(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 he were to swing for it.
I opened the window and signed to the man not to notice,
so he contented himself after looking the place over and making
up his mind as to what kind of place he had got to by saying,
‘Lor' bless yer, sir, I wouldn't mind what was said to me
in a bloomin' madhouse. I pity ye and the guv'nor for havin'
to live in the house with a wild beast like that.'
"Then he asked his way civilly enough, and I told him
where the gate of the empty house was. He went away
followed by threats and curses and revilings from our man.
I went down to see if I could make out any cause for his anger,
since he is usually such a well-behaved man, and except
his violent fits nothing of the kind had ever occurred.
I found him, to my astonishment, quite composed and most genial
in his manner. I tried to get him to talk of the incident,
but he blandly asked me questions as to what I meant, and led
me to believe that he was completely oblivious of the affair.
It was, I am sorry to say, however, only another instance
of his cunning, for within half an hour I heard of him again.
This time he had broken out through the window of his room,
and was running down the avenue. I called to the attendants
to follow me, and ran after him, for I feared he was intent
on some mischief. My fear was justified when I saw the same
cart which had passed before coming down the road, having on it
some great wooden boxes. The men were wiping their foreheads,
and were flushed in the face, as if with violent exercise.
Before I could get up to him, the patient rushed at them,
and pulling one of them off the cart, began to knock his head
against the ground. If I had not seized him just at the moment,
I believe he would have killed the man there and then.
The other fellow jumped down and struck him over the head
with the butt end of his heavy whip. It was a horrible blow,
but he did not seem to mind it, but seized him also, and struggled
with the three of us, pulling us to and fro as if we were kittens.
You know I am no lightweight, and the others were both burly men.
At first he was silent in his fighting, but as we began to master him,
and the attendants were putting a strait waistcoat on him,
he began to shout, ‘I'll frustrate them! They shan't rob me!
They shan't murder me by inches! I'll fight for my Lord
and Master!'and all sorts of similar incoherent ravings.
It was with very considerable difficulty that they got
him back to the house and put him in the padded room.
One of the attendants, Hardy, had a finger broken.
However, I set it all right, and he is going on well.
"The two carriers were at first loud in their threats of actions
for damages, and promised to rain all the penalties of the law on us.
Their threats were, however, mingled with some sort of indirect
apology for the defeat of the two of them by a feeble madman.
They said that if it had not been for the way their strength
had been spent in carrying and raising the heavy boxes
to the cart they would have made short work of him.
They gave as another reason for their defeat the extraordinary
state of drouth to which they had been reduced by the dusty
nature of their occupation and the reprehensible distance from
the scene of their labors of any place of public entertainment.
I quite understood their drift, and after a stiff glass
of strong grog, or rather more of the same, and with each
a sovereign in hand, they made light of the attack, and swore
that they would encounter a worse madman any day for the pleasure
of meeting so ‘bloomin' good a bloke' as your correspondent.
I took their names and addresses, in case they might be needed.
They are as follows: Jack Smollet, of Dudding's Rents,
King George's Road, Great Walworth, and Thomas Snelling,
Peter Farley's Row, Guide Court, Bethnal Green. They are both
in the employment of Harris & Sons, Moving and Shipment Company,
Orange Master's Yard, Soho.
"I shall report to you any matter of interest occurring here,
and shall wire you at once if there is anything of importance.
"Believe me, dear Sir,
"Yours faithfully,
"Patrick Hennessey."
LETTER, MINA HARKER TO LUCY WESTENRA (Unopened by her)
18 September
"My dearest Lucy,
"Such a sad blow has befallen us. Mr. Hawkins has died very suddenly.
Some may not think it so sad for us, but we had both come to so
love him that it really seems as though we had lost a father.
I never knew either father or mother, so that the dear old man's
death is a real blow to me. Jonathan is greatly distressed.
It is not only that he feels sorrow, deep sorrow, for the dear,
good man who has befriended him all his life, and now at
the end has treated him like his own son and left him a fortune
which to people of our modest bringing up is wealth beyond
the dream of avarice, but Jonathan feels it on another account.
He says the amount of responsibility which it puts upon him makes
him nervous. He begins to doubt himself. I try to cheer him up,
and my belief in him helps him to have a belief in himself.
But it is here that the grave shock that he experienced tells upon
him the most. Oh, it is too hard that a sweet, simple, noble,
strong nature such as his, a nature which enabled him by our dear,
good friend's aid to rise from clerk to master in a few years,
should be so injured that the very essence of its strength is gone.
Forgive me, dear, if I worry you with my troubles in the midst of your
own happiness, but Lucy dear, I must tell someone, for the strain
of keeping up a brave and cheerful appearance to Jonathan tries me,
and I have no one here that I can confide in. I dread coming up to London,
as we must do that day after tomorrow, for poor Mr. Hawkins left
in his will that he was to be buried in the grave with his father.
As there are no relations at all, Jonathan will have to be chief mourner.
I shall try to run over to see you, dearest, if only for a few minutes.
Forgive me for troubling you. With all blessings,
"Your loving
Mina Harker"