Read the book: «Dark Days and Much Darker Days: A Detective Story Club Christmas Annual»
Copyright
Published by COLLINS CRIME CLUB
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
Dark Days first published in J.W. Arrowsmith’s Christmas Annual 1884
Published by The Detective Story Club for Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1930
Much Darker Days first published by Longmans, Green & Co. 1884
Introduction © David Brawn 2016
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1930, 2016
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008137748
Ebook Edition © October 2016 ISBN: 9780008137755
Version: 2016-08-25
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Dark Days
Dedication
Editor’s Preface
Chapter I: A Prayer and a Vow
Chapter II: A Villain’s Blow
Chapter III: ‘the Wages of Sin’
Chapter IV: At All Cost, Sleep!
Chapter V: A White Tomb
Chapter VI: The Secret Kept
Chapter VII: The Melting of the Snow
Chapter VIII: Flight
Chapter IX: Safe—and Loved!
Chapter X: The Sword Falls
Chapter XI: Special Pleading
Chapter XII: Tempted to Dishonour
Chapter XIII: The Last Hope
Chapter XIV: The Criminal Court
Chapter XV: The Black Cap
Chapter XVI: ‘Where Are the Snows That Fell Last Year?’
Chapter XVII: Clear Skies
Much Darker Days
Preface
Preface (Revised Edition)
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’)
Dark Days & Much Darker Days
About the Publisher
INTRODUCTION
‘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!’
So began the Editor’s introduction to Collins’ Detective Story Club edition of Dark Days, republished in May 1930 almost 50 years after the story had been devoured by a reading public in love with the work of Hugh Conway. With respect to the Editor, however, ‘narrative power’, ‘graphic description’ and ‘atmosphere’ might have been key for the popular novelist, but they were not by 1930 the most essential ingredients of a successful detective novel. This was the era in which readers craved cerebral ingenuity over dramatic characterisation and saw the emergence of what has since been described (perhaps unfairly) as the ‘humdrum’ school of crime writers. Dark Days was a late Victorian detective story, a novelette with its roots in early Gothic tales and the sensation novels of the 1860s, and was published in a format that owed its existence to the early work of Charles Dickens: the Christmas Annual.
Cheap reading matter had been around for decades in the form of ‘chap books’, unbound leaflets sold by street vendors, usually only eight pages in length, which were so short they led to stories being serialised over multiple issues. By the 1840s, with more widespread literacy and the invention of rotary printing presses which allowed for fast production, the mass distribution of these stories among the working classes took off with the ‘penny bloods’, weekly publications churned out by versatile writers catering for every taste. Illustrated with a black-and-white engraving on the first page, these serialised adventures rapidly turned from swashbuckling tales of pirates and highwaymen to more outlandish and thrilling themes—and increasingly towards stories of crime and murder. One of the most notorious and most popular run of ‘bloods’ narrated the exploits of the murderous Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, whose victims ended up in meat-pies: The String of Pearls began publication in 1846 and ran for 18 weeks, inspiring many similar sensationalised crime stories that unashamedly blurred the boundaries of true crime and heady fiction, some of which ran for months on end.
One of the finer Victorian traditions that grew out of this appetite for serial fiction was the Annual, in which publishers of serials and periodicals would release special Christmas editions outside their normal run, enticing new readers with one-off short stories, cartoons and festive humour. Seasonal ghost stories were especially popular, as were mysteries, and standalone short stories began to flourish as a result. Major book publishers such as Routledge’s also issued special Christmas Annuals, with more sophisticated novella-length content, although price was critical. The real foundation of the Annual as a British publishing phenomenon can be traced back to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, surely the most enduring Christmas story of modern times.
Dickens began writing his ‘little carol’ in October 1843, finishing it by the end of November, in time to be published for Christmas with hand-coloured illustrations by John Leech. Financing the printing of 10,000 copies himself after a disagreement with his publishers, the book was nevertheless far from the success its author had hoped for. ‘The first 6,000 copies show a profit of £230 and the last four will yield as much more. I had set my heart and soul on a thousand clear,’ Dickens wrote. The price of five shillings, even for a lavishly bound book as this was, was too expensive for most pockets, but the story grew in popularity and did not deter him from writing more Christmas novellas: The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain followed over the next five years, and as the prices were dropped from shillings to just pence, sales grew from ten thousand to hundreds of thousands.
With the Christmas Annual having established itself as a regular fixture of the publishing calendar, an unlikely benefactor was 33-year-old Bristol auctioneer Frederick John Fargus. Under the pseudonym ‘Hugh Conway’, his first published story, ‘The Daughter of the Stars’, appeared in Thirteen at Dinner and What Came of It, the first Christmas Annual from local publisher J.W. Arrowsmith in 1881. A rapid succession of songs, poems and stories by Conway followed in various publications over the next two years, culminating in the short novel Called Back, which formed the basis of Arrowsmith’s third Christmas Annual in 1883. Having sold an unremarkable 3,000 copies by Christmas—barely half its initial print run—no one can have predicted that by 1887 it would have gone on to sell a staggering 350,000 copies and been translated into all the major European languages. As Graham Law observes in his excellent article ‘Poor Fargus’ for The Wilkie Collins Journal in 2000, this sudden turn of events seems to have been precipitated by an enthusiastic review on 3 January 1884 in Henry Labouchère’s widely-read society weekly, Truth:
‘Who Arrowsmith is and who Hugh Conway is I do not know, nor had I ever heard of the Christmas Annual of the former, or of the latter as a writer of fiction; but, a week or two ago, a friend of mine said to me, “Buy Arrowsmith’s Christmas Annual, if you want to read one of the best stories that have appeared for many a year.” A few days ago, I happened to be at the Waterloo Station waiting for a train. I remembered the advice, and asked the clerk at the bookstall for the Annual. He handed it to me, and remarked, “They say the story is very good, but this is only the third copy I have sold.” It was so foggy that I could not read it in the train as I had intended, so I put the book into my pocket. About 2 that night, it occurred to me that it was nearing the hour when decent, quiet people go to bed. I saw the Annual staring me in the face, and took it up. Well, not until 4.30 did I get to bed. By that time I had finished the story. Had I not, I should have gone on reading. I agree with my friend—nay, I go farther than him, and say that Wilkie Collins never penned a more enthralling story.’
Spurred on by his new-found fame, Hugh Conway wrote a vast amount of new fiction in 1884, including a highly regarded full-length novel, A Family Affair. But it was his two subsequent Annuals for Arrowsmith that cemented his reputation as a bestseller: Dark Days in 1884 and Slings and Arrows, published posthumously in 1885. For, as detailed in Martin Edwards’ informative introduction to Called Back, also in this series, the author died in Monte Carlo on 15 May 1885, aged only 37. He had been writing for only four years.
Dark Days was particularly successful: it was widely translated and like Called Back there was a stage play to help increase its longevity. It also attracted an unlikely champion. Within weeks of its appearance, a parody entitled Much Darker Days by the noted Scottish author, literary critic and folklorist Andrew Lang was published by Longmans, Green & Co. under the pseudonym ‘A. Huge Longway’. Lang was active as a journalist and was the literary editor of Longman’s Magazine, and clearly saw an opportunity to capitalise on Conway’s success by publishing his biting satire. Interestingly, a second edition published the following April contained what was tantamount to an apology, seemingly for causing offence:
‘Parody is a parasitical, but should not be a poisonous, plant. The Author of this unassuming jape has learned, with surprise and regret, that some sentences which it contains are thought even more vexatious than frivolous. To frivol, not to vex, was his aim, and he has corrected this edition accordingly.’
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
DARK DAYS
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.
But why, during those six months, had I not, passionately in love as I was, won the girl’s heart? Why did she not leave me as my affianced bride? Why did I let her leave me at all?
The answer is short. She loved me not.
Not that she had ever told me so in words. I had never asked her in words for her love. But she must have known—she must have known! When I was with her, every look, every action of mine must have told her the truth. Women are not fools or blind. A man who, loving as I did, can conceal the true state of his feelings must be more than mortal.
I had not spoken; I dared not speak. Better uncertainty with hope than certainty with despair. The day on which Philippa refused my love would be as the day of death to me.
Besides, what had I to offer her? Although succeeding fairly well for a beginner, at present I could only ask the woman I made my wife to share comparative poverty. And Philippa! Ah! I would have wrapped Philippa in luxury! All that wealth could buy ought to be hers. Had you seen her in the glory of her fresh young beauty, you would have smiled at the presumption of the man who could expect such a being to become the wife of a hard-working and as yet ill-paid doctor. You would have felt that she should have had the world at her feet.
Had I thought that she loved me, I might perhaps have dared to hope she would even then have been happy as my wife. But she did not love me. Moreover, she was ambitious.
She knew—small blame to her—how beautiful she was. Do I wrong her when I say that in those days she looked for the gifts of rank and riches from the man who loved her? She knew that she was a queen among women, and expected a queen’s dues.
(Sweetest, are my words cruel? They are the cruellest I have spoken, or shall speak, against you. Forgive them!)
We were friends—great friends. Such friendship is love’s bane. It buoys false hopes; it lulls to security; it leads astray; it is a staff which breaks suddenly, and wounds the hand which leans upon it. So little it seems to need to make friendship grow into love; and yet how seldom that little is added! The love which begins with hate or dislike is often luckier than that which begins with friendship. Lovers cannot be friends.
Philippa and her mother left my neighbourhood. Then went to London for a while. I heard from them occasionally, and once or twice, when in town, called upon them. Time went by. I worked hard at my profession the while, striving, by sheer toil, to drive the dream from my life. Alas! I strove in vain. To love Philippa was to love her for ever!
One morning a letter came from her. I tore it open. The news it contained was grievous. Her mother had died suddenly. Philippa was alone in the world. So far as I knew, she had not a relation left; and I believed, perhaps hoped, that, save myself, she had no friend.
I needed no time for consideration. That afternoon I was in London. If I could not comfort her in her great sorrow, I could at least sympathise with her; could undertake the management of the many business details which are attendant upon a death.
Poor Philippa! She was glad to see me. Through her tears she flashed me a look of gratitude. I did all I could for her, and stayed in town until the funeral was over. Then I was obliged to think of going home. What was to become of the girl?
Kith or kin she had none, nor did she mention the name of any friend who would be willing to receive her. As I suspected, she was absolutely alone in the world. As soon as my back was turned she would have no one on whom she could count for sympathy or help.
It must have been her utter loneliness which urged me, in spite of my better judgment, in spite of the grief which still oppressed her, to throw myself at her feet and declare the desire of my heart. My words I cannot recall, but I think—I know I pleaded eloquently. Such passion as mine gives power and intensity to the most unpractised speaker. Yet long before my appeal was ended I knew that I pleaded in vain. Her eyes, her manner, told me she loved me not.
Then, remembering her present helpless condition, I checked myself. I begged her to forget the words I had spoken; not to answer them now; to let me say them again in some months’ time. Let me still be her friend, and render her such service as I could.
She shook her head; she held out her hand. The first action meant the refusal of my love; the second, the acceptance of my friendship. I schooled myself to calmness, and we discussed her plans for the future.
She was lodging in a house in a quiet, respectable street near Regent’s Park. She expressed her intention of staying on here for a while.
‘But alone!’ I exclaimed.
‘Why not? What have I to fear? Still, I am open to reason, if you can suggest a better plan.’
I could suggest no other. Philippa was past twenty-one, and would at once succeed to whatever money had been her mother’s. This was enough to live upon. She had no friends, and must live somewhere. Why should she not stay on at her present lodgings? Nevertheless, I trembled as I thought of this beautiful girl all alone in London. Why could she not love me? Why could she not be my wife? It needed all my self-restraint to keep me from breaking afresh into passionate appeals.
As she would not give me the right to dispose of her future, I could do nothing more. I bade her a sad farewell, then went back to my home to conquer my unhappy love, or to suffer from its fresh inroads.
Conquer it! Such love as mine is never conquered. It is a man’s life. Philippa was never absent from my thoughts. Let my frame of mind be gay or grave Philippa was always present.
Now and then she wrote to me, but her letters told me little as to her mode of life; they were short friendly epistles, and gave me little hope.
Yet I was not quite hopeless. I felt that I had been too hasty in asking for her love so soon after her mother’s death. Let her recover from the shock, then I will try again. Three months was the time which in my own mind I resolved should elapse before I again approached her with words of love. Three months! How wearily they dragged themselves away!
Towards the end of my self-imposed term of probation I fancied that a brighter, gayer tone manifested itself in Philippa’s letters. Fool that I was! I augured well from this.
Telling myself that such love as mine must win in the end, I went to London, and once more saw Philippa. She received me kindly. Although her garb was still that of deep mourning, never, I thought, had she looked more beautiful. Not long after our first greeting did I wait before I began to plead again. She stopped me at the outset.
‘Hush,’ she said; ‘I have forgotten your former words; let us still be friends.’
‘Never!’ I cried passionately. ‘Philippa, answer me once for all, tell me you can love me!’
She looked at me compassionately. ‘How can I best answer you?’ she said, musingly. ‘The sharpest remedy is perhaps the kindest. Basil, will you understand me when I say it is too late?’
‘Too late! What can you mean? Has another—?’
The words died on my lips as Philippa, drawing a ring from the fourth finger of her left hand, showed me that it concealed a plain gold circlet. Her eyes met mine imploringly.
‘I should have told you before,’ she said softly, and bending her proud head; ‘but there were reasons—even now I am pledged to tell no one. Basil, I only show you this, because I know you will take no other answer.’
I rose without a word. The room seemed whirling around me. The only thing which was clear to my sight was that cursed gold band on the fair white hand—that symbol of possession by another! In that moment hope and all the sweetness of life seemed swept away from me.
Something in my face must have told her how her news affected me. She came to me and laid her hand upon my arm. I trembled like a leaf beneath her touch. She looked beseechingly into my face.
‘Oh, not like that!’ she cried. ‘Basil, I am not worth it. I should not have made you happy. You will forget—you will find another. If I have wronged or misled you, say you forgive me. Let me hear you, my true friend, wish me happiness.’
I strove to force my dry lips to frame some conventional phrase. In vain! Words would not come. I sank into a chair and covered my face with my hands.
The door opened suddenly, and a man entered. He may have been about forty years of age. He was tall and remarkably handsome. He was dressed with scrupulous care; but there was something written on his face which told me it was not the face of a good man. As I rose from my chair he glanced from me to Philippa with an air of suspicious enquiry.
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