by Bram Stoker
“What a situation!”
“It was. Dab, dab, dab, came these horrid footsteps, and there was I groping about the room in an agony. I heard them coming nearer and nearer to my door. Another moment, and they must have reached it, when my hand struck against the lock.”
“What an escape!”
“No, it was not.”
“No?”
“No, indeed. The key was on the outside, and you may well guess I was not over and above disposed to open the door to get at it.”
“No, no.”
“I felt regularly bewildered, I can tell you; it seemed to me as if the very devil himself was coming down stairs hopping all the way upon one leg.”
“How terrific!”
“I felt my senses almost leaving me; but I did what I could to hold the door shut just as I heard the strange step come from the last stair on to the landing. Then there was a horrid sound, and some one began trying the lock of my door.”
“What a moment!”
“Yes, I can tell you it was a moment. Such a moment as I don’t wish to go through again. I held the door as close as I could, and did not speak. I tried to cry out help and murder, but I could not; my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my strength was fast failing me.”
“Horrid, horrid!”
“Take a drop of ale.”
“Thank you. Well, I don’t think this went on above two or three minutes, and all the while some one tried might and main to push open the door. My strength left me all at once; I had only time to stagger back a step or two, and then, as the door opened, I fainted away.”
“Well, well!”
“Ah, you wouldn’t have said well, if you had been there, I can tell you.”
“No; but what become of you. What happened next? How did it end? What was it?”
“Why, what exactly happened next after I fainted I cannot tell you; but the first thing I saw when I recovered was a candle.”
“Yes, yes.”
“And then a crowd of people.”
“Ah, ah!”
“And then Dr. Web.”
“Gracious!”
“And. Mrs. Bulk, my housekeeper. I was in my own bed, and when I opened my eyes I heard Dr. Webb say, —
“‘He will be better soon. Can no one form any idea of what it is all about. Some sudden fright surely could alone have produced such an effect.’”
“‘The Lord have mercy upon me!’ said I.
“Upon this everybody who had been called in got round the bed, and wanted to know what had happened; but I said not a word of it; but turning to Mrs. Bulk, I asked her how it was she found out I had fainted.
“‘Why, sir,’ says she, ‘I was coming up to bed as softly as I could, because I knew you had gone to rest some time before. The clock was striking twelve, and as I went past it some of my clothes, I suppose, caught the large weight, but it was knocked off, and down the stairs it rolled, going with such a lump from one to the other, and I couldn’t catch it because it rolled so fast, that I made sure you would be awakened; so I came down to tell you what it was, and it was some time before I could get your room door open, and when I did I found you out of bed and insensible.’”
There was a general look of disappointment when this explanation was given, and one said, —
“Then it was not the vampire?”
“Certainly not.”
“And, after all, only a clock weight.”
“That’s about it.”
“Why didn’t you tell us that at first?”
“Because that would have spoilt the story.”
There was a general murmur of discontent, and, after a few moments one man said, with some vivacity, —
“Well, although our friend’s vampyre has turned out, after all, to be nothing but a confounded clock-weight, there’s no disputing the fact about Sir Francis Varney being a vampyre, and not a clock-weight.”
“Very true — very true.”
“And what’s to be done to rid the town of such a man?”
“Oh, don’t call him a man.”
“Well, a monster.”
“Ah, that’s more like. I tell you what, sir, if you had got a light, when you first heard the noise in your room, and gone out to see what it was, you would have spared yourself much fright.”
“Ah, no doubt; it’s always easy afterwards to say, if you had done this, and if you had done the other, so and so would have been the effect; but there is something about the hour of midnight that makes men tremble.”
“Well,” said one, who had not yet spoken, “I don’t see why twelve at night should be a whit more disagreeable than twelve at day.”
“Don’t you?”
“Not I.”
“Now, for instance, many a party of pleasure goes to that old ruin where Sir Francis Varney so unaccountably disappeared in broad daylight. But is there any one here who would go to it alone, and at midnight?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I would.”
“What! and after what has happened as regards the vampyre in connection with it?”
“Yes, I would.”
“I’ll bet you twenty shilling you won’t.”
“And I — and I,” cried several.
“Well, gentlemen,” said the man, who certainly shewed no signs of fear, “I will go, and not only will I go and take all your bets, but, if I do meet the vampyre, then I’ll do my best to take him prisoner.”
“And when will you go?”
“To-night,” he cried, and he sprang to his feet; “hark ye all, I don’t believe one word about vampyres. I’ll go at once; it’s getting late, and let any one of you, in order that you may be convinced I have been to the place, give me any article, which I will hide among the ruins; and tell you where to find it to-morrow in broad daylight.”
“Well,” said one, “that’s fair, Tom Eccles. Here’s a handkerchief of mine; I should know it again among a hundred others.”
“Agreed; I’ll leave it in the ruins.”
The wagers were fairly agreed upon; several handkerchiefs were handed to Tom Eccles; and at eleven o’clock he fairly started, through the murky darkness of the night, to the old ruin where Sir Francis Varney and Marchdale were holding their most unholy conference.
It is one thing to talk and to accept wagers in the snug parlour of an inn, and another to go alone across a tract of country wrapped in the profound stillness of night to an ancient ruin which, in addition to the natural gloom which might well be supposed to surround it, has superadded associations which are anything but of a pleasant character.
Tom Eccles, as he was named, was one of those individuals who act greatly from impulse. He was certainly not a coward, and, perhaps, really as free from superstition as most persons, but he was human, and consequently he had nerves, and he had likewise an imagination.
He went to his house first before he started on his errand to the ruins. It was to get a horse-pistol which he had, and which he duly loaded and placed in his pocket. Then he wrapped himself up in a great-coat, and with the air of a man quite determined upon something desperate he left the town.
The guests at the inn looked after him as he walked from the door of that friendly establishment, and some of them, as they saw his resolved aspect, began to quake for the amount of the wagers they had laid upon his non-success.
However, it was resolved among them, that they would stay until half-past twelve, in the expectation of his return, before they separated.
To while away the time, he who had been so facetious about his story of the clock-weight, volunteered to tell what happened to a friend of his who went to take possession of some family property which he became possessed of as heir-at-law to an uncle who had died without a will, having an illegitimate family unprovided for in every shape.
“Ah! nobody cares for other people’s illegitimate children, and, if their parents don’t provide for them, why, the workhouse is open for them, just as if they were someth
ing different from other people.”
“So they are; if their parents don’t take care of them, and provide for them, nobody else will, as you say, neighbour, except when they have a Fitz put to their name, which tells you they are royal bastards, and of course unlike anybody else’s.”
“But go on — let’s know all about it; we sha’n’t hear what he has got to say at all, at this rate.”
“Well, as I was saying, or about to say, the nephew, as soon as he heard his uncle was dead, comes and claps his seal upon everything in the house.”
“But, could he do so?” inquired one of the guests.
“I don’t see what was to hinder him,” replied a third. “He could do so, certainly.”
“But there was a son, and, as I take it, a son’s nearer than a nephew any day.”
“But the son is illegitimate.”
“Legitimate, or illegitimate, a son’s a son; don’t bother me about distinction of that sort; why, now, there was old Weatherbit — ”
“Order, order.”
“Let’s hear the tale.”
“Very good, gentlemen, I’ll go on, if I ain’t to be interrupted; but I’ll say this, that an illegitimate son is no son, in the eyes of the law; or at most he’s an accident quite, and ain’t what he is, and so can’t inherit.”
“Well, that’s what I call making matters plain,” said one of the guests, who took his pipe from his mouth to make room for the remark; “now that is what I likes.”
“Well, as I have proved then,” resumed the speaker, “the nephew was the heir, and into the house he would come. A fine affair it was too — the illegitimates looking the colour of sloes; but he knew the law, and would have it put in force.”
“Law’s law, you know.”
“Uncommonly true that; and the nephew stuck to it like a cobbler to his last — he said they should go out, and they did go out; and, say what they would about their natural claims, he would not listen to them, but bundled them out and out in a pretty short space of time.”
“It was trying to them, mind you, to leave the house they had been born in with very different expectations to those which now appeared to be their fate. Poor things, they looked ruefully enough, and well they might, for there was a wide world for them, and no prospect of a warm corner.
“Well, as I was saying, he had them all out and the house clear to himself.
“Now,” said he, “I have an open field and no favour. I don’t care for no — Eh! what?”
“There was a sudden knocking, he thought, the door, and went and opened it, but nothing was to be seen.
“Oh! I see — somebody next door; and if it wasn’t, it don’t matter. There’s nobody here. I’m alone, and there’s plenty of valuables in the house. That is what I call very good company. I wouldn’t wish for better.”
He turned about, looked over room after room, and satisfied himself that he was alone — that the house was empty.
At every room he entered he paused to think over the value — what it was worth, and that he was a very fortunate man in having dropped into such a good thing.”
“Ah! there’s the old boy’s secretary, too — his bureau — there’ll be something in that that will amuse me mightily; but I don’t think I shall sit up late. He was a rum old man, to say the least of it — a very odd sort of man.”
With that he gave himself a shrug, as if some very uncomfortable feeling had come over him.
“I’ll go to bed early, and get some sleep, and then in daylight I can look after these papers. They won’t be less interesting in the morning than they are now.”
There had been some rum stories about the old man, and now the nephew seemed to think he might have let the family sleep on the premises for that night; yes, at that moment he could have found it in his heart to have paid for all the expense of their keep, had it been possible to have had them back to remain the night.
But that wasn’t possible, for they would not have done it, but sooner have remained in the streets all night than stay there all night, like so many house-dogs, employed by one who stepped in between them and their father’s goods, which were their inheritance, but for one trifling circumstance — a mere ceremony.
The night came on, and he had lights. True it was he had not been down stairs, only just to have a look. He could not tell what sort of a place it was; there were a good many odd sort of passages, that seemed to end nowhere, and others that did.
There were large doors; but they were all locked, and he had the keys; so he didn’t mind, but secured all places that were not fastened.
He then went up stairs again, and sat down in the room where the bureau was placed.
“I’ll be bound,” said one of the guests, “he was in a bit of a stew, notwithstanding all his brag.”
“Oh! I don’t believe,” said another, “that anything done that is dangerous, or supposed to be dangerous, by the bravest man, is any way wholly without some uncomfortable feelings. They may not be strong enough to prevent the thing proposed to be done from being done, but they give a disagreeable sensation to the skin.”
“You have felt it, then?”
“Ha! ha! ha!”
“Why, at that time I slept in the churchyard for a wager, I must say I felt cold all over, as if my skin was walking about me in an uncomfortable manner.”
“But you won your wager?”
“I did.”
“And of course you slept there?”
“To be sure I did.”
“And met with nothing?”
“Nothing, save a few bumps against the gravestones.”
“Those were hard knocks, I should say.”
“They were, I assure you; but I lay there, and slept there, and won my wager.”
“Would you do it again?”
“No.”
“And why not?”
“Because of the rheumatism.”
“You caught that?”
“I did; I would give ten times my wager to get rid of them. I have them very badly.”
“Come, order, order — the tale; let’s hear the end of that, since it has begun.”
“With all my heart. Come, neighbour.”
“Well, as I said, he was fidgetty; but yet he was not a man to be very easily frightened or overcome, for he was stout and bold.
“When he shut himself up in the room, he took out a bottle of some good wine, and helped himself to drink; it was good old wine, and he soon felt himself warmed and, comforted. He could have faced the enemy.
“If one bottle produces such an effect,” he muttered, “what will two do?”
This was a question that could only be solved by trying it, and this he proceeded to do.
But first he drew a brace of long barrelled pistols from his coat pocket, and taking a powder-flask and bullets from his pocket also, he loaded them very carefully.
“There,” said he, “are my bull-dogs; and rare watch-dogs they are. They never bark but they bite. Now, if anybody does come, it will be all up with them. Tricks upon travellers ain’t a safe game when I have these; and now for the other bottle.”
He drew the other bottle, and thought, if anything, it was better than the first. He drank it rather quick, to be sure, and then he began to feel sleepy and tired.
“I think I shall go to bed,” he said; “that is, if I can find my way there, for it does seem to me as if the door was travelling. Never mind, it will make a call here again presently, and then I’ll get through.”
So saying he arose. Taking the candle in his hand, he walked with a better step than might have been expected under the circumstance. True it was the candle wagged to and fro, and his shadow danced upon the wall; but still, when he got to the bed, he secured his door, put the light in a safe place, threw himself down, and was fast asleep in a few moments, or rather he fell into a doze instantaneously.
How long he remained in this state he knew not, but he was suddenly awakened by a loud bang, as though something heavy and flat had f
allen upon the floor — such, for instance, as a door, or anything of that sort. He jumped up, rubbed his eyes, and could even then hear the reverberations through the house.
“What is that?” he muttered; “what is that?”
He listened, and thought he could hear something moving down stairs, and for a moment he was seized with an ague fit; but recollecting, I suppose, that there were some valuables down stairs that were worth fighting for, he carefully extinguished the light that still burned, and softly crept down stairs.
When he got down stairs he thought he could hear some one scramble up the kitchen stairs, and then into the room where the bureau was. Listening for a moment to ascertain if there were more than one, and then feeling convinced there was not, he followed into the parlour, when he heard the cabinet open by a key.
This was a new miracle, and one he could not understand; and then he hoard the papers begin to rattle and rustle; so, drawing out one of the pistols, he cocked it, and walked in.
The figure instantly began to jump about; it was dressed in white — in grave-clothes. He was terribly nervous, and shook, so he feared to fire the pistol; but at length he did, and the report was followed by a fall and a loud groan.
This was very dreadful — very dreadful; but all was quiet, and he lit the candle again, and approached the body to examine it, and ascertain if he knew who it was. A groan came from it. The bureau was open, and the figure clutched firmly a will in his hand.
The figure was dressed in grave-clothes, and he started up when he saw the form and features of his own uncle, the man who was dead, who somehow or other had escaped his confinement, and found his way up, here. He held his will firmly; and the nephew was so horrified and stunned, that he threw down the light, and rushed out of the room with a shout of terror, and never returned again.
The narrator concluded, and one of the guests said, —
“And do you really believe it?” — ”No, no — to be sure not.”
“You don’t?” — ”Why should I? My friend was, out of all hand, one of the greatest liars I ever came near; and why, therefore, should I believe him? I don’t, on my conscience, believe one word of it.”