The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker (ebook and pdf reader .txt) 📖
- Author: Bram Stoker
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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
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