VARNEY IN THE GARDEN.—THE COMMUNICATION OF DR. CHILLINGWORTH TO THE
ADMIRAL AND HENRY.
Kind reader, it was indeed Varney who had clambered over the garden
wall, and thus made his way into the garden of Bannerworth Hall; and
what filled those who looked at him with the most surprise was, that he
did not seem in any particular way to make a secret of his presence,
but walked on with an air of boldness which either arose from a feeling
of absolute impunity, from his thinking there was no one there, or from
an audacity which none but he could have compassed.
As for the little party that was there assembled, and who looked
upon him, they seemed thunderstricken by his presence; and Henry,
probably, as well as the admiral, would have burst out into some sudden
exclamation, had they not been restrained by Dr. Chillingworth, who,
suspecting that they might in some way give an alarm, hastened to speak
first, saying in a whisper,—
“For Heaven’s sake, be still; fortune, you see, favours us most
strangely. Leave Varney alone. You have no other mode whatever of
discovering what he really wants at Bannerworth Hall.”
“I am glad you have spoken,” said Henry, as he drew a long breath. “If
you had not, I feel convinced that in another moment I should have
rushed forward and confronted this man who has been the very bane of my
life.”
“And so should I,” said the admiral; “although I protest against any
harm being done to him, on account of some sort of good feeling that
he has displayed, after all, in releasing Charles from that dungeon in
which Marchdale has perished.”
“At the moment,” said Henry, “I had forgotten that; but I will own
that his conduct has been tinctured by a strange and wild kind of
generosity at times, which would seem to bespeak, at the bottom of his
heart, some good feelings, the impulses of which were only quenched by
circumstances.”
“That is my firm impression of him, I can assure you,” said Dr.
Chillingworth.
They watched Varney now from the leafy covert in which they were
situated, and, indeed, had they been less effectually concealed, it
did not seem likely that the much dreaded vampyre would have perceived
them; for not only did he make no effort at concealment himself, but he
took no pains to see if any one was watching him in his progress to the
house.
His footsteps were more rapid than they usually were, and there was
altogether an air and manner about him, as if he were moved to some
purpose which of itself was sufficiently important to submerge in its
consequences all ordinary risks and all ordinary cautions.
He tried several windows of the house along that terrace of which we
have more than once had occasion to speak, before he found one that
opened; but at length he did succeed, and stepped at once into the
Hall, leaving those, who now for some moments in silence had regarded
his movements, to lose themselves in a fearful sea of conjecture as to
what could possibly be his object.
“At all events,” said the admiral, “I’m glad we are here. If the
vampyre should have a fight with that other fellow, that we heard doing
such a lot of carpentering work in the house, we ought, I think, to see
fair play.”
“I, for one,” said the doctor, “would not like to stand by and see the
vampyre murdered; but I am inclined to think he is a good match for any
mortal opponent.”
“You may depend he is,” said Henry. “But how long, doctor, do you
purpose that we should wait here in such a state of suspense as to what
is going on within the house?”
“I hope not long; but that something will occur to make us have food
for action. Hark! what is that?”
There was a loud crash within the building, as of broken glass. It
sounded as if some window had been completely dashed in; but although
they looked carefully over the front of the building, they could see
no evidences of such a thing having happened, and were compelled,
consequently, to come to the opinion that Varney and the other man must
have met in one of the back rooms, and that the crash of glass had
arisen from some personal conflict in which they had engaged.
“I cannot stand this,” said Henry.
“Nay, nay,” said the doctor; “be still, and I will tell you something,
than which there can be no more fitting time than this to reveal it.”
“Refers it to the vampyre?”
“It does—it does.”
“Be brief, then; I am in an agony of impatience.”
“It is a circumstance concerning which I can be brief; for, horrible
as it is, I have no wish to dress it in any adventitious colours. Sir
Francis Varney, although under another name, is an old acquaintance of
mine.”
“Acquaintance!” said Henry.
“Why, you don’t mean to say you are a vampyre?” said the admiral; “or
that he has ever visited you?”
“No; but I knew him. From the first moment that I looked upon him in
this neighbourhood, I thought I knew him; but the circumstance which
induced me to think so was of so terrific a character, that I made some
efforts to chase it from my mind. It has, however, grown upon me day
by day, and, lately, I have had proof sufficient to convince me of his
identity with one whom I first saw under most singular circumstances of
romance.”
“Say on,—you are agitated.”
“I am, indeed. This revelation has several times, within the last few
days, trembled on my lips, but now you shall have it; because you ought
to know all that it is possible for me to tell you of him who has
caused you so serious an amount of disturbance.”
“You awaken, doctor,” said Henry, “all my interest.”
“And mine, too,” remarked the admiral. “What can it be all about? and
where, doctor, did you first see this Varney the vampyre?”
“In his coffin.”
Both the admiral and Henry gave starts of surprise as, with one accord,
they exclaimed,—
“Did you say coffin?”
“Yes; I tell you, on my word of honour, that the first time in my life
I saw ever Sir Francis Varney, was in his coffin.”
“Then he is a vampyre, and there can be no mistake,” said the admiral.
“Go on, I pray you, doctor, go on,” said Henry, anxiously.
“I will. The reason why he became the inhabitant of a coffin was simply
this:—he had been hanged,—executed at the Old Bailey, in London, before
ever I set eyes upon that strange countenance of his. You know that I
was practising surgery at the London schools some years ago, and that,
consequently, as I commenced the profession rather late in life, I was
extremely anxious to do the most I could in a very short space of time.”
“Yes—yes.”
“Arrived, then, with plenty of resources, which I did not, as the young
men who affected to be studying in the same classes as myself, spend in
the pursuit of what they considered life in London, I was indefatigable
in my professional labours, and there was nothing connected with them
which I did not try to accomplish.
“At that period, the difficulty of getting a subject for anatomization
was very great, and all sorts of schemes had to be put into requisition
to accomplish so desirable, and, indeed, absolutely necessary a
purpose.
“I became acquainted with the man who, I have told you, is in the
Hall, at present, and who then filled the unenviable post of public
executioner. It so happened, too, that I had read a learned treatise,
by a Frenchman, who had made a vast number of experiments with galvanic
and other apparatus, upon persons who had come to death in different
ways, and, in one case, he asserted that he had actually recovered a
man who had been hanged, and he had lived five weeks afterwards.
“Young as I then was, in comparison to what I am now, in my profession,
this inflamed my imagination, and nothing seemed to me so desirable
as getting hold of some one who had only recently been put to death,
for the purpose of trying what I could do in the way of attempting a
resuscitation of the subject. It was precisely for this reason that
I sought out the public executioner, and made his acquaintance, whom
every one else shunned, because I thought he might assist me by handing
over to me the body of some condemned and executed man, upon whom I
could try my skill.
“I broached the subject to him, and found him not averse. He said,
that if I would come forward and claim, as next of kin, the body of
the criminal who was to be executed the first time, from that period,
that he could give me a hint that I should have no real next of kin
opponents, he would throw every facility in my way, and allow the body
to be removed to his house.
“This was just what I wanted; and, I believe, I waited with impatience
for some poor wretch to be hurried to his last account by the hands of
my friend, the public executioner.
“At length a circumstance occurred which favoured my designs most
effectually,—A man was apprehended for a highway robbery of a most
aggravated character. He was tried, and the evidence against him was so
conclusive, that the defence which was attempted by his counsel, became
a mere matter of form.
“He was convicted, and sentenced. The judge told him not to flatter
himself with the least notion that mercy would be extended to him.
The crime of which he had been found guilty was on the increase; it
was highly necessary to make some great public example, to show evil
doers that they could not, with impunity, thus trample upon the liberty
of the subject, and had suddenly, just as it were, in the very nick
of time, committed the very crime, attended with all the aggravated
circumstances which made it easy and desirable to hang him out of hand.
“He heard his sentence, they tell me unmoved. I did not see him, but
he was represented to me as a man of a strong, and well-knit frame,
with rather a strange, but what some would have considered a handsome
expression of countenance, inasmuch as that there was an expression of
much haughty resolution depicted on it.
“I flew to my friend the executioner.
“‘Can you,’ I said, ‘get me that man’s body, who is to be hanged for
the highway robbery, on Monday?’
“‘Yes,’ he said; ‘I see nothing to prevent it. Not one soul has offered
to claim even common companionship with him,—far less kindred. I think
if you put in your claim as a cousin, who will bear the expense of his
decent burial, you will have every chance of getting possession of the
body.’
“I did not hesitate, but, on the morning before the execution, I called
upon one of the sheriffs.
“I told him that the condemned man, I regretted to say, was related to
me; but as I knew nothing could be done to save him on the trial, I
had abstained from coming forward; but that as I did not like the idea
of his being rudely interred by the authorities, I had come forward to
ask for the body, after the execution should have taken place, in order
that I might, at all events, bestow upon it, in some sequestered spot,
a decent burial, with all the rites of the church.
“The sheriff was a man not overburthened with penetration. He applauded
my pious feelings, and actually gave me, without any inquiry, a written
order to receive the body from the hands of the hangman, after it had
hung the hour prescribed by the law.
“I did not, as you may well suppose, wish to appear more in the
business than was absolutely necessary; but I gave the executioner the
sheriff’s order for the body, and he promised that he would get a shell
ready to place it in, and four stout men to carry it at once to his
house, when he should cut it down.
“‘Good!’ I said; ‘and now as I am not a little anxious for the success
of my experiment, do you not think that you can manage so that the fall
of the criminal shall not be so sudden as to break his neck?’
“‘I have thought of that,’ he said, ‘and I believe that I can manage to
let him down gently, so that he shall die of suffocation, instead of
having his neck put out of joint. I will do my best.’
“‘If you can but succeed in that,’ said I, for I was quite in a state
of mania upon the subject, ‘I shall be much indebted to you, and will
double the amount of money which I have already promised.’
“This was, as I believed it would be, a powerful stimulus to him to
do all in his power to meet my wishes, and he took, no doubt, active
measures to accomplish all that I desired.
“You can imagine with what intense impatience I waited the result. He
resided in an old ruinous looking house, a short distance on the Surrey
side of the river, and there I had arranged all my apparatus for making
experiments upon the dead man, in an apartment the windows of which
commanded a view of the entrance.”
“I was completely ready by half-past eight, although a moment’s
consideration of course told me that at least another hour must elapse
before there could be the least chance of my seeing him arrive, for
whom I so anxiously longed.
“I can safely say so infatuated was I upon the subject, that no fond
lover ever looked with more nervous anxiety for the arrival of the
chosen object of his heart, than I did for that dead body, upon which I
proposed to exert all the influences of professional skill, to recall
back the soul to its earthly dwelling-place.
“At length I heard the sound of wheels. I found that my friend the
hangman had procured a cart, in which he brought the coffin, that
being a much quicker mode of conveyance than by bearers, so that about
a quarter past nine o’clock the vehicle, with its ghastly content,
stopped at the door of his house.
“In my impatience I ran down stairs to meet that which ninety-nine
men out of a hundred would have gone some distance to avoid the
sight of, namely, a corpse, livid and fresh from the gallows. I,
however, heralded it as a great gift, and already, in imagination I
saw myself imitating the learned Frenchman, who had published such an
elaborate treatise on the mode of restoring life under all sorts of
circumstances, to those who were already pronounced by unscientific
persons to be dead.
“To be sure, a sort of feeling had come over me at times, knowing
as I did that the French are a nation that do not scruple at all to
sacrifice truth on the altar of vanity, that it might be after all a
mere rhodomontade; but, however, I could only ascertain so much by
actually trying, so the suspicion that such might, by a possibility, be
the end of the adventure, did not deter me.
“I officiously assisted in having the coffin brought into the room
where I had prepared everything that was necessary in the conduction
of my grand experiment; and then, when no one was there with me but my
friend the executioner, I, with his help, the one of us taking the head
and the other the feet, took the body from the coffin and laid it upon
a table.
“Hastily I placed my hand upon the region of the heart, and to my great
delight I found it still warm. I drew off the cap that covered the
face, and then, for the first time, my eyes rested upon the countenance
of him who now calls himself—Heaven only knows why—Sir Francis Varney.”
“Good God!” said Henry, “are you certain?”
“Quite.”
“It may have been some other rascal like him,” said the admiral.
“No, I am quite sure now; I have, as I have before mentioned to you,
tried to get out of my own conviction upon the subject, but I have been
actually assured that he is the man by the very hangman himself.”
“Go on, go on! Your tale certainly is a strange one, and I do not say
it either to compliment you or to cast a doubt upon you, but, except
from the lips of an old, and valued friend, such as you yourself are, I
should not believe it.’
“I am not surprised to hear you say that,” replied the doctor; “nor
should I be offended even now if you were to entertain a belief that I
might, after all, be mistaken.”
“No, no; you would not be so positive upon the subject, I well know, if
there was the slightest possibility of an error.”
“Indeed I should not.”
“Let us have the sequel, then.”
“It is this. I was most anxious to effect an immediate resuscitation,
if it were possible, of the hanged man. A little manipulation soon
convinced me that the neck was not broken, which left me at once
everything to hope for. The hangman was more prudent than I was, and
before I commenced my experiments, he said,—
“‘Doctor, have you duly considered what you mean to do with this
fellow, in case you should be successful in restoring him to life?’
“‘Not I,’ said I.
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘you can do as you like; but I consider that it is
really worth thinking of.’
“I was headstrong on the matter, and could think of nothing but the
success or the non-success, in a physiological point of view, of my
plan for restoring the dead to life; so I set about my experiments
without any delay, and with a completeness and a vigour that promised
the most completely successful results, if success could at all be an
ingredient in what sober judgment would doubtless have denominated a
mad-headed and wild scheme.
“For more than half an hour I tried in vain, by the assistance of
the hangman, who acted under my directions. Not the least symptom of
vitality presented itself; and he had a smile upon his countenance, as
he said in a bantering tone,—
“‘I am afraid, sir, it is much easier to kill than to restore their
patients with doctors.’
“Before I could make him any reply, for I felt that his observation
had a good amount of truth in it, joined to its sarcasm the hanged man
uttered a loud scream, and opened his eyes.
“I must own I was myself rather startled; but I for some moments longer
continued the same means which had produced such an effect, when
suddenly he sprang up and laid hold of me, at the same time exclaiming,—
“‘Death, death, where is the treasure?’
[Illustration: The vampyre is restored to life by Dr. Chillingworth’s
galvanic experiment.]
“I had fully succeeded—too fully; and while the executioner looked on
with horror depicted in his countenance, I fled from the room and the
house, taking my way home as fast as I possibly could.
“A dread came over me, that the restored man would follow me if
he should find out to whom it was he was indebted for the rather
questionable boon of a new life. I packed up what articles I set the
greatest store by, bade adieu to London, and never have I since set
foot within that city.”
“And you never met the man you had so resuscitated?”
“Not till I saw Varney, the vampyre; and, as I tell you, I am now
certain that he is the man.”
“That is the strangest yarn that ever I heard,” said the admiral.
“A most singular circumstance,” said Henry.
“You may have noticed about his countenance,” said Dr. Chillingworth,
“a strange distorted look?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Well, that has arisen from a spasmodic contraction of the muscles,
in consequence of his having been hanged. He will never lose it, and
it has not a little contributed to give him the horrible look he has,
and to invest him with some of the seeming outward attributes of the
vampyre.”
“And that man who is now in the hall with him, doctor,” said Henry, “is
the very hangman who executed him?”
“The same. He tells me that after I left, he paid attention to the
restored man, and completed what I had nearly done. He kept him in his
house for a time, and then made a bargain with him, for a large sum of
money per annum, all of which he has regularly been paid, although he
tells me he has no more idea where Varney gets it, than the man in the
moon.”
“It is very strange; but, hark! do you not hear the sound of voices in
angry altercation?”
“Yes, yes, they have met. Let us approach the windows now. We may
chance to hear something of what they say to each other.”