Complete Works of Bram Stoker (455 page)

And then on either side, linked by golden clasps of exquisite shape, was a line of flaming jewels, of which the colours seemed to glow.  Each of these stones seemed to hold a living star, which twinkled in every phase of changing light.

Margaret raised her hands in ecstasy.  She bent over to examine more closely; but suddenly drew back and stood fully erect at her grand height.  She seemed to speak with the conviction of absolute knowledge as she said:

“That is no cerement!  It was no meant for the clothing of death!  It is a marriage robe!”

Mr. Trelawny leaned over and touched the linen robe.  He lifted a fold at the neck, and I knew from the quick intake of his breath that something had surprised him. He lifted yet a little more; and then he, too, stood back and pointed, saying:

“Margaret is right!  That dress is not intended to be worn by the dead! See! her figure is not robed in it.  It is but laid upon her.”  He lifted the zone of jewels and handed it to Margaret.  Then with both hands he raised the ample robe, and laid it across the arms which she extended in a natural impulse.  Things of such beauty were too precious to be handled with any but the greatest care.

We all stood awed at the beauty of the figure which, save for the face cloth, now lay completely nude before us.  Mr. Trelawny bent over, and with hands that trembled slightly, raised this linen cloth which was of the same fineness as the robe.  As he stood back and the whole glorious beauty of the Queen was revealed, I felt a rush of shame sweep over me. It was not right that we should be there, gazing with irreverent eyes on such unclad beauty:  it was indecent; it was almost sacrilegious! And yet the white wonder of that beautiful form was something to dream of. It was not like death at all; it was like a statue carven in ivory by the hand of a Praxiteles. There was nothing of that horrible shrinkage which death seems to effect in a moment.  There was none of the wrinkled toughness which seems to be a leading characteristic of most mummies. There was not the shrunken attenuation of a body dried in the sand, as I had seen before in museums.  All the pores of the body seemed to have been preserved in some wonderful way.  The flesh was full and round, as in a living person; and the skin was as smooth as satin.  The colour seemed extraordinary.  It was like ivory, new ivory; except where the right arm, with shattered, bloodstained wrist and missing hand had lain bare to exposure in the sarcophagus for so many tens of centuries.

With a womanly impulse; with a mouth that drooped with pity, with eyes that flashed with anger, and cheeks that flamed, Margaret threw over the body the beautiful robe which lay across her arm.  Only the face was then to be seen.  This was more startling even than the body, for it seemed not dead, but alive.  The eyelids were closed; but the long, black, curling lashes lay over on the cheeks.  The nostrils, set in grave pride, seemed to have the repose which, when it is seen in life, is greater than the repose of death.  The full, red lips, though the mouth was not open, showed the tiniest white line of pearly teeth within.  Her hair, glorious in quantity and glossy black as the raven’s wing, was piled in great masses over the white forehead, on which a few curling tresses strayed like tendrils.  I was amazed at the likeness to Margaret, though I had had my mind prepared for this by Mr. Corbeck’s quotation of her father’s statement.  This woman  —  I could not think of her as a mummy or a corpse  —  was the image of Margaret as my eyes had first lit on her.  The likeness was increased by the jewelled ornament which she wore in her hair, the “Disk and Plumes”, such as Margaret, too, had worn.  It, too, was a glorious jewel; one noble pearl of moonlight lustre, flanked by carven pieces of moonstone.

Mr. Trelawny was overcome as he looked.  He quite broke down; and when Margaret flew to him and held him close in her arms and comforted him, I heard him murmur brokenly:

“It looks as if you were dead, my child!”

There was a long silence.  I could hear without the roar of the wind, which was now risen to a tempest, and the furius dashing of the waves far below.  Mr. Trelawny’s voice broke the spell:

“Later on we must try and find out the process of embalming.  It is not like any that I know.  There does not seem to have been any opening cut for the withdrawing of the viscera and organs, which apparently remain intact within the body.  Then, again, there is no moisture in the flesh; but its place is supplied with something else, as though wax or stearine had been conveyed into the veins by some subtle process.  I wonder could it be possible that at that time they could have used paraffin.  It might have been, by some process that we know not, pumped into the veins, where it hardened!”

Margaret, having thrown a white sheet over the Queen’s body, asked us to bring it to her own room, where we laid it on her bed.  Then she sent us away, saying:

“Leave her alone with me.  There are still many hours to pass, and I do not like to leave her lying there, all stark in the glare of light. This may be the Bridal she prepared for  —  the Bridal of Death; and at least she shall wear her pretty robes.”

When presently she brought me back to her room, the dead Queen was dressed in the robe of fine linen with the embroidery of gold; and all her beautiful jewels were in place.  Candles were lit around her, and white flowers lay upon her breast.

Hand in hand we stood looking at her for a while.  Then with a sigh, Margaret covered her with one of her own snowy sheets.  She turned away; and after softly closing the door of the room, went back with me to the others who had now come into the dining room.  Here we all began to talk over the things that had been, and that were to be.

Now and again I could feel that one or other of us was forcing conversation, as if we were not sure of ourselves.  The long wait was beginning to tell on our nerves.  It was apparent to me that Mr. Trelawny had suffered in that strange trance more than we suspected, or than he cared to show.  True, his will and his determination were as strong as ever; but the purely physical side of him had been weakened somewhat.  It was indeed only natural that it should be.  No man can go through a period of four days of absolute negation of life without being weakened by it somehow.

As the hours crept by, the time passed more and more slowly.  The other men seemed to get unconsciously a little drowsy.  I wondered if in the case of Mr. Trelawny and Mr. Corbeck, who had already been under the hypnotic influence of the Queen, the same dormance was manifesting itself.  Doctor Winchester had periods of distraction which grew longer and more frequent as the time wore on.

As to Margaret, the suspense told on her exceedingly, as might have been expected in the case of a woman.  She grew paler and paler still; till at last about midnight, I began to be seriously alarmed about her.  I got her to come into the library with me, and tried to make her lie down on a sofa for a little while.  As Mr. Trelawny had decided that the experiment was to be made exactly at the seventh hour after sunset, it would be as nearly as possible three o’clock in the morning when the great trial should be made.  Even allowing a whole hour for the final preparations, we had still two hours of waiting to go through, and I promised faithfully to watch her and to awake her at any time she might name.  She would not hear of it, however.  She thanked me sweetly and smiled at me as she did so; but she assured me that she was not sleepy, and that she was quite able to bear up.  That it was only the suspense and excitement of waiting that made her pale.  I agreed perforce; but I kept her talking of many things in the library for more than an hour; so that at last, when she insisted on going back to her father’s room I felt that I had at least done something to help her pass the time.

We found the three men sitting patiently in silence.  With manlike fortitude they were content to be still when they felt they had done all in their power.

And so we waited.

The striking of two o’clock seemed to freshen us all up.  Whatever shadows had been settling over us during the long hours preceding seemed to lift at once, and we all went about our separate duties alert and with alacrity.  We looked first to the windows to see that they were closed; for now the storm raged so fiercely that we feared it might upset our plans which, after all, were based on perfect stillness.  Then we got ready our respirators to put them on when the time should be close at hand.  We had from the first arranged to use them, for we did not know whether some noxious fume might not come from the Magic Coffer when it should be opened.  Somehow it never seemed to occur to any of us that there was any doubt as to its opening.

Then, under Margaret’s guidance, we carried the body of Queen Tera, still clad in her Bridal robes, from her room into the cavern.

It was a strange sight, and a strange experience.  The group of grave silent men carrying away from the lighted candles and the white flowers the white still figure, which looked like an ivory statue when through our moving the robe fell back.

We laid her in the sarcophagus, and placed the severed hand in its true position on her breast.  Under it was laid the Jewel of Seven Stars, which Mr Trelawny had taken from the safe.  It seemed to flash and blaze as he put it in its place.  The glare of the electric lights shone cold on the great sarcophagus fixed ready for the final experiment  —  the Great Experiment, consequent on the researches during a lifetime of these two travelled scholars.  Again, the startling likeness between Margaret and the mummy, intensified by her own extraordinary pallor, heightened the strangeness of it all.

When all was finally fixed, three-quarters of an hour had gone; for we were deliberate in all our doings.  Margaret beckoned me, and I went with her to her room.  There she did a thing which moved me strangely, and brought home to me keenly the desperate nature of the enterprise on which we were embarked.  One by one, she blew out the candles carefully, and placed them back in their usual places.  When she had finished she said to me:

“They are done with!  Whatever comes  —  Life or Death  —  there will be no purpose in their using now!”

We returned to the cavern with a strange thrill as of finality.  There was to be no going back now!

We put on our respirators, and took our places as had been arranged.  I was to stand by the taps of the electric lights, ready to turn them off or on as Mr Trelawny should direct.  His last caution to me to carry out his instructions exactly was almost like a menace; for he warned me that death to any or all of us might come from any error or neglect on my part. Margaret and Doctor Winchester were to stand between the sarcophagus and the wall, so that they would not be between the mummy and the Magic Coffer.  They were to note accurately all that should happen with regard to the Queen.

Mr Trelawny and Mr Corbeck were to see the lamps lighted: and then to take their places, the former at the foot, the latter at the head, of the sarcophagus.

When the hands of the clock were close to the hour, they stood ready with their lit tapers, like gunners in old days with their linstocks.

For the few minutes that followed, the passing of time was a slow horror. Mr Trelawny stood with his watch in his hand, ready to give the signal.

The time approached with inconceivable slowness; but at last came the whirring of wheels which warns that the hour is at hand.  The striking of the silver bell of the clock seemed to smite on our hearts like the knell of doom. One! Two! Three!

The wicks of the lamps caught, and I turned out the electric light.  In the dimness of the struggling lamps, and after the bright glow of the electric light, the room and all within it took weird shape, and everything seemed in an instant to change.  We waited, with our hearts beating.  I know mine did; and I fancied I could hear the pulsation of the others.  Without, the storm raged; the shutters of the narrow windows shook and strained and rattled, as though something was striving for entrance.

The seconds seemed to pass with leaden wings; it was as though all the world were standing still.  The figures of the others stood out dimly, Margaret’s white dress alone showing clearly in the gloom.  The thick respirators, which we all wore, added to the strange appearance.  The thin light of the lamps, as the two men bent over the Coffer, showed Mr Trelawny’s square jaw and strong mouth, and the brown, wrinkled face of Mr Corbeck.  Their eyes seemed to glare in the light.  Across the room Doctor Winchester’s eyes twinkled like stars, and Margaret’s blazed like black suns.

Would the lamps never burn up!

It was only a few seconds in all till they did blaze up.  A slow, steady light, growing more and more bright; and changing in colour from blue to crystal white.  So they stayed for a couple of minutes, without any change in the Coffer being noticeable.  At last there began to appear all over it a delicate glow.  This grew and grew, till it became like a blazing jewel; and then like a living thing, whose essence was light.  Mr Trelawny and Mr Corbeck moved silently to their places beside the sarcophagus.

We waited and waited, our hearts seeming to stand still.

All at once there was a sound like a tiny muffled explosion, and the cover of the Coffer lifted right up on a level plane a few inches; there was no mistaking anything now, for the whole cavern was full of light.  Then the cover, staying fast at one side, rose slowly up on the other, as though yielding to some pressure of balance.  I could not see what was within, for the risen cover stood between.  The Coffer still continued to glow; from it began to steal a faint greenish vapour which floated in the direction of the sarcophagus as though impelled or drawn towards it.  I could not smell it fully on account of the respirator; but, even through that, I was conscious of a strange, pungent odour.  The vapour got somewhat denser after a few seconds, and began to pass directly into the open sarcophagus.  It was evident now that the mummied body had some attraction for it; and also that it had some effect on the body, for the sarcophagus slowly became illumined as though the body had begun to glow.  I could not see within from where I stood, but I gathered from the faces of all the four watchers that something strange was happening.