CHAPTER CLXXVIII.
[Chapter 195]
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 untangibility
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 daisie 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 he [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, [f]or
many a long year. When I do seen [seem?] to repose, then what dreadful images
awake to my senses. Better, far better than 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 pilgimage 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."
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