Van Helsing whispered to me, “Jonathan is in a stupor such as we know the Vampire can produce. We can do nothing with poor Madam Mina for a few moments till she recovers herself. I must wake him!”
He dipped the end of a towel in cold water and with it began to flick him on the face, his wife all the while holding her face between her hands and sobbing in a way that was heart breaking to hear. I raised the blind, and looked out of the window. There was much moonshine, and as I looked I could see Quincey Morris run across the lawn and hide himself in the shadow of a great yew tree. It puzzled me to think why he was doing this. But at the instant I heard Harker’s quick exclamation as he woke to partial consciousness, and turned to the bed. On his face, as there might well be, was a look of wild amazement. He seemed dazed for a few seconds, and then full consciousness seemed to burst upon him all at once, and he started up.
His wife was aroused by the quick movement, and turned to him with her arms stretched out, as though to embrace him. Instantly, however, she drew them in again, and putting her elbows together, held her hands before her face, and shuddered till the bed beneath her shook.
“In God’s name what does this mean?” Harker cried out. “Dr. Seward, Dr. Van Helsing, what is it? What has happened? What is wrong? Mina, dear what is it? What does that blood mean? My God, my God! Has it come to this!” And, raising himself to his knees, he beat his hands wildly together. “Good God help us! Help her! Oh, help her!”
With a quick movement he jumped from bed, and began to pull on his clothes, all the man in him awake at the need for instant exertion. “What has happened? Tell me all about it!” he cried without pausing. “Dr. Van Helsing, you love Mina, I know. Oh, do something to save her. It cannot have gone too far yet. Guard her while I look for him!”
His wife, through her terror and horror and distress, saw some sure danger to him. Instantly forgetting her own grief, she seized hold of him and cried out.
“No! No! Jonathan, you must not leave me. I have suffered enough tonight, God knows, without the dread of his harming you. You must stay with me. Stay with these friends who will watch over you!” Her expression became frantic as she spoke. And, he yielding to her, she pulled him down sitting on the bedside, and clung to him fiercely.
Van Helsing and I tried to calm them both. The Professor held up his golden crucifix, and said with wonderful calmness, “Do not fear, my dear. We are here, and whilst this is close to you no foul thing can approach. You are safe for tonight, and we must be calm and take counsel together.”
She shuddered and was silent, holding down her head on her husband’s breast. When she raised it, his white night-robe was stained with blood where her lips had touched, and where the thin open wound in the neck had sent forth drops. The instant she saw it she drew back, with a low wail, and whispered, amidst choking sobs.
“Unclean, unclean! I must touch him or kiss him no more. Oh, that it should be that it is I who am now his worst enemy, and whom he may have most cause to fear.”
To this he spoke out resolutely, “Nonsense, Mina. It is a shame to me to hear such a word. I would not hear it of you. And I shall not hear it from you. May God judge me by my deserts, and punish me with more bitter suffering than even this hour, if by any act or will of mine anything ever come between us!”
He put out his arms and folded her to his breast. And for a while she lay there sobbing. He looked at us over her bowed head, with eyes that blinked damply above his quivering nostrils. His mouth was set as steel.
After a while her sobs became less frequent and more faint, and then he said to me, speaking with a studied calmness, which I felt tried his nervous power to the utmost.
“And now, Dr. Seward, tell me all about it. Too well I know the broad fact. Tell me all that has been.”
I told him exactly what had happened and he listened with seeming impassiveness, but his nostrils twitched and his eyes blazed as I told how the ruthless hands of the Count had held his wife in that terrible and horrid position, with her mouth to the open wound in his breast. It interested me, even at that moment, to see that whilst the face of white set passion worked convulsively over the bowed head, the hands tenderly and lovingly stroked the ruffled hair. Just as I had finished, Quincey and Godalming knocked at the door. They entered in obedience to our summons. Van Helsing looked at me questioningly. I understood him to mean if we were to take advantage of their coming to divert if possible the thoughts of the unhappy husband and wife from each other and from themselves. So on nodding acquiescence to him he asked them what they had seen or done. To which Lord Godalming answered.
“I could not see him anywhere in the passage, or in any of our rooms. I looked in the study but, though he had been there, he had gone. He had, however … ” He stopped suddenly, looking at the poor drooping figure on the bed.
Van Helsing said gravely, “Go on, friend Arthur. We want here no more concealments. Our hope now is in knowing all. Tell freely!”
So Art went on, “He had been there, and though it could only have been for a few seconds, he made rare hay of the place. All the manuscript had been burned, and the blue flames were flickering amongst the white ashes. The cylinders of your phonograph too were thrown on the fire, and the wax had helped the flames.”
Here I interrupted. “Thank God there is the other copy in the safe!”
His face lit for a moment, but fell again as he went on. “I ran downstairs then, but could see no sign of him. I looked into Renfield’s room, but there was no trace there except … ” Again he paused.
“Go on,” said Harker hoarsely. So he bowed his head and moistening his lips with his tongue, added, “except that the poor fellow is dead.”
Mrs. Harker raised her head, looking from one to the other of us she said solemnly, “God’s will be done!”
I could not but feel that Art was keeping back something. But, as I took it that it was with a purpose, I said nothing.
Van Helsing turned to Morris and asked, “And you, friend Quincey, have you any to tell?”
“A little,” he answered. “It may be much eventually, but at present I can’t say. I thought it well to know if possible where the Count would go when he left the house. I did not see him, but I saw a bat rise from Renfield’s window, and flap westward. I expected to see him in some shape go back to Carfax, but he evidently sought some other lair. He will not be back tonight, for the sky is reddening in the east, and the dawn is close. We must work tomorrow!”
He said the latter words through his shut teeth. For a space of perhaps a couple of minutes there was silence, and I could fancy that I could hear the sound of our hearts beating.
Then Van Helsing said, placing his hand tenderly on Mrs. Harker’s head, “And now, Madam Mina, poor dear, dear, Madam Mina, tell us exactly what happened. God knows that I do not want that you be pained, but it is need that we know all. For now more than ever has all work to be done quick and sharp, and in deadly earnest. The day is close to us that must end all, if it may be so, and now is the chance that we may live and learn.”
The poor dear lady shivered, and I could see the tension of her nerves as she clasped her husband closer to her and bent her head lower and lower still on his breast. Then she raised her head proudly, and held out one hand to Van Helsing who took it in his, and after stooping and kissing it reverently, held it fast. The other hand was locked in that of her husband, who held his other arm thrown round her protectingly. After a pause in which she was evidently ordering her thoughts, she began.
“I took the sleeping draught which you had so kindly given me, but for a long time it did not act. I seemed to become more wakeful, and myriads of horrible fancies began to crowd in upon my mind. All of them connected with death, and vampires, with blood, and pain, and trouble.” Her husband involuntarily groaned as she turned to him and said lovingly, “Do not fret, dear. You must be brave and strong, and help me through the horrible task. If you only knew what an effort it is to me to tell of this fearful thing at all
, you would understand how much I need your help. Well, I saw I must try to help the medicine to its work with my will, if it was to do me any good, so I resolutely set myself to sleep. Sure enough sleep must soon have come to me, for I remember no more. Jonathan coming in had not waked me, for he lay by my side when next I remember. There was in the room the same thin white mist that I had before noticed. But I forget now if you know of this. You will find it in my diary, which I shall show you later. I felt the same vague terror, which had come to me before and the same sense of some presence. I turned to wake Jonathan, but found that he slept so soundly that it seemed as if it was he who had taken the sleeping draught, and not I. I tried, but I could not wake him. This caused me a great fear, and I looked around terrified. Then indeed, my heart sank within me. Beside the bed, as if he had stepped out of the mist, or rather as if the mist had turned into his figure, for it had entirely disappeared, stood a tall, thin man, all in black. I knew him at once from the description of the others. The waxen face, the high aquiline nose, on which the light fell in a thin white line, the parted red lips, with the sharp white teeth showing between, and the red eyes that I had seemed to see in the sunset on the windows of St. Mary’s Church at Whitby. I knew, too, the red scar on his forehead where Jonathan had struck him. For an instant my heart stood still, and I would have screamed out, only that I was paralyzed. In the pause he spoke in a sort of keen, cutting whisper, pointing as he spoke to Jonathan.
“’Silence! If you make a sound I shall take him and dash his brains out before your very eyes.’ I was appalled and was too bewildered to do or say anything. With a mocking smile, he placed one hand upon my shoulder and, holding me tight, bared my throat with the other, saying as he did so, ‘First, a little refreshment to reward my exertions. You may as well be quiet. It is not the first time, or the second, that your veins have appeased my thirst!’ I was bewildered, and strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him. I suppose it is a part of the horrible curse that such is, when his touch is on his victim. And oh, my God, my God, pity me! He placed his reeking lips upon my throat!” Her husband groaned again. She clasped his hand harder, and looked at him pityingly, as if he were the injured one, and went on.
“I felt my strength fading away, and I was in a half swoon. How long this horrible thing lasted I know not, but it seemed that a long time must have passed before he took his foul, awful, sneering mouth away. I saw it drip with the fresh blood!” The remembrance seemed for a while to overpower her, and she drooped and would have sunk down but for her husband’s sustaining arm. With a great effort she recovered herself and went on.
“Then he spoke to me mockingly, ‘And so you, like the others, would play your brains against mine. You would help these men to hunt me and frustrate me in my design! You know now, and they know in part already, and will know in full before long, what it is to cross my path. They should have kept their energies for use closer to home. Whilst they played wits against me, against me who commanded nations, and intrigued for them, and fought for them, hundreds of years before they were born, I was countermining them. And you, their best beloved one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, kin of my kin, my bountiful wine-press for a while, and shall be later on my companion and my helper. You shall be avenged in turn, for not one of them but shall minister to your needs. But as yet you are to be punished for what you have done. You have aided in thwarting me. Now you shall come to my call. When my brain says “Come!” to you, you shall cross land or sea to do my bidding. And to that end this!’”
“With that he pulled open his shirt, and with his long sharp nails opened a vein in his breast. When the blood began to spurt out, he took my hands in one of his, holding them tight, and with the other seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound, so that I must either suffocate or swallow some to the … Oh, my God! My God! What have I done? What have I done to deserve such a fate, I who have tried to walk in meekness and righteousness all my days. God pity me! Look down on a poor soul in worse than mortal peril. And in mercy pity those to whom she is dear!” Then she began to rub her lips as though to cleanse them from pollution.
As she was telling her terrible story, the eastern sky began to quicken, and everything became more and more clear. Harker was still and quiet; but over his face, as the awful narrative went on, came a grey look which deepened and deepened in the morning light, till when the first red streak of the coming dawn shot up, the flesh stood darkly out against the whitening hair.
We have arranged that one of us is to stay within call of the unhappy pair till we can meet together and arrange about taking action.
Of this I am sure. The sun rises today on no more miserable house in all the great round of its daily course.
CHAPTER 22
JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL
3 October. — As I must do something or go mad, I write this diary. It is now six o’clock, and we are to meet in the study in half an hour and take something to eat, for Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward are agreed that if we do not eat we cannot work our best. Our best will be, God knows, required today. I must keep writing at every chance, for I dare not stop to think else I will quite lose my reason.
The thought of that monster touching my sweet Mina sends me into such fury it risks pushing me into drastic, foolish, behaviour. I must retain my senses, to act with the level of cold cunning the Count himself uses. It is so hard though! I know the power of these creatures over us mere humans, I remember well the women in his castle: their ripe lips and voluptuous breasts straining the top of their bodices. Even now I hope I never meet them again, for I am unable to resist.
Did Mina feel the same desire when the Count drank from her? If those women drove me beyond reasonable thought then what reaction would the Count cause with his far stronger powers? Are the Undead capable of physical acts? What a terrifying thought! Yet, my heart tells me it was not the case; that he used her to drink from and nothing else.
I have to push these visions away and concentrate on caring for my wife, the victim in this: who now suffers because I arranged for this monster to come to our country. I want to remove all images of those castle temptresses from my mind, but just a single thought of them has made me hot and hard, straining against the flap of my trousers. Usually I would seek Mina out, but to do so with those creatures in my mind would be to sully her.
Instead, I moved my own hand down, rubbing my flesh, inhaling at the sharp pulse of pleasure that floods through my hips. In the corridor outside, footsteps echoed and I paused, but thankfully they continued past the study door, which was closed. I hope that I am not putting the others in danger by omitting to tell details about those women. I fear they would lose all respect for me if they knew though, because unless you have met these creatures, you could never understand their power.
I would rather face the Count then see that fair haired maiden again with her lips, ruby-red and parted with a false smile. I remembered my dream, of her mouth around my private parts, her tongue caressing my hardness, swirling around the tip. Closing my eyes, I sensed the brush of her hair, soft and silky, against my thighs, lips tight around me, a cold hand enclosing me, caressing my shaft, the thumb sliding across my tip, cooling and inflaming simultaneously. Even now, my breath is being driven from my lungs in broken gasps, causing me to lie back against the hard, wooden chair. I love my wife! Why do these creatures continue to haunt me? Why is my hand caressing my own body as these visions fill my mind?
I bite my own lip to muffle a cry as I come, hunched over the desk, muscles shaking. Dazed, I glanced towards the door, grateful that it was still shut as my cheeks burn warm. My Mina will not go through this self-disgust; she is an innocent woman, whom I love, and he will not have her, not while one of our group remains alive.
Be afraid Count, for combined we are a match for you. And we will not give up until you and your wanton mistresses are lying on the earth, a stake through your hearts. You will regret the day you selected my wife as your next victim.
Dracula: The Wild and Wanton Edition Page 14
