Vintage Vampire Stories (19 page)

I tested the strength of my own influence the next day, and I was inclined to be less severe in my judgement of the meek spinster, after a long morning in the woods with Lota and Captain Holbrook, in which all my arguments and entreaties, backed most fervently by an adoring lover, had proved useless.

“I am assured that no place could suit my health better,” Lota said, decisively, “and I mean to stay here till my doctor orders me to Varese or home to England. Do you suppose I spent a year's income on the villa with the idea of running away from it? I am tired to death of being teased about the place. First it is auntie, and then it is Captain Holbrook, and now it is young Helen. Villa, gardens, and woods are utterly lovely, and I mean to stay.”

“But if you are not happy here?”

“Who says I am not happy?”

“Your face says it, Lota.”

“I am just as happy here as I should be anywhere else,” she answered, doggedly, “and I mean to stay.”

She set her teeth as she finished the sentence, and her face had a look of angry resolve that I had never seen in it before. It seemed as if she were fighting against something, defying something. She rose abruptly from the bank upon which she had been sitting, in a sheltered hollow, near the rocky cleft where a ruined oil mill hung mouldering on the brink of a waterfall; and she began to walk up and down very fast, muttering to herself with frowning brows:

“I shall stay! I shall stay!” I heard her repeating, as she passed me.

After that miserable morning—miserable in a climate and a scene of loveliness where bare existence should have been bliss—I had many serious conversations with Captain Holbrook, who was at the villa every day, the most wonderful and devoted of lovers. From him I learnt all that was known of the house in which I was living. He had taken infinite pains to discover any reason, in the house or the neighbourhood, for the lamentable change in Lota, but with the slightest results. No legend of the supernatural was associated with the Orange Grove; but on being questioned searchingly an old Italian physician who had spent his life at Taggia, and who had known Ruffini, confessed that there was a something, a mysterious something, about the villa which seemed to have affected everybody who lived in it, as owner or master, within the memory of the oldest inhabitant.

“People are not happy there. No, they are not happy, and sometimes they fade and die.”

“Invalids who come to the South to die?”

“Not always. The Signorina's grandfather was an elderly man; but he appeared in robust health when he came. However, at that age, a sudden break up is by no means wonderful. There were previous instances of decay and death far more appalling, and in some ways mysterious. I am sorry the pretty young lady has spent so much money on the villa.”

“What does money matter if she would only go elsewhere?”

She would not. That was the difficulty. No argument of her lover's could move her. She would go in April, she told him, at the season for departure; but not even his persuasion, his urgent prayers, would induce her to leave one week or one day sooner than the doctor ordered.

“I should hate myself if I were weak enough to run away from this place,” she said; and it seemed to me that those words were the clue to her conduct, and that she making a martyr of herself rather than succumb to something of horror which was haunting and killing her.

Her marriage had been fixed for the following June, and George Holbrook was strong in the rights of a future husband; but submissive as she was in all other respects, upon this point she was stubborn, and her lover's fervent pleading moved her no more than the piteous entreaties of her spinster aunt.

I began to understand that the case was hopeless, so far as Lota's well-being depended upon her speedy removal from the Orange Grove. We could only wait as hopefully as we could for April, and the time she had fixed for departure. I took the earliest opportunity of confiding my fears to the English physician; but clever and amiable as he was, he laughed all ideas of occult influence to scorn.

“From the moment the sanitary engineer—a really scientific man—certified this house as a healthy house, the last word was said as to its suitableness for Miss Hammond. The situation is perfect, the climate all that one could desire. It would be folly to move her till the spring is advanced well enough for Varese or England.”

What could I say against this verdict of local experience? Lota was not one of those interesting and profitable cases which a doctor likes to keep under his own eye. As a patient, her doctor only saw her once in way; but he dropped in at the villa often as a friend, and he had been useful in bringing nice people about her.

I pressed the question so far as to ask him about the rooms at the back of the house, the old monkish rooms which had served as an infirmary in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. “Surely those rooms must be cold and damp?”

“Damp, no. Cold, yes. All north rooms are cold on the Riviera—and the change from south to north is perilous—but as no one uses the old monkish rooms their aspect can make little difference.”

“Does not Miss Hammond use those rooms sometimes?”

“Never, I believe. Indeed, I understood Miss Elderson to say that the corridor leading to the old part of the house is kept locked, and that she has the key. I take it the good lady thinks that if the rooms are haunted it is her business to keep the ghosts in safe custody—as she does the groceries.”

“Has nobody ever used these rooms since the new villa was built?” I asked.

“Mr. Hammond used them, and was rather attached to that part of the house. His library is still there, I believe, in what was once a refectory.”

“I should love to see it.”

“You have only to ask Miss Elderson.”

I did ask Miss Elderson without an hour's delay, the first time I found myself alone with her. She blushed, hesitated, assured me that the rooms contained nothing worth looking at, and fully confessed that the key was not comepatible.

“I have not lost it,” she said. “It is only mislaid. It is sure to turn up when I am looking for something else. I put it in a safe place.”

Miss Elderson's places of safety had been one of our stock jokes ever since I had know Lota and her aunt; so I was inclined to despair of ever seeing those mysterious rooms in which the monks had lived.Yet after meditating upon the subject in a long ramble on the hill above the villa I was inclined to think that Lota might know more about that key than the good simple soul who mislaid it. There were hours in every day during which my friend disappeared from the family circle, hours in which she was supposed to be resting inside the mosquito curtains in her own room. I had knocked at her door once or twice during this period of supposed rest; and there had been no answer. I had tried the door softly, and had found it locked, and had gone away believing my friend fast asleep; but now I began to wonder whether Lota might not possess the key of those uninhabited rooms, and for some strange capricious motive spend some of her lonely hours within those walls. I made an investigation at the back of the villa the following day, before the early coffee and the rolls, which we three spinsters generally took in the verandah on warm sunny mornings, and most of our mornings were warm. I found the massive Venetian shutters firmly secured inside, and affording not a glimpse of the rooms within. The windows looked straight upon the precipitous hill, and these northward-facing rooms must needs be dark and chilly at the best of times. My curiosity was completely baffled. Even if I had been disposed to do a little house-breaking there was no possibility of opening those too solid looking shutters. I tugged at the fastenings savagely, but made no more impression than if I had been a fly.

For the next four days I watched Lota's movements.

After our morning saunter—she was far too weak now to go further than the terraced paths near the villa, and our sauntering was of the slowest—my poor friend would retire to her room for what she called her afternoon rest, while the carriage, rarely used by herself, conveyed her aunt and me for a drive, which our low spirits made ineffably dreary.Vainly was that panorama of loveliness spread before my eyes—I could enjoy nothing; for between me and that romantic scene there was the image of my perishing friend, dying by inches, and obstinately determined to die.

I questioned Lota's maid about those long afternoons which her mistress spent in her darkened room, and the young woman's answers confirmed my suspicions.

Miss Hammond did not like to be disturbed. She was a very heavy sleeper.

“She likes me to go to her at four o'clock every afternoon to do her hair, and put on her teagown. She is generally fast asleep when I go to her.”

“And her door locked?”

“No, the door is very seldom locked at four. I went an hour earlier once with a telegram, and then the door was locked, and Miss Hammond was so fast asleep that she couldn't hear me knocking. I had to wait till the usual time.”

On the fourth day after my inspection of the shutters, I started for the daily drive at the accustomed hour; but when we had gone a little way down the hill, I pretended to remember an important letter that had to be written, and asked Miss Elderson to stop the carriage, and let me go back to the villa, excusing my desertion for this afternoon. The poor lady, who was as low-spirited as myself, declared she would miss me sadly, and the carriage crept on, while I climbed the hill by those straight steep paths which shortened the journey to a five minutes' walk.

The silence of the villa as I went softly in at the open hall doors suggested a general siesta. There was an awning in front of the door, and the hall was wrapt in shadow, the corridor beyond darker still, and at the end of this corridor I saw a flitting figure in pale grey—the pale Indian cashmere of Lota's neat morning frock. I heard a key turn, then the creaking of a heavy door, and the darkness had swallowed that pale grey figure.

I waited a few moments, and then stole softly along the passage. The door was half open, and I peered into the room beyond. It was empty, but an open door facing the fireplace showed me another room—a room lined with bookshelves, and in this room I could hear footsteps pacing slowly to and fro, very slowly, with the feeble tread I knew too well.

Presently she turned, put her hand to her brow as if remembering something, and hurried to the door where I was standing.

“It is I, Lota!” I called out, as she approached me, lest she should be startled by my unexpected presence.

I had been mean enough to steal a march upon her, but I was not mean enough to conceal myself.

“You here!” she exclaimed.

I told her how I had suspected her visits to these deserted rooms, and how I had dreaded the melancholy effect which their dreariness must needs exercise upon her mind and health.

“Do you call them dreary?” she asked, with a curious little laugh. “I call them charming. They are the only rooms in the house that interest me. And it was just the same with my grandfather. He spent his declining days in these queer old rooms, surrounded by these queer old things.”

She looked round her, with furtive, wandering glances, at the heavy old bookshelves, the black and white cabinets, the dismal old Italian tapestry, and at a Venetian glass which occupied a narrow recess at the end of the inner room, a glass that reached from floor to ceiling, and in a florid carved frame, from which the gilding had mostly worn away.

Her glance lingered on this Venetian glass, which to my uneducated eye looked the oldest piece of furniture in the room. The surface was so clouded and tarnished that although Lota and I were standing opposite it at a little distance, I could see no reflection of ourselves or of the room.

“You cannot find that curious old glass very flattering to your vanity,” I said, trying to be sprightly and careless in my remarks, while my eyes were watching that wasted countenance with its hectic bloom, and those too brilliant eyes.

“No, it doesn't flatter, but I like it,” she said, going a little nearer the glass, and then suddenly drawing a dark velvet curtain across the narrow space between the two projecting bookcases.

I had not noticed the curtain till she touched it, for this end of the long room was in shadow. The heavy shutters which I had seen outside were closed over two of the windows, but the shutters had been pushed back from the third window, and the casements were open to the still, soft air.

There was a sofa opposite the curtained recess. Lota sank down upon it, folded her arms, and looked at me with a defiant smile.

“Well, what do you think of my den?” she asked.

“I think you could not have chosen a worse.”

“And yet my grandfather liked these rooms better than all the rest of the house. He almost lived in them. His old servant told me so.”

“An elderly fancy, which no doubt injured his health.”

“People choose to say so, because he died sooner than they expected. His death would have come at the appointed time. The day and hour were written in the Book of Fate before he came here. The house had nothing to do with it—only in this quiet old room he had time to think of what was coming.”

“He was old, and had lived his life; you are young, and life is all before you.”

“All!” She echoed, with a laugh that chilled my heart.

I tried to be cheerful, matter of fact, practical. I urged her to abandon this dismal library, with its dry old books, airless gloom and northern aspect. I told her she had been guilty of an unworthy deceit in spending long hours in rooms that had been especially forbidden her. She made an end of my pleading with cruel abruptness.

“You are talking nonsense, Helen.You know that I am doomed to die before the summer is over, and I know that you know it.”

“You were well when you came here; you have been growing worse day by day.”

“My good health was only seeming. The seeds of disease were here,” touching her contracted chest. “They have only developed. Don't talk to me, Helen; I shall spend my quiet hours in these rooms till the end, like my poor old grandfather. There need be no more concealment or double dealing. This house is mine, and I shall occupy the rooms I like.”

She drew herself up haughtily as she rose from the sofa, but the poor little attempt at dignity was spoilt by a paroxysm of coughing that made her glad to rest in my arms, while I laid her gently down upon the sofa.

The darkness came upon us while she lay there, prostrate, exhausted, and that afternoon in the shadow of the steep hill was the first of many such afternoons.

From that day she allowed me to share her solitude, so long as I did not disturb her reveries, her long silences, or brief snatches of slumber. I sat by the open window and worked or read, while she lay on the sofa, or moved softly about the room, looking at the books on the shelves, or often stopping before that dark Venetian glass to contemplate her own shadowy image.

I wondered exceedingly in those days what pleasure or interest she could find in surveying that blurred shadow of her faded beauty. Was it in bitterness she looked at her altered form, the shrunken features—or only in philosophical wonder such as Marlborough felt, when he pointed to the withered old form in the glass—the poor remains of peerless manhood and exclaimed: “That was once a man.”

I had no power to withdraw her from that gloomy solitude. I was thankful for the privilege of being with her, able to comfort her in moments of physical misery.

Captain Holbrook left within a few days of my discovery, his leave having so nearly expired that he had only just time enough to get back to Portsmouth, where his regiment was stationed. He went regretfully, full of fear, and his last anxious words were spoken to me at the little station on the sea shore.

“Do all you can to bring her home as soon as the doctor will let her come,” he said. “I leave her with a heavy heart, but I can do no good by remaining. I shall count every hour between now and April. She has promised to stay at Southsea till we are married, so that we may be near each other. I am to find a pretty villa for her and her aunt. It will be something for me to do.”

My heart ached for him in his forlorness, glad of any little duty that made a link between him and his sweetheart. I knew that he dearly loved his profession, and I knew also that he had offered to leave the army if Lota liked—to alter the whole plan of his life rather than be parted from her, even for a few weeks. She had forbidden such a sacrifice; and she had stubbornly refused to advance the date of her marriage, and marry him at San Remo, as he had entreated her at Ventnor, where he believed she would be better than in her Italian paradise.

He was gone, and I felt miserably helpless and lonely without him—lonely even in Lota's company, for between her and me there were shadows and mysteries that filled my heart with dread. Sitting in the same room with her—admitted now to constant companionship—I felt not the less that there were secrets in her life which I knew not. Her eloquent face told some sad story which I could not read; and sometimes it seemed to me that between her and me there was a third presence, and that the name of the third was Death.

She let me share her quiet afternoons in the old rooms, but though her occupation of these rooms was no longer concealed from the household, she kept the privilege of solitude with jealous care. Her aunt still believed in the siesta between lunch and dinner, and went for her solitary drives with a placid submission to Lota's desire that the carriage and horses should be used by somebody.The poor thing was quite as unhappy as I, and quite as fond as Lota; but her feeble spirit had no power to struggle against her niece's strong will. Of these two the younger had always ruled the elder. After Captain Holbrook's departure the doctor took his patient seriously in hand, and I soon perceived a marked change in his manner of questioning her, while the stethoscope came now into frequent use. The casual weekly visits became daily visits; and in answer to my anxious questions I was told that the case had suddenly assumed a serious character.

“We have something to fight against now,” said the doctor; “until now we have had nothing but nerves and fancies.”

“And now?”

“The lungs are affected.”

This was the beginning of a new sadness. Instead of vague fears, we had now the certainty of evil; and I think in the dreary days and weeks that followed, the poor old aunt and I had not one thought or desire, or fear, which was not centred in the fair young creature whose fading life we watched. Two English nurses, summoned from Cannes, aided in the actual nursing, for which trained skill was needed; but in all the little services which love can perform Miss Elderson and I were Lota's faithful slaves.

I told the doctor of her afternoons spent in her grandfather's library; and I told him also that I doubted my power, or his, to induce her to abandon that room.

“She has a fancy for it, and you know how difficult fancies are to fight with when anyone is out of health.”

“It is a curious fact,” said the doctor, “that in every bad case I have attended in this house my patient has had an obstinate preference for that dull, cold, room.”

“When you say every bad case, I think you must mean every fatal case,” I said.

“Yes. Unhappily the three or four cases I am thinking of ended fatally; but that fact need not make you unhappy. Feeble, elderly people come to this southern shore to spin out the frail thread of life that is at breaking point when they leave England. In your young friend's case sunshine and balmy air may do much. She ought to live on the sunny side of the house; but her fancy for her grandfather's library may be indulged all the same. She can spend her evenings in that room, which can be made thoroughly warm and comfortable before she enters it. The room is well built and dry.When the shutters are shut and the curtains drawn, and the temperature carefully regulated, it will be as good a room as any other for the lamp-light hours; but for the day let her have all the sunshine she can.”

I repeated this little lecture to Lota, who promised to obey.

“I like the queer, old room,” she said, “and, Helen, don't think me a bear if I say that I should like to alone there sometimes, as I used to be before you hunted me down. Society is very nice for people who are well enough to enjoy it, but I'm not up to society, not even yours and auntie's. Yes, I know what you are going to say. You sit like a mouse, and don't speak till you are spoken to; but the very knowledge that you are there, watching me and thinking about me, worries me. And as for the auntie, with her little anxious fidgettings, wanting to settle my footstool, and shake up my pillows, and turn the leaves of my books, and always making me uncomfortable in the kindest way, dear soul—well, I don't mind confessing that she gets on my nerves, and makes me feel as if I should like to scream. Let me have one hour or two of perfect solitude sometimes, Helen. The nurse don't count. She can sit in the room, and you will know that I am not going to die suddenly without anybody to look on at my poor little tragedy.”