I then told her my news. Even when we were married and living together I had never revealed my past to her, so what I had to say to her was a triple surprise. Firstly I had to tell her that I had once renounced a family and estate of which she had never heard, secondly that I had now returned to it, and thirdly that as a consequence I had decided to abandon my stage career.
As I should have guessed in advance, Julia appeared to take all this calmly. (Only when I told her that she should henceforward be correctly addressed as Lady Julia did her composure momentarily break.) A little later, she asked me if I was sure I should abandon my career. I said I saw no alternative. She told me that although we were separated she had continued to follow my magic career with admiration, regretting only that she were no longer a part of it.
As we spoke I felt rising in me, or more correctly sinking out of me, a despair that I had thrown away my wife, and more unforgivably my splendid children, for the sake of the American woman.
Yesterday, before leaving London, I sought out Julia a second time. This time the children were not with her.
I threw myself at her mercy, and begged her forgiveness for all the sins I had committed against her. I pleaded with her to return to me, and live with me once more as my wife. I promised her anything in my power to grant, should she accept.
She said no, but promised that she would consider carefully. I deserve no better.
Later in the day I caught the overnight train to Sheffield. I thought of nothing but reconciliation with Julia.
14th November 1900
However, I am obliged to think of nothing but money, faced once more as I am with the realities of this decaying house.
It is ridiculous to be inconvenienced by shortage of money so soon after squandering that huge amount, so I have written to Tesla and demanded a refund of everything I paid him. It is nearly three months since I left Colorado Springs and I have not had a single word from him. He will have to pay, no matter what his circumstances, because at the same time I have written to the firm of attorneys in New York who aided me in a small legal matter during my last tour. I have instructed them to start proceedings against him from the first day of next month. If he refunds me immediately he receives my letter I shall call off the hounds, but he will have to take the consequences if he does not.
15th November 1900
I am about to return to London.
17th November 1900
I am back in Derbyshire, and weary of travelling on trains. I am not, however, weary of life.
Julia has put to me a proposition about a way we could possibly be together in the future. It boils down to my having to make a simple decision.
She says she will return to me, live with me once more as my wife, but only if I resume my magic career. She wishes me to leave Caldlow House and return to Idmiston Villas. She says that she and the children do not wish to move to a house in a remote and, to them, unknown part of Derbyshire. She has put the point to me in terms so simple that I know they are non-negotiable.
To try to persuade me that her proposal is also for my own good, she adds four general arguments.
First she says the stage is in her blood as much as mine, and that although she now sees the children as her first duty she would wish to participate wholly in all my future stage endeavours. (I presume by this she means I will not be allowed foreign tours without her, so there will be no risk of another Olivia Svenson coming between us.)
At the beginning of this year, she next argues, I was at the peak of my profession, but that by default the wretched Borden is on the brink of taking my laurels. Apparently, he is continuing to perform his version of the switch illusion.
Julia then reminds me that the only reliable way I know of earning money is to perform magic, and that I have a duty to go on supporting her as well as running the family estate she has never seen and had never heard of until last week.
Finally she points out that I will not lose my inheritance by continuing to work in London, and the house and everything that goes with the estate will still be waiting for me when the time comes for retirement. Urgent matters, such as repairs, can be managed from London almost as easily as from the house.
So I have returned to Derbyshire, ostensibly to attend to matters here, but in fact I do need some time alone to think.
I cannot walk away from my responsibilities in Caldlow House. There are the tenant farmers, the household staff, the commitments my family have traditionally made to the rural council, the church, the parishioners, and so on. I find myself taking these matters seriously, so I presume they have always been flowing, unsuspected, in the blood hitherto.
But what practical use can I be in any of these functions if I am to become, as seems likely, bankrupt?
19th November 1900
What I really want is to be with Julia and my family once more, but to do so means accepting Julia's terms. Moving back to London would not be difficult, but I do feel a terrific resistance to the idea of going back on the stage.
I have been away from it for just a few weeks, but I had not realized what a burden it had all become. I remember the day, back in Colorado Springs, when the news of Henry's death belatedly reached me. I thought nothing of Henry and his humiliating but appropriate demise in Paris. What I felt was for myself, a burst of relief, genuine and uplifting relief.
I would be free at last of the mental stresses and strains associated with performing illusions. There would be an end, a thankful end, to the daily hours of practice. No more overnight stays in appalling provincial hotels or seaside lodging houses. No more tiresome train journeys. I would be free of the ceaseless attention to practical matters; making sure the props and costumes would arrive in the same places as me and at the same time, checking the backstage areas of the theatres for the best use of my props, employing and paying the staff, and a hundred other minor chores. All these had suddenly vanished from my life.
And I had also thought about Borden. There was my unshakable foe, lurking out there in the world of magic, ready to resume his campaign of pranks against me.
If I never went back I would miss none of it. I had not realized how the resentment had been growing inside me.
But Julia tempts me.
There is the happy laughter from the audience when I work a surprising effect, the radiance of the lights beaming down upon me, the friendship of the other artistes I meet in the daily round, the applause at the end of my performance. Inevitably also, the fame, the admiring glances in the street, the respectful regard of my contemporaries, the recognition in the highest areas of society. No honest man could say these mean nothing to him.
And the money. How I crave the money!
It is of course no longer a question of what I will decide, but how soon I can convince myself I must do it.
20th November 1900
To London once more by train.
21st November 1900
I am at Idmiston Villas, and I have found here a letter from Alley, the assistant to Nikola Tesla. I now transcribe it:
September 27, 1900
Mr Angier, Sir:
I don't expect you have heard but Nikola Tesla has left Colorado already, and is rumored to have moved his operation to the East, probably to New York or New Jersey. His laboratory here has been seized by his creditors, and it is currently looking for a purchaser. I have been left in the lurch, with more than a month's pay due to me.
You will wish to know, however, that in some matters Mr Tesla is a man of honor, and before our work here was completed your equipment was as instructed shipped to your workshop.
Once the apparatus has been correctly put together (I wrote the assembly instructions myself) you will find it is in complete working order, and operates exactly to the agreed technical specification. The device is self-regulating, and should continue to work without adjustment or repair for many years. All you should do is keep it clean, brighten the electrical contact points should they become dull, and in general ensure that no physical damage goes unrepaired. (Mr Tesla enclosed a set of spares for those parts which will, in the ordinary course, require replacement. All the other parts, such as the wooden struts, may be replaced from normal sources.)