THE GRANGE AT WOODBURY
I stopped for three weeks in Jane's lodgings; and before the end of
that time, Jane and I had got upon the most intimate footing. It was
partly her kindliness that endeared her to me, and her constant
sense of continuity with the earlier days which I had quite
forgotten; but it was partly too, I felt sure, a vague revival
within my own breast of a familiarity that had long ago subsisted
between us. I was coming to myself again, on one side of my nature.
Day by day I grew more certain that while facts had passed away from
me, appropriate emotions remained vaguely present. Among the
Woodbury people that I met, I recognised none to say that I knew
them; but I knew almost at first sight that I liked this one and
disliked that one. And in every case alike, when I talked the matter
over afterwards with Jane, she confirmed my suspicion that in my
First State I had liked or disliked just those persons respectively.
My brain was upset, but my heart remained precisely the same as
ever.
On my second morning I went up to The Grange with her. The house was
still unlet. Since the day of the murder, nobody cared to live in
it. The garden and shrubbery had been sadly neglected: Jane took me
out of the way as we walked up the path, to show me the place where
the photographic apparatus had been found embedded in the grass, and
where the murderer had cut his hands getting over the wall in his
frantic agitation. The wall was pretty high and protected with
bottle-glass. I guessed he must have been tall to scramble over it.
That seemed to tell against Jane's crude idea that a woman might
have done it.
But when I said so to Jane, she met me at once with the crushing
reply: "Perhaps it wasn't the same person that came back for the
box." I saw she was right again. I had jumped at a conclusion. In
cases like this, one must leave no hypothesis untried, jump at no
conclusions of any sort. Clearly, that woman ought to have been made
a detective.
As I entered the house the weird sense of familiarity that pursued
me throughout rose to a very high pitch. I couldn't fairly say,
indeed, that I remembered the different rooms. All I could say with
certainty was that I had seen them before. To this there were three
exceptions--the three that belonged to my Second State--the library,
my bedroom, and the hall and staircase. The first was indelibly
printed on my memory as a component part of the Picture, and I found
my recollection of every object in the room almost startling in its
correctness. Only, there was an alcove on one side that I'd quite
forgotten, and I saw why most clearly. I stood with my back to it as
I looked at the Picture. The other two bits I remembered as the room
in which I had had my first great illness, and the passage down
which I had been carried or helped when I was taken to Aunt Emma's.
I had begun to recognise now that the emotional impression made upon
me by people and things was the only sure guide I still possessed as
to their connection or association with my past history. And the
rooms at The Grange had each in this way some distinctive
characteristic. The library, of course, was the chief home of the
Horror which had hung upon my spirit even during the days when I
hardly knew in any intelligible sense the cause of it. But the
drawing-room and dining-room both produced upon my mind a vague
consciousness of constraint. I was dimly aware of being ill at ease
and uncomfortable in them. My own bedroom, on the contrary, gave me
a pleasant feeling of rest and freedom and security: while the
servants'-hall and the kitchen seemed perfect paradises of liberty.
"Ah! many's the time, miss," Jane said with a sigh, looking over at
the empty grate, "you'd come down here to make cakes or puddings,
and laugh and joke like a child with Mary an' me. I often used to
say to Emily--her as was cook here before Ellen Smith,--'Miss Una's
never so happy as when she's down here in the kitchen.' And 'That's
true what you say,' says Emily to me, many a time and often."
That was exactly the impression left upon my own mind. I began to
conclude, in a dim, formless way, that my father must have been a
somewhat stern and unsympathetic man; that I had felt constrained
and uncomfortable in his presence upstairs, and had often been
pleased to get away from his eye to the comparative liberty and ease
of my own room or of the maid-servants' quarters.
At last, in the big attic that had once been the nursery, I paused
and looked at Jane. A queer sensation came over me.
"Jane," I said slowly, hardly liking to frame the words, "there's
something strange about this room. He wasn't cruel to me, was he?"
"Oh! no, miss," Jane answered promptly. "He wasn't never what you
might call exactly cruel. He was a very good father, and looked
after you well; but he was sort of stern and moody-like--would have
his own way, and didn't pay no attention to fads and fancies, he
called 'em. When you were little, many's the time he sent you up
here for punishment--disobedience and such like."
I took out the photograph and tried, as it were, to think of my
father as alive and with his eyes open. I couldn't remember the
eyes. Jane told me they were blue; but I think what she said was the
sort of impression the face produced upon me. A man not unjust or
harsh in his dealings with myself, but very strong and masterful. A
man who would have his own way in spite of anybody. A father who
ruled his daughter as a vessel of his making, to be done as he would
with, and be moulded to his fashion.
Still, my visit to The Grange resulted in the end in casting very
little light upon the problem before me. It pained and distressed me
greatly, but it brought no new elements of the case into view: at
best, it only familiarised me with the scene of action of the
tragedy. The presence of the alcove was the one fresh feature.
Nothing recalled to me as yet in any way the murderer's features. I
racked my brain in vain; no fresh image came up in it. I could
recollect nothing about the man or his antecedents.
I almost began to doubt that I would ever succeed in reconstructing
my past, when even the sight of the home in which I had spent my
childish days suggested so few new thoughts or ideas to me.
For a day or two after that I rested at Jane's, lest I should
disturb my brain too much. Then I called once more on the doctor who
had made the post mortem on my father, and given evidence at the
inquest, to see if anything he could say might recall my lapsed
memory.
The moment he came into the room--a man about fifty, close-shaven
and kindly-looking--I recognised him at once, and held out my hand
to him frankly. He surveyed me from head to foot with a good medical
stare, and then wrung my hand in return with extraordinary warmth
and effusion. I could see at once he retained a most pleasing
recollection of my First State, and was really glad to see me.
"What, you remember me then, Una!" he cried, with quite fatherly
delight. "You haven't forgotten me, my dear, as you've forgotten all
the rest, haven't you?"
It was startling to be called by one's Christian name like that, and
by a complete stranger, too; but I was getting quite accustomed now
to these little incongruities.
"Oh, yes; I remember you perfectly," I answered, half-grieved to
distress him, "though I shouldn't have known your name, and didn't
expect to see you. You're the doctor who attended me in my first
great illness--the illness with which my present life began--just
after the murder."
He drew back, a little crestfallen.
"Then that's all you recollect, is it?" he asked. "You don't
remember me before, dear? Not Dr. Marten, who used to take you on
his knee when you were a tiny little girl, and bring you lollipops
from town, to the great detriment of your digestion, and get into
rows with your poor father for indulging you and spoiling you? You
must surely remember me?"
I shook my head slowly. I was sorry to disappoint him; but it was
necessary before all things to get at the bare truth.
"I'm afraid not," I answered. "Do please forgive me! You must have
read in the papers, like everybody else, of the very great change
that has so long come over me. Bear in mind, I can't remember
anything at all that occurred before the murder. That first illness
is to me the earliest recollection of childhood."
He gazed across at me compassionately.
"My poor child," he said in a low voice, like a very affectionate
friend, "it's much better so. You have been mercifully spared a
great deal of pain. Una, when I first saw you at The Grange after
your father's death, I thanked heaven you had been so seized. I
thanked heaven the world had become suddenly a blank to you. I
prayed hard you might never recover your senses again, or at least
your memory. And now that you're slowly returned to life once more,
against all hope or fear, I'm heartily glad it's in this peculiar
way. I'm heartily glad all the past's blotted out for you. You can't
understand that, my child? Ah, no, very likely not. But I think it's
much best for you, all your first life should be wholly forgotten."
He paused for a second. Then he added slowly: "If you remembered it
all, the sense of the tragedy would be far more acute and poignant
even than at present."
"Perhaps so," I said resolutely; "but not the sense of mystery. It's
THAT that appals me so! I'd rather know the truth than be so wrapped
up in the incomprehensible."
He looked at me pityingly once more.
"My poor child," he said, in the same gentle and fatherly voice,
"you don't wholly understand. It doesn't all come home to you. I can
see clearly, from what Inspector Wolferstan told me, after his visit
to you the other day--"
I broke in, in surprise.
"Inspector Wolferstan!" I cried. "Then he came down here to see you,
did he?"
It was horrible to find how all my movements were discussed and
chronicled.
"Yes, he came down here to see me and talk things over," Dr. Marten
went on, as calmly as if it were mere matter of course. "And I could
see from what he said you were still spared much. For instance, you
remember it all only as an event that happened to an old man with a
long white beard. You don't fully realise, except intellectually,
that it was your own father. You're saved, as a daughter, the misery
and horror of thinking and feeling it was your father who lay dead
there."
"That's quite true," I answered. "I admit that I can't feel it all
as deeply as I ought. But none the less, I've come down here to make
a violent effort. Let it cost what it may, I must get at the truth.
I wanted to see whether the sight of The Grange and of Woodbury may
help me to recall the lost scenes in my memory."
To my immense surprise, Dr. Marten rose from his seat, and standing
up before me in a perfect agony of what seemed like terror, half
mixed with affection, exclaimed in a very earnest and resolute
voice:
"Oh, Una, my child, whatever you do--I beg of you--I implore
you--don't try to recall the past at all! Don't attempt it! Don't
dream of it!"
"Why not?" I cried, astonished. "Surely it's my duty to try and find
out my father's murderer!"
Instead of answering me, he looked about him for half a minute in
suspense, as if doubtful what next to do or to say. Then he walked
across with great deliberation to the door of the room, and locked
and double-locked it with furtive alarm, as I interpreted his
action.
So terrified did he seem, indeed, that for a moment the idea
occurred to me in a very vague way--Was I talking with the murderer?
Had the man who himself committed the crime conducted the post
mortem, and put Justice off the scent? And was I now practically at
the mercy of the criminal I was trying to track down? The thought
for a second or two made me feel terribly uncomfortable. But I
glanced at his back and at his hands, and reassured myself. That
broad, short man was not the slim figure of my Picture and of the
photograph. Those large red hands were not the originals of the
small and delicate white palm just displayed at the back in both
those strange documents of the mysterious murder.
The doctor came over again, and drew his chair close to mine.
"Una, my child," he said slowly, "I love you very much, as if you
were my own daughter. I always loved you and admired you, and was
sorry--oh, so sorry!--for you. You've quite forgotten who I am; but
I've not forgotten you. Take what I say as coming from an old
friend, from one who loves you and has your interest at heart. For
heaven's sake, I implore you, my child, make no more inquiries. Try
to forget--not to remember. If you do recollect, you'll be sorry in
the end for it."
"Why so?" I asked, amazed, yet somehow feeling in my heart I could
trust him implicitly. "Why should the knowledge of the true
circumstances of the case make me more unhappy than I am at
present?"
He gazed harder at me than ever.
"Because," he replied in slow tones, weighing each word as he spoke,
"you may find that the murder was committed by some person or
persons you love or once loved very much indeed. You may find it
will rend your very heart-strings to see that person or those
persons punished. You may find the circumstances were wholly
otherwise than you imagine them to be.... Let sleeping dogs lie, my
dear. Without your aid, nothing more can be done. Don't trouble
yourself to put the blood-hounds on the track of some unhappy
creature who might otherwise escape. Don't rake it all up afresh.
Bury it--bury it--bury it!"
He spoke so earnestly that he filled me with vague alarm.
"Dr. Marten," I said solemnly, "answer me just one question. Do you
know who was the murderer?"
"No, no!" he exclaimed, starting once more. "Thank heaven, I can't
tell you that! I don't know. I know nothing. Nobody on earth knows
but the two who were present on the night of the murder, I feel
sure. And of those two, one's unknown, and the other has forgotten."
"But you suspect who he is?" I put in, probing the secret curiously.
He trembled visibly.
"I suspect who he is," he replied, after a moment's hesitation. "But
I have never communicated, and will never communicate, my suspicions
to anybody, not even to you. I will only say this: the person whom I
suspect is one with whom you may now have forgotten all your past
relations, but whom you would be sorry to punish if you recovered
your memory. I formed a strong opinion at the time who that person
was. I formed it from the nature and disposition of the wound, and
the arrangement of the objects in the room when I was called in to
see your father's body."
"And you never said so at the inquest!" I cried, indignant.
He looked at me hard again. Then he spoke in a very slow and earnest
voice:
"For your sake, Una, and for the sake of your affections, I held my
peace," he said. "My dear, the suspicion was but a very slender one:
I had nothing to go upon. And why should I have tried to destroy
your happiness?"
That horrible article in the penny Society paper came back to my
mind once more with hideous suggestiveness. I turned to him almost
fiercely.
"So far as you know, Dr. Marten," I asked, "was I ever in love? Had
I ever an admirer? Was I ever engaged to anyone?"
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled a sort of smile of relief.
"How should I know?" he answered. "Admirers?--yes, dozens of them;
I was one myself. Lovers?--who can say? But I advise you not to
push the inquiry further."
I questioned him some minutes longer, but could get nothing more
from him. Then I rose to go.
"Dr. Marten," I said firmly, "if I remember all, and if it wrings my
heart to remember, I tell you I will give up that man to justice all
the same! I think I know myself well enough to know this much at
least, that I never, never could stoop either to love or to screen a
man who could commit such a foul and dastardly crime as this one."
He took my hand fervently, raised it with warmth to his lips and
kissed it twice over.
"My dear," he said, with tears dropping down his gentle old cheeks,
"this is a very great mystery--a terrible mystery. But I know you
speak the truth. I can see you mean it. Therefore, all the more
earnestly do I beg and beseech you, go away from Woodbury at once,
and as long as you live think no more about it."