Dracula's Guest
after the other in the face and added with cool deliberate cruelty:
“Asleep on duty! Is this the manner of the Old Guard? No wonder, then,
a Waterloo!”
By the gleam of the lantern I saw the grim old faces grow deadly pale,
and almost shuddered at the look in the eyes of the old men as the
laugh of the soldiers echoed the grim pleasantry of the officer.
I felt in that moment that I was in some measure avenged.
For a moment they looked as if they would throw themselves on the
taunter, but years of their life had schooled them and they remained
still.
“You are but five,” said the commissary; “where is the sixth?” The
answer came with a grim chuckle.
“He is there!” and the speaker pointed to the bottom of the wardrobe.
“He died last night. You won’t find much of him. The burial of the rats
is quick!”
The commissary stooped and looked in. Then he turned to the officer and
said calmly:
“We may as well go back. No trace here now; nothing to prove that man
was the one wounded by your soldiers’ bullets! Probably they murdered
him to cover up the trace. See!” again he stooped and placed his hands
on the skeleton. “The rats work quickly and they are many. These bones
are warm!”
I shuddered, and so did many more of those around me.
“Form!” said the officer, and so in marching order, with the lanterns
swinging in front and the manacled veterans in the midst, with steady
tramp we took ourselves out of the dustheaps and turned backward to the
fortress of Bicêtre.
My year of probation has long since ended, and Alice is my wife. But
when I look back upon that trying twelvemonth one of the most vivid
incidents that memory recalls is that associated with my visit to the
City of Dust.
A Dream of Red Hands
The first opinion given to me regarding Jacob Settle was a simple
descriptive statement, “He’s a down-in-the-mouth chap”: but I found
that it embodied the thoughts and ideas of all his fellow-workmen.
There was in the phrase a certain easy tolerance, an absence of
positive feeling of any kind, rather than any complete opinion, which
marked pretty accurately the man’s place in public esteem. Still, there
was some dissimilarity between this and his appearance which
unconsciously set me thinking, and by degrees, as I saw more of the
place and the workmen, I came to have a special interest in him. He
was, I found, for ever doing kindnesses, not involving money expenses
beyond his humble means, but in the manifold ways of forethought and
forbearance and self-repression which are of the truer charities of
life. Women and children trusted him implicitly, though, strangely
enough, he rather shunned them, except when anyone was sick, and then
he made his appearance to help if he could, timidly and awkwardly. He
led a very solitary life, keeping house by himself in a tiny cottage,
or rather hut, of one room, far on the edge of the moorland. His
existence seemed so sad and solitary that I wished to cheer it up, and
for the purpose took the occasion when we had both been sitting up with
a child, injured by me through accident, to offer to lend him books. He
gladly accepted, and as we parted in the grey of the dawn I felt that
something of mutual confidence had been established between us.
The books were always most carefully and punctually returned, and in
time Jacob Settle and I became quite friends. Once or twice as I
crossed the moorland on Sundays I looked in on him; but on such
occasions he was shy and ill at ease so that I felt diffident about
calling to see him. He would never under any circumstances come into my
own lodgings.
One Sunday afternoon, I was coming back from a long walk beyond the
moor, and as I passed Settle’s cottage stopped at the door to say “How
do you do?” to him. As the door was shut, I thought that he was out,
and merely knocked for form’s sake, or through habit, not expecting to
get any answer. To my surprise, I heard a feeble voice from within,
though what was said I could not hear. I entered at once, and found
Jacob lying half-dressed upon his bed. He was as pale as death, and the
sweat was simply rolling off his face. His hands were unconsciously
gripping the bedclothes as a drowning man holds on to whatever he may
grasp. As I came in he half arose, with a wild, hunted look in his
eyes, which were wide open and staring, as though something of horror
had come before him; but when he recognised me he sank back on the
couch with a smothered sob of relief and closed his eyes. I stood by
him for a while, quite a minute or two, while he gasped. Then he opened
his eyes and looked at me, but with such a despairing, woeful
expression that, as I am a living man, I would have rather seen that
frozen look of horror. I sat down beside him and asked after his
health. For a while he would not answer me except to say that he was
not ill; but then, after scrutinising me closely, he half arose on his
elbow and said:
“I thank you kindly, sir, but I’m simply telling you the truth. I am
not ill, as men call it, though God knows whether there be not worse
sicknesses than doctors know of. I’ll tell you, as you are so kind, but
I trust that you won’t even mention such a thing to a living soul, for
it might work me more and greater woe. I am suffering from a bad
dream.”
“A bad dream!” I said, hoping to cheer him; “but dreams pass away with
the light—even with waking.” There I stopped, for before he spoke I saw
the answer in his desolate look round the little place.
“No! no! that’s all well for people that live in comfort and with those
they love around them. It is a thousand times worse for those who live
alone and have to do so. What cheer is there for me, waking here in the
silence of the night, with the wide moor around me full of voices and
full of faces that make my waking a worse dream than my sleep? Ah,
young sir, you have no past that can send its legions to people the
darkness and the empty space, and I pray the good God that you may
never have!” As he spoke, there was such an almost irresistible gravity
of conviction in his manner that I abandoned my remonstrance about his
solitary life. I felt that I was in the presence of some secret
influence which I could not fathom. To my relief, for I knew not what
to say, he went on:
“Two nights past have I dreamed it. It was hard enough the first night,
but I came through it. Last night the expectation was in itself almost
worse than the dream—until the dream came, and then it swept away every
remembrance of lesser pain. I stayed awake till just before the dawn,
and then it came again, and ever since I have been in such an agony as
I am sure the dying feel, and with it all the dread of tonight.” Before
he had got to the end of the sentence my mind was made up, and I felt
that I could speak to him more cheerfully.
“Try and get to sleep early tonight—in fact, before the evening has
passed away. The sleep will refresh you, and I promise you there will
not be any bad dreams after tonight.” He shook his head hopelessly, so
I sat a little longer and then left him.
When I got home I made my arrangements for the night, for I had made up
my mind to share Jacob Settle’s lonely vigil in his cottage on the
moor. I judged that if he got to sleep before sunset he would wake well
before midnight, and so, just as the bells of the city were striking
eleven, I stood opposite his door armed with a bag, in which were my
supper, an extra large flask, a couple of candles, and a book. The
moonlight was bright, and flooded the whole moor, till it was almost as
light as day; but ever and anon black clouds drove across the sky, and
made a darkness which by comparison seemed almost tangible. I opened
the door softly, and entered without waking Jacob, who lay asleep with
his white face upward. He was still, and again bathed in sweat. I tried
to imagine what visions were passing before those closed eyes which
could bring with them the misery and woe which were stamped on the
face, but fancy failed me, and I waited for the awakening. It came
suddenly, and in a fashion which touched me to the quick, for the
hollow groan that broke from the man’s white lips as he half arose and
sank back was manifestly the realisation or completion of some train of
thought which had gone before.
“If this be dreaming,” said I to myself, “then it must be based on some
very terrible reality. What can have been that unhappy fact that he
spoke of?”
While I thus spoke, he realised that I was with him. It struck me as
strange that he had no period of that doubt as to whether dream or
reality surrounded him which commonly marks an expected environment of
waking men. With a positive cry of joy, he seized my hand and held it
in his two wet, trembling hands, as a frightened child clings on to
someone whom it loves. I tried to soothe him:
“There, there! it is all right. I have come to stay with you tonight,
and together we will try to fight this evil dream.” He let go my hand
suddenly, and sank back on his bed and covered his eyes with his hands.
“Fight it?—the evil dream! Ah! no, sir, no! No mortal power can fight
that dream, for it comes from God—and is burned in here;” and he beat
upon his forehead. Then he went on:
“It is the same dream, ever the same, and yet it grows in its power to
torture me every time it comes.”
“What is the dream?” I asked, thinking that the speaking of it might
give him some relief, but he shrank away from me, and after a long
pause said:
“No, I had better not tell it. It may not come again.”
There was manifestly something to conceal from me—something that lay
behind the dream, so I answered:
“All right. I hope you have seen the last of it. But if it should come
again, you will tell me, will you not? I ask, not out of curiosity, but
because I think it may relieve you to speak.” He answered with what I
thought was almost an undue amount of solemnity:
“If it comes again, I shall tell you all.”
Then I tried to get his mind away from the subject to more mundane
things, so I produced supper, and made him share it with me, including
the contents of the flask. After a little he braced up, and when I lit
my cigar, having given him another, we smoked a full hour, and talked
of many things. Little by little the comfort of his body stole over his
mind, and I could see sleep laying her gentle hands on his eyelids. He
felt it, too, and told me that now he felt all right, and I might
safely leave him; but I told him that, right or wrong, I was going to
see in the daylight. So I lit my other candle, and began to read as he
fell asleep.
By degrees I got interested in my book, so interested that presently I
was startled by its dropping out of my hands. I looked and saw that
Jacob was still asleep, and I was rejoiced to see that there was on his
face a look of unwonted happiness, while his lips seemed to move with
unspoken words. Then I turned to my work again, and again woke, but
this time to feel chilled to my very marrow by hearing the voice from
the bed beside me:
“Not with those red hands! Never! never!” On looking at him, I found
that he was still asleep. He woke, however, in an instant, and did not
seem surprised to see me; there was again that strange apathy as to his
surroundings. Then I said:
“Settle, tell me your dream. You may speak freely, for I shall hold
your confidence sacred. While we both live I shall never mention what
you may choose to tell me.”
He replied:
“I said I would; but I had better tell you first what goes before the
dream, that you may understand. I was a schoolmaster when I was a very
young man; it was only a parish school in a little village in the West
Country. No need to mention any names. Better not. I was engaged to be
married to a young girl whom I loved and almost reverenced. It was the