Much Darker Days Part 3

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 circ.u.mstance 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 ma.s.s. 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!_

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 ma.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 ma.s.s on the roadside would remain _in statu quo_.

So long, Philippa was safe.