Dracula

B >> Bram Stoker >> Dracula

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34

"Why, Mina, have I been asleep! Oh, do forgive me for being so rude.
Come, and we'll have a cup of tea somewhere."

He had evidently forgotten all about the dark stranger, as in his
illness he had forgotten all that this episode had reminded him of. I
don't like this lapsing into forgetfulness. It may make or continue
some injury to the brain. I must not ask him, for fear I shall do
more harm than good, but I must somehow learn the facts of his journey
abroad. The time is come, I fear, when I must open the parcel, and
know what is written. Oh, Jonathan, you will, I know, forgive me if I
do wrong, but it is for your own dear sake.

Later.--A sad homecoming in every way, the house empty of the dear
soul who was so good to us. Jonathan still pale and dizzy under a
slight relapse of his malady, and now a telegram from Van Helsing,
whoever he may be. "You will be grieved to hear that Mrs. Westenra
died five days ago, and that Lucy died the day before yesterday. They
were both buried today."

Oh, what a wealth of sorrow in a few words! Poor Mrs. Westenra! Poor
Lucy! Gone, gone, never to return to us! And poor, poor Arthur, to
have lost such a sweetness out of his life! God help us all to bear
our troubles.

DR. SEWARD'S DIARY-CONT.

22 September.--It is all over. Arthur has gone back to Ring, and has
taken Quincey Morris with him. What a fine fellow is Quincey! I
believe in my heart of hearts that he suffered as much about Lucy's
death as any of us, but he bore himself through it like a moral
Viking. If America can go on breeding men like that, she will be a
power in the world indeed. Van Helsing is lying down, having a rest
preparatory to his journey. He goes to Amsterdam tonight, but says he
returns tomorrow night, that he only wants to make some arrangements
which can only be made personally. He is to stop with me then, if he
can. He says he has work to do in London which may take him some
time. Poor old fellow! I fear that the strain of the past week has
broken down even his iron strength. All the time of the burial he
was, I could see, putting some terrible restraint on himself. When it
was all over, we were standing beside Arthur, who, poor fellow, was
speaking of his part in the operation where his blood had been
transfused to his Lucy's veins. I could see Van Helsing's face grow
white and purple by turns. Arthur was saying that he felt since then
as if they two had been really married, and that she was his wife in
the sight of God. None of us said a word of the other operations, and
none of us ever shall. Arthur and Quincey went away together to the
station, and Van Helsing and I came on here. The moment we were alone
in the carriage he gave way to a regular fit of hysterics. He has
denied to me since that it was hysterics, and insisted that it was
only his sense of humor asserting itself under very terrible
conditions. He laughed till he cried, and I had to draw down the
blinds lest any one should see us and misjudge. And then he cried,
till he laughed again, and laughed and cried together, just as a woman
does. I tried to be stern with him, as one is to a woman under the
circumstances, but it had no effect. Men and women are so different
in manifestations of nervous strength or weakness! Then when his face
grew grave and stern again I asked him why his mirth, and why at such
a time. His reply was in a way characteristic of him, for it was
logical and forceful and mysterious. He said,

"Ah, you don't comprehend, friend John. Do not think that I am not
sad, though I laugh. See, I have cried even when the laugh did choke
me. But no more think that I am all sorry when I cry, for the laugh
he come just the same. Keep it always with you that laughter who
knock at your door and say, 'May I come in?' is not true laughter.
No! He is a king, and he come when and how he like. He ask no
person, he choose no time of suitability. He say, 'I am here.'
Behold, in example I grieve my heart out for that so sweet young
girl. I give my blood for her, though I am old and worn. I give my
time, my skill, my sleep. I let my other sufferers want that she may
have all. And yet I can laugh at her very grave, laugh when the clay
from the spade of the sexton drop upon her coffin and say 'Thud,
thud!' to my heart, till it send back the blood from my cheek. My
heart bleed for that poor boy, that dear boy, so of the age of mine
own boy had I been so blessed that he live, and with his hair and eyes
the same.

"There, you know now why I love him so. And yet when he say things
that touch my husband-heart to the quick, and make my father-heart
yearn to him as to no other man, not even you, friend John, for we are
more level in experiences than father and son, yet even at such a
moment King Laugh he come to me and shout and bellow in my ear, 'Here I
am! Here I am!' till the blood come dance back and bring some of the
sunshine that he carry with him to my cheek. Oh, friend John, it is a
strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and
troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the
tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and
tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he
make with that smileless mouth of him. And believe me, friend John,
that he is good to come, and kind. Ah, we men and women are like
ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears
come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps
the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come
like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go
on with our labor, what it may be."

I did not like to wound him by pretending not to see his idea, but as
I did not yet understand the cause of his laughter, I asked him. As
he answered me his face grew stern, and he said in quite a different
tone,

"Oh, it was the grim irony of it all, this so lovely lady garlanded
with flowers, that looked so fair as life, till one by one we wondered
if she were truly dead, she laid in that so fine marble house in that
lonely churchyard, where rest so many of her kin, laid there with the
mother who loved her, and whom she loved, and that sacred bell going
'Toll! Toll! Toll!' so sad and slow, and those holy men, with the
white garments of the angel, pretending to read books, and yet all the
time their eyes never on the page, and all of us with the bowed head.
And all for what? She is dead, so! Is it not?"

"Well, for the life of me, Professor," I said, "I can't see anything
to laugh at in all that. Why, your expression makes it a harder
puzzle than before. But even if the burial service was comic, what
about poor Art and his trouble? Why his heart was simply breaking."

"Just so. Said he not that the transfusion of his blood to her veins
had made her truly his bride?"

"Yes, and it was a sweet and comforting idea for him."

"Quite so. But there was a difficulty, friend John. If so that, then
what about the others? Ho, ho! Then this so sweet maid is a
polyandrist, and me, with my poor wife dead to me, but alive by
Church's law, though no wits, all gone, even I, who am faithful
husband to this now-no-wife, am bigamist."

"I don't see where the joke comes in there either!" I said, and I did
not feel particularly pleased with him for saying such things. He
laid his hand on my arm, and said,

"Friend John, forgive me if I pain. I showed not my feeling to others
when it would wound, but only to you, my old friend, whom I can trust.
If you could have looked into my heart then when I want to laugh, if
you could have done so when the laugh arrived, if you could do so now,
when King Laugh have pack up his crown, and all that is to him, for he
go far, far away from me, and for a long, long time, maybe you would
perhaps pity me the most of all."

I was touched by the tenderness of his tone, and asked why.

"Because I know!"

And now we are all scattered, and for many a long day loneliness will
sit over our roofs with brooding wings. Lucy lies in the tomb of her
kin, a lordly death house in a lonely churchyard, away from teeming
London, where the air is fresh, and the sun rises over Hampstead Hill,
and where wild flowers grow of their own accord.

So I can finish this diary, and God only knows if I shall ever begin
another. If I do, or if I even open this again, it will be to deal
with different people and different themes, for here at the end, where
the romance of my life is told, ere I go back to take up the thread of
my life-work, I say sadly and without hope, "FINIS".

THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE, 25 SEPTEMBER A HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY

The neighborhood of Hampstead is just at present exercised
with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel
to those of what was known to the writers of headlines as
"The Kensington Horror," or "The Stabbing Woman," or "The
Woman in Black." During the past two or three days several
cases have occurred of young children straying from home or
neglecting to return from their playing on the Heath. In
all these cases the children were too young to give any
properly intelligible account of themselves, but the
consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a
"bloofer lady." It has always been late in the evening when
they have been missed, and on two occasions the children
have not been found until early in the following morning.
It is generally supposed in the neighborhood that, as the
first child missed gave as his reason for being away that a
"bloofer lady" had asked him to come for a walk, the others
had picked up the phrase and used it as occasion served. This
is the more natural as the favourite game of the little ones
at present is luring each other away by wiles. A correspondent
writes us that to see some of the tiny tots pretending to be the
"bloofer lady" is supremely funny. Some of our caricaturists
might, he says, take a lesson in the irony of grotesque by
comparing the reality and the picture. It is only in accordance
with general principles of human nature that the "bloofer lady"
should be the popular role at these al fresco performances. Our
correspondent naively says that even Ellen Terry could not be so
winningly attractive as some of these grubby-faced little
children pretend, and even imagine themselves, to be.

There is, however, possibly a serious side to the question,
for some of the children, indeed all who have been missed
at night, have been slightly torn or wounded in the throat.
The wounds seem such as might be made by a rat or a small
dog, and although of not much importance individually, would tend
to show that whatever animal inflicts them has a system or method
of its own. The police of the division have been instructed to
keep a sharp lookout for straying children, especially when very
young, in and around Hampstead Heath, and for any stray dog which
may be about.

THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE, 25 SEPTEMBER EXTRA SPECIAL

THE HAMPSTEAD HORROR

ANOTHER CHILD INJURED

THE "BLOOFER LADY"

We have just received intelligence that another child,
missed last night, was only discovered late in the morning
under a furze bush at the Shooter's Hill side of Hampstead
Heath, which is perhaps, less frequented than the other
parts. It has the same tiny wound in the throat as has
been noticed in other cases. It was terribly weak, and
looked quite emaciated. It too, when partially restored,
had the common story to tell of being lured away by the
"bloofer lady".

CHAPTER 14

MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

23 September.--Jonathan is better after a bad night. I am so glad
that he has plenty of work to do, for that keeps his mind off the
terrible things, and oh, I am rejoiced that he is not now weighed down
with the responsibility of his new position. I knew he would be true
to himself, and now how proud I am to see my Jonathan rising to the
height of his advancement and keeping pace in all ways with the duties
that come upon him. He will be away all day till late, for he said he
could not lunch at home. My household work is done, so I shall take
his foreign journal, and lock myself up in my room and read it.

24 September.--I hadn't the heart to write last night, that terrible
record of Jonathan's upset me so. Poor dear! How he must have
suffered, whether it be true or only imagination. I wonder if there
is any truth in it at all. Did he get his brain fever, and then write
all those terrible things, or had he some cause for it all? I suppose
I shall never know, for I dare not open the subject to him. And yet
that man we saw yesterday! He seemed quite certain of him, poor
fellow! I suppose it was the funeral upset him and sent his mind back
on some train of thought.

He believes it all himself. I remember how on our wedding day he said
"Unless some solemn duty come upon me to go back to the bitter hours,
asleep or awake, mad or sane . . ." There seems to be through it all
some thread of continuity. That fearful Count was coming to London.
If it should be, and he came to London, with its teeming millions . . .
There may be a solemn duty, and if it come we must not shrink from
it. I shall be prepared. I shall get my typewriter this very hour
and begin transcribing. Then we shall be ready for other eyes if
required. And if it be wanted, then, perhaps, if I am ready, poor
Jonathan may not be upset, for I can speak for him and never let him
be troubled or worried with it at all. If ever Jonathan quite gets
over the nervousness he may want to tell me of it all, and I can ask
him questions and find out things, and see how I may comfort him.

LETTER, VAN HELSING TO MRS. HARKER

24 September

(Confidence)

"Dear Madam,

"I pray you to pardon my writing, in that I am so far
friend as that I sent to you sad news of Miss Lucy
Westenra's death. By the kindness of Lord Godalming, I am
empowered to read her letters and papers, for I am deeply
concerned about certain matters vitally important. In them
I find some letters from you, which show how great friends
you were and how you love her. Oh, Madam Mina, by that
love, I implore you, help me. It is for others' good that
I ask, to redress great wrong, and to lift much and terrible
troubles, that may be more great than you can know. May it be
that I see you? You can trust me. I am friend of Dr. John
Seward and of Lord Godalming (that was Arthur of Miss Lucy). I
must keep it private for the present from all. I should come to
Exeter to see you at once if you tell me I am privilege to come,
and where and when. I implore your pardon, Madam. I have read
your letters to poor Lucy, and know how good you are and how your
husband suffer. So I pray you, if it may be, enlighten him not,
least it may harm. Again your pardon, and forgive me.

"VAN HELSING"

TELEGRAM, MRS. HARKER TO VAN HELSING

25 September.--Come today by quarter past ten train if you
can catch it. Can see you any time you call.
"WILHELMINA HARKER"

MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

25 September.--I cannot help feeling terribly excited as the time
draws near for the visit of Dr. Van Helsing, for somehow I expect that
it will throw some light upon Jonathan's sad experience, and as he
attended poor dear Lucy in her last illness, he can tell me all about
her. That is the reason of his coming. It is concerning Lucy and her
sleep-walking, and not about Jonathan. Then I shall never know the
real truth now! How silly I am. That awful journal gets hold of my
imagination and tinges everything with something of its own colour. Of
course it is about Lucy. That habit came back to the poor dear, and
that awful night on the cliff must have made her ill. I had almost
forgotten in my own affairs how ill she was afterwards. She must have
told him of her sleep-walking adventure on the cliff, and that I knew
all about it, and now he wants me to tell him what I know, so that he
may understand. I hope I did right in not saying anything of it to
Mrs. Westenra. I should never forgive myself if any act of mine, were
it even a negative one, brought harm on poor dear Lucy. I hope too,
Dr. Van Helsing will not blame me. I have had so much trouble and
anxiety of late that I feel I cannot bear more just at present.

I suppose a cry does us all good at times, clears the air as other
rain does. Perhaps it was reading the journal yesterday that upset
me, and then Jonathan went away this morning to stay away from me a
whole day and night, the first time we have been parted since our
marriage. I do hope the dear fellow will take care of himself, and
that nothing will occur to upset him. It is two o'clock, and the
doctor will be here soon now. I shall say nothing of Jonathan's
journal unless he asks me. I am so glad I have typewritten out my own
journal, so that, in case he asks about Lucy, I can hand it to him.
It will save much questioning.

Later.--He has come and gone. Oh, what a strange meeting, and how it
all makes my head whirl round. I feel like one in a dream. Can it be
all possible, or even a part of it? If I had not read Jonathan's
journal first, I should never have accepted even a possibility. Poor,
poor, dear Jonathan! How he must have suffered. Please the good God,
all this may not upset him again. I shall try to save him from it.
But it may be even a consolation and a help to him, terrible though it
be and awful in its consequences, to know for certain that his eyes
and ears and brain did not deceive him, and that it is all true. It
may be that it is the doubt which haunts him, that when the doubt is
removed, no matter which, waking or dreaming, may prove the truth, he
will be more satisfied and better able to bear the shock. Dr. Van
Helsing must be a good man as well as a clever one if he is Arthur's
friend and Dr. Seward's, and if they brought him all the way from
Holland to look after Lucy. I feel from having seen him that he is
good and kind and of a noble nature. When he comes tomorrow I shall
ask him about Jonathan. And then, please God, all this sorrow and
anxiety may lead to a good end. I used to think I would like to
practice interviewing. Jonathan's friend on "The Exeter News" told
him that memory is everything in such work, that you must be able to
put down exactly almost every word spoken, even if you had to refine
some of it afterwards. Here was a rare interview. I shall try to
record it verbatim.

It was half-past two o'clock when the knock came. I took my courage a
deux mains and waited. In a few minutes Mary opened the door, and
announced "Dr. Van Helsing".

I rose and bowed, and he came towards me, a man of medium weight,
strongly built, with his shoulders set back over a broad, deep chest
and a neck well balanced on the trunk as the head is on the neck. The
poise of the head strikes me at once as indicative of thought and
power. The head is noble, well-sized, broad, and large behind the
ears. The face, clean-shaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large
resolute, mobile mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight, but with
quick, sensitive nostrils, that seem to broaden as the big bushy brows
come down and the mouth tightens. The forehead is broad and fine,
rising at first almost straight and then sloping back above two bumps
or ridges wide apart, such a forehead that the reddish hair cannot
possibly tumble over it, but falls naturally back and to the sides.
Big, dark blue eyes are set widely apart, and are quick and tender or
stern with the man's moods. He said to me,

"Mrs. Harker, is it not?" I bowed assent.

"That was Miss Mina Murray?" Again I assented.

"It is Mina Murray that I came to see that was friend of that poor dear
child Lucy Westenra. Madam Mina, it is on account of the dead that I
come."

"Sir," I said, "you could have no better claim on me than that you
were a friend and helper of Lucy Westenra." And I held out my hand.
He took it and said tenderly,

"Oh, Madam Mina, I know that the friend of that poor little girl must
be good, but I had yet to learn . . ." He finished his speech with a
courtly bow. I asked him what it was that he wanted to see me about,
so he at once began.

"I have read your letters to Miss Lucy. Forgive me, but I had to
begin to inquire somewhere, and there was none to ask. I know that
you were with her at Whitby. She sometimes kept a diary, you need not
look surprised, Madam Mina. It was begun after you had left, and was
an imitation of you, and in that diary she traces by inference certain
things to a sleep-walking in which she puts down that you saved her.
In great perplexity then I come to you, and ask you out of your so
much kindness to tell me all of it that you can remember."

"I can tell you, I think, Dr. Van Helsing, all about it."

"Ah, then you have good memory for facts, for details? It is not
always so with young ladies."

"No, doctor, but I wrote it all down at the time. I can show it to
you if you like."

"Oh, Madam Mina, I well be grateful. You will do me much favour."

I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit, I suppose
it is some taste of the original apple that remains still in our
mouths, so I handed him the shorthand diary. He took it with a
grateful bow, and said, "May I read it?"

"If you wish," I answered as demurely as I could. He opened it, and
for an instant his face fell. Then he stood up and bowed.

"Oh, you so clever woman!" he said. "I knew long that Mr. Jonathan
was a man of much thankfulness, but see, his wife have all the good
things. And will you not so much honour me and so help me as to read
it for me? Alas! I know not the shorthand."

By this time my little joke was over, and I was almost ashamed. So I
took the typewritten copy from my work basket and handed it to him.

"Forgive me," I said. "I could not help it, but I had been thinking
that it was of dear Lucy that you wished to ask, and so that you might
not have time to wait, not on my account, but because I know your time
must be precious, I have written it out on the typewriter for you."

He took it and his eyes glistened. "You are so good," he said. "And
may I read it now? I may want to ask you some things when I have
read."

"By all means," I said, "read it over whilst I order lunch, and then
you can ask me questions whilst we eat."

He bowed and settled himself in a chair with his back to the light,
and became so absorbed in the papers, whilst I went to see after lunch
chiefly in order that he might not be disturbed. When I came back, I
found him walking hurriedly up and down the room, his face all ablaze
with excitement. He rushed up to me and took me by both hands.

"Oh, Madam Mina," he said, "how can I say what I owe to you? This
paper is as sunshine. It opens the gate to me. I am dazed, I am
dazzled, with so much light, and yet clouds roll in behind the light
every time. But that you do not, cannot comprehend. Oh, but I am
grateful to you, you so clever woman. Madame," he said this very
solemnly, "if ever Abraham Van Helsing can do anything for you or
yours, I trust you will let me know. It will be pleasure and delight
if I may serve you as a friend, as a friend, but all I have ever
learned, all I can ever do, shall be for you and those you love. There
are darknesses in life, and there are lights. You are one of the
lights. You will have a happy life and a good life, and your husband
will be blessed in you."

"But, doctor, you praise me too much, and you do not know me."

"Not know you, I, who am old, and who have studied all my life men and
women, I who have made my specialty the brain and all that belongs to
him and all that follow from him! And I have read your diary that you
have so goodly written for me, and which breathes out truth in every
line. I, who have read your so sweet letter to poor Lucy of your
marriage and your trust, not know you! Oh, Madam Mina, good women
tell all their lives, and by day and by hour and by minute, such
things that angels can read. And we men who wish to know have in us
something of angels' eyes. Your husband is noble nature, and you are
noble too, for you trust, and trust cannot be where there is mean
nature. And your husband, tell me of him. Is he quite well? Is all
that fever gone, and is he strong and hearty?"

I saw here an opening to ask him about Jonathan, so I said, "He was
almost recovered, but he has been greatly upset by Mr. Hawkins death."

He interrupted, "Oh, yes. I know. I know. I have read your last two
letters."

I went on, "I suppose this upset him, for when we were in town on
Thursday last he had a sort of shock."

"A shock, and after brain fever so soon! That is not good. What kind
of shock was it?"

"He thought he saw some one who recalled something terrible, something
which led to his brain fever." And here the whole thing seemed to
overwhelm me in a rush. The pity for Jonathan, the horror which he
experienced, the whole fearful mystery of his diary, and the fear that
has been brooding over me ever since, all came in a tumult. I suppose
I was hysterical, for I threw myself on my knees and held up my hands
to him, and implored him to make my husband well again. He took my
hands and raised me up, and made me sit on the sofa, and sat by me. He
held my hand in his, and said to me with, oh, such infinite sweetness,

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34