Slave Of Dracula (10 page)

“I’m quite well, thank you, Dr. Seward.” Her own nanny’s strictly taught good manners allowed her to
smile as she lied. “I’m sorry Mr. Holmwood will not be able to join us.”

“His father was taken ill, at their ancestral home in Ring.” The telegram had reached him that morning,
as he’d been writ-ing up instructions for Hennessey to look after various of the more difficult patients.
“Have you been there? It’s in the Lake District, probably one of the most beautiful old houses I’ve ever
seen.” He helped Mrs. Westenra to the little table, just as if she hadn’t made sniffy remarks about his
quarters in Rushbrook House; held her chair for her and handed her her napkin before seating Lucy, then
himself. “I had occasion to spend a few weeks there, when I was first hired to escort Uncle Harry
Holmwood round the world and make sure he didn’t kill himself or anyone else in the process.”

Tales of Uncle Harry kept both women entertained through luncheon-traveling with Uncle Harry had
given Seward a stock of stories that would have lasted him through two months in quarantine, and that
was only the repeatable ones. His ill-will against Violet Westenra dissolved as though it had never been,
petty in the face of mortality’s shadow, and he exerted himself to entertain her. For her part, she met his
efforts with smiling cheer. Sometimes Seward, glancing at Lucy’s face, saw dread and con-fusion in her
eyes as she looked at her mother, but Mrs. West-enra seemed already to be withdrawing from the world
of the living. If asked, she would probably agree that Lucy was too thin and did not look well. But she
did not seem to see the skull that stared at Seward from beneath Lucy’s fragile skin.

“If you young people will excuse me, it’s become my custom to lie down for a little after luncheon . . .”

And they were alone.

The last time they had been so was back in May, when Lucy had confessed to him, weeping, that she
loved another: that her heart was not free.

He wondered if his would ever be.

The memory of the scene was in her eyes as she looked at him, and Seward said, as if speaking to a
new patient, “So tell me what’s troubling you … Miss Westenra. Or may I yet call you Lucy, as if you
were my sister?”

Her fleeting smile showed gums nearly white, and sunken back horribly from her teeth. “I should like to

have a brother like you, Doctor … Jack. One day . . .”

The maid came in to clear up. Lucy glanced sidelong at her, and said, “Would you much mind coming
to my boudoir, if you’re going to look in my eyes and at my tongue and all that?” She smiled brightly, but
in her eyes Seward saw the same worry that had been there when she’d watched her mother at lunch.

Wondering how much her mother guessed; how much her mother saw.

“Of course.” He followed her through the well-remembered front hall, with its Queen Anne chest and
the big Chinese porce-lain bowl that held visitors’ cards, and up to her room, over looking the back
garden on a little balcony and painted white and violet.

The moment the door was closed, she sank onto a chair, her hands pressed to her brow to cover her
eyes, as if all her strength had deserted her and she had barely made it to refuge. For a mo-ment she said
nothing, but Seward could see the tears flowing from beneath her trembling fingers.

“I can’t tell you how I loathe talking about myself.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“I understand,” replied Seward softly. “But even were I per-sonally blackguard enough to speak of
what another tells me, a doctor’s confidence is sacred. Arthur is my friend, and grievously anxious about
you, but your trouble is no more his business than the sufferings of any of my patients would be.”

“It isn’t that.” Lucy raised her head then, shook back the ten-drils of her hair that had come unpinned
around her face. “Tell Arthur everything you choose. It is his business, and no more than I would tell him
myself, were he here.

“As for what’s wrong … I don’t know what’s wrong with me! That’s what frightens me so. I feel so
weak, and I have trouble breathing, especially in the morning, as if there isn’t enough air in the world to
fill my lungs. And I have dreams, terrible dreams . . .”

“About what?” Seward asked, though the matter was clearly physical and not in the province of mental
fancies. Lucy ducked her head aside, the faintest flare of pink staining the ghastly white of her
cheekbones.

“I-I don’t recall.” Her breath quickened to a sudden, rag-ged gasp. She got hastily to her feet and went
to the window, the pink cashmere shawl sliding from her shoulders in her confusion. Her hands fumbled
with the window-catch and the next moment she gave a little cry as the casement jerked up hard. She
pulled her hand back, where a corner of the pane cracked at the impact.

Seward sprang to his feet and went to her. She was crying in earnest now, clutching her cut finger, from
weakness, he guessed, rather than genuine pain. Or shame perhaps, he thought, as he took her hand and
made sure that the cut was indeed superficial. He found it curious, how frequently young ladies were
overcome with shame they could not name, when they were exhausted, or hurt.

He said nothing, only took a clean handkerchief from his jacket pocket to tie up the cut. He didn’t even
think Lucy noticed that he also extracted from the same pocket a small glass pipette, and took in it a few
drops of her blood.

“I wish Mina were with me,” Lucy whispered, as Seward guided her back to her chair. “Mina Murray,
who was in the Fourth Form at Mrs. Druggett’s School when I was in the First. Of Course I can speak
to … to Arthur about anything, but … but sometimes a girl needs another girl to speak to.”

“Of course,” said Seward. And in a gently rallying tone, added, “That’s a well-known medical fact,” and
was rewarded by Lucy’s hesitant smile. “And I’m sorry,” he went on more soberly, “that Arthur could not
be here to comfort you. Even were you not affianced, I could name no man better suited to the task.”

And she sighed and relaxed, relieved that Arthur’s name was not forbidden between them. She turned
a little away from him, groping in her pocket for a handkerchief to wipe her eyes.

“Can your Miss Murray not be sent for?” Seward asked. “She was the friend who went to Whitby with
you, was she not?”

“She was, but she was called away suddenly, just before Mother and I came home. Her fiancé was
taken ill with brain-fever somewhere in Europe, and she had to go to him.”

Speaking of her friend’s concerns seemed to steady her, and she held out her hand, and opened her
mouth, for his examina-tion of nails and gums, with the air of an obedient child. The mucous membranes
were nearly white, as he had observed be-fore. Chlorosis? he wondered, baffled. It was a form of
anaemia that struck girls of her age, but he’d never known it to come on so swiftly. In May she’d been
delicate-she was always prone to bronchial complaints-but she’d been pink as a rose and lively as a
kitten.

“When did this start?” he asked, expecting her to say-as so many did-that she didn’t really know, that it
had come on her gradually.

Instead she replied at once, “In Whitby. I used to sleep-walk when I was at school, I think I told
you-poor Mina was forever chasing me down the hallways in the middle of the night! In Whitby I started
doing so again. One night I went right out of the house where we were staying, and walked clear up to
the churchyard that overlooks the town. Mina found me lying on one of the tombstones, like the heroine
of a play. We didn’t tell Mama.”

Again the hesitation, the shadow of fear crossing her eyes–fear of what she half-guessed, fear that she
would not even speak of to Seward, and he a doctor. Fear that her fear for her mother was true.

She went on, “I felt ill right after that. I thought I’d just taken a chill, and that it would pass off, and it
did, for a day or two. Then it came back, for three, perhaps four days. I felt better for a day or two just
before Mina left for Buda-Pesth, and when Arthur was in Whitby, we rode and walked and went
boating, and I thought all was well. But now . . .”

She lowered her head to her hands again, and began to cry afresh. “A week ago it began again, the
dreams, and the sleep-walking, and this horrible feeling of being in some terrible danger that I cannot see.
Last night I woke up lying on the floor between my bed and the window, gasping as if I were drown-ing
and cold … so cold! I’ve tried asking Mother if I may sleep with her and she doesn’t want me to. She
says she sleeps so lightly she’s afraid she will disturb me, or I her. I look at myself in the mirror and I look
like Death. I see myself in Arthur’s eyes…”

She broke off, her hands pressed to her mouth, her thin body trembling as if with bitter chill. “What’s
wrong with me, jack?” Her voice thinned to barely a breath. “I know this isn’t right. What’s happening to
me?”

“What’s happening is that you’re ill.” Seward would have given his right arm to cup her thin cheek with
his hand; he took her hand instead. Long practice had given him the ability to put into his voice a calm
steadiness that he was far from feeling. “All pathologies have an explanation: we simply haven’t found the
right one here yet. You show some symptoms of anaemia but the onset is all wrong. Are you able to

eat?”

She shook her head. It was true she’d only toyed with her lunch.

“The sleep-walking and the dreams may very well have some-thing to do with it, and with your very
natural concern over your mother’s health. In my work with the human mind, I’ve ob-served many cases
of some mental stress or upset working its way out in physical symptoms. There’s a great deal of new
work being done on this subject and it’s apparently not at all uncom-mon. Would it be all right if I came
back for lunch the day after tomorrow, and brought a friend with me? He’s the doctor I stud-ied with at
the University of Leyden, an expert in rare diseases. He may be able to take one look at you and say,
`Ach, it is polly-diddle-itis! She has only to bathe in goat’s milk and she vill be vell again!”‘

Lucy burst into laughter, her whole emaciated face lightening, and she clasped Seward’s hand in both of
hers. “Bring whom you will, dear Jack,” she said. “Mother will be lunching out; we can be alone. And
thank you,” she added, as she descended the stairs with him, and walked him to the door. “Thank you
more than I can say.”

Lucy’s laughter, and the brightness that had replaced the frightened lethargy in her eyes, remained with
Seward through the long rattling journey back to Purfleet in the two-horse fly he kept-at rather more
expense than he liked-for such occasions. Simmons was driving, and came close to tangling axles with
half a dozen cabs, drays, and carts on the road.

At Rushbrook House he took a quick glance at Hennessey’s sloppy notes to make sure nothing
untoward had happened in his absence-Emily Strathmore had had to be put in the Swing again, and
“Lord Spotty” was up to his old tricks-then settled down to write a letter to Arthur Holmwood, and a
telegram to Abraham Van Helsing.

For nearly three weeks Renfield watched, as if from a barred and distant window, as the thing in the
chapel at Carfax continued its attacks on Lucy.

When the red-eyed bat had flown from the chapel window, leaving him behind in the hands of his foes,
he had feared that he must see the kill. He had had no idea, he thought now, of how long that kill would
take, of the drawn-out torment of cat-and–mouse that Wotan played, like a malicious child, with the
fright-ened girl. It was one thing, he told himself, cold with anger, to kill in the delirious uncontrollable
rush of rage or lust (How do I know that? he wondered: why did the brown face of an Indian girl wink
through his consciousness, lying sleeping on the char-poi at his side … sleeping with open eyes … ) It was
another to kill by inches, to leave Lucy swooning on the floor of her room, to come again another night
and draw her once more to the brink of death.

Yet he could not speak of what he knew. Wotan held the power of life in his hand, life that Renfield
desperately needed. Not once in those three weeks did Wotan call upon him or speak his name, but
Renfield did not give up the hope-the certainty–that he would.

“All over, all over, he has deserted me,” he said one warm September afternoon when Seward came to
visit him-to visit him in his old room, whose repaired window looked out over the garden and the
tree-lined drive from the gates. He’d spread sugar from his tea over the window-sill, and had caught a
dozen flies in the final hour of the day. “No hope for me now unless I do it for myself.” Seward, though of
too small a mind to com-prehend or even guess at Renfield’s mission, sympathized and agreed to provide
an extra ration of sugar. It was astonishing, thought Renfield, shaking his head, how easily the man could
be manipulated.

“He’s off to visit that sweetheart of his, that’s bound to marry a lord,” provided Langmore shortly
thereafter, coming in with the extra sugar while Renfield sat at the open window watching Seward’s smart
black fly rattle off down the drive and through the gates.

“Is she having second thoughts?” inquired Renfield, and the little keeper hooted with laughter and
slapped his thigh. “Lord, let’s hope not! That mother of her’n would ass-assinate him if she thought it!
What a griffin! No-the poor young lady’s took ill.” Langmore came over to the window, with a glance of
wary disgust at the little buzzing cardboard box at Renfield’s elbow, and with his eyes followed the black
carriage through the gates, and out onto the London road. By his voice, and the pupils of his eyes,
Renfield could see the keeper had had a touch of poppy before coming on duty. Not enough to put him
to sleep, but enough to make him talkative.

“Funny how a man can be cool and smart as a soldier, when the likes of old Emily Strathmore’s tearin’
at him like a wildcat, yet since his Miss Lucy’s been took ill-and her promised to an other man, and that
other man the Doc’s best friend-it’s like he’s aged ten years.”