The Lady of the Shroud - Bram Stoker (phonics reader txt) 📗

compel you or interfere with you. I

only express a hope. But one thing I do more than hope—I desire, if

you will honour my wishes, that, come what may, you are to keep your

British nationality, unless by special arrangement with and consent

of the Privy Council. Such arrangement to be formally made by my

friend, Edward Bingham Trent, or whomsoever he may appoint by deed or

will to act in the matter, and made in such a way that no act save

that alone of Parliament in all its estates, and endorsed by the

King, may or can prevail against it.

 

My last word to you is, Be bold and honest, and fear not. Most

things—even kingship—SOMEWHERE may now and again be won by the

sword. A brave heart and a strong arm may go far. But whatever is

so won cannot be held merely by the sword. Justice alone can hold in

the long run. Where men trust they will follow, and the rank and

file of people want to follow, not to lead. If it be your fortune to

lead, be bold. Be wary, if you will; exercise any other faculties

that may aid or guard. Shrink from nothing. Avoid nothing that is

honourable in itself. Take responsibility when such presents itself.

What others shrink from, accept. That is to be great in what world,

little or big, you move. Fear nothing, no matter of what kind danger

may be or whence it come. The only real way to meet danger is to

despise it—except with your brains. Meet it in the gate, not the

hall.

 

My kinsman, the name of my race and your own, worthily mingled in

your own person, now rests with you!

 

Letter from Rupert Sent Leger, 32 Bodmin Street, Victoria, S.W., to

Miss Janet MacKelpie, Croom, Ross-shire.

January 3, 1907.

 

MY DEAREST AUNT JANET,

 

You will, I know, be rejoiced to hear of the great good-fortune which

has come to me through the Will of Uncle Roger. Perhaps Sir Colin

will have written to you, as he is one of the executors, and there is

a bequest to you, so I must not spoil his pleasure of telling you of

that part himself. Unfortunately, I am not free to speak fully of my

own legacy yet, but I want you to know that at worst I am to receive

an amount many times more than I ever dreamt of possessing through

any possible stroke of fortune. So soon as I can leave London—

where, of course, I must remain until things are settled—I am coming

up to Croom to see you, and I hope I shall by then be able to let you

know so much that you will be able to guess at the extraordinary

change that has come to my circumstances. It is all like an

impossible dream: there is nothing like it in the “Arabian Nights.”

However, the details must wait, I am pledged to secrecy for the

present. And you must be pledged too. You won’t mind, dear, will

you? What I want to do at present is merely to tell you of my own

good-fortune, and that I shall be going presently to live for a while

at Vissarion. Won’t you come with me, Aunt Janet? We shall talk

more of this when I come to Croom; but I want you to keep the subject

in your mind.

 

Your loving

RUPERT.

 

From Rupert Sent Leger’s Journal.

January 4, 1907.

 

Things have been humming about me so fast that I have had hardly time

to think. But some of the things have been so important, and have so

changed my entire outlook on life, that it may be well to keep some

personal record of them. I may some day want to remember some

detail—perhaps the sequence of events, or something like that—and

it may be useful. It ought to be, if there is any justice in things,

for it will be an awful swot to write it when I have so many things

to think of now. Aunt Janet, I suppose, will like to keep it locked

up for me, as she does with all my journals and papers. That is one

good thing about Aunt Janet amongst many: she has no curiosity, or

else she has some other quality which keeps her from prying as other

women would. It would seem that she has not so much as opened the

cover of one of my journals ever in her life, and that she would not

without my permission. So this can in time go to her also.

 

I dined last night with Mr. Trent, by his special desire. The dinner

was in his own rooms. Dinner sent in from the hotel. He would not

have any waiters at all, but made them send in the dinner all at

once, and we helped ourselves. As we were quite alone, we could talk

freely, and we got over a lot of ground while we were dining. He

began to tell me about Uncle Roger. I was glad of that, for, of

course, I wanted to know all I could of him, and the fact was I had

seen very little of him. Of course, when I was a small kid he was

often in our house, for he was very fond of mother, and she of him.

But I fancy that a small boy was rather a nuisance to him. And then

I was at school, and he was away in the East. And then poor mother

died while he was living in the Blue Mountains, and I never saw him

again. When I wrote to him about Aunt Janet he answered me very

kindly but he was so very just in the matter that I got afraid of

him. And after that I ran away, and have been roaming ever since; so

there was never a chance of our meeting. But that letter of his has

opened my eyes. To think of him following me that way all over the

world, waiting to hold out a helping hand if I should want it, I only

wish I had known, or even suspected, the sort of man he was, and how

he cared for me, and I would sometimes have come back to see him, if

I had to come half round the world. Well, all I can do now is to

carry out his wishes; that will be my expiation for my neglect. He

knew what he wanted exactly, and I suppose I shall come in time to

know it all and understand it, too.

 

I was thinking something like this when Mr. Trent began to talk, so

that all he said fitted exactly into my own thought. The two men

were evidently great friends—I should have gathered that, anyhow,

from the Will—and the letters—so I was not surprised when Mr. Trent

told me that they had been to school together, Uncle Roger being a

senior when he was a junior; and had then and ever after shared each

other’s confidence. Mr. Trent, I gathered, had from the very first

been in love with my mother, even when she was a little girl; but he

was poor and shy, and did not like to speak. When he had made up his

mind to do so, he found that she had by then met my father, and could

not help seeing that they loved each other. So he was silent. He

told me he had never said a word about it to anyone—not even to my

Uncle Roger, though he knew from one thing and another, though he

never spoke of it, that he would like it. I could not help seeing

that the dear old man regarded me in a sort of parental way—I have

heard of such romantic attachments being transferred to the later

generation. I was not displeased with it; on the contrary, I liked

him better for it. I love my mother so much—I always think of her

in the present—that I cannot think of her as dead. There is a tie

between anyone else who loved her and myself. I tried to let Mr.

Trent see that I liked him, and it pleased him so much that I could

see his liking for me growing greater. Before we parted he told me

that he was going to give up business. He must have understood how

disappointed I was—for how could I ever get along at all without

him?—for he said, as he laid a hand quite affectionately, I thought-

-on my shoulder:

 

“I shall have one client, though, whose business I always hope to

keep, and for whom I shall be always whilst I live glad to act—if he

will have me.” I did not care to speak as I took his hand. He

squeezed mine, too, and said very earnestly:

 

“I served your uncle’s interests to the very best of my ability for

nearly fifty years. He had full confidence in me, and I was proud of

his trust. I can honestly say, Rupert—you won’t mind me using that

familiarity, will you?—that, though the interests which I guarded

were so vast that without abusing my trust I could often have used my

knowledge to my personal advantage, I never once, in little matters

or big, abused that trust—no, not even rubbed the bloom off it. And

now that he has remembered me in his Will so generously that I need

work no more, it will be a very genuine pleasure and pride to me to

carry out as well as I can the wishes that I partly knew, and now

realize more fully towards you, his nephew.”

 

In the long chat which we had, and which lasted till midnight, he

told me many very interesting things about Uncle Roger. When, in the

course of conversation, he mentioned that the fortune Uncle Roger

left must be well over a hundred millions, I was so surprised that I

said out loud—I did not mean to ask a question:

 

“How on earth could a man beginning with nothing realize such a

gigantic fortune?”

 

“By all honest ways,” he answered, “and his clever human insight. He

knew one half of the world, and so kept abreast of all public and

national movements that he knew the critical moment to advance money

required. He was always generous, and always on the side of freedom.

There are nations at this moment only now entering on the

consolidation of their liberty, who owe all to him, who knew when and

how to help. No wonder that in some lands they will drink to his

memory on great occasions as they used to drink his health.”

 

“As you and I shall do now, sir!” I said, as I filled my glass and

stood up. We drank it in bumpers. We did not say a word, either of

us; but the old gentleman held out his hand, and I took it. And so,

holding hands, we drank in silence. It made me feel quite choky; and

I could see that he, too, was moved.

 

From E. B. Trent’s Memoranda.

January 4, 1907.

 

I asked Mr. Rupert Sent Leger to dine with me at my office alone, as

I wished to have a chat with him. To-morrow Sir Colin and I will

have a formal meeting with him for the settlement of affairs, but I

thought it best to have an informal talk with him alone first, as I

wished to tell him certain matters which will make our meeting to-morrow more productive of utility, as he can now have more full

understanding of the subjects which we have to discuss. Sir Colin is

all that can be in manhood, and I could wish no better colleague in

the executorship of this