APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/books/dracula/DRACGUEST

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                     DRACULA'S GUEST

                          1914

                           by

                      Bram Stoker

NOTE:  DRACULA'S GUEST was excised from  the original DRACULA
      MSS by his publisher because of the length of the orig-
      inal book MSS.  It  was  published as a short story in
      1914,  two years after Stoker's death.  Enjoy!

                  NEW WAVE PUBLISHERS
                  2103 N. LIBERTY STREET
                  PORTLAND OR 97217-4971
                  [phone]


When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich,
and the air was full of the joyousness of early  summer. Just as we were
about to depart, Herr Delbruck (the maitre d'hotel of the Quatre
Saisons, where I was staying) came down bareheaded to the carriage and,
after wishing me a  pleasant drive, said to the coachman, still holding
his hand on the handle of the carriage door, "Remember you are back by
nightfall. The sky looks bright but there is a shiver in the north wind
that says there may be a sudden storm. But I am sure you will not be
late." Here he smiled and added,"for you know what night it is."

Johann answered with an emphatic, "Ja, mein Herr," and,  touching his
hat, drove off quickly. When we had cleared the town, I said, after
signalling to him to stop:

"Tell me, Johann, what is tonight?"

He crossed himself, as he answered laconically: "Walpurgis nacht." Then
he took out his watch, a great, old-fashioned German silver thing as big
as a turnip and looked at it, with his eyebrows gathered together and a
little impatient shrug of his shoulders. I realized that this was his
way of respect- fully protesting against the unnecessary delay and sank
back in the carriage, merely motioning him to proceed. He started off
rapidly, as if to make up for lost time. Every now and  then the horses
seemed to throw up their heads and sniff the air suspiciously. On such
occasions I often looked round in alarm. The road was pretty bleak, for
we were traversing a  sort of high windswept plateau. As we drove,I saw
a road that looked but little used and which seemed to dip through a
lit- tle winding valley. It looked so inviting that, even at the  risk
of offending him, I called Johann to stop--and when he had pulled up, I
told him I would like to drive down that  road. He made all sorts of
excuses and frequently crossed him- self as he spoke. This somewhat
piqued my curiosity, so I ask- ed him various questions. He answered
fencingly and repeatedly looked at his watch in protest.

Finally I said, "Well, Johann, I want to go down this road. I shall not
ask you to come unless you like; but tell me why you do not like to go,
that is all I ask." For answer he seem- ed to throw himself off the box,
so quickly did he reach the ground. Then he stretched out his hands
appealingly to me and implored me not to go. There was just enough of
English mixed with the German for me to understand the drift of his
talk. He seemed always just about to tell me something--the very idea
of which evidently frightened him; but each time he pulled him- self up
saying, "Walpurgis nacht!"

I tried to argue with him, but it was difficult to argue with a man when
I did not know his language. The advantage  certainly rested with him,
for although he began to speak in  English, of a very crude and broken
kind, he always got ex- cited and broke into his native tongue--and
every time he did  so, he looked at his watch. Then the horses became
restless  and sniffed the air. At this he grew very pale, and, looking
around in a frightened way, he suddenly jumped forward, took  them by
the bridles,and led them on some twenty feet. I foll- owed and asked why
he had done this. For an answer he crossed  himself, pointed to the spot
we had left, and drew his carr- iage in the direction of the other road,
indicating a cross,  and said, first in German, then in English, "Buried
him--him  what killed themselves."

 I remembered the old custom of burying suicides at cross  roads: "Ah! I
see, a suicide. How interesting!" But for the life of me I could not
make out why the horses were frighten- ed.

Whilst we were talking, we heard a sort of sound between a yelp and a
bark.It was far away; but the horses got very rest- less, and it took
Johann all his time to quiet them. He was  pale and said, "It sounds
like a wolf--but yet there are no wolves here now."

"No?" I said, questioning him. "Isn't it long since the wolves were so
near the city?"

"Long, long," he answered, "in the spring and summer; but with the snow
the wolves have been here not so long."

Whilst he was petting the horses and trying to quiet them, dark clouds
drifted rapidly across the sky. The sunshine pass- ed away, and a breath
of cold wind seemed to drift over us.It was only a breath, however, and
more of a warning than a fact, for the sun came out brightly again.

Johann looked under his lifted hand at the horizon and said, "The storm
of snow, he comes before long time." Then he looked at his watch again,
and, straightway holding his reins firmly--for the horses were still
pawing the ground restless- ly and shaking their heads--he climbed to
his box as though the time had come for proceeding on our journey.

I felt a little obstinate and did not at once get into the carriage.

"Tell me," I said, "about this place where the road leads," and I
pointed down.

Again he crossed himself and mumbled a prayer before he an- swered, "It
is unholy."

"What is unholy?" I enquired.

"The village."

"Then there is a village?"

"No, no. No one lives there hundreds of years."

My curiosity was piqued, "But you said there was a village."

"There was."

"Where is it now?"

Whereupon he burst out into a long story in German and Eng- lish, so
mixed up that I could not quite understand exactly what he said. Roughly
I gathered that long ago, hundreds of years, men had died there and been
buried in their graves; but sounds were heard under the clay, and when
the graves were opened,men and women were found rosy with life and their
mouths red with blood. And so, in haste to save their lives  (aye, and
their souls!--and here he crossed himself)those who were left fled away
to other places, where the living lived and the dead were dead and
not--not something. He was evident- ly afraid to speak the last words.
As he proceeded with his narration, he grew more and more excited. It
seemed as if his imagination had got hold of him, and he ended in a
perfect paroxysm of fear--white-faced, perspiring, trembling, and
looking round him as if expecting that some dreadful presence would
manifest itself there in the bright sunshine on the open plain.

Finally, in an agony of desperation, he cried, "Walpurgis nacht!" and
pointed to the carriage for me to get in.

All my English blood rose at this,and standing back I said, "You are
afraid, Johann--you are afraid. Go home, I shall re- turn alone, the
walk will do me good." The carriage door was open. I took from the seat
my oak walking stick--which I al- ways carry on my holiday
excursions--and closed the door, pointing back to Munich, and said, "Go
home,Johann--Walpurgis nacht doesn't concern Englishmen."

The horses were now more restive than ever, and Johann was trying to
hold them in, while excitedly imploring me not to do anything so
foolish. I pitied the poor fellow, he was so deeply in earnest; but all
the same I could not help laughing. His English was quite gone now. In
his anxiety he had forgot- ten that his only means of making me
understand was to talk my language, so he jabbered away in his native
German. It be- gan to be a little tedious. After giving the direction,
"Home!" I turned to go down the cross road into the valley.

With a despairing gesture,Johann turned his horses towards Munich. I
leaned on my stick and looked after him. He went slowly along the road
for a while, then there came over the crest of the hill a man tall and
thin. I could see so much in the distance. When he drew near the
horses,they began to jump and kick about, then to scream with terror.
Johann could not hold them in; they bolted down the road, running away
madly. I watched them out of sight, then looked for the stranger; but I
found that he, too, was gone.

With a light heart I turned down the side road through the deepening
valley to which Johann had objected. There was not the slightest
reason,that I could see, for his objection; and I daresay I tramped for
a couple of hours without thinking of time or distance and certainly
without seeing a person or a house. So far as the place was concerned,
it was desolation itself. But I did not notice this particularly till,
on turn- ing a bend in the road,I came upon a scattered fringe of wood;
then I recognized that I had been impressed unconsciously by the
desolation of the region through which I had passed.

I sat down to rest myself and began to look around. It  struck me that
it was considerably colder than it had been at the commencement of my
walk--a sort of sighing sound seemed to be around me with, now and then,
high overhead, a sort of muffled roar. Looking upwards I noticed that
great thick clouds were drafting rapidly across the sky from north to
south at a great height.There were signs of a coming storm in some lofty
stratum of the air. I was a little chilly, and, thinking that it was the
sitting still after the exercise of walking, I resumed my journey.

The ground I passed over was now much more picturesque.  There were no
striking objects that the eye might single out, but in all there was a
charm of beauty.I took little heed of time, and it was only when the
deepening twilight forced it- self upon me that I began to think of how
I should find my way home. The air was cold, and the drifting of clouds
high overhead was more marked. They were accompanied by a sort of far
away rushing sound, through which seemed to come at inter- vals that
mysterious cry which the driver had said came from a wolf. For a while I
hesitated. I had said I would see the  deserted village, so on I went
and presently came on a wide stretch of open country, shut in by hills
all around. Their sides were covered with trees which spread down to the
plain, dotting in clumps the gentler slopes and hollows which showed
here and there.I followed with my eye the winding of the road and saw
that it curved close to one of the densest of these clumps and was lost
behind it.

As I looked there came a cold shiver in the air, and the snow began to
fall. I thought of the miles and miles of bleak country I had passed,
and then hurried on to seek shelter of the wood in front. Darker and
darker grew the sky, and faster and heavier fell the snow, till the
earth before and around me was a glistening white carpet the further
edge of which  was lost in misty vagueness. The road was here but crude,
and when on the level its boundaries were not so marked as when it
passed through the cuttings; and in a little while I found that I must
have strayed from it, for I missed underfoot the hard surface, and my
feet sank deeper in the grass and moss. Then the wind grew stronger and
blew with ever increasing force, till I was fain to run before it. The
air became icy- cold, and in spite of my exercise I began to suffer. The
snow was now falling so thickly and whirling around me in such rap- id
eddies that I could hardly keep my eyes open. Every now and then the
heavens were torn asunder by vivid lightning, and in the flashes I could
see ahead of me a great mass of trees, chiefly yew and cypress all
heavily coated with snow.

I was soon amongst the shelter of the trees, and there in comparative
silence I could hear the rush of the wind high overhead. Presently the
blackness of the storm had become mer- ged in the darkness of the night.
By-and-by the storm seemed to be passing away,it now only came in fierce
puffs or blasts. At such moments the weird sound of the wolf appeared to
be echoed by many similar sounds around me.

Now and again, through the black mass of drifting cloud,  came a
straggling ray of moonlight which lit up the expanse and showed me that
I was at the edge of a dense mass of cyp- ress and yew trees. As the
snow had ceased to fall, I walked out from the shelter and began to
investigate more closely. It appeared to me that, amongst so many old
foundations as I had passed, there might be still standing a house in
which, though in ruins,I could find some sort of shelter for a while. As
I skirted the edge of the copse, I found that a low wall encircled it,
and following this I presently found an opening. Here the cypresses
formed an alley leading up to a square mass of some kind of building.
Just as I caught sight of this, however, the drifting clouds obscured
the moon, and I passed up the path in darkness. The wind must have grown
colder, for I felt myself shiver as I walked; but there was hope of
shel- ter, and I groped my way blindly on.

I stopped, for there was a sudden stillness. The storm had passed; and,
perhaps in sympathy with nature's silence, my heart seemed to cease to
beat. But this was only momentarily; for suddenly the moonlight broke
through the clouds showing me that I was in a graveyard and that the
square object before me was a great massive tomb of marble, as white as
the snow that lay on and all around it. With the moonlight there came a
fierce sigh of the storm which appeared to resume its  course with a
long, low howl, as of many dogs or wolves.I was awed and shocked, and I
felt the cold perceptibly grow upon me till it seemed to grip me by the
heart. Then while the flood of moonlight still fell on the marble tomb,
the storm gave further evidence of renewing, as though it were return-
ing on its track. Impelled by some sort of fascination, I app- roached
the sepulchre to see what it was and why such a thing stood alone in
such a place.I walked around it and read, over the Doric door, in
German--

   COUNTESS DOLINGEN OF GRATZ

    IN STYRIA

   SOUGHT AND FOUND DEATH

    1801

On the top of the tomb, seemingly driven through the solid marble--for
the structure was composed of a few vast blocks of stone--was a great
iron spike or stake. On going to the back I saw, graven in great Russian
letters: "The dead travel fast."

There was something so weird and uncanny about the whole thing that it
gave me a turn and made me feel quite faint. I began to wish, for the
first time, that I had taken Johann's advice. Here a thought struck me,
which came under almost mys- sterious circumstances and with a terrible
shock. This was Wal- purgis Night!

Walpurgis Night was when, according to the belief of mill- ions of
people, the devil was abroad--when the graves were op- ened and the dead
came forth and walked. When all evil things of earth and air and water
held revel. This very place the driver had specially shunned. This was
the depopulated vill- age of centuries ago.This was where the suicide
lay; and this was the place where I was alone--unmanned, shivering with
cold in a shroud of snow with a wild storm gathering again up- on me! It
took all my philosophy, all the religion I had been taught,all my
courage,not to collapse in a paroxysm of fright.

And now a perfect tornado burst upon me. The ground shook as though
thousands of horses thundered across it; and this time the storm bore on
its icy wings, not snow, but great hailstones which drove with such
violence that they might have come from the thongs of Balearic
slingers--hailstones that beat down leaf and branch and made the shelter
of the  cypresses of no more avail than though their stems were stand-
ing corn. At the first I had rushed to the nearest tree;but I was soon
fain to leave it and seek the only spot that seemed to afford refuge,
the deep Doric doorway of the marble tomb. There, crouching against the
massive bronze door, I gained a certain amount of protection from the
beating of the hail- stones, for now they only drove against me as they
ricochett- ed from the ground and the side of the marble.

As I leaned against the door, it moved slightly and opened inwards. The
shelter of even a tomb was welcome in that piti- less tempest and I was
about to enter it when there came a flash of forked lightning that lit
up the whole expanse of the heavens. In the instant, as I am a living
man, I saw, as my my eyes turned into the darkness of the tomb, a
beautiful woman with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on
a bier. As the thunder broke overhead, I was grasped as by the hand of a
giant and hurled out into the storm. The whole thing was so sudden that,
before I could realize the shock, moral as well as physical, I found the
hailstones beating me down. At the same time I had a strange, dominating
feeling that I was not alone. I looked towards the tomb. Just then there
came another blinding flash which seemed to strike the iron stake that
surmounted the tomb and to pour through to the earth, blasting and
crumbling the marble, as in a burst of flame. The dead woman rose for a
moment of agony while she was lapped in the flame, and her bitter scream
of pain was drowned in the thundercrash. The last thing I heard was this
mingling of dreadful sound,as again I was seized in the giant grasp and
dragged away, while the hailstones beat on me and the air around seemed
reverberant with the howling of wolves. The last sight that I remembered
was a vague, white, moving mass,as if all the graves around me had sent
out the phantoms of their sheeted dead, and that they were closing in on
me through the white cloudiness of the driving hail.

Gradually there came a sort of vague beginning of cons- ciousness, then
a sense of weariness that was dreadful. For a time I remembered nothing,
but slowly my senses returned. My feet seemed positively racked with
pain, yet I could not move them. They seemed to be numbed. There was an
icy feeling at the back of my neck and all down my spine, and my ears,
like my feet, were dead yet in torment; but there was in my breast a
sense of warmth which was by comparison delicious.It was as a
nightmare--a physical nightmare, if one may use such an expression; for
some heavy weight on my chest made it diff- icult for me to breathe.

This period of semilethargy seemed to remain a long time, and as it
faded away I must have slept or swooned. Then came a sort of loathing,
like the first stage of seasickness, and a wild desire to be free of
something--I knew not what.A vast stillness enveloped me, as though all
the world were asleep or dead--only broken by the low panting as of some
animal close to me. I felt a warm rasping at my throat, then came a
consciousness of the awful truth which chilled me to the heart and sent
the blood surging up through my brain. Some great an- imal was lying on
me and now licking my throat. I feared to stir, for some instinct of
prudence bade me lie still; but the brute seemed to realize that there
was now some change in me, for it raised its head. Through my eyelashes
I saw above me the two great flaming eyes of a gigantic wolf. Its sharp
white teeth gleamed in the gaping red mouth, and I could feel its hot
breath fierce and acrid upon me.

For another spell of time I remembered no more. Then I be- came
conscious of a low growl, followed by a yelp, renewed again and again.
Then seemingly very far away, I heard a "Hol- loa! holloa!" as of many
voices calling in unison. Cautiously I raised my head and looked in the
direction whence the sound came, but the cemetery blocked my view. The
wolf still contin- ued to yelp in a strange way, and a red glare began
to move round the grove of cypresses, as though following the sound. As
the voices drew closer, the wolf yelped faster and louder. I feared to
make either sound or motion. Nearer came the red glow over the white
pall which stretched into the darkness a- round me. Then all at once
from beyond the trees there came at a trot a troop of horsemen bearing
torches. The wolf rose from my breast and made for the cemetery. I saw
one of the horsemen (soldiers by their caps and their long military
cloaks) raise his carbine and take aim. A companion knocked  up his
arm,and I heard the ball whiz over my head. He had ev- idently taken my
body for that of the wolf. Another sighted the animal as it slunk away,
and a shot followed. Then, at a gallop, the troop rode forward--some
towards me, others foll- owing the wolf as it disappeared amongst the
snow-clad cypress- es.

As they drew nearer I tried to move but was powerless, al- though I
could see and hear all that went on around me. Two or three of the
soldiers jumped from their horses and knelt beside me. One of them
raised my head and placed his hand ov- er my heart.

"Good news, comrades!" he cried. "His heart still beats!"

Then some brandy was poured down my throat; it put vigor into me, and I
was able to open my eyes fully and look around. Lights and shadows were
moving among the trees, and I heard men call to one another. They drew
together, uttering fright- ened exclamations; and the lights flashed as
the others came pouring out of the cemetery pell-mell, like men
possessed. When the further ones came close to us, those who were around
me asked them eagerly, "Well, have you found him?"

The reply rang out hurriedly, "No! no! Come away quick-- quick! This is
no place to stay, and on this of all nights!"

"What was it?" was the question, asked in all manner of keys.The answer
came variously and all indefinitely as though the men were moved by some
common impulse to speak yet were restrained by some common fear from
giving their thoughts.

"It--it--indeed!" gibbered one, whose wits had plainly giv- en out for
the moment.

"A wolf--and yet not a wolf!" another put in shudderingly.

"No use trying for him without the sacred bullet," a third remarked in a
more ordinary manner.

"Serve us right for coming out on this night!Truly we have earned our
thousand marks!" were the ejaculations of a fourth.

"There was blood on the broken marble," another said after a pause, "the
lightning never brought that there. And for him- -is he safe? Look at
his throat! See comrades, the wolf has been lying on him and keeping his
blood warm."

The officer looked at my throat and replied, "He is all  right, the skin
is not pierced. What does it all mean? We should never have found him
but for the yelping of the wolf."

"What became of it?" asked the man who was holding up my head and who
seemed the least panic-stricken of the party, for his hands were steady
and without tremor. On his sleeve was the chevron of a petty officer.

"It went home," answered the man, whose long face was pall- id and who
actually shook with terror as he glanced around him fearfully. "There
are graves enough there in which it may lie. Come, comrades--come
quickly! Let us leave this cursed spot."

The officer raised me to a sitting posture, as he uttered a word of
command; then several men placed me upon a horse.He sprang to the saddle
behind me, took me in his arms, gave the word to advance; and, turning
our faces away from the cypress- es, we rode away in swift military
order.

As yet my tongue refused its office, and I was perforce silent. I must
have fallen asleep; for the next thing I remem- bered was finding myself
standing up, supported by a soldier on each side of me. It was almost
broad daylight, and to the north a red streak of sunlight was reflected
like a path of blood over the waste of snow. The officer was telling the
men to say nothing of what they had seen, except that they found an
English stranger, guarded by a large dog.

"Dog! that was no dog," cut in the man who had exhibited such fear. "I
think I know a wolf when I see one."

The young officer answered calmly, "I said a dog."

"Dog!" reiterated the other ironically.It was evident that his courage
was rising with the sun; and, pointing to me, he said, "Look at his
throat. Is that the work of a dog, master?"

Instinctively I raised my hand to my throat, and as I touch- ed it I
cried out in pain. The men crowded round to look, some stooping down
from their saddles;and again there came the calm voice of the young
officer, "A dog, as I said. If aught else were said we should only be
laughed at."

I was then mounted behind a trooper, and we rode on into the suburbs of
Munich. Here we came across a stray carriage into which I was lifted ,
and it was driven off to the Quatre Saisons--the young officer
accompanying me, whilst a trooper followed with his horse, and the
others rode off to their barracks.

When we arrived, Herr Delbruck rushed so quickly down the steps to meet
me, that it was apparent he had been watching  within. Taking me by both
hands he solicitously led me in.The officer saluted me and was turning
to withdraw, when I recog- nized his purpose and insisted that he should
come to my rooms. Over a glass of wine I warmly thanked him and his
brave comrades for saving me. He replied simply that he was more than
glad, and that Herr Delbruck had at the first taken steps to make all
the searching party pleased; at which ambiguous utterance the maitre
d'hotel smiled, while the officer plead- duty and withdrew.

"But Herr Delbruck," I enquired, "how and why was it that the soldiers
searched for me?"

He shrugged his shoulders, as if in depreciation of his own deed, as he
replied, "I was so fortunate as to obtain leave from the commander of
the regiment in which I serve, to ask for volunteers."

"But how did you know I was lost?" I asked.

"The driver came hither with the remains of his carriage,  which had
been upset when the horses ran away."

"But surely you would not send a search party of soldiers merely on this
account?"

"Oh, no!" he answered, "but even before the coachman arriv- ed, I had
this telegram from the Boyar whose guest you are," and he took from his
pocket a telegram which he handed to me, and I read:

        Bistritz.
 Be careful of my guest--his safety is most precious to me. Should aught
happen to him, or if he be missed, spare nothing to find him and ensure
his safety. He is English and therefore adventurous. There are often
dangers from snow and wolves and night. Lose not a moment if you sus-
pect harm to him. I answer your zeal with my fortune.
        --Dracula.

As I held the telegram in my hand,the room seemed to whirl around me,and
if the attentive maitre d'hotel had not caught me,I think I should have
fallen. There was something so str- ange in all this, something so weird
and impossible to imag- ine, that there grew on me a sense of my being
in some way the sport of opposite forces--the mere vague idea of which
seemed in a way to paralyze me. I was certainly under some form of
mysterious protection. From a distant country had come, in the very nick
of time, a message that took me out of the  danger of the snow sleep and
the jaws of the wolf.

     ***

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