predecessors had been born, beyond the memory of man. It is a very old
house, and the greater part of it was originally a castle, strongly
fortified, and surrounded by a deep moat supplied with abundant water
from the hills by a hidden aqueduct. Many of the fortifications have
been destroyed, and the moat has been filled up. The water from the
aqueduct supplies great fountains, and runs down into huge oblong basins
in the terraced gardens, one below the other, each surrounded by a broad
pavement of marble between the water and the flower-beds. The waste
surplus finally escapes through an artificial grotto, some thirty yards
long, into a stream, flowing down through the park to the meadows
beyond, and thence to the distant river. The buildings were extended a
little and greatly altered more than two hundred years ago, in the time
of Charles II., but since then little has been done to improve them,
though they have been kept in fairly good repair, according to our
fortunes.
In the gardens there are terraces and huge hedges of box and evergreen,
some of which used to be clipped into shapes of animals, in the Italian
style. I can remember when I was a lad how I used to try to make out
what the trees were cut to represent, and how I used to appeal for
explanations to Judith, my Welsh nurse. She dealt in a strange mythology
of her own, and peopled the gardens with griffins, dragons, good genii
and bad, and filled my mind with them at the same time. My nursery
window afforded a view of the great fountains at the head of the upper
basin, and on moonlight nights the Welshwoman would hold me up to the
glass and bid me look at the mist and spray rising into mysterious
shapes, moving mystically in the white light like living things.
"It's the Woman of the Water," she used to say; and sometimes she would
threaten that if I did not go to sleep the Woman of the Water would
steal up to the high window and carry me away in her wet arms.
The place was gloomy. The broad basins of water and the tall
evergreen hedges gave it a funereal look, and the damp-stained
marble causeways by the pools might have been made of tombstones.
The gray and weather-beaten walls and towers without, the dark and
massively-furnished rooms within, the deep, mysterious recesses and the
heavy curtains, all affected my spirits. I was silent and sad from my
childhood. There was a great clock tower above, from which the hours
rang dismally during the day, and tolled like a knell in the dead of
night. There was no light nor life in the house, for my mother was a
helpless invalid, and my father had grown melancholy in his long task of
caring for her. He was a thin, dark man, with sad eyes; kind, I think,
but silent and unhappy. Next to my mother, I believe he loved me better
than anything on earth, for he took immense pains and trouble in
teaching me, and what he taught me I have never forgotten. Perhaps it
was his only amusement, and that may be the reason why I had no nursery
governess or teacher of any kind while he lived.
I used to be taken to see my mother every day, and sometimes twice a
day, for an hour at a time. Then I sat upon a little stool near her
feet, and she would ask me what I had been doing, and what I wanted to
do. I daresay she saw already the seeds of a profound melancholy in my
nature, for she looked at me always with a sad smile, and kissed me with
a sigh when I was taken away.
One night, when I was just six years old, I lay awake in the nursery.
The door was not quite shut, and the Welsh nurse was sitting sewing in
the next room. Suddenly I heard her groan, and say in a strange voice,
"One--two--one--two!" I was frightened, and I jumped up and ran to the
door, barefooted as I was.
"What is it, Judith?" I cried, clinging to her skirts. I can remember
the look in her strange dark eyes as she answered.
"One--two leaden coffins, fallen from the ceiling!" she crooned, working
herself in her chair. "One--two--a light coffin and a heavy coffin,
falling to the floor!"
Then she seemed to notice me, and she took me back to bed and sang me to
sleep with a queer old Welsh song.
I do not know how it was, but the impression got hold of me that she had
meant that my father and mother were going to die very soon. They died
in the very room where she had been sitting that night. It was a great
room, my day nursery, full of sun when there was any: and when the days
were dark it was the most cheerful place in the house. My mother grew
rapidly worse, and I was transferred to another part of the building to
make place for her. They thought my nursery was gayer for her, I
suppose; but she could not live. She was beautiful when she was dead,
and I cried bitterly.
"The light one, the light one--the heavy one to come," crooned the
Welshwoman. And she was right. My father took the room after my mother
was gone, and day by day he grew thinner and paler and sadder.
"The heavy one, the heavy one--all of lead," moaned my nurse, one night
in December, standing still, just as she was going to take away the
light after putting me to bed. Then she took me up again and wrapped me
in a little gown, and led me away to my father's room. She knocked, but
no one answered. She opened the door, and we found him in his easy-chair
before the fire, very white, quite dead.
So I was alone with the Welshwoman till strange people came, and
relations whom I had never seen; and then I heard them saying that I
must be taken away to some more cheerful place. They were kind people,
and I will not believe that they were kind only because I was to be very
rich when I grew to be a man. The world never seemed to be a very bad
place to me, nor all the people to be miserable sinners, even when I was
most melancholy. I do not remember that any one ever did me any great
injustice, nor that I was ever oppressed or ill-treated in any way, even
by the boys at school. I was sad, I suppose, because my childhood was so
gloomy, and, later, because I was unlucky in everything I undertook,
till I finally believed I was pursued by fate, and I used to dream that
the old Welsh nurse and the Woman of the Water between them had vowed
to pursue me to my end. But my natural disposition should have been
cheerful, as I have often thought.
Among lads of my age I was never last, or even among the last, in
anything; but I was never first. If I trained for a race, I was sure to
sprain my ankle on the day when I was to run. If I pulled an oar with
others, my oar was sure to break. If I competed for a prize, some
unforeseen accident prevented my winning it at the last moment. Nothing
to which I put my hand succeeded, and I got the reputation of being
unlucky, until my companions felt it was always safe to bet against me,
no matter what the appearances might be. I became discouraged and
listless in everything. I gave up the idea of competing for any
distinction at the University, comforting myself with the thought that
I could not fail in the examination for the ordinary degree. The day
before the examination began I fell ill; and when at last I recovered,
after a narrow escape from death, I turned my back upon Oxford, and went
down alone to visit the old place where I had been born, feeble in
health and profoundly disgusted and discouraged. I was twenty-one years
of age, master of myself and of my fortune; but so deeply had the long
chain of small unlucky circumstances affected me that I thought
seriously of shutting myself up from the world to live the life of a
hermit, and to die as soon as possible. Death seemed the only cheerful
possibility in my existence, and my thoughts soon dwelt upon it
altogether.
I had never shown any wish to return to my own home since I had been
taken away as a little boy, and no one had ever pressed me to do so. The
place had been kept in order after a fashion, and did not seem to have
suffered during the fifteen years or more of my absence. Nothing earthly
could affect those old grey walls that had fought the elements for so
many centuries. The garden was more wild than I remembered it; the
marble causeways about the pools looked more yellow and damp than of
old, and the whole place at first looked smaller. It was not until I had
wandered about the house and grounds for many hours that I realised the
huge size of the home where I was to live in solitude. Then I began to
delight in it, and my resolution to live alone grew stronger.
The people had turned out to welcome me, of course, and I tried to
recognise the changed faces of the old gardener and the old housekeeper,
and to call them by name. My old nurse I knew at once. She had grown
very grey since she heard the coffins fall in the nursery fifteen years
before, but her strange eyes were the same, and the look in them woke
all my old memories. She went over the house with me.
"And how is the Woman of the Water?" I asked, trying to laugh a little.
"Does she still play in the moonlight?"
"She is hungry," answered the Welshwoman, in a low voice.
"Hungry? Then we will feed her." I laughed. But old Judith turned very
pale, and looked at me strangely.
"Feed her? Ay--you will feed her well," she muttered, glancing behind
her at the ancient housekeeper, who tottered after us with feeble steps
through the halls and passages.
I did not think much of her words. She had always talked oddly, as
Welshwomen will, and though I was very melancholy I am sure I was not
superstitious, and I was certainly not timid. Only, as in a far-off
dream, I seemed to see her standing with the light in her hand and
muttering, "The heavy one--all of lead," and then leading a little boy
through the long corridors to see his father lying dead in a great
easy-chair before a smouldering fire. So we went over the house, and I
chose the rooms where I would live; and the servants I had brought with
me ordered and arranged everything, and I had no more trouble. I did not
care what they did provided I was left in peace, and was not expected to
give directions; for I was more listless than ever, owing to the effects
of my illness at college.
I dined in solitary state, and the melancholy grandeur of the vast old
dining-room pleased me. Then I went to the room I had selected for my
study, and sat down in a deep chair, under a bright light, to think, or
to let my thoughts meander through labyrinths of their own choosing,
utterly indifferent to the course they might take.
The tall windows of the room opened to the level of the ground upon the
terrace at the head of the garden. It was in the end of July, and
everything was open, for the weather was warm. As I sat alone I heard
the unceasing plash of the great fountains, and I fell to thinking of
the Woman of the Water. I rose, and went out into the still night, and
sat down upon a seat on the terrace, between two gigantic Italian
flower-pots. The air was deliciously soft and sweet with the smell of
the flowers, and the garden was more congenial to me than the house. Sad
people always like running water and the sound of it at night, though I
cannot tell why. I sat and listened in the gloom, for it was dark below,
and the pale moon had not yet climbed over the hills in front of me,
though all the air above was light with her rising beams. Slowly the
white halo in the eastern sky ascended in an arch above the wooded
crests, making the outlines of the mountains more intensely black by
contrast, as though the head of some great white saint were rising from
behind a screen in a vast cathedral, throwing misty glories from below.
I longed to see the moon herself, and I tried to reckon the seconds
before she must appear. Then she sprang up quickly, and in a moment more
hung round and perfect in the sky. I gazed at her, and then at the
floating spray of the tall fountains, and down at the pools, where the
water-lilies were rocking softly in their sleep on the velvet surface of
the moon-lit water. Just then a great swan floated out silently into
the midst of the basin, and wreathed his long neck, catching the water
in his broad bill, and scattering showers of diamonds around him.
Suddenly, as I gazed, something came between me and the light. I looked
up instantly. Between me and the round disk of the moon rose a luminous
face of a woman, with great strange eyes, and a woman's mouth, full and
soft, but not smiling, hooded in black, staring at me as I sat still
upon my bench. She was close to me--so close that I could have touched
her with my hand. But I was transfixed and helpless. She stood still for
a moment, but her expression did not change. Then she passed swiftly
away, and my hair stood up on my head, while the cold breeze from her
white dress was wafted to my temples as she moved. The moonlight,
shining through the tossing spray of the fountain, made traceries of
shadow on the gleaming folds of her garments. In an instant she was gone
and I was alone.
I was strangely shaken by the vision, and some time passed before I
could rise to my feet, for I was still weak from my illness, and the
sight I had seen would have startled any one. I did not reason with
myself, for I was certain that I had looked on the unearthly, and no
argument could have destroyed that belief. At last I got up and stood
unsteadily, gazing in the direction in which I thought the face had
gone; but there was nothing to be seen--nothing but the broad paths, the
tall, dark evergreen hedges, the tossing water of the fountains and the
smooth pool below. I fell back upon the seat and recalled the face I had
seen. Strange to say, now that the first impression had passed, there
was nothing startling in the recollection; on the contrary, I felt that
I was fascinated by the face, and would give anything to see it again. I
could retrace the beautiful straight features, the long dark eyes, and
the wonderful mouth most exactly in my mind, and when I had
reconstructed every detail from memory I knew that the whole was
beautiful, and that I should love a woman with such a face.
"I wonder whether she is the Woman of the Water!" I said to myself. Then
rising once more, I wandered down the garden, descending one short
flight of steps after another, from terrace to terrace by the edge of
the marble basins, through the shadow and through the moonlight; and I
crossed the water by the rustic bridge above the artificial grotto, and
climbed slowly up again to the highest terrace by the other side. The
air seemed sweeter, and I was very calm, so that I think I smiled to
myself as I walked, as though a new happiness had come to me. The
woman's face seemed always before me, and the thought of it gave me an
unwonted thrill of pleasure, unlike anything I had ever felt before.
I turned, as I reached the house, and looked back upon the scene. It had
certainly changed in the short hour since I had come out, and my mood
had changed with it. Just like my luck, I thought, to fall in love with
a ghost! But in old times I would have sighed, and gone to bed more sad
than ever, at such a melancholy conclusion. To-night I felt happy,
almost for the first time in my life. The gloomy old study seemed
cheerful when I went in. The old pictures on the walls smiled at me, and
I sat down in my deep chair with a new and delightful sensation that I
was not alone. The idea of having seen a ghost, and of feeling much the
better for it, was so absurd that I laughed softly, as I took up one of
the books I had brought with me and began to read.
That impression did not wear off. I slept peacefully, and in the morning
I threw open my windows to the summer air and looked down at the garden,
at the stretches of green and at the coloured flower-beds, at the
circling swallows and at the bright water.
"A man might make a paradise of this place," I exclaimed. "A man and a
woman together!"
From that day the old castle no longer seemed gloomy, and I think I
ceased to be sad; for some time, too, I began to take an interest in the
place, and to try and make it more alive. I avoided my old Welsh nurse,
lest she should damp my humour with some dismal prophecy, and recall my
old self by bringing back memories of my dismal childhood. But what I
thought of most was the ghostly figure I had seen in the garden that
first night after my arrival. I went out every evening and wandered
through the walks and paths; but, try as I might, I did not see my
vision again. At last, after many days, the memory grew more faint, and
my old moody nature gradually overcame the temporary sense of lightness
I had experienced. The summer turned to autumn, and I grew restless. It
began to rain. The dampness pervaded the gardens, and the outer halls
smelled musty, like tombs; the grey sky oppressed me intolerably. I left
the place as it was and went abroad, determined to try anything which
might possibly make a second break in the monotonous melancholy from
which I suffered.
II.
Most people would be struck by the utter insignificance of the small
events which, after the death of my parents, influenced my life and made
me unhappy. The gruesome forebodings of a Welsh nurse, which chanced to
be realised by an odd coincidence of events, should not seem enough to
change the nature of a child, and to direct the bent of his character in
after years. The little disappointments of schoolboy life, and the
somewhat less childish ones of an uneventful and undistinguished
academic career, should not have sufficed to turn me out at
one-and-twenty years of age a melancholic, listless idler. Some weakness
of my own character may have contributed to the result, but in a greater
degree it was due to my having a reputation for bad luck. However, I
will not try to analyse the causes of my state, for I should satisfy
nobody, least of all myself. Still less will I attempt to explain why I
felt a temporary revival of my spirits after my adventure in the garden.
It is certain that I was in love with the face I had seen, and that I
longed to see it again; that I gave up all hope of a second visitation,
grew more sad than ever, packed up my traps, and finally went abroad.
But in my dreams I went back to my home, and it always appeared to me
sunny and bright, as it had looked on that summer's morning after I had
seen the woman by the fountain.
I went to Paris. I went further, and wandered about Germany. I tried to
amuse myself, and I failed miserably. With the aimless whims of an idle
and useless man, come all sorts of suggestions for good resolutions. One
day I made up my mind that I would go and bury myself in a German
university for a time, and live simply like a poor student. I started
with the intention of going to Leipsic, determined to stay there until
some event should direct my life or change my humour, or make an end of
me altogether. The express train stopped at some station of which I did
not know the name. It was dusk on a winter's afternoon, and I peered
through the thick glass from my seat. Suddenly another train came
gliding in from the opposite direction, and stopped alongside of ours. I
looked at the carriage which chanced to be abreast of mine, and idly
read the black letters painted on a white board swinging from the brass
handrail: BERLIN--COLOGNE--PARIS. Then I looked up at the window above.
I started violently, and the cold perspiration broke out upon my
forehead. In the dim light, not six feet from where I sat, I saw the
face of a woman, the face I loved, the straight, fine features, the
strange eyes, the wonderful mouth, the pale skin. Her head-dress was a
dark veil, which seemed to be tied about her head and passed over the
shoulders under her chin. As I threw down the window and knelt on the
cushioned seat, leaning far out to get a better view, a long whistle
screamed through the station, followed by a quick series of dull,
clanking sounds; then there was a slight jerk, and my train moved on.
Luckily the window was narrow, being the one over the seat, beside the
door, or I believe I would have jumped out of it then and there. In an
instant the speed increased, and I was being carried swiftly away in the
opposite direction from the thing I loved.
For a quarter of an hour I lay back in my place, stunned by the
suddenness of the apparition. At last one of the two other passengers, a
large and gorgeous captain of the White Konigsberg Cuirassiers, civilly
but firmly suggested that I might shut my window, as the evening was
cold. I did so, with an apology, and relapsed into silence. The train
ran swiftly on, for a long time, and it was already beginning to slacken
speed before entering another station, when I roused myself and made a
sudden resolution. As the carriage stopped before the brilliantly
lighted platform, I seized my belongings, saluted my fellow-passengers,
and got out, determined to take the first express back to Paris.
This time the circumstances of the vision had been so natural that it
did not strike me that there was anything unreal about the face, or
about the woman to whom it belonged. I did not try to explain to myself
how the face, and the woman, could be travelling by a fast train from
Berlin to Paris on a winter's afternoon, when both were in my mind
indelibly associated with the moonlight and the fountains in my own
English home. I certainly would not have admitted that I had been
mistaken in the dusk, attributing to what I had seen a resemblance to my
former vision which did not really exist. There was not the slightest
doubt in my mind, and I was positively sure that I had again seen the
face I loved. I did not hesitate, and in a few hours I was on my way
back to Paris. I could not help reflecting on my ill luck. Wandering as
I had been for many months, it might as easily have chanced that I
should be travelling in the same train with that woman, instead of going
the other way. But my luck was destined to turn for a time.
I searched Paris for several days. I dined at the principal hotels; I
went to the theatres; I rode in the Bois de Boulogne in the morning, and
picked up an acquaintance, whom I forced to drive with me in the
afternoon. I went to mass at the Madeleine, and I attended the services
at the English Church. I hung about the Louvre and Notre Dame. I went to
Versailles. I spent hours in parading the Rue de Rivoli, in the
neighbourhood of Meurice's corner, where foreigners pass and repass from
morning till night. At last I received an invitation to a reception at
the English Embassy. I went, and I found what I had sought so long.
There she was, sitting by an old lady in grey satin and diamonds, who
had a wrinkled but kindly face and keen grey eyes that seemed to take
in everything they saw, with very little inclination to give much in
return. But I did not notice the chaperon. I saw only the face that had
haunted me for months, and in the excitement of the moment I walked
quickly towards the pair, forgetting such a trifle as the necessity for
an introduction.
She was far more beautiful than I had thought, but I never doubted that
it was she herself and no other. Vision or no vision before, this was
the reality, and I knew it. Twice her hair had been covered, now at last
I saw it, and the added beauty of its magnificence glorified the whole
woman. It was rich hair, fine and abundant, golden, with deep ruddy
tints in it like red bronze spun fine. There was no ornament in it, not
a rose, not a thread of gold, and I felt that it needed nothing to
enhance its splendour; nothing but her pale face, her dark strange eyes,
and her heavy eyebrows. I could see that she was slender too, but strong
withal, as she sat there quietly gazing at the moving scene in the midst
of the brilliant lights and the hum of perpetual conversation.
I recollected the detail of introduction in time, and turned aside to
look for my host. I found him at last. I begged him to present me to the
two ladies, pointing them out to him at the same time.
"Yes--uh--by all means--uh--" replied his Excellency with a pleasant
smile. He evidently had no idea of my name, which was not to be wondered
at.
"I am Lord Cairngorm," I observed.
"Oh--by all means," answered the Ambassador with the same hospitable
smile. "Yes--uh--the fact is, I must try and find out who they are; such
lots of people, you know."
"Oh, if you will present me, I will try and find out for you," said I,
laughing.
"Ah, yes--so kind of you--come along," said my host. We threaded the
crowd, and in a few minutes we stood before the two ladies.
"'Lowmintrduce L'd Cairngorm," he said; then, adding quickly to me,
"Come and dine to-morrow, won't you?" he glided away with his pleasant
smile and disappeared in the crowd.
I sat down beside the beautiful girl, conscious that the eyes of the
duenna were upon me.
"I think we have been very near meeting before," I remarked, by way of
opening the conversation.
My companion turned her eyes full upon me with an air of inquiry. She
evidently did not recall my face, if she had ever seen me.
"Really--I cannot remember," she observed, in a low and musical voice.
"When?"
"In the first place, you came down from Berlin by the express, ten days
ago. I was going the other way, and our carriages stopped opposite each
other. I saw you at the window."
"Yes--we came that way, but I do not remember----" She hesitated.