THE DISCOVERY OF THE BODY OF MARCHDALE IN THE RUINS BY THE MOB.—THE
BURNING OF THE CORPSE.—THE MURDER OF THE HANGMAN.
The mob reached the ruins of Bannerworth Hall, and crowded round it
on all sides, with the view of ascertaining if a human creature, dead
or alive, were there; various surmises were afloat, and some were for
considering that everybody but themselves, or their friends, must be
nothing less than vampyres. Indeed, a strange man, suddenly appearing
among them, would have caused a sensation, and a ring would no doubt
have been formed round him, and then a hasty council held, or, what
was more probable, some shout, or word uttered by some one behind, who
could not understand what was going on in front, would have determined
them to commit some desperate outrage, and the sacrifice of life would
have been the inevitable result of such an unfortunate concurrence of
circumstances.
There was a pause before anyone ventured among the ruins; the walls
were carefully looked to, and in more than one instance, but they were
found dangerous, what were remaining; some parts had been so completely
destroyed, that there were nothing but heaps of rubbish.
However, curiosity was exerted to such an extraordinary pitch that
it overcame the fear of danger, in search of the horrible; for they
believed that if there were any one in the ruins he must be a vampyre,
of course, and they were somewhat cautious in going near such a
creature, lest in so doing they should meet with some accident, and
become vampyres too.
This was a dreadful reflection, and one that every now and then
impressed itself upon the individuals composing the mob; but at the
same time any new impulse, or a shout, and they immediately became
insensible to all fear; the mere impulse is the dominant one, and then
all is forgotten.
The scene was an impressive one; the beautiful house and grounds looked
desolate and drear; many of the trees were stripped and broken down,
and many scorched and burned, while the gardens and flower beds, the
delight of the Bannerworth family, were rudely trodden under foot by
the rabble, and all those little beauties so much admired and tended by
the inhabitants, were now utterly destroyed, and in such a state that
their site could not even be detected by the former owners.
It was a sad sight to see such a sacrilege committed,—such violence
done to private feelings, as to have all these places thrown open
to the scrutiny of the brutal and vulgar, who are incapable of
appreciating or understanding the pleasures of a refined taste.
The ruins presented a remarkable contrast to what the place had been
but a very short time before; and now the scene of desolation was
complete, there was no one spot in which the most wretched could find
shelter.
To be sure, under the lee of some broken and crumbling wall, that
tottered, rather than stood, a huddled wretch might have found shelter
from the wind, but it would have been at the risk of his life, and not
there complete.
The mob became quiet for some moments, but was not so long; indeed,
a mob of people,—which is, in fact, always composed of the most
disorderly characters to be found in a place, is not exactly the
assembly that is most calculated for quietness; somebody gave a shout,
and then somebody else shouted, and the one wide throat of the whole
concourse was opened, and sent forth a mighty yell.
After this exhibition of power, they began to run about like
mad,—traverse the grounds from one end to the other, and then the ruins
were in progress of being explored.
This was a tender affair, and had to be done with some care and caution
by those who were so engaged; and they walked over crumbling and
decayed masses.
In one or two places, they saw what appeared to be large holes, into
which the building materials had been sunk, by their own weight,
through the flooring, that seemed as roofs to some cellars or dungeons.
Seeing this, they knew not how soon some other part might sink in,
and carry their precious bodies down with the mass of rubbish; this
gave an interest to the scene,—a little danger is a sort of salt to an
adventure, and enables those who have taken part in it to talk of their
exploits, and of their dangers, which is pleasant to do, and to hear in
the ale-house, and by the inglenook in the winter.
However, when a few had gone some distance, others followed, when they
saw them enter the place in safety; and at length the whole ruins were
covered with living men, and not a few women, who seemed necessary to
make up the elements of mischief in this case.
There were some shouting and hallooing from one to the other as they
hurried about the ruins.
At length they had explored the ruins nearly all over, when one
man, who had stood a few minutes upon a spot, gazing intently upon
something, suddenly exclaimed,—
“Hilloa! hurrah! here we are, altogether,—come on,—I’ve found him,—I’ve
found—recollect it’s me, and nobody else has found,—hurrah!”
Then, with a wild kind of frenzy, he threw his hat up into the air, as
if to attract attention, and call others round him, to see what it was
he had found.
“What’s the matter, Bill?” exclaimed one who came up to him, and who
had been close at hand.
“The matter? why, I’ve found him; that’s the matter, old man,” replied
the first.
“What, a whale?
“No, a wampyre; the blessed wampyre! there he is,—don’t you see him
under them ere bricks?”
“Oh, that’s not him; he got away.”
“I don’t care,” replied the other, “who got away, or who didn’t; I know
this much, that he’s a wampyre,—he wouldn’t be there if he warn’t.”
This was an unanswerable argument, and nobody could deny it;
consequently, there was a cessation of talk, and the people then came
up, as the two first were looking at the body.
“Whose is it?” inquired a dozen voices.
“Not Sir Francis Varney’s!” said the second speaker; “the clothes are
not his—”
“No, no; not Sir Francis’s.”
“But I tell you what, mates,” said the first speaker; “that if it isn’t
Sir Francis Varney’s, it is somebody else’s as bad. I dare say, now,
he’s a wictim.”
“A what!”
“A wictim to the wampyre; and, if he sees the blessed moonlight, he
will be a wampyre hisself, and so shall we be, too, if he puts his
teeth into us.”
“So we shall,—so we shall,” said the mob, and their flesh began to run
cold, and there was a feeling of horror creeping over the whole body of
persons within hearing.
“I tell you what it is; our only plan will be to get him out of the
ruins, then, remarked another.
“What!” said one; “who’s going to handle such cattle? if you’ve a sore
about you, and his blood touches you, who’s to say you won’t be a
vampyre, too!”
“No, no you won’t,” said an old woman.
“I won’t try,” was the happy rejoinder; “I ain’t a-going to carry
a wampyre on my two legs home to my wife and small family of seven
children, and another a-coming.”
There was a pause for a few moments, and then one man more adventurous
than the rest, exclaimed,—
“Well, vampyre, or no vampyre, his dead body can harm no one; so here
goes to get it out, help me who will; once have it out, and then we can
prevent any evil, by burning it, and thus destroying the whole body.
“Hurrah!” shouted three or four more, as they jumped down into the hole
formed by the falling in of the materials which had crushed Marchdale
to death, for it was his body they had discovered.
They immediately set to work to displace such of the materials as lay
on the body, and then, having cleared it of all superincumbent rubbish,
they proceeded to lift it up, but found that it had got entangled, as
they called it, with some chains; with some trouble they got them off,
and the body was lifted out to a higher spot.
“Now, what’s to be done?” inquired one.
“Burn it,” said another.
“Hurrah!” shouted a female voice; “we’ve got the wampyre! run a stake
through his body, and then place him upon some dry wood,—there’s plenty
to be had about here, I am sure,—and then burn him to a cinder.”
“That’s right, old woman,—that’s right,” said a man; “nothing better:
the devil must be in him if he come to life after that, I should say.”
There might be something in that, and the mob shouted its approbation,
as it was sure to do at anything stupid or senseless, and the proposal
might be said to have been carried by acclamation, and it required only
the execution.
This was soon done. There were plenty of laths and rafters, and the
adjoining wood furnished an abundant supply of dry sticks, so there was
no want of fuel.
There was a loud shout as each accession of sticks took place, and,
as each individual threw his bundle into the heap, each man felt
all the self-devotion to the task as the Scottish chieftain who
sacrificed himself and seven sons in the battle for his superior;
and, when one son was cut down, the man filled up his place with the
exclamation,—“Another for Hector,” until he himself fell as the last of
his race.
Soon now the heap became prodigious, and it required an effort to get
the mangled corpse upon this funeral bier; but it was then a shout
from the mob that rent the air announced, both the fact and their
satisfaction.
The next thing to be done was to light the pile—this was no easy task;
but like all others, it was accomplished, and the dead body of the
vampyre’s victim was thrown on to prevent that becoming a vampyre too,
in its turn.
“There, boys,” said one, “he’ll not see the moonlight, that’s certain,
and the sooner we put a light to this the better; for it may be, the
soldiers will be down upon us before we know anything of it; so now,
who’s got a light?”
This was a question that required a deal of searching; but, at length
one was found by one of the mob coming forward, and after drawing his
pipe vigorously for some moments, he collected some scraps of paper,
upon which he emptied the contents of the pipe, with the hope they
would take fire.
In this, however, he was doomed to disappointment; for it produced
nothing but a deal of smoke, and the paper burned without producing any
flame.
This act of disinterestedness, however was not without its due
consequences, for there were several who had pipes, and, fired with the
hope of emulating the first projector of the scheme for raising the
flame, they joined together, and putting the contents of their pipes
together on some paper, straw, and chips, they produced, after some
little trouble, a flame.
Then there was a shout, and the burning mass was then placed in
a favourable position nearer the pile of materials collected for
burning, and then, in a few moments, it began to take light; one piece
communicated the fire to another, until the whole was in a blaze.
When the first flame fairly reached the top, a loud and tremendous
shout arose from the mob, and the very welkin re-echoed with its
fulness.
Then the forked flames rushed through the wood, and hissed and crackled
as they flew, throwing up huge masses of black smoke, and casting a
peculiar reflection around. Not a sound was heard save the hissing and
roaring of the flames, which seemed like the approaching of a furious
whirlwind.
[Illustration: The burning of Marchdale’s body by the mob.]
At length there was nothing to be seen but the blackened mass; it was
enveloped in one huge flame, that threw out a great heat, so much so,
that those nearest to it felt induced to retire from before it.
“I reckon,” said one, “that he’s pretty well done by this time—he’s had
a warm berth of it up there.”
“Yes,” said another, “farmer Watkins’s sheep he roasted whole at last
harvest-home hadn’t such a fire as this, I’ll warrant; there’s no such
fire in the county—why, it would prevent a frost, I do believe it
would.”
“So it would, neighbour,” answered another.
“Yes,” replied a third, “but you’d want such a one corner of each field
though.”
• • • • •
There was much talk and joking going on among the men who stood
around, in the midst of which, however, they were disturbed by a
loud shout, and upon looking in the quarter whence it came, they saw
stealing from among the ruins, the form of a man.
He was a strange, odd looking man, and at the time it was very doubtful
among the mob as to whom it was—nobody could tell, and more than one
looked at the burning pile, and then at the man who seemed to be so
mysteriously present, as if they almost imagined that the body had got
away.
“Who is it?” exclaimed one.
“Danged if I knows,” said another, looking very hard, and very white at
the same time;—“I hope it ain’t the chap what we’ve burned here jist
now.”
“No,” said the female, “that you may be sure of, for he’s had a stake
through his body, and as you said, he can never get over that, for as
the stake is consumed, so are his vitals, and that’s a sure sign he’s
done for.”
“Yes, yes, she’s right—a vampyre may live upon blood, but cannot do
without his inside.”
This was so obvious to them all, that it was at once conceded, and
a general impression pervaded the mob that it might be Sir Francis
Varney; a shout ensued.
“Hurrah!—After him—there’s a vampyre—there he goes!—after him—catch
him—burn him!”
And a variety of other exclamations were uttered, at the same time; the
victim of popular wrath seemed to be aware that he was now discovered,
and made off with all possible expedition, towards some wood.
Away went the mob in pursuit, hooting and hallooing like demons, and
denouncing the unfortunate being with all the terrors that could be
imagined, and which naturally added greater speed to the unfortunate
man.
However, some among the mob, seeing that there was every probability
of the stranger’s escaping at a mere match of speed, brought a little
cunning to bear upon matter, and took a circuit round, and thus
intercepted him.
This was not accomplished without a desperate effort, and by the best
runners, who thus reached the spot he made for, before he could get
there.
When the stranger saw himself thus intercepted, he endeavoured to fly
in a different direction; but was soon secured by the mob, who made
somewhat free with his person, and commenced knocking him about.
“Have mercy on me,” said the stranger. “What do you want? I am not
rich; but take all I have.”
“What do you do here?” inquired twenty voices. “Come, tell us that—what
do you do here, and who are you?”
“A stranger, quite a stranger to these parts.”
“Oh, yes! he’s a stranger; but that’s all the worse for him—he’s a
vampyre—there’s no doubt about that.”
“Good God,” said the man, “I am a living and breathing man like
yourselves. I have done no wrong, and injured no man—be merciful unto
me; I intend no harm.”
“Of course not; send him to the fire—take him back to the ruins—to the
fire.”
“Ay, and run a stake through his body, and then he’s safe for life. I
am sure he has something to do with the vampyre; and who knows, if he
ain’t a vampyre, how soon he may become one?”
“Ah! that’s very true; bring him back to the fire, and we’ll try the
effects of the fire upon his constitution.”
“I tell you what, neighbour, it’s my opinion, that as one fool makes
many, so one vampyre makes many.”
“So it does, so it does; there’s much truth and reason in that
neighbour; I am decidedly of that opinion, too.”
“Come along then,” cried the mob, cuffing and pulling the unfortunate
stranger with them.
“Mercy, mercy!”
But it was useless to call for mercy to men whose superstitious
feelings urged them on; for when the demon of superstition is active,
no matter what form it may take, it always results in cruelty and
wickedness to all.
Various were the shouts and menaces of the mob, and the stranger saw no
hope of life unless he could escape from the hands of the people who
surrounded him.
They had now nearly reached the ruins, and the stranger, who was
certainly a somewhat odd and remarkable looking man, and who appeared
in their eyes the very impersonation of their notions of a vampyre, was
thrust from one to the other, kicked by one, and then cuffed by the
other, as if he was doomed to run the gauntlet.
“Down with the vampyre!” said the mob.
“I am no vampyre,” said the stranger; “I am new to these parts, and I
pray you have mercy upon me. I have done you no wrong. Hear me,—I know
nothing of these people of whom you speak.”
“That won’t do; you’ve come here to see what you can do, I dare say;
and, though you may have been hurt by the vampyre, and may be only
your misfortune, and not your fault, yet the mischief is as great as
ever it was or can be, you become, in spite of yourself, a vampyre, and
do the same injury to others that has been done to you—there’s no help
for you.”
“No help,—we can’t help it,” shouted the mob; “he must die,—throw him
on the pile.”
“Put a stake through him first, though,” exclaimed the humane female;
“put a stake through him, and then he’s safe.”
This horrible advice had an electric effect on the stranger, who jumped
up, and eluded the grasp of several hands that were stretched forth to
seize him.
“Throw him upon the burning wood!” shouted one.
“And a stake through his body,” suggested the humane female again, who
seemed to have this one idea in her heart, and no other, and, upon
every available opportunity, she seemed to be anxious to give utterance
to the comfortable notion.
“Seize him!” exclaimed one.
“Never let him go,” said another; “we’ve gone too far to hang back now;
and, if he escape, he will visit us in our sleep, were it only out of
spite.”
The stranger made a dash among the ruins, and, for a moment,
out-stripped his pursuers; but a few, more adventurous than the rest,
succeeded in driving him into an angle formed by two walls, and the
consequence was, he was compelled to come to a stand.
“Seize him—seize him!” exclaimed all those at a distance.
The stranger, seeing he was now nearly surrounded, and had no chance
of escape, save by some great effort, seized a long piece of wood, and
struck two of his assailants down at once, and then dashed through the
opening.
He immediately made for another part of the ruins, and succeeded in
making his escape for some short distance, but was unable to keep up
the speed that was required, for his great exertion before had nearly
exhausted him, and the fear of a cruel death before his eyes was not
enough to give him strength, or lend speed to his flight. He had
suffered too much from violence, and, though he ran with great speed,
yet those who followed were uninjured, and fresher,—he had no chance.
They came very close upon him at the corner of a field, which he
endeavoured to cross, and had succeeded in doing, and he made a
desperate attempt to scramble up the bank that divided the field from
the next, but he slipped back, almost exhausted, into the ditch, and
the whole mob came up.
However, he got on the bank, and leaped into the next field, and then
he was immediately surrounded by those who pursued him, and he was
struck down.
“Down with the vampyre!—kill him,—he’s one of ’em,—run a stake through
him!” were a few of the cries of the infuriated mob of people, who
were only infuriated because he attempted to escape their murderous
intentions.
It was strange to see how they collected in a ring as the unfortunate
man lay on the ground, panting for breath, and hardly able to
speak—their infuriated countenances plainly showing the mischief they
were intent upon.
“Have mercy upon me!” he exclaimed, as he lay on the earth; “I have no
power to help myself.”
The mob returned no answer, but stood collecting their numbers as they
came up.
“Have mercy on me! it cannot be any pleasure to you to spill my blood.
I am unable to resist—I am one man among many,—you surely cannot wish
to beat me to death?”
“We want to hurt no one, except in our own defence, and we won’t be
made vampyres of because you don’t like to die.”
“No, no; we won’t be vampyres,” exclaimed the mob, and there arose a
great shout from the mob.
“Are you men—fathers?—have you families? if so, I have the same ties as
you have; spare me for their sakes,—do not murder me,—you will leave
one an orphan if you do; besides, what have I done? I have injured no
one.”
“I tell you what, friends, if we listen to him we shall all be
vampyres, and all our children will all be vampyres and orphans.”
“So we shall, so we shall; down with him!”
The man attempted to get up, but, in doing so, he received a heavy blow
from a hedge-stake, wielded by the herculean arm of a peasant. The
sound of the blow was heard by those immediately around, and the man
fell dead. There was a pause, and those nearest, apparently fearful
of the consequences, and hardly expecting the catastrophe, began to
disperse, and the remainder did so very soon afterwards.