By the Waters of Paradise

by F. Marion Crawford

I

I remember my childhood very distinctly. I do not think that
the fact argues a good memory, for I have never been clever at
learning words by heart, in prose or rhyme; so that I believe my
remembrance of events depends much more upon the events themselves
than upon my possessing any special facility for recalling them.
Perhaps I am too imaginative, and the earliest impressions I received
were of a kind to stimulate the imagination abnormally. A long
series of little misfortunes, so connected with each other as to
suggest a sort of weird fatality, so worked upon my melancholy
temperament when I was a boy that, before I was of age, I sincerely
believed myself to be under a curse, and not only myself, but my
whole family and every individual who bore my name.

I was born in the old place where my father, and his father, and
all his predecessors had been born, beyond the memory of man. It is
a very old house, and the greater part of it was originally a castle,
strongly fortified, and surrounded by a deep moat supplied with
abundant water from the hills by a hidden aqueduct. Many of the
fortifications have been destroyed, and the moat has been filled up.
The water from the aqueduct supplies great fountains, and runs down
into huge oblong basins in the terraced gardens, one below the other,
each surrounded by a broad pavement of marble between the water and
the flower-beds. The waste surplus finally escapes through an
artificial grotto, some thirty yards long, into a stream, flowing
down through the park to the meadows beyond, and thence to the
distant river. The buildings were extended a little and greatly
altered more than two hundred years ago, in the time of Charles II.,
but since then little has been done to improve them, though they have
been kept in fairly good repair, according to our fortunes.

In the gardens there are terraces and huge hedges of box and
evergreen, some of which used to be clipped into shapes of animals,
in the Italian style. I can remember when I was a lad how I used to
try to make out what the trees were cut to represent, and how I used
to appeal for explanations to Judith, my Welsh nurse. She dealt in a
strange mythology of her own, and peopled the gardens with griffins,
dragons, good genii and bad, and filled my mind with them at the same
time. My nursery window afforded a view of the great fountains at
the head of the upper basin, and on moonlight nights the Welshwoman
would hold me up to the glass and bid me look at the mist and spray
rising into mysterious shapes, moving mystically in the white light
like living things.

"It's the Woman of the Water," she used to say; and sometimes
she would threaten that if I did not go to sleep the Woman of the
Water would steal up to the high window and carry me away in her wet
arms.

The place was gloomy. The broad basins of water and the tall
evergreen hedges gave it a funereal look, and the damp-stained marble
causeways by the pools might have been made of tombstones. The gray
and weather-beaten walls and towers without, the dark and massively
furnished rooms within, the deep, mysterious recesses and the heavy
curtains, all affected my spirits. I was silent and sad from my
childhood. There was a great clock tower above, from which the hours
rang dismally during the day, and tolled like a knell in the dead of
night. There was no light nor life in the house, for my mother was a
helpless invalid, and my father had grown melancholy in his long task
of caring for her. He was a thin, dark man, with sad eyes; kind, I
think, but silent and unhappy. Next to my mother, I believe he loved
me better than anything on earth, for he took immense pains and
trouble in teaching me, and what he taught me I have never forgotten.
Perhaps it was his only amusement, and that may be the reason why I
had no nursery governess or teacher of any kind while he lived.

I used to be taken to see my mother every day, and sometimes
twice a day, for an hour at a time. Then I sat upon a little stool
near her feet, and she would ask me what I had been doing, and what I
wanted to do. I dare say she saw already the seeds of a profound
melancholy in my nature, for she looked at me always with a sad
smile, and kissed me with a sigh when I was taken away.

One night, when I was just six years old, I lay awake in the
nursery. The door was not quite shut, and the Welsh nurse was
sitting sewing in the next room. Suddenly I heard her groan, and say
in a strange voice, "One--two--one--two!" I was frightened, and I
jumped up and ran to the door, barefooted as I was.

"What is it, Judith?" I cried, clinging to her skirts. I can
remember the look in her strange dark eyes as she answered:

"One--two leaden coffins, fallen from the ceiling!" she crooned,
working herself in her chair. "One--two--a light coffin and a heavy
coffin, falling to the floor!"

Then she seemed to notice me, and she took me back to bed and
sang me to sleep with a queer old Welsh song.

I do not know how it was, but the impression got hold of me that
she had meant that my father and mother were going to die very soon.
They died in the very room where she had been sitting that night. It
was a great room, my day nursery, full of sun when there was any; and
when the days were dark it was the most cheerful place in the house.
My mother grew rapidly worse, and I was transferred to another part
of the building to make place for her. They thought my nursery was
gayer for her, I suppose; but she could not live. She was beautiful
when she was dead, and I cried bitterly.

The light one, the light one--the heavy one to come," crooned
the Welshwoman. And she was right. My father took the room after my
mother was gone, and day by day he grew thinner and paler and
sadder.

"The heavy one, the heavy one--all of lead," moaned my nurse,
one night in December, standing still, just as she was going to take
away the light after putting me to bed. Then she took me up again
and wrapped me in a little gown, and led me away to my father's room.
She knocked, but no one answered. She opened the door, and we found
him in his easy chair before the fire, very white, quite dead.

So I was alone with the Welshwoman till strange people came, and
relations whom I had never seen; and then I heard them saying that I
must be taken away to some more cheerful place. They were kind
people, and I will not believe that they were kind only because I was
to be very rich when I grew to be a man. The world never seemed to
be a very bad place to me, nor all the people to be miserable
sinners, even when I was most melancholy. I do not remember that
anyone ever did me any great injustice, nor that I was ever oppressed
or ill treated in any way, even by the boys at school. I was sad, I
suppose, because my childhood was so gloomy, and, later, because I
was unlucky in everything I undertook, till I finally believed I was
pursued by fate, and I used to dream that the old Welsh nurse and the
Woman of the Water between them had vowed to pursue me to my end.
But my natural disposition should have been cheerful, as I have often
thought.

Among the lads of my age I was never last, or even among the
last, in anything; but I was never first. If I trained for a race, I
was sure to sprain my ankle on the day when I was to run. If I
pulled an oar with others, my oar was sure to break. If I competed
for a prize, some unforeseen accident prevented my winning it at the
last moment. Nothing to which I put my hand succeeded, and I got the
reputation of being unlucky, until my companions felt it was always
safe to bet against me, no matter what the appearances might be. I
became discouraged and listless in everything. I gave up the idea of
competing for any distinction at the University, comforting myself
with the thought that I could not fail in the examination for the
ordinary degree. The day before the examination began I fell ill;
and when at last I recovered, after a narrow escape from death, I
turned my back upon Oxford, and went down alone to visit the old
place where I had been born, feeble in health and profoundly
disgusted and discouraged. I was twenty-one years of age, master of
myself and of my fortune; but so deeply had the long chain of small
unlucky circumstances affected me that I thought seriously of
shutting myself up from the world to live the life of a hermit and to
die as soon as possible. Death seemed the only cheerful possibility
in my existence, and my thoughts soon dwelt upon it altogether.

I had never shown any wish to return to my own home since I had
been taken away as a little boy, and no one had ever pressed me to do
so. The place had been kept in order after a fashion, and did not
seem to have suffered during the fifteen years or more of my absence.
Nothing earthly could affect those old gray walls that had fought
the elements for so many centuries. The garden was more wild than I
remembered it; the marble causeways about the pools looked more
yellow and damp than of old, and the whole place at first looked
smaller. It was not until I had wandered about the house and grounds
for many hours that I realized the huge size of the home where I was
to live in solitude. Then I began to delight in it, and my
resolution to live alone grew stronger.

The people had turned out to welcome me, of course, and I tried
to recognize the changed faces of the old gardener and the old
housekeeper, and to call them by name. My old nurse I knew at once.
She had grown very gray since she heard the coffins fall in the
nursery fifteen years before, but her strange eyes were the same, and
the look in them woke all my old memories. She went over the house
with me.

"And how is the Woman of the Water?" I asked, trying to laugh a
little. "Does she still play in the moonlight?"

"She is hungry," answered the Welshwoman, in a low voice.

"Hungry? Then we will feed her." I laughed. But old Judith
turned very pale, and looked at me strangely.

"Feed her? Aye--you will feed her well," she muttered, glancing
behind her at the ancient housekeeper, who tottered after us with
feeble steps through the halls and passages.

I did not think much of her words. She had always talked oddly,
as Welshwomen will, and though I was very melancholy I am sure I was
not superstitious, and I was certainly not timid. Only, as in a
far-off dream, I seemed to see her standing with the light in her
hand and muttering, "The heavy one--all of lead," and then leading a
little boy through the long corridors to see his father lying dead in
a great easy chair before a smoldering fire. So we went over the
house, and I chose the rooms where I would live; and the servants I
had brought with me ordered and arranged everything, and I had no
more trouble. I did not care what they did provided I was left in
peace and was not expected to give directions; for I was more
listless than ever, owing to the effects of my illness at college.

I dined in solitary state, and the melancholy grandeur of the
vast old dining-room pleased me. Then I went to the room I had
selected for my study, and sat down in a deep chair, under a bright
light, to think, or to let my thoughts meander through labyrinths of
their own choosing, utterly indifferent to the course they might
take.

The tall windows of the room opened to the level of the ground
upon the terrace at the head of the garden. It was in the end of
July, and everything was open, for the weather was warm. As I sat
alone I heard the unceasing splash of the great fountains, and I fell
to thinking of the Woman of the Water. I rose and went out into the
still night, and sat down upon a seat on the terrace, between two
gigantic Italian flower pots. The air was deliciously soft and sweet
with the smell of the flowers, and the garden was more congenial to
me than the house. Sad people always like running water and the
sound of it at night, though I cannot tell why. I sat and listened
in the gloom, for it was dark below, and the pale moon had not yet
climbed over the hills in front of me, though all the air above was
light with her rising beams. Slowly the white halo in the eastern
sky ascended in an arch above the wooded crests, making the outlines
of the mountains more intensely black by contrast, as though the head
of some great white saint were rising from behind a screen in a vast
cathedral, throwing misty glories from below. I longed to see the
moon herself, and I tried to reckon the seconds before she must
appear. Then she sprang up quickly, and in a moment more hung round
and perfect in the sky. I gazed at her, and then at the floating
spray of the tall fountains, and down at the pools, where the water
lilies were rocking softly in their sleep on the velvet surface of
the moonlit water. Just then a great swan floated out silently into
the midst of the basin, and wreathed his long neck, catching the
water in his broad bill, and scattering showers of diamonds around
him.

Suddenly, as I gazed, something came between me and the light.
I looked up instantly. Between me and the round disk of the moon
rose a luminous face of a woman, with great strange eyes, and a
woman's mouth, full and soft, but not smiling, hooded in black,
staring at me as I sat still upon my bench. She was close to me-- so
close that I could have touched her with my hand. But I was
transfixed and helpless. She stood still for a moment, but her
expression did not change. Then she passed swiftly away, and my hair
stood up on my head, while the cold breeze from her white dress was
wafted to my temples as she moved. The moonlight, shining through
the tossing spray of the fountain, made traceries of shadow on the
gleaming folds of her garments. In an instant she was gone and I was
alone.

I was strangely shaken by the vision, and some time passed
before I could rise to my feet, for I was still weak from my illness,
and the sight I had seen would have startled anyone. I did not
reason with myself, for I was certain that I had looked on the
unearthly, and no argument could have destroyed that belief. At last
I got up and stood unsteadily, gazing in the direction in which I
thought the face had gone; but there was nothing to be seen--nothing
but the broad paths, the tall, dark evergreen hedges, the tossing
water of the fountains and the smooth pool below. I fell back upon
the seat and recalled the face I had seen. Strange to say, now that
the first impression had passed, there was nothing startling in the
recollection; on the contrary, I felt that I was fascinated by the
face, and would give anything to see it again. I could retrace the
beautiful straight features, the long dark eyes, and the wonderful
mouth most exactly in my mind, and when I had reconstructed every
detail from memory I knew that the whole was beautiful, and that I
should love a woman with such a face.

"I wonder whether she is the Woman of the Water!" I said to
myself. Then rising once more, I wandered down the garden, descending
one short flight of steps after another from terrace to terrace by
the edge of the marble basins, through the shadow and through the
moonlight; and I crossed the water by the rustic bridge above the
artificial grotto, and climbed slowly up again to the highest terrace
by the other side. The air seemed sweeter, and I was very calm, so
that I think I smiled to myself as I walked, as though a new
happiness had come to me. The woman's face seemed always before me,
and the thought of it gave me an unwonted thrill of pleasure, unlike
anything I had ever felt before.

I turned as I reached the house, and looked back upon the scene.
It had certainly changed in the short hour since I had come out, and
my mood had changed with it. Just like my luck, I thought, to fall
in love with a ghost! But in old times I would have sighed, and gone
to bed more sad than ever, at such a melancholy conclusion. To-night
I felt happy, almost for the first time in my life. The gloomy old
study seemed cheerful when I went in. The old pictures on the walls
smiled at me, and I sat down in my deep chair with a new and
delightful sensation that I was not alone. The idea of having seen a
ghost, and of feeling much the better for it, was so absurd that I
laughed softly, as I took up one of the books I had brought with me
and began to read.

That impression did not wear off. I slept peacefully, and in
the morning I threw open my windows to the summer air and looked down
at the garden, at the stretches of green and at the colored flower-
beds, at the circling swallows and at the bright water.

"A man might make a paradise of this place," I exclaimed. "A
man and a woman together!"

From that day the old Castle no longer seemed gloomy, and I
think I ceased to be sad; for some time, too, I began to take an
interest in the place, and to try and make it more alive. I avoided
my old Welsh nurse, lest she should damp my humor with some dismal
prophecy, and recall my old self by bringing back memories of my
dismal childhood. But what I thought of most was the ghostly figure
I had seen in the garden that first night after my arrival. I went
out every evening and wandered through the walks and paths; but, try
as I might, I did not see my vision again. At last, after many days,
the memory grew more faint, and my old moody nature gradually
overcame the temporary sense of lightness I had experienced. The
summer turned to autumn, and I grew restless. It began to rain. The
dampness pervaded the gardens, and the outer halls smelled musty,
like tombs; the gray sky oppressed me intolerably. I left the place
as it was and went abroad, determined to try anything which might
possibly make a second break in the monotonous melancholy from which
I suffered.

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 grewsome forebodings of a Welsh nurse,
which chanced to be realized 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 analyze 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 farther, 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 Leipzig,
determined to stay there until some event should direct my life or
change my humor, 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 traveling 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 traveling 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 theaters; 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 neighborhood 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 gray satin and
diamonds, who had a wrinkled but kindly face and keen gray 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 toward 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 splendor; nothing
but her pale face, her dark strange eyes, and her heavy eyebrows. I
could see that she was slender too, but strong withal, as she sat
there quietly gazing at the moving scene in the midst of the
brilliant lights and the hum of perpetual conversation.

I recollected the detail of introduction in time, and turned
aside to look for my host. I found him at last. I begged him to
present me to the two ladies, pointing them out to him at the same
time.

"Yes--uh--by all means--uh," replied his Excellency with a
pleasant smile. He evidently had no idea of my name, which was not
to be wondered at.

"I am Lord Cairngorm," I observed.

"Oh--by all means," answered the Ambassador with the same
hospitable smile. "Yes--uh--the fact is, I must try and find out who
they are; such lots of people, you know."

"Oh, if you will present me, I will try and find out for you,"
said I, laughing.

"Ah, yes--so kind of you--come along," said my host. We
threaded the crowd, and in a few minutes we stood before the two
ladies.

"'Lowmintrduce L'd Cairngorm," he said; then, adding quickly to
me, "Come and dine to-morrow, won't you?" he glided away with his
pleasant smile and disappeared in the crowd.

I sat down beside the beautiful girl, conscious that the eyes of
the duenna were upon me.

"I think we have been very near meeting before," I remarked, by
way of opening the conversation.

My companion turned her eyes full upon me with an air of
inquiry. She evidently did not recall my face, if she had ever seen
me.

"Really--I cannot remember," she observed, in a low and musical
voice. "When?"

"In the first place, you came down from Berlin by the express
ten days ago. I was going the other way, and our carriages stopped
opposite each other. I saw you at the window."

"Yes--we came that way, but I do not remember--" She
hesitated.

"Secondly," I continued, "I was sitting alone in my garden last
summer--near the end of July--do you remember? You must have
wandered in there through the park; you came up to the house and
looked at me--"

"Was that you?" she asked, in evident surprise. Then she broke
into a laugh. "I told everybody I had seen a ghost; there had never
been any Cairngorms in the place since the memory of man. We left
the next day, and never heard that you had come there; indeed, I did
not know the castle belonged to you."

"Where were you staying?" I asked.

"Where? Why, with my aunt, where I always stay. She is your
neighbor, 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 recognized you. Perhaps--perhaps you are
a Miss Bluebell?"

"Considering that you are a neighbor, 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 neighbor? I am sure she would
like to know."

I leaned toward 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 neighbor, 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 neighbors! 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 neighbors 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
anyone 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 schon!

"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 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 inquired, turning quickly upon me.

"Oh--nothing. You might try my paces with a view to quarreling
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 honor 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 humor. 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 practice 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 gayly. "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 anyone 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 gray walls below me and the gray 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 recognize--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 odors 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,
my petty disappointments. I endeavored 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 realized happiness.
I reveled 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
traveler 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 toward 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
traveling, 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 today, 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 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?"

"Aye--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 downward
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 darkness 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.

"Aye, 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. "Aye," 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 toward 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 farther, 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 crystallizes into
landscapes from fairyland, full of exquisite shapes and traceries
upon the blank surface, so her spirit has transformed every gray
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.