Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories (32 page)

Luckily I found an early cab in the Piazza of the Lateran, for I was dead-beat, and was soon at my lodgings in the Via della Croce, where my landlady let me in very speedily. Then at last I had the comfort of throwing off my clothes, all damp with the night dew, and turning in. My wrath had cooled to a certain point, and I did not fear to lower its temperature too greatly by yielding to an overwhelming desire for sleep. An hour or two could make no great difference to Magnin—let him fancy me still hanging about the Vigna Marziali! Sleep I must have, no matter what he thought.

I slept long, and was awakened at last by my landlady, Sora Nanna, standing over me, and saying, “There is a Signore who wants you.”

“It is I, Magnin!” said a voice behind her. “I could not wait for you to come!” He looked haggard with anxiety and watching.

“Detaille is raving still,” he went on, “only worse than before. Speak, for Heaven’s sake! Why don’t you tell me something?” And he shook me by the arm as though he thought I was still asleep.

“Have you nothing to say? You must have seen something! Did you see Marcello?”

“Oh! yes, I saw him.”

“Well?”

“Well, he was very comfortable—quite alive. He had a woman’s arms around him.”

I heard my door violently slammed to, a ferocious
“Sacré gamin!”
and then steps springing down the stairs. I felt perfectly happy at having made such an impression, and turned and resumed my broken sleep with almost a kindly feeling towards Magnin, who was at that moment probably tearing up the Spanish Scalinata two steps at a time, and making himself horribly hot. It could not help Detaille, poor fellow! He could not understand my news. When I had slept long enough I got up, refreshed myself with a bath and something to eat, and went off to see Detaille. It was not his fault that I had been made a fool of, so I felt sorry for him.

I found him raving just as I had left him the day before, only worse, as Magnin said. He persisted in continually crying, “Marcello, take care! no one can save you!” in hoarse, weak tones, but with the regularity of a knell, keeping up a peculiar movement with his feet, as though he were weary with a long road, but must press forward to his goal. Then he would stop and break into childish sobs.

“My feet are so sore,” he murmured piteously, “and I am so tired! But I will come! They are following me, but I am strong!” Then a violent struggle with his invisible pursuers, in which he would break off into that singing of his, alternating with the warning cry. The singing voice was quite another from the speaking one. He went on and on repeating the singular air which he had himself called A Funeral March, and which had become intensely disagreeable to me. If it was one indeed, it surely was intended for no Christian burial. As he sang, the tears kept trickling down his cheeks, and Magnin sat wiping them away as tenderly as a woman. Between his song he would clasp his hands, feebly enough, for he was very weak when the delirium did not make him violent, and cry in heart-rending tones, “Marcello, I shall never see you again! Why did you leave us?” At last, when he stopped for a moment, Magnin left his side, beckoning the Sister to take it, and drew me into the other room, closing the door behind him.

“Now tell me exactly how you saw Marcello,” said he; so I related my whole absurd experience—forgetting, however, my personal irritation, for he looked too wretched and worn for anybody to be angry with him. He made me repeat several times my description of Marcello’s face and manner as he had come out of the house. That seemed to make more impression upon him than the love-business.

“Sick people have strange intuitions,” he said gravely; “and I persist in thinking that Marcello is very ill and in danger.
Tenez!
” And here he broke off, went to the door, and called,
“Ma Sœur!”
under his breath. She understood, and after having drawn the bedclothes straight, and once more dried the trickling tears, she came noiselessly to where we stood, the wet handkerchief still in her hand. She was a singularly tall and strong-looking woman, with piercing black eyes and a self-controlled manner. Strange to say, she bore the adopted name of Claudius, instead of a more feminine one.

“Ma Sœur,”
said Magnin, “at what o’clock was it that he sprang out of bed and we had to hold him for so long?”

“Half-past eleven and a few minutes,” she answered promptly. Then he turned to me.

“At what time did Marcello come out into the garden?”

“Well, it might have been half-past eleven,” I answered unwillingly. “I should say that three-quarters of an hour might possibly have passed since I rang my repeater. Mind you, I won’t swear it!” I hate to have people try to prove mysterious coincidences, and this was just what they were attempting.

“Are you sure of the hour,
ma Sœur?
” I asked, a little tartly.

She looked at me calmly with her great, black eyes, and said:

“I heard the Trinità de’ Monti strike the half-hour just before it happened.”

“Be so good as to tell Monsieur Sutton exactly what took place,” said Magnin.

“One moment, Monsieur,” and she went swiftly and softly to Detaille, raised him on her strong arm, and held a glass to his lips, from which he drank mechanically. Then she came and stood where she could watch him through the open door.

“He hears nothing,” she said, as she hung the handkerchief to dry over a chair; and then she went on. “It was half-past eleven, and my patient had been very uneasy—that is to say, more so even than before. It might have been four or five minutes after the dock had finished striking that he became suddenly quite still, and then began to tremble all over, so that the bed shook with him.” She spoke admirable English, as many of the Sisters do, so I need not translate, but will give her own words.

“He went on trembling until I thought he was going to have a fit, and told Monsieur Magnin to be ready to go for the doctor, when just then the trembling stopped, he became perfectly stiff, his hair stood up upon his head, and his eyes seemed coming out of their sockets, though he could see nothing, for I passed the candle before them. All at once he sprang out of his bed and rushed to the door. I did not know he was so strong. Before he got there I had him in my arms, for he has become very light, and I carried him back to bed again, though he was struggling, like a child. Monsieur Magnin came in from the next room just as he was trying to get up again, and we held him down until it was past, but he screamed Monsieur Souvestre’s name for a long time after that. Afterwards he was very cold and exhausted, of course, and I gave him some beef-tea, though it was not the hour for it.”

“I think you had better tell the Sister all about it,” said Magnin turning to me. “It is the best that the nurse should know everything.”

“Very well,” said I; “though I do not think it’s much in her line.” She answered me herself: “Everything which concerns our patients is our business. Nothing shocks me.” Thereupon she sat down and thrust her hands into her long sleeves, prepared to listen. I repeated the whole affair as I had done to Magnin. She never took her brilliant eyes from off my face, and listened as coolly as though she had been a doctor hearing an account of a difficult case, though to me it seemed almost sacrilege to be describing the behaviour of a love-stricken youth to a Sister of Charity.

“What do you say to that,
ma Sœur
?” asked Magnin, when I had done.

“I say nothing, monsieur. It is sufficient that I know it”; and she withdrew her hands from her sleeves, took up the handkerchief, which was dry by this time, and returned quietly to her place at the bedside.

“I wonder if I have shocked her, after all?” I said to Magnin.

“Oh, no,” he answered. “They see many things, and a
Sœur
is as abstract as a confessor; they do not allow themselves any personal feelings. I have seen Sœur Claudius listen perfectly unmoved to the most abominable ravings, only crossing herself beneath her cape at the most hideous blasphemies. It was late summer when poor Justin Revol died. You were not here.” Magnin put his hand to his forehead.

“You are looking ill yourself,” I said. “Go and try to sleep, and I will stay.”

“Very well,” he answered; “but I cannot rest unless you promise to remember everything he says, that I may hear it when I wake”; and he threw himself down on the hard sofa like a sack, and was asleep in a moment; and I, who had felt so angry with him but a few hours ago, put a cushion under his head and made him comfortable.

I sat down in the next room and listened to Detaille’s monotonous ravings, while Sœur Claudius read in her book of prayers. It was getting dusk, and several of the academicians stole in and stood over the sick man and shook their heads. They looked around for Magnin, but I pointed to the other room with my finger on my lips, and they nodded and went away on tiptoe.

It required no effort of memory to repeat Detaille’s words to Magnin when he woke, for they were always the same. We had another Sister that night, and as Sœur Claudius was not to return till the next day at midday, I offered to share the watch with Magnin, who was getting very nervous and exhausted, and who seemed to think that some such attack might be expected as had occurred the night before. The new sister was a gentle, delicate-looking little woman, with tears in her soft brown eyes as she bent over the sick man, and crossed herself from time to time, grasping the crucifix which hung from the beads at her waist. Nevertheless she was calm and useful, and as punctual as Sœur Claudius herself in giving the medicines.

The doctor had come in the evening, and prescribed a change in these. He would not say what he thought of his patient, but only declared that it was necessary to wait for a crisis. Magnin sent for some supper, and we sat over it together in the silence, neither of us hungry. He kept looking at his watch.

“If the same thing happens tonight, he will die!” said he, and laid his head on his arms.

“He will die in a most foolish cause, then,” I said angrily, for I thought he was going to cry, as those Frenchmen have a way of doing, and I wanted to irritate him by way of a tonic; so I went on—

“It would be dying for a
vaurien
who is making an ass of himself in a ridiculous business which will be over in a week! Souvestre may get as much fever as he likes! Only don’t ask me to come and nurse him.”

“It is not the fever,” said he slowly, “it is a horrible nameless dread that I have; I suppose it is listening to Detaille that makes me nervous. Hark!” he added, “it strikes eleven. We must watch!”

“If you really expect another attack you had better warn the Sister,” I said; so he told her in a few words what might happen.

“Very well, monsieur,” she answered, and sat down quietly near the bed, Magnin at the pillow and I near him. No sound was to be heard but Detaille’s ceaseless lament.

And now, before I tell you more, I must stop to entreat you to believe me. It will be almost impossible for you to do so, I know, for I have laughed myself at such tales, and no assurances would have made me credit them. But I, Robert Sutton, swear that this thing happened. More I cannot do. It is the truth.

We had been watching Detaille intently. He was lying with closed eyes, and had been very restless. Suddenly he became quite still, and then began to tremble, exactly as Sœur Claudius had described. It was a curious, uniform trembling, apparently in every fibre, and his iron bedstead shook as though strong hands were at its head and foot. Then came the absolute rigidity she had also described, and I do not exaggerate when I say that not only did his short-cropped hair seem to stand erect, but that it literally did so. A lamp cast the shadow of his profile against the wall to the left of his bed, and as I looked at the immovable outline which seemed painted on the wall, I saw the hair slowly rise until the line where it joined the forehead was quite a different one—abrupt instead of a smooth sweep. His eyes opened wide and were frightfully fixed, then as frightfully strained, but they certainly did not see us.

We waited breathlessly for what might follow. The little Sister was standing close to him, her lips pressed together and a little pale, but very calm. “Do not be frightened,
ma Sœur
,” whispered Magnin; and she answered in a business-like tone, “No, monsieur,” and drew still nearer to her patient, and took his hands, which were stiff as those of a corpse, between her own to warm them. I laid mine upon his heart; it was beating so imperceptibly that I almost thought it had stopped, and as I leaned my face to his lips I could feel no breath issue from them. It seemed as though the rigour would last for ever.

Suddenly, without any transition, he hurled himself with enormous force, and literally at one bound, almost into the middle of the room, scattering us aside like leaves in the wind. I was upon him in a moment, grappling with him with all my strength, to prevent him from reaching the door. Magnin had been thrown backwards against the table, and I heard the medicine bottles crash with his fall. He had flung back his hand to save himself, and rushed to help me with blood dripping from a cut in his wrist. The little Sister sprang to us. Detaille had thrown her violently back upon her knees, and now, with a nurse’s instinct, she tried to throw a shawl over his bare breast. We four must have made a strange group!