Recalled to Life by Grant Allen (best historical fiction books of all time TXT) 📖

stirs no chord--recalls absolutely nothing. But I want to know about that Athletic Meeting. Was my poor father there that day? And did he take a set of photographs?"

Minnie clapped her hands triumphantly.

"I KNEW you remembered!" she cried. "Of course, Cousin Vivian was there. We drove over in a break. You MUST remember that. And he took a whole lot of instantaneous photographs."

My hand trembled violently in my cousin's. I felt I was now on the very eve of a great discovery.

"Minnie," I said, tentatively, "do you think your papa would drive us over some day and--and show us the place again?"

"Of course he would, dear," Minnie answered, with a gentle pressure of my hand. "He'd be only too delighted. Whatever you choose. You know you were always such a favourite of daddy's."

I knew nothing of the sort; but I was glad to learn it. I drew Minnie out a little more about the Athletics and my visit to Berry Pomeroy. She wouldn't tell me much: she was too illusive and indefinite: she never could get the notion out of her head, somehow, that I remembered all about it, and was only pretending to forgetfulness. But I gathered from what she said, that Dr. Ivor and I must have flirted a great deal; or, at least, that he must have paid me a good lot of attention. My father didn't like it, Minnie said; he thought Dr. Ivor wasn't well enough off to marry me. He was a distant cousin of ours, of course--everything was always "of course" with that dear bright Minnie--what, didn't I know that? Oh, yes, his mother was one of the Moores of Barnstaple, cousin Edward's people. His name was Courtenay Moore Ivor, you know--though I knew nothing of the sort. And he was awfully clever. And, oh, so handsome!

"Is he at Berry Pomeroy still?" I asked, trembling, thinking this would be a good person to get information from about the people at the Athletic Sports.

"Oh dear, no," Minnie answered, looking hard at me, curiously. "He was never at Berry Pomeroy. He had a practice at Babbicombe. He's in Canada now, you know. He went over six months after Cousin Vivian's death. I think, dear,"--she hesitated,--"he never QUITE got over your entirely forgetting him, even if you forgot your whole past history."

This was a curious romance to me, that Minnie thus sprang on me--a romance of my own past life of which I myself knew nothing.

We sat late talking, and I could see Minnie was very full indeed of Dr. Ivor. Over and over again she recurred to his name, and always as though she thought it might rouse some latent chord in my memory. But nothing came of it. If ever I had cared for Dr. Ivor at all, that feeling had passed away utterly with the rest of my experiences.

When Minnie rose to go, I took her hand once more in mine. As I did so, I started. Something about it seemed strangely familiar. I looked at it close with a keen glance. Why, this was curious! It was Aunt Emma's hand: it was my mother's hand: it was the hand in my mental Picture: it was the hand of the murderer!

"It's just like auntie's," I said with an effort, seeing Minnie noticed my start.

She looked at it and laughed.

"The Moore hand," she said gaily. "We all have it, except you. It's awfully persistent."

I turned it over in front and examined the palm. At sight of it my brain reeled. This was surely magic! Minnie Moore's hand, too, was scarred over with cuts, exactly like Aunt Emma's!"

"Why, how on earth did you do that?" I cried, thunderstruck at the discovery.

But Minnie only laughed again, a bright girlish laugh.

"Climbing over that beastly wall at The Grange," she said with a merry look. "Oh, what fun we did have! We climbed it together. We were dreadful tomboys in those days, dear, you and I: but you were luckier than I was, and didn't cut yourself with the bottle-glass."

This was too surprising to be passed over unnoticed. When Minnie was gone, I lay awake and pondered about it. Had all the Moores got scars on their hands, I wondered? And how many people, I asked myself, had cut themselves time and again in climbing over that barricaded garden-wall of my father's?

The Moore hand might be hereditary, but not surely the scars. Was the murderer, then, a Moore, and was that the meaning of Dr. Marten's warning?


CHAPTER XIII.

DR. IVOR OF BABBICOMBE


Two days later, Cousin Willie drove us over to Berry Pomeroy. The lion of the place is the castle, of course; but Minnie had told him beforehand I wanted, for reasons of my own, to visit the cricket-field where the sports were held "the year Dr. Ivor won the mile race, you remember." So we went there straight. As soon as we entered, I recognised the field at once, and the pavilion, and the woods, as being precisely the same as those presented in the photograph. But I got no further than that. The captain of the cricket-club was on the ground that day, and I managed to get into conversation with him, and strolled off in the grounds. There I showed him the photograph, and asked if he could identify the man climbing over the wagon: but he said he couldn't recognise him. Somebody or other from Torquay, perhaps; not a regular resident. The figures were so small, and so difficult to make sure about. If I'd leave him the photograph, perhaps--but at that I drew back, for I didn't want anybody, least of all at Torquay, to know what quest I was engaged upon.

We drove back, a merry party enough, in spite of my failure. Minnie was always so jolly, and her mirth was contagious. She talked all the way still of Dr. Ivor, half-teasing me. It was all very well my pretending not to remember, she said; but why did I want to see the cricket-field if it wasn't for that? Poor Courtenay! if only he knew, how delighted he'd be to know he wasn't forgotten! For he really took it to heart, my illness--she always called it my illness, and so I suppose it was. From the day I lost my memory, nothing seemed to go right with him; and he was never content till he went and buried himself somewhere in the wilds of Canada.

That evening again, I sat with Minnie in my room. I was depressed and distressed. I didn't want to cry before Minnie, but I could have cried with good heart for sheer vexation. Of course I couldn't bear to go showing the photograph to all the world, and letting everybody see I'd made myself a sort of amateur detective. They would mistake my motives so. And yet I didn't know how I was ever to find out my man any other way. It was that or nothing. I made up my mind I would ask Cousin Willie.

I took out the photograph, as if unintentionally, when I went to my box, and laid it down with my curling-tongs on the table close by Minnie. Minnie took it up abstractedly and looked at it with an indefinite gaze.

"Why, this is the cricket-field!" she cried, as soon as she collected her senses. "One of your father's experiments. The earliest acmegraphs. How splendidly they come out! See, that's Sir Everard at the bottom; and there's little Jack Hillier above; and this on one side's Captain Brooks; and there, in front of all--well, you know HIM anyhow, Una. Now, don't pretend you forget! That's Courtenay Ivor!"

Her finger was on the man who stood poised ready to jump. With an awful recoil, I drew back and suppressed a scream. It was on the tip of my tongue to cry out, "Why, that's my father's murderer!"

But, happily, with a great effort of will I restrained myself. I saw it all at a glance. That, then, was the meaning of Dr. Marten's warning! No wonder, I thought, the shock had disorganised my whole brain. If Minnie was right, I was in love once with that man. And I must have seen my lover murder my father!

For I didn't doubt, from what Minnie said, I had really once loved Dr. Ivor. Horrible and ghastly as it might be to realise it, I didn't doubt it was the truth. I had once loved the very man I was now bent on pursuing as a criminal and a murderer!

"You're sure that's him, Minnie?" I cried, trying to conceal my agitation. "You're sure that's Courtenay Ivor, the man stooping on the wagon-top?"

Minnie looked at me, smiling. She thought I was asking for a very different reason.

"Yes, that's him, right enough, dear," she said. "I could tell him among a thousand. Why, the Moore hand alone would be quite enough to know him by. It's just like my own. We've all of us got it--except yourself. I always said you weren't one of us. You're a regular born Callingham."

I gazed at her fixedly. I could hardly speak.

"Oh, Minnie!" I cried once more, "have you ... have you any photograph of him?"

"No, we haven't, dear," Minnie answered.

"That was a fad of Courtenay's, you know. Wherever he went, he'd never be photographed. He was annoyed that day that your father should have taken him unawares. He hated being 'done,' he said. He's so handsome and so nice, but he's not a bit conceited. And he was such a splendid bicyclist! He rode over and back on his bicycle that day, and then ran in all the races as if it were nothing."

A light burst over me at once. This was circumstantial evidence. The murderer who disappeared as if by magic the moment his crime was committed must have come and gone all unseen, no doubt, on his bicycle. He must have left it under the window till his vile deed was done, and then leapt out upon it in a second and dashed off whence he came like a flash of lightning.

It was a premeditated crime, in that case, not the mere casual result of a sudden quarrel.

I must find out this man now, were it only to relieve my own sense of mystery.

"Minnie," I said once more, screwing up my courage to ask, "where's Dr. Ivor now? I mean--that is to say--in what part of Canada?"

Minnie looked at me and laughed.

"There, I told you so!" she said, merrily. "It's not the least bit of use your pretending you're not in love with him, Una. Why, just look how you tremble! You're as white as a ghost! And then you say you don't care for poor Courtenay! I forget the exact name of the place where he lives, but I've got it in my desk, and I can tell you to-morrow.--Oh, yes; it's Palmyra, on the Canada Pacific. I suppose you want to write to him. Or perhaps you mean to go out and offer yourself bodily."

It was awful having to bottle up the truth in one's own heart, and to laugh and jest like this; but I endured it somehow.

"No, it's not that," I said gravely. "I've other reasons of my own for asking his address, Minnie. I want to go out there, it's true; but not because I cherish the faintest pleasing recollection of Dr. Ivor in any way."

Minnie scanned me over in surprise.

"Well, how