by Oscar Wilde
“Seem to be,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “without being so. You are not sought, nor any of your friends?”
“Who, then?”
“Sir Francis Varney,” was the immediate reply.
“Indeed! and what has he done to excite popular indignation? of private wrong I can accuse him; but I desire no crowd to take up my cause, or to avenge my quarrels.”
“Mr. Bannerworth, it has become known, through my indiscretion, that Sir Frances Varney is suspected of being a vampire.”
“Is this so?”
“Hurrah!” shouted the mob. “Down with the vampire! hurrah! where is he? Down with him!”
“Drive a stake through him,” said a woman; “it’s the only way, and the humanest. You’ve only to take a hedge stake and sharpen it a bit at one end, and char it a little in the fire so as there mayt’n’t be no splinters to hurt, and then poke it through his stomach.”
The mob gave a great shout at this humane piece of advice, and it was some time before Henry could make himself heard at all, even to those who were nearest to him.
When he did succeed in so doing, he cried, with a loud voice—
“Hear me, all of you. It is quite needless for me to inquire how you became possessed of the information that a dreadful suspicion hangs over the person of Sir Francis Varney; but if, in consequence of hearing such news, you fancy this public demonstration will be agreeable to me, or likely to relieve those who are nearest or dearest to me from the state of misery and apprehension into which they have fallen, you are much mistaken.”
“Hear him, hear him!” cried Mr. Marchdale; “he speaks both wisdom and truth.”
“If anything,” pursued Henry, “could add to the annoyance of vexation and misery we have suffered, it would assuredly be the being made subjects of every-day gossip, and every-day clamour.”
“You hear him?” said Mr. Marchdale.
“Yes, we does,” said a man; “but we comes out to catch a vampire, for all that.”
“Oh, to be sure,” said the humane woman; “nobody’s feelings is nothing to us. Are we to be woke up in the night with vampires sucking our bloods while we’ve got a stake in the country?”
“Hurrah!” shouted everybody. “Down with the vampire! where is he?”
“You are wrong. I assure you, you are all wrong,” said Mr. Chillingworth, imploringly; “there is no vampire here, you see. Sir Francis Varney has not only escaped, but he will take the law of all of you.”
This was an argument which appeared to stagger a few, but the bolder spirits pushed them on, and a suggestion to search the wood having been made by some one who was more cunning than his neighbours, that measure was at once proceeded with, and executed in a systematic manner, which made those who knew it to be the hiding-place of Sir Francis Varney tremble for his safety.
It was with a strange mixture of feeling that Henry Bannerworth waited the result of the search for the man who but a few minutes before had been opposed to him in a contest of life or death.
The destruction of Sir Francis Varney would certainly have been an effectual means of preventing him from continuing to be the incubus he then was upon the Bannerworth family; and yet the generous nature of Henry shrank with horror from seeing even such a creature as Varney sacrificed at the shrine of popular resentment, and murdered by an infuriated populace.
He felt as great an interest in the escape of the vampire as if some great advantage to himself bad been contingent upon such an event; and, although he spoke not a word, while the echoes of the little wood were all awakened by the clamorous manner in which the mob searched for their victim, his feelings could be well read upon his countenance.
The admiral, too, without possessing probably the fine feelings of Henry Bannerworth, took an unusually sympathetic interest in the fate of the vampire; and, after placing himself in various attitudes of intense excitement, he exclaimed—
“Damn it, Jack, I do hope, after all, the vampire will get the better of them. It’s like a whole flotilla attacking one vessel—a lubberly proceeding at the best, and I’ll be hanged if I like it. I should like to pour in a broadside into those fellows, just to let them see it wasn’t a proper English mode of fighting. Shouldn’t you, Jack?”
“Ay, ay, sir, I should.”
“Shiver me, if I see an opportunity, if I don’t let some of those rascals know what’s what.”
Scarcely had these words escaped the lips of the old admiral than there arose a loud shout from the interior of the wood. It was a shout of success, and seemed at the very least to herald the capture of the unfortunate Varney.
“By Heaven!” exclaimed Henry, “they have him.”
“God forbid!” said Mr. Marchdale; “this grows too serious.”
“Bear a hand, Jack,” said the admiral: “we’ll have a fight for it yet; they sha’n’t murder even a vampire in cold blood. Load the pistols and send a flying shot or two among the rascals, the moment they appear.”
“No, no,” said Henry; “no more violence, at least there has been enough—there has been enough.”
Even as he spoke there came rushing from among the trees, at the corner of the wood, the figure of a man. There needed but one glance to assure them who it was. Sir Francis Varney had been seen, and was flying before those implacable foes who had sought his life.
He had divested himself of his huge cloak, as well as of his low slouched hat, and, with a speed which nothing but the most absolute desperation could have enabled him to exert, he rushed onward, beating down before him every obstacle, and bounding over the meadows at a rate that, if he could have continued it for any length of time, would have set pursuit at defiance.
“Bravo!” shouted the admiral, “a stern chase is a long chase, and I wish them joy of it—damn me, Jack, did you ever see anybody get along like that?”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“You never did, you scoundrel.”
“Yes, I did.”
“When and where?”
“When you ran away off the sound.”
The admiral turned nearly blue with anger, but Jack looked perfectly imperturbable, as he added—
“You know you ran away after the French frigates who wouldn’t stay to fight you.”
“Ah! that indeed. There he goes, putting on every stitch of canvass, I’ll be bound.”
“And there they come,” said Jack, as he pointed to the corner of the wood, and some of the more active of the vampire’s pursuers showed themselves.
It would appear as if the vampire had been started from some hiding-place in the interior of the wood, and had then thought it expedient altogether to leave that retreat, and make his way to some more secure one across the open country, where there would be more obstacles to his discovery than perseverance could overcome. Probably, then, among the brushwood and trees, for a few moments he had been again lost sight of, until those who were closest upon his track had emerged from among the dense foliage, and saw him scouring across the country at such headlong speed. These were but few, and in their extreme anxiety themselves to capture Varney, whose precipate and terrified flight brought a firm conviction to their minds of his being a vampire, they did not stop to get much of a reinforcement, but plunged on like greyhounds in his track.
“Jack,” said the admiral, “this won’t do. Look at that great lubberly fellow with the queer smock-frock.”
“Never saw such a figure-head in my life,” said Jack.
“Stop him.”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
The man was coming on at a prodigious rate, and Jack, with all the deliberation in the world, advanced to meet him; and when they got sufficiently close together, that in a few moments they must encounter each other, Jack made himself into as small a bundle as possible, and presented his shoulder to the advancing countryman in such a way, that he flew off it at a tangent, as
if he had run against a brick wall, and after rolling head over heels for some distance, safely deposited himself in a ditch, where he disappeared completely for a few moments from all human observation.
“Don’t say I hit you,” said Jack. “Curse yer, what did yer run against me for? Sarves you right. Lubbers as don’t know how to steer, in course runs agin things.”
“Bravo,” said the admiral; “there’s another of them.”
The pursuers of Varney the vampire, however, now came too thick and fast to be so easily disposed of, and as soon as his figure could be seen coursing over the meadows, and springing over road and ditch with an agility almost frightful to look upon, the whole rabble rout was in pursuit of him.
By this time, the man who had fallen into the ditch had succeeded in making his appearance in the visible world again, and as he crawled up the bank, looking a thing of mire and mud, Jack walked up to him with all the carelessness in the world, and said to him—
“Any luck, old chap?”
“Oh, murder!” said the man, “what do you mean? who are you? where am I? what’s the matter? Old Muster Fowler, the fat crowner, will set upon me now.”
“Have you caught anything?” said Jack.
“Caught anything?”
“Yes; you’ve been in for eels, haven’t you?”
“Damn!”
“Well, it is odd to me, as some people can’t go a fishing without getting out of temper. Have it your own way; I won’t interfere with you;” and away Jack walked.
The man cleared the mud out of his eyes, as well as he could, and looked after him with a powerful suspicion that in Jack he saw the very cause of his mortal mishap: but, somehow or other, his immersion in the not over limpid stream had wonderfully cooled his courage, and casting one despairing look upon his begrimed apparel, and another at the last of the stragglers who were pursuing Sir Francis Varney across the fields, he thought it prudent to get home as fast he could, and get rid of the disagreeable results of an adventure which had turned out for him anything but auspicious or pleasant.
Mr. Chillingworth, as though by a sort of impulse to be present in case Sir Francis Varney should really be run down and with a hope of saving him from personal violence, had followed the foremost of the rioters in the wood, found it now quite impossible for him to carry on such a chase as that which was being undertaken across the fields after Sir Francis Varney.
His person was unfortunately but ill qualified for the continuance of such a pursuit, and, although with the greatest reluctance, he at last felt himself compelled to give it up.
In making his way through the intricacies of the wood, he had been seriously incommoded by the thick undergrowth, and he had accidentally encountered several miry pools, with which he had involuntarily made a closer acquaintance than was at all conducive either to his personal appearance or comfort. The doctor’s temper, though, generally speaking, one of the most even, was at last affected by his mishaps, and he could not restrain from an execration upon his want of prudence in letting his wife have a knowledge of a secret that was not his own, and the producing an unlooked for circumstance, the termination of which might be of a most disastrous nature.
Tired, therefore, and nearly exhausted by the exertions he had already taken, he emerged now alone from the wood, and near the spot where stood Henry Bannerworth and his friends in consultation.
The jaded look of the surgeon was quite sufficient indication of the trouble and turmoil he had gone through, and some expressions of sympathy for his condition were dropped by Henry, to whom he replied—
“Nay, my young friend, I deserve it all. I have nothing but my own indiscretion to thank for all the turmoil and tumult that has arisen this morning.”
“But to what possible cause can we attribute such an outrage?”
“Reproach me as much as you will, I deserve it. A man may prate of his own secrets if he like, but he should be careful of those of other people. I trusted yours to another, and am properly punished.”
“Enough,” said Henry; “we’ll say no more of that, Mr. Chillingworth. What is done cannot be undone, and we had better spend our time in reflection of how to make the best of what is, than in useless lamentation over its causes. What is to be done?”
“Nay, I know not. Have you fought the duel?”
“Yes; and, as you perceive, harmlessly.”
“Thank Heaven for that.”
“Nay, I had my fire, which Sir Francis Varney refused to return; so the affair had just ended, when the sound of approaching tumult came upon our ears.”
“What a strange mixture,” exclaimed Marchdale, “of feelings and passions this Varney appears to be. At one moment acting with the apparent greatest malignity; and another, seeming to have awakened in his mind a romantic generosity which knows no bounds. I cannot understand him.”
“Nor I, indeed,” said Henry; “but yet I somehow tremble for his fate, and I seem to feel that something ought to be done to save him from the fearful consequences of popular feeling. Let us hasten to the town, and procure what assistance we may: but a few persons, well organised and properly armed, will achieve wonders against a desultory and ill-appointed multitude. There may be a chance of saving him, yet, from the imminent danger which surrounds him.”
“That’s proper,” cried the admiral. “I don’t like to see anybody run down. A fair fight’s another thing. Yard arm and yard arm—stink pots and pipkins—broadside to broadside—and throw in your bodies, if you like, on the lee quarter; but don’t do anything shabby. What do you think of it, Jack?”
“Why, I means to say as how if Varney only keeps on sail as he’s been doing, that the devil himself wouldn’t catch him in a gale.”
“And yet,” said Henry, “it is our duty to do the best we can. Let us at once to the town, and summons all the assistance in our power. Come on—come on!”
His friends needed no further urging, but, at a brisk pace, they all proceeded by the nearest footpaths towards the town.
It puzzled his pursuers to think in what possible direction Sir Francis Varney expected to find sustenance or succour, when they saw how curiously he took his flight across the meadows. Instead of endeavouring, by any circuitous path, to seek the shelter of his own house, or to throw himself upon the care of the authorities of the town, who must, to the extent of their power, have protected him, he struck across the fields, apparently without aim or purpose, seemingly intent upon nothing but to distance his pursuers in a long chase, which might possibly tire them, or it might not, according to their or his powers of endurance.
We say this seemed to be the case, but it was not so in reality. Sir Francis Varney had a deeper purpose, and it was scarcely to be supposed that a man of his subtle genius, and, apparently, far-seeing and reflecting intellect, could have so far overlooked the many dangers of his position as not to be fully prepared for some such contingency as that which had just now occurred.
Holding, as he did, so strange a place in society—living among men, and yet possessing so few attributes in common with humanity—he must all along have felt the possibility of drawing upon himself popular violence.
He could not wholly rely upon the secrecy of the Bannerworth family, much as they might well be supposed to shrink from giving publicity to circumstances of so fearfully strange and perilous a nature as those which had occurred amongst them. The merest accident might, at any moment, make him the town’s talk. The overhearing of a few chance words by some gossiping domestic—some ebullition of anger or annoyance by some member of the family—or a communication from some friend who had been treated with confidence—might, at any time, awaken around him some such a storm as that which now raged at his heels.
Varney the vampire must have calculated this. He must have felt the possibility of such a state of things; and, as a matter of course, politicly provided himself with some place of refuge.
That place of refuge, to the surprise of every one, appeared to be the ancient ruin, of which we have before spoken, and which was so well known to every inhabitant of the county.
Truly, it seemed like some act of mere desperation for Sir Francis Varney to hope there to hide himself. There remained within, of what had once been a stately pile, but a few grey crumbling walls, which the hunted have would have passed unheeded, knowing that not for one instant could he have baffled his pursuers by seeking so inefficient a refuge.
And those who followed hard and fast upon the track of Sir Francis Varney felt so sure of their game, when they saw whither he was speeding, that they relaxed in their haste considerably, calling loudly to each other that the vampire was caught at last, for he could be easily surrounded among the old ruins, and dragged from amongst its moss-grown walls.
In another moment, with a wild dash and a cry of exultation, he sprang out of sight, behind an angle, formed by what had been at one time one of the principal supports of the ancient structure.
Then, as if there was still something so dangerous about him, that only by a great number of hands could he be hoped to be secured, the infuriated peasantry gathered in a dense circle around what they considered his temporary place of refuge, and as the sun, which had now climbed above the tree tops, and dispersed, in a great measure, many of the heavy clouds of morning, shone down upon the excited group, they might have been supposed there assembled to perform some superstitious rite, which time had hallowed as an association of the crumbling ruin around which they stood.
By the time the whole of the stragglers, who had persisted in the chase, had come up, there might have been about fifty or sixty resolute men, each intent upon securing the person of one whom they felt, while in existence, would continue to be a terror to all the weaker and dearer portions of their domestic circles.