Chapter 7 - Page 2

room
in which I had had my first great illness, and the passage down
which I had been carried or helped when I was taken to Aunt Emma's.

I had begun to recognise now that the emotional impression made upon
me by people and things was the only sure guide I still possessed as
to their connection or association with my past history. And the
rooms at The Grange had each in this way some distinctive
characteristic. The library, of course, was the chief home of the
Horror which had hung upon my spirit even during the days when I
hardly knew in any intelligible sense the cause of it. But the
drawing-room and dining-room both produced upon my mind a vague
consciousness of constraint. I was dimly aware of being ill at ease
and uncomfortable in them. My own bedroom, on the contrary, gave me
a pleasant feeling of rest and freedom and security: while the
servants'-hall and the kitchen seemed perfect paradises of liberty.

"Ah! many's the time, miss," Jane said with a sigh, looking over at
the empty grate, "you'd come down here to make cakes or puddings,
and laugh and joke like a child with Mary an' me. I often used to
say to Emily--her as was cook here before Ellen Smith,--'Miss Una's
never so happy as when she's down here in the kitchen.' And 'That's
true what you say,' says Emily to me, many a time and often."

That was exactly the impression left upon my own mind. I began to
conclude, in a dim, formless way, that my father must have been a
somewhat stern and unsympathetic man; that I had felt constrained
and uncomfortable in his presence upstairs, and had often been
pleased to get away from his eye to the comparative liberty and ease
of my own room or of the maid-servants' quarters.

At last, in the big attic that had once been the nursery, I paused
and looked at Jane. A queer sensation came over me.

"Jane," I said slowly, hardly liking to frame the words, "there's
something strange about this room. He wasn't cruel to me, was he?"

"Oh! no, miss," Jane answered promptly. "He wasn't never what you
might call exactly cruel. He was a very good father, and looked
after you well; but he was sort of stern and moody-like--would have
his own way, and didn't pay no attention to fads and fancies, he
called 'em. When you were little, many's the time he sent you up
here for punishment--disobedience and such like."

I took out the photograph and tried, as it were, to think of my
father as alive and with his eyes open. I couldn't remember the
eyes. Jane told me they were blue; but I think what she said was the
sort of impression the face produced upon me. A man not unjust or
harsh in his dealings with myself, but very strong and masterful.