The Pobratim Part 64

"Radonic," answered he.

"Is the wound a bad one?"

"He is dying!" replied the Montenegrin, in a whisper.

CHAPTER XVI

THE VAMPIRE

Vranic, having found out that the Austrian law could do nothing for him, except punish him for his crime in cutting down the vines of a man who had done him no harm, shut himself up at home to nurse his wounded head, to brood over his revenge, and pity himself for all the mishaps that had befallen him. The more he pitied himself, the more irritable he grew, and the more he considered himself a poor persecuted wretch. He durst not go out for fear of being laughed at; and, in fact, when he did go, the children in the streets began to call him names, to ask him what he had done with his ears, and whether he liked cutting people's vines down.

With his bickering and peevish temper, not only his fast friends grew weary of him, but his own family forsook him; his very brother, at last, could not abide his saturnine humour, and left him. He then began to drink to try and drown his troubles; still, he only took enough to muddle his brains, and, moreover, the greater quant.i.ty of spirits he consumed the more sullen he grew.

Having but one idea in his head--that is, the great wrong that had been done to him--he hardly fell asleep at nights but he was at once haunted by fearful dreams. His murdered brother would at once appear before him and ask him--urge him--to avenge his death:

"While you are enjoying the inheritance I left you, I am groaning in h.e.l.l-fire, and my murderer is not only left free, but he is even made much of."

Ma.s.ses were said for the dead man's soul, still that was of no avail; Vranic's dreams got always more frightful. The _morina_, the dreadful _mara_ or nightmare, took up its dwelling in the tailor's house. No sooner did the poor man close his eyes than the ponderous ghost came hovering over him, and at last crushed him with its weight. The sign of the pentacle was drawn on every door and window. A witch drew it for him on paper with magical ink, and he placed the paper under his pillow. He put another on the sheets; then the nightmare left him alone, and other evil spirits came in its stead. Not knowing the names of these evil spirits or their nature, it was a difficult task to find out the planet under which they were subjected, the sign which they obeyed, and what charm was potent enough to scare them away.

One night (it was about the hour when his brother had been murdered) the tailor was lying on his bed in a half-wakeful slumber--that is to say, his drowsy body was benumbed, but his mind was still quite awake, when all at once he was roused by the noise of a loud wind blowing within the house. Outside, everything was perfectly quiet, but inside a distant door seemed to have been opened down in some cellar, and a draught was blowing up with a moaning, booming sound.

You might have fancied that a grave had been opened and a ghastly gale was blowing from the hollow depths of h.e.l.l below, and that it came wheezing up. It was dreadful to hear, for it had such a dismal sound.

Perhaps it was only his imagination, but Vranic thought that this mysterious draught was cold, damp and chilly; that it had an earthy, rank smell of mildew as it blew by him.

He lay there shivering, hardly daring to breathe, putting his tongue between his chattering teeth not to make a noise, and listening to that strange, weird blast as at last it died far away in a faint, imperceptible sigh.

No sooner had the sound of the wind entirely subsided than he heard a cadenced noise of footsteps coming from afar. Were these steps out of the house or inside? he could not tell. He heard them draw nearer and ever nearer; they seemed to come across the wall of the room, as if bricks and stones were no obstacle to his uncanny visitor; now they were in his room, walking up to his bed. Appalled with terror, Vranic looked towards the place from where the footsteps came, but he could not see anybody. Trembling as if with a fit of palsy, he cast a fearful, furtive glance all around, even in the furthermost corner of the room; not the shadow of a ghost was to be seen; nevertheless, the footsteps of the invisible person grew louder as they approached at a slow, sure, inexorable pace.

At last they stopped; they were by his bed. Vranic felt the breath of a person on his very face.

Except a person who has felt it, no one can realise the horror of having an invisible being leaning over you, of feeling his breath on your face.

Vranic tried to rise, but he at once came in close contact with the unseen monster; two cold, clammy, boneless hands gripped him and pinned him down; he vainly struggled to get free, but he was as a baby in the hands of his invisible foe. In a few seconds he was entirely mastered, cowed down, overcome, panting, breathless. When he tried to scream, a limp, nerveless hand, as soft as a huge toad, was placed upon his mouth, shutting it up entirely, and impeding all power of utterance. Then the ponderous ma.s.s of the ghost came upon him, crushed him, smothered him. Fainting with fear, his strength and his senses forsook him at the same time, and he swooned away.

When he came back to life, the cold, grey light of the dawning day, pouring in through the half-closed shutters, gave the room a squalid, lurid look. His head was not exactly paining him, but it felt drained of all its contents, and as light as an empty skull, or an old poppy head in which the seeds are rattling. He looked around. There was nothing unusual in the room; everything was just as it had been upon the previous evening. Had his struggle with the ghost been but a dream? He tried to move, to rise, but all his limbs were as weary and sore as if he had really fought and been beaten. Nay, his whole body was as weak as if he had had some long illness and was only now convalescent. He recalled to mind all the details of the struggle, he looked at the places where he felt numb and sore, and everywhere he remarked livid stains which he had not seen before. He lifted himself up on his right elbow; to his horror and consternation, there were two or three spots of blood upon the white sheet.

He felt faint and sick at that sight; he understood everything. His had not been a dream; his gruesome visitor was a frightful ghost, a terrible _vukodlaki_, which had fought with him and sucked his blood.

His brother had become a loathsome vampire; he was the first victim.

For a moment he remained bewildered, unable to think; then when he did manage to collect his wandering senses, the terrible reality of his misfortune almost drove him mad again.

The ghost, having tasted his blood, would not leave him till it had drained him to the very last drop. He was a lost man; no medical aid could be of any use; nourishing food, wine and tonics might prolong his agony a few days longer and no more. He was doomed to a sure death. Daily--as if in a decline--he saw himself wasting away, for the vampire would suck the very marrow of his bones.

His was a dreary life, indeed, and yet he clung to it with might and main. The days pa.s.sed on wearily, and he tried to hope against hope itself; but he was so weak and dispirited that the slightest noise made him shiver and grow pale. An unexpected footstep, the opening or shutting of a door, slackened or accelerated the beating of his heart.

With fear and trembling he waited for night to come on, and when the sun went down--when darkness came over the earth--his terror grew apace. Still, where was he to go? He had not a single friend on the surface of the earth. He, therefore, drank several gla.s.ses of spirits, muttered his prayers and went to bed. No sooner had he fallen asleep than he fell again a prey to the vampire.

On the third night he determined not to go to bed, but to remain awake, and thus wait for the arrival of his gruesome guest. Still, at the last moment his courage failed him, so he went to an old man who lived hard by. He promised to make him a new waistcoat if he would only give him a rug to sleep on, and tell him a story until he got drowsy.

The old man complied willingly, above all as Vranic had brought a _bukara_ of wine with him, so he at once began the story of

THE PRIEST AND HIS COOK.

In the village of Steino there lived an old priest who was exceedingly wealthy, but who was, withal, as miserly as he was rich.

Although he had fields which stretched farther than the eye could reach, fat pastures, herds and flocks; although his cellars were filled with mellow wine, his barns were bursting with the grace of G.o.d; although abundance reigned in his house, still he was never known to have given a crust of bread to a beggar or a gla.s.s of wine to a weary old man.

He lived all alone with a skinflint of an old cook, as stingy as himself, who would rather by far have seen an apple rot than give it to a hungry child whose mouth watered for it.

Those two grim old fogeys, birds of one feather, cared for no one else in this world except for each other, and, in fact, the people in Steino said----, but people in villages have bad tongues, so it's useless to repeat what was said about them.

The priest had a nephew, a smith, a good-hearted, bright-eyed, burly kind of a fellow, beloved by all the village, except by his uncle, whom he had greatly displeased because he had married a bonny la.s.s of the neighbouring village of Smarje, instead of taking as a wife the----, well, the cook's niece, though, between us and the wall, the cook was never known to have had a sister or a brother either, and the people----, but, as I said before, the people were apt to say nasty things about their priest.

The smith, who was quite a pauper, had several children, for the poorer a man is the more babies his wife presents him with--women everywhere are such unreasonable creatures--and whenever he applied to his uncle for a trifle, the uncle would spout the Scriptures in Latin, saying something about the unfitness of casting pearls before pigs, and that he would rather see him hanged than help him.

Once--it was in the middle of winter--the poor smith had been without any work for days and days. He had spent his last penny; then the baker would not give him any more bread on credit, and at last, on a cold, frosty night, the poor children had been obliged to go to bed supperless.

The smith, who had sworn a few days before never again to put his foot in the priest's house, was, in his despair, obliged to humble himself, and go and beg for a loaf of bread, with which to satisfy his children on the morrow.

Before he knocked at the door, he went and peeped in through the half-closed shutters, and he saw his uncle and the cook seated by a roaring fire, with their feet on the fender, munching roasted chestnuts and drinking mulled wine. Their shining lips still seemed greasy from the fat sausages they had eaten for supper, and, as he sniffed at the window, he fancied the air was redolent with the spices of black-pudding. The smell made his mouth water and his hungry stomach rumble.

The poor man knocked at the door with a trembling hand; his legs began to quake, he had not eaten the whole of that long day; but then he thought of his hungry children, and knocked with a steadier hand.

The priest, hearing the knock, thought it must be some pious parishioner bringing him a fat pullet or perhaps a sleek sucking-pig, the price of a ma.s.s to be said on the morrow; but when, instead, he saw his nephew, looking as mean and as sheepish as people usually do when they go a-begging, he was greatly disappointed.

"What do you want, bothering here at this time of the night?" asked the old priest, gruffly.

"Uncle," said the poor man, dejectedly.

"I suppose you've been drinking, as usual; you stink of spirits."

"Spirits, in sooth! when I haven't a penny to bless me."

"Oh, if it's only a blessing you want, here, take one and go!"

And the priest lifted up his thumb and the two fingers, and uttered something like "_Dominus vobisc.u.m,_" and then waved him off; whilst the old shrew skulking near him uttered a croaking kind of laugh, and said that a priest's blessing was a priceless boon.

"Yes," replied the smith, "upon a full stomach; but my children have gone to bed supperless, and I haven't had a crust of bread the whole of the day."

"'Man shall not live by bread alone,' the Scriptures say, and you ought to know that if you are a Christian, sir."

"Eh? I daresay the Scriptures are right, for priests surely do not live on bread alone; they fatten on plump pullets and crisp pork-pies."

"Do you mean to bully me, you unbelieving beggar?"