Dracula: Letters — Lucy and Mina

Mina Murray wrote to her dear friend Lucy Westenra, apologizing for her long silence and explaining that she had been busy learning shorthand and typewriting so that she could one day help her fiancé, Jonathan Harker, with his work.She mentioned that Jonathan was still away in Transylvania but would be home again within the week, and she teased Lucy for having no news to share, especially about a certain “tall, handsome, curly-haired man.”

Lucy wrote back that the curly-haired man was only Mr. Arthur Holmwood, who often called on her and her mother and got along with them very well.She also mentioned a new friend, Dr. John Seward, a clever young doctor who ran a large asylum and had a curious habit of studying people’s faces as if trying to read their thoughts.Lucy admitted, blushing as she wrote, that she was secretly in love with Arthur, though he had not yet told her in words that he loved her too.

A few weeks later, Lucy wrote again with astonishing news: in a single day, she had received not one but three proposals of marriage.The first, just before lunch, was Dr. Seward, who spoke to her plainly and gently, and asked only whether her heart already belonged to someone else.When Lucy admitted that it did, Seward stood up, wished her happiness, and asked only that she think of him as a true friend from then on.

The second, that same afternoon, was Mr. Quincey Morris, an easygoing American from Texas, who asked for her hand in his own joking, warm way, comparing marriage to two horses driving in “double harness.”Seeing that his teasing had not entirely won her over, he grew serious and asked the same honest question Seward had: was there already someone else she loved?When Lucy told him yes, Morris took her answer with grace, called himself a good loser, asked for one kiss to remember her by, and left, wishing the unknown rival good luck.

Lucy confessed to Mina that she could not bring herself to describe the third proposal in any detail, except to say that it was Arthur Holmwood, and that within moments his arms were around her and he was kissing her.She was, she wrote, happier than she had ever been in her life, and she made Mina promise to keep the whole story a secret from everyone but Jonathan.

That same evening, Dr. Seward wrote sadly in his diary that he had lost his appetite and could not rest, so he threw himself back into his work at the asylum instead.He turned his attention to one patient in particular, a strange, powerful man named Renfield, whose fixed ideas and sudden fits of gloom Seward was determined to understand.

Meanwhile, Quincey Morris wrote to his old friend Arthur, recalling their adventures together from campfires on the prairie to the shores of Lake Titicaca, and invited him to a quiet dinner the next night with himself and Seward.It was his way of saying that there were no hard feelings between the three friends, now that all of them understood how matters stood with Lucy.None of them yet knew how soon they would all be needed together, for a far stranger trouble than a broken heart was already gathering around Lucy.