Chapter 2 - Page 2

in a low voice with a woman in a white cap and
a clean white apron who waited on me daily. As soon as he was gone,
my nurse, as I learned afterwards to call her,--it's so hard not to
drop into the language of everyday life when one has to describe
things to other people,--my nurse got me up, with much ado and
solemnity, and dressed me in a new black frock, very dismal and
ugly, and put on me a black hat, with a dreary-looking veil; and
took me downstairs, with the aid of a man who wore a suit of blue
clothes and a queer kind of helmet. The man was of the sort I now
call a policeman. These pictures are far less definite in my mind
than the one that begins my second life; but still, in a vague kind
of way, I pretty well remember 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