RUPERT’S JOURNAL—Continued.

May 2, 1907.

I had heard long ago that Second Sight is a terrible gift, even to its possessor.  I am now inclined not only to believe, but to understand it.  Aunt Janet has made such a practice of it of late that I go in constant dread of discovery of my secret.  She seems to parallel me all the time, whatever I may do.  It is like a sort of dual existence to her; for she is her dear old self all the time, and yet some other person with a sort of intellectual kit of telescope and notebook, which are eternally used on me.  I know they are for me, too—for what she considers my good.  But all the same it makes an embarrassment.  Happily Second Sight cannot speak as clearly as it sees, or, rather, as it understands.  For the translation of the vague beliefs which it inculcates is both nebulous and uncertain—a sort of Delphic oracle which always says things which no one can make out at the time, but which can be afterwards read in any one of several ways.  This is all right, for in my case it is a kind of safety; but, then, Aunt Janet is a very clever woman, and some time she herself may be able to understand.  Then she may begin to put two and two together.  When she does that, it will not be long before she knows more than I do of the facts of the whole affair.  And her reading of them and of the Lady of the Shroud, round whom they circle, may not be the same as mine.  Well, that will be all right too.  Aunt Janet loves me—God knows I have good reason to know that all through these years—and whatever view she may take, her acts will be all I could wish.  But I shall come in for a good lot of scolding, I am sure.  By the way, I ought to think of that; if Aunt Janet scolds me, it is a pretty good proof that I ought to be scolded.  I wonder if I dare tell her all.  No!  It is too strange.  She is only a woman, after all: and if she knew I loved . . . I wish I knew her name, and thought—as I might myself do, only that I resist it—that she is not alive at all.  Well, what she would either think or do beats me.  I suppose she would want to slipper me as she used to do when I was a wee kiddie—in a different way, of course.

May 3, 1907.

I really could not go on seriously last night.  The idea of Aunt Janet giving me a licking as in the dear old days made me laugh so much that nothing in the world seemed serious then.  Oh, Aunt Janet is all right whatever comes.  That I am sure of, so I needn’t worry over it.  A good thing too; there will be plenty to worry about without that.  I shall not check her telling me of her visions, however; I may learn something from them.

For the last four-and-twenty hours I have, whilst awake, been looking over Aunt Janet’s books, of which I brought a wheen down here.  Gee whizz!  No wonder the old dear is superstitious, when she is filled up to the back teeth with that sort of stuff!  There may be some truth in some of those yarns; those who wrote them may believe in them, or some of them, at all events.  But as to coherence or logic, or any sort of reasonable or instructive deduction, they might as well have been written by so many hens!  These occult book-makers seem to gather only a lot of bare, bald facts, which they put down in the most uninteresting way possible.  They go by quantity only.  One story of the kind, well examined and with logical comments, would be more convincing to a third party than a whole hecatomb of them.