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 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.
29 September, night.—A little before twelve o’clock 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—Arthur trembling 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?”