Vintage Vampire Stories (8 page)

“Something in the association of ideas reminded me of Madame
de
St. Croix, and I said to myself, ‘At last age must have overtaken that marvelous beauty, and time brought the indomitable spirit to remorse, repentance, perhaps even amendment. What can have made me think of her in a quiet, peaceful scene like this?'

“Just then a lady and gentleman crossed the gravel walk in front of me, and took their places on a seat under an old tree not a dozen yards off. It was a lovely day in early autumn; the flowers were still ablaze with the gaudiest of their summer beauty, the sky was all dappled grey and gold, earth had put on the richest dress she wears throughout the year; but here and there a leaf fell noiseless on the sward, as if to testify that she too must shed all her glories in due season, and yield, like other beauties, her unwilling tribute to decay.

“But there was nothing of autumn in the pair who not sat opposite my couch, chatting, laughing, flirting, apparently either ignoring or disregarding my proximity. The man was in all the bloom and beauty of youth; the woman, though looking a few years older, did not yet seem to have attained her prime. I could scarcely believe my eyes! Yes, if ever I beheld Madame
de
St. Croix, there she sat with her fatal gaze turned on this infatuated boy, leading him gradually, steadily, surely, to the edge of that chasm into which those who plunged came to the surface nevermore. It was the old story over again. How well I remembered, ever after such an interval, the tender droop of the head, the veiling eyelashes, the glance so quickly averted, yet, like a snapshot, telling with such deadly effect; the mournful smile, the gentle whisper, the quiet confiding gesture of the slender hand, all the by-play of the most accomplished and most unscrupulous of actresses. There was no more chance of escape for her companion that for a fisherman of the North Sea, whose skiff had been sucked in the Maëlstrohm, with mast unshipped and oars adrift half a mile astern. By sight, if not personally, I then knew most of the notabilities of the day.The boy, for such I might well call him in comparisons with myself, seemed too good for his fate, and yet I saw well enough it was inevitable. He had already made himself a name as a poet of no mean pretensions, and held besides the character of a high-spirited, agreeable, and unaffected member of society. Add to this, that he was manly, good-looking, and well-born; nothing more seemed wanting to render him a fit victim for the altar at which he was to be offered up. Like his predecessors, he was fascinated. The snake held him in her eyes. The poor bird's wings were fluttering, its volition was gone, its doom sealed. Could nothing save it from the destroyer? I longed to have back, if only for a day, the powers which I had regretted so little half-an-hour ago. Weak, helpless, weary, and worn-out, I yet determined to make an effort, and save him if I could.

“They rose to go, but found the gate locked through which they had intended to pass. She had a way of affecting a pretty wilfulness in trifles, and sent him to fetch the key. Prompt to obey her lightest wish, he bounded off in search of it, and following slowly, she passed within two paces of my chair, bending on its helpless invalid a look that seemed to express far less pity for his condition than a grudging envy of his lot. I stopped her with a gesture that in one more able-bodied would have been a bow, and, strange to say, she recognised me at once. There was not a moment to lose. I took courage from a certain wistful look that gave softness to her eyes, and I spoke out.

“‘We shall never meet again,' I said; ‘we have crossed each other's paths at such long intervals, and on such strange occasions, but I know this is the last of them! Why time stands still for
you
is a secret I cannot fathom, but the end must come some day, put if off however long you will. Do you not think that when you become as I am, a weary mortal, stumbling with half-shut eyes on the edge of an open grave, it would be well to have one good deed on which you could look back, to have reprieved one out of the many victims on whom you have inflicted mortal punishment for the offence of loving you so much better than you deserve? Far as it stretches behind you, every footstep in your track is marked with sorrow—more than one with blood. Show mercy now, as you may have to ask it hereafter. Life is all before this one, and it seems cruel thus to blast the sapling from its very roots. He is hopeful, trustful, and fresh-hearted—spare him and let him go.'

“She was fitting the glove on her faultless little hand. Her brow seemed so calm, so soft and pure, that for a moment I thought I had conquered, but looking up from her feminine employment, I recognised the hungry glitter in those dark, merciless eyes, and I knew there was no hope.

“‘It is too late,' she answered, ‘too late to persuade either him or me. It is no fault of mine. It is fate. For him—for the others—for all of us. Sometimes I wish it had not been so. Mine has been an unhappy life, and there seems to be no end, no resting-place. I can no more help myself than a drowning wretch, swept down by a torrent; but I am too proud to catch at the twigs and straws that would break off in my hand. I would change places with you willingly. Yes—you in that bath chair. I am so tired sometimes, and yet I dare not wish it was all over. Think of me as forbearingly as you can, for we shall not cross each other's path again.'

“‘And this boy?' I asked, striving to detect something of compunction in the pitiless face that was yet so beautiful.

“‘He must take his chance with the rest,' she said. ‘Here he comes—good-bye.'

“They walked away arm-in-arm through the golden autumn weather, and a chill came into my very heart, for I knew what that chance was worth.

“A few months, and the snow lay six inches deep over the grave of him whose opening manhood had been so full of promise, so rich in all that makes youth brightest, life most worth having; while a woman in deep mourning was praying there, under the wintry sky; but this woman was his mother, and her heart was broken for the love she bore her boy.

“His death had been very shocking, very sudden. People talked of a ruptured blood vessel, a fall on his bedroom floor, a doctor not to be found when sent for; a series of fatalities that precluded the possibility of saving him; but those who pretended to know best affirmed that not all the doctors in Europe could have done any good, for when his servant went to call him in the morning he found his master lying stark and stiff, having been dead some hours. There was a pool of blood on his carpet; there were ashes of burnt letters in his fireplace; more, they whispered with meaning shrugs and solemn, awe-struck faces—

“You can understand now that I believe in Vampires.”

“What became of her?” I asked, rather eagerly, for I was interested in this Madame
de
St. Croix. I like a woman who goes into extremes, either for good or evil. Great recklessness, equally with great sensibility, has its charm for such a temperament as mine. I can understand, though I cannot explain, the influence possessed by very wicked women who never scruple to risk their own happiness as readily as their neighbours'. I wanted to know something more about Madame
de
St. Croix, but he was not listening; he paid no attention to my question. In a tone of abstraction that denoted his thoughts were many miles away, he only murmured,

“Insatiate—impenetrable—pitiless. The others were bad enough in all conscience, but I think she might have spared the boy!”

Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924) was a prolific novelist, poet and squire-parson who wrote numerous British and European travelogues. His vampire stories include “A Dead Finger,” “Glamr” and “A Professional Secret,” but he is usually remembered today for his hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

His seminal
Book of Werewolves
(1865) was one of Bram Stoker's primary sources of information for
Dracula.
Stoker appropriated many of the werewolves' features—including canine teeth, pointed finger nails and the ability to change shape—for his literary vampire.

On 1 June, 1867, the
Daily Mail
compared
Dracula
to five classics of gothic literature:
The Mysteries of Udulpho
;
Frankenstein
;
Wuthering Heights
;“The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Margery of Quether.”The first four of these stories have remained in print and are easily available today, but Baring-Gould's story has been all but neglected. “Margery of Quether” was first published in the
Cornhill Magazine
in April and May of 1884, with original illustrations by Harry Furniss. It was reprinted in
Margery of Quether: And Other Stories
(London: Methuen, 1891) and enjoyed limited edition in 1999. However, the following presentation marks its American debut.

T
his is written by my own hand, entirely unassisted. I am George Rosedhu, of Brinsabatch, in the parish of Lamerton, and in the county of Devon—whether to write myself Mister of Esquire, I do not know. My father was a yeoman, so was my grandfather, idem my great-grandfather. But I notice that when anyone asks of me a favour, or writes me a begging letter, he addresses me as Esquire, whereas he who has no expectation of getting anything out of me invariably styles me Mister. I have held my acres for five hundred years—that is, my family, the Rosedhus, have, in direct lineal descent, always in the male line, and I intend, in like manner, ti hand it on, neither impaired nor enlarged, to my own son, when I get on, which I am sure of, as the Rosedhus always have had male issue. But what this Nihilism, and Communism, and Tenant-right, and Agricultural Holdings legislation, threatened by this Gladstone-Chamberlain Radical Government, there is no knowing where a man with ancestral acres stands, and, in the general topsy-turvyism into which we are plunging—thanks to this Radical Government, God bless me!—I may be driven to have only female issue. There is no knowing to what we landed proprietors are coming.

Before I proceed with my story, I must apologize for anything that smacks of rudeness in my style. I do not mean to say that there is anything intrinsically rude in my literary productions, but that the present taste is so vitiated by slipshod English and effeminacy of writing, that the modern reader of periodicals may not appreciate my composition as it deserves. Roast beef does not taste its best after Indian curry.

My education has been thorough, not superficial. I was reared in none of your ‘Adademies for Young Gentlemen,' but brought up on the Eton Latin Grammar and came at the Tavistock Free Grammar School. The consequence is that what I pretend to know, I know. I am a practical man with a place in the world, and when I leave it, there will be a hole which will be felt, just as when a molar is removed from the jaw.

There is no exaggeration in saying that my family is as old as the hills, for a part of my estate covers a side of that great hog's-back now called Black Down, which lies right before my window; and anyone who knows anything about the old British tongue will tell you that Rosedhu is the Cornish for Black Down. Well, that proves that we held land here before ever the Saxons came and drove the Bristish language across eh Tamar. My title-deeds don't go back so far as that, but there are some of them which, though they be in Latin, I cannot decipher. The hills may change their names, but the Rosedhus never. My house is nothing to boast of.We have been yeomen, not squires, and we have never aimed at living like gentry. Perhaps that is why the Rosedus are here still, and the other yeomen families round have gone scat (I mean, gone to pieces). If the sons won't look to the farm and the girls mind the dairy, the family cannot thrive.

Brinsabatch is an ordinary farm-house substantially built of volcanic stone, black, partly with age, and partly because of the burnt nature of the stone. The windows are wide, of word, and always kept painted white. The roof is of slate, and grows some clumps of stone-crop, yellow as gold.

Brinsabatch lies in a combe, that is, a hollow lap, in Yaffell—or as the maps call it, Heathfield. Yaffelll is a huge elevated bank of moor to the north-west and west, and what is very singular about it is, that at the very highest point of the moor an extinct volcanic cone protrudes, and rises to the height of about twelve hundred feet. This is called Brentor, and it is crowned with a church, the very tiniest in the world I should suppose, but tiny as it is, it has chancel, nave, porch, and west tower like any Christian parish church. There is also a graveyard round the church. This occupies a little platform on the top of the mountain, and there is absolutely no room there for anything else. To the west, the rocks are quite precipitous, but the peak can be ascended from the east up a steep grass slope strewn with pumice. The church is dedicated to S. Michael, and the story goes that, whilst it was being built, every night the devil removed as many stones as had been set on the foundations during the day. But the archangel was too much for him. He waited behind Cox Tor, and one night threw a great rock across and hit the Evil One between the horns, and gave him such a headache that he desisted from interference thenceforth. The rock is there, and the marks of the horns are on the stone. It is said also that there is a depression caused by the thumb of S. Michael. I have looked at it carefully, but I express no opinion thereon—that may have been caused by the weather.

Looking up Brinsabatch Coombe, clothed in oak coppice and with a brawling stream dancing down its furrow, Brentor has a striking effect, soaring above it high into the blue air, with its little church and tower topping the peak.

I am many miles from Lamerton, which is my parish church, and all Heathfield lies between, so, as Divine service is performed every Sunday in the church of S. Michael de Rupe, I ascend the rocky pinnacle to worship there.

You must understand that there is no road, not even a path to the top; one scrambles up over the turf, in windy weather clinging to the heather bushes. It is a famous place for courting, that is why the lads and lasses are such church-going folk hereabout. The boys help the girls up, and after service hold their hands to help them down. Then, sometimes a maiden lays hold of a gorse bush in mistake for a bunch of health, and gets her pretty hand full of prickles. When that happens, her young man makes her sit down beside him under a rock away from the wind, that is from the descending congregation, and he picks the prickles out of her rosy palm with a pin. As there are thousands of prickles on a gorse bush, this sometimes takes a long time, and as the pin sometimes hurts, and the maid winces, the lad ahs to squeeze her hand very tight to hold it steady. I've known thorns drawn out with kisses.

I always do say that parsons make a mistake when they build churches in the midst of the population. Dear, simple, conceited souls, do they really suppose that folks go to church to hear them preach? No such thing—that is the excuse; they go for a romp. Parsons should think of that, and make provision accordingly, and se the sacred edifice on the top of moor or down, or in shay corners where there are long lanes well wooded. Church paths are always lovers' lanes.

When a woman gets too old for sweethearting—if that time ever arrives, in her own opinion—she goes to church for scandal-mongery, and, of course, the further she has to go, the more time she ahs for talk and the outpour of gossip. I know the butcher at Lydford kills once a week. Sunday is the character-killing day with us, and all our womenkind are the butchers.

Well!—this is all neither here nor there. I was writing about my house, and I have been led into a digression on church-going. However, it is not a digression either; it may seem so to my readers, but I know what I am about, and as my troubles came of church-going, what I have said is not so much out of the way as some superficial and inconsiderate readers may have supposed. I return, for a bit, to the description of my farm-house. As I have said once, and I insist on it again, Brinsabatch makes no pretensions to be other than a substantial yeoman's residence.You can smell the pigs' houses as you come near, and I don't pretend that the scent arises from clematis or weigelia. The cowyard is at the back, and there is plenty of mud in the lane, and streams of water running down the cart ruts, and skeins of oats and barley straw hanging to the hollies in the hedge. There is no gravel drive up to the front door, but there is a little patch of turf before it walled off from the lane, with crystals of white spar ornamenting the top of the wall. In the wall is a gate, and an ascent by four granite steps to a path sanded with mundic gravel that leads just twelve feet six inches across the grass plot to the front door. This door is bolted above and below, and chained and double-locked, but the back door that leads from the yard into the kitchen is always open, and I go in and out by that.The front door is for ornament, not use, except on grand occasions.

The rooms of Brinsabatch are low, and I can touch the ceiling easily in each with my hand; I can touch that in the bedrooms with my head. Low rooms are warmer and more homelike than the tall rooms of Queen Anne's and King George's reigns.

On the other side of Heathfield is Quether, a farm that has belonged to the Palmers pretty nigh as long as Brinsabatch has belonged to the Rosedhus. Farmer John Palmers pretty nigh as long as Brinsabatch has belonged to the Rosedhus. Farmer John Palmer is a man of some substance, one of the old sort of yeomen, fresh in colour, with light blue eyes and fair hair; he is big-made and stout. He is a man who knows the world and can make money. He has a lime-kiln as well as a farm, but the lime-kiln is not his own, he rents it. His daughter Margaret is a very pretty girl. He has several sons, and a swarm of small children of no particular sex. They are all in petticoats. So Margaret can't take much with her when she marries. Margaret used to go to chapel, but her religious views underwent a change since one Sunday afternoon she visited Brentor church. This change in her was not produced by anything in the parson's sermon, but by the fact that I was there, aged three-and-twenty, was good-looking, and the sole owner of Brinsabatch. I accompanied her back to Quether. Since that Sunday she has been very regular in her devotions at S. Michael de Rupe; she has, I understand, returned her missionary box to the minister of the chapel, and no longer collects for the conversion of the heathen to humbug. As for me, I became a much more regular attendant at church after that Sunday afternoon than I had been before. When the day was windy, I helped Margaret up the rock, and held her hand very tightly in mine, for had she missed her footing she might have perished. When the day was rainy, we shared one gig umbrella. When the day was windy and rainy, it was better still; for the gig umbrella could not be unfurled, so I folded my wide waterproof over us both. When the day was foggy, that was best of all, for then we lost our way in the fog, and could not find the church door till service was ended. On sunshiny days we were merry; in rain and fog, sentimental.

One Sunday she and I had gone round to the west end of the church after service. I told her that I wanted to show her Kit Hill, where the Britons made their last stand against King Athelstan and the Saxons; the real reason was that there is only a narrow ledge between the tower and the precipice, on which two cannot walk abreast, but on which two can stand very well with their backs to the wall, and no one else can come within ye and ear shot of them. Whilst we stood there, a sudden cloud rolled by beneath our feet, completely obliterating the landscape, but we were left above the vapour, in the sunlight, looking down, as it were, on a rushing, eddying sea of white foam. The effect was strange; it was as thought we were insulated on a little rock in a vast ocean that no bounds. Margaret pressed my arm and said, “We two seem to be alone in a little world to ourselves.”

I answered, looking at the fog, “And a preciously dull world and dreary outlook.”

I have not much imagination, and I did not at the moment take her words as an appeal for a pretty and lover-like reply. I missed the opportunity and it was gone past recall. She let go of my arm in dudgeon, and when I turned my head Margaret had disappeared. With a step she had left the ledge, and a few paces had taken her to her father. The fog at the same time rose and enveloped the top of the Tor and the church, so that I could no longer see Margaret, and the possibility of overtaking her and apologizing was lost.