Then I put my hands on Renfield's shoulders and gave him a few soft words. He took them rather sulkily, I thought. It was not peace and calm he wanted. But I tried…
I left him quiet, if not pacified. Then, wraith-like, I went out of his room and past the guard who nodded in his chair, and up the stairs again. Listening outside the door of the Harkers' apartment, I could hear only one set of lungs at work within-Mina's, that I had already come to be able to recognize. And there came also to my sensitive ears the soft, thick murmur of her heart, so tender a pump that pushed such pure elixir through her veins. The fang roots in my upper jaw were aching as I tapped lightly at her door. And at my tapping her breath inside, that had already been quick with anticipation, quickened more…
If chastity can be defined as that which is protected by a chastity belt, then Mina, like Lucy before her, was always chaste with me. But as I am concerned to speak the truth I must relate that Mina gave herself to me as fully as she could, as early as that night, our second meeting. Very little in the way of making plans did we accomplish then, for ourselves even, let alone for her husband's future welfare… ah, Mina! My true, enduring love! Dear one, heart of my heart…
Harker on his tardy return home-to the asylum, that is-on that night of first October found Mina fast asleep, and thought her a little too pale; her eyes look as though she has been crying. Poor dear, I've no doubt it frets her to be kept in the dark, and it may make her doubly anxious about me and the others. But… it is better to be disappointed and worried in such a way now than to have her nerve broken. The doctors were quite right to insist on her being kept out of this dreadful business… indeed, it may not be a hard task after all, for she herself has become reticent on the subject, and has not spoken of the count and his doings ever since we told her of our decision.
The next day, October second, I rested, glassy-eyed, in trance. That day saw Arthur and Quincey out looking at horses, with a view to purchasing some in case any sort of cavalry action should be required; they were basically men of action, chafed by Van Helsing's deviousness and delays. Harker continued his interviews with teamsters, by which he was methodically tracking down my boxes-though of course he had not discovered that several of them no longer contained their original soil. Seward had enough work of his own about the asylum to keep him out of mischief; and one of the most advanced scientists of his day was reportedly at the British Museum's reading room, "searching for witch and demon cures" that he had told Seward "might be useful later." Mina got some rest during the day, but the mental strain of her ambiguous new position was affecting her, and Harker on rejoining her in the afternoon thought she still looked wan.
She made a gallant effort to be bright and cheerful… it took all my courage to hold to the wise resolution of keeping her out of our grim task. She seemed somehow more reconciled; or else the very subject seems to have become repugnant to her, for when any accidental allusion is made she actually shudders…
He had just found my house in Piccadilly, ripe for plundering; but had to record regretfully that he could not tell the other men of the day's great discovery whilst his wife was hanging about.
So after dinner-followed by a little music to save appearances even amongst ourselves-I took Mina to her room and left her to go to bed. The dear girl was more affectionate with me than ever, and clung to me as though she would detain me; but there was much to be talked of and I came away. Thank God, the ceasing of telling things has made no difference between us.
So many a cuckolded husband has comforted himself, I should imagine, as his last chance to retain first place in his girl's heart slips through his hands, unnoticed by himself.
Now come we to a night that formed another major turning point for all of us. When after dark I slipped into Renfield's room I found him seated moodily on a stool in the middle of his small floor. All day he had evidently been brooding, and had convinced himself that I had deliberately tricked and misled him, promised him Mina and then snatched her away for my own enjoyment. He looked sidelong at me as I came in and for the first time did not rush to fawn over me and protest his loyalty. His very stillness made me slow my passage through his chamber and look at him well, and mark the cunning of violent madness that gleamed so in his eyes.
He addressed me then in a most soft and beseeching voice, and wearing the face of perfect sanity that he put on periodically in his discussions with Seward and the rest; but Seward had never been taken in by this appearance, and no more was I.
Renfield pressed me again to grant him Mina for his obscene delight, as if she were some slave or chattel, whose favors and very flesh and blood were mine to do with as I chose. When I would hear no more, and made to walk past him in man-form to reach the door, he at last exploded in frustrated wrath.
"God! God! God!" he screamed. "Then I shall take her for myself. Twice before I have escaped and fled to plead my cause with you; the next time I go straight to her and do with her what I will!" He had a little more to say, namely some details of his plans, that I shall not repeat. And with that he hurled himself upon me, maniacal fingers reaching for my throat.
In all the years since I first rose from the grave I have never felt a stronger human grip; but if Renfield's strength in his full fit of madness was that of four stout men or five, why mine is normally that of four or five such robust raving madmen as himself; and when I heard his threats against Mina my sinews too were amplified by rage.
It gave me savage satisfaction to come to honest grips with a foeman at last. I lifted him like a scarecrow and slammed him to the floor, once, again, how many times I do not know. I heard bones grind and break, and when I let him go I marked the twisted way in which he lay. His blood, his life, poured freely out from several lacerations on his head and face. The last I saw of Renfield was that spreading scarlet pool, which I disdained as carrion as I turned my back on him and hastened to where my beloved waited in her rooms.
The struggle made noise enough to rouse the dozing attendant in the hallway. He, after a quick look in through the door's observation panel, hurried to tell Seward of the "accident." I had made myself nearly invisible before the man looked in at the door, and by the time Seward had got himself down to Renfield's room I was up above in Mina's, where Harker snored in bed, with honest oafish weariness, and where my lady sat in her nightdress gazing out the window, as if she sought the solace of the moon, or mayhap a pair of flapping wings.
My entry was utterly silent, but in a moment she was somehow aware of my tall presence near the door, and looked around with an intake of breath.
"What are you doing?" she cried to me in a fierce whisper, her gaze meanwhile darting to her husband's sleeping form and back to mine.
I glanced at him and listened to his breath, and marked the rhythms of his heart and sleeping brain.
"Jonathan will not heed us," I remarked, and went on: "There is some news. The madman Renfield downstairs was utterly determined to supplant your husband and myself as well; I cooled his ardor as I passed, so you may still sleep easily tonight."
"Sleep easily?" she cried. "God, Vlad, how may that be?" Mina stared a long moment at me as if she had never truly seen me before. "Is Renfield dead, then?"
I bowed slightly. "It was done to protect your life, my lady, which is dearer to me now than my own."
"Oh, Vlad." Her voice lowered briefly to a whisper of pure horror. "And you and Jonathan stalking each other like-like-"
"I am not stalking him, dear heart." A blase snore came from the bed. I went on: "I now have relatively secure lodgings available elsewhere, away from Carfax, and I am going to abandon my estate. We shall be neighbors no longer."