Vampire Barnabas Collins rises from his coffin in the basement of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood and calls for his unwilling sidekick, ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi. Magda has news for him. She has found madwoman Jenny Collins, estranged wife of libertine Quentin Collins, locked in an upstairs bedroom. Barnabas is not surprised about that. He was the one who locked Jenny there, and before dawn he left Magda a note telling her where Jenny was and instructing her to look after her until he came back to life. But Magda never saw the note. Quentin came to the house and read it before Magda came home. He tried to kill Jenny and was stopped by the timely intervention of his girlfriend, maidservant Beth Chavez. He came back later with another plan to kill Jenny, and that time Magda herself stopped him and threatened to place a curse on him unless he gave up.
Magda and her husband Sandor figured out that Quentin’s siblings, stuffy Edward and spinster Judith, have been keeping Jenny locked up in the great house ever since Quentin left her and she went mad over a year ago. They have also figured out that she escaped from the great house, made her way to the Old House, and that Barnabas saw that she was dangerous and trapped her in the room. They wanted to keep her there until they could make arrangements to take her to a Romani caravan where she could be taken care of. Magda and Sandor felt a responsibility to do this, because Jenny is Magda’s sister.
When Magda interrupted Quentin’s second attempt of the day to kill Jenny, she told him that Jenny was her sister. He was stunned. He had no more idea of this relationship than the audience did until we learned of it yesterday. He was so utterly shocked that his wife was a member of an ethnic group he despises that he went almost two full minutes before making a flip remark about it. That’s a record for Quentin.
Barnabas is also quite surprised to learn that Magda is connected to the Collins family by marriage, but it does nothing to change his plans. He has come to the year 1897 to prevent Quentin becoming a ghost who will ruin things for everyone at Collinwood in 1969, and he says that he dare not change anything that would prevent the events of the years in between from taking the shape they did originally.
This does not make much sense. Barnabas does not know why Quentin became a malevolent ghost, so he has no way of knowing how much history will have to change to prevent that outcome. Moreover, he has been quite reckless with the timeline in many other ways. In #704, Barnabas bit a girl named Sophie Baker, evidently killing her. Sophie wasn’t his only victim- in #740, Magda mentioned that Barnabas’ bite marks had been found on “girls”- plural- in the nearby village of Collinsport. Presumably those girls were dead when the marks were found. So he has already committed more than one homicide, ending the lives of people who would otherwise have worked, had children, and made who knows what other kinds of contributions to the history of central Maine. And he is continually picking fights with people and meddling in matters that don’t seem to have anything to do with Quentin’s future ability to rest in peace.
What Magda does not tell Barnabas is that Jenny at one point during the morning got away from her and Sandor, went downstairs, and saw him in his coffin. Magda frantically tried to persuade Jenny to keep this secret, but Jenny has so little contact with the world everyone else lives in that it would seem unlikely she will remember she promised not to talk about what she saw.
Barnabas is about to climb the stairs to go talk to Jenny when a knock comes at the door. It is Judith. Quentin has told her that Jenny and Magda are sisters. Judith and Magda have a testy exchange, ending when Barnabas orders Magda to go upstairs and see to her sister.
Judith probes to see what Barnabas knows and what he is planning to do. She says that he has seen the family at its worst, and knows all its most horrible secrets. He assures her that he is not interested in passing judgment. He mentions Jenny’s children; Judith tells him she has none, and he says that he thought she did only because she claims to have. The audience has known since #707 that Judith is sending money to a woman named Mrs Fillmore to take care of a problem relating to Jenny; it seems likely that this money is going to care for Jenny and Quentin’s twin children. After a few moments, it is clear to Judith that Barnabas has not penetrated very deeply into the secrets surrounding Jenny, and she begins to relax.
Joan Bennett plays Judith’s behavior very subtly. She is calm, quiet, a bit weary. She moves her eyes slightly from side to side, and occasionally purses her lips at the corners. Judith does not look like someone who has just learned shocking news, but like someone who is trying to figure out how to keep the rest of an old secret once part of it has leaked out. Bennett invites us to conclude that Judith has known of Jenny’s family background for a long time.
Jenny bursts in, sees Barnabas, and declares that he is dead. She saw him in his coffin, she exclaims. This is not much of a cliffhanger ending. Jenny’s whole life is one long mad scene. If anyone starts to doubt whether Barnabas is quite what he seems, all he or Magda or anyone else who might be on his side now has to do is point out that the doubter is echoing Jenny, and they will be instantly discredited. This winds up as another in the long series of strokes of luck that have enabled Barnabas to keep operating for so long.
Dark Shadows Commentary 