CHAPTER 16
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY--cont.
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 dents of the heavy clouds that scudded across the sky. We all kept somehow close together, with Van Helsing slightly in front as she led the way. When we had come close to the tomb I looked well at Artemis, for I feared the proximity to a place laden with so sorrowful a memory would upset her, but she bore herself well. I took it that the very mystery of the proceeding was in some way a counteractant to her grief. The Professor unlocked the door, and seeing a natural hesitation amongst us for various reasons, solved the difficulty by entering first herself. The rest of us followed, and she closed the door. She then lit a dark lantern and pointed to a coffin. Artemis stepped forward hesitatingly. Van Helsing said to me, 'You were with me here yesterday. Was the body of Mister Lucas 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.'
She took her screwdriver and again took off the lid of the coffin. Artemis looked on, very pale but silent. When the lid was removed she stepped forward. She evidently did not know that there was a leaden coffin, or at any rate, had not thought of it. When she saw the rent in the lead, the blood rushed to her face for an instant, but as quickly fell away again, so that she remained of a ghastly whiteness. She 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 Quincy 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 or touched him. 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 daytime and he lay there. Did he not, friend Joan?
'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 UnDead can move. I waited here all 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 UnDead cannot bear, and other things which they shun. Last night there was no exodus, so tonight 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 she shut the dark slide of her lantern, 'now to the outside.'She opened the door, and we filed out, she coming last and locking the door behind her.
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 woman's life. How sweet it was to breathe the fresh air, that had no taint of death and decay. How humanizing 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 her own way was solemn and overcome. Artemis 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. Quincy Morris was phlegmatic in the way of a woman who accepts all things, and accepts them in the spirit of cool bravery, with hazard of all she has at stake. Not being able to smoke, she cut herself a good-sized plug of tobacco and began to chew. As to Van Helsing, she was employed in a definite way. First she took from her bag a mass of what looked like thin, wafer-like biscuit, which was carefully rolled up in a white napkin. Next she took out a double handful of some whitish stuff, like dough or putty. She crumbled the wafer up fine and worked it into the mass between her hands. This she 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 her what it was that she was doing. Artemis and Quincy drew near also, as they too were curious.
She answered, 'I am closing the tomb so that the UnDead may not enter.'
‘and is that stuff you have there going to do it?'
'It is.'
'What is that which you are using?'This time the question was by Artemis. Van Helsing reverently lifted her hat as she 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 her 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 Artemis. 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 funeral 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, big, aching, void, and then from the Professor a keen 'S-s-s-s!’ she 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 man, 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 she 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 Artemis, as we recognized the features of Lucas Westenra. Lucas 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 her gesture, we all advanced too. The four of us ranged in a line before the door of the tomb. Van Helsing raised her lantern and drew the slide. By the concentrated light that fell on Lucas's face we could see that the lips were crimson with fresh blood, and that the stream had trickled over him chin and stained the purity of his lawn death-robe.
We shuddered with horror. I could see by the tremulous light that even Van Helsing's iron nerve had failed. Artemis was next to me, and if I had not seized her arm and held her up, she would have fallen.
When Lucas, I call the thing that was before us Lucas because it bore his shape, saw us he drew back with an angry snarl, such as a cat gives when taken unawares, then his eyes ranged over us. Lucas's eyes in form and colour, but Lucas'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 he then to be killed, I could have done it with savage delight. As he looked, his 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, he flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the child that up to now he had clutched strenuously to his breast, growling over it as a dog growls o
ver 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 Artemis. When he advanced to her with outstretched arms and a wanton smile she fell back and hid her face in her hands.
He still advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace, said, 'Come to me, Artemis. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my wife, come!'
There was something diabolically sweet in his tones, something of the tinkling of glass when struck, which rang through the brains even of us who heard the words addressed to another.
As for Artemis, she seemed under a spell, moving her hands from her face, she opened wide her arms. He was leaping for them, when Van Helsing sprang forward and held between them her little golden crucifix. He recoiled from it, and, with a suddenly distorted face, full of rage, dashed past her as if to enter the tomb.
When within a foot or two of the door, however, he stopped, as if arrested by some irresistible force. Then he turned, and his face was shown in the clear burst of moonlight and by the lamp, which had now no quiver from Van Helsing's 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 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, he remained between the lifted crucifix and the sacred closing of his means of entry.
Van Helsing broke the silence by asking Artemis, 'Answer me, oh my friend! Am I to proceed in my work?'
'Do as you will, friend. Do as you will. There can be no horror like this ever any more.’ and she groaned in spirit.
Quincy and I simultaneously moved towards her, and took her arms. We could hear the click of the closing lantern as Van Helsing held it down. Coming close to the tomb, she began to remove from the chinks some of the sacred emblem which she had placed there. We all looked on with horrified amazement as we saw, when she stood back, the man, with a corporeal body as real at that moment as our own, pass 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, she lifted the child and said, 'Come now, my friends. We can do no more till tomorrow. 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 locks the gate we shall remain. Then there is more to do, but not like this of tonight. As for this little one, she is not much harmed, and by tomorrow night she shall be well. We shall leave her where the police will find her, as on the other night, and then to home.'
Coming close to Artemis, she said, 'My friend Artemis, 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 tomorrow you will, please God, have passed them, and have drunk of the sweet waters. So do not mourn over-much. Till then I shall not ask you to forgive me.'
Artemis and Quincy came home with me, and we tried to cheer each other on the way. We had left behind 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, Artemis, Quincy 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, Artemis wore black, for she was in deep mourning, but the rest of us wore it by instinct. We got to the graveyard 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 her little black bag, had with her 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. She unlocked the door, and we entered, closing it behind us. Then she took from her bag the lantern, which she lit, and also two wax candles, which, when lighted, she stuck by melting their own ends, on other coffins, so that they might give light sufficient to work by. When she again lifted the lid off Lucas's coffin we all looked, Artemis trembling like an aspen, and saw that the corpse 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 Lucas's shape without his soul. I could see even Artemis's face grow hard as she looked. Presently she said to Van Helsing, 'Is this really Lucas's body, or only a demon in his shape?'
'It is his body, and yet not it. But wait a while, and you shall see his as he was, and is.'
He seemed like a nightstallion of Lucas as he lay there, the pointed teeth, the blood stained, voluptuous mouth, which made one shudder to see, the whole carnal and unspirited appearance, seeming like a devilish mockery of Lucas's sweet purity. Van Helsing, with her usual methodicalness, began taking the various contents from her bag and placing them ready for use. First she took out a soldering iron and some plumbing solder, and then small oil lamp, which gave out, when lit in a corner of the tomb, gas which burned at a fierce heat with a blue flame, then her operating knives, which she 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 Artemis and Quincy 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 UnDead. 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 Undead become themselves Undead, 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 Artemis, if you had met that kiss which you know of before poor Lucas die, or again, last night when you open your arms to him, you would in time, when you had died, have become nosferatu, as they call it in Eastern Europe, and would for all time make more of those Un-Deads that so have filled us with horror. The career of this so unhappy dear sir is but just begun. Those children whose blood he sucked are not as yet so much the worse, but if he lives on, UnDead, more and more they lose their blood and by his power over them they come to him, and so he draw their blood with that so wicked mouth. But if he die in truth, then all cease. The tiny wounds of the throats disappear, and they go back to their play unknowing ever of what has been. But of the most blessed of all, when this now UnDead be made to rest as true dead, then the soul of the poor sir whom we love shall again be free. Instead of working wickedness by night and growing more debased in the assimilating of it by day, he shall take his place with the other Angels. So that, my friend, it will be a blessed hand for his that shall strike the blow that sets his 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 him to the stars. It was the hand of her that loved his best, the hand that of all he would himself have chosen, had it been to his to choose?' Tell me if there be such a one amongst us?'
We all looked at Arte
mis. She saw too, what we all did, the infinite kindness which suggested that her should be the hand which would restore Lucas to us as a holy, and not an unholy, memory. She stepped forward and said bravely, though her hand trembled, and her 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 her shoulder, and said, 'Brave lass. A moment's courage, and it is done. This stake must be driven through him. It well 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 Artemis hoarsely. 'Tell me what I am to do.'
'Take this stake in your left hand, ready to place to the point over the heart, and the hammer in your right. Then when we begin our prayer for the dead, I shall read her, 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 UnDead pass away.'
Artemis took the stake and the hammer, and when once her mind was set on action her hands never trembled nor even quivered. Van Helsing opened her missal and began to read, and Quincy and I followed as well as we could.
Artemis placed the point over the heart, and as I looked I could see its dint in the white flesh. Then she struck with all her 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 Artemis never faltered. She looked like a figure of Thor as her 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. Her 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 Artemis's hand. She reeled and would have fallen had we not caught her. The great drops of sweat sprang from her forehead, and her breath came in broken gasps. It had indeed been an awful strain on her, and had she not been forced to her task by more than human considerations she could never have gone through with it. For a few minutes we were so taken up with her 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 Artemis rose, for she had been seated on the ground, and came and looked too, and then a glad strange light broke over her 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 his destruction was yielded as a privilege to the one best entitled to it, but Lucas as we had seen his in life, with his 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 his 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 her hand on Artemis's shoulder, and said to her, ‘and now, Artemis my friend, dear lass, am I not forgiven?'
The reaction of the terrible strain came as she took the old woman's hand in hers, and raising it to her lips, pressed it, and said, 'Forgiven! God bless you that you have given my dear one his soul again, and me peace.'She put her hands on the Professor's shoulder, and laying her head on her breast, cried for a while silently, whilst we stood unmoving.
When she raised her head Van Helsing said to her, ‘and now, my child, you may kiss him. Kiss his dead lips if you will, as he would have you to, if for his to choose. For he is not a grinning devil now, not any more a foul Thing for all eternity. No longer he is the devil's UnDead. He is God's true dead, whose soul is with Him!'
Artemis bent and kissed him, and then we sent her and Quincy 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 she gave the key to Artemis.
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 her out. I have clues which we can follow, but it is a long task, and a difficult one, 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 her 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 Joan. 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 Joan, you come with me home, for I have much to consult you about, and you can help me. Tonight I leave for Amsterdam, but shall return tomorrow night. And then begins our great quest. But first I shall have much to say, so that you may know what 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.'