Much Darker Days

Mechanically, I still groped on the ground, and picked up a small chill object.

It was a latch-key! I thrust it in my pocket with my other keys.

Then a thought occurred to me, and I chucked it over the hedge, to serve as circumstantial evidence. Next I turned and went up the road, springing my rattle and flashing my bull’s-eye lantern on every side, like Mr. Pickwick when he alarmed the scientific gentleman.

Suddenly, with a cry of horror, I stopped short. At my very feet, in the little circle of concentrated light thrown by the lantern, lay a white crushed, cylindrical mass.

That mass I had seen before in the warm summer weather – that mass, once a white hat, had adorned the brows of that masher!

It was Sir Runan’s topper!

CHAPTER IV. – As A Hatter!

YES, the white hat, lying there all battered and crushed on the white snow, must be the hat of Sir Runan! Who else but the tigerish aristocrat that disdained the homely four-wheeler and preferred to walk five miles to his victim on this night of dread – who else would wear the gay gossamer of July in stormy December?

In that hat, thanks doubtless to its airy insouciant grace, he had won Philippa; in that hat he would have bearded her, defied her, and cast her off! The cruelty of man! The larger and bulkier crumpled heap which lay on the road a little beyond the hat, that heap with all its outlines already blurred by snow, that heap must be the baronet himself!

Oh, but this was vengeance, swift, deadly vengeance!

But how, but how had she wreaked it? She, already my heart whispered she!

Was my peerless Philippa then a murderess?

Oh, say not so; call hers (ye would do so an she had been an Irish felon) ‘the wild justice of revenge,’ or the speedy execution of the outraged creditor.

Killed by Philippa!

Yes, and why? The answer was only too obvious. She must have gone forth to meet him, and to wring from him, by what means she might, that quarter’s salary which the dastard had left unpaid. Then my thoughts flew to the door-key, the cause of that fierce family hatred which burned between Philippa and her betrayer. That latch-key she had wrested from him, it had fallen from her hand, and I – I had pitched it into space!

Overcome with emotion, I staggered in the direction of the ‘pike. All the way, in the blinding, whirling snow, I traced the unobliterated prints of a small fairy foot.

This was a dreary comfort! Philippa had gone before me; the prints of the one small foot were hers. She must, then, have hopped all the way! Could such a mode of progression be consistent with a feeling of guilt? Could remorse step so gaily?

My man William, the Sphynx, opened the door to me. Assuming a natural air, I observed: —

‘Miss South is at home?’

‘Yes, sir. Just come in, sir.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘Well, sir, she just is on the rampage. “I’ll make ‘is fur fly,” she up and sez, sez she, when she heard as you was hout. Not a nice young lady for a small tea-party, sir,’ he added, lowering his voice; ‘a regular out-and-outer your sister is, to be sure.’

The Sphynx, in spite of his stolidity, occasionally ventured upon some slight liberty when addressing me.

I made a gay rejoinder, reflecting on the character of his own unmarried female relations, and entered the room.

Philippa was sitting on the lofty, dark oak chimney-piece, with her feet dangling unconventionally over the fireplace. The snow, melting from her little boots and her hair, had made a large puddle on the floor.

I came up and stood waiting for her to speak, but she kept pettishly swinging her small feet, as one who, by the action, means to signify displeasure.

‘Philippa,’ I said sternly, ‘speak to me.’

‘Well, here’s a gay old flare-up!’ cried Philippa, leaping from the chimney-piece, and folding her arms fiercely akimbo.

‘Who are you? Where’s the baby? You a brother; you’re a pretty brother! Is this the way you keep ‘pointments with a poor girl? Who killed the baby? You did – you all did it.’

Her words ran one into the other, as with an eloquence, which I cannot hope to reproduce (and indeed my excellent publisher would not permit it for a moment), she continued to dance derisively at me, and to heap reproaches of the most vexatious and frivolous nature on my head.

‘Philippa,’ I remarked at last, ‘you frivol too much.’

A sullen look settled on her face, and, with the aid of a chair, she reseated herself in her former listless, drooping attitude upon the chimney-piece.

On beholding these symptoms, on hearing these reproaches, a great wave of joy swept over my heart. Manifestly, Philippa was indeed, as Mrs. Thompson had said, ‘as mad as a hatter.’ Whatever she might have done did not count, and was all right. We would plead insanity.

She had fallen a victim to a mental disease, the source of which I have no hesitation in saying has not yet been properly investigated. So far as I know there is no monograph on the subject, or certainly I would have read it up carefully for the purpose of this Christmas Annual. I cannot get on without a mad woman in my stories, and if I can’t find a proper case in the medical books, why, I invent one, or take it from the French. This one I have invented.

The details of Philippa’s case, though of vast and momentous professional interest, I shall reserve for a communication to some journal of Science.

As for the treatment, I measured out no less than sixty drops of laudanum, with an equal amount of very old brandy, in a separate vessel. But preparing a dose and getting a patient like this to take it, are two different things. I succeeded by the following device.

I sent for some hot water and sugar and a lemon. I mixed the boiling element carefully with the brandy, and (separately) with the laudanum.

I took a little of the former beverage. Philippa with unaffected interest beheld me repeat this action again and again. A softer, more contented look stole over her beautiful face. I seized the moment. Once more I pressed the potion (the other potion) upon her.

This time successfully.

Softly murmuring ‘More sugar,’ Philippa sank into a sleep – sound as the sleep of death.

Philippa might awaken, I hoped, with her memory free from the events of the day.

As Princess Toto, in the weird old Elizabethan tragedy, quite forgot the circumstance of her Marriage, so Philippa might entirely forget her Murder.

When we remember what women are, the latter instance of obliviousness appears the more probable.

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.