The frontispiece from the 1820 edition of ‘The Bride of the Isles’.

Copyright

HARPER

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Selection, Introduction, and Notes © Richard Dalby and Brian J. Frost 2017

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A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780008216481

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Version: 2017-04-05

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

The Bride of the Isles by Anonymous (1820)

The Unholy Compact Abjured by Charles Pigault-Lebrun (1825)

Viy by Nikolai Gogol (1835)

The Burgomaster in Bottle by Erckmann-Chatrian (1849)

Lost in a Pyramid; or, The Mummy’s Curse by Louisa May Alcott (1869)

Professor Brankel’s Secret by Fergus Hume (1882)

John Barrington Cowles by Arthur Conan Doyle (1884)

Manor by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1884)

Old Aeson by Arthur Quiller-Couch (1890)

The Mask by Richard Marsh (1892)

The Last of the Vampires by Phil Robinson (1893)

The Story of Jella and the Macic by Professor P. Jones (1895)

The Ring of Knowledge by William Beer (1896)

A Beautiful Vampire by Arabella Kenealy (1896)

The Story of Baelbrow by E. & H. Heron (1898)

The Purple Terror by Fred M. White (1899)

Glámr by Sabine Baring-Gould (1904)

The Vampire Nemesis by ‘Dolly’ (1905)

The Electric Vampire by F. H. Power (1910)

Footnotes

Bibliography

About the Editors

By the Same Editor

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

ARRANGED chronologically, the nineteen stories in this anthology are culled from books and magazines published between 1820 and 1910, a period noted for producing some of the finest vampire tales ever written. The first vampire story to make a significant impact on European literature was ‘The Vampyre,’ by John William Polidori, which set a precedent by depicting the vampire as an aristocrat. Erroneously attributed to Lord Byron when it was first published in the April 1819 issue of The New Monthly Magazine, this story subsequently inspired a surge of popular interest in vampires and established the vampire’s image as a fatal lover.

In 1820 the French author Cyprien Bérard penned a novel-length sequel to Polidori’s story, titling it Lord Ruthwen ou les Vampires. This, in turn, formed the basis for James R. Planché’s play The Vampire; or, The Bride of the Isles, which had its first performance on the London stage in August 1820. Not long afterwards an anonymously-written short story adapted from the play, bearing the title ‘The Bride of the Isles: A Tale Founded on the Popular Legend of the Vampire,’ was put on sale by an enterprising Dublin publisher. Better than most vampire tales written in the early 1800s, its inclusion in the present volume marks its first appearance in an anthology exclusively devoted to vampire fiction.

The earliest known vampire story by an American writer, Robert C. Sands’ ‘The Black Vampyre: A Legend of Saint Domingo’ (1819), broke new ground by featuring a mulatto vampire. A more significant innovation, the introduction of the female vampire into prose fiction, is the main claim to fame of Ernst Raupach’s ‘Wake Not the Dead,’ which was, for many years, falsely attributed to Johann Ludwig Tieck. A cautionary tale about the folly of bringing the dead back to life, it was originally published in Leipzig in 1822, and received its first English translation a year later when it was included in Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations. Less well-known is the quaintly titled story ‘Pepopukin in Corsica,’ in which a disagreeable suitor is sent packing by inspiring in him a dread of vampires. Originally published in 1827, in The Stanley Tales, Vol. 1, where it was credited to ‘A. Y.’, it was recently claimed that the author these initials belonged to was Arthur Young. Another story from the 1820s, this time by a French writer, is ‘The Unholy Compact Abjured’ (1825), by Charles Pigault-Lebrun, in which a soldier seeking shelter for the night encounters demonic vampires in a spooky chateau.

Russian literature’s first major contribution to the vampire canon was Nikolai Gogol’s ‘Viy,’ which comes from his 1835 collection Mirgorod. Described by Edmund Wilson as ‘one of the most terrific things of its kind ever written,’ it is about a young philosopher’s frightening encounter with a witch-vampire and monstrous winged creatures under the control of the King of the Gnomes. The most famous vampire story from the 1830s is undoubtedly ‘La Morte Amoureuse’ (1836), by the French author Théophile Gautier. Anthologised many times under different titles (e.g. ‘Clarimonde,’ ‘The Dreamland Bride,’ and ‘The Beautiful Dead’), it tells of a young priest’s illicit relationship with a dead courtesan, whose beguiling revenant draws him into a fantastical dreamworld and nightly sucks small quantities of his blood to sustain her life-in-death existence.

Meanwhile, in America, Edgar Allan Poe was turning out a string of morbid horror tales, several of which dealt with unusual forms of vampirism. In ‘Ligeia’ (1838), for instance, he introduced the idea of mental vampirism, linking it with the allied theme of metempsychosis. The ill-fated title character, a beautiful, highly intelligent woman, gradually wastes away as a result of her husband’s obsessive desire to know her completely; but, in a final twist, retribution for this subconscious act of vampirism seems likely when the dead woman’s spirit possesses the body of her marital successor, suggesting that the roles of vampire and victim will shortly be reversed. A variation on the same theme occurs in another of Poe’s stories, ‘The Oval Portrait’ (1845), in which an artist totally absorbed in capturing an absolute likeness of his lovely young bride is unaware of the devitalising effect it is having on her frail constitution, and fails to notice that with each sitting the woman’s life force is ebbing away. Psychic vampirism of an even more bizarre kind is the underlying theme of Poe’s masterpiece, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ (1839). In this story the psychic vampire is the ancestral home of the Usher family, and its victims are the current occupants, Roderick Usher and his sister Madeline. By some hideous process, the ancient mansion – a sentient stone organism impregnated with the evil emanations of past generations of Ushers – is having a devitalising effect on the doomed couple, bringing the horror of madness into their lives. These three stories, along with two others utilising the vampire theme, ‘Morella’ (1835) and ‘Berenice’ (1835), were collected together in Dead Brides: Vampire Tales (1999).

A story by one of Poe’s contemporaries, James Kirke Paulding’s ‘The Vroucolacas,’ has, in the past, attracted the curiosity of vampire aficionados due to its extreme rarity, but since it has become accessible on an internet website any hopes that it might turn out to be a forgotten gem have sadly been dashed. Originally published in the June 1846 issue of Graham’s Magazine, it is about a frustrated suitor pretending to be a vampire in order to win the hand of his sweetheart. Vampiric possession is the theme of Erckmann-Chatrian’s ‘The Burgomaster in Bottle,’ which first appeared in the French journal Le Démocrate du Rhin in 1849. Since then, this story has strangely been overlooked by compilers of vampire anthologies, a situation finally rectified by its inclusion within these pages. The most frequently anthologised vampire tale from the 1840s is ‘The Mysterious Stranger,’ the bloodsucking villain of which, Azzo von Klatka, is thought to have been the model for Count Dracula. Formerly uncredited, it has recently been established that the author of this story was a little-known German writer named Karl von Wachsmann, and it first appeared in print in 1844, which is much earlier than was previously supposed. Hereditary vampirism is the theme of Aleksey K. Tolstoy’s ‘Upyr,’ which was first published in 1841 under the pseudonym ‘Krasnorogsky.’ Also worth a brief mention is the vampire episode from Alexandre Dumas’s The Thousand and One Phantoms (1848), which usually bears the title ‘The Pale Lady’ when it is published separately.

Novels with a vampire as the central character were something of a rarity in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the only one remembered today is Varney the Vampyre; or, The Feast of Blood, which was originally published in weekly instalments between 1845 and 1847, coming out in book form immediately afterwards. The vampiric hero-villain of this long, rambling narrative is Sir Francis Varney, a tall, gaunt figure with cadaverous features, who is made even more frightening to look at by his glassy eyes, taloned hands, and fang-like teeth. He is also incredibly strong, can move about rapidly, and is a master of disguise. Even on those occasions where he is seemingly killed, he is subsequently revived by the Moon’s rays, allowing him to resume his nefarious activities. Finally, after an interminable series of escapades, Varney becomes tired of his life of horror, and ends it all by throwing himself into the crater of Mount Vesuvius. Currently available in a number of paperback editions, in which the novel’s authorship is attributed to either James Malcolm Rymer or Thomas P. Prest, this crudely-written ‘penny dreadful’ is really only noteworthy for the influence it had on later writers, who reworked the variations on the vampire theme which it had introduced.

In comparison with the previous decade, the 1850s were lean years for vampire fiction. The only work of any significance was Charles Wilkins Webber’s Spiritual Vampirism (1853), which had the distinction of being the first novel to have psychic vampirism as its theme. The following decade was more fruitful, producing some notable short stories featuring female vampires. Of these, none are more highly regarded than Ivan Turgenev’s ‘Phantoms’ (1864), the hero of which is repeatedly visited at night by a phantasmal female figure, who he suspects is secretly sucking his blood. The first vampire story by an Australian author, ‘The White Maniac: A Doctor’s Tale’ (1867), by Mary Fortune, centres on events that take place inside a strange house where everything in it is coloured white. A doctor’s desire to solve the mystery leads to the shocking discovery that this has been done by the owner of the property to placate his ward, a beautiful young noblewoman, who suffers from a rare type of anthropophagy, making her prone to homicidal rages whenever she sees something coloured scarlet. One of the earliest appearances of the ‘vamp’ – the name usually given to a heartless, man-eating seductress – was in ‘A Vampire,’ an episode in G. J. Whyte-Melville’s Bones and I; or, The Skeleton at Home (1868). Calling herself Madame de St Croix, this insatiable sexual vampire has remained youthful and desirable over many years and has acquired a string of lovers, all of whom have died in mysterious circumstances. On more traditional lines is William Gilbert’s ‘The Last Lords of Gardonal’ (1867), in which a nobleman is attacked by his beautiful bride on their wedding night, unaware that she has been brought back to life by a wizard’s magical powers, and can only survive in her present state by sucking her husband’s blood.

Vampirism of a much more unusual kind occurs in Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Lost in a Pyramid; or, The Mummy’s Curse’ (1869). In this chilling tale an ancient curse is activated when a seed found in a mummy’s wrappings is planted, and the white flower it bears slowly absorbs the vitality of a young woman after she pins it to her dress. One of the least effective stories from the 1860s is ‘The Vampire; or, Pedro Pacheco and the Bruxa’ (1863), by William H. G. Kingston. Although the main narrative is preceded by a fascinating account of the activities of vicious Portuguese vampires called Bruxas, their non-appearance in the story itself is something of a letdown.

The only vampire-themed novels from the 1860s remembered today are Le Chevalier Ténèbre (1860) and La Vampire (1865), both of which were written by Paul Féval. In the earlier novel, two notorious male siblings, one a ghoul, the other a vampire, periodically emerge from their 400-year-old graves and go on the rampage. The later novel features the equally formidable Countess Addhema – a pale, fleshless old woman with a bald pate – who is temporarily transformed into a ravishing beauty every time she applies to her bare skull a living head of hair torn from one of her beautiful young female victims. Féval added to his tally of vampire novels in the following decade, penning La Ville Vampire in 1874. A parody of early nineteenth century Gothic novels, its unlikely heroine is the real-life author Ann Radcliffe, who mounts an expedition to find the legendary vampire-infested city of Selene, hoping to rescue a friend who has been taken there following her abduction by the evil vampire lord Otto Goetzi.

The first story to feature a lesbian vampire was Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’ (1871). In this frequently anthologised classic a young woman named Laura is visited nightly in her bedchamber by the new house guest, the alluring Carmilla, and is drawn into an increasingly intimate relationship with her. Thereafter, Laura’s health declines, raising fears that she is the victim of a vampire. It eventually transpires that Carmilla is the revenant of Countess Mircalla Karnstein, who has been dead for more than one hundred and fifty years.

In the 1880s – looked on today as the beginning of supernatural fiction’s golden era – there was a noticeable broadening of the vampire story’s scope. For example, bigotry, and the tragic circumstances that may arise from it, provides the basis for Eliza Lynn Linton’s ‘The Fate of Madame Cabanel’ (1880), in which a young Englishwoman living among superstitious French peasants is brutally murdered after being mistaken for a vampire. In contrast, Phil Robinson’s ‘The Man-Eating Tree’ (1881) is about an arboreal vampire poetically described as ‘a great limb with a thousand clammy hands.’ In another offbeat story, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs’ ‘Manor’ (1884), a drowned sailor’s corpse becomes reanimated and issues from its grave at night to suck the blood of a youth who had been in a homosexual relationship with the dead man. A unique story from 1886 which is still capable of sending shivers up and down readers’ spines is Guy de Maupassant’s ‘The Horla,’ the narrator of which fears he has become the plaything of an invisible vampire. Psychic vampirism is the theme of Frank R. Stockton’s ‘A Borrowed Month’ (1886), in which a young man suffering from a debilitating illness discovers that, by the force of his will, he can draw energy and vitality from his friends. Psychic vampirism of a more sinister kind is practised in Conan Doyle’s ‘John Barrington Cowles’ (1884); this time the perpetrator is a beautiful, sadistic woman who luxuriates in her ability to destroy her lovers.

Sabine Baring-Gould’s ‘Margery of Quether’ (1884) is, without doubt, one of the oddest vampire stories in English literature. Satirising the politics of its day – with many references to the controversial reforms to the land laws – it was popular for a while, but soon sank into a lengthy period of obscurity. However, since its inclusion in Vintage Vampire Stories (2011) this story’s cynical humour can now be savoured once again. A more conventional story, Aleksey K. Tolstoy’s ‘The Family of the Vourdalak,’ draws its inspiration from Serbian folklore. Originally written in 1839, but not published until 1884, it tells of a French diplomat’s frightening encounter with vampires, which happens when he stops for the night at a village, and discovers it is deserted apart from a single family, all of whom have been transformed into vampires after the head of the household was bitten by one.

Two other significant stories from the 1880s are ‘Ken’s Mystery’ (1883), by Julian Hawthorne, and ‘A Mystery of the Campagna’ (1887), by ‘Von Degen’ (pseudonym of Anne Crawford). In the former, the hero becomes romantically entangled with a legendary vampiress after travelling with her into the past through the agency of a magic ring; and, in the latter, a composer holidaying in Italy becomes the victim of a centuries-old vampiress whose sarcophagus is concealed in an underground burial chamber.

As might be expected from one of the most fertile periods in the history of supernatural fiction, the final decade of the nineteenth century yielded a rich harvest of vampire stories, several of which are among the finest ever written. Particularly outstanding is Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Parasite,’ which is a compelling tale about a psychic vampire. Originally published in Harper’s Weekly, 10 November–1 December 1894, it revolves around the machinations of a frail, middle-aged spinster who is able to control the thoughts and actions of other people by her amazing mental powers. In particular, she conceives a passion for a university professor, whom she hypnotises in an attempt to make him reciprocate her love, eventually resorting to vampiric possession when this ploy fails.

One of the few stories from the 1890s to feature a psychic vampire of the male gender is ‘Old Aeson’ (1890), by Arthur Quiller-Couch, which tells how a man who gives shelter in his home to a decrepit stranger soon lives to regret his charity when his guest usurps his position in the household by stealing his youth and most of his substance. Two other stories from the 1890s with psychic vampirism as their main motif are ‘A Modern Vampire’ (1894), by W. L. Alden, in which an author has his energy drained by a pretty young woman he has befriended; and ‘A Beautiful Vampire’ (1896), by Arabella Kenealy, whose central character, a menopausal woman, steals beauty and sexual energy from those around her in order to remain attractive to members of the opposite sex.

New medical procedures being introduced around this time may have inspired ‘Good Lady Ducayne’ (1896), by Mary E. Braddon. In this lacklustre yarn a latter-day Elizabeth Bathory has survived well beyond the normal lifespan by getting her private physician to inject her with blood he has drained from his employer’s young female companions, all of whom fade away and die. A far superior story by this author is ‘Herself’ (1894), which was included in Vintage Vampire Stories after years of undeserved neglect. Set in Italy, it chronicles the gradual decline in health of a bubbly young woman after she becomes morbidly enraptured by an antique mirror, which steals some of her vitality every time she gazes into its depths.

A female vampire of royal blood, who comes to life and sucks the blood of an Englishman after her ancient resting-place is disturbed, is featured in ‘The Tomb Among the Pines’ (1894), an uncredited story which was initially published in the British periodical Household Words. One of the most exotic vampiresses from the 1890s is the evil enchantress in ‘The Crimson Weaver’ (1895), by R. Murray Gilchrist. Incredibly old yet stunningly beautiful, she lures a knight into her magical domain and kills him horribly after enslaving him with a kiss. Similarly, in Arthur Quiller-Couch’s ‘The Legend of Sir Dinar’ (1891) an Arthurian knight seeking the Holy Grail is held in thrall by a beautiful vampiress who steals his youth. There can be no doubt, however, that the deadliest female vampire from this period is Annette, the central character in Dick Donovan’s 1899 story ‘The Woman with the “Oily Eyes”.’ An irredeemably evil monster in womanly form, she attracts upright men against their will and brings about their destruction, using her mesmeric eyes to subjugate them. Another story from 1899, Vincent O’Sullivan’s ‘Will,’ is notable for its effective use of the ‘biter bit’ scenario. Similar in style to Poe’s macabre tales, it tells how a man with an irrational hatred for his wife relentlessly draws out and absorbs her life force by gazing at her intently for hours on end, until eventually she dies. The tables are turned, however, when the dead woman constantly haunts her husband, sapping his will to live.

One of the most unconventional vampire stories from the late Victorian era is ‘A Kiss of Judas’ by ‘X. L.’ (pseudonym of Julian Osgood Field). First published in 1893, it is based on the curious legend of the Children of Judas, the substance of which is that the lineal descendants of the arch-traitor are prowling about the world intent on doing harm to anyone who offends them. Luring their victims into their clutches by any means necessary, they kill them with one bite or kiss, which is so deadly it drains the blood from their bodies, leaving a wound on the flesh like three X’s, signifying the thirty pieces of silver paid to Christ’s betrayer. Another offbeat story is Count Eric Stenbock’s ‘The True Story of a Vampire,’ which comes from his 1894 collection Studies of Death. Count Vardalek, whose activities this story chronicles, is a male version of Le Fanu’s Carmilla, but whereas she was homoerotically attracted to another woman, Vardalek has similar feelings about a young boy.

‘The Priest and His Cook’ and ‘The Story of Jella and the Macic’ are two folkloric tales that have recently been extracted from The Pobratim, an 1895 novel by Professor P. Jones. The former appeared for the first time in Vintage Vampire Stories, and the latter makes its debut in the present volume. Two better-known stories from the 1890s that have turned up in vampire anthologies on more than one occasion are ‘Let Loose’ (1890), by Mary Cholmondeley, and ‘The Death of Halpin Frayser’ (1891), by Ambrose Bierce. Both are difficult to classify, but a case for including them in the vampire canon can be made if one views them as stories about the dead returning to wreak vengeance on the living, using methods akin to vampirism. There are, however, no such doubts about the eligibility of H. B. Marriott Watson’s ‘The Stone Chamber’ (1898) to be categorised as a vampire story. Set in rural England, it tells how guests staying at Marvyn Abbey awake in the morning feeling exhausted and have red marks on their necks, a tell-tale sign that they have been preyed upon by a vampire.

Stories about vampires of the non-human kind were also popular during the final decade of the nineteenth century. For instance, in H. G. Wells’ ‘The Flowering of the Strange Orchid’ (1894), a collector of exotic plants is attacked by a bloodsucking orchid growing in his hothouse; while in Fred M. White’s ‘The Purple Terror’ (1899) a group of explorers are menaced by vampire-vines in the Cuban jungle. Even more loathsome is the vampire-like monstrosity in Erckmann-Chatrian’s ‘The Crab Spider’ (1893), in which animals and people who enter a cave at a German health resort are attacked and have their bodies drained of blood by a giant arachnid. In another fascinating story, Sidney Bertram’s ‘With the Vampires’ (1899), explorers journeying up the Amazon encounter cave-dwelling vampire bats. The same geographical location is also the setting for Phil Robinson’s ‘The Last of the Vampires’ (1893), in which a German trader comes across a huge vampire-pterodactyl, to which human sacrifices are made.

A psychic detective whose cases sometimes involved vampire-like phenomena is Flaxman Low, who appeared in a series of allegedly real ghost stories in Pearson’s Magazine between 1898 and 1899 under the byline of E. & H. Heron, a pseudonym used by the mother-and-son writing team Kate and Hesketh Prichard. In ‘The Story of Baelbrow,’ for instance, Low investigates mysterious deaths at a reputedly haunted house, and discovers that a previously ineffectual spirit-vampire has become a deadly killer by activating an Egyptian mummy in his client’s private museum. In another exploit, ‘The Story of the Moor Road,’ a malevolent elemental becomes palpable after absorbing an invalid’s vitality; and, in ‘The Story of the Grey House,’ guests staying at a secluded country house are strangled and drained of blood by a demoniacal creeper growing in the shrubbery.

The 1890s was also a productive decade for vampire novels, but apart from a select few most are forgotten today. Towering above them all is Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which, since its launch in 1897, has gone on to sell millions of copies around the world and is undoubtedly the most influential vampire novel ever written. Surviving changes in fashion and numerous indignities at the hands of clumsy editors, it has, over time, earned itself a unique place in the vampire canon, and has deservedly achieved the status of a classic of English literature. The enduring appeal of this novel is primarily due to its sensational plot and Stoker’s spellbinding narrative power, but it is also noteworthy for two other reasons. Firstly, it has systemised the rules of literary and cinematic vampirology for all time, and secondly we have in Count Dracula the definitive incarnation of the human bloodsucker.

The only novel from the 1890s to rival Stoker’s magnum opus in popularity is H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898), which was the first novel to feature alien vampires. For the benefit of those who haven’t read Wells’ classic, or are only familiar with the plot through watching adulterated film versions, the vampires are the invading Martians, who, we learn, turned to vampirism after their digestive tracts atrophied almost completely, making them solely reliant on blood for sustenance. Initially they preyed on their fellow Martians, but when supplies of the life-giving fluid became exhausted they were forced to look beyond their own planet for survival, and found just what they needed on neighbouring Earth.

J. Maclaren Cobban’s Master of His Fate (1890), which was strongly influenced by Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, concerns the tragic fate of a scientist who has discovered a formula that enables him to renew his youth by absorbing energy from other people merely by touching them. However, as the necessity to absorb larger amounts of energy arises, he is forced to commit suicide to prevent the deaths of his ‘donors,’ who include the woman he loves. Another novel probably inspired by Stevenson’s split-personality classic is Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). While not usually thought of as a vampire, Gray can quite legitimately be likened to one in view of his destructive, self-indulgent lifestyle, an essential part of which is the consumption of other people’s life-energy in order to gain eternal youth. Vampirism of a similar nature is practised in H. J. Chaytor’s The Light of the Eye (1897) and L. T. Meade’s The Desire of Men: An Impossibility (1899). In the former, a man’s eyes have the power to suck out people’s vitality, while Meade’s thriller revolves around weird experiments in a strange house, where the aged regain their lost youth at the expense of the young. Other novels from the 1890s with vampirism as the main or subsidiary theme are: The Soul of Countess Adrian (1891), by Mrs Campbell Praed; The Strange Story of Dr Senex (1891), by E. E. Baldwin; Sardia: A Story of Love (1891), by Cora Linn Daniels; The Fair Abigail (1894), by Paul Heyse; The Lost Stradivarius (1895), by J. Meade Falkner; Lilith (1895), by George MacDonald; The Blood of the Vampire (1897), by Florence Marryat; In Quest of Life (1898), by Thaddeus W. Williams; and The Enchanter (1899), by U. L. Silberrad.

The only vampire novels from the first decade of the twentieth century of any significance are In the Dwellings of the Wilderness (1904), by C. Bryson Taylor; The Woman in Black (1906), by M. Y. Halidom; and The House of the Vampire (1907), by George Sylvester Viereck. In the first of these, a party of American archaeologists is attacked vampirically by the revivified mummy of an Egyptian princess; while the novel by the pseudonymous M. Y. Halidom features a glamorous seductress who has retained her beauty and youthful appearance for centuries by sucking the blood of her lovers. In contrast, the vampire in Viereck’s novel – an arrogant, self-centred writer – acts like a psychic sponge, stealing the most creative thoughts of his protégés and passing them off as his own.

A short story from the turn of the century which has remained popular over the years is F. G. Loring’s ‘The Tomb of Sarah.’ First published in the December 1900 issue of Pall Mall Magazine, it centres on the nocturnal activities of an undead witch who has been accidentally released from the confinement of her tomb during renovations to a church. For a while her nightly forays in search of blood cause great concern among the local community, but she is eventually caught and permanently laid to rest by the time-honoured ritual of driving a stake through her heart. A much more sensational story from this period, Richard Marsh’s ‘The Mask’ (Marvels and Mysteries, 1900), is about a homicidal madwoman adept in the art of mask-making who transforms herself into a raving beauty and tries to suck the blood of the story’s hero. Female vampires are also featured in two stories in Hume Nisbet’s collection Stories Weird and Wonderful (1900). In ‘The Vampire Maid’ a weary traveller finds lodgings at an isolated cottage on the Westmorland moors, only to be preyed on during the night by the landlady’s vampire daughter; and in ‘The Old Portrait’ a woman depicted in a painting comes to life and tries to suck out the vitality of the picture’s owner with a long, lingering kiss. Offering more substantial fare, Phil Robinson’s ‘Medusa,’ a well-crafted story from Tales by Three Brothers (1902), is about a seductive femme fatale who feeds on the life force of her male admirers. A more subtle threat is posed in Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s ‘Luella Miller’ (1902), the title character of which unconsciously absorbs the vitality of her nearest and dearest, causing them to languish while she blooms. On more traditional lines is F. Marion Crawford’s vampire classic ‘For the Blood is the Life’ (1905), in which a gypsy girl returns from the dead to vampirize the man who had spurned her love. In another first-rate story, R. Murray Gilchrist’s ‘The Lover’s Ordeal’ (1905), a young woman challenges her fiancé to pass through an ordeal before she will consent to marry him. This involves spending the night at a haunted house; but, unbeknown to the couple, a beautiful vampiress is lurking in one of the rooms, waiting patiently for her next victim to come along. An inconsequential piece, by comparison, is ‘The Vampire,’ by Hugh McCrae, which was originally published under the pseudonym ‘W. W. Lamble’ when it appeared in the November 1901 edition of The Bulletin.

One of the Edwardian era’s finest vampire stories is ‘Count Magnus,’ by M. R. James, which has been anthologised many times since its debut in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904). Among this author’s spookiest tales, it chronicles the events leading up to the gruesome death of an English scholar, who becomes a doomed man after delving too deeply into suppressed legends about a notorious seventeenth-century Swedish nobleman. A minor story, ‘The Vampire’ (1902), by Basil Tozer, has seemingly sunk into oblivion, a fate that may well have befallen Frank Norris’s ‘Grettir at Thorhall-stead’ (1903) had it not been rescued from obscurity by fantasy historian Sam Moskowitz, who reprinted it in his 1971 anthology Horrors Unknown. Not entirely original, Norris’s story is a retelling of an episode in Grettir’s Saga, in which the legendary Icelandic hero has a fateful encounter with a vampire. Coincidentally, the same episode also provided the inspiration for Sabine Baring-Gould’s ‘Glámr,’ which was included in his A Book of Ghosts (1904). Another vampire story from this collection is ‘A Dead Finger,’ in which the hapless protagonist is preyed on by the disembodied spirit of a dead man, which is gradually stealing his vitality in an attempt to create a new body for itself. On similar lines to this story are Luigi Capuana’s ‘A Vampire’ (1907), which describes how the disembodied spirit of a woman’s deceased husband attempts to suck the blood of her infant child; and Lionel Sparrow’s ‘The Vengeance of the Dead’ (1910), in which a thoroughly evil man has, since his demise, existed in a state of life-in-death by stealing vitality from the living and transferring it to his corpse. More ambitiously, the unscrupulous scientist in C. Langton Clarke’s ‘The Elixir of Life’ (1903) has isolated the vitic force and found a way to transfer it from others to himself, thereby attaining a kind of immortality. More conventional in their treatment of the vampire theme are ‘The Vampire Nemesis’ (1905), by ‘Dolly,’ and ‘The Singular Death of Morton’ (1910), by Algernon Blackwood. In the former story a suicide is reincarnated as a giant vampire bat; and, in the latter, two men holidaying in France encounter a sinister woman, who lures one of them to a cemetery and sucks all the blood from his body.

Some of the best stories from the Edwardian era feature vampires in unusual guises. In Morley Roberts’ ‘The Blood Fetish’ (1909), for example, a severed hand lives on as an independent entity by absorbing the blood of both animal and human victims. In another morbid tale, Horacio Quiroga’s ‘The Feather Pillow’ (1907), a young woman has all the blood gradually sucked out of her by a monstrous insect secreted inside the pillow on her bed; and in F. H. Power’s ‘The Electric Vampire’ (1910) a mad scientist creates a giant, electrically-charged insect which feeds on blood. Even more bizarre is Louise J. Strong’s ‘An Unscientific Story’ (1903), in which a professor who has succeeded in breeding the ‘life-germ’ in his laboratory soon realises the folly of his experiments when his creation grows at a fantastic rate and within a short time forms itself into a humanoid creature which exhibits a craving for blood.

The first anthology to gather together a sizeable number of stories from this golden age of vampire fiction was Richard Dalby’s Dracula’s Brood (1987), which contained twenty-three rare stories written by friends and contemporaries of Bram Stoker. Then, after years of searching through dusty old books and defunct magazines, Richard and fellow vampire enthusiast Robert Eighteen-Bisang compiled an even rarer collection of stories for their 2011 anthology Vintage Vampire Stories. Now, after more diligent searching, Richard and I have put together this stunning new collection of stories, nearly all of which have been unavailable for many years, and include several forgotten gems whose resurrection from an undeserved obscurity should finally bring them the recognition they deserve.

BRIAN J. FROST

THE BRIDE OF THE ISLES
A Tale Founded on the Popular Legend of the Vampire

Anonymous

When this story, which is based on James Robinson Planché’s play The Vampire; or, The Bride of the Isles, received its first publication in 1820, the publisher, J. Charles of Dublin, took the liberty of falsely attributing it to Lord Byron, and the real author is unknown. Nevertheless, it is an excellent example of the bluebook or ‘Shilling Shocker,’ which were the terms usually used to describe short Gothic tales published in booklet form during the early 19th century. Retailing between sixpence and a shilling, they were about four by seven inches in size, and their closely printed pages were stitched into a cover made of flimsy blue paper. These luridly illustrated publications were especially popular with members of the lower classes, many of whom craved the thrill of reading stories revolving around shocking, mysterious and horrid incidents, but couldn’t afford to buy expensive Gothic novels, which were often published in three volumes. A copy of the rare 1820 first edition, complete with its coloured frontispiece, fetched £2000 at auction three years ago.

‘THOUGH the cheek be pale, and glared the eye, such is the wondrous art the hapless victim blind adores, and drops into their grasp like birds when gazed on by a basilisk.’

THERE IS A popular superstition still extant in the southern isles of Scotland, but not with the force as it was a century since, that the souls of persons, whose actions in the mortal state were so wickedly atrocious as to deny all possibility of happiness in that of the next; were doomed to everlasting perdition, but had the power given them by infernal spirits to be for a while the scourge of the living.

This was done by allowing the wicked spirit to enter the body of another person at the moment their own soul had winged its flight from earth; the corpse was thus reanimated – the same look, the same voice, the same expression of countenance, with physical powers to eat and drink, and partake of human enjoyments, but with the most wicked propensities, and in this state they were called vampires. This second existence as it may not improperly be termed, is held on a tenure of the most horrid and diabolical nature. Every All-Hallow E’en, he must wed a lovely virgin, and slay her, which done, he is to catch her warm blood and drink it, and from this draught he is renovated for another year, and free to take another shape, and pursue his Satanic course; but if he failed in procuring a wife at the appointed time, or had not opportunity to make the sacrifice before the moon set, the vampire was no more – he did not turn into a skeleton, but literally vanished into air and nothingness.

One of these demoniac sprites, Oscar Montcalm, of infamous notoriety in the Scotch annals of crime and murder (who was decapitated by the hands of the common executioner), was a most successful vampire, and many were the poor unfortunate maidens who had been sacrificed to support his supernatural career, roving from place to place, and every year changing his shape as opportunity presented itself, but always chosing to enter the corpse of some man of rank and power, as by that means his voracious appetite for luxury was gratified.

Oscar Montcalm had seen, and distantly adored in his mortal state, the superior beauty of the Lady Margaret, daughter of the Baron of the Isles, the good Lord Ronald; but, such was his situation, he had not dared to address her; however, he did not forget her in his vampire state, but marked her out for one of his victims, in revenge for the scorn with which he had been treated by her father.

Lady Margaret, though lovely and well proportioned, entered her twentieth year unmarried, nor had she ever been addressed by a suitor whom she could regard with the least partiality, and with much anxiety she sought to know whether she should ever enter into wedlock, and what sort of person her future lord would be. With credulity pardonable to the times in which she lived, and the narrow education then given to females, even of rank, she consulted Sage, Seer and Witch, as to this important event; but it is not to be wondered at that she met with many contradictions, everyone telling a different tale. At length urged on by the irresistible desire to pry into futurity, she repaired with her two maidens, Effie and Constance, to the Cave of Fingal, where, cutting off a lock of her hair, and joining it to a ring from her finger, she cast it into the well, according to the directions she had received from Merna, the Hag of the mountains, who had instructed the fair one as to this expedition.

No sooner was the ring flung into the well than a dreadful storm arose; the torches, which the attendant maidens had borne, were extinguished, and the immense cave was in utter darkness: loud and dreadful was the thunder, accompanied by a horrid confusion of sounds, which beggars description.

Margaret and her companions sunk on their knees; but they were too stupefied with horror to pray, or to endeavour to retrace their way out of this den of horrors. Of a sudden, the cave was brilliantly illuminated, but with no visible means of light, for there were neither torch, lamp, or candle. Solemn music was heard, slow and awfully grand, and in a few minutes two figures appeared, one heavy, morose in countenance, and clad in dark robes, who announced herself as Una, the spirit of the storm, and touching a sable curtain, discovered to the view of Margaret the figure of a noble young warrior, Ruthven, Earl of Marsden, who had accompanied her father to the wars. Again the storm resounded, the curtain closed, and the cave resumed its darkness; but this was only transient – the brilliant light returned – Una was gone, and the light figure, dressed in transparent robes, sprinkled over with spangles remained. With her wand she pulled aside the curtain, and a young man of interesting appearance was visible, but his person was a stranger to the fair one. Ariel, the spirit of the Air, then waved her hand to the entrance of the cave, as a signal for them to depart, and bowing low, they withdrew, amid strains of heart-thrilling harmony, rejoiced to find themselves once more in an open space, and they happily returned in safety to the baron’s castle. The Lady Margaret was well pleased with what she had seen, as promising her two husbands, though she was somewhat puzzled by calling to mind a couplet that Ariel had repeated three or four times, while the curtain remained undrawn.

‘But once fair maid, will you be wed,

You’ll know no second bridal bed.’

What could this mean? Surely she would never stoop to illicit desires or intrigue? She thought she knew her own heart too well.

The vampire had seen into the designs of Margaret to visit the Cave of Fingal, and he sought out Ariel and Una, to whom, by virtue of his supernatural rights, he had easy access. The spirit of the air would not befriend him, but the spirit of the storm assisted him to pry into futurity; and to suit his views, she presented the figure of Ruthven, Earl of Marsden. In the meantime, Marsden had the good fortune to save Lord Ronald’s life in the battle, and the wars being ended, or at least suspended for a time, he invited the gallant youth home with him to his castle, to pass a few months amid the social rites of hospitality and the pleasure of the chase.

The Lady Margaret received her father with dutiful affection, and gratitude to providence for his safe return, and she beheld young Marsden with secret delight; but when informed that he had preserved the baron from overpowering enemies, her gratitude knew no bounds, and she looked so beautiful and engaging, while returning her thankful effusions for the service he had rendered her father, that the earl could not resist the impulse, and from that hour became deeply enamoured of the lovely fair one.

Marsden’s rank and birth were unexceptionable but his fortune was very inadequate to support a title, which made him (added to the love of military glory) enter into the profession of arms, of which he was an ornament.

Margaret was the only child, and her father abounding in wealth and honours; it might therefore be presumed that an ambition might lead him to form very exalted views for the aggrandisement of his heiress; and so he had, but perceiving how high his preserver stood in the good graces of his darling child, and that the passion was becoming mutual, he resolved not to give any interruption to their happiness, but if Marsden could win Margaret to let him have her, as a rich reward for the service he had performed amid the clang of arms.

Parties were daily formed by the baron for the chase, hawking, or fishing, while the evening was given to the festive dance, or the minstrels tuned their harps in the great hall, and sang the deeds of Scottish chiefs, long since departed, amongst whom the heroic Wallace was not forgot.

The love of Ruthven and Lady Margaret were now generally known throughout the islands and congratulations poured in from every quarter.

A day was fixed for the nuptials, and magnificent preparations were made at the castle for the celebration of the ceremony, when the sudden and severe illness of the baron caused a delay. He wished them not to defer their marriage on his account; but the young people, in this instance would not obey him, declaring their joys would be incomplete without his revered presence.

The baron blessed them for this instance of love and filial duty, but he still felt a strong desire to have the marriage concluded.

The baron was scarce recovered, when he and Ruthven were summoned to the field of battle, a war having broken out in Flanders, and the marriage was deferred till their return; and taking a most affectionate leave of the Lady Margaret, the father and lover left the castle, and the fair one in the charge of old Alexander, the faithful steward, with many commands and cautions respecting the edifice and the lady, whom they both regarded as a gem of inestimable value, with whom they were loath to part, but imperious duty and the calls of honour allowed no alternative.

Robert, the old steward’s son, attended the baron abroad; and Marsden took his own servant the faithful Gilbert. They were successful in several skirmishes with the enemy, but in the final engagement Ruthven lost his life, dying in the arms of the Lord of the Isles, who mourned over him as for a beloved son, and he ordered Robert and Gilbert, who were on the spot, to convey the body to a place beyond the carnage, that when the battle was over he might see it (if he himself survived) and have the valued remains interred in a manner that became an earl and a soldier, dying in defending his country’s cause.

The battle ended, for the glory and success of Great Britain, and the good Baron of the Isles was unhurt, so was Robert, but Gilbert was amongst the slain.

Lord Ronald, fatigued with the sharp action of the day, in which he had borne his part with a vigour surprising to his time of life, for his head was now silvered over with the honourable badge of age, repaired to his tent to take some refreshment and an hour’s rest on his couch, to invigorate his frame. The couch eased his weary limbs, but his eyes closed not, and all his thoughts were on Ruthven, and the distress the sad news would give to his dear child. He arose, and with trembling fingers penned a letter to her, describing the melancholy event, and exhorting her, for the sake of her father, to support this trial with resignation and patience, and bow to the dispensations of Providence, who orders all things eventually for the best, however severe and distressing they seem at the time. He ended his letter by observing that he should return to the castle of the Isles without delay, being anxious to fold her in his arms, and that he should bring the corpse of the brave Marsden to his native land.

The letter being sent off expressly by one of his retainers, the baron ordered some soldiers to attend with a bier, and taking Robert for their guide they went to fetch the body of Ruthven, and in the meantime he had a small tent erected for its reception, surmounted by a sable flag.

But this posthumous attention of the good baron was all in vain, for after a long absence, Robert and the soldiers returned, with the unwelcome news that the body of the gallant Scot was not to be found, but the spot where it had been deposited by the servants was still marked with the blood that had flowed from his gaping wounds and it was presumed that the enemy had found the corpse, and had conveyed it away to some obscure hole out of revenge for the slaughter he had dealt among their leaders before his fall. This event added materially to Ronald’s regret and sorrow, for the natives of the Isles of Escotia held a traditional superstition, that while the body lay unburied the spirit wandered denied of rest. He offered rewards for the body without success, and was at length obliged, though with much reluctance, to drop the affair.

The baron was obliged to pay his duty in England to his sovereign before he repaired to the Isles. Unexpected events detained him two months at the British court, but he at last effected his departure to his long wished-for home.

A courier made known his approach, and Lady Margaret, attended by the whole household, dressed in their best array, came forth to meet him, headed by the aged minstrel, and they received their lord with joyous shouts and lively strains, about half a mile from the gates of the castle.

Lord Ronald, as the carriage descended a steep hill that led into the valley, had a full view of the party approaching to meet him, and his heart felt elated at the compliment. He could discern his daughter; but how came it she was not in sables? Surely Ruthven, her betrothed lover, deserved that mark of respect to his memory! But he could observe that she was gaily dressed, and her high plume of feathers waving in the light breeze that adulated the air. The baron cast a look on his own deep mourning, and sighed; he was not pleased – but worse and worse. As he gained a nearer view, he perceived that his daughter was handed along, most familiarly by a knight. I had hoped, said he to himself, that Margaret would have rose superior to the inconstancy and caprice attributed to her sex. Can it be possible, that she has so soon forgot the valiant, accomplished Ruthven! Oh, woman! woman! are ye all alike? As the vehicle entered the valley, Ronald quitted it, to receive the welcome of his child and retainers.

Powers of astonishment! Was it, or was it not, illusion? By what miracle did he behold Ruthven, Earl of Marsden, standing before him, and Lady Margaret hanging with chaste expressions of delight on his arm; there was a scar on his forehead, and he was much paler than before the battle, but no other alteration was visible. As for Robert, he stood aghast, his hair bristled up and his joints trembled, and altogether would have served as a good model of horror to a painter or statuary.

Ruthven stretched forth his hand – ‘You seem astonished, my good lord,’ said he, ‘to find me here before you, or, indeed to find me here at all. I was discovered by some peasants returning from their daily labour, nearly covered with fern and leaves [‘Yes,’ said Robert, ‘that was Gilbert’s work and mine.’] by means of a little dog, who had scented out my body from its purposed concealment. They were very poor, and my clothes and decorations were a strong temptation, to which they yielded, they agreed to strip me, sell the clothes, and divide the spoil. While they were thus occupied, they perceived signs of life, and their humanity prevailed over every other consideration, I was conveyed to one of their cottages, and well attended. The man had a wonderful skill in herbs and simples, therefore my cure was rapid, but previous to my leaving them, I well rewarded everyone who had been instrumental in my preservation and freely forgave the intended plunder they had confessed to me, as it was the means directed by fate to prolong my existence, and restore me to my angelic Margaret.

‘When I recovered, I found the British forces had quitted Flanders, but I could not learn which direction my friend the baron (you my dear lord) had taken; so I hastened to Scotland with all the speed my situation would admit of, and we were retarded at sea by adverse winds. I found my dear betrothed, and her fair damsels, in deep mourning for my supposed loss; but I soon changed her tears for smiles, and her sables for gayer vestments: but at first her surprise, like yours, Lord Ronald, was too great to admit of utterance, but in time we became composed and grateful, and we agreed not to inform you of my existence, but astonish you on your arrival.’

The baron greeted his young friend most warmly and testified his hope that no more ill-omened events would disappoint the nuptials of the brave earl and Margaret, whom he tenderly clasped to his bosom, and kissing each cheek, remarked that she was the living image of his dear departed wife. He then turned to the old harper, and bidding him strike up a lively strain, proceeded to the castle, where all was joy and festivity; again resounded the song, and again the damsels, with their swains showed off their best reels à la Caledonia.

In the old steward’s room a plenteous board was spread, for the upper servants and retainers of the hospitable Lord of the Isles, who ordered flowing bowls and well replenished horns to the health of Ruthven and Margaret.

Some of the party were remarking on the wonderful preservation of Marsden’s earl by the Flemish peasants, instead of plundering and leaving him to perish, as many would have done to an almost expiring enemy.

‘Almost expiring!’ said Robert, whose cheeks had not yet recovered their usual hue since the meeting in the valley with Ruthven.

‘Almost expiring!’ he repeated; ‘I am certain the body of the earl was dead – aye, as dead as my great grandsire – when I and Gilbert carried him from the field of battle; and when we left him under the fern he was as cold as ice, and the blood from his wounds coagulated – No, no, he never came to life again; this Ruthven you have here must be a vampire.’

‘A vampire! a vampire!’ resounded from all the company, with loud shouts of laughter at poor Robert’s simplicity. ‘Perhaps you are a vampire,’ said his sweetheart, Effie, joining in the mirth, ‘so I shall take care how I trust myself in your power.’

Robert did not reply, and all the rest of the night he had to stand the bantering jests of his companions.

But Robert was right; Marsden’s earl died on the field of battle, and the moment the servants quitted the corpse, the vampire, wicked Montcalm, whose relics lay mouldering beneath a stone in Fingal’s cave, watching the moment, took possession, and reanimated the body; the wounds instantly healed, but the face wore a pallid hue, the invariable case with the vampires, their blood not flowing in that free circulation which belongs to real mortals.

The story told by the vampire was a fabrication, respecting the peasants, to impose on Lord Ronald and the Lady Margaret as to the appearance of the supposed Ruthven, and he well succeeded.

On previously consulting the Spirit of the Storm, the vampire had discovered that Margaret would be courted by Ruthven, Earl of Marsden; he also discovered, in his peep into futurity, that the young hero would be slain in battle, and this seemed to him a glorious opportunity to obtain possession of the lovely Margaret, and make her his victim, renovate his vampireship, and go on in the most diabolical career, hurling destruction on the human race, and drawing them into crime after crime, till they sank into the gulf of eternal infamy.

It now wanted a month to All-Hallow E’en and it so chanced, that in that year the next coming moon would set on that very eve from its full orbit. The vampire repaired to the cave of Fingal, and by magic means, which he well knew how to put in execution, he raised up some infernal spirits, whom he asked for orders. They told him they would consult their ruler Beelzebub, and he was to come on the third eve from thence for an answer.

This, then, was the decree – he must wed a virgin, destroy her, and drink her blood, before the setting of the moon on All-Hallow E’en, or terminate into mere nonentity; and if the maid was unchaste, the charm was dissolved. If he succeeded he was to quit the form of Earl Marsden and get egress into some other corpse to give it animation.

The supposed death of Ruthven had caused Margaret to imbibe the idea that the two figures she had seen in Fingal’s cave, and Ariel’s couplet prophetic but of one marriage, now made out by his fall, he being only a betrothed lover, and the stranger knight she regarded as her future spouse; but the return of the Earl again puzzled her, and she knew not what to think, but at length resolved on another visit to the mystic cavern. Possibly ashamed of confessing this weakness to her maidens, or, what is more probable, conscious that from the terrors they had experienced in attending her there, she could not persuade them to go a second time, she went alone, and soon after midnight, when all the castle was hushed in sound repose, save the vampire, who beheld from the lofty casement, the temporary flight of the enterprising Margaret. How did he thirst for her blood – how willingly would he have immolated the lovely maid that moment, and paid the infernal tribute, but for one clause that interposed and saved her from his fangs. This was the necessity of his being first legally married, in all due form, to the intended victim. He regarded her with a diabolical and malicious scowl, while, by as bright a starlight night as ever illumined the heavens, he saw her tripping through the park’s wide avenues of stately firs. He wondered where she was going, and felt apprehensive that some event was in agitation that might deprive him of his bride. The vampire had just concluded to follow her, when a heaviness he could neither resist or shake off, overpowered him and sealed his eyes in a deep sleep.

Margaret, in much perturbation and a beating heart, gained the way to the cave; but the interior was so dark that she was obliged to grope on her hands and knees to the magic well, and cast in the accustomed charm. The thunder rolled, and the storm commenced, but with not one quarter of the violence as on her preceding visit. The music followed in an harmonious strain, and the spirits of the storm and air soon stood before her. The beauty, the innocence, of the noble maid, her virtues and her benevolence, had interested these mystical beings in her behalf – yes, even the stern and oft obdurate Una felt for Margaret, and wished to save her. They could not alter the decree of fate, nor had they power over the vampires; the only thing that remained was to warn the enquirer, if possible, of her danger. For this purpose, they unfolded the curtain, and presented to her view, the real Ruthven on the field of battle, bleeding and a corpse. She heard his last sigh, saw his last convulsive motion – a grisly fleshless skeleton stood by his side, and at that moment entered his corpse, which sprung up reanimated! Margaret knew well the traditional tales of the vampires, and shuddered as she beheld one before her; for what could be more plain? No further vision was shown her – she was warned from the cave, and the fair one returned to the castle, dejected and spiritless. What did this mean? Ruthven, her adored Ruthven, could be no vampire – impossible – so accomplished, so clever, superior in most things to others of his rank. She passed the intervening hours in a very restless state, till they met at their morning repast in the small saloon. The vampire handed her to a chair; she remembered the scene in the cave, and shrank back with a feeling of disgust; but this was not lasting; the labours of the spirit of the storm and the air had not their intended effect; like advice given to young maidens that accords not with the inclination, it sank before the fascination of the object beloved, and she regarded what had been shown her as wayward spite in Una and Ariel; so ready are we to twist circumstances to act in conformity with our own inclination.

The dews of night, the chilling breeze, the damp of the magic cave of Fingal, joined to the fatigue and agitation of the noble maiden, caused a fever which confined her to her chamber several days, and again delayed the marriage. The vampire grew impatient, and before the Lady Margaret was scarce convalescent, he began to press for the nuptial ceremony, with what the good baron thought indecorous haste, though he made all possible allowance for repeated disappointments and youthful passions.

Robert, much better read than the warrior, his master, in the traditional tales of his country, and its popular superstitions, had not yet got the better of his shock at the reappearance of Ruthven in his native valley, when he felt convinced that Marsden’s earl died of his wounds on the field of battle at Flanders. ‘Aye, by the holy rood, he did,’ would the youth often mutter to himself. ‘May I never live to be married to my gentle Effie, and it wants but three days and three nights to that happy morn, if I did not see Ruthven’s eye-strings crack, and his heart’s veins burst assunder: this is a vampire, and this is the moon when those foul fiends pay their tribute, and now he is all impatience to wed my young mistress, forsooth – Yes, yes, ’tis plain enough: but what is the use of saying anything about it, my father and all the servants laugh at me; even my intended turns into ridicule, anything I advance on the subject, and calls me Robert, the vampire hunter: but I will not be deterred from doing my duty like an honest servant, let them jeer as they will. I am resolved to tell the baron all that I know, that is, all I think of his guest, and then he may please himself, and come what will, my conscience will be clear.’

Robert had courage to face a cannon, and never turned his back on the bravest foe, but he felt daunted at the disclosure he meant to make to Lord Ronald; the subject was awkward, and the vampire (if vampire he was) might take a summary revenge on him for his interference. Yet his resolution was not shaken, and seeking the cellar-man he procured a glass of cordial and a horn of ale to revive his spirits, and then, finding himself what he called his own man again, he sought the baron, whom he happened to find alone and taking his evening walk in the grounds, while Margaret and her lover were sitting at their music.

Robert told his tale with much hesitation and faltering, but the baron heard him with more patience than he expected, and made him recount every particular of his suspicions. ‘’Tis strange! ’tis marvellous strange!’ replied the good Lord Ronald; ‘for I have seen many persons from Flanders, and yet they never heard of the Earl of Marsden being saved by the peasants: one would have thought such news would have spread like wildfire.’

‘Neither does he go to mass or prayer,’ observed Robert, ‘as a Christian warrior ought to do; nor does he take salt on his trencher.fn1 And All-Hallow E’en is fast approaching,’ continued Robert: ‘this is the fatal moon, and my young mistress—’

‘Shall never be his,’ exclaimed the baron, ‘’till the moon sets, and the night, so tragic and pregnant of evil to many a spotless maid, is gone by; then if Ruthven is Marsden’s true earl, he may have my Margaret. She shall then be his, and I will turn all my fish ponds into bowls for whisky punch, and the great fountain in the forecourt shall flow with ale till not a Scot around can stand upon his legs, or he is no well-wisher to me or mine; but if he is an infernal vampire, his reign will be over. Faith, by St Andrew, I know not what to think, but I have had fearful dreams, portentous of evil to my ancient house.’

The baron dismissed Robert with a present, and many encomiums on his fidelity and zeal for him and the Lady Margaret. ‘My father,’ said the honest fellow, ‘has lived with you from youth to age: I was born within these walls, and my deceased mother suckled your amiable heiress; treachery in me would be double guilt: no, I would die to serve the house of Ronald!’

When the baron entered his daughter’s apartment, a group met his eyes, very ill calculated to give him pleasure in his present frame of mind full of supernatural ideas, and teeming with dread suspicions; Margaret had changed her robes of plaid silk for virgin white, her neck chain, bracelets and other ornaments of filigree silver, most exquisitely wrought. Ruthven was also dressed with elegance. The fair one’s attendants were also in their best. The steward and the physician of the household were present, and the chaplain stood with the sacred book in his hand.

‘We were waiting for you, my dear Lord Baron,’ said the vampire, Ruthven; ‘I have persuaded my lovely betrothed to be mine this very evening. We have been so very unfortunate, that I dread further delay, and think every hour teeming with evil till she is mine irrevocably.’

‘You have no rival,’ answered the baron, much alarmed and piqued: ‘you are secure in Margaret’s love and my consent. My friends and tenants will ill brook such privacy; they have been accustomed to see the daughters of the Lord of the Isles wedded in public pomp and magnificence, and to share in the festive and abundant hospitalities. No, by the shades of my ancestors, I will have no such doings.’

Ruthven pleaded hard, but the baron heeded not his arguments or eloquence, for the more he seemed bent on espousing Margaret then, the old lord thought more on Robert’s report and his own suspicions. Margaret, infatuated by the spell that cast an illusion over her senses, seemed to forget her proper dignity and the delicate decorum of her sex, and joined in the solicitations of her lover. ‘My dear father,’ said the beauteous maiden, ‘Ruthven and myself are in unison with each other’s sentiments; we seek not in pomp and glare for happiness; we place our prospects of future bliss in elegant retirement and domestic pleasures. Allow us to be now united, I entreat you, and you can afterwards treat your neighbours, retainers, and servants, as plenteously as you like, but I shrink from the idea of a public marriage.’

Ruthven took the hand of his betrothed, which she presented to him with the most endearing smiles, while her eyes modestly bent down and her cheeks covered with roseate blushes, and never did Lady Margaret look so irresistibly captivating as at that moment.

The baron, while she was speaking, trembled with emotion – Not for a single hour, said he, mentally, would I defer their happiness on account of bridal pomp, if I thought all was right; but I will not risk the sacrificing of so much loveliness, and that my only child, the image of my lost Cassandra, to a vampire; but he did not like to disclose the suspicions he had imbibed, for if they were founded in error, how grossly ridiculous would he appear, and he resolved to delay the nuptials, and stay the test of the moon. He therefore said, ‘It is my pleasure to give a full month to splendid preparation, ’tis but a short delay, and let me have the satisfaction to have the nuptials as I would wish them to be, in honour of Marsden’s earl and Ronald’s daughter.’

The baron observed the lover give a start at the words ‘a full month’, and his eyes shot forth a most malicious glance. He still held Margaret’s hand. ‘Nonsense! my good friend,’ said he, ‘this is not fair, from one warrior to another – Chaplain, begin the ceremony.’

The enraged baron flung off his guard, snatched the book from the hands of the priest, and bade Margaret retire with her maidens to another room, accusing Ruthven of being a vampire.

This was strongly resented by the accused, and, indeed, every one took his part, and laughed at the suggestion. This raised the baron’s passion so high that he was declared by the physician to be insane, and they coercively conveyed him to his chamber, and barred him in, where he was on the point of becoming frantic indeed, from the thoughts of his injunctions, for he was more convinced than ever of Ruthven being a supernatural imposter, or he would never have acted so uncourteous to a knight in his own castle.

Robert having heard from his father, the old steward, of the interruption of the marriage through the baron’s mania, in thinking the Earl of Marsden a vampire, and his lord’s confinement in the western turret, observed that he supposed the nuptials then were all off. His parent answered no, that the young people were not forced to obey such whims; that Lady Margaret was retired for an hour to regain her composure, and the chaplain would then perform the ceremony. ‘And who is to be the bride’s father?’ said Robert. – ‘I am to have that honour,’ replied the steward. – ‘And much good may it do you,’ said the son: ‘but if I was you, I’d cater better for the noble Lady Margaret than to give her to an evil spirit.’ – ‘Go to, for an ungracious bird,’ exclaimed Alexander; ‘you are as mad as your master; poor Effie will have but a crazy husband at the best of it.’ – ‘Better a crazy one, than a bloodthirsty vampire, father,’ observed Robert, who quitted the room, vexed at the loud peal of laughter, which was now set up against him.

Robert went out into the park, but returned privately into the castle by a bypath and a private door, of which he had a key, having procured it some time before he went to the wars, for he was then a rakish youth, and loved to steal out to the village dance or festival, after he was supposed to retire to rest for the night; but now he was contracted to the languishing blue-eyed Effie he was reformed, and voluntarily relinquished all such stolen delights. The key was now regarded by him as a treasure. ‘It helped me,’ said he to himself, ‘to sow my wild oats; it shall now aid me to perform a more laudable purpose. Little did I think to see the good Baron of the Isles a captive in his own castle; and for what, but that he is in too much possession of his senses to sacrifice his lovely virgin daughter to a vampire, for such, by the holy rood, is this fine Earl of Marsden. Why his face is the image of death itself, and his eyes glare; yet my Lady Margaret forsooth! thinks him very handsome, now she is under the influence of the wicked spell; the real Ruthven looked not so when he came to woo the noble fair one; but he says ’tis through his wounds in battle: I think by St Cuthbert, he has had time enough to get his complexion again, and he eats and drinks voraciously, it makes me sick to see him as I stand in waiting, and no salt – faugh!’

This long soliloquy, brought the faithful youth to the door of the baron’s prison; he drew the bolts and entered; his lord was pacing the chamber with unmeasured strides, and beating his forehead, while heavy sighs burst from his aged bosom. He started and stood still on Robert’s entrance.

‘Friend or foe?’ said he. – ‘Friend,’ replied Robert, ‘and when I prove otherwise to my most noble master and commander, may I be seized by the foul fiend and made food for vulture.’

‘I am not mad,’ said the good old veteran, ‘but I think I may say, I am distracted with grief.’

‘You are no more mad than I, my lord; I do not join in that absurd tale; but hasten and arm yourself. The marriage is to take place almost immediately – let us hasten and prevent it, ere it is too late.’

Lord Ronald was doubly shocked – his suspicions of the vampire were increased by this obstinate persisting in the nuptials against his command, and the want of tenderness and filial love testified by his daughter. How changed was Margaret! Did she choose for her bridal hours those of confinement to her sire – had she not supposed him insane, it is not to be thought she would have suffered him to be thus treated; this then was her season for connubial joys – the sudden insanity of her only surviving parent, he who had so ardently strove not only to fulfil his own duties, but to supply the place as far as possible of the late Lady Cassandra, his amiable wife, and he felt there was no sting so keen as a child’s ingratitude. The barbed arrow seemed to touch his very vitals, and for the first time in his life the brave Ronald shed tears.

‘Take courage, my lord,’ said Robert, ‘if they dare still to oppose your authority, this trusty falchion, this well-tried steel, shall prove if Ruthven is common flesh and blood or no.’

‘Moderation! moderation! Robert,’ replied the baron, as he led the way to Lady Margaret’s apartment, where he did not arrive one minute too soon – the ceremony was on the point of commencing, and ’tis possible a few of the first words had been pronounced by the priest.

The baron’s entrance caused a universal consternation – the maidens shrieked, and the vampire began to bluster, but Lord Ronald took prompt measures. He solemnly protested that he was in the full use and exercise of his senses, and charged his daughter, on the penalty of incurring his curse, not to enter into wedlock with Marsden’s earl till he sanctioned it. She did not choose to disobey on such an awful threat, but casting a look of anguish and tenderness on her lover, she burst into tears, and leaning on the arms of her sympathising maidens, withdrew to her chamber, where throwing herself on a couch, gave way to a full tide of sorrow. ‘Cruel father!’ she exclaimed. ‘Ridiculous superstition! I feel I never shall be the bride of my truly adored and adoring Ruthven, so many fatal interruptions seem as if the fates forbid our union – spirits of the storm and air, are ye not too in league against me?’

The vampire now besought the baron’s forgiveness and friendship, attributing his recent behaviour to excess of love, that did not brook delay; he also interceded for the chaplain, whom Lord Ronald was about to dismiss for his presumption, and peace was again restored in the Castle of the Isles.

Wine was called for, and a repast was spread and the vampire so artfully strove against the suspicions of the baron, that the prejudices of the latter were nearly done away; and Robert blamed for his credulous folly; yet the false earl could not obtain from the old nobleman a promise to allow him to wed before the setting of the moon, for Ronald still adhered to that test, nor would abridge aught of a term that now waxed very short.

The vampire concealed his chagrin and feigned content; he thought it best to keep a firm footing in the castle, as some chance might still operate in his favour, founding his hopes on the spell he had obtained over Lady Margaret, and the strong affection with which she beheld him, and he scarcely admitted a doubt of success, if he could get the baron and Robert out of the way; for no one else in the castle had the least doubt of his being the real Earl of Marsden.

The baron, however, watched with great vigilance, and Robert never stirred from a station he had taken that commanded a view of the door of Lady Margaret’s chamber. Time seemed to ride on swift pinions with the vampire – his fears were stronger than his hopes – he had never been so foiled before in his attempts, and he thought it best to provide against the coming danger, and leave the mistress alone for her maid the blue eyed Effie; whom he would lure from her allegiance to Robert, persuade her to wed himself, and then sacrifice her to pay his annual demoniac tribute. This would serve two purposes, renew his vampireship, and be a deadly revenge on the interfering Robert, on whom he longed to wreak his diabolical rage.

It seemed rather a difficult achievement to gain the affections of a young and certainly most virtuous maiden (who was to be married in a few hours to the object of her first choice) from that object, but the vampire’s case grew desperate, and he resolved to try if the charm would operate.

While Robert was watching the lady, the vampire resolved to seize on the more ignoble prize, and he assailed Effie with every alluring temptation. He told the poor girl that he was tired of pursuing the match with Lady Margaret, and abhorred the thought of allying himself to such a piece of dotage as the credulous baron, who was grown superannuated, and only fit to sit amongst the old wives a-spinning, and tell legendary tales of hobgoblins, and water sprites. He said Effie’s beauty and innocence had charmed him – that she wanted nothing but dress and rank to be level with her mistress, and that would be hers by marrying Marsden’s earl.

‘But I am ignorant, and can neither play music, sing, dance, or do the honours of a table, like Lady Margaret.’ This reply pleased the vampire; it seemed one of a very yielding nature, if she had no scruples but what arose from a fear of her own demerits.

‘All these can soon be taught,’ said the deceiver. ‘I must seek some lady of fallen fortune, but elegant accomplishment, to polish your native gracefulness; she shall be your companion in my absence, and your tutoress, and I will join in the delightful task; therefore that can be no objection.’ Effie raised several other difficulties, but all were successfully combated, and the vampire earl promised to make the foresaken Robert amends for the loss of his bride by a noble sum and a pretty damsel from off his own estate.

Effie yielded; and though by this act she justly incurred censure and reproach, yet we must do her the justice to remember that the vampire had a tongue to charm his victims, and eyes that are described like the fascination of a basilisk; and to have a powerful earl sighing for her love, might have tempted a higher maid than the simple Effie, the mere child of nature.

Having gained her consent, he hastened to secure his prize; he persuaded her that they must instantly flee, lest the lynx-eyed Robert should grow jealous, and interrupt their promised happiness; he therefore told her to meet him in an hour, at the end of the long avenue in the castle park, and he would be prepared with a horse to convey her to the next convent (about five miles distant) where the priest could join their hands.

That he intended to wed Effie was too true; in that promise lurked no deceit, but the ceremony over, he meant to take her into an adjacent wood, offer up his sacrifice by immolating her with his own hands, and drinking her heart’s blood; then seek out some noble form just departed – enter it – and woo Lady Margaret in a new character, and finally triumph over the baron, for he hated all who opposed him in his designs.

Poor unsuspecting Effie, thy head ran on nothing but the glare of thy expected coronet, and thou felt no pity for thy so lately loved Robert, or thy kind and generous mistress, though both were to be betrayed by this clandestine step.

She was true to her appointment and crossed the park with light steps – the vampire was in waiting – he assisted her to mount the horse, and then sprung up behind her. – The steed bounded off like lightning. In an instant Robert rushed from a copse and cried out for the fugitives to stop, but instead of obeying him the vampire spurred his horse to quicken him on. The baron had taken Robert’s post to watch the Lady Margaret while the latter made an excursion for air; his gun was loaded, and vengeance nerved the young soldier’s arm with so sure an aim that the corporeal part of the vampire fell mortally wounded to the ground, dragging Effie after it loudly shrieking, and all her new-raised love extinguished – for the illusion had vanished, and the image of Robert again filled her virgin heart. Most happily for her future peace the secret of her consenting to the supposed earl’s passion was known to her alone – there had been no witness of that degrading incident so fatal to her integrity; and Robert believing she was carried off against her will, all ended well – she was espoused to her faithful suitor at the appointed time, and made an excellent wife; for her dereliction had made her watchful over herself – she often thought of the precipice on which she had stood and trembled. Her beauty long after her marriage gained her admirers, but they were soon dismissed with spirit, and taught to keep at a proper distance, for Effie was now proof against seduction.

But to return to the vampire. He lay bleeding on the ground, while Robert conveyed Effie to the castle, cautioning her to secrecy as she valued his life, for he knew not what might be the result of this act, if it was indeed Marsden’s earl he had slain. He sought the baron who was much vexed at the recital, though he acknowledged that Robert had much provocation, and Ruthven’s elopement with Effie was an insult on the Lady Margaret not to be borne. The Lord of the Isles and his faithful follower repaired to the spot where the latter had left the treacherous earl.

‘I wonder,’ said Robert, as they proceeded thither, and calling to mind the scene in Flanders, ‘whether we shall find his lordship there, or whether Beelzebub has given him a second life.’ The vampire, however, was there, bleeding copiously, but in full possession of his senses. He declared life to be ebbing fast, and that he forgave Robert his death wound; also, he ascribed his carrying off Effie as a mere frolic to alarm her and that he had intended to convey her back in safety to the castle. ‘I do not like such jests,’ said the indignant Robert, ‘and you have paid for an act you had better have left alone.’

The false earl then proceeded to state, on the oath of a dying man, that he was no vampire. This gave a sad pang both to the baron and Robert, and the former testified his regret at the conduct such suspicions had given rise to. He then demanded of Ruthven if he had any commission to charge him with, and it should be punctually executed.

‘Swear it,’ exclaimed the vampire, eagerly.

The baron drew forth his sword and swore on it.

‘Give me that topaz ring from off your finger,’ said the vampire; ‘let me die with it on, in token of your renewed amity, and allow it to be buried with me.’ To this the Lord Ronald most readily consented.

‘Next,’ said the vampire, drawing it forth from his bosom, where it hung extended by a hair chain, ‘take this ring of twisted gold, and cast it into a well that stands on the north side of Fingal’s cave – ’tis a charm given by the mighty Stuffa. I shall thus have a vow performed that will give peace to my soul, and save it from wandering after it has quitted its mortal clay-built tenement. In a few minutes I shall be no more – draw my body aside into the copse, and tomorrow at your return you can seek it, and give me burial; but for the present conceal my death from all you meet: name it not until the ring is in the cave.’

In a few minutes the vampire seemed to die with a heavy groan, and the afflicted baron and his attendant proceeded to obey the last injunctions thus received, both conscience-stricken at having thus treated Marsden’s earl, and feeling assured, from the manner of his death, that he was a mortal man. They returned to the castle to prepare for their journey to the cave; but mentioned not the decease of Ruthven; and even Effie was imposed on to believe that the wounds, though they had bled much, were but trifling. This gave much comfort to the damsel, as it cleared her Robert of a deed of blood.

The baron and Robert set out as soon as it dawned for the cave of Fingal, to perform what they thought an imperious duty, for as such they considered a posthumous request made under such distressing circumstances.

Little did the credulous pair suspect that they were now made the agents of the wicked vampire, for this is the true story of the magic ring.

The outer part of the vampire was not subject to disease, and it was invincible to the sword. If they could contrive to have Stuffa’s ring flung into the well of the cave of Fingal within twenty-four hours after the death wound it was restored to its vile career for the appointed time, and for that season the malignant spirit hovered round the body.

The good Lord of the Isles and Robert arrived safe there, and with little difficulty found the well, for report had spread its situation far and wide owing to its magic qualities. Lord Ronald cast in the ring – instantaneously a hissing, as if of snakes, followed, but soon all was silent as the grave.

They left the cavern and found themselves in the midst of a pelting storm, and their horses, which they had left tied to a tree, were unloosened and they sought in vain for them. As they continued their search a sweet musical voice was heard by the wanderers.

‘’Tis Ariel bids you haste away,

’Tis Ariel warns you not to stay;

Hie and stop a horrid scene,

’Tis the fatal Hallow E’en,

Haste and save the destin’d fair

From the treacherous vampire’s snare!’

‘Robert,’ said the Baron, ‘did you hear ought or do my ears deceive me?’ – again was the verse repeated with this additional stanza—

‘Lose not time but quickly see

Whose the triumph is to be,

Margaret must be no more,

Or the vampire’s reign is o’er’

‘Tis plain enough, my lord; Ariel, who is always reckoned a benign spirit, warns us. – We are deceived. – Oh this cursed vampire! I see it now, he made us tools for his own purpose.’

‘Nonsense, my good fellow,’ said the baron, ‘it must be some new plot against my peace – a real vampire, for we left Marsden’s Earl quite dead.’

‘Oh, he was dead enough in Flanders,’ observed Robert, ‘but he seems to have as many lives as the Witch of Endor’s tabby cat. My mind forbodes horrid things. – No harm, however, in getting home quick.’

But they were involved in the intricacies of the forest, and it required both patience and perseverance to find the right track; at length they succeeded, and walked on with rapid strides, for the evening wore away. At this juncture some horsemen overtook them. – It was quite dusk and objects scarce discernible.

‘Hoy, holla, my good foresters! can you put us in the way for Baron Ronald’s castle; the Lord of the Isles we mean,’ said the foremost of the cavaliers.

‘What want you there?’ replied the baron (himself), ‘let us know ere we guide you, for we are going thither.’

‘I am Hildebrand, Lord Gowen’s sister’s son, sent by my mother to pay my respects and duty to him as becomes a nephew and a godson, nor has he seen me since my infancy.’

‘Welcome! Welcome!’ exclaimed the baron, ‘son of my beloved Ellen, I am thy uncle, but by some strange accidents, here on foot with one single follower.’

‘’Tis lucky,’ replied the youth, springing from his steed and embracing the baron, ‘that we have some led horses in our train.’ Lord Ronald and Robert were glad to hear of this seasonable supply, and mounting the noble beasts, set off at full speed.

Hildebrand, as they rode along, was made acquainted with recent events by his worthy uncle – he was struck with terror, and felt much interested for the Lady Margaret; for young Gowen had imbibed from the countess (his mother) a strong belief of the existence of vampires, and he intimated, though respectfully, to his venerable uncle, that he had done wrong by throwing the ring into the well, as by that means it was most probable the wicked sprite had acquired reanimation.

Again the storm arose and served to retard their progress, for the steeds affrighted at the vivid and incessant lightning, could with difficulty be got forward. At length they arrived at the copse, and Robert with two of Earl Gowen’s serving men dismounted to seek for the body, but it was not there. ‘Just as I thought to find it,’ said the former. ‘Beshrew me it is an industrious sprite; but the moon will soon set,’ and as the benign Ariel sang—

‘Let’s haste and save the destin’d fair

From the treacherous vampire’s snare.’

They spurred their horses, and the storm having made a temporary stop they were soon across the park. Music was sounding – they could distinguish the harper’s strain – the great hall was lighted up most brilliantly – a sumptuous altar had been erected at one end – and for the third time, the marriage ceremony was about to begin, when the baron, Lord Gowen and Robert rushed in and secured the intended bride, who fainted immediately, for in the person of her noble cousin she beheld the form shown her by Una and Ariel in the cave of Fingal, and the vampire’s charm vanished away like snow before the meridian sun.

The vampire seemed armed with supernatural strength – he resisted all their efforts to subdue him – and their swords made no impression – he struggled hard to bear away the Lady Margaret from the midst of her protectors, and the amazing efforts of the vampire spread horror and alarm, for that he was an evil sprite no one now doubted. He had returned to the castle that evening, and said he came with the baron’s consent (who had undertaken a sudden journey) to wed the Lady Margaret, and had brought her father’s ring as a token. All was now bustle, preparation and joy, till the unexpected entrance of the Lord of the Isles and his companions, and had it not been for the providence of Gowen seeking the castle that night, the fiend would have triumphed, for they could not have got home on foot in time enough to save her.

But the fiend was not to be overpowered – he jumped on the temporary altar, sword in hand (after having wounded and bit with his teeth several of the domestics), insisting he would yet have his bride. In an instant the scene changed – the moon set – the thunder rolled over the castle, and the bolt fell on the vampire – he rolled lifeless upon the floor, and after a terrific yell, melted into thin air, incorporeal and invisible to every eye. Thus ended the wicked sprite.

Some months after this event Margaret was happily united to Earl Gowen, with whom she led a happy life till they both sunk into the grave, venerable with age, making good the prediction of the spirits of the cave of Fingal—

‘Ne’er but once was she to wed,

Or have a second bridal bed.’

THE UNHOLY COMPACT ABJURED

Charles Pigault-Lebrun

Charles Pigault-Lebrun (1753–1835) was a Calais-born French novelist and playwright whose real name was Charles-Antoine-Guillaume Pigault de l’Epinoy. His most celebrated novels are L’Enfant du Carnaval (1792) and Angelique et Jeanneton de la Place Maubert (1799). Not so well-known is his short story ‘The Unholy Compact Abjured,’ which, according to Peter Haining, received its first English translation in 1825 for its appearance in a British weekly magazine titled The French Novelist.

IN the churchyard of the town of Salins, department of Jura, may still be seen the remains of a tomb, on which is sculptured in figures as rude as the age in which they were carved, a representation of a soldier, firmly clasped in the arms of a maiden; near them stands the devil in a menacing attitude. Though the inhabitants of the town are all ready to swear to the truth of the story, they are not agreed as to the time when it happened; so that we can only say, that some centuries have rolled away, since a young soldier named St Amand, a native of Salins, was returning after a long absence to the bosom of his family. He walked with quick and cheerful steps, carrying with ease, in a small knapsack, the whole of his worldly goods. Never since he quitted the paternal roof, had he felt so happy; for he hoped ere night, to see his pretty cousin, Ninette, whom he loved with all his heart, and whom he intended to make his wife.

He walked on, gaily carolling, till he saw a crossroad before him, and uncertain of his way, he called to an old woman, with her back towards him, to direct him. She was silent: and, as he approached, he repeated the call, and she raised her head to answer it. The stout heart of the young soldier quailed, as he cast his eyes upon a countenance, such as never before had met his gaze. He had, indeed, reason to tremble; for he had just disturbed in the middle of an incantation, one of the most powerful witches in the country. She regarded him with a demoniac smile, and said in a tone which froze his blood, ‘Turn where thou wilt, thy road is sure, – it leads to death!’

For some moments, he stood as if rooted to the spot; but, soon, fear of the sorceress, who remained gazing upon him, gave him strength to flee. He ran forward, nor stopped till he had completely lost sight of the fearful being, whose dreadful prediction had struck him with such horror. Suddenly a frightful storm arose; the thunder growled, and the lightning flashed round the weary traveller, who, drenched with rain, and overcome with fatigue, had hardly strength to proceed. How great was his joy, when he saw at a distance, a magnificent chateau, the gate of which stood open. He exerted all his remaining strength to reach it, and precipitately entered a large hall. There he stopped, expecting every moment to see some domestics, but no one appeared. He remained some time, watching the progress of the storm: at length it began to abate, and he determined to pursue his way; but as he approached the door, it closed with a loud noise, and all his efforts to open it were in vain.

Struck with astonishment and dismay, the young soldier now believed that the prediction of the witch was about to be accomplished, and that he was doomed to fall a sacrifice to magic art. Exhausted by his vain efforts to open the ponderous door, he sank for a moment in helpless despondency, on the marble pavement; put his trust in providence, and soon revived. He said his prayers, and rising, waited with firmness the issue of this extraordinary adventure. When he became composed enough to look round him, he examined the hall in which he was: a pair of folding doors at the further end, flattered him with the hope of escape that way; but they too, were fastened. The hall was of immense size, entirely unfurnished; the walls, pavement and ceiling, were of black marble; there were no windows, but a small sky-light faintly admitted the light of day, into this abode of gloom, where reigned a silence like that of the tomb. Hour after hour passed; this mournful silence remained still undisturbed; and St Amand, overcome with fatigue and watching, at length sunk into a deep, though perturbed slumber.

His sleep was soon disturbed by a frightful dream: he heard all at once, the sound of a knell, mingled with the cries of bats, and owls, and a hollow voice, murmured in his ear, ‘Woe to those who trouble the repose of the dead!’ He started on his feet, but what a sight met his eyes! The hall was partially illuminated by flashes of sulphurous fire; on the pavement was laid the body of a man newly slain, and covered with innumerable wounds, from which a band of unearthly forms, whose fearful occupation proclaimed their hellish origin, were draining the yet warm blood.

St Amand uttered a shriek of terror, and was in an instant surrounded by the fiends: already were their fangs, from which the remains of their horrid feast still dripped, extended to grasp him, when he hastily made the sign of the cross, and sank senseless upon the ground. When he regained his senses, the infernal band had vanished, and he saw bending over him, an old man, magnificently but strangely dressed: his silken garments flowed loosely around him, and were embroidered with figures of different animals, and mystic devices. His countenance was majestic, and his venerable white beard descended below his girdle: but his features had a wild and gloomy expression: his eyes, above all, had in their glance, that which might appal the stoutest heart. St Amand shrunk from this mysterious being, with awe, mingled with abhorrence, and a cold shudder ran through his veins, as the old man bent upon him his piercing eyes.

‘Rash youth,’ cried he in a severe tone, ‘how is it that thou hast dared to enter this place, where never mortal foot save mine has trod?’

‘I came not willingly,’ replied St Amand, trembling; ‘an evil destiny, and not vain curiosity brought me hither.’

‘Thou wouldst not the less have expiated thy presumption with thy life, but for my aid,’ returned the old man, austerely. ‘I have saved thee from the vampires who guard it, and it depends upon me, whether thou shalt not still become their prey.’

‘Oh! save me, then, I pray thee!’

‘And why should I save thee?’ demanded the venerable magician. ‘What price art thou willing to give me for thy life?’

‘Alas! I have nothing worthy of thy acceptance,’ sighed St Amand.

‘But thou may’st have; and it is only through thee that I can obtain what I most desire.’

‘How?’

‘The blood of a dove, for me, would be a treasure, but I may not kill one; she must be slain for me, by one whose life I have saved. Should I liberate thee, a dove will fly to thy bosom; swear that thou wilt instantly sacrifice her for me, and thou shalt be free.’

‘I swear it!’

Hardly had St Amand uttered the words, when he found himself in the chamber of Ninette, who, with a cry of joy, rushed into his arms. He pressed her with transport to his breast; but scarcely had he embraced her, when he saw the magician standing by his side.

‘Wretch!’ cried he, ‘is it thus thou keepest thine oath? Pierce her heart – she is the dove that thou must instantly sacrifice, if thou wilt not become a feast for the vampires!’

‘Sacrifice her? Never! Never!’

‘Then, thou art my prey!’ and the fiend assuming his own form, sprang towards his victim; but he stopped suddenly – he dared not seize him: for the maiden held him firmly clasped in her arms, and the little cross of gold, which night and day she wore upon her bosom, had been blest by the venerable priest, whose gift it was. Thus, nought unholy dared approach the maiden, and the baffled fiend fled with a tremendous yell, as the crowing of the cock announced the approach of dawn.

The cries of the maiden soon brought the neighbours to her chamber, and among them was the pastor, to whom St Amand related his adventure. ‘Oh, my son!’ said the good priest, ‘what have you done? See you not, that you have entered into a contract with the powers of darkness? Unable to wreak their vengeance on you, when you had guarded yourself with the blessed sign of our redemption, the fiend has had recourse to craft to draw you into his power. You have promised a sacrifice, to the enemy of God and man, but you have done it in ignorance. Abjure then, solemnly, the cursed contract, and dread no longer the vengeance of the fiend.’

The young soldier made the required abjuration, during which, the most dreadful noises were heard: it was the last effort of the demon’s vengeance; for, from that time, he was never seen, nor heard of. St Amand married Ninette, who had given him such a courageous proof of her love; and the cross transmitted from her, to her descendants, was always considered by them as the most precious part of their inheritance. In process of time, the family became wealthy, and a great grandson of St Amand erected the monument we have described, to commemorate the miraculous escape of his ancestor.

VIY

Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809–1852) was a Russian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer of Ukrainian ethnicity. While in his early twenties, Gogol’s first volume of stories, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1831), met with immediate success; and a second volume, Mirgorod (1835), was equally well received. By far the strangest story in the latter is ‘Viy,’ the title of which is the name given to the King of the Gnomes. It should be pointed out, however, that this grotesque entity is not an authentic figure from Ukrainian folklore, as Gogol had claimed in an introductory note to the story, but is probably based on an old folk tradition surrounding St Cassian, the Unmerciful, who was said to have had eyebrows that descended to his knees, whereas, in Gogol’s story, the King of the Gnomes is depicted as having eyelids that reach to the ground.

AS soon as the rather musical seminary bell which hung at the gate of the Bratsky Monastery rang out every morning in Kiev, schoolboys and students hurried thither in crowds from all parts of the town. Students of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy and theology trudged to their classrooms with exercise books under their arms. The grammarians were quite small boys: they shoved each other as they went along and quarrelled in a shrill alto; they almost all wore muddy or tattered clothes, and their pockets were full of all manner of rubbish, such as knucklebones, whistles made of feathers, or a half-eaten pie, sometimes even little sparrows, one of whom suddenly chirruping at an exceptionally quiet moment in the classroom would cost its owner some sound whacks on both hands and sometimes a thrashing. The rhetoricians walked with more dignity; their clothes were often quite free from holes; on the other hand, their countenances almost all bore some decoration, after the style of a figure of rhetoric; either one eye had sunk right under the forehead, or there was a monstrous swelling in place of a lip, or some other disfigurement. They talked and swore among themselves in tenor voices. The philosophers conversed an octave lower in the scale; they had nothing in their pockets but strong, cheap tobacco. They laid in no stores of any sort, but ate on the spot anything they came across; they smelt of pipes and vodka to such a distance that a passing workman would sometimes stop a long way off and sniff the air like a setter dog.

As a rule the market was just beginning to stir at that hour, and the women with bread-rings, rolls, melon seeds, and poppy cakes would tug at the skirts of those whose coats were of fine cloth or some cotton material.

‘This way, young gentlemen, this way!’ they kept saying from all sides: ‘here are bread rings, poppy cakes, twists, good white rolls; they are really good! Made with honey! I baked them myself.’

Another woman lifting up a sort of long twist made of dough would cry: ‘Here’s a breadstick! Buy my breadstick, young gentlemen!’

‘Don’t buy anything off her; see what a horrid woman she is, her nose is nasty and her hands are dirty …’

But the women were afraid to worry the philosophers and the theologians, for the latter were fond of taking things to taste and always a good handful.

On reaching the seminary, the crowd dispersed to their various classes, which were held in low-pitched but fairly large rooms, with little windows, wide doorways, and dirty benches. The classroom was at once filled with all sorts of buzzing sounds: the ‘auditors’ heard their pupils repeat their lessons; the shrill alto of a grammarian rang out, and the windowpane responded with almost the same note; in a corner a rhetorician, whose mouth and thick lips should have belonged at least to a student of philosophy, was droning something in a bass voice, and all that could be heard at a distance was ‘Boo, boo, boo …’ The ‘auditors,’ as they heard the lesson, kept glancing with one eye under the bench, where a roll or a cheese-cake or some pumpkin seeds were peeping out of a scholar’s pocket.

When this learned crowd managed to arrive a little too early, or when they knew that the professors would be later than usual, then by general consent they got up a fight, and everyone had to take part in it, even the monitors whose duty it was to maintain discipline and look after the morals of all the students. Two theologians usually settled the arrangements for the battle: whether each class was to defend itself individually, or whether all were to be divided into two parties, the bursars and the seminarists. In any case the grammarians first began the attack, and, as soon as the rhetoricians entered the fray, they ran away and stood at points of vantage to watch the contest. Then the devotees of philosophy, with long black moustaches, joined in, and finally those of theology, very thick in the neck and attired in shocking trousers, took part. It commonly ended in theology beating all the rest, and the philosophers, rubbing their ribs, would be forced into the classroom and sat down on the benches to rest. The professor, who had himself at one time taken part in such battles, could, on entering the class, see in a minute from the flushed faces of his audience that the battle had been a good one and, while he was caning a rhetorician on the fingers, in another classroom another professor would be smacking philosophers’ hands with a wooden bat. The theologians were dealt with in quite a different way: they received, to use the expression of a professor of theology, ‘a peck of peas apiece,’ in other words, a liberal drubbing with short leather thongs.

On holidays and ceremonial occasions the bursars and the seminarists went from house to house as mummers. Sometimes they acted a play, and then the most distinguished figure was always some theologian, almost as tall as the belfry of Kiev, who took the part of Herodias or Potiphar’s wife. They received in payment a piece of linen, or a sack of millet or half a boiled goose, or something of the sort. All this crowd of students – the seminarists as well as the bursars, with whom they maintain an hereditary feud – were exceedingly badly off for means of subsistence, and at the same time had extraordinary appetites, so that to reckon how many dumplings each of them tucked away at supper would be utterly impossible, and therefore the voluntary offerings of prosperous citizens could not be sufficient for them. Then the ‘senate’ of the philosophers and theologians despatched the grammarians and rhetoricians, under the supervision of a philosopher (who sometimes took part in the raid himself), with sacks on their shoulders to plunder the kitchen gardens – and pumpkin porridge was made in the bursars’ quarters. The members of the ‘senate’ ate such masses of melons that next day their ‘auditors’ heard two lessons from them instead of one, one coming from their lips, another muttering in their stomachs. Both the bursars and the seminarists wore long garments resembling frock coats, ‘prolonged to the utmost limit,’ a technical expression signifying below their heels.

The most important event for the seminarists was the coming of the vacation: it began in June, when they usually dispersed to their homes. Then the whole high-road was dotted with philosophers, grammarians and theologians. Those who had nowhere to go went to stay with some comrade. The philosophers and theologians took a situation, that is, undertook the tuition of the children in some prosperous family, and received in payment a pair of new boots or sometimes even a coat. The whole crowd trailed along together like a gipsy encampment, boiled their porridge, and slept in the fields. Everyone hauled along a sack in which he had a shirt and a pair of leg-wrappers. The theologians were particularly careful and precise: to avoid wearing out their boots, they took them off, hung them on sticks and carried them on their shoulders, particularly if it was muddy; then, tucking their trousers up above their knees, they splashed fearlessly through the puddles. When they saw a village they turned off the high-road and, going up to any house which seemed a little better looking than the rest, stood in a row before the windows and began singing a chant at the top of their voices. The master of the house, some old Cossack villager, would listen to them for a long time, his head propped on his hands, then he would sob bitterly and say, turning to his wife: ‘Wife! What the scholars are singing must be very deep; bring them fat bacon and anything else that we have.’ And a whole bowl of dumplings was emptied into the sack, a good-sized piece of bacon, several flat loaves, and sometimes a trussed hen would go into it too. Fortified with such stores, the grammarians, rhetoricians, philosophers and theologians went on their way again. Their numbers lessened, however, the further they went. Almost all wandered off towards their homes, and only those were left whose parental abodes were further away.

Once, at the time of such a migration, three students turned off the high-road in order to replenish their store of provisions at the first homestead they could find, for their sacks had long been empty. They were the theologian, Halyava; the philosopher, Homa Brut; and the rhetorician, Tibery Gorobets.

The theologian was a well-grown broad-shouldered fellow; he had an extremely odd habit – anything that lay within his reach he invariably stole. In other circumstances, he was of an excessively gloomy temper, and when he was drunk he used to hide in the rank grass, and the seminarists had a lot of trouble to find him there.

The philosopher, Homa Brut, was of a cheerful temper, he was very fond of lying on his back, smoking a pipe; when he was drinking he always engaged musicians and danced the trepak. He often had a taste of the ‘peck of peas,’ but took it with perfect philosophical indifference, saying that there is no escaping what has to be. The rhetorician, Tibery Gorobets, had not yet the right to wear a moustache, to drink vodka, and to smoke a pipe. He only wore a curl round his ear, and so his character was as yet hardly formed; but, judging from the big bumps on the forehead, with which he often appeared in class, it might be presumed that he would make a good fighter. The theologian, Halyava, and the philosopher, Homa, often pulled him by the forelock as a sign of their favour, and employed him as their messenger.

It was evening when they turned off the high-road; the sun had only just set and the warmth of the day still lingered in the air. The theologian and the philosopher walked along in silence smoking their pipes; the rhetorician, Tibery Gorobets, kept knocking off the heads of the wayside thistles with his stick. The road ran between scattered groups of oak and nut trees standing here and there in the meadows. Sloping uplands and little hills, green and round as cupolas, were interspersed here and there about the plain. The cornfields of ripening wheat, which came into view in two places, showed that some village must soon be seen. It was more than an hour, however, since they had passed the cornfields, yet they had come upon no dwelling. The sky was now completely wrapped in darkness, and only in the west there was a pale streak left of the glow of sunset.

‘What the devil does it mean?’ said the philosopher, Homa Brut. ‘It looked as though there must be a village in a minute.’

The theologian did not speak, he gazed at the surrounding country, then put his pipe back in his mouth, and they continued on their way.

‘Upon my soul!’ the philosopher said, stopping again, ‘not a devil’s fist to be seen.’

‘Maybe some village will turn up further on,’ said the theologian, not removing his pipe.

But meantime night had come on, and a rather dark night. Small storm clouds increased the gloom, and by every token they could expect neither stars nor moon. The students noticed that they had lost their way and for a long time had been walking off the road.

The philosopher, after feeling about with his feet in all directions, said at last, abruptly: ‘I say, where’s the road?’

The theologian did not speak for a while, then after pondering, he brought out: ‘Yes, it is a dark night.’

The rhetorician walked off to one side and tried on his hands and knees to feel for the road, but his hands came upon nothing but foxes’ holes. On all sides of them there was the steppe, which, it seemed, no one had ever crossed.

The travellers made another effort to press on a little, but there was the same wilderness in all directions. The philosopher tried shouting, but his voice seemed completely lost on the steppe, and met with no reply. All they heard was, a little afterwards, a faint moaning like the howl of a wolf.

‘I say, what’s to be done?’ said the philosopher.

‘Why, halt and sleep in the open!’ said the theologian, and he felt in his pocket for flint and tinder to light his pipe again. But the philosopher could not agree to this: it was always his habit at night to put away a quarter loaf of bread and four pounds of fat bacon, and he was conscious on this occasion of an insufferable sense of loneliness in his stomach. Besides, in spite of his cheerful temper, the philosopher was rather afraid of wolves.

‘No, Halyava, we can’t,’ he said. ‘What, stretch out and lie down like a dog, without a bite or a sup of anything? Let’s make another try for it; maybe we shall stumble on some dwelling-place and get at least a drink of vodka for supper.’

At the word ‘vodka’ the theologian spat to one side and brought out: ‘Well, of course, it’s no use staying in the open.’

The students walked on, and to their intense delight caught the sound of barking in the distance. Listening which way it came from, they walked on more boldly and a little later saw a light.

‘A village! It really is a village!’ said the philosopher.

He was not mistaken in his supposition; in a little while they actually saw a little homestead consisting of only two cottages looking into the same farmyard. There was a light in the windows; a dozen plum trees stood up by the fence. Looking through the cracks in the paling-gate the students saw a yard filled with carriers’ waggons. Stars peeped out here and there in the sky at the moment.

‘Look, mates, don’t let’s be put off! We must get a night’s lodging somehow!’

The three learned gentlemen banged on the gates with one accord and shouted, ‘Open!’

The door of one of the cottages creaked, and a minute later they saw before them an old woman in sheepskin.

‘Who is there?’ she cried, with a hollow cough.

‘Give us a night’s lodging, granny; we have lost our way; a night in the open is as bad as a hungry belly.’

‘What manner of folks may you be?’

‘Oh, harmless folks: Halyava, a theologian; Brut, a philosopher; and Gorobets, a rhetorician.’

‘I can’t,’ grumbled the old woman. ‘The yard is crowded with folk and every corner in the cottage is full. Where am I to put you? And such great hulking fellows, too! Why, it would knock my cottage to pieces if I put such fellows in it. I know these philosophers and theologians; if one began taking in these drunken fellows, there’d soon be no home left. Be off, be off! There’s no place for you here!’

‘Have pity on us, granny! How can you let Christian souls perish for no rhyme or reason? Put us where you please; and if we do aught amiss or anything else, may our arms be withered, and God only knows what befall us – so there!’

The old woman seemed somewhat softened.

‘Very well,’ she said, as though reconsidering, ‘I’ll let you in, but I’ll put you all in different places; for my mind won’t be at rest if you are all together.’

‘That’s as you please; we’ll make no objection,’ answered the students.

The gate creaked and they went into the yard.

‘Well, granny,’ said the philosopher, following the old woman, ‘how would it be, as they say … upon my soul I feel as though somebody were driving a cart in my stomach: not a morsel has passed my lips all day.’

‘What next will he want!’ said the old woman. ‘No, I’ve nothing to give you, and the oven’s not been heated today.’

‘But we’d pay for it all,’ the philosopher went on, ‘tomorrow morning, in hard cash. Yes!’ he added in an undertone, ‘the devil a bit you’ll get!’

‘Go in, go in! and you must be satisfied with what you’re given. Fine young gentlemen the devil has brought us!’

Homa the philosopher was thrown into utter dejection by these words, but his nose was suddenly aware of the odour of dried fish; he glanced towards the trousers of the theologian who was walking at his side, and saw a huge fishtail sticking out of his pocket. The theologian had already succeeded in filching a whole carp from a waggon. And as he had done this from no interested motive but simply from habit, and, quite forgetting his carp, was already looking about for anything else he could carry off, having no mind to miss even a broken wheel, the philosopher slipped his hand into his friend’s pocket, as though it were his own, and pulled out the carp.

The old woman put the students in their several places: the rhetorician she kept in the cottage, the theologian she locked in an empty closet, the philosopher she assigned a sheep’s pen, also empty.

The latter, on finding himself alone, instantly devoured the carp, examined the hurdle-walls of the pen, kicked an inquisitive pig that woke up and thrust its snout in from the next pen, and turned over on his right side to fall into a sound sleep. All at once the low door opened, and the old woman bending down stepped into the pen.

‘What is it, granny, what do you want?’ said the philosopher.

But the old woman came towards him with outstretched arms.

‘Aha, ha!’ thought the philosopher. ‘No, my dear, you are too old!’

He turned a little away, but the old woman unceremoniously approached him again.

‘Listen, granny!’ said the philosopher. ‘It’s a fast time now; and I am a man who wouldn’t sin in a fast for a thousand golden pieces.’

But the old woman opened her arms and tried to catch him without saying a word.

The philosopher was frightened, especially when he noticed a strange glitter in her eyes. ‘Granny, what is it? Go – go away – God bless you!’ he cried.

The old woman said not a word, but tried to clutch him in her arms.

He leapt on to his feet, intending to escape; but the old woman stood in the doorway, fixed her glittering eyes on him and again began approaching him.

The philosopher tried to push her back with his hands, but to his surprise found that his arms would not rise, his legs would not move, and he perceived with horror that even his voice would not obey him; words hovered on his lips without a sound. He heard nothing but the beating of his heart. He saw the old woman approach him. She folded his arms, bent his head down, leapt with the swiftness of a cat upon his back, and struck him with a broom on the side; and he, prancing like a horse, carried her on his shoulders. All this happened so quickly that the philosopher scarcely knew what he was doing. He clutched his knees in both hands, trying to stop his legs from moving, but to his extreme amazement they were lifted against his will and executed capers more swiftly than a Circassian racer. Only when they had left the farm, and the wide plain lay stretched before them with a forest black as coal on one side, he said to himself: ‘Aha! she’s a witch!’

The waning crescent of the moon was shining in the sky. The timid radiance of midnight lay mistily over the earth, light as a transparent veil. The forests, the meadows, the sky, the dales, all seemed as though slumbering with open eyes; not a breeze fluttered anywhere; there was a damp warmth in the freshness of the night; the shadows of the trees and bushes fell on the sloping plain in pointed wedge shapes like comets. Such was the night when Homa Brut, the philosopher, set off galloping with a mysterious rider on his back. He was aware of an exhausting, unpleasant, and at the same time, voluptuous sensation assailing his heart. He bent his head and saw that the grass which had been almost under his feet seemed growing at a depth far away, and that above it there lay water, transparent as a mountain stream, and the grass seemed to be at the bottom of a clear sea, limpid to its very depths; anyway, he saw clearly in it his own reflection with the old woman sitting on his back. He saw shining there a sun instead of the moon; he heard the bluebells ringing as they bent their little heads; he saw a water-nymph float out from behind the reeds, there was the gleam of her leg and back, rounded and supple, all brightness and shimmering. She turned towards him and now her face came nearer, with eyes clear, sparkling, keen, with singing that pierced to the heart; now it was on the surface, and shaking with sparkling laughter it moved away; and now she turned on her back, and her cloud-like breasts, dead-white like unglazed china, gleamed in the sun at the edges of their white, soft and supple roundness. Little bubbles of water like beads bedewed them. She was all quivering and laughing in the water …

Did he see this or did he not? Was he awake or dreaming? But what was that? The wind or music? It is ringing and ringing and eddying and coming closer and piercing to his heart with an insufferable thrill …

‘What does it mean?’ the philosopher wondered, looking down as he flew along, full speed. The sweat was streaming from him. He was aware of a fiendishly voluptuous feeling, he felt a stabbing, exhaustingly terrible delight. It often seemed to him as though his heart had melted away, and with terror he clutched at it. Worn out, desperate, he began trying to recall all the prayers he knew. He went through all the exorcisms against evil spirits, and all at once felt somewhat refreshed; he felt that his step was growing slower, the witch’s hold upon his back seemed feebler, thick grass touched him, and now he saw nothing extraordinary in it. The clear, crescent moon was shining in the sky.

‘Good!’ the philosopher Homa thought to himself, and he began repeating the exorcisms almost aloud. At last, quick as lightning, he sprang from under the old woman and in his turn leapt on her back. The old woman, with a tiny tripping step, ran so fast that her rider could scarcely breathe. The earth flashed by under him; everything was clear in the moonlight, though the moon was not full; the ground was smooth, but everything flashed by so rapidly that it was confused and indistinct. He snatched up a piece of wood that lay on the road and began whacking the old woman with all his might. She uttered wild howls; at first they were angry and menacing, then they grew fainter, sweeter, clearer, then rang out gently like delicate silver bells that stabbed him to the heart; and the thought flashed through his mind: was it really an old woman?

‘Oh, I can do no more!’ she murmured, and sank exhausted on the ground.

He stood up and looked into her face (there was the glow of sunrise, and the golden domes of the Kiev churches were gleaming in the distance): before him lay a lovely creature with luxuriant tresses all in disorder and eyelashes as long as arrows. Senseless she tossed her bare white arms and moaned, looking upwards with eyes full of tears.

Homa trembled like a leaf on a tree; he was overcome by pity and a strange emotion and timidity, feelings he could not himself explain. He set off running, full speed. His heart throbbed uneasily as he went, and he could not account for the strange new feeling that had taken possession of it. He did not want to go back to the farm; he hastened to Kiev, pondering all the way on this incomprehensible adventure.

There was scarcely a student left in the town. All had dispersed about the countryside, either to situations, or simply without them; because in the villages of Little Russia they could get dumplings, cheese, sour cream, and puddings as big as a hat without paying a kopeck for them. The big rambling house in which the students were lodged was absolutely empty, and although the philosopher rummaged in every corner, and even felt in all the holes and cracks in the roof, he could not find a bit of bacon or even a stale roll such as were commonly hidden there by the students.

The philosopher, however, soon found means to improve his lot: he walked whistling three times through the market, finally winked at a young widow in a yellow bonnet who was selling ribbons, shot and wheels – and was that very day regaled with wheat dumplings, a chicken … in short, there is no telling what was on the table laid for him in a little mud house in the middle of a cherry orchard.

That same evening the philosopher was seen in a tavern: he was lying on the bench, smoking a pipe as his habit was, and in the sight of all he flung the Jew who kept the house a gold coin. A mug stood before him. He looked at all that came in and went out with eyes full of cool satisfaction, and thought no more of his extraordinary adventure.

Meanwhile rumours were circulating everywhere that the daughter of one of the richest Cossack sotniks,fn1 who lived nearly forty miles from Kiev, had returned one day from a walk, terribly injured, hardly able to crawl home to her father’s house, was lying at the point of death, and had expressed a wish that one of the Kiev seminarists, Homa Brut, should read the prayers over her and the psalms for three days after her death. The philosopher heard of this from the rector himself, who summoned him to his room and informed him that he was to set off on the journey without any delay, that the noble sotnik had sent servants and a carriage to fetch him.

The philosopher shuddered from an unaccountable feeling which he could not have explained to himself. A dark presentiment told him that something evil was awaiting him. Without knowing why, he bluntly declared that he would not go.

‘Listen, Domine Homa!’ said the rector. (On some occasions he expressed himself very courteously with those under his authority.) ‘Who the devil is asking you whether you want to go or not? All I have to tell you is that if you go on jibbing and making difficulties, I’ll order you such a whacking with a young birch tree, on your back and the rest of you, that there will be no need for you to go to the bath after.’

The philosopher, scratching behind his ear, went out without uttering a word, proposing at the first suitable opportunity to put his trust in his heels. Plunged in thought he went down the steep staircase that led into a yard shut in by poplars, and stood still for a minute, hearing quite distinctly the voice of the rector giving orders to his butler and some one else – probably one of the servants sent to fetch him by the sotnik.

‘Thank his honour for the grain and the eggs,’ the rector was saying: ‘and tell him that as soon as the books about which he writes are ready I will send them at once, I have already given them to a scribe to be copied, and don’t forget, my good man, to mention to his honour that I know there are excellent fish at his place, especially sturgeon, and he might on occasion send some; here in the market it’s bad and dear. And you, Yavtuh, give, the young fellows a cup of vodka each, and bind the philosopher or he’ll be off directly.’

‘There, the devil’s son!’ the philosopher thought to himself. ‘He scented it out, the wily long-legs!’ He went down and saw a covered chaise, which he almost took at first for a baker’s oven on wheels. It was, indeed, as deep as the oven in which bricks are baked. It was only the ordinary Cracow carriage in which Jews travel fifty together with their wares to all the towns where they smell out a fair. Six healthy and stalwart Cossacks, no longer young, were waiting for him. Their tunics of fine cloth, with tassels, showed that they belonged to a rather important and wealthy master; some small scars proved that they had at some time been in battle, not ingloriously.

‘What’s to be done? What is to be must be!’ the philosopher thought to himself and, turning to the Cossacks, he said aloud: ‘Good day to you, comrades!’

‘Good health to you, master philosopher,’ some of the Cossacks replied.

‘So I am to get in with you? It’s a goodly chaise!’ he went on, as he clambered in, ‘we need only hire some musicians and we might dance here.’

‘Yes, it’s a carriage of ample proportions,’ said one of the Cossacks, seating himself on the box beside the coachman, who had tied a rag over his head to replace the cap which he had managed to leave behind at a pot-house. The other five and the philosopher crawled into the recesses of the chaise and settled themselves on sacks filled with various purchases they had made in the town. ‘It would be interesting to know,’ said the philosopher, ‘if this chaise were loaded up with goods of some sort, salt for instance, or iron wedges, how many horses would be needed then?’

‘Yes,’ the Cossack, sitting on the box, said after a pause, ‘it would need a sufficient number of horses.’

After this satisfactory reply the Cossack thought himself entitled to hold his tongue for the remainder of the journey.

The philosopher was extremely desirous of learning more in detail, who this sotnik was, what he was like, what had been heard about his daughter who in such a strange way returned home and was found on the point of death, and whose story was now connected with his own, what was being done in the house, and how things were there. He addressed the Cossacks with inquiries, but no doubt they too were philosophers, for by way of a reply they remained silent, smoking their pipes and lying on their backs. Only one of them turned to the driver on the box with a brief order. ‘Mind, Overko, you old booby, when you are near the tavern on the Tchuhraylovo road, don’t forget to stop and wake me and the other chaps, if any should chance to drop asleep.’

After this he fell asleep rather audibly. These instructions were, however, quite unnecessary for, as soon as the gigantic chaise drew near the pot-house, all the Cossacks with one voice shouted: ‘Stop!’ Moreover, Overko’s horses were already trained to stop of themselves at every pot-house.

In spite of the hot July day, they all got out of the chaise and went into the low-pitched dirty room, where the Jew who kept the house hastened to receive his old friends with every sign of delight. The Jew brought from under the skirt of his coat some ham sausages, and, putting them on the table, turned his back at once on this food forbidden by the Talmud. All the Cossacks sat down round the table; earthenware mugs were set for each of the guests. Homa had to take part in the general festivity, and, as Little Russians infallibly begin kissing each other or weeping when they are drunk, soon the whole room resounded with smacks. ‘I say, Spirid, a kiss.’ ‘Come here, Dorosh, I want to embrace you!’

One Cossack with grey moustaches, a little older than the rest, propped his cheek on his hand and began sobbing bitterly at the thought that he had no father nor mother and was all alone in the world. Another one, much given to moralising, persisted in consoling him, saying: ‘Don’t cry; upon my soul, don’t cry! What is there in it …? The Lord knows best, you know.’

The one whose name was Dorosh became extremely inquisitive, and, turning to the philosopher Homa, kept asking him: ‘I should like to know what they teach you in the college. Is it the same as what the deacon reads in church, or something different?’

‘Don’t ask!’ the sermonising Cossack said emphatically: ‘let it be as it is, God knows what is wanted, God knows everything.’

‘No, I want to know,’ said Dorosh, ‘what is written there in those books? Maybe it is quite different from what the deacon reads.’

‘Oh, my goodness, my goodness!’ said the sermonising worthy, ‘and why say such a thing; it’s as the Lord wills. There is no changing what the Lord has willed!’

‘I want to know all that’s written. I’ll go to college, upon my word, I will. Do you suppose I can’t learn? I’ll learn it all, all!’

‘Oh my goodness …!’ said the sermonising Cossack, and he dropped his head on the table, because he was utterly incapable of supporting it any longer on his shoulders. The other Cossacks were discussing their masters and the question why the moon shone in the sky. The philosopher, seeing the state of their minds, resolved to seize his opportunity and make his escape. To begin with he turned to the grey-headed Cossack who was grieving for his father and mother.

‘Why are you blubbering, uncle?’ he said, ‘I am an orphan myself! Let me go in freedom, lads! What do you want with me?’

‘Let him go!’ several responded, ‘why, he is an orphan, let him go where he likes.’

‘Oh, my goodness, my goodness!’ the moralising Cossack articulated, lifting his head. ‘Let him go!’

‘Let him go where he likes!’

And the Cossacks meant to lead him out into the open air themselves, but the one who had displayed his curiosity stopped them, saying: ‘Don’t touch him. I want to talk to him about college: I am going to college myself …’

It is doubtful, however, whether the escape could have taken place, for when the philosopher tried to get up from the table his legs seemed to have become wooden, and he began to perceive such a number of doors in the room that he could hardly discover the real one.

It was evening before the Cossacks bethought themselves that they had further to go. Clambering into the chaise, they trailed along the road, urging on the horses and singing a song of which nobody could have made out the words or the sense. After trundling on for the greater part of the night, continually straying off the road, though they knew every inch of the way, they drove at last down a steep hill into a valley, and the philosopher noticed a paling or hurdle that ran alongside, low trees and roofs peeping out behind it. This was a big village belonging to the sotnik. By now it was long past midnight; the sky was dark, but there were little stars twinkling here and there. No light was to be seen in a single cottage. To the accompaniment of the barking of dogs, they drove into the courtyard. Thatched barns and little houses came into sight on both sides; one of the latter, which stood exactly in the middle opposite the gates, was larger than the others, and was apparently the sotnik’s residence. The chaise drew up before a little shed that did duty for a barn, and our travellers went off to bed. The philosopher, however, wanted to inspect the outside of the sotnik’s house; but, though he stared his hardest, nothing could be seen distinctly; the house looked to him like a bear; the chimney turned into the rector. The philosopher gave it up and went to sleep.

When he woke up, the whole house was in commotion: the sotnik’s daughter had died in the night. Servants were running hurriedly to and fro; some old women were crying; an inquisitive crowd was looking through the fence at the house, as though something might be seen there. The philosopher began examining at his leisure the objects he could not make out in the night. The sotnik’s house was a little, low-pitched building, such as was usual in Little Russia in old days; its roof was of thatch; a small, high, pointed gable with a little window that looked like an eye turned upwards, was painted in blue and yellow flowers and red crescents; it was supported on oak posts, rounded above and hexagonal below, with carving at the top. Under the gable was a little porch with seats on each side. There were verandahs round the house resting on similar posts, some of them carved in spirals. A tall pyramidal pear tree, with trembling leaves, made a patch of green in front of the house. Two rows of barns for storing grain stood in the middle of the yard, forming a sort of wide street leading to the house. Beyond the barns, close to the gate, stood facing each other two three-cornered storehouses, also thatched. Each triangular wall was painted in various designs and had a little door in it. On one of them was depicted a Cossack sitting on a barrel, holding a mug above his head with the inscription: ‘I’ll drink it all!’ On the other, there was a bottle, flagons, and at the sides, by way of ornament, a horse upside down, a pipe, a tambourine, and the inscription: ‘Wine is the Cossack’s comfort!’ A drum and brass trumpets could be seen through the huge window in the loft of one of the barns. At the gates stood two cannons. Everything showed that the master of the house was fond of merrymaking, and that the yard often resounded with the shouts of revellers. There were two windmills outside the gate. Behind the house stretched gardens, and through the treetops the dark caps of chimneys were all that could be seen of cottages smothered in green bushes. The whole village lay on the broad sloping side of a hill. The steep side, at the very foot of which lay the courtyard, made a screen from the north. Looked at from below, it seemed even steeper, and here and there on its tall top uneven stalks of rough grass stood up black against the clear sky; its bare aspect was somehow depressing; its clay soil was hollowed out by the fall and trickle of rain. Two cottages stood at some distance from each other on its steep slope; one of them was overshadowed by the branches of a spreading apple tree, banked up with soil and supported by short stakes near the root. The apples, knocked down by the wind, were falling right into the master’s courtyard. The road, coiling about the hill from the very top, ran down beside the courtyard to the village. When the philosopher scanned its terrific steepness and recalled their journey down it the previous night, he came to the conclusion that either the sotnik had very clever horses or that the Cossacks had very strong heads to have managed, even when drunk, to escape flying head over heels with the immense chaise and baggage. The philosopher was standing on the very highest point in the yard. When he turned and looked in the opposite direction he saw quite a different view. The village sloped away into a plain. Meadows stretched as far as the eye could see; their brilliant verdure was deeper in the distance, and whole rows of villages looked like dark patches in it, though they must have been more than fifteen miles away. On the right of the meadowlands was a line of hills, and a hardly perceptible streak of flashing light and darkness showed where the Dnieper ran.

‘Ah, a splendid spot!’ said the philosopher, ‘this would be the place to live, fishing in the Dnieper and the ponds, bird-catching with nets, or shooting king-snipe and little bustard. Though I do believe there would be a few great bustards too in those meadows! One could dry lots of fruit, too, and sell it in the town, or, better still, make vodka of it, for there’s no drink to compare with fruit-vodka. But it would be just as well to consider how to slip away from here.’

He noticed outside the fence a little path completely overgrown with weeds; he was mechanically setting his foot on it with the idea of simply going first out for a walk, and then stealthily passing between the cottages and dashing out into the open country, when he suddenly felt a rather strong hand on his shoulder.

Behind him stood the old Cossack who had on the previous evening so bitterly bewailed the death of his father and mother and his own solitary state.

‘It’s no good your thinking of making off, Mr Philosopher!’ he said: ‘this isn’t the sort of establishment you can run away from; and the roads are bad, too, for anyone on foot; you had better come to the master: he’s been expecting you this long time in the parlour.’

‘Let us go! To be sure … I’m delighted,’ said the philosopher, and he followed the Cossack.

The sotnik, an elderly man with grey moustaches and an expression of gloomy sadness, was sitting at a table in the parlour, his head propped on his hands. He was about fifty; but the deep despondency on his face and its wan pallor showed that his soul had been crushed and shattered at one blow, and all his old gaiety and noisy merrymaking had gone for ever. When Homa went in with the old Cossack, he removed one hand from his face and gave a slight nod in response to their low bows.

Homa and the Cossack stood respectfully at the door.

‘Who are you, where do you come from, and what is your calling, good man?’ said the sotnik, in a voice neither friendly nor ill-humoured.

‘A bursar, student in philosophy, Homa Brut …’

‘Who was your father?’

‘I don’t know, honoured sir.’

‘Your mother?’

‘I don’t know my mother either. It is reasonable to suppose, of course, that I had a mother; but who she was and where she came from, and when she lived – upon my soul, good sir, I don’t know.’

The old man paused and seemed to sink into a reverie for a minute.

‘How did you come to know my daughter?’

‘I didn’t know her, honoured sir, upon my word, I didn’t. I have never had anything to do with young ladies, never in my life. Bless them, saving your presence!’

‘Why did she fix on you and no other to read the psalms over her?’

The philosopher shrugged his shoulders. ‘God knows how to make that out. It’s a well-known thing, the gentry are for ever taking fancies that the most learned man couldn’t explain, and the proverb says: “The devil himself must dance at the master’s bidding.”’

‘Are you telling the truth, philosopher?’

‘May I be struck down by thunder on the spot if I’m not.’

‘If she had but lived one brief moment longer,’ the sotnik said to himself mournfully, ‘I should have learned all about it. “Let no one else read over me, but send, father, at once to the Kiev Seminary and fetch the bursar, Homa Brut; let him pray three nights for my sinful soul. He knows …!” But what he knows, I did not hear: she, poor darling, could say no more before she died. You, good man, are no doubt well known for your holy life and pious works, and she, maybe, heard tell of you.’

‘Who? I?’ said the philosopher, stepping back in amazement. ‘I – holy life!’ he articulated, looking straight in the sotnik’s face. ‘God be with you, sir! What are you talking about! Why – though it’s not a seemly thing to speak of – I paid the baker’s wife a visit on Maundy Thursday.’

‘Well … I suppose there must be some reason for fixing on you. You must begin your duties this very day.’

‘As to that, I would tell your honour … Of course, any man versed in holy scripture may, as far as in him lies … but a deacon or a sacristan would be better fitted for it. They are men of understanding, and know how it is all done; while I … Besides I haven’t the right voice for it, and I myself am good for nothing. I’m not the figure for it.’

‘Well, say what you like, I shall carry out all my darling’s wishes, I will spare nothing. And if for three nights from today you duly recite the prayers over her, I will reward you, if not … I don’t advise the devil himself to anger me.’

The last words were uttered by the sotnik so vigorously that the philosopher fully grasped their significance.

‘Follow me!’ said the sotnik.

They went out into the hall. The sotnik opened the door into another room, opposite the first. The philosopher paused a minute in the hall to blow his nose and crossed the threshold with unaccountable apprehension.

The whole floor was covered with red cotton stuff. On a high table in the corner under the holy images lay the body of the dead girl on a coverlet of dark blue velvet adorned with gold fringe and tassels. Tall wax candles, entwined with sprigs of guelder rose, stood at her feet and head, shedding a dim light that was lost in the brightness of daylight. The dead girl’s face was hidden from him by the inconsolable father, who sat down facing her with his back to the door. The philosopher was impressed by the words he heard:

‘I am grieving, my dearly beloved daughter, not that in the flower of your age you have left the earth, to my sorrow and mourning, without living your allotted span; I grieve, my darling, that I know not him, my bitter foe, who was the cause of your death. And if I knew the man who could but dream of hurting you, or even saying anything unkind of you, I swear to God he should not see his children again, if he be old as I, nor his father and mother, if he be of that time of life, and his body should be cast out to be devoured by the birds and beasts of the steppe! But my grief it is, my wild marigold, my birdie, light of my eyes, that I must live out my days without comfort, wiping with the skirt of my coat the trickling tears that flow from my old eyes, while my enemy will be making merry and secretly mocking at the feeble old man …’

He came to a standstill, due to an outburst of sorrow, which found vent in a flood of tears.

The philosopher was touched by such inconsolable sadness; he coughed, uttering a hollow sound in the effort to clear his throat. The sotnik turned round and pointed him to a place at the dead girl’s head, before a small lectern with books on it.

‘I shall get through three nights somehow,’ thought the philosopher: ‘and the old man will stuff both my pockets with gold pieces for it.’

He drew near, and clearing his throat once more, began reading, paying no attention to anything else and not venturing to glance at the face of the dead girl. A profound stillness reigned in the apartment. He noticed that the sotnik had withdrawn. Slowly, he turned his head to look at the dead, and …

A shudder ran through his veins: before him lay a beauty whose like had surely never been on earth before. Never, it seemed, could features have been formed in such striking yet harmonious beauty. She lay as though living: the lovely forehead, fair as snow, as silver, looked deep in thought; the even brows – dark as night in the midst of sunshine – rose proudly above the closed eyes; the eyelashes, that fell like arrows on the cheeks, glowed with the warmth of secret desires; the lips were rubies, ready to break into the laugh of bliss, the flood of joy … But in them, in those very features, he saw something terrible and poignant. He felt a sickening ache stirring in his heart, as though, in the midst of a whirl of gaiety and dancing crowds, someone had begun singing a funeral dirge. The rubies of her lips looked like blood surging up from her heart. All at once he was aware of something dreadfully familiar in her face. ‘The witch!’ he cried in a voice not his own, as, turning pale, he looked away and fell to repeating his prayers. It was the witch that he had killed!

When the sun was setting, they carried the corpse to the church. The philosopher supported the coffin swathed in black on his shoulder, and felt something cold as ice on it. The sotnik walked in front, with his hand on the right side of the dead girl’s narrow resting home. The wooden church, blackened by age and overgrown with green lichen, stood disconsolately, with its three cone-shaped domes, at the very end of the village. It was evident that no service had been performed in it for a long time. Candles had been lighted before almost every image. The coffin was set down in the centre opposite the altar. The old sotnik kissed the dead girl once more, bowed down to the ground, and went out together with the coffin bearers, giving orders that the philosopher should have a good supper and then be taken to the church. On reaching the kitchen all the men who had carried the coffin began putting their hands on the stove, as the custom is with Little Russians, after seeing a dead body.

The hunger, of which the philosopher began at that moment to be conscious, made him for some minutes entirely oblivious of the dead girl. Soon all the servants began gradually assembling in the kitchen, which in the sotnik’s house was something like a club, where all the inhabitants of the yard gathered together, including even the dogs, who wagging their tails, came to the door for bones and slops. Wherever anybody might be sent, and with whatever duty he might be charged, he always went first to the kitchen to rest for at least a minute on the bench and smoke a pipe. All the unmarried men in their smart Cossack tunics lay there almost all day long, on the bench, under the bench, or on the stove – anywhere, in fact, where a comfortable place could be found to lie on. Then everybody invariably left behind in the kitchen either his cap or a whip to keep stray dogs off or some such thing. But the biggest crowd always gathered at supper-time, when the drover who had taken the horses to the paddock, and the herdsman who had brought the cows in to be milked, and all the others who were not to be seen during the day, came in. At supper, even the most taciturn tongues were moved to loquacity. It was then that all the news was talked over: who had got himself new breeches, and what was hidden in the bowels of the earth, and who had seen a wolf. There were witty talkers among them; indeed, there is no lack of them anywhere among the Little Russians.

The philosopher sat down with the rest in a big circle in the open air before the kitchen door. Soon a peasant woman in a red bonnet popped out, holding in both hands a steaming bowl of dumplings, which she set down in their midst. Each pulled out a wooden spoon from his pocket, or, for lack of a spoon, a wooden stick. As soon as their jaws began moving more slowly, and the wolfish hunger of the whole party was somewhat assuaged, many of them began talking. The conversation naturally turned on the dead maiden.

‘Is it true,’ said a young shepherd who had put so many buttons and copper discs on the leather strap on which his pipe hung that he looked like a small haberdasher’s shop, ‘is it true that the young lady, saving your presence, was on friendly terms with the Evil One?’

‘Who? The young mistress?’ said Dorosh, a man our philosopher already knew, ‘why, she was a regular witch! I’ll take my oath she was a witch!’

‘Hush, hush, Dorosh,’ said another man, who had shown a great disposition to soothe the others on the journey, ‘that’s no business of ours, God bless it! It’s no good talking about it.’

But Dorosh was not at all inclined to hold his tongue; he had just been to the cellar on some job with the butler, and, having applied his lips to two or three barrels, he had come out extremely merry and talked away without ceasing.

‘What do you want? Me to be quiet?’ he said, ‘why, I’ve been ridden by her myself! Upon my soul, I have!’

‘Tell us, uncle,’ said the young shepherd with the buttons, ‘are there signs by which you can tell a witch?’

‘No, you can’t,’ answered Dorosh, ‘there’s no way of telling: you might read through all the psalm-books and you couldn’t tell.’

‘Yes, you can, Dorosh, you can; don’t say that,’ the former comforter objected; ‘it’s with good purpose God has given every creature its peculiar habit; folks that have studied say that a witch has a little tail.’

‘When a woman’s old, she’s a witch,’ the grey-headed Cossack said coolly.

‘Oh! you’re a nice set!’ retorted the peasant woman, who was at that instant pouring a fresh lot of dumplings into the empty pot; ‘regular fat hogs!’

The old Cossack, whose name was Yavtuh and nickname Kovtun, gave a smile of satisfaction seeing that his words had cut the old woman to the quick; while the herdsman gave vent to a guffaw, like the bellowing of two bulls as they stand facing each other.

The beginning of the conversation had aroused the philosopher’s curiosity and made him intensely anxious to learn more details about the sotnik’s daughter, and so, wishing to bring the talk back to that subject, he turned to his neighbour with the words: ‘I should like to ask why all the folk sitting at supper here look upon the young mistress as a witch? Did she do a mischief to anybody or bring anybody to harm?’

‘There were all sorts of doings,’ answered one of the company, a man with a flat face strikingly resembling a spade. ‘Everybody remembers the dog-boy Mikita and the …’

‘What about the dog-boy Mikita?’ said the philosopher.

‘Stop! I’ll tell about the dog-boy Mikita,’ said Dorosh.

‘I’ll tell about him,’ said the drover, ‘for he was a great crony of mine.’

‘I’ll tell about Mikita,’ said Spirid.

‘Let him, let Spirid tell it!’ shouted the company.

Spirid began: ‘You didn’t know Mikita, Mr Philosopher Homa. Ah, he was a man! He knew every dog as well as he knew his own father. The dog-boy we’ve got now, Mikola, who’s sitting next but one from me, isn’t worth the sole of his shoe. Though he knows his job, too, but beside the other he’s trash, slops.’

‘You tell the story well, very well!’ said Dorosh, nodding his head approvingly.

Spirid went on: ‘He’d see a hare quicker than you’d wipe the snuff from your nose. He’d whistle: “Here, Breaker! here Swift-foot!” and he in full gallop on his horse; and there was no saying which would outrace the other, he the dog, or the dog him. He’d toss off a mug of vodka without winking. He was a fine dog-boy! Only a little time back he began to be always staring at the young mistress. Whether he had fallen in love with her, or whether she had simply bewitched him, anyway the man was done for, he went fairly silly; the devil only knows what he turned into … pfoo! No decent word for it …’

‘That’s good,’ said Dorosh.

‘As soon as the young mistress looks at him, he drops the bridle out of his hand, calls Breaker Bushy-brow, is all of a fluster and doesn’t know what he’s doing. One day the young mistress comes into the stable where he is rubbing down a horse.

‘“I say, Mikita,” says she, “let me put my foot on you.” And he, silly fellow, is pleased at that. “Not your foot only,” says he, “you may sit on me altogether.” The young mistress lifted her foot, and, as soon as he saw her bare, plump, white leg, he went fairly crazy, so he said. He bent his back, silly fellow, and, clasping her bare legs in his hands, ran galloping like a horse all over the countryside. And he couldn’t say where he was driven, but he came back more dead than alive, and from that time he withered up like a chip of wood; and one day when they went into the stable, instead of him they found a heap of ashes lying there and an empty pail; he had burnt up entirely, burnt up of himself. And he was a dog-boy such as you couldn’t find another all the world over.’

When Spirid had finished his story, reflections upon the rare qualities of the deceased dog-boy followed from all sides.

‘And haven’t you heard tell of Sheptun’s wife?’ said Dorosh, addressing Homa.

‘No.’

‘Well, well! You are not taught with too much sense, it seems, in the seminary. Listen, then. There’s a Cossack called Sheptun in our village – a good Cossack! He is given to stealing at times, and telling lies when there’s no occasion, but … he’s a good Cossack. His cottage is not so far from here. Just about the very hour that we sat down this evening to table, Sheptun and his wife finished their supper and lay down to sleep, and, as it was fine weather, his wife lay down in the yard, and Sheptun in the cottage on the bench; or no … it was the wife lay indoors on the bench and Sheptun in the yard …’

‘Not on the bench, she was lying on the floor,’ put in a peasant woman who stood in the doorway with her cheek propped in her hand.

Dorosh looked at her, then looked down, then looked at her again, and after a brief pause, said: ‘When I strip off your petticoat before everybody, you won’t be pleased.’

This warning had its effect; the old woman held her tongue and did not interrupt the story again.

Dorosh went on: ‘And in the cradle hanging in the middle of the cottage lay a baby a year old – whether of the male or female sex I can’t say. Sheptun’s wife was lying there when she heard a dog scratching at the door and howling fit to make you run out of the cottage. She was scared, for women are such foolish creatures that, if towards evening you put your tongue out at one from behind a door, her heart’s in her mouth. However, she thought: “Well, I’ll go and give that damned dog a whack on its nose, and maybe it will stop howling,” and taking the oven-fork she went to open the door. She had hardly opened it when a dog dashed in between her legs and straight to the baby’s cradle. She saw that it was no longer a dog, but the young mistress, and, if it had been the young lady in her own shape as she knew her, it would not have been so bad. But the peculiar thing is that she was all blue and her eyes glowing like coals. She snatched up the child, bit its throat, and began sucking its blood. Sheptun’s wife could only scream: “Oh, horror!” and rushed towards the door. But she sees the door’s locked in the passage; she flies up to the loft and there she sits all of a shake, silly woman; and then she sees the young mistress coming up to her in the loft; she pounced on her, and began biting the silly woman. When Sheptun pulled his wife down from the loft in the morning she was bitten all over and had turned black and blue; and next day the silly woman died. So you see what uncanny and wicked doings happen in the world! Though it is of the gentry’s breed, a witch is a witch.’

After telling the story, Dorosh looked about him complacently and thrust his finger into his pipe, preparing to fill it with tobacco. The subject of the witch seemed inexhaustible. Each in turn hastened to tell some tale of her. One had seen the witch in the form of a haystack come right up to the door of his cottage; another had had his cap or his pipe stolen by her; many of the girls in the village had had their hair cut off by her; others had lost several quarts of blood sucked by her.

At last the company pulled themselves together and saw that they had been chattering too long, for it was quite dark in the yard. They all began wandering off to their several sleeping places, which were either in the kitchen, or the barns, or the middle of the courtyard.

‘Well, Mr Homa! now it’s time for us to go to the deceased lady,’ said the grey-headed Cossack, addressing the philosopher; and together with Spirid and Dorosh they set off to the church, lashing with their whips at the dogs, of which there were a great number in the road, and which gnawed their sticks angrily.

Though the philosopher had managed to fortify himself with a good mugful of vodka, he felt a fearfulness creeping stealthily over him as they approached the lighted church. The stories and strange tales he had heard helped to work upon his imagination. The darkness under the fence and trees grew less thick as they came into the more open place. At last they went into the church enclosure and found a little yard, beyond which there was not a tree to be seen, nothing but open country and meadows swallowed up in the darkness of night. The three Cossacks and Homa mounted the steep steps to the porch and went into the church. Here they left the philosopher with the best wishes that he might carry out his duties satisfactorily, and locked the door after them, as their master had bidden them.

The philosopher was left alone. First he yawned, then he stretched, then he blew into both hands, and at last he looked about him. In the middle of the church stood the black coffin; candles were gleaming under the dark images; the light from them only lit up the ikon-stand and shed a faint glimmer in the middle of the church; the distant corners were wrapped in darkness. The tall, old-fashioned ikon stand showed traces of great antiquity; its carved fretwork, once gilt, only glistened here and there with splashes of gold; the gilt had peeled off in one place, and was completely tarnished in another; the faces of the saints, blackened by age, had a gloomy look. The philosopher looked round him again. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what is there to be afraid of here? No living man can come in here, and to guard me from the dead and ghosts from the other world I have prayers that I have but to read aloud to keep them from laying a finger on me. It’s all right!’ he repeated with a wave of his hand, ‘let’s read.’ Going up to the lectern he saw some bundles of candles. ‘That’s good,’ thought the philosopher; ‘I must light up the whole church so that it may be as bright as by daylight. Oh, it is a pity that one must not smoke a pipe in the temple of God!’

And he proceeded to stick up wax candles at all the cornices, lecterns and images, not stinting them at all, and soon the whole church was flooded with light. Only overhead the darkness seemed somehow more profound, and the gloomy ikons looked even more sullenly out of their antique carved frames, which glistened here and there with specks of gilt. He went up to the coffin, looked timidly at the face of the dead – and could not help closing his eyelids with a faint shudder: such terrible, brilliant beauty!

He turned and tried to move away; but with the strange curiosity, the self-contradictory feeling, which dogs a man especially in times of terror, he could not, as he withdrew, resist taking another look. And then, after the same shudder, he looked again. The striking beauty of the dead maiden certainly seemed terrible. Possibly, indeed, she would not have overwhelmed him with such panic fear if she had been a little less lovely. But there was in her features nothing faded, tarnished, dead; her face was living, and it seemed to the philosopher that she was looking at him with closed eyes. He even fancied that a tear was oozing from under her right eyelid, and, when it rested on her cheek, he saw distinctly that it was a drop of blood.

He walked hastily away to the lectern, opened the book, and to give himself more confidence began reading in a very loud voice. His voice smote upon the wooden church walls, which had so long been deaf and silent; it rang out, forlorn, unechoed, in a deep bass in the absolutely dead stillness, and seemed somehow uncanny even to the reader himself. ‘What is there to be afraid of?’ he was saying meanwhile to himself. ‘She won’t rise up out of her coffin, for she will fear the word of God. Let her lie there! And a fine Cossack I am, if I should be scared. Well, I’ve drunk a drop too much – that’s why it seems dreadful. I’ll have a pinch of snuff. Ah, the good snuff! Fine snuff, good snuff!’ However, as he turned over the pages, he kept taking sidelong glances at the coffin, and an involuntary feeling seemed whispering to him: ‘Look, look, she is going to get up! See, she’ll sit up, she’ll look out from the coffin!’

But the silence was deathlike; the coffin stood motionless; the candles shed a perfect flood of light. A church lighted up at night with a dead body in it and no living soul near is full of terror!

Raising his voice, he began singing in various keys, trying to drown the fears that still lurked in him, but every minute he turned his eyes to the coffin, as though asking, in spite of himself: ‘What if she does sit up, if she gets up?’

But the coffin did not stir. If there had but been some sound! some living creature! There was not so much as a cricket churring in the corner! There was nothing but the faint splutter of a far-away candle, the light tap of a drop of wax falling on the floor.

‘What if she were to get up …?’

She was raising her head …

He looked at her wildly and rubbed his eyes. She was, indeed, not lying down now, but sitting up in the coffin. He looked away, and again turned his eyes with horror on the coffin. She stood up … she was walking about the church with her eyes shut, moving her arms to and fro as though trying to catch someone.

She was coming straight towards him. In terror he drew a circle round him; with an effort he began reading the prayers and pronouncing the exorcisms which had been taught him by a monk who had all his life seen witches and evil spirits.

She stood almost on the very line; but it was clear that she had not the power to cross it, and she turned livid all over like one who has been dead for several days. Homa had not the courage to look at her; she was terrifying. She ground her teeth and opened her dead eyes; but, seeing nothing, turned with fury – that was apparent in her quivering face – in another direction, and, flinging her arms, clutched in them each column and corner, trying to catch Homa. At last she stood still, holding up a menacing finger, and lay down again in her coffin.

The philosopher could not recover his self-possession, but kept gazing at the narrow dwelling place of the witch. At last the coffin suddenly sprang up from its place and with a hissing sound began flying all over the church, zigzagging through the air in all directions.

The philosopher saw it almost over his head, but at the same time he saw that it could not cross the circle he had drawn, and he redoubled his exorcisms. The coffin dropped down in the middle of the church and stayed there without moving. The corpse got up out of it, livid and greenish. But at that instant the crow of the cock was heard in the distance; the corpse sank back in the coffin and closed the lid.

The philosopher’s heart was throbbing and the sweat was streaming down him; but, emboldened by the cock’s crowing, he read on more rapidly the pages he ought to have read through before. At the first streak of dawn the sacristan came to relieve him, together with old Yavtuh, who was at that time performing the duties of a beadle.

On reaching his distant sleeping-place, the philosopher could not for a long time get to sleep; but weariness gained the upper hand at last and he slept on till dinner-time. When he woke up, all the events of the night seemed to him to have happened in a dream. To keep up his strength he was given at dinner a mug of vodka.

Over dinner he soon grew lively, made a remark or two, and devoured a rather large sucking pig almost unaided; but some feeling he could not have explained made him unable to bring himself to speak of his adventures in the church, and to the inquiries of the inquisitive he replied: ‘Yes, all sorts of strange things happened.’ The philosopher was one of those people who, if they are well fed, are moved to extraordinary benevolence. Lying down with his pipe in his teeth he watched them all with a honied look in his eyes and kept spitting to one side.

After dinner the philosopher was in excellent spirits. He went round the whole village and made friends with almost everybody; he was kicked out of two cottages, indeed; one good-looking young woman caught him a good smack on the back with a spade when he took it into his head to try her shift and skirt, and inquire what stuff they were made of. But as evening approached the philosopher grew more pensive. An hour before supper almost all the servants gathered together to play kragli – a sort of skittles in which long sticks are used instead of balls, and the winner has the right to ride on the loser’s back. This game became very entertaining for the spectators; often the drover, a man as broad as a pancake, was mounted on the swineherd, a feeble little man, who was nothing but wrinkles. Another time it was the drover who had to bow his back, and Dorosh, leaping on it, always said: ‘What a fine bull!’ The more dignified of the company sat in the kitchen doorway. They looked on very gravely, smoking their pipes, even when the young people roared with laughter at some witty remark from the drover or Spirid. Homa tried in vain to give himself up to this game; some gloomy thought stuck in his head like a nail. At supper, in spite of his efforts to be merry, terror grew within him as the darkness spread over the sky.

‘Come, it’s time to set off, Mr Seminarist!’ said his friend, the grey-headed Cossack, getting up from the table, together with Dorosh; ‘let us go to our task.’

Homa was taken to the church again in the same way; again he was left there alone and the door was locked upon him. As soon as he was alone, fear began to take possession of him again. Again he saw the dark ikons, the gleaming frames, and the familiar black coffin standing in menacing stillness and immobility in the middle of the church.

‘Well,’ he said to himself, ‘now there’s nothing marvellous to me in this marvel. It was only alarming the first time. Yes, it was only rather alarming the first time, and even then it wasn’t so alarming; now it’s not alarming at all.’

He made haste to take his stand at the lectern, drew a circle around him, pronounced some exorcisms, and began reading aloud, resolving not to raise his eyes from the book and not to pay attention to anything. He had been reading for about an hour and was beginning to cough and feel rather tired; he took his horn out of his pocket and, before putting the snuff to his nose, stole a timid look at the coffin. His heart turned cold; the corpse was already standing before him on the very edge of the circle, and her dead, greenish eyes were fixed upon him. The philosopher shuddered, and a cold chill ran through his veins. Dropping his eyes to the book, he began reading the prayers and exorcisms more loudly, and heard the corpse again grinding her teeth and waving her arms trying to catch him. But, with a sidelong glance out of one eye, he saw that the corpse was feeling for him where he was not standing, and that she evidently could not see him. He heard a hollow mutter, and she began pronouncing terrible words with her dead lips; they gurgled hoarsely like the bubbling of boiling pitch. He could not have said what they meant; but there was something fearful in them. The philosopher understood with horror that she was making an incantation.

A wind blew through the church at her words, and there was a sound as of multitudes of flying wings. He heard the beating of wings on the panes of the church windows and on the iron window-frames, the dull scratching of claws upon the iron, and an immense troop thundering on the doors and trying to break in. His heart was throbbing violently all this time; closing his eyes, he kept reading prayers and exorcisms. At last there was a sudden shrill sound in the distance; it was a distant cock crowing. The philosopher, utterly spent, stopped and took breath.

When they came in to fetch him, they found him more dead than alive; he was leaning with his back against the wall while, with his eyes almost starting out of his head, he stared at the Cossacks as they came in. They could scarcely get him along and had to support him all the way back. On reaching the courtyard, he pulled himself together and bade them give him a mug of vodka. When he had drunk it, he stroked down the hair on his head and said: ‘There are lots of foul things of all sorts in the world! And the panics they give one, there …’ With that the philosopher waved his hand in despair.

The company sitting round him bowed their heads, hearing such sayings. Even a small boy, whom everybody in the servants’ quarters felt himself entitled to depute in his place when it was a question of cleaning the stables or fetching water, even this poor youngster stared open-mouthed at the philosopher.

At that moment the old cook’s assistant, a peasant woman, not yet past middle age, a terrible coquette, who always found something to pin to her cap – a bit of ribbon, a pink, or even a scrap of coloured paper, if she had nothing better – passed by, in a tightly girt apron, which displayed her round, sturdy figure.

‘Good day, Homa!’ she said, seeing the philosopher. ‘Aie, aie, aie! what’s the matter with you?’ she shrieked, clasping her hands.

‘Why, what is it, silly woman?’

‘Oh, my goodness! Why, you’ve gone quite grey!’

‘Aha! why, she’s right!’ Spirid pronounced, looking attentively at the philosopher. ‘Why, you have really gone as grey as our old Yavtuh.’

The philosopher, hearing this, ran headlong to the kitchen, where he had noticed on the wall a fly-blown triangular bit of looking-glass before which were stuck forget-me-nots, periwinkles and even wreaths of marigolds, testifying to its importance for the toilet of the finery-loving coquette. With horror he saw the truth of their words: half of his hair had in fact turned white.

Homa Brut hung his head and abandoned himself to reflection. ‘I will go to the master,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll tell him all about it and explain that I cannot go on reading. Let him send me back to Kiev straight away.’

With these thoughts in his mind he bent his steps towards the porch of the house.

The sotnik was sitting almost motionless in his parlour. The same hopeless grief which the philosopher had seen in his face before was still apparent. Only his cheeks were more sunken. It was evident that he had taken very little food, or perhaps had not eaten at all. The extraordinary pallor of his face gave it a look of stony immobility.

‘Good day!’ he pronounced on seeing Homa, who stood, cap in hand, at the door. ‘Well, how goes it with you? All satisfactory?’

‘It’s satisfactory, all right; such devilish doings, that one can but pick up one’s cap and take to one’s heels.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Why, your daughter, your honour … Looking at it reasonably, she is, to be sure, of noble birth, nobody is going to gainsay it; only, saving your presence, God rest her soul …’

‘What of my daughter?’

‘She had dealings with Satan. She gives one such horrors that there’s no reading scripture at all.’

‘Read away! read away! She did well to send for you; she took much care, poor darling, about her soul and tried to drive away all evil thoughts with prayers.’

‘That’s as you like to say, your honour; upon my soul, I cannot go on with it!’

‘Read away!’ the sotnik persisted in the same persuasive voice, ‘you have only one night left; you will do a Christian deed and I will reward you.’

‘But whatever rewards … Do as you please, your honour, but I will not read!’ Homa declared resolutely.

‘Listen, philosopher!’ said the sotnik, and his voice grew firm and menacing. ‘I don’t like these pranks. You can behave like that in your seminary; but with me it is different. When I flog, it’s not the same as your rector’s flogging. Do you know what good leather whips are like?’

‘I should think I do!’ said the philosopher, dropping his voice; ‘everybody knows what leather whips are like: in a large dose, it’s quite unendurable.’

‘Yes, but you don’t know yet how my lads can lay them on!’ said the sotnik, menacingly, rising to his feet, and his face assumed an imperious and ferocious expression that betrayed the unbridled violence of his character, only subdued for the time by sorrow.

‘Here they first give a sound flogging, then sprinkle with vodka, and begin over again. Go along, go along, finish your task! If you don’t – you’ll never get up again. If you do – a thousand gold pieces!’

‘Oho, ho! he’s a stiff one!’ thought the philosopher as he went out: ‘he’s not to be trifled with. Wait a bit, friend; I’ll cut and run, so that you and your hounds will never catch me.’

And Homa made up his mind to run away. He only waited for the hour after dinner when all the servants were accustomed to lie about in the hay in the barns and to give vent to such snores and wheezing that the backyard sounded like a factory.

The time came at last. Even Yavtuh closed his eyes as he lay stretched out in the sun. With fear and trembling, the philosopher stealthily made his way into the pleasure garden, from which he fancied he could more easily escape into the open country without being observed. As is usual with such gardens, it was dreadfully neglected and overgrown, and so made an extremely suitable setting for any secret enterprise. Except for one little path, trodden by the servants on their tasks, it was entirely hidden in a dense thicket of cherry-trees, elders and burdock, which thrust up their tall stems covered with clinging pinkish burs. A network of wild hop was flung over this medley of trees and bushes of varied hues, forming a roof over them, clinging to the fence and falling, mingled with wild bell-flowers, from it in coiling snakes. Beyond the fence, which formed the boundary of the garden, there came a perfect forest of rank grass and weeds, which looked as though no one cared to peep enviously into it, and as though any scythe would be broken to bits trying to mow down the stout stubbly stalks.

When the philosopher tried to get over the fence, his teeth chattered and his heart beat so violently that he was frightened at it. The skirts of his long coat seemed to stick to the ground as though someone had nailed them down. As he climbed over, he fancied he heard a voice shout in his ears with a deafening hiss: ‘Where are you off to?’ The philosopher dived into the long grass and fell to running, frequently stumbling over old roots and trampling upon moles. He saw that when he came out of the rank weeds he would have to cross a field, and that beyond it lay a dark thicket of blackthorn, in which he thought he would be safe. He expected after making his way through it to find the road leading straight to Kiev. He ran across the field at once and found himself in the thicket.

He crawled through the prickly bushes, paying a toll of rags from his coat on every thorn, and came out into a little hollow. A willow with spreading branches bent down almost to the earth. A little brook sparkled pure as silver. The first thing the philosopher did was to lie down and drink, for he was insufferably thirsty. ‘Good water!’ he said, wiping his lips; ‘I might rest here!’

‘No, we had better go straight ahead; they’ll be coming to look for you!’

These words rang out above his ears. He looked round – before him was standing Yavtuh. ‘Curse Yavtuh!’ the philosopher thought in his wrath; ‘I could take you and fling you … And I could batter in your ugly face and all of you with an oak post.’

‘You needn’t have gone such a long way round,’ Yavtuh went on, ‘you’d have done better to keep to the road I have come by, straight by the stable. And it’s a pity about your coat. It’s good cloth. What did you pay a yard for it? But we’ve walked far enough; it’s time to go home.’

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