DRACULA
PART 14
CHAPTER
XIV
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 his 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)
(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,
lest it may harm. Again your pardon, and forgive me.
“Van Helsing.”
Telegram, Mrs. Harker to Van
Helsing.
“25
September.—Come to-day 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 she knows, 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 type-written 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
to-morrow 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 practise
interviewing; Jonathan’s friend on “The Exeter News” told him that memory was
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 à 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 one 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 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 knew that the friend of that poor lily 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 in 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.”
“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 will be grateful; you will do me much favour.” I could not resist the
temptation of mystifying him a bit—I suppose it is some of the 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 workbasket 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 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 daze, I am dazzle, 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. Madam”—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 happy life and good life, and your husband will be blessed in you.”
“But,
doctor, you praise me too much, and—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’s 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 was not good. What kind of a 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:—
“My life
is a barren and lonely one, and so full of work that I have not had much time
for friendships; but since I have been summoned to here by my friend John
Seward I have known so many good people and seen such nobility that I feel more
than ever—and it has grown with my advancing years—the
loneliness of my life. Believe, me, then, that I come here full of respect for
you, and you have given me hope—hope, not in what I am seeking of, but that
there are good women still left to make life happy—good women, whose lives and
whose truths may make good lesson for the children that are to be. I am glad,
glad, that I may here be of some use to you; for if your husband suffer, he
suffer within the range of my study and experience. I promise you that I will
gladly do all for him that I can—all to make his life strong and manly,
and your life a happy one. Now you must eat. You are overwrought and perhaps
over-anxious. Husband Jonathan would not like to see you so pale; and what he
like not where he love, is not to his good. Therefore for his sake you must eat
and smile. You have told me all about Lucy, and so now we shall not speak of
it, lest it distress. I shall stay in Exeter to-night, for I want to think much
over what you have told me, and when I have thought I will ask you questions,
if I may. And then, too, you will tell me of husband Jonathan’s trouble so far as
you can, but not yet. You must eat now; afterwards you shall tell me all.”
After
lunch, when we went back to the drawing-room, he said to me:—
“And now
tell me all about him.” When it came to speaking to this great learned man, I
began to fear that he would think me a weak fool, and Jonathan a madman—that
journal is all so strange—and I hesitated to go on. But he was so sweet and
kind, and he had promised to help, and I trusted him, so I said:—
“Dr. Van
Helsing, what I have to tell you is so queer that you must not laugh at me or
at my husband. I have been since yesterday in a sort of fever of doubt; you
must be kind to me, and not think me foolish that I have even half believed
some very strange things.” He reassured me by his manner as well as his words
when he said:—
“Oh, my
dear, if you only know how strange is the matter regarding which I am here, it
is you who would laugh. I have learned not to think little of any one’s belief,
no matter how strange it be. I have tried to keep an open mind; and it is not
the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the
extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.”
“Thank
you, thank you, a thousand times! You have taken a weight off my mind. If you
will let me, I shall give you a paper to read. It is long, but I have
typewritten it out. It will tell you my trouble and Jonathan’s. It is the copy
of his journal when abroad, and all that happened. I
dare not say anything of it; you will read for yourself and judge. And then
when I see you, perhaps, you will be very kind and tell me what you think.”
“I
promise,” he said as I gave him the papers; “I shall in the morning, so soon as
I can, come to see you and your husband, if I may.”
“Jonathan
will be here at half-past eleven, and you must come to lunch with us and see
him then; you could catch the quick 3:34 train, which will leave you at
Paddington before eight.” He was surprised at my knowledge of the trains
off-hand, but he does not know that I have made up all the trains to and from
Exeter, so that I may help Jonathan in case he is in a hurry.
So he took
the papers with him and went away, and I sit here thinking—thinking I don’t
know what.
Letter (by hand), Van Helsing
to Mrs. Harker.
“25 September, 6 o’clock.
“Dear Madam Mina,—
“I have
read your husband’s so wonderful diary. You may sleep without doubt. Strange
and terrible as it is, it is true! I will pledge my life on it. It may
be worse for others; but for him and you there is no dread. He is a noble
fellow; and let me tell you from experience of men, that one who would do as he
did in going down that wall and to that room—ay, and going a second time—is not
one to be injured in permanence by a shock. His brain and his heart are all
right; this I swear, before I have even seen him; so be at rest. I shall have
much to ask him of other things. I am blessed that to-day I come to see you,
for I have learn all at once so much that again I am dazzle—dazzle more than
ever, and I must think.
“Yours the most faithful,
“Abraham Van Helsing.”
“Abraham Van Helsing.”
Letter, Mrs. Harker to Van
Helsing.
“25 September, 6:30 p. m.
“My dear Dr. Van Helsing,—
“A
thousand thanks for your kind letter, which has taken a great weight off my
mind. And yet, if it be true, what terrible things there are in the world, and
what an awful thing if that man, that monster, be really in London! I fear to
think. I have this moment, whilst writing, had a wire from Jonathan, saying that he leaves by the 6:25 to-night from Launceston and
will be here at 10:18, so that I shall have no fear to-night. Will you,
therefore, instead of lunching with us, please come to breakfast at eight
o’clock, if this be not too early for you? You can get away, if you are in a
hurry, by the 10:30 train, which will bring you to Paddington by 2:35. Do not
answer this, as I shall take it that, if I do not hear, you will come to
breakfast.
“Believe me,
“Your faithful and grateful friend,
“Mina Harker.”
“Your faithful and grateful friend,
“Mina Harker.”
Jonathan Harker’s Journal.
26
September.—I thought never to write
in this diary again, but the time has come. When I got home last night Mina had
supper ready, and when we had supped she told me of Van Helsing’s visit, and of
her having given him the two diaries copied out, and of how anxious she has
been about me. She showed me in the doctor’s letter that all I wrote down was
true. It seems to have made a new man of me. It was the doubt as to the reality
of the whole thing that knocked me over. I felt impotent, and in the dark, and
distrustful. But, now that I know, I am not afraid, even of the Count.
He has succeeded after all, then, in his design in getting to London, and it
was he I saw. He has got younger, and how? Van Helsing is the man to unmask him
and hunt him out, if he is anything like what Mina says. We sat late, and
talked it all over. Mina is dressing, and I shall call at the hotel in a few
minutes and bring him over....
He was, I
think, surprised to see me. When I came into the room where he was, and
introduced myself, he took me by the shoulder, and turned my face round to the
light, and said, after a sharp scrutiny:—
“But Madam
Mina told me you were ill, that you had had a shock.” It was so funny to hear
my wife called “Madam Mina” by this kindly, strong-faced old man. I smiled, and
said:—
“I was
ill, I have had a shock; but you have cured me already.”
“And how?”
“By your
letter to Mina last night. I was in doubt, and then everything took a hue of
unreality, and I did not know what to trust, even the evidence of my own
senses. Not knowing what to trust, I did not know what to do; and so had only
to keep on working in what had hitherto been the groove of my life. The groove
ceased to avail me, and I mistrusted myself. Doctor, you
don’t know what it is to doubt everything, even yourself. No, you don’t; you
couldn’t with eyebrows like yours.” He seemed pleased, and laughed as he said:—
“So! You
are physiognomist. I learn more here with each hour. I am with so much pleasure
coming to you to breakfast; and, oh, sir, you will pardon praise from an old
man, but you are blessed in your wife.” I would listen to him go on praising
Mina for a day, so I simply nodded and stood silent.
“She is
one of God’s women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women
that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on
earth. So true, so sweet, so noble, so little an egoist—and that, let me tell
you, is much in this age, so sceptical and selfish. And you, sir—I have read
all the letters to poor Miss Lucy, and some of them speak of you, so I know you
since some days from the knowing of others; but I have seen your true self
since last night. You will give me your hand, will you not? And let us be
friends for all our lives.”
We shook
hands, and he was so earnest and so kind that it made me quite choky.
“And now,”
he said, “may I ask you for some more help? I have a great task to do, and at
the beginning it is to know. You can help me here. Can you tell me what went
before your going to Transylvania? Later on I may ask more help, and of a
different kind; but at first this will do.”
“Look
here, sir,” I said, “does what you have to do concern the Count?”
“It does,”
he said solemnly.
“Then I am
with you heart and soul. As you go by the 10:30 train, you will not have time
to read them; but I shall get the bundle of papers. You can take them with you
and read them in the train.”
After
breakfast I saw him to the station. When we were parting he said:—
“Perhaps
you will come to town if I send to you, and take Madam Mina too.”
“We shall
both come when you will,” I said.
I had got
him the morning papers and the London papers of the previous night, and while
we were talking at the carriage window, waiting for the train to start, he was
turning them over. His eyes suddenly seemed to catch something in one of them,
“The Westminster Gazette”—I knew it by the colour—and he grew quite white. He
read something intently, groaning to himself: “Mein
Gott! Mein Gott! So soon! so soon!” I do not think he remembered me at the
moment. Just then the whistle blew, and the train moved off. This recalled him
to himself, and he leaned out of the window and waved his hand, calling out:
“Love to Madam Mina; I shall write so soon as ever I can.”
Dr. Seward’s Diary.
26
September.—Truly there is no such
thing as finality. Not a week since I said “Finis,” and yet here I am starting
fresh again, or rather going on with the same record. Until this afternoon I
had no cause to think of what is done. Renfield had become, to all intents, as
sane as he ever was. He was already well ahead with his fly business; and he
had just started in the spider line also; so he had not been of any trouble to
me. I had a letter from Arthur, written on Sunday, and from it I gather that he
is bearing up wonderfully well. Quincey Morris is with him, and that is much of
a help, for he himself is a bubbling well of good spirits. Quincey wrote me a
line too, and from him I hear that Arthur is beginning to recover something of
his old buoyancy; so as to them all my mind is at rest. As for myself, I was
settling down to my work with the enthusiasm which I used to have for it, so
that I might fairly have said that the wound which poor Lucy left on me was
becoming cicatrised. Everything is, however, now reopened; and what is to be the
end God only knows. I have an idea that Van Helsing thinks he knows, too, but
he will only let out enough at a time to whet curiosity. He went to Exeter
yesterday, and stayed there all night. To-day he came back, and almost bounded
into the room at about half-past five o’clock, and thrust last night’s
“Westminster Gazette” into my hand.
“What do
you think of that?” he asked as he stood back and folded his arms.
I looked
over the paper, for I really did not know what he meant; but he took it from me
and pointed out a paragraph about children being decoyed away at Hampstead. It
did not convey much to me, until I reached a passage where it described small
punctured wounds on their throats. An idea struck me, and I looked up. “Well?”
he said.
“It is
like poor Lucy’s.”
“And what
do you make of it?”
“Simply
that there is some cause in common. Whatever it was that injured her has
injured them.” I did not quite understand his answer:—
“How do
you mean, Professor?” I asked. I was a little inclined to take his seriousness
lightly—for, after all, four days of rest and freedom from burning, harrowing
anxiety does help to restore one’s spirits—but when I saw his face, it sobered
me. Never, even in the midst of our despair about poor Lucy, had he looked more
stern.
“Tell me!”
I said. “I can hazard no opinion. I do not know what to think, and I have no
data on which to found a conjecture.”
“Do you
mean to tell me, friend John, that you have no suspicion as to what poor Lucy
died of; not after all the hints given, not only by events, but by me?”
“Of
nervous prostration following on great loss or waste of blood.”
“And how
the blood lost or waste?” I shook my head. He stepped over and sat down beside
me, and went on:—
“You are
clever man, friend John; you reason well, and your wit is bold; but you are too
prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is
outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there
are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see
things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be
contemplate by men’s eyes, because they know—or think they know—some things
which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it
wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to
explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which
think themselves new; and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be
young—like the fine ladies at the opera. I suppose now you do not believe in
corporeal transference. No? Nor in materialisation. No? Nor in astral bodies.
No? Nor in the reading of thought. No? Nor in hypnotism——”
“Yes,” I
said. “Charcot has proved that pretty well.” He smiled as he went on: “Then you
are satisfied as to it. Yes? And of course then you understand how it act, and
can follow the mind of the great Charcot—alas that he is no more!—into the very
soul of the patient that he influence. No? Then, friend John, am I to take it
that you simply accept fact, and are satisfied to let from premise to
conclusion be a blank? No? Then tell me—for I am student of the brain—how you
accept the hypnotism and reject the thought reading. Let me tell you, my
friend, that there are things done to-day in electrical science which would
have been deemed unholy by the very men who discovered electricity—who would themselves not so long before have been burned
as wizards. There are always mysteries in life. Why was it that Methuselah
lived nine hundred years, and ‘Old Parr’ one hundred and sixty-nine, and yet
that poor Lucy, with four men’s blood in her poor veins, could not live even
one day? For, had she live one more day, we could have save her. Do you know all
the mystery of life and death? Do you know the altogether of comparative
anatomy and can say wherefore the qualities of brutes are in some men, and not
in others? Can you tell me why, when other spiders die small and soon, that one
great spider lived for centuries in the tower of the old Spanish church and
grew and grew, till, on descending, he could drink the oil of all the church
lamps? Can you tell me why in the Pampas, ay and elsewhere, there are bats that
come at night and open the veins of cattle and horses and suck dry their veins;
how in some islands of the Western seas there are bats which hang on the trees
all day, and those who have seen describe as like giant nuts or pods, and that
when the sailors sleep on the deck, because that it is hot, flit down on them,
and then—and then in the morning are found dead men, white as even Miss Lucy
was?”
“Good God,
Professor!” I said, starting up. “Do you mean to tell me that Lucy was bitten
by such a bat; and that such a thing is here in London in the nineteenth
century?” He waved his hand for silence, and went on:—
“Can you
tell me why the tortoise lives more long than generations of men; why the
elephant goes on and on till he have seen dynasties; and why the parrot never
die only of bite of cat or dog or other complaint? Can you tell me why men
believe in all ages and places that there are some few who live on always if
they be permit; that there are men and women who cannot die? We all
know—because science has vouched for the fact—that there have been toads shut
up in rocks for thousands of years, shut in one so small hole that only hold
him since the youth of the world. Can you tell me how the Indian fakir can make
himself to die and have been buried, and his grave sealed and corn sowed on it,
and the corn reaped and be cut and sown and reaped and cut again, and then men
come and take away the unbroken seal and that there lie the Indian fakir, not
dead, but that rise up and walk amongst them as before?” Here I interrupted
him. I was getting bewildered; he so crowded on my mind his list of nature’s
eccentricities and possible impossibilities that my imagination was getting
fired. I had a dim idea that he was teaching me some lesson, as long ago he
used to do in his study at Amsterdam; but he used then
to tell me the thing, so that I could have the object of thought in mind all
the time. But now I was without this help, yet I wanted to follow him, so I
said:—
“Professor,
let me be your pet student again. Tell me the thesis, so that I may apply your knowledge
as you go on. At present I am going in my mind from point to point as a mad
man, and not a sane one, follows an idea. I feel like a novice lumbering
through a bog in a mist, jumping from one tussock to another in the mere blind
effort to move on without knowing where I am going.”
“That is
good image,” he said. “Well, I shall tell you. My thesis is this: I want you to
believe.”
“To
believe what?”
“To
believe in things that you cannot. Let me illustrate. I heard once of an
American who so defined faith: ‘that faculty which enables us to believe things
which we know to be untrue.’ For one, I follow that man. He meant that we shall
have an open mind, and not let a little bit of truth check the rush of a big
truth, like a small rock does a railway truck. We get the small truth first.
Good! We keep him, and we value him; but all the same we must not let him think
himself all the truth in the universe.”
“Then you
want me not to let some previous conviction injure the receptivity of my mind
with regard to some strange matter. Do I read your lesson aright?”
“Ah, you
are my favourite pupil still. It is worth to teach you. Now that you are
willing to understand, you have taken the first step to understand. You think
then that those so small holes in the children’s throats were made by the same
that made the hole in Miss Lucy?”
“I suppose
so.” He stood up and said solemnly:—
“Then you
are wrong. Oh, would it were so! but alas! no. It is worse, far, far worse.”
“In God’s
name, Professor Van Helsing, what do you mean?” I cried.
He threw
himself with a despairing gesture into a chair, and placed his elbows on the
table, covering his face with his hands as he spoke:—
To be continued
