Part 29 (1/2)

Early in January 1901, the day after Lord Robert's triumphant procession through London, I went to spend some weeks at an ”open-air cure” in Devons.h.i.+re, high up in the hills, and in a bleak part of the county.

Several severe illnesses had left me so supersensitive to colds and draughts that it seemed a vital necessity to take some such drastic step, even at this inclement time of the year, unless I were prepared to sink into a state of chronic invalidism, and become a burden to myself and my neighbours for the rest of my natural life.

An old friend was ”second in command” in this special establishment, which she had asked me to recommend, and a bright thought struck me that I might do my friend a good turn, and myself also, by spending a few weeks in the house.

I did not bargain, however, for the deep snow which fell on the very day after my arrival, nor for the howling west winds, which continued to blow during the whole of my stay.

In these parts, the west wind corresponds with our eastern variety, and is quite as cold and disagreeable.

Nor were the surroundings inside of a very cheerful nature. All the other patients (six or seven) were quite young girls, and all more or less consumptive. Several of them were very attractive, which made it seem all the more sad. Without exception, all were, or had been, engaged to be married, as the coping-stone to this tragedy of their lives! In several cases the engagements had been broken off, sometimes by mutual consent, on the score of health. In a few exceptions, where love had proved stronger than prudence and common-sense, it was equally melancholy to realise that the future could hold nothing but disappointment on the one side, and a hopeless regret on the other.

Under these circ.u.mstances it was perhaps only to be expected that my first impressions of the establishment should not be entirely _couleur de rose_. Yet the house itself was pleasant enough, and the view from the drawing-room windows was simply magnificent, including sea as well as moor.

Curtainless windows, with sashes thrown wide open, and chilly linoleum to replace warm carpets, were rather a trial to the uninitiated, early in January, with deep snow on the ground and fires none too plentiful.

In addition to these drawbacks I had another personal one. Coming in the middle of the winter, it was naturally Hobson's choice as regarded the bedrooms. All the best and warmest aspects had been appropriated in the autumn, and an ugly little room, with cold, west outlook and depressing, mustard-coloured distempered walls, fell to my lot.

Yet even these facts did not sufficiently account for the extremely depressing effect of that room upon me.

”Has anyone died here lately?” was my first and natural query in a house of this kind.

I had heard the girls casually mention two gentlemen patients who had been in the house the previous year--one of these had gone into rooms in a neighbouring town with his nurse. I did not hear what had become of the other one, and had not sufficient curiosity to ask the question.

My friend rea.s.sured me by saying she was sure no one had died recently in _my_ room. She had only lately come to the house herself, as I knew; having been matron for some years of a small hospital in the country.

”The second poor gentleman, who was a patient here, did die in the house, I believe, but that was months ago,” she said, ”and I understand that he had Laura Pearce's room,” mentioning one of the girls, who had a specially cheerful apartment. It seemed quite natural that a sick man, confined to his bed, should occupy a large and sunny room, so I thought no more of the matter. Still, I was always conscious of an unpleasant and sad atmosphere in my own room, and took occasion one day to ask the lady at the head of the establishment whether she knew anything of the predecessors in the house.

It struck me that the psychic atmosphere in my room might be connected with some of _them_.

Miss Hunter replied laughingly: ”I can't tell you anything about them, for the very good reason that they don't exist. _I_ am the first tenant of this house. It was only built two years ago, and remained vacant for the first twelve months.”

Then I told her very cautiously of my feeling about my room, and that I had supposed it might have to do with someone who had slept there before she took the house.

Two or three of the young girls were in the room at the time, and it struck me that one of them--the one who was there for her second winter--looked a little surprised and interested; but the matron pa.s.sed off the subject with a few bantering words, and again I had no suspicion of the truth.

Six weeks pa.s.sed, and my last night in the house had arrived. My nurse friend was in the habit of giving me ma.s.sage twice a day, before getting up in the morning and the last thing at night. She left me on this occasion about ten-thirty P.M., expressing a hope that I should soon sleep, and have a good night before my long journey next day.

”Not much doubt of that,” I murmured. ”Why, I'm half asleep already!”

And I turned round, tired and yet soothed by the ma.s.sage, and soon fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Several hours must have pa.s.sed, when I woke up, trembling and terror-struck, after pa.s.sing through an experience which seems as vivid to me to-day as on that February night or early morning. My heart was beating, my limbs trembling, beads of perspiration covered my face, as I discovered later.

No wonder! I had been through an experience from which few, I imagine, return to tell the tale. For I had pa.s.sed through every detail of dying, and dying a very hard and difficult death.

Body and soul were being literally _torn apart_, in spite of the desperate effort to cling together, and my spirit seemed to be launched into unknown depths of darkness and possible horror. It was the feeling that _I did not know where I was going nor what awaited me_ that seemed so terrible--this and the horrible fight for mastery between my poor body and soul and some unknown force that was inexorably set upon dividing them.

This, so far as I can express it, exactly describes the experience I had just gone through, and from which I had awakened in such abject terror.

As the beating of my heart subsided, and I could think more calmly, I remembered with startling distinctness that in the very worst of the struggle I had been vainly endeavouring to say that text in the twenty-third Psalm which begins: