Varney the Vampire; Or, the Feast of Blood by Prest and Rymer (most recommended books .txt) 📕

was striking twelve, and as I went past it some of my clothes, I suppose, caught the large weight, but it was knocked off, and down the stairs it rolled, going with such a lump from one to the other, and I couldn't catch it because it rolled so fast, that I made sure you would be awakened; so I came down to tell you what it was, and it was some time before I could get your room door open, and when I did I found you out of bed and insensible.'"

There was a general look of disappointment when this explanation was given, and one said,—

"Then it was not the vampire?"

"Certainly not."

"And, after all, only a clock weight."

"That's about it."

"Why didn't you tell us that at first?"

"Because that would have spoilt the story."

There was a general murmur of discontent, and, after a few moments one man said, with some vivacity,—

"Well, although our friend's vampyre has turned out, after all, to be nothing but a confounded clock-weight, there's no disputing the fact about Sir Francis Varney being a vampyre, and not a clock-weight."

"Very true—very true."

"And what's to be done to rid the town of such a man?"

"Oh, don't call him a man."

"Well, a monster."

"Ah, that's more like. I tell you what, sir, if you had got a light, when you first heard the noise in your room, and gone out to see what it was, you would have spared yourself much fright."

"Ah, no doubt; it's always easy afterwards to say, if you had done this, and if you had done the other, so and so would have been the effect; but there is something about the hour of midnight that makes men tremble."

"Well," said one, who had not yet spoken, "I don't see why twelve at night should be a whit more disagreeable than twelve at day."

"Don't you?"

"Not I."

"Now, for instance, many a party of pleasure goes to that old ruin where Sir Francis Varney so unaccountably disappeared in broad daylight. But is there any one here who would go to it alone, and at midnight?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"I would."

"What! and after what has happened as regards the vampyre in connection with it?"

"Yes, I would."

"I'll bet you twenty shilling you won't."

"And I—and I," cried several.

"Well, gentlemen," said the man, who certainly shewed no signs of fear, "I will go, and not only will I go and take all your bets, but, if I do meet the vampyre, then I'll do my best to take him prisoner."

"And when will you go?"

"To-night," he cried, and he sprang to his feet; "hark ye all, I don't believe one word about vampyres. I'll go at once; it's getting late, and let any one of you, in order that you may be convinced I have been to the place, give me any article, which I will hide among the ruins; and tell you where to find it to-morrow in broad daylight."

"Well," said one, "that's fair, Tom Eccles. Here's a handkerchief of mine; I should know it again among a hundred others."

"Agreed; I'll leave it in the ruins."

The wagers were fairly agreed upon; several handkerchiefs were handed to Tom Eccles; and at eleven o'clock he fairly started, through the murky darkness of the night, to the old ruin where Sir Francis Varney and Marchdale were holding their most unholy conference.

It is one thing to talk and to accept wagers in the snug parlour of an inn, and another to go alone across a tract of country wrapped in the profound stillness of night to an ancient ruin which, in addition to the natural gloom which might well be supposed to surround it, has superadded associations which are anything but of a pleasant character.

Tom Eccles, as he was named, was one of those individuals who act greatly from impulse. He was certainly not a coward, and, perhaps, really as free from superstition as most persons, but he was human, and consequently he had nerves, and he had likewise an imagination.

He went to his house first before he started on his errand to the ruins. It was to get a horse-pistol which he had, and which he duly loaded and placed in his pocket. Then he wrapped himself up in a great-coat, and with the air of a man quite determined upon something desperate he left the town.

The guests at the inn looked after him as he walked from the door of that friendly establishment, and some of them, as they saw his resolved aspect, began to quake for the amount of the wagers they had laid upon his non-success.

However, it was resolved among them, that they would stay until half-past twelve, in the expectation of his return, before they separated.

To while away the time, he who had been so facetious about his story of the clock-weight, volunteered to tell what happened to a friend of his who went to take possession of some family property which he became possessed of as heir-at-law to an uncle who had died without a will, having an illegitimate family unprovided for in every shape.

"Ah! nobody cares for other people's illegitimate children, and, if their parents don't provide for them, why, the workhouse is open for them, just as if they were something different from other people."

"So they are; if their parents don't take care of them, and provide for them, nobody else will, as you say, neighbour, except when they have a Fitz put to their name, which tells you they are royal bastards, and of course unlike anybody else's."

"But go on—let's know all about it; we sha'n't hear what he has got to say at all, at this rate."

"Well, as I was saying, or about to say, the nephew, as soon as he heard his uncle was dead, comes and claps his seal upon everything in the house."

"But, could he do so?" inquired one of the guests.

"I don't see what was to hinder him," replied a third. "He could do so, certainly."

"But there was a son, and, as I take it, a son's nearer than a nephew any day."

"But the son is illegitimate."

"Legitimate, or illegitimate, a son's a son; don't bother me about distinction of that sort; why, now, there was old Weatherbit—"

"Order, order."

"Let's hear the tale."

"Very good, gentlemen, I'll go on, if I ain't to be interrupted; but I'll say this, that an illegitimate son is no son, in the eyes of the law; or at most he's an accident quite, and ain't what he is, and so can't inherit."

"Well, that's what I call making matters plain," said one of the guests, who took his pipe from his mouth to make room for the remark; "now that is what I likes."

"Well, as I have proved then," resumed the speaker, "the nephew was the heir, and into the house he would come. A fine affair it was too—the illegitimates looking the colour of sloes; but he knew the law, and would have it put in force."

"Law's law, you know."

"Uncommonly true that; and the nephew stuck to it like a cobbler to his last—he said they should go out, and they did go out; and, say what they would about their natural claims, he would not listen to them, but bundled them out and out in a pretty short space of time."

"It was trying to them, mind you, to leave the house they had been born in with very different expectations to those which now appeared to be their fate. Poor things, they looked ruefully enough, and well they might, for there was a wide world for them, and no prospect of a warm corner.

"Well, as I was saying, he had them all out and the house clear to himself.

"Now," said he, "I have an open field and no favour. I don't care for no—Eh! what?"

"There was a sudden knocking, he thought, the door, and went and opened it, but nothing was to be seen.

"Oh! I see—somebody next door; and if it wasn't, it don't matter. There's nobody here. I'm alone, and there's plenty of valuables in the house. That is what I call very good company. I wouldn't wish for better."

He turned about, looked over room after room, and satisfied himself that he was alone—that the house was empty.

At every room he entered he paused to think over the value—what it was worth, and that he was a very fortunate man in having dropped into such a good thing.

"Ah! there's the old boy's secretary, too—his bureau—there'll be something in that that will amuse me mightily; but I don't think I shall sit up late. He was a rum old man, to say the least of it—a very odd sort of