Dracula
carefully ascertaining that the lock was a falling, and not a spring,
one. In the latter case we should have been in a bad plight. Then he
fumbled in his bag, and taking out a matchbox and a piece of candle,
proceeded to make a light. The tomb in the day-time, and when wreathed
with fresh flowers, had looked grim and gruesome enough; but now, some
days afterwards, when the flowers hung lank and dead, their whites
turning to rust and their greens to browns; when the spider and the
beetle had resumed their accustomed dominance; when time-discoloured
stone, and dust-encrusted mortar, and rusty, dank iron, and tarnished
brass, and clouded silver-plating gave back the feeble glimmer of a
candle, the effect was more miserable and sordid than could have been
imagined. It conveyed irresistibly the idea that life--animal life--was
not the only thing which could pass away.
Van Helsing went about his work systematically. Holding his candle so
that he could read the coffin plates, and so holding it that the sperm
dropped in white patches which congealed as they touched the metal, he
made assurance of Lucy’s coffin. Another search in his bag, and he took
out a turnscrew.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“To open the coffin. You shall yet be convinced.” Straightway he began
taking out the screws, and finally lifted off the lid, showing the
casing of lead beneath. The sight was almost too much for me. It seemed
to be as much an affront to the dead as it would have been to have
stripped off her clothing in her sleep whilst living; I actually took
hold of his hand to stop him. He only said: “You shall see,” and again
fumbling in his bag, took out a tiny fret-saw. Striking the turnscrew
through the lead with a swift downward stab, which made me wince, he
made a small hole, which was, however, big enough to admit the point of
the saw. I had expected a rush of gas from the week-old corpse. We
doctors, who have had to study our dangers, have to become accustomed to
such things, and I drew back towards the door. But the Professor never
stopped for a moment; he sawed down a couple of feet along one side of
the lead coffin, and then across, and down the other side. Taking the
edge of the loose flange, he bent it back towards the foot of the
coffin, and holding up the candle into the aperture, motioned to me to
look.
I drew near and looked. The coffin was empty.
It was certainly a surprise to me, and gave me a considerable shock, but
Van Helsing was unmoved. He was now more sure than ever of his ground,
and so emboldened to proceed in his task. “Are you satisfied now, friend
John?” he asked.
I felt all the dogged argumentativeness of my nature awake within me as
I answered him:--
“I am satisfied that Lucy’s body is not in that coffin; but that only
proves one thing.”
“And what is that, friend John?”
“That it is not there.”
“That is good logic,” he said, “so far as it goes. But how do you--how
can you--account for it not being there?”
“Perhaps a body-snatcher,” I suggested. “Some of the undertaker’s people
may have stolen it.” I felt that I was speaking folly, and yet it was
the only real cause which I could suggest. The Professor sighed. “Ah
well!” he said, “we must have more proof. Come with me.”
He put on the coffin-lid again, gathered up all his things and placed
them in the bag, blew out the light, and placed the candle also in the
bag. We opened the door, and went out. Behind us he closed the door and
locked it. He handed me the key, saying: “Will you keep it? You had
better be assured.” I laughed--it was not a very cheerful laugh, I am
bound to say--as I motioned him to keep it. “A key is nothing,” I said;
“there may be duplicates; and anyhow it is not difficult to pick a lock
of that kind.” He said nothing, but put the key in his pocket. Then he
told me to watch at one side of the churchyard whilst he would watch at
the other. I took up my place behind a yew-tree, and I saw his dark
figure move until the intervening headstones and trees hid it from my
sight.
It was a lonely vigil. Just after I had taken my place I heard a distant
clock strike twelve, and in time came one and two. I was chilled and
unnerved, and angry with the Professor for taking me on such an errand
and with myself for coming. I was too cold and too sleepy to be keenly
observant, and not sleepy enough to betray my trust so altogether I had
a dreary, miserable time.
Suddenly, as I turned round, I thought I saw something like a white
streak, moving between two dark yew-trees at the side of the churchyard
farthest from the tomb; at the same time a dark mass moved from the
Professor’s side of the ground, and hurriedly went towards it. Then I
too moved; but I had to go round headstones and railed-off tombs, and I
stumbled over graves. The sky was overcast, and somewhere far off an
early cock crew. A little way off, beyond a line of scattered
juniper-trees, which marked the pathway to the church, a white, dim
figure flitted in the direction of the tomb. The tomb itself was hidden
by trees, and I could not see where the figure disappeared. I heard the
rustle of actual movement where I had first seen the white figure, and
coming over, found the Professor holding in his arms a tiny child. When
he saw me he held it out to me, and said:--
“Are you satisfied now?”
“No,” I said, in a way that I felt was aggressive.
“Do you not see the child?”
“Yes, it is a child, but who brought it here? And is it wounded?” I
asked.
“We shall see,” said the Professor, and with one impulse we took our way
out of the churchyard, he carrying the sleeping child.
When we had got some little distance away, we went into a clump of
trees, and struck a match, and looked at the child’s throat. It was
without a scratch or scar of any kind.
“Was I right?” I asked triumphantly.
“We were just in time,” said the Professor thankfully.
We had now to decide what we were to do with the child, and so consulted
about it. If we were to take it to a police-station we should have to
give some account of our movements during the night; at least, we should
have had to make some statement as to how we had come to find the child.
So finally we decided that we would take it to the Heath, and when we
heard a policeman coming, would leave it where he could not fail to find
it; we would then seek our way home as quickly as we could. All fell out
well. At the edge of Hampstead Heath we heard a policeman’s heavy
tramp, and laying the child on the pathway, we waited and watched until
he saw it as he flashed his lantern to and fro. We heard his exclamation
of astonishment, and then we went away silently. By good chance we got a
cab near the “Spaniards,” and drove to town.
I cannot sleep, so I make this entry. But I must try to get a few hours’
sleep, as Van Helsing is to call for me at noon. He insists that I shall
go with him on another expedition.
* * * * *
_27 September._--It was two o’clock before we found a suitable
opportunity for our attempt. The funeral held at noon was all completed,
and the last stragglers of the mourners had taken themselves lazily
away, when, looking carefully from behind a clump of alder-trees, we saw
the sexton lock the gate after him. We knew then that we were safe till
morning did we desire it; but the Professor told me that we should not
want more than an hour at most. Again I felt that horrid sense of the
reality of things, in which any effort of imagination seemed out of
place; and I realised distinctly the perils of the law which we were
incurring in our unhallowed work. Besides, I felt it was all so useless.
Outrageous as it was to open a leaden coffin, to see if a woman dead
nearly a week were really dead, it now seemed the height of folly to
open the tomb again, when we knew, from the evidence of our own
eyesight, that the coffin was empty. I shrugged my shoulders, however,
and rested silent, for Van Helsing had a way of going on his own road,
no matter who remonstrated. He took the key, opened the vault, and again
courteously motioned me to precede. The place was not so gruesome as
last night, but oh, how unutterably mean-looking when the sunshine
streamed in. Van Helsing walked over to Lucy’s coffin, and I followed.
He bent over and again forced back the leaden flange; and then a shock
of surprise and dismay shot through me.
There lay Lucy, seemingly just as we had seen her the night before her
funeral. She was, if possible, more radiantly beautiful than ever; and I
could not believe that she was dead. The lips were red, nay redder than
before; and on the cheeks was a delicate bloom.
“Is this a juggle?” I said to him.
“Are you convinced now?” said the Professor in response, and as he spoke
he put over his hand, and in a way that made me shudder, pulled back the
dead lips and showed the white teeth.
“See,” he went on, “see, they are even sharper than before. With this
and this”--and he touched one of the canine teeth and that below
it--“the little children can be bitten. Are you of belief now, friend
John?” Once more, argumentative hostility woke within me. I _could_ not
accept such an overwhelming idea as he suggested; so, with an attempt to
argue of which I was even at the moment ashamed, I said:--
“She may have been placed here since last night.”
“Indeed? That is so, and by whom?”
“I do not know. Some one has done it.”
“And yet she has been dead one week. Most peoples in that time would not
look so.” I had no answer for this, so was silent. Van Helsing did not
seem to notice my silence; at any rate, he showed neither chagrin nor
triumph. He was looking intently at the face of the dead woman, raising
the eyelids and looking at the eyes, and once more opening the lips and
examining the teeth. Then he turned to me and said:--
“Here, there is one thing which is different from all recorded; here is
some dual life that is not as the common. She was bitten by the vampire
when she was in a trance, sleep-walking--oh, you start; you do not know
that, friend John, but you shall know it all later--and in trance could
he best come to take more blood. In trance she died, and in trance she
is Un-Dead, too. So it is that she differ from all other. Usually when
the Un-Dead sleep at home”--as he spoke he made a comprehensive sweep of
his arm to designate what to a vampire was “home”--“their face show what
they are, but this so sweet that was when she not Un-Dead she go back to
the nothings of the common dead. There is no malign there, see, and so
it make hard that I must kill her in her sleep.” This turned my blood
cold, and it began to dawn upon me that I was accepting Van Helsing’s
theories; but if she were really dead, what was there of terror in the
idea of killing her? He looked up at me, and evidently saw the change in
my face, for he said almost joyously:--
“Ah, you believe now?”
I answered: “Do not press me too hard all at once. I am willing to
accept. How will you do this bloody work?”
“I shall cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and I shall
drive a stake through her body.” It made me shudder to think of so
mutilating the body of the woman whom I had loved. And yet the feeling
was not so strong as I had expected. I was, in fact, beginning to
shudder at the presence of this being, this Un-Dead, as Van Helsing
called it, and to loathe it. Is it possible that love is all subjective,
or all objective?
I waited a considerable time for Van Helsing to begin, but he stood as
if wrapped in thought. Presently he closed the catch of his bag with a
snap, and said:--
“I have been thinking, and have made up my mind as to what is best. If I
did simply follow my inclining I would do now, at this moment, what is