Complete Works of Bram Stoker (340 page)

But the fierce, hardy mountaineers were unconquerable.  For centuries they had fought, with a fervour and fury that nothing could withstand or abate, attacks on their independence.  Time after time, century after century, they had opposed with dauntless front invading armies sent against them.  This unquenchable fire of freedom had had its effect.  One and all, the great Powers knew that to conquer that little nation would be no mean task, but rather that of a tireless giant.  Over and over again had they fought with units against hundreds, never ceasing until they had either wiped out their foes entirely or seen them retreat across the frontier in diminished numbers.

For many years past, however, the Land of the Blue Mountains had remained unassailable, for all the Powers and States had feared lest the others should unite against the one who should begin the attack.

At the time I speak of there was a feeling throughout the Blue Mountains  —  and, indeed, elsewhere  —  that Turkey was preparing for a war of offence.  The objective of her attack was not known anywhere, but here there was evidence that the Turkish “Bureau of Spies” was in active exercise towards their sturdy little neighbour.  To prepare for this, the Voivode Peter Vissarion approached me in order to obtain the necessary “sinews of war.”

The situation was complicated by the fact that the Elective Council was at present largely held together by the old Greek Church, which was the religion of the people, and which had had since the beginning its destinies linked in a large degree with theirs.  Thus it was possible that if a war should break out, it might easily become  —  whatever might have been its cause or beginnings  —  a war of creeds.  This in the Balkans must be largely one of races, the end of which no mind could diagnose or even guess at.

I had now for some time had knowledge of the country and its people, and had come to love them both.  The nobility of Vissarion’s self-sacrifice at once appealed to me, and I felt that I, too, should like to have a hand in the upholding of such a land and such a people.  They both deserved freedom.  When Vissarion handed me the completed deed of sale I was going to tear it up; but he somehow recognised my intention, and forestalled it.  He held up his hand arrestingly as he said:

“I recognise your purpose, and, believe me, I honour you for it from the very depths of my soul.  But, my friend, it must not be.  Our mountaineers are proud beyond belief.  Though they would allow me  —  who am one of themselves, and whose fathers have been in some way leaders and spokesmen amongst them for many centuries  —  to do all that is in my power to do  —  and what, each and all, they would be glad to do were the call to them  —  they would not accept aid from one outside themselves.  My good friend, they would resent it, and might show to you, who wish us all so well, active hostility, which might end in danger, or even death.  That was why, my friend, I asked to put a clause in our agreement, that I might have right to repurchase my estate, regarding which you would fain act so generously.”

Thus it is, my dear nephew Rupert, only son of my dear sister, that I hereby charge you solemnly as you value me  —  as you value yourself  —  as you value honour, that, should it ever become known that that noble Voivode, Peter Vissarion, imperilled himself for his country’s good, and if it be of danger or evil repute to him that even for such a purpose he sold his heritage, you shall at once and to the knowledge of the mountaineers  —  though not necessarily to others  —  reconvey to him or his heirs the freehold that he was willing to part with  —  and that he has
de facto
parted with by the effluxion of the time during which his right of repurchase existed.  This is a secret trust and duty which is between thee and me alone in the first instance; a duty which I have undertaken on behalf of my heirs, and which must be carried out, at whatsoever cost may ensue.  You must not take it that it is from any mistrust of you or belief that you will fail that I have taken another measure to insure that this my cherished idea is borne out.  Indeed, it is that the law may, in case of need  —  for no man can know what may happen after his own hand be taken from the plough  —  be complied with, that I have in another letter written for the guidance of others, directed that in case of any failure to carry out this trust  —  death or other  —  the direction become a clause or codicil to my Will.  But in the meantime I wish that this be kept a secret between us two.  To show you the full extent of my confidence, let me here tell you that the letter alluded to above is marked “C,” and directed to my solicitor and co-executor, Edward Bingham Trent, which is finally to be regarded as clause eleven of my Will.  To which end he has my instructions and also a copy of this letter, which is, in case of need, and that only, to be opened, and is to be a guide to my wishes as to the carrying out by you of the conditions on which you inherit.

And now, my dear nephew, let me change to another subject more dear to me  —  yourself.  When you read this I shall have passed away, so that I need not be hampered now by that reserve which I feel has grown upon me through a long and self-contained life.  Your mother was very dear to me.  As you know, she was twenty years younger than her youngest brother, who was two years younger than me.  So we were all young men when she was a baby, and, I need not say, a pet amongst us  —  almost like our own child to each of us, as well as our sister.  You knew her sweetness and high quality, so I need say nothing of these; but I should like you to understand that she was very dear to me.  When she and your father came to know and love each other I was far away, opening up a new branch of business in the interior of China, and it was not for several months that I got home news.  When I first heard of him they had already been married.  I was delighted to find that they were very happy.  They needed nothing that I could give.  When he died so suddenly I tried to comfort her, and all I had was at her disposal, did she want it.  She was a proud woman  —  though not with me.  She had come to understand that, though I seemed cold and hard (and perhaps was so generally), I was not so to her.  But she would not have help of any kind.  When I pressed her, she told me that she had enough for your keep and education and her own sustenance for the time she must still live; that your father and she had agreed that you should be brought up to a healthy and strenuous life rather than to one of luxury; and she thought that it would be better for the development of your character that you should learn to be self-reliant and to be content with what your dear father had left you.  She had always been a wise and thoughtful girl, and now all her wisdom and thought were for you, your father’s and her child.  When she spoke of you and your future, she said many things which I thought memorable.  One of them I remember to this day.  It was apropos of my saying that there is a danger of its own kind in extreme poverty.  A young man might know too much want.  She answered me: “True!  That is so!  But there is a danger that overrides it;” and after a time went on:

“It is better not to know wants than not to know want!”  I tell you, boy, that is a great truth, and I hope you will remember it for yourself as well as a part of the wisdom of your mother.  And here let me say something else which is a sort of corollary of that wise utterance:

I dare say you thought me very hard and unsympathetic that time I would not, as one of your trustees, agree to your transferring your little fortune to Miss MacKelpie.  I dare say you bear a grudge towards me about it up to this day.  Well, if you have any of that remaining, put it aside when you know the truth.  That request of yours was an unspeakable delight to me.  It was like your mother coming back from the dead.  That little letter of yours made me wish for the first time that I had a son  —  and that he should be like you.  I fell into a sort of reverie, thinking if I were yet too old to marry, so that a son might be with me in my declining years  —  if such were to ever be for me.  But I concluded that this might not be.  There was no woman whom I knew or had ever met with that I could love as your mother loved your father and as he loved her.  So I resigned myself to my fate.  I must go my lonely road on to the end.  And then came a ray of light into my darkness: there was you.  Though you might not feel like a son to me  —  I could not expect it when the memory of that sweet relationship was more worthily filled.  But I could feel like a father to you.  Nothing could prevent that or interfere with it, for I would keep it as my secret in the very holy of holies of my heart, where had been for thirty years the image of a sweet little child  —  your mother.  My boy, when in your future life you shall have happiness and honour and power, I hope you will sometimes give a thought to the lonely old man whose later years your very existence seemed to brighten.

The thought of your mother recalled me to my duty.  I had undertaken for her a sacred task: to carry out her wishes regarding her son.  I knew how she would have acted.  It might  —  would  —  have been to her a struggle of inclination and duty; and duty would have won.  And so I carried out my duty, though I tell you it was a harsh and bitter task to me at the time.  But I may tell you that I have since been glad when I think of the result.  I tried, as you may perhaps remember, to carry out your wishes in another way, but your letter put the difficulty of doing so so clearly before me that I had to give it up.  And let me tell you that that letter endeared you to me more than ever.

I need not tell you that thenceforth I followed your life very closely.  When you ran away to sea, I used in secret every part of the mechanism of commerce to find out what had become of you.  Then, until you had reached your majority, I had a constant watch kept upon you  —  not to interfere with you in any way, but so that I might be able to find you should need arise.  When in due course I heard of your first act on coming of age I was satisfied.  I had to know of the carrying out of your original intention towards Janet Mac Kelpie, for the securities had to be transferred.

From that time on I watched  —  of course through other eyes  —  your chief doings.  It would have been a pleasure to me to have been able to help in carrying out any hope or ambition of yours, but I realised that in the years intervening between your coming of age and the present moment you were fulfilling your ideas and ambitions in your own way, and, as I shall try to explain to you presently, my ambitions also.  You were of so adventurous a nature that even my own widely-spread machinery of acquiring information  —  what I may call my private “intelligence department”  —  was inadequate.  My machinery was fairly adequate for the East  —  in great part, at all events.  But you went North and South, and West also, and, in addition, you essayed realms where commerce and purely real affairs have no foothold  —  worlds of thought, of spiritual import, of psychic phenomena  —  speaking generally, of mysteries.  As now and again I was baffled in my inquiries, I had to enlarge my mechanism, and to this end started  —  not in my own name, of course  —  some new magazines devoted to certain branches of inquiry and adventure.  Should you ever care to know more of these things, Mr. Trent, in whose name the stock is left, will be delighted to give you all details.  Indeed, these stocks, like all else I have, shall be yours when the time comes, if you care to ask for them.  By means of
The Journal of Adventure
,
The Magazine of Mystery
,
Occultism
,
Balloon and Aeroplane
,
The Submarine
,
Jungle and Pampas
,
The Ghost World
,
The Explorer
,
Forest and Island
,
Ocean and Creek
, I was often kept informed when I should otherwise have been ignorant of your whereabouts and designs.  For instance, when you had disappeared into the Forest of the Incas, I got the first whisper of your strange adventures and discoveries in the buried cities of Eudori from a correspondent of
The Journal of Adventure
long before the details given in
The Times
of the rock-temple of the primeval savages, where only remained the little dragon serpents, whose giant ancestors were rudely sculptured on the sacrificial altar.  I well remember how I thrilled at even that meagre account of your going in alone into that veritable hell.  It was from
Occultism
that I learned how you had made a stay alone in the haunted catacombs of Elora, in the far recesses of the Himalayas, and of the fearful experiences which, when you came out shuddering and ghastly, overcame to almost epileptic fear those who had banded themselves together to go as far as the rock-cut approach to the hidden temple.

All such things I read with rejoicing.  You were shaping yourself for a wider and loftier adventure, which would crown more worthily your matured manhood.  When I read of you in a description of Mihask, in Madagascar, and the devil-worship there rarely held, I felt I had only to wait for your home-coming in order to broach the enterprise I had so long contemplated.  This was what I read:

“He is a man to whom no adventure is too wild or too daring.  His reckless bravery is a byword amongst many savage peoples and amongst many others not savages, whose fears are not of material things, but of the world of mysteries in and beyond the grave.  He dares not only wild animals and savage men; but has tackled African magic and Indian mysticism.  The Psychical Research Society has long exploited his deeds of valiance, and looked upon him as perhaps their most trusted agent or source of discovery.  He is in the very prime of life, of almost giant stature and strength, trained to the use of all arms of all countries, inured to every kind of hardship, subtle-minded and resourceful, understanding human nature from its elemental form up.  To say that he is fearless would be inadequate.  In a word, he is a man whose strength and daring fit him for any enterprise of any kind.  He would dare and do anything in the world or out of it, on the earth or under it, in the sea or  —  in the air, fearing nothing material or unseen, not man or ghost, nor God nor Devil.”

If you ever care to think of it, I carried that cutting in my pocket-book from that hour I read it till now.