exhaustion. Lucy was up and in cheerful spirits. When she shook
hands with me she looked sharply in my face and said,
"No sitting up tonight for you. You are worn out. I am quite
well again. Indeed, I am, and if there is to be any sitting up, it
is I who will sit up with you."
I would not argue the point, but went and had my supper. Lucy
came with me, and, enlivened by her charming presence, I made an
excellent meal, and had a couple of glasses of the more than
excellent port. Then Lucy took me upstairs, and showed me a room
next her own, where a cozy fire was burning.
"Now," she said. "You must stay here. I shall leave this door
open and my door too. You can lie on the sofa for I know that
nothing would induce any of you doctors to go to bed whilst there
is a patient above the horizon. If I want anything I shall call
out, and you can come to me at once."
I could not but acquiesce, for I was dog tired, and could not
have sat up had I tried. So, on her renewing her promise to call me
if she should want anything, I lay on the sofa, and forgot all
about everything.
LUCY WESTENRA'S DIARY
9 September.—I feel so happy tonight. I have been so miserably
weak, that to be able to think and move about is like feeling
sunshine after a long spell of east wind out of a steel sky.
Somehow Arthur feels very, very close to me. I seem to feel his
presence warm about me. I suppose it is that sickness and weakness
are selfish things and turn our inner eyes and sympathy on
ourselves, whilst health and strength give love rein, and in
thought and feeling he can wander where he wills. I know where my
thoughts are. If only Arthur knew! My dear, my dear, your ears must
tingle as you sleep, as mine do waking. Oh, the blissful rest of
last night! How I slept, with that dear, good Dr. Seward watching
me. And tonight I shall not fear to sleep, since he is close at
hand and within call. Thank everybody for being so good to me.
Thank God! Goodnight Arthur.
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
10 September.—I was conscious of the Professor's hand on myDR. SEWARD'S DIARY
10 September.—I was conscious of the Professor's hand on my
head, and started awake all in a second. That is one of the things
that we learn in an asylum, at any rate.
"And how is our patient?"
"Well, when I left her, or rather when she left me," I
answered.
"Come, let us see," he said. And together we went into the
room.
The blind was down, and I went over to raise it gently, whilst
Van Helsing stepped, with his soft, cat-like tread, over to the
bed.
As I raised the blind, and the morning sunlight flooded the
room, I heard the Professor's low hiss of inspiration, and knowing
its rarity, a deadly fear shot through my heart. As I passed over
he moved back, and his exclamation of horror, "Gott in Himmel!"
needed no enforcement from his agonized face. He raised his hand
and pointed to the bed, and his iron face was drawn and ashen
white. I felt my knees begin to tremble.
There on the bed, seemingly in a swoon, lay poor Lucy, more
horribly white and wan-looking than ever. Even the lips were white,
and the gums seemed to have shrunken back from the teeth, as we
sometimes see in a corpse after a prolonged illness.
Van Helsing raised his foot to stamp in anger, but the instinct
of his life and all the long years of habit stood to him, and he
put it down again softly.
"Quick!" he said. "Bring the brandy."
I flew to the dining room, and returned with the decanter. He
wetted the poor white lips with it, and together we rubbed palm and
wrist and heart. He felt her heart, and after a few moments of
agonizing suspense said,
"It is not too late. It beats, though but feebly. All our work
is undone. We must begin again. There is no young Arthur here now.
I have to call on you yourself this time, friend John." As he
spoke, he was dipping into his bag, and producing the instruments
of transfusion. I had taken off my coat and rolled up my shirt
sleeve. There was no possibility of an opiate just at present, and
no need of one. and so, without a moment's delay, we began the
operation.no need of one. and so, without a moment's delay, we began the
operation.
After a time, it did not seem a short time either, for the
draining away of one's blood, no matter how willingly it be given,
is a terrible feeling, Van Helsing held up a warning finger. "Do
not stir," he said. "But I fear that with growing strength she may
wake, and that would make danger, oh, so much danger. But I shall
precaution take. I shall give hypodermic injection of morphia." He
proceeded then, swiftly and deftly, to carry out his intent.
The effect on Lucy was not bad, for the faint seemed to merge
subtly into the narcotic sleep. It was with a feeling of personal
pride that I could see a faint tinge of color steal back into the
pallid cheeks and lips. No man knows, till he experiences it, what
it is to feel his own lifeblood drawn away into the veins of the
woman he loves.
The Professor watched me critically. "That will do," he said.
"Already?" I remonstrated. "You took a great deal more from Art."
To which he smiled a sad sort of smile as he replied,
"He is her lover, her fiance. You have work, much work to do for
her and for others, and the present will suffice.
When we stopped the operation, he attended to Lucy, whilst I
applied digital pressure to my own incision. I laid down, while I
waited his leisure to attend to me, for I felt faint and a little
sick. By and by he bound up my wound, and sent me downstairs to get
a glass of wine for myself. As I was leaving the room, he came
after me, and half whispered.
"Mind, nothing must be said of this. If our young lover should
turn up unexpected, as before, no word to him. It would at once
frighten him and enjealous him, too. There must be none. So!"
When I came back he looked at me carefully, and then said, "You
are not much the worse. Go into the room, and lie on your sofa, and
rest awhile, then have much breakfast and come here to me."
I followed out his orders, for I knew how right and wise they
were. I had done my part, and now my next duty was to keep up my