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

then when you come to consider the number of people we have buried—how many have gone to their last homes—and how many more will go the same way."—"Yes, yes; that's all very well, Jacob. You are precious surly this morning. I'll come to-night. You're brewing a sentimental tale as sure as eggs is eggs."

"Well, that is pretty certain; but as I was saying how many more are there—"

"Ah, don't bother yourself with calculations that have neither beginning nor end, and which haven't one point to go. Come, Jacob, have you finished yet?"—"Quite," said Jacob.

They now arranged the pall, and placed all in readiness, and returned to a place down stairs where they could enjoy themselves for an odd half hour, and pass that time away until the moment should arrive when his reverence would be ready to bury the deceased, upon consideration of the fees to be paid upon the occasion.

The tap-room was crowded, and there was no room for the men, and they were taken into the kitchen, where they were seated, and earnestly at work, preparing for the ceremony that had so shortly to be performed.

"Any better, Jacobs?"—"What do you mean?" inquired Jacobs, with a groan. "It's news to me if I have been ill."

"Oh, yes, you were doleful up stairs, you know."—"I've a proper regard for my profession—that's the difference between you and I, you know."

"I'll wager you what you like, now, that I'll handle a corpse and drive a screw in a coffin as well as you, now, although you are so solid and miserable."—"So you may—so you may."

"Then what do you mean by saying I haven't a proper regard for my profession?"—"I say you haven't, and there's the thing that shall prove it—you don't look it, and that's the truth."

"I don't look like an undertaker! indeed I dare say I don't if I ain't dressed like one."—"Nor when you are," reiterated Jacob.

"Why not, pray?"—"Because you have always a grin on your face as broad as a gridiron—that's why."

This ended the dispute, for the employer of the men suddenly put his head in, saying,—

"Come, now, time's up; you are wanted up stairs, all of you. Be quick; we shall have his reverence waiting for us, and then we shall lose his recommendation."

"Ready sir," said the round man, taking up his pint and finishing it off at a draught, at the same moment he thrust the remains of some bread and cheese into his pocket.

Jacob, too, took his pot, and, having finished it, with great gravity followed the example of his more jocose companion, and they all left the kitchen for the room above, where the corpse was lying ready for interment.

There was an unusual bustle; everybody was on the tip-top of expectation, and awaiting the result in a quiet hurry, and hoped to have the first glimpse of the coffin, though why they should do so it was difficult to define. But in this fit of mysterious hope and expectation they certainly stood.

"Will they be long?" inquired a man at the door of one inside,—"will they be long before they come?"—"They are coming now," said the man. "Do you all keep quiet; they are knocking their heads against the top of the landing. Hark! There, I told you so."

The man departed, hearing something, and being satisfied that he had got some information.

"Now, then," said the landlord, "move out of the way, and allow the corpse to pass out. Let me have no indecent conduct; let everything be as it should be."

The people soon removed from the passage and vicinity of the doorway, and then the mournful procession—as the newspapers have it—moved forward. They were heard coming down stairs, and thence along the passage, until they came to the street, and then the whole number of attendants was plainly discernible.

How different was the funeral of one who had friends. He was alone; none followed, save the undertaker and his attendants, all of whom looked solemn from habit and professional motives. Even the jocose man was as supernaturally solemn as could be well imagined; indeed, nobody knew he was the same man.

"Well," said the landlord, as he watched them down the street, as they slowly paced their way with funereal, not sorrowful, solemnity—"well, I am very glad that it is all over."

"It has been a sad plague to you," said one.

"It has, indeed; it must be to any one who has had another such a job as this. I don't say it out of any disrespect to the poor man who is dead and gone—quite the reverse; but I would not have such another affair on my hands for pounds."

"I can easily believe you, especially when we come to consider the disagreeables of a mob."

"You may say that. There's no knowing what they will or won't do, confound them! If they'd act like men, and pay for what they have, why, then I shouldn't care much about them; but it don't do to have other people in the bar."

"I should think not, indeed; that would alter the scale of your profits, I reckon."

"It would make all the difference to me. Business," added the landlord, "conducted on that scale, would become a loss; and a man might as well walk into a well at once."

"So I should say. Have many such occurrences as these been usual in this part of the country?" inquired the stranger.

"Not usual at all," said the landlord; "but the fact is, the whole neighbourhood has run distracted about some superhuman being they call a vampyre."

"Indeed!"—"Yes; and they suspected the unfortunate man who has been lying up-stairs, a corpse, for some days."

"Oh, the man they have just taken in the coffin to bury?" said the stranger.

"Yes, sir, the same."

"Well, I thought perhaps somebody of great consequence had suddenly become defunct."—"Oh, dear no; it would not have caused half the sensation; people have been really mad."

"It was a strange occurrence, altogether, I believe, was it?" inquired the stranger.—"Indeed it was, sir. I hardly know the particulars, there have been so many tales afloat; though they all concur in one point, and that is, it has destroyed the peace of one family."

"Who has done so?"—"The vampyre."

"Indeed! I never heard of such an animal, save as a fable, before; it seems to me extraordinary."

"So it would do to any one, sir, as was not on the spot, to see it; I'm sure I wouldn't."

In the meantime, the procession, short as it was of itself, moved along in slow time through a throng of people who ran out of their houses on either side of the way, and lined the whole length of the town.

Many of these closed in behind, and followed the mourners until they were near the church, and then they made a rush to get into the churchyard.

As yet all had been conducted with tolerable propriety, the funeral met with no impediment. The presence of death among so many of them seemed some check upon the licence of the mob, who bowed in silence to the majesty of death.

Who could bear ill-will against him who was now no more? Man, while he is man, is always the subject of hatred, fear, or love. Some one of these passions, in a modified state, exists in all men, and with such feelings they will regard each other; and it is barely possible that any one should not be the object of some of these, and hence the stranger's corpse was treated with respect.

In silence the body proceeded along the highway until it came to the churchyard, and followed by an immense multitude of people of all grades.

The authorities trembled; they knew not what all this portended. They thought it might pass off; but it might become a storm first; they hoped and feared by turns, till some of them fell sick with apprehension.

There was a deep silence observed by all those in the immediate vicinity of the coffin, but those farther in the rear found full expression for their feelings.

"Do you think," said an old man to another, "that he will come to life again, eh?"—"Oh, yes, vampyres always do, and lay in the moonlight, and then they come to life again. Moonlight recovers a vampyre to life again."

"And yet the moonlight is cold."—"Ah, but who's to tell what may happen to a vampyre, or what's hot or what's cold?"

"Certainly not; oh, dear, no."—"And then they have permission to suck the blood of other people, to live themselves, and to make other people vampyres, too."

"The lord have mercy upon us!"—"Ay, but they have driven a stake through this one, and he can't get in moonlight or daylight; it's all over—he's certainly done for; we may congratulate ourselves on this point."

"So we may—so we may."