by Bram Stoker
There was a visible movement and an exclamation among the multitude. Some were pushed down, in the eager desire of those behind to obtain a sight of the ghastly remains of the butcher; those at a distance were frantic, and the excitement was momentarily increasing.
They might all have spared themselves the trouble, for the coffin was empty — here was no dead butcher, nor any evidence of one ever having been there, not even the grave-clothes; the only thing at all in the receptacle of the dead was a brick.
Dick’s astonishment was so intense that his eyes and mouth kept opening together to such an extent, that it seemed doubtful when they would reach their extreme point of elongation. He then took up the brick and looked at it curiously, and turned it over and over, examined the ends and the sides with a critical eye, and at length he said, —
“Well, I’m blowed, here’s a transmogrification; he’s consolidified himself into a blessed brick — my eye, here’s a curiosity.”
“But you don’t mean to say that’s the butcher, Dick?” said the boy.
Dick reached over, and gave him a tap on the head with the brick.
“There!” he said, “that’s what I calls occular demonstration. Do you believe it now, you blessed infidel? What’s more natural? He was an out-and-out brick while he was alive; and he’s turned to a brick now he’s dead.”
“Give it to me, Dick,” said the boy; “I should like to have that brick, just for the fun of the thing.”
“I’ll see you turned into a pantile first. I sha’n’t part with this here, it looks so blessed sensible; it’s a gaining on me every minute as a most remarkable likeness, d — — d if it ain’t.”
By this time the bewilderment of the mob had subsided; now that there was no dead butcher to look upon, they fancied themselves most grievously injured; and, somehow or other, Dick, notwithstanding all his exertions in their service, was looked upon in the light of a showman, who had promised some startling exhibition and then had disappointed his auditors.
The first intimation he had of popular vengeance was a stone thrown at him, but Dick’s eye happened to be upon the fellow who threw it, and collaring him in a moment, he dealt him a cuff on the side of the head, which confused his faculties for a week.
“Hark ye,” he then cried, with a loud voice, “don’t interfere with me; you know it won’t go down. There’s something wrong here; and, as one of yourselves, I’m as much interested in finding out what it is as any of you can possibly be. There seems to be some truth in this vampyre business; our old friend, the butcher, you see, is not in his grave; where is he then?”
The mob looked at each other, and none attempted to answer the question.
“Why, of course, he’s a vampyre,” said Dick, “and you may all of you expect to see him, in turn, come into your bed-room windows with a burst, and lay hold of you like a million and a half of leeches rolled into one.”
There was a general expression of horror, and then Dick continued, —
“You’d better all of you go home; I shall have no hand in pulling up any more of the coffins — this is a dose for me. Of course you can do what you like.”
“Pull them all up!” cried a voice; “pull them all up! Let’s see how many vampyres there are in the churchyard.”
“Well, it’s no business of mine,” said Dick; “but I wouldn’t, if I was you.”
“You may depend,” said one, “that Dick knows something about it, or he wouldn’t take it so easy.”
“Ah! down with him,” said the man who had received the box on the ears; “he’s perhaps a vampyre himself.”
The mob made a demonstration towards him, but Dick stood his ground, and they paused again.
“Now, you’re a cowardly set,” he said; “cause you’re disappointed, you want to come upon me. Now, I’ll just show what a little thing will frighten you all again, and I warn beforehand it will, so you sha’n’t say you didn’t know it, and were taken by surprise.”
The mob looked at him, wondering what he was going to do.
“Once! twice! thrice!” he said, and then he flung the brick up into the air an immense height, and shouted “heads,” in a loud tone.
A general dispersion of the crowd ensued, and the brick fell in the centre of a very large circle indeed.
“There you are again,” said Dick; “why, what a nice act you are!”
“What fun!” said the boy. “It’s a famous coffin, this, Dick,” and he laid himself down in the butcher’s last resting-place. “I never was in a coffin before — it’s snug enough.”
“Ah, you’re a rum ‘un,” said Dick; “you’re such a inquiring genius, you is; you’ll get your head into some hole one day, and not be able to get it out again, and then I shall see you a kicking. Hush! lay still — don’t say anything.”
“Good again,” said the boy; “what shall I do?”
“Give a sort of a howl and a squeak, when they’ve all come back again.”
“Won’t I!” said the boy; “pop on the lid.”
“There you are,” said Dick; “d — — d if I don’t adopt you, and bring you up to the science of nothing.”
“Now, listen to me, good people all,” added Dick; “I have really got something to say to you.”
At this intimation the people slowly gathered again round the grave.
“Listen,” said Dick, solemnly; “it strikes me there’s some tremendous do going on.”
“Yes, there is,” said several who were foremost.
“It won’t be long before you’ll all of you be most d — nably astonished; but let me beg of all you not to accuse me of having anything to do with it, provided I tell you all I know.”
“No, Dick; we won’t — we won’t — we won’t.”
“Good; then, listen. I don’t know anything, but I’ll tell you what I think, and that’s as good; I don’t think that this brick is the butcher; but I think, that when you least expect it — hush! come a little closer.”
“Yes, yes; we are closer.”
“Well, then, I say, when you all least expect it, and when you ain’t dreaming of such a thing, you’ll hear something of my fat friend as is dead and gone, that will astonish you all.”
Dick paused, and he gave the coffin a slight kick, as intimation to the boy that he might as well be doing his part in the drama, upon which that ingenious young gentleman set up such a howl, that even Dick jumped, so unearthly did it sound within the confines of that receptacle of the dead.
But if the effect upon him was great, what must it have been upon those whom it took completely unawares? For a moment or two they seemed completely paralysed, and then they frightened the boy, for the shout of terror that rose from so many throats at once was positively alarming.
This jest of Dick’s was final, for, before three minutes had elapsed, the churchyard was clear of all human occupants save himself and the boy, who had played his part so well in the coffin.
“Get out,” said Dick, “it’s all right — we’ve done ‘em at last; and now you may depend upon it they won’t be in a hurry to come here again. You keep your own counsel, or else somebody will serve you out for this. I don’t think you’re altogether averse to a bit of fun, and if you keep yourself quiet, you’ll have the satisfaction of hearing what’s said about this affair in every pot-house in the village, and no mistake.”
CHAPTER XLVI.
THE PREPARATIONS FOR LEAVING BANNERWORTH HALL, AND THE MYSTERIOUS CONDUCT OF THE ADMIRAL AND MR. CHILLINGWORTH.
It seemed now, that, by the concurrence of all parties, Bannerworth Hall was to be abandoned; and, notwithstanding Henry was loth — as he had, indeed, from the first shown himself — to leave the ancient abode of his race, yet, as not only Flora, but the admiral and his friend Mr. Chillingworth seemed to be of opinion that it would be a prudent course to 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 and free acquiescence of every member o
f the family.
“If,” he said, “there be any among us who will say to me ‘Continue to keep open the house in which we have passed so many happy hours, and let the ancient home of our race still afford a shelter to us,’ I shall feel myself bound to do so; but if both my mother and my brother agree to a departure 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 or arrangement.”
“We may consider that, then, as settled,” said the admiral, “for I have spoken to your brother, and he is of our opinion. Therefore, my boy, we may 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 I can 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 she would at once give; but she shall hear the proposition, and I will leave her to decide upon it, unbiased in her judgment by any stated opinion of mine upon the matter.”
“Good. That’ll do; and the proper way to put it, too. There’s no mistake about 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 of the feelings and wishes of Flora to be prepared to yield a ready assent to the proposition of leaving the Hall.
Moreover, Mr. Marchdale had, from the first, been an advocate of such a course of proceeding, and Henry well knew how strong an influence he had over Mrs. Bannerworth’s mind, in consequence of the respect in which she held 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 have been grown up and capable of coming to a judgment for themselves, have ever 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 and all its appurtenances pleasant in my eyes, but the presence in it of those who are so dear to me? If you all leave it, you take with you the only charms it ever possessed; so it becomes in itself as nothing. I am quite ready to accompany you all anywhere, so that we do but keep together.”
“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 clung with a kind of superstitious reverence to this ancient abiding-place of my race, but it may not be so. Those, perchance, who are more practically able to come to correct conclusions, in consequence of their feelings not being sufficiently interested to lead them astray, have decided otherwise; and, therefore, I am content to leave.”
“Do not grieve at it, Henry. There has hung a cloud of misfortune over us all since the garden of this house became the scene of an event which we can none of us remember but with terror and shuddering.”
“Two generations of our family must live and die before the remembrance of that circumstance can be obliterated. But we will think of it no more.”
There can no doubt but that the dreadful circumstance to which both Mrs. Bannerworth and Henry alluded, was the suicide of the father of the family in the gardens which before has been hinted at in the course of this narration, as being a circumstance which had created a great sensation at the time, and cast a great gloom for many months over the family.
The reader will, doubtless, too, recollect that, at his last moments, this unhappy individual was said to have uttered some incoherent words about some hidden money, and that the rapid hand of death alone seemed to prevent him from being explicit upon that subject, and left it merely a 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, and several of their friends, among whom was Mr. Marchdale, were decidedly of opinion that the apparently pointed and mysterious words uttered, were but the disordered wanderings of an intellect already hovering on the confines of eternity.
Indeed, far from any money, of any amount, being a disturbance to the last moments of the dissolute man, whose vices and extravagances had brought his family, to such ruin, it was pretty generally believed that he had committed suicide simply from a conviction of the impossibility of raising any more supplies of cash, to enable him to carry on the career which he had pursued for so long.
But to resume.
Henry at once communicated to the admiral what his mother had said, and then the whole question regarding the removal being settled in the affirmative, nothing remained to be done but to set about it as quickly as possible.
The Bannerworths lived sufficiently distant from the town to be out of earshot of the disturbances which were then taking place; and so completely isolated were they from all sort of society, that they had no notion of the popular disturbance which Varney the vampyre had given rise to.
It was not until the following morning that Mr. Chillingworth, who had been home in the meantime, brought word of what had taken place, and that great commotion was still in the town, and that the civil authorities, finding themselves by far too weak to contend against the popular will, had sent for assistance to a garrison town, some twenty miles 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 creating the disturbance about the vampyre, but it seemed to promise a kind of notoriety which they might well shrink from, and which they were just the people to view with dislike.
View the matter how we like, however, it is not to be considered as at all probable that the Bannerworth family would remain long in ignorance of what a great sensation they had created unwittingly in the neighbourhood.
The very reasons which had induced their servants to leave their establishment, and prefer throwing themselves completely out of place, rather than remain in so ill-omened a house, were sure to be bruited abroad far and wide.
And that, perhaps, when they came to consider of it, would suffice to form another good and substantial reason for leaving the Hall, and seeking a refuge in obscurity from the extremely troublesome sort of popularity incidental to their peculiar situation.
Mr. Chillingworth felt uncommonly chary of telling them all that had taken place; although he was well aware that the proceedings of the riotous mob had not terminated with the little disappointment at the old ruin, to which they had so effectually chased Varney the vampyre, but to lose him so singularly when he got there.
No doubt he possessed the admiral with the uproar that was going on in the 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; “it strikes 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 your family. I understand there’s a precious row in the town.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes; bother the particulars, for I don’t know them; but, hark ye, by to-morrow I’ll have found a place for you to go to, so pack up the sticks, get all your stores ready to clear out, and make yourself scarce from this place.”
“I understand you,” said Henry; “We have become the subject of popular rumour; I’ve only to beg of you, admiral, that you’ll say nothing of this to Flora; she has already suffered enough, Heaven knows; do not let her have the additional infliction of thinking that her name is made familiar 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 the question 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 get a plain answer?”
“Why, you son of a bad looking gun, what do you mean by that? I tell you what it is, Jack; I’ve let you come sneaking too often on the quarter-deck, and now you come poking your fun at your officers, you rascal!”
“I poking fun!” said Jack; “couldn’t think of such a thing. I should just 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’s books, and you shall just go and cruise by yourself; I’ve done with you.”
“Go and tell that to the marines, if you like,” said Jack. “I ain’t done with you yet, for a jolly long watch. Why, what do you suppose would become of you, you great babby, without me? Ain’t I always a conveying you from place to place, and steering you through all sorts of difficulties?”
“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 a turning rumgumtious, and no mistake. Howsomdever, I must turn it over in my 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 quite satisfied, but feeling, at least, that he had made a demonstration of attack.
As for the admiral, he considered that the thump he had given Jack with the stick, and it was no gentle one, was a decided balancing of accounts up to that period, and as he remained likewise master of the field, he was upon the whole very well satisfied.