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or grass wave or rustle so ominously; never did bough creak so
mysteriously; and never did the far-away howling of dogs send such a
woeful presage through the night.
There was a long spell of silence, a big, aching void, and then from the
Professor a keen "S-s-s-s!" He pointed; and far down the avenue of yews
we saw a white figure advance--a dim white figure, which held something
dark at its breast. The figure stopped, and at the moment a ray of
moonlight fell upon the masses of driving clouds and showed in startling
prominence a dark-haired woman, dressed in the cerements of the grave.
We could not see the face, for it was bent down over what we saw to be a
fair-haired child. There was a pause and a sharp little cry, such as a
child gives in sleep, or a dog as it lies before the fire and dreams. We
were starting forward, but the Professor's warning hand, seen by us as
he stood behind a yew-tree, kept us back; and then as we looked the
white figure moved forwards again. It was now near enough for us to see
clearly, and the moonlight still held. My own heart grew cold as ice,
and I could hear the gasp of Arthur, as we recognised the features of
Lucy Westenra. Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was
turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous
wantonness. Van Helsing stepped out, and, obedient to his gesture, we
all advanced too; the four of us ranged in a line before the door of the
tomb. Van Helsing raised his lantern and drew the slide; by the
concentrated light that fell on Lucy's face we could see that the lips
were crimson with fresh blood, and that the stream had trickled over her
chin and stained the purity of her lawn death-robe.
We shuddered with horror. I could see by the tremulous light that even
Van Helsing's iron nerve had failed. Arthur was next to me, and if I had
not seized his arm and held him up, he would have fallen.
When Lucy--I call the thing that was before us Lucy because it bore her
shape--saw us she drew back with an angry snarl, such as a cat gives
when taken unawares; then her eyes ranged over us. Lucy's eyes in form
and colour; but Lucy's eyes unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of
the pure, gentle orbs we knew. At that moment the remnant of my love
passed into hate and loathing; had she then to be killed, I could have
done it with savage delight. As she looked, her eyes blazed with unholy
light, and the face became wreathed with a voluptuous smile. Oh, God,
how it made me shudder to see it! With a careless motion, she flung to
the ground, callous as a devil, the child that up to now she had
clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls
over a bone. The child gave a sharp cry, and lay there moaning. There
was a cold-bloodedness in the act which wrung a groan from Arthur; when
she advanced to him with outstretched arms and a wanton smile he fell
back and hid his face in his hands.
She still advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace,
said:--
"Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are
hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!"
There was something diabolically sweet in her tones--something of the
tingling of glass when struck--which rang through the brains even of us
who heard the words addressed to another. As for Arthur, he seemed under
a spell; moving his hands from his face, he opened wide his arms. She
was leaping for them, when Van Helsing sprang forward and held between
them his little golden crucifix. She recoiled from it, and, with a
suddenly distorted face, full of rage, dashed past him as if to enter
the tomb.
When within a foot or two of the door, however, she stopped, as if
arrested by some irresistible force. Then she turned, and her face was
shown in the clear burst of moonlight and by the lamp, which had now no
quiver from Van Helsing's iron nerves. Never did I see such baffled
malice on a face; and never, I trust, shall such ever be seen again by
mortal eyes. The beautiful colour became livid, the eyes seemed to throw
out sparks of hell-fire, the brows were wrinkled as though the folds of
the flesh were the coils of Medusa's snakes, and the lovely,
blood-stained mouth grew to an open square, as in the passion masks of
the Greeks and Japanese. If ever a face meant death--if looks could
kill--we saw it at that moment.
And so for full half a minute, which seemed an eternity, she remained
between the lifted crucifix and the sacred closing of her means of
entry. Van Helsing broke the silence by asking Arthur:--
"Answer me, oh my friend! Am I to proceed in my work?"
Arthur threw himself on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, as he
answered:--
"Do as you will, friend; do as you will. There can be no horror like
this ever any more;" and he groaned in spirit. Quincey and I
simultaneously moved towards him, and took his arms. We could hear the
click of the closing lantern as Van Helsing held it down; coming close
to the tomb, he began to remove from the chinks some of the sacred
emblem which he had placed there. We all looked on in horrified
amazement as we saw, when he stood back, the woman, with a corporeal
body as real at that moment as our own, pass in through the interstice
where scarce a knife-blade could have gone. We all felt a glad sense of
relief when we saw the Professor calmly restoring the strings of putty
to the edges of the door.
When this was done, he lifted the child and said:
"Come now, my friends; we can do no more till to-morrow. There is a
funeral at noon, so here we shall all come before long after that. The
friends of the dead will all be gone by two, and when the sexton lock