The Penny Dreadfuls MEGAPACK™

by Oscar Wilde

  “I know his handwriting well,” said the admiral. “The letters bear so strong a resemblance to it that they would deceive anybody.”

  “Then you may depend,” remarked Henry, “some most deep-laid and desperate plot is going on.”

  “I begin,” added Marchdale, “to dread that such must be the case. What say you to claiming the assistance of the authorities, as well as offering a large reward for any information regarding Mr. Charles Holland?”

  “No plan shall be left untried, you may depend.”

  They had now reached the house, and Henry having procured some clean water, carefully washed the paper which had been found among the trodden grass. When freed from the mixture of clay and mud which had obscured it, they made out the following words—

  “—it be so well. At the next full moon seek a convenient spot, and it can be done. The signature is, to my apprehension, perfect. The money which I hold, in my opinion, is much more in amount than you imagine, must be ours; and as for—”

  Here the paper was torn across, and no further words were visible upon it.

  Mystery seemed now to be accumulating upon mystery; each one, as it showed itself darkly, seeming to bear some remote relation to what preceded it; and yet only confusing it the more.

  That this apparent scrap of a letter had dropped from some one’s pocket during the fearful struggle, of which there were such ample evidences, was extremely probable; but what it related to, by whom it was written, or by whom dropped, were unfathomable mysteries.

  In fact, no one could give an opinion upon these matters at all; and after a further series of conjectures, it could only be decided, that unimportant as the scrap of paper appeared now to be, it should be preserved, in case it should, as there was a dim possibility that it might become a connecting link in some chain of evidence at another time.

  “And here we are,” said Henry, “completely at fault, and knowing not what to do.”

  “Well, it is a hard case,” said the admiral, “that, with all the will in the world to be up and doing something, we are lying here like a fleet of ships in a calm, as idle as possible.”

  “You perceive we have no evidence to connect Sir Francis Varney with this affair, either nearly or remotely,” said Marchdale.

  “Certainly not,” replied Henry.

  “But yet, I hope you will not lose sight of the suggestion I proposed, to the effect of ascertaining if he were from home last night.”

  “But how is that to be carried out?”

  “Boldly.”

  “How boldly?”

  “By going at once, I should advise, to his house, and asking the first one of his domestics you may happen to see.”

  “I will go over,” cried George; “on such occasions as these one cannot act upon ceremony.”

  He seized his hat, and without waiting for a word from any one approving or condemning his going, off he went.

  “If,” said Henry, “we find that Varney has nothing to do with the matter, we are completely at fault.”

  “Completely,” echoed Marchdale.

  “In that case, admiral, I think we ought to defer to your feelings upon the subject, and do whatever you suggest should be done.”

  “I shall offer a hundred pounds reward to any one who can and will bring any news of Charles.”

  “A hundred pounds is too much,” said Marchdale.

  “Not at all; and while I am about it, since the amount is made a subject of discussion, I shall make it two hundred, and that may benefit some rascal who is not so well paid for keeping the secret as I will pay him for disclosing it.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” said Marchdale.

  “I know I am, as I always am.”

  Marchdale could not forbear a smile at the opinionated old man, who thought no one’s opinion upon any subject at all equal to his own; but he made no remark, and only waited, as did Henry, with evident anxiety for the return of George.

  The distance was not great, and George certainly performed his errand quickly, for he was back in less time than they had thought he could return in. The moment he came into the room, he said, without waiting for any inquiry to be made of him—

  “We are at fault again. I am assured that Sir Francis Varney never stirred from home after eight o’clock last evening.”

  “Damn it, then,” said the admiral, “let us give the devil his due. He could not have had any hand in this business.”

  “Certainly not.”

  “From whom, George, did you get your information?” asked Henry, in a desponding tone.

  “From, first of all, one of his servants, whom I met away from the house, and then from one whom I saw at the house.”

  “There can be no mistake, then?”

  “Certainly none. The servants answered me at once, and so frankly that I cannot doubt it.”

  The door of the room was slowly opened, and Flora came in. She looked almost the shadow of what she had been but a few weeks before. She was beautiful, but she almost realised the poet’s description of one who had suffered much, and was sinking into an early grave, the victim of a broken heart:—

  “She was more beautiful than death,

  And yet as sad to look upon.”

  Her face was of a marble paleness, and as she clasped her hands, and glanced from face to face, to see if she could gather hope and consolation from the expression of any one, she might have been taken for some exquisite statue of despair.

  “Have you found him?” she said. Have you found Charles?”

  “Flora, Flora,” said Henry, as he approached her.

  “Nay, answer me; have you found him? You went to seek him. Dead or alive, have you found him?”

  “We have not, Flora.”

  “Then I must seek him myself. None will search for him as I will search; I must myself seek him. ‘Tis true affection that can alone be successful in such a search.”

  “Believe me, dear Flora, that all has been done which the shortness of the time that has elapsed would permit. Further measures will now immediately be taken. Rest assured, dear sister, that all will be done that the utmost zeal can suggest.”

  “They have killed him! they have killed him!” she said, mournfully. “Oh, God, they have killed him! I am not now mad, but the time will come when I must surely be maddened. The vampire has killed Charles Holland—the dreadful vampire!”

  “Nay, now, Flora, this is frenzy.”

  “Because he loved me has he been destroyed. I know it, I know it. The vampire has doomed me to destruction. I am lost, and all who loved me will be involved in one common ruin on my account. Leave me all of you to perish. If, for iniquities done in our family, some one must suffer to appease the divine vengeance, let that one be me, and only me.”

  “Hush, sister, hush!” cried Henry. “I expected not this from you. The expressions you use are not your expressions. I know you better. There is abundance of divine mercy, but no divine vengeance. Be calm, I pray you.”

  “Calm! calm!”

  “Yes. Make an exertion of that intellect we all know you to possess. It is too common a thing with human nature, when misfortune overtakes it, to imagine that such a state of things is specially arranged. We quarrel with Providence because it does not interfere with some special miracle in our favour; forgetting that, being denizens of this earth, and members of a great social system; We must be subject occasionally to the accidents which will disturb its efficient working.”

  “Oh, brother, brother!” she exclaimed, as she dropped into a seat, “you have never loved.”

  “Indeed!”

  “No; you have never felt what it was to hold your being upon the breath of another. You can reason calmly, because you cannot know the extent of feeling you are vainly endeavouring to combat.”

  “Flora, you do me less than justice. All I wis
h to impress upon your mind is, that you are not in any way picked out by Providence to be specially unhappy—that there is no perversion of nature on your account.”

  “Call you that hideous vampire form that haunts me no perversion of ordinary nature?”

  “What is is natural,” said Marchdale.

  “Cold reasoning to one who suffers as I suffer. I cannot argue with you; I can only know that I am most unhappy—most miserable.”

  “But that will pass away, sister, and the sun of your happiness may smile again.”

  “Oh, if I could but hope!”

  “And wherefore should you deprive yourself of that poorest privilege of the most unhappy?”

  “Because my heart tells me to despair.”

  “Tell it you won’t, then,” cried Admiral Bell. “If you had been at sea as long as I have, Miss Bannerworth, you would never despair of anything at all.”

  “Providence guarded you,” said Marchdale.

  “Yes, that’s true enough, I dare say, I was in a storm once off Cape Ushant, and it was only through Providence, and cutting away the mainmast myself, that we succeeded in getting into port.”

  “You have one hope,” said Marchdale to Flora, as he looked in her wan face.

  “One hope?”

  “Yes. Recollect you have one hope.”

  “What is that?”

  “You think that, by removing from this place, you may find that peace which is here denied you.”

  “No, no, no.”

  “Indeed. I thought that such was your firm conviction.”

  “It was; but circumstances have altered.”

  “How?”

  “Charles Holland has disappeared here, and here must I remain to seek for him.”

  “True he may have disappeared here,” remarked Marchdale; “and yet that may be no argument for supposing him still here.”

  “Where, then, is he?”

  “God knows how rejoiced I should be if I were able to answer your question. I must seek him, dead or alive! I must see him yet before I bid adieu to this world, which has now lost all its charms for me.”

  “Do not despair,” said Henry; “I will go to the town now at once, to make known our suspicions that he has met with some foul play. I will set every means in operation that I possibly can to discover him. Mr. Chillingworth will aid me, too; and I hope that not many days will elapse, Flora, before some intelligence of a most satisfactory nature shall be brought to you on Charles Holland’s account.”

  “Go, go, brother; go at once.”

  “I go now at once.”

  “Shall I accompany you?” said Marchdale.

  “No. Remain here to keep watch over Flora’s safety while I am gone; I can alone do all that can be done.”

  “And don’t forget to offer the two hundred pounds reward,” said the admiral, “to any one who can bring us news of Charles, on which we can rely.”

  “I will not.”

  “Surely—surely something must result from that,” said Flora, as she looked in the admiral’s face, as if to gather encouragement in her dawning hopes from its expression.

  “Of course it will, my dear,” he said. “Don’t you be downhearted; you and I are of one mind in this affair, and of one mind we will keep. We won’t give up our opinions for anybody.”

  “Our opinions,” she said, “of the honour and honesty of Charles Holland. That is what we will adhere to.”

  “Of course we will.”

  “Ah, sir, it joys me, even in the midst of this, my affliction, to find one at least who is determined to do him full justice. We cannot find such contradictions in nature as that a mind, full of noble impulses, should stoop to such a sudden act of selfishness as those letters would attribute to Charles Holland. It cannot—cannot be.”

  “You are right, my dear. And now, Master Henry, you be off, will you, if you please.”

  “I am off now. Farewell, Flora, for a brief space.”

  “Farewell, brother; and Heaven speed you on your errand.”

  “Amen to that,” cried the admiral; “and now, my dear, if you have got half an hour to spare, just tuck your arm under mine, and take a walk with me in the garden, for I want to say something to you.”

  “Most willingly,” said Flora.

  “I would not advise you to stray far from the house, Miss Bannerworth,” said Marchdale.

  “Nobody asked you for advice,” said the admiral. “Damn me, do you want to make out that I ain’t capable of taking care of her?”

  “No, no; but—”

  “Oh, nonsense! Come along, my dear; and if all the vampires and odd fish that were ever created were to come across our path, we would settle them somehow or another. Come along, and don’t listen to anybody’s croaking.”

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  A PEEP THROUGH AN IRON GRATING.—THE LONELY PRISONER IN HIS DUNGEON.—THE MYSTERY.

  Without forestalling the interest of our story, or recording a fact in its wrong place, we now call our readers’ attention to a circumstance which may, at all events, afford some food for conjecture.

  Some distance from the Hall, which, from time immemorial, had been the home and the property of the Bannerworth family, was an ancient ruin known by the name of the Monks’ Hall.

  It was conjectured that this ruin was the remains of some one of those half monastic, half military buildings which, during the middle ages, were so common in almost every commanding situation in every county of England.

  At a period of history when the church arrogated to itself an amount of political power which the intelligence of the spirit of the age now denies to it, and when its members were quite ready to assert at any time the truth of their doctrines by the strong arm of power, such buildings as the one, the old grey ruins of which were situated near to Bannerworth Hall, were erected.

  Ostensibly for religious purposes, but really as a stronghold for defence, as well as for aggression, this Monks’ Hall, as it was called, partook quite as much of the character of a fortress, as of an ecclesiastical building.

  The ruins covered a considerable extent, of ground, but the only part which seemed successfully to have resisted the encroaches of time, at least to a considerable extent, was a long, hall in which the jolly monks no doubt feasted and caroused.

  Adjoining to this hall, were the walls of other parts of the building, and at several places there were small, low, mysterious-looking doors that led, heaven knows where, into some intricacies and labyrinths beneath the building, which no one had, within the memory of man, been content to run the risk of losing himself in.

  It was related that among these subterranean passages and arches there were pitfalls and pools of water; and whether such a statement was true or not, it certainly acted as a considerable damper upon the vigour of curiosity.

  This ruin was so well known in the neighbourhood, and had become from earliest childhood so familiar to the inhabitants of Bannerworth Hall, that one would as soon expect an old inhabitant of Ludgate-hill to make some remark about St. Paul’s, as any of them to allude to the ruins of Monks’ Hall.

  They never now thought of going near to it, for in infancy they had spoiled among its ruins, and it had become one of those familiar objects which, almost, from that very familiarity, cease to hold a place in the memories of those who know it so well.

  It is, however, to this ruin we would now conduct our readers, premising that what we have to say concerning it now, is not precisely in the form of a connected portion of our narrative.

  * * * *

  It is evening—the evening of that first day of heart loneliness to poor Flora Bannerworth. The lingering rays of the setting sun are gilding the old ruins with a wondrous beauty. The edges of the decayed stones seem now to be tipped with gold, and as the rich golden refulgence of light gleams upon the painted glass which sti
ll adorned a large window of the hall, a flood of many-coloured beautiful light was cast within, making the old flag-stones, with which the interior was paved, look more like some rich tapestry, laid down to do honour to a monarch.

  So picturesque and so beautiful an aspect did the ancient ruin wear, that to one with a soul to appreciate the romantic and the beautiful, it would have amply repaid the fatigue of a long journey now to see it.

  And as the sun sank to rest, the gorgeous colours that it cast upon the mouldering wall, deepened from an appearance of burnished gold to a crimson hue, and from that again the colour changed to a shifting purple, mingling with the shadows of the evening, and so gradually fading away into absolute darkness.

  The place is as silent as the tomb—a silence far more solemn than could have existed, had there been no remains of a human habitation; because even these time-worn walls were suggestive of what once had been; and the wrapt stillness which now pervaded them brought with them a melancholy feeling for the past.

  There was not even the low hum of insect life to break the stillness of these ancient ruins.

  And now the last rays of the sun are gradually fading away. In a short time all will be darkness. A low gentle wind is getting up, and beginning slightly to stir the tall blades of grass that have shot up between some of the old stones. The silence is broken, awfully broken, by a sudden cry of despair; such a cry as might come from some imprisoned spirit, doomed to waste an age of horror in a tomb.

  And yet it was scarcely to be called a scream, and not all a groan. It might have come from some one on the moment of some dreadful sacrifice, when the judgment had not sufficient time to call courage to its aid, but involuntarily had induced that sound which might not be repeated.

  A few startled birds flew from odd holes and corners about the ruins, to seek some other place of rest. The owl hooted from a corner of what had once been a belfry, and a dreamy-looking bat flew out from a cranny and struck itself headlong against a projection.

  Then all was still again. Silence resumed its reign, and if there had been a mortal ear to drink in that sudden sound, the mind might well have doubted if fancy had not more to do with the matter than reality.