at the church and were standing outside. “You should have seen the Westenra’s house last night, Mina. Arthur had hundreds of candles burning in the rooms and wreaths of white roses and gardenias on all the doors. It was positively transcendent. I am so sorry that you did not see our girl all dressed in white tulle, with the most delicate pearls in the netting. I have never seen a sight so beautiful except-”
Kate stopped, choking on her words. “Except Lucy when she used to smile.”
She broke down, bending over in tears, and Jacob took her in his arms and rocked her gently, whispering things into her ear that I could not hear. In that moment, I knew beyond a doubt that she and Jacob were lovers. I remember how morally superior I had felt to her just a few months before, but now I envied that she had the love of a strong man who would hold and comfort her.
Arthur Holmwood, with his mother on his arm, had overheard this. He took me aside, and with frantic eyes, said, “Mina, you’ve no idea what we have been through. Lucy, my poor Lucy! I should have buried her in black. She was still in mourning for her mother, and I for my father. But I could not bear to see an angel go to Heaven in black!” He turned to his mother. “Was I wrong, Mother?”
I could not see the lady’s face beneath her heavy veil. I remembered that her husband had died not two months earlier. She clutched her son’s arm and with a very tired voice said, “Come, Arthur, help the mourners out of their carriages.”
“She should be in our family tomb,” he said. “I have done everything wrong!”
“She should be beside her parents,” said his mother. “She was theirs much longer than she was ours.”
I sat numb through the service, staring at Lucy’s coffin. I thought of Jonathan, of Lucy, of myself-of all the hopes we had harbored. How could the fabric of our lives have disintegrated so quickly? And, of course, I thought of Morris Quince, who was absent but who may have been responsible for Lucy’s demise. If she had never met him, she would have quietly married Arthur and learned to love him, as many a woman before her had done. It was Quince who had made her sick with love. It was Quince who had killed her. I sat in the pew with my fists clenched. I wanted him to pay for what he had done, but he had escaped to America unscathed and probably already had another naive girl under his spell. After the service, I got into one of the funereal carriages as quickly as possible and was silent on the drive to the cemetery. I was too angry to participate in the predictable postfuneral lamentations.
Now we walked down the wooded path to the mournful tune of the pipes and drums that Arthur had commissioned, past ornate marble monuments topped with delicate angels, crosses, and other sculptures. Thick with chestnut and maple trees that blocked out the skies, Highgate seemed more forest than graveyard. The Westenra crypt was in the Circle of Lebanon, a cluster of tombs beneath a magnificent centuries-old cedar of Lebanon that gave it its name. We passed through the entrance, an Egyptian style arch flanked by two ancient- looking columns and two tall obelisks, where the path began to slope gently to a semicircular arrangement of tombs with Roman-style doorways.
The procession stopped, and we gathered ourselves around the entry, where the pallbearers stood with Lucy’s coffin. My hands began to shake, and I looked for someone who might help steady my nerves when John Seward’s deep-set eyes met mine. I cannot explain his look, a mixture of fear and sadness. He seemed to need even more comfort than I. Kate told me that Lucy had died in his care while he and his colleagues heroically attempted desperate measures to save her, and that she thought he felt responsible for Lucy’s demise.
The minister began to recite prayers, and everyone bowed their heads. Kate had instigated a scheme that I would read a poem that Lucy had liked in the days when the three of us had become enthralled with the poetry of Christina Rossetti. Headmistress believed that such maudlin literature would thwart the sunny temperaments natural to young ladies and diminish our enthusiasm for accomplishment. Naturally, Kate and Lucy had smuggled it into our dormitory, reading it by moonlight after everyone else had gone to sleep.
“Don’t you remember, Mina? Lucy said that she wanted the poem to be read at her gravesite,” Kate had said, thrusting a copy of it into my hands.
“She was fifteen at the time, Kate. I think she would have changed her mind.”
“Perhaps she had a premonition that she would die young,” Kate said.
“Perhaps you have spent too much time investigating mediums,” I replied. “Besides, if you feel so strongly about this, you should read the poem yourself.”
“You were Lucy’s closest friend and you are the
Objectively speaking, it was true. My voice was gentle and melodic.
Arthur Holmwood was all for the idea. “If that is what my darling would have wanted, then we must make sure that it is done,” he had said.
Now I heard his voice at the end of the minister’s prayers.
“Miss Mina Murray-oh, I am sorry, Mrs. Jonathan Harker, that is-will now read a poem that Lucy had admired when she was a student at Miss Hadley’s School for Young Ladies of Accomplishment.”
Everyone looked up, following Arthur’s eyes, to rest upon me. My heart started to pound in my chest, and I tried to smile, but not too much for the solemn occasion. Shaking, I walked forward to the casket. It was difficult to retrieve the poem from my pocket, what with my gloved, trembling hands. Arthur gave me an encouraging smile as he took my umbrella and held it over my head.
I began slowly, for there is nothing less eloquent than allowing nervousness to speed us through important moments. “When we were just girls at school, Lucy told us that she wished to have this poem read at the site of her burial. I had hoped that I would be a very old woman delivering these words, if at all, for it would have been my fondest wish to have had my companion for many more decades, and even more, that I would have passed before her. This is for Lucy.” I read:
O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes;
Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth;
Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth
With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs.
She hath no questions, she hath no replies,
Hush’d in and curtain’d with a bless’d dearth
Of all that irk’d her from the hour of birth;
With stillness that is almost Paradise.
Darkness more clear than noonday holdeth her,
Silence more musical than any song;
Even her very heart has ceased to stir:
Until the morning of Eternity
Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be;
And when she wakes she will not think it long.
I got through the delivery of the poem, even smiling at one point when I remembered Lucy, her young face bright with revelation, exclaiming, “Imagine, death is a place where all cares disappear!”
We watched the pallbearers place Lucy’s casket in the vault with her parents, whose coffins sat on the first and second shelves of the tomb. The men slid Lucy’s casket onto the third shelf, hitting the wall of the vault with such finality that it made me shudder.
John Seward came out of the vault and met my eyes. He walked to me, and we stared at each other. His ever- questioning eyes, full of sadness and longing, searched mine. The rain had stopped. “Let me take that for you,” he said. He shook out my wet umbrella.
We were both silent again. I put out my gloved hand, and he took it and kissed it. Then he cupped it, using the opportunity to link arms with me. “Shall I escort you back to the carriages?” he asked.
We walked together to the entrance of the cemetery. “I have not spoken with you since your travels,” Seward said. “Is Mr. Harker recuperated from his illness?”
I was groping for a discreet answer to his question when I saw a man standing beside a familiar gleaming black carriage with two restless black horses. He was dressed in a handsome suit of thick velour, with a dark green vest and a black shirt. A silk cravat pinned with a silver dragon covered his neck. The beast had emeralds for eyes, which seemed to be staring directly at me, as did the man from beneath his low-brimmed hat. He held open the door to the carriage.
