by James Reese
Over the dregs of dinner, Caine told how the pamphlet he’d later penned had caused no such stir, for which he’d given thanks. “Already I wanted to rid myself of the man. London had its allure, yes, but at what price?” But Caine did not, or rather could not, rid himself of Tumblety, and the price to be paid—the literal price—is, I fear, yet to be determined; for:
As I left Greeba Castle some hours ago, after a night and morning most memorable, a chagrined Thomas Henry Hall Caine—honourable man—pressed upon me letters, very personal letters, written in the hand of Francis Tumblety and addressed to Caine himself. These I’ve now read, and…and good God! If, if the twin of this correspondence is yet in Tumblety’s possession, well, then, the American has the means to ruin Caine, to blackmail him into bankruptcy, into oblivion. Into jail! For the first of these letters—dated 28 January 1875—begins in terms so intimate as to burn the ears of the world. Oh, Caine, dear Caine, I fear the fate that awaits you, friend. How, how will we avert it?
Alas. The first letter appears to follow upon a London rendezvous, for in it Tumblety references various…pleasures lately partaken of and writes, “As you have proved yourself most feminine, I feel under great obligation, and hope some time to be able to make suitable recompense.” What to make of this?73
And Caine, foolish Caine, seems to have returned such letters in kind, yes; as Tumblety writes on another occasion, “It gives me infinite pleasure to hear from you, as I should dearly love to see your sweet face and spend an entire night in your company…. I feel such melancholy when I read your amiable letter”—an “amiable letter”: Whatever can Caine have been thinking?—“as it brings back the pleasing reminiscences of the past and only stimulates the affection I feel for you.” Good God! Ruinous, such lines, ruinous!74
Another letter—one in which Tumblety plays the Persecuted One, and lists those Parliamentarians and other public men of repute who are sure to support him in his nameless cause—invites Caine to visit him again, as soon as possible; but he closes the letter by chiding Caine, telling him not to bring the printer’s bill when next he comes, but rather pay it himself. The cheek! And in subsequent letters, Tumblety further turns his talk to loans:
“Dear boy, wire at once—forty. Wire, wire, wire!” Yet the older man is coy, too, cunning, closing the letter with: “Come here by the morning train. I must see you. Be a dear and bring the sum we spoke of.” And he signs himself, “Yours affectionately, F.T.”
More of the same follows, until an angry letter dated 4 August and posted, presumably, from somewhere other than London, as in it Tumblety refers to having “moved on”:
“Caine,” it begins, “trifle with my patience no longer. Send me £2 to the above address no more no less a paltry amount than the £2 and this friendly correspondence shall go on, independent of these petty financial matters upon which you insist. Fear not—no-one knows anything about IT, and there is no fraud being committed upon you as I am not in the habit of telling people about my private affairs. You abuse me in suggesting I might ever speak of this, of US.
“I got your last letter forwarded to me here this morning and felt surprise at finding in it not the 2£ lately requested but excuses only. I am stopping here for 3 or 4 days and no more. Do not fail to send a postal order.” Young Caine, threatened so, must have responded by posting the two pounds, for I have here a letter of slightly later date in which Tumblety recants somewhat, yet stops short of apology:
“You must have thought my last note imperative,” he writes, “but the fact is I really required the money.” (Q.: Is Tumblety a man of means or not?)75
Said letter closes with, “I will do you a better favor than this before long.” One can only hope that the favour alluded to was the burning of all letters similar to these in content or tone and addressed to Tumblety in Caine’s hand. Oh, yes, ruinous such letters would be if they came to light now to shine upon the author of The Deemster! Caine’s position is a parlous one indeed. Can such letters yet be in the blackmailing hands of Tumblety? If so, poor Caine may yet come to rue the day he first picked up a pen for any purpose, let alone to spill his heart toward the likes of a Francis Tumblety!
Later; nearer London.—I write again after a quarter-hour’s respite, for with those infernal letters of Tumblety’s in my left hand I could no longer steady my right. At present they sit smothering in my satchel, and there they shall remain. My heart is full from the trust little Tommy has shown me, and I shan’t abuse it, ever. If eyes other than mine ever read those letters, we, all of us, will long ago have gone to dust. No: None alive shall ever see them. And that includes simple Mary Caine, who loves a man she hardly knows.
And this trust Caine has shown conferring the letters unto my care makes up somewhat, too, for the scepticism he showed last night when dinner was done and we repaired to his study, it being now my turn to talk.
I much preferred whisky to the proffered port, indeed had need of whisky if I were to find my words; and I sought to assuage myself further with a Havana cigar. There we sat, smoking in the study before a fire lately laid by an unseen servant; for the cold would come on with nightfall. And though it was stifling at present and would grow smoky as well, my repeated request for air was again refused. Caine’s papers were piled all about, his books thrown helter-skelter. (Mem.: Caine’s means of composition seems rather more physical than mine. Perhaps in heaving the odd volume I’d come upon a like success. If only.)
Over dessert, Caine had said he’d heard naught of Tumblety since he’d received a letter sent from San Francisco—in which Tumblety entreated Caine to come meet him in the American city of his, Caine’s, choice—until a more recent letter arrived announcing his return to London. “Did the last mention money?” The night was late, my conversant a friend: Why not hasten to my point? (Already I’d caught the sulphurous scent of blackmail on the air.)
“No,” said Caine, “but as I see where you are headed, let me say that the thought has already—and often—crossed my mind. But again, no: His last letter bore no allusion to…blackmail.” Here was the first mention of a means of blackmail: extant letters. My supposition would be proved true on the morrow, all too true; such that now I know as well why a worried Caine sacrificed his Stoker to such a man: introducing us would have seemed a scanty price to pay in order to preserve the peace, to busy Tumblety in London and keep him at bay.
Caine fell quiet then. He occupied himself over-long with the lighting of his cigar. Now I wonder if he wasn’t considering introducing the other letters, all the letters? If so, he desisted. As it was evident he felt he’d lowered himself in the telling of his tale, I sought to raise him up, saying he’d sunken not at all in my esteem, &c. Caine was having none of it. Already his mullygrubs had come, and I fear they shan’t surrender him for many days more. (Mem.: Wire upon return to London: Letters read. Friendship firm.)
Indeed, Caine might well have retired then, save it was my time to talk, to tell what I knew of Tumblety. I set in. Five minutes later, Caine sat ramrod straight in his chair, his wide eyes afire, his jaw slack, and his cigar fast ceding to ash.
I’d decided not to mince my words. If madness be Caine’s verdict, so be it.
…I have just sat some while in consideration of how men’s minds close; how, as boys, we believe so much more than as men. Are able to believe so much more: bogeymen beneath our beds, pirates lying in wait in the coves of Clontarf, &c. As we age, our beliefs are drawn in, are pulled tight—by what: religion? the world, or our overly vaunted experience of it?—much as a miser pulls tight the strings of his purse; but the miser enriches himself, whilst we men are left bereft, believing in single things, sure things. And surely the goal of life oughtn’t to be fewer beliefs at its ending than at its beginning, but more. A broadening is what’s wanted; for one’s ideas must be as broad as nature if they are to interpret nature. Alas, though a man’s beliefs ought to broaden with age, the lot of most men’s lives is a lessening, a narrowing over time. Not so Hommy-Beg,
bless him, or surely he’d have shown me the door last night. No: Caine has proved himself the exception rather than the rule; and said proof was this:
He sat a long while in consideration of all I’d said—and I had said all, all—before pronouncing it “a scandal on common sense; and yet…and yet…There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part. Are we now on the verge of such a one?”
He stood to pace, a trait acquired from Rossetti, all the while fingering the pistol in his pocket. “Possession, you say? It rather sends one to one’s wits’ end, does it not? Though of course wit factors…well, it factors not a whit, for we enter now into another realm entirely. And we—men of paid imagination, after all—ought to be able to progress upon that path, no?” And then he said again and again, as if in time with his heartbeat, “Oh Bram, Oh Bram, Oh Bram…” till finally he waxed philosophical; so:-
“I have often wondered if life as we live it isn’t merely the visible aspect of a far vaster, invisible conflict. Time and again, we find no reason that things have happened as they have. Strange, this. So how, then, can we refute that theory of the ancients—the same upon which the Greeks based their plays? Which is namely this: That invisible powers of good and evil—operative in regions above and beyond our control—wage war while working out our destiny.
“Mightn’t some of these powers—whatever they are—be made manifest to man, even if accidentally so?” I said nothing, as capital-N Nothing was all I had left to say.
“Even our own forebears,” continued Caine, “saw the devil’s hand in everyday deeds. I daresay they attended Satan himself at every turn, whilst God, of course, was thought to be rather more…shy. They cursed the one and praised the other daily, thrice daily in my grandmother’s case. To her the world was full of spirits good and bad, ministers of God and His Enemy, such that she’d not have been surprised to see an angel spring from her teapot, or turn to find the Arch-fiend himself seated at her table.
“How is it they—be it the Greeks or my grandmother—had faith, whilst we, Bram, can barely muster belief?”
“Oh,” said I, “I believe. Now more so than ever.”
“I’d rather think you would, yes…. A demon, you say? Snakes and scorpions and such? Come as portents, signs?” He paced on in silence. The sea could be heard without, the fire within. Our whisky was gone, but I daresay no two men were ever more sober than we. “You, Bram, are a man free of all fiddle-faddle. This I know. This I have long known. So I believe all you say, if for no better reasons than that you say it; and, further, I cannot justify my disbelief. Too, if ever a man were to be asked to dance with the devil—or this particular devil, this risen god, this Enemy of Egypt, this—”
“Set,” said I.
“Set” said he, “—well then, Francis Tumblety would be that man.” Caine paused. He turned toward me. “Have you spoken of this to anyone else?”
“I have not, though I thought to talk to Lady Wilde, as she—”
“Yes, yes,” said Caine, “you have always held her and her late husband in high regard.”
“I have. Sir William would neither blanch nor blink at all this, but rather he’d seek to get to its bottom by…by whatever means. I shall do the same. And as Speranza shared, nay shares still, both Sir William’s scepticism—which surely is wanted—and his erudition, I shall appeal to her. Only those who know much know there is more to learn, much more.”76
“And Henry? Will you speak of this to Henry?”
“I will not: Tumblety has his ear at present, and Henry would think I mean only to malign the man.”
“Malign indeed,” mused Caine. “From the Latin malignus, meaning ‘bad.’ This is a bad business, Bram.”
“So it is. So it is. But it may yet turn out well; for—” And I was spared having to lie further, as, concomitant with my last word, there’d come a rap, rap, rap at the castle door. Caine sprang from his seat, pulled out his pistol, and began waving it about wildly. “Calm yourself, man,” said I, standing. “But whoever…? And at this late hour?”
Caine was white, and wavering in his resolve. I feared he’d fire: at a shimmering window, at a maid come to see if we’d all we needed; and so I said:-
“I’ll go.” Turning at the study door, I meant to admonish Caine, to tell him to re-pack his pistol; but I said nothing. Better he have it ready to hand, for who knew what the night had brought to his door?
Of course, some few moments more and I knew: it was the steward, come to accompany the postman’s boy. “A telegram,” snarled the steward, “for Mr. Stoker.” I drew forth a farthing for the boy, and thanked him. I shut the great door resoundingly upon the steward even as he went onto tiptoe to look over my shoulder, searching out Caine in vain; for the latter crouched now behind the study door, a discovery which startled me badly as I re-entered the room and disclosed him so.
“Good God, Caine,” said I, “come from there and put that pistol up. You’d have shot the telegraph boy! And wouldn’t Punch have had fun depicting that till your last day standing?”
“I fear Punch may yet have far more fun with me than that.” It was a comment I could not have understood fully, not then; though now I do. “A telegram?” Caine held out a trembling hand: after all, this house was his.
When told the telegram was for me, my host was relieved. “Just as well. I want no news at present. You’ve provided quite enough to-night, Stoker, and my nerves are fraught.” He fell heavily into his chair.
Returning to mine, I opened and read the telegram. “However did he know to find me here? Florence must have told him.”
“Told who?”
“Henry, of course.”
“Henry,” said Caine, “could find you anywhere. A bloodhound, he is, so long as the blood be yours. But what does he say, Bram?”
I handed the telegram to Caine, who read it aloud:-
“‘Come at once. Horrid incident.’”
There was panic in Caine’s voice as he asked, “You’ll not leave now?” And even if the hour had been earlier, and the packets still steaming toward Liverpool, I’d not have left till the morning, this morning, for I knew that my tale of Tumblety had taken from Tommy all hope of sleep and…alas, he’d not have fared well alone.
“No, no,” I assured him, “impossible. The first boat of the morning will do. No doubt it’s but some bit of theatre business badly seen to, or some impediment to the mounting of our Macbeth.”
“Ah, yes,” said Caine, “it’s to be Macbeth. Finally.”
“Yes, by year’s end. Or so it is hoped—by Henry if not necessarily myself.”
“Henry’s talked of putting on the Scottish play for years. Why, we even spoke about it back when we all three were in Edinburgh, you’ll recall.”
I did recall, and said so. I recalled, too, the reason the Caines had accompanied us to the Scottish capital; but I left it to my friend to allude to same, as then he did:
“Mary, by the way—”
“Of course,” said I, interrupting, for a man ought to spare a friend such words as were coming. “Not a whisper.” Though the revelation of the letters yet lay a half-day ahead, still I knew enough to swear I’d keep Caine’s confidence as regarded Tumblety, as surely as he’d keep mine. After all, though Caine risks ruin, I run the risk of a bunk beside Penfold’s in Stepney Latch!
“Perhaps,” said I as we headed upstairs towards our suites, “perhaps we’ll neither of us ever hear from the man again.”
“One can but hope,” said Caine. Whereupon he went into his room and threw several bolts behind him. I retired in my turn, thinking the resolution of this—all this, whatever it may be—will want rather more than hope.
In the morning, after the promised bacon and brawn, I took my leave of Caine, of Greeba Castle, wondering what further revelations lay in the letters I’d lately been handed with nary a word but a worried, very worried, look.
Mere minutes now to Euston, whence to Henry and his “horrid incid
ent.” Whatever it be, pray let it be explicable.
BRAM STOKER’S JOURNAL
Tuesday, 12 June ’88, later.—Horrid indeed. And his hand is in this, surely.
Upon returning to Euston Station, I went straight to the Lyceum, arriving there to wonder why all the world was milling about. I hadn’t time to set down my satchel before I was beset, first by Jimmy at the stage door; secondly by the two tenders of cats who sat huddled round she who tended them in turn, Mrs. Quibbel, whose tears precluded her customary salute; and thirdly by Henry, who, I’d been told manifold times in my progress toward the XO, attended me there. En route I learned naught but that the incident, whatever it had been, had occurred in the Beefsteak Club the night prior; yet I could not connect that fact with Mrs. Quibbel’s fresh tears: Whatever had she to do with events as they passed in the Guv’nor’s private dining room?
Henry explained, but this Record needn’t show his surliness in doing so. Suffice it to say that, in the opinion of Henry Irving, I have no right to absent myself more than one half-hour from his summoning call. Tommyrot! But so he holds. Alas, said he:
Mrs. Quibbel had come to her post earlier than usual yesterday, Monday instant, 11 June—11 a.m. o/c, said she; by which hour I would have been well launched toward Liverpool. “Or so she has sworn,” said Henry, seated at his side of our double-desk.
“Have you cause to doubt her?” I asked, taking my own seat, my back to the opened door. “And whatever do you mean ‘sworn’?” Had Henry interrogated Mrs. Q. himself? The answer was slow to come, for Henry Irving often acts rather than tells his tales, and tiresomely so.
“The lady,” said he, thus casting a slight aspersion upon Mrs. Quibbel, who, though she has proved herself both amiable and utile, is certainly no lady, “…the lady has sworn that she arrived before luncheon and let herself into the Beefsteak Club. To ready it, says she; to tidy it if need be.” Had Henry dined there the night prior, Sunday? If so, with whom? Could Tumblety so dissemble himself as to pass—and pass as what: unpossessed?—in common company? I did not know, of course, for I’d absented myself at curtain-fall Sunday last, eager for these pages, sleep, and that early-morning train that carried me to Caine. “Tell me, Stoker,” said Henry, “have you enlarged the woman’s responsibilities so that now she is charged with tidying my dining room?” His dining room. Indeed.