THE PREPARATIONS FOR LEAVING BANNERWORTH HALL, AND THE MYSTERIOUS
CONDUCT OF THE ADMIRAL AND MR. CHILLINGWORTH.
It seemed now, that, by the concurrence of all parties, Bannerworth
Hall was to be abandoned; and, notwithstanding Henry was loth—as he
had, indeed, from the first shown himself—to leave the ancient abode of
his race, yet, as not only Flora, but the admiral and his friend Mr.
Chillingworth seemed to be of opinion that it would be a prudent course
to adopt, he felt that it would not become him to oppose the measure.
He, however, now made his consent to depend wholly upon the full and
free acquiescence of every member of the family.
“If,” he said, “there be any among us who will say to me ‘Continue to
keep open the house in which we have passed so many happy hours, and
let the ancient home of our race still afford a shelter to us,’ I shall
feel myself bound to do so; but if both my mother and my brother agree
to a departure from it, and that its hearth shall be left cold and
desolate, be it so. I will not stand in the way of any unanimous wish
or arrangement.”
“We may consider that, then, as settled,” said the admiral, “for I have
spoken to your brother, and he is of our opinion. Therefore, my boy, we
may all be off as soon as we can conveniently get under weigh.”
“But my mother?
“Oh, there, I don’t know. You must speak to her yourself. I never, if I
can help it, interfere with the women folks.”
“If she consent, then I am willing.”
“Will you ask her?”
“I will not ask her to leave, because I know, then, what answer she
would at once give; but she shall hear the proposition, and I will
leave her to decide upon it, unbiased in her judgment by any stated
opinion of mine upon the matter.”
“Good. That’ll do; and the proper way to put it, too. There’s no
mistake about that, I can tell you.”
Henry, although he went through the ceremony of consulting his mother,
had no sort of doubt before he did so that she was sufficiently aware
of the feelings and wishes of Flora to be prepared to yield a ready
assent to the proposition of leaving the Hall.
Moreover, Mr. Marchdale had, from the first, been an advocate of such
a course of proceeding, and Henry well knew how strong an influence
he had over Mrs. Bannerworth’s mind, in consequence of the respect in
which she held him as an old and valued friend.
He was, therefore, prepared for what his mother said, which was,—
“My dear Henry, you know that the wishes of my children, since they
have been grown up and capable of coming to a judgment for themselves,
have ever been laws to me. If you, among you all, agree to leave this
place, do so.”
“But will you leave it freely, mother?”
“Most freely I go with you all; what is it that has made this house
and all its appurtenances pleasant in my eyes, but the presence in it
of those who are so dear to me? If you all leave it, you take with you
the only charms it ever possessed; so it becomes in itself as nothing.
I am quite ready to accompany you all anywhere, so that we do but keep
together.”
“Then, mother, we may consider that as settled.”
“As you please.”
“It is scarcely as I please. I must confess that I would fain
have clung with a kind of superstitious reverence to this ancient
abiding-place of my race, but it may not be so. Those, perchance,
who are more practically able to come to correct conclusions, in
consequence of their feelings not being sufficiently interested to lead
them astray, have decided otherwise; and, therefore, I am content to
leave.”
“Do not grieve at it, Henry. There has hung a cloud of misfortune over
us all since the garden of this house became the scene of an event
which we can none of us remember but with terror and shuddering.”
“Two generations of our family must live and die before the remembrance
of that circumstance can be obliterated. But we will think of it no
more.”
There can no doubt but that the dreadful circumstance to which both
Mrs. Bannerworth and Henry alluded, was the suicide of the father of
the family in the gardens which before has been hinted at in the course
of this narration, as being a circumstance which had created a great
sensation at the time, and cast a great gloom for many months over the
family.
The reader will, doubtless, too, recollect that, at his last moments,
this unhappy individual was said to have uttered some incoherent words
about some hidden money, and that the rapid hand of death alone seemed
to prevent him from being explicit upon that subject, and left it
merely a matter of conjecture.
As years had rolled on, this affair, even as a subject of speculation,
had ceased to occupy the minds of any of the Bannerworth family, and
several of their friends, among whom was Mr. Marchdale, were decidedly
of opinion that the apparently pointed and mysterious words uttered,
were but the disordered wanderings of an intellect already hovering on
the confines of eternity.
Indeed, far from any money, of any amount, being a disturbance to the
last moments of the dissolute man, whose vices and extravagances had
brought his family to such ruin, it was pretty generally believed that
he had committed suicide simply from a conviction of the impossibility
of raising any more supplies of cash, to enable him to carry on the
career which he had pursued for so long.
But to resume.
Henry at once communicated to the admiral what his mother had said,
and then the whole question regarding the removal being settled in the
affirmative, nothing remained to be done but to set about it as quickly
as possible.
The Bannerworths lived sufficiently distant from the town to be out
of earshot of the disturbances which were then taking place; and so
completely isolated were they from all sort of society, that they had
no notion of the popular disturbance which Varney the vampyre had
given rise to.
It was not until the following morning that Mr. Chillingworth, who
had been home in the meantime, brought word of what had taken place,
and that great commotion was still in the town, and that the civil
authorities, finding themselves by far too weak to contend against the
popular will, had sent for assistance to a garrison town, some twenty
miles distant.
It was a great grief to the Bannerworth family to hear these tidings,
not that they were in any way, except as victims, accessory to creating
the disturbance about the vampyre, but it seemed to promise a kind of
notoriety which they might well shrink from, and which they were just
the people to view with dislike.
View the matter how we like, however, it is not to be considered as
at all probable that the Bannerworth family would remain long in
ignorance of what a great sensation they had created unwittingly in the
neighbourhood.
The very reasons which had induced their servants to leave their
establishment, and prefer throwing themselves completely out of place,
rather than remain in so ill-omened a house, were sure to be bruited
abroad far and wide.
And that, perhaps, when they came to consider of it, would suffice to
form another good and substantial reason for leaving the Hall, and
seeking a refuge in obscurity from the extremely troublesome sort of
popularity incidental to their peculiar situation.
Mr. Chillingworth felt uncommonly chary of telling them all that had
taken place; although he was well aware that the proceedings of the
riotous mob had not terminated with the little disappointment at the
old ruin, to which they had so effectually chased Varney the vampyre,
but to lose him so singularly when he got there.
No doubt he possessed the admiral with the uproar that was going on in
the town, for the latter did hint a little of it to Henry Bannerworth.
“Hilloa!” he said to Henry, as he saw him walking in the garden; “it
strikes me if you and your ship’s crew continue in these latitudes,
you’ll get as notorious as the Flying Dutchman in the southern ocean.”
“How do you mean?” said Henry.
“Why, it’s a sure going proverb to say, that a nod’s as good as a wink;
but, the fact is, it’s getting rather too well known to be pleasant,
that a vampyre has struck up rather a close acquaintance with your
family. I understand there’s a precious row in the town.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes; bother the particulars, for I don’t know them; but, hark ye, by
to-morrow I’ll have found a place for you to go to, so pack up the
sticks, get all your stores ready to clear out, and make yourself
scarce from this place.”
“I understand you,” said Henry; “We have become the subject of popular
rumour; I’ve only to beg of you, admiral, that you’ll say nothing of
this to Flora; she has already suffered enough, Heaven knows; do not
let her have the additional infliction of thinking that her name is
made familiar in every pothouse in the town.”
“Leave me alone for that,” said the admiral. “Do you think I’m an ass?”
“Ay, ay,” said Jack Pringle, who came in at that moment, and thought
the question was addressed to him.
“Who spoke to you, you bad-looking horse-marine?”
“Me a horse-marine! didn’t you ask a plain question of a fellow, and
get a plain answer?”
“Why, you son of a bad looking gun, what do you mean by that? I tell
you what it is, Jack; I’ve let you come sneaking too often on the
quarter-deck, and now you come poking your fun at your officers, you
rascal!”
“I poking fun!” said Jack; “couldn’t think of such a thing. I should
just as soon think of you making a joke as me.”
“Now, I tell you what it is, I shall just strike you off the ship’s
books, and you shall just go and cruise by yourself; I’ve done with
you.”
“Go and tell that to the marines, if you like,” said Jack. “I ain’t
done with you yet, for a jolly long watch. Why, what do you suppose
would become of you, you great babby, without me? Ain’t I always a
conveying you from place to place, and steering you through all sorts
of difficulties?”
“D——n your impudence!”
“Well, then, d——n yours.”
“Shiver my timbers!”
“Ay, you may do what you like with your own timbers.”
“And you won’t leave me?”
“Sartingly not.”
“Come here, then?”
Jack might have expected a gratuity, for he advanced with alacrity.
“There,” said the admiral, as he laid his stick across his shoulders;
“that’s your last month’s wages; don’t spend it all at once.”
“Well, I’m d—d!” said Jack; “who’d have thought of that?—he’s a turning
rumgumtious, and no mistake. Howsomdever, I must turn it over in my
mind, and be even with him, somehow—I owes him one for that. I say,
admiral.”
“What now, you lubber?”
“Nothing; turn that over in your mind;” and away Jack walked, not quite
satisfied, but feeling, at least, that he had made a demonstration of
attack.
As for the admiral, he considered that the thump he had given Jack
with the stick, and it was no gentle one, was a decided balancing of
accounts up to that period, and as he remained likewise master of the
field, he was upon the whole very well satisfied.
These last few words which had been spoken to Henry by Admiral Bell,
more than any others, induced him to hasten his departure from
Bannerworth Hall; he had walked away when the altercation between
Jack Pringle and the admiral began, for he had seen sufficient of
those wordy conflicts between those originals to be quite satisfied
that neither of them meant what he said of a discouraging character
towards the other, and that far from there being any unfriendly feeling
contingent upon those little affairs, they were only a species of
friendly sparring, which both parties enjoyed extremely.
He went direct to Flora, and he said to her,—
“Since we are all agreed upon the necessity, or, at all events, upon
the expediency of a departure from the Hall, I think, sister, the
sooner we carry out that determination the better and the pleasanter
for us all it will be. Do you think you could remove so hastily as
to-morrow?”
“To-morrow! That is soon indeed.”
“I grant you that it is so; but Admiral Bell assures me that he will
have everything in readiness, and a place provided for us to go to by
then.”
“Would it be possible to remove from a house like this so very quickly?”
“Yes, sister. If you look around you, you will see that a great portion
of the comforts you enjoy in this mansion belong to it as a part of
its very structure, and are not removable at pleasure; what we really
have to take away is very little. The urgent want of money during our
father’s lifetime induced him, as you may recollect even, at various
times to part with much that was ornamental, as well as useful, which
was in the Hall. You will recollect that we seldom returned from those
little continental tours which to us were so delightful, without
finding some old familiar objects gone, which, upon inquiry, we found
had been turned into money, to meet some more than usually pressing
demand.”
“That is true, brother; I recollect well.”
“So that, upon the whole, sister, there is little to remove.”
“Well, well, be it so. I will prepare our mother for this sudden
step. Believe me, my heart goes with it; and as a force of vengeful
circumstances have induced us to remove from this home, which was once
so full of pleasant recollections, it is certainly better, as you say,
that the act should be at once consummated, than left hanging in terror
over our minds.”
“Then I’ll consider that as settled,” said Henry.