Seen and Unseen Part 7

Amongst other details, George Eliot said finally that she had come to know my mother in spirit life, where she was called STELLA. Now my mother's name in earth life was Ellen, which has the same root for its origin. Of course, Miss Maynard did not then know whether my mother were alive or dead, and nothing naturally concerning her Christian name.

The last statement made by George Eliot on this occasion was that "_before another year had rolled by, a great gift would come to me, and I must be very careful to use without abusing it_." I was too tired at the moment to ask whether "another year rolling by" meant a whole year from 28th October 1887 (the date of the message), or the end of the current year--namely, 31st December 1887.

When the message had come to an end, Miss Maynard gathered up the scattered sheets, and promising to copy them out for me, took her departure, and left me to muse--so far as a racking brain would allow--on the curious and interesting result of her visit. No cup of tea to thirsty wayfarer was ever surely so grandly rewarded!

My next adventure had a distant connection with these Australian experiences.

I had come out to join the friend (Miss Greenlow) who had been my companion in America, and who had thence sailed for Sydney when I returned for a year to England. She had been anxious for me to rejoin her in Australia, and from thence visit j.a.pan and China; but my arrival having been delayed by literary matters, this lady had finally lost patience, and, without my knowledge, had gone on to New Zealand, and thence, as it turned out, to Samoa. When I heard of the New Zealand episode there was nothing for it but to follow her there, on a will-o'-the-wisp expedition, as it turned out, but, fortunately, I was unaware of this at the time. I say fortunately, because had I known that she had already left Australia for Samoa, I should certainly have returned to England, in despair of tracing her any further, and thereby one of my most interesting experiences would have been lost.

The illness in Melbourne, already referred to, detained me for over a fortnight, so it was necessary to transfer my New Zealand ticket from one boat to another. So the illness also must have been one of the factors that was involved in the adventure, as I have called it. For the delay led to my meeting--in a friend's house--Mr Arthur Kitchener (a younger brother of Lord Kitchener), who was introduced to me on the special ground that we were to be fellow-travellers to New Zealand a day or two later. As a matter of fact, Mr Kitchener was on his way from England to New Zealand, where he was superintending a sheep-run for his father in those days. He had come out by P. & O., and trans.h.i.+pped at Melbourne after two or three days' delay there.

Several other pa.s.sengers from the _Ma.s.silia_ were also going on to New Zealand, and naturally they felt like old friends after the five or six weeks already spent together. They thought _I_ wanted to be alone, and I thought _they_ wanted to be alone, and so I kept severely to the upper deck, feeling often lonely, and they all remained on the lower deck, wis.h.i.+ng I would come down and talk to them sometimes. In spite of these misconceptions on either side, Mr Kitchener and I became sufficiently friendly for him to give me a very kind and hospitable invitation to spend the last few days of the year at his "station," about nine miles from Dunback, in the Dunedin district. I think I must have told him of my disappointment in missing my companion in Sydney, after travelling so many thousand miles to join her, and doubtless he felt some interest in this Stanley and Livingstone sort of chase, with two women taking the princ.i.p.al characters!

Anyway, the invitation was given and accepted, and he kindly promised to ask one or two people to meet me in his house.

All this came to pa.s.s some weeks later, on my return from the New Zealand lakes, and just before an expedition to the "Sounds," generally known as the "Sounds Trip."

This is a pleasure trip, organised for early January, which is, of course, midsummer there. It lasts for ten days, and gives one the opportunity of seeing to the best advantage these glorious inlets of the sea.

My week at the sheep station was to precede this, as I have explained; in fact, as the steamer sailed late in the afternoon, it was possible to go on board without stopping for the night at Dunedin, whence we were to sail. But at the last moment a slight contretemps took place. Owing to some delay the steamer would not be able to leave till Monday, instead of the Sat.u.r.day morning as arranged, and our kind host insisted on extending his hospitality for the two extra days.

Now each day there had been some talk about having an impromptu _seance_, and each day I had successfully evaded the arrangement. I have a great dislike to sitting in casual circles with strangers, and it seemed to me that no good purpose would be served by doing so. It is impossible on these occasions to convince anyone else that you are not pus.h.i.+ng or "muscle moving," or generally playing tricks, and it has always seemed to me that the time wasted over mutual recriminations on these points, or the silly jokes that appear inevitable, when two or three human beings at a table get together in a private house; might be much more profitably spent.

Table turning as a parlour game is about as stupid and aimless an amus.e.m.e.nt as I know. I represented all this to Mr Kitchener, but in vain. He had attended some psychic meetings in Dunback or Dunedin, and evidently wished me to reconsider the matter. Also it happened to be the last day of the year, when people are always more inclined to be obliging, I suppose; anyway that Sat.u.r.day night, 31st December 1887, found me sitting down to a table in the little drawing-room of that far-away sheep station.

As some reward for any virtue there may have been in yielding my point, I remembered suddenly that George Eliot's message on 28th October--two months previously--had been rather vague, and that it might be interesting, if the chance came, to find out whether "_before another year has rolled away_" meant a year from 28th October, or the year of which so few hours still remained to us.

After the usual inanities--"_I am sure you are pus.h.i.+ng._" "No; _you_ are! _I saw your fingers pressing heavily._" "_Why, how extraordinary!

that is exactly what I thought about you_," etc. etc., it was intimated that a spirit was there giving the name of George Eliot, so I put my question at once.

"I did not mean another year from October last--I referred to this year," was the answer.

"Shall I be able to write automatically?" was my next query.

"No; leave that alone--it would be very dangerous for you at present."

"Shall I be able to hear? Shall I become clair-audient?"

"No," came for the second time.

My next question naturally was: "Then shall I be able to _see_ very soon?"

"Yes; for you will become clairvoyant for the first time. Remember my warning to use but not abuse the gift."

Now I must explain that all this time a good deal of the usual kind of joking had been going on. Moreover, I felt intuitively that Mr Kitchener thought I was deceiving myself into the idea that human muscles could not account for the movements, and, in fact, the very worst possible conditions for getting anything of value were present.

So much so that I did not for one moment suppose that it was really George Eliot, or that she would countenance that particular sort of buffoonery, and the incident made no impression upon me at all. I had already taken my hands off the table, when someone--Mr Kitchener, I think--banged it down four times, and then triumphantly observed: "_Yes, of course, you will see somebody during the night, or rather at four o'clock in the morning, you see!_" The whole thing was the kind of fiasco I had expected, "degenerating into a romp," as poor Corney Grain used to remark about the "Lancers" and the stern old lady in the suburban villa.

The bathos of table turning had surely been reached when it came to banging the leg of the table down four times, and calmly announcing four o'clock as the time for my first vision!

But the remarkable point is that I _did_ have my first vision that night, though it had come and gone long before four A.M.

It is necessary to remember that the sun rises about three-thirty A.M.

during the end of December or first week in January out there, so it would have been fairly light before four A.M.; whereas when I woke out of my first sleep that night, it was pitch dark.

My room was the usual whitewashed apartment to be found in the ordinary colonial "station," with a wooden bed standing about two or three feet from the wall, and parallel with the only window in the room; which faced the door (at the foot of my bed), and was fitted with a very dark green blind, on account of the hot summer suns.h.i.+ne.

But it was now pitch dark in the room. I woke facing the window, but turned on my side, as one generally does on such occasions, and this brought me face to face with the wall. To my infinite amazement there stood between the wall and my bed, a diaphanous figure of a woman, quite life size or rather more, with one arm held out in a protecting fas.h.i.+on towards me, and some drapery about the head. The features were, moreover, quite distinct, and, as I afterwards realised, the counterpart of George Eliot's curious and Savonarola-like countenance. But at the moment, oddly enough, I only thought of two things--first, how extraordinary that what had appeared to me such a silly waste of time overnight should have had any element of reality about it! Then swiftly came the second idea: "And how in the world does it happen that I don't feel a bit frightened?"

I lay there absolutely content and peaceful, with a feeling of blissful satisfaction which I have never exactly realised either before or since that one occasion.

"_Everything is all right--nothing can really ever go wrong--nothing at least that matters at all. All the real things are all right. I can never doubt the truth of these things after this experience. It was promised, and the promise has been redeemed._" These were the thoughts that pa.s.sed idly through my brain as I lay--fully awake--and looked up at the comforting woman's figure. For it seemed more--much more--than a mere vision. I have spoken of the figure as diaphanous because it was not as solid as an ordinary human being, but, on the other hand, I could not see the wall through it: it was too solid for that. Then I remembered a story told in _The Athenaeum_--of all papers--and written by a Dr Jephson, of his experience whilst paying a visit to Lord Offord, and making notes--late at night--in the library of the house for some literary work on hand. He had finished his notes, put away the book of reference, looked at his watch, found the hands marking two A.M. (so far as I remember), and had just said to himself: "Well, I shall be in bed by two-thirty after all," when, turning round, he found a large leather chair close to his own, tenanted by a Spanish priest in some ancient dress!

Thinking it might be an hallucination, he deliberately turned round--_away_ from the priest--rubbed his eyes, and then slowly looked back again. Still the priest was there, and Dr Jephson then realised for the first time that, although not _consciously frightened_ or alarmed in any way, he was quite unable to _speak_ to the intruder. So he quietly chose a pencil, sat down, and calmly took his portrait. The priest politely remained until the sketch was completed, and then vanished.

This story, read some years previously, flashed through my brain, and I thought: "_I_ will try turning round, and then seeing if she is still there." I turned deliberately, facing the window, and then realised that it was pitch dark in my room--not the faintest glimmer of light came through the heavily shrouded window. "_Then it can't be four o'clock_,"

was my triumphant comment.

It would have been too disappointing had my distinguished visitor condoned the unblus.h.i.+ng banging down four times of the table leg, by choosing that hour for her arrival in my room! But then again, how could I _see_ her, since the room was quite dark? It was only necessary to turn round once more to the wall to realise that I _did_ see her in fact, although I ought not to have done so in theory! I saw her as distinctly as I ever saw a marble statue in the Vatican Gallery by the light of noon. Although I had recalled the Jephson story so circ.u.mstantially, it never struck me that it might be interesting to attempt any conversation, and see whether I also were tongue-tied. I did not _want_ to speak--there seemed no special reason for speaking. It was quite enough to lie there with this blissful feeling of protection and love folding me round like a cloud with golden lining. And as this consciousness held me in its loving grasp, to my infinite sorrow the kind, protecting figure disappeared, gently and very slowly, sinking into the ground on the spot where I had first seen her; and once more all was dark in the room.

I lay, too happy and peaceful for movement or even speculation for some ten minutes, and then it struck me that I had better light the candle by my side, and find out what o'clock it might be.

Now I have a rather accurate idea of time, and can generally tell within a minute or two how long any special work may have taken me. Looking at my watch, I saw it was just two-twenty-five A.M., so I settled in my own mind that I must have seen the figure at two-fifteen A.M., or possibly at two-ten A.M., for I think the experience lasted nearly five minutes altogether. Anyway, I felt sure that ten minutes, as nearly as possible, had elapsed between the sinking of the figure out of sight and my lighting the match in order to consult my watch. It may have been nine minutes, or possibly eleven, but I feel confident the time mentioned would be within these limits.

Therefore next morning, when our host appeared, and I was chaffed about "the vision," I said boldly: "You think it all nonsense, and I confess I did not believe anything that came last night when so much joking was going on, but I was mistaken. I _did_ see, for the first time in my life, anything abnormal." And I repeated my experience, just as I have now written it down.

Incredulous looks greeted me, and then Mr Kitchener said quietly:

"Oh yes, you saw something at four A.M. I am not at all surprised to hear that."

"Not at four A.M.," I answered, "but at two-fifteen A.M. I made a special note of the time. I was asleep again long before four A.M., and never slept better in my life."

He looked puzzled, and then suggested that my watch must have gone wrong; but we compared notes, and our watches were registering exactly the same hour within a minute or two.

I found out later that, having learnt something of the Thought Transference Theory at the Dunedin Circle or Metaphysical Club which he had attended, Mr Kitchener had attempted to _make me see_ a vision at four A.M., but as he confessed he had been fast asleep _when_ I _did_ see (_an hour and three quarters before his efforts started_), it would take a very ingenious person to prove that the latter had anything to do with the occurrence.

A deeply interesting corroboration reached me, however, a few weeks later, by which time I had visited the "Sounds," and many other places of interest, and had arrived safely at Auckland, in the North Island.

On the morning of my vision, I must not forget to mention, that I had spoken of it to Mr Kitchener's faithful Irish housekeeper, whose nationality I knew would prevent her thinking me a mere lunatic. By this time scepticism had the upper hand, and I was beginning to try to explain away everything in the true Podmorian spirit.

Could Mr Kitchener or any other person present have had to do with the matter? In this case my blissful feelings would naturally be merely the result of imagination, and easily disposed of on this ground. So I questioned the little housekeeper when she brought my hot water as to whether it could have been possible for Mr Kitchener or anyone else in the house to have access to a clean sheet or tablecloth, and to have masqueraded in the garden outside my room. She indignantly denied the possibility. "The linen is all locked up by me; besides, no one would have been so wicked. It might have frightened you out of your senses, ma'am! Do you suppose the master would have done such a thing?"

No; I did not really accuse anyone of such a cruel and stupid joke.

Moreover, it was a little difficult, even for Podmorian ingenuity, to explain how man or woman, masquerading in a white sheet in the garden outside, could convey the fairly solid figure of a faked "George Eliot,"

who stood well out between the wall and my bed; and this through a thick green blind and curtains, when garden and room alike were shrouded in _absolute_ darkness!

Foiled in all my attempts to find a "sensible solution" to the mystery, I determined to write and ask Lizzie Maynard of Melbourne if _she_ could throw any light upon matters, my decision in taking this step being strengthened by the curious coincidence which I had just discovered--_i.e._ that Mr Kitchener's housekeeper had lived with the Maynards when they had had a house in Dunedin, which was later burnt down, as so often happens in the Colonies. "Jane" had lost sight of the Maynard family for years, and was much excited by my promising to write and tell them of my meeting with her.