Often, as a mere child, when lying awake in those nights, whose stillness have a quality of awe, the silence would be broken by weird, barbaric songs which wafted a sense of old, wild adventurous life, and in a curious quality of mystery I saw violet mountains sleeping in sunlight, above a sea of amethyst. Childish visions, but sacred nights. Very many years passed before I understood them.
On hot velvety nights in June a curious scent of smoke would come to me, the measured hollow beating of bells, and a tremulous far-away piping. Years after, I stood alone one evening on the slopes of Etna, amid the pale asphodels and the desolation of tumbling lava fields, and I heard the pipes of Pan, the reed pipe of the herd boy, and linked the past with the present. Again, passing through a region where the smoke rose from the charcoal burners' fires the scent of an ancient memory came vaporing up, the unfamiliar scent that puzzled my childhood, and I was away in a flash, to wait for the soul to free herself and return from the world's edge.
I had to journey further east before I heard again at dawn the ring of camel bells as a caravan broke camp, and then I understood the visions of my youth, as I listened to the measured hollow beating, and watched a strange medley of eastern traffic trail away across the desert.
Sometimes, when the nursery clock seemed to tick more loudly than usual, I saw a gigantic water-wheel, and behind it massive rocks with the hewn tombs of ancient kings, and beyond them lay distant glamorous mountains, white sails creeping amid warm purple isles, set in a gulf of turquoise. Sometimes I have dreamed holy things, and waked to find myself over-awed by the sublimity of the vision and the glory of the Universe.
So many of those childish visions I have identified in later life, but there is one which eludes me. It is a great white road leading to the farther east, and I see it drenched in white sunlight. Tinkling mule trains pass along it, and I know now it is in some way connected with Ida that saw ancient Troy, and the Capital of Pontus, the seat of Mithridates' Court, and the Empire of Trebizond. Some day, who knows, I may walk upon it.
Looking back I can recollect nothing psychic happening to me before the age of six. I can fix that date upon which I became actually aware of the other world. It all happened through "Silk dress" and "Rumpus."
I slept in a bed in one corner, and my younger brother slept in another corner. The room was large, and at the top of a modern, quite ordinary, town house. Two flights of stairs ran down to the ground floor. "Silk dress" was something we were extremely interested in, but I cannot recollect that we were ever in the least afraid.
When we first became aware of "silk dress" I do not know, but in looking back across those many years I think that in the beginning we must have accepted "it" as something or somebody "real." Only after several experiences did it dawn upon us that "it" was not real. By then we had passed beyond the stage when we might have felt fear. After we had gone to bed we were left quite alone in the dark, and the nurses went down to supper. The younger children slept in another room. It was during such periods of silence that "silk dress" began its ascent.
Just as we were dropping off to sleep one of us would murmur drowsily, "Here comes silk dress." Then we lay quite still, very wide awake again and listened intently.
From far down on the ground floor we heard footsteps quietly and methodically ascending, and the rustle of a silk dress. We could hear quite distinctly when "it" arrived at the first floor, which was occupied by our parents, then "it" passed on to the next flight of stairs leading to our floor.