Then the horror overcame me, and I sank down unconscious. CHAPTER.
He is young and strong; there are kisses for us all.
I was conscious of the presence of the count, and of his being as if lapped in a stain of fury.
I picked out one who has afforded me a study of interest. He is so quaint in his ideas, and so unlike the normal lunatic, that I have determined to understand him as well as I can. Today I seemed to get nearer than ever before to the heart of his mystery.
To one thing I have made up my mind. If we find out that Mina must be a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land alone. I suppose it is thus that in old times one vampire meant many. Just as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for their ghastly ranks.
Was this desolation but another link in the chain of doom which seemed drawing tight around us? Was it indeed a house of death to which I had to come too late?
Her struggle back to life was something frightful to see and hear.
I questioned him more fully than I had ever done, with a view to making myself master of the facts of his hallucination. In my manner of doing it there was, I now see, something of cruelty. I seemed to wish to keep to the point of his madness-a thing which I avoid with the patients as I would the mouth of hell.
Truly Miss Lucy, if she be sad in the foes that beset her, is at least happy in the friends that love her. One, two, three, all open their veins for her, besides one old man. Oh yes, friend John; I am not blind! I love you all the more for it!
I seek not gaiety nor mirth, not the bright voluptuousness of much sunshine and sparkling waters which please the young and gay. I am no longer young.
Jack, if you may tell me without betraying confidence. Arthur was the first; is that not so?
He was in a torture of suspense regarding the woman he loved, and his utter ignorance of the terrible mystery which seemed to surround her intensified his pain.
The case of Renfield grows more interesting the more I get to understand the man. He has certain qualities very largely developed; selfishness, secrecy, and purpose. I wish I could get at what is the object of the latter. He seems to have some settled scheme of his own, but what it is I do not yet know.
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.
He has evidently some deep probllem in his mind, for he keeps a little notebook in which he is always jotting down something.
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.
I quite love that dear Dr Van Helsing. I wonder why he was so anxious about these flowers. He positively frightened me, he was so fierce. And yet he must have been right, for I feel comfort from them already.
As the count leaned over me and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal. The count, evidently noticing it, drew back; and with a grim kind of smile, which showed more than he had yet done his proturberant teeth, set himself down again, on his own side of the fireplace.
I awoke in my own bed. If it be that I had not dreamt, the count must have carried here. I tried to satisfy myself on the subject, but could not arrive at any unquestionable result.
I never knew either father or mother, so that the dear old man’s death is a real blow for me.
Of one thing I am glad: if it was the count that carried me here and undressed me, he must have been hurried in his task, for my pockets are intact. I am sure this diary would have been a mystery to him which he would not have brooked.