Varney the Vampire; Or, the Feast of Blood

by Thomas Preskett Prest

  CHAPTER LXXXI.

  THE VAMPYRE'S FLIGHT.--HIS DANGER, AND THE LAST PLACE OF REFUGE.

  Leaving the disorderly and vicious mob, who were thus sacrificing humanlife to their excited passions, we return to the brothers Bannerworthand the doctor, who together with Admiral Bell, still held watch overthe hall.

  No indication of the coming forth of Varney presented itself for sometime longer, and then, at least they thought, they heard a window open;and, turning their eyes in the direction whence the sound proceeded,they could see the form of a man slowly and cautiously emerging from it.

  As far as they could judge, from the distance at which they were, thatform partook much of the appearance and the general aspect of SirFrancis Varney, and the more they looked and noticed its movements, themore they felt convinced that such was the fact.

  "There comes your patient, doctor," said the admiral.

  "Don't call him my patient," said the doctor, "if you please."

  "Why you know he is; and you are, in a manner of speaking, bound to lookafter him. Well, what is to be done?"

  "He must not, on any account," said Dr. Chillingworth, "be allowed toleave the place. Believe me, I have the very strongest reasons forsaying so."

  "He shall not leave it then," said Henry.

  Even as he spoke, Henry Bannerworth darted forward, and Sir FrancisVarney dropped from the window, out of which he had clambered, close tohis feet.

  "Hold!" cried Henry, "you are my prisoner."

  With the most imperturbable coolness in the world, Sir Francis Varneyturned upon him, and replied,--

  "And pray, Henry Bannerworth, what have I done to provoke your wrath?"

  "What have you done?--have you not, like a thief, broken into my house?Can you ask what you have done?"

  "Ay," said the vampyre, "like a thief, perchance, and yet no thief. MayI ask you, what there is to steal, in the house?"

  By the time this short dialogue had been uttered, the rest of the partyhad come up, and Varney was, so far as regarded numbers, a prisoner.

  "Well, gentlemen," he said, with that strange contortion of countenancewhich, now they all understood, arose from the fact of his having beenhanged, and restored to life again. "Well, gentlemen, now that you havebeleaguered me in such a way, may I ask you what it is about?"

  "If you will step aside with me, Sir Francis Varney, for a moment," saidDr. Chillingworth, "I will make to you a communication which will enableyou to know what it is all about."

  "Oh, with pleasure," said the vampyre. "I am not ill at present; butstill, sir, I have no objection to hear what you have to say."

  He stepped a few paces on one side with the doctor, while the otherswaited, not without some amount of impatience for the result of thecommunication. All that they could hear was, that Varney said,suddenly--

  "You are quite mistaken."

  And then the doctor appeared to be insisting upon something, which thevampyre listened to patiently; and, at the end, burst out with,--

  "Why, doctor, you must be dreaming."

  At this, Dr. Chillingworth at once left him, and advancing to hisfriends, he said,--

  "Sir Francis Varney denies in toto all that I have related to youconcerning him; therefore, I can say no more than that I earnestlyrecommend you, before you let him go, to see that he takes nothing ofvalue with him."

  "Why, what can you mean?" said Varney.

  "Search him," said the doctor; "I will tell you why, very shortly."

  "Indeed--indeed!" said Sir Francis Varney. "Now, gentlemen, I will giveyou a chance of behaving justly and quietly, so saving yourself thedanger of acting otherwise. I have made repeated offers to take thishouse, either as a tenant or as a purchaser, all of which offers havebeen declined, upon, I dare say, a common enough principle, namely, onewhich induces people to enhance the value of anything they have fordisposal, if it be unique, by making it difficult to come at. Seeingthat you had deserted the place, I could make no doubt but that it wasto be had, so I came here to make a thorough examination of itsinterior, to see if it would suit me. I find that it will not;therefore, I have only to apologise for the intrusion, and to wish you aremarkably good evening."

  "That won't do," said the doctor.

  "What won't do, sir?"

  "This excuse will not do, Sir Francis Varney. You are, although you denyit, the man who was hanged in London some years ago for a highwayrobbery."

  Varney laughed, and held up his hands, exclaiming,--

  "Alas! alas! our good friend, the doctor, has studied too hard; hiswits, probably, at the best of times, none of the clearest, have becomehopelessly entangled."

  "Do you deny," said Henry, "then, that you are that man?"

  "Most unequivocally."

  "I assert it," said the doctor, "and now, I will tell you all, for Iperceive you hesitate about searching, Sir Francis Varney, I tell youall why it is that he has such an affection for Bannerworth Hall."

  "Before you do," said Varney, "there is a pill for you, which you mayfind more nauseous and harder of digestion, than any your shop canfurnish."

  As Varney uttered these words, he suddenly drew from his pocket apistol, and, levelling it at the unfortunate doctor, he fired it full athim.

  The act was so sudden, so utterly unexpected, and so stunning, that itwas done before any one could move hand or foot to prevent it. HenryBannerworth and his brother were the furthest off from the vampyre; and,unhappily, in the rush which they, as soon us possible, made towardshim, they knocked down the admiral, who impeded them much; and, beforethey could spring over, or past him, Sir Francis Varney was gone.

  So sudden, too, had been his departure, that they had not the least ideain which direction he had gone; so that to follow him would have been awork of the greatest possible difficulty.

  Notwithstanding, however, both the difficulty and the danger, for nodoubt the vampyre was well enough armed, Henry and his brother bothrushed after the murderer, as they now believed him to be, in the routewhich they thought it was most probable he would take, namely, thatwhich led towards the garden gate.

  They reached that spot in a few moments, but all was profoundly still.Not the least trace of any one could be seen, high or low, and they werecompelled, after a cursory examination, to admit that Sir Francis Varneyhad again made his escape, despite the great odds that were against himin point of numbers.

  "He has gone," said Henry. "Let us go back, and see into the state ofpoor Dr. Chillingworth, who, I fear, is a dead man."

  They hurried back to the spot, and there they found the admiral lookingas composed as possible, and solacing himself with a pinch of snuff, ashe gazed upon the apparently lifeless form at his feet.

  "Is he dead?" said Henry.

  "I should say he was," replied the admiral; "such a shot as that wasdon't want to be repeated. Well, I liked the doctor with all his faults.He only had one foolish way with him, and that was, that he shirked hisgrog."

  "This is an awful catastrophe," said Henry, as he knelt down by the sideof the body. "Assist me, some of you. Where is Charles?"

  "I'll be hanged," said the admiral, "if I know. He disappearedsomewhere."

  "This is a night of mystery as well as terror. Alas! poor Dr.Chillingworth! I little thought that you would have fallen a victim tothe man whom you preserved from death. How strange it is that you shouldhave snatched from the tomb the very individual who was, eventually, totake your own life."

  The brothers gently raised the body of the doctor, and carried it on tothe glass plot, which was close at hand.

  "Farewell, kind and honest-hearted Chillingworth," said Henry; "I shall,many and many a time, feel your loss; and now I will rest not until Ihave delivered up to justice your murderer. All consideration, orfeeling, for what seemed to be latent virtues in that strange andinexplicable man, Varney, shall vanish, and he shall reap theconsequences of the crime he has now committed."

  "It was a cold blooded, cowardly murder," said his brother.

  "I
t was; but you may depend the doctor was about to reveal something tous, which Varney so much dreaded, that he took his life as the onlyeffectual way, at the moment, of stopping him."

  "It must be so," said Henry.

  "And now," said the admiral, "it's too late, and we shall not know it atall. That's the way. A fellow saves up what he has got to tell till itis too late to tell it, and down he goes to Davy Jones's locker with allhis secrets aboard."

  "Not always," said Dr. Chillingworth, suddenly sitting boltupright--"not always."

  Henry and his brother started back in amazement, and the admiral was sotaken by surprise, that had not the resuscitated doctor suddenlystretched out his hand and laid hold of him by the ankle, he would havemade a precipitate retreat.

  "Hilloa! murder!" he cried. "Let me go! How do I know but you may be avampyre by now, as you were shot by one."

  Henry soonest recovered from the surprise of the moment, and with themost unfeigned satisfaction, he cried,--

  "Thank God you are unhurt, Dr. Chillingworth! Why he must have missedyou by a miracle."

  "Not at all," said the doctor. "Help me up--thank you--all right. I'monly a little singed about the whiskers. He hit me safe enough."

  "Then how have you escaped?"

  "Why from the want of a bullet in the pistol, to be sure. I canunderstand it all well enough. He wanted to create sufficient confusionto cover a desperate attempt to escape, and he thought that would bebest done by seeming so shoot me. The suddenness of the shock, and thefull belief, at the moment, that he had sent a bullet into my brains,made me fall, and produced a temporary confusion of ideas, amounting toinsensibility."

  "From which you are happily recovered. Thank Heaven that, after all, heis not such a villain as this act would have made him."

  "Ah!" said the admiral, "it takes people who have lived a little inthese affairs to know the difference in sound between a firearm with abullet in it, and one without. I knew it was all right."

  "Then why did you not say so, admiral?"

  "What was the use? I thought the doctor might be amused to know what youshould say of him, so you see I didn't interfere; and, as I am not agood hand at galloping after anybody, I didn't try that part of thebusiness, but just remained where I was."

  "Alas! alas!" cried the doctor, "I much fear that, by his going, I havelost all that I expected to be able to do for you, Henry. It's of notthe least use now telling you or troubling you about it. You may nowsell or let Bannerworth Hall to whomever you please, for I am afraid itis really worthless."

  "What on earth do you mean?" said Henry. "Why, doctor, will you keep upthis mystery among us? If you have anything to say, why not say it atonce?"

  "Because, I tell you it's of no use now. The game is up, Sir FrancisVarney has escaped; but still I don't know that I need exactlyhesitate."

  "There can be no reason for your hesitating about making a communicationto us," said Henry. "It is unfriendly not to do so."

  "My dear boy, you will excuse me for saying that you don't know what youare talking about."

  "Can you give any reason?"

  "Yes; respect for the living. I should have to relate something of thedead which would be hurtful to their feelings."

  Henry was silent for a few moments, and then he said,--

  "What dead? And who are the living?"

  "Another time," whispered the doctor to him; "another time, Henry. Donot press me now. But you shall know all another time."

  "I must be content. But now let us remember that another man yet lingersin Bannerworth Hall. I will endure suspense on his account no longer. Heis an intruder there; so I go at once to dislodge him."

  No one made any opposition to this move, not even the doctor; so Henrypreceded them all to the house. They passed through the open window intothe long hall, and from thence into every apartment of the mansion,without finding the object of their search. But from one of the windowsup to which there grew great masses of ivy, there hung a rope, by whichany one might easily have let himself down; and no doubt, therefore,existed in all their minds that the hangman had sufficiently profited bythe confusion incidental to the supposed shooting of the doctor, to makegood his escape from the place.

  "And so, after all," said Henry, "we are completely foiled?"

  "We may be," said Dr. Chillingworth; "but it is, perhaps, going too farto say that we actually are. One thing, however, is quite clear; andthat is, no good can be done here."

  "Then let us go home," said the admiral. "I did not think from the firstthat any good would be done here."

  They all left the garden together now; so that almost for the firsttime, Bannerworth Hall was left to itself, unguarded and unwatched byany one whatever. It was with an evident and a marked melancholy thatthe doctor proceeded with the party to the cottage-house of theBannerworths; but, as after what he had said, Henry forbore to questionhim further upon those subjects which he admitted he was keeping secret;and as none of the party were much in a cue for general conversation,the whole of them walked on with more silence than usually characterisedthem.