Chapter Sixteen, Bram Stoker's DraculaSari DaleENGL305/DIHU301 Stoker, Bram. The Project Gutenberg Ebook of Dracula. 2013.
Chapter XVI
Continued from Dr. Seward's Diary,
September 29th
It was just a quarter before twelve o’clock when we got into the churchyard over
the low wall. The night was dark with occasional gleams of moonlight between the
rents of the heavy clouds that scudded across the sky. We all kept somehow close
together, with Van Helsing slightly in
front as he led the way. When we had come close to the tomb I looked well at
Arthur for I feared that the proximity to
a place laden with so sorrowful a memory would upset him; but he bore himself
well. I took it that the very mystery of the proceeding was in some way a
counteractant to his grief. The Professor
unlocked the door, and seeing a natural hesitation amongst us for various
reasons, solved the difficulty by entering first himself. The rest of us
followed, and he closed the door. He then lit a dark lantern and pointed to the
coffin. Arthur stepped forward hesitatingly;
Van Helsing said to me:—
“You were with me here yesterday. Was the body of Miss
Lucy in that coffin?”
“It was.” The Professor turned to the rest
saying:—
“You hear; and yet there is no one who does not believe with me.” He took his
screwdriver and again took off the lid of the coffin. Arthur looked on, very pale but silent; when the lid was removed
he stepped forward. He evidently did not know that there was a leaden coffin,
or, at any rate, had not thought of it. When he saw the rent in the lead, the
blood rushed to his face for an instant,
but as quickly fell away again, so that he remained of a ghastly whiteness; he
was still silent. Van Helsing forced back
the leaden flange, and we all looked in and recoiled.
The coffin was empty!
For several minutes no one spoke a word. The silence was broken by Quincey Morris:—
“Professor, I answered for you. Your word
is all I want. I wouldn’t ask such a thing ordinarily—I wouldn’t so dishonour
you as to imply a doubt; but this is a mystery that goes beyond any honour or
dishonour. Is this your doing?”
“I swear to you by all that I hold sacred that I have not removed nor touched
her. What happened was this: Two nights ago my friend Seward and I came
here—with good purpose, believe me. I opened that coffin, which was then sealed
up, and we found it, as now, empty. We then waited, and saw something white come
through the trees. The next day we came here in day-time, and she lay there. Did
she not, friend John?”
“Yes.”
“That night we were just in time. One more so small child was missing, and we
find it, thank God, unharmed amongst the graves. Yesterday I came here before
sundown, for at sundown the Un-Dead can move. I waited here all the night till
the sun rose, but I saw nothing. It was most probable that it was because I had
laid over the clamps of those doors garlic, which the Un-Dead cannot bear, and
other things which they shun. Last night there was no exodus, so to-night before
the sundown I took away my garlic and other things. And so it is we find this
coffin empty. But bear with me. So far there is much that is strange. Wait you
with me outside, unseen and unheard, and things much stranger are yet to be.
So”—here he shut the dark slide of his lantern—“now to the outside.” He opened
the door, and we filed out, he coming last and locking the door behind him.
Oh! but it seemed fresh and pure in the night air
after the terror of that vault. How sweet it was to
see the clouds race by, and the passing gleams of the moonlight between the
scudding clouds crossing and passing—like the gladness and sorrow of a man’s
life; how sweet it was to breathe the fresh air,
that had no taint of death and decay; how humanising to see the red lighting of the sky beyond the hill, and to hear
far away the muffled roar that marks the life of a great city. Each in his own
way was solemn and overcome. Arthur was
silent, and was, I could see, striving to grasp the purpose and the inner
meaning of the mystery. I was myself tolerably patient, and half inclined again
to throw aside doubt and to accept Van
Helsing's conclusions. Quincey Morris
was phlegmatic in the way of a man who accepts all things, and
accepts them in the spirit of cool bravery, with hazard of all he has to stake.
Not being able to smoke, he cut himself a good-sized plug of tobacco and began
to chew. As to Van Helsing, he was employed in a definite way. First he took
from his bag a mass of what looked like thin, wafer-like biscuit, which was
carefully rolled up in a white napkin; next he took out a double-handful of some
whitish stuff, like dough or putty. He crumbled the wafer up fine and worked it
into the mass between his hands. This he then took, and rolling it into thin
strips, began to lay them into the crevices between the door and its setting in
the tomb. I was somewhat puzzled at this, and being close, asked him what it was
that he was doing. Arthur and Quincey drew near also, as they too were curious.
He answered:—
“I am closing the tomb, so that the Un-Dead may not enter.”
“And is that stuff you have put there going to do it?” asked Quincey. “Great Scott! Is this a game?”
“It is.”
“What is that which you are using?” This time the question was by Arthur. Van
Helsing reverently lifted his hat as he answered:—
“The Host. I brought it from Amsterdam. I have an Indulgence.” It was an answer
that appalled the most sceptical of us, and we felt individually that in the
presence of such earnest purpose as the Professor's, a purpose which could thus use the to him most
sacred of things, it was impossible to distrust. In respectful silence we took
the places assigned to us close round the tomb, but hidden from the sight of any
one approaching. I pitied the others, especially Arthur. I had myself been apprenticed by my former visits to
this watching horror; and yet I, who had up to an hour ago repudiated the
proofs, felt my heart sink within me. Never did tombs look so ghastly white;
never did cypress, or yew, or juniper so seem the embodiment of funereal gloom;
never did tree 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 Westerna.
Lucy Westerna, but yet how changed. The
sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless
cruelty, and the purity to voluptuouswantonness. 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’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 mouthgrew 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 the gate we shall remain. Then
there is more to do; but not like this of to-night. As for this little one, he
is not much harm, and by to-morrow night he shall be well. We shall leave him
where the police will find him, as on the other night; and then to home.” Coming
close to Arthur, he said:—
“My friend Arthur, you have had a sore trial;
but after, when you look back, you will see how it was necessary. You are now in
the bitter waters, my child. By this time to-morrow you will, please God, have
passed them, and have drunk of the sweet waters; so
do not mourn overmuch. Till then I shall not ask you to forgive me.”
Arthur and Quincey came home with me, and we tried to cheer each other on
the way. We had left the child in safety, and were tired; so we all slept with
more or less reality of sleep.
September 29th,
—A little before we three—Arthur, Quincey Morris, and
myself—called for the Professor. It was
odd to notice that by common consent we had all put on black clothes. Of course,
Arthur wore black, for he was in deep
mourning, but the rest of us wore it by instinct. We got to the churchyard by
half-past one, and strolled about, keeping out of official observation, so that
when the gravediggers had completed their task and the sexton under the belief
that every one had gone, had locked the gate, we had the place all to ourselves.
Van Helsing, instead of his little
black bag, had with him a long leather one, something like a cricketing bag; it
was manifestly of fair weight.
When we were alone and had heard the last of the footsteps die out up the road,
we silently, and as if by ordered intention, followed the Professor to the tomb. He unlocked the door,
and we entered, closing it behind us. Then he took from his bag the lantern,
which he lit, and also two wax candles, which, when lighted, he stuck, by
melting their own ends, on other coffins, so that they might give light
sufficient to work by. When he again lifted the lid off Lucy's coffin we all looked—Arthurtrembling like an aspen—and saw that the body lay
there in all its death-beauty But there was
no love in my own heart, nothing but loathing for
the foul Thing which had taken Lucy's shape
without her soul. I could see even Arthur’s
face grow hard as he looked. Presently he said to Van Helsing:—
“Is this really Lucy's body, or only a demon in
her shape?”
“It is her body, and yet not it. But wait a while, and you all see her as she
was, and is.”
She seemed like a nightmare of Lucy as she lay
there; the pointed teeth, the bloodstained, voluptuous mouth—which it made one shudder to see—the whole carnal and
unspiritual appearance, seeming like a devilish mockery of Lucy'ssweet purity. Van
Helsing, with his usual methodicalness, began taking the various
contents from his bag and placing them ready for use. First he took out a
soldering iron and some plumbing solder, and then a small oil-lamp, which gave
out, when lit in a corner of the tomb, gas which burned at fierce heat with a
blue flame; then his operating knives, which he placed to hand; and last a round
wooden stake, some two and a half or three
inches thick and about three feet long. One end of it was hardened by charring
in the fire, and was sharpened to a fine point. With this stake came a heavy hammer, such as in households is used in the
coal-cellar for breaking the lumps. To me, a doctor’s preparations for work of
any kind are stimulating and bracing, but the effect of these things on both
Arthur and Quincey was to cause them a sort of consternation. They both,
however, kept their courage, and remained silent and quiet.
When all was ready, Van Helsing said:—
“Before we do anything, let me tell you this; it is out of the lore and
experience of the ancients and of all those who have studied the powers of the
Un-Dead. When they become such, there comes with the change the curse of
immortality; they cannot die, but must go on age
after age adding new victims and multiplying the evils of the world; for all
that die from the preying of the Un-Dead becomes themselves Un-Dead, and prey on their kind. And so the circle goes on
ever widening, like as the ripples from a stone thrown in the water. Friend
Arthur, if you had met that kiss which you know of before poor Lucydie; or again, last night when you open your arms
to her, you would in time, when you had died, have become nosferatu, as they
call it in Eastern Europe, and would all time make more of those Un-Deads that
so have fill us with horror. The career of this so unhappy dear lady is but just
begun. Those children whose blood she suck are not as yet so much the worse; but if
she live on, Un-Dead, more and more they lose their blood and by her power over them they come to her; and so she draw
their blood with that so wicked mouth. But if
she die in truth, then all cease; the tiny wounds
of the throats disappear, and they go back to their
plays unknowing ever of what has been. But of the most blessed of all, when this
now Un-Dead be made to rest as true dead, then the soul of the poor lady whom we
love shall again be free. Instead of working
wickedness by night and growing more debased in the assimilating of it by day,
she shall take her place with the other Angels. So that, my friend, it will be a
blessed hand for her that shall strike the blow that sets her free. To this I am
willing; but is there none amongst us who has a better right? Will it be no joy
to think of hereafter in the silence of the night when sleep is not: ‘It was my
hand that sent her to the stars; it was the hand of him that loved her best; the
hand that of all she would herself have chosen, had it been to her to choose?’
Tell me if there be such a one amongst us?”
We all looked at Arthur. He saw, too, what we
all did, the infinite kindness which suggested that his should be the hand which
would restore Lucy to us as a holy, and not an
unholy, memory; he stepped forward and said bravely, though his hand trembled, and his face was as pale as snow:—
“My true friend, from the bottom of my broken heart I thank you. Tell me what I
am to do, and I shall not falter!” Van
Helsing laid a hand on his shoulder, and said:—
“Brave lad! A moment’s courage, and it is done. This stake
must be driven through her. It will be a fearful ordeal—be not
deceived in that—but it will be only a short time, and you will then rejoice
more than your pain was great; from this grim tomb
you will emerge as though you tread on air. But you must not falter when once
you have begun. Only think that we, your true friends, are round you, and that
we pray for you all the time.”
“Go on,” said Arthur hoarsely. “Tell me what I
am to do.”
“Take this stake in your left hand, ready to place
the point over the heart, and the hammer in your
right. Then when we begin our prayer for the dead—I shall read him, I have here
the book, and the others shall follow—strike in God’s name, that so all may be
well with the dead that we love and that the Un-Dead
pass away.”
Arthur took the stake
and the hammer, and when once his mind was set on action his hands
never trembled nor even quivered. Van Helsing opened his missal and began to
read, and Quincey and I followed as well as
we could. Arthur placed the point over the
heart, and as I looked I could see its dint in the white flesh. Then he struck with all his might.
The Thing in the coffin writhed; and a
hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red
lips. The body shook and quivered and
twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together till the
lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. But
Arthur never faltered. He looked like a
figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and
spurted up around it. His face was set, and high duty seemed to shine through
it; the sight of it gave us courage so that our voices seemed to ring through
the little vault.
And then the writhing and quiveringof the body
became less, and the teeth seemed to champ, and the face to quiver. Finally it lay still. The terrible task was
over.
The hammer fell from Arthur’s hand. He reeled and would have fallen had we not caught
him. The great drops of sweat sprang from his
forehead, and his breath came in broken gasps. It
had indeed been an awful strain on him; and had he not been forced to his task
by more than human considerations he could never have gone through with it. For
a few minutes we were so taken up with him that we did not look towards the
coffin. When we did, however, a murmur of startled surprise ran from one to the
other of us. We gazed so eagerly that Arthur
rose, for he had been seated on the ground, and came and looked too; and then a
glad, strange light broke over his face and dispelled altogether the gloom of
horror that lay upon it.
There, in the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing that we had so dreaded and
grown to hate that the work of her destruction was yielded as a privilege to the
one best entitled to it, but Lucy as we had
seen her in her life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity. True that there were there, as we had seen them
in life, the traces of care and pain and waste; but these were all dear to us,
for they marked her truth to what we knew. One and all we felt that the holy
calm that lay like sunshine over the wasted face and form was only an earthly
token and symbol of the calm that was to reign for ever.
Van Helsing came and laid his hand on
Arthur’s shoulder, and said to him:—
“And now, Arthur my friend, dear lad, am I not
forgiven?”
The reaction of the terrible strain came as he took the old man’s hand in his,
and raising it to his lips, pressed it, and
said:—
“Forgiven! God bless you that you have given my dear one her soul again, and me
peace.” He put his hands on the Professor's shoulder, and laying his head on his breast, cried
for a while silently, whilst we stood unmoving. When he raised his head
Van Helsing said to him:—
“And now, my child, you may kiss her. Kiss her dead lips if you will, as she would
have you to, if for her to choose. For she is not a grinning devil now—not any
more a foul Thing for all eternity. No longer she is the devil’s Un-Dead. She is
God’s true dead, whose soul is with Him!”
Arthur bent and kissed her, and then we sent him and Quincey out of the tomb; the Professor and I sawed the top off the stake, leaving the point of it in the body. Then we cut off the head and filled the mouth with garlic. We soldered up the leaden coffin,
screwed on the coffin-lid, and gathering up our belongings, came away. When the
Professor locked the door he gave the
key to Arthur.
Outside the air was sweet, the sun shone, and the
birds sang, and it seemed as if all nature were tuned to a different pitch.
There was gladness and mirth and peace everywhere, for we were at rest ourselves
on one account, and we were glad, though it was with a tempered joy.
Before we moved away Van Helsing
said:—
“Now, my friends, one step of our work is done, one the most harrowing to
ourselves. But there remains a greater task: to find out the author of all this
our sorrow and to stamp him out. I have clues which we can follow; but it is a
long task, and a difficult, and there is danger in it, and pain. Shall you not all help me? We have learned to
believe, all of us—is it not so? And since so, do we not see our duty? Yes! And
do we not promise to go on to the bitter end?”
Each in turn, we took his hand, and the promise was made. Then said the Professor as we moved off:—
“Two nights hence you shall meet with me and dine together at seven of the clock
with friend John. I shall entreat two others, two that you know not as yet; and
I shall be ready to all our work show and our plans unfold. Friend John, you
come with me home, for I have much to consult about, and you can help me.
To-night I leave for Amsterdam, but shall return to-morrow night. And then
begins our great quest. But first I shall have much to say, so that you may know
what is to do and to dread. Then our promise shall be made to each other anew;
for there is a terrible task before us, and once our feet are on the ploughshare
we must not draw back.”
The Violent Erotic
Erotic - What constitutes erotic language was
decided through word frequency studies in Victorian pornographic texts. This
language set is largely characterized by adjectives such as wanton and
voluptuous.Violent - Violent language is characterized by
weapons and descriptions of weaponry. I have also included verbs describing
violence and words related to wounds and wounding.The Violent Erotic - Violent erotic language
describes overlap between the erotic and violent language sets. There are a
number of words and phrases that belong to both, implying a shared vocabulary
between sex acts and violence.
Arthur HolmwoodArthur Holmwood is the wealthy son of Lord
Goldaming. When his father dies, he inherits his title. He is betrothed
to Lucy Westerna earlier on in the novel before Count Dracula transforms
her into a vampire.Lucy WestenraLucy Westenra is the best friend of Mina Murray. She
comes from a wealthy family and is decribed throughout the novel as
physically attractive. She has a history of sleepwalking, which makes
her susceptible to Dracula's enchantment. She becomes mysteriously ill
several times before dying and returning to life as a
vampire.19Dr. John SewardBest friends with Arthur Holmwood and Quincey
Morris, Dr. Seward is a psychiatrist at a mental institute. His
observations of R. M. Renfield allow the reader insight into the
characteristics of a vampire. Much of the novel is written from his
perspective.Abraham Van HelsingVan Helsing is invited Dr. Seward to help diagnose
the condition of Lucy Westerna, whose state is quickly deteriorating.
Van Helsing is well-versed in a number of subjects including vampirism.
He is the one who first understands that Lucy is the victim of a
vampire. After she dies, he instructs Arthur, Dr. Seward, and Quincey on
how to kill Lucy's undead corpse.Quincey MorrisQuincey Morris is a wealthy American from Texas. He, along with
Arthur, Dr. Seward, and Van Helsing, is part of the Crew of Light, which
sets out to destroy Dracula