Atlas Nightshade

Day 37

"'My dears, I want to drink your health and prosperity; and may every

blessing attend you both. I know you both from children, and have, with

love and pride, seen you grow up. Now I want you to make your home here

with me. I have left to me neither chick nor child; all are gone, and in

my will I have left you everything.' I cried, Lucy dear, as Jonathan and

the old man clasped hands. Our evening was a very, very happy one.

"So here we are, installed in this beautiful old house, and from both my

bedroom and the drawing-room I can see the great elms of the cathedral

close, with their great black stems standing out against the old yellow

stone of the cathedral and I can hear the rooks overhead cawing and

cawing and chattering and gossiping all day, after the manner of

rooks--and humans. I am busy, I need not tell you, arranging things and

housekeeping. Jonathan and Mr. Hawkins are busy all day; for, now that

Jonathan is a partner, Mr. Hawkins wants to tell him all about the

clients.

"How is your dear mother getting on? I wish I could run up to town for a

day or two to see you, dear, but I dare not go yet, with so much on my

shoulders; and Jonathan wants looking after still. He is beginning to

put some flesh on his bones again, but he was terribly weakened by the

long illness; even now he sometimes starts out of his sleep in a sudden

way and awakes all trembling until I can coax him back to his usual

placidity. However, thank God, these occasions grow less frequent as the

days go on, and they will in time pass away altogether, I trust. And now

I have told you my news, let me ask yours. When are you to be married,

and where, and who is to perform the ceremony, and what are you to wear,

and is it to be a public or a private wedding? Tell me all about it,

dear; tell me all about everything, for there is nothing which interests

you which will not be dear to me. Jonathan asks me to send his

'respectful duty,' but I do not think that is good enough from the

junior partner of the important firm Hawkins & Harker; and so, as you

love me, and he loves me, and I love you with all the moods and tenses

of the verb, I send you simply his 'love' instead. Good-bye, my dearest

Lucy, and all blessings on you.

"Yours,

"MINA HARKER."

_Report from Patrick Hennessey, M. D., M. R. C. S. L. K. Q. C. P. I.,

etc., etc., to John Seward, M. D._

"_20 September._

"My dear Sir,--

"In accordance with your wishes, I enclose report of the conditions of

everything left in my charge.... With regard to patient, Renfield, there

is more to say. He has had another outbreak, which might have had a

dreadful ending, but which, as it fortunately happened, was unattended

with any unhappy results. This afternoon a carrier's cart with two men

made a call at the empty house whose grounds abut on ours--the house to

which, you will remember, the patient twice ran away. The men stopped at

our gate to ask the porter their way, as they were strangers. I was

myself looking out of the study window, having a smoke after dinner, and

saw one of them come up to the house. As he passed the window of

Renfield's room, the patient began to rate him from within, and called

him all the foul names he could lay his tongue to. The man, who seemed a

decent fellow enough, contented himself by telling him to "shut up for a

foul-mouthed beggar," whereon our man accused him of robbing him and

wanting to murder him and said that he would hinder him if he were to

swing for it. I opened the window and signed to the man not to notice,

so he contented himself after looking the place over and making up his

mind as to what kind of a place he had got to by saying: 'Lor' bless

yer, sir, I wouldn't mind what was said to me in a bloomin' madhouse. I

pity ye and the guv'nor for havin' to live in the house with a wild

beast like that.' Then he asked his way civilly enough, and I told him

where the gate of the empty house was; he went away, followed by threats

and curses and revilings from our man. I went down to see if I could

make out any cause for his anger, since he is usually such a

well-behaved man, and except his violent fits nothing of the kind had

ever occurred. I found him, to my astonishment, quite composed and most

genial in his manner. I tried to get him to talk of the incident, but he

blandly asked me questions as to what I meant, and led me to believe

that he was completely oblivious of the affair. It was, I am sorry to

say, however, only another instance of his cunning, for within half an

hour I heard of him again. This time he had broken out through the

window of his room, and was running down the avenue. I called to the

attendants to follow me, and ran after him, for I feared he was intent

on some mischief. My fear was justified when I saw the same cart which

had passed before coming down the road, having on it some great wooden

boxes. The men were wiping their foreheads, and were flushed in the

face, as if with violent exercise. Before I could get up to him the

patient rushed at them, and pulling one of them off the cart, began to

knock his head against the ground. If I had not seized him just at the

moment I believe he would have killed the man there and then. The other

fellow jumped down and struck him over the head with the butt-end of his

heavy whip. It was a terrible blow; but he did not seem to mind it, but

seized him also, and struggled with the three of us, pulling us to and

fro as if we were kittens. You know I am no light weight, and the others

were both burly men. At first he was silent in his fighting; but as we

began to master him, and the attendants were putting a strait-waistcoat

on him, he began to shout: 'I'll frustrate them! They shan't rob me!

they shan't murder me by inches! I'll fight for my Lord and Master!' and

all sorts of similar incoherent ravings. It was with very considerable

difficulty that they got him back to the house and put him in the padded

room. One of the attendants, Hardy, had a finger broken. However, I set

it all right; and he is going on well.

"The two carriers were at first loud in their threats of actions for

damages, and promised to rain all the penalties of the law on us. Their

threats were, however, mingled with some sort of indirect apology for

the defeat of the two of them by a feeble madman. They said that if it

had not been for the way their strength had been spent in carrying and

raising the heavy boxes to the cart they would have made short work of

him. They gave as another reason for their defeat the extraordinary

state of drouth to which they had been reduced by the dusty nature of

their occupation and the reprehensible distance from the scene of their

labours of any place of public entertainment. I quite understood their

drift, and after a stiff glass of grog, or rather more of the same, and

with each a sovereign in hand, they made light of the attack, and swore

that they would encounter a worse madman any day for the pleasure of

meeting so 'bloomin' good a bloke' as your correspondent. I took their

names and addresses, in case they might be needed. They are as

follows:--Jack Smollet, of Dudding's Rents, King George's Road, Great

Walworth, and Thomas Snelling, Peter Farley's Row, Guide Court, Bethnal

Green. They are both in the employment of Harris & Sons, Moving and

Shipment Company, Orange Master's Yard, Soho.

"I shall report to you any matter of interest occurring here, and shall

wire you at once if there is anything of importance.

"Believe me, dear Sir,

"Yours faithfully,

"PATRICK HENNESSEY."

_Letter, Mina Harker to Lucy Westenra_.

(Unopened by her.)

"_18 September._

"My dearest Lucy,--

"Such a sad blow has befallen us. Mr. Hawkins has died very suddenly.

Some may not think it so sad for us, but we had both come to so love him

that it really seems as though we had lost a father. I never knew either

father or mother, so that the dear old man's death is a real blow to me.

Jonathan is greatly distressed. It is not only that he feels sorrow,

deep sorrow, for the dear, good man who has befriended him all his life,

and now at the end has treated him like his own son and left him a

fortune which to people of our modest bringing up is wealth beyond the

dream of avarice, but Jonathan feels it on another account. He says the

amount of responsibility which it puts upon him makes him nervous. He

begins to doubt himself. I try to cheer him up, and _my_ belief in _him_

helps him to have a belief in himself. But it is here that the grave

shock that he experienced tells upon him the most. Oh, it is too hard

that a sweet, simple, noble, strong nature such as his--a nature which

enabled him by our dear, good friend's aid to rise from clerk to master

in a few years--should be so injured that the very essence of its

strength is gone. Forgive me, dear, if I worry you with my troubles in

the midst of your own happiness; but, Lucy dear, I must tell some one,

for the strain of keeping up a brave and cheerful appearance to Jonathan

tries me, and I have no one here that I can confide in. I dread coming

up to London, as we must do the day after to-morrow; for poor Mr.

Hawkins left in his will that he was to be buried in the grave with his

father. As there are no relations at all, Jonathan will have to be chief

mourner. I shall try to run over to see you, dearest, if only for a few

minutes. Forgive me for troubling you. With all blessings,

"Your loving

"MINA HARKER."

_Dr. Seward's Diary._

_20 September._--Only resolution and habit can let me make an entry

to-night. I am too miserable, too low-spirited, too sick of the world

and all in it, including life itself, that I would not care if I heard

this moment the flapping of the wings of the angel of death. And he has

been flapping those grim wings to some purpose of late--Lucy's mother

and Arthur's father, and now.... Let me get on with my work.

I duly relieved Van Helsing in his watch over Lucy. We wanted Arthur to

go to rest also, but he refused at first. It was only when I told him

that we should want him to help us during the day, and that we must not

all break down for want of rest, lest Lucy should suffer, that he agreed

to go. Van Helsing was very kind to him. "Come, my child," he said;

"come with me. You are sick and weak, and have had much sorrow and much

mental pain, as well as that tax on your strength that we know of. You

must not be alone; for to be alone is to be full of fears and alarms.

Come to the drawing-room, where there is a big fire, and there are two

sofas. You shall lie on one, and I on the other, and our sympathy will

be comfort to each other, even though we do not speak, and even if we

sleep." Arthur went off with him, casting back a longing look on Lucy's

face, which lay in her pillow, almost whiter than the lawn. She lay

quite still, and I looked round the room to see that all was as it

should be. I could see that the Professor had carried out in this room,

as in the other, his purpose of using the garlic; the whole of the

window-sashes reeked with it, and round Lucy's neck, over the silk

handkerchief which Van Helsing made her keep on, was a rough chaplet of

the same odorous flowers. Lucy was breathing somewhat stertorously, and

her face was at its worst, for the open mouth showed the pale gums. Her

teeth, in the dim, uncertain light, seemed longer and sharper than they

had been in the morning. In particular, by some trick of the light, the

canine teeth looked longer and sharper than the rest. I sat down by her,

and presently she moved uneasily. At the same moment there came a sort

of dull flapping or buffeting at the window. I went over to it softly,

and peeped out by the corner of the blind. There was a full moonlight,

and I could see that the noise was made by a great bat, which wheeled

round--doubtless attracted by the light, although so dim--and every now

and again struck the window with its wings. When I came back to my seat,

I found that Lucy had moved slightly, and had torn away the garlic

flowers from her throat. I replaced them as well as I could, and sat

watching her.