Dracula's Guest
The officer raised me to a sitting posture, as he uttered a word of
command; then several men placed me upon a horse. He sprang to the
saddle behind me, took me in his arms, gave the word to advance; and,
turning our faces away from the cypresses, we rode away in swift,
military order.
As yet my tongue refused its office, and I was perforce silent. I must
have fallen asleep; for the next thing I remembered was finding myself
standing up, supported by a soldier on each side of me. It was almost
broad daylight, and to the north a red streak of sunlight was
reflected, like a path of blood, over the waste of snow. The officer
was telling the men to say nothing of what they had seen, except that
they found an English stranger, guarded by a large dog.
“Dog! that was no dog,” cut in the man who had exhibited such fear. “I
think I know a wolf when I see one.”
The young officer answered calmly: “I said a dog.”
“Dog!” reiterated the other ironically. It was evident that his courage
was rising with the sun; and, pointing to me, he said, “Look at his
throat. Is that the work of a dog, master?”
Instinctively I raised my hand to my throat, and as I touched it I
cried out in pain. The men crowded round to look, some stooping down
from their saddles; and again there came the calm voice of the young
officer:
“A dog, as I said. If aught else were said we should only be laughed
at.”
I was then mounted behind a trooper, and we rode on into the suburbs of
Munich. Here we came across a stray carriage, into which I was lifted,
and it was driven off to the Quatre Saisons—the young officer
accompanying me, whilst a trooper followed with his horse, and the
others rode off to their barracks.
When we arrived, Herr Delbrück rushed so quickly down the steps to meet
me, that it was apparent he had been watching within. Taking me by both
hands he solicitously led me in. The officer saluted me and was turning
to withdraw, when I recognised his purpose, and insisted that he should
come to my rooms. Over a glass of wine I warmly thanked him and his
brave comrades for saving me. He replied simply that he was more than
glad, and that Herr Delbrück had at the first taken steps to make all
the searching party pleased; at which ambiguous utterance the maître
d’hôtel smiled, while the officer pleaded duty and withdrew.
“But Herr Delbrück,” I enquired, “how and why was it that the soldiers
searched for me?”
He shrugged his shoulders, as if in depreciation of his own deed, as he
replied:
“I was so fortunate as to obtain leave from the commander of the
regiment in which I served, to ask for volunteers.”
“But how did you know I was lost?” I asked.
“The driver came hither with the remains of his carriage, which had
been upset when the horses ran away.”
“But surely you would not send a search-party of soldiers merely on
this account?”
“Oh, no!” he answered; “but even before the coachman arrived, I had
this telegram from the Boyar whose guest you are,” and he took from his
pocket a telegram which he handed to me, and I read:
_Bistritz_.
Be careful of my guest—his safety is most precious to me. Should aught
happen to him, or if he be missed, spare nothing to find him and ensure
his safety. He is English and therefore adventurous. There are often
dangers from snow and wolves and night. Lose not a moment if you
suspect harm to him. I answer your zeal with my fortune.—_Dracula_.
As I held the telegram in my hand, the room seemed to whirl around me;
and, if the attentive maître d’hôtel had not caught me, I think I
should have fallen. There was something so strange in all this,
something so weird and impossible to imagine, that there grew on me a
sense of my being in some way the sport of opposite forces—the mere
vague idea of which seemed in a way to paralyse me. I was certainly
under some form of mysterious protection. From a distant country had
come, in the very nick of time, a message that took me out of the
danger of the snow-sleep and the jaws of the wolf.
The Judge’s House
When the time for his examination drew near Malcolm Malcolmson made up
his mind to go somewhere to read by himself. He feared the attractions
of the seaside, and also he feared completely rural isolation, for of
old he knew it charms, and so he determined to find some unpretentious
little town where there would be nothing to distract him. He refrained
from asking suggestions from any of his friends, for he argued that
each would recommend some place of which he had knowledge, and where he
had already acquaintances. As Malcolmson wished to avoid friends he had
no wish to encumber himself with the attention of friends’ friends, and
so he determined to look out for a place for himself. He packed a
portmanteau with some clothes and all the books he required, and then
took ticket for the first name on the local time-table which he did not
know.
When at the end of three hours’ journey he alighted at Benchurch, he
felt satisfied that he had so far obliterated his tracks as to be sure
of having a peaceful opportunity of pursuing his studies. He went
straight to the one inn which the sleepy little place contained, and
put up for the night. Benchurch was a market town, and once in three
weeks was crowded to excess, but for the remainder of the twenty-one
days it was as attractive as a desert. Malcolmson looked around the day
after his arrival to try to find quarters more isolated than even so
quiet an inn as “The Good Traveller” afforded. There was only one place
which took his fancy, and it certainly satisfied his wildest ideas
regarding quiet; in fact, quiet was not the proper word to apply to
it—desolation was the only term conveying any suitable idea of its
isolation. It was an old rambling, heavy-built house of the Jacobean
style, with heavy gables and windows, unusually small, and set higher
than was customary in such houses, and was surrounded with a high brick
wall massively built. Indeed, on examination, it looked more like a
fortified house than an ordinary dwelling. But all these things pleased
Malcolmson. “Here,” he thought, “is the very spot I have been looking
for, and if I can get opportunity of using it I shall be happy.” His
joy was increased when he realised beyond doubt that it was not at
present inhabited.
From the post-office he got the name of the agent, who was rarely
surprised at the application to rent a part of the old house. Mr.
Carnford, the local lawyer and agent, was a genial old gentleman, and
frankly confessed his delight at anyone being willing to live in the
house.
“To tell you the truth,” said he, “I should be only too happy, on
behalf of the owners, to let anyone have the house rent free for a term
of years if only to accustom the people here to see it inhabited. It
has been so long empty that some kind of absurd prejudice has grown up
about it, and this can be best put down by its occupation—if only,” he
added with a sly glance at Malcolmson, “by a scholar like yourself, who
wants its quiet for a time.”
Malcolmson thought it needless to ask the agent about the “absurd
prejudice”; he knew he would get more information, if he should require
it, on that subject from other quarters. He paid his three months’
rent, got a receipt, and the name of an old woman who would probably
undertake to “do” for him, and came away with the keys in his pocket.
He then went to the landlady of the inn, who was a cheerful and most
kindly person, and asked her advice as to such stores and provisions as
he would be likely to require. She threw up her hands in amazement when
he told her where he was going to settle himself.
“Not in the Judge’s House!” she said, and grew pale as she spoke. He
explained the locality of the house, saying that he did not know its
name. When he had finished she answered:
“Aye, sure enough—sure enough the very place! It is the Judge’s House
sure enough.” He asked her to tell him about the place, why so called,
and what there was against it. She told him that it was so called
locally because it had been many years before—how long she could not
say, as she was herself from another part of the country, but she
thought it must have been a hundred years or more—the abode of a judge
who was held in great terror on account of his harsh sentences and his
hostility to prisoners at Assizes. As to what there was against the
house itself she could not tell. She had often asked, but no one could
inform her; but there was a general feeling that there was _something_,
and for her own part she would not take all the money in Drinkwater’s
Bank and stay in the house an hour by herself. Then she apologised to
Malcolmson for her disturbing talk.
“It is too bad of me, sir, and you—and a young gentlemen, too—if you
will pardon me saying it, going to live there all alone. If you were my
boy—and you’ll excuse me for saying it—you wouldn’t sleep there a
night, not if I had to go there myself and pull the big alarm bell
that’s on the roof!” The good creature was so manifestly in earnest,
and was so kindly in her intentions, that Malcolmson, although amused,
was touched. He told her kindly how much he appreciated her interest in
him, and added:
“But, my dear Mrs. Witham, indeed you need not be concerned about me! A
man who is reading for the Mathematical Tripos has too much to think of
to be disturbed by any of these mysterious ‘somethings’, and his work
is of too exact and prosaic a kind to allow of his having any corner in
his mind for mysteries of any kind. Harmonical Progression,
Permutations and Combinations, and Elliptic Functions have sufficient
mysteries for me!” Mrs. Witham kindly undertook to see after his
commissions, and he went himself to look for the old woman who had been
recommended to him. When he returned to the Judge’s House with her,
after an interval of a couple of hours, he found Mrs. Witham herself
waiting with several men and boys carrying parcels, and an
upholsterer’s man with a bed in a car, for she said, though tables and
chairs might be all very well, a bed that hadn’t been aired for mayhap
fifty years was not proper for young bones to lie on. She was evidently
curious to see the inside of the house; and though manifestly so afraid
of the “somethings” that at the slightest sound she clutched on to
Malcolmson, whom she never left for a moment, went over the whole
place.
After his examination of the house, Malcolmson decided to take up his
abode in the great dining-room, which was big enough to serve for all
his requirements; and Mrs. Witham, with the aid of the charwoman, Mrs.
Dempster, proceeded to arrange matters. When the hampers were brought
in and unpacked, Malcolmson saw that with much kind forethought she had
sent from her own kitchen sufficient provisions to last for a few days.
Before going she expressed all sorts of kind wishes; and at the door
turned and said:
“And perhaps, sir, as the room is big and draughty it might be well to
have one of those big screens put round your bed at night—though, truth
to tell, I would die myself if I were to be so shut in with all kinds
of—of ‘things’, that put their heads round the sides, or over the top,
and look on me!” The image which she had called up was too much for her
nerves, and she fled incontinently.
Mrs. Dempster sniffed in a superior manner as the landlady disappeared,
and remarked that for her own part she wasn’t afraid of all the bogies
in the kingdom.
“I’ll tell you what it is, sir,” she said; “bogies is all kinds and
sorts of things—except bogies! Rats and mice, and beetles; and creaky
doors, and loose slates, and broken panes, and stiff drawer handles,
that stay out when you pull them and then fall down in the middle of
the night. Look at the wainscot of the room! It is old—hundreds of