The Jewel of Seven Stars, Bram Stoker [books to read for self improvement txt] 📗

were

a large number of Egyptian objects in Mr. Trelawny’s house; but until I

came to deal with them seriatim I had little idea of either their

importance, the size of some of them, or of their endless number. Far

into the night we worked. At times we used all the strength which we

could muster on a single object; again we worked separately, but always

under Mr. Trelawny’s immediate direction. He himself, assisted by

Margaret, kept an exact tall of each piece.

 

It was only when we sat down, utterly wearied, to a long-delayed supper

that we began to realised that a large part of the work was done. Only

a few of the packing-cases, however, were closed; for a vast amount of

work still remained. We had finished some of the cases, each of which

held only one of the great sarcophagi. The cases which held many objects

could not be closed till all had been differentiated and packed.

 

I slept that night without movement or without dreams; and on our

comparing notes in the morning, I found that each of the others had had

the same experience.

 

By dinner-time next evening the whole work was complete, and all was

ready for the carriers who were to come at midnight. A little before

the appointed time we heard the rumble of carts; then we were shortly

invaded by an army of workmen, who seemed by sheer force of numbers to

move without effort, in an endless procession, all our prepared

packages. A little over an hour sufficed them, and when the carts had

rumbled away, we all got ready to follow them to Paddington. Silvio was

of course to be taken as one of our party.

 

Before leaving we went in a body over the house, which looked desolate

indeed. As the servants had all gone to Cornwall there had been no

attempt at tidying-up; every room and passage in which we had worked,

and all the stairways, were strewn with paper and waste, and marked with

dirty feet.

 

The last thing which Mr. Trelawny did before coming away was to take

from the great safe the Ruby with the Seven Stars. As he put it safely

into his pocket-book, Margaret, who had all at once seemed to grow

deadly tired and stood beside her father pale and rigid, suddenly became

all aglow, as though the sight of the Jewel had inspired her. She

smiled at her father approvingly as she said:

 

“You are right, Father. There will not be any more trouble tonight.

She will not wreck your arrangements for any cause. I would stake my

life upon it.”

 

“She—or something—wrecked us in the desert when we had come from the

tomb in the Valley of the Sorcerer!” was the grim comment of Corbeck,

who was standing by. Margaret answered him like a flash:

 

“Ah! she was then near her tomb from which for thousands of years her

body had not been moved. She must know that things are different now.”

 

“How must she know?” asked Corbeck keenly.

 

“If she has that astral body that Father spoke of, surely she must know!

How can she fail to, with an invisible presence and an intellect that

can roam abroad even to the stars and the worlds beyond us!” She

paused, and her father said solemnly:

 

“It is on that supposition that we are proceeding. We must have the

courage of our convictions, and act on them—to the last!”

 

Margaret took his hand and held it in a dreamy kind of way as we filed

out of the house. She was holding it still when he locked the hall

door, and when we moved up the road to the gateway, whence we took a cab

to Paddington.

 

When all the goods were loaded at the station, the whole of the workmen

went on to the train; this took also some of the stone-wagons used for

carrying the cases with the great sarcophagi. Ordinary carts and plenty

of horses were to be found at Westerton, which was our station for

Kyllion. Mr. Trelawny had ordered a sleeping-carriage for our party;

as soon as the train had started we all turned into our cubicles.

 

That night I slept sound. There was over me a conviction of security

which was absolute and supreme. Margaret’s definite announcement:

“There will not be any trouble tonight!” seemed to carry assurance with

it. I did not question it; nor did anyone else. It was only afterwards

that I began to think as to how she was so sure. The train was a slow

one, stopping many times and for considerable intervals. As Mr.

Trelawny did not wish to arrive at Westerton before dark, there was no

need to hurry; and arrangements had been made to feed the workmen at

certain places on the journey. We had our own hamper with us in the

private car.

 

All that afternoon we talked over the Great Experiment, which seemed to

have become a definite entity in our thoughts. Mr. Trelawny became more

and more enthusiastic as the time wore on; hope was with him becoming

certainty. Doctor Winchester seemed to become imbued with some of his

spirit, though at times he would throw out some scientific fact which

would either make an impasse to the other’s line of argument, or would

come as an arresting shock. Mr. Corbeck, on the other hand, seemed

slightly antagonistic to the theory. It may have been that whilst the

opinions of the others advanced, his own stood still; but the effect was

an attitude which appeared negative, if not wholly one of negation.

 

As for Margaret, she seemed to be in some way overcome. Either it was

some new phase of feeling with her, or else she was taking the issue

more seriously than she had yet done. She was generally more or less

distraite, as though sunk in a brown study; from this she would recover

herself with a start. This was usually when there occurred some marked

episode in the journey, such as stopping at a station, or when the

thunderous rumble of crossing a viaduct woke the echoes of the hills or

cliffs around us. On each such occasion she would plunge into the

conversation, taking such a part in it as to show that, whatever had

been her abstracted thought, her senses had taken in fully all that had

gone on around her. Towards myself her manner was strange. Sometimes

it was marked by a distance, half shy, half haughty, which was new to

me. At other times there were moments of passion in look and gesture

which almost made me dizzy with delight. Little, however, of a marked

nature transpired during the journey. There was but one episode which

had in it any element of alarm, but as we were all asleep at the time it

did not disturb us. We only learned it from a communicative guard in the

morning. Whilst running between Dawlish and Teignmouth the train was

stopped by a warning given by someone who moved a torch to and fro right

on the very track. The driver had found on pulling up that just ahead

of the train a small landslip had taken place, some of the red earth

from the high bank having fallen away. It did not however reach to the

metals; and the driver had resumed his way, none too well pleased at the

delay. To use his own words, the guard thought “there was too much

bally caution on this ‘ere line!’”

 

We arrived at Westerton about nine o’clock in the evening. Carts and

horses were in waiting, and the work of unloading the train began at

once. Our own party did not wait to see the work done, as it was in the

hands of competent people. We took the carriage which was in waiting,

and through the darkness of the night sped on to Kyllion.

 

We were all impressed by the house as it appeared in the bright

moonlight. A great grey stone mansion of the Jacobean period; vast and

spacious, standing high over the sea on the very verge of a high cliff.

When we had swept round the curve of the avenue cut through the rock,

and come out on the high plateau on which the house stood, the crash and

murmur of waves breaking against rock far below us came with an

invigorating breath of moist sea air. We understood then in an instant

how well we were shut out from the world on that rocky shelf above the

sea.

 

Within the house we found all ready. Mrs. Grant and her staff had

worked well, and all was bright and fresh and clean. We took a brief

survey of the chief rooms and then separated to have a wash and to

change our clothes after our long journey of more than four-and-twenty

hours.

 

We had supper in the great dining-room on the south side, the walls of

which actually hung over the sea. The murmur came up muffled, but it

never ceased. As the little promontory stood well out into the sea, the

northern side of the house was open; and the due north was in no way

shut out by the great mass of rock, which, reared high above us, shut

out the rest of the world. Far off across the bay we could see the

trembling lights of the castle, and here and there along the shore the

faint light of a fisher’s window. For the rest the sea was a dark blue

plain with an occasional flicker of light as the gleam of starlight fell

on the slope of a swelling wave.

 

When supper was over we all adjourned to the room which Mr. Trelawny had

set aside as his study, his bedroom being close to it. As we entered,

the first thing I noticed was a great safe, somewhat similar to that

which stood in his room in London. When we were in the room Mr.

Trelawny went over to the table, and, taking out his pocket-book, laid

it on the table. As he did so he pressed down on it with the palm of

his hand. A strange pallor came over his face. With fingers that

trembled he opened the book, saying as he did so:

 

“Its bulk does not seem the same; I hope nothing has happened!”

 

All three of us men crowded round close. Margaret alone remained calm;

she stood erect and silent, and still as a statue. She had a far-away

look in her eyes, as though she did not either know or care what was

going on around her.

 

With a despairing gesture Trelawny threw open the pouch of the

pocket-book wherein he had placed the Jewel of Seven Stars. As he sank

down on the chair which stood close to him, he said in a hoarse voice:

 

“My God! it is gone. Without it the Great Experiment can come to

nothing!”

 

His words seemed to wake Margaret from her introspective mood. An

agonised spasm swept her face; but almost on the instant she was calm.

She almost smiled as she said:

 

“You may have left it in your room, Father. Perhaps it has fallen out

of the pocket-book whilst you were changing.” Without a word we all

hurried into the next room through the open door between the study and

the bedroom. And then a sudden calm fell on us like a cloud of fear.

 

There! on the table, lay the Jewel of Seven Stars, shining and sparkling

with lurid light, as though each of the seven points of each the seven

stars gleamed through blood!

 

Timidly we each looked behind us, and then at each other. Margaret was

now like the rest of us. She