Dark Days and Much Darker Days: A Detective Story Club Christmas Annual. David Brawn

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       CHAPTER II

       A VILLAIN’S BLOW

      THEY tell me there are natures stern enough to be able to crush love out of their lives. Ah! Not such love as mine! Time, they say, can heal every wound. Not such a wound as mine! My whole existence underwent a change when Philippa showed me the wedding-ring on her finger. No wonder it did. Hope was eliminated from it. From that moment I was a changed man.

      Life was no longer worth living. The spur of ambition was blunted; the desire for fame gone; the interest which I had hitherto felt in my profession vanished. All the spring, the elasticity, seemed taken out of my being. For months and months I did my work in a perfunctory manner. It gave me no satisfaction that my practice grew larger. I worked, but I cared nothing for my work. Success gave me no pleasure. An increase to the number of my patients was positively unwelcome to me. So long as I made money enough to supply my daily needs, what did it matter? Of what use was wealth to me? It could not buy me the one thing for which I craved. Of what use was life? No wonder that such friends as I had once possessed all but forsook me. My mood at that time was none of the sweetest. I wanted no friends. I was alone in the world; I should be always alone.

      So things went on for more than a year. I grew worse instead of better. My gloom deepened; my cynicism grew more confirmed; my life became more and more aimless.

      These are not lovers’ rhapsodies. I would spare you them if I could; but it is necessary that you should know the exact state of my mind in order to understand my subsequent conduct. Even now it seems to me that I am writing this description with my heart’s blood.

      Not a word came from Philippa. I made no enquiries about her, took no steps to trace her. I dared not. Not for one moment did I forget her, and through all those weary months tried to think of her as happy and to be envied; yet, in spite of myself, I shuddered as I pictured her lot as it might really be.

      But all the while I knew that the day would come when I should learn whether I was to be thankful that my prayer had been answered, or to be prepared to keep my vow.

      In my misanthropical state of mind I heard without the slightest feeling of joy or elation that a distant relative of mine, a man from whom I expected nothing, had died and left me the bulk of his large property. I cared nothing for this unexpected wealth, except for the fact that it enabled me to free myself from a round of toil in which by now I took not the slightest interest. Had it but come two or three years before! Alas! All things in this life come too late.

      Now that I was no longer forced to mingle with men in order to gain the means of living, I absolutely shunned my kind. The wish of my youth, to travel in far countries, no longer existed with me. I disposed of my practice—or rather I simply handed it over to the first comer. I left the town of my adoption, and bought a small house—it was little more than a cottage—some five miles away from the tiny town of Roding. Here I was utterly unknown, and could live exactly as I chose; and for months it was my choice to live almost like a hermit.

      My needs were ministered to by a man who had been for some years in my employment. He was a handy, faithful fellow; honest as the day, stolid as the Sphynx; and, for some reason or other, so much attached to me that he was willing to perform on my behalf the duties of housekeeping which are usually relegated to female servants.

      Looking back upon that time of seclusion, as a medical man, I wonder what would eventually have been my fate if events had not occurred which once more forced me into the world of men? I firmly believe that brooding in solitude over my grief would at last have affected my brain; that sooner or later I must have developed symptoms of melancholia; Professionally speaking, the probabilities are I should have committed suicide.

      Even in the depth of my degradation I must have known the dangers of the path which I was treading; for, after having passed six dreary months in my lonely cottage, I was trying to brace myself to seek a change of scene. I shrank from leaving my quiet abode; but every day formed afresh the resolve to do so.

      Yet the days, each the same as its forerunner, went by, and I was still there. I had books, of course. I read for days together; then I would throw the volumes aside, and, with a bitter smile, ask myself to what end was I directing my studies. The accumulation of knowledge? Tush! I would give all the learning I had acquired, all that a lifetime of research could acquire, to hold Philippa for one brief moment to my heart, and hear her say she loved me! If in the whirl of men, in the midst of hard work, I found it impossible to conquer my hopeless passion, how could I expect to do so living as I at present lived?

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