Stoker The Lady Of The Shroud

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-98744-783-9
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 291 Seiten

Reihe: Classics To Go

The Lady of the Shroud is a novel by Bram Stoker, published by William Heinemann in 1909. The book is an epistolary novel, narrated in the first person via letters and diary extracts from various characters, but mainly Rupert. The initial sections, leading up to the reading of the uncle's will, told by other characters, suggest that Rupert is the black sheep of the family, and the conditions of having to live in the castle in the Blue Mountains for a year before he can permanently inherit the unexpectedly large million-pound estate suggest the uncle is somehow testing the heir.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stoker, Bram

Leseproben

BOOK II: VISSARION
Letter from Rupert Sent Leger, Castle of Vissarion, the Spear of Ivan, Land of the Blue Mountains, to Miss Janet MacKelpie, Croom Castle, Ross-shire, N.B. January 23, 1907. My dearest Aunt Janet, As you see, I am here at last.  Having got my formal duty done, as you made me promise—my letters reporting arrival to Sir Colin and Mr. Trent are lying sealed in front of me ready to post (for nothing shall go before yours)—I am free to speak to you. This is a most lovely place, and I hope you will like it.  I am quite sure you will.  We passed it in the steamer coming from Trieste to Durazzo.  I knew the locality from the chart, and it was pointed out to me by one of the officers with whom I had become quite friendly, and who kindly showed me interesting places whenever we got within sight of shore.  The Spear of Ivan, on which the Castle stands, is a headland running well out into the sea.  It is quite a peculiar place—a sort of headland on a headland, jutting out into a deep, wide bay, so that, though it is a promontory, it is as far away from the traffic of coast life as anything you can conceive.  The main promontory is the end of a range of mountains, and looms up vast, towering over everything, a mass of sapphire blue.  I can well understand how the country came to be called the “Land of the Blue Mountains,” for it is all mountains, and they are all blue!  The coast-line is magnificent—what is called “iron-bound”—being all rocky; sometimes great frowning precipices; sometimes jutting spurs of rock; again little rocky islets, now and again clad with trees and verdure, at other places stark and bare.  Elsewhere are little rocky bays and indentations—always rock, and often with long, interesting caves.  Some of the shores of the bays are sandy, or else ridges of beautiful pebbles, where the waves make endless murmur. But of all the places I have seen—in this land or any other—the most absolutely beautiful is Vissarion.  It stands at the ultimate point of the promontory—I mean the little, or, rather, lesser promontory—that continues on the spur of the mountain range.  For the lesser promontory or extension of the mountain is in reality vast; the lowest bit of cliff along the sea-front is not less than a couple of hundred feet high.  That point of rock is really very peculiar.  I think Dame Nature must, in the early days of her housekeeping—or, rather, house-building—have intended to give her little child, man, a rudimentary lesson in self-protection.  It is just a natural bastion such as a titanic Vauban might have designed in primeval times.  So far as the Castle is concerned, it is alone visible from the sea.  Any enemy approaching could see only that frowning wall of black rock, of vast height and perpendicular steepness.  Even the old fortifications which crown it are not built, but cut in the solid rock.  A long narrow creek of very deep water, walled in by high, steep cliffs, runs in behind the Castle, bending north and west, making safe and secret anchorage.  Into the creek falls over a precipice a mountain-stream, which never fails in volume of water.  On the western shore of that creek is the Castle, a huge pile of buildings of every style of architecture, from the Twelfth century to where such things seemed to stop in this dear old-world land—about the time of Queen Elizabeth.  So it is pretty picturesque.  I can tell you.  When we got the first glimpse of the place from the steamer the officer, with whom I was on the bridge, pointed towards it and said: “That is where we saw the dead woman floating in a coffin.”  That was rather interesting, so I asked him all about it.  He took from his pocket-book a cutting from an Italian paper, which he handed to me.  As I can read and speak Italian fairly well, it was all right; but as you, my dear Aunt Janet, are not skilled in languages, and as I doubt if there is any assistance of the kind to be had at Croom, I do not send it.  But as I have heard that the item has been produced in the last number of The Journal of Occultism, you will be easily able to get it.  As he handed me the cutting he said: “I am Destilia!”  His story was so strange that I asked him a good many questions about it.  He answered me quite frankly on every point, but always adhering stoutly to the main point—namely, that it was no phantom or mirage, no dream or imperfect vision in a fog.  “We were four in all who saw it,” he said—“three from the bridge and the Englishman, Caulfield—from the bows—whose account exactly agreed with what we saw.  Captain Mirolani and Falamano and I were all awake and in good trim.  We looked with our night-glasses, which are more than usually powerful.  You know, we need good glasses for the east shore of the Adriatic and for among the islands to the south.  There was a full moon and a brilliant light.  Of course we were a little way off, for though the Spear of Ivan is in deep water, one has to be careful of currents, for it is in just such places that the dangerous currents run.”  The agent of Lloyd’s told me only a few weeks ago that it was only after a prolonged investigation of the tidal and sea currents that the house decided to except from ordinary sea risks losses due to a too close course by the Spear of Ivan.  When I tried to get a little more definite account of the coffin-boat and the dead lady that is given in The Journal of Occultism he simply shrugged his shoulders.  “Signor, it is all,” he said.  “That Englishman wrote everything after endless questioning.” So you see, my dear, that our new home is not without superstitious interests of its own.  It is rather a nice idea, is it not, to have a dead woman cruising round our promontory in a coffin?  I doubt if even at Croom you can beat that.  “Makes the place kind of homey,” as an American would say.  When you come, Aunt Janet, you will not feel lonesome, at any rate, and it will save us the trouble of importing some of your Highland ghosts to make you feel at home in the new land.  I don’t know, but we might ask the stiff to come to tea with us.  Of course, it would be a late tea.  Somewhere between midnight and cock-crow would be about the etiquette of the thing, I fancy! But I must tell you all the realities of the Castle and around it.  So I will write again within a day or two, and try to let you know enough to prepare you for coming here.  Till then adieu, my dear. Your loving
Rupert. From Rupert Sent Leger, Vissarion, to Janet MacKelpie, Croom. January 25, 1907. I hope I did not frighten you, dear Aunt Janet, by the yarn of the lady in the coffin.  But I know you are not afraid; you have told me too many weird stories for me to dread that.  Besides, you have Second Sight—latent, at all events.  However, there won’t be any more ghosts, or about ghosts, in this letter.  I want to tell you all about our new home.  I am so glad you are coming out so soon; I am beginning to feel so lonesome—I walk about sometimes aimlessly, and find my thoughts drifting in such an odd way.  If I didn’t know better, I might begin to think I was in love!  There is no one here to be in love with; so make your mind easy, Aunt Janet.  Not that you would be unhappy, I know, dear, if I did fall in love.  I suppose I must marry some day.  It is a duty now, I know, when there is such an estate as Uncle Roger has left me.  And I know this: I shall never marry any woman unless I love her.  And I am right sure that if I do love her you will love her, too, Aunt Janet!  Won’t you, dear?  It wouldn’t be half a delight if you didn’t.  It won’t if you don’t.  There, now! But before I begin to describe Vissarion I shall throw a sop to you as a chatelaine; that may give you patience to read the rest.  The Castle needs a lot of things to make it comfortable—as you would consider it.  In fact, it is absolutely destitute of everything of a domestic nature.  Uncle Roger had it vetted on the defence side, and so far it could stand a siege.  But it couldn’t cook a dinner or go through a spring-cleaning!  As you know, I am not much up in domestic matters, and so I cannot give you details; but you may take it that it wants everything.  I don’t mean furniture, or silver, or even gold-plate, or works of art, for it is full of the most magnificent old things that you can imagine.  I think Uncle Roger must have been a collector, and gathered a lot of good things in all sorts of places, stored them for years, and then sent them here.  But as to glass, china, delft, all sorts of crockery, linen, household appliances and machinery, cooking utensils—except of the simplest—there are none.  I don’t think Uncle Roger could have lived here more than on a temporary picnic.  So far as I only am concerned, I am all right; a gridiron and a saucepan are all I want—and I can use them myself.  But, dear Aunt Janet, I don’t want you to pig it.  I would like you to have everything you can imagine, and all of the very best.  Cost doesn’t count now for us, thanks to Uncle Roger; and so I want you to order all.  I know you, dear—being a woman—won’t object to shopping.  But it will have to be wholesale.  This is an enormous place, and...