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morning." I asked him again if it were really necessary that they should
pursue the Count, for oh! I dread Jonathan leaving me, and I know that
he would surely go if the others went. He answered in growing passion,
at first quietly. As he went on, however, he grew more angry and more
forceful, till in the end we could not but see wherein was at least some
of that personal dominance which made him so long a master amongst
men:--
"Yes, it is necessary--necessary--necessary! For your sake in the first,
and then for the sake of humanity. This monster has done much harm
already, in the narrow scope where he find himself, and in the short
time when as yet he was only as a body groping his so small measure in
darkness and not knowing. All this have I told these others; you, my
dear Madam Mina, will learn it in the phonograph of my friend John, or
in that of your husband. I have told them how the measure of leaving his
own barren land--barren of peoples--and coming to a new land where life
of man teems till they are like the multitude of standing corn, was the
work of centuries. Were another of the Un-Dead, like him, to try to do
what he has done, perhaps not all the centuries of the world that have
been, or that will be, could aid him. With this one, all the forces of
nature that are occult and deep and strong must have worked together in
some wondrous way. The very place, where he have been alive, Un-Dead for
all these centuries, is full of strangeness of the geologic and chemical
world. There are deep caverns and fissures that reach none know whither.
There have been volcanoes, some of whose openings still send out waters
of strange properties, and gases that kill or make to vivify. Doubtless,
there is something magnetic or electric in some of these combinations of
occult forces which work for physical life in strange way; and in
himself were from the first some great qualities. In a hard and warlike
time he was celebrate that he have more iron nerve, more subtle brain,
more braver heart, than any man. In him some vital principle have in
strange way found their utmost; and as his body keep strong and grow and
thrive, so his brain grow too. All this without that diabolic aid which
is surely to him; for it have to yield to the powers that come from,
and are, symbolic of good. And now this is what he is to us. He have
infect you--oh, forgive me, my dear, that I must say such; but it is for
good of you that I speak. He infect you in such wise, that even if he do
no more, you have only to live--to live in your own old, sweet way; and
so in time, death, which is of man's common lot and with God's sanction,
shall make you like to him. This must not be! We have sworn together
that it must not. Thus are we ministers of God's own wish: that the
world, and men for whom His Son die, will not be given over to monsters,
whose very existence would defame Him. He have allowed us to redeem one
soul already, and we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem
more. Like them we shall travel towards the sunrise; and like them, if
we fall, we fall in good cause." He paused and I said:--
"But will not the Count take his rebuff wisely? Since he has been driven
from England, will he not avoid it, as a tiger does the village from
which he has been hunted?"
"Aha!" he said, "your simile of the tiger good, for me, and I shall
adopt him. Your man-eater, as they of India call the tiger who has once
tasted blood of the human, care no more for the other prey, but prowl
unceasing till he get him. This that we hunt from our village is a
tiger, too, a man-eater, and he never cease to prowl. Nay, in himself he
is not one to retire and stay afar. In his life, his living life, he go
over the Turkey frontier and attack his enemy on his own ground; he be
beaten back, but did he stay? No! He come again, and again, and again.
Look at his persistence and endurance. With the child-brain that was to
him he have long since conceive the idea of coming to a great city. What
does he do? He find out the place of all the world most of promise for
him. Then he deliberately set himself down to prepare for the task. He
find in patience just how is his strength, and what are his powers. He
study new tongues. He learn new social life; new environment of old
ways, the politic, the law, the finance, the science, the habit of a new
land and a new people who have come to be since he was. His glimpse that
he have had, whet his appetite only and enkeen his desire. Nay, it help
him to grow as to his brain; for it all prove to him how right he was at
the first in his surmises. He have done this alone; all alone! from a
ruin tomb in a forgotten land. What more may he not do when the greater
world of thought is open to him. He that can smile at death, as we know
him; who can flourish in the midst of diseases that kill off whole
peoples. Oh, if such an one was to come from God, and not the Devil,
what a force for good might he not be in this old world of ours. But we
are pledged to set the world free. Our toil must be in silence, and our
efforts all in secret; for in this enlightened age, when men believe not
even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest
strength. It would be at once his sheath and his armour, and his weapons
to destroy us, his enemies, who are willing to peril even our own souls
for the safety of one we love--for the good of mankind, and for the
honour and glory of God."
After a general discussion it was determined that for to-night nothing
be definitely settled; that we should all sleep on the facts, and try to
think out the proper conclusions. To-morrow, at breakfast, we are to
meet again, and, after making our conclusions known to one another, we
shall decide on some definite cause of action.
* * * * *
I feel a wonderful peace and rest to-night. It is as if some haunting
presence were removed from me. Perhaps ...
My surmise was not finished, could not be; for I caught sight in the
mirror of the red mark upon my forehead; and I knew that I was still
unclean.
_Dr. Seward's Diary._