The Blood of the Vampire

by Florence Marryat

  “But, Anthony, you do not understand me! What the Baroness said was true! I see it now! I killed Bobby!”

  “My dearest, you are raving! You killed Bobby! What utter, utter folly! How could you have killed Bobby?”

  Harriet passed her hand wearily across her brow, as if she found it too hard to make her meaning plain.

  “O! yes, I did! We were always together, in the garden or the house! And he used to sit with his head on my shoulder and his arm round my waist. I should not have allowed it! I should have driven him away! But he loved me, poor Bobby, and it will be the same, Doctor Phillips says, with everybody I love! I shall only do them harm!”

  “Hally! I shall begin to think in another moment that you are ill yourself—that you have a fever or something and that it is affecting your brain!”

  “There was a sister at the Convent, Sister Theodosia, who was very good to me when I first went there,” continued the girl in a dreamy voice, as if she had not heard his words; “and she used to sit with me upon her lap for hours together because I was sad. But she grew ill and they had to send her away up to the hill where they had their sanatorium. That made the fourth in Jamaica!”

  “Now! I will not have you talk any more of this nonsense,” said Pennell, half annoyed by her perseverance, “and to prove to you what a little silly you are to imagine that everyone who falls ill or dies, who comes within the range of your acquaintance owes it to your influence, tell me how it is that your father and mother, who must have lived nearer to you than anybody else, did not fall sick and die also?”

  “My parents saw less of me than anybody,” replied Harriet, sadly, “they were ashamed of their ‘bastard’ I suppose! But old Pete loved me and took me with him everywhere, and he didn’t get sick,” she concluded, with a faint smile.

  “Of course not! See! what rubbish you have been talking—making yourself and me unhappy for nothing at all! So now let me take you in my arms and kiss the remembrance of it away!”

  He was about to put his suggestion into execution, but she still shrank from him.

  “No! no! indeed you must not! It is all true! I cannot forget Olga Brimont, and Mrs. Pullen, and the baby, and poor Bobby! It is true, indeed it is, and I have been accursed from my birth.”

  And she burst into a torrent of passionate tears.

  Pennell let her expend some for her emotion before he continued, “Well! and what is to be the upshot of it all!”

  “I must part from you,” replied the girl, “indeed, indeed I must! I cannot injure you as I have done others! Doctor Phillips said I was not fit for marriage—that I should always weaken and hurt those whom I loved most—and that I should draw from them, physically and mentally until I had sapped all their strength—that I have the blood of the vampire in me, the vampire that sucks its victims’ breaths until they die!”

  “Doctor Phillips be damned!” exclaimed Pennell, “what right has he to promulgate his absurd and untenable theories, and to poison the happiness of a girl’s life with his folly? He is an old fool, a dotard, a senseless ass, and I shall tell him so! Vampire be hanged! And if it were the truth, I for one could not wish for a sweeter death! Come along, Hally, and try your venom upon me! I am quite ready to run the risk!”

  He held out his arms to her again as he spoke, and she sank on her knees beside him.

  “O! Tony! Tony! cannot you read the truth? I love you, dear, I love you! I never loved any creature in this world before I loved you. I did not know that it was given to mortals to love so much! And my love has opened my eyes! Sooner than injure you, whom I would die to save from harm, I will separate myself from you! I will give you up! I will live my lonely life without you. I could do that, but I can never, never consent to sap your manhood and your brains, which do not belong to me but to the world, and see you wither like a poi­soned plant, the leaves of which lie discoloured and dead upon the garden path.”

  Never in the course of their acquaintanceship had Harriet Brandt seemed so sweet, so pathetic, so unselfish to Anthony Pennell as then. If he had resolved not to resign her from the first, he did so a thousand times more now. He threw his arms around her kneeling figure and lowered his head until it lay upon the crown of her dusky hair.

  “My darling! my darling! my own sweet girl!” he murmured, “our destinies are interwoven for ever! No one and nothing shall come between us! You cannot give me up unless you have my con­sent to doing so. I hold your sacred promise to become my wife, and I shall not release you from it!”

  “But if I harmed you?” she said fearfully.

  “I do not believe in the possibility of your harming me,” he replied, “but if I am to die, which is what I suppose you mean, I claim my right to die in your arms. But whenever it happens you will have neither hastened nor retarded it!”

  “O! if I could only think so!” she murmured.

  “You must! Why cannot you trust my judgment as much as that of Madame Gobelli or old Phillips—a couple of mischief makers. And now, Hally, when shall it be?”

  “When shall ‘what’ be?” she whispered.

  “You know what I mean as well as I do! When shall we be mar­ried? We have no one to consult but ourselves! I am my own master and you are alone in the world! These things are very easily managed you know. I have but to go to Doctors’ Commons[129] for a special license to enable us to be married at a registrar’s office to-morrow. Shall it be to-morrow, love?”

  “O! no! no! I could not make up my mind so soon!”

  “But why not? Would you live in this dull hotel all by yourself, Hally?”

  “I do not know! I am so very unhappy! Leave me, Anthony, for God’s sake, leave me whilst there is time! You do not know the risk you may be running by remaining by my side! How can I consent to let you, whom I love like my very life, run any risk for my sake! O! I love you—I love you!” cried the impassioned girl, as she clung tightly to him. “You are my lord and master and my king, and I will never, never be so selfish as to harm you for the sake of my own gratification. You must go away—put the seas between us—never see me, never write or speak to me more—only save yourself, my beloved, save yourself!”

  He smiled compassionately, as he would have smiled at the ravings of a child, as he raised her from her lowly position and placed her in a chair.

  “Do you know what I am going to do, little woman?” he said cheerfully. “I am going to leave you all alone to think this matter over until to-morrow. By that time you will have been able to com­pare the opinions of two people who do not care a jot about you, with those of mine who love you so dearly. Think well over what they have said to you, and I have said to you, and you have said to me! Remember, that if you adhere to your present determination you will make both you and me most unhappy, and do no one any good. As for myself, I venture to say that if I lose you my grief and disappointment will be so great that, in all probability, I shall never do any good work again. But be a sensible girl—make up your mind to marry me and give the lie to all this nonsense, and I’ll write a book that will astonish the world! Come, Hally, is it to be ruin or success for me?—Ruin to spend my life without the only woman I have ever cared for, or success to win my wife and a companion who will help me in my work and make my happiness complete?”

  He kissed her tear-stained face several times, and left her with a bright smile.

  “This time to-morrow, remember, and I shall come with the license in my pocket.”

  - CHAPTER XVII -

  Doctor Phillips did not meet Margaret and her husband until luncheon time and then they were full of an encounter which they had had during their morning walk.

  “Only fancy, Doctor!” exclaimed Margaret, with more animation than she had displayed of late, “Arthur and I have been shopping in Regent Street, and who do you think we met?”

  “I give it up, my dear,” replied the doctor, helping himself to cold beef. “I am not good at guessing riddles.”

  “Ralph and Elinor! They had just come from some ex
hibition of pictures in New Bond Street, and I never saw them so pleased with each other before. Ralph was looking actually ‘spooney’ and Elinor was positively radiant.”

  “Souvent femme varie,” quoted Doctor Phillips, shrugging his shoulders.

  “O! but, Doctor, it made Arthur and me so glad to see them. Elinor is very fond of Ralph, you know, although she has shewn it so little. And so I have no doubt is he of her, and there would never have been any unpleasantness between them if it had not been for that horrid girl, Harriet Brandt.”

  “It is not like you, my dear Margaret, to condemn anyone with­out a hearing. Perhaps you have not heard the true case of Miss Harriet Brandt. Although I am glad that Ralph has disentangled him­self from her, I still believe that he behaved very badly to both the young ladies, and whilst I am glad to hear that Miss Leyton smiles upon him again, I think it is more than he deserves!”

  “And I agree with you, Doctor,” interposed Colonel Pullen, “I have never seen this Miss Brandt, but I know what a fool my brother is with women, and can quite understand that he may have raised her hopes just to gratify his own vanity. I have no patience with him.”

  “Well! for Miss Leyton’s sake let us hope that this will be his last experience of dallying with forbidden pleasures. But what will you say when I tell you that one of my visitors this morning has been the young lady in question—Miss Brandt!”

  “Harriet Brandt!” exclaimed Margaret, “but why—is she ill?”

  “O! no! Her trouble is mental—not physical.”

  “She is not still hankering after Ralph, I hope.”

  “You are afraid he might not be able to resist the bait! So should I be. But she did not mention Captain Pullen. Her distress was all about herself!”

  “O! do tell me about it, Doctor, if it is not a secret! You know I have a kind of interest in Harriet Brandt!”

  “When she does not interfere with the prospects of your family,” observed the doctor drily, “exactly so! Well then, the poor girl is in great trouble, and I had very little consolation to give her! She has left Madame Gobelli’s house. It seems that the old woman insulted her terribly and almost turned her out.”

  “O! that awful Baroness,” cried Margaret, “it is only what might have been expected! We heard dreadful stories about her at Heyst. She has an uncontrollable temper and when offended, a most vituperative tongue. Her ill-breeding is apparent at all times, but it must be overwhelming when she is angry. But how did she insult Miss Brandt?”

  “You remember what I told you of the girl’s antecedents! It appears that the Baroness must have got hold of the same story, for she cast it in her teeth, accusing her moreover of having caused the death of her son.”

  “Madame Gobelli’s son? What! Bobby—O! you do not mean to say that Bobby—is dead?”

  “Yes! There was but one son, I think! He died yesterday, as I understood Miss Brandt. And the mother in her rage and grief turned upon the poor girl and told her such bitter truths that she rushed from the house at once. Her visit to me this morning was paid in order to ascertain if such things were true, as the Baroness, very unjustifiably I think, had referred her to me for confirmation.”

  “And what did you tell her?”

  “What could I tell her? At first I declined to give an opinion but she put such pertinent questions to me that unless I had lied I saw no way of getting out of it. I glossed over matters as well as I could but even so they were bad enough. But I impressed it upon her that she must not think of marrying. I thought it the best way to put all idea of catching Captain Pullen out of her mind. Let him once get safely married and she can decide for herself with regard to the next. But at all hazards, we must keep Ralph out of her way, for between you and me and the post, she is a young woman whom most men would find it difficult to resist.”

  “O! yes! she and Ralph must not meet again,” said Margaret, dreamingly. Her thoughts had wandered back to Bobby and Heyst, and all the trouble she had encountered whilst there. What despair had attacked her when she lost her only child, and now Madame Gobelli—the woman she so much disliked—had lost her only child also.

  “Poor Madame Gobelli!” she ejaculated, “I cannot help thinking of her! Fancy, Bobby being—dead! And she used to make him so unhappy and humiliate him before strangers! How she must be suffering for it now! How it must all come back upon her! Poor Bobby! Elinor will be sorry to hear that he is gone! She used to pity him so and often gave him fruit and cakes. Fancy his being dead! I cannot believe it.”

  “It is true, nevertheless! But it is the common lot, Margaret! Perhaps as his mother used to treat him so roughly, the poor lad is better off where he is.”

  “O! of course, I have no doubt of that! But he was all she had—like me!” said Margaret, with her eyes over-brimming. Her husband put his arms round her and let her have her cry out on his shoulder.

  Then, as he wiped her tears away she whispered,

  “Arthur, I should like to go and see her—the Baroness, I mean! I can sympathise so truly with her, I might be able to say a few words of comfort!”

  “Do as you like, my darling,” replied Colonel Pullen, “that is, if you are sure that the woman won’t insult you as she did Miss Brandt!”

  “O! no! no! I am not in the least afraid! Why should she? I shall only tell her how much I feel for her—how much our common loss——”

  She could not proceed, and the doctor whispered to the Colonel, “Let her do as she wishes! The best salve for our own wounds is to try and heal those of others!”

  Margaret rose and prepared to leave the room.

  “I shall go at once,” she said. “I suppose there is no chance of my meeting Harriet Brandt there!”

  “I think not! She told me she had left the Red House for good and all, but she did not say where she was staying! Though, after all, I think she is most in want of comfort of the two.”

  “O! no!” replied Margaret, faintly, “there is no grief like that of—of—” She did not finish her sentence but left the room hastily in order to assume her walking things.

  “Will she ever get over the loss of her child?” demanded Colonel Pullen, gloomily. The doctor regarded him with a half-amused surprise.

  “My dear fellow, though it is useless to preach the doctrine to a bereaved mother, the loss of an innocent baby is perhaps the least trying in the category of human ills. To rear the child, as thousands do, to be unloving, or unsympathetic, or ungrateful, is a thousand times worse. But it is too soon for your dear wife to acknowledge it! Let her go to this other mother and let them cry together. It will do her all the good in the world!”

  And the doctor, having finished his luncheon, put on his top coat and prepared to make a round of professional calls.

  Margaret came back ready for her visit.

  “I shall not offer to go with you, darling,” said the Colonel, “because my presence would only be inconvenient. But mind you keep the cab waiting, or you may find some difficulty in getting another in that district. What address shall I give the driver?”

  “First to our florist in Regent Street, that I may get some white flowers.”

  In another minute she was off, and in about an hour afterwards she found herself outside the Red House which looked gloomier than ever with all the blinds drawn down. Margaret rang the front door bell which was answered by Miss Wynward.

  “Can I see Madame Gobelli?” commenced Margaret, “I have just heard the sad news and come to condole with her!”

  Miss Wynward let her into the hall and ushered her into a side room.

  “You will excuse my asking if you are a friend of her ladyship’s,” she said.

  “I can hardly call myself a friend,” replied Margaret, “but I stayed with her in the same hotel at Heyst last summer, and I knew the dear boy who is dead. I was most grieved to hear of his death, and naturally anxious to enquire after the Baroness. But if she is too upset to see me, of course I would not think of forcing my presence upon her!”

&n
bsp; “I don’t think her ladyship would object to receiving any friend, but I am not sure if she would recognise you!”

  “Not recognise me? It is not three months since we parted.”

  “You do not understand me! Our dear boy’s death was so sudden—I have been with him since he was five years old, so you will forgive my mentioning him in such a fashion—that it has had a terrible effect upon his poor mother. In fact she is paralysed! The medical men think the paralysis is confined to the lower limbs, but at present they are unable to decide definitely as the Baroness has not opened her lips since the event occurred.”

  “O! poor Madame Gobelli!” cried Margaret, tearfully, “I felt sure she loved him under all her apparent roughness and indifference!”

  “Yes! I have been with them so long that I know her manner amounted at times to cruelty, but she did not mean it to be so! She thought to make him hardy and independent, instead of which it had just the opposite effect! But she is paying bitterly for it now! I really think his death will kill her, though the doctors laugh at my fears!”

  “I—I—too have lost my only child, my precious little baby,” replied Margaret, encouraged by the sympathetic tenderness in the other woman’s eyes, “and I thought also at first that I must die—that I could not live without her—but God is so good, and there is such comfort in the thought that what ever we may suffer, our darlings have missed all the bitterness and sin and disappointments of this world, that at last—that is, sometimes—one feels almost thankful that they are safe with Him!”

  “Ah! Madame Gobelli has not your hope and trust, Madam!” said Miss Wynward, “if she had, she would be a better and happier woman. But I must tell you that she is in the same room as Bobby! She will not be moved from there, but lies on the couch where we placed her when she fell, stricken with the paralysis, gazing at the corpse!”

  “Poor dear woman!” exclaimed Margaret.