Dracula: Chapters 19–27

Remember that he has the strength of twenty men, and that, though our necks or our windpipes are of the common kind—and therefore breakable or crushable—his are not amenable to mere strength.

...as he spoke he lifted a little silver crucifix and held it out to me, I being nearest to him—“put these flowers round your neck”—here he handed to me a wreath of withered garlic blossoms—“for other enemies more mundane, this revolver and this knife; and for aid in all, these so small electric lamps, which you can fasten to your breast; and for all, and above all at the last, this, which we must not desecrate needless.”

There was an earthy smell, as of some dry miasma, which came through the fouler air.

They seemed to swarm over the place all at once, till the lamplight, shining on their moving dark bodies and glittering, baleful eyes, made the place look like a bank of earth set with fireflies.

The dogs dashed on, but at the threshold suddenly stopped and snarled, and then, simultaneously lifting their noses, began to howl in most lugubrious fashion.

And yet it is this very obliquity of thought and memory which makes mental disease such a fascinating study.

Not a word more would he say, but sat in his implacable sullenness as indifferent to me as though I had not been in the room at all.

Not a thing seemed to be stirring, but all to be grim and fixed as death or fate; so that a thin streak of white mist, that crept with almost imperceptible slowness across the grass towards the house, seemed to have a sentience and a vitality of its own.

An interview with a surly gatekeeper and a surlier foreman, both of whom were appeased with the coin of the realm, put me on the track of Bloxam; he was sent for on my suggesting that I was willing to pay his day’s wages to his foreman for the privilege of asking him a few questions on a private matter.

“This has been a great day’s work, friend Jonathan. Doubtless we are on the track of the missing boxes. If we find them all in that house, then our work is near the end. But if there be some missing, we must search until we find them. Then shall we make our final coup, and hunt the wretch to his real death.”

He smiled with an ineffably benign superiority.

“I don’t want an elephant’s soul, or any soul at all!” he said. For a few moments he sat despondently.

Van Helsing returned with extraordinary celerity, bearing with him a surgical case.

Inured as I was to sick beds and death, this suspense grew, and grew upon me.

I told him exactly what had happened, and he listened with seeming impassiveness; but his nostrils twitched and his eyes blazed as I told how the ruthless hands of the Count had held his wife in that terrible and horrid position, with her mouth to the open wound in his breast.

You may as well be quiet; it is not the first time, or the second, that your veins have appeased my thirst!

Your police must indeed be zealous men and clever—oh, so clever!—in reading the heart, that they trouble themselves in such matter.

Mina took a growing interest in everything and I was rejoiced to see that the exigency of affairs was helping her to forget for a time the terrible experience of the night.

But the words to her thought came quickly; the echo of the scream had not ceased to ring on the air when there came the reaction, and she sank on her knees on the floor in an agony of abasement.

He has chosen this earth because it has been holy. Thus we defeat him with his own weapon, for we make it more holy still. It was sanctified to such use of man, now we sanctify it to God.

“Quincey and I will find a locksmith. You had better not come with us in case there should be any difficulty; for under the circumstances it wouldn’t seem so bad for us to break into an empty house. But you are a solicitor and the Incorporated Law Society might tell you that you should have known better.” I demurred as to my not sharing any danger even of odium...

At the corner of Arlington Street our contingent got out and strolled into the Green Park.

After a cursory glance at the rest of the rooms, from basement to attic, we came to the conclusion that the dining-room contained any effects which might belong to the Count; and so we proceeded to minutely examine them.

We looked at each other, and together moved out into the hall; we each held ready to use our various armaments—the spiritual in the left hand, the mortal in the right.

In all our hunting parties and adventures in different parts of the world, Quincey Morris had always been the one to arrange the plan of action, and Arthur and I had been accustomed to obey him implicitly.

His waxen hue became greenish-yellow by the contrast of his burning eyes, and the red scar on the forehead showed on the pallid skin like a palpitating wound.

We had a sort of perfunctory supper together, and I think it cheered us all up somewhat.

I could see that he had something on his mind which he wanted to say, but felt some hesitancy about broaching the subject.

“But, dear one,” she said, with such spiritual intensity that her eyes were like pole stars, “it is I who wish it; and it is not for myself. You can ask Dr. Van Helsing if I am not right; if he disagrees you may do as you will. Nay, more, if you all agree, later, you are absolved from the promise.”

“Promise me that you will not tell me anything of the plans formed for the campaign against the Count. Not by word, or inference, or implication; not at any time whilst this remains to me!” and she solemnly pointed to the scar.

I know that if he tells me to come in secret, I must come by wile; by any device to hoodwink—even Jonathan.

I look to you to make it a happy memory of my husband’s life that it was his loving hand which set me free from the awful thrall upon me.

Even a sceptic, who can see nothing but a travesty of bitter truth in anything holy or emotional, would have been melted to the heart had he seen that little group of loving and devoted friends kneeling round that stricken and sorrowing lady; or heard the tender passion of her husband’s voice, as in tones so broken with emotion that often he had to pause, he read the simple and beautiful service from the Burial of the Dead.

The Count, even if he takes the form of a bat, cannot cross the running water of his own volition, and so cannot leave the ship.

There is this peculiarity in criminals. It is so constant, in all countries and at all times, that even police, who know not much from philosophy, come to know it empirically, that it is.

One of his neighbours, who did not seem to bear him any affection, said that he had gone away two days before, no one knew whither. This was corroborated by his landlord, who had received by messenger the key of the house together with the rent due, in English money.

God grant that we may be guided aright, and that He will deign to watch over my husband and those dear to us both, and who are in such deadly peril. As for me, I am not worthy in His sight. Alas! I am unclean to His eyes, and shall be until He may deign to let me stand forth in His sight as one of those who have not incurred His wrath.

I should have felt terrible fear at seeing Jonathan in such danger, but that the ardour of battle must have been upon me as well as the rest of them; I felt no fear, but only a wild, surging desire to do something.

Jonathan’s impetuosity, and the manifest singleness of his purpose, seemed to overawe those in front of him; instinctively they cowered aside and let him pass.

He was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with the horrible vindictive look which I knew too well.