Anne Perry - A Christmas Homecoming

“ 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.”