Recalled to Life

Front matter

RECALLED TO LIFE BY GRANT ALLEN AUTHOR OF "what's BRED IN THE BONE," " kalee's SHRINE," etc. BRISTOL J. W. Arrowsmith, ii Quay Street LONDON Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent St. Co. Limited All rights reserved CONTENTS. Chap. Page I. UNA CALLINGHAM'S FIRST RECOLLECTION ... 5 II. BEGINNING LIFE AGAIN 12 III. AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR 22 IV. THE STORV OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS 36 V. I BECOME A WOMAN 49 VI. RE-LIVING MY LIFE 62 VII. THE GRANGE AT WOODBURY 72 VIII. A VISION OF DEAD YEARS 87 IX. HATEFUL SUSPICIONS 95 X. YET ANOTHER PHOTOGRAPH IoS XI. THE VISION RECURS Iig XII. THE MOORES OF TORQUAY I26 XIII. DR. IVOR OF BABBICOMBE I35 XIV. MY WELCOME TO CANADA I43 XV. A NEW ACQUAINTANCE 1 55 XVI. MY PLANS ALTER I75 XVII. A STRANGE RECOGNITION 183 XVIII. MURDER WILL OUT I92 XIX. THE REAL MURDERER 202 XX. THE STRANGER FROM THE SEA 211 XXI. THE PLOT UNRAVELS ITSELF 226 XXII. MY MEMORY RETURNS 234 XXIII. THE FATAL SHOT 245 XXIV. ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

Chapter I

■Una Callingbam's -first IRecolIection. TSj-T may sound odd to say so, but the very Slj? earliest fact that impressed itself on my memory was a scene that took place — so I was told — Avhen I was eighteen years old, in my father's house, The Grange, at Woodbury. My babyhood, my childhood, my girlhood, my school-days were all utterly blotted out by that one strange^shock of horror. My past life became exactly as though it had neA'er been. I forgot my own name. I forgot my mother-tongue. I forgot everything I had ever done or knoAvn or thought about. Except for the power to walk and stand and perform simple actions of every-day use, I became a baby in arms again, 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." I was examined and reported upon as a Psychological Curiosity.

But at the time, I knew nothing of all this. A thunderbolt, as it were, destroyed at one blow every relic, every trace of my previous existence ; and I began life all over again, with that terrible scene of blood as my first birthday and practical starting point. I remember it all even now with horrible dis tinctness. Each item in it photographed itself vividly on my mind's eye. I saw it as in a picture — just as clearly, just as visually. And the effect, now I look back upon it with a maturer judgment, was precisely like a photograph in another way too. It was wholly unrelated in time and space : it stood alone by itself, lighted up by a single spark, without rational connection before or after it. What led up to it all, I hadn't the very faintest idea. I only knew the Event itself took place ; and I, like a statue, stood rooted in the midst of it.

And this was the Picture as, for many long months, it presented itself incessantly to my startled brain, by day and by night, awake or asleep, in colours more distinct than words can possibly paint them. I saw myself standing in a large, square room — a very handsome old room, filled with bookshelves like a library. On one side stood a table, and on the table a box. A flash of light rendered the whole scene visible. But it wasn't light that came in through the window. It was rather like light ning, so quick it was, and clear, and short-lived, and terrible. Half-way to the door, I stood and looked in 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 jets from a wound on his left breast. I didn't even know at the moment the man was my father ; though slowly, afterward, by the concurrent testimony of others, I learnt to call him so.

But his relation ship wasn't part of the Picture to me. There, he was only in my eyes a man — a man well past middle age, with a long white beard, now dabbled with the thick blood that kept gurgling so hatefully from the red spot in his waistcoat. He lay on his back, half-curled round toward one arm, exactly as he fell. And the revolver he had been shot with lay on the ground not far from him. But that wasn't all the Picture. The murderer was there as well as the victim. Besides the table, and the box, and the wounded man, and the pistol, I saw another figure behind, getting out of the window. It was the figure of a man, I should say about twenty-five or thirty : he had just raised himself to the ledge, and was poising to leap ; for the room, as I afterwards learned, though on the ground floor, stood raised on a basement above the garden behind.

I couldn't see the man's face, or any part of him, indeed, except his stooping back, and his feet, and his neck, and his elbows. But what little I saw was printed indelibly on the very fibre of my nature. I could have recognised that man anywhere if I saw him in the same attitude. I could have sworn to him in any court of justice on the strength 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 mental photograph. The man was well dressed, and had the bearing of a gentleman. Looking back upon the scene long after, when I had learned once more what words and things meant, I could feel instinctively this was no common burglar, no vulgar murderer. Whatever might have been the man's object in shooting my father, I was certain from the very first it was not mere robbery.

But at the time, I 'm confident, I never reasoned about his motives or his actions in any way. I merely took in the scene, as it were, passively, in a great access of horror, which ren dered me incapable of 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 pistol lying pointed with its muzzle towards his body, the pool of blood that soaked deep into the Turkey carpet beneath, the ledge of the window, the young man's rounded back as he paused and hesitated. And I 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 long after. I must have seen him before : I must surely have been there when the crime was committed.

I must have known at the moment everything about it. But the blank that came over my memory, came over it with the fatal shot. All that went before, was to me as though it were not. I recollect vaguely, as the first point in my life, that my eyes were shut hard, and darkness came over me. While they were so shut, I heard an explosion. Next moment, I be lieve, I opened them, and saw this Picture. No sensitive-plate could have photographed it more instantaneously, as by an electric spark, than did my retina that evening, as for months after I saw it all. In another moment, I shut my lids again, and all was over. There was darkness once more, and I was alone with my Horror. In years then to come, I puzzled my head much as to the meaning of the Picture. Gradually, step by step, I worked some cf it out, with the aid of my friends, and of the evidence tendered at the coroner's inquest.

But for the moment I knew nothing of all that. I was a newborn baby again. Only with this important difference. They say our minds at birth are like a sheet of white paper, ready to take whatever impressions may fall upon them. Mine was like a sheet all covered and obscured by one hateful picture. It was weeks, I fancy, before I knew or was conscious of anything else but that. The Picture and a great Horror divided my life between them. Recollect, I didn't even remember the murdered man was my father. I. didn't recognise the room as one in our own old house at Woodbury. I didn't know anything at all except what I tell you here. I saw the corpse, the blood, the box on the table, the wires by the side, the bottles and baths and plates of an amateur photographer's kit, without knowing what they all meant.

I saw even the books not as books but as visible points of colour. It had something the effect on me that it might have upon anyone else to be dropped suddenly on the stage of a theatre at the very moment when a hideous crime was being com mitted, and to believe it real, or rather, to know it by some vague sense as hateful and actual. Here my history began. I date from that Picture. My second babyhood was passed in the shadow of the abiding Horror.

Chapter II

Xife again. happened after is far more vague ISlgfl to me. Compared with the vividness ' \a, of that one initial Picture, the events of the next few months have only the blurred indistinctness of all childish memories. For I was a child once more, in all save stature, and had to learn to remember things just like other children. I will try to tell the whole tale over again exactly as it then struck me. After the Picture, I told you, I shut my eyes in alarm for a second. When I opened them once more there was a noise, a very great noise, and my recollection is that people had burst wildly into the room, and were lifting the dead body, and bending over it in astonishment, and speaking loud to me, and staring at me. I believe they broke the door open, though that's rather inference than memory ; I learnt it afterwards.

Soon some of them rushed to the open window and looked out into the garden. Then, suddenly, a man gave a shout, and leaping on to the sill, jumped down in pursuit, as I thought, of the murderer. As time went on, more people flocked in ; and some of them looked at the body and the pool of blood ; and some of them turned round and spoke to me. But what they said or what they meant I hadn't the slightest idea. The noise of the pistol-shot still rang loud in my ears : the ineffable Horror still drowned all my senses. After a while, another man came in, with an air of authority, and felt my pulse and my brow, and lifted me on to a sofa. But I didn't even remember there was such a thing as a doctor. I lay there for a while, quite dazed ; and the man, who was kindly-looking and close-shaven and fatherly, gave me something in a glass : after which he turned round and examined the body.

He looked hard at the revolver, too, and chalked its place on the ground. Then I saw no more, for two women lifted me in their arms and took me up to bed ; and with that, the first scene of my childhood seemed to end entirely. I lay in bed for a day or two, during which time I was dimly aware of much commotion going on here and there in the house ; and the doctor came night and morning, and tended me carefully. I suppose I may call him the doctor now, though at the time I didn't call him so — I knew him merely as a visible figure. I don't believe I thought at all during those earliest days, or gave things names in any known language. They rather passed before me dreamily in long procession, like a vague panorama. When people spoke to me, it was like the sound of a foreign tongue. I attached no more importance to anything the}' said than to the cawing of the rooks in the trees by the rectory.

At the end of five days, the doctor came once more, and watched me a great deal, and spoke 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 particulars, such as the names of people and the places I had lived in.

Words soon came back to me : names and facts were lost : I knew the world as a whole, not my own old part in it. Well, not to make my story too long in these early childish stages, we went on the train, as it seemed to me, a long way across fields to Aunt Emma's. I didn't know she was Aunt Emma then, for, indeed, I had never seen her before ; but I remember arriving there at her pretty little cottage, and seeing a sweet old lady. — barely sixty, I should say, but with smooth white hair, — who stood on the steps of the house and cried like a child, and held out her hands to me, and hugged me and kissed me. And it was there that I learned my first word. A great many times over, she spoke about " Una." She said it so often, I caught vaguely at the sound. And nurse, when she answered her, said " Una " also.

Then, when Aunt Emma called me, she always said "Una." So it came to me dimly that Una meant me. But I didn't exactly recollect it had been my name before, though I learned in due time afterwards that I 'd always been called so. However, just at first, I picked up the word as a child might pick it up ; and when, some months later, I began to talk easily, I spoke of myself always in the third person as Una. I can remember with a smile now how I went one day to Aunt Emma — I, a great girl of eighteen — and held up my skirt, that I 'd muddied in the street, and said to her, with great gravity : "Una naughty girl: Una got her frock wet. Aunt Emma going to scold poor Una for being so naughty ! " Not that I often smiled, in those days ; for, in spite of Aunt Emma's kindness, my second girl hood, like my first, was avery unhappy one.

The Horror and the Picture pursued me too close. It was months and months before I could get rid for a moment of that persistent nightmare. And yet I had everything else on earth to make me happy. Aunt Emma lived in a pretty east-coast town, with high bracken-clad downs, and breezy common beyond ; while in front stretched great sands, where I loved to race about and to play cricket and tennis. It was the loveliest town that ever you saw in your life, with a broken chancel to the grand old church, and a lighthouse on a hill, with delicious views to seaward. The doctor had sent me there (I know now) as soon as I was well enough to move, in order to get me away from the terrible associations of The Grange at Woodbury. As long as I lived in the midst of scenes which would remind me of poor father, he said, and of his tragical death, there was no hope of my recovery.

The only chance for me to regain what I had lost in that moment of shock was complete change of air, of life, of surroundings. Aunt Emma, for her part, was only too glad to take me in : and as poor papa had died intestate, Aunt Emma was now, of course, my legal guardian. She was my mother's sister, I learned as time went on ; and there had been feud while he lived between her and my father. Why, I couldn't imagine. She was the sweetest old soul I ever knew, indeed, and what on earth he could have quarrelled with her about I never could fathom. She tended me so carefully that as months went by, the Horror began to decrease and my soul to become calm again. I grew gradually able to remain in a room alone for a few minutes at a time, and to sleep at night in a bed by myself, if only there was a candle, and nurse was in another bed in the same room close by me.

Yet every now and again a fresh shivering fit came on. At such times I would cover my head with the bedclothes and cower, and see the Picture even so floating visibly in mid-air like a vision before me. My second education must have been almost as much of a business as my first had been, only rather less longsome. I had first to relearn the English language, which came back to me by degrees, much quicker, of course, than I had 2 * picked it up in my childhood. Then I had to begin again with reading, writing, and arithmetic — all new to me in a way, and all old in another. Whatever I learned and whatever I read seemed novel while I learned it, but familiar the moment I had thoroughly grasped it. To put it shortly, I could remember nothing of myself, but I could recall many things, after a time, as soon as they were told me clearly.

The process was rather a process of reminding than of teaching, properly so called. But it took some years for me to recall things, even when I was reminded of them. I spent four years at Aunt Emma's, growing gradually to my own age again. At the end of that time I was counted a girl of twenty-two, much like any other. But I was older than my age ; and the shadow of the Horror pursued me incessantly. All that time I knew, too, from what I heard said in the house that my father's murderer had never been caught, and that nobody even knew who he was, or anything definite about him. The police gave him up as an uncaught criminal. He was still at large, and might always be so. I knew this from vague hints and from vague hints alone ; for whenever I tried to ask, I was hushed up at once with an air of authority.

"Una, dearest," Aunt Emma would say, in her quiet fashion, " you mustn't talk about that night. I have Dr. Wade's strict orders that nothing must be s.iid to you about it, and above all nothing that could in any way excite or arouse you." So I was fain to keep my peace ; for though Aunt Emma was kind, she ruled me still in all things like a little girl, as I was when I came to her.

Chapter III

an mnejpecteo Wisitor. §NE morning, after I 'd been four whole years at Aunt Emma's, I heard a ring at the bell, and, looking over the stairs, saw a tall and handsome man in a semi:military coat, who asked in a most audible voice for Miss Callingham. Maria, the housemaid, hesitated a moment " Miss Callingham 's in, sir," she answered in a somewhat dubious tone; "but I don't know whether I ought to let you see her or not. My mistress is out ; and I 've strict orders that no strangers are to call on Miss Callingham when her aunt 's not here." And she held the door ajar in her hand undecidedly. The tall man smiled, and seemed to me to slip a coin quietly into Maria's palm. "So much the better," he answered, with un obtrusive persistence ; " I thought Miss Moore was out. That 's just why I 've come.

I 'm an officer from Scotland Yard, and I want to see Miss Callingham — alone — most particularly." Maria drew herself up and paused. My heart stood still within me at this chance of enlightenment. I guessed what he meant ; so I called over the stairs to her, in a tremor of excitement : " Show the gentleman into the drawing-room, Maria. I '11 come down to him at once." For I was dying to know the explanation of the Picture that haunted me so persistently ; and as nobody at home would ever tell me anything worth knowing about it, I thought this was as good an opportunity as I could get for making a beginning towards the solution of the mystery. Well, I ran into my own room as quick as quick could be, and set my front hair straight, and slipped on a hat and jacket (for I was in my morning dress), and then went down to the drawing-room to see the Inspector.

He rose as I entered. He was a gentleman, I felt at once. His manner was as deferential, as kind, and as considerate to my sensitiveness, as anything it 's possible for you to imagine in anyone. " I 'm sorry to have to trouble you, Miss Callingham," he said, with a very gentle smile ; " but I daresay you can understand yourself the object of my visit. I could have wished to come in a more authorised way ; but I 've been in corre spondence with Miss Moore for some time past as to the desirability of reopening the inquiry with regard to your father's unfortunate death ; and I thought the time might now have arrived when it would be possible to put a few questions to you personally upon that unhappy subject. Miss Moore objected to my plan. She thought it would still perhaps be prejudicial to your health — a point in which Dr. Wade, I must say, entirely agrees with her.

Nevertheless, in the interests of Justice, as the murderer is still at large, I 've ventured to ask you for this interview ; because what I read in the newspapers about the state of your health ." I interrupted him, astonished. " What you read in the newspapers about the state of my health ! " I repeated, thunderstruck. " Why, surely they don't put the state of my health in the newspapers ! " For I didn't know then I was a Psychological Phenomenon. The Inspector smiled blandly, and pulling out his pocket-book, selected a cutting from a pile that apparently all referred to me. "You're mistaken," he said, briefly. "The newspapers, on the contrary, have treated your case at great length. See, here 's the latest report. That 's clipped from last Wednesday's Telegraph." I remembered then that a paragraph of just that size had been carefully cut out of Wednes day's paper before I was allowed by Aunt Emma to read it.

Aunt Emma always glanced over the paper first, indeed, and often cut out such offend ing paragraphs. But I never attached much importance to their absence before, because I thought it was merely a little fussy result of auntie's good old English sense of maidenly modesty. I supposed she merely meant to spare my blushes. I knew girls were often prevented on particular days from reading the papers. But now I seized the paragraph he handed me, and read it with deep interest. It was the very first time I had seen my own name in a printed newspaper. I didn't know then how often it had figured there. The paragraph was headed, "The Woodbury Murder," and it ran something like this, as well as I can remember it : " There are still hopes that the miscreant who shot Mr. Vivian Callingham at The Grange, at Woodbury, some four years since, may be tracked down and punished at last for his cowardly crime.

It will be fresh in everyone's memory, as one of the most romantic episodes in that extraordinary tragedy, that at the precise moment of her father's death, Miss Callingham, who was present in the room during the attack, and who alone might have been a witness capable of recognising or describing the wretched assailant, lost her reason on the spot, owing to the appalling shock to her nervous system, and remained for some months in an imbecile condition. Gradually, as we have informed our readers from time to time, Miss Callingham's intellect has become stronger and stronger ; and though she is still totally unable to remember spontaneously any events that occur red before her father's death, it is hoped it may be possible, by describing vividly certain trains of previous incidents, to recall them in some small degree to her imperfect memory.

Dr. Thornton, of Welbeck Street, who has visited her from time to time on behalf of the Treasury, in conjunction with Dr. Wade, her own medical attendant, went down to Barton -on -the -Sea on Monday, and once more examined Miss Callingham's intellect. Though the Doctor is judiciously reticent as to the result of his visit, it is generally believed at Barton that he thinks the young lady sufficiently recovered to undergo a regular interrogatory ; and in spite of the fact that Dr. Wade is opposed to any such proceeding at present, as prejudicial to the lady's health, it is not unlikely that the Trea sury may act upon their own medical official's opinion, and send down an Inspector from Scot land Yard to make inquiries direct on the subject from Miss Callingham in person." My head swam round.

It was all like a dream to me. I held my forehead with my hands, and gazed blankly at the Inspector. " You understand what all this means ? " he said interrogatively, leaning forward as he spoke. " You remember the murder ? " " Perfectly," I answered him, trembling all over. " I remember every detail of it. I could describe to you exactly all the objects in the room. The Picture it left behind has burned itself into my brain like a flash of lightning ! " The Inspector drew his chair nearer. " Now, Miss Callingham," he said in a very serious voice, " that 's a remarkable expression — ' like a flash of lightning.' Bear in mind, this is a matter of life and death to somebody some where. Somebody's neck may depend upon your answers. Will you tell me exactly how much you remember ? " I told him in a few words precisely how the scene had imprinted itself on my memory.