Seen and Unseen Part 4

I pa.s.s over another most excellent and evidential incident as a concession to family prejudice. It has already appeared in my book on America ent.i.tled "A Year in the Great Republic," and may be found there.

At a third materialising _seance_ at the same house an excitable Italian friend of mine, who had never seen anything of the kind before, came with much the same prejudices as I had felt at the Boston _seance_, and disturbed the conditions very much by his att.i.tude of determined antagonism; whilst his comparative ignorance of English, and my feeble Italian, made explanations, under the circ.u.mstances, rather hopeless.

The whole circle was put out of harmony, and a dead weight lay upon us all. The materialisations continued, it is true; but personally it was a great relief to me when my excitable friend left, declaring that everything he had seen was "_physiquement impossible mon ange_."

He departed so abruptly as to bring down much abuse upon his absent head for having "broken the battery" and almost "killed the medium" by his sudden disappearance from the circle.

This awful threat had so much power over the rest of the party that we sat out to the bitter end, leaving the medium at last still in her trance, with husband and son hovering over her in an anxiety which, if acted, showed first-cla.s.s dramatic power.

Meanwhile I had made the acquaintance of a very beautiful and charming woman in New York, to whom I had brought a letter of introduction.

She has had a tragic and remarkable history; is a woman of great mental powers, in addition to very remarkable beauty; and is of the highest rank, being an Austrian princess, I believe, in her own right, and having spent her youth in foreign courts.

Apart from these facts, which had been told me by a mutual friend before we met, I knew nothing whatever of her family history, nor whether she had brothers or sisters, alive or dead.

I had spoken to her of my curious experiences, and she had discussed the matter with me from the standpoint of a thorough woman of the world, of strong mental power, who had seen too much of life to be dogmatic or narrow in her views, but too much also to believe in what is called the "supernatural," before every possible _natural_ hypothesis had been admitted and dismissed as untenable.

Sitting in her pretty room the day before I left New York, we had talked for some two hours on various subjects connected with life and literature, and before the final "adieux" she said laughingly: "Well, have you been to any more _seances_?"

I said "No," and that we did not intend to do so, as our time was now so short. A few moments of careless talk on the subject ensued, and picking up a newspaper, I cast my eye over the usual list of mediums, clairvoyants, etc. A half-defined wish to see whether any spirit friend would come to me under totally different conditions and surroundings, and in an entirely different quarter of the city, led to my copying out one of the addresses at haphazard.

I could not prevail upon my hostess to accompany me (she is delicate, and dreads night air), but I took the slip of paper to my hotel, thinking that my friend there might care to take the cars after dinner to this distant end of the city.

My English companion proved rather indifferent and disinclined towards the expedition.

This was very natural. She was not magnetic in temperament, and had no expectation of seeing any of her own friends, although, of course, she had both seen and spoken to those who came for me.

However, a good dinner at the excellent Windsor Hotel fortified us so much after our fatigues that at the last moment we agreed to make one more attempt, no one, ourselves included, having known five minutes previously that we should leave the house.

On this occasion we were ushered into a much more imposing drawing-room, and the lady herself was evidently some degrees higher in the social scale than our first mediumistic friend.

The arrangements also were quite different. As we sat waiting for a few minutes (having arrived very punctually), Mrs Gray looked at my friend, and then described an elderly lady with grey hair who was standing over her, but, of course, invisible to our eyes. Almost immediately Mrs Gray began rubbing her knees, and complained of pain in them, adding: "The impression of dropsy is being conveyed to me. This spirit seems to have suffered from disease of that nature."

My friend--who was very self-contained and unemotional--gave no clue to the fact that she recognised anyone by this description, but as we were returning home in the cars she said quietly: "It is curious Mrs Gray should have described that old lady with grey hair--I suppose she meant my mother. _She_ had grey hair, and died of dropsy."

On my expostulating with this lady for having given the impression that she did not recognise the description at the time she said, with conscious pride: "You don't suppose I was going to let the woman know that she had described my mother?"

To give a false impression in so good a cause as determined incredulity, seems not only justifiable, but actually praiseworthy to many minds.

Later in the evening, the _seance_ being in full swing, a spirit dressed in some kind of white "sister's" dress appeared at the door of the cabinet; and Mrs Stoddart Gray asked if anyone in the circle could speak German, as this spirit did not seem to understand French, Italian, or English, and she herself only recognised German by the sound.

A gentleman volunteered his a.s.sistance, but apparently without much effect, and being a German scholar, I then offered to come to the rescue. The moment I went up to the figure she seemed to gain strength, and came quite out of the cabinet, and said to me in the most refined German (any readers who have studied the language know that there is as wide a difference between the highest and lowest type of German accent as between an educated Irish "accent" and an Irish brogue):

"_Ich bin die schwester von Madame Schewitsch_," mentioning the name of the foreign friend with whom I had been spending that afternoon: "_Ich weisz das Sie Heute Nach mittag bei meiner schwester waren._"[1]

[1] Translation: "I am the sister of Madame Schewitsch--I know that you spent this afternoon with my sister."

She had evidently a strong, almost overwhelming desire to make some communication to me for her sister, but the difficulty in doing so seemed equally strong.

It lay beyond the question of language. She spoke with sufficient strength, and I could understand perfectly her well-chosen and well-p.r.o.nounced words. But some insuperable obstacle seemed to prevent her telling me what she wished to convey, and the despairing attempt to surmount this was painful in the extreme.

I a.s.sured her of my willingness to help in any way possible, and made a few suggestions, but all in vain.

"Is it that you are not happy?"

"No--no! That is not it."

It seemed to me some sort of warning which she wished to convey, and had some connection with illness, for the words _achtung_ and _krankheit_ (warning and illness) were repeated more than once, but no definite message came.

I then asked if she could _write_ it, and she caught eagerly at the idea. So I borrowed a pencil and some paper, and placed them on a small table in the middle of the room, with a chair in front of it. She came quite close to the table (five gas burners were more than half turned on, so there was plenty of light), sat down, and took up the pencil, but almost immediately threw it down again, saying in a most unhappy and despairing voice: "_Nein! nein! Ich kann es selbst nicht schreiben!_"[2]

and vanished before my very eyes as she rose from the table. Now had this been a case of fraud, and supposing that some woman had means of discovering the name of my New York friend and the fact of my having spent that very afternoon with her, what would have been easier than to write or give some commonplace message in a language of which she had already proved herself mistress?

[2] Translation: "No! no! I cannot even write it!"

The episode was so painful that I decided _not_ to write to Madame Schewitsch about it. I have therefore no absolute corroboration of the fact that the lady mentioned had a sister who became a nun, or who was connected with some such establishment, and had pa.s.sed over. This, however, is much more probable than not, because in every high-born Catholic family in Austria, one member in a large family almost invariably takes the veil. I have given the real name in this case, hoping Madame Schewitsch may perchance come across my book, and supply the information needed. I may remark, finally, that three or four months later, whilst travelling in California, I heard from my excitable and sceptical Italian friend (who had given me the introduction to Madame Schewitsch) that this lady had had a long and most serious illness during my absence in the West, and that her husband and he had both feared she would never recover from it. This fear, fortunately, proved to be groundless.

To return to the sitting.

About twenty minutes after the "sister" had disappeared, a figure in white came forward very swiftly, and without a moment's hesitation pointed towards me, saying quickly: "_For you._"

I went up at once, recognising who it was, but determined to give no sign of this fact.

The "spirit" looked at me for a moment with surprise, as one might look at any well-known friend who pa.s.sed us in the street without a greeting.

As I remained silent she whispered: "Don't you know me?" I am afraid _I_ gave the false impression this time, and asked her for her name.

"_Why, I am Muriel!_" came the instant answer, mentioning the name of the first friend who had appeared to me, after spelling out her name, at the previous _seances_ held in another part of New York.

On this third appearance my spirit friend asked me to kiss her. I must confess that I complied with some amount of trepidation, which proved to be quite unnecessary.

There was nothing the least repulsive to the touch, although it was not exactly like kissing anyone on earth; but an indescribable atmosphere of freshness and purity, which seemed always to surround this friend whilst living, was very apparent under these changed conditions. Another curious little point is that I had entirely forgotten my friend's love of violets (she always wore them when possible, and used violet scent) until I smelt them distinctly whilst speaking to her.

It must be remembered that until the day of the sitting, we had never dreamed of going to Mrs Gray's house, nor had we even heard her name. I picked it out of a newspaper by chance--amongst at least thirty others.

Until past seven o'clock that evening we had not decided to visit her, and the _seance_ began at eight P.M., no single person in the room being present who had been at the house of the other medium some weeks previously. Under these circ.u.mstances it would be difficult to account for the fact of my friend's reappearance on the ground of collusion between the two mediums. Moreover, such collusion would not account for the appearance earlier in the evening of a spirit claiming to be the sister of Madame Schewitsch.

No one hitherto has been able to suggest any _intelligent_ explanation of my personal experiences on these occasions. Conjuring tricks and trap doors are, of course, "trotted out" by the _unintelligent_ sceptic, but these do not meet the difficulty of an _accurate knowledge of names and of family matters of comparatively small importance_.

As I am just now chiefly concerned with presenting incidents in my life rather than in prosing over them, I resist the temptation to go further into the question of _Materialisations_ either from the historical or ethical point of view, and pa.s.s on to the subject of clairvoyance.

CHAPTER II--_continued_