Renfield.
Slave of Dracula.
Barbara Hambly
CHAPTER ONE.
R.M.R."s notes 20 May 7 flies, 3 spiders I"ve filled many notebook pages and sc.r.a.ps of paper with these daily reckonings. Sometimes I look at them and they make no sense to me, nothing at all but scratchmarks. In more sensible moments, I think the counting is just a sad form of mental mischief.
It"s a way to avoid thinking about the truly essential question, which is, of course, what does a single housefly mean?
Letter, Miss Mina Murray to Miss Lucy Westenra 20 May My dearest Lucy, I am writing this to you in the happiest of moods. Can you guess why? Yes, I"ve heard from Jonathan today! He writes from Bistritz, the post-town nearest Castle Dracula-to receive a letter a mere two weeks after it was posted is a miracle, for Transylvania. What a great thing it is, to be living so close to the threshold of the twentieth century! He still has heard little con- cerning his client the Count, save that he is rumored to keep not one but three beautiful wives. This may be proper form beyond the woods and east of the Danube, but I know you will agree that it is two wives too many. I"ve always felt that I am too trusting or too unimaginative to know the pangs of envy. Still, I must admit to a moment of jealousy, and in my idle dreams these women cannot help but notice how fine a man my Jonathan is.
I know that it would be unreasonable of me to expect Jonathan"s business with the Count-the purchase of property here in England somewhere-to be finished in more than a few days, yet already I begin to fret that he has not outdistanced his own letter and arrived on my doorstep before it. I will write Mr. Hawkins, Jonathan"s employer, that after Jonathan and I are married, when my husband must travel so on company business, I must go with him. Naturally I will tell Mr. Hawkins that I can be of great benefit to his firm with my record-keeping and skill at the typewriter, and further, that the company need not pay me a shilling. I don"t know if I could bear another such separation, and I know that Jonathan surely feels the same-when he can turn his thoughts from the Count"s captivating wives.
Well, dear Lucy, you mentioned that you will be having dinner soon at Rushbrook House. I have not met your Dr. John Seward, but you have written that he is handsome and quite out of the ordinary. I should suppose so. No ordinary man would invite a young lady to dine at a madhouse.
Your loving, Mina "Cook says, must she obey every order from that Mr. Blaine? Because if she does, she says she won"t be able to get the chicken on the table in time."
Dr. John Seward briefly closed his eyes and didn"t even try to imagine what contradictory order given by the elegant butler Blaine-borrowed for the occasion from the local baronet, Sir Ambrose Poole-would preclude Mrs. Davies having the chicken ready for dinner with Mrs. Westenra and her daughter. Ordinarily, the maid"s question would have intrigued him. (Did he command her to polish the borrowed silver tureen that Sir Ambrose brought along with him? To fetch newer and fresher lettuce-leaves wherewith to line the platter?) Now it represented yet one more minor monster tussling with his trouser-leg as he prepared for the major encounter of the evening.
In the quiet, steady voice he"d perfected in a decade of dealing with the insane, he replied, "Please tell Mrs. Davies to use her best judgment, and to refer Mr. Blaine to me if there seems m be a conflict. Tell them both that getting the food on the table for dinner is my first priority."
The housemaid Mary nodded, the expression in her eyes clearly proclaiming that there was some major portion of Seward"s instructions which she hadn"t understood, and she darted back through the door of the little pantry and clattered down the corridor to the kitchen. Seward wondered if he should go after her and ascertain what part of his instructions were going to be garbled in transmission this time, but the chiming of the pantry clock claimed his attention like the salvo of a battle"s opening guns.
Eight.
Dear G.o.d, they would be here any minute.
You"ve confronted cannibal savages in the South Seas on that round-the-world voyage with Lord G.o.dalming"s daffy brother, Seward reminded himself. You"ve faced of f against Comancheros in Texas out to murder you and your friends for your boots. Can one respectable English matron out to secure A Good Match for her daughter be worse?
O f course she can.
As he pa.s.sed through the dining-room-its faded silk wallpapers and graceful proportions a reminder of the house"s patrician origins-he encountered Dr. Hennessey, his night surgeon, pouring himself what was clearly his third or fourth cognac of the evening.
"Cheer up, Johnny," encouraged the older man with a rather hazy grin. "This girl-she has money, eh? And she"s pretty? How about this mother of hers, then ... She has money, too?"
Seward blenched at the thought of the fat-bellied and sweaty Irishman-the best that Rushbrook Asylum could get for its rather limited funds-sidling up to Mrs. Westenra with propositions of a double wedding, and said, "I believe the money is all secured in an unbreakable trust," a patent fabrication that he hoped would hold for the evening. "As for Miss Westenra . . ."
The bell pealed and the attendant Langmore, bedight in livery borrowed like everything else for the evening from Sir Ambrose, strode through from pantry to hall, shouting, "I"m comin", then, keep your . . ."
Seward strode ahead of him, cutting him off at the hall door and preceding him into the small and rather gloomy entryway that had been carved out of what had once been the house"s library. All the grand rooms in the main block of Rushbrook House had years ago been converted for the use of the doctors and the patients: the original dining-room into a clinic with a dispensary in the pantry, the drawing-room into a day-room for the quieter patients, the morning-room for hydrotherapy, and the billiard-room- rather grimly equipped with several patent "tranquilizing chairs" and a Swing. Many of the rooms of the wing allotted to the Staff had a tinkered-with look, where a side door had been given the trappings of a main entrance and rooms originally s.p.a.cious had been divided to approximate a normal household.
Mrs. Westenra was taking in all these alterations with a cold blue eye that missed not a halved window nor a single square inch where brick had been subst.i.tuted for marble. "How very cozy," she said as Seward escorted her and her daughter across the threshold, and through the hall into the rest of the original library, now doing duty as drawing-room for the Superintendent, i.e.
himself. "What a very clever use of s.p.a.ce."
"I think it"s charming." Lucy shrugged her wrap into Langmore"s waiting hands, giving the attendant-c.u.m-footman one of those sweetly dazzling smiles that, even glancing, had won Seward"s heart the night he"d first encountered her at a party at Lord G.o.dalming"s. Then she turned the full brightness of her eyes on him. "Are those hyacinths from the garden here at Rushbrook, Dr.
Seward? I thought we saw a garden, didn"t we, Mama, as we drove up?"
"You did indeed, Miss Westenra. Several of our patients enjoy working with plants and flowers. Not only enjoy it, but seem to find it calming to their minds and nerves." He took her gloved hand, and guided her to a chair: a delicate girl, too thin for her medium height, her flaxen hair dressed in a feathery chignon that further emphasized this ethereal quality.
Mrs. Westenra gave an exaggerated shudder. "I hope you didn"t have them coming into this part of the house and arranging the flowers, too, Dr. Seward." Like her daughter, she was a thin woman, her pallor an exaggeration of Lucy"s alabaster delicacy, her eyes the chill ant.i.thesis of her daughter"s hopeful trust. She glanced pointedly at Langmore. "Or do you use them in your household?
I daresay it would take more courage than I possess, to live never knowing when I"d come through the door and find myself face- to-face with a lunatic." She turned as she said it, and drew back a little as Dr. Hennessey entered, red-faced and swaying slightly, a now-full-again gla.s.s of cognac in his hand.
"Dr. Hennessey," Seward introduced through slightly clenched teeth, "who is in charge here at night." And sleeps it off during the day. Hennessey was a relative of Lady Poole-upon whose husband"s patronage Rushbrook House depended-and his em- ployment here owed as much to this fact as to his willingness to work for what Seward was able to pay. Seward was familiar with such links. His own stint of shepherding Lord G.o.dalming"s brother, the erratic Harry Holmwood, through South America, Russia, and the South Seas had resulted in his acquaintance and friendship with his patient"s nephew, the Honorable Arthur Holmwood: the true prize, Seward knew, in the widowed Mrs. Westenra"s matrimonial quest.
And why not? he reflected, as Blaine entered to announce dinner. The Honorable Arthur was as handsome as a Burne-Jones engraving of Sir Galahad, curly-haired, square-chinned, unfailingly polite (even to the pavement-nymphs they"d patronized in Tampico, San Antonio, Vladivostok, and Singapore), and stood to inherit a very large fortune and the t.i.tle of Viscount G.o.dalming.
Seward had watched his young friend"s eyes at that party at the G.o.dalming town-house and knew he adored Miss Westenra. The only problem was that Seward adored her, too. Even at nineteen, she had the tact, taste, and vivacity to make a perfect London hostess. But she also, Seward guessed, watching her as he seated her at his left at the cramped dining-room table, had the instinctive empathy to be a doctor"s wife.
Even a mad-doctor"s.
As Blaine brought forth the fish course-a sorry turbot adorned with a half-lemon carved into a crown-and Hennessey launched into a rambling Nietzschean toast, Seward reflected that it was going to be a long evening.
"Sor?"
It was Langmore, tiptoeing out of the pantry to whisper in his ear. The attendant"s livery was mussed, his old-fashioned stock pulled askew.
"It"s the big new "un, sor. He"s scarpered."
Mrs. Westenra was questioning Hennessey-since Seward"s answers had proven unsatisfactory-about the number and variation of patients represented at Rushbrook, turning every now and then to Lucy with little cries of, "How horrible!" when the Dubliner doctor obliged her with a particularly bizarre example of behavior. Unlike many private asylums, Seward had insisted, when he"d been hired, on treating all prospective patients, not merely those who were easiest or least troublesome. Hennessey was regaling the ladies with accounts of Mrs. Strathmore"s a.s.sault on Mrs. Jaimeson with the scissors, and Seward only hoped he wouldn"t go on to detail the more revolting aspects of the notorious "Lord Spotty," as the attendants called him.
"Please excuse me," said Seward, rising. "There"s a small matter that needs my attention. I"ll be back in a moment."
Dr. Hennessey, refilling his gla.s.s, didn"t even think to ask if help was needed. Probably, reflected Seward, just as well.
As he was leaving, Mrs. Westenra said, "Those cries! Do the poor souls always howl so?"
Seward paused in his tracks, and reflected that he must be well-fitted to his business. It had been some time since he"d even been aware of the howling.
Letter, R. M. Renfield to his wife (Undated) My beloved Catherine, I hope this letter finds you in excellent health and the most congenial of spirits. I"m aware that it"s been some time since I"ve written to you, and I beg both your understanding and your forgiveness. It"s been a busy time for me, as I slowly grasp the changed nature of my life. I must accept new ways, puzzling ways, sometimes inhuman ways-but toward what final design? I do not know.
I have barely a moment to myself each morning and again each night. That"s certainly not enough quiet time for me to order my thoughts and compose such letters as deserve your attention. In fact, I was hoping against reason that you would visit me this last week-end. We might have enjoyed some tranquil time together, you and I, to speak or share the silent moments as we always did.
It"s spring and the air here is scented with honeysuckle, the sweetness of England for which I so longed among the heavy perfumes of foreign lands. But these are not the flowers you tended so carefully, nor the blossoms that cheered me nightly when I returned home from the City. Without you all things have lost their savor.
Please consider visiting next week-end, or the one thereafter. I will believe that you are arriving soon, bringing with you everything that gives color and freshness to the dawn, and rest and comfort to the twilight. And-I need not say this, I"m certain-please tell our precious Vixie that she will always be the joy in my life wherever I go, howsoever we are separated, and that she (and you, my dear Catherine) will go with me everywhere, always.
Please believe me, Forever your most loving husband, R. M. Renfield
Chapter Two.
A slanted coign of roof sheltered the rear door of the Staff wing of Rushbrook House. Beyond it, rain that had started during the soup course pattered sadly in the darkness. Rushbrook House stood a few miles from the last houses of Purfleet, and beyond the wall of the extensive grounds, the Thames marshes lay as they had lain since time immemorial. Even the grounds, though planted with trees and crossed by two or three drainage ca.n.a.ls discreetly disguised as ornamental brooks, tended to squishy muckiness and standing pools in the slightest rain.
"How long ago did he escape?" Seward shrank in spite of himself from the idea of a chase through the mora.s.s in his single presentable evening-suit.
"Just now, sir, when Hardy was takin" him his supper." Langmore had acquired a lantern in one hand, a strait-jacket rolled up under the other arm. The patient Renfield, though grayhaired, stood over six feet tall and was built like an oak-tree.
"Bashed me up against the wall like I was a kid, sir," added Hardy, stepping out the door behind Seward. He was easily Ren- field"s size, towering over Seward"s five-feet-ten-inch slightness. The side of his face was purpling where he"d been struck. "And him so quiet and gentlemanly-like." He shrugged into an oilskin mac.
"Like I"s tellin" you, Hardy." Langmore shook his grizzled head. "It"s the quiet ones you gotta watch. Sly, they is." He glanced at Seward, like a soldier waiting for his captain to lead him to battle.
Seward took a deep breath. "Check along the wall by the road first," he said. "Then check the east wall. That"s the lowest, and in the worst repair. If he goes over there, he"ll just find himself in the grounds of Carfax. Thank G.o.d the place is deserted, and the house well-locked. Blow your whistles if you need a.s.sistance."
The two burly night attendants looked momentarily nonplussed as it sank in that Seward wasn"t going to go with them, then took a second look at their employer"s dinner-jacket and polished shoes, and nodded, belatedly putting two and two together. Seward supposed, as they faded into the utter darkness beyond the thin pools of gaslight from Rushbrook"s windows, that if they had even average intelligence, they would have been able to find employment as something other than hired strongmen at a madhouse.
Yet having dispatched them to an adventure he considered himself too well-dressed to partic.i.p.ate in, Seward found himself unable to simply return to the house. It was his duty to make sure Renfield got back to his room in safety. He had branded himself already in his own eyes as a shirker by staying here on the relatively dry rear step. He could not further betray his trust by settling down to a comfortable dinner with the girl he loved while one of his patients was loose-the more so because he was fairly certain that if Renfield wasn"t found, neither Langmore nor Hardy would interrupt him at his dinner a second time.
d.a.m.n it. Seward fumbled in his pocket for his cigarette case. Curious, how the mad always had such fiendish timing in their outbursts. As if they could tell which were the most important events in the lives of those around them, and waited for the most utterly disruptive moment to make their move.
Could they? he wondered. Did they have an extra sensitivity, an extra faculty o f observation? He shivered, for the night was raw and bitterly cold. Everyone speaks of the connection between madness and artistic talent-do both states share roots in a greater capacity for perception o f detail? He would, he reflected, have to write to his old teacher in Amsterdam about the matter. Van Helsing was always fascinated by such connections.
His heart warmed a little at the thought of the st.u.r.dy old Dutchman, a pleasant recollection washed away entirely by a gust of wind that blew rain over him, soaking the shoulders of his jacket.
So he might as well have gone out running through the mire after all.
Good G.o.d, what horrors was Hennessey telling Miss Westenra and her mother in his absence?
Lanterns flashed dimly through the trees, jogging up and down as if the men were running. They vanished then, but Seward"s jaw tightened. Along the eastern wall, then, which being built of large stones rather than bricks made it far easier to climb. He strained his ears for the sound of the whistles. If Renfield got over the dilapidated barrier that divided Rushbrook"s park from that of Carfax, the long-neglected estate immediately to the east, it could easily take them the rest of the night to locate him. Like Rushbrook, Carfax was an enormous house, but it was infinitely older and falling into ruin. When first he"d come to Rushbrook, Seward had gone over the wall himself and ascertained that the old house and its attendant chapel were at least tightly locked. An escapee would have had a hard time going to earth inside. But its park was a jungle, nearly twenty acres of overgrown groves and woods, mired with standing pools around a small lake.
d.a.m.n, thought Seward again. d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n ...
A fine future I have to offer poor Miss Westenra. What made me ever think she"d consider my offer? He recalled his own inner smile when, a few days ago, his friend Quincey Morris had spoken to him of his own adoration for the delicate blonde girl.
Quincey was a stringy, awkward-handed Texan whom Seward and the Honorable Arthur had met during their adventurous year of travel in the company of the Honorable Uncle Harry. Arthur had invited Quincey to spend a season in London with him, and though the Texan"s speech still bore the tw.a.n.g of the American plains, his manners were meticulously good and his self-made fortune-in land, cattle, and Colorado gold-had made him marginally acceptable to a certain segment of the more impoverished Society mamas.
Though Seward liked Quincey enormously, he had never for a moment considered him genuine compet.i.tion for Lucy Westenra"s hand. He couldn"t imagine that lively, sociable girl agreeing to go live in a ranch-house in San Antonio, be it never so s.p.a.cious and comfortable. The memory of his own patronizing att.i.tude sliced him now like a flaming whip: And you think she would be any more likely to revel in "cozy" quarters in Rushbrook House, listening to the screaming of the mad on still nights?
But the flare of hope was like a little white flame somewhere behind his sternum. She might ...
And the memory of the scent of her hair, and the thoughtful pucker between those delicate brows, warmed him again. She was an exceptional girl. He would a.s.sure her that this situation was only temporary Darkness thickened in the darkness, first a b.u.mbling outline, then a Laoc.o.o.n that resolved itself into three inter-tangled shapes, Renfield"s bowed gray head and enormous shoulders seeming to dominate the attendants who walked on either side. All three were covered with mud. The lanterns had gone out. Renfield was strait-jacketed and there was blood on Langmore"s lined face, but there was no suggestion of violence now, only a kind of sly petulance in Renfield"s eyes as he was pushed into the reflected light near the house.
"I"m not trouble," he muttered, twisting his head to look down at Langmore. "I"m not trouble to anyone."
"If you"re not trouble, mate, I"d like to see what is," retorted the little attendant. "But you come along quiet, and we"ll go easy with you this time. Won"t even put you on the Swing, will we, Hardy?"
Renfield flinched at the mention of the Swing, something Seward noticed with annoyance. Hennessey swore by the Swing, claiming that the motion of being swooped up and down blindfolded for hours calmed the patients" minds. In the six months he"d been Superintendant, it had not escaped Seward that for all Hennessey"s claims of theraputic value, his colleague had only to threaten its use for most patients to calm down immediately, in terror at the nausea and disorientation the "calming" device produced.
"We"ll be kind to you, oh, yes," agreed Hardy, with a bad-tempered look. "First one"s free, innit?"
"I"m not the one you should be looking for," added Renfield, turning his head over his shoulder to speak to the bigger attendant.
"I"m not the one."
"He did come along quiet, once we"d both laid hold on him, sor." Langmore wiped the raindrops from his eyes to look at Seward. "Gave us a nasty run, though. You want him in a crib for the rest of the night?"
Seward, watching Renfield"s face, again saw the twitch of dread at mention of being locked into what was to all intents and purposes a latticework metal coffin, barely the depth of a man"s breast or the width of his shoulders. Unable to move, unable to turn over, unable even to reach one arm across to scratch an itch ...
More humane than chaining, of course, but in Seward"s opinion, not much more. All very well to go on about moral treatment, lad, Hennessey had said patronizingly, when Seward had begun making changes in the House"s patient routines. You just see how your "moral treatment" answers when you"ve got some foaming mooncalf coming at you swinging his bed round his head like a club. You"ll be putting those wall-rings back into the cells quick enough.
He pushed the soaked hair out of his eyes. "No, take him to his room and strap him to his cot. I"ll be along in a moment and give him some chloral hydrate. He should sleep through "til morning. Once you"ve done that, please go on back to the diningroom. I"m sure Simmons and Mr. Blaine need your help."
Langmore"s grin was wry. "Like nuthin" never happened, sor."
"Exactly." Seward shivered with the cold, and crushed out his cigarette on the wet stone of the doorstep as he turned back to his recaptured patient. Standing on the step, he was at eye level with the bigger man. Dark blue eyes, Seward noted again, under an almost anthropoid shelf of brow. Though Renfield"s hair was graying, his heavy eyebrows were still nearly black. "Mr. Renfield, your family-and you yourself-have been a.s.sured that there"s nothing to fear from me or from anyone else at Rushbrook House.
Why did you flee?"
Under the dripping brows, the muck-plastered hair, the dark blue gaze was calm and altogether sane. "My question," Renfield replied, "is, Why do you not?"
Lucy got quickly to her feet as Seward came back into the diningroom, and would have crossed to him in the pantry doorway had not her mother halted her with a glare. The girl hesitated, napkin still in hand, then asked, "Is everything all right? Did they find the poor man?"
""Course they did, acusbla." Dr. Hennessey jovially lifted his gla.s.s to Seward in a mock toast. "Told you they would. That Langmore has a nose on him like a bloodhound. And he"s a good tracker besides!" And he relapsed into gales of inebriated chortles of appreciation at his own jest.
Across the curdled remains of the fish course, which had not been removed in the nearly seventy-five minutes that had elapsed since Langmore"s hesitant summons, Mrs. Westenra regarded Seward with a gaze like frozen slag.
"My dear Mrs. Westenra!" Seward cried, identifying the immediate priority in the situation, "I am most terribly sorry! I instructed Simmons to carry on in my absence. I cannot imagine what happened . . ." He held Lucy"s chair for her as she reseated herself.
"Yes, Miss Westenra, to answer your question, the patient was brought back safely and unhurt. I"ve just come now from giving him a sedative injection . . ."
And changing into gray tweeds that looked hopelessly out of place next to Hennessey"s rumpled and straining dinner clothes, and the expensive silks of the two ladies.
"You don"t actually let your patients roam loose about the house, as Dr. Hennessey said?" Lucy looked timidly up over her shoulder at Seward. "Do you?" To her left, Hennessey grinned drunkenly and winked.
When Langmore and Simmons brought in the Hindle Wakesa German specialty slightly beyond Cook"s skills-the chicken was stone cold and the lemon-cream sauce had separated.
The rest of the dinner proceeded in silence.