The Blood of the Vampire

by Florence Marryat

  “Mein tear! mein tear!” interposed the unfortunate Baron.

  “You go on with your dinner, Gustave, and leave me alone! I saw you! And no more lady jockey races do you attend whilst we’re in this Popish country. They ain’t good for you.”

  “I’m very thankful that I have been saved such a dangerous exper-iment,” said Captain Pullen, “though if I thought that you would tie your handkerchief over my eyes and put my head in your lap, Madame, I should feel tempted to try it as soon as dinner is over!”

  “Go along with you, you bad boy!” chuckled the Baroness, “there’s something else to see this evening! They are going to ’ave a procession of lanterns as soon as it’s dark!”

  “And it is to stop in front of every hotel,” added Harriet, “and the landlords are going to distribute bonbons and gateaux amongst the lantern bearers.”

  “O! we must not miss that on any account!” replied Captain Pullen, addressing himself to her in reply.

  Margaret and Elinor thought, when the time came, that they should be able to see the procession of lanterns just as well from the balcony as when mingled with the crowd, so they brought their work and books down there and sat with Ralph, drinking coffee and conversing of all that had occurred. The Baroness had disappeared and Harriet Brandt had apparently gone with her—a fact for which both ladies were inwardly thankful.

  Presently, as the dusk fell, the procession of lanterns could be seen wending its way from the further end of the Digue. It was a very pretty and fantastical sight. The bearers were not only children—many grown men and women took part in it and the devices into which the Chinese lanterns had been formed were quaint and clever. Some held a ring around them, as milkmaids carry their pails—others held crosses and banners designed in tiny lanterns, far above their heads. One, which could be seen topping all the rest, was poised like a skipping rope over the bearer’s shoulders, whilst the coloured lanterns swung inside it like a row of bells. The members of the procession shouted, or sung, or danced, or walked steadily as suited their temperaments and came along, a merry crowd up and down the Digue, stopping at the various hotels for largesse in the shape of cakes and sugar-plums.

  Ralph Pullen found his eyes wandering more than once in the direction of the Baroness’s sitting-room to see if he could catch a glimpse of her or her protégée (as Harriet Brandt seemed now universally acknowledged to be), but he heard no sound, nor caught a glimpse of them, and concluded in consequence that they had left the hotel again.

  “Whoever is carrying that skipping rope of lanterns seems to be in a merry mood,” observed Margaret after a while, “for it is jumping up and down in the most extravagant manner! She must be dancing! Do look, Elinor!”

  “I see! I suppose this sort of childish performance amuses a child­ish people, but for my own part I think once of it is quite enough and am thankful that we are not called upon to admire it in England!”

  “O! I think it is rather interesting,” remarked Margaret, “I only wish my dear baby had been well enough to enjoy it! How she would have screamed and cooed at those bright coloured lanterns! But when I tried to attract her attention to them just now she only whined to be put into her cot again. How thankful I shall be to see dear Doctor Phillips to-morrow!”

  The procession had reached the front of the Hotel by this time and halted there for refreshment. The waiters, Jules and Phillippe and Henri, appeared with plates of dessert and cakes and threw them indiscriminately amongst the people. One of the foremost to jump and scramble to catch the falling sweetmeats was the girl who carried the lantern skipping rope above her head and in whom Ralph Pullen, to his astonishment, recognised Harriet Brandt. There she was, fantastically dressed in a white frock and a broad yellow sash, with her magnificent hair loose and wreathed with scarlet flowers. She looked amazingly handsome, like a Bacchante, and her appear­ance and air of abandon sent the young man’s blood into his face and up to the roots of his fair hair.

  “Surely!” exclaimed Margaret, “that is never Miss Brandt!”

  “Yes! it is,” cried Harriet, “I’m having the most awful fun! Why don’t you come too? I’ve danced the whole way up the Digue, and it is so warm! I wish the waiters would give us something to drink! I’ve eaten so many bonbons I feel quite sick!”

  “What will you take, Miss Brandt?” asked Captain Pullen eagerly, “limonade or soda water?”

  “A limonade, please! You are good!” she replied, as he handed her the tumbler over the balcony balustrades. “Come along and dance with me!”

  “I cannot! I am with my sister and Miss Leyton!” he replied.

  “O! pray do not let us prevent you,” said Elinor in her coldest voice, “Margaret was just going upstairs and I am quite ready to accompany her!”

  “No, no, Elinor,” whispered Mrs. Pullen with a shake of her head, “stay here and keep Ralph company!”

  “But it is nearly ten o’clock,” replied Miss Leyton consulting her watch, “and I have been on my feet all day! and feel quite ready for bed. Good-night Ralph!” she continued, offering him her hand.

  “Well! if you two are really going to bed I shall go too,” said Captain Pullen rising, “for there will be nothing for me to do here after you’re gone!”

  “Not even to follow the procession?” suggested Miss Leyton, with a smile.

  “Don’t talk nonsense!” he rejoined crossly. “Am I the sort of man to go bobbing up and down the Digue amongst a parcel of children?”

  He shook hands with them both and walked away rather sulkily to his own quarter of the hotel. But he did not go to bed. He waited until some fifteen minutes had elapsed and then telling himself that it was impossible to sleep at that hour, and that if Elinor chose to behave like a bear it was not his fault, he came downstairs again and sauntered out on the sea front.

  It was very lonely there at that moment. The procession had turned and gone down to the other end again, where its lights and banners could be seen waving about in the still summer air.

  “Why shouldn’t the girl jump about and enjoy herself if she chooses,” thought Ralph Pullen, “Elinor makes no allowances for condition or age, but would have every one as prim and old-maidish as herself. I declare she gets worse each time I see her! A nice sort of wife she will make if this kind of thing goes on! But by Jingo! if we are ever married I’ll take her prudery out of her, and make her—what? The woman who commences by pursing her mouth up at everything ends by opening it wider than anybody else! There’s twice as much harm in a prude as in one of these frank openhearted girls whose eyes tell you what they’re thinking of the first time you see them!”

  He had been strolling down the Digue as he pondered thus, and now found himself meeting the procession again.

  “Come and dance with me,” cried Harriet Brandt who, apparently as fresh as ever, was still waving her branch of lanterns to the measure of her steps. He took her hand and tried to stop her.

  “Haven’t you had about enough of this?” he said, “I’m sure you must be tired. Here’s a little boy without a lantern! Give him yours to hold and come for a little walk with me!”

  The touch of his cool hand upon her heated palm seemed to rouse all the animal in Harriet Brandt’s blood. Her hand, very slight and lissom, clung to his with a force of which he had not thought it capable and he felt it trembling in his clasp.

  “Come!” he repeated coaxingly, “you mustn’t dance any more or you will overtire yourself! Come with me and get cool and rest!”

  She threw her branch of lanterns to the boy beside her impetuously.

  “Here!” she cried, “take them! I don’t want them any more! And take me away,” she continued to Ralph, but without letting go of his hand, “You are right! I want—I want—rest!”

  Her slight figure swayed towards him as he led her out of the crowd and across a narrow street to where the road ran behind all the houses and hotels and was dark and empty and void. The din of the voices, and the trampling of feet, and the echo of the song
s still reached them, but they could see nothing—the world was on the Digue and they were in the dusk and quietude together—and alone.

  Ralph felt the slight form beside him lean upon his shoulder till their faces almost touched. He threw his arm about her waist. Her hot breath fanned his cheek.

  “Kiss me!” she murmured in a dreamy voice. Captain Pullen was not slow to accept the invitation so confidingly extended. What Englishman would be? He turned his face to Harriet Brandt’s, and her full red lips met his own in a long-drawn kiss that seemed to sap his vitality. As he raised his head again he felt faint and sick, but quickly recovering himself he gave her a second kiss more passionate, if possible, than the first. Then the following whispered conversation ensued between them. “Do you know,” he commenced, with his head close to hers, “that you are the very jolliest little girl that I have ever met!”

  “And you—you are the man I have dreamt of, but never seen till now!”

  “How is that? Am I so different from the rest of my sex?”

  “Very—very different! So strong and brave and beautiful!”

  “Dear little girl! And so you really like me?”

  “I love you,” said Harriet feverishly, “I loved you the first minute we met.”

  “And I love you! You’re awfully sweet and pretty, you know!”

  “Do you really think so? What would Mrs. Pullen say if she heard you?”

  “Mrs. Pullen is not the keeper of my conscience. But she must not hear it.”

  “O! no! nor Miss Leyton either!”

  “Most certainly not Miss Leyton. She is a terrible prude! She would be awfully shocked!”

  “It must be a secret,—just between you and me!” murmured the girl. “Just so! A sweet little secret, all our own, and nobody else’s!” And then the fair head and the dark one came again in juxtaposition, and the rest was lost in—Silence!

  - CHAPTER VII -

  Doctor Phillips had not been in the Hôtel Lion d’Or five minutes before Margaret Pullen took him upstairs to see her baby. She was becoming terribly anxious about her. They encountered Captain Ralph Pullen on the staircase.

  “Hullo! young man, and what have you been doing to yourself?” exclaimed the doctor.

  He was certainly looking ill. His face was chalky white, and his eyes seemed to have lost their brightness and colour.

  “Been up racketting late at night?” continued Doctor Phillips. “What is Miss Leyton about, not to look after you better?”

  “No, indeed, Doctor,” replied the young man with a smile, “I am sure my sister-in-law will testify to the good hours I have kept since here. But I have a headache this morning—a rather bad one,” he added, with his hand to the nape of his neck.

  “Perhaps this place doesn’t agree with you—it was always rather famous for its smells if I remember aright! However, I am going to see Miss Ethel Pullen now and when I have finished with her I will look after you!”

  “No thank you, Doctor,” said Ralph laughing, as he descended the stairs. “None of your nostrums for me! Keep them for the baby!”

  “He is not looking well,” observed Doctor Phillips to Margaret, as they walked on together.

  “I don’t think he is, now you point it out to me, but I have not noticed it before,” replied Margaret. “I am sure he has been living quietly enough whilst here!”

  The infant was lying as she had now done for several days past— quite tranquil and free from pain but inert and half asleep. The doctor raised her eyelids and examined her eyeballs—felt her pulse and listened to her heart—but he did not seem to be satisfied.

  “What has this child been having?” he asked abruptly.

  “Having, Doctor? Why! nothing of course, but her milk, and I have always that from the same cow!”

  “No opium—no soothing syrup, nor quackeries of any kind?”

  “Certainly not! You know how often you have warned me against anything of the sort!”

  “And no one has had the charge of her except you and the nurse here? You can both swear she has never been tampered with?”

  “O! I think so, certainly, yes! Baby has never been from under the eye of one or the other of us. A young lady resident in the hotel—a Miss Brandt—has often nursed her and played with her but one of us has always been there at the time.”

  “A Miss—what did you say?” demanded the doctor sharply.

  “A Miss Brandt—a very good-natured girl, who is fond of children!”

  “Very well then! I will go at once to the pharmacien’s and get a prescription made up for your baby, and I hope that your anxiety may soon be relieved!”

  “O! thank you, Doctor, so much!” exclaimed Margaret. “I knew you would do her good as soon as you saw her!”

  But the doctor was not so sure of himself. He turned the case over and over in his mind as he walked to the chemist’s shop wondering how such a state of exhaustion and collapse could have been brought about.

  The baby had her first dose and the doctor had just time to wash and change his travelling suit before they all met at the dinner table.

  Here they found the party opposite augmented by the arrival of Monsieur Alfred Brimont, a young Brussels tradesman who had come over to Heyst to conduct his sister home. He was trying to persuade Harriet Brandt to accompany Olga and stay a few days with them but the girl—with a long look in the direction of Captain Pullen—shook her head determinately.

  “O! you might come, Harriet, just for a few days,” argued Olga, “now that the Bataille des Fleurs is over there is nothing left to stay for in Heyst, and Alfred says that Brussels is such a beautiful place.”

  “There are the theatres, and the Parc, and the Quinçonce, and Wauxhall!” said young Brimont persuasively, “Mademoiselle would enjoy herself, I have no doubt!”

  But Harriet still negatived the proposal.

  “Why shouldn’t we make up a party and all go together,” suggested the Baroness. “Me and the Baron and Bobby and ’Arriet? You would like it then, my dear, wouldn’t you?” she said to the girl, “and you really should see Brussels before we go ’ome! What do you say, Gustave? We’d go to the Hotel de Saxe, and see everything! It wouldn’t take us more than a week or ten days.”

  “Do as you like, mein tear,” acquiesced the Baron.

  “And why shouldn’t you come with us, Captain?” continued Madame Gobelli to Ralph. “You don’t look quite the thing to me! A little change would do you good. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy! ’Ave you been to Brussels?”

  “I lived there for years, Madame, and know every part of it!” he replied.

  “Come and renew your acquaintance then, and take me and ’Arriet about! The Baron isn’t much good when it comes to sightseeing, are you, Gustave? ’E likes ’is pipe and ’is slippers too well! But you’re young and spry! Well! is it a bargain?”

  “I really could not decide in such a hurry,” said Ralph, with a glance at Margaret and Elinor, “but we might all go to Brussels perhaps, a little later on.”

  “I don’t think you must buoy up the hopes of the Baroness and Miss Brandt with that idea,” remarked Miss Leyton coldly, “because I am sure that Mrs. Pullen has no intention of doing anything of the sort. If you wish to accompany Madame Gobelli’s party you had better make your arrangements without any reference to us!”

  “All right! If you prefer it, I will,” he answered in the same indifferent tone.

  “Who is that young lady sitting opposite with the dark eyes?” demanded Doctor Phillips of Mrs. Pullen.

  “The same I spoke to you of upstairs as having been kind to baby—Miss Harriet Brandt!”

  “I knew a Brandt once,” he answered. “Has she anything to do with the West Indies?”

  “O! yes! she comes from Jamaica! She is an orphan, the daughter of Doctor Henry Brandt, and has been educated in the Ursuline Convent there! She is a young lady with an independent fortune and considered to be quite a catch in Heyst!”

  “And you and Miss Leyto
n are intimate with her?”

  “She has attached herself very much to us since coming here. She has few friends, poor girl!”

  “Will you introduce me?”

  “Miss Brandt, my friend, Doctor Phillips, wishes for an introduction to you.”

  The usual courtesies passed between them and then the doctor said,

  “I fancy I knew your father, Miss Brandt, when I was quartered in Jamaica with the Thirteenth Lances. Did he not live on the top of the Hill, on a plantation called Helvetia?”

  “That was the name of our place,” replied Harriet, “but I left it when I was only eleven. My trustee Mr. Trawler lives there now!”

  “Ah! Trawler the attorney! I have no doubt he made as much out of the property as he could squeeze.”

  “Do you mean that he cheated me?” asked Harriet, naïvely.

  “God forbid! my dear young lady. But he was a great crony of your father’s, and a d—d sharp lawyer, and those sort of gentry generally feather their own nest pretty well, in payment of their friendship.”

  “He can’t do me any harm now,” said Harriet, “for I have my property in my own hands!”

  “Quite right! quite right! that is, if you’re a business woman,” rejoined the doctor. “And are you travelling all by yourself ?”

  Harriet was about to answer in the affirmative when the Baroness took the words out of her mouth.

  “No, Sir, she ain’t! She came over with her friend, Mademoiselle Brimont, and now she’s under my chaperonage. She’s a deal too ’andsome, ain’t she? to be travelling about the world alone with her money-bags under her arm. My name’s the Baroness Gobelli,— this is my ’usband, Baron Gustave Gobelli, and this is my little boy, Bobby Bates—by my first ’usband you’ll understand—and when you return to London, if you like to come and see Miss Brandt at our ’ouse—the Red ’Ouse, ’Olloway, we shall be very pleased to see you!”

  “I am sure, Madame, you are infinitely kind,” replied Doctor Phillips gravely.

  “Not at all! You’ll meet no end of swells there, Prince Loris of Taxelmein, and Prince Adalbert of Waxsquiemer, and ’eaps of others. But all the same we’re in trade, the Baron and I—and we’re not ashamed of it either. We make boots and shoes! Our firm is Fantaisie et Cie, of Oxford Street and though I say it, you won’t find better boots and shoes in all London than ours. No brown paper soles and rotten uppers! Not a bit of it! It’s all genuine stuff with us. You can take any boot out of the shop and rip it to pieces and prove what I say! The best materials and the best workmen, that’s our principle, and it answers. We can’t make ’em fast enough!”