THE VAMPYRE HAS SERIOUS THOUGHTS.—THE DREAM.—THE RESOLUTION.
The next day after the events that we have detailed, Varney found
himself in a hotel in London. He did not even make the effort to
inquire how the affair connected with the Lady Annetta, in which
towards the last he had played a generous part, prospered.
He was too spirit-broken himself to do so.
For nearly the whole day he remained in a room by himself, and although
to avoid uncomfortable and ungracious remarks being made by the people
of the house, he ordered from time to time food and wine, he, in
accordance with his horrible nature, which forbade him any nourishment
but human blood, touched neither.
During that day he seemed to be suffering acutely, for now and then
as the waiters of the hotel passed the door of the private room he
occupied, they heard deep agonising groans, and when once or twice they
went in, fancying that he must be very ill or dying, they found him
seated at a table on which his head was resting.
He would start up on these occasions, and sternly question them for
interrupting him, so at last they left him alone.
Let us look at him in his solitude.
It is getting towards the dim and dusky hours of late twilight, and he
can only barely be descried as he sits bolt upright in a high-backed
arm-chair, looking at vacancy, while his lips move, and he appears to
be conversing with the spirits of another world, that in their dim
intangibility are not visible to mortal eyes.
Now and then he would strike his breast, and utter a dull groan as if
some sudden recollection of the dreadful past had come over him, with
such a full tide of horror that it could not be resisted.
It was not until a considerable time had elapsed, and the darkness had
greatly increased, that he at length spoke.
“And I was once happy,” he said mournfully, “once happy, because I was
innocent. Oh! gracious Heaven, how long am I to suffer?”
A spasmodic kind of movement of his whole features ensued, that was
quite dreadful to look upon, and would have terrified any one who could
have seen them. Then he spoke again.
“I was happy one hundred and eighty years ago,” he said, “for that has
been the awful duration my life as yet; yes, a hundred and eighty years
have, with their sunshine of summer, and their winter storms, passed
over my head; and I had a wife and children, who, with innocent and
gladsome prattle, would climb my knee and nestle in my bosom. Oh! where
are they all now?”
He wrung his hands, but he did not weep the fount of tears had dried up
for a hundred years in his bosom.
“Yes, yes! the grave holds them—holds them? said I. No, no, long since
have they crumbled into dust, and nothing of them remains as a faint
indication even of who once was human. I, I it was who listened to the
councils of a fiend, and destroyed her who had give up home, kindred,
associations, all for me.”
He rose up from the chair, and seemed to think that he would find some
relief in pacing the room to and fro, but he soon threw himself again
into the seat.
“No, no,” he said, “no peace for me; and I cannot sleep, I have never
slept what mortals call sleep, the sleep of rest and freedom from care,
for many a long year. When I do seem to repose, then what dreadful
images awake to my senses. Better, far better that my glaring eyeballs
should crack with weariness, than that I should taste such repose.”
The sympathetic shudder with which he uttered these words was quite
proof sufficient of his deep and earnest sincerity. He must indeed
have suffered much before he could have give such a sentiment such an
utterance. We pity thee, Varney!
“And when, oh, when will my weary pilgrimage be over,” he ejaculated;
“Oh when will the crime of murder be cleansed from my soul. I killed
her. Yes, I killed her who loved me. A fiend, I know it was a fiend,
whispered suspicion in my ear, suspicion of her who was as pure as the
first ray of sunlight that from heaven shows itself to chase away the
night, but I listened and then created from my own fevered brain the
circumstances that gave suspicion strength and horrible consistency—and
I killed her.”
After the utterance of these words he was silent for a time, and then
in heart-rending accents he again repeated them.
“I killed her—I killed her, and she was innocent. Then I became what I
am. There was a period of madness, I think, but I became a vampyre; I
have died many deaths, but recovered from them all; for ever, by some
strange accident or combination of circumstances, the cold moonbeams
have had access to my lifeless form, and I have recovered.”
By this time the landlord of the hotel in which Varney was staying, had
got in a fearful fidget, for he began to think that he had a madman
in his house, and that it would turn out that his guest had made his
escape from some lunatic asylum.
“I wonder now,” he thought, “if a little soothing civility would do any
good; I will try it. It can’t surely do any harm.”
With this intent the landlord went up stairs to the room in which
Varney the Vampyre was, and he tapped gently at the door.
There was no reply, and after a few moments’ consideration, the
landlord opened the door and peeped in, when he saw his customer
sitting in an arm-chair, in the manner in which we have described him
to sit.
“If you please, sir,” said the landlord, “would you not like——”
“Blood!” said Varney, rising.
The landlord did not wait for any more, but bustled down stairs again
with all the promptitude in his power.
It was a bed-room and sitting-room that Varney occupied at the hotel,
the one adjoining the other, and now although he groaned and sighed at
the idea of repose, he flung himself upon the bed, full dressed, as he
was, and there he lay as still as death itself.
One of those strange fitful kind of slumbers, such as he had himself
described as being so full of dread, came over him.
For a time he was still, as we have said, but then as various images of
agony began to chase each other through his brain, he tossed about his
arms, and more than once the word “mercy” came from his lips in accents
of the most soul-harrowing nature.
This state of things continued for some considerable time, and then in
his sleep a great change came over him, and he fancied he was walking
in a garden replete with all the varied beauties of a southern clime,
and through the centre of which meandered a stream, the chrystal music
of which was delightfully calming and soothing to his senses.
All around seemed to speak of the peace and loveliness of an Eden.
As he wandered on, he fancied that some form was walking by his side,
and that he heard the gentle fall of its feet, and the flutter of
garments.
“Varney,” it said, “you have suffered much.”
“I have. Oh, God knows I have.”
“You would die, Varney, if the moonbeams could be prevented from
reaching you.”
“Yes, yes. But how—how?”
“The ocean. The deep, deep sea hides many a worse secret than the
corpse of a vampyre.”
It might have been that, after all, his sleep was to some extent
refreshing to him, or that the dream he had, had instilled a hope
into him of a release from what, in his case, might truly be called
the bondage of existence; but he certainly arose more calm, cool, and
collected, than he had been for some time past.
“Yes,” he said, “the deep sea holds a secret well, and if I could but
be washed into some of its caverns, I might lie there and rot until the
great world itself had run its course.”
This idea took great possession of him. He thought over various modes
of carrying it out. At one time he thought that if he bought a boat on
the sea coast, and went out alone, sailing away as far from land as he
could, he might be able to accomplish his object. But then he might not
be able to get far enough.
At length he thought of a more feasible and a better plan than that,
and it was to take his passage in some ship for any port, and watch his
opportunity, some night when far from land, to steal up upon the deck
and plunge in the waves.
The more he considered of this plan the better he liked it, and the
more it wore an appearance of probability and an aspect of success, so
at length the thought grew into a resolution.
“Yes, yes,” he muttered, “who knows but that some friendly spirit—for
the mid air that floats ’twixt earth and heaven is peopled with such,
may have whispered such counsel in my ears. It shall be done; I will no
longer hesitate, but make this attempt to shake off the dreadful weight
which mere existence is to me.”