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It seemed now, that, by the concurrence of all parties, Bannerworth Hall
was to be abandoned; and, notwithstanding Henry was loth--as he had,
indeed, from the first shown himself--to leave the ancient abode of his
race, yet, as not only Flora, but the admiral and his friend Mr.
Chillingworth seemed to be of opinion that it would be a prudent course
to adopt, he felt that it would not become him to oppose the measure. He, however, now made his consent to depend wholly upon the full and
free acquiescence of every member of the family. "If," he said, "there be any among us who will say to me 'Continue to
keep open the house in which we have passed so many happy hours, and let
the ancient home of our race still afford a shelter to us,' I shall feel
myself bound to do so; but if both my mother and my brother agree to a
departure from it, and that its hearth shall be left cold and desolate,
be it so. I will not stand in the way of any unanimous wish or
arrangement." "We may consider that, then, as settled," said the admiral, "for I have
spoken to your brother, and he is of our opinion. Therefore, my boy, we
may all be off as soon as we can conveniently get under weigh." "But my mother? "Oh, there, I don't know. You must speak to her yourself. I never, if I
can help it, interfere with the women folks." "If she consent, then I am willing." "Will you ask her?" "I will not ask her to leave, because I know, then, what answer she
would at once give; but she shall hear the proposition, and I will leave
her to decide upon it, unbiased in her judgment by any stated opinion of
mine upon the matter." "Good. That'll do; and the proper way to put it, too. There's no mistake
about that, I can tell you." Henry, although he went through the ceremony of consulting his mother,
had no sort of doubt before he did so that she was sufficiently aware of
the feelings and wishes of Flora to be prepared to yield a ready assent
to the proposition of leaving the Hall. Moreover, Mr. Marchdale had, from the first, been an advocate of such a
course of proceeding, and Henry well knew how strong an influence he had
over Mrs. Bannerworth's mind, in consequence of the respect in which she
held him as an old and valued friend. He was, therefore, prepared for what his mother said, which was,--

"My dear Henry, you know that the wishes of my children, since they have
been grown up and capable of coming to a judgment for themselves, have
ever been laws to me. If you, among you all, agree to leave this place,
do so." "But will you leave it freely, mother?" "Most freely I go with you all; what is it that has made this house and
all its appurtenances pleasant in my eyes, but the presence in it of
those who are so dear to me? If you all leave it, you take with you the
only charms it ever possessed; so it becomes in itself as nothing. I am
quite ready to accompany you all anywhere, so that we do but keep
together." "Then, mother, we may consider that as settled." "As you please." "'It's scarcely as I please. I must confess that I would fain have clung
with a kind of superstitious reverence to this ancient abiding-place of
my race, but it may not be so. Those, perchance, who are more
practically able to come to correct conclusions, in consequence of their
feelings not being sufficiently interested to lead them astray, have
decided otherwise; and, therefore, I am content to leave." "Do not grieve at it, Henry. There has hung a cloud of misfortune over
us all since the garden of this house became the scene of an event which
we can none of us remember but with terror and shuddering." "Two generations of our family must live and die before the remembrance
of that circumstance can be obliterated. But we will think of it no
more." There can no doubt but that the dreadful circumstance to which both Mrs.
Bannerworth and Henry alluded, was the suicide of the father of the
family in the gardens which before has been hinted at in the course of
this narration, as being a circumstance which had created a great
sensation at the time, and cast a great gloom for many months over the
family. The reader will, doubtless, too, recollect that, at his last moments,
this unhappy individual was said to have uttered some incoherent words
about some hidden money, and that the rapid hand of death alone seemed
to prevent him from being explicit upon that subject, and left it merely
a matter of conjecture. As years had rolled on, this affair, even as a subject of speculation,
had ceased to occupy the minds of any of the Bannerworth family, and
several of their friends, among whom was Mr. Marchdale, were decidedly
of opinion that the apparently pointed and mysterious words uttered,
were but the disordered wanderings of an intellect already hovering on
the confines of eternity. Indeed, far from any money, of any amount, being a disturbance to the
last moments of the dissolute man, whose vices and extravagances had
brought his family, to such ruin, it was pretty generally believed that
he had committed suicide simply from a conviction of the impossibility
of raising any more supplies of cash, to enable him to carry on the
career which he had pursued for so long. But to resume. Henry at once communicated to the admiral what his mother had said, and
then the whole question regarding the removal being settled in the
affirmative, nothing remained to be done but to set about it as quickly
as possible. The Bannerworths lived sufficiently distant from the town to be out of
earshot of the disturbances which were then taking place; and so
completely isolated were they from all sort of society, that they had no
notion of the popular disturbance which Varney the vampyre had given
rise to. It was not until the following morning that Mr. Chillingworth, who had
been home in the meantime, brought word of what had taken place, and
that great commotion was still in the town, and that the civil
authorities, finding themselves by far too weak to contend against the
popular will, had sent for assistance to a garrison town, some twenty
miles distant. It was a great grief to the Bannerworth family to hear these tidings,
not that they were in any way, except as victims, accessory to creating
the disturbance about the vampyre, but it seemed to promise a kind of
notoriety which they might well shrink from, and which they were just
the people to view with dislike. View the matter how we like, however, it is not to be considered as at
all probable that the Bannerworth family would remain long in ignorance
of what a great sensation they had created unwittingly in the
neighbourhood. The very reasons which had induced their servants to leave their
establishment, and prefer throwing themselves completely out of place,
rather than remain in so ill-omened a house, were sure to be bruited
abroad far and wide.