Jewel of Seven Stars
The Jewel of Seven Stars
by Bram Stoker
Contents
Chapter I. A Summons in the Night
Chapter II. Strange Instructions
Chapter III. The Watchers
Chapter IV. The Second Attempt
Chapter V. More Strange Instructions
Chapter VI. Suspicions
Chapter VII . The Traveller’s Loss
Chapter VIII. The Finding of the Lamps
Chapter IX. The Need of Knowledge
Chapter X. The Valley of the Sorcerer
Chapter XI. A Queen’s Tomb
Chapter XII. The Magic Coffer
Chapter XIII. Awaking From the Trance
Chapter XIV. The Birth-Mark
Chapter XV. The Purpose of Queen Tera
Chapter XVI. Powers—Old and New
Chapter XVII. The Cavern
Chapter XVIII. Doubts and Fears
Chapter XIX. The Lesson of the “Ka”
Chapter XX. The Great Experiment
To Eleanor and Constance Hoyt
Formatted for and by friends at mobileread.com. Cover illustration, design and formatting by Travis Scott Greer at TravisScottGreer.com. This illustration along with this formatted book is donated into the public domain in the spirit of promoting great literature.
Chapter I
A Summons in the Night
It all seemed so real that I could hardly imagine that it had ever occurred before; and yet each episode came, not as a fresh step in the logic of things, but as something expected. It is in such a wise that memory plays its pranks for good or ill; for pleasure or pain; for weal or woe. It is thus that life is bittersweet, and that which has been done becomes eternal.
Again, the light skiff, ceasing to shoot through the lazy water as when the oars flashed and dripped, glided out of the fierce July sunlight into the cool shade of the great drooping willow branches—I standing up in the swaying boat, she sitting still and with deft fingers guarding herself from stray twigs or the freedom of the resilience of moving boughs. Again, the water looked golden-brown under the canopy of translucent green; and the grassy bank was of emerald hue. Again, we sat in the cool shade, with the myriad noises of nature both without and within our bower merging into that drowsy hum in whose sufficing environment the great world with its disturbing trouble, and its more disturbing joys, can be effectually forgotten. Again, in that blissful solitude the young girl lost the convention of her prim, narrow upbringing, and told me in a natural, dreamy way of the loneliness of her new life. With an undertone of sadness she made me feel how in that spacious home each one of the household was isolated by the personal magnificence of her father and herself; that there confidence had no altar, and sympathy no shrine; and that there even her father’s face was as distant as the old country life seemed now. Once more, the wisdom of my manhood and the experience of my years laid themselves at the girl’s feet.
1 comment