The Blood of the Vampire

by Florence Marryat

  “Certainly not!” replied Margaret warmly. “The sister who told you so knew nothing about men. My dear husband is more like an angel than a man, and there are many like him. You mustn’t believe such nonsense, Miss Brandt! I am sure you never heard your parents say such a silly thing!”

  “O! my father and mother! I never remember hearing them say any-thing!” replied Miss Brandt. She had crept closer and closer to Mrs. Pullen as she spoke, and now encircled her waist with her arm and leaned her head upon her shoulder. It was not a position that Margaret liked, nor one she would have expected from a woman on so short an acquaintance, but she did not wish to appear unkind by telling Miss Brandt to move further away. The poor girl was evidently quite unused to the ways and customs of Society, she seemed moreover very friendless and dependant—so Margaret laid her solecism down to ignorance and let her head rest where she had placed it, resolving inwardly meanwhile that she would not subject herself to be treated in so familiar a manner again.

  “Don’t you remember your parents then?” she asked her presently.

  “Hardly! I saw so little of them,” said Miss Brandt, “my father was a great doctor and scientist I believe, and I am not quite sure if he knew that he had a daughter!”

  “Oh my dear, what nonsense!”

  “But it is true, Mrs. Pullen! He was always shut up in his labora­tory, and I was not allowed to go near that part of the house. I suppose he was very clever and all that—but he was too much engaged in making experiments to take any notice of me, and I am sure I never wanted to see him!”

  “How very sad! But you had your mother to turn to for consolation and company, whilst she lived, surely?”

  “O! my mother!” echoed Harriet, carelessly. “Yes! my mother! Well! I don’t think I knew much more of her either. The ladies in Jamaica get very lazy you know, and keep a good deal to their own rooms. The person there I loved best of all, was old Pete, the overseer!”

  “The overseer!”

  “Of the estate and niggers, you know! We had plenty of niggers on the coffee plantation, regular African fellows with woolly heads and blubber lips and yellow whites to their eyes. When I was a little thing of four years old Pete used to let me whip the little niggers for a treat when they had done anything wrong. It used to make me laugh to see them wriggle their legs under the whip and cry!”

  “O! don’t, Miss Brandt!” exclaimed Margaret Pullen, in a voice of pain.

  “It’s true, but they deserved it you know, the little wretches, always thieving or lying or something! I’ve seen a woman whipped to death because she wouldn’t work. We think nothing of that sort of thing over there. Still—you can’t wonder that I was glad to get out of the Island. But I loved old Pete and if he had been alive when I left I would have brought him to England with me. He used to carry me for miles through the jungle on his back—out in the fresh mornings and the cool, dewy eves. I had a pony to ride but I never went anywhere without his hand upon my bridle rein. He was always so afraid lest I should come to any harm. I don’t think anybody else cared. Pete was the only creature who ever loved me, and when I think of Jamaica I remember my old nigger servant as the one friend I had there!”

  “It is very, very sad!” was all that Mrs. Pullen could say.

  She had become fainter and fainter as the girl leaned against her with her head upon her breast. Some sensation which she could not define, nor account for—some feeling which she had never experienced before—had come over her and made her head reel. She felt as if something or someone were drawing all her life away. She tried to disengage herself from the girl’s clasp but Harriet Brandt seemed to come after her, like a coiling snake, till she could stand it no longer and faintly exclaiming:

  “Miss Brandt! let go of me, please! I feel ill!” she rose and tried to make her way between the crowded tables, towards the open air. As she stumbled along she came against (to her great relief) her friend, Elinor Leyton.

  “O! Elinor!” she gasped, “I don’t know what is the matter with me! I feel so strange, so light-headed! Do take me home!”

  Miss Leyton dragged her through the audience and made her sit down on a bench facing the sea.

  “Why! what’s the matter?” demanded Harriet Brandt, who had made her way after them, “is Mrs. Pullen ill?”

  “So it appears,” replied Miss Leyton, coldly, “but how it hap­pened you should know better than myself! I suppose it is very warm in there!”

  “No! no! I do not think so,” said Margaret, with a bewildered air, “we had chairs close to the side. And Miss Brandt was telling me of her life in Jamaica when such an extraordinary sensation came over me! I can’t describe it! It was just as if I had been scooped hollow!”

  At this description Harriet Brandt burst into a loud laugh, but Elinor frowned her down.

  “It may seem a laughing matter to you, Miss Brandt,” she said, in the same cold tone, “but it is none to me. Mrs. Pullen is far from strong and her health is not to be trifled with. However, I shall not let her out of my sight again.”

  “Don’t make a fuss about it, Elinor,” pleaded her friend. “It was my own fault, if anyone’s. I think there must be a thunderstorm in the air. I have felt so oppressed all the evening. Or is the smell from the dunes worse than usual? Perhaps I ate something at dinner that disagreed with me!”

  “I cannot understand it at all,” replied Miss Leyton, “you are not used to fainting or being suddenly attacked in any way. However, if you feel able to walk let us go back to the Hotel. Miss Brandt will doubtless find someone to finish the evening with!”

  Harriet was just about to reply that she knew no one but them­selves, and to offer to take Mrs. Pullen’s arm on the other side, when Elinor Leyton cut her short.

  “No! thank you, Miss Brandt! Mrs. Pullen would, I am sure, prefer to return to the Hotel alone with me! You can easily join the Vieuxtemps or any other of the visitors to the Lion d’Or. There is not much ceremony observed amongst the English at these foreign places. It would be better perhaps if there were a little more! Come, Margaret, take my arm and we will walk as slowly as you like! But I shall not be comfortable until I see you safe in your own room!”

  So the two ladies moved off together leaving Harriet Brandt standing disconsolately on the Digue watching their departure. Mrs. Pullen had uttered a faint good-night to her but had made no suggestion that she should walk back with them, and it seemed to the girl as if they both in some measure blamed her for the illness of her companion. What had she done she asked herself, as she reviewed what had passed between them, that could in any way account for Mrs. Pullen’s illness? She liked her so much—so very much—she had so hoped she was going to be her friend—she would have done anything, and given anything, sooner than put her to inconvenience in any way. As the two ladies moved slowly out of sight Harriet turned sadly and walked the other way. She felt lonely and disappointed. She knew no one to speak to and there was a cold empty feeling in her breast as though, in losing her hold on Margaret Pullen, she had lost something on which she had depended. Something of her feeling must have communicated itself to Margaret Pullen, for after a minute or two she stopped and said,

  “I don’t half like leaving Miss Brandt by herself, Elinor! She is very young to be wandering about a town by night and alone!”

  “Nonsense!” returned Miss Leyton, shortly, “a young lady who can make the voyage from Jamaica to Heyst on her own account, knocking about in London for a week on the way, is surely compe­tent to walk back to the Hotel without your assistance. I should say that Miss Brandt was a very independent young woman!”

  “Perhaps, by nature, but she has been shut up in a convent for the best part of her life and that is not considered to be a good preparation for fighting one’s way through the world!”

  “She’ll be able to fight her own battles, never fear!” was Elinor’s reply.

  Just then they encountered Bobby Bates, who lifted his cap as he hurried past them.

  “Where are y
ou going so fast, Mr. Bates?” said Elinor Leyton.

  “I am going back to the Hotel to fetch Mamma’s fur boa!” he answered.

  They were passing a lighted lamp at the time, and she noticed that the lad’s eyes were red and his features bore traces of distress.

  “Are you ill?” she enquired quickly, “or in any trouble?”

  He halted for a minute in his stride.

  “No! no! not exactly,” he said in a low voice and then, as if the words came from him against his will, he went on, “But O! I do wish someone would speak to Mamma about the way she treats me. It’s cruel—to strike me with her stick before all those people as if I were a baby, and to call me such names! Even the servant William laughs at me! Do all mothers do the same, Miss Leyton? Ought a man to stand it quietly?”

  “Decidedly not!” cried Elinor, without hesitation.

  “O! Elinor! remember, she is his mother,” remonstrated Margaret, “don’t say anything to set him against her!”

  “But I was nineteen last birthday,” continued the lad, “and sometimes she treats me in such a manner, that I can’t bear it! The Baron dare not say a word to her! She swears at him so. Sometimes, I think I will run away and go to sea!”

  “No! no! you mustn’t do that!” called Miss Leyton after him, as he quickened his footsteps in the direction of the Lion d’Or.

  “What an awful woman!” sighed Mrs. Pullen. “Fancy! striking her own son in public, and with that thick stick too. I believe he had been crying!”

  “I am sure he had,” replied her friend, “you can see the poor fellow is half-witted and very weakly into the bargain. I suppose she has beaten his brains to a pap. What a terrible misfortune to have such a mother! You should hear some of the stories Madame Lamont has to tell of her!”

  “But how does she hear them?”

  “Through the Baron’s servant William, I suppose. He says the Baroness has often taken her stick to him and the other servants and thinks no more of swearing at them than a trooper! They all hate her. One day she took up a kitchen cleaver and advanced upon her coachman with it, but he seized her by both arms and sat her down upon the fire, whence she was only rescued after being somewhat severely burned!”

  “It served her right!” exclaimed Margaret, laughing at the ludicrous idea, “but what a picture she must have presented, seated on the kitchen range! Where can the woman have been raised? What sort of a person can she be?”

  “Not what she pretends, Margaret, you may be sure of that! All her fine talk of lords and ladies is so much bunkum. But I pity the poor little Baron who is, at all events, inoffensive. How can he put up with such a wife! He must feel very much ashamed of her sometimes!”

  “And yet he seems devoted to her! He never leaves her side for a moment. He is her walking stick, her fetcher and carrier, and her scribe. I don’t believe she can write a letter!”

  “And yet she was talking at the table d’hôte yesterday of the Duke of This and the Earl of That, and hinting at her having stayed at Osborne and Windsor. Of course they are falsehoods! She has never seen the inside of a palace unless it was in the capacity of a charwoman! Have you observed her hair? It is as coarse as a horse tail? And her hands! Bobby informed me the other day that his Mamma took nines in gloves! She’s not a woman, my dear! She’s a female elephant!”

  Margaret was laughing still, when they reached the steps of the Lion d’Or.

  “You are very naughty and very scandalous, Elinor,” she said, “but you have done me a world of good. My unpleasant feelings have quite gone. I am quite capable of continuing our walk if you would like to do so.”

  “No such thing, Madam,” replied Miss Leyton, “I am responsible for your well-doing in Arthur’s absence. Upstairs and into bed you go, unless you would like a cup of coffee and a chasse first. That is the only indulgence I can grant you.”

  But Mrs. Pullen declined the proffered refreshment and the two ladies sought their rooms in company.

  - CHAPTER III -

  The next morning dawned upon a perfect August day. The sun streamed brightly over every part of Heyst, turning the loose dry yellow sand (from end to end of which not a stone or boulder was to be seen) into a veritable cloth of gold. The patient asses, carrying their white-covered saddles and tied to stakes, were waiting in a row for hire, whilst some dozen Rosinantes, called by courtesy, horses, were also of the company. The sands were already strewn with chil­dren, their short petti-coats crammed into a pair of bathing drawers and their heads protected by linen hats or bonnets, digging away at the dry sand as if their lives depended on their efforts. The bathing machines, painted in gay stripes of green, red, blue, or orange, were hauled down ready for action, and the wooden tents, which can be hired for the season at any foreign watering place, were being swept out and arranged for the day’s use.

  Some of the more pretentious ones belonging to private families were surmounted by a gilt coronet, the proud possession of the Comte Darblaye, or the Herr Baron Grumplestein—sported flags moreover of France or Germany and were screened from the eyes of the vulgar by lace or muslin curtains tied up with blue ribbons. On the balcony of the Lion d’Or, where the visitors always took their breakfast, were arranged tables piled with dishes of crevettes fresh from the sea, pistolets,[92] and beautiful butter as white and tasteless as cream. It was a delight to breakfast on the open balcony with the sea breeze blowing in one’s face, and in the intervals of eating prawns and bread and butter or perusing the morning papers, to watch the cheerful scene below.

  The Baroness was there, early, of course. She and her husband and the ill-used Bobby occupied a table to themselves whence she addressed her remarks to whomever she chose, whether they wished to listen or not, and the Baron shelled her crevettes and buttered her pistolets for her. Margaret and Elinor were rather later than usual for Mrs. Pullen had not passed a good night and Miss Leyton would not have her disturbed.

  Harriet Brandt was there as they appeared and beside her a pale, unhealthy-looking young woman whom she introduced as her friend and travelling companion, Olga Brimont.

  “Olga did not wish to come down. She thought she would lie another day in bed, but I made her get up and dress, and I was right, wasn’t I, Mrs. Pullen?”

  “I think the fresh air will do Mademoiselle Brimont more good than the close bedroom, if she is strong enough to stand it!” replied Margaret, with a smile. “I am afraid you are still feeling weak,” she continued to the new-comer.

  “I feel better than I did on board the steamer or in London,” said Mademoiselle Brimont. She was an under-sized girl with plain features, and did not shew off to advantage beside her travelling companion.

  “Did you suffer so much from sea-sickness? I can sympathise with you, as I am a very bad sailor myself!”

  “O! no! Madame, it was not the mal de mer. I can hardly tell you what it was. Miss Brandt and I occupied a small cabin together, and perhaps it was because it was so small, but I did not feel as if I could breathe there—such a terrible oppression as though some one were sitting on my chest—and such a general feeling of emptiness. It was the same in London, though Miss Brandt did all she could for me, indeed she sat up with me all night till I feared she would be ill herself—but I feel better now! Last night I slept for the first time since leaving Jamaica!”

  “That is right! You will soon get well in this lovely air!”

  They all sat down at the same table and commenced to discuss their rolls and coffee. Margaret Pullen, glancing up once, was struck by the look with which Harriet Brandt was regarding her—it was so full of yearning affection—almost of longing to approach her nearer, to hear her speak, to touch her hand! It amused her to observe it! She had heard of cases in which young unsophisticated girls had taken unaccountable affections for members of their own sex and trusted she was not going to form the subject for some such experience on Miss Brandt’s part. The idea made her address her conversation more to Mademoiselle Brimont than to her companion of the evening
before.

  “I suppose you and Miss Brandt were great friends in the Convent,” she said.

  “O! no, Madame, we hardly ever saw each other whilst there except in chapel. There is so much difference in our ages, I am only seventeen and was in the lower school, whilst Miss Brandt did hardly any lessons during the last two years she spent there. But I was very glad to have her company across to England. My brother would have sent for me last year if he could have heard of a lady to travel with me!”

  “Are you going on to join your brother soon?”

  “He says he will fetch me, Madame, as soon as he can be spared from his business. He is my only relation. My parents died, like Miss Brandt’s, in the West Indies.”

  “Well! you must be sure and get your looks back before he arrives!” said Margaret, kindly.

  The head waiter now appeared with the letters from England, amongst which was one for Miss Leyton in a firm, manly handwriting with a regimental crest in blue and gold upon the envelope. Her face did not change in the least as she broke the seal, although it came from her fiancé, Captain Ralph Pullen. Elinor Leyton’s was an exceptionally cold face and it matched her disposition. She had attractive features;—a delicate nose, carved as if in ivory—brown eyes, a fair rose-tinted complexion and a small mouth with thin, firmly closed lips. Her hair was bronze-coloured and it was always dressed to perfection. She had a good figure too, with small hands and feet—and she was robed in excellent taste. She was pre-eminently a woman for a man to be proud of as the mistress of his house and the head of his table. She might be trusted never to say or do an unladylike thing—before all, she was cognisant of the obligations which devolved upon her as the daughter of Lord Walthamstowe and a member of the British aristocracy. But in disposition she was undoubtedly cold, and her fiancé had already begun to find it out. Their engagement had come about neither of them quite knew how, but he liked the idea of being connected with an aristocratic family, and she was proud of having won a man for whom many caps had been pulled in vain. He was considered to be one of the handsomest men of his generation, and she was what people called an unexceptional match for him. She was fond of him in her way, but her way was a strange one. She called the attitude she assumed towards him a proper and ladylike reserve but impartial spectators, with stronger feelings, would have deemed it indifference.