‘Fie!’ I said; ‘that was a bit of hysteria. Come now, take your breakfast.’
She looked me in the face. A terror of death stood in beads on her skin. ‘I have heard of transfusion,’ she said faintly; ‘if you will let me have some of the rich red blood run out of your veins into mine I will settle £500 a year on you.’
I shook my head.
‘A thousand,’ she said. ‘Fifteen hundred.’
‘I should be cheating you,’ I insisted, ‘even were I willing. The operation has never been really successful.’
She broke into raving and tears.
‘I cannot die,’ she said; ‘I love life. I love being beautiful and rich; I love admiration. I must have admiration! I love my beautiful, beautiful body and the joy of life! I cannot, cannot die!’
‘What nonsense!’ I said. ‘You are not going to die.’
‘If I could only get it,’ she raved, ‘I would drink blood out of living bodies rather than I would die.’
An hour later she summoned the housekeeper. She had been cogitating with a fold between her brows; her teeth set like pearls in the red of her lower lip.
‘Plimmer,’ she said, ‘give all the servants a month’s wages and an hour’s notice to quit. I cannot endure their sickly faces. Get in a staff of decently healthy people. These cadaverous wretches are killing me.’
Plimmer left the room without a word. At the door she cast one look toward me and threw her hands up, as one who says: ‘The Lord have mercy on us!’
I followed, and bade her stay her hand. Whether Andrew’s theories were true, or whether my lady were but a person with a mania, there was no doubt but that her convictions played an important part in the case.
I threw on my things and expended a half-sovereign at the chemist’s. I came back the possessor of sundry packets. These I distributed among the household with explicit directions. Her ladyship was not well; her whim must be humoured.
It is surprising what a little rouge will do. In a few minutes the servants’ hall was a scene Arcadian. Even the elderly butler reverted to blooming youth. Then I said to her cheerfully:
‘You are making a mistake about the servants. For my part I am struck with their healthy looks.’
‘Since I have been ill?’ she faltered.
She lay quiet, breathing hard through her dilated nostrils. ‘Send some of them in,’ she said presently.
By the time they had gone she was as white as paper. ‘Good Heavens!’ I heard her mutter, ‘I have lost my power. I am a dead woman.’
Then she flung out her arms and wept. ‘Get me healthy children,’ she cried; ‘I must have health about me.’
Dr Byrne, who was attending her, assented in all innocence. ‘Why, of course,’ he said; ‘it will be cheerful for you. Get in some cherry-cheeked children to amuse her ladyship, Nurse.’
I nodded – in token that I was not deaf – not at all in acquiescence. Food and wine I supplied in plenty, but neither children nor adults. I isolated her in toto. I allowed her maids only to come near her long enough to dust and arrange the room. I have seen her fix them with a basilisk stare, straining her will. She had undoubtedly some baleful hypnotic power which set them trembling and stumbling about in curious, aimless fashion. They would seem drawn, as by some spell, to stand motionless and dazed beside her bed. Then I would turn them face about and parading their roseate tints, scold them for idleness and dismiss them. She would stare after them in a despair which, under other circumstances, would have been pitiful. The sense that her power was gone robbed her actually of power. She raved and cursed her self-murdered lover for involving her in his death.
Whether Dr Andrew and I were justified in that we did I sometimes wonder now. Then I had no room for doubt. In face of the horrible facts it did not occur to me to question it. If that she believed were true, we were assuredly justified; if not, that we did could not affect results.
Andrew’s theory of those results is that she had lived so long on human energy that food in the crude state stood her in little stead. Certainly, though she was fed unremittingly on the choicest and most nourishing of diets, she was an aged and haggard woman in a week. Nobody would have recognized her. She shrivelled and shrank like one cholera-stricken. One day her dog stole into the room. She put out her hand and clutched it voraciously. I took it an hour later from her. It was dead and stiff.
How I myself, and a nurse I had called in to help me, kept life in us I cannot say. I had been an abstainer. Now I drank wine like water. All round her bed was an atmosphere as of a vault, though outside it was sunny June.
She raged like one possessed. ‘You are murdering, murdering me,’ she cried incessantly.
Dr Byrne thought her mind wandering. I knew it centred with a monstrous, selfish sanity. He sent for one of the first London consultants. After a lengthy investigation the great man pronounced her suffering from some obscure nervous disease. ‘Nothing to be done,’ he said. ‘I give her three days: most interesting case. Hope you will succeed in getting a post-mortem.’
Once she fixed me with her baleful eyes, how baleful was seen now that their fine lustre and the bloom beneath them were gone.
‘I have had ten years more of life and pleasure than my due,’ she chuckled in her shrivelled throat – the throat now of an old, old woman.
Then she broke into dry-eyed crying. ‘I thought I could have lived another ten.’ She begged once for a mirror. I thank Heaven that with all my heat of indignation against her, I was not guilty of that cruelty.
Dr Andrew called daily for my bulletin. Everything science afforded in the way of food and stimulant, he scrupulously got down from London.
‘We must give her every chance,’ he said, ‘every justifiable chance, that is.’
After a few days I was again single-handed. My nurse-colleague succumbed. I felt my powers failing. I could scarcely drag about. I prayed Providence for strength to last so long as she should. Even in the moment of dissolution, such was her frenzied greed of life, that I believed should some non-resistant person take my place, she would struggle back to health.
Once when I arranged her pillows, she seized my hand, and before I could withdraw it she had carried it to her mouth and bitten into it. I felt her suck the blood voraciously. She cried out and struck at me as I wrenched it away.
She died in the third week of her isolation. I saw the death change come into her shrivelled face. Then in the moment wherein life left her she made one supremest effort.
It seemed as though my heart stopped. My head took on my chest, my hands dropped at my side. Then I swayed and fell headlong across her bed. They found me later lying on her corpse. I am convinced that had she been a moment earlier, had she nerved her powers the instant before, rather than on the instant life was leaving her, she would be alive to this day, and I – As it was, I did not leave my bed for a month.
‘If I were to write that story in the Lancet,’ Dr Andrew said, ‘I should be the laughing-stock of the profession. Yet it is the very keynote of human health and human disease, this interchange of vital force which goes on continually between individuals. Such rapacity and greed as the Deverish’s are, fortunately, rare; but there are a score such vampires in this very town, vampires in lesser degree. When A. talks with me ten minutes I feel ten years older. It takes me an hour to bring my nerve-power up to par again. People call him a bore. In reality he is a rapacious egotist hungrily absorbing the life-force of anyone with whom he comes into relation – in other words, a human vampire.’
THE STORY OF BAELBROW
E. & H. Heron
E. & H. Heron was the joint pseudonym of the mother-and-son writing team, Kate O’Brien Ryall Prichard (1851–1935) and Hesketh Vernon Prichard (1876–1922). Hesketh, who did most of the writing, was born in Jhansi, India, the son of an officer in the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. One of the most accomplished Englishmen of his generation, he led an extremely active life and was, among other things, an international reporter and war cor
respondent, an explorer, a big-game hunter, a prominent conservationist, a first-class cricketer, and an expert marksman, who was placed in charge of the training of the British Army’s sniper squads during the First World War. Prichard also found time to write novels and short stories – most of them in collaboration with his mother. His circle of literary friends included Arthur Conan Doyle and J. M. Barrie; and it was the latter who introduced him to press baron Cyril Arthur Pearson, who suggested that Prichard and his mother write a series of ghost stories for Pearson’s Magazine. The invitation was accepted and the duo penned a total of twelve stories, each featuring Flaxman Low, a psychic detective specialising in investigating supernatural mysteries. This popular series included the following story, which appeared in the April 1898 issue of the magazine.
IT is a matter for regret that so many of Mr Flaxman Low’s reminiscences should deal with the darker episodes of his career. Yet this is almost unavoidable, as the more purely scientific and less strongly marked cases would not, perhaps, contain the same elements of interest for the general public, however valuable and instructive they might be to the expert student. It has also been considered better to choose the completer cases, those that ended in something like satisfactory proof, rather than the many instances where the thread broke off abruptly amongst surmisings, which it was never possible to subject to convincing tests.
North of a low-lying strip of country on the East Anglian coast, the promontory of Bael Ness thrusts out a blunt nose into the sea. On the Ness, backed by pinewoods, stands a square, comfortable stone mansion, known to the countryside as Baelbrow. It has faced the east winds for close upon three hundred years, and during the whole period has been the home of the Swaffam family, who were never in any wise put out of conceit of their ancestral dwelling by the fact that it had always been haunted. Indeed, the Swaffams were proud of the Baelbrow Ghost, which enjoyed a wide notoriety, and no one dreamt of complaining of its behaviour until Professor Jungvort, of Nuremburg, laid information against it, and sent an urgent appeal for help to Mr Flaxman Low.
The Professor, who was well acquainted with Mr Low, detailed the circumstances of his tenancy of Baelbrow, and the unpleasant events that had followed thereupon.
It appeared that Mr Swaffam, senior, who spent a large portion of his time abroad, had offered to lend his house to the Professor for the summer season. When the Jungvorts arrived at Baelbrow, they were charmed with the place. The prospect, though not very varied, was at least extensive, and the air exhilarating. Also the Professor’s daughter enjoyed frequent visits from her betrothed – Harold Swaffam – and the Professor was delightfully employed in overhauling the Swaffam library.
The Jungvorts had been duly told of the ghost, which lent distinction to the old house, but never in any way interfered with the comfort of the inmates. For some time they found this description to be strictly true, but with the beginning of October came a change. Up to this time and as far back as the Swaffam annals reached, the ghost had been a shadow, a rustle, a passing sigh – nothing definite or troublesome. But early in October strange things began to occur, and the terror culminated when a housemaid was found dead in a corridor three weeks later. Upon this the Professor felt that it was time to send for Flaxman Low.
Mr Low arrived upon a chilly evening when the house was already beginning to blur in the purple twilight, and the resinous scent of the pines came sweetly on the land breeze. Jungvort welcomed him in the spacious, firelit hall. He was a stout German with a quantity of white hair, round eyes emphasised by spectacles, and a kindly, dreamy face. His life-study was philology, and his two relaxations chess and the smoking of a big Bismarck-bowled meerschaum.
‘Now, Professor,’ said Mr Low when they had settled themselves in the smoking-room, ‘how did it all begin?’
‘I will tell you,’ replied Jungvort, thrusting out his chin, and tapping his broad chest, and speaking as if an unwarrantable liberty had been taken with him. ‘First of all, it has shown itself to me!’
Mr Flaxman Low smiled and assured him that nothing could be more satisfactory.
‘But not at all satisfactory!’ exclaimed the Professor. ‘I was sitting here alone, it might have been midnight – when I hear something come creeping like a little dog with its nails, tick-tick, upon the oak flooring of the hall. I whistle, for I think it is the little “Rags” of my daughter, and afterwards opened the door, and I saw’ – he hesitated and looked hard at Low through his spectacles, ‘something that was just disappearing into the passage which connects the two wings of the house. It was a figure, not unlike the human figure, but narrow and straight. I fancied I saw a bunch of black hair, and a flutter of something detached, which may have been a handkerchief. I was overcome by a feeling of repulsion. I heard a few, clicking steps, then it stopped, as I thought, at the museum door. Come, I will show you the spot.’
The Professor conducted Mr Low into the hall. The main staircase, dark and massive, yawned above them, and directly behind it ran the passage referred to by the Professor. It was over twenty feet long, and about midway led past a deep arch containing a door reached by two steps. Jungvort explained that this door formed the entrance to a large room called the Museum, in which Mr Swaffam, senior, who was something of a dilettante, stored the various curios he picked up during his excursions abroad. The Professor went on to say that he immediately followed the figure, which he believed had gone into the museum, but he found nothing there except the cases containing Swaffam’s treasures.
‘I mentioned my experience to no one. I concluded that I had seen the ghost. But two days after, one of the female servants coming through the passage in the dark, declared that a man leapt out at her from the embrasure of the Museum door, but she released herself and ran screaming into the servants’ hall. We at once made a search but found nothing to substantiate her story.
‘I took no notice of this, though it coincided pretty well with my own experience. The week after, my daughter Lena came down late one night for a book. As she was about to cross the hall, something leapt upon her from behind. Women are of little use in serious investigations – she fainted! Since then she has been ill and the doctor says “Run down.”’ Here the Professor spread out his hands. ‘So she leaves for a change tomorrow. Since then other members of the household have been attacked in much the same manner, with always the same result, they faint and are weak and useless when they recover.
‘But, last Wednesday, the affair became a tragedy. By that time the servants had refused to come through the passage except in a crowd of three or four – most of them preferring to go round by the terrace to reach this part of the house. But one maid, named Eliza Freeman, said she was not afraid of the Baelbrow Ghost, and undertook to put out the lights in the hall one night. When she had done so, and was returning through the passage past the Museum door, she appears to have been attacked, or at any rate frightened. In the grey of the morning they found her lying beside the steps dead. There was a little blood upon her sleeve but no mark upon her body except a small raised pustule under the ear. The doctor said the girl was extraordinarily anæmic, and that she probably died from fright, her heart being weak. I was surprised at this, for she had always seemed to be a particularly strong and active young woman.’
‘Can I see Miss Jungvort tomorrow before she goes?’ asked Low, as the Professor signified he had nothing more to tell.
The Professor was rather unwilling that his daughter should be questioned, but he at last gave his permission, and next morning Low had a short talk with the girl before she left the house. He found her a very pretty girl, though listless and startlingly pale, and with a frightened stare in her light brown eyes. Mr Low asked if she could describe her assailant.
‘No,’ she answered, ‘I could not see him, for he was behind me. I only saw a dark, bony hand, with shining nails, and a bandaged arm pass just under my eyes before I fainted.’
‘Bandaged arm? I have heard nothing of this.’
‘Tut – tu
t, mere fancy!’ put in the Professor impatiently.
‘I saw the bandages on the arm,’ repeated the girl, turning her head wearily away, ‘and I smelt the antiseptics it was dressed with.’
‘You have hurt your neck,’ remarked Mr Low, who noticed a small circular patch of pink under her ear.
She flushed and paled, raising her hand to her neck with a nervous jerk, as she said in a low voice:
‘It has almost killed me. Before he touched me, I knew he was there! I felt it!’
When they left her the Professor apologised for the unreliability of her evidence, and pointed out the discrepancy between her statement and his own.
‘She says she sees nothing but an arm, yet I tell you it had no arms! Preposterous! Conceive a wounded man entering this house to frighten the young women! I do not know what to make of it! Is it a man, or is it the Baelbrow Ghost?’
During the afternoon when Mr Low and the Professor returned from a stroll on the shore, they found a dark-browed young man with a bull neck, and strongly marked features, standing sullenly before the hall fire. The Professor presented him to Mr Low as Harold Swaffam.
Swaffam seemed to be about thirty, but was already known as a far-seeing and successful member of the Stock Exchange.
‘I am pleased to meet you, Mr Low,’ he began, with a keen glance, ‘though you don’t look sufficiently high-strung for one of your profession.’
Mr Low merely bowed.
‘Come, you don’t defend your craft against my insinuations?’ went on Swaffam. ‘And so you have come to rout out our poor old ghost from Baelbrow? You forget that he is an heirloom, a family possession! What’s this about his having turned rabid, eh, Professor?’ he ended, wheeling round upon Jungvort in his brusque way.
The Professor told the story over again. It was plain that he stood rather in awe of his prospective son-in-law.
‘I heard much the same from Lena, whom I met at the station,’ said Swaffam. ‘It is my opinion that the women in this house are suffering from an epidemic of hysteria. You agree with me, Mr Low?’
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