"stoker-dracula-168" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stoker Bram)

be, and in such way? This poor mother, all unknowing, and all for
the best as she think, does such thing as lose her daughter body and
soul; and we must not tell her, we must not even warn her, or she die,
and then both die. Oh, how we are beset! How are all the powers of the
devils against us!" Suddenly he jumped to his feet. "Come," he said,
"come, we must see and act. Devils or no devils, or all the devils
at once, it matters not; we fight him all the same." He went to the
hall-door for his bag; and together we went up to Lucy's room.

Once again I drew up the blind, whilst Van Helsing went towards
the bed. This time he did not start as he looked on the poor face with
the same awful, waxen pallor as before. He wore a look of stern
sadness and infinite pity.

"As I expected," he murmured, with that hissing inspiration of his
which meant so much. Without a word he went and locked the door, and
then began to set out on the little table the instruments for yet
another operation of transfusion of blood. I had long ago recognised
the necessity, and begun to take off my coat, but he stopped me with a
warning hand. "No!" he said. "To-day you must operate. I shall
provide. You are weakened already." As he spoke he took off his coat
and rolled up his shirt-sleeve.

Again the operation; again the narcotic; again some return of colour
to the ashy cheeks, and the regular breathing of healthy sleep. This
time I watched whilst Van Helsing recruited himself and rested.

Presently he took an opportunity of telling Mrs. Westenra that she
must not remove anything from Lucy's room without consulting him; that
the flowers were of medicinal value, and that the breathing of their
odour was a part of the system of cure. Then he took over the care
of the case himself, saying that he would watch this night and the
next and would send me word when to come.

After another hour Lucy waked from her sleep, fresh and bright and
seemingly not much the worse for her terrible ordeal.

What does it all mean? I am beginning to wonder if my long habit
of life amongst the insane is beginning to tell upon my own brain.

Lucy Westenra's Diary.

17 September.- Four days and nights of peace. I am getting so strong
again that I hardly know myself It is as if I had passed through
some long nightmare, and had just awakened to see the beautiful
sunshine and feel the fresh air of the morning around me. I have a dim
half-remembrance of long, anxious times of waiting and fearing;
darkness in which there was not even the pain of hope to make
present distress more poignant; and then long spell of oblivion, and
the rising back to life as a diver coming up through a great press