Vintage Vampire Stories (14 page)

“Woman of outer darkness, fiend of death,
From what inhuman cave, what dire abyss,
Hast thou invisible that spell o'erheard?
What potent hand hath touched thy quickened corse,
What song dissolved thy cerements, who unclosed
Those faded eyes and filled them from the stars?”
Landor: Gebir.

T
owards the end of September, about eight years ago, the steamship Albrecht, under the command of the popular Captain Pellegrini, had on its voyage down the Danube, as far as Rustchuck, the honour of counting among its passengers a gentleman to whom not inaptly might have been addressed the somewhat audacious remark made by Charles Buller to a well-known peer, now deceased, “I often think how puzzled your Maker must be to account for your conduct.” And, indeed, a more curious jumble of lovable and detestable qualities than went to the making-up of the personality, labeled for formal purposes Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Ulick Verner Rowan, but familiarly known to Society as ‘Hippy' Rowan, it would, we think, have been difficult to find. Selfish almost to cruelty, and yet capable of acts of generous self-sacrifice to which many a better man could not perhaps have risen; famous for his unnecessary harshness in the numerous wars wherein he had distinguished himself, and yet enjoying the well-merited reputation of being the best-natured man in London, Hippy Rowan, thanks to the calm and healthy spirit of philosophy within him, had in the course of his fifty odd years of mundane experiences, never allowed a touch of cynicism to chill his heart. It is not so easy or natural as many may imagine to be content with a great deal; but in the golden days when much had been his—at the meridian of his altogether pleasant life, in which even the afternoon shadows were in no wise indicative of the terrors of the advancing night—Dick Rowan was possessed of the same serene spirit of content which distinguished him in the latter and more troublous times when he found himself forced to look gout and debt in the face on an income barely double the wages he had formerly given to his cordon bleu.

Just before our story opens, he had been invited by his old friend Djavil Pacha, a Turkish millionaire, to spend a few days with him at his palace on the Bosphorus—a summons which Dick Rowan was now steaming down the Danube to obey . . .

He had chosen this particularly monotonous and uncomfortable way of reaching his friend for reasons which do not concern us: but the thought of the unpleasant railway journey from Rustchuck to Varna which awaited him, and then the encounter with the Black Sea, did not tend to assuage the twinges of gout and irritability which assailed him by fits and starts as, during the two dreary days he watched the shores on either side glide slowly by—seeing on the right Hungary at length give place to Servia, and the Servia to Turkey, while perpetual Wallachia, sad and desolate, stretched unceasingly and for ever to the left—walking up and down the deck leaning on the arm of his trusty valet, or rather, Ancient or Lieutenant, Adams by name, a man almost as well known and fully as well informed as his master, a Cockney who, without any control over the aspirates in his native English, spoke eight other different languages, including Arabic, accurately and fluently, and whose knowledge of Oriental countries dated indeed from the days when he had been pageboy to the great Eltchi in Constantinople. There were but few passengers on board—an abnormally small number, in fact—and to this circumstance, doubtless, was it due that Rowan who, as a rule, paid but little attention to his fellow-travelers, happened to remark a mysterious-looking individual—a man, and apparently not an old one—who sat quite apart from the others and by himself, muffled up to the eyes in a very voluminous, albeit rather dirty, white silk handkerchief, and who was evidently invalid, judging from the listless way in which he sat, the extreme pallor of the only part of his face which could be seen, and above all, the fever-fed light which glared from between his sore and lashless eyelids. He was dressed entirely in black, and although his clothes were somewhat shabby, they betokened carelessness on the part of their wearer rather than poverty; and Adams had noticed and called his master's attention to the fact that on one finger of the man's thin, yellow, dirty hand, which every now and then he would lift to rearrange still higher up about his face the silken muffler, sparkled a diamond, which the omniscient valet recognized to be a stone of value.

“What an extremely disagreeable-looking man, Adams!” pettishly murmured the Colonel in English, as he and his servant in their perambulations up and down the deck for the twentieth time on the first morning of the journey passed by where the mysterious stranger sat. “And how he stares at us! He has the eyes of a lunatic, and there is evidently something horrible the matter with his face. Perhaps he's a leper. Ask the Captain about him.”

But the ever-amiable Captain Pellegrini had not much information to impart, save indeed that the man was certainly neither a madman nor a leper, nor indeed, so far as he knew, an invalid.

He was a Moldavian, Isaac Lebedenko by name, a young man, a medical student or doctor, the Captain thought; but, at all events, a man in very well-to-do circumstances, for he always spent his money freely.

“I have known him off and on for two years, please your Excellency,” said the skipper. “Though I must confess I have never seen his face properly, for he's always muffled up in that way. He takes his meals by himself, and of course pays extra for doing so, and in fact he always, so far as I know, keeps entirely to himself and never speaks to any one. But the steward's boy, who has waited on him and seen his face, says there is nothing the matter with him except indeed that he's the ugliest man he ever saw.”

“Perhaps he's consumptive,” suggested the Colonel. But the all-wise Adams shook his head. That was quite inadmissible. He had seen the man walk, and had noticed his legs. Phthisis could not deceive him, he could recognize its presence at a glance. This man was as strong on his legs as a panther; no consumption there.

“Well,” said the Colonel, impatiently, “there's evidently something wrong with him, no matter what, and I'm glad I'm not condemned to remain long in his society; for he certainly has the most unpleasant look in his eyes that I've seen since we left the lepers.” And then he turned the current of the conversation, and the subject dropped.

That night, very late, when the Colonel was sitting quite alone on deck, smoking a cigarette, and thinking over his approaching visit to Djavil, wondering what persons his old friend would have invited to his palace to meet him, and a thousand souvenirs thronging to his mind as he dreamily glanced up at the moon which smiled over slowly-receding Servia, a voice close to his ear, a slow, huskily sibilant high-pitched whisper, broke the stillness, saying in lisping French—

“May I ask, Monsieur, by what right you dare to question persons about me?” and, turning, he saw standing by his shoulder that horrible man in shabby black, his eyes glaring with exceptional ferocity from between the red bare lids, and the diamond-decorated, clawlike hand grasping convulsively the soiled white muffler, presumably to prevent the vehemence of his speech from causing it to slip down.

Hippy rose to his feet at once, and, as he did so, his face passed close to the half-shrouded countenance of the man who had addressed him, and the familiar sickening smell of animal musk full of repulsive significance to the experienced traveler assailed his nostrils.

“What do you mean?” he exclaimed, shrinking back, his disgust quite overpowering for the moment every other sentiment. “Stand back! Don't come near me!”

The man said nothing, stood quite still, but Rowan saw plainly in the moonlight the red-encircled eyes gleam with renewed ferocity, the yellow, claw-like hand wearing the diamond ring grasping the dirty muffler agitated by a convulsive spasm, and heard beneath the silken covering the husky breathing caught as in a sob. Hippy recovered himself at once. “Forgive me, Monsieur,” he said, coldly. “You startled me. Might I beg you to repeat your question?”

The man said nothing. It was evident that he had perceived the disgust he had inspired, and that his anger, his indignation, mastered him, and that he dared not trust himself to speak.

“You asked me I think,” continued the Colonel in a more gentle tone—for his conscience smote him as he reflected that he might perhaps involuntarily have caused pain to one who, notwithstanding his unpleasant aspect, and arrogant, not to say hostile, attitude, was doubtless merely an invalid and a sufferer—“You asked me, I think, Monsieur, by what right I made inquiries concerning you? Pray pardon me for having done so. I have, indeed, no excuse to offer, but I am really sorry if I have offended you. I merely asked the Captain—“

But the man interrupted him, his voice, which was tremulous with passion, coming as a husky wheezy hiss, which rendered the strong lisp with which he pronounced the French the more noticeable and grotesque.

“You asked him—you dared ask him if I were not a leper. He told Hoffmann, the steward's boy, who told me.You can't deny it! Dog of an Englishman!”

Here, gasping for want of breath, and apparently quite overpowered by his anger, the man took a step towards Rowan. This outburst of vituperation came as a great relief to the Colonel. Like most persons of refined feeling, he could stand any wounds better than those inflicted by self-reproach, and the suspicion that perhaps by careless rudeness he had caused pain to the one worthy only of pity had been as gall to him. The man's violent hostility and bad language entirely altered and brightened the aspect of affairs.

“I am sorry,” said Hippy, with ironical politeness, “that my nationality should not meet with the honour of your approval. It is not, hélas! the proud privilege of all to be able to boast that they are natives of Moldavia, you know! Pour le reste, all I can do is to repeat my apology for—“But the man interrupted him again.

“Apology!” he echoed, if indeed any word indicative of resonance can be applied to the hoarse, damp, lisping whisper in which he spoke—“Apology! Ah, yes! You English curs are all cowards, and only think of apologies.You dare not fight, canaille, but you shall! I'll force you to!”And again he took a step forward, but this time in so menacing a fashion that the Colonel, half amused and half disgusted, thought it prudent to step back.

“Take care!” he said, half raising his stick as if to push the man back as an unclean thing: “keep your distance,”—and then, speaking quickly, for he feared an assault from the infuriated Moldavian, and was desirous of avoiding such an absurd complication, he continued, “If you can prove to me that I ought to meet you, I shall be happy to do so.You're right, of course, in thinking duels are no longer the fashion in England. But I'm an exception to the rule. I've fought two already, and shall be happy to add to the number by meeting you if it can be arranged. But that's hardly a matter you and I can properly discuss between ourselves, is it? Captain Pellegrini knows me. I'll leave my address with him. I have friends in Turkey, and shall be staying in the neighbourhood of Constantinople for a fortnight, so if you care to send me your seconds, I will appoint gentleman to receive them. Allow me to wish you a good-night!” and Rowan raised his hat with much formal politeness, and stepped aside as if to depart; but the man sprang forward like a cat and stood in his way.

“Coward!” he exclaimed, extending both arms as if to bar Rowan's passage—“Cur! like all your countrymen! You think to run away from me, but you shall not! You shall go on your knees and beg my pardon, you accursed Englishman—you dog—you—“

But just as the enraged Moldavian reached this point in his fury an awful thing happened. The yellow, claw-like hand having been withdrawn from clutching the dirty muffler, the vehemence of the man's speech began gradually to disarrange this covering, causing it little by little to sink lower and lower and thus to disclose by degrees to Rowan a sight so strange, so awful, that, impelled by a morbid curiosity, he involuntarily bent his head forward as his horror-stricken eyes eagerly noted every step in the infernal progress of this revelation. And thus, gazing at the slowly slipping silk, he saw first, beardless, hollow cheeks, twitching with emotion, but of a most hideous pallor, of indeed that awful hue inseparably associated with the idea of post-mortem changes, then, in the middle of this livid leanness, lighted only by those fever-fed, red-lidded eyes, the beginning—the broad base springing from the very cheekbones as it were—of a repulsive prominence which apparently went narrowing on to some termination which as yet the scarf hid, but which the horrified Colonel felt every second surer and yet more sure could not resemble the nasal organ of man, but rather the—ah, yes! the silk fell, and in the moonlight Rowan saw the end he had foreseen, the pointed nose as of a large ferret, and beneath it, far in under it, nervously working, the humid, viscous horror of a small mouth almost round, but lipless, from which came in hurried, husky sibilance the lisping words of hate and menace.

This awful revelation, although partly expected, was so inexpressibly horrible when it came, that, doubtless, the expression of disgust in Rowan's face deepened so suddenly in acuteness and intensity as to arrest the attention of the monster who inspired it, infuriated though he was; for he paused in the lisping tumult of his violence, and, as he paused, became suddenly aware that the muffler had slipped down. Then, rightly interpreting the horror he saw written in the Colonel's countenance, and goaded to a fresh fit of fury, too despairing and violent even for words, he, with an inarticulate moan or whimper, rushed blindly forward with extended arms to attack his enemy. But the Colonel, who had foreseen this onslaught, stepped quickly to one side, and, as he did so, quite overpowered by disgust, he could not resist the temptation of giving the hostile monster a violent push with his heavy walking stick—a thrust of far greater force than he had intended, for it caused the man to totter and fall forward, just as two or three sailors, who, from a distance, had witnessed the last incidents of the dispute, ran up and stood between the adversaries.