第28章

When I came in he threw himself on his knees before me and implored me to let him have a cat, that his salvation depended upon it.

I was firm, however, and told him that he could not have it, whereupon he went without a word, and sat down, gnawing his fingers, in the corner where I had found him.

I shall see him in the morning early.

20 July.--Visited Renfield very early, before attendant went his rounds.

Found him up and humming a tune. He was spreading out his sugar, which he had saved, in the window, and was manifestly beginning his fly catching again, and beginning it cheerfully and with a good grace.

I looked around for his birds,and not seeing them,asked him where they were.

He replied, without turning round, that they had all flown away.

There were a few feathers about the room and on his pillow a drop of blood.

I said nothing, but went and told the keeper to report to me if there were anything odd about him during the day.

11 am.--The attendant has just been to see me to say that Renfield has been very sick and has disgorged a whole lot of feathers.

"My belief is, doctor," he said, "that he has eaten his birds, and that he just took and ate them raw!"

11 pm.--I gave Renfield a strong opiate tonight, enough to make even him sleep, and took away his pocketbook to look at it.

The thought that has been buzzing about my brain lately is complete, and the theory proved.

My homicidal maniac is of a peculiar kind. I shall have to invent a new classification for him, and call him a zoophagous (life-eating) maniac.

What he desires is to absorb as many lives as he can, and he has laid himself out to achieve it in a cumulative way. He gave many flies to one spider and many spiders to one bird, and then wanted a cat to eat the many birds.

What would have been his later steps?

It would almost be worth while to complete the experiment.

It might be done if there were only a sufficient cause.

Men sneered at vivisection, and yet look at its results today!

Why not advance science in its most difficult and vital aspect, the knowledge of the brain?

Had I even the secret of one such mind, did I hold the key to the fancy of even one lunatic, I might advance my own branch of science to a pitch compared with which Burdon-Sanderson's physiology or Ferrier's brain knowledge would be as nothing. If only there were a sufficient cause!

I must not think too much of this, or I may be tempted.

A good cause might turn the scale with me, for may not I too be of an exceptional brain, congenitally?

How well the man reasoned. Lunatics always do within their own scope.

I wonder at how many lives he values a man, or if at only one.

He has closed the account most accurately, and today begun a new record.

How many of us begin a new record with each day of our lives?

To me it seems only yesterday that my whole life ended with my new hope, and that truly I began a new record.

So it shall be until the Great Recorder sums me up and closes my ledger account with a balance to profit or loss.

Oh, Lucy, Lucy, I cannot be angry with you, nor can I be angry with my friend whose happiness is yours, but I must only wait on hopeless and work. Work! Work!

If I could have as strong a cause as my poor mad friend there, a good, unselfish cause to make me work, that would be indeed happiness.

MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL

26 July.--I am anxious,and it soothes me to express myself here.

It is like whispering to one's self and listening at the same time.

And there is also something about the shorthand symbols that makes it different from writing. I am unhappy about Lucy and about Jonathan.

I had not heard from Jonathan for some time, and was very concerned, but yesterday dear Mr. Hawkins, who is always so kind, sent me a letter from him. I had written asking him if he had heard, and he said the enclosed had just been received. It is only a line dated from Castle Dracula, and says that he is just starting for home. That is not like Jonathan.

I do not understand it, and it makes me uneasy.

Then, too, Lucy, although she is so well, has lately taken to her old habit of walking in her sleep. Her mother has spoken to me about it, and we have decided that I am to lock the door of our room every night.

Mrs. Westenra has got an idea that sleep-walkers always go out on roofs of houses and along the edges of cliffs and then get suddenly wakened and fall over with a despairing cry that echoes all over the place.

Poor dear, she is naturally anxious about Lucy, and she tells me that her husband, Lucy's father, had the same habit, that he would get up in the night and dress himself and go out, if he were not stopped.

Lucy is to be married in the autumn, and she is already planning out her dresses and how her house is to be arranged.

I sympathise with her, for I do the same, only Jonathan and I will start in life in a very simple way, and shall have to try to make both ends meet.

Mr. Holmwood, he is the Hon. Arthur Holmwood, only son of Lord Godalming, is coming up here very shortly, as soon as he can leave town, for his father is not very well, and I think dear Lucy is counting the moments till he comes.

She wants to take him up in the seat on the churchyard cliff and show him the beauty of Whitby. I daresay it is the waiting which disturbs her.

She will be all right when he arrives.