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

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I stopped writing last night—do you know why? Because I wanted to

write more! This sounds a paradox, but it is true. The fact is

that, as I go on telling you of this delightful place, I keep finding

out new beauties myself. Broadly speaking, it IS ALL beautiful. In

the long view or the little view—as the telescope or the microscope

directs—it is all the same. Your eye can turn on nothing that does

not entrance you. I was yesterday roaming about the upper part of

time Castle, and came across some delightful nooks, which at once I

became fond of, and already like them as if I had known them all my

life. I felt at first a sense of greediness when I had appropriated

to myself several rooms in different places—I who have never in my

life had more than one room which I could call my own—and that only

for a time! But when I slept on it the feeling changed, and its

aspect is now not half bad. It is now under another classification—

under a much more important label—PROPRIETORSHIP. If I were writing

philosophy, I should here put in a cynical remark:

 

“Selfishness is an appanage of poverty. It might appear in the stud-book as by ‘Morals’ out of ‘Wants.’”

 

I have now three bedrooms arranged as my own particular dens. One of

the other two was also a choice of Uncle Roger’s. It is at the top

of one of the towers to the extreme east, and from it I can catch the

first ray of light over the mountains. I slept in it last night, and

when I woke, as in my travelling I was accustomed to do, at dawn, I

saw from my bed through an open window—a small window, for it is in

a fortress tower—the whole great expanse to the east. Not far off,

and springing from the summit of a great ruin, where long ago a seed

had fallen, rose a great silver-birch, and the half-transparent,

drooping branches and hanging clusters of leaf broke the outline of

the grey hills beyond, for the hills were, for a wonder, grey instead

of blue. There was a mackerel sky, with the clouds dropping on the

mountain-tops till you could hardly say which was which. It was a

mackerel sky of a very bold and extraordinary kind—not a dish of

mackerel, but a world of mackerel! The mountains are certainly most

lovely. In this clear air they usually seem close at hand. It was

only this morning, with the faint glimpse of the dawn whilst the

night clouds were still unpierced by the sunlight, that I seemed to

realize their greatness. I have seen the same enlightening effect of

aerial perspective a few times before—in Colorado, in Upper India,

in Thibet, and in the uplands amongst the Andes.

 

There is certainly something in looking at things from above which

tends to raise one’s own self-esteem. From the height, inequalities

simply disappear. This I have often felt on a big scale when

ballooning, or, better still, from an aeroplane. Even here from the

tower the outlook is somehow quite different from below. One

realizes the place and all around it, not in detail, but as a whole.

I shall certainly sleep up here occasionally, when you have come and

we have settled down to our life as it is to be. I shall live in my

own room downstairs, where I can have the intimacy of the garden.

But I shall appreciate it all the more from now and again losing the

sense of intimacy for a while, and surveying it without the sense of

one’s own self-importance.

 

I hope you have started on that matter of the servants. For myself,

I don’t care a button whether or not there are any servants at all;

but I know well that you won’t come till you have made your

arrangements regarding them! Another thing, Aunt Janet. You must

not be killed with work here, and it is all so vast … Why can’t

you get some sort of secretary who will write your letters and do all

that sort of thing for you? I know you won’t have a man secretary;

but there are lots of women now who can write shorthand and

typewrite. You could doubtless get one in the clan—someone with a

desire to better herself. I know you would make her happy here. If

she is not too young, all the better; she will have learned to hold

her tongue and mind her own business, and not be too inquisitive.

That would be a nuisance when we are finding our way about in a new

country and trying to reconcile all sorts of opposites in a whole new

country with new people, whom at first we shan’t understand, and who

certainly won’t understand us; where every man carries a gun with as

little thought of it as he has of buttons! Good-bye for a while.

 

Your loving

RUPERT.

 

From Rupert Sent Leger, Vissarion, to Janet MacKelpie,

Croom.

February 3, 1907.

 

I am back in my own room again. Already it seems to me that to get

here again is like coming home. I have been going about for the last

few days amongst the mountaineers and trying to make their

acquaintance. It is a tough job; and I can see that there will be

nothing but to stick to it. They are in reality the most primitive

people I ever met—the most fixed to their own ideas, which belong to

centuries back. I can understand now what people were like in

England—not in Queen Elizabeth’s time, for that was civilized time,

but in the time of Coeur-de-Lion, or even earlier—and all the time

with the most absolute mastery of weapons of precision. Every man

carries a rifle—and knows how to use it, too. I do believe they

would rather go without their clothes than their guns if they had to

choose between them. They also carry a handjar, which used to be

their national weapon. It is a sort of heavy, straight cutlass, and

they are so expert with it as well as so strong that it is as facile

in the hands of a Blue Mountaineer as is a foil in the hands of a

Persian maitre d’armes. They are so proud and reserved that they

make one feel quite small, and an “outsider” as well. I can see

quite well that they rather resent my being here at all. It is not

personal, for when alone with me they are genial, almost brotherly;

but the moment a few of them get together they are like a sort of

jury, with me as the criminal before them. It is an odd situation,

and quite new to me. I am pretty well accustomed to all sorts of

people, from cannibals to Mahatmas, but I’m blessed if I ever struck

such a type as this—so proud, so haughty, so reserved, so distant,

so absolutely fearless, so honourable, so hospitable. Uncle Roger’s

head was level when he chose them out as a people to live amongst.

Do you know, Aunt Janet, I can’t help feeling that they are very much

like your own Highlanders—only more so. I’m sure of one thing:

that in the end we shall get on capitally together. But it will be a

slow job, and will need a lot of patience. I have a feeling in my

bones that when they know me better they will be very loyal and very

true; and I am not a hair’s-breadth afraid of them or anything they

shall or might do. That is, of course, if I live long enough for

them to have time to know me. Anything may happen with such an

indomitable, proud people to whom pride is more than victuals. After

all, it only needs one man out of a crowd to have a wrong idea or to

make a mistake as to one’s motive—and there you are. But it will be

all right that way, I am sure. I am come here to stay, as Uncle

Roger wished. And stay I shall even if it has to be in a little bed

of my own beyond the garden—seven feet odd long, and not too narrow-

-or else a stone-box of equal proportions in the vaults of St. Sava’s

Church across the Creek—the old burial-place of the Vissarions and

other noble people for a good many centuries back …

 

I have been reading over this letter, dear Aunt Janet, and I am

afraid the record is rather an alarming one. But don’t you go

building up superstitious horrors or fears on it. Honestly, I am

only joking about death—a thing to which I have been rather prone

for a good many years back. Not in very good taste, I suppose, but

certainly very useful when the old man with the black wings goes

flying about you day and night in strange places, sometimes visible

and at others invisible. But you can always hear wings, especially

in the dark, when you cannot see them. YOU know that, Aunt Janet,

who come of a race of warriors, and who have special sight behind or

through the black curtain.

 

Honestly, I am in no whit afraid of the Blue Mountaineers, nor have I

a doubt of them. I love them already for their splendid qualities,

and I am prepared to love them for themselves. I feel, too, that

they will love me (and incidentally they are sure to love you). I

have a sort of undercurrent of thought that there is something in

their minds concerning me—something not painful, but disturbing;

something that has a base in the past; something that has hope in it

and possible pride, and not a little respect. As yet they can have

had no opportunity of forming such impression from seeing me or from

any thing I have done. Of course, it may be that, although they are

fine, tall, stalwart men, I am still a head and shoulders over the

tallest of them that I have yet seen. I catch their eyes looking up

at me as though they were measuring me, even when they are keeping

away from me, or, rather, keeping me from them at arm’s length. I

suppose I shall understand what it all means some day. In the

meantime there is nothing to do but to go on my own way—which is

Uncle Roger’s—and wait and be patient and just. I have learned the

value of that, any way, in my life amongst strange peoples. Good-night.

 

Your loving

RUPERT.

 

From Rupert Sent Leger, Vissarion, to Janet MacKelpie,

Croom.

February 24, 1907.

 

MY DEAR AUNT JANET,

 

I am more than rejoiced to hear that you are coming here so soon.

This isolation is, I think, getting on my nerves. I thought for a

while last night that I was getting on, but the reaction came all too

soon. I was in my room in the east turret, the room on the

corbeille, and saw here and there men passing silently and swiftly

between the trees as though in secret. By-and-by I located their

meeting-place, which was in a hollow in the midst of the wood just

outside the “natural” garden, as the map or plan of the castle calls

it. I stalked that place for all I was worth, and suddenly walked

straight into the midst of them. There were perhaps two or three

hundred gathered, about the very finest lot of men I ever saw in my

life. It was in its way quite an experience, and one not likely to

be repeated, for, as I told you, in this country every man carries a

rifle, and knows how to use it. I do not think I have seen a single

man (or