Varney the Vampire; Or, the Feast of Blood

by Thomas Preskett Prest

  CHAPTER XLVI.

  THE PREPARATIONS FOR LEAVING BANNERWORTH HALL, AND THE MYSTERIOUSCONDUCT OF THE ADMIRAL AND MR. CHILLINGWORTH.

  It seemed now, that, by the concurrence of all parties, Bannerworth Hallwas to be abandoned; and, notwithstanding Henry was loth--as he had,indeed, from the first shown himself--to leave the ancient abode of hisrace, yet, as not only Flora, but the admiral and his friend Mr.Chillingworth seemed to be of opinion that it would be a prudent courseto adopt, he felt that it would not become him to oppose the measure.

  He, however, now made his consent to depend wholly upon the full andfree acquiescence of every member of the family.

  "If," he said, "there be any among us who will say to me 'Continue tokeep open the house in which we have passed so many happy hours, and letthe ancient home of our race still afford a shelter to us,' I shall feelmyself bound to do so; but if both my mother and my brother agree to adeparture from it, and that its hearth shall be left cold and desolate,be it so. I will not stand in the way of any unanimous wish orarrangement."

  "We may consider that, then, as settled," said the admiral, "for I havespoken to your brother, and he is of our opinion. Therefore, my boy, wemay all be off as soon as we can conveniently get under weigh."

  "But my mother?

  "Oh, there, I don't know. You must speak to her yourself. I never, if Ican help it, interfere with the women folks."

  "If she consent, then I am willing."

  "Will you ask her?"

  "I will not ask her to leave, because I know, then, what answer shewould at once give; but she shall hear the proposition, and I will leaveher to decide upon it, unbiased in her judgment by any stated opinion ofmine upon the matter."

  "Good. That'll do; and the proper way to put it, too. There's no mistakeabout that, I can tell you."

  Henry, although he went through the ceremony of consulting his mother,had no sort of doubt before he did so that she was sufficiently aware ofthe feelings and wishes of Flora to be prepared to yield a ready assentto the proposition of leaving the Hall.

  Moreover, Mr. Marchdale had, from the first, been an advocate of such acourse of proceeding, and Henry well knew how strong an influence he hadover Mrs. Bannerworth's mind, in consequence of the respect in which sheheld him as an old and valued friend.

  He was, therefore, prepared for what his mother said, which was,--

  "My dear Henry, you know that the wishes of my children, since they havebeen grown up and capable of coming to a judgment for themselves, haveever been laws to me. If you, among you all, agree to leave this place,do so."

  "But will you leave it freely, mother?"

  "Most freely I go with you all; what is it that has made this house andall its appurtenances pleasant in my eyes, but the presence in it ofthose who are so dear to me? If you all leave it, you take with you theonly charms it ever possessed; so it becomes in itself as nothing. I amquite ready to accompany you all anywhere, so that we do but keeptogether."

  "Then, mother, we may consider that as settled."

  "As you please."

  "'It's scarcely as I please. I must confess that I would fain have clungwith a kind of superstitious reverence to this ancient abiding-place ofmy race, but it may not be so. Those, perchance, who are morepractically able to come to correct conclusions, in consequence of theirfeelings not being sufficiently interested to lead them astray, havedecided otherwise; and, therefore, I am content to leave."

  "Do not grieve at it, Henry. There has hung a cloud of misfortune overus all since the garden of this house became the scene of an event whichwe can none of us remember but with terror and shuddering."

  "Two generations of our family must live and die before the remembranceof that circumstance can be obliterated. But we will think of it nomore."

  There can no doubt but that the dreadful circumstance to which both Mrs.Bannerworth and Henry alluded, was the suicide of the father of thefamily in the gardens which before has been hinted at in the course ofthis narration, as being a circumstance which had created a greatsensation at the time, and cast a great gloom for many months over thefamily.

  The reader will, doubtless, too, recollect that, at his last moments,this unhappy individual was said to have uttered some incoherent wordsabout some hidden money, and that the rapid hand of death alone seemedto prevent him from being explicit upon that subject, and left it merelya matter of conjecture.

  As years had rolled on, this affair, even as a subject of speculation,had ceased to occupy the minds of any of the Bannerworth family, andseveral of their friends, among whom was Mr. Marchdale, were decidedlyof opinion that the apparently pointed and mysterious words uttered,were but the disordered wanderings of an intellect already hovering onthe confines of eternity.

  Indeed, far from any money, of any amount, being a disturbance to thelast moments of the dissolute man, whose vices and extravagances hadbrought his family, to such ruin, it was pretty generally believed thathe had committed suicide simply from a conviction of the impossibilityof raising any more supplies of cash, to enable him to carry on thecareer which he had pursued for so long.

  But to resume.

  Henry at once communicated to the admiral what his mother had said, andthen the whole question regarding the removal being settled in theaffirmative, nothing remained to be done but to set about it as quicklyas possible.

  The Bannerworths lived sufficiently distant from the town to be out ofearshot of the disturbances which were then taking place; and socompletely isolated were they from all sort of society, that they had nonotion of the popular disturbance which Varney the vampyre had givenrise to.

  It was not until the following morning that Mr. Chillingworth, who hadbeen home in the meantime, brought word of what had taken place, andthat great commotion was still in the town, and that the civilauthorities, finding themselves by far too weak to contend against thepopular will, had sent for assistance to a garrison town, some twentymiles distant.

  It was a great grief to the Bannerworth family to hear these tidings,not that they were in any way, except as victims, accessory to creatingthe disturbance about the vampyre, but it seemed to promise a kind ofnotoriety which they might well shrink from, and which they were justthe people to view with dislike.

  View the matter how we like, however, it is not to be considered as atall probable that the Bannerworth family would remain long in ignoranceof what a great sensation they had created unwittingly in theneighbourhood.

  The very reasons which had induced their servants to leave theirestablishment, and prefer throwing themselves completely out of place,rather than remain in so ill-omened a house, were sure to be bruitedabroad far and wide.

  And that, perhaps, when they came to consider of it, would suffice toform another good and substantial reason for leaving the Hall, andseeking a refuge in obscurity from the extremely troublesome sort ofpopularity incidental to their peculiar situation.

  Mr. Chillingworth felt uncommonly chary of telling them all that hadtaken place; although he was well aware that the proceedings of theriotous mob had not terminated with the little disappointment at the oldruin, to which they had so effectually chased Varney the vampyre, but tolose him so singularly when he got there.

  No doubt he possessed the admiral with the uproar that was going on inthe town, for the latter did hint a little of it to Henry Bannerworth.

  "Hilloa!" he said to Henry, as he saw him walking in the garden; "itstrikes me if you and your ship's crew continue in these latitudes,you'll get as notorious as the Flying Dutchman in the southern ocean."

  "How do you mean?" said Henry.

  "Why, it's a sure going proverb to say, that a nod's as good as a wink;but, the fact is, it's getting rather too well known to be pleasant,that a vampyre has struck up rather a close acquaintance with yourfamily. I understand there's a precious row in the town."

  "Indeed!"

  "Yes; bother the particulars, for I don't know them; but, hark ye, byto-morrow I'll have found a place for you
to go to, so pack up thesticks, get all your stores ready to clear out, and make yourself scarcefrom this place."

  "I understand you," said Henry; "We have become the subject of popularrumour; I've only to beg of you, admiral, that you'll say nothing ofthis to Flora; she has already suffered enough, Heaven knows; do not lether have the additional infliction of thinking that her name is madefamiliar in every pothouse in the town."

  "Leave me alone for that," said the admiral. "Do you think I'm an ass?"

  "Ay, ay," said Jack Pringle, who came in at that moment, and thought thequestion was addressed to him.

  "Who spoke to you, you bad-looking horse-marine?"

  "Me a horse-marine! didn't you ask a plain question of a fellow, and geta plain answer?"

  "Why, you son of a bad looking gun, what do you mean by that? I tell youwhat it is, Jack; I've let you come sneaking too often on thequarter-deck, and now you come poking your fun at your officers, yourascal!"

  "I poking fun!" said Jack; "couldn't think of such a thing. I shouldjust as soon think of you making a joke as me."

  "Now, I tell you what it is, I shall just strike you off the ship'sbooks, and you shall just go and cruise by yourself; I've done withyou."

  "Go and tell that to the marines, if you like," said Jack. "I ain't donewith you yet, for a jolly long watch. Why, what do you suppose wouldbecome of you, you great babby, without me? Ain't I always a conveyingyou from place to place, and steering you through all sorts ofdifficulties?"

  "D---n your impudence!"

  "Well, then, d---n yours."

  "Shiver my timbers!"

  "Ay, you may do what you like with your own timbers."

  "And you won't leave me?"

  "Sartingly not."

  "Come here, then?"

  Jack might have expected a gratuity, for he advanced with alacrity.

  "There," said the admiral, as he laid his stick across his shoulders;"that's your last month's wages; don't spend it all at once."

  "Well, I'm d----d!" said Jack; "who'd have thought of that?--he's aturning rumgumtious, and no mistake. Howsomdever, I must turn it over inmy mind, and be even with him, somehow--I owes him one for that. I say,admiral."

  "What now, you lubber?"

  "Nothing; turn that over in your mind;" and away Jack walked, not quitesatisfied, but feeling, at least, that he had made a demonstration ofattack.

  As for the admiral, he considered that the thump he had given Jack withthe stick, and it was no gentle one, was a decided balancing of accountsup to that period, and as he remained likewise master of the field, hewas upon the whole very well satisfied.

  These last few words which had been spoken to Henry by Admiral Bell,more than any others, induced him to hasten his departure fromBannerworth Hall; he had walked away when the altercation between JackPringle and the admiral began, for he had seen sufficient of those wordyconflicts between those originals to be quite satisfied that neither ofthem meant what he said of a discouraging character towards the other,and that far from there being any unfriendly feeling contingent uponthose little affairs, they were only a species of friendly sparring,which both parties enjoyed extremely.

  He went direct to Flora, and he said to her,--

  "Since we are all agreed upon the necessity, or, at all events, upon theexpediency of a departure from the Hall, I think, sister, the sooner wecarry out that determination the better and the pleasanter for us all itwill be. Do you think you could remove so hastily as to-morrow?"

  "To-morrow! That is soon indeed."

  "I grant you that it is so; but Admiral Bell assures me that he willhave everything in readiness, and a place provided for us to go to bythen."

  "Would it be possible to remove from a house like this so very quickly?"

  "Yes, sister. If you look around you, you will see that a great portionof the comforts you enjoy in this mansion belong to it as a part of itsvery structure, and are not removable at pleasure; what we really haveto take away is very little. The urgent want of money during ourfather's lifetime induced him, as you may recollect even, at varioustimes to part with much that was ornamental, as well as useful, whichwas in the Hall. You will recollect that we seldom returned from thoselittle continental tours which to us were so delightful, without findingsome old familiar objects gone, which, upon inquiry, we found had beenturned into money, to meet some more than usually pressing demand."

  "That is true, brother; I recollect well."

  "So that, upon the whole, sister, there is little to remove."

  "Well, well, be it so. I will prepare our mother for this sudden step.Believe me, my heart goes with it; and as a force of vengefulcircumstances have induced us to remove from this home, which was onceso full of pleasant recollections, it is certainly better, as you say,that the act should be at once consummated, than left hanging in terrorover our minds."

  "Then I'll consider that as settled," said Henry.