On the twenty-third of February, I had one of the most wonderful spiritual experiences of my life. Lilly had gone home, and taken Alice with her, and I was quite alone. The room which they occupied, while in the hotel, opened into my room; but it was now empty, and the proprietors had promised to put no one into it, unless obliged by stress of business; for it had been very convenient, for changing the air in my room. I awoke from sleep about three A.M. and found my room distressingly hot. I rose, put on wool slippers, stopped at the table, ate a few grapes, and drank a glass of milk, and then thought I would open the door between the two rooms. I was very weak, but I reached the door, and had my hand on the key. Then Some One in the adjoining room thrust quickly a heavy bolt across the other side of the door. I concluded the room had become occupied while I was asleep, was a little annoyed at not being informed, but thought no more of the circumstance, until the chambermaid came to me in the morning.
“Do you know,” she said, “I left both the windows in the next room open, and it has been the coldest night of the winter. The room was like an ice box this morning; for the heat was turned off and the wind blowing, and freezing as it blew.”
“But the room was occupied,” I answered.
“No, indeed!” she continued. “I went in an hour ago, and shut the windows and put on the heat, and I will take you there while I make this room comfortable.” She did so, and I was lying wrapped in a blanket upon a sofa, when I remembered the almost angry drawing of the bolt, and turned my head to look at the door. There was no bolt there. There was nothing but 460 a little brass screw in the lintel, that a child’s finger could turn noiselessly. Yet the bolt I heard was one of the large iron bolts, used in the farm and manor houses of Westmoreland, and the North Country. They crossed the whole door, and fell into the socket provided, with a great noise—the noise I had heard early that morning. Who had been watching me through the long night hours? One step into that freezing room would have chilled the spark of life in me. Who had prevented it, and that in such a manner as should convince me that it was no mortal hand, and no mortal bolt that saved me? That day, I could do nothing but pray and wonder, and then pray again. I thought I was alone, and I was not alone. Some angel had charge over me, and I remembered that there was just a touch of impatience in the driving of the bolt, as if the watcher had the feeling of a mother, vexed at her child’s imprudence. I have had many spiritual experiences but few that affected me more than this one.
About the eighteenth of March I resolved to go home, and Lilly’s husband went to Cornwall, had the water put on, and the fires lighted; and on the twentieth Lilly and Alice followed, taking a servant with them. I waited as patiently as I could for Lilly to send me word the house was warm and comfortable; then Mr. Munro came and packed my trunks, and on the twenty-sixth my captivity ended. God let me go home, and I found Love and every comfort waiting for me.
On March, the twenty-ninth, I wrote: “I am getting well. This is a new birthday. A happy day.” I had written two chapters of “The Strawberry Handkerchief” when I was taken ill, but I was not able to return to it until May, the nineteenth, and I did not finish it until January, the seventh, A.D. 1908, when we were staying at Bretton Hall Hotel, for the three cold months.
On January, the thirty-first, Mr. and Mrs. Dodd gave me a “Bow of Orange Ribbon” dinner. All decorations were in the dominant color, and it was a very pretty affair. Mrs. Dodd is a charming hostess, and Mr. Dodd knows the exact tone at which a company of happy, sensible people should be kept. He sets it, and he keeps it, and every one follows his lead, as naturally in pleasure, as they do in business.
On February, the twenty-ninth, I was guest of honor at the Press Club Reception, held at the Waldorf Astoria. I enjoyed this occasion thoroughly, for I like the men and women of the press. I sat beside Mr. Pollock, a man of extraordinary genius. I had a very sore throat that day, but his speech made me forget I had anything but a heart and a brain. Bishop Potter sat near me. I had a pen and ink acquaintance with him, but had never before met him personally. As a man, he was delightful; as a bishop, he fell below my ideal. But then my ideal had been formed on the English Spiritual Lords, and I thought of Carpenter, and others, and wondered if they ever forgot their office so far as to tell a great public assemblage funny stories. The stories were excellent, and quite in keeping with what one of them called “his job,” but somehow they fell below the office he filled in the church. Yet everyone enjoyed them, and my quibble may be laid to my English superstitions about sacred things.
I had a little reception after the meeting, and never in all my life had I been so petted and praised. The young women crowded round me and kissed my hands, and my cheeks, and I wished they were all my daughters. Mrs. Klopsch had sent me an immense bouquet of violets, and I gave every flower away to them. If ever fame tasted sweet to me, it was during that half hour among the lovely women of the New York press.