I walked back to the others with my finger on my lip, and Miss Chaplin closed the door behind me.

"We need not go any further; that is the haunted room," I said, in a low voice that could not reach the woman inside.

"You're right. You've found it," was the answer.

I heard the story when we went downstairs, but I can only recollect that it had to do with a Lady Sutherland, who had been brutally flung out of the window.

I will now relate a curious incident of haunting by elementals, and it will be seen that such hauntings may quite easily appear to the ordinary observer as an abnormal occurrence to which no clue can be given.

What is an elemental? It is only when the mystic has advanced in her studies that she discovers how manifold evolution is, and how small a part humanity really fills in the economy of nature.

When the microscope is used myriads of germs of life, unsuspected by us, are revealed; even so the invisible planes connected with this earth contain myriads of forms of life, of whose existence most of us are unconscious. When we read of a "good or bad elemental" it must always be either an artificial ent.i.ty, or one of the many varieties of nature spirits that is meant. I will deal now with a case of the artificial variety.

Such elementals are formed out of the elemental essence lying behind the mineral kingdom. It is the monadic essence, or material used in creation, or it may be called the outpouring of Divine force into matter. This elemental essence is marvelously sensitive to human thought, however fleeting. It responds instantly to the vibrations set up consciously or unconsciously by human will or desire. The influence of thought can mold a living force, good or evil, into an existence, evanescent or lasting. Such shapes possess a certain appropriateness to the character of the desire which calls them into existence, though they generally possess distortions, either unpleasant or terrifying.

Persons who play with, or use for some malign purpose, Black Magic, generally have a swarm of such semi-intelligent ent.i.ties surrounding them, and professional Black Magicians can call artificial elementals of great power into existence, and use them for their fell designs.

As a rule, however, the enormous inchoate ma.s.s of ent.i.ties, known as elementals, are beings of human thought creation, created in no malicious spirit, but more often the result of curiosity, and tampering with a very dangerous power, as yet little understood. The amateur magician on pa.s.sing over to the other side by no means loses his taste for the grotesque and abnormal, and often continues to play pranks on those left behind, by means of the dangerous powers he has acquired whilst on earth.

I was visiting some old friends in the South of England. Some years before they had succeeded to a fine inheritance, and it was the first time that I had stayed with them in that house. I did not experience any uncomfortable sensations in the bedroom appointed to me. It was early summer-time when there is but a short spell of darkness, and I was on such intimate terms with my hostess, herself a psychic, that I had only to say I disliked the atmosphere of my bedroom, to have it changed.

The former mistress of the house had been a very remarkable woman whom I had known intimately. She was brilliantly clever and accomplished, and charming to talk to, but unfortunately she took a vivid interest in occultism of the wrong sort--in Black Magic. Anything to do with spells, witchcraft, elementals, incantations, attracted her enormously, and she had a very considerable knowledge of the subject. I have no doubt she could have worked a great deal of mischief had she been so inclined, but luckily her designs were more impish than malign.

I often warned her that there was undoubted danger in such researches, and that she was certain to attract about her elementals of a most undesirable kind, but my warnings went unheeded, and to the time of her death her interest in the dark subject never flagged.

She had not died in the house I had come to stay in, but it occurred to me as I dressed for dinner that I was in her old bedroom.

This suggestion came to me suddenly, and to the accompaniment of a sound. A sound more felt than heard, a sound known to the spirit rather than to the ear; a tiptoe silence hovering on the brink of sound's threshold.

My surroundings gave a very pleasant impression. A glorious sunset was flooding the west. My room was full of golden light, and the window was flung wide to the warm summer air. There was nothing to be recorded either ghostly or uncanny, yet something was present which made me uncomfortable. Strange thoughts, bizarre fancies, found lodgment in my mind, and I stood rigid, listening intently. The room was full of secrets. They seemed suddenly to creep forth and whisper together.

There it was again! that soft echo of a sound which was like no other sound. An eerie, uncanny sensation crept down my spine, a strange, undefinable feeling of uncertainty, not yet amounting to fear. I moved towards the corner of the room, whence the sound proceeded, and as I approached, out of that corner dropped down a huge gray moth, a second dropped down after it, and both lay with outstretched wings on the white coverlet of the bed.

Now I have always had a peculiar antipathy to moths, the big furry sort.

I can handle a spider, and bear with a black beetle, but with big woolly moths I cannot live happily. I saw one once under a microscope, and it was covered with horrid looking parasites. I am aware that other creatures are similarly afflicted, but this microscopic vision accentuated my horror of all big moths. They seem to me repulsive, sinister, and uncanny creatures. The curious thing is that though I dislike them they adore me, and I always know that if there is one in my parish it will find me out.

On this occasion I felt a very natural desire to laugh at myself. Of course, the creatures had at once discovered me, and this was all that had resulted from my uncomfortable sensations. A feeling of scorn swept over me. Two moths had rustled softly. Could anything be more ba.n.a.l, more commonplace? I flung a towel over them, and finished dressing. Then I rang for the housemaid.

When she came I told her she must accomplish the destruction of the occupants of my bed. I could see no moths flying about outside, but nevertheless the window must be kept closed till I opened it again in the dark, before getting into bed.

She told me that she was always particular to close the windows before bringing in a light, as the bats were a nuisance. I a.s.sured her that I had no objection to a room full of bats, but I could not sleep in a room full of moths. She promised to look about the room whilst it was still light, and destroy any she found. I closed the window myself and went down to dinner.

We were but three women present; my hostess, myself, and a friend of ours, and we spent a delightful evening together talking of old times.

That night, before beginning to undress, I blew out my candle, and throwing up the window I stood looking forth upon enchantment. It was still light, with a l.u.s.ter that filled all s.p.a.ce, and it seemed wicked to shut out such beauty. Westward the stars were pale, but southward one great dull red star shone low down on the horizon. The owls were haunting the gardens with their banshee notes. It was a night for the revelation of the fairy folk, elves and pixies, fauns and dryads, elfins, nymphs and satyrs. A night when she tells her secrets to her lovers in the psalmody of nature, when the spirits of earth, fire, air, and water utter softly to human souls, if they will but incline the ear to hearken to the message.

If I want a definition of G.o.d I shall go, not to the bell and the book, but to a starlit, fragrant garden, where I can look long and deep into the pa.s.sion of Creation's eyes. I will be as the old gray poet who wrote--

"I am he that walks with the tender and growing night, I call the earth and sea, half hid by the night.

Press close magnetic, nourishing night, Night of the South wind, night of the large, few stars."

Across the hushed magic came silver sweet the strokes of eleven from the village church, and the spell was broken. I closed the window, lit my candles, and prepared for bed.

Just before extinguishing my lights, and re-opening the window, I carried a candle to the side of the bed with a box of matches. What was my horror on discovering that the turned-down bed and both pillows were liberally strewn with enormous gray moths. The sight was extraordinary, I literally could not believe my eyes. I stood there staring, and mechanically counting them. Twenty--thirty. I turned back to the dressing-table with the candle still in my hand. What was I to do? If I had the courage to destroy them, what sort of condition would the bed be in after?

I am writing of actual facts, and without the least exaggeration. The smallest of those moths must have been quite an inch long in their fat gray bodies, and quite three inches long across the wings. I thought I knew most moths by sight and name, but I had never seen any like these before. What depressed me most was the fact that moths are attracted by candle-light. I had been burning four candles for quite twenty minutes, and not a moth had forsaken the bed for the flame. I was positively certain that they had not flown in whilst I stood in the dark of the open window. They were far too big and numerous to have escaped observation. What was I to do? I could not use that bed, and I now felt a strong repulsion for the room. I regretted deeply that the household must all be in bed, because I knew that no description I could give would convey anything like actuality, and the truth was certain to appear wild exaggeration.

I made up my mind at once. I knew there were several unoccupied rooms on either side of me, and taking my lighted candle I placed it, still lit, in a basin on the marble-topped washstand. It should remain lit all night, and in the morning I would come to search for victims. The other candles I extinguished, all but one to take with me, and leaving the window still shut I softly left the room. I entered the next bedroom and approached the bed. Of course, there were no sheets, but the white dust sheet covering the blankets was spotless--there was not a moth to be seen anywhere. Blowing out my candle I opened the window, and getting into bed between the blankets I was soon fast asleep.

I awakened to glorious sunshine, and looked at my wrist watch, which I had placed beside my bed. Six o'clock and a lovely warm summer morning.

I jumped out of bed, full of curiosity regarding my visitors of over-night, and returned to my own room. Not a trace of a moth to be seen anywhere. The candle had burnt itself out, no singed wings or blackened bodies lay near. The window was shut. I threw it wide, and then I went round the room shaking curtains, looking behind pictures, and climbing on a chair I examined the top of the wardrobe. Not the faintest signs of the great gray drove of the night before. Where could they all have vanished to?

I gave it up, and got into my own bed, to await the advent of my early tea. I hated having to tell the housemaid that I had been driven into another room, but I knew she would find out the fact for herself. She was obviously incredulous, and a.s.sured me she had thoroughly searched the room, and seen but two winged creatures; those she had removed from the bed. I had seen for myself when coming to bed that the window had remained shut. She had often seen one or two brown moths in the rooms at night, but she owned that never before had she seen huge gray ones.

The matter was left at that, and during the day I told my hostess of my adventure, and she at once ordered the room I had slept in to be prepared for me, in case I might encounter the same difficulties again.

I dressed for dinner in the moth-room, without catching sight of one.

When bedtime came we three women all entered the room together.

On approaching the bed, and looking down on it, no one spoke for a moment. Then my fellow guest exclaimed:

"Well, I must say that if I had not seen this with my own eyes I never would have believed it."

The bed was liberally sprinkled with large gray moths.

My hostess shivered. "Come away, and let us shut the door. It's too horrible," she said.

During the remainder of my visit I was perfectly comfortable in my new room, and the curious fact must be stated that after I had left the moth-room the moths forsook it too. I could discern a pitying incredulity in the housemaid's att.i.tude towards me afterwards. She had seen but two, and she did not believe in the drove.

My hostess and friend who had witnessed the phenomenon at once agreed that there was something more in it than an entomological curiosity. I would have given much for the opinion of a naturalist. What, I wonder, would he have made of that fat, gray flock sprinkling the bed? What species of moth would he have declared them to be?

I have searched in many books since and never found anything the least resembling them, and I retain my original, firm belief that they were nothing more or less than a flock of elementals, sent forth as a practical joke by a practiced magician on the other side.

CHAPTER XIX

"THE NEW JEANNE D'ARC"

Before writing on the above subject, which is proving to-day of absorbing interest to a very large number of people, Protestant as well as Catholic, I will point out a curious fact that is occultly connected with it.

At certain periods in our normal life, certain subjects lying quite outside our earthly experience begin quite suddenly to be talked of and written upon. No one knows why, no one, outside occultism, can even form a conjecture why such subjects should suddenly obsess the brains of a considerable number of persons, why they should crop up in the most unexpected places, or why they should form the foundations of a considerable ma.s.s of literature.

It would appear as if they were floating in the air at some particular time, and ma.s.ses of people catch them up like germs, and carry them about until their power is exhausted.

I will give an instance. In the years just before the war "The Great G.o.d Pan" drifted across our mental horizon and was at once drawn into our aura.