JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL
3 October.--As I must do something or go mad, I write this diary.
It is now six o'clock, and we are to meet in the study in half an hour and take something to eat, for Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward are agreed that if we do not eat we cannot work our best. Our best will be, God knows, required today. I must keep writing at every chance, for I dare not stop to think. All, big and little, must go down.
Perhaps at the end the little things may teach us most.
The teaching, big or little, could not have landed Mina or me anywhere worse than we are today. However, we must trust and hope.
Poor Mina told me just now, with the tears running down her dear cheeks, that it is in trouble and trial that our faith is tested.
That we must keep on trusting, and that God will aid us up to the end.
The end! Oh my God! What end?. . . To work! To work!
When Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward had come back from seeing poor Renfield, we went gravely into what was to be done. First, Dr. Seward told us that when he and Dr. Van Helsing had gone down to the room below they had found Renfield lying on the floor, all in a heap. His face was all bruised and crushed in, and the bones of the neck were broken.
Dr. Seward asked the attendant who was on duty in the passage if he had heard anything. He said that he had been sitting down, he confessed to half dozing, when he heard loud voices in the room, and then Renfield had called out loudly several times, "God! God! God!" After that there was a sound of falling, and when he entered the room he found him lying on the floor, face down, just as the doctors had seen him.
Van Helsing asked if he had heard "voices" or "a voice," and he said he could not say. That at first it had seemed to him as if there were two, but as there was no one in the room it could have been only one.
He could swear to it, if required, that the word "God" was spoken by the patient.
Dr. Seward said to us, when we were alone, that he did not wish to go into the matter. The question of an inquest had to be considered, and it would never do to put forward the truth, as no one would believe it.
As it was, he thought that on the attendant's evidence he could give a certificate of death by misadventure in falling from bed.
In case the coroner should demand it, there would be a formal inquest, necessarily to the same result.
When the question began to be discussed as to what should be our next step, the very first thing we decided was that Mina should be in full confidence.
That nothing of any sort, no matter how painful, should be kept from her.
She herself agreed as to its wisdom, and it was pitiful to see her so brave and yet so sorrowful, and in such a depth of despair.
"There must be no concealment," she said. "Alas! We have had too much already. And besides there is nothing in all the world that can give me more pain than I have already endured, than I suffer now!
Whatever may happen, it must be of new hope or of new courage to me!"
Van Helsing was looking at her fixedly as she spoke, and said, suddenly but quietly, "But dear Madam Mina, are you not afraid.
Not for yourself, but for others from yourself, after what has happened?"
Her face grew set in its lines, but her eyes shone with the devotion of a martyr as she answered, "Ah no!
For my mind is made up!"
"To what?" he asked gently, whilst we were all very still, for each in our own way we had a sort of vague idea of what she meant.
Her answer came with direct simplicity, as though she was simply stating a fact, "Because if I find in myself, and I shall watch keenly for it, a sign of harm to any that I love, I shall die!"
"You would not kill yourself?" he asked, hoarsely.
"I would. If there were no friend who loved me, who would save me such a pain, and so desperate an effort!"
She looked at him meaningly as she spoke.
He was sitting down, but now he rose and came close to her and put his hand on her head as he said solemnly.
"My child, there is such an one if it were for your good.
For myself I could hold it in my account with God to find such an euthanasia for you, even at this moment if it were best.
Nay, were it safe! But my child. . ."
For a moment he seemed choked, and a great sob rose in his throat.
He gulped it down and went on, "There are here some who would stand between you and death. You must not die. You must not die by any hand, but least of all your own. Until the other, who has fouled your sweet life, is true dead you must not die.
For if he is still with the quick Undead, your death would make you even as he is. No, you must live! You must struggle and strive to live, though death would seem a boon unspeakable.
You must fight Death himself, though he come to you in pain or in joy. By the day, or the night, in safety or in peril!
On your living soul I charge you that you do not die.
Nay, nor think of death, till this great evil be past."
The poor dear grew white as death, and shook and shivered, as I have seen a quicksand shake and shiver at the incoming of the tide. We were all silent. We could do nothing.
At length she grew more calm and turning to him said sweetly, but oh so sorrowfully, as she held out her hand, "I promise you, my dear friend, that if God will let me live, I shall strive to do so. Till, if it may be in His good time, this horror may have passed away from me."
She was so good and brave that we all felt that our hearts were strengthened to work and endure for her, and we began to discuss what we were to do.
I told her that she was to have all the papers in the safe, and all the papers or diaries and phonographs we might hereafter use, and was to keep the record as she had done before. She was pleased with the prospect of anything to do, if "pleased" could be used in connection with so grim an interest.
As usual Van Helsing had thought ahead of everyone else, and was prepared with an exact ordering of our work.
"It is perhaps well," he said, "that at our meeting after our visit to Carfax we decided not to do anything with the earth boxes that lay there.
