Chapter 8

A VISION OF DEAD YEARS

The interview with Dr. Marten left me very much disquieted. But it
wasn't the only disquieting thing that occurred at Woodbury. Before
I left the place I happened to go one day into Jane's own little
sitting-room. Jane was anxious I should see it--she wanted me to
know all her house, she said, for the sake of old times: and for the
sake of those old times that I couldn't remember, but when I knew
she'd been kind to me, I went in and looked at it.

There was nothing very peculiar about Jane's little sitting-room:
just the ordinary English landlady's parlour. You know the
type:--square table in the middle; bright blue vases on the
mantelpiece; chromo-lithograph from the Illustrated London News on
the wall; rickety whatnot with glass-shaded wax-flowers in the
recess by the window. But over in one corner I chanced to observe a
framed photograph of early execution, which hung faded and dim
there. Perhaps it was because my father was such a scientific
amateur; but photography, I found out in time, struck the key-note
of my history in every chapter. I didn't know why, but this
particular picture attracted me strangely. It came from The Grange,
Jane told me: she'd hunted it out in the attic over the front
bedroom after the house was shut up. It belonged to a lot of my
father's early attempts that were locked in a box there. "He'd
always been trying experiments and things," she said, "with
photography, poor gentleman."

Faded and dim as it was, the picture riveted my eyes at once by some
unknown power of attraction. I gazed at it long and earnestly. It
represented a house of colonial aspect, square, wood-built, and
verandah-girt, standing alone among strange trees whose very names
and aspects were then unfamiliar to me, but which I nowadays know to
be Australian eucalyptuses. On the steps of the verandah sat a lady
in deep mourning. A child played by her side, and a collie dog lay
curled up still and sleepy in the foreground. The child, indeed,
stirred no chord of any sort in my troubled brain; but my heart came
up into my mouth so at sight of the lady, that I said to myself all
at once in my awe, "That must surely be my mother!"

The longer I looked at it, the more was I convinced I must have
judged aright. Not indeed that in any true sense I could say I
remembered her face or figure: I was so young when she died,
according to everybody's account, that even if I'd remained in my
First State I could hardly have retained any vivid recollection of
her. But both lady and house brought up in me once more to some
vague degree that strange consciousness of familiarity I had noticed
at The Grange: and what was odder still, the sense of wont