SWEDEN AND RUSSIA, 1892
Taking my experiences chronologically, I must now carry my readers back to England, where the autumn of this year found me in London.
I had been asked to recommend a house for paying guests, well situated, in the West End of London, and newly started by a lady who had been left a widow with very slender provision. Several kind women had interested themselves in the case, and had wisely suggested thinking out a means of livelihood in the future rather than merely supplying present wants.
It would be difficult to imagine a person less suited for the sort of employment chosen; but that is "another story."
I never care to recommend anything or anybody of which or of whom I have no personal knowledge; at the same time, I was anxious to help my kindly acquaintance in her philanthropy, and as I had arranged to spend some weeks in London that autumn—to be near an invalid brother—it struck me that I might stay at the house so strongly recommended, instead of taking private rooms as usual.
So I journeyed to Sussex Gardens, found a charming house, newly furnished and decorated, and as clean as the proverbial "new pin," and, moreover, a very good-looking mistress of the house, still a youngish woman of five or six and thirty.
She spoke most warmly of the kindness she had received from the lady who had given me her address, showed me some pleasant rooms, and the arrangement was quickly completed.
I chose a small sitting-room in addition to my bedroom, although, as a matter of fact, this was scarcely necessary, as I was the first guest received. Only one deaf old lady appeared upon the scene during the six weeks I spent there.
I had not been forty-eight hours in the house before I discovered that my hostess was a convinced and very remarkable psychic. Naturally she was delighted to find someone to whom she could speak of her various experiences without being laughed at or put down as a lunatic. At the same time I am bound to confess that Mrs Peters, although extremely interesting, was also rather agitating, and certainly much too erratic to make an entirely satisfactory Chatelaine. She was given to reading "Aurora Leigh," instead of ordering dinner, and had to be sent for occasionally to sit at the head of the table, with a volume of Browning or Tennyson firmly clutched in her reluctant hand. Even when duly "found and delivered," curious things happened during the meals—especially at dinner in the evening, when she often put down knife and fork and directed my attention to the far end of the handsome dining-room, where she was wont to see the ghost of her late husband.
"Look, dear Miss Bates! Surely you must see him—dear Henry, I mean. There he stands, beard and all, just between the sofa and the wall. I can see him as clearly as I see you!"