Varney the Vampire 2(128)

 

"Varney," he cried, "Varney, be calm! you will be listened to by one who will draw no harsh--no hasty conclusions; by one, who, with that charity, I grieve to say, is rare, will place upon the words you utter the most favourable construction. Tell me all, I pray you, tell me all."

 

"This is strange," said the vampyre. "I never thought that aught human could thus have moved me. Young man, you have touched the chords of memory; they vibrate throughout my heart, producing cadences and sounds of years long past. Bear with me awhile."

 

"And you will speak to me?"

 

"I will."

 

"Having your promise, then, I am content, Varney."

 

"But you must be secret; not even in the wildest waste of nature, where you can well presume that naught but Heaven can listen to your whisperings, must you utter one word of that which I shall tell to you."

 

"Alas!" said Charles, "I dare not take such a confidence; I have said that it is not for myself; I seek such knowledge of what you are, and what you have been, but it is for another so dear to me, that all the charms of life that make up other men's delights, equal not the witchery of one glance from her, speaking as it does of the glorious light from that Heaven which is eternal, from whence she sprung."

 

"And you reject my communication," said Varney, "because I will not give you leave to expose it to Flora Bannerworth?"

 

"It must be so."

 

"And you are most anxious to hear that which I have to relate?"

 

"Most anxious, indeed--indeed, most anxious."

 

"Then have I found in that scruple which besets your mind, a better argument for trusting you, than had ye been loud in protestation. Had your promises of secrecy been but those which come from the lip, and not from the heart, my confidence would not have been rejected on such grounds. I think that I dare trust you."

 

"With leave to tell to Flora that which you shall communicate."

 

"You may whisper it to her, but to no one else, without my special leave and licence."

 

"I agree to those terms, and will religiously preserve them."

 

"I do not doubt you for one moment; and now I will tell to you what never yet has passed my lips to mortal man. Now will I connect together some matters which you may have heard piecemeal from others."

 

"What others are they?"

 

"Dr. Chillingworth, and he who once officiated as a London hangman."

 

"I have heard something from those quarters."

 

"Listen then to me, and you shall better understand that which you have heard. Some years ago, it matters not the number, on a stormy night, towards the autumn of the year, two men sat alone in poverty, and that species of distress which beset the haughty, profligate, daring man, who has been accustomed all his life to its most enticing enjoyments, but never to that industry which alone ought to produce them, and render them great and magnificent."

 

"Two men; and who were they?"

 

"I was one. Look upon me! I was of those men; and strong and evil passions were battling in my heart."

 

"And the other!"

 

"Was Marmaduke Bannerworth."

 

"Gracious Heaven! the father of her whom I adore; the suicide."

 

"Yes, the same; that man stained with a thousand vices--blasted by a thousand crimes--the father of her who partakes nothing of his nature, who borrows nothing from his memory but his name--was the man who there sat with me, plotting and contriving how, by fraud or violence, we were to lead our usual life of revelry and wild audacious debauch."

 

"Go on, go on; believe me, I am deeply interested."

 

"I can see as much. We were not nice in the various schemes which our prolific fancies engendered. If trickery, and the false dice at the gaming-table, sufficed not to fill our purses, we were bold enough for violence. If simple robbery would not succeed, we could take a life."

 

"Murder?"

 

"Ay, call it by its proper name, a murder. We sat till the midnight hour had passed, without arriving at a definite conclusion; we saw no plan of practicable operation, and so we wandered onwards to one of those deep dens of iniquity, a gaming-house, wherein we had won and lost thousands.

 

"We had no money, but we staked largely, in the shape of a wager, upon the success of one of the players; we knew not, or cared not, for the consequence, if we had lost; but, as it happened, we were largely successful, and beggars as we had walked into that place, we might have left it independent men.

 

"But when does the gambler know when to pause in his career? If defeat awakens all the raging passions of humanity within his bosom, success but feeds the great vice that has been there engendered. To the dawn of morn we played; the bright sun shone in, and yet we played--the midday came, and went--the stimulant of wine supported us, and still we played; then came the shadows of evening, stealing on in all their beauty. But what were they to us, amid those mutations of fortune, which, at one moment, made us princes, and placed palaces at our control, and, at another, debased us below the veriest beggar, that craves the stinted alms of charity from door to door.