DR. 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.

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 colour 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.