Mystery of Cloomber , livre ebook

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. I John Fothergill West, student of law in the University of St. Andrews, have endeavoured in the ensuing pages to lay my statement before the public in a concise and business-like fashion.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	23 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819919377
Langue	English

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I - THE HEGIRA OF THE WESTS FROM EDINBURGH
I John Fothergill West, student of law in theUniversity of St. Andrews, have endeavoured in the ensuing pages tolay my statement before the public in a concise and business-likefashion.
It is not my wish to achieve literary success, norhave I any desire by the graces of my style, or by the artisticordering of my incidents, to throw a deeper shadow over the strangepassages of which I shall have to speak. My highest ambition isthat those who know something of the matter should, after readingmy account, be able to conscientiously indorse it without finding asingle paragraph in which I have either added to or detracted fromthe truth.
Should I attain this result, I shall rest amplysatisfied with the outcome of my first, and probably my last,venture in literature.
It was my intention to write out the sequence ofevents in due order, depending on trustworthy hearsay when I wasdescribing that which was beyond my own personal knowledge. I havenow, however, through the kind cooperation of friends, hit upon aplan which promises to be less onerous to me and more satisfactoryto the reader. This is nothing less than to make use of the variousmanuscripts which I have by me bearing upon the subject, and to addto them the first-hand evidence contributed by those who had thebest opportunities of knowing Major-General J. B. Heatherstone.
In pursuance of this design I shall lay before thepublic the testimony of Israel Stakes, formerly coachman atCloomber Hall, and of John Easterling, F.R.C.P. Edin., nowpractising at Stranraer, in Wigtownshire. To these I shall add averbatim account extracted from the journal of the late JohnBerthier Heatherstone, of the events which occurred in the ThulValley in the autumn of '41 towards the end of the first AfghanWar, with a description of the skirmish in the Terada defile, andof the death of the man Ghoolab Shah.
To myself I reserve the duty of filling up all thegaps and chinks which may be left in the narrative. By thisarrangement I have sunk from the position of an author to that of acompiler, but on the other hand my work has ceased to be a storyand has expanded into a series of affidavits.
My Father, John Hunter West, was a well knownOriental and Sanskrit scholar, and his name is still of weight withthose who are interested in such matters. He it was who first afterSir William Jones called attention to the great value of earlyPersian literature, and his translations from the Hafiz and fromFerideddin Atar have earned the warmest commendations from theBaron von Hammer-Purgstall, of Vienna, and other distinguishedContinental critics.
In the issue of the Orientalisches Scienzblattfor January, 1861, he is described as "Der beruhmte und sehr gelhernte Hunter West vonEdinburgh" – a passage which I well remember that he cut out andstowed away, with a pardonable vanity, among the most reveredfamily archives.
He had been brought up to be a solicitor, or Writerto the Signet, as it is termed in Scotland, but his learned hobbyabsorbed so much of his time that he had little to devote to thepursuit of his profession.
When his clients were seeking him at his chambers inGeorge Street, he was buried in the recesses of the Advocates'Library, or poring over some mouldy manuscript at the PhilosophicalInstitution, with his brain more exercised over the code which Menupropounded six hundred years before the birth of Christ than overthe knotty problems of Scottish law in the nineteenth century.Hence it can hardly be wondered at that as his learning accumulatedhis practice dissolved, until at the very moment when he hadattained the zenith of his celebrity he had also reached the nadirof his fortunes.
There being no chair of Sanscrit in any of hisnative universities, and no demand anywhere for the only mentalwares which he had to dispose of, we should have been forced toretire into genteel poverty, consoling ourselves with the aphorismsand precepts of Firdousi, Omar Khayyam, and others of his Easternfavourites, had it not been for the kindness and liberality of hishalf-brother William Farintosh, the Laird of Branksome, inWigtownshire.
This William Farintosh was the proprietor of alanded estate, the acreage which bore, unfortunately, a mostdisproportional relation to its value, for it formed the bleakestand most barren tract of land in the whole of a bleak and barrenshire. As a bachelor, however, his expenses had been small, and hehad contrived from the rents of his scattered cottages, and thesale of the Galloway nags, which he bred upon the moors, not onlyto live as a laird should, but to put by a considerable sum in thebank.
We had heard little from our kinsman during the daysof our comparative prosperity, but just as we were at our wit'send, there came a letter like a ministering angel, giving usassurance of sympathy and succour. In it the Laird of Branksometold us that one of his lungs had been growing weaker for sometime, and that Dr. Easterling, of Stranraer, had strongly advisedhim to spend the few years which were left to him in some moregenial climate. He had determined, therefore to set out for theSouth of Italy, and he begged that we should take up our residenceat Branksome in his absence, and that my father should act as hisland steward and agent at a salary which placed us above all fearof want.
Our mother had been dead for some years, so thatthere were only myself, my father, and my sister Esther to consult,and it may be readily imagined that it did not take us long todecide upon the acceptance of the laird's generous offer. My fatherstarted for Wigtown that very night, while Esther and I followed afew days afterwards, bearing with us two potato-sacksful of learnedbooks, and such other of our household effects that were worth thetrouble and expense of transport.
II - OF THE STRANGE MANNER IN WHICH A TENANTCAME TO CLOOMBER
Branksome might have appeared a poor dwelling-placewhen compared with the house of an English squire, but to us, afterour long residence in stuffy apartments, it was of regalmagnificence.
The building was broad-spread and low, withred-tiled roof, diamond-paned windows, and a profusion of dwellingrooms with smoke-blackened ceilings and oaken wainscots. In frontwas a small lawn, girt round with a thin fringe of haggard and illgrown beeches, all gnarled and withered from the effects of thesea-spray. Behind lay the scattered hamlet of Branksome-Bere – adozen cottages at most – inhabited by rude fisher-folk who lookedupon the laird as their natural protector.
To the west was the broad, yellow beach and theIrish Sea, while in all other directions the desolate moors,greyish-green in the foreground and purple in the distance,stretched away in long, low curves to the horizon.
Very bleak and lonely it was upon this Wigtowncoast. A man might walk many a weary mile and never see a livingthing except the white, heavy- flapping kittiwakes, which screamedand cried to each other with their shrill, sad voices.
Very lonely and very bleak! Once out of sight ofBranksome and there was no sign of the works of man save only wherethe high, white tower of Cloomber Hall shot up, like a headstone ofsome giant grave, from amid the firs and larches which girt itround.
This great house, a mile or more from our dwelling,had been built by a wealthy Glasgow merchant of strange tastes andlonely habits, but at the time of our arrival it had beenuntenanted for many years, and stood with weather-blotched wallsand vacant, staring windows looking blankly out over the hillside.
Empty and mildewed, it served only as a landmark tothe fishermen, for they had found by experience that by keeping thelaird's chimney and the white tower of Cloomber in a line theycould steer their way through the ugly reef which raises its jaggedback, like that of some sleeping monster, above the troubled watersof the wind-swept bay.
To this wild spot it was that Fate had brought myfather, my sister, and myself. For us its loneliness had noterrors. After the hubbub and bustle of a great city, and the wearytask of upholding appearances upon a slender income, there was agrand, soul-soothing serenity in the long sky-line and the eagerair. Here at least there was no neighbour to pry and chatter.
The laird had left his phaeton and two ponies behindhim, with the aid of which my father and I would go the round ofthe estate doing such light duties as fall to an agent, or "factor"as it was there called, while our gentle Esther looked to ourhousehold needs, and brightened the dark old building.
Such was our simple, uneventful existence, until thesummer night when an unlooked-for incident occurred which proved tobe the herald of those strange doings which I have taken up my pento describe.
It had been my habit to pull out of an evening inthe laird's skiff and to catch a few whiting which might serve forour supper. On this well-remembered occasion my sister came withme, sitting with her book in the stern-sheets of the boat, while Ihung my lines over the bows.
The sun had sunk down behind the rugged Irish coast,but a long bank of flushed cloud still marked the spot, and cast aglory upon the waters. The whole broad ocean was seamed and scarredwith crimson streaks. I had risen in the boat, and was gazing roundin delight at the broad panorama of shore and sea and sky, when mysister plucked at my sleeve with a little, sharp cry ofsurprise.
"See, John," she cried, "there is a light inCloomber Tower!".
I turned my head and stared back at the tall, whiteturret which peeped out above the belt of trees. As I gazed Idistinctly saw at one of the windows the glint of a light, whichsuddenly vanished, and then shone out once more from another higherup. There it flickered for some time, and finally flashed past twosuccessive windows underneath before the trees obscured our view ofit. It was clear that some one bearing a lamp or a candle hadclimbed up the tower stairs and had then