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RECALLED TO LIFE
BY GRANT ALLEN
CONTENTS.
I. UNA CALLINGHAM'S FIRST RECOLLECTION
II. BEGINNING LIFE AGAIN
III. AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR
IV. THE STORY OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS
V. I BECOME A WOMAN
VI. RE-LIVING MY LIFE
VII. THE GRANGE AT WOODBURY
VIII. A VISION OF DEAD YEARS
IX. HATEFUL SUSPICIONS
X. YET ANOTHER PHOTOGRAPH
XI. THE VISION RECURS
XII. THE MOORES OF TORQUAY
XIII. DR. IVOR OF BABBICOMBE
XIV. MY WELCOME TO CANADA
XV. A NEW ACQUAINTANCE
XVI. MY PLANS ALTER
XVII. A STRANGE RECOGNITION
XVIII. MURDER WILL OUT
XIX. THE REAL MURDERER
XX. THE STRANGER FROM THE SEA
XXI. THE PLOT UNRAVELS ITSELF
XXII. MY MEMORY RETURNS
XXIII. THE FATAL SHOT
XXIV. ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
CHAPTER I.
UNA CALLINGHAM'S FIRST RECOLLECTION
It may sound odd to say so, but the very earliest fact thatimpressed itself on my memory was a scene that took place--so I wastold--when I was eighteen years old, in my father's house, TheGrange, at Woodbury.
My babyhood, my childhood, my girlhood, my school-days were allutterly blotted out by that one strange shock of horror. My pastlife became exactly as though it had never been. I forgot my ownname. I forgot my mother-tongue. I forgot everything I had ever doneor known or thought about. Except for the power to walk and standand perform simple actions of every-day use, I became a baby in armsagain, with a nurse to take care of me. The doctors told me, later,I had fallen into what they were pleased to call "a Second State." Iwas examined and reported upon as a Psychological Curiosity. But atthe time, I knew nothing of all this. A thunderbolt, as it were,destroyed at one blow every relic, every trace of my previousexistence; and I began life all over again, with that terrible sceneof blood as my first birthday and practical starting point.
I remember it all even now with horrible distinctness. Each item init photographed itself vividly on my mind's eye. I saw it as in apicture--just as clearly, just as visually. And the effect, now Ilook back upon it with a maturer judgment, was precisely like aphotograph in another way too. It was wholly unrelated in time andspace: it stood alone by itself, lighted up by a single spark,without rational connection before or after it. What led up to itall, I hadn't the very faintest idea. I only knew the Event itselftook place; and I, like a statue, stood rooted in the midst of it.
And this was the Picture as, for many long months, it presenteditself incessantly to my startled brain, by day and by night, awakeor asleep, in colours more distinct than words can possibly paintthem.
I saw myself standing in a large, square room--a very handsome oldroom, filled with bookshelves like a library. On one side stood atable, and on the table a box. A flash of light rendered the wholescene visible. But it wasn't light that came in through the window.It was rather like lightning, so quick it was, and clear, andshort-lived, and terrible. Half-way to the door, I stood and lookedin horror at the sight revealed before my eyes by that sudden flash.A man lay dead in a little pool of blood that gurgled by short jetsfrom a wound on his left breast. I didn't even know at the momentthe man was my father; though slowly, afterward, by the concurrenttestimony of others, I learnt to call him so. But his relationshipwasn't part of the Picture to me. There, he was only in my eyes aman--a man well past middle age, with a long white beard, nowdabbled with the thick blood that kept gurgling so hatefully fromthe red spot in his waistcoat. He lay on his back, half-curled roundtoward one arm, exactly as he fell. And the revolver he had beenshot with lay on the ground not far from him.
But that wasn't all the Picture. The murderer was there as well asthe victim. Besides the table, and the box, and the wounded man, andthe pistol, I saw another figure behind, getting out of the window.It was the figure of a man, I should say about twenty-five orthirty: he had just raised himself to the ledge, and was poising toleap; for the room, as I afterwards learned, though on the groundfloor, stood raised on a basement above the garden behind. Icouldn't see the man's face, or any part of him, indeed, except hisstooping back, and his feet, and his neck, and his elbows. But whatlittle I saw was printed indelibly on the very fibre of my nature. Icould have recognised that man anywhere if I saw him in the sameattitude. I could have sworn to him in any court of justice on thestrength of his back alone, so vividly did I picture it.
He was tall and thin, but he stooped like a hunchback.
There were other points worth notice in that strange mentalphotograph. The man was well-dressed, and had the bearing of agentleman. Looking back upon the scene long after, when I hadlearned once more what words and things meant, I could feelinstinctively this was no common burglar, no vulgar murderer.Whatever might have been the man's object in shooting my father, Iwas certain from the very first it was not mere robbery. But at thetime, I'm confident, I never reasoned about his motives or hisactions in any way. I merely took in the scene, as it were,passively, in a great access of horror, which rendered me incapableof sense or thought or speech or motion. I saw the table, the box,the apparatus by its side, the murdered man on the floor, the pistollying pointed with its muzzle towards his body, the pool of bloodthat soaked deep into the Turkey carpet beneath, the ledge of thewindow, the young man's rounded back as he paused and hesitated. AndI also saw, like an instantaneous flash, one hand pushed behind him,waving me off, I almost thought, with the gesture of one warning.
Why didn't I remember the murderer's face? That puzzled me longafter. I must have seen him before: I must surely have been therewhen the crime was committed. I must have known at the momenteverything about it. But the blank that came over my memory, cameover it with the fatal shot. All that went before, was to me asthough it were not. I recollect vaguely, as the first point in mylife, that my eyes were shut hard, and darkness came over me. Whilethey were so shut, I heard an explosion. Next moment, I believe, Iopened them, and saw this Picture. No sensitive-plate could havephotographed it more instantaneously, as by an electric spark, thandid my retina that evening, as for months after I saw it all. Inanother moment, I shut my lids again, and all was over. There wasdarkness once more, and I was alone with my Horror.
In years then to come, I puzzled my head much as to the meaning ofthe Picture. Gradually, step by step, I worked some of it out, withthe aid of my friends, and of the evidence tendered at the coroner'sinquest. But for the moment I knew nothing of all that. I was anewborn baby again. Only with this important difference. They sayour minds at birth are like a sheet of white paper, ready to takewhatever impressions may fall upon them. Mine was like a sheet allcovered and obscured by one hateful picture. It was weeks, I fancy,before I knew or was conscious of anything else but that. ThePicture and a great Horror divided my life between them.
Recollect, I didn't even remember the murdered man was my father. Ididn't recognise the room as one in our own old house at Woodbury. Ididn't know anything at all except what I tell you here. I saw thecorpse, the blood, the box on the table, the wires by the side, thebottles and baths and plates of an amateur photographer's kit,without knowing what they all meant. I saw even the books not asbooks but as visible points of colour. It had something the effecton me that it might have upon anyone else to be dropped suddenly onthe stage of a theatre at the very moment when a hideous crime wasbeing committed, and to believe it real, or rather, to know it bysome vague sense as hateful and actual.
Here my history began. I date from that Picture. My
second babyhoodwas passed in the shadow of the abiding Horror.