Ghosts I Have Seen Part 9

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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 s.h.i.+llings."

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 pa.s.sed, 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 n.o.bles 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 b.u.t.ton 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 s.h.i.+ps that pa.s.s in the night "we exchange signals with one another," and pa.s.s 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 s.h.i.+p in mid ocean, and watching a trail of smoke from another s.h.i.+p on the horizon, I am always impelled to wonder about its human cargo. Who and what are they, and for what distant sh.o.r.es 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 circ.u.mscribed, 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 sh.o.r.es 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 s.h.i.+p 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 comrades.h.i.+p 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 ident.i.ty. 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude 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 kins.h.i.+p, stretching invisible threads down through the ages. With both those women I had a feeling of kins.h.i.+p. 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 s.h.i.+ne 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.s 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 att.i.tude that should prevail in all such trials and circ.u.mstances. 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 friends.h.i.+ps, 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed some time in the United States and Canada; we then returned to England and took a place in Cambridges.h.i.+re. 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 Cambridges.h.i.+re."

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 Cambridges.h.i.+re?'"

The answer was prompt and clear: