The Lady of the Shroud - Bram Stoker (phonics reader txt) 📗
- Author: Bram Stoker
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on the stone flooring, I fled up the steep steps, and through the dim
expanse of the church, out into the bright sunlight. I found that I
had mechanically raised the fallen lamp, and had taken it with me in
my flight.
My feet naturally turned towards home. It was all instinctive. The
new horror had—for the time, at any rate—drowned my mind in its
mystery, deeper than the deepest depths of thought or imagination.
RUPERT’S JOURNAL—Continued.
May 1, 1907.
For some days after the last adventure I was in truth in a half-dazed
condition, unable to think sensibly, hardly coherently. Indeed, it
was as much as I could do to preserve something of my habitual
appearance and manner. However, my first test happily came soon, and
when I was once through it I reacquired sufficient self-confidence to
go through with my purpose. Gradually the original phase of
stupefaction passed, and I was able to look the situation in the
face. I knew the worst now, at any rate; and when the lowest point
has been reached things must begin to mend. Still, I was wofully
sensitive regarding anything which might affect my Lady of the
Shroud, or even my opinion of her. I even began to dread Aunt
Janet’s Second-Sight visions or dreams. These had a fatal habit of
coming so near to fact that they always made for a danger of
discovery. I had to realize now that the Lady of the Shroud might
indeed be a Vampire—one of that horrid race that survives death and
carries on a life-in-death existence eternally and only for evil.
Indeed, I began to EXPECT that Aunt Janet would ere long have some
prophetic insight to the matter. She had been so wonderfully correct
in her prophetic surmises with regard to both the visits to my room
that it was hardly possible that she could fail to take cognizance of
this last development.
But my dread was not justified; at any rate, I had no reason to
suspect that by any force or exercise of her occult gift she might
cause me concern by the discovery of my secret. Only once did I feel
that actual danger in that respect was close to me. That was when
she came early one morning and rapped at my door. When I called out,
“Who is that? What is it?” she said in an agitated way:
“Thank God, laddie, you are all right! Go to sleep again.”
Later on, when we met at breakfast, she explained that she had had a
nightmare in the grey of the morning. She thought she had seen me in
the crypt of a great church close beside a stone coffin; and, knowing
that such was an ominous subject to dream about, came as soon as she
dared to see if I was all right. Her mind was evidently set on death
and burial, for she went on:
“By the way, Rupert, I am told that the great church on time top of
the cliff across the creek is St. Sava’s, where the great people of
the country used to be buried. I want you to take me there some day.
We shall go over it, and look at the tombs and monuments together. I
really think I should be afraid to go alone, but it will be all right
if you are with me.” This was getting really dangerous, so I turned
it aside:
Really, Aunt Janet, I’m afraid it won’t do. If you go off to weird
old churches, and fill yourself up with a fresh supply of horrors, I
don’t know what will happen. You’ll be dreaming dreadful things
about me every night and neither you nor I shall get any sleep.” It
went to my heart to oppose her in any wish; and also this kind of
chaffy opposition might pain her. But I had no alternative; the
matter was too serious to be allowed to proceed. Should Aunt Janet
go to the church, she would surely want to visit the crypt. Should
she do so, and there notice the glass-covered tomb—as she could not
help doing—the Lord only knew what would happen. She had already
Second-Sighted a woman being married to me, and before I myself knew
that I had such a hope. What might she not reveal did she know where
the woman came from? It may have been that her power of Second Sight
had to rest on some basis of knowledge or belief, and that her vision
was but some intuitive perception of my own subjective thought. But
whatever it was it should be stopped—at all hazards.
This whole episode set me thinking introspectively, and led me
gradually but imperatively to self-analysis—not of powers, but of
motives. I found myself before long examining myself as to what were
my real intentions. I thought at first that this intellectual
process was an exercise of pure reason; but soon discarded this as
inadequate—even impossible. Reason is a cold manifestation; this
feeling which swayed and dominated me is none other than passion,
which is quick, hot, and insistent.
As for myself, the self-analysis could lead to but one result—the
expression to myself of the reality and definiteness of an already-formed though unconscious intention. I wished to do the woman good—
to serve her in some way—to secure her some benefit by any means, no
matter how difficult, which might be within my power. I knew that I
loved her—loved her most truly and fervently; there was no need for
self-analysis to tell me that. And, moreover, no self-analysis, or
any other mental process that I knew of, could help my one doubt:
whether she was an ordinary woman (or an extraordinary woman, for the
matter of that) in some sore and terrible straits; or else one who
lay under some dreadful condition, only partially alive, and not
mistress of herself or her acts. Whichever her condition might be,
there was in my own feeling a superfluity of affection for her. The
self-analysis taught me one thing, at any rate—that I had for her,
to start with, an infinite pity which had softened towards her my
whole being, and had already mastered merely selfish desire. Out of
it I began to find excuses for her every act. In the doing so I knew
now, though perhaps I did not at the time the process was going on,
that my view in its true inwardness was of her as a living woman—the
woman I loved.
In the forming of our ideas there are different methods of work, as
though the analogy with material life holds good. In the building of
a house, for instance, there are many persons employed; men of
different trades and occupations—architect, builder, masons,
carpenters, plumbers, and a host of others—and all these with the
officials of each guild or trade. So in the world of thought and
feelings: knowledge and understanding come through various agents,
each competent to its task.
How far pity reacted with love I knew not; I only knew that whatever
her state might be, were she living or dead, I could find in my heart
no blame for the Lady of the Shroud. It could not be that she was
dead in the real conventional way; for, after all, the Dead do not
walk the earth in corporal substance, even if there be spirits which
take the corporal form. This woman was of actual form and weight.
How could I doubt that, at all events—I, who had held her in my
arms? Might it not be that she was not quite dead, and that it had
been given to me to restore her to life again? Ah! that would be,
indeed, a privilege well worth the giving my life to accomplish.
That such a thing may be is possible. Surely the old myths were not
absolute inventions; they must have had a basis somewhere in fact.
May not the world-old story of Orpheus and Eurydice have been based
on some deeplying principle or power of human nature? There is not
one of us but has wished at some time to bring back the dead. Ay,
and who has not felt that in himself or herself was power in the deep
love for our dead to make them quick again, did we but know the
secret of how it was to be done?
For myself, I have seen such mysteries that I am open to conviction
regarding things not yet explained. These have been, of course,
amongst savages or those old-world people who have brought unchecked
traditions and beliefs—ay, and powers too—down the ages from the
dim days when the world was young; when forces were elemental, and
Nature’s handiwork was experimental rather than completed. Some of
these wonders may have been older still than the accepted period of
our own period of creation. May we not have to-day other wonders,
different only in method, but not more susceptible of belief? Obi-ism and Fantee-ism have been exercised in my own presence, and their
results proved by the evidence of my own eyes and other senses. So,
too, have stranger rites, with the same object and the same success,
in the far Pacific Islands. So, too, in India and China, in Thibet
and in the Golden Chersonese. On all and each of these occasions
there was, on my own part, enough belief to set in motion the powers
of understanding; and there were no moral scruples to stand in the
way of realization. Those whose lives are so spent that they achieve
the reputation of not fearing man or God or devil are not deterred in
their doing or thwarted from a set purpose by things which might
deter others not so equipped for adventure. Whatever may be before
them—pleasant or painful, bitter or sweet, arduous or facile,
enjoyable or terrible, humorous or full of awe and horror—they must
accept, taking them in the onward course as a good athlete takes
hurdles in his stride. And there must be no hesitating, no looking
back. If the explorer or the adventurer has scruples, he had better
give up that special branch of effort and come himself to a more
level walk in life. Neither must there be regrets. There is no need
for such; savage life has this advantage: it begets a certain
toleration not to be found in conventional existence.
RUPERT’S JOURNAL—Continued.
May 2, 1907.
I had heard long ago that Second Sight is a terrible gift, even to
its possessor. I am now inclined not only to believe, but to
understand it. Aunt Janet has made such a practice of it of late
that I go in constant dread of discovery of my secret. She seems to
parallel me all the time, whatever I may do. It is like a sort of
dual existence to her; for she is her dear old self all the time, and
yet some other person with a sort of intellectual kit of telescope
and notebook, which are eternally used on me. I know they are FOR
me, too—for what she considers my good. But all the same it makes
an embarrassment. Happily Second Sight cannot speak as clearly as it
sees, or, rather, as it understands. For the translation of the
vague beliefs which it inculcates is both nebulous and uncertain—a
sort of Delphic oracle which always says things which no one can make
out at the time, but which can be afterwards read in any one of
several ways. This is all right, for in my case it is a kind of
safety; but, then, Aunt Janet is a very clever woman, and some time
she herself may be able to understand. Then she may begin to put two
and two together. When she does that, it will
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