Much Darker Days

CHAPTER VI. – Hard As Nails

OF course when I woke next morning my first thought was of Philippa; my second was of the weather. Always interesting, meteorological observation becomes peculiarly absorbing when it entirely depends on the thermometer whether you shall, or shall not, be arrested as an accessory after the fact, or (as lawyers say) post-mortem. My heart sank into my boots, or rather (for I had not yet dressed) into my slippers, when I found that, for the first time during sixteen days, the snow had ceased falling. I threw up the sash, the cold air cut me like a knife. Mechanically I threw up the sponge; it struck hard against the ceiling, and fell back a mass of brittle, jingling icicles, so severe was the iron frost that had bound it.

I gathered up a handful of snow from the window-sill. It crumbled in my fingers like patent camphorated tooth-powder, for which purpose I instantly proceeded to use it. Necessity is the mother of invention. Then I turned, as a final test, to my bath. Oh, joy! it was frozen ten inches thick! No tub for me today! I ran downstairs gleefully, and glanced at the thermometer outside my study window. Hooray, it registered twenty degrees below zero! It registered! That reminded me of my oath! I registered it once more, regardless of legal expenses.

My spirits rose as rapidly as the glass had fallen. The wind was due east, not generally a matter for indecent exultation.

But while the wind was due east, so long the frost would last, and that white mass on the roadside would remain in statu quo.

So long, Philippa was safe.

After that her fate, and mine too, depended on the eccentricities of a jury, the chartered libertinism of an ermined judge, the humour of the law, on a series of points without precedent concerning which no monograph had as yet been written; and, as a last desperate resource, on the letters of a sympathetic British public in the penny papers. The penny papers, the criminal’s latest broadsheet anchor! Under the exasperating circumstances, Philippa remained as well as could be expected. She spoke little, but ate and drank a good deal. Day after day the brave black frost lasted, and the snowy grave hid all that it would have been highly inconvenient for me to have discovered. The heavens themselves seemed to be shielding us and working for us. Do the heavens generally shield accessories after the fact, and ladies who have shortened the careers of their lords? These questions I leave to the casuist, the meteorologist, the compilers of weather forecasts, and other constituted authorities on matters connected with theology and the state of the barometer.

I have not given the year in which these unobtrusive events occurred.

Many who can remember that mighty fall of snow, exceeding aught in the recollection of the oldest inhabitant, and the time during which the frost kept it on the earth, will be able and willing to fix the date.

I do not object to their thus occupying their leisure with chronological research.

If they feel at all baffled by the difficulties of the problem, I will give them an additional ‘light’: Since that year there has been no weather like it.

Answers may be sent to the Puzzle Editor of Truth.

Day by day Philippa grew better and better. This appears to be the usual result, of excessively seasonable weather acting on a constitution previously undermined by bigamy, murder, and similar excesses.

I spare all technical summary of the case, sufficient to say that this was one of the rare instances in which the mind, totally unhinged, is restored to its balance by sixty drops of laudanum taken fasting, with a squeeze of lemon, after violent exercise on an empty stomach.

The case is almost unique; but, had things fallen out otherwise, this story could never have been got ready in time to romp in before the other Christmas Annuals.

Matters would have become really too complicated!

As Philippa recovered, it became more and more evident even to the most dilatory mind that the sooner she left the scene of her late unrehearsed performance the better.

The baronet had not yet been missed – indeed, he never was missed, and that is one of the very most remarkable points in the whole affair.

When he did come to be missed, however, he would naturally be sought for in the neighbourhood of the most recent and attractive of his wives.

That wife was Philippa.

Everything pointed to instant flight.

But how was I to get Philippa to see this? Ex hypothesi she knew nothing of the murder. On the other hand, all her pure, though passionate nature would revolt against sharing my home longer than was necessary. But would not the same purity prevent her from accompanying me abroad?

Brother and sister we had called ourselves but Philippa had never been the dupe of this terminology.

Besides, was not her position, in any case, just a little shady?

An idea now occurred to me for the first time. Many men would long ere now have asked their mothers to chaperon them. It flashed across me that I had a mother.

He who says ‘mother’ says ‘chaperon.’

I would take my Philippa to my mother. Philippa was now completely convalescent.

I can only attribute my lingering to the sense of fatality that all things would come round and be all square.

Love I had laid aside till I could see my way a little clearer in the certainly perplexing combination of circumstances. Nevertheless, Philippa, I say it advisedly, seemed to me a good deal more pure and innocent than when we first met. True, she had been secretly married to a man under a name which she knew to be false.

True, she had given birth to a baby whose later fate remains a mystery even to this day. True, her hands were stained with the blood of Sir Runan Errand.

But why speak of Redistribution, why agitate for Woman’s Suffrage, if trifles like these are to obstruct a girl’s path in society?

Philippa’s wrongs had goaded her to madness. Her madness was responsible for the act. She was not mad any longer. Therefore she was not responsible. Therefore Philippa was innocent.

If she became mad again, then it would be time to speak of guilt.

But would these arguments be as powerful with a British as they certainly would have proved with a French jury?

Once Philippa seemed to awaken to a sense of the situation.

Once she asked me ‘How she came to my home that night?’

‘You came out of the whirling snow, and in a high state of delirium,’ I answered, epigrammatically.

‘I thought I came on foot,’ she replied, dreamily.

‘But, Basil,’ she went on, ‘what afterwards? What’s the next move, my noble sportsman?’

What, indeed! Philippa had me there.

Clearly it was time to move.

In order to avert suspicion, I thought it was better not to shut up my house.

For the same purpose, I did a little in crime on my own account.

A man tires of only being an accessory.

William, the Sphynx, obviously ‘was in the know,’ as sporting characters say. Was in the know of what was in the snow! I must silence William.

I took my measures quietly.

First I laid in two dozen of very curious pale sherry at half-a-crown.

I bought each bottle at a separate shop in a different disguise (making twenty-four in all), that my proceedings might not attract attention.

I laid down the deadly fluid with all proper caution in the cellar.

At parting from William I gave him five shillings and the cellar key, telling him to be very careful, and await my instructions.

I knew well that long before my ‘instructions’ could reach him, the faithful William would be speechless, and far beyond the reach of human science.

His secret would sleep with the White Groom.

Then Philippa and I drove to town, Philippa asking me conundrums, like Nebuchadnezzar.

‘There was something I dreamed of. Tell me what it was?’ she asked.

But, though better informed than the Wise Men and Soothsayers of old, I did not gratify her unusual desire.

On reaching town I drove straight to the hotel at which my mother was staying.

It was one of those highly-priced private hotels in the New Out.

As, however, I had no desire to purchase this place of entertainment, the exorbitant value set on it by its proprietors did not affect my spirits.

In a few minutes I had told my mother all save two things: the business of the baby, and the fate which had overtaken Sir Runan.

With these trifling exceptions she knew all.

To fall into Philippa’s arms was, to my still active parent, the work of a moment.

Then Philippa looked at me with an artless wink.

‘Basil, my brother, you are really too good.’

Ah, how happy I should have felt could that one dark night’s work have been undone!

CHAPTER VII. – Rescue And Retire!

HITHERTO I have said little about my mother, and I may even seem to have regarded that lady in the light of a temporary convenience. My readers will, however, already have guessed that my mother was no common character.

Consider for a moment the position which she so readily consented to occupy.

The trifling details about the sudden decease of Sir Runan and the affair of the baby, as we have seen, I had thought it better not to name to her.

Matters, therefore, in her opinion, stood thus: —

Philippa was the victim of a baronet’s wiles.

When off with the new love, she had promptly returned and passed a considerable time under the roof of the old love; that is, of myself.

Then I had suddenly arrived with this eligible prospective daughter-in-law at my mother’s high-priced hotel, and I kept insisting that we should at once migrate, we three, to foreign parts – the more foreign the better.

I had especially dilated on the charms of the scenery and the salubrity of the climate in countries where there was no extradition treaty with England.

Even if there was nothing in these circumstances to arouse the watchful jealousy of a mother, it must be remembered that, as a chaperon, she did seem to come a little late in the day.

‘As you have lived together so long without me,’ some parents would have observed, ‘you can do without me altogether.’

None of these trivial objections occurred to my mother.

She was good-nature itself.

Just returned from a professional tour on the Continent (she was, I should have said, in the profession herself, and admirably filled the exigeant part of Stout Lady in a highly respectable exhibition), my mother at once began to pack up her properties and make ready to accompany us.

Never was there a more good-humoured chaperon. If one of us entered the room where she was sitting with the other, she would humorously give me a push, and observing ‘Two is company, young people, three is none,’ would toddle off with all the alacrity that her figure and age permitted.

I learned from inquiries addressed to the Family Herald (correspondence column) that the Soudan was then, even as it is now, the land safest against English law. Spain, in this respect, was reckoned a bad second.

The very next day I again broached the subject of foreign travel to my mother. It was already obvious that the frost would not last for ever. Once the snow melted, once the crushed mass that had been a baronet was discovered, circumstantial evidence would point to Philippa. True, there was no one save myself who could positively swear that Philippa had killed Sir Runan. Again, though I could positively swear it, my knowledge was only an inference of my own. Philippa herself had completely forgotten the circumstance. But the suspicions of the Bearded Woman and of the White Groom were sure to be aroused, and the Soudan I resolved to seek without an hour’s delay.

I reckoned without my hostess.

My mother at first demurred.

‘You certainly don’t look well, Basil. But why the Soudan?’

‘A whim, a sick man’s fancy. Perhaps because it is not so very remote from Old Calabar, the country of Philippa’s own father. Mother, tell me, how do you like her?’

‘She is the woman you love, and however shady her antecedents, however peculiar her style of conversation, she is, she must be, blameless. To say more, after so short an acquaintance, might savour of haste and exaggeration.’

A woman’s logic!

‘Then you will come to the Soudan with us to-morrow?’

‘No, my child, further south than Spain I will not go, not this journey!’

Here Philippa entered.

‘Well, what’s the next news, old man?’ she said.

‘To Spain, to-morrow!’

sang sweet Philippa, in childish high spirits.

I had rarely seen her thus!

Alas, Philippa’s nursery charm against the rain proved worse than unavailing.

That afternoon, after several months of brave black frost, which had gripped the land in its stern clasp, the rain began to fall heavily.

The white veil of snow gradually withdrew.

All that night I dreamed of the white snow slowly vanishing from the white hat.

Next morning the snow had vanished, and the white hat must have been obvious to the wayfaring man though a fool.

Next morning, and the next, and the next, found me still in London.

Why?

My mother was shopping!

Oh, the awful torture of having a gay mother shopping the solemn hours away, when each instant drew her son nearer to the doom of an accessory after the fact!

My mother did not object to travel, but she did like to have her little comforts about her.

She occupied herself in purchasing —

A water-bed.

A boule, or hot-water bottle.

A portable stove.

A travelling kitchen-range.

A medicine chest.

A complete set of Ollendorff.

Ten thousand pots of Dundee marmalade. And such other articles as she deemed essential to her comfort and safety during the expedition. In vain I urged that our motto was Rescue and Retire, and that such elaborate preparations might prevent our retiring from our native shore, and therefore make rescue exceedingly problematical.

My Tory mother only answered by quoting the example of Lord Wolseley and the Nile Expedition.

‘How long did they tarry among the pots – the marmalade pots?’ said my mother. ‘Did they start before every mess had its proper share of extra teaspoons in case of accident, and a double supply of patent respirators for the drummer-boys, and of snow-shoes for the Canadian boatmen in case the climate proved uncertain?’

My mother’s historical knowledge, and the unique example of provident and exhaustive equipment which she cited, reduced me to silence, but did not diminish my anxiety. The delay made me nervous, excited, and chippy.

To-morrow morning we were to start.

To-morrow morning was too late.

With an effort I opened the morning paper – the Morning Post, as it happened – and ran hastily up and down the columns, active exercise having been recommended to me. What cared I for politics, foreign news, or even the sportive intelligence? All I sought for was a paragraph headed ‘Horrible Disclosures,’ or, ‘Awful Death of a Baronet.’ I ran up and down the columns in vain.

No such item of news met my eye. Joyously I rose to go, when my eye fell on the Standard.

Mechanically I opened it.

Those words were written (or so they seemed to me to be written) in letters of fire, though the admirable press at Shoe Lane did not really employ that suitable medium.

‘Horrible Discovery near Roding.’

At once the truth flashed across me. The Morning Post had not contained the intelligence because,

The Government had Boycotted the ‘Morning Post’!

Only journals which more or less supported the Government were permitted to obtain ‘copy’ of such thrilling interest!

And yet they speak of a free press and a free country!

Tearing myself away from these reflections, I bent my mind on the awful paragraph.

‘The melting of the snow has thrown a lurid light on the mysterious disappearance (which up to this moment had attracted no attention) of an eccentric baronet, well known in sporting circles. Yesterday afternoon a gentleman’s groom, wading down the highway, discovered the white hat of a gentleman floating on the muddy stream into which the unparalleled weather and the negligence of the Road Trustees has converted our thoroughfare. An inscription in red ink within the lining leaves no doubt that this article of dress is all that is left of the late Sir Runan Errand. The unfortunate nobleman’s friends have been communicated with. The active and intelligent representative of the local police believes that he is in possession of a clue to the author of the crime. Probably the body of the murdered noble has been carried down by the flooded road to the sea.’

I tore that paper to pieces, and used it to wrap up sandwiches for the journey.

Once again I say, if you cannot feel with me, throw this tale aside. Heaven knows it is a sombre one, and it goes on getting sombrer and sombrer! But probably, by this time, you have either tossed the work away or looked at the end to see what happened to them all.

The morning dawned.

I filled my bag with Hanover pieces, which I thought might come in handy on the Spanish Turf, and packed up three or four yellow, red, green, and blue opera hats, so useful to the adventurous bookmaker.

At this very moment the postman arrived and gave me a letter in a woman’s hand.

I thrust it in my breast pocket recklessly.

The cab rattled away.

At last we were off.

I am sure that no one who could have seen us that morning would have dreamt that out of that party of three – a more than comfortable-looking English matron, a girl whose strange beauty has been sufficiently dwelt upon, and a gentleman in a yellow crush hat and a bookmaker’s bag – two were flying from the hands of justice.

Our appearance was certainly such as to disarm all suspicion.

But appearances are proverbially deceitful. Were ours deceitful enough?

‘But where are we going?’ said my mother, with the short memory of old age.

‘To Paris first, then to Spain, and, if needful, down to Khartoum.’

‘Then you young people will have to go alone. I draw the line at Dongola.’

I glanced at Philippa.

Then for the first time since her malady I saw Philippa blushing! Her long curved eyelashes hid her eyes, which presumably were also pink, but certainly my mother’s broad pleasantry had called a tell-tale blush to the cheek of the young person.

As we drew near Folkestone I remembered the letter, but the sight of the Roding postmark induced me to defer opening it till we should be on board the steamer. When Philippa was battling with the agonies of the voyage, then, undisturbed, I might ascertain what Mrs. Thompson (for it was sure to be Mrs. Thompson) had to say.

We were now on board. Philippa and my mother fled to the depths of the saloon, and I opened the fateful missive. It began without any conventional formalities, and the very first words blanched a cheek already pale.

‘I see yer!’

This strange epistle commenced: —

‘I know why Sir Runan never reached my house. I know the reason (it was only too obvious) for her strange, excited state. I know how he met the death he deserved.

‘I never had the pluck. None of the rest of us ever had the pluck. We all swore we’d swing for him as, one after another, he wedded and deserted us. The Two-headed Nightingale swore it, and the Missing Link, and the Spotted Girl, and the Strong Woman who used to double up horseshoes. Now she doubles up her perambulator with her children in it, but she never doubled up him.

‘As to your sister, tell her from me that she is all right. She has made herself his widow, she is the Dowager Lady Errand.

‘The fact is, the Live Mermaid was never alive at all! She was a put-up thing of waxwork and a stuffed salmo ferox. His pretended marriage with her is therefore a mere specious excuse to enable him to avoid your sister’s claims.

‘Now he is dead, your sister can take the name, title, and estates. I wish she may get them.’

CHAPTER VIII. – Local Colour

I READ the woman’s letter again and again, read it with feelings of the most mingled description. First, I reflected with solemn pride that Philippa was more than an honest woman; that she really was a baronet’s lady! After we were married she should keep her title. Many people do. How well it would sound when we entered a room together – ’ Dr. South and Lady Errand!’ Yet, on second thoughts, would not this conjunction of names rather set people asking questions?