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 schoen!_
"Are you always gay?" I asked, suddenly. "How happy you must be!"
"The days would sometimes seem very long if I were gloomy," she
answered, thoughtfully. "Yes, I think I find life very pleasant, and I
tell it so."
"How can you 'tell life' anything?" I inquired. "If I could catch my
life and talk to it, I would abuse it prodigiously, I assure you."
"I daresay. You have a melancholy temper. You ought to live out of
doors, dig potatoes, make hay, shoot, hunt, tumble into ditches, and
come home muddy and hungry for dinner. It would be much better for you
than moping in your rook tower, and hating everything."
"It is rather lonely down there," I murmured, apologetically, feeling
that Miss Lammas was quite right.
"Then marry, and quarrel with your wife," she laughed. "Anything is
better than being alone."
"I am a very peaceable person. I never quarrel with anybody. You can try
it. You will find it quite impossible."
"Will you let me try?" she asked, still smiling.
"By all means--especially if it is to be only a preliminary canter," I
answered, rashly.
"What do you mean?" she inquired, turning quickly upon me.
"Oh--nothing. You might try my paces with a view to quarrelling in the
future. I cannot imagine how you are going to do it. You will have to
resort to immediate and direct abuse."
"No. I will only say that if you do not like your life, it is your own
fault. How can a man of your age talk of being melancholy, or of the
hollowness of existence? Are you consumptive? Are you subject to
hereditary insanity? Are you deaf, like Aunt Bluebell? Are you poor,
like--lots of people? Have you been crossed in love? Have you lost the
world for a woman, or any particular woman for the sake of the world?
Are you feeble-minded, a cripple, an outcast? Are you--repulsively
ugly?" She laughed again. "Is there any reason in the world why you
should not enjoy all you have got in life?"
"No. There is no reason whatever, except that I am dreadfully unlucky,
especially in small things."
"Then try big things, just for a change," suggested Miss Lammas. "Try
and get married, for instance, and see how it turns out."
"If it turned out badly it would be rather serious."
"Not half so serious as it is to abuse everything unreasonably. If abuse
is your particular talent, abuse something that ought to be abused.
Abuse the Conservatives--or the Liberals--it does not matter which,
since they are always abusing each other. Make yourself felt by other
people. You will like it, if they don't. It will make a man of you. Fill
your mouth with pebbles, and howl at the sea, if you cannot do anything
else. It did Demosthenes no end of good you know. You will have the
satisfaction of imitating a great man."
"Really, Miss Lammas, I think the list of innocent exercises you
propose----"
"Very well--if you don't care for that sort of thing, care for some
other sort of thing. Care for something, or hate something. Don't be
idle. Life is short, and though art may be long, plenty of noise answers
nearly as well."
"I do care for something--I mean, somebody," I said.
"A woman? Then marry her. Don't hesitate."
"I do not know whether she would marry me," I replied. "I have never
asked her."
"Then ask her at once," answered Miss Lammas. "I shall die happy if I
feel I have persuaded a melancholy fellow-creature to rouse himself to
action. Ask her, by all means, and see what she says. If she does not
accept you at once, she may take you the next time. Meanwhile, you will
have entered for the race. If you lose, there are the 'All-aged Trial
Stakes,' and the 'Consolation Race.'"
"And plenty of selling races into the bargain. Shall I take you at your
word, Miss Lammas?"
"I hope you will," she answered.
"Since you yourself advise me, I will. Miss Lammas, will you do me the
honour to marry me?"
For the first time in my life the blood rushed to my head and my sight
swam. I cannot tell why I said it. It would be useless to try to explain
the extraordinary fascination the girl exercised over me, nor the still
more extraordinary feeling of intimacy with her which had grown in me
during that half-hour. Lonely, sad, unlucky as I had been all my life, I
was certainly not timid, nor even shy. But to propose to marry a woman
after half an hour's acquaintance was a piece of madness of which I
never believed myself capable, and of which I should never be capable
again, could I be placed in the same situation. It was as though my
whole being had been changed in a moment by magic--by the white magic of
her nature brought into contact with mine. The blood sank back to my
heart, and a moment later I found myself staring at her with anxious
eyes. To my amazement she was as calm as ever, but her beautiful mouth
smiled, and there was a mischievous light in her dark-brown eyes.
"Fairly caught," she answered. "For an individual who pretends to be
listless and sad you are not lacking in humour. I had really not the
least idea what you were going to say. Wouldn't it be singularly
awkward for you if I had said 'Yes'? I never saw anybody begin to
practise so sharply what was preached to him--with so very little loss
of time!"
"You probably never met a man who had dreamed of you for seven months
before being introduced."
"No, I never did," she answered, gaily. "It smacks of the romantic.
Perhaps you are a romantic character, after all. I should think you were
if I believed you. Very well; you have taken my advice, entered for a
Stranger's Race and lost it. Try the All-aged Trial Stakes. You have
another cuff, and a pencil. Propose to Aunt Bluebell; she would dance
with astonishment, and she might recover her hearing."
III.
That was how I first asked Margaret Lammas to be my wife, and I will
agree with any one who says I behaved very foolishly. But I have not
repented of it, and I never shall. I have long ago understood that I was
out of my mind that evening, but I think my temporary insanity on that
occasion has had the effect of making me a saner man ever since. Her
manner turned my head, for it was so different from what I had expected.
To hear this lovely creature, who, in my imagination, was a heroine of
romance, if not of tragedy, talking familiarly and laughing readily was
more than my equanimity could bear, and I lost my head as well as my
heart. But when I went back to England in the spring, I went to make
certain arrangements at the Castle--certain changes and improvements
which would be absolutely necessary. I had won the race for which I had
entered myself so rashly, and we were to be married in June.
Whether the change was due to the orders I had left with the gardener
and the rest of the servants, or to my own state of mind, I cannot tell.
At all events, the old place did not look the same to me when I opened
my window on the morning after my arrival. There were the grey walls
below me, and the grey turrets flanking the huge building; there were
the fountains, the marble causeways, the smooth basins, the tall box
hedges, the water-lilies and the swans, just as of old. But there was
something else there, too--something in the air, in the water, and in
the greenness that I did not recognise--a light over everything by which
everything was transfigured. The clock in the tower struck seven, and
the strokes of the ancient bell sounded like a wedding chime. The air
sang with the thrilling treble of the songbirds, with the silvery music
of the plashing water and the softer harmony of the leaves stirred by
the fresh morning wind. There was a smell of new-mown hay from the
distant meadows, and of blooming roses from the beds below, wafted up
together to my window. I stood in the pure sunshine and drank the air
and all the sounds and the odours that were in it; and I looked down at
my garden and said: "It is Paradise, after all." I think the men of old
were right when they called heaven a garden, and Eden, a garden
inhabited by one man and one woman, the Earthly Paradise.
I turned away, wondering what had become of the gloomy memories I had
always associated with my home. I tried to recall the impression of my
nurse's horrible prophecy before the death of my parents--an impression
which hitherto had been vivid enough. I tried to remember my old self,
my dejection, my listlessness, my bad luck, and my petty
disappointments. I endeavoured to force myself to think as I used to
think, if only to satisfy myself that I had not lost my individuality.
But I succeeded in none of these efforts. I was a different man, a
changed being, incapable of sorrow, of ill luck, or of sadness. My life
had been a dream, not evil, but infinitely gloomy and hopeless. It was
now a reality, full of hope, gladness, and all manner of good. My home
had been like a tomb; to-day it was paradise. My heart had been as
though it had not existed; to-day it beat with strength and youth, and
the certainty of realised happiness. I revelled in the beauty of the
world, and called loveliness out of the future to enjoy it before time
should bring it to me, as a traveller in the plains looks up to the
mountains, and already tastes the cool air through the dust of the
road.
Here, I thought, we will live and live for years. There we will sit by
the fountain towards evening and in the deep moonlight. Down those paths
we will wander together. On those benches we will rest and talk. Among
those eastern hills we will ride through the soft twilight, and in the
old house we will tell tales on winter nights, when the logs burn high,
and the holly berries are red, and the old clock tolls out the dying
year. On these old steps, in these dark passages and stately rooms,
there will one day be the sound of little pattering feet, and laughing
child-voices will ring up to the vaults of the ancient hall. Those tiny
footsteps shall not be slow and sad as mine were, nor shall the
childish words be spoken in an awed whisper. No gloomy Welshwoman shall
people the dusky corners with weird horrors, nor utter horrid prophecies
of death and ghastly things. All shall be young, and fresh, and joyful,
and happy, and we will turn the old luck again, and forget that there
was ever any sadness.
So I thought, as I looked out of my window that morning and for many
mornings after that, and every day it all seemed more real than ever
before, and much nearer. But the old nurse looked at me askance, and
muttered odd sayings about the Woman of the Water. I cared little what
she said, for I was far too happy.
At last the time came near for the wedding. Lady Bluebell and all the
tribe of Bluebells, as Margaret called them, were at Bluebell Grange,
for we had determined to be married in the country, and to come straight
to the Castle afterwards. We cared little for travelling, and not at all
for a crowded ceremony at St. George's in Hanover Square, with all the
tiresome formalities afterwards. I used to ride over to the Grange every
day, and very often Margaret would come with her aunt and some of her
cousins to the Castle. I was suspicious of my own taste, and was only
too glad to let her have her way about the alterations and improvements
in our home.
We were to be married on the thirtieth of July, and on the evening of
the twenty-eighth Margaret drove over with some of the Bluebell party.
In the long summer twilight we all went out into the garden. Naturally
enough, Margaret and I were left to ourselves, and we wandered down by
the marble basins.
"It is an odd coincidence," I said; "it was on this very night last year
that I first saw you."
"Considering that it is the month of July," answered Margaret with a
laugh, "and that we have been here almost every day, I don't think the
coincidence is so extraordinary, after all."
"No, dear," said I, "I suppose not. I don't know why it struck me. We
shall very likely be here a year from to-day, and a year from that. The
odd thing, when I think of it, is that you should be here at all. But my
luck has turned. I ought not to think anything odd that happens now
that I have you. It is all sure to be good."
"A slight change in your ideas since that remarkable performance of
yours in Paris," said Margaret. "Do you know, I thought you were the
most extraordinary man I had ever met."
"I thought you were the most charming woman I had ever seen. I naturally
did not want to lose any time in frivolities. I took you at your word, I
followed your advice, I asked you to marry me, and this is the
delightful result--what's the matter?"
Margaret had started suddenly, and her hand tightened on my arm. An old
woman was coming up the path, and was close to us before we saw her, for
the moon had risen, and was shining full in our faces. The woman turned
out to be my old nurse.
"It's only old Judith, dear--don't be frightened," I said. Then I spoke
to the Welshwoman: "What are you about, Judith? Have you been feeding
the Woman of the Water?"
"Ay--when the clock strikes, Willie--my lord, I mean," muttered the old
creature, drawing aside to let us pass, and fixing her strange eyes on
Margaret's face.
"What does she mean?" asked Margaret, when we had gone by.
"Nothing, darling. The old thing is mildly crazy, but she is a good
soul."
We went on in silence for a few moments, and came to the rustic bridge
just above the artificial grotto through which the water ran out into
the park, dark and swift in its narrow channel. We stopped, and leaned
on the wooden rail. The moon was now behind us, and shone full upon the
long vista of basins and on the huge walls and towers of the Castle
above.
"How proud you ought to be of such a grand old place!" said Margaret,
softly.
"It is yours now, darling," I answered. "You have as good a right to
love it as I--but I only love it because you are to live in it, dear."
Her hand stole out and lay on mine, and we were both silent.
Just then the clock began to strike far off in the tower.
I counted--eight--nine--ten--eleven--I looked at my
watch--twelve--thirteen--I laughed. The bell went on striking.
"The old clock has gone crazy, like Judith," I exclaimed. Still it went
on, note after note ringing out monotonously through the still air. We
leaned over the rail, instinctively looking in the direction whence the
sound came. On and on it went. I counted nearly a hundred, out of sheer
curiosity, for I understood that something had broken, and that the
thing was running itself down.
Suddenly there was a crack as of breaking wood, a cry and a heavy
splash, and I was alone, clinging to the broken end of the rail of the
rustic bridge.
I do not think I hesitated while my pulse beat twice. I sprang clear of
the bridge into the black rushing water, dived to the bottom, came up
again with empty hands, turned and swam downwards through the grotto in
the thick darkness, plunging and diving at every stroke, striking my
head and hands against jagged stones and sharp corners, clutching at
last something in my fingers, and dragging it up with all my might. I
spoke, I cried aloud, but there was no answer. I was alone in the pitchy
blackness with my burden, and the house was five hundred yards away.
Struggling still, I felt the ground beneath my feet, I saw a ray of
moonlight--the grotto widened, and the deep water became a broad and
shallow brook as I stumbled over the stones and at last laid Margaret's
body on the bank in the park beyond.
"Ay, Willie, as the clock struck!" said the voice of Judith, the Welsh
nurse, as she bent down and looked at the white face. The old woman
must have turned back and followed us, seen the accident, and slipped
out by the lower gate of the garden. "Ay," she groaned, "you have fed
the Woman of the Water this night, Willie, while the clock was
striking."
I scarcely heard her as I knelt beside the lifeless body of the woman I
loved, chafing the wet white temples, and gazing wildly into the
wide-staring eyes. I remember only the first returning look of
consciousness, the first heaving breath, the first movement of those
dear hands stretching out towards me.
* * * * *
That is not much of a story, you say. It is the story of my life. That
is all. It does not pretend to be anything else. Old Judith says my
luck turned on that summer's night, when I was struggling in the water
to save all that was worth living for. A month later there was a stone
bridge above the grotto, and Margaret and I stood on it and looked up at
the moonlit Castle, as we had done once before, and as we have done many
times since. For all those things happened ten years ago last summer,
and this is the tenth Christmas Eve we have spent together by the
roaring logs in the old hall, talking of old times; and every year there
are more old times to talk of. There are curly-headed boys, too, with
red-gold hair and dark-brown eyes like their mother's, and a little
Margaret, with solemn black eyes like mine. Why could not she look like
her mother, too, as well as the rest of them?
The world is very bright at this glorious Christmas time, and perhaps
there is little use in calling up the sadness of long ago, unless it be
to make the jolly firelight seem more cheerful, the good wife's face
look gladder, and to give the children's laughter a merrier ring, by
contrast with all that is gone. Perhaps, too, some sad-faced, listless,
melancholy youth, who feels that the world is very hollow, and that life
is like a perpetual funeral service, just as I used to feel myself, may
take courage from my example, and having found the woman of his heart,
ask her to marry him after half an hour's acquaintance. But, on the
whole, I would not advise any man to marry, for the simple reason that
no man will ever find a wife like mine, and being obliged to go further,
he will necessarily fare worse. My wife has done miracles, but I will
not assert that any other woman is able to follow her example.
Margaret always said that the old place was beautiful, and that I ought
to be proud of it. I daresay she is right. She has even more imagination
than I. But I have a good answer and a plain one, which is this--that
all the beauty of the Castle comes from her. She has breathed upon it
all, as the children blow upon the cold glass window-panes in winter;
and as their warm breath crystallises into landscapes from fairyland,
full of exquisite shapes and traceries upon the blank surface, so her
spirit has transformed every grey stone of the old towers, every
ancient tree and hedge in the gardens, every thought in my once
melancholy self. All that was old is young, and all that was sad is
glad, and I am the gladdest of all. Whatever heaven may be, there is no
earthly paradise without woman, nor is there anywhere a place so
desolate, so dreary, so unutterably miserable that a woman cannot make
it seem heaven to the man she loves and who loves her.
I hear certain cynics laugh, and cry that all that has been said before.
Do not laugh, my good cynic. You are too small a man to laugh at such a
great thing as love. Prayers have been said before now by many, and
perhaps you say yours, too. I do not think they lose anything by being
repeated, nor you by repeating them. You say that the world is bitter,
and full of the Waters of Bitterness. Love, and so live that you may be
loved--the world will turn sweet for you, and you shall rest like me by
the Waters of Paradise.
THE INCOGNITO LIBRARY.
A series of small books by representative writers, whose names will for
the present not be given.