by Bram Stoker
“I only know of the result,” said Dr Chillingworth, “that would ensue, if it were not for you, and that would consist in a great injury to the revenue, in consequence of the much less consumption of rum and other strong liquors.”
“I’ll be hanged up at the yard if I understands what you mean,” said Jack; “as if I ever drunk anything — I, of all people in the world. I am ashamed of you. You are drunk.”
Several of the dragoons had to turn aside to keep themselves from laughing, and the officer himself could not forbear from a smile as be said to the doctor, —
“Sir, you seem to have many acquaintances, and by some means or another they all have an inclination to come here to-night. If, however, you consider that you are bound to remain here from a feeling that the Hall is threatened with any danger, you may dismiss that fear, for I shall leave a picquet here all night.”
“No, sir,” replied Dr. Chillingworth, “it is not that I fear now, after the manner in which they have been repulsed, any danger to the Hall from the mob; but I have reasons for wishing to be in it or near it for some time to come.”
“As you please.”
“Charles, do not wait for or accept the guidance of that drunken fellow, but go yourself with a direction which I will write down for you in a leaf of my pocket-book.”
“Drunken fellow,” exclaimed Jack, who had now scrambled to his feet, “who do you call a drunken fellow?”
“Why you, unquestionably.”
“Well, now, that is hard. Come along, nevey; I’ll shew you where they all are. I could walk a plank on any deck with any man in the service, I could. Come along, my boy, come along.”
“You can accept of him as a guide if you like, of course,” said the doctor; “he may be sober enough to conduct you.”
“I think he can,” said Charles. “Lead on, Jack; but mark me, I shall inform my uncle of this intemperance, as well as of the manner in which you let your tongue wag about him behind his back, unless you promise to reform.”
“He is long past all reformation,” remarked Dr. Chillingworth; “it is out of the question.”
“And I am afraid my uncle will not have courage to attempt such an ungrateful task, when there is so little chance of success,” replied Charles Holland, shaking the worthy doctor by the hand. “Farewell, for the present, sir; the next time I see you, I hope we shall both be more pleasantly situated.”
“Come along, nevey,” interrupted Jack Pringle; “now you’ve found your way back, the first thing you ought to do, is to report yourself as having come aboard. Follow me, and I’ll soon show yer the port where the old hulk’s laid hisself up.”
Jack walked on first, tolerably steady, if one may take into account his divers deep potations, and Charles Holland, anticipating with delight again looking upon the face of his much loved Flora, followed closely behind him.
We can well imagine the world of delightful thoughts that came crowding upon him when Jack, after rather a long walk, announced that they were now very near the residence of the object of his soul’s adoration.
We trust that there is not one of our readers who, for one moment, will suppose that Charles Holland was the sort of man to leave even such a villain and double-faced hypocrite as Marchdale, to starve amid the gloomy ruins where he was immured.
Far from Charles’s intentions was any such thing; but he did think that a night passed there, with no other company than his own reflections, would do him a world of good, and was, at all events, no very great modicum of punishment for the rascality with which he had behaved.
Besides, even during that night there were refreshments in the shape of bread and water, such as had been presented to Charles himself, within Marchdale’s reach as they had been within his.
That individual now, Charles thought, would have a good opportunity of testing the quality of that kind of food, and of finding out what an extremely light diet it was for a strong man to live upon.
But in the morning it was Charles’s intention to take Henry Bannerworth and the admiral with him to the ruins, and then and there release the wretch from his confinement, on condition that he made a full confession of his villanies before those persons.
Oh, how gladly would Marchdale have exchanged the fate which actually befell him for any amount of personal humiliation, always provided that it brought with it a commensurate amount of personal safety.
But that fate was one altogether undreamt of by Charles Holland, and wholly without his control.
It was a fate which would have been his, but for the murderous purpose which had brought Marchdale to the dungeon, and those happy accidents which had enabled Charles to change places with him, and breathe the free, cool, fresh air; while he left his enemy loaded with the same chains that had encumbered his limbs so cruelly, and lying on that same damp dungeon floor, which he thought would be his grave.
We mentioned that as Charles left the ruins, the storm, which had been giving various indications of its coming, seemed to be rapidly approaching.
It was one of these extremely local tempests which expend all their principal fury over a small space of country; and, in this instance, the space seemed to include little more than the river, and the few meadows which immediately surrounded it, and lent it so much of its beauty.
Marchdale soon found that his cries were drowned by the louder voices of the elements. The wailing of the wind among the ancient ruins was much more full of sound than his cries; and, now and then, the full-mouthed thunder filled the air with such a volume of roaring, and awakened so many echoes among the ruins, that, had he possessed the voices of fifty men, he could not have hoped to wage war with it.
And then, although we know that Charles Holland would have encountered death himself, rather than he would have willingly left anything human to expire of hunger in that dungeon, yet Marchdale, judging of others by himself, felt by no means sure of any such thing, and, in his horror of apprehension, fancied that that was just the sort of easy, and pleasant, and complete revenge that it was in Charles Holland’s power to take, and just the one which would suggest itself, under the circumstances, to his mind.
Could anything be possibly more full of horror than such a thought? Death, let it come in any shape it may, is yet a most repulsive and unwelcome guest; but, when it comes, so united with all that can add to its terrors, it is enough to drive reason from its throne, and fill the mind with images of absolute horror.
Tired of shrieking, for his parched lips and clogged tongue would scarcely now permit him to utter a sound higher than a whisper. Marchdale lay, listening to the furious storm without, in the last abandonment of despair.
“Oh! what a death is this,” he groaned. “Here, alone — all alone — and starvation to creep on me by degrees, sapping life’s energies one by one. Already do I feel the dreadful sickening weakness growing on me. Help, oh! help me Heav — no, no! Dare I call on Heaven to help me? Is there no fiend of darkness who now will bid me a price for a human soul? Is there not one who will do so — not one who will rescue me from the horror that surrounds me, for Heaven will not? I dare not ask mercy there.”
The storm continued louder and louder. The wind, it is true, was nearly hushed, but the roar and the rattle of the echo-awakening thunder fully made up for its cessation, while, now and then, even there, in that underground abode, some sudden reflection of the vivid lightning’s light would find its way, lending, for a fleeting moment, sufficient light to Marchdale, wherewith he could see the gloomy place in which he was.
At times he wept, and at times he raved, while ever and anon he made such frantic efforts to free himself from the chains that were around him, that, had they not been strong, he must have succeeded; but, as it was, he only made deep indentations into his flesh, and gave himself much pain.
“Charles Holland!” he shouted; “oh! release me! Varney! Varney! why do you not come to save me? I have toiled for you most unrequitedly — I have not had my reward. Let it all consist in my release fr
om this dreadful bondage. Help! help! oh, help!”
There was no one to hear him. The storm continued, and now, suddenly, a sudden and a sharper sound than any awakened by the thunder’s roar came upon his startled ear, and, in increased agony, he shouted, —
“What is that? oh! what is that? God of heaven, do my fears translate that sound aright? Can it be, oh! can it be, that the ruins which have stood for so many a year are now crumbling down before the storm of to-night?”
The sound came again, and he felt the walls of the dungeon in which he was shake. Now there could be no doubt but that the lightning had struck some part of the building, and so endangered the safety of all that was above ground. For a moment there came across his brain such a rush of agony, that he neither spoke nor moved. Had that dreadful feeling continued much longer, he must have lapsed into insanity; but that amount of mercy — for mercy it would have been — was not shown to him. He still felt all the accumulating horrors of his situation, and then, with such shrieks as nothing but a full appreciation of such horrors could have given him strength to utter, he called upon earth, upon heaven and upon all that was infernal, to save him from his impending doom.
All was in vain. It was an impending doom which nothing but the direct interposition of Heaven could have at all averted; and it was not likely that any such perversion of the regular laws of nature would take place to save such a man as Marchdale.
Again came the crashing sound of falling stones, and he was certain that the old ruins, which had stood for so many hundred years the storm, and the utmost wrath of the elements, was at length yielding, and crumbling down.
What else could he expect but to be engulphed among the fragments — fragments still weighty and destructive, although in decay. How fearfully now did his horrified imagination take in at one glance, as it were, a panoramic view of all his past life, and how absolutely contemptible, at that moment, appeared all that he had been striving for.
But the walls shake again, and this time the vibration is more fearful than before. There is a tremendous uproar above him — the roof yields to some superincumbent pressure — there is one shriek, and Marchdale lies crushed beneath a mass of masonry that it would take men and machinery days to remove from off him.
All is over now. That bold, bad man — that accomplished hypocrite — that mendacious, would-be murderer was no more. He lies but a mangled, crushed, and festering corpse.
May his soul find mercy with his God!
The storm, from this moment, seemed to relax in its violence, as if it had accomplished a great purpose, and, consequently, now, need no longer “vex the air with its boisterous presence.” Gradually the thunder died away in the distance. The wind no longer blew in blustrous gusts, but, with a gentle murmuring, swept around the ancient pile, as if singing the requiem of the dead that lay beneath — that dead which mortal eyes were never to look upon.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
THE MEETING OF CHARLES AND FLORA.
Charles Holland followed Jack Pringle for some time in silence from Bannerworth Hall; his mind was too full of thought concerning the past to allow him to indulge in much of that kind of conversation in which Jack Pringle might be fully considered to be a proficient.
As for Jack, somehow or another, he had felt his dignity offended in the garden of Bannerworth Hall, and he had made up his mind, as he afterwards stated in his own phraseology, not to speak to nobody till somebody spoke to him.
A growing anxiety, however, to ascertain from one who had seen her lately, how Flora had borne his absence, at length induced Charles Holland to break his self-imposed silence.
“Jack,” he said, “you have had the happiness of seeing her lately, tell me, does Flora Bannerworth look as she was wont to look, or have all the roses faded from her cheeks?”
“Why, as for the roses,” said Jack, “I’m blowed if I can tell, and seeing as how she don’t look at me much, I doesn’t know nothing about her; I can tell you something, though, about the old admiral that will make you open your eyes.”
“Indeed, Jack, and what may that be?”
“Why, he’s took to drink, and gets groggy about every day of his life, and the most singular thing is, that when that’s the case with the old man, he says it’s me.”
“Indeed, Jack! taken to drinking has my poor old uncle, from grief, I suppose, Jack, at my disappearance.”
“No, I don’t think it’s grief,” said Jack; “it strikes me it’s rum-and-water.”
“Alas, alas, I never could have imagined he could have fallen into that habit of yours; he always seemed so far from anything of this kind.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said Jack, “I know’d you’d be astonished. It will be the death of him, that’s my opinion; and the idea, you know, Master Charles, of accusing me when he gets drunk himself.”
“I believe that is a common delusion of intemperate persons,” said Charles.
“Is it, sir; well, it’s a very awkward I thing, because you know, sir, as well as most people, that I’m not the fellow to take a drop too much.”
“I cannot say, Jack, that I know so much, for I have certainly heard my uncle accuse you of intoxication.”
“Lor’, sir, that was all just on account of his trying it hisself; he was a thinking on it then, and wanted to see how I’d take it.”
“But tell me of Flora; are you quite certain that she has had no more alarms from Varney?”
“What, that ere vampyre fellow? not a bit of it, your honour. Lor’ bless you, he must have found out by some means or another that I was on the look out, and that did the business. He’ll never come near Miss Flora again, I’ll be bound, though to be sure we moved away from the Hall on account of him; but not that I saw the good of cruising out of one’s own latitude, but somehow or another you see the doctor and the admiral got it into their heads to establish a sort of blockade, and the idea of the thing was to sail away in the night quite quiet, and after that take up a position that would come across the enemy on the larboard tack, if so be as he made his appearance.”
“Oh, you allude to watching the Hall, I presume?”
“Ay, ay, sir, just so; but would you believe it, Master Charlie, the admiral and the doctor got so blessed drunk that I could do nothing with ‘em.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes, they did indeed, and made all kinds of queer mistakes, so that the end of all that was, that the vampyre did come; but he got away again.”
“He did come then; Sir Francis Varney came again after the house was presumed to be deserted?”
“He did, sir.”
“That is very strange; what on earth could have been his object? This affair is most inexplicably mysterious. I hope the distance, Jack, is not far that you’re taking me, for I’m incapable of enduring much fatigue.”
“Not a great way, your honour; keep two points to the westward, and sail straight on; we’ll soon come to port. My eye, won’t there be a squall when you get in. I expect as Miss Flora will drop down as dead as a herring, for she doesn’t think you’re above the hatches.”
“A good thought, Jack; my sudden appearance may produce alarm. When we reach the place of abode of the Bannerworths, you shall precede me, and prepare them in some measure for my reception.”
“Very good, sir; do you see that there little white cottage a-head, there in the offing?”
“Yes, yes; is that the place?”
“Yes, your honour, that’s the port to which we are bound.”
“Well, then, Jack, you hasten a-head, and see Miss Flora, and be sure you prepare her gently and by degrees, you know, Jack, for my appearance, so that she shall not be alarmed.”
“Ay, ay, sir, I understand; you wait here, and I’ll go and do it; there would be a squall if you were to make your appearance, sir, all at once. She looks upon you as safely lodged in Davy’s locker; she minds me, all the world, of a girl I knew at Portsmouth, called Bet Bumplush. She was one of your delicate little creatures as don’t live long in
this here world; no, blow me; when I came home from a eighteen months’ cruise, once I seed her drinking rum out of a quart pot, so I says, ‘Hilloa, what cheer?’ And only to think now of the wonderful effect that there had upon her; with that very pot she gives the fellow as was standing treat a knobber on the head as lasted him three weeks. She was too good for this here world, she was, and too rummantic. ‘Go to blazes,’ she says to him, ‘here’s Jack Pringle come home.’”
“Very romantic indeed,” said Charles.
“Yes, I believe you, sir; and that puts me in mind of Miss Flora and you.”
“An extremely flattering comparison. Of course I feel much obliged.”
“Oh, don’t name it, sir. The British tar as can’t oblige a feller-cretor is unworthy to tread the quarter-deck, or to bear a hand to the distress of a woman.”
“Very well,” said Charles. “Now, as we are here, precede me, if you please, and let me beg of you to be especially cautious in your manner of announcing me.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said Jack: and away he walked towards the cottage, leaving Charles some distance behind.
Flora and the admiral were sitting together conversing. The old man, who loved her as if she had been a child of his own, was endeavouring, to the extent of his ability, to assuage the anguish of her thoughts, which at that moment chanced to be bent upon Charles Holland.
“Nevermind, my dear,” he said; “he’ll turn up some of these days, and when he does, I sha’n’t forget to tell him that it was you who stood out for his honesty and truth, when every one else was against him, including myself, an old wretch that I was.”
“Oh, sir, how could you for one moment believe that those letters could have been written by your nephew Charles? They carried, sir, upon the face of them their own refutation; and I’m only surprised that for one instant you, or any one who knew him, could have believed him capable of writing them.”