Creatures of the Night (Boxed Set Edition). Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг

or two until he came to the table, at which he clutched for support. He turned very pale as he said, in a faint voice—

      "Is—is she mad, or am I?"

      "Tell him I am mad, Henry," cried Flora. "Do not, oh, do not make his lonely thoughts terrible with more than that. Tell him I am mad."

      "Come with me," whispered Henry to Holland. "I pray you come with me at once, and you shall know all."

      "I—will."

      "George, stay with Flora for a time. Come, come, Mr. Holland, you ought, and you shall know all; then you can come to a judgment for yourself. This way, sir. You cannot, in the wildest freak of your imagination, guess that which I have now to tell you."

      Never was mortal man so utterly bewildered by the events of the last hour of his existence as was now Charles Holland, and truly he might well be so. He had arrived in England, and made what speed he could to the house of a family whom he admired for their intelligence, their high culture, and in one member of which his whole thoughts of domestic happiness in this world were centered, and he found nothing but confusion, incoherence, mystery, and the wildest dismay.

      Well might he doubt if he were sleeping or waking—well might he ask if he or they were mad.

      And now, as, after a long, lingering look of affection upon the pale, suffering face of Flora, he followed Henry from the room, his thoughts were busy in fancying a thousand vague and wild imaginations with respect to the communication which was promised to be made to him.

      But, as Henry had truly said to him, not in the wildest freak of his imagination could he conceive of any thing near the terrible strangeness and horror of that which he had to tell him, and consequently he found himself closeted with Henry in a small private room, removed from the domestic part of the hall, to the full in as bewildered a state as he had been from the first.

      CHAPTER XI.

       Table of Contents

      THE COMMUNICATIONS TO THE LOVER.—THE HEART'S DESPAIR.

      Consternation is sympathetic, and any one who had looked upon the features of Charles Holland, now that he was seated with Henry Bannerworth, in expectation of a communication which his fears told him was to blast all his dearest and most fondly cherished hopes for ever, would scarce have recognised in him the same young man who, one short hour before, had knocked so loudly, and so full of joyful hope and expectation, at the door of the hall.

      But so it was. He knew Henry Bannerworth too well to suppose that any unreal cause could blanch his cheek. He knew Flora too well to imagine for one moment that caprice had dictated the, to him, fearful words of dismissal she had uttered to him.

      Happier would it at that time have been for Charles Holland had she acted capriciously towards him, and convinced him that his true heart's devotion had been cast at the feet of one unworthy of so really noble a gift. Pride would then have enabled him, no doubt, successfully to resist the blow. A feeling of honest and proper indignation at having his feelings trifled with, would, no doubt, have sustained him, but, alas! the case seemed widely different.

      True, she implored him to think of her no more—no longer to cherish in his breast the fond dream of affection which had been its guest so long; but the manner in which she did so brought along with it an irresistible conviction, that she was making a noble sacrifice of her own feelings for him, from some cause which was involved in the profoundest mystery.

      But now he was to hear all. Henry had promised to tell him, and as he looked into his pale, but handsomely intellectual face, he half dreaded the disclosure he yet panted to hear.

      "Tell me all, Henry—tell me all," he said. "Upon the words that come from your lips I know I can rely."

      "I will have no reservations with you," said Henry, sadly. "You ought to know all, and you shall. Prepare yourself for the strangest revelation you ever heard."

      "Indeed!"

      "Ay. One which in hearing you may well doubt; and one which, I hope, you will never find an opportunity of verifying."

      "You speak in riddles."

      "And yet speak truly, Charles. You heard with what a frantic vehemence Flora desired you to think no more of her?"

      "I did—I did."

      "She was right. She is a noble-hearted girl for uttering those words. A dreadful incident in our family has occurred, which might well induce you to pause before uniting your fate with that of any member of it."

      "Impossible. Nothing can possibly subdue the feelings of affection I entertain for Flora. She is worthy of any one, and, as such, amid all changes—all mutations of fortune, she shall be mine."

      "Do not suppose that any change of fortune has produced the scene you were witness to."

      "Then, what else?"

      "I will tell you, Holland. In all your travels, and in all your reading, did you ever come across anything about vampyres?"

      "About what?" cried Charles, drawing his chair forward a little. "About what?"

      "You may well doubt the evidence of your own ears, Charles Holland, and wish me to repeat what I said. I say, do you know anything about vampyres?"

      Charles Holland looked curiously in Henry's face, and the latter immediately added—

      "I can guess what is passing in your mind at present, and I do not wonder at it. You think I must be mad."

      "Well, really, Henry, your extraordinary question—"

      "I knew it. Were I you, I should hesitate to believe the tale; but the fact is, we have every reason to believe that one member of our own family is one of those horrible preternatural beings called vampyres."

      "Good God, Henry, can you allow your judgment for a moment to stoop to such a supposition?"

      "That is what I have asked myself a hundred times; but, Charles Holland, the judgment, the feelings, and all the prejudices, natural and acquired, must succumb to actual ocular demonstration. Listen to me, and do not interrupt me. You shall know all, and you shall know it circumstantially."

      Henry then related to the astonished Charles Holland all that had occurred, from the first alarm of Flora, up to that period when he, Holland, caught her in his arms as she was about to leave the room.

      "And now," he said, in conclusion, "I cannot tell what opinion you may come to as regards these most singular events. You will recollect that here is the unbiassed evidence of four or five people to the facts, and, beyond that, the servants, who have seen something of the horrible visitor."

      "You bewilder me, utterly," said Charles Holland.

      "As we are all bewildered."

      "But—but, gracious Heaven! it cannot be."

      "It is."

      "No—no. There is—there must be yet some dreadful mistake."

      "Can you start any supposition by which we can otherwise explain any of the phenomena I have described to you? If you can, for Heaven's sake do so, and you will find no one who will cling to it with more tenacity than I."

      "Any other species or kind of supernatural appearance might admit of argument; but this, to my perception, is too wildly improbable—too much at variance with all we see and know of the operations of nature."

      "It is so. All that we have told ourselves repeatedly, and yet is all human reason at once struck down by the few brief words of—'We have seen it.'"

      "I would doubt my eyesight."