Dracula's Guest
the gentleman of the party, Mr. Geoffrey Brent, having been fortunately
saved as he had been walking up the hill to ease the horses. He gave
information, and search was made. The broken rail, the excoriated
roadway, the marks where the horses had struggled on the decline before
finally pitching over into the torrent—all told the sad tale. It was a
wet season, and there had been much snow in the winter, so that the
river was swollen beyond its usual volume, and the eddies of the stream
were packed with ice. All search was made, and finally the wreck of the
carriage and the body of one horse were found in an eddy of the river.
Later on the body of the driver was found on the sandy, torrent-swept
waste near Täsch; but the body of the lady, like that of the other
horse, had quite disappeared, and was—what was left of it by that
time—whirling amongst the eddies of the Rhone on its way down to the
Lake of Geneva.
Wykham Delandre made all the enquiries possible, but could not find any
trace of the missing woman. He found, however, in the books of the
various hotels the name of “Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Brent”. And he had a
stone erected at Zermatt to his sister’s memory, under her married
name, and a tablet put up in the church at Bretten, the parish in which
both Brent’s Rock and Dander’s Croft were situated.
There was a lapse of nearly a year, after the excitement of the matter
had worn away, and the whole neighbourhood had gone on its accustomed
way. Brent was still absent, and Delandre more drunken, more morose,
and more revengeful than before.
Then there was a new excitement. Brent’s Rock was being made ready for
a new mistress. It was officially announced by Geoffrey himself in a
letter to the Vicar, that he had been married some months before to an
Italian lady, and that they were then on their way home. Then a small
army of workmen invaded the house; and hammer and plane sounded, and a
general air of size and paint pervaded the atmosphere. One wing of the
old house, the south, was entirely re-done; and then the great body of
the workmen departed, leaving only materials for the doing of the old
hall when Geoffrey Brent should have returned, for he had directed that
the decoration was only to be done under his own eyes. He had brought
with him accurate drawings of a hall in the house of his bride’s
father, for he wished to reproduce for her the place to which she had
been accustomed. As the moulding had all to be re-done, some
scaffolding poles and boards were brought in and laid on one side of
the great hall, and also a great wooden tank or box for mixing the
lime, which was laid in bags beside it.
When the new mistress of Brent’s Rock arrived the bells of the church
rang out, and there was a general jubilation. She was a beautiful
creature, full of the poetry and fire and passion of the South; and the
few English words which she had learned were spoken in such a sweet and
pretty broken way that she won the hearts of the people almost as much
by the music of her voice as by the melting beauty of her dark eyes.
Geoffrey Brent seemed more happy than he had ever before appeared; but
there was a dark, anxious look on his face that was new to those who
knew him of old, and he started at times as though at some noise that
was unheard by others.
And so months passed and the whisper grew that at last Brent’s Rock was
to have an heir. Geoffrey was very tender to his wife, and the new bond
between them seemed to soften him. He took more interest in his tenants
and their needs than he had ever done; and works of charity on his part
as well as on his sweet young wife’s were not lacking. He seemed to
have set all his hopes on the child that was coming, and as he looked
deeper into the future the dark shadow that had come over his face
seemed to die gradually away.
All the time Wykham Delandre nursed his revenge. Deep in his heart had
grown up a purpose of vengeance which only waited an opportunity to
crystallise and take a definite shape. His vague idea was somehow
centred in the wife of Brent, for he knew that he could strike him best
through those he loved, and the coming time seemed to hold in its womb
the opportunity for which he longed. One night he sat alone in the
living-room of his house. It had once been a handsome room in its way,
but time and neglect had done their work and it was now little better
than a ruin, without dignity or picturesqueness of any kind. He had
been drinking heavily for some time and was more than half stupefied.
He thought he heard a noise as of someone at the door and looked up.
Then he called half savagely to come in; but there was no response.
With a muttered blasphemy he renewed his potations. Presently he forgot
all around him, sank into a daze, but suddenly awoke to see standing
before him someone or something like a battered, ghostly edition of his
sister. For a few moments there came upon him a sort of fear. The woman
before him, with distorted features and burning eyes seemed hardly
human, and the only thing that seemed a reality of his sister, as she
had been, was her wealth of golden hair, and this was now streaked with
grey. She eyed her brother with a long, cold stare; and he, too, as he
looked and began to realise the actuality of her presence, found the
hatred of her which he had had, once again surging up in his heart. All
the brooding passion of the past year seemed to find a voice at once as
he asked her:
“Why are you here? You’re dead and buried.”
“I am here, Wykham Delandre, for no love of you, but because I hate
another even more than I do you!” A great passion blazed in her eyes.
“Him?” he asked, in so fierce a whisper that even the woman was for an
instant startled till she regained her calm.
“Yes, him!” she answered. “But make no mistake, my revenge is my own;
and I merely use you to help me to it.” Wykham asked suddenly:
“Did he marry you?”
The woman’s distorted face broadened out in a ghastly attempt at a
smile. It was a hideous mockery, for the broken features and seamed
scars took strange shapes and strange colours, and queer lines of white
showed out as the straining muscles pressed on the old cicatrices.
“So you would like to know! It would please your pride to feel that
your sister was truly married! Well, you shall not know. That was my
revenge on you, and I do not mean to change it by a hair’s breadth. I
have come here tonight simply to let you know that I am alive, so that
if any violence be done me where I am going there may be a witness.”
“Where are you going?” demanded her brother.
“That is my affair! and I have not the least intention of letting you
know!” Wykham stood up, but the drink was on him and he reeled and
fell. As he lay on the floor he announced his intention of following
his sister; and with an outburst of splenetic humour told her that he
would follow her through the darkness by the light of her hair, and of
her beauty. At this she turned on him, and said that there were others
beside him that would rue her hair and her beauty too. “As he will,”
she hissed; “for the hair remains though the beauty be gone. When he
withdrew the lynch-pin and sent us over the precipice into the torrent,
he had little thought of my beauty. Perhaps his beauty would be scarred
like mine were he whirled, as I was, among the rocks of the Visp, and
frozen on the ice pack in the drift of the river. But let him beware!
His time is coming!” and with a fierce gesture she flung open the door
and passed out into the night.
Later on that night, Mrs. Brent, who was but half-asleep, became
suddenly awake and spoke to her husband:
“Geoffrey, was not that the click of a lock somewhere below our
window?”
But Geoffrey—though she thought that he, too, had started at the
noise—seemed sound asleep, and breathed heavily. Again Mrs. Brent
dozed; but this time awoke to the fact that her husband had arisen and
was partially dressed. He was deadly pale, and when the light of the
lamp which he had in his hand fell on his face, she was frightened at
the look in his eyes.
“What is it, Geoffrey? What dost thou?” she asked.
“Hush! little one,” he answered, in a strange, hoarse voice. “Go to
sleep. I am restless, and wish to finish some work I left undone.”
“Bring it here, my husband,” she said; “I am lonely and I fear when
thou art away.”
For reply he merely kissed her and went out, closing the door behind
him. She lay awake for awhile, and then nature asserted itself, and she
slept.
Suddenly she started broad awake with the memory in her ears of a
smothered cry from somewhere not far off. She jumped up and ran to the
door and listened, but there was no sound. She grew alarmed for her
husband, and called out: “Geoffrey! Geoffrey!”
After a few moments the door of the great hall opened, and Geoffrey
appeared at it, but without his lamp.
“Hush!” he said, in a sort of whisper, and his voice was harsh and
stern. “Hush! Get to bed! I am working, and must not be disturbed. Go
to sleep, and do not wake the house!”
With a chill in her heart—for the harshness of her husband’s voice was
new to her—she crept back to bed and lay there trembling, too
frightened to cry, and listened to every sound. There was a long pause
of silence, and then the sound of some iron implement striking muffled
blows! Then there came a clang of a heavy stone falling, followed by a
muffled curse. Then a dragging sound, and then more noise of stone on
stone. She lay all the while in an agony of fear, and her heart beat
dreadfully. She heard a curious sort of scraping sound; and then there
was silence. Presently the door opened gently, and Geoffrey appeared.
His wife pretended to be asleep; but through her eyelashes she saw him
wash from his hands something white that looked like lime.
In the morning he made no allusion to the previous night, and she was
afraid to ask any question.
From that day there seemed some shadow over Geoffrey Brent. He neither
ate nor slept as he had been accustomed, and his former habit of
turning suddenly as though someone were speaking from behind him
revived. The old hall seemed to have some kind of fascination for him.
He used to go there many times in the day, but grew impatient if
anyone, even his wife, entered it. When the builder’s foreman came to
inquire about continuing his work Geoffrey was out driving; the man
went into the hall, and when Geoffrey returned the servant told him of
his arrival and where he was. With a frightful oath he pushed the
servant aside and hurried up to the old hall. The workman met him
almost at the door; and as Geoffrey burst into the room he ran against
him. The man apologised:
“Beg pardon, sir, but I was just going out to make some enquiries. I
directed twelve sacks of lime to be sent here, but I see there are only
ten.”
“Damn the ten sacks and the twelve too!” was the ungracious and
incomprehensible rejoinder.
The workman looked surprised, and tried to turn the conversation.
“I see, sir, there is a little matter which our people must have done;
but the governor will of course see it set right at his own cost.”
“What do you mean?”
“That “ere “arth-stone, sir: Some idiot must have put a scaffold pole
on it and cracked it right down the middle, and it’s thick enough you’d
think to stand hanythink.” Geoffrey was silent for quite a minute, and
then said in a constrained voice and with much gentler manner:
“Tell your people that I am not going on with the work in the hall at
present. I want to leave it as it is for a while longer.”
“All right sir. I’ll send up a few of our chaps to take away these
poles and lime bags and tidy the place up a bit.”
“No! No!” said Geoffrey, “leave them where they are. I shall send and