I signed what seemed innumerable papers, which were then wrapped for posting back to Hawkins. My gypsies, Szgany as I called them then, were at the castle frequently, and through both fear and loyalty they were, in what touched my own person, most dependable. They carried mail for me, as well as bringing me horses and caring for them. They brought me food sometimes-I will discourse of my eating habits later-and formed for a long time a useful although shaky bridge twixt me and other men.
When we were done with signing and mailing Harker read to me his notes describing my new estate and how he had located it. I remember the description well, as I remember the rest of my enemies' journals for that year. I am not likely to forget a word.
"At Purfleet, on a by-road, I came across just such a place as seemed to be required, and where was displayed a dilapidated notice that the place was for sale. It is surrounded by a high wall, of ancient structure, built of heavy stones, and has not been repaired for a large number of years. The closed gates are of heavy old oak and iron, all eaten with rust."
"The estate is called Carfax, no doubt a corruption of the old Quatre Face, as the house is four-sided, agreeing with the cardinal points of the compass. It contains in all some twenty acres, quite surrounded by the stone wall above mentioned. There are many trees on it, which make it in places gloomy, and there is a deep, dark-looking pond or small lake, evidently fed by some springs, as the water is clear and flows away in a fair-sized stream. The house is very large and of all periods back, I should say, to medieval times, for one part is of stone immensely thick, with only a few windows high up and heavily barred with iron. It looks like part of a keep, and is close to an old chapel or church. I could not enter it, as I had not the key of the door leading to it from the house, but I have taken with my Kodak views of it from various points. There are but few houses close at hand, one being a very large house only recently added to and formed into a private lunatic asylum. It is not, however, visible from the grounds." This last was not an accurate statement, as I later discovered; but of course I was ready to make a few allowances for salesmen's puffery.
"I am glad that it is old and big," I said when he had finished his description. "I myself am of an old family, and to live in a new house would kill me. A house cannot be made habitable in a day; and, after all, how few days go to make up a century. I rejoice also that there is a chapel of old times… I am no longer young and my heart, through weary years of mourning over the dead, is not attuned to mirth… I love the shade and the shadow, and would be alone with my thoughts when I may."
We spent a long evening, similar to the last; and this, the night of May seventh to eighth, 1891, was the last for a long time, many months, when either of us felt that things were going well, indeed, when we were not pondering each other as enemies, at least in potential.
I had naturally taken the precaution of removing all mirrors from the rooms of the castle that I expected my guest to occupy or visit. On the third morning of Harker's stay, however, I entered his room early in the hours of daylight-an uncomfortable time for me-to find him shaving with the aid of his traveling mirror.
It had been a conceit of mine that when I began to be fully and unquestioningly accepted in the normal world as human, the psychology of most men and women would not permit them to credit the objective fact that I cast no reflection in a mirror, at least none ordinarily perceptible to the human eye. Let me say here parenthetically that film and the cathode ray tube are something else again. But whatever the outcome of research along this line is to be, on that morning I had deluded myself into thinking that this reasonable, unsuperstitious Englishman would not be allowed by his own psychology to perceive the exact truth: that when I entered the room behind him as he shaved, my figure cast no reflection in the glass.
I was wrong. When I said, "Good morning!" almost in his ear, he was so startled that he reacted physically and his straight razor made a slight cut on his chin. At the same time I was made aware that he had indeed noted my image's absence from the mirror, for he alternated his glance from me to it not once but several times whilst he struggled not to let his bafflement show on his face. This was a blow to me, the first indication that my plans were indeed impossible, and it hit me hard, though I struggled to maintain composure.
After a moment Harker gave up looking for me in his glass, returned my greeting in a flustered way, then put his razor down and began to look for some sticking plaster in his kit. His chin was beading blood.
Hemophile that I am known to be (in the true sense of the word), it is not true that the mere sight of blood under any and all circumstances is enough to trip me into a paroxysm of lust for the good red stuff. According to Harker's journal, which is unforgettable to me and from which I quote verbatim, my "eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac fury" as soon as I saw his blood, and I "suddenly made a grab" at his throat.
Now I ask you-you enjoy a good rare beefsteak, perhaps? Naturally. Now, suppose you stroll into the dining room where a guest of yours is finishing his lunch, and observe a morsel of meat left on his plate. Does the sight make your eyes blaze with demoniac fury? Or suppose that under circumstances of perfect propriety one guest in your house is a young lady, an attractive one, let us say. And suppose further that through some truly innocent mistake upon her part or yours you open a door and discover her unclad-are you so automatically provoked that you literally make a grab at her, without thought for the consequences? No more am I provoked in comparable situation. Great heaven, if male hemoglobin were all that I desired I should hardly have gone to all the trouble and expense of buying an estate in London so they should send me a ruddy young solicitor.
There was, as always-I admit it-a certain pang of longing at the sight of blood. But it was concern for Harker's welfare, nothing else, that prompted me to reach out a hand in the direction of the wound. The bitter shock of realization that he had noticed my absence from the mirror was augmented severely at the moment when my outstretched hand brushed the open collar of his shirt, and just beneath it touched the string of beads which an old woman in Bistrita had forced upon him when she learned his destination.
String of beads? Of course at the moment I discovered them I knew they were a rosary, and at its end I knew the cross was hung. And since I had already learned in one of our conversations that Harker was a staunch Protestant, an English Churchman as he put it, there was but one interpretation that I could put upon his wearing of a crucifix-he had acquired it, or at least it had been thrust upon him and accepted, as armor for his journey into a vampire's lair.
I, who had begun to think of myself as already accepted by society, had my fool's hopes dashed before they were well launched. In the moments before I could get them off the ground again, and counsel myself to patience, I behaved rashly. My first impulse was to tear the beads from around his neck but reverence held me back from that-I am a Catholic myself, you know, though born into the Orthodox faith, and in my days of breathing I endowed five monasteries. With a moment in which to reflect I realized the injustice of an assault upon the person of Harker, an ignorant, well-meaning youth who doubtless did not understand fully the implications of the good-luck charm he had been given to wear.
"Take care," said I, whilst struggling to master my anger and disappointment, "take care how you cut yourself, for it is more dangerous than you think in this country." I had in mind Anna, Wanda, and Melisse, whose reaction to the sight and scent of fresh young male blood was sure to be much less restrained than my own. "And this is the thing that has done the mischief!" I cried out, forced by the strains upon my soul to take some kind of violent action, and seizing on the symbol of my alienation as its object. "It is a foul bauble of man's vanity. Away with it!" I wrenched open the heavy window and threw out Harker's shaving glass, to be splintered by the fall to the courtyard.