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

strangely awakening position, the influence of the quiet; and

sleep began to steal over me. Several times I tried to fend it off,

but, as I could not make any overt movement without alarming my

strange and beautiful companion, I had to yield myself to drowsiness.

I was still in such an overwhelming stupor of surprise that I could

not even think freely. There was nothing for me but to control

myself and wait. Before I could well fix my thoughts I was asleep.

 

I was recalled to consciousness by hearing, even through the pall of

sleep that bound me, the crowing of a cock in some of the out-offices

of the castle. At the same instant the figure, lying deathly still

but for the gentle heaving of her bosom, began to struggle wildly.

The sound had won through the gates of her sleep also. With a swift,

gliding motion she slipped from the bed to the floor, saying in a

fierce whisper as she pulled herself up to her full height:

 

“Let me out! I must go! I must go!”

 

By this time I was fully awake, and the whole position of things came

to me in an instant which I shall never—can never—forget: the dim

light of the candle, now nearly burned down to the socket, all the

dimmer from the fact that the first grey gleam of morning was

stealing in round the edges of the heavy curtain; the tall, slim

figure in the brown dressing-gown whose over-length trailed on the

floor, the black hair showing glossy in the light, and increasing by

contrast the marble whiteness of the face, in which the black eyes

sent through their stars fiery gleams. She appeared quite in a

frenzy of haste; her eagerness was simply irresistible.

 

I was so stupefied with amazement, as well as with sleep, that I did

not attempt to stop her, but began instinctively to help her by

furthering her wishes. As she ran behind the screen, and, as far as

sound could inform me,—began frantically to disrobe herself of the

warm dressing-gown and to don again the ice-cold wet shroud, I pulled

back the curtain from the window, and drew the bolt of the glass

door. As I did so she was already behind me, shivering. As I threw

open the door she glided out with a swift silent movement, but

trembling in an agonized way. As she passed me, she murmured in a

low voice, which was almost lost in the chattering of her teeth:

 

“Oh, thank you—thank you a thousand times! But I must go. I MUST!

I MUST! I shall come again, and try to show my gratitude. Do not

condemn me as ungrateful—till then.” And she was gone.

 

I watched her pass the length of the white path, flitting from shrub

to shrub or statue as she had come. In the cold grey light of the

undeveloped dawn she seemed even more ghostly than she had done in

the black shadow of the night.

 

When she disappeared from sight in the shadow of the wood, I stood on

the terrace for a long time watching, in case I should be afforded

another glimpse of her, for there was now no doubt in my mind that

she had for me some strange attraction. I felt even then that the

look in those glorious starry eyes would be with me always so long as

I might live. There was some fascination which went deeper than my

eyes or my flesh or my heart—down deep into the very depths of my

soul. My mind was all in a whirl, so that I could hardly think

coherently. It all was like a dream; the reality seemed far away.

It was not possible to doubt that the phantom figure which had been

so close to me during the dark hours of the night was actual flesh

and blood. Yet she was so cold, so cold! Altogether I could not fix

my mind to either proposition: that it was a living woman who had

held my hand, or a dead body reanimated for the time or the occasion

in some strange manner.

 

The difficulty was too great for me to make up my mind upon it, even

had I wanted to. But, in any case, I did not want to. This would,

no doubt, come in time. But till then I wished to dream on, as

anyone does in a dream which can still be blissful though there be

pauses of pain, or ghastliness, or doubt, or terror.

 

So I closed the window and drew the curtain again, feeling for the

first time the cold in which I had stood on the wet marble floor of

the terrace when my bare feet began to get warm on the soft carpet.

To get rid of the chill feeling I got into the bed on which SHE had

lain, and as the warmth restored me tried to think coherently. For a

short while I was going over the facts of the night—or what seemed

as facts to my remembrance. But as I continued to think, the

possibilities of any result seemed to get less, and I found myself

vainly trying to reconcile with the logic of life the grim episode of

the night. The effort proved to be too much for such concentration

as was left to me; moreover, interrupted sleep was clamant, and would

not be denied. What I dreamt of—if I dreamt at all—I know not. I

only know that I was ready for waking when the time came. It came

with a violent knocking at my door. I sprang from bed, fully awake

in a second, drew the bolt, and slipped back to bed. With a hurried

“May I come in?” Aunt Janet entered. She seemed relieved when she

saw me, and gave without my asking an explanation of her

perturbation:

 

“Oh, laddie, I hae been so uneasy aboot ye all the nicht. I hae had

dreams an’ veesions an’ a’ sorts o’ uncanny fancies. I fear that—”

She was by now drawing back the curtain, and as her eyes took in the

marks of wet all over the floor the current of her thoughts changed:

 

“Why, laddie, whativer hae ye been doin’ wi’ yer baith? Oh, the mess

ye hae made! ‘Tis sinful to gie sic trouble an’ waste … ” And

so she went on. I was glad to hear the tirade, which was only what a

good housewife, outraged in her sentiments of order, would have made.

I listened in patience—with pleasure when I thought of what she

would have thought (and said) had she known the real facts. I was

well pleased to have got off so easily.

 

RUPERT’S JOURNAL—Continued.

April 10, 1907.

 

For some days after what I call “the episode” I was in a strange

condition of mind. I did not take anyone—not even Aunt Janet—into

confidence. Even she dear, and open-hearted and liberal-minded as

she is, might not have understood well enough to be just and

tolerant; and I did not care to hear any adverse comment on my

strange visitor. Somehow I could not bear the thought of anyone

finding fault with her or in her, though, strangely enough, I was

eternally defending her to myself; for, despite my wishes,

embarrassing thoughts WOULD come again and again, and again in all

sorts and variants of queries difficult to answer. I found myself

defending her, sometimes as a woman hard pressed by spiritual fear

and physical suffering, sometimes as not being amenable to laws that

govern the Living. Indeed, I could not make up my mind whether I

looked on her as a living human being or as one with some strange

existence in another world, and having only a chance foothold in our

own. In such doubt imagination began to work, and thoughts of evil,

of danger, of doubt, even of fear, began to crowd on me with such

persistence and in such varied forms that I found my instinct of

reticence growing into a settled purpose. The value of this

instinctive precaution was promptly shown by Aunt Janet’s state of

mind, with consequent revelation of it. She became full of gloomy

prognostications and what I thought were morbid fears. For the first

time in my life I discovered that Aunt Janet had nerves! I had long

had a secret belief that she was gifted, to some degree at any rate,

with Second Sight, which quality, or whatever it is, skilled in the

powers if not the lore of superstition, manages to keep at stretch

not only the mind of its immediate pathic, but of others relevant to

it. Perhaps this natural quality had received a fresh impetus from

the arrival of some cases of her books sent on by Sir Colin. She

appeared to read and reread these works, which were chiefly on occult

subjects, day and night, except when she was imparting to me choice

excerpts of the most baleful and fearsome kind. Indeed, before a

week was over I found myself to be an expert in the history of the

cult, as well as in its manifestations, which latter I had been

versed in for a good many years.

 

The result of all this was that it set me brooding. Such, at least,

I gathered was the fact when Aunt Janet took me to task for it. She

always speaks out according to her convictions, so that her thinking

I brooded was to me a proof that I did; and after a personal

examination I came—reluctantly—to the conclusion that she was

right, so far, at any rate, as my outer conduct was concerned. The

state of mind I was in, however, kept me from making any

acknowledgment of it—the real cause of my keeping so much to myself

and of being so distrait. And so I went on, torturing myself as

before with introspective questioning; and she, with her mind set on

my actions, and endeavouring to find a cause for them, continued and

expounded her beliefs and fears.

 

Her nightly chats with me when we were alone after dinner—for I had

come to avoid her questioning at other times—kept my imagination at

high pressure. Despite myself, I could not but find new cause for

concern in the perennial founts of her superstition. I had thought,

years ago, that I had then sounded the depths of this branch of

psychicism; but this new phase of thought, founded on the really deep

hold which the existence of my beautiful visitor and her sad and

dreadful circumstances had taken upon me, brought me a new concern in

the matter of self-importance. I came to think that I must

reconstruct my self-values, and begin a fresh understanding of

ethical beliefs. Do what I would, my mind would keep turning on the

uncanny subjects brought before it. I began to apply them one by one

to my own late experience, and unconsciously to try to fit them in

turn to the present case.

 

The effect of this brooding was that I was, despite my own will,

struck by the similarity of circumstances bearing on my visitor, and

the conditions apportioned by tradition and superstition to such

strange survivals from earlier ages as these partial existences which

are rather Undead than Living—still walking the earth, though

claimed by the world of the Dead. Amongst them are the Vampire, or

the Wehr-Wolf. To this class also might belong in a measure the

Doppelganger—one of whose dual existences commonly belongs to the

actual world around it. So, too, the denizens of the world of

Astralism. In any of these named worlds there is a material

presence—which must be created, if only for a single or periodic

purpose. It matters not whether a material presence already created

can be receptive of a disembodied soul, or a