Complete Works of Bram Stoker

by Bram Stoker

  “‘Tis Master Rafe come home; and oh! my dear lord, this is a joyful house this night!”

  The old Alderman sank down on the high-backed settle in the hall and covered his face with his hands.

  “Now God be thanked!” he said, and when he took his hands away Abigail saw that his eyes were wet. She too was moved, and as she raised the corner of her apron to her eyes, he bent over, took both her hands, and said — “Good Mistress Abigail, the faithful friend of that dear child, we old folks, methinks, are those that have the youngest hearts still. Only that we cry with joy when the time has gone by that we can cry at sorrow. I have been so anxious — in such suspense — that I was afraid almost to know the truth I sought. How did she receive him?”

  The old woman shook her head:

  “That I don’t know, my lord, but I take it that there wasn’t any great quarrel between them, for when I was up there awhile gone they was sitting together on the sofy as they used to sit.”

  The Alderman paused, and then with some diffidence he said —

  “Do you think now, Mistress Abigail, that I might go up just for a little while?”

  “Dear heart, now! but you came that quiet that I quite forgot. Miss Betty told me herself to lay a cover for you for supper, for that she wouldn’t be surprised if you looked in this evening. To think of it! She must be a witch!”

  “Then go and ask her, if you please, Mistress Abigail, if she will care to receive me this evening?”

  Abigail departed at once on her errand. A moment later Betty came flying down the stairs, calling out —

  “Where is he? He must have come very quietly, for I never heard him!” and she threw her arms round him and kissed him. “Come upstairs,” she said. “I was hoping you would come, for I have something to tell you.” Arm in arm they came back to the drawingroom where Rafe was standing at the door. As they drew close, each man extended a hand. Betty, taking them, placed them together and put both her own hands over the clasped ones. The Alderman was about to speak when Betty began, so he waited.

  “Cousin Fenton I have a confession to make, and you must let me make it now. I was sitting in your own chair in your study last evening when you talked with Rafe.”

  His surprise overmastered him. “God bless my soul! I hope you didn’t hear — ”

  “Oh yes, I did! thank God! I did. For I wouldn’t for anything miss out of my life that conversation of two men whom I love and honour. Rafe knows what I think of him; or perhaps he knows a little — it will take a longer time to let him know it all!” and she looked at him lovingly. “But you know up to now only that I am an eavesdropper. How am I to thank you? You know what I mean! I know your kindness and your sympathy already — I — I shall try to show you some day,” and once again the sweet eyes were filled with tears, but this time they were of pure joy. “My dear old friend, your wish has come true; the good God is giving me my heart’s desire.”

  They all three went and sat on the sofa, Betty being between the two men and holding a hand of each; and the time seemed to have flown by too quickly when Abigail came and announced that supper was served. Betty took her cousin’s arm and smiled at Rafe as she did so, saying to the Alderman but so that Rafe could hear —

  “A hostess must not be taken down by her liusband; and Rafe is not far from that now!” The blush on her face as she spoke was a poem in itself.

  That was a happy meal; and if there was any of the three who sat at meat, or any of those who waited on them, who was not content no sign of the feeling was evidenced. It was not late when Rafe and the Alderman went away together; for in Cheyne Walk they kept early hours, and the road to London was one which had its own anxieties. Rafe took a little longer to say goodbye than his elder, who did not, however, seem impatient as he stood chatting in the hall with Abigail; but when he came running down the stairs Betty’s sweet “goodbye” followed his footsteps like a blessing.

  The Alderman had left his carriage at the inn at Chelsea, and they drove to town together. On the way Mr. Fenton learned where Rafe was staying, and drove straight to the place and took away his belongings. Rafe remonstrated, he feared he might give trouble; but the Alderman would hear no denial. Willy-nilly he must stay in his house till the happy time came when he would be with Betty.

  “Tut man!” he said; “d’ye think that I would let Betty’s husband lie at an inn? The dear lass! When she told me to take her to supper and gave her reason I seemed to see the time come already that please God will come. She and you going through life hand in hand, trusting each other and taking light to guide yourselves and others out of the troubles that are behind. I hope to see you with your children at your knees, teaching them how to grow into good men and women, and making the world the more like what God would have it because you both have lived in it!” Rafe reverently lifted his hat, and as he raised his hands the back flash of the carriage lamps showed his scarred wrists, and he said — “God helping us, your vision will be true.”

  It must be taken that God did help them; for the record of all their lives showed that the old man’s insight had not deceived him.

  THE END.

  THE MYSTERY OF THE SEA

  This novel was first published in 1902 by Doubleday, Page and Company of New York. The first two chapters were later republished as the short story The Seer. The novel tells the story of Archie Hunter, who is on vacation on Cruden Bay, Aberdeenshire, when he begins to see strange visions of death. An old local woman, Gormala, possesses the same gift — the ‘second sight’ — and informs Archie of an ancient legend of “the mystery of the sea.” According to this legend, when a “golden man” with “death as his bride” should die at Lammas-tide, the mystery will be revealed.

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  SECOND SIGHT

  CHAPTER II

  GORMALA

  CHAPTER III

  AN ANCIENT RUNE

  CHAPTER IV

  LAMMAS FLOODS

  CHAPTER VI

  THE MINISTERS OF THE DOOM

  CHAPTER VII

  FROM OTHER AGES AND THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

  CHAPTER VIII

  A RUN ON THE BEACH

  CHAPTER IX

  CONFIDENCES AND SECRET WRITING

  CHAPTER X

  A CLEAR HORIZON

  CHAPTER XI

  IN THE TWILIGHT

  CHAPTER XII

  THE CIPHER

  CHAPTER XIII

  A RIDE THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS

  CHAPTER XIV.

  A SECRET SHARED

  CHAPTER XV:

  A PECULIAR DINNER-PARTY

  CHAPTER XVI

  REVELATIONS

  CHAPTER XVII

  SAM ADAMS’S TASK

  CHAPTER XVIII

  FIREWORKS AND JOAN OF ARC

  CHAPTER XIX

  ON CHANGING ONE’S NAME

  CHAPTER XX

  COMRADESHIP

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE OLD FAR WEST AND THE NEW

  CHAPTER XXII

  CROM CASTLE

  CHAPTER XXIII

  SECRET SERVICE

  CHAPTER XXIV

  A SUBTLE PLAN

  CHAPTER XXV

  INDUCTIVE RATIOCINATION

  CHAPTER XXIV

  A WHOLE WEDDING DAY

  CHAPTER XXVII

  ENTRANCE TO THE CAVERN

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  VOICES IN THE DARK

  CHAPTER XXIX

  THE MONUMENT

  CHAPTER XXX

  THE SECRET PASSAGE

  CHAPTER XXXI

  MARJORY’S ADVENTURE

  CHAPTER XXXII

  THE LOST SCRIPT

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  DON BERNARDINO

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  THE ACCOLADE

  CHAPTER XXXV

  THE POPE’S TREASURE

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  THE RISING TIDE

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  ROUND THE CLOCK


  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  THE DUTY OF A WIFE

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR

  CHAPTER XL

  THE REDEMPTION OF A TRUST

  CHAPTER XLI

  TREASURE TROVE

  CHAPTER X

  A STRUGGLE

  CHAPTER XLVI

  THE HONOUR OF A SPANIARD

  CHAPTER XLIV

  THE VOICE IN THE DUST

  CHAPTER XLV

  DANGER

  CHAPTER XLI

  ARDIFFERY MANSE

  CHAPTER XLVII

  THE DUMB CAN SPEAK

  CHAPTER XLVIII

  DUNBUY HAVEN

  CHAPTER XLIX

  GORMALA’S LAST HELP

  CHAPTER L

  THE EYES OF THE DEAD

  CHAPTER LI

  IN THE SEA FOG

  CHAPTER LII

  THE SKARES

  CHAPTER LIII

  FROM THE DEEP

  TO

  DAISY GILBEY RIVIERE

  OF THE THIRD GENERATION OF

  LOVING AND LOYAL FRIENDS

  “To win the mystery o’ the sea,

  “An’ learn the secrets that there be,

  “Gather in ane these weirds three:

  “A gowden moon on a flowin’ tide;

  “An’ Lammas floods for the spell to bide;

  “An’ a gowden mon wi death for his bride.”

  Gaelic verse and English translation.

  CHAPTER I

  SECOND SIGHT

  I HAD just arrived at Cruden Bay on my annual visit, and after a late breakfast was sitting on the low wall which was a continuation of the escarpment of the bridge over the Water of Cruden. Opposite to me, across the road and standing under the only little clump of trees in the place was a tall, gaunt old woman, who kept looking at me intently. As I sat, a little group, consisting of a man and two women, went by. I found my eyes follow them, for it seemed to me after they had passed me that the two women walked together and the man alone in front carrying on his shoulder a little black box — a coffin. I shuddered as I thought, but a moment later I saw all three abreast just as they had been. The old woman was now looking at me with eyes that blazed. She came across the road and said to me without preface:

  “What saw ye then, that yer e’en looked so awed?” I did not like to tell her so I did not answer. Her great eyes were fixed keenly upon me, seeming to look me through and through. I felt that I grew quite red, whereupon she said, apparently to herself: “I thocht so! Even I did not see that which he saw.”

  “How do you mean?” I queried. She answered ambiguously: “Wait! Ye shall perhaps know before this hour to-morrow!”

  Her answer interested me and I tried to get her to say more; but she would not. She moved away with a grand stately movement that seemed to become her great gaunt form.

  After dinner whilst I was sitting in front of the hotel, there was a great commotion in the village; much running to and fro of men and women with sad mien. On questioning them I found that a child had been drowned in the little harbour below. Just then a woman and a man, the same that had passed the bridge earlier in the day, ran by with wild looks. One of the bystanders looked after them pityingly as he said:

  “Puir souls. It’s a sad home-comin’ for them the nicht.”

  “Who are they?” I asked. The man took off his cap reverently as he answered:

  “The father and mother Of the child that was drowned!” As he spoke I looked round as though some one had called me.

  There stood the gaunt woman with a look of triumph on her face.

  * * * * *

  The curved shore of Cruden Bay, Aberdeenshire, is backed by a waste of sandhills in whose hollows seagrass and moss and wild violets, together with the pretty “grass of Parnassus” form a green carpet. The surface of the hills is held together by bent-grass and is eternally shifting as the wind takes the fine sand and drifts it to and fro. All behind is green, from the meadows that mark the southern edge of the bay to the swelling uplands that stretch away and away far in the distance, till the blue mist of the mountains at Braemar sets a kind of barrier. In the centre of the bay the highest point of the land that runs downward to the sea looks like a miniature hill known as the Hawklaw; from this point onward to the extreme south, the land runs high with a gentle trend downwards.

  ‘Cruden sands are wide and firm and the sea runs out a considerable distance. When there is a storm with the wind on shore the whole bay is a mass of leaping waves and broken water that threatens every instant to annihilate the stake-nets which stretch out here and there along the shore. More than a few vessels have been lost on these wide stretching sands, and it was perhaps the roaring of the shallow seas and the terror which they inspired which sent the crews to the spirit room and the bodies of those of them which came to shore later on, to the churchyard on the hill.

  If Cruden Bay is to be taken figuratively as a mouth, with the sand hills for soft palate, and the green Hawklaw as the tongue, the rocks which work the extremities are its teeth. To the north the rocks of red granite rise jagged ‘and broken. To the south, a mile and a half away as the crow flies, Nature seems to have manifested its wildest forces. It is here, where the little promontory called Whinnyfold juts out, that the two great geological features of the Aberdeen coast meet. The red sienite of the north joins the black gneiss of the south. That union must have been originally a wild one; there are evidences of an upheaval which must have shaken the earth to its centre. Here and there are great masses of either species of rock hurled upwards in every conceivable variety of form, sometimes fused or pressed together so that it is impossible to say exactly where gneiss ends or sienite begins; but broadly speaking here is an irregular line of separation. This line runs seawards to the east and its strength is shown in its outcrop. For half a mile or more the rocks rise through the sea singly or in broken masses ending in a dangerous cluster known as “The Skares” and which has had for centuries its full toll of wreck and disaster. Did the sea hold its dead where they fell, its floor around the Skares would be whitened with their bones, and new islands could build themselves with the piling wreckage. At times one may see here the ocean in her fiercest mood; for it is when the tempest drives from the southeast that the sea is fretted amongst the rugged rocks and sends its spume landwards. The rocks that at calmer times rise dark from the briny deep are lost to sight for moments in the grand onrush of the waves. The seagulls which usually whiten them, now flutter around screaming, and the sound of their shrieks comes in on the gale almost in a continuous note, for the single cries are merged in the multitudinous roar of sea and air.

  The village, squatted beside the emboucher of the Water of Cruden at the northern side of the bay is simple enough; a few rows of fishermen’s cottages, two or three great red-tiled drying-sheds nestled in the sand-heap behind the fishers’ houses. For the rest of the place as it was when first I saw it, a little lookout beside a tall flagstaff on the northern cliff, a few scattered farms over the inland prospect, one little hotel down on the western bank of the Water of Cruden with a fringe of willows protecting its sunk garden which was always lull of fruits and flowers.

  From the most southern part of the beach of Cruden Bay to Whinnyfold village the distance is but a few hundred yards; first a steep pull up the face of the rock; and then an even way, beside part of which runs a tiny stream. To the left of this path, going towards Whinnyfold, the ground rises in a bold slope and then falls again all round, forming a sort of wide miniature hill of some eighteen or twenty acres. Of this the southern side is sheer, the black rock dipping into the waters of the little bay of Whinnyfold, in the centre of which is a picturesque island of rock shelving steeply from the water on the northern side, as is the tendency of all the gneiss and granite in this part. But to east and north there are irregular bays or openings, so that the furthest points of the promontory stretch out like fingers. At the tips of these are reefs of sunken rock falling down
to deep water and whose existence can only be suspected in bad weather when the rush of the current beneath sends up swirling eddies or curling masses of foam. These little bays are mostly curved and are green where falling earth or drifting sand have hidden the outmost side of the rocks and given a foothold to the seagrass and clover. Here have been at some time or other great caves, now either fallen in or silted up with sand, or obliterated with the earth brought down in the rush of surface-water in times of long rain. In one of these bays, Broad Haven, facing right out to the Skares, stands an isolated pillar of rock called locally the “Puir mon” through whose base, time and weather have worn a hole through which one may walk dryshod.

  Through the masses of rocks that run down to the sea from the sides and shores of all these bays are here and there natural channels with straight edges as though cut on purpose for the taking in of the cobbles belonging to the fisher folk of Whinnyfold.

  When first I saw the place I fell in love with it. Had it been possible I should have spent my summer there, in a house of my own, but the want of any place in which to live forbade such an opportunity. So I stayed in the little hotel, the Kilmarnock Arms.

  The next year I came again, and the next, and the next. And then I arranged to take a feu at Whinnyfold and to build a house overlooking the Skares for myself. The details of this kept me constantly going to Whinnyfold, and my house to be was always in my thoughts.

  Hitherto my life had been an uneventful one. At school I was, though secretly ambitious, dull as to results. At College I was better off, for my big body and athletic powers gave me a certain position in which I had to overcome my natural shyness. When I was about eight and twenty I found myself nominally a barrister, with no knowledge whatever of the practice of law and but little less of the theory, and with a commission in the Devil’s Own — the irreverent name given to the Inns of Court Volunteers. I had few relatives, but a comfortable, though not great, fortune; and I had been round the world, dilettante fashion.

  CHAPTER II

  GORMALA

  ALL that night I thought of the dead child and of the peculiar vision which had come to me. Sleeping or waking it was all the game; my mind could not leave the parents in procession as seen in imagination, or their distracted mien in reality. Mingled with them was the great-eyed, aquiline-featured, gaunt old woman who had taken such an interest in the affair, and in my part of it. I asked the landlord if he knew her, since, from his position as postmaster he knew almost everyone for miles around. He told me that she was a stranger to the place. Then he added: