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.

With a wild bound of horror, Jack sprang upon me at once.  He seized me bodily in his arms.  He carried me back into the room with irresistible strength.  I fought against him in vain.  He laid me on the sofa.  He bent over me like a whirlwind and smothered me with hot kisses.

“My darling,” he cried, “my darling, then this shock hasn’t killed you!  It hasn’t stunned you like the last!  You’re still your own dear self!  You’ve still strength to think and plan exactly what one would expect from you.  Oh!  Una, my Una, you must wait and hear all.  When you’ve learned how it happened, you won’t wish to act so rashly.”

I struggled to free myself, though his arms were hard and close like a strong man’s around me.

“Let me go, Jack!” I cried feebly, trying to tear myself from his grasp.  “I love you better than I love my own life.  If I would have given you up, how much more must I give up myself, now I know it was I who really did it!”

He held me down by main force.  He pinned me to the sofa.  I suppose it’s because I’m a woman, and weak, and all that—­but I liked even then to feel how strong and how big he was, and how feeble I was myself, like a child in his arms.  And I resisted on purpose, just to feel him hold me.  Somehow, I couldn’t realize, after all, that I was indeed a murderess.  It didn’t seem possible.  I couldn’t believe it was in me.

“Jack,” I said slowly, giving way at last, and letting him hold me down with his small strong hands and slender iron wrist, “tell me, if you will, how I came to do it.  I’ll sit here quite still, if only you’ll tell me.  Am I really a murderess?”

Jack recoiled like one shot.

You a murderess, my spotless Una!” he exclaimed, all aghast.  “If anyone else on earth but you had just asked such a thing in my presence, I’d have leapt at the fellow’s throat, and held him down till I choked him!”

“But I did it!” I cried wildly.  “I remember now, I did it.  It all comes back to me at last.  I fired at him, just so.  I aimed the loaded pistol point-blank at his heart, I can hear the din in my ears.  I can see the flash at the muzzle.  And then I flung down the pistol—­like this—­at my feet:  and darkness came on; and I forgot everything.  Why, Dr. Marten knew that much!  I remember now, he told me he’d formed a very strong impression, from the nature of the wound and the position of the various objects on the floor of the room, who it was that did it!  He must have seen it was I who flung down the pistol.”

Jack gazed at me in suspense.

“He’s a very good friend of yours, then,” he murmured, “that Dr. Marten.  For he never said a word of all that at the inquest.”

“But I must give myself up!” I cried, in a fever of penitence for what that other woman who once was me had done.  “Oh, Jack, do let me!  It’s hateful to know I’m a murderess and to go unpunished.  It’s hateful to draw back from the fate I’d have imposed on another.  I’d like to be hanged for it.  I want to be hanged.  It’s the only possible way to appease one’s conscience.”

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Recalled to Life from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.