SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: FOLLOWED

"Followed" by "L. T. Meade" (Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith) & "Robert Eustace" (Eustace Robert Barton). first published in The Strand, December 1900; reprinted in The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes 2, edited by Alan K. Russell, 1979; included in the collection of Meade's stories, The Eyes of Terror and Other Dark Adventures, Swan Press, 2021)

It is a dark, starless night.  There may be a sliver of a moon above, but it is most likely obscured by Stygian storm clouds.  Perhaps it is raining; more likely, though, only the threat of rain is present. In the distance above, there is a castle, or perhaps it is a mansion...whatever -- it is a large building, isolated and  towering on the hill behind the girl.  The girl is running from the building, on a path that descends from the building.  The building itself (castle, mansion, whatever...) is in darkness except for a faint light coming from one of its windows.  It's a safe bet to assume that the window is high up in the building -- perhaps it is coming from a turret room.  And there are shadows.  (Did I mention the shadows?  They are there, lots and lot of them, although we are not entirely sure what they are shadows of.)  The girl is running, panicked.  She has long hair, either raven dark or blonde (she is never a redhead).  She is wearing either a long dress or a white nightgown, never Casual wear or a pants suit or some comfy flannel footie pajamas with a plaid pattern (or festooned with tiny yellow ducks).  As she flees, her head is turned ever so slightly back to that mysterious dark bulding which appears to be holding some sort of terror for her.  It's as if she's being chased by some palpable threat.  Her eyes are wide with fear, even though we know that she is a smart, capable woman who, even in this day and age, can handle almost any situation.  As she runs, we can hear a faint voice behind her, exasperated, saying, "For Heaven's sakes, hold still!  I'm trying to capture the moment."  It is the voice of the artist, trying to paint the cover of this latest paperback Gothic romance...

Back in the Sixties and Seventies, Gothics were all the rage, pushing nurse novels and other genre fodder far back in the line of paperbound cash cows.  Of course, these were not true Gothics, havng as much similarity to that genre as a self-help manual has to a serial killer novel.  But they sold, and they sold well.

Why do I mention this?  Because Meade and Eustace's story "Followed" could, with a smidge of updating and by expanding it by a few thousand words or so, have neen a runaway best-selling Gothic romance in those paperback days of yore.   As I was reading the story, I kept thinking what W. E. D. Ross or Phyliis Whitney or Victoria Holt could have done with this plot.

Our heroine's name is Flower Dalrymple (of course it would be).  She is not yet twenty and is engaged to David Ross, a landed propietor, "stalwart and broad-shouldered, with a complexion as dark as a gipsy."  David lives with his mother, whose love for him is "a very strange and a very deep passion."  Had this not been Victorian times, I suspect that fact would have sent off warning alarms for Flower.  David's mother, Lady Sarah, invites Flower to the family estate for the Christmas holidays, whixh in that day and age evidently begin on the second week of December and last almost forever.  So off Flower goes, and Lady Sarah does her best to make her uncomfortable -- hinting and even overtly stating that Flower would be better off breaking the engagemnt.  During her stay, David goes flitting back and forth to London for business, so Flower is spending much of the time alone with Lady Sarah and her machinations.  Well, not exactly alone.  There's a servant -- an Australian bushman who, because he is Black, is named Sambo; Lady Sarah dresses him in lose sily tousers, as though he hailed from the Far East.  (I won't go into Sambo's racial physiogamy because we've evolved from that, one hopes, in the Twentiy-first century.)

We are introduced Lady Sarah's "peculiar recreations."  Reptiles.  More specifically, venomous snakes.   There's the Vipera Nascicornis, the African nose4-horned snake, whose bite can kill a man within four hours,  And there's the Pseuechic Pophyriacus, whose bite can kill within six m inutes.  And there are many other snakes -- ring snakes and puff adders, whip snakes and moccasins, black vipers and copperheads --Lady Sarah has named each, because "they are my younger children."  And what would happen if they got loose? the reader wonders.

You get the picture.  And you know where the plot is going, so I won't bother you with details.  

"Followed" turns out to be an easy, almost addictive read, despite a deus ex whatthehell ending.

I loved it.  It would have made a great AIP or Hammer Studios film, perhaps with Barbara Steele as Flower.  If it had been a Sixties or Seventies Gothic romance, I would have snapped it up as quickly as possible.  

L. T. Meade was a prolific Victorian novelist (over 280 books in her lifetime, and almost a dozen still to be published after her death) of books for young people, most often girls  (A World of Girls, Dumps: A Plain Girl, Jill, a Flower Girl, Betty, a School Girl), as well as many seminal mysteries, first with Clifford Halifax (six books, including The Ponsonby Diamonds, Stories from the Diary of a Doctor. and Dr. Rumsey's Patient:  A Very Strange Story), then with "Robert Eustace" (eleven volumes, including A Master of Mysteries, The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings, and The Sorceress of the Strand).  "Robert Eustace" published a number of mysteries, most often in collaboration -- Eustace would often supply a basic plot and would contribute scientific and medical background to the stories.  In addition to Meade, he collaborated with Dorothy L. Sayers (The Documents in the Case) snd Edgar Jepson (The Tea-Leaf). 

The December 1900 issue of The Strand is available online at Internet Archive.