Much Darker Days

Darker Days, by Andrew Lang
(AKA A. Huge Longway)

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Title: Much Darker Days
Author: Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
Release Date: June 25, 2007 [EBook #21933]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUCH
DARKER DAYS ***

Produced by David Widger

MUCH DARKER DAYS
by Andrew Lang
[AKA A. Huge Longway]

1884

PREFACE
A belief that modern Christmas fiction is too cheerful in tone, too
artistic in construction, and too original in motive, has inspired the
author of this tale of middle-class life. He trusts that he has escaped, at
least, the errors he deplores, and has set an example of a more
seasonable and sensational style of narrative.

Contents:
CHAPTER I.
—The Curse (Registered).
CHAPTER II.
—A Villain's By-Blow.
CHAPTER III.
—Mes Gages! Mes Gages!
CHAPTER IV.
—As A Hatter!
CHAPTER V.
—The White Groom.
CHAPTER VI.

—Hard As Nails.
CHAPTER VII.
—Rescue And Retire!
CHAPTER VIII.
—Local Colour.
CHAPTER IX.
—Saved! Saved!
CHAPTER X.
—Not Too Mad, But Just Mad Enough.
CHAPTER XI.
—A Terrible Temptation.
CHAPTER XII.
—Judge Juggins.
CHAPTER XIII.
—Cleared Up. (From The 'Green Park Gazette.')

MUCH DARKER DAYS.
CHAPTER I.
--The Curse (Registered).

WHEN this story of my life, or of such parts of it as are not deemed
wholly unfit for publication, is read (and, no doubt, a public which
devoured 'Scrawled Black' will stand almost anything), it will be found
that I have sometimes acted without prim cautiousness--that I have, in
fact, wallowed in crime. Stillicide and Mayhem I (rare old crimes!) are
child's play to me, who have been an 'accessory after the fact!' In
excuse, I can but plead two things-the excellence of the opportunity to
do so, and the weakness of the resistance which my victim offered.
If you cannot allow for these, throw the book out of the
railway-carriage window! You have paid your money, and to the
verdict of your pale morality or absurd sense of art in fiction I am
therefore absolutely indifferent. You are too angelic for me; I am too
fiendish for you. Let us agree to differ. I say nothing about my boyhood.
Twenty-five years ago a poor boy-but no matter. I was that boy! I hurry
on to the soaring period of manhood, 'when the strength, the nerve, the
intellect is or should be at its height,' or are or should be at their height,
if you must have grammar in a Christmas Annual. My nerve was at its
height: I was thirty.
Yet, what was I then? A miserable moonstruck mortal, duly entitled to
write M.D. (of Tarrytown College, Alaska) after my name--for the title
of Doctor is useful in the profession--but with no other source of
enjoyment or emotional recreation in a cold, casual world. Often and
often have I written M.D. after my name, till the glowing pleasure
palled, and I have sunk back asking, 'Has life, then, no more than this to
offer?'
Bear with me if I write like this for ever so many pages; bear with me,
it is such easy writing, and only thus can I hope to make you
understand my subsequent and slightly peculiar conduct.
How rare was hers, the loveliness of the woman I lost--of her whose
loss brought me down to the condition I attempt to depict!
How strange was her rich beauty! She was at once dark and fair--la
blonde et la brune! How different from the Spotted Girls and
Two-headed Nightingales whom I have often seen exhibited, and

drawing money too, as the types of physical imperfections! Warm
Southern blood glowed darkly in one of Philippa's cheeks--the left; pale
Teutonic grace smiled in the other--the right. Her mother was a fair
blonde Englishwoman, but it was Old Calabar that gave her daughter
those curls of sable wool, contrasting so exquisitely with her
silken-golden tresses. Her English mother may have lent Philippa many
exquisite graces, but it was from her father, a pure-blooded negro, that
she inherited her classic outline of profile.
Philippa, in fact, was a natural arrangement in black and white. Viewed
from one side she appeared the Venus of the Gold Coast, from the other
she outshone the Hellenic Aphrodite. From any point of view she was
an extraordinarily attractive addition to the Exhibition and Menagerie
which at that time I was running in the Midland Counties.
Her father, the nature of whose avocation I never thought it necessary
to inquire into,