10 September.--I was conscious of the Professor's hand on my head, and
started awake all in a second. That is one of the things that we learn in an
asylum, at any rate.
"And how is our patient?"
"Well, when I left her, or rather when she left me," I answered.
"Come, let us see," he said. And together we went into the room.
The blind was down, and I went over to raise it gently, whilst Van Helsing
stepped, with his soft, cat-like tread, over to the bed.
As I raised the blind, and the morning sunlight flooded the room, I heard
the Professor's low hiss of inspiration, and knowing its rarity, a deadly fear
shot through my heart. As I passed over he moved back, and his exclamation of
horror, "Gott in Himmel!" needed no enforcement from his agonized
face. He raised his hand and pointed to the bed, and his iron face was drawn
and ashen white. I felt my knees begin to tremble.
There on the bed, seemingly in a swoon, lay poor Lucy, more horribly white
and wan-looking than ever. Even the lips were white, and the gums seemed to
have shrunken back from the teeth, as we sometimes see in a corpse after a
prolonged illness.
Van Helsing raised his foot to stamp in anger, but the instinct of his life
and all the long years of habit stood to him, and he put it down again softly.
"Quick!" he said. "Bring the brandy."
I flew to the dining room, and returned with the decanter. He wetted the
poor white lips with it, and together we rubbed palm and wrist and heart. He
felt her heart, and after a few moments of agonizing suspense said,
"It is not too late. It beats, though but feebly. All our work is
undone. We must begin again. There is no young Arthur here now. I have to call
on you yourself this time, friend John." As he spoke, he was dipping into
his bag, and producing the instruments of transfusion. I had taken off my coat
and rolled up my shirt sleeve. There was no possibility of an opiate just at
present, and no need of one. and so, without a moment's delay, we began the
operation.
After a time, it did not seem a short time either, for the draining away of
one's blood, no matter how willingly it be given, is a terrible feeling, Van
Helsing held up a warning finger. "Do not stir," he said. "But I
fear that with growing strength she may wake, and that would make danger, oh,
so much danger. But I shall precaution take. I shall give hypodermic injection
of morphia." He proceeded then, swiftly and deftly, to carry out his
intent.
The effect on Lucy was not bad, for the faint seemed to merge subtly into
the narcotic sleep. It was with a feeling of personal pride that I could see a
faint tinge of color steal back into the pallid cheeks and lips. No man knows,
till he experiences it, what it is to feel his own lifeblood drawn away into
the veins of the woman he loves.
The Professor watched me critically. "That will do," he said.
"Already?" I remonstrated. "You took a great deal more from
Art." To which he smiled a sad sort of smile as he replied,
"He is her lover, her fiance. You have work, much work to do for her
and for others, and the present will suffice.
When we stopped the operation, he attended to Lucy, whilst I applied digital
pressure to my own incision. I laid down, while I waited his leisure to attend
to me, for I felt faint and a little sick. By and by he bound up my wound, and
sent me downstairs to get a glass of wine for myself. As I was leaving the
room, he came after me, and half whispered.