Dracula's Guest
years old! Do you think there’s no rats and beetles there! And do you
imagine, sir, that you won’t see none of them? Rats is bogies, I tell
you, and bogies is rats; and don’t you get to think anything else!”
“Mrs. Dempster,” said Malcolmson gravely, making her a polite bow, “you
know more than a Senior Wrangler! And let me say, that, as a mark of
esteem for your indubitable soundness of head and heart, I shall, when
I go, give you possession of this house, and let you stay here by
yourself for the last two months of my tenancy, for four weeks will
serve my purpose.”
“Thank you kindly, sir!” she answered, “but I couldn’t sleep away from
home a night. I am in Greenhow’s Charity, and if I slept a night away
from my rooms I should lose all I have got to live on. The rules is
very strict; and there’s too many watching for a vacancy for me to run
any risks in the matter. Only for that, sir, I’d gladly come here and
attend on you altogether during your stay.”
“My good woman,” said Malcolmson hastily, “I have come here on purpose
to obtain solitude; and believe me that I am grateful to the late
Greenhow for having so organised his admirable charity—whatever it
is—that I am perforce denied the opportunity of suffering from such a
form of temptation! Saint Anthony himself could not be more rigid on
the point!”
The old woman laughed harshly. “Ah, you young gentlemen,” she said,
“you don’t fear for naught; and belike you’ll get all the solitude you
want here.” She set to work with her cleaning; and by nightfall, when
Malcolmson returned from his walk—he always had one of his books to
study as he walked—he found the room swept and tidied, a fire burning
in the old hearth, the lamp lit, and the table spread for supper with
Mrs. Witham’s excellent fare. “This is comfort, indeed,” he said, as he
rubbed his hands.
When he had finished his supper, and lifted the tray to the other end
of the great oak dining-table, he got out his books again, put fresh
wood on the fire, trimmed his lamp, and set himself down to a spell of
real hard work. He went on without pause till about eleven o’clock,
when he knocked off for a bit to fix his fire and lamp, and to make
himself a cup of tea. He had always been a tea-drinker, and during his
college life had sat late at work and had taken tea late. The rest was
a great luxury to him, and he enjoyed it with a sense of delicious,
voluptuous ease. The renewed fire leaped and sparkled, and threw quaint
shadows through the great old room; and as he sipped his hot tea he
revelled in the sense of isolation from his kind. Then it was that he
began to notice for the first time what a noise the rats were making.
“Surely,” he thought, “they cannot have been at it all the time I was
reading. Had they been, I must have noticed it!” Presently, when the
noise increased, he satisfied himself that it was really new. It was
evident that at first the rats had been frightened at the presence of a
stranger, and the light of fire and lamp; but that as the time went on
they had grown bolder and were now disporting themselves as was their
wont.
How busy they were! and hark to the strange noises! Up and down behind
the old wainscot, over the ceiling and under the floor they raced, and
gnawed, and scratched! Malcolmson smiled to himself as he recalled to
mind the saying of Mrs. Dempster, “Bogies is rats, and rats is bogies!”
The tea began to have its effect of intellectual and nervous stimulus,
he saw with joy another long spell of work to be done before the night
was past, and in the sense of security which it gave him, he allowed
himself the luxury of a good look round the room. He took his lamp in
one hand, and went all around, wondering that so quaint and beautiful
an old house had been so long neglected. The carving of the oak on the
panels of the wainscot was fine, and on and round the doors and windows
it was beautiful and of rare merit. There were some old pictures on the
walls, but they were coated so thick with dust and dirt that he could
not distinguish any detail of them, though he held his lamp as high as
he could over his head. Here and there as he went round he saw some
crack or hole blocked for a moment by the face of a rat with its bright
eyes glittering in the light, but in an instant it was gone, and a
squeak and a scamper followed. The thing that most struck him, however,
was the rope of the great alarm bell on the roof, which hung down in a
corner of the room on the right-hand side of the fireplace. He pulled
up close to the hearth a great high-backed carved oak chair, and sat
down to his last cup of tea. When this was done he made up the fire,
and went back to his work, sitting at the corner of the table, having
the fire to his left. For a little while the rats disturbed him
somewhat with their perpetual scampering, but he got accustomed to the
noise as one does to the ticking of a clock or to the roar of moving
water; and he became so immersed in his work that everything in the
world, except the problem which he was trying to solve, passed away
from him.
He suddenly looked up, his problem was still unsolved, and there was in
the air that sense of the hour before the dawn, which is so dread to
doubtful life. The noise of the rats had ceased. Indeed it seemed to
him that it must have ceased but lately and that it was the sudden
cessation which had disturbed him. The fire had fallen low, but still
it threw out a deep red glow. As he looked he started in spite of his
_sang froid_.
There on the great high-backed carved oak chair by the right side of
the fireplace sat an enormous rat, steadily glaring at him with baleful
eyes. He made a motion to it as though to hunt it away, but it did not
stir. Then he made the motion of throwing something. Still it did not
stir, but showed its great white teeth angrily, and its cruel eyes
shone in the lamplight with an added vindictiveness.
Malcolmson felt amazed, and seizing the poker from the hearth ran at it
to kill it. Before, however, he could strike it, the rat, with a squeak
that sounded like the concentration of hate, jumped upon the floor,
and, running up the rope of the alarm bell, disappeared in the darkness
beyond the range of the green-shaded lamp. Instantly, strange to say,
the noisy scampering of the rats in the wainscot began again.
By this time Malcolmson’s mind was quite off the problem; and as a
shrill cock-crow outside told him of the approach of morning, he went
to bed and to sleep.
He slept so sound that he was not even waked by Mrs. Dempster coming in
to make up his room. It was only when she had tidied up the place and
got his breakfast ready and tapped on the screen which closed in his
bed that he woke. He was a little tired still after his night’s hard
work, but a strong cup of tea soon freshened him up and, taking his
book, he went out for his morning walk, bringing with him a few
sandwiches lest he should not care to return till dinner time. He found
a quiet walk between high elms some way outside the town, and here he
spent the greater part of the day studying his Laplace. On his return
he looked in to see Mrs. Witham and to thank her for her kindness. When
she saw him coming through the diamond-paned bay window of her sanctum
she came out to meet him and asked him in. She looked at him
searchingly and shook her head as she said:
“You must not overdo it, sir. You are paler this morning than you
should be. Too late hours and too hard work on the brain isn’t good for
any man! But tell me, sir, how did you pass the night? Well, I hope?
But my heart! sir, I was glad when Mrs. Dempster told me this morning
that you were all right and sleeping sound when she went in.”
“Oh, I was all right,” he answered smiling, “the ‘somethings’ didn’t
worry me, as yet. Only the rats; and they had a circus, I tell you, all
over the place. There was one wicked looking old devil that sat up on
my own chair by the fire, and wouldn’t go till I took the poker to him,
and then he ran up the rope of the alarm bell and got to somewhere up
the wall or the ceiling—I couldn’t see where, it was so dark.”
“Mercy on us,” said Mrs. Witham, “an old devil, and sitting on a chair
by the fireside! Take care, sir! take care! There’s many a true word
spoken in jest.”
“How do you mean? Pon my word I don’t understand.”
“An old devil! The old devil, perhaps. There! sir, you needn’t laugh,”
for Malcolmson had broken into a hearty peal. “You young folks thinks
it easy to laugh at things that makes older ones shudder. Never mind,
sir! never mind! Please God, you’ll laugh all the time. It’s what I
wish you myself!” and the good lady beamed all over in sympathy with
his enjoyment, her fears gone for a moment.
“Oh, forgive me!” said Malcolmson presently. “Don’t think me rude; but
the idea was too much for me—that the old devil himself was on the
chair last night!” And at the thought he laughed again. Then he went
home to dinner.
This evening the scampering of the rats began earlier; indeed it had
been going on before his arrival, and only ceased whilst his presence
by its freshness disturbed them. After dinner he sat by the fire for a
while and had a smoke; and then, having cleared his table, began to
work as before. Tonight the rats disturbed him more than they had done
on the previous night. How they scampered up and down and under and
over! How they squeaked, and scratched, and gnawed! How they, getting
bolder by degrees, came to the mouths of their holes and to the chinks
and cracks and crannies in the wainscoting till their eyes shone like
tiny lamps as the firelight rose and fell. But to him, now doubtless
accustomed to them, their eyes were not wicked; only their playfulness
touched him. Sometimes the boldest of them made sallies out on the
floor or along the mouldings of the wainscot. Now and again as they
disturbed him Malcolmson made a sound to frighten them, smiting the
table with his hand or giving a fierce “Hsh, hsh,” so that they fled
straightway to their holes.
And so the early part of the night wore on; and despite the noise
Malcolmson got more and more immersed in his work.
All at once he stopped, as on the previous night, being overcome by a
sudden sense of silence. There was not the faintest sound of gnaw, or
scratch, or squeak. The silence was as of the grave. He remembered the
odd occurrence of the previous night, and instinctively he looked at
the chair standing close by the fireside. And then a very odd sensation
thrilled through him.
There, on the great old high-backed carved oak chair beside the
fireplace sat the same enormous rat, steadily glaring at him with
baleful eyes.
Instinctively he took the nearest thing to his hand, a book of
logarithms, and flung it at it. The book was badly aimed and the rat
did not stir, so again the poker performance of the previous night was
repeated; and again the rat, being closely pursued, fled up the rope of
the alarm bell. Strangely too, the departure of this rat was instantly
followed by the renewal of the noise made by the general rat community.
On this occasion, as on the previous one, Malcolmson could not see at
what part of the room the rat disappeared, for the green shade of his
lamp left the upper part of the room in darkness, and the fire had
burned low.
On looking at his watch he found it was close on midnight; and, not
sorry for the _divertissement_, he made up his fire and made himself
his nightly pot of tea. He had got through a good spell of work, and
thought himself entitled to a cigarette; and so he sat on the great oak
chair before the fire and enjoyed it. Whilst smoking he began to think
that he would like to know where the rat disappeared to, for he had
certain ideas for the morrow not entirely disconnected with a rat-trap.