Seen and Unseen Part 18

I did not happen to have the letter in my pocket which authorised my visit, and should probably not have produced it in any case. So I turned away rather shortly, leaving my card, saying: "I must trouble you to forward this at once to Lady Caithness."

The moment the secretary saw my name, her manner entirely changed, and became as servile as it had been "cavalier."

"Miss Bates, I see? Oh, certainly, I shall communicate at once with her ladys.h.i.+p. I had no idea it was Miss Bates. Pray excuse me, so many come and ask for the d.u.c.h.esse, and we have to be so very particular. But, of course, _you_ must be the lady the d.u.c.h.esse is so very fond of. She has mentioned you often, and warned us to receive you with every courtesy."

And that is my last recollection of the kindly woman, who died a few months later. No, not absolutely my last recollection: visiting Scotland in 1896, I made a point of going to Holyrood Chapel for the express purpose of finding her grave.

The plain stone slab and simple inscription seemed at first a curious contrast to the gorgeous magnificence of her home and dress and surroundings. Yet I am inclined to think that they represented a side of her character which was quite as real as the other.

In like manner, no one who knew of her only as a "wild visionary" could have realised the shrewd, practical woman of business and of common-sense who shared the personality of Countess of Caithness and d.u.c.h.esse de Pomar.

I remember that Mr Frederic Myers made the same remark to me after a visit he paid to her, just after my return to England, for the purpose of arranging matters with regard to her generous bequest to the Society for Psychical Research.

CHAPTER VIII

FROM OXFORD TO WIMBLEDON

From Paris to England is not a long cry, and my next reminiscence is connected with the University of Oxford.

I was spending a few days there with a friend in the spring of 1896, and went with her one afternoon to an Oxford tea-party, with its usual sprinkling of women, married and unmarried; a few dons captured as a question of friends.h.i.+p, and more than a few undergraduates.

Amongst the latter I chanced to hear the name of a very well-known bishop, whom I had first met and known rather intimately when I was a young girl, and he a young married curate. I had also known his wife (a few years my senior) very intimately in those far-off days, so my curiosity was aroused to know if the young man in this Oxford drawing-room should chance to be a son of this bishop, whom we will call the Bishop of Granchester. I found that my surmise was correct; the young man was introduced to me, and we were soon deep in an interesting conversation about his parents, especially his mother, who had died when he was barely three years old. He knew little or nothing about her. His father had married again, and his paternal grandmother (still alive in 1896) had never cared for his mother--from feelings of jealousy probably--so there was no one to speak to the boy about her, and he was naturally delighted to hear all my girlish recollections of her.

"Do come and have tea with me to-morrow afternoon, or any day that suits you," he said eagerly. "I have one or two old photographs taken of my mother when she was young, and I should like so much to know which of them you consider the best."

Of course, I agreed to go, Mr Blake-Mason promising to ask a "chum" to entertain my hostess whilst he and I discussed the photographs and the old days before he was born.

Returning home from his rooms that February evening, I was conscious once more of an unaccountable depression, and also a certain amount of nervous irritability, which other sensitives will understand, and which often precedes some psychic happening. Just after we had finished dinner, it struck me suddenly, and _for the first time_, that my discomfort might be connected with my afternoon visit. This young man's mother might be wis.h.i.+ng to impress me in some way! I found that this was the fact, but felt unequal to going further into the matter that night.

I promised to listen to anything she might wish to say next morning, and having given this promise, all unpleasant and disturbing influences disappeared, and I had a good night's rest. Next morning, after breakfast, my hostess said very practically:

"Now do get this matter off your mind at once, or you will be worried about it all day. I am going to order dinner, and shall then be in the drawing-room, so you can have this room entirely to yourself."

I sat down, and a very beautiful message was given to me by the friend of my girlhood.

She was evidently very much perturbed and very anxious about something connected with her youngest son, whom I had met for the first time two days previously, and about whose affairs, I need scarcely say, I was in a state of profound ignorance. The little mother was anxious not to "give him away," nor betray confidences, and so her words were very guarded. There was evidently nothing in the least dishonourable or in any way _unworthy_ of her son in question. I gathered, rather, that he might be contemplating some step which she, from her wider outlook, considered undesirable and inexpedient; possibly even disastrous in the future.

It was no business of mine, and I make it a point of honour not to "try to guess" more than I am told, and to forget what I _am_ told as soon as possible, where the affairs of other people are involved.

This is, fortunately, easy for me as a rule, but in this case one sentence remains even now ringing in my ears, and if the son ever comes across this record I hope he will forgive my reproducing his mother's last beautiful words to me:

"_Tell my darling boy that life is so solemn and true love so sacred a thing. Tell him to be very, very sure, lest he lose the substance in pursuing the shadow._"

The first sentence is given verbatim. In the second my memory may be producing the sense without the exact wording, but I have no doubt at all that my words practically convey what the mother wished me to "tell her boy."

This message gave me a hard problem to solve: "What should I do with it?"

On the one hand, my having agreed to take the message, tacitly bound me to let him have it.

On the other hand, there were various questions to consider. In the first place, Mr Blake-Mason might probably, and very naturally, resent my writing to him on the subject, especially as I had no reason to suppose he had any knowledge of psychic matters.

Secondly, he might suppose (quite untruly) that I had heard some private affairs of his discussed, and had taken upon myself to convey a personal warning, under cover of his dead mother's wishes.

This was perhaps exaggerating a possibility, which, nevertheless, could not be ignored.

Thirdly, he might consider me a harmless lunatic, conveying a message which had no slightest foundation in truth.

Fourthly, it might, on the other hand, give him the impression that his mother must have some access to his most private affairs; in which case he might become intensely interested in psychic matters, to the exclusion of more mundane affairs--always a danger with young people--not to mention other possibilities of psychic disaster for _inexperienced investigators_.

I went over all these chances _con_, to put against the one _pro_ of his mother's loving anxiety, and my sense of responsibility to her.

Finally, I decided that there was no choice left for me but to send the message, and trust the consequences to a Higher Wisdom.

I did this, adding a few words of explanation, and also of warning, in case he should recognise my absolute _bona fides_ and his mother's personality, and become too much absorbed by these psychic possibilities. Unfortunately, I added, in his own interests, _that it was not necessary to acknowledge the letter._

"It would doubtless reach him, and I had nothing more to do with the matter."

I left Oxford next day, and have never seen the young man since; nor have I ever heard from him. I concluded that he was annoyed, or that the message was quite wide of the mark. I never doubted his mother's presence with me, but I might have failed to reproduce her words to her son with sufficient accuracy for recognition.

Anyway, I put the matter out of my head as one of those trying episodes to which all sensitives are exposed at times, when they think more of conscience than personal convenience.

Three or four years pa.s.sed before the corroboration of that message came to me, in a rather curious manner.

A cousin of mine, having been badly wounded in the West African War, was sent to a London hospital to have the bullet, which had puzzled all the local surgeons, located and extracted.

He was at the hospital for several weeks during the London season of 1899, I think. During these weeks I, in common with many other friends and relations, was in the habit of paying him occasional visits. I had gone to say good-bye to him on leaving town, when "by chance" (as we call it) he mentioned, for the _first_ time, the name of his ward sister, adding how charming and kind and capable she had proved. "By the way, she is a daughter of the Bishop of Granchester," he added. "You know everybody, Cousin Emmie! perhaps you know _her_," he said, smiling.

"No; I don't know her, Bertie! but I knew her mother and father very well many years ago."

Nothing would satisfy him but that I should ask to see her when I left the hospital, and as he seemed really anxious on the point I promised to do so, though inwardly averse from disturbing a busy woman.

I asked the hall porter for her, but said I had no special business, and would not ask to see her unless she happened to be quite free. In a few moments he returned, and showed me into a pretty sitting-room on the ground floor, saying that the sister would be with me shortly. The door opened again to admit a bright, pleasant-looking young woman of seven or eight and twenty, who gave me a most cordial greeting when she heard my name, saying: "Oh yes, Frank told me all about meeting you at Oxford."

I did not feel very keen about talking of "Frank" just then; but we sat down, and had a long half hour's chat on much the same lines as my conversation with her brother three years before.

I had said good-bye, and she had accompanied me across the hall to the fine stone steps leading from the hospital--she had, in fact, turned towards her own apartments--when I felt I _must_ ask her one more question, so I also turned, and hurried back to her.

"Did your brother Frank ever tell you of a letter he received from me in Oxford?" I asked.

"Oh yes," she answered, without a touch of embarra.s.sment.

Then I continued: "I never heard from him about it. I told him he need not write at the time, but I have been afraid he was hurt or annoyed, and thought it an impertinence on my part perhaps."

"Did Frank never write?" she asked, with genuine astonishment. "I know he intended to do so. Certainly he was not annoyed in any way. Far from it. He was intensely interested, and _I have the best of reasons for knowing that that message from our mother made a very great difference in his life_."