Seen and Unseen Part 30

She and I descended in solemn state to the fine library of our host, on the ground floor, whilst his wife and sister elected to remain in the drawing-room upstairs. A sister-in-law also begged to be excused from accompanying us, and spent the whole time occupied by our _seance_, in playing Moody and Sankey hymns, doubtless hoping thereby to exorcise the evil spirits whom we should presumably evoke.

Unfortunately, she did not play loud enough to divert the attention of the Portuguese cook, who promptly gave warning next day, saying she could not stand these "devilish practices"! We had failed to realise that the very wall, close to which our small table was placed, divided the kitchen from the large ground-floor library, so the poor woman doubtless sat with her ear well jammed up against this part.i.tion, and considered every rap of the table leg on the floor, a distinct footstep of the devil!

Nothing more terrible happened to _us_ that evening than being forced to look up our English history once more, in "Hume" and "Green's Short History of the English People," both of which volumes were close at hand. For the whole _seance_ might have been an "easy lesson in English history," with John, Duke of Northumberland, Lady Jane Grey, the Earl of Leicester, and the famous Elizabeth as its exponents. All these purported to be with us that evening, and I am bound to say that all dates and details mentioned, which our middle-aged memories could not verify at the moment, were in every case corroborated by reference to the library books later.

It was just before leaving England for Portugal that I first met a lady (with whom I have since become more intimate), under rather exceptional circ.u.mstances--these latter were unknown to me at the time.

My brother, Colonel C. E. Bates, was living at this time (1901) in rooms in Cambridge Terrace, and the drawing-room floor was occupied by a Miss Isabel Smith, who was then only a name to us both. His landlady had given him to understand that this lady had connections in India, and was the niece of a General Propert, still on the active list, and an old friend of my brother's in Indian days.

The last Sunday before starting for Lisbon I called in as usual to spend the afternoon in Cambridge Terrace, and found that the "drawing-room lady" had just been paying him a visit, and had left him most enthusiastic.

This visit surprised me, because my brother, being a very great invalid, had an inveterate dislike to meeting strangers, with whom he generally found it difficult to carry on any lengthy conversation. But this visitor had evidently been an exception. My brother expressed some regret that I should have missed seeing her, so to please him I suggested sending his valet upstairs with his compliments, and asking if I might pay the lady a short visit, should she be disengaged.

She came downstairs kindly, a second time, and we had a pleasant chat, whilst my brother and an old Indian brother officer carried on their conversation.

I left England a few days later, and scarcely expected to see or hear any more of Miss Isabel Smith. Fate, however, ordained otherwise. Some weeks elapsed, and then I received a letter from my brother, mentioning the curious circ.u.mstances that, he had just heard, had led to his making the acquaintance of this pleasant neighbour. "It is too long a story to write," he concluded, "but I will tell you all about it next time we meet."

He did so, and as his account exactly tallies with the one Miss Isabel Smith (now Mrs Finch) has kindly written out for me for insertion in this volume, I will quote the latter from her own words. I must premise that Miss Smith turned out to be naturally clairvoyant and clair-audient, rather to the disgust of my brother, who considered himself superior to these "superst.i.tions." Her narrative is interesting not only in itself, but because it is an object lesson in the curious "hits and misses" in psychic investigation. In this case a spirit confessed to an impersonation; but it was an impersonation of the brother of a man whom my brother had really known in India--a fact entirely apart from any possible knowledge on the part of Miss Smith, who had never met my brother at the time of her adventure. I will now give Miss Smith's narrative.

"When at Grindelwald in the winter 1900-1901 an excarnate ent.i.ty came and spoke to me. He seemed much interested in the South African campaign; told me he had been a soldier, first in the Rifle Brigade, then in the Indian army. When I asked his name he said he was Henry Arthur Chomley (the name of a celebrated amba.s.sador was the one given), that he was a brother of Sir Frederic Chomley, and had been in the Rifle Brigade and in India, _and had pa.s.sed over two or three years before_.

When, shortly afterwards, I returned to Cambridge Terrace, he realised the changed surroundings, and asked where I was. On learning I was in rooms he asked whether there was anyone else in the house, and on my telling him there was a paralysed military man downstairs named Bates, he exclaimed 'What! Charlie Bates? I knew him very well in India--do ask him if he remembers me!'

I said I did not know the gentleman, but would certainly ask him if an opportunity should occur.

A few days after this, a message was brought up to me from Colonel Bates, asking for my uncle, General Propert's, address in Burmah. This gave me the opening. I wrote giving the required information, and suggested that I might come and have a talk with him.

In my next conversation with 'Colonel Chomley' I told him all this, and he again said: '_Mind you ask him about me!_' I answered: '_How can I, when I don't know what Colonel Bates' ideas are on these subjects? He might look on me as a dangerous lunatic!_'

Colonel Chomley remarked: '_I think you will find that he is interested in psychic matters._'

I discovered that this was true, for on my first visit I saw a copy of the S.P.R. Proceedings lying on the table.

I found him interested, but unable to get beyond the 'subliminal consciousness' theory.

A few days later I asked Colonel Bates if he had ever met a Colonel Henry Arthur Chomley in India. He thought for a moment, then said:

'Chomley? Why, of course I knew a Chomley, but I don't know his Christian name. He was Brigade Major at Meean Meer, and I took over the brigade from him, and bought his horses, etc. Where did _you_ know him?'

I then told him of the spirit who had given me the name of Henry Arthur Chomley, who said he had known him in India, and had over and over again begged to be remembered to him.

The day following this conversation Colonel Bates sent me up his Army List, open, and marked at the name of Colonel _Walter_ Chomley, and a note explaining that it was not Henry Arthur, but _Walter Chomley_ whom he had known at Meean Meer.

I then asked 'Henry Arthur' if his name was Walter or Henry Arthur.

He said: '_Henry Arthur. Surely I ought to know my own name!_'

Colonel Bates told the story to you the next time you (_i.e._ E. K.

Bates) came to see him, and I remember we discussed it together when we met again.

Shortly afterwards you wrote to tell me that you had looked up a _Debrett_ for 1895, and had there found _Colonel Henry Arthur Chomley, a brother of Sir Frederic Chomley, of the Rifle Brigade, etc._, so that Henry Arthur Chomley was evidently alive in that year, and _had_ been in the Rifle Brigade.

I was much pleased to get this corroborative evidence, though the mistake in initials must have been Colonel Bates' error, and apologised to Colonel Henry Arthur Chomley in the Unseen.

A few weeks later, however, you wrote again, and told me that you had been staying with a friend, who drove you over to call upon Colonel and Mrs Henry Arthur Chomley, that he was a brother of Sir Frederic Chomley, and was certainly _alive_, although not _at home_, at the time of your visit!

This information startled me, and my guide, at my request, went to look up the _soi-disant_ Colonel to find out what it all meant.

The latter then confessed to having taken a friend's name, said a sudden impulse came over him when I first asked his name, and having told one lie, he felt bound to go on deceiving me, but that he had known both Colonel Bates and Colonel Henry Arthur Chomley in India, and that his own real name was Anstruther!"

This was Miss Smith's narrative.

Now out of this curious jumble of true and false, two points remain clear:

My brother _had_ known a Chomley in India, and had succeeded him as Brigade Major at Meean Meer. This Chomley _was_ a brother of Sir Frederic Chomley, the well-known diplomatist, but his name was Walter, not Henry Arthur. Yet Sir Frederic _had_ a brother named Henry Arthur, and the impersonating Anstruther had borrowed the wrong brother's name when trying to pose as the friend of Colonel Charles Bates. To make confusion worse confounded, _Walter Chomley_ was alive, as well as _Henry Arthur_, at the time of Miss Mabel Smith's experiences, for I have seen his death within the last eight months!

The second point is that, personally, my brother and I had reason to be grateful to the deceiving Anstruther. He was certainly the means of introducing a pleasant acquaintance to my brother and to me.

Miss Mabel Smith's experience at Grindelwald reminds me of one of my own in the same place during the following year.

I had gone there with a cousin, who was eager for skating and tobogganing, in January 1902, on my way to Rome. After a pleasant week at a charmingly quiet and comfortable hotel--the _Alpenruhe_ I think was the name--my cousin wished, for purposes of policy, to change over to a more famous, but noisy and overcrowded one.

So on the evening of 3rd February we found ourselves in this immense caravanserai, having exchanged our large, comfortable, steam-heated rooms for small, oblong apartments, each provided with three doors as well as the window, and a wood fire to be fed from small "five-franc baskets," and always going out at that!

There was deep snow on the ground and a heavy fog of snow falling when we made our change, so that one was not in the most brilliant spirits; and being suddenly thrust into the midst of a big, heterogeneous company of strangers is never exhilarating.

Our bedrooms, though small and not specially comfortable, were perfectly commonplace, the very last _milieu_ with which one would have a.s.sociated any interesting experience. The window of my room faced the door into the pa.s.sage, my bed lay between the two; right and left of it were two other doors, each communicating with other occupied rooms.

Therefore I thought little the first night of noises and moving of furniture, taking for granted that these must be occurring either right or left of me, and that the clearness of the atmosphere accounted for my odd impression that a table and chair--between my bed and the window--were being moved.

The following night (4th February), however, this fact was indisputable.

I had heard both my neighbours retire to bed by ten P.M., as so many do who have been skating and tobogganing all day long. I had sat up reading for half-an-hour beyond this, and went to bed at eleven P.M., by which time there was perfect silence in the hotel, as no special entertainment was going on.

Very shortly, this movement of the furniture began again, unmistakably in my room this time. Curiously enough, it did not frighten me at all nor suggest burglars (a far greater terror to me than ghosts!). I cannot at this distance of time remember _why_ the idea of Mr Myers should have come to me in connection with these noises; but I am quite certain that I _did_ think of him at the time, and fully expected his name to be given, when I asked if anyone wished to speak to me and were trying to attract my attention by moving the furniture about.

It was greatly to my surprise, therefore, that the name of _Gifford_ was given. I may here note that this was the real name given to me. He said he was a judge, one who had lived fifty or sixty years previously, that he had once unintentionally condemned an innocent man to be hanged, and he was evidently still greatly perturbed about this, and begged for my prayers.

All this put Mr Myers entirely out of my head--_unfortunately_, as events proved.

I had some further talk with Judge Gifford, but do not remember it in detail.

Next morning I told my cousin of my experience, and on the evening of the following day mentioned it in the presence of some neighbours at _table d'hote_ who had introduced psychic subjects to us.

This gentleman and his wife were both impressed, and yet incredulous, and when my cousin laughingly declared that "Gifford had come to _her_ the second night, but that she told him she was too tired out to listen to him," we all three supposed that she was turning the whole subject into ridicule. This would have been quite characteristic of her, although I have always thought she had some mediumistic faculty, and was one of the many people whom I should advise to leave these matters alone. I was the more convinced that she was merely "chaffing" on this occasion, because when I warned our acquaintances of her powers of exaggeration in "making fun" of things, she said nothing.

But when we had returned to our rooms that night she remarked quite quietly: "But he _did_ come, Emmie! When you said that at _table d'hote_ about my exaggerating things, I let it pa.s.s, because very often it is true. But what I said this evening was _absolutely correct_, though perhaps it is as well those people should not believe it. Someone _did_ come to my bedside last night, and said: 'I am Gifford--will you listen to me?' And I said: 'No; not to-night. I am too tired,' just as I told you."