DRACULA
PART 16
CHAPTER XVI
DR. SEWARD’S DIARY—continued
IT was just a quarter before
twelve o’clock when we got into the churchyard over the low wall. The night was
dark with occasional gleams of moonlight between the rents of the heavy clouds
that scudded across the sky. We all kept somehow close together, with Van
Helsing slightly in front as he led the way. When we had come close to the tomb
I looked well at Arthur, for I feared that the proximity to a place laden with
so sorrowful a memory would upset him; but he bore himself well. I took it that
the very mystery of the proceeding was in some way a counteractant to his
grief. The Professor unlocked the door, and seeing a natural hesitation amongst
us for various reasons, solved the difficulty by entering first himself. The
rest of us followed, and he closed the door. He then lit a dark lantern and
pointed to the coffin. Arthur stepped forward hesitatingly; Van Helsing said to
me:—
“You were
with me here yesterday. Was the body of Miss Lucy in that coffin?”
“It was.”
The Professor turned to the rest saying:—
“You hear;
and yet there is no one who does not believe with me.” He took his screwdriver
and again took off the lid of the coffin. Arthur looked on, very pale but
silent; when the lid was removed he stepped forward. He evidently did not know
that there was a leaden coffin, or, at any rate, had not thought of it. When he
saw the rent in the lead, the blood rushed to his face for an instant, but as
quickly fell away again, so that he remained of a ghastly whiteness; he was
still silent. Van Helsing forced back the leaden flange, and we all looked in
and recoiled.
The coffin
was empty!
For
several minutes no one spoke a word. The silence was broken by Quincey Morris:—
“Professor,
I answered for you. Your word is all I want. I wouldn’t ask such a thing ordinarily—I
wouldn’t so dishonour you as to imply a doubt; but this is a mystery that goes
beyond any honour or dishonour. Is this your doing?”
“I swear
to you by all that I hold sacred that I have not removed
nor touched her. What happened was this: Two nights ago my friend Seward and I
came here—with good purpose, believe me. I opened that coffin, which was then
sealed up, and we found it, as now, empty. We then waited, and saw something
white come through the trees. The next day we came here in day-time, and she
lay there. Did she not, friend John?”
“Yes.”
“That
night we were just in time. One more so small child was missing, and we find
it, thank God, unharmed amongst the graves. Yesterday I came here before
sundown, for at sundown the Un-Dead can move. I waited here all the night till
the sun rose, but I saw nothing. It was most probable that it was because I had
laid over the clamps of those doors garlic, which the Un-Dead cannot bear, and
other things which they shun. Last night there was no exodus, so to-night
before the sundown I took away my garlic and other things. And so it is we find
this coffin empty. But bear with me. So far there is much that is strange. Wait
you with me outside, unseen and unheard, and things much stranger are yet to
be. So”—here he shut the dark slide of his lantern—“now to the outside.” He
opened the door, and we filed out, he coming last and locking the door behind
him.
Oh! but it
seemed fresh and pure in the night air after the terror of that vault. How
sweet it was to see the clouds race by, and the passing gleams of the moonlight
between the scudding clouds crossing and passing—like the gladness and sorrow
of a man’s life; how sweet it was to breathe the fresh air, that had no taint
of death and decay; how humanising to see the red lighting of the sky beyond
the hill, and to hear far away the muffled roar that marks the life of a great
city. Each in his own way was solemn and overcome. Arthur was silent, and was,
I could see, striving to grasp the purpose and the inner meaning of the
mystery. I was myself tolerably patient, and half inclined again to throw aside
doubt and to accept Van Helsing’s conclusions. Quincey Morris was phlegmatic in
the way of a man who accepts all things, and accepts them in the spirit of cool
bravery, with hazard of all he has to stake. Not being able to smoke, he cut
himself a good-sized plug of tobacco and began to chew. As to Van Helsing, he
was employed in a definite way. First he took from his bag a mass of what
looked like thin, wafer-like biscuit, which was carefully rolled up in a white
napkin; next he took out a double-handful of some whitish stuff, like dough or
putty. He crumbled the wafer up fine and worked it into the mass between his
hands. This he then took, and rolling it into thin strips, began to lay them into the crevices between the door and its
setting in the tomb. I was somewhat puzzled at this, and being close, asked him
what it was that he was doing. Arthur and Quincey drew near also, as they too
were curious. He answered:—
“I am
closing the tomb, so that the Un-Dead may not enter.”
“And is
that stuff you have put there going to do it?” asked Quincey. “Great Scott! Is
this a game?”
“It is.”
“What is
that which you are using?” This time the question was by Arthur. Van Helsing
reverently lifted his hat as he answered:—
“The Host.
I brought it from Amsterdam. I have an Indulgence.” It was an answer that
appalled the most sceptical of us, and we felt individually that in the
presence of such earnest purpose as the Professor’s, a purpose which could thus
use the to him most sacred of things, it was impossible to distrust. In
respectful silence we took the places assigned to us close round the tomb, but
hidden from the sight of any one approaching. I pitied the others, especially
Arthur. I had myself been apprenticed by my former visits to this watching
horror; and yet I, who had up to an hour ago repudiated the proofs, felt my
heart sink within me. Never did tombs look so ghastly white; never did cypress,
or yew, or juniper so seem the embodiment of funereal gloom; never did tree or
grass wave or rustle so ominously; never did bough creak so mysteriously; and
never did the far-away howling of dogs send such a woeful presage through the
night.
There was
a long spell of silence, a big, aching void, and then from the Professor a keen
“S-s-s-s!” He pointed; and far down the avenue of yews we saw a white figure
advance—a dim white figure, which held something dark at its breast. The figure
stopped, and at the moment a ray of moonlight fell upon the masses of driving
clouds and showed in startling prominence a dark-haired woman, dressed in the
cerements of the grave. We could not see the face, for it was bent down over
what we saw to be a fair-haired child. There was a pause and a sharp little
cry, such as a child gives in sleep, or a dog as it lies before the fire and
dreams. We were starting forward, but the Professor’s warning hand, seen by us
as he stood behind a yew-tree, kept us back; and then as we looked the white
figure moved forwards again. It was now near enough for us to see clearly, and
the moonlight still held. My own heart grew cold as ice, and I could hear the
gasp of Arthur, as we recognised the features of Lucy Westenra. Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was
turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous
wantonness. Van Helsing stepped out, and, obedient to his gesture, we all
advanced too; the four of us ranged in a line before the door of the tomb. Van
Helsing raised his lantern and drew the slide; by the concentrated light that
fell on Lucy’s face we could see that the lips were crimson with fresh blood,
and that the stream had trickled over her chin and stained the purity of her
lawn death-robe.
We
shuddered with horror. I could see by the tremulous light that even Van
Helsing’s iron nerve had failed. Arthur was next to me, and if I had not seized
his arm and held him up, he would have fallen.
When
Lucy—I call the thing that was before us Lucy because it bore her shape—saw us
she drew back with an angry snarl, such as a cat gives when taken unawares;
then her eyes ranged over us. Lucy’s eyes in form and colour; but Lucy’s eyes
unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew. At
that moment the remnant of my love passed into hate and loathing; had she then
to be killed, I could have done it with savage delight. As she looked, her eyes
blazed with unholy light, and the face became wreathed with a voluptuous smile.
Oh, God, how it made me shudder to see it! With a careless motion, she flung to
the ground, callous as a devil, the child that up to now she had clutched
strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone. The
child gave a sharp cry, and lay there moaning. There was a cold-bloodedness in
the act which wrung a groan from Arthur; when she advanced to him with
outstretched arms and a wanton smile he fell back and hid his face in his
hands.
She still
advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace, said:—
“Come to
me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you.
Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!”
There was
something diabolically sweet in her tones—something of the tingling of glass
when struck—which rang through the brains even of us who heard the words
addressed to another. As for Arthur, he seemed under a spell; moving his hands
from his face, he opened wide his arms. She was leaping for them, when Van
Helsing sprang forward and held between them his little golden crucifix. She
recoiled from it, and, with a suddenly distorted face, full of rage, dashed
past him as if to enter the tomb.
When
within a foot or two of the door, however, she stopped, as if arrested by some
irresistible force. Then she turned, and her face was shown in the clear burst
of moonlight and by the lamp, which had now no quiver from Van Helsing’s iron
nerves. Never did I see such baffled malice on a face; and never, I trust,
shall such ever be seen again by mortal eyes. The beautiful colour became livid,
the eyes seemed to throw out sparks of hell-fire, the brows were wrinkled as
though the folds of the flesh were the coils of Medusa’s snakes, and the
lovely, blood-stained mouth grew to an open square, as in the passion masks of
the Greeks and Japanese. If ever a face meant death—if looks could kill—we saw
it at that moment.
And so for
full half a minute, which seemed an eternity, she remained between the lifted
crucifix and the sacred closing of her means of entry. Van Helsing broke the
silence by asking Arthur:—
“Answer
me, oh my friend! Am I to proceed in my work?”
Arthur
threw himself on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, as he answered:—
“Do as you
will, friend; do as you will. There can be no horror like this ever any more;”
and he groaned in spirit. Quincey and I simultaneously moved towards him, and
took his arms. We could hear the click of the closing lantern as Van Helsing
held it down; coming close to the tomb, he began to remove from the chinks some
of the sacred emblem which he had placed there. We all looked on in horrified
amazement as we saw, when he stood back, the woman, with a corporeal body as
real at that moment as our own, pass in through the interstice where scarce a
knife-blade could have gone. We all felt a glad sense of relief when we saw the
Professor calmly restoring the strings of putty to the edges of the door.
When this
was done, he lifted the child and said:
“Come now,
my friends; we can do no more till to-morrow. There is a funeral at noon, so
here we shall all come before long after that. The friends of the dead will all
be gone by two, and when the sexton lock the gate we shall remain. Then there
is more to do; but not like this of to-night. As for this little one, he is not
much harm, and by to-morrow night he shall be well. We shall leave him where
the police will find him, as on the other night; and then to home.” Coming
close to Arthur, he said:—
“My friend
Arthur, you have had a sore trial; but after, when you look back, you will see
how it was necessary. You are now in the bitter waters, my child. By this time
to-morrow you will, please God, have passed them, and
have drunk of the sweet waters; so do not mourn overmuch. Till then I shall not
ask you to forgive me.”
Arthur and
Quincey came home with me, and we tried to cheer each other on the way. We had
left the child in safety, and were tired; so we all slept with more or less
reality of sleep.
29
September, night.—A little before
twelve o’clock we three—Arthur, Quincey Morris, and myself—called for the
Professor. It was odd to notice that by common consent we had all put on black
clothes. Of course, Arthur wore black, for he was in deep mourning, but the
rest of us wore it by instinct. We got to the churchyard by half-past one, and
strolled about, keeping out of official observation, so that when the
gravediggers had completed their task and the sexton under the belief that
every one had gone, had locked the gate, we had the place all to ourselves. Van
Helsing, instead of his little black bag, had with him a long leather one,
something like a cricketing bag; it was manifestly of fair weight.
When we
were alone and had heard the last of the footsteps die out up the road, we
silently, and as if by ordered intention, followed the Professor to the tomb.
He unlocked the door, and we entered, closing it behind us. Then he took from
his bag the lantern, which he lit, and also two wax candles, which, when
lighted, he stuck, by melting their own ends, on other coffins, so that they
might give light sufficient to work by. When he again lifted the lid off Lucy’s
coffin we all looked—Arthur trembling like an aspen—and saw that the body lay
there in all its death-beauty. But there was no love in my own heart, nothing
but loathing for the foul Thing which had taken Lucy’s shape without her soul.
I could see even Arthur’s face grow hard as he looked. Presently he said to Van
Helsing:—
“Is this
really Lucy’s body, or only a demon in her shape?”
“It is her
body, and yet not it. But wait a while, and you all see her as she was, and
is.”
She seemed
like a nightmare of Lucy as she lay there; the pointed teeth, the bloodstained,
voluptuous mouth—which it made one shudder to see—the whole carnal and
unspiritual appearance, seeming like a devilish mockery of Lucy’s sweet purity.
Van Helsing, with his usual methodicalness, began taking the various contents
from his bag and placing them ready for use. First he took out a soldering iron
and some plumbing solder, and then a small oil-lamp, which gave out, when lit
in a corner of the tomb, gas which burned at fierce heat
with a blue flame; then his operating knives, which he placed to hand; and last
a round wooden stake, some two and a half or three inches thick and about three
feet long. One end of it was hardened by charring in the fire, and was
sharpened to a fine point. With this stake came a heavy hammer, such as in
households is used in the coal-cellar for breaking the lumps. To me, a doctor’s
preparations for work of any kind are stimulating and bracing, but the effect
of these things on both Arthur and Quincey was to cause them a sort of
consternation. They both, however, kept their courage, and remained silent and
quiet.
When all
was ready, Van Helsing said:—
“Before we
do anything, let me tell you this; it is out of the lore and experience of the
ancients and of all those who have studied the powers of the Un-Dead. When they
become such, there comes with the change the curse of immortality; they cannot
die, but must go on age after age adding new victims and multiplying the evils
of the world; for all that die from the preying of the Un-Dead becomes
themselves Un-Dead, and prey on their kind. And so the circle goes on ever
widening, like as the ripples from a stone thrown in the water. Friend Arthur,
if you had met that kiss which you know of before poor Lucy die; or again, last
night when you open your arms to her, you would in time, when you had died,
have become nosferatu, as they call it in Eastern Europe, and would all
time make more of those Un-Deads that so have fill us with horror. The career
of this so unhappy dear lady is but just begun. Those children whose blood she
suck are not as yet so much the worse; but if she live on, Un-Dead, more and
more they lose their blood and by her power over them they come to her; and so
she draw their blood with that so wicked mouth. But if she die in truth, then
all cease; the tiny wounds of the throats disappear, and they go back to their
plays unknowing ever of what has been. But of the most blessed of all, when
this now Un-Dead be made to rest as true dead, then the soul of the poor lady
whom we love shall again be free. Instead of working wickedness by night and
growing more debased in the assimilating of it by day, she shall take her place
with the other Angels. So that, my friend, it will be a blessed hand for her
that shall strike the blow that sets her free. To this I am willing; but is
there none amongst us who has a better right? Will it be no joy to think of
hereafter in the silence of the night when sleep is not: ‘It was my hand that
sent her to the stars; it was the hand of him that loved her best; the hand that of all she would herself have chosen, had it been to
her to choose?’ Tell me if there be such a one amongst us?”
We all
looked at Arthur. He saw, too, what we all did, the infinite kindness which
suggested that his should be the hand which would restore Lucy to us as a holy,
and not an unholy, memory; he stepped forward and said bravely, though his hand
trembled, and his face was as pale as snow:—
“My true
friend, from the bottom of my broken heart I thank you. Tell me what I am to
do, and I shall not falter!” Van Helsing laid a hand on his shoulder, and
said:—
“Brave
lad! A moment’s courage, and it is done. This stake must be driven through her.
It will be a fearful ordeal—be not deceived in that—but it will be only a short
time, and you will then rejoice more than your pain was great; from this grim
tomb you will emerge as though you tread on air. But you must not falter when
once you have begun. Only think that we, your true friends, are round you, and
that we pray for you all the time.”
“Go on,”
said Arthur hoarsely. “Tell me what I am to do.”
“Take this
stake in your left hand, ready to place the point over the heart, and the
hammer in your right. Then when we begin our prayer for the dead—I shall read
him, I have here the book, and the others shall follow—strike in God’s name,
that so all may be well with the dead that we love and that the Un-Dead pass
away.”
Arthur
took the stake and the hammer, and when once his mind was set on action his
hands never trembled nor even quivered. Van Helsing opened his missal and began
to read, and Quincey and I followed as well as we could. Arthur placed the
point over the heart, and as I looked I could see its dint in the white flesh.
Then he struck with all his might.
The Thing
in the coffin writhed; and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the
opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions;
the sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth
was smeared with a crimson foam. But Arthur never faltered. He looked like a
figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper
the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and
spurted up around it. His face was set, and high duty seemed to shine through
it; the sight of it gave us courage so that our voices seemed to ring through
the little vault.
And then
the writhing and quivering of the body became less, and
the teeth seemed to champ, and the face to quiver. Finally it lay still. The
terrible task was over.
The hammer
fell from Arthur’s hand. He reeled and would have fallen had we not caught him.
The great drops of sweat sprang from his forehead, and his breath came in
broken gasps. It had indeed been an awful strain on him; and had he not been
forced to his task by more than human considerations he could never have gone
through with it. For a few minutes we were so taken up with him that we did not
look towards the coffin. When we did, however, a murmur of startled surprise
ran from one to the other of us. We gazed so eagerly that Arthur rose, for he
had been seated on the ground, and came and looked too; and then a glad,
strange light broke over his face and dispelled altogether the gloom of horror
that lay upon it.
There, in
the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing that we had so dreaded and grown to
hate that the work of her destruction was yielded as a privilege to the one
best entitled to it, but Lucy as we had seen her in her life, with her face of
unequalled sweetness and purity. True that there were there, as we had seen
them in life, the traces of care and pain and waste; but these were all dear to
us, for they marked her truth to what we knew. One and all we felt that the
holy calm that lay like sunshine over the wasted face and form was only an
earthly token and symbol of the calm that was to reign for ever.
Van
Helsing came and laid his hand on Arthur’s shoulder, and said to him:—
“And now,
Arthur my friend, dear lad, am I not forgiven?”
The
reaction of the terrible strain came as he took the old man’s hand in his, and
raising it to his lips, pressed it, and said:—
“Forgiven!
God bless you that you have given my dear one her soul again, and me peace.” He
put his hands on the Professor’s shoulder, and laying his head on his breast,
cried for a while silently, whilst we stood unmoving. When he raised his head
Van Helsing said to him:—
“And now,
my child, you may kiss her. Kiss her dead lips if you will, as she would have
you to, if for her to choose. For she is not a grinning devil now—not any more
a foul Thing for all eternity. No longer she is the devil’s Un-Dead. She is
God’s true dead, whose soul is with Him!”
Arthur
bent and kissed her, and then we sent him and Quincey out of the tomb; the
Professor and I sawed the top off the stake, leaving the point of it in the
body. Then we cut off the head and filled the mouth with garlic. We soldered up
the leaden coffin, screwed on the coffin-lid, and
gathering up our belongings, came away. When the Professor locked the door he
gave the key to Arthur.
Outside
the air was sweet, the sun shone, and the birds sang, and it seemed as if all
nature were tuned to a different pitch. There was gladness and mirth and peace
everywhere, for we were at rest ourselves on one account, and we were glad,
though it was with a tempered joy.
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 this our sorrow and
to stamp him out. I have clues which we can follow; but it is a long task, and
a difficult, 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 about, and you can help me. To-night
I leave for Amsterdam, but shall return to-morrow night. And then begins our
great quest. But first I shall have much to say, so that you may know what is
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.”
To be
continued
