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Much Darker Days, a fiction by Andrew Lang |
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CHAPTER II - A Villain's By-Blow |
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_ CHAPTER II - A Villain's By-Blow PHILIPPA was another's! Life was no longer worth living. Hope was evaluated; ambition was blunted. The interest which I had hitherto felt in my profession vanished. All the spring, the elasticity seemed taken out of my two Bounding Brothers from the Gutta Percha coast. For months I did my work in a perfunctory manner. I added a Tattooed Man to my exhibition and a Two-headed Snake, also a White-eyed Botocudo, who played the guitar, and a pair of Siamese Twins, who were fired out of a double-barrelled cannon, and then did the lofty trapeze business. They drew, but success gave me no pleasure. So long as I made money enough for my daily needs (and whisky was cheap), what recked I? My mood was none of the sweetest. My friends fell off from me; ay, they fell like nine-pins whenever I could get within reach of them. I was alone in the world. You will not be surprised to hear it; the wretched have no friends. So things went on for a year. I became worse instead of better. My gloom deepened, my liver grew more and more confirmed in its morbid inaction. These are not lover's rhapsodies, they merely show the state of my body and mind, and explain what purists may condemn. In this condition I heard without hypocritical regret that a distant relative (a long-lost uncle) had conveniently left me his vast property. I cared only because it enabled me to withdraw from the profession. I disposed of my exhibition, or rather I let it go for a song. I simply handed over the Tattooed Man, the Artillery Twins, and the Double-headed Serpent to the first-comer, who happened to be a rural dean. Far in the deeps of the country, near the little town of Roding, on a lonely highway, where no man ever came, I took a 'pike. Here I dwelt like a hermit, refusing to give change to the rare passers-by in carts and gigs, and attended by a handy fellow, William Evans, stolid as the Sphynx, which word, for reasons that may or may not appear later in this narrative, I prefer to spell with a y , contrary to the best authorities and usual custom. It was midwinter, and midnight. My room lay in darkness. Heavy snow was falling. I went to the window and flattened my nose against the pane. 'What,' I asked myself, 'is most like a cat looking out of a window?' 'A cat looking in at a window,' answered a silvery voice from the darkness. Flattened against the self-same pane was another nose, a woman's. It was the lovely organ of mixed architecture belonging to Philippa! With a low cry of amazement, I broke the pane: it was no idle vision, no case of the 'horrors;' the cold, cold nose of my Philippa encountered my own. The ice was now broken; she swept into my chamber, lovelier than ever in her strange unearthly beauty, and a new sealskin coat. Then she seated herself with careless grace, tilting back her chair, and resting her feet on the chimney-piece. 'Dear Philippa,' I exclaimed politely, 'how is your husband?' 'Husband! I have none,' she hissed. 'Tell me, Basil, did you ever hate a fellow no end?' 'Yes,' I answered, truly; for, like Mr. Carlyle, I just detested most people, and him who had robbed me of Philippa most of all. 'Do you know what he did, Basil? He insisted on having a latch-key! Did you ever hate a man?' I threw out my arms. My heart was full of bitterness. 'He did more! He has refused to pay my last quarter's salary. Basil, didn't you ever hate a man?' My brain reeled at these repeated outrages. 'And where are you staying at present, Philippa? I hope you are pretty comfortable?' I inquired, anxiously. Philippa went on: 'My husband as was has chucked me. I was about to have a baby. I bored him. I was in the way--in the family-way. Basil, did you ever hate a fellow? If not, read this letter.' She threw a letter towards me. She chucked it with all her old gracious dexterity. It was dated from Monte Carlo, and ran thus:-- 'As we don't seem quite to hit it off, I think I may as well finish this business of our marriage. The shortest way to make things clear to your very limited intelligence is to assure you that you are not my wife at all. Before I married you I was the husband of the Live Mermaid. She has died since then, and I might have married you over and over again; but I was not quite so infatuated. I shall just run across and settle up about this little affair on Wednesday. As you are five miles from the station, as the weather is perfectly awful, as moreover I am a luxurious, self-indulgent baronet and as this story would never get on unless I walked, don't send to meet me. I would rather walk.' Here was a pretty letter from a fond husband. 'But, ha! proud noble,' I whispered to my heart, 'you and me shall meet to-morrow.' 'And where are you staying, Philippa?' I repeated, to lead the conversation into a more agreeable channel. 'With a Mrs. Thompson,' she replied; 'a lady connected with Sir Runan.' 'Very well, let me call for your things tomorrow. I can pass myself off as your brother, you know.' 'My half-brother,' said Philippa, blushing, 'on the mother's side.' The brave girl thought of everything . The child of white parents, I should have in vain pretended to be Philippa's full brother. They would not have believed me had I sworn it. 'Don't you think,' Philippa continued, as a sudden thought occurred to her, 'that as it is almost midnight and snowing heavily it would be more proper for me to return to Mrs. Thompson's?' There was no contesting this. We walked together to the house of that lady, and at my suggestion Philippa sought her couch. I sat down and awaited the advent of Mrs. Thompson. She soon appeared. A woman of about five-and-thirty, with an aquiline face, and a long, dark, silky beard sweeping down to her waist. Whatever this woman's charms might have been for me when I was still in the profession, she could now boast of very few. Doubtless she had been in Sir Runan's show, and was one of his victims. I apologised for the lateness of my call, and entered at once on business. Mrs. Thompson remarked that 'my sister's health was not as it should be,'--not all she could wish. 'I do not wish to alarm you; no doubt you, her brother, are used to it; but, for a girl as mad as a hatter--well, I'll trouble you!' 'I myself can write M.D. after my name,' I replied,' and you are related, I think, to Sir Runan Errand?' 'We are connections,' she said, not taking the point of my sarcasm. 'His conduct rarely astonishes me. When I found, however, that this lady, your sister, was his wife, I own, for once, I was surprised.' Feeling that this woman had the better of it, with her calm, polished, highbred sarcasms, I walked back to the 'pike, full of hopes of a sweet revenge. As, however, I had never spoken to a baronet before, I could not but fear that his lofty air of superior rank might daunt me when we met to-morrow. _ |
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