Dracula
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 to-night; for the sky is reddening in the east, and the
dawn is close. We must work to-morrow!”
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 very 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
paralysed. 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 designs! 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 of 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 to-day on no more miserable house in
all the great round of its daily course.
CHAPTER XXII
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 to-day. I must keep writing at every chance, for I dare
not stop to think. All, big and little, must go down; perhaps at the end
the little things may teach us most. The teaching, big or little, could
not have landed Mina or me anywhere worse than we are to-day. However,
we must trust and hope. Poor Mina told me just now, with the tears
running down her dear cheeks, that it is in trouble and trial that our
faith is tested--that we must keep on trusting; and that God will aid us
up to the end. The end! oh my God! what end?... To work! To work!
When Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward had come back from seeing poor
Renfield, we went gravely into what was to be done. First, Dr. Seward
told us that when he and Dr. Van Helsing had gone down to the room below
they had found Renfield lying on the floor, all in a heap. His face was
all bruised and crushed in, and the bones of the neck were broken.
Dr. Seward asked the attendant who was on duty in the passage if he had
heard anything. He said that he had been sitting down--he confessed to
half dozing--when he heard loud voices in the room, and then Renfield
had called out loudly several times, “God! God! God!” after that there
was a sound of falling, and when he entered the room he found him lying
on the floor, face down, just as the doctors had seen him. Van Helsing
asked if he had heard “voices” or “a voice,” and he said he could not
say; that at first it had seemed to him as if there were two, but as
there was no one in the room it could have been only one. He could swear
to it, if required, that the word “God” was spoken by the patient. Dr.
Seward said to us, when we were alone, that he did not wish to go into
the matter; the question of an inquest had to be considered, and it
would never do to put forward the truth, as no one would believe it. As
it was, he thought that on the attendant’s evidence he could give a
certificate of death by misadventure in falling from bed. In case the
coroner should demand it, there would be a formal inquest, necessarily
to the same result.
When the question began to be discussed as to what should be our next
step, the very first thing we decided was that Mina should be in full
confidence; that nothing of any sort--no matter how painful--should be
kept from her. She herself agreed as to its wisdom, and it was pitiful
to see her so brave and yet so sorrowful, and in such a depth of
despair. “There must be no concealment,” she said, “Alas! we have had
too much already. And besides there is nothing in all the world that can
give me more pain than I have already endured--than I suffer now!
Whatever may happen, it must be of new hope or of new courage to me!”
Van Helsing was looking at her fixedly as she spoke, and said, suddenly
but quietly:--
“But dear Madam Mina, are you not afraid; not for yourself, but for
others from yourself, after what has happened?” Her face grew set in its
lines, but her eyes shone with the devotion of a martyr as she
answered:--
“Ah no! for my mind is made up!”
“To what?” he asked gently, whilst we were all very still; for each in
our own way we had a sort of vague idea of what she meant. Her answer
came with direct simplicity, as though she were simply stating a fact:--
“Because if I find in myself--and I shall watch keenly for it--a sign of
harm to any that I love, I shall die!”
“You would not kill yourself?” he asked, hoarsely.
“I would; if there were no friend who loved me, who would save me such a
pain, and so desperate an effort!” She looked at him meaningly as she
spoke. He was sitting down; but now he rose and came close to her and
put his hand on her head as he said solemnly:
“My child, there is such an one if it were for your good. For myself I
could hold it in my account with God to find such an euthanasia for you,