by Oscar Wilde
“Be it so. The moon rises soon.”
“It does.”
“Ah, already I fancy I see a brightening of the air as if the mellow radiance of the queen of night were already quietly diffusing itself throughout the realms of space. Come further within the ruins.”
They both walked further among the crumbling walls and fragments of columns with which the place abounded. As they did so they paused now and then to listen, and more than once they both heard plainly the sound of certain footsteps immediately outside the once handsome and spacious building.
Varney, the vampire, who had been holding this conversation with no other than Marchdale, smiled as he, in a whispered voice, told the latter what to do in order to frighten away from the place the foolhardy man who thought that, by himself, he should be able to accomplish anything against the vampire.
It was, indeed, a hair-brained expedition, for whether Sir Francis Varney was really so awful and preternatural a being as so many concurrent circumstances would seem to proclaim, or not, he was not a likely being to allow himself to be conquered by anyone individual, let his powers or his courage be what they might.
What induced this man to become so ventursome we shall now proceed to relate, as well as what kind of reception he got in the old ruins, which, since the mysterious disappearance of Sir Francis Varney within their recesses, had possessed so increased a share of interest and attracted so much popular attention and speculation.
CHAPTER LXIII.
THE GUESTS AT THE INN, AND THE STORY OF THE DEAD UNCLE.
As had been truly stated by Mr. Marchdale, who now stands out in his true colours to the reader as the confidant and abettor of Sir Francis Varney, there had assembled on that evening a curious and a gossipping party at the inn where such dreadful and such riotous proceedings had taken place, which, in their proper place, we have already duly and at length recorded.
It was not very likely that, on that evening, or for many and many an evening to come, the conversation in the parlour of the inn would be upon any other subject than that of the vampire.
Indeed, the strange, mysterious, and horrible circumstances which had occurred, bade fair to be gossipping stock in trade for many a year.
Never before had a subject presenting so many curious features arisen. Never, within the memory of that personage who is supposed to know everything, had there occurred any circumstance in the county, or set of circumstances, which afforded such abundant scope for conjecture and speculation.
Everybody might have his individual opinion, and be just as likely to be right as his neighbours; and the beauty of the affair was, that such was the interest of the subject itself, that there was sure to be a kind of reflected interest with every surmise that at all bore upon it.
On this particular night, when Marchdale was prowling about, gathering what news he could, in order that he might carry it to the vampire, a more than usually strong muster of the gossips of the town took place.
Indeed, all of any note in the talking way were there, with the exception of one, and he was in the county gaol, being one of the prisoners apprehended by the military when they made the successful attack upon the lumber-room of the inn, after the dreadful desecration of the dead which had taken place.
The landlord of the inn was likely to make a good thing of it, for talking makes people thirsty; and he began to consider that a vampire about once a-year would be no bad thing for the Blue Lion.
“It’s shocking,” said one of the guests; “it’s shocking to think of. Only last night, I am quite sure I had such a fright that it added at least ten years to my age.”
“A fright!” said several.
“I believe I speak English—I said a fright.”
“Well, but had it anything to do with the vampire?”
“Everything.”
“Oh! do tell us; do tell us all about it. How was it? Did he come to you? Go on. Well, well.”
The first speaker became immediately a very important personage in the room; and, when he saw that, he became at once a very important personage in his own eyes likewise; and, before he would speak another word, he filled a fresh pipe, and ordered another mug of ale.
“It’s no use trying to hurry him,” said one.
“No,” he said, “it isn’t. I’ll tell you in good time what a dreadful circumstance has made me sixty-three today, when I was only fifty-three yesterday.”
“Was it very dreadful?”
“Rather. You wouldn’t have survived it at all.”
“Indeed!”
“No. Now listen. I went to bed at a quarter after eleven, as usual. I didn’t notice anything particular in the room.”
“Did you peep under the bed?”
“No, I didn’t. Well, as I was a-saying, to bed I went, and I didn’t fasten the door; because, being a very sound sleeper, in case there was a fire, I shouldn’t hear a word of it if I did.”
“No,” said another. “I recollect once—”
“Be so good as allow me to finish what I know, before you begin to recollect anything, if you please. As I was saying, I didn’t lock the door, but I went to bed. Somehow or another, I did not feel at all comfortable, and I tossed about, first on one side, and then on the other; but it was all in vain; I only got, every moment, more and more fidgetty.”
“And did you think of the vampire?” said one of the listeners.
“I thought of nothing else till I heard my clock, which is on the landing of the stairs above my bed-room, begin to strike twelve.”
“Ah! I like to hear a clock sound in the night,” said one; “it puts one in mind of the rest of the world, and lets one know one isn’t all alone.”
“Very good. The striking of the clock I should not at all have objected to; but it was what followed that did the business.”
“What, what?”
“Fair and softly; fair and softly. Just hand me a light, Mr. Sprigs, if you please. I’ll tell you all, gentlemen, in a moment or two.”
With the most provoking deliberation, the speaker re-lit his pipe, which had gone out while he was talking, and then, after a few whiffs, to assure himself that its contents had thoroughly ignited, he resumed—
“No sooner had the last sound of it died away, than I heard something on the stairs.”
“Yes, yes.”
“It was as if some man had given his foot a hard blow against one of the stairs; and he would have needed to have had a heavy boot on to do it. I started up in bed and listened, as you may well suppose, not in the most tranquil state of mind, and then I heard an odd, gnawing sort of noise, and then another dab upon one of the stairs.”
“How dreadful!”
“It was. What to do I knew not, or what to think, except that the vampire had, by some means, got in at the attic window, and was coming down stairs to my room. That seemed the most likely. Then there was another groan, and then another heavy step; and, as they were evidently coming towards my door, I felt accordingly, and got out of bed, not knowing hardly whether I was on my head or my heels, to try and lock my door.”
“Ah, to be sure.”
“Yes; that was all very well, if I could have done it; but a man in such a state of mind as I was in is not a very sharp hand at doing anything. I shook from head to foot. The room was very dark, and I couldn’t, for a moment or two, collect my senses sufficient really to know which way the door lay.”
“What a situation!”
“It was. Dab, dab, dab, came these horrid footsteps, and there was I groping about the room in an agony. I heard them coming nearer and nearer to my door. Another moment, and they must have reached it, when my hand struck against the lock.”
“What an escape!”
“No, it was not.”
“No?”
“No, indeed. The key was on the outside, and you may well guess I w
as not over and above disposed to open the door to get at it.”
“No, no.”
“I felt regularly bewildered, I can tell you; it seemed to me as if the very devil himself was coming down stairs hopping all the way upon one leg.”
“How terrific!”
“I felt my senses almost leaving me; but I did what I could to hold the door shut just as I heard the strange step come from the last stair on to the landing. Then there was a horrid sound, and some one began trying the lock of my door.”
“What a moment!”
“Yes, I can tell you it was a moment. Such a moment as I don’t wish to go through again. I held the door as close as I could, and did not speak. I tried to cry out help and murder, but I could not; my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my strength was fast failing me.”
“Horrid, horrid!”
“Take a drop of ale.”
“Thank you. Well, I don’t think this went on above two or three minutes, and all the while some one tried might and main to push open the door. My strength left me all at once; I had only time to stagger back a step or two, and then, as the door opened, I fainted away.”
“Well, well!”
“Ah, you wouldn’t have said well, if you had been there, I can tell you.”
“No; but what become of you. What happened next? How did it end? What was it?”
“Why, what exactly happened next after I fainted I cannot tell you; but the first thing I saw when I recovered was a candle.”
“Yes, yes.”
“And then a crowd of people.”
“Ah, ah!”
“And then Dr. Web.”
“Gracious!”
“And. Mrs. Bulk, my housekeeper. I was in my own bed, and when I opened my eyes I heard Dr. Webb say—
“‘He will be better soon. Can no one form any idea of what it is all about. Some sudden fright surely could alone have produced such an effect.’”
“‘The Lord have mercy upon me!’ said I.
“Upon this everybody who had been called in got round the bed, and wanted to know what had happened; but I said not a word of it; but turning to Mrs. Bulk, I asked her how it was she found out I had fainted.
“‘Why, sir,’ says she, ‘I was coming up to bed as softly as I could, because I knew you had gone to rest some time before. The clock was striking twelve, and as I went past it some of my clothes, I suppose, caught the large weight, but it was knocked off, and down the stairs it rolled, going with such a lump from one to the other, and I couldn’t catch it because it rolled so fast, that I made sure you would be awakened; so I came down to tell you what it was, and it was some time before I could get your room door open, and when I did I found you out of bed and insensible.’”
There was a general look of disappointment when this explanation was given, and one said—
“Then it was not the vampire?”
“Certainly not.”
“And, after all, only a clock weight.”
“That’s about it.”
“Why didn’t you tell us that at first?”
“Because that would have spoilt the story.”
There was a general murmur of discontent, and, after a few moments one man said, with some vivacity—
“Well, although our friend’s vampire has turned out, after all, to be nothing but a confounded clock-weight, there’s no disputing the fact about Sir Francis Varney being a vampire, and not a clock-weight.”
“Very true—very true.”
“And what’s to be done to rid the town of such a man?”
“Oh, don’t call him a man.”
“Well, a monster.”
“Ah, that’s more like. I tell you what, sir, if you had got a light, when you first heard the noise in your room, and gone out to see what it was, you would have spared yourself much fright.”
“Ah, no doubt; it’s always easy afterwards to say, if you had done this, and if you had done the other, so and so would have been the effect; but there is something about the hour of midnight that makes men tremble.”
“Well,” said one, who had not yet spoken, “I don’t see why twelve at night should be a whit more disagreeable than twelve at day.”
“Don’t you?”
“Not I.”
“Now, for instance, many a party of pleasure goes to that old ruin where Sir Francis Varney so unaccountably disappeared in broad daylight. But is there any one here who would go to it alone, and at midnight?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I would.”
“What! and after what has happened as regards the vampire in connection with it?”
“Yes, I would.”
“I’ll bet you twenty shilling you won’t.”
“And I—and I,” cried several.
“Well, gentlemen,” said the man, who certainly shewed no signs of fear, “I will go, and not only will I go and take all your bets, but, if I do meet the vampire, then I’ll do my best to take him prisoner.”
“And when will you go?”
“Tonight,” he cried, and he sprang to his feet; “hark ye all, I don’t believe one word about vampires. I’ll go at once; it’s getting late, and let any one of you, in order that you may be convinced I have been to the place, give me any article, which I will hide among the ruins; and tell you where to find it tomorrow in broad daylight.”
“Well,” said one, “that’s fair, Tom Eccles. Here’s a handkerchief of mine; I should know it again among a hundred others.”
“Agreed; I’ll leave it in the ruins.”
The wagers were fairly agreed upon; several handkerchiefs were handed to Tom Eccles; and at eleven o’clock he fairly started, through the murky darkness of the night, to the old ruin where Sir Francis Varney and Marchdale were holding their most unholy conference.
It is one thing to talk and to accept wagers in the snug parlour of an inn, and another to go alone across a tract of country wrapped in the profound stillness of night to an ancient ruin which, in addition to the natural gloom which might well be supposed to surround it, has superadded associations which are anything but of a pleasant character.
Tom Eccles, as he was named, was one of those individuals who act greatly from impulse. He was certainly not a coward, and, perhaps, really as free from superstition as most persons, but he was human, and consequently he had nerves, and he had likewise an imagination.
He went to his house first before he started on his errand to the ruins. It was to get a horse-pistol which he had, and which he duly loaded and placed in his pocket. Then he wrapped himself up in a great-coat, and with the air of a man quite determined upon something desperate he left the town.
The guests at the inn looked after him as he walked from the door of that friendly establishment, and some of them, as they saw his resolved aspect, began to quake for the amount of the wagers they had laid upon his non-success.
However, it was resolved among them, that they would stay until half-past twelve, in the expectation of his return, before they separated.
To while away the time, he who had been so facetious about his story of the clock-weight, volunteered to tell what happened to a friend of his who went to take possession of some family property which he became possessed of as heir-at-law to an uncle who had died without a will, having an illegitimate family unprovided for in every shape.
“Ah! nobody cares for other people’s illegitimate children, and, if their parents don’t provide for them, why, the workhouse is open for them, just as if they were something different from other people.”
“So they are; if their parents don’t take care of them, and provide for them, nobody else will, as you say, neighbour, except when they have a Fitz put to their name, which tells you they are royal bastards, and of course unlike anybody else’s.”
“But go on—let’s know all about it; we sha’n’t hear what he has got to say at all, at this rate.”
“Well, as I was saying, or about to say, the nephew, as soon as he heard his uncle was dead, comes and claps his seal upon everything in the house.”
“But, could he do so?” inquired one of the guests.
“I don’t see what was to hinder him,” replied a third. “He could do so, certainly.”
“But there was a son, and, as I take it, a son’s nearer than a nephew any day.”
“But the son is illegitimate.”
“Legitimate, or illegitimate, a son’s a son; don’t bother me about distinction of that sort; why, now, there was old Weatherbit—”
“Order, order.”
“Let’s hear the tale.”
“Very good, gentlemen, I’ll go on, if I ain’t to be interrupted; but I’ll say this, that an illegitimate son is no son, in the eyes of the law; or at most he’s an accident quite, and ain’t what he is, and so can’t inherit.”
“Well, that’s what I call making matters plain,” said one of the guests, who took his pipe from his mouth to make room for the remark; “now that is what I likes.”
“Well, as I have proved then,” resumed the speaker, “the nephew was the heir, and into the house he would come. A fine affair it was too—the illegitimates looking the colour of sloes; but he knew the law, and would have it put in force.”
“Law’s law, you know.”
“Uncommonly true that; and the nephew stuck to it like a cobbler to his last—he said they should go out, and they did go out; and, say what they would about their natural claims, he would not listen to them, but bundled them out and out in a pretty short space of time.”
“It was trying to them, mind you, to leave the house they had been born in with very different expectations to those which now appeared to be their fate. Poor things, they looked ruefully enough, and well they might, for there was a wide world for them, and no prospect of a warm corner.
“Well, as I was saying, he had them all out and the house clear to himself.
“Now,” said he, “I have an open field and no favour. I don’t care for no—Eh! what?”