CHAPTER XLVII.
THE REMOVAL FROM THE HALL.--THE NIGHT WATCH, AND THE ALARM.
Mrs. Bannerworth's consent having been already given to the removal, shesaid at once, when appealed to, that she was quite ready to go at anytime her children thought expedient.
Upon this, Henry sought the admiral, and told him as much, at the sametime adding,--
"My sister feared that we should have considerable trouble in theremoval, but I have convinced her that such will not be the case, as weare by no means overburdened with cumbrous property."
"Cumbrous property," said the admiral, "why, what do you mean? I begleave to say, that when I took the house, I took the table and chairswith it. D--n it, what good do you suppose an empty house is to me?"
"The tables and chairs!"
"Yes. I took the house just as it stands. Don't try and bamboozle me outof it. I tell you, you've nothing to move but yourselves and immediatepersonal effects."
"I was not aware, admiral, that that was your plan."
"Well, then, now you are, listen to me. I've circumvented the enemy toooften not to know how to get up a plot. Jack and I have managed it all.To-morrow evening, after dark, and before the moon's got high enough tothrow any light, you and your brother, and Miss Flora and your mother,will come out of the house, and Jack and I will lead you where you're togo to. There's plenty of furniture where you're a-going, and so you willget off free, without anybody knowing anything about it."
"Well, admiral, I've said it before, and it is the unanimous opinion ofus all, that everything should be left to you. You have proved yourselftoo good a friend to us for us to hesitate at all in obeying yourcommands. Arrange everything, I pray you, according to your wishes andfeelings, and you will find there shall be no cavilling on our parts."
"That's right; there's nothing like giving a command to some one person.There's no good done without. Now I'll manage it all. Mind you, seveno'clock to-morrow evening everything is to be ready, and you will all beprepared to leave the Hall."
"It shall be so."
"Who's that giving such a thundering ring at the gate?"
"Nay, I know not. We have few visitors and no servants, so I must e'enbe my own gate porter."
Henry walked to the gate, and having opened it, a servant in a handsomelivery stepped a pace or two into the garden.
"Well," said Henry.
"Is Mr. Henry Bannerworth within, or Admiral Bell?"
"Both," cried the admiral. "I'm Admiral Bell, and this is Mr. HenryBannerworth. What do you want with us, you d----d gingerbread-lookingflunkey?"
"Sir, my master desires his compliments--his very best compliments--andhe wants to know how you are after your flurry."
"What?"
"After your--a--a--flurry and excitement."
"Who is your master?" said Henry.
"Sir Francis Varney."
"The devil!" said the admiral; "if that don't beat all the impudence Iever came near. Our flurry! Ah! I like that fellow. Just go and tellhim--"
"No, no," said Henry, interposing, "send back no message. Say to yourmaster, fellow, that Mr. Henry Bannerworth feels that not only has he noclaim to Sir Francis Varney's courtesy, but that he would rather bewithout it."
"Oh, ha!" said the footman, adjusting his collar; "very good. This seemsa d----d, old-fashioned, outlandish place of yours. Any ale?"
"Now, shiver my hulks!" said the admiral.
"Hush! hush!" said Henry; "who knows but there may be a design in this?We have no ale."
"Oh, ah! dem!--dry as dust, by God! What does the old commodore say? Anymessage, my ancient Greek?"
"No, thank you," said the admiral; "bless you, nothing. What did yougive for that waistcoat, d--n you? Ha! ha! you're a clever fellow."
"Ah! the old gentleman's ill. However, I'll take back his compliments,and that he's much obliged at Sir Francis's condescension. At the sametime, I suppose may place in my eye what I may get out of either of you,without hindering me seeing my way back. Ha! ha! Adieu--adieu."
"Bravo!" said the admiral; "that's it--go it--now for it. D--n it, it isa _do!_"
The admiral's calmness during the latter part of the dialogue arose fromthe fact that over the flunkey's shoulder, and at some little distanceoff, he saw Jack Pringle taking off his jacket, and rolling up hissleeves in that deliberate sort of way that seemed to imply adetermination of setting about some species of work that combined thepleasant with the useful.
Jack executed many nods to and winks at the livery-servant, and jerkedhis thumb likewise in the direction of a pump near at hand, in a mannerthat spoke as plainly as possible, that John was to be pumped upon.
And now the conference was ended, and Sir Francis's messenger turned togo; but Jack Pringle bothered him completely, for he danced round him insuch a singular manner, that, turn which way he would, there stood JackPringle, in some grotesque attitude, intercepting him; and so he edgedhim on, till he got him to the pump.
"Jack," said the admiral.
"Ay, ay, sir."
"Don't pump on that fellow now."
"Ay, ay, sir; give us a hand."
Jack laid hold of him by the two ears, and holding him under the pump,kicked his shins until he completely gathered himself beneath the spout.It was in vain that he shouted "Murder! help! fire! thieves!" Jack wasinexorable, and the admiral pumped.
Jack turned the fellow's head about in a very scientific manner, so asto give him a fair dose of hydropathic treatment, and in a few minutes,never was human being more thoroughly saturated with moisture than wasSir Francis Varney's servant. He had left off hallooing for aid, for hefound that whenever he did so, Jack held his mouth under the spout,which was decidedly unpleasant; so, with a patience that looked likeheroic fortitude, he was compelled to wait until the admiral was tiredof pumping.
"Very good," at length he said. "Now, Jack, for fear this fellow catchercold, be so good as to get a horsewhip, and see him off the premiseswith it."
"Ay, ay, sir," said Jack. "And I say, old fellow, you can take back allour blessed compliments now, and say you've been flurried a littleyourself; and if so be as you came here as dry as dust, d----e, you goback as wet as a mop. Won't it do to kick him out, sir?"
"Very well--as you please, Jack."
"Then here goes;" and Jack proceeded to kick the shivering animal fromthe garden with a vehemence that soon convinced him of the necessity ofgetting out of it as quickly as possible.
How it was that Sir Francis Varney, after the fearful race he had had,got home again across the fields, free from all danger, and back to hisown house, from whence he sent so cool and insolent a message, theycould not conceive.
But such must certainly be the fact; somehow or another, he had escapedall danger, and, with a calm insolence peculiar to the man, he had nodoubt adopted the present mode of signifying as much to theBannerworths.
The insolence of his servant was, no doubt, a matter of pre-arrangementwith that individual, however he might have set about it con amore. Asfor the termination of the adventure, that, of course, had not been atall calculated upon; but, like most tools of other people's insolence orambition, the insolence of the underling had received both his ownpunishment and his master's.
We know quite enough of Sir Francis Varney to feel assured that he wouldrather consider it as a good jest than otherwise of his footman, so thatwith the suffering he endured at the Bannerworths', and the want ofsympathy he was likely to find at home, that individual had certainlynothing to congratulate himself upon but the melancholy reminiscence ofhis own cleverness.
But were the mob satisfied with what had occurred in the churchyard?They were not, and that night was to witness the perpetration of amelancholy outrage, such as the history of the time presents no parallelto.
The finding of a brick in the coffin of the butcher, instead of the bodyof that individual, soon spread as a piece of startling intelligence allover the place; and the obvious deduction that was drawn from thecircumstance, seemed to
be that the deceased butcher was unquestionablya vampyre, and out upon some expedition at the time when his coffin wassearched.
How he had originally got out of that receptacle for the dead wascertainly a mystery; but the story was none the worse for that. Indeed,an ingenious individual found a solution for that part of the business,for, as he said, nothing was more natural, when anybody died who wascapable of becoming a vampyre, than for other vampyres who knew it todig him up, and lay him out in the cold beams of the moonlight, until heacquired the same sort of vitality they themselves possessed, and joinedtheir horrible fraternity.
In lieu of a better explanation--and, after all, it was no bad one--thistheory was generally received, and, with a shuddering horror, peopleasked themselves, if the whole of the churchyard were excavated, howmany coffins would be found tenantless by the dead which had beensupposed, by simple-minded people, to inhabit them.
The presence, however, of a body of dragoons, towards evening,effectually prevented any renewed attack upon the sacred precincts ofthe churchyard, and it was a strange and startling thing to see thatcountry town under military surveillance, and sentinels posted at itsprincipal buildings.
This measure smothered the vengeance of the crowd, and insured, for atime, the safety of Sir Francis Varney; for no considerable body ofpersons could assemble for the purpose of attacking his house again,without being followed; so such a step was not attempted.
It had so happened, however, that on that very day, the funeral of ayoung man was to have taken place, who had put up for a time at thatsame inn where Admiral Bell was first introduced to the reader. He hadbecome seriously ill, and, after a few days of indisposition, which hadpuzzled the country practitioners, breathed his last.
He was to have been buried in the village churchyard on the very day ofthe riot and confusion incidental to the exhumation of the coffin of thebutcher, and probably from that circumstance we may deduce the presenceof the clergyman in canonicals at the period of the riot.
When it was found that so disorderly a mob possessed the churchyard, theidea of burying the stranger on that day was abandoned; but still allwould have gone on quietly as regarded him, had it not been for thefolly of one of the chamber-maids at the tavern.
This woman, with all the love of gossip incidental to her class, had,from the first, entered so fully into all the particulars concerningvampyres, that she fairly might be considered to be a little deranged onthat head. Her imagination had been so worked upon, that she was in anunfit state to think of anything else, and if ever upon anybody a sternand revolting superstition was calculated to produce direful effects, itwas upon this woman.
The town was tolerably quiet; the presence of the soldiery hadfrightened some and amused others, and no doubt the night would havepassed off serenely, had she not suddenly rushed into the street, and,with bewildered accents and frantic gestures shouted,--
"A vampyre--a vampyre--a vampyre!"
These words soon collected a crowd around her, and then, with screamingaccents, which would have been quite enough to convince any reflectingperson that she had actually gone distracted upon that point, shecried,--
"Come into the house--come into the house! Look upon the dead body, thatshould have been in its grave; it's fresher now than it was the day onwhich it died, and there's a colour in its cheeks! A vampyre--avampyre--a vampyre! Heaven save us from a vampyre!"
The strange, infuriated, maniacal manner in which these words wereuttered, produced an astonishingly exciting effect among the mob.Several women screamed, and some few fainted. The torch was laid againto the altar of popular feeling, and the fierce flame of superstitionburnt brightly and fiercely.
Some twenty or thirty persons, with shouts and exclamations, rushed intothe inn, while the woman who had created the disturbance still continuedto rave, tearing her hair, and shrieking at intervals, until she fellexhausted upon the pavement.
Soon, from a hundred throats, rose the dreadful cry of "A vampyre--avampyre!" The alarm was given throughout the whole town; the bugles ofthe military sounded; there was a clash of arms--the shrieks of women;altogether, the premonitory symptoms of such a riot as was not likely tobe quelled without bloodshed and considerable disaster.
It is truly astonishing the effect which one weak or vicious-mindedperson can produce upon a multitude.
Here was a woman whose opinion would have been accounted valueless uponthe most common-place subject, and whose word would not have passed fortwopence, setting a whole town by the ears by force of nothing but hersheer brutal ignorance.
It is a notorious physiological fact, that after four or five days, oreven a week, the bodies of many persons assume an appearance offreshness, such as might have been looked for in vain immediately afterdeath.
It is one of the most insidious processes of that decay which appears toregret with its
"----------- offensive fingers, To mar the lines where beauty lingers."
But what did the chamber-maid know of physiology? Probably, she wouldhave asked if it was anything good to eat; and so, of course, having herhead full of vampyres, she must needs produce so lamentable a scene ofconfusion, the results of which we almost sicken at detailing.
Varney the Vampire; Or, the Feast of Blood Page 46
