"Bram Stoker - Dracula" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stoker Bram)

CHAPTER 3


Jonathan Harker's Journal Continued


When I found that I was a prisoner a sort of wild feeling came
over me. I rushed up and down the stairs, trying every door
and peering out of every window I could find, but after a little
the conviction of my helplessness overpowered all other feelings.
When I look back after a few hours I think I must have been
mad for the time, for I behaved much as a rat does in a trap.
When, however, the conviction had come to me that I was helpless
I sat down quietly, as quietly as I have ever done anything
in my life, and began to think over what was best to be done.
I am thinking still, and as yet have come to no definite conclusion.
Of one thing only am I certain. That it is no use making my ideas
known to the Count. He knows well that I am imprisoned, and as
he has done it himself, and has doubtless his own motives for it,
he would only deceive me if I trusted him fully with the facts.
So far as I can see, my only plan will be to keep my knowledge and my
fears to myself, and my eyes open. I am, I know, either being deceived,
like a baby, by my own fears, or else I am in desperate straits,
and if the latter be so, I need, and shall need, all my brains
to get through.

I had hardly come to this conclusion when I heard the great door
below shut, and knew that the Count had returned. He did not come
at once into the library, so I went cautiously to my own room and
found him making the bed. This was odd, but only confirmed what I
had all along thought, that there are no servants in the house.
When later I saw him through the chink of the hinges of the door
laying the table in the dining room, I was assured of it.
For if he does himself all these menial offices, surely it is proof
that there is no one else in the castle, it must have been the Count
himself who was the driver of the coach that brought me here.
This is a terrible thought, for if so, what does it mean that he could
control the wolves, as he did, by only holding up his hand for silence?
How was it that all the people at Bistritz and on the coach had
some terrible fear for me? What meant the giving of the crucifix,
of the garlic, of the wild rose, of the mountain ash?

Bless that good, good woman who hung the crucifix round my neck!
For it is a comfort and a strength to me whenever I touch it.
It is odd that a thing which I have been taught to regard with disfavour
and as idolatrous should in a time of loneliness and trouble be of help.
Is it that there is something in the essence of the thing itself,