Vintage Vampire Stories (30 page)

“Nothing, thank you.You can do nothing for me. I have come to do something for you, instead.” I bowed in acknowledgement.

“I have come to warn you,” he went on, still hurriedly and shifting uneasily in his seat, like one who has an unpleasant thing to tell and is anxious to be over with it. The strangeness of his voice and manner, and the intentness—almost the fierceness—with which he looked at me, made me uneasy in my turn. I doubted his sanity, and wished there was more light or that my clerk was present.

“I came to warn you,” he said again, and I saw his hands moving nervously as he leaned toward me and spoke harshly and quickly. “You are in love with her—Mrs. Tierce. No; don't deny it. I know, I know, and before heaven, if I can save you I will.”

The heaviness of his breathing told the intensity of the excitement under which he was laboring as he went on, edging further forward on his chair and reaching out his hands towards me;

“She is not a woman; she is not human.Yes, I know how beautiful she is; how helpless a man must be before her. I have known it for six years; and had I not known it I should not now be what I am.You will think me mad,” he said. “You probably think me so now. I do not wonder at it. What else should you think when a stranger comes into your chambers and tells you that in these matter-of-fact nineteenth-century days there exist beings who are not human—who have more than human attributes, and that one of these beings is the woman whom you love?”

He was quieter now, more serious, and spoke almost argumentatively, as one who seeks only to convince, while he almost despaired of doing it.

“You are laughing at me now—or pitying me; but I call the Almighty God to witness that I speak the truth—if a God can be almighty and let her live. I tell you, sir, that to know her is death. If you do not believe me you will become worse than I am—as her husband is who died at her feet here in London—as the American is who died before her in the café at Nice—as heaven only knows how many more are who have crossed her path.”

Of course I had no doubt of his madness; but his earnestness—the utter strength of conviction with which he spoke—was strangely moving. That he, poor fellow, believed what he said, it was impossible to doubt.

“It is six years since I saw her first at Havre, in France. I chanced to be seated at the next table to her at Frascati's, and I knew that I loved her then. The American was with her. I followed her to Cannes, to Trouville, to Monaco, to Nice; and where she went the American went, too. There was no impropriety in their companionship, but he followed her as I did; only that he had her acquaintance and I had not. And I knew, or thought I knew, that it would he useless for me to try and win her while he was there. He evidently worshipped her, and she—for he was a handsome fellow (Reading was his name)—seemed to care for him. So I watched her from a distance, waiting and hoping; and as I have told you my turn came.

“It was in the Café Royal, and nobody it happen but herself. Suddenly she rushed out from the corner where they were sitting and called for help. Every one crowded around, and he was dead—dead in his chair, with his face upturned and his eyes fixed, staring like one suddenly terrified. They said it was heart disease. Heart disease!”

It had grown almost dark, and he drew his chair close to me. The paling light from the window just showed me the worn face and the sunken, feverish eyes.

“Then I came to know her,” he continued, after a pause. “I hung upon her as he had done, and for three months I believed that I was the happiest man in Europe. In Venice, in Florence, in Paris, in London, I was constantly with her, day after day. She seemed to love me, and in the Bois or in Hyde Park how proud I was to be seen by her side! Then she went to stay for a month at Oxford, and I, with her permission, followed her there, and would call for her at the Mitre every morning. Under the shadow of the grey college walls and in the well-trimmed walks and gardens, it seemed that her face put on a new and holier beauty in keeping with the place. There it was that I told her that I loved her and asked her to be my wife, as we stood for a minute to rest in the cloisters of Christ Church.”

His voice was very sad. It had lost its harshness, and as he remembered—or did he only imagine?—the sweetness of those days of love-making, there was more of a soft regretfulness than of anger in his tones.

“She did not refuse me,” he said,“nor did she explicitly accept me. But I was idiotically happy—happy for three whole days—until that afternoon in the Magdalen Walks, when in ten minutes I became, from a healthy, strong man, the wreck you see me now.”

The regretfulness was all gone, and the hard, fierce ring was in his voice again as he went on:

“It was on one of the benches in Addison's Walk, as they call it, and I pressed her for some more definite promise than she had yet given me. She did not seem to listen to me, to heed me, as she leaned back, her hands lying idly in her lap and her great, grave eyes looking out across the meadow. I grew more passionate; clasped her hands and begged for an answer. At last she turned her face towards me. I met her eyes—”

His voice broke and he stopped speaking. For a minute or more we sat in silence in the twilight, his face buried in his hands. Then he raised his head again, and in slow, unimpassioned accents, continued:

“As our eyes met, hers looked lusterless, hardly as if she saw me or was looking at me, but as I gazed into them they changed. Somewhere inside them, or behind them, a flame was lit. The pupils expanded, black and brilliant as eyes never shone before.What was it? Was it love? And leaning still closer, I gazed more intensely into the eyes that seemed now to blame before me. And as I looked the spell came upon me. It was as though I swooned. Dimly I became aware that I was losing my power of motion, of speech, of thought. The eyes engulfed me. I was vaguely conscious that I must somehow disengage myself from the spell that was upon me; but I could not. I was powerless, and she—it was as if she fed upon my very life. I cannot phrase it otherwise. I was numb, and, though I tried to speak, could not move one muscle. Then consciousness began to leave me, and I was on the point of—God knows what—swoon or death—when the crunching of feet on the gravel path came sharply to my ears.

“Who was it that passed I do not know. I know not how long I sat there. I remember that she rose without a word and left me. When I moved it was evening. The sun was behind the college walls, and the walk was dark. With my brain hardly awake and my lower limbs still benumbed, slowly I made my way out of the college gates and up the High Street to the Clarendon Hotel, where I was staying. Next morning I awoke what you see me now—a cripple, paralytic for life.”

During all this narrative I had sat silent, engrossed in the madman's tale. As a piece of dramatic elocution, it was magnificent. When he finished I cast about for some commonplace remark to make, but in the state of my feelings it was not easy to find one, and it was he who again broke the silence:

“Tierce, poor fool! I warned him as I am warning you. It was two years afterward that she married him, and in two weeks more he was dead—dead in their house in Park Lane—died of heart disease! Heart disease!”

And as he said it, I could not help thinking of James Westerby.

My visitor was about to speak again when a football sounded on the stairs outside, the door opened, and my clerk stood in the entrance, astonished at the darkness.

“Come in, Jackson,” I called, to let him know that I was there, and “light the gas, please.”

My visitor rose painfully, and again took his crutch.

“I have told you all that is vital to the case,” he said in the matter-of-fact voice of a client addressing his attorney, “and you will, of course, do as you think best.”

Jackson, about to light the gas, with a burning match in his hand, held the door open for the stranger to pass out, and without another word the cripple moved laboriously away. It was not until he had gone that it occurred to me that I had not asked nor been told his name.

“Has that gentleman ever called before, Jackson?”

“I think not, sir.”

But probably I should meet him again.

And now, my thoughts reverted to her. He was mad, of course: and his story was absurd. But as I walked home from the office, those eyes were before me, blazing with the passion which he had lit in them. What eyes they were in truth! How lovely, and how I loved them! And how easy, too, it was to imagine them dilating and engulfing one's senses until he swooned!

I had not hoped to see her again that day, having spent part of the morning in “helping her to shop,” and expecting to escort her to the theatre on the evening following. So after a solitary dinner at a restaurant, I climbed up to my chambers to dream away the evening alone.

The story which I had heard a few hours before certainly had not in any way altered my feelings towards Mrs. Tierce. Indeed, I hardly thought of the story, except to pity the poor fellow who told it and to speculate upon his history. Who was he? Had he loved her and gone mad for love of her? And should I tell her of his visit? It might pain her by bringing up unpleasant memories; but on the other hand I should like to know something more of the cripple's history.

But I was restless, and my rooms seemed more than ever lonely and unhomelike that evening; so about nine o'clock, I put on my hat and overcoat and went out into the street.

It was a cold night, damp and raw, with no sign of starlight or moonlight overhead, and a heavy, misty atmosphere through which the street lights shone blurred and twinkling.

Instinctively I turned westward, and, as a matter of course, set my face towards Grasmere Crescent, not with any intention of calling at the house, but with a lover's longing to see it and to be near to her. I passed the house on the opposite side of the street. No. 19 had a large bow-window in the drawing room, on the first floor, and as I approached, the blind of the narrow side-window facing me being raised some few inches gave a glimpse of the brightly lighted, daintily furnished room, with which I was so familiar, within. I had hoped to catch a glimpse of her, but in the small segment of the room that was visible through the aperture, no figure was to be seen.

After passing on to the end of the street I made a circuit round some by-streets and so back to Grasmere Crescent. As I approached now from the north the house looked dark, save for a narrowest chink of light which outlined the edge of the bow-window. When I had passed I turned to look back at the window of which the blind was raised; and doing so, I saw a curious thing.

It was only instantaneous; but just for that instant I saw two figures standing, herself and one of the servants, whom I recognized. They were facing one another, each, it seemed, leaning slightly forward. But even as I looked, the servant suddenly threw up her hands and fell—fell straight backward, rigidly, as if in a fit. Mrs. Tierce started towards the falling girl, as if to catch her. The movement took her out of my range of vision, the projecting woodwork of the window intervening.

It all happened so suddenly that I stood for a moment bewildered and irresolute. Had I really seen it? It was more like some tableau on a stage, or the flash of a slide from a magic lantern, than a reality.

Recovering my senses, my first impulse was to cross the street and offer my services. But why? The girl had but slipped suddenly upon the polished floor, and doubtless they were laughing over it now. It would be an impertinence for me to thrust myself in with a confession of having been playing spy. So, after standing and gazing at the window for a few moments, during which I once saw Mrs. Tierce pass quickly across the room and back, I moved on to my rooms.

The next morning as I sat at breakfast, a note was brought to me.

I wished now that I had obeyed my first impulse on the preceding evenings and had rung at the door to volunteer my services. I would certainly go and see her immediately after breakfast.

Fortunately my theatre party included only two other persons besides Mrs. Tierce and myself, and I was on sufficiently intimate terms with John Bradstreet and his wife to have no fear of offending them. So I wrote Mrs. Bradstreet a short note explaining the situation briefly, enclosing the tickets and hoping she would use the box or not, as she saw fit. Then I drove at once to Grasmere Crescent.

In her quiet, self-possessed way Mrs. Tierce had already done all that was necessary, and I found that there was little excuse for thrusting my services upon her. Still I saw her frequently during the next two days, though never for any length of time and rarely to talk of things not associated immediately with the melancholy ceremony that was impending. The dead girl seemed to have had no family connections, and the funeral was conducted under Mrs. Tierce's directions. I accompanied her to the church and cemetery, and left her at her own door afterwards, accepting an invitation to call again that evening.

I have spoken before of the curious self-possession, an imperturbable self-reliance, which Mrs. Tierce possessed and which sat very becomingly upon her delicate grave face. Never had this quality in her seemed more admirably perfect to me than during those days when the shadow of death hung over her home.