if we could,” said Jo eagerly. “I train my sisters daily in the skills of slayer hunting. Laurie could join us.”
Suspecting a trap, the old man raised his stake.
“I could, sir,” Laurie said, speaking for the first time since his grandfather appeared. “They could teach me how to defend myself against vampire slayers.”
That the human lad had nothing to fear from vampire slayers was an obvious point his grandfather couldn’t help but make. Then he added, “And who will teach you how to defend yourself against the vampires?”
Jo laughed. “Us? We’re not a threat to anyone!”
Laurie laughed too, and the change in his grandson did not escape the old gentleman. There was colour, light and life in the boy’s face now, vivacity in his manner, and genuine merriment in his laugh.
“She’s right, the lad is lonely,” thought Mr Laurence, but he wasn’t sure that allowing him into the company of four deadly creatures was the best solution. He liked Jo, for her odd, blunt ways suited him, but she was a vampire and therefore unworthy of trust.
Laurie knew how implacable his grandfather was in his prejudices and said sorely, “It’s just as well. The training would take me away from my study of piano. I plan to be a musician, just like my mother, you know.”
“Oh, how marvellous!” cried Jo, clapping her hands. “You will play grand concerts before hundreds and hundreds of people and travel all over the world and see so many—”
“That will do, that will do, young lady,” Mr Laurence said. “Too many sugarplums are not good for him. His music isn’t bad, but I hope he will do as well in more important things.”
“He doesn’t like to hear me play,” explained Laurie.
“Then you should let him train with us, sir,” Jo said. “We have only a very, very old piano that nobody can get much music out of save my sister Beth, who loves playing.”
Mr Laurence considered the argument. Self-defence was a manly pursuit, even when practised by vampire girls, and the study of it would leave Laurie less time for inconsequentials like music.
Aware that he wavered, Jo said, “Honestly, sir, we’re good folks. My mother helps the poor and my father is fighting the war because he considers it his duty.”
The latter hardly recommended the March family to the old man, who thought that the carnage of war was a sideboard buffet with endless appetising treats for a creature of the night. Nevertheless, he relented and agreed to let Laurie come amongst them for the purposes of strength training and calisthenics.
Delighted, Jo made her goodbyes and rushed home to tell her sisters about their new recruit.
12 Critics disagree as to the source of the reference. The most widely credited source is Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). However, scholars of vampire literature point to Ye Olde Tale of Ivanhoe the Eternal by Sir Wilfred Ivanhoe (1173-1879), a first-person account of the adventure tale on which Scott based his famous story. In 1865, the vampire-author embarked on a much-celebrated reading tour of North America to mark the release of a new illustrated edition of his classic, and the Marches would have been sure to have seen him in Concord.
13 Literally “white food”; as no edible products were traditionally kept in a vampire household, Meg is presumed to have made the blancmange out of plaster and water.
BETH FINDS THE PALACE BEAUTIFUL
To appease Mr Laurence’s concerns, the girls held their training sessions in the large house under the watchful gaze of the old man, who quickly saw that the only one committed to the training itself was Jo, for her sisters laughed and chatted throughout the entire event. All were delighted with the new venue except timid Beth, who thought Laurie’s grandfather was as fierce as the lions who protected the Palace Beautiful14 in their game of Vilgrim’s Progress.
Mr Laurence, although not a lion, did growl when he was displeased, a circumstance that occurred less and less as he spent more and more time in the girls’ company. He even unwound enough to pay a call on Mrs March, whose generosity with the Hummels touched his heart.
The new friendship flourished like grass in spring. Everyone liked Laurie, and he privately informed his tutor Mr Brooke that “the Marches were regularly splendid girls”. With the delightful enthusiasm of vampire youth, they took the solitary boy into their midst and made much of him, and he found something very charming in the innocent companionship of these simple-hearted undead girls. Never having known mother or sisters, he was quick to feel the influences they brought about him, and their busy, lively ways made him ashamed of the indolent life he led. He was tired of books, and found vampires so interesting now that Mr Brooke was obliged to make very unsatisfactory reports, for Laurie was always playing truant and running over to the Marches’.
“Never mind, let him take a holiday, and make it up afterwards,” said the old man, whose stance on vampires had undergone a sweeping change. “The good lady next door says he is studying too hard and needs young society, amusement and exercise. I suspect she is right, and that I’ve been coddling the fellow as if I’d been his grandmother. Let him do what he likes, as long as he is happy. He can’t get into mischief in that little nest over there.”
What good times they had, to be sure. Meg could walk in the conservatory whenever she liked and revel in bouquets, Jo browsed over the new library voraciously, and convulsed the old gentleman with her criticisms, Amy copied pictures and enjoyed beauty to her heart’s content, and Laurie played “lord of the manor” in the most delightful style.
But Beth, though yearning for the grand piano, could not pluck up courage to go to the “Mansion of Bliss”, as Meg called it, and so missed out on everything, including the training sessions. She went once with Jo, but the old gentleman, not being aware of her infirmity, stared at her so hard from under his heavy eyebrows, and said “Hey!” so loud, that he frightened her so much her “feet chattered on the floor”, she told her mother, and she ran away, declaring she would never go there any more, not even for the dear piano. No persuasions or enticements could overcome her fear, till, the fact coming to Mr Laurence’s ear in some mysterious way, he set about mending matters. During one of his brief calls, he artfully led the conversation to music, and talked away about great singers whom he had seen, fine organs he had heard, and told such charming anecdotes that Beth found it impossible to stay in her distant corner, but crept nearer and nearer, as if fascinated. At the back of his chair she stopped and stood listening, with her great eyes wide open and her cheeks pale with excitement of this unusual performance. Taking no more notice of her than if she had been a fly, Mr Laurence talked on about Laurie’s lessons and teachers. And presently, as if the idea had just occurred to him, he said to Mrs March…
“The boy neglects his music now, and I’m glad of it. But the piano suffers for want of use. Wouldn’t some of your girls like to run over, and practise on it now and then, just to keep it in tune, you know, ma’am?”
Beth
