by Oscar Wilde
Could anything be possibly more full of horror than such a thought? Death, let it come in any shape it may, is yet a most repulsive and unwelcome guest; but, when it comes, so united with all that can add to its terrors, it is enough to drive reason from its throne, and fill the mind with images of absolute horror.
Tired of shrieking, for his parched lips and clogged tongue would scarcely now permit him to utter a sound higher than a whisper. Marchdale lay, listening to the furious storm without, in the last abandonment of despair.
“Oh! what a death is this,” he groaned. “Here, alone—all alone—and starvation to creep on me by degrees, sapping life’s energies one by one. Already do I feel the dreadful sickening weakness growing on me. Help, oh! help me Heav—no, no! Dare I call on Heaven to help me? Is there no fiend of darkness who now will bid me a price for a human soul? Is there not one who will do so—not one who will rescue me from the horror that surrounds me, for Heaven will not? I dare not ask mercy there.”
The storm continued louder and louder. The wind, it is true, was nearly hushed, but the roar and the rattle of the echo-awakening thunder fully made up for its cessation, while, now and then, even there, in that underground abode, some sudden reflection of the vivid lightning’s light would find its way, lending, for a fleeting moment, sufficient light to Marchdale, wherewith he could see the gloomy place in which he was.
At times he wept, and at times he raved, while ever and anon he made such frantic efforts to free himself from the chains that were around him, that, had they not been strong, he must have succeeded; but, as it was, he only made deep indentations into his flesh, and gave himself much pain.
“Charles Holland!” he shouted; “oh! release me! Varney! Varney! why do you not come to save me? I have toiled for you most unrequitedly—I have not had my reward. Let it all consist in my release from this dreadful bondage. Help! help! oh, help!”
There was no one to hear him. The storm continued, and now, suddenly, a sudden and a sharper sound than any awakened by the thunder’s roar came upon his startled ear, and, in increased agony, he shouted—
“What is that? oh! what is that? God of heaven, do my fears translate that sound aright? Can it be, oh! can it be, that the ruins which have stood for so many a year are now crumbling down before the storm of tonight?”
The sound came again, and he felt the walls of the dungeon in which he was shake. Now there could be no doubt but that the lightning had struck some part of the building, and so endangered the safety of all that was above ground. For a moment there came across his brain such a rush of agony, that he neither spoke nor moved. Had that dreadful feeling continued much longer, he must have lapsed into insanity; but that amount of mercy—for mercy it would have been—was not shown to him. He still felt all the accumulating horrors of his situation, and then, with such shrieks as nothing but a full appreciation of such horrors could have given him strength to utter, he called upon earth, upon heaven and upon all that was infernal, to save him from his impending doom.
All was in vain. It was an impending doom which nothing but the direct interposition of Heaven could have at all averted; and it was not likely that any such perversion of the regular laws of nature would take place to save such a man as Marchdale.
Again came the crashing sound of falling stones, and he was certain that the old ruins, which had stood for so many hundred years the storm, and the utmost wrath of the elements, was at length yielding, and crumbling down.
What else could he expect but to be engulphed among the fragments—fragments still weighty and destructive, although in decay. How fearfully now did his horrified imagination take in at one glance, as it were, a panoramic view of all his past life, and how absolutely contemptible, at that moment, appeared all that he had been striving for.
But the walls shake again, and this time the vibration is more fearful than before. There is a tremendous uproar above him—the roof yields to some superincumbent pressure—there is one shriek, and Marchdale lies crushed beneath a mass of masonry that it would take men and machinery days to remove from off him.
All is over now. That bold, bad man—that accomplished hypocrite—that mendacious, would-be murderer was no more. He lies but a mangled, crushed, and festering corpse.
May his soul find mercy with his God!
The storm, from this moment, seemed to relax in its violence, as if it had accomplished a great purpose, and, consequently, now, need no longer “vex the air with its boisterous presence.” Gradually the thunder died away in the distance. The wind no longer blew in blustrous gusts, but, with a gentle murmuring, swept around the ancient pile, as if singing the requiem of the dead that lay beneath—that dead which mortal eyes were never to look upon.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
THE MEETING OF CHARLES AND FLORA.
Charles Holland followed Jack Pringle for some time in silence from Bannerworth Hall; his mind was too full of thought concerning the past to allow him to indulge in much of that kind of conversation in which Jack Pringle might be fully considered to be a proficient.
As for Jack, somehow or another, he had felt his dignity offended in the garden of Bannerworth Hall, and he had made up his mind, as he afterwards stated in his own phraseology, not to speak to nobody till somebody spoke to him.
A growing anxiety, however, to ascertain from one who had seen her lately, how Flora had borne his absence, at length induced Charles Holland to break his self-imposed silence.
“Jack,” he said, “you have had the happiness of seeing her lately, tell me, does Flora Bannerworth look as she was wont to look, or have all the roses faded from her cheeks?”
“Why, as for the roses,” said Jack, “I’m blowed if I can tell, and seeing as how she don’t look at me much, I doesn’t know nothing about her; I can tell you something, though, about the old admiral that will make you open your eyes.”
“Indeed, Jack, and what may that be?”
“Why, he’s took to drink, and gets groggy about every day of his life, and the most singular thing is, that when that’s the case with the old man, he says it’s me.”
“Indeed, Jack! taken to drinking has my poor old uncle, from grief, I suppose, Jack, at my disappearance.”
“No, I don’t think it’s grief,” said Jack; “it strikes me it’s rum-and-water.”
“Alas, alas, I never could have imagined he could have fallen into that habit of yours; he always seemed so far from anything of this kind.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said Jack, “I know’d you’d be astonished. It will be the death of him, that’s my opinion; and the idea, you know, Master Charles, of accusing me when he gets drunk himself.”
“I believe that is a common delusion of intemperate persons,” said Charles.
“Is it, sir; well, it’s a very awkward I thing, because you know, sir, as well as most people, that I’m not the fellow to take a drop too much.”
“I cannot say, Jack, that I know so much, for I have certainly heard my uncle accuse you of intoxication.”
“Lor’, sir, that was all just on account of his trying it hisself; he was a thinking on it then, and wanted to see how I’d take it.”
“But tell me of Flora; are you quite certain that she has had no more alarms from Varney?”
“What, that ere vampire fellow? not a bit of it, your honour. Lor’ bless you, he must have found out by some means or another that I was on the look out, and that did the business. He’ll never come near Miss Flora again, I’ll be bound, though to be sure we moved away from the Hall on account of him; but not that I saw the good of cruising out of one’s own latitude, but somehow or another you see the doctor and the admiral got it into their heads to establish a sort of blockade, and the idea of the thing was to sail away in the night quite quiet, and after that take up a position that would come across the enemy on the larboard tack, if so be as he made his appearance.”
; “Oh, you allude to watching the Hall, I presume?”
“Ay, ay, sir, just so; but would you believe it, Master Charlie, the admiral and the doctor got so blessed drunk that I could do nothing with ’em.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes, they did indeed, and made all kinds of queer mistakes, so that the end of all that was, that the vampire did come; but he got away again.”
“He did come then; Sir Francis Varney came again after the house was presumed to be deserted?”
“He did, sir.”
“That is very strange; what on earth could have been his object? This affair is most inexplicably mysterious. I hope the distance, Jack, is not far that you’re taking me, for I’m incapable of enduring much fatigue.”
“Not a great way, your honour; keep two points to the westward, and sail straight on; we’ll soon come to port. My eye, won’t there be a squall when you get in. I expect as Miss Flora will drop down as dead as a herring, for she doesn’t think you’re above the hatches.”
“A good thought, Jack; my sudden appearance may produce alarm. When we reach the place of abode of the Bannerworths, you shall precede me, and prepare them in some measure for my reception.”
“Very good, sir; do you see that there little white cottage a-head, there in the offing?”
“Yes, yes; is that the place?”
“Yes, your honour, that’s the port to which we are bound.”
“Well, then, Jack, you hasten a-head, and see Miss Flora, and be sure you prepare her gently and by degrees, you know, Jack, for my appearance, so that she shall not be alarmed.”
“Ay, ay, sir, I understand; you wait here, and I’ll go and do it; there would be a squall if you were to make your appearance, sir, all at once. She looks upon you as safely lodged in Davy’s locker; she minds me, all the world, of a girl I knew at Portsmouth, called Bet Bumplush. She was one of your delicate little creatures as don’t live long in this here world; no, blow me; when I came home from a eighteen months’ cruise, once I seed her drinking rum out of a quart pot, so I says, ‘Hilloa, what cheer?’ And only to think now of the wonderful effect that there had upon her; with that very pot she gives the fellow as was standing treat a knobber on the head as lasted him three weeks. She was too good for this here world, she was, and too rummantic. ‘Go to blazes,’ she says to him, ‘here’s Jack Pringle come home.’”
“Very romantic indeed,” said Charles.
“Yes, I believe you, sir; and that puts me in mind of Miss Flora and you.”
“An extremely flattering comparison. Of course I feel much obliged.”
“Oh, don’t name it, sir. The British tar as can’t oblige a feller-cretor is unworthy to tread the quarter-deck, or to bear a hand to the distress of a woman.”
“Very well,” said Charles. “Now, as we are here, precede me, if you please, and let me beg of you to be especially cautious in your manner of announcing me.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said Jack: and away he walked towards the cottage, leaving Charles some distance behind.
Flora and the admiral were sitting together conversing. The old man, who loved her as if she had been a child of his own, was endeavouring, to the extent of his ability, to assuage the anguish of her thoughts, which at that moment chanced to be bent upon Charles Holland.
“Nevermind, my dear,” he said; “he’ll turn up some of these days, and when he does, I sha’n’t forget to tell him that it was you who stood out for his honesty and truth, when every one else was against him, including myself, an old wretch that I was.”
“Oh, sir, how could you for one moment believe that those letters could have been written by your nephew Charles? They carried, sir, upon the face of them their own refutation; and I’m only surprised that for one instant you, or any one who knew him, could have believed him capable of writing them.”
“Avast, there,” said the admiral; “that’ll do. I own you got the better of the old sailor there. I think you and Jack Pringle were the only two persons who stood out from the first.”
“Then I honour Jack for doing so.”
“And here he is,” said the admiral, “and you’d better tell him. The mutinous rascal! he wants all the honour he can get, as a set-off against his drunkenness and other bad habits.”
Jack walked into the room, looked about him in silence for a moment, thrust his hands in his breeches pockets, and gave a long whistle.
“What’s the matter now?” said the admiral.
“Damn me, if Charles Holland ain’t outside, and I’ve come to prepare you for the blessed shock,” said Jack. “Don’t faint either of you, because I’m only going to let you know it by degrees, you know.”
A shriek burst from Flora’s lips, and she sprung to the door of the apartment.
“What!” cried the admiral, “my nephew—my nephew Charles! Jack, you rascal, if you’re joking, it’s the last joke you shall make in this world; and if it’s true, I—I—I’m an old fool, that’s all.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said Jack; “didn’t you know that afore?”
“Charles—Charles!” cried Flora. He heard the voice. Her name escaped his lips, and rang with a pleasant echo through the house.
In another moment he was in the room, and had clasped her to his breast.
“My own—my beautiful—my true!”
“Charles, dear Charles!”
“Oh, Flora, what have I not endured since last we met; but this repays me—more than repays me for all.”
“What is the past now,” cried Flora—“what are all its miseries placed against this happy, happy moment?”
“Damn me, nobody thinks of me,” said the admiral.
“My dear uncle,” said Charles, looking over Flora’s shoulder, as he still held her in his arms, “is that you?”
“Yes, yes, swab, it is me, and you know it; but give us your five, you mutinous vagabond; and I tell you what, I’ll do you the greatest favour I’ve had an opportunity of doing you some time—I’ll leave you alone, you dog. Come along, Jack.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said Jack; and away they went out of the apartment.
And now those two loving hearts were alone—they who had been so long separated by malignant destiny, once again were heart to heart, looking into each other’s faces with all the beaming tenderness of an affection of the truest, holiest character.
The admiral had done a favour to them both to leave them alone, although we much doubt whether his presence, or the presence of the whole world, would have had the effect of controlling one generous sentiment of noble feeling.
They would have forgotten everything but that they were together, and that once again each looked into the other’s eyes with all the tenderness of a love purer and higher than ordinarily belongs to mortal affections.
Language was weak to give utterance to the full gust of happy feelings that now were theirs. It was ecstasy enough to feel, to know that the evil fortune which had so long separated them, depriving each existence of its sunniest aspect, was over. It was enough for Charles Holland to feel that she loved him still. It was enough for Flora Bannerworth to know, as she looked into his beaming countenance, that that love was not misplaced, but was met by feelings such as she herself would have dictated to be the inhabitants of the heart of him whom she would have chosen from the mass of mankind as her own.
“Flora—dear Flora,” said Charles, “and you have never doubted me?”
“I’ve never doubted, Charles, Heaven or you. To doubt one would have been, to doubt both.”
“Generous and best of girls, what must you have thought of my enforced absence! Oh! Flora, I was unjust enough to your truth to make my greatest pang the thought that you might doubt me, and cast me from your heart for ever.”
“Ah! Charles, you ought to have known me better. I stood amid sore temptation to do so much. There were those who would h
ave urged me on to think that you had cast me from your heart for ever. There were those ready and willing to place the worst construction upon your conduct, and with a devilish ingenuity to strive to make me participate in such a feeling; but, no, Charles, no—I loved you, and I trusted you, and I could not so far belie my own judgment as to tell you other than what you always seemed to my young fancy.”
“And you are right, my Flora, right; and is it not a glorious triumph to see that love—that sentiment of passion—has enabled you to have so enduring and so noble a confidence in aught human?”
“Ay, Charles, it is the sentiment of passion, for our love has been more a sentiment than a passion. I would fain think that we had loved each other with an affection not usually known, appreciated, or understood, and so, in the vanity of my best affections, I would strive to think them something exclusive, and beyond the common feelings of humanity.”
“And you are right, my Flora; such love as yours is the exception; there may be preferences, there may be passions, and there may be sentiments, but never, never, surely, was there a heart like yours.”
“Nay, Charles, now you speak from a too poetical fancy; but is it possible that I have had you here so long, with your hand clasped in mine, and asked you not the causes of your absence?”
“Oh, Flora, I have suffered much—much physically, but more mentally. It was the thought of you that was at once the bane and the antidote of my existence.”
“Indeed, Charles! Did I present myself in such contradictory colours to you?”
“Yes, dearest, as thus. When I thought of you, sometimes, in the deep seclusion of a dungeon, that thought almost goaded me to madness, because it brought with it the conviction—a conviction peculiar to a lover—that none could so effectually stand between you and all evil as myself.”
“Yes, yes, Charles; most true.”
“It seemed to me as if all the world in arms could not have protected you so well as this one heart, clad in the triple steel of its affections, could have shielded you from evil.”