THE REMOVAL FROM THE HALL.—THE NIGHT WATCH, AND THE ALARM.
Mrs. Bannerworth’s consent having been already given to the removal,
she said at once, when appealed to, that she was quite ready to go at
any time her children thought expedient.
Upon this, Henry sought the admiral, and told him as much, at the same
time adding,—
“My sister feared that we should have considerable trouble in the
removal, but I have convinced her that such will not be the case, as we
are by no means overburdened with cumbrous property.”
“Cumbrous property,” said the admiral, “why, what do you mean? I beg
leave to say, that when I took the house, I took the table and chairs
with it. D—n it, what good do you suppose an empty house is to me?”
“The tables and chairs!”
“Yes. I took the house just as it stands. Don’t try and bamboozle
me out of it. I tell you, you’ve nothing to move but yourselves and
immediate personal effects.”
“I was not aware, admiral, that that was your plan.”
“Well, then, now you are, listen to me. I’ve circumvented the enemy too
often not to know how to get up a plot. Jack and I have managed it all.
To-morrow evening, after dark, and before the moon’s got high enough to
throw any light, you and your brother, and Miss Flora and your mother,
will come out of the house, and Jack and I will lead you where you’re
to go to. There’s plenty of furniture where you’re a-going, and so you
will get off free, without anybody knowing anything about it.”
“Well, admiral, I’ve said it before, and it is the unanimous opinion of
us all, that everything should be left to you. You have proved yourself
too good a friend to us for us to hesitate at all in obeying your
commands. Arrange everything, I pray you, according to your wishes and
feelings, and you will find there shall be no cavilling on our parts.”
“That’s right; there’s nothing like giving a command to some one
person. There’s no good done without. Now I’ll manage it all. Mind you,
seven o’clock to-morrow evening everything is to be ready, and you will
all be prepared to leave the Hall.”
“It shall be so.”
“Who’s that giving such a thundering ring at the gate?”
“Nay, I know not. We have few visitors and no servants, so I must e’en
be my own gate porter.”
Henry walked to the gate, and having opened it, a servant in a handsome
livery stepped a pace or two into the garden.
“Well,” said Henry.
“Is Mr. Henry Bannerworth within, or Admiral Bell?”
“Both,” cried the admiral. “I’m Admiral Bell, and this is Mr. Henry
Bannerworth. What do you want with us, you d—d gingerbread-looking
flunkey?”
“Sir, my master desires his compliments—his very best compliments—and
he wants to know how you are after your flurry.”
“What?”
“After your—a—a—flurry and excitement.”
“Who is your master?” said Henry.
“Sir Francis Varney.”
“The devil!” said the admiral; “if that don’t beat all the impudence I
ever came near. Our flurry! Ah! I like that fellow. Just go and tell
him——”
“No, no,” said Henry, interposing, “send back no message. Say to your
master, fellow, that Mr. Henry Bannerworth feels that not only has he
no claim to Sir Francis Varney’s courtesy, but that he would rather be
without it.”
“Oh, ha!” said the footman, adjusting his collar; “very good. This
seems a d—d, old-fashioned, outlandish place of yours. Any ale?”
“Now, shiver my hulks!” said the admiral.
“Hush! hush!” said Henry; “who knows but there may be a design in this?
We have no ale.”
“Oh, ah! dem!—dry as dust, by God! What does the old commodore say? Any
message, my ancient Greek?”
“No, thank you,” said the admiral; “bless you, nothing. What did you
give for that waistcoat, d—n you? Ha! ha! you’re a clever fellow.”
“Ah! the old gentleman’s ill. However, I’ll take back his compliments,
and that he’s much obliged at Sir Francis’s condescension. At the same
time, I suppose may place in my eye what I may get out of either of
you, without hindering me seeing my way back. Ha! ha! Adieu—adieu.”
“Bravo!” said the admiral; “that’s it—go it—now for it. D—n it, it is a
_do!_”
The admiral’s calmness during the latter part of the dialogue arose
from the fact that over the flunkey’s shoulder, and at some little
distance off, he saw Jack Pringle taking off his jacket, and rolling
up his sleeves in that deliberate sort of way that seemed to imply a
determination of setting about some species of work that combined the
pleasant with the useful.
Jack executed many nods to and winks at the livery-servant, and jerked
his thumb likewise in the direction of a pump near at hand, in a manner
that spoke as plainly as possible, that John was to be pumped upon.
And now the conference was ended, and Sir Francis’s messenger turned to
go; but Jack Pringle bothered him completely, for he danced round him
in such a singular manner, that, turn which way he would, there stood
Jack Pringle, in some grotesque attitude, intercepting him; and so he
edged him on, till he got him to the pump.
“Jack,” said the admiral.
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“Don’t pump on that fellow now.”
“Ay, ay, sir; give us a hand.”
Jack laid hold of him by the two ears, and holding him under the pump,
kicked his shins until he completely gathered himself beneath the
spout. It was in vain that he shouted “Murder! help! fire! thieves!”
Jack was inexorable, and the admiral pumped.
[Illustration: Jack holds the messenger under the pump.]
Jack turned the fellow’s head about in a very scientific manner, so as
to give him a fair dose of hydropathic treatment, and in a few minutes,
never was human being more thoroughly saturated with moisture than was
Sir Francis Varney’s servant. He had left off hallooing for aid, for
he found that whenever he did so, Jack held his mouth under the spout,
which was decidedly unpleasant; so, with a patience that looked like
heroic fortitude, he was compelled to wait until the admiral was tired
of pumping.
“Very good,” at length he said. “Now, Jack, for fear this fellow
catches cold, be so good as to get a horsewhip, and see him off the
premises with it.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said Jack. “And I say, old fellow, you can take back all
our blessed compliments now, and say you’ve been flurried a little
yourself; and if so be as you came here as dry as dust, d—e, you go
back as wet as a mop. Won’t it do to kick him out, sir?”
“Very well—as you please, Jack.”
“Then here goes;” and Jack proceeded to kick the shivering animal from
the garden with a vehemence that soon convinced him of the necessity of
getting out of it as quickly as possible.
How it was that Sir Francis Varney, after the fearful race he had had,
got home again across the fields, free from all danger, and back to his
own house, from whence he sent so cool and insolent a message, they
could not conceive.
But such must certainly be the fact; somehow or another, he had
escaped all danger, and, with a calm insolence peculiar to the man,
he had no doubt adopted the present mode of signifying as much to the
Bannerworths.
The insolence of his servant was, no doubt, a matter of pre-arrangement
with that individual, however he might have set about it _con amore_.
As for the termination of the adventure, that, of course, had not
been at all calculated upon; but, like most tools of other people’s
insolence or ambition, the insolence of the underling had received both
his own punishment and his master’s.
We know quite enough of Sir Francis Varney to feel assured that he
would rather consider it as a good jest than otherwise of his footman,
so that with the suffering he endured at the Bannerworths’, and the
want of sympathy he was likely to find at home, that individual had
certainly nothing to congratulate himself upon but the melancholy
reminiscence of his own cleverness.
But were the mob satisfied with what had occurred in the churchyard?
They were not, and that night was to witness the perpetration of
a melancholy outrage, such as the history of the time presents no
parallel to.
The finding of a brick in the coffin of the butcher, instead of
the body of that individual, soon spread as a piece of startling
intelligence all over the place; and the obvious deduction that was
drawn from the circumstance, seemed to be that the deceased butcher was
unquestionably a vampyre, and out upon some expedition at the time when
his coffin was searched.
How he had originally got out of that receptacle for the dead was
certainly a mystery; but the story was none the worse for that. Indeed,
an ingenious individual found a solution for that part of the business,
for, as he said, nothing was more natural, when anybody died who was
capable of becoming a vampyre, than for other vampyres who knew it to
dig him up, and lay him out in the cold beams of the moonlight, until
he acquired the same sort of vitality they themselves possessed, and
joined their horrible fraternity.
In lieu of a better explanation—and, after all, it was no bad one—this
theory was generally received, and, with a shuddering horror, people
asked themselves, if the whole of the churchyard were excavated, how
many coffins would be found tenantless by the dead which had been
supposed, by simple-minded people, to inhabit them.
The presence, however, of a body of dragoons, towards evening,
effectually prevented any renewed attack upon the sacred precincts of
the churchyard, and it was a strange and startling thing to see that
country town under military surveillance, and sentinels posted at its
principal buildings.
This measure smothered the vengeance of the crowd, and insured, for a
time, the safety of Sir Francis Varney; for no considerable body of
persons could assemble for the purpose of attacking his house again,
without being followed; so such a step was not attempted.
It had so happened, however, that on that very day, the funeral of a
young man was to have taken place, who had put up for a time at that
same inn where Admiral Bell was first introduced to the reader. He had
become seriously ill, and, after a few days of indisposition, which had
puzzled the country practitioners, breathed his last.
He was to have been buried in the village churchyard on the very day
of the riot and confusion incidental to the exhumation of the coffin
of the butcher, and probably from that circumstance we may deduce the
presence of the clergyman in canonicals at the period of the riot.
When it was found that so disorderly a mob possessed the churchyard,
the idea of burying the stranger on that day was abandoned; but still
all would have gone on quietly as regarded him, had it not been for the
folly of one of the chamber-maids at the tavern.
This woman, with all the love of gossip incidental to her class, had,
from the first, entered so fully into all the particulars concerning
vampyres, that she fairly might be considered to be a little deranged
on that head. Her imagination had been so worked upon, that she was
in an unfit state to think of anything else, and if ever upon anybody
a stern and revolting superstition was calculated to produce direful
effects, it was upon this woman.
The town was tolerably quiet; the presence of the soldiery had
frightened some and amused others, and no doubt the night would have
passed off serenely, had she not suddenly rushed into the street, and,
with bewildered accents and frantic gestures shouted,—
“A vampyre—a vampyre—a vampyre!”
These words soon collected a crowd around her, and then, with screaming
accents, which would have been quite enough to convince any reflecting
person that she had actually gone distracted upon that point, she
cried,—
“Come into the house—come into the house! Look upon the dead body,
that should have been in its grave; it’s fresher now than it was the
day on which it died, and there’s a colour in its cheeks! A vampyre—a
vampyre—a vampyre! Heaven save us from a vampyre!”
The strange, infuriated, maniacal manner in which these words were
uttered, produced an astonishingly exciting effect among the mob.
Several women screamed, and some few fainted. The torch was laid again
to the altar of popular feeling, and the fierce flame of superstition
burnt brightly and fiercely.
Some twenty or thirty persons, with shouts and exclamations, rushed
into the inn, while the woman who had created the disturbance still
continued to rave, tearing her hair, and shrieking at intervals, until
she fell exhausted upon the pavement.
Soon, from a hundred throats, rose the dreadful cry of “A vampyre—a
vampyre!” The alarm was given throughout the whole town; the bugles of
the military sounded; there was a clash of arms—the shrieks of women;
altogether, the premonitory symptoms of such a riot as was not likely
to be quelled without bloodshed and considerable disaster. It is truly
astonishing the effect which one weak or vicious-minded person can
produce upon a multitude.
Here was a woman whose opinion would have been accounted valueless upon
the most common-place subject, and whose word would not have passed for
twopence, setting a whole town by the ears by force of nothing but her
sheer brutal ignorance.
It is a notorious physiological fact, that after four or five days,
or even a week, the bodies of many persons assume an appearance of
freshness, such as might have been looked for in vain immediately after
death.
It is one of the most insidious processes of that decay which appears
to regret with its
“——————— offensive fingers,
To mar the lines where beauty lingers.”
But what did the chamber-maid know of physiology? Probably, she would
have asked if it was anything good to eat; and so, of course, having
her head full of vampyres, she must needs produce so lamentable a scene
of confusion, the results of which we almost sicken at detailing.