E. F. Benson

“ Thought reading, telepathy, suggestion—all these are natural phenomena. We know a little about them, and we've got to exclude them first, before we accept anything so strange as a vision of the future."
"Exclude them, then," he said. "I'm quite with you; but you mustn't think that I put clairvoyance or knowledge of the future on a different plane to any of those. It's only an extension of a natural law—a branch line, so to speak, that led to Helyat, off the main line. It's part of the system." ”

“ I asked, knowing that the occult side of life is far more real to Hugh than the happenings of normal existence.
"I really don't know whether you'll think it is spooky or not," he said. "You may think it is only a coincidence. You see, I don't believe in coincidences. There isn't such a thing as blind chance, to my mind. What we call chance is only the working out of a law of which we are ignorant." ”

“ Meantime the dusk was coming rapidly on—a thick and murky dusk, hot and windless. The road made a sharp right-angled turn. It was open to the fields on one side, but the other was bounded by a high stone wall that rose above my head. I was beginning to wonder what this inclosure was, when I came to a big iron gate in it, and I saw through the bars that it was a graveyard. Row upon row the tombstones glimmered faintly in the dusk, and at the far end of it, only just visible in the gathering darkness, were the roofs and small spire of a cemetery chapel. ”

“ Even if it turned out that eventually he was buried in the cemetery of this twilit, untenanted town, what good would it have done him to know of that before it happened? What is the use of communications between this world and some other world inaccessible to the ordinary perceptions of mankind, if these communications contain nothing that is of value or interest?
He looked at me with a distant, penetrating glance, which seemed to be focused on some inconceivable remoteness, and laughed.
"No, that wasn't the coincidence," he said. ”

“ The law is that in the real world, in the true existence beyond the 'muddy vesture of decay,' the past and the present and the future are one. They are a point in eternity which can be perceived and handled from both sides. Difficult to express, but that's the kind of thing. Occasionally, and in the case of some people, the muddy vesture can be stripped off, though only intermittently and for a moment, and then they perceive and know. ”

“ If we were ignorant of the movement of the earth, we should think it a coincidence that the sun will rise to-morrow very nearly at the same time as it rose to-day. We don't call it a coincidence because we know, more or less, the law that makes it do so. ”

“ I adore chess, and play it quite atrociously, but when I am playing chess I can think of nothing else. That night, however, things went strangely well, and after about twenty moves I saw, with trembling excitement, that the unwonted prospect of winning my game was opening out in front of me. I mention this to show that I was wide awake and concentrated on what I was doing.
"As I meditated the move which was soon to prove fatal to my adversary, a vision such as I have had once or twice before leaped into being before my eyes. ”

“ Why I connected these forebodings with my journey or my stay at Helyat I had no idea. Search my mind as I might, there was no conceivable reason for doing so. I told myself that this was one of those causeless fears which sometimes obsess people of the steadiest nerves, and that to yield to it would be to take a definite step in the direction of mental unbalance. It would never do to let oneself become the prey of such unreasonable terrors. ”

“ And now, the moment that I had sent off that telegram, the exhilaration at the thought of getting into a high and bracing air completely passed, and the dread of some imminent peril took such possession of me that I very nearly sent a second telegram on the heels of the first, to say that I could not manage to come, after all. ”

“ The vision, apparently, had lasted just the space of his one move, for mine was already being made when it began."
III
Hugh paused, and I supposed the story was over.
"What an odd affair!" I said. "It's just one of those meaningless but interesting intrusions into everyday life, coming from God knows where, which don't lead to anything. What was the name of the station, by the way? Did you take the trouble to find out whether your vision resembled the actual place? Was that the coincidence?" ”

“ About the same time an up express is due to pass through Corstophine without stopping. Usually the local train to Helyat waits on the down line for it to pass. This afternoon, however, the express was late, and the Helyat train was signaled to start. Whether owing to a mistake of the signalman, who had not put up the signal against the express, or whether the driver of the express had not seen it, was not yet clear; but what had happened was that while the Helyat train was on the section of the up line, the express, running at full speed to make up time, dashed into it. ”