Part II Dream Stories (continued 2)

As I asked this last question, the pencil on the table rose again, and wrote thus on the paper:—

".ksatonoD"

Again horror seized on me, and the air becoming full of smoke I found it impossible to breathe. "Let me out!" I cried, "I am stifled here,—the air is full of smoke!"

"Outside," the people of the house answered, "you will lose your way; it is quite dark, and we have no other rooms to let. And, besides, it is the same in all the other apartments of the inn."

"But the place is haunted!" I cried; and I pushed past them, and burst out of the house.

Before the doorway stood a tall veiled figure, like translucent silver. A sense of reverence overcame me. The night was balmy, and bright almost as day with resplendent starlight. The stars seemed to lean out of heaven; they looked down on me like living eyes, full of a strange immeasurable sympathy. I crossed the threshold, and stood in the open plain, breathing with rapture and relief the pure warm air of that delicious night. How restful, calm, and glorious was the dark landscape, outlined in purple against the luminous sky! And what a consciousness of vastness and immensity above and around me! "Where am I?" I cried. The silver figure stood beside me, and lifted its veil. It was Pallas Athena.

"Under the Stars of the East," she answered me, "the true eternal Lights of the World."

After I was awake, a text in the Gospels was vividly brought to my mind:—"There was no room for then in the Inn." What is this Inn, I wondered, all the rooms of which are haunted, and in which the Christ cannot be born? And this open country under the eastern night,—is it not the same in which they were "abiding," to whom that Birth was first angelically announced?

—Atcham, Nov. 5, 1885

————— ** The solution of the enigma was afterwards recognised in an instruction, also imparted in sleep, in which it was said, "If Occultism were all, and held the key of heaven, there would be no need of Christ." (Ed.)

XXII. An Eastern Apologue

The following was read by me during sleep, in an old book printed in archaic type. As with many other things similarly read by me, I do not know whether it is to be found in any book:—

"After Buddha had been ten years in retirement, certain sages sent their disciples to him, asking him,—'What dost thou claim to be, Gotama?'

"Buddha answered them, 'I claim to be nothing.'

"Ten years afterwards they sent again to him, asking the same question, and again Buddha answered:—'I claim to be nothing.'

"Then after yet another ten years had passed, they sent a third time, asking, 'What dost thou claim to be, Gotama?'

"And Buddha replied, 'I claim to be the utterance of the most high God.'

"Then they said to him: 'How is this, that hitherto thou hast proclaimed thyself to be nothing, and now thou declarest thyself to be the very utterance of God?'

"Buddha answered: `Either I am nothing, or I am the very utterance of God, for between these two all is silence."'

—Atcham, March 5, 1885

XXIII. A Haunted House Indeed!

I dreamt that during a tour on the Continent with my friend C. we stayed in a town wherein there was an ancient house of horrible reputation, concerning which we received the following account. At the top of the house was a suite of rooms, from which no one who entered at night ever again emerged. No corpse was ever found; but it was said by some that the victims were absorbed bodily by the walls; by others that there were in the rooms a number of pictures in frames, one frame, however, containing a blank canvas, which had the dreadful power, first, of fascinating the beholder, and next of drawing him towards it, so that he was compelled to approach and gaze at it. Then, by the same hideous enchantment, he was forced to touch it, and the touch was fatal. For the canvas seized him as a devil-fish seizes its prey, and sucked him in, so that he perished without leaving a trace of himself, or of the manner of his death. The legend said further that if any person could succeed in passing a night in these rooms and in resisting their deadly influence, the spell would for ever be broken, and no one would thenceforth be sacrificed.

Hearing all this, and being somewhat of the knight-errant order, C. and I determined to face the danger, and, if possible, deliver the town from the enchantment. We were assured that the attempt would be vain, for that it had already been many times made, and the Devils of the place were always triumphant. They had the power, we were told, of hallucinating the senses of their victims; we should be subjected to some illusion, and be fatally deceived. Nevertheless, we were resolved to try what we could do, and in order to acquaint ourselves with the scene of the ordeal, we visited the place in the daytime. It was a gloomy-looking building, consisting of several vast rooms, filled with lumber of old furniture, worm-eaten and decaying; scaffoldings, which seemed to have been erected for the sake of making repairs and then left; the windows were curtainless, the floors bare, and rats ran hither and thither among the rubbish accumulated in the corners. Nothing could possibly look more desolate and gruesome. We saw no pictures; but as we did not explore every part of the rooms, they may have been there without our seeing them.

We were further informed by the people of the town that in order to visit the rooms at night it was necessary to wear a special costume, and that without it we should have no chance whatever of issuing from them alive. This costume was of black and white, and each of us was to carry a black stave. So we put on this attire,—which somewhat resembled the garb of an ecclesiastical order,—and when the appointed time came, repaired to the haunted house, where, after toiling up the great staircase in the darkness, we reached the door of the haunted apartments to find it closed. But light was plainly visible beneath it, and within was the sound of voices. This greatly surprised us; but after a short conference we knocked. The door was presently opened by a servant, dressed as a modern indoor footman usually is, who civilly asked us to walk in. On entering we found the place altogether different from what we expected to find, and had found on our daylight visit. It was brightly lighted, had decorated walls, pretty ornaments, carpets, and every kind of modern garnishment, and, in short, bore all the appearance of an ordinary well-appointed private "flat." While we stood in the corridor, astonished, a gentleman in evening dress advanced towards us from one of the reception rooms. As he looked interrogatively at us, we thought it best to explain the intrusion, adding that we presumed we had either entered the wrong house, or stopped at the wrong apartment.

He laughed pleasantly at our tale, and said, "I don't know anything about haunted rooms, and, in fact, don't believe in anything of the kind. As for these rooms, they have for a long time been let for two or three nights every week to our Society for the purpose of social reunion. We are members of a musical and literary association, and are in the habit of holding conversaziones in these rooms on certain evenings, during which we entertain ourselves with dancing, singing, charades, and literary gossip. The rooms are spacious and lofty, and exactly adapted to our requirements. As you are here, I may say, in the name of the rest of the members, that we shall be happy if you will join us." At this I glanced at our dresses in some confusion, which being observed by the gentleman, he hastened to say: "You need be under no anxiety about your appearance, for this is a costume night, and the greater number of our guests are in travesty." As he spoke he threw open the door of a large drawing-room and invited us in. On entering we found a company of men and women, well-dressed, some in ordinary evening attire and some costumed. The room was brilliantly lighted and beautifully furnished and decorated. At one end was a grand piano, round which several persons were grouped; others were seated on ottomans taking tea or coffee; and others strolled about, talking. Our host, who appeared to be master of the ceremonies, introduced us to several persons, and we soon became deeply interested in a conversation on literary subjects. So the evening wore on pleasantly, but I never ceased to wonder how we could have mistaken the house or the staircase after the precaution we had taken of visiting it in the daytime in order to avoid the possibility of error.

Presently, being tired of conversation, I wandered away from the group with which C. was still engaged, to look at the beautiful decorations of the great salon, the walls of which were covered with artistic designs in fresco. Between each couple of panels, the whole length of the salon, was a beautiful painting, representing a landscape or a sea-piece. I passed from one to the other, admiring each, till I had reached the extreme end, and was far away from the rest of the company, where the lights were not so many or so bright as in the centre. The last fresco in the series then caught my attention. At first it appeared to me to be unfinished; and then I observed that there was upon its background no picture at all, but only a background of merging tints which seemed to change, and to be now sky, now sea, now green grass. This empty picture had, moreover, an odd metallic coloring which fascinated me; and saying to myself "Is there really any painting on it?" I mechanically put out my hand and touched it. On this I was instantly seized by a frightful sensation, a shock that ran from the tips of my fingers to my brain, and steeped my whole being. Simultaneously I was aware of an overwhelming sense of sucking and dragging, which, from my hand and arm, and, as it were, through them, seemed to possess and envelop my whole person. Face, hair, eyes, bosom, limbs, every portion of my body was locked in an awful embrace which, like the vortex of a whirlpool, drew me irresistibly towards the picture. I felt the hideous impulse clinging over me and sucking me forwards into the wall. I strove in vain to resist it. My efforts were more futile than the flutter of gossamer wings. And then there rushed upon my mind the consciousness that all we had been told about the haunted rooms was true; that a strong delusion had been cast over us; that all this brilliant throng of modern ladies and gentlemen were fiends masquerading, prepared beforehand for our coming; that all the beauty and splendor of our surroundings were mere glamor; and that in reality the rooms were those we had seen in the daytime, filled with lumber and rot and vermin. As I realised all this, and was thrilled with the certainty of it, a sudden access of strength came to me, and I was impelled, as a last desperate effort, to turn my back on the awful fresco, and at least to save my face from coming into contact with it and being glued to its surface. With a shriek of anguish I wrenched myself round and fell prostrate on the ground, face downwards, with my back to the wall, feeling as though the flesh had been torn from my hand and arm. Whether I was saved or not I knew not. My whole being was over-powered by the realisation of the deception to which I had succumbed. I had looked for something so different,—darkness, vacant, deserted rooms, and perhaps a tall, white, empty canvas in a frame, against which I should have been on my guard. Who could have anticipated or suspected this cheerful welcome, these entertaining literati, these innocent-looking frescoes? Who could have foreseen so deadly a horror in such a guise? Was I doomed? Should I, too, be sucked in and absorbed, and perhaps C. after me, knowing nothing of my fate? I had no voice; I could not warn him; all my force seemed to have been spent on the single shriek I had uttered as I turned my back on the wall. I lay prone upon the floor, and knew that I had swooned.

And thus, on seeking me, C. would doubtless have found me, lying insensible among the rubbish, with the rooms restored to the condition in which we had seen them by day, my success in withdrawing myself having dissolved the spell and destroyed the enchantment. But as it was, I awoke from my swoon only to find that I had been dreaming.

XXIV. The Square in the Hand

The foregoing dream was almost immediately succeeded by another, in which I dreamt that I was concerned in a very prominent way in a political struggle in France for liberty and the people's rights. My part in this struggle was, indeed, the leading one, but my friend C. had been drawn into it at my instance, and was implicated in a secondary manner only. The government sought our arrest, and, for a time, we evaded all attempts to take us, but at last we were surprised and driven under escort in a private carriage to a military station, where we were to be detained for examination. With us was arrested a man popularly known as "Fou," a poor weakling whom I much pitied. When we arrived at the station which was our destination, "Fou" gave some trouble to the officials. I think he fainted, but at all events his conveyance from the carriage to the caserne needed the conjoined efforts of our escort, and some commotion was caused by his appearance among the crowd assembled to see us. Clearly the crowd was sympathetic with us and hostile to the military. I particularly noticed one woman who pressed forward as "Fou" was being carried into the station, and who loudly called on all present to note his feeble condition and the barbarity of arresting a witless creature such as he. At that moment C. laid his hand on my arm and whispered: "Now is our time; the guards are all occupied with 'Fou;' we are left alone for a minute; let us jump out of the carriage and run!" As he said this he opened the carriage door on the side opposite to the caserne and alighted in the street. I instantly followed, and the people favoring us, we pressed through them and fled at the top of our speed down the road. As we ran I espied a pathway winding up a hillside away from the town, and cried, "Let us go up there; let us get away from the street!" C. answered, "No, no; they would see us there immediately at that height, the path is too conspicuous. Our best safety is to lose ourselves in the town. We may throw them off our track by winding in and out of the streets." Just then a little child, playing in the road, got in our way, and nearly threw us down as we ran. We had to pause a moment to recover ourselves. "That child may have cost us our lives," whispered C., breathlessly. A second afterwards we reached the bottom of the street which branched off right and left. I hesitated a moment; then we both turned to the right. As we did so— in the twinkling of an eye—we found ourselves in the midst of a group of soldiers coming round the corner. I ran straight into the arms of one of them, who the same instant knew me and seized me by throat and waist with a grip of iron. This was a horrible moment! The iron grasp was sudden and solid as the grip of a vice; the man's arm held my waist like a bar of steel. "I arrest you!" he cried, and the soldiers immediately closed round us. At once I realised the hopelessness of the situation,—the utter futility of resistance. "Vous n'avez pas besoin de me tenir ainsi," I said to the officer; "j irai tranquillement" He loosened his hold and we were then marched off to another military station, in a different part of the town from that whence we had escaped. The man who had arrested me was a sergeant or some officer in petty command. He took me alone with him into the guardroom, and placed before me on a wooden table some papers which he told me to fill in and sign. Then he sat down opposite to me and I looked through the papers. They were forms, with blanks left for descriptions specifying the name, occupation, age, address and so forth of arrested persons. I signed these, and pushing them across the table to the man, asked him what was to be done with us. "You will be shot," he replied, quickly and decisively. "Both of us?" I asked. "Both," he replied. "But," said I, "my companion has done nothing to deserve death. He was drawn into this struggle entirely by me. Consider, too, his advanced age. His hair is white; he stoops, and, had it not been for the difficulty with which he moves his limbs, both of us would probably be at this moment in a place of safety. What can you gain by shooting an old man such as he?" The officer was silent. He neither favored nor discouraged me by his manner. While I sat awaiting his reply, I glanced at the hand with which I had just signed the papers, and a sudden idea flashed into my mind. "At least," I said, "grant me one request. If my companion must die, let me die first." Now I made this request for the following reason. In my right hand, the line of life broke abruptly halfway in its length, indicating a sudden and violent death. But the point at which it broke was terminated by a perfectly marked square, extraordinarily clear-cut and distinct. Such a square, occurring at the end of a broken line means rescue, salvation. I had long been aware of this strange figuration in my hand, and had often wondered what it presaged. But now, as once more I looked at it, it came upon me with sudden conviction that in some way I was destined to be delivered from death at the last moment, and I thought that if this be so it would be horrible should C. have been killed first. If I were to be saved I should certainly save him also, for my pardon would involve the pardon of both, or my rescue the rescue of both. Therefore it was important to provide for his safety until after my fate was decided. The officer seemed to take this last request into more serious consideration than the first. He said shortly: "I may be able to manage that for you," and then at once rose and took up the papers I had signed. "When are we to be shot?" I asked him. "Tomorrow morning," he replied, as promptly as before. Then he went out, turning the key of the guardroom upon me.

The dawn of the next day broke darkly. It was a terribly stormy day; great black lurid thunderclouds lay piled along the horizon, and came up slowly and awfully against the wind. I looked upon them with terror; they seemed so near the earth, and so like living, watching things. They hung out of the sky, extending long ghostly arms downwards, and their gloom and density seemed supernatural. The soldiers took us out, our hands bound behind us, into a quadrangle at the back of their barracks. The scene is sharply impressed on my mind. A palisade of two sides of a square, made of wooden planks, ran round the quadrangle. Behind this palisade, and pressed up close against it, was a mob of men and women—the people of the town—come to see the execution. But their faces were sympathetic; an unmistakable look of mingled grief and rage, not unmixed with desperation—for they were a down-trodden folk—shone in the hundreds of eyes turned towards us. I was the only woman among the condemned. C. was there, and poor "Fou," looking bewildered, and one or two other prisoners. On the third and fourth sides of the quadrangle was a high wall, and in a certain place was a niche partly enclosing the trunk of a tree, cut off at the top. An iron ring was driven into the trunk midway, evidently for the purpose of securing condemned persons for execution. I guessed it would be used for that now. In the centre of the square piece of ground stood a file of soldiers, armed with carbines, and an officer with a drawn sabre. The palisade was guarded by a row of soldiers somewhat sparsely distributed, ertainly not more than a dozen in all. A Catholic priest in a black cassock walked beside me, and as we were conducted into the enclosure, he turned to me and offered religious consolation. I declined his ministrations, but asked him anxiously if he knew which of us was to die first. "You," he replied; "the officer in charge of you said you wished it, and he has been able to accede to your request." Even then I felt a singular joy at hearing this, though I had no longer any expectation of release. Death was, I thought, far too near at hand for that. Just then a soldier approached us, and led me, bare-headed, to the tree trunk, where he placed me with my back against it, and made fast my hands behind me with a rope to the iron ring. No bandage was put over my eyes. I stood thus, facing the file of soldiers in the middle of the quadrangle, and noticed that the officer with the drawn sabre placed himself at the extremity of the line, composed of six men. In that supreme moment I also noticed that their uniform was bright with steel accoutrements. Their helmets were of steel, and their carbines, as they raised them and pointed them at me, ready cocked, glittered in a fitful gleam of sunlight with the same burnished metal. There was an instant's stillness and hush while the men took aim; then I saw the officer raise his bared sabre as the signal to fire. It flashed in the air; then, with a suddenness impossible to convey, the whole quadrangle blazed with an awful light,—a light so vivid, so intense, so blinding, so indescribable that everything was blotted out and devoured by it. It crossed my brain with instantaneous conviction that this amazing glare was the physical effect of being shot, and that the bullets had pierced my brain or heart, and caused this frightful sense of all-pervading flame. Vaguely I remembered having read or having been told that such was the result produced on the nervous system of a victim to death from firearms. "It is over," I said, "that was the bullets." But presently there forced itself on my dazed senses a sound—a confusion of sounds—darkness succeeding the white flash—then steadying itself into gloomy daylight; a tumult; a heap of stricken, tumbled men lying stone-still before me; a fearful horror upon every living face; and then . . . it all burst on me with distinct conviction. The storm which had been gathering all the morning had culminated in its blackest and most electric point immediately overhead. The file of soldiers appointed to shoot us stood exactly under it. Sparkling with bright steel on head and breast and carbines, they stood shoulder to shoulder, a complete lightning conductor, and at the end of the chain they formed, their officer, at the critical moment, raised his shining, naked blade towards the sky. Instantaneously heaven opened, and the lightning fell, attracted by the burnished steel. From blade to carbine, from helmet to breastplate it ran, smiting every man dead as he stood.

They fell like a row of ninepins, blackened in face and hand in an instant,—in the twinkling of an eye. Dead. The electric flame licked the life out of seven men in that second; not one moved a muscle or a finger again. Then followed a wild scene. The crowd, stupefied for a minute by the thunderbolt and the horror of the devastation it had wrought, presently recovered sense, and with a mighty shout hurled itself against the palisade, burst it, leapt over it and swarmed into the quadrangle, easily overpowering the unnerved guards. I was surrounded; eager hands unbound mine; arms were thrown about me; the people roared, and wept, and triumphed, and fell about me on their knees praising Heaven. I think rain fell, my face was wet with drops, and my hair,—but I knew no more, for I swooned and lay unconscious in the arms of the crowd. My rescue had indeed come, and from the very Heavens!

—Rome, April 12, 1887

Dream-Verses

"Through the Ages"

Wake, thou that sleepest! Soul, awake! Thy light is come, arise and shine! For darkness melts, and dawn divine Doth from the holy Orient break;

Swift-darting down the shadowy ways And misty deeps of unborn Time, God's Light, God's Day, whose perfect prime Is as the light of seven days.

Wake, prophet-soul, the time draws near, "The God who knows" within thee stirs And speaks, for His thou art, and Hers Who bears the mystic shield and spear.

The hidden secrets of their shrine Where thou, initiate, didst adore, Their quickening finger shall restore And make its glories newly thine.

A touch divine shall thrill thy brain, Thy soul shall leap to life, and lo! What she has known, again shall know; What she has seen, shall see again;

The ancient Past through which she came,— A cloud across a sunset sky,— A cactus flower of scarlet dye,— A bird with throat and wings of flame;—

A red wild roe, whose mountain bed Nor ever hound or hunter knew, Whose flying footprint dashed the dew In nameless forests, long since dead.

And ever thus in ceaseless roll The wheels of Destiny and Time Through changing form and age and clime Bear onward the undying Soul:

Till now a Sense, confused and dim, Dawns in a shape of nobler mould, Less beast, scarce human; uncontrolled, With free fierce life in every limb;

A savage youth, in painted gear, Foot fleeter than the summer wind; Scant speech for scanty needs designed, Content with sweetheart, spoil and spear

And, passing thence, with burning breath, A fiery Soul that knows no fear, The armed hosts of Odin hear Her voice amid the ranks of death;

There, where the sounds of war are shrill, And clarion shrieks, and battle roars, Once more set free, she leaps and soars A Soul of flame, aspiring still!

Till last, in fairer shape she stands Where lotus-scented waters glide, A Theban Priestess, dusky-eyed, Barefooted on the golden sands;

Or, prostrate, in the Temple-halls, When Spirits wake, and mortals sleep, She hears what mighty Voices sweep Like winds along the columned walls.

A Princess then beneath the palms Which wave o'er Afric's burning plains, The blood of Afric in thy veins, A golden circlet on thine arms.

By sacred Ganges' sultry tide, With dreamy gaze and clasped hands Thou walkst a Seeress in the lands Where holy Buddha lived and died.

Anon, a sea-bleached mountain cave Makes shelter for thee, grave and wan, Thou solemn, solitary Man, Who, nightly, by the star-lit wave

Invokest with illumined eyes The steadfast Lords who rule and wait Beyond the heavens and Time and fate, Until the perfect Dawn shall rise,

And oracles, through ages dumb, Shall wake, and holy forms shall shine On mountain peaks in light divine, When mortals bid God's kingdom come

So turns the wheel of thy [keen] soul; From birth to birth her ruling stars, Swift Mercury and fiery Mars, In ever changing orbits roll!

—Paris, May, 1880

Fragment

A jarring note, a chord amiss— The music's sweeter after, Like wrangling ended with a kiss, Or tears, with silver laughter.

The high gods have no joys like these, So sweet in human story; No tempest rends their tranquil seas Beyond the sunset glory.

The whirling wheels of Time and Fate

Fragment*

I thank Thee, Lord, who hast through devious ways Led me to know Thy Praise, And to this Wildernesse Hast brought me out, Thine Israel to blesse.

If I should faint with Thirst, or weary, sink, To these my Soule is Drink, To these the Majick Rod Is Life, and mine is hid with Christ in God.

————— * These are not properly dream-verses, having been suddenly presented to the waking vision one day in Paris while gazing at the bright sky. (Ed.)

Signs of the Times

Eyes of the dawning in heaven? Sparks from the opening of hell? Gleams from the altar-lamps seven? Can you tell?

Is it the glare of a fire? Is it the breaking of day? Birth lights, or funeral pyre? Who shall say?

—April 19, 1886.

With the Gods

Sweet lengths of shore with sea between, Sweet gleams of tender blue and green, Sweet wind caressive and unseen, Soft breathing from the deep;

What joy have I in all sweet things; How clear and bright my spirit sings; Rising aloft on mystic wings; While sense and body sleep.

In some such dream of grace and light, My soul shall pass into the sight Of the dear Gods who in the height Of inward being dwell;

And joyful at Her perfect feet Whom most of all I long to greet, My soul shall lie in meadow sweet All white with asphodel.

—August 31, 1887.