PEACOCK'S FEATHERS--THE SKELETON HAND AT MONTE CARLO
A sea voyage once provided me with a wonderfully lucky experience,
inasmuch as it saved me from an extremely bad accident.
I was returning quite alone from the East in a ship crammed full of
women and children, most of them soldiers' wives and families going home
to escape the hot weather. Many of them were attended by ayahs.
Two days out we ran into a raging storm, and everything was battened
down. Owing to the weather, and the excessive crowding, the conditions
below soon became very unpleasant, and I asked the captain if I might
take possession of the ladies' summer drawing-room on the upper deck and
close to the bridge. Seeing that it would not be used by any one else
for some time to come he kindly agreed, and I at once settled myself in
my eyrie with a few books, and prepared for some days of solitude.
But as the storm did not abate the suffering women and children below
claimed my attention. They were confined in an atmosphere which was
appalling, they were all terribly ill and utterly helpless. The mothers
were unable to attend to their children, most of whom were infants, and
the ayahs suffered horribly. Having no cabins they lay groaning on the
floors of the corridors, drenched with water as the ship was awash from
stem to stern, and tossed hither and thither as she rolled heavily.
It was never easy to descend from my perch aloft, but the sufferers had
to be aided, and day after day I never knew a dry moment till I lay down
at night. So far the summer drawing-room remained fairly water-tight in
spite of being swept continually by heavy seas, but the noise of the
elements was absolutely deafening, and when the captain called upon me
we had to shout in each other's ears.
With his connivance I got a shelter rigged up on what appeared to be the
only dry spot on board. It was about twelve feet square and walled in
with sailcloth, and there the sailors helped to carry a number of tiny
children. They were to remain there during the best hours of the day,
until their mothers and nurses were capable of attending to them once
more.
I took charge at first and found my task no light one. The babies did
not seem to appreciate my blandishments. They cried persistently, but
luckily their voices were drowned in the roaring of the wind.
At last a cabin boy chanced to look in, and at once sized up the
situation. He signaled to me that he knew of something that would ease
the tension and then he disappeared. In five minutes he was back
brandishing a large bunch of peacock's feathers. These he shook in the
face of each infant in turn, at the same time making the most hideous
grimaces at them. It was an anxious moment for me, but luckily the
effect was electrical. The babies suddenly forgot to yell, they stiffly
maintained their equilibrium and stared in a sort of indignant
amazement. Then, gradually, as the boy kept going round the circle
repeating the process, smiles and dimples began to appear, and in five
minutes more the whole creche was laughing.
I applied for permission to annex that boy; he was indeed a treasure,
and the joy in the peacock's feathers never palled. His gutta-percha
face had an infinite variety of expression, which he could instantly
turn on to suit all occasions. It was a fascinating sight to see him
going round the group feeding each baby out of the same bottle, one of
the old-fashioned horrors with a long indiarubber tube and teat. Those
infants who had contemptuously rejected all my offers of nourishment now
sat expectantly agape waiting their turn. The scene always reminded me
of the artificial feeding of fowls, by the man who goes round the pens
squirting liquid down each gaping throat.
When we landed at Marseilles there was a wonderful parting between the
babies and the cabin boy. They clung to him to the last, and howled
dismally when they were carried off by their haggard mothers.
One night, during the height of the storm I was asleep on the fixed red
velvet seat running round the walls of the summer drawing-room. I lay
just under a porthole, to which was attached a rope. The other end of
the rope was tied round my arm to prevent my being thrown to the floor
by the rolling of the ship.
At five o'clock in the morning I was suddenly awakened by hearing my
husband's voice shouting in my ear. (My husband not being on board, but
in our home in the North of Scotland.)
"Sit up! Sit up!" shouted his voice commandingly.
Considerably startled I threw myself into a sitting position, and as I
did so a gigantic wave shattered the porthole, and the heavy fragments
of glass fell on to the pillow where a second before my face had lain.
Of course, the water poured in and over me in volumes, and stopped my
wrist watch at five a. m., but I had got used to salt water, and in a
few minutes the weary captain had waded in, and was disentangling me
from my rope and congratulating me on my lucky escape.
I told him how it was that I had escaped, and he was not in the least
skeptical. On the contrary, he said that he had known some curious
things happen in his time, for which there was no accounting; but he
always kept a black cat on board.
Had the safety of his ship not claimed his whole attention I believe he
would have told me some of his experiences, but when, at last, the
weather abated he was too much in need of rest to be bothered by any
one.
My husband had no knowledge of the service he had rendered me. At five
a. m. that morning he was asleep at home, and had no premonition of
danger, or any recollection on waking of the role his astral counterpart
had undoubtedly played.
What is this astral counterpart of man? His soul and spirit dwells in a
shroud of flesh, and the feat of getting out of that shroud of flesh at
will is the aim of all occultists. It is to the astral world they go,
soul and spirit encased in the astral sheath we term the astral body.
During sleep, or in trance, when the normal physical senses are in
abeyance, when the body is unconscious in sleep, the mind continues to
act in the realm corresponding to the suggestions given when awake. The
world at large is open to the highly developed man, and he will
sometimes bring back from his astral plane expeditions memories of what
he has seen and heard.
In deep slumber the physical body in healthful repose remains where it
has lain down to rest, but the man's higher principles, the astral body
encasing the soul and spirit, is invariably withdrawn, and in
underdeveloped persons hovers in the immediate neighborhood. In such
cases the higher principles, the astral body, soul and spirit of St.
Paul's Gospel, are not sufficiently developed to roam, and remain near
the physical body in a brooding sleep. All cultured persons in the
present day have their astral senses fairly well developed, and have the
power during sleep to go where they will, but as yet few have the power
to retain the memory of it when returning to the body.
In some cases the astral man during sleep is specially attracted to some
one point, and he invariably travels towards it; in other cases he will
drift aimlessly about on the astral currents, meeting with experience of
all sorts and with people in a similar condition whom he knows. Is there
anything very extraordinary in all this, and is not the condition of
deep unconscious sleep a demonstration in itself that the physical
consciousness has departed elsewhere? As it is no longer functioning on
the Physical plane clearly it has found another realm in which it can
temporarily exercise its activities.
My husband once had a rather interesting experience of his own, on the
Astral plane. He was in bed and asleep on the Physical plane, and he
believes that the time must have been between eleven p. m. and twelve a.
m. He simply became aware that he was functioning consciously on the
Astral plane, and was intensely interested.
He found himself in a strange house of medium size, and he was floating
at the top of a flight of stairs leading to an ordinary entrance hall
below. At the foot of the stairs hung a lighted lamp, and below the lamp
stood a man and woman, who were apparently exchanging a word or two
before bidding each other good-night.
My husband instantly conceived the idea of testing and proving his
belief, that he was consciously afloat on the Astral plane. If this
belief was true, then he ought to be able to pass through the couple
standing below, without their being in the least aware of his presence.
In a flash he was downstairs, and his belief stood the test. His
imponderable astral body passed without feeling or shock through two
ponderable bodies of flesh and blood, and he was out on the other side.
The excitement of the adventure awakened him, and he brought back to the
Physical plane a clear recollection of all that had happened.
When one thinks of it, the possible presence of total strangers in one's
house is rather alarming. Luckily for us such wanderers rarely bring
back to waking consciousness the memory of their nocturnal escapades.
When we are more advanced in "other side" knowledge we will doubtless
refrain from intruding upon the privacy of our neighbors' dwellings, and
confine our attentions to realms which are free to all.
It is curious how constantly one hears of the ghosts of priests and
monks being seen. I have not met any one yet who has encountered the
wraith of an Anglican parson, or a Nonconformist preacher. I wonder why?
I presume the latter do sometimes "walk."
Once upon a time, when we were in Rome, my husband and I went to keep an
appointment with Monsignor Stonor, who was a great celebrity, and an
extremely handsome and charming man. We were being shown upstairs by a
servant, and the hour was eleven o'clock on a sunny spring day. I was
walking first, my husband following, and at the top of the stairs,
coming slowly downward, was an old priest carrying a huge portfolio,
under which he seemed to be staggering. He passed the servant, and as he
neared me I noticed that the cassock which he wore was torn in great
rents in several places. His gray hair hung on his shoulders, though his
crown was shaven, and his face was the color of old ivory.
I moved slightly to give him and his burden room to pass, and as he did
so our eyes met. His were very strange. They were exactly like points of
live flame.
Something about his whole presence struck me as so weird that I turned
involuntarily and looked back.
As I did so, I saw my husband walk straight through him. My husband saw
nothing. Then I knew and understood.
I did not mention this incident to Monsignor Stonor, but some time after
I met his sister, Viscountess Clifden, at Monte Carlo. She was an
intimate friend of mine, and one day when an opportunity offered I told
her the little story, and asked her if she had ever met with anything of
the sort herself. She replied that personally, she had not, but she had
heard that several people encountered at different times the old priest
in her brother's rooms, though he himself had seen nothing of this
apparition.
Lady Clifden enjoyed nothing more than a little flutter at the tables.
She never missed a single day during her long sojourns at Monte Carlo.
Every one knows that the Anglican church-goers in the Principality hurry
from church to gaming rooms in order to stake on the numbers of the
hymns. Lady Clifden used also to hurry from Mass with any numbers she
had caught up, and she considered Sunday her lucky day. Suddenly her
luck changed.
She told me that on the previous Sunday she had just pulled off a nice
little coup, and was about to grasp it, when, to her horror she saw a
skeleton hand stretched forth. Before she could collect her scattered
senses the skeleton hand had raked in her gold. Where that gold had gone
to worried and puzzled her dreadfully. So it did me! I never heard the
last of it. She could not get over her loss.
It was no use suggesting that the hand had belonged to one of the
emaciated harpies who prey upon the unwary. Lady Clifden knew all about
them, and was a match for the whole gang, had they attacked her. She
insisted that the hand that had grasped her gold had neither skin nor
flesh upon it, and that she had seen the two bare arm bones from wrist
to elbow. We compromised on the suggestion of a third party that it must
have been the devil himself, and that the heat he is supposed to
engender had melted the gold entirely away.
Monte Carlo is a very interesting place for the clairvoyant to be in,
more especially if her vision extends to seeing auras. Perhaps nowhere
on earth are the basest human passions more swiftly and violently
aroused, and several times, when some tragedy was being enacted, or some
enormous coup was being brought off, I have been unable to see details,
because they were hidden within a dense envelop of dark crimson clouds.
In the rooms a crowd collects swiftly, and from a hundred human auras,
all gathered in one compact mass, stream forth emanations of the basest
description. Cupidity, envy, revenge, lust of the vilest, despair, ruin,
death.
I remember being met one night by a friend in the Attrium who was very
excited. "Hurry up," she cried, "the double Duchess has broken the bank
and is still playing."
I went into the gambling rooms, and looked for the table at which the
Duchess of Devonshire was staking. I knew she would attract a big crowd
if she was winning.
I found the table easily enough, not because it was surrounded by a
crowd of people, but because it was hidden by a dark and dense crimson
fog.
With patience I got through this fog, and watched the handsome Duchess
of Devonshire, formerly Duchess of Manchester, and born a Hanoverian,
playing with a great quantity of gold, and a pile of thousand franc
notes. By bending low down, almost level with the table, I found I got
completely out of the fog, and could see clearly underneath it.
One night there was a rush outside, and a huge ring formed to watch "a
scrap" taking place between two celebrated members of _la haute
cocotterie de Paris_.
They were fighting with formidable hatpins, and I understood that the
prey they fought over was Leopold, King of the Belgians.
I ran with the crowd, the gambling rooms emptied in a twinkling, for the
combat took place in the Casino Square. I squeezed through the excited
mob till I got behind the backers of both parties, who were holding the
ring and defying the police.
It was a wonderful sight to witness the combined play of flaming red
auras, shot through with vivid flashes like lightning, and blazing
jewels.
The duel ended with a few scratches, much tearing of gorgeous raiment
and disheveled hair.
How interesting it was to the mystic to feel the psychology of that
crowd, and see the thin veneer of civilization stripped off, leaving
nothing but the human tiger and ape. Both ladies were eventually led off
the arena by the police, not, be it understood, to the police-station,
but to their own sumptuous apartments. All the time they shrieked and
chattered like infuriated macaws, and between the shrieks they
administered resounding smacks upon the cheeks of their patient escort.
Monte Carlo was a wonderful place in those days, in which to study human
nature at its best and worst. In latter years it has become meretricious
and shabby, and the old magnificence is seen no more. Fifteen to twenty
years ago all that was greatest in Europe, Asia, and the Americas,
congregated there, and crowned heads mingled freely with the scum of the
earth. Constant _habitues_ were the Duchess of Devonshire, and her son,
Lord Charles Montague; the Duchess of Montrose, known to the ring at
Newmarket as "Bobs," and always the personification, to listen to and
look at, of a Thames bargee. Leopold of Belgium, Ferdinand of Bulgaria,
Grand Dukes of Russia, potentates from India, all hobnobbing together
and gambling heavily.
I often wonder now what has befallen those brilliant stars of the
half-world firmament. Emmeline d'Alencon with her "bobbed" hair, and
her passionate love of animals and birds. The demure Jeanne Ray, who
came out every morning to her garden gate, and distributed food to the
crowd of paupers and cripples. I have seen peasants kiss the hem of her
dress as she walked on an afternoon along the Promenade des Anglais. The
beautiful, soulless Merode, the fierce, stately Otero, and many others
who thought nothing of wearing fifty to a hundred thousand pounds' worth
of jewels on one evening.
Where are they now? If living they are old! Old! a word more dreaded by
their class than death.