The Penny Dreadfuls MEGAPACK™

by Oscar Wilde

  “Which is merely that he is fond of old houses.”

  “Precisely so. That is the reason, and the only one, that can be got from him. Heaven only knows if it be the true one.”

  “It may be, brother.”

  “As you say, it may; but there’s a doubt, nevertheless, Flora. I much rejoice that you have had an interview with this mysterious being, for you have certainty, since that time, been happier and more composed than I ever hoped to see you again.”

  “I have indeed.”

  “It is sufficiently perceivable.”

  “Somehow, brother, since that interview, I have not had the same sort of dread of Sir Francis Varney which before made the very sound of his name a note of terror to me. His words, and all he said to me during that interview which took place so strangely between us, indeed how I know not, tended altogether rather to make him, to a certain extent, an object of my sympathies rather than my abhorrence.”

  “That is very strange.”

  “I own that it is strange, Henry; but when we come for but a brief moment to reflect upon the circumstances which have occurred, we shall, I think, be able to find some cause even to pity Varney the vampire.”

  “How?”

  “Thus, brother. It is said—and well may I who have been subject to an attack of such a nature, tremble to repeat the saying—that those who have been once subject to the visitations of a vampire, are themselves in a way to become one of the dreadful and maddening fraternity.”

  “I have heard so much, sister,” replied Henry.

  “Yes; and therefore who knows but that Sir Francis Varney may, at one time, have been as innocent as we are ourselves of the terrible and fiendish propensity which now makes him a terror and a reproach to all who know him, or are in any way obnoxious to his attacks.”

  “That is true.”

  “There may have been a time—who shall say there was not?—when he, like me, would have shrunk, with a dread as great as any one could have experienced, from the contamination of the touch even of a vampire.”

  “I cannot, sister, deny the soundness of your reasoning,” said Henry, with a sigh; “but I still no not see anything, even from a full conviction that Varney is unfortunate, which should induce us to tolerate him.”

  “Nay, brother, I said not tolerate. What I mean is, that even with the horror and dread we must naturally feel at such a being, we may afford to mingle some amount of pity, which shall make us rather seek to shun him, than to cross his path with a resolution of doing him an injury.”

  “I perceive well, sister, what you mean. Rather than remain here, and make an attempt to defy Sir Francis Varney, you would fly from him, and leave him undisputed master of the field.”

  “I would—I would.”

  “Heaven forbid that I or any one should thwart you. You know well, Flora, how dear you are to me; you know well that your happiness has ever been to us all a matter which has assumed the most important of shapes, as regarded our general domestic policy. It is not, therefore, likely now, dear sister, that we should thwart you in your wish to remove from here.”

  “I know, Henry, all you would say,” remarked Flora, as a tear started to her eyes. “I know well all you think, and, in your love for me, I likewise know well I rely for ever. You are attached to this place, as, indeed, we all are, by a thousand happy and pleasant associations; but listen to me further, Henry, I do not wish to wander far.”

  “Not far, Flora?”

  “No. Do I not still cling to a hope that Charles may yet appear? and if he do so, it will assuredly be in this neighbourhood, which he knows is native and most dear to us all.”

  “True.”

  “Then do I wish to make some sort of parade, in the way of publicity, of our leaving the Hall.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “And yet not go far. In the neighbouring town, for example, surely we might find some means of living entirely free from remark or observation as to who or what we were.”

  “That, sister, I doubt. If you seek for that species of solitude which you contemplate, it is only to be found in a desert.”

  “A desert?”

  “Yes; or in a large city.”

  “Indeed!”

  “Ay, Flora; you may well believe me, that it is so. In a small community you can have no possible chance of evading an amount of scrutiny which would very soon pierce through any disguise you could by any possibility assume.”

  “Then there is no resource. We must go far.”

  “Nay, I will consider for you, Flora; and although, as a general principle, what I have said I know to be true, yet some more special circumstance may arise that may point a course that, while it enables us, for Charles Holland’s sake, to remain in this immediate neighbourhood, yet will procure to us all the secrecy we may desire.”

  “Dear—dear brother,” said Flora, as she flung herself upon Henry’s neck, “you speak cheeringly to me, and, what is more, you believe in Charles’s faithfulness and truth.”

  “As Heaven is my judge, I do.”

  “A thousand, thousand thanks for such an assurance. I know him too well to doubt, for one moment, his faith. Oh, brother! could he—could Charles Holland, the soul of honour, the abode of every noble impulse that can adorn humanity—could he have written those letters? No, no! perish the thought!”

  “It has perished.”

  “Thank God!”

  “I only, upon reflection, wonder how, misled for the moment by the concurrence of a number of circumstances, I could ever have suspected him.”

  “It is like your generous nature, brother to say so; but you know as well as I, that there has been one here who has, far from feeling any sort of anxiety to think as well as possible of poor Charles Holland, has done all that in him lay to take the worst view of his mysterious disappearance, and induce us to do the like.”

  “You allude to Mr. Marchdale?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, Flora, at the same time that I must admit you have cause for speaking of Mr. Marchdale as you do, yet when we come to consider all things, there may be found for him excuses.”

  “May there?”

  “Yes, Flora; he is a man, as he himself says, past the meridian of life, and the world is a sad as well as a bad teacher, for it soon—too soon, alas! deprives us of our trusting confidence in human nature.”

  “It may be so; but yet, he, knowing as he did so very little of Charles Holland, judged him hastily and harshly.”

  “You rather ought to say, Flora, that he did not judge him generously.”

  “Well, be it so.”

  “And you must recollect, when you say so, that Marchdale did not love Charles Holland.”

  “Nay, now,” said Flora, while there flashed across her cheek, for a moment, a heightened colour, “you are commencing to jest with me, and, therefore, we will say no more. You know, dear Henry, all my hopes, my wishes, and my feelings, and I shall therefore leave my future destiny in your hands, to dispose of as you please. Look yonder!”

  “Where?”

  “There. Do you not see the admiral and Mr. Chillingworth walking among the trees?”

  “Yes, yes; I do now.”

  “How very serious and intent they are upon the subject of their discourse. They seem quite lost to all surrounding objects. I could not have imagined any subject that would so completely have absorbed the attention of Admiral Bell.”

  “Mr. Chillingworth had something to relate to him or to propose, of a nature which, perchance, has had the effect of enchaining all his attention—he called him from the room.”

  “Yes; I saw that he did. But see, they come towards us, and now we shall, probably, hear what is the subject-matter of their discourse and consultation.”

  “We shall.”

  Admiral Bell had evidently seen Henry and his siste
r, for now, suddenly, as if not from having for the first moment observed them, and, in consequence, broken off their private discourse, but as if they arrived at some point in it which enabled them to come to a conclusion to be communicative, the admiral came towards the brother and sister,

  “Well,” said the bluff old admiral, when they were sufficiently near to exchange words, “well, Miss Flora, you are looking a thousand times better than you were.”

  “I thank you, admiral, I am much better.”

  “Oh, to be sure you are; and you will be much better still, and no sort of mistake. Now, here’s the doctor and I have both been agreeing upon what is best for you.”

  “Indeed!”

  “Yes, to be sure. Have we not, doctor?”

  “We have, admiral.”

  “Good; and what, now, Miss Flora, do you suppose it is?”

  “I really cannot say.”

  “Why, it’s change of air, to be sure. You must get away from here as quickly as you can, or there will be no peace for you.”

  “Yes,” added Mr. Chillingworth, advancing; “I am quite convinced that change of scene and change of place, and habits, and people, will tend more to your complete recovery than any other circumstances. In the most ordinary cases of indisposition we always find that the invalid recovers much sooner away from the scene of his indisposition, than by remaining in it, even though its general salubrity be much greater than the place to which he may be removed.”

  “Good,” said the admiral.

  “Then we are to understand,” said Henry, with a smile, “that we are no longer to be your guests, Admiral Bell?”

  “Belay there!” cried the admiral; “who told you to understand any such thing, I should like to know?”

  “Well, but we shall look upon this house as yours, now; and, that being the case, if we remove from it, of course we cease to be your guests any longer.”

  “That’s all you know about it. Now, hark ye. You don’t command the fleet, so don’t pretend to know what the admiral is going to do. I have made money by knocking about some of the enemies of old England, and that’s the most gratifying manner in the world of making money, so far as I am concerned.”

  “It is an honourable mode.”

  “Of course it is. Well, I am going to—what the deuce do you call it?”

  “What?”

  “That’s just what I want to know. Oh, I have it now. I am going to what the lawyers call invest it.”

  “A prudent step, admiral, and one which it is to be hoped, before now, has occurred to you.”

  “Perhaps it has and perhaps it hasn’t; however, that’s my business, and no one’s else’s. I am going to invest my spare cash in taking houses; so, as I don’t care a straw where the houses may be situated, you can look out for one somewhere that will suit you, and I’ll take it; so, after all, you will be my guests there just the same as you are here.”

  “Admiral,” said Henry, “it would be imposing upon a generosity as rare as it is noble, were we to allow you to do so much for us as you contemplate.”

  “Very good.”

  “We cannot—we dare not.”

  “But I say you shall. So you have had your say, and I’ve had mine, after which, if you please, Master Henry Bannerworth, I shall take upon myself to consider the affair as altogether settled. You can commence operations as soon as you like. I know that Miss Flora, here—bless her sweet eyes—don’t want to stay at Bannerworth Hall any longer than she can help it.”

  “Indeed I was urging upon Henry to remove,” said Flora; “but yet I cannot help feeling with him, admiral, that we are imposing upon your goodness.”

  “Go on imposing, then.”

  “But—”

  “Psha! Can’t a man be imposed upon if he likes? damn it, that’s a poor privilege for an Englishman to be forced to make a row about. I tell you I like it. I will be imposed upon, so there’s an end of that; and now let’s come in and see what Mrs. Bannerworth has got ready for luncheon.”

  * * * *

  It can hardly be supposed that such a popular ferment as had been created in the country town, by the singular reports concerning Varney the Vampire, should readily, and without abundant satisfaction, subside.

  An idea like that which had lent so powerful an impulse to the popular mind, was one far easier to set going than to deprecate or extinguish. The very circumstances which had occurred to foil the excited mob in their pursuit of Sir Francis Varney, were of a nature to increase the popular superstition concerning him, and to make him and his acts appear in still more dreadful colours.

  Mobs do not reason very closely and clearly; but the very fact of the frantic flight of Sir Francis Varney from the projected attack of the infuriated multitude, was seized hold of as proof positive of the reality of his vampire-like existence.

  Then, again, had he not disappeared in the most mysterious manner? Had he not sought refuge where no human being would think of seeking refuge, namely, in that old, dilapidated ruin, where, when his pursuers were so close upon his track, he had succeeded in eluding their grasp with a facility which looked as if he had vanished into thin air, or as if the very earth had opened to receive him bodily within its cold embraces?

  It is not to be wondered at, that the few who fled so precipitately from the ruin, lost nothing of the wonderful story they had to tell, in the carrying it from that place to the town. When they reached their neighbours, they not only told what had really occurred, but they added to it all their own surmises, and the fanciful creation of all their own fears, so that before mid-day, and about the time when Henry Bannerworth was conversing so quietly in the gardens of the Hall with his beautiful sister, there was an amount of popular ferment in the town, of which they had no conception.

  All business was suspended, and many persons, now that once the idea had been started concerning the possibility that a vampire might have been visiting some of the houses in the place, told how, in the dead of the night, they had heard strange noises. How children had shrieked from no apparent cause—doors opened and shut without human agency; and windows rattled that never had been known to rattle before.

  Some, too, went so far as to declare that they had been awakened out of their sleep by noises incidental to an effort made to enter their chambers; and others had seen dusky forms of gigantic proportions outside their windows, tampering with their fastenings, and only disappearing when the light of day mocked all attempts at concealment.

  These tales flew from mouth to mouth, and all listened to them with such an eager interest, that none thought it worth while to challenge their inconsistencies, or to express a doubt of their truth, because they had not been mentioned before.

  The only individual, and he was a remarkably clever man, who made the slightest remark upon the subject of a practical character, hazarded a suggestion that made confusion worse confounded.

  He knew something of vampires. He had travelled abroad, and had heard of them in Germany, as well as in the east, and, to a crowd of wondering and aghast listeners, he said—

  “You may depend upon it, my friends, this has been going on for some time; there have been several mysterious and sudden deaths in the town lately; people have wasted away and died nobody knew how or wherefore.”

  “Yes—yes,” said everybody.

  “There was Miles, the butcher; you know how fat he was, and then how fat he wasn’t.”

  A general assent was given to the proposition; and then, elevating one arm in an oratorical manner, the clever fellow continued—

  “I have not a doubt that Miles, the butcher, and every one else who has died suddenly lately, have been victims of the vampire; and what’s more, they’ll all be vampires, and come and suck other people’s blood, till at last the whole town will be a town of vampires.”

  “But what’s to be done?” cried one, who trembled so exce
ssively that he could scarcely stand under his apprehension.

  “There is but one plan—Sir Francis Varney must be found, and put out of the world in such a manner that he can’t come back to it again; and all those who are dead that we have any suspicion of, should be taken up out of their graves and looked at, to see if they’re rotting or not; if they are it’s all right; but, if they look fresh and much, as usual, you may depend they’re vampires, and no mistake.”

  This was a terrific suggestion thrown amongst a mob. To have caught Sir Francis Varney and immolated him at the shrine of popular fury, they would not have shrunk from; but a desecration of the graves of those whom they had known in life was a matter which, however much it had to recommend it, even the boldest stood aghast at, and felt some qualms of irresolution.

  There are many ideas, however, which, like the first plunge into a cold bath, are rather uncomfortable for the moment; but which, in a little time, we become so familiarized with, that they become stripped of their disagreeable concomitants, and appear quite pleasing and natural.

  So it was with this notion of exhuming the dead bodies of those townspeople who had recently died from what was called a decay of nature, and such other failures of vitality as bore not the tangible name of any understood disease.

  From mouth to mouth the awful suggestion spread like wildfire, until at last it grew into such a shape that it almost seemed to become a duty, at all events, to have up Miles the butcher, and see how he looked.

  There is, too, about human nature a natural craving curiosity concerning everything connected with the dead. There is not a man of education or of intellectual endowment who would not travel many miles to look upon the exhumation of the remains of some one famous in his time, whether for his vices, his virtues, his knowledge, his talents, or his heroism; and, if this feeling exist in the minds of the educated and refined in a sublimated shape, which lends to it grace and dignity, we may look for it among the vulgar and the ignorant, taking only a grosser and meaner form, in accordance with their habits of thought. The rude materials, of which the highest and noblest feelings of educated minds are formed, will be found amongst the most grovelling and base; and so this vulgar curiosity, which, combined with other feelings, prompted an ignorant and illiterate mob to exhume Miles, the once fat butcher, in a different form tempted the philosophic Hamlet to moralise upon the skull of Yorick.