I
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, so 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 dare say 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 anyone 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 the 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 gray 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 realized 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
recognize 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 gray 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? Aye—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 smoldering 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 splash 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 moonlit 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 anyone. 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 colored 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 humor 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 gray 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.