THE THOUSAND POUNDS.—THE STRANGER’S PRECAUTIONS.
Varney moved not now, nor did he speak, but, like a statue, he stood,
with his unearthly looking eyes rivetted upon the door of the apartment.
In a few moments one of his servants came, and said—
“Sir, a person is here, who says he wants to see you. He desired me to
say, that he had ridden far, and that moments were precious when the
tide of life was ebbing fast.”
“Yes! yes!” gasped Varney; “admit him, I know him! Bring him here? It
is—an—old friend—of mine.”
He sank into a chair, and still he kept his eyes fixed upon that door
through which his visitor must come. Surely some secret of dreadful
moment must be connected with him whom Sir Francis expected—dreaded—and
yet dared not refuse to see. And now a footstep approaches—a slow and
a solemn footstep—it pauses a moment at the door of the apartment, and
then the servant flings it open, and a tall man enters. He is enveloped
in the folds of a horseman’s cloak, and there is the clank of spurs
upon his heels as he walks into the room.
[Illustration: The visit of the unknown to Sir Francis Varney.]
Varney rose again, but he said not a word; and for a few moments they
stood opposite each other in silence. The domestic has left the room,
and the door is closed, so that there was nothing to prevent them
from conversing; and, yet, silent they continued for some minutes. It
seemed as if each was most anxious that the other should commence the
conversation first.
And yet there was nothing so very remarkable in the appearance of that
stranger, which should entirely justify Sir Francis Varney, in feeling
so much alarm at his presence. He certainly was a man past the prime
of life; and he looked like one who had battled much with misfortune,
and as if time had not passed so lightly over his brow, but that it had
left deep traces of its progress.
The only thing positively bad about his countenance, was to be found in
his eyes. There there was a most ungracious and sinister expression, a
kind of lurking and suspicious look, as if he were always resolving in
his mind some deep laid scheme, which might be sufficient to circumvent
the whole of mankind.
Finding, probably, that Varney would not speak first, he let his cloak
fall more loosely about him, and in a low, deep tone, he said,
“I presume I was expected?”
“You were,” said Varney. “It is the day, and it is the hour.”
“You are right. I like to see you so mindful. You don’t improve in
looks since——”
“Hush—hush! no more of that; can we not meet without a dreadful
allusion to the past? There needs nothing to remind me of it; and your
presence here now shows that you are not forgetful. Speak not of that
fearful episode. Let no words combine to place it in a tangible shape
to human understanding. I cannot, dare not, hear you speak of that.”
“It is well,” said the stranger; “as you please. Let our interview be
brief. You know my errand?”
“I do. So fearful a drag upon limited means, is not likely to be
readily forgotten.”
“Oh, you are too ingenious—too full of well laid schemes, and too
apt and ready in their execution, to feel, as any fearful drag, the
conditions of our bargain. Why do you look at me so earnestly?”
“Because,” said Varney—and he trembled as he spoke—“because each
lineament of your countenance brings me back to the recollection of the
only scene in life that made me shudder, and which I cannot think of,
even with the indifference of contempt. I see it all before my mind’s
eye, coming in frightful panoramic array, those incidents, which even
to dream of, are sufficient to drive the soul to madness; the dread of
this annual visit, hangs upon me like a dark cloud upon my very heart;
it sits like some foul incubus, destroying its vitality, and dragging
me, from day to day, nearer to that tomb, from whence not as before, I
can emerge.”
“You have been among the dead?” said the stranger.
“I have.”
“And yet are mortal.”
“Yes,” repeated Varney, “yes, and yet am mortal.”
“It was I that plucked you back to that world, which, to judge from
your appearance, has had since that eventful period but few charms for
you. By my faith you look like——”
“Like what I am,” interrupted Varney. “This is a subject that once a
year gets frightfully renewed between us. For weeks before your visit I
am haunted by frightful recollections, and it takes me many weeks after
you are gone, before I can restore myself to serenity. Look at me; am I
not an altered man?”
“In faith you are,” said the stranger “I have no wish to press upon you
painful recollections. And yet ’tis strange to me that upon such a man
as you, the event to which you allude should produce so terrible an
impression.”
“I have passed through the agony of death,” said Varney, “and have
again endured the torture—for it is such—of the re-union of the body
and the soul; not having endured so much, not the faintest echo of such
feelings can enter into your imagination.”
“There may be truth in that, and yet, like a fluttering moth round a
flame, it seems to me, that when I do see you, you take a terrific kind
of satisfaction in talking of the past.”
“That is strictly true,” said Varney; “the images with which my mind is
filled are frightful. Pent up do they remain for twelve long months.
I can speak to you, and you only, without disguise, and thus does it
seem to me that I get rid of the uneasy load of horrible imaginings.
When you are gone, and have been gone a sufficient lapse of time, my
slumbers are not haunted with frightful images—I regain a comparative
peace, until the time slowly comes around again, when we are doomed to
meet.”
“I understand you. You seem well lodged here?”
“I have ever kept my word, and sent to you, telling you where I am.”
“You have, truly. I have no shadow of complaint to make against you.
No one could have more faithfully performed his bond than you have.
I give you ample credit for all that, and long may you live still to
perform your conditions.”
“I dare not deceive you, although to keep such faith I may be compelled
to deceive a hundred others.”
“Of that I cannot judge. Fortune seems to smile upon you; you have not
as yet disappointed me.”
“And will not now,” said Varney. “The gigantic and frightful penalty of
disappointing you, stares me in the face. I dare not do so.”
He took from his pocket, as he spoke, a clasped book, from which he
produced several bank notes, which he placed before the stranger.
“A thousand pounds,” he said; “that is the agreement.”
“It is to the very letter. I do not return to you a thousand thanks—we
understand each other better than to waste time with idle compliment.
Indeed I will go quite as far as to say, truthfully, that did not my
necessities require this amount from you, you should have the boon, for
which you pay that price at a much cheaper rate.”
“Enough! enough!” said Varney. “It is strange, that your face should
have been the last I saw, when the world closed upon me, and the first
that met my eyes when I was again snatched back to life! Do you pursue
still your dreadful trade?”
“Yes,” said the stranger, “for another year, and then, with such a
moderate competence as fortune has assigned me, I retire, to make way
for younger and abler spirits.”
“And then,” said Varney, “shall you still require of me such an amount
as this?”
“No; this is my last visit but one. I shall be just and liberal towards
you. You are not old; and I have no wish to become the clog of your
existence. As I have before told you, it is my necessity, and not my
inclination, that sets the value upon the service I rendered you.”
“I understand you, and ought to thank you. And in reply to so much
courtesy, be assured, that when I shudder at your presence, it is not
that I regard you with horror, as an individual, but it is because the
sight of you awakens mournfully the remembrance of the past.”
“It is clear to me,” said the stranger; “and now I think we part with
each other in a better spirit than we ever did before; and when we meet
again, the remembrance that it is the last time, will clear away the
gloom that I now find hanging over you.”
“It may! it may! With what an earnest gaze you still regard me!”
“I do. It does appear to me most strange, that time should not have
obliterated the effects which I thought would have ceased with their
cause. You are no more the man that in my recollection you once were,
than I am like a sporting child.”
“And I never shall be,” said Varney; “never—never again! This self-same
look which the hand of death had placed upon me, I shall ever wear.
I shudder at myself, and as I oft perceive the eye of idle curiosity
fixed steadfastly upon me, I wonder in my inmost heart, if even the
wildest guesser hits upon the cause why I am not like unto other men?”
“No. Of that you may depend there is no suspicion; but I will leave you
now; we part such friends, as men situated as we are can be. Once again
shall we meet, and then farewell for ever.”
“Do you leave England, then?”
“I do. You know my situation in life. It is not one which offers me
inducements to remain. In some other land, I shall win the respect and
attention I may not hope for here. There my wealth will win many golden
opinions; and casting, as best I may, the veil of forgetfulness over my
former life, my declining years may yet be happy. This money, that I
have had of you from time to time, has been more pleasantly earned than
all beside. Wrung, as it has been, from your fears, still have I taken
it with less reproach. And now, farewell!”
Varney rang for a servant to show the stranger from the house, and
without another word they parted.
Then, when he was alone, that mysterious owner of that costly home drew
a long breath of apparently exquisite relief.
“That is over!—that is over!” he said. “He shall have the other
thousand pounds, perchance, sooner than he thinks. With all expedition
I will send it to him. And then on that subject I shall be at peace.
I shall have paid a large sum; but that which I purchased was to me
priceless. It was my life!—it was my life itself! That possession
which the world’s wealth cannot restore! And shall I grudge these
thousands, which have found their way into this man’s hands? No! ’Tis
true, that existence, for me, has lost some of its most resplendent
charms. ’Tis true, that I have no earthly affections, and that shunning
companionship with all, I am alike shunned by all; and yet, while the
life-blood still will circulate within my shrunken veins, I cling to
vitality.”
He passed into an inner room, and taking from a hook, on which it hung,
a long, dark-coloured cloak, he enveloped his tall, unearthly figure
within its folds. Then, with his hat in his hand, he passed out of his
house, and appeared to be taking his way towards Bannerworth House.
Surely it must be guilt of no common die that could oppress a man so
destitute of human sympathies as Sir Francis Varney. The dreadful
suspicions that hovered round him with respect to what he was, appeared
to gather confirmation from every act of his existence.
Whether or not this man, to whom he felt bound to pay annually so
large a sum, was in the secret, and knew him to be something more than
earthly, we cannot at present declare; but it would seem from the tenor
of their conversation as if such were the fact.
Perchance he had saved him from the corruption of the tomb, by placing
out, on some sylvan spot, where the cold moonbeams fell, the apparently
lifeless form, and now claimed so large a reward for such a service,
and the necessary secrecy contingent upon it.
We say this may be so, and yet again some more natural and rational
explanation may unexpectedly present itself; and there may be yet a
dark page in Sir Francis Varney’s life’s volume, which will place him
in a light of superadded terrors to our readers.
Time, and the now rapidly accumulating incidents of our tale, will soon
tear aside the veil of mystery that now envelopes some of our _dramatis
personæ_.
And let us hope that in the development of those incidents we shall be
enabled to rescue the beautiful Flora Bannerworth from the despairing
gloom that is around her. Let us hope and even anticipate that we
shall see her smile again; that the roseate hue of health will again
revisit her cheeks, the light buoyancy of her step return, and that as
before she may be the joy of all around her, dispensing and receiving
happiness.
And, he too, that gallant fearless lover, he whom no chance of time
or tide could sever from the object of his fond affections, he who
listened to nothing but the dictates of his heart’s best feelings,
let us indulge a hope that he will have a bright reward, and that the
sunshine of a permanent felicity will only seem the brighter for the
shadows that for a time have obscured its glory.