Much Darker Days | Page 2

to terms. I thought I might conclude a more advantageous arrangement if Philippa's heart was touched, if she would be mine. But she did not love me. Moreover, she was ambitious; she knew, small blame to her, how unique she was.
'The fact is,' she would observe when I pressed my suit, 'the fact is I look higher than a mere showman, even if he can write M.D. after his name.' Philippa soon left the circuit 'to better herself.'
In a short time a telegram from her apprised me that she was an orphan. I flew to where she lodged, in a quiet, respectable street, near Ratcliff Highway. She expressed her intention of staying here for some time.
'But alone, Philippa?'
(She was but eight-and-thirty).
'Not so much alone as you suppose,' she replied archly.
This should have warned me, but again I passionately urged my plea. I offered most attractive inducements. A line to herself in the bills! Everything found!
'Basil,' she observed, blushing in her usual partial manner, 'you are a day after the fair.'
'But there are plenty of fairs,' I cried, 'all of which we attend regularly. What can you mean? Has another----'
'He hev,' said Philippa, demurely but decidedly.
'You are engaged?' She raised her lovely hand, and was showing me a gold wedding circlet, when the door opened, and a strikingly handsome man of some forty summers entered.
There was something written in his face (a dark contusion, in fact, under the left eye) which told me that he could not be a pure and high-souled Christian gentleman.
'Basil South, M.D.' said Philippa, introducing us. 'Mr. Baby Farmer' (obviously a name of endearment), and again a rosy blush crept round her neck in the usual partial manner, which made one of her most peculiar charms.
I bowed mechanically, and, amid a few dishevelled remarks on the weather, left the house the most disappointed showman in England.
'Cur, sneak, coward, villain!' I hissed when I felt sure I was well out of hearing. 'Farewell, farewell, Philippa!'
To drown remembrance and regret, I remained in town, striving in a course of what moralists call 'gaiety' to forget what I had lost.
How many try the same prescription, and seem rather to like it! I often met my fellow-patients.
One day, on the steps of the Aquarium, I saw the man whom I suspected of not being Philippa's husband.
'Who is that cove?' I asked.
'Him with the gardenia?' replied a friend, idiomatically. 'That is Sir Runan Errand, the amateur showman--him that runs the Live Mermaid, the Missing Link, and Koot Hoomi, the Mahatma of the Mountain.'
'What kind of man is he?'
'Just about the usual kind of man you see generally here. Just about as hot as they make them. Mad about having a show of his own; crazed on two-headed calves.'
'Is he married?'
'If every lady who calls herself Lady Errand had a legal title to do so, the "Baronetage" would have to be extended to several supplementary volumes.'
And this was Philippa's husband!
What was she among so many?
My impulse was to demand an explanation from the baronet, but for reasons not wholly unconnected with my height and fighting weight, I abstained.
I did better. I went to my hotel, called for the hotel book, and registered an oath, which is, therefore, copyright. I swore that in twenty-five years I would be even with him I hated. I prayed, rather inconsistently, that honour and happiness might be the lot of her I had lost. After that I felt better.
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