Datasets:
Beifengdo
/
Python-Learning

Dataset card Data Studio Files
xet
 Community
text
stringlengths
0
73
said:--
"Perhaps you will come to town if I send to you, and take Madam Mina
too."
"We shall both come when you will," I said.
I had got him the morning papers and the London papers of the previous
night, and while we were talking at the carriage window, waiting for the
train to start, he was turning them over. His eyes suddenly seemed to
catch something in one of them, "The Westminster Gazette"--I knew it by
the colour--and he grew quite white. He read something intently,
groaning to himself: "Mein Gott! Mein Gott! So soon! so soon!" I do not
think he remembered me at the moment. Just then the whistle blew, and
the train moved off. This recalled him to himself, and he leaned out of
the window and waved his hand, calling out: "Love to Madam Mina; I shall
write so soon as ever I can."
_Dr. Seward's Diary._
_26 September._--Truly there is no such thing as finality. Not a week
since I said "Finis," and yet here I am starting fresh again, or rather
going on with the same record. Until this afternoon I had no cause to
think of what is done. Renfield had become, to all intents, as sane as
he ever was. He was already well ahead with his fly business; and he had
just started in the spider line also; so he had not been of any trouble
to me. I had a letter from Arthur, written on Sunday, and from it I
gather that he is bearing up wonderfully well. Quincey Morris is with
him, and that is much of a help, for he himself is a bubbling well of
good spirits. Quincey wrote me a line too, and from him I hear that
Arthur is beginning to recover something of his old buoyancy; so as to
them all my mind is at rest. As for myself, I was settling down to my
work with the enthusiasm which I used to have for it, so that I might
fairly have said that the wound which poor Lucy left on me was becoming
cicatrised. Everything is, however, now reopened; and what is to be the
end God only knows. I have an idea that Van Helsing thinks he knows,
too, but he will only let out enough at a time to whet curiosity. He
went to Exeter yesterday, and stayed there all night. To-day he came
back, and almost bounded into the room at about half-past five o'clock,
and thrust last night's "Westminster Gazette" into my hand.
"What do you think of that?" he asked as he stood back and folded his
arms.
I looked over the paper, for I really did not know what he meant; but he
took it from me and pointed out a paragraph about children being decoyed
away at Hampstead. It did not convey much to me, until I reached a
passage where it described small punctured wounds on their throats. An
idea struck me, and I looked up. "Well?" he said.
"It is like poor Lucy's."
"And what do you make of it?"
"Simply that there is some cause in common. Whatever it was that injured
her has injured them." I did not quite understand his answer:--
"That is true indirectly, but not directly."
"How do you mean, Professor?" I asked. I was a little inclined to take
his seriousness lightly--for, after all, four days of rest and freedom
from burning, harrowing anxiety does help to restore one's spirits--but
when I saw his face, it sobered me. Never, even in the midst of our
despair about poor Lucy, had he looked more stern.
"Tell me!" I said. "I can hazard no opinion. I do not know what to
think, and I have no data on which to found a conjecture."
"Do you mean to tell me, friend John, that you have no suspicion as to
what poor Lucy died of; not after all the hints given, not only by
events, but by me?"
"Of nervous prostration following on great loss or waste of blood."
"And how the blood lost or waste?" I shook my head. He stepped over and
sat down beside me, and went on:--
"You are clever man, friend John; you reason well, and your wit is bold;
but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears
hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to
you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand,
and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But
there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men's
eyes, because they know--or think they know--some things which other men
have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to
explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to
explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs,
which think themselves new; and which are yet but the old, which pretend
to be young--like the fine ladies at the opera. I suppose now you do not
believe in corporeal transference. No? Nor in materialisation. No? Nor
in astral bodies. No? Nor in the reading of thought. No? Nor in
hypnotism----"
"Yes," I said. "Charcot has proved that pretty well." He smiled as he
went on: "Then you are satisfied as to it. Yes? And of course then you
understand how it act, and can follow the mind of the great
Charcot--alas that he is no more!--into the very soul of the patient
that he influence. No? Then, friend John, am I to take it that you
simply accept fact, and are satisfied to let from premise to conclusion