by Syrie James
The boy took in the shiny new shoes and new suit Jonathan was wearing, and then lingered on his beautiful, red cashmere scarf. “You must be doing all right now! That’s my favorite colour: red.”
“Is it?” Jonathan said. I knew that the scarf had been a gift from Mr. Hawkins years before, and that Jonathan had long treasured it; but without a second thought, he said, “It’s yours,” as he wrapped the scarf around the little boy’s neck.
The boy gasped with wordless delight; then emotion seemed to overcome him, and he pushed open the door and disappeared into the dining-hall.
I took Jonathan’s hand and squeezed it as we proceeded down the hall. “That was very sweet and generous of you.”
Jonathan only shrugged. “I wish I could give every one of them a home, and parents who loved them.”
We had just reached the foyer when an old woman in a white cap and apron happened by. I recognised her at once as a servant I had never liked: she was the one I had overhead gossiping about my mother when I was just seven years of age. Upon seeing us, the old woman stopped and cried out, “Well bless my soul, if it isn’t Miss Mina an’ Master Jonathan. Haven’t seen the likes of you two in many a year.”
“Hello, Mrs. Pringle,” I returned politely. “How are you?”
“Same as ever, just older an’ ornerier. How are you two getting on?”
“Fine, thank you ma’am,” Jonathan replied. “In fact, we are married now.”
“Are you, then? Good for you. Your mum would have liked that.” She glanced at me now and went quiet for a moment, as if trying to recall something long forgotten.
“Well, ma’am,” Jonathan said with a smile, “it was good to see you again. Good day.” He took my arm, and we were about to head for the door, when the old woman blurted:
“Did you ever get that envelope, Miss Mina?”
I turned to her in surprise. “What envelope?”
“Why, the envelope what was left for you when you was a girl.”
Jonathan and I exchanged a look, and I said: “I received no envelope, Mrs. Pringle. How do you know of it?”
“Why, I was here the day it arrived. A young woman put it into my own hands, on the doorstep. So pale and sickly she was, I remember thinking: she’s not long for this world. She’d writ your name on it, and made me promise to deliver it to the head of the orphanage and to say he was not to give it to you until you reached eighteen years of age.”
My heart began to pound. “When was this?”
“You might have been six or seven at the time, as I recall.”
“Who left the letter? Was it my mother? What did the letter say?”
The old woman lowered her eyes now, with a surreptitious look that told me she had read the letter, before delivering it to the institution’s director—if she had, indeed, ever delivered it. “I could not say, ma’am. Strange that Mr. Howell never sent it to you, after you come of age. I suppose he just forgot.”
I was stunned and excited by this news. It was the first piece of information I had ever heard about my mother since that remark about her indiscreet behaviour which had so traumatised me as a child. But I was saddened, too, to hear that she had been sickly. We said good-bye to Mrs. Pringle and went in search of the new director of the establishment, a bewhiskered, preoccupied man who said he knew nothing about any letter addressed to me but would be happy to forward the envelope should he ever come across it. I gave him my address in Exeter, and we departed.
“Oh, Jonathan!” I cried, as we strode down the street. “Can you imagine it? A letter to me—perhaps from my own mother!”
“I hope he finds it; but I would not get your hopes up, my dear. It may have been discarded long ago.”
“Even so. Just to know that she was thinking of me when I was six or seven; that she wanted to communicate with me; it makes me feel better somehow.”
It was by then the middle of the afternoon. Over lunch at a café, we indulged in more happy childhood memories. Jonathan suggested that we help the orphanage by making a donation from his newly inherited funds, and I agreed. We tried to decide what to do with the few hours we had left in London before we had to catch our train. I wanted to call on Lucy and her mother, both to say hello and to reassure myself that all was well with them; but Jonathan insisted that we did not have time, since Hillingham was on the opposite side of town.
We took a bus instead to Hyde Park Corner, and then walked down Piccadilly, an activity we had always enjoyed. With my arm linked in Jonathan’s, we strolled along the busy street, looking at all the people, the shops, and the fashionable residences. Outside Giuliano’s jewellery shop at 115 Piccadilly, I noticed a beautiful girl in a big cart-wheel hat, sitting in a new and expensively built open carriage. I was idly wondering who she was—no doubt an important customer, I thought, waiting for a piece of fine jewellery to be delivered—when I felt Jonathan clutch my arm so tightly that it made me wince.
Under his breath, he said: “My God!”
“What is it?”
“Look!” Jonathan cried, his face now very pale, and his eyes bulging in mingled terror and amazement.
I followed his gaze. He was staring at a man who stood near-by, turned partially away from us, his attention intently focused on the pretty girl in the carriage. As I looked at the man, a strange feeling came over me: my skin felt clammy, my heart began to race, and I began to shiver. The man—who was tall and thin, dressed all in black, and had black hair and a black moustache—bore an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Wagner! But I knew it could not be he; for this man looked to be at least fifty years old—a good twenty years older than the man I was acquainted with. He had a short, pointed beard, and his face looked hard and cruel.
“Do you see who it is?” Jonathan said in horror, still gripping my arm anxiously.
I struggled to remain calm. “No, dear. I don’t know him. Who is it?”
“It is the man himself!”
I had no idea who Jonathan meant, but his answer both shocked and frightened me, for he seemed to be talking not to me, but to himself—and he was very greatly terrified. I do believe that if I had not been there to support him, he would have sunk down to the ground. Now a clerk came out of the jewellery shop and handed a small parcel to the lady in the carriage, and she drove off. The strange man quickly hailed a hansom, hopped in, and followed in the same direction.
Jonathan stared at the departing cab and said in great agitation, still as if to himself: “I believe it is the Count, but he has grown young. My God, if this be so! Oh, my God! If I only knew! If I only knew!”
“You must be mistaken, my dear.” My heart pounded in alarm. I understood that Jonathan thought this man was the same Count Dracula he had visited in Transylvania; but his words made no sense to me. How could a man grow young? I feared to ask him any questions, however, lest it cause a return of the brain fever which had so weakened him before; so I remained silent and drew Jonathan away quietly.
He did not say another word but allowed me to lead him, walking on as if dazed until we reached the Green Park, where we sat down on a shady bench. Jonathan closed his eyes and leaned against me, still holding my hand tightly. After a few minutes, I felt his grip relax, and I realised he had fallen asleep.
As I sat there, cradling Jonathan’s head with my shoulder and listening to the breeze stir the trees overhead, my heart continued to race. Who was the strange man we had seen? Why did he look so much like Mr. Wagner? I would have guessed him to be that gentleman’s father, had Mr. Wagner not said that his parents were dead. What, I wondered, was behind Jonathan’s violent reaction to the man? If only I could ask him! But I dared not, for fear I would do more harm than good.
OUR HOME-COMING THAT NIGHT WAS SAD IN EVERY WAY. THE house felt strange and empty without that dear soul, Mr. Hawkins, who had been so good to us; Jonathan was still pale and dizzy, under a slight relapse of his malady; and a telegram was awaiting me, sent from London the day before, with the most devastating news:
LONDON 21 SEPTEMBER 1890
MRS. MINA HARKER
YOU WILL BE GRIEVED TO HEAR THAT MRS. WESTENRA DIED FIVE DAYS AGO AND THAT LUCY DIED THE DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY. THEY WERE BOTH BURIED TODAY.
ABRAHAM VAN HELSING
I read the words once, twice, three times, hoping that it was some mistake. When the full meaning of the dreadful message made its final impact, my legs buckled beneath me; I dropped onto the sofa in shock and let out an anguished cry.
“What is it?” Jonathan asked, as he darted to my side. “What is wrong?”
“Oh, what a wealth of sorrow in just a few words!” I said brokenly, as I handed him the telegram.
He read it, then sank down beside me, stunned. “Mrs. Westenra? And Miss Lucy? They are both dead?”
Tears sprang into my eyes. “How is it possible? I knew that Mrs. Westenra was ailing; still, I had hoped she might recover. I will dearly miss her. But Lucy! Poor, dear Lucy! My dearest, most beloved friend. Her birthday was next week! She was not yet twenty years old!”
“I am so sorry, Mina,” Jonathan said softly, as he took my hand. “She was a lovely girl, and I know how much you loved her.”
“She sounded so well and happy in her last letter,” I sobbed. “How could she be dead? What on earth happened?”
“Perhaps some kind of accident befell her.”
“If so, who is this Mr. Van Helsing? Why has he written to me? For such important news, why did I not hear from Lucy’s fiancé, Mr. Holmwood?”
“He may have been too upset to write,” Jonathan mused. “Van Helsing must be their solicitor. It could be that you are mentioned in Lucy’s will.”
“Lucy never bothered to write a will, I am sure of it. Oh! To be taken so young, less than two weeks before her wedding, when she was so full of life and promise! And poor Mr. Holmwood, to have lost such sweetness out of his life!” A sudden thought occurred to me, and I choked back another sob. “Jonathan, do you realise: while you and I were attending Mr. Hawkins’s funeral this morning and visiting the orphanage, Lucy and her mother were both already dead and buried. Gone, gone—never to return!”
I wept as if my heart would break. Jonathan pulled me into his arms and held me, stroking my hair silently; but there is little any one can say or do to ease the shock and pain of the loss of a best friend.
Before we went to bed, I wrote to Mr. Holmwood, expressing my deepest condolences and seeking more information about the tragedies that had befallen my friends.
It seemed that our grief and troubles were never-ending; for that night, Jonathan was again beset by bad dreams.
“No! Keep your hands off me! Get away, you wicked harpies!” he cried in his sleep, as his hands clutched one side of his throat, as if to protect himself from some invisible harm.
I woke him gently, as I had done every night since we had been married. “Jonathan,” I said softly, as he lay trembling beside me, “this has been going on such a long time. I know I said I would never ask—”
“Then don’t ask now,” he replied raggedly. Closing his eyes, he turned away.
I lay awake into the wee hours, puzzling over the strange turn our lives had taken over the past month. Lucy, Mrs. Westenra, and Mr. Hawkins, all dead and buried; Jonathan and I married, with a house of our own; my husband a solicitor, newly wealthy, and the master of his own business; yet beset by mental attacks and frequent, horrible nightmares. So much tragedy, so many changes, and all of it so sudden—it seemed impossible to believe.
Jonathan went off to work the next morning in a determined frame of mind, as if relieved to have the responsibility of his position to take his mind off the other, terrible things; but I was worried about him. Clearly, he was not well. Did his nightmares threaten an impending return of his brain fever? If so, what could I do to help him if he refused to talk about it?
It was then that I remembered the statement he had made on the morning before our wedding. He had said that I was free to read the journal he had kept during his stay in Transylvania as long as I did not talk to him about it.
Well then, I decided: the time had come.
As soon as the front door shut behind him, I ran upstairs to our bedroom and locked the door. From a cupboard, I retrieved the parcel that I had sealed with wax in Buda-Pesth, and unwrapped it. Drawing up a chair to the window, I sat down with Jonathan’s foreign journal and began to read.
EIGHT
IT WAS SLOW GOING AT FIRST, AS MY SHORTHAND WAS RUSTY from disuse; but I was soon poring through Jonathan’s scrawled pages with ease. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for its shocking and truly frightening contents.
The document began harmlessly enough, with a long and detailed account of Jonathan’s travel experiences in Austria and Hungary, and a picturesque description of the Transylvanian country-side. Upon his arrival at his hotel in Bistritz, a very cordial letter was awaiting him:
My Friend—
Welcome to the Carpathians. I am anxiously expecting you. Sleep well to-night. At three tomorrow the diligence2 will start for Bukovina; a place on it is kept for you. At the Borgo Pass my carriage will await you and will bring you to me. I trust that your journey from London has been a happy one, and that you will enjoy your stay in my beautiful land.
Your friend,
Dracula
Jonathan was surprised when the landlord at the hotel tried to persuade him not to continue on his journey. To his further consternation, the man’s wife, somewhat hysterical, went down on her knees and implored him not to go, crying, “Do you know what you are going to?”
When Jonathan insisted that he had business to conduct at Castle Dracula, and could not very well leave without completing it, the woman dried her tears and placed her own rosary and crucifix around Jonathan’s neck, telling him to wear it “for his mother’s sake.”
Jonathan thought their behaviour extremely odd, until he boarded the public coach the next morning and observed the local peasants eyeing him with pity and uttering strange words that he translated to mean “were-wolf” and “vampire.” As the coach took him deeper and deeper into the Carpathian Mountains, Jonathan became increasingly uneasy. His fellow passengers, with fearful looks but not a word of explanation, all began giving him crucifixes and other charms against evil, such as garlic and sprigs of wild rose and mountain ash. What kind of man was he visiting, Jonathan wondered, that everyone was so afraid for him?
Late that night, on a lonely winding of the Borgo Pass, the public coach was met as promised by a calèche3 and four coal-black horses, sent from Castle Dracula to fetch Jonathan—an arrival which prompted a chorus of screams from the peasants and a universal crossing of themselves. One of Jonathan’s companions whispered to another: “Denn die Todten reiten schnell.” (“For the dead travel fast.”)
I paused in my reading, the hair on the back of my neck standing up on end, for I recognised that phrase. It was a line from Gottfried Burger’s poem “Lenore,” the dark, horrific tale of a young woman who is taken on a wild horseback ride to a graveyard by her fiancé’s animated corpse, and then drawn down into his coffin to her death!
With equal parts fascination and dread, I picked up Jonathan’s journal and continued to read:
The carriage was driven by a strange, tall man with an iron grip, a long, brown beard, and a great black hat which shrouded his face. In excellent German, he commanded Jonathan to board his vehicle. Frightened, but with little alternative, Jonathan did as he was directed. The calèche took off, moving at incredible speed. The journey to the castle became more and more harrowing, for the horses began straining and rearing, terrified by the cries of howling wolves. The driver stopped and soothed the horses by petting them and whispering in their ears. Later, to Jonathan’s amazement, when the carriage was surrounded by a huge pack of angry wolves, the driver stepped down into the road, and with a great sweep of his arm, uttered an imperious command which caused the beasts to fall back and disappear! This was all so strange and uncanny that Jonathan was afra
id to speak or move.
When the carriage finally arrived and dropped Jonathan in pitch-darkness on the doorstep of what he perceived to be an immense, old castle, he was left alone for quite some time. Doubts and fears invaded his mind. What sort of grim adventure had he embarked on? At last, to the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts, the great door opened, and he met his host.
“I am Dracula,” intoned the tall, thin, elderly Count, shaking Jonathan’s hand with a strength that made him wince and a grip that felt as cold as ice. “I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Enter freely and of your own will!”
The Count was very pale, his skin nearly the same shade as his white hair and moustache. He was a well-educated, charming, and hospitable gentleman, who spoke English with a skill and ease that Jonathan found surprising for a man who claimed that he had never been to England. The castle was ancient and many parts of it seemed forbidding, lit only by antique lamps whose flames threw long, quivering shadows against its stone walls and long, dark passages. To Jonathan’s relief and delight, however, his own accommodations proved to be both comfortable and beautifully and expensively furnished, if centuries old. He found a delicious supper awaiting him, laid out on an elegant, solid gold table service. Count Dracula did not join him, insisting that he had already dined.
The next day, Jonathan took stock of his surroundings. The castle was extremely isolated, surrounded by jagged mountains, and situated on a high precipice above a forested valley. He was left on his own for a long period of time during the day, as Count Dracula preferred to interact by night.
Jonathan soon discovered a beautifully furnished and very complete library, containing hundreds of thousands of volumes and a great many periodicals in a variety of languages, a vast number of which were in English. The Count joined him there.
“These companions,” Count Dracula said, referring to his books, “have been good friends to me for some years past. Through them, I have come to know your great England; and to know her is to love her. I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is.”