadow made me desist. At times the
+form came quite close to the bed, but I could never see the face
+clearly; it was vague and undetermined in outline, in fact, not
+completely materialized. Not for a second did that wavering movement
+cease, that floating, shimmering motion 'twixt bed and window, of what I
+knew to be the ghost of a man.</p>
+
+<p>How long this unpleasant state of things continued I do not know. I was
+perfectly well aware that a ghost should be addressed in sympathetic
+terms, should be asked if any human help can be rendered, but at the
+time it never once occurred to me to speak. Gradually, as I watched that
+retreating then advancing form, at moments opaque, then almost
+transparent, I lost consciousness and fell asleep again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I was awakened a few hours later by a loud knocking at my door. I slid
+instantly out of bed, turned the key, and was confronted by the
+chambermaid, bringing my early tea.</p>
+
+<p>"Who was the man who killed himself in this room?"</p>
+
+<p>Luckily, the woman did not drop the tray, as I hurled at her this abrupt
+question. She set the tea down on a table and turned to me a scared
+face, as she answered by another question:</p>
+
+<p>"How ever did you find out that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind how I found out. Please answer me. I won't get you into
+trouble," I said firmly.</p>
+
+<p>"It was an army gentleman. He shot himself here the night before last.
+That's all I know," was her subdued answer.</p>
+
+<p>Poor "army gentleman"! So you were revisiting the scene of your last
+tragedy, or had you ever left that confined space between four walls
+which witnessed the supreme mental agony of the suicide?</p>
+
+<p>What had prompted me to put that sudden question to the chambermaid? I
+could not tell. In the moment of waking, slipping out of bed and opening
+the door, no recollection had come to me of my earlier experience, but
+betwixt that experience and my abrupt waking at her knock knowledge must
+have been somehow afforded me of the tragedy. I knew a man had done
+himself to death in that room shortly before I occupied it.</p>
+
+<p>A day or two afterwards I read an account of the inquest held upon the
+body. A rankling sense of unjust treatment had preyed upon his brain.</p>
+
+<p>Suicide whilst of unsound mind was the verdict. Poor "army gentleman," I
+fear I could have been of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> little service to you, even if I had opened
+up some form of communication between myself and your disembodied soul!</p>
+
+<p>When one remembers how many persons occupy even one room in a hotel in
+twelve months, it seems natural that psychic phenomena should be common
+to such houses. Undoubtedly many tragedies must be enacted in every
+hotel within a comparatively short space of time, and one may, in utter
+unconsciousness, occupy a bedroom in which, but the night before, murder
+or suicide has taken place.</p>
+
+<p>Some years ago, I had occasion to pass a night in one of the big West
+End hotels of London. It was very full, and I had to be content with a
+very indifferent room on the main entrance floor, and looking to the
+back. The window had iron bars in front of it, through which one could
+slip one's head, but not one's shoulders. The reason for the bars was
+obvious. A wide mews ran on a level with this floor of the house, and
+failing this obstruction any one could have stepped with perfect ease
+from the pavement into the room.</p>
+
+<p>Thrusting my head through the bars I could see from end to end of the
+mews. On the left there was no exit, on the right was a narrow lane
+running down the side of the hotel, and leading into the main
+thoroughfare. The mews seemed very quiet, clean and respectable, and for
+one night only I decided that the room would do. I was very tired after
+passing two nights in a train, and went early to bed and fell asleep at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>I ascertained afterwards that I had been sleeping for five hours, when I
+was suddenly awakened by a loud noise of scuffling feet, accompanied by
+a gurgling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> choking sound, as if some one was struggling to find
+utterance, to gain breath.</p>
+
+<p>To be awakened by a noise out of a sound sleep is always a startling,
+uncomfortable experience. If the astral body has been wandering far
+afield, it has to return to the physical body in far too great a hurry
+for comfort. There is always more or less of a dislocating jar under
+such circumstances. The startled sensation is greatly accentuated when,
+in place of waking to dead silence, one awakens to unaccountable and
+very unpleasant sounds.</p>
+
+<p>I lay perfectly still, with every nerve tingling, and every muscle taut,
+and listened intently. The noise came from the window which was shut,
+and my heart began to beat more thickly with a dread and terror which
+had neither form nor shape. Slowly I remembered the mews outside, and
+felt instantly thankful that because of its proximity I had shut the
+window, instead of sleeping with it wide open, as is my custom.</p>
+
+<p>Was murder taking place out there? What was that hideous, choking sound,
+that surged in with guttural gasps from out the darkness, and which
+suggested nothing so much as a frenzied struggle of loathing and
+agonized fear?</p>
+
+<p>I lay shuddering and quaking as with the grip of ague. My imagination
+instantly constructed the scene so vividly suggested by the nature of
+the sounds. A man's hands were on the throat of a woman, and he was
+deliberately strangling the life out of her struggling body. I was sick
+with unspeakable agonies of dread, and for quite five minutes I could
+not summon force or motion to my limbs.</p>
+
+<p>If some unfortunate was being done to death it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> clearly my duty to
+run to the window and give the alarm by shrieking "murder," but now I
+began to wonder if that awful struggle was taking place outside or just
+inside my room. Though the mews was well lit my blind was drawn down,
+and the room was in darkness, except for a faint reflection shining in
+from a street lamp. I had only to stretch out my hand in order to switch
+on a light above my bed, but a paralysis of fear held me.</p>
+
+<p>That noise of infinite pain, of frantic, dying agony, those convulsive,
+ghastly groans and scuffling of feet, and wrestling, writhing bodies,
+were spell-binding beyond the power of human conception, and the most
+awe-inspiring fantasy. I tried to reason with myself, but the horror
+scattered all reasoning, yet a sense of duty, of natural humanity, and
+anger with my own fears, kept tugging at me. It seemed as if the sounds
+were losing force, were beginning to die out. I was lying still in
+abject terror, whilst a fellow-creature was being deliberately done to
+death.</p>
+
+<p>A blind fury with myself, and the murderer, suddenly superseded fear.
+Without turning on the light I jumped out of bed, and knocking up
+against the furniture in my haste, I dashed towards the faint light
+coming in from the street. In another moment I had thrust aside the
+blind, and thrown the window wide. I know I shouted out something; I
+have no idea what. I thrust my head out between the iron bars, and
+looked to right and left. I could see absolutely nothing. The street was
+quite empty, and so well lit that I could see from end to end of it.</p>
+
+<p>I drew in my head, and stood there silently, and quivering still with
+excitement, as one does when awakened with the broken fragments of an
+evil dream.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then, suddenly, a sensation of bristling fear took possession of me once
+more, unreasoning and unreasonable fear, clutching at my heart with a
+grip of ice. The noise had not ceased, it continued more faintly, and it
+came from a corner of my room to the right of the window. Murder had
+been done in the room in which I now stood, and was being re-enacted
+now. The certainty rushed on me with the force of a whirlwind.</p>
+
+<p>I was dimly conscious of human voices in the mews, of a window being
+thrown open. My cry had awakened other sleepers. I left my window open,
+and let the blind fall before it. Then I crept softly across to the
+opposite side of the room, whence the dying sound proceeded. The victim
+was almost dead. I could hear nothing but a gasping, rattling sigh, and
+then silence. The silence of death.</p>
+
+<p>I was roused from my trance of horror by the measured tread of a
+policeman outside. I heard him speaking with others, then, seeing
+nothing to account for the disturbance in the mews, he went away again,
+and I fell asleep from utter mental exhaustion.</p>
+
+<p>When I awoke the sun was in the room, and I looked towards the corner
+where the tragedy of the darkness had been enacted. How peaceful and
+innocent the room now looked, in the light of a cheerful summer morning,
+and how thankful I was to know that I would be far away from it in a
+very few hours.</p>
+
+<p>Yet another hotel story comes to me as I write.</p>
+
+<p>My sister and her husband came to Torquay to spend a couple of nights
+and took rooms in one of the principal hotels. They had not announced
+their arrival beforehand, and the manageress took them upstairs to see
+several vacant rooms. There was one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> not shown to them, but the door was
+wide open, and my sister seeing that it was unoccupied walked in, and
+said she preferred it to any of the others, because of its particular
+view.</p>
+
+<p>For some unknown reason the manageress was greatly against their taking
+it; she raised every sort of objection, but my sister was firm, and
+finally the luggage was carried up and she began to unpack, whilst her
+husband went down to order tea.</p>
+
+<p>After a few minutes, and whilst she was on her knees beside the trunk,
+she heard some one moving in the room behind her, but she could see
+nothing. It occurred to her, however, that some tragedy might have taken
+place in that particular room, which would explain the reluctance of the
+manageress to let them hire it. Not being of a nervous disposition, my
+sister thought no more of the matter, and went downstairs to join her
+husband.</p>
+
+<p>That night she was awakened by something, she never knew what, but on
+opening her eyes she saw a rather disturbing vision. Close to the door
+stood the figure of a man, looking straight towards her. His figure was
+brilliantly luminous, and stood out clearly and distinctly in the
+darkness of the room.</p>
+
+<p>She awakened her husband, who sat up in bed and stared back at the
+figure. He saw it as clearly and distinctly as his wife saw it, and for
+some considerable time they watched it, until it gradually faded out.</p>
+
+<p>What is so sad is that they did not address this ghost. They had every
+opportunity, for at the same hour the same figure appeared the next
+night. It never tried to approach them: it simply stood there quietly
+for about an hour, and then vanished. Probably it was the wraith of a
+suicide. The fact remains<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> that very few people do address the ghosts
+they see. Even if they are not afraid, it never seems to occur to seers
+that to speak to the disembodied might be a very kind and helpful thing
+to do.</p>
+
+<p>On their return home my brother-in-law told this story to some friends
+at his Club, and a stranger who was present said that he was aware there
+was a haunted room in that Torquay hotel, for he knew some one else who
+had seen it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>AN AUSTRIAN ADVENTURE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Only once did I ever see an elemental of the terrifying type, and I have
+no desire to repeat the experience.</p>
+
+<p>Several years ago I was traveling alone on my way to Bohemia. With me,
+in the railway carriage, I had an aluminum traveler's typewriter,
+enclosed in, and fastened down to a leather case. I had also a large
+leather dispatch box, containing several chapters of a new novel I was
+writing, and which I meant to finish whilst abroad.</p>
+
+<p>At the last moment, just as I was starting on my journey, a friend had
+given me a small Russian ikon, and I had put that in the box with my
+writing materials.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the frontier into Austria, I got out with the other
+travelers, carrying the typewriter in my hand to ensure its safety. A
+porter brought along the dispatch box, and the luggage from the van to
+the Custom House.</p>
+
+<p>I had nothing to declare and said so, but when the officials came to
+look at the typewriter and the contents of the dispatch box, their civil
+attitude changed, and I was curtly told that I would have to remain
+behind, in order that a more thorough examination might be made.</p>
+
+<p>There was little use in expostulating, no one took<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> the smallest notice
+of any explanations I made, and I had the unhappy fate to behold all my
+fellow travelers stream out onto the platform, and make for the waiting
+train, and the growing conviction that they would proceed on their
+journey without me.</p>
+
+<p>When alone with the officials I had the field to myself, and I explained
+that I was a British subject, and a British novelist, but they merely
+looked at me with the same blend of incredulity my fellow countrymen so
+often favor me with, when they accidentally discover that I am
+synonymous with the writer, Violet Tweedale.</p>
+
+<p>How well I know the look and the words accompanying it: "Are you Violet
+Tweedale, the novelist? Well! who'd have thought it? I never would have
+guessed."</p>
+
+<p>Their expression says plainly enough, "You don't look capable of writing
+out a laundry bill, far less a novel."</p>
+
+<p>Seeing that my statements made no impression upon the Customs officials,
+I resigned myself to an unknown fate, and in a few moments, looking
+through the open door, I had the misery of seeing my train glide out of
+the station, leaving me behind.</p>
+
+<p>An animated conversation now began which occupied at least ten minutes,
+and my typewriter and dispatch box were subjected to a most rigid
+scrutiny. I kept on imploring the officials not to break the typewriter,
+but they paid no heed, and at last, after playing about with it for some
+time, they requested me to give them an exhibition of its powers. Alas!
+it was too late. The machine was thoroughly upset with the rough
+fingering it had been subjected to, and I could not get it to work.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I saw that this fact was set down as another black mark of suspicion
+against me, and they then began another long discussion upon the ikon. I
+began to be so bored and tired that I sat down on my trunk, lit a
+cigarette, and attempted to preserve a certain amount of outward calm,
+whilst mentally I raged furiously within.</p>
+
+<p>I noticed that a messenger had been sent out of the room, but could not
+catch the object of his errand. When all chattering and gesticulating
+together, they abandoned ordinary German, and fell into a dialect of
+their own which I could not understand.</p>
+
+<p>In a few moments the messenger returned with two more officials, and a
+waiter from the station restaurant. The waiter was given a chapter of my
+novel&mdash;each chapter had an ordinary exercise book to itself&mdash;and told to
+translate my English into German.</p>
+
+<p>I presume he honestly tried to do his best, but the translation bore no
+resemblance to the original. Even the officials soon wearied of the
+fumbled nonsense, and the waiter was sent away.</p>
+
+<p>Then the head official informed me that I might continue my journey by
+the next train, but I must consider myself under arrest, till further
+information concerning my business and identity was obtained. He
+informed me, finally, that I was a Russian spy.</p>
+
+<p>I retaliated by informing him that I was a British subject. That my
+husband was at that moment in Bavaria, and directly I could communicate
+with him he would obtain my release through our Embassy at Vienna. Never
+did I regret anything more than my own stupidity in having left my
+much-vis&eacute;d passport behind me in England.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The typewriter was then closed down, tied with string and heavily
+sealed. I was ordered to carry it myself, and place it in the very
+center of an empty luggage wagon.</p>
+
+<p>As I complied it flashed upon me that they had never seen a typewriter
+before, and suspected it to be a sort of infernal machine. My dispatch
+box disappeared altogether, and I got into a first-class carriage,
+accompanied by two very smart attendants. They wore cocked hats, much
+gold braid, and many gold buttons, and they each carried a sword and a
+revolver, with which to shoot me, I presume, if I tried to run away.</p>
+
+<p>We three were not alone in the carriage. In a corner sat a dark man with
+a small black mustache, and smoking a very long cigar. He was neatly
+dressed in a long dust coat, and on his smooth black hair he wore a
+brown Homburg hat. In one dark eye was a single monocle, through which
+he regarded me with a mild surprise.</p>
+
+<p>I saw at once that if I was to be burdened with the constant society of
+my two officials for several days, the only thing to do was to make
+friends with them. The circumstances had not arisen through any fault of
+theirs, and they had to obey the orders of their superiors. Both were
+men who looked between the age of thirty to forty, and they had quite
+pleasant faces. I began by offering them cigarettes from my case&mdash;no
+Customs officials object to enough tobacco being carried to last out a
+journey&mdash;and they accepted my civility with profuse thanks.</p>
+
+<p>The man in the corner still regarded us from time to time with interest,
+and when we had finished our cigarettes he leaned forward and most
+politely offered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> us each a big cigar. The voice of this person so
+amazed me that in refusing with thanks, and saying I never smoked
+cigars, I looked very closely at him. The voice was that of a cultured
+gentlewoman, and that was exactly what this person turned out to be. Not
+a man, but a woman dressed exactly to resemble a man. When she stood up
+I saw that she wore a divided skirt, and by the manner in which my
+guards addressed her when they accepted her cigars, I knew that she was
+some great personage. Later on I discovered that she was a member of the
+Imperial House of Austria. She spoke English perfectly, and I explained
+my position, which seemed to amuse her immensely. We found that we had
+mutual friends, and we were chattering most amicably when I reached my
+destination.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently a wire had preceded us, for other officials were waiting on
+the platform to take possession of the typewriter, and I said good-by to
+it, as I thought, forever.</p>
+
+<p>The amazement of the hotel manager may be imagined when he saw me arrive
+under escort. Though I had engaged my rooms he had never seen me before,
+and I was secretly uneasy lest he should refuse to take me in under the
+circumstances, but my attendants appeared to possess unlimited
+authority. I was shown into a good bedroom at the very end of the
+corridor. The manager spoke perfect English, and I explained my position
+from my point of view. He was quite civil, but I thought rather
+non-committal. He evidently did not like the situation, but at that
+moment I had a stroke of luck.</p>
+
+<p>There entered the head waiter, carrying the usual paper of
+identification which one always fills in abroad.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> His face was quite
+familiar to me. I never forget a face, but I cannot always fit a name to
+it. Where had I seen this man before? Then in a flash I remembered. It
+was in Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>When I had filled the paper, both men remaining in the room, I recalled
+myself to his memory, and the occasions when he had waited upon some
+members of our royal family, to whose table I had been bidden. These
+occasions had been of comparatively recent happening, and though
+possibly not being quite sure in his recollection of me, he remembered
+our royal family perfectly, and several little personal incidents that
+had occurred whilst we were all in the same hotel.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, there had been a very brilliant ball given at the hotel,
+and the royalties had looked on for several hours, and included me in
+their circle. This man had been specially detailed to wait upon the
+circle, all the evening.</p>
+
+<p>This conversation produced a great effect upon the manager, who
+volunteered to make matters as easy as he could for me, till the Embassy
+moved. The officials would sit by the door, and not at my table during
+meals, and they would be accommodated with chairs in the corridor by the
+top of the staircase, instead of outside my bedroom door. He regretted
+that they would closely follow me whenever I went out, but doubtless I
+would communicate with my husband at once, and the mistake would soon be
+corrected.</p>
+
+<p>After I had had some tea, I began to feel quite light-hearted, and I
+unpacked and wrote to my husband in Bavaria.</p>
+
+<p>That night when I went to bed I locked my door securely, and composed
+myself to sleep after a tiring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> and disturbing day. I had been in a
+railway "sleeper" all the night before, and though I sleep like a top in
+a train, I am always unusually sleepy on the following night in bed.</p>
+
+<p>It was summer-time, and very hot weather, and my blinds were drawn up
+and the window thrown wide open. No houses faced me; I looked out on a
+big public garden.</p>
+
+<p>I was soon fast asleep, but was awakened again by some noise in the
+room. I lay still for a little, listening intently, all the unpleasant
+incidents of the past day rushing back upon me. The noise was not
+continuous, but now and again came the sound of something soft, dragging
+about the floor. The room was fairly light, with the glow of a waning
+moon, and I judged the hour to be between two and three o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>At last I determined to ascertain what produced this curious sound. I
+had an electric light over my bed, and I sat up and suddenly switched it
+on.</p>
+
+<p>Then I realized with horror that I was in the presence of something I
+had never encountered before, but had often read and heard of. An
+elemental of a malignant type, and of grotesque form.</p>
+
+<p>Just for an instant I saw nothing but what looked like an enormous
+pillow, but suddenly out of this grayish-green pillow emerged a head of
+frog-like shape, and two bright yellow eyes were fixed on mine. I
+suppose I was too terrified even to remember what my sensations were. A
+sort of paralysis of fear and horror held me spellbound. There it
+squatted, thrusting out its misshapen head, its yellow eyes regarding me
+fixedly. I have no idea how long it remained there, or how long we
+continued to gaze at one another, but I gradually became aware that it
+was receding from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> view. It grew smaller and smaller, and dimmer and
+more indistinct, till at length it vanished altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Elliott O'Donnell mentions in one of his books having seen such
+creatures, and of having had a number of such cases reported to him, but
+generally as the forerunners of illness. To such phantasms he has given
+the name of "Morbas," and he believes that certain apparitions are
+symbolical of certain diseases "if not the actual creators of the
+bacilli from which these diseases arise." This seems to me to be a
+reasonable explanation of such phenomena, but in my case there was no
+disease in question. I was perfectly well at the time, and remained so.
+It is possible, however, that a sick person might have occupied my room
+the night before. One never knows in hotels, and I had not then read
+O'Donnell's explanation and made no inquiries. Many of the experiences
+related in his deeply interesting books are no doubt regarded as
+fiction, but I know that they are cases common to very many psychics.</p>
+
+<p>For some time I lay awake, fearful of a recurrence of the horrible
+phenomenon, but gradually sleep overcame me, and I did not wake again
+till seven o'clock on a lovely summer morning.</p>
+
+<p>That day I took two long walks, closely followed by my escort. They
+walked immediately behind me, and often we stopped to converse, or to
+sit down to rest and smoke a cigarette together. They told me all their
+family history, and about their wives and children, and really they made
+themselves as agreeable as they possibly could. In the afternoon we
+climbed up the mountains to one of the many caf&eacute;s, and had chocolate and
+cakes, which they thoroughly enjoyed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> When I finally went back to the
+hotel for the night they complained of being tired, and hoped I would
+not walk so far on the morrow. Their idea of enjoyment was the usual
+foreign custom of taking a seat outside a street caf&eacute;, and sitting there
+hour after hour idly watching the passers-by, smoking endless cigarettes
+and drinking beer.</p>
+
+<p>That night I prepared myself for a recurrence of the abnormal phenomenon
+I had witnessed, and gathered up all my courage, and decided to attack
+it with the Sacred command. For a long time I lay awake, but nothing
+happened, and finally I fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>I awoke to pandemonium. My room was in a hub-bub of high-pitched noise.
+Screams of glee and frolic, shouts of thin laughter, and pattering feet
+with little thuds interspersed. The sounds were all pitched in an
+unknown key. They can best be described as ordinary sounds intensely
+rarefied, and pitched in so high a treble that they had run out of the
+scale altogether.</p>
+
+<p>It was a much darker night, and very hot. Thunder clouds hung over the
+town, and now and again there was a gleam of lightning and a mutter of
+distant thunder. I peeped over the edge of the bed, but could see
+nothing. The noises continued with unabated merriment. A hundred
+creatures of sorts apparently were playing round me.</p>
+
+<p>Summoning all my courage I sat up and switched on the light. What I saw
+must read like pure nonsense to the majority, but nevertheless I mean to
+record facts as they happened to me.</p>
+
+<p>About a dozen small forms, half-man, half-animal, were playing leap-frog
+round the room. They were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> about three feet in height, some slightly
+smaller, and though their bodies, legs and feet were human, their heads
+resembled apes.</p>
+
+<p>I forgot all about being afraid, they were so amazingly grotesque, and
+they were so thoroughly happy. One would go down on all fours, and the
+creatures immediately behind him would leap his back, and so on down the
+chain, and all the while they kept up that shrill, high-pitched note of
+intense enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>I have come to the conclusion that it was the light that finally put an
+end to their revels. They took no heed of me, but gradually their
+energies flagged, they faded and became blurred in outline; one by one
+they simply went out like sparks until not one was left.</p>
+
+<p>Though I occupied that room for a month I was never disturbed again.
+Perfect quiet reigned for the rest of my stay.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of five days a police official came to call upon me, and
+informed me that my identity had been perfectly established by the
+British Embassy at Vienna, and that my escort was now withdrawn. He also
+begged to return my typewriter, rendered utterly useless I discovered,
+to my great dismay, and the dispatch box arrived intact the next
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>I have no explanation to offer of the phenomena I have described. They
+belong to the many unsolved mysteries that constantly surround us. It
+will be said that my mind was in an excited and abnormal condition owing
+to my adventures in the Customs House, and that I probably imagined the
+scene instead of really seeing the creatures I have described.</p>
+
+<p>I agree that probably my mental faculties, for the time being, were
+possibly abnormal, but I hold that when the consciousness is in an
+abnormal condition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> it is naturally much easier to see the abnormal. At
+ordinary times the veil of the flesh seems denser, and the consciousness
+much less acute.</p>
+
+<p>The question seems to me to hang more on the query&mdash;do such creatures
+actually exist, than on the argument did I, or did I not see them? There
+are creatures living in the physical world quite as horrible to look
+upon as the astral entities I saw. The octopus and some apes, for
+instance. Innumerable people of unimpeachable veracity have testified to
+seeing grotesque and hideous creatures, which can only be placed in the
+category of astral denizens, and in that category I place the phenomena
+I certainly witnessed on two successive nights.</p>
+
+<p>The following story has been given to me by a barrister who kindly
+allows me to give his name:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">E. F. Williams, B.A.</span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trinity College, Cambridge.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"It is clear that Needle Jim was murdered by the proprietor, Corbett of
+the Tally Ho, and that his wraith haunted the spot. Horses appear to be
+as sensitive as dogs are to apparitions, and there are several instances
+on record where horses have been the means of bringing murder to light.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a difficult matter, indeed, to be asked to write a ghost story if
+you do not believe in ghosts; however, I will endeavor to relate the
+nearest approach to one which has come within my knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>"The winter of the year 1849 was an exceptionally severe one, very heavy
+falls of snow and deep drifts in many places, especially in the
+neighborhood of Worcester, near which the scene of my story lies.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It was, in those days, the custom of packmen as they were called, to
+travel around the country with various assortments of goods&mdash;calling at
+the various farmhouses and cottages offering their wares for sale; some
+would have cutlery, some laces and ribbons, but the packman with whom we
+are concerned carried pins, needles, and such like, hailing from
+Redditch, where they are manufactured. He used to go his round four
+times a year, and was known by the name of Needle Jim.</p>
+
+<p>"About the beginning of January, in spite of the snow, Jim left
+Worcester for Upper Onslow, Clayton and Broadway, with a view of going
+to Cleobury Mortimer, Wyn Forest, and back to Redditch. Apparently he
+was seen at Onslow and Clayton, but after that, there was no further
+trace of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Now at the village of Broadway, there is a little cider house called
+the Tally Ho, and a few cottages. The road is narrow, with three very
+sharp corners, protected only from a very steep dingle by an ill-kept,
+low, out-of-repair hedge&mdash;very dangerous on a dark night. The old
+proprietor of the inn, named Corbett, lived there with his old wife, and
+was in the poorest of circumstances, the customers at the inn not being
+very numerous. Nothing more was heard of Needle Jim.</p>
+
+<p>"Now opposite the Tally Ho, on the far bank of the dingle, was a piece
+of ground facing the south, and old Corbett thought it would make an
+excellent cherry orchard. So the hitherto impecunious Corbett bought a
+portion, and when he had bought it he fenced it round, and from the
+opposite side it looked exactly the shape of a coffin, and the coffin
+piece it is called to this day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"At the time of which I am writing, if was permissible after a man had
+been hung, for his relatives to take the body away home for burial. One
+day, two men arrived at the Tally Ho, with such a body fastened across
+the back of a horse; tying up the horse they went into the inn for some
+refreshment, shortly to be called out by a woman who said the horse,
+burden and all, had jumped over the hedge into the dingle and was lying
+at the bottom. They hurried down and there found the horse with his neck
+broken and his ghastly burden under him. It was a curious fact that
+after the disappearance of Needle Jim, horses approaching this corner
+broke into heavy sweats and showed great signs of fear, and a number of
+people preferred to travel by the longer route, <i>via</i> the Hundred Horse.</p>
+
+<p>"Some years ago some alterations were being made to the front of an old
+hotel in a little country town about five miles from the scenes depicted
+above, and on raising the large flagstone of the bottom step, there was
+discovered the skeleton of a man with his skull smashed. The old folks
+declared it must be the body of the missing packman; anyhow, after the
+discovery, the spirit or ghost seems to have departed from the precincts
+of the Tally Ho.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I am not a believer in ghosts or their allies, but when I was a
+small boy I went on my pony accompanied by two servants, who were taking
+a parcel to a house next door to the Tally Ho, and whilst they were
+inside the house, all at once the pony snorted and started full gallop
+for home as hard as he could go; we parted company going down a steep
+hill, and I have often thought it was a good thing for me we did, for if
+he had bolted into his stable (which he did do) I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> should probably have
+had my head smashed, as the doorway was very low.</p>
+
+<p>"Still, I do not believe in ghosts, I think it is more convenient not
+to!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>ACROSS THE THRESHOLD</h3>
+
+
+<p>Once upon a time I had an interesting experience showing how often one
+may be in the presence of the disembodied without being in the least
+aware of the fact.</p>
+
+<p>It was a bright, cold day in October, with a biting wind and brilliant
+sunshine. About midday I was walking up a long avenue leading to a great
+house. On either side of me, for a mile or so, lay flat, open grass
+country, pasturages full of grazing cattle. The trees bordering the
+avenue stood at about thirty feet apart; they were gigantic beeches of
+considerable age. Their silvery trunks of wide girth were smooth and
+straight, and in no way impeded the view on all sides. The avenue was
+wide and straight and bordered by grass out of which the trees sprang.</p>
+
+<p>As I turned in at the lodge gate I noticed, without any particular
+interest, a woman walking in front of me, but in a very few moments I
+began to pay more attention to her obvious peculiarities. She was about
+twenty-five to thirty feet ahead of me, moving in the same direction,
+and the view I had of her back began to puzzle me. On that decidedly
+chilly morning she wore a white muslin dress, a material never used out
+of doors even in summer in that northern clime. Over her shoulders
+floated something mauve and flimsy, and on her head was what looked like
+an old-fashioned poke-bonnet.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Her back looked young, and yet she was a creature of a bygone century,
+and knowing every one within a twenty-mile radius of where I walked I
+speculated as to who she could possibly be.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps what puzzled me most was how she had managed to avoid the
+attention of the village children, who would at once have been alive to
+the novelty of her whole appearance. I looked forward to hearing all
+about her at the big house, and as seemed highly probable, meeting her
+face to face and obtaining an introduction to her.</p>
+
+<p>Then it suddenly occurred to me to overtake her and pass her; we were
+both walking very slowly. I at once quickened my steps, but somehow I
+never seemed to gain on her. Even this did not rouse in me the faintest
+suspicion of being in the presence of a disembodied soul, it merely
+sharpened my curiosity and urged me to greater efforts.</p>
+
+<p>I moved from the road to the grass which I calculated would deaden the
+sound of my footsteps, then I began to run.</p>
+
+<p>Still no success! The lady never turned her head to right or left, but
+was clearly aware of my pursuit, for apparently without the least effort
+she kept her distance from me.</p>
+
+<p>At the moment when I was feeling rather baffled and very much puzzled I
+caught sight of my friend, N., in the distance coming to meet me. "Ah!"
+I thought, as I at once slowed down to draw breath, "she will have to
+pass her and she'll tell me what her face is like."</p>
+
+<p>I kept eyes and attention closely fixed on the two figures as they drew
+nearer and nearer to one another. Now the stranger appeared to be
+exactly at an equal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> distance between us, when, lo! she simply vanished
+as utterly and entirely as the electric light one switches off in a
+room. One second there she was, perfectly and clearly visible, the next
+second, there she was not. I looked foolishly around, though I knew that
+neither to right or left was there any hiding-place, moreover my eyes
+had been fully upon her when she vanished, flicked out&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>How well I remember N. running up to me and without any greeting, we
+both simultaneously burst out&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see her?"</p>
+
+<p>N. told me that the inside of the poke-bonnet was empty. The lady had no
+face.</p>
+
+<p>Of course we gazed around and searched behind the boles of the trees,
+but we were both aware how foolish any such proceeding was, for we had
+both been staring hard at her when she disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>There was a bygone tragedy connected with that part of the avenue, but
+on discussing the matter with the owner of the great house we all had to
+come reluctantly to the conclusion that the woman we had seen had no
+connection with that story. A former Lady Dalrymple had been murdered by
+one of her servants in the avenue about a hundred years previously, but
+the portraits of the deceased and the lady we had seen bore not the
+smallest resemblance. It was said that "Lady Dalrymple walked"&mdash;a tall,
+massive figure clad in a dark, heavy cloak sprinkled with snow. She had
+been done to death one January night in a snowstorm which had hidden her
+remains for several days.</p>
+
+<p>The apparition we had seen was that of a very slender girl or young
+woman. The interesting fact that I wish to emphasize is that had this
+young drama<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> in muslin turned aside, slipped through the light fence,
+and struck off across the fields it would never have occurred to either
+N. or me that she was not physical. We would have speculated as to who
+she was, but out of common civility we would not have followed her. We
+would have made casual inquiries as to who she was, simply out of
+curiosity aroused by her peculiar attire, and then the trifling incident
+would have been forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>That sudden vanishing has rooted the experience firmly in my mind, and I
+have long since become convinced that the little story I have just told
+is an extremely common one. I believe such disembodied spirits are
+constantly with us, and that many of us see them, pass them in the
+streets, stand beside them in crowds, and accept them perfectly
+naturally as physical entities in no way different from what we are
+ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Many people believe that our faculties have a limit beyond which we
+cannot go, but this is certainly not so, as it is now proved that some
+people have the X-ray sight by nature and can see far more than others.
+This faculty has nothing to do with keenness of sight, it is a question
+of sight which is able to respond to different series of vibrations.
+Undoubtedly there are many entities about us who do not reflect rays of
+light that we can see, yet who may reflect those other rays of rates of
+vibration which can be photographed.</p>
+
+<p>It is extremely difficult for the average person to grasp the reality of
+that which we cannot see with our physical eyes, and to realize how very
+partial our sight is, yet science continually demonstrates to us worlds
+of teeming life of whose very existence we should be ignorant so far as
+our senses are concerned.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>What ought clearly to be grasped is the fact that we are not separated
+from the so-called dead, save by the limitation of our consciences. We
+have not lost those gone before, we have only lost the power to see
+them, and very occasionally that power is restored to us, by what means
+we know not. All visible things are the result of invisible causes, and
+doubtless those denizens of the subtler worlds come amongst us with a
+distinct purpose in view. Sometimes that purpose can be traced to
+remorse, revenge, a quest, a strong attraction to the scene of a crime,
+but in many other cases no object can be discerned.</p>
+
+<p>The condition of the observer is constantly found to be absolutely
+normal. The mental conditions of both myself and N. were, as far as we
+could tell, quite normal. Our mental activity was no greater, no more
+vivid or more accurate than usual, yet we both saw an object that was
+beyond normal sense and rational vision.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that so often there is no connecting link between the
+apparition and his or her surroundings induces me to believe that we are
+everywhere surrounded by the denizens of the other world, and on rare
+occasions we catch a glimpse of them.</p>
+
+<p>Here is another utterly trivial story which emphasizes the above
+suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>I was lunching with my husband in a house built within the last fifty
+years. The only former occupants were known to us. We were discussing a
+letter I had that morning received and I said: "I'll go and fetch it for
+you to read." I rose and left the dining-room, and pushed open the
+half-closed door of the adjoining drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>What was my astonishment to behold standing in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> the middle of the floor
+a tall, dark man, a total stranger. He stood exactly between the door
+and a large bow window, through which poured a flood of sunshine, and I
+paused involuntarily and stared at him. Not that there was anything the
+least peculiar about him, and, indeed, his air of great respectability
+instantly banished the flashing thought of "Burglar."</p>
+
+<p>The stranger returned my stare with perfect composure, and in a second
+or two during which we regarded each other I had time to observe his
+appearance. He was well dressed, all in black, with a modern, black
+broadcloth frockcoat buttoned close. He was very tall and strongly
+built, his face was sallow and heavy featured, and he wore a short,
+black beard. I bowed and addressed him:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry! I didn't know any one was waiting. Do you wish to see me or
+my husband?" I said politely.</p>
+
+<p>The man made no reply, but at once began to glide, not walk, towards a
+closed glass door leading to a conservatory on the left. His eyes never
+left mine. Without opening the door he passed through it and vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Then I realized and darted after him, throwing open the door and staring
+beyond. Nothing! Nothing physical could have passed through a glass door
+without shattering it, and that is all there is to this story. The man
+had no connection with us nor, so far as we could learn, with the former
+occupants of the house.</p>
+
+<p>A very old friend of mine, Mrs. Sinclair, wife of the late Sir
+Tollemache Sinclair's second son, told me of an experience she and her
+mother once had when visiting a cousin, Major Fetherston Dilke, of
+Maxstoke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> Castle, Warwickshire. The Castle is ancient and surrounded by
+a moat, and within the moat lies a tennis court. In order to reach their
+rooms on the ground floor, Mrs. Sinclair and her mother had to pass
+through a great stone hall filled with fine old oak and armor. Beyond
+that their way lay through the remains of an old chapel, which once had
+been extensively damaged by fire.</p>
+
+<p>One evening after playing tennis till rather late, Mrs. Sinclair and her
+mother hastened indoors to change for dinner. As they passed through the
+chapel Mrs. Sinclair saw her mother suddenly shrink back against the
+wall; at the same time she exclaimed, "Oh, May, stand aside and let that
+person pass."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sinclair looked round, but could see no one. Again her mother cried
+out insistently:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do let her pass."</p>
+
+<p>"But no one is here," Mrs. Sinclair assured her. Then seeing that her
+mother looked terrified she took her by the arm and hurried her to their
+rooms.</p>
+
+<p>When the door was shut Mrs. Sinclair tried to soothe her mother's
+agitation, and asked her what she had seen, and why she was so
+disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>Her mother replied: "There was a young woman in the corner who was
+trying hard to escape observation, and the sight of her gave me the most
+uncomfortable feeling. She was not a maidservant, and wore no cap. She
+was dressed in a mauve print gown with a violet sprig upon it. She might
+have been a needle-woman." Mrs. Sinclair calmed her mother as well as
+she could, and they went down to dinner together.</p>
+
+<p>During the meal what was her horror to hear her mother say to their
+host, "Oh, William, I feel sure there are ghosts in the Castle. I've
+seen one to-night."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was a most uncomfortable silence after this, and Major Fetherston
+Dilke looked terribly agitated.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner, when the ladies were alone in the drawing-room, Mrs. Dilke
+asked Mrs. Sinclair what they had seen, and on being told she explained
+that before a death in the family a certain housekeeper, who had been
+murdered, always haunted the chapel, and in consequence of this warning
+always coming true her husband was exceedingly nervous of this
+apparition. Nothing more was said upon the subject during Mrs.
+Sinclair's stay, but before the end of the year Major Fetherston Dilke
+lay dead.</p>
+
+<p>Such warnings are very common, and very hard to understand. They suggest
+that the apparition knows of the approaching death of a certain person,
+and that it has the power to make itself visible to certain persons, at
+certain times. Why this warning should be given is a baffling mystery.
+Again, why did not Mrs. Sinclair see this ghost when her mother so
+plainly saw it?</p>
+
+<p>The fact is that all sorts of most unlikely persons see apparitions,
+even the rankest unbeliever and the most matter-of-fact individual, and
+they generally see them at most unexpected moments.</p>
+
+<p>I remember one day walking along a country road, and seeing a dog-cart
+in the distance coming towards me. As it drew nearer I saw that it
+contained (the late) Lord Wemyss, and on recognizing me he drew up and
+jumped down.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got a confession to make to you," he said. "I wouldn't tell any
+one else for the world. I'd have the life chaffed out of me. I've
+actually seen a ghost."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not in the least surprised. Why shouldn't you see a ghost?" I
+retorted.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well! I never believed in them, and I didn't think I was the sort of
+man who'd ever see one. Now, if it had been Arthur Balfour there would
+have been nothing in it. He's a member of the Psychical Society, and all
+that sort of thing."</p>
+
+<p>"But being a member of the Psychical Society does not predispose one to
+see ghosts," I expostulated, but Lord Wemyss remained very puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>He told me that when about half a mile from his own front door at
+Gosford, East Lothian, he saw a man walking in front of him in the same
+direction, going towards the house. In a vague sort of way he wondered
+for a moment where this man had suddenly sprung from, as he had not
+noticed him before, but there was nothing unusual in his appearance to
+arouse curiosity. He was a stranger and looked like a foreman in his
+Sunday clothes.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Wemyss walked on, always keeping about ten yards between himself
+and the stranger. At a certain point he fully expected he would strike
+off by a path leading to the servants' and tradesmen's entrance, but
+rather to his surprise, the man did no such thing. He pursued an
+undeviating course towards the main entrance, and on observing this Lord
+Wemyss became more interested, and looked at him more closely.</p>
+
+<p>Still there was something remarkable to be observed, and concluding that
+the man, being a stranger, did not know of any other entrance, he
+quickened his steps in order to come up with him. In this he failed&mdash;the
+man kept his distance, and just as he reached the door he vanished from
+sight.</p>
+
+<p>I tried hard to persuade Lord Wemyss to tell this story to Mr. Balfour,
+who was so intimate a friend, but I believe he never did so. The
+interest lies in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> long time, during a half-mile walk, in which the
+ghost was under observation, also in the fact that until the man
+disappeared on the doorstep Lord Wemyss had never suspected that the
+stranger was other than ordinary flesh and blood.</p>
+
+<p>So many people have confided their ghost stories to me, and swore me to
+secrecy, that I am convinced such experiences are very common, and only
+remain hidden either from fear of being laughed at or from being thought
+to suffer from hallucinations.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>HAUNTED ROOMS</h3>
+
+
+<p>How is it that one can "feel" a room is haunted? What is it that gives
+one the strong impression that there is something unpleasant about a
+certain room, a something that sets it apart, as a place to be avoided?</p>
+
+<p>The mind operates with the senses. It receives impressions through the
+air as sound, or through the ether as sight, and so forth. Through the
+various senses we catch the vibrations of consciousness belonging to our
+environment, near or far. Psychically developed persons possess an
+increase of sensibility which enables them to see, hear, and feel more
+acutely than most people. Wherever some great mental disturbance has
+taken place, wherever overwhelming sorrow, hatred, pain, terror, or any
+kind of violent passion has been felt, an impression of a very marked
+character has been imprinted on the astral light. So strong is this
+impression that often persons possessing but the first glimmer of the
+psychic faculty are deeply impressed by it. But a slight temporary
+increase of sensibility would enable them to visualize the whole scene.
+That such impressions should be imprinted on the astral light is no more
+wonderful than ordinary photography, or the impression of the human
+voice upon the cylinders of a gramophone.</p>
+
+<p>To me, a haunted room is always full of shadows. That is how I see it.
+That is one of several ways by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> which I distinguish it from other rooms.
+Other people do not always see these shadows, and the room may actually
+be flooded with sunshine when I enter it for the first time. This makes
+no difference to what I see. The shadows are there, despite the
+sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>There are long-drawn-out shadows, which seem to take their rise in the
+corners of the room, and creep across the floor. They are not
+motionless, but in constant vibration and re-formation, like smoke
+drifts. Such shadows are not of a uniform gray, but tinged by dull
+colors, dark red, sulphur yellow, muddy brown. In a haunted room there
+is always a shadow above one's head. A hovering cloud between the
+ceiling and midway to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Then there are the sensations I feel when entering a haunted room.
+Little shivers run through me, and what I take to be nervous excitation
+sets all my spine jangling, and the tiny nerve threads quivering. The
+sensation of icy cold water trickling down my back is most unpleasant.</p>
+
+<p>At times a profound melancholy falls upon me, often blended with a
+poignant compassion for some one, I know not whom. At other times a
+sensation of violent repulsion invades my being, which has actually, in
+some cases, produced physical sickness. Again, there is the helpless
+feeling, and that is the hardest to bear of all such psychic
+disturbances. The feeling that something is about to occur in that room
+which I will be powerless to ward off.</p>
+
+<p>What can one do when paying a visit if one is ushered into a bedroom by
+one's hostess which one instantly knows to be "unhealthful"? I cannot
+find a better word to describe many a haunted room. This experience has
+several times happened to me, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> unless I know my hostess very well, I
+am obliged to sleep in this unhealthful atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>On one occasion I was invited to dine and sleep with some old friends,
+who had taken on lease an old castle in the neighborhood of St. Andrews,
+where I happened to be staying. They had only been in residence for a
+month or two, an old brother and an old sister, whom I had known all my
+life.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of this long friendship they were not the sort of people to
+whom I could have said, "Would you mind giving me another room? The one
+you have selected for me is haunted, and if I remain in it I will have
+no sleep. I shall not even dare to try to sleep, but shall have to keep
+awake all night to ward off the evil." They would have been both shocked
+and indignant at such a suggestion, and probably have concluded that I
+had gone stark staring mad.</p>
+
+<p>I had accepted a seat in a carriage belonging to some friends in St.
+Andrews, who were also going to the castle to dine, but who were
+returning to sleep in their own homes in the town.</p>
+
+<p>It was twilight when we drove up the long avenue, and caught a first
+glimpse of the exterior. A typical old Scotch castle, very large, with
+high-peaked roofs and pepper-box turrets, and all built of gray stone.</p>
+
+<p>About an hour before dinner I was conducted to my room. My evening dress
+was already spread upon the bed, and the housemaid was arranging my
+toilet articles on the dressing-table.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you will be comfortable here, my dear," said my kind hostess,
+and I thanked her with a sinking heart as she went away.</p>
+
+<p>As the housemaid prepared to follow her I said, "Am I the only person
+sleeping on this floor?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She answered, "You are the only one in this wing, miss."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a very large house, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty-six bedrooms," answered the housemaid, "but we've shut up most
+of them. This one has such a good view that Miss Young thought it ought
+to be used." With that she went away, and I looked round.</p>
+
+<p>Six lighted candles and a big wood fire seemed only to accentuate the
+profound gloom and depression of the large, irregular room. The very
+first thing I did was to throw a towel over the face of the mirror on
+the dressing-table. Then I investigated every nook and corner.</p>
+
+<p>There was a powdering closet formed in a pepper-box turret. The carpet
+of the room stopped short at its door, and inside the boards looked
+loose and uneven. I fetched a candle and soon discovered that the
+floorboards lifted up quite easily, and beneath them was a black yawning
+hole, an <i>oubliette</i>, through which wretched prisoners were cast in days
+not so long ago.</p>
+
+<p>I replaced the boards, telling myself that in the morning I would have a
+look at the outside of this black shaft. It probably ended, as most of
+such places did end in the old Scotch castles, in a big dungeon
+underground.</p>
+
+<p>Inside my big room there were sloping ceilings, and great beams, and an
+enormous fireplace had been bricked up to suit more modern requirements.
+There were two doors, the one I had entered by and another which was
+locked and keyless. The window, with the view, was hidden by heavy red
+curtains, and the atmosphere was musty and dank, like that of a vault.</p>
+
+<p>As I stared around me I could not help thinking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> what an unfortunate
+thing it is to be born without any imagination. Any one possessed of a
+spark of that quality would have hesitated before putting a young guest
+into so gloomy a chamber, the only room occupied in that wing.</p>
+
+<p>"No sleep possible here," I told myself grimly, as I began to dress.
+Then I set myself to "feel after" what was really wrong with the room.
+Supposing I did fall asleep, what would happen? Would some one come and
+try to strangle me in the night? That had actually happened to many
+people. Would I suddenly awake to the fact that some one unseen was
+pulling off the bedclothes? That was also a trick common to ghostly
+visitants.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually I gathered impressions, very unpleasant ones. I became
+positively certain that I was being watched intently. Some one, present
+in the room, though unseen by me, was watching my every movement. That
+some one violently resented my occupation of the room, was intensely
+hostile, and meant to make things nasty for me later on that night.
+Wherever I moved I felt that malignant eyes followed me, and I kept
+glancing over my shoulder at every crack of the furniture, and the
+scratching of a mouse in the wainscot. It was in the stretches of dead
+silence that the presence became most imminent, most menacing, and I had
+a strong instinct to set my back against the wall and face right out
+into the room.</p>
+
+<p>Again I was confronted by the mirror problem. I had become certain that
+it must remain covered. If I looked into its surface I knew I would see
+something horrible. Something kept whispering to me, "Never mind how you
+look, never mind if your bodice is all awry, or your skirt all askew, or
+your hair all bulging<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> out on one side. Don't uncover the mirror if you
+value your sanity. What there is to be seen can only become visible in
+the mirror. Don't worry after explanations, or why this should or how it
+could be. Do as I tell you. Keep the mirror covered and when you come up
+to bed keep your back to the wall."</p>
+
+<p>Dressing was a very rapid process that night, and when completed, so far
+as circumstances would allow, I found I still had twenty minutes to wait
+until the dinner gong would ring. I sat down with my back against the
+wall, and surveyed the depressing apartment with a gloomy anticipation.
+Where was that stealthy watcher, whose baleful eyes I felt were fixed
+upon me? I could see nothing. I could only feel acutely that I was not
+alone, and that I was "in for" an awful night.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! to get away, and leave that malignant unseen watcher in undisputed
+possession of his dismal abode! I was quite certain of the gender! Then
+a chance of deliverance flashed over me. I could return after dinner to
+St. Andrews with the friends who had brought me. But I had accepted the
+invitation to stay the night. What possible excuse could I make for
+cutting short my visit? In this case the truth was no use; in fact,
+worse than useless. Not only would my host and hostess utterly fail to
+understand what I was talking about, but they would be exceedingly
+indignant, and look upon me as absolutely insane.</p>
+
+<p>As falsehood had to be resorted to, I surely could invent some plausible
+excuse that would hurt no one's feelings, but the only excuse I could
+think of was illness. I must tell my hostess that I feared I was "in
+for" an illness of some sort, and the wisest thing to do was to drive
+back to St. Andrews and be laid up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> in my own bed. The most hospitable
+person would rather not have a sick guest under her roof. The excuse I
+proposed to make seemed to me to be the one most likely to be accepted
+without much fuss.</p>
+
+<p>I did not determine upon this plan without a certain amount of wavering.
+"After all," I told myself, "it is only for one night, and what can this
+entity do but give you a very creepy and disturbed night. You will have
+to sit up against the wall, and defend yourself by the power of the
+Cross, bidding it begone, in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the
+Holy Ghost. This you may have to do many times, but the night won't last
+forever, and you had best try to make the best of things, and not risk
+offending old friends."</p>
+
+<p>It did seem hard that I dared not tell the truth. Had the entity been in
+the flesh how easy it would have been. Who has not, at some time or
+another in her life, found herself unwittingly to be an unwelcome guest,
+and made to feel "if you don't go away at once you will regret it"?
+Sometimes one comes across persons who for some private reason dread
+being overlooked, or who love their hermitage so dearly that they refuse
+to be amiable, to even the most swiftly passing guest. Old people are
+often like that, every one knows, or has known, of such people in the
+flesh. Yet how few believe that such unpleasant traits persist just as
+strongly after so-called death, as before. What should suddenly change a
+man's whole disposition the moment he "shuffles off this mortal coil"?</p>
+
+<p>I felt I was now in the presence of one who dreaded being overlooked,
+and who sought to get rid of me by every device in his power.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst thinking thus my mind was irrevocably made up for me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>My attention was suddenly drawn towards a soft stealthy noise. Padded
+footsteps. Something had come near, and was creeping warily round in
+front of me. I felt the eyes upon me. I was being regarded more closely.
+What was about to follow?</p>
+
+<p>I leapt to my feet, and raising my arm made the sign of the Cross. "I
+bid you begone, in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's pause of utter silence. The atmosphere struck
+suddenly chill as ice. A curious sensation of emptiness crept over the
+room. I was alone, but for how long would I remain alone?</p>
+
+<p>I hurried downstairs and tried to play my part, and during the course of
+the evening I told my falsehoods as naturally as I could. At half-past
+ten I drove off to St. Andrews with a light heart, and an utter
+indifference to the consequences.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that my falsehoods did not, however, "go down," for I never
+was asked again to that house.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was as well, for I certainly never would have set foot in it
+again, and I had sacrificed the truth quite sufficiently upon this one
+occasion.</p>
+
+<p>I had no difficulty in finding out what sort of reputation the castle
+bore. Every one agreed that it was haunted. I asked one elderly woman
+who had lived all her life in St. Andrews, and who knew the whole
+country intimately, what she thought of S. Castle.</p>
+
+<p>"Horrible, haunted old place. I can't think how the Youngs could have
+taken it," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>"But what sort of ghosts haunt it?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Old Sir James and his son. They were in league with the Devil, and the
+son, another James, used to murder people and throw them down into the
+dungeon. He was beheaded in the reign of Charles the First."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Have you known any one who has ever seen anything?" I persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but my father remembered as a young man seeing a pile of human
+bones being removed from the dungeon, and buried in the churchyard. The
+late people lived to be very old, and always kept Sir James' wing shut
+up. Now the place has changed hands, and probably the Youngs will never
+be disturbed. They are installed in the most modern part of the house,
+and won't need to use the haunted wing."</p>
+
+<p>It must not be supposed that all haunted houses or rooms are unpleasant
+to live in. People in the flesh are either pleasant or unpleasant,
+disturbing or tranquil to live with, and so it is with their astral
+counterparts. When they elect to haunt the scenes of their old
+activities some ghosts are so inoffensive that they can be lived with
+under the most tranquil conditions.</p>
+
+<p>One autumn we took a shooting lodge in the far North of Scotland, and
+though I recognized at once that it was frequented by an entity from the
+"other side," I experienced no uneasy feelings whatever.</p>
+
+<p>We had not been in residence longer than three hours before this ghost
+put in an appearance.</p>
+
+<p>We were in a lively confusion of unpacking and settling down. Several
+large trunks had been carried upstairs, and set down on a wide corridor
+on to which the bedrooms opened.</p>
+
+<p>I was on my knees unpacking one of those trunks, our dog "Pompey" was
+seated beside me superintending matters, and my maid was standing at my
+side waiting to carry various articles into the different rooms. The
+hour was midday, and the early autumn sunshine flooded the house.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly "Pompey" growled, and turned towards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> the staircase, with all
+his hair bristling. I also looked round and saw a tall, quite ordinary
+man mounting the staircase.</p>
+
+<p>I thought nothing of this, supposing him to be the factor whom we
+expected, and I rose to my feet at once. He came on along the corridor
+straight towards us, and looking directly at us, but when within about
+ten feet from where we stood he suddenly vanished.</p>
+
+<p>I heard my maid give a sharp exclamation, and at the same instant
+"Pompey" made a furious dash at the spot, and growling angrily began to
+pursue something invisible to us, down the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>I followed as quickly as I could. I feared "Pompey" would be lost if he
+ran out into the deer forest surrounding us on all sides. I caught him
+at the deer fence, edging the vegetable garden, and induced him with
+some difficulty to return to the house.</p>
+
+<p>My maid and I compared notes. What I had seen accorded exactly with what
+she had seen. She soon got over her uncomfortable experience, and though
+I never saw this entity again, I often felt him near me. He was,
+however, of so colorless a personality, that he never proved in the
+least disturbing to any one in the house.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of which I write the Astral Plane was not so generally
+recognized as an actual residential quarter as it is now. In these days
+a halfway house for the soul was not considered necessary for
+Protestants. They either went direct to heaven or hell, according to
+their manner of life on earth. The Catholics alone had their Purgatory,
+to which the departed souls repaired, there to slough off the passions
+of earth and fit themselves for higher realms.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Purgatory and the Astral Plane mean the same thing now to the vast
+majority of thinkers. A halfway house for the soul. A condition of
+consciousness interpenetrating this earth, which may actually be visited
+under certain conditions by those still possessing a physical body, an
+abode so contiguous to this world as to make the words of the Poet
+literally true&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"All houses wherein men have lived and died are haunted houses."</p>
+
+<p>In these days I used to get severely chaffed on the subject of the
+Astral Plane. Frivolous young things would say to me, "Hello! been on
+the Astral Plane lately?"</p>
+
+<p>One day I was undergoing a certain amount of good-natured chaff from a
+number of young people at Dunrobin Castle. I defended my beliefs
+vigorously, and at last the present Lady Londonderry, then Miss Chaplin,
+the Duke's niece, challenged me to pick out the haunted room in the
+Castle.</p>
+
+<p>I had never at that time been in any part of the building save in one
+bedroom, and the public rooms. I at once took up the challenge, and the
+Duke remarked that I had my work cut out for me, as several of the rooms
+had a reputation for being haunted.</p>
+
+<p>I replied that I would undertake to pick out a room where life was still
+actively carried on by those who had suffered something terrible on that
+spot in the past, and who were now denizens of the Astral Plane.</p>
+
+<p>A small crowd of us then started, led by Miss Chaplin, and we went from
+room to room. She opened the door and remained with the others on the
+threshold. I walked into each room alone and gathered impressions.</p>
+
+<p>In several of the rooms I felt the presence of astral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> entities, but
+nothing of a strong or unpleasant nature. At last we came to a room
+occupied by a maid, sitting alone, sewing, and I felt instantly that my
+quest was at an end.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sharp atmosphere of anguish that was quite unmistakable;
+some ghastly tragedy had taken place within those four walls, but I said
+nothing before the sewing woman. I felt drawn towards the window, the
+trouble was centered there. If I remember rightly, the room was high up,
+and overlooking, not the sea, but a paved courtyard.</p>
+
+<p>I walked back to the others with my finger on my lip, and Miss Chaplin
+closed the door behind me.</p>
+
+<p>"We need not go any further; that is the haunted room," I said, in a low
+voice that could not reach the woman inside.</p>
+
+<p>"You're right. You've found it," was the answer.</p>
+
+<p>I heard the story when we went downstairs, but I can only recollect that
+it had to do with a Lady Sutherland, who had been brutally flung out of
+the window.</p>
+
+<p>I will now relate a curious incident of haunting by elementals, and it
+will be seen that such hauntings may quite easily appear to the ordinary
+observer as an abnormal occurrence to which no clue can be given.</p>
+
+<p>What is an elemental? It is only when the mystic has advanced in her
+studies that she discovers how manifold evolution is, and how small a
+part humanity really fills in the economy of nature.</p>
+
+<p>When the microscope is used myriads of germs of life, unsuspected by us,
+are revealed; even so the invisible planes connected with this earth
+contain myriads of forms of life, of whose existence most of us are
+unconscious. When we read of a "good or bad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> elemental" it must always
+be either an artificial entity, or one of the many varieties of nature
+spirits that is meant. I will deal now with a case of the artificial
+variety.</p>
+
+<p>Such elementals are formed out of the elemental essence lying behind the
+mineral kingdom. It is the monadic essence, or material used in
+creation, or it may be called the outpouring of Divine force into
+matter. This elemental essence is marvelously sensitive to human
+thought, however fleeting. It responds instantly to the vibrations set
+up consciously or unconsciously by human will or desire. The influence
+of thought can mold a living force, good or evil, into an existence,
+evanescent or lasting. Such shapes possess a certain appropriateness to
+the character of the desire which calls them into existence, though they
+generally possess distortions, either unpleasant or terrifying.</p>
+
+<p>Persons who play with, or use for some malign purpose, Black Magic,
+generally have a swarm of such semi-intelligent entities surrounding
+them, and professional Black Magicians can call artificial elementals of
+great power into existence, and use them for their fell designs.</p>
+
+<p>As a rule, however, the enormous inchoate mass of entities, known as
+elementals, are beings of human thought creation, created in no
+malicious spirit, but more often the result of curiosity, and tampering
+with a very dangerous power, as yet little understood. The amateur
+magician on passing over to the other side by no means loses his taste
+for the grotesque and abnormal, and often continues to play pranks on
+those left behind, by means of the dangerous powers he has acquired
+whilst on earth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I was visiting some old friends in the South of England. Some years
+before they had succeeded to a fine inheritance, and it was the first
+time that I had stayed with them in that house. I did not experience any
+uncomfortable sensations in the bedroom appointed to me. It was early
+summer-time when there is but a short spell of darkness, and I was on
+such intimate terms with my hostess, herself a psychic, that I had only
+to say I disliked the atmosphere of my bedroom, to have it changed.</p>
+
+<p>The former mistress of the house had been a very remarkable woman whom I
+had known intimately. She was brilliantly clever and accomplished, and
+charming to talk to, but unfortunately she took a vivid interest in
+occultism of the wrong sort&mdash;in Black Magic. Anything to do with spells,
+witchcraft, elementals, incantations, attracted her enormously, and she
+had a very considerable knowledge of the subject. I have no doubt she
+could have worked a great deal of mischief had she been so inclined, but
+luckily her designs were more impish than malign.</p>
+
+<p>I often warned her that there was undoubted danger in such researches,
+and that she was certain to attract about her elementals of a most
+undesirable kind, but my warnings went unheeded, and to the time of her
+death her interest in the dark subject never flagged.</p>
+
+<p>She had not died in the house I had come to stay in, but it occurred to
+me as I dressed for dinner that I was in her old bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>This suggestion came to me suddenly, and to the accompaniment of a
+sound. A sound more felt than heard, a sound known to the spirit rather
+than to the ear; a tiptoe silence hovering on the brink of sound's
+threshold.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>My surroundings gave a very pleasant impression. A glorious sunset was
+flooding the west. My room was full of golden light, and the window was
+flung wide to the warm summer air. There was nothing to be recorded
+either ghostly or uncanny, yet something was present which made me
+uncomfortable. Strange thoughts, bizarre fancies, found lodgment in my
+mind, and I stood rigid, listening intently. The room was full of
+secrets. They seemed suddenly to creep forth and whisper together.</p>
+
+<p>There it was again! that soft echo of a sound which was like no other
+sound. An eerie, uncanny sensation crept down my spine, a strange,
+undefinable feeling of uncertainty, not yet amounting to fear. I moved
+towards the corner of the room, whence the sound proceeded, and as I
+approached, out of that corner dropped down a huge gray moth, a second
+dropped down after it, and both lay with outstretched wings on the white
+coverlet of the bed.</p>
+
+<p>Now I have always had a peculiar antipathy to moths, the big furry sort.
+I can handle a spider, and bear with a black beetle, but with big woolly
+moths I cannot live happily. I saw one once under a microscope, and it
+was covered with horrid looking parasites. I am aware that other
+creatures are similarly afflicted, but this microscopic vision
+accentuated my horror of all big moths. They seem to me repulsive,
+sinister, and uncanny creatures. The curious thing is that though I
+dislike them they adore me, and I always know that if there is one in my
+parish it will find me out.</p>
+
+<p>On this occasion I felt a very natural desire to laugh at myself. Of
+course, the creatures had at once discovered me, and this was all that
+had resulted from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> my uncomfortable sensations. A feeling of scorn swept
+over me. Two moths had rustled softly. Could anything be more banal,
+more commonplace? I flung a towel over them, and finished dressing. Then
+I rang for the housemaid.</p>
+
+<p>When she came I told her she must accomplish the destruction of the
+occupants of my bed. I could see no moths flying about outside, but
+nevertheless the window must be kept closed till I opened it again in
+the dark, before getting into bed.</p>
+
+<p>She told me that she was always particular to close the windows before
+bringing in a light, as the bats were a nuisance. I assured her that I
+had no objection to a room full of bats, but I could not sleep in a room
+full of moths. She promised to look about the room whilst it was still
+light, and destroy any she found. I closed the window myself and went
+down to dinner.</p>
+
+<p>We were but three women present; my hostess, myself, and a friend of
+ours, and we spent a delightful evening together talking of old times.</p>
+
+<p>That night, before beginning to undress, I blew out my candle, and
+throwing up the window I stood looking forth upon enchantment. It was
+still light, with a luster that filled all space, and it seemed wicked
+to shut out such beauty. Westward the stars were pale, but southward one
+great dull red star shone low down on the horizon. The owls were
+haunting the gardens with their banshee notes. It was a night for the
+revelation of the fairy folk, elves and pixies, fauns and dryads,
+elfins, nymphs and satyrs. A night when she tells her secrets to her
+lovers in the psalmody of nature, when the spirits of earth, fire, air,
+and water utter softly to human souls, if they will but incline the ear
+to hearken to the message.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If I want a definition of God I shall go, not to the bell and the book,
+but to a starlit, fragrant garden, where I can look long and deep into
+the passion of Creation's eyes. I will be as the old gray poet who
+wrote&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I call the earth and sea, half hid by the night.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Press close magnetic, nourishing night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Night of the South wind, night of the large, few stars."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Across the hushed magic came silver sweet the strokes of eleven from the
+village church, and the spell was broken. I closed the window, lit my
+candles, and prepared for bed.</p>
+
+<p>Just before extinguishing my lights, and re-opening the window, I
+carried a candle to the side of the bed with a box of matches. What was
+my horror on discovering that the turned-down bed and both pillows were
+liberally strewn with enormous gray moths. The sight was extraordinary,
+I literally could not believe my eyes. I stood there staring, and
+mechanically counting them. Twenty&mdash;thirty. I turned back to the
+dressing-table with the candle still in my hand. What was I to do? If I
+had the courage to destroy them, what sort of condition would the bed be
+in after?</p>
+
+<p>I am writing of actual facts, and without the least exaggeration. The
+smallest of those moths must have been quite an inch long in their fat
+gray bodies, and quite three inches long across the wings. I thought I
+knew most moths by sight and name, but I had never seen any like these
+before. What depressed me most was the fact that moths are attracted by
+candle-light. I had been burning four candles for quite twenty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> minutes,
+and not a moth had forsaken the bed for the flame. I was positively
+certain that they had not flown in whilst I stood in the dark of the
+open window. They were far too big and numerous to have escaped
+observation. What was I to do? I could not use that bed, and I now felt
+a strong repulsion for the room. I regretted deeply that the household
+must all be in bed, because I knew that no description I could give
+would convey anything like actuality, and the truth was certain to
+appear wild exaggeration.</p>
+
+<p>I made up my mind at once. I knew there were several unoccupied rooms on
+either side of me, and taking my lighted candle I placed it, still lit,
+in a basin on the marble-topped washstand. It should remain lit all
+night, and in the morning I would come to search for victims. The other
+candles I extinguished, all but one to take with me, and leaving the
+window still shut I softly left the room. I entered the next bedroom and
+approached the bed. Of course, there were no sheets, but the white dust
+sheet covering the blankets was spotless&mdash;there was not a moth to be
+seen anywhere. Blowing out my candle I opened the window, and getting
+into bed between the blankets I was soon fast asleep.</p>
+
+<p>I awakened to glorious sunshine, and looked at my wrist watch, which I
+had placed beside my bed. Six o'clock and a lovely warm summer morning.</p>
+
+<p>I jumped out of bed, full of curiosity regarding my visitors of
+over-night, and returned to my own room. Not a trace of a moth to be
+seen anywhere. The candle had burnt itself out, no singed wings or
+blackened bodies lay near. The window was shut. I threw it wide, and
+then I went round the room shaking curtains, looking behind pictures,
+and climbing on a chair<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> I examined the top of the wardrobe. Not the
+faintest signs of the great gray drove of the night before. Where could
+they all have vanished to?</p>
+
+<p>I gave it up, and got into my own bed, to await the advent of my early
+tea. I hated having to tell the housemaid that I had been driven into
+another room, but I knew she would find out the fact for herself. She
+was obviously incredulous, and assured me she had thoroughly searched
+the room, and seen but two winged creatures; those she had removed from
+the bed. I had seen for myself when coming to bed that the window had
+remained shut. She had often seen one or two brown moths in the rooms at
+night, but she owned that never before had she seen huge gray ones.</p>
+
+<p>The matter was left at that, and during the day I told my hostess of my
+adventure, and she at once ordered the room I had slept in to be
+prepared for me, in case I might encounter the same difficulties again.
+I dressed for dinner in the moth-room, without catching sight of one.
+When bedtime came we three women all entered the room together.</p>
+
+<p>On approaching the bed, and looking down on it, no one spoke for a
+moment. Then my fellow guest exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I must say that if I had not seen this with my own eyes I never
+would have believed it."</p>
+
+<p>The bed was liberally sprinkled with large gray moths.</p>
+
+<p>My hostess shivered. "Come away, and let us shut the door. It's too
+horrible," she said.</p>
+
+<p>During the remainder of my visit I was perfectly comfortable in my new
+room, and the curious fact must be stated that after I had left the
+moth-room the moths forsook it too. I could discern a pitying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+incredulity in the housemaid's attitude towards me afterwards. She had
+seen but two, and she did not believe in the drove.</p>
+
+<p>My hostess and friend who had witnessed the phenomenon at once agreed
+that there was something more in it than an entomological curiosity. I
+would have given much for the opinion of a naturalist. What, I wonder,
+would he have made of that fat, gray flock sprinkling the bed? What
+species of moth would he have declared them to be?</p>
+
+<p>I have searched in many books since and never found anything the least
+resembling them, and I retain my original, firm belief that they were
+nothing more or less than a flock of elementals, sent forth as a
+practical joke by a practiced magician on the other side.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<h3>"THE NEW JEANNE D'ARC"</h3>
+
+
+<p>Before writing on the above subject, which is proving to-day of
+absorbing interest to a very large number of people, Protestant as well
+as Catholic, I will point out a curious fact that is occultly connected
+with it.</p>
+
+<p>At certain periods in our normal life, certain subjects lying quite
+outside our earthly experience begin quite suddenly to be talked of and
+written upon. No one knows why, no one, outside occultism, can even form
+a conjecture why such subjects should suddenly obsess the brains of a
+considerable number of persons, why they should crop up in the most
+unexpected places, or why they should form the foundations of a
+considerable mass of literature.</p>
+
+<p>It would appear as if they were floating in the air at some particular
+time, and masses of people catch them up like germs, and carry them
+about until their power is exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>I will give an instance. In the years just before the war "The Great God
+Pan" drifted across our mental horizon and was at once drawn into our
+aura.</p>
+
+<p>No one knows anything about "The Great God Pan." He is supposed to
+belong to mythology, but novelists of distinction at once began to write
+upon him, not one after the other, but simultaneously. I read at least
+three thrilling novels in which he figured<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> largely, and I myself was
+impelled to write a novel upon the same subject.</p>
+
+<p>I began the book knowing nothing of the god, beyond what I could gather
+from the London Library, and Frazer's "Golden Bough," but as I proceeded
+I was conscious of new information drifting in from without, and on
+finishing the book I found that other authors had been at work on the
+same subject.</p>
+
+<p>"The Great God Pan" appeared on the stage, and a popular actress sang a
+song about him. One heard his name mentioned constantly in society, and
+hideous stories were told of him in Bohemian art circles. He was the
+bugbear of the s&eacute;ance room, journalists mentioned him in quite serious
+articles, and I once heard his name spoken from a pulpit.</p>
+
+<p>The bare fact of this seemingly inconsequent disease (for it almost
+amounted to a disease with us) drifting into our stolid British
+atmosphere was not curious to the occultist, who is aware that at
+certain times, certain subjects are flooded in on us from "the other
+side" by those who have our welfare at heart.</p>
+
+<p>I never heard any explanation of why Pan should have come here to play
+quite an important part in our mental lives, or why he should have
+obsessed so many of us for about a couple of years. The more one
+discovered about him the less one liked him, but psychics are led to
+believe that there are many schemes of evolution hovering about us, and
+interpenetrating our own, though not visible to our normal
+consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>It may therefore be that "The Great God Pan" did actually come into our
+atmosphere, and thus his individuality impressed itself upon those whose
+minds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> were plastic to such impressions. Possibly he arrived on this
+earth much as an aerolite arrives, drawn out of his own orbit by the
+superior attraction of this globe.</p>
+
+<p>"The Great God Pan" was, what might be termed, the forerunner of the
+devil's reincarnation. The belief in a personal devil was rapidly dying
+out amongst us, in spite of "The Sorrows of Satan," and the belief in
+"The Prince of this World" so insisted upon throughout the Old and New
+Testaments.</p>
+
+<p>There is no more engrossing subject for the occultist to indulge in than
+gathering together every verse in the Bible dealing with "The Evil One,"
+and trying, with the aid of ancient traditions, to piece a coherent
+story together. When one gets a certain distance in the study one comes
+to the conclusion that there is a great deal more in it than meets the
+eye. It is a vast subject, and I think the most profoundly occult
+mystery extant and undeciphered.</p>
+
+<p>The devil now occupies a prominent position in the collective thought of
+the nation. An enormous number of people believe now in his existence,
+who would have scorned the bare idea before 1916. It was in that year
+that he began to loom large in the beliefs of quite materially minded
+people, and his advent into actual, active existence at once complicated
+matters terribly.</p>
+
+<p>Said a well-known writer to me, "I think there is something in it. It's
+very tiresome. I was just beginning to settle down in my beliefs, now
+I'm all upset again by this conception of a personal adversary to the
+Supreme Ruler."</p>
+
+<p>In the early weeks of 1917 a new impression drifted in on us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Some angel came down and stirred the pool of the world, and left with us
+"The Sacred Heart."</p>
+
+<p>"The Sacred Heart" was the forerunner of "The New Jeanne d'Arc," Claire
+Ferchaud.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing that has more astonished the Catholic world than
+hearing "The Sacred Heart" talked of by Protestants, and actually
+adopted by them as a sacred symbol. Hitherto it has been exclusively a
+part of Catholic worship.</p>
+
+<p>There was such a demand for the little metal "Sacred Heart" images (a
+figure of the Christ, with hands outstretched and a flaming heart at His
+breast), that can be carried about in the pocket, that they were not to
+be bought in England, and were hard to procure abroad. Enormous numbers
+had been sent to the front by persons belonging to all denominations,
+who treasured one of their own at home. Very suddenly "The Sacred Heart"
+became an object of veneration amongst thousands to whom Roman
+Catholicism was anathema.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the demand from France that "The Sacred Heart" should be
+placed above the tricolor.</p>
+
+<p>I had not heard of Claire Ferchaud before the beginning of 1918, though
+her Divine Mission began about six years previously.</p>
+
+<p>Occultists began to speak of her amongst themselves as one who would yet
+save France. This hope was never lost sight of in the country's darkest
+hours. Now there is a steadily growing demand amongst the educated
+British public to learn all that can be known about this girl who has
+been called "The New Joan of Arc."</p>
+
+<p>In 1916 she was summoned to appear before an Ecclesiastical Commission
+at Poitiers in the same room<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> in which "The Maid of Orleans" was
+interrogated, before being placed at the head of the Army of
+deliverance.</p>
+
+<p>Both Claire Ferchaud and her communications were subjected to the
+strictest scrutiny. The result was entirely in her favor. Her writings
+were examined by Father Vaudrious, D.D., M.S.D., who declared them
+inspired, and equal to those of St. Catherine of Sienna and St. Teresa.
+Finally they were taken to Rome, and submitted to a commission appointed
+by the Holy See. The result being that she was ordered to continue her
+mission. The writings deal with devotion to "The Sacred Heart" and the
+dignity of priesthood.</p>
+
+<p>One is irresistibly reminded of the opening scenes at Lourdes, whilst
+Bernadette Soubirons was alive, in 1858. Again, one cannot but recall a
+certain similarity betwixt certain events in the life of the Maid of
+Orleans and the events taking place now in the life of Claire Ferchaud.</p>
+
+<p>Claire is a girl twenty-two years old, the daughter of a peasant
+proprietor in the village of Ranfilli&egrave;res, a mile from Lublande, Deux
+S&egrave;vres Dept., France. Her parents are alive, and she has two sisters and
+three brothers. The father and one brother fought during the war,
+another brother was a prisoner, and the youngest assists on the farm.
+One of the sisters works on the farm, and the eldest sister is a
+r&eacute;ligieuse at the community of La Sagesse.</p>
+
+<p>Claire was tending her father's flocks when the first great revelation
+came to her nine years ago; then she was but thirteen years old. She had
+crept into a thicket to read, and suddenly the Divine Master appeared to
+her and bade her lay down her book. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> told her she had been chosen for
+a Divine Mission, and that He would guide and instruct her. He showed
+her "The Sacred Heart" covered with wounds.</p>
+
+<p>On recounting her vision to her priest, she was treated with coldness
+and disbelief, and on her telling him two years later that Our Lord
+daily appeared to her in Holy Communion she was treated still more
+coldly.</p>
+
+<p>Until he himself received a sign he maintained an attitude of utter
+disbelief. What happened soon after whilst he was celebrating Holy Mass,
+entirely convinced him.</p>
+
+<p>At that particular part of the Canon when the priest divides the Sacred
+Species he saw blood issue from the Sacred Host. Nor was this all. A
+week afterwards he observed Claire Ferchaud in a trance in his own
+church, and he saw her using a handkerchief as if wiping some object in
+front of her, which he could not see. Blood stains appeared on the
+handkerchief, and increased as she repeated the action.</p>
+
+<p>Filled with amazement he sought later for an explanation, and she told
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Our Lord appeared before me suffering greatly because of the terrible
+sins of the world, and He asked me to do for Him what Veronica did on
+the road to Calvary. To wipe away the bloody sweat that trickled down
+His face. I saw the Sacred Heart, riddled with wounds, and the deepest
+wound of all was inflicted by France, the eldest daughter of the Church,
+on whom He had lavished so deep a love. Once before He appeared to me
+walking upon ears of corn which He crushed to powder."</p>
+
+<p>The priest after hearing this explanation took the handkerchief to the
+bishop, who listened to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> wonderful story with sympathetic attention.
+He examined the blood-stained handkerchief minutely, and sent for a nun.
+"If," he said, "the stains are what they are represented to be they
+cannot be washed out."</p>
+
+<p>The bishop put the matter to the test, and watched the nun endeavoring
+to remove the stains. It was all in vain, and the bishop standing by his
+own test declared the mission of Claire Ferchaud to be Divine.</p>
+
+<p>Every night, between eleven and twelve o'clock, Claire beholds
+apparitions, and receives the sacred teaching that was promised, and it
+was in 1916 that she was ordered to Poitiers to undergo
+cross-examination.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately the further development of Claire Ferchaud's mission
+cannot yet be communicated to the world, but in time it will be, and
+very startling and wonderful it will seem.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile she encountered very strong opposition. With considerable
+difficulty the Deputy of Vend&eacute;e arranged a meeting between Claire and M.
+Poincar&eacute;. Claire implored him to permit the emblem of the Sacred Heart
+to be placed on the Standards of France, as the one condition of
+success. Unfortunately M. Poincar&eacute; had to refuse, owing to political
+reasons, though as proof of her mission she disclosed an incident only
+known to him which happened after the victory of the Marne.</p>
+
+<p>The same adverse influence operated at her interview with M. Clemenceau.
+This appointment was arranged by the Archbishop of Rheims, Cardinal
+Lucon. The Archbishop implored M. Clemenceau to fix a day of public
+intercession for France. This also the Prime Minister of France had
+reluctantly to refuse.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is openly stated that before the later French successes the emblem of
+the Sacred Heart was secretly sewn upon the flags of France, and it is
+also affirmed that General Foch is a devoted lover of the Sacred Heart,
+and bears its emblem with him wherever he goes.</p>
+
+<p>Great changes have come about in the village where Claire Ferchaud
+dwells. Formerly a sleepy, neglected little place, it is now converted
+into a scene of the greatest activity.</p>
+
+<p>From all parts of France the pilgrims come&mdash;some on foot, having walked
+many miles, some in motors and horse-driven vehicles. Hundreds of
+soldiers find their way there, and it is estimated that from fifteen to
+twenty thousand people pass through Lublande in a month.</p>
+
+<p>With the consent of her bishop, Claire Ferchaud has formed a small
+community of nine, and is now established in a temporary convent
+adjacent to her parish church at Lublande. It is believed that her
+Divine Mission will be accomplished in 1922, and that she will then be
+released from earthly life.</p>
+
+<p>Claire has predicted a stormy period for France after peace has been
+signed. According to her prophecy there will be violent unrest until
+rulers arise who possess firm religious convictions. At the beginning of
+the war she affirmed that the French Army would never prosper until the
+troops were commanded by a true son of the Church. This affirmation she
+claimed to receive from a Divine source. When Mar&eacute;chal Foch took over
+the supreme command she was satisfied that victory, so far as the French
+arms were concerned, was assured.</p>
+
+<p>As all the world knows, and as all may learn who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> read Hyndman's life of
+his old friend Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France, like the
+majority of his colleagues, is frankly atheistical. Claire Ferchaud
+claims to have received the Divine intimation that until this condition
+of mind is superseded by a public acknowledgment of a supreme divine
+power, a supreme arbiter over the destinies of the world, the affairs of
+France can never prosper. She predicts that in 1922 rulers will arise
+who will bow before a Power superior to their own human energies.</p>
+
+<p>The first part of her prophecy has come true. A man of God won his way
+to the front, and saved France and the Allies at the darkest hour of
+their tribulation.</p>
+
+<p>The supreme command was vested in a man of profound religious
+convictions, who carried his beliefs and observances openly into the
+arena of war.</p>
+
+<p>I translate the words written lately to me by one who has served under
+Ferdinand Foch. They throw a brilliant light upon a great soul.</p>
+
+<p>"I can see him now, alone and unattended, at an hour when the Church of
+Cassel was deserted, praying and seeking comfort in the great sorrow, of
+which he never spoke. He had lost his only son, and one of his daughters
+was widowed. In spite of his indomitable energy there was about him an
+air of profound melancholy and sadness.</p>
+
+<p>"At certain moments his eyes seemed to say, 'I approach the twilight of
+my life in the consciousness of being a good servant who will repose in
+the peace of God. My faith in life eternal, in a good God, has sustained
+me in my hardest hours. Prayer has illumined my soul. See to it, you
+young men of France, who are without a great ideal, without any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
+conception of the spiritual side of life, there can be nothing for you
+but discouragement and feebleness. We demand of you great sacrifices to
+the end. Accept those sacrifices as I accept mine, who believe that
+spirit must prevail over matter.'"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<h3>HAUNTED HOUSES&mdash;"CASTEL A MARE"</h3>
+
+
+<p>I have never yet met any one who was not interested in haunted houses.
+Even the most blatant skeptic always wants to "hear all about it,"
+though he has predetermined to treat the story with his habitual
+scoffing incredulity. Of all the departments of psychical research none
+commands more general interest than a "spooky" house, and there are few
+people who cannot name a dwelling which has acquired the reputation for
+being haunted by denizens of the other world.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, any house that falls into serious disrepair, and remains
+unoccupied for some long period, any dwelling whose owner permits decay
+to proceed unchecked, and dilapidation to run its course, at once
+suggests the thought to the beholder, "what a haunted looking old
+place," and rumor, in such cases, quickly supplies all the old
+phenomena, even though tradition be totally absent. Tramps are always on
+the lookout for such shelters, and their damped-down fires catch the eye
+of some scared rustic who happens to be passing in the dark. Rats and
+the winds of heaven play hide-and-seek through the deserted rooms and
+corridors, and owls find sanctuary in the surrounding gardens. Their
+cries, varying from the exultant shriek to the mournful wail, add a
+weird suggestiveness to the abiding melancholy of such abandoned
+habitations.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is so much talk nowadays of hauntings and ghosts, that it seems
+strange we should know so very little about them. I have never heard a
+really convincing explanation of why ghosts should haunt certain houses,
+and I have no explanation of my own to offer. If ghosts could be
+commanded, if one could be sure of witnessing certain phenomena that
+have been elaborately described to one, then there might be the ghost of
+a chance of advantageous investigation. No such opportunities seem to be
+afforded the investigator. He may watch for months and see nothing, yet
+the elusive wraith may turn up before several witnesses on the very
+night after he has abandoned his quest out of sheer boredom and
+discouragement.</p>
+
+<p>Some seven years ago, whilst wintering in Torquay, I heard a great deal
+of gossip about a villa on the Warberries, which was reputed to be badly
+haunted. For the last forty to fifty years nobody, it was said, had been
+able to live in it for any length of time. Several people asserted that
+they had heard screams coming from it as they passed along the high
+road, and no occupant had ever been able to keep a door shut or even
+locked.</p>
+
+<p>The house is at present being pulled down, therefore I commit no
+indiscretion in describing the phenomena connected with it.</p>
+
+<p>"Castel a Mare" is situated in what house agents would describe as "a
+highly residential quarter." It is surrounded by numerous villas,
+inhabited by people who are all very "well to do," and who make Torquay
+their permanent home. The majority of these villas lie right back from
+the road, and are hidden in their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> own luxuriant gardens, but the
+haunted house is one of several whose back premises open straight on to
+the road.</p>
+
+<p>No dwelling could have looked more commonplace or uninteresting. It was
+built in the form of a high box, three storied. It was hideous and
+inartistic in the extreme, but along its frontage looking towards the
+sea and hidden from the road, there ran a wide balcony on to which the
+second floor rooms opened, and from there the view over the garden was
+charming. When I first went to look at it, dilapidation had set in.
+Jackdaws and starlings were busy in the chimneys, the paint was peeling
+off the walls, and most of the windows were broken. Year after year
+those windows were mended, but they never remained intact for more than
+a week, and during the war there has been no attempt at renewal. Even
+the agents' boards, "To be let or sold" dropped one by one from their
+stems, as if in sheer weariness of so fruitless an announcement.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before I obtained the loan of the keys, and proceeded to
+"take the atmosphere." It was decidedly unhealthful, I concluded, though
+I neither heard nor saw anything unusual during the hour I spent alone
+in quietly wandering through the deserted rooms. I found no trace of
+tramps, and all the closed windows were thickly cobwebbed <i>inside</i>, an
+important fact to notice in psychic research. I fixed upon the bathroom
+and one other small room, as the <i>foci</i> of the trouble, and left the
+house with no other strong impression than that my movements had been
+closely watched, by some one unseen by me. It was no uncommon sight in
+pre-war days to see several<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> smart motor cars drawn up at the gate.
+Frivolous parties of explorers in search of a thrill drove in from the
+surrounding neighborhood, and romped gayly through the house and out
+again, and I discovered that several of those visitors had distinctly
+felt that they were being followed about and watched.</p>
+
+<p>My husband and I were naturally much interested in this haunted
+dwelling, so accessible, and so near to our own house. We determined
+that if we could make friends with the owner we would do a little
+investigation on our own. Numerous people, on the plea that the house
+might suit them as a residence, got the loan of the keys, and spent an
+hour or two inside the place, wandering about the house and garden, but
+the owner was getting tired of this rush of spurious house-hunters. He
+was beginning to ask for <i>bona fides</i>, so we determined honestly to
+state our purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The proprietor was an old builder who owned several other houses. He
+received me very civilly, even gratefully. He would willingly give us
+the keys for as long a period as we required them. "Castel a Mare"
+brought him extreme bad luck; he longed to be rid of it, and he added
+that after our investigations, if my husband could give the house a
+clean bill of health it would be of enormous benefit to him, in enabling
+him to let or sell it. He did not seem very hopeful, but stated it to be
+his opinion that the hauntings were all nonsense, and that the screams
+people heard were the cries of some peacocks that lived in a property
+not far off. This sounded very reasonable, and I promised him that if we
+could honestly state that the house was perfectly unhealthful, we would
+permit our conclusions to be made public.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>My husband and I decided that the hour one p. m. till two p. m. would be
+the quietest and least conspicuous time in which to investigate.
+Doubtless the night would have been better still, but it would have
+created too much excitement in the neighborhood, and callers to see "how
+we were bearing up" would have defeated our object. Between one and two
+all Torquay would be lunching, and we could easily slip in unobserved,
+and we would require neither lights nor warm comforts.</p>
+
+<p>We started at once, my husband keeping the keys, and making himself
+responsible for the doors. Though the window-panes were badly broken
+there were no openings large enough to admit a small child, and, as I
+have said, the network of cobwebs within was evidence that no human
+being entered the house by the windows. The front door lock was in good
+order, and so were most of the other locks in the house. We shut
+ourselves in, and after a thorough examination of the premises we
+mounted to the first floor. Three rooms opened on to it, belonging to
+the principal bedroom&mdash;a smaller room and a bathroom opening out of the
+big bedroom. My husband closed all the doors, and we sat down on the
+lower steps of the bare staircase leading to the floor above. That day
+we drew an absolute blank, and at two o'clock we closed every door in
+the house, and just inside the front door we made a careless looking
+arrangement of twigs, dead leaves, pieces of straw and dust, which could
+not fail to betray the passing of human feet, should anybody possess a
+duplicate key to the front door and enter by that means.</p>
+
+<p>The second day we found our twig and straw arrangements intact, but not
+a single door was shut,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> all were thrown defiantly wide. This seemed
+rather promising and we went upstairs to our seat on the steps, and
+carefully reclosing the doors immediately in front of us, sat down to
+await events.</p>
+
+<p>Quite half an hour must have passed when suddenly a click made us both
+look up. The handle of the door, but a couple of yards distant from me,
+leading into the small room, was turning, and the door quietly opened
+wide enough to admit the passing of a human being. It was a bright sunny
+day, and one could see the brass knob turning round quite distinctly. We
+saw no form of any sort, and the door remained half open. For perhaps a
+couple of moments we awaited developments, then our attention was
+suddenly switched off the door by the sound of hurrying footsteps
+running along the bare boards on the corridor above us. My husband
+rushed up and searched each empty room, but neither saw anything nor
+heard anything more. Before leaving the house we shut all doors, and
+locked all that would lock. Such was the meager extent of our second
+day's investigations.</p>
+
+<p>On the third day the doors were all found wide flung. No door opened
+before our eyes as on our former visit, but a brushing sound was heard
+ascending the stairs, as if from some one pressing close against the
+wall.</p>
+
+<p>For about a fortnight nothing happened beyond what I have recounted, but
+I was strongly conscious that we were being watched. The most
+unhealthful spots were the bathroom, a servants' room entered by a
+staircase leading from the kitchen, and the stable, a small building
+immediately to the right of the house. The bathroom was in great
+disrepair, long strips of paper hung from the walls, and an air of
+profound<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> depression pervaded it. Obviously it had once been merely a
+large cupboard, and it had a window admitting light from a passage
+behind it.</p>
+
+<p>We had never once failed to find every door which we had closed thrown
+wide on our return, and one day we locked the bathroom, and removing the
+key we looked about for some spot in which to secrete it. On that floor
+was nothing large enough to hide even so small an object as a key, so we
+took it downstairs to the dining-room. In a corner lay a rag of linoleum
+about six inches square, under this we placed the bathroom key and left
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon a house agent called and asked for the loan of the keys.
+He told us that a brave widow, who knew the history of the house,
+thought it might suit her to live in, and he proposed to take her over
+it and point out its charms. He would return the keys to us directly
+afterwards. I took advantage of this occasion to say to the agent that
+probably the screams some people had heard proceeded from the peacocks
+in the neighborhood.</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head and answered, "We hoped that might prove to be the
+case, but we have ascertained that it is not so." He seemed despondent
+about the place, even though what we had to tell him was as yet nothing
+very formidable or exciting. What we did not tell him was that we had
+locked up the bathroom, and hidden the key. We left him to discover that
+fact for himself.</p>
+
+<p>He returned with the keys in about an hour, and I asked him what the
+widow thought of "Castel a Mare."</p>
+
+<p>"She thinks something might be made of it. The cheapness attracts her,"
+he answered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But it will need so much doing to it," I demurred. "What did she think
+of the bathroom?"</p>
+
+<p>"She said it only needed cleaning and repapering. The bath itself she
+found in good enough condition."</p>
+
+<p>So the bathroom door was open, in spite of our having locked it and
+hidden the key!</p>
+
+<p>After the agent had gone we went to the house. Every door stood wide.
+The bathroom key was still in its hiding-place, and the door open. We
+replaced the key. The ghosts laughed to scorn such securities as locks
+and keys.</p>
+
+<p>For a month or two we pursued our investigations, then we returned the
+keys to the owner. Though we had seen and heard so little it was
+impossible to give the house a clean bill of health, and the old builder
+was much cast down. A few days afterwards we received a letter from him
+offering us the house as a free gift. It would pay him to be rid of the
+ground rent, and the place was as useless to him as to any one else. We
+thanked him and refused the gift.</p>
+
+<p>About this period I was lucky enough to get into touch with a former
+tenant of "Castel a Mare," and this lady most kindly gave me many
+details of her residence there. About thirty years ago she occupied it
+with her father and mother, and they were the last family to live in it
+for any length of time, and for many years it has remained empty.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after their arrival this family discovered that there was something
+very much amiss with their new residence. The house, the garden, and the
+stable were decidedly uncanny, but it was some time before they would
+admit, even to themselves, that the strange happenings were of a
+supernatural order.</p>
+
+<p>The phenomena fell under three headings: a piercing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> scream heard
+continually, at any hour and during all seasons; continuous steps
+running along corridors, and up and down stairs; constant lockings of
+doors by unseen hands.</p>
+
+<p>The scream was decidedly the most unnerving of the various phenomena.
+The family lived in constant dread of it. Sometimes it came from the
+garden, sometimes from inside the house. One morning whilst they sat at
+breakfast, they were violently startled by this horrible sound coming
+from the inner hall, just outside the room in which they sat. It took
+but a moment to throw open the door, but, as usual, there was nothing to
+be seen.</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion the family doctor had just arrived at the front
+door, and was about to ring, when he was startled by the scream coming
+from inside the house. This doctor still lives in the neighborhood, and
+is one of many people who can bear witness to the fact.</p>
+
+<p>The footsteps of unseen people kept the family pretty busy. They were
+always running to the doors to see who was hurrying past, and up and
+down stairs. Very soon the drawing-room became extremely uncomfortable,
+and practically uninhabitable. It was always full of unseen people
+moving about. The lady of the house never felt herself alone, and when
+she found herself locked into her own room, the behavior of her astral
+guests seemed to her to have become intolerable. The master of the house
+no more escaped these attentions than did the rest of the inhabitants,
+and finally all keys had to be removed from all doors.</p>
+
+<p>One night some guests, after getting into bed, heard some one open the
+door of their room and enter. Astonishment kept them silent, and in a
+minute or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> two their visitor quietly withdrew and closed the door again.
+They concluded that it must have been their hostess, and that thinking
+they were asleep she had not spoken, yet still they thought the incident
+very strange. The next morning they discovered that no member of the
+household had entered their room.</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion a lady who had come to help nurse a sick sister saw,
+one night, a strange woman dressed in black velvet walk downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>Animals fared badly at "Castel a Mare." A large dog belonging to the
+family was often found cowering and growling in abject fear of something
+visible to it, but not to the human inhabitants, and the harness horse
+showed such an invincible objection to its stable, that it could only be
+got in by backing.</p>
+
+<p>Later on I was told that a member of the Psychical Society had visited
+"Castel a Mare," and had pronounced the garden to be more haunted than
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting to note how absolutely untenable badly haunted houses
+become. No matter how skeptical, how resolutely material the tenants may
+be, the phenomena wear them down to a humble surrender at last. After
+all, what can people do but quit a residence which is constantly showing
+incontrovertible evidence that it is possessed by numerous unseen
+entities that defy analysis?</p>
+
+<p>Every one is interested in getting rid of this weird disturbance, but
+how to do it? The skeptic is resolute in unmasking the fraud, but finds
+himself balked by intangibility. He hears the scream at his door, and
+rushes to arrest the miscreant, but sees no one to grapple with.
+Domestic difficulties become acute. No warning is given, no wages asked.
+The servants decamp, too scared to care for anything but putting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+distance between themselves and the nameless dread. Visitors begin to
+fight shy of the house. They have heard the screams.</p>
+
+<p>Month after month the master of the house, thinking of his rent, and his
+reputation for sanity, and what the loss of both would mean to him,
+clings to skepticism as his only hope and refuge. He is not going to be
+driven forth by any such stuff and nonsense as ghosts! Why! there are no
+such things! "Seen things? heard things?" Well, yes, he has, but, of
+course, there must be some rational explanation. A man who has fought
+for king and country is not going to be defeated and put to flight by a
+pack of silly women's stories. He will soon get to the bottom of the
+whole affair, then woe betide the practical joker!</p>
+
+<p>When alone he racks his brains in vain. He is furious with himself for
+having heard the scream, and tells himself he must be "going dotty." He
+is puzzled, baffled, irritated, but more determined than ever to "stick
+it out." Who can the "joker" be who is demoralizing his household, who
+has even dared to lock him into his own room? He thinks of his wife and
+family, and of their shattered nerves; he thinks of his terrified
+servants, and of his dog, which can no longer be persuaded to enter the
+house. He feels he must look elsewhere for the disturber of his peace.
+But where? He keeps careful watch unknown (as he thinks) to his family.
+The steps approach him, pass close to him, then die away in the
+distance, leaving him fuming, impotent. He finds it necessary to wipe
+his brow, which enrages him still more. At dead of night he watches on
+the staircase, with all lights full on.</p>
+
+<p>Silence, utter silence! Absolutely nothing to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> seen or heard. He
+thinks of going to bed. He always said the whole thing was "tommy rot."
+The deathly silence is suddenly rent by a piercing scream at his very
+elbow, and he leaps to his feet, growling out an oath below his breath.
+He looks wildly round on every side of him. Nothing! Something strange
+is happening to his head. He passes his hand over his hair. It seems to
+be creeping along his scalp, and he thinks of the quills of a porcupine.
+"What the devil is he to do?" "Go to bed," answers inclination, "you're
+doing no good here. Yes! Go to bed; that's the sensible thing to do."</p>
+
+<p>The next morning every one asks him if he heard "it." He acknowledges to
+himself that his temper is becoming vile.</p>
+
+<p>The day comes when he is left alone with his family. The staff has fled
+and he feels rather broken.</p>
+
+<p>At last he gives in, and agrees to seek another home, but it is not to
+the ghosts he gives in, but to the nervous fancies of a pack of silly
+women. He feels wonderfully light-hearted, however, now that his mind is
+made up, and a glow of magnanimity pervades him. "If you do a thing at
+all do it well and <i>at once</i>," he tells himself, and promptly hires
+another house in another neighborhood.</p>
+
+<p>When questioned by his men friends he laughs. The man in the street
+might understand certain things that he could tell, but the man in the
+club, never! "All tommy rot, my dear chap, but my wife got nervous, and
+the servants! You know what they are. Scared by the scratch of a mouse.
+For the women's sake I thought it best to quit. You know what women are,
+when they once get an idea into their heads!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SEQUEL</h3>
+
+
+<p>In 1917 a friend rang me up and asked me if I would form one of a party
+of investigation at "Castel a Mare." The services of a medium had been
+secured, and a soldier on leave, who was deeply immersed in psychic
+research, was in high hopes of getting some genuine results.</p>
+
+<p>I accepted the invitation because a certain incident had once more
+roused my curiosity in the haunted house.</p>
+
+<p>During our investigations I had been disappointed at not hearing the
+much-talked-of scream, the more so after learning from the former
+tenants how very often they had heard it. When I did at last hear it I
+was walking past the house on a very hot summer morning, about eleven
+o'clock. I was not thinking of the house, and had just passed it on my
+way home, when a piercing scream arrested my attention. I wheeled round
+instantly; there was not a doubt as to where the scream came from, but
+unfortunately, though there were people on the road, there was no one
+near enough to bear witness. The scream appeared to come from some one
+in abject terror, and would have arrested the attention of any one who
+happened to be passing. I mean that had no haunted house stood there,
+had the scream proceeded from any other villa, I am sure that any
+passer-by would have halted wonderingly, and awaited further
+developments.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Castel a Mare" lay in absolute silence, under the blazing sunshine, and
+in a minute or two I walked on. I could now understand what it must have
+meant to live in that house, in constant dread of that weird and hideous
+sound resounding through the rooms or garden.</p>
+
+<p>This incident made me eager to join my friend's party, and on reaching
+the house I found a small crowd assembled.</p>
+
+<p>The medium, myself, and four other women. The soldier, and an elderly
+and burly builder belonging to the neighborhood, who was interested in
+psychic research. Eight persons in all.</p>
+
+<p>As there was no chair or furniture of any description in the house, we
+carried in a small empty box from a rubbish heap outside, and followed
+the medium through the rooms. She elected to remain in the large
+bedroom, on the first floor, out of which opened the bathroom, and she
+sat down on the box and leaned her back against the wall, whilst we
+lounged about the room and awaited events. It was a sunny summer
+afternoon, and the many broken panes of glass throughout the house
+admitted plenty of air.</p>
+
+<p>After some minutes it was plain to see that the medium had fallen into a
+trance. Her eyes were closed, and she lay back as if in sound sleep.
+Time passed, nothing happened, we were all rather silent, as I had
+warned the party that though we were in a room at the side of the house
+farthest from the road, our voices could plainly be heard by passers-by,
+and we wanted no interference.</p>
+
+<p>Just as we were all beginning to feel rather bored and tired of
+standing, the medium sprang to her feet with surprising agility, pouring
+out a volume of violent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> language. Her voice had taken on the deep
+growling tones of an infuriated man, who advanced menacingly towards
+those of us who were nearest to him. In harsh, threatening voice he
+demanded to know what right we had to intrude on his privacy.</p>
+
+<p>There was a general scattering of the scared party before this
+unlooked-for attack, and the soldier gave it as his opinion that the
+medium was now controlled by the spirit of a very violent male entity. I
+had no doubt upon the point.</p>
+
+<p>Then commenced so very unpleasant a scene that I had no doubt also of
+the medium's genuineness. No charlatan, dependent upon fraudulent
+mediumship for her daily bread, would have made herself so intensely
+obnoxious as did this frail little woman. I found myself saying, "Never
+again. This isn't good enough."</p>
+
+<p>The entity that controlled her possessed superhuman strength. His voice
+was like the bellow of a bull, as he told us to be gone, or he would
+throw us out himself, and his language was shocking.</p>
+
+<p>I had warned the medium on entering the house that we must be as quiet
+as possible, or we would have the police walking in on us. Now I
+expected any moment to see a policeman, or some male stranger arrive on
+the scene, and demand to know what was the matter.</p>
+
+<p>The majority of our party were keeping at a safe distance, but suddenly
+the control rushed full tilt at the soldier, who had stood his ground,
+and attacking him with a tigerish fury drew blood at once. The big
+builder and I rushed forward to his aid. The rest of the party forsook
+us and fled, pell-mell, out of the house and into the garden. Glancing
+through a window,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> near which we fought, I saw below a row of scared
+faces staring up in awed wonder.</p>
+
+<p>The scene being enacted was really amazing. This frail little creature
+threw us off like feathers, and drove us foot by foot before her, always
+heading us off the bathroom. We tried to stand our ground, and dodge her
+furious lunges, but she was too much for us. After a desperate scuffle,
+which lasted quite seven or eight minutes, and resulted in much torn
+clothing, she drove us out of the room and on to the landing. Then
+suddenly, without warning, the entity seemed to evacuate the body he had
+controlled, and the medium went down with a crash and lay at our feet,
+just a little crumpled disheveled heap.</p>
+
+<p>For some considerable time I thought that she was dead. Her lips were
+blue, and I could feel no pulse. We had neither water nor brandy with
+which to revive her, and we decided to carry her down into the garden
+and see what fresh air would do. Though villas stood all round us, the
+foliage of the trees gave us absolute privacy, and we laid her flat on
+the lawn. There, after about ten minutes, she gradually regained her
+consciousness, and seemingly none the worse for her experiences she sat
+up and asked what had happened.</p>
+
+<p>We did not give her the truth in its entirety, and contrived to account
+for the blood-stained soldier and the torn clothing, without unduly
+shocking and distressing her. We then dispersed; the medium walking off
+as if nothing whatever had occurred to deplete her strength.</p>
+
+<p>Some days after this the soldier begged for another experiment with the
+medium. He had no doubts as to her genuineness, and he was sure that if
+we tried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> again we would get further developments. She was willing to
+try again, and so was the builder, but with one exception the rest of
+the party refused to have anything more to do with the unpleasant
+affair, and the one exception stipulated to remain in the garden. She
+very wisely remarked that if she came into the house there was no
+knowing what entity might not attach itself to her, and return home with
+her, and she was not going to risk it. Of course this real danger always
+had to be counted upon in such investigations, but as the men of the
+party desired a woman to accompany the medium, I consented, and we
+entered the house once more, a reduced party of four.</p>
+
+<p>After the medium had remained entranced for some minutes, the same male
+entity again controlled her. The same violence, the same attacks began
+once more, but this time we were better prepared to defend ourselves.
+The soldier and the stalwart builder warded off the attacks, and tried
+conciliatory expostulations, but all to no purpose. Then the soldier,
+who seemed to have considerable experience in such matters, tried a
+system of exorcising, sternly bidding the malignant entity depart. There
+ensued a very curious spiritual conflict between the exorcist and the
+entity, in which sometimes it seemed as if one, then the other, was
+about to triumph.</p>
+
+<p>Those wavering moments were useful in giving us breathing space from the
+assaults, and at length having failed, as we desired, to get into the
+bathroom, we drove him back against the wall at the far end of the room.
+Finally the exorcist triumphed, and the medium collapsed on the floor,
+as the strength of the control left her.</p>
+
+<p>For a few moments we allowed the crumpled up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> little heap to remain
+where she lay, whilst we mopped our brows and regained our breath. The
+soldier had brought a flask of brandy which we proposed to administer to
+the unconscious medium, but quite suddenly a new development began.</p>
+
+<p>She raised her head, and still crouching on the floor with closed eyes
+she began to cry bitterly. Wailing, and moaning, and uttering
+inarticulate words, she had become the picture of absolute woe.</p>
+
+<p>"Another entity has got hold of her," announced the soldier. It
+certainly appeared to be so.</p>
+
+<p>All signs of violence had gone. The medium had become a heart-broken
+woman.</p>
+
+<p>We raised her to her feet, her condition was pitiable, but her words
+became more coherent.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor master! On the bed. Help him! Help him!" she moaned, and pointed
+to one side of the room. Again and again she indicated, by clenching her
+hands on her throat, that death by strangulation was the culmination of
+some terrible tragedy that had been enacted in that room.</p>
+
+<p>She wandered, in a desolate manner, about the floor, wringing her hands,
+the tears pouring down her cheeks, whilst she pointed to the bed, then
+towards the bathroom with shuddering horror.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly we were startled out of our compassionate sympathy by a
+piercing scream, and my thoughts flew instantly to the experiences of
+the former tenants, and what I myself had heard in passing on that June
+morning of the former year.</p>
+
+<p>The medium had turned at bay, and began a frantic encounter with some
+entity unseen by us. Wildly she wrestled and fought, as if for her life,
+whilst she emitted piercing shrieks for "help." We rushed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> the
+rescue, dragging her away from her invisible assailant, but a
+disembodied fighter has a considerable pull over a fighter in the flesh,
+who possesses something tangible that can be seized. I placed the medium
+behind me, with her back to the wall, but though I pressed her close she
+continued to fight, and I had to defend myself as well as defend her.
+Her assailant was undoubtedly the first terrible entity which had
+controlled her. At intervals she gasped out, "Terrible doctor&mdash;will kill
+me&mdash;he's killed master&mdash;help! help!"</p>
+
+<p>Gradually she ceased to fight. The soldier was exorcising with all his
+force, and was gaining power; finally he triumphed, inasmuch as he
+banished the "terrible doctor."</p>
+
+<p>The medium was, however, still under the control of the broken-hearted
+entity, and began again to wander about the room. We extracted from her
+further details. An approximate date of the tragedy. Her master's name,
+that he was mentally deficient when the murder took place. She was a
+maidservant in the house, and after witnessing the crime she appeared to
+have shared her master's fate, though by what means we could not
+determine. The doctor was a resident physician of foreign origin.</p>
+
+<p>At last we induced her to enter the bathroom, which she seemed to dread,
+and there she fell to lamenting over the dead body of her master, which
+had lain hidden there when the room was used as a large cupboard. It was
+a very painful scene, which was ended abruptly by her falling down
+insensible.</p>
+
+<p>She had collapsed in an awkward corner, but at last we lifted her out,
+and carried her downstairs to the garden. When I tried to revive her
+with brandy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> I found that her teeth were tightly clenched. I then tried
+artificial respiration, as I could feel no pulse. Gradually she came
+back to life, quietly, calmly, and in total ignorance of what had
+occurred. The most amazing thing was that she showed no signs whatever
+of exhaustion or mental fatigue. We were all dead beat, but not so the
+fragile-looking little medium, though externally she looked terribly
+disheveled and draggled.</p>
+
+<p>This was the last time I set foot in the haunted house, which is now
+being demolished, but I still had to experience more of its odd
+phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>The date and names the medium had given us were later on verified by
+means of a record of villa residents, which for many years had been kept
+in the town of Torquay.</p>
+
+<p>There is no one left now who has any interest in verifying a tragic
+story supposed to have been enacted about fifty years ago. It must be
+left in the realms of psychic research, by which means it was dragged to
+light. Certain it is that no such murder came to the knowledge of those
+who were alive then, and live still in Torquay.</p>
+
+<p>If there is any truth in the story it falls under the category of
+undiscovered crimes. The murderer was able somehow to hide his
+iniquities, and escape suspicion and punishment. I do not know if it is
+intended to build another house on the same site. I hope not, for it is
+very probable that a new residence would share the fate of the old.
+Bricks and mortar are no impediment to the free passage of the
+disembodied, and there is no reason why they should not elect to
+manifest for an indefinite period of time.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt that the scream was an actual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> fact. There are so
+many people living who heard it, and are willing to testify to the
+horror of it. Amongst those living people are former tenants, who for
+long bore the nervous strain of its constant recurrence.</p>
+
+<p>There remains one other weird incident in connection with "Castel a
+Mare" which I will now try to describe.</p>
+
+<p>In the winter of 1917 I was engaged in war work which took me out at
+night. Like every other coast town Torquay was plunged at sunset into
+deepest darkness, save when the moon defied the authorities. The road
+leading from the nearest tramcar to our house was not lit at all, and
+one had to stumble along as best one could, even electric torches being
+forbidden.</p>
+
+<p>I was returning home one very dark, still night about a quarter past
+ten, and being very tired I was walking very slowly. Owing to the inky
+darkness I thought it best to walk in the middle of the road, in order
+to avoid the inequalities in the footpath at each garden entrance to the
+villas. At that hour there was no traffic, and not a soul about.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly my steps were arrested by a loud knocking on a window-pane, and
+I collected my thoughts and tried to take my bearings. The sound came
+from the left, where two or three villas stand close to the road. All I
+could distinguish was a denser blot of black against the dense
+surroundings, but by making certain calculations I recognized that I
+stood outside "Castel a Mare." The knocking on the pane lasted only a
+moment or two, and was insistent and peremptory. I jumped to the instant
+conclusion that some one was having "a lark" inside, and was trying to
+"get a rise" out of me. I was too tired to be bothered, and moved on
+again with a strong inclination<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> towards my own warm bed, when the
+knocking rang out more peremptory than ever. It seemed to say "Stop!
+don't go on. I have something to say to you." Involuntarily I stood
+still again, and wished that some human being would pass along the road.
+I really would not have cared who it was, policeman, soldier,
+maidservant. I would have laid hold of them and said, "Do you hear that
+knocking? It comes from the haunted house."</p>
+
+<p>Alas! no one did come. The night lay like an inky pall all about me,
+silent as the grave, save for that commanding order to stop which was
+rapped upon a window-pane whenever I attempted to move on.</p>
+
+<p>Though the being who thus sought to detain me could not possibly
+distinguish who I was, or whether my gender was male or female, he could
+certainly hear my footsteps as I walked, and the cool inconsequence of
+his behavior began to nettle me. I was about to move resolutely on when
+I heard something else. This time something really thrilling!</p>
+
+<p>Peal after peal of light laughter, accompanied by flying feet. But such
+laughter! Thin, high treble laughter, right away up and out of the
+scale, and apparently proceeding from many persons. Such flying feet!
+racing, pattering, rushing feet, light as those of the trained athlete.
+I stood enthralled with wonder, for in the pitch-black darkness of that
+house surely no human feet could avoid disaster. They were rushing up
+and down that steep, bare wooden staircase that I knew so well, and the
+laughter and the swift-winged feet sounded now from the ground floor,
+then could be clearly traced ascending, till they reached the third and
+last floor. Tearing along the empty corridors,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> they began the breakneck
+descent again to the bottom, a pell-mell, wild rush of demented demons
+chasing each other. That is what it sounded like.</p>
+
+<p>I must have stood there for quite ten minutes, longing intensely for
+some one to share in my experiences, but Torquay had gone to bed, and I
+felt it was time for me to do likewise.</p>
+
+<p>What could I make of the affair? Nothing! Rats? Rats don't laugh. Human
+beings having a rag and trying to scare the neighborhood? No human being
+could have run up and down that staircase in such profound darkness. It
+would have been a case of crawling up with a firm hand on the banister
+rail.</p>
+
+<p>I gave up trying to think and turned resolutely away. As I did so the
+knocking began again upon the window-pane.</p>
+
+<p>"Do stop; oh! don't go away. Stop! stop!" it seemed to call after me
+insistently as I quickened my footsteps and gradually outdistanced the
+imperious demand.</p>
+
+<p>What explanation have I to offer? None! The hallucinations of a tired
+woman? That may do for the general public, but not for me. You see, I
+was the person who heard it.</p>
+
+<p>There are many haunted houses that are quite habitable, such as Hampton
+Court Palace, etc. Where the apparition keeps strictly to an
+anniversary, or where the phenomena are mild and inoffensive, their
+presence can be endured with a certain amount of equanimity. The point
+really lies in this. Are the ghosts who haunt a dwelling indifferent to,
+or hostile to, the presence of their companions in the flesh? If the
+situation is according to the latter, then the ghosts will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> certainly
+score. They will rid themselves of the human inhabitants by a
+wearing-down nerve pressure, which cannot be fought against with any
+chance of success. If the ghosts are shy or indifferent, wrapped up in
+their own concerns and containing themselves in a world of their own,
+then there is no reason why the incarnate and discarnate should not live
+peacefully together.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, February 27th, 1919, I read the following in the <i>Morning
+Post</i>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Haunted or disturbed properties. A lady who has deeply studied this
+subject and possesses unusual powers will find out the history of the
+trouble and undertake to remedy it. Houses with persistent bad luck can
+often be freed from the influence. Strictest confidence. Social
+references asked and offered."</p>
+
+<p>What would our grandparents have thought of this means of turning an
+honest penny? I have no doubt the lady "possessing the unusual powers"
+will be employed, and in many cases she will be successful. In the
+majority of cases I venture to say that she will fail, simply because
+the majority of cases are too elusive to be dealt with by human means.
+How would this lady treat the "Castel a Mare" scream? How would she deal
+with the next story I am going to relate?</p>
+
+<p>It is a simple matter to compile a book of thrilling ghost stories if
+direct evidence is not given, if names of persons and places are
+suppressed.</p>
+
+<p>I claim that my stories have a special interest and value, because I
+have tried to restrict them to such as can be attested to by living
+persons, closely related to me either by friendship or by family ties.
+In a very few instances I have been obliged for obvious reasons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> to
+suppress the names of houses and hotels. In these cases I am ready
+personally to supply full information to genuine students of the occult,
+if they are willing to approach me privately.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE HAUNTED LODGE</h3>
+
+
+<p>A considerable number of people are alive who can testify to the truth
+of the facts I now narrate. I regret that I have not been able to
+investigate this case personally, but I hope to do so before very long.</p>
+
+<p>In the spring of 1901, my sister and her husband, Major Stewart, rented
+an old shooting lodge in Argyllshire. The place was charmingly situated,
+the shooting and fishing excellent, and the scenery around was noted for
+its romantic beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Though the main portion of the house was old, a new wing had been added
+for the sleeping accommodation of servants, and this arrangement shut
+them off at night from the ancient part of the dwelling. The original
+kitchen still remained in use.</p>
+
+<p>The servants had been sent on in advance to prepare the lodge, and when
+Major and Mrs. Stewart arrived they were at once confronted with the
+information that the place bore a very evil reputation. The villagers
+had not hesitated to prime the maids with all sorts of creepy stories,
+eminently calculated to cause their precipitate departure. Luckily for
+the master and mistress the maids had been with them for some years, and
+were neither of a timid age nor disposition, so the household settled
+comfortably down, in those long spring and summer days, which in the
+north means practically no darkness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>My sister had banished the alleged hauntings from her mind, and probably
+the maids had done likewise, for all was going quietly and well, when
+suddenly, after a week's residence, there came a rude reminder.</p>
+
+<p>Major and Mrs. Stewart were both awakened one night by unmistakable
+sounds of very noisy burglars, who appeared to have broken into the
+house through the kitchen quarters. The major lit a candle, and looked
+at his watch. It was just on midnight. What puzzled them both was the
+noise the intruders made. Burglars naturally tread softly and
+stealthily, but these men stamped about in heavy boots, and were engaged
+in throwing about heavy articles. There seemed to be quite a number of
+accomplices involved in the enterprise, and they displayed an amazing
+indifference to detection.</p>
+
+<p>My sister and her husband decided that events could not be left to take
+their course. This matter must be looked into. The major armed himself
+with a loaded revolver. My sister armed herself with a lighted candle
+and a box of matches, and together they crept softly downstairs on their
+way to the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>All this time the noises continued. Stamping of heavy feet, crashing
+down of heavy weights, but on the way downstairs a first glimmering that
+the supernatural came into this affair began to dawn upon my sister. She
+became aware that an invisible presence was following them.</p>
+
+<p>The noises continued as they cautiously and silently crept towards the
+kitchen. As they reached the door, suddenly utter silence fell. Inside
+nothing was disarranged. There were no signs of burglars, everything was
+as usual.</p>
+
+<p>Considerably mystified Major and Mrs. Stewart returned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> to bed, and were
+not disturbed again that night.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, about four o'clock in the afternoon, the same sounds began
+again. This time the noise was easily located in one of the unused
+bedrooms on the top floor of the house. Heavily shod men were tramping
+about the floor overhead, throwing down heavy boxes and making a
+considerable disturbance.</p>
+
+<p>Major and Mrs. Stewart ascended on tiptoe, and when outside the closed
+door listened intently. There was no mistake this time. Nothing could
+sound more human than the activity going on inside that room. Half a
+dozen men at least were in possession of it, and those men had to be
+confronted. Luckily they had no means of escape. This time they really
+would be caught.</p>
+
+<p>After a few minutes of silent listening the major, whose hand was on the
+knob, threw open the door and bounded into the room.</p>
+
+<p>Instant silence&mdash;nothing&mdash;not even the whisk of a defiant rat's tail!</p>
+
+<p>The husband and wife sat down and stared at one another in utter
+bewilderment. The bright spring daylight seemed to mock them as it
+flooded every chink and cranny.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after this occurrence three guests came to stay, two women and a
+man. They were given bedrooms on the top floor, but the room whence the
+disturbance had come was left severely alone. The household, with one
+accord, welcomed their advent as a pleasant distraction, and it was
+unanimously agreed that they should be kept in absolute ignorance of
+what had taken place.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning the three guests all had the same story to tell, of
+having had no sleep. Heavily booted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> men kept passing their doors, and
+heavy articles were flung about in adjacent rooms. They had spent a
+night of terror. No one had possessed sufficient courage to look out
+into the corridor, along which the men were passing, and they had kept
+lights burning in their rooms till full daybreak. They refused to sleep
+again upon that floor.</p>
+
+<p>My sister moved them down to the second floor, on which she herself
+slept, and a thorough investigation of the house, outside and inside,
+was made. No conclusion was come to.</p>
+
+<p>The noises continued on the following night, but being overhead, and
+more distant, they were more endurable.</p>
+
+<p>A second male guest now arrived, and the assembled household waited in
+breathless interest to see how the ghosts would affect him. Nothing
+whatever was told to him, and he was lodged in a bedroom immediately
+underneath the noisy one.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, after all had passed a disturbed night, it was found
+that some of the noises had proceeded from the new guest. He had carried
+some of his blankets out into the garden and had slept there. He
+remained on, but refused to sleep in the house, and a tent was rigged up
+for him outside. He stated that the disturbances were too much for his
+nerves, though he had no idea what they were. His behavior, on the first
+night, in retiring to the garden, was meant as a strong protest against
+such treatment of a tired guest. His temper had got the upper hand of
+him, after fruitless efforts to sleep, and, finally, he had tramped
+downstairs with an armful of blankets, anticipating many apologies next
+morning from host and hostess, and a peaceful night to follow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The following day a new maid arrived. She slept in the old part of the
+house, and shortly afterwards asked my sister if the house was haunted,
+as she had been kept awake by "heavy people running past her door with
+naked feet."</p>
+
+<p>By this time it was only the influence of the staid old servants which
+prevented the younger ones from taking flight. My sister and her husband
+were not alarmed, they were profoundly interested.</p>
+
+<p>The summer passed on, and there were days and weeks when nothing was
+heard, then quite suddenly the disturbances would begin again. As the
+noises sounded so very human it was extremely difficult to believe that
+they really did not proceed from incarnate beings, and my sister told me
+that time after time, as she listened, she would say to herself, "Now,
+beyond a shadow of doubt there are men in that room." She would creep
+upstairs, listen for some time with her hand on the door-knob&mdash;then
+suddenly throw it open&mdash;to find nothing. She never wearied of trying to
+surprise those invisible men.</p>
+
+<p>At times when her husband was away from home, she would spend the entire
+night in an obstinate attempt to solve the mystery. When she had no
+guests, and the servants were asleep in their new wing, she would awake
+to the noise. Taking her candle she would mount on bare, silent feet to
+the floor above, and listen at the door, often for half an hour at a
+time. She had no fear, but intense curiosity. It was easy to trace what
+was going on in the room. Men were packing, moving heavy boxes, throwing
+down heavy articles, walking about the floor with ponderous tread. First
+they would be at one end of the room, then move on to the other.
+Sometimes they approached so near the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> door behind which she stood, that
+she expected to see it open, and to be confronted by several burly
+ruffians. She would rush suddenly in, candle in hand, only to be
+received in sudden, utter silence. Not even the scurry of a scared
+mouse. After half an hour of patient waiting within the room, she would
+leave it, close the door, and sit down on the staircase. In a few
+moments the disturbance was again in full swing.</p>
+
+<p>Were I writing an account of these hauntings for the Psychical Society I
+should go into the most minute details; suffice it here to say, that
+during all this time every sort of investigation had been carried out by
+practical men and women, who had personally heard the disturbances, and
+who were keenly interested in the phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>Rats were, of course, the first natural suggestion, but no one put forth
+this theory after having once, with their own ears, heard the
+disturbances. No one could advance any rational conclusion. The whole
+affair was baffling in the extreme.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been simple enough to leave the place and forfeit the
+rent, but my sister and her husband loved the sport and the beauty of
+the surroundings, and were determined to remain, unless anything worse
+developed. No one ever saw anything unpleasant, or even suggestive of
+the supernatural, and the whole household had become more or less
+indifferent to the noises. They brought no harm to anybody, and might be
+safely ignored.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Stewart had four Pomeranian dogs which did not produce a calming
+effect upon their human companions. They were constantly seeing things,
+bristling and showing every sign of terror. Into the noisy room they
+refused to go, and they objected to being left<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> a moment alone. They
+slept in my sister's bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>One night she was alone in the old house. Major Stewart had gone on
+business to Edinburgh, and the servants had retired to bed in their own
+wing. Mrs. Stewart was sitting in the smoking-room, reading an
+interesting novel by the light of a lamp. A good fire burned, and the
+four Poms were asleep on the hearth-rug. The door was slightly ajar, and
+outside it ran a short corridor.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, at its far end a terrible noise arose. A very different noise
+to anything that had been heard before, and one so blood-curdling that
+Mrs. Stewart at last knew the meaning of mortal fear.</p>
+
+<p>Two men were fighting desperately, swaying and wrestling, and snarling
+fiercely like two tigers locked in deathly combat. She glanced at the
+dogs. They were sitting up, staring with terrified eyes at the door,
+their bodies quivering, their little fangs showing. Then&mdash;with a
+bound&mdash;they were off, tearing for dear life along the corridor towards
+the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>It was a situation that demanded considerable nerve. Impossible to sit
+there alone in the dead of night, and listen to that hideous din, but a
+few yards from the door. She must follow the dogs as swiftly as she
+dared.</p>
+
+<p>She took up the lamp and moved stealthily to the door. The corridor was
+in complete darkness, and in that darkness the two men fought
+desperately, and below their breath they raved, groaned, blasphemed,
+incoherently. One long drawn out babel of breathless discord.</p>
+
+<p>In an overwhelming rush of terror Mrs. Stewart made a dash for the
+stairs, but while still in the corridor she heard flying feet
+approaching her from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> end she was trying to reach. She shrank back
+against the wall, the flying feet passed in a wild tempestuous rush, and
+as they did so the lamp was struck violently out of her hand, and she
+was left in complete darkness.</p>
+
+<p>She reached her bedroom and locked the door, then she lighted the
+candles and looked for the dogs. She found them huddled together in
+abject terror under her bed.</p>
+
+<p>The next day my sister called upon the lady who owned the place, and
+recounting her experiences asked to be told the origin of the hauntings.
+She was told the following story:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Many years previously a farmer, who was a widower, lived in the lodge
+with an only son, who was grown up. The old farmer married again, a
+pretty young girl, and the son fell in love with his stepmother. A
+quarrel ensued, and a desperate conflict, in which the father stabbed
+his son to death.</p>
+
+<p>The Stewarts did not leave the haunted lodge till some long time after
+the events I have narrated; in fact, my sister inhabited it after her
+husband died, during a stay in the South of England.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to form any conjecture as to the actual cause of the
+disturbances. How do ghosts contrive to make such a noise? The common
+answer would be, "They were astral noises heard clairaudiently." But was
+every one in the house clairaudient? It is possible, but most unlikely.
+When the noises began every one under that roof heard them, and
+continued to hear them till they ceased.</p>
+
+<p>The lodge is still to let, so perhaps the mystery may yet be unraveled.
+Will a member of the Psychical Society not try his luck? The rent is
+low, the sport, of more than one kind, is excellent.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the course of time my widowed sister married again, and her second
+husband has given me a curious and gruesome story of an experience which
+came to him whilst he was still a bachelor. I will give it in his own
+words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"About fourteen years ago I retired from the London Stock Exchange, and
+owing to ill health I was advised by my doctor to take a long sea
+voyage. This advice I followed, and much benefited by rest and sea air I
+returned to London, after an absence of nine months.</p>
+
+<p>"Always having lived an active life I could not contemplate settling
+down in utter idleness, and I consulted my solicitor on the subject of
+work.</p>
+
+<p>"He told me that a client of his had just bought a flourishing and
+well-known mill in North Wales. He proposed to run it for a time alone,
+and then turn it into a company or syndicate, as he had not sufficient
+capital of his own to ensure its ultimate success. In due time, my
+solicitor gave me a letter of introduction to this man, and I went to
+stay at his house close to the mill, which he had just bought.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a rambling old place, which in the good old days had been a
+coaching inn. Owing to bad management the landlord had failed, and for
+many years it had stood empty and 'to let.' It was a queer idea, I
+thought, to turn a coaching inn into a private residence, more
+especially as I soon heard that it had a very evil reputation.</p>
+
+<p>"Though I made many inquiries in the neighborhood I could never get
+anything more definite than that there was some evil influence in the
+house. Every one who lived in it came to a bad or violent end. I
+concluded that its proximity to his work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> caused the mill owner to
+purchase it, and I thought no more of the matter.</p>
+
+<p>"If I was favorably impressed, my intention was to put a certain amount
+of capital into the concern and learn the trade, but after staying for a
+few days with the mill owner, I came to the conclusion that I would have
+nothing to do with so odd a person.</p>
+
+<p>"He was of medium height and very thin, with rather straggling hair
+turning gray, and a sallow, hollow-cheeked face. He had a curious habit
+of glancing suddenly behind him, as if some one had just tapped him on
+the shoulder, and several other little traits bespoke an extreme
+nervousness of disposition.</p>
+
+<p>"One night I entered a room where he happened to be, and discovered him
+staring at himself in a mirror. I suppose I exhibited some surprise, for
+he wheeled round on me and cried, 'Well! how do you think I am looking?'</p>
+
+<p>"Had I answered truthfully I should have said, 'Stark, staring mad.' His
+face was ghastly pale, and his eyes were blazing. I made some careless
+reply, and shortly afterwards left the house to play a game of billiards
+with some acquaintances I had made. There I was given some interesting
+information. The mill owner was a declared bankrupt.</p>
+
+<p>"I returned to the house at ten o'clock, and at once retired to bed,
+without again seeing my unfortunate host.</p>
+
+<p>"The next morning I was awakened at half-past seven by my hostess
+knocking at my door, and inquiring if I had seen anything of her
+husband. I replied that I had seen nothing of him, but if she was
+anxious I would dress quickly and have a look round<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> for him. This offer
+she accepted with gratitude. The station was not far distant, and she
+suggested that he might have taken the train to Manchester. Would I go
+and make inquiries?</p>
+
+<p>"I was soon on the way, and interviewed a porter, who informed me he had
+seen the mill owner about an hour ago, not on the platform, but staring
+at the rails. The man had watched him, thinking his behavior suspicious,
+and remembering the evil reputation of his dwelling, but after a while
+he had turned away, and was last seen walking rapidly off in the
+direction of his own home.</p>
+
+<p>"I went back and reported what I had heard, and the very anxious wife
+suggested that I should snatch a hasty breakfast and then make inquiries
+at a farm a mile off, which was also their property. This I readily
+consented to do. I was extremely sorry for the poor woman, and though
+she did not make a confidant of me, I could see she was consumed with
+anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"My errand was quite fruitless, nothing was known of the master, no one
+had seen him, and back I went to the mill house, feeling by this time
+that probably the wife had every cause for her anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw nothing of her when I entered. I looked into every room on the
+ground floor, and was just going to ring for a servant, when I fancied I
+heard a faint cry.</p>
+
+<p>"I went out into the hall and listened intently. The voice was calling
+from somewhere below the ground, and I thought at once of the huge
+cellars I had been shown, where once the good old ale had been brewed
+and stored. I ran to the door which led to the cellars; it was open, and
+then I clearly heard a woman's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> voice crying, 'Oh! bring a knife! bring
+a knife quickly!'</p>
+
+<p>"I darted back into the dining-room and caught up the first knife I
+could find, a ham carver, then hastened to the door and began descending
+the dark stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"The cellars were fairly well lighted by two grated windows, and a
+horrible sight met my eyes. There stood the wife, bending under the
+weight of her husband, who was suspended by a rope round his neck from
+the great beam overhead. One glance at the hideously distorted face, the
+glazed eyes protruding from their sockets, the gaping mouth and swollen
+tongue, told me the worst.</p>
+
+<p>"Hastily I severed the rope, and the wife and her dead husband sank to
+the ground together.</p>
+
+<p>"There was little to be done. We laid the corpse flat on the stone
+floor, and I persuaded her to leave it and come upstairs with me, and
+wait for the arrival of the doctor and police. This she consented to do.
+She was very quiet and composed, a curious apathy of indifference
+possessed her, and I would far rather have seen her in floods of natural
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>"By evening the house had fallen into a dead silence. The doctor had
+pronounced life to be extinct, and the corpse had been carried up to an
+unused bedroom immediately over the smoking-room. The police found that
+the mill owner had committed suicide by hanging. He had jumped off a
+stone slab, after having adjusted the rope to the beam and his own
+throat. With the exception of an old nurse who was devoted to her
+mistress, the servants all departed in a body, and the house was left
+brooding under a weight of intolerable depression.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not blame the servants. As a matter of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> fact, there was nothing I
+would have liked better than to quit the mill house there and then, and
+never set foot in it again, but I had the desolate widow to consider. I
+could not leave her alone, whilst there was still the smallest
+possibility of my being of use. Added to this I had the queerest feeling
+that she required protection, though from what I would have been at a
+loss to say.</p>
+
+<p>"Another feeling, which I combated violently, was a sensation of being
+mocked and jeered at by some unseen entity. I was being urged to get out
+of the house, to recognize my own impotence, to mind my own business,
+and when I metaphorically replied, 'Get thee behind me, Satan,' I could
+have sworn I heard a sly laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I told myself all this was but the result of a shock to the
+nerves, and I was not going to pay any attention to it, so despite my
+intense longing to run out of the house I settled down with the daily
+paper, a cigarette, and a novel in the smoking-room, and resolutely
+turned my thoughts away from the tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>"The widow, and her old nurse, who had promised me not to leave her
+mistress for a moment, had retired together for the night, so I felt
+satisfied, so far as they were concerned.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I must have dozed off, for I was suddenly roused broad awake
+by footsteps overhead, in the room where the corpse lay. I sat up
+straight and listened intently. Were my nerves playing tricks with me?
+No; certainly not. There was no mistaking that sound for hallucination.
+It was perfectly clear and distinct. A man was walking about overhead,
+and the only man save myself within these walls had hanged himself by
+the neck until he was dead. There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> it was&mdash;the sound. A man's footsteps
+pacing slowly up and down the floor of the bedroom above, from end to
+end, backwards and forwards.</p>
+
+<p>"I considered what I had better do. I was sure the widow and the old
+nurse were in the bedroom, quite at the other end of the house. Probably
+they were both asleep. I hoped so. What had I better do&mdash;nothing? Yet
+this inaction irked me. My curiosity was intense. The supernatural had
+never occupied much of my thoughts, but now it began to do so. Those
+steps must proceed from the supernatural. There was no other
+explanation. I was the only live man in the house.</p>
+
+<p>"At last I could stand it no longer. I jumped up and proceeded upstairs.
+The lights had been left to me to extinguish; they were still on, and I
+saw at once that the door of the bedroom was open.</p>
+
+<p>"I entered the room, lit the gas and searched every corner. No living
+thing was present. The dead man lay in rigid lines beneath a sheet. I
+left the room again in darkness, and carefully closing the door I went
+softly along to the widow's room, and knocked very gently.</p>
+
+<p>"The old nurse came to the door. She told me her mistress was asleep,
+and that the doctor had given her a sleeping draught. Neither of them
+had left the room since they entered it to go to bed, more than an hour
+ago.</p>
+
+<p>"I went downstairs again and took up the newspaper, but almost
+immediately the footsteps began once more overhead, in the room where
+the dead man lay.</p>
+
+<p>"The sound was soft and stealthy at first, then it grew louder. The same
+footsteps moving about the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> floor, up and down, up and down. I am not
+ashamed to say that I felt a cold sweat break out all over me. I could
+not stand that sound any longer. I made up my mind to go to bed.</p>
+
+<p>"I removed my shoes and turned out the light. As I did so I could have
+sworn I heard a sly, low laugh behind me. I crept upstairs. The door of
+that horrible room was again open. With a shaking hand I closed it, and
+hurried to my bedroom, locking the door at once.</p>
+
+<p>"The next day I told my experiences to one of the acquaintances I had
+made, and he volunteered to come in and keep me company until the
+funeral was over. I gladly accepted his offer. I did not hear the
+footsteps again. I conclude because the widow was sitting with us on the
+following nights, and the ghost had no desire to terrify her."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<h3>AURAS</h3>
+
+
+<p>I was born with the power to see auras, and I had attained to quite a
+grown-up age before I discovered that every one could not see them.</p>
+
+<p>What is an aura? You will see them glittering round the heads of saints,
+and of The Christ in church windows. You will see them painted round the
+head of the Blessed Virgin, round the head of the Infant she holds, but,
+indeed, auras are the property of all, however humble and lowly. Nothing
+that has life, be the spark ever so faint, is without its astral
+counterpart, its tenuous surrounding atmosphere. Science has
+demonstrated this. Auras have now been photographed.</p>
+
+<p>Habitual seeing of human auras has made me no more or less observant of
+them than I am of the human face. If I am asked by any one to say what
+her aura looks like, I do so to the best of my ability, but at that
+complacent moment it is a very tame affair, much like the aura that any
+one may see surrounding a lighted candle. A medley of prismatic hues, no
+color predominating.</p>
+
+<p>Where auras become really interesting is in a room full of people. I
+look down to the far end of the room where a group is seated talking. I
+cannot hear what they are saying, but I can tell at once whether the
+conversation is harmonious or otherwise.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Often there will be one member of the group whose aura is very
+disturbed. It will emit flashes of brilliant red as he talks vehemently.
+The aura of the man he is addressing has turned a sulky, leaden gray.</p>
+
+<p>A woman who is sitting listening has an aura of intense boredom. The
+colors are all there, but they have become faded, and the extreme tips
+droop dejectedly, like so many wilted blades of grass.</p>
+
+<p>The biggest aura I ever saw was that of the late Mr. Sexton, a great
+orator whom I once heard in the House of Commons. Some people have mean,
+tight little auras, others have great spreading haloes of brilliant
+light. I met with a very unusual aura quite lately.</p>
+
+<p>A young woman, Miss L., came to tea with me, a charming, cultured woman,
+whose profession it is to keep a large girls' school. She is much
+interested in occult matters, and we "got upon" the subject of a rather
+wonderful case of spiritualism of which she knows the details&mdash;the
+medium being a young girl whom I will call "Elsie."</p>
+
+<p>Whilst I was talking to Miss L. I could not help observing something
+very peculiar in her aura; it was all lopsided. In place of being a
+complete circle around her head, it had a huge bulge out to the left. I
+had never before seen an aura like that, and it interested me greatly.</p>
+
+<p>Just before leaving she mentioned auras, and asked me what hers was
+like.</p>
+
+<p>I told her honestly that it was peculiar, lopsided, and bulging on one
+side.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed and said she knew that, because "Elsie" always chaffed her
+about it, saying, "You wear your halo all awry." This was very
+interesting confirmation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> of my power to see auras correctly. I don't
+know "Elsie," I don't even know her name, which has been kept a secret,
+but we evidently see Miss L.'s aura in exactly the same peculiar form.</p>
+
+<p>The other day I was sitting reading by the window, and as I moved in my
+chair I caught sight, "with the tail of my eye," of something bright at
+the other end of the room. A patch of light about a foot deep, and two
+feet long was coming from behind the edge of a tall screen that hid a
+door. I rose and walked out of the room. Behind the screen was a maid,
+whom I had not heard enter the open door. She was busy over some quiet
+work, and it was her aura that I had seen, though she herself was hidden
+from view.</p>
+
+<p>Once before in my life my attention has been drawn to the aura of one
+whom I could not at the moment see in the flesh.</p>
+
+<p>I happened to be passing a glove shop in the south of France, and as I
+strolled slowly past the door a blaze of yellow gold inside the shop
+caught my eye, and attracted my attention. I paused at once and looked
+through the open door. This great golden aura belonged to the Empress
+Elizabeth of Austria, who was standing at the counter. Her back was
+turned towards me, and I stood for a minute watching this aura of a
+woman whose restless imagination, and passionate love for the bitter
+wine of liberty, brought her finally to an absolutely fitting death. I
+believe she would have chosen this death before all others, for at heart
+she was a born anarchist. She fell painlessly by the dagger of
+anarchism.</p>
+
+<p>One effect of being able to see auras is that they fix certain incidents
+firmly in the mind. I remember one such incident very clearly. I was
+staying at Ha<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>warden with the Gladstones whilst the Irish troubles of
+'82 were at their height. One afternoon we were all assembled on the
+lawn having tea; Mr. Gladstone was standing rather apart, his hands full
+of papers, which had just been brought to him. I saw him unfold what
+looked like a large poster, glance at it, then suddenly he dashed it to
+the ground and stamped viciously upon it. I heard him give vent to some
+exclamations of intense anger, but had I heard nothing I could not have
+failed to know he was desperately annoyed over something, for he was
+suddenly wrapped in a brilliant crimson cloud, through which sharp
+flashes like lightning darted hither and thither. He was "seeing red."</p>
+
+<p>I remember Mrs. Gladstone murmuring something about "posters being torn
+down in Ireland," but I was too thrilled over her husband's aura to pay
+much heed to what she said. I shall never forget that scene, and the
+practical disappearance of Mr. Gladstone in the enveloping folds of a
+great red cloud. In a minute or two he emerged, and resumed his habitual
+aura, which extended to about two and a half feet beyond his head, and
+was largely tinged with purple.</p>
+
+<p>At Hawarden Church on Sunday, whilst he read the lessons, I watched his
+aura with much interest, because it changed so continuously, and I
+discovered that this change arose out of his absorption in what he read.
+Only one little example can I remember to illustrate what I mean. "And
+the heart of Pharaoh was hardened and he would not let the people go."</p>
+
+<p>In reading those words aloud Mr. Gladstone's aura deepened to red, and I
+saw he was very indignant with Pharaoh's behavior. During the sermon he
+sat facing us in our pew, and in a chair just beneath the pulpit,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> and I
+could tell by watching his aura just how he felt about the discourse.</p>
+
+<p>Later on, just after the tragic murders by the Fenians in Ph&oelig;nix Park
+of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Bourke, I received a note from Mrs.
+Gladstone, asking me to go to breakfast with them in their London house
+in Buckingham Gate. When I arrived the first person I saw was Lady
+Frederick Cavendish, calm and composed, and bearing her loss with quiet
+stoicism, but the atmosphere of the house was very different from that
+of Hawarden. A gloom was over all, and for the first time I noticed that
+Mr. Gladstone's aura was depressed and tired. Its vigorous vibrations
+had considerably slowed down, like a jet of flame that had been turned
+low, and the extremities drooped dejectedly.</p>
+
+<p>Though crimson red is the color of anger, there is a beautiful soft rose
+which is the color of love. The "green-eyed monster" of jealousy history
+has handed down to us from the ancient seers, also the "jaundiced"
+appearance of envy. A gloomy, grumbling person has a very leaden gray
+atmosphere, and one who has "a fit of the blues" shows he is "off color"
+in his dull, muddy blue aura. But there is a beautiful sky-blue to be
+seen in the auras of many artists and scientists. Very material, earthly
+people have generally a deep, dull orange tinge in their astral
+envelope, and there is a glorious golden yellow surrounding the heads of
+the spiritually joyful and highly intellectual. Purple is the color of
+power, greatness. Children have an aura of crystal whiteness, which
+develops color after the age of seven.</p>
+
+<p>I remember the aura of Frederic Myers very well. A large and intensely
+spiritual halo. He is the only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> man I can remember in those days&mdash;about
+'92-'96&mdash;as having an aura within an aura, though this phenomenon is now
+becoming more marked. "A rainbow was about his head," those words
+explain exactly what I mean. About a foot above his head circled a pure
+rainbow, and this beautiful decoration looked as if it were superimposed
+upon the original aura, which streamed out far above it. I have only as
+yet, in these later years, seen this rainbow above the heads of two
+people: one alive, Miss Maud Roydon, one alas! gone west&mdash;the
+incomparable Elsie Inglis. I conclude it means a degree of
+self-sacrificing spirituality, which as yet has been attained to by very
+few. Indeed, I would venture further, and assert that it stands for a
+certain initiation conferred upon "the beloved" by the Masters of
+Wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>King Edward was blessed by a very fine aura of constantly changing
+colors. I remember once noticing this in the most unspiritual of
+environments, and whilst the King was still Prince of Wales.</p>
+
+<p>We were on Newmarket Heath, and His Majesty came up to me and said, "I
+hear you are married." After a few minutes of friendly conversation,
+which had taken an amusingly domestic turn, he said to me, "Now, how
+much has your husband got a year?"</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing in the question but the most friendly interest; still,
+it will naturally seem strange that he should have possessed the
+faintest curiosity as to the financial situation of so humble a member
+of his people.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst he put the question, and waited for the answer, his whole aura
+and atmosphere deepened and intensified. He was actually interested in
+my answer,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> and this I have always believed was the fundamental reason
+of his great popularity. The power he possessed of throwing himself
+heart and soul into the trivial, as into the great things of life. He
+was intensely human, with a genuine fund of sympathy for the ordinary
+affairs of life. He liked to know the domestic conditions of those whom
+he honored with his friendship, and the first time I ever spoke to him,
+at a dance given by the Rothschilds in Piccadilly, I saw at once that
+the natural human simplicities of life absorbed him absolutely whilst
+under discussion. Though a man who would not tolerate a liberty, the
+easiest way to get on with him when alone, was to confide in him any
+personal difficulty, and to forget who he was, always providing that one
+had the good breeding to remember instantly that he was the king when
+speaking to him in public.</p>
+
+<p>The most occult day (to use the popular expression) I ever spent was the
+26th June, 1902, the day of the postponed Coronation. I shall never
+forget that warm summer day of stupendous gloom, and oppressive
+darkness. There was something more than meteorology in that leaden pall
+that hid the skies, and enveloped the whole of London. Even the densest
+materialists were uneasy, startled and inquiring, for putting aside that
+mighty aura of sorrow and gloom rising up to heaven from the hearts of
+millions, there was, as it were, the response of heaven herself. That
+dark and mournful response Nature assumed, when wrapping herself in a
+shroud of leaden darkness she brooded over the city, like the pall of
+death itself. That day the mystic walked in a dream, enmeshed in the
+warp of great occult happenings being woven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> out in the loom of Karmic
+fatality. It was impossible to settle down to doing anything. One just
+"sat about," living every moment intensely.</p>
+
+<p>Once, when presenting a girl at Court, during the present reign, I
+noticed what a very striking aura John Burns possesses. This girl
+naturally wished to see all she could, so we went to the Palace very
+early, and found a seat in the Throne Room, close to where the King and
+Queen would sit later on. In a short time celebrities began to stroll
+into the royal circles, divided from us by a cord. First came the
+present Lord Grey of Falloden, and then came Mr. John Burns, resplendent
+in dark blue knee breeches and gold-embroidered coat. He moved about
+quite familiarly inside the holy of holies, speaking first to one, then
+another of the gathering little crowd. Being so close to him I observed
+him with unusual interest. His aura is very large, and what I can only
+describe as massive, and already it was tinged by the gray veil of
+disappointment. I have seen him several times since, and the veil has
+become more opaque. What interested me so profoundly in him that night
+were the contrasts I knew to exist in his life, and which must have
+profoundly influenced his outlook on human existence.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon I was walking alone up Piccadilly. There had been rumors
+of coming riots, but no one in the West End gave any credence to such
+silly stories, and the streets were full of the usual gay throng, intent
+on amusement.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, as I walked along, a youth on a bicycle dashed past the
+pavement, shouting something I could not catch. More men on bicycles
+followed. The promenaders began to "sit up and take notice."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> Carriage
+horses were being smartly whipped up, and women began to scurry
+nervously.</p>
+
+<p>Then it seemed to me I could hear something above the roar of the
+ordinary traffic, a hoarse prolonged shout. Servants now appeared on
+doorsteps, and looked about anxiously for non-existent policemen, others
+began closing outside shutters before windows. Just as I reached the
+Naval and Military Club I saw that the servants had come out, and were
+about to close both great gates&mdash;"In" and "Out." One of these men
+pointed up the street and advised me at once to seek cover, and I saw in
+the dim distance what looked like a mighty crowd advancing.</p>
+
+<p>In a second I had darted through the gates, and was safely inside before
+they closed upon the approaching mob.</p>
+
+<p>I have only a very confused memory of what happened after. Of kindly
+attentions from the members. Of women's shrieks as their carriages were
+stopped, and their valuables taken from them. Of the deafening roar of
+furious male voices, crashings of glass windows, howls of savage
+exultation, as a hosier's shop close by fell victim to the rioters, the
+clatter of hoofs from terrified horses. I could see nothing, but the
+battering upon the club gates added tenfold to the terrifying din. The
+members withdrew, taking me with them, to the house, and prepared to
+hold it against the furious mob, should the gates give way.</p>
+
+<p>Such wild moments are not easily forgotten, and why I looked upon John
+Burns that night at Court with such a peculiar interest was because he
+led that riot, and suffered imprisonment for so doing.</p>
+
+<p>Looking upon him in Court dress, in the royal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> enclosure, on intimate
+terms with the great of the world, though perhaps not the great of the
+earth, knowing him to hold high office in the government, I marked the
+change. Then throwing back my mind to those poignant hours in the past,
+which he had created, I felt that nothing is too extraordinary to belong
+to the careers of some men; they live through several lives in one.
+Their Karma is so crowded with stirring events, in the working out of
+the past, in the makings of the future, that nothing human can be any
+longer strange to them. The auras of such men are naturally great,
+because such contrasts of light and shade only come in the lives of men
+possessed of great and lofty ideals.</p>
+
+<p>For some years little has been heard of the former idol of Battersea. He
+is facing west now, though a ray or two of dawning light may still touch
+him in the near future. That wild idealism which comes to men who keep
+their eyes fixed upon a dawn so long in coming, fades out behind the
+veil of disillusion, as the days come not, and the years draw nigh with
+no pleasure in them. Man's ingratitude to man is one of the cruelest
+tests imposed upon the soul of idealism. The soul that can bear it
+without a tinge of cynicism has risen to mighty heights.</p>
+
+<p>Such grandeur of soul was possessed by Elsie Inglis. So impregnated was
+she with pure love of humanity, that when her own country virtually
+turned its back upon her, this irreparable disgrace, brought upon
+themselves by her own people, cast no shadow upon her soul. In the years
+before the war I often noted her lovely aura as I sat amongst an
+audience, and watched her on a platform fighting woman's battle.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After the war broke out I only saw her once, by the merest chance. It
+was then I marked that a rainbow was now about her head, and I knew at
+once that tremendous events were in store for her, though the British
+Government had refused her services. Ah! the poor little cramped mind of
+England's officialism! yet has not this very poverty of imagination,
+this iron-bound worship of worn-out tradition, brought to birth an
+internationalism which could never have been ours without it? It drove
+forth hundreds, thousands of ardent souls, to other lands. Rejected by
+their own, they clasped the pierced hands of strangers, and laid down
+their own incomparably gallant lives at the foot of a cross, whereon
+hung those who had at length become their brothers through a commune of
+agony.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie Inglis received no honor or decoration from the people, or the
+"Great of England." Only the body, worn very thin in the service of
+humanity, was at last honored in death. Knowing the woman, and the stuff
+she was made of, one can only feel intensely this was all as it should
+have been. To offer Elsie Inglis a medal would have been a sacrilege.
+"Hands off such souls as hers," is the cry one's every instinct rings
+forth to the "bauble worshipers" of this world. Besides, and this is a
+very great besides, those who go with a rainbow about their heads are
+not destined for earthly honors. They have taken the great step, they
+have received the great Initiation, a jewel in the blazing crown of
+eternity, and for them no more are the laurel wreaths that perish. In
+justice to those throned on high on earth, the above should be
+remembered. If it is with Elsie Inglis, as I fully believe, she would
+have understood that for her God and Mammon were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> eternally divorced,
+and any attempt at worldly recognition would have been frustrated by
+"The Lords of Eternal Light and Wisdom," whose chosen disciple she had
+become.</p>
+
+<p>The psychology of the people is a very interesting and curious study, to
+the aura seer. The analysis of the collective mind awaits some great
+writer who will give us a book of absorbing interest. Those who can see
+auras have a great advantage, if they are public speakers. During the
+period of my life, when I had a great deal of political platform work, I
+was always very sensitive to my audiences, because I could see how they
+were taking my remarks. I have always found big audiences of the people
+very colorless in the main. Flashes of bright color would be apparent
+all over the hall, but there was no sustained glow. Whilst sitting on
+some one else's platform, often that of a great orator, I have marked
+exactly the same phenomenon. The soul of the people is still young and
+childlike. It has the indifference of extreme youth, the forgetfulness
+and ingratitude of extreme youth.</p>
+
+<p>I look back upon the fall of Parnell and Dilke, great minds whose
+earthly careers were destroyed by the people. All the world knows why.
+To-day I look on the "perpetrators" of the Gallipoli and Mesopotamia
+tragedies, and I see they have all gone up higher in the esteem of the
+people. They have risen in the world, and are looked upon as ripe for
+even higher office. The poor human brain reels before such anomalies. I
+was in London when the Gallipoli reports were given to the public. They
+shook me to the very foundation of my being. I think they were given out
+towards the end of the week, because I remember saying to myself, "on
+Sunday morning the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> British working man and woman will read all this
+abomination of desolation and crime in their Sunday paper."</p>
+
+<p>Purposely I strolled about the London parks in the lovely afternoon of
+that Sunday. Crowds were there, reading, courting, sleeping. I went home
+realizing that no one cared. The collective aura of the people was as
+serene and indifferent as ever.</p>
+
+<p>I have come to think more kindly of our people's pathetic indifference,
+because I am sure it is the indifference of very young souls, who have
+passed through but few incarnations, and "know not what they do." I see
+them exploited by the politicians, given a rag doll to amuse themselves
+with, anything will do, from the big loaf to the "Kayzer," and sent to
+the polls hugging their golliwog, but I doubt the returning troops being
+so easily amused and deluded.</p>
+
+<p>The state of the Universe is the expression of man's desire, and man is
+really the builder of his own body, that "house not made with hands,"
+though in his youthful ignorance he attributes both to an over-ruling
+intelligence, whom he alternately blesses and curses. When men learn
+that they must work with, and not against the mental laws, they will no
+longer ask why God permits the world to be so full of misery. They will
+cease to erect a scapegoat, because they will have learned that they are
+the makers of their own misery or happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Many people seem to think that the power to see auras must be very
+useful in helping one to distinguish between friends and foes, but such
+is not really the case. Auras exemplify individual character, not
+individual predilections, and some of my friends being very bad
+characters, indeed, have shocking auras. I had one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> great friend who, at
+the beginning of our acquaintance, spent much of his time in prison,
+which was really a blessing for his ill-used wife. His aura was
+literally in tatters, just a little irregular circle of rags and
+patches.</p>
+
+<p>I had just succeeded in making him sober, by insisting constantly and
+most seriously that he was "a cut above the public-house," and much too
+superior a man to mix with such degraded companions, when the war broke
+out. He went to the front, and on his first return to Blighty, badly
+gassed, he came at once to see me. I really felt a sort of personal
+pride in him, and an actual sense of personal possession in his
+enormously grown aura. It was clear evidence of his sprouting soul. He
+went back to France, but was wounded and again gassed, and this time his
+return was final, as he was of no further use.</p>
+
+<p>For a few months he did odd jobs with great difficulty, then, finally,
+he succumbed to pneumonia. I was very proud indeed of his aura as I sat
+beside his bed, his hand in mine. There was real love in my heart for
+him that day. Here, indeed, was an infant soul that had begun to develop
+on the right road, and the tattered aura of rags and patches had become
+a neatly trimmed little halo round his poor tired head.</p>
+
+<p>So he went west, and his broken body, wrapped in the British flag, went
+to a soldier's grave, and a firing party gave him the Last Post.</p>
+
+<p>His wife returned home to find that her neighbors, anxious to celebrate
+the occasion, had brought their best china and had arranged a tea-party.
+As we sat down, she turned to me and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, thank God, my man's been buried like a gentleman."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When I came to think it over I arrived at the conclusion that "the worst
+character in the slums" had not done so badly with his life, after all.
+He had died like a gentleman. The British Flag is a strange case of
+transubstantiation. At first, just so many pieces of common material
+sold across a counter. Fashioned into the emblem of our Nation it
+becomes a sacred symbol, taken kneeling like a sacrament, which indeed
+it has become. What better shroud could any man ask for?</p>
+
+<p>I am sorry that I have had no opportunity of seeing President Wilson's
+aura, the man who has turned his face towards a heavenly ideal, and is
+scattering the seed amongst all the nations. When a man sets out on such
+a long radiant path, he will carry visibly in the daylight an
+illuminated brow. He has brought to us the vision without which the
+people perish.</p>
+
+<p>The life of the heart has always meant much more to me than the life of
+the head. The rebel by nature can only be held by love, and I have been
+blest by twenty-eight years of perfect union with one who has given me
+love for love, faith for faith, and complete intellectual understanding.
+My life has also been wonderfully gifted by staunchest friends, who have
+loved me through sunshine and storm, and who still clasp hands with me
+across continents and seas.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose I must have enemies. They say every one has, but they have
+never made me aware of their enmity, perhaps because there is no room in
+a very full heart to receive aught but love. If I were to single apart
+one outstanding feature in my life, it would be the wonderful kindness
+and friendship that has been given to me. Ah! how easy that makes it to
+write lovingly of others.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Behind all this lies the master passion of the born mystic for
+liberation. The constant ache and urge for real freedom, and power to be
+victorious over all circumstances. At home in all scenes, restful in all
+fortunes. There is the urge of the soul for universality of contact with
+all humanity, independent of race, color or creed. The urge of the
+spirit to smash the confines which pinion it down to earth.</p>
+
+<p>I think it is really the urge of reincarnating life still clinging to
+me. The knowledge that my immortal soul must return to the House of
+Bondage, until perfection is reached, and there is the going out no more
+from the Father's House, from a freedom which has become supreme.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<h3>ADIEU</h3>
+
+
+<p>To-day there are many, an ever-swelling number, who behold with joy the
+gates ajar, who standing in the twilight catch momentary glimpses of
+dawn upon the horizon of time, who know by personal experience that they
+have come into touch with a region where vast schemes are conceived, and
+universal laws of boundless magnitude connected with the soul's eternal
+pilgrimage are carried out.</p>
+
+<p>Again, there are others, timid, shrinking souls to whom, by a mere
+chance combination of circumstances, a glimpse has been shown which is
+none too welcome. Such affrighted ones drop the eyelids from the
+startling vision. They will have none of it, and they are free to accept
+or reject, go on, or stand still.</p>
+
+<p>Others, again, have actually been born with that super-normal sight
+which can discern the workings behind the drop scene shrouding the
+stupendous drama of cosmic government.</p>
+
+<p>I have long been conscious that the veil has worn very thin between
+myself and another world lying around me. As the years draw swiftly on,
+and every second thrown back into eternity brings me nearer to blessed
+deliverance I find the rents in the veil grow more numerous. They bring
+single shining moments, which reveal the spirit of life, its motives and
+consecration.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Through the driving storm wrack there will come quite suddenly a
+brilliant heavenly glimpse. It never lasts long, but long enough to show
+me reality. Something of the vastness of cosmos and the pathetic
+minuteness of this earth, just a speck of star dust in the palm of God,
+an atom of world stuff swinging in boundless space.</p>
+
+<p>Something of the reality of those shining ones who guide the progression
+of natural order, embodiments of resistless energy and of stateliest
+imperial mien.</p>
+
+<p>Glimpses that show to me what was in the mind of the great Christian
+Mystic when he wrote of a mighty angel: "A rainbow was upon his head,
+and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire."</p>
+
+<p>Behind such visions extend vast ranges of being, quite outside my ken,
+yet, nevertheless, speaking to me of things, for the expression of which
+no words have yet been coined. Infinitely greater than anything that can
+be said. Significant in meaning beyond expression, and far transcending
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p>Such glimpses show to me lives that as compared with ours, are as ours
+to the tiniest insect afloat for an hour on the breath of the south
+wind. Lives which ordain the fateful hour when the rise and fall of
+empires, the destruction of nations, and the clash of worlds, and their
+cosmic significance in world history shall begin or end. Where things
+life promised but never gave come to full fruition.</p>
+
+<p>Other glimpses and echoes from the Great Beyond bring to me the answer
+to a problem, a few notes and a new melody, a new energy of hope and
+love, an inspiration<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> from the Great Brotherhood, whose lowliest
+disciple I am, whose work to establish the Brotherhood, the true
+affinity of humanity upon earth I hold most dear, most high.</p>
+
+<p>In the present dark hour all the world is drinking of one chalice, its
+wine the life outpoured for others. All humanity is partaking of one
+bread, a body which has most truly and literally being given to be
+broken. Death has left many songs unsung, a myriad graves are filled,
+youth is blighted in the bud, in this white winter men call death, and
+its cup is pressed close to the lips of love. Many are the hopes that
+lie folded away in the quiet cemetery of the heart, where we lay flowers
+of tender reminiscence. Yet, this sacrament of fellowship which is
+eclipsed in the awful impoverishment of human life will one day be
+swelled by the return of the young, fallen on the Field of Honor,
+glorified and purified for their God-appointed work in evolution.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps I have gone a few steps farther than most people into the
+mysterious beyond, come nearer reading the great riddle, for the
+creature who is not afraid of thought and worldly condemnation, who is
+not afraid of solitude or ridicule, will soon come near the truth, will
+quickly catch the incommunicable thrill of advancing destinies. She will
+cease to live under the despotism of days, the tyranny of years. She
+will know that the swiftest touch cannot put a finger on the present,
+and that there is but one recorder of time, the great star clock of the
+sky.</p>
+
+<p>The symbol of life is the Circle, not the Straight line, and each of us
+lives over again the story of humanity, as in the shadow of pre-natal
+gloom we repeat the physical evolution of the race. The increase of
+knowledge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> but widens the horizon of the unknown promised land, to which
+we are moving onward and upward throughout the ages.</p>
+
+<p>However far the mind travels there is always deep down in the soul
+stores of information awaiting transference to the surface of
+consciousness. Rich mines of knowledge are there awaiting the day when
+they will be uncovered, waiting in patience the day when some Divine
+Adventurer will search for them and bring them to light.</p>
+
+<p>However great its aspirations the soul but looks out upon an illimitable
+horizon, and sees the human pilgrimage as a long Emm&aelig;us walk, with
+hearts burning by the way. Always must there be mystery in life, because
+life is spiritual, not material. The presence of mystery in life is the
+presence of God, and the infinity of God shows that mystery must always
+exist.</p>
+
+<p>Such glimpses beyond the veil are all transfiguring. They exalt the
+heart in a single flash to a glow point, and show the soul of the
+Universe in the incandescent crucible of the eternal. In a deeply
+beshadowed time such visions tell us all that we need know, and it is
+this: God is with us and in us. Though obscure for the moment His
+transcendence stands outside the change and flux of time, and His awful
+sovereignty sways irresistibly the tides of human circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>Hours must come when the pen falls from the nerveless fingers, the task
+is left undone, when the weary cry goes up, "There is nothing we can
+do!" We have been doing for so many thousand years, the years which the
+locusts hath eaten. What have we achieved?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When such hours come, as come they must, is there nothing to fall back
+upon but this awful confession of failure, this haunting undertone of
+all our mortal life that many ages have not hushed?</p>
+
+<p>Surely, yes! There is always for the mystic the unmeasured immensity of
+soul land to explore, that Great Beyond and within which is infinite,
+eternal, and of which we are all a part.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! but it may be said, all are not mystics, to which I would reply, all
+who desire can be mystics. For what, after all, is a mystic, but one who
+enters into possession of the inner life? One who becomes fully aware of
+her self-consciousness, and who gains thereby new faculties and
+enlightenment. It places her in touch with that supreme reality which
+some call God and some The Great Creative Power. The mystic knows that
+power is to be found within through identification and submergence with
+the Primordial Force which constitutes the ocean of life. She can always
+pass the sky and clouds of earth, and enter the great, deep, real world
+outside. It is always possible to her to seek a fairer world where the
+only things that matter are the eternal verities, which should be taken
+kneeling, like a sacrament.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Love and life which is Beauty.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love and power which is Goodness.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love and knowledge which is Wisdom.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The Road of the Flaming Sacred Heart is strewn with insight, kindness
+and sympathy, which gives eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, and a
+voice to the dumb! It is paved with love that serves the humble and
+defends the disinherited. Bravely it walks the <i>Via Dolorosa</i>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> and it
+"Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, its reward
+to know the love of God, unutterable even to them that know."</p>
+
+<p>The Mystic can face the future without fear, for the power has been
+given her to take her soul, and like a carrier dove, loose it into
+space, to speed away into the fathomless, the everlasting, the voiceless
+deep whose silence is the "Welcome Home" of God.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ghosts I Have Seen, by Violet Tweedale
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ghosts I Have Seen, by Violet Tweedale
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ghosts I Have Seen
+       And Other Psychic Experiences
+
+Author: Violet Tweedale
+
+Release Date: May 23, 2012 [EBook #39769]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GHOSTS I HAVE SEEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+GHOSTS I HAVE SEEN
+
+AND OTHER PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES
+
+BY
+
+VIOLET TWEEDALE
+
+
+NEW YORK
+FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+PUBLISHERS
+
+_Copyright, 1919, by_
+FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                                    PAGE
+
+I "SILK DRESS" AND "RUMPUS"                                   1
+
+II THE GHOST OF BROUGHTON HALL                               14
+
+III CURIOUS PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES                              33
+
+IV EAST END DAYS AND NIGHTS                                  48
+
+V THE MAN IN THE MARYLEBONE ROAD                             66
+
+VI THE GHOST OF PRINCE CHARLIE                               74
+
+VII PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS                                   91
+
+VIII SOME STRANGE EVENTS                                     98
+
+IX POMPEY AND THE DUCHESS                                   114
+
+X THE INVISIBLE HANDS                                       124
+
+XI DAWNS                                                    133
+
+XII PEACOCK'S FEATHERS--THE SKELETON HAND AT MONTE CARLO    146
+
+XIII I COMMIT MURDER                                        157
+
+XIV THE ANGEL OF LOURDES                                    175
+
+XV THE WRAITH OF THE ARMY GENTLEMAN                         184
+
+XVI AN AUSTRIAN ADVENTURE                                   197
+
+XVII ACROSS THE THRESHOLD                                   211
+
+XVIII HAUNTED ROOMS                                         221
+
+XIX "THE NEW JEANNE D'ARC"                                  241
+
+XX HAUNTED HOUSES--"CASTEL A MARE"                          251
+
+XXI THE SEQUEL                                              263
+
+XXII THE HAUNTED LODGE                                      276
+
+XXIII AURAS                                                 291
+
+XXIV ADIEU                                                  307
+
+
+
+
+GHOSTS I HAVE SEEN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+"SILK DRESS" AND "RUMPUS"
+
+
+From the terrible conditions of the present I have turned back to the
+past, for a little joy and a great deliverance.
+
+In the present one lives no longer from day to day, but from hour to
+hour, and even a fleeting memory of the joys that are no more refreshes
+the soul--wearied, and fainting with a pallid anxiety that wraith-like
+envelops the whole being in a thrall of sadness.
+
+To-day I heard music which I had known and loved in the happy, careless
+long ago, and whilst I was lost in a dream of half-forgotten bliss I
+smelt the fragrance of mimosa flower. I cannot describe the sensations
+of joy that thrilled through my whole being. An involuntary moving of
+the spirit, an emergence into a dream world, described by the Greeks as
+"ecstasy." The music fashioned the invisible link, and I was back again
+on a hillside where the mimosa grew in native abundance. Now, one thinks
+of France only as a hideous battle plain, but memory, the true
+dispensator of time, is never bound by years. She keeps ever fresh, in
+glowing colors, those ideal moments that gather up the utter joys of
+life into one divine sheaf of memory.
+
+It is not only for its great uses that we must have memory, but for its
+joys. It rends the gray veil shrouding present existence, and shows us
+life as what it really is. A phantasmagoria of wonder, wrapped in
+mystery.
+
+The day of miracles is not past, it never will be past, but if you want
+miracles you must have the power of seeing them.
+
+I have written in this book of the miracles I have seen. Some of them
+any one can see, others are reserved for the delectation of the few.
+
+I have written of strange visitants from other realms, and of that vivid
+illumination which at moments lays bare the hidden springs of life, when
+the spirit emerges beyond the limit of human thought, and familiar
+things, beyond the horizon of life, and touches a sphere beyond
+immortality. It is a condition that the grave has nothing to do with, a
+beholding beyond the frontiers of the soul.
+
+I have written of the spiritual life, for without this spiritual life a
+palace would be no wider than a tomb. The vastness of the spirit world
+defies description. It can choose its own pathways, and any one of these
+long, long roads leading to the great mysteries.
+
+It is now almost universally acknowledged that psychic experiences, of a
+specific nature, occur at certain times to certain people, that are not
+explicable by any known science. Generally, they are experiences which
+point to the continuity of the human consciousness with a wider
+spiritual environment, from which the normal man is shut off.
+
+A few such experiences that have come to me I record.
+
+I hope that I have never tried to convince others of the truth of these
+experiences. If I have done so it has been unconsciously done. I am
+absolutely persuaded that such phenomena can only become convincing when
+personally experienced. Such matters ought not to be accepted on
+hearsay. It is mere folly for one woman to attempt to demonstrate to
+another the existence of the human soul. The most that A can communicate
+to B, of any part of her own experiences, is so much of it as is common
+to the experiences of both.
+
+I have proved conclusively to my own consciousness that I am linked up
+with a wider consciousness from which, at times, such experiences flow
+in.
+
+I know my soul to be in touch with a greater soul, which at moments
+enters into communication with me, and opens out a vastness which it is
+impossible to translate into words, and which annihilates space and
+time.
+
+I have had my vision, and I know. Therefore I am quite unmoved by
+criticism or ridicule.
+
+I believe that what has come to me will come to all, and there is no
+need to hurry the process. We are simply a tiny part of a whole, which
+has neither beginning nor end. We live in a universe which is infinite
+in time and space, which has always existed in some form, and will go on
+in some form for ever. The discovery of the law of the indestructibility
+of matter has proved this beyond a doubt.
+
+At some second in time our Universe will be dissolved into new systems,
+for the life of a solar system lasts only a second in eternity, but that
+need not worry us yet. There is lots of time for man to realize his
+soul, and all will doubtless do so at some moment in their many earth
+lives.
+
+The classic idea is that the Golden Age lies in the past, but the Stoic
+doctrine of recurring cycles in the ages of the world seems to suggest
+that the Golden Age may return.
+
+There are people to-day who ask, "Is this the end of the world?"
+
+More probably it is the end of an age. The harvest may be ripe for the
+sickle to be thrust in. The opposition of good and evil may have reached
+their fullest manifestation. It may be the hour in eternity for a
+complete readjustment of the little ant-hills we call great nations.
+
+We know the rise and fall of nations to be an historical fact,
+apparently based on an immutable law. This recurring phenomenon cannot
+be explained, though there are theories. Possibly the true one may be
+found in the failure or compliance to respond to the challenge: "Advance
+to a higher spiritual plane or perish." It may be that the right of
+continuance depends upon the answer to that challenge.
+
+What brought about the decline of those mighty civilizations whose
+monuments of antiquity seem to mock our pride? What insidious disease
+brought about the fall of Rome? The beauty and inspiration of Greece was
+arrested by some swift decay, and the giant temples and Pyramids of
+Egypt, and the Mounds of Mesopotamia, testify to a grandeur far
+surpassing ours.
+
+In the world's morning time, before the mists began to clear, we can
+trace the rise and fall of a score of mighty Empires. From out their
+present tombs of tragic silence arise figures, colossal sculptured
+figures, with faces and forms of commanding power. Assyrians, a mighty
+race, leaving behind whole libraries of record, chiseled upon
+indestructible pages. The lost arts of three thousand years ago.
+
+Earlier still the earth resounded to the thunder of Xenophon's
+thousands, and the chariots of Persia sweeping after them. Lying deeper
+still in the shroud of antiquity the Pharaohs emerge as mighty
+conquerors, and we can dimly discern in the Empire of the Chaldeans the
+movement of a gorgeous civilization, and the majestic figures of men
+versed in mystic, and, to us, unknown lore. In Italy, memorials of a
+refined people, who were precursors of Roman power, have been found,
+forms of perfect grace in delicate vases and coins of gold and silver.
+The old Etruscan art is traced back to the Assyrians' sculpture. The
+snowy crown of ancient Greece budded and bloomed in the mighty halls of
+Assyria's splendor, hundreds of years before Christ. No phantom world
+could furnish a mightier or more resplendent host.
+
+Reading of those proud and mighty civilizations brings the simple life
+of the Nazarene very near to us in years, it also shows us how quickly
+great splendors are sanded over by the hands of time. The British Museum
+holds the sculptured records of twenty-five hundred years. Whilst the
+flames, kindled by the mob of Christian monks, from the great
+Alexandrian library rose to Heaven, the temple fronts of the Pharaohs,
+the Pyramids, the Sphinx, loomed out of the conflagration. The impotent
+torches of the fanatics were powerless against such imperishable
+records. What of our records? Will these ancient civilizations be
+remembered when the fame of modern nations has vanished utterly? Which
+has the best chance of enduring in the future? The paper and pasteboard
+of to-day, or the monuments of stone, to which the Monarchs of bygone
+Empires entrusted the history of their unsurpassed grandeur?
+
+"If thou hadst known in this thy day, even thou, the things which belong
+to thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes."
+
+This is the epitaph written across the tombs of all nations now
+crumbling into dust.
+
+"The things which belong to thy peace." The things which never die or
+fade, whose continuity is never broken, the Divine seeds that cannot
+perish, the things which are immortal. The winged soul in its aeon-long
+pilgrimages through eternity to home.
+
+I find it easy to write to-day upon psychic subjects, for everywhere I
+discern the dawn of what Conan Doyle, in his deeply interesting book,
+calls "The new revelation."
+
+To one who, for the last forty years, has been immersed in all branches
+of occult research, the change of view that has come over the world in
+four years is very remarkable. Every one is now interested in the human
+soul, and all that appertains to it. The speeding up in the number of
+psychic experiences coming to light is enormous. So often now I come
+across "the last man in the world to see or hear anything" who has just
+been accorded a startling experience, and the rank skeptic is becoming a
+thing of the past.
+
+Whilst sitting in solitude it is interesting to let one's thoughts slip
+back to childhood, and trace the present life in the mirror of the old.
+I discover that in the immediate now there is nothing new, but only that
+which has its symbol in the old. I seem to get only the much clearer
+vision of what once was vague and cloudy, or wholly unconsidered by the
+mind of youth.
+
+In that garden of memory I can set old happenings in a new light, and
+measure my slow footprints in the age-long journey behind me. Two facts
+emerge from out such musings. Firstly, the journey of my soul takes a
+spiral path, which at intervals brings me face to face with the old
+things that I have learned to modernize by dressing in fresh thought
+forms, as new perceptions are won. Perceptions prophetic of the greater
+capacity for attainment when the Divine Power is permitted to unfold
+itself without let or hindrance.
+
+Secondly, the further on the soul journeys the more solitary the road
+becomes. One by one the old companion pilgrims drop away. Perhaps it is
+that on that long, lone trail the traveler must be free.
+
+Very early in my life came the consciousness that everywhere about me,
+in the infinitely above, in the infinitely below, permeating heart, mind
+and soul, is life--endless, eternal.
+
+On this shoreless ocean of existence, without form or name, the soul is
+afloat. Birth and death are the tides, the ebb and flow of the ocean of
+life. The human soul is but a ripple on the sea of existence, and
+phenomenal life is but a flash in the eternity of eternities. All the
+teeming lives of effort around us, all the travail and suffering to
+which humanity is destined, are ordained for the great purpose of soul
+evolution. God sets the balance at every grave. That which distinguishes
+every man is the vast dower of our nature, eventually the same to all,
+the passing incidents of station, fortune, talent, are mere surface
+varieties.
+
+I find in my mind the existence of something illimitably beyond mind,
+doubtless a common experience. I do not know what that something is, but
+it is very real, and it invariably shows me how cribbed, cabined and
+confined this life really is. I cannot even tell what it is that
+confines me. I only know that there is a limitless world full of
+infinite possibilities all around me. I seem always to have known this,
+but I cannot grasp it. True, at rare intervals, I catch a glimpse
+through a rift in the clouds, then they close again.
+
+At such moments I experience an ecstasy of heart sweet happiness, so
+marvelously sweet, so pure, so near Divine with its deep wordless
+thoughts of infinite beauty. Such regions are not so much impenetrable
+as ineffable. They are glimpses gained at some great altitude, from
+which I can look down on the mortal pageant and behold mysteries in
+which I take no part, but by which I am encircled, as an island, by
+infinity. Such are luminous and splendid moments, when the soul beholds
+the world in its real mystic beauty. It is the hour of transfiguration,
+in which the veil drops from the heart and the film from the eyes, so
+that we see life as God means it to be.
+
+Often, as a mere child, when lying awake in those nights, whose
+stillness have a quality of awe, the silence would be broken by weird,
+barbaric songs which wafted a sense of old, wild adventurous life, and
+in a curious quality of mystery I saw violet mountains sleeping in
+sunlight, above a sea of amethyst. Childish visions, but sacred nights.
+Very many years passed before I understood them.
+
+On hot velvety nights in June a curious scent of smoke would come to me,
+the measured hollow beating of bells, and a tremulous far-away piping.
+Years after, I stood alone one evening on the slopes of Etna, amid the
+pale asphodels and the desolation of tumbling lava fields, and I heard
+the pipes of Pan, the reed pipe of the herd boy, and linked the past
+with the present. Again, passing through a region where the smoke rose
+from the charcoal burners' fires the scent of an ancient memory came
+vaporing up, the unfamiliar scent that puzzled my childhood, and I was
+away in a flash, to wait for the soul to free herself and return from
+the world's edge.
+
+I had to journey further east before I heard again at dawn the ring of
+camel bells as a caravan broke camp, and then I understood the visions
+of my youth, as I listened to the measured hollow beating, and watched a
+strange medley of eastern traffic trail away across the desert.
+
+Sometimes, when the nursery clock seemed to tick more loudly than usual,
+I saw a gigantic water-wheel, and behind it massive rocks with the hewn
+tombs of ancient kings, and beyond them lay distant glamorous mountains,
+white sails creeping amid warm purple isles, set in a gulf of turquoise.
+Sometimes I have dreamed holy things, and waked to find myself over-awed
+by the sublimity of the vision and the glory of the Universe.
+
+So many of those childish visions I have identified in later life, but
+there is one which eludes me. It is a great white road leading to the
+farther east, and I see it drenched in white sunlight. Tinkling mule
+trains pass along it, and I know now it is in some way connected with
+Ida that saw ancient Troy, and the Capital of Pontus, the seat of
+Mithridates' Court, and the Empire of Trebizond. Some day, who knows, I
+may walk upon it.
+
+Looking back I can recollect nothing psychic happening to me before the
+age of six. I can fix that date upon which I became actually aware of
+the other world. It all happened through "Silk dress" and "Rumpus."
+
+I slept in a bed in one corner, and my younger brother slept in another
+corner. The room was large, and at the top of a modern, quite ordinary,
+town house. Two flights of stairs ran down to the ground floor. "Silk
+dress" was something we were extremely interested in, but I cannot
+recollect that we were ever in the least afraid.
+
+When we first became aware of "silk dress" I do not know, but in looking
+back across those many years I think that in the beginning we must have
+accepted "it" as something or somebody "real." Only after several
+experiences did it dawn upon us that "it" was not real. By then we had
+passed beyond the stage when we might have felt fear. After we had gone
+to bed we were left quite alone in the dark, and the nurses went down to
+supper. The younger children slept in another room. It was during such
+periods of silence that "silk dress" began its ascent.
+
+Just as we were dropping off to sleep one of us would murmur drowsily,
+"Here comes silk dress." Then we lay quite still, very wide awake again
+and listened intently.
+
+From far down on the ground floor we heard footsteps quietly and
+methodically ascending, and the rustle of a silk dress. We could hear
+quite distinctly when "it" arrived at the first floor, which was
+occupied by our parents, then "it" passed on to the next flight of
+stairs leading to our floor.
+
+The sound of footsteps and the rustle of the silk dress became more and
+more clearly audible as "it" drew ever nearer. We could tell the second
+at which "it" passed from the last step on to the corridor which led
+past our half-open door. Then there was a thrilling moment or two, when
+the tip-tap of shoes, and the swish of silk on the linoleum was quite
+loud, but the footsteps never halted. They always swept past the
+half-closed door, and went on into a small room beyond, which was used
+for storing boxes. Then dead silence fell again.
+
+In those days we never heard the word "ghost" mentioned, yet I cannot
+recollect thinking of "silk dress" as anything but a visitor from the
+other world. We talked of "it" freely in the household, but probably
+because we expressed no fear, no one seemed in the least interested. On
+wakeful nights we occupied ourselves in waiting for "it," and on wet
+nights we could not hear "it" clearly because the rain pattered so
+loudly on a large skylight outside our door. What interested us
+enormously was the fact that we never heard "it" descend again. How "it"
+got down in order to mount once more was a great puzzle.
+
+"Rumpus" was quite another matter, quite another order of manifestation.
+"Rumpus" always began when we were sound asleep, and "Rumpus" always
+wide awakened us. "They" came at longer intervals, about every ten days,
+whilst "it" came on most nights. During the summer mornings in the
+North, when one could often read a book in the light of a one a. m.
+dawn, "they" were very interesting, because when "their" hour, five a.
+m., arrived the room was flooded with sunshine. In winter mornings, when
+the room was in black darkness, we were merely bored, and cross at being
+roused, and we simply lay still and endured "them" till they had quite
+finished. But in the summer mornings we always sat up in bed and
+intently watched something we never saw.
+
+When "Rumpus" roused us brusquely from our slumbers it was by means of a
+demoniac pandemonium. The room was in possession of "them," and "they"
+crashed, and banged, and tossed about the furniture in the most reckless
+fashion. Crash went the wardrobe, bang went one chair after another,
+hurtling across the room. Crash went wardrobe back into its place again,
+clang went the fire-irons. Rushing collisions, and rappings on the
+window-panes, thuds on the floor, rattlings and clatterings of crockery,
+jingling of brass, creakings and groanings of expostulation from the old
+sofa, clanking of the fireguard, a veritable tornado of noise, enough
+surely to awaken the dead, yet out of the living it only awakened--us.
+No one else in the house ever heard it, and our vivid descriptions were,
+perhaps, naturally attributed to nightmare.
+
+We, of course, knew that it was nothing of the sort. We were, indeed,
+very wide awake during the ten to fifteen minutes the pandemonium
+continued, and our eyes were kept darting from side to side following
+the track of the noises, as they grew in volume and intensity. Creak,
+groan, crash! No mistaking the spot where that deafening sound came
+from. That was the old mahogany wardrobe being hurled face downwards on
+the floor, but whilst our eyes were riveted on its statuesque and utter
+immobility jingle, clank, from the fender, where the fire-irons
+commenced to jig. A wildly confused uproar over all the room, then boom,
+thud, beneath us, and our beds shivered convulsively, and sent thrills
+of wild excitement coursing through our nerves.
+
+Suddenly the tumult would cease. The mystery lay in the fact that we
+never saw anything move, though we distinctly heard everything moving,
+and could feel our beds reel beneath us.
+
+I have no explanations to offer of those happenings. They are very
+clearly fixed in my objective memory, and when we were both grown up,
+and had finally left that house my brother used often to say to me, "Do
+you remember 'Silk Dress' and 'Rumpus'?"
+
+Such recollections crowd back upon me now, with many other images of
+childhood. No sooner do I recollect one than another emerges like a
+shining cloud from below the horizon. Where have they been lying hidden
+during all those flying years? They have dwelt deep down in the eternal
+memory, the heart of God which beats in all humanity. Within that heart
+are stored aeonic treasures. They lie ever in wait to be bidden arise and
+cross the threshold.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE GHOST OF BROUGHTON HALL
+
+
+I was about six years old when my family moved to a brand new house in
+Claremont Crescent, that had just been erected on the outskirts of
+Edinburgh. There were still some green fields unbuilt upon, and some
+fine old trees left standing close to us, and those were still included
+in a triangular group of three grand old Manors--Broughton Hall, Powder
+Hall, and Logie Green. All three had the reputation of being badly
+haunted. The first named stood almost within a stone's throw of our end
+of the Crescent, and was occupied by an ancient family named Walker, who
+had held the property for generations. They still existed as a very
+charming relic of Scotch antiquity, and they had always been friends of
+our family.
+
+The house from the outside was very grim and forbidding-looking. It was
+hidden from the eyes of the curious behind very high walls, and was
+entered upon by two huge gates, always kept closed.
+
+Inside, the house was most interesting and attractive. There were many
+closed rooms and winding staircases, and odd steps in long, dark
+corridors, but the rooms that were lived in were beautiful of their
+kind. There were desks with secret drawers, wonderful pieces of
+Chippendale, tenderly cared for, quantities of rare old china and cut
+glass, and on the walls hung glorious Romneys and Hoppners, which
+fetched huge prices at Christie's when the household was finally broken
+up by death.
+
+The family consisted of three sisters, Fanny, Hope, and Kitty, the
+latter a widow, named Mrs. Chew. There were two brothers, Adam and John.
+The former lived with his sisters. John was a minister, and only paid
+visits. There was a nephew, the heir, William Stephens, who also paid
+long visits to the Hall. Though, at the date of which I speak, about
+1870, he must have been at least sixty, he was always referred to as
+"the Laddie."
+
+The three sisters occupied distinct positions in the house. Mrs. Chew
+acted as cook, though servants were kept, and she always sat in the
+kitchen, only coming "through" to the dining-room for her meals. Miss
+Hope was the worldly member of the family. She had been to London Town,
+and could not be relied upon to stop at home. She looked after the
+polishing of the furniture, the old glass and china. Miss Fanny was the
+lady of the family. She always sat in the best parlor. Every one waited
+on her, and she was never permitted to do anything for herself.
+
+She dressed for the part in thick, black satin, with, in winter, a white
+silk embroidered Chinese shawl, and, in summer, old Brussels lace.
+Across her forehead was a band of black velvet, with a pear-shaped pearl
+depending between the eyebrows. Over her snow-white hair was flung a
+piece of old lace surmounting a wreath of artificial flowers. Her
+claw-like hands were covered by lace mittens and many rings. I saw her
+constantly, and she was always idle. I never saw her read, or sew, or
+knit, and often I wondered what she thought about, as she sat there
+always in the same chair, year in year out, and with no companion but a
+large gray parrot. True, her surroundings were delightful. From her
+chair near the fire she could look out on the quaint old garden, always
+full of flowers, and she could glance around her at the many beautiful
+objects the room contained.
+
+I especially admired one Hoppner. The subject was a beautiful woman,
+with a mass of powdered hair, seated by an open window. Her cheek was
+supported in her hand, and at her elbow was a quaint little wicker cage
+containing a bird. I think the artist meant to suggest that both were
+captives. Though quite well in health, Miss Fanny never left the house,
+even to walk in the garden.
+
+My father and I went very often to call upon those curious old people,
+who were so utterly out of touch with modern life, backward though life
+was then in the Northern Capital. We arrived at all sorts of hours, but
+refreshments were always produced. An amazingly rich cake, and fruity
+old port, served in large quarter-pint cut-glass rummers. It was not
+considered polite to refuse those offerings, which were always kept in a
+corner cupboard, and served by Mrs. Chew, who emerged from the kitchen,
+or Miss Hope, who left her housework to greet us.
+
+Though Broughton Hall was commonly reputed to be haunted, no one seemed
+to know what form the ghost took. I was great friends with Mr. Adam, a
+majestic, clean-shaven old man, who carried his chin very high above an
+enormous black silk stock, and often I tried to draw him on the subject
+of the ghost, but without success. He took it very seriously, and warned
+me that "I wouldn't be any the better for having seen it. Besides," he
+always concluded, "it's a family affair." The sisters were even more
+uncommunicative.
+
+My father and I were profoundly interested in this ghost. There was
+something about the whole establishment that was extremely promising,
+from the ghost-hunter point of view. The consequence of this was that we
+were always on the prowl. Nothing discouraged us, and we spared neither
+time nor trouble. There is no research which requires such infinite
+patience as psychic research. Several years passed before the great
+moment arrived, and when it did arrive it was all over in about four
+minutes.
+
+My father had a way of suddenly looking up from his work and saying,
+"Let's go to Broughton Hall." I would at once rise, and together we
+would pass out into the night, without either hats or coats. Very
+eccentric, it may be said, but then we frankly were very eccentric. We
+would steal away together around the Crescent, and down the road till we
+reached the great gates. Very softly we opened and closed them, and
+keeping well in the shadow of the trees and bushes we would creep round
+the silent house.
+
+I cannot describe the thrill of those nocturnal adventures. It was all
+so eerie, so full of vague, terrifying possibilities. I don't know what
+we expected to see, and we were generally back again in our own house in
+half an hour; but one night our patience really was rewarded.
+
+It was November, dry, but wild and bitterly cold. Billowy white snow
+clouds scudding before a brisk north wind threw us alternately into
+light and darkness, as they covered and uncovered the face of the full
+moon. We had emerged from our house about half-past nine, and had
+reached the back of Broughton Hall. The house was shrouded in darkness
+and dead silence, every blind was close drawn, and the suggestion was
+one of utter emptiness. My father and I were walking apart, I being
+right under the shadow of the walls, whilst he was in the middle of the
+paved court, which had neither hedge nor walls, but met the edge of the
+field running up to it.
+
+Suddenly I heard him whisper "Hush!" though we never did utter a word
+whilst close to the house. His arm was pointing in front of him. I
+stared ahead, and then I saw, clearly lit by the moon, a woman who had
+apparently just rounded the corner of the house. She was running hard,
+straight towards us, and her feet made no sound on the round cobble
+stones.
+
+Terror suddenly seized me, and I darted across to my father, and got
+well behind him, seizing him firmly round the waist. The woman came on,
+rushing wildly. She had nearly reached us, and I was almost thrown over
+as my father faced her, and backed to allow her to pass. I peeped round
+him, and saw a woman, ghastly pale, and distraught-looking, clad in a
+white nightdress. Two long strands of black hair streamed out behind
+her, and her bare arms were outstretched in front. In a flash she had
+passed, and absolutely silently, and I found myself lying on the ground
+alone, and my father vanishing in hot pursuit.
+
+Needless to say I very quickly picked myself up again, and joined the
+chase. Terror lent me wings, and in a minute or two I came up with him,
+standing breathless by the gate.
+
+"Vanished into thin air just as I reached her. That's always the way.
+You can't catch them," he said.
+
+We made a little detour before going home, in order to discuss the
+great event. We had no doubt that we had seen a genuine apparition. We
+knew all the occupants of the Hall, and the woman had vanished in the
+open, and in full flight, just as my father had come up alongside her.
+He cautioned me against mentioning our adventure to any one, and I kept
+silence until years after, when Broughton Hall was pulled down and its
+inmates were all dead.
+
+Before going on to our next ghostly adventure I will say a few words
+about my father, Robert Chambers, who in those days was something of a
+celebrity, and a very remarkable man.
+
+In appearance he was very handsome, extremely tall and well built, and
+with features that were well-nigh perfect. It was the fashion in his
+time to wear the hair rather long, and his was dark and very curly. He
+always dressed well, in the style of the country gentleman, rather than
+as a town dweller.
+
+In character he was extremely independent, and was utterly indifferent
+to two things--money and public opinion. His intellect was
+extraordinary, and it was commonly said that he knew a great deal about
+most things, and something about all things.
+
+In Scotland, in those days, it was not considered necessary to trouble
+about the education of girls. No one ever tried to educate me,
+consequently at a very early age I was absolutely free to devote myself
+entirely to my father, and we were inseparable. Our intercourse was not
+that of father and daughter. It was that of confidential friends of an
+equal age. At that period my mother was more or less of an invalid, and
+had her own attendants.
+
+My father and I went every morning at ten o'clock to the old business
+house of W. and R. Chambers, in the High Street of Edinburgh, and
+remained there till half-past two, when we walked home together,
+sometimes paying a call or two on the way. Though a mere uneducated
+child I helped him in his literary work, and at odd hours committed to
+memory many poets. We returned to four o'clock dinner, the correct hour
+in those days, and at six o'clock a porter arrived with my father's bag,
+containing manuscripts to be read and selected for _Chambers' Journal_.
+From six p. m. till midnight he worked at reading manuscript, not typed
+then, and proof correcting.
+
+Twice a week we went to the theater--there was only one in Edinburgh
+then. It was managed by a hard working couple, Mr. and Mrs. Howard, who
+sometimes filled up a week by acting themselves. I am bound to say we
+spent most of our time in the Green Room, and I knew every turn and
+twist behind the curtain. This turned out to be lucky for us.
+
+One night we went to a performance given by the Arthur Sullivan Company,
+and about halfway through a cry of "Fire" was raised. Great masses of
+burning stuff began to drop from the ceiling down into the auditorium.
+Instantly there was a panic, and a terrible stampede, and my father and
+I leaned forward, protecting our heads behind the backs of the stalls in
+front, whilst the mad rush climbed over us. When all was clear in front
+of us we made our way to the back of the stage, and escaped quite
+easily. I looked behind me, and I can see now the dense mass of
+struggling humanity wedged in the doorway.
+
+I remained safely with Mrs. Howard whilst my father ran around to the
+front and helped to extricate the dead. The theater was burned to the
+ground, but was very rapidly built up again.
+
+My first literary effort must here be recorded. I collaborated with
+Professor Andrew Wilson in writing the pantomime of "Ali Baba and the
+Forty Thieves."
+
+Andrew Wilson was Professor of Natural Science, and an extremely
+versatile person--a passionate love of the drama was added to his many
+scientific attainments. We wrote the dialogue together, in one long
+revelry of laughter, and I was responsible for the words of the songs.
+As a literary effort I can only describe it as appalling. The pantomime
+was, however, a great success. The audacity of our utter incompetence
+proved highly successful, and the critics justly described it as "The
+funniest Pantomime in Scotland." No wonder the audience laughed from
+start to finish.
+
+My father always called at once upon any celebrity who happened to be
+passing through the city, and thus I became acquainted with many
+interesting and amusing people. Henry Irving was amongst the number. We
+always called upon him on our way to business, a little before ten. If
+he was playing for a week we called on him every morning, and often
+looked into the Green Room at night. He and my father were great
+friends, and at the hour of our visit he was always propped up in bed
+having breakfast. I used to perch on the bed whilst the two men talked.
+Irving's nightshirt interested me (pyjamas had not come in then). It was
+white cambric with two enormous double frills down the front, and quite
+a pierrot ruffle round his neck. He was profoundly interested in the
+occult, and told me that a ghost he had once seen had suggested to him a
+particular action of his whilst playing in "The Bells." At the moment
+when he parted the curtains, and looked wildly out, shouting hoarsely,
+"The Bells, the Bells."
+
+Through Irving we came to know the Baroness Burdett Coutts, his ardent
+admirer. She was very kind to me, and presented me with a green silk
+dress, but I always thought her a very melancholy woman, even when
+entertaining many interesting people in her celebrated corner house in
+Piccadilly, with its white china parrot swinging in the window. She was
+much attached to my father, and treated him with a humble and touching
+deference.
+
+Robert Chambers was a very keen sportsman, who fortunately did not
+require much practice to keep up his game. He held championships in golf
+and bowling. He was too ardent a naturalist and ornithologist to care
+for shooting, but he was an expert angler. He was also a born actor and
+mimic, and used to keep a Green Room in roars by "taking off" any of
+"the profession" called for, and I never heard a better ventriloquist.
+He adored music, and played the flute well. As a platform speaker he was
+extremely fluent and perfectly at ease.
+
+His indifference to money resulted in his never having a penny in his
+pocket at night, no matter how much he took with him in the morning, and
+one of my tasks was to prevent his being fleeced by those who lay in
+wait for him. He took any amount of trouble over impecunious and
+incompetent authors, and constantly re-wrote their work for them in
+order to make it fit for publication. He was a unique editor, and his
+labors in the cause of charity were strenuous, secret, and, I fear,
+rather indiscriminate.
+
+During this period of my life, the head of the house, William Chambers,
+was still living, with his quaint old wife, in the West End of
+Edinburgh. William, who had survived his more versatile brother, Robert
+(my grandfather), was a little shriveled-up old man, with a dry and
+severe manner. Most people were afraid of him, few liked him, but I got
+on with him famously. I have always been extremely proud of the fact
+that he rose from nothing to great wealth. There must be something fine
+in a man, who, as a lad, rose at four a. m. to read classics to an
+intelligent baker, whilst the batch of bread was being baked, and who
+gladly accepted as payment a copper or a roll.
+
+William and Robert Chambers had left their widowed mother to fend for
+themselves. The family was at the lowest financial ebb. Much money had
+been spent on the French refugees who flocked into Scotland in 1810, and
+there was nothing to spare now. We were originally French, like so very
+many of the old Scotch families. The first of us in history is recorded
+as Guillaume de la Chaumbre, who, as the most prominent man in Peebles,
+signed the Ragman Roll in 1296. My people had always lived in the dales
+of the Tweed, so very appropriately I married a man called Tweedale.
+
+Towards the end of his life William Chambers amused himself by spending
+many thousands on the restoration of St. Giles' Cathedral, an historic
+church which had fallen into great disrepair. This was a time of great
+interest for me, and I used to spend hours helping the workmen to gather
+up the thousands of human skulls that paved the church to a good depth.
+There were tombs laid bare of many celebrated people of the long ago,
+and these had to be identified, and carefully kept intact, until finally
+given a safer resting-place.
+
+William Chambers had been offered a baronetcy some years previously, but
+he refused it. He told me he did not consider it a dignified thing for a
+man of letters to bear any other honor than that accorded to brain power
+by a benefited world. He and his brother Robert were the pioneers of
+cheap and good educational literature for the laboring man, and the
+avidity with which this literature, "Chambers' Information for the
+People," was consumed, appeared to be a fitting reward. In those days it
+was an unheard-of thing for a publisher to be honored by a title. Now,
+however, on the eve of the re-opening of St. Giles' Cathedral, Her
+Majesty, Queen Victoria, commanded William Chambers to accept a
+baronetcy. The old couple were much agitated, but had to submit, and the
+Queen announced her intention of performing the opening ceremony.
+
+When the day arrived William Chambers lay dead in his house, and my
+father and I took the place of the old couple. The Queen was indisposed,
+and Lord Aberdeen took her place.
+
+After the ceremony both Lord Aberdeen and Lord Rosebery urged upon my
+father to take up the baronetcy, more especially as he was his uncle's
+heir, but this he utterly refused to do.
+
+Old Lady Chambers, the widow, discarded her title immediately and
+remained Mrs. Chambers till the day of her death.
+
+It must have been at least a month after William Chambers' death that he
+visited me in a very vivid dream. I dreamed that he was standing beside
+my bed, and suddenly he bent over me and whispered in my ear, "I've left
+you all my money." On waking I had totally forgotten the dream, but
+later in the day an old servant of ours said to me, "I saw the wraith
+of your Uncle William last night, but he had nothing to say to me."
+
+Then my dream flashed back to me. A day or two afterwards I said
+suddenly to the old family lawyer, "Was there ever a question of Uncle
+William leaving his money to me?"
+
+The dry answer was, "Yes! at one time there was a question of that." I
+could never extract anything further from him on the subject.
+
+Though now possessed of considerable wealth my father made no difference
+in his mode of life, and he continued to work just as hard as ever, and
+to give away large sums of money. He never wanted anything for himself,
+but was always ready to give to others. He had a great love of precious
+stones, and always carried about little packets of diamonds, which
+looked like packets of chemists' powders. Had I desired I could have
+loaded myself with jewels. He never denied me anything and we continued
+our close companionship, the only difference now being we took some
+holidays in the form of afternoons off.
+
+On one of these occasions we saw our second ghost.
+
+We went to pay a visit to a very old woman, whose name I cannot
+remember. She lived alone with one servant in an ancient dwelling in
+Inveresk. The house was a large one, and was enclosed by very high
+walls, which entirely isolated it from the busy streets that surrounded
+it. The original old garden remained, in all its beauty, and the rooms
+were full of quaint heirlooms.
+
+We were always made very welcome, and the servant at once produced a
+delicious tea, consisting of fresh baked scones, butter made of real
+cream--margarine being not then invented--home-made strawberry jam, and
+home-laid eggs. Russian eggs were not then imported.
+
+I must here interpose that deliciously innocent telegram sent by an
+Aberdeen merchant in the first days of the Great War, and which set all
+England and Scotland mad to see the fur and snow-clad Russian troops
+passing through to the Front. The telegram ran as follows:--
+
+    "Twenty thousand Russians arrived."
+
+The twenty thousand Muscovites were only twenty thousand stale eggs, but
+Lord Kitchener's order was, "Let it stand."
+
+To return to my story.
+
+One glorious late spring evening we were seated at tea, and the window
+was thrown wide to the perfumed garden, where lilacs, and wallflowers,
+and lilies of the valley rioted gloriously. The birds were in full song
+in this peaceful sanctuary, which might have been a hundred miles away
+from a town. My father had put his invariable question to the old woman,
+"Have you seen her again?" Sometimes the answer was Yes, sometimes No. I
+gathered that this question referred to the old woman's dead daughter,
+her only child. This daughter had been violently insane for many years
+and had remained under her mother's protection. She had died some years
+previously, at the age of fifty-five, having endured a terribly long
+martyrdom.
+
+Suddenly my father broke off the conversation.
+
+"My God! there she is!" He half rose from his chair and stared through
+the open window. I looked in the same direction. A woman was strolling
+aimlessly along the path just outside. There was a curious uncertainty
+about her movements. She walked like a blind person, who has neither
+stick nor arm to guide her. Strangely enough I never thought of
+connecting this woman with the ghost of the mad daughter. She looked so
+natural, so commonplace. Her hollow face was quite gray, and her dark
+hair was drawn tightly back from it, and rolled in an ugly knob behind.
+Her dress was of some dark material, her boots were of cloth, and her
+hands and arms were rolled up in a stuff apron she wore.
+
+There she was, vacantly wandering in the garden, in the lovely spring
+evening, with the blackbirds and thrushes singing their hearts out all
+around her, and I did not comprehend why such an ordinary, unattractive
+looking person should so deeply interest my father.
+
+I turned round to say something to the old woman, then I instantly
+understood. She had gone down on her knees, and had hidden herself by
+throwing the end of the tablecloth over her head.
+
+Then I turned my eyes back to the apparition. I don't suppose she was
+visible for more than four minutes. I remember my father uttering
+consoling words to the effect that "she's gone," and helping the old
+woman into her chair again, when we resumed our tea and conversation, as
+if nothing unusual had occurred.
+
+Looking back upon these incidents I contrast the infinite trouble we
+took in our hunt for ghosts, with present-day psychical research. I
+think of the innumerable half hours we spent at Broughton Hall, and only
+once were we rewarded by seeing anything. We visited the old woman at
+Inveresk whenever we found time. There was nothing in the least
+inspiring or interesting in her conversation, yet to us there was an
+unspeakable charm about her outward circumstances.
+
+There was the spiritual charm of the silent old house, with its
+vibrating memories of the long departed. The charm of the cloistered
+peace, amidst which the woman lived and dreamed, shut away from the
+world by the high walls. It was a retreat in which to meditate, and that
+always appealed to me. A dwelling with a beautiful view has a great
+charm, but it draws the thoughts always outward to the external. Still,
+when I pass a quiet old homestead, hidden away in its own flowery old
+garden from the eyes of the world, it attracts me far more than the
+far-flung grandeur of many a stately English mansion.
+
+Only in such retreats of ancient peace can the thoughts be turned
+continuously inward, to their true bourne--the temple of the living God.
+
+I seem to have been born with an ingrained belief in the enormous virtue
+of renunciation. Self-sacrifice, I am certain, is the foundation stone
+upon which is built the moral progress of man. I had occasion to prove
+this for myself at a comparatively early age. My mother suddenly became
+much more ailing than usual, and began to suffer a great deal of pain. A
+consultation of doctors was called by our own family physician, and two
+of the greatest surgeons in Edinburgh arrived one morning at our house.
+
+After about an hour they came into the room in which I awaited them.
+Their faces were very grave. They informed me, as kindly as they could,
+that they had arrived at the unanimous opinion that my mother was
+suffering from internal cancer, and that she might possibly live another
+six months. Our own doctor confessed that he had long suspected this,
+and the two surgeons corroborated his opinion. There was no doubt in
+their minds, as the disease had openly declared itself.
+
+I took this shock in perfect silence for a minute or two, then I decided
+upon my first course of action. I asked them in the meanwhile to keep
+this matter secret from every one, even from my father.
+
+To this they rather demurred, saying that it was only right that he
+should know the truth, and that he would certainly question them. I then
+urged that our family doctor had known of this, and had hidden his
+knowledge up to to-day. It would be easy enough for him to go on hiding
+the truth for a short time longer.
+
+The doctors sought to know my reason for this secrecy; it would do no
+good, the truth would have to come out. I could give no reason. I had no
+reason, only a very strong instinct, and I wanted time. I asked for a
+fortnight, after which I would myself inform my father of the nature of
+my mother's malady.
+
+They agreed to this, doubtless much relieved that so unpleasant a task
+was removed to other shoulders, and they went away.
+
+That night I did not sleep. I had too much to think out. My mother must
+not die. I had to form some plan to save her, if it were humanly
+possible. She was absolutely necessary, I considered, to the younger
+children. She would be required for some years yet. My life was wholly
+given up to my father, I had become necessary to him, and this left me
+no time to mother the young ones. His health was not of the best. A
+curious tendency to hemorrhage kept him constantly weak. If he had a
+tooth drawn bleeding would continue for days after. He needed all my
+attention.
+
+At that particular time I possessed something--never mind what--that
+meant more to me than anything else in the whole wide world. It was the
+greatest thing I had in life. I decided before morning that with this,
+my one great possession, I would strike a bargain with the Almighty. I
+would give Him a fortnight to consider it. I would offer Him the
+greatest thing in my life in exchange for my mother's life.
+
+Quite conceivably He might refuse to consider the proposition, in which
+case I stood to lose everything. I could never again recover what I
+proposed to risk, but I came to the deliberate conclusion that it was
+worth it. The case demanded a desperate remedy.
+
+Having made up my mind, I went about the business in the crudest and
+most practical manner. I set aside certain odd half hours during the
+coming fortnight, in which I would state my case. I wanted God to have
+every opportunity of considering my suggestion on its simple merits.
+
+I began by pointing out to Him why it was so necessary that my mother
+should live, and then I went on to say that He might be sure I asked
+nothing for myself. I proposed to give in exchange for my mother's life
+the greatest thing I possessed on earth, a thing that doubtless was of
+little interest to Him, but nevertheless meant a very great deal to
+me--in fact, my all. I really had nothing else of any value to offer.
+
+Now, in thus addressing the Almighty, I was not acting as a primitive
+savage, for I had considered the subject of Deity for several years, and
+had studied most of the great theologians. I addressed Him thus as a
+Spirit of too supreme a potency, of too extraneous a mentality and
+majesty, to be addressed in any other terms but plain downright
+reasoning. Elaborate and propitiatory words were good enough for earthly
+princelets, but ridiculous when offered up to the Supreme Creative
+Power. That was my way of looking at it, and I began at once to carry
+out my plan. There was no time to lose. Meanwhile, no living soul, save
+the doctors, knew of my secret.
+
+At the end of the second day my mother was free from pain. At the end of
+the first week she was recovering rapidly. The family doctor was
+intensely puzzled, but still adhered to his original conviction. On the
+eighth day I ceased my half-hourly reasoning with God. I merely thanked
+Him for concluding the bargain. He had accepted my sacrifice, the
+greatest I could make, and there that matter ended. I felt, without the
+smallest irreverence, that we were quits.
+
+At the end of the month the two great surgeons returned, at our own
+doctor's request. I awaited them with perfect assurance and
+tranquillity. When they came in to me they still looked perturbed. They
+told me that they had examined my mother, and found all traces of the
+malady had disappeared. They could not account for it, they reiterated
+their former diagnosis, dwelling upon certain facts, in very natural
+self-justification. They expressed, in the very kindest manner, their
+deep regret for all the suffering and anxiety they must have caused me,
+and said how very lucky it was that no one had been made aware of their
+original convictions, save myself. The case was extraordinary, abnormal,
+there was nothing more to say. Then they went away for the last time.
+
+My father was greatly puzzled at their refusing to accept any fee, and
+to the day of his death our own doctor, whenever he found me alone,
+referred to the case as the most marvelous he had ever come across. My
+mother quite regained her health, and died many years after from lung
+trouble.
+
+One other great sacrifice I had to make a year or two after. My father
+was entirely confined to bed with a severe attack of internal
+hemorrhage, and at the same time my youngest sister was threatened with
+consumption. She was ordered to go to the South of France immediately.
+
+It was decided that I must go with her, as she could not be trusted to
+strangers. My mother, absolutely restored to health, would be left with
+my father, who had also a good nurse valet.
+
+My father and I bade each other farewell one early morning in February,
+1888. We knew we would not meet again on earth.
+
+Only one other curious incident do I remember in connection with that
+town house we lived in. On the night of the 28th December we were all
+assembled in the library, most of us were reading, and a violent wind
+storm was howling round the house. Suddenly my father laid down the
+proof sheets he was correcting, and took out his watch. Then he turned
+to us and said: "At this moment, seven fifteen, on Sunday the 28th of
+December, 1879, something terrible has happened. I think a bridge must
+be down."
+
+The next day we learned that the Tay Bridge had been blown down at that
+very hour, and the train and its occupants hurled to death in the waters
+below.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+CURIOUS PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES
+
+
+After my father's death I began to live a much more independent life. I
+was financially independent, and I proceeded to London, where I felt I
+would have a wider range of intellectual companionship. I lived in
+hotels and dispensed with all chaperonage, thus leaving myself free to
+join my mother on the Riviera in the early spring months.
+
+I never cared for dancing, and always having had the companionship of
+people who were years older than myself, I had made few girl friends. My
+first cousin, Lady Campbell, wife of Sir Guy Campbell, Bart., 60th
+Rifles, and another first cousin, Menie Muriel Dowie, were the only two
+I really saw much of.
+
+Lady Campbell was, and is, a very attractive woman, possessed of great
+charm of manner. Exceedingly cultured and intelligent, she is also an
+artist to her finger tips. As girls we used to be fond of attending
+Queen Victoria's Drawing-rooms. A bevy of us would take lunch with us in
+the carriages, and thoroughly enjoy our day out. I was the last woman to
+kiss the hand of Queen Victoria at a Drawing-room. I was stopped by a
+Court official just as I was moving forward, and told to wait as "Her
+Majesty is going to withdraw." The present Dowager Queen Alexandra, as
+Princess of Wales, then took her place. On this occasion I heard the
+Queen say, "Let this lady pass." I was then told to proceed.
+
+Being very tall I had always a certain difficulty in getting down low
+enough to kiss the tiny Queen's hand. After I had passed, and as I
+backed out of "the presence," I saw Her Majesty being assisted out of
+the queer little half chair, half stool she used. She never held another
+Drawing-room, and I regret that, being abroad, I had not the honor of
+making a last curtsy to the little coffin as it passed through the
+streets of London.
+
+Menie Muriel Dowie was a brilliant bohemian, as can be gathered by those
+who have read her book, "A Girl in the Carpathians." I have never known
+any woman who was possessed of so many natural talents. She is as much
+at home in skilled and polished diplomacy as in practical agriculture.
+She has always been a great traveler, yet a delicate woman. Only her
+indomitable spirit kept her going in her youth, as it still does in her
+beautiful house in Green Street, and her model farm in Gloucestershire.
+
+My greatest older friends were Mrs. Lynn Linton, the novelist, Browning,
+the poet, Lord Leighton, the painter, and Mrs. Proctor, widow of Barry
+Cornwall, and mother of Adelaide Proctor, the poet. All people old
+enough to be my parents.
+
+I had a great admiration for Mrs. Lynn Linton's strong, cold intellect;
+it was so invigorating, and she was so self-reliant, an uncommon thing
+for a woman to be in those days. We had long arguments over matters
+occult, but I never could make the least impression upon her strong
+materialism. "I won't leave this earth even with you," she used to
+protest. She was a great friend and admirer of my aunt, Lady Priestley,
+also a woman of very fine intellect, who devoted herself to scientific
+pursuits. Had she been a man, or had she lived in the present day, when
+woman has at last come into her own, she would have made a very strong
+mark.
+
+Robert Browning, whom I had known for some years, used to drop in very
+often to have a chat, and I rejoiced in him exceedingly as a born mystic
+of a high order. We often discussed the possibility of his work being
+directed from the other side, and we argued as to whether he received
+inspiration from various quarters, or whether he was the beloved of some
+poet of a former age, who, active still in the spirit world, expressed
+his great thoughts through Robert Browning on earth. So many people at
+that time frankly said they could not understand Browning's poetry, and
+this I told him was to be attributed to lack of the mystic perception.
+Now that mysticism has so enormously developed, his work is much more
+comprehensive to the world.
+
+I had alas! only one year of really close friendship with him, for he
+died the year after I came to London.
+
+One curious thing Browning told me.
+
+He dropped in one night to see me, after dinner at a house where
+Millais, the painter, had been one of the guests.
+
+"Johnnie Millais told me an odd thing to-night," he said. "He's
+constantly seeing figures appearing and disappearing on the face of the
+canvas he's working upon."
+
+"What sort of figures?" I asked.
+
+Browning shot out his cuff.
+
+"Here they are. I knew you'd be interested, so I took them down for you.
+Better write them down for yourself, but don't mention the subject to
+him or any of his family."
+
+I fetched a piece of paper and copied from Browning's cuff.
+
+"13. 1.8.9.6. The figures don't always come in that order," he said,
+"but more often than not they do. The 13 always comes up as 13, but he's
+seen 9.6.1.8. What do you make of it?"
+
+"At present nothing, but the future may throw light upon the
+phenomenon," I answered.
+
+I never mentioned this occurrence to any one, and, indeed, forgot all
+about it till some years after Millais' death, when I came upon my notes
+in an old box. I then realized that the great painter had been looking
+upon the dates of his own death. He died on August 13th, 1896.
+
+One night some one, I have not the least idea who, came to me in my
+sleep and bade me take up pencil and paper, and write to dictation.
+Still sound asleep I did as I was bidden. I always kept writing
+materials by my bedside.
+
+In the morning I remembered nothing of this till my eye fell upon some
+sheets of paper. The writing upon them was mine, but very big and
+untidy. Then I recollected the command I had received in the night and
+eagerly read what I had written. Here it is. I gave Browning a copy as
+he was so deeply interested--
+
+     "A solitary cottage stood on the edge of a bleak moorland. The sun
+     sank behind the low horizon, and left marshy pools glowing like
+     living opals. A stream of homeward flying rooks made a streak of
+     indigo across the topaz sky where gauzy wind-riven clouds floated
+     westward. The sacred hush of eventide brooded under the calm wings
+     of night.
+
+     "Out on the waste wandered the Angel of 'Sleep,' and the Angel of
+     'Death' with arms fraternally entwined, and whilst the brotherly
+     genii embraced each other, night stole down with velvet footfall,
+     and the green stars peered forth.
+
+     "Then the Angel of Sleep shook from out his hands the invisible
+     grains of slumber, and bade the night wind waft them o'er the
+     world. And soon the child in its cradle, the tired mother, the aged
+     man, and the pain-laden woman were at peace. The curfew tolled out
+     from the distant hamlet and then was still.
+
+     "Inside the cottage a rushlight burned faintly, indicating the
+     poverty of the room, and illuminating the death-like features of
+     the boy who lay on the bed. By his side, worn out, sat the father,
+     his horny hand clasped in that of his child.
+
+     "And the two brother Angels advanced, hand in hand, and peered in
+     at the window, and the Angel of Sleep said: 'Behold how gracious a
+     thing it is, that we can visit this humble dwelling and scatter
+     grains of slumber around, and send oblivion to the weary watcher. I
+     am beloved and courted by all. How merciful is our vocation.' And
+     silently he entered the room.
+
+     "He kissed the eyelids of the weary watcher, and as he did so some
+     grains fell from out the wreath of scarlet poppies that lay like
+     drops of blood upon his brow.
+
+     "But the Angel of Death sat without, his pallid face shrouded in
+     the sable of his wings.
+
+     "And he spake to the Angel of Sleep, 'Of a truth thou art happy and
+     beloved. The welcome guest of all, whereas I am shunned, the door
+     is barred as against a secret foe, and I am counted the enemy of
+     the world.'
+
+     "But the Angel of Sleep wiped away the immortal tears from the dark
+     and mournful eyes of his brother Death.
+
+     "'Are we not children born of the one Father?' said he, 'and do not
+     the good call thee friend, and the lonely, the homeless, the weary
+     laden bless thy hallowed name when they wake in Paradise.'
+
+     "And the Angel of Death unfurled his sable wings and took heart.
+     And as Lucifer the light-bringer paled in the violet Heavens he
+     silently entered the dwelling. With his golden scythe he cut the
+     silver cord of life, and gathered the child to his faithful bosom."
+
+The evenings I most enjoyed were those I spent in the studio of Felix
+Moscheles, the great apostle of peace. There one met all the genius and
+talent in London, and any genius of foreign nationality who happened to
+be visiting England. The cosmopolitan element always attracted me, and I
+went to several frankly revolutionary houses, where red ties flaunted,
+and where those Russian Nihilists found a welcome who were constantly
+rushing over here to escape Siberia. Through them I learned to
+understand what the real woes of Russia were, and to expect the present
+revolution as the inevitable result of brutal repression and
+misgovernment.
+
+During one winter at Nice I renewed my acquaintance with one of the most
+remarkable mystics of modern times, Marie, Countess of Caithness and
+Duchesse de Pomar.
+
+I had first met her in Edinburgh in 1872 when she was on the eve of her
+second marriage with Lord Caithness. My father and mother attended her
+very quiet wedding. Now we met again many years after at her beautiful
+home, the Palais Tiranty, Nice. Lady Caithness was widowed for the
+second time, Lord Caithness having died in 1881, and lived alone with
+her devoted son, the Duc de Pomar. She had a magnificent home in Paris,
+"Holyrood," Avenue Wagram. This house contained a large lecture hall
+filled with gilt chairs, and hung round with fine pictures. Leading from
+this hall down a flight of marble stairs one came to a chapel or seance
+room, used for direct communication with the spirit of Mary Stuart, and
+said to have been built "under the Queen's instructions."
+
+This presupposes Queen Mary to be still on "the other side." Other
+occultists maintain that she has reincarnated again in the person of a
+very old Empress, who still lives on earth.
+
+It has been often said of Lady Caithness that she believed herself to be
+the reincarnation of Mary Stuart. During all the years I knew her
+intimately I never heard her even hint at such a belief, and the fact
+that she believed herself to be in touch with the Queen on "the other
+side" precludes in my opinion the possibility of her having formed such
+a conception.
+
+What may have given rise to the suggestion was the fact that she dressed
+after the fashion of the Scottish Queen, and was surrounded by "Mary
+relics." Also, there is no doubt that she had a deeply sympathetic
+interest in the unfortunate Queen, and had elevated her memory into what
+amounted almost to a religion. In the chapel there is a full length
+lovely portrait of Mary, which is so lighted and arranged that it gives
+the impression of a living woman. Leading out of the dining-room was the
+bedroom of Lady Caithness, a sumptuous apartment. The bed was a state
+bed, plumes of ostrich feathers uprose at each corner. At one end was a
+crown, and behind the pillows was a fresco painting representing Jacob's
+Ladder, with a multitude of angels ascending and descending. Often Lady
+Caithness received in bed, as was the habit of the French Queens of
+former days.
+
+The jewels possessed by Lady Caithness were the most gorgeous I have
+ever seen. Nothing worn by crowned heads, at the many English Courts I
+have attended, were comparable to them. I can remember an Edinburgh
+jeweler inviting my father and me to inspect some diamonds belonging to
+her that he was cleaning. There was a long chain of huge diamonds
+reaching to the knees, with a cross attached, which no casual observer,
+not possessing the jeweler's guarantee as we did, would have believed to
+be genuine. When standing receiving her guests in the beautiful salons
+of the Palais Tiranty, clad in crimson velvet, she looked a very
+wonderful figure, for she possessed exceptional personal beauty as well.
+
+As may be supposed, a woman of such commanding presence who was known to
+possess a deep interest in the occult, could secure the services of the
+best mediums the world over. I sat with her through many seances,
+successful, barren, and indifferent, conducted by mediums of various
+nationalities. I remember one conducted by a South American medium,
+where the "controls" became very noisy and troublesome, and threatened
+to do serious damage. The medium could not be roused out of the trance
+she had fallen into, and it had really become necessary to put an end to
+the performance. She was a very big, heavy woman, and had sunk half off
+her chair on to the floor. I suggested to Lady Caithness that if we
+could drag or carry her into another room matters might then quiet down,
+but I added dubiously, "She must be a great weight."
+
+Lady Caithness replied with a smile: "Try. You'll probably find her very
+light indeed."
+
+I did try, and this was the only time in my life that I had the
+opportunity of proving to myself how tremendously a medium loses weight
+whilst genuine manifestations are in progress. I found it quite easy to
+lift this woman, who in ordinary circumstances must have weighed at
+least twelve or thirteen stone.
+
+Sir William Crookes has given to the world a very interesting account of
+his work in weighing mediums, before and during materialization. He
+always found that a great decrease in weight took place during the
+materializations, proving how enormous is the drain on the strength of
+the medium. Such evidence is most valuable, as coming from our greatest
+chemist.
+
+On this particular night I had no doubt as to the genuineness of the
+medium. Had she been a fraud she would have stopped the seance at once,
+on seeing how annoyed Lady Caithness was. She had every reason to
+conciliate her, and was greatly distressed to hear that her services
+would no longer be required. The troublesome spirits followed her into
+the next room, but gradually subsided as we succeeded in bringing the
+woman back out of her trance.
+
+I used to go very often to the theater at Nice with Lady Caithness. She
+had her own box, and often invited Don Carlos of Spain, and other
+distinguished personages, to accompany her. One night we went to hear
+the incomparable Judic. We were only a party of three, the third being
+Prince Valori.
+
+The Prince was then a man past middle age. He suggested a magnificent
+ruin, retaining as he did the battered remains of great good looks, and
+it was plain to see that his valet was exceedingly skillful. He
+possessed also a European reputation for heiress hunting, but to the day
+of his death he never succeeded in catching one, though it was said he
+had pursued his quarry in all parts of the world. Perhaps the figure he
+placed upon his ancient lineage and his personal charm was too high;
+perhaps he had begun his quest too late in life, though the position of
+a widowed Princess Valori would certainly not have been without
+attraction. I attributed his single blessedness to quite a different
+cause.
+
+That night, whilst my attention was fixed on the stage, I became dimly
+aware that some one had entered our box, but until the song was over I
+did not turn round to look who it was. We always had visitors coming and
+going. When at last I did glance round I saw nothing remarkable. Only a
+man in fancy dress seated behind Valori, a man whom I had never seen
+before.
+
+At that period Nice went mad during the winter season. The most
+extravagant amusements were entered into with a wild zest, by the very
+cosmopolitan society of extremely wealthy people. There were fancy
+dress balls every night somewhere, and no one thought it strange to see
+bands of revelers in fancy costume walking about the streets and
+thronging the cafes at all hours of the night.
+
+I was not therefore astonished to see this man in fancy dress, leaning
+familiarly over the back of Prince Valori's chair. He was a very thin
+man, with very long, thin legs, and he was dressed entirely in chocolate
+brown--a sort of close-fitting cowl was drawn over his head, and his
+curious long, impish face was made more weird by small, sharply pointed
+ears rising on each side of his head. He appeared to have "got himself
+up" to look like a satyr, or some such mythical monstrosity. He was not
+introduced to me at the moment, and other people entering our box whom I
+knew, I forgot about him. When the box cleared before the next act I
+noticed he had gone.
+
+A week or so after this I went to a fancy dress ball given by a Russian
+friend of mine--Princess Lina Galitzine. There was a great crowd, and a
+number of Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses, some of whom had driven long
+distances from their villas and hotels in Mentone, Monte Carlo, and
+Beaulieu, etc. I soon saw Prince Valori making his way towards me,
+dressed very magnificently, in a French costume of the eighteenth
+century. By his side moved the man in brown.
+
+Now that I saw "the satyr" under brilliant light he struck me at once as
+something peculiar. His walk was alone sufficient to attract attention.
+He strutted on tiptoes, with a curious jerk with every step he made.
+Those who remember Henry Irving's peculiar walk may form some idea of
+"the satyr's" movements. They were Irving's immensely exaggerated. I
+concluded that Valori was bringing him up to present him to me, but
+such proved not to be his intention. Valori shook hands, coolly
+requested the young American to whom I was talking to move off and find
+some one to dance with, and seated himself in the vacated chair. "The
+satyr" stood by his side and said nothing. I thought this very odd, and
+glancing, whenever I could do so unobserved, at the silent brown figure,
+I began to feel uneasy and shivery. It was impossible, whilst he stood
+there listening to all we said, to ask Valori who he was, and no mention
+was made of him.
+
+As soon as I could I escaped to talk to some one else, and for an hour
+or two I avoided both. During this time I asked several people who "the
+satyr" was, but no one seemed to have noticed him in the crowd. At last,
+when seated at supper with the late James Gordon Bennett, who did not
+usually go to balls, but had looked in here for half an hour for some
+purpose of his own, I found myself seated next to a very charming Pole,
+married to a Russian, the Princess Schehoffskoi. I knew her to be a
+genuine mystic, one of the group who first instituted spiritualism into
+the Russian Court circles. I seized an opportunity, whilst Gordon
+Bennett was occupied with some one else, to ask her who the brown satyr
+was who had attached himself to Valori.
+
+She was at once absorbed in the question, and, lowering her voice, she
+said, "Why, how interesting! Don't you know that is his 'Familiar' who
+is constantly in attendance upon him. People say they became attached
+whilst he was attending a 'Sabbath' in the Vosges, and he can't get rid
+of it."
+
+"A Sabbath!" I echoed blankly.
+
+"Yes! Surely you have heard of a 'Witch's Sabbath.' They still hold them
+at Lutzei, and each person receives a 'Familiar.' Those 'Sabbaths' are
+the most appalling orgies and hideously blasphemous. The 'Familiars'
+have names--Minette, Verdelet, etc. I had an ancestor who owned a
+'Familiar' called Sainte Buisson. His name was de Laski. Of course, he
+was a Pole, and a Prince of Siradia, and he came across Dr. Dee, the
+necromancer of Queen Elizabeth's time. They seem to have entered into a
+sort of partnership."
+
+All this the Princess told me quite seriously, and I found out later
+from her that Satanism or devil worship was largely practiced in France.
+It is interesting to note that the names of the French war mascots of
+the moment are all taken from the names of well-known "Familiars" in
+occult lore.
+
+"Then the 'satyr' attached to Valori is not human flesh and blood; how
+horrible!" I whispered back. "Have many people seen him? Is he always
+there?"
+
+The Princess nodded, "The clairvoyantes here all know about it, and I
+myself have seen him, not here, but in Paris. I shall go in search of
+Valori directly after supper."
+
+"And I shall go home to bed," I answered.
+
+The next morning I met Valori, alone, on the Promenade des Anglais. He
+turned and strolled by my side, and I determined to put a straight
+question. After a little trivial conversation I said, "By the way, who
+is that brown man, dressed like a Satyr, who has been with you lately?"
+
+I watched Valori's face as I put the question, and as I saw the change
+that came over it I felt very sorry and ashamed of having spoken. He
+looked so utterly dejected and miserable.
+
+"You also?" he muttered, then fell to silence.
+
+I gathered that the same question had been put to him before, and I
+hastened to reassure him. "Don't answer. My question was impertinent;
+let us speak of other things," I said hastily, but he remained silent,
+staring down at the ground. Then suddenly he said--
+
+"I am not the only one in the world so afflicted."
+
+I did not pursue the subject. His words were true. That evening I
+received a large bouquet of Russian violets, and on a card was written
+the following French proverb:--"La reputation d'un homme est comme son
+ombre, qui tantot le suit et tantot le precede; quelquefois elle est
+plus longue et quelquefois plus courte que lui."
+
+At that time the whole Riviera was swarming with professional
+clairvoyantes, and it soon "got wind" that Prince Valori's "Familiar"
+was walking about with him. He treated the matter almost as lightly as a
+distinguished English General treated his "Familiar."
+
+The Englishman, General Elliot, who commanded the forces in Scotland,
+was a very well-known society man, about twenty-five years ago. He had a
+name for his Familiar, "Wononi," and used actually to speak aloud with
+him in the middle of a dinner-party. The General occupied a very
+distinguished position, not only in his profession, but in the social
+world, and to look at he was the very last man that one would associate
+with matters occult.
+
+In 1895 Marie, Duchesse de Pomar and Countess of Caithness, died. She
+had the right to claim burial in Holyrood Chapel, and a very simple
+stone marks her last resting-place. To her I owe the warmest friendship
+of my life, for it was in her opera box I met the present Lady Treowen,
+born a daughter of Lord Albert Conynghame, who afterwards became the
+first Lord Londesborough. To the many who know and love her, Albertina
+Treowen represents a type of perfect breeding, alas! fast becoming
+extinct in these days. She has lived the reality of noblesse oblige, has
+the rare gift of perfect friendship, and combines a rare refinement of
+mind with strong moral courage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+EAST END DAYS AND NIGHTS
+
+
+If we had found the golden thread of meaning which gives coherence to
+the whole; if we had been taught as our religion that every man and
+woman was receiving the strictest justice at the Divine hands, and that
+our conditions to-day were exactly those our former lives entitled us
+to, how different would be our outlook on life. As it is, men have
+fallen away in their bitter discontent from a God in whose justice they
+have ceased to believe, and of whose impartiality they see no sign.
+
+I doubt if any religion extant has claimed such a wide diversity in its
+adherents as Christianity. Calvin, Knox, Torquemada, the Archbishop of
+Canterbury, and Kaiser Wilhelm. Mr. Gladstone, and Czar Nicolas. The
+Pope of Rome, and Spurgeon. Even those nine names, which might be
+multiplied indefinitely, show us diametrically opposed readings of the
+same faith.
+
+It would be of enormous benefit to us if we studied all the great
+religions, and separated from each the obviously false from the true,
+and appropriated the latter. The Bible would gain enormously in value if
+studied in conjunction with other sacred books written before the advent
+of Christ.
+
+A careful study of the ancient faiths will reveal a wonderful
+similarity. We are beginning to break down the limitations which have
+been presumptuously cast around the conceptions of the Divine teachings.
+We begin to see that not only in Palestine, but in all the world, and
+amongst all peoples, God has been revealing Himself to the hearts of
+men.
+
+It is always folly for the orthodox to hold up hands in holy horror at
+the views of the unorthodox. It is a selfish standpoint, and makes
+matters no better. Doubt does not spring from the wish to doubt. It
+arises solely from the play of the mind on the facts of daily life
+surrounding us. The truth remains, that, unless the Church recovers
+those vital doctrines that she has lost, and which alone make life
+rational to the intelligent, she will be finally abandoned when the
+present generation dies out.
+
+We can never rest content with a faith which flatly contradicts the
+facts of life which surround us, and press in on us from every side in
+our daily existence. We hold that what we undoubtedly find in life ought
+to have its complement in religion. The searching temper of our vast
+sacrifices in war are thrusting faith down to primitive bed-rock.
+Orthodoxies and heterodoxies will not matter much now. What will matter
+will be honesty, effectiveness, and a rational explanation of life. For
+nineteen hundred years we have professed the religion of what others
+said about Christ. Now the hour is approaching when we must try the
+religion of what Christ said about us and the world.
+
+I was always of a very inquiring turn of mind, and I had abandoned
+orthodoxy before I was twenty. I had read everything I could lay my
+hands on, and I emerged after a year or two, an out-and-out agnostic, in
+the popular sense of the term.
+
+I had, however, no intention of remaining in that condition. I was
+convinced there must be some link between Science and Religion, and that
+a just God, worthy of all worship, was to be found, if only I knew where
+to seek. I can look back on this crude stage of my life, and see what a
+nuisance I must have been, with my defiant disbelief and constant
+questioning. I became an ardent truth-seeker, but my demands, I can now
+realize, grew out of my palpitating desire to reduce the world of
+disorder to the likeness of a supreme and beneficent Creator. If God be
+just and good, then what is the explanation of this hideous discrepancy
+in human lives?
+
+Following on this came the question: "Is it possible that a just God is
+going to judge us, one and all, on our miserable record of three score
+years and ten?"
+
+"Whatsoever ye soweth that shall ye reap." So the criminal and the
+savage were to be judged by their deeds, though, through no fault of
+their own, they were born under circumstances which precluded any
+glimmer of light to shine in on their darkness. "Ah!" but I was told,
+"God will make it up to them hereafter. Of course, He won't judge them
+as He will judge you."
+
+This seemed to me pure nonsense. I could not understand a God who
+arranged His creation so badly. Whilst in London I started out on a
+search for truth.
+
+Amongst those who accorded me interviews were Cardinal Newman and the
+late Archdeacon Liddon. The former was exquisitely sympathetic and
+patient, but he gave me no mental satisfaction. I helped him for some
+weeks in the great dock strike, and then we drifted apart for ever.
+Liddon listened patiently, then told me flatly he could not solve the
+mysteries I sought to probe. I also was accorded an unsatisfactory
+interview with Basil Wilberforce. After a lapse of thirty years we met
+again, though I never recalled to him the visit I had paid him in my
+youth, being sure he must have forgotten all about it. I found him
+enormously changed mentally. He had outgrown all resemblance to his
+former mental self.
+
+At that early period some one happened to mention to me that a certain
+Madame Blavatsky had just arrived in London, bringing with her a new
+religion. My curiosity was at once fired, and I set off to call upon
+her.
+
+I shall never forget that first interview with a much maligned woman,
+whom I rapidly came to know intimately and love dearly. She was seated
+in a great armchair, with a table by her side on which lay tobacco and
+cigarette paper. Whilst she spoke her exquisite taper fingers
+automatically rolled cigarettes. She was dressed in a loose black robe,
+and on her crinkly gray hair she wore a black shawl. Her face was pure
+Kalmuk, and a network of fine wrinkles covered it. Her eyes, large and
+pale green, dominated the countenance--wonderful eyes in their
+arresting, dreamy mysticism.
+
+I asked her to explain her new religion, and she answered that hers was
+the very oldest extant, and formed the belief of five hundred million
+souls. I inquired how it was that this stupendous fact had not yet
+touched Christendom, and her reply was that there had never been any
+interference with Christian thought. Though judge of all, Christianity
+had been judged by none. The rise of Japan was a factor of immense
+potency, and in time would open out a new era in the comprehension of
+East by West. Then the meaning would flash upon the churches of the
+words, "Neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem."
+
+I explained to her my difficulties, which she proceeded to solve by
+expounding the doctrines of reincarnation and Karma. They jumped
+instantly to my reason. I there and then found the Just God, of whom I
+had been in search. From that day to this I have never had reason to
+swerve from those beliefs. The older I grow, the more experience I
+gather, the more I read, the more confirmed do I become in the belief
+that such provide the only rational explanation of this life, the only
+natural hope in the world to come.
+
+I have offered those beliefs to very many people whom I discovered to be
+on the same quest as I had been. I have never once had them rejected by
+any serious truth-seeker, and I have seen them passed on and on by these
+people to others, forming enormous ramifications which became lost to
+view in the passage of time and their own magnitude.
+
+In these early days there was little literature available for the
+student, but the circle of clever brains which rapidly surrounded
+Blavatsky set to work with a will under her guidance, and now, after the
+lapse of thirty years, there is an enormous literature always commanding
+a wide sale, and the little circle that gathered round "the old lady"
+has swollen into very many thousands.
+
+What was the secret of Helena Petrovski Blavatsky's instant success? I
+have no doubt that it lay in her power to give to the West the Eastern
+answers to those problems which the Church has lost.
+
+In her way Blavatsky was a true missioner. "Go forth on your journey for
+the weal and the welfare of all people, out of compassion for the world
+and the welfare of angels and mortals," was the command given by the
+Lord Buddha to his disciples, and Christ, following the universal ideal,
+five hundred years later, commanded, "Go ye into all the world and
+preach the Gospel of the whole Creation."
+
+I began to study those, to me, new doctrines at once, and I also took up
+their occult side, no light task, but one of absorbing interest. Not
+till then did I fully realize that in no one human life could that long,
+long path be trodden, in no new-born soul could be developed those
+divine possibilities of which I could catch but a fleeting illusive
+vision.
+
+"Thou canst not travel in the Path before thou hast become the Path
+itself." Did not the Christ warn his followers that the Path must be
+trodden more or less alone? "Forsake all and follow Me." So, also in the
+Bhagavad Gita it is written: "Abandoning all duties come unto me alone
+for shelter. Sorrow not, I will liberate thee from thy sins."
+
+"The secret doctrine" written by Blavatsky proved a mine of wealth, and
+I read the volumes through seven times in seven different keys. The
+works of A. P. Sinnett, text books then, and now brought up to date by
+expanding knowledge, were extremely helpful. For advanced students "The
+Growth of the Soul" is unsurpassed. A very short time elapsed before
+mental food was supplied for practically every branch of mysticism and
+occult development, and students flocked into headquarters from all
+parts of the world.
+
+It is interesting to remember the two adjoining villas in Avenue Road,
+St. John's Wood, where we used to congregate to study, and hear lectures
+thirty years ago, and to look now on the stately buildings in Tavistock
+Square. They are designed by the great architect Lutyens, whose wife,
+Lady Emily, is an ardent theosophist. I am glad that I have lived to see
+these doctrines take firm root in the West, and grow so amazingly that
+in all cities they are now held by vast numbers, and even in cases where
+they have not been finally adopted they are acknowledged to be the only
+logical conclusion for those who desire to possess a rational belief. I
+am glad that I can look back with love and profound gratitude to Helena
+P. Blavatsky, the woman who grafted on the West the wisdom of the ages.
+I have no doubt that she is enabled to see the mighty structure raised
+on her small beginnings, and doubtless she has met on "the other side"
+men and women whose debt to her is equally as great as mine.
+
+Blavatsky began by exploding the theory that men are born equal. If this
+one life were all, then this great error ought, in common justice, to be
+absolute truth, and every man should possess common rights in the
+community, and one man ought to be as good as another. If every soul
+born to-day is a fresh creation, who will in the course of time pass
+away from this life for ever, then why is it that one is only fitted to
+obey, whilst another is eminently fitted to rule? One is born with a
+tendency to vice and crime, another to virtue and honesty. One is born a
+genius, another is born to idiocy. How, she asked, could a firm social
+foundation ever be built up on this utter disregard of nature? How
+treat, as having right to equal power, the wise and the ignorant, the
+criminal and the saint? Yet, if man be born but once it would be very
+unjust to build on any other foundation.
+
+Re-incarnation implies the evolution of the soul, and it makes the
+equality of man a delusion. In evolution time plays the greatest part,
+and through evolution humanity is climbing. "Souls while eternal in
+their essence are of different ages in their individuality."
+
+Many of us must know people who though quite old in years are children
+in mind. Men and women who having arrived at three score years and ten
+are still utterly childish and inconsequent. They are young souls who
+have had the experiences of very few earth lives. Again, we all know
+children who seem born abnormally old. Infant prodigies, musicians,
+calculators, painters who have brought over their genius from a former
+life.
+
+I remember once meeting with a curious experience, which is not very
+easy to describe. It was an experience more of feeling than of seeing.
+
+I was standing in Milan Cathedral. In front of me and behind was
+gathered a crowd of peasants. High Mass was being celebrated, and all
+the seats were occupied.
+
+After a few moments I began to feel a curious sensation of being
+intently watched. Some penetrating influence was probing me through and
+through, with a quiet but intensely powerful directness. I had the
+sensation that my soul was being stripped bare. I looked round, but
+could see nothing to account for my sensation. Every one seemed intent
+on their devotions. I began to wonder if some malicious old peasant was
+throwing over me the spell of the evil eye, but again my feelings were
+not conscious of an evil intent; it was more an absorbed speculation
+directed towards me. Some one was probing my soul, speculating on my
+spiritual worth or worthlessness, with an intensely earnest yet cold
+calculation.
+
+Just in front of me stood a peasant woman of the poorest class. Her back
+was towards me, and over her shoulder hung a baby of not more than a
+year old. Suddenly I met the eyes of the child full. Then I knew. As a
+psychological experience it was most interesting, but it sent a little
+thrill of creepiness through me.
+
+The baby did not withdraw its gaze, but continued leisurely to look me
+through and through. The eyes were large and gray, the expression that
+of a contemplative savant, with a faint dash of irony in their glance. I
+do not pretend to be anything but what is now called "psychic," but I am
+certain that those windows of the soul, with that age-long experience
+flooding out of them, would have arrested the most material person. My
+husband, who is accustomed to my "flights of imagination," was very much
+struck by that look of maturity, that suggestion of aeonic knowledge.
+
+Blavatsky taught me to look on man as an evolving entity, in whose life
+career births and deaths are recurring incidents. Birth and death begin
+and end only a single chapter in the book of life. She taught me that we
+cannot evade inexorable destiny. I made my present in my past. To-day I
+am making my future. In proportion as I outwear my past, and change my
+present abysmal ignorance into knowledge, so shall I become free.
+
+I have often heard Blavatsky called a charlatan, and I am bound to say
+that her impish behavior often gave grounds for this description. She
+was foolishly intolerant of the many smart West End ladies who arrived
+in flocks, demanding to see spooks, masters, elementals, anything, in
+fact, in the way of phenomena.
+
+Madame Blavatsky was a born conjuror. Her wonderful fingers were made
+for jugglers' tricks, and I have seen her often use them for that
+purpose. I well remember my amazement upon the first occasion on which
+she exhibited her occult powers, spurious and genuine.
+
+I was sitting alone with her one afternoon, when the cards of Jessica,
+Lady Sykes, the late Duchess of Montrose and the Honorable Mrs. S.----
+(still living) were brought in to her. She said she would receive the
+ladies at once, and they were ushered in. They explained that they had
+heard of her new religion, and her marvelous occult powers. They hoped
+she would afford them a little exhibition of what she could do.
+
+Madame Blavatsky had not moved out of her chair. She was suavity itself,
+and whilst conversing she rolled cigarettes for her visitors and invited
+them to smoke. She concluded that they were not particularly interested
+in the old faith which the young West called new; what they really were
+keen about was phenomena.
+
+That was so, responded the ladies, and the burly Duchess inquired if
+Madame ever gave racing tips, or lucky numbers for Monte Carlo?
+
+Madame disclaimed having any such knowledge, but she was willing to
+afford them a few moments' amusement. Would one of the ladies suggest
+something she would like done?
+
+Lady Sykes produced a pack of cards from her pocket, and held them out
+to Madame Blavatsky, who shook her head.
+
+"First remove the marked cards," she said.
+
+Lady Sykes laughed and replied, "Which are they?"
+
+Madame Blavatsky told her, without a second's hesitation. This charmed
+the ladies. It seemed a good beginning.
+
+"Make that basket of tobacco jump about," suggested one of them.
+
+The next moment the basket had vanished. I don't know where it went, I
+only know it disappeared by trickery, that the ladies looked for it
+everywhere, even under Madame Blavatsky's ample skirts, and that
+suddenly it reappeared upon its usual table. A little more jugglery
+followed and some psychometry, which was excellent, then the ladies
+departed, apparently well satisfied with the entertainment.
+
+When I was once more alone with Madame Blavatsky, she turned to me with
+a wry smile and said, "Would you have me throw pearls before swine?"
+
+I asked her if all she had done was pure trickery.
+
+"Not all, but most of it," she unblushingly replied, "but now I will
+give you something lovely and real."
+
+For a moment or two she was silent, covering her eyes with her hand,
+then a sound caught my ear. I can only describe what I heard as fairy
+music, exquisitely dainty and original. It seemed to proceed from
+somewhere just between the floor and the ceiling, and it moved about to
+different corners of the room. There was a crystal innocence in the
+music, which suggested the dance of joyous children at play.
+
+"Now I will give you the music of life," said Madame Blavatsky.
+
+For a moment or two there fell a trance-like silence. The twilight was
+creeping into the room, and seemed to bring with it a tingling
+expectancy. Then it seemed to me that something entered from without,
+and brought with it utterly new conditions, something incredible,
+unimagined and beyond the bounds of reason.
+
+Some one was singing, a distant melody was creeping nearer, yet I was
+aware it had never been distant, it was only becoming louder.
+
+I suddenly felt afraid of myself. The air about me was ringing with
+vibrations of weird, unearthly music, seemingly as much around me as it
+was above and behind me. It had no whereabouts, it was unlocatable. As I
+listened my whole body quivered with wild elation, and the sensation of
+the unforeseen.
+
+There was rhythm in the music, yet it was unlike anything I had ever
+heard before. It sounded like a Pastorale, and it held a call to which
+my whole being wildly responded.
+
+Who was the player, and what was his instrument? He might have been a
+flautist, and he played with a catching lilt, a luxurious abandon that
+was an incarnation of Nature. It caught me suddenly away to green
+Sicilian hills, where the pipes of unseen players echo down the mountain
+sides, as the pipes of Pan once echoed through the rugged gorges and
+purple vales of Hellas and Thrace.
+
+Alluring though the music was, and replete with the hot fever of life,
+it carried with it a thrill of dread. Its sweetness was cloying, its
+tenderness was sensuous. A balmy scent crept through the room, of wild
+thyme, of herbs, of asphodel and the muscadine of the wine press. It
+enwrapt me like an odorous vapor.
+
+The sounds began to take shape, and gradually mold themselves into
+words. I knew I was being courted with subtlety, and urged to fly out of
+my house of life and join the Saturnalia Regna. The player was speaking
+a language which I understood, as I had understood no tongue before. It
+was my true native tongue that spoke in the wild ringing lilt, and I
+could not but give ear to its enchantments and the ecstasy of its joy.
+
+My soul seemed to strain at the leash. Should I let go? Like a powerful
+opiate the allurement enfolded me, yet from out its thrall a small
+insistent voice whispered "Caution! Where will you be led: supposing you
+yield your will, would it ever be yours again?"
+
+Now my brain was seized with a sense of panic and weakness. The music
+suddenly seemed replete with gay sinfulness and insolent conquest. It
+spoke the secrets which the nature myth so often murmurs to those who
+live amid great silences, of those dread mysteries of the spirit which
+yet invest it with such glory and wonderment.
+
+With a violent reaction of fear I rose suddenly, and as I did so the
+whole scene was swept from out the range of my senses. I was back once
+more in Blavatsky's room with the creeping twilight and the far off
+hoarse roar of London stealing in at the open window. I glanced at
+Madame Blavatsky. She had sunk down in her chair, and she lay huddled up
+in deep trance. She had floated out with the music into a sea of earthly
+oblivion. Between her fingers she held a small Russian cross.
+
+I knew that she had thrust me back to the world which still claimed me,
+and I went quietly out of the house into the streets of London.
+
+On another occasion when I was alone with Madame Blavatsky she suddenly
+broke off our conversation by lapsing into another language, which I
+supposed to be Hindustanee. She appeared to be addressing some one else,
+and on looking over my shoulder I saw we were no longer alone. A man
+stood in the middle of the room. I was sure he had not entered by the
+door, window or chimney, and as I looked at him in some astonishment, he
+salaamed to Madame Blavatsky, and replied to her in the same language in
+which she had addressed him.
+
+I rose at once to leave her, and as I bade her good-by she whispered to
+me, "Do not mention this." The man did not seem aware of my presence; he
+took no notice of me as I left the room. He was dark in color and very
+sad looking, and his dress was a long, black cloak and a soft black hat
+which he did not remove, pulled well over his eyes.
+
+I found out that evening that none of the general staff were aware of
+his arrival, and I saw him no more.
+
+I remember clearly the first night that Annie Besant came to
+headquarters as an interested inquirer. She arrived with the socialist,
+Herbert Burrows. Madame Blavatsky told me she was destined to take a
+very great part in the future Theosophical movement. At that time such a
+thing seemed incredible, yet it has come to pass.
+
+About this period I went to live in the East End of London, Haggerston
+and Whitechapel, where I had a night shelter of my own. There I saw into
+what surroundings children were born, how they grow up, and how their
+parents live and die. I have seen so much of the lives of the outcast
+poor that I can feel nothing but the most passionate pity for them,
+even though I can now look upon them as souls just beginning to climb
+the ladder of evolution.
+
+My night shelter was for women only, and was purposely of the roughest
+description. The floor was bare concrete, and round the walls were heaps
+of millers' sacks I had bought cheap, owing to mice having eaten holes
+in them.
+
+According to our laws the legal age at which a girl can marry is
+thirteen, and I used to get many of these girl wives in for the night,
+as their lawful husbands used to turn them out of doors. I discovered
+that it was no uncommon practice for a man to buy one of those children
+from the parents for a few pence, the parents' consent being necessary.
+The marriage was solemnized, and the child wife was used only as a
+drudge to slave for the husband and his mistress, who was of a more
+suitable age to become his mate.
+
+I used to be very much troubled by women in the throes of delirium
+tremens. They would come in quite quietly when the shelter opened,
+strip, pick up a sack and get into it, and then lie down and at once go
+to sleep. After a few hours' dead slumber they would get up, raving mad,
+and disturb all the other sleepers. The reason of this peculiar form of
+D. T. was explained to me by a doctor in the neighborhood. The publicans
+kept a pail behind the bar, into which was thrown the dregs of every
+species of liquor sold during the day. This concoction was distributed
+cheap at closing time, and its effects were cumulative.
+
+One night I had a curious experience. The room was unusually quiet, and
+I had closed my eyes, but I was not asleep. I opened them, and, in the
+bright light of one unshaded gas jet, I saw a dark figure moving. Its
+back was towards me, and I instantly thought a plain clothes policeman
+had entered, no unusual occurrence, without my hearing him. In these
+days detectives used often to escort the West End ladies on slumming
+expeditions, and they usually called on me. Then I saw this figure was
+clad in dark robes, and was very tall. Again I thought, this is some old
+Jew who has crept in, and I was just about to rise and eject him, when
+something suddenly stopped me.
+
+_I saw through him and beyond him._ I then and there realized that
+feeling of hair of one's head rising on one's scalp is no mere figment
+of speech.
+
+The figure moved softly round the room, it made no sound whatever, and
+as it came to each sleeper it bent down, as if closely scrutinizing each
+face. It occurred to me that it was looking for some one. I began to
+dread the moment when the search was over, and the figure would turn its
+face towards me. I felt that my hair had turned into the quills of a
+porcupine. I wanted to shut my eyes, but dared not. Then before that
+quest was over, the figure straightened itself and turned full towards
+me. My fears instantly fell away from me like a fallen mantle, for
+though I knew the visitor had come from the other side, there was
+something so profoundly sad in the pale weary face, that compassion
+quite eclipsed fear. Another second and it had vanished.
+
+I lived in Whitechapel during the dread visitation of "Jack the Ripper,"
+and all women at once adopted the habit of walking in the middle of the
+road amongst the horses and carts. Fortunately there were no motors in
+those days to add to the confusion. When we came to the house or alley
+we wished to enter, we made a sudden dash for it.
+
+One night I had occasion to pass the entire night by the bedside of a
+dying prostitute. She lived in one of four rooms, all occupied by the
+same class, and all opening into a court not larger than ten feet by
+ten. I suppose I must have been very tired, for I fell asleep, and about
+five a. m. I woke and found I was alone, the woman was dead. I went out
+into the court, hearing a sudden noise of excited voices, and discovered
+that "Jack" had been at work in the adjoining room, only separated from
+mine by a match-board partition. Portions of the unfortunate woman were
+neatly arranged on a deal table. I had heard absolutely nothing. Later
+on that same day I revisited the scene, and found a curious contrast.
+Seeing his way to a cheap furnished lodging, a coster had married his
+donah in a hurry, and the wedding breakfast was being eaten off the
+blood-stained table!
+
+It was in those days that I developed into a convinced Suffragist. I saw
+that until men and women came together to improve and mold our
+civilization, very little improvement could be expected. The son of the
+bondwoman is not on a level with the son of the free woman, and we saw
+that the struggle must go on until we were accorded the right to govern
+our own lives.
+
+I could always see the anti's point of view, for, had I thought only of
+my own position as an isolated unit, a vote would have seemed to me a
+needless responsibility. No social worker who has penetrated to the
+depths can maintain this attitude, and so, in company with all other
+women workers, I entered on the crusade which has just terminated in
+victory. Much as I dislike militancy, I am convinced that it hastened
+our victory by very many years, by bringing the subject before the
+world. Also the enormous number of idle and, formerly, indifferent
+women, who have rushed into work in answer to their country's call, has
+helped our cause enormously. I have invariably found that directly a
+woman enters the ranks of active labor, her views, however strongly they
+have been opposed to us, at once swing round. Once a woman _proves for
+herself_ the disabilities under which we labor, she is at once
+converted. To the very many women who suffered acute physical torture
+during the militant campaign, our easy victory must seem passing
+strange.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MAN IN THE MARYLEBONE ROAD
+
+
+It is thirty years ago since I became a convert to Spiritualism. At that
+time I made up my mind that I would attend fifty seances, and if, out of
+that number, I did not come across one that I could be absolutely
+certain was genuine I would attend no more. Spiritualism, in itself,
+never interested me, but I was determined to see for myself if there was
+really anything in it.
+
+I attended twenty-nine seances before I happened on one that was
+absolutely convincing. Several had been almost convincing, but a
+loophole for fraud had remained, and so long as that was the case I
+persevered.
+
+I went one summer morning to see an old man who lived in the Marylebone
+Road. I was shown up into a sunny little room on the first floor. It had
+neither carpet, curtains nor window blind, and it looked on the street.
+The furniture consisted of a plain, uncovered deal table in the middle
+of a clean planked floor, and eight plain uncovered deal chairs were
+ranged round the walls. The room was utterly destitute of ornament,
+there was not even a clock, and I was the only occupant.
+
+Soon the old man entered, a very ordinary looking person, and civilly
+asked what I wanted.
+
+I said that I understood he was possessed of psychic powers, and I would
+like to see an exhibition of them.
+
+He smiled and answered, "My fee is two-and-six for a quarter of an
+hour. Choose your own phenomenon, and I'll see what I can do."
+
+I was puzzled at first, and looked round the bare walls for inspiration.
+There was not even a photograph or picture. Then suddenly I thought of
+something rather silly.
+
+"Please make those four chairs opposite to us cross the floor and mount
+on to the table," I said.
+
+The old man drew his chair quite close to mine, "Then give me your
+hand." I removed my glove and did as he asked.
+
+He looked, not at the chairs, but into my face, and I at once warned
+him.
+
+"I am no good as a subject for hypnotism, so it is useless to try."
+
+He laughed and answered, "I am not a hypnotist, but I see you have
+power. You may as well lend me some. You are young, and I am old."
+
+At that second my attention was distracted by a grating sound, and I
+forgot all about my companion. I saw the four chairs leave the wall and
+advance towards the table, in exactly the position, and tilted forward,
+they would be in if a human hand was dragging them across the floor.
+There appeared to be four invisible hands at the work. Then, one by one,
+they were neatly balanced, one on the top of the other, on the table.
+
+When the manifestation was complete I remembered the old man, and looked
+round at him. He was watching the business, as keenly interested as I
+was.
+
+"Good boys! good boys," I heard him murmur.
+
+"How is it done?" I asked him.
+
+He shrugged. "The Petris (spirits) do it. I don't."
+
+"Then ask 'the Petris' to put the chairs neatly back again."
+
+"The Petris" performed this feat very expeditiously, and I paid
+two-and-sixpence and departed. There was no loophole here for fraud, not
+a wire, or string, or any human manipulation, and I was not hypnotized.
+I never have been. For that sort of test I had seen enough.
+
+Shortly after I witnessed a materialization in broad daylight. I was
+free to move about the room, and stand by the medium as she lay bound
+and deeply entranced. I was free to make any examinations I pleased,
+whilst others present conversed with the spirit, and I left the house
+absolutely convinced of the genuineness of that phenomenon.
+
+That was the last test seance I attended, and for years afterwards I did
+not interest myself in spiritualism, nor did I attend many private
+sittings.
+
+Towards the close of the South African War I was ordered from "the other
+side" to begin again, but on different lines. I was ordered to be a
+medium.
+
+A man whom I barely knew, and who had passed over, wished to communicate
+with his people. This put me in a quandary. I hardly knew his people,
+and their social position was not such as could be treated
+unceremoniously by a casual acquaintance. I had never heard that they
+were interested in "other side" subjects. The very little I knew of them
+suggested quite the reverse.
+
+I consulted with my husband. "One cannot," I argued, "go up to people
+who are almost strangers and tell them their son wishes to communicate
+with them through me."
+
+My husband quite saw the difficulty, but it had always happened that
+when any one wished to communicate with us, and we paid no attention, we
+were given no peace till we did take heed, and sat down with an Ouija
+board to receive the message. He therefore proposed that we should
+consult Mr. A. P. Sinnett, now such a well-known writer on Occultism,
+and an old friend of ours. We therefore laid the matter before him.
+
+His reply was uncompromising.
+
+"Do as you are told from the other side. It is not for you to question
+or consider the social consequences to yourselves."
+
+This advice we immediately followed, and we were met with the utmost
+kindness and sympathetic understanding. Sittings were arranged,
+communication established. Test questions were put, which we did not
+understand, but which were satisfactory to the questioners, and for many
+years the sittings continued until the "other side" made arrangements
+for a change of mediums and I was set free for other work. I say, set
+free, because during all those years we had held ourselves entirely at
+the disposal of this wonderful spirit, who communicated through me, and
+it is no exaggeration to say that our daily lives, our worldly plans,
+entirely depended upon his wishes. He had his own work to do, and our
+earth lives were always arranged to suit his convenience.
+
+About the same time as the above experience began my husband was
+disturbed by noises in his library, and he came to the conclusion that
+some one had something to say and was determined to say it. One evening,
+when the disturbance prevented serious reading, we sat down with the
+Ouija board. The result was as follows--
+
+A spirit who purported to be a well-known soldier of fortune who had
+lately committed suicide, desired to give a message. This astonished us,
+as we had known him only slightly, and we wondered why he had chosen to
+bestow his attentions on us. He said he was very unhappy because he owed
+a certain sum of money to a friend, whom I will call B. This money B.
+could have refunded to him if he would communicate with a certain London
+address, which the departed soldier gave us in full.
+
+We knew B., and knew that he had been a close friend of the departed. We
+also knew that B. was on the Gold Coast. We promised, however, to send
+him the message, and that was the last we ever heard of the soldier.
+
+My husband wrote to B. on the Gold Coast simply giving him the message
+and leaving it at that. We were sure B. was an absolute skeptic. He was!
+and did nothing till his return to England three years later, when he
+applied at the address which he happened to have kept, and received his
+money.
+
+I first became interested in Occultism, not only through my own very
+early experiences, but through hearing as a mere child that my
+grandfather, Robert the younger of the two well-known publishing
+brothers, W. and R. Chambers, had investigated spiritualism to his
+entire satisfaction.
+
+In those days, about 1860, scientific men did not trouble about occult
+subjects, which were deemed beneath their notice. Science was so
+strictly orthodox that my grandfather published his "Vestiges of
+Creation" anonymously. It created an enormous sensation, and upon that
+book and the writings of Lamarck, Darwin founded his "Origin of
+Species." Robert Chambers determined to go to America and investigate
+for himself the reported marvelous happenings there. He had sittings
+with all the renowned mediums, bringing to bear upon their phenomena the
+acumen of his scientific mind, and he returned to Europe a convinced
+believer. He carried on regular sittings with Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall
+and other intellectuals, and with General Drayson, then a young beginner
+who went very far in his investigations before he died.
+
+About the year 1885 I happened to be staying at Hawarden with Mr. and
+Mrs. Gladstone, and the only other guest, outside the family party, was
+the late Canon Malcolm McColl, through whose instrumentality I became a
+member of the Psychical Society.
+
+McColl was a most interesting personality, a leading light on matters
+occult, and a famous recounter of ghost stories. He was also _persona
+grata_ in the Gladstone household, and Mrs. Gladstone often spoke to me
+of their deep love for him.
+
+I forget now what led up to the subject, but one night, when we were
+sitting talking, I told Mr. Gladstone that my grandfather, Robert
+Chambers, had been a convinced spiritualist. The Canon at once tried to
+draw the G.O.M., and to our mutual amazement his arguments in favor of
+the return of the disembodied soul to earth were met by concurring short
+ejaculations, such as "Of course! Naturally! Why, certainly!"
+
+Then quite suddenly Mr. Gladstone began to prove to us that the old
+Biblical scribes were convinced spiritualists. From his intimate
+knowledge of the Bible he quoted text after text in support of his
+contention. "Here He worked no wonders because the people were wanting
+in faith," he compared to the present day medium's difficulty in
+working with skeptics. When Christ asked, "Who has touched Me? Much
+virtue has passed out of Me," He but spoke as many a modern healer
+speaks on feeling a failure of power. "Try the spirits whether they be
+of God," is what all spiritualists of to-day should practice rigorously.
+
+Conan Doyle, in his book, "The New Revelation," touches upon those
+facts, and it was only on reading his book with profound interest that I
+remembered the impressive talk I had so many years ago with Mr.
+Gladstone. As Conan Doyle truly says, "The early Christian Church was
+saturated with spiritualism."
+
+What, it may be asked, is the value to a woman of psychic experiences,
+whose reality may be convincing to herself, but never to others?
+
+Firstly, there is this enormous value for me, that certain psychic
+experiences I have had make a future existence, after so-called death, a
+certainty.
+
+Secondly, other varieties of psychic phenomena have furnished me with
+unmistakable proof that I possess an immortal soul.
+
+Thirdly, still other varieties of experiences have provided me with the
+implicit belief in a God, who is in actual touch with Humanity.
+
+Again, all soul experiences, begotten from out the supreme mystery of
+Being, show us that our real life is not contained in our present normal
+consciousness, but in a vastly wider, grander plane, which, as yet, is
+but dimly sensed by the few.
+
+Those who have bathed in "the light invisible" can bring glory to those
+in gloom. They visit, but no longer live in the day. Their glory is in
+the night, when they walk with the Immortals, and bear with them the
+golden lamps of life eternal. Those who have realized the powers within,
+powers which not only are the pillars of infinite harmony, but the
+mainspring of eternal life, have builded on a rock which no tempest can
+destroy.
+
+
+    "'Tis time
+    New hopes should animate the world,
+    New light should dawn from new revealings to a race
+        Weighed down so long."
+
+                         PARACELSUS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE GHOST OF PRINCE CHARLIE
+
+
+Scotland in the autumn of the pre-war days was a very gay place. The big
+country houses were filled with shooting parties, and for the Autumn
+Meetings, Ayr races, Perth races, and games, The Inverness Gathering,
+etc. The dates were so arranged that one could go the round, and thus
+dance through several weeks. I used to go regularly to Inverness, and
+afterwards visit friends in the surrounding neighborhood. One of the
+most delightful houses to visit was Tarbat, belonging to the Countess of
+Cromartie. Any one who has read her unique books must have come to the
+conclusion that Lady Cromartie is a mystic of no ordinary type, but only
+those who know her intimately are aware how predominating in her
+character is this inborn mysticism.
+
+I first remember the two sisters, Lady Sibell and Lady Constance
+Mackenzie, hanging on to their father's arms as they walked about
+Folkestone. They were then tiny tots, and I was staying with their
+mother, the beautiful Lilian, daughter of Lord Macdonald of the Isles.
+Beautiful was the only word to describe Lord Cromartie's wife--and Lily
+seemed the most suitable name that could have been bestowed upon her.
+She was intensely musical and interested in ghosts. Born the daughter of
+a Highland chieftain she understood how to live the life of a great
+Scottish noblewoman. She was always very kind to me, and I used to stay
+with her very often.
+
+In 1893 Lord Cromartie died, and his eldest daughter, Lady Sibell,
+became Countess of Cromartie in her own right--the title going in the
+female line. As a child the young Countess had been a great reader. I
+remember she used often to be missing, and found in some quiet room
+buried in a book. To this day she has the faculty of so absorbing
+herself in a book that no amount of talking and noise in the room
+penetrates her ears. Lady Constance was quite different, devoted to
+out-of-door life, and I shall never forget how adoring the old people on
+the properties were to her, and how she loved them. One sterling and
+unusual quality she had. I never heard her say an unkind word of any
+one.
+
+In 1899 the Countess of Cromartie married Major, now Colonel Blunt, and
+she has three fine children, two boys and a girl.
+
+One of the most remarkable facts about her is her agelessness. She never
+alters with the years. Her white delicate skin, her girlish figure and
+dark glowing eyes, always retain their look of extreme youth.
+
+I have said that her mysticism must at once become apparent to the
+readers of her books, but to those, who like myself have known her from
+childhood, her psychic powers have always been extraordinary.
+
+I remember one autumn staying at Tarbat with only a very few other
+guests, I forget now who they all were. It had been a dead, still day.
+One of those sad, brooding days one gets so often in the north. In the
+afternoon, when we were out walking, Lady Cromartie said suddenly to me
+and a Miss Drummond, whom we were both very fond of, "There is going to
+be an earthquake to-night."
+
+We received this piece of information as a joke, and I thought nothing
+more of the matter till tea-time, when a gorgeous sunset was
+illuminating the heavens. As we were standing at the window looking out
+at it we were all startled by a tremendous roar, more like a very loud
+peal of thunder than anything else, yet we knew, by the look of the sky,
+that it could not have been thunder. Every one offered a different
+opinion as to what the noise could mean, but Lady Cromartie calmly said,
+"The noise is in the earth, not in the sky; it is the forerunner of the
+earthquake."
+
+We now began to take this earthquake business more seriously. Sibell
+Drummond, also very psychic, said she knew the noise came from the
+interior of the earth, and that very early that morning she had heard
+the same sound, only much more distant. We asked Lady Cromartie how she
+could possibly tell that an earthquake was coming. Such convulsions are
+not common enough in Scotland to admit of lucky guesses.
+
+"I can tell those things of Nature; something in me is akin to them,"
+she explained. "It is quite certain this earthquake will come before
+morning."
+
+As the sun went down the quiet weather changed, and by bed-time it was
+blowing such a gale that we forgot all about Lady Cromartie's prophecy.
+At one o'clock in the morning, when we were all asleep, the earthquake
+arrived, and awakened us all instantly. My bed rocked, and the china
+clattered, and I heard a big picture near my bed move out from the wall
+and go back again. Some of us got up, but there was only the one sharp
+shock. In the morning we heard that considerable damage had been done.
+Several houses and stables had been razed to the ground, and some
+animals killed and people injured.
+
+Another curious incident I remember happening during a visit to Tarbat.
+
+At breakfast one morning Lady Cromartie told us that she had a very
+vivid dream just before daylight. She dreamed that if she went into a
+certain room in the house she would find some jewels that had been
+hidden there. She seemed to have been told this in her sleep by some one
+she did not know. The room was indicated, but not the spot where the
+jewels lay. The present Duke of Argyll, always keenly alive to psychic
+phenomena, was of our party, and he at once proposed that directly after
+we had finished breakfast we should all proceed to the room, rarely
+used, but formerly a business room, and make a thorough search.
+
+By the way, I cannot refrain here from suggesting what a wonderful book
+of Scottish ghost stories the Duke could give us if he chose. His
+repertoire was endless and most thrilling, and he knew how to tell a
+ghost story.
+
+After breakfast we adjourned to the room indicated in the dream, and
+began our search. The only likely place seemed a large bookcase, full of
+books, with cupboards beneath. All the doors were locked and keyless. A
+pause ensued whilst keys were fetched from the housekeeper's room, and
+for a long time we could find nothing to fit the doors, but at last we
+were rewarded. The cupboards below were opened, disclosing a quantity of
+rubbish. Old books, estate maps, fishing tackle, every sort of thing,
+but no jewels.
+
+At last the Duke, down on his knees fumbling amongst the dust, drew
+forth two tin japanned boxes. He shook them, and the thumping inside
+proved that they were not empty. The trouble was they also were locked
+and keyless. Again there was a scramble to fit keys. We were all on the
+tiptoe of excited expectation.
+
+At last both boxes were opened, and there lay the jewels. Fine,
+old-fashioned pieces that had lain there, who knows for how long, and
+probably had belonged to Lady Cromartie's grandmother, "the Countess
+Duchess" 3rd Duchess of Sutherland.
+
+Still another reminiscence of beautiful Tarbat.
+
+Lady Cromartie asked me to join a shooting party she and Major Blunt
+were giving, to meet Prince Arthur of Connaught.
+
+I arrived one evening in wild winter weather. There had been a heavy
+snowstorm, and the sky looked as if there was considerably more to come.
+I found all the other guests had already arrived, and we were a very
+merry party. It was Prince Arthur's first "shoot" in the far North, and
+his first experience of what Scotland could provide in the way of autumn
+weather, and he was glad to avail himself of a thick woolen sweater of
+mine, which I was proud to present to him. He was perfectly charming to
+us all, and there was, owing to his simplicity, no sense of stiffness
+introduced into our party. That evening, after dinner, he was strolling
+round the room, looking at the pictures, and he paused opposite a framed
+letter, written by Prince Charles Edward during the '45 to the Lord
+Cromartie of that time, who was his earnest supporter.
+
+"Why!" exclaimed Prince Arthur, "that letter is written by 'The
+Pretender,' isn't it?"
+
+There was no answer. A thrill of horror ran through the breasts of the
+ardent Jacobites present. Dead silence reigned.
+
+Then I could stand it no longer. "Please, sir," I said, "we all call him
+Prince Charles Edward Stuart."
+
+Prince Arthur turned round laughingly. "I beg his pardon and all of
+yours," he exclaimed in the most charming manner, and the hearts of all
+the outraged Jacobites warmed to him at once.
+
+I was just about to creep into bed, very late that night, and very tired
+after my long, cold journey in a desperately sluggish train, when Lady
+Cromartie peeped in at my door. Her wonderful dark eyes were ablaze, and
+I knew at once she had something psychic to tell me. Her eyes looked
+like nothing else in the world but her eyes, when she is on the track of
+a ghost, or one of her "other side" experiences.
+
+"I have just seen Prince Charles Edward," she announced.
+
+I took her firmly by the arm. Prince Charles Edward means a very great
+deal to me, and I don't let anything pass me by that concerns his
+beloved memory.
+
+"Tell me quick. Where did you see him?" I asked.
+
+"I was just going to get into bed when I saw him standing looking at me,
+at the far end of the room. He was smiling, and as I stared back at him
+he slowly crossed the floor, his smiling face always turned to me, and
+vanished through the wall," was Lady Cromartie's answer.
+
+Then I told her of a certain feeling I had experienced earlier in the
+evening. At the moment when our Jacobite hearts were stung to deep,
+though fleeting resentment, we had formed a thought form, powerful
+enough to reach the spirit of Bonny Prince Charlie on "the other side."
+Our spirits had called on him, and he had heard and responded. Why not?
+If we believe in the immortality of the soul, the soul of Prince Charles
+Edward surely lives. Where? On the Astral plane, where the souls of all
+must go to divest themselves of the lower passions of earth, and the
+veil between the Physical plane and the Astral plane is wearing very
+thin in these days.
+
+For many of us there are rents through which we are permitted to see the
+old friends who are not lost but gone before, and who await us in a
+sphere where we in turn will await the coming of those who follow after.
+Indeed, the time does not now seem to be so far distant when so-called
+death will be pushed one stage further back, and the transference of the
+soul from earth to the Astral plane will no longer be treated as
+severance. What then will be termed the severance we now call death? It
+will be the passing of the cleansed soul from the Astral plane to the
+Heaven world, for a period of blissful rest before the life urge compels
+the reincarnating ego to take on once more the veil of flesh, in a
+transient human world.
+
+I doubt if it is possible for an English person to comprehend what it
+means to be a Jacobite. One is born a Jacobite or one is not. I was born
+a Jacobite, and I never lose my passionate love and regret for the
+sufferings and sorrows of Prince Charles Edward. No female figure in the
+past attracts me so much as does Flora MacDonald. Had I lived during the
+'45 I would have worn the white cockade, and parted with my last "shift"
+for the love of Bonny Prince Charlie. All very ridiculous, many may say,
+but there it is. That is what it means to be born a Jacobite.
+
+My grandfather was an ardent Jacobite, and consorted largely with old
+Jacobite families. The Sobieski Stuarts often made their home with him.
+Grand looking men of striking physique and good looks. Robert Chambers
+used to tell a story of the ghost Piper of Fingask; the property of a
+fine old Jacobite, Sir Peter Murray Threipland. The baronetcy is now
+extinct.
+
+One night, whilst my grandfather was visiting Sir Peter, they were
+sitting at supper in the old dining-hall. The two old sisters of Sir
+Peter, Eliza and Jessie, were present. Suddenly the faint strain of the
+pipes was heard in the distance, surely no uncommon sound in Scotland,
+where every Laird has his own piper to play round the dining-table, yet
+a sudden silence fell upon the little party of four. All ears were
+listening intently, and straining eyes were blank to all but the
+evidence of hearing. The noise grew louder, the piper seemed to be
+mounting the stone staircase, yet his brogues made no sound as he
+ascended.
+
+Sir Peter dropped his head down into his arms folded upon the table. He
+sought to hide the fear in his old eyes. The women sat as if chiseled
+out of granite, gray to the lips. The piper of Fingask had come for one
+of them. Which? Now the piper of death was drawing very near, the skirl
+of his pipes had nearly reached the door. In another moment, with a full
+blast of triumph that beat about their ears as it surged into the hall,
+he had passed, and had begun his ascent to the ramparts. The skirl was
+dying away into a wail. Miss Eliza spoke: "He's come for you, Jessie."
+There was no response. The piper of Fingask was playing a "Last Lament"
+now, as he swung round the ramparts.
+
+True enough he had come for Miss Jessie, and very shortly after she
+obeyed the call.
+
+To this day there are men and women who never forget to offer up their
+passionate regret for Prince Charles before they sleep. I know of one
+old Scottish house where his memory is an ever-present, ever-living
+thing. The shadowy old room is consecrated to him. On the walls hang
+portraits of him, and trophies of the '15 and the '45 stand round in
+glass cases. On one table lies a worn, white cockade, yellow with age,
+and a lock of fair hair clasped by a band of blackened pearls. In a tall
+slender glass there is always, in summer-time, a single white rose.
+
+Above is the portrait of the idol of the present house, who gave in the
+past of their all in life and treasure, for the cause they hold so
+sacred, so dear. I cannot look upon that gay, careless, handsome face
+without the tears rising to my eyes. His eyes smile into mine.
+Involuntarily I bend before him. What was the power in you, Prince
+Charles Edward Stuart, that drew from countless women and men that wild
+unswerving devotion? Which made light of terrible hardships, which
+followed you faithfully through glen and corrie? What is that power
+which you still exert over those to whom your name is but a memory, but
+who still, when they think on you or look upon your pictured face, cry
+silently in their hearts for the lost House of Stuart? "Oh! waes me for
+Prince Charlie!"
+
+One must be Scotch to understand that the Union did nothing to unite
+England and Scotland. To the Scottish plowman the Englishman is still a
+foreigner, whom he dislikes. Scotch and English servants do not work
+well in the same house. To us, Mary Queen of Scots lived "only the
+other day." When the House of Stuart passed from us our history ended.
+
+Our old houses are full of ghosts, the atmosphere is saturated with the
+tragic history of the past, the very skies seem to brood in melancholy
+over the soil, where so many wild bloody scenes were enacted. To the
+Psychic, Scotland is a land not yet emerged from the dour savagery of
+the past. Once, on visiting an historic old castle, my host pointed out
+to me a group of seven old trees standing close to the entrance.
+
+"Seven skeletons lie there," he said. "My grandfather went after a
+neighboring clan who had raided his cattle. He brought back seven men
+with halters round their necks and strung them up to those trees. Holes
+were dug beneath, and they all dropped into them by degrees, and then
+the earth was shoveled over them again."
+
+What will become of all those grand old places in the future? They are
+so costly to maintain. I think of all those lying around our own
+Aberdeenshire home; Fyvie Castle, a great stately pile, beautiful to
+look upon always, but more especially so when the red fires of a winter
+sunset blaze upon its many windows, and turn to rose the mantling snow
+on battlements and towers, whilst all around is wrapped in a garment of
+spotless white: House of Monymusk, Craigston Castle, Craigievar.
+
+I have just mentioned a few, all have their ghosts, and some have a
+curse upon them.
+
+A friend of ours came to see us, not very long ago, and told us of a
+horrible experience he had been through recently.
+
+He had been visiting a great house in the North, noted in Scottish
+history. The new Laird had only entered into possession during the last
+few years, on the death of a near relative, who had died from excessive
+drinking, the Scotchman's curse. Our friend had heard that this dead
+Laird "walked," but he had not met any one who had actually seen his
+ghost. After spending a pleasant evening with his host, and going
+through many reminiscences of his former visits to the house, and to the
+late Laird, who in spite of his fatal propensities had been a gallant
+gentleman and a great sportsman, our friend retired to bed.
+
+The room he slept in was a large one, and the bed faced the door, and a
+washstand stood on one side of it. He remembered the room, having slept
+in it on former occasions. He was roused in the night by some one rather
+noisily fumbling at the handle of his door, which was not locked. He sat
+up in bed and called out, "Who is it?"
+
+There was a full moon riding in a clear, frosty sky, and the room was
+only in semi-darkness. He stared at the door, which at that moment burst
+open, and standing in the aperture was a man, the dead Laird. Outside,
+was a long corridor with several windows, through which the moonlight
+poured. Against this silvery background stood the huge figure of the
+late Laird. He leaned forward, supporting himself by holding with both
+hands to the framework of the door, and with a glowering, half-drunken
+stare his eyes were fixed on the startled occupant of the bed.
+
+A panic seized our friend, who felt that if that menacing figure
+advanced into the room he would go mad. There was only one door, and no
+other means of escape, and very stealthily he slid to the opposite side
+of the bed, and reaching out, seized the water-bottle on his washstand.
+
+This action did not pass unnoticed by his terrible visitor. Suddenly
+relaxing his hold on the doorposts, he dropped down on his knees, and
+began rapidly crawling on all fours towards the bed, his inflamed eyes
+blazing with anger.
+
+Our friend did not wait for his arrival. With a blood-curdling yell he
+hurled the water-bottle full at his old friend, and leaping from the
+other side of the bed tore to the door and fled down the passage, as if
+pursued by a pack of devils. Hardly knowing what he did, he battered
+with his hands on the door of the room he knew to be occupied by his
+host and hostess, shouting out at the same time a call for assistance.
+Then he heard the voice of the wife saying to the husband, "It's
+Charlie. Open the door. I believe he's seen poor Angus."
+
+He had indeed seen "poor Angus," and for the last time, he assured us.
+Old friendship could not stand the test of so horrible an apparition.
+The room was empty when he returned to it with his host. Angus had gone
+back again to the land of the shadows, and only the scattered fragments
+of the water-bottle remained as a souvenir of his visit.
+
+Several servants had seen Angus, and it was difficult to keep the house
+staffed. One old housemaid, who had been in the family many years, had
+seen him frequently, and had even ventured to remonstrate with her
+former master, bidding him go back to his shroud and sleep peacefully in
+his grave like a respectable man, but apparently to no purpose. Angus
+preferred to "walk" and to terrify all to whom he had the power to show
+himself.
+
+Speaking of the Duke of Argyll has reminded me of some curious
+occurrences in connection with Lord Colin Campbell. At one time of my
+life, soon after my father's death, I saw a good deal of him. He was
+then studying law and intended later to practice in India. This plan he
+carried out, and in India he died, the result of a chill.
+
+Lord Colin was a very interesting man, a keen geologist and something of
+an artist. There were few subjects he was not interested in, and though
+somewhat shy of the subject, he had a decided aptitude for ghosts.
+
+One day in London he brought to my house a small gold cross fixed to a
+slab of gray marble, and asked me if I would keep it for him. He
+explained that it was an exact reproduction of the old stone cross of
+Inverary. He was then living in Argyll Lodge, Campden Hill, and I said I
+should have thought there was room enough for it there. I could not
+understand why he brought it to me. He looked uneasy and said he wished
+to get rid of it out of the house. When pressed to say why, he confessed
+that there was something uncanny about it. He thought it made him "see
+things," and he added, "Garry hates it."
+
+Garry was a fine, sable collie, devoted to his master and he to it.
+Garry had the misfortune to break his leg, and this caused Lord Colin
+acute distress. The leg was set, and the dog lay in a large clothes
+basket, and eventually got well. Garry was just recovering when Lord
+Colin brought me the cross.
+
+He became more expansive in a few moments, and said that he had seen a
+figure bending over the cross, as if to examine it. The figure had a
+hood, and he thought it must be the ghost of a monk. He had seen this
+many times, and Garry often growled, and his hair bristled at the very
+moment when his master caught sight of the apparition. Anything that
+distressed the dog must be removed, and knowing how interested I was in
+ghosts he had brought the cross to me.
+
+Of course I was delighted to have a chance of witnessing psychic
+phenomena of any kind, but alas, though I kept the cross for years, and
+only sent it lately to the present Duke, I never saw anything in
+connection with it.
+
+I did, however, see something interesting in connection with Lord Colin.
+
+One hot June evening, in London, I was sitting alone by the open window.
+The day had been very exhausting; it was one of those hot spells that
+come so often before regular summer sets in, and I was glad to rest
+quietly and do nothing.
+
+The street was wonderfully quiet at that hour, nine o'clock, when all
+the world of fashion was dining, and the daylight was strong enough to
+read by, had I so desired. Suddenly my attention was attracted by a
+slight noise behind me, and glancing round at the open door I saw that
+Lord Colin and his dog had just entered the room, as was their habit,
+unannounced. In his hand he carried a huge bunch of white and mauve
+lilac blossoms. I had not expected him that evening, but I was very
+pleased to see him, and exclaimed, "Why, Colin, what a glorious bouquet!
+I can smell it already."
+
+He was smiling as he and his dog moved up the long room towards me, but
+he said nothing. I had risen and held out my hand, but when about
+halfway across the floor both he and the dog vanished entirely and quite
+suddenly.
+
+I shall never forget my utter amazement and consternation. I could not
+disbelieve the evidence of my own senses, for I was absolutely certain
+I could still smell the lilac, and I had no doubt whatever that I had
+seen Lord Colin and his dog.
+
+I sat down again and fell to considering the extraordinary circumstance.
+I was perfectly well and normal, I had not been thinking of Lord Colin,
+and yet in the midst of other thoughts a sound had attracted my
+attention, and looking round I had seen him enter with his dog. For the
+space of quite two minutes both had been visible. I got up again and
+timed the whole affair by my wrist watch. The room I sat in was very
+long. I was at one end, and the door at the other. It took me just one
+minute to walk leisurely forward over the ground they had covered,
+before they vanished from my sight.
+
+I sat down again and began to wonder if Lord Colin was ill, or was he
+dead, and why was he carrying lilacs? 'Phones were uncommon things in
+those days; I had no means of communication with Argyll Lodge.
+
+For an hour I sat considering the wonderful vividness of my curious
+experience. The daylight had faded into a close, soft twilight, but I
+wanted no artificial light. Then just as ten o'clock was striking I
+heard a voice in the hall below; a voice I was sure was Lord Colin's,
+and he was answered by one of my servants. Steps sounded on the stairs,
+and in another moment in he walked with Garry, and in his hand he
+carried a big bunch of white and mauve lilacs.
+
+I stood staring at him in the dim twilight. Was this the real man and
+dog at last?
+
+"I know it's awfully late to pay a call, but I thought you would like
+some lilac," he exclaimed; "it's so lovely in our garden just now," and
+he held out the flowers.
+
+I took them and bade him be seated. Garry came to me and rested his nose
+on my lap. For a moment I could not speak.
+
+"Aren't you well?" asked Colin.
+
+Then I recovered myself, but I did not tell him what had happened only
+an hour before. As we talked I discovered that he had intended to come
+at nine o'clock, and was just starting when a relative arrived and
+detained him.
+
+On another occasion he told me of a curious dream he had as a boy.
+
+Queen Victoria came to Inverary to pay a visit to the Duke and Duchess
+of Argyll, Lord Colin's parents, and it was arranged that the young sons
+of the house should act as pages to Her Majesty. The night of the day on
+which the Queen arrived, Colin dreamed that some one whom he did not
+know came to him and said, "To-morrow the Queen will give you twenty
+shillings."
+
+When the boy wakened up in the morning he remembered this dream, and all
+day long he was on the outlook for its fulfillment. The hours passed,
+but though he was often in her presence and kept as close to her as he
+dared, the Queen never produced her purse. Just before reentering the
+house towards evening, she suddenly turned to John Brown, her constant
+attendant, and said something which Colin did not catch. What was his
+joy on perceiving that surly henchman extract from a shabby old purse a
+filthy Scotch one pound note, which he handed to Her Majesty.
+
+"My little Colin, here is a present for you," said the Queen, and making
+his best bow the boy accepted the gift. His dream had come true.
+
+John Brown was the terror of all the great nobles whom the Queen was
+pleased to visit. Her Majesty took him everywhere with her, and he was
+her closest attendant. Born of the humblest Scotch parents on the Estate
+of Balmoral, he died in the position of a potentate in a royal
+residence. His manners were terribly rough and objectionable, and his
+behavior to the gentlemen with whom he constantly came into contact was
+insulting to the last degree. He had one invariable habit. When the
+Queen paid a visit naturally her honored host was in waiting to hand her
+out of her carriage. Brown contrived to nip down from his perch at the
+back of the carriage, just at a certain moment, and with a violent push
+thrust aside the prince, duke or peer who sought to do honor to the
+Sovereign.
+
+Some of the gentlemen about the Court paid him very liberally, not for
+civility, but simply to desist from his habitual insults, and it has
+been said that Disraeli discovered some method of conciliation, but
+Brown took an absolute pleasure in insulting all who had occasion to
+approach Her Majesty. Latterly he drank very heavily, and when he died,
+to the unutterable relief of all and sundry he bequeathed all his
+savings and possessions, even the watch he wore, to Her Majesty. His
+many poor relatives living in cottages on the estate never saw a penny
+of his money, nor so much as a button from his doublet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS
+
+
+We are all of us, in this world, strangers and pilgrims, and to each
+human being, in turn, and in varied ways, comes the knowledge, "A
+stranger with Thee and a sojourner as all my Fathers were."
+
+Like ships that pass in the night "we exchange signals with one
+another," and pass on our different ways through the ocean of life. I
+think it is the sea that most clearly brings home to me the transitory
+nature of our pilgrimage. Leaning over the side of a ship in mid ocean,
+and watching a trail of smoke from another ship on the horizon, I am
+always impelled to wonder about its human cargo. Who and what are they,
+and for what distant shores are they bound? Again one sweeps the far
+horizons only to find them empty of aught but a vast tumbling expanse of
+waters. Then, without warning, we are wrapped in a dense blanket of fog.
+The sirens sound insistently, and are at once answered by ships on every
+side. It is startling to find there are many so near, but utterly
+invisible. In a few minutes we have emerged again into distance and
+clear skies, and again there is nothing that meets the eye but the empty
+watery expanse.
+
+Looking back on my life I can recall many meetings with fellow pilgrims
+that apparently were purely accidental, yet they left their mark upon
+my life. Meetings such as those, when two souls thrown together by the
+force of circumstances, in quiet far-away places; or in the marts of the
+world, become in a few short hours like old and tried friends. How often
+have I heard it said, even after one short hour, "I feel as if I had
+known you all my life." Such I look upon as epochs in my pilgrimage,
+milestones and guiding stars on my life's road. Yet the limitations of
+such epochs are obvious enough. Time on earth is circumscribed, still
+there is subconsciously the instant recognition of two kindred souls who
+hear and remember, who instinctively know that once, perchance many
+times before, they have landed together on the shores of time, from the
+storm-tossed bark of life.
+
+It seems strange that those chance meetings should have no continuity. I
+remember one such meeting in the East, and how utterly by chance it
+seemed to come about. It lasted for three days, yet after three hours I
+knew more of my fellow pilgrim and he of me than we would have known of
+each other in three months at home. We were both quite alone, but I
+remember his recalling the pre-Buddha words written a thousand years
+before the coming of the Christ: "Thou shalt not separate thy Being from
+Being, and the rest, but merge the ocean in the drop, the drop within
+the ocean. So shalt thou be in full accord with all that lives, bear
+love to men as though they were thy brother pupils, disciples of one
+teacher, the sons of one sweet mother."
+
+When we bade each other good-by and I boarded my ship we told each other
+we would meet again, but instinctively we knew we never should. I have
+forgotten his name, but all else I can remember very clearly, and the
+wonderful comradeship two souls, drifting together for a second in time,
+can give each other. He gave me the sufi mysticism of Omar Khayyam, and
+I can still see the English face burnt dark with eastern suns, under the
+snowy turban, and the brilliant parrot swinging on a palm bough above
+his head. I can still hear the low grave voice reciting the quatrains of
+Persia's astronomer poet, written a thousand years ago. They fitted in
+with our surroundings:--
+
+    "There was a door to which I found no key.
+    There was a veil past which I could not see!
+    Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
+    There seemed, and then no more of Me and Thee."
+
+I suppose we all have many such recollections in our lives, and it is
+impossible (for me) to believe them to be a mere matter of chance, for,
+always on parting, I have been conscious that I have received some
+lasting good, or it has mercifully chanced that I have been able to help
+a stranger and pilgrim on a difficult way.
+
+Again, I remember another interesting meeting. A woman was sitting alone
+on a bench in the outskirts of Cairo, and her worn face was turned to
+the dying fires of sunset. She was very shabby and poor looking, and
+obviously she was a European. In my casual glance I caught something
+familiar, and after going on some paces I felt a compelling force
+bidding me return. I sat down beside her and at once spoke to her. I
+knew who she was when she turned her face to me, and the hideous
+contrast of her past and her present appalled me. She does not know
+to-day that I am aware of her real identity. She is in England, and all
+now is well with her. One can always, as the pre-Buddhist taught us,
+"Point out the way however dim and lost amongst the Host, as does the
+evening star to those who tread their path in darkness."
+
+Again, it is strange to tell why unknown pilgrims should leave their
+mark upon us for all earthly time, pilgrims to whom one has never
+spoken, and of whom one knows nothing. When I was quite a child I passed
+every day through a very quiet and well-to-do street of dwelling-houses.
+At a window behind two flower-pots, sat a woman whom I supposed to be
+sewing, though her hands were hidden from view. I can see her as clearly
+now as I saw her then, over forty years ago in the northern capital. The
+pale, tragic profile, the down-drooped eyelids, the meekly-banded hair.
+I used to wonder about her constantly. She possessed me, and interested
+me at that time more than anything else in my life. Even to this day she
+comes unbidden into my mind at frequent intervals.
+
+Again from my bedroom window in Belgrade I used to watch another woman.
+She came out on her balcony twice a day, always at the same hours. She
+put her hands on the rails, and turned her dark, southern face up to the
+skies, and there she would stand for an hour, gazing fixedly above. I
+never once saw her eyes drop to the busy street below, and once a
+prisoner, dragging his heavy chains behind him, paused and looked up and
+cried out to her for bread. She appeared not to hear him, her rigid
+attitude never relaxed.
+
+It is the thoughts of such pilgrims, as one conjectures them to be, that
+form the interest, or perhaps it really is something more, a far-off
+kinship, stretching invisible threads down through the ages. With both
+those women I had a feeling of kinship. I had picked them out of the
+world's crowd, because of some silent influence they exerted over me,
+the lingering power of some far back, forgotten touch, which had once
+drawn us together. I know that in my life I had met those "that I have
+loved long since and lost awhile."
+
+For me there was purpose in those "stars" that shine through my life, as
+looking back they show me where I had arrived at the moment of their
+uprising, and their rays pierce the penumbra shadows wherein the soul
+lies hid. Each star showed me the lees in the cup of destiny, brought to
+me a new revelation of soul, and elucidated for me something of the
+mystery of life.
+
+Again, surely there is Divine purpose in those islets of friendship
+which jewel-like stud the gray vesture of ordinary existence. They are
+close, warm, and utterly sincere, often for many long years, then they
+are suddenly sundered by the inrush of some invading force which cuts
+them off in their full bloom. Sometimes the Master Death bids them pass
+on, sometimes the break comes by some utterly trivial, yet inexorable
+fiat of human destiny.
+
+In the clash of human interests it must needs be that pain must come to
+some. Life cannot be all serenity and peace to the pilgrims who toil
+upon its stormy way, its _via dolorosa_. Such crises teach us the just
+attitude that should prevail in all such trials and circumstances. Amiel
+says, "There is one wrong man is not bound to punish, that of which he
+himself is the victim. Such a wrong is to be healed, not avenged." For
+hate there is but one antidote--love. The art of forgetfulness is not
+yet a science, but to forget the evil one has but to remember the good.
+Love knows neither saint nor sinner, for she seeks in every heart the
+hidden gem of good. She thinks no ill, because she knows the trials of
+each one are penalty enough for deeds already done. Neither in the case
+of Death's intervention, nor in the case of human misunderstanding
+should there be sorrow for lost friendships, though there must
+inevitably be regret.
+
+Love brings with it suffering, for all who love suffer with those they
+love. Unkindness and injustices are hard to bear, and the loss of those
+we love is a bitter pain, but those whose hearts are great enough still
+find others on whom to lavish love. Are there not many who need it, and
+are there not great rewards for those who have love to spare. To be
+required, to be appealed to, and turned to as a help and refuge. Such
+are the prizes for those whose hearts are always alight with love, who
+from one flame can kindle many.
+
+When death looses the silver cord, and souls seem torn asunder for ever
+more, there will be sadness of spirit. When a break comes, perhaps
+through third-party treachery, there may come the sense of eternal
+severance, but is it eternal? I doubt it. More probably there lies
+before us an existence of clearer judgment and understanding, of vaster
+possibilities, in which we shall know, even as also we are known. Though
+now we see each other through a glass darkly, a day will come when we
+shall no longer see in part, but face to face. When faith, hope and love
+shall be reunited, and we shall realize that the greatest of these three
+is love, which suffereth long, and is kind and thinketh no evil.
+
+Again, there are these loves in one's life, some fleeting, some
+lasting, that are too sacred to write of, and of which one never speaks.
+The joys and sorrows they brought, the prose or poesy of our intercourse
+are graven deep on the heart. Whether it be they still walk by our side,
+or have gone west to rest after labor, we must learn to say with the
+pre-Buddhists of old time: "Do not grieve for the living or the dead.
+Never did I not exist for you... nor will any one of us ever hereafter
+cease to be."
+
+Such sacramental hours sanctify the variety of our lot, combine the
+pathos of love and death, and stretch through the corridors of memory
+into the hush and shadow of the haunted past; where all the mystery of
+such hours seem gathered for inspiration. There linger the symbols of
+our sojourn here. How potent, yet how fragmentary they are! The scent of
+a flower, the long embrace, the hand held out in vain, the flash of
+recognition, the chime of the clock which altered the course of the
+pilgrimage. The meek hands folded on the still breast. Such symbols
+abide with us like the image of a Divine form, some echo of immortal
+music, some lingering word of angels. Their cadences come ever back to
+us from infinite distances, ghostly chords and evanescent. Harmonies
+which come and go too fitfully for apprehension.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+SOME STRANGE EVENTS
+
+
+After my marriage my husband and I passed some time in the United States
+and Canada; we then returned to England and took a place in
+Cambridgeshire. We were both very fond of racing, and attended all the
+meetings at Newmarket.
+
+One day I drove by appointment to the house of a neighbor who had asked
+me to meet Miss Catherine Bates, author of that interesting book, "Seen
+and Unseen."
+
+Just before I started my husband, half in fun, and knowing Miss Bates to
+be a psychic, said, "Ask her what horse is going to win the
+Cambridgeshire."
+
+I promised to put the question and drove off. I had a most interesting
+visit, but I totally forgot to ask Miss Bates for the winner of the
+coming race.
+
+It was not until I was seated in the victoria, exchanging a few parting
+words with the two ladies standing in the doorway to bid me good-by,
+that I suddenly recollected my husband's request. As the horses were
+starting I called out to Miss Bates--
+
+"Tell me what's going to win 'The Cambridgeshire?'"
+
+The answer was prompt and clear:
+
+"Marco to win, ---- for a place." (I regret I cannot remember the name
+of the second horse.)
+
+As I drove away I waved my thanks, and directly I got home I told my
+husband--"Marco to win, ---- for a place."
+
+He was much interested in this "tip" from so well-known a psychic, and
+of course we backed "Marco to win and ---- for a place" for all we were
+worth. I wish I could remember the odds. I only know that they were
+"long."
+
+The event duly came off, and I wrote to Miss Bates thanking her for the
+good turn she had done us.
+
+Her reply astounded me.
+
+She began by saying she had not heard me put any question to her
+regarding the winner of the Cambridgeshire, and went on to say that she
+knew nothing about racing, and knew none of the horses' names, therefore
+it was impossible that she could have given me the "tip."
+
+Her hostess cared nothing for racing, and was as ignorant as she was
+upon the subject, but she did remember hearing me call out to Miss
+Bates, "What's going to win the Cambridgeshire?"
+
+I then questioned our coachman and footman. Both distinctly remembered
+my calling out the question, and both, keen on racing, listened for the
+reply, but they heard none.
+
+Where did that answer come from? I cannot tell. Was some spirit
+interested in racing hovering near? Did he contrive to drop the "tip"
+into my mind, open at that moment and eager to catch the response?
+
+A year after the event I have recounted above, I was resting one
+afternoon in the summer-time. I had been ill, and was not yet strong
+enough to lead an ordinary life, and I was lying on a sofa in a top
+floor room. The room immediately beneath me was the drawing-room, and
+the weather being hot all the windows were wide open. The house we
+inhabited was quite isolated in its own park, and the village was about
+half a mile distant. My husband was from home, and I was alone in that
+particular part of the house, the servants' quarters being at the back,
+and shut off from the rest.
+
+Out of the absolute quiet suddenly came the sound of music. Some one was
+playing my piano in the drawing-room below. This, in itself, caused me
+irritation, but no surprise. I was not well enough to entertain callers
+at tea, due in half an hour, and I had given orders that I would see no
+one, but it had happened before that the musical neighbors had called,
+and whilst waiting for me had sat down to the piano.
+
+I was too annoyed to hasten downstairs. I lay waiting for the butler to
+come to me and inform me why my orders had been disobeyed. Meanwhile I
+listened to the music, and wondered greatly who the brilliant pianist
+could be. I did not recognize the music, but it sounded quite modern,
+and requiring a great amount of technique. The player was, however, a
+most brilliant performer, who had acquired considerable skill.
+"Evidently a professional," I thought, and wondered all the more who it
+could possibly be.
+
+Still there were no signs of the ascending butler, and time continued to
+pass. I began to feel obstinate, and determined to remain where I was,
+until I was correctly informed of the caller's identity.
+
+The music steadily continued, every note borne to my ears as clearly as
+if I had been in the room with the performer. "Very wonderful music, but
+soulless," I concluded, and though my curiosity was growing every
+moment my obstinacy prevailed, and I remained where I was. At last,
+after quite twenty minutes, the music suddenly stopped; it broke off in
+the middle of a movement.
+
+I rose at once, and went downstairs feeling very cross. I pushed open
+the drawing-room door and entered. It was absolutely empty, but the
+piano, which had not been opened for several weeks, was open now. I went
+to the window which commanded the avenue; not a soul was in sight. Then
+I rang the bell, and when the butler entered the following dialogue took
+place:----
+
+"Who was the caller who has just been?"
+
+"There have been no callers to-day, madam."
+
+"But surely you heard the piano being played?"
+
+"We heard a lot of music, but we thought it was you playing, madam."
+
+"Then you all heard it?"
+
+"All of us in the hall heard it, madam."
+
+I left it at that. Suddenly it came to me that I had better not push my
+inquiries further. Until that second it had never occurred to me that
+the performer might be a disembodied spirit.
+
+The butler did not leave the matter alone, but made every inquiry at the
+Lodge, and also of the out-door servants, but nothing came of it. No one
+had seen a stranger, and the silver was intact. My maid told me some
+time afterwards that the household had shaken down to the conviction
+that I had really been the performer, and that my recent illness had
+caused me to forget the fact. I let this conviction remain unshaken, but
+I marveled at the lack of musical discrimination my household displayed.
+The disparity between my strumming and the brilliant execution of my
+spirit guest was so vast that I could not even feel flattered by their
+mistake.
+
+A year or two after we took a cottage on the Thames, and there, during
+our summer visits, I had an uncomfortable time.
+
+There was something wrong with the sideboard end of the dining-room. For
+a long time I could not make out what it was. My attention was
+constantly being attracted to the spot. If I passed the door I thought
+instantly of the sideboard. In plain language, I was constantly being
+invited, by some invisible person, to come in and have a drink. If I was
+putting anything away in the sideboard the suggestion was always very
+strong. On the outside stood a tantalus of spirits and soda water, ready
+to refresh any calling boating men. Inside the cupboards were wine
+decanters.
+
+I always resisted the suggestion, I suppose because I did not happen to
+want anything to drink--for years I have been a total abstainer, and at
+the time I certainly did not realize the menace of those suggestions.
+
+Now and again I caught sight of a small oblong gray cloud hovering in
+front of the sideboard but it was not till many months afterwards that I
+saw something much more definite. The gray shadow had become the clearly
+defined shade of a small woman. She hovered about the spot in a
+wavering, undecided manner. It was apparent that she was seeking
+something. One day, in a flash, I recognized the truth, the suggestion
+came from her. She was inviting me to drink with her.
+
+My husband and I set to work to find out who this unfortunate woman had
+been when she dwelt on earth. We discovered a very sad story. She had
+been a celebrity of the half world, and I had actually seen her in the
+flesh. She had traveled to Monte Carlo one winter in the next sleeping
+compartment to ours, and she had lived for some years in our riverside
+cottage. Latterly she had fallen an incurable victim to drinking, and
+had died of it. Poor little soul; my heart went out to her in deepest
+pity, but I was glad to leave the cottage forever, when in 1898 we went
+to live at my husband's place, Balquholly, Aberdeenshire.
+
+Some people, perhaps once in their lives, become sensitive enough to
+recognize a visitor from the Astral plane. If the occasion is not
+repeated they believe themselves to have been victims of hallucinations.
+Others find themselves seeing and hearing, with increasing frequency,
+something to which those around them are blind and deaf. They realize,
+in fact, that they are in touch with the Astral plane, the region lying
+next to our world of dense matter, and often some Astral entity on the
+lowest levels of that plane is continuously striving to work through
+their mediumship. The world is very far from realizing this danger. What
+are those entities working for?
+
+The man or woman who has led a decently pure life on earth will have no
+attraction to the lowest levels, contiguous with earth, of the Astral
+plane, and will, at so-called death, pass swiftly through it. But, alas!
+the vast majority have by no means freed themselves from all lower
+desires before passing over, and it takes a considerable time before the
+evil forces generated on earth work themselves out on "the other side."
+
+The length of man's detention on the lower level will depend entirely
+on the earthly life he has lived, and the quality of the desires he has
+indulged in.
+
+The desires of a drunkard, a debaucher, are as strong after death as
+before. The present Bishop of London made that very clear in one of his
+Easter addresses, but the subject finds it impossible, without a
+physical body, to gratify his lusts. Occasionally it can be done in a
+vicarious manner, when he is able to seize on a like minded person and
+obsess him or her, or when he finds a medium who consciously or
+unconsciously panders to his desires. For this reason I hold it to be
+imperative for safety's sake, that every genuine medium should be a
+total abstainer.
+
+How often one is asked the question: "What is a medium?"
+
+It is a difficult question to answer in a few words. I should put it
+thus----
+
+A medium is one whose principles, physical, mental, spiritual, are so
+loosely bound together that an Astral entity can draw from him without
+difficulty the matter it requires for manifestation. The very essence of
+mediumship is the ready separability of the principles.
+
+In the case of the poor little woman I have mentioned, she was fortunate
+enough not to meet with (in me) a sensitive, through whom her passion
+could be vicariously gratified.
+
+Such unfulfilled desires gradually burn themselves out, and the
+suffering caused in the process no doubt goes to work off evil Karma
+generated in the past life. It is the soul that desires, the body is but
+the tool to grasp the desire, and after death old lusts crowd upon the
+departed. Thirsty with no throat; sensual with no body to grip the foul
+desire, soon it is learned that the worst evils and the hardest to undo
+have been woven out of the mind.
+
+Here is another story or two relating to one of the most puzzling
+mysteries in ghost lore--the phenomena of temporary hauntings.
+
+Why do ghosts suddenly take possession of a house with which, in their
+incarnate days, they have had no connection?
+
+Such ghosts differ from those only seen once. They take up their abode
+in a dwelling which has absolutely no traditions of haunting. They will
+be seen and heard on many occasions, for a few months, possibly for a
+few years. They will then suddenly depart, and be seen or heard no more.
+
+Such apparitions cannot readily be traced to any defunct friend or
+member of the family. They have no known connection with the house in
+which they appear, and no one can form the faintest conception why they
+should suddenly elect to "walk" within those four walls, which hitherto
+have been normal and free from "other side" visitors.
+
+A case of this description happened to my youngest brother, who, before
+he bought his present country house, lived in a detached, new building,
+not far from the Dean Bridge, in Edinburgh.
+
+He had occupied this house for some years previous to his experience,
+and had neither heard nor seen anything of a spooky nature. The
+manifestation only lasted for a few weeks. Nothing in the form of a
+ghost was seen, but much was heard.
+
+I will give the story in my brother's own words:
+
+"On a certain evening, a year or two ago, I went out after dinner to
+visit some friends, and returned home about half-past eleven.
+
+"Not feeling inclined to go to bed, I took up a book and sat down to
+read for half an hour.
+
+"About a quarter-past midnight I suddenly became aware that stealthy
+footsteps were coming upstairs. Looking at my watch I thought it very
+strange that any of the maids should be still up at such a late hour.
+
+"The door was well ajar, and I arose from my chair, listening intently,
+as I crossed the room. The footsteps were now quite distinct, and I knew
+at once they were not those of any woman. They were the stealthy
+footsteps of a man, and naturally I at once concluded that he was a
+burglar.
+
+"I calculated swiftly that he would either enter the room in which I
+stood, or he would go on and up the next flight of stairs to the
+bedrooms. In any case, he had to be faced and caught. I realized that,
+and I much regretted I had nothing at hand which would help me, should
+he prove to be armed.
+
+"There was, however, no time for further thought. Every second brought
+him nearer, and taking up a position just behind the door, I waited till
+he arrived on the landing, and until he came to the spot when he must
+either turn in, or go on upstairs.
+
+"The moment came, almost at once. With a sudden bound I sprang out to
+close with him. Lo! and behold! nothing was to be seen! Nothing was now
+to be heard, except the ticking of a clock.
+
+"I stood still and absolutely astounded. The footsteps had been no trick
+of imagination, I was very sure of that. Had I not heard them stealthily
+beginning the ascent of the stairs, and grow louder the nearer they
+approached me?
+
+"I mopped my brow. Would any self-respecting burglar have come on, and
+up a lighted staircase, and along a landing towards a room which he must
+have known was still occupied, as the light shone through the half-open
+door? Are burglars ever as rash as that?
+
+"Then I reminded myself that as there was no burglar in the case my
+speculations were mere waste of time.
+
+"I put out the lights, and went to bed in a very uncomfortable frame of
+mind.
+
+"The next day, when I returned home from business, my housekeeper
+informed me that a strange man had been walking about the house. She had
+not seen him, though she had looked for him--that was the curious part
+of it, but she had heard him quite distinctly, several times, and she
+didn't like it one little bit. Not that she was frightened! Oh! dear no,
+but it was uncanny, and she thought she had better tell me. I thanked
+her and assured her that there was nothing to fear. The house was quite
+new, and uncanny things never happen in new houses. I advised her not to
+mention the subject to any one but me, and told her that I was not going
+out again that evening.
+
+"After dinner I settled down in my room, to wait for the footsteps I
+instinctively felt sure would return. I kept the lights burning on
+stairs and landing, and set the door half open, placing my chair in such
+a position that I could see any one who passed outside the room on the
+landing. This time I did not think of arming myself. I had come to the
+firm conclusion that the sounds came from no person living in the flesh.
+As no house adjoined mine I had no 'next door' on which to lay the
+blame for the disturbance.
+
+"Sure enough, about an hour earlier this time, the unknown, unseen
+visitor began his ascent of my staircase. I cannot describe my feelings
+during those moments of waiting for 'it' to pass. I can only say they
+were intensely unpleasant, and I hope I may never again have to confess
+myself to be a wretched coward. A burglar would at that moment have
+appeared to me in the guise of a dear friend.
+
+"However, the thing had to be faced, there was no one else that I could
+put onto the job, and so I simply sat still and waited, with my eyes
+fixed on the landing outside. The steps came on, distinct enough, and
+growing nearer and louder. They arrived on the landing, they reached my
+door, they passed, and proceeded to mount the next flight of steps to
+the bedrooms. I had seen absolutely nothing.
+
+"I rose and walked out on to the landing, and looked up at the brightly
+lit staircase. I could mark, by the sound, the progress made by those
+invisible feet. They passed on to the bedroom floor, and with heartfelt
+gratitude I heard them enter, not mine, but an empty room. I heard
+nothing more that night. Presumably the ghost remained quietly in his
+comfortable quarters.
+
+"The next day came more complaints from the housekeeper. The 'strange
+man' not only promenaded the house at intervals, but he had the
+impertinence to ring several bells. I wondered if a whisky and soda left
+casually on his dressing-table would appease his thirst for summoning
+the servants in this irritating fashion.
+
+"For some days after this we were left in peace, and I began to hope
+that 'it' had betaken itself to the house of some other chap, but no
+such luck!
+
+"One evening I was in the dining-room decanting some wine before dinner.
+It was just seven o'clock, when I heard 'its' footsteps again. This time
+they were coming downstairs. I went to the door and looked out. There
+was no one to be seen. I reentered the dining-room and shut 'it' out. I
+suppose 'it' had been having a rest in the bedroom. I trusted 'it' meant
+to have a night out.
+
+"A moment or two later I heard a click near the fireplace, and looking
+towards the spot whence this sound came, I saw the handle of the bell
+being pulled back. In another second the bell rang.
+
+"When the maid answered it I was ready for her.
+
+"'Oh! don't you know what that is?' I inquired with mild sarcasm. 'Only
+mice crossing the wires. Nothing to be frightened of in that, is there?'
+
+"I stuck to this all through the weeks that followed. The maids ceased
+to answer the bells, and went early to bed in a bunch. They no longer
+required rooms to themselves.
+
+"In a few months the trouble stopped as suddenly as it had begun. 'It'
+had evidently found other quarters more to 'its' liking. The mice were
+equally obliging. They ceased running across the wires."
+
+What theory will explain this species of haunting which is quite common?
+May it not be that this disembodied entity attached itself to my brother
+whilst he was out, and like a lost dog followed him home? There must be
+countless entities wandering about all over this globe, seeking an
+abiding-place for their restless souls. People who find themselves as
+bereft of friends on the other side of death, as they were in earth
+life. Those who have friends here have doubtless friends there.
+
+In old days we used to think of a post-mortem abode as somewhere in the
+skies. Some even mentioned a receiving station in the bowels of the
+earth. Now I find that the majority of educated people have come to
+regard so-called death as merely a change of consciousness, and the
+immediate post-mortem sphere of our activities to be a region
+interpenetrating this earth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A county neighbor of ours in Aberdeenshire told me of a very tantalizing
+experience he had a very few years ago of temporary haunting. This was a
+case of seeing, not hearing.
+
+The time was late autumn, and his family had gone south for the winter,
+leaving him alone for a week or two to finish up the shooting.
+
+One night, immediately after he had dined, he ran upstairs to his
+bedroom to fetch something. On coming out of his room again, what was
+his astonishment to see, walking in front of him, a tall young lady,
+very smartly dressed in the height of the prevailing fashion. She wore
+black satin, cut very low and without sleeves, and she moved very
+quietly along the passage, and proceeded to go downstairs. She never
+turned her elaborately coiffed head, and he could not see her face. He
+followed, too speechless with amazement to address her. Who on earth
+could she be? Where was she going? Nine o'clock at night; only two old
+servants in the house! In the depth of the country, and nine miles away
+from anywhere! And this charming young lady who so unexpectedly had made
+her appearance to brighten his solitude!
+
+What a surprising adventure! The situation was piquant to say the least
+of it.
+
+He followed immediately behind the attractive vision. He even wondered
+what room he would have prepared for her. So absolutely real did she
+look, that not for a second did he doubt she was ordinary flesh and
+blood.
+
+When describing her afterwards to me he said, "I can assure you I saw
+the actual white flesh of her bare arms and shoulders. I was close
+behind her."
+
+The lady moved composedly on, walking with supple grace and perfect
+self-possession. She was not in the least hurried or flustered. She
+reached the bottom of the stairs, and he had a momentary fear that she
+would make for the front door, where surely a Rolls Royce would be
+awaiting her. Not so! She walked straight into the dining-room. He
+followed.
+
+As he entered the door she had gained the opposite end of the room,
+where the sideboard stood.
+
+For a second she stood still, turned and glanced round at him with an
+enchanting smile of delicate raillery. Then she deliberately walked
+through the sideboard and wall beyond, and was lost to sight.
+
+The beholder of this ghost had never seen anything of the sort before,
+and was, if anything, a disbeliever in psychic phenomena. He is a
+perfectly healthy, normal country gentleman, whose principal hobby is
+sport, and who prefers a country life out of doors to the life of an
+intellectual student.
+
+Needless to say the occurrence puzzled him beyond measure. He could not
+"place" the lady, and was certain that he had never seen her before. Her
+dress proclaimed her to be absolutely modern.
+
+Though in roundabout ways he tried to find out if any woman, answering
+to her description, was visiting at the time in any of the neighboring
+country houses, he failed entirely to get any result.
+
+Being rather shy of the chaff he knew would be indulged in at his
+expense, he mentioned the incident to no one. He took careful notes of
+date, time, and other particulars, and kept a strict watch, but the lady
+appeared no more during his stay, and before Christmas he went south to
+rejoin his family.
+
+He did not forget the experience. When the following autumn came round
+he found himself again in the North, under exactly similar
+circumstances. Eagerly he anticipated the anniversary of his first
+ghost. He was waiting for her on the landing outside his bedroom door,
+and suddenly she sprang into sight from nowhere. To-night he had
+determined to lay hold of her, but he calculated without his ghost. She
+sped downstairs, this time as if she was well aware that he was in
+pursuit. They gained the dining-room almost neck to neck, and this time
+she made no pause before slipping through the wall. She simply looked
+back at him over her shoulder, and smiled at him enchantingly,
+provokingly. Then he found himself alone.
+
+The following year was blank. She came no more.
+
+Why did she come to that house, with which, it is certain, she had no
+connection? Why did she only appear twice, and both times on the same
+date?
+
+Such are the questions one asks in vain, but such fugitive visions
+suggest the whisperings of a voice which calls out in the wilderness,
+and leads through life's enigmas to the final awakening.
+
+There are visions of beauty to which we are blind, and joyous harmonies
+we do not hear. There are depths of feeling we have not plumbed, and
+heights we have not aspired to, yet I am sure if we but place ourselves
+in a simple attitude of receptiveness, we will draw nearer to the glory
+of the unseen, and Nature's finer forces will draw nearer to us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+POMPEY AND THE DUCHESS
+
+
+Have animals souls?
+
+I unhesitatingly answer "Yes."
+
+If my dog has not a soul then neither have I--my dreams of immortality
+are merely a delusion. I base my belief upon the God-like qualities
+found in animals--the highest quality of all, love, pure, and
+unadulterated by self-seeking.
+
+The oldest scriptures of the world tell us that when wild animals die
+their life flows back into a group soul, a mass, as it were, of
+undifferentiated life essence. As the animal becomes domesticated, as a
+dog or cat learns to live with man, shares in his joys and sorrows, to
+be his constant companion, then it advances rapidly in evolution. It is
+developing human qualities, and in due time will no more return to merge
+in the group soul, but be born into the human family. A lowly human
+family it is true, a primitive savage to begin with, but that animal has
+passed one of the most important milestones on the long, lone trail. It
+will never more return to the world in the form of the beast, henceforth
+it will commence its slow ascent from the most elementary human body to
+the exalted heights of a god. They tell us in the East: "First a stone,
+then a plant, then an animal, then a man, and finally a God." This is
+how the wisdom of the East understands Divine evolution.
+
+Cases where the ghosts of animals have been seen are becoming quite
+common. Before describing the astral apparitions of some of our animals,
+I will recall a very interesting case which was investigated in recent
+years at Ballechin, Perthshire. The accounts of the Ballechin hauntings
+are contained in a big volume, but at present I am only concerned in the
+four-footed ghosts that were seen. The trouble began upon the death of
+the eccentric owner, old Major Stewart, in 1876. He had frequently
+stated his intention of haunting the place after his death, and,
+furthermore, had asserted his determination to "walk" in the form of one
+of his many dogs, a favorite black spaniel.
+
+The family, anxious, as they thought, to be on the safe side, had all
+the pack, numbering fourteen, destroyed at the death of their master,
+but this wholesale slaughter of the innocents proved of no avail.
+
+The first intimation of its futility was immediately apparent. The wife
+of the old Major's nephew and heir was seated one day adding up accounts
+in the dead man's study, when the room was suddenly invaded by the old
+doggy smell, and an unseen dog pushed distinctly up against her.
+
+Many other unpleasant incidents followed after, but the really great
+happenings did not begin till 1896, when a shooting tenant, after a week
+or two, was compelled to quit the house, and forfeit the considerable
+rent he had paid in advance.
+
+The above fact came to the notice of that inveterate ghost-hunter, the
+late Marquis of Bute, and he, and several other members of the Psychical
+Society, hired the house, and went into residence. _The Times_ of June,
+1897, contains elaborate details of the various experiences and the
+names of the investigators.
+
+The phenomena they describe are very startling, but perhaps the most
+unnerving specter was the frequent appearance of a black spaniel, which
+was seen by numerous persons. One member of the party had brought a
+black spaniel of his own. He saw it run across the room, when at that
+moment the real dog--his own--entered and began to fraternize with the
+ghost dog.
+
+Two ladies occupying the same bedroom had a curious experience. A pet
+dog on the end of the bed began to whine, and looking to where its eyes
+were fixed they saw, not the black spaniel, but two black paws on the
+table by the bed.
+
+Various other sorts of dogs were seen by many people. The black spaniel
+by no means had the monopoly, and dogs, purposely brought by the
+investigators to aid them in their elucidation of the mystery, made
+friends or exhibited mistrust of the pack of ghost dogs haunting both
+house and grounds.
+
+Twice in my life I have seen the wraith of our own dogs, "Pompey" and
+"Triff." Pompey was a big brindled bulldog of terrifying aspect and
+angelic nature. My husband and I adored him, and his death caused us
+great grief. Indeed, the whole household mourned him long and deeply.
+One day, about ten days after his death, I suddenly caught sight of him
+walking in front of me down the avenue.
+
+On the spur of the moment I called him by name, then he vanished.
+
+I mentioned this occurrence to my maid, who at once told me the
+kitchenmaid had seen him in exactly the same place.
+
+When alive on earth "Pompey" had a habit of stealing into a guest's room
+when the early tea was brought up. He would lie in wait in a dark
+corner and then attempt to enter behind the maid or valet. When the door
+was shut again he would emerge from his hiding-place, and attempt to
+leap on the bed. He was exceedingly gentle and affectionate, but
+externally he was so forbidding that his offers of friendship were not
+always accepted, and he was a great weight.
+
+One day a Mrs. Shelton came to stay with us, and the next morning asked
+to have her room changed, because "Pompey" had kept walking round her
+bed all night, and she had not been able to sleep. She was sure it was
+"Pompey," because she recognized his peculiar, heavy, slithering
+movements.
+
+Some time after this Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland, came to pay us a
+visit. She had been very overworked, and needed a complete rest. She
+brought with her a maid and a small French bulldog, and she and the maid
+occupied a suite of three rooms, two bedrooms and a bathroom, shut off
+from the rest of the house by a heavy swing door.
+
+The French bulldog was accustomed to sleep in the maid's room. We had no
+dog left of our own. The beautiful Duchess went to bed about half-past
+ten; she was very tired and ought to have slept well, but she didn't.
+
+In the night she was awakened by what she took to be her own bulldog
+prowling round her bed, yet its footsteps sounded strangely heavy.
+
+She knew nothing about "Pompey's" ghostly visits; we had been careful
+not to mention them.
+
+When she came downstairs the next morning she told us what a disturbed
+night she had passed through. She was awakened soon after midnight by
+the restless movements of a bulldog round her bed. She did not doubt it
+was her own dog, that owing to the forgetfulness of her maid had been
+left asleep under her bed. She called it, and at the same time switched
+on the light, but could see no signs of any dog at all. Rather puzzled,
+but concluding that she must have been mistaken, she composed herself to
+sleep once more.
+
+Before very long the noise began again. A bulldog with its heavy,
+slouching tread was moving about round her bed.
+
+This time the Duchess got up, and made a thorough search of her room,
+but could see nothing in the shape of any animal. Yet so convinced was
+she that a dog had been in the room, that she determined to look into
+her maid's room to see if her own dog was there.
+
+She opened her maid's door, which was shut, and went into the room. The
+woman was asleep, and on the bed at her feet slept the French bulldog.
+
+There was nothing to be done but to go back to her own bed once more,
+and try to sleep in spite of the disturbances.
+
+This was the story the Duchess told us, and added to me, "If he comes
+again to-night I shall come along to your room and rouse you."
+
+It did not come again. The peculiarity of "Pompey's" visits was that
+they only occurred once to each stranger, though he came several times
+to me, as was but natural.
+
+We honored his memory by raising to him a large granite headstone, on
+which was inscribed--
+
+    "Soft lies the turf on one who finds his rest,
+    Here, on our common Mother's ample breast,
+    Unstained by meanness, avarice and pride,
+    He never flattered and he never lied.
+    No gluttonous excess his slumbers broke,
+    No burning alcohol, no stifling smoke.
+    He ne'er intrigued a rival to displace,
+    He ran, but never betted on a race.
+    Content with harmless sports and moderate food,
+    Boundless in love, and faith and gratitude.
+    Happy the man, if there be any such,
+    Of whom his epitaph can say as much.
+
+                    "On this spot
+          are deposited the remains of one
+        who possessed beauty without vanity,
+              strength without insolence,
+              courage without ferocity,
+      and all the virtues of man without his vices.
+    This praise, which would be unmeaning flattery
+            if inscribed over human ashes,
+         is but a just tribute to the memory of
+                     'Pompey' a dog.
+         Born 1891.                Died 1902."
+
+Our next dog, "Triff," was a very handsome sable collie. Of course, we
+became devoted to him, and when he also passed away we felt very
+desolate without him.
+
+For a long time I never could feel that he had left me. Though I could
+not see him, I used to speak to him, just as if I could see the dear
+presence I so strongly felt. It was hard that I never could catch a
+glimpse of him, because others did. The butler saw him many times, and
+my maid caught sight of him twice.
+
+One often reads in ghost books of abnormal animal-like creatures being
+seen by psychics, but it is rare to meet with living individuals who can
+testify to such personal experiences.
+
+I remember Lilian, Countess of Cromartie, telling me of a strange
+incident that once happened to her.
+
+She was walking alone one bright summer morning in Windsor Great Park.
+Suddenly she saw an amazing looking creature loping slowly towards her.
+It resembled an enormous hare. That is to say, its legs and head were
+those of a hare, but its size was that of a goat, and its horned head
+was half-goat, half-hare. This creature, loping without any fear, and
+with a hare's movement straight towards her, caused her to pause. She
+stood still and breathlessly waited its approach. It passed quite close
+to her, and as it did so she struck at it with her parasol. Instantly it
+disappeared.
+
+Princess Frederica of Hanover, always intensely interested in psychic
+phenomena, and herself no tyro in psychic knowledge, told me many years
+ago that she had seen several different sorts of abnormal animals, quite
+unknown to this earth, and under circumstances which left no doubt as to
+their actual existence.
+
+Many years ago there was much talk amongst a certain set of an
+experience that had come to a foreign Grand Duchess and her husband, who
+spent much of their time in England. This couple were traveling in the
+wilds of Greece, and one night they wandered out together on to a bare
+mountain side. Sitting down to rest they were enjoying the beauty and
+utter loneliness of the moonlit scene, when they suddenly heard the
+galloping of many horses' hoofs approaching them. This astonished them
+greatly, as they were in so wild and unfrequented a part of the country.
+There was no road near them, and it seemed strange to hear horses
+galloping so fast on such rough ground at night, even though there was a
+moon.
+
+Husband and wife stood up immediately in order to show themselves. The
+sound suggested a headlong rush, and they feared that in another second
+a whole regiment might ride over them.
+
+They had not long to wait. A troop of creatures, half-men, half-horses,
+tore past them, helter-skelter. Fleet and sure-footed they thundered by,
+and they brought with them the most wonderful sense of joy and
+exhilaration. Neither the Grand Duchess nor her husband felt the
+smallest fear; on the contrary, both were seized by a wild elation, a
+desire to be one of that splendid legion. The thundering of their hoofs
+spread over the hills, and died away into the distance.
+
+On returning to their camp the husband and wife found an uproar.
+Something had gone wrong with the Greek servants, who were shivering
+with terror, and struggling with equally terrified horses to prevent a
+stampede. All that could be learned from the Greeks was that they had
+heard something, something known of and greatly feared.
+
+I happened to hear the Grand Duchess tell of her weird experience, and I
+have often wondered in later years if Algernon Blackwood had also heard
+the story, and founded upon it his fascinating book, "The Centaur."
+
+There were several people in the room whilst the Grand Duchess was
+unfolding, in the most impressive manner, this strange event. Amongst
+them was the first Lady Henry Grosvenor, born Miss Erskine Wemyss of
+Wemyss Castle.
+
+She told us that when a child of seven years old, she had passed through
+some minutes of such absolute terror, that as long as she lived she
+would never forget the experience.
+
+With another child, and a nurse in attendance, she was playing one
+summer morning out of doors. After a little while the nurse rose from
+her seat amongst the heather, and wandered away a short distance, out of
+sight but not out of hearing.
+
+A few moments after the two little girls heard some bushes behind them
+rustling, and a huge creature, half-goat, half-man, emerged and
+leisurely crossing the road in front of them plunged into the woods
+beyond and was lost to sight. Both children were thrown into a paroxysm
+of terror, and screamed loudly. The nurse ran back to them, and when
+told what was the matter scolded them for their foolish fancies. No such
+animal existed, such as they described, an animal much bigger than a
+goat, that walked upright, and had but two legs, and two hoofs, that was
+covered with shaggy brown hair from the waist downward, and had the
+smooth skin of a man from the waist upward!
+
+The nurse bade them come home at once, and as they gained the road Miss
+Wemyss pointed down into the dust. Clearly defined was the track of a
+two-hoofed creature that had crossed at that spot. The nurse stared for
+a moment or two, then with one accord they all ran. She never took her
+charges near that spot again.
+
+Lady Henry said that the memory of that experience was so firmly grafted
+on her mind that she could always recall with perfect clarity the exact
+appearance of this appalling creature. In after years, when grown up,
+she realized from pictures that what she had seen was a Faun or Satyr.
+Such pictures or statues always sent a thrill of horror through her. She
+attributed this apparition to the fact that she and her companion were
+playing close to the site of a Roman camp, and the road was an old Roman
+road.
+
+She went on to say that the Grand Duchess had given her courage to tell
+this incredible story. It was as absolutely real to her as was the
+passing of the Centaurs to the Grand Duchess.
+
+The whole scene stood out in brilliant light as a picture before her,
+whenever she thought of it, which she very often did. She never
+mentioned it to any one, as she felt that no one would believe her. She
+could always smell again the scent of summer, and the odor of pine
+trees, and hear the trickling of water from a tiny stream. She could
+always see a wide, white road, ribbon-like stretching away to the
+horizon. Then, suddenly, she and her young companion stood face to face
+with a presence, a hideous, unspeakable shape, that was neither man nor
+beast.
+
+She believed that there was a real world beyond the glamour and vision
+of our ordinary senses, and sometimes this veil was lifted for a few
+seconds. She believed that much of the tradition of mythical creatures
+represented solid fact, and that it was possible there were failures of
+creation still extant. Again, might there not be races fallen out of
+evolution, but retaining as a survival certain powers that to us appear
+miraculous. A very gifted being was Miminie Erskine Wemyss, who married
+Lord Henry Grosvenor. One of my earliest memories is the thrill her
+beauty gave me when first I saw her, as she walked into church, a silver
+prayer-book, slung on a silver chain, depending from her arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE INVISIBLE HANDS
+
+
+All through my life there have come to me moments never to be forgotten.
+Often the incidents that so deeply impressed me were utterly trivial in
+themselves, still they were sacramental, inasmuch as they proved to me,
+absolutely and conclusively, the immortality of the soul, and the power
+possessed by the soul after so-called death to concern itself with
+terrestrial happenings. Such moments are sacramental, in the sense that
+Nature is sacramental, in its showing forth of God's glory, and the
+manifestation of His handiwork.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was sitting near the library window, reading, in the fading light of a
+quiet November afternoon. It was one of those utterly still, mournful
+days, with a gray, brooding sky, save where, in the west, a pale
+primrose sunset was bathing the horizon in light. I was reading "Man and
+the Universe," by Sir Oliver Lodge, and had arrived at page 137, which
+ends Chapter VI.
+
+In those days, the year was 1908, I always tried to arrange at least one
+week of perfect quiet for the study of a new book which I had just
+ordered. I would calculate on which day the post would bring it to my
+country home, and I would arrange my life accordingly. This may sound
+rather ridiculous, but the truth is that a book like "Man and the
+Universe" is such a pure intellectual treat to me, that I like to gloat
+over it, to taste it slowly, and imbibe it gradually. I try to spin out
+the joy of it as long as possible by reading slowly, and thinking over
+the problems presented.
+
+At last I put the book down on a table by my side. I was in no hurry. It
+lay on its back, open, the pages uppermost; just where I had stopped
+reading. I fell to wondering on the words I had just read.
+
+"A reformer must not be in haste. The kingdom cometh not by observation,
+but by secret working as of leaven. Nor must he advocate any compromise
+repugnant to an enlightened conscience. Bigotry must die, but it must
+die a natural, not a violent death. Would that the leaders in Church and
+State had always been able to receive an impatient enthusiast in the
+spirit of the lines--
+
+    "Dreamer of dreams! no taunt is in our sadness,
+    What e'er our fears our hearts are with your cause,
+    God's mills grind slow; and thoughtless haste were madness,
+    To gain Heaven's ends we dare not break Heaven's laws."
+
+I must have sat thinking for quite ten minutes when my attention was
+suddenly attracted by a sound. The sound of paper leaves being rustled.
+The room was so dead still that the faintest sound would have called my
+attention, but this sound was by no means faint. I turned my head and
+looked at the book I had been reading, because, from it, unmistakably
+the noise proceeded.
+
+I beheld a most enthralling phenomenon. Unseen hands were turning over
+the pages.
+
+A thrill of intense excitement ran through me, and I stared at the book
+in breathless interest. The hands seemed to be searching for some
+particular passage. The number of the page upon which the passage was
+printed was not, apparently, known to the searcher. I will try to
+describe what actually happened.
+
+Several leaves of the book were turned over rather rapidly, each leaf
+making the usual sound which accompanies such an ordinary physical
+action. Then, as if fearing that the passage required had been
+overlooked or passed by, several leaves were turned back again.
+
+This manifestation continued for at least ten minutes, and I could see
+nothing but the pages of the book being turned quite methodically, as by
+a human hand.
+
+At moments there was rather a long pause in the search, and at the first
+pause I thought the demonstration might be over, but once again the
+invisible entity resumed the search, and I found myself saying, "He
+found something there that interested him. That is why he stopped." For
+no reason I can give I felt certain my visitor was a male spirit.
+
+On the second pause in the search occurring I had no doubt that again he
+had found something that interested him. The whole manifestation was
+very leisurely and wonderfully human. As I sat watching the book being
+manipulated by unseen fingers, every smallest action suggested design.
+One could not doubt as to what was taking place. At length there came a
+pause longer than usual. The book lay flat on its back wide open. There
+was now no quiver of the leaves. The invisible entity had found what he
+wanted and gone.
+
+I curbed my curiosity for five minutes more, then feeling convinced
+that I was again alone I stretched out my hand, took the book and,
+rising, carried it close to the window.
+
+There was still enough light to read by, and the leaves were open at
+pages 172-173.
+
+I had only read as far as page 137.
+
+I scanned them eagerly, and at once discovered that a mark had been made
+on the margin of page 172. A long cross had been placed against a
+paragraph. The mark was such as might have been made by a sharp
+finger-nail. The words marked were--
+
+"I want to make the distinct assertion that a really existing thing
+never perishes, but only changes its form."
+
+To-day the mark is as clearly visible on the page as on the day it was
+made. I can form no conjecture as to who the entity was, but he
+certainly knew the contents of the book. No one watching the search
+could doubt that, or that he was desirous of impressing upon the readers
+of the book a certain fact stated therein, which must have previously
+attracted his attention.
+
+In the year 1900 we took a house for the winter months in the West End
+of London.
+
+It was a small house though joined on either side by great mansions, and
+once upon a time it had actually been a farmhouse standing amid smiling
+fields.
+
+It retained many relics of its ancient origin in fine oak paneling and
+quaint nooks and corners, and had been for many of its latter years the
+town residence of a man whose type had practically died out, the perfect
+type of our old English aristocracy.
+
+The bedroom I occupied was exceedingly comfortable and warm. The bed,
+placed against the wall, was exactly opposite to the fireplace, so that
+lying on my right side I looked straight at the fire and could see the
+whole room.
+
+I was constantly on the alert, as I knew how full of history such a
+house must be, but for several weeks I neither saw nor heard anything in
+the least unusual.
+
+One night, quite unexpectedly, a change occurred. I no longer had the
+room to myself. A stranger occupied it with me.
+
+It was a cold, snowy night, and I was lying in bed facing the fire and
+courting sleep, when I heard a sudden noise which was totally different
+to the sounds made by the dying fire. Take a large sheet of stiff
+writing paper in your hand and crush it up between your fingers and you
+will hear the sound I heard. Quite a loud and distinct noise if you
+happen to be in a very quiet room, at an hour when all the household has
+retired to bed.
+
+Naturally, I instantly opened my eyes and looked out into the room,
+which was lit brightly enough by the fire to make all the objects it
+contained quite distinct.
+
+An armchair was drawn up close to the fire; half an hour before I had
+been seated in it warming my toes before getting into bed; now it was
+again filled.
+
+In it sat a man turned sideways towards me. He was lying back with his
+legs stretched straight out in front of him towards the fire. One of his
+arms hung over the arm of the chair, and in his clenched hand was a
+large piece of paper or parchment.
+
+His finely cut profile was clearly outlined, he was clean shaven, and he
+stared into the fire, his chin sunk in a high black stock.
+
+His hair was powdered and tied behind by a large black bow, and he wore
+bright blue cloth knee breeches, white stockings, silver buckled shoes,
+and many gold buttons on his blue coat. I did not take in all those
+details at once; I had ample leisure to do so later. For, I suppose, a
+full two minutes, I stared very hard at him, and lay very still, knowing
+full well I was looking at a ghost. Then very cautiously I drew the
+bedclothes over my head, and shut out the startling vision. I was
+invaded by wild panic.
+
+I have never been one of those timid women who are frightened by their
+own shadows. I require to be face to face with a tangible danger before
+I put faith in its existence, yet, I confess that at that moment I knew
+what actual fear meant. My heart beat thickly, then seemed to stop, and
+I was instantly bathed in cold perspiration. I knew that the servants
+were all in bed two flights of stairs below me, and my husband was out
+of London, so no calling for help was any use. I therefore forced a sort
+of spurious desperate courage, and began to be angry with myself for
+being thus afraid when no cause for fear existed. I treated myself to a
+scornful lecture. "You who profess to know all about ghosts, you who
+have actually seen several ghosts, you coward to quail before this one!
+Don't you know perfectly well that he won't hurt you, that he has a
+perfect right to sit in that chair, and that it is your duty to speak to
+him should he show any desire for conversation?"
+
+"I am so terribly alone," pleaded my other self in feeble self-defense.
+
+"Well, what of it? If the whole household was in the room what could
+they do? You are not a child. Uncover your head and look the specter
+boldly in the face."
+
+The stillness and hush of deep night, at the hour when sleepers slumber
+soundest, was upon the house. The traffic of London was muffled in a
+heavy fall of snow. I could hear nothing but the feeble crackling of the
+expiring fire in the grate, but gradually I rallied my courage and
+faculties and peeped stealthily out.
+
+There sat that dark form between me and the fire; there he lay in an
+attitude of moody carelessness, watching the cooling embers as they
+faded from scarlet to pink, from pink to yellow, and then fell tinkling
+into heaps of white ashes. No statue was ever stiller. He did not move
+in the least, but sat more like an effigy of a man carved out of stone
+than a creature of flesh and blood.
+
+I closed my eyes and re-opened them, to test the fact whether I was
+awake or asleep and dreaming. No, I was broad wake and the room was
+still fairly well lit, and there sat the phantom before the fire, the
+proud, well-set head with its powdered curls distinctly visible in the
+red glow of the firelight. I should think an hour must have passed thus,
+whilst I gazed at the figure before me, taking in every detail. There
+was no indication that he knew or cared for my presence. The figure sat
+like a stone.
+
+I came to the conclusion that the phantom was about thirty years of age,
+and a sailor who had lived in the days of Nelson, judging by his clothes
+and the pictures I had seen. I noticed particularly his hand clenched on
+the paper. A white hand, with strong cruel-looking fingers. There is so
+much character in hands. The face may be drilled into a mere mask, but
+hands tell tales of their owners. I could imagine the hand that had
+crushed the paper closing murderously on the throat of an adversary, or
+gripped hard on the hilt of a dagger.
+
+There were moments when the awful inertia of the figure began to play
+havoc with my nerves, when I would have given anything to make that
+impassive form move from out its dreary attitude of sullen brooding;
+anything to cause the profile of the face, with all its gloom and pride,
+to turn and front me, so that I might know the worst. But the figure
+never turned, never stirred, but sat with stately head bowed under a
+weight of thought.
+
+Now and again a little flame would spurt up and glitter on his shoe
+buckles, his brass buttons, but the fire was dying now, and gradually
+the figure became more and more indistinct.
+
+Then I slept. I had been feeling drowsy for some time, and fought
+against it. I had violently resisted sleep, feeling a great repugnance
+to losing consciousness whilst the specter still sat there, but the
+blank force of sleep at length overpowered me. When I awoke the cold
+gray morning light was stealing feebly in through the window. The chair
+was empty. The figure was gone.
+
+The next night I went to bed full of courage, but I was left alone. If
+the sailor returned it was not until after I had gone to sleep.
+
+A week later he came back. One moment the chair was empty, the next
+moment with one wild heart throb I opened my eyes at the sound of
+crackling paper, and the chair was filled. There he sat in his brooding
+sullen attitude and continued so to sit till slumber vanquished me.
+After that I saw him at constant intervals.
+
+By this time I had entirely rid myself of all fear. I did not even
+desire to change my room which would have been very inconvenient, and I
+dreaded alarming the household and being left alone to conduct the
+domestic duties. But though no longer afraid those constant visits began
+to get on my nerves, and I consulted a Catholic friend who was always
+sympathetic to the occult side of life.
+
+She said at once that this spirit should be exorcised and set free from
+the bondage of earth, and that she had an old friend, a Franciscan monk,
+who was known to be a powerful exorcist. She offered to arrange the
+matter, and I gladly accepted her suggestion.
+
+It was on an early spring afternoon that Father Reginald Buckler came to
+the house. In his white habit, sandaled feet and shorn crown, he looked
+an incongruous figure in that fashionable locality already beginning its
+social entertainments in view of the season's approach. He was a
+charming, courteous old man, who took his mission very seriously. After
+a few words of explanation we mounted to the bedroom floor.
+
+There were four doors opening on to the little landing, and without
+asking which of the doors led to the haunted chamber, he turned the
+handle of the right one and entered. Still he put no question, but at
+once proceeded with the Service of Exorcism.
+
+Sprinkling the four corners of the room with Holy Water, he bade me
+kneel down in the middle. Then he raised his Crucifix and offered up
+prayers for the repose of the earth-bound soul, that he might be loosed
+and set free.
+
+For five weeks longer we remained in the house, but I never saw the
+sailor again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+DAWNS
+
+
+We have been given many wonderful dawns this winter, and I have used
+them eagerly as a cleansing of the war-weary mind and distracted soul.
+In such ethereal apparitional dawns one walks with the Eternal, and all
+temporal things fade away. Those pale silver daybreaks have a rapture of
+their own, they suggest a fresh creation straight from the looms of God.
+When the hours of day have drawn on the flaming sunset, that exquisitely
+serene emotion of virgin tranquillity will have passed away, and the
+horizon will be lurid and grand beneath a grave frowning sadness
+gathered from the scenes of earth they have brooded over.
+
+Such dawns beckon imperiously to the pilgrim, to leave the shelter of
+the roof-tree, and come forth to walk with the immortals whilst the
+Morning Star, the light-bringer, still shines, a white gold radiance in
+the heavens, and the distance is still dissolved in veils of pearl and
+opal.
+
+Such daybreaks always rouse in me the urge for wider thought, for the
+broad day of the mind. Out of the limitless beyond comes the certain
+knowledge of a something unimagined, lying just outside human thought. I
+am sure there is so much not yet imagined, something more than mere
+existence.
+
+There is a wine of happiness in tranquil daybreak, and an aloofness from
+life that urges one to seek for that which is beyond comprehension. The
+draught exalts the soul, and quickens it with unquenchable fire, until
+the world falls away, far from one, as day wells out of still darkness.
+Only at such moments do we reach the true horizon.
+
+Again, there is an amnesty in such dawns, a glory of release from the
+house of bondage. In the great silences, life, as we know it, is remote,
+and the immensity is a magic that draws the soul, fusing it in a strange
+passion, so that whatever fulfillment our existence holds is summed in
+that hour of solitude.
+
+A pale wash of translucent gold is thrown across land and sea. On the
+far horizon a ship is set in relief, against a core of crimson flame
+which heralds the sun. A dove coos softly, and on a bare branch a thrush
+thrills in waves of sound, seeking in the universal ether to reproduce
+its divine instinct in other feathered hearts that are attuned to its
+melody.
+
+Such joys as these are transitory, and never wholly possessed. They pass
+the enclosures of life, and bring one nearer to the beating heart of
+truth. The agonizing fear of losing hold on them is, in itself, the
+cause of their dispersal. It is the same at rare moments of
+semi-consciousness, when one has actually laid hold of a genuine astral
+experience--and knows it. Then comes the frantic endeavor to hold on--to
+pin the moment fast and tight, till the whole vision is absorbed. The
+soul seems to hold its breath! How often, with bitter disappointment I
+have rushed reluctantly into full waking consciousness--and only half
+the story told. Fragmentary though such moments are their potency is
+such that they endure through time. Thank God, that whilst the wedlock
+of body and soul still holds undissolved there is scope for such joys.
+They are uncommunicable, and may not be shared with others at will, and
+they tell the soul that she is not of creation and cannot be contained
+by law. At such hours she learns the truth, that she passes for a brief
+span into the limited, from out the limitless whence she came. At such
+sacramental hours one can pray the prayer of Socrates, offered up by the
+banks of the Illissus:
+
+"O Beloved God of the forests and flocks and all ye Divinities of this
+place, grant me to become beautiful in the inner man, and that whatever
+outward things I have may be at peace with those within. May I deem the
+wise man rich, and may I have so much wealth, and so much only, as a
+good man can manage to enjoy.
+
+"Do we need anything else, Phaedrus? For myself I have prayed enough."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How many people now recall fragments of former lives! Ask the next man
+you meet if he has any recollections of former existences, and be sure
+he will not eye you askance as a fugitive from Bedlam. He may smile and
+shake his head, and regret to say he isn't psychic, but he won't ask you
+what on earth you mean. This is how we have progressed towards truth in
+the last thirty years. The truth of reincarnation is being quietly
+accepted by the West and is now openly preached from many pulpits. If
+God is love, who could reconcile with any comprehensive idea of justice
+and law in the world the lives and experiences of common humanity? How
+reconcile the births taking place in one single day in their vast
+diversity, by the hell for the criminal, born, nurtured and killed in
+crime, who never had a chance, and Heaven for the happily born, who
+need never have a temptation? What is the Divine Law lying behind this
+seeming hideous injustice? Undoubtedly the continuous evolution of the
+soul in bodies of matter. Men are looking now to the scheme of organic
+evolution to provide the field for spiritual evolution. They are finding
+it in the depths of their own consciousness.
+
+I chanced upon one of those fragments of a past life, those islets in
+eternity in a strange way. I was paying a visit to a stranger in
+Cambridgeshire, and whilst awaiting her entry I walked round the room
+looking at some lovely water-colored sketches that hung upon the walls.
+When their owner entered, and after a few minutes' conversation, I said,
+"How beautiful those Sicilian scenes are!"
+
+She looked pleased and answered: "I'm so glad you recognize them. I
+painted them. When were you last in Sicily?"
+
+I had never at that time been in Sicily. I told her so, but I could not
+tell a stranger that suddenly there had dawned upon me a keen
+recollection of the country I had certainly been in, though not in this
+life. The paintings, of course, dealt with a restricted field, but as I
+looked at them one by one I saw mentally a wide landscape in which each
+picture formed but a tiny spot. One I remember was a painting of a
+wonderfully perfect temple, which occupied the whole space of the
+picture. As I looked at it I saw wide rolling plains, and a wide expanse
+of blue sea. This I later recognized in Girgenti.
+
+A month or two afterwards my husband and I went to Sicily for the
+winter, and, as I had expected, the island was perfectly familiar to me.
+I knew exactly round which bend of the hill I should find a temple, but
+Syracuse was really my spiritual home. It was there that I had played
+out one of my many life dramas, and many incidents returned to me as I
+wandered over the hills, and gathered maiden-hair ferns in the twilight
+of the empty tombs.
+
+Once I opened my eyes on Stromboli, one of the AEolian or Lipari Isles.
+Instantly I felt a passion of love for it, an intuition of spiritual
+delight which is utterly irreducible to terms. I have looked upon it
+since, and always with an adoration impossible to paint with pen or
+pencil. I have for weeks anticipated the moment when I should see it
+again. It means something to me far beyond what the eye can see, the
+tongue relate, and it is this something lying betwixt rhapsody and
+lament which draws me by a tenuous chain of thought right back into the
+womb of time, where buried memory stirs in its long sleep.
+
+Stromboli, so the ancient poets tell us, was the home of the fiery god,
+Vulcan. That explains much to me, but it unfolds a secret none may
+learn.
+
+It was in a flaming dawn that I first saw Stromboli rising from amid the
+numerous isles surrounding it. From its cone shot a great plume of
+smoke, like a giant ostrich feather, silver tinted. In its ethereal
+loveliness it seemed to float in the void, half of earth, half of
+heaven.
+
+Neither bondage of words, nor the cold scrutiny of reason can impinge
+upon a scene which draws the soul away upon a celestial pilgrimage. Free
+and elate, she passes beyond the frontiers of life, and like the echoes
+of the sea when a shell is held to the ear, she hears the pulse of earth
+beat far away in unfathomable distance. The marvel of the uncreated
+consumes her in a trance of unincarnate passion.
+
+Those who have once adventured on such pilgrimages are never quite the
+same again. They become children of "the Divine unrest." They have
+experienced a moment in which earth and flesh dissolve, in which law is
+not, in which creeds and covenants find no place, and the hold upon
+common life with its moving mirages is blotted out. Time and space are
+annulled, the aeon and the second are one. The soul unswathed, has risen
+from the tomb where the life urge has laid it, and is aglow with the
+transcendental fires of eternal being. In after days the soul learns to
+set barriers against such visitants. One must not look upon the other
+side of the moon too often, for fear one is drawn away from home and
+kindred. The time is not yet, but it will surely come.
+
+One other curious happening I must relate. Years ago, one autumn when I
+was in the far north there came a magnificent visitation of falling
+stars and many aerolites dropped to earth. The display was predicted,
+and I was on the lookout. It came in a rain of gold and seemingly from
+all points of the compass. For hours I watched a sight far more
+marvelous than anything I had anticipated.
+
+When at last I reluctantly went to bed I had a strange dream or, rather,
+astral experience. I was a Hungarian gipsy, the head or queen of an
+enormous clan. I heard wild Hungarian music, and saw enormous crowds of
+my people gathered round me. They were very savage and picturesque, and
+a ceremony was proceeding.
+
+On the ground, and in the center of a great ring of people, stood a
+large bowl filled with blood. I stood in front of it and watched the
+swearing in of new adherents to my clan, by means of the "blood
+covenant." The blood that filled the bowl had been drawn from the veins
+of my people, and the new adherents were each required to drink from it
+and swear their allegiance. Only one thing troubled me all through what
+seemed a long ceremony. My feet caused me pain, and I was aware that
+they were bare, as were the feet of all my people.
+
+So vivid was the dream that I could visualize my whole life as I lived
+it on the plains of Hungary, and the scenery surrounding me was lit up
+by a glorious sunset. There were hundreds of horses grazing loose, as
+far as the eye could reach, and flocks of enormous white geese, amid
+which great storks strutted.
+
+Suddenly I awoke with the acute pain in my feet uppermost in my mind. I
+found myself clad only in my nightgown, walking bare-footed on the rough
+gravel paths of the garden, whence I had watched the stellar display. I
+had been walking in my sleep, and the sudden unaccustomed stony hardness
+of the path under my bare feet had awakened in me the recollection of a
+past life, in which I had lived, a wild nomad in southern Hungary.
+
+This is the one and only occasion in my life in which I have known
+somnambulism. Luckily my memory did not fail me on waking and, some time
+after, when I was able to revisit the scenes of that long ago pilgrimage
+I was quite familiar with my surroundings.
+
+Buda Pest and the lands lying southward were then my home, a roving home
+and tent life of infinite variety.
+
+Thus the dead of vanished years are disguised in the present living.
+
+I have no doubt that many people who have not had the interesting
+experience of remembering one or more of their former incarnations have
+been able through some trivial incident to recollect happenings long
+vanished from their memory. Sometimes the scent of a flower, the glimpse
+of a scene, a chance word or expression will vividly recall some episode
+lying hidden for many years in the subconsciousness. Again it will be
+pulled over the threshold from past to present, from the storehouse of
+the eternal memory into the everyday working consciousness or mind.
+
+This is not a book for scientists. I will therefore go into no elaborate
+metaphysics, but will sketch as simply as I can what I mean by
+subconsciousness. I use the term for the region or zone within us which
+stores up the residues of past thoughts and experiences. Scientists tell
+us there are three realms of mind, the super-conscious, the conscious,
+the subconscious. The conscious mind is what we commonly use. It belongs
+purely to the objective world, and its instruments are the five senses.
+The subconscious mind is the storehouse for experiences on the human
+plane of man's long past. The super-consciousness is independent of the
+five senses. It is a faculty of perception closely akin to the One force
+in the Universe, which is inseparably related to all created things. It
+possesses the attributes of Infinity, is indestructible, immortal,
+undying. We may forget a fact for many years, then suddenly we remember
+it. I believe it has come back to us again across the threshold from the
+subconscious region to our consciousness or mind which is open to
+everyday observation.
+
+I have become convinced, by personal experience, of the existence in us
+of this region below the threshold of our ordinary conscious life. When
+I was young there were many problems I wished to solve, and in this
+effort human aid often failed me. My plan was to "sleep on" a problem,
+ardently desiring before "dropping off" that an answer might be accorded
+me. I suppose this desire was of the nature of prayer, though addressed
+to no Deity. Almost invariably the solution was clear and unmistakable
+to me in the morning.
+
+I lost this great advantage at the age of twenty-one, but even now I can
+sometimes "get at" a solution by leaving the question severely alone,
+after turning it well over in my mind. The solution will suddenly pop
+up, often weeks after I have tried to get at it, and when it comes
+there, it arrives apropos of nothing, so to speak. It simply dawns in
+the thick of quite other subjects, which happen at the moment to occupy
+my mind.
+
+Though I can no more demonstrate to others the existence of the
+subconsciousness than I can prove the existence of the immortal soul, I
+have got sufficient proof to satisfy myself, and I believe the same
+knowledge is open to many of us. Within our being are sympathetic chords
+that can vibrate to all the symphonies of Nature. There are visions of
+beauty and depths of feeling which may be seen and felt, if heart and
+mind are open to the higher influences. The finer forces of Nature, and
+her immutable laws, are ready to draw nigh to us if we desire to welcome
+them, and are eager to place ourselves in harmony with the Infinite
+Source of being. We are in the keeping of the best and highest, and
+whatever things are pure, whatsoever things are beautiful, whatsoever
+things are true and high and holy will gravitate towards us in
+proportion to the degree we desire them. The mysterious gift of
+existence is in itself a beckoning ideal, and a foregleam of the final
+awakening that will surely be ours.
+
+Now what does the subconsciousness contain?
+
+Firstly, I believe it to be permeated by Deity, and the Divine
+indwelling. It is the seat of Genius. I believe a genius to be one who
+is capable of drawing from the contents of his subconsciousness that
+which outwardly appears as a creation. It is said that genius creates
+and talent copies. I believe that a man becomes great when he represents
+the results of countless lives in his individuality, and each life is an
+arc of the infinite life of the Universe. The man with aeons of
+experience behind him is infinitely more _en rapport_ with his
+subconsciousness than those younger, more immature souls who have as yet
+experienced few earth lives and who constitute the bulk of humanity.
+
+The eternal mind finds its home in the subconsciousness, by which I mean
+that nothing is really forgotten by man. This lapse of memory is the
+passing of the subject from the ordinary mind into the subconsciousness,
+whence it may later be recovered again. The memory of all our former
+incarnations I believe to lie hidden in the subconsciousness. It is from
+this region or zone that one gets sudden uprushes of memory, and such
+uprushes are induced by stumbling on a chance link between the two zones
+of consciousness.
+
+Some chance incident, such as the presence of my bare feet upon the
+rough gravel, touches a correspondence on the other side of the
+threshold, and lays bare old scenes to the observation of the ordinary
+mind. It is noteworthy that the matter contained in this up-rushing is
+recognized first, and the means which brought about the uprush is
+recognized secondly.
+
+I believe there is a vital communication between consciousness and
+subconsciousness which could be enormously developed and utilized by
+practice. The age in which we live has produced the most marvelous
+triumphs of mind over matter. Access to the subconsciousness is becoming
+commoner and simpler. We have broken in and harnessed material forces in
+a manner undreamt of fifty years ago. Yet there is an alas! a fact which
+detracts from all our legitimate pride in our achievement--the base uses
+to which our triumphs have been put. The whole of our inventive power
+has been turned against the life that gave it birth. The parents are
+being consumed by their own offspring.... Matter evolved out of spirit
+has threatened destruction to the latter.
+
+The threshold between our ordinary consciousness and the region of
+subconsciousness seems to me like a bridge which is rarely used, and
+which separates the country known from the country unknown. I live in
+the country known, but if I can touch a button at my end I can get a
+response instantaneously transmitted from the country unknown. The
+trouble is to find the button. At present I only press it at long
+intervals and by the merest chance. Still it is something of an
+achievement to have convinced one's self that such a region actually
+does exist.
+
+I believe this subconsciousness of ours is in direct contact with the
+Great Creative Power. "It is God that worketh" in man, and its vital
+communications are hidden in the infinite eternity. Says a Sufi ideal:
+"To abide in God after passing away is the work of the perfect man, who
+not only journeys to God--passes from plurality to unity--but in and
+with God--continuing in the unitive state he returns with God (his
+subconscious self) to the phenomenal world from which he sets out, and
+manifests unity in plurality."
+
+Though at present, to all outward seeming, the evolution of the beast is
+consummated, there is a something that flatly contradicts this apparent
+certainty. That something is man's subconsciousness, and the Divinity it
+enshrouds, and which fiercely and irrevocably is set against the
+bestiality into which he is plunged. War has never been so universally
+hated as it now is. It is in this vital fact, which cannot be too
+strongly emphasized, that our future hope lies.
+
+I believe this vital fact to be so strong that entire regeneration is a
+certainty. Where hitherto this force has lain dormant or been dispersed,
+disunited and weak in spiritual utterance, it is now a collective force
+concentrated in millions of lives. All over the earth it is now gathered
+_en masse_, and that stupendous aggregate, vivified, sharpened, and
+intensely accentuated by untold suffering will revolutionize all former
+weak and fatalistic acquiescence in the inevitability of war. Millions
+of men have descended into hell, they are there now, but they will arise
+again from amongst the dead, and ascend one day into the Heaven of
+peace, and thence they will judge the quick and the dead by a new
+standard. The standard of the God within, whose voice has been heard at
+last from out the din of battle. It is the same God who has said to the
+East:--
+
+"Have perseverance as one who dost forever more endure. Thy shadows
+(physical bodies) live and vanish, that which is in thee shall live
+forever, that which in thee knows is not of fleeting life, it is the
+man that was, that is, that will be, for whom the hour shall never
+strike."
+
+To-day we all use, in some cases automatically, the powers and aptitudes
+developed in us in the long and painful evolution of the physical form.
+As evolution proceeds we will gain a vastly greater control over the
+subconsciousness, and in aeons to come "in the flight of the alone to the
+alone" union will be achieved. The two will be merged in one.
+
+The Lord Buddha has said that to enter Nirvana is to become fully
+conscious of our fundamental oneness with the universal life.
+
+"I and my Father are one." Christ's sense of oneness with the Father was
+essentially Nirvanic.
+
+We have not yet accustomed ourselves to think of evolution in any terms
+but the material, as a power inherent in matter, Darwin's physical
+evolution stood for pure materialism. Bergson now carries us a step
+farther. He introduces us to a spiritual principle. His creative
+evolution is a spiritual activity seeking freedom of expression in
+matter. Darwin's struggle for existence is by Bergson transmuted into
+life, expressing itself through material forms, and life and matter are
+in constant conflict. Again he points out that the spiritual principle,
+life, has not "had it all its own way." It has experienced checks, but
+in two modes of activity it has succeeded, in instinct and intelligence.
+Thus he draws for us the grandiose upward sweep of a Divine activity.
+Curbed, it is true, by the crust of matter, but finding ever higher
+capacities, and higher expression towards that ultimate reality which is
+creative life and to me is union with that higher self lying in the
+subconsciousness of all men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+PEACOCK'S FEATHERS--THE SKELETON HAND AT MONTE CARLO
+
+
+A sea voyage once provided me with a wonderfully lucky experience,
+inasmuch as it saved me from an extremely bad accident.
+
+I was returning quite alone from the East in a ship crammed full of
+women and children, most of them soldiers' wives and families going home
+to escape the hot weather. Many of them were attended by ayahs.
+
+Two days out we ran into a raging storm, and everything was battened
+down. Owing to the weather, and the excessive crowding, the conditions
+below soon became very unpleasant, and I asked the captain if I might
+take possession of the ladies' summer drawing-room on the upper deck and
+close to the bridge. Seeing that it would not be used by any one else
+for some time to come he kindly agreed, and I at once settled myself in
+my eyrie with a few books, and prepared for some days of solitude.
+
+But as the storm did not abate the suffering women and children below
+claimed my attention. They were confined in an atmosphere which was
+appalling, they were all terribly ill and utterly helpless. The mothers
+were unable to attend to their children, most of whom were infants, and
+the ayahs suffered horribly. Having no cabins they lay groaning on the
+floors of the corridors, drenched with water as the ship was awash from
+stem to stern, and tossed hither and thither as she rolled heavily.
+
+It was never easy to descend from my perch aloft, but the sufferers had
+to be aided, and day after day I never knew a dry moment till I lay down
+at night. So far the summer drawing-room remained fairly water-tight in
+spite of being swept continually by heavy seas, but the noise of the
+elements was absolutely deafening, and when the captain called upon me
+we had to shout in each other's ears.
+
+With his connivance I got a shelter rigged up on what appeared to be the
+only dry spot on board. It was about twelve feet square and walled in
+with sailcloth, and there the sailors helped to carry a number of tiny
+children. They were to remain there during the best hours of the day,
+until their mothers and nurses were capable of attending to them once
+more.
+
+I took charge at first and found my task no light one. The babies did
+not seem to appreciate my blandishments. They cried persistently, but
+luckily their voices were drowned in the roaring of the wind.
+
+At last a cabin boy chanced to look in, and at once sized up the
+situation. He signaled to me that he knew of something that would ease
+the tension and then he disappeared. In five minutes he was back
+brandishing a large bunch of peacock's feathers. These he shook in the
+face of each infant in turn, at the same time making the most hideous
+grimaces at them. It was an anxious moment for me, but luckily the
+effect was electrical. The babies suddenly forgot to yell, they stiffly
+maintained their equilibrium and stared in a sort of indignant
+amazement. Then, gradually, as the boy kept going round the circle
+repeating the process, smiles and dimples began to appear, and in five
+minutes more the whole creche was laughing.
+
+I applied for permission to annex that boy; he was indeed a treasure,
+and the joy in the peacock's feathers never palled. His gutta-percha
+face had an infinite variety of expression, which he could instantly
+turn on to suit all occasions. It was a fascinating sight to see him
+going round the group feeding each baby out of the same bottle, one of
+the old-fashioned horrors with a long indiarubber tube and teat. Those
+infants who had contemptuously rejected all my offers of nourishment now
+sat expectantly agape waiting their turn. The scene always reminded me
+of the artificial feeding of fowls, by the man who goes round the pens
+squirting liquid down each gaping throat.
+
+When we landed at Marseilles there was a wonderful parting between the
+babies and the cabin boy. They clung to him to the last, and howled
+dismally when they were carried off by their haggard mothers.
+
+One night, during the height of the storm I was asleep on the fixed red
+velvet seat running round the walls of the summer drawing-room. I lay
+just under a porthole, to which was attached a rope. The other end of
+the rope was tied round my arm to prevent my being thrown to the floor
+by the rolling of the ship.
+
+At five o'clock in the morning I was suddenly awakened by hearing my
+husband's voice shouting in my ear. (My husband not being on board, but
+in our home in the North of Scotland.)
+
+"Sit up! Sit up!" shouted his voice commandingly.
+
+Considerably startled I threw myself into a sitting position, and as I
+did so a gigantic wave shattered the porthole, and the heavy fragments
+of glass fell on to the pillow where a second before my face had lain.
+
+Of course, the water poured in and over me in volumes, and stopped my
+wrist watch at five a. m., but I had got used to salt water, and in a
+few minutes the weary captain had waded in, and was disentangling me
+from my rope and congratulating me on my lucky escape.
+
+I told him how it was that I had escaped, and he was not in the least
+skeptical. On the contrary, he said that he had known some curious
+things happen in his time, for which there was no accounting; but he
+always kept a black cat on board.
+
+Had the safety of his ship not claimed his whole attention I believe he
+would have told me some of his experiences, but when, at last, the
+weather abated he was too much in need of rest to be bothered by any
+one.
+
+My husband had no knowledge of the service he had rendered me. At five
+a. m. that morning he was asleep at home, and had no premonition of
+danger, or any recollection on waking of the role his astral counterpart
+had undoubtedly played.
+
+What is this astral counterpart of man? His soul and spirit dwells in a
+shroud of flesh, and the feat of getting out of that shroud of flesh at
+will is the aim of all occultists. It is to the astral world they go,
+soul and spirit encased in the astral sheath we term the astral body.
+
+During sleep, or in trance, when the normal physical senses are in
+abeyance, when the body is unconscious in sleep, the mind continues to
+act in the realm corresponding to the suggestions given when awake. The
+world at large is open to the highly developed man, and he will
+sometimes bring back from his astral plane expeditions memories of what
+he has seen and heard.
+
+In deep slumber the physical body in healthful repose remains where it
+has lain down to rest, but the man's higher principles, the astral body
+encasing the soul and spirit, is invariably withdrawn, and in
+underdeveloped persons hovers in the immediate neighborhood. In such
+cases the higher principles, the astral body, soul and spirit of St.
+Paul's Gospel, are not sufficiently developed to roam, and remain near
+the physical body in a brooding sleep. All cultured persons in the
+present day have their astral senses fairly well developed, and have the
+power during sleep to go where they will, but as yet few have the power
+to retain the memory of it when returning to the body.
+
+In some cases the astral man during sleep is specially attracted to some
+one point, and he invariably travels towards it; in other cases he will
+drift aimlessly about on the astral currents, meeting with experience of
+all sorts and with people in a similar condition whom he knows. Is there
+anything very extraordinary in all this, and is not the condition of
+deep unconscious sleep a demonstration in itself that the physical
+consciousness has departed elsewhere? As it is no longer functioning on
+the Physical plane clearly it has found another realm in which it can
+temporarily exercise its activities.
+
+My husband once had a rather interesting experience of his own, on the
+Astral plane. He was in bed and asleep on the Physical plane, and he
+believes that the time must have been between eleven p. m. and twelve a.
+m. He simply became aware that he was functioning consciously on the
+Astral plane, and was intensely interested.
+
+He found himself in a strange house of medium size, and he was floating
+at the top of a flight of stairs leading to an ordinary entrance hall
+below. At the foot of the stairs hung a lighted lamp, and below the lamp
+stood a man and woman, who were apparently exchanging a word or two
+before bidding each other good-night.
+
+My husband instantly conceived the idea of testing and proving his
+belief, that he was consciously afloat on the Astral plane. If this
+belief was true, then he ought to be able to pass through the couple
+standing below, without their being in the least aware of his presence.
+
+In a flash he was downstairs, and his belief stood the test. His
+imponderable astral body passed without feeling or shock through two
+ponderable bodies of flesh and blood, and he was out on the other side.
+The excitement of the adventure awakened him, and he brought back to the
+Physical plane a clear recollection of all that had happened.
+
+When one thinks of it, the possible presence of total strangers in one's
+house is rather alarming. Luckily for us such wanderers rarely bring
+back to waking consciousness the memory of their nocturnal escapades.
+When we are more advanced in "other side" knowledge we will doubtless
+refrain from intruding upon the privacy of our neighbors' dwellings, and
+confine our attentions to realms which are free to all.
+
+It is curious how constantly one hears of the ghosts of priests and
+monks being seen. I have not met any one yet who has encountered the
+wraith of an Anglican parson, or a Nonconformist preacher. I wonder why?
+I presume the latter do sometimes "walk."
+
+Once upon a time, when we were in Rome, my husband and I went to keep an
+appointment with Monsignor Stonor, who was a great celebrity, and an
+extremely handsome and charming man. We were being shown upstairs by a
+servant, and the hour was eleven o'clock on a sunny spring day. I was
+walking first, my husband following, and at the top of the stairs,
+coming slowly downward, was an old priest carrying a huge portfolio,
+under which he seemed to be staggering. He passed the servant, and as he
+neared me I noticed that the cassock which he wore was torn in great
+rents in several places. His gray hair hung on his shoulders, though his
+crown was shaven, and his face was the color of old ivory.
+
+I moved slightly to give him and his burden room to pass, and as he did
+so our eyes met. His were very strange. They were exactly like points of
+live flame.
+
+Something about his whole presence struck me as so weird that I turned
+involuntarily and looked back.
+
+As I did so, I saw my husband walk straight through him. My husband saw
+nothing. Then I knew and understood.
+
+I did not mention this incident to Monsignor Stonor, but some time after
+I met his sister, Viscountess Clifden, at Monte Carlo. She was an
+intimate friend of mine, and one day when an opportunity offered I told
+her the little story, and asked her if she had ever met with anything of
+the sort herself. She replied that personally, she had not, but she had
+heard that several people encountered at different times the old priest
+in her brother's rooms, though he himself had seen nothing of this
+apparition.
+
+Lady Clifden enjoyed nothing more than a little flutter at the tables.
+She never missed a single day during her long sojourns at Monte Carlo.
+
+Every one knows that the Anglican church-goers in the Principality hurry
+from church to gaming rooms in order to stake on the numbers of the
+hymns. Lady Clifden used also to hurry from Mass with any numbers she
+had caught up, and she considered Sunday her lucky day. Suddenly her
+luck changed.
+
+She told me that on the previous Sunday she had just pulled off a nice
+little coup, and was about to grasp it, when, to her horror she saw a
+skeleton hand stretched forth. Before she could collect her scattered
+senses the skeleton hand had raked in her gold. Where that gold had gone
+to worried and puzzled her dreadfully. So it did me! I never heard the
+last of it. She could not get over her loss.
+
+It was no use suggesting that the hand had belonged to one of the
+emaciated harpies who prey upon the unwary. Lady Clifden knew all about
+them, and was a match for the whole gang, had they attacked her. She
+insisted that the hand that had grasped her gold had neither skin nor
+flesh upon it, and that she had seen the two bare arm bones from wrist
+to elbow. We compromised on the suggestion of a third party that it must
+have been the devil himself, and that the heat he is supposed to
+engender had melted the gold entirely away.
+
+Monte Carlo is a very interesting place for the clairvoyant to be in,
+more especially if her vision extends to seeing auras. Perhaps nowhere
+on earth are the basest human passions more swiftly and violently
+aroused, and several times, when some tragedy was being enacted, or some
+enormous coup was being brought off, I have been unable to see details,
+because they were hidden within a dense envelop of dark crimson clouds.
+
+In the rooms a crowd collects swiftly, and from a hundred human auras,
+all gathered in one compact mass, stream forth emanations of the basest
+description. Cupidity, envy, revenge, lust of the vilest, despair, ruin,
+death.
+
+I remember being met one night by a friend in the Attrium who was very
+excited. "Hurry up," she cried, "the double Duchess has broken the bank
+and is still playing."
+
+I went into the gambling rooms, and looked for the table at which the
+Duchess of Devonshire was staking. I knew she would attract a big crowd
+if she was winning.
+
+I found the table easily enough, not because it was surrounded by a
+crowd of people, but because it was hidden by a dark and dense crimson
+fog.
+
+With patience I got through this fog, and watched the handsome Duchess
+of Devonshire, formerly Duchess of Manchester, and born a Hanoverian,
+playing with a great quantity of gold, and a pile of thousand franc
+notes. By bending low down, almost level with the table, I found I got
+completely out of the fog, and could see clearly underneath it.
+
+One night there was a rush outside, and a huge ring formed to watch "a
+scrap" taking place between two celebrated members of _la haute
+cocotterie de Paris_.
+
+They were fighting with formidable hatpins, and I understood that the
+prey they fought over was Leopold, King of the Belgians.
+
+I ran with the crowd, the gambling rooms emptied in a twinkling, for the
+combat took place in the Casino Square. I squeezed through the excited
+mob till I got behind the backers of both parties, who were holding the
+ring and defying the police.
+
+It was a wonderful sight to witness the combined play of flaming red
+auras, shot through with vivid flashes like lightning, and blazing
+jewels.
+
+The duel ended with a few scratches, much tearing of gorgeous raiment
+and disheveled hair.
+
+How interesting it was to the mystic to feel the psychology of that
+crowd, and see the thin veneer of civilization stripped off, leaving
+nothing but the human tiger and ape. Both ladies were eventually led off
+the arena by the police, not, be it understood, to the police-station,
+but to their own sumptuous apartments. All the time they shrieked and
+chattered like infuriated macaws, and between the shrieks they
+administered resounding smacks upon the cheeks of their patient escort.
+
+Monte Carlo was a wonderful place in those days, in which to study human
+nature at its best and worst. In latter years it has become meretricious
+and shabby, and the old magnificence is seen no more. Fifteen to twenty
+years ago all that was greatest in Europe, Asia, and the Americas,
+congregated there, and crowned heads mingled freely with the scum of the
+earth. Constant _habitues_ were the Duchess of Devonshire, and her son,
+Lord Charles Montague; the Duchess of Montrose, known to the ring at
+Newmarket as "Bobs," and always the personification, to listen to and
+look at, of a Thames bargee. Leopold of Belgium, Ferdinand of Bulgaria,
+Grand Dukes of Russia, potentates from India, all hobnobbing together
+and gambling heavily.
+
+I often wonder now what has befallen those brilliant stars of the
+half-world firmament. Emmeline d'Alencon with her "bobbed" hair, and
+her passionate love of animals and birds. The demure Jeanne Ray, who
+came out every morning to her garden gate, and distributed food to the
+crowd of paupers and cripples. I have seen peasants kiss the hem of her
+dress as she walked on an afternoon along the Promenade des Anglais. The
+beautiful, soulless Merode, the fierce, stately Otero, and many others
+who thought nothing of wearing fifty to a hundred thousand pounds' worth
+of jewels on one evening.
+
+Where are they now? If living they are old! Old! a word more dreaded by
+their class than death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+I COMMIT MURDER
+
+
+I will now relate a very unpleasant experience that befell me thirty
+years ago, but which has by no means exhausted itself in the passage of
+years. It still, at long intervals, recurs to me as vividly as when
+first I passed through the painful hours of its unfoldment.
+
+It was the month of July, and I was making a tour by road through a
+portion of Scotland, driving my own horse. I was accompanied by a groom
+and a maid.
+
+One evening we arrived at a well-known inn on Deeside, where I had
+arranged to pass a couple of nights. I found my room ready for me, an
+ordinary hotel bedroom, and after supper I retired very early to bed,
+feeling very sleepy after a long day in the open air.
+
+Towards morning I had a vision. I was a woman who had committed the
+crime of murder; and I went in hourly terror of discovery and arrest, as
+the police were actively in search of the criminal. Up to the present I
+had succeeded in evading them, and no shadow of suspicion had yet fallen
+upon me, but I lived in constant haunting dread that sooner or later
+some chance clue would direct their attention to me, and I should be
+arrested and brought up for trial.
+
+I had no clue in the vision as to how the murder had been committed. My
+victim was a man, and a sensation, vague and cloudy, suggested that a
+quick poison was the mode of destruction I used, but I never gathered
+why I murdered him, or what relation, if any, he was to me.
+
+The vision was confined to my miserable sensations of fear of detection,
+and the trouble was that I seemed utterly powerless to keep away from
+the scene of my crime, a large mansion in the West End of London.
+
+Not only did I haunt the outside of the house, but I had several times
+contrived to penetrate into the interior without being discovered, the
+house having stood empty since the crime.
+
+It was a dark, foggy night when I determined again to effect an
+entrance, and I listened intently in the street before darting up to the
+front door and fitting my key in the lock. There was not a sound, and I
+found myself in the interior with the door softly closed behind me.
+
+I carried a candle, which I was about to light, when I saw that the
+large hall was not in its usual darkness. A dim light burned in a
+pendant globe, and looking round I perceived abundant evidences that the
+house was again occupied. Several pairs of men's gloves were neatly
+folded on the hall table, and a man's silk hat was neatly covered with a
+cloth. There was not the faintest sound to be heard in the house, and
+the hour was between eleven and midnight.
+
+Very softly I crept up the wide staircase. My heart was beating
+tumultuously, and I was in an agony of apprehension. On the first
+corridor I entered the room where I had concealed the body of the man I
+had murdered. I had dragged it there and hidden it in a great dress
+wardrobe. I opened the wardrobe door and found the interior had been
+filled with women's clothes, they were swathed in linen sheets. Amongst
+them I began to search with both hands, but, of course, found no signs
+of the body, which had long since been removed. However, in some
+unaccountable way the action of searching seemed to comfort me, and soon
+I turned to retrace my steps and gain the street once more.
+
+At that second I heard some one approaching, and quick as thought I
+slipped into the wardrobe and pulled the door close. Some one entered
+the room and then left it again. In a few more moments the house was
+again silent as the grave, and I began to creep downstairs very softly.
+
+When halfway down, at a bend which brought me in full view of the hall
+and the front door in the background, I stopped short at a sound.
+
+Some one was about to enter, some one was fumbling with a latch key at
+the other side of that door. Another moment and that some one would
+enter and I would be discovered. There was but one chance. Whoever it
+was might not come upstairs. He or she might strike off to the left of
+the hall, where a corridor ran to that end of the house.
+
+I cannot attempt to describe my agonizing terror of suspense, yet I did
+not lose my presence of mind. Instantaneously I decided what to do,
+should the one about to enter elect to come straight upstairs.
+
+I hastily lit my candle, carefully shading it with my hand, and
+crouching low I peered through the banisters, towards the front door. It
+opened, and a man entered, middle-aged, well dressed, a gentleman, and
+an utter stranger to me.
+
+He closed the door and turned the key, but drew no bolts. Then he threw
+off a heavy coat, and placed his hat and gloves on the table. My heart
+beat to suffocation, as I waited to see which way he would go. He was
+whistling softly to himself and, turning, began to walk across the hall,
+heading for the stairs.
+
+Then the moment for action came. I knew now I should have to pass him in
+order to make my escape. I threw myself into the tragic pose of a
+somnambulist. I wore a long floating cloak, and I knew my face was white
+as death, and my eyes wide with sheer terror.
+
+With both hands, one of which held the lighted candle, outstretched
+gropingly, with distraught gaze fixed in wild vacancy, I slipped
+silently down the few remaining steps and sped noiselessly in my soft
+shoes straight across the hall towards him.
+
+Though I never turned my eyes upon him I was aware that he had stopped
+dead short, and was staring at me in startled amazement. Then fear
+suddenly invaded him, I could feel it. He fell back as if to let me
+pass, as I glided silently nearer to him and to the door.
+
+He was backing away from me now, then in another instant, he had turned
+and fled along the corridor. One more moment and I was safely outside,
+on the pavement.
+
+I woke up to a brilliant summer morning pouring in at my open window,
+but I was in no mood to enjoy its loveliness. I was bathed in cold
+perspiration, I was shivering with pure unadulterated fear. I was
+prostrate with the violent revulsion of feeling, from acute dread of
+discovery to partial immunity on gaining the street and escaping from
+the house. The vividness of every detail was crystal clear, and attended
+by all the violent emotions such an adventure and escape would
+naturally arouse in me, had they happened in the world of realities.
+
+It was hours before I could shake off the horror of the vision, and I
+left the hotel that day. Nothing would induce me ever to pass another
+night under that roof.
+
+I had no recurrence of the vision till three months after, then it came
+again, with all its attendant horrors, when I was asleep in my own bed
+at home. This was succeeded at long intervals by a vision of my
+condition of mind as an undiscovered criminal, always evading detection,
+but without the vision of my return to the scene of the crime. During
+the last thirty years I have had recurrences of the complete and partial
+vision, but at long intervals.
+
+A few years ago I happened to be standing with my host in an enormous
+stone hall, in one of the greatest houses in England. We were discussing
+the house, and its uncomfortable vastness. There were suites of
+apartments in outlying parts where whole families might hide for days if
+housemaids were careless. To reach the dining and drawing-rooms from the
+bedrooms, if one was tired, was a real weariness.
+
+We were looking up at the great gallery, running round the hall. It was
+reached by four wide flights of stairs at different corners, and it was
+full of all sorts of recesses, and massive pieces of old furniture and
+screens. On the spur of the moment I said to my host, "Wouldn't it be
+uncanny if we were to see a strange face looking down on us?"
+
+To my surprise, he answered: "Oh! that has often happened. I've often
+seen strangers looking down. At one time I took them to be inquisitive
+members of my own household, whom I didn't know by sight, and one day I
+complained about it, to the housekeeper. She looked very much disturbed
+and told me she had seen the same thing herself. The house is opened on
+certain days to the public, and she was half inclined to think one of
+the visitors had escaped from the crowd, and hidden herself for several
+days, as it was not on a public day that the figure was seen."
+
+"Is it always the same figure?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, no," replied my host. "Always a different one, and always some one
+quite ordinary and modern looking. The strictest orders are given that
+none of the servants' friends are to be allowed in this part of the
+house, and the housekeeper has always been with us and is thoroughly
+trustworthy. The fact remains an unsolved mystery."
+
+The housekeeper was a very agreeable old woman of the real,
+old-fashioned type. Very rustling in the evening, in a rich silk gown,
+and wearing some fine piece of jewelry presented to her by one or other
+of the crowned heads who had visited the famous house. I had asked her
+before I left about these mysterious appearances, and she had no
+explanation to offer. She had ascertained beyond a shadow of a doubt,
+that they had nothing to do with the household.
+
+"They were always just ordinary looking men and women, such as one meets
+in the streets every day. Sometimes they seem to have hats on, sometimes
+their heads appear uncovered," she explained.
+
+This fits in with a belief I have always held that we constantly rub
+shoulders with the disembodied, without being in the least aware of it.
+As the Bishop of London once said: "We will find ourselves exactly the
+same persons ten minutes after death as we were ten minutes before
+death."
+
+There are many occasions when we cannot express feeling in intellectual
+terms owing to the poverty of language. One's life not being a matter of
+intellectual perception, but a conscious experience, little of it can be
+made known. The mystic life is really incommunicable.
+
+We regard the Universe through the lens of five very imperfect senses,
+conscious all the time that there are certainly many more mediums for
+the expression of consciousness.
+
+Perception is a manifestation of consciousness, and varies enormously in
+individuals, ranging often above and beneath the normal. Undoubtedly
+perception can be enormously extended by practice, not only in seeing
+material objects, but in approaching the borderland of other worlds.
+
+The sight of the Psychic or Medium is not so much vision as a
+consciousness of the thoughts and feelings of others. It is a sensation
+rather than a process of thinking, sensation not as we commonly accept
+the term, but sensation through which mental objects are realized with
+as great a clarity of vision as physical objects are seen with the naked
+eye.
+
+This intuitive vision is near akin to ordinary physical vision, inasmuch
+as the object seen has a real concrete existence. The Psychic feels
+vibrations and absorbs them.
+
+My explanation of my vision in the Highland inn is that the actual
+criminal had slept the night before in the room I occupied, and
+happening to be mediumistic I at once began to absorb the vibrations,
+and became steeped in all the circumstances, environment, and
+conditions thrown off by the criminal in connection with the crime.
+
+The vibrations were intensely strong, and still fresh and concentrated.
+I absorbed them so fully that still at times they steal back across the
+threshold of my subconsciousness, the vehicle which registers and
+retains all impressions.
+
+During sleep, when one is off guard, the gate is often ajar, and old
+memories and incidents steal through, and range at will through the
+ordinary consciousness.
+
+In daily, normal existence the mind is merely a whirlpool, but
+undoubtedly the criminal would concentrate mentally on every detail of
+her crime. There would be a focalization of her mind; a concentration of
+her whole mental faculties upon this one single subject, and when the
+mental force is reduced from its normal, dissipated condition into
+coherency, its power is unlimited. It is possible to catch a physical
+disease by sleeping in an infected bed. It is quite as easy to catch a
+mental disease by the same means. Many emotions are highly contagious,
+notably fear. All are invisible to human sight, and there is rarely any
+warning. A Psychic may sense something unpleasant before infection is
+established. In fact, this often happens to quite normal individuals.
+Something in the atmosphere of a place conveys a warning, is unpleasant
+or uncongenial and it is avoided. If a warning was conveyed to me in the
+Highland inn I was too tired to heed it.
+
+At one time in my life I saw a great deal of two intimate and charming
+friends, Lord and Lady Wynford. Alas! both have now passed over.
+
+Lady Wynford was born Caroline Baillie of Dochfour, and owing to her
+Scotch blood, and her relationship with many of our great Scotch
+families, she was profoundly interested in ghosts. Lord Wynford, on the
+contrary, had an absolute horror of the subject, and always left the
+room whilst it was under discussion. Though very dissimilar, husband and
+wife were the best of friends. She was very handsome and a brilliant
+woman of the world. He was shy, retiring, and deeply religious. A
+perfect example of a true gentleman of the old school, and an aristocrat
+to his finger-tips. I was devoted to them both, and they were very kind
+to me in giving me their warm friendship, though at the time of which I
+write I was only a girl of about twenty years old.
+
+At that period the great topic of conversation amongst ghost-hunters was
+Glamis Castle, the most celebrated of all haunted houses. No ghost book
+is ever considered complete without reference to this celebrated Castle,
+and the story usually narrated is, that in the secret room some abnormal
+horror lived, and that the heir, Lord Glamis, and the factor, had to be
+told of its existence by the Earl of Strathmore in person. This
+information was of so terrible a nature that it changed not only the
+lives of those two men, but even their personal appearance. They grew
+aged and haggard in a single night.
+
+This story was readily discussed in old days by members of the
+Strathmore family, who were just as keen as outsiders were to probe the
+mystery. To-day it is universally believed that the monstrosity is at
+last laid to rest, and that though other ghosts still walk the Castle,
+the worst has departed forever.
+
+I went one afternoon to see the Wynfords in the hotel in which they
+stayed whilst in Scotland, and found Lady Reay with them. She was a
+wonderful woman in her way, and preserved her youth up till very late in
+life. Lord Wynford was not present, and Lady Wynford at once greeted me
+by exclaiming, "We are going to stay at Glamis next week, and Lady Reay
+has been there and seen a ghost."
+
+"But not _the_ ghost," admitted Lady Reay.
+
+"Then what did you see?" I inquired.
+
+She then told the following story, which has a sequel:--
+
+"I had been in the Castle for three nights and much to my satisfaction
+seen absolutely nothing. We were a very cheery party, and every one was
+frightfully thrilled and nervously expectant, but we were very careful
+not to breathe the word 'ghost' before our host and hostess.
+
+"On the fourth night I was awakened by a moaning sound in my room, and I
+opened my eyes. The room was in total darkness, but I saw something very
+bright near the door. I shut my eyes instantly, and pulled the
+bedclothes over my head in a paroxysm of fear. I longed to light my
+candles, but didn't dare, and the moaning continued, and I thought I
+should go quite mad.
+
+"At last I ventured to peep out again. I saw a woman dressed exactly
+like Mary Tudor, in her pictures, and she was wandering round the walls,
+flinging herself against them, like a bird against the bars of a cage,
+and beating her hands upon the walls, and all the time she moaned
+horribly. I'm sure she was the ghost of a mad woman. Her face and form
+were lit up exactly like a picture thrown upon a magic lantern screen,
+and every detail of her dress was clearly defined.
+
+"Luckily she never looked at me, or I should have screamed, and I
+thought of Lord and Lady I. sleeping in the next room to mine, and
+wondered how I could reach them. I was really too terrified to move, and
+the ghost kept more or less to that part of the room where the door was
+situated.
+
+"I must have lain there awake for two or three hours, sometimes with my
+head buried under the clothes, sometimes peeping out, when at last the
+moaning suddenly stopped. I opened my eyes. Thank God, I was alone. The
+ghost had departed.
+
+"I lay with wide open eyes till daybreak. Then the first thing I did was
+to run to the mirror to see if my hair had turned white. Mercifully it
+hadn't, but I looked an awful wreck.
+
+"I told just a few people what I had seen, and contrived to get a wire
+sent me before lunch. Early in the afternoon I was on the way to
+Edinburgh."
+
+Such was the story Lady Reay related.
+
+Thirteen years later Captain Eric Streatfield, who was a nephew of Lord
+Strathmore, and an intimate friend of my husband, told me exactly the
+same story. He was a boy of six at the time, when the lady of Tudor days
+appeared moaning in his room, and he said he would never forget the
+misery of the night he passed. He was very much interested in hearing
+that Lady Reay had gone through the same experience. He told me another
+extraordinary story.
+
+Whilst, as a school boy, he was visiting at Glamis Castle with his
+parents, he noticed that they began to behave in rather a peculiar
+manner. They were often consulting alone with one another, and
+constantly scanning the sky from their bedroom window, which adjoined
+his. For two or three days this sort of thing went on, and he caught
+queer fragments of conversation whispered between them, such as, "It
+doesn't always happen. We might be spared this year, the power must die
+out some day."
+
+At last one evening his father called him into his room, where his
+mother stood by the open window. In his hand his father held an open
+watch.
+
+His mother bade him look out, and tell them what sort of night it was.
+He replied that it was fine, and still and cold, and the stars were
+beginning to appear.
+
+His father then said, "We want you to take particular note of the
+weather, for in another moment you may witness a remarkable change.
+Probably you will see a furious tempest."
+
+Eric could not make head or tail of this. He wondered if his parents had
+gone mad, but glancing at his mother he noticed that she looked
+strangely pale and anxious.
+
+Then the storm burst, with such terrific suddenness and fury that it
+terrified him. A howling tempest, accompanied by blinding lightning and
+deafening thunder, rushed down upon them from an absolutely clear sky.
+
+His mother knelt down by the bed, and he thought that she was praying.
+
+When Eric asked for an explanation he was told that when he was grown up
+one would be given him. Unfortunately the moment never came. An aunt had
+told him that the storm was peculiarly to do with Glamis, and was
+something that could not be explained.
+
+Lord and Lady Wynford paid their visit to Glamis, and I looked forward
+eagerly to their return in a week's time. I went to see them the day
+after their arrival back again, and was met by Lady Wynford alone.
+Before I could question her she began to speak of the visit.
+
+"I don't want you even to mention the word Glamis to Wynford," she said
+very gravely. "He's had a great shock, and he's in a very queer state of
+mind."
+
+She paused, and I ventured to ask, "But what sort of shock?"
+
+Then she gave me the following account:--
+
+"Wynford and I occupied adjoining bedrooms. We were having a delightful
+time. Glorious weather, and a lot of very pleasant people. I really
+forgot all about there being any ghost. We were out all day, and very
+sleepy at night, and I never heard or saw a thing that was unusual.
+
+"Two nights before we left something happened to Wynford. He came into
+my room and awakened me at seven o'clock in the morning. He was fully
+dressed, and he looked dreadfully upset and serious. He said he had
+something to tell me, and he wished to get it over, and then he would
+try not to think of it any more. I was certain then that he had seen or
+heard something terrible, and I waited with the greatest impatience for
+him to continue. He seemed confronted with some great difficulty, but
+after a long pause he said--
+
+"'You know that I have always disbelieved in the supernatural. I have
+never believed that God would permit such things to come to pass as I
+have heard lightly described. I was wrong. Such awful experiences are
+possible. I know it to my own cost, and I pray God I may never pass such
+a night again as that which I have just come through. I have not slept
+for a moment. I feel I must tell you this, in fact, it is necessary that
+I tell you, because I am going to extract a promise from you. A promise
+that you will never mention in my hearing the name of this house, or the
+terrible subject with which its name is connected.'
+
+"I was speechless for a few minutes with perplexed amazement. I had
+never heard Wynford speak like that, nor had I ever seen him so terribly
+upset.
+
+"'But,' I said at last, 'aren't you going to tell me what has so
+unnerved you?'
+
+"He began pacing up and down the room. 'Good God, no,' he exclaimed, 'I
+couldn't even begin to tell you. I have no words that would have any
+meaning or expression. Don't you understand, there is no language to
+convey such happenings from one to the other. They are seen, felt,
+heard! They cannot be uttered. There are some things on earth I know of
+now, that may not be related to the spoken word. Perhaps between a man
+and his God, but not even between you and me.'
+
+"We were silent again for some minutes, during which he continued to
+pace the room, his head drooped on his breast. I was really seriously
+alarmed. I even feared for his reason, and I couldn't form the smallest
+conjecture as to what had been the nature of his experiences. I was
+quite convinced of one thing. What he had seen was no ordinary ghost,
+like Lady Reay's Tudor Lady. She might have amazed him, but it required
+something much more terrible and awe-inspiring to have reduced him to
+such a condition of mental misery and desolation.
+
+"I wanted to comfort him, to sympathize with him, but something about
+him held me at arm's length. It was his soul that was suffering, and
+with his soul a man must wrestle alone. I felt that his deep religious
+convictions of a lifetime had been violently dislocated, for all I knew
+shattered entirely, and I felt profound compassion for him. I may have
+had doubts, on many points. I confess to being a worldly skeptic, but
+Wynford's faith has always been so pure and childlike, and I have
+striven never to jar him on religious subjects. Now I feel as if
+somehow, everything that he has ever had has been taken away from him.
+
+"At last I said, 'Don't you think we had better leave to-day? We can
+easily make some excuse.'
+
+"He stopped and looked straight at me, so strangely.
+
+"'No, I can't leave to-day. I must stay another night here. There is
+something I must do. Now will you give me your promise never to mention
+this subject to me again? We may not be alone together again to-day. I
+want to get it over. Promise.'
+
+"I gave him my promise at once. I dared not have opposed him. I was
+horribly frightened. He went out of the room at once, and I lay thinking
+and shivering with dread. 'What was it he had to do? Why could we not
+leave to-day?' It was all so mysterious.
+
+"Well! the day passed in an ordinary manner, and if Wynford was more
+grave than usual I don't think any one noticed it. Then came the night I
+so dreaded. Of course I didn't sleep at first, I was too anxious, and I
+heard him come up to his room half an hour after I did. The door between
+our rooms was closed, and I lay awake listening intently. I heard him
+moving about; I supposed he was undressing, and his man never sits up
+for him. Then after a time there were occasional creaks which I knew
+came from an armchair, and I knew that he had not gone to bed.
+
+"I suppose I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I was aware
+of was Wynford's voice. He was speaking to some one, and seemed to be in
+the middle of a conversation. When he ceased speaking I strained my ears
+to catch a reply. I could hear no words, only his voice. Then a reply
+did come, and it simply froze the blood in my body, and I felt bathed in
+ice, and had to put my finger between my teeth, they chattered so
+horribly.
+
+"The reply was a hoarse whisper, a sort of rasping, grating undertone,
+that was not so much a whisper as an inability to speak in any other
+voice. There was something almost inhuman in those harsh, vibrating, yet
+husky words, spoken too low for me to catch. I knew at once that no
+guest, no member of the family, spoke like that, and I could not
+conceive that it could be a servant. What could Wynford have to say to
+any servant of Lord Strathmore?
+
+"A clock somewhere in the Castle struck three. No; I was certain that
+the presence with him, whatever else it might be, was no human being
+dwelling under the roof of Glamis.
+
+"At times they seemed to hold an argument; sometimes Wynford's voice was
+sharp and decisive, at other times it was utterly weary and despondent.
+I dreaded what the effect might be upon him of this awful night, but I
+could do nothing but lie shivering in bed, and pray for the morning.
+
+"How long it went on for I can't say, but the conviction came to me
+suddenly that Wynford had begun to pray. His voice was raised, and now
+and again I fancied I could hear words. The rasping whisper came now
+only in short, sharp interjections or expostulations, I don't know
+which. The even flow of Wynford's words went quietly on, and I began to
+be certain that he was praying for the being who spoke with that
+terrible whisper. It occurred to me that he might even be trying to
+exorcise some unclean spirit.
+
+"At last a silence fell. Wynford stopped praying, and I hoped that the
+terrible interview was at an end. Then it began again, and for quite an
+hour the prayers went on, with long periods of silence in between. I
+heard no more of the terrible, husky whisper.
+
+"I fell asleep again and did not awake till my maid brought me early
+tea. No sooner had she gone than Wynford entered, fully dressed. Though
+he looked desperately tired and wan, he seemed quite composed, and as if
+some weight had been removed from off him. He said he was going for a
+stroll before breakfast, and, of course, I remembered my promise and put
+no questions. I have come to the conclusion that a hundred people may
+stay any length of time at Glamis and see or hear nothing. The hundred
+and first may receive such a shock to the nervous system that he never
+really recovers from it."
+
+Such was the mysterious story that Lady Wynford unfolded. I saw her
+husband the next day, but beyond being graver than usual in his manner I
+detected no difference in him. He never referred, even in the most
+indirect way, to his visit, but he must have inferred by my silence that
+I had been warned not to mention the subject. Many others must, however,
+have done so, for every one, who at that period passed a night under
+Glamis Castle roof, was eagerly questioned by friends and acquaintances
+on their return.
+
+The only occasion on which I visited Glamis was on the night of a ball,
+given in honor of the Crown Prince of Sweden. The curiosity of the
+guests was held in check by servants being stationed at certain doors,
+and entrances to corridors and staircases, to inform rude explorers that
+they could not pass. It is hard to believe that such a course of action
+was necessary, but I personally watched little parties being turned back
+towards the ballroom and sitting-out-rooms, showing that intense
+curiosity may even prove stronger than good breeding.
+
+What Wynford saw that night will never be known, but one fact remains.
+It left so deep an impression upon him that he was never the same man
+again. He became graver and more wrapped up in his own thoughts month by
+month, and the change that ended in his death his wife attributed to
+those nights passed in Glamis Castle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE ANGEL OF LOURDES
+
+
+One lovely summer evening I was standing in a hotel bedroom, washing my
+hands. I was in Lourdes, and I was pondering upon a certain long flight
+of stone steps that I could see quite clearly from my window. At the top
+of the steps, which were cut in the face of the wooded hillside, stood a
+great Calvary, and from dawn till darkness pilgrims made the hard ascent
+upon their knees. The stones were worn and grooved by the stream of
+human beings making their painful way to the foot of the Cross.
+
+The atmosphere of Lourdes is very impressive to the Psychic. One
+breathes the concentrated essence of prayer. No one goes there who is
+not on prayer intent, and in the public streets, gardens and churches
+one comes across kneeling figures lost in Divine contemplation. No one
+heeds them; all are on a like mission, and sometimes men and women stand
+for hours with outstretched arms. Human crosses, oblivious to all, lost
+in a mystic rapture which takes count of neither time nor place.
+
+I turned my head towards the window. The sun had just set behind the
+mountains, and the sky was illuminated by a rosy afterglow. Down in the
+valley the shadows were beginning to lengthen, but I could still see the
+Calvary on the hillside, and the dark human stream slowly moving up the
+stony way, the _Via Dolorosa_ of the Cross.
+
+At that moment the sense of a presence swung into my field of
+consciousness, and contracted my vague faculties to focus. Something
+moving in the sky above caught my eye.
+
+How shall I describe the sight?
+
+I saw an angel floating above the mountains.
+
+The figure, wingless, yet floating in erect grace, was of great size,
+and wrapped entirely in cloudy gray. The head was bare and slightly
+bent, as if looking down on earth. The movements were smooth and
+gliding, as a feather floats in the wind. The distance was too great--I
+judged about a quarter of a mile--for me to distinguish the features,
+but owing to its great size the figure was clearly visible and deeply
+inspiring.
+
+It was a vision on which none could look intently without feeling the
+weight of a mighty awe. It gathered up the wandering emotions of the
+heart, and all a lifetime's ideals of beauty, grandeur, sublimity, in
+one serene presentation.
+
+The vision floated on majestically, across the valley and the little
+town with its praying multitudes. In about three minutes It had passed,
+and was lost in the pearly mists of the gathering night.
+
+And whilst the vision lasted I was acutely conscious of that innumerable
+concourse of kneeling forms below, all struggling upwards to the Cross.
+
+It seems to me that the devout, of other faiths than that of Rome, lose
+much by not taking advantage of Lourdes. For many years, thousands of
+pilgrims from all corners of the earth have bent their steps towards the
+shrine, and poured out their souls in a passion of supplication. This
+tremendous concentration of faith, love and fervent adoration, often
+ecstatic thanksgiving for answered prayer, must find an echo in the
+Heaven World to which they are sent.
+
+It is so easy at Lourdes to feel that the Throne of Grace has been
+actually reached, because one can sense the pathway, the ladder made by
+human love, praise and faith, down which, I doubt not, the Angels of God
+are always passing. It is easier to concentrate the mind in a place
+where religious thought has been poured out for many years, because one
+insensibly becomes calmed, and tranquilized, and aided by the atmosphere
+thousands of others have created.
+
+At Lourdes there is nothing to attract the scoffer, and thousands of
+hearts filled with reverence and devotion reenforce each year the
+already powerful vibrations, and leave the place the better and richer
+for their presence.
+
+How few people realize that they have never seen themselves? How many
+can tell what they really look like?
+
+A very, very few can, and I am amongst the number.
+
+I wakened one morning in summer, and opened my eyes on my sunlit bedroom
+at home. Instantly I saw something which thrilled me with vivid
+interest. I saw myself!
+
+I was emerging out of a corner of the room, and composedly approaching
+the bed. There was no doubt as to recognition. I knew instantly I was
+looking on my own face for the first time, and it was something of a
+shock to discover that I was more or less of a stranger to myself. I saw
+how false a looking-glass can be. I had not begun to know myself.
+
+With absorbed interest I stared very hard, in my intense desire to
+imprint on my memory my own image. I approached the bed, and as I did
+so, I seemed to shrink, fade, and waver. Then suddenly I vanished--into
+my recumbent body.
+
+For a few minutes afterwards I was too concerned with my physical
+condition to ponder on the vision of my real self. I was tossing
+violently in the bed, in an inner distraughtness which was most
+disturbing. Then, as my nervous system began to calm down, I strove to
+imprint on my memory the recollection of what I really looked like.
+
+My face, even in the wonder of those few moments in which I had seen it,
+expressed emotions I had never seemed to know. Nothing was as I had
+believed it to be. All the traits that went to form my character needed
+readjusting, and all seemed curiously imperfect. I could not remember
+how I was clothed, though I had seen myself from head to foot. I suppose
+I was too engrossed in studying my face to think of my body.
+
+The vision left me with a blank sense of utter disillusionment and
+failure. Nothing in me was finished or complete. My expression suggested
+a character which was horribly crude, imperfect and rudimentary. Looking
+at myself afterwards in the mirror, I came to the conclusion that it
+lied, or that in waking life I wear a mask.
+
+It is salutary to behold one's spiritual portrait, a thing not visible
+to the mind alone but to the physical sight. In a flash comes the
+knowledge that dwelling in us are forces, not yet grasped by mortal
+mind, that cry for recognition. There have been moments in all lives, I
+believe, when a glimpse is caught of the Olympian heights to which it is
+possible to rise. Glimpses, alas! of the evanescent thing we know
+ourselves in truth to be.
+
+Sometimes, on the Astral plane, it happens that friends meet under
+strange circumstances, and one figures largely in the doings of another.
+The memory of those nocturnal adventures is brought through and clearly
+recollected in the morning.
+
+One such occurrence I will relate, and it is peculiar and unusual.
+
+An old friend of ours, a man who has devoted his life to the development
+of his spiritual faculties (not to be confused with the development of
+mediumship and phenomena), had a series of dreams in which he appeared
+to be two people. He himself was the same tall, slender man he is in
+daily life, but in this psychic experience a much smaller man moved
+always on his left side, and somehow seemed to symbolize his waking
+personality.
+
+The central figure in one of these unusual experiences was a young man
+who was unknown to our friend, and who had died abroad. His body had
+been embalmed and brought home for burial, and our friend had been shown
+photographs of him, and had also communicated with him through automatic
+writing. This much was imprinted on his physical memory.
+
+Now, whilst lying asleep one night, the spiritual counterpart of our
+friend became aware that the body of the young man was exposed and could
+be seen. His companion, or other self, the shorter man who moved by his
+side, shrank back with horror from such a suggestion, just as our friend
+would instinctively have done in waking consciousness, but he himself
+was determined to see the body, and went straight through a door facing
+him, into a room where it was lying on a low table.
+
+Now comes the moment when I began to figure in this experience. I was
+standing on the opposite side of the table, making vigorous passes over
+the young man's body, which appeared to be fashioned out of pinkish
+clay. The trunk and legs looked as though I had roughly modeled them
+with my hands. The head was more highly finished. It was sharp and
+distinct in outline, and our friend recognized it instantly as being a
+representation of the young man whose portraits he had seen. He stared
+at the face with great interest, and taking up a cloth, gently wiped the
+cheek where a fleck of foam lay. This action seemed to vivify the body,
+for it began to mutter and murmur indistinctly. Apparently it was alive,
+and not dead.
+
+Our friend relates that this discovery gave him such a shock that he
+lost the thread of memory which he was bringing back to his physical
+body on the bed. The next moment he woke up. My recollection, a
+perfectly clear one, of these happenings, was that he simply vanished
+from the scene, leaving me alone with the body, which I continued to
+manipulate.
+
+Afterwards, through automatic writing, our friend was told by the
+departed young man, that this astral vision signified the collecting of
+etheric matter to fashion a body in which he could function on etheric
+planes.
+
+On another occasion our friend had the experience of walking about on
+the other side with the young man, who was dressed in an ordinary tweed
+suit, and being taken by him to various acquaintances, to whom he was
+introduced. With the exception of the above experience, he believes that
+this was the first time he had ever seen him. The interesting point of
+both experiences is, that both I and our friend brought back on waking,
+a clear and similar recollection of the episode in which we were jointly
+concerned.
+
+This friend of ours is a disciple of "The Flaming Heart," called by
+Catholics "The Sacred Heart." He writes to me thus:--
+
+"I see now more clearly than before that the Christ self within uses its
+powers as a whole, just as the personal man uses intellect, will, and
+feeling, all three being energized by love, which is the element of
+interest in the several activities."
+
+"So the self of love works out and manifests as--
+
+    Love and Life         Beauty.
+    Love and Power        Goodness.
+    Love and Knowledge    Wisdom.
+
+"The Love element saves us from wrong living, wrong doing or wrong
+thinking. So we go from strength to strength, by yielding the lower self
+to the transmuting power of the Higher."
+
+It was long before I came to understand the full significance of the
+Flaming Heart. It was plain to see what its realization meant to our
+friend. He radiates an extraordinary serenity of mind, an atmosphere of
+strength and peace, a calm in the midst of storm which apparently
+nothing can shake. Pre-eminently, when in his presence, one is conscious
+of a commanding power which will only be used for exalted purposes. This
+clear subjection of the lower self, to the transmuting power of the
+Higher self, has worked such marvels in him that one longs to grasp the
+secret of his success.
+
+A few years passed, and still the heart of the mystery eluded me. This
+year, 1918, it came to me in a flash.
+
+The experience I am about to relate may have happened to many others. To
+me, it was a tremendous revelation.
+
+I was kneeling one morning in front of the Altar, at Early Celebration.
+I have always felt, through the Eucharist, the possibility of great
+spiritual development, and often there comes to me at such moments, a
+mystical response to the inner mysteries of the Sacrament. I have never
+looked for supernatural happenings, hallucinations, or psychic
+excitements, but my spiritual instincts are always alive and craving
+satisfaction. This they have never before received in any really lasting
+degree.
+
+Now came a new Divine illumination.
+
+Two clergymen were officiating at the celebration. I had just received
+the bread from the one, and had raised my head and hands to receive the
+cup from the other, when suddenly I went quite blind.
+
+The vicar, who was moving towards me, was blotted out. I stared at a
+black veil utterly impenetrable, and I was aware of a tremendous
+internal dislocation. My heart beat tumultuously, and felt as if thrust
+out of place. Then my sight was restored.
+
+I saw before me, not the man, bearing in his hands the chalice, but a
+flaming heart of fire, from which radiated out living, scintillating
+streams of golden light. They filled the background with their quivering
+radiance, and I was conscious of shrinking back, and bowing my head as
+the supernal vision approached me and enveloped me in Its aura.
+
+The cup had been transmuted by Divine alchemy into the Flaming Heart of
+love's sacrifice, and I was given to taste of the living waters of Life.
+
+For a few minutes I was quite unconscious of where I was. I had been,
+indeed, caught up into the seventh Heaven. I know now that I acted
+mechanically, and to outward semblance I behaved in the orthodox manner,
+but when I raised my head again the vicar had passed on and the vision
+had vanished. Nothing had happened to distract the attention of others.
+
+I returned to my seat conscious that I had been taught the meaning and
+marvelous significance of the Flaming Heart. I understood the words of
+the great mystic, St. John.
+
+     "In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
+
+     "And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness overcame
+     it not.
+
+     "There was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man,
+     coming into the world."
+
+I know that the Flaming Heart of Divinity dwells in the breasts of all
+humanity, that the soul is no empty shell, but the shrine of the Divine
+Presence, and that Presence is the Guide and Light of Life.
+
+I have seen revealed the inner mystery of the sacramental life. Through
+a rift in the veil of the material, the hidden life of eternity was
+symbolized for me in the Flaming Heart, the true Eucharistic Mystery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE WRAITH OF THE ARMY GENTLEMAN
+
+
+To some people life is an unspeakable tragedy; to others it is a mere
+farce. To all it is a profound mystery.
+
+What am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going? What is this
+mysterious ego that thinks and acts?
+
+From Darwin we learn that the human body has taken a million years to
+evolve its present form. Is it logical to suppose that there is no
+scheme of evolution for the immortal soul, in which it can preserve its
+individuality through the ages? The mills of God grind slowly, and what
+is seventy or eighty years in eternity, in which we develop the highest
+and most complex organism we can conceive of--the Soul?
+
+Five hundred and thirty-five years B. C. Pythagoras was teaching the
+reincarnation of the immortal soul in his celebrated school. Plato,
+Socrates, Aristotle, Philo, Virgil, Cicero, Euclid, the Egyptians and
+the Hindoos taught the same doctrine. In the days of Christ the
+transmigration of souls was an accepted belief, and in 250 A. D. Origen,
+the greatest of the Christian Fathers, was still teaching the same
+doctrine. Justin Martyr recognized the presence of the Logos in Jesus,
+and Socrates and Clement of Alexandria affirmed that the same philosophy
+had brought the Greeks to Christ. To this day it remains the belief of
+three-fourths of the human race.
+
+In our country, though a rapidly growing faith, Buddhism fails to
+command the attention it otherwise would, for two reasons. Firstly, we
+have never been a religious-minded people, and are now very much less so
+than formerly. What are loosely termed religious subjects interest a
+very few, and bore intensely the great majority. Out of our forty-four
+million souls, a mere handful are interested in a future life. The rest
+prefer not to take the problem into consideration, though they are ready
+to accept a small dose of conventional religion, ready-made and
+pre-digested. Secondly, faith in the transmigration of souls in a
+succession of physical bodies only becomes an urgent mental necessity, a
+vitally necessary explanation of life's inequalities, to those who mix
+with the outcast poor. Such persons are again comparatively few, and, to
+those of them who think, life without reincarnation is simply an
+incomprehensible and chaotic puzzle.
+
+Once the faith is grasped that life between birth and death is only a
+tiny fragment of the aeons allotted to us, in which to develop
+spiritually, divine harmony; love and justice reappear. Only thus can
+one see light. But if the tardy growth of this all-sufficient
+illumination is slow to take root, it must be remembered that to the
+ordinary, well-to-do person it makes no appeal.
+
+"Am I my brother's keeper?" is generally answered in the negative, and
+the hypocritical rejoinder, covering a mountain of selfishness, that it
+is an impertinence to pry into the lives of the poor, is the facile
+excuse for sitting at ease and cozening the conscience into the belief
+that the poor are God's affair. Even the devout and pious, who may feel
+deep compassion for the sorrow of the destitute, have no spur to prick
+their mental apathy, unless they mix freely and constantly with the
+poor and oppressed. Only then will come the perplexed question: Where
+can I see in all this overwhelming misery the Divine hand of love and
+justice?
+
+The Christ who established his Brotherhood with us, by proclaiming God
+the Universal Father, told us that "Before Abraham was, I am," and I
+suppose that most people, who accept anything, accept the pre-existence
+of Christ. Yet how few of us can remember anything of our own past
+lives, and how merciful it is that we cannot. How utterly overwhelming
+such memory would be! The future is as carefully hidden from us as the
+past, yet our previous lives have been by no means unfruitful.
+
+The experiences we have gathered in the past years of this life are
+nearly all forgotten, yet our development has gone on, and the records
+are stored in the subconsciousness, sometimes to be pulled across the
+threshold and displayed in a complete panorama before the dying eyes.
+The statements to this effect made by those who have been resuscitated
+when at the point of death by drowning, are too numerous to be discarded
+as mere fables.
+
+Undoubtedly we all contain the germs of sin at birth, but few educated
+people now accept the statements that we are born sinful because our
+parents sinned, or because of the moral delinquencies of those of Eden.
+Certainly we all bear the consequences of others' sins, but the cruel
+injustice of a God who deliberately punishes present humanity for the
+sins of past humanity is too revolting a conception of the Creator to
+gain acceptance to-day.
+
+This very fact shows that we have advanced spiritually. So base a
+conception of the Almighty is violently repugnant to serious thinkers.
+The intuitive consciousness of man postulates the over-ruling spirit as
+a power representing perfect justice and love, and the innate instinct
+to believe that we ourselves are in some mysterious way akin to this
+Divine Ideal keeps ever alive the belief in our Divine origin.
+
+What is the grand apotheosis of each human life? The Christ spirit; a
+scheme of regenerative redemption, simple, natural, yet superlatively
+grand.
+
+If one asks whether the orbs in space take precedence of personal will
+and intelligence, or personal will and intelligence take precedence of
+the orbs in space, one has only to ask whether builders or buildings
+have priority. Do pictures originate the artist? do books originate the
+author? If one begins to study with a belief in spirit as power and
+cause, one can account for all things, but to start with matter as a
+foundation is to fail absolutely to account for either matter or spirit.
+
+In some infinite womb the vital Heavens, the visible Universe must have
+existed before time was. We see all elements have their affinities, all
+stars their course, all atoms their polarity. We see the wheel of
+Ezekiel symbolizing the whole scheme and fabric of Nature.
+
+Heaven works not only with stupendous immensities but with small
+minorities. Atoms of unutterable minuteness are streaming into the
+unseen atmosphere every second from the souls and bodies of the human
+race. When the soul seeks, aspires after God, the most vital of all
+atoms go forth with the breath, as light from the sun to the earth.
+Surely we and our angel kindred inhabit one house of which the most
+distant provinces are in touch with the center of all. Heaven and earth
+are bridged by the spirit ladder of love, and the soul can inbreathe the
+spirit of God as the body inbreathes oxygen.
+
+The contemplative mind beholds every day the passage of things invisible
+into sight, the transfer of the seen into the unseen, and all is
+natural. The life throb of the palpable world is a pulsation going forth
+every instant from the eternal energy, drawing out by an ethereal medium
+from the invisible and intangible, that which is visible and tangible.
+
+I will speak now of the passage of a thing invisible into sight. How, to
+me, it became so I cannot tell. I don't know.
+
+One summer evening my husband and I were occupying two communicating
+bedrooms in a London hotel, contiguous with one of the great railway
+stations. We had to make an early start in the morning, and had come
+there to be near our train.
+
+I awakened in the early morning hours. The gray dawn was just beginning
+to show through the bars of the Venetian blinds lowered before the two
+windows. Those bars had not been adjusted, and they also admitted a
+rather bright light from a street lamp. I judged it to be somewhere
+about four o'clock, but I did not look at my watch. I was too
+pre-occupied in looking at something else.
+
+My bare arm was stretched outside the coverlet, and I was aware that
+what had awakened me was a cold wind blowing on my skin. The furniture
+of the room was dimly outlined, and at first I vaguely threw my
+half-open eyes around without perceiving anything unusual, but gradually
+my senses, shaking off their drowsiness, became aware of movement
+between the bed and the window. Something tall and gray was wavering
+like a pillar of smoke betwixt me and the struggling daylight. I closed
+my eyes again with a creepy feeling, a disinclination to look again, but
+my bare arm, which still lay outside the coverlet, received another
+intimation that roused me to keen alertness. A chill wind was blowing
+over my skin.
+
+I drew in my arm hastily, and opened my eyes. That tall gray something
+had approached much nearer to me, and now I could distinguish with
+perfect clearness the figure of a man, but such a wavering, fluid form
+that one moment seemed on the point of dissolving into thin air, and the
+next moment gathering itself together again in clear cut outline.
+
+For what seemed to me a long time I stared at the gray apparition. I
+felt a cold fear, a rigid horror creep over me, and but for the
+recollection of my husband's nearness, and the open door between us, I
+might have fainted from pure terror. I thought of calling to him, but
+something sinister in that wavering shadow made me desist. At times the
+form came quite close to the bed, but I could never see the face
+clearly; it was vague and undetermined in outline, in fact, not
+completely materialized. Not for a second did that wavering movement
+cease, that floating, shimmering motion 'twixt bed and window, of what I
+knew to be the ghost of a man.
+
+How long this unpleasant state of things continued I do not know. I was
+perfectly well aware that a ghost should be addressed in sympathetic
+terms, should be asked if any human help can be rendered, but at the
+time it never once occurred to me to speak. Gradually, as I watched that
+retreating then advancing form, at moments opaque, then almost
+transparent, I lost consciousness and fell asleep again.
+
+I was awakened a few hours later by a loud knocking at my door. I slid
+instantly out of bed, turned the key, and was confronted by the
+chambermaid, bringing my early tea.
+
+"Who was the man who killed himself in this room?"
+
+Luckily, the woman did not drop the tray, as I hurled at her this abrupt
+question. She set the tea down on a table and turned to me a scared
+face, as she answered by another question:
+
+"How ever did you find out that?"
+
+"Never mind how I found out. Please answer me. I won't get you into
+trouble," I said firmly.
+
+"It was an army gentleman. He shot himself here the night before last.
+That's all I know," was her subdued answer.
+
+Poor "army gentleman"! So you were revisiting the scene of your last
+tragedy, or had you ever left that confined space between four walls
+which witnessed the supreme mental agony of the suicide?
+
+What had prompted me to put that sudden question to the chambermaid? I
+could not tell. In the moment of waking, slipping out of bed and opening
+the door, no recollection had come to me of my earlier experience, but
+betwixt that experience and my abrupt waking at her knock knowledge must
+have been somehow afforded me of the tragedy. I knew a man had done
+himself to death in that room shortly before I occupied it.
+
+A day or two afterwards I read an account of the inquest held upon the
+body. A rankling sense of unjust treatment had preyed upon his brain.
+
+Suicide whilst of unsound mind was the verdict. Poor "army gentleman," I
+fear I could have been of little service to you, even if I had opened
+up some form of communication between myself and your disembodied soul!
+
+When one remembers how many persons occupy even one room in a hotel in
+twelve months, it seems natural that psychic phenomena should be common
+to such houses. Undoubtedly many tragedies must be enacted in every
+hotel within a comparatively short space of time, and one may, in utter
+unconsciousness, occupy a bedroom in which, but the night before, murder
+or suicide has taken place.
+
+Some years ago, I had occasion to pass a night in one of the big West
+End hotels of London. It was very full, and I had to be content with a
+very indifferent room on the main entrance floor, and looking to the
+back. The window had iron bars in front of it, through which one could
+slip one's head, but not one's shoulders. The reason for the bars was
+obvious. A wide mews ran on a level with this floor of the house, and
+failing this obstruction any one could have stepped with perfect ease
+from the pavement into the room.
+
+Thrusting my head through the bars I could see from end to end of the
+mews. On the left there was no exit, on the right was a narrow lane
+running down the side of the hotel, and leading into the main
+thoroughfare. The mews seemed very quiet, clean and respectable, and for
+one night only I decided that the room would do. I was very tired after
+passing two nights in a train, and went early to bed and fell asleep at
+once.
+
+I ascertained afterwards that I had been sleeping for five hours, when I
+was suddenly awakened by a loud noise of scuffling feet, accompanied by
+a gurgling choking sound, as if some one was struggling to find
+utterance, to gain breath.
+
+To be awakened by a noise out of a sound sleep is always a startling,
+uncomfortable experience. If the astral body has been wandering far
+afield, it has to return to the physical body in far too great a hurry
+for comfort. There is always more or less of a dislocating jar under
+such circumstances. The startled sensation is greatly accentuated when,
+in place of waking to dead silence, one awakens to unaccountable and
+very unpleasant sounds.
+
+I lay perfectly still, with every nerve tingling, and every muscle taut,
+and listened intently. The noise came from the window which was shut,
+and my heart began to beat more thickly with a dread and terror which
+had neither form nor shape. Slowly I remembered the mews outside, and
+felt instantly thankful that because of its proximity I had shut the
+window, instead of sleeping with it wide open, as is my custom.
+
+Was murder taking place out there? What was that hideous, choking sound,
+that surged in with guttural gasps from out the darkness, and which
+suggested nothing so much as a frenzied struggle of loathing and
+agonized fear?
+
+I lay shuddering and quaking as with the grip of ague. My imagination
+instantly constructed the scene so vividly suggested by the nature of
+the sounds. A man's hands were on the throat of a woman, and he was
+deliberately strangling the life out of her struggling body. I was sick
+with unspeakable agonies of dread, and for quite five minutes I could
+not summon force or motion to my limbs.
+
+If some unfortunate was being done to death it was clearly my duty to
+run to the window and give the alarm by shrieking "murder," but now I
+began to wonder if that awful struggle was taking place outside or just
+inside my room. Though the mews was well lit my blind was drawn down,
+and the room was in darkness, except for a faint reflection shining in
+from a street lamp. I had only to stretch out my hand in order to switch
+on a light above my bed, but a paralysis of fear held me.
+
+That noise of infinite pain, of frantic, dying agony, those convulsive,
+ghastly groans and scuffling of feet, and wrestling, writhing bodies,
+were spell-binding beyond the power of human conception, and the most
+awe-inspiring fantasy. I tried to reason with myself, but the horror
+scattered all reasoning, yet a sense of duty, of natural humanity, and
+anger with my own fears, kept tugging at me. It seemed as if the sounds
+were losing force, were beginning to die out. I was lying still in
+abject terror, whilst a fellow-creature was being deliberately done to
+death.
+
+A blind fury with myself, and the murderer, suddenly superseded fear.
+Without turning on the light I jumped out of bed, and knocking up
+against the furniture in my haste, I dashed towards the faint light
+coming in from the street. In another moment I had thrust aside the
+blind, and thrown the window wide. I know I shouted out something; I
+have no idea what. I thrust my head out between the iron bars, and
+looked to right and left. I could see absolutely nothing. The street was
+quite empty, and so well lit that I could see from end to end of it.
+
+I drew in my head, and stood there silently, and quivering still with
+excitement, as one does when awakened with the broken fragments of an
+evil dream.
+
+Then, suddenly, a sensation of bristling fear took possession of me once
+more, unreasoning and unreasonable fear, clutching at my heart with a
+grip of ice. The noise had not ceased, it continued more faintly, and it
+came from a corner of my room to the right of the window. Murder had
+been done in the room in which I now stood, and was being re-enacted
+now. The certainty rushed on me with the force of a whirlwind.
+
+I was dimly conscious of human voices in the mews, of a window being
+thrown open. My cry had awakened other sleepers. I left my window open,
+and let the blind fall before it. Then I crept softly across to the
+opposite side of the room, whence the dying sound proceeded. The victim
+was almost dead. I could hear nothing but a gasping, rattling sigh, and
+then silence. The silence of death.
+
+I was roused from my trance of horror by the measured tread of a
+policeman outside. I heard him speaking with others, then, seeing
+nothing to account for the disturbance in the mews, he went away again,
+and I fell asleep from utter mental exhaustion.
+
+When I awoke the sun was in the room, and I looked towards the corner
+where the tragedy of the darkness had been enacted. How peaceful and
+innocent the room now looked, in the light of a cheerful summer morning,
+and how thankful I was to know that I would be far away from it in a
+very few hours.
+
+Yet another hotel story comes to me as I write.
+
+My sister and her husband came to Torquay to spend a couple of nights
+and took rooms in one of the principal hotels. They had not announced
+their arrival beforehand, and the manageress took them upstairs to see
+several vacant rooms. There was one not shown to them, but the door was
+wide open, and my sister seeing that it was unoccupied walked in, and
+said she preferred it to any of the others, because of its particular
+view.
+
+For some unknown reason the manageress was greatly against their taking
+it; she raised every sort of objection, but my sister was firm, and
+finally the luggage was carried up and she began to unpack, whilst her
+husband went down to order tea.
+
+After a few minutes, and whilst she was on her knees beside the trunk,
+she heard some one moving in the room behind her, but she could see
+nothing. It occurred to her, however, that some tragedy might have taken
+place in that particular room, which would explain the reluctance of the
+manageress to let them hire it. Not being of a nervous disposition, my
+sister thought no more of the matter, and went downstairs to join her
+husband.
+
+That night she was awakened by something, she never knew what, but on
+opening her eyes she saw a rather disturbing vision. Close to the door
+stood the figure of a man, looking straight towards her. His figure was
+brilliantly luminous, and stood out clearly and distinctly in the
+darkness of the room.
+
+She awakened her husband, who sat up in bed and stared back at the
+figure. He saw it as clearly and distinctly as his wife saw it, and for
+some considerable time they watched it, until it gradually faded out.
+
+What is so sad is that they did not address this ghost. They had every
+opportunity, for at the same hour the same figure appeared the next
+night. It never tried to approach them: it simply stood there quietly
+for about an hour, and then vanished. Probably it was the wraith of a
+suicide. The fact remains that very few people do address the ghosts
+they see. Even if they are not afraid, it never seems to occur to seers
+that to speak to the disembodied might be a very kind and helpful thing
+to do.
+
+On their return home my brother-in-law told this story to some friends
+at his Club, and a stranger who was present said that he was aware there
+was a haunted room in that Torquay hotel, for he knew some one else who
+had seen it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+AN AUSTRIAN ADVENTURE
+
+
+Only once did I ever see an elemental of the terrifying type, and I have
+no desire to repeat the experience.
+
+Several years ago I was traveling alone on my way to Bohemia. With me,
+in the railway carriage, I had an aluminum traveler's typewriter,
+enclosed in, and fastened down to a leather case. I had also a large
+leather dispatch box, containing several chapters of a new novel I was
+writing, and which I meant to finish whilst abroad.
+
+At the last moment, just as I was starting on my journey, a friend had
+given me a small Russian ikon, and I had put that in the box with my
+writing materials.
+
+On reaching the frontier into Austria, I got out with the other
+travelers, carrying the typewriter in my hand to ensure its safety. A
+porter brought along the dispatch box, and the luggage from the van to
+the Custom House.
+
+I had nothing to declare and said so, but when the officials came to
+look at the typewriter and the contents of the dispatch box, their civil
+attitude changed, and I was curtly told that I would have to remain
+behind, in order that a more thorough examination might be made.
+
+There was little use in expostulating, no one took the smallest notice
+of any explanations I made, and I had the unhappy fate to behold all my
+fellow travelers stream out onto the platform, and make for the waiting
+train, and the growing conviction that they would proceed on their
+journey without me.
+
+When alone with the officials I had the field to myself, and I explained
+that I was a British subject, and a British novelist, but they merely
+looked at me with the same blend of incredulity my fellow countrymen so
+often favor me with, when they accidentally discover that I am
+synonymous with the writer, Violet Tweedale.
+
+How well I know the look and the words accompanying it: "Are you Violet
+Tweedale, the novelist? Well! who'd have thought it? I never would have
+guessed."
+
+Their expression says plainly enough, "You don't look capable of writing
+out a laundry bill, far less a novel."
+
+Seeing that my statements made no impression upon the Customs officials,
+I resigned myself to an unknown fate, and in a few moments, looking
+through the open door, I had the misery of seeing my train glide out of
+the station, leaving me behind.
+
+An animated conversation now began which occupied at least ten minutes,
+and my typewriter and dispatch box were subjected to a most rigid
+scrutiny. I kept on imploring the officials not to break the typewriter,
+but they paid no heed, and at last, after playing about with it for some
+time, they requested me to give them an exhibition of its powers. Alas!
+it was too late. The machine was thoroughly upset with the rough
+fingering it had been subjected to, and I could not get it to work.
+
+I saw that this fact was set down as another black mark of suspicion
+against me, and they then began another long discussion upon the ikon. I
+began to be so bored and tired that I sat down on my trunk, lit a
+cigarette, and attempted to preserve a certain amount of outward calm,
+whilst mentally I raged furiously within.
+
+I noticed that a messenger had been sent out of the room, but could not
+catch the object of his errand. When all chattering and gesticulating
+together, they abandoned ordinary German, and fell into a dialect of
+their own which I could not understand.
+
+In a few moments the messenger returned with two more officials, and a
+waiter from the station restaurant. The waiter was given a chapter of my
+novel--each chapter had an ordinary exercise book to itself--and told to
+translate my English into German.
+
+I presume he honestly tried to do his best, but the translation bore no
+resemblance to the original. Even the officials soon wearied of the
+fumbled nonsense, and the waiter was sent away.
+
+Then the head official informed me that I might continue my journey by
+the next train, but I must consider myself under arrest, till further
+information concerning my business and identity was obtained. He
+informed me, finally, that I was a Russian spy.
+
+I retaliated by informing him that I was a British subject. That my
+husband was at that moment in Bavaria, and directly I could communicate
+with him he would obtain my release through our Embassy at Vienna. Never
+did I regret anything more than my own stupidity in having left my
+much-vised passport behind me in England.
+
+The typewriter was then closed down, tied with string and heavily
+sealed. I was ordered to carry it myself, and place it in the very
+center of an empty luggage wagon.
+
+As I complied it flashed upon me that they had never seen a typewriter
+before, and suspected it to be a sort of infernal machine. My dispatch
+box disappeared altogether, and I got into a first-class carriage,
+accompanied by two very smart attendants. They wore cocked hats, much
+gold braid, and many gold buttons, and they each carried a sword and a
+revolver, with which to shoot me, I presume, if I tried to run away.
+
+We three were not alone in the carriage. In a corner sat a dark man with
+a small black mustache, and smoking a very long cigar. He was neatly
+dressed in a long dust coat, and on his smooth black hair he wore a
+brown Homburg hat. In one dark eye was a single monocle, through which
+he regarded me with a mild surprise.
+
+I saw at once that if I was to be burdened with the constant society of
+my two officials for several days, the only thing to do was to make
+friends with them. The circumstances had not arisen through any fault of
+theirs, and they had to obey the orders of their superiors. Both were
+men who looked between the age of thirty to forty, and they had quite
+pleasant faces. I began by offering them cigarettes from my case--no
+Customs officials object to enough tobacco being carried to last out a
+journey--and they accepted my civility with profuse thanks.
+
+The man in the corner still regarded us from time to time with interest,
+and when we had finished our cigarettes he leaned forward and most
+politely offered us each a big cigar. The voice of this person so
+amazed me that in refusing with thanks, and saying I never smoked
+cigars, I looked very closely at him. The voice was that of a cultured
+gentlewoman, and that was exactly what this person turned out to be. Not
+a man, but a woman dressed exactly to resemble a man. When she stood up
+I saw that she wore a divided skirt, and by the manner in which my
+guards addressed her when they accepted her cigars, I knew that she was
+some great personage. Later on I discovered that she was a member of the
+Imperial House of Austria. She spoke English perfectly, and I explained
+my position, which seemed to amuse her immensely. We found that we had
+mutual friends, and we were chattering most amicably when I reached my
+destination.
+
+Evidently a wire had preceded us, for other officials were waiting on
+the platform to take possession of the typewriter, and I said good-by to
+it, as I thought, forever.
+
+The amazement of the hotel manager may be imagined when he saw me arrive
+under escort. Though I had engaged my rooms he had never seen me before,
+and I was secretly uneasy lest he should refuse to take me in under the
+circumstances, but my attendants appeared to possess unlimited
+authority. I was shown into a good bedroom at the very end of the
+corridor. The manager spoke perfect English, and I explained my position
+from my point of view. He was quite civil, but I thought rather
+non-committal. He evidently did not like the situation, but at that
+moment I had a stroke of luck.
+
+There entered the head waiter, carrying the usual paper of
+identification which one always fills in abroad. His face was quite
+familiar to me. I never forget a face, but I cannot always fit a name to
+it. Where had I seen this man before? Then in a flash I remembered. It
+was in Egypt.
+
+When I had filled the paper, both men remaining in the room, I recalled
+myself to his memory, and the occasions when he had waited upon some
+members of our royal family, to whose table I had been bidden. These
+occasions had been of comparatively recent happening, and though
+possibly not being quite sure in his recollection of me, he remembered
+our royal family perfectly, and several little personal incidents that
+had occurred whilst we were all in the same hotel.
+
+For instance, there had been a very brilliant ball given at the hotel,
+and the royalties had looked on for several hours, and included me in
+their circle. This man had been specially detailed to wait upon the
+circle, all the evening.
+
+This conversation produced a great effect upon the manager, who
+volunteered to make matters as easy as he could for me, till the Embassy
+moved. The officials would sit by the door, and not at my table during
+meals, and they would be accommodated with chairs in the corridor by the
+top of the staircase, instead of outside my bedroom door. He regretted
+that they would closely follow me whenever I went out, but doubtless I
+would communicate with my husband at once, and the mistake would soon be
+corrected.
+
+After I had had some tea, I began to feel quite light-hearted, and I
+unpacked and wrote to my husband in Bavaria.
+
+That night when I went to bed I locked my door securely, and composed
+myself to sleep after a tiring and disturbing day. I had been in a
+railway "sleeper" all the night before, and though I sleep like a top in
+a train, I am always unusually sleepy on the following night in bed.
+
+It was summer-time, and very hot weather, and my blinds were drawn up
+and the window thrown wide open. No houses faced me; I looked out on a
+big public garden.
+
+I was soon fast asleep, but was awakened again by some noise in the
+room. I lay still for a little, listening intently, all the unpleasant
+incidents of the past day rushing back upon me. The noise was not
+continuous, but now and again came the sound of something soft, dragging
+about the floor. The room was fairly light, with the glow of a waning
+moon, and I judged the hour to be between two and three o'clock.
+
+At last I determined to ascertain what produced this curious sound. I
+had an electric light over my bed, and I sat up and suddenly switched it
+on.
+
+Then I realized with horror that I was in the presence of something I
+had never encountered before, but had often read and heard of. An
+elemental of a malignant type, and of grotesque form.
+
+Just for an instant I saw nothing but what looked like an enormous
+pillow, but suddenly out of this grayish-green pillow emerged a head of
+frog-like shape, and two bright yellow eyes were fixed on mine. I
+suppose I was too terrified even to remember what my sensations were. A
+sort of paralysis of fear and horror held me spellbound. There it
+squatted, thrusting out its misshapen head, its yellow eyes regarding me
+fixedly. I have no idea how long it remained there, or how long we
+continued to gaze at one another, but I gradually became aware that it
+was receding from view. It grew smaller and smaller, and dimmer and
+more indistinct, till at length it vanished altogether.
+
+Elliott O'Donnell mentions in one of his books having seen such
+creatures, and of having had a number of such cases reported to him, but
+generally as the forerunners of illness. To such phantasms he has given
+the name of "Morbas," and he believes that certain apparitions are
+symbolical of certain diseases "if not the actual creators of the
+bacilli from which these diseases arise." This seems to me to be a
+reasonable explanation of such phenomena, but in my case there was no
+disease in question. I was perfectly well at the time, and remained so.
+It is possible, however, that a sick person might have occupied my room
+the night before. One never knows in hotels, and I had not then read
+O'Donnell's explanation and made no inquiries. Many of the experiences
+related in his deeply interesting books are no doubt regarded as
+fiction, but I know that they are cases common to very many psychics.
+
+For some time I lay awake, fearful of a recurrence of the horrible
+phenomenon, but gradually sleep overcame me, and I did not wake again
+till seven o'clock on a lovely summer morning.
+
+That day I took two long walks, closely followed by my escort. They
+walked immediately behind me, and often we stopped to converse, or to
+sit down to rest and smoke a cigarette together. They told me all their
+family history, and about their wives and children, and really they made
+themselves as agreeable as they possibly could. In the afternoon we
+climbed up the mountains to one of the many cafes, and had chocolate and
+cakes, which they thoroughly enjoyed. When I finally went back to the
+hotel for the night they complained of being tired, and hoped I would
+not walk so far on the morrow. Their idea of enjoyment was the usual
+foreign custom of taking a seat outside a street cafe, and sitting there
+hour after hour idly watching the passers-by, smoking endless cigarettes
+and drinking beer.
+
+That night I prepared myself for a recurrence of the abnormal phenomenon
+I had witnessed, and gathered up all my courage, and decided to attack
+it with the Sacred command. For a long time I lay awake, but nothing
+happened, and finally I fell asleep.
+
+I awoke to pandemonium. My room was in a hub-bub of high-pitched noise.
+Screams of glee and frolic, shouts of thin laughter, and pattering feet
+with little thuds interspersed. The sounds were all pitched in an
+unknown key. They can best be described as ordinary sounds intensely
+rarefied, and pitched in so high a treble that they had run out of the
+scale altogether.
+
+It was a much darker night, and very hot. Thunder clouds hung over the
+town, and now and again there was a gleam of lightning and a mutter of
+distant thunder. I peeped over the edge of the bed, but could see
+nothing. The noises continued with unabated merriment. A hundred
+creatures of sorts apparently were playing round me.
+
+Summoning all my courage I sat up and switched on the light. What I saw
+must read like pure nonsense to the majority, but nevertheless I mean to
+record facts as they happened to me.
+
+About a dozen small forms, half-man, half-animal, were playing leap-frog
+round the room. They were about three feet in height, some slightly
+smaller, and though their bodies, legs and feet were human, their heads
+resembled apes.
+
+I forgot all about being afraid, they were so amazingly grotesque, and
+they were so thoroughly happy. One would go down on all fours, and the
+creatures immediately behind him would leap his back, and so on down the
+chain, and all the while they kept up that shrill, high-pitched note of
+intense enjoyment.
+
+I have come to the conclusion that it was the light that finally put an
+end to their revels. They took no heed of me, but gradually their
+energies flagged, they faded and became blurred in outline; one by one
+they simply went out like sparks until not one was left.
+
+Though I occupied that room for a month I was never disturbed again.
+Perfect quiet reigned for the rest of my stay.
+
+At the end of five days a police official came to call upon me, and
+informed me that my identity had been perfectly established by the
+British Embassy at Vienna, and that my escort was now withdrawn. He also
+begged to return my typewriter, rendered utterly useless I discovered,
+to my great dismay, and the dispatch box arrived intact the next
+morning.
+
+I have no explanation to offer of the phenomena I have described. They
+belong to the many unsolved mysteries that constantly surround us. It
+will be said that my mind was in an excited and abnormal condition owing
+to my adventures in the Customs House, and that I probably imagined the
+scene instead of really seeing the creatures I have described.
+
+I agree that probably my mental faculties, for the time being, were
+possibly abnormal, but I hold that when the consciousness is in an
+abnormal condition it is naturally much easier to see the abnormal. At
+ordinary times the veil of the flesh seems denser, and the consciousness
+much less acute.
+
+The question seems to me to hang more on the query--do such creatures
+actually exist, than on the argument did I, or did I not see them? There
+are creatures living in the physical world quite as horrible to look
+upon as the astral entities I saw. The octopus and some apes, for
+instance. Innumerable people of unimpeachable veracity have testified to
+seeing grotesque and hideous creatures, which can only be placed in the
+category of astral denizens, and in that category I place the phenomena
+I certainly witnessed on two successive nights.
+
+The following story has been given to me by a barrister who kindly
+allows me to give his name:
+
+    E. F. WILLIAMS, B.A.
+    Trinity College, Cambridge.
+
+"It is clear that Needle Jim was murdered by the proprietor, Corbett of
+the Tally Ho, and that his wraith haunted the spot. Horses appear to be
+as sensitive as dogs are to apparitions, and there are several instances
+on record where horses have been the means of bringing murder to light.
+
+"It is a difficult matter, indeed, to be asked to write a ghost story if
+you do not believe in ghosts; however, I will endeavor to relate the
+nearest approach to one which has come within my knowledge.
+
+"The winter of the year 1849 was an exceptionally severe one, very heavy
+falls of snow and deep drifts in many places, especially in the
+neighborhood of Worcester, near which the scene of my story lies.
+
+"It was, in those days, the custom of packmen as they were called, to
+travel around the country with various assortments of goods--calling at
+the various farmhouses and cottages offering their wares for sale; some
+would have cutlery, some laces and ribbons, but the packman with whom we
+are concerned carried pins, needles, and such like, hailing from
+Redditch, where they are manufactured. He used to go his round four
+times a year, and was known by the name of Needle Jim.
+
+"About the beginning of January, in spite of the snow, Jim left
+Worcester for Upper Onslow, Clayton and Broadway, with a view of going
+to Cleobury Mortimer, Wyn Forest, and back to Redditch. Apparently he
+was seen at Onslow and Clayton, but after that, there was no further
+trace of him.
+
+"Now at the village of Broadway, there is a little cider house called
+the Tally Ho, and a few cottages. The road is narrow, with three very
+sharp corners, protected only from a very steep dingle by an ill-kept,
+low, out-of-repair hedge--very dangerous on a dark night. The old
+proprietor of the inn, named Corbett, lived there with his old wife, and
+was in the poorest of circumstances, the customers at the inn not being
+very numerous. Nothing more was heard of Needle Jim.
+
+"Now opposite the Tally Ho, on the far bank of the dingle, was a piece
+of ground facing the south, and old Corbett thought it would make an
+excellent cherry orchard. So the hitherto impecunious Corbett bought a
+portion, and when he had bought it he fenced it round, and from the
+opposite side it looked exactly the shape of a coffin, and the coffin
+piece it is called to this day.
+
+"At the time of which I am writing, if was permissible after a man had
+been hung, for his relatives to take the body away home for burial. One
+day, two men arrived at the Tally Ho, with such a body fastened across
+the back of a horse; tying up the horse they went into the inn for some
+refreshment, shortly to be called out by a woman who said the horse,
+burden and all, had jumped over the hedge into the dingle and was lying
+at the bottom. They hurried down and there found the horse with his neck
+broken and his ghastly burden under him. It was a curious fact that
+after the disappearance of Needle Jim, horses approaching this corner
+broke into heavy sweats and showed great signs of fear, and a number of
+people preferred to travel by the longer route, _via_ the Hundred Horse.
+
+"Some years ago some alterations were being made to the front of an old
+hotel in a little country town about five miles from the scenes depicted
+above, and on raising the large flagstone of the bottom step, there was
+discovered the skeleton of a man with his skull smashed. The old folks
+declared it must be the body of the missing packman; anyhow, after the
+discovery, the spirit or ghost seems to have departed from the precincts
+of the Tally Ho.
+
+"Now I am not a believer in ghosts or their allies, but when I was a
+small boy I went on my pony accompanied by two servants, who were taking
+a parcel to a house next door to the Tally Ho, and whilst they were
+inside the house, all at once the pony snorted and started full gallop
+for home as hard as he could go; we parted company going down a steep
+hill, and I have often thought it was a good thing for me we did, for if
+he had bolted into his stable (which he did do) I should probably have
+had my head smashed, as the doorway was very low.
+
+"Still, I do not believe in ghosts, I think it is more convenient not
+to!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+ACROSS THE THRESHOLD
+
+
+Once upon a time I had an interesting experience showing how often one
+may be in the presence of the disembodied without being in the least
+aware of the fact.
+
+It was a bright, cold day in October, with a biting wind and brilliant
+sunshine. About midday I was walking up a long avenue leading to a great
+house. On either side of me, for a mile or so, lay flat, open grass
+country, pasturages full of grazing cattle. The trees bordering the
+avenue stood at about thirty feet apart; they were gigantic beeches of
+considerable age. Their silvery trunks of wide girth were smooth and
+straight, and in no way impeded the view on all sides. The avenue was
+wide and straight and bordered by grass out of which the trees sprang.
+
+As I turned in at the lodge gate I noticed, without any particular
+interest, a woman walking in front of me, but in a very few moments I
+began to pay more attention to her obvious peculiarities. She was about
+twenty-five to thirty feet ahead of me, moving in the same direction,
+and the view I had of her back began to puzzle me. On that decidedly
+chilly morning she wore a white muslin dress, a material never used out
+of doors even in summer in that northern clime. Over her shoulders
+floated something mauve and flimsy, and on her head was what looked like
+an old-fashioned poke-bonnet.
+
+Her back looked young, and yet she was a creature of a bygone century,
+and knowing every one within a twenty-mile radius of where I walked I
+speculated as to who she could possibly be.
+
+Perhaps what puzzled me most was how she had managed to avoid the
+attention of the village children, who would at once have been alive to
+the novelty of her whole appearance. I looked forward to hearing all
+about her at the big house, and as seemed highly probable, meeting her
+face to face and obtaining an introduction to her.
+
+Then it suddenly occurred to me to overtake her and pass her; we were
+both walking very slowly. I at once quickened my steps, but somehow I
+never seemed to gain on her. Even this did not rouse in me the faintest
+suspicion of being in the presence of a disembodied soul, it merely
+sharpened my curiosity and urged me to greater efforts.
+
+I moved from the road to the grass which I calculated would deaden the
+sound of my footsteps, then I began to run.
+
+Still no success! The lady never turned her head to right or left, but
+was clearly aware of my pursuit, for apparently without the least effort
+she kept her distance from me.
+
+At the moment when I was feeling rather baffled and very much puzzled I
+caught sight of my friend, N., in the distance coming to meet me. "Ah!"
+I thought, as I at once slowed down to draw breath, "she will have to
+pass her and she'll tell me what her face is like."
+
+I kept eyes and attention closely fixed on the two figures as they drew
+nearer and nearer to one another. Now the stranger appeared to be
+exactly at an equal distance between us, when, lo! she simply vanished
+as utterly and entirely as the electric light one switches off in a
+room. One second there she was, perfectly and clearly visible, the next
+second, there she was not. I looked foolishly around, though I knew that
+neither to right or left was there any hiding-place, moreover my eyes
+had been fully upon her when she vanished, flicked out--
+
+How well I remember N. running up to me and without any greeting, we
+both simultaneously burst out--
+
+"Did you see her?"
+
+N. told me that the inside of the poke-bonnet was empty. The lady had no
+face.
+
+Of course we gazed around and searched behind the boles of the trees,
+but we were both aware how foolish any such proceeding was, for we had
+both been staring hard at her when she disappeared.
+
+There was a bygone tragedy connected with that part of the avenue, but
+on discussing the matter with the owner of the great house we all had to
+come reluctantly to the conclusion that the woman we had seen had no
+connection with that story. A former Lady Dalrymple had been murdered by
+one of her servants in the avenue about a hundred years previously, but
+the portraits of the deceased and the lady we had seen bore not the
+smallest resemblance. It was said that "Lady Dalrymple walked"--a tall,
+massive figure clad in a dark, heavy cloak sprinkled with snow. She had
+been done to death one January night in a snowstorm which had hidden her
+remains for several days.
+
+The apparition we had seen was that of a very slender girl or young
+woman. The interesting fact that I wish to emphasize is that had this
+young drama in muslin turned aside, slipped through the light fence,
+and struck off across the fields it would never have occurred to either
+N. or me that she was not physical. We would have speculated as to who
+she was, but out of common civility we would not have followed her. We
+would have made casual inquiries as to who she was, simply out of
+curiosity aroused by her peculiar attire, and then the trifling incident
+would have been forgotten.
+
+That sudden vanishing has rooted the experience firmly in my mind, and I
+have long since become convinced that the little story I have just told
+is an extremely common one. I believe such disembodied spirits are
+constantly with us, and that many of us see them, pass them in the
+streets, stand beside them in crowds, and accept them perfectly
+naturally as physical entities in no way different from what we are
+ourselves.
+
+Many people believe that our faculties have a limit beyond which we
+cannot go, but this is certainly not so, as it is now proved that some
+people have the X-ray sight by nature and can see far more than others.
+This faculty has nothing to do with keenness of sight, it is a question
+of sight which is able to respond to different series of vibrations.
+Undoubtedly there are many entities about us who do not reflect rays of
+light that we can see, yet who may reflect those other rays of rates of
+vibration which can be photographed.
+
+It is extremely difficult for the average person to grasp the reality of
+that which we cannot see with our physical eyes, and to realize how very
+partial our sight is, yet science continually demonstrates to us worlds
+of teeming life of whose very existence we should be ignorant so far as
+our senses are concerned.
+
+What ought clearly to be grasped is the fact that we are not separated
+from the so-called dead, save by the limitation of our consciences. We
+have not lost those gone before, we have only lost the power to see
+them, and very occasionally that power is restored to us, by what means
+we know not. All visible things are the result of invisible causes, and
+doubtless those denizens of the subtler worlds come amongst us with a
+distinct purpose in view. Sometimes that purpose can be traced to
+remorse, revenge, a quest, a strong attraction to the scene of a crime,
+but in many other cases no object can be discerned.
+
+The condition of the observer is constantly found to be absolutely
+normal. The mental conditions of both myself and N. were, as far as we
+could tell, quite normal. Our mental activity was no greater, no more
+vivid or more accurate than usual, yet we both saw an object that was
+beyond normal sense and rational vision.
+
+The fact that so often there is no connecting link between the
+apparition and his or her surroundings induces me to believe that we are
+everywhere surrounded by the denizens of the other world, and on rare
+occasions we catch a glimpse of them.
+
+Here is another utterly trivial story which emphasizes the above
+suggestion.
+
+I was lunching with my husband in a house built within the last fifty
+years. The only former occupants were known to us. We were discussing a
+letter I had that morning received and I said: "I'll go and fetch it for
+you to read." I rose and left the dining-room, and pushed open the
+half-closed door of the adjoining drawing-room.
+
+What was my astonishment to behold standing in the middle of the floor
+a tall, dark man, a total stranger. He stood exactly between the door
+and a large bow window, through which poured a flood of sunshine, and I
+paused involuntarily and stared at him. Not that there was anything the
+least peculiar about him, and, indeed, his air of great respectability
+instantly banished the flashing thought of "Burglar."
+
+The stranger returned my stare with perfect composure, and in a second
+or two during which we regarded each other I had time to observe his
+appearance. He was well dressed, all in black, with a modern, black
+broadcloth frockcoat buttoned close. He was very tall and strongly
+built, his face was sallow and heavy featured, and he wore a short,
+black beard. I bowed and addressed him:
+
+"I'm sorry! I didn't know any one was waiting. Do you wish to see me or
+my husband?" I said politely.
+
+The man made no reply, but at once began to glide, not walk, towards a
+closed glass door leading to a conservatory on the left. His eyes never
+left mine. Without opening the door he passed through it and vanished.
+
+Then I realized and darted after him, throwing open the door and staring
+beyond. Nothing! Nothing physical could have passed through a glass door
+without shattering it, and that is all there is to this story. The man
+had no connection with us nor, so far as we could learn, with the former
+occupants of the house.
+
+A very old friend of mine, Mrs. Sinclair, wife of the late Sir
+Tollemache Sinclair's second son, told me of an experience she and her
+mother once had when visiting a cousin, Major Fetherston Dilke, of
+Maxstoke Castle, Warwickshire. The Castle is ancient and surrounded by
+a moat, and within the moat lies a tennis court. In order to reach their
+rooms on the ground floor, Mrs. Sinclair and her mother had to pass
+through a great stone hall filled with fine old oak and armor. Beyond
+that their way lay through the remains of an old chapel, which once had
+been extensively damaged by fire.
+
+One evening after playing tennis till rather late, Mrs. Sinclair and her
+mother hastened indoors to change for dinner. As they passed through the
+chapel Mrs. Sinclair saw her mother suddenly shrink back against the
+wall; at the same time she exclaimed, "Oh, May, stand aside and let that
+person pass."
+
+Mrs. Sinclair looked round, but could see no one. Again her mother cried
+out insistently:
+
+"Oh, do let her pass."
+
+"But no one is here," Mrs. Sinclair assured her. Then seeing that her
+mother looked terrified she took her by the arm and hurried her to their
+rooms.
+
+When the door was shut Mrs. Sinclair tried to soothe her mother's
+agitation, and asked her what she had seen, and why she was so
+disturbed.
+
+Her mother replied: "There was a young woman in the corner who was
+trying hard to escape observation, and the sight of her gave me the most
+uncomfortable feeling. She was not a maidservant, and wore no cap. She
+was dressed in a mauve print gown with a violet sprig upon it. She might
+have been a needle-woman." Mrs. Sinclair calmed her mother as well as
+she could, and they went down to dinner together.
+
+During the meal what was her horror to hear her mother say to their
+host, "Oh, William, I feel sure there are ghosts in the Castle. I've
+seen one to-night."
+
+There was a most uncomfortable silence after this, and Major Fetherston
+Dilke looked terribly agitated.
+
+After dinner, when the ladies were alone in the drawing-room, Mrs. Dilke
+asked Mrs. Sinclair what they had seen, and on being told she explained
+that before a death in the family a certain housekeeper, who had been
+murdered, always haunted the chapel, and in consequence of this warning
+always coming true her husband was exceedingly nervous of this
+apparition. Nothing more was said upon the subject during Mrs.
+Sinclair's stay, but before the end of the year Major Fetherston Dilke
+lay dead.
+
+Such warnings are very common, and very hard to understand. They suggest
+that the apparition knows of the approaching death of a certain person,
+and that it has the power to make itself visible to certain persons, at
+certain times. Why this warning should be given is a baffling mystery.
+Again, why did not Mrs. Sinclair see this ghost when her mother so
+plainly saw it?
+
+The fact is that all sorts of most unlikely persons see apparitions,
+even the rankest unbeliever and the most matter-of-fact individual, and
+they generally see them at most unexpected moments.
+
+I remember one day walking along a country road, and seeing a dog-cart
+in the distance coming towards me. As it drew nearer I saw that it
+contained (the late) Lord Wemyss, and on recognizing me he drew up and
+jumped down.
+
+"I've got a confession to make to you," he said. "I wouldn't tell any
+one else for the world. I'd have the life chaffed out of me. I've
+actually seen a ghost."
+
+"I'm not in the least surprised. Why shouldn't you see a ghost?" I
+retorted.
+
+"Well! I never believed in them, and I didn't think I was the sort of
+man who'd ever see one. Now, if it had been Arthur Balfour there would
+have been nothing in it. He's a member of the Psychical Society, and all
+that sort of thing."
+
+"But being a member of the Psychical Society does not predispose one to
+see ghosts," I expostulated, but Lord Wemyss remained very puzzled.
+
+He told me that when about half a mile from his own front door at
+Gosford, East Lothian, he saw a man walking in front of him in the same
+direction, going towards the house. In a vague sort of way he wondered
+for a moment where this man had suddenly sprung from, as he had not
+noticed him before, but there was nothing unusual in his appearance to
+arouse curiosity. He was a stranger and looked like a foreman in his
+Sunday clothes.
+
+Lord Wemyss walked on, always keeping about ten yards between himself
+and the stranger. At a certain point he fully expected he would strike
+off by a path leading to the servants' and tradesmen's entrance, but
+rather to his surprise, the man did no such thing. He pursued an
+undeviating course towards the main entrance, and on observing this Lord
+Wemyss became more interested, and looked at him more closely.
+
+Still there was something remarkable to be observed, and concluding that
+the man, being a stranger, did not know of any other entrance, he
+quickened his steps in order to come up with him. In this he failed--the
+man kept his distance, and just as he reached the door he vanished from
+sight.
+
+I tried hard to persuade Lord Wemyss to tell this story to Mr. Balfour,
+who was so intimate a friend, but I believe he never did so. The
+interest lies in the long time, during a half-mile walk, in which the
+ghost was under observation, also in the fact that until the man
+disappeared on the doorstep Lord Wemyss had never suspected that the
+stranger was other than ordinary flesh and blood.
+
+So many people have confided their ghost stories to me, and swore me to
+secrecy, that I am convinced such experiences are very common, and only
+remain hidden either from fear of being laughed at or from being thought
+to suffer from hallucinations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+HAUNTED ROOMS
+
+
+How is it that one can "feel" a room is haunted? What is it that gives
+one the strong impression that there is something unpleasant about a
+certain room, a something that sets it apart, as a place to be avoided?
+
+The mind operates with the senses. It receives impressions through the
+air as sound, or through the ether as sight, and so forth. Through the
+various senses we catch the vibrations of consciousness belonging to our
+environment, near or far. Psychically developed persons possess an
+increase of sensibility which enables them to see, hear, and feel more
+acutely than most people. Wherever some great mental disturbance has
+taken place, wherever overwhelming sorrow, hatred, pain, terror, or any
+kind of violent passion has been felt, an impression of a very marked
+character has been imprinted on the astral light. So strong is this
+impression that often persons possessing but the first glimmer of the
+psychic faculty are deeply impressed by it. But a slight temporary
+increase of sensibility would enable them to visualize the whole scene.
+That such impressions should be imprinted on the astral light is no more
+wonderful than ordinary photography, or the impression of the human
+voice upon the cylinders of a gramophone.
+
+To me, a haunted room is always full of shadows. That is how I see it.
+That is one of several ways by which I distinguish it from other rooms.
+Other people do not always see these shadows, and the room may actually
+be flooded with sunshine when I enter it for the first time. This makes
+no difference to what I see. The shadows are there, despite the
+sunshine.
+
+There are long-drawn-out shadows, which seem to take their rise in the
+corners of the room, and creep across the floor. They are not
+motionless, but in constant vibration and re-formation, like smoke
+drifts. Such shadows are not of a uniform gray, but tinged by dull
+colors, dark red, sulphur yellow, muddy brown. In a haunted room there
+is always a shadow above one's head. A hovering cloud between the
+ceiling and midway to the floor.
+
+Then there are the sensations I feel when entering a haunted room.
+Little shivers run through me, and what I take to be nervous excitation
+sets all my spine jangling, and the tiny nerve threads quivering. The
+sensation of icy cold water trickling down my back is most unpleasant.
+
+At times a profound melancholy falls upon me, often blended with a
+poignant compassion for some one, I know not whom. At other times a
+sensation of violent repulsion invades my being, which has actually, in
+some cases, produced physical sickness. Again, there is the helpless
+feeling, and that is the hardest to bear of all such psychic
+disturbances. The feeling that something is about to occur in that room
+which I will be powerless to ward off.
+
+What can one do when paying a visit if one is ushered into a bedroom by
+one's hostess which one instantly knows to be "unhealthful"? I cannot
+find a better word to describe many a haunted room. This experience has
+several times happened to me, and unless I know my hostess very well, I
+am obliged to sleep in this unhealthful atmosphere.
+
+On one occasion I was invited to dine and sleep with some old friends,
+who had taken on lease an old castle in the neighborhood of St. Andrews,
+where I happened to be staying. They had only been in residence for a
+month or two, an old brother and an old sister, whom I had known all my
+life.
+
+In spite of this long friendship they were not the sort of people to
+whom I could have said, "Would you mind giving me another room? The one
+you have selected for me is haunted, and if I remain in it I will have
+no sleep. I shall not even dare to try to sleep, but shall have to keep
+awake all night to ward off the evil." They would have been both shocked
+and indignant at such a suggestion, and probably have concluded that I
+had gone stark staring mad.
+
+I had accepted a seat in a carriage belonging to some friends in St.
+Andrews, who were also going to the castle to dine, but who were
+returning to sleep in their own homes in the town.
+
+It was twilight when we drove up the long avenue, and caught a first
+glimpse of the exterior. A typical old Scotch castle, very large, with
+high-peaked roofs and pepper-box turrets, and all built of gray stone.
+
+About an hour before dinner I was conducted to my room. My evening dress
+was already spread upon the bed, and the housemaid was arranging my
+toilet articles on the dressing-table.
+
+"I think you will be comfortable here, my dear," said my kind hostess,
+and I thanked her with a sinking heart as she went away.
+
+As the housemaid prepared to follow her I said, "Am I the only person
+sleeping on this floor?"
+
+She answered, "You are the only one in this wing, miss."
+
+"It is a very large house, I suppose?"
+
+"Twenty-six bedrooms," answered the housemaid, "but we've shut up most
+of them. This one has such a good view that Miss Young thought it ought
+to be used." With that she went away, and I looked round.
+
+Six lighted candles and a big wood fire seemed only to accentuate the
+profound gloom and depression of the large, irregular room. The very
+first thing I did was to throw a towel over the face of the mirror on
+the dressing-table. Then I investigated every nook and corner.
+
+There was a powdering closet formed in a pepper-box turret. The carpet
+of the room stopped short at its door, and inside the boards looked
+loose and uneven. I fetched a candle and soon discovered that the
+floorboards lifted up quite easily, and beneath them was a black yawning
+hole, an _oubliette_, through which wretched prisoners were cast in days
+not so long ago.
+
+I replaced the boards, telling myself that in the morning I would have a
+look at the outside of this black shaft. It probably ended, as most of
+such places did end in the old Scotch castles, in a big dungeon
+underground.
+
+Inside my big room there were sloping ceilings, and great beams, and an
+enormous fireplace had been bricked up to suit more modern requirements.
+There were two doors, the one I had entered by and another which was
+locked and keyless. The window, with the view, was hidden by heavy red
+curtains, and the atmosphere was musty and dank, like that of a vault.
+
+As I stared around me I could not help thinking what an unfortunate
+thing it is to be born without any imagination. Any one possessed of a
+spark of that quality would have hesitated before putting a young guest
+into so gloomy a chamber, the only room occupied in that wing.
+
+"No sleep possible here," I told myself grimly, as I began to dress.
+Then I set myself to "feel after" what was really wrong with the room.
+Supposing I did fall asleep, what would happen? Would some one come and
+try to strangle me in the night? That had actually happened to many
+people. Would I suddenly awake to the fact that some one unseen was
+pulling off the bedclothes? That was also a trick common to ghostly
+visitants.
+
+Gradually I gathered impressions, very unpleasant ones. I became
+positively certain that I was being watched intently. Some one, present
+in the room, though unseen by me, was watching my every movement. That
+some one violently resented my occupation of the room, was intensely
+hostile, and meant to make things nasty for me later on that night.
+Wherever I moved I felt that malignant eyes followed me, and I kept
+glancing over my shoulder at every crack of the furniture, and the
+scratching of a mouse in the wainscot. It was in the stretches of dead
+silence that the presence became most imminent, most menacing, and I had
+a strong instinct to set my back against the wall and face right out
+into the room.
+
+Again I was confronted by the mirror problem. I had become certain that
+it must remain covered. If I looked into its surface I knew I would see
+something horrible. Something kept whispering to me, "Never mind how you
+look, never mind if your bodice is all awry, or your skirt all askew, or
+your hair all bulging out on one side. Don't uncover the mirror if you
+value your sanity. What there is to be seen can only become visible in
+the mirror. Don't worry after explanations, or why this should or how it
+could be. Do as I tell you. Keep the mirror covered and when you come up
+to bed keep your back to the wall."
+
+Dressing was a very rapid process that night, and when completed, so far
+as circumstances would allow, I found I still had twenty minutes to wait
+until the dinner gong would ring. I sat down with my back against the
+wall, and surveyed the depressing apartment with a gloomy anticipation.
+Where was that stealthy watcher, whose baleful eyes I felt were fixed
+upon me? I could see nothing. I could only feel acutely that I was not
+alone, and that I was "in for" an awful night.
+
+Oh! to get away, and leave that malignant unseen watcher in undisputed
+possession of his dismal abode! I was quite certain of the gender! Then
+a chance of deliverance flashed over me. I could return after dinner to
+St. Andrews with the friends who had brought me. But I had accepted the
+invitation to stay the night. What possible excuse could I make for
+cutting short my visit? In this case the truth was no use; in fact,
+worse than useless. Not only would my host and hostess utterly fail to
+understand what I was talking about, but they would be exceedingly
+indignant, and look upon me as absolutely insane.
+
+As falsehood had to be resorted to, I surely could invent some plausible
+excuse that would hurt no one's feelings, but the only excuse I could
+think of was illness. I must tell my hostess that I feared I was "in
+for" an illness of some sort, and the wisest thing to do was to drive
+back to St. Andrews and be laid up in my own bed. The most hospitable
+person would rather not have a sick guest under her roof. The excuse I
+proposed to make seemed to me to be the one most likely to be accepted
+without much fuss.
+
+I did not determine upon this plan without a certain amount of wavering.
+"After all," I told myself, "it is only for one night, and what can this
+entity do but give you a very creepy and disturbed night. You will have
+to sit up against the wall, and defend yourself by the power of the
+Cross, bidding it begone, in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the
+Holy Ghost. This you may have to do many times, but the night won't last
+forever, and you had best try to make the best of things, and not risk
+offending old friends."
+
+It did seem hard that I dared not tell the truth. Had the entity been in
+the flesh how easy it would have been. Who has not, at some time or
+another in her life, found herself unwittingly to be an unwelcome guest,
+and made to feel "if you don't go away at once you will regret it"?
+Sometimes one comes across persons who for some private reason dread
+being overlooked, or who love their hermitage so dearly that they refuse
+to be amiable, to even the most swiftly passing guest. Old people are
+often like that, every one knows, or has known, of such people in the
+flesh. Yet how few believe that such unpleasant traits persist just as
+strongly after so-called death, as before. What should suddenly change a
+man's whole disposition the moment he "shuffles off this mortal coil"?
+
+I felt I was now in the presence of one who dreaded being overlooked,
+and who sought to get rid of me by every device in his power.
+
+Whilst thinking thus my mind was irrevocably made up for me.
+
+My attention was suddenly drawn towards a soft stealthy noise. Padded
+footsteps. Something had come near, and was creeping warily round in
+front of me. I felt the eyes upon me. I was being regarded more closely.
+What was about to follow?
+
+I leapt to my feet, and raising my arm made the sign of the Cross. "I
+bid you begone, in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."
+
+There was a moment's pause of utter silence. The atmosphere struck
+suddenly chill as ice. A curious sensation of emptiness crept over the
+room. I was alone, but for how long would I remain alone?
+
+I hurried downstairs and tried to play my part, and during the course of
+the evening I told my falsehoods as naturally as I could. At half-past
+ten I drove off to St. Andrews with a light heart, and an utter
+indifference to the consequences.
+
+I believe that my falsehoods did not, however, "go down," for I never
+was asked again to that house.
+
+Perhaps it was as well, for I certainly never would have set foot in it
+again, and I had sacrificed the truth quite sufficiently upon this one
+occasion.
+
+I had no difficulty in finding out what sort of reputation the castle
+bore. Every one agreed that it was haunted. I asked one elderly woman
+who had lived all her life in St. Andrews, and who knew the whole
+country intimately, what she thought of S. Castle.
+
+"Horrible, haunted old place. I can't think how the Youngs could have
+taken it," she replied.
+
+"But what sort of ghosts haunt it?" I asked.
+
+"Old Sir James and his son. They were in league with the Devil, and the
+son, another James, used to murder people and throw them down into the
+dungeon. He was beheaded in the reign of Charles the First."
+
+"Have you known any one who has ever seen anything?" I persisted.
+
+"No, but my father remembered as a young man seeing a pile of human
+bones being removed from the dungeon, and buried in the churchyard. The
+late people lived to be very old, and always kept Sir James' wing shut
+up. Now the place has changed hands, and probably the Youngs will never
+be disturbed. They are installed in the most modern part of the house,
+and won't need to use the haunted wing."
+
+It must not be supposed that all haunted houses or rooms are unpleasant
+to live in. People in the flesh are either pleasant or unpleasant,
+disturbing or tranquil to live with, and so it is with their astral
+counterparts. When they elect to haunt the scenes of their old
+activities some ghosts are so inoffensive that they can be lived with
+under the most tranquil conditions.
+
+One autumn we took a shooting lodge in the far North of Scotland, and
+though I recognized at once that it was frequented by an entity from the
+"other side," I experienced no uneasy feelings whatever.
+
+We had not been in residence longer than three hours before this ghost
+put in an appearance.
+
+We were in a lively confusion of unpacking and settling down. Several
+large trunks had been carried upstairs, and set down on a wide corridor
+on to which the bedrooms opened.
+
+I was on my knees unpacking one of those trunks, our dog "Pompey" was
+seated beside me superintending matters, and my maid was standing at my
+side waiting to carry various articles into the different rooms. The
+hour was midday, and the early autumn sunshine flooded the house.
+
+Suddenly "Pompey" growled, and turned towards the staircase, with all
+his hair bristling. I also looked round and saw a tall, quite ordinary
+man mounting the staircase.
+
+I thought nothing of this, supposing him to be the factor whom we
+expected, and I rose to my feet at once. He came on along the corridor
+straight towards us, and looking directly at us, but when within about
+ten feet from where we stood he suddenly vanished.
+
+I heard my maid give a sharp exclamation, and at the same instant
+"Pompey" made a furious dash at the spot, and growling angrily began to
+pursue something invisible to us, down the stairs.
+
+I followed as quickly as I could. I feared "Pompey" would be lost if he
+ran out into the deer forest surrounding us on all sides. I caught him
+at the deer fence, edging the vegetable garden, and induced him with
+some difficulty to return to the house.
+
+My maid and I compared notes. What I had seen accorded exactly with what
+she had seen. She soon got over her uncomfortable experience, and though
+I never saw this entity again, I often felt him near me. He was,
+however, of so colorless a personality, that he never proved in the
+least disturbing to any one in the house.
+
+At the time of which I write the Astral Plane was not so generally
+recognized as an actual residential quarter as it is now. In these days
+a halfway house for the soul was not considered necessary for
+Protestants. They either went direct to heaven or hell, according to
+their manner of life on earth. The Catholics alone had their Purgatory,
+to which the departed souls repaired, there to slough off the passions
+of earth and fit themselves for higher realms.
+
+Purgatory and the Astral Plane mean the same thing now to the vast
+majority of thinkers. A halfway house for the soul. A condition of
+consciousness interpenetrating this earth, which may actually be visited
+under certain conditions by those still possessing a physical body, an
+abode so contiguous to this world as to make the words of the Poet
+literally true--
+
+"All houses wherein men have lived and died are haunted houses."
+
+In these days I used to get severely chaffed on the subject of the
+Astral Plane. Frivolous young things would say to me, "Hello! been on
+the Astral Plane lately?"
+
+One day I was undergoing a certain amount of good-natured chaff from a
+number of young people at Dunrobin Castle. I defended my beliefs
+vigorously, and at last the present Lady Londonderry, then Miss Chaplin,
+the Duke's niece, challenged me to pick out the haunted room in the
+Castle.
+
+I had never at that time been in any part of the building save in one
+bedroom, and the public rooms. I at once took up the challenge, and the
+Duke remarked that I had my work cut out for me, as several of the rooms
+had a reputation for being haunted.
+
+I replied that I would undertake to pick out a room where life was still
+actively carried on by those who had suffered something terrible on that
+spot in the past, and who were now denizens of the Astral Plane.
+
+A small crowd of us then started, led by Miss Chaplin, and we went from
+room to room. She opened the door and remained with the others on the
+threshold. I walked into each room alone and gathered impressions.
+
+In several of the rooms I felt the presence of astral entities, but
+nothing of a strong or unpleasant nature. At last we came to a room
+occupied by a maid, sitting alone, sewing, and I felt instantly that my
+quest was at an end.
+
+There was a sharp atmosphere of anguish that was quite unmistakable;
+some ghastly tragedy had taken place within those four walls, but I said
+nothing before the sewing woman. I felt drawn towards the window, the
+trouble was centered there. If I remember rightly, the room was high up,
+and overlooking, not the sea, but a paved courtyard.
+
+I walked back to the others with my finger on my lip, and Miss Chaplin
+closed the door behind me.
+
+"We need not go any further; that is the haunted room," I said, in a low
+voice that could not reach the woman inside.
+
+"You're right. You've found it," was the answer.
+
+I heard the story when we went downstairs, but I can only recollect that
+it had to do with a Lady Sutherland, who had been brutally flung out of
+the window.
+
+I will now relate a curious incident of haunting by elementals, and it
+will be seen that such hauntings may quite easily appear to the ordinary
+observer as an abnormal occurrence to which no clue can be given.
+
+What is an elemental? It is only when the mystic has advanced in her
+studies that she discovers how manifold evolution is, and how small a
+part humanity really fills in the economy of nature.
+
+When the microscope is used myriads of germs of life, unsuspected by us,
+are revealed; even so the invisible planes connected with this earth
+contain myriads of forms of life, of whose existence most of us are
+unconscious. When we read of a "good or bad elemental" it must always
+be either an artificial entity, or one of the many varieties of nature
+spirits that is meant. I will deal now with a case of the artificial
+variety.
+
+Such elementals are formed out of the elemental essence lying behind the
+mineral kingdom. It is the monadic essence, or material used in
+creation, or it may be called the outpouring of Divine force into
+matter. This elemental essence is marvelously sensitive to human
+thought, however fleeting. It responds instantly to the vibrations set
+up consciously or unconsciously by human will or desire. The influence
+of thought can mold a living force, good or evil, into an existence,
+evanescent or lasting. Such shapes possess a certain appropriateness to
+the character of the desire which calls them into existence, though they
+generally possess distortions, either unpleasant or terrifying.
+
+Persons who play with, or use for some malign purpose, Black Magic,
+generally have a swarm of such semi-intelligent entities surrounding
+them, and professional Black Magicians can call artificial elementals of
+great power into existence, and use them for their fell designs.
+
+As a rule, however, the enormous inchoate mass of entities, known as
+elementals, are beings of human thought creation, created in no
+malicious spirit, but more often the result of curiosity, and tampering
+with a very dangerous power, as yet little understood. The amateur
+magician on passing over to the other side by no means loses his taste
+for the grotesque and abnormal, and often continues to play pranks on
+those left behind, by means of the dangerous powers he has acquired
+whilst on earth.
+
+I was visiting some old friends in the South of England. Some years
+before they had succeeded to a fine inheritance, and it was the first
+time that I had stayed with them in that house. I did not experience any
+uncomfortable sensations in the bedroom appointed to me. It was early
+summer-time when there is but a short spell of darkness, and I was on
+such intimate terms with my hostess, herself a psychic, that I had only
+to say I disliked the atmosphere of my bedroom, to have it changed.
+
+The former mistress of the house had been a very remarkable woman whom I
+had known intimately. She was brilliantly clever and accomplished, and
+charming to talk to, but unfortunately she took a vivid interest in
+occultism of the wrong sort--in Black Magic. Anything to do with spells,
+witchcraft, elementals, incantations, attracted her enormously, and she
+had a very considerable knowledge of the subject. I have no doubt she
+could have worked a great deal of mischief had she been so inclined, but
+luckily her designs were more impish than malign.
+
+I often warned her that there was undoubted danger in such researches,
+and that she was certain to attract about her elementals of a most
+undesirable kind, but my warnings went unheeded, and to the time of her
+death her interest in the dark subject never flagged.
+
+She had not died in the house I had come to stay in, but it occurred to
+me as I dressed for dinner that I was in her old bedroom.
+
+This suggestion came to me suddenly, and to the accompaniment of a
+sound. A sound more felt than heard, a sound known to the spirit rather
+than to the ear; a tiptoe silence hovering on the brink of sound's
+threshold.
+
+My surroundings gave a very pleasant impression. A glorious sunset was
+flooding the west. My room was full of golden light, and the window was
+flung wide to the warm summer air. There was nothing to be recorded
+either ghostly or uncanny, yet something was present which made me
+uncomfortable. Strange thoughts, bizarre fancies, found lodgment in my
+mind, and I stood rigid, listening intently. The room was full of
+secrets. They seemed suddenly to creep forth and whisper together.
+
+There it was again! that soft echo of a sound which was like no other
+sound. An eerie, uncanny sensation crept down my spine, a strange,
+undefinable feeling of uncertainty, not yet amounting to fear. I moved
+towards the corner of the room, whence the sound proceeded, and as I
+approached, out of that corner dropped down a huge gray moth, a second
+dropped down after it, and both lay with outstretched wings on the white
+coverlet of the bed.
+
+Now I have always had a peculiar antipathy to moths, the big furry sort.
+I can handle a spider, and bear with a black beetle, but with big woolly
+moths I cannot live happily. I saw one once under a microscope, and it
+was covered with horrid looking parasites. I am aware that other
+creatures are similarly afflicted, but this microscopic vision
+accentuated my horror of all big moths. They seem to me repulsive,
+sinister, and uncanny creatures. The curious thing is that though I
+dislike them they adore me, and I always know that if there is one in my
+parish it will find me out.
+
+On this occasion I felt a very natural desire to laugh at myself. Of
+course, the creatures had at once discovered me, and this was all that
+had resulted from my uncomfortable sensations. A feeling of scorn swept
+over me. Two moths had rustled softly. Could anything be more banal,
+more commonplace? I flung a towel over them, and finished dressing. Then
+I rang for the housemaid.
+
+When she came I told her she must accomplish the destruction of the
+occupants of my bed. I could see no moths flying about outside, but
+nevertheless the window must be kept closed till I opened it again in
+the dark, before getting into bed.
+
+She told me that she was always particular to close the windows before
+bringing in a light, as the bats were a nuisance. I assured her that I
+had no objection to a room full of bats, but I could not sleep in a room
+full of moths. She promised to look about the room whilst it was still
+light, and destroy any she found. I closed the window myself and went
+down to dinner.
+
+We were but three women present; my hostess, myself, and a friend of
+ours, and we spent a delightful evening together talking of old times.
+
+That night, before beginning to undress, I blew out my candle, and
+throwing up the window I stood looking forth upon enchantment. It was
+still light, with a luster that filled all space, and it seemed wicked
+to shut out such beauty. Westward the stars were pale, but southward one
+great dull red star shone low down on the horizon. The owls were
+haunting the gardens with their banshee notes. It was a night for the
+revelation of the fairy folk, elves and pixies, fauns and dryads,
+elfins, nymphs and satyrs. A night when she tells her secrets to her
+lovers in the psalmody of nature, when the spirits of earth, fire, air,
+and water utter softly to human souls, if they will but incline the ear
+to hearken to the message.
+
+If I want a definition of God I shall go, not to the bell and the book,
+but to a starlit, fragrant garden, where I can look long and deep into
+the passion of Creation's eyes. I will be as the old gray poet who
+wrote--
+
+    "I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
+    I call the earth and sea, half hid by the night.
+    Press close magnetic, nourishing night,
+    Night of the South wind, night of the large, few stars."
+
+Across the hushed magic came silver sweet the strokes of eleven from the
+village church, and the spell was broken. I closed the window, lit my
+candles, and prepared for bed.
+
+Just before extinguishing my lights, and re-opening the window, I
+carried a candle to the side of the bed with a box of matches. What was
+my horror on discovering that the turned-down bed and both pillows were
+liberally strewn with enormous gray moths. The sight was extraordinary,
+I literally could not believe my eyes. I stood there staring, and
+mechanically counting them. Twenty--thirty. I turned back to the
+dressing-table with the candle still in my hand. What was I to do? If I
+had the courage to destroy them, what sort of condition would the bed be
+in after?
+
+I am writing of actual facts, and without the least exaggeration. The
+smallest of those moths must have been quite an inch long in their fat
+gray bodies, and quite three inches long across the wings. I thought I
+knew most moths by sight and name, but I had never seen any like these
+before. What depressed me most was the fact that moths are attracted by
+candle-light. I had been burning four candles for quite twenty minutes,
+and not a moth had forsaken the bed for the flame. I was positively
+certain that they had not flown in whilst I stood in the dark of the
+open window. They were far too big and numerous to have escaped
+observation. What was I to do? I could not use that bed, and I now felt
+a strong repulsion for the room. I regretted deeply that the household
+must all be in bed, because I knew that no description I could give
+would convey anything like actuality, and the truth was certain to
+appear wild exaggeration.
+
+I made up my mind at once. I knew there were several unoccupied rooms on
+either side of me, and taking my lighted candle I placed it, still lit,
+in a basin on the marble-topped washstand. It should remain lit all
+night, and in the morning I would come to search for victims. The other
+candles I extinguished, all but one to take with me, and leaving the
+window still shut I softly left the room. I entered the next bedroom and
+approached the bed. Of course, there were no sheets, but the white dust
+sheet covering the blankets was spotless--there was not a moth to be
+seen anywhere. Blowing out my candle I opened the window, and getting
+into bed between the blankets I was soon fast asleep.
+
+I awakened to glorious sunshine, and looked at my wrist watch, which I
+had placed beside my bed. Six o'clock and a lovely warm summer morning.
+
+I jumped out of bed, full of curiosity regarding my visitors of
+over-night, and returned to my own room. Not a trace of a moth to be
+seen anywhere. The candle had burnt itself out, no singed wings or
+blackened bodies lay near. The window was shut. I threw it wide, and
+then I went round the room shaking curtains, looking behind pictures,
+and climbing on a chair I examined the top of the wardrobe. Not the
+faintest signs of the great gray drove of the night before. Where could
+they all have vanished to?
+
+I gave it up, and got into my own bed, to await the advent of my early
+tea. I hated having to tell the housemaid that I had been driven into
+another room, but I knew she would find out the fact for herself. She
+was obviously incredulous, and assured me she had thoroughly searched
+the room, and seen but two winged creatures; those she had removed from
+the bed. I had seen for myself when coming to bed that the window had
+remained shut. She had often seen one or two brown moths in the rooms at
+night, but she owned that never before had she seen huge gray ones.
+
+The matter was left at that, and during the day I told my hostess of my
+adventure, and she at once ordered the room I had slept in to be
+prepared for me, in case I might encounter the same difficulties again.
+I dressed for dinner in the moth-room, without catching sight of one.
+When bedtime came we three women all entered the room together.
+
+On approaching the bed, and looking down on it, no one spoke for a
+moment. Then my fellow guest exclaimed:
+
+"Well, I must say that if I had not seen this with my own eyes I never
+would have believed it."
+
+The bed was liberally sprinkled with large gray moths.
+
+My hostess shivered. "Come away, and let us shut the door. It's too
+horrible," she said.
+
+During the remainder of my visit I was perfectly comfortable in my new
+room, and the curious fact must be stated that after I had left the
+moth-room the moths forsook it too. I could discern a pitying
+incredulity in the housemaid's attitude towards me afterwards. She had
+seen but two, and she did not believe in the drove.
+
+My hostess and friend who had witnessed the phenomenon at once agreed
+that there was something more in it than an entomological curiosity. I
+would have given much for the opinion of a naturalist. What, I wonder,
+would he have made of that fat, gray flock sprinkling the bed? What
+species of moth would he have declared them to be?
+
+I have searched in many books since and never found anything the least
+resembling them, and I retain my original, firm belief that they were
+nothing more or less than a flock of elementals, sent forth as a
+practical joke by a practiced magician on the other side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+"THE NEW JEANNE D'ARC"
+
+
+Before writing on the above subject, which is proving to-day of
+absorbing interest to a very large number of people, Protestant as well
+as Catholic, I will point out a curious fact that is occultly connected
+with it.
+
+At certain periods in our normal life, certain subjects lying quite
+outside our earthly experience begin quite suddenly to be talked of and
+written upon. No one knows why, no one, outside occultism, can even form
+a conjecture why such subjects should suddenly obsess the brains of a
+considerable number of persons, why they should crop up in the most
+unexpected places, or why they should form the foundations of a
+considerable mass of literature.
+
+It would appear as if they were floating in the air at some particular
+time, and masses of people catch them up like germs, and carry them
+about until their power is exhausted.
+
+I will give an instance. In the years just before the war "The Great God
+Pan" drifted across our mental horizon and was at once drawn into our
+aura.
+
+No one knows anything about "The Great God Pan." He is supposed to
+belong to mythology, but novelists of distinction at once began to write
+upon him, not one after the other, but simultaneously. I read at least
+three thrilling novels in which he figured largely, and I myself was
+impelled to write a novel upon the same subject.
+
+I began the book knowing nothing of the god, beyond what I could gather
+from the London Library, and Frazer's "Golden Bough," but as I proceeded
+I was conscious of new information drifting in from without, and on
+finishing the book I found that other authors had been at work on the
+same subject.
+
+"The Great God Pan" appeared on the stage, and a popular actress sang a
+song about him. One heard his name mentioned constantly in society, and
+hideous stories were told of him in Bohemian art circles. He was the
+bugbear of the seance room, journalists mentioned him in quite serious
+articles, and I once heard his name spoken from a pulpit.
+
+The bare fact of this seemingly inconsequent disease (for it almost
+amounted to a disease with us) drifting into our stolid British
+atmosphere was not curious to the occultist, who is aware that at
+certain times, certain subjects are flooded in on us from "the other
+side" by those who have our welfare at heart.
+
+I never heard any explanation of why Pan should have come here to play
+quite an important part in our mental lives, or why he should have
+obsessed so many of us for about a couple of years. The more one
+discovered about him the less one liked him, but psychics are led to
+believe that there are many schemes of evolution hovering about us, and
+interpenetrating our own, though not visible to our normal
+consciousness.
+
+It may therefore be that "The Great God Pan" did actually come into our
+atmosphere, and thus his individuality impressed itself upon those whose
+minds were plastic to such impressions. Possibly he arrived on this
+earth much as an aerolite arrives, drawn out of his own orbit by the
+superior attraction of this globe.
+
+"The Great God Pan" was, what might be termed, the forerunner of the
+devil's reincarnation. The belief in a personal devil was rapidly dying
+out amongst us, in spite of "The Sorrows of Satan," and the belief in
+"The Prince of this World" so insisted upon throughout the Old and New
+Testaments.
+
+There is no more engrossing subject for the occultist to indulge in than
+gathering together every verse in the Bible dealing with "The Evil One,"
+and trying, with the aid of ancient traditions, to piece a coherent
+story together. When one gets a certain distance in the study one comes
+to the conclusion that there is a great deal more in it than meets the
+eye. It is a vast subject, and I think the most profoundly occult
+mystery extant and undeciphered.
+
+The devil now occupies a prominent position in the collective thought of
+the nation. An enormous number of people believe now in his existence,
+who would have scorned the bare idea before 1916. It was in that year
+that he began to loom large in the beliefs of quite materially minded
+people, and his advent into actual, active existence at once complicated
+matters terribly.
+
+Said a well-known writer to me, "I think there is something in it. It's
+very tiresome. I was just beginning to settle down in my beliefs, now
+I'm all upset again by this conception of a personal adversary to the
+Supreme Ruler."
+
+In the early weeks of 1917 a new impression drifted in on us.
+
+Some angel came down and stirred the pool of the world, and left with us
+"The Sacred Heart."
+
+"The Sacred Heart" was the forerunner of "The New Jeanne d'Arc," Claire
+Ferchaud.
+
+There is nothing that has more astonished the Catholic world than
+hearing "The Sacred Heart" talked of by Protestants, and actually
+adopted by them as a sacred symbol. Hitherto it has been exclusively a
+part of Catholic worship.
+
+There was such a demand for the little metal "Sacred Heart" images (a
+figure of the Christ, with hands outstretched and a flaming heart at His
+breast), that can be carried about in the pocket, that they were not to
+be bought in England, and were hard to procure abroad. Enormous numbers
+had been sent to the front by persons belonging to all denominations,
+who treasured one of their own at home. Very suddenly "The Sacred Heart"
+became an object of veneration amongst thousands to whom Roman
+Catholicism was anathema.
+
+Then came the demand from France that "The Sacred Heart" should be
+placed above the tricolor.
+
+I had not heard of Claire Ferchaud before the beginning of 1918, though
+her Divine Mission began about six years previously.
+
+Occultists began to speak of her amongst themselves as one who would yet
+save France. This hope was never lost sight of in the country's darkest
+hours. Now there is a steadily growing demand amongst the educated
+British public to learn all that can be known about this girl who has
+been called "The New Joan of Arc."
+
+In 1916 she was summoned to appear before an Ecclesiastical Commission
+at Poitiers in the same room in which "The Maid of Orleans" was
+interrogated, before being placed at the head of the Army of
+deliverance.
+
+Both Claire Ferchaud and her communications were subjected to the
+strictest scrutiny. The result was entirely in her favor. Her writings
+were examined by Father Vaudrious, D.D., M.S.D., who declared them
+inspired, and equal to those of St. Catherine of Sienna and St. Teresa.
+Finally they were taken to Rome, and submitted to a commission appointed
+by the Holy See. The result being that she was ordered to continue her
+mission. The writings deal with devotion to "The Sacred Heart" and the
+dignity of priesthood.
+
+One is irresistibly reminded of the opening scenes at Lourdes, whilst
+Bernadette Soubirons was alive, in 1858. Again, one cannot but recall a
+certain similarity betwixt certain events in the life of the Maid of
+Orleans and the events taking place now in the life of Claire Ferchaud.
+
+Claire is a girl twenty-two years old, the daughter of a peasant
+proprietor in the village of Ranfillieres, a mile from Lublande, Deux
+Sevres Dept., France. Her parents are alive, and she has two sisters and
+three brothers. The father and one brother fought during the war,
+another brother was a prisoner, and the youngest assists on the farm.
+One of the sisters works on the farm, and the eldest sister is a
+religieuse at the community of La Sagesse.
+
+Claire was tending her father's flocks when the first great revelation
+came to her nine years ago; then she was but thirteen years old. She had
+crept into a thicket to read, and suddenly the Divine Master appeared to
+her and bade her lay down her book. He told her she had been chosen for
+a Divine Mission, and that He would guide and instruct her. He showed
+her "The Sacred Heart" covered with wounds.
+
+On recounting her vision to her priest, she was treated with coldness
+and disbelief, and on her telling him two years later that Our Lord
+daily appeared to her in Holy Communion she was treated still more
+coldly.
+
+Until he himself received a sign he maintained an attitude of utter
+disbelief. What happened soon after whilst he was celebrating Holy Mass,
+entirely convinced him.
+
+At that particular part of the Canon when the priest divides the Sacred
+Species he saw blood issue from the Sacred Host. Nor was this all. A
+week afterwards he observed Claire Ferchaud in a trance in his own
+church, and he saw her using a handkerchief as if wiping some object in
+front of her, which he could not see. Blood stains appeared on the
+handkerchief, and increased as she repeated the action.
+
+Filled with amazement he sought later for an explanation, and she told
+him.
+
+"Our Lord appeared before me suffering greatly because of the terrible
+sins of the world, and He asked me to do for Him what Veronica did on
+the road to Calvary. To wipe away the bloody sweat that trickled down
+His face. I saw the Sacred Heart, riddled with wounds, and the deepest
+wound of all was inflicted by France, the eldest daughter of the Church,
+on whom He had lavished so deep a love. Once before He appeared to me
+walking upon ears of corn which He crushed to powder."
+
+The priest after hearing this explanation took the handkerchief to the
+bishop, who listened to the wonderful story with sympathetic attention.
+He examined the blood-stained handkerchief minutely, and sent for a nun.
+"If," he said, "the stains are what they are represented to be they
+cannot be washed out."
+
+The bishop put the matter to the test, and watched the nun endeavoring
+to remove the stains. It was all in vain, and the bishop standing by his
+own test declared the mission of Claire Ferchaud to be Divine.
+
+Every night, between eleven and twelve o'clock, Claire beholds
+apparitions, and receives the sacred teaching that was promised, and it
+was in 1916 that she was ordered to Poitiers to undergo
+cross-examination.
+
+Unfortunately the further development of Claire Ferchaud's mission
+cannot yet be communicated to the world, but in time it will be, and
+very startling and wonderful it will seem.
+
+Meanwhile she encountered very strong opposition. With considerable
+difficulty the Deputy of Vendee arranged a meeting between Claire and M.
+Poincare. Claire implored him to permit the emblem of the Sacred Heart
+to be placed on the Standards of France, as the one condition of
+success. Unfortunately M. Poincare had to refuse, owing to political
+reasons, though as proof of her mission she disclosed an incident only
+known to him which happened after the victory of the Marne.
+
+The same adverse influence operated at her interview with M. Clemenceau.
+This appointment was arranged by the Archbishop of Rheims, Cardinal
+Lucon. The Archbishop implored M. Clemenceau to fix a day of public
+intercession for France. This also the Prime Minister of France had
+reluctantly to refuse.
+
+It is openly stated that before the later French successes the emblem of
+the Sacred Heart was secretly sewn upon the flags of France, and it is
+also affirmed that General Foch is a devoted lover of the Sacred Heart,
+and bears its emblem with him wherever he goes.
+
+Great changes have come about in the village where Claire Ferchaud
+dwells. Formerly a sleepy, neglected little place, it is now converted
+into a scene of the greatest activity.
+
+From all parts of France the pilgrims come--some on foot, having walked
+many miles, some in motors and horse-driven vehicles. Hundreds of
+soldiers find their way there, and it is estimated that from fifteen to
+twenty thousand people pass through Lublande in a month.
+
+With the consent of her bishop, Claire Ferchaud has formed a small
+community of nine, and is now established in a temporary convent
+adjacent to her parish church at Lublande. It is believed that her
+Divine Mission will be accomplished in 1922, and that she will then be
+released from earthly life.
+
+Claire has predicted a stormy period for France after peace has been
+signed. According to her prophecy there will be violent unrest until
+rulers arise who possess firm religious convictions. At the beginning of
+the war she affirmed that the French Army would never prosper until the
+troops were commanded by a true son of the Church. This affirmation she
+claimed to receive from a Divine source. When Marechal Foch took over
+the supreme command she was satisfied that victory, so far as the French
+arms were concerned, was assured.
+
+As all the world knows, and as all may learn who read Hyndman's life of
+his old friend Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France, like the
+majority of his colleagues, is frankly atheistical. Claire Ferchaud
+claims to have received the Divine intimation that until this condition
+of mind is superseded by a public acknowledgment of a supreme divine
+power, a supreme arbiter over the destinies of the world, the affairs of
+France can never prosper. She predicts that in 1922 rulers will arise
+who will bow before a Power superior to their own human energies.
+
+The first part of her prophecy has come true. A man of God won his way
+to the front, and saved France and the Allies at the darkest hour of
+their tribulation.
+
+The supreme command was vested in a man of profound religious
+convictions, who carried his beliefs and observances openly into the
+arena of war.
+
+I translate the words written lately to me by one who has served under
+Ferdinand Foch. They throw a brilliant light upon a great soul.
+
+"I can see him now, alone and unattended, at an hour when the Church of
+Cassel was deserted, praying and seeking comfort in the great sorrow, of
+which he never spoke. He had lost his only son, and one of his daughters
+was widowed. In spite of his indomitable energy there was about him an
+air of profound melancholy and sadness.
+
+"At certain moments his eyes seemed to say, 'I approach the twilight of
+my life in the consciousness of being a good servant who will repose in
+the peace of God. My faith in life eternal, in a good God, has sustained
+me in my hardest hours. Prayer has illumined my soul. See to it, you
+young men of France, who are without a great ideal, without any
+conception of the spiritual side of life, there can be nothing for you
+but discouragement and feebleness. We demand of you great sacrifices to
+the end. Accept those sacrifices as I accept mine, who believe that
+spirit must prevail over matter.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+HAUNTED HOUSES--"CASTEL A MARE"
+
+
+I have never yet met any one who was not interested in haunted houses.
+Even the most blatant skeptic always wants to "hear all about it,"
+though he has predetermined to treat the story with his habitual
+scoffing incredulity. Of all the departments of psychical research none
+commands more general interest than a "spooky" house, and there are few
+people who cannot name a dwelling which has acquired the reputation for
+being haunted by denizens of the other world.
+
+Of course, any house that falls into serious disrepair, and remains
+unoccupied for some long period, any dwelling whose owner permits decay
+to proceed unchecked, and dilapidation to run its course, at once
+suggests the thought to the beholder, "what a haunted looking old
+place," and rumor, in such cases, quickly supplies all the old
+phenomena, even though tradition be totally absent. Tramps are always on
+the lookout for such shelters, and their damped-down fires catch the eye
+of some scared rustic who happens to be passing in the dark. Rats and
+the winds of heaven play hide-and-seek through the deserted rooms and
+corridors, and owls find sanctuary in the surrounding gardens. Their
+cries, varying from the exultant shriek to the mournful wail, add a
+weird suggestiveness to the abiding melancholy of such abandoned
+habitations.
+
+There is so much talk nowadays of hauntings and ghosts, that it seems
+strange we should know so very little about them. I have never heard a
+really convincing explanation of why ghosts should haunt certain houses,
+and I have no explanation of my own to offer. If ghosts could be
+commanded, if one could be sure of witnessing certain phenomena that
+have been elaborately described to one, then there might be the ghost of
+a chance of advantageous investigation. No such opportunities seem to be
+afforded the investigator. He may watch for months and see nothing, yet
+the elusive wraith may turn up before several witnesses on the very
+night after he has abandoned his quest out of sheer boredom and
+discouragement.
+
+Some seven years ago, whilst wintering in Torquay, I heard a great deal
+of gossip about a villa on the Warberries, which was reputed to be badly
+haunted. For the last forty to fifty years nobody, it was said, had been
+able to live in it for any length of time. Several people asserted that
+they had heard screams coming from it as they passed along the high
+road, and no occupant had ever been able to keep a door shut or even
+locked.
+
+The house is at present being pulled down, therefore I commit no
+indiscretion in describing the phenomena connected with it.
+
+"Castel a Mare" is situated in what house agents would describe as "a
+highly residential quarter." It is surrounded by numerous villas,
+inhabited by people who are all very "well to do," and who make Torquay
+their permanent home. The majority of these villas lie right back from
+the road, and are hidden in their own luxuriant gardens, but the
+haunted house is one of several whose back premises open straight on to
+the road.
+
+No dwelling could have looked more commonplace or uninteresting. It was
+built in the form of a high box, three storied. It was hideous and
+inartistic in the extreme, but along its frontage looking towards the
+sea and hidden from the road, there ran a wide balcony on to which the
+second floor rooms opened, and from there the view over the garden was
+charming. When I first went to look at it, dilapidation had set in.
+Jackdaws and starlings were busy in the chimneys, the paint was peeling
+off the walls, and most of the windows were broken. Year after year
+those windows were mended, but they never remained intact for more than
+a week, and during the war there has been no attempt at renewal. Even
+the agents' boards, "To be let or sold" dropped one by one from their
+stems, as if in sheer weariness of so fruitless an announcement.
+
+It was not long before I obtained the loan of the keys, and proceeded to
+"take the atmosphere." It was decidedly unhealthful, I concluded, though
+I neither heard nor saw anything unusual during the hour I spent alone
+in quietly wandering through the deserted rooms. I found no trace of
+tramps, and all the closed windows were thickly cobwebbed _inside_, an
+important fact to notice in psychic research. I fixed upon the bathroom
+and one other small room, as the _foci_ of the trouble, and left the
+house with no other strong impression than that my movements had been
+closely watched, by some one unseen by me. It was no uncommon sight in
+pre-war days to see several smart motor cars drawn up at the gate.
+Frivolous parties of explorers in search of a thrill drove in from the
+surrounding neighborhood, and romped gayly through the house and out
+again, and I discovered that several of those visitors had distinctly
+felt that they were being followed about and watched.
+
+My husband and I were naturally much interested in this haunted
+dwelling, so accessible, and so near to our own house. We determined
+that if we could make friends with the owner we would do a little
+investigation on our own. Numerous people, on the plea that the house
+might suit them as a residence, got the loan of the keys, and spent an
+hour or two inside the place, wandering about the house and garden, but
+the owner was getting tired of this rush of spurious house-hunters. He
+was beginning to ask for _bona fides_, so we determined honestly to
+state our purpose.
+
+The proprietor was an old builder who owned several other houses. He
+received me very civilly, even gratefully. He would willingly give us
+the keys for as long a period as we required them. "Castel a Mare"
+brought him extreme bad luck; he longed to be rid of it, and he added
+that after our investigations, if my husband could give the house a
+clean bill of health it would be of enormous benefit to him, in enabling
+him to let or sell it. He did not seem very hopeful, but stated it to be
+his opinion that the hauntings were all nonsense, and that the screams
+people heard were the cries of some peacocks that lived in a property
+not far off. This sounded very reasonable, and I promised him that if we
+could honestly state that the house was perfectly unhealthful, we would
+permit our conclusions to be made public.
+
+My husband and I decided that the hour one p. m. till two p. m. would be
+the quietest and least conspicuous time in which to investigate.
+Doubtless the night would have been better still, but it would have
+created too much excitement in the neighborhood, and callers to see "how
+we were bearing up" would have defeated our object. Between one and two
+all Torquay would be lunching, and we could easily slip in unobserved,
+and we would require neither lights nor warm comforts.
+
+We started at once, my husband keeping the keys, and making himself
+responsible for the doors. Though the window-panes were badly broken
+there were no openings large enough to admit a small child, and, as I
+have said, the network of cobwebs within was evidence that no human
+being entered the house by the windows. The front door lock was in good
+order, and so were most of the other locks in the house. We shut
+ourselves in, and after a thorough examination of the premises we
+mounted to the first floor. Three rooms opened on to it, belonging to
+the principal bedroom--a smaller room and a bathroom opening out of the
+big bedroom. My husband closed all the doors, and we sat down on the
+lower steps of the bare staircase leading to the floor above. That day
+we drew an absolute blank, and at two o'clock we closed every door in
+the house, and just inside the front door we made a careless looking
+arrangement of twigs, dead leaves, pieces of straw and dust, which could
+not fail to betray the passing of human feet, should anybody possess a
+duplicate key to the front door and enter by that means.
+
+The second day we found our twig and straw arrangements intact, but not
+a single door was shut, all were thrown defiantly wide. This seemed
+rather promising and we went upstairs to our seat on the steps, and
+carefully reclosing the doors immediately in front of us, sat down to
+await events.
+
+Quite half an hour must have passed when suddenly a click made us both
+look up. The handle of the door, but a couple of yards distant from me,
+leading into the small room, was turning, and the door quietly opened
+wide enough to admit the passing of a human being. It was a bright sunny
+day, and one could see the brass knob turning round quite distinctly. We
+saw no form of any sort, and the door remained half open. For perhaps a
+couple of moments we awaited developments, then our attention was
+suddenly switched off the door by the sound of hurrying footsteps
+running along the bare boards on the corridor above us. My husband
+rushed up and searched each empty room, but neither saw anything nor
+heard anything more. Before leaving the house we shut all doors, and
+locked all that would lock. Such was the meager extent of our second
+day's investigations.
+
+On the third day the doors were all found wide flung. No door opened
+before our eyes as on our former visit, but a brushing sound was heard
+ascending the stairs, as if from some one pressing close against the
+wall.
+
+For about a fortnight nothing happened beyond what I have recounted, but
+I was strongly conscious that we were being watched. The most
+unhealthful spots were the bathroom, a servants' room entered by a
+staircase leading from the kitchen, and the stable, a small building
+immediately to the right of the house. The bathroom was in great
+disrepair, long strips of paper hung from the walls, and an air of
+profound depression pervaded it. Obviously it had once been merely a
+large cupboard, and it had a window admitting light from a passage
+behind it.
+
+We had never once failed to find every door which we had closed thrown
+wide on our return, and one day we locked the bathroom, and removing the
+key we looked about for some spot in which to secrete it. On that floor
+was nothing large enough to hide even so small an object as a key, so we
+took it downstairs to the dining-room. In a corner lay a rag of linoleum
+about six inches square, under this we placed the bathroom key and left
+the house.
+
+That afternoon a house agent called and asked for the loan of the keys.
+He told us that a brave widow, who knew the history of the house,
+thought it might suit her to live in, and he proposed to take her over
+it and point out its charms. He would return the keys to us directly
+afterwards. I took advantage of this occasion to say to the agent that
+probably the screams some people had heard proceeded from the peacocks
+in the neighborhood.
+
+He shook his head and answered, "We hoped that might prove to be the
+case, but we have ascertained that it is not so." He seemed despondent
+about the place, even though what we had to tell him was as yet nothing
+very formidable or exciting. What we did not tell him was that we had
+locked up the bathroom, and hidden the key. We left him to discover that
+fact for himself.
+
+He returned with the keys in about an hour, and I asked him what the
+widow thought of "Castel a Mare."
+
+"She thinks something might be made of it. The cheapness attracts her,"
+he answered.
+
+"But it will need so much doing to it," I demurred. "What did she think
+of the bathroom?"
+
+"She said it only needed cleaning and repapering. The bath itself she
+found in good enough condition."
+
+So the bathroom door was open, in spite of our having locked it and
+hidden the key!
+
+After the agent had gone we went to the house. Every door stood wide.
+The bathroom key was still in its hiding-place, and the door open. We
+replaced the key. The ghosts laughed to scorn such securities as locks
+and keys.
+
+For a month or two we pursued our investigations, then we returned the
+keys to the owner. Though we had seen and heard so little it was
+impossible to give the house a clean bill of health, and the old builder
+was much cast down. A few days afterwards we received a letter from him
+offering us the house as a free gift. It would pay him to be rid of the
+ground rent, and the place was as useless to him as to any one else. We
+thanked him and refused the gift.
+
+About this period I was lucky enough to get into touch with a former
+tenant of "Castel a Mare," and this lady most kindly gave me many
+details of her residence there. About thirty years ago she occupied it
+with her father and mother, and they were the last family to live in it
+for any length of time, and for many years it has remained empty.
+
+Soon after their arrival this family discovered that there was something
+very much amiss with their new residence. The house, the garden, and the
+stable were decidedly uncanny, but it was some time before they would
+admit, even to themselves, that the strange happenings were of a
+supernatural order.
+
+The phenomena fell under three headings: a piercing scream heard
+continually, at any hour and during all seasons; continuous steps
+running along corridors, and up and down stairs; constant lockings of
+doors by unseen hands.
+
+The scream was decidedly the most unnerving of the various phenomena.
+The family lived in constant dread of it. Sometimes it came from the
+garden, sometimes from inside the house. One morning whilst they sat at
+breakfast, they were violently startled by this horrible sound coming
+from the inner hall, just outside the room in which they sat. It took
+but a moment to throw open the door, but, as usual, there was nothing to
+be seen.
+
+On another occasion the family doctor had just arrived at the front
+door, and was about to ring, when he was startled by the scream coming
+from inside the house. This doctor still lives in the neighborhood, and
+is one of many people who can bear witness to the fact.
+
+The footsteps of unseen people kept the family pretty busy. They were
+always running to the doors to see who was hurrying past, and up and
+down stairs. Very soon the drawing-room became extremely uncomfortable,
+and practically uninhabitable. It was always full of unseen people
+moving about. The lady of the house never felt herself alone, and when
+she found herself locked into her own room, the behavior of her astral
+guests seemed to her to have become intolerable. The master of the house
+no more escaped these attentions than did the rest of the inhabitants,
+and finally all keys had to be removed from all doors.
+
+One night some guests, after getting into bed, heard some one open the
+door of their room and enter. Astonishment kept them silent, and in a
+minute or two their visitor quietly withdrew and closed the door again.
+They concluded that it must have been their hostess, and that thinking
+they were asleep she had not spoken, yet still they thought the incident
+very strange. The next morning they discovered that no member of the
+household had entered their room.
+
+On another occasion a lady who had come to help nurse a sick sister saw,
+one night, a strange woman dressed in black velvet walk downstairs.
+
+Animals fared badly at "Castel a Mare." A large dog belonging to the
+family was often found cowering and growling in abject fear of something
+visible to it, but not to the human inhabitants, and the harness horse
+showed such an invincible objection to its stable, that it could only be
+got in by backing.
+
+Later on I was told that a member of the Psychical Society had visited
+"Castel a Mare," and had pronounced the garden to be more haunted than
+the house.
+
+It is interesting to note how absolutely untenable badly haunted houses
+become. No matter how skeptical, how resolutely material the tenants may
+be, the phenomena wear them down to a humble surrender at last. After
+all, what can people do but quit a residence which is constantly showing
+incontrovertible evidence that it is possessed by numerous unseen
+entities that defy analysis?
+
+Every one is interested in getting rid of this weird disturbance, but
+how to do it? The skeptic is resolute in unmasking the fraud, but finds
+himself balked by intangibility. He hears the scream at his door, and
+rushes to arrest the miscreant, but sees no one to grapple with.
+Domestic difficulties become acute. No warning is given, no wages asked.
+The servants decamp, too scared to care for anything but putting
+distance between themselves and the nameless dread. Visitors begin to
+fight shy of the house. They have heard the screams.
+
+Month after month the master of the house, thinking of his rent, and his
+reputation for sanity, and what the loss of both would mean to him,
+clings to skepticism as his only hope and refuge. He is not going to be
+driven forth by any such stuff and nonsense as ghosts! Why! there are no
+such things! "Seen things? heard things?" Well, yes, he has, but, of
+course, there must be some rational explanation. A man who has fought
+for king and country is not going to be defeated and put to flight by a
+pack of silly women's stories. He will soon get to the bottom of the
+whole affair, then woe betide the practical joker!
+
+When alone he racks his brains in vain. He is furious with himself for
+having heard the scream, and tells himself he must be "going dotty." He
+is puzzled, baffled, irritated, but more determined than ever to "stick
+it out." Who can the "joker" be who is demoralizing his household, who
+has even dared to lock him into his own room? He thinks of his wife and
+family, and of their shattered nerves; he thinks of his terrified
+servants, and of his dog, which can no longer be persuaded to enter the
+house. He feels he must look elsewhere for the disturber of his peace.
+But where? He keeps careful watch unknown (as he thinks) to his family.
+The steps approach him, pass close to him, then die away in the
+distance, leaving him fuming, impotent. He finds it necessary to wipe
+his brow, which enrages him still more. At dead of night he watches on
+the staircase, with all lights full on.
+
+Silence, utter silence! Absolutely nothing to be seen or heard. He
+thinks of going to bed. He always said the whole thing was "tommy rot."
+The deathly silence is suddenly rent by a piercing scream at his very
+elbow, and he leaps to his feet, growling out an oath below his breath.
+He looks wildly round on every side of him. Nothing! Something strange
+is happening to his head. He passes his hand over his hair. It seems to
+be creeping along his scalp, and he thinks of the quills of a porcupine.
+"What the devil is he to do?" "Go to bed," answers inclination, "you're
+doing no good here. Yes! Go to bed; that's the sensible thing to do."
+
+The next morning every one asks him if he heard "it." He acknowledges to
+himself that his temper is becoming vile.
+
+The day comes when he is left alone with his family. The staff has fled
+and he feels rather broken.
+
+At last he gives in, and agrees to seek another home, but it is not to
+the ghosts he gives in, but to the nervous fancies of a pack of silly
+women. He feels wonderfully light-hearted, however, now that his mind is
+made up, and a glow of magnanimity pervades him. "If you do a thing at
+all do it well and _at once_," he tells himself, and promptly hires
+another house in another neighborhood.
+
+When questioned by his men friends he laughs. The man in the street
+might understand certain things that he could tell, but the man in the
+club, never! "All tommy rot, my dear chap, but my wife got nervous, and
+the servants! You know what they are. Scared by the scratch of a mouse.
+For the women's sake I thought it best to quit. You know what women are,
+when they once get an idea into their heads!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE SEQUEL
+
+
+In 1917 a friend rang me up and asked me if I would form one of a party
+of investigation at "Castel a Mare." The services of a medium had been
+secured, and a soldier on leave, who was deeply immersed in psychic
+research, was in high hopes of getting some genuine results.
+
+I accepted the invitation because a certain incident had once more
+roused my curiosity in the haunted house.
+
+During our investigations I had been disappointed at not hearing the
+much-talked-of scream, the more so after learning from the former
+tenants how very often they had heard it. When I did at last hear it I
+was walking past the house on a very hot summer morning, about eleven
+o'clock. I was not thinking of the house, and had just passed it on my
+way home, when a piercing scream arrested my attention. I wheeled round
+instantly; there was not a doubt as to where the scream came from, but
+unfortunately, though there were people on the road, there was no one
+near enough to bear witness. The scream appeared to come from some one
+in abject terror, and would have arrested the attention of any one who
+happened to be passing. I mean that had no haunted house stood there,
+had the scream proceeded from any other villa, I am sure that any
+passer-by would have halted wonderingly, and awaited further
+developments.
+
+"Castel a Mare" lay in absolute silence, under the blazing sunshine, and
+in a minute or two I walked on. I could now understand what it must have
+meant to live in that house, in constant dread of that weird and hideous
+sound resounding through the rooms or garden.
+
+This incident made me eager to join my friend's party, and on reaching
+the house I found a small crowd assembled.
+
+The medium, myself, and four other women. The soldier, and an elderly
+and burly builder belonging to the neighborhood, who was interested in
+psychic research. Eight persons in all.
+
+As there was no chair or furniture of any description in the house, we
+carried in a small empty box from a rubbish heap outside, and followed
+the medium through the rooms. She elected to remain in the large
+bedroom, on the first floor, out of which opened the bathroom, and she
+sat down on the box and leaned her back against the wall, whilst we
+lounged about the room and awaited events. It was a sunny summer
+afternoon, and the many broken panes of glass throughout the house
+admitted plenty of air.
+
+After some minutes it was plain to see that the medium had fallen into a
+trance. Her eyes were closed, and she lay back as if in sound sleep.
+Time passed, nothing happened, we were all rather silent, as I had
+warned the party that though we were in a room at the side of the house
+farthest from the road, our voices could plainly be heard by passers-by,
+and we wanted no interference.
+
+Just as we were all beginning to feel rather bored and tired of
+standing, the medium sprang to her feet with surprising agility, pouring
+out a volume of violent language. Her voice had taken on the deep
+growling tones of an infuriated man, who advanced menacingly towards
+those of us who were nearest to him. In harsh, threatening voice he
+demanded to know what right we had to intrude on his privacy.
+
+There was a general scattering of the scared party before this
+unlooked-for attack, and the soldier gave it as his opinion that the
+medium was now controlled by the spirit of a very violent male entity. I
+had no doubt upon the point.
+
+Then commenced so very unpleasant a scene that I had no doubt also of
+the medium's genuineness. No charlatan, dependent upon fraudulent
+mediumship for her daily bread, would have made herself so intensely
+obnoxious as did this frail little woman. I found myself saying, "Never
+again. This isn't good enough."
+
+The entity that controlled her possessed superhuman strength. His voice
+was like the bellow of a bull, as he told us to be gone, or he would
+throw us out himself, and his language was shocking.
+
+I had warned the medium on entering the house that we must be as quiet
+as possible, or we would have the police walking in on us. Now I
+expected any moment to see a policeman, or some male stranger arrive on
+the scene, and demand to know what was the matter.
+
+The majority of our party were keeping at a safe distance, but suddenly
+the control rushed full tilt at the soldier, who had stood his ground,
+and attacking him with a tigerish fury drew blood at once. The big
+builder and I rushed forward to his aid. The rest of the party forsook
+us and fled, pell-mell, out of the house and into the garden. Glancing
+through a window, near which we fought, I saw below a row of scared
+faces staring up in awed wonder.
+
+The scene being enacted was really amazing. This frail little creature
+threw us off like feathers, and drove us foot by foot before her, always
+heading us off the bathroom. We tried to stand our ground, and dodge her
+furious lunges, but she was too much for us. After a desperate scuffle,
+which lasted quite seven or eight minutes, and resulted in much torn
+clothing, she drove us out of the room and on to the landing. Then
+suddenly, without warning, the entity seemed to evacuate the body he had
+controlled, and the medium went down with a crash and lay at our feet,
+just a little crumpled disheveled heap.
+
+For some considerable time I thought that she was dead. Her lips were
+blue, and I could feel no pulse. We had neither water nor brandy with
+which to revive her, and we decided to carry her down into the garden
+and see what fresh air would do. Though villas stood all round us, the
+foliage of the trees gave us absolute privacy, and we laid her flat on
+the lawn. There, after about ten minutes, she gradually regained her
+consciousness, and seemingly none the worse for her experiences she sat
+up and asked what had happened.
+
+We did not give her the truth in its entirety, and contrived to account
+for the blood-stained soldier and the torn clothing, without unduly
+shocking and distressing her. We then dispersed; the medium walking off
+as if nothing whatever had occurred to deplete her strength.
+
+Some days after this the soldier begged for another experiment with the
+medium. He had no doubts as to her genuineness, and he was sure that if
+we tried again we would get further developments. She was willing to
+try again, and so was the builder, but with one exception the rest of
+the party refused to have anything more to do with the unpleasant
+affair, and the one exception stipulated to remain in the garden. She
+very wisely remarked that if she came into the house there was no
+knowing what entity might not attach itself to her, and return home with
+her, and she was not going to risk it. Of course this real danger always
+had to be counted upon in such investigations, but as the men of the
+party desired a woman to accompany the medium, I consented, and we
+entered the house once more, a reduced party of four.
+
+After the medium had remained entranced for some minutes, the same male
+entity again controlled her. The same violence, the same attacks began
+once more, but this time we were better prepared to defend ourselves.
+The soldier and the stalwart builder warded off the attacks, and tried
+conciliatory expostulations, but all to no purpose. Then the soldier,
+who seemed to have considerable experience in such matters, tried a
+system of exorcising, sternly bidding the malignant entity depart. There
+ensued a very curious spiritual conflict between the exorcist and the
+entity, in which sometimes it seemed as if one, then the other, was
+about to triumph.
+
+Those wavering moments were useful in giving us breathing space from the
+assaults, and at length having failed, as we desired, to get into the
+bathroom, we drove him back against the wall at the far end of the room.
+Finally the exorcist triumphed, and the medium collapsed on the floor,
+as the strength of the control left her.
+
+For a few moments we allowed the crumpled up little heap to remain
+where she lay, whilst we mopped our brows and regained our breath. The
+soldier had brought a flask of brandy which we proposed to administer to
+the unconscious medium, but quite suddenly a new development began.
+
+She raised her head, and still crouching on the floor with closed eyes
+she began to cry bitterly. Wailing, and moaning, and uttering
+inarticulate words, she had become the picture of absolute woe.
+
+"Another entity has got hold of her," announced the soldier. It
+certainly appeared to be so.
+
+All signs of violence had gone. The medium had become a heart-broken
+woman.
+
+We raised her to her feet, her condition was pitiable, but her words
+became more coherent.
+
+"Poor master! On the bed. Help him! Help him!" she moaned, and pointed
+to one side of the room. Again and again she indicated, by clenching her
+hands on her throat, that death by strangulation was the culmination of
+some terrible tragedy that had been enacted in that room.
+
+She wandered, in a desolate manner, about the floor, wringing her hands,
+the tears pouring down her cheeks, whilst she pointed to the bed, then
+towards the bathroom with shuddering horror.
+
+Suddenly we were startled out of our compassionate sympathy by a
+piercing scream, and my thoughts flew instantly to the experiences of
+the former tenants, and what I myself had heard in passing on that June
+morning of the former year.
+
+The medium had turned at bay, and began a frantic encounter with some
+entity unseen by us. Wildly she wrestled and fought, as if for her life,
+whilst she emitted piercing shrieks for "help." We rushed to the
+rescue, dragging her away from her invisible assailant, but a
+disembodied fighter has a considerable pull over a fighter in the flesh,
+who possesses something tangible that can be seized. I placed the medium
+behind me, with her back to the wall, but though I pressed her close she
+continued to fight, and I had to defend myself as well as defend her.
+Her assailant was undoubtedly the first terrible entity which had
+controlled her. At intervals she gasped out, "Terrible doctor--will kill
+me--he's killed master--help! help!"
+
+Gradually she ceased to fight. The soldier was exorcising with all his
+force, and was gaining power; finally he triumphed, inasmuch as he
+banished the "terrible doctor."
+
+The medium was, however, still under the control of the broken-hearted
+entity, and began again to wander about the room. We extracted from her
+further details. An approximate date of the tragedy. Her master's name,
+that he was mentally deficient when the murder took place. She was a
+maidservant in the house, and after witnessing the crime she appeared to
+have shared her master's fate, though by what means we could not
+determine. The doctor was a resident physician of foreign origin.
+
+At last we induced her to enter the bathroom, which she seemed to dread,
+and there she fell to lamenting over the dead body of her master, which
+had lain hidden there when the room was used as a large cupboard. It was
+a very painful scene, which was ended abruptly by her falling down
+insensible.
+
+She had collapsed in an awkward corner, but at last we lifted her out,
+and carried her downstairs to the garden. When I tried to revive her
+with brandy I found that her teeth were tightly clenched. I then tried
+artificial respiration, as I could feel no pulse. Gradually she came
+back to life, quietly, calmly, and in total ignorance of what had
+occurred. The most amazing thing was that she showed no signs whatever
+of exhaustion or mental fatigue. We were all dead beat, but not so the
+fragile-looking little medium, though externally she looked terribly
+disheveled and draggled.
+
+This was the last time I set foot in the haunted house, which is now
+being demolished, but I still had to experience more of its odd
+phenomena.
+
+The date and names the medium had given us were later on verified by
+means of a record of villa residents, which for many years had been kept
+in the town of Torquay.
+
+There is no one left now who has any interest in verifying a tragic
+story supposed to have been enacted about fifty years ago. It must be
+left in the realms of psychic research, by which means it was dragged to
+light. Certain it is that no such murder came to the knowledge of those
+who were alive then, and live still in Torquay.
+
+If there is any truth in the story it falls under the category of
+undiscovered crimes. The murderer was able somehow to hide his
+iniquities, and escape suspicion and punishment. I do not know if it is
+intended to build another house on the same site. I hope not, for it is
+very probable that a new residence would share the fate of the old.
+Bricks and mortar are no impediment to the free passage of the
+disembodied, and there is no reason why they should not elect to
+manifest for an indefinite period of time.
+
+There can be no doubt that the scream was an actual fact. There are so
+many people living who heard it, and are willing to testify to the
+horror of it. Amongst those living people are former tenants, who for
+long bore the nervous strain of its constant recurrence.
+
+There remains one other weird incident in connection with "Castel a
+Mare" which I will now try to describe.
+
+In the winter of 1917 I was engaged in war work which took me out at
+night. Like every other coast town Torquay was plunged at sunset into
+deepest darkness, save when the moon defied the authorities. The road
+leading from the nearest tramcar to our house was not lit at all, and
+one had to stumble along as best one could, even electric torches being
+forbidden.
+
+I was returning home one very dark, still night about a quarter past
+ten, and being very tired I was walking very slowly. Owing to the inky
+darkness I thought it best to walk in the middle of the road, in order
+to avoid the inequalities in the footpath at each garden entrance to the
+villas. At that hour there was no traffic, and not a soul about.
+
+Suddenly my steps were arrested by a loud knocking on a window-pane, and
+I collected my thoughts and tried to take my bearings. The sound came
+from the left, where two or three villas stand close to the road. All I
+could distinguish was a denser blot of black against the dense
+surroundings, but by making certain calculations I recognized that I
+stood outside "Castel a Mare." The knocking on the pane lasted only a
+moment or two, and was insistent and peremptory. I jumped to the instant
+conclusion that some one was having "a lark" inside, and was trying to
+"get a rise" out of me. I was too tired to be bothered, and moved on
+again with a strong inclination towards my own warm bed, when the
+knocking rang out more peremptory than ever. It seemed to say "Stop!
+don't go on. I have something to say to you." Involuntarily I stood
+still again, and wished that some human being would pass along the road.
+I really would not have cared who it was, policeman, soldier,
+maidservant. I would have laid hold of them and said, "Do you hear that
+knocking? It comes from the haunted house."
+
+Alas! no one did come. The night lay like an inky pall all about me,
+silent as the grave, save for that commanding order to stop which was
+rapped upon a window-pane whenever I attempted to move on.
+
+Though the being who thus sought to detain me could not possibly
+distinguish who I was, or whether my gender was male or female, he could
+certainly hear my footsteps as I walked, and the cool inconsequence of
+his behavior began to nettle me. I was about to move resolutely on when
+I heard something else. This time something really thrilling!
+
+Peal after peal of light laughter, accompanied by flying feet. But such
+laughter! Thin, high treble laughter, right away up and out of the
+scale, and apparently proceeding from many persons. Such flying feet!
+racing, pattering, rushing feet, light as those of the trained athlete.
+I stood enthralled with wonder, for in the pitch-black darkness of that
+house surely no human feet could avoid disaster. They were rushing up
+and down that steep, bare wooden staircase that I knew so well, and the
+laughter and the swift-winged feet sounded now from the ground floor,
+then could be clearly traced ascending, till they reached the third and
+last floor. Tearing along the empty corridors, they began the breakneck
+descent again to the bottom, a pell-mell, wild rush of demented demons
+chasing each other. That is what it sounded like.
+
+I must have stood there for quite ten minutes, longing intensely for
+some one to share in my experiences, but Torquay had gone to bed, and I
+felt it was time for me to do likewise.
+
+What could I make of the affair? Nothing! Rats? Rats don't laugh. Human
+beings having a rag and trying to scare the neighborhood? No human being
+could have run up and down that staircase in such profound darkness. It
+would have been a case of crawling up with a firm hand on the banister
+rail.
+
+I gave up trying to think and turned resolutely away. As I did so the
+knocking began again upon the window-pane.
+
+"Do stop; oh! don't go away. Stop! stop!" it seemed to call after me
+insistently as I quickened my footsteps and gradually outdistanced the
+imperious demand.
+
+What explanation have I to offer? None! The hallucinations of a tired
+woman? That may do for the general public, but not for me. You see, I
+was the person who heard it.
+
+There are many haunted houses that are quite habitable, such as Hampton
+Court Palace, etc. Where the apparition keeps strictly to an
+anniversary, or where the phenomena are mild and inoffensive, their
+presence can be endured with a certain amount of equanimity. The point
+really lies in this. Are the ghosts who haunt a dwelling indifferent to,
+or hostile to, the presence of their companions in the flesh? If the
+situation is according to the latter, then the ghosts will certainly
+score. They will rid themselves of the human inhabitants by a
+wearing-down nerve pressure, which cannot be fought against with any
+chance of success. If the ghosts are shy or indifferent, wrapped up in
+their own concerns and containing themselves in a world of their own,
+then there is no reason why the incarnate and discarnate should not live
+peacefully together.
+
+To-day, February 27th, 1919, I read the following in the _Morning
+Post_:--
+
+"Haunted or disturbed properties. A lady who has deeply studied this
+subject and possesses unusual powers will find out the history of the
+trouble and undertake to remedy it. Houses with persistent bad luck can
+often be freed from the influence. Strictest confidence. Social
+references asked and offered."
+
+What would our grandparents have thought of this means of turning an
+honest penny? I have no doubt the lady "possessing the unusual powers"
+will be employed, and in many cases she will be successful. In the
+majority of cases I venture to say that she will fail, simply because
+the majority of cases are too elusive to be dealt with by human means.
+How would this lady treat the "Castel a Mare" scream? How would she deal
+with the next story I am going to relate?
+
+It is a simple matter to compile a book of thrilling ghost stories if
+direct evidence is not given, if names of persons and places are
+suppressed.
+
+I claim that my stories have a special interest and value, because I
+have tried to restrict them to such as can be attested to by living
+persons, closely related to me either by friendship or by family ties.
+In a very few instances I have been obliged for obvious reasons to
+suppress the names of houses and hotels. In these cases I am ready
+personally to supply full information to genuine students of the occult,
+if they are willing to approach me privately.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE HAUNTED LODGE
+
+
+A considerable number of people are alive who can testify to the truth
+of the facts I now narrate. I regret that I have not been able to
+investigate this case personally, but I hope to do so before very long.
+
+In the spring of 1901, my sister and her husband, Major Stewart, rented
+an old shooting lodge in Argyllshire. The place was charmingly situated,
+the shooting and fishing excellent, and the scenery around was noted for
+its romantic beauty.
+
+Though the main portion of the house was old, a new wing had been added
+for the sleeping accommodation of servants, and this arrangement shut
+them off at night from the ancient part of the dwelling. The original
+kitchen still remained in use.
+
+The servants had been sent on in advance to prepare the lodge, and when
+Major and Mrs. Stewart arrived they were at once confronted with the
+information that the place bore a very evil reputation. The villagers
+had not hesitated to prime the maids with all sorts of creepy stories,
+eminently calculated to cause their precipitate departure. Luckily for
+the master and mistress the maids had been with them for some years, and
+were neither of a timid age nor disposition, so the household settled
+comfortably down, in those long spring and summer days, which in the
+north means practically no darkness.
+
+My sister had banished the alleged hauntings from her mind, and probably
+the maids had done likewise, for all was going quietly and well, when
+suddenly, after a week's residence, there came a rude reminder.
+
+Major and Mrs. Stewart were both awakened one night by unmistakable
+sounds of very noisy burglars, who appeared to have broken into the
+house through the kitchen quarters. The major lit a candle, and looked
+at his watch. It was just on midnight. What puzzled them both was the
+noise the intruders made. Burglars naturally tread softly and
+stealthily, but these men stamped about in heavy boots, and were engaged
+in throwing about heavy articles. There seemed to be quite a number of
+accomplices involved in the enterprise, and they displayed an amazing
+indifference to detection.
+
+My sister and her husband decided that events could not be left to take
+their course. This matter must be looked into. The major armed himself
+with a loaded revolver. My sister armed herself with a lighted candle
+and a box of matches, and together they crept softly downstairs on their
+way to the kitchen.
+
+All this time the noises continued. Stamping of heavy feet, crashing
+down of heavy weights, but on the way downstairs a first glimmering that
+the supernatural came into this affair began to dawn upon my sister. She
+became aware that an invisible presence was following them.
+
+The noises continued as they cautiously and silently crept towards the
+kitchen. As they reached the door, suddenly utter silence fell. Inside
+nothing was disarranged. There were no signs of burglars, everything was
+as usual.
+
+Considerably mystified Major and Mrs. Stewart returned to bed, and were
+not disturbed again that night.
+
+The next day, about four o'clock in the afternoon, the same sounds began
+again. This time the noise was easily located in one of the unused
+bedrooms on the top floor of the house. Heavily shod men were tramping
+about the floor overhead, throwing down heavy boxes and making a
+considerable disturbance.
+
+Major and Mrs. Stewart ascended on tiptoe, and when outside the closed
+door listened intently. There was no mistake this time. Nothing could
+sound more human than the activity going on inside that room. Half a
+dozen men at least were in possession of it, and those men had to be
+confronted. Luckily they had no means of escape. This time they really
+would be caught.
+
+After a few minutes of silent listening the major, whose hand was on the
+knob, threw open the door and bounded into the room.
+
+Instant silence--nothing--not even the whisk of a defiant rat's tail!
+
+The husband and wife sat down and stared at one another in utter
+bewilderment. The bright spring daylight seemed to mock them as it
+flooded every chink and cranny.
+
+Shortly after this occurrence three guests came to stay, two women and a
+man. They were given bedrooms on the top floor, but the room whence the
+disturbance had come was left severely alone. The household, with one
+accord, welcomed their advent as a pleasant distraction, and it was
+unanimously agreed that they should be kept in absolute ignorance of
+what had taken place.
+
+The next morning the three guests all had the same story to tell, of
+having had no sleep. Heavily booted men kept passing their doors, and
+heavy articles were flung about in adjacent rooms. They had spent a
+night of terror. No one had possessed sufficient courage to look out
+into the corridor, along which the men were passing, and they had kept
+lights burning in their rooms till full daybreak. They refused to sleep
+again upon that floor.
+
+My sister moved them down to the second floor, on which she herself
+slept, and a thorough investigation of the house, outside and inside,
+was made. No conclusion was come to.
+
+The noises continued on the following night, but being overhead, and
+more distant, they were more endurable.
+
+A second male guest now arrived, and the assembled household waited in
+breathless interest to see how the ghosts would affect him. Nothing
+whatever was told to him, and he was lodged in a bedroom immediately
+underneath the noisy one.
+
+The next morning, after all had passed a disturbed night, it was found
+that some of the noises had proceeded from the new guest. He had carried
+some of his blankets out into the garden and had slept there. He
+remained on, but refused to sleep in the house, and a tent was rigged up
+for him outside. He stated that the disturbances were too much for his
+nerves, though he had no idea what they were. His behavior, on the first
+night, in retiring to the garden, was meant as a strong protest against
+such treatment of a tired guest. His temper had got the upper hand of
+him, after fruitless efforts to sleep, and, finally, he had tramped
+downstairs with an armful of blankets, anticipating many apologies next
+morning from host and hostess, and a peaceful night to follow.
+
+The following day a new maid arrived. She slept in the old part of the
+house, and shortly afterwards asked my sister if the house was haunted,
+as she had been kept awake by "heavy people running past her door with
+naked feet."
+
+By this time it was only the influence of the staid old servants which
+prevented the younger ones from taking flight. My sister and her husband
+were not alarmed, they were profoundly interested.
+
+The summer passed on, and there were days and weeks when nothing was
+heard, then quite suddenly the disturbances would begin again. As the
+noises sounded so very human it was extremely difficult to believe that
+they really did not proceed from incarnate beings, and my sister told me
+that time after time, as she listened, she would say to herself, "Now,
+beyond a shadow of doubt there are men in that room." She would creep
+upstairs, listen for some time with her hand on the door-knob--then
+suddenly throw it open--to find nothing. She never wearied of trying to
+surprise those invisible men.
+
+At times when her husband was away from home, she would spend the entire
+night in an obstinate attempt to solve the mystery. When she had no
+guests, and the servants were asleep in their new wing, she would awake
+to the noise. Taking her candle she would mount on bare, silent feet to
+the floor above, and listen at the door, often for half an hour at a
+time. She had no fear, but intense curiosity. It was easy to trace what
+was going on in the room. Men were packing, moving heavy boxes, throwing
+down heavy articles, walking about the floor with ponderous tread. First
+they would be at one end of the room, then move on to the other.
+Sometimes they approached so near the door behind which she stood, that
+she expected to see it open, and to be confronted by several burly
+ruffians. She would rush suddenly in, candle in hand, only to be
+received in sudden, utter silence. Not even the scurry of a scared
+mouse. After half an hour of patient waiting within the room, she would
+leave it, close the door, and sit down on the staircase. In a few
+moments the disturbance was again in full swing.
+
+Were I writing an account of these hauntings for the Psychical Society I
+should go into the most minute details; suffice it here to say, that
+during all this time every sort of investigation had been carried out by
+practical men and women, who had personally heard the disturbances, and
+who were keenly interested in the phenomena.
+
+Rats were, of course, the first natural suggestion, but no one put forth
+this theory after having once, with their own ears, heard the
+disturbances. No one could advance any rational conclusion. The whole
+affair was baffling in the extreme.
+
+It would have been simple enough to leave the place and forfeit the
+rent, but my sister and her husband loved the sport and the beauty of
+the surroundings, and were determined to remain, unless anything worse
+developed. No one ever saw anything unpleasant, or even suggestive of
+the supernatural, and the whole household had become more or less
+indifferent to the noises. They brought no harm to anybody, and might be
+safely ignored.
+
+Mrs. Stewart had four Pomeranian dogs which did not produce a calming
+effect upon their human companions. They were constantly seeing things,
+bristling and showing every sign of terror. Into the noisy room they
+refused to go, and they objected to being left a moment alone. They
+slept in my sister's bedroom.
+
+One night she was alone in the old house. Major Stewart had gone on
+business to Edinburgh, and the servants had retired to bed in their own
+wing. Mrs. Stewart was sitting in the smoking-room, reading an
+interesting novel by the light of a lamp. A good fire burned, and the
+four Poms were asleep on the hearth-rug. The door was slightly ajar, and
+outside it ran a short corridor.
+
+Suddenly, at its far end a terrible noise arose. A very different noise
+to anything that had been heard before, and one so blood-curdling that
+Mrs. Stewart at last knew the meaning of mortal fear.
+
+Two men were fighting desperately, swaying and wrestling, and snarling
+fiercely like two tigers locked in deathly combat. She glanced at the
+dogs. They were sitting up, staring with terrified eyes at the door,
+their bodies quivering, their little fangs showing. Then--with a
+bound--they were off, tearing for dear life along the corridor towards
+the stairs.
+
+It was a situation that demanded considerable nerve. Impossible to sit
+there alone in the dead of night, and listen to that hideous din, but a
+few yards from the door. She must follow the dogs as swiftly as she
+dared.
+
+She took up the lamp and moved stealthily to the door. The corridor was
+in complete darkness, and in that darkness the two men fought
+desperately, and below their breath they raved, groaned, blasphemed,
+incoherently. One long drawn out babel of breathless discord.
+
+In an overwhelming rush of terror Mrs. Stewart made a dash for the
+stairs, but while still in the corridor she heard flying feet
+approaching her from the end she was trying to reach. She shrank back
+against the wall, the flying feet passed in a wild tempestuous rush, and
+as they did so the lamp was struck violently out of her hand, and she
+was left in complete darkness.
+
+She reached her bedroom and locked the door, then she lighted the
+candles and looked for the dogs. She found them huddled together in
+abject terror under her bed.
+
+The next day my sister called upon the lady who owned the place, and
+recounting her experiences asked to be told the origin of the hauntings.
+She was told the following story:--
+
+Many years previously a farmer, who was a widower, lived in the lodge
+with an only son, who was grown up. The old farmer married again, a
+pretty young girl, and the son fell in love with his stepmother. A
+quarrel ensued, and a desperate conflict, in which the father stabbed
+his son to death.
+
+The Stewarts did not leave the haunted lodge till some long time after
+the events I have narrated; in fact, my sister inhabited it after her
+husband died, during a stay in the South of England.
+
+It is difficult to form any conjecture as to the actual cause of the
+disturbances. How do ghosts contrive to make such a noise? The common
+answer would be, "They were astral noises heard clairaudiently." But was
+every one in the house clairaudient? It is possible, but most unlikely.
+When the noises began every one under that roof heard them, and
+continued to hear them till they ceased.
+
+The lodge is still to let, so perhaps the mystery may yet be unraveled.
+Will a member of the Psychical Society not try his luck? The rent is
+low, the sport, of more than one kind, is excellent.
+
+In the course of time my widowed sister married again, and her second
+husband has given me a curious and gruesome story of an experience which
+came to him whilst he was still a bachelor. I will give it in his own
+words:--
+
+"About fourteen years ago I retired from the London Stock Exchange, and
+owing to ill health I was advised by my doctor to take a long sea
+voyage. This advice I followed, and much benefited by rest and sea air I
+returned to London, after an absence of nine months.
+
+"Always having lived an active life I could not contemplate settling
+down in utter idleness, and I consulted my solicitor on the subject of
+work.
+
+"He told me that a client of his had just bought a flourishing and
+well-known mill in North Wales. He proposed to run it for a time alone,
+and then turn it into a company or syndicate, as he had not sufficient
+capital of his own to ensure its ultimate success. In due time, my
+solicitor gave me a letter of introduction to this man, and I went to
+stay at his house close to the mill, which he had just bought.
+
+"It was a rambling old place, which in the good old days had been a
+coaching inn. Owing to bad management the landlord had failed, and for
+many years it had stood empty and 'to let.' It was a queer idea, I
+thought, to turn a coaching inn into a private residence, more
+especially as I soon heard that it had a very evil reputation.
+
+"Though I made many inquiries in the neighborhood I could never get
+anything more definite than that there was some evil influence in the
+house. Every one who lived in it came to a bad or violent end. I
+concluded that its proximity to his work caused the mill owner to
+purchase it, and I thought no more of the matter.
+
+"If I was favorably impressed, my intention was to put a certain amount
+of capital into the concern and learn the trade, but after staying for a
+few days with the mill owner, I came to the conclusion that I would have
+nothing to do with so odd a person.
+
+"He was of medium height and very thin, with rather straggling hair
+turning gray, and a sallow, hollow-cheeked face. He had a curious habit
+of glancing suddenly behind him, as if some one had just tapped him on
+the shoulder, and several other little traits bespoke an extreme
+nervousness of disposition.
+
+"One night I entered a room where he happened to be, and discovered him
+staring at himself in a mirror. I suppose I exhibited some surprise, for
+he wheeled round on me and cried, 'Well! how do you think I am looking?'
+
+"Had I answered truthfully I should have said, 'Stark, staring mad.' His
+face was ghastly pale, and his eyes were blazing. I made some careless
+reply, and shortly afterwards left the house to play a game of billiards
+with some acquaintances I had made. There I was given some interesting
+information. The mill owner was a declared bankrupt.
+
+"I returned to the house at ten o'clock, and at once retired to bed,
+without again seeing my unfortunate host.
+
+"The next morning I was awakened at half-past seven by my hostess
+knocking at my door, and inquiring if I had seen anything of her
+husband. I replied that I had seen nothing of him, but if she was
+anxious I would dress quickly and have a look round for him. This offer
+she accepted with gratitude. The station was not far distant, and she
+suggested that he might have taken the train to Manchester. Would I go
+and make inquiries?
+
+"I was soon on the way, and interviewed a porter, who informed me he had
+seen the mill owner about an hour ago, not on the platform, but staring
+at the rails. The man had watched him, thinking his behavior suspicious,
+and remembering the evil reputation of his dwelling, but after a while
+he had turned away, and was last seen walking rapidly off in the
+direction of his own home.
+
+"I went back and reported what I had heard, and the very anxious wife
+suggested that I should snatch a hasty breakfast and then make inquiries
+at a farm a mile off, which was also their property. This I readily
+consented to do. I was extremely sorry for the poor woman, and though
+she did not make a confidant of me, I could see she was consumed with
+anxiety.
+
+"My errand was quite fruitless, nothing was known of the master, no one
+had seen him, and back I went to the mill house, feeling by this time
+that probably the wife had every cause for her anxiety.
+
+"I saw nothing of her when I entered. I looked into every room on the
+ground floor, and was just going to ring for a servant, when I fancied I
+heard a faint cry.
+
+"I went out into the hall and listened intently. The voice was calling
+from somewhere below the ground, and I thought at once of the huge
+cellars I had been shown, where once the good old ale had been brewed
+and stored. I ran to the door which led to the cellars; it was open, and
+then I clearly heard a woman's voice crying, 'Oh! bring a knife! bring
+a knife quickly!'
+
+"I darted back into the dining-room and caught up the first knife I
+could find, a ham carver, then hastened to the door and began descending
+the dark stairs.
+
+"The cellars were fairly well lighted by two grated windows, and a
+horrible sight met my eyes. There stood the wife, bending under the
+weight of her husband, who was suspended by a rope round his neck from
+the great beam overhead. One glance at the hideously distorted face, the
+glazed eyes protruding from their sockets, the gaping mouth and swollen
+tongue, told me the worst.
+
+"Hastily I severed the rope, and the wife and her dead husband sank to
+the ground together.
+
+"There was little to be done. We laid the corpse flat on the stone
+floor, and I persuaded her to leave it and come upstairs with me, and
+wait for the arrival of the doctor and police. This she consented to do.
+She was very quiet and composed, a curious apathy of indifference
+possessed her, and I would far rather have seen her in floods of natural
+tears.
+
+"By evening the house had fallen into a dead silence. The doctor had
+pronounced life to be extinct, and the corpse had been carried up to an
+unused bedroom immediately over the smoking-room. The police found that
+the mill owner had committed suicide by hanging. He had jumped off a
+stone slab, after having adjusted the rope to the beam and his own
+throat. With the exception of an old nurse who was devoted to her
+mistress, the servants all departed in a body, and the house was left
+brooding under a weight of intolerable depression.
+
+"I did not blame the servants. As a matter of fact, there was nothing I
+would have liked better than to quit the mill house there and then, and
+never set foot in it again, but I had the desolate widow to consider. I
+could not leave her alone, whilst there was still the smallest
+possibility of my being of use. Added to this I had the queerest feeling
+that she required protection, though from what I would have been at a
+loss to say.
+
+"Another feeling, which I combated violently, was a sensation of being
+mocked and jeered at by some unseen entity. I was being urged to get out
+of the house, to recognize my own impotence, to mind my own business,
+and when I metaphorically replied, 'Get thee behind me, Satan,' I could
+have sworn I heard a sly laugh.
+
+"Of course I told myself all this was but the result of a shock to the
+nerves, and I was not going to pay any attention to it, so despite my
+intense longing to run out of the house I settled down with the daily
+paper, a cigarette, and a novel in the smoking-room, and resolutely
+turned my thoughts away from the tragedy.
+
+"The widow, and her old nurse, who had promised me not to leave her
+mistress for a moment, had retired together for the night, so I felt
+satisfied, so far as they were concerned.
+
+"I suppose I must have dozed off, for I was suddenly roused broad awake
+by footsteps overhead, in the room where the corpse lay. I sat up
+straight and listened intently. Were my nerves playing tricks with me?
+No; certainly not. There was no mistaking that sound for hallucination.
+It was perfectly clear and distinct. A man was walking about overhead,
+and the only man save myself within these walls had hanged himself by
+the neck until he was dead. There it was--the sound. A man's footsteps
+pacing slowly up and down the floor of the bedroom above, from end to
+end, backwards and forwards.
+
+"I considered what I had better do. I was sure the widow and the old
+nurse were in the bedroom, quite at the other end of the house. Probably
+they were both asleep. I hoped so. What had I better do--nothing? Yet
+this inaction irked me. My curiosity was intense. The supernatural had
+never occupied much of my thoughts, but now it began to do so. Those
+steps must proceed from the supernatural. There was no other
+explanation. I was the only live man in the house.
+
+"At last I could stand it no longer. I jumped up and proceeded upstairs.
+The lights had been left to me to extinguish; they were still on, and I
+saw at once that the door of the bedroom was open.
+
+"I entered the room, lit the gas and searched every corner. No living
+thing was present. The dead man lay in rigid lines beneath a sheet. I
+left the room again in darkness, and carefully closing the door I went
+softly along to the widow's room, and knocked very gently.
+
+"The old nurse came to the door. She told me her mistress was asleep,
+and that the doctor had given her a sleeping draught. Neither of them
+had left the room since they entered it to go to bed, more than an hour
+ago.
+
+"I went downstairs again and took up the newspaper, but almost
+immediately the footsteps began once more overhead, in the room where
+the dead man lay.
+
+"The sound was soft and stealthy at first, then it grew louder. The same
+footsteps moving about the floor, up and down, up and down. I am not
+ashamed to say that I felt a cold sweat break out all over me. I could
+not stand that sound any longer. I made up my mind to go to bed.
+
+"I removed my shoes and turned out the light. As I did so I could have
+sworn I heard a sly, low laugh behind me. I crept upstairs. The door of
+that horrible room was again open. With a shaking hand I closed it, and
+hurried to my bedroom, locking the door at once.
+
+"The next day I told my experiences to one of the acquaintances I had
+made, and he volunteered to come in and keep me company until the
+funeral was over. I gladly accepted his offer. I did not hear the
+footsteps again. I conclude because the widow was sitting with us on the
+following nights, and the ghost had no desire to terrify her."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+AURAS
+
+
+I was born with the power to see auras, and I had attained to quite a
+grown-up age before I discovered that every one could not see them.
+
+What is an aura? You will see them glittering round the heads of saints,
+and of The Christ in church windows. You will see them painted round the
+head of the Blessed Virgin, round the head of the Infant she holds, but,
+indeed, auras are the property of all, however humble and lowly. Nothing
+that has life, be the spark ever so faint, is without its astral
+counterpart, its tenuous surrounding atmosphere. Science has
+demonstrated this. Auras have now been photographed.
+
+Habitual seeing of human auras has made me no more or less observant of
+them than I am of the human face. If I am asked by any one to say what
+her aura looks like, I do so to the best of my ability, but at that
+complacent moment it is a very tame affair, much like the aura that any
+one may see surrounding a lighted candle. A medley of prismatic hues, no
+color predominating.
+
+Where auras become really interesting is in a room full of people. I
+look down to the far end of the room where a group is seated talking. I
+cannot hear what they are saying, but I can tell at once whether the
+conversation is harmonious or otherwise.
+
+Often there will be one member of the group whose aura is very
+disturbed. It will emit flashes of brilliant red as he talks vehemently.
+The aura of the man he is addressing has turned a sulky, leaden gray.
+
+A woman who is sitting listening has an aura of intense boredom. The
+colors are all there, but they have become faded, and the extreme tips
+droop dejectedly, like so many wilted blades of grass.
+
+The biggest aura I ever saw was that of the late Mr. Sexton, a great
+orator whom I once heard in the House of Commons. Some people have mean,
+tight little auras, others have great spreading haloes of brilliant
+light. I met with a very unusual aura quite lately.
+
+A young woman, Miss L., came to tea with me, a charming, cultured woman,
+whose profession it is to keep a large girls' school. She is much
+interested in occult matters, and we "got upon" the subject of a rather
+wonderful case of spiritualism of which she knows the details--the
+medium being a young girl whom I will call "Elsie."
+
+Whilst I was talking to Miss L. I could not help observing something
+very peculiar in her aura; it was all lopsided. In place of being a
+complete circle around her head, it had a huge bulge out to the left. I
+had never before seen an aura like that, and it interested me greatly.
+
+Just before leaving she mentioned auras, and asked me what hers was
+like.
+
+I told her honestly that it was peculiar, lopsided, and bulging on one
+side.
+
+She laughed and said she knew that, because "Elsie" always chaffed her
+about it, saying, "You wear your halo all awry." This was very
+interesting confirmation of my power to see auras correctly. I don't
+know "Elsie," I don't even know her name, which has been kept a secret,
+but we evidently see Miss L.'s aura in exactly the same peculiar form.
+
+The other day I was sitting reading by the window, and as I moved in my
+chair I caught sight, "with the tail of my eye," of something bright at
+the other end of the room. A patch of light about a foot deep, and two
+feet long was coming from behind the edge of a tall screen that hid a
+door. I rose and walked out of the room. Behind the screen was a maid,
+whom I had not heard enter the open door. She was busy over some quiet
+work, and it was her aura that I had seen, though she herself was hidden
+from view.
+
+Once before in my life my attention has been drawn to the aura of one
+whom I could not at the moment see in the flesh.
+
+I happened to be passing a glove shop in the south of France, and as I
+strolled slowly past the door a blaze of yellow gold inside the shop
+caught my eye, and attracted my attention. I paused at once and looked
+through the open door. This great golden aura belonged to the Empress
+Elizabeth of Austria, who was standing at the counter. Her back was
+turned towards me, and I stood for a minute watching this aura of a
+woman whose restless imagination, and passionate love for the bitter
+wine of liberty, brought her finally to an absolutely fitting death. I
+believe she would have chosen this death before all others, for at heart
+she was a born anarchist. She fell painlessly by the dagger of
+anarchism.
+
+One effect of being able to see auras is that they fix certain incidents
+firmly in the mind. I remember one such incident very clearly. I was
+staying at Hawarden with the Gladstones whilst the Irish troubles of
+'82 were at their height. One afternoon we were all assembled on the
+lawn having tea; Mr. Gladstone was standing rather apart, his hands full
+of papers, which had just been brought to him. I saw him unfold what
+looked like a large poster, glance at it, then suddenly he dashed it to
+the ground and stamped viciously upon it. I heard him give vent to some
+exclamations of intense anger, but had I heard nothing I could not have
+failed to know he was desperately annoyed over something, for he was
+suddenly wrapped in a brilliant crimson cloud, through which sharp
+flashes like lightning darted hither and thither. He was "seeing red."
+
+I remember Mrs. Gladstone murmuring something about "posters being torn
+down in Ireland," but I was too thrilled over her husband's aura to pay
+much heed to what she said. I shall never forget that scene, and the
+practical disappearance of Mr. Gladstone in the enveloping folds of a
+great red cloud. In a minute or two he emerged, and resumed his habitual
+aura, which extended to about two and a half feet beyond his head, and
+was largely tinged with purple.
+
+At Hawarden Church on Sunday, whilst he read the lessons, I watched his
+aura with much interest, because it changed so continuously, and I
+discovered that this change arose out of his absorption in what he read.
+Only one little example can I remember to illustrate what I mean. "And
+the heart of Pharaoh was hardened and he would not let the people go."
+
+In reading those words aloud Mr. Gladstone's aura deepened to red, and I
+saw he was very indignant with Pharaoh's behavior. During the sermon he
+sat facing us in our pew, and in a chair just beneath the pulpit, and I
+could tell by watching his aura just how he felt about the discourse.
+
+Later on, just after the tragic murders by the Fenians in Phoenix Park
+of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Bourke, I received a note from Mrs.
+Gladstone, asking me to go to breakfast with them in their London house
+in Buckingham Gate. When I arrived the first person I saw was Lady
+Frederick Cavendish, calm and composed, and bearing her loss with quiet
+stoicism, but the atmosphere of the house was very different from that
+of Hawarden. A gloom was over all, and for the first time I noticed that
+Mr. Gladstone's aura was depressed and tired. Its vigorous vibrations
+had considerably slowed down, like a jet of flame that had been turned
+low, and the extremities drooped dejectedly.
+
+Though crimson red is the color of anger, there is a beautiful soft rose
+which is the color of love. The "green-eyed monster" of jealousy history
+has handed down to us from the ancient seers, also the "jaundiced"
+appearance of envy. A gloomy, grumbling person has a very leaden gray
+atmosphere, and one who has "a fit of the blues" shows he is "off color"
+in his dull, muddy blue aura. But there is a beautiful sky-blue to be
+seen in the auras of many artists and scientists. Very material, earthly
+people have generally a deep, dull orange tinge in their astral
+envelope, and there is a glorious golden yellow surrounding the heads of
+the spiritually joyful and highly intellectual. Purple is the color of
+power, greatness. Children have an aura of crystal whiteness, which
+develops color after the age of seven.
+
+I remember the aura of Frederic Myers very well. A large and intensely
+spiritual halo. He is the only man I can remember in those days--about
+'92-'96--as having an aura within an aura, though this phenomenon is now
+becoming more marked. "A rainbow was about his head," those words
+explain exactly what I mean. About a foot above his head circled a pure
+rainbow, and this beautiful decoration looked as if it were superimposed
+upon the original aura, which streamed out far above it. I have only as
+yet, in these later years, seen this rainbow above the heads of two
+people: one alive, Miss Maud Roydon, one alas! gone west--the
+incomparable Elsie Inglis. I conclude it means a degree of
+self-sacrificing spirituality, which as yet has been attained to by very
+few. Indeed, I would venture further, and assert that it stands for a
+certain initiation conferred upon "the beloved" by the Masters of
+Wisdom.
+
+King Edward was blessed by a very fine aura of constantly changing
+colors. I remember once noticing this in the most unspiritual of
+environments, and whilst the King was still Prince of Wales.
+
+We were on Newmarket Heath, and His Majesty came up to me and said, "I
+hear you are married." After a few minutes of friendly conversation,
+which had taken an amusingly domestic turn, he said to me, "Now, how
+much has your husband got a year?"
+
+There was nothing in the question but the most friendly interest; still,
+it will naturally seem strange that he should have possessed the
+faintest curiosity as to the financial situation of so humble a member
+of his people.
+
+Whilst he put the question, and waited for the answer, his whole aura
+and atmosphere deepened and intensified. He was actually interested in
+my answer, and this I have always believed was the fundamental reason
+of his great popularity. The power he possessed of throwing himself
+heart and soul into the trivial, as into the great things of life. He
+was intensely human, with a genuine fund of sympathy for the ordinary
+affairs of life. He liked to know the domestic conditions of those whom
+he honored with his friendship, and the first time I ever spoke to him,
+at a dance given by the Rothschilds in Piccadilly, I saw at once that
+the natural human simplicities of life absorbed him absolutely whilst
+under discussion. Though a man who would not tolerate a liberty, the
+easiest way to get on with him when alone, was to confide in him any
+personal difficulty, and to forget who he was, always providing that one
+had the good breeding to remember instantly that he was the king when
+speaking to him in public.
+
+The most occult day (to use the popular expression) I ever spent was the
+26th June, 1902, the day of the postponed Coronation. I shall never
+forget that warm summer day of stupendous gloom, and oppressive
+darkness. There was something more than meteorology in that leaden pall
+that hid the skies, and enveloped the whole of London. Even the densest
+materialists were uneasy, startled and inquiring, for putting aside that
+mighty aura of sorrow and gloom rising up to heaven from the hearts of
+millions, there was, as it were, the response of heaven herself. That
+dark and mournful response Nature assumed, when wrapping herself in a
+shroud of leaden darkness she brooded over the city, like the pall of
+death itself. That day the mystic walked in a dream, enmeshed in the
+warp of great occult happenings being woven out in the loom of Karmic
+fatality. It was impossible to settle down to doing anything. One just
+"sat about," living every moment intensely.
+
+Once, when presenting a girl at Court, during the present reign, I
+noticed what a very striking aura John Burns possesses. This girl
+naturally wished to see all she could, so we went to the Palace very
+early, and found a seat in the Throne Room, close to where the King and
+Queen would sit later on. In a short time celebrities began to stroll
+into the royal circles, divided from us by a cord. First came the
+present Lord Grey of Falloden, and then came Mr. John Burns, resplendent
+in dark blue knee breeches and gold-embroidered coat. He moved about
+quite familiarly inside the holy of holies, speaking first to one, then
+another of the gathering little crowd. Being so close to him I observed
+him with unusual interest. His aura is very large, and what I can only
+describe as massive, and already it was tinged by the gray veil of
+disappointment. I have seen him several times since, and the veil has
+become more opaque. What interested me so profoundly in him that night
+were the contrasts I knew to exist in his life, and which must have
+profoundly influenced his outlook on human existence.
+
+One afternoon I was walking alone up Piccadilly. There had been rumors
+of coming riots, but no one in the West End gave any credence to such
+silly stories, and the streets were full of the usual gay throng, intent
+on amusement.
+
+Suddenly, as I walked along, a youth on a bicycle dashed past the
+pavement, shouting something I could not catch. More men on bicycles
+followed. The promenaders began to "sit up and take notice." Carriage
+horses were being smartly whipped up, and women began to scurry
+nervously.
+
+Then it seemed to me I could hear something above the roar of the
+ordinary traffic, a hoarse prolonged shout. Servants now appeared on
+doorsteps, and looked about anxiously for non-existent policemen, others
+began closing outside shutters before windows. Just as I reached the
+Naval and Military Club I saw that the servants had come out, and were
+about to close both great gates--"In" and "Out." One of these men
+pointed up the street and advised me at once to seek cover, and I saw in
+the dim distance what looked like a mighty crowd advancing.
+
+In a second I had darted through the gates, and was safely inside before
+they closed upon the approaching mob.
+
+I have only a very confused memory of what happened after. Of kindly
+attentions from the members. Of women's shrieks as their carriages were
+stopped, and their valuables taken from them. Of the deafening roar of
+furious male voices, crashings of glass windows, howls of savage
+exultation, as a hosier's shop close by fell victim to the rioters, the
+clatter of hoofs from terrified horses. I could see nothing, but the
+battering upon the club gates added tenfold to the terrifying din. The
+members withdrew, taking me with them, to the house, and prepared to
+hold it against the furious mob, should the gates give way.
+
+Such wild moments are not easily forgotten, and why I looked upon John
+Burns that night at Court with such a peculiar interest was because he
+led that riot, and suffered imprisonment for so doing.
+
+Looking upon him in Court dress, in the royal enclosure, on intimate
+terms with the great of the world, though perhaps not the great of the
+earth, knowing him to hold high office in the government, I marked the
+change. Then throwing back my mind to those poignant hours in the past,
+which he had created, I felt that nothing is too extraordinary to belong
+to the careers of some men; they live through several lives in one.
+Their Karma is so crowded with stirring events, in the working out of
+the past, in the makings of the future, that nothing human can be any
+longer strange to them. The auras of such men are naturally great,
+because such contrasts of light and shade only come in the lives of men
+possessed of great and lofty ideals.
+
+For some years little has been heard of the former idol of Battersea. He
+is facing west now, though a ray or two of dawning light may still touch
+him in the near future. That wild idealism which comes to men who keep
+their eyes fixed upon a dawn so long in coming, fades out behind the
+veil of disillusion, as the days come not, and the years draw nigh with
+no pleasure in them. Man's ingratitude to man is one of the cruelest
+tests imposed upon the soul of idealism. The soul that can bear it
+without a tinge of cynicism has risen to mighty heights.
+
+Such grandeur of soul was possessed by Elsie Inglis. So impregnated was
+she with pure love of humanity, that when her own country virtually
+turned its back upon her, this irreparable disgrace, brought upon
+themselves by her own people, cast no shadow upon her soul. In the years
+before the war I often noted her lovely aura as I sat amongst an
+audience, and watched her on a platform fighting woman's battle.
+
+After the war broke out I only saw her once, by the merest chance. It
+was then I marked that a rainbow was now about her head, and I knew at
+once that tremendous events were in store for her, though the British
+Government had refused her services. Ah! the poor little cramped mind of
+England's officialism! yet has not this very poverty of imagination,
+this iron-bound worship of worn-out tradition, brought to birth an
+internationalism which could never have been ours without it? It drove
+forth hundreds, thousands of ardent souls, to other lands. Rejected by
+their own, they clasped the pierced hands of strangers, and laid down
+their own incomparably gallant lives at the foot of a cross, whereon
+hung those who had at length become their brothers through a commune of
+agony.
+
+Elsie Inglis received no honor or decoration from the people, or the
+"Great of England." Only the body, worn very thin in the service of
+humanity, was at last honored in death. Knowing the woman, and the stuff
+she was made of, one can only feel intensely this was all as it should
+have been. To offer Elsie Inglis a medal would have been a sacrilege.
+"Hands off such souls as hers," is the cry one's every instinct rings
+forth to the "bauble worshipers" of this world. Besides, and this is a
+very great besides, those who go with a rainbow about their heads are
+not destined for earthly honors. They have taken the great step, they
+have received the great Initiation, a jewel in the blazing crown of
+eternity, and for them no more are the laurel wreaths that perish. In
+justice to those throned on high on earth, the above should be
+remembered. If it is with Elsie Inglis, as I fully believe, she would
+have understood that for her God and Mammon were eternally divorced,
+and any attempt at worldly recognition would have been frustrated by
+"The Lords of Eternal Light and Wisdom," whose chosen disciple she had
+become.
+
+The psychology of the people is a very interesting and curious study, to
+the aura seer. The analysis of the collective mind awaits some great
+writer who will give us a book of absorbing interest. Those who can see
+auras have a great advantage, if they are public speakers. During the
+period of my life, when I had a great deal of political platform work, I
+was always very sensitive to my audiences, because I could see how they
+were taking my remarks. I have always found big audiences of the people
+very colorless in the main. Flashes of bright color would be apparent
+all over the hall, but there was no sustained glow. Whilst sitting on
+some one else's platform, often that of a great orator, I have marked
+exactly the same phenomenon. The soul of the people is still young and
+childlike. It has the indifference of extreme youth, the forgetfulness
+and ingratitude of extreme youth.
+
+I look back upon the fall of Parnell and Dilke, great minds whose
+earthly careers were destroyed by the people. All the world knows why.
+To-day I look on the "perpetrators" of the Gallipoli and Mesopotamia
+tragedies, and I see they have all gone up higher in the esteem of the
+people. They have risen in the world, and are looked upon as ripe for
+even higher office. The poor human brain reels before such anomalies. I
+was in London when the Gallipoli reports were given to the public. They
+shook me to the very foundation of my being. I think they were given out
+towards the end of the week, because I remember saying to myself, "on
+Sunday morning the British working man and woman will read all this
+abomination of desolation and crime in their Sunday paper."
+
+Purposely I strolled about the London parks in the lovely afternoon of
+that Sunday. Crowds were there, reading, courting, sleeping. I went home
+realizing that no one cared. The collective aura of the people was as
+serene and indifferent as ever.
+
+I have come to think more kindly of our people's pathetic indifference,
+because I am sure it is the indifference of very young souls, who have
+passed through but few incarnations, and "know not what they do." I see
+them exploited by the politicians, given a rag doll to amuse themselves
+with, anything will do, from the big loaf to the "Kayzer," and sent to
+the polls hugging their golliwog, but I doubt the returning troops being
+so easily amused and deluded.
+
+The state of the Universe is the expression of man's desire, and man is
+really the builder of his own body, that "house not made with hands,"
+though in his youthful ignorance he attributes both to an over-ruling
+intelligence, whom he alternately blesses and curses. When men learn
+that they must work with, and not against the mental laws, they will no
+longer ask why God permits the world to be so full of misery. They will
+cease to erect a scapegoat, because they will have learned that they are
+the makers of their own misery or happiness.
+
+Many people seem to think that the power to see auras must be very
+useful in helping one to distinguish between friends and foes, but such
+is not really the case. Auras exemplify individual character, not
+individual predilections, and some of my friends being very bad
+characters, indeed, have shocking auras. I had one great friend who, at
+the beginning of our acquaintance, spent much of his time in prison,
+which was really a blessing for his ill-used wife. His aura was
+literally in tatters, just a little irregular circle of rags and
+patches.
+
+I had just succeeded in making him sober, by insisting constantly and
+most seriously that he was "a cut above the public-house," and much too
+superior a man to mix with such degraded companions, when the war broke
+out. He went to the front, and on his first return to Blighty, badly
+gassed, he came at once to see me. I really felt a sort of personal
+pride in him, and an actual sense of personal possession in his
+enormously grown aura. It was clear evidence of his sprouting soul. He
+went back to France, but was wounded and again gassed, and this time his
+return was final, as he was of no further use.
+
+For a few months he did odd jobs with great difficulty, then, finally,
+he succumbed to pneumonia. I was very proud indeed of his aura as I sat
+beside his bed, his hand in mine. There was real love in my heart for
+him that day. Here, indeed, was an infant soul that had begun to develop
+on the right road, and the tattered aura of rags and patches had become
+a neatly trimmed little halo round his poor tired head.
+
+So he went west, and his broken body, wrapped in the British flag, went
+to a soldier's grave, and a firing party gave him the Last Post.
+
+His wife returned home to find that her neighbors, anxious to celebrate
+the occasion, had brought their best china and had arranged a tea-party.
+As we sat down, she turned to me and said:
+
+"Well, thank God, my man's been buried like a gentleman."
+
+When I came to think it over I arrived at the conclusion that "the worst
+character in the slums" had not done so badly with his life, after all.
+He had died like a gentleman. The British Flag is a strange case of
+transubstantiation. At first, just so many pieces of common material
+sold across a counter. Fashioned into the emblem of our Nation it
+becomes a sacred symbol, taken kneeling like a sacrament, which indeed
+it has become. What better shroud could any man ask for?
+
+I am sorry that I have had no opportunity of seeing President Wilson's
+aura, the man who has turned his face towards a heavenly ideal, and is
+scattering the seed amongst all the nations. When a man sets out on such
+a long radiant path, he will carry visibly in the daylight an
+illuminated brow. He has brought to us the vision without which the
+people perish.
+
+The life of the heart has always meant much more to me than the life of
+the head. The rebel by nature can only be held by love, and I have been
+blest by twenty-eight years of perfect union with one who has given me
+love for love, faith for faith, and complete intellectual understanding.
+My life has also been wonderfully gifted by staunchest friends, who have
+loved me through sunshine and storm, and who still clasp hands with me
+across continents and seas.
+
+I suppose I must have enemies. They say every one has, but they have
+never made me aware of their enmity, perhaps because there is no room in
+a very full heart to receive aught but love. If I were to single apart
+one outstanding feature in my life, it would be the wonderful kindness
+and friendship that has been given to me. Ah! how easy that makes it to
+write lovingly of others.
+
+Behind all this lies the master passion of the born mystic for
+liberation. The constant ache and urge for real freedom, and power to be
+victorious over all circumstances. At home in all scenes, restful in all
+fortunes. There is the urge of the soul for universality of contact with
+all humanity, independent of race, color or creed. The urge of the
+spirit to smash the confines which pinion it down to earth.
+
+I think it is really the urge of reincarnating life still clinging to
+me. The knowledge that my immortal soul must return to the House of
+Bondage, until perfection is reached, and there is the going out no more
+from the Father's House, from a freedom which has become supreme.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+ADIEU
+
+
+To-day there are many, an ever-swelling number, who behold with joy the
+gates ajar, who standing in the twilight catch momentary glimpses of
+dawn upon the horizon of time, who know by personal experience that they
+have come into touch with a region where vast schemes are conceived, and
+universal laws of boundless magnitude connected with the soul's eternal
+pilgrimage are carried out.
+
+Again, there are others, timid, shrinking souls to whom, by a mere
+chance combination of circumstances, a glimpse has been shown which is
+none too welcome. Such affrighted ones drop the eyelids from the
+startling vision. They will have none of it, and they are free to accept
+or reject, go on, or stand still.
+
+Others, again, have actually been born with that super-normal sight
+which can discern the workings behind the drop scene shrouding the
+stupendous drama of cosmic government.
+
+I have long been conscious that the veil has worn very thin between
+myself and another world lying around me. As the years draw swiftly on,
+and every second thrown back into eternity brings me nearer to blessed
+deliverance I find the rents in the veil grow more numerous. They bring
+single shining moments, which reveal the spirit of life, its motives and
+consecration.
+
+Through the driving storm wrack there will come quite suddenly a
+brilliant heavenly glimpse. It never lasts long, but long enough to show
+me reality. Something of the vastness of cosmos and the pathetic
+minuteness of this earth, just a speck of star dust in the palm of God,
+an atom of world stuff swinging in boundless space.
+
+Something of the reality of those shining ones who guide the progression
+of natural order, embodiments of resistless energy and of stateliest
+imperial mien.
+
+Glimpses that show to me what was in the mind of the great Christian
+Mystic when he wrote of a mighty angel: "A rainbow was upon his head,
+and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire."
+
+Behind such visions extend vast ranges of being, quite outside my ken,
+yet, nevertheless, speaking to me of things, for the expression of which
+no words have yet been coined. Infinitely greater than anything that can
+be said. Significant in meaning beyond expression, and far transcending
+imagination.
+
+Such glimpses show to me lives that as compared with ours, are as ours
+to the tiniest insect afloat for an hour on the breath of the south
+wind. Lives which ordain the fateful hour when the rise and fall of
+empires, the destruction of nations, and the clash of worlds, and their
+cosmic significance in world history shall begin or end. Where things
+life promised but never gave come to full fruition.
+
+Other glimpses and echoes from the Great Beyond bring to me the answer
+to a problem, a few notes and a new melody, a new energy of hope and
+love, an inspiration from the Great Brotherhood, whose lowliest
+disciple I am, whose work to establish the Brotherhood, the true
+affinity of humanity upon earth I hold most dear, most high.
+
+In the present dark hour all the world is drinking of one chalice, its
+wine the life outpoured for others. All humanity is partaking of one
+bread, a body which has most truly and literally being given to be
+broken. Death has left many songs unsung, a myriad graves are filled,
+youth is blighted in the bud, in this white winter men call death, and
+its cup is pressed close to the lips of love. Many are the hopes that
+lie folded away in the quiet cemetery of the heart, where we lay flowers
+of tender reminiscence. Yet, this sacrament of fellowship which is
+eclipsed in the awful impoverishment of human life will one day be
+swelled by the return of the young, fallen on the Field of Honor,
+glorified and purified for their God-appointed work in evolution.
+
+Perhaps I have gone a few steps farther than most people into the
+mysterious beyond, come nearer reading the great riddle, for the
+creature who is not afraid of thought and worldly condemnation, who is
+not afraid of solitude or ridicule, will soon come near the truth, will
+quickly catch the incommunicable thrill of advancing destinies. She will
+cease to live under the despotism of days, the tyranny of years. She
+will know that the swiftest touch cannot put a finger on the present,
+and that there is but one recorder of time, the great star clock of the
+sky.
+
+The symbol of life is the Circle, not the Straight line, and each of us
+lives over again the story of humanity, as in the shadow of pre-natal
+gloom we repeat the physical evolution of the race. The increase of
+knowledge but widens the horizon of the unknown promised land, to which
+we are moving onward and upward throughout the ages.
+
+However far the mind travels there is always deep down in the soul
+stores of information awaiting transference to the surface of
+consciousness. Rich mines of knowledge are there awaiting the day when
+they will be uncovered, waiting in patience the day when some Divine
+Adventurer will search for them and bring them to light.
+
+However great its aspirations the soul but looks out upon an illimitable
+horizon, and sees the human pilgrimage as a long Emmaeus walk, with
+hearts burning by the way. Always must there be mystery in life, because
+life is spiritual, not material. The presence of mystery in life is the
+presence of God, and the infinity of God shows that mystery must always
+exist.
+
+Such glimpses beyond the veil are all transfiguring. They exalt the
+heart in a single flash to a glow point, and show the soul of the
+Universe in the incandescent crucible of the eternal. In a deeply
+beshadowed time such visions tell us all that we need know, and it is
+this: God is with us and in us. Though obscure for the moment His
+transcendence stands outside the change and flux of time, and His awful
+sovereignty sways irresistibly the tides of human circumstances.
+
+Hours must come when the pen falls from the nerveless fingers, the task
+is left undone, when the weary cry goes up, "There is nothing we can
+do!" We have been doing for so many thousand years, the years which the
+locusts hath eaten. What have we achieved?
+
+When such hours come, as come they must, is there nothing to fall back
+upon but this awful confession of failure, this haunting undertone of
+all our mortal life that many ages have not hushed?
+
+Surely, yes! There is always for the mystic the unmeasured immensity of
+soul land to explore, that Great Beyond and within which is infinite,
+eternal, and of which we are all a part.
+
+Ah! but it may be said, all are not mystics, to which I would reply, all
+who desire can be mystics. For what, after all, is a mystic, but one who
+enters into possession of the inner life? One who becomes fully aware of
+her self-consciousness, and who gains thereby new faculties and
+enlightenment. It places her in touch with that supreme reality which
+some call God and some The Great Creative Power. The mystic knows that
+power is to be found within through identification and submergence with
+the Primordial Force which constitutes the ocean of life. She can always
+pass the sky and clouds of earth, and enter the great, deep, real world
+outside. It is always possible to her to seek a fairer world where the
+only things that matter are the eternal verities, which should be taken
+kneeling, like a sacrament.
+
+    Love and life which is Beauty.
+    Love and power which is Goodness.
+    Love and knowledge which is Wisdom.
+
+The Road of the Flaming Sacred Heart is strewn with insight, kindness
+and sympathy, which gives eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, and a
+voice to the dumb! It is paved with love that serves the humble and
+defends the disinherited. Bravely it walks the _Via Dolorosa_, and it
+"Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, its reward
+to know the love of God, unutterable even to them that know."
+
+The Mystic can face the future without fear, for the power has been
+given her to take her soul, and like a carrier dove, loose it into
+space, to speed away into the fathomless, the everlasting, the voiceless
+deep whose silence is the "Welcome Home" of God.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ghosts I Have Seen, by Violet Tweedale
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