Before we moved away Van Helsing said, “Now, my friends, one step of our work is done, one the most harrowing to ourselves. But there remains a greater task: to find out the author of all our sorrow and to stamp him out. I have clues, which we can follow, but it is a long task, and a difficult one, and there is danger in it, and pain. Shall you not all help me? We have learned to believe, all of us, is it not so? And since so, do we not see our duty? Yes! And do we not promise to go on to the bitter end?”
Each in turn, we took his hand, and the promise was made. Then said the Professor as we moved off, “Two nights hence you shall meet with me and dine together at seven of the clock with friend John. I shall entreat two others, two that you know not as yet, and I shall be ready to all our work show and our plans unfold. Friend John, you come with me home, for I have much to consult you about, and you can help me. Tonight I leave for Amsterdam, but shall return tomorrow night. And then begins our great quest. But first I shall have much to say, so that you may know what to do and to dread. Then our promise shall be made to each other anew. For there is a terrible task before us, and once our feet are on the ploughshare we must not draw back.”
• • •
Letter from Arthur Holmwood, Lord Godalming to Lucy Westerna
My darling Lucy,
How I wish you were with me tonight. Instead I pace this building alone, while elsewhere, our friends likely mirror my restlessness. In my dreams I fear I have killed you, then I awake fully, a scream in my throat and sweat soaking the sheets. I loved you, yet when you most needed me I was absent.
Oh my sweet Lucy! What happened to you? When I first saw you amongst the trees, I wanted to gather you up and hold you tight — to shout out it had been a terrible mistake and that you still lived. Then I saw the blood on your mouth, almost black under the shadows, and the wanton look in your eyes. As I watched, you cast that poor child to the floor as though he were a rat: you, who were always so sweet and loving. I knew then Van Helsing was right. It was not you, but some terrible being inside your body and I had to set you free to die as you lived: a kind and wonderful woman.
I hope you can forgive me if you saw me driving the stake into your heart. Even I could not watch the second part, as they cut off your head and filled your mouth, I understood the necessity, but you were Lucy again by then, and it was all I could do to not to push their hands away. I stood strong for your sake though, because I knew it was what you would have wanted.
It comforts me that you died with my blood in your veins, as if we were already joined in marriage. I know that it was not only my life force that you took, that the other men had performed the same task. Does that make you married to us all? I do believe they loved you too, but you were my life, my future, and my only true love. I wanted you as my wife, the mother of my children. You have left me though, to go to a better place, and while I cannot wish you back, I hope with all my heart that I will soon join you. This pain is unbearable. Each morning I wake and your face is fixed in my mind, beautiful, gentle: the way you used to be.
You knew you were dying, it was why you were so passionate with me in our final days, and I thank you for it. The other men shared their blood in your veins, but they did not possess your body as I did. They never knew what it was like to lay above you, buried inside you, your gaze fastened to mine, lips smiling at me. We should not have done it, but I have no regrets; we had so little time together.
I remember you naked on the sofa after we barred the door, the lamplight playing over your pale skin and shadows under your breasts. Your legs had been longer than I expected, gleaming, soft and warm to touch. I loved seeing you close your eyes, as I used my fingers, then my mouth upon you, exploring you in a way that will remain forever in my memory. There was desperation about us; even though you were so ill, you were as eager as I was for love.
I can still recall your taste — clean, fresh, but musky, and the feeling as you took me into your body. I loved it best when we lay on the rug by the fire, so I could spread your hair back from your face and stare into your eyes. I could not bear the thought of hurting you, of bruising those fragile, thin legs, which gleamed white under the firelight. I will never be able to sit in that room again without seeing you smiling at me, your gaze dark and intent, cheeks slightly flushed. Around your neck, you wore that band of velvet, which you would not allow me to remove, and even though I know now it concealed your death wound, I still cannot think of it in anger. It was part of you; as was the lock of your hair that I keep forever in my watchcase.
You became my bride those nights — we were married in body and mind. I only wish we had longer together, but maybe such intense love is always destined to burn out young. It is both a gift and a penance.
I will lock this letter away, for no one shall know these things except us and I hope you are at peace now, watching down at us. You will be avenged! We’ll catch the monster that took away so precious a life, for your sake, and for the sake of everyone else. I will never forget you my darling, the one who taught me how to love and be loved.
My sweet Lucy.
Your ever-loving husband, Arthur.
CHAPTER 17
DR. SEWARD’S DIARY — cont.
When we arrived at the Berkely Hotel, Van Helsing found a telegram waiting for him.
“Am coming up by train. Jonathan at Whitby. Important news. Mina Harker.”
The Professor was delighted. “Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina,” he said, “pearl among women! She arrives, but I cannot stay. She must go to your house, friend John. You must meet her at the station. Telegraph her en route so that she may be prepared.”
When the wire was dispatched he had a cup of tea. Over it he told me of a diary kept by Jonathan Harker when abroad, and gave me a typewritten copy of it, as also of Mrs. Harker’s diary at Whitby. “Take these,” he said, “and study them well. When I have returned you will be master of all the facts, and we can then better enter on our inquisition. Keep them safe, for there is in them much of treasure. You will need all your faith, even you who have had such an experience as that of today. What is here told,” he laid his hand heavily and gravely on the packet of papers as he spoke, “may be the beginning of the end to you and me and many another, or it may sound the knell of the UnDead who walk the earth. Read all, I pray you, with the open mind, and if you can add in any way to the story here told do so, for it is all important. You have kept a diary of all these so strange things, is it not so? Yes! Then we shall go through all these together when we meet.” He then made ready for his departure and shortly drove off to Liverpool Street. I took my way to Paddington, where I arrived about fifteen minutes before the train came in.
The crowd melted away, after the bustling fashion common to arrival platforms, and I was beginning to feel uneasy, lest I might miss my guest, when a sweet-faced, dainty looking girl stepped up to me, and after a quick glance said, “Dr. Seward, is it not?”
“And you are Mrs. Harker!” I answered at once, whereupon she held out her hand.
“I knew you from the description of poor dear Lucy, but … ” She stopped suddenly, and a quick blush overspread her face.
The blush that rose to my own cheeks somehow set us both at ease, for it was a tacit answer to her own. I got her luggage, which included a typewriter, and we took the Underground to Fenchurch Street, after I had sent a wire to my housekeeper to have a sitting room and a bedroom prepared at once for Mrs. Harker.
In due time we arrived. She knew, of course, that the place was a lunatic asylum, but I could see that she was unable to repress a shudder when we entered.
She told me that, if she might, she would come presently to my study, as she had much to say. So here I am finishing my entry in my phonograph diary whilst I await her. As yet I have not had the chance of looking at the papers, which Van Helsing left with me, though they lie open before me. I must get her interested in something, so that I may have an opportunity of reading them. She does not know how precious time is, or what
a task we have in hand. I must be careful not to frighten her. Here she is!
• • •
MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL
29 September. — After I had tidied myself, I went down to Dr. Seward’s study. At the door I paused a moment, for I thought I heard him talking with some one. As, however, he had pressed me to be quick, I knocked at the door, and on his calling out, “Come in,” I entered.
To my intense surprise, there was no one with him. He was quite alone, and on the table opposite him was what I knew at once from the description to be a phonograph. I had never seen one, and was much interested.
“I hope I did not keep you waiting,” I said, “but I stayed at the door as I heard you talking, and thought there was someone with you.”
“Oh,” he replied with a smile, “I was only entering my diary.”
“Your diary?” I asked him in surprise.
“Yes,” he answered. “I keep it in this.” As he spoke he laid his hand on the phonograph. I felt quite excited over it, and blurted out, “Why, this beats even shorthand! May I hear it say something?”
“Certainly,” he replied with alacrity, and stood up to put it in train for speaking. Then he paused, and a troubled look overspread his face.
“The fact is,” he began awkwardly, “I only keep my diary in it, and as it is entirely, almost entirely, about my cases it may be awkward, that is, I mean … ” He stopped, and I tried to help him out of his embarrassment.
“You helped to attend dear Lucy at the end. Let me hear how she died, for all that I know of her, I shall be very grateful. She was very, very dear to me.”
To my surprise, he answered, with a horrorstruck look in his face, “Tell you of her death? Not for the wide world!”
“Why not?” I asked, for some grave, terrible feeling was coming over me.
Again he paused, and I could see that he was trying to invent an excuse. At length, he stammered out, “You see, I do not know how to pick out any particular part of the diary.”
Even while he was speaking an idea dawned upon him, and he said with unconscious simplicity, in a different voice, and with the naiveté of a child, “that’s quite true, upon my honour.”
I could not but smile, at which he grimaced. “I gave myself away that time!” he said. “But do you know that, although I have kept the diary for months past, it never once struck me how I was going to find any particular part of it in case I wanted to look it up?”
By this time my mind was made up that the diary of a doctor who attended Lucy might have something to add to the sum of our knowledge of that terrible Being, and I said boldly, “Then, Dr. Seward, you had better let me copy it out for you on my typewriter.”
He grew to a positively deathly pallor as he said, “No! No! No! For all the world. I wouldn’t let you know that terrible story!”
Then it was terrible. My intuition was right! For a moment, I thought, and as my eyes ranged the room, unconsciously looking for something or some opportunity to aid me, they lit on a great batch of typewriting on the table. His eyes caught the look in mine, and without his thinking, followed their direction. As they saw the parcel he realized my meaning.
“You do not know me,” I said. “When you have read those papers, my own diary and my husband’s also, which I have typed, you will know me better. I have not faltered in giving every thought of my own heart in this cause. But, of course, you do not know me, yet, and I must not expect you to trust me so far.”
He is certainly a man of noble nature. Poor dear Lucy was right about him. He stood up and opened a large drawer, in which were arranged in order a number of hollow cylinders of metal covered with dark wax, and said,
“You are quite right. I did not trust you because I did not know you. But I know you now, and let me say that I should have known you long ago. I know that Lucy told you of me. She told me of you too. May I make the only atonement in my power? Take the cylinders and hear them. The first half-dozen of them are personal to me, and they will not horrify you. Then you will know me better. Dinner will by then be ready. In the meantime I shall read over some of these documents, and shall be better able to understand certain things.”
He carried the phonograph himself up to my sitting room and adjusted it for me. Now I shall learn something pleasant, I am sure. For it will tell me the other side of a true love episode of which I know one side already.
• • •
DR. SEWARD’S DIARY
29 September. — I was so absorbed in that wonderful diary of Jonathan Harker and that other of his wife that I let the time run on without thinking. Mrs. Harker was not down when the maid came to announce dinner, so I said, “She is possibly tired. Let dinner wait an hour,” and I went on with my work. I had just finished Mrs. Harker’s diary, when she came in. She looked sweetly pretty, but very sad, and her eyes were flushed with crying. This somehow moved me much. Of late I have had cause for tears, God knows! But the relief of them was denied me, and now the sight of those sweet eyes, brightened by recent tears, went straight to my heart. So I said as gently as I could, “I greatly fear I have distressed you.”
“Oh, no, not distressed me,” she replied. “But I have been more touched than I can say by your grief. That is a wonderful machine, but it is cruelly true. It told me, in its very tones, the anguish of your heart. It was like a soul crying out to Almighty God. No one must hear them spoken ever again! See, I have tried to be useful. I have copied out the words on my typewriter, and none other need now hear your heart beat, as I did.”
“No one need ever know, shall ever know,” I said in a low voice. She laid her hand on mine and said very gravely, “Ah, but they must!”
“Must! But why?” I asked.
“Because it is a part of the terrible story, a part of poor Lucy’s death and all that led to it. Because in the struggle we have before us to rid the earth of this terrible monster, we must have all the knowledge and all the help that we can get. I think that the cylinders, which you gave me, contained more than you intended me to know. But I can see that there are in your record many lights to this dark mystery. You will let me help, will you not? I know all up to a certain point, and I see already, though your diary only took me to 7 September, how poor Lucy was beset, and how her terrible doom was being wrought out. Jonathan and I have been working day and night since Professor Van Helsing saw us. He is gone to Whitby to get more information, and he will be here tomorrow to help us. We need have no secrets amongst us. Working together and with absolute trust, we can surely be stronger than if some of us were in the dark.”
She looked at me so appealingly, and at the same time manifested such courage and resolution in her bearing, that I gave in at once to her wishes. “You shall,” I said, “do as you like in the matter. God forgive me if I do wrong! There are terrible things yet to learn of, but if you have so far traveled on the road to poor Lucy’s death, you will not be content, I know, to remain in the dark. Nay, the end, the very end, may give you a gleam of peace. Come, there is dinner. We must keep one another strong for what is before us. We have a cruel and dreadful task. When you have eaten you shall learn the rest, and I shall answer any questions you ask, if there be anything which you do not understand, though it was apparent to us who were present.”
• • •
MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL
29 September. — After dinner I came with Dr. Seward to his study. He brought back the phonograph from my room, and I took a chair, and arranged the phonograph so that I could touch it without getting up, and showed me how to stop it in case I should want to pause. Then he very thoughtfully took a chair, with his back to me, so that I might be as free as possible, and began to read. I put the forked metal to my ears and listened.
When the terrible story of Lucy’s death, and all that followed, was done, I lay back in my chair powerless. Fortunately I am not of a fainting disposition. When Dr. Seward saw me he jumped up with a horrified exclamation, and hurriedly taking a case bottle from the cupboard,
gave me some brandy, which in a few minutes somewhat restored me. My brain was all in a whirl, and only that there came through all the multitude of horrors, the holy ray of light that my dear Lucy was at last at peace, I do not think I could have borne it without making a scene. It is all so wild and mysterious, and strange that if I had not known Jonathan’s experience in Transylvania I could not have believed. As it was, I didn’t know what to believe, and so got out of my difficulty by attending to something else. I took the cover off my typewriter, and said to Dr. Seward,
“Let me write this all out now. We must be ready for Dr. Van Helsing when he comes. I have sent a telegram to Jonathan to come on here when he arrives in London from Whitby. In this matter dates are everything, and I think that if we get all of our material ready, and have every item put in chronological order, we shall have done much.
“You tell me that Lord Godalming and Mr. Morris are coming too. Let us be able to tell them when they come.”
He accordingly set the phonograph at a slow pace, and I began to typewrite from the beginning of the seventeenth cylinder. I used manifold, and so took three copies of the diary, just as I had done with the rest. It was late when I got through, but Dr. Seward went about his work of going his round of the patients. When he had finished he came back and sat near me, reading, so that I did not feel too lonely whilst I worked. How good and thoughtful he is. The world seems full of good men, even if there are monsters in it.
Before I left him I remembered what Jonathan put in his diary of the Professor’s perturbation at reading something in an evening paper at the station at Exeter, so, seeing that Dr. Seward keeps his newspapers, I borrowed the files of ‘The Westminster Gazette’ and ‘The Pall Mall Gazette’ and took them to my room. I remember how much the ‘Dailygraph’ and ‘The Whitby Gazette’, of which I had made cuttings, had helped us to understand the terrible events at Whitby when Count Dracula landed, so I shall look through the evening papers since then, and perhaps I shall get some new light. I am not sleepy, and the work will help to keep me quiet.
Dracula: The Wild and Wanton Edition Page 6
