_26 September._--Truly there is no such thing as finality. Not a weeksince I said "Finis," and yet here I am starting fresh again, or rathergoing on with the same record. Until this afternoon I had no cause tothink of what is done. Renfield had become, to all intents, as sane ashe ever was. He was already well ahead with his fly business; and hehad just started in the spider line also; so he had not been of anytrouble to me. I had a letter from Arthur, written on Sunday, and fromit I gather that he is bearing up wonderfully well. Quincey Morris iswith him, and that is much of a help, for he himself is a bubbling wellof good spirits. Quincey wrote me a line too, and from him I hear thatArthur is beginning to recover something of his old buoyancy; so as tothem all my mind is at rest. As for myself, I was settling down to mywork with the enthusiasm which I used to have for it, so that I mightfairly have said that the wound which poor Lucy left on me was becomingcicatrised. Everything is, however, now reopened; and what is to be theend 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 toExeter yesterday, and stayed there all night. To-day he came back, andalmost bounded into my room at about half-past five o'clock, and thrustlast night's "Westminster Gazette" into my hand.
"What do you think of that?" he asked as he stood back and folded hisarms.
I looked over the paper, for I really did not know what he meant; buthe took it from me and pointed out a paragraph about children beingdecoyed away at Hampstead. It did not convey much to me, until I reacheda passage where it described small punctured wounds on their throats. Anidea struck me, and I looked up. "Well?" he said.
"It is like poor Lucy's."
"And what do make of it?"
"Simply that there is some cause in common. Whatever it was that injuredher 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 takehis seriousness lightly--for, after
all, four days of rest and freedomfrom burning, harrowing anxiety does help to restore one's spirits--butwhen I saw his face, it sobered me. Never, even in the midst of ourdespair about poor Lucy, had he looked more stern.
"Tell me!" I said. "I can hazard no opinion. I do not know what tothink, and I have no data on which to found a conjecture."
"Do you mean to tell me, friend John, that you have no suspicion asto what poor Lucy died of; not after all the hints given, not only byevents, 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 andsat 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 earshear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account toyou. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand,and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? Butthere are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men'seyes, because they know--or think they know--some things which othermen have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants toexplain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing toexplain. 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 pretendto be young--like the fine ladies at the opera. I suppose now you donot believe in corporeal transference. No? Nor in materialisation. No?Nor in astral bodies. No? Nor in the reading of thought. No? Nor inhypnotism----"
"Yes," I said. "Charcot has proved that pretty well." He smiled ashe went on: "Then you are satisfied as to it. Yes? And of coursethen you understand how it act, and can follow the mind of the greatCharcot--alas that he is no more!--into the very soul of the patientthat he influence. No? Then, friend John, am I to take it that yousimply accept fact, and are satisfied to let from premise to conclusionbe a blank? No? Then tell me--for I am student of the brain--how youaccept the hypnotism and reject the thought-reading. Let me tell you,my friend, that there are things done to-day in electrical sciencewhich would have been deemed unholy by the very men who discoveredelectricity--who would themselves not so long before have been burnedas wizards. There are always mysteries in life. Why was it thatMethuselah lived nine hundred years, and 'Old Parr' one hundred andsixty-nine, and yet that poor Lucy, with four men's blood in her poorveins, could not live even one day? For, had she lived one more day, wecould have save her. Do you know all the mystery of life and death? Doyou know the altogether of comparative anatomy, and can say whereforethe qualities of brutes are in some men, and not in others? Can youtell me why, when other spiders die small and soon, that one greatspider lived for centuries in the tower of the old Spanish church andgrew and grew, till, on descending, he could drink the oil of all thechurch lamps? Can you tell me why in the Pampas, ay and elsewhere,there are bats that come at night and open the veins of cattle andhorses and suck dry their veins; how in some islands of the Westernseas there are bats which hang on the trees all day, that those whohave seen describe as like giant nuts or pods, and that when thesailors sleep on the deck, because that it is hot, flit down on them,and then--and then in the morning are found dead men, white as evenMiss Lucy was?"
"Good God, Professor!" I said, starting up. "Do you mean to tell methat Lucy was bitten by such a bat; and that such a thing is here inLondon in the nineteenth century?" He waved his hand for silence, andwent on:--
"Can you tell me why the tortoise lives more long than generations ofmen; why the elephant goes on and on till he have seen dynasties; andwhy the parrot never die only of bite of cat or dog or other complaint?Can you tell me why men believe in all ages and places that there aresome few who live on always if they be permit; that there are men andwomen who cannot die? We all know--because science has vouched for thefact--that there have been toads shut up in rocks for thousands ofyears, shut in one so small hole that only hold him since the youth ofthe world. Can you tell me how the Indian fakir can make himself to dieand have been buried, and his grave sealed and corn sowed on it, andthe corn reaped and be cut and sown and reaped and cut again, and thenmen come and take away the unbroken seal, and that there lie the Indianfakir, not dead, but that rise up and walk amongst them as before?" HereI interrupted him. I was getting bewildered; he so crowded on my mindhis list of nature's eccentricities and possible impossibilities thatmy imagination was getting fired. I had a dim idea that he was teachingme some lesson, as long ago he used to do in his study at Amsterdam;but he used then to tell me the thing, so that I could have the objectof thought in mind all the time. But now I was without his help, yet Iwanted to follow him, so I said:--
"Professor, let me be your pet student again. Tell me the thesis, sothat I may apply your knowledge as you go on. At present I am going inmy mind from point to point as a mad man, and not a sane one, follows anidea. I feel like a novice blundering through a bog in a mist, jumpingfrom one tussock to another in the mere blind effort to move on withoutknowing where I am going."
"That is good image," he said. "Well, I shall tell you. My thesis isthis: I want you to believe."
"To believe what?"
"To believe in things that you cannot. Let me illustrate. I heard onceof an American who so defined faith: 'that which enables us to believethings which we know to be untrue.' For one, I follow that man. He meantthat we shall have an open mind, and not let a little bit of truth checkthe rush of a big truth, like a small rock does a railway truck. We getthe small truth first. Good! We keep him, and we value him; but all thesame we must not let him think himself all the truth in the universe."
"Then you want me not to let some previous conviction injure thereceptivity of my mind with regard to some strange matter. Do I readyour lesson aright?"
"Ah, you are my favourite pupil still. It is worth to teach you. Nowthat you are willing to understand, you have taken the first step tounderstand. You think then that those so small holes in the children'sthroats were made by the same that made the hole in Miss Lucy?"
"I suppose so." He stood up and said solemnly:--
"Then you are wrong. Oh, would it were so! but alas! no. It is worse,far, far worse."
"In God's name, Professor Van Helsing, what do you mean?" I cried.
He threw himself with a despairing gesture into a chair, and placed hiselbows on the table, covering his face with his hands as he spoke:--
"They were made by Miss Lucy!"
CHAPTER XV.
/Dr. Seward's Diary/--_continued._