Complete Works of Bram Stoker (429 page)

‘I filled them all up with Wolseley Gartside; and they filled up as much space as the editorial staff could spare from ads. Generally I paid for the printing, too - though who benefited by it I don’t know. I thought Gartside would darken the air when he got my bill; but I did him well - in quantity, at all events. But the quality was good, too; just what the old man liked. I not only painted him as a man of transcendent genius and as an artist that had no peer in past or present, but gave him such a character as a libertine that the local Don Juans began over their drink to talk of reviving lynching, and the womenkind exhausted the dry goods stores for new frocks and fal-lals of all kinds. Why, they tell me that the demand for toupees and false fronts and extensions was such that the New York wholesale hair houses sent down a whole flock of drummers. The back-numbers were going to have a turn at him as well as the girls and the frisky matrons! I gave him out as having the courage of a lion and the heart of a fiend; the skill at cards of a prestidigitateur; the style and daring in the hunt of Buffalo Bill; the learning of an Erasmus; the voice of a De Reske; the strength of Milo - it was before Sandow’s time. I finished it all off with a hypnotic gift which was unique; which from the stage could rule audiences, and in the smoking-room or the boudoir could make man or woman his obedient slave. I got most of the newspapers to take up hypnotism as a theme of controversy, and wrote lots of letters on the subject, under various names, which opened people’s eyes as to the power of that mysterious craft - or quality, whichever it is - and the consequent danger attendant on their daily lives. I suppose I needn’t say that the whole controversy everywhere circled round Gartside and his wonderful powers. I tell you that by the Sunday afternoon when my Star came along with his crowd in his special, with his private car at the tail of it, and him on the rear platform, the women of Patricia City, where he opened, were in a flutter. They didn’t know whether it was hope or fear. Knowing the sex as I do, I am inclined to think it was hope. To tame and subdue a dragon of voluptuous impurity is the dearest wish of a good woman’s heart!’

‘Oh, really, Mr Phase Alphage ...’ said the First Old Woman, raising an index finger of remonstrance.

‘True, dear lady, true. It is trite as a record, as well as solemn as a truth.’

‘Aye, it is truth, indeed. Sad truth!’ murmured the Tragedian, in a thunderous bass. ‘The experiences of my own hot youth have proven it to the full. ‘Twas not gifts of mind or body, all-compelling though these be, nor the fascinations of our glamorous calling. Rather would I call it the maelstrom of passion which the Apple of Eden begot in the breast of woman.’

‘Rather a mixed metaphor that!’ said the young man from Oxford, who seemed to have taken on himself the task of keeping the Tragedian to order. ‘But we understand what you mean. Drive on, Alphage.’

‘I was fifty miles on my road when the day of opening came; but I ran back - that came out of my own pocket, too! - to see  Gartside and hear what he thought of the way I had exploited him. I boarded his train down the line, and came on with him. He was both jubilant and effusive, and said my work in advance was the best he had ever had. “Go on, my boy, go on, and follow it up. You are on the right tack!” were the last words he said to me. I dropped off at the depot, and got on the outward train, for I didn’t want to get pitched into by him when he should find the excitement was less than he expected. I do believe he thought there would be in waiting a murderous crowd, with a rope, intent on a neck-tie party, with a few regiments of State troops to counteract them.

‘When I got into the next town the Press was full of what had been said at Patricia City, and wanted me to go at least one better, or they couldn’t use my stuff at all. That would be checkmate to me as Advance Agent, so I was in a real difficulty. I couldn’t increase the praise of my Star, so the only thing was to go down. I made up my mind to go deeper and deeper into crime. There was no help for it. I knew well that each other town in that group would want its own increase of pressure, and so arranged my plans in the back of my head. I should have to distribute the steps of the downward grade amongst five different towns; so I laid out my work and began to get my copy ready. I never went to bed at all that night, but spent it writing advance matter in shorthand. In the morning I got a smart typewriter and dictated to her from my stenographic script. I sent off that for Tuesday by mail, and got the rest ready to post when the hour should arrive. I had to be careful not to send matter long enough in advance for the comparison of towns, or of different papers in the same town.

‘Early on Tuesday morning I got to Hustleville - that was the second town of the tour - and from that moment matters began to hum. All the papers were full, not only of my own matter, but of comments on it. In addition, nearly every one had a leader in which they cut the Tragedian to pieces. The Banner of Freedom wanted to make out his coming to be nothing short of an international outrage.

‘“It makes little,” it said, “for the comity of nations that an ostensibly friendly country like England should be allowed to dump down on our shores a cargo of criminal decadents like the man Wolseley Gartside and his crowd of hooligans. His being left at large so long as seems to have been the case says little for either the morals or the sanity of the people who have permitted his existence. He is a smirch on the fair face of cosmic law, a living germ of intellectual disease, a cancerous growth even in the parasitic calling which he follows; an outrage to man and morals, to fair living, to development of God’s creatures - nay, even to God Himself! The people of this State have not in the past lacked courage or energy to terminate swiftly, by the exercise of rough justice in the open courts of natural law, the opportunities of offenders against public good. We have heard of a human pendulum swinging on a giant bough of one of our noble forest trees; there are recollections in the minds of those of our pioneers who happily survive of worthless miscreants riding on rails clad in unpretentious costumes of feathers and tar. It is up to the heroic souls who founded Hustleville to break the long silence of their well-won repose, and, for protection of the city they have won from forest depths, and for the defence of their kin, to raise voice and hand for woman’s honour and man’s unshrinking nobility! A hint on such a subject should be sufficient. Verbum sapientice sufficit. We have done.”

‘This reached Gartside after breakfast, and he at once wired me:

‘“Go on; it is well. Banner has struck right note. Shall be ere long living heart of international cyclone!”

‘I went on the same afternoon to Comstock, which was next on our route. I had, of course, sent on plenty of advance matter, and the editors had written me gratefully about it. But when I called at the Whoop - which was, I understood, the popular paper - I was received in a manner which was decidedly chilly. I am not, as a rule, lacking in diffidence ...’

‘Distinctly an understatement, my dear sir,’ said the Tragedian, with challenge to battle in his eye. You really wrong yourself by putting it in that negative way!’ He glared in return, but went on, calmly:

‘... but I admit I was a little nonplussed - no pun intended, Governor’ - this to the Manager. ‘So I asked the editor if I had hurt or affronted him in any way to cause his greeting to be so different from his written words. He hum’d and haw’d, and finally admitted that he was chagrined that the Comstock Whoop had not been treated as well as the Hustleville Banner of Freedom.

‘“How?” I asked. “I sent you twenty per cent more advance copy.”

‘“Aye. The quantity was all right; but there were none of the spicy details which worked up the dormant conscience of even a one-horse town like Hustleville. Now, I suppose you know that we young towns can’t live on the past. Has-been isn’t a good diet for growing youth. Moreover, we’re all living on one another’s backs, with the nails dug in. What we want in the Whoop is anti-soothing syrup; and nothing else is any use to us. So get a move on you and let us have it. We want stronger meat than Hustleville.”

‘“But there’s nothing stronger. To say more wouldn’t be true.”

‘The editor seemed as if struck blind. He raised his hands as if expostulating with the powers of the air, as he said:

‘“True! Do I live to hear the Advance Agent of a Troupe speak of truth ... Now, look here, Mister. It’s no use talking ethics with you. For either I’m drunk - which would be early in the day for me - or else you’ve got some sort of freshness on you that I don’t understand. And I may tell you for your edification that we don’t much care for freshness here. Comstock is a town where we perspire quick; and there’s plenty of space in the forest for developing our cem-e-tary. When I got your first letter I told my boys to hold back because this was your funeral, and ye was up in the etiquette. But the boys wasn’t altogether pleased. They are good boys, and could knock sparks out of Ananias in making a story. See! So you’d better get to work. You know your man and they don’t; so your story is apt to seem more lifelike. I’ll want the copy here by seven. Then, the quicker ye quit the better.”

‘There was nothing for it but to carry out Wolseley Gartside’s instructions. It was wife-beating this time that swelled his reputation. I didn’t mean to be knocked out by the boys of the Whoop, nor to afford an opportunity for exemplifying the sudorific rapidity of Comstock - no, nor to take a part in de-veloping the cem-e-tary either; so the story of WG’s experiences as a defendant in the police-court of Abingchester, in the Peak of Derbyshire - that was well out of the way of public prints - was given in full detail, together with a description of the Lord Chancellor who condemned him, and an exciting account of his escape, riddled with bullets, from the county gaol. The editor read it with a beaming face, and said when he had done:

‘“That’s the biggest scoop we ever had. Here, I’ll give you a straight tip which will put money in your pocket if you get out your copy right smart. There is every indication that when the play is over to-morrow night there will be an adjournment of citizens to the forest, and that one of the oaks will bear a new sort of acorn. One with a bloated body; but a rotten heart. See?”

‘I did see; and I sent an urgent letter to WG by the driver of the mail train, telling him frankly where his instructions were likely to lead him.

‘He was wise for once, and altered his route. This wasn’t a case for vanity, but for skin. So there wasn’t any new kind of acorn found on the forest round Comstock, though the search party was all ready.

‘Now, Mr Hempitch,’ said the MC, ‘you’re next.’ So he began at once.

‘All right, sir. Mr Alphage’s story of a Star reminds me of a Star of another kind which is more in my line of business.

A STAR TRAP

“When I was apprenticed to theatrical carpentering my master was John Haliday, who was Master Machinist - we called men in his post ‘Master Carpenter’ in those days - of the old Victoria Theatre, Hulme. It wasn’t called Hulme; but that name will do. It would only stir up painful memories if I were to give the real name. I daresay some of you - not the Ladies (this with a gallant bow all round) - will remember the case of a Harlequin as was killed in an accident in the pantomime. We needn’t mention names; Mortimer will do for a name to call him by - Henry Mortimer. The cause of it was never found out. But I knew it; and I’ve kept silence for so long that I may speak now without hurting anyone. They’re all dead long ago that was interested in the death of Henry Mortimer or the man who wrought that death.”

“Any of you who know of the case will remember what a handsome, dapper, well-built man Mortimer was. To my own mind he was the handsomest man I ever saw.”

The Tragedian’s low, grumbling whisper, “That’s a large order,” sounded a warning note. Hempitch, however, did not seem to hear it, but went on:

“Of course, I was only a boy then, and I hadn’t seen any of you gentlemen - Yer very good health, Mr Wellesley Dovercourt, sir, and cettera. I needn’t tell you, Ladies, how well a harlequin’s dress sets off a nice slim figure. No wonder that in these days of suffragettes, women wants to be harlequins as well as columbines. Though I hope they won’t make the columbine a man’s part!”

“Mortimer was the nimblest chap at the traps I ever see. He was so sure of hisself that he would have extra weight put on so that when the counter weights fell he’d shoot up five or six feet higher than anyone else could even try to. Moreover, he had a way of drawing up his legs when in the air - the way a frog does when he is swimming - that made his jump look ever so much higher.”

“I think the girls were all in love with him, the way they used to stand in the wings when the time was comin’ for his entrance. That wouldn’t have mattered much, for girls are always falling in love with some man or other, but it made trouble, as it always does when the married ones take the same start. There were several of these that were always after him, more shame for them, with husbands of their own. That was dangerous enough, and hard to stand for a man who might mean to be decent in any way. But the real trial - and the real trouble, too - was none other than the young wife of my own master, and she was more than flesh and blood could stand. She had come into the panto, the season before, as a high-kicker - and she could! She could kick higher than girls that was more than a foot taller than her; for she was a wee bit of a thing and as pretty as pie; a gold-haired, blue-eyed, slim thing with much the figure of a boy, except for. . . and they saved her from any mistaken idea of that kind. Jack Haliday went crazy over her, and when the notice was up, and there was no young spark with plenty of oof coming along to do the proper thing by her, she married him. It was, when they was joined, what you Ladies call a marriage of convenience; but after a bit they two got on very well, and we all thought she was beginning to like the old man - for Jack was old enough to be her father, with a bit to spare. In the summer, when the house was closed, he took her to the Isle of Man; and when they came back he made no secret of it that he’d had the happiest time of his life. She looked quite happy, too, and treated him affectionate; and we all began to think that that marriage had not been a failure at any rate.”