Bram Stoker's Lost Romance Story

The earliest recollection of Victor Paterson was of a stern and unbending father to whom all around him paid almost extravagant homage, and who frowned when any of his children had the hardihood to appear in his presence. Indeed, he felt from the tears and kisses of his mother on such occasions that some kindly and protective power had been exercised on his behalf. While he was yet—as it seemed to him afterward—a very baby he had been conscious of a stern, loud voice raised in menace, and a soft, appealing one in reply from the mother to whose heart he was clasped; and he felt, rather than remembered, that to what had passed at that interview was due any kindness shown later on to him or to either of his younger brothers. This feeling was partly due to an interview several years later when he was a great, brawny boy. His father had sent for him to his library, and when he had entered and stood almost trembling before him, said:

I have sent for you, sir, because you are now of an age to understand your position in life, and to realize what I have arranged concerning the future of yourself and your brothers.

Here Victor tried to mumble out some sort of thanks, but his father, holding up a warning hand, went on: “I want no thanks—no recognition of any kind. I have no desire whatever to have sons to make my own life worried to the extent that children can disarrange settled plans. Candidly I wish that none of you had ever been born, but since you are here, and as the law does not give me power of life and death over you, I have yielded to your mother’s wishes that you should be in some way placed in an independent position. I have acquiesced in this the more freely since I shall thus be able to secure through your absence a larger measure of quiet for myself. I have, therefore, arranged that you are to have an estate
of your own, and in order that you may not be closer to me than necessary I have chosen as your abode the island of Skye. You may be aware that my means are vast; let me add to your information this item that they are absolutely and entirely at my own disposal. What I do for you now is final, and you need never expect, during my life or at my death, any addition to your fortune from this source. As your mother has urged on me that you, as her eldest son, should have even better provision than your brothers, I have settled on you an estate which is of larger area, and which carries with it some territorial influence, for it makes you a laird. It will, under all ordinary circumstances, be adequate for your requirements, but be careful with it and husband your resources, for if anything should happen adversely you will find yourself in a very different position, and will never, under any circumstances whatever, get any help from me. Your brothers I have taken care of in a proportionate degree. As I daresay you have gathered from the peculiar bent of his education, Hobson will take his place at the royal navy. My influence can secure that for him, and also that he will be kept on the Australian station—certainly at first, and afterwards by his own wish, for the liberal provision which I make for him is contingent on his remaining in distant waters. Aide will be a mining engineer, and for his future is secured a large mining tract at the upper waters of the Amazon. Thus he, too, will remain far from me, and I shall thus be able to maintain my purposes unaltered, and my self-possession unimpaired. Today, therefore, you may all take farewell of your mother, as for me, I desire no farewells. I am creditably rid of you all, and shall henceforth forget that you have ever existed. You may, if you wish, look on yourself as the head of a new family and act accordingly. You will now please to make your brothers acquainted with my wishes and with the separate arrangements for their future made for them, as I have no wish to undergo a similar interview of this sort.” So saying he touched the bell on his table and resumed his work. Victor, without a word, bowed, and withdrew. He straightaway called his brothers to him and told them exactly the messages which he had to deliver. Then, having taken an affectionate leave of his mother, he started that evening for Skye as the journey had been arranged for him.

At Skye he was all-powerful, and as he was of a nature at once masterful and kindly he soon became a sort of beneficent despot among his tenants. The estate which had been given him was of vast extent, and though much of the ground was poor and there were many mountains absolutely sterile, sufficient remained of more generous nature to make him rich even for a local territorial magnate. For nearly 10 years he had been in enjoyment of his fortune, and had grown almost to forget the loneliness and disappointments of his early years. The Island of Skye is not a place where life goes very rapidly, and the local pleasures are of a somewhat primitive kind, tempered with that spirit of obedience in all things to the chief which is common to feudalism and the semi-barbaric method of clanship.

He had but lately started on a sailing trip in his little yacht the Eagle, when one afternoon, leaving his yacht outside the rocks and island to the north he had pulled his punt in shoreward to enjoy the view of Quairang from the sea side. The day was hot, and all around him calm, and so coming as near shore as he could without losing, under the shadow of the cliffs, sight of the mountain top, he pulled in his oars and lay down lazily, letting the boat rock on the swell while the set of the tide drifted him along shore. The rocking motion and the heat made him drowsy, and for a while the whole scene around him faded away into the darkness of dreamless sleep.

He awoke with the sound of a distant cry ringing in his ears, and, instinctively sitting up and grasping the oars, listened for a repetition. It came quickly, and seeking with his eyes the direction of the sound, he saw on a cliff, near which the boat had drifted, a woman wildly waving a scarf with one hand, while with the other she pointed down the cliff, all the while screaming.

The previous excerpt is from John Edgar Browning and Bram Stoker's The Forgotten Writings of Bram Stoker, published 2012, reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan.