Recalled to Life

᠊ Recalled to Life

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Recalled to Life, by Grant Allen (#6 in our series by Grant Allen)
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Title: Recalled to Life
Author: Grant Allen
Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5832] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on September 10, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, RECALLED TO LIFE ***

Charles Aldarondo and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

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 that impressed itself on my memory was a scene that took place--so I was told--when 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 never been. I forgot my own name. I forgot my mother-tongue. I forgot everything I had ever done or known 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 distinctness. 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 lightning, 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 relationship wasn't part of the Picture to me. There, he was only in my eyes a man--a man well past