Complete Works of Bram Stoker (587 page)

He thought probably that he could but be stopped in what he was about, and, until he was so, that he might as well go on.

And on he went, with a vengeance, vexing the admiral terribly, who proposed so repeatedly to go into the house and insist upon knowing what he was about, that his, wishes were upon the point of being conceded to by Henry, although they were combatted by the doctor, when, from the window at which he had entered, out stepped the hangman.

“Good morning, gentlemen! good morning,” he said, and he moved towards the garden gate. “I will not trouble you any longer. Good morning!”

“Not so fast,” said the admiral, “or we may bring you up with a round turn, and I never miss my mark when I can see it, and I shall not let it get out of sight, you may depend.”

He drew a pistol from his pocket, as he spoke, and pointed it at the hangman, who, thereupon paused and said:  — 

“What! am I not to be permitted to go in peace? Why it was but a short time since the doctor was quarrelling with me because I did not go, and now it seems that I am to be shot if I do.”

“Yes,” said the admiral, “that’s it.”

“Well! but,  —  ”

“You dare,” said he, “stir another inch towards the gate, and you are a dead man!”

The hangman hesitated a moment, and looked at Admiral Bell; apparently the result of the scrutiny was, that he would keep his word, for he suddenly turned and dived in at the window again without saying another word.

“Well; you have certainly stopped him from leaving,” said Henry; “but what’s to be done now?”

“Let him be, let him be,” said the doctor; “he must come out again, for there are no provisions in the place, and he will be starved out.”

“Hush! what is that?” said Henry.

There was a very gentle ring at the bell which hung over the garden gate.

“That’s an experiment, now, I’ll be bound,” said the doctor, “to ascertain if any one is here; let us hide ourselves, and take no notice.”

The ring in a few moments was repeated, and the three confederates hid themselves effectually behind some thick laurel bushes and awaited with expectation what might next ensue.

Not long had they occupied their place of concealment, before they heard a heavy fall upon the gravelled pathway, immediately within the gate, as if some one had clambered to the top from the outside, and then jumped down.

That this was the case the sound of footsteps soon convinced them, and to their surprise as well as satisfaction, they saw through the interstices of the laurel bush behind which they were concealed, no less a personage that Sir Francis Varney himself.

“It is Varney,” said Henry.

“Yes, yes,” whispered the doctor. “Let him be, do not move for any consideration, for the first time let him do just what he likes.”

“D  —  n the fellow!” said the admiral; “there are some points about him that like, after all, and he’s quite an angel compared to that rascal Marchdale.”

“He is,  —  he saved Charles.”

“He did, and not if I know it shall any harm come to him, unless he were terribly to provoke it by becoming himself the assailant.”

“How sad he looks!”

“Hush! he comes nearer; it is not safe to talk. Look at him.”

CHAPTER LXXVII.

VARNEY IN THE GARDEN.  —  THE COMMUNICATION OF DR. CHILLINGWORTH TO THE ADMIRAL AND HENRY.

Kind reader, it was indeed Varney who had clambered over the garden wall, and thus made his way into the garden of Bannerworth Hall; and what filled those who looked at him with the most surprise was, that he did not seem in any particular way to make a secret of his presence, but walked on with an air of boldness which either arose from a feeling of absolute impunity, from his thinking there was no one there, or from an audacity which none but he could have compassed.

As for the little party that was there assembled, and who looked upon him, they seemed thunderstricken by his presence; and Henry, probably, as well as the admiral, would have burst out into some sudden exclamation, had they not been restrained by Dr. Chillingworth, who, suspecting that they might in some way give an alarm, hastened to speak first, saying in a whisper,  — 

“For Heaven’s sake, be still, fortune, you see, favours us most strangely. Leave Varney alone. You have no other mode whatever of discovering what he really wants at Bannerworth Hall.”

“I am glad you have spoken,” said Henry, as he drew a long breath. “If you had not, I feel convinced that in another moment I should have rushed forward and confronted this man who has been the very bane of my life.”

“And so should I,” said the admiral; “although I protest against any harm being done to him, on account of some sort of good feeling that he has displayed, after all, in releasing Charles from that dungeon in which Marchdale has perished.”

“At the moment,” said Henry, “I had forgotten that; but I will own that his conduct has been tinctured by a strange and wild kind of generosity at times, which would seem to bespeak, at the bottom of his heart, some good feelings, the impulses of which were only quenched by circumstances.”

“That is my firm impression of him, I can assure you,” said Dr. Chillingworth.

They watched Varney now from the leafy covert in which they were situated, and, indeed, had they been less effectually concealed, it did not seem likely that the much dreaded vampyre would have perceived them; for not only did he make no effort at concealment himself, but he took no pains to see if any one was watching him in his progress to the house.

His footsteps were more rapid than they usually were, and there was altogether an air and manner about him, as if he were moved to some purpose which of itself was sufficiently important to submerge in its consequences all ordinary risks and all ordinary cautions.

He tried several windows of the house along that terrace of which we have more than once had occasion to speak, before he found one that opened; but at length he did succeed, and stepped at once into the Hall, leaving those, who now for some moments in silence had regarded his movements, to lose themselves in a fearful sea of conjecture as to what could possibly be his object.

“At all events,” said the admiral, “I’m glad we are here. If the vampyre should have a fight with that other fellow, that we heard doing such a lot of carpentering work in the house, we ought, I think, to see fair play.”

“I, for one,” said the doctor, “would not like to stand by and see the vampyre murdered; but I am inclined to think he is a good match for any mortal opponent.”

“You may depend he is,” said Henry.

“But how long, doctor, do you purpose that we should wait here in such a state of suspense as to what is going on within the house?”

“I hope not long; but that something will occur to make us have food for action. Hark! what is that?”

There was a loud crash within the building, as of broken glass. It sounded as if some window had been completely dashed in; but although they looked carefully over the front of the building, they could see no evidences of such a thing having happened, and were compelled, consequently, to come to the opinion that Varney and the other man must have met in one of the back rooms, and that the crash of glass had arisen from some personal conflict in which they had engaged.

“I cannot stand this,” said Henry.

“Nay, nay,” said the doctor; “be still, and I will tell you something, than which there can be no more fitting time than this to reveal it.”

“Refers it to the vampyre?”

“It does  —  it does.”

“Be brief, then; I am in an agony of impatience.”

“It is a circumstance concerning which I can be brief; for, horrible as it is, I have no wish to dress it in any adventitious colours. Sir Francis Varney, although under another name, is an old acquaintance of mine.”

“Acquaintance!” said Henry.

“Why, you don’t mean to say you are a vampyre?” said the admiral; “or that he has ever visited you?”

“No; but I knew him. From the first moment that I looked upon him in this neighbourhood, I thought I knew him; but the circumstance which induced me to think so was of so terrific a character, that I made some efforts to chase it from my mind. It has, however, grown upon me day by day, and, lately, I have had proof sufficient to convince me of his identity with one whom I first saw under most singular circumstances of romance.”

“Say on,  —  you are agitated.”

“I am, indeed. This revelation has several times, within the last few days, trembled on my lips, but now you shall have it; because you ought to know all that it is possible for me to tell you of him who has caused you so serious an amount of disturbance.”

“You awaken, doctor,” said Henry, “all my interest.”

“And mine, too,” remarked the admiral. “What can it be all about? and where, doctor, did you first see this Varney the vampyre?”

“In his coffin.”

Both the admiral and Henry gave starts of surprise as, with one accord, they exclaimed,  — 

“Did you say coffin?”

“Yes: I tell you, on my word of honour, that the first time in my life I saw ever Sir Francis Varney, was in his coffin.”

“Then he is a vampyre, and there can be no mistake,” said the admiral.

“Go on, I pray you, doctor, go on,” said Henry, anxiously.

“I will. The reason why he became the inhabitant of a coffin was simply this:  —  he had been hanged,  —  executed at the Old Bailey, in London, before ever I set eyes upon that strange countenance of his. You know that I was practising surgery at the London schools some years ago, and that, consequently, as I commenced the profession rather late in life, I was extremely anxious to do the most I could in a very short space of time.”

“Yes  —  yes.”

“Arrived, then, with plenty of resources, which I did not, as the young men who affected to be studying in the same classes as myself, spend in the pursuit of what they considered life in London, I was indefatigable in my professional labours, and there was nothing connected with them which I did not try to accomplish.

“At that period, the difficulty of getting a subject for anatomization was very great, and all sorts of schemes had to be put into requisition to accomplish so desirable, and, indeed, absolutely necessary a purpose.

“I became acquainted with the man who, I have told you, is in the Hall, at present, and who then filled the unenviable post of public executioner. It so happened, too, that I had read a learned treatise, by a Frenchman, who had made a vast number of experiments with galvanic and other apparatus, upon persons who had come to death in different ways, and, in one case, he asserted that he had actually recovered a man who had been hanged, and he had lived five weeks afterwards.

“Young as I then was, in comparison to what I am now, in my profession, this inflamed my imagination, and nothing seemed to me so desirable as getting hold of some one who had only recently been put to death, for the purpose of trying what I could do in the way of attempting a resuscitation of the subject. It was precisely for this reason that I sought out the public executioner, and made his acquaintance, whom every one else shunned, because I thought he might assist me by handing over to me the body of some condemned and executed man, upon whom I could try my skill.

“I broached the subject to him, and found him not averse. He said, that if I would come forward and claim, as next of kin and allow the body to be removed to his house, the body of the criminal who was to be executed the first time, from that period, that he could give me a hint that I should have no real next of kin opponents, he would throw every facility in my way.

“This was just what I wanted; and, I believe, I waited with impatience for some poor wretch to be hurried to his last account by the hands of my friend, the public executioner.

“At length a circumstance occurred which favoured my designs most effectually,  —  A man was apprehended for a highway robbery of a most aggravated character. He was tried, and the evidence against him was so conclusive, that the defence which was attempted by his counsel, became a mere matter of form.

“He was convicted, and sentenced. The judge told him not to flatter himself with the least notion that mercy would be extended to him. The crime of which he had been found guilty was on the increase it was highly necessary to make some great public example, to show evil doers that they could not, with impunity, thus trample upon the liberty of the subject, and had suddenly, just as it were, in the very nick of time, committed the very crime, attended with all the aggravated circumstances which made it easy and desirable to hang him out of hand.

“He heard his sentence, they tell me unmoved. I did not see him, but he was represented to me as a man of a strong, and well-knit frame, with rather a strange, but what some would have considered a handsome expression of countenance, inasmuch as that there was an expression of much haughty resolution depicted on it.

“I flew to my friend the executioner.

“‘Can you,’ I said, ‘get me that man’s body, who is to be hanged for the highway robbery, on Monday?’

“‘Yes,’ he said; ‘I see nothing to prevent it. Not one soul has offered to claim even common companionship with him,  —  far less kindred. I think if you put in your claim as a cousin, who will bear the expense of his decent burial, you will have every chance of getting possession of the body.’

“I did not hesitate, but, on the morning before the execution, I called upon one of the sheriffs.

“I told him that the condemned man, I regretted to say, was related to me; but as I knew nothing could be done to save him on the trial, I had abstained from coming forward; but that as I did not like the idea of his being rudely interred by the authorities, I had come forward to ask for the body, after the execution should have taken place, in order that I might, at all events, bestow upon it, in some sequestered spot, a decent burial, with all the rites of the church.

“The sheriff was a man not overburthened with penetration. He applauded my pious feelings, and actually gave me, without any inquiry, a written order to receive the body from the hands of the hangman, after it had hung the hour prescribed by the law.