Were you to enact
before my very eyes some of those feats which, to the senses of others,
would stamp you as the preternatural being you assume to be, I would
doubt the evidence of my own senses ere I permitted such a bugbear to
oppress my brain." "Go," said Sir Francis Varney, "go: I have no more words for you; I have
nothing to relate to you." "Nay, you have already listened sufficiently to me to give me a hope
that I had awakened some of the humanity that was in your nature. Do
not, Sir Francis Varney, crush that hope, even as it was budding forth;
not for my own sake do I ask you for revelations; that may,
perhaps--must be painful for you; but for the sake of Flora Bannerworth,
to whom you owe abundance of reparation." "No, no." "In the name of all that is great, and good, and just, I call upon you
for justice." "What have I to do with such an invocation? Utter such a sentiment to
men who, like yourself, are invested with the reality as well as the
outward show of human nature." "Nay, Sir Francis Varney, now you belie yourself. You have passed
through a long, and, perchance, a stormy life. Can you look back upon
your career, and find no reminiscences of the past that shall convince
you that you are of the great family of man, and have had abundance of
human feelings and of human affections?" "Peace, peace!" "Nay, Sir Francis Varney, I will take your word, and if you will lay
your hand upon your heart, and tell me truly that you never felt what it
was to love--to have all feeling, all taste, and all hope of future joy,
concentrated in one individual, I will despair, and leave you. If you
will tell me that never, in your whole life, you have felt for any fair
and glorious creature, as I now feel for Flora Bannerworth, a being for
whom you could have sacrificed not only existence, but all the hopes of
a glorious future that bloom around it--if you will tell me, with the
calm, dispassionate aspect of truth, that you have held yourself aloof
from such human feelings, I will no longer press you to a disclosure
which I shall bring no argument to urge." The agitation of Sir Francis Varney's countenance was perceptible, and
Charles Holland was about to speak again, when, striking him upon the
breast with his clinched hand, the vampyre checked him, saying--

"Do you wish to drive me mad, that you thus, from memory's hidden cells,
conjure up images of the past?" "Then there are such images to conjure up--there are such shadows only
sleeping, but which require only, as you did even now, but a touch to
awaken them to life and energy. Oh, Sir Francis Varney, do not tell me
that you are not human." The vampyre made a furious gesture, as if he would have attacked Charles
Holland; but then he sank nearly to the floor, as if soul-stricken by
some recollection that unnerved his arm; he shook with unwonted emotion,
and, from the frightful livid aspect of his countenance, Charles dreaded
some serious accession of indisposition, which might, if nothing else
did, prevent him from making the revelation he so much sought to hear
from his lips. "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.