THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER.—THE PARTICULARS OF THE SUICIDE AT BANNERWORTH
HALL.
“Hilloa where the deuce is he?” said the admiral. “Was there ever such
a confounded take-in?”
“Well, I really don’t know,” said Mr. Chillingworth; “but it seems
to me that he must have gone out of that door that was behind him; I
begin, do you know, admiral, to wish——”
“What?”
“That we had never come here at all; and I think the sooner we get out
of it the better.”
“Yes; but I am not going to be hoaxed and humbugged in this way. I
will have satisfaction, but not with those confounded scythes and
things he talks about in the dark room. Give me broad daylight and no
favour; yardarm and yardarm; broadside and broadside; hand-grenades and
marling-spikes.”
“Well, but that’s what he won’t do. Now, admiral, listen to me.”
“Well, go on; what next?”
“Come away at once.”
“Oh, you said that before.”
“Yes; but I’m going to say something else. Look round you. Don’t you
think this a large, scientific-looking room?”
“What of that?”
“Why, what if suppose it was to become as dark as the grave, and Varney
was to enter with his scythe, that he talks of, and begin mowing about
our legs.”
“The devil! Come along!”
The door at which they entered was at this moment opened, and the old
woman made her appearance.
“Please, sir,” she said, “here’s a Mr. Mortimer,” in a loud voice. “Oh,
Sir Francis ain’t here! Where’s he gone, gentlemen?”
“To the devil!” said the admiral. “Who may Mr. Mortimer be?”
There walked past the woman a stout, portly-looking man, well dressed,
but with a very odd look upon his face, in consequence of an obliquity
of vision, which prevented the possibility of knowing which way he was
looking.
“I must see him,” he said; “I must see him.”
Mr. Chillingworth started back as if in amazement.
“Good God!” he cried, “you here!”
“Confusion!” said Mortimer; “are you Dr.—— Dr.——”
“Chillingworth.”
“The same. Hush! there is no occasion to betray—that is, to state my
secret.”
“And mine, too,” said Chillingworth. “But what brings you here?”
“I cannot and dare not tell you. Farewell!”
He turned abruptly, and was leaving the room; but he ran against some
one at the entrance, and in another moment Henry Bannerworth, heated
and almost breathless by evident haste, made his appearance.
“Hilloa! bravo!” cried the admiral; “the more the merrier! Here’s a
combined squadron! Why, how came you here, Mr. Henry Bannerworth?”
“Bannerworth!” said Mortimer; “is that young man’s name Bannerworth?”
“Yes,” said Henry. “Do you know me, sir?”
“No, no; only I—I—must be off. Does anybody know anything of Sir
Francis Varney?”
“We did know something of him,” said the admiral, “a little while ago;
but he’s taken himself off. Don’t you do so likewise. If you’ve got
anything to say, stop and say it, like an Englishman.”
“Stuff! stuff!” said Mortimer, impatiently. “What do you all want here?”
“Why, Sir Francis Varney,” said Henry,—“and I care not if the whole
world heard it—is the persecutor of my family.”
“How? in what way?”
“He has the reputation of a vampyre; he has hunted me and mine from
house and home.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes,” cried Dr. Chillingworth; “and, by some means or another, he
seems determined to get possession of Bannerworth Hall.”
“Well, gentlemen,” said Mortimer, “I promise you that I will inquire
into this. Mr. Chillingworth, I did not expect to meet you. Perhaps the
least we say to each other is, after all, the better.”
“Let me ask but one question,” said Dr. Chillingworth, imploringly.
“Ask it.”
“Did he live after——”
“Hush! he did.”
“You always told me to the contrary.”
“Yes; I had an object; the game is up. Farewell; and, gentlemen, as I
am making my exit, let me do so with a sentiment:—Society at large is
divided into two great classes.”
“And what may they be?” said the admiral.
“Those who have been hanged, and those who have not. Adieu!”
He turned and left the room; and Mr. Chillingworth sunk into a chair,
and said, in a low voice,—
“It’s uncommonly true; and I’ve found out an acquaintance among the
former.”
“D—n it! you seem all mad,” said the admiral. “I can’t make out what
you are about. How came you here, Mr. Henry Bannerworth?”
“By mere accident I heard,” said Henry, “that you were keeping watch
and ward in the Hall. Admiral, it was cruel, and not well done of you,
to attempt such an enterprise without acquainting me with it. Did you
suppose for a moment that I, who had the greatest interest in this
affair, would have shrunk from danger, if danger there be; or lacked
perseverance, if that quality were necessary in carrying out any plan
by which the safety and honour of my family might be preserved?”
“Nay, now, my young friend,” said Mr. Chillingworth.
“Nay, sir; but I take it ill that I should have been kept out of this
affair; and it should have been sedulously, as it were, kept a secret
from me.”
“Let him go on as he likes,” said the admiral; “boys will be boys.
After all, you know, doctor, it’s my affair, and not yours. Let him say
what he likes; where’s the odds? It’s of no consequence.”
“I do not expect. Admiral Bell,” said Henry, “that it is to you; but it
is to me.”
“Psha!”
“Respecting you, sir, as I do—”
“Gammon!”
“I must confess that I did expect—”
“What you didn’t get; therefore, there’s an end of that. Now, I tell
you what, Henry, Sir Francis Varney is within this house; at least, I
have reason to suppose so.”
“Then,” exclaimed Henry, impetuously, “I will wring from him answers to
various questions which concern my peace and happiness.”
“Please, gentlemen,” said the woman Deborah, making her appearance,
“Sir Francis Varney has gone out, and he says I’m to show you all the
door, as soon as it is convenient for you all to walk out of it.”
“I feel convinced,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “that it will be a useless
search now to attempt to find Sir Francis Varney here. Let me beg of
you all to come away; and believe me that I do not speak lightly, or
with a view to get you from here, when I say, that after I have heard
something from you, Henry, which I shall ask you to relate to me,
painful though it may be, I shall be able to suggest some explanation
of many things which appear at present obscure, and to put you in a
course of freeing you from the difficulties which surround you, which,
Heaven knows, I little expected I should have it in my power to propose
to any of you.”
“I will follow your advice, Mr. Chillingworth,” said Henry; “for I
have always found that it has been dictated by good feeling as well as
correct judgment. Admiral Bell, you will oblige me much by coming away
with me now and at once.”
“Well,” remarked the admiral, “if the doctor has really something to
say, it alters the appearance of things, and, of course, I have no
objection.”
Upon this, the whole three of them immediately left the place, and it
was evident that Mr. Chillingworth had something of an uncomfortable
character upon his mind. He was unusually silent and reserved, and,
when he did speak, he seemed rather inclined to turn the conversation
upon indifferent topics, than to add anything more to what he had said
upon the deeply interesting one which held so foremost a place in all
their minds.
“How is Flora, now,” he asked of Henry, “since her removal?”
“Anxious still,” said Henry; “but, I think, better.”
“That is well. I perceive that, naturally, we are all three walking
towards Bannerworth Hall, and, perhaps, it is as well that on that spot
I should ask of you, Henry, to indulge me with a confidence such as,
under ordinary circumstances, I should not at all feel myself justified
in requiring of you.”
“To what does it relate?” said Henry. “You may be assured, Mr.
Chillingworth, that I am not likely to refuse my confidence to you,
whom I have so much reason to respect as an attached friend of myself
and my family.”
“You will not object, likewise, I hope,” added Mr. Chillingworth, “to
extend that confidence to Admiral Bell; for, as you well know, a truer
and more warm-hearted man than he does not exist.”
“What do you expect for that, doctor?” said the admiral.
“There is nothing,” said Henry, “that I could relate at all, that I
should shrink from relating to Admiral Bell.”
“Well, my boy,” said the admiral, “and all I can reply to that is, you
are quite right; for there can be nothing that you need shrink from
telling me, so far as regards the fact of trusting me with it goes.”
“I am assured of that.”
“A British officer, once pledging his word, prefers death to breaking
it. Whatever you wish kept secret in the communication you make to me,
say so, and it will never pass my lips.”
“Why, sir, the fact is,” said Henry, “that what I am about to relate
to you consists not so much of secrets as of matters which would be
painful to my feelings to talk of more than may be absolutely required.”
“I understand you.”
“Let me, for a moment,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “put myself right. I
do not suspect, Mr. Henry Bannerworth, that you fancy I ask you to
make a recital of circumstances which must be painful to you, from any
idle motive. But let me declare that I have now a stronger impulse,
which induces me to wish to hear from your own lips those matters which
popular rumour may have greatly exaggerated or vitiated.”
“It is scarcely possible,” remarked Henry, sadly, “that popular rumour
should exaggerate the facts.”
“Indeed!”
“No. They are, unhappily, of themselves, in their bare truthfulness, so
full of all that can be grievous to those who are in any way connected
with them, that there needs no exaggeration to invest them with more
terror, or with more of that sadness which must ever belong to a
recollection of them in my mind.”
In suchlike discourse as this, the time was passed, until Henry
Bannerworth and his friends once more reached the Hall, from which he,
with his family, had so recently removed, in consequence of the fearful
persecution to which they had been subjected.
They passed again into the garden which they all knew so well, and then
Henry paused and looked around him with a deep sigh.
In answer to an inquiring glance from Mr. Chillingworth, he said,—
“Is it not strange, now, that I should have only been away from here a
space of time which may be counted by hours, and yet all seems changed.
I could almost fancy that years had elapsed since I had looked at it.”
“Oh,” remarked the doctor, “time is always by the imagination measured
by the number of events which are crowded into a given space of it,
and not by its actual duration. Come into the house; there you will
find all just as you left it, Henry, and you can tell us your story at
leisure.”
“The air,” said Henry, “about here is fresh and pleasant. Let us sit
down in the summer-house yonder, and there I will tell you all. It has
a local interest, too, connected with the tale.”
This was agreed to, and, in a few moments, the admiral, Mr.
Chillingworth, and Henry were seated in the same summer-house which had
witnessed the strange interview between Sir Francis Varney and Flora
Bannerworth, in which he had induced her to believe that he felt for
the distress he had occasioned her, and was strongly impressed with the
injustice of her sufferings.
Henry was silent for some few moments, and then he said, with a deep
sigh, as he looked mournfully around him,—
“It was on this spot that my father breathed his last, and hence have
I said that it has a local interest in the tale I have to tell, which
makes it the most fitting place in which to tell it.”
“Oh,” said the admiral, “he died here, did he?”
“Yes, where you are now sitting.”
“Very good, I have seen many a brave man die in my time, and I hope
to see a few more, although, I grant you, the death in the heat of
conflict, and fighting for our country, is a vastly different thing to
some shore-going mode of leaving the world.”
“Yes,” said Henry, as if pursuing his own meditations, rather than
listening to the admiral. “Yes, it was from this precise spot that my
father took his last look at the ancient house of his race. What we can
now see of it, he saw of it with his dying eyes, and many a time I have
sat here and fancied the world of terrible thoughts that must at such a
moment have come across his brain.”
“You might well do so,” said the doctor.
“You see,” added Henry, “that from here the fullest view you have of
any of the windows of the house is of that of Flora’s room, as we have
always called it, because for years she had had it as her chamber; and,
when all the vegetation of summer is in its prime, and the vine which
you perceive crawls over this summer-house is full of leaf and fruit,
the view is so much hindered that it is difficult, without making an
artificial gap in the clustering foliage, to see anything but the
window.”
“So I should imagine,” replied Mr. Chillingworth.
“You, doctor,” added Henry, “who know much of my family, need not be
told what sort of man my father was.”
“No, indeed.”
“But you, Admiral Bell, who do not know, must be told, and, however
grievous it may be to me to have to say so, I must inform you that he
was not a man who would have merited your esteem.”
“Well,” said the admiral, “you know, my boy, that can make no
difference as regards you in anybody’s mind, who has got the brains of
an owl. Every man’s credit, character, and honour, to my thinking, is
in his own most special keeping, and let your father be what he might,
or who he might, I do not see that any conduct of his ought to raise
upon your cheek the flush of shame, or cost you more uneasiness than
ordinary good feeling dictates to the errors and feelings of a fellow
creature.”
“If all the world,” said Henry, “would take such liberal and
comprehensive views as you do, admiral, it would be much happier than
it is; but such is not the case, and people are but too apt to blame
one person for the evil that another has done.”
“Ah, but,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “it so happens that those are the
people whose opinions are of the very least consequence.”
“There is some truth in that,” said Henry, sadly; “but, however, let
me proceed; since I have to tell the tale, I could wish it over. My
father, then, Admiral Bell, although a man not tainted in early life
with vices, became, by the force of bad associates, and a sort of want
of congeniality and sentiment that sprang up between him and my mother,
plunged into all the excesses of his age.”
“These excesses were all of that character which the most readily lay
hold strongly of an unreflecting mind, because they all presented
themselves in the garb of sociality.
The wine cup is drained in the name of good fellowship; money which is
wanted for legitimate purposes is squandered under the mask of a noble
and free generosity, and all that the small imaginations of a number of
persons of perverted intellects could enable them to do, has been done
from time to time, to impart a kind of lustre to intemperance and all
its dreadful and criminal consequences.
My father, having once got into the company of what he considered wits
and men of spirit, soon became thoroughly vitiated. He was almost
the only one of the set among whom he passed what he considered his
highly convivial existence, who was really worth anything, pecuniarily
speaking. There were some among them who might have been respectable
men, and perchance carved their way to fortune, as well as some others
who had started in life with good patrimonies; but he, my father, at
the time he became associated with them, was the only one, as I say,
who, to use a phrase I have heard myself from his lips concerning them,
had got a feather to fly with.
The consequence of this was, that his society, merely for the sake of
the animal gratification of drinking at his expense was courted, and
he was much flattered, all of which he laid to the score of his own
merits, which had been found out, and duly appreciated by these _bon
vivants_, while he considered that the grave admonitions of his real
friends proceeded from nothing in the world but downright envy and
malice.
Such a state of things as this could not last very long. The associates
of my father wanted money as well as wine, so they introduced him to
the gaming-table, and he became fascinated with the fearful vice to an
extent which predicted his own destruction and the ruin of every one
who was in any way dependent upon him.
He could not absolutely sell Bannerworth Hall, unless I had given my
consent, which I refused; but he accumulated debt upon debt, and from
time to time stripped the mansion of all its most costly contents.
With various mutations of fortune, he continued this horrible and
baneful career for a long time, until, at last, he found himself
utterly and irretrievably ruined, and he came home in an agony of
despair, being so weak, and utterly ruined in constitution, that he
kept his bed for many days.
It appeared, however, that something occurred at this juncture which
gave him actually, or all events awakened a hope that he should possess
some money, and be again in a position to try his fortune at the
gaming-table.
He rose, and, fortifying himself once more with the strong stimulant
of wine and spirits, he left his home, and was absent for about two
months.
What occurred to him during that time we none of us ever knew, but late
one night he came home, apparently much flurried in manner, and seeming
as if something had happened to drive him half mad.
He would not speak to any one, but he shut himself up the whole of the
night in the chamber where hangs the portrait that bears so strong
a resemblance to Sir Francis Varney, and there he remained till the
morning, when he emerged, and said briefly that he intended to leave
the country.
He was in a most fearful state of nervousness, and my mother tells me
that he shook like one in an ague, and started at every little sound
that occurred in the house, and glared about him so wildly that it was
horrible to see him, or to sit in the same apartment with him.
She says that the whole morning passed on in this way till a letter
came to him, the contents of which appeared to throw him into a perfect
convulsion of terror, and he retired again to the room with the
portrait, where he remained some hours, and then he emerged, looking
like a ghost, so dreadfully pale and haggard was he.
He walked into the garden here, and was seen to sit down in this
summer-house, and fix his eyes upon the window of that apartment.
Henry paused for a few moments, and then he added,—
You will excuse me from entering upon any details of what next ensued
in the melancholy history. My father here committed suicide. He was
found dying, and all the words he spoke were, “The money is hidden!”
Death claimed his victim, and, with a convulsive spasm, he resigned his
spirit, leaving what he had intended to say hidden in the oblivion of
the grave.
[Illustration: The suicide of Henry Bannerworth’s father.]
“That was an odd affair,” said the admiral.
“It was, indeed. We have all pondered deeply, and the result was,
that, upon the whole, we were inclined to come to an opinion that the
words he so uttered were but the result of the mental disturbance that
at such a moment might well be supposed to be ensuing in the mind,
and that they related really to no foregone fact any more than some
incoherent words uttered by a man in a dream might be supposed to do.”
“It may be so.”
“I do not mean,” remarked Mr. Chillingworth, “for one moment to attempt
to dispute, Henry, the rationality of such an opinion as you have just
given utterance to; but you forget that another circumstance occurred,
which gave a colour to the words used by your father.”
“Yes; I know to what you allude.”
“Be so good as to state it to the admiral.”
“I will. On the evening of that same day there came a man here, who, in
seeming ignorance of what had occurred, although by that time it was
well known to all the neighbourhood, asked to see my father.”
“Upon being told that he was dead, he started back, either with well
acted or with real surprise, and seemed to be immensely chagrined. He
then demanded to know if he had left any disposition of his property;
but he got no information, and departed muttering the most diabolical
oaths and curses that can be imagined. He mounted his horse, for he had
ridden to the Hall and his last words were, as I am told—”
“‘Where, in the name of all that’s damnable, can he have put the
money!’”
“And did you never find out who this man was?” asked the admiral.
“Never.”
“It is an odd affair.”
“It is,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “and full of mystery. The public mind
was much taken up at the time with some other matters, or it would
have made the death of Mr. Bannerworth the subject of more prolific
comment than it did. As it was, however, a great deal was said upon the
subject, and the whole county was in a state of commotion for weeks
afterwards.”
“Yes,” said Henry; “it so happened that about that very time a murder
was committed in the neighbourhood of London, which baffled all the
exertions of the authorities to discover the perpetrators of. It was
the murder of Lord Lorne.”
“Oh! I remember,” said the admiral; “the newspapers were full of it for
a long time.”
“They were; and so, as Mr. Chillingworth says, the more exciting
interest which that affair created drew off public attention, in a
great measure, from my father’s suicide, and we did not suffer so much
from public remark and from impertinent curiosity as might have been
expected.”
“And, in addition,” said Mr. Chillingworth, and he changed colour a
little as he spoke, “there was an execution shortly afterwards.”
“Yes,” said Henry, “there was.”
“The execution of a man named Angerstein,” added Mr. Chillingworth,
“for a highway robbery, attended with the most brutal violence.”
“True; all the affairs of that period of time are strongly impressed
upon my mind,” said Henry; “but you do not seem well, Mr.
Chillingworth.”
“Oh, yes; I am quite well—you are mistaken.”
Both the admiral and Henry looked scrutinizingly at the doctor, who
certainly appeared to them to be labouring under some great mental
excitement, which he found it almost beyond his power to repress.
“I tell you what it is, doctor,” said the admiral; “I don’t pretend,
and never did, to see further through a tar-barrel than my neighbours;
but I can see far enough to feel convinced that you have got something
on your mind, and that it somehow concerns this affair.”
“Is it so?” said Henry.
“I cannot if I would,” said Mr. Chillingworth; “and I may with truth
add, that I would not, if I could, hide from you that I have something
on my mind connected with this affair; but let me assure you it would
be premature of me to tell you of it.”
“Premature be d—d!” said the admiral; “out with it.”
“Nay, nay, dear sir; I am not now in a position to say what is passing
through my mind.”
“Alter your position, then, and be blowed!” cried Jack Pringle,
suddenly stepping forward, and giving the doctor such a push, that he
nearly went through one of the sides of the summer-house.
“Why, you scoundrel!” cried the admiral, “how came you here?”
“On my legs,” said Jack. “Do you think nobody wants to know nothing but
yourself? I’m as fond of a yarn as anybody.”
“But if you are,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “you had no occasion to come
against me as if you wanted to move a house.”
“You said as you wasn’t in a position to say something as I wanted to
hear, so I thought I’d alter it for you.”
“Is this fellow,” said the doctor, shaking his head, as he accosted the
admiral, “the most artful or stupid?”
“A little of both,” said Admiral Bell—“a little of both, doctor. He’s a
great fool and a great scamp.”
“The same to you,” said Jack; “you’re another. I shall hate you
presently, if you go on making yourself so ridiculous. Now, mind, I’ll
only give you a trial of another week or so, and if you don’t be more
purlite in your d——n language, I’ll leave you.”
Away strolled Jack, with his hands in his pockets, towards the house,
while the admiral was half choked with rage, and could only glare after
him, without the ability to say a word.
Under any other circumstances than the present one of trouble, and
difficulty; and deep anxiety, Henry Bannerworth must have laughed at
these singular little episodes between Jack and the admiral; but his
mind was now by far too much harassed to permit him to do so.
“Let him go, let him go, my dear sir,” said Mr. Chillingworth to the
admiral, who showed some signs of an intention to pursue Jack; “he no
doubt has been drinking again.”
“I’ll turn him off the first moment I catch him sober enough to
understand me,” said the admiral.
“Well, well; do as you please; but now let me ask a favour of both of
you.”
“What is it?”
“That you will leave Bannerworth Hall to me for a week.”
“What for?”
“I hope to make some discoveries connected with it which shall well
reward you for the trouble.”
“It’s no trouble,” said Henry; “and for myself, I have amply sufficient
faith, both in your judgment and in your friendship, doctor, to accede
to any request which you may make to me.”
“And I,” said the admiral. “Be it so—be it so. For one week, you say?”
“Yes—for one week. I hope, by the end of that time, to have achieved
something worth the telling you of; and I promise you that, if I am
at all disappointed in my expectation, that I will frankly and freely
communicate to you all I know and all I suspect.”
“Then that’s a bargain.”
“It is.”
“And what’s to be done at once?”
“Why, nothing, but to take the greatest possible care that Bannerworth
Hall is not left another hour without some one in it; and in order that
such should be the case, I have to request that you two will remain
here until I go to the town, and make preparations for taking quiet
possession of it myself, which I will do in the course of two hours, at
most.”
“Don’t be longer,” said the admiral, “for I am so desperately hungry,
that I shall certainly begin to eat somebody, if you are.”
“Depend upon me.”
“Very well,” said Henry; “you may depend we will wait here until you
come back.”
The doctor at once hurried from the garden, leaving Henry and the
admiral to amuse themselves as best they might, with conjectures as to
what he was really about, until his return.