CHAPTER VI.
RELIVING MY LIFE
Often, as you walk down a street, a man or woman passes you by. Youlook up at them and say to yourself, "I seem to know that face"; butyou can put no name to it, attach to it no definite idea, noassociations of any sort. That was just how Woodbury struck me whenI first came back to it. The houses, the streets, the people, werein a way familiar; yet I could no more have found my way alone fromthe station to The Grange than I could find my way alone from hereto Kamschatka.
So I drove up first in search of lodgings. At the station evenseveral people had bowed or shaken hands with me respectfully as Idescended from the train. They came up as if they thought I mustrecognise them at once: there was recognition in their eyes; butwhen they met my blank stare, they seemed to remember all about it,and merely murmured in strange tones:
"Good-morning, miss! So you're here: glad to see you've come backagain at last to Woodbury."
This reception dazzled me. It was so strange, so uncanny. I was gladto get away in a fly by myself, and to be driven to lodgings in theclean little High Street. For to me, it wasn't really "coming back"at all: it was coming to a strange town, where everyone knew me, and_I_ knew nobody.
"You'd like to go to Jane's, of course," the driver said to me witha friendly nod as he reached the High Street: and not liking toconfess my forgetfulness of Jane, I responded with warmth thatJane's would, no doubt, exactly suit me.
We drew up at the door of a neat little house. The driver rang thebell.
"Miss Una's here," he said, confidentially; "and she's looking forlodgings."
It was inexpressibly strange and weird to me, this one-sidedrecognition, this unfamiliar familiarity: it gave me a queer thrillof the supernatural that I can hardly express to you. But I didn'tknow what to do, when a kindly-faced, middle-aged Englishupper-class servant rushed out at me, open-armed, and hugging mehard to her breast, exclaimed with many loud kisses:
"Miss Una, Miss Una! So it's YOU, dear; so it is! Then you've comeback at last to us!"
I could hardly imagine what to say or do. The utmost I could assertwith truth was, Jane's face wasn't exactly and entirely in all waysunfamiliar to me. Yet I could see Jane herself was so unfeignedlydelighted to see me again, that I hadn't the heart to confess I'dforgotten her very existence. So I took her two hands in mine--sincefriendliness begets friendliness--and holding her off a littleway, for fear the kisses should be repeated, I said to her verygravely:
"You see, Jane, since those days I've had a terrible shock, and youcan hardly expect me to remember anything. It's all like a dream tome. You must forgive me if I don't recall it just at once as I oughtto do."
"Oh! yes, miss," Jane answered, holding my hands in her delight andweeping volubly. "We've read about all that, of course, in theLondon newspapers. But there, I'm glad anyhow you remembered to comeand look for my lodgings. I think I should just have sat down andcried if they told me Miss Una'd come back to Woodbury, and never somuch as asked to see me."
I don't think I ever felt so like a hypocrite in my life before. ButI realised at least that even if Jane's lodgings were discomfortembodied, I must take them and stop in them, while I remained there,now. Nothing else was possible. I COULDN'T go elsewhere.
Fortunately, however, the rooms turned out to be as neat as a newpin, and as admirably kept as any woman in England could keep them.I gathered from the very first, of course, that Jane had been one ofthe servants at The Grange in the days of my First State; and whileI drank my cup of tea, Jane herself came in and talked volubly tome, disclosing to me, parenthetically, the further fact that she wasthe parlour-maid at the time of my father's murder. That gave me aclue to her identity. Then she was the witness Greenfield who gaveevidence at the inquest! I made a mental note of that, anddetermined to look up what she'd said to the coroner, in the book ofextracts the Inspector gave me, as soon as I got alone in my bedroomthat evening.
After dinner, however, Jane came in again, with the freedom of anold servant, and talked to me much about the Woodbury Mystery.Gradually, as time went on that night, though I remembered nothingdefinite of myself about her, the sense of familiarity andfriendliness came home to me more vividly. The appropriate emotionseemed easier to rouse, I observed, than the intellectual memory. Iknew Jane and I had been on very good terms, some time, somewhere. Italked with her easily, for I had a consciousness of companionship.
By-and-by, without revealing to her how little I could recollectabout her own personality, I confessed to Jane, by slow degrees,that the whole past was still gone utterly from my shattered memory.I told her I knew nothing except the Picture and the facts itcomprised; and to show her just how small that knowledge really was,I showed her (imprudently enough) the photograph the Inspector hadleft with me.
Jane looked at it long and slowly, with tears in her eyes. Then shesaid at last, after a deep pause, in a very hushed voice:
"Why, how did you get this? It wasn't put in the papers."
"No," I answered quietly, "it wasn't put in the papers. For reasonsof their own, the police kept it unpublished."
Jane gazed at the proof still closer. "They oughtn't to have donethat," she said.
"They ought to have sent it out everywhere broadcast--so thatanybody who knew the man could tell him by his back."
That seemed to me such obvious good sense that I wondered to myselfthe police hadn't thought long since of it; but I supposed they hadsome good ground of their own for holding it all this time in theirown possession.
Jane went on talking to me still for many minutes about the scene:
"Ah, yes; that was just how he lay, poor dear gentleman! And thebook on the chair, too! Well, did you ever in your life see anythingso like! And to think it was taken all by itself, as one might say,by magic. But there! your poor papa was a wonderful clever man. Suchthings as he used to invent! Such ideas and such machines! We weresorry for him, though we always thought, to be sure, he was dreadfulsevere with you, Miss Una. Such a gentleman to have his own way,too--so cold and reserved like. But one mustn't talk nothing but goodabout the dead, they say. And if he was a bit hard, he was more thanhard treated for it in the end, poor gentleman!"
It interested me to get these half side-lights on my father'scharacter. Knowing nothing of him, as I did, save the solitary factthat he was the white-haired gentleman I saw dead in my Picture, Inaturally wanted to learn as much as I could from this old servantof ours as to the family conditions.
"Then you thought him harsh, in the servants'-hall?" I saidtentatively to Jane. "You thought him hard and unbending?"
"Well, there, Miss," Jane ran on, putting a cushion to my backtenderly--it was strange to be the recipient of so much delicateattention from a perfect stranger,--"not exactly what you'd callharsh to us ourselves, you know: he was a good master enough, aslong as one did what was ordered, though he was a little bitfidgetty. But to you, we all thought he was always rather hard.People said so in Woodbury. And yet, in a way, I don't know how itwas, he always seemed more'n half afraid of you. He was carefulabout your health, and spoiled and petted you for that; yet he wasalways pulling you up, you know, and looking after what you did: andfor one thing, I remember, there's many a time you were sent to bedwhen you were a good big girl for nothing on earth else but becausehe heard you talking to us in the hall about Australia."
"Talking to you about Australia!" I cried, pricking my ears. "Why,what harm was there in that? Why on earth didn't he want me to talkabout Australia?"
"Ah! what harm indeed?" Jane echoed blandly. "That's what we oftenused to say among ourselves downstairs. But Mr. Callingham, he wasalways that way, miss--so strict and particular. He said he'dforbidden you to say a word to anybody about that confoundedcountry; and you must do as you were told. He seemed to have agrudge against Australia, though it was there he made his money. Andhe always would have his own way, your father would."
While she spoke, I looked hard at the white head in the photograph.Even as I did so, a thoug
ht occurred to me that had never occurredbefore. Both in my mental Picture, and in looking at the photographwhen I saw it first, the feeling that was uppermost in my mind wasnot sorrow, but horror. I didn't think with affection and regret anda deep sense of bereavement about my father's murder. The emotionalaccompaniment that had stamped itself upon the very fibre of mysoul, was not pain but awe. I think my main feeling was a feelingthat a foul crime had taken place in the house, not a feeling that Ihad lost a very dear and near relative. Rightly or wrongly, I drewfrom this the inference, which Jane's gossip confirmed, that I hadprobably rather feared than loved my father.
It was strange to be reduced to such indirect evidence on such apoint as that; but it was all I could get, and I had to be contentwith it.
Jane, leaning over my shoulder, looked hard at the photograph too. Icould see her eyes were fixed on the back of the man who was seendisappearing through the open window. He was dressed like agentleman, in knickerbockers and jacket, as far as one could judge;for the evening light rather blurred that part of the picture. Onehand was just waved, palm open, behind him. Jane regarded it hard.Then she gave an odd little start:
"Why, just look at that hand!" she cried, with a tremor of surprise."Don't you see what it is? Don't you think it's a woman's?"
I gazed back at her incredulously.
"Impossible," I answered, shaking my head. "It belongs as clear asday to the man you see in the photograph. How on earth could hishand be a woman's then, I'd like to know? I can see the shirt-cuff."
"Why, yes," Jane answered, with simple common-sense: "it's DRESSEDlike a man, of course, and it's a man to look at; but the hand's awoman's, as true as I'm standing here. Why mightn't a woman dress ina man's suit on purpose? And perhaps it was just because they wereso sure it was a man as did it, that the police has gone wrong solong in trying to find the murderer."
I looked hard at the hand myself. Then I shut my eyes, and thoughtof the corresponding object in my mental Picture. The result fairlystaggered me. The impression in each case was exactly the same. Itwas a soft and delicate hand, very white and womanlike. But was itreally a woman's? I couldn't feel quite sure in my own mind aboutthat; but the very warning Jane gave me seemed to me a most usefulone. It would be well, after all, to keep one's mind sedulously opento every possible explanation, and to take nothing for granted as tothe murderer's personality.