Dracula's Guest
that his information on the subject was complete. Before they parted he
asked his companion if he had happened to see a second figure, dressed
like himself on the other rock as he had approached to succour him.
“Na! Na!” came the answer, “there is nae sic another fule in these
parts. Nor has there been since the time o’ Jamie Fleeman—him that was
fule to the Laird o’ Udny. Why, mon! sic a heathenish dress as ye have
on till ye has nae been seen in these pairts within the memory o’ mon.
An’ I’m thinkin’ that sic a dress never was for sittin’ on the cauld
rock, as ye done beyont. Mon! but do ye no fear the rheumatism or the
lumbagy wi’ floppin’ doon on to the cauld stanes wi’ yer bare flesh? I
was thinking that it was daft ye waur when I see ye the mornin’ doon be
the port, but it’s fule or eediot ye maun be for the like o’ thot!” Mr.
Markam did not care to argue the point, and as they were now close to
his own home he asked the salmon-fisher to have a glass of whisky—which
he did—and they parted for the night. He took good care to warn all his
family of the quicksand, telling them that he had himself been in some
danger from it.
All that night he never slept. He heard the hours strike one after the
other; but try how he would he could not get to sleep. Over and over
again he went through the horrible episode of the quicksand, from the
time that Saft Tammie had broken his habitual silence to preach to him
of the sin of vanity and to warn him. The question kept ever arising in
his mind: “Am I then so vain as to be in the ranks of the foolish?” and
the answer ever came in the words of the crazy prophet: “‘Vanity of
vanities! All is vanity.’ Meet thyself face to face, and repent ere the
quicksand shall swallow thee!” Somehow a feeling of doom began to shape
itself in his mind that he would yet perish in that same quicksand, for
there he had already met himself face to face.
In the grey of the morning he dozed off, but it was evident that he
continued the subject in his dreams, for he was fully awakened by his
wife, who said:
“Do sleep quietly! That blessed Highland suit has got on your brain.
Don’t talk in your sleep, if you can help it!” He was somehow conscious
of a glad feeling, as if some terrible weight had been lifted from him,
but he did not know any cause of it. He asked his wife what he had said
in his sleep, and she answered:
“You said it often enough, goodness knows, for one to remember it—‘Not
face to face! I saw the eagle plume over the bald head! There is hope
yet! Not face to face!’ Go to sleep! Do!” And then he did go to sleep,
for he seemed to realise that the prophecy of the crazy man had not yet
been fulfilled. He had not met himself face to face—as yet at all
events.
He was awakened early by a maid who came to tell him that there was a
fisherman at the door who wanted to see him. He dressed himself as
quickly as he could—for he was not yet expert with the Highland
dress—and hurried down, not wishing to keep the salmon-fisher waiting.
He was surprised and not altogether pleased to find that his visitor
was none other than Saft Tammie, who at once opened fire on him:
“I maun gang awa’ t’ the post; but I thocht that I would waste an hour
on ye, and ca’ roond just to see if ye waur still that fou wi’ vanity
as on the nicht gane by. An I see that ye’ve no learned the lesson.
Well! the time is comin’, sure eneucht! However I have all the time i’
the marnins to my ain sel’, so I’ll aye look roond jist till see how ye
gang yer ain gait to the quicksan’, and then to the de’il! I’m aff till
ma wark the noo!” And he went straightway, leaving Mr. Markam
considerably vexed, for the maids within earshot were vainly trying to
conceal their giggles. He had fairly made up his mind to wear on that
day ordinary clothes, but the visit of Saft Tammie reversed his
decision. He would show them all that he was not a coward, and he would
go on as he had begun—come what might. When he came to breakfast in
full martial panoply the children, one and all, held down their heads
and the backs of their necks became very red indeed. As, however, none
of them laughed—except Titus, the youngest boy, who was seized with a
fit of hysterical choking and was promptly banished from the room—he
could not reprove them, but began to break his egg with a sternly
determined air. It was unfortunate that as his wife was handing him a
cup of tea one of the buttons of his sleeve caught in the lace of her
morning wrapper, with the result that the hot tea was spilt over his
bare knees. Not unnaturally, he made use of a swear word, whereupon his
wife, somewhat nettled, spoke out:
“Well, Arthur, if you will make such an idiot of yourself with that
ridiculous costume what else can you expect? You are not accustomed to
it—and you never will be!” In answer he began an indignant speech with:
“Madam!” but he got no further, for now that the subject was broached,
Mrs. Markam intended to have her say out. It was not a pleasant say,
and, truth to tell, it was not said in a pleasant manner. A wife’s
manner seldom is pleasant when she undertakes to tell what she
considers “truths” to her husband. The result was that Arthur Fernlee
Markam undertook, then and there, that during his stay in Scotland he
would wear no other costume than the one she abused. Woman-like his
wife had the last word—given in this case with tears:
“Very well, Arthur! Of course you will do as you choose. Make me as
ridiculous as you can, and spoil the poor girls’ chances in life. Young
men don’t seem to care, as a general rule, for an idiot father-in-law!
But I must warn you that your vanity will some day get a rude shock—if
indeed you are not before then in an asylum or dead!”
It was manifest after a few days that Mr. Markam would have to take the
major part of his outdoor exercise by himself. The girls now and again
took a walk with him, chiefly in the early morning or late at night, or
on a wet day when there would be no one about; they professed to be
willing to go out at all times, but somehow something always seemed to
occur to prevent it. The boys could never be found at all on such
occasions, and as to Mrs. Markam she sternly refused to go out with him
on any consideration so long as he should continue to make a fool of
himself. On the Sunday he dressed himself in his habitual broadcloth,
for he rightly felt that church was not a place for angry feelings; but
on Monday morning he resumed his Highland garb. By this time he would
have given a good deal if he had never thought of the dress, but his
British obstinacy was strong, and he would not give in. Saft Tammie
called at his house every morning, and, not being able to see him nor
to have any message taken to him, used to call back in the afternoon
when the letter-bag had been delivered and watched for his going out.
On such occasions he never failed to warn him against his vanity in the
same words which he had used at the first. Before many days were over
Mr. Markam had come to look upon him as little short of a scourge.
By the time the week was out the enforced partial solitude, the
constant chagrin, and the never-ending brooding which was thus
engendered, began to make Mr. Markam quite ill. He was too proud to
take any of his family into his confidence since they had in his view
treated him very badly. Then he did not sleep well at night, and when
he did sleep he had constantly bad dreams. Merely to assure himself
that his pluck was not failing him he made it a practice to visit the
quicksand at least once every day; he hardly ever failed to go there
the last thing at night. It was perhaps this habit that wrought the
quicksand with its terrible experience so perpetually into his dreams.
More and more vivid these became, till on waking at times he could
hardly realise that he had not been actually in the flesh to visit the
fatal spot. He sometimes thought that he might have been walking in his
sleep.
One night his dream was so vivid that when he awoke he could not
believe that it had only been a dream. He shut his eyes again and
again, but each time the vision, if it was a vision, or the reality, if
it was a reality, would rise before him. The moon was shining full and
yellow over the quicksand as he approached it; he could see the expanse
of light shaken and disturbed and full of black shadows as the liquid
sand quivered and trembled and wrinkled and eddied as was its wont
between its pauses of marble calm. As he drew close to it another
figure came towards it from the opposite side with equal footsteps. He
saw that it was his own figure, his very self, and in silent terror,
compelled by what force he knew not, he advanced—charmed as the bird is
by the snake, mesmerised or hypnotised—to meet this other self. As he
felt the yielding sand closing over him he awoke in the agony of death,
trembling with fear, and, strange to say, with the silly man’s prophecy
seeming to sound in his ears: “‘Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!’ See
thyself and repent ere the quicksand swallow thee!”
So convinced was he that this was no dream that he arose, early as it
was, and dressing himself without disturbing his wife took his way to
the shore. His heart fell when he came across a series of footsteps on
the sands, which he at once recognised as his own. There was the same
wide heel, the same square toe; he had no doubt now that he had
actually been there, and half horrified, and half in a state of dreamy
stupor, he followed the footsteps, and found them lost in the edge of
the yielding quicksand. This gave him a terrible shock, for there were
no return steps marked on the sand, and he felt that there was some
dread mystery which he could not penetrate, and the penetration of
which would, he feared, undo him.
In this state of affairs he took two wrong courses. Firstly he kept his
trouble to himself, and, as none of his family had any clue to it,
every innocent word or expression which they used supplied fuel to the
consuming fire of his imagination. Secondly he began to read books
professing to bear upon the mysteries of dreaming and of mental
phenomena generally, with the result that every wild imagination of
every crank or half-crazy philosopher became a living germ of unrest in
the fertilising soil of his disordered brain. Thus negatively and
positively all things began to work to a common end. Not the least of
his disturbing causes was Saft Tammie, who had now become at certain
times of the day a fixture at his gate. After a while, being interested
in the previous state of this individual, he made inquiries regarding
his past with the following result.
Saft Tammie was popularly believed to be the son of a laird in one of
the counties round the Firth of Forth. He had been partially educated
for the ministry, but for some cause which no one ever knew threw up
his prospects suddenly, and, going to Peterhead in its days of whaling
prosperity, had there taken service on a whaler. Here off and on he had
remained for some years, getting gradually more and more silent in his
habits, till finally his shipmates protested against so taciturn a
mate, and he had found service amongst the fishing smacks of the
northern fleet. He had worked for many years at the fishing with always
the reputation of being “a wee bit daft,” till at length he had
gradually settled down at Crooken, where the laird, doubtless knowing
something of his family history, had given him a job which practically
made him a pensioner. The minister who gave the information finished
thus:—
“It is a very strange thing, but the man seems to have some odd kind of
gift. Whether it be that ‘second sight’ which we Scotch people are so
prone to believe in, or some other occult form of knowledge, I know