Kindred Spirits

Characters and original stories from "The Creeping Man" and "The Veiled Lodger" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Setting: The exhibition "Meet Me at the Circus", in the TD Gallery on the first floor of the Library, September 2008.

"What a striking woman." He sidled toward her as well as he could, trying to ogle her while pretending to look at the picture she stood before -- a commonplace photograph of a moustached man in a gaudy frogged coat snapping a whip at a snarling lion.

He cursed the thick veil covering her face from hairline to just above her full, luscious lips, surprised by his urge to see her expression. Her posture told him that she was careworn and sad. Or was she angry? From a drooping shoulder, her right arm extended stiffly downward to a clenched fist.

She turned, and he saw her lips tremble.

Years under the Indian sun had not burned out his English reserve. Beggar though he now was, he still had the training of a gentleman, and a gentleman does not intrude upon a lady's privacy.

She touched the wall with a groping gesture. She was evidently about to faint.

He hesitated, his sight dropping to his frayed trousers. The woman was 'respectably' dressed, but she was also in distress.

"I could not help noticing … I mean, I don't mean to intrude, but … Please. You appear indisposed. Let me be of assistance to you."

He sensed her tense and scrutinize him through her veil. Flushing, he was about to draw back; but she grasped his arm.

"Thank-you. I do need to sit … to get away from …" She faltered, then said urgently, "Please help me outside. I must breathe."

She leaned on his arm, and bent backed though he was, somehow he did get her through the doorways and to a bench outside the library. She thanked him, and then caught his gnarled hand.

"Please sit beside me, sir. I owe you an explanation."

"You owe me nothing, Ma'am," he replied gallantly. "But I'll stay until you feel fit enough." A cad could take advantage of an ill and lovely woman all alone, he assured himself.

"You are very kind … but then, I saw that you would be kind - and understanding."

The man flushed. "Because I'm a cripple?"

"Because you offered your help, not assumed I would want it." The gentle smile beneath the veil conveyed her understanding and sympathy. "You have a hero's pride, so you would understand my own pride."

"'Back straight. Eyes front.'" The man managed a wry smile. "Hardly 'back straight' in my case."

"Hardly 'eyes front' in my own," the woman replied, smiling and touching the hem of her veil.

"They could not be more beautiful than your smile," the man blurted out.

"You are a flatterer, Mr. …"

"Henry Wood. I was a corporal – in the Royal Munsters." He frowned hard. "Too long ago."

The woman took and pressed his gnarled hand between hers. "Eugenia Ronder. I'm honoured, Corporal."

Wood shook his head. "These aren't battle scars, ma'am. I was captured, beaten, broken and enslaved – because a false comrade wanted my girl."

Suddenly, his reserve broke under the warm pressure of her hands. He told her all, from falling in love with the daughter of the colour sergeant through falling into the trap set by his rival, his enslavement, his escape and his journey back to England, to his final confrontation with the woman he had loved and the man who had betrayed him.

Several times Mrs. Ronder swallowed hard, as though blinking back tears, all the while nodding encouragement.

"So Colonel Barclay died of his own guilty conscience?"

"Or from fright. I must have been a fearsome sight. He thought I was safely dead, until Nancy threw her encounter with me in his face. Not that I hadn't plotted his death from the start of it all; but I thought Nancy was happy with him, and I wanted to leave it so. When I heard her cry that he had stolen her life, I came through that window with my cudgel up and waving. But I never touched him. It was fate that made him fall and hit his head on the fireplace mantel. Still, I feel his blood on my hands."

"Don't reproach yourself. Your blood was on his."

Mrs. Ronder turned half away and bowed her head. She took a deep breath. "I murdered my husband."

There was a palpable pause, then a touch of strong, though gnarled fingers on her elbow. "He deserved it," Wood said softly.

"You knew him?" She spun to him so quickly her veil twirled up revealing two beautiful brown eyes in a mutilated face. She pulled it back quickly, but not quickly enough. He saw her cheeks were deeply scarred and he shuddered.

"I should have warned you," she said bitterly. "Even Sherlock Holmes could not stand the sight of my face."

"Sherlock Holmes?" he exclaimed.

"Yes. The Great Detective. You'd think he had seen ghastlier sights, investigating murders."

Wood's brow furrowed. "He investigated me," he admitted. "I told him my story, just as I told you, and he let me alone." He paused. "He let you alone too, I presume, after you told yours?"

She nodded. He patted her hand. "I don't condemn you. We've both been reprieved by a man who has seen the worst that men do, and I've no right. I don't know your husband, but he must have caused what happened to your face."

"You don't know how deeply he scarred me! He was a sadist. He beat me like he beat and starved our beasts. The lion scarred only my body. My husband scarred my soul."

"The lion?" Wood said, astonished at her vehemence that it took him a moment to connect her statement to the picture she had touched. "The picture … Was that your husband?"

She shook her head. "No. There you could tell man from beast. In my case, the lion was the sentient creature. It mauled me because it smelled blood and sensed danger. It was also hungry for its evening meal. Leonardo and I should have taken that into our calculations."

"Leonardo?"

"My lover, the strongman. My husband was too much a coward to confront him. Leonardo needed the money and we needed his act. We had no one else but Jimmy Griggs, the clown; though my husband had salted enough money away to hire the best. He knew we loved, so beat and humiliated me where Leonardo could overhear both the blows and curses.

"Since we could not escape him, we killed him. Leonardo hammered nails into a club, in the shape of a lion's splayed paw. One night – we were in Abbas Parva – he hid behind a van and struck my husband from behind. I opened the lion's cage, to make it appear the lion had killed my husband and escaped during feeding time. The lion … had it's own ideas." She suddenly crumpled, shielding her face with her hands.

"That horrible, horrible night!"

Wood gingerly patted her shoulder, his own thoughts slipped to his own unforgettable horrors. "I know," he said bitterly. "I know you can't forget."

Mrs. Ronder raised her head, and almost raised her veil to clearly see his expression. "You do know," she said, awed and tearful. "I can tell from your voice that you know."

Wood grimaced and nodded, shamefaced. "You wouldn't think it from this carcase, but I was a strong, handsome soldier once. The Ghazis tortured me until I was a twisted stick. I've known despair and I've tasted the spittle of hate. None are good for the soul. My sleep is haunted by nightmares and my waking by horrible memories."

He looked at her with a rueful grin. "Love exacted a heavy price from us both."

Mrs. Ronder laid her slim white hand on his dried sinewy arm. "Did your Nancy love him?"

He shook his head. "She thought I was dead. Barclay was a good choice for her, as far as fortune went. She admitted he had made her a good husband, but she loved me.

She gave a start of surprise. "You have seen her since … since those days?"

He nodded. "I recognized her in the street and blurted out her name. It must have been my voice that told her who I was. She asked what had happened to me. I told her."

He raked his hands through his sparse hair. "Of course it upset her; but I had not reckoned on how much. Everyone said the Barclays were a devoted couple. I thought she had learned to love him.

"I followed her to her house, worried for what I had done to her state of mind. I hovered outside the French window. Barclay came in. The words she said to him! "Give me back my life!" she demanded over and over. "I don't want to breathe the same air as you." I knew then that she had always been true to me.

"My rage was so red then at the trick Barclay had played on us both. I came in on them, my stick raised high. I would have struck him down and killed him then and there; but his own conscience did the job for me."

Mrs. Ronder nodded. "Did you marry your old love?" she asked softly.

Henry Wood snorted. "The colonel's lady marry a deformed beggar? Only in fairy tales!"

Mrs. Ronder swallowed and looked away. "I did not mean to offend. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I'm glad we didn't. I couldn't have stood her pity, after having had her love." Wood sighed. "I wished we could have; but she had her position and Barclay's money. What could I give her? And our story would all come out then. What good would scandal have done."

He touched her veil. "What about you? Did you marry your Samson?

She shook her head and sighed. "My 'Samson' fled from what the lion did to me. I was not blamed for my husband's death, and I had enough money to pay the doctors and hide. A living death."

"You should not say that," Wood reproved her.

"Why not? My seclusion has been from shame. You volunteered to get help because your camp was under siege. Your scars are honourable."

"Do you think I didn't want death when I got them? Only anger kept me alive. But when I was freed, I had my living to get, and no energy to spare for hate. Not even when I came to Aldershot, until I heard Nancy screaming at Barclay that he had ruined her life."

He touched her veil, then drew it up. She cried out and grasped his wrist, but he gently pried her fingers away and looked at her. Her eyes were brown and beautiful.

"Then don't hide." She tried to look away. He tilted up her chin. "Face the world from behind a veil, but face it with me. We've been alone too long, and we'll been lonely apart. We belong together."