The Lair of the White Worm, Bram Stoker [novels to read .TXT] 📗

savages.  Then he got up in the world and became an Obi-man, which gives an opportunity to wealth via blackmail.  Finally, he reached the highest honour in hellish service.  He became a user of Voodoo, which seems to be a service of the utmost baseness and cruelty.  I was told some of his deeds of cruelty, which are simply sickening.  They made me long for an opportunity of helping to drive him back to hell.  You might think to look at him that you could measure in some way the extent of his vileness; but it would be a vain hope.  Monsters such as he is belong to an earlier and more rudimentary stage of barbarism.  He is in his way a clever fellow—for a nigger; but is none the less dangerous or the less hateful for that.  The men in the ship told me that he was a collector: some of them had seen his collections.  Such collections!  All that was potent for evil in bird or beast, or even in fish.  Beaks that could break and rend and tear—all the birds represented were of a predatory kind.  Even the fishes are those which are born to destroy, to wound, to torture.  The collection, I assure you, was an object lesson in human malignity.  This being has enough evil in his face to frighten even a strong man.  It is little wonder that the sight of it put that poor girl into a dead faint!”

Nothing more could be done at the moment, so they separated.

Adam was up in the early morning and took a smart walk round the Brow.  As he was passing Diana’s Grove, he looked in on the short avenue of trees, and noticed the snakes killed on the previous morning by the mongoose.  They all lay in a row, straight and rigid, as if they had been placed by hands.  Their skins seemed damp and sticky, and they were covered all over with ants and other insects.  They looked loathsome, so after a glance, he passed on.

A little later, when his steps took him, naturally enough, past the entrance to Mercy Farm, he was passed by the negro, moving quickly under the trees wherever there was shadow.  Laid across one extended arm, looking like dirty towels across a rail, he had the horrid-looking snakes.  He did not seem to see Adam.  No one was to be seen at Mercy except a few workmen in the farmyard, so, after waiting on the chance of seeing Mimi, Adam began to go slowly home.

Once more he was passed on the way.  This time it was by Lady Arabella, walking hurriedly and so furiously angry that she did not recognise him, even to the extent of acknowledging his bow.

When Adam got back to Lesser Hill, he went to the coach-house where the box with the mongoose was kept, and took it with him, intending to finish at the Mound of Stone what he had begun the previous morning with regard to the extermination.  He found that the snakes were even more easily attacked than on the previous day; no less than six were killed in the first half-hour.  As no more appeared, he took it for granted that the morning’s work was over, and went towards home.  The mongoose had by this time become accustomed to him, and was willing to let himself be handled freely.  Adam lifted him up and put him on his shoulder and walked on.  Presently he saw a lady advancing towards him, and recognised Lady Arabella.

Hitherto the mongoose had been quiet, like a playful affectionate kitten; but when the two got close, Adam was horrified to see the mongoose, in a state of the wildest fury, with every hair standing on end, jump from his shoulder and run towards Lady Arabella.  It looked so furious and so intent on attack that he called a warning.

“Look out—look out!  The animal is furious and means to attack.”

Lady Arabella looked more than ever disdainful and was passing on; the mongoose jumped at her in a furious attack.  Adam rushed forward with his stick, the only weapon he had.  But just as he got within striking distance, the lady drew out a revolver and shot the animal, breaking his backbone.  Not satisfied with this, she poured shot after shot into him till the magazine was exhausted.  There was no coolness or hauteur about her now; she seemed more furious even than the animal, her face transformed with hate, and as determined to kill as he had appeared to be.  Adam, not knowing exactly what to do, lifted his hat in apology and hurried on to Lesser Hill.

CHAPTER VIII—SURVIVALS

At breakfast Sir Nathaniel noticed that Adam was put out about something, but he said nothing.  The lesson of silence is better remembered in age than in youth.  When they were both in the study, where Sir Nathaniel followed him, Adam at once began to tell his companion of what had happened.  Sir Nathaniel looked graver and graver as the narration proceeded, and when Adam had stopped he remained silent for several minutes, before speaking.

“This is very grave.  I have not formed any opinion yet; but it seems to me at first impression that this is worse than anything I had expected.”

“Why, sir?” said Adam.  “Is the killing of a mongoose—no matter by whom—so serious a thing as all that?”

His companion smoked on quietly for quite another few minutes before he spoke.

“When I have properly thought it over I may moderate my opinion, but in the meantime it seems to me that there is something dreadful behind all this—something that may affect all our lives—that may mean the issue of life or death to any of us.”

Adam sat up quickly.

“Do tell me, sir, what is in your mind—if, of course, you have no objection, or do not think it better to withhold it.”

“I have no objection, Adam—in fact, if I had, I should have to overcome it.  I fear there can be no more reserved thoughts between us.”

“Indeed, sir, that sounds serious, worse than serious!”

“Adam, I greatly fear that the time has come for us—for you and me, at all events—to speak out plainly to one another.  Does not there seem something very mysterious about this?”

“I have thought so, sir, all along.  The only difficulty one has is what one is to think and where to begin.”

“Let us begin with what you have told me.  First take the conduct of the mongoose.  He was quiet, even friendly and affectionate with you.  He only attacked the snakes, which is, after all, his business in life.”

“That is so!”

“Then we must try to find some reason why he attacked Lady Arabella.”

“May it not be that a mongoose may have merely the instinct to attack, that nature does not allow or provide him with the fine reasoning powers to discriminate who he is to attack?”

“Of course that may be so.  But, on the other hand, should we not satisfy ourselves why he does wish to attack anything?  If for centuries, this particular animal is known to attack only one kind of other animal, are we not justified in assuming that when one of them attacks a hitherto unclassed animal, he recognises in that animal some quality which it has in common with the hereditary enemy?”

“That is a good argument, sir,” Adam went on, “but a dangerous one.  If we followed it out, it would lead us to believe that Lady Arabella is a snake.”

“We must be sure, before going to such an end, that there is no point as yet unconsidered which would account for the unknown thing which puzzles us.”

“In what way?”

“Well, suppose the instinct works on some physical basis—for instance, smell.  If there were anything in recent juxtaposition to the attacked which would carry the scent, surely that would supply the missing cause.”

“Of course!” Adam spoke with conviction.

“Now, from what you tell me, the negro had just come from the direction of Diana’s Grove, carrying the dead snakes which the mongoose had killed the previous morning.  Might not the scent have been carried that way?”

“Of course it might, and probably was.  I never thought of that.  Is there any possible way of guessing approximately how long a scent will remain?  You see, this is a natural scent, and may derive from a place where it has been effective for thousands of years.  Then, does a scent of any kind carry with it any form or quality of another kind, either good or evil?  I ask you because one ancient name of the house lived in by the lady who was attacked by the mongoose was ‘The Lair of the White Worm.’  If any of these things be so, our difficulties have multiplied indefinitely.  They may even change in kind.  We may get into moral entanglements; before we know it, we may be in the midst of a struggle between good and evil.”

Sir Nathaniel smiled gravely.

“With regard to the first question—so far as I know, there are no fixed periods for which a scent may be active—I think we may take it that that period does not run into thousands of years.  As to whether any moral change accompanies a physical one, I can only say that I have met no proof of the fact.  At the same time, we must remember that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are terms so wide as to take in the whole scheme of creation, and all that is implied by them and by their mutual action and reaction.  Generally, I would say that in the scheme of a First Cause anything is possible.  So long as the inherent forces or tendencies of any one thing are veiled from us we must expect mystery.”

“There is one other question on which I should like to ask your opinion.  Suppose that there are any permanent forces appertaining to the past, what we may call ‘survivals,’ do these belong to good as well as to evil?  For instance, if the scent of the primaeval monster can so remain in proportion to the original strength, can the same be true of things of good import?”

Sir Nathaniel thought for a while before he answered.

“We must be careful not to confuse the physical and the moral.  I can see that already you have switched on the moral entirely, so perhaps we had better follow it up first.  On the side of the moral, we have certain justification for belief in the utterances of revealed religion.  For instance, ‘the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much’ is altogether for good.  We have nothing of a similar kind on the side of evil.  But if we accept this dictum we need have no more fear of ‘mysteries’: these become thenceforth merely obstacles.”

Adam suddenly changed to another phase of the subject.

“And now, sir, may I turn for a few minutes to purely practical things, or rather to matters of historical fact?”

Sir Nathaniel bowed acquiescence.

“We have already spoken of the history, so far as it is known, of some of the places round us—‘Castra Regis,’ ‘Diana’s Grove,’ and ‘The Lair of the White Worm.’  I would like to ask if there is anything not necessarily of evil import about any of the places?”

“Which?” asked Sir Nathaniel shrewdly.

“Well, for instance, this house and Mercy Farm?”

“Here we turn,” said Sir Nathaniel, “to the other side, the light side of things.  Let us take Mercy Farm first.  When Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory to Christianise England, in the time of the Romans, he was received and protected by Ethelbert, King of Kent, whose wife, daughter of Charibert, King of Paris, was a Christian, and did much for Augustine.  She founded a nunnery in memory of Columba, which was named Sedes misericordioe, the House of Mercy, and, as the region was Mercian, the two names became involved.  As Columba is the Latin for dove, the dove became a sort of signification of the nunnery.  She seized on the idea and made the newly-founded nunnery a house of doves.  Someone sent her a freshly-discovered dove, a sort of carrier, but which had in the white feathers of its head and neck the form of a religious cowl.  The nunnery flourished for more than a century, when, in the time of Penda, who was the reactionary of heathendom, it fell into decay.  In the meantime the doves, protected by religious feeling, had increased mightily, and were known in all Catholic communities.  When King Offa ruled in Mercia, about a hundred and fifty years later, he restored Christianity, and under its protection the nunnery of St. Columba was restored and its doves flourished again.  In process of time this religious house again fell into desuetude; but before it disappeared it had achieved a great name for good works, and in especial for the piety of its members.  If deeds and prayers and hopes and earnest thinking leave anywhere any moral effect, Mercy Farm and all