Complete Works of Bram Stoker (4 page)

And yet we wonder at times to see, when occasion offers, with what astonishing rapidity certain individuals assert themselves, and how, when a strange circumstance arises, some new individual arises along with it, as though the man and the hour were predestined for each other.

We need not wonder if we will but think that all along the man was ready, girt in his armour, resolved in his cause, and merely awaiting, although, perhaps, he knew it not, the opportunity to manifest himself.

Whilst Jerry had been working - and working so honestly and well that he was on the high road to success - he never once abandoned in his secret heart the idea of seeking a wider field for his exertion. Truly, Alexander has his prototypes in every age and country; and men even try to look ever beyond the horizon of their hopes, sighing for new worlds when the victories of the old have been achieved.

From the receipt of Sebright’s letter, Jerry had found the old wish reviving stronger than ever. He was so prosperous that the idea of failure in work seemed too far away to be easily realised; and his home was so happy that domestic trouble was absolutely beyond his comprehension.

The holy admonition - ‘Ye that stand take heed lest ye fall,’ should be ever before the minds of men.

Katey saw her husband’s secret wish gradually growing into a resolve, with unutterable pain; and tried to combat Jerry’s views but hopelessly. At first he listened, and argued the matter over fairly in all its aspects, being ever kind-hearted and tender, and seeming to thoroughly sympathise with her views; but as the weeks wore on, he began to take a different tone, and without losing any of his kindness or tenderness to express more decided opinions and intentions. The change was so gradual that even Katey’s wifely love, and the acuteness which is the handmaiden of love, could see no cause for change, nor could mark any time as being the period of a definite change.

In fact, the masculine resolution was asserting itself over the feminine, and acting and reacting in itself, but constantly in the direction of settled purpose.

With the feeling of power which a man of average mental calibre feels over a woman of similar status amongst her own sex, comes a fuller purpose - a more decided, definite resolve to the man himself. Thus, Jerry, whilst arguing with his wife, had been all the time strengthening his own resolve, and working himself up to the belief that immediate action was necessary to his success in life.

Wives, be careful how you argue with your husbands, for you walk on a ridge between two precipices. If you allow a half-formed wish to be the parent of immediate action on your husband’s part, without raising a warning voice should you see danger that he does not, then you do him a wrong which will surely recoil on your own head and the heads of your children. But if, on the other hand, you persistently combat with argument wishes which should be furthered or opposed with the patent truths of the heart’s experience, then you will surely fail, for you will be fighting reality with vacuity - opposing steel with air-drawn daggers of the fancy.

Katey’s position was very painful. She felt that her speaking to her husband was a duty which her wifely vow, as much as her wifely love, called on her to fulfil; but at the same time she felt with that subtle instinct of true love which never errs and never lies, that she was sapping the foundations of her husband’s love and weakening the influence which she had over him. Poor Katey! her lot was a hard one, but she felt - and she was right - that where duty points the way, then the way must be walked whatever be the misery of the journey, and wherever the road may lead.

Jerry’s mother, too, was fretted by her son’s determination. He never spoke of it to her, but she heard it from their mutual friends, and the very fact of his being reticent on the point caused her more pain by raising doubts as to his motive, not only for going, but concealing his wish from her. Jerry had a two-fold reason for his silence. Firstly, he did not wish to give her pain, and thought that by keeping silent on the point she would be spared at least the agony of looking forward to his departure. In this, Jerry, like many of his fellows, fell into the same error, which leads the hunted ostrich to hide its head in the sand - the error which we make when we think that shutting our eyes means shutting out the danger which we wish to avoid. Again, Jerry wished to avoid pain to himself.

The analysis of a sensual nature shows two evil qualities, which, although not always expressed, are, nevertheless, ruling powers - obstinacy and cruelty. No matter how these qualities may be counterbalanced by other qualities as good as these are bad, or no matter how well they are disguised, these two evil powers have here their home. Obstinacy in its hardest light is the adherence to a line of action begun for its end to be gained rather than for its duty; and cruelty is almost its logical consequence, for it is by its direct or indirect means that obstacles are cleared away or points of vantage unworthily gained. Jerry’s nature was a sensual one, although it had ever been held in check.

The power of evil has a home in every human heart. In one it is a palace vast and splendid, so splendid and vast that to the onlooker there are no dark nooks, no gloomy corners, but where all is so rich and noble that there is dignity in everything. In another it is a shooting-box only visited for motives of pleasure. In another it is an office where gold and secrecy are synonymous terms. In another it is a villa. In another a lowly hut. In Jerry it was the last; but no one is to suppose that because it was a hut, that, therefore, it was unimportant. The residents in palaces are usually to a certain extent migratory, but the inhabitants of huts are seldom absentees, and every Irishman knows that a perpetually resident peasant is better for a country than a lordly absentee.

Thus Jerry’s devil, although living in a small house, was still always there, and was ever on the spot when opportunities occurred.

One change - one decided change - came which Katey regretted exceedingly, and that was in his friendship for Parnell. Hitherto the two men had been excellent friends, and Jerry’s success in some little business ventures was largely due to Parnell’s wise counsel. But now the two men were seldom together, and the elder one seemed to have lost all his old influence over his companion.

Parnell saw the change as well as Katey, and was deeply grieved. He, however, saw, whilst he saw the change, what danger there was in alluding to it, and so as he was one of those men who feel it almost as much a breach of duty to be silent on certain occasions as to bespeak falsely, wisely kept aloof and waited for a fitting opportunity for speaking earnestly to Jerry without the risk of offending him.

Jerry, too, knew of the change in himself, and felt a sort of hostile indignation with all who opposed openly or tacitly his determination.

This was the first manifestation of the cruelty of his nature.

His mother was broken-hearted, and in her grief, when arguing with him, unwisely gave play to her bitterness, and so hardened up one of the softest spots in his heart. She abused Sebright also, and, as some of the charges which she brought against him were manifestly absurd, Jerry took occasion to think, and to express his thoughts, that they were all absurd.

The devil works through love as well as hatred, and his blows are more deadly when we who strike and we who bear alike heed them not.

One day there came a letter from John Sebright, which influenced Jerry vitally. It was as follows:-

‘Kingficher Arms, Sundy.

‘Dear Jerry - You had better come over here at wanse, there is a place to sute you in a theatre called the Stanly, where the wants a carpentre to manage for them; he must be a good man or he won’t doo, and the wagis is fine, not to say exsiv, and the place esy and the people nice, you had best tri for it at wanse, and don’t let the chance slip, or you will be a damd fool, and not worth gettin’ another, don’t let your mother or your wife keep you back, as the will tri to, for weemen isn’t able to do bisnis, but men is; an’ the maneger has a nefew, who is a friend o’ mine an’ a capatle felo, an’ a hed like iren, an’mony is goin’ heer lik water, an’ a man with your hed wood make a fortin in no tim, which let me no at wanse til I tel the nephew, which if you give me a £1 tu give him to speek for you, it will be all rite, and send the money by return to me, care of Mrs Smith, Kingficher Arms, Welbred-street, London, and i remane yours trooly.

‘John Sebright.

‘P.S. - don’t sho this to your wif or mother, or the’l think i wance to mak you cum, an’ av corse mi motivs is disintrested, as i’m wel off miself an’ quit hapy.

‘P.S. 2. - if you tel the weemen tel them i’m goin’ to be marrid to a good woman ho is very pias an’ charetable an’ wel off don’t forget the £1.’

Jerry was no fool, and very clearly he saw through the motive of the writer of this precious epistle, but there were passages in it which interested him deeply. Notwithstanding the mean selfishness of the man’s thoughts, and the vile English in which they were expressed, he could not shut his eyes to certain things which they suggested, chiefly the opening as theatrical carpenter.

Jerry had never heard of the Stanley Theatre, and even now had not the ghost of an idea what it was like or of what class; nevertheless, he could not help thinking that it might be something good. London has a big name, and people who live out of it have traditionally an idea that everything there is great, and rich, and flourishing, and happy.

The people who live in it can tell a different story, and point to hundreds and thousands of the poorest and most wretched creatures that exist on the face of God’s beautiful world - the world that He has made beautiful, but that man has defaced with sin.

Jerry was in that state in which a man finds everything which happens exactly suiting his own views. His eyes - the eyes of his inner self - were so full of his project that they were incapable of seeing anything but what bore on its advancement. He shut his eyes to dangers and defects and difficulties, and like many another man leaped blindly into the dark.

Sometimes to leap in the dark is the perfection of wisdom and courage combined; but this is when the gloom which is round us is a danger, from which we must escape at any hazard, and not when we make an artificial night by wilfully shutting our eyes upon the glory of the sun.

Jerry wrote to Sebright, enclosing a Post-office order for one pound and telling him to lose no time about seeing after the situation for him.

He said not a word about what he had done, even to poor little Katey, who saw with the eyes of her love that he was keeping something back from her.

It was the first secret of their married life, and the bright eyes were dim from silent weeping as the little wife rose the morning after the letter to London was despatched.

Several days elapsed before Jerry got any reply from London; and the interval was an unhappy time for both him and his wife. Katey’s grief grew heavier and heavier to her since she had no one to tell it to; and Jerry felt that there was a shadow between them. He recked not that it was the shadow of his own selfish desire - the spectre of the future - that stood between them.

Katey’s lot was hard. The sweetest blessing of marriage is that it halves our sorrows and doubles our joys; and so far as her present life went Katey was a widow in this respect - but without the sweet consolation that married trust had never died.

Jerry’s anxiety made the home trouble light. He had, like most men to whom the world behind the curtain is as unknown as were the mysteries of Isis to a Neophyte, a strange longing to share in the unknown life of the dramatic world. Moth-like he had buzzed around the footlights when a boy, and had never lost the slight romantic feeling which such buzzing ever inspires. Once or twice his professional work had brought him within the magic precincts where the stage-manager is king, and there the weirdness of the place, with its myriad cords and chains, and traps, and scenes, and flies, had more than ever enchanted him.

The chance now offered of employment was indeed a temptation. If he should be able to adopt the new life he would have an opportunity of combining his romantic taste and his trade experience, and would be moreover in that wider field for exertion to which he had long looked forward.

And so he waited with what patience he could, and shut his eyes as close as possible to the growing miseries of his home.

At last a letter came from Sebright, telling him that he had got the place, and one also from the manager, stating that he would have to be at work in a fortnight’s time, and stating the salary, which was very liberal.

Face to face with the situation, Jerry found that the sooner he told his wife the better. He took the day to think over his plans, and when he went home in the evening he went prepared to tell her.

There was about him a tenderness unusual of late - a tenderness which reminded Katey of the first days of their married life and of the time when her first child was born; and so the little woman’s heart was touched, and woman-like she could not fear, nor even see troubles in the light of her husband’s smile. Jerry himself felt the change in her manner, and his tenderness grew. He took her on his knees, as in their old courting days, and a few sweet whispered words brought the colour to her cheek, and the old light into her eyes. Then it was that Jerry felt how hard was the news which he had to tell, and he half repented of his resolution. He thought of the happy home which he was breaking up, and of the anguish of the little wife and mother who was to be taken away from all her friends and relatives to begin the world anew amongst strangers. But the time was come when he must speak, for to delay would be cruel, and so he began with a huskiness in his throat which was not usual to him. ‘Katey, dear, I’ve some news for you.’ Katey’s arms tightened round his neck. ‘Oh, and good news too, Jerry, I know by your tenderness to me to-night. Jerry dear, have you given up the wild idea?’

Jerry did not expect this, and his voice became a little harder as he replied -

‘No, I have not given up the wild idea, as you call it. It is about it that I want to speak.’