Chapter LV…

Chapter LV

THE RETURN OF THE MOB AND MILITARY TO THE TOWN.—THE MADNESS OF THE MOB.—THE GROCER’S REVENGE.

On the termination of the conflagration, or, rather, the fall of the roof, with the loss of grandeur in the spectacle, men’s minds began to be free from the excitement that chained them to the spot, watching the progress of that element which has been truly described as a very good servant, but a very bad master; and of the truth of this every one must be well satisfied.

There was now remaining little more than the livid glare of the hot and burning embers; and this did not extend far, for the walls were too strongly built to fall in from their own weight; they were strong and stout, and intercepted the little light the ashes would have given out.

The mob now began to feel fatigued and chilly. It had been standing and walking about many hours, and the approach of exhaustion could not be put off much longer, especially as there was no longer any great excitement to carry it off.

The officer, seeing that nothing was to be done, collected his men together, and they were soon seen in motion. He had been ordered to stop any tumult that he might have seen, and to save any property. But there was nothing to do now; all the property that could have been saved was now destroyed, and the mob were beginning to disperse, and creep towards their own houses.

The order was then given for the men to take close order, and keep together, and the word to march was given, which the men obeyed with alacrity, for they had no good-will in stopping there the whole of the night.

The return to the village of both the mob and the military was not without its vicissitudes; accidents of all kinds were rife amongst them; the military, however, taking the open paths, soon diminished the distance, and that, too, with little or no accidents, save such as might have been expected from the state of the fields, after they had been so much trodden down of late.

Not so the townspeople or the peasantry; for, by way of keeping up their spirits, and amusing themselves on their way home, they commenced larking, as they called it, which often meant the execution of practical jokes, and these sometimes were of a serious nature.

The night was dark at that hour, especially so when there was a number of persons traversing about, so that little or nothing could be seen.

The mistakes and blunders that were made were numerous. In one place there were a number of people penetrating a path that led only to a hedge and deep ditch; indeed it was a brook very deep and muddy.

Here they came to a stop and endeavoured to ascertain its width, but the little reflected light they had was deceptive, and it did not appear so broad as it was.

“Oh, I can jump it,” exclaimed one.

“And so can I,” said another. “I have done so before, and why should I not do so now.”

This was unanswerable, and as there were many present, at least a dozen were eager to jump.

“If thee can do it, I know I can,” said a brawny countryman; “so I’ll do it at once.

“The sooner the better,” shouted some one behind, “or you’ll have no room for a run, here’s a lot of ’em coming up; push over as quickly as you can.”

Thus urged, the jumpers at once made a rush to the edge of the ditch, and many jumped, and many more, from the prevailing darkness, did not see exactly where the ditch was, and taking one or two steps too many, found themselves up above the waist in muddy water.

Nor were those who jumped much better off, for nearly all jumped short or fell backwards into the stream, and were dragged out in a terrible state.

“Oh, lord! oh, lord!” exclaimed one poor fellow, dripping wet and shivering with cold, “I shall die! oh, the rheumatiz, there’ll be a pretty winter for me: I’m half dead.”

“Hold your noise,” said another, “and help me to get the mud out of my eye; I can’t see.”

“Never mind,” added a third, “considering how you jump, I don’t think you want to see.”

“This comes a hunting vampyres.”

“Oh, it’s all a judgment; who knows but he may be in the air; it is nothing to laugh at as I shouldn’t be surprised if he were; only think how precious pleasant.”

“However pleasant it may be to you,” remarked one, “it’s profitable to a good many.”

“How so?”

“Why, see the numbers of things that will be spoiled, coats torn, hats crushed, heads broken, and shoes burst. Oh, it’s an ill-wind that blows nobody any good.”

“So it is, but you may benefit anybody you like, so you don’t do it at my expence.”

In one part of a field where there were some stiles and gates, a big countryman caught a fat shopkeeper with the arms of the stile a terrible poke in the stomach; while the breath was knocked out of the poor man’s stomach, and he was gasping with agony, the fellow set to laughing, and said to his companions, who were of the same class—

“I say, Jim, look at the grocer, he hasn’t got any wind to spare, I’d run him for a wager, see how he gapes like a fish out of water.”

The poor shopkeeper felt indeed like a fish out of water, and as he afterwards declared he felt just as if he had had a red hot clock weight thrust into the midst of his stomach and there left to cool.

However, the grocer would be revenged upon his tormentor, who had now lost sight of him, but the fat man, after a time, recovering his wind, and the pain in his stomach becoming less intense, he gathered himself up.

“My name ain’t Jones,” he muttered, “if I don’t be one to his one for that; I’ll do something that shall make him remember what it is to insult a respectable tradesman. I’ll never forgive such an insult. It is dark, and that’s why it is he has dared to do this.”

Filled with dire thoughts and a spirit of revenge, he looked from side to side to see with what he could effect his object, but could espy nothing.

“It’s shameful,” he muttered; “what would I give for a little retort. I’d plaster his ugly countenance.”

As he spoke, he placed his hands on some pales to rest himself, when he found that they stuck to them, the pales had that day been newly pitched.

A bright idea now struck him.

“If I could only get a handful of this stuff,” he thought, “I should be able to serve him out for serving me out. I will, cost what it may; I’m resolved upon that. I’ll not have my wind knocked out, and my inside set on fire for nothing. No, no; I’ll be revenged on him.”

With this view he felt over the pales, and found that he could scrape off a little only, but not with his hands; indeed, it only plastered them; he, therefore, marched about for something to scrape it off with.

“Ah; I have a knife, a large pocket knife, that will do, that is the sort of thing I want.”

He immediately commenced feeling for it, but had scarcely got his hand into his pocket when he found there would be a great difficulty in either pushing it in further or withdrawing it altogether, for the pitch made it difficult to do either, and his pocket stuck to his hands like a glove.

“D—n it,” said the grocer, “who would have thought of that? here’s a pretty go, curse that fellow, he is the cause of all this; I’ll be revenged upon him, if it’s a year hence.”

The enraged grocer drew his hand out, but was unable to effect his object in withdrawing the knife also; but he saw something shining, he stooped to pick it up, exclaiming as he did so, in a gratified tone of voice,

“Ah, here’s something that will do better.”

As he made a grasp at it, he found he had inserted his hand into something soft.

“God bless me! what now?”

He pulled his hand hastily away, and found that it stuck slightly, and then he saw what it was.

“Ay, ay, the very thing. Surely it must have been placed here on purpose by the people.”

The fact was, he had placed his hand into a pot of pitch that had been left by the people who had been at work at pitching the pales, but had been attracted by the fire at Sir Francis Varney’s, and to see which they had left their work, and the pitch was left on a smouldering peat fire, so that when Mr. Jones, the grocer, accidentally put his hand into it he found it just warm.

When he made this discovery he dabbed his hand again into the pitch-pot, exclaiming,—

“In for a penny, in for a pound.”

And he endeavoured to secure as large a handful of the slippery and sticky stuff as he could, and this done he set off to come up with the big countryman who had done him so much indignity and made his stomach uncomfortable.

He soon came up with him, for the man had stopped rather behind, and was larking, as it is called, with some men, to whom he was a companion.

He had slipped down a bank, and was partially sitting down on the soft mud. In his bustle, the little grocer came down with a slide, close to the big countryman.

“Ah—ah! my little grocer,” said the countryman, holding out his hand to catch him, and drawing him towards himself. “You will come and sit down by the side of your old friend.”

As he spoke, he endeavoured to pull Mr. Jones down, too; but that individual only replied by fetching the countryman a swinging smack across the face with the handful of pitch.

“There, take that; and now we are quits; we shall be old friends after this, eh? Are you satisfied? You’ll remember me, I’ll warrant.”

As the grocer spoke, he rubbed his hands over the face of the fallen man, and then rushed from the spot with all the haste he could make.

The countryman sat a moment or two confounded, cursing, and swearing, and spluttering, vowing vengeance, believing that it was mud only that had been plastered over his face; but when he put his hands up, and found out what it was, he roared and bellowed like a town-bull.

He cried out to his companions that his eyes were pitched; but they only laughed at him, thinking he was having some foolish lark with them.

It was next day before he got home, for he wandered about all night: and it took him a week to wash the pitch off by means of grease; and ever afterwards he recollected the pitching of his face; nor did he ever forget the grocer.

Thus it was the whole party returned a long while after dark across the fields, with all the various accidents that were likely to befall such an assemblage of people.

The vampyre hunting cost many of them dear, for clothes were injured on all sides, hats lost, and shoes missing in a manner that put some of the rioters to much inconvenience. Soon afterwards, the military retired to their quarters; and the townspeople at length became tranquil and nothing more was heard or done that night.

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Chapter LVI

THE DEPARTURE OF THE BANNERWORTHS FROM THE HALL.—THE NEW ABODE.—JACK PRINGLE, PILOT.

During that very evening, on which the house of Sir Francis Varney was fired by the mob, another scene, and one of different character, was enacted at Bannerworth Hall, where the owners of that ancient place were departing from it.

It was towards the latter part of the day, that Flora Bannerworth, Mrs. Bannerworth, and Henry Bannerworth, were preparing themselves to depart from the house of their ancestors. The intended proprietor was, as we have already been made acquainted with, the old admiral, who had taken the place somewhat mysteriously, considering the way in which he usually did business.

The admiral was walking up and down the lawn before the house, and looking up at the windows every now and then; and turning to Jack Pringle, he said,—

“Jack, you dog.”

“Ay—ay, sir.”

“Mind you convoy these women into the right port; do you hear? and no mistaking the bearings; do you hear?”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

“These crafts want care; and you are pilot, commander, and all; so mind and keep your weather eye open.”

“Ay, ay, sir. I knows the craft well enough, and I knows the roads, too; there’ll be no end of foundering against the breakers to find where they lie.”

“No, no, Jack; you needn’t do that; but mind your bearings. Jack, mind your bearings.”

“Never fear; I know ’em, well enough; my eyes ain’t laid up in ordinary yet.”

“Eh? What do you mean by that, you dog, eh?”

“Nothing; only I can see without helps to read, or glasses either; so I know one place from another.”

There was now some one moving within; and the admiral, followed by Jack Pringle, entered the Hall. Henry Bannerworth was there. They were all ready to go when the coach came for them, which the admiral had ordered for them.

“Jack, you lubber; where are you?”

“Ay, ay, sir, here am I.”

“Go, and station yourself up in some place where you can keep a good look-out for the coach, and come and report when you see it.”

“Ay—ay, sir,” said Jack, and away he went from the room, and stationed himself up in one of the trees, that commanded a good view of the main road for some distance.

“Admiral Bell,” said Henry, “here we are, trusting implicitly to you; and in doing so, I am sure I am doing right.”

“You will see that,” said the admiral. “All’s fair and honest as yet; and what is to come, will speak for itself.”

“I hope you won’t suffer from any of these nocturnal visits,” said Henry.

“I don’t much care about them; but old Admiral Bell don’t strike his colours to an enemy, however ugly he may look. No, no; it must be a better craft than his own that’ll take him; and one who won’t run away, but that will grapple yard-arm and yard-arm, you know.”

“Why, admiral, you must have seen many dangers in your time, and be used to all kinds of disturbances and conflicts. You have had a life of experience.”

“Yes; and experience has come pretty thick sometimes, I can tell you, when it comes in the shape of Frenchmen’s broadsides.”

“I dare say, then, it must be rather awkward.”

“Death by the law,” said the admiral, “to stop one of them with your head, I assure you. I dare not make the attempt myself, though I have often seen it done.”

“I dare say; but here are Flora and my mother.”

As he spoke, Flora and her mother entered the apartment.

“Well, admiral, we are all ready; and, though I may feel somewhat sorry at leaving the old Hall, yet it arises from attachment to the place, and not any disinclination to be beyond the reach of these dreadful alarms.”

“And I, too, shall be by no means sorry,” said Flora; “I am sure it is some gratification to know we leave a friend here, rather than some others, who would have had the place, if they could have got it, by any means.”

“Ah, that’s true enough, Miss Flora,” said the admiral; “but we’ll run the enemy down yet, depend upon it. But once away, you will be free from these terrors; and now, as you have promised, do not let yourselves be seen any where at all.”

“You have our promises, admiral; and they shall be religiously kept, I can assure you.”

“Boat, ahoy—ahoy!” shouted Jack.

“What boat?” said the admiral, surprised; and then he muttered, “Confound you for a lubber! Didn’t I tell you to mind your bearings, you dog-fish you?”

“Ay, ay, sir—and so I did.”

“You did.”

“Yes, here they are. Squint over the larboard bulk-heads, as they call walls, and then atween the two trees on the starboard side of the course, then straight ahead for a few hundred fathoms, when you come to a funnel as is smoking like the crater of Mount Vesuvius, and then in a line with that on the top of the hill, comes our boat.”

“Well,” said the admiral, “that’ll do. Now go open the gates, and keep a bright look out, and if you see anybody near your watch, why douse their glim.”

“Ay—ay, sir,” said Jack, and he disappeared.

“Rather a lucid description,” said Henry, as he thought of Jack’s report to the admiral.

“Oh, it’s a seaman’s report. I know what he means; it’s quicker and plainer than the land lingo, to my ears, and Jack can’t talk any other, you see.”

By this time the coach came into the yard, and the whole party descended into the court-yard, where they came to take leave of the old place.

“Farewell, admiral.”

“Good bye,” said the admiral. “I hope the place you are going to will be such as please you—I hope it will.”

“I am sure we shall endeavour to be pleased with it, and I am pretty sure we shall.”

“Good bye.”

“Farewell, Admiral Bell,” said Henry.

“You remember your promises?”

“I do. Good bye, Mr. Chillingworth.”

“Good bye,” said Mr. Chillingworth, who came up to bid them farewell; “a pleasant journey, and may you all be the happier for it.”

“You do not come with us?”

“No; I have some business of importance to attend to, else I should have the greatest pleasure in doing so. But good bye; we shall not be long apart, I dare say.”

“I hope not,” said Henry.

The door of the carriage was shut by the admiral, who looked round, saying,—

“Jack—Jack Pringle, where are you, you dog?”

“Here am I,” said Jack.

“Where have you been to?”

“Only been for pigtail,” said Jack. “I forgot it, and couldn’t set sail without it.”

“You dog you; didn’t I tell you to mind your bearings?”

“So I will,” said Jack, “fore and aft—fore and aft, admiral.”

“You had better,” said the admiral, who, however, relaxed into a broad grin, which he concealed from Jack Pringle.

Jack mounted the coach-box, and away it went, just as it was getting dark. The old admiral had locked up all the rooms in the presence of Henry Bannerworth; and when the coach had gone out of sight, Mr. Chillingworth came back to the Hall, where he joined the admiral.

“Well,” he said, “they are gone, Admiral Bell, and we are alone; we have a clear stage and no favour.”

“The two things of all others I most desire. Now, they will be strangers where they are going to, and that will be something gained. I will endeavour to do some thing if I get yard-arm and yard-arm with these pirates. I’ll make ’em feel the weight of true metal; I’ll board ’em—d——e, I’ll do everything.”

“Everything that can be done.”

“Ay—ay.”

• • • • •

The coach in which the family of the Bannerworths were carried away continued its course without any let or hindrance, and they met no one on their road during the whole drive. The fact was, nearly everybody was at the conflagration at Sir Francis Varney’s house.

Flora knew not which way they were going, and, after a time, all trace of the road was lost. Darkness set in, and they all sat in silence in the coach.

At length, after some time had been spent thus, Flora Bannerworth turned to Jack Pringle, and said,—

“Are we near, or have we much further to go?”

“Not very much, ma’am,” said Jack. “All’s right, however—ship in the direct course, and no breakers ahead—no lookout necessary; however there’s a land-lubber aloft to keep a look out.”

As this was not very intelligible, and Jack seemed to have his own reasons for silence, they asked him no further questions; but in about three-quarters of an hour, during which time the coach had been driving through the trees, they came to a standstill by a sudden pull of the check-string from Jack, who said,—

“Hilloa!—take in sails, and drop anchor.”

“Is this the place?”

“Yes, here we are,” said Jack; “we’re in port now, at all events;” and he began to sing,—

“The trials and the dangers of the voyage is past,”

when the coach door opened, and they all got out and looked about them where they were.

“Up the garden if you please, ma’am—as quick as you can; the night air is very cold.”

Flora and her mother and brother took the hint, which was meant by Jack to mean that they were not to be seen outside. They at once entered a pretty garden, and then they came to a very neat and picturesque cottage. They had no time to look up at it, as the door was immediately opened by an elderly female, who was intended to wait upon them.

Soon after, Jack Pringle and the coachman entered the passage with the small amount of luggage which they had brought with them. This was deposited in the passage, and then Jack went out again, and, after a few minutes, there was the sound of wheels, which intimated that the coach had driven off.

Jack, however, returned in a few minutes afterwards, having secured the wicket-gate at the end of the garden, and then entered the house, shutting the door carefully after him.

Flora and her mother looked over the apartments in which they were shown with some surprise. It was, in everything, such as they could wish; indeed, though it could not be termed handsomely or extravagantly furnished, or that the things were new, yet, there was all that convenience and comfort could require, and some little of the luxuries.

“Well,” said Flora, “this is very thoughtful of the admiral. The place will really be charming, and the garden, too, delightful.”

“Mustn’t be made use of just now,” said Jack, “if you please, ma’am; them’s the orders at present.”

“Very well,” said Flora, smiling. “I suppose, Mr. Pringle, we must obey them.”

“Jack Pringle, if you please,” said Jack. “My commands only temporary. I ain’t got a commission.”

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LVII. THE LONELY WATCH, AND THE ADVENTURE IN THE DESERTED HOUSE

It is now quite night, and so peculiar and solemn a stillness reigns in and about Bannerworth Hall and its surrounding grounds, that one might have supposed it a place of the dead, deserted completely after sunset by all who would still hold kindred with the living. There was not a breath of air stirring, and this circumstance added greatly to the impression of profound repose which the whole scene exhibited.

The wind during the day had been rather of a squally character, but towards nightfall, as is often usual after a day of such a character, it had completely lulled, and the serenity of the scene was unbroken even by the faintest sigh from a wandering zephyr.

The moon rose late at that period, and as is always the case at that interval between sunset and the rising of that luminary which makes the night so beautiful, the darkness was of the most profound character.

It was one of those nights to produce melancholy reflections—a night on which a man would be apt to review his past life, and to look into the hidden recesses of his soul to see if conscience could make a coward of him in the loneliness and stillness that breathed around.

It was one of those nights in which wanderers in the solitude of nature feel that the eye of Heaven is upon them, and on which there seems to be a more visible connection between the world and its great Creator than upon ordinary occasions.

The solemn and melancholy appear places once instinct with life, when deserted by those familiar forms and faces that have long inhabited them. There is no desert, no uninhabited isle in the far ocean, no wild, barren, pathless tract of unmitigated sterility, which could for one moment compare in point of loneliness and desolation to a deserted city.

Strip London, mighty and majestic as it is, of the busy swarm of humanity that throng its streets, its suburbs, its temples, its public edifices, and its private dwellings, and how awful would be the walk of one solitary man throughout its noiseless thoroughfares.

If madness seized not upon him ere he had been long the sole survivor of a race, it would need be cast in no common mould.

And to descend from great things to smaller—from the huge leviathan city to one mansion far removed from the noise and bustle of conventional life, we may imagine the sort of desolation that reigned through Bannerworth Hall, when, for the first time, after nearly a hundred and fifty years of occupation, it was deserted by the representatives of that family, so many members of which had lived and died beneath its roof. The house, and everything within, without, and around it, seemed actually to sympathize with its own desolation and desertion.

It seemed as if twenty years of continued occupation could not have produced such an effect upon the ancient edifice as had those few hours of neglect and desertion.

And yet it was not as if it had been stripped of those time-worn and ancient relics of ornament and furnishing that so long had appertained to it. No, nothing but the absence of those forms which had been accustomed quietly to move from room to room, and to be met here upon a staircase, there upon a corridor, and even in some of the ancient panelled apartments, which give it an air of dreary repose and listlessness.

The shutters, too, were all closed, and that circumstance contributed largely to the production of that gloomy effect which otherwise could not have ensued.

In fact, what could be done without attracting very special observation was done to prove to any casual observer that the house was untenanted.

But such was not really the case. In that very room where the much dreaded Varney the vampyre had made one of his dreaded appearances to Flora Bannerworth and her mother, sat two men.

It was from that apartment that Flora had discharged the pistol, which had been left to her by her brother, and the shot from which it was believed by the whole family had most certainly taken effect upon the person of the vampyre.

It was a room peculiarly accessible from the gardens, for it had long French windows opening to the very ground, and but a stone step intervened between the flooring of the apartment and a broad gravel walk which wound round that entire portion of the house.

It was in this room, then, that two men sat in silence, and nearly in darkness.

Before them, and on a table, were several articles of refreshment, as well of defence and offence, according as their intentions might be.

There were a bottle and three glasses, and lying near the elbow of one of the men was a large pair of pistols, such as might have adorned the belt of some desperate character, who wished to instil an opinion of his prowess into his foes by the magnitude of his weapons.

Close at hand, by the same party, lay some more modern fire-arms, as well as a long dirk, with a silver mounted handle.

The light they had consisted of a large lantern, so constructed with a slide, that it could be completely obscured at a moment’s notice; but now as it was placed, the rays that were allowed to come from it were directed as much from the window of the apartment, as possible, and fell upon the faces of the two men, revealing them to be Admiral Bell and Dr. Chillingworth.

It might have been the effect of the particular light in which he sat, but the doctor looked extremely pale, and did not appear at all at his ease.

The admiral, on the contrary, appeared in as placable a state of mind as possible and had his arms folded across his breast, and his head shrunk down between his shoulders, as if he had made up his mind to something that was to last a long time, and, therefore he was making the best of it.

“I do hope,” said Mr. Chillingworth, after a long pause, “that our efforts will be crowned with success—you know, my dear sir, that I have always been of your opinion, that there was a great deal more in this matter than met the eye.”

“To be sure,” said the admiral, “and as to our efforts being crowned with success, why, I’ll give you a toast, doctor, ‘may the morning’s reflection provide for the evening’s amusement.’”

“Ha! ha!” said Chillingworth, faintly; “I’d rather not drink any more, and you seem, admiral, to have transposed the toast in some way. I believe it runs, ‘may the evening’s amusement bear the morning’s reflection.’”

“Transpose the devil!” said the admiral; “what do I care how it runs? I gave you my toast, and as to that you mention, it’s another one altogether, and a sneaking, shore-going one too; but why don’t you drink?”

“Why, my dear sir, medically speaking, I am strongly of opinion that, when the human stomach is made to contain a large quantity of alcohol, it produces bad effects upon the system. Now, I’ve certainly taken one glass of this infernally strong Hollands, and it is now lying in my stomach like the red-hot heater of a tea-urn.”

“Is it? put it out with another, then.”

“Ay, I’m afraid that would not answer, but do you really think, admiral, that we shall effect anything by waiting here, and keeping watch and ward, not under the most comfortable circumstances, this first night of the Hall being empty.”

“Well, I don’t know that we shall,” said the admiral; “but when you really want to steal a march upon the enemy, there is nothing like beginning betimes. We are both of opinion that Varney’s great object throughout has been, by some means or another, to get possession of the house.”

“Yes; true, true.”

“We know that he has been unceasing in his endeavours to get the Bannerworth family out of it; that he has offered them their own price to become its tenant, and that the whole gist of his quiet and placid interview with Flora in the garden, was to supply her with a new set of reasons for urging her mother and brother to leave Bannerworth Hall, because the old ones were certainly not found sufficient.”

“True, true, most true,” said Mr. Chillingworth, emphatically. “You know, sir, that from the first time you broached that view of the subject to me, how entirely I coincided with you.”

“Of course you did, for you are a honest fellow, and a right-thinking fellow, though you are a doctor, and I don’t know that I like doctors much better than I like lawyers—they’re only humbugs in a different sort of way. But I wish to be liberal; there is such a thing as an honest lawyer, and, d——e, you’re an honest doctor!”

“Of course I’m much obliged, admiral, for your good opinion. I only wish it had struck me to bring something of a solid nature in the shape of food, to sustain the waste of the animal economy during the hours we shall have to wait here.”

“Don’t trouble yourself about that,” said the admiral. “Do you think I’m a donkey, and would set out on a cruise without victualling my ship? I should think not. Jack Pringle will be here soon, and he has my orders to bring in something to eat.”

“Well,” said the doctor, “that’s very provident of you, admiral, and I feel personally obliged; but tell me, how do you intend to conduct the watch?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, I mean, if we sit here with the window fastened so as to prevent our light from being seen, and the door closed, how are we by any possibility to know if the house is attacked or not?”

“Hark’ee, my friend,” said the admiral; “I’ve left a weak point for the enemy.”

“A what, admiral?”

“A weak point. I’ve taken good care to secure everything but one of the windows on the ground floor, and that I’ve left open, or so nearly open, that it will look like the most natural place in the world to get in at. Now, just inside that window, I’ve placed a lot of the family crockery. I’ll warrant, if anybody so much as puts his foot in, you’ll hear the smash;—and, d—e, there it is!”

There was a loud crash at this moment, followed by a succession of similar sounds, but of a lesser degree; and both the admiral and Mr. Chillingworth sprung to their feet.

“Come on,” cried the former; “here’ll be a precious row—take the lantern.”

Mr. Chillingworth did so, but he did not seem possessed of a great deal of presence of mind; for, before they got out of the room, he twice accidentally put on the dark slide, and produced a total darkness.

“D——n!” said the admiral; “don’t make it wink and wink in that way; hold it up, and run after me as hard as you can.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” said Mr. Chillingworth.

It was one of the windows of a long room, containing five, fronting the garden, which the admiral had left purposely unguarded; and it was not far from the apartment in which they had been sitting, so that, probably, not half a minute’s time elapsed between the moment of the first alarm, and their reaching the spot from whence it was presumed to arise.

The admiral had armed himself with one of the huge pistols, and he dashed forward, with all the vehemence of his character, towards the window, where he knew he had placed the family crockery, and where he fully expected to meet the reward of his exertion by discovering some one lying amid its fragments.

In this, however, he was disappointed; for, although there was evidently a great smash amongst the plates and dishes, the window remained closed, and there was no indication whatever of the presence of any one.

“Well, that’s odd,” said the admiral; “I balanced them up amazingly careful, and two of ’em edgeways—d——e, a fly would have knocked them down.”

“Mew,” said, a great cat, emerging from under a chair.

“Curse you, there you are,” said the admiral. “Put out the light, put out the light; here we’re illuminating the whole house for nothing.”

With, a click went the darkening slide over the lantern, and all was obscurity.

At that instant a shrill, clear whistle came from the garden.

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Chapter LVIII

THE ARRIVAL OF JACK PRINGLE.—MIDNIGHT AND THE VAMPYRE.—THE MYSTERIOUS HAT.

“Bless me! what is that?” said Mr. Chillingworth; “what a very singular sound.”

“Hold your noise,” said the admiral; “did you never hear that before?”

“No; how should I?”

“Lor, bless the ignorance of some people, that’s a boatswain’s call.”

“Oh, it is,” said Mr. Chillingworth; “is he going to call again?”

“D——e, I tell ye it’s a boatswain’s call.”

“Well, then, d——e, if it comes to that,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “what does he call here for?”

The admiral disdained an answer; but demanding the lantern, he opened it, so that there was a sufficient glimmering of light to guide him, and then walked from the room towards the front door of the Hall.

He asked no questions before he opened it, because, no doubt, the signal was preconcerted; and Jack Pringle, for it was he indeed who had arrived, at once walked in, and the admiral barred the door with the same precision with which it was before secured.

“Well, Jack,” he said, “did you see anybody?”

“Ay, ay, sir,” said Jack.

“Why, ye don’t mean that—where?”

“Where I bought the grub; a woman——”

“D——e, you’re a fool, Jack.”

“You’re another.”

“Hilloa, ye scoundrel, what d’ye mean by talking to me in that way? is this your respect for your superiors?”

“Ship’s been paid off, long ago,” said Jack, “and I ain’t got no superiors. I ain’t a marine or a Frenchman.”

“Why, you’re drunk.”

“I know it; put that in your eye.”

“There’s a scoundrel. Why, you know-nothing-lubber, didn’t I tell you to be careful, and that everything depended upon secrecy and caution? and didn’t I tell you, above all this, to avoid drink?”

“To be sure you did.”

“And yet you come here like a rum cask.”

“Yes; now you’ve had your say, what then?”

“You’d better leave him alone,” said Mr. Chillingworth; “it’s no use arguing with a drunken man.”

“Harkye, admiral,” said Jack, steadying himself as well as he could. “I’ve put up with you a precious long while, but I won’t no longer; you’re so drunk, now, that you keeping bobbing up and down like the mizen gaff in a storm—that’s my opinion—tol de rol.”

“Let him alone, let him alone,” urged Mr. Chillingworth.

“The villain,” said the admiral; “he’s enough to ruin everything; now, who would have thought that? but it’s always been the way with him for a matter of twenty years—he never had any judgment in his drink. When it was all smooth sailing, and nothing to do, and the fellow might have got an extra drop on board, which nobody would have cared for, he’s as sober as a judge; but, whenever there’s anything to do, that wants a little cleverness, confound him, he ships rum enough to float a seventy-four.”

“Are you going to stand anything to drink,” said Jack, “my old buffer? Do you recollect where you got your knob scuttled off Beyrout—how you fell on your latter end and tried to recollect your church cateckis, you old brute?—I’s ashamed of you. Do you recollect the brown girl you bought for thirteen bob and a tanner, at the blessed Society Islands, and sold her again for a dollar, to a nigger seven feet two, in his natural pumps? you’re a nice article, you is, to talk of marines and swabs, and shore-going lubbers, blow yer. Do you recollect the little Frenchman that told ye he’d pull your blessed nose, and I advised you to soap it? do you recollect Sall at Spithead, as you got in at a port hole of the state cabin, all but her behind?”

“Death and the devil!” said the admiral, breaking from the grasp of Mr. Chillingworth.

“Ay,” said Jack, “you’ll come to ’em both one of these days, old cock, and no mistake.”

“I’ll have his life, I’ll have his life,” roared the admiral.

“Nay, nay, sir,” said Mr. Chillingworth, catching the admiral round the waist. “My dear sir, recollect, now, if I may venture to advise you, Admiral Bell, there’s a lot of that fiery hollands you know, in the next room; set him down to that, and finish him off. I’ll warrant him, he’ll be quiet enough.”

“What’s that you say?” cried Jack—“hollands!—who’s got any?—next to rum and Elizabeth Baker, if I has an affection, it’s hollands.”

“Jack!” said the admiral.

“Ay, ay, sir!” said Jack, instinctively.

“Come this way.”

Jack staggered after him, and they all reached the room where the admiral and Mr. Chillingworth had been sitting before the alarm.

“There!” said the admiral, putting the light upon the table, and pointing to the bottle; “what do you think of that?”

“I never thinks under such circumstances,” said Jack. “Here’s to the wooden walls of old England!”

He seized the bottle, and, putting its neck into his mouth, for a few moments nothing was heard but a gurgling sound of the liquor passing down his throat; his head went further and further back, until, at last, over he went, chair and bottle and all, and lay in a helpless state of intoxication on the floor.

“So far, so good,” said the admiral. “He’s out of the way, at all events.”

“I’ll just loosen his neckcloth,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “and then we’ll go and sit somewhere else; and I should recommend that, if anywhere, we take up our station in that chamber, once Flora’s, where the mysterious panelled portrait hangs, that bears so strong a resemblance to Varney, the vampyre.”

“Hush!” said the admiral. “What’s that?”

They listened for a moment intently; and then, distinctly, upon the gravel path outside the window, they heard a footstep, as if some person were walking along, not altogether heedlessly, but yet without any very great amount of caution or attention to the noise he might make.

“Hist!” said the doctor. “Not a word. They come.”

“What do you say they for?” said the admiral.

“Because something seems to whisper me that Mr. Marchdale knows more of Varney, the vampyre, than ever he has chosen to reveal. Put out the light.”

“Yes, yes—that’ll do. The moon has risen; see how it streams through the chinks of the shutters.”

“No, no—it’s not in that direction, or our light would have betrayed us. Do you not see the beams come from that half glass-door leading to the greenhouse?”

“Yes; and there’s the footstep again, or another.”

Tramp, tramp came a footfall again upon the gravel path, and, as before, died away upon their listening ears.

“What do you say now,” said Mr. Chillingworth—“are there not two?”

“If they were a dozen,” said the admiral, “although we have lost one of our force, I would tackle them. Let’s creep on through the rooms in the direction the footsteps went.”

“My life on it,” said Mr. Chillingworth as they left the apartment, “if this be Varney, he makes for that apartment where Flora slept, and which he knows how to get admission to. I’ve studied the house well, admiral, and to get to that window any one from here outside must take a considerable round. Come on—we shall be beforehand.”

“A good idea—a good idea. Be it so.”

Just allowing themselves sufficient light to guide them on the way from the lantern, they hurried on with as much precipitation as the intricacies of the passage would allow, nor halted till they had reached the chamber were hung the portrait which bore so striking and remarkable a likeness to Varney, the vampyre.

They left the lamp outside the door, so that not even a straggling beam from it could betray that there were persons on the watch; and then, as quietly as foot could fall, they took up their station among the hangings of the antique bedstead, which has been before alluded to in this work as a remarkable piece of furniture appertaining to that apartment.

“Do you think,” said the admiral, “we’ve distanced them?”

“Certainly we have. It’s unlucky that the blind of the window is down.”

“Is it? By Heaven, there’s a d—d strange-looking shadow creeping over it.”

Mr. Chillingworth looked almost with suspended breath. Even he could not altogether get rid of a tremulous feeling, as he saw that the shadow of a human form, apparently of very large dimensions, was on the outside, with the arms spread out, as if feeling for some means of opening the window.

It would have been easy now to have fired one of the pistols direct upon the figure; but, somehow or another, both the admiral and Mr. Chillingworth shrank from that course, and they felt much rather inclined to capture whoever might make his appearance, only using their pistols as a last resource, than gratuitously and at once to resort to violence.

“Who should you say that was?” whispered the admiral.

“Varney, the vampyre.”

“D—e, he’s ill-looking and big enough for anything—there’s a noise!”

There was a strange cracking sound at the window, as if a pane of glass was being very stealthily and quietly broken; and then the blind was agitated slightly, confusing much the shadow that was cast upon it, as if the hand of some person was introduced for the purpose of effecting a complete entrance into the apartment.

“He’s coming in,” whispered the admiral.

“Hush, for Heaven’s sake!” said Mr. Chillingworth; “you will alarm him, and we shall lose the fruit of all the labour we have already bestowed upon the matter; but did you not say something, admiral, about lying under the window and catching him by the leg?”

“Why, yes; I did.”

“Go and do it, then; for, as sure as you are a living man, his leg will be in in a minute.”

“Here goes,” said the admiral; “I never suggest anything which I’m unwilling to do myself.”

Whoever it was that now was making such strenuous exertions to get into the apartment seemed to find some difficulty as regarded the fastenings of the window, and as this difficulty increased, the patience of the party, as well as his caution deserted him, and the casement was rattled with violence.

With a far greater amount of caution than any one from a knowledge of his character would have given him credit for, the admiral crept forward and laid himself exactly under the window.

The depth of wood-work from the floor to the lowest part of the window-frame did not exceed above two feet; so that any one could conveniently step in from the balcony outside on to the floor of the apartment, which was just what he who was attempting to effect an entrance was desirous of doing.

It was quite clear that, be he who he might, mortal or vampyre, he had some acquaintance with the fastening of the window; for now he succeeded in moving it, and the sash was thrown open.

The blind was still an obstacle; but a vigorous pull from the intruder brought that down on the prostrate admiral; and then Mr. Chillingworth saw, by the moonlight, a tall, gaunt figure standing in the balcony, as if just hesitating for a moment whether to get head first or feet first into the apartment.

Had he chosen the former alternative he would need, indeed, to have been endowed with more than mortal powers of defence and offence to escape capture, but his lucky star was in the ascendancy, and he put his foot in first.

He turned his side to the apartment and, as he did so, the bright moonlight fell upon his face, enabling Mr. Chillingworth to see, without the shadow of a doubt, that it was, indeed, Varney, the vampyre, who was thus stealthily making his entrance into Bannerworth Hall, according to the calculation which had been made by the admiral upon that subject. The doctor scarcely knew whether to be pleased or not at this discovery; it was almost a terrifying one, sceptical as he was upon the subject of vampyres, and he waited breathless for the issue of the singular and perilous adventure.

No doubt Admiral Bell deeply congratulated himself upon the success which was about to crown his stratagem for the capture of the intruder, be he who he might, and he writhed with impatience for the foot to come sufficiently near him to enable him to grasp it.

His patience was not severely tried, for in another moment it rested upon his chest.

“Boarders a hoy!” shouted the admiral, and at once he laid hold of the trespasser. “Yard-arm to yard-arm, I think I’ve got you now. Here’s a prize, doctor! he shall go away without his leg if he goes away now. Eh! what! the light—d—e, he has—Doctor, the light! the light! Why what’s this?—Hilloa, there!”

Dr. Chillingworth sprang into the passage, and procured the light—in another moment he was at the side of the admiral, and the lantern slide being thrown back, he saw at once the dilemma into which his friend had fallen.

There he lay upon his back, grasping, with the vehemence of an embrace that had in it much of the ludicrous, a long boot, from which the intruder had cleverly slipped his leg, leaving it as a poor trophy in the hands of his enemies.

“Why you’ve only pulled his boot off,” said the doctor; “and now he’s gone for good, for he knows what we’re about, and has slipped through your fingers.”

Admiral Bell sat up and looked at the boot with a rueful countenance.

“Done again!” he said.

“Yes, you are done,” said the doctor; “why didn’t you lay hold of the leg while you were about it, instead of the boot? Admiral, are these your tactics?”

“Don’t be a fool,” said the admiral; “put out the light and give me the pistols, or blaze away yourself into the garden; a chance shot may do something. It’s no use running after him; a stern chase is a long chase; but fire away.”

As if some parties below had heard him give the word, two loud reports from the garden immediately ensued, and a crash of glass testified to the fact that some deadly missile had entered the room.

“Murder!” said the doctor, and he fell flat upon his back. “I don’t like this at all; it’s all in your line, admiral, but not in mine.”

“All’s right, my lad,” said the admiral; “now for it.”

He saw lying in the moonlight the pistols which he and the doctor had brought into the room, and in another moment he, to use his own words, returned the broadside of the enemy.

“D—n it!” he said, “this puts me in mind of old times. Blaze away, you thieves, while I load; broadside to broadside. It’s your turn now; I scorn to take an advantage. What the devil’s that?”

Something very large and very heavy came bang against the window, sending it all into the room, and nearly smothering the admiral with the fragments. Another shot was then fired, and in came something else, which hit the wall on the opposite side of the room, rebounding from thence on to the doctor, who gave a yell of despair.

After that all was still; the enemy seemed to be satisfied that they had silenced the garrison. And it took the admiral a great deal of kicking and plunging to rescue himself from some superincumbent mass that was upon him, which seemed to him to be a considerable sized tree.

“Call this fair fighting,” he shouted—“getting a man’s legs and arms tangled up like a piece of Indian matting in the branches of a tree? Doctor, I say! hilloa! where are you?”

“I don’t know,” said the doctor; “but there’s somebody getting into the balcony—now we shall be murdered in cold blood!”

“Where’s the pistols?”

“Fired off, of course; you did it yourself.”

Bang came something else into the room, which, from the sound it made, closely resembled a brick, and after that somebody jumped clean into the centre of the floor, and then, after rolling and writhing about in a most singular manner, slowly got up, and with various preliminary hiccups, said,—

“Come on, you lubbers, many of you as like. I’m the tar for all weathers.”

“Why, d—e,” said the admiral, “it’s Jack Pringle.”

“Yes, it is,” said Jack, who was not sufficiently sober to recognise the admiral’s voice. “I sees as how you’ve heard of me. Come on, all of you.”

“Why, Jack, you scoundrel,” roared the admiral, “how came you here? Don’t you know me? I’m your admiral, you horse-marine.”

“Eh?” said Jack. “Ay—ay, sir, how came you here?”

“How came you, you villain?”

“Boarded the enemy.”

“The enemy who you boarded was us; and hang me if I don’t think you haven’t been pouring broadsides into us, while the enemy were scudding before the wind in another direction.”

“Lor!” said Jack.

“Explain, you scoundrel, directly—explain.”

“Well, that’s only reasonable,” said Jack; and giving a heavier lurch than usual, he sat down with a great bounce upon the floor. “You see it’s just this here,—when I was a coming of course I heard, just as I was a going, that ere as made me come all in consequence of somebody a going, or for to come, you see, admiral.”

“Doctor,” cried the admiral, in a great rage, “just help me out of this entanglement of branches, and I’ll rid the world from an encumbrance by smashing that fellow.”

“Smash yourself!” said Jack. “You know you’re drunk.”

“My dear admiral,” said Mr. Chillingworth, laying hold of one of his legs, and pulling it very hard, which brought his face into a lot of brambles, “we’re making a mess of this business.”

“Murder!” shouted the admiral; “you are indeed. Is that what you call pulling me out of it? You’ve stuck me fast.”

“I’ll manage it,” said Jack. “I’ve seed him in many a scrape, and I’ve seed him out. You pull me, doctor, and I’ll pull him. Yo hoy!”

Jack laid hold of the admiral by the scuff of the neck, and the doctor laid hold of Jack round the waist, the consequence of which was that he was dragged out from the branches of the tree, which seemed to have been thrown into the room, and down fell both Jack and the doctor.

At this instant there was a strange hissing sound heard below the window; then there was a sudden, loud report, as if a hand-grenade had gone off. A spectral sort of light gleamed into the room, and a tall, gaunt-looking figure rose slowly up in the balcony.

“Beware of the dead!” said a voice. “Let the living contend with the living, the dead with the dead. Beware!”

The figure disappeared, as did also the strange, spectral-looking light. A death-like silence ensued, and the cold moonbeams streamed in upon the floor of the apartment, as if nothing had occurred to disturb the wrapped repose and serenity of the scene.

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Chapter LIX

THE WARNING.—THE NEW PLAN OF OPERATION.—THE INSULTING MESSAGE FROM VARNEY.

So much of the night had been consumed in these operations, that by the time they were over, and the three personages who lay upon the floor of what might be called the haunted chamber of Bannerworth Hall, even had they now been disposed to seek repose, would have had a short time to do so before the daylight would have streamed in upon them, and roused them to the bustle of waking existence.

It may be well believed what a vast amount of surprise came over the three persons in that chamber at the last little circumstance that had occurred in connection with the night’s proceedings.

There was nothing which had preceded that, that did not resemble a genuine attack upon the premises; but about that last mysterious appearance, with its curious light, there was quite enough to bother the admiral and Jack Pringle to a considerable effect, whatever might be the effect upon Mr. Chillingworth, whose profession better enabled him to comprehend, chemically, what would produce effects that, no doubt, astonished them amazingly.

What with his intoxication and the violent exercise he had taken, Jack was again thoroughly prostrate; while the admiral could not have looked more astonished had the evil one himself appeared in propria persona and given him notice to quit the premises.

He was, however, the first to speak, and the words he spoke were addressed to Jack, to whom he said,—

“Jack, you lubber, what do you think of all that?”

Jack, however, was too far gone even to say “Ay, ay, sir;” and Mr. Chillingworth, slowly getting himself up to his feet, approached the admiral.

“It’s hard to say so much, Admiral Bell,” he said, “but it strikes me that whatever object this Sir Francis Varney, or Varney, the vampyre, has in coming into Bannerworth Hall, it is, at all events, of sufficient importance to induce him to go any length, and not to let even a life to stand in the way of its accomplishment.”

“Well, it seems so,” said the admiral; “for I’ll be hanged if I can make head or tail of the fellow.”

“If we value our personal safety, we shall hesitate to continue a perilous adventure, which I think can end only in defeat, if not in death.”

“But we don’t value our personal safety,” said the admiral. “We’ve got into the adventure, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t carry it out. It may be growing a little serious; but what of that? For the sake of that young girl, Flora Bannerworth, as well as for the sake of my nephew, Charles Holland, I will see the end of this affair, let it be what it may; but mind you, Mr. Chillingworth, if one man chooses to go upon a desperate service, that’s no reason why he should ask another to do so.”

“I understand you,” said Mr. Chillingworth; “but, having commenced the adventure with you, I am not the man to desert you in it. We have committed a great mistake.”

“A mistake! how?”

“Why, we ought to have watched outside the house, instead of within it. There can be no doubt that if we had lain in wait in the garden, we should have been in a better position to have accomplished our object.”

“Well, I don’t know, doctor, but it seems to me that if Jack Pringle hadn’t made such a fool of himself, we should have managed very well: and I don’t know now how he came to behave in the manner he did.”

“Nor I,” said Mr. Chillingworth. “But, at all events, so far as the result goes, it is quite clear that any further watching, in this house, for the appearance of Sir Francis Varney, will now be in vain. He has nothing to do now but to keep quiet until we are tired out—a fact, concerning which he can easily obtain information—and then he immediately, without trouble, walks into the premises, to his own satisfaction.”

“But what the deuce can he want upon the premises?”

“That question, admiral, induces me to think that we have made another mistake. We ought not to have attempted to surprise Sir Francis Varney in coming into Bannerworth Hall, but to catch him as he came out.”

“Well, there’s something in that,” said the admiral. “This is a pretty night’s business, to be sure. However, it can’t be helped, it’s done, and there’s an end on’t. And now, as the morning is near at hand, I certainly must confess I should like to get some breakfast, although I don’t like that we should all leave the house together.”

“Why,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “as we have now no secret to keep with regard to our being here, because the principal person we wished to keep it from is aware of it, I think we cannot do better than send at once for Henry Bannerworth, tell him of the non-success of the effort we have made in his behalf, and admit him at once into our consultation of what is next to be done.”

“Agreed, agreed, I think that, without troubling him, we might have captured this Varney; but that’s over now, and, as soon as Jack Pringle chooses to wake up again, I’ll send him to the Bannerworths with a message.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” said Jack, suddenly; “all’s right.”

“Why, you vagabond,” said the admiral, “I do believe you’ve been shamming!”

“Shamming what?”

“Being drunk, to be sure.”

“Lor! couldn’t do it,” said Jack; “I’ll just tell you how it was. I wakened up and found myself shut in somewhere; and, as I couldn’t get out of the door, I thought I’d try the window, and there I did get out. Well, perhaps I wasn’t quite the thing, but I sees two people in the garden a looking up at this ere room; and, to be sure, I thought it was you and the doctor. Well, it warn’t no business of mine to interfere, so I seed one of you climb up the balcony, as I thought, and then, after which, come down head over heels with such a run, that I thought you must have broken your neck. Well, after that you fired a couple of shots in, and then, after that, I made sure it was you, admiral.”

“And what made you make sure of that?”

“Why, because you scuttled away like an empty tar-barrel in full tide.”

“Confound you, you scoundrel!”

“Well, then, confound you, if it comes to that. I thought I was doing you good sarvice, and that the enemy was here, when all the while it turned out as you was and the enemy wasn’t, and the enemy was outside and you wasn’t.”

“But who threw such a confounded lot of things into the room?”

“Why, I did, of course; I had but one pistol, and, when I fired that off, I was forced to make up a broadside with what I could.”

“Was there ever such a stupid!” said the admiral; “doctor, doctor, you talked of us making two mistakes; but you forgot a third and worse one still, and that was the bringing such a lubberly son of a sea-cook into the place as this fellow.”

“You’re another,” said Jack; “and you knows it.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “it’s no use continuing it, admiral; Jack, in his way, did, I dare say, what he considered for the best.”

“I wish he’d do, then, what he considers for the worst, next time.”

“Perhaps I may,” said Jack, “and then you will be served out above a bit. What ’ud become of you, I wonder, if it wasn’t for me? I’m as good as a mother to you, you knows that, you old babby.”

“Come, come, admiral,” said Mr. Chillingworth; “come down to the garden-gate; it is now just upon daybreak, and the probability is that we shall not be long there before we see some of the country people, who will get us anything we require in the shape of refreshment; and as for Jack, he seems quite sufficiently recovered now to go to the Bannerworths’.”

“Oh! I can go,” said Jack; “as for that, the only thing as puts me out of the way is the want of something to drink. My constitution won’t stand what they call temperance living, or nothing with the chill off.”

“Go at once,” said the admiral, “and tell Mr. Henry Bannerworth that we are here; but do not tell him before his sister or his mother. If you meet anybody on the road, send them here with a cargo of victuals. It strikes me that a good, comfortable breakfast wouldn’t be at all amiss, doctor.”

“How rapidly the day dawns,” remarked Mr. Chillingworth, as he walked into the balcony from whence Varney, the vampire, had attempted to make good his entrance to the Hall.

Just as he spoke, and before Jack Pringle could get half way over to the garden gate, there came a tremendous ring at the bell which was suspended over it.

A view of that gate could not be commanded from the window of the haunted apartment, so that they could not see who it was that demanded admission.

As Jack Pringle was going down at any rate, they saw no necessity for personal interference; and he proved that there was not, by presently returning with a note which he said had been thrown over the gate by a lad, who then scampered off with all the speed he could make.

The note, exteriorly, was well got up, and had all the appearance of great care having been bestowed upon its folding and sealing.

It was duly addressed to “Admiral Bell, Bannerworth Hall,” and the word “immediate” was written at one corner.

The admiral, after looking at it for some time with very great wonder, came at last to the conclusion that probably to open it would be the shortest way of arriving at a knowledge of who had sent it, and he accordingly did so.

The note was as follows:—

“My dear sir,—Feeling assured that you cannot be surrounded with those means and appliances for comfort in the Hall, in its now deserted condition, which you have a right to expect, and so eminently deserve, I flatter myself that I shall receive an answer in the affirmative, when I request the favour of your company to breakfast, as well as that of your learned friend. Mr. Chillingworth.

“In consequence of a little accident which occurred last evening to my own residence, I am, ad interim, until the county build it up for me again, staying at a house called Walmesley Lodge, where I shall expect you with all the impatience of one soliciting an honour, and hoping that it will be conferred upon him.

“I trust that any little difference of opinion on other subjects will not interfere to prevent the harmony of our morning’s meal together.

“Believe me to be, my dear sir, with the greatest possible consideration, your very obedient, humble servant,

“+Francis Varney+.”

The admiral gasped again, and looked at Mr. Chillingworth, and then at the note, and then at Mr. Chillingworth again, as if he was perfectly bewildered.

“That’s about the coolest piece of business,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “that ever I heard of.”

“Hang me,” said the admiral, “if I sha’n’t like the fellow at last. It is cool, and I like it because it is cool. Where’s my hat? where’s my stick?”

“What are you going to do?”

“Accept his invitation, to be sure, and breakfast with him; and, my learned friend, as he calls you, I hope you’ll come likewise. I’ll take the fellow at his word. By fair means, or by foul, I’ll know what he wants here; and why he persecutes this family, for whom I have an attachment; and what hand he has in the disappearance of my nephew, Charles Holland; for, as sure as there’s a Heaven above us, he’s at the bottom of that affair. Where is this Walmesley Lodge?”

“Just in the neighbourhood; but——”

“Come on, then; come on.”

“But, really, admiral, you don’t mean to say you’ll breakfast with—with——”

“A vampyre? Yes, I would, and will, and mean to do so. Here, Jack, you needn’t go to Mr. Bannerworth’s yet. Come, my learned friend, let’s take Time by the forelock.”

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LX. THE INTERRUPTED BREAKFAST AT SIR FRANCIS VARNEY’S

Notwithstanding all Mr. Chillingworth could say to the contrary, the admiral really meant to breakfast with Sir Francis Varney.

The worthy doctor could not for some time believe but that the admiral must be joking, when he talked in such a strain; but he was very soon convinced to the contrary, by the latter actually walking out and once more asking him, Mr. Chillingworth, if he meant to go with him, or not.

This was conclusive, so the doctor said,—

“Well, admiral, this appears to me rather a mad sort of freak; but, as I have begun the adventure with you, I will conclude it with you.”

“That’s right,” said the admiral; “I’m not deceived in you, doctor; so come along. Hang these vampyres, I don’t know how to tackle them, myself. I think, after all, Sir Francis Varney is more in your line than he is in mine.”

“How do you mean?”

“Why, couldn’t you persuade him he’s ill, and wants some physic? That would soon settle him, you know.”

“Settle him!” said Mr. Chillingworth; “I beg to say, that if I did give him any physic, the dose would be much to his advantage; but, however, my opinion is, that this invitation to breakfast is, after all, a mere piece of irony; and that, when we get to Walmesley Lodge, we shall not see anything of him; on the contrary, we shall probably find it’s a hoax.”

“I certainly shouldn’t like that, but still it’s worth the trying. The fellow has really behaved himself in such an extraordinary manner, that, if I can make terms with him I will; and there’s one thing, you know, doctor, that I think we may say we have discovered.”

“And what may that be? Is it, not to make too sure of a vampyre, even when you have him by the leg?”

“No, that ain’t it, though that’s a very good thing in its way; but it is just this, that Sir Francis Varney, whoever he is and whatever he is, is after Bannerworth Hall, and not the Bannerworth family. If you recollect, Mr. Chillingworth, in our conversation, I have always insisted upon that fact.”

“You have; and it seems to me to be completely verified by the proceedings of the night. There, then, admiral, is the great mystery—what can he want at Bannerworth Hall that makes him take such a world of trouble, and run so many fearful risks in trying to get at it?”

“That is, indeed, the mystery; and if he really means this invitation to breakfast, I shall ask him plumply, and tell him, at the same time, that possibly his very best way to secure his object will be to be candid, vampyre as he is.”

“But really, admiral, you do not still cling to that foolish superstition of believing that Sir Francis Varney is in reality a vampyre?”

“I don’t know, and I can’t say; if anybody was to give me a description of a strange sort of fish that I had never seen, I wouldn’t take upon myself to say there wasn’t such a thing; nor would you, doctor, if you had really seen the many odd ones that I have encountered at various times.”

“Well, well, admiral, I’m certainly not belonging to that school of philosophy which declares the impossible to be what it don’t understand; there may be vampyres, and there may be apparitions, for all I know to the contrary; I only doubt these things, because I think, if they were true, that, as a phenomena of nature, they would have been by this time established by repeated instances without the possibility of doubt or cavil.”

“Well, there’s something in that; but how far have we got to go now?”

“No further than to yon enclosure where you see those park-like looking gates, and that cedar-tree stretching its dark-green foliage so far into the road; that is Walmesley Lodge, whither you have been invited.”

“And you, my learned friend, recollect that you were invited too; so that you are no intruder upon the hospitality of Varney the vampyre.”

“I say, admiral,” said Mr. Chillingworth, when they reached the gates, “you know it is not quite the thing to call a man a vampyre at his own breakfast-table, so just oblige me by promising not to make any such remark to Sir Francis.”

“A likely thing!” said the admiral; “he knows I know what he is, and he knows I’m a plain man and a blunt speaker; however, I’ll be civil to him, and more than that I can’t promise. I must wring out of him, if I can, what has become of Charles Holland, and what the deuce he really wants himself.”

“Well, well; come to no collision with him, while we’re his guests.”

“Not if I can help it.”

The doctor rang at the gate bell of Walmesley Lodge, and was in a few moments answered by a woman, who demanded their business.

“Is Sir Francis Varney here?” said the doctor.

“Oh, ah! yes,” she replied; “you see his house was burnt down, for something or other—I’m sure I don’t know what—by some people—I’m sure I don’t know who; so, as the lodge was to let, we have took him in till he can suit himself.”

“Ah! that’s it, is it?” said the admiral—“tell him that Admiral Bell and Dr. Chillingworth are here.”

“Very well,” said the woman; “you may walk in.”

“Thank ye; you’re vastly obliging, ma’am. Is there anything going on in the breakfast line?”

“Well, yes; I am getting him some breakfast, but he didn’t say as he expected company.”

The woman opened the garden gate, and they walked up a trimly laid out garden to the lodge, which was a cottage-like structure in external appearance, although within it boasted of all the comforts of a tolerably extensive house.

She left them in a small room, leading from the hall, and was absent about five minutes; then she returned, and, merely saying that Sir Francis Varney presented his compliments, and desired them to walk up stairs, she preceded them up a handsome flight which led to the first floor of the lodge.

Up to this moment, Mr. Chillingworth had expected some excuse, for, notwithstanding all he had heard and seen of Sir Francis Varney, he could not believe that any amount of impudence would suffice to enable him to receive people as his guests, with whom he must feel that he was at such positive war.

It was a singular circumstance; and, perhaps, the only thing that matched the cool impertinence of the invitation, was the acceptance of it under the circumstances by the admiral.

Sir Francis Varney might have intended it as a jest; but if he did so, in the first instance, it was evident he would not allow himself to be beaten with his own weapons.

The room into which they were shown was a longish narrow one; a very wide door gave them admission to it, at the end, nearest the staircase, and at its other extremity there was a similar door opening into some other apartments of the house.

Sir Francis Varney sat with his back towards this second door, and a table, with some chairs and other articles of furniture, were so arranged before him, that while they seemed but to be carelessly placed in the position they occupied, they really formed a pretty good barrier between him and his visitors.

The admiral, however, was too intent upon getting a sight of Varney, to notice any preparation of this sort, and he advanced quickly into the room.

And there, indeed, was the much dreaded, troublesome, persevering, and singular looking being who had caused such a world of annoyance to the family of the Bannerworths, as well as disturbing the peace of the whole district, which had the misfortune to have him as an inhabitant.

If anything, he looked thinner, taller, and paler than usual, and there seemed to be a slight nervousness of manner about him, as he slowly inclined his head towards the admiral, which was not quite intelligible.

“Well,” said Admiral Bell, “you invited me to breakfast, and my learned friend; here we are.”

“No two human beings,” said Varney, “could be more welcome to my hospitality than yourself and Dr. Chillingworth. I pray you to be seated. What a pleasant thing it is, after the toils and struggles of this life, occasionally to sit down in the sweet companionship of such dear friends.”

He made a hideous face as he spoke, and the admiral looked as if he were half inclined to quarrel at that early stage of the proceedings.

“Dear friends!” he said; “well, well—it’s no use squabbling about a word or two; but I tell you what it is, Mr. Varney, or Sir Francis Varney, or whatever your d—d name is——”

“Hold, my dear sir,” said Varney—“after breakfast, if you please—after breakfast.”

He rang a hand-bell as he spoke, and the woman who had charge of the house brought in a tray tolerably covered with the materials for a substantial morning’s meal. She placed it upon the table, and certainly the various articles that smoked upon it did great credit to her culinary powers.

“Deborah,” said Sir Varney, in a mild sort of tone, “keep on continually bringing things to eat until this old brutal sea ruffian has satiated his disgusting appetite.”

The admiral opened his eyes an enormous width, and, looking at Sir Francis Varney, he placed his two fists upon the table, and drew a long breath.

“Did you address those observations to me,” he said, at length, “you blood-sucking vagabond?”

“Eh?” said Sir Francis Varney, looking over the admiral’s head, as if he saw something interesting on the wall beyond.

“My dear admiral,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “come away.”

“I’ll see you d—d first!” said the admiral. “Now, Mr. Vampyre, no shuffling; did you address those observations to me?”

“Deborah,” said Sir Francis Varney, in silvery tones, “you can remove this tray and bring on the next.”

“Not if I know it,” said the admiral “I came to breakfast, and I’ll have it; after breakfast I’ll pull your nose—ay, if you were fifty vampyres, I’d do it.”

“Dr. Chillingworth,” said Varney, without paying the least attention to what the admiral said, “you don’t eat, my dear sir; you must be fatigued with your night’s exertions. A man of your age, you know, cannot be supposed to roll and tumble about like a fool in a pantomime with impunity. Only think what a calamity it would be if you were laid up. Your patients would all get well, you know.”

“Sir Francis Varney,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “we’re your guests; we come here at your invitation to partake of a meal. You have wantonly attacked both of us. I need not say that by so doing you cast a far greater slur upon your own taste and judgment than you can upon us.”

“Admirably spoken,” said Sir Francis Varney, giving his hands a clap together that made the admiral jump again. “Now, old Bell, I’ll fight you, if you think yourself aggrieved, while the doctor sees fair play.”

“Old who?” shouted the admiral.

“Bell, Bell—is not your name Bell?—a family cognomen, I presume, on account of the infernal clack, clack, without any sense in it, that is the characteristic of your race.”

“You’ll fight me?” said the admiral, jumping up.

“Yes; if you challenge me.”

“By Jove I do; of course.”

“Then I accept it; and the challenged party, you know well, or ought to know, can make his own terms in the encounter.”

“Make what terms you please; I care not what they are. Only say you will fight, and that’s sufficient.”

“It is well,” said Sir Francis Varney, in a solemn tone.

“Nay, nay,” interrupted Mr. Chillingworth; “this is boyish folly.”

“Hold your row,” said the admiral, “and let’s hear what he’s got to say.”

“In this mansion,” said Sir Francis Varney—“for a mansion it is, although under the unpretending name of a lodge—in this mansion there is a large apartment which was originally fitted up by a scientific proprietor of the place, for the purpose of microscopic and other experiments, which required a darkness total and complete, such a darkness as seems as if it could be felt—palpable, thick, and obscure as the darkness of the tomb, and I know what that is.”

“The devil you do!” said this admiral “It’s damp, too, ain’t it?”

“The room?”

“No; the grave.”

“Oh! uncommonly, after autumnal rains. But to resume—this room is large, lofty, and perfectly empty.”

“Well?”

“I propose that we procure two scythes.”

“Two what?”

“Scythes, with their long handles, and their convenient holding places.”

“Well, I’ll be hanged! What next do you propose?”

“You may be hanged. The next is, that with these scythes we be both of us placed in the darkened room, and the door closed, and doubly locked upon us for one hour, and that then and there we do our best each to cut the other in two. If you succeed in dismembering me, you will have won the day; but I hope, from my superior agility”—here Sir Francis jumped upon his chair, and sat upon the back of it—“to get the better of you. How do you like the plan I have proposed? Does it meet your wishes?”

“Curse your impudence!” said the admiral, placing his elbows upon the table and resting his chin in astonishment upon his two hands.

“Nay,” interrupted Sir Francis, “you challenged me; and, besides, you’ll have an equal chance, you know that. If you succeed in striking me first, down I go; whereas it I succeed in striking you first, down you go.”

As he spoke, Sir Francis Varney stretched out his foot, and closed a small bracket, which held out the flap of the table on which the admiral was leaning, and, accordingly, down the admiral went, tea-tray and all.

Mr. Chillingworth ran to help him up, and, when they both recovered their feet, they found they were alone.

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Chapter LXI

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER.—THE PARTICULARS OF THE SUICIDE AT BANNERWORTH HALL.

“Hilloa where the deuce is he?” said the admiral. “Was there ever such a confounded take-in?”

“Well, I really don’t know,” said Mr. Chillingworth; “but it seems to me that he must have gone out of that door that was behind him; I begin, do you know, admiral, to wish——”

“What?”

“That we had never come here at all; and I think the sooner we get out of it the better.”

“Yes; but I am not going to be hoaxed and humbugged in this way. I will have satisfaction, but not with those confounded scythes and things he talks about in the dark room. Give me broad daylight and no favour; yardarm and yardarm; broadside and broadside; hand-grenades and marling-spikes.”

“Well, but that’s what he won’t do. Now, admiral, listen to me.”

“Well, go on; what next?”

“Come away at once.”

“Oh, you said that before.”

“Yes; but I’m going to say something else. Look round you. Don’t you think this a large, scientific-looking room?”

“What of that?”

“Why, what if suppose it was to become as dark as the grave, and Varney was to enter with his scythe, that he talks of, and begin mowing about our legs.”

“The devil! Come along!”

The door at which they entered was at this moment opened, and the old woman made her appearance.

“Please, sir,” she said, “here’s a Mr. Mortimer,” in a loud voice. “Oh, Sir Francis ain’t here! Where’s he gone, gentlemen?”

“To the devil!” said the admiral. “Who may Mr. Mortimer be?”

There walked past the woman a stout, portly-looking man, well dressed, but with a very odd look upon his face, in consequence of an obliquity of vision, which prevented the possibility of knowing which way he was looking.

“I must see him,” he said; “I must see him.”

Mr. Chillingworth started back as if in amazement.

“Good God!” he cried, “you here!”

“Confusion!” said Mortimer; “are you Dr.—— Dr.——”

“Chillingworth.”

“The same. Hush! there is no occasion to betray—that is, to state my secret.”

“And mine, too,” said Chillingworth. “But what brings you here?”

“I cannot and dare not tell you. Farewell!”

He turned abruptly, and was leaving the room; but he ran against some one at the entrance, and in another moment Henry Bannerworth, heated and almost breathless by evident haste, made his appearance.

“Hilloa! bravo!” cried the admiral; “the more the merrier! Here’s a combined squadron! Why, how came you here, Mr. Henry Bannerworth?”

“Bannerworth!” said Mortimer; “is that young man’s name Bannerworth?”

“Yes,” said Henry. “Do you know me, sir?”

“No, no; only I—I—must be off. Does anybody know anything of Sir Francis Varney?”

“We did know something of him,” said the admiral, “a little while ago; but he’s taken himself off. Don’t you do so likewise. If you’ve got anything to say, stop and say it, like an Englishman.”

“Stuff! stuff!” said Mortimer, impatiently. “What do you all want here?”

“Why, Sir Francis Varney,” said Henry,—“and I care not if the whole world heard it—is the persecutor of my family.”

“How? in what way?”

“He has the reputation of a vampyre; he has hunted me and mine from house and home.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes,” cried Dr. Chillingworth; “and, by some means or another, he seems determined to get possession of Bannerworth Hall.”

“Well, gentlemen,” said Mortimer, “I promise you that I will inquire into this. Mr. Chillingworth, I did not expect to meet you. Perhaps the least we say to each other is, after all, the better.”

“Let me ask but one question,” said Dr. Chillingworth, imploringly.

“Ask it.”

“Did he live after——”

“Hush! he did.”

“You always told me to the contrary.”

“Yes; I had an object; the game is up. Farewell; and, gentlemen, as I am making my exit, let me do so with a sentiment:—Society at large is divided into two great classes.”

“And what may they be?” said the admiral.

“Those who have been hanged, and those who have not. Adieu!”

He turned and left the room; and Mr. Chillingworth sunk into a chair, and said, in a low voice,—

“It’s uncommonly true; and I’ve found out an acquaintance among the former.”

“D—n it! you seem all mad,” said the admiral. “I can’t make out what you are about. How came you here, Mr. Henry Bannerworth?”

“By mere accident I heard,” said Henry, “that you were keeping watch and ward in the Hall. Admiral, it was cruel, and not well done of you, to attempt such an enterprise without acquainting me with it. Did you suppose for a moment that I, who had the greatest interest in this affair, would have shrunk from danger, if danger there be; or lacked perseverance, if that quality were necessary in carrying out any plan by which the safety and honour of my family might be preserved?”

“Nay, now, my young friend,” said Mr. Chillingworth.

“Nay, sir; but I take it ill that I should have been kept out of this affair; and it should have been sedulously, as it were, kept a secret from me.”

“Let him go on as he likes,” said the admiral; “boys will be boys. After all, you know, doctor, it’s my affair, and not yours. Let him say what he likes; where’s the odds? It’s of no consequence.”

“I do not expect. Admiral Bell,” said Henry, “that it is to you; but it is to me.”

“Psha!”

“Respecting you, sir, as I do—”

“Gammon!”

“I must confess that I did expect—”

“What you didn’t get; therefore, there’s an end of that. Now, I tell you what, Henry, Sir Francis Varney is within this house; at least, I have reason to suppose so.”

“Then,” exclaimed Henry, impetuously, “I will wring from him answers to various questions which concern my peace and happiness.”

“Please, gentlemen,” said the woman Deborah, making her appearance, “Sir Francis Varney has gone out, and he says I’m to show you all the door, as soon as it is convenient for you all to walk out of it.”

“I feel convinced,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “that it will be a useless search now to attempt to find Sir Francis Varney here. Let me beg of you all to come away; and believe me that I do not speak lightly, or with a view to get you from here, when I say, that after I have heard something from you, Henry, which I shall ask you to relate to me, painful though it may be, I shall be able to suggest some explanation of many things which appear at present obscure, and to put you in a course of freeing you from the difficulties which surround you, which, Heaven knows, I little expected I should have it in my power to propose to any of you.”

“I will follow your advice, Mr. Chillingworth,” said Henry; “for I have always found that it has been dictated by good feeling as well as correct judgment. Admiral Bell, you will oblige me much by coming away with me now and at once.”

“Well,” remarked the admiral, “if the doctor has really something to say, it alters the appearance of things, and, of course, I have no objection.”

Upon this, the whole three of them immediately left the place, and it was evident that Mr. Chillingworth had something of an uncomfortable character upon his mind. He was unusually silent and reserved, and, when he did speak, he seemed rather inclined to turn the conversation upon indifferent topics, than to add anything more to what he had said upon the deeply interesting one which held so foremost a place in all their minds.

“How is Flora, now,” he asked of Henry, “since her removal?”

“Anxious still,” said Henry; “but, I think, better.”

“That is well. I perceive that, naturally, we are all three walking towards Bannerworth Hall, and, perhaps, it is as well that on that spot I should ask of you, Henry, to indulge me with a confidence such as, under ordinary circumstances, I should not at all feel myself justified in requiring of you.”

“To what does it relate?” said Henry. “You may be assured, Mr. Chillingworth, that I am not likely to refuse my confidence to you, whom I have so much reason to respect as an attached friend of myself and my family.”

“You will not object, likewise, I hope,” added Mr. Chillingworth, “to extend that confidence to Admiral Bell; for, as you well know, a truer and more warm-hearted man than he does not exist.”

“What do you expect for that, doctor?” said the admiral.

“There is nothing,” said Henry, “that I could relate at all, that I should shrink from relating to Admiral Bell.”

“Well, my boy,” said the admiral, “and all I can reply to that is, you are quite right; for there can be nothing that you need shrink from telling me, so far as regards the fact of trusting me with it goes.”

“I am assured of that.”

“A British officer, once pledging his word, prefers death to breaking it. Whatever you wish kept secret in the communication you make to me, say so, and it will never pass my lips.”

“Why, sir, the fact is,” said Henry, “that what I am about to relate to you consists not so much of secrets as of matters which would be painful to my feelings to talk of more than may be absolutely required.”

“I understand you.”

“Let me, for a moment,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “put myself right. I do not suspect, Mr. Henry Bannerworth, that you fancy I ask you to make a recital of circumstances which must be painful to you, from any idle motive. But let me declare that I have now a stronger impulse, which induces me to wish to hear from your own lips those matters which popular rumour may have greatly exaggerated or vitiated.”

“It is scarcely possible,” remarked Henry, sadly, “that popular rumour should exaggerate the facts.”

“Indeed!”

“No. They are, unhappily, of themselves, in their bare truthfulness, so full of all that can be grievous to those who are in any way connected with them, that there needs no exaggeration to invest them with more terror, or with more of that sadness which must ever belong to a recollection of them in my mind.”

In suchlike discourse as this, the time was passed, until Henry Bannerworth and his friends once more reached the Hall, from which he, with his family, had so recently removed, in consequence of the fearful persecution to which they had been subjected.

They passed again into the garden which they all knew so well, and then Henry paused and looked around him with a deep sigh.

In answer to an inquiring glance from Mr. Chillingworth, he said,—

“Is it not strange, now, that I should have only been away from here a space of time which may be counted by hours, and yet all seems changed. I could almost fancy that years had elapsed since I had looked at it.”

“Oh,” remarked the doctor, “time is always by the imagination measured by the number of events which are crowded into a given space of it, and not by its actual duration. Come into the house; there you will find all just as you left it, Henry, and you can tell us your story at leisure.”

“The air,” said Henry, “about here is fresh and pleasant. Let us sit down in the summer-house yonder, and there I will tell you all. It has a local interest, too, connected with the tale.”

This was agreed to, and, in a few moments, the admiral, Mr. Chillingworth, and Henry were seated in the same summer-house which had witnessed the strange interview between Sir Francis Varney and Flora Bannerworth, in which he had induced her to believe that he felt for the distress he had occasioned her, and was strongly impressed with the injustice of her sufferings.

Henry was silent for some few moments, and then he said, with a deep sigh, as he looked mournfully around him,—

“It was on this spot that my father breathed his last, and hence have I said that it has a local interest in the tale I have to tell, which makes it the most fitting place in which to tell it.”

“Oh,” said the admiral, “he died here, did he?”

“Yes, where you are now sitting.”

“Very good, I have seen many a brave man die in my time, and I hope to see a few more, although, I grant you, the death in the heat of conflict, and fighting for our country, is a vastly different thing to some shore-going mode of leaving the world.”

“Yes,” said Henry, as if pursuing his own meditations, rather than listening to the admiral. “Yes, it was from this precise spot that my father took his last look at the ancient house of his race. What we can now see of it, he saw of it with his dying eyes, and many a time I have sat here and fancied the world of terrible thoughts that must at such a moment have come across his brain.”

“You might well do so,” said the doctor.

“You see,” added Henry, “that from here the fullest view you have of any of the windows of the house is of that of Flora’s room, as we have always called it, because for years she had had it as her chamber; and, when all the vegetation of summer is in its prime, and the vine which you perceive crawls over this summer-house is full of leaf and fruit, the view is so much hindered that it is difficult, without making an artificial gap in the clustering foliage, to see anything but the window.”

“So I should imagine,” replied Mr. Chillingworth.

“You, doctor,” added Henry, “who know much of my family, need not be told what sort of man my father was.”

“No, indeed.”

“But you, Admiral Bell, who do not know, must be told, and, however grievous it may be to me to have to say so, I must inform you that he was not a man who would have merited your esteem.”

“Well,” said the admiral, “you know, my boy, that can make no difference as regards you in anybody’s mind, who has got the brains of an owl. Every man’s credit, character, and honour, to my thinking, is in his own most special keeping, and let your father be what he might, or who he might, I do not see that any conduct of his ought to raise upon your cheek the flush of shame, or cost you more uneasiness than ordinary good feeling dictates to the errors and feelings of a fellow creature.”

“If all the world,” said Henry, “would take such liberal and comprehensive views as you do, admiral, it would be much happier than it is; but such is not the case, and people are but too apt to blame one person for the evil that another has done.”

“Ah, but,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “it so happens that those are the people whose opinions are of the very least consequence.”

“There is some truth in that,” said Henry, sadly; “but, however, let me proceed; since I have to tell the tale, I could wish it over. My father, then, Admiral Bell, although a man not tainted in early life with vices, became, by the force of bad associates, and a sort of want of congeniality and sentiment that sprang up between him and my mother, plunged into all the excesses of his age.”

“These excesses were all of that character which the most readily lay hold strongly of an unreflecting mind, because they all presented themselves in the garb of sociality.

The wine cup is drained in the name of good fellowship; money which is wanted for legitimate purposes is squandered under the mask of a noble and free generosity, and all that the small imaginations of a number of persons of perverted intellects could enable them to do, has been done from time to time, to impart a kind of lustre to intemperance and all its dreadful and criminal consequences.

My father, having once got into the company of what he considered wits and men of spirit, soon became thoroughly vitiated. He was almost the only one of the set among whom he passed what he considered his highly convivial existence, who was really worth anything, pecuniarily speaking. There were some among them who might have been respectable men, and perchance carved their way to fortune, as well as some others who had started in life with good patrimonies; but he, my father, at the time he became associated with them, was the only one, as I say, who, to use a phrase I have heard myself from his lips concerning them, had got a feather to fly with.

The consequence of this was, that his society, merely for the sake of the animal gratification of drinking at his expense was courted, and he was much flattered, all of which he laid to the score of his own merits, which had been found out, and duly appreciated by these bon vivants, while he considered that the grave admonitions of his real friends proceeded from nothing in the world but downright envy and malice.

Such a state of things as this could not last very long. The associates of my father wanted money as well as wine, so they introduced him to the gaming-table, and he became fascinated with the fearful vice to an extent which predicted his own destruction and the ruin of every one who was in any way dependent upon him.

He could not absolutely sell Bannerworth Hall, unless I had given my consent, which I refused; but he accumulated debt upon debt, and from time to time stripped the mansion of all its most costly contents.

With various mutations of fortune, he continued this horrible and baneful career for a long time, until, at last, he found himself utterly and irretrievably ruined, and he came home in an agony of despair, being so weak, and utterly ruined in constitution, that he kept his bed for many days.

It appeared, however, that something occurred at this juncture which gave him actually, or all events awakened a hope that he should possess some money, and be again in a position to try his fortune at the gaming-table.

He rose, and, fortifying himself once more with the strong stimulant of wine and spirits, he left his home, and was absent for about two months.

What occurred to him during that time we none of us ever knew, but late one night he came home, apparently much flurried in manner, and seeming as if something had happened to drive him half mad.

He would not speak to any one, but he shut himself up the whole of the night in the chamber where hangs the portrait that bears so strong a resemblance to Sir Francis Varney, and there he remained till the morning, when he emerged, and said briefly that he intended to leave the country.

He was in a most fearful state of nervousness, and my mother tells me that he shook like one in an ague, and started at every little sound that occurred in the house, and glared about him so wildly that it was horrible to see him, or to sit in the same apartment with him.

She says that the whole morning passed on in this way till a letter came to him, the contents of which appeared to throw him into a perfect convulsion of terror, and he retired again to the room with the portrait, where he remained some hours, and then he emerged, looking like a ghost, so dreadfully pale and haggard was he.

He walked into the garden here, and was seen to sit down in this summer-house, and fix his eyes upon the window of that apartment.

Henry paused for a few moments, and then he added,—

You will excuse me from entering upon any details of what next ensued in the melancholy history. My father here committed suicide. He was found dying, and all the words he spoke were, “The money is hidden!” Death claimed his victim, and, with a convulsive spasm, he resigned his spirit, leaving what he had intended to say hidden in the oblivion of the grave.

“That was an odd affair,” said the admiral.

“It was, indeed. We have all pondered deeply, and the result was, that, upon the whole, we were inclined to come to an opinion that the words he so uttered were but the result of the mental disturbance that at such a moment might well be supposed to be ensuing in the mind, and that they related really to no foregone fact any more than some incoherent words uttered by a man in a dream might be supposed to do.”

“It may be so.”

“I do not mean,” remarked Mr. Chillingworth, “for one moment to attempt to dispute, Henry, the rationality of such an opinion as you have just given utterance to; but you forget that another circumstance occurred, which gave a colour to the words used by your father.”

“Yes; I know to what you allude.”

“Be so good as to state it to the admiral.”

“I will. On the evening of that same day there came a man here, who, in seeming ignorance of what had occurred, although by that time it was well known to all the neighbourhood, asked to see my father.”

“Upon being told that he was dead, he started back, either with well acted or with real surprise, and seemed to be immensely chagrined. He then demanded to know if he had left any disposition of his property; but he got no information, and departed muttering the most diabolical oaths and curses that can be imagined. He mounted his horse, for he had ridden to the Hall and his last words were, as I am told—”

“‘Where, in the name of all that’s damnable, can he have put the money!’”

“And did you never find out who this man was?” asked the admiral.

“Never.”

“It is an odd affair.”

“It is,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “and full of mystery. The public mind was much taken up at the time with some other matters, or it would have made the death of Mr. Bannerworth the subject of more prolific comment than it did. As it was, however, a great deal was said upon the subject, and the whole county was in a state of commotion for weeks afterwards.”

“Yes,” said Henry; “it so happened that about that very time a murder was committed in the neighbourhood of London, which baffled all the exertions of the authorities to discover the perpetrators of. It was the murder of Lord Lorne.”

“Oh! I remember,” said the admiral; “the newspapers were full of it for a long time.”

“They were; and so, as Mr. Chillingworth says, the more exciting interest which that affair created drew off public attention, in a great measure, from my father’s suicide, and we did not suffer so much from public remark and from impertinent curiosity as might have been expected.”

“And, in addition,” said Mr. Chillingworth, and he changed colour a little as he spoke, “there was an execution shortly afterwards.”

“Yes,” said Henry, “there was.”

“The execution of a man named Angerstein,” added Mr. Chillingworth, “for a highway robbery, attended with the most brutal violence.”

“True; all the affairs of that period of time are strongly impressed upon my mind,” said Henry; “but you do not seem well, Mr. Chillingworth.”

“Oh, yes; I am quite well—you are mistaken.”

Both the admiral and Henry looked scrutinizingly at the doctor, who certainly appeared to them to be labouring under some great mental excitement, which he found it almost beyond his power to repress.

“I tell you what it is, doctor,” said the admiral; “I don’t pretend, and never did, to see further through a tar-barrel than my neighbours; but I can see far enough to feel convinced that you have got something on your mind, and that it somehow concerns this affair.”

“Is it so?” said Henry.

“I cannot if I would,” said Mr. Chillingworth; “and I may with truth add, that I would not, if I could, hide from you that I have something on my mind connected with this affair; but let me assure you it would be premature of me to tell you of it.”

“Premature be d—d!” said the admiral; “out with it.”

“Nay, nay, dear sir; I am not now in a position to say what is passing through my mind.”

“Alter your position, then, and be blowed!” cried Jack Pringle, suddenly stepping forward, and giving the doctor such a push, that he nearly went through one of the sides of the summer-house.

“Why, you scoundrel!” cried the admiral, “how came you here?”

“On my legs,” said Jack. “Do you think nobody wants to know nothing but yourself? I’m as fond of a yarn as anybody.”

“But if you are,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “you had no occasion to come against me as if you wanted to move a house.”

“You said as you wasn’t in a position to say something as I wanted to hear, so I thought I’d alter it for you.”

“Is this fellow,” said the doctor, shaking his head, as he accosted the admiral, “the most artful or stupid?”

“A little of both,” said Admiral Bell—“a little of both, doctor. He’s a great fool and a great scamp.”

“The same to you,” said Jack; “you’re another. I shall hate you presently, if you go on making yourself so ridiculous. Now, mind, I’ll only give you a trial of another week or so, and if you don’t be more purlite in your d——n language, I’ll leave you.”

Away strolled Jack, with his hands in his pockets, towards the house, while the admiral was half choked with rage, and could only glare after him, without the ability to say a word.

Under any other circumstances than the present one of trouble, and difficulty; and deep anxiety, Henry Bannerworth must have laughed at these singular little episodes between Jack and the admiral; but his mind was now by far too much harassed to permit him to do so.

“Let him go, let him go, my dear sir,” said Mr. Chillingworth to the admiral, who showed some signs of an intention to pursue Jack; “he no doubt has been drinking again.”

“I’ll turn him off the first moment I catch him sober enough to understand me,” said the admiral.

“Well, well; do as you please; but now let me ask a favour of both of you.”

“What is it?”

“That you will leave Bannerworth Hall to me for a week.”

“What for?”

“I hope to make some discoveries connected with it which shall well reward you for the trouble.”

“It’s no trouble,” said Henry; “and for myself, I have amply sufficient faith, both in your judgment and in your friendship, doctor, to accede to any request which you may make to me.”

“And I,” said the admiral. “Be it so—be it so. For one week, you say?”

“Yes—for one week. I hope, by the end of that time, to have achieved something worth the telling you of; and I promise you that, if I am at all disappointed in my expectation, that I will frankly and freely communicate to you all I know and all I suspect.”

“Then that’s a bargain.”

“It is.”

“And what’s to be done at once?”

“Why, nothing, but to take the greatest possible care that Bannerworth Hall is not left another hour without some one in it; and in order that such should be the case, I have to request that you two will remain here until I go to the town, and make preparations for taking quiet possession of it myself, which I will do in the course of two hours, at most.”

“Don’t be longer,” said the admiral, “for I am so desperately hungry, that I shall certainly begin to eat somebody, if you are.”

“Depend upon me.”

“Very well,” said Henry; “you may depend we will wait here until you come back.”

The doctor at once hurried from the garden, leaving Henry and the admiral to amuse themselves as best they might, with conjectures as to what he was really about, until his return.

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Chapter LXII

THE MYSTERIOUS MEETING IN THE RUIN AGAIN.—THE VAMPYRE’S ATTACK UPON THE CONSTABLE.

It is now necessary that we return once more to that mysterious ruin, in the intricacies of which Varney, when pursued by the mob, had succeeded in finding a refuge which defied all the exertions which were made for his discovery. Our readers must be well aware, that, connected with that ruin, are some secrets of great importance to our story; and we will now, at the solemn hour of midnight, take another glance at what is doing within its recesses.

At that solemn hour it is not probable that any one would seek that gloomy place from choice. Some lover of the picturesque certainly might visit it; but such was not the inciting cause of the pilgrimage with those who were soon to stand within its gloomy precincts.

Other motives dictated their presence in that spot—motives of rapine; peradventure of murder itself.

As the neighbouring clocks sounded the hour of twelve, and the faint strokes were borne gently on the wind to that isolated ruin, there might have been seen a tall man standing by the porch of what had once been a large doorway to some portion of the ruin.

His form was enveloped in a large cloak, which was of such ample material that he seemed well able to wrap it several times around him, and then leave a considerable portion of it floating idly in the gentle wind.

He stood as still, as calm, and as motionless as a statue, for a considerable time, before any degree of impatience began to show itself. Then he took from his pocket a large antique watch, the white face of which just enabled him to see what the time was, and, in a voice which had in it some amount of petulance and anger, he said,—

“Not come yet, and nearly half an hour beyond the time! What can have detained him? This is, indeed, trifling with the most important moments of a man’s existence.”

Even as he spoke, he heard, from some distance off, the sound of a short, quick footstep. He bent forwards to listen, and then, in a tone of satisfaction, he said,—

“He comes—he comes!”

But he who thus waited for some confederate among these dim and old grey ruins, advanced not a step to meet him. On the contrary, such seemed the amount of cold-blooded caution which he possessed, that the nearer the man—who was evidently advancing—got to the place, the further back did he who had preceded him shrink into the shadow of the dim and crumbling walls, which had, for some years now past, seemed to bend to the passing blast, and to be on the point of yielding to the destroying hand of time.

And yet, surely he needed not have been so cautious. Who was likely, at such an hour as that, to come to the ruins, but one who sought it by appointment?

And, moreover, the manner of the advancing man should have been quite sufficient to convince him who waited, that so much caution was unnecessary; but it was a part and parcel of his nature.

About three minutes more sufficed to bring the second man to the ruin, and he, at once, and fearlessly, plunged into its recesses.

“Who comes?” said the first man, in a deep, hollow voice.

“He whom you expect,” was the reply.

“Good,” he said, and at once he now emerged from his hiding-place, and they stood together in the nearly total darkness with which the place was enshrouded; for the night was a cloudy one, and there appeared not a star in the heavens, to shed its faint light upon the scene below.

For a few moments they were both silent, for he who had last arrived had evidently made great exertions to reach the spot, and was breathing laboriously, while he who was there first appeared, from some natural taciturnity of character, to decline opening the conversation.

At length the second comer spoke, saying,—

“I have made some exertion to get here to my time, and yet I am beyond it, as you are no doubt aware.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Well, such would not have been the case; but yet, I stayed to bring you some news of importance.”

“Indeed!”

“It is so. This place, which we have, now for some time had as a quiet and perfectly eligible one of meeting, is about to be invaded by one of those restless, troublesome spirits, who are never happy but when they are contriving something to the annoyance of others who do not interfere with them.”

“Explain yourself more fully.”

“I will. At a tavern in the town, there has happened some strange scenes of violence, in consequence of the general excitement into which the common people have been thrown upon the dreadful subject of vampyres.”

“Well.”

“The consequence is, that numerous arrests have taken place, and the places of confinement for offenders against the laws are now full of those whose heated and angry imaginations have induced them to take violent steps to discover the reality or the falsehood of rumours which so much affected them, their wives, and their families, that they feared to lie down to their night’s repose.”

The other laughed a short, hollow, restless sort of laugh, which had not one particle of real mirth in it.

“Go on—go on,” he said. “What did they do?”

“Immense excesses have been committed; but what made me, first of all, stay beyond my time, was that I overheard a man declare his intentions this night, from twelve till the morning, and for some nights to come, to hold watch and ward for the vampyre.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes. He did but stay, at the earnest solicitation of his comrades, to take yet another glass, ere he came upon his expedition.”

“He must be met. The idiot! what business is it of his?”

“There are always people who will make everything their business, whether it be so or not.”

“There are. Let us retire further into the recesses of the ruin, and there consider as well what is to be done regarding more important affairs, as with this rash intruder here.”

They both walked for some twenty paces, or so, right into the ruin, and then he who had been there first, said, suddenly, to his companion,—

“I am annoyed, although the feeling reaches no further than annoyance, for I have a natural love of mischief, to think that my reputation has spread so widely, and made so much noise.”

“Your reputation as a vampyre, Sir Francis Varney, you mean?”

“Yes; but there is no occasion for you to utter my name aloud, even here where we are alone together.”

“It came out unawares.”

“Unawares! Can it be possible that you have so little command over yourself as to allow a name to come from your lips unawares?”

“Sometimes.”

“I am surprised.”

“Well, it cannot be helped. What do you now propose to do?”

“Nay, you are my privy councillor. Have you no deep-laid, artful project in hand? Can you not plan and arrange something which may yet have the effect of accomplishing what at first seemed so very simple, but which has, from one unfortunate circumstance and another, become full of difficulty and pregnant with all sorts of dangers?”

“I must confess I have no plan.”

“I listen with astonishment.”

“Nay, now, you are jesting.”

“When did you ever hear of me jesting?”

“Not often, I admit. But you have a fertile genius, and I have always, myself, found it easier to be the executive than to plan an elaborate course of action for others.”

“Then you throw it all on me?”

“I throw a weight, naturally enough, upon the shoulders which I think the best adapted to sustain it.”

“Be it so, then—be it so.”

“You are, I presume, from what you say, provided with a scheme of action which shall present better hopes of success, at less risk, I hope. Look what great danger we have already passed through.”

“Yes, we have.”

“I pray you avoid that in the next campaign.”

“It is not the danger that annoys and troubles me, but it is that, notwithstanding it, the object is as far off as ever from being attained.”

“And not only so, but, as is invariably the case under such circumstances, we have made it more difficult of execution because we have put those upon their guard thoroughly who are the most likely to oppose us.”

“We have—we have.”

“And placed the probability of success afar off indeed.”

“And yet I have set my life upon the cast, and I will stand the hazard. I tell you I will accomplish this object, or I will perish in the attempt.”

“You are too enthusiastic.”

“Not at all. Nothing has been ever done, the execution of which was difficult, without enthusiasm. I will do what I intend, or Bannerworth Hall shall become a heap of ruins, where fire shall do its worst work of devastation, and I will myself find a grave in the midst.”

“Well, I quarrel with no man for chalking out the course he intends to pursue; but what do you mean to do with the prisoner below here?”

“Kill him.”

“What?”

“I say kill him. Do you not understand me?”

“I do, indeed.”

“When everything else is secured, and when the whole of that which I so much court, and which I will have, is in my possession, I will take his life, or you shall. Ay, you are just the man for such a deed. A smooth-faced, specious sort of man are you, and you like not danger. There will be none in taking the life of a man who is chained to the floor of a dungeon.”

“I know not why,” said the other, “you take a pleasure on this particular night, of all others, in saying all you can which you think will be offensive to me.”

“Now, how you wrong me. This is the reward of confidence.”

“I don’t want such confidence.”

“Why, you surely don’t want me to flatter you.”

“No; but——”

“Psha! Hark you. That admiral is the great stumbling-block in my way. I should ere this have had undisturbed possession of Bannerworth Hall but for him. He must be got out of the way somehow.”

“A short time will tire him out of watching. He is one of those men of impulse who soon become wearied of inaction.”

“Ay, and then the Bannerworths return to the Hall.”

“It may be so.”

“I am certain of it. We have been out-generalled in this matter, although I grant we did all that men could do to give us success.”

“In what way would you get rid of this troublesome admiral?”

“I scarcely know. A letter from his nephew might, if well put together, get him to London.”

“I doubt it. I hate him mortally. He has offended me more than once most grievously.”

“I know it. He saw through you.”

“I do not give him so much credit. He is a suspicious man, and a vain and a jealous one.”

“And yet he saw through you. Now, listen to me. You are completely at fault, and have no plan of operations whatever in your mind. What I want you to do is, to disappear from the neighbourhood for a time, and so will I. As for our prisoner here below, I cannot see what else can be done with him than—than——”

“Than what? Do you hesitate?”

“I do.”

“Then what is it you were about to say?”

“I cannot but feel that all we have done, hitherto, as regards this young prisoner of ours, has failed. He has, with a determined obstinacy, set at naught, as well you know, all threats.”

“He has.”

“He has refused to do one act which could in any way aid me in my objects. In fact, from the first to the last, he has been nothing but an expense and an encumbrance to us both.”

“All that is strictly true.”

“And yet, although you, as well as I, know of a marvellously ready way of getting rid of such encumbrances, I must own, that I shrink with more than a feeling of reluctance from the murder of the youth.”

“You contemplated it then?” asked the other.

“No; I cannot be said to have contemplated it. That is not the proper sort of expression to use.”

“What is then?”

“To contemplate a deed seems to me to have some close connexion to the wish to do it.”

“And you have no such wish?”

“I have no such wish, and what is more I will not do it.”

“Then that is sufficient; and the only question that remains for you to consider is, what you will do. It is far easier in all enterprises to decide upon what we will not do, than upon what we will. For my own part I must say that I can perceive no mode of extricating ourselves from this involvement with anything like safety.”

“Then it must be done with something like danger.”

“As you please.”

“You say so, and your words bear a clear enough signification; but from your tone I can guess how much you are dissatisfied with the aspect of affairs.”

“Dissatisfied!”

“Yes; I say, dissatisfied. Be frank, and own that which it is in vain to conceal from me. I know you too well; arch hypocrite as you are, and fully capable of easily deceiving many, you cannot deceive me.”

“I really cannot understand you.”

“Then I will take care that you shall.”

“How?”

“Listen. I will not have the life of Charles Holland taken.”

“Who wishes to take it?”

“You.”

“There, indeed, you wrong me. Unless you yourself thought that such an act was imperatively called for by the state of affairs, do you think that I would needlessly bring down upon my head the odium as well as the danger of such a deed? No, no. Let him live, if you are willing; he may live a thousand years for all I care.”

“’Tis well. I am, mark me, not only willing, but I am determined that he shall live so far as we are concerned. I can respect the courage that, even when he considered that his life was at stake, enabled him to say no to a proposal which was cowardly and dishonourable, although it went far to the defeat of my own plans and has involved me in much trouble.”

“Hush! hush!”

“What is it?”

“I fancy I hear a footstep.”

“Indeed; that were a novelty in such a place as this.”

“And yet not more than I expected. Have you forgotten what I told you when I reached here to-night after the appointed hour?”

“Truly; I had for the moment. Do you think then that the footstep which now meets our ears, is that of the adventurer who boasted that he could keep watch for the vampyre?”

“In faith do I. What is to be done with such a meddling fool?”

“He ought certainly to be taught not to be so fond of interfering with other people’s affairs.”

“Certainly.”

“Perchance the lesson will not be wholly thrown away upon others. It may be worth while to take some trouble with this poor valiant fellow, and let him spread his news so as to stop any one else from being equally venturous and troublesome.”

“A good thought.”

“Shall it be done?”

“Yes; if you will arrange that which shall accomplish such a result.”

“Be it so. The moon rises soon.”

“It does.”

“Ah, already I fancy I see a brightening of the air as if the mellow radiance of the queen of night were already quietly diffusing itself throughout the realms of space. Come further within the ruins.”

They both walked further among the crumbling walls and fragments of columns with which the place abounded. As they did so they paused now and then to listen, and more than once they both heard plainly the sound of certain footsteps immediately outside the once handsome and spacious building.

Varney, the vampyre, who had been holding this conversation with no other than Marchdale, smiled as he, in a whispered voice, told the latter what to do in order to frighten away from the place the foolhardy man who thought that, by himself, he should be able to accomplish anything against the vampyre.

It was, indeed, a hair-brained expedition, for whether Sir Francis Varney was really so awful and preternatural a being as so many concurrent circumstances would seem to proclaim, or not, he was not a likely being to allow himself to be conquered by any one individual, let his powers or his courage be what they might.

What induced this man to become so ventursome we shall now proceed to relate, as well as what kind of reception he got in the old ruins, which, since the mysterious disappearance of Sir Francis Varney within their recesses, had possessed so increased a share of interest and attracted so much popular attention and speculation.

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Chapter LXIII

THE GUESTS AT THE INN, AND THE STORY OF THE DEAD UNCLE.

As had been truly stated by Mr. Marchdale, who now stands out in his true colours to the reader as the confidant and abettor of Sir Francis Varney, there had assembled on that evening a curious and a gossipping party at the inn where such dreadful and such riotous proceedings had taken place, which, in their proper place, we have already duly and at length recorded.

It was not very likely that, on that evening, or for many and many an evening to come, the conversation in the parlour of the inn would be upon any other subject than that of the vampyre.

Indeed, the strange, mysterious, and horrible circumstances which had occurred, bade fair to be gossipping stock in trade for many a year.

Never before had a subject presenting so many curious features arisen. Never, within the memory of that personage who is supposed to know everything, had there occurred any circumstance in the county, or set of circumstances, which afforded such abundant scope for conjecture and speculation.

Everybody might have his individual opinion, and be just as likely to be right as his neighbours; and the beauty of the affair was, that such was the interest of the subject itself, that there was sure to be a kind of reflected interest with every surmise that at all bore upon it.

On this particular night, when Marchdale was prowling about, gathering what news he could, in order that he might carry it to the vampyre, a more than usually strong muster of the gossips of the town took place.

Indeed, all of any note in the talking way were there, with the exception of one, and he was in the county gaol, being one of the prisoners apprehended by the military when they made the successful attack upon the lumber-room of the inn, after the dreadful desecration of the dead which had taken place.

The landlord of the inn was likely to make a good thing of it, for talking makes people thirsty; and he began to consider that a vampyre about once a-year would be no bad thing for the Blue Lion.

“It’s shocking,” said one of the guests; “it’s shocking to think of. Only last night, I am quite sure I had such a fright that it added at least ten years to my age.”

“A fright!” said several.

“I believe I speak English—I said a fright.”

“Well, but had it anything to do with the vampyre?”

“Everything.”

“Oh! do tell us; do tell us all about it. How was it? Did he come to you? Go on. Well, well.”

The first speaker became immediately a very important personage in the room; and, when he saw that, he became at once a very important personage in his own eyes likewise; and, before he would speak another word, he filled a fresh pipe, and ordered another mug of ale.

“It’s no use trying to hurry him,” said one.

“No,” he said, “it isn’t. I’ll tell you in good time what a dreadful circumstance has made me sixty-three to-day, when I was only fifty-three yesterday.”

“Was it very dreadful?”

“Rather. You wouldn’t have survived it at all.”

“Indeed!”

“No. Now listen. I went to bed at a quarter after eleven, as usual. I didn’t notice anything particular in the room.”

“Did you peep under the bed?”

“No, I didn’t. Well, as I was a-saying, to bed I went, and I didn’t fasten the door; because, being a very sound sleeper, in case there was a fire, I shouldn’t hear a word of it if I did.”

“No,” said another. “I recollect once——”

“Be so good as allow me to finish what I know, before you begin to recollect anything, if you please. As I was saying, I didn’t lock the door, but I went to bed. Somehow or another, I did not feel at all comfortable, and I tossed about, first on one side, and then on the other; but it was all in vain; I only got, every moment, more and more fidgetty.”

“And did you think of the vampyre?” said one of the listeners.

“I thought of nothing else till I heard my clock, which is on the landing of the stairs above my bed-room, begin to strike twelve.”

“Ah! I like to hear a clock sound in the night,” said one; “it puts one in mind of the rest of the world, and lets one know one isn’t all alone.”

“Very good. The striking of the clock I should not at all have objected to; but it was what followed that did the business.”

“What, what?”

“Fair and softly; fair and softly. Just hand me a light, Mr. Sprigs, if you please. I’ll tell you all, gentlemen, in a moment or two.”

With the most provoking deliberation, the speaker re-lit his pipe, which had gone out while he was talking, and then, after a few whiffs, to assure himself that its contents had thoroughly ignited, he resumed,—

“No sooner had the last sound of it died away, than I heard something on the stairs.”

“Yes, yes.”

“It was as if some man had given his foot a hard blow against one of the stairs; and he would have needed to have had a heavy boot on to do it. I started up in bed and listened, as you may well suppose, not in the most tranquil state of mind, and then I heard an odd, gnawing sort of noise, and then another dab upon one of the stairs.”

“How dreadful!”

“It was. What to do I knew not, or what to think, except that the vampyre had, by some means, got in at the attic window, and was coming down stairs to my room. That seemed the most likely. Then there was another groan, and then another heavy step; and, as they were evidently coming towards my door, I felt accordingly, and got out of bed, not knowing hardly whether I was on my head or my heels, to try and lock my door.”

“Ah, to be sure.”

“Yes; that was all very well, if I could have done it; but a man in such a state of mind as I was in is not a very sharp hand at doing anything. I shook from head to foot. The room was very dark, and I couldn’t, for a moment or two, collect my senses sufficient really to know which way the door lay.”

“What a situation!”

“It was. Dab, dab, dab, came these horrid footsteps, and there was I groping about the room in an agony. I heard them coming nearer and nearer to my door. Another moment, and they must have reached it, when my hand struck against the lock.”

“What an escape!”

“No, it was not.”

“No?”

“No, indeed. The key was on the outside, and you may well guess I was not over and above disposed to open the door to get at it.”

“No, no.”

“I felt regularly bewildered, I can tell you; it seemed to me as if the very devil himself was coming down stairs hopping all the way upon one leg.”

“How terrific!”

“I felt my senses almost leaving me; but I did what I could to hold the door shut just as I heard the strange step come from the last stair on to the landing. Then there was a horrid sound, and some one began trying the lock of my door.”

“What a moment!”

“Yes, I can tell you it was a moment. Such a moment as I don’t wish to go through again. I held the door as close as I could, and did not speak. I tried to cry out help and murder, but I could not; my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my strength was fast failing me.”

“Horrid, horrid!”

“Take a drop of ale.”

“Thank you. Well, I don’t think this went on above two or three minutes, and all the while some one tried might and main to push open the door. My strength left me all at once; I had only time to stagger back a step or two, and then, as the door opened, I fainted away.”

“Well, well!”

“Ah, you wouldn’t have said well, if you had been there, I can tell you.”

“No; but what become of you. What happened next? How did it end? What was it?”

“Why, what exactly happened next after I fainted I cannot tell you; but the first thing I saw when I recovered was a candle.”

“Yes, yes.”

“And then a crowd of people.”

“Ah, ah!”

“And then Dr. Webb.”

“Gracious!”

“And Mrs. Bulk, my housekeeper. I was in my own bed, and when I opened my eyes I heard Dr. Webb say,—

“‘He will be better soon. Can no one form any idea of what it is all about. Some sudden fright surely could alone have produced such an effect.’”

“‘The Lord have mercy upon me!’ said I.

“Upon this everybody who had been called in got round the bed, and wanted to know what had happened; but I said not a word of it; but turning to Mrs. Bulk, I asked her how it was she found out I had fainted.

“‘Why, sir,’ says she, ‘I was coming up to bed as softly as I could, because I knew you had gone to rest some time before. The clock was striking twelve, and as I went past it some of my clothes, I suppose, caught the large weight, but it was knocked off, and down the stairs it rolled, going with such a lump from one to the other, and I couldn’t catch it because it rolled so fast, that I made sure you would be awakened; so I came down to tell you what it was, and it was some time before I could get your room door open, and when I did I found you out of bed and insensible.’”

There was a general look of disappointment when this explanation was given, and one said,—

“Then it was not the vampire?”

“Certainly not.”

“And, after all, only a clock weight.”

“That’s about it.”

“Why didn’t you tell us that at first?”

“Because that would have spoilt the story.”

There was a general murmur of discontent, and, after a few moments one man said, with some vivacity,—

“Well, although our friend’s vampyre has turned out, after all, to be nothing but a confounded clock-weight, there’s no disputing the fact about Sir Francis Varney being a vampyre, and not a clock-weight.”

“Very true—very true.”

“And what’s to be done to rid the town of such a man?”

“Oh, don’t call him a man.”

“Well, a monster.”

“Ah, that’s more like. I tell you what, sir, if you had got a light, when you first heard the noise in your room, and gone out to see what it was, you would have spared yourself much fright.”

“Ah, no doubt; it’s always easy afterwards to say, if you had done this, and if you had done the other, so and so would have been the effect; but there is something about the hour of midnight that makes men tremble.”

“Well,” said one, who had not yet spoken, “I don’t see why twelve at night should be a whit more disagreeable than twelve at day.”

“Don’t you?”

“Not I.”

“Now, for instance, many a party of pleasure goes to that old ruin where Sir Francis Varney so unaccountably disappeared in broad daylight. But is there any one here who would go to it alone, and at midnight?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“I would.”

“What! and after what has happened as regards the vampyre in connection with it?”

“Yes, I would.”

“I’ll bet you twenty shillings you won’t.”

“And I—and I,” cried several.

“Well, gentlemen,” said the man, who certainly shewed no signs of fear, “I will go, and not only will I go and take all your bets, but, if I do meet the vampyre, then I’ll do my best to take him prisoner.”

“And when will you go?”

“To-night,” he cried, and he sprang to his feet; “hark ye all, I don’t believe one word about vampyres. I’ll go at once; it’s getting late, and let any one of you, in order that you may be convinced I have been to the place, give me any article, which I will hide among the ruins; and tell you where to find it to-morrow in broad daylight.”

“Well,” said one, “that’s fair, Tom Eccles. Here’s a handkerchief of mine; I should know it again among a hundred others.”

“Agreed; I’ll leave it in the ruins.”

The wagers were fairly agreed upon; several handkerchiefs were handed to Tom Eccles; and at eleven o’clock he fairly started, through the murky darkness of the night, to the old ruin where Sir Francis Varney and Marchdale were holding their most unholy conference.

It is one thing to talk and to accept wagers in the snug parlour of an inn, and another to go alone across a tract of country wrapped in the profound stillness of night to an ancient ruin which, in addition to the natural gloom which might well be supposed to surround it, has superadded associations which are anything but of a pleasant character.

Tom Eccles, as he was named, was one of those individuals who act greatly from impulse. He was certainly not a coward, and, perhaps, really as free from superstition as most persons, but he was human, and consequently he had nerves, and he had likewise an imagination.

He went to his house first before he started on his errand to the ruins. It was to get a horse-pistol which he had, and which he duly loaded and placed in his pocket. Then he wrapped himself up in a great-coat, and with the air of a man quite determined upon something desperate he left the town.

The guests at the inn looked after him as he walked from the door of that friendly establishment, and some of them, as they saw his resolved aspect, began to quake for the amount of the wagers they had laid upon his non-success.

However, it was resolved among them, that they would stay until half-past twelve, in the expectation of his return, before they separated.

To while away the time, he who had been so facetious about his story of the clock-weight, volunteered to tell what happened to a friend of his who went to take possession of some family property which he became possessed of as heir-at-law to an uncle who had died without a will, having an illegitimate family unprovided for in every shape.

“Ah! nobody cares for other people’s illegitimate children, and, if their parents don’t provide for them, why, the workhouse is open for them, just as if they were something different from other people.”

“So they are; if their parents don’t take care of them, and provide for them, nobody else will, as you say, neighbour, except when they have a Fitz put to their name, which tells you they are royal bastards, and of course unlike anybody else’s.”

“But go on—let’s know all about it; we sha’n’t hear what he has got to say at all, at this rate.”

“Well, as I was saying, or about to say, the nephew, as soon as he heard his uncle was dead, comes and claps his seal upon everything in the house.”

“But, could he do so?” inquired one of the guests.

“I don’t see what was to hinder him,” replied a third. “He could do so, certainly.”

“But there was a son, and, as I take it, a son’s nearer than a nephew any day.”

“But the son is illegitimate.”

“Legitimate, or illegitimate, a son’s a son; don’t bother me about distinction of that sort; why, now, there was old Weatherbit——”

“Order, order.”

“Let’s hear the tale.”

“Very good, gentlemen, I’ll go on, if I ain’t to be interrupted; but I’ll say this, that an illegitimate son is no son, in the eyes of the law; or at most he’s an accident quite, and ain’t what he is, and so can’t inherit.”

“Well, that’s what I call making matters plain,” said one of the guests, who took his pipe from his mouth to make room for the remark; “now that is what I likes.”

“Well, as I have proved then,” resumed the speaker, “the nephew was the heir, and into the house he would come. A fine affair it was too—the illegitimates looking the colour of sloes; but he knew the law, and would have it put in force.”

“Law’s law, you know.”

“Uncommonly true that; and the nephew stuck to it like a cobbler to his last—he said they should go out, and they did go out; and, say what they would about their natural claims, he would not listen to them, but bundled them out and out in a pretty short space of time.”

“It was trying to them, mind you, to leave the house they had been born in with very different expectations to those which now appeared to be their fate. Poor things, they looked ruefully enough, and well they might, for there was a wide world for them, and no prospect of a warm corner.

“Well, as I was saying, he had them all out and the house clear to himself.

“Now,” said he, “I have an open field and no favour. I don’t care for no——Eh! what?”

“There was a sudden knocking, he thought, the door, and went and opened it, but nothing was to be seen.

“Oh! I see—somebody next door; and if it wasn’t, it don’t matter. There’s nobody here. I’m alone, and there’s plenty of valuables in the house. That is what I call very good company. I wouldn’t wish for better.”

He turned about, looked over room after room, and satisfied himself that he was alone—that the house was empty.

At every room he entered he paused to think over the value—what it was worth, and that he was a very fortunate man in having dropped into such a good thing.

“Ah! there’s the old boy’s secretary, too—his bureau—there’ll be something in that that will amuse me mightily; but I don’t think I shall sit up late. He was a rum old man, to say the least of it—a very odd sort of man.”

With that he gave himself a shrug, as if some very uncomfortable feeling had come over him.

“I’ll go to bed early, and get some sleep, and then in daylight I can look after these papers. They won’t be less interesting in the morning than they are now.”

There had been some rum stories about the old man, and now the nephew seemed to think he might have let the family sleep on the premises for that night; yes, at that moment he could have found it in his heart to have paid for all the expense of their keep, had it been possible to have had them back to remain the night.

But that wasn’t possible, for they would not have done it, but sooner have remained in the streets all night than stay there all night, like so many house-dogs, employed by one who stepped in between them and their father’s goods, which were their inheritance, but for one trifling circumstance—a mere ceremony.

The night came on, and he had lights. True it was he had not been down stairs, only just to have a look. He could not tell what sort of a place it was; there were a good many odd sort of passages, that seemed to end nowhere, and others that did.

There were large doors; but they were all locked, and he had the keys; so he didn’t mind, but secured all places that were not fastened.

He then went up stairs again, and sat down in the room where the bureau was placed.

“I’ll be bound,” said one of the guests, “he was in a bit of a stew, notwithstanding all his brag.”

“Oh! I don’t believe,” said another, “that anything done that is dangerous, or supposed to be dangerous, by the bravest man, is any way wholly without some uncomfortable feelings. They may not be strong enough to prevent the thing proposed to be done from being done, but they give a disagreeable sensation to the skin.”

“You have felt it, then?”

“Ha! ha! ha!”

“Why, at that time I slept in the churchyard for a wager, I must say I felt cold all over, as if my skin was walking about me in an uncomfortable manner.”

“But you won your wager?”

“I did.”

“And of course you slept there?”

“To be sure I did.”

“And met with nothing?”

“Nothing, save a few bumps against the gravestones.”

“Those were hard knocks, I should say.”

“They were, I assure you; but I lay there, and slept there, and won my wager.”

“Would you do it again?”

“No.”

“And why not?”

“Because of the rheumatism.”

“You caught that?”

“I did; I would give ten times my wager to get rid of them. I have them very badly.”

“Come, order, order—the tale; let’s hear the end of that, since it has begun.”

“With all my heart. Come, neighbour.”

“Well, as I said, he was fidgetty; but yet he was not a man to be very easily frightened or overcome, for he was stout and bold.

“When he shut himself up in the room, he took out a bottle of some good wine, and helped himself to drink; it was good old wine, and he soon felt himself warmed and, comforted. He could have faced the enemy.

“If one bottle produces such an effect,” he muttered, “what will two do?”

This was a question that could only be solved by trying it, and this he proceeded to do.

But first he drew a brace of long barrelled pistols from his coat pocket, and taking a powder-flask and bullets from his pocket also, he loaded them very carefully.

“There,” said he, “are my bull-dogs; and rare watch-dogs they are. They never bark but they bite. Now, if anybody does come, it will be all up with them. Tricks upon travellers ain’t a safe game when I have these; and now for the other bottle.”

He drew the other bottle, and thought, if anything, it was better than the first. He drank it rather quick, to be sure, and then he began to feel sleepy and tired.

“I think I shall go to bed,” he said; “that is, if I can find my way there, for it does seem to me as if the door was travelling. Never mind, it will make a call here again presently, and then I’ll get through.”

So saying he arose. Taking the candle in his hand, he walked with a better step than might have been expected under the circumstance. True it was the candle wagged to and fro, and his shadow danced upon the wall; but still, when he got to the bed, he secured his door, put the light in a safe place, threw himself down, and was fast asleep in a few moments, or rather he fell into a doze instantaneously.

How long he remained in this state he knew not, but he was suddenly awakened by a loud bang, as though something heavy and flat had fallen upon the floor—such, for instance, as a door, or anything of that sort. He jumped up, rubbed his eyes, and could even then hear the reverberations through the house.

“What is that?” he muttered; “what is that?”

He listened, and thought he could hear something moving down stairs, and for a moment he was seized with an ague fit; but recollecting, I suppose, that there were some valuables down stairs that were worth fighting for, he carefully extinguished the light that still burned, and softly crept down stairs.

When he got down stairs he thought he could hear some one scramble up the kitchen stairs, and then into the room where the bureau was. Listening for a moment to ascertain if there were more than one, and then feeling convinced there was not, he followed into the parlour, when he heard the cabinet open by a key.

This was a new miracle, and one he could not understand; and then he heard the papers begin to rattle and rustle; so, drawing out one of the pistols, he cocked it, and walked in.

The figure instantly began to jump about; it was dressed in white—in grave-clothes. He was terribly nervous, and shook, so he feared to fire the pistol; but at length he did, and the report was followed by a fall and a loud groan.

This was very dreadful—very dreadful; but all was quiet, and he lit the candle again, and approached the body to examine it, and ascertain if he knew who it was. A groan came from it. The bureau was open, and the figure clutched firmly a will in his hand.

The figure was dressed in grave-clothes, and he started up when he saw the form and features of his own uncle, the man who was dead, who somehow or other had escaped his confinement, and found his way up, here. He held his will firmly; and the nephew was so horrified and stunned, that he threw down the light, and rushed out of the room with a shout of terror, and never returned again.

• • • • •

The narrator concluded, and one of the guests said,—

“And do you really believe it?”—“No, no—to be sure not.”

“You don’t?”—“Why should I? My friend was, out of all hand, one of the greatest liars I ever came near; and why, therefore, should I believe him? I don’t, on my conscience, believe one word of it.”

It was now half-past twelve, and, as Tom Eccles came not back, and the landlord did not feel disposed to draw any more liquor, they left the inn, and retired to their separate houses in a great state of anxiety to know the fate of their respective wagers.

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LXIV. THE VAMPIRE IN THE MOONLIGHT.—THE FALSE FRIEND

Part of the distance being accomplished towards the old ruins, Tom Eccles began to feel that what he had undertaken was not altogether such child’s-play as he had at first imagined it to be. Somehow or another, with a singular and uncomfortable sort of distinctness, there came across his mind every story that he had remembered of the wild and the wonderful. All the long-since forgotten tales of superstition that in early childhood he had learned, came now back upon him, suggesting to his mind a thousand uncomfortable fancies of the strangest description.

It was not likely that when once a man, under such circumstances, got into such a frame of mind, he would readily get out of it again, while he continued surrounded by such scenes as had first called them into existence.

No doubt, had he turned about, and faced the inn again instead of the old ruins he would soon have shaken off these “thick coming fancies;” but such a result was no to be expected, so long as he kept on towards the dismal place he had pledged himself to reach.

As he traversed meadow after meadow, he began to ask himself some questions, which he found that he could not answer exactly in a consolatory manner, under the present state of things.

Among these questions was the very pertinent one of,—“It’s no argument against vampyres, because I don’t see the use of ’em—is it?” This he was compelled to answer as he had put it; and when, in addition, he began to recollect that, without the shadow of a doubt, Sir Francis Varney the supposed vampyre, had been chased across the fields to that very ruin whither he was bound, and had then and there disappeared, he certainly found himself in decidedly uncomfortable and most unpromising situation.

“No,” he said, “no. Hang it, I won’t go back now, to be made the laughing-stock of the whole town, which I should be. Come what may of it, I will go on as I have commenced; so I shall put on as stout a heart as I can.”

Then, having come to this resolve, he strove might and main to banish from his mind those disagreeable reminiscences that had been oppressing him, to turn his attention to subjects of a different complexion.

During the progress of making this endeavour, which was rather futile, he came within sight of the ruins. Then he slackened his pace a little, telling himself, with a pardonable self-deceit, that it was common, ordinary caution only, which induced him to do so, and nothing at all in the shape of fear.

“Time enough,” he remarked, “to be afraid, when I see anything to be afraid of, which I don’t see as yet. So, as all’s right, I may as well put a good face upon the matter.”

He tried to whistle a tune, but it turned out only a melancholy failure; so he gave that up in despair, and walked on until he got within a hundred yards, or thereabouts, of the old ruins.

He thus proceeded, and bending his ear close to the ground, he listened attentively for several minutes. Somehow, he fancied that a strange, murmuring sound came to his ears; but he was not quite sure that it proceeded from the ruins, because it was just that sort of sound that might come from a long way off, being mellowed by distance, although, perhaps, loud enough at its source.

“Well, well,” he whispered to himself, “it don’t matter much, after all. Go I must, and hide the handkerchiefs somewhere, or else be laughed at, besides losing my wages. The former I don’t like, and the latter I cannot afford.”

Thus clinching the matter by such knock-down arguments, he walked on until he was almost within the very shadow of the ruins, and, probably, it was at this juncture that his footsteps may have been heard by Marchdale and Sir Francis Varney.

Then he paused again; but all was profoundly still, and he began to think that the strange sort of murmuring noise which he had heard must have come from far off and not at all from any person or persons within the ruins.

“Let me see,” he said to himself; “I have five handkerchiefs to hide among the old ruins somewhere, and the sooner I do so the better, because then I will get away; for, as regards staying here to watch, Heaven knows how long, for Sir Francis Varney, I don’t intend to do it, upon second thoughts, and second thoughts, they say, are generally best.”

With the most careful footsteps now, as if he were treading upon some fragile substance, which he feared to injure, he advanced until he was fairly within the precincts of the ancient place, which now bore so ill a reputation.

He then made to himself much the same remark that Sir Francis Varney had made to Marchdale, with respect to the brightening up of the sky, in consequence of its being near the time for the moon to rise from the horizon, and he saw more clearly around him, although he could not find any good place to hide the handkerchiefs in.

“I must and will,” he said, “hide them securely; for it would, indeed, be remarkably unpleasant, after coming here and winning my wages, to have the proofs that I had done so taken away by some chance visitor to the place.”

He at length saw a tolerably large stone, which stood, in a slant position, up against one of the walls. Its size attracted him. He thought, if his strength was sufficient to move it, that it would be a good thing to do so, and to place the handkerchiefs beneath it; for, at all events, it was so heavy that it could not be kicked aside, and no one, without some sort of motive to do so, beyond the mere love of labour, would set about moving it from its position.

“I may go further and fare worse,” he said to himself; “so here shall all the handkerchiefs lie, to afford a proof that I have been here.”

He packed them into a small compass, and then stooped to roll aside the heavy stone, when, at the moment, before he could apply his strength to that purpose, he heard some one, in his immediate neighbourhood, say,—“Hist!”

This was so sudden, and so utterly unexpected, that he not only ceased his exertions to move the stone, but he nearly fell down in his surprise.

“Hist—hist!” said the voice again.

“What—what,” gasped Tom Eccles—“what are you?”—“Hush—hush—hush!”

The perspiration broke out upon his brow, and he leaned against the wall for support, as he managed to say, faintly,—

“Well, hush—what then?”—“Hist!”

“Well, I hear you. Where are you?”

“Here at hand. Who are you?”

“Tom Eccles. Who are you?”—“A friend. Have you seen anything?”

“No; I wish I could. I should like to see you if I could.”—“I’m coming.”

There was a slow and cautious footstep, and Marchdale advanced to where Tom Eccles was standing.

“Come, now,” said the latter, when he saw the dusky-looking form stalking towards him; “till I know you better, I’ll be obliged to you to keep off. I am well armed. Keep your distance, be you friend or foe.”

“Armed!” exclaimed Marchdale, and he at once paused.—“Yes, I am.”

“But I am a friend. I have no sort of objection frankly to tell you my errand. I am a friend of the Bannerworth family, and have kept watch here now for two nights, in the hopes of meeting with Varney, the vampyre.”

“The deuce you have; and pray what may your name be?”—“Marchdale.”

“If you be Mr. Marchdale, I know you by sight; for I have seen you with Mr. Henry Bannerworth several times. Come out from among the shadows, and let us have a look at you; but, till you do, don’t come within arm’s length of me. I am not naturally suspicious; but we cannot be too careful.”

“Oh! certainly—certainly. The silver edge of the moon is now just peeping up from the east, and you will be able to see me well, if you step from the shadow of the wall by which you now are.”

This was a reasonable enough proposition, and Tom Eccles at once acceded to it, by stepping out boldly into the partial moonlight, which now began to fall upon the open meadows, tinting the grass with a silvery refulgence, and rendering even minute objects visible. The moment he saw Marchdale he knew him, and, advancing frankly to him, he said,—

“I know you, sir, well.”

“And what brings you here?”—“A wager for one thing, and a wish to see the vampyre for another.”

“Indeed!”—“Yes; I must own I have such a wish, along with a still stronger one, to capture him, if possible; and, as there are now two of us, why may we not do it?”

“As for capturing him,” said Marchdale, “I should prefer shooting him.”—“You would?”

“I would, indeed. I have seen him once shot down, and he is now, I have no doubt, as well as ever. What were you doing with that huge stone I saw you bending over?”—“I have some handkerchiefs to hide here, as a proof that I have to-night really been to this place.”

“Oh, I will show you a better spot, where there is a crevice in which you can place them with perfect safety. Will you walk with me into the ruins?”—“Willingly.”

“It’s odd enough,” remarked Marchdale, after he had shown Tom Eccles where to hide the handkerchiefs, “that you and I should both be here upon so similar an errand.”—“I’m very glad of it. It robs the place of its gloom, and makes it ten times more endurable than it otherwise would be. What do you propose to do if you see the vampyre?”

“I shall try a pistol bullet on him. You say you are armed?”—“Yes.”

“With pistols?”—“One. Here it is.”

“A huge weapon; loaded well, of course?”—“Oh, yes, I can depend upon it; but I did not intend to use it, unless assailed.”

“’Tis well. What is that?”—“What—what?”

“Don’t you see anything there? Come farther back. Look—look. At the corner of that wall there I am certain there is the flutter of a human garment.”—“There is—there is.”

“Hush! Keep close. It must be the vampyre.”—“Give me my pistol. What are you doing with it?”

“Only ramming down the charge more firmly for you. Take it. If that be Varney the vampyre, I shall challenge him to surrender the moment he appears; and if he does not, I will fire upon him, and do you do so likewise.”—“Well, I—I don’t know.”

“You have scruples?”—“I certainly have.”

“Well, well—don’t you fire, then, but leave it to me. There; look—look. Now have you any doubt? There he goes; in his cloak. It is—it is——”—“Varney, by Heavens!” cried Tom Eccles.

“Surrender!” shouted Marchdale.

At the instant Sir Francis Varney sprang forward, and made off at a rapid pace across the meadows.

“Fire after him—fire!” cried Marchdale, “or he will escape. My pistol has missed fire. He will be off.”

On the impulse of the moment, and thus urged by the voice and the gesture of his companion, Tom Eccles took aim as well as he could, and fired after the retreating form of Sir Francis Varney. His conscience smote him as he heard the report and saw the flash of the large pistol amid the half sort of darkness that was still around.

The effect of the shot was then to him painfully apparent. He saw Varney stop instantly; then make a vain attempt to stagger forward a little, and finally fall heavily to the earth, with all the appearance of one killed upon the spot.

“You have hit him,” said Marchdale—“you have hit him. Bravo!”—“I have—hit him.”

“Yes, a capital shot, by Jove!”—“I am very sorry.”

“Sorry! sorry for ridding the world of such a being! What was in your pistol?”—“A couple of slugs.”

“Well, they have made a lodgment in him, that’s quite clear. Let’s go up and finish him at once.”—“He seems finished.”

“I beg your pardon there. When the moonbeams fall upon him he’ll get up and walk away as if nothing was the matter.”—“Will he?” cried Tom, with animation—“will he?”

“Certainly he will.”—“Thank God for that. Now, hark you, Mr. Marchdale: I should not have fired if you had not at the moment urged me to do so. Now, I shall stay and see if the effect which you talk of will ensue; and although it may convince me that he is a vampyre, and that there are such things, he may go off, scot free, for me.”

“Go off?”—“Yes; I don’t want to have even a vampyre’s blood upon my hands.”

“You are exceedingly delicate.”—“Perhaps I am; it’s my way, though. I have shot him—not you, mind; so, in a manner of speaking, he belongs to me. Now, mark, me: I won’t have him touched any more to-night, unless you think there’s a chance of making a prisoner of him without violence.”

“There he lies; you can go and make a prisoner of him at once, dead as he is; and if you take him out of the moonlight——”

“I understand; he won’t recover.”—“Certainly not.”

“But, as I want him to recover, that don’t suit me.”—“Well, I cannot but honour your scruples, although I do not actually share in them; but I promise you that, since such is your wish, I will take no steps against the vampyre; but let us come up to him and see if he be really dead, or only badly wounded.”

Tom Eccles hung back a little from this proposal; but, upon being urged again by Marchdale, and told that he need not go closer than he chose, he consented, and the two of them approached the prostrate form of Sir Francis Varney, which lay upon its face in the faint moonlight, which each moment was gathering strength and power.

“He lies upon his face,” said Marchdale. “Will you go and turn him over?”—“Who—I? God forbid I should touch him.”

“Well—well, I will. Come on.”

They halted within a couple of yards of the body. Tom Eccles would not go a step farther; so Marchdale advanced alone, and pretended to be, with great repugnance, examining for the wound.

“He is quite dead,” he said; “but I cannot see the hurt.”—“I think he turned his head as I fired.”

“Did he? Let us see.”

Marchdale lifted up the head, and disclosed such a mass of clotted-looking blood, that Tom Eccles at once took to his heels, nor stopped until he was nearly as far off as the ruins. Marchdale followed him more slowly, and when he came up to him, he said,—

“The slugs have taken effect on his face.”—“I know it—I know it. Don’t tell me.”

“He looks horrible.”—“And I am a murderer.”

“Psha! You look upon this matter too seriously. Think of who and what he was, and then you will soon acquit yourself of being open to any such charge.”—“I am bewildered, Mr. Marchdale, and cannot now know whether he be a vampyre or not. If he be not, I have murdered, most unjustifiably, a fellow-creature.”

“Well, but if he be?”—“Why, even then I do not know but that I ought to consider myself as guilty. He is one of God’s creatures if he were ten times a vampyre.”

“Well, you really do take a serious view of the affair.”—“Not more serious than it deserves.”

“And what do you mean to do?”—“I shall remain here to await the result of what you tell me will ensue, if he be a real vampire. Even now the moonbeams are full upon him, and each moment increasing in intensity. Think you he will recover?”

“I do indeed.”—“Then here will I wait.”

“Since that is your resolve, I will keep you company. We shall easily find some old stone in the ruins which will serve us for a seat, and there at leisure we can keep our eyes upon the dead body, and be able to observe if it make the least movement.”

This plan was adopted, and they sat down just within the ruins, but in such a place that they had a full view of the dead body, as it appeared to be, of Sir Francis Varney, upon which the sweet moonbeams shone full and clear.

Tom Eccles related how he was incited to come upon his expedition, but he might have spared himself that trouble, as Marchdale had been in a retired corner of the inn parlour before he came to his appointment with Varney, and heard the business for the most part proposed.

Half-an-hour, certainly not more, might have elapsed; when suddenly Tom Eccles uttered an exclamation, partly of surprise and partly of terror,—

“He moves; he moves!” he cried. “Look at the vampyre’s body.”

Marchdale affected to look with an all-absorbing interest, and there was Sir Francis Varney, raising slowly one arm with the hand outstretched towards the moon, as if invoking that luminary to shed more of its beams upon him. Then the body moved slowly, like some one writhing in pain, and yet unable to move from the spot on which it lay. From the head to the foot, the whole frame seemed to be convulsed, and now and then as the ghastly object seemed to be gathering more strength, the limbs were thrown out with a rapid and a frightful looking violence.

It was truly to one, who might look upon it as a reality and no juggle, a frightful sight to see, and although Marchdale, of course, tolerably well preserved his equanimity, only now and then, for appearance sake, affecting to be wonderfully shocked, poor Tom Eccles was in such a state of horror and fright that he could not, if he would, have flown from the spot, so fascinated was he by the horrible spectacle.

This was a state of things which continued for many minutes, and then the body showed evident symptoms of so much returning animation, that it was about to rise from his gory bed and mingle once again with the living.

“Behold!” said Marchdale—“behold!”—“Heaven have mercy upon us!”

“It is as I said; the beams of the moon have revived the vampyre. You perceive now that there can be no doubt.”—“Yes, yes, I see him; I see him.”

Sir Francis Varney now, as if with a great struggle, rose to his feet, and looked up at the bright moon for some moments with such an air and manner that it would not have required any very great amount of imagination to conceive that he was returning to it some sort of thanksgiving for the good that it had done to him.

He then seemed for some moments in a state of considerable indecision as to which way he should proceed. He turned round several times. Then he advanced a step or two towards the house, but apparently his resolution changed again, and casting his eyes upon the ruins, he at once made towards them.

This was too much for the philosophy as well as for the courage of Tom Eccles. It was all very well to look on at some distance, and observe the wonderful and inexplicable proceedings of the vampyre; but when he showed symptoms of making a nearer acquaintance, it was not to be borne.

“Why, he’s coming here,” said Tom.—“He seems so indeed,” remarked Marchdale.

“Do you mean to stay?”—“I think I shall.”

“You do, do you?”—“Yes, I should much like to question him, and as we are two to one I think we really can have nothing to fear.”

“Do you? I’m altogether of a different opinion. A man who has more lives than a cat don’t much mind at what odds he fights. You may stay if you like.”—“You do not mean to say that you will desert me?”

“I don’t see a bit how you call it deserting you; if we had come out together on this adventure, I would have stayed it out with you; but as we came separate and independent, we may as well go back so.”—“Well, but——”

“Good morning,” cried Tom, and he at once took to his heels towards the town, without staying to pay any attention to the remonstrances of Marchdale, who called after him in vain.

Sir Francis Varney, probably, had Tom Eccles not gone off so rapidly, would have yet taken another thought, and gone in another direction than that which led him to the ruins, and Tom, if he had had his senses fully about him, as well as all his powers of perception, would have seen that the progress of the vampyre was very slow, while he continued to converse with Marchdale, and that it was only when he went off at good speed that Sir Francis Varney likewise thought it prudent to do so.

“Is he much terrified?” said Varney, as he came up to Marchdale.—“Yes, most completely.”

“This then, will make a good story in the town.”—“It will, indeed, and not a little enhance your reputation.”

“Well, well; it don’t much matter now; but if by terrifying people I can purchase for myself anything like immunity for the past, I shall be satisfied.”—“I think you may now safely reckon that you have done so. This man who has fled with so much precipitation, had courage.”

“Unquestionably.”—“Or else he would have shrunk from coming here at all.”

“True, but his courage and presence arose from his strong doubts as to the existence of such beings as vampyres.”—“Yes, and now that he is convinced, his bravery has evaporated along with his doubts; and such a tale as he has now to tell, will be found sufficient to convert even the most sceptical in the town.”

“I hope so.”—“And yet it cannot much avail you.”

“Not personally, but I must confess that I am not dead to all human passions, and I feel some desire of revenge against those dastards who by hundreds have hunted me, burnt down my mansion, and sought my destruction.”—“That I do not wonder at.”

“I would fain leave among them a legacy of fear. Such fear as shall haunt them and their children for years to come. I would wish that the name of Varney, the vampire, should be a sound of terror for generations.”—“It will be so.”

“It shall.”—“And now, then, for a consideration of what is to be done with our prisoner. What is your resolve upon that point?”

“I have considered it while I was lying upon yon green sward waiting for the friendly moonbeams to fall upon my face, and it seems to me that there is no sort of resource but to——”—“Kill him?”

“No, no.”—“What then?”

“To set him free.”—“Nay, have you considered the immense hazard of doing so? Think again; I pray you think again. I am decidedly of opinion that he more than suspects who are his enemies; and, in that case, you know what consequences would ensue; besides, have we not enough already to encounter? Why should we add another young, bold, determined spirit to the band which is already arrayed against us?”

“You talk in vain, Marchdale; I know to what it all tends; you have a strong desire for the death of this young man.”—“No; there you wrong me. I have no desire for his death, for its own sake; but, where great interests are at stake, there must be sacrifices made.”

“So there must; therefore, I will make a sacrifice, and let this young prisoner free from his dungeon.”—“If such be your determination, I know well it is useless to combat with it. When do you purpose giving him his freedom?”

“I will not act so heedlessly as that your principles of caution shall blame me. I will attempt to get from him some promise that he will not make himself an active instrument against me. Perchance, too, as Bannerworth Hall, which he is sure to visit, wears such an air of desertion, I may be able to persuade him that the Bannerworth family, as well as his uncle, have left this part of the country altogether; so that, without making any inquiry for them about the neighbourhood, he may be induced to leave at once.”—“That would be well.”

“Good; your prudence approves of the plan, and therefore it shall be done.”—“I am rather inclined to think,” said Marchdale, with a slight tone of sarcasm, “that if my prudence did not approve of the plan, it would still be done.”

“Most probably,” said Varney, calmly.—“Will you release him to-night?”

“It is morning, now, and soon the soft grey light of day will tint the east. I do not think I will release him till sunset again now. Has he provision to last him until then?”—“He has.”

“Well, then, two hours after sunset I will come here and release him from his weary bondage, and now I must go to find some place in which to hide my proscribed head. As for Bannerworth Hall, I will yet have it in my power; I have sworn to do so, I will keep my oath.”—“The accomplishment of our purpose, I regret to say, seems as far off as ever.”

“Not so—not so. As I before remarked, we must disappear, for a time, so as to lull suspicion. There will then arise a period when Bannerworth Hall will neither be watched, as it is now, nor will it be inhabited,—a period before the Bannerworth family has made up its mind to go back to it, and when long watching without a result has become too tiresome to be continued at all; then we can at once pursue our object.”—“Be it so.”

“And now, Marchdale, I want more money.”—“More money!”

“Yes; you know well that I have had large demands of late.”—“But I certainly had an impression that you were possessed, by the death of some one, with very ample means.”

“Yes, but there is a means by which all is taken from me. I have no real resources but what are rapidly used up, so I must come upon you again.”—“I have already completely crippled myself as regards money matters in this enterprise, and I do certainly hope that the fruits will not be far distant. If they be much longer delayed, I shall really not know what to do. However, come to the lodge where you have been staying, and then I will give you, to the extent of my ability, whatever sum you think your present exigencies require.”

“Come on, then, at once. I would certainly, of course, rather leave this place now, before daybreak. Come on, I say, come on.”

Sir Francis Varney and Marchdale walked for some time in silence across the meadows. It was evident that there was not between these associates the very best of feelings. Marchdale was always smarting under an assumption of authority over him, on the part of Sir Francis Varney, while the latter scarcely cared to conceal any portion of the contempt with which he regarded his hypocritical companion.

Some very strong bond of union, indeed, must surely bind these two strange persons together! It must be something of a more than common nature which induces Marchdale not only to obey the behests of his mysterious companion, but to supply him so readily with money as we perceive he promises to do.

And, as regards Varney, the vampyre, he, too, must have some great object in view to induce him to run such a world of risk, and take so much trouble as he was doing with the Bannerworth family.

What his object is, and what is the object of Marchdale, will, now that we have progressed so far in our story, soon appear, and then much that is perfectly inexplicable, will become clear and distinct, and we shall find that some strong human motives are at the bottom of it all.

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Chapter LXV

VARNEY’S VISIT TO THE DUNGEON OF THE LONELY PRISONER IN THE RUINS.

Evident it was that Marchdale was not near so scrupulous as Sir Francis Varney, in what he chose to do. He would, without hesitation, have sacrificed the life of that prisoner in the lonely dungeon, whom it would be an insult to the understanding of our readers, not to presume that they had, long ere this, established in their minds to be Charles Holland.

His own safety seemed to be the paramount consideration with Marchdale, and it was evident that he cared for nothing in comparison with that object.

It says much, however, for Sir Francis Varney, that he did not give in to such a blood-thirsty feeling, but rather chose to set the prisoner free, and run all the chances of the danger to which he might expose himself by such a course of conduct, than to insure safety, comparatively, by his destruction.

Sir Francis Varney is evidently a character of strangely mixed feelings. It is quite evident that he has some great object in view, which he wishes to accomplish almost at any risk; but it is equally evident, at the same time, that he wishes to do so with the least possible injury to others, or else he would never have behaved as he had done in his interview with the beautiful and persecuted Flora Bannerworth, or now suggested the idea of setting Charles Holland free from the dreary dungeon in which he had been so long confined.

We are always anxious and willing to give every one credit for the good that is in them; and, hence, we are pleased to find that Sir Francis Varney, despite his singular, and apparently preternatural capabilities, has something sufficiently human about his mind and feelings, to induce him to do as little injury as possible to others in the pursuit of his own objects.

Of the two, vampyre as he is, we prefer him much to the despicable and hypocritical, Marchdale, who, under the pretence of being the friend of the Bannerworth family, would freely have inflicted upon them the most deadly injuries.

It was quite clear that he was most dreadfully disappointed that Sir Francis Varney, would not permit him to take the life of Charles Holland, and it was with a gloomy and dissatisfied air that he left the ruins to proceed towards the town, after what we may almost term the altercation he had had with Varney the vampyre upon that subject.

It must not be supposed that Sir Francis Varney, however, was blind to the danger which must inevitably accrue from permitting Charles Holland once more to obtain his liberty.

What the latter would be able to state would be more than sufficient to convince the Bannerworths, and all interested in their fortunes, that something was going on of a character, which, however, supernatural it might seem to be, still seemed to have some human and ordinary objects for its ends.

Sir Francis Varney thought over all this before he proceeded, according to his promise, to the dungeon of the prisoner; but it would seem as if there was considerable difficulty, even to an individual of his long practice in all kinds of chicanery and deceit, in arriving at any satisfactory conclusion, as to a means of making Charles Holland’s release a matter of less danger to himself, than it would be likely to be, if, unfettered by obligation, he was at once set free.

At the solemn hour of midnight, while all was still, that is, to say, on the night succeeding the one, on which he had had the interview with Marchdale, we have recorded, Sir Francis Varney alone sought the silent ruins. He was attired, as usual, in his huge cloak, and, indeed, the chilly air of the evening warranted such protection against its numerous discomforts.

Had any one seen him, however, upon that evening, they would have observed an air of great doubt, and irresolution upon his brow, as if he were struggling with some impulses which he found it extremely difficult to restrain.

“I know well,” he muttered, as he walked among the shadow of the ruins, “that Marchdale’s reasoning is coldly and horribly correct, when he says that there is danger in setting this youth free; but, I am about to leave this place, and not to show myself for some time, and I cannot reconcile myself to inflicting upon him the horror of a death by starvation, which must ensue.”

It was a night of more than usual dullness, and, as Sir Francis Varney removed the massy stone, which hid the narrow and tortuous entrance to the dungeons, a chilly feeling crept over him, and he could not help supposing, that even then Marchdale might have played him false, and neglected to supply the prisoner food, according to his promise.

Hastily he descended to the dungeons, and with a step, which had in it far less of caution, than had usually characterised his proceedings, he proceeded onwards until he reached that particular dungeon, in which our young friend, to whom we wished so well, had been so long confined from the beautiful and cheering light of day, and from all that his heart’s best affections most cling to.

“Speak,” said Sir Francis Varney, as he entered the dungeon. “If the occupant of this dreary place live, let him answer one who is as much his friend as he has been his enemy.”

“I have no friend,” said Charles Holland, faintly; “unless it be one who would come and restore me to liberty.”

“And how know you that I am not he?”

“Your voice sounds like that of one of my persecutors. Why do you not place the climax to your injuries by at once taking away life. I should be better pleased that you would do so, than that I should wear out the useless struggle of existence in so dreary and wretched an abode as this.”

“Young man,” said Sir Francis Varney, “I have come to you on a greater errand of mercy than, probably, you will ever give me credit for. There is one who would too readily have granted your present request, and who would at once have taken that life of which you profess to be so wearied; but which may yet present to you some of its sunniest and most beautiful aspects.”

“Your tones are friendly,” said Charles; “but yet I dread some new deception. That you are one of those who consigned me by stratagem, and by brute force, to this place of durance, I am perfectly well assured, and, therefore, any good that may be promised by you, presents itself to me in a very doubtful character.”

“I cannot be surprised,” said Sir Francis Varney, “at such sentiments arising from your lips; but, nevertheless, I am inclined to save you. You have been detained here because it was supposed by being so, a particular object would be best obtained by your absence. That object, however has failed, notwithstanding, and I do not feel further inclined to protract your sufferings. Have you any guess as to the parties who have thus confined you?”—“I am unaccustomed to dissemble, and, therefore I will say at once that I have a guess.”

“In which way does it tend?”—

“Against Sir Francis Varney, called the vampyre.”

“Does it not strike you that this may be a dangerous candour?”—“It may, or it may not be; I cannot help it. I know I am at the mercy of my foes, and I do not believe that anything I can say or do will make my situation worse or better.”

“You are much mistaken there. In other hands than mine, it might make it much worse; but it happens to be one of my weaknesses, that I am charged with candour, and that I admire boldness of disposition.”—“Indeed! and yet can behave in the manner you have done towards me.”

“Yes. There are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. I am the more encouraged to set you free, because, if I procure from you a promise, which I intend to attempt, I am inclined to believe that you will keep it.”—“I shall assuredly keep whatever promise I may make. Propound your conditions, and if they be such as honour and honesty will permit me to accede to, I will do so willingly and at once. Heaven knows I am weary enough of this miserable imprisonment.”

“Will you promise me then, if I set you free, not to mention your suspicions that it is to Sir Francis Varney you owe this ill turn, and not to attempt any act of vengeance against him as a retaliation for it.”—“I cannot promise so much as that. Freedom, indeed, would be a poor boon, if I were not permitted freely to converse of some of the circumstances connected with my captivity.”

“You object?”—“I do to the former of your propositions, but not to the latter. I will promise not to go at all out of my way to execute any vengeance upon you; but I will not promise that I will not communicate the circumstances of my forced absence from them, to those friends whose opinion I so much value, and to return to whom is almost as dear to me as liberty itself.”

Sir Francis Varney was silent for a few moments, and then he said, in a tone of deep solemnity,—

“There are ninety-nine persons out of a hundred who would take your life for the independence of your tongue; but I am as the hundredth one, who looks with a benevolent eye at your proceedings. Will you promise me, if I remove the fetters which now bind your limbs, that you will make no personal attack upon me; for I am weary of personal contention, and I have no disposition to endure it. Will you make me this promise?”—“I will.”

Without another word, but trusting implicitly to the promise which had been given to him, Sir Francis Varney produced a small key from his pocket, and unlocked with it a padlock which confined the chains about the prisoner.

With ease, Charles Holland was then enabled to shake them off, and then, for the first time, for some weeks, he rose to his feet, and felt all the exquisite relief of being comparatively free from bondage.

“This is delightful, indeed,” he said.

“It is,” said Sir Francis Varney—“it is but a foretaste of the happiness you will enjoy when you are entirely free. You see that I have trusted you.”

“You have trusted me as you might trust me, and you perceive that I have kept my word.”

“You have; and since you decline to make me the promise which I would fain have from you, to the effect that you would not mention me as one of the authors of your calamity, I must trust to your honour not to attempt revenge for what you have suffered.”

“That I will promise. There can be but little difficulty to any generous mind in giving up such a feeling. In consequence of your sparing me what you might still further have inflicted, I will let the past rest, and as if it had never happened really to me; and speak of it to others, but as a circumstance which I wish not to revert to, but prefer should be buried in oblivion.”

“It is well; and now I have a request to make of you, which, perhaps, you will consider the hardest of all.”

“Name it. I feel myself bound to a considerable extent to comply with whatever you may demand of me, that is not contrary to honourable principle.”

“Then it is this, that, comparatively free as you are, and in a condition, as you are, to assert your own freedom, you will not do so hastily, or for a considerable period; in fact, I wish and expect that you should wait yet awhile, until it shall suit me to say that it is my pleasure that you shall be free.”

“That is, indeed, a hard condition to man who feels, as you yourself remark, that he can assert his freedom. It is one which I have still a hope you will not persevere in.

“Nay, young man, I think that I have treated you with generosity, to make you feel that I am not the worst of foes you could have had. All I require of you is, that you should wait here for about an hour. It is now nearly one o’clock; will you wait until you hear it strike two before you actually make a movement to leave this place?”

Charles Holland hesitated for some moments, and then he said,—

“Do not fancy that I am not one who appreciates the singular trust you have reposed in me; and, however repugnant to me it may be to remain here, a voluntary prisoner, I am inclined to do so, if it be but to convince you that the trust you have reposed in me is not in vain, and that I can behave with equal generosity to you as you can to me.”

“Be it so,” said Sir Francis Varney; “I shall leave you with a full reliance that you will keep your word; and now, farewell. When you think of me, fancy me rather one unfortunate than criminal, and tell yourself that even Varney the vampyre had some traits in his character, which, although they might not raise your esteem, at all events did not loudly call for your reprobation.”

“I shall do so. Oh! Flora, Flora, I shall look upon you once again, after believing and thinking that I had bidden you a long and last adieu. My own beautiful Flora, it is joy indeed to think that I shall look upon that face again, which, to my perception, is full of all the majesty of loveliness.”

Sir Francis Varney looked coldly on while Charles uttered this enthusiastic speech.

“Remember,” he said, “till two o’clock;” and he walked towards the door of the dungeon. “You will have no difficulty in finding your way out from this place. Doubtless you already perceive the entrance by which I gained admission.”

“Had I been free,” said Charles, “and had the use of my limbs, I should, long ere this, have worked my way to life and liberty.”

“’Tis well. Goodnight.”

Varney walked from the place, and just closed the door behind him. With a slow and stately step he left the ruins, and Charles Holland found himself once more alone, but in a much more enviable condition than for many weeks he could have called his.

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Chapter LXVI

FLORA BANNERWORTH’S APPARENT INCONSISTENCY.—THE ADMIRAL’S CIRCUMSTANCES AND ADVICE.—MR. CHILLINGWORTH’S MYSTERIOUS ABSENCE.

For a brief space let us return to Flora Bannerworth, who had suffered so much on account of her affections, as well as on account of the mysterious attack that had been made upon her by the reputed vampyre.

After leaving Bannerworth Hall for a short time, she seemed to recover her spirits; but this was a state of things which did not last, and only showed how fallacious it was to expect that, after the grievous things that had happened, she would rapidly recover her equanimity.

It is said, by learned physiologists, that two bodily pains cannot endure at the same space of time in the system; and, whether it be so or not, is a question concerning which it would be foreign to the nature of our work, to enter into anything like an elaborate disquisition.

Certainly, however, so far as Flora Bannerworth was concerned, she seemed inclined to show that, mentally, the observation was a true one, for that, now she became released from a continued dread of the visits of the vampyre, her mind would, with more painful interest than ever, recur to the melancholy condition, probably, of Charles Holland, if he were alive, and to soul-harrowing reflections concerning him, if he were dead.

She could not, and she did not, believe, for one moment, that his desertion of her had been of a voluntary character. She knew, or fancied she knew, him by far too well for that; and she more than once expressed her opinion, to the effect that she was perfectly convinced his disappearance was a part and parcel of all that train of circumstances which had so recently occurred, and produced such a world of unhappiness to her, as well as to the whole of the Bannerworth family.

“If he had never loved me,” she said to her brother Henry, “he would have been alive and well; but he has fallen a victim to the truth of a passion, and to the constancy of an affection which, to my dying day, I will believe in.”

Now that Mr. Marchdale had left the place there was no one to dispute this proposition with Flora, for all, as well as she, were fully inclined to think well of Charles Holland.

It was on the very morning which preceded that evening when Sir Francis Varney called upon Charles Holland in the manner we have related, with the gratifying news that, upon certain conditions, he might be released, that Flora Bannerworth, when the admiral came to see them, spoke to him of Charles Holland, saying,—

“Now, sir, that I am away from Bannerworth Hall, I do not, and cannot feel satisfied; for the thought that Charles may eventually come back, and seek us there, still haunts me. Fancy him, sir, doing so, and seeing the place completely deserted.”

“Well, there’s something in that,” said the admiral; “but, however, he’s hardly such a goose, if it were so to happen, to give up the chase—he’d find us out somehow.”

“You think he would, sir? or, do you not think that despair would seize upon him, and that, fancying we had all left the spot for ever, he might likewise do so; so that we should lose him more effectually than we have done at present?”

“No; hardly,” said the admiral; “he couldn’t be such a goose as that. Why, when I was of his age, if I had secured the affections of a young girl like you, I’d have gone over all the world, but I’d have found out where she was; and what I mean to say is, if he’s half such a goose as you think him, he deserves to lose you.”

“Did you not tell me something, sir, of Mr. Chillingworth talking of taking possession of the Hall for a brief space of time?”

“Why, yes, I did; and I expect he is there now; in fact, I’m sure he’s there, for he said he would be.”

“No, he ain’t,” said Jack Pringle, at that moment entering the room; “you’re wrong again, as you always are, somehow or other.”

“What, you vagabond, are you here, you mutinous rascal?”—“Ay, ay, sir; go on; don’t mind me. I wonder what you’d do, sir, if you hadn’t somebody like me to go on talking about.”

“Why, you infernal rascal, I wonder what you’d do if you had not an indulgent commander, who puts up even with real mutiny, and says nothing about it. But where have you been? Did you go as I directed you, and take some provisions to Bannerworth Hall?”—“Yes, I did; but I brought them back again; there’s nobody there, and don’t seem likely to be, except a dead body.”

“A dead body! Whose body can that be!”—“Tom somebody; for I’m d——d if it ain’t a great he cat.”

“You scoundrel, how dare you alarm me in such a way? But do you mean to tell me that you did not see Dr. Chillingworth at the Hall?”—“How could I see him, if he wasn’t there?”

“But he was there; he said he would be there.”—“Then he’s gone again, for there’s nobody there that I know of in the shape of a doctor. I went through every part of the ship—I mean the house—and the deuce a soul could I find; so as it was rather lonely and uncomfortable, I came away again. ‘Who knows,’ thought I, ‘but some blessed vampyre or another may come across me.’”

“This won’t do,” said the old admiral, buttoning up his coat to the chin; “Bannerworth Hall must not be deserted in this way. It is quite clear that Sir Francis Varney and his associates have some particular object in view in getting possession of the place. Here, you Jack.”—“Ay, ay, sir.”

“Just go back again, and stay at the Hall till somebody comes to you. Even such a stupid hound as you will be something to scare away unwelcome visitors. Go back to the Hall, I say. What are you staring at?”—“Back to Bannerworth Hall!” said Jack. “What! just where I’ve come from; all that way off, and nothing to eat, and, what’s worse, nothing to drink. I’ll see you d—d first.”

The admiral caught up a table-fork, and made a rush at Jack; but Henry Bannerworth interfered.

“No, no,” he said, “admiral; no, no—not that. You must recollect that you yourself have given this, no doubt, faithful fellow of your’s liberty to do and say a great many things which don’t look like good service; but I have no doubt, from what I have seen of his disposition, that he would risk his life rather than that you should come to any harm.”

“Ay, ay,” said Jack; “he quite forgets when the bullets were scuttling our nobs off Cape Ushant, when that big Frenchman had hold of him by the skirf of his neck, and began pummelling his head, and the lee scuppers were running with blood, and a bit of Joe Wiggins’s brains had come slap in my eye, while some of Jack Marling’s guts was hanging round my neck like a nosegay, all in consequence of grape-shot—then he didn’t say as I was a swab, when I came up, and bored a hole in the Frenchman’s back with a pike. Ay, it’s all very well now, when there’s peace, and no danger, to call Jack Pringle a lubberly rascal, and mutinous. I’m blessed if it ain’t enough to make an old pair of shoes faint away.”

“Why, you infernal scoundrel,” said the admiral, “nothing of the sort ever happened, and you know it. Jack, you’re no seaman.”—“Werry good,” said Jack; “then, if I ain’t no seaman, you are what shore-going people calls a jolly fat old humbug.”

“Jack, hold your tongue,” said Henry Bannerworth; “you carry these things too far. You know very well that your master esteems you, and you should not presume too much upon that fact.”—“My master!” said Jack; “don’t call him my master. I never had a master, and don’t intend. He’s my admiral, if you like; but an English sailor don’t like a master.”

“I tell you what it is, Jack,” said the admiral; “you’ve got your good qualities, I admit.”—“Ay, ay, sir—that’s enough; you may as well leave off well while you can.”

“But I’ll just tell you what you resemble more than anything else.”—“Chew me up! what may that be, sir?”

“A French marine.”—“A what! A French marine! Good-bye. I wouldn’t say another word to you, if you was to pay me a dollar a piece. Of all the blessed insults rolled into one, this here’s the worstest. You might have called me a marine, or you might have called me a Frenchman, but to make out that I’m both a marine and a Frenchman, d—me, if it isn’t enough to make human nature stand on an end! Now, I’ve done with you.”

“And a good job, too,” said the admiral. “I wish I’d thought of it before. You’re worse than a third day’s ague, or a hot and a cold fever in the tropics.”—“Very good,” said Jack; “I only hope Providence will have mercy upon you, and keep an eye upon you when I’m gone, otherwise, I wonder what will become of you? It wasn’t so when young Belinda, who you took off the island of Antiggy, in the Ingies, jumped overboard, and I went arter her in a heavy swell. Howsumdever, never mind, you shook hands with me then; and while a bushel of the briny was weeping out of the corner of each of your blinkers, you says, says you,—”

“Hold!” cried the admiral, “hold! I know what I said, Jack. It’s cut a fathom deep in my memory. Give us your fist, Jack, and—and—”—“Hold yourself,” said Jack; “I know what you’re going to say, and I won’t hear you say it—so there’s an end of it. Lor bless you! I knows you. I ain’t a going to leave you. Don’t be afraid; I only works you up, and works you down again, just to see if there’s any of that old spirit in you when we was aboard the Victory. Don’t you recollect, admiral?”

“Yes—yes; enough, Jack.”—“Why, let me see—that was a matter of forty years ago, nearly, when I was a youngster.”

“There—there, Jack—that’ll do. You bring the events of other years fresh upon my memory. Peace—peace. I have not forgotten; but still, to hear what you know of them, if recited, would give the old man a pang.”—“A pang,” said Jack; “I suppose that’s some dictionary word for a punch in the eye. That would be mutiny with a vengeance; so I’m off.”

“Go, go.”—“I’m a going; and just to please you, I’ll go to the Hall, so you sha’n’t say that you told me to do anything that I didn’t.”

Away went Jack, whistling an air, that might have been popular when he and the admiral were young, and Henry Bannerworth could not but remark that an appearance of great sadness came over the old man, when Jack was gone.

“I fear, sir,” he said, “that heedless sailor has touched upon some episode in your existence, the wounds of which are still fresh enough to give you pain.”—“It is so,” said the old admiral; “just look at me, now. Do I look like the hero of a romantic love story?”

“Not exactly, I admit.”—“Well, notwithstanding that, Jack Pringle has touched a chord that vibrates in my heart yet,” replied the admiral.

“Have you any objection to tell me of it?”—“None, whatever; and perhaps, by the time I have done, the doctor may have found his way back again, or Jack may bring us some news of him. So here goes for a short, but a true yarn.”

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LXVII. THE ADMIRAL’S STORY OF THE BEAUTIFUL BELINDA

Just at this moment Flora Bannerworth stole into the room from whence she had departed a short time since; but when she saw that old Admiral Bell was looking so exceedingly serious, and apparently about to address Henry upon some very important subject, she would have retired, but he turned towards her, and said,—

“My story, my dear, I’ve no objection to your hearing, and, like all women folks, a love story never comes amiss to you; so you may as well stay and hear it.”—“A love story,” said Flora; “you tell a love story, sir?”

“Yes, my dear, and not only tell it, but be the hero of it, likewise; ain’t you astonished?”—“I am, indeed.”

“Well, you’ll be more astonished then before I’ve done; so just listen. As Jack Pringle says, it was the matter of about somewhere forty years ago, that I was in command of the Victory frigate, which was placed upon the West Indian station, during a war then raging, for the protection of our ports and harbours in that vicinity. We’d not a strong force in that quarter, therefore, I had to cut about from place to place, and do the best I could. After a time, though, I rather think that we frightened off the enemy, during which time I chiefly anchored off the island of Antigua, and was hospitably received at the house of a planter, of the name of Marchant, who, in fact, made his house my home, and introduced me to all the elite of the society of the island. Ah! Miss Flora, you’ve no idea, to look at me now, what I was then; I held a captain’s commission, and was nearly the youngest man in the service, with such a rank. I was as slender, ay, as a dancing master. These withered and bleached locks were black as the raven’s plume. Ay, ay, but no matter; the planter had a daughter.”

“And you loved her?” said Flora—“Loved her,” said the old man, and the flush of youthful animation came to his countenance; “loved her, do you say! I adored her; I worshipped her; she was to me—but what a d—d old fool, I am; we’ll skip that if you please.”

“Nay, nay,” said Flora; “that is what I want to hear.”—“I haven’t the least doubt of that, in the world; but that’s just what you won’t hear; none of your nonsense, Miss Flora; the old man may be a fool, but he isn’t quite an idiot.”

“He’s neither,” said Flora; “true feelings can never disgrace any one.”—“Perhaps not; but, however, to make a long story short, somehow or other, one day, Belinda was sitting alone, and I rudely pounced upon her; I rather think then I must have said something that I oughtn’t to have said, for it took her so aback; I was forced, somehow or other, to hold her up, and then I—I—yes; I’m sure I kissed her; and so, I told her I loved her; and then, what do you think she said?”

“Why,” said Flora, “that she reciprocated the passion.”—“D—n my rags,” said Jack, who at the moment came into the room, “I suppose that’s the name of some shell or other.”

“You here, you villain!” said the admiral; “I thought you were gone.”—“So I was,” said Jack, “but I came back for my hat, you see.”

Away he went again, and the admiral resumed his story.

“Well, Miss Flora,” he said, “you haven’t made a good guess, as she didn’t say anything at all, she only clung to me like some wild bird to its mother’s breast, and cried as if her heart would break.”—“Indeed!”

“Yes; I didn’t know the cause of her emotion, but at last I got it out of her.”—“What was it?”

“Oh, a mere trifle; she was already married to somebody else, that’s all; some d—d fellow, who had gone trading about the islands, a fellow she didn’t care a straw about, that was old enough to be her father.”

“And you left her?”—“No, I didn’t. Guess again. I was a mad-headed youngster. I only felt—I didn’t think. I persuaded her to come away with me. I took her aboard my ship, and set sail with her. A few weeks flew like hours; but one day we were hailed by a vessel, and when we neared her, she manned a boat and brought a letter on board, addressed to Belinda. It was from her father, written in his last moments. It began with a curse and ended with a blessing. There was a postscript in another hand, to say the old man died of grief. She read it by my side on the quarter-deck. It dropped from her grasp, and she plunged into the sea. Jack Pringle went after her; but I never saw her again.”

“Gracious Heavens! what a tragedy!”—“Yes, tolerable,” said the old man.

He arose and took his hat and placed it on his head. He gave the crown of it a blow that sent it nearly over his eyes. He thrust his hands deep into his breeches pockets, clenched his teeth, and muttered something inaudible as he strode from the apartment.

“Who would have thought, Henry,” said Flora, “that such a man as Admiral Bell had been the hero of such an adventure?”—“Ay, who indeed; but it shows that we never can judge from appearances, Flora; and that those who seem to us the most heart-whole may have experienced the wildest vicissitudes of passion.”

“And we must remember, likewise, that this was forty years ago, Henry, which makes a material difference in the state of the case as regards Admiral Bell.”

“It does indeed—more than half a lifetime; and yet how evident it was that his old feelings clung to him. I can well imagine the many hours of bitter regret which the memory of this his lost love must have given him.”

“True—true. I can feel something for him; for have I not lost one who loved me—a worse loss, too, than that which Admiral Bell relates; for am I not a prey to all the horrors of uncertainty? Whereas, he knew the worst, and that, at all events, death had claimed its victim, leaving nothing to conjecture in the shape of suffering, so that the mind had nothing to do but to recover slowly, but surely, as it would from the shock which it had received.”

“That is worse than you, Flora; but rather would I have you cherish hope of soon beholding Charles Holland, probably alive and well, than fancy any great disaster has come over him.”

“I will endeavour to do so,” replied Flora.

“I long to hear what has become of Dr. Chillingworth. His disappearance is most singular; for I fully suspected that he had some particular object in view in getting possession for a short time of Bannerworth Hall; but now, from Jack Pringle’s account, he appears not to be in it, and, in fact, to have disappeared completely from the sight of all who knew him.”

“Yes,” said Flora; “but he may have done that, brother, still in furtherance of his object.”

“It may be so, and I will hope that it is so. Keep yourself close, sister, and see no one, while I proceed to his house to inquire if they have heard anything of him. I will return soon, be assured; and, in the meantime, should you see my brother, tell him I shall be at home in an hour or so, and not to leave the cottage; for it is more than likely that the admiral has gone to Bannerworth Hall, so that you may not see anything of him for some time.”

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