A Christmas Homecoming: A Novel

allin joined them for dinner that night. His clothes had been dried and ironed by Netheridge’s valet, and, if he was exhausted by his carriage ordeal, or his long walk in the snow, he showed no sign of it at all.

“I hope you were not hurt, Mr. Ballin?” Eliza inquired with concern.

“Not at all,” Ballin answered gravely, and yet a certain amusement flickered in his eyes. “Except my dignity, perhaps. To be riding in comfort, if also in anxiety, at one moment, and then scrambling to arise out of a drift of snow the next, makes one appear more than a little ridiculous. However, there was no one to observe me, except my coachman, and he was in no better circumstances than I.”

“Where is he?” Lydia asked, her soup spoon arrested halfway to her mouth.

“In the servants’ quarters, I imagine,” Mercy answered her. “Did you expect to see him in the dining room?”

Ballin looked at Mercy with interest, his eyes searching her delicate, pretty face as if trying to observe something deeper. “Actually, he is staying at the wheelwright’s cottage, Mrs. Hobbs,” he answered softly. “He bruised his legs rather badly, and I fear this walk would have been distressing for him.”

“Where were you hoping to go?” James asked. However, there was no interest in his face; it was clear that he inquired only to be polite.

“To stay with friends on the farther side of Whitby,” Ballin replied. “I regret that it will be some time before that is possible, judging from the weather. No doubt they will have deduced that I was obliged to seek hospitality elsewhere, and they will not be overly anxious.”

“Sorry.” Netheridge shook his head. “Can’t get a message to anyone through this storm. The snow is several feet deep in some places on the road. And if this wind gets worse, we could have trees down.”

Even as he spoke the howling outside increased. Mercy shivered, glancing toward the rich red curtains drawn across the windows.

“ ‘Listen to them, the children of the night’,” Vincent quoted from the book, a line Alice had kept in the play.

Mercy gave another, even more convulsive shiver.

“You’re not onstage now!” Lydia said sharply. “There are no bats or wolves out there. This is Yorkshire.”

“Dracula came to Yorkshire,” Mercy retorted instantly. “This is exactly where it all happened! Didn’t you read the book, for heaven’s sake?”

“I read it,” Lydia said with a sigh. “I don’t believe it. It’s my job to believe it onstage, not at the dinner table.”

“It’s only the wind,” James said to no one in particular. “The whole thing is an excellent horror story, but there’s nothing real to be frightened of.”

“Bravo,” Vincent observed sarcastically. “That’s perfectly in character. Harker didn’t believe in vampires until Dracula had already taken Lucy and turned her into one.”

Alice looked from one to the other of them. Her eyes were bright, and there was a slight flush on her cheeks, although it was impossible to tell if it was embarrassment or excitement. Perhaps a little of each.

Douglas Paterson regarded Alice’s face with a distress that was close to exasperation. “Really—,” he began.

Alice cut him off, looking toward Ballin. “Can we make you believe in vampires, just for a season?” she asked him.

“Alice!” Netheridge protested.

Ballin held up his long-fingered, powerful hand, moving with uncommon grace. “Please! It is a game we must all play, the suspension of disbelief, just for a while. Surely Christmas is the season in which to believe in miracles? The Son of God came to earth as a little child, helpless and dependent, just as we all are, even when we least think so. Does it not follow that the creatures of evil must also be knocking at the door, waiting for someone to allow them in?”

Mercy gave a little gasp.

Lydia rolled her eyes and glanced momentarily to Douglas before turning away again.

Alice was looking at Ballin intently, her expression keen with interest. “I’ve never heard anyone say something like that before,” she said.

“Of course you haven’t,” Douglas responded. “It’s nonsense.”

“No, it isn’t!” Caroline said quickly. “Haven’t you seen Holman Hunt’s painting of Christ, The Light of the World? He is standing at the door, but the handle is on the inside. If we do not open it ourselves, then he cannot come in, either. So maybe the final choice is always ours?”

“What about Halloween?” Mercy asked. “Aren’t demons supposed to be abroad then? Can’t they come in?”

“Fairy stories,” Netheridge said briskly. “Anyway, demons are not the same thing as vampires. The Church might have a reasonable argument for the devil, but vampires are strictly Bram Stoker’s imagination. Damned good story, but that’s all.”

“If you will forgive me saying so, Mr. Netheridge, vampires are a lot older than Mr. Stoker, vivid as his imagination is,” Ballin said apologetically. “And they are not demons, which are essentially inhuman. Vampires are the ‘undead,’ who were once as human and mortal as you or I, but who have lost the blessings of death and the resurrection to eternal life. They are damned, in the sense that they can never move on.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Douglas demanded hotly. “You are speaking as if they were something more than the creation of some opportunistic writer with a desire to make a name and a fortune for himself by trading on the unhealthy fears of a part of society who have time on their hands, and overheated imaginations.”

Netheridge gave him a heavily disapproving look. “Nonsense,” he said tartly. “You are making far too much of it, Douglas. A little fear sharpens our appreciation for the very real safety and comfort that we have. Don’t spoil the entertainment by sounding so self-righteous.”

Douglas blushed deep red, but said nothing at all.

Eliza looked uncomfortable.

Joshua drew in his breath, but found that he had nothing to say, either.

It was Ballin who spoke. “You give Mr. Stoker too much credit, and too much blame, Mr. Paterson. His work is very fine. He has created a story that will no doubt entertain readers for decades to come, but he is far from the first to use the ancient figure of the vampire as a literary device. But perhaps Stoker’s novel will be even more successful than John Polidori’s The Vampyre, published eighty years ago. Polidori’s vampire, Lord Ruthven, was actually based upon his illustrious patient, Lord Byron.”

“I think we very safely presume there is no truth in that,” Joshua put in.

Ballin smiled at him. “I agree, unequivocally. However, the history of the vampire, real or imagined, goes back even beyond the ancient Greek to the Hebrew, and the blood-drinking Lilith. The pedigree is not perhaps respectable, but it is certainly rooted in mankind’s knowledge of good and evil, and what may become of a human soul when darkness is chosen over light.”

Alice was fascinated. The color in her cheeks had heightened, and her eyes were brilliant.

“You know!” she whispered. “You understand. The evil is real.” She turned to Joshua. “You are right, Mr. Fielding: We haven’t caught the essence of the novel yet. I am so grateful to you for not humoring me and letting me go ahead with something so much less than good, let alone true. We must work harder. Perhaps Mr. Ballin will help us?”

Lydia looked at Alice, then at Douglas, and her face registered a gamut of emotions. Caroline thought she saw in it more compassion than anything else. Was it for Douglas, or for Alice? Or had she misread it altogether? Perhaps it was only fear, and a degree of embarrassment?

“If I may be of assistance, without intruding, then I would be honored,” Ballin replied, first to Alice, then to Joshua.

Caroline watched Joshua, uncertain of what she read in his eyes. Was it amusement, desperation, or awareness of his own inadequacy to mend a situation that had run away from him like a bolting horse?

“Have you any experience in stagecraft, Mr. Ballin?” he asked.

Ballin hesitated, for the first time Caroline had seen since he had stepped through the front door out of the storm and into the light and the warmth.

“I think I should leave that to you, Mr. Fielding.” He bowed his black head very slightly. “I can speak only of the legend of the vampire, and what it says of mankind.”

“Legend is just what it is,” Netheridge agreed. “Like all that Greek nonsense about gods and goddesses always squabbling with each other, and changing shape into animals, and whatever.”

“Ah,” Ballin sighed. “Metamorphosis. What a wonderful idea: to change completely, at will, into something else. Such an easy dream to understand.”

“Not if it’s wolves and bats.” Lydia shuddered. “Why would anyone want to turn into such a thing?”

“To escape, of course,” Ballin told her. “It is always to escape. Bats can fly, can steer themselves without sight, moving through the darkness at will.”

Mercy gave a cry, almost a strangled scream.

“Stop playing to the gallery,” Lydia muttered. She said it under her breath, but Caroline heard her quite clearly. She wondered who else had. James looked pale. Joshua was exasperated.

The evening was clearly going to be a very long one.