_Midnight._--Another change in him.I had been to see Miss Westenra,whom I found much better, and had just returned,and was standing at our own gate looking at the sunset,when once more I heard him yelling.As his room is on this side of the house,I could hear it better than in the morning.It was a shock to me to turn from the wonderful smoky beauty of a sunset over London, with its lurid lights and inky shadows and all the marvellous tints that come on foul clouds even as on foul water, and to realise all the grim sternness of my own cold stone building, with its wealth of breathing misery, and my own desolate heart to endure it all. I reached him just as the sun was going down, and from his window saw the red disc sink. As it sank he became less and less frenzied; and just as it dipped he slid from the hands that held him, an inert mass, on the floor. It is wonderful, however, what intellectual recuperative power lunatics have, for within a few minutes he stood up quite calmly and looked around him. I signalled to the attendants not to hold him, for I was anxious to see what he would do. He went straight over to the window and brushed out the crumbs of sugar; then he took his fly-box, and emptied it outside, and threw away the box; then he shut the window, and crossing over, sat down on his bed. All this surprised me, so I asked him: “Are you not going to keep flies any more?”
“No,” said he; “I am sick of all that rubbish!” He certainly is a wonderfully interesting study.I wish I could get some glimpse of his mind or of the cause of his sudden passion. Stop; there may be a clue after all, if we can find why to-day his paroxysms came on at high noon and at sunset. Can it be that there is a malign influence of the sun at periods which affects certain natures--as at times the moon does others?We shall see.
_Telegram, Seward, London, to Van Helsing, Amsterdam._
“_4 September._--Patient still better to-day.”
_Telegram, Seward, London, to Van Helsing, Amsterdam._
“_5 September._--Patient greatly improved.Good appetite; sleeps naturally; good spirits;colour coming back.”
_Telegram, Seward, London, to Van Helsing, Amsterdam._
“_6 September._--Terrible change for the worse.Come at once; do not lose an hour.I hold over telegram to Holmwood till have seen you.”
CHAPTER X
_Letter, Dr. Seward to Hon. Arthur Holmwood._
“_6 September._
“My dear Art,--
“My news to-day is not so good.Lucy this morning had gone back a bit. There is,however, one good thing which has arisen from it; Mrs.Westenra was naturally anxious concerning Lucy,and has consulted me professionally about her.I took advantage of the opportunity,and told her that my old master, Van Helsing,the great specialist, was coming to stay with me,and that I would put her in his charge conjointly with myself;so now we can come and go without alarming her unduly,for a shock to her would mean sudden death, and this,in Lucy’s weak condition, might be disastrous to her.We are hedged in with difficulties, all of us,my poor old fellow; but, please God,we shall come through them all right.If any need I shall write, so that,if you do not hear from me,take it for granted that I am simply waiting for news. In haste
“Yours ever,
“JOHN SEWARD.”
_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
_7 September._--The first thing Van Helsing said to me when we met at Liverpool Street was:--
“Have you said anything to our young friend the lover of her?”
“No,” I said. “I waited till I had seen you,as I said in my telegram.I wrote him a letter simply telling him that you were coming,as Miss Westenra was not so well,and that I should let him know if need be.”
“Right, my friend,” he said, “quite right!Better he not know as yet; perhaps he shall never know.I pray so; but if it be needed, then he shall know all.And, my good friend John, let me caution you.You deal with the madmen.All men are mad in some way or the other;and inasmuch as you deal discreetly with your madmen,so deal with God’s madmen, too--the rest of the world.You tell not your madmen what you do nor why you do it;you tell them not what you think.So you shall keep knowledge in its place,where it may rest--where it may gather its kind around it and breed.You and I shall keep as yet what we know here,and here.” He touched me on the heart and on the forehead,and then touched himself the same way.“I have for myself thoughts at the present.Later I shall unfold to you.”
“Why not now?” I asked. “It may do some good;we may arrive at some decision.” He stopped and looked at me, and said:--
“My friend John, when the corn is grown,even before it has ripened--while the milk of its mother-earth is in him,and the sunshine has not yet begun to paint him with his gold,the husbandman he pull the ear and rub him between his rough hands,and blow away the green chaff, and say to you: ‘Look!he’s good corn; he will make good crop when the time comes.’” I did not see the application, and told him so.For reply he reached over and took my ear in his hand and pulled it playfully,as he used long ago to do at lectures, and said:“The good husbandman tell you so then because he knows,but not till then. But you do not find the good husbandman dig up his planted corn to see if he grow; that is for the children who play at husbandry, and not for those who take it as of the work of their life. See you now, friend John?I have sown my corn,and Nature has her work to do in making it sprout;if he sprout at all, there’s some promise;and I wait till the ear begins to swell.” He broke off,for he evidently saw that I understood.Then he went on, and very gravely:--
“You were always a careful student,and your case-book was ever more full than the rest.You were only student then; now you are master,and I trust that good habit have not fail. Remember,my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory,and we should not trust the weaker.Even if you have not kept the good practise,let me tell you that this case of our dear miss is one that may be--mind,I say _may be_--of such interest to us and others that all the rest may not make him kick the beam, as your peoples say. Take then good note of it. Nothing is too small. I counsel you, put down in record even your doubts and surmises. Hereafter it may be of interest to you to see how true you guess. We learn from failure, not from success!”
When I described Lucy’s symptoms--the same as before,but infinitely more marked--he looked very grave,but said nothing. He took with him a bag in which were many instruments and drugs, “the ghastly paraphernalia of our beneficial trade,” as he once called, in one of his lectures, the equipment of a professor of the healing craft. When we were shown in, Mrs. Westenra met us. She was alarmed, but not nearly so much as I expected to find her. Nature in one of her beneficent moods has ordained that even death has some antidote to its own terrors. Here, in a case where any shock may prove fatal, matters are so ordered that, from some cause or other, the things not personal--even the terrible change in her daughter to whom she is so attached--do not seem to reach her. It is something like the way Dame Nature gathers round a foreign body an envelope of some insensitive tissue which can protect from evil that which it would otherwise harm by contact. If this be an ordered selfishness, then we should pause before we condemn any one for the vice of egoism, for there may be deeper root for its causes than we have knowledge of.