Vintage Vampire Stories (11 page)

I left Brinsabatch that morning with great reluctance, and all the time of divine service I was thinking far more of old Margery than of young Margaret, as I ought—and I do not mind confessing my fault openly. My seat is a little forward of the Quether pew on the other side. Usually, when standing for the psalms and hymns, I stand sideways, that the light may fall on my book, and look over the top at Margaret, who does the same; but as she is on the other side and the window opposite mine, she turns towards me that she may get the light on her print, and so our eyes are always meeting. When the parson is praying to us, I lean forward with my head on the book board, and so my eyes go diagonally backward, Margaret leans her head in an opposite fashion, and so her eyes go diagonally forward, and our eyes are always meeting in the prayers, as in the psalms. During the sermon I am obliged to turn round on my seat, as I am hard of hearing in my right ear, owing to a cricket ball having hit it when I was at the Tavistock Grammar School. Margaret always somehow has her bonnet string over her left ear, so she is fored to sit roundabout on her seat and expose the hearing ear to the preacher, and so it always comes about that during the sermon our eyes are meeting. This Christmas Day it was other with me; I could think of nothing but my poor little old Margery in her bassinet by the fire, and I kept on wondering whether she would wake up in my absence and fret for want of me. Then I had through the sermon a pricking feeling in my chest—I suppose where her tooth and nails had held so tight—and I was restless and uncomfortable to be back at Brinsabatch.

After service, as I was shaking hands all round, feeling eager to get it over and be off, Farmer Palmer said to me, “Come home to Quether with us, Rosedhu, and eat your Christmas dinner there. We are old friend and hope to be closer friends in time than we are now. I don't like, nor does Margaret here, to think of you sitting lonely down to your meal on Christmas Day. There is a knofe and fork laid ready for you, and I will take no refusal.”

I made a lame sort of excuse. I said I was unwell.

“That is true enough,” said Palmer; “you don't look yourself at all to-day, and Margaret is uneasy about you.Your face is white, your hand shakes, and you look older by some years than when I last saw you. When was that?”

“Sunday, father,” said Margaret with a sigh.

I assured them that I was too indisposed to accept their kind invitation, and I saw that they believed me. Margaret's brown eyes were fixed anxiously and intently on me. I had been up all night, much worried, that was why I looked older and unwell, but I only said by way of explanation to Palmer, the one magical word ‘liver.'When you say that word every man understands you. It touches his heart at once.

As I walked home every person I passed and spoke to said, “How oldened you are!” or “How ill you look!” or “Why, sure-ly that baint you, Mr. George, looking nigher forty than twenty.”

I wish Mr. Palmer would not try to thrust Margaret on me. Margaret invites me to dinner. Margaret is concerned at my looks. Margaret remembers when last we met. That is all hyperbola and figure and flower of speech, and means in plain English, I want you to take my eldest daughter off my hands, but I am not going to give more than a trifle with her.

I never was more pleased than on this occasion when I got home again. I unlocked my parlour door, and ran in and up to the clothes basket, and cried in a sort of fond foolish rapture, “Bless it! Bless it!”

The little old woman opened her eyes—they were not clouded with catacact; that must have been a fancy of mine before; she saw me and smiled, and made a sort of crowing noise in her throat. I stooped over to kiss her, when—click! In an instant she had fastened herself to me, and driven her tooth into my chest, and grabbed me with her hands, so that I was held as in a vice. To wrench her off would have been impossible. I believe if torn away the hands would have held to me still, and the arms come off at the wrists. I know that when a ferret fastens on a rabbit you may kill the beast before he will let go, unless you nip his hind foot; then he opens his mouth to squeal, and loosens his grip to defned himself. I did not think of this at the time, or I might have called in someone to pinch Margery's foot; but I doubt, even it I had remembered this, whether I should have had recourse to this expedient. I did not care to have my situation discussed; moreover, I was conscious of a soothing sensation all the time Margery was fast. Besides, I knew by this time that when the little old woman had had enough she would drop off, just as a leech does when full. I would not have you suppose that Margery was sucking my blood. Nothing of the sort; that is, not grossly in the manner of a leech. But she really did, in some marvelous manner to me quite inexplicable, extract life and health, the blood from my veins and the marrow from my bones, and assimilate them herself.

Presently she fell off, as I knew she would when satisfied, and lay in my lap, across my knees. She looked up at me with a smile that had something really pleasant in it. She was positively taller, her skin fresher, her eye clearer than before; her eyelashes were grey, not snowy; and there was actually a down of grey hairs covering her poll, like the feather on a cockatoo. I wrapped a blanket round her, and was about to replace it in the basket, when I found, to me surprise, that it would cramp her limbs; she could not kick out of it. So I got a drawer out of my bureau, fitted it up with pillows, and laid her in that.

I really do think there is something taking about her expression. When you consider her age, she gave wonderfully little trouble. At first it was strange to me to have to do with this sort of little creature—it was my first and only—but I saw that I should soon get used to it. In the afternoon I employed myself in making a pair of rockers, which I adjusted to the drawer, and by this means converted it into a very tolerable cradle. I am handy at carpentering. Indeed there are not many things which I cannot do when put to it. When the emergency arose, as the reader will see, I became really a superior nurse, without any training or experience. Indeed, I feel confident that in the event of this Radical Galdstone-Chamberlain-Bradlaugh Government altering the land laws and robbing me of Brinsabatch, I could always earn my living as a nurse; I could take a baby from the month, if not earlier, or a person of advanced age lapsed into second childhood. Never before have I taken in hand the tools of literature, and yet, I venture to say that—well! There are idiots in the world who don't know the qualities of a cow, and to whom a sample of wheat is submitted in vain. Such persons are welcome to form what opinion they like of my literary style. Their opinion is of no value whatever to me. There is no veneer in my work, it is sterling. There is no padding, as it is called; my literary execution is as substantial and thorough as were the rockers I put on the cradle. The rockers were not put on many days before they were needed. Old Margery became very restless at night, and she would not let me be long out of the house by day. She was cutting her teeth. The back teeth are terribly trying to babies—they have fits sometimes and big heads and water on the brain, all through the molars. If it be so with an infant of a few months, just consider what it must be with an old woman in her three-hundredth year, or thereabouts! I bore with her very patiently, but broken rest is trying to a man. Besudes, about the same time I suffered badly in my jaws, for my teeth, which were formerly perfectly sound, began to decay, break off, and fall out. I may say, approximately, that as Margery cut a tooth I lost one; also that, as her hair grew and darkened, mine came out or turned grey. Moreover, as her eye cleared mine became dim, and as her spirits rose mine became despondent.

In this way, weeks, and even months, passed. It really was a pretty sight to see the havoc of ages repaired in the person of Margery; the sight would have been one of unalloyed delight, had not the recovery been effected at my expense. The colour came back into her cheek as it left my once so florid complexion; she filled out as I shriveled up, she grew tall as I collapsed; the drawer would now no longer contain her, and a bed was made for her by the fire in the parlour. I noticed a gradual change in the tenor of her talk, as she grew younger. At first she could think and speak of nothing but her ailings, but after, she took to talking scandal, bitter and venomous, of neighbours, that is, of neighbours dead and dropped to dust, whose very tombstones are weathered so as to be illegible. Little by little her talk became less virulent, and softened into harmless prattle, and was all about the things of the farm and house. She was a first-rate worker. I was glad she took such an interest in the farm; she brisked about and saw to everything. I was suffered much from rheumatism and bronchitis. Neighbours came to see me, and all were in the same tale, that I was becoming an old man before my time, that the change in me was something unprecedented and unaccountable. I could not walk without a stick. I stooped. My hair was thin and grey, my limbs so shrunken that my clothes hung on me as on a scarecrow. I was advised to see a doctor; that is—everyone had a special doctor who was sure to cure me; one said I must go to Dr. Budd at North Tawton, and another to Dr. Hingston at Plymouth, and one to this and one to that; they would have sent me flying over the county consulting doctors, and varying them every week. Some said—and I soon found that was the prevailing opinion—that I was bewitched, and advised me strongly to consult the shite witch either in Exeter or Plymouth. I turned a deaf ear to them all. I wanted no doctors. I needed no white witch. I knew well enough what ailed me. I never now went up Brentor to church. Dear life! I could not have climbed such a height if I had wished it! My poor old bones ached at the very thought, and my back was nigh broken when I walked through the shippen one day to the linneye [cattle shed]. Besides, I had grown terribly short of wind, and I had such a rattling on my chest. I almost choked of a night. That was the bronchitic, and when I coughed it shook me pretty well to pieces.

So time passed, and I knew that I was sinking slowly and surely into my grave; there was no real complaint on me to kill me. I was breaking up of old age, and yet was no more that three and twenty. Everyone said I looked as If I was over ninety years. If I could see the hundred, it would be something to be proud of before I was four and twenty. One thought troubled me sorely. Whatever would become of Brinsabatch without a Rosedhu in it? I should die without leaving a lineal descendant in the male line. I would go out of the family. I had not a relation in the world. We Rosedhus always marry late in life, and never have large families. I was the single thread on which the possible Rosedhu posterity depended. I believe that an aunt had once married, and had a lot of children, but she was never named in the family. It was tantamount to a loss of character in Rosedhu eyes. I did not even know her married name. She was dead; but her issue no doubt remained, though I knew nothing of them. They, I suppose would inherit. I found as I grew older that this fretted me more and more. I would soon pass beyond the grave into the world of spirits, and I knew, the moment I turned up there, that the Rosedhus would be down on me for not having left male issue to inherit Brinsabatch, each, with intolerable self-assurance, setting himself up before me as an example I ought to have copied. As if, under my peculiar circumstances, I could help myself. The only one of my ancestors with whom I should eb able to exchange words would be George Rosedhu who had married Mary Cake. I would cast it in his teeth that had he been faithful to his first love, this disastrous contingency would not have occurred.

“Ah!” said I, in a fit of spleen, “it is all very well of you, Margery, to go about the house singing. What is to become of the Rosedhus? To whom will Brinsabatch fall? You have drawn all the flush and health out of me and made yourself young at my charge, - but I get nothing thereby.”

“I will nurse you in you decrepitude, dearest George,” she answered, and a dimple came to her rosy cheek, the prettiest twinkle in her laughing blue eye. Upon my word she was a bonny buxom wench, and it would have been a delight to be in the house with her, had I been younger. Now I could only gaze on her charms despairingly from afar off, as Moses looked on the Promised Land from Pisgah. What a worker she was, moreover! What a manager! What an organizer! What a housekeeper, cook, diarywoman, rolled into one! Never was the house so neat, the linen so cared for, the brass pans so scoured, the butter so sweet, the dairy so clean. She had been brought up in the old-fashioned, hard-working, sensible ways of farm in the reign of Good Queen Bess. In our days, the women are all infected with your Gladstone-Chamberlain topsy-turvyism, and the farmers' daughters play the piano and murder French, and farmers' wives read Miss Braddon and Ouida and neglect the cows. Her ways were a surprise to all on the estate. The men and the maids had never seen anything like it. Folks could not make Margery out, who she was, and where I had picked her up. Nobody seemed to belong to her; she had never been seen before, and yet she know the names of every tor, and hamlet, and coombe, and moor, as if she had been reared there. But though she knew the places, she did not know the people. She spoke of the Tremaines of Cullacombe, whereas the family had left that house two hundred years ago, and were settled at Sydenham. She talked of the Doidges of Hurlditch, a family that had been gone at least a hundred years. Kilworthy, she supposed, was still tenanted by the Glanvilles, whereas that race is extinct, and the place belongs to the Duke of Bedford, who had turned it into a farm. On the other hand, what was curious was, that Margery hit right now and then on the names of some of the laboring poor; she would salute a man by his right Christian and surname, because he was exactly like an ancestor some two hundred and fity years ago. Though the great families have migrated or disappeared, the poor have stuck to their native villages, and reproduce from century to century the same faces, the same prejudices, the same characteristics. They are almost as unchangeable as the hills.