Dracula's Guest
adventures, might have stepped out of a novel. We kept for the last
object of interest in the city to be visited the Burg, and on the day
appointed for the visit strolled round the outer wall of the city by
the eastern side.
The Burg is seated on a rock dominating the town and an immensely deep
fosse guards it on the northern side. Nurnberg has been happy in that
it was never sacked; had it been it would certainly not be so spick and
span perfect as it is at present. The ditch has not been used for
centuries, and now its base is spread with tea-gardens and orchards, of
which some of the trees are of quite respectable growth. As we wandered
round the wall, dawdling in the hot July sunshine, we often paused to
admire the views spread before us, and in especial the great plain
covered with towns and villages and bounded with a blue line of hills,
like a landscape of Claude Lorraine. From this we always turned with
new delight to the city itself, with its myriad of quaint old gables
and acre-wide red roofs dotted with dormer windows, tier upon tier. A
little to our right rose the towers of the Burg, and nearer still,
standing grim, the Torture Tower, which was, and is, perhaps, the most
interesting place in the city. For centuries the tradition of the Iron
Virgin of Nurnberg has been handed down as an instance of the horrors
of cruelty of which man is capable; we had long looked forward to
seeing it; and here at last was its home.
In one of our pauses we leaned over the wall of the moat and looked
down. The garden seemed quite fifty or sixty feet below us, and the sun
pouring into it with an intense, moveless heat like that of an oven.
Beyond rose the grey, grim wall seemingly of endless height, and losing
itself right and left in the angles of bastion and counterscarp. Trees
and bushes crowned the wall, and above again towered the lofty houses
on whose massive beauty Time has only set the hand of approval. The sun
was hot and we were lazy; time was our own, and we lingered, leaning on
the wall. Just below us was a pretty sight—a great black cat lying
stretched in the sun, whilst round her gambolled prettily a tiny black
kitten. The mother would wave her tail for the kitten to play with, or
would raise her feet and push away the little one as an encouragement
to further play. They were just at the foot of the wall, and Elias P.
Hutcheson, in order to help the play, stooped and took from the walk a
moderate sized pebble.
“See!” he said, “I will drop it near the kitten, and they will both
wonder where it came from.”
“Oh, be careful,” said my wife; “you might hit the dear little thing!”
“Not me, ma’am,” said Elias P. “Why, I’m as tender as a Maine
cherry-tree. Lor, bless ye. I wouldn’t hurt the poor pooty little
critter more’n I’d scalp a baby. An’ you may bet your variegated socks
on that! See, I’ll drop it fur away on the outside so’s not to go near
her!” Thus saying, he leaned over and held his arm out at full length
and dropped the stone. It may be that there is some attractive force
which draws lesser matters to greater; or more probably that the wall
was not plump but sloped to its base—we not noticing the inclination
from above; but the stone fell with a sickening thud that came up to us
through the hot air, right on the kitten’s head, and shattered out its
little brains then and there. The black cat cast a swift upward glance,
and we saw her eyes like green fire fixed an instant on Elias P.
Hutcheson; and then her attention was given to the kitten, which lay
still with just a quiver of her tiny limbs, whilst a thin red stream
trickled from a gaping wound. With a muffled cry, such as a human being
might give, she bent over the kitten licking its wounds and moaning.
Suddenly she seemed to realise that it was dead, and again threw her
eyes up at us. I shall never forget the sight, for she looked the
perfect incarnation of hate. Her green eyes blazed with lurid fire, and
the white, sharp teeth seemed to almost shine through the blood which
dabbled her mouth and whiskers. She gnashed her teeth, and her claws
stood out stark and at full length on every paw. Then she made a wild
rush up the wall as if to reach us, but when the momentum ended fell
back, and further added to her horrible appearance for she fell on the
kitten, and rose with her black fur smeared with its brains and blood.
Amelia turned quite faint, and I had to lift her back from the wall.
There was a seat close by in shade of a spreading plane-tree, and here
I placed her whilst she composed herself. Then I went back to
Hutcheson, who stood without moving, looking down on the angry cat
below.
As I joined him, he said:
“Wall, I guess that air the savagest beast I ever see—’cept once when
an Apache squaw had an edge on a half-breed what they nicknamed
‘Splinters’ “cos of the way he fixed up her papoose which he stole on a
raid just to show that he appreciated the way they had given his mother
the fire torture. She got that kinder look so set on her face that it
jest seemed to grow there. She followed Splinters mor’n three year till
at last the braves got him and handed him over to her. They did say
that no man, white or Injun, had ever been so long a-dying under the
tortures of the Apaches. The only time I ever see her smile was when I
wiped her out. I kem on the camp just in time to see Splinters pass in
his checks, and he wasn’t sorry to go either. He was a hard citizen,
and though I never could shake with him after that papoose business—for
it was bitter bad, and he should have been a white man, for he looked
like one—I see he had got paid out in full. Durn me, but I took a piece
of his hide from one of his skinnin’ posts an’ had it made into a
pocket-book. It’s here now!” and he slapped the breast pocket of his
coat.
Whilst he was speaking the cat was continuing her frantic efforts to
get up the wall. She would take a run back and then charge up,
sometimes reaching an incredible height. She did not seem to mind the
heavy fall which she got each time but started with renewed vigour; and
at every tumble her appearance became more horrible. Hutcheson was a
kind-hearted man—my wife and I had both noticed little acts of kindness
to animals as well as to persons—and he seemed concerned at the state
of fury to which the cat had wrought herself.
“Wall, now!” he said, “I du declare that that poor critter seems quite
desperate. There! there! poor thing, it was all an accident—though that
won’t bring back your little one to you. Say! I wouldn’t have had such
a thing happen for a thousand! Just shows what a clumsy fool of a man
can do when he tries to play! Seems I’m too darned slipperhanded to
even play with a cat. Say Colonel!” it was a pleasant way he had to
bestow titles freely—“I hope your wife don’t hold no grudge against me
on account of this unpleasantness? Why, I wouldn’t have had it occur on
no account.”
He came over to Amelia and apologised profusely, and she with her usual
kindness of heart hastened to assure him that she quite understood that
it was an accident. Then we all went again to the wall and looked over.
The cat missing Hutcheson’s face had drawn back across the moat, and
was sitting on her haunches as though ready to spring. Indeed, the very
instant she saw him she did spring, and with a blind unreasoning fury,
which would have been grotesque, only that it was so frightfully real.
She did not try to run up the wall, but simply launched herself at him
as though hate and fury could lend her wings to pass straight through
the great distance between them. Amelia, womanlike, got quite
concerned, and said to Elias P. in a warning voice:
“Oh! you must be very careful. That animal would try to kill you if she
were here; her eyes look like positive murder.”
He laughed out jovially. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, “but I can’t help
laughin’. Fancy a man that has fought grizzlies an’ Injuns bein’
careful of bein’ murdered by a cat!”
When the cat heard him laugh, her whole demeanour seemed to change. She
no longer tried to jump or run up the wall, but went quietly over, and
sitting again beside the dead kitten began to lick and fondle it as
though it were alive.
“See!” said I, “the effect of a really strong man. Even that animal in
the midst of her fury recognises the voice of a master, and bows to
him!”
“Like a squaw!” was the only comment of Elias P. Hutcheson, as we moved
on our way round the city fosse. Every now and then we looked over the
wall and each time saw the cat following us. At first she had kept
going back to the dead kitten, and then as the distance grew greater
took it in her mouth and so followed. After a while, however, she
abandoned this, for we saw her following all alone; she had evidently
hidden the body somewhere. Amelia’s alarm grew at the cat’s
persistence, and more than once she repeated her warning; but the
American always laughed with amusement, till finally, seeing that she
was beginning to be worried, he said:
“I say, ma’am, you needn’t be skeered over that cat. I go heeled, I
du!” Here he slapped his pistol pocket at the back of his lumbar
region. “Why sooner’n have you worried, I’ll shoot the critter, right
here, an’ risk the police interferin’ with a citizen of the United
States for carryin’ arms contrairy to reg’lations!” As he spoke he
looked over the wall, but the cat on seeing him, retreated, with a
growl, into a bed of tall flowers, and was hidden. He went on: “Blest
if that ar critter ain’t got more sense of what’s good for her than
most Christians. I guess we’ve seen the last of her! You bet, she’ll go
back now to that busted kitten and have a private funeral of it, all to
herself!”
Amelia did not like to say more, lest he might, in mistaken kindness to
her, fulfil his threat of shooting the cat: and so we went on and
crossed the little wooden bridge leading to the gateway whence ran the
steep paved roadway between the Burg and the pentagonal Torture Tower.
As we crossed the bridge we saw the cat again down below us. When she
saw us her fury seemed to return, and she made frantic efforts to get
up the steep wall. Hutcheson laughed as he looked down at her, and
said:
“Goodbye, old girl. Sorry I injured your feelin’s, but you’ll get over
it in time! So long!” And then we passed through the long, dim archway
and came to the gate of the Burg.
When we came out again after our survey of this most beautiful old
place which not even the well-intentioned efforts of the Gothic
restorers of forty years ago have been able to spoil—though their
restoration was then glaring white—we seemed to have quite forgotten
the unpleasant episode of the morning. The old lime tree with its great
trunk gnarled with the passing of nearly nine centuries, the deep well
cut through the heart of the rock by those captives of old, and the
lovely view from the city wall whence we heard, spread over almost a
full quarter of an hour, the multitudinous chimes of the city, had all
helped to wipe out from our minds the incident of the slain kitten.
We were the only visitors who had entered the Torture Tower that
morning—so at least said the old custodian—and as we had the place all
to ourselves were able to make a minute and more satisfactory survey
than would have otherwise been possible. The custodian, looking to us
as the sole source of his gains for the day, was willing to meet our
wishes in any way. The Torture Tower is truly a grim place, even now
when many thousands of visitors have sent a stream of life, and the joy
that follows life, into the place; but at the time I mention it wore
its grimmest and most gruesome aspect. The dust of ages seemed to have
settled on it, and the darkness and the horror of its memories seem to