photographs appearing of well-known men, I confess that I was rather
impressed by one of my most recent experiments. I received a message
from a medium in Sheffield, who is unknown to me, saying that Cecil
Rhodes, who had then been dead about nine months, had spoken to her
clairaudiently, and had told her to ask me to go to the photographer's,
and that he would come and be photographed. The medium was a stranger to
me, and I confess that I received the message with considerable
skepticism. However, when she came up to town I accompanied her to the
studio. She declared that she saw Cecil Rhodes, and that he spoke to
her, and that he was standing behind me when the plate was exposed. When
the plate came to be developed, although there was one well-defined
figure standing behind me and several other faces half visible in the
background, there was no portrait of Cecil Rhodes. I was not surprised,
and went away. A month afterwards I went to have another sitting with
the photographer. I chatted with him for a short time, and then he left
the room for a moment. When he came back he said to me: 'There is a
round-faced well set-up man here with a short moustache and a dimple in
his chin. Do you know him?' 'No,' I said, 'I don't know any such man.'
'Well, he seems to be very busy about you.' 'Well,' I said, 'if he comes
upstairs, we shall see what we can get.' 'I don't know,' said he. When I
was sitting, he said, 'There he is, and I see the letter R. Is it Robert
or Richard, do you think?' 'I don't know any Robert or Richard,' I said.
He took the picture. He then proceeded with the second plate, and said,
'That man is still here, and I see behind him a country road. I wonder
what that means.' He went into the dark room, and presently came out and
said, 'I see "road or roads." Do you know any one of that name?' 'Of
course,' I said, 'Cecil Rhodes.' 'Do you mean him as died in the
Transvaal lately?' said he. I said 'Yes.' 'Well,' he said, 'was he a man
like that?' 'Well, he had a moustache,' I said. And sure enough, when
the plate was developed, there was Cecil Rhodes looking fifteen years
younger than when he died.
"Some other plates were exposed. One was entirely blank, on two others
the mist was formed into a kind of clot of light, but no figure was
visible, the fifth had a portrait of an unknown man, and on the sixth,
when it came to be developed, there was the same portrait of Cecil
Rhodes that had appeared on the first, but without the white drapery
round the head.
"Of course it may be said that it was well known that I was connected
with Cecil Rhodes and that the photographer therefore would have no
difficulty in faking a portrait. I admit all that, and therefore I would
not have introduced this if it had stood alone, as any evidence showing
that it was a _bona fide_ photograph of an invisible being. But it does
not stand alone, and I have almost every reason to believe in the almost
stupid honesty, if I may use such a phrase, of the photographer. I am
naturally much interested in these latest portraits of the African
Colossus. They are, at any rate, entirely new, no such portraits, to the
best of my knowledge--and I have made a collection of all I can lay my
hands on--exactly resembling those portraits which I obtained at Mr.
B--'s studio.
"I will conclude the account of my experiments by telling how I secured
a portrait under circumstances which preclude any possibility of fake or
fraud. One day when I entered the studio, Mr. B-- said to me, 'There is
a man come with you who has been here before; he came here some days ago
when I was by myself; he looked very wild, and he had a gun in his hand,
and I did not like the look of him. I don't like guns, so I asked him to
go away, for I was frightened of the gun, and he went. But now he has
come with you, and he has not got his gun any more, so we will let him
stop.' I was rather amused at the old man's story and said, 'Well, see
if you can photograph him.' 'I don't know as I can,' he said, 'I never
know what I can get,'--which is quite true, for often the photographs
which he says he sees clairvoyantly do not come out on the plate. While
he was photographing me, I said to him, 'If you can tell this man to go
away, you can ask him his name.' 'Yes,' said he. 'Will you do so?' I
said. 'Yes,' he said. After seeming to ask the question mentally, he
said, 'He says his name is Piet Botha.' 'Piet Botha,' I said, 'I know no
such name. There are Louis and Philip, and Chris Botha. I have never
heard of Piet; still they are a numerous family and there are plenty of
Bothas in South Africa, and it will be interesting to ask General Botha,
when he arrives, whether he knows of any Piet Botha.' When the negative
was developed, sure enough there appeared behind me a photograph of a
stalwart bearded person, who might have been a Boer or a Russian moujik,
but who was certainly unknown to me. I had never seen a portrait of any
one which bore any resemblance to the photograph.
"When General Botha arrived I did not get an opportunity of asking him
about the photograph, but some time afterwards I asked Mr. Fischer, one
of the delegation from the South African Republics, to look at the
photograph, and if he got an opportunity to ask General Botha if he knew
of such a man as Piet Botha. Mr. Fischer said he thought he had seen the
face before, but he could not be certain. He departed with the
photograph. Some days afterwards Mr. Wessels, a member of the delegation
with Mr. Fischer, came down to my office. He said, 'I want to know about
that photograph that you gave Mr. Fischer.' 'Yes,' I said, 'what about
it?' 'I want to know where you got it.' I told him. He replied
disdainfully, 'I don't believe in such things; it is superstition;
besides, that man didn't know Mr. B--; he has never been in London; how
could he come there?' 'What,' I said, 'do you know him?' 'Know him!'
said Mr. Wessels. 'He is my brother-in-law.' 'Really!' I said. 'What did
they call him?' 'Pietrus Johannes Botha, but we always called him Piet
for short.' 'Is he dead, then?' I said. 'Yes,' said Mr. Wessels, 'he was
the first Boer officer who was killed in the siege of Kimberley; but
there is a mystery about this; you didn't know him?' 'No,' I said. 'And
never heard of him?' 'No,' I said. 'But,' he said, 'I have the man's
portrait in my house in South Africa, how could you get it?' 'But,' I
said, 'I never have had it.' 'I don't understand,' he said, moodily, and
so departed. I afterwards showed the photograph to another Free-State
Boer who knew Piet Botha very well, and he had not the slightest
hesitation in declaring that it was an unmistakable likeness of his dead
friend.[8]
[Footnote 8: Referring to this photo elsewhere, he wrote:--"This at
least is not a case which telepathy can explain. Nor can the hypothesis
of fraud hold water. It was by the merest accident that I asked the
photographer to see if the spirit would give his name. No one in
England, so far as I have been able to ascertain, knew that any Piet
Botha ever existed.
"As if to render all explanation of fraud or contrivance still more
incredible, it may be mentioned that the _Daily Graphic_ of October,
1889, which announced that a Commandant Botha had been killed in the
siege of Kimberley, published a portrait alleged to be that of the dead
commandant, which not only does not bear the remotest resemblance to the
Piet Botha of my photograph, but which was described as Commandant Hans
Botha!"]
"This is a plain, straightforward narrative of my experiences; they are
still going on. But if I continue them forever I don't see how I am
going to obtain better results than those which I have already secured.
At the same time I must admit that when I have taken my own kodak to the
studio and taken a photograph immediately before Mr. B-- had exposed his
plate, I got no results. The same failure occurred with another
photographer whom I took, who took his own camera and his own plates,
and took a photograph immediately before and immediately after Mr. B--
had exposed his plate, and secured no result. Mr. B--'s explanation of
this is that he thinks he does in some way or other magnetize, as he
terms it, the plate, and that there is some effluence from his hand
which is as necessary for the development of the psychic figure as the
developing liquid is for the development of an ordinary photograph. This
explanation would no doubt be derided as, I presume, wiseacres would
have derided the first photographers when they insisted upon the
necessity of darkness whilst developing their plates. What I hold to be
established is that in the presence of this particular individual, Mr.
B--, who at present is the only person known to me who is able to
produce these photographs, it is possible to obtain under test
conditions photographs that are unmistakably portraits of deceased
persons; the said deceased persons being entirely unknown to him, and in
some cases equally unknown to the sitter. Neither was any portrait of
such person accessible either to the sitter or the photographer; neither
was either the sitter or the photographer conscious of the very
existence of these persons, whose identity was subsequently recognized
by their friends.[9]
[Footnote 9: Miss Katharine Bates was present when the Piet Botha
photograph was taken under the exact conditions specified by my father.]
"I am willing to admit that no conceivable conditions in the way of
marking plates and supervising the actions or the operations of the
photographer are of the least use, in so much as an expert conjurer can
easily deceive the eye of the unskilled observer. But what I do maintain
is that it is impossible for the cleverest trick photographer and the
ablest conjurer in the world to produce a photograph, at a moment's
notice, of an unknown relative of an unknown sitter, this portrait to
be unmistakably recognizable by all survivors who knew the original in
life. This Mr. B-- has done again and again. And it seems to me that a
great step has been made towards establishing the possibility of
verifying by photography the reality of the existence of other
intelligences than our own."
The photographer alluded to in this article is Mr. Boursnell. He died
shortly after it was written, and although father experimented with
others, he never obtained such convincing and satisfactory results.
THE SIN-EATER
By Fiona Macleod
SIN.
_Taste this bread, this substance: tell me
Is it bread or flesh?_
[_The Senses approach._]
THE SMELL.
_Its smell
Is the smell of bread._
SIN.
_Touch, come. Why tremble?
Say what's this thou touchest?_
THE TOUCH.
_Bread._
SIN.
_Sight, declare what thou discernest
In this object._
THE SIGHT.
_Bread alone._
--CALDERON,
_Los Encantos de la Culpa_
A wet wind out of the south mazed and mooned through the sea-mist that
hung over the Ross. In all the bays and creeks was a continuous weary
lapping of water. There was no other sound anywhere.
Thus was it at daybreak; it was thus at noon; thus was it now in the
darkening of the day. A confused thrusting and falling of sounds through
the silence betokened the hour of the setting. Curlews wailed in the
mist; on the seething limpet-covered rocks the skuas and terns
screamed, or uttered hoarse, rasping cries. Ever and again the prolonged
note of the oyster-catcher shrilled against the air, as an echo flying
blindly along a blank wall of cliff. Out of weedy places, wherein the
tide sobbed with long, gurgling moans, came at intervals the barking of
a seal.
Inland, by the hamlet of Contullich, there is a reedy tarn called the
Loch-a-chaoruinn.[10] By the shores of this mournful water a man moved.
It was a slow, weary walk that of the man Neil Ross. He had come from
Duninch, thirty miles to the eastward, and had not rested foot, nor
eaten, nor had word of man or woman, since his going west an hour after
dawn.
[Footnote 10: Contullich: i.e. Ceann-nan-tulaich, "the end of the
hillocks." Loch a chaoruinn means the loch of the rowan-trees.]
At the bend of the loch nearest the clachan he came upon an old woman
carrying peat. To his reiterated question as to where he was, and if the
tarn were Feur-Lochan above Fionnaphort that is on the strait of Iona on
the west side of the Ross of Mull, she did not at first make any answer.
The rain trickled down her withered brown face, over which the thin gray
locks hung limply. It was only in the deep-set eyes that the flame of
life still glimmered, though that dimly.
The man had used the English when first he spoke, but as though
mechanically. Supposing that he had not been understood, he repeated his
question in the Gaelic.
After a minute's silence the old woman answered him in the native
tongue, but only to put a question in return.
"I am thinking it is a long time since you have been in Iona?"
The man stirred uneasily.
"And why is that, mother?" he asked, in a weak voice hoarse with damp
and fatigue; "how is it you will be knowing that I have been in Iona at
all?"
"Because I knew your kith and kin there, Neil Ross."
"I have not been hearing that name, mother, for many a long year. And as
for the old face o' you, it is unbeknown to me."
"I was at the naming of you, for all that. Well do I remember the day
that Silis Macallum gave you birth; and I was at the house on the croft
of Ballyrona when Murtagh Ross--that was your father--laughed. It was an
ill laughing that."
"I am knowing it. The curse of God on him!"
"'Tis not the first, nor the last, though the grass is on his head three
years agone now."
"You that know who I am will be knowing that I have no kith or kin now
on Iona?"
"Ay; they are all under gray stone or running wave. Donald your brother,
and Murtagh your next brother, and little Silis, and your mother Silis
herself, and your two brothers of your father, Angus and Ian Macallum,
and your father Murtagh Ross, and his lawful childless wife, Dionaid,
and his sister Anna--one and all, they lie beneath the green wave or in
the brown mould. It is said there is a curse upon all who live at
Ballyrona. The owl builds now in the rafters, and it is the big sea-rat
that runs across the fireless hearth."
"It is there I am going."
"The foolishness is on you, Neil Ross."
"Now it is that I am knowing who you are. It is old Sheen Macarthur I am
speaking to."
"Tha mise ... it is I."
"And you will be alone now, too, I am thinking, Sheen?"
"I am alone. God took my three boys at the one fishing ten years ago;
and before there was moonrise in the blackness of my heart my man went.
It was after the drowning of Anndra that my croft was taken from me.
Then I crossed the Sound, and shared with my widow sister Elsie McVurie
till _she_ went; and then the two cows had to go; and I had no rent, and
was old."
In the silence that followed, the rain dribbled from the sodden bracken
and dripping loneroid. Big tears rolled slowly down the deep lines on
the face of Sheen. Once there was a sob in her throat, but she put her
shaking hand to it, and it was still.
Neil Ross shifted from foot to foot. The ooze in that marshy place
squelched with each restless movement he made. Beyond them a plover
wheeled, a blurred splatch in the mist, crying its mournful cry over and
over and over.
It was a pitiful thing to hear--ah, bitter loneliness, bitter patience
of poor old women. That he knew well. But he was too weary, and his
heart was nigh full of its own burthen. The words could not come to his
lips. But at last he spoke.
"Tha mo chridhe goirt," he said, with tears in his voice, as he put his
hand on her bent shoulder; "my heart is sore."
She put up her old face against his.
"'S tha e ruidhinn mo chridhe," she whispered; "it is touching my heart
you are."
After that they walked on slowly through the dripping mist, each dumb
and brooding deep.
"Where will you be staying this night?" asked Sheen suddenly, when they
had traversed a wide boggy stretch of land; adding, as by an
afterthought--"Ah, it is asking you were if the tarn there were
Feur-Lochan. No; it is Loch-a-chaoruinn, and the clachan that is near is
Contullich."
"Which way?"
"Yonder, to the right."
"And you are not going there?"
"No. I am going to the steading of Andrew Blair. Maybe you are for
knowing it? It is called the Baile-na-Chlais-nambuidheag."[11]
[Footnote 11: "The farm in the hollow of the yellow flowers."]
"I do not remember. But it is remembering a Blair I am. He was Adam, the
son of Adam, the son of Robert. He and my father did many an ill deed
together."
"Ay, to the stones be it said. Sure, now, there was, even till this
weary day, no man or woman who had a good word for Adam Blair."
"And why that ... why till this day?"
"It is not yet the third hour since he went into the silence."
Neil Ross uttered a sound like a stifled curse. For a time he trudged
wearily on.
"Then I am too late," he said at last, but as though speaking to
himself. "I had hoped to see him face to face again, and curse him
between the eyes. It was he who made Murtagh Ross break his troth to my
mother, and marry that other woman, barren at that, God be praised! And
they say ill of him, do they?"
"Ay, it is evil that is upon him. This crime and that, God knows; and
the shadow of murder on his brow and in his eyes. Well, well, 'tis ill
to be speaking of a man in corpse, and that near by. 'Tis Himself only
that knows, Neil Ross."
"Maybe ay and maybe no. But where is it that I can be sleeping this
night, Sheen Macarthur?"
"They will not be taking a stranger at the farm this night of the
nights, I am thinking. There is no place else for seven miles yet, when
there is the clachan, before you will be coming to Fionnaphort. There is
the warm byre, Neil, my man; or, if you can bide by my peats, you may
rest, and welcome, though there is no bed for you, and no food either
save some of the porridge that is over."
"And that will do well enough for me, Sheen; and Himself bless you for
it."
And so it was.
* * * * *
After old Sheen Macarthur had given the wayfarer food--poor food at
that, but welcome to one nigh starved, and for the heartsome way it was
given, and because of the thanks to God that was upon it before even
spoon was lifted--she told him a lie. It was the good lie of tender
love.
"Sure now, after all, Neil, my man," she said, "it is sleeping at the
farm I ought to be, for Maisie Macdonald, the wise woman, will be
sitting by the corpse, and there will be none to keep her company. It is
there I must be going; and if I am weary, there is a good bed for me
just beyond the dead-board, which I am not minding at all. So, if it is
tired you are sitting by the peats, lie down on my bed there, and have
the sleep; and God be with you."
With that she went, and soundlessly, for Neil Ross was already asleep,
where he sat on an upturned claar, with his elbows on his knees, and his
flame-lit face in his hands.
The rain had ceased; but the mist still hung over the land, though in
thin veils now, and these slowly drifting seaward. Sheen stepped wearily
along the stony path that led from her bothy to the farm-house. She
stood still once, the fear upon her, for she saw three or four blurred
yellow gleams moving beyond her, eastward, along the dyke. She knew what
they were--the corpse-lights that on the night of death go between the
bier and the place of burial. More than once she had seen them before
the last hour, and by that token had known the end to be near.
Good Catholic that she was, she crossed herself, and took heart. Then
muttering
"Crois nan naoi aingeal leam
'O mhullach mo chinn
Gu craican mo bhonn."
(The cross of the nine angels be about me,
From the top of my head
To the soles of my feet),
she went on her way fearlessly.
When she came to the White House, she entered by the milk-shed that was
between the byre and the kitchen. At the end of it was a paved place,
with washing-tubs. At one of these stood a girl that served in the
house--an ignorant lass called Jessie McFall, out of Oban. She was
ignorant, indeed, not to know that to wash clothes with a newly dead
body near by was an ill thing to do. Was it not a matter for the knowing
that the corpse could hear, and might rise up in the night and clothe
itself in a clean white shroud?
She was still speaking to the lassie when Maisie Macdonald, the
deid-watcher, opened the door of the room behind the kitchen to see who
it was that was come. The two old women nodded silently. It was not till
Sheen was in the closed room, midway in which something covered with a
sheet lay on a board, that any word was spoken.
"Duit sith mor, Beann Macdonald."
"And deep peace to you, too, Sheen; and to him that is there."
"Och, ochone, mise 'n diugh; 'tis a dark hour this."
"Ay; it is bad. Will you have been hearing or seeing anything?"
"Well, as for that, I am thinking I saw lights moving betwixt here and
the green place over there."
"The corpse-lights?"
"Well, it is calling them that they are."
"I _thought_ they would be out. And I have been hearing the noise of the
planks--the cracking of the boards, you know, that will be used for the
coffin to-morrow."
A long silence followed. The old women had seated themselves by the
corpse, their cloaks over their heads. The room was fireless, and was
lit only by a tall wax death-candle, kept against the hour of the going.
At last Sheen began swaying slowly to and fro, crooning low the while.
"I would not be for doing that, Sheen Macarthur," said the deid-watcher
in a low voice, but meaningly; adding, after a moment's pause, "_The
mice have all left the house_."
Sheen sat upright, a look half of terror, half of awe in her eyes.
"God save the sinful soul that is hiding," she whispered.
Well she knew what Maisie meant. If the soul of the dead be a lost soul
it knows its doom. The house of death is the house of sanctuary; but
before the dawn that follows the death-night the soul must go forth,
whosoever or whatsoever wait for it in the homeless, shelterless plains
of air around and beyond. If it be well with the soul, it need have no
fear; if it be not ill with the soul, it may fare forth with surety; but
if it be ill with the soul, ill will the going be. Thus is it that the
spirit of an evil man cannot stay, and yet dare not go; and so it
strives to hide itself in secret places anywhere, in dark channels and
blind walls; and the wise creatures that live near man smell the terror,
and flee. Maisie repeated the saying of Sheen, then, after a silence,
added:
"Adam Blair will not lie in his grave for a year and a day because of
the sins that are upon him; and it is knowing that, they are here. He
will be the Watcher of the Dead for a year and a day."
"Ay, sure, there will be dark prints in the dawn-dew over yonder."
Once more the old women relapsed into silence. Through the night there
was a sighing sound. It was not the sea, which was too far off to be
heard save in a day of storm. The wind it was, that was dragging itself
across the sodden moors like a wounded thing, moaning and sighing.
Out of sheer weariness, Sheen twice rocked forward from her stool, heavy
with sleep. At last Maisie led her over to the niche-bed opposite, and
laid her down there, and waited till the deep furrows in the face
relaxed somewhat, and the thin breath labored slow across the fallen
jaw.
"Poor old woman," she muttered, heedless of her own gray hairs and
grayer years; "a bitter, bad thing it is to be old, old and weary. 'Tis
the sorrow, that. God keep the pain of it!"
As for herself, she did not sleep at all that night, but sat between the
living and the dead, with her plaid shrouding her. Once, when Sheen gave
a low, terrified scream in her sleep, she rose, and in a loud voice
cried, "_Sheeach-ad! Away with you!_" And with that she lifted the
shroud from the dead man, and took the pennies off the eyelids, and
lifted each lid; then, staring into these filmed wells, muttered an
ancient incantation that would compel the soul of Adam Blair to leave
the spirit of Sheen alone, and return to the cold corpse that was its
coffin till the wood was ready.
The dawn came at last. Sheen slept, and Adam Blair slept a deeper sleep,
and Maisie stared out of her wan, weary eyes against the red and stormy
flares of light that came into the sky.
When, an hour after sunrise, Sheen Macarthur reached her bothy, she
found Neil Ross, heavy with slumber, upon her bed. The fire was not out,
though no flame or spark was visible; but she stooped and blew at the
heart of the peats till the redness came, and once it came it grew.
Having done this, she kneeled and said a rune of the morning, and after
that a prayer, and then a prayer for the poor man Neil. She could pray
no more because of the tears. She rose and put the meal and water into
the pot for the porridge to be ready against his awaking. One of the
hens that was there came and pecked at her ragged skirt. "Poor beastie,"
she said. "Sure, that will just be the way I am pulling at the white
robe of the Mother o' God. 'Tis a bit meal for you, cluckie, and for me
a healing hand upon my tears. O, och, ochone, the tears, the tears!"
It was not till the third hour after sunrise of that bleak day in that
winter of the winters, that Neil Ross stirred and arose. He ate in
silence. Once he said that he smelt the snow coming out of the north.
Sheen said no word at all.