GEORGE STADE
such as a child gives in sleep . . .. My own heart grew cold as ice ,
and I could hear the gasp of Arthur, as we recognized the fea–
tures of Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness
was turned to admantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to
voluptuous wantonness.... We could see that the lips were
crimson with fresh blood, and that the stream had trickled over
her chin and stained the purity of her lawn death-robe .
When Lucy - I call the thing that was before us Lucy be–
cause it bore her shape - saw us she drew back with an angry
snarl, such as a cat gives when taken unawares; then her eyes
ranged over us. Lucy's eyes in form and colour; but Lucy's eyes
unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we
knew. At that moment the remnant of my love passed into hate
and loathing; had she then to be killed, I could have done it with
savage delight. As she looked, her eyes blazed with unholy light,
and the face became wreathed with a voluptuous smile . Oh,
God, how it made me shudder to see it! With a careless motion,
she flung to the ground callous as a devil, the child that up to
now she had clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it
as a dog growls over a bone. The child gave a sharp cry, and lay
there moaning. There was a cold-bloodedness in the act which
wrung a groan from Arthur; when she advanced to him with out–
stretched arms and a wanton smile he fell back and hid his face in
his hands.
She still advanced, however, and with a languorous, volup–
tuous grace, said: -
"Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me.
My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together.
Come, my husband, come!"
There was something diabolically sweet in her tones–
something of the tingling of glass when struck - which rang
through the brains even of us who heard the words addressed to
another. As for Arthur, he seemed under a spell; moving his
hands from his face, he opened wide his arms . She was leaping
for them, when Van Helsing sprang forward and held between
them his little golden crucifix. She recoiled from it and, with a
suddenly distorted face, full of rage, dashed past him as if to
enter the tomb.. ..
Never did I see such baffled malice on a face; and never, I
trust , shall such ever be seen again by mortal eyes. The beautiful
colour became livid, the eyes seemed to throw out sparks of hell–
fire , the brows were wrinkled as though the folds of the flesh
were the coils of Medusa's snakes, and the lovely, blood-stained
mouth grew to an open square, as in the passion masks of the
Greeks and Japanese .
If
ever a face meant death - if looks could
kill- we saw it at that moment.
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