I remember my childhood very distinctly. I do not think that
the fact argues a good memory, for I have never been clever at learning
words by heart, in prose or rhyme; so that I believe my remembrance of
events depends much more upon the events themselves than upon my
possessing any special facility for recalling them. Perhaps I am too
imaginative, and the earliest impressions I received were of a kind to
stimulate the imagination abnormally. A long series of
little misfortunes, connected with each other as to suggest a sort of
weird fatality, so worked upon my melancholy temperament when I was a
boy that, before I was of age, I sincerely believed myself to be under a
curse, and not only myself, but my whole family, and every individual
who bore my name.
I was born in the old place where my father, and his father, and all
his predecessors had been born, beyond the memory of man. It is a very
old house, and the greater part of it was originally a castle, strongly
fortified, and surrounded by a deep moat supplied with abundant water
from the hills by a hidden aqueduct. Many of the fortifications have
been destroyed, and the moat has been filled up. The water from
the aqueduct supplies great fountains, and runs down into huge oblong
basins in the terraced gardens, one below the other, each surrounded by a
broad pavement of marble between the water and the flower-beds. The
waste surplus finally escapes through an artificial grotto, some thirty
yards long, into a stream, flowing down through the park to the meadows
beyond, and thence to the distant river. The buildings were extended a
little and greatly altered more than two hundred years ago, in the time
of Charles II., but since then little has been done to improve them,
though they have been kept in fairly good repair, according to our
fortunes.
In the gardens there are terraces and huge hedges of box and
evergreen, some of which used to be clipped into shapes of animals, in
the Italian style. I can remember when I was a lad how I used to try to
make out what the trees were cut to represent, and how I used to appeal
for explanations to Judith, my Welsh nurse. She dealt in a strange
mythology of her own, and peopled the gardens with griffins, dragons,
good genii and bad, and filled my mind with them at the same time. My
nursery window afforded a view of the great fountains at the head of the
upper basin, and on moonlight nights the Welshwoman would hold me up to
the glass and bid me look at the mist and spray rising into mysterious
shapes, moving mystically in the white light like living things.
“It’s the Woman of the Water,” she used to say; and sometimes she
would threaten that if I did not go to sleep the Woman of the Water
would steal up to the high window and carry me away in her wet arms.
The place was gloomy. The broad basins of water and the tall
evergreen hedges gave it a funereal look, and the damp-stained marble
causeways by the pools might have been made of tombstones. The gray and
weather-beaten walls and towers without, the dark and
massively-furnished rooms within, the deep, mysterious recesses and the
heavy curtains, all affected my spirits. I was silent and sad from my
childhood. There was a great clock tower above, from which the hours
rang dismally during the day, and tolled like a knell in the dead of
night. There was no light nor life in the house, for my mother was a
helpless invalid, and my father had grown melancholy in his long task of
caring for her. He was a thin, dark man, with sad eyes; kind, I think,
but silent and unhappy. Next to my mother, I believe he loved me better
than anything on earth, for he took immense pains and trouble in
teaching me, and what he taught me I have never forgotten. Perhaps it
was his only amusement, and that may be the reason why I had no nursery
governess or teacher of any kind while he lived.
I used to be taken to see my mother every day, and sometimes twice a
day, for an hour at a time. Then I sat upon a little stool near her
feet, and she would ask me what I had been doing, and what I wanted to
do. I daresay she saw already the seeds of a profound melancholy in my
nature, for she looked at me always with a sad smile, and kissed me with
a sigh when I was taken away.
One night, when I was just six years old, I lay awake in the nursery.
The door was not quite shut, and the Welsh nurse was sitting sewing in
the next room. Suddenly I heard her groan, and say in a strange voice,
“One—two—one—two!” I was frightened, and I jumped up and ran to the
door, barefooted as I was.
“What is it, Judith?” I cried, clinging to her skirts. I can remember the look in her strange dark eyes as she answered.
“One—two leaden coffins, fallen from the ceiling!” she crooned,
working herself in her chair. “One—two—a light coffin and a heavy
coffin, falling to the floor!”
Then she seemed to notice me, and she took me back to bed and sang me to sleep with a queer old Welsh song.
I do not know how it was, but the impression got hold of me that she
had meant that my father and mother were going to die very soon. They
died in the very room where she had been sitting that night. It was a
great room, my day nursery, full of sun when there was any: and when the
days were dark it was the most cheerful place in the house. My mother
grew rapidly worse, and I was transferred to another part of the
building to make place for her. They thought my nursery was gayer for
her, I suppose; but she could not live. She was beautiful when she was
dead, and I cried bitterly.
“The light one, the light one—the heavy one to come,” crooned the
Welshwoman. And she was right. My father took the room after my mother
was gone, and day by day he grew thinner and paler and sadder.
“The heavy one, the heavy one—all of lead,” moaned my nurse, one
night in December, standing still, just as she was going to take away
the light after putting me to bed. Then she took me up again and wrapped
me in a little gown, and led me away to my father’s room. She knocked,
but no one answered. She opened the door, and we found him in his
easy-chair before the fire, very white, quite dead.
So I was alone with the Welshwoman till strange people came, and
relations whom I had never seen; and then I heard them saying that I
must be taken away to some more cheerful place. They were kind people,
and I will not believe that they were kind only because I was to be very
rich when I grew to be a man. The world never seemed to be a very bad
place to me, nor all the people to be miserable sinners, even when I was
most melancholy. I do not remember that any one ever did me any great
injustice, nor that I was ever oppressed or ill-treated in any way, even
by the boys at school. I was sad, I suppose, because my childhood was
so gloomy, and, later, because I was unlucky in everything I undertook,
till I finally believed I was pursued by fate, and I used to dream that
the old Welsh nurse and the Woman of the Water between them had vowed to
pursue me to my end. But my natural disposition should have been
cheerful, as I have often thought.
Among lads of my age I was never last, or even among the last, in
anything; but I was never first. If I trained for a race, I was sure to
sprain my ankle on the day when I was to run. If I pulled an oar with
others, my oar was sure to break. If I competed for a prize, some
unforeseen accident prevented my winning it at the last moment. Nothing
to which I put my hand succeeded, and I got the reputation of being
unlucky, until my companions felt it was always safe to bet against me,
no matter what the appearances might be. I became discouraged and
listless in everything. I gave up the idea of competing for any
distinction at the University, comforting myself with the thought that I
could not fail in the examination for the ordinary degree. The day
before the examination began I fell ill; and when at last I recovered,
after a narrow escape from death, I turned my back upon Oxford, and went
down alone to visit the old place where I had been born, feeble in
health and profoundly disgusted and discouraged. I was twenty-one years
of age, master of myself and of my fortune; but so deeply had the long
chain of small unlucky circumstances affected me that I thought
seriously of shutting myself up from the world to live the life of a
hermit, and to die as soon as possible. Death seemed the only cheerful
possibility in my existence, and my thoughts soon dwelt upon it
altogether.
I had never shown any wish to return to my own home since I had been
taken away as a little boy, and no one had ever pressed me to do so. The
place had been kept in order after a fashion, and did not seem to have
suffered during the fifteen years or more of my absence. Nothing earthly
could affect those old grey walls that had fought the elements for so
many centuries. The garden was more wild than I remembered it; the
marble causeways about the pools looked more yellow and damp than of
old, and the whole place at first looked smaller. It was not until I had
wandered about the house and grounds for many hours that I realised
the huge size of the home where I was to live in solitude. Then I began
to delight in it, and my resolution to live alone grew stronger.
The people had turned out to welcome me, of course, and I tried to
recognise the changed faces of the old gardener and the old housekeeper,
and to call them by name. My old nurse I knew at once. She had grown
very grey since she heard the coffins fall in the nursery fifteen years
before, but her strange eyes were the same, and the look in them woke
all my old memories. She went over the house with me.
“And how is the Woman of the Water?” I asked, trying to laugh a little. “Does she still play in the moonlight?”
“She is hungry,” answered the Welshwoman, in a low voice.
“Hungry? Then we will feed her.” I laughed. But old Judith turned very pale, and looked at me strangely.
“Feed her? Ay—you will feed her well,” she muttered, glancing behind
her at the ancient housekeeper, who tottered after us with feeble steps
through the halls and passages.
I did not think much of her words. She had always talked oddly, as
Welshwomen will, and though I was very melancholy I am sure I was not
superstitious, and I was certainly not timid. Only, as in a far-off
dream, I seemed to see her standing with the light in her hand and
muttering, “The heavy one—all of lead,” and then leading a little boy
through the long corridors to see his father lying dead in a
great easy-chair before a smouldering fire. So we went over the house,
and I chose the rooms where I would live; and the servants I had brought
with me ordered and arranged everything, and I had no more trouble. I
did not care what they did provided I was left in peace, and was not
expected to give directions; for I was more listless than ever, owing to
the effects of my illness at college.
I dined in solitary state, and the melancholy grandeur of the vast
old dining-room pleased me. Then I went to the room I had selected for
my study, and sat down in a deep chair, under a bright light, to think,
or to let my thoughts meander through labyrinths of their own choosing,
utterly indifferent to the course they might take.
The tall windows of the room opened to the level of the ground upon
the terrace at the head of the garden. It was in the end of July, and
everything was open, for the weather was warm. As I sat alone I heard
the unceasing plash of the great fountains, and I fell to thinking of
the Woman of the Water. I rose, and went out into the still night, and
sat down upon a seat on the terrace, between two gigantic Italian
flower-pots. The air was deliciously soft and sweet with the smell of
the flowers, and the garden was more congenial to me than the house. Sad
people always like running water and the sound of it at night, though I
cannot tell why. I sat and listened in the gloom, for it was dark
below, and the pale moon had not yet climbed over the hills in front of
me, though all the air above was light with her rising beams. Slowly the
white halo in the eastern sky ascended in an arch above the wooded
crests, making the outlines of the mountains more intensely black by
contrast, as though the head of some great white saint were rising from
behind a screen in a vast cathedral, throwing misty glories from below. I
longed to see the moon herself, and I tried to reckon the seconds
before she must appear. Then she sprang up quickly, and in a moment more
hung round and perfect in the sky. I gazed at her, and then at the
floating spray of the tall fountains, and down at the pools, where the
water-lilies were rocking softly in their sleep on the velvet surface of
the moon-lit water. Just then a great swan floated out silently into
the midst of the basin, and wreathed his long neck, catching the water
in his broad bill, and scattering showers of diamonds around him.
Suddenly, as I gazed, something came between me and the light. I
looked up instantly. Between me and the round disk of the moon rose a
luminous face of a woman, with great strange eyes, and a woman’s mouth,
full and soft, but not smiling, hooded in black, staring at me as I sat
still upon my bench. She was close to me—so close that I could have
touched her with my hand. But I was transfixed and helpless. She stood
still for a moment, but her expression did not change. Then she passed
swiftly away, and my hair stood up on my head, while the cold breeze
from her white dress was wafted to my temples as she moved. The
moonlight, shining through the tossing spray of the fountain, made
traceries of shadow on the gleaming folds of her garments. In an instant
she was gone and I was alone.
I was strangely shaken by the vision, and some time passed before I
could rise to my feet, for I was still weak from my illness, and the
sight I had seen would have startled any one. I did not reason with
myself, for I was certain that I had looked on the unearthly, and no
argument could have destroyed that belief. At last I got up and stood
unsteadily, gazing in the direction in which I thought the face had
gone; but there was nothing to be seen—nothing but the broad paths, the
tall, dark evergreen hedges, the tossing water of the fountains and the
smooth pool below. I fell back upon the seat and recalled the face I had
seen. Strange to say, now that the first impression had passed, there
was nothing startling in the recollection; on the contrary, I felt that I
was fascinated by the face, and would give anything to see it again. I
could retrace the beautiful straight features, the long dark eyes, and
the wonderful mouth most exactly in my mind, and when I had
reconstructed every detail from memory I knew that the whole was
beautiful, and that I should love a woman with such a face.
“I wonder whether she is the Woman of the Water!” I said to myself.
Then rising once more, I wandered down the garden, descending one short
flight of steps after another, from terrace to terrace by the edge of
the marble basins, through the shadow and through the moonlight; and I
crossed the water by the rustic bridge above the artificial grotto, and
climbed slowly up again to the highest terrace by the other side. The
air seemed sweeter, and I was very calm, so that I think I smiled to
myself as I walked, as though a new happiness had come to me. The
woman’s face seemed always before me, and the thought of it gave me an
unwonted thrill of pleasure, unlike anything I had ever felt before.
I turned, as I reached the house, and looked back upon the scene. It
had certainly changed in the short hour since I had come out, and my
mood had changed with it. Just like my luck, I thought, to fall in love
with a ghost! But in old times I would have sighed, and gone to bed more
sad than ever, at such a melancholy conclusion. To-night I felt happy,
almost for the first time in my life. The gloomy old study seemed
cheerful when I went in. The old pictures on the walls smiled at me, and
I sat down in my deep chair with a new and delightful sensation that I
was not alone. The idea of having seen a ghost, and of feeling much the
better for it, was so absurd that I laughed softly, as I took up one of
the books I had brought with me and began to read.
That impression did not wear off. I slept peacefully, and in the
morning I threw open my windows to the summer air and looked down at the
garden, at the stretches of green and at the coloured flower-beds, at
the circling swallows and at the bright water.
“A man might make a paradise of this place,” I exclaimed. “A man and a woman together!”
From that day the old castle no longer seemed gloomy, and I think I
ceased to be sad; for some time, too, I began to take an interest in the
place, and to try and make it more alive. I avoided my old Welsh nurse,
lest she should damp my humour with some dismal prophecy, and recall my
old self by bringing back memories of my dismal childhood. But what I
thought of most was the ghostly figure I had seen in the garden that
first night after my arrival. I went out every evening and wandered
through the walks and paths; but, try as I might, I did not see my
vision again. At last, after many days, the memory grew more faint, and
my old moody nature gradually overcame the temporary sense of lightness I
had experienced. The summer turned to autumn, and I grew restless. It
began to rain. The dampness pervaded the gardens, and the outer halls
smelled musty, like tombs; the grey sky oppressed me intolerably. I left
the place as it was and went abroad, determined to try anything which
might possibly make a second break in the monotonous melancholy from
which I suffered.
II.
Most people would be struck by the utter insignificance of the small
events which, after the death of my parents, influenced my life and made
me unhappy. The gruesome forebodings of a Welsh nurse, which chanced to
be realised by an odd coincidence of events, should not seem enough to
change the nature of a child, and to direct the bent of his character in
after years. The little disappointments of schoolboy life, and the
somewhat less childish ones of an uneventful and undistinguished
academic career, should not have sufficed to turn me out at
one-and-twenty years of age a melancholic, listless idler. Some weakness
of my own character may have contributed to the result, but in a
greater degree it was due to my having a reputation for bad luck.
However, I will not try to analyse the causes of my state, for I should
satisfy nobody, least of all myself. Still less will I attempt to
explain why I felt a temporary revival of my spirits after my adventure
in the garden. It is certain that I was in love with the face I had
seen, and that I longed to see it again; that I gave up all hope of a
second visitation, grew more sad than ever, packed up my traps, and
finally went abroad. But in my dreams I went back to my home, and it
always appeared to me sunny and bright, as it had looked on
that summer’s morning after I had seen the woman by the fountain.
I went to Paris. I went further, and wandered about Germany. I tried
to amuse myself, and I failed miserably. With the aimless whims of an
idle and useless man, come all sorts of suggestions for good
resolutions. One day I made up my mind that I would go and bury myself
in a German university for a time, and live simply like a poor student. I
started with the intention of going to Leipsic, determined to stay
there until some event should direct my life or change my humour, or
make an end of me altogether. The express train stopped at some station
of which I did not know the name. It was dusk on a winter’s afternoon,
and I peered through the thick glass from my seat. Suddenly another
train came gliding in from the opposite direction, and stopped alongside
of ours. I looked at the carriage which chanced to be abreast of mine,
and idly read the black letters painted on a white board swinging from
the brass handrail: Berlin—Cologne—Paris. Then I looked up at the window
above. I started violently, and the cold perspiration broke out upon my
forehead. In the dim light, not six feet from where I sat, I saw the
face of a woman, the face I loved, the straight, fine features, the
strange eyes, the wonderful mouth, the pale skin. Her head-dress was a
dark veil, which seemed to be tied about her head and passed over the
shoulders under her chin. As I threw down the window and knelt on the
cushioned seat, leaning far out to get a better view, a long whistle
screamed through the station, followed by a quick series of dull,
clanking sounds; then there was a slight jerk, and my train moved on.
Luckily the window was narrow, being the one over the seat, beside the
door, or I believe I would have jumped out of it then and there. In an
instant the speed increased, and I was being carried swiftly away in the
opposite direction from the thing I loved.
For a quarter of an hour I lay back in my place, stunned by the
suddenness of the apparition. At last one of the two other passengers, a
large and gorgeous captain of the White Konigsberg Cuirassiers, civilly
but firmly suggested that I might shut my window, as the evening was
cold. I did so, with an apology, and relapsed into silence. The train
ran swiftly on, for a long time, and it was already beginning to slacken
speed before entering another station, when I roused myself and made a
sudden resolution. As the carriage stopped before the brilliantly
lighted platform, I seized my belongings, saluted my fellow-passengers,
and got out, determined to take the first express back to Paris.
This time the circumstances of the vision had been so natural that it
did not strike me that there was anything unreal about the face, or
about the woman to whom it belonged. I did not try to explain to myself
how the face, and the woman, could be travelling by a fast train from
Berlin to Paris on a winter’s afternoon, when both were in my mind
indelibly associated with the moonlight and the fountains in my own
English home. I certainly would not have admitted that I had been
mistaken in the dusk, attributing to what I had seen a resemblance to my
former vision which did not really exist. There was not the slightest
doubt in my mind, and I was positively sure that I had again seen the
face I loved. I did not hesitate, and in a few hours I was on my way
back to Paris. I could not help reflecting on my ill luck. Wandering as I
had been for many months, it might as easily have chanced that I should
be travelling in the same train with that woman, instead of going the
other way. But my luck was destined to turn for a time.
I searched Paris for several days. I dined at the principal hotels; I
went to the theatres; I rode in the Bois de Boulogne in the morning,
and picked up an acquaintance, whom I forced to drive with me in the
afternoon. I went to mass at the Madeleine, and I attended the services
at the English Church. I hung about the Louvre and Notre Dame. I went to
Versailles. I spent hours in parading the Rue de Rivoli, in the
neighbourhood of Meurice’s corner, where foreigners pass and repass from
morning till night. At last I received an invitation to a reception at
the English Embassy. I went, and I found what I had sought so long.
There she was, sitting by an old lady in grey satin and diamonds, who
had a wrinkled but kindly face and keen grey eyes that seemed to take
in everything they saw, with very little inclination to give much in
return. But I did not notice the chaperon. I saw only the face that had
haunted me for months, and in the excitement of the moment I walked
quickly towards the pair, forgetting such a trifle as the necessity for
an introduction.
She was far more beautiful than I had thought, but I never doubted
that it was she herself and no other. Vision or no vision before, this
was the reality, and I knew it. Twice her hair had been covered, now at
last I saw it, and the added beauty of its magnificence glorified the
whole woman. It was rich hair, fine and abundant, golden, with deep
ruddy tints in it like red bronze spun fine. There was no ornament in
it, not a rose, not a thread of gold, and I felt that it needed nothing
to enhance its splendour; nothing but her pale face, her dark strange
eyes, and her heavy eyebrows. I could see that she was slender too, but
strong withal, as she sat there quietly gazing at the moving scene in
the midst of the brilliant lights and the hum of perpetual conversation.
I recollected the detail of introduction in time, and turned aside to
look for my host. I found him at last. I begged him to present me to
the two ladies, pointing them out to him at the same time.
“Yes—uh—by all means—uh—” replied his Excellency with a pleasant
smile. He evidently had no idea of my name, which was not to be wondered
at.
“I am Lord Cairngorm,” I observed.
“Oh—by all means,” answered the Ambassador with the same hospitable
smile. “Yes—uh—the fact is, I must try and find out who they are; such
lots of people, you know.”
“Oh, if you will present me, I will try and find out for you,” said I, laughing.
“Ah, yes—so kind of you—come along,” said my host. We threaded the crowd, and in a few minutes we stood before the two ladies.
“‘Lowmintrduce L’d Cairngorm,” he said; then, adding quickly to me,
“Come and dine to-morrow, won’t you?” he glided away with his pleasant
smile and disappeared in the crowd.
I sat down beside the beautiful girl, conscious that the eyes of the duenna were upon me.
“I think we have been very near meeting before,” I remarked, by way of opening the conversation.
My companion turned her eyes full upon me with an air of inquiry. She evidently did not recall my face, if she had ever seen me.
“Really—I cannot remember,” she observed, in a low and musical voice. “When?”
“In the first place, you came down from Berlin by the express, ten
days ago. I was going the other way, and our carriages stopped opposite
each other. I saw you at the window.”
“Yes—we came that way, but I do not remember——” She hesitated.
“Secondly,” I continued, “I was sitting alone in my garden
last summer—near the end of July—do you remember? You must have wandered
in there through the park; you came up to the house and looked at me——”
“Was that you?” she asked, in evident surprise. Then she broke into a
laugh. “I told everybody I had seen a ghost; there had never been any
Cairngorms in the place since the memory of man. We left the next day,
and never heard that you had come there; indeed, I did not know the
castle belonged to you.”
“Where were you staying?” I asked.
“Where? Why, with my aunt, where I always stay. She is your neighbour, since it is you.”
“I—beg your pardon—but then—is your aunt Lady Bluebell? I did not quite catch——”
“Don’t be afraid. She is amazingly deaf. Yes. She is the relict of my
beloved uncle, the sixteenth or seventeenth Baron Bluebell—I forget
exactly how many of them there have been. And I—do you know who I am?”
She laughed, well knowing that I did not.
“No,” I answered frankly. “I have not the least idea. I asked to be
introduced because I recognised you. Perhaps—perhaps you are a Miss
Bluebell?”
“Considering that you are a neighbour, I will tell you who I am,” she
answered. “No; I am of the tribe of Bluebells, but my name is Lammas,
and I have been given to understand that I was christened Margaret.
Being a floral family, they call me Daisy. A dreadful American man once
told me that my aunt was a Bluebell and that I was a Harebell—with two
l’s and an e—because my hair is so thick. I warn you, so that you may
avoid making such a bad pun.”
“Do I look like a man who makes puns?” I asked, being very conscious of my melancholy face and sad looks.
Miss Lammas eyed me critically.
“No; you have a mournful temperament. I think I can trust you,” she
answered. “Do you think you could communicate to my aunt the fact that
you are a Cairngorm and a neighbour? I am sure she would like to know.”
I leaned towards the old lady, inflating my lungs for a yell. But Miss Lammas stopped me.
“That is not of the slightest use,” she remarked. “You can write it on a bit of paper. She is utterly deaf.”
“I have a pencil,” I answered; “but I have no paper. Would my cuff do, do you think?”
“Oh, yes!” replied Miss Lammas, with alacrity; “men often do that.”
I wrote on my cuff: “Miss Lammas wishes me to explain that I am your
neighbour, Cairngorm.” Then I held out my arm before the old lady’s
nose. She seemed perfectly accustomed to the proceeding, put up her
glasses, read the words, smiled, nodded, and addressed me in the
unearthly voice peculiar to people who hear nothing.
“I knew your grandfather very well,” she said. Then she smiled and
nodded to me again, and to her niece, and relapsed into silence.
“It is all right,” remarked Miss Lammas. “Aunt Bluebell knows she is
deaf, and does not say much, like the parrot. You see, she knew your
grandfather. How odd, that we should be neighbours! Why have we never
met before?”
“If you had told me you knew my grandfather when you appeared in the
garden, I should not have been in the least surprised,” I answered
rather irrelevantly. “I really thought you were the ghost of the old
fountain. How in the world did you come there at that hour?”
“We were a large party and we went out for a walk. Then we thought we
should like to see what your park was like in the moonlight, and so we
trespassed. I got separated from the rest, and came upon you by
accident, just as I was admiring the extremely ghostly look of your
house, and wondering whether anybody would ever come and live there
again. It looks like the castle of Macbeth, or a scene from the opera.
Do you know anybody here?”
“Hardly a soul! Do you?”
“No. Aunt Bluebell said it was our duty to come. It is easy for her
to go out; she does not bear the burden of the conversation.”
“I am sorry you find it a burden,” said I. “Shall I go away?”
Miss Lammas looked at me with a sudden gravity in her beautiful eyes,
and there was a sort of hesitation about the lines of her full, soft
mouth.
“No,” she said at last, quite simply, “don’t go away. We may like
each other, if you stay a little longer—and we ought to, because we are
neighbours in the country.”
I suppose I ought to have thought Miss Lammas a very odd girl. There
is, indeed, a sort of freemasonry between people who discover that they
live near each other, and that they ought to have known each other
before. But there was a sort of unexpected frankness and simplicity in
the girl’s amusing manner which would have struck any one else as being
singular, to say the least of it. To me, however, it all seemed natural
enough. I had dreamed of her face too long not to be utterly happy when I
met her at last, and could talk to her as much as I pleased. To me, the
man of ill luck in everything, the whole meeting seemed too good to
be true. I felt again that strange sensation of lightness which I had
experienced after I had seen her face in the garden. The great rooms
seemed brighter, life seemed worth living; my sluggish, melancholy blood
ran faster, and filled me with a new sense of strength. I said to
myself that without this woman I was but an imperfect being, but that
with her I could accomplish everything to which I should set my hand.
Like the great Doctor, when he thought he had cheated Mephistopheles at
last, I could have cried aloud to the fleeting moment, Verweile doch, du bist so schön!
“Are you always gay?” I asked, suddenly. “How happy you must be!”
“The days would sometimes seem very long if I were gloomy,” she
answered, thoughtfully. “Yes, I think I find life very pleasant, and I
tell it so.”
“How can you ‘tell life’ anything?” I inquired. “If I could catch my
life and talk to it, I would abuse it prodigiously, I assure you.”
“I daresay. You have a melancholy temper. You ought to live out of
doors, dig potatoes, make hay, shoot, hunt, tumble into ditches, and
come home muddy and hungry for dinner. It would be much better for you
than moping in your rook tower, and hating everything.”
“It is rather lonely down there,” I murmured, apologetically, feeling that Miss Lammas was quite right.
“Then marry, and quarrel with your wife,” she laughed. “Anything is better than being alone.”
“I am a very peaceable person. I never quarrel with anybody. You can try it. You will find it quite impossible.”
“Will you let me try?” she asked, still smiling.
“By all means—especially if it is to be only a preliminary canter,” I answered, rashly.
“What do you mean?” she inquired, turning quickly upon me.
“Oh—nothing. You might try my paces with a view to quarrelling in the
future. I cannot imagine how you are going to do it. You will have to
resort to immediate and direct abuse.”
“No. I will only say that if you do not like your life, it is your
own fault. How can a man of your age talk of being melancholy, or of the
hollowness of existence? Are you consumptive? Are you subject to
hereditary insanity? Are you deaf, like Aunt Bluebell? Are you poor,
like—lots of people? Have you been crossed in love? Have you lost the
world for a woman, or any particular woman for the sake of the world?
Are you feeble-minded, a cripple, an outcast? Are you—repulsively ugly?”
She laughed again. “Is there any reason in the world why you should not
enjoy all you have got in life?”
“No. There is no reason whatever, except that I am dreadfully unlucky, especially in small things.”
“Then try big things, just for a change,” suggested Miss Lammas. “Try and get married, for instance, and see how it turns out.”
“If it turned out badly it would be rather serious.”
“Not half so serious as it is to abuse everything unreasonably. If
abuse is your particular talent, abuse something that ought to be
abused. Abuse the Conservatives—or the Liberals—it does not matter
which, since they are always abusing each other. Make yourself felt by
other people. You will like it, if they don’t. It will make a man of
you. Fill your mouth with pebbles, and howl at the sea, if you cannot do
anything else. It did Demosthenes no end of good you know. You will
have the satisfaction of imitating a great man.”
“Really, Miss Lammas, I think the list of innocent exercises you propose——”
“Very well—if you don’t care for that sort of thing, care for some
other sort of thing. Care for something, or hate something. Don’t be
idle. Life is short, and though art may be long, plenty of noise answers
nearly as well.”
“I do care for something—I mean, somebody,” I said.
“A woman? Then marry her. Don’t hesitate.”
“I do not know whether she would marry me,” I replied. “I have never asked her.”
“Then ask her at once,” answered Miss Lammas. “I shall die happy if I
feel I have persuaded a melancholy fellow-creature to rouse himself to
action. Ask her, by all means, and see what she says. If she does not
accept you at once, she may take you the next time. Meanwhile, you will
have entered for the race. If you lose, there are the ‘All-aged Trial
Stakes,’ and the ‘Consolation Race.'”
“And plenty of selling races into the bargain. Shall I take you at your word, Miss Lammas?”
“I hope you will,” she answered.
“Since you yourself advise me, I will. Miss Lammas, will you do me the honour to marry me?”
For the first time in my life the blood rushed to my head and my
sight swam. I cannot tell why I said it. It would be useless to try to
explain the extraordinary fascination the girl exercised over me, nor
the still more extraordinary feeling of intimacy with her which had
grown in me during that half-hour. Lonely, sad, unlucky as I had been
all my life, I was certainly not timid, nor even shy. But to propose to
marry a woman after half an hour’s acquaintance was a piece of madness
of which I never believed myself capable, and of which I should never be
capable again, could I be placed in the same situation. It was as
though my whole being had been changed in a moment by magic—by the white
magic of her nature brought into contact with mine. The blood sank back
to my heart, and a moment later I found myself staring at her with
anxious eyes. To my amazement she was as calm as ever, but her beautiful
mouth smiled, and there was a mischievous light in her dark-brown eyes.
“Fairly caught,” she answered. “For an individual who pretends to be
listless and sad you are not lacking in humour. I had really not the
least idea what you were going to say. Wouldn’t it be singularly awkward
for you if I had said ‘Yes’? I never saw anybody begin to practise so
sharply what was preached to him—with so very little loss of time!”
“You probably never met a man who had dreamed of you for seven months before being introduced.”
“No, I never did,” she answered, gaily. “It smacks of the romantic.
Perhaps you are a romantic character, after all. I should think you were
if I believed you. Very well; you have taken my advice, entered for a
Stranger’s Race and lost it. Try the All-aged Trial Stakes. You have
another cuff, and a pencil. Propose to Aunt Bluebell; she would dance
with astonishment, and she might recover her hearing.”
III.
That was how I first asked Margaret Lammas to be my wife, and I will
agree with any one who says I behaved very foolishly. But I have not
repented of it, and I never shall. I have long ago understood that I was
out of my mind that evening, but I think my temporary insanity on that
occasion has had the effect of making me a saner man ever since. Her
manner turned my head, for it was so different from what I had expected.
To hear this lovely creature, who, in my imagination, was a heroine of
romance, if not of tragedy, talking familiarly and laughing readily was
more than my equanimity could bear, and I lost my head as well as my
heart. But when I went back to England in the spring, I went to make
certain arrangements at the Castle—certain changes and improvements
which would be absolutely necessary. I had won the race for which I had
entered myself so rashly, and we were to be married in June.
Whether the change was due to the orders I had left with the gardener
and the rest of the servants, or to my own state of mind, I cannot
tell. At all events, the old place did not look the same to me when I
opened my window on the morning after my arrival. There were the grey
walls below me, and the grey turrets flanking the huge building; there
were the fountains, the marble causeways, the smooth basins, the tall
box hedges, the water-lilies and the swans, just as of old. But there
was something else there, too—something in the air, in the water, and in
the greenness that I did not recognise—a light over everything by which
everything was transfigured. The clock in the tower struck seven, and
the strokes of the ancient bell sounded like a wedding chime. The air
sang with the thrilling treble of the songbirds, with the silvery music
of the plashing water and the softer harmony of the leaves stirred by
the fresh morning wind. There was a smell of new-mown hay from the
distant meadows, and of blooming roses from the beds below, wafted up
together to my window. I stood in the pure sunshine and drank the air
and all the sounds and the odours that were in it; and I looked down at
my garden and said: “It is Paradise, after all.” I think the men of old
were right when they called heaven a garden, and Eden, a garden
inhabited by one man and one woman, the Earthly Paradise.
I turned away, wondering what had become of the gloomy memories I had
always associated with my home. I tried to recall the impression of my
nurse’s horrible prophecy before the death of my parents—an impression
which hitherto had been vivid enough. I tried to remember my old self,
my dejection, my listlessness, my bad luck, and my petty
disappointments. I endeavoured to force myself to think as I used
to think, if only to satisfy myself that I had not lost my
individuality. But I succeeded in none of these efforts. I was a
different man, a changed being, incapable of sorrow, of ill luck, or of
sadness. My life had been a dream, not evil, but infinitely gloomy and
hopeless. It was now a reality, full of hope, gladness, and all manner
of good. My home had been like a tomb; to-day it was paradise. My heart
had been as though it had not existed; to-day it beat with strength and
youth, and the certainty of realised happiness. I revelled in the beauty
of the world, and called loveliness out of the future to enjoy it
before time should bring it to me, as a traveller in the plains looks up
to the mountains, and already tastes the cool air through the dust of
the road.
Here, I thought, we will live and live for years. There we will sit
by the fountain towards evening and in the deep moonlight. Down those
paths we will wander together. On those benches we will rest and talk.
Among those eastern hills we will ride through the soft twilight, and in
the old house we will tell tales on winter nights, when the logs burn
high, and the holly berries are red, and the old clock tolls out the
dying year. On these old steps, in these dark passages and stately
rooms, there will one day be the sound of little pattering feet, and
laughing child-voices will ring up to the vaults of the ancient hall.
Those tiny footsteps shall not be slow and sad as mine were, nor shall
the childish words be spoken in an awed whisper. No gloomy Welshwoman
shall people the dusky corners with weird horrors, nor utter horrid
prophecies of death and ghastly things. All shall be young, and fresh,
and joyful, and happy, and we will turn the old luck again, and forget
that there was ever any sadness.
So I thought, as I looked out of my window that morning and for many
mornings after that, and every day it all seemed more real than ever
before, and much nearer. But the old nurse looked at me askance, and
muttered odd sayings about the Woman of the Water. I cared little what
she said, for I was far too happy.
At last the time came near for the wedding. Lady Bluebell and all the
tribe of Bluebells, as Margaret called them, were at Bluebell Grange,
for we had determined to be married in the country, and to come straight
to the Castle afterwards. We cared little for travelling, and not at
all for a crowded ceremony at St. George’s in Hanover Square, with all
the tiresome formalities afterwards. I used to ride over to the Grange
every day, and very often Margaret would come with her aunt and some of
her cousins to the Castle. I was suspicious of my own taste, and was
only too glad to let her have her way about the alterations and
improvements in our home.
We were to be married on the thirtieth of July, and on the evening of
the twenty-eighth Margaret drove over with some of the Bluebell party.
In the long summer twilight we all went out into the garden. Naturally
enough, Margaret and I were left to ourselves, and we wandered down by
the marble basins.
“It is an odd coincidence,” I said; “it was on this very night last year that I first saw you.”
“Considering that it is the month of July,” answered Margaret with a
laugh, “and that we have been here almost every day, I don’t think the
coincidence is so extraordinary, after all.”
“No, dear,” said I, “I suppose not. I don’t know why it struck me. We
shall very likely be here a year from to-day, and a year from that. The
odd thing, when I think of it, is that you should be here at all. But
my luck has turned. I ought not to think anything odd that happens now
that I have you. It is all sure to be good.”
“A slight change in your ideas since that remarkable performance of
yours in Paris,” said Margaret. “Do you know, I thought you were the
most extraordinary man I had ever met.”
“I thought you were the most charming woman I had ever seen. I
naturally did not want to lose any time in frivolities. I took you at
your word, I followed your advice, I asked you to marry me, and this is
the delightful result—what’s the matter?”
Margaret had started suddenly, and her hand tightened on my arm. An
old woman was coming up the path, and was close to us before we saw her,
for the moon had risen, and was shining full in our faces. The woman
turned out to be my old nurse.
“It’s only old Judith, dear—don’t be frightened,” I said. Then I
spoke to the Welshwoman: “What are you about, Judith? Have you been
feeding the Woman of the Water?”
“Ay—when the clock strikes, Willie—my lord, I mean,” muttered the old
creature, drawing aside to let us pass, and fixing her strange eyes on
Margaret’s face.
“What does she mean?” asked Margaret, when we had gone by.
“Nothing, darling. The old thing is mildly crazy, but she is a good soul.”
We went on in silence for a few moments, and came to the rustic
bridge just above the artificial grotto through which the water ran out
into the park, dark and swift in its narrow channel. We stopped, and
leaned on the wooden rail. The moon was now behind us, and shone full
upon the long vista of basins and on the huge walls and towers of the
Castle above.
“How proud you ought to be of such a grand old place!” said Margaret, softly.
“It is yours now, darling,” I answered. “You have as good a right to
love it as I—but I only love it because you are to live in it, dear.”
Her hand stole out and lay on mine, and we were both silent. Just
then the clock began to strike far off in the tower. I
counted—eight—nine—ten—eleven—I looked at my watch—twelve—thirteen—I
laughed. The bell went on striking.
“The old clock has gone crazy, like Judith,” I exclaimed. Still it
went on, note after note ringing out monotonously through the still air.
We leaned over the rail, instinctively looking in the direction whence
the sound came. On and on it went. I counted nearly a hundred, out of
sheer curiosity, for I understood that something had broken, and that
the thing was running itself down.
Suddenly there was a crack as of breaking wood, a cry and a heavy
splash, and I was alone, clinging to the broken end of the rail of the
rustic bridge.
I do not think I hesitated while my pulse beat twice. I sprang clear
of the bridge into the black rushing water, dived to the bottom, came up
again with empty hands, turned and swam downwards through the grotto in
the thick darkness, plunging and diving at every stroke, striking my
head and hands against jagged stones and sharp corners, clutching at
last something in my fingers, and dragging it up with all my might. I
spoke, I cried aloud, but there was no answer. I was alone in the pitchy
blackness with my burden, and the house was five hundred yards away.
Struggling still, I felt the ground beneath my feet, I saw a ray of
moonlight—the grotto widened, and the deep water became a broad and
shallow brook as I stumbled over the stones and at last laid Margaret’s
body on the bank in the park beyond.
“Ay, Willie, as the clock struck!” said the voice of Judith, the
Welsh nurse, as she bent down and looked at the white face. The old
woman must have turned back and followed us, seen the accident, and
slipped out by the lower gate of the garden. “Ay,” she groaned, “you
have fed the Woman of the Water this night, Willie, while the clock was
striking.”
I scarcely heard her as I knelt beside the lifeless body of the woman
I loved, chafing the wet white temples, and gazing wildly into the
wide-staring eyes. I remember only the first returning look of
consciousness, the first heaving breath, the first movement of those
dear hands stretching out towards me.
***
That is not much of a story, you say. It is the story of my life.
That is all. It does not pretend to be anything else. Old Judith says my
luck turned on that summer’s night, when I was struggling in the water
to save all that was worth living for. A month later there was a stone
bridge above the grotto, and Margaret and I stood on it and looked up at
the moonlit Castle, as we had done once before, and as we have done
many times since. For all those things happened ten years ago last
summer, and this is the tenth Christmas Eve we have spent together by
the roaring logs in the old hall, talking of old times; and every year
there are more old times to talk of. There are curly-headed boys, too,
with red-gold hair and dark-brown eyes like their mother’s, and a little
Margaret, with solemn black eyes like mine. Why could not she look like
her mother, too, as well as the rest of them?
The world is very bright at this glorious Christmas time, and perhaps
there is little use in calling up the sadness of long ago, unless it be
to make the jolly firelight seem more cheerful, the good wife’s face
look gladder, and to give the children’s laughter a merrier ring, by
contrast with all that is gone. Perhaps, too, some sad-faced, listless,
melancholy youth, who feels that the world is very hollow, and that life
is like a perpetual funeral service, just as I used to feel myself, may
take courage from my example, and having found the woman of his heart,
ask her to marry him after half an hour’s acquaintance. But, on the
whole, I would not advise any man to marry, for the simple reason that
no man will ever find a wife like mine, and being obliged to go further,
he will necessarily fare worse. My wife has done miracles, but I will
not assert that any other woman is able to follow her example.
Margaret always said that the old place was beautiful, and that I
ought to be proud of it. I daresay she is right. She has even more
imagination than I. But I have a good answer and a plain one, which is
this—that all the beauty of the Castle comes from her. She has breathed
upon it all, as the children blow upon the cold glass window-panes in
winter; and as their warm breath crystallises into landscapes from
fairyland, full of exquisite shapes and traceries upon the blank
surface, so her spirit has transformed every grey stone of the old
towers, every ancient tree and hedge in the gardens, every thought in my
once melancholy self. All that was old is young, and all that was sad
is glad, and I am the gladdest of all. Whatever heaven may be, there is
no earthly paradise without woman, nor is there anywhere a place so
desolate, so dreary, so unutterably miserable that a woman cannot make
it seem heaven to the man she loves and who loves her.
I hear certain cynics laugh, and cry that all that has been said
before. Do not laugh, my good cynic. You are too small a man to laugh at
such a great thing as love. Prayers have been said before now by many,
and perhaps you say yours, too. I do not think they lose anything by
being repeated, nor you by repeating them. You say that the world is
bitter, and full of the Waters of Bitterness. Love, and so live that you
may be loved—the world will turn sweet for you, and you shall rest like
me by the Waters of Paradise.
.
About the Author
Francis Marion Crawford (August
2, 1854 – April 9, 1909)[1] was an American writer noted for his many
novels, especially those set in Italy, and for his classic weird and
fantastical stories.
Wikipedia
F Marion Crawford Books at Amazon
