Part 7 (1/2)

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.