CHAPTER IV

The captain was one of those splendidly tough and cheerful specimens of

seafaring humanity whose combined courage, hardihood, and calmness in

difficulty leads them naturally into high positions of trust. He was not

the man to be led away by an idle tale, and the mere fact that he was

willing to join me in the investigation was proof that he thought there

was something seriously wrong, which could not be accounted for on

ordinary theories, nor laughed down as a common superstition. To some

extent, too, his reputation was at stake, as well as the reputation of

the ship. It is no light thing to lose passengers overboard, and he knew

it.

About ten o'clock that evening, as I was smoking a last cigar, he came

up to me, and drew me aside from the beat of the other passengers who

were patrolling the deck in the warm darkness.

"This is a serious matter, Mr. Brisbane," he said. "We must make up our

minds either way--to be disappointed or to have a pretty rough time of

it. You see I cannot afford to laugh at the affair, and I will ask you

to sign your name to a statement of whatever occurs. If nothing happens

to-night, we will try it again to-morrow and next day. Are you ready?"

So we went below, and entered the state-room. As we went in I could see

Robert the steward, who stood a little further down the passage,

watching us, with his usual grin, as though certain that something

dreadful was about to happen. The captain closed the door behind us and

bolted it.

"Supposing we put your portmanteau before the door," he suggested. "One

of us can sit on it. Nothing can get out then. Is the port screwed

down?"

I found it as I had left it in the morning. Indeed, without using a

lever, as I had done, no one could have opened it. I drew back the

curtains of the upper berth so that I could see well into it. By the

captain's advice I lighted my reading lantern, and placed it so that it

shone upon the white sheets above. He insisted upon sitting on the

portmanteau, declaring that he wished to be able to swear that he had

sat before the door.

Then he requested me to search the stateroom thoroughly, an operation

very soon accomplished, as it consisted merely in looking beneath the

lower berth and under the couch below the porthole. The spaces were

quite empty.

"It is impossible for any human being to get in," I said, "or for any

human being to open the port."

"Very good," said the captain, calmly. "If we see anything now, it must

be either imagination or something supernatural."

I sat down on the edge of the lower berth.

"The first time it happened," said the captain, crossing his legs and

leaning back against the door, "was in March. The passenger who slept

here, in the upper berth, turned out to have been a lunatic--at all

events, he was known to have been a little touched, and he had taken his

passage without the knowledge of his friends. He rushed out in the

middle of the night, and threw himself overboard, before the officer who

had the watch could stop him. We stopped and lowered a boat; it was a

quiet night, just before that heavy weather came on; but we could not

find him. Of course his suicide was afterwards accounted for on the

ground of his insanity."

"I suppose that often happens?" I remarked, rather absently.

"Not often--no," said the captain; "never before in my experience,

though I have heard of it happening on board of other ships. Well, as I

was saying, that occurred in March. On the very next trip--What are you

looking at?" he asked, stopping suddenly in his narration.

I believe I gave no answer. My eyes were riveted upon the porthole. It

seemed to me that the brass loop-nut was beginning to turn very slowly

upon the screw--so slowly, however, that I was not sure it moved at all.

I watched it intently, fixing its position in my mind, and trying to

ascertain whether it changed. Seeing where I was looking, the captain

looked too.

"It moves!" he exclaimed, in a tone of conviction. "No, it does not," he

added, after a minute.

"If it were the jarring of the screw," said I, "it would have opened

during the day; but I found it this evening jammed tight as I left it

this morning."

I rose and tried the nut. It was certainly loosened, for by an effort I

could move it with my hands.

"The queer thing," said the captain, "is that the second man who was

lost is supposed to have got through that very port. We had a terrible

time over it. It was in the middle of the night, and the weather was

very heavy; there was an alarm that one of the ports was open and the

sea running in. I came below and found everything flooded, the water

pouring in every time she rolled, and the whole port swinging from the

top bolts--not the porthole in the middle. Well, we managed to shut it,

but the water did some damage. Ever since that the place smells of

sea-water from time to time. We supposed the passenger had thrown

himself out, though the Lord only knows how he did it. The steward kept

telling me that he cannot keep anything shut here. Upon my word--I can

smell it now, cannot you?" he enquired, sniffing the air suspiciously.

"Yes--distinctly," I said, and I shuddered as that same odour of

stagnant sea-water grew stronger in the cabin. "Now, to smell like this,

the place must be damp," I continued, "and yet when I examined it with

the carpenter this morning everything was perfectly dry. It is most

extraordinary--hallo!"

My reading lantern, which had been placed in the upper berth, was

suddenly extinguished. There was still a good deal of light from the

pane of ground glass near the door, behind which loomed the regulation

lamp. The ship rolled heavily, and the curtain of the upper berth swung

far out into the state-room and back again. I rose quickly from my seat

on the edge of the bed, and the captain at the same moment started to

his feet with a loud cry of surprise. I had turned with the intention of

taking down the lantern to examine it, when I heard his exclamation,

and immediately afterwards his call for help. I sprang towards him. He

was wrestling with all his might with the brass loop of the port. It

seemed to turn against his hands in spite of all his efforts. I caught

up my cane, a heavy oak stick I always used to carry, and thrust it

through the ring and bore on it with all my strength. But the strong

wood snapped suddenly, and I fell upon the couch. When I rose again the

port was wide open, and the captain was standing with his back against

the door, pale to the lips.

"There is something in that berth!" he cried, in a strange voice, his

eyes almost starting from his head. "Hold the door, while I look--it

shall not escape us, whatever it is!"

But instead of taking his place, I sprang upon the lower bed, and seized

something which lay in the upper berth.

It was something ghostly, horrible beyond words, and it moved in my

grip. It was like the body of a man long drowned, and yet it moved, and

had the strength of ten men living; but I gripped it with all my

might--the slippery, oozy, horrible thing--the dead white eyes seemed to

stare at me out of the dusk; the putrid odour of rank sea-water was

about it, and its shiny hair hung in foul wet curls over its dead face.

I wrestled with the dead thing; it thrust itself upon me and forced me

back and nearly broke my arms; it wound its corpse's arms about my neck,

the living death, and overpowered me, so that I, at last, cried aloud

and fell, and left my hold.

As I fell the thing sprang across me, and seemed to throw itself upon

the captain. When I last saw him on his feet his face was white and his

lips set. It seemed to me that he struck a violent blow at the dead

being, and then he, too, fell forward upon his face, with an

inarticulate cry of horror.

The thing paused an instant, seeming to hover over his prostrate body,

and I could have screamed again for very fright, but I had no voice

left. The thing vanished suddenly, and it seemed to my disturbed senses

that it made its exit through the open port, though how that was

possible, considering the smallness of the aperture, is more than any

one can tell. I lay a long time upon the floor, and the captain lay

beside me. At last I partially recovered my senses and moved, and

instantly I knew that my arm was broken--the small bone of the left

forearm near the wrist.

I got upon my feet somehow, and with my remaining hand I tried to raise

the captain. He groaned and moved, and at last came to himself. He was

not hurt, but he seemed badly stunned.

Well, do you want to hear any more? There is nothing more. That is the

end of my story. The carpenter carried out his scheme of running half a

dozen four-inch screws through the door of 105; and if ever you take a

passage in the _Kamtschatka_, you may ask for a berth in that

state-room. You will be told that it is engaged--yes--it is engaged by

that dead thing.

I finished the trip in the surgeon's cabin. He doctored my broken arm,

and advised me not to "fiddle about with ghosts and things" any more.

The captain was very silent, and never sailed again in that ship, though

it is still running. And I will not sail in her either. It was a very

disagreeable experience, and I was very badly frightened, which is a

thing I do not like. That is all. That is how I saw a ghost--if it was a

ghost. It was dead, anyhow.

BY THE WATERS OF PARADISE

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 so 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 grey 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 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

unforseen 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 outline 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 disc 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 figure 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.

CHAPTER 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, came 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 Leipzic, 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 Königsberg 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 re-pass

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 enquiry. 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 enquired. "If I could catch my

life and talk to it, I would abuse it prodigiously, I assure you."

"I dare say. 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 enquired, 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 feebleminded, 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, or 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."

CHAPTER 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 song-birds, 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 own 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 have 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 the

strokes--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 she not 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 dare say 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.

THE DOLL'S GHOST

It was a terrible accident, and for one moment the splendid machinery of

Cranston House got out of gear and stood still. The butler emerged from

the retirement in which he spent his elegant leisure, two grooms of the

chambers appeared simultaneously from opposite directions, there were

actually housemaids on the grand staircase, and those who remember the

facts most exactly assert that Mrs. Pringle herself positively stood

upon the landing. Mrs. Pringle was the housekeeper. As for the head

nurse, the under nurse, and the nursery maid, their feelings cannot be

described. The head nurse laid one hand upon the polished marble

balustrade and stared stupidly before her, the under nurse stood rigid

and pale, leaning against the polished marble wall, and the nursery-maid

collapsed and sat down upon the polished marble step, just beyond the

limits of the velvet carpet, and frankly burst into tears.

The Lady Gwendolen Lancaster-Douglas-Scroop, youngest daughter of the

ninth Duke of Cranston, and aged six years and three months, picked

herself up quite alone, and sat down on the third step from the foot of

the grand staircase in Cranston House.

"Oh!" ejaculated the butler, and he disappeared again.

"Ah!" responded the grooms of the chambers, as they also went away.

"It's only that doll," Mrs. Pringle was distinctly heard to say, in a

tone of contempt.

The under nurse heard her say it. Then the three nurses gathered round

Lady Gwendolen and patted her, and gave her unhealthy things out of

their pockets, and hurried her out of Cranston House as fast as they

could, lest it should be found out upstairs that they had allowed the

Lady Gwendolen Lancaster-Douglas-Scroop to tumble down the grand

staircase with her doll in her arms. And as the doll was badly broken,

the nursery-maid carried it, with the pieces, wrapped up in Lady

Gwendolen's little cloak. It was not far to Hyde Park, and when they had

reached a quiet place they took means to find out that Lady Gwendolen

had no bruises. For the carpet was very thick and soft, and there was

thick stuff under it to make it softer.

Lady Gwendolen Douglas-Scroop sometimes yelled, but she never cried. It

was because she had yelled that the nurse had allowed her to go

downstairs alone with Nina, the doll, under one arm, while she steadied

herself with her other hand on the balustrade, and trod upon the

polished marble steps beyond the edge of the carpet. So she had fallen,

and Nina had come to grief.

When the nurses were quite sure that she was not hurt, they unwrapped

the doll and looked at her in her turn. She had been a very beautiful

doll, very large, and fair, and healthy, with real yellow hair, and

eyelids that would open and shut over very grown-up dark eyes. Moreover,

when you moved her right arm up and down she said "Pa-pa," and when you

moved the left she said "Ma-ma," very distinctly.

"I heard her say 'Pa' when she fell," said the under nurse, who heard

everything. "But she ought to have said 'Pa-pa.'"

"That's because her arm went up when she hit the step," said the head

nurse. "She'll say the other 'Pa' when I put it down again."

"Pa," said Nina, as her right arm was pushed down, and speaking through

her broken face. It was cracked right across, from the upper corner of

the forehead, with a hideous gash, through the nose and down to the

little frilled collar of the pale green silk Mother Hubbard frock, and

two little three-cornered pieces of porcelain had fallen out.

"I'm sure it's a wonder she can speak at all, being all smashed," said

the under nurse.

"You'll have to take her to Mr. Puckler," said her superior. "It's not

far, and you'd better go at once."

Lady Gwendolen was occupied in digging a hole in the ground with a

little spade, and paid no attention to the nurses.

"What are you doing?" enquired the nursery-maid, looking on.

"Nina's dead, and I'm diggin' her a grave," replied her ladyship

thoughtfully.

"Oh, she'll come to life again all right," said the nursery-maid.

The under nurse wrapped Nina up again and departed. Fortunately a kind

soldier, with very long legs and a very small cap, happened to be there;

and as he had nothing to do, he offered to see the under nurse safely to

Mr. Puckler's and back.

Mr. Bernard Puckler and his little daughter lived in a little house in a

little alley, which led out off a quiet little street not very far from

Belgrave Square. He was the great doll doctor, and his extensive

practice lay in the most aristocratic quarter. He mended dolls of all

sizes and ages, boy dolls and girl dolls, baby dolls in long clothes,

and grown-up dolls in fashionable gowns, talking dolls and dumb dolls,

those that shut their eyes when they lay down, and those whose eyes had

to be shut for them by means of a mysterious wire. His daughter Else was

only just over twelve years old, but she was already very clever at

mending dolls' clothes, and at doing their hair, which is harder than

you might think, though the dolls sit quite still while it is being

done.

Mr. Puckler had originally been a German, but he had dissolved his

nationality in the ocean of London many years ago, like a great many

foreigners. He still had one or two German friends, however, who came on

Saturday evenings, and smoked with him and played picquet or "skat" with

him for farthing points, and called him "Herr Doctor," which seemed to

please Mr. Puckler very much.

He looked older than he was, for his beard was rather long and ragged,

his hair was grizzled and thin, and he wore horn-rimmed spectacles. As

for Else, she was a thin, pale child, very quiet and neat, with dark

eyes and brown hair that was plaited down her back and tied with a bit

of black ribbon. She mended the dolls' clothes and took the dolls back

to their homes when they were quite strong again.

The house was a little one, but too big for the two people who lived in

it. There was a small sitting-room on the street, and the workshop was

at the back, and there were three rooms upstairs. But the father and

daughter lived most of their time in the workshop, because they were

generally at work, even in the evenings.

Mr. Puckler laid Nina on the table and looked at her a long time, till

the tears began to fill his eyes behind the horn-rimmed spectacles. He

was a very susceptible man, and he often fell in love with the dolls he

mended, and found it hard to part with them when they had smiled at him

for a few days. They were real little people to him, with characters and

thoughts and feelings of their own, and he was very tender with them

all. But some attracted him especially from the first, and when they

were brought to him maimed and injured, their state seemed so pitiful to

him that the tears came easily. You must remember that he had lived

among dolls during a great part of his life, and understood them.

"How do you know that they feel nothing?" he went on to say to Else.

"You must be gentle with them. It costs nothing to be kind to the little

beings, and perhaps it makes a difference to them."

And Else understood him, because she was a child, and she knew that she

was more to him than all the dolls.

He fell in love with Nina at first sight, perhaps because her beautiful

brown glass eyes were something like Else's own, and he loved Else first

and best, with all his heart. And, besides, it was a very sorrowful

case. Nina had evidently not been long in the world, for her complexion

was perfect, her hair was smooth where it should be smooth, and curly

where it should be curly, and her silk clothes were perfectly new. But

across her face was that frightful gash, like a sabre-cut, deep and

shadowy within, but clean and sharp at the edges. When he tenderly

pressed her head to close the gaping wound, the edges made a fine

grating sound, that was painful to hear, and the lids of the dark eyes

quivered and trembled as though Nina were suffering dreadfully.

"Poor Nina!" he exclaimed sorrowfully. "But I shall not hurt you much,

though you will take a long time to get strong."

He always asked the names of the broken dolls when they were brought to

him, and sometimes the people knew what the children called them, and

told him. He liked "Nina" for a name. Altogether and in every way she

pleased him more than any doll he had seen for many years, and he felt

drawn to her, and made up his mind to make her perfectly strong and

sound, no matter how much labour it might cost him.

Mr. Puckler worked patiently a little at a time, and Else watched him.

She could do nothing for poor Nina, whose clothes needed no mending. The

longer the doll doctor worked, the more fond he became of the yellow

hair and the beautiful brown glass eyes. He sometimes forgot all the

other dolls that were waiting to be mended, lying side by side on a

shelf, and sat for an hour gazing at Nina's face, while he racked his

ingenuity for some new invention by which to hide even the smallest

trace of the terrible accident.

She was wonderfully mended. Even he was obliged to admit that; but the

scar was still visible to his keen eyes, a very fine line right across

the face, downwards from right to left. Yet all the conditions had been

most favourable for a cure, since the cement had set quite hard at the

first attempt and the weather had been fine and dry, which makes a great

difference in a dolls' hospital.

At last he knew that he could do no more, and the under nurse had

already come twice to see whether the job was finished, as she coarsely

expressed it.

"Nina is not quite strong yet," Mr. Puckler had answered each time, for

he could not make up his mind to face the parting.

And now he sat before the square deal table at which he worked, and Nina

lay before him for the last time with a big brown paper box beside her.

It stood there like her coffin, waiting for her, he thought. He must put

her into it, and lay tissue paper over her dear face, and then put on

the lid, and at the thought of tying the string his sight was dim with

tears again. He was never to look into the glassy depths of the

beautiful brown eyes any more, nor to hear the little wooden voice say

"Pa-pa" and "Ma-ma." It was a very painful moment.

In the vain hope of gaining time before the separation, he took up the

little sticky bottles of cement and glue and gum and colour, looking at

each one in turn, and then at Nina's face. And all his small tools lay

there, neatly arranged in a row, but he knew that he could not use them

again for Nina. She was quite strong at last, and in a country where

there should be no cruel children to hurt her she might live a hundred

years, with only that almost imperceptible line across her face to tell

of the fearful thing that had befallen her on the marble steps of

Cranston House.

Suddenly Mr. Puckler's heart was quite full, and he rose abruptly from

his seat and turned away.

"Else," he said unsteadily, "you must do it for me. I cannot bear to see

her go into the box."

So he went and stood at the window with his back turned, while Else did

what he had not the heart to do.

"Is it done?" he asked, not turning round. "Then take her away, my dear.

Put on your hat, and take her to Cranston House quickly, and when you

are gone I will turn round."

Else was used to her father's queer ways with the dolls, and though she

had never seen him so much moved by a parting, she was not much

surprised.

"Come back quickly," he said, when he heard her hand on the latch. "It

is growing late, and I should not send you at this hour. But I cannot

bear to look forward to it any more."

When Else was gone, he left the window and sat down in his place before

the table again, to wait for the child to come back. He touched the

place where Nina had lain, very gently, and he recalled the softly

tinted pink face, and the glass eyes, and the ringlets of yellow hair,

till he could almost see them.

The evenings were long, for it was late in the spring. But it began to

grow dark soon, and Mr. Puckler wondered why Else did not come back. She

had been gone an hour and a half, and that was much longer than he had

expected, for it was barely half a mile from Belgrave Square to Cranston

House. He reflected that the child might have been kept waiting, but as

the twilight deepened he grew anxious, and walked up and down in the dim

workshop, no longer thinking of Nina, but of Else, his own living child,

whom he loved.

An undefinable, disquieting sensation came upon him by fine degrees, a

chilliness and a faint stirring of his thin hair, joined with a wish to

be in any company rather than to be alone much longer. It was the

beginning of fear.

He told himself in strong German-English that he was a foolish old man,

and he began to feel about for the matches in the dusk. He knew just

where they should be, for he always kept them in the same place, close

to the little tin box that held bits of sealing-wax of various colours,

for some kinds of mending. But somehow he could not find the matches in

the gloom.

Something had happened to Else, he was sure, and as his fear increased,

he felt as though it might be allayed if he could get a light and see

what time it was. Then he called himself a foolish old man again, and

the sound of his own voice startled him in the dark. He could not find

the matches.

The window was grey still; he might see what time it was if he went

close to it, and he could go and get matches out of the cupboard

afterwards. He stood back from the table, to get out of the way of the

chair, and began to cross the board floor.

Something was following him in the dark. There was a small pattering, as

of tiny feet upon the boards. He stopped and listened, and the roots of

his hair tingled. It was nothing, and he was a foolish old man. He made

two steps more, and he was sure that he heard the little pattering

again. He turned his back to the window, leaning against the sash so

that the panes began to crack, and he faced the dark. Everything was

quite still, and it smelt of paste and cement and wood-filings as usual.

"Is that you, Else?" he asked, and he was surprised by the fear in his

voice.

There was no answer in the room, and he held up his watch and tried to

make out what time it was by the grey dusk that was just not darkness.

So far as he could see, it was within two or three minutes of ten

o'clock. He had been a long time alone. He was shocked, and frightened

for Else, out in London, so late, and he almost ran across the room to

the door. As he fumbled for the latch, he distinctly heard the running

of the little feet after him.

"Mice!" he exclaimed feebly, just as he got the door open.

He shut it quickly behind him, and felt as though some cold thing had

settled on his back and were writhing upon him. The passage was quite

dark, but he found his hat and was out in the alley in a moment,

breathing more freely, and surprised to find how much light there still

was in the open air. He could see the pavement clearly under his feet,

and far off in the street to which the alley led he could hear the

laughter and calls of children, playing some game out of doors. He

wondered how he could have been so nervous, and for an instant he

thought of going back into the house to wait quietly for Else. But

instantly he felt that nervous fright of something stealing over him

again. In any case it was better to walk up to Cranston House and ask

the servants about the child. One of the women had perhaps taken a fancy

to her, and was even now giving her tea and cake.

He walked quickly to Belgrave Square, and then up the broad streets,

listening as he went, whenever there was no other sound, for the tiny

footsteps. But he heard nothing, and was laughing at himself when he

rang the servants' bell at the big house. Of course, the child must be

there.

The person who opened the door was quite an inferior person, for it was

a back door, but affected the manners of the front, and stared at Mr.

Puckler superciliously under the strong light.

No little girl had been seen, and he knew "nothing about no dolls."

"She is my little girl," said Mr. Puckler tremulously, for all his

anxiety was returning tenfold, "and I am afraid something has happened."

The inferior person said rudely that "nothing could have happened to her

in that house, because she had not been there, which was a jolly good

reason why;" and Mr. Puckler was obliged to admit that the man ought to

know, as it was his business to keep the door and let people in. He

wished to be allowed to speak to the under nurse, who knew him; but the

man was ruder than ever, and finally shut the door in his face.

When the doll doctor was alone in the street, he steadied himself by the

railing, for he felt as though he were breaking in two, just as some

dolls break, in the middle of the backbone.

Presently he knew that he must be doing something to find Else, and that

gave him strength. He began to walk as quickly as he could through the

streets, following every highway and byway which his little girl might

have taken on her errand. He also asked several policemen in vain if

they had seen her, and most of them answered him kindly, for they saw

that he was a sober man and in his right senses, and some of them had

little girls of their own.

It was one o'clock in the morning when he went up to his own door

again, worn out and hopeless and broken-hearted. As he turned the key in

the lock, his heart stood still, for he knew that he was awake and not

dreaming, and that he really heard those tiny footsteps pattering to

meet him inside the house along the passage.

But he was too unhappy to be much frightened any more, and his heart

went on again with a dull regular pain, that found its way all through

him with every pulse. So he went in, and hung up his hat in the dark,

and found the matches in the cupboard and the candlestick in its place

in the corner.

Mr. Puckler was so much overcome and so completely worn out that he sat

down in his chair before the work-table and almost fainted, as his face

dropped forward upon his folded hands. Beside him the solitary candle

burned steadily with a low flame in the still warm air.

"Else! Else!" he moaned against his yellow knuckles. And that was all he

could say, and it was no relief to him. On the contrary, the very sound

of the name was a new and sharp pain that pierced his ears and his head

and his very soul. For every time he repeated the name it meant that

little Else was dead, somewhere out in the streets of London in the

dark.

He was so terribly hurt that he did not even feel something pulling

gently at the skirt of his old coat, so gently that it was like the

nibbling of a tiny mouse. He might have thought that it was really a

mouse if he had noticed it.

"Else! Else!" he groaned right against his hands.

Then a cool breath stirred his thin hair, and the low flame of the one

candle dropped down almost to a mere spark, not flickering as though a

draught were going to blow it out, but just dropping down as if it were

tired out. Mr. Puckler felt his hands stiffening with fright under his

face; and there was a faint rustling sound, like some small silk thing

blown in a gentle breeze. He sat up straight, stark and scared, and a

small wooden voice spoke in the stillness.

"Pa-pa," it said, with a break between the syllables.

Mr. Puckler stood up in a single jump, and his chair fell over backwards

with a smashing noise upon the wooden floor. The candle had almost gone

out.

It was Nina's doll voice that had spoken, and he should have known it

among the voices of a hundred other dolls. And yet there was something

more in it, a little human ring, with a pitiful cry and a call for help,

and the wail of a hurt child. Mr. Puckler stood up, stark and stiff, and

tried to look round, but at first he could not, for he seemed to be

frozen from head to foot.

Then he made a great effort, and he raised one hand to each of his

temples, and pressed his own head round as he would have turned a

doll's. The candle was burning so low that it might as well have been

out altogether, for any light it gave, and the room seemed quite dark at

first. Then he saw something. He would not have believed that he could

be more frightened than he had been just before that. But he was, and

his knees shook, for he saw the doll standing in the middle of the

floor, shining with a faint and ghostly radiance, her beautiful glassy

brown eyes fixed on his. And across her face the very thin line of the

break he had mended shone as though it were drawn in light with a fine

point of white flame.

Yet there was something more in the eyes, too; there was something

human, like Else's own, but as if only the doll saw him through them,

and not Else. And there was enough of Else to bring back all his pain

and to make him forget his fear.

"Else! my little Else!" he cried aloud.

The small ghost moved, and its doll-arm slowly rose and fell with a

stiff, mechanical motion.

"Pa-pa," it said.

It seemed this time that there was even more of Else's tone echoing

somewhere between the wooden notes that reached his ears so distinctly,

and yet so far away. Else was calling him, he was sure.

His face was perfectly white in the gloom, but his knees did not shake

any more, and he felt that he was less frightened.

"Yes, child! But where? Where?" he asked. "Where are you, Else?"

"Pa-pa!"

The syllables died away in the quiet room. There was a low rustling of

silk, the glassy brown eyes turned slowly away, and Mr. Puckler heard

the pitter-patter of the small feet in the bronze kid slippers as the

figure ran straight to the door. Then the candle burned high again, the

room was full of light, and he was alone.

Mr. Puckler passed his hand over his eyes and looked about him. He could

see everything quite clearly, and he felt that he must have been

dreaming, though he was standing instead of sitting down, as he should

have been if he had just waked up. The candle burned brightly now. There

were the dolls to be mended, lying in a row with their toes up. The

third one had lost her right shoe, and Else was making one. He knew

that, and he was certainly not dreaming now. He had not been dreaming

when he had come in from his fruitless search and had heard the doll's

footsteps running to the door. He had not fallen asleep in his chair.

How could he possibly have fallen asleep when his heart was breaking? He

had been awake all the time.

He steadied himself, set the fallen chair upon its legs, and said to

himself again very emphatically that he was a foolish old man. He ought

to be out in the streets looking for his child, asking questions, and

enquiring at the police stations, where all accidents were reported as

soon as they were known, or at the hospitals.

"Pa-pa!"

The longing, wailing, pitiful little wooden cry rang from the passage,

outside the door, and Mr. Puckler stood for an instant with white face,

transfixed and rooted to the spot. A moment later his hand was on the

latch. Then he was in the passage, with the light streaming from the

open door behind him.

Quite at the other end he saw the little phantom shining clearly in the

shadow, and the right hand seemed to beckon to him as the arm rose and

fell once more. He knew all at once that it had not come to frighten him

but to lead him, and when it disappeared, and he walked boldly towards

the door, he knew that it was in the street outside, waiting for him. He

forgot that he was tired and had eaten no supper, and had walked many

miles, for a sudden hope ran through and through him, like a golden

stream of life.

And sure enough, at the corner of the alley, and at the corner of the

street, and out in Belgrave Square, he saw the small ghost flitting

before him. Sometimes it was only a shadow, where there was other light,

but then the glare of the lamps made a pale green sheen on its little

Mother Hubbard frock of silk; and sometimes, where the streets were dark

and silent, the whole figure shone out brightly, with its yellow curls

and rosy neck. It seemed to trot along like a tiny child, and Mr.

Puckler could almost hear the pattering of the bronze kid slippers on

the pavement as it ran. But it went very fast, and he could only just

keep up with it, tearing along with his hat on the back of his head and

his thin hair blown by the night breeze, and his horn-rimmed spectacles

firmly set upon his broad nose.

On and on he went, and he had no idea where he was. He did not even

care, for he knew certainly that he was going the right way.

Then at last, in a wide, quiet street, he was standing before a big,

sober-looking door that had two lamps on each side of it, and a polished

brass bell-handle, which he pulled.

And just inside, when the door was opened, in the bright light, there

was the little shadow, and the pale green sheen of the little silk

dress, and once more the small cry came to his ears, less pitiful, more

longing.

"Pa-pa!"

The shadow turned suddenly bright, and out of the brightness the

beautiful brown glass eyes were turned up happily to his, while the rosy

mouth smiled so divinely that the phantom doll looked almost like a

little angel just then.

"A little girl was brought in soon after ten o'clock," said the quiet

voice of the hospital doorkeeper. "I think they thought she was only

stunned. She was holding a big brown-paper box against her, and they

could not get it out of her arms. She had a long plait of brown hair

that hung down as they carried her."

"She is my little girl," said Mr. Puckler, but he hardly heard his own

voice.

He leaned over Else's face in the gentle light of the children's ward,

and when he had stood there a minute the beautiful brown eyes opened and

looked up to his.

"Pa-pa!" cried Else, softly, "I knew you would come!"

Then Mr. Puckler did not know what he did or said for a moment, and what

he felt was worth all the fear and terror and despair that had almost

killed him that night. But by and by Else was telling her story, and the

nurse let her speak, for there were only two other children in the room,

who were getting well and were sound asleep.

"They were big boys with bad faces," said Else, "and they tried to get

Nina away from me, but I held on and fought as well as I could till one

of them hit me with something, and I don't remember any more, for I

tumbled down, and I suppose the boys ran away, and somebody found me

there. But I'm afraid Nina is all smashed."

"Here is the box," said the nurse. "We could not take it out of her arms

till she came to herself. Should you like to see if the doll is broken?"

And she undid the string cleverly, but Nina was all smashed to pieces.

Only the gentle light of the children's ward made a pale green sheen in

the folds of the little Mother Hubbard frock.