David Brawn – Dark Days and Much Darker Days: A Detective Story Club Christmas Annual (страница 3)

The revision contained numerous minor changes: names were altered to create greater distance from the original (Basil became Babil, Sphynx was changed to Labbywrinth, and Roding became Noding), and a few sentences were removed and in one instance changed altogether (from ‘a public which devoured Scrawled Black will stand almost anything’ to the more facetious ‘And this Christmas, I fancy, no narrative is likely to be found more beguiling’).

The version in this new volume is based on the unexpurgated first printing, although occasional extra lines added in the revised edition have been inserted to give the fullest version of the story and of Lang’s wit. So as not to spoil the drama of Dark Days, and to fully appreciate the satire of Much Darker Days, it is recommended that the reader resists the temptation to read the parody first!

With Hugh Conway having been compared favourably to the author of The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868), books that had defined the emerging British detective novel, it was not without irony that Wilkie Collins himself was approached by J.W. Arrowsmith to fill Conway’s shoes and write their 1886 Christmas Annual. This he did with The Guilty River, although when it failed to sell as well as any of Conway’s Annuals, Collins turned down the offer to write any more and passed the baton to Walter Besant.

The following year, however, it was Beeton’s Christmas Annual that was to be the game-changer of the season, introducing a character who would become as famous as Ebenezer Scrooge from that Dickens tale 44 years earlier. With two shorter stories by R. André and C.J. Hamilton, Beeton’s 1887 Annual contained A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle—the debut of Sherlock Holmes. The sensational and dramatic ‘shilling shockers’ epitomised by Hugh Conway were about to be superseded by a new kind of detective fiction.

DAVID BRAWN

May 2016

Dedication

TO MY FRIEND

J. COMYNS CARR

EDITOR’S PREFACE

HUGH CONWAY has that first essential of the popular novelist—strong narrative power. His story is the first consideration always. Not that he does not possess other attributes to success: graphic description, which carries with it—not necessarily, but certainly in the case of Hugh Conway—atmosphere. He can, too, draw a most convincing character, as the present book will show. We look to Dark Days for a story that will hold our mature minds just as the fireside tales of our grandfathers held us as children—and we get it!

Dark Days is a novel of a love that won through the intricacies and horrors of a most uncanny crime. It is told in the first person by Doctor North, the central figure in the plot, a fact which largely explains the poignancy of the book. The autobiographical form always gives the reader a direct contact with the situations in which the main character finds himself. He therefore goes through his experiences and finds himself swayed by the very emotions that move his ‘hero’.

Philippa is surely the most beautiful murderess that ever crossed the pages of fiction. Her crime is horrifying, but is it not justified? Was the world not better rid of a man of Sir Mervyn Ferrand’s type—an idler, an ‘adventurer’, in the degraded sense of the word? Perhaps … but murder is murder in the eyes of the law. Doctor North was convinced of the moral innocence of his beloved as will the reader be, no doubt, but he has to go through dark days indeed before the whole of the mystery is cleared up.

The novel is arresting on not a few points, but most intriguing of all is the fact that the criminal of the novel is the victim of the crime!

THE EDITOR

FROM THE ORIGINAL DETECTIVE STORY CLUB EDITION

May 1930

CHAPTER I

A PRAYER AND A VOW

WHEN this story of my life, or of such portions of my life as present any out-of-the-common features, is read, it will be found that I have committed errors of judgment—that I have sinned not only socially, but also against the law of the land. In excuse I can plead but two things—the strength of love; the weakness of human nature.

If these carry no weight with you, throw the book aside. You are too good for me; I am too human for you. We cannot be friends. Read no further.

I need say nothing about my childhood; nothing about my boyhood. Let me hurry on to early manhood; to that time when the wonderful dreams of youth begin to leave one; when the impulse which can drive sober reason aside must be, indeed, a strong one; when one has learnt to count the cost of every rash step; when the transient and fitful flames of the boy have settled down to a steady, glowing fire which will burn until only ashes are left; when the strength, the nerve, the intellect, is or should be at its height; when, in short, one’s years number thirty.

Yet, what was I then? A soured, morose, disappointed man; without ambition, without care for the morrow; without a goal or object in life. Breathing, eating, drinking, as by instinct. Rising in the morning, and wishing the day was over; lying down at night, and caring little whether the listless eyes I closed might open again or not.

And why? Ah! To know why you must sit with me as I sit lonely over my glowing fire one winter night. You must read my thoughts; the pictures of my past must rise before you as they rise before me. My sorrow, my hate, my love must be yours. You must, indeed, be my very self.

You may begin this retrospect with triumph. You may go back to the day when, after having passed my examination with high honours, I, Basil North, was duly entitled to write M.D. after my name, and to set to work to win fame and fortune by doing my best towards relieving the sufferings of my fellow-creatures. You may say as I said then, as I say now, ‘A noble career; a life full of interest and usefulness.’

You may see me full of hope and courage, and ready for any amount of hard work; settling down in a large provincial town, resolved to beat out a practice for myself. You may see how, after the usual initiatory struggles, my footing gradually grew firmer; how my name became familiar; how, at last, I seemed to be in a fair way of winning success.

You may see how for a while a dream brightened my life; how that dream faded, and left gloom in its place. You may see the woman I loved.

No, I am wrong. Her you cannot see. Only I myself can see Philippa as I saw her then—as I see her now.

Heavens! How fair she was! How glorious her rich dark beauty! How different from the pink-white and yellow dolls whom I have seen exalted as the types of perfection! Warm Southern blood ran through her veins and tinged her clear brown cheek with colour. Her mother was an Englishwoman; but it was Spain that gave her daughter that exquisite grace, those wondrous dark eyes and long curled lashes, that mass of soft black hair, that passionate impulsive nature, and, perhaps, that queen-like carriage and dignity. The English mother may have given the girl many good gifts, but her beauty came from the father, whom she had never known; the Andalusian, who died while she was but a child in arms.

Yet, in spite of her foreign grace, Philippa was English. Her Spanish origin was to her but a tradition. Her foot had never touched her father’s native land. Its language was strange to her. She was born in England, and her father, the nature of whose occupation I have not been able to ascertain, seems to have spent most of his time in this country.

When did I learn to love her? Ask me rather, when did we first meet? Even then as my eyes fell upon the girl, I knew, as by revelation, that for me life and her love meant one and the same thing. Till that moment there was no woman in the world the sight of whom would have quickened my pulse by a beat. I had read and heard of such love as this. I had laughed at it. There seemed no room for such an engrossing passion in my busy life. Yet all at once I loved as man has never loved before; and as I sit tonight and gaze into the fire I tell myself that the objectless life I am leading is the only one possible for the man who loved but failed to win Philippa.

Our first meeting was brought about in a most prosaic way. Her mother, who suffered from a chronic disease, consulted me professionally. My visits, at first those of a doctor, soon became those of a friend, and I was free to woo the girl to the best of my ability.

Philippa and her mother lived in a small house on the outskirts of the town. They were not rich people, but had enough to keep the pinch of poverty from their lives. The mother was a sweet, quiet, lady-like woman, who bore her sufferings with resignation. Her health was, indeed, wretched. The only thing which seemed likely to benefit her was continual change of air and scene. After attending her for about six months, I was in conscience bound to endorse the opinion of her former medical advisers, and tell her it would be well for her to try another change.

My heart was heavy as I gave this advice. If adopted, it meant that Philippa and I must part.