Dracula: Renfield's Master

That evening, around eight o’clock, Renfield suddenly grew excited and began sniffing at the air like a dog on the hunt.He would not speak to the attendant at all that night, and when Dr. Seward visited him an hour later, Renfield only said, in a haughty voice, “I don’t want to talk to you: you don’t count now; the Master is at hand.”It looked like some sudden religious mania — and combined with his history of violence, Dr. Seward worried that a man this strong could be truly dangerous.

To test whether Renfield’s calm was real, Dr. Seward tried to draw him into his usual favorite subject: his pet spiders.“Bother them all — I don’t care a pin about them,” Renfield snapped, though spiders had been his obsession for weeks.When pressed further, he only answered strangely, about bridesmaids waiting for a bride who was drawing near, and would explain nothing more.

Tired and low in spirits, Dr. Seward thought about taking a sleeping draught, but decided to stay sleepless and alert instead.He was glad he had, because not long after, the night-watchman rushed in to say that Renfield had escaped.The attendant explained that he had heard a window being wrenched open, and had seen only Renfield’s bare feet disappear through it.

Dr. Seward threw on his clothes and ran outside, and through the trees he glimpsed a white figure scaling the high wall that separated the asylum grounds from the deserted house next door.He sent the watchman for more men, grabbed a ladder, climbed over the wall himself, and dropped down into the grounds of Carfax.On the far side of the old house, he found Renfield pressed close against the ironbound door of the chapel, talking urgently to someone Dr. Seward could not see.

“I am here to do Your bidding, Master,” Renfield was saying. “I am Your slave, and You will reward me, for I shall be faithful.”As the men closed in around him, Renfield fought back with astonishing strength, more like a wild beast than a man.It took every one of them together to finally subdue him and drag him back to the asylum.

Back in the padded room, they restrained him in a strait-waistcoat and chained him to the wall, safely out of harm’s way at last.Just before falling silent, Renfield spoke one last coherent sentence: “I shall be patient, Master. It is coming — coming — coming!”