Disclaimer: Dracula is not mine. If it was mine, I would be over a hundred years old.
Young Love
Chapter One
The Professor was laughing. How could he be laughing? Poor Lucy wasn't even cold in her grave! At least he was crying at the same time. When he had finally sobered, Dr. Seward asked, sounding very aggravated, "What has come over you, Doctor? Will you so disrespect Lucy?"
"Ah you don't comprehend, Friend John. Do not think that I am not sad, though I laugh. See I have cried even when the laugh did choke me. I grieve my heart out for that so sweet young girl; I give my blood for her, a chance I did not have last time; I give my time, my skill, my sleep, when before they were all ripped from me. I let my other suffers want that so she may have all. My heart bleed for that poor boy- that dear boy, so of the age of mine own boy had I been so blessed that he live, and with his hair and eyes the same. There, you know now why I love him so. And yet when he say things that touch my husband-heart to the quick, and make my father-heart yearn to him as to no other man- not even to you, Friend John, for we are more level in experiences than father and son. Oh! Friend John, it is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles."
"Then why do you laugh?"
"Oh, it was the rim irony of it all. This so lovely lady garlanded with flowers, that looked so fair as life, till one by one we wondered if she were truly dead; she laid in that so fine marble house in that lonely churchyard, where rest so many of her kin, laid there with the mother who loved her, and whom she loved. And, oh! So similar! She that I loved above all else, and was taken the same as this sweet girl!"
This certainly was a new development for Dr. Seward, who had no idea yet of this man's prior history with the fiend. Hesitantly, he said, "I can't see anything to laugh at in all that. Why, your explanation makes it a harder puzzle than before. But even if the burial service was comic, what about poor Art and his trouble? Why, his heart was simply breaking."
"Just so. Said he not that the transfusion of his blood to her veins had made her truly his bride?"
"Yes, and it was a sweet and comforting idea for him."
"Quite so. But there was a difficulty, Friend John. Is so that, then what about the others? Then this so sweet maid is a polyandrist, and me, with my poor wife dead to me in all save body- even I, who am faithful husband to this now-no-wife, am bigamist."
"I don't see where the joke comes in their either!" Dr. Seward huffed.
"Friend John, forgive me if I pain. I showed not my feeling to others when it would wound, but only to you, my old friend, whom I can trust. If you could have looked into my very heart that when I want to laugh; if you could have done so when the laugh arrived; if you could do so now, when King Laugh have pack up his crown and all that is to him- for he go far, far away from me, and for a long, long time- maybe yuou would perhaps pity me the most of all."
"Why?" Dr. Seward asked, being much more delicate and tender than his previous questioning.
"Because I know!"
Dr. Seward did not get the chance to ask what it was he knew before saying good-bye for the present. After much contemplation on the fact, Dr. Seward informed the others of his suspicions: that Van Helsing had a previous encounter with the fiend which prompted the fervour and persistence of his hunt of the vampire.
The following day, Mina Harker and her husband Jonathan Harker arrived at the residence of the departed Lucy Westenra, at which Prof. Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, and Quincey Morris still stayed.
Once Harker and Dr. Seward had arrived, all of them were present. They walked into the parlour where Dr. Van Helsing sat reading. He looked up from his book and immediately smiled warmly to us. "Welcome, my friends." Upon seeing the graveness of their manner, he asked in concern, "Is something wrong?"
Dr. Seward, being the one to which the cloue was presented, stepped forward and asked, "We have all heard that you have some prior history with the fiend we are pursuing."
At this point, Mrs. Harker stepped forward to ask, or rather say, the difficult part. "We would like to know what it is and if it will affect you."
Van Helsing smiled sadly and said, "I thank you for your concern, my friends, and I understand it. This is not easy for me. I have some documents which may help you to understand my history with the monster, for he and I have old business."
Van helsing left. A minute later, he returned with two old journals and a stack of papers which appeared to be letters and legal documents.
Your story begins in this book. It was Isolde Francesca Sforza's journal, which she started the day her father told her she would be marrying soon."
"What are the rest?" Mr. Morris asked.
"All in good time," Van Helsing said.