(Unopened by her)
17 September
My dearest Lucy,
"It seems an age since I heard from you, or indeed since I wrote. You
will pardon me, I know, for all my faults when you have read all my budget of
news. Well, I got my husband back all right. When we arrived at Exeter there was a
carriage waiting for us, and in it, though he had an attack of gout, Mr.
Hawkins. He took us to his house, where there were rooms for us all nice and
comfortable, and we dined together. After dinner Mr. Hawkins said,
" `My dears, I want to drink your health and prosperity, and may every
blessing attend you both. I know you both from children, and have, with love
and pride, seen you grow up. Now I want you to make your home here with me. I
have left to me neither chick nor child. All are gone, and in my will I have
left you everything.' I cried, Lucy dear, as Jonathan and the old man clasped
hands. Our evening was a very, very happy one.
"So here we are, installed in this beautiful old house, and from both
my bedroom and the drawing room I can see the great elms of the cathedral
close, with their great black stems standing out against the old yellow stone
of the cathedral, and I can hear the rooks overhead cawing and cawing and
chattering and chattering and gossiping all day, after the manner of rooks--and
humans. I am busy, I need not tell you, arranging things and housekeeping.
Jonathan and Mr. Hawkins are busy all day, for now that Jonathan is a partner,
Mr. Hawkins wants to tell him all about the clients.
"How is your dear mother getting on? I wish I could run up to town for
a day or two to see you, dear, but I, dare not go yet, with so much on my
shoulders, and Jonathan wants looking after still. He is beginning to put some
flesh on his bones again, but he was terribly weakened by the long illness.
Even now he sometimes starts out of his sleep in a sudden way and awakes all
trembling until I can coax him back to his usual placidity. However, thank God,
these occasions grow less frequent as the days go on, and they will in time
pass away altogether, I trust. And now I have told you my news, let me ask
yours. When are you to be married, and where, and who is to perform the
ceremony, and what are you to wear, and is it to be a public or private
wedding? Tell me all about it, dear, tell me all about everything, for there is
nothing which interests you which will not be dear to me. Jonathan asks me to
send his `respectful duty', but I do not think that is good enough from the
junior partner of the important firm Hawkins & Harker. And so, as you love
me, and he loves me, and I love you with all the moods and tenses of the verb,
I send you simply his `love' instead. Goodbye, my dearest Lucy, and blessings
on you." Yours, Mina Harker
REPORT FROM PATRICK HENNESSEY, MD, MRCSLK, QCPI, ETC, ETC, TO JOHN SEWARD,
MD
20 September
My dear Sir:
"In accordance with your wishes, I enclose report of the conditions of
everything left in my charge. With regard to patient, Renfield, there is more
to say. He has had another outbreak, which might have had a dreadful ending,
but which, as it fortunately happened, was unattended with any unhappy results.
This afternoon a carrier's cart with two men made a call at the empty house
whose grounds abut on ours, the house to which, you will remember, the patient
twice ran away. The men stopped at our gate to ask the porter their way, as
they were strangers.
"I was myself looking out of the study window, having a smoke after
dinner, and saw one of them come up to the house. As he passed the window of
Renfield's room, the patient began to rate him from within, and called him all
the foul names he could lay his tongue to.
The man, who seemed a decent fellow enough, contented
himself by telling him to `shut up for a foul-mouthed beggar',whereon our man
accused him of robbing him and wanting to murder him and said that he would
hinder him if