by James Reese
Meanwhile—Henry Irving be damned—I set off to-morrow for the Isle of Man. There Thomas Henry Hall Caine will be made to answer for all & everything.
Now, sleep. I have sent word downstairs that I am to be woken in four hours, lest I miss the 8.12 to Liverpool, whence I will ferry to Caine in his castle. My questions are legion; pray shall my answers be legion, too, by luncheon to-morrow.
Pray, yes; for in the days since Friday the 1st, it seems I may have re-found my faith, both sides of belief ’s equation now being in balance: If before I doubted God, now it seems I know Him from having met His Opposite.
BRAM STOKER’S JOURNAL
Tuesday, 12 June [1888], returning to London from Liverpool.
Though still my stomach sways within owing to a rude crossing from Douglas61 to L’pool over seventy-odd nautical miles of a distemperate Irish Sea, and though my penmanship at present testifies to the shimmy and shake of this railcar, still I write. I dare not delay. I must record my recent converse with Caine before time renders my memory inexact, retentive of substance but not our speech precisely as it passed.
Since those strangest of events which I shall here refer to only as Setian, I have been disinclined to leave home, not because I deem myself safer there than elsewhere but rather because, having seen what I have seen, I feel myself a stranger in the wider world and want none of it at present. Word was sent to H.I. at the Lyceum: I lied and said I was unwell—physically unwell—and from my slant atop the dining-room table I have seen to only the meanest of daily details. Let others undertake the rest. Although now that Henry has learned of my excursion to Caine—I know not how—I suppose I must return to the theatre and suffer his abuse when, in truth, having heard what I have heard from Caine, I am sorely tempted to pack wife & child and set London at our backs, once and for all; for somewhere in the city lurks this Tumblety.
I went to Caine for two reasons, nay three, for the first must be this: He would not come to me! Reason two: Neither did he deign to write, such that I knew there to be a reason for his reticence and knew, too, that if only I could set him down fireside, as in days of old, if only I could unstopper his speech, I would have my answers. Reason three: None present at the above-mentioned Setian event will speak to me, and in the silence that has ensued, my sanity dissolves like toast in tea.
All last week, I wondered how much I could confide in Lady Wilde; for I would not worry her, nor could I appear to impugn Constance, of whom she grows ever more protective. Finally, I went to Speranza on Wednesday last; for she alone of all my acquaintances—all save Caine—has both a heart and brain capacious enough to…Brief: Believing in nothing, Speranza is capable of believing in anything. And as regards the super-natural, it was the pastime of both her and Sir William; and indeed, by her own work—both fiction and non-—she has contributed much to the topic.
Unfortunately, I found Speranza in the company of that bookman to whom she sells her beloveds in twos and threes so as to survive, and pity—which I dared not let show—prompted me to take my leave of Park Street in haste. Glad I am to have done so, too; for Caine has told me much, much, and I shall now return to Lady Wilde with…Well, though I haven’t all the answers, not by a long stretch, the questions are clearer.
Oh, but poor, pitiable Caine. How his secrets took their toll, even as he spoke them. A terrible business, this. And it would seem that things have worsened in London, for the Guv’nor’s telegram, lately delivered to Greeba Castle, summons me home at speed. But before I tell of my leaving the castle and Caine, I must first tell of my coming. I must record the particulars as they passed; and so:
I left out of Euston Station at 8.12 o/c, bound for Liverpool. I sent no word to Caine of my coming, but I had discovered from Mary—now at their Hawthorns house with Ralph—that Caine was indeed in residence at the castle. Alone, as best she knew. And so I set off to catch him unawares, to corner him as a dog does a cat; for he’d left me little choice.
Owing to delays no porter could explain, we were two hours late arriving in Liverpool. So, too, was the crossing to Douglas delayed: three hours more were added to the journey; such that I was most foul of mood when, finally, from aback the dray I’d hired portside, I saw the ivy-covered crenellations of Greeba Castle hove into view high above the Douglas-to-Peel road.
The drayman bore the brunt of my mood, which would shame me save for this: our progress would not have been slower if we’d had half a horse at the helm. Moreover, the Manxman insisted upon stopping midway. Slipping down from the dray, he said he’d a message to deliver to a certain publican, though I supposed he sought naught but a fast pint with which to slake his thirst. I sat steaming upon the dray, heated by both the afternoon sun and the islanders’ stares. I was a Stranger; and so I took scant notice when two boys came barrelling out of the aforementioned pub and, having appraised me shyly, proceeded apace in the direction of the castle.
And so I ought not to have been surprised to soon find a steward of sorts standing at the lower gates of Greeba Castle, coldly enquiring into what business I had thereabouts. “My business, sir,” said I, “is none of yours.” With a few words more, carefully chosen, I suggested the steward step aside. He would not. He barred the way with his body, both fists locked onto the long bore of his rifle. I would have to wait under the watchful eye of the drayman whilst the steward carried my name up to the castle proper; where, of course, Caine converted it to apology and permission to pass. The drayman departed, the steward sneered, and I, satchel in hand, walked red-faced up to the castle.
“Friend,” said I to Caine, who stood in his door dressed in a country suit of Knickerbocker tweed, “criminals have been known to escape Pentonville prison with greater ease.” He looked worn, worried, and unsurprised to see me. “Living under guard, are you? Has the reading public gone rabid?”
Caine responded to neither gibe in kind, as once he would have; instead he held to my hand overlong. Silence ensued, and in its course Caine seized my left hand with both of his. He shoved my cuff up and flipped my hand, searching out what he called my “Manhattan scar.” From said inspection, I withdrew with a nod: All is well was conveyed, so, too, Let that be the end of it.
Looking down into Caine’s face—as perforce I must if we stand but an arm’s length apart—I found worry in his every feature. His brown eyes were wide, as ever they are, but brimful of tears as well. The bags beneath them bespoke sleeplessness, such that I, drawing conclusions I’d soon learn were false, observed:-
“I disturb you at your work.” This he neither acknowledged nor denied. Indeed, he said nothing at all. “I’m afraid your reticence left me little choice but to come, Caine; for the situation in town has grown quite…complicated as regards your—”
“Quiet!” And looking about, this way and that, nervous as a fox at the heel of the hunt, he added, “No more now, not here…inside, inside”; and he all but pulled me into the castle proper.
Built but a half-century ago, Greeba Castle sits upon its hill like a cake iced with ivy, the same that hosts the “creepy-crawlies” that render the place repugnant to Mary Caine. That, and its distance from her beloved London. And so the castle seems Caine’s alone. With his newfound riches, he renovates it, room by room, garden by garden. In so doing, he stakes a claim to Manxmanship, if you will, and keeps at bay, literally, those more tenacious members of the Her Majesty’s tax inspectorate who insist that he is English—being Liverpool born—and, according to the laws of the mainland, falling ever deeper into arrears. It is a rich man’s war Caine wages, and one from which I long ago recused myself, as both barrister and friend.
In the silence following upon Caine’s strange salutation and his insistence that we enter the castle, I wondered how long it had been since I’d last heard his voice, for it is distinctive: quite deep, quite mellifluous for so diminutive a man. Indeed, were it not for his body, Caine’s voice may well have carried him onto the stage. It was a dream he’d been loath to abandon, I know; and said dream was
doubtless the reason he’d long worshipped Henry Irving. In a lesser man, such disappointment might’ve rendered down to envy; not so with Hall Caine.
Once we were in the foyer, Caine closed the door behind us and threw a battery of bolts. It was warm within the castle, airless and far too close. It was evident no window had been opened to the sea of late, as the weather surely warranted. The sounds of the locks yet reverberant, Caine took from his pocket a small, pearl-handled pistol and set it on a table beside the door. “Whatever is the matter, man?” I asked, wondering if Caine’s glooms had finally gotten the better of him.
He came nearer, tilting high his red-bearded chin and locking his bleary eyes on mine. I was all sympathy: on the instant I forgave my friend for that silence of his that has vexed me so. “Speak, man,” said I. “What is it?”
Caine sighed. “I might apologise to you, Bram, from this day to my last, might die with apology upon my tongue, and still I could never—”
“Good God, Caine, you’re talking like a page torn from Scott.”62 The joke went well wide of its mark: Caine simply stared up at me. I saw it’d be best to let him speak, even if he’d devolve to tears in doing so.
Circling the dark-panelled foyer, Caine continued. “I am confident, Bram, that at times I am the densest-headed mortal the sky looks down on. Surely there has never before been anyone, anyone who could see as vividly as I sometimes can and yet be—eleven hours out of twelve—so blind and muddle-brained.”
“I must think, Caine, that you rather overstate your case.” In truth, I doubted he did: Hadn’t he sent Tumblety to me? And, knowing I dissembled, Caine whispered:-
“Tumblety.” He spoke so fast, and with such disdain, it seemed he might have spat the name.
“Tumblety, indeed,” said I. “So he is at the crux of this, both here”—I nodded towards the pistol, lest my allusion to the battened-down castle be lost—“and in London?”
In response, Caine led my eye to the lintel above the broad door leading from the foyer; on it were words carved since last I’d visited, words from the Bard—AYLI, if I am not mistaken63—the which he recited:-
“‘Here Shall Ye Find No Enemy But Winter and Rough Weather.’” He sighed till it seemed he’d exhale his very soul. “I fear,” said he, finally, “that those words are no longer true, and that he of whom I’ve reason to be wary might well—Oh, Bram, I’ve made my enemy yours. I fear it may be hard to forgive a friend that, though an eternity of apologies be said.”
“Fear not, friend,” I said, adding, rather as a sigh of my own, “…Tumblety.” Caine reacted as if the name itself were an invocation and the man might suddenly appear. Alas, who was I to doubt he might?
“I do fear finding our enemy here, Bram; but I have taken precautions, I have taken pains.” Such as, I supposed, the spying islanders and the armed steward; still, and rather brusquely, I bade my friend explain.
“I have read your letters, Bram, every one, and your telegrams, too. I know what has been going on in London.”
“Why, then, didn’t you answer?…Deucedly rude of you, Caine, deucedly.”
“I cannot excuse my actions,” said he; “but perhaps I can explain them. I’d hoped, hoped Francis would bid a fast hello to Henry and yourself and then leave you be, but from your letters I learn that he is up to his tricks of old.”
“‘Tricks of old’? Whatever do you mean?”
He sighed. He circled the foyer, stopping only to peer out a window, this way and that, scanning the landscape. He slipped the pistol back into his pocket before continuing. “There are things, Bram, that want no words, things that ought not to be written, not even in those beloved ciphers of yours. One only utters such things under the worst duress.”
“Secrets, I suppose you mean.”
“Confessions,” said Caine. “Or call them what you will. But as regards Francis Tumblety, I can assure you, Bram, you know not the least of them.”
“Nor, I fear, do you.”
Caine’s russet-colored eyebrows arched. Had I come with answers in addition to questions? “An unburdening, then? On both our parts?”
“Indeed,” said I. “It is the reason I have come.”
“And the reason I feared you would,” said Caine; “for what I have to say—”
“Surely,” said I, forestalling my friend, “such converse as this wants two comfortable chairs.” I nodded towards the parlour beyond. “Shall we?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” said Caine. “I forget myself…. I can ring for tea if you’d like.”
“I’d very much like. The dirt of the city and the dust of the country have left me parched…. And for God’s sake, Caine, throw a window open to the sea, would you? It is as stuffy as Victoria’s boudoir in here.” At last: a smile; but it faded fast as Caine refused, squarely, to air the castle. He would open no windows. To do so at present, said he, would be “unsafe.” Unsafe? Alas, whatever Caine knew of Francis Tumblety, the tale I’d brought up from London would allay his fears not at all.
Tea having been brought and served, and with dinner having been ordered—baked whiting was all there was at hand, muttered an apologetic maid—Caine launched into his confession, which I hereby record with his permission; so:
“Am I to bleed myself, Bram, for having been, as a boy, a bit…impressionable?” He leaned from his high-backed chair towards mine, towards me, whispering lest his words be heard by a servant at the door. Caine has, I fear, come into some upper-class pretensions of late, one such being the belief that servants have naught to do but go door to door, keyhole to keyhole, in an espial crouch; and so, as a precaution against same, he set a lathe-like instrument atop a small table near the parlour door. A few cranks of the instrument’s arm and out came Caine’s own voice. Astonishing, this.
“What on earth…?” Though I had heard of Mr. Edison’s phonograph, here was one in action.
Caine explained: He’d recently acquired the machine—and doubtless for a fair amount, too—so as to speak into it and thereby record, onto waxy cylinders, and by means yet mysterious to me, himself, reading his work aloud. This a secretary then transcribes. (Mem.: Investigate; surely there exists a whole devil’s den of uses for such a contraption.)64 There being more pressing matters at hand, I enquired no further into Tommy’s new toy, yet to its scratching accompaniment we spoke, the faux voice of Caine obfuscating the real and so confounding any keyholers.
“‘As a boy,’ you say? How long have you known the man?”
“I first met him,” said Caine, “in 1874. I was twenty-one; he, forty-one.” Poor Caine raked his slender fingers through his ruddy beard and moustaches, mopped with a kerchief his receding brow—that he resembles Shakespeare is the highest compliment one can pay Thomas Henry Hall Caine—and fidgeted in his chair as if it were afire. His wide eyes avoided mine all the while. I hated to see him so; but alas, there were answers to be had.
“That would be the mathematics of it all,” said I, “as you approach your thirty-fifth birthday, yes?” Caine nodded. Satisfied at having rightly pegged the American as fifty-ish, I continued, cruelly perhaps, “But at twenty-one, Caine, one can hardly consider oneself a boy.”
“He was twice my age, Bram, and made of me a boy. I was…impressionable, yes.”
“How so? What do you mean, ‘impressionable’?”
“Really, Bram, I’ll not be interrogated. And in my own parlour, no less!” Odd, such an outburst from Caine. My friend’s fuse had shortened of late. I had best take care.
“Ah,” said I, “I see it is my turn to apologise to a friend: I am sorry, Caine. I had supposed it might be easier for you if—”
“In due time,” said he; “all in due time.” Which adage Caine took to heart: there we sat some while in stifling silence, Caine studying the back of his hands, until:-
“I was yet living in Liverpool in ’74, as you know, writing theatrical critiques for the Town Crier…. I’d not yet met Mary.”
I nodded. “But you had made Henry’s
acquaintance, yes?”
“I had. Words of mine regarding his Hamlet had reached him, and he responded by requesting my presence when first he played the Prince at the Lyceum, as soon he would: All Hallows’ Eve, as it happened: thirty-one October, ’74.”
Despite my trying to hold my tongue, to let Caine speak as he would, my impatience prompted me to say I knew that Caine had been present at the premier, knew, too, that afterwards he’d dined with Henry for the first time.
“But what you don’t know is this: He accompanied me.”
“Tumblety?” At which utterance, Caine closed his eyes and sighed his assent.
“You are quite correct,” said I. “That I did not know.” How odd of Henry not to have mentioned as much. Surely he remembers meeting the American in the company of Caine, albeit it fourteen years ago? Was this, then, the hook Tumblety had in Henry, the one by which he’d lately reeled in the somewhat gullible Guv’nor? Henry is an actor, after all: he can be had for a compliment; and I’ve heard Tumblety speak with a silvered tongue when it serves him.
“Yes,” continued Caine, “Henry has known the man nearly as long as I—Francis having arrived in Liverpool that June, not four months prior to that Halloween Hamlet.”
“From…?” And as I was unnerved by references to the American by his Christian name, I appended, as if clarity had been sought, “Whence had Tumblety come?”
“From New York, I believe; but…he, Tumblety”—and so Caine acceded to my lead—“has always been a traveller. Or rather, I should say a runner.”
“Had you mutual friends? Was it they who introduced you?” This, too, was cruel: an allusion to Caine’s having beset me with Tumblety.
“No,” said he, flatly. “We met via an advert.”
The puzzlement upon my face must have been question enough, for Caine continued:-
“An advert, yes. In the newspaper.”
“Surely not an advert for the infamous Pimple Banisher?” Despite his predilection for fancy dress—shared with Tumblety, it seemed—I would not call Hall Caine vain.