The Lady of the Shroud, Bram Stoker [most life changing books .txt] 📗
- Author: Bram Stoker
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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
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