The Revenant of Thraxton Hall

CHAPTER 3 WILDE IN THE CITY

Although it was barely 3:00 P.M., the city was smothering beneath one of the dense, yellow, soot-choked fogs known as a “London particular.” In the unnatural twilight, amber haloes trembled about the streetlamps as the hansom dropped Conan Doyle at the front door of the Savoy.

Inside, the restaurant bustled with warmth and life and light. The author was a frequent guest at the Savoy and his entrance typically caused no excitement. But tonight, as he scanned the tables looking for the person he was meeting, heads turned and flung cold, belligerent stares in his direction. A moment later he noticed, with unease, that many of the diners also wore black armbands.

Bad news had beaten him there.

Instinct told Conan Doyle to put his head down and keep walking, as a moving target was harder to hit. Then his glance happened to fall upon a lone figure sitting at a corner table: a small schoolboy hiding behind an obviously false moustache. But then the boy made eye contact and Conan Doyle recognized it was a false child with a real moustache: J.M. Barrie, playwright and close friend, with whom he had a dinner engagement. A year ago, Conan Doyle and Barrie had pooled their collective genius to collaborate on Jane Annie, a comic opera commissioned by Richard D’Oyly Carte. The play had been a resounding catastrophe, jeered by audiences and pilloried by critics. After each excruciating performance, the friends had slunk away to salve their wounds with a whiskey or three. Thankfully, Jane Annie closed after only fifty performances — before either man suffered permanent liver damage.

As Conan Doyle squeezed through the tight sprawl of tables, the diminutive Barrie (who at scarcely five feet in height was often mistaken for a schoolboy) rose from his chair to greet him.

“J.M.,” said Arthur, swallowing the smaller man’s hand in his own fleshy grip.

“Arthur.”

A waiter appeared and hovered as the two settled into their chairs. Conan Doyle noticed a half-drained tumbler of scotch in front of his friend.

“I am drinking the holy waters of Mother Scotland,” Barrie said, rolling the r’s in his rich brogue.

“I, too, am in dire need of baptism,” Conan Doyle replied. He nodded to the waiter and said, “Same for me, Henry — and make it a triple snit.”

Although both men were Scottish born, after living in England for most of his life Conan Doyle’s Edinburgh accent had been polished to a soft burr.

“Ach!” Barrie said, eyebrows arching in surprise. “A triple snit this early? I take it you’ve had a bad day, Arthur?”

“A quite beastly day,” Conan Doyle snarled, pausing as the waiter set down a scotch in front of him. He then added: “Extraordinarily bad!” He quaffed a mouthful of whiskey, shuddering as it burned down his throat, then wiped a napkin across his moustache and fixed Barrie with his intense brown gaze. “But let me tell you how it began, with an encounter the like of which would seem fantastical even in a tale of fiction—”

“Ah, here is London’s most celebrated murderer!” The voice that interrupted him was loud, urbane, and utterly unforgettable. Conan Doyle looked up at a large man dressed in a bottle-green cloth overcoat heavily trimmed with fur. The coat was worn thrown about his shoulders like a cape and splayed open to reveal a lemon-yellow jacket with a white silk cravat. On his head he wore a black broad-brimmed hat pulled down rakishly over one eye.

Oscar Wilde — of course, who else would dress in such a fashion? He was accompanied by a slender young man who stood too close to Wilde’s shoulder, the way a pilot fish rubs up against the flanks of a shark. The young man was tall and thin with slender wrists and high cheekbones. He wore his short blond hair curled and brilliantined. With extravagant eyelashes and features as delicate as a porcelain doll’s, he was altogether too pretty to be a boy. He never looked directly at Conan Doyle or Barrie, but peered at them shyly from the corner of one eye. Conan Doyle shifted in his chair with growing discomfort. Rumors about Wilde flew on the wind these days, and this was obviously Oscar’s latest “companion.”

“Hello, Arthur,” Wilde said, and then appeared to start and made a show of peering down at Barrie, as if he could not quite make him out. “Why, is that you down there J.M.?” he queried. “Ah yes, I see the moustache if not the man it’s attached to. Honestly, J.M., if it were not for your enormous talent it would be so easy to miss you.”

Wilde’s closest friends were often the butt of his wit, but it was never with any malice.

“Ach, it would be hard to miss you, Oscar, in any crowd,” the diminutive Scotsman retorted before dunking his moustache back into his whiskey.

“Really? I am told people miss me the moment I leave the room.” Wilde punctuated his remark with a ridiculous, self-mocking smile and everyone chuckled. It was impossible to be in a bad mood when Oscar Wilde was present.

Wilde threw himself into an empty chair, shrugged the coat from his shoulders, and drew off his hat with a flourish, releasing his long chestnut curls. The young man pulled his chair closer to Wilde and perched delicately.

“And who is this, er, friend, of yours, Oscar?” J.M. asked in a tone so pointedly ironic it made Conan Doyle cringe.

“This is George…” Wilde said, and added in an exaggeratedly posh voice, “… also of the theater.”

Wilde noticed the heavy glass tumblers of scotch set in front of each man. “Ah, good whiskey, the official drink of any wake. I take it we are lamenting the loss of the much-loved Sherlock Holmes. I shall join you in a glass to see the old man off, but then we must switch to champagne, as befitting any celebration.”

The waiter brought a whiskey for Wilde, but nothing for his young companion. Wilde sipped his whisky and smiled joyously. “Mmmmmn!” he breathed, smacking his lips. “Could anything but whiskey slake a true Irishman’s thirst?” He patted his young companion on the knee. “I’m afraid George here does not drink. Quite reprehensible isn’t it? I’ve always said that an absence of vices is a vice in and of itself.”

Wilde quaffed his whiskey in three deep gulps, then semaphored the waiter with a flourish of his handkerchief. Moments later, a huge magnum had been cracked and each man held a freshly charged champagne flute.

“What are we celebrating, Oscar?” Conan Doyle asked, wondering if Wilde had a new play opening that he had somehow failed to hear of.

“What are we celebrating?” Wilde repeated, flashing his long-toothed smile. “Surely my arrival is always a cause for celebration!”

As usual, Wilde’s personality engulfed the table, preventing any chance of normal conversation. Conan Doyle studied Wilde’s animated face as he launched into another witticism. Lady Windermere’s Fan had been a resounding success the previous year, making him the wealthiest and most successful man of letters in London. But despite Wilde’s beautiful wife and two children, his enthusiasm for the companionship of young men had lately become a virulent source of scorching gossip.

“I offer a toast,” Wilde said, mildly slurring. “A toast to the ghost of Sherlock Holmes. May he watch over poor Arthur and keep him safe in his dotage.”

“To Sherlock Holmes.”

Champagne flutes chinked, everyone smiling and laughing as they imbibed. Everyone except Conan Doyle, who choked down a mouthful of chilled Dom Pérignon along with the last of his pride.

Suddenly, Wilde rose from the table, drew on his coat and hat, and then seized the champagne bucket and tucked it under one arm.

“And now Oscar Wilde must take his leave. Come along chaps. I have a four-wheeler waiting outside to convey us to our next destination.”

“I’m afraid I have a train to catch, Oscar,” Conan Doyle said. “My wife—”

“This is modern London, Arthur,” Wilde scolded, “not the Scottish provinces. Here in the civilized world the trains run on time and after dark. I promise you will be in time to catch the ten thirty to South Norwood.”

“But where are we going?” Barrie demanded.

“To witness the inexplicable,” Wilde said. He paused for a moment to strike a theatrical pose, one hand clamped to his breast. “A mind-ripping spectacle that will leave you both confounded and astonished. I saw it for the first time last night and thought it quite miraculous. But miracles lack luster unless one has witnesses.”

And with that, the Irish playwright swept away with his young shadow in tow. J.M. Barrie and Conan Doyle dallied a moment and then rose from the table and followed, hurrying to catch up, mere flotsam dragged along in Oscar Wilde’s irresistible slipstream.

The carriage they rode in was new and luxuriously appointed — another of Wilde’s mad extravagances. The bucket of chilled champagne was wedged between Wilde and the carriage door. He sat scrunched hip-to-hip with George, so close that their knees constantly brushed together. J.M. Barrie rolled his eyes at Conan Doyle, who cleared his throat and averted his gaze, peering out the window. He had assumed that the four-wheeler was heading north to the Royal Lyceum, where another in their circle of friends, Bram Stoker, was manager. Instead, he was surprised to find they were heading south, to one of the more disreputable districts of London.

“I must remonstrate with you, Arthur,” Wilde said, tossing off his third glass. “You are poaching on my reputation as a scandalous man of letters. You give birth to the greatest hero of modern times and then you kill him off. Just like that. As if he were nothing. My God, Arthur, you are fearless, truly you are. Your audacity makes me dizzy.” He grabbed the magnum and hoisted it dripping from the bucket. “And I find the best cure for dizziness is always more champagne.”

Bubbly slopped and overflowed as Wilde attempted to replenish their glasses in a swaying carriage jouncing along cobbled streets cratered with potholes.

Minutes later, the four-wheeler deposited them outside the gaudily lit marquee of Gatti’s-Under-the-Arches, a music hall literally built beneath the arches of Charing Cross railway station. By day the street was an odiferous mélange of butcher shops and fish stalls. By night, even with the shop fronts shut and the barrows and stalls stacked away, the lingering tang of fish heads and pig’s trotters shivered in the air.

“We’re late,” Conan Doyle noted. “The performance has already begun.”

“Nonsense,” Wilde said. “Oscar Wilde is never late. It is everyone else who arrives too early. In fact, our timing is perfect — the queues are gone and the performance we have come to see will take the stage in a few minutes.”

The large Irishman led the way, and the four of them swept past the ticket office without paying, unchallenged by the gray-haired codger in the booth, who merely pressed his face against the grille and called after, “A pleasure to see you again, Mister Wilde.”

Wilde acknowledged him with an imperious wave. They passed through the doors and into the darkened music hall. As they took their seats in the front row, a comedian was being booed from the stage.

Conan Doyle leaned across and shouted over the bray of hoots and yells, “What are we here to see?”

“The inexplicable,” Wilde answered cryptically.

The band struck up a blaring number to drown the booing and hissing. The comic scrambled to gather up his props and had barely fled the stage when a bevy of dancing girls burst into the footlights, kicking and prancing so that the tops of their short skirts flirted with the thighs of their stocking-clad legs.

Although Conan Doyle had heard of such lewd performances, he had never actually attended one, and found that, for once, rumor understated reality.

The women were all young and spritely, full of life. They whooped and shrieked as they danced. Conan Doyle found his heart thumping and his face burning. He dropped his gaze and focused on the edge of the stage. Wilde leaned over, squeezed his knee, and whispered: “You’ll survive, Arthur. Just lie back, relax, and think of the empire.”

J.M. Barrie muttered in a low voice, “I hear the dancers at the Moulin Rouge wear no undergarments at all.”

“It is true,” Wilde agreed. “I have been to the Moulin Rouge many times. Although…” He smiled a languorous smile. “The view from here almost rivals that of Paris. In fact, if you look hard enough, you can see Kent.”

That was the final straw for Conan Doyle. He started to get up from his seat, but Wilde pulled him back down. “Stay, Arthur,” Wilde chided. “This is precisely the kind of medicine the good doctor needs.”

By now Conan Doyle could not take his eyes off the parade of young female flesh and squeezed the armrests of his chair with a crushing grip.

The girls danced off the stage to a chorus of bravos, yells, and the thunder of stamping feet.

There was a pause, and then the theater manager, announced by the off-stage emcee’s disembodied voice as “Mister Henry Purvis, Esquire,” stepped to the front of the stage. He was a worn-thin man in a worn-thin evening suit. Purvis had been the manager since the music hall opened, and if anything was in more need of a thorough tarting up than was his establishment.

The beam of a spotlight meandered across the boards until it found him. “Tonight, Ladies and Gentlemen,” he announced in a basso profundo that was quite surprising, given his lean frame, “Gatti’s has the rare pleasure to present not just a performer, but a unique individual who is one of the true wonders of the age. His name is Daniel Dunglas Hume, the greatest psychic medium in the world. Mister Hume’s abilities have been studied by some of the best scientific minds of our time and have been found to be absolutely genuine.”

As Purvis spoke, a number of painted backdrops lowered from the fly loft depicting Daniel Dunglas Hume performing feats of psychic wonder. One canvas was painted with the figure of a finely dressed man holding a skull in a Hamlet/Yorick pose, as if contemplating the mysteries of death. The other canvases illustrated a séance with a ghostly apparition of a woman’s face appearing above Hume’s head; a hand bell ringing inside a bell jar, while Hume stood several feet away, his fingers to his temples; and most dramatically, Hume levitating several feet into the air before a group of astonished spectators.

“Who is this chap?” Conan Doyle asked.

“One of your fellow Scotsmen,” Wilde muttered. “But grew up in Connecticut. Speaks in an erudite Yankee accent with the odd Scots vowel sound tossed in to season the mulligan.”

“Oh gawd, a conjurer,” J.M. Barrie said in a dour voice. “I hate bloody conjurers!”

“Ladies and Gentleman,” the theater manager’s voice rose to a dramatic crescendo, “be prepared to be astonished. I give you, the wonder of the Americas. The wonder of London. The wonder of the world — Daniel Dunglas Hume!”

The spotlight swerved away from the emcee and focused upon a tall man who stepped from the wings. The crowd did not applaud, but seemed to be holding its collective breath. The band played a restless stir of cellos as the solitary figure strutted across the stage. He wore a full moustache, with no beard or cheek whiskers, and sported a fine head of hair with auburn curls that tickled the collar of his shirt and curled upon his noble brow. Hume was dressed in a black velvet jacket and serge gray trousers, a red jabot tied around his neck. In his right hand, he clutched a fine lace handkerchief, which added to his air of a dandy. His effect upon the female portion of the audience was apparent by the susurration of excited whispers and the way he drew their faces like needles to a lodestone. He stopped at the edge of the stage and bowed, his posture relaxed.

“Good evening, my British cousins.” His accent was indeed melliflously “Yankee.” “My name is Daniel Dunglas Hume. Tonight, I shall perform—”

“Levitate!” an uncouth Cockney voice bawled from the cheap seats up in the gods. “Come on, Yank! Let’s see ya fly!”

Hume’s composure never wavered. He held up a hand, importuning silence and began again. “I shall perform a number of wonders, but I regret to say that I am somewhat fatigued, having only recently arrived in your fine country. Every performance is slightly different and is dependent upon the cooperation of the spirits.” He smiled handsomely. “And what this tired old body can achieve.”

“Levitate!” the cockney voice howled again. “Let’s see ya lev—” There was a thud and a loud “ooooof” as someone took it upon himself to silence the heckler with a clenched fist driven between his shoulder blades.

Hume looked up and smiled, nodding in appreciation to his anonymous helper. “Tonight I shall—” He paused as something caught in his voice. The handkerchief flew up to cover his mouth as he coughed explosively. He seemed on the verge of a coughing fit, but visibly forced himself to relax. Having regained his composure, he pulled away the handkerchief and began again. “Teleportation… is the ability to move distant objects instantaneously through the power of the mind alone.”

This set the crowd abuzz with excited murmuring.

“But first… first I must pause to recognize the presence of genius amongst us.” He looked toward Conan Doyle and his companions. “Or, more correctly, the presence of three geniuses amongst us.” He gestured and a spotlight lit them up. “Tonight, we are graced with the presence of three of London’s greatest men of letters: Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, and J.M. Barrie. Gentleman, welcome.”

The delighted audience burst into thunderous applause. Oscar Wilde leapt to his feet, bowed his head, and made a salaam gesture to the crowd. J.M. Barrie stood up from his seat, (which made remarkably little difference to his height) and acknowledged the applause with a polite nod. When Conan Doyle rose, the applause subsided noticeably and was mixed with a low grumbling and scattered boos — apparently the news about the demise of Sherlock Holmes had followed him there, like his own personal rain cloud. He ducked his head in a quick bow and sat down again.

Hume strode to the very edge of the stage. “For this demonstration, I shall require the assistance of a member of the audience.”

A forest of hands went up. Hume pointed to a pretty young woman in the front row, a few seats from Conan Doyle.

“Young lady, do you have an object I could borrow, say a golden guinea?”

The young lady blushed and dropped her eyes bashfully, shaking her head.

“Obviously not a native of England,” Conan Doyle muttered to his companions. “Anyone could see from the young lady’s dress she’s a shop girl, unlikely to be carrying a golden guinea in her purse.”

“But I’m sure he’s already got a guinea up his sleeve,” Barrie whispered. “Ready to make the switch.”

“Mister Hume, if I might be so bold,” Wilde spoke up, rising from his seat. “I have an object the young lady might borrow.”

The spotlight swung over to fix him in its beam. Wilde reached inside his jacket pocket and took out what at first appeared to be a large coin. He held it aloft so that it sparkled in the light. “While attending Trinity College in Dublin, I was awarded the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek. It is one of my most treasured possessions and quite unique. You could not find its double anywhere in England.” Wilde threw Barrie a sardonic glance. “Therefore, I think it will make a perfect substitution for a golden guinea, any of which — as my friend J.M. Barrie aptly commented to me — could be quickly substituted by a magician of mundane talent.”

Hume smiled broadly. “An excellent observation, Mister Wilde, and I thank you — and Mister Barrie. Your gold medal will make an excellent substitute, and I promise it shall be safely returned to you.”

Wilde handed the medal to Conan Doyle, who admired it for a moment, and then handed it on. The medal was passed along the front row until the young lady received it.

Hume continued. “Although I have never seen this medal, I presume it is embossed with something approximating heads or tails. Would you agree, madam?”

She looked it over. “Yessir.” She spoke in a broad cockney accent. “It’s got an ’orse on one side an’ a castle on the other.”

“Well observed,” Hume said. “Now, young lady, when I give you the word, I want you to toss the medal and catch it on the back of your hand. I will attempt to discern whether it is heads or tails — castle or horse. Do you understand?”

The young woman nodded and smiled.

Hume stretched out his arm, the fingers of his hand extended. He lowered his head and appeared to concentrate. From the orchestra pit, a drum roll grumbled.

“On the count of three,” he said. “One… two… three!”

The young lady tossed the heavy medal into the air. It glittered in the spotlight as it spun and she caught it on the back of her hand. On stage, Hume closed his fingers and snatched back his hand. “Now tell us,” he said to the young lady, “is it heads or tails?”

The young lady lifted the hand trapping the medal and gawked with surprise.

Vanished.

She looked up at Hume with alarm. “It’s gone, sir!” she cried, jumping to her feet. “It’s gone. I dunno how, but it’s gone!”

The crowd gasped.

Hume did not move, milking the moment. Then he slowly extended his arm, the fingers of his hand clenched in a trembling fist.

“It’s in his hand,” Barrie whispered. “I’ll bet my life it’s in his hand.”

The entire audience leaned forward in its seats, craning to see, as Hume unfolded his fingers, one-by-one.

But the hand was empty.

Hume’s arm fell slack. He threw a defeated look at Oscar Wilde. “Mister Wilde, I am greatly embarrassed to admit it, but I seem to have lost your prized medal.”

For once, Oscar Wilde was speechless, his face stricken with a look of sick surprise.

Then Hume smacked a palm to his forehead, as if just realizing something. “Ah, I have found it.” He smiled at the Irish playwright. “Mister Wilde, if you could check the inside pocket of your jacket.”

Wilde fumbled in his inside pocket and drew out the Berkeley medal. A smile returned to his face as he rose from his seat and held the medal aloft to show the audience.

The audience burst into cheers. Hume took a modest bow.

But then the chants began: “Levitate… Levitate… Levitate…”

Hume raised both hands in an appeal to quiet the crowd, but his minor miracle had only made them hungrier for a big miracle: they wanted to see a man rise from the stage.

The shouts of “Levitate… Levitate… Levitate…” grew louder and masked the sound as Hume clamped the lace handkerchief to his face and his body was wracked with a coughing fit, his face visibly paling.

Conan Doyle turned to Wilde and had to shout to be heard. “The fellow’s not well!”

On stage, Hume had managed to stifle his coughing attack. He wiped his mouth with the handkerchief and waved a hand to silence the crowd. When the hubbub finally abated, he spoke in a ragged voice. “Very well, then. I shall attempt the levitation.”

The crowd roared with approval and burst once more into applause. Hume dropped his head, seeming to gather his energies. Silence fell as he raised both arms and lifted his gaze to the ceiling.

Moments passed. Nothing happened. A bead of sweat trickled from Hume’s hairline and ran down his cheek.

And then, slowly, imperceptibly, he seemed to grow taller. A cascade of gasps rippled from the front to the back rows of the theater as empty space appeared between the stage and the soles of Hume’s shoes. He rose slowly, hesitantly, into the air: a foot… two feet. When he reached three feet his ascent started to waver. His face was strained, running with sweat, a vein bulging on his forehead.

And then he began to sink. Slowly at first, and then he dropped the last foot to the stage, landing heavily. He forced a smile, dabbed at his sweating face with a handkerchief, and tried to make a showman-like flourish, but then his eyes rolled up into the back of his head as his legs buckled and he slumped to the boards.

Women screamed. The audience surged to its feet, as did Conan Doyle and his companions.

The manager, Mister Purvis, ran to the lip of the stage as several stagehands helped carry off Hume’s limp body. “Not to worry,” he flustered. “Mister Hume is simply tired from his travels. He will be topping the bill again tomorrow night, after he has had time to properly rest.” Purvis waved a frantic hand at the orchestra, which sought to cover Hume’s awkward departure with a cheerful blare of music.

J.M. Barrie leaned over and slapped a hand on Wilde’s shoulder. “You were right, Oscar,” he commented sardonically. “That was quite inexplicable.”