Called Back

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• 1914
• Suspense, Drama

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Dr. Ceneri, in his labors for the liberation of Italy from the Austrian yoke, spends the fortunes, of which as sole trustee he has control, on his sister's children, Anthony and Pauline. Under his guardianship, Pauline grows into a beautiful girl, and Macari, one of Ceneri's fellow conspirators in the Garibaldian cause, falls in love with her, but his love is not returned. Anthony is frivolous and extravagant, and as his allowance from his uncle is not enough for his wants, he demands a settlement and the control of his own fortune. Ceneri tries to gain time. One night Pauline goes with her brother to the theater. He brings her back to their uncle's house, and when Ceneri comes in, accompanied by Macari and another man, Petroff, Anthony refuses to wait his uncle's convenience any longer. Pauline goes into an adjoining room, playing and singing softly to herself. A quarrel springs up between Anthony and the other men in the course of which Macari stabs Anthony to the heart. Pauline sees this from her seat at the piano and springs up with a shriek. It is at this moment that Gilbert Vaughan enters the house. Vaughan has been suffering from lenticular cataract and has lost his sight. In a mood of restless depression he leaves his house, intending to walk up and down the pavement outside. Presently he ceases to count his paces, and he finds that he is lost. He asks a belated reveler to take him to his home in Walpole Street, but the drunken man really takes him to Horace Street. Vaughan's latch-key opens the door of Dr. Ceneri's house. He is arrested by the sound of music and waits by a door, listening to Pauline singing. Suddenly he hears a gurgle and a thud, the music ends in a piercing shriek and, forgetting his blindness, Vaughan dashes into the room. He is immediately made prisoner, but they quickly satisfy themselves that he is really blind. They administer an opiate to him and he is then left in a quiet thoroughfare, where he is picked up by the police. His explanations to his old nurse, Priscilla, are disbelieved. No one believes his story and he ceases to talk of it. Two years pass. A specialist performs a successful operation and Vaughan's sight is completely restored. One day he is traveling in Italy when a beautiful girl attracts his attention. He follows her into a church and is puzzled to note the strange lifelessness of her beauty. Three months later he sees the same girl and discovers that her name is Pauline March. By chance he makes her acquaintance, but Pauline only answers him in monosyllables. Nevertheless, his infatuation increases, and he boldly asks Dr. Ceneri's permission to marry Pauline. Ceneri at last consents, but two days after his marriage, Vaughan, to his horror, discovers that Pauline's mind is a blank. Macari, hearing of Pauline's marriage, calls in the hope of profiting by the change in her circumstances. He represents himself as Pauline's brother and tries to enlist Vaughan's aid in recovering from the Italian Government Pauline's fortune, of which he intends to claim one-half. Becoming excited, he takes a knife from the table and stabs heavily on the blotting-pad. Pauline immediately shrieks and faints. Vaughan goes to her aid. Presently she opens her eyes, rises and goes blindly out of the house, followed by her husband. She stops before Dr. Ceneri's old house in Horace Street and will not leave the door. To humor her, Vaughan tries his key in the lock. To his surprise the lock turns. They go upstairs through the dusty house and Pauline mechanically sits down at the piano and begins to sing the song he heard on the night of the murder. At the same point the song is broken off, Pauline shrieks and faints. And then by some strange clairvoyance, Vaughan finds that when he holds his wife's hand, he sees the whole scene of the murder, transferred from Pauline's brain to his. He carries Pauline back to her own home, dangerously ill, and accuses Macari of the murder in Horace street. Macari recognizes Pauline's husband as the blind man and cynically admits the crime, but says the man he killed was Pauline's lover and that the blow was struck to avenge his dishonored sister. Vaughan turns him out, but his faith is shaken by the story. Tortured by doubt, he resolves to wrest the truth from Ceneri. He finds that the doctor has been doomed for revolutionary propaganda work to Siberia. Vaughan visits him there, finds him almost at the point of death among hideous surroundings, and learns that Macari's story is a lie: that the murdered man was Pauline's brother; also that Macari was the traitor who betrayed him and had him sent to Siberia; and with his dying breath, Dr. Ceneri begs Vaughan to convey that fact to his faithful friend, Petroff. Vaughan returns to London, having first written to Petroff to meet him at his London house. Vaughan learns that his wife has quite recovered her senses. Petroff arrives and Vaughan gives him Ceneri's dying message, and Petroff vows vengeance on Macari. Pauline is in the garden, pondering. She imagines that Dr. Ceneri, through undue influence, induced Vaughan to marry her when she was a half-witted girl and that, therefore, she has no right to wear the wedding ring. Just as she is taking the ring from her finger her husband approaches, and, mistaking the meaning of her action, goes, broken-hearted, back towards the house. Alone again, Pauline is visited by Macari, who, having heard that her mind has been restored, fears for his own safety. He threatens her. She must keep silent or she shall share her brother's fate. She tries to break away, whereupon he attempts to kill her. The noise brings Vaughan on the scene again. He closes with Macari, and there is a violent struggle. Macari is fast gaining the mastery when Petroff, who from a distance has seen the fight, rushes up and quickly overcomes Macari. He is about to stab Macari when Vaughan intervenes, and Macari makes his escape. Later, Petroff tracks down Macari, and after a desperate struggle, slays him. The story ends with Vaughan and Pauline happily reunited.