Recalled to Life | Page 4

them.
On the ground floor, nurse made me walk; and I walked out to the door,
where a cab was in waiting, drawn slowly by a pair of horses. People
were looking on, on either side, between the door and the cab--great
crowds of people, peering eagerly forward; and two more men in blue
suits were holding them off by main force from surging against me and
incommoding me. I don't think they wanted to hurt me: it was rather
curiosity than anger I saw in their faces. But I was afraid, and shrank
back. They were eager to see me, however, and pressed forward with
loud cries, so that the men in blue suits had hard work to prevent them.

I know now there were two reasons why they wanted to see me. I was
the murdered man's daughter, and I was a Psychological Phenomenon.
We drove away, through green lanes, in the cab, nurse and I; and in
spite of the Horror, which surrounded me always, and the Picture,
which recurred every time I shut my eyes to think, I enjoyed that drive
very much, with all the fresh vividness of childish pleasure. Though I
learnt later I was eighteen years old at least, I was in my inner self just
like a baby of ten months, going ta-ta. At the end of the drive, we drew
up sharp at a house, where some more men stood about, with red bands
on their caps, and took boxes from the cab and put them into a van,
while nurse and I got into a different carriage, drawn quickly by a thing
that went puff-puff, puff-puff. I didn't know it was a railway, and yet in
a way I did. I half forgot, half remembered it. Things that I'd seen in my
previous state seemed to come back to me, in fact, as soon as I saw
them; or at least to be more familiar to me than things I'd never seen
before. Especially afterwards. But while things were remembered,
persons, I found by-and-by, were completely forgotten. Or rather, while
I remembered after a while generalities, such as houses and men,
recognising them in the abstract as a house, or a man, or a horse, or a
baby, I forgot entirely particulars, such as the names of people and the
places I had lived in. Words soon came back to me: names and facts
were lost: I knew the world as a whole, not my own old part in it.
Well, not to make my story too long in these early childish stages, we
went on the train, as it seemed to me, a long way across fields to Aunt
Emma's. I didn't know she was Aunt Emma then for, indeed, I had
never seen her before; but I remember arriving there at her pretty little
cottage, and seeing a sweet old lady--barely sixty, I should say, but
with smooth white hair,--who stood on the steps of the house and cried
like a child, and held out her hands to me, and hugged me and kissed
me. And it was there that I learned my first word. A great many times
over, she spoke about "Una." She said it so often, I caught vaguely at
the sound. And nurse, when she answered her, said "Una" also. Then,
when Aunt Emma called me, she always said "Una." So it came to me
dimly that Una meant ME. But I didn't exactly recollect it had been my
name before, though I learned in due time afterwards that I'd always
been called so. However, just at first, I picked up the word as a child
might pick it up; and when, some months later, I began to talk easily, I

spoke of myself always in the third person as Una. I can remember with
a smile now how I went one day to Aunt Emma--I, a great girl of
eighteen--and held up my skirt, that I'd muddied in the street, and said
to her, with great gravity:
"Una naughty girl: Una got her frock wet. Aunt Emma going to scold
poor Una for being so naughty!"
Not that I often smiled, in those days; for, in spite of Aunt Emma's
kindness, my second girlhood, like my first, was a very unhappy one.
The Horror and the Picture pursued me too close. It was months and
months before I could get rid for a moment of that persistent nightmare.
And yet I had everything else on earth to make me happy. Aunt Emma
lived in a pretty east-coast town, with high bracken-clad downs, and
breezy common beyond; while in front stretched great sands, where I
loved to race about and to play cricket and tennis. It was the loveliest
town that ever you saw in your