A Christmas Homecoming Page 5

  Caroline hesitated, then went after her.

  They swung around the last corner before the theater to find Joshua and James facing Mercy. She was leaning against the wall, gasping for breath, her face flushed scarlet.

  Mr. Ballin was standing some seven or eight feet away from her, perfectly composed, his hands at his sides.

  “You have a superb theater, Mrs. Netheridge,” Ballin said frankly.

  They all looked toward Eliza, who flushed at the attention.

  “Even the sound is flawless. It was designed by someone with the most excellent taste and technical knowledge. I came to look at it, and I regret that Mrs. Hobbs did not expect to find anyone else here. Quite understandably, I startled her. I am so sorry.”

  Joshua swore under his breath with a couple of words Caroline had not heard him use before. She would not have heard them at all had she not been standing close enough to almost touch him.

  He steadied himself quickly. “You have no need to apologize, Mr. Ballin. I am sure you intended no harm. Mrs. Hobbs’s imagination seems to have gotten the better of her.” He looked at Mercy without trying to conceal his impatience. “For goodness sake, Mercy, go to bed and get some sleep. We all need it.”

  “Are you sure you are quite all right, Mrs. Hobbs?” Eliza asked anxiously.

  James moved closer to Mercy, then glared at Ballin. “Of course she isn’t all right! He comes creeping around here, uninvited, and frightens her half to death. How could she possibly be all right?”

  Vincent spread his arms wide. “Perfect,” he said sarcastically. “The black-cloaked stranger comes out of the storm, no doubt washed ashore in his coffin, and then stalks young women in the vast heart of this elaborate house with its stained-glass windows and private theater. I couldn’t have designed it better myself. For God’s sake, stop being such a damned actress, Mercy. Be a human being for half an hour.”

  Lydia, who was standing next to Caroline, started to laugh, and choked it off only with difficulty.

  Alice appeared, breathless. “Is anyone hurt?” she asked anxiously.

  “No, of course not,” Vincent snapped. “Mercy met Mr. Ballin around a corner and imagined she met a vampire so she screamed like a banshee, in order that no one in the entire house, and probably half of Whitby, would miss her moment of high drama. Go to bed and don’t worry about it. It’s a rehearsal.” He stalked away from the group and disappeared around the corner back to the main hallway.

  Mercy started to tremble.

  Eliza went to her. “Please let us take you back to the withdrawing room. Perhaps a hot cocoa would warm you. You have had a terrible shock.”

  “So must poor Mr. Ballin,” Caroline said. “If he was walking along the corridor quietly and someone came out of the shadows screaming at him at the top of her lungs, it’s lucky he didn’t have an apoplexy. Mr. Ballin, I’m extremely sorry we are all behaving like mad people. We have been rehearsing a play of considerable horror, and we are all worried that we will not be able to do the subject justice. We are tired and rather highly strung. I hope you will be quite all right. Perhaps you should have a hot cocoa as well. It will settle your nerves after what must have been a terrible shock for you.”

  “If you wander uninvited around other people’s houses at night, you must expect to cause terror and distress,” James said angrily.

  Joshua clenched his teeth. “He is not uninvited, James. He offered to help us improve the script and we accepted …”

  “You accepted!” James snapped back.

  “I did, and so did Miss Netheridge. It is her play, and I am directing it. And Mr. Ballin is a guest here.” He turned to Ballin. “I hope you will sleep well, and still feel like giving us whatever assistance you can in the morning.”

  Ballin bowed. “Of course. Good night.” He walked away slowly, elegantly, clearly conscious of everyone watching him.

  Caroline let out a sigh of relief and leaned closer to Joshua. His arm tightened around her.

  n the morning they were all considerably subdued. It was still snowing and, although no one said so, it was apparent that they were effectively imprisoned in the house. The drifts were deep. No vehicle could make its way through them—and a man on foot might easily slip and fall, and the snow would bury him. One of the footmen had been as far as the bend of the road, and reported that there were several trees down. They could not reasonably expect to be able to get a even a dog cart past for a couple of days, even if the weather improved within hours—and it showed no signs of improving. The sky was leaden, and every so often there were fresh squalls of snow.

  “Is there any point in rehearsing?” Mercy asked Joshua when she found him walking toward the theater with Caroline. “You can’t imagine that anyone is going to come to an amateur play in this weather!” She ignored Caroline.

  “Have you a better idea how we should spend our time until we know whether we are to perform or not?” Joshua asked her.

  “Perform for whom? The kitchen staff?”

  “If we can entertain the kitchen staff it would be a good indication that we had made a passable drama out of it,” he said. “But Christmas is still half a week away. A rise in temperature and a day’s rain, and the roads will be open again. What else do you want to do?”

  “Not play Mina in this damned awful play!”

  “And not play on the London stage in the spring, either, I presume?”

  “All right! I’ll do Mina! In fact, get that horrible man to play Dracula and we’ll scare the wits out of half the neighborhood,” she retorted, increasing her stride and moving ahead of him. She barged past Caroline as if she was nothing more than a curtain on the wall.

  The rehearsal began quite well. They started at the scene just after Mina has been attacked once already and Van Helsing discovers the puncture marks of the vampire’s teeth on her throat.

  Mercy was suitably wan and exhausted. Caroline hated to admit it, even to herself, but she did the scene rather well. Even James, Douglas, Lydia, and Alice, all sitting in the audience, did not feel inclined to interrupt. Only Joshua seemed weary of it, as if something still did not satisfy him. Caroline did not understand what it was. Once, she looked at Mr. Ballin, and saw for an instant the same weary expression echoed in his face.

  At the end of the scene they stopped, waiting for instructions as to the next place to work on.

  “That was excellent,” James said enthusiastically. “We are beginning to catch the mood of it.”

  “She’s still terrified from last night, aren’t you!” Lydia challenged, looking at Mercy with amusement. “If you had met the real Dracula, you would have died of fright. Not much use to anyone then, even him.”

  Ballin turned toward her.

  “I think perhaps you miss the point, Miss Rye, that Dracula is repellent only when one sees his soul. In human form he is greatly attractive, especially to women.”

  “He’s evil!” Douglas said sharply. “We can all see that. That is why it horrifies us. That is the point, surely?”

  “No, Mr. Paterson.” Ballin spoke gently, caressing the words. “The very power of evil is that it is not recognizable to us most of the time. It is not repellent at all. It does not attack, it seduces.”

  Caroline felt a sudden chill, as if a cold hand had touched her.

  Douglas’s mouth curled with disgust, and, for an instant, with something that looked like fear. “It’s a fairy story, Mr. Ballin,” he said gratingly. “An entertainment for Christmas, one I think is in very poor taste. But if we must have it, then let us at least be honest about it. The whole idea of vampires is disgusting. If we make that clear, then at least we will have achieved something.”

  “We will have lied.” Ballin smiled. “Do we not all feed upon each other, at times, in some fashion?”

  Lydia laughed and gave a brief applause. “You’re wonderful, Mr. Ballin. You are giving us exactly the frisson of genuine fear we need to make this play come alive.” She shot a look at Douglas, her eyes bright
and gentle. “And you play to him perfectly. Did you arrange it?”

  Douglas was clearly nonplussed, but he enjoyed the compliment. After a moment’s hesitation he decided to make the best of it and smiled slowly, neither confirming nor denying.

  Alice was startled. She saw Douglas’s gratitude to Lydia, and even a spark of admiration in his face. But what surprised her most was that she felt no jealousy at all.

  Watching them all, Caroline was also surprised. Had she been Alice, she would have wanted to be the one to charm Douglas, and she would’ve resented another young and very pretty woman who had done it instead.

  But Alice was clearly thinking only of the play. She turned to Ballin. “I haven’t caught that essence of evil yet, have I?” she asked. “I wanted Dracula to fascinate the audience and make them afraid, but the whole point of the story is that he fascinates Lucy and Mina as well, in spite of their being good people. It’s the potential weakness in all of us that is the really frightening thing.”

  “You have to invite the vampire into your house or he cannot enter,” Ballin added. “That is the heart of it. Perhaps you might make the point a little more forcefully. The way it is now, the audience may miss its importance.”

  “Yes. Yes I will! Mr. Fielding is so much more correct than I realized, even yesterday. We have a lot of work to do.”

  Douglas looked pained. “It’s only a play for the neighbors, Alice.”

  A shadow of annoyance crossed Alice’s face. “I want to do the best I can for the play’s own sake,” she said a little angrily, as if he should have known her well enough to know that much.

  “You were upset yesterday by all the work that needed to be done. You were nearly in tears,” he pointed out.

  She stood up, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment that he should have made her humiliation so public. “Well, I’m not now! I’m grateful. You may not care whether I succeed or not, but I care. I want to do the best I can. I want to capture the power and the meaning of the book as well as the more superficial horror. I’m sorry you think I’m not worth that, and that I can’t do it. But perhaps it’s as well I know that of you now.” She walked stiffly past Douglas and Lydia and stopped at the foot of the stage, a couple of yards from where Joshua was standing with the script in his hand.

  “I shall come back in a few moments,” she told him. “I’m not walking out. I just need to think a little.”

  Joshua nodded and watched her leave. Then he looked at Ballin, his face registering both curiosity and respect. Caroline imagined that she saw a moment of bright, almost luminous understanding between them.

  Douglas looked wretched. Lydia put her hand on his arm, very gently.

  “Don’t worry so much,” she whispered to him. “She’s nervous because she is trying to do something very difficult, and she wants to do it well. Wouldn’t you, especially when you have everybody you care about looking at you? I would.”

  He looked at her intensely for several seconds. “Do you love acting?” he asked impulsively. “I mean … I mean, really love it? So you would be wretched if you couldn’t?”

  She lowered her eyes, then looked up at him with a sweet smile. “No, not at all. It’s quite fun, and I like the friendship we have, almost like a family, but I’d still rather have a real family, a husband and children. I think most women would, perhaps not all …” She left the idea unfinished, as if it were too indelicate to complete.

  He sighed and leaned back in his seat.

  Caroline heard Eliza Netheridge breathe in sharply and turned to meet her eyes, feeling as if she knew her thoughts. She had had three daughters herself. Sarah, her eldest, had died some time ago, in circumstances that still touched her with horror. Charlotte, the second and by far the most awkward, had met the man she would eventually marry because of the manner of Sarah’s death. Caroline had almost despaired of Charlotte’s happiness, and yet in some ways Charlotte had enriched all their lives through her choice of husband in a way that no one else in the family had. Emily, the youngest, had married brilliantly the first time, then had been widowed, and was now happily married again. But Caroline knew exactly what Eliza was suffering. She smiled at her now.

  “I wouldn’t bother saying anything to her, if I were you,” she said very quietly, so there was no chance of anyone else overhearing her. “Just now, it would only make it worse. I have a daughter whose nature is not unlike Alice’s. She is about as biddable as a domestic cat. I don’t know if you have ever tried to make a cat do anything it didn’t wish to?”

  Eliza smiled in spite of herself. “Quite pointless,” she replied. “But I’m still fond of them, and they are both affectionate and very useful in the house.”

  “So are willful daughters, when they are good at heart.” Caroline nodded.

  Eliza sighed. “Alice is good, but she will lose that young man if she is not kinder to him. I’m sorry if she is a friend of yours, but that young Miss Rye has her eyes on Douglas—I don’t know with what intent, to win him, or merely for the fun of playing, like a cat with a mouse, to continue your domestic likeness.”

  “From what I know of her, quite possibly to win him.” Caroline surprised herself by the sincerity of her answer. She realized as she spoke how many times she had seen Lydia a little apart from the others, in mood if not in physical presence. The stage, and even the admiration and love of the audience, did not satisfy some far greater need in her. And quite possibly she wanted what Alice had more than Alice wanted it herself.

  “Do you really think so?” Eliza asked. “And then what will Alice do?”

  Caroline smiled, but there was an edge of apprehension in it. “Judging from what I have seen of her so far, whatever she wants to. And if the cost is high, she will have the courage to meet it.”

  “Oh, dear,” Eliza said, biting her lip. “I was afraid that was what you were going to say.”

  alf an hour later they were back rehearsing again. This time Caroline was taking notes for the lighting that would be required, as well as any further props that could be used to suggest a scene. They had bright limelights with them, and Joshua had shown her the equipment, and how to use it. It was a strange contraption with little taps to turn on the hydrogen and oxygen, and a screw for rotating and raising the calcium oxide. Just at the moment, all she wanted to do was make decisions about where in the script the lights needed to be focused, or changed.

  Joshua and Alice had done some further rewriting, and they began with a scene from earlier in the play. They had cut out Jonathan Harker’s account of Renfield’s travels in Transylvania, and given the speech referring to Renfield’s circumstances to Van Helsing instead. With the other character cuts, the changes worked far more smoothly than the earlier version had.

  Vincent was reading from the new script. Even though he described the reduction to insanity of a previously decent man, it seemed to Caroline to be without either honor or pity. She found her attention wandering, and was very much afraid that the audience’s would also. Was Alice’s writing really so poor?

  She looked at Joshua’s face and saw his frustration. Alice was standing just below the stage; her pale face and tight jaw betrayed that she also knew it was not working.

  Ballin stood up.

  Vincent stopped reading at once and glared at him. “Does your superior knowledge of vampires, or of good and evil, suggest how this could be better written?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Not at all. But I have a suggestion about how it could be differently played,” Ballin replied mildly. “Though it would alter the character of Van Helsing somewhat.”

  Vincent spread his arms wide. “By all means. After all, what does Bram Stoker know about it? Or about anything?”

  “We can’t avail ourselves of his knowledge,” Ballin replied. “At least not before Christmas, and we need a remedy rather sooner than that.”

  “In what way would it alter Van Helsing, Mr. Ballin?” Alice asked, cutting across Vincent.

  Ballin moved toward the s
teps up to the stage. The lights shone on his coal-black hair and his unnaturally pale face with its powerful features.

  “By giving him a little lightness,” he replied, glancing at her, then at Joshua. “It is possible to be very serious about fighting evil without taking yourself so … pompously. Allow him a sense of humor, some eccentricity or talent other than his obsession with vampires.”

  “That’s the whole point of him.” Vincent was really angry now. “If you can’t see that, then you have missed the essence of the character.”

  “That he has but one dimension?” Ballin concluded. “Do you you truly believe so?” Again he looked at Alice. “I do not.”

  Vincent opened his mouth to retaliate, then decided against it. He abruptly threw the script down on the floor, leaving its pages scattered.

  Joshua was pale, the lines around his mouth deep-etched. He looked so weary that Caroline longed to help him, but could think of no way at all to do so.

  Ballin climbed up the steps onto the stage, picked up the fallen script, and found the place where Van Helsing described Renfield.

  “May I?” he asked.

  Alice nodded.

  “If you wish,” Joshua conceded.

  Ballin began, using exactly the same words as Vincent had, but in a totally different voice. He was not Van Helsing using language to tell the audience how Renfield had caught flies and eaten them, or pulled the heads off rats to drink their blood: He was Renfield doing it in front of them. He buzzed, mimicking the flies. His hand moved so fast it was barely visible, as if he had caught the insect on the wing. The buzzing ceased. He put it to his mouth and crunched his teeth.

  In the audience Lydia gasped and stifled a cry. Eliza Netheridge groaned. Mercy put her hand over her own mouth as if to prevent anything from entering it.

  Ballin went on. He described a rat, clicking his fingernails on one another like rat feet on the floor. He wrinkled his nose, sniffing. He pounced on an imaginary rat, squeaking as the creature might, and made a movement as if tearing off its head.

  Caroline felt her stomach clench and was glad she had not just eaten her luncheon. In her mind’s eye she could clearly see the miserable Renfield, reduced to an insane caricature of the man he had been, so in thrall to the vampire that he imagined he could survive only by such means.