Chapter 6

RELIVING MY LIFE

Often, as you walk down a street, a man or woman passes you by. You
look up at them and say to yourself, "I seem to know that face"; but
you can put no name to it, attach to it no definite idea, no
associations of any sort. That was just how Woodbury struck me when
I first came back to it. The houses, the streets, the people, were
in a way familiar; yet I could no more have found my way alone from
the station to The Grange than I could find my way alone from here
to Kamschatka.

So I drove up first in search of lodgings. At the station even
several people had bowed or shaken hands with me respectfully as I
descended from the train. They came up as if they thought I must
recognise them at once: there was recognition in their eyes; but
when 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 back
again at last to Woodbury."

This reception dazzled me. It was so strange, so uncanny. I was glad
to get away in a fly by myself, and to be driven to lodgings in the
clean 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 with
a friendly nod as he reached the High Street: and not liking to
confess my forgetfulness of Jane, I responded with warmth that
Jane's would, no doubt, exactly suit me.

We drew up at the door of a neat little house. The driver rang the
bell.

"Miss Una's here," he said, confidentially; "and she's looking for
lodgings."

It was inexpressibly strange and weird to me, this one-sided
recognition, this unfamiliar familiarity: it gave me a queer thrill
of the supernatural that I can hardly express to you. But I didn't
know what to do, when a kindly-faced, middle-aged English
upper-class servant rushed out at me, open-armed, and hugging me
hard to her breast, exclaimed with many loud kisses:

"Miss Una, Miss Una! So it's YOU, dear; so it is! Then you've come
back at last to us!"

I could hardly imagine what to say or do. The utmost I could assert
with truth was, Jane's face wasn't exactly and entirely in all ways
unfamiliar to me. Yet I could see Jane herself was so unfeignedly
delighted to see me again, that I hadn't the heart to confess I'd
forgotten her very existence. So I took her two hands in mine--
since friendliness begets friendliness--and holding her off a little
way, for fear the kisses should be repeated, I said to her very
gravely:

"You see, Jane, since