Part 18 (1/2)
I did not happen to have the letter in my pocket which authorised my visit, and should probably not have produced it in any case. So I turned away rather shortly, leaving my card, saying: ”I must trouble you to forward this at once to Lady Caithness.”
The moment the secretary saw my name, her manner entirely changed, and became as servile as it had been ”cavalier.”
”Miss Bates, I see? Oh, certainly, I shall communicate at once with her ladys.h.i.+p. I had no idea it was Miss Bates. Pray excuse me, so many come and ask for the d.u.c.h.esse, and we have to be so very particular. But, of course, _you_ must be the lady the d.u.c.h.esse is so very fond of. She has mentioned you often, and warned us to receive you with every courtesy.”
And that is my last recollection of the kindly woman, who died a few months later. No, not absolutely my last recollection: visiting Scotland in 1896, I made a point of going to Holyrood Chapel for the express purpose of finding her grave.
The plain stone slab and simple inscription seemed at first a curious contrast to the gorgeous magnificence of her home and dress and surroundings. Yet I am inclined to think that they represented a side of her character which was quite as real as the other.
In like manner, no one who knew of her only as a ”wild visionary” could have realised the shrewd, practical woman of business and of common-sense who shared the personality of Countess of Caithness and d.u.c.h.esse de Pomar.
I remember that Mr Frederic Myers made the same remark to me after a visit he paid to her, just after my return to England, for the purpose of arranging matters with regard to her generous bequest to the Society for Psychical Research.
CHAPTER VIII
FROM OXFORD TO WIMBLEDON
From Paris to England is not a long cry, and my next reminiscence is connected with the University of Oxford.
I was spending a few days there with a friend in the spring of 1896, and went with her one afternoon to an Oxford tea-party, with its usual sprinkling of women, married and unmarried; a few dons captured as a question of friends.h.i.+p, and more than a few undergraduates.
Amongst the latter I chanced to hear the name of a very well-known bishop, whom I had first met and known rather intimately when I was a young girl, and he a young married curate. I had also known his wife (a few years my senior) very intimately in those far-off days, so my curiosity was aroused to know if the young man in this Oxford drawing-room should chance to be a son of this bishop, whom we will call the Bishop of Granchester. I found that my surmise was correct; the young man was introduced to me, and we were soon deep in an interesting conversation about his parents, especially his mother, who had died when he was barely three years old. He knew little or nothing about her. His father had married again, and his paternal grandmother (still alive in 1896) had never cared for his mother--from feelings of jealousy probably--so there was no one to speak to the boy about her, and he was naturally delighted to hear all my girlish recollections of her.
”Do come and have tea with me to-morrow afternoon, or any day that suits you,” he said eagerly. ”I have one or two old photographs taken of my mother when she was young, and I should like so much to know which of them you consider the best.”
Of course, I agreed to go, Mr Blake-Mason promising to ask a ”chum” to entertain my hostess whilst he and I discussed the photographs and the old days before he was born.
Returning home from his rooms that February evening, I was conscious once more of an unaccountable depression, and also a certain amount of nervous irritability, which other sensitives will understand, and which often precedes some psychic happening. Just after we had finished dinner, it struck me suddenly, and _for the first time_, that my discomfort might be connected with my afternoon visit. This young man's mother might be wis.h.i.+ng to impress me in some way! I found that this was the fact, but felt unequal to going further into the matter that night.
I promised to listen to anything she might wish to say next morning, and having given this promise, all unpleasant and disturbing influences disappeared, and I had a good night's rest. Next morning, after breakfast, my hostess said very practically:
”Now do get this matter off your mind at once, or you will be worried about it all day. I am going to order dinner, and shall then be in the drawing-room, so you can have this room entirely to yourself.”
I sat down, and a very beautiful message was given to me by the friend of my girlhood.
She was evidently very much perturbed and very anxious about something connected with her youngest son, whom I had met for the first time two days previously, and about whose affairs, I need scarcely say, I was in a state of profound ignorance. The little mother was anxious not to ”give him away,” nor betray confidences, and so her words were very guarded. There was evidently nothing in the least dishonourable or in any way _unworthy_ of her son in question. I gathered, rather, that he might be contemplating some step which she, from her wider outlook, considered undesirable and inexpedient; possibly even disastrous in the future.
It was no business of mine, and I make it a point of honour not to ”try to guess” more than I am told, and to forget what I _am_ told as soon as possible, where the affairs of other people are involved.
This is, fortunately, easy for me as a rule, but in this case one sentence remains even now ringing in my ears, and if the son ever comes across this record I hope he will forgive my reproducing his mother's last beautiful words to me:
”_Tell my darling boy that life is so solemn and true love so sacred a thing. Tell him to be very, very sure, lest he lose the substance in pursuing the shadow._”
The first sentence is given verbatim. In the second my memory may be producing the sense without the exact wording, but I have no doubt at all that my words practically convey what the mother wished me to ”tell her boy.”
This message gave me a hard problem to solve: ”What should I do with it?”
On the one hand, my having agreed to take the message, tacitly bound me to let him have it.