A Strange Story — Complete

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

Little of any importance in connection with the deceased or his murder transpired in the course of that day’s examination and inquiries.

The next day, a gentleman distantly related to the young lady to whom Sir Philip was engaged, and who had been for some time in correspondence with the deceased, arrived at L——. He had been sent for at the suggestion of the Albanian servant, who said that Sir Philip had stayed a day at this gentleman’s house in London, on his way to L——, from Dover.

The new comer, whose name was Danvers, gave a more touching pathos to the horror which the murder had excited. It seemed that the motives which had swayed Sir Philip in the choice of his betrothed were singularly pure and noble. The young lady’s father—an intimate college friend—had been visited by a sudden reverse of fortune, which had brought on a fever that proved mortal. He had died some years ago, leaving his only child penniless, and had bequeathed her to the care and guardianship of Sir Philip.

The orphan received her education at a convent near Paris; and when Sir Philip, a few weeks since, arrived in that city from the East, he offered her his hand and fortune.

“I know,” said Mr. Danvers, “from the conversation I held with him when he came to me in London, that he was induced to this offer by the conscientious desire to discharge the trust consigned to him by his old friend. Sir Philip was still of an age that could not permit him to take under his own roof a female ward of eighteen, without injury to her good name. He could only get over that difficulty by making the ward his wife. ‘She will be safer and happier with the man she will love and honour for her father’s sake,’ said the chivalrous gentleman, ‘than she will be under any other roof I could find for her.’”

And now there arrived another stranger to L——, sent for by Mr. Jeeves, the lawyer,—a stranger to L——, but not to me; my old Edinburgh acquaintance, Richard Strahan.

The will in Mr. Jeeves’s keeping, with its recent codicil, was opened and read. The will itself bore date about six years anterior to the testator’s tragic death: it was very short, and, with the exception of a few legacies, of which the most important was L10,000 to his ward, the whole of his property was left to Richard Strahan, on the condition that he took the name and arms of Derval within a year from the date of Sir Philip’s decease. The codicil, added to the will the night before his death, increased the legacy to the young lady from L10,000 to L30,000, and bequeathed an annuity of L100 a year to his Albanian servant. Accompanying the will, and within the same envelope, was a sealed letter, addressed to Richard Strahan, and dated at Paris two weeks before Sir Philip’s decease. Strahan brought that letter to me. It ran thus:—

“Richard Strahan, I advise you to pull down the house called Derval
Court, and to build another on a better site, the plans of which, to
be modified according to your own taste and requirements, will be
found among my papers. This is a recommendation, not a command. But
I strictly enjoin you entirely to demolish the more ancient part,
which was chiefly occupied by myself, and to destroy by fire, without
perusal, all the books and manuscripts found in the safes in my study.
I have appointed you my sole executor, as well as my heir, because I
have no personal friends in whom I can confide as I trust I may do in
the man I have never seen, simply because he will bear my name and
represent my lineage. There will be found in my writing-desk, which
always accompanies me in my travels, an autobiographical work, a
record of my own life, comprising discoveries, or hints at discovery,
in science, through means little cultivated in our age. You will not
be surprised that before selecting you as my heir and executor, from a
crowd of relations not more distant, I should have made inquiries in
order to justify my selection. The result of those inquiries informs
me that you have not yourself the peculiar knowledge nor the habits of
mind that could enable you to judge of matters which demand the
attainments and the practice of science; but that you are of an
honest, affectionate nature, and will regard as sacred the last
injunctions of a benefactor. I enjoin you, then, to submit the
aforesaid manuscript memoir to some man on whose character for
humanity and honour you can place confidential reliance, and who is
accustomed to the study of the positive sciences, more especially
chemistry, in connection with electricity and magnetism. My desire is
that he shall edit and arrange this memoir for publication; and that,
wherever he feels a conscientious doubt whether any discovery, or hint
of discovery, therein contained would not prove more dangerous than
useful to mankind, he shall consult with any other three men of
science whose names are a guarantee for probity and knowledge, and
according to the best of his judgment, after such consultation,
suppress or publish the passage of which he has so doubted. I own the
ambition which first directed me towards studies of a very unusual
character, and which has encouraged me in their pursuit through many
years of voluntary exile, in lands where they could be best
facilitated or aided,—the ambition of leaving behind me the renown of
a bold discoverer in those recesses of nature which philosophy has
hitherto abandoned to superstition. But I feel, at the moment in
which I trace these lines, a fear lest, in the absorbing interest of
researches which tend to increase to a marvellous degree the power of
man over all matter, animate or inanimate, I may have blunted my own
moral perceptions; and that there may be much in the knowledge which I
sought and acquired from the pure desire of investigating hidden
truths, that could be more abused to purposes of tremendous evil than
be likely to conduce to benignant good. And of this a mind
disciplined to severe reasoning, and uninfluenced by the enthusiasm
which has probably obscured my own judgment, should be the
unprejudiced arbiter. Much as I have coveted and still do covet
that fame which makes the memory of one man the common inheritance of
all, I would infinitely rather that my name should pass away with my
breath, than that I should transmit to my fellowmen any portion of
a knowledge which the good might forbear to exercise and the bad might
unscrupulously pervert. I bear about with me, wherever I wander, a
certain steel casket. I received this casket, with its contents, from
a man whose memory I hold in profound veneration. Should I live to
find a person whom, after minute and intimate trial of his character,
I should deem worthy of such confidence, it is my intention to
communicate to him the secret how to prepare and how to use such of
the powders and essences stored within that casket as I myself have
ventured to employ. Others I have never tested, nor do I know how
they could be resupplied if lost or wasted. But as the contents of
this casket, in the hands of any one not duly instructed as to the
mode of applying them, would either be useless, or conduce, through
inadvertent and ignorant misapplication, to the most dangerous
consequences; so, if I die without having found, and in writing named,
such a confidant as I have described above, I command you immediately
to empty all the powders and essences found therein into any running
stream of water, which will at once harmlessly dissolve them. On
no account must they be cast into fire!
“This letter, Richard Strahan, will only come under your eyes in case
the plans and the hopes which I have formed for my earthly future
should be frustrated by the death on which I do not calculate, but
against the chances of which this will and this letter provide. I am
about to revisit England, in defiance of a warning that I shall be
there subjected to some peril which I refused to have defined, because
I am unwilling that any mean apprehension of personal danger should
enfeeble my nerves in the discharge of a stern and solemn duty. If I
overcome that peril, you will not be my heir; my testament will be
remodelled; this letter will be recalled and destroyed. I shall form
ties which promise me the happiness I have never hitherto found,
though it is common to all men,—the affections of home, the caresses
of children, among whom I may find one to whom hereafter I may
bequeath, in my knowledge, a far nobler heritage than my lands. In
that case, however, my first care would be to assure your own
fortunes. And the sum which this codicil assures to my betrothed
would be transferred to yourself on my wedding-day. Do you know why,
never having seen you, I thus select you for preference to all my
other kindred; why my heart, in writing thus, warms to your image?
Richard Strahan, your only sister, many years older than yourself—you
were then a child—was the object of my first love. We were to have
been wedded, for her parents deceived me into the belief that she
returned my affection. With a rare and nobler candour, she herself
informed me that her heart was given to another, who possessed not my
worldly gifts of wealth and station. In resigning my claims to her
hand, I succeeded in propitiating her parents to her own choice. I
obtained for her husband the living which he held, and I settled on
your sister the dower which, at her death, passed to you as the
brother to whom she had shown a mother’s love, and the interest of
which has secured you a modest independence.
“If these lines ever reach you, recognize my title to reverential
obedience to commands which may seem to you wild, perhaps irrational;
and repay, as if a debt due from your own lost sister, the affection
I have borne to you for her sake.”

While I read this long and strange letter, Strahan sat by my side, covering his face with his hands, and weeping with honest tears for the man whose death had made him powerful and rich.

“You will undertake the trust ordained to me in this letter,” said he, struggling to compose himself. “You will read and edit this memoir; you are the very man he himself would have selected. Of your honour and humanity there can be no doubt, and you have studied with success the sciences which he specifies as requisite for the discharge of the task he commands.”