The mystery of the wood used to appeal to my curiosity, but I never
dared to scramble over the low wall until one day, leaving my
governess, who was praying by the tomb, I discovered a gap through
which I could climb. My wanderings were suddenly brought to an end by
the appearance, or the fancied appearance, of somebody in a brown
dress--a woman I thought it must be; she seemed to float along the
ground, and I hurried back, falling and hurting myself severely in my
hurry to escape through the gap. So great was my fear that I spoke not
of my hurt to my governess, but of the being I had seen, beseeching of
her to come back; but she would not come back, and this fact impressed
me greatly. I said to myself, "If she didn't believe somebody was
there she'd come back." The fear endured for long afterwards; and I
used to beg of her not to cross the open space between the last shift
of the wood and the tomb itself. We can re-live in imagination an
emotion already experienced. Everything I had felt when I was a child
about the mysterious hollows in the beech wood behind the tomb and the
old stone there, and the being I had seen clothed in a brown cloak, I
could re-live again, but the wood enkindled no new emotion in me.
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