Ghosts I Have Seen Part 18

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 G.o.d would permit such things to come to pa.s.s as I have heard lightly described. I was wrong. Such awful experiences are possible. I know it to my own cost, and I pray G.o.d I may never pa.s.s 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 compa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sed 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s. 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 pa.s.sed 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 mult.i.tudes. In about three minutes It had pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sion 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 G.o.d are always pa.s.sing. 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-gla.s.s 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 rec.u.mbent 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.