Stoker looks as though he will send them away.
“I am an admirer of your novel,” says Edgar quickly.
The big man’s eyes soften. “You are?”
“We all are,” says Lucy.
“I would be honored if you would consent to discuss it,” says Lear. “I am a professor of English literature at a highly respected school for boys.” It is only a slight lie.
Stoker’s eyes are smiling now. “But, of course.”
“It is hard to believe we are meeting you,” says Tiger, affecting a gush.
Stoker bows slightly to her and then turns back to Lear. “Would you and your party like to come in?” He holds out his right arm and motions toward the door. “Hawkins,” he says to one of the Lyceum’s young attendants dressed in a crisp evening suit, “the door, please.”
Hawkins opens the entrance and they all file in. As they do, Stoker whispers something to the young man. He departs.
Inside, they introduce themselves and then all move along a dark corridor, Stoker in the lead. It is tight and brick walled and clammy. They hear a thumping sound.
“We have ghosts, you know,” says Stoker over his shoulder, “many of them. The most popular is an elderly lady who is often seen with a severed head in her lap, stroking it.” He laughs.
The dark corridor twists and turns. The thumps sound ominous, but after a while, Edgar realizes they are simply behind the stage and hearing stagehands moving props.
They keep walking, descending and then rising up a stone staircase. This would be a perfect place to kill someone, thinks Edgar. But moments later, he is filled with wonder. As they emerge through a door, the stage is right there! He could take a few steps and be upon it, the very boards on which Irving and Ellen Terry have just trod. It is lit softly now. The workers have moved off and there is a strange silence: awaiting the great artist and the world he will conjure.
Several strides farther, Stoker leads them up a tight staircase to a large, ornately carved wooden door at the top. He opens it and ushers them in. They enter a wood-paneled room with a low ceiling, full of busts of actors, authors and royalty and beautiful paintings. Flames crackle in a fireplace. A long dining table sits in the center, attended by more than a dozen empty chairs that appear as though they were made for King Arthur and his knights.
“Welcome to the dining room of the Sublime Society,” crows Stoker.
Edgar has read about this fabled place—the Beefsteak Room. All of London wants to be invited here where Irving holds dinner parties, sometimes after performances, entertaining the greatest stars of the realm. Prime ministers have sat here, Oscar Wilde, the immortal Dickens and the Prince of Wales. Edgar imagines the bright talk that has flowed in this room. He envisions Irving, the most spectacular of them all, making his entrance fresh from the stage and still in makeup, as if from another reality, ferocious past the witching hour. It is said that he seldom sleeps at night: consumed by his performances, he cannot return to earth for hours.
“Please sit down,” says Stoker, aware of the awe he has aroused.
Edgar descends gently into his chair, wondering who may have been in it before him. Stoker pours a glass of port for everyone and then pulls back a seat at the head of the table and takes it, his attitude open and inviting, a hand hanging over one of the arms and the other elegantly holding his glass.
“You know,” he says to Lear, “some silver-tongued talker who was here said that there was no such thing as an immoral work of art. I liked that. It gave me courage. It allowed me to write Dracula.” Stoker stares off for an instant and then comes around. “What would you like to know?”
“First, let me offer my compliments upon a remarkable achievement. Your novel strikes me as a groundbreaking work.”
“Why, thank you, sir.”
“I would not be surprised if the name of Dracula is still discussed decades from now.”
“You are too kind.”
“But how did you conceive of such an idea? A monster, yes, I can understand that, Polidori’s work and Varney the Vampire and all that stuff, but this is truly different. It affects one, how should one say—”
“Why, yes, an excellent word. There are currents in it, under the text, that give one startling sensations.”
“It is the truth!” Stoker’s eyes glaze over when he says it. Edgar tries not to sit forward.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Stoker? It is all true? Surely, you can’t mean that—”
“I didn’t say it was all true, my good man. I said it was the truth. There is a very great difference.”
“How so?”
“It is, may I be so bold as to say, art, and of the sort I was not sure I was capable. Some force guided me as I toiled over it for six long years.” He seems entranced again.
“Why so long to create it?”
Stoker turns his eyes on Lear, but they gaze right through him. “It was because it took possession of me and I wrote and re-wrote! I knew that in a way, like I said of Mr. Irving this evening, I was selling my soul to the devil. One shouldn’t write such horrible things. But I couldn’t stop. I could see this revenant, this Count Dracula, this undead man! He was old and foreign and he was trapping me in a dark European castle … and I could see him coming through young women’s windows in England, undressing them and …”
Lucy shifts uncomfortably in her chair.
Stoker notices and turns to her. “I must apologize, my dear. It is not something fit for a lady to hear. But sometimes, I realize now, artists must tell dark truths. They are deep in that book. I am not sure I was in control as they came from me!” He stares into the fire.
“Was there a model,” asks Jonathan, “for your villain?”
“A model?” Stoker comes out of his reverie.
“Yes,” says Lear, “did you base your Dracula on a living human being?”
Their host hesitates. “How could I possibly do that? We are speaking of a despicable creature here, a demon who murders and defiles, someone who feeds children to his female undead!” He shouts the last few words.
“Of course,” says Lear, “a rather silly thought on my part.”
“Indeed.”
“But,” says Edgar, “have you never felt that some of the creatures you have read of, like the Frankenstein monster or Mr. Hyde, might in some way be real?”
“No, I have not. That is madness.”
There is a knock on the door.
“Enter!”
Hawkins comes in bearing a silver plate with something on it.
“Oh yes, hand them out, my boy.”
The handsome young attendant, broad shouldered in his snug-fitting suit and sporting an admirable and manly black mustache, walks around the table handing something to each guest. He pauses slightly at both Tiger and Lucy, glancing down over their shoulders at their bare necks. Miss Lear knows he is doing it and blushes; Miss Tilley fixes him with a steely gaze.
Edgar looks at what he has been given.
“Stoker, this is too kind of you,” says Lear.
“They are in the stalls.”
Edgar can’t believe it. “Tickets in the front row!” he exclaims.
“Yes, my young friend,” says Stoker, “for tomorrow night. Now, there, on that stage, you shall experience a real demon!”
Stoker gets to his feet, indicating that the others are to rise. He walks to the door and returns with them along the shadowy corridor to the backstage exit on Burleigh Street. They bid farewell and are about to make their way toward Wellington Street when they hear his voice in the mist behind them.
“Come early, about four, and I shall give you a private tour of the Lyceum.”