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Updated: May 9, 2025
It hangs to this day in its cheap frame above the chimney-piece, the one bright spot relieving those damp-stained walls; dull eyes stare and stare again at it, catching a vista, through its flashy tints, of the far-off land of art. Christmas Waits annoy me, and I yearn to throw open the window and fling coal at them as once from the window of a high flat in Chelsea I did.
Should you ever wander of a Sunday morning within sound of the cracked bell that calls a few habit-bound, old-fashioned folk to worship within those damp-stained walls, and drop into talk with the old men who on such days sometimes sit, each in his brass-buttoned long brown coat, upon the low stone coping underneath those broken railings, you might hear this tale from them, as I did, more years ago than I care to recollect.
"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 tenth one struck flame. There were ashes and black brands in the fireplace, left there possibly, by the landlord's last moofer. Grandma Padgett built a fire to which the children huddled, casting fearful glances up the damp-stained walls. The flame was something like a welcome. "Perhaps," said Grandma with energy, "there are even provisions in the house.
She stood in a great hall. Round the walls hung pictures in tarnished frames. Rich furniture, damp-stained and worm-eaten, stood stiffly arranged as if for some great function. Only here and there was evidence of some disorder. A table was upset near the fireplace. The covering of a chair had been torn, and the hair stuffing of its cushions bulged through the rent.
Yet I am told that her wrinkles and creases, although manifold, were not harsh nor rugged; and that her face might be likened rather to a billet of love written on fair white vellum, that had been somewhat crumpled by the hand of him who hates Youth and Love, than to some musty old conveyance or mortgage-deed scrabbled on yellow, damp-stained, rat-gnawed parchment.
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