I pointed out that she had been Lady Errand, after all.
This gave Philippa no comfort.
"It makes things worse," she said. "I thought I had only got rid of my betrayer; and now you say I have killed my husband. You men have no tact."
"Besides," Philippa went on, after pausing to reflect, "I have not bettered myself one bit. If I had not gone for him I would be Lady Errand, and no end of a swell, and now I"m only plain Mrs. Basil South."
Speaking thus, Philippa wept afresh, and refused to be comforted.
Her remarks were not flattering to my self-esteem.
At this time I felt, with peculiar bitterness, the blanks in Philippa"s memory. Nothing is more difficult than to make your heroine not too mad, but just mad enough.
Had Philippa been a trifle saner, or less under the influence of luncheon, at first, she would either never have murdered Sir Runan at all (which perhaps would have been the best course), or she would have known _how_ she murdered him.
The entire absence of information on this head added much to my perplexities.
On the other hand, had Philippa been a trifle madder, or _more_ under the influence of luncheon, nothing could ever have recalled the event to her memory at all.
As it is, my poor wife (if she _was_ my wife, a subject on which I intend to submit a monograph to a legal contemporary), my poor wife was almost provoking in what she forgot and what she remembered.
One day as my dear patient was creeping about the _patio_, she asked me if I saw _all_ the papers?
I said I saw most of them.
"Well, look at them _all_, for who knows how many may be boycotted by the present Government? In a boycotted print you don"t know but you may miss an account of how some fellow was hanged for what I did. I believe two people can"t be executed for the same crime. Now, if any one swings for Sir Runan, _I_ am safe; but it might happen, and you never know it."
Dear Philippa, ever thoughtful for others! I promised to read every one of the papers, and I was soon rewarded for the unparalleled tedium of these studies.
CHAPTER XI.--A Terrible Temptation.
I HATE looking back and reading words which I have written when the printer"s devil was waiting for copy in the hall, but I fancy I have somewhere called this tale a confession; if not, I meant to do so. It has no more claim to be called a work of art than the cheapest penny dreadful. How could it?
It holds but two characters, a man and a woman.
All the rest are the merest supers. Perhaps you may wonder that I thus antic.i.p.ate criticism; but review-writing is so easy that I may just as well fill up with this as with any other kind of padding.
My publisher insists on so many pages of copy. When he does not get what he wants, the language rich and powerful enough to serve his needs has yet to be invented.
But he struggles on with the help of a dictionary of American expletives.
However, we are coming to the conclusion, and that, I think, will waken the public up! And yet this chapter will be a short one. It will be the review of a struggle against a temptation to commit, not perhaps crime, but an act of the grossest bad taste.
To that temptation I succ.u.mbed; we both succ.u.mbed.
It is a temptation to which I dare think poor human nature has rarely been subjected.
The temptation to go and see a man, a fellow-creature, tried for a crime which one"s wife committed, and to which one is an accessory after the fact.
Oh, that morning!
How well I remember it.
Breakfast was just oyer, the table with its relics of fragrant bloaters and _terrine_ of _pate_ still stood in the _patio_.
I was alone. I loafed lazily and at my ease.
Then I lighted a princely _havanna_, blaming myself for profaning the scented air from _el Cuadro de Leicester_.
You see I have such a sensitive aesthetic conscience.
Then I took from my pocket the _Sporting Times_, and set listlessly to work to skim its lengthy columns.
This was owing to my vow to Philippa, that I would read every journal published in England. As the day went on, I often sat with them up to my shoulders, and littering all the _patio_.
I ran down the topics of the day. This scene is an "under-study," by the way, of the other scene in which I read of the discovery of Sir Runan"s hat. At last I turned my attention to the provincial news column. A name, a familiar name, caught my eye; the name of one who, I had fondly fancied, had: long-lain unburied in my cellar at the "pike.
My princely _havanna_ fell unheeded on the marble pavement of the _patio_, as with indescribable amazement I read the following "par."
"William Evans, the man accused of the murder of Sir Runan Errand, will be tried at the Newnham a.s.sizes on the 20th. The case, which excites considerable interest among the _elite_ of Boding and district, will come on the _tapis_ the first day of the meeting. The evidence will be of a purely circ.u.mstantial kind."
Every word of that "par" was a staggerer. I sat as one stunned, dazed, stupid, motionless, with my eye on the sheet.
Was ever man in such a situation before?
Your wife commits a murder.
You become an accessory after the fact.
You take steps to destroy one of the two people who suspect the truth.
And then you find that the man on whom you committed murder is accused of the murder which you and your wife committed.
The sound of my mother"s voice scolding Philippa wakened me from my stupor. They were coming.
I could not face them.
Doubling up the newspaper, I thrust it into my pocket, and sped swiftly out of the _patio_.
Where did I go? I scarcely remember. I think it must have been to one of the public gardens or public-houses, I am not certain which. All sense of locality left me. I found at last some lonely spot, and there I threw myself on the ground, dug my finger-nails into the dry ground, and held on with all the tenacity of despair. In the wild whirl of my brain I feared that I might be thrown off into infinite s.p.a.ce. This sensation pa.s.sed off. At first I thought I had gone mad. Then I felt pretty certain that it must be the other people who had gone mad.
I had killed William Evans.
My wife had killed Runan Errand.
How, then, could Runan Errand have been killed by William Evans?