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Much Darker Days, a fiction by Andrew Lang |
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CHAPTER V - The White Groom |
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_ CHAPTER V - The White Groom I SHALL, I am sure, scarcely be credited when I say that Philippa's unconsciousness lasted for sixteen days. I had wished her to sleep so long that the memory of her deeds on the awful night should fade from her memory. She seemed likely to do so. All the time she slept I felt more and more secure, because the snow never ceased falling. It must have been thirty feet deep above all that was mortal of Sir Runan Errand. The deeper the better. The baronet was never missed by any one, curious to say. No inquiries were made; and this might have puzzled a person less unacquainted than myself with the manners of baronets and their friends. Sometimes an awful fascination led me along the road where I had found the broken, battered mass. I fancied I could see the very drift where the thing lay, and a dreary temptation (dating probably from the old times when I had some wild beasts in the exhibition) urged me to 'stir it up with a long pole.' I resisted it, and, bitterly weeping, I turned away towards Philippa's bedside. As I walked I met Mrs. Thompson. 'Does she hate him?' she asked suddenly. 'Forgiveness is a Christian virtue,' I answered evasively. I could not trust this woman. 'Listen,' she said, 'and try to understand. If I thought she hated him, I would tell her something. If she thought you hated them, he would tell me something. If ye or you thought he hated her, I would tell him something. I will wait and see.' She left me to make the best (which was not much) of her enigmatical words. She was evidently a strange woman. I felt that she was mixed up in Sir Runan's early life, and that we were mixed up in Sir Runan's early death--in fact, that everything was very mixed indeed. She came back. 'Give me your name and college,' she said, 'not necessarily for publication,' and I divined that she had once been a proctor at Girton. I gave her my address at the public-house round the corner, and we parted, Mrs. Thompson whispering that she 'would write.' On reaching home I leaped to Philippa's apartment. A great change had come over her. She was awake! I became at once a prey to the wildest anxiety. The difficulties of my position for the first time revealed themselves to me. If Philippa remained insane, how was I to remove her from the scene of her--alas! of her crime? If Philippa had become sane, her position under my roof was extremely compromising. Again, if she were insane, a jury might acquit her, when the snow melted and revealed all that was left of the baronet. But, in that case, what pleasure or profit could I derive from the society of an insane Philippa? Supposing, on the other hand, she was sane, then was I not an 'accessory after the fact,' and liable to all the pains and penalties of such a crime? Here the final question arose and shook its ghostly finger at me: 'Can a sane man be an accessory after the fact in a murder committed by an insane woman?' So far as I know, there is no monograph on this subject, or certainly I would have consulted it for the purpose of this Christmas Annual. All these questions swept like lightning through my brain, as I knelt by Philippa's bedside, and awaited her first word. ' Bon jour , Philippine,' I said. 'Basil,' she replied, 'where am I?' 'Under my roof--your brother's roof,' I said. 'Brother! oh, stow that bosh!' she said, turning languidly away. There could not be a doubt of it, Philippa was herself again! I rose pensively, and wandered out towards the stables. Covered with white snow over a white macintosh, I met by the coach-house door William, the Sphynx. The White Groom! Twiddling a small object, a door-key of peculiar make , in his hand, he grinned stolidly at me. 'She's a rum un, squire, your sister, she be,' chuckled the Sphynx. 'William,' I said, 'go to Roding, and bring back two nurses, even if they have to hire twenty drags to draw them here. And, William, bring some drugs in the drags.' By setting him on this expedition I got rid of the Sphynx. Was he a witness? He was certainly acquainted with the nature of an oath! _ |
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