Dracula’s Brethren

by Richard Dalby

  ‘Does he stay here long?’ asked Dulchester, giving the fire a poke with the toe of his boot, and thereby causing the downfall of a fantastical castle of burning coal.

  ‘About six months,’ answered Philippa. ‘Hand me that fan, Jack; you have made the fire so hot that it is scorching my face.’

  Jack did so, and, kneeling down beside her, looked up into her face with a laugh.

  ‘Let us put away all thought of this Professor, sweetheart,’ he said, catching her hand, ‘and talk of something interesting.’

  It must have been very interesting, for Sir Gilbert and the Professor, coming into the room half an hour afterwards, found them in the same position, with Philippa’s hand straying through Jack’s chestnut curls.

  When discovered thus, Jack sprung to his feet with a growl, and became deeply interested in a picture hanging near him, while Miss Harkness directed her attentions to the Chinese pictorial representations on her fan.

  The Professor looked at them with a kind of half-sneer, which made Jack long to knock him down, and then, at Philippa’s request, went to the piano, and began to play. Sir Gilbert was sound asleep in his armchair by the fire; Jack sat opposite him with his arm resting on his knee and his chin in his hand, watching Philippa, who was flirting with her fan and staring into the fire. Away in the semi-darkness, sat the Professor at the piano, playing the music of Mendelssohn and Schubert. The situation truly ‘had its charm,’ as Jack thought; but again the presence of the German seemed an unsympathetic element. Besides, Jack did not care for soft harmonics, and preferred the lusty hunting songs of Whyte-Melville to all the pathos and melody of the masters of music.

  Yet there was a kind of dreamy soporific influence about the Professor’s playing which, at that time, seemed eminently satisfactory.

  Suddenly the Professor stopped playing and began to speak.

  ‘I will play a composition of my own,’ he said slowly. ‘It is called “A Dream Phantasy.”’

  He commenced to play again, beginning with a low crescendo of minor arpeggios in the bass, gradually ascending and becoming louder and more agitated, then changed the tempo and dreamily gliding into the swing and rhythm of a cradle-song, as if waves of sleep were closing softly over the head of the dreamer.

  Then with an introductory prelude of sharp, clear chords came a grand movement in march-time, with the thunder and tread of many feet, and the silver sound of trumpets drifting into a sorrowful and pathetic melody, which seemed full of the grief and pathos of death.

  A shower of silvery tones like the falling of summer rain on the sea, and then a wild, delicious waltz, fantastic and capricious as one of Chopin’s ethereal compositions.

  Then followed a beautifully smooth modulation with wondrous extended harmonies, and the player glided into a quaint barcarolle, as if a boat were afloat on the breast of a calm summer sea, sailing towards the burning heart of the sunset, and drifting—

  ‘By Jove, you know, Jack, I think the run today was the best of the season.’

  Philippa had been thinking for a long time before she delivered this eminently commonplace remark.

  The Professor thought that she was listening to his music, whereas, her thoughts were far away with the red-coated field, with the gallant fox flying ahead.

  He shut down the piano with a crash, and rose to go.

  ‘You’ll come over tomorrow,’ said Sir Gilbert, as he shook hands.

  ‘Certainly,’ answered the Professor, with a smile. ‘Goodnight, Lord Dulchester; you don’t come my way?’

  ‘No, I ride home,’ answered Dulchester, who had no fancy for a talk with this foreigner.

  ‘I will order the carriage, Professor,’ said Sir Gilbert, going to the bell.

  ‘Thanks – no,’ returned the German, politely stopping him. ‘I prefer to walk. Goodnight once more, and goodnight to you, Miss Philippa. I see you do not care for music.’

  And with this parting shaft, the Professor bowed himself out with his cold and sardonic sneer, leaving Philippa angry with herself at having betrayed her thoughts so far, and Lord Dulchester with an unholy desire in his heart to ‘punch the foreign beggar’s head.’

  V

  The Effect of the Elixir.

  ‘Dreams are the nightly progeny of sleep,

  The ghostly visitants which mock our rest;

  And yet methinks they give a sovereignty

  Within their airy realms to many a wight,

  Who wakes to find himself a ragged knave,

  And all the rainbow pageants of the night

  Only the idle bubbles of the brain.’

  ‘LAUNCESTON, November 14th. – At last I have found the second volume of “Giraldus.” By a strange train of circumstances I have been led step by step towards this successful end. Nothing now remains for me to do but to go over Sir Gilbert’s library, take up the “Giraldus,” and turn to the page indicated by the cryptogram.

  ‘Then shall I be able to supply the missing drug and add the final ingredient to this marvellous elixir. I have no fear of Sir Gilbert learning why I am so anxious about the “Giraldus.” And, truth to tell, he cannot even notice that I am anxious, for I carefully repress all manifestations of interest concerning it, beyond that of an admirer of rare books

  ‘I heard him mention today where it was in his library, with as cool and composed a manner as though I had never heard of the book, while every nerve in my body was tingling with excitement. However, I must now curb my impatience until I can see the volume in the ordinary course. Sir Gilbert is a man wholly devoted to his books, and his desires are bounded by the overflowing shelves of his library. He asked me to stay to dinner, and I was introduced to his daughter and her lover. The lover is one of the aristocracy – a brainless young athlete, with the body of a Milo, and the intellect, as Landor says, “of a lizard.” But Miss Philippa Harkness, the daughter, is a very strange young woman. It is a long time since I have studied Lavater, and possibly my skill in physiognomy may have declined, but I have rarely seen a more contradictory face. She has intellect, but does not use it. So far as I can see she has not even the average education of an English lady; all her talk is about field sport and horses, while her conversation is full of words which I am certain are not in the English dictionary – at least, not as far as my acquaintance with it goes. She could be clever if she would, but she will not, for one of the most powerful passions of nature is wanting in her. She is not ambitious, and is quite content to pass the days of her life as her senses dictate, without attempting to rise to eminence.

  ‘Strange that Nature, the bounteous, should be so capricious. To one she gives no talents, and ambition; while to this girl she gives talents without ambition.

  ‘During the evening I made the discovery that Miss Harkness does not like me. She talked gaily and courteously enough, but she avoided my eye, and seemed ill at ease when I addressed her. I suppose it is my manner. A scholastic occupation is certainly not the best for acquiring graces, and I am always rather awkward in the presence of women. I also made the discovery during the evening that she has no soul – at least, not for music. While I was playing my “Dream Phantasy,” she suddenly broke in with some remark about her day’s sport. Bah! why should I be angry? and yet it wounded my self-esteem. I thought that my playing would hold anyone spellbound, and now I find that it has no effect on this woman. If I took the trouble to hate anybody, I should hate this girl. But I never trouble. Her nature is the opposite to mine, and we seem to have a mutual distrust and dislike of one another. Strange I never felt like this before. I had better master this absurd feeling, as I am to see her almost daily for the next six months. In the meantime all my thoughts are concentrated on the “Giraldus.” By this time tomorrow I shall know the secret drug, and then— I must go over tomorrow and look up the “Giraldus” without delay.’

  Professor Brankel closed his diary, and prepared for bed. Before he put out the light he went to his desk and took out a small phial filled with a colourless liquid.
He swallowed three drops; then, putting the phial away, he went to bed, and was soon wrapped in visions created by the strange power of the elixir.

  Behold I stand under the shadows of a moonless and starless night, divested of that gross garment of clay which is the emblem of mortality. The immortal part of myself is severed from the mortal, and I am an airy spirit, nameless and soulless, for I myself am the soul. Nothing of earth has any part in me; I am formed of the ethereal essence which God breathes into the body of man. I have no feelings, physical or mental, but stand a naked human soul, a citizen of the universe, a partaker of eternity. Time draws back the veil of the past, and I enter into the vast halls of his palace, to wander through the populous courts; to see the splendid kaleidoscope of humanity, and the marvellous colours with which the iridescent dome of life ‘stains the white surface of eternity.’

  … I stand within the mighty arena of the Colosseum, and above me, tier above tier, I see the blood-loving Roman populace gazing down with wolfish eyes on the blood-stained sands. The bright blue sky gleams through the striped awning which shadows the heads of the people. There is Horace, fresh from his little Sabine farm, laughing with Mæcenas; Virgil, with a placid smile on his face, listening to the witty and epigrammatical conversation of Catullus – the Rochester of his day – who is amusing his fickle Lesbia with remarks on the spectators. And he, the master of the world, rose-crowned, looks down with a serene face at the long train of gladiators. Ave Cæsar … . The fight begins … a battle of Titans. See how their eyes flash … how the sparks fly from their shields at every blow. And Fortune, fickle as a woman, gives her favours now to one again to another … See, one has fallen … and his triumphant adversary stands over him, looking round for the verdict of the people … Habet! And the blood of the conquered sinks into the thirsty sands of the arena – insatiable of blood as the masters of the world …

  … Is it thou, O Athens, the omphalos of Greece … set like a jewel in the midst of thy green groves, and filled with the superb intellects of antiquity? … Behold the great white streets … the vivid, sparkling crowd brimming over with veritable Aristophanic humour … the wrangling of the philosophers and their pupils from the porticoes, and the god-like figures of the youths as they haste to the gymnasium. Yes, this is indeed the intellectual capital of the world … The great theatre, with the semicircle of eager faces gazing spellbound at the splendid pageantry of the ‘Agamemnon’ … The deep-mouthed roll of the Eschylean line fills the wide-ringed theatre with a sublime thunder, and echoes down the vaulted corridors of Time with ever-increasing volume … How magnificent … the fiery ring of the speech of Clytemnestra … the stately eloquence of the king of men … the wild cry of Cassandra, shrinking with prophetic horror from the blood-stained threshold of the palace … See … Chorus.

  (Here the entries in the diary were illegible.)

  Hail, Queen, with the snow-white breasts and eyes of fire … I pray you, wherefore do you look so eagerly from the mighty walls of wide-streeted Troy? … Helen … fairest and most imperial of women, thy fatal beauty hath doomed the proud towers of Ilium. Think not that yonder light at which thou gazest as it gleams like a crimson-hearted star … think not that it comes from the tent of thy forsaken husband …

  … It lights the funeral couch of Patroclus, and beneath its beam sits the sullen-faced Achilles, gazing with wrathful eyes at the dimly-seen walls of Troy … Ai: Ai: … The end is near, O Queen … Thy fatal beauty hath worked out its evil destiny … and already the irrevocable fiat has gone forth from the Fates … Ai: Ai: … Crafty Ulysses, with the cautious wrinkles round thy deep-set eyes, I pray thee tell me where thou art going . . Ithaca: … Push off the galley from the shores of Troy … Unloose the ten years’ bound sail … and let us cross the foaming leagues of perilous seas in search of thine island home … Lo: how the great sea freshens and whitens under the caress of the winds, and we feel the salt breath of the wandering fields of foam of large savour in our nostrils … But lo: what purple land gleams dimly in the distance? … Lotus-eaters … (Here the diary is illegible.) See … how the nymphs sport in the crystal waters … the flash of white bodies; the waving of dishevelled locks … Ithaca … Turn the galley home to where the ever-weaving Penelope awaits thee …

  Ah, Ithaca.

  … Oh, clash and clamour of music … the light tread of slave girls scattering flowers … the barbaric gleam of scarlet and gold … the martial bearing of the Roman soldiers … and she – the serpent of the Nile – comes for her Roman lover … Ah, Cleopatra. Egypt … he with the passionate face, that stretches out his arms to thee, would sustain the great diadem of the world on his brow, but for thee, dark-browed gipsy … Hark, how the shrill music sounds … he comes. Anthony.

  … Ancient Egypt, mysterious and marvellous, wrapped in the deepest mists of antiquity … Long slumbrous ranges of palaces … long trains of painted figures on the walls … and symbolical hieroglyphics … Lift up the dense veil which shrouds thy mysterious … countenance, O Isis … Behold how the solemn sphynxes in silent lines gaze wide-eyed at the mysterious Pyramids … O mysterious Egypt … hail … Osiris … Thoth … (Here the writing is illegible.)

  … Strike the timbrel, for Miriam, the prophetess of the Lord, sings a pæan of victory, and her great brother towers sublime over the Redeemed Israelites … Golgotha … Calvary … The Cross … who … who hangs upon it so still and lifeless? … Behind … reddens the evening sky, and the Cross hangs like a thundercloud over Jerusalem … Is it then true … this which I deemed a fable? … Didst thou die for humanity, O Christ? … Ah, lift not those pain-charged eyes, O Nazarene: … see how the red blood drips from thy thorn-wreathed diadem … Prophet … Christianity … I am in space, the centre of the … great wheel of the universe … around throng the nebulous masses of worlds … and this heaving mass of fire, is this the earth? … I stand before the portals of creation … Open … God … Fire … Chaos …

  The fresh morning breaks slowly in the East, and the dreamer awakes to the reality of life.

  VI

  The Last Ingredient of the Elixir.

  ‘A rarer drug

  Than all the perfumed spices of the East.’

  PHILIPPA was seated at the window of the breakfast room, dressed in her riding habit. Engaged that morning to ride with Lord Dulchester, and longing to be in the saddle, she waited his arrival with some impatience. She was reading the Field, her favourite paper; every now and then glancing at the clock, or bending down to caress the huge staghound lying at her feet. At last with a laugh she arose, tossed the paper on the floor, and stepped out on to the terrace followed by her dog.

  It was a cold, clear morning, with a brisk wind blowing, which brought the blood into Philippa’s cheeks in no time. There were a number of pigeons on the terrace, but at her approach they flew away, and she saw them, whirling specks of white, in the cold, blue sky. Miss Harkness stood staring at them for some time, and then, giving her dog’s ears a malicious pull, she began to talk to herself.

  ‘I never did see anyone like that Jack of mine. He is always late; it is about half an hour since the time I told him. Ah, there’s that dear old pater hard at work; I shall go in and see him.’

  The window of the library was open, and, stepping lightly in, she went to her father. He was bending over his writing-table examining a stray leaf of some book, and looked up with a bewildered expression when her shadow fell on him.

  ‘Well, pater,’ she said, gaily, laying her gloved hand on his shoulder, ‘hard at work? Why don’t you come out for a ride, instead of sitting all day among these musty old books?’

  ‘Bless me, Philippa, how you talk,’ answered her father, peevishly. ‘How can I spare the time? Besides, Professor Brankel is coming to see the library today.’

  Philippa turned round without a word and went on to the terrace, where she stood carelessly flicking at the leaves of a cypress which grew near, and thinking deeply. Her dog lay down at her feet, and put his nose between his
paws, keeping one bright eye sharply on his mistress, while the other blinked half-asleep. The thoughts of Miss Harkness were not of a pleasant nature. She had forgotten the German, and her father’s reminder had brought to her the unpleasant fact that there was such a person. She was by no means a young lady given to fancies, and yet there was that about this Professor she did not like. Although not of an imaginative tendency, his eyes seemed to fascinate her and again she thought of Christabel.

  ‘It’s one comfort I shall be away all day,’ she muttered to herself, ‘and he will be gone by the time I come home, that is, if the pater does not ask—’

  ‘Phil! Phil!’ cried a voice almost immediately beneath her, and on looking over she saw her tardy lover, mounted on a splendid horse, and looking handsome and fresh, as a young Briton ought to look on riding five miles on a cold morning, with his ladylove at the end of the fifth mile.

  ‘How late you are, Jack,’ she cried, catching up her gloves and flying down the steps. ‘I’ve been waiting quite an hour.’

  ‘Couldn’t get away,’ replied Dulchester, who had dismounted, and was looking with pride at her eager face. ‘The governor wanted to consult me about some things, and it was with great difficulty I could come even now.’

  ‘I am to take that explanation with a grain of salt,’ laughed Philippa, whose horse had now been brought round.

  ‘Just as you like – with or without salt,’ retorted Jack, flinging the reins of his horse to the groom, and standing ready to assist her to mount.

  She laughed lightly, put her foot on his hand, and in another moment was in the saddle. She gathered up her reins, and gave Fiddle-de-dee a sharp stroke with her whip, which caused him to dance about in the most alarming manner.

  ‘Now then, Phil, are you ready?’ asked Lord Dulchester, who had mounted his own horse and was steering it beside hers.