The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker (ebook and pdf reader .txt) 📖
- Author: Bram Stoker
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state of our commissariat arrangements. Afte it, by Mr. Trelawny’s
advice, we separated; each to prepare in our own way for the strain of
the coming night. Margaret looked pale and somewhat overwrought, so I
advised her to lie down and try to sleep. She promised that she would.
The abstraction which had been upon her fitfully all day lifted for the
time; with all her old sweetness and loving delicacy she kissed me
good-bye for the present! With the sense of happiness which this gave
me I went out for a walk on the cliffs. I did not want to think; and I
had an instinctive feeling that fresh air and God’s sunlight, and the
myriad beauties of the works of His hand would be the best preparation
of fortitude for what was to come.
When I got back, all the party were assembling for a late tea. Coming
fresh from the exhilaration of nature, it struck me as almost comic that
we, who were nearing the end of so strange—almost monstrous—an
undertaking, should be yet bound by the needs and habits of our lives.
All the men of the party were grave; the time of seclusion, even if it
had given them rest, had also given opportunity for thought. Margaret
was bright, almost buoyant; but I missed about her something of her
usual spontaneity. Towards myself there was a shadowy air of reserve,
which brought back something of my suspicion. When tea was over, she
went out of the room; but returned in a minute with the roll of drawing
which she had taken with her earlier in the day. Coming close to Mr.
Trelawny, she said:
“Father, I have been carefully considering what you said today about
the hidden meaning of those suns and hearts and ‘Ka’s’, and I have been
examining the drawings again.”
“And with what result, my child?” asked Mr. Trelawny eagerly.
“There is another reading possible!”
“And that?” His voice was now tremulous with anxiety. Margaret spoke
with a strange ring in her voice; a ring that cannot be, unless there is
the consciousness of truth behind it:
“It means that at the sunset the ‘Ka’ is to enter the ‘Ab’; and it is
only at the sunrise that it will leave it!”
“Go on!” said her father hoarsely.
“It means that for this night the Queen’s Double, which is otherwise
free, will remain in her heart, which is mortal and cannot leave its
prison-place in the mummy-shrouding. It means that when the sun has
dropped into the sea, Queen Tera will cease to exist as a conscious
power, till sunrise; unless the Great Experiment can recall her to
waking life. It means that there will be nothing whatever for you or
others to fear from her in such way as we have all cause to remember.
Whatever change may come from the working of the Great Experiment, there
can come none from the poor, helpless, dead woman who has waited all
those centuries for this night; who has given up to the coming hour all
the freedom of eternity, won in the old way, in hope of a new life in a
new world such as she longed for … !” She stopped suddenly. As she
had gone on speaking there had come with her words a strange pathetic,
almost pleading, tone which touched me to the quick. As she stopped, I
could see, before she turned away her head, that her eyes were full of
tears.
For once the heart of her father did not respond to her feeling. He
looked exultant, but with a grim masterfulness which reminded me of the
set look of his stern face as he had lain in the trance. He did not
offer any consolation to his daughter in her sympathetic pain. He only
said:
“We may test the accuracy of your surmise, and of her feeling, when the
time comes!” Having said so, he went up the stone stairway and into his
own room. Margaret’s face had a troubled look as she gazed after him.
Strangely enough her trouble did not as usual touch me to the quick.
When Mr. Trelawny had gone, silence reigned. I do not think that any of
us wanted to talk. Presently Margaret went to her room, and I went out
on the terrace over the sea. The fresh air and the beauty of all before
helped to restore the good spirits which I had known earlier in the day.
Presently i felt myself actually rejoicing in the belief that the danger
which I had feared from the Queen’s violence on the coming night was
obviated. I believed in Margaret’s belief so thoroughly that it did not
occur to me to dispute her reasoning. In a lofty frame of mind, and
with less anxiety than I had felt for days, I went to my room and lay
down on the sofa.
I was awaked by Corbeck calling to me, hurriedly:
“Come down to the cave as quickly as you can. Mr. Trelawny wants to see
us all there at once. Hurry!”
I jumped up and ran down to the cave. All were there except Margaret,
who came immediately after me carrying Silvio in her arms. When the cat
saw his old enemy he struggled to get down; but Margaret held him fast
and soothed him. I looked at my watch. It was close to eight.
When Margaret was with us her father said directly, with a quiet
insistence which was new to me:
“You believe, Margaret, that Queen Tera has voluntarily undertaken to
give up her freedom for this night? To become a mummy and nothing more,
till the Experiment has been completed? To be content that she shall be
powerless under all and any circumstances until after all is over and
the act of resurrection has been accomplished, or the effort has
failed?” After a pause Margaret answered in a low voice:
“Yes!”
In the pause her whole being, appearance, expression, voice, manner had
changed. Even Silvio noticed it, and with a violent effort wriggled away
from her arms; she did not seem to notice the act. I expected that the
cat, when he had achieved his freedom, would have attacked the mummy;
but on this occasion he did not. He seemed too cowed to approach it.
He shrunk away, and with a piteous “miaou” came over and rubbed himself
against my ankles. I took him up in my arms, and he nestled there
content. Mr. Trelawny spoke again:
“You are sure of what you say! You believe it with all your soul?”
Margaret’s face had lost the abstracted look; it now seemed illuminated
with the devotion of one to whom is given to speak of great things. She
answered in a voice which, though quiet, vibrated with conviction:
“I know it! My knowledge is beyond belief!” Mr. Trelawny spoke again:
“Then you are so sure, that were you Queen Tera herself, you would be
willing to prove it in any way that I might suggest?”
“Yes, any way!” the answer rang out fearlessly. He spoke again, in a
voice in which was no note of doubt:
“Even in the abandonment of your Familiar to death—to annihilation.”
She paused, and I could see that she suffered—suffered horribly. There
was in her eyes a hunted look, which no man can, unmoved, see in the
eyes of his beloved. I was about to interrupt, when her father’s eyes,
glancing round with a fierce determination, met mine. I stood silent,
almost spellbound; so also the other men. Something was going on before
us which we did not understand!
With a few long strides Mr. Trelawny went to the west side of the cave
and tore back the shutter which obscured the window. The cool air blew
in, and the sunlight streamed over them both, for Margaret was now by
his side. He pointed to where the sun was sinking into the sea in a
halo of golden fire, and his face was as set as flint. In a voice whose
absolute uncompromising hardness I shall hear in my ears at times till
my dying day, he said:
“Choose! Speak! When the sun has dipped below the sea, it will be too
late!” The glory of the dying sun seemed to light up Margaret’s face,
till it shone as if lit from within by a noble light, as she answered:
“Even that!”
Then stepping over to where the mummy cat stood on the little table, she
placed her hand on it. She had now left the sunlight, and the shadows
looked dark and deep over her. In a clear voice she said:
“Were I Tera, I would say ‘Take all I have! This night is for the Gods
alone!’”
As she spoke the sun dipped, and the cold shadow suddenly fell on us.
We all stood still for a while. Silvio jumped from my arms and ran over
to his mistress, rearing himself up against her dress as if asking to be
lifted. He took no notice whatever of the mummy now.
Margaret was glorious with all her wonted sweetness as she said sadly:
“The sun is down, Father! Shall any of us see it again? The night of
nights is come!”
If any evidence had been wanted of how absolutely one and all of us had
come to believe in the spiritual existence of the Egyptian Queen, it
would have been found in the change which n a few minutes had been
effected in us by the statement of voluntary negation made, we all
believed, through Margaret. Despite the coming of the fearful ordeal,
the sense of which it was impossible to forget, we looked and acted as
though a great relief had come to us. We had indeed lived in such a
state of terrorism during the days when Mr. Trelawny was lying in a
trance that the feeling had bitten deeply into us. No one knows till he
has experienced it, what it is to be in constant dreadof some unknown
danger which may come at any time and in any form.
The change was manifested in different ways, according to each nature.
Margaret was sad. Doctor Winchester was in high spirits, and keenly
observant; the process of thought which had served as an antidote to
fear, being now relieved from this duty, added to his intellectual
enthusiasm. Mr. Corbeck seemed to be in a retrospective rather than a
speculative mood. I was myself rather inclined to be gay; the relief
from certain anxiety regarding Margaret was sufficient for me for the
time.
As to Mr. Trelawny he seemed less changed than any. Perhaps this was
only natural, as he had had in his mind the intention for so many years
of doing that in which we were tonight engaged, that any event
connected with it could only seem to him as an episode, a step to the
end. His was that commanding nature which looks so to the end of an
undertaking that all else is of secondary importance. Even now, though
his terrible sternness relaxed under the relief from the strain, he
never flagged nor faltered for a moment in his purpose. He asked us men
to come with him; and going to the hall we presently managed to lower
into the cave an oak table, fairly long and not too wide, which stood
against the wall in the hall. This we placed under the strong cluster
of electric lights in the middle of the cave. Margaret looked on for a
while; then all at once her face blanched, and in an agitated voice she
said:
“What are you going
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