Complete Works of Bram Stoker (538 page)

“Oh, horror  —  horror!”

“But most I do affect the young and beautiful. It is from the veins of such as thou art, Flora Bannerworth, that I would seek the sustenance I’m compelled to obtain for my own exhausted energies. But never yet, in all my long career  —  a career extending over centuries of time  —  never yet have I felt the soft sensation of human pity till I looked on thee, exquisite piece of excellence. Even at the moment when the reviving fluid from the gushing fountain of your veins was warming at my heart, I pitied and I loved you. Oh, Flora! even I can now feel the pang of being what I am!”

There was a something in the tone, a touch of sadness in the manner, and a deep sincerity in these words, that in some measure disabused Flora of her fears. She sobbed hysterically, and a gush of tears came to her relief, as, in almost inarticulate accents, she said,  — 

“May the great God forgive even you!”

“I have need of such a prayer,” exclaimed Varney  —  ”Heaven knows I have need of such a prayer. May it ascend on the wings of the night air to the throne of Heaven. May it be softly whispered by ministering angels to the ear of Divinity. God knows I have need of such a prayer!”

“To hear you speak in such a strain,” said Flora, “calms the excited fancy, and strips even your horrible presence of some of its maddening influence.”

“Hush,” said the vampire, “you must hear more  —  you must know more ere you speak of the matters that have of late exercised an influence of terror over you.”

“But how came I here?” said Flora, “tell me that. By what more than earthly power have you brought me to this spot? If I am to listen to you, why should it not be at some more likely time and place?”

“I have powers,” said Varney, assuming from Flora’s words, that she would believe such arrogance  —  ”I have powers which suffice to bend many purposes to my will  —  powers incidental to my position, and therefore is it I have brought you here to listen to that which should make you happier than you are.”

“I will attend,” said Flora. “I do not shudder now; there’s an icy coldness through my veins, but it is the night air  —  speak, I will attend you.”

“I will. Flora Bannerworth, I am one who has witnessed time’s mutations on man and on his works, and I have pitied neither; I have seen the fall of empires, and sighed not that high reaching ambition was toppled to the dust. I have seen the grave close over the young and the beautiful  —  those whom I have doomed by my insatiable thirst for human blood to death, long ere the usual span of life was past, but I never loved till now.”

“Can such a being as you,” said Flora “be susceptible of such an earthly passion?”

“And wherefore not?”

“Love is either too much of heaven, or too much of earth to find a home with thee.”

“No, Flora, no! it may be that the feeling is born of pity. I will save you  —  I will save you from a continuance of the horrors that are assailing you.”

“Oh! then may Heaven have mercy in your hour of need!”

“Amen!”

“May you even yet know peace and joy above.”

“It is a faint and straggling hope  —  but if achieved, it will be through the interposition of such a spirit as thine, Flora, which has already exercised so benign an influence upon my tortured soul, as to produce the wish within my heart, to do a least one unselfish action.”

“That wish,” said Flora, “shall be father to the deed. Heaven has boundless mercy yet.”

“For thy sweet sake, I will believe so much, Flora Bannerworth; it is a condition with my hateful race, that if we can find one human heart to love us, we are free. If, in the face of Heaven, you will consent to be mine, you will snatch me from a continuance of my frightful doom, and for your pure sake, and on your merits, shall I yet know heavenly happiness. Will you be mine?”

A cloud swept from off the face of the moon, and a slant ray fell upon the hideous features of the vampire. He looked as if just rescued from some charnel-house, and endowed for a space with vitality to destroy all beauty and harmony in nature, and drive some benighted soul to madness.

“No, no, no!” shrieked Flora, “never!”

“Enough,” said Varney, “I am answered. It was a bad proposal. I am a vampyre still.”

“Spare me! spare me!”

“Blood!”

Flora sank upon her knees, and uplifted her hands to heaven. “Mercy, mercy!” she said.

“Blood!” said Varney, and she saw his hideous, fang-like teeth. “Blood! Flora Bannerworth, the vampyre’s motto. I have asked you to love me, and you will not  —  the penalty be yours.”

“No, no!” said Flora. “Can it be possible that even you, who have already spoken with judgment and precision, can be so unjust? you must feel that, in all respects, I have been a victim, most gratuitously  —  a sufferer, while there existed no just cause that I should suffer; one who has been tortured, not from personal fault, selfishness, lapse of integrity, or honourable feelings, but because you have found it necessary, for the prolongation of your terrific existence, to attack me as you have done. By what plea of honour, honesty, or justice, can I be blamed for not embracing an alternative which is beyond all human control?  —  I cannot love you.”

“Then be content to suffer. Flora Bannerworth, will you not, even for a time, to save yourself and to save me, become mine?”

“Horrible proposition!”

“Then am I doomed yet, perhaps, for many a cycle of years, to spread misery and desolation around me; and yet I love you with a feeling which has in it more of gratefulness and unselfishness than ever yet found a home within my breast. I would fain have you, although you cannot save me; there may yet be a chance, which shall enable you to escape from the persecution of my presence.”

“Oh! glorious chance!” said Flora. “Which way can it come? tell me how I may embrace it, and such grateful feelings as a heart-stricken mourner can offer to him who has rescued her from her deep affliction, shall yet be yours.”

“Hear me, then, Flora Bannerworth, while I state to you some particulars of mysterious existence, of such beings as myself, which never yet have been breathed to mortal ears.”

Flora looked intently at him, and listened, while, with a serious earnestness of manner, he detailed to her something of the physiology of the singular class of beings which the concurrence of all circumstances tended to make him appear.

“Flora,” he said, “it is not that I am so enamoured of an existence to be prolonged only by such frightful means, which induces me to become a terror to you or to others. Believe me, that if my victims, those whom my insatiable thirst for blood make wretched, suffer much, I, the vampyre, am not without my moments of unutterable agony. But it is a mysterious law of our nature, that as the period approaches when the exhausted energies of life require a new support from the warm, gushing fountain of another’s veins, the strong desire to live grows upon us, until, in a paroxysm of wild insanity, which will recognise no obstacles, human or divine, we seek a victim.”

“A fearful state!” said Flora.

“It is so; and, when the dreadful repast is over, then again the pulse beats healthfully, and the wasted energies of a strange kind of vitality are restored to us, we become calm again, but with that calmness comes all the horror, all the agony of reflection, and we suffer far more than tongue can tell.”

“You have my pity,” said Flora; “even you have my pity.”

“I might well demand it, if such a feeling held a place within your breast. I might well demand your pity, Flora Bannerworth, for never crawled an abject wretch upon the earth’s rotundity, so pitiable as I.”

“Go on, go on.”

“I will, and with such brief conclusions as I may. Having once attacked any human being, we feel a strange, but terribly impulsive desire again to seek that person for more blood. But I love you, Flora; the small amount of sensibility that still lingers about my preternatural existence, acknowledges in you a pure and better spirit. I would fain save you.”

“Oh! tell me how I may escape the terrible infliction.”

“That can only be done by flight. Leave this place, I implore you! leave it as quickly as the movement may be made. Linger not  —  cast not one regretful look behind you on your ancient home. I shall remain in this locality for years. Let me lose sight of you, I will not pursue you; but, by force of circumstances, I am myself compelled to linger here. Flight is the only means by which you may avoid a doom as terrific as that which I endure.”

“But tell me,” said Flora, after a moment’s pause, during which she appeared to be endeavouring to gather courage to ask some fearful question; “tell me if it be true that those who have once endured the terrific attack of a vampyre, become themselves, after death, one of that dread race?”

“It is by such means,” said Varney, “that the frightful brood increases; but time and circumstances must aid the development of the new and horrible existence. You, however, are safe.”

“Safe! Oh! say that word again.”

“Yes, safe; not once or twice will the vampyre’s attack have sufficient influence on your mortal frame, as to induce a susceptibility on your part to become coexistent with such as he. The attacks must be often repeated, and the termination of mortal existence must be a consequence essential, and direct from those attacks, before such a result may be anticipated.”

“Yes, yes; I understand.”

“If you were to continue my victim from year to year, the energies of life would slowly waste away, and, till like some faint taper’s gleam, consuming more sustenance than it received, the veriest accident would extinguish your existence, and then, Flora Bannerworth, you might become a vampyre.”

“Oh! horrible! most horrible!”

“If by chance, or by design, the least glimpse of the cold moonbeams rested on your apparently lifeless remains, you would rise again and be one of us  —  a terror to yourself and a desolation to all around.”

“Oh! I will fly from here,” said Flora. “The hope of escape from so terrific and dreadful a doom shall urge me onward; if flight can save me  —  flight from Bannerworth Hall, I will pause not until continents and oceans divide us.”

“It is well. I’m able now thus calmly to reason with you. A few short months more and I shall feel the languor of death creeping over me, and then will come that mad excitement of the brain, which, were you hidden behind triple doors of steel, would tempt me again to seek your chamber  —  again to seize you in my full embrace  —  again to draw from your veins the means of prolonged life  —  again to convulse your very soul with terror.”

“I need no incentives,” said Flora, with a shudder, “in the shape of descriptions of the past, to urge me on.”

“You will fly from Bannerworth Hall?”

“Yes, yes!” said Flora, “it shall be so; its very chambers now are hideous with the recollection of scenes enacted in them. I will urge my brothers, my mother, all to leave, and in some distant clime we will find security and shelter. There even we will learn to think of you with more of sorrow than of anger  —  more pity than reproach  —  more curiosity than loathing.”

“Be it so,” said the vampyre; and he clasped his hands, as if with a thankfulness that he had done so much towards restoring peace at least to one, who, in consequence of his acts, had felt such exquisite despair. “Be it so; and even I will hope that the feelings which have induced so desolated and so isolated a being as myself to endeavour to bring peace to one human heart, will plead for me, trumpet-tongued, to Heaven!”

“It will  —  it will,” said Flora.

“Do you think so?”

“I do; and I will pray that the thought may turn to certainty in such a cause.”

The vampyre appeared to be much affected; and then he added,  — 

“Flora, you know that this spot has been the scene of a catastrophe fearful to look back upon, in the annals of your family?”

“It has,” said Flora. “I know to what you allude; ‘tis a matter of common knowledge to all  —  a sad theme to me, and one I would not court.”

“Nor would I oppress you with it. Your father, here, on this very spot, committed that desperate act which brought him uncalled for to the judgment seat of God. I have a strange, wild curiosity upon such subjects. Will you, in return for the good that I have tried to do you, gratify it?”

“I know not what you mean,” said Flora.

“To be more explicit, then, do you remember the day on which your father breathed his last?”

“Too well  —  too well.”

“Did you see him or converse with him shortly before that desperate act was committed?”

“No; he shut himself up for some time in a solitary chamber.”

“Ha! what chamber?”

“The one in which I slept myself on the night  —  ”

“Yes, yes; the one with the portrait  —  that speaking portrait  —  the eyes of which seem to challenge an intruder as he enters the apartment.”

“The same.”

“For hours shut up there!” added Varney, musingly; “and from thence he wandered to the garden, where, in this summer-house, he breathed his last?”

“It was so.”

“Then, Flora, ere I bid you adieu  —  ”

These words were scarcely uttered, when there was a quick, hasty footstep, and Henry Bannerworth appeared behind Varney, in the very entrance of the summer-house.

“Now,” he cried, “for revenge! Now, foul being, blot upon the earth’s surface, horrible imitation of humanity, if mortal arm can do aught against you, you shall die!”

A shriek came from the lips of Flora, and flinging herself past Varney, who stepped aside, she clung to her brother, who made an unavailing pass with his sword at the vampyre. It was a critical moment; and had the presence of mind of Varney deserted him in the least, unarmed as he was, he must have fallen beneath the weapon of Henry. To spring, however, up the seat which Flora had vacated, and to dash out some of the flimsy and rotten wood-work at the back of the summer-house by the propulsive power of his whole frame, was the work of a moment; and before Henry could free himself from the clinging embrace of Flora, Varney, the vampyre was gone, and there was no greater chance of his capture than on a former occasion, when he was pursued in vain from the Hall to the wood, in the intricacies of which he was so entirely lost.