Complete Works of Bram Stoker (368 page)

When I resumed my seat, Mr. Sent Leger described how, just before the time fixed by the “pirate Captain”  —  so he designated him, as did every speaker thereafter  —  the warship met with some under-sea accident, which had a destructive effect on all on board her.  Then he added certain words, which I give verbatim, as I am sure that others will some time wish to remember them in their exactness:

“By the way, President and Lords of the Council, I trust I may ask you to confirm Captain Rooke, of the armoured yacht
The Lady
, to be Admiral of the Squadron of the Land of the Blue Mountains, and also Captain (tentatively) Desmond, late First-Lieutenant of
The Lady
, to the command of the second warship of our fleet  —  the as yet unnamed vessel, whose former Captain threatened to bombard Ilsin.  My Lords, Admiral Rooke has done great service to the Land of the Blue Mountains, and deserves well at your hands.  You will have in him, I am sure, a great official.  One who will till his last breath give you good and loyal service.”

He had sat down, the President put to the Council resolutions, which were passed by acclamation.  Admiral Rooke was given command of the navy, and Captain Desmond confirmed in his appointment to the captaincy of the new ship, which was, by a further resolution, named
The Gospodar Rupert
.

In thanking the Council for acceding to his request, and for the great honour done him in the naming of the ship, Mr. Sent Leger said:

“May I ask that the armoured yacht
The Lady
be accepted by you, the National Council, on behalf of the nation, as a gift on behalf of the cause of freedom from the Voivodin Teuta?”

In response to the mighty cheer of the Council with which the splendid gift was accepted the Gospodar Rupert  —  Mr. Sent Leger  —  bowed, and went quietly out of the room.

As no agenda of the meeting had been prepared, there was for a time, not silence, but much individual conversation.  In the midst of it the Voivode rose up, whereupon there was a strict silence.  All listened with an intensity of eagerness whilst he spoke.

“President and Lords of the Council, Archbishop, and Vladika, I should but ill show my respect did I hesitate to tell you at this the first opportunity I have had of certain matters personal primarily to myself, but which, in the progress of recent events, have come to impinge on the affairs of the nation.  Until I have done so, I shall not feel that I have done a duty, long due to you or your predecessors in office, and which I hope you will allow me to say that I have only kept back for purposes of statecraft.  May I ask that you will come back with me in memory to the year 1890, when our struggle against Ottoman aggression, later on so successfully brought to a close, was begun.  We were then in a desperate condition.  Our finances had run so low that we could not purchase even the bread which we required.  Nay, more, we could not procure through the National Exchequer what we wanted more than bread  —  arms of modern effectiveness; for men may endure hunger and yet fight well, as the glorious past of our country has proved again and again and again.  But when our foes are better armed than we are, the penalty is dreadful to a nation small as our own is in number, no matter how brave their hearts.  In this strait I myself had to secretly raise a sufficient sum of money to procure the weapons we needed.  To this end I sought the assistance of a great merchant-prince, to whom our nation as well as myself was known.  He met me in the same generous spirit which he had shown to other struggling nationalities throughout a long and honourable career.  When I pledged to him as security my own estates, he wished to tear up the bond, and only under pressure would he meet my wishes in this respect.  Lords of the Council, it was his money, thus generously advanced, which procured for us the arms with which we hewed out our freedom.

“Not long ago that noble merchant  —  and here I trust you will pardon me that I am so moved as to perhaps appear to suffer in want of respect to this great Council  —  this noble merchant passed to his account  —  leaving to a near kinsman of his own the royal fortune which he had amassed.  Only a few hours ago that worthy kinsman of the benefactor of our nation made it known to me that in his last will he had bequeathed to me, by secret trust, the whole of those estates which long ago I had forfeited by effluxion of time, inasmuch as I had been unable to fulfil the terms of my voluntary bond.  It grieves me to think that I have had to keep you so long in ignorance of the good thought and wishes and acts of this great man.

“But it was by his wise counsel, fortified by my own judgment, that I was silent; for, indeed, I feared, as he did, lest in our troublous times some doubting spirit without our boundaries, or even within it, might mistrust the honesty of my purposes for public good, because I was no longer one whose whole fortune was invested within our confines.  This prince-merchant, the great English Roger Melton  —  let his name be for ever graven on the hearts of our people!  —  kept silent during his own life, and enjoined on others to come after him to keep secret from the men of the Blue Mountains that secret loan made to me on their behalf, lest in their eyes I, who had striven to be their friend and helper, should suffer wrong repute.  But, happily, he has left me free to clear myself in your eyes.  Moreover, by arranging to have  —  under certain contingencies, which have come to pass  —  the estates which were originally my own retransferred to me, I have no longer the honour of having given what I could to the national cause.  All such now belongs to him; for it was his money  —  and his only  —  which purchased our national armament.

“His worthy kinsman you already know, for he has not only been amongst you for many months, but has already done you good service in his own person.  He it was who, as a mighty warrior, answered the summons of the Vladika when misfortune came upon my house in the capture by enemies of my dear daughter, the Voivodin Teuta, whom you hold in your hearts; who, with a chosen band of our brothers, pursued the marauders, and himself, by a deed of daring and prowess, of which poets shall hereafter sing, saved her, when hope itself seemed to be dead, from their ruthless hands, and brought her back to us; who administered condign punishment to the miscreants who had dared to so wrong her.  He it was who later took me, your servant, out of the prison wherein another band of Turkish miscreants held me captive; rescued me, with the help of my dear daughter, whom he had already freed, whilst I had on my person the documents of international secrecy of which I have already advised you  —  rescued me whilst I had been as yet unsubjected to the indignity of search.

“Beyond this you know now that of which I was in partial ignorance: how he had, through the skill and devotion of your new Admiral, wrought destruction on a hecatomb of our malignant foes.  You who have received for the nation the splendid gift of the little warship, which already represents a new era in naval armament, can understand the great-souled generosity of the man who has restored the vast possessions of my House.  On our way hither from Ilsin, Rupert Sent Leger made known to me the terms of the trust of his noble uncle, Roger Melton, and  —  believe me that he did so generously, with a joy that transcended my own  —  restored to the last male of the Vissarion race the whole inheritance of a noble line.

“And now, my Lords of the Council, I come to another matter, in which I find myself in something of a difficulty, for I am aware that in certain ways you actually know more of it than even I myself do.  It is regarding the marriage of my daughter to Rupert Sent Leger.  It is known to me that the matter has been brought before you by the Archbishop, who, as guardian of my daughter during my absence on the service of the nation, wished to obtain your sanction, as till my return he held her safety in trust.  This was so, not from any merit of mine, but because she, in her own person, had undertaken for the service of our nation a task of almost incredible difficulty.  My Lords, were she child of another father, I should extol to the skies her bravery, her self-devotion, her loyalty to the land she loves.  Why, then, should I hesitate to speak of her deeds in fitting terms, since it is my duty, my glory, to hold them in higher honour than can any in this land?  I shall not shame her  —  or even myself  —  by being silent when such a duty urges me to speak, as Voivode, as trusted envoy of our nation, as father.  Ages hence loyal men and women of our Land of the Blue Mountains will sing her deeds in song and tell them in story.  Her name, Teuta, already sacred in these regions, where it was held by a great Queen, and honoured by all men, will hereafter be held as a symbol and type of woman’s devotion.  Oh, my Lords, we pass along the path of life, the best of us but a little time marching in the sunlight between gloom and gloom, and it is during that march that we must be judged for the future.  This brave woman has won knightly spurs as well as any Paladin of old.  So is it meet that ere she might mate with one worthy of her you, who hold in your hands the safety and honour of the State, should give your approval.  To you was it given to sit in judgment on the worth of this gallant Englisher, now my son.  You judged him then, before you had seen his valour, his strength, and skill exercised on behalf of a national cause.  You judged wisely, oh, my brothers, and out of a grateful heart I thank you one and all for it.  Well has he justified your trust by his later acts.  When, in obedience to the summons of the Vladika, he put the nation in a blaze and ranged our boundaries with a ring of steel, he did so unknowing that what was dearest to him in the world was at stake.  He saved my daughter’s honour and happiness, and won her safety by an act of valour that outvies any told in history.  He took my daughter with him to bring me out from the Silent Tower on the wings of the air, when earth had for me no possibility of freedom  —  I, that had even then in my possession the documents involving other nations which the Soldan would fain have purchased with the half of his empire.

“Henceforth to me, Lords of the Council, this brave man must ever be as a son of my heart, and I trust that in his name grandsons of my own may keep in bright honour the name which in glorious days of old my fathers made illustrious.  Did I know how adequately to thank you for your interest in my child, I would yield up to you my very soul in thanks.”

The speech of the Voivode was received with the honour of the Blue Mountains  —  the drawing and raising of handjars.

FROM RUPERT’S JOURNAL.

July
14, 1907.

For nearly a week we waited for some message from Constantinople, fully expecting either a declaration of war, or else some inquiry so couched as to make war an inevitable result.  The National Council remained on at Vissarion as the guests of the Voivode, to whom, in accordance with my uncle’s will, I had prepared to re-transfer all his estates.  He was, by the way, unwilling at first to accept, and it was only when I showed him Uncle Roger’s letter, and made him read the Deed of Transfer prepared in anticipation by Mr. Trent, that he allowed me to persuade him.  Finally he said:

“As you, my good friends, have so arranged, I must accept, be it only in honour to the wishes of the dead.  But remember, I only do so but for the present, reserving to myself the freedom to withdraw later if I so desire.”

But Constantinople was silent.  The whole nefarious scheme was one of the “put-up jobs” which are part of the dirty work of a certain order of statecraft  —  to be accepted if successful; to be denied in case of failure.

The matter stood thus: Turkey had thrown the dice  —  and lost.  Her men were dead; her ship was forfeit.  It was only some ten days after the warship was left derelict with every living thing  —  that is, everything that had been living  —  with its neck broken, as Rooke informed me, when he brought the ship down the creek, and housed it in the dock behind the armoured gates  —  that we saw an item in
The Roma
copied from
The Constantinople Journal
of July 9:

“LOSS OF AN OTTOMAN IRONCLAD WITH ALL HANDS.

“News has been received at Constantinople of the total loss, with all hands, of one of the newest and finest warships in the Turkish fleet  — 
The Mahmoud
, Captain Ali Ali  —  which foundered in a storm on the night of July 5, some distance off Cabrera, in the Balearic Isles.  There were no survivors, and no wreckage was discovered by the ships which went in relief  —  the
Pera
and the
Mustapha
  —  or reported from anywhere along the shores of the islands, of which exhaustive search was made. 
The Mahmoud
was double-manned, as she carried a full extra crew sent on an educational cruise on the most perfectly scientifically equipped warship on service in the Mediterranean waters.”

When the Voivode and I talked over the matter, he said:

“After all, Turkey is a shrewd Power.  She certainly seems to know when she is beaten, and does not intend to make a bad thing seem worse in the eyes of the world.”

Well, ‘tis a bad wind that blows good to nobody.  As
The Mahmoud
was lost off the Balearics, it cannot have been her that put the marauders on shore and trained her big guns on Ilsin.  We take it, therefore, that the latter must have been a pirate, and as we have taken her derelict in our waters, she is now ours in all ways.  Anyhow, she is ours, and is the first ship of her class in the navy of the Blue Mountains.  I am inclined to think that even if she was  —  or is still  —  a Turkish ship, Admiral Rooke would not be inclined to let her go.  As for Captain Desmond, I think he would go straight out of his mind if such a thing was to be even suggested to him.

It will be a pity if we have any more trouble, for life here is very happy with us all now.  The Voivode is, I think, like a man in a dream.  Teuta is ideally happy, and the real affection which sprang up between them when she and Aunt Janet met is a joy to think of.  I had posted Teuta about her, so that when they should meet my wife might not, by any inadvertence, receive or cause any pain.  But the moment Teuta saw her she ran straight over to her and lifted her in her strong young arms, and, raising her up as one would lift a child, kissed her.  Then, when she had put her sitting in the chair from which she had arisen when we entered the room, she knelt down before her, and put her face down in her lap.  Aunt Janet’s face was a study; I myself could hardly say whether at the first moment surprise or joy predominated.  But there could be no doubt about it the instant after.  She seemed to beam with happiness.  When Teuta knelt to her, she could only say: