hands of the water
of Life.

XII

I wonder if others experience a very peculiar sensation, which comes
upon me at intervals unexpectedly and inexplicably in a certain kind of
scene, and on reading a certain type of book--I have known it from my
early childhood, as far back as I can recollect anything. It is the
sensation of being quite close to some beautiful and mysterious thing
which I have lost, and for which in a blind way I am searching. It
contains within it a vague yet poignant happiness, a rich and unknown
experience. It is the nearest I ever come to a sense of pre-existence;
and I have sometimes wondered if it might not be, not perhaps my own
pre-existence, but some inherited recollection of happiness in which I
myself had no part, but which was part of the mind of one, or of many,
from whom I derive my origin. If limbs and features, qualities and
desires, are derived from one's ancestors, why should one not also
derive a touch of their happy dreams, their sweet remembrances?

The first time it ever came to me was when we were taken, quite as
small children, to a little cottage which stood in a clearing of a
great pine-wood near Wellington College. I suppose that the cottage was
really older than the wood; it was guarded by great sprawling laurels,
and below the house was a privet-hedged garden, sheltered all round by
the pines, with a stream at the foot. The sun lay very warm on the
vegetable beds and orchard trees, and there was a row of hives--not
painted cupboards such as one now sees, but big egg-shaped things made
of a rope of twisted straw--round which on warm days the humming bees
made a low musical note, that rose and fell as the numbers increased or
diminished. I suppose my nurse went to buy honey there--we called it
The Honey-woman's Cottage. I dimly remember an old, smiling, wrinkled
woman opening the door to us, summoning my nurse in to a mysterious
talk, and inviting us to go into the garden meanwhile. The whole
proceeding was intensely mysterious and beautiful. Through the red pine
stems one could see the sandy soil rising and falling in low ridges,
strewn with russet needles. Down below, nearer to the stream, a tough
green sword-grass grew richly; and beyond lay the deep wood, softly
sighing, and containing all sorts of strange scents and haunting
presences. In the garden there was a penetrating aromatic smell from
the box-hedges and the hot vegetable-beds. We wandered about, and it