Recalled to Life eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 211 pages of information about Recalled to Life.

Recalled to Life eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 211 pages of information about Recalled to Life.

Not that I often smiled, in those days; for, in spite of Aunt Emma’s kindness, my second girlhood, like my first, was a very 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 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.

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Recalled to Life from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.