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Dracula

Bram Stoker

Section 32 of 54 - Table of Contents
CHAPTER 17


DR. SEWARD'S DIARY-cont.

When we arrived at the Berkely Hotel, Van Helsing found a telegram
waiting for him.

"Am coming up by train.  Jonathan at Whitby.  Important news.  Mina
Harker."


The Professor was delighted.  "Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina," he
said, "pearl among women!  She arrive, but I cannot stay.  She must go
to your house, friend John.  You must meet her at the station.
Telegraph her en route so that she may be prepared."

When the wire was dispatched he had a cup of tea.  Over it he told me
of a diary kept by Jonathan Harker when abroad, and gave me a
typewritten copy of it, as also of Mrs. Harker's diary at Whitby.
"Take these," he said, "and study them well.  When I have returned you
will be master of all the facts, and we can then better enter on our
inquisition.  Keep them safe, for there is in them much of treasure.
You will need all your faith, even you who have had such an experience
as that of today.  What is here told," he laid his hand heavily and
gravely on the packet of papers as he spoke, "may be the beginning of
the end to you and me and many another, or it may sound the knell of
the UnDead who walk the earth.  Read all, I pray you, with the open
mind, and if you can add in any way to the story here told do so, for
it is all important.  You have kept a diary of all these so strange
things, is it not so?  Yes!  Then we shall go through all these
together when we meet."  He then made ready for his departure and
shortly drove off to Liverpool Street.  I took my way to Paddington,
where I arrived about fifteen minutes before the train came in.

The crowd melted away, after the bustling fashion common to arrival
platforms, and I was beginning to feel uneasy, lest I might miss my
guest, when a sweet-faced, dainty looking girl stepped up to me, and
after a quick glance said, "Dr. Seward, is it not?"

"And you are Mrs. Harker!" I answered at once, whereupon she held out
her hand.

"I knew you from the description of poor dear Lucy, but . . ."  She
stopped suddenly, and a quick blush overspread her face.

The blush that rose to my own cheeks somehow set us both at ease, for
it was a tacit answer to her own.  I got her luggage, which included a
typewriter, and we took the Underground to Fenchurch Street, after I
had sent a wire to my housekeeper to have a sitting room and a bedroom
prepared at once for Mrs. Harker.

In due time we arrived.  She knew, of course, that the place was a
lunatic asylum, but I could see that she was unable to repress a
shudder when we entered.

She told me that, if she might, she would come presently to my study,
as she had much to say.  So here I am finishing my entry in my
phonograph diary whilst I await her.  As yet I have not had the chance
of looking at the papers which Van Helsing left with me, though they
lie open before me.  I must get her interested in something, so that I
may have an opportunity of reading them.  She does not know how
precious time is, or what a task we have in hand.  I must be careful
not to frighten her.  Here she is!




MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

29 September.--After I had tidied myself, I went down to Dr. Seward's
study.  At the door I paused a moment, for I thought I heard him
talking with some one.  As, however, he had pressed me to be quick, I
knocked at the door, and on his calling out, "Come in," I entered.

To my intense surprise, there was no one with him.  He was quite
alone, and on the table opposite him was what I knew at once from the
description to be a phonograph.  I had never seen one, and was much
interested.

"I hope I did not keep you waiting," I said, "but I stayed at the door
as I heard you talking, and thought there was someone with you."

"Oh," he replied with a smile, "I was only entering my diary."

"Your diary?" I asked him in surprise.

"Yes," he answered.  "I keep it in this."  As he spoke he laid his
hand on the phonograph.  I felt quite excited over it, and blurted
out, "Why, this beats even shorthand!  May I hear it say something?"

"Certainly," he replied with alacrity, and stood up to put it in train
for speaking.  Then he paused, and a troubled look overspread his
face.

"The fact is," he began awkwardly, "I only keep my diary in it, and as
it is entirely, almost entirely, about my cases it may be awkward,
that is, I mean . . ."  He stopped, and I tried to help him out of his
embarrassment.

"You helped to attend dear Lucy at the end.  Let me hear how she died,
for all that I know of her, I shall be very grateful.  She was very,
very dear to me."

To my surprise, he answered, with a horrorstruck look in his face,
"Tell you of her death?  Not for the wide world!"

"Why not?" I asked, for some grave, terrible feeling was coming over me.

Again he paused, and I could see that he was trying to invent an
excuse.  At length, he stammered out, "You see, I do not know how to
pick out any particular part of the diary."

Even while he was speaking an idea dawned upon him, and he said with
unconscious simplicity, in a different voice, and with the naivete of
a child, "that's quite true, upon my honour.  Honest Indian!"

I could not but smile, at which he grimaced.  "I gave myself away that
time!" he said.  "But do you know that, although I have kept the diary
for months past, it never once struck me how I was going to find any
particular part of it in case I wanted to look it up?"

By this time my mind was made up that the diary of a doctor who
attended Lucy might have something to add to the sum of our knowledge
of that terrible Being, and I said boldly, "Then, Dr. Seward, you had
better let me copy it out for you on my typewriter."

He grew to a positively deathly pallor as he said, "No!  No!  No!  For
all the world.  I wouldn't let you know that terrible story!"

Then it was terrible.  My intuition was right!  For a moment, I
thought, and as my eyes ranged the room, unconsciously looking for
something or some opportunity to aid me, they lit on a great batch of
typewriting on the table.  His eyes caught the look in mine, and
without his thinking, followed their direction.  As they saw the
parcel he realized my meaning.

"You do not know me," I said.  "When you have read those papers, my
own diary and my husband's also, which I have typed, you will know me
better.  I have not faltered in giving every thought of my own heart
in this cause.  But, of course, you do not know me, yet, and I must
not expect you to trust me so far."

He is certainly a man of noble nature.  Poor dear Lucy was right about
him.  He stood up and opened a large drawer, in which were arranged in
order a number of hollow cylinders of metal covered with dark wax, and
said,

"You are quite right.  I did not trust you because I did not know
you.  But I know you now, and let me say that I should have known you
long ago.  I know that Lucy told you of me.  She told me of you too.
May I make the only atonement in my power?  Take the cylinders and
hear them.  The first half-dozen of them are personal to me, and they
will not horrify you.  Then you will know me better.  Dinner will by
then be ready.  In the meantime I shall read over some of these
documents, and shall be better able to understand certain things."

He carried the phonograph himself up to my sitting room and adjusted
it for me.  Now I shall learn something pleasant, I am sure.  For it
will tell me the other side of a true love episode of which I know one
side already.




DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

29 September.--I was so absorbed in that wonderful diary of Jonathan
Harker and that other of his wife that I let the time run on without
thinking.  Mrs. Harker was not down when the maid came to announce
dinner, so I said, "She is possibly tired.  Let dinner wait an hour,"
and I went on with my work.  I had just finished Mrs. Harker's diary,
when she came in.  She looked sweetly pretty, but very sad, and her
eyes were flushed with crying.  This somehow moved me much.  Of late I
have had cause for tears, God knows!  But the relief of them was
denied me, and now the sight of those sweet eyes, brightened by recent
tears, went straight to my heart.  So I said as gently as I could, "I
greatly fear I have distressed you."

"Oh, no, not distressed me," she replied.  "But I have been more
touched than I can say by your grief.  That is a wonderful machine,
but it is cruelly true.  It told me, in its very tones, the anguish of
your heart.  It was like a soul crying out to Almighty God.  No one
must hear them spoken ever again!  See, I have tried to be useful.  I
have copied out the words on my typewriter, and none other need now
hear your heart beat, as I did."

"No one need ever know, shall ever know," I said in a low voice.  She
laid her hand on mine and said very gravely, "Ah, but they must!"

"Must!  But why?" I asked.

"Because it is a part of the terrible story, a part of poor Lucy's
death and all that led to it.  Because in the struggle which we have
before us to rid the earth of this terrible monster we must have all
the knowledge and all the help which we can get.  I think that the
cylinders which you gave me contained more than you intended me to
know.  But I can see that there are in your record many lights to this
dark mystery.  You will let me help, will you not?  I know all up to a
certain point, and I see already, though your diary only took me to 7
September, how poor Lucy was beset, and how her terrible doom was
being wrought out.  Jonathan and I have been working day and night
since Professor Van Helsing saw us.  He is gone to Whitby to get more
information, and he will be here tomorrow to help us.  We need have no
secrets amongst us.  Working together and with absolute trust, we can
surely be stronger than if some of us were in the dark."

She looked at me so appealingly, and at the same time manifested such
courage and resolution in her bearing, that I gave in at once to her
wishes.  "You shall," I said, "do as you like in the matter.  God
forgive me if I do wrong!  There are terrible things yet to learn of,
but if you have so far traveled on the road to poor Lucy's death, you
will not be content, I know, to remain in the dark.  Nay, the end, the
very end, may give you a gleam of peace.  Come, there is dinner.  We
must keep one another strong for what is before us.  We have a cruel
and dreadful task.  When you have eaten you shall learn the rest, and
I shall answer any questions you ask, if there be anything which you
do not understand, though it was apparent to us who were present."



MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

29 September.--After dinner I came with Dr. Seward to his study.  He
brought back the phonograph from my room, and I took a chair, and
arranged the phonograph so that I could touch it without getting up,
and showed me how to stop it in case I should want to pause.  Then he
very thoughtfully took a chair, with his back to me, so that I might
be as free as possible, and began to read.  I put the forked metal to
my ears and listened.

When the terrible story of Lucy's death, and all that followed, was
done, I lay back in my chair powerless.  Fortunately I am not of a
fainting disposition.  When Dr. Seward saw me he jumped up with a
horrified exclamation, and hurriedly taking a case bottle from the
cupboard, gave me some brandy, which in a few minutes somewhat
restored me.  My brain was all in a whirl, and only that there came
through all the multitude of horrors, the holy ray of light that my
dear Lucy was at last at peace, I do not think I could have borne it
without making a scene.  It is all so wild and mysterious, and strange
that if I had not known Jonathan's experience in Transylvania I could
not have believed.  As it was, I didn't know what to believe, and so
got out of my difficulty by attending to something else.  I took the
cover off my typewriter, and said to Dr. Seward,

"Let me write this all out now.  We must be ready for Dr. Van Helsing
when he comes.  I have sent a telegram to Jonathan to come on here
when he arrives in London from Whitby.  In this matter dates are
everything, and I think that if we get all of our material ready, and
have every item put in chronological order, we shall have done much.

"You tell me that Lord Godalming and Mr. Morris are coming too.  Let
us be able to tell them when they come."

He accordingly set the phonograph at a slow pace, and I began to
typewrite from the beginning of the seventeenth cylinder.  I used
manifold, and so took three copies of the diary, just as I had done
with the rest.  It was late when I got through, but Dr. Seward went
about his work of going his round of the patients.  When he had
finished he came back and sat near me, reading, so that I did not feel
too lonely whilst I worked.  How good and thoughtful he is.  The world
seems full of good men, even if there are monsters in it.

Before I left him I remembered what Jonathan put in his diary of the
Professor's perturbation at reading something in an evening paper at
the station at Exeter, so, seeing that Dr. Seward keeps his
newspapers, I borrowed the files of 'The Westminster Gazette' and 'The
Pall Mall Gazette' and took them to my room.  I remember how much the
'Dailygraph' and 'The Whitby Gazette', of which I had made cuttings,
had helped us to understand the terrible events at Whitby when Count
Dracula landed, so I shall look through the evening papers since then,
and perhaps I shall get some new light.  I am not sleepy, and the work
will help to keep me quiet.
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