THE THREAT.—ITS CONSEQUENCES.—THE RESCUE, AND SIR FRANCIS VARNEY’S
DANGER.
Sir Francis Varney now paused again, and he seemed for a few moments to
gloat over the helpless condition of her whom he had so determined to
make his victim; there was no look of pity in his face, no one touch
of human kindness could be found in the whole expression of those
diabolical features; and if he delayed making the attempt to strike
terror into the heart of that unhappy, but beautiful being, it could
not be from any relenting feeling, but simply, that he wished for a
few moments to indulge his imagination with the idea of perfecting his
villany more effectually.
Alas! and they who would have flown to her rescue,—they, who for her
would have chanced all accidents, ay, even life itself, were sleeping,
and knew not of the loved one’s danger. She was alone, and far enough
from the house, to be driven to that tottering verge where sanity ends,
and the dream of madness, with all its terrors, commences.
But still she slept—if that half-waking sleep could indeed be
considered as any thing akin to ordinary slumber—still she slept, and
called mournfully upon her lover’s name; and in tender, beseeching
accents, that should have melted even the stubbornest hearts, did she
express her soul’s conviction that he loved her still.
The very repetition of the name of Charles Holland seemed to be galling
to Sir Francis Varney. He made a gesture of impatience, as she again
uttered it, and then stepping forward, he stood within a pace of where
she sat, and in a fearfully distinct voice he said,—
“Flora Bannerworth, awake! awake! and look upon me, although the sight
blast you, and drive you to despair. Awake! awake!”
It was not the sound of the voice which aroused her from that strange
slumber. It is said that those who sleep in that eccentric manner, are
insensible to sounds, but that the lightest touch will arouse them in
an instant; and so it was in this case, for Sir Francis Varney, as he
spoke, laid upon the hand of Flora two of his cold, corpse-like looking
fingers. A shriek burst from her lips, and although the confusion of
her memory and conceptions was immense, yet she was awake, and the
somnambulistic trance had left her.
“Help, help!” she cried. “Gracious Heavens! Where am I?”
Varney spoke not, but he spread out his long, thin arms in such a
manner that he seemed almost to encircle her, while he touched her not,
so that escape became a matter of impossibility, and to attempt to do
so, must have been to have thrown herself into his hideous embrace.
[Illustration: Flora encounters Varney in the summer-house.]
She could obtain but a single view of the face and figure of him who
opposed her progress, but, slight as that view was, it more than
sufficed. The very extremity of fear came across her, and she sat like
one paralysed; the only evidence of existence she gave consisting in
the words,—
“The vampyre—the vampyre!”
“Yes,” said Varney, “the vampyre. You know me, Flora
Bannerworth—Varney, the vampyre; your midnight guest at that feast of
blood. I am the vampyre. Look upon me well; shrink not from my gaze.
You will do well not to shun me, but to speak to me in such a shape
that I may learn to love you.”
Flora shook as in a convulsion, and she looked as white as any marble
statue.
“This is horrible!” she said. “Why does not Heaven grant me the death I
pray for?”
“Hold!” said Varney. “Dress not up in the false colours of the
imagination that which in itself is sufficiently terrific to need
none of the allurements of romance. Flora Bannerworth, you are
persecuted—persecuted by me, the vampyre. It is my fate to persecute
you; for there are laws to the invisible as well as the visible
creation that force even such a being as I am to play my part in the
great drama of existence. I am a vampyre; the sustenance that supports
this frame must be drawn from the life-blood of others.”
“Oh, horror—horror!”
“But most I do affect the young and beautiful. It is from the veins of
such as thou art, Flora Bannerworth, that I would seek the sustenance
I’m compelled to obtain for my own exhausted energies. But never yet,
in all my long career—a career extending over centuries of time—never
yet have I felt the soft sensation of human pity till I looked on thee,
exquisite piece of excellence. Even at the moment when the reviving
fluid from the gushing fountain of your veins was warming at my heart,
I pitied and I loved you. Oh, Flora! even I can now feel the pang of
being what I am!”
There was a something in the tone, a touch of sadness in the manner,
and a deep sincerity in these words, that in some measure disabused
Flora of her fears. She sobbed hysterically, and a gush of tears came
to her relief, as, in almost inarticulate accents, she said,—
“May the great God forgive even you!”
“I have need of such a prayer,” exclaimed Varney—“Heaven knows I have
need of such a prayer. May it ascend on the wings of the night air to
the throne of Heaven. May it be softly whispered by ministering angels
to the ear of Divinity. God knows I have need of such a prayer!”
“To hear you speak in such a strain,” said Flora, “calms the excited
fancy, and strips even your horrible presence of some of its maddening
influence.”
“Hush,” said the vampire, “you must hear more—you must know more ere
you speak of the matters that have of late exercised an influence of
terror over you.”
“But how came I here?” said Flora, “tell me that. By what more than
earthly power have you brought me to this spot? If I am to listen to
you, why should it not be at some more likely time and place?”
“I have powers,” said Varney, assuming from Flora’s words, that she
would believe such arrogance—“I have powers which suffice to bend many
purposes to my will—powers incidental to my position, and therefore
is it I have brought you here to listen to that which should make you
happier than you are.”
“I will attend,” said Flora. “I do not shudder now; there’s an icy
coldness through my veins, but it is the night air—speak, I will attend
you.”
“I will. Flora Bannerworth, I am one who has witnessed time’s mutations
on man and on his works, and I have pitied neither; I have seen the
fall of empires, and sighed not that high reaching ambition was toppled
to the dust. I have seen the grave close over the young and the
beautiful—those whom I have doomed by my insatiable thirst for human
blood to death, long ere the usual span of life was past, but I never
loved till now.”
“Can such a being as you,” said Flora “be susceptible of such an
earthly passion?”
“And wherefore not?”
“Love is either too much of heaven, or too much of earth to find a home
with thee.”
“No, Flora, no! it may be that the feeling is born of pity. I will
save you—I will save you from a continuance of the horrors that are
assailing you.”
“Oh! then may Heaven have mercy in your hour of need!”
“Amen!”
“May you even yet know peace and joy above.”
“It is a faint and straggling hope—but if achieved, it will be through
the interposition of such a spirit as thine, Flora, which has already
exercised so benign an influence upon my tortured soul, as to produce
the wish within my heart, to do a least one unselfish action.”
“That wish,” said Flora, “shall be father to the deed. Heaven has
boundless mercy yet.”
“For thy sweet sake, I will believe so much, Flora Bannerworth; it is
a condition with my hateful race, that if we can find one human heart
to love us, we are free. If, in the face of Heaven, you will consent to
be mine, you will snatch me from a continuance of my frightful doom,
and for your pure sake, and on your merits, shall I yet know heavenly
happiness. Will you be mine?”
A cloud swept from off the face of the moon, and a slant ray fell upon
the hideous features of the vampire. He looked as if just rescued from
some charnel-house, and endowed for a space with vitality to destroy
all beauty and harmony in nature, and drive some benighted soul to
madness.
“No, no, no!” shrieked Flora, “never!”
“Enough,” said Varney, “I am answered. It was a bad proposal. I am a
vampyre still.”
“Spare me! spare me!”
“Blood!”
Flora sank upon her knees, and uplifted her hands to heaven. “Mercy,
mercy!” she said.
“Blood!” said Varney, and she saw his hideous, fang-like teeth. “Blood!
Flora Bannerworth, the vampyre’s motto. I have asked you to love me,
and you will not—the penalty be yours.”
“No, no!” said Flora. “Can it be possible that even you, who have
already spoken with judgment and precision, can be so unjust? you must
feel that, in all respects, I have been a victim, most gratuitously—a
sufferer, while there existed no just cause that I should suffer; one
who has been tortured, not from personal fault, selfishness, lapse
of integrity, or honourable feelings, but because you have found it
necessary, for the prolongation of your terrific existence, to attack
me as you have done. By what plea of honour, honesty, or justice, can
I be blamed for not embracing an alternative which is beyond all human
control?—I cannot love you.”
“Then be content to suffer. Flora Bannerworth, will you not, even for a
time, to save yourself and to save me, become mine?”
“Horrible proposition!”
“Then am I doomed yet, perhaps, for many a cycle of years, to spread
misery and desolation around me; and yet I love you with a feeling
which has in it more of gratefulness and unselfishness than ever yet
found a home within my breast. I would fain save you, although you
cannot save me; there may yet be a chance, which shall enable you to
escape from the persecution of my presence.”
“Oh! glorious chance!” said Flora. “Which way can it come? tell me
how I may embrace it, and such grateful feelings as a heart-stricken
mourner can offer to him who has rescued her from her deep affliction,
shall yet be yours.”
“Hear me, then, Flora Bannerworth, while I state to you some
particulars of mysterious existence, of such beings as myself, which
never yet have been breathed to mortal ears.”
Flora looked intently at him, and listened, while, with a serious
earnestness of manner, he detailed to her something of the physiology
of the singular class of beings which the concurrence of all
circumstances tended to make him appear.
“Flora,” he said, “it is not that I am so enamoured of an existence to
be prolonged only by such frightful means, which induces me to become
a terror to you or to others. Believe me, that if my victims, those
whom my insatiable thirst for blood make wretched, suffer much, I,
the vampyre, am not without my moments of unutterable agony. But it
is a mysterious law of our nature, that as the period approaches when
the exhausted energies of life require a new support from the warm,
gushing fountain of another’s veins, the strong desire to live grows
upon us, until, in a paroxysm of wild insanity, which will recognise no
obstacles, human or divine, we seek a victim.”
“A fearful state!” said Flora.
“It is so; and, when the dreadful repast is over, then again the
pulse beats healthfully, and the wasted energies of a strange kind
of vitality are restored to us, we become calm again, but with that
calmness comes all the horror, all the agony of reflection, and we
suffer far more than tongue can tell.”
“You have my pity,” said Flora; “even you have my pity.”
“I might well demand it, if such a feeling held a place within your
breast. I might well demand your pity, Flora Bannerworth, for never
crawled an abject wretch upon the earth’s rotundity, so pitiable as I.”
“Go on, go on.”
“I will, and with such brief conclusions as I may. Having once attacked
any human being, we feel a strange, but terribly impulsive desire
again to seek that person for more blood. But I love you, Flora; the
small amount of sensibility that still lingers about my preternatural
existence, acknowledges in you a pure and better spirit. I would fain
save you.”
“Oh! tell me how I may escape the terrible infliction.”
“That can only be done by flight. Leave this place, I implore you!
leave it as quickly as the movement may be made. Linger not—cast not
one regretful look behind you on your ancient home. I shall remain
in this locality for years. Let me lose sight of you, I will not
pursue you; but, by force of circumstances, I am myself compelled to
linger here. Flight is the only means by which you may avoid a doom as
terrific as that which I endure.”
“But tell me,” said Flora, after a moment’s pause, during which she
appeared to be endeavouring to gather courage to ask some fearful
question; “tell me if it be true that those who have once endured the
terrific attack of a vampyre, become themselves, after death, one of
that dread race?”
“It is by such means,” said Varney, “that the frightful brood
increases; but time and circumstances must aid the development of the
new and horrible existence. You, however, are safe.”
“Safe! Oh! say that word again.”
“Yes, safe; not once or twice will the vampyre’s attack have sufficient
influence on your mortal frame, as to induce a susceptibility on your
part to become coexistent with such as he. The attacks must be often
repeated, and the termination of mortal existence must be a consequence
essential, and direct from those attacks, before such a result may be
anticipated.”
“Yes, yes; I understand.”
“If you were to continue my victim from year to year, the energies of
life would slowly waste away, till like some faint taper’s gleam,
consuming more sustenance than it received, the veriest accident would
extinguish your existence, and then, Flora Bannerworth, you might
become a vampyre.”
“Oh! horrible! most horrible!”
“If by chance, or by design, the least glimpse of the cold moonbeams
rested on your apparently lifeless remains, you would rise again and be
one of us—a terror to yourself and a desolation to all around.”
“Oh! I will fly from here,” said Flora. “The hope of escape from so
terrific and dreadful a doom shall urge me onward; if flight can save
me—flight from Bannerworth Hall, I will pause not until continents and
oceans divide us.”
“It is well. I’m able now thus calmly to reason with you. A few short
months more and I shall feel the languor of death creeping over me,
and then will come that mad excitement of the brain, which, were you
hidden behind triple doors of steel, would tempt me again to seek your
chamber—again to seize you in my full embrace—again to draw from your
veins the means of prolonged life—again to convulse your very soul with
terror.”
“I need no incentives,” said Flora, with a shudder, “in the shape of
descriptions of the past, to urge me on.”
“You will fly from Bannerworth Hall?”
“Yes, yes!” said Flora, “it shall be so; its very chambers now are
hideous with the recollection of scenes enacted in them. I will urge
my brothers, my mother, all to leave, and in some distant clime we
will find security and shelter. There even we will learn to think of
you with more of sorrow than of anger—more pity than reproach—more
curiosity than loathing.”
“Be it so,” said the vampyre; and he clasped his hands, as if with
a thankfulness that he had done so much towards restoring peace at
least to one, who, in consequence of his acts, had felt such exquisite
despair. “Be it so; and even I will hope that the feelings which have
induced so desolated and so isolated a being as myself to endeavour to
bring peace to one human heart, will plead for me, trumpet-tongued, to
Heaven!”
“It will—it will,” said Flora.
“Do you think so?”
“I do; and I will pray that the thought may turn to certainty in such a
cause.”
The vampyre appeared to be much affected; and then he added,—
“Flora, you know that this spot has been the scene of a catastrophe
fearful to look back upon, in the annals of your family?”
“It has,” said Flora. “I know to what you allude; ’tis a matter of
common knowledge to all—a sad theme to me, and one I would not court.”
“Nor would I oppress you with it. Your father, here, on this very
spot, committed that desperate act which brought him uncalled for to
the judgment seat of God. I have a strange, wild curiosity upon such
subjects. Will you, in return for the good that I have tried to do you,
gratify it?”
“I know not what you mean,” said Flora.
“To be more explicit, then, do you remember the day on which your
father breathed his last?”
“Too well—too well.”
“Did you see him or converse with him shortly before that desperate act
was committed?”
“No; he shut himself up for some time in a solitary chamber.”
“Ha! what chamber?”
“The one in which I slept myself on the night——”
“Yes, yes; the one with the portrait—that speaking portrait—the eyes of
which seem to challenge an intruder as he enters the apartment.”
“The same.”
“For hours shut up there!” added Varney, musingly; “and from thence he
wandered to the garden, where, in this summer-house, he breathed his
last?”
“It was so.”
“Then, Flora, ere I bid you adieu——”
These words were scarcely uttered, when there was a quick, hasty
footstep, and Henry Bannerworth appeared behind Varney, in the very
entrance of the summer-house.
“Now,” he cried, “for revenge! Now, foul being, blot upon the earth’s
surface, horrible imitation of humanity, if mortal arm can do aught
against you, you shall die!”
A shriek came from the lips of Flora, and flinging herself past Varney,
who stepped aside, she clung to her brother, who made an unavailing
pass with his sword at the vampyre. It was a critical moment; and had
the presence of mind of Varney deserted him in the least, unarmed as
he was, he must have fallen beneath the weapon of Henry. To spring,
however, up the seat which Flora had vacated, and to dash out some of
the flimsy and rotten wood-work at the back of the summer-house by the
propulsive power of his whole frame, was the work of a moment; and
before Henry could free himself from the clinging embrace of Flora,
Varney, the vampyre, was gone, and there was no greater chance of his
capture than on a former occasion, when he was pursued in vain from the
Hall to the wood, in the intricacies of which he was so entirely lost.