The Penny Dreadfuls MEGAPACK™

by Oscar Wilde

  In a moment of thoughtlessness and confidence, he told his wife. Yes, this really clever man, from whom one would not have expected such a piece of horrible indiscretion, actually told his wife all about the vampire. But such is human nature; combined with an amount of firmness and reasoning power, that one would have thought to be invulnerable safeguards, we find some weakness which astonishes all calculation.

  Such was this of Mr. Chillingworth’s. It is true, he cautioned the lady to be secret, and pointed to her the danger of making Varney the vampire a theme for gossip; but he might as well have whispered to a hurricane to be so good as not to go on blowing so, as request Mrs. Chillingworth to keep a secret.

  Of course she burst into the usual fervent declarations of “Who was she to tell? Was she a person who went about telling things? When did she see anybody? Not she, once in a blue moon;” and then, when Mr. Chillingworth went out, like the King of Otaheite, she invited the neighbours round about to come to take some tea.

  Under solemn promises of secrecy, sixteen ladies that evening were made acquainted with the full and interesting particulars of the attack of the vampire on Flora Bannerworth, and all the evidence inculpating Sir Francis Varney as the blood-thirsty individual.

  When the mind comes to consider that these sixteen ladies multiplied their information by about four-and-twenty each, we become quite lost in a sea of arithmetic, and feel compelled to sum up the whole by a candid assumption that in four-and-twenty hours not an individual in the whole town was ignorant of the circumstances.

  On the morning before the projected duel, there was an unusual commotion in the streets. People were conversing together in little knots, and using rather violent gesticulations. Poor Mr. Chillingworth! he alone was ignorant of the causes of the popular commotion, and so he went to bed wondering that an unusual bustle pervaded the little market town, but not at all guessing its origin.

  Somehow or another, however, the populace, who had determined to make a demonstration on the following morning against the vampire, thought it highly necessary first to pay some sort of compliment to Mr. Chillingworth, and, accordingly, at an early hour, a great mob assembled outside his house, and gave three terrific applauding shouts, which roused him most unpleasantly from his sleep; and induced the greatest astonishment at the cause of such a tumult.

  Oh, that artful Mrs. Chillingworth! too well she knew what was the matter; yet she pretended to be so oblivious upon the subject.

  “Good God!” cried Mr. Chillingworth, as he started up in bed, “what’s all that?”

  “All what?” said his wife.

  “All what! Do you mean to say you heard nothing?”

  “Well, I think I did hear a little sort of something.”

  “A little sort of something? It shook the house.”

  “Well, well; never mind. Go to sleep again; it’s no business of ours.”

  “Yes; but it may be, though. It’s all very well to say ‘go to sleep.’ That happens to be a thing I can’t do. There’s something amiss.”

  “Well, what’s that to you?”

  “Perhaps nothing; but, perhaps, everything.”

  Mr. Chillingworth sprang from his bed, and began dressing, a process which he executed with considerable rapidity, and in which he was much accelerated by two or three supplementary shouts from the people below.

  Then, in a temporary lull, a loud voice shouted—

  “Down with the vampire—down with the vampire!”

  The truth in an instant burst over the mind of Mr. Chillingworth; and, turning to his wife, he exclaimed—

  “I understand it now. You’ve been gossipping about Sir Francis Varney, and have caused all this tumult.”

  “I gossip! Well, I never! Lay it on me; it’s sure to be my fault. I might have known that beforehand. I always am.”

  “But you must have spoken of it.”

  “Who have I got to speak to about it?”

  “Did you, or did you not?”

  “Who should I tell?”

  Mr. Chillingworth was dressed, and he hastened down and entered the street with great desperation. He had a hope that he might be enabled to disperse the crowd, and yet be in time to keep his appointment at the duel.

  His appearance was hailed with another shout, for it was considered, of course, that he had come to join in the attack upon Sir Francis Varney. He found assembled a much more considerable mob than he had imagined, and to his alarm he found many armed with all sorts of weapons of offence.

  “Hurrah!” cried a great lumpy-looking fellow, who seemed half mad with the prospect of a disturbance. “Hurrah! here’s the doctor, he’ll tell us all about it as we go along. Come on.”

  “For Heaven’s sake,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “stop; What are you about to do all of you?”

  “Burn the vampire—burn the vampire!”

  “Hold—hold! this is folly. Let me implore you all to return to your homes, or you will get into serious trouble on this subject.”

  This was a piece of advice not at all likely to be adopted; and when the mob found that Mr. Chillingworth was not disposed to encourage and countenance it in its violence, it gave another loud shout of defiance, and moved off through the long straggling streets of the town in a direction towards Sir Francis Varney’s house.

  It is true that what were called the authorities of the town had become alarmed, and were stirring, but they found themselves in such a frightful minority, that it became out of the question for them to interfere with any effect to stop the lawless proceedings of the rioters, so that the infuriated populace had it all their own way, and in a straggling, disorderly-looking kind of procession they moved off, vowing vengeance as they went against Varney the vampire.

  Hopeless as Mr. Chillingworth thought it was to interfere with any degree of effect in the proceedings of the mob, he still could not reconcile it to himself to be absent from a scene which he now felt certain had been produced by his own imprudence, so he went on with the crowd, endeavouring, as he did so, by every argument that could be suggested to him to induce them to abstain from the acts of violence they contemplated. He had a hope, too, that when they reached Sir Francis Varney’s, finding him not within, as probably would be the case, as by that time he would have started to meet Henry Bannerworth on the ground, to fight the duel, he might induce the mob to return and forego their meditated violence.

  And thus was it that, urged on by a multitude of persons, the unhappy surgeon was expiating, both in mind and person, the serious mistakes he had committed in trusting a secret to his wife.

  Let it not be supposed that we for one moment wish to lay down a general principle as regards the confiding secrets to ladies, because from the beginning of the world it has become notorious how well they keep them, and with what admirable discretion, tact, and forethought this fairest portion of humanity conduct themselves.

  We know how few Mrs. Chillingworths there are in the world, and have but to regret that our friend the doctor should, in his matrimonial adventure, have met with such a specimen.

  CHAPTER XL.

  THE POPULAR RIOT.—SIR FRANCIS VARNEY’S DANGER.—THE SUGGESTION AND ITS RESULTS.

  Such, then, were the circumstances which at once altered the whole aspect of the affairs, and, from private and domestic causes of very deep annoyance, led to public results of a character which seemed likely to involve the whole country-side in the greatest possible confusion.

  But while we blame Mr. Chillingworth for being so indiscreet as to communicate the secret of such a person as Varney the vampire to his wife, we trust in a short time to be enabled to show that he made as much reparation as it was possible to make for the mischief he had unintentionally committed. And now as he struggled onward—apparently onward—first and foremost among the rioters, he was really doing all in his power to quell that tumult which superstition and dread had
raised.

  Human nature truly delights in the marvellous, and in proportion as a knowledge of the natural phenomena of nature is restricted, and unbridled imagination allowed to give the rein to fathomless conjecture, we shall find an eagerness likewise to believe the marvellous to be the truth.

  That dim and uncertain condition concerning vampires, originating probably as it had done in Germany, had spread itself slowly, but insidiously, throughout the whole of the civilized world.

  In no country and in no clime is there not something which bears a kind of family relationship to the veritable vampire of which Sir Francis Varney appeared to be so choice a specimen.

  The ghoul of eastern nations is but the same being, altered to suit habits and localities; and the sema of the Scandinavians is but the vampire of a more primitive race, and a personification of that morbid imagination which has once fancied the probability of the dead walking again among the living, with all the frightful insignia of corruption and the grave about them.

  Although not popular in England, still there had been tales told of such midnight visitants, so that Mrs. Chillingworth, when she had imparted the information which she had obtained, had already some rough material to work upon in the minds of her auditors, and therefore there was no great difficulty in very soon establishing the fact.

  Under such circumstances, ignorant people always do what they have heard has been done by some one else before them and in an incredibly short space of time the propriety of catching Sir Francis Varney, depriving him of his vampire-like existence, and driving a stake through his body, became not at all a questionable proposition.

  Alas, poor Mr. Chillingworth! as well might he have attempted King Canute’s task of stemming the waves of the ocean as that of attempting to stop the crowd from proceeding to Sir Francis Varney’s house.

  His very presence was a sort of confirmation of the whole affair. In vain he gesticulated, in vain he begged and prayed that they would go back, and in vain he declared that full and ample justice should be done upon the vampire, provided popular clamour spared him, and he was left to more deliberate judgment.

  Those who were foremost in the throng paid no attention to these remonstrances while those who were more distant heard them not, and, for all they knew, he might be urging the crowd on to violence, instead of deprecating it.

  Thus, then, this disorderly rabble soon reached the house of Sir Francis Varney and loudly demanded of his terrified servant where he was to be found.

  The knocking at the Hall door was prodigious, and, with a laudable desire, doubtless, of saving time, the moment one was done amusing himself with the ponderous knocker, another seized it; so that until the door was flung open by some of the bewildered and terrified men, there was no cessation whatever of the furious demands for admittance.

  “Varney the vampire—Varney the vampire!” cried a hundred voices. “Death to the vampire! Where is he? Bring him out. Varney the vampire!”

  The servants were too terrified to speak for some moments, as they saw such a tumultuous assemblage seeking their master, while so singular a name was applied to him. At length, one more bold than the rest contrived to stammer out—

  “My good people, Sir Francis Varney is not at home. He took an early breakfast, and has been out nearly an hour.”

  The mob paused a moment in indecision, and then one of the foremost cried—

  “Who’d suppose they’d own he was at home? He’s hiding somewhere of course; let’s pull him out.”

  “Ah, pull him out—pull him out!” cried many voices. A rush was made into the hall and in a very few minutes its chambers were ransacked, and all its hidden places carefully searched, with the hope of discovering the hidden form of Sir Francis Varney.

  The servants felt that, with their inefficient strength, to oppose the proceedings of an assemblage which seemed to be unchecked by all sort of law or reason, would be madness; they therefore only looked on, with wonder and dismay, satisfied certainly in their own minds that Sir Francis would not be found, and indulging in much conjecture as to what would be the result of such violent and unexpected proceedings.

  Mr. Chillingworth hoped that time was being gained, and that some sort of indication of what was going on would reach the unhappy object of popular detestation sufficiently early to enable him to provide for his own safety.

  He knew he was breaking his own engagement to be present at the duel between Henry Bannerworth and Sir Francis Varney, and, as that thought recurred to him, he dreaded that his professional services might be required on one side or the other; for he knew, or fancied he knew, that mutual hatred dictated the contest; and he thought that if ever a duel had taken place which was likely to be attended with some disastrous result, that was surely the one.

  But how could he leave, watched and surrounded as he was by an infuriated multitude—how could he hope but that his footsteps would be dogged, or that the slightest attempt of his to convey a warning to Sir Francis Varney, would not be the means of bringing down upon his head the very danger he sought to shield him from.

  In this state of uncertainty, then, did our medical man remain, a prey to the bitterest reflections, and full of the direst apprehensions, without having the slightest power of himself to alter so disastrous a train of circumstances.

  Dissatisfied with their non-success, the crowd twice searched the house of Sir Francis Varney, from the attics to the basement; and then, and not till then, did they begin reluctantly to believe that the servants must have spoken the truth.

  “He’s in the town somewhere,” cried one. “Let’s go back to the town.”

  It is strange how suddenly any mob will obey any impulse, and this perfectly groundless supposition was sufficient to turn their steps back again in the direction whence they came, and they had actually, in a straggling sort of column, reached halfway towards the town, when they encountered a boy, whose professional pursuit consisted in tending sheep very early of a morning, and who at once informed them that he had seen Sir Francis Varney in the wood, half way between Bannerworth Hall and his own home.

  This event at once turned the whole tide again, and with renewed clamours, carrying Mr. Chillingworth along with them, they now rapidly neared the real spot, where, probably, had they turned a little earlier, they would have viewed the object of their suspicion and hatred.

  But, as we have already recorded, the advancing throng was seen by the parties on the ground, where the duel could scarcely have been said to have been fought; and then had Sir Francis Varney dashed into the wood, which was so opportunely at hand to afford him a shelter from his enemies, and from the intricacies of which—well acquainted with them as he doubtless was—he had every chance of eluding their pursuit.

  The whole affair was a great surprise to Henry and his friends, when they saw such a string of people advancing, with such shouts and imprecations; they could not, for the life of them, imagine what could have excited such a turn out among the ordinarily industrious and quiet inhabitants of a town, remarkable rather for the quietude and steadiness of its population, than for any violent outbreaks of popular feeling.

  “What can Mr. Chillingworth be about,” said Henry, “to bring such a mob here? has he taken leave of his senses?”

  “Nay,” said Marchdale; “look again; he seems to be trying to keep them back, although ineffectually, for they will not be stayed.”

  “Damn me,” said the admiral, “here’s a gang of pirates; we shall be boarded and carried before we know where we are, Jack.”

  “Ay ay, sir,” said Jack.

  “And is that all you’ve got to say, you lubber, when you see your admiral in danger? You’d better go and make terms with the enemy at once.”

  “Really, this is serious,” said Henry; “they shout for Varney. Can Mr. Chillingworth have been so mad as to adopt this means of stopping the duel?”

  “Impossible
,” said Marchdale; “if that had been his intention, he could have done so quietly, through the medium of the civil authorities.”

  “Hang me!” exclaimed the admiral, “if there are any civil authorities; they talk of smashing somebody. What do they say, Jack? I don’t hear quite so well as I used.”

  “You always was a little deaf,” said Jack.

  “What?”

  “A little deaf, I say.”

  “Why, you lubberly lying swab, how dare you say so?”

  “Because you was.”

  “You slave-going scoundrel!”

  “For Heaven’s sake, do not quarrel at such a time as this!” said Henry; “we shall be surrounded in a moment. Come, Mr. Marchdale, let you and I visit these people, and ascertain what it is that has so much excited their indignation.”

  “Agreed,” said Marchdale; and they both stepped forward at a rapid pace, to meet the advancing throng.

  The crowd which had now approached to within a short distance of the expectant little party, was of a most motley description, and its appearance, under many circumstances, would cause considerable risibility. Men and women were mixed indiscriminately together, and in the shouting, the latter, if such a thing were possible, exceeded the former, both in discordance and energy.

  Every individual composing that mob carried some weapon calculated for defence, such as flails, scythes, sickles, bludgeons, &c., and this mode of arming caused them to wear a most formidable appearance; while the passion that superstition had called up was strongly depicted in their inflamed features. Their fury, too, had been excited by their disappointment, and it was with concentrated rage that they now pressed onward.

  The calm and steady advance of Henry and Mr. Marchdale to meet the advancing throng, seemed to have the effect of retarding their progress a little, and they came to a parley at a hedge, which separated them from the meadow in which the duel had been fought.

  “You seem to be advancing towards us,” said Henry. “Do you seek me or any of my friends; and if so, upon what errand? Mr. Chillingworth, for Heaven’s sake, explain what is the cause of all this assault. You seem to be at the head of it.”