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Title: Toppleton's Client
or, A Spirit in Exile
Author: John Kendrick Bangs
Release Date: October 30, 2010 [EBook #34171]
Language: English
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TOPPLETON'S CLIENT
OR
_A SPIRIT IN EXILE_
BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
NEW YORK
CHARLES L. WEBSTER & COMPANY
1893
TO
F. D. S.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
INTRODUCING MR. HOPKINS TOPPLETON 1
CHAPTER II.
MR. HOPKINS TOPPLETON LEASES AN OFFICE 13
CHAPTER III.
MR. HOPKINS TOPPLETON ENCOUNTERS A WEARY SPIRIT 25
CHAPTER IV.
THE WEARY SPIRIT GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF 39
CHAPTER V.
HOPKINS BECOMES BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THE WEARY
SPIRIT 55
CHAPTER VI.
THE SPIRIT UNFOLDS A HORRID TALE 73
CHAPTER VII.
A CHAPTER OF PROFIT AND LOSS 90
CHAPTER VIII.
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN THE MAKING OF A NAME 107
CHAPTER IX.
THE CROWNING ACT OF INFAMY 124
CHAPTER X.
THE SPIRIT'S STORY IS CONCLUDED 149
CHAPTER XI.
TOPPLETON CONSULTS THE LAW AND FORMS AN OPINION 167
CHAPTER XII.
TOPPLETON MAKES A FAIR START 184
CHAPTER XIII.
AT BARNCASTLE HALL 201
CHAPTER XIV.
THE DINNER AND ITS RESULT 218
CHAPTER XV.
BARNCASTLE CONFIDES IN HOPKINS 233
CHAPTER XVI.
MR. HOPKINS TOPPLETON MAKES A DISCOVERY 251
CHAPTER XVII.
EPILOGUE 268
TOPPLETON'S CLIENT.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCING MR. HOPKINS TOPPLETON.
MR. HOPKINS TOPPLETON, Barrister of London and New York, was considered
by his intimates a most fortunate young man. He was accounted the happy
possessor of an income of something over fifty thousand dollars a year,
derived from investments which time had shown to be as far removed from
instability, and as little influenced by the fluctuations of the stock
market, as the pyramids of Egypt themselves. Better than this, however,
better even than personal beauty, with which he was plentifully endowed,
Mr. Hopkins Toppleton was blessed with a great name, which he had
received ready-made from his illustrious father, late head of the legal
firm of Toppleton, Morley, Harkins, Perkins, Mawson, Bronson, Smithers
and Hicks. The value of the name to Hopkins was unquestionable, since it
enabled him, at his father's death, to enter that famous aggregation of
legal talent as a special partner, although his knowledge of law was
scant, receiving a share of the profits of the concern for the use of
his patronymic, which, owing to his father's pre-eminent success at the
Bar, Messrs. Morley, Harkins, _et al._, were anxious to retain. This
desire of Mr. Toppleton's late associates was most natural, for such was
the tremendous force exerted by the name he bore, that plaintiffs when
they perceived it arrayed in opposition to their claims, not
infrequently withdrew their suits, or offered terms upon which any
defendant of sense might be induced to compromise. On the other hand,
when a defendant found himself confronted with the fact that Hopkins
Toppleton, Sen., had joined forces with the plaintiff, he usually either
settled the claim against him in full or placed himself beyond the
jurisdiction of the courts.
When Toppleton, Sen., died, it was very generally believed that the
firm, whose name has already been mentioned at some length, lost not
only its head, but also a very large proportion of its brains,--a
situation quite as logical as it was unfortunate for the gentlemen with
whom Mr. Toppleton had been associated. Nor was this feeling, that with
the departure of Toppleton, the illustrious, for other worlds the firm
was deprived of a most considerable portion of its claims to high
standing, confined to cavilling outsiders. No one recognized the unhappy
state of affairs at the busy office on Broadway more quickly than did
Messrs. Morley, Harkins, Perkins, Mawson, Bronson, Smithers, and Hicks
themselves, and at the first meeting of the firm, after the funeral of
their dead partner, these gentlemen unanimously resolved that something
must be done.
It was at this meeting that Mr. Hicks suggested that the only course
left for the bereaved firm to pursue, if it desired to remain an
aggressive force in its chosen profession, was to retain the name of
Toppleton at the mast-head, and, as Mr. Mawson put it, "to bluff it
out." Mr. Perkins agreed with Mr. Hicks, and suggested that the only
honest way to do this was to induce Mr. Toppleton's only son, known to
all--even to the clerks in the office--as Hoppy, to enter the firm as a
full partner.
"I do not think," Mr. Perkins said, "that it is quite proper for us to
assume a virtue that we do not possess, and while Hoppy--I should say
Hopkins--has never studied law, I think he could be induced to do so, in
which event he could be taken in here, and we should have a perfectly
equitable claim to all the business which the name of Toppleton would
certainly bring to us."
"I am afraid," Mr. Bronson put in at this point, "I am very much afraid
that such a course would require the entire reorganization of the firm's
machinery. It would never do for the member whose name stands at the
head of our partnership designation, to be on such terms of intimacy
with the office boys, for instance, as to permit of his being addressed
by them as Hoppy; nor would it conduce toward good discipline, I am
convinced, for the nominal head of the concern to be engaged in making
pools on baseball games with our book-keepers and clerks, which, during
his lamented father's life, I understand was one of the lad's most
cherished customs. Now, while I agree with my friend Perkins that it is
desirable that the firm should have an unassailable basis for its
retention of the name of Toppleton, I do not agree with him that young
Hopkins should be taken in here if we are to retain our present highly
efficient force of subordinates. They would be utterly demoralized in
less than a month."
"But what do you suggest as an alternative?" inquired Mr. Morley.
"I believe that we should make Hopkins a special partner in the firm,
and have him travel abroad for his health," returned Mr. Bronson after a
moment's reflection.
"I regret to say," objected Mr. Hicks, "that Hoppy's health is
distressingly good. Your point in regard to the probable demoralization
of our office force, however, is well taken. Hopkins must go abroad if
he becomes one of us; but I suggest that instead of sending him for his
health, we establish a London branch office, and put him in charge on a
salary of, say, 10,000 dollars. We have no business interests outside of
this country, so that such a course, in view of his absolute ignorance
of law, would be perfectly safe, and we could give Hoppy to understand
in the event of his acceptance of our proposition that he shall be free
to take a vacation whenever he pleases, for as long a period of time as
he pleases, and the oftener the better."
"That's the best plan, I think," said Mr. Mawson. "In fact, if Hoppy
declines that responsible office, I wouldn't mind taking it myself."
And so it happened. The proposition was made to Hopkins, and he accepted
it with alacrity. He did not care for the practice of the law, but he
had no objection to receiving an extra ten thousand dollars a year as a
silent partner in a flourishing concern with headquarters in London,
particularly when his sole duties were to remain away from the office on
a perpetual vacation.
"I was born with a love of rest," Hoppy once said in talking over his
prospects with his friends some time before the proposition of his
father's partners had been submitted to him. "Even as a baby I was fond
of it. I remember my mother saying that I slept for nearly the whole of
my first year of existence, and when I came to my school days my
reputation with my teachers was, that in the enjoyment of recess and in
assiduous devotion to all that pertained to a life of elegant leisure,
there was not a boy in school who could approach me."
The young man never railed at fate for compelling him to lead a life
which would have filled others of robuster ideas with ennui, but he did
on occasions find fault with the powers for having condemned him to
birth in a country like the United States, where the man of leisure is
regarded with less of reverence than of derision.
"It is a no harder fate for the soul of an artist to dwell in the body
of a pork-packer," he had said only the night before the plan outlined
by Mr. Hicks was brought to his attention, "than for a man of my restful
tendencies to be at home in a land where the hustler alone inspires
respect. What the fates should have done in my case was clearly to have
had me born a rich duke or a prince, whose chief duty it would be to
lead the fashionable world and to set styles of dress for others to
follow. I'd have made a magnificent member of the House of Lords, or
proprietor of a rich estate somewhere in England, with nothing to do but
to spend my income and open horse shows; but in New York there is no
leisure class of recognized standing, excepting, of course, the
messenger-boys and the plumbers, and even they do not command the
respect which foreign do-nothings inspire. It's hard luck. The only
redeeming feature of the case is that owing to a high tariff I can spend
my money with less effort here than I could abroad."
Then came the proposition from the firm, and in it Hoppy recognized the
ingredients of the ideal life--a life of rest in a country capable of
understanding the value to society of the drones, a life free from
responsibility, yet possessing a semblance of dignity bound to impress
those unacquainted with the real state of affairs. Added to this was the
encouragement which an extra ten thousand a year must invariably bring
to the man appointed to receive it.
"It's just what I needed," he said to Mr. Hicks, "to make my income
what it ought to be. Fifty thousand dollars is, of course, a handsome
return from investments, but it is an awkward sum to spend. It doesn't
divide up well. But sixty thousand a year is simply ideal. Twelve goes
into sixty five times, and none over--five thousand a month means
something, and doesn't complicate accounts. Besides, the increase will
pay the interest on a yacht nicely."
"You are a great boy, Hoppy," said Mr. Hicks, when the young man had
thus unbosomed himself, "but I doubt if you will ever be a great man."
"Oh, I don't know," said Hoppy; "there's no telling what may develop. Of
course, Mr. Hicks, I shall go into the study of the law very seriously;
I couldn't think of accepting your offer without making some effort to
show that I deserved it. I shall give up the reading of my irresponsible
days, and take to reading law. I shall stop my subscription to the
sporting papers, and take the _Daily Register_ and _Court Calendar_
instead, and if you think it would be worth while I might also subscribe
to the _Albany Law Journal_, with which interesting periodical I am
already tolerably familiar, having kept my father's files in order for
some years."
"No, Hoppy," said Mr. Hicks, with a smile, "I don't think you'd better
give up the sporting papers; 'all work and no play makes Jack a dull
boy.'"
"Perhaps you are right," said Hopkins, in reply to this. "But I _shall_
read Blackstone, and accumulate a library on legal subjects, Mr. Hicks.
In that I am firm. I am a good deal of a book-lover anyhow, and since
law is to be my profession I might as well suit my books to my needs.
I'll order a first edition of Blackstone at once."
"You'd better get the comic Blackstone," said Mr. Hicks, gravely. "You
will find it a very interesting book."
"Very well, Mr. Hicks," returned the amiable head-partner-elect of the
famous legal firm, "I'll make a note of that. I will also purchase the
'Newgate Calendar,' and any other books you may choose to
recommend,--and I tell you what, Mr. Hicks, when my collection gets
going it will be the talk of the town. I'll have 'em all in absolute
firsts, and as for the bindings, your old yellow-backed tomes at the
office will be cast utterly in the shade by my full crushed levant
morocco books in rich reds and blues. Just think of the hundred or more
volumes of New York reports in Russia leather, Mr. Hicks!"
"It takes my breath away, Hoppy," returned the lawyer. "Every one of the
volumes will be absolutely uncut, I suppose, eh?"
"Never you mind about that," retorted Hopkins; "you think I'm joking,
but you'll find your mistake some day. I'm serious in this business,
though I think I'll begin my labours by taking a winter at Nice."
"That is wise," said Mr. Hicks, approvingly; "and then you might put in
the summer in Norway, devoting the spring and autumn to rest and quiet."
"I'll think about that," Hopkins answered; "but the first step to take,
really, is to pack up my things here, and sail for London and secure an
office."
"A very proper sentiment, my dear boy," returned Mr. Hicks; "but let me
advise you, do not be rash about plunging into the professional vortex.
Remember that at present your knowledge of the law is limited entirely
to your theories as to what it ought to be, and law is seldom that; nor
must you forget that in asking you to represent us in London, it is not
our desire to inflict upon you any really active work. We simply desire
you to live in an atmosphere that, to one of your tastes, is necessarily
broadening, and if you find it advisable to pursue intellectual breadth
across the continent of Europe to the uttermost parts of the earth, you
will find that the firm stands ready to furnish you with material
assistance, and to remove all obstacles from your path."
"Thanks for your kindness, Mr. Hicks," said Hopkins. "I shall endeavour
to prove myself worthy of it."
"I have no doubt of it, my boy," rejoined Mr. Hicks, rising. "And, in
parting with you, let me impress upon you the importance, both to you
and to ourselves in the present stage of your legal development, of the
maxim, that to a young lawyer not sure of his law, and devoid of
experience, there is nothing quite so dangerous as a client. Avoid
clients, Hoppy, as you would dangerous explosives. Many a young lawyer
has seemed great until fate has thrown a client athwart his path."
With these words, designed quite as much for the protection of the firm,
as for the edification of that concern's new head, Mr. Hicks withdrew,
and Hopkins turned his attention to preparations for departure; paying
his bills, laying in a stock of cigars, and instructing his valet as to
the disposition of his lares and penates. Four weeks later he sailed for
London, arriving there in good shape early in June, ready for all the
delights of the season, then at its height.
It was not until Hopkins had been four days at sea, that the firm of
Toppleton, Morley, Harkins, Perkins, Mawson, Bronson, Smithers, and
Hicks learned that the new partner had presided at a Coney Island
banquet, given by himself to the office-boys, clerks, book-keepers, and
stenographers of the firm, on the Saturday half-holiday previous to his
departure. It is doubtful if this appalling fact would have come to
light even then, had not Mr. Mawson, in endeavouring to discharge one of
the office-boys for insubordination, been informed by the delinquent
that he defied him; the senior member of the firm, the departed Hoppy,
having promised to retain the youth in his employ at increased wages,
until he was old enough to go to London, and assist him in looking after
the interests of his clients abroad. An investigation, which followed,
showed that Hopkins had celebrated his departure in the manner
indicated, and also divulged the interesting fact that the running
expenses of the office, according to the new partner's promises, were
immediately to be increased at least twenty-five per cent. per annum in
salaries.
CHAPTER II.
MR. HOPKINS TOPPLETON LEASES AN OFFICE.
IT did not take Hopkins many days to discover that a life of elegant
leisure in London approximates labour of the hardest sort. Nor was it
entirely easy for him to spend his one thousand pounds a month, with
lodgings for his headquarters. This fact annoyed him considerably, for
he valued money only for what it could bring him, and yet how else to
live than in lodgings he could not decide. Hotel life he abhorred, not
only because he considered its excellence purely superficial, but also
because it brought him in contact with what he called his "flash-light
fellow countrymen, with Wagnerian voices and frontier manners"--by which
I presume he meant the diamond studded individuals who travel on Cook's
Tickets, and whose so-called Americanism is based on the notion that
Britons are still weeping over the events of '76, and who love to send
patriotic allusions to the star-spangled banner echoing down through
the corridors of the hotels, out and along the Thames Embankment, to
the very doors of parliament itself.
"Why don't you buy a house-boat?" asked one of his cronies, to whom he
had confided his belief that luxurious ease was hard on the
constitution. "Then you can run off up the Thames, and loaf away the
tedious hours of your leisure."
"That's an idea worth considering," he replied, "and perhaps I'll try it
on next summer. I do not feel this year, however, that I ought to desert
London, considering the responsibilities of my position."
"What are you talking about?" said the other with a laugh.
"Responsibilities! Why, man, you haven't been to your office since you
arrived."
"No," returned Hoppy, "I haven't. In fact I haven't got an office to 'be
to.' That's what bothers me so like thunder. I've looked at plenty of
offices advertised as for rent for legal firms, but I'll be hanged if I
can find anything suitable. Your barristers over here have not as good
accommodations as we give obsolete papers at home. Our pigeon-holes are
palatial in comparison with your office suites, and accustomed as I am
to breathing fresh air, I really can't stand the atmosphere I have been
compelled to take into my lungs in the rooms I have looked at."
"But, my dear fellow, what more than a pigeon-hole do you need?" asked
his friend. "You are not called upon to attend to any business here. A
post-office box would suffice for the receipt of communications from
America."
"That's all true enough," returned Hopkins, "but where am I to keep my
law library? And what am I to do in case I should have a client?"
"Keep your books in your lodgings, and don't count your clients before
they get into litigation," replied the other.
"My dear Tutterson," Hopkins said in answer to this, "you are the
queerest mixture of common sense and idiotcy I have ever encountered. My
library at home, indeed! Haven't you any better sense than to suggest my
carrying my profession into my home life? Do you suppose I want to be
reminded at every step I take that I am a lawyer? Must my business be
rammed down my throat at all hours? Am I never to have relaxation from
office cares? Indeed, I'll not have a suggestion of law within a mile of
my lodgings! I must have an office; but now that I think of it, not
having to go to the office from one year's end to another, it makes no
difference whether it consists of the ground floor of Buckingham Palace
or a rear cell three flights up, in Newgate Prison."
"Except," returned Tutterson, "that if you had the office at Newgate you
might do more business than if you shared Buckingham Palace with the
Royal family."
"Yes; and on the other hand, the society at the palace is probably more
desirable than that of Newgate; so each having equal advantages, I think
I'd better compromise and take an office out near the Tower," said
Hopkins. "The location is quite desirable from my point of view. It
would be so inaccessible that I should have a decent excuse for not
going there, and besides, I reduce my chances of being embarrassed by a
client to a minimum."
"That is where you are very much mistaken," said Tutterson. "If you hang
your shingle out by the Tower, you will be one lawyer among a hundred
Beef-Eaters, and therefore distinguished, and likely to be sought out by
clients. On the other hand, if you behave like a sensible man, and take
chambers in the Temple, you'll be an unknown attorney among a thousand
Q.C's. And as for the decent excuse for not attending to business, you
simply forget that you are no longer in America but in England. Here a
man needs an excuse for going to work. Trade is looked down upon. It is
the butterfly we esteem, not the grub. A man who _will_ work when he
doesn't need to work, is looked upon with distrust. Society doesn't
cultivate him, and the million regard him with suspicion,--and the
position of both is distinctly logical. He who serves is a servant, and
society looks upon him as such, and when he insists upon serving without
the necessity to serve, he diminishes by just so much the opportunities
of some poor devil to whom opportunity is bread and butter, which sets
the poor devil against him. You do not need an excuse for neglecting
business, Toppleton, and, by Jove, if it wasn't for your beastly
American ideas, you'd apologize to yourself for even thinking of such a
thing."
"Well, I fancy you are right," replied Toppleton. "To tell you the
truth, I never thought of it in that light before. There is value in a
leisure class, after all. It keeps the peach-blow humanity from
competing with the earthenware, to the disadvantage of the latter. I see
now why the lower and middle classes so dearly love the lords and dukes
and other noble born creatures Nature has set above them. It is the
generous self-denial of the aristocracy in the matter of work, and the
consequent diminution of competition, that is the basis of that love.
I'll do as you say, and see what I can do in the Temple. Even if a
client should happen to stray in at one of those rare moments when I am
on duty, I can assume a weary demeanour and tell him that I have already
more work on my hands than I can accomplish with proper deference to my
health, and request him to take his quarrel elsewhere."
So the question was settled. An office was taken in the Temple. Hopkins
bought himself a wig and a gown, purchased a dozen tin boxes, each
labelled with the hypothetical name of some supposititious client, had
the room luxuriously fitted up, arranged his law library, consisting of
the "Comic Blackstone," "Bench and Bar," by Sergeant Ballantyne, the
"Newgate Calendar," and an absolute first of "Parsons on Contracts," on
the mahogany shelves he had had constructed there; hung out a shingle
announcing himself and firm as having headquarters within, and, placing
beneath it a printed placard to the effect that he had gone out to
lunch, he turned the key in the door and departed with Tutterson for a
trip to the land of the Midnight Sun.
Now it so happened, that the agent having in charge the particular
section of the Temple in which Hopkins' new office was located, had
concealed from the young American the fact that for some twenty-five or
thirty years, the room which Toppleton had leased had remained
unoccupied--that is, it had never been occupied for any consecutive
period of time during that number of years. Tenants had come but had as
quickly gone. There was something about the room that no one seemed able
to cope with. Luxuriously furnished or bare, it made no difference in
the fortunes of Number 17, from the doors of which now projected the
sign of Toppleton, Morley, Harkins, Perkins, Mawson, Bronson, Smithers,
and Hicks. Just what the trouble was, the agent had not been able to
determine in a manner satisfactory to himself until about a year before
Hopkins happened in to negotiate with him for a four years' lease.
Departing tenants, when they had spoken to him at all on the subject,
had confined themselves to demands for a rebate on rents paid in
advance, on the rather untenable ground that the room was uncanny and
depressing.
"We can't stand it," they had said, earnestly. "There must be some awful
mystery connected with the room. There has been a murder, or a suicide,
or some equally dreadful crime committed within its walls at some time
or another."
This, of course, the agent always strenuously denied, and his books
substantiated his denial. The only possible crime divulged by the books,
was thirty-three years back when an occupant departed without paying his
rent, but that surely did not constitute the sort of crime that would
warrant the insinuation that the room was haunted.
"And as for your statement that the room makes you feel weird and
depressed," the agent had added with the suggestion of a sneer, "I am
sure there is nothing in the terms of the lease which binds me to keep
tenants in a natural and cheerful frame of mind. I can't help it, you
know, if you get the blues or eat yourselves into a state that makes
that room seem to you to be haunted."
"But," one expostulating tenant had observed, "but, my dear sir, I am
given to understand that the five tenants preceding my occupancy left
for precisely the same reason, that the office at times is suffocatingly
weird; and that undefined whispers are to be heard playing at puss in
the corner with heart-rending sighs at almost any hour of the day or
night throughout the year, cannot be denied."
"Well, all I've got to say about that," was the agent's invariable
reply, "is that _I_ never saw a sigh or heard a whisper of a
supernatural order in that room, and if you want to go to law with a
case based on a Welsh rarebit diet, just do it. If the courts decide
that I owe you money, and must forfeit my lease rights because you have
dyspepsia, I'll turn over the whole business to you and join the army."
Of course this independent attitude of the agent always settled the
question at once. His tenants, however insane they might appear to the
agent's eyes, were invariably sane enough not to carry the matter to the
courts, where it was hardly possible that a plaintiff could be relieved
of the conditions of his contract, because his office gave him a megrim,
super-induced by the visit of a disembodied sigh.
Judges are hard-headed, practical persons, who take no stock in spirits
not purely liquid, realizing which the tenants of Number 17, without
exception, wisely resolved to suffer in silence, invariably leaving the
room, however, in a state of disuse encouraging to cobwebs, which would
have delighted the soul of a connoisseur in wines.
"If I can't make the rent of the room, I can at least raise cobwebs for
innkeepers to use in connection with their wine cellars," said the agent
to himself with a sad chuckle, which showed that he was possessed of a
certain humorous philosophy which must have been extremely consoling to
him.
At the end of three years of abortive effort to keep the room rented,
impelled partly by curiosity to know if anything really was the matter
with the office, partly by a desire to relieve the building of the odium
under which the continued emptiness of one of its apartments had placed
it, the agent moved into Number 17 himself.
His tenancy lasted precisely one week, at the end of which time he moved
out again. He, too, had heard the undefined whispers and disembodied
sighs; he, too, had trembled with awe when the uncanny quality of the
atmosphere clogged up his lungs and set his heart beating at a galloping
pace; he, too, decided that so far as he was concerned life in that
office was intolerable, and he acted accordingly. He departed, and from
that moment No. 17 was entered on his books no longer as for rent as an
office, but was transferred to the list of rooms mentioned as desirable
for storage purposes.
To the agent's credit be it said that when Hopkins Toppleton came along
and desired to rent the apartment for office use his first impulse was
to make a clean breast of the matter, and to say to him that in his own
opinion and that of others the room was haunted and had been so for many
years; but when he reflected that his conscience, such as it was, along
with the rest of his being, was in the employ of the proprietors of the
building, he felt that it was his duty to hold his peace. Toppleton had
been informed that the room was useful chiefly for storage purposes, and
if he chose to use it as an office, it was his own affair. In addition
to this, the agent had a vague hope that Hopkins, being an American and
used to all sorts of horrible things in his native land--such as
boa-constrictors on the streets, buffaloes in the back yard, and Indians
swarming in the suburbs of the cities,--would be able to cope with the
invisible visitant, and ultimately either subdue or drive the
disembodied sigh into the spirit vale. In view of these facts,
therefore, it was not surprising that when Hopkins had finally signed a
four years' lease and had taken possession, the agent should give a sigh
of relief, and, on his return home, inform his wife that she might treat
herself to a new silk dress.
During the few weeks which elapsed between the signing of the lease and
Hopkins' ostensible departure on a three months' lunching tour, he was
watched with considerable interest by the agent, but, until the "Gone to
Lunch" placard was put up, the latter saw no sign that Hopkins had
discovered anything wrong with the office, and even then the agent
thought nothing about it until the placard began to accumulate dust.
Then he shook his head and silently congratulated himself that the rent
had been paid a year in advance; "for," he said, "if he hasn't gone to
New York to lunch, the chances are that that sigh has got to work again
and frightened him into an unceremonious departure." Neither of which
hypotheses was correct, for as we have already heard, Hopkins had
departed for Norway.
As for the sigh, the young lawyer had heard it but once. That was when
he was about leaving the room for his three months' tour, and he had
attributed it to the soughing of the wind in the trees outside of his
window, which was indeed an error, as he might have discovered at the
time had he taken the trouble to investigate, for there were no trees
outside of his window through whose branches a wind could have soughed
even if it had been disposed to do so.
CHAPTER III.
MR. HOPKINS TOPPLETON ENCOUNTERS A WEARY SPIRIT.
IT was well along in October when Hopkins returned to London, and he got
back to his office in the Temple none too soon. The agent had fully made
up his mind that he was gone for good, and was about taking steps to
remove his effects from Number 17, and gain an honest penny by
sub-letting that light and airy apartment for his own benefit, a vision
of profit which Toppleton redivivus effectually dispelled.
The return, for this reason, was of course a grave disappointment to Mr.
Stubbs, but he rose to the occasion when the long lost lessee appeared
on the scene, and welcomed him cordially.
"Good morning, sir," he said. "Glad to see you back. Didn't know what
had become of you or should have forwarded your mail. Have a pleasant
trip?"
"Very," said Toppleton, shortly.
"It seems to have agreed with you,--you've a finer colour than you had."
"Yes," replied Hopkins, drily. "That's natural. I've been to Norway. The
sun's been working day and night, and I'm tanned."
"I hope everything is--er--everything was all right with the room, sir?"
the agent then said somewhat anxiously.
"I found nothing wrong with it," said Hopkins; "did you suspect that
anything was wrong there?"
"Oh, no!--indeed not. Of course not," returned the agent with some
confusion. "I only asked--er--so that in case there was anything you
wanted, you know, it might be attended to at once. There's nothing wrong
with the room at all, sir. Nothing. Absolutely nothing."
"Well, that's good," said Toppleton, turning to his table. "I'm glad
there's nothing the matter. It will take a very small percentage of the
rental to remedy that. Good morning, Mr. Stubbs."
"Good morning, sir," said Mr. Stubbs, and then he departed.
"Now for the mail," said Hopkins, grasping his letter-opener, and
running it deftly through the flap of a communication from Mr. Morley,
written two months previously.
"Dear Hoppy," he read. "We have just been informed of your singular act
on the Saturday previous to your departure for London."
"Hm! what the deuce did I do then?" said Hopkins, stroking his moustache
thoughtfully. "Let me see. 'Singular act.' I've done quite a number of
singular things on Saturdays, but what--Oh, yes! Ha, ha! That Coney
Island dinner. Oh, bosh!--what nonsense! as if my giving the boys a
feast were going to hurt the prospects of a firm like ours. By George,
it'll work just the other way. It'll fill the force with an enthusiasm
for work which--"
Here Hopkins stopped for a moment to say, "Come in!" Somebody had
knocked, he thought. But the door remained closed.
"Come in!" he cried again.
Still there was no answer, and on walking to the door and opening it,
Toppleton discovered that his ears had deceived him. There was no one
there, nor was there any sign of life whatever in the hallway.
"I'm glad," he said, returning to his chair and taking up Mr. Morley's
letter once more. "It might have been a client, and to a man at the
head of a big firm who has never been admitted to practice in any court
or country, that would be an embarrassment to say the least. It's queer
though, about that knock. I certainly heard one. Maybe there is some
telepathic influence between Morley and me. He usually punctuates his
complaints with a whack on a table or back of a chair. That's what it
must have been; but let's see what else he has to say."
"Of course," he read, "if you desire to associate with those who are
socially and professionally your inferiors, we have nothing to say. That
is a matter entirely beyond our jurisdiction, but when you commit the
firm to outrageous expenditures simply to gratify your own love of
generosity, it is time to call a halt."
"What the devil is he talking about?" said Hopkins, putting the letter
down. "I paid for that dinner out of my own pocket, and never charged
the firm a cent, even though it does indirectly reap all the benefits.
I'll have to write Morley and call his attention to that fact. How
vulgar these disputes--"
At this point he was again interrupted by a sound which, in describing
it afterwards, he likened to a ton of aspirates sliding down a coal
chute.
"This room appears to be an asylum for strange noises," said he, looking
about him to discover, if possible, whence this second interruption
came. "I don't believe Morley feels badly enough about my behaviour for
one of his sighs to cross the ocean and greet my ears, but I'm hanged if
I know how else to account for it, unless there's a speaking tube with a
whistle in it somewhere hereabouts. I wonder if that's what Stubbs
meant!" he added, reflecting.
"Bah!" he said in answer to his own question, picking up Mr. Morley's
letter for a third time. "This is the nineteenth century. Weird sounds
are mortal-made these days, and I'm not afraid of them. If there were
anything supernatural about them, why didn't the air get blue, and
where's my cold chill and my hair standing erect? I fancy I'll retain my
composure until the symptoms are a little more strongly developed."
Here he returned to his reading.
"We desire to have you explain to us, at your earliest convenience," the
letter went on to say, "why you have so extravagantly raised the salary
of every man, woman and child in our employ, utterly regardless of
merit, and without consultation with those with whom you have been
associated, to such a figure that the firm has been compelled to reduce
its autumn dividend to meet the requirements of the pay roll. Your
probable answer will be, I presume,--knowing your extraordinary
resources in the matter of explanations--that you cannot consent to be a
mere figure-head, and that you considered it your duty to impress upon
our clerks the fact that you are not what they might suspect under the
circumstances, but a vital, moving force in the concern; but you may as
well spare yourself the trouble of making any such explanation, since it
will not be satisfactory either to myself or to the other members of the
firm, with the possible exception of our friend Mawson, who, with his
customary about-town manners, is disposed to make light of the matter.
We desire to have you distinctly understand that your duties are to be
confined entirely to the London office, and to add that were it not for
your esteemed father's sake we should at once cancel our agreement with
you. The name you bear, honoured as it is in our profession, is of great
value to us: but it is, after all, a luxury rather than a necessity, and
in these hard times we are strongly inclined to dispense with luxuries
whenever we find them too expensive for our pockets."
Hopkins paused in his reading and pursed his lips to give a long, low
whistle, a sound which was frozen _in transitu_, for the lips were no
sooner pursed than there came from a far corner the very sound that he
had intended to utter.
For the first time in his life Toppleton knew what fear was; for the
first time since he was a boy, when he wore it that way, did he become
conscious that his hair stood upon end. His blood seemed to congeal in
his veins, and his heart for a moment ceased to beat, and then, as if
desirous of making up for lost time, began to thump against his ribs at
lightning pace and with such force that Hopkins feared it might break
the crystal of the watch which he carried in the upper left-hand pocket
of his vest.
Mr. Morley's letter fluttered from his nerveless hand to the floor, and,
despite its severity, was forgotten before it touched the handsome rug
beneath Hopkins' table. The new sensation--the sensation of fear--had
taken possession of his whole being, and, for an instant, he was as one
paralyzed. Then, recovering his powers of motion, he whirled about in
his revolving chair and started to his feet as if he had been shot.
"This is unbearable!" he cried, glancing nervously about the room. "It's
bad enough to have an office-boy who whistles, but when you get the
whistle in the abstract without the advantage of the office-boy, it is
too much."
Then Hopkins rang the bell and summoned the janitor.
"Tell the agent I want to see him," he said when that worthy appeared,
and then, returning to his desk, he sat down and mechanically opened a
copy of the _Daily Register_ and tried to read it.
"It's no use," he cried in a moment, crumpling the paper into a ball and
throwing it across the room. "That vile whistle has regularly knocked me
out."
The paper ball reached the door just as the agent entered, and struck
him athwart the watch chain.
"Beg pardon," said Hopkins, "I didn't mean that for you. Everything here
seems to be bewitched this morning, that dull compilation of legal woe
included."
"It's of no consequence, sir, I assure you," returned the agent
uneasily.
"No, I don't think it amounts to a row of beans to a man who hates
trouble," said Hopkins, referring more to the journal than to the
untoward act of the paper ball. "But I say, Mr. Stubbs, I've been having
a devil of a time in this room this morning, and when I say devil I mean
devil."
Stubbs paled visibly. The moment he had feared had come.
"Wh--wh--what sus--seems to b--be the m--mum--matter, sir?" he
stammered.
"Nothing seems, something _is_ the matter," returned Hopkins. "I don't
wonder you stammer. You'd stammer worse if you had been here with me
three minutes ago. Stubbs, I believe this room is haunted!"
Mr. Stubbs's efforts at surprise at this point were painful to witness.
"Haunted, sir?" he said.
"Yes, haunted!" retorted Hopkins; "and by a confoundedly impertinent
something or other that not only sighs and knocks on the door but
whistles, Stubbs--actually whistles. Has this room a history?"
"Well, a sort of a one," returned Stubbs; "but I never heard any one
complain about it on the score of whistling, sir."
"Stubbs, I believe you are lying. Hasn't somebody killed an office-boy
in this apartment, for whistling?" queried Hopkins, gazing sternly at
the shuffling agent.
"I'll take an affidavit that nothing of the kind ever happened,"
returned the agent, gaining confidence.
"That won't be necessary," said Toppleton. "I am satisfied with your
assurance. But, Stubbs, to what do you attribute these beastly
disturbances? Ghosts?"
"Of course not, Mr. Toppleton," replied Mr. Stubbs. "I fancy you must
have heard some boy whistling in the hall."
"How about the knock and the sigh?" demanded the American.
"The knock is easily accounted for," returned the agent. "Somebody in
the room above you must have dropped something on the floor, while the
sigh was probably the wind blowing through the key-hole."
"Or a bit of fog coming down the chimney, eh, Stubbs?" put in Hopkins,
satirically.
"No, sir," replied poor Stubbs, growing red where he had been white;
"there is no fog to-day, sir."
"True, Stubbs; and you will likewise observe there is no wind to sough
through key-holes," retorted Hopkins, severely, rising and walking to
the window.
Stubbs stood motionless, without an answer. Toppleton had cornered him
in a flimsy pretext, and then came the climax to his horrible
experience.
From behind him in the corner whence had come the sigh and the whistle,
there now proceeded a smothered laugh--a sound which curdled his blood
and left him so limp that he staggered to the mantel and grasped it to
keep himself from falling to the floor.
Hopkins turned upon him, his face livid with anger, and the two men
gazed at each other in silence for a moment, the one endeavouring to
master his fear, the other to smother his wrath.
"Do you mean to insult me, Mr. Stubbs, by laughing in my face when I
send for you to request explanations as to the conduct--as to
the--er--the conduct of your room? It sounds ridiculous to say that, but
there is no other way to put it, for it _is_ the conduct of the room of
which I complain. What do you mean by your ill-timed levity?"
"I pass you my word, Mr. Toppleton, I will swear to you, sir, that
nothing was further from my thoughts than mirth. I agree with you that
it is no laughing matter for--"
"But I heard you laugh," said Toppleton, eyeing the agent, his anger now
not unmixed with awe. "You laughed as plainly as it is possible for any
one to laugh, except that you endeavoured to smother the sound."
"I did nothing of the sort, Mr. Toppleton," pleaded Stubbs, his hand
shaking and his eyes wandering fearsomely over toward the mysterious
corner where all was still and innocent-looking. "That laugh came from
other lips than mine--if, indeed, it came from lips at all, which I
doubt."
"You mean," cried Toppleton, grasping Stubbs by the arm with a grip that
made the agent wince, "you mean that this room is--"
"Khee-hee-hee-hee-hee!" came the derisive laugh from the corner,
followed by the mysterious whistle and heartrending sigh which Hopkins
had already so unpleasantly heard.
Toppleton was transfixed with terror, and the agent, with an ejaculation
of fear, ran from the room, and scurried down the stairs out into the
court as fast as his legs could carry him, where he fell prostrate in a
paroxysm of terror.
Deserted by the agent and shut up in the room with his unwelcome
visitor--for the agent had slammed the door behind him with such force
that the catch had slipped and loosened the bolt, so that Toppleton was
to all intents and purposes a prisoner--Hopkins exerted what little
nerve force he had left, and pulled himself together again as best he
could. He staggered to his table, and taking a small bottle of whiskey
from the cupboard at its side, poured at least one half of its fiery
contents down into his throat.
"_Similia similibus_," said he softly to himself. "If I have to fight
spirits, I shall use spirits." Then facing about, he gazed into the
corner unflinchingly for a moment, following up his glance with one of
the hand fire grenades that hung in a wire basket on the wall, which he
hurled with all his force into the offending void. To this ebullition of
heroic indignation, the only reply was a repetition of the sounds whose
origin was so mysterious, but this time they proceeded directly from
Toppleton's chair which stood at his side.
Another grenade, smashed into the maroon leather seat of the chair, was
Hopkins' rejoinder, whereupon he was infuriated to hear the smothered
laugh emanate from the depths of a treasured bit of cloisonné standing
upon the mantel, within which it had been Hopkins' custom, in his
apartments at home, to keep the faded leaves of the roses given to him
by his friends of the fairer sex--a custom which, despite the volumes of
tobacco smoke poured into the room by Hopkins and his companions night
and day, kept the atmosphere thereof as sweet as a garden.
"You are a bright spirit," said Hopkins with a forced laugh. "You know
mighty well that you are safe from violence there; but if you'll get out
of that and give me one fair shot at you over on the washstand, you'll
never haunt again."
"At last!" came the smothered voice, this time from the top of the jar.
"At last, after years of weary waiting and watching, I may speak without
breaking my vow."
"Then for heaven's sake," cried Hopkins, sinking back into his chair and
staring blankly at the jar, "for heaven's sake speak and explain
yourself, if you do not wish to drive me to the insane asylum. Who in
the name of my honoured partners are you?"
There was a moment's pause, and then the answer came,--
"I am a weary spirit--a spirit in exile--harmless and unhappy, whose
unhappiness you may be able to relieve."
"I?" cried Hopkins, wildly.
"Yes, you. I am come to intrust my affairs to your hands."
"You are--"
"A client," returned the spirit.
Hopkins gasped twice, closed his eyes, clutched wildly at his heart, and
slid down to the floor an inert mass.
He had fainted.
CHAPTER IV.
THE WEARY SPIRIT GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF.
HOW long Hopkins would have remained in an unconscious state had not a
cold perspiration sprung forth from his forehead, and, trickling over
his temples, brought him to his senses, I cannot say. Suffice it to
relate that his stupor lasted hardly more than a minute. When he opened
his eyes and gazed over toward the haunted vase, he saw there the same
depressing nothingness accompanied by the same soul-chilling sighs that
had so discomfited him. To the ear there was something there, a
something quite as perceptible to the auricular sense as if it were a
living, tangible creature, but as imperceptible to the eye as that which
has never existed. The presence, or whatever else it was that had
entered into Toppleton's life so unceremoniously, was apparently much
affected by the searching gaze which its victim directed toward it.
"Don't look at me that way, I beg of you, Mr. Toppleton," said the
spirit after it had sighed a half dozen times and given an occasional
nervous whistle. "I don't deserve all that your glance implies, and if
you could only understand me, I think you would sympathize with me in my
trials."
"I? I sympathize with you? Well, I like that," cried Toppleton, raising
himself on his elbow and staring blankly at the vase. "It appears to me
that I am the object of sympathy this time. What the deuce are you,
anyhow? How am I to understand you, when you sit around like a maudlin
void lost in a vacuum? Are you an apparition or what?"
"I am neither an apparition nor a what," returned the spirit. "I
couldn't be an apparition without appearing. I suppose you might call me
a limited perception; that is, I can be perceived but not seen, although
I am human."
"You must be a sort of cross between a rumour and a small boy, I
suppose; is that it?" queried Toppleton, with a touch of sarcasm in his
tone.
"If you mean that I am half-way between things which should be seen and
not heard, and other things which should be heard and not seen, I fancy
your surmise approximates correctness. For my part, a love of
conciseness leads me to set myself down as a Presence," was the
spirit's answer.
"I'll give you a liberal reward," retorted Toppleton, eagerly, "if
you'll place yourself in the category of an Absence as regards me and my
office here; for, to tell you the truth, I am addicted more or less to
heart disease, and I can't say I care to risk an association with a
vocally inclined zero, such as you seem to be. What's your price?"
"You wrong me, Toppleton," returned the Presence, indignantly, floating
from the edge of the vase over to the large rocking chair in the corner
by the window, which began at once to sway to and fro, to the
undisguised wonderment of its owner. "I am not a blackmailer, as you
might see at once if you could look into my face."
"Where do you keep your face?" asked Hopkins, sitting up and embracing
his knees. "If you have brought it along with you for heaven's sake trot
it out. I can't ruin my eyes on you as you are now. Have you no office
hours, say from ten to two, when you may be seen by those desirous of
feasting their eyes upon your tangibility?"
"I am afraid you are joking, Hopkins," said the spirit, growing
familiar. "If you are, I beg that you will stop. What is a good joke to
some eyes is a very serious matter to others."
"That, my dear Presence," returned Toppleton, "is a very true
observation, as is borne out by the large percentage of serious matter
that appears in comic journals."
"Please do not be flippant," said the voice from the rocking-chair,
sadly. "I have come to you as a suppliant for assistance. The fact that
I have come without my body is against me, I know, but that is a
circumstance over which I have absolutely no control. My body has been
stolen from me, and I am at present a shapeless wanderer with nowhere to
lay my head, and no head to lay there, if perchance the world held some
corner that I might call my own."
"I can't see what you have to complain about on that score," said
Toppleton, rising from the floor and seizing a large magnifying glass
from his table and gazing searchingly through it into the chair which
still rocked violently. "An individual like yourself, if you are an
individual, ought to be able to find comfort anywhere. The avidity with
which you have seized upon that chair, and the extraordinary vitality
you seem to have imparted to its rockers, indicate to my mind that the
world has about everything for you that any reasonable being can
desire. If you can percolate into my apartment and make use of the
luxuries I had fondly hoped were exclusively mine, I can't see what is
to prevent your settling down at Windsor Castle if you will. Aren't
there any comfortable chairs and beds there?"
"I don't know whether there are or not," replied the Presence. "I never
went there, and being a loyal British Presence, I should hesitate very
strongly before I would discommode the Royal family."
"It might be awkward, I suppose," returned Toppleton with a laugh, "if
you should happen to fall asleep in the Prince of Wales' favourite
arm-chair, and he should happen to come in and sit on you, for I presume
you are no more visible to Royalty than you are to Republican simplicity
as embodied in myself. Still, as a loyal British subject, I should think
you'd rather be sat on by the Prince than by a common mortal."
As Hopkins spoke these words the chair stopped rocking, and if its
attitude meant anything, its invisible occupant was leaning forward and
staring with pained astonishment at the young lawyer, who was leaning
gracefully against the mantelpiece. Then on a sudden the chair's
attitude was relaxed and it rocked slowly backward again, resuming its
former pace. A few minutes passed without a word being spoken, at the
end of which time the spirit sighed deeply.
"Is there anything in this world," it asked, "is there anything too
sacred for you Americans to joke about? Have you no ideals, no--"
"Plenty of ideals but no special idols," returned Hopkins, perceiving
the spirit's drift. "But of course, if I hurt your feelings by joking
about the Prince, I apologize. Though unasked, you are still my guest,
and I should be very sorry to seem lacking in courtesy. But tell me
about this body of yours. How did you come to lose it, and is it still
living?"
"Yes, it is still living," replied the spirit. "Living a life of
honoured ease."
"But how the deuce did you come to lose it? that's what I can't
understand. I have heard of men losing pretty nearly everything but
their bodies."
"As I have already told you," said the spirit, wearily, "it was stolen
from me."
"And have you no clue to the thieves? Do you know where it is?"
"Yes, I know where it is. In fact I saw it only last week," replied the
spirit with a sob, "and it's getting old, Toppleton, very old. When it
was taken away from me it was erect of stature, broad-shouldered,
muscular and full of health. To-day it is round-shouldered, flabby and
generally consumptive-looking. When I occupied it, the face was
clean-shaven and ruddy. The hair was of a rich auburn, the hands milk
white. The carriage was graceful, and about my lips there played a smile
that fascinated. The blue eyes sparkled, the teeth shone out between my
lips when I smiled, like a strip of chased silver in the sunlight; I
tell you, Toppleton, when I had that body it had some style about it;
but now--it breaks my heart to think of it now!"
"It hasn't lost its good looks altogether, has it?" queried Hopkins, his
voice slightly tremulous with the sympathy he was beginning to feel for
this disembodied entity before him.
"It has," sobbed the spirit; "and I'm not surprised that it has,
considering the life it has led since I lost it. The auburn hair that
used to be my mother's pride, and my schoolmates' source of wit, has
gradually dropped away and left a hairless scalp of an insignificant
pinkish hue which would disgrace a shrimp. My once happy smile has
subsided into something like a toothless sneer; for my dazzling teeth
are no more. The blue eyes are expressionless, the elastic step is
halting, and, what is worse, the present occupant of my physical self
has grown a beard that makes me look like a pirate."
"I wonder you recognized yourself," said Hopkins.
"It was strange; but I did recognize myself by my ring which I still
wear," returned the spirit. "But, Toppleton," it added, "you have no
notion how terrible it is for a man to see himself growing old and
breaking away from all the habits and principles of youth, powerless to
interfere. For instance, my body was temperate when I was in it. I never
drank more than one glass of whiskey in one day. Now it is brandy and
water all day long, and it galls me, like the merry hereafter, with my
temperance scruples, to see myself given over to intemperate drams. _I_
never used profane language. Last Friday I heard my own lips condemn a
poor unoffending fly to everlasting punishment. But I want to tell you
how this outrageous thing came to pass. I want to tell you how it was
that in the very bud of my existence I was robbed of a suitable case in
which to go through life, and I want you, with your extraordinary
knowledge of the law, as I understand it to be, to devise some scheme
for my relief. If you don't, nobody will, and before many years it will
be too late. The body is growing weaker every day. I can see that, and I
want to get it back again before it becomes absolutely valueless. I
believe that under my care, restored to its original owner, it can be
fixed up and made quite respectable for its declining years. Of course
the teeth and the hair are gone for ever, but I think I can furbish up
the smile, the eye and the hands. I know that I can restore my former
good habits."
"I'm hanged if I see how I can help you," rejoined Hopkins. "Do you mean
to say that the present occupant of your personality is the creature who
robbed you of it?"
"Precisely," said the spirit. "He's the very same person, and, stars
above us, how he has abused the premises! He has made my name famous--"
"You don't mean to say that he took your name too?" put in Hopkins
incredulously.
"I mean just that," retorted the spirit. "He stole my name, my body, my
prospects, my clothing--every blessed thing I had except my
consciousness, and he thrust that out into a cold, unsympathetic world,
to float around in invisible nebulousness for thirty long years. Oh, it
is an awful tale of villainy, Toppleton! Awful!"
"You say he has made your name famous," said Toppleton. "You give him
credit for that, don't you?"
"I would if the very fame accorded my name did not tend to make me
infamous in the eyes of those I hold most dear; and the beastly part of
it is that I can't explain the situation to them."
"Why not?" asked Hopkins. "If you can lay all this misery bare to me,
why can't you lay it before those for whose good will and admiration you
are lamenting?"
"Because, Hopkins, they never address me, and it is my hard fate not to
be able to open a conversation," returned the spirit. "If you will
remember, it was not until you asked me who the devil I was, or some
equally choice question of like import, that I began to hold converse
with you; you are the only man with whom I have talked for thirty years,
Hopkins, because you are the only person who has taken the initiative."
"Well, you goaded me into it," returned Hopkins. "So I can't see why you
can't goad your friends of longer standing into it."
"The explanation is simple," replied the spirit. "My friends haven't had
the courage to withstand the terrors of the situation. The minute I have
whistled, sighed or laughed, they have made a bee line for the door, and
raised such a hullabaloo about the 'supernatural visitation,' as they
termed my efforts, that I couldn't do a thing with them. They've
everyone of them, from my respected mother down, avoided me, even as
that man Stubbs has avoided me. I believe you too would have fled if the
door hadn't locked automatically, and so forced you to remain here."
"If I could have avoided this interview I should most certainly have
done so," said Toppleton, candidly. "You can probably guess yourself how
very unpleasant it is to be disturbed in your work by a whistle that
emanates from some unseen lips, and to have your room taken possession
of by an invisible being with a grievance."
"Yes, Hopkins. I've had almost the same experience myself," replied the
spirit; "and to be as candid with you as you have been with me, I will
say that it was just that experience, and nothing else, that is
responsible for my present difficulties."
"That's encouraging for me," said Hopkins, nervously. "But tell me how
have you become infamously famous?"
"The bandit who now occupies my being has violated every principle of
religion and politics that he found in me when he took possession,"
returned the spirit, leaving the rocking-chair and settling down on the
mantelpiece, in front of the clock. "Where I was a pronounced Tory he
has made me vote with the Liberals. Notwithstanding the fact that I was
brought up in the Church of England, he joined first the dissenters and
is now a thorough agnostic, and signs my name to the most outrageous
views on social and moral subjects you ever heard advanced. My family
have cut loose from me as I am represented by him, and the dearest
friend of my youth never mentions my name save in terms of severest
reprehension. Would you like that, Hopkins Toppleton?"
"I'd be precious far from liking it," Hopkins answered. "It seems to me
I'd commit suicide under such circumstances. Have you thought of that?"
"Often," replied the spirit; "but the question has always been, how?"
"Take poison! Shoot yourself! Drown yourself!"
"I can't take poison. That fiend who robbed me has my stomach, so what
could I put the poison into?" retorted the spirit. "Shoot myself? How? I
haven't a pistol. If I had a pistol I couldn't fire it, because I've
nothing to pull the trigger with. If I had something to pull the trigger
with, what should I fire at? I have no brains to blow out, no heart to
shoot at. I'd simply fire into air."
"How about the third method?" queried Toppleton.
"Drowning?" asked the unhappy Presence. "That wouldn't work. I've
nothing to drown. If I could get under water, I'd bubble right up again,
so you see it's useless. Besides, it's only the body that dies, not the
spirit. You see the shape I'm left in."
"No," returned Hopkins, "I perceive the lack of shape you are left in,
and I must confess you are in the hardest luck of any person I ever
knew; but really, my dear sir, I don't see how I can render you any
assistance, so we might as well consider the interview at an end. Now
that I am better acquainted with you I will say, however, that if it
gives you any pleasure to loll around here or to sleep up there in my
cloisonné jar with the rose leaves, you are welcome to do so."
"If you would only hear my story, Hopkins," said the spirit,
beseechingly, "you would be so wrought up by its horrible details that
you would devise some plan for my relief. You would be less than a man
if you did not, and I am told that you Americans are great fighters.
Take this case for me, won't you?"
Hopkins hesitated. He was strongly inclined to yield, the cause was so
extraordinary, and yet he could not in a moment overcome his
strongly-cultivated repugnance to burdening himself with a client. Then
he was conscientious, too. He did not wish to identify the famous house
of Toppleton, Morley, Harkins, Perkins, Mawson, Bronson, Smithers and
Hicks with a case in which the possibilities of success seemed so
remote. On the other hand he could not but reflect that, aside from the
purely humane aspect of the matter, a successful issue would redound to
the everlasting glory of himself and his partners over the sea--that is,
it would if anybody could be made to believe in the existence of such a
case. He realized that the emergency was one which must be met by
himself alone, because he was thoroughly convinced that the hard-headed
practical men of affairs whom he represented would scarcely credit his
account of the occurrences of the last hour, and would set him down
either as having been under the influence of drink or as having lost his
senses. He would not have believed the story himself if some one else
had told it to him, and he could not expect his partners in New York to
be any more credulous than he would have been.
His hesitation was short-lived, however, for in a moment it was
dispelled by a sigh from his unseen guest. It was the most heartrending
sigh he had ever heard, and it overcame his scruples.
"By George!" he said, "I will listen to your story, and I'll help you
if I can, only you will unstring my nerves unless you get yourself a
shape of some kind or other. It makes my blood run cold to sit here and
bandy words with an absolute nonentity."
"I don't know where I can get a shape," returned the spirit.
"What did the thief who took your shape do with his old one?" asked
Hopkins.
"He'd buried it before I met him," returned the spirit.
"Buried it? Oh, Heavens!" cried Hopkins, seizing his hat. "Let's get out
of this and take a little fresh air; if we don't, I'll go mad. Come," he
added, addressing the spirit, "we'll run over to the Lowther Arcade and
buy a form. If we can't find anything better we'll get a wooden Indian
or a French doll, or anything having human semblance so that you can
climb into it and lessen the infernal uncanniness of your
disembodiment."
Hopkins rang the janitor's bell again, and when that worthy appeared he
had him unfasten the door from the outside; then he and the spirit
started out in search of an embodiment for the exiled soul.
"Hi thinks as 'ow 'e must be craizy," said the janitor, as Toppleton
disappeared around the corner in animated conversation with his
invisible client. "E's' talkin' away like hall possessed, hand nobody as
hi can see within hearshot. These Hamericans is nothink much has far as
'ead goes."
As for Toppleton and the Presence, they found in the Lowther Arcade just
what they wanted--an Aunt Sallie with a hollow head, into which the
spirit was able to enter, and from which it told its tale of woe,
sitting, bodily and visibly, in the rocking-chair, before the eyes of
Hopkins Toppleton, the words falling fluently from the open lips of the
dusky incubus the spirit had put on.
"It was odd, but not too infernally weird," said Hopkins afterwards,
"and I was able to listen without losing my equanimity, to one of the
meanest tales of robbery I ever heard."
CHAPTER V.
HOPKINS BECOMES BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THE WEARY SPIRIT.
"I DO not know," said the weary spirit, as he entered the head of the
Aunt Sallie and endeavoured to make himself comfortable therein, "I do
not know whether I can do justice to my story in these limited
headquarters or not, but I can try. It isn't a good fit, this body
isn't, and I cannot help being conscious that to your eyes I must appear
as a blackamoor, which, to an English spirit of cultivation and
refinement such as I am, is more or less discomfiting."
"I shouldn't mind if I were you," returned Hopkins. "It's very becoming
to you; much more so, indeed, than that airy nothingness you had on when
I first perceived you, and while your tale may be more or less affected
by your consciousness of the strange, ready-made physiognomy you have
assumed, I, nevertheless, can grasp it better than I might if you
persisted in sounding off your woes from an empty rocking-chair, or from
the edge of my cloisonné rose jar."
"Oh, I don't blame you, Toppleton," returned the spirit. "I am, on the
contrary, very grateful to you for what you have done for me. I shall
always appreciate your generosity, for instance, in buying me this shape
in order to give me at least a semblance of individuality, and I assure
you that if I can ever get back into my real body, I will work it to the
verge of nervous prostration to serve you, should you stand in need of
assistance in any way."
Hopkins' scrutiny of the Aunt Sallie, as these words issued from the
round aperture in the red lips made originally to hold the pipe stem,
but now used as a tubal exit for the tale of woe, was so searching that
anything less stolid than the wooden head would have flinched. The Aunt
Sallie stood it, however, without showing a trace of emotion, gazing
steadfastly with her bright blue eyes out of the window, her eyelids
more fixed than the stars themselves, since no sign of a wink or a
twinkle did they give.
"I wish," said Toppleton, experiencing a slight return of his awed
chilliness as he observed the unyielding fixity of Sallie's expression,
"in fact, I earnestly wish we could have secured a ventriloquist's
marionette instead of that thing you've got on. It would really be a
blessing to me if you could wink your eyes, or wag your ears, or change
your expression in some way or other."
"I don't see how it can be done," returned the spirit from behind
Toppleton's back. "I cannot exercise any control over these wooden
features."
Hopkins jumped two or three feet across the room, the unexpected
locality of the voice gave him such a shock, and the pulsation of his
heart leaped madly from the normal to the triply abnormal.
"Wh--whuh--what the devil did you do tha--that for?" he cried, as soon
as he was calm enough to speak. "Do y--you want to give me heart
failure?"
"Not I!" replied the spirit, once more returning to the Sallie. "That
would be a very unbusiness-like proceeding on my part at a time like
this, when, after thirty years of misery, I find at last one who is
willing to champion my cause. I only wanted to see how my second self
looked in this chair. To my eyes I appear rather plain and
dusky-looking, but what's the odds? The figure will serve its purpose,
and after all that's what we want. I'm sorry to have frightened you,
Toppleton, honestly sorry."
"Oh, never mind," rejoined Toppleton, graciously. "Only don't do it
again. Let's have the tale now."
"Very well," said the spirit. "If you will kindly shove me further back
into the chair, and arrange my overskirt for me, I'll begin--that's
another uncomfortable thing about my situation at present. It's somewhat
trying to a spirit of masculine habits to find himself arrayed in a
shape wearing the habiliments of the other sex."
Hopkins did as he was requested, and, throwing himself down on his
lounge, lit his pipe, and announced himself as ready to listen.
"I think I'd like a pipe myself," said the Sallie. "I've got a fine
place for one, I see."
"How can you talk if you stop your mouth up with a pipe?" asked Hopkins.
"Through my nose," replied the spirit. "Or there are holes in the ears,
I can talk through them quite as well."
"Well, I guess not," returned Hopkins. "I have had enough of your weird
vocal exercises to-day without having you talk with your ears, but if
you'll smoke with one or both of them, you're welcome to do it."
"Very well," replied the spirit. "I fancy you're right, and inasmuch as
I haven't had a pipe for thirty years, I'll let you fill up two for me,
and I'll try 'em both."
Accordingly Hopkins filled two of the clay pipes, three dozen of which
had come with the Aunt Sallie, and lighting them for the spirit, placed
them in the ears of his vis-à-vis as requested.
"Ah," said the spirit as he began to puff, "this is what I call
comfort." And then he began his story.
"I was born," he said, breathing forth a cloud of smoke from his right
ear, "sixty years ago in a small house within a stone's throw of what is
now the band stand in the park at Buxton."
"You must have had human catapults in those days," interrupted
Toppleton, for as he remembered the band stand at Buxton, it was
situated at some considerable distance from anything which in any degree
represented a habitation in which one could begin life comfortably.
"I don't know about that. I am not telling you a sporting tale. I am
simply narrating the events of my career, such as they are," returned
the spirit, "and my father has assured me that the house in which I
first saw light was, as I have said, within a stone's throw of what is
now the band stand in the Buxton Park. The band stand may have been
nearer the house in the old days than it is now,--that is an
insignificant sort of a detail anyhow, and if you'd prefer it I will put
it in this way: I was born at Buxton sixty years ago in a small house,
no longer standing, from whose windows the band stand in the park might
have been seen if there had been one there. How is that?"
"Perfectly satisfactory," replied Hopkins. "A statement of that kind
would be accepted in any court in the land as veracious on the face of
it, whereas we might be called upon to prove that other tale, which
between you and me had about it a distinctly Munchausenesque flavour."
The spirit was evidently much impressed with this reasoning, for he
forgot himself for a moment, and inhaled some of the smoke, so that it
came out between his lips instead of from his ears as before.
"I am glad to see you take such interest in the matter," he said after a
moment's reflection. "We must indeed have an absolutely irrefragable
story if we are to take it to court. I had not thought of that. But to
resume. My parents were like most others of their class, poor but
honest. My mother was a poetess with an annuity. My father was a
non-resistant, a sort of forerunner of Tolstoï, with none of the
latter's energy. He was content to live along on my mother's annuity,
leaving her for her own needs an undivided interest in the earnings of
her pen."
"He was a gentleman of leisure, then," returned Hopkins, "with
pronounced leanings towards the sedentary school of philosophy."
"That's it," replied the spirit. "That was my father in a nut-shell. He
took things as they came--indeed that was his chief fault. As mother
used to say, he not only took things as they came, but took all there
was to take, so that there was never anything left for the rest of us.
His non-resistant tendencies were almost a curse to the family. Why,
he'd even listen to mother's poetry and not complain. If there were
weeds in the garden, he would submit tamely, rather than take a hoe and
eradicate them. He used to sigh once in awhile and condemn my mother's
parents for leaving her so little that she could not afford to hire a
man to keep our place in order, but further than this he did not murmur.
My mother, on the other hand, was energetic in her special line. I've
known that woman to turn out fifteen poems in a morning, and, at one
time, I think it was the day of Victoria's coronation, she wrote an
elegy on William the Fourth of sixty-eight stanzas, and a coronation
ode that reached from one end of the parlour to the other,--doing it all
between luncheon and dinner. Dinner was four hours late to be sure, but
even that does not affect the wonderful quality of the achievement."
"Didn't your father resist that?" queried Toppleton, sympathetically.
"No," replied the spirit, "never uttered a complaint."
"He must have been an extraordinary man," observed Toppleton, shaking
his head in wonder.
"He was," assented the spirit. "Father was a genius in his way; but he
was born tired, and he never seemed able to outgrow it."
Here the spirit requested Toppleton's permission to leave the Aunt
Sallie for a moment. The head was getting too full of smoke for comfort.
"I'll just sit over here on the waste basket until the smoke has a
chance to get out," he said. "If I don't, it will be the ruin of me."
"All right," returned Toppleton. "I suppose when a man is reduced to
nothing but a voice, it is rather destructive to his health to get
diluted with tobacco smoke. But, I say, that was a pretty tough
condition of affairs in your house I should say. Poetic mother,
do-nothing father, small income and a baby. How did you manage to
live?"
"Oh, we lived well enough," replied the spirit. "The income was
large enough to pay the rent and keep father from hunger and
thirst--particularly the latter. Mother, being a poet, didn't eat
anything to speak of, and I fed on cow's milk. We had a cow chiefly
because her appetite kept the grass cut, and when I came along she
served an additional useful purpose. In the matter of clothing we did
first rate. Mother's trousseau lasted as long as she did, and father
never needed anything more than the suit he was married in. Inheriting
my mother's poetic traits, and my father's tendency to let things come
as they might and go as they would, it is hardly strange that as I grew
older I became addicted to habits of indecision; that I lacked courage
when a slight display of that quality meant success; that I was
invariably found wanting in the little crises which make up existence in
this sphere; that I always let slip the opportunities which were mine,
and that at those tides of my own affairs which taken at the flood would
have led on to fortune, I was always high and dry somewhere out of
reach, and that, in consequence, all the voyage of my life has been
bound in shallows and in miseries, as my mother would have said."
"Your mother must have been a diligent student of Shakespeare,"
Toppleton retorted, resenting the spirit's appropriation to his mother
of the great singer's words, and also taking offence at the implied
reflection upon his own reading.
"Yes, she was," replied the spirit unabashed. "In fact, my mother was so
saturated--she was more than imbued--with the spirit of Shakespeare,
that she was frequently unable to distinguish her own poems from his, a
condition of affairs which was the cause, at one time, of her being
charged with plagiarism, when she was in reality guilty of nothing worse
than unconscious cerebration."
"That is an unfortunate disease when it develops into verbatim
appropriation," said Toppleton, drily.
"Precisely my father's words," returned the spirit. "But the effect of
such parental causes, as I have already said," continued the exiled
soul, "was a pusillanimous offspring, which for the offspring in
question, myself, was extremely disastrous. The poet in me was just
sufficiently well developed to give me a malarious idea of life. In
spite of my sex I was a poetess rather than a poet. I could begin an
epic or a triolet without any trouble; but I never knew when to stop, a
failing not necessarily fatal to an epic, but death to a triolet. The
true climaxes of my lucubrations were generally avoided, and miserably
inadequate compromises adopted in their stead. My muse was a snivelling,
weak-kneed sort of creature, who, had she been of this earth, would have
belonged to the ranks of those who are addicted to smelling-salts,
influenza and imaginary troubles, and not the strong, picturesque,
helpful female, calculated to goad a man on to immortality. I generally
knew what was the right thing to do, but never had the courage to do it.
That was my peculiarity, and it has brought me to this--to the level of
a soul with no habitation save the effigy of a negress, provided for me
by a charitably disposed chance acquaintance."
"You do not appear to have had a single redeeming feature," said
Toppleton, some disgust manifested on his countenance, for to tell the
truth he was thoroughly disappointed to learn that the spirit's moral
cowardice had brought his trouble upon him.
"Oh, yes, I had," replied the spirit hastily, as if anxious to
rehabilitate himself in his host's eyes. "I was strong in one
particular. In matters pertaining to religion I was unusually strong. My
very meekness rendered me so."
"Your kind of meekness isn't the kind that inherits the earth, though,"
retorted Toppleton. "Meekness that means the abandonment of right for
the sake of peace is a crime. Meekness that subverts self-respect is an
offence against society. Meekness which is synonymous with pusillanimity
is not the meekness which develops into true religious feeling."
"No; that is very true," said the spirit. "I do not deny one word of
what you say; but I, nevertheless, was an extremely religious boy, nor
did I change when I entered upon man's estate; and it is that strong
religious fervour with which my spirit is still imbued that has made my
cup so much the more bitter, since, as I have hinted, he who robbed me
of my body has written pamphlets of the most shocking sort over my name,
denouncing the Church and attempting to upset the whole fabric of
Christianity."
"I am anxious to get to the details of the robbery," said Toppleton,
with a smile of sympathy; "pass over your extreme youth and come to
that."
"I will do so," replied the spirit, returning to the figure Toppleton
had provided for him, the smoke having by this time evacuated his new
habitation. "I will omit the details of my life up to the time when I
became a lawyer and--"
"You don't mean to say you _ever_ became a lawyer?" interrupted Hopkins,
incredulously.
"Why, certainly," replied the spirit; "I became a lawyer, and at the
time I lost my body I was getting to be considered a famous one."
"How on earth, with your meekness, did you ever have the courage to take
up a profession that requires nerve and an aggressive nature if success
is to be sought after?" asked the American.
"It was that same fatal inability to make up my mind to do what my
conscience prompted. It was another one of my compromises," returned the
spirit, sadly. "I couldn't make up my mind between the pulpit and
literature, so I compromised on the law, mastered it to a sufficient
extent to be admitted to practice, and opened an office--the same room,
by the way, as that in which you and I are seated at this moment."
"Do you remember any of your law now?" Toppleton asked uneasily, for he
was afraid the spirit might discover how ignorant he was on the subject.
"Not a line of it," returned the spirit. "It has gone from me as
completely as my name, my body, my auburn hair and my teeth. But I _was_
a lawyer, and by slow degrees I built up a fair practice. People seemed
to recognize how strong I was in matters of compromise, and cases that
were not considered strong enough to take into court were brought to me
in order that I might suggest methods of adjustment satisfactory to both
parties. For three years I did a thriving business here, and for one
whose knowledge of the law was limited I got along very well. I was one
of the few barristers in London who had become well-known to litigants
without ever having appeared in court, and I was very well satisfied
with my prospects.
"Everything went smoothly with me until a few weeks after I had passed
my thirtieth birthday, when a man came into my office and retained me in
an inheritance case, in which the amount involved was thirty thousand
pounds. He had been made defendant in a suit brought against him by his
own brother for the recovery of that sum. It was a very complicated
case, but the brother really had no valid claim to the money. The father
of the two men, ten minutes before his death, had told my client in
confidence that it was his desire that he should inherit sixty thousand
pounds more than the other brother, telling him, however, that he must
get it for himself, since the written will of the dying man provided
that the two sons should share and share alike. In spasmodic gasps the
old man added that he would find the money concealed in a secret drawer
in an old desk up in the attic, in sixty one-thousand pound notes. My
client, realizing that his father could not last many minutes longer,
and feeling that his dying wishes should not be thwarted, rushed from
the room to the attic, and after rummaging about for nine minutes, found
the drawer and touched the secret spring. Unfortunately the day was a
very damp one, and the drawer stuck, so that it was fully eleven minutes
before the money was really in my client's hands. He shoved it into his
pocket and went downstairs again, where he learned that his father had
expired one minute before, or just ten minutes after he had left him.
"The other son not long after discovered what had been done, and after
listening to my client's story, decided to contest his title to his
share of the sixty thousand pounds, alleging that the money not having
passed into my client's hands until after the testator's death, belonged
to the estate, and could only be diverted therefrom upon the production
of an instrument in writing over the deceased man's signature, duly
witnessed. You see," added the spirit, "that was a very fine point."
"Yes, indeed!" said Toppleton; "it's the kind of a point that I hope
and pray may never puncture my professional epidermis, for I'll be
hanged if I'd know what to advise. What did you do?"
"Ah!" sighed the spirit, "there's where the trouble came in. I studied
that case diligently. I consulted every law book I could find. Every
leading case on inheritance matters I read, marked, learned and inwardly
digested, and I made up my mind that if we could prove that my client's
watch was fast upon that occasion, and that the money was in his hands
one minute before his father's death instead of one minute after it, the
plaintiff would not have a leg to stand on. Then it occurred to me 'this
means trouble.' It means a long and tedious litigation. It means defeat,
appeal, victory, appeal, defeat, appeal, on, on through all the courts
in Great Britain, and finally the House of Lords, the result being the
loss to my client of every penny of the amount involved, even though he
should ultimately win the suit, and the loss to me of sleep, the
development of nerves and a career of unrelieved anxiety. Compromise was
the proper course to be recommended."
"A proper conclusion, I should say," said Toppleton.
"I think so, too," replied the spirit, "and if I had only remained true
to my instincts my client would have compromised, and I should have
been spared all that followed. It would have been better for all
concerned, for I should have been in possession of myself to-day, and my
client by compromising would in the end have lost no more than he had to
pay me for my services--fifteen thousand pounds."
"Phe--e--ew!" whistled Hopkins. "That was a swindle!"
"Yes, but I wasn't party to it, as you will shortly see. When I made up
my mind that compromise was the best settlement of the case, all things
considered, I sat down right here by this window to write to Mr. Baskins
to that effect. It was a beastly night out. The wind shrieked through
the court there, and it was cold enough to freeze the marrow in a
grilled bone. I was just about to sign my communication to Mr. Baskins,
when I heard a knock at the door.
"'Come in,' I said.
"And then, Mr. Toppleton, as sure as I am sitting here in this Aunt
Sallie talking to you, the door opened and then slowly closed, a light
step was perceptible to the ear, moving across the carpet, and in a
moment a rocking-chair owned by me began to sway to and fro, just as
this one sways when I or you are sitting in it, but to my eyes there was
absolutely nothing visible that had not always been in the room."
Hopkins began to feel chilly again.
"You mean to say that to all intents and purposes, an invisible being
like yourself called on you as you have called on me?" he said in a
minute, his breath coming in short, quick gasps.
"Precisely," returned the incumbent of the Aunt Sallie. "I was visited,
even as you have been visited, by an invisible being, only my visitor
did not remain invisible, for as I sprang to my feet, my whole being
palpitant with terror, the lamp on my table sputtered and went out; and
then I saw, sitting luminous in the dark, gazing at me with large,
gaping, unfathomably deep green eyes, a creature having the semblance of
a man, but of a man no longer of this earth."
CHAPTER VI.
THE SPIRIT UNFOLDS A HORRID TALE.
"IF ever a man had a right to swoon away, Hopkins," continued the
spirit, his voice dropping to a whisper, "I was that man, and I presume
I should have done so but for the everlasting spirit of compromise in my
breast. The proper thing to do under the circumstances was manifestly to
flop down on the carpet insensate, just as you did when I announced
myself to you; and I assure you I had greater reason for so doing than
you had, for my visitor had absolutely no limitations whatsoever in the
line of the horrible. He was an affront to every sense, and not, like
myself, trying only to the ear. To the sense of sight was he most
horrible, and I would have given anything I possessed to be able to
remove my eyes from his dreadful personality, with the long bony claws
where you and I have fingers; with tight-drawn cheeks so transparent
that through them could be seen his hideous jaws; with eyes which stared
even when the lids closed over them; and, worst of all, his throbbing
brain was visible as it worked inside his skull; and so bloodless of
aspect was he withal, that the mind instinctively likened him to a
fasting vampire."
"Excuse me!" groaned Hopkins, throwing himself down on the couch and
burying his face in the pillow. "This is awful. I've crossed the ocean
eight times, Sallie, and until now I have never known sea-sickness, but
this--this vampire of yours is mightier than Neptune; just hand me the
whiskey."
"I'm sorry it affects you that way, Hopkins," said the spirit, "and I'd
gladly give you the whiskey if I could, but you know how circumscribed
my abilities are. I haven't any hand to hand it with."
"Never mind," said Hopkins, the colour returning to his cheeks, "I feel
better now. It was only a sudden turn I had; only, my friend, go slow on
the horrible, will you?"
"I wish I could," replied the spirit sadly, "but the cause of truth
requires that I tell you precisely what happened, omitting no single
detail of the sickening totality. Perhaps, before I proceed, you had
better take a dozen grains of quinine, and have the whiskey within
reach."
"That is a good suggestion," said Hopkins, rising and gulping down the
pills, and grasping the neck of the square-cut bottle containing the
treasured fluid, with his trembling hand. "Go ahead," he said, as he
resumed his recumbent position on the couch.
"To the olfactories," resumed the spirit, "the visitant was stifling. A
gross of sulphur matches let off all at once would be a weak imitation
of the atmospheric condition of this room after he had been here two
minutes, and yet I did not dare to turn from him to open the window. My
only weapon of defence was my eye, under the tense gaze of which he
seemed uneasy, and I was fearful of what might happen were I to permit
it to waver for one instant. His colour was simply deadly. I should
describe it best, perhaps, as of a pallid green in which there was a
suggestion of yellow that heightened the general effect to the point
where it became ghastly."
Here Hopkins' eyelids fluttered, and the bottle was raised to his lips.
When the draught had been taken the bottle dropped from his nerveless
fingers to the floor, and shivered into countless slivers of brown
crystal.
"Jove!" ejaculated the spirit. "That was very unfortunate, Hop--"
"No matter," interrupted Hopkins, "it was empty. Go on. Did this private
view you and the Nile-green apparition were having of each other last
for ever?"
"No," returned the spirit, "it did not. It probably lasted less than a
minute, although it seemed a century. I tried half a dozen times to
speak, but my words were frozen on my lips."
"Why didn't you break them off and throw them at him?" suggested
Toppleton, hysterical to the point of flippancy.
"Because I did not possess the genius of the Yankee who is inventive
where the Briton is only enduring," retorted the spirit, somewhat
disgusted at Toppleton's airy treatment of his awful situation. "Finally
my visitor spoke, and for an instant I wished he hadn't, his voice was
so abominably harsh, so jangling to every nerve in my body, however
callous."
"'You don't appear to be glad to see me,' he said.
"'Well, to tell you the truth,' I replied, 'I am not. I am not a
collector of optical delusions, nor am I a lover of the horrible and
mysterious.'
"'But I am your friend,' remonstrated my visitor.
"'I should dislike to be judged by my friends, if that is so,' I
returned, throwing as much withering contempt into my glance as I
possibly could. 'I think,' I resumed, 'if I were to be seen walking down
Piccadilly with you, I should be cut by every self-respecting
acquaintance I have.'
"'You are an ungrateful wretch,' said the intruder. 'Here I have
travelled myriads of miles to help you, and the minute I put in an
appearance you cast worse slurs upon me than you would if I were your
worst enemy.'
"'I do not wish to be ungrateful,' I answered coolly, 'but you must
admit that it is difficult for a purely mortal being like myself to
receive a supernatural being like yourself with any degree of
cordiality.'
"'Granted,' returned the spectre with a grin, which was more terrifying
to me than anything I had yet seen, 'but when I tell you that I have
come to befriend you--'
"'I don't call it friendly to scare a man to death; I don't call it
friendly to steal invisibly into a man's office and choke him nearly to
suffocation. It seems to me you might use some other style of cologne to
advantage when you go calling on your friends, and if I had cheeks
through which my whole molar system was visible to the outside world,
I'd grow whiskers.'"
"My admiration for you has increased eighty-seven per cent.," put in
Toppleton, "that is, it has if all you say you said to the spook is
true."
"I'd swear to it," returned the spirit, the tone of his voice showing
the gratification he felt at Toppleton's words. "I talked up to him all
the time, though I was quaking inwardly from the start. He noticed it
too, for he said practically what you have just remarked.
"'You command my highest admiration,' were his words. 'If you were as
spunky as this all the time, you would not need my assistance, but you
are not, and so I have come. _You must not compromise that case._'
"Here the deadly green thing rose from the chair and approached me,"
continued the spirit, "and as he approached my terror increased, so it
is no wonder that, when he got so near that I could feel his wretched
soul-chilling breath upon my cheek, his luminous body towering above me
as a giant towers over a dwarf, and repeated the words, '_you must not
compromise that case_,' I should shrink back into a heap at the side of
my desk, and reply, 'Certainly _not_.'"
"'You have a splendid fighting chance,' he added, 'but it will be a
bitter fight,--a fight, the winning of which will make you famous, but
which you, by yourself, with all the law in Christendom on your side,
could no more win than you could batter down the Tower of London with
balls of putty.'
"'Then,' said I, 'I _must_ compromise.'
"'No,' returned my visitor, 'for I am here to win the case for you.'
"'You will never be retained,' I retorted. 'You are a degree too foggy
to be acceptable either to my client or to myself.'
"'I do not ask to be retained; but you must provide me with the means to
appear in court. _You must leave your body and let me put it on._'"
"That must have been a staggerer," said Hopkins. "Were you fool enough
to give it to him without getting a receipt?"
"I was not fool enough to yield without persuasion," rejoined the spirit
sadly, "but when he brought all the infernal power at his command into
play to lure me on, I weakened, and when I weaken I am done for.
Toppleton, that messenger of Satan promised me everything that was dear
to my soul. The temptation of Faust was nowhere alongside of that which
was placed before me as mine if I but chose to take it, and no price was
asked save that one little privilege of being permitted to do the
things which should make me rich, powerful and happy in the guise which
I was to put off that the apparition might put it on. From my boyhood
days I had wished to be rich and powerful, and from the hour in which I
reached man's estate had I been in love, but hopelessly, since she I
loved was ambitious, and would not consent to be mine until I had made
my mark.
"'Alone,' said my visitor, 'you will never make your name illustrious.
With my help you may--and consider what it means. Refuse my offer, and
you will lead the dull, monotonous life of him who knows no success, to
whose ears the plaudits of the world shall never come; you will live
alone and uncared for, for she whom you love cannot become the wife of a
failure. Accept my offer, and in a month you are famous, in a year you
are rich, in an instant you are happy, for the heart you yearn toward
will beat responsive to your own.'
"'But your motive!' I cried. 'Why should you do all this for me who know
you not, and without a price?'
"'My reason,' returned that perjured instrument of malign fate, 'is my
weakness. I love the world. I love the sensation of living. I love to
hear the praises of man ringing in my ears. I am a lover of earth and
earthly ways, with no hope of tasting the joys of earth save in your
acquiescence. I am the soul of one departed. I have put off against my
will the mortal habitation in which I dwelt for many happy years. I have
solved the rebus of existence and have put on omniscience. All things I
can accomplish once I have the means. I ask you for them, with little
hope that you will grant my request, however, because you are the
embodiment of all that is uncertain. Had you lived among the Olympian
gods, they would have made you the Deity of Indecision; but before
refusing my offer remember this, you have now the grand opportunity of
life, such an opportunity as has never been offered to any mortal being
since the time of Shakespeare--'
"'Did Shakespeare have this opportunity?' I asked eagerly.
"'My son,' returned the apparition, with a meaning look, 'do not seek to
know too much about the mystery of William Shakespeare. You know whence
he sprang, how he lived and what he achieved; let my unguarded words of
a moment since be the seed of suggestion which planted in the soil of
your brain may sprout and blossom forth into the flowers of certain
knowledge. It is not for me to let a mortal like you into the confidence
of the Fates; suffice it that _I_ offer you immortality and present
happiness. Think it over: I will return to-morrow.'
"Before I could reply," continued the spirit, "he had vanished. The
light of my lamp returned of its own volition, and but for the odour of
sulphur which still clung to the hangings of the room I should have
supposed that I had been dreaming.
"Utterly wearied by the excitement of my strange experience, I threw
myself down upon my couch, and fell into a deep sleep from which I did
not awake for sixteen hours, in consequence of which a whole day was
practically gone out of my life.
"Darkness was closing in upon me as I opened my eyes, and as it grew
more dense I could see taking shape in the chair by my table my visitor
of the night before, more pallid and sulphurous than ever.
"'Well?' he said, as I opened my eyes.
"'No!' I answered shortly, 'I am not well. I might be much better if
you'd confine yourself to the cemetery to which you belong.'
"'Reparteedious as ever!' he retorted.
"'I don't know the word,' I replied; 'it belongs to neither a dead nor a
live language.'
"'But it's a good word, nevertheless,' observed the ghost quietly,' and
I advise you to think of it whenever you are inclined to indulge in
stupid repartee. It may help you in your career,--but I have come for an
answer to my proposition.'"
"He was right about reparteedious," said Hopkins, interrupting the
spirit's story; "that's a good word, and unless you have it copyrighted
I think I'll open the doors of my vocabulary and admit it to the charmed
circle of my verbiage."
"No, I have no copyright on it," replied the spirit, gazing at Hopkins
with as sad an expression as could possibly be assumed, considering the
imperturbability of Aunt Sallie's countenance. "You may have it for your
vocabulary, Hopkins, but if you will take a little well-meant advice you
had better be very careful about your word collection. Your frequent and
flippant interruptions of my sad story lead me to fear that you are
overworking your vocabulary, which is a very dangerous thing for a young
man of your age and intelligence to do.
"But to resume my tale," continued the spirit, after waiting a moment
for Hopkins to reply to his suggestion, which Hopkins seemed not to
hear, so busy was he looking for his memorandum book on his table,--a
table so littered up with papers and silver paraphernalia for writing
that no portion of its polished surface was visible. "I told my
unwelcome guest that I had no answer to give him; that, as I was not a
believer in the supernatural, I did not intend to waste my time in
parleying with a figment of my brain.
"'You are cautious enough to have been a policeman,' he said in response
to this. 'But caution in this instance is a vice.'
"'Caution is not a vice when a spirit of your evil aspect enters one's
office in the dead of night, and asks for the loan of one's body,' I
answered. 'I should be more justified in lending my diamond-stud to a
sneak thief to wear to a lawn-tennis party at the Duke of Devonshire's,
than in acquiescing in your scheme.'
"'Then you do not care to become a great man, to assure yourself of a
fortune beyond your wildest dreams, to put yourself in such a position
that she whom you love will be unable to resist your proposal of
marriage?'
"'I am not untruthful enough to make any such pretence as that,' I
answered. 'I do want to be everything you say, to have everything that
you promise, but if I know the young woman upon whom my affections are
lavishing themselves, she would object strenuously to my making a
bargain with a transparent offshoot of the infernal regions like
yourself. How do I know that, after I am married and have settled down
to a life of honourable ease, you will not come along and insist upon an
invitation to dinner; or obtrude yourself into the home circle at times
when it will be extremely inconvenient to receive you? What guarantee
have I that, when I have suddenly developed from my present obscurity
into the promised distinction, you will not appear to some of my rivals
and let them into the secret of my success; and, more important still,
how do I know that after Miss Hicksworthy-Johnstone has become my wife
you will not go to her and destroy my happiness by revealing to her the
true state of affairs?'
"'I can only give you my word that I will be faithful,' returned my
visitor.
"'Well, if your word is no better than reparteedious, it is not the kind
of word upon which I should place any reliance whatsoever,' I retorted;
'so you may as well take yourself off; I am not lending myself these
days.'"
"That was very well said," observed Toppleton, "only I wish you had had
witnesses. Your sudden development of back-bone under the circumstance
was so extraordinarily extraordinary that it is almost beyond credence.
Did the fiend depart as you spoke those words?"
"No," returned the exiled spirit, "he did not. He began operations,
deceiving me grossly. He rose from the rocking-chair and said he fancied
it was time for him to be off. When he got to the door he turned and
kissed his right collection of claws to me, and asked if there was any
place in the neighbourhood where he could get a drink. Well, of course,
unpleasant as he was to look at, he had injured me in no respect, and
save for my instinctive suspicions I had no real reason for believing
that he was actuated by any but the best of motives. So I replied that
the best place I knew of for him to get a drink was right here in this
room, and that if he would wait a second I would join him in a glass. He
hesitated an instant, and then said that seeing it was I who asked him,
he thought he would; so I got out my little stone jug and poured out two
rather stiff doses of brandy. Now it had been my habit to take my liquid
refreshment undiluted, and taking my glass in hand I held it aloft and
observed, 'Here's to you.'
"My visitor placed his claws on my arm.
"'You do not mean to say,' he said, 'that you take this fiery stuff
without water?'
"'That is my custom,' I answered. 'I think it a positive wrong to spoil
good brandy with the rather inferior brand of water we get here in
London, nor do I deem it proper to take so pure a fluid as water and
destroy its innocence by introducing this liquid into it.'
"'As you please,' was my visitor's response. 'I was foolish enough to do
that myself when I was fortunate enough to have a physique. In fact it
was just that thing that finally laid me by the heels. But let me have a
little water with mine please.'
"I laid my glass down beside his on the table, and, taking the pitcher,
left the room for an instant to fill it at the water-cooler."
"That was a fine thing to do," said Toppleton. "Your idiocy cropped out
then in great shape. How did you know he wouldn't rob you?"
"I wish he had robbed me and gone about his business," returned the
spirit. "If that was all he did, I'd have been all right to this day. I
was gone about two minutes, and when I returned he was standing by the
window, whistling the most obnoxious tune I ever heard. What it was I
don't know, but it gave me a chill. As I entered the room he stopped
whistling and turned to greet me, took the pitcher from my hand, filled
his glass to the brim with water and quaffed its contents. I drank my
dose raw. As the brandy coursed down my throat into my stomach I fairly
groaned with pain, it burned me so.
"'What the devil have you been doing with that brandy?' I cried, turning
upon my visitor.
"'Swallowing it; why?' he asked innocently. 'You meant that I should
drink it, didn't you?'
"'You can't put me off that way,' I groaned in my agony; for if I had
swallowed a hot coal I could not have suffered more, that infernal stuff
scorched me so. 'You have drugged my brandy.'
"'Have I?' he asked, with a menacing gesture and a frown that wrinkled
up his hideous forehead, until his brains, still visible through the
transparent flesh and bone, were reduced to a spongy mass no bigger than
a walnut--"
"He was concentrating his mind, I suppose?" suggested Hopkins.
"It looked that way," said the spirit, "and it was an awful sight.
"'Have I?' he repeated, and then he added, 'well, if I have, it is only
to save you from yourself, for by this means alone can you ever fulfil
your destiny.'
"As these words issued forth from his white lips, I became unconscious.
How long I remained so, I do not know; but when I came to once more, I
was as I am now--a spirit having no visible shape; while seated in my
chair, writing with my pen and in perfect imitation of my chirography, I
saw what had been my body now occupied by another."
CHAPTER VII.
A CHAPTER OF PROFIT AND LOSS.
SO overcome was the occupant of the Aunt Sallie at this point of his
story, that he requested Hopkins' permission to leave his quarters that
he might sit on the floor near the slivers of the shattered whiskey
bottle. He needed stimulant. Hopkins readily granted the request, for he
felt as if he would not mind having a little stimulant for himself, but
as the last drop available for his purposes had been put to the use for
which it was intended, he had to deny himself the comfort he would have
derived from it. The fact that this horrid event, the harrowing details
of which he had just listened to, had occurred right there in his own
apartments served to make him doubly depressed, for it certainly
indicated that the room, despite its cheerful situation, had been the
dwelling-place of a supernatural being, and the present lessee was
fearful lest that being should appear on the scene once more to
practise some of his infernal tricks upon him.
"You mean to say that when you recovered your senses, you had been
deprived of your body?" said Hopkins at last, breaking the silence more
for the sake of calming his agitated mind than because he had anything
to say.
"Yes," replied the spirit. "I lay there on the sofa an intellectual
abstract whose concrete had been amputated and invested by a being who
had already lived four-score of years in one body, and who, having worn
that out, was now on the look-out for a second. The sensation was
dreadful, and when I attempted to do what theretofore I had always done
in moments of extreme agitation--to pull fiercely at my moustache--I was
simply appalled to realize that the power to raise my hand to do this
had passed, along with the moustache itself, into the control of that
other being. Then an access of rage surged over me, and I attempted to
stamp my foot and shriek. The shriek was a success, but my foot like my
arm was beyond my control.
"As the shriek died away I observed my head slowly turning from the
paper before it on the table, my right hand relaxed its grasp on the
pen, and my own eyes were turned upon me, and I was simply maddened to
see the left eye wink mischievously at me, while my mouth broadened into
a smile at my own misfortunes.
"'Hello,' I said to myself--that is you know the other being in myself
said this to me outside of myself. 'You've come to, at last, eh? I
thought you were going to remain in a comatose state for ever.'
"'See here, my friend,' I said, trying to be calm. 'This is a very
clever trick you've put upon me, but from my point of view it is most
uncomfortable, and I'd just as lief have you evacuate the premises, and
permit me once more to assume my normal condition.'
"'Not until I have accomplished what I set out to accomplish,' was the
answer that fell from my own lips, which again indulged in an
impertinent smile at my expense. 'You don't suppose that I have put in
three weeks of time and energy to make you famous with the intention of
withdrawing on the eve of success, do you?'
"'I don't know what you mean,' I replied, 'I don't understand the
allusion, nor can I see why you permit me to be insulted by my own
lips.'
"Here," said the spirit, "my face became clouded and my smile vanished.
"'Ungrateful wretch that you are!' said he who had rifled me of myself.
'Are you not aware that three weeks have elapsed since you and your
body parted company? Are you not aware that in that time I have forced
the fight between the brothers Baskins to a point that has made that
case the talk of London, and you, the hero of the hour in legal circles?
Do you not understand that to-morrow you are to appear in court to sum
up for your side, and that the London _Times_ itself is to have five
stenographers in court to take down every word that is uttered by him
they call a second Burke, because of his eloquence, by him they call a
second Sheridan, because of his wit, by him they call the newly
discovered leader of the English bar, because of the aggressive and
powerful manner in which this now celebrated will case has been
conducted? And finally, are you not aware that it is you who gain the
credit due to me, since it is I who have merged my personality into
yours, while you have only to remain quiescent and accord to me the
undisturbed occupation of your physical self for a few days more?'
"'I know none of these things,' I answered. 'I know that possibly an
hour ago you robbed me of my senses by your infernal machinations, and
that when they are restored to me I find myself disembodied, nameless,
invisible.'
"'Do you know the date upon which I visited you first?' asked my
tormentor.
"'Yes, it was November eighth. You returned on the night of November
ninth--that is you returned early this evening.'
"'Perhaps this will convince you of the lapse of time, then,' retorted
the occupant of my chair, tossing me a copy of the _Times_, 'and these
will prove the rest,' he added, throwing several other newspapers at the
place where my feet would have been had he not deprived me of them.
"I looked the papers over. The _Times_ was dated November twenty-ninth
and contained, as did also the others, a long account of the trial of
the case of Baskins _v._ Baskins, in which I seemed to have figured
prominently, concluding with a biographical sketch of myself coupled
with the announcement that my former neighbours at Buxton were thinking
of calling upon me to stand for Parliament. The tenour of everything in
the papers was complimentary in the highest degree. It seemed that I had
fairly routed my client's adversaries by nothing else than the
aggressive manner of my fighting; that the case was practically won,
though it still remained for me to sum up on the morrow, and that all
London was expected to swarm into the court room to listen to my
marvellous eloquence. I read and was stunned. My position was more
unhappy than ever, for here was a greatness builded up for me, that was
utterly beyond my ability once returned to my corse of clay to sustain,
and before me was placed the horrible alternative of perpetual exile or
stultification."
"Lovely prospect," murmured Hopkins.
"As I read on," continued the spirit, "I felt the burning gaze of my
visitor upon me, though he could not see me. In my body or out of it, he
still possessed that fearful power of mental concentration which when
exerted upon another through the medium of the eye was withering to the
soul. So nervous did I become, that noiseless as a sun-mote I moved
across to the other side of the room, and yet his gaze followed me as if
instinctively aware of my slightest move. For a time not a word was
spoken by either of us. I was so overcome at the sudden revelation of my
fame, that I knew not what to say. The words of blame that entered into
my consciousness--for that was all that was left of me--to say, I could
not utter, because however badly I had been treated by this fearful
creature in the beginning, it could not be denied that he had exerted
his powers entirely for my benefit. On the other hand, I found it
impossible to thank him for what he had done, since I was unable to
dismiss the sense of indignation I felt at the summary and tricky manner
in which he had robbed me of my individuality. As for the other, he
seemed to be thinking deeply, which contributed to my alarm, for I knew
not what it was he was revolving in his mind, and I feared some
additional exercise of his supernatural power to my further
discomfiture. Finally he spoke.
"'I am very deeply disappointed in you,' he said. 'I at least supposed
you to be a person of gratitude. I deemed your nature to be sufficiently
refined and sensible to favours to evince some little appreciation of
what has been done for you, but I must say that the veriest clod of a
peasant would be hardly less stolid in the face of generous effort in
his behalf than you have been toward me. A more unresponsive soul than
yours can hardly have lived.'
"'Can you blame me for not being effusively grateful to you for having
cut me out of three weeks of existence?' I asked.
"'I can and I do,' he replied. 'You have not been incommoded. Upon your
own confession you have not even been conscious during the period that
you lacked anatomy. On the other hand, consider what I have gone
through! I have suffered more in the past fortnight than I did in my
whole previous life. In making the substitution of my inner self for
yours in your body, I failed to remember how much greater than the
mortal mind is the mind which has put on omniscience, and I have found
the head in which your intellect lived at ease, so contracted, so narrow
for the accommodation of mine, that the work I have undertaken in your
interest has been one prolonged bit of unremitting agony. If you have
ever tried to wear a shoe fifteen sizes too small for you, you will have
a faint glimmering of the pain I have suffered in trying to encase a
number thirty mind in a seven and a quarter head. It has been almost
impossible for me to get some of my great thoughts into this thick
cranium of yours in their entirety,--indeed if thoughts were visible,
your client might have seen them sticking out of these ears, or hovering
above this lovely halo of auburn hair you wear, waiting for admission to
an already overcrowded skull.'
"As he spoke these words," said the spirit, with a chuckle, "I would
have given ten pounds to have had something to smile with. I never
thought one could miss his lips so much as when I tried to grin and
found I had not the wherewithal. Despite the insulting comment of my
visitor upon the quality of my own mind, it really filled what there
was left of me with pleasure to hear that, even though I had departed
from it, my body through its limitations had been able to resent the
intrusion of this alien spirit so effectually.
"'In addition to the bad fit mentally,' continued the usurper of my
anatomy, 'I have had to cope with your dyspepsia, which I did not know
you had, and various other physical troubles such as rheumatism and
toothache. It appears to me that even if I had not made you famous, the
mere fact that I have relieved you of your toothache and rheumatism for
three weeks should entitle me to your gratitude. However, I am willing
to withdraw in your favour immediately if you insist. Of course you will
have to sum up that case to-morrow, and I sincerely hope that you will
do it in a manner creditable to your new self, that is to yourself as I
have made you.'
"Of course you see, Hopkins," said the spirit, pausing in his story for
a moment, "what a dreadful position that left me in. I was absolutely in
the dark as to what had been done in the case. I did not know what line
of argument had been pursued--I was even unacquainted with the name of
the presiding justice at the trial, and as for the testimony elicited
during the three weeks of my own personal desuetude, I had not read one
word of it. To attempt to sum up the case under the circumstances meant
ruin--it meant the final sacrifice of all my hopes; disgrace was
imminent.
"'I cannot sum up the case,' I answered in a moment. 'I have not
mastered the details, nor is there time for me to do so before the court
opens.'
"'I am aware of that fact,' retorted the other. 'But that is nothing to
me. I am not at all interested in upholding the undeserved fame of an
ingrate. It's nothing to me if disgrace stares you in the face. My name
is safe; graven upon a white marble stone in a country cemetery, it is
beyond the reach of dishonour, and is endorsed in deep-cut letters with
an epitaph extolling the virtues of him who bore it. This is your affair
entirely; I wash my hands of it. Come, prepare for your return.'
"Now I submit to you, Hopkins, that, considering the situation, I was
justified in changing my tone toward him. Put yourself in my place for a
moment," said the spirit.
"I'd rather not," returned Hopkins with a shudder.
"Oh, I don't mean for you to exchange places with me. I just want you to
try to imagine what you would have done under the circumstances. You
would have besought him even as I did to crown his work with final
success, and not leave matters in so unsatisfactory a condition; to
spare you the dishonour of a public failure, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, either that or suicide would have been my course," returned
Hopkins. "I think I'd have fled to some apothecary's and concealed
myself in a chloroform bottle until my consciousness evaporated if I'd
been you. You must have known that this thing could not keep up for
ever, unless you would consent to remain disembodied all your days."
"That was just the most horrible thing about it," said the spirit. "When
I realized what it all meant, I was nearly distracted; but believing
suicide to be a crime, and knowing, as I have already told you, that the
mind is indestructible, I could not do as you suggested. I might have
lulled myself into a state of perpetual unconsciousness, but I did not
care to do that, for the reason that, despite the harrowing features of
my situation, I was morbidly interested to see how it would all come
out. At any rate, I succumbed to my fears, and begged him not to think
of departing from my mortal habitation and leaving me in the lurch.
"'Now,' he replied, his face, or rather my face, wreathing with smiles,
'now you are talking sense. I thought you would come to it. It would be
the height of folly for you to ruin yourself simply to gratify your love
of retaining your form. I promise you that to-morrow night, after the
great speech has been made in court--a speech which will ring out
through the whole country, that will echo from the hills of Scotland
across the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains, to re-echo thence to
the Himalayas, and so on until your fame has encircled the earth--I
promise you that then I will depart hence and trouble you no more,
except it be your desire that I return.'"
"That was a fair proposition--he wasn't such a mean fiend after all,"
said Hopkins.
"At that moment I thought he was rather a square fiend," returned the
spirit sadly; "but he developed as time went on."
"And the speech next day? How was that? Did he keep his word?" Hopkins
asked.
"Indeed he did," said the spirit with enthusiasm, "and it was simply
marvellous. That night, after we had had the conversation I have just
told you of, that fellow worked like a slave getting up his points,
consulting the records, classifying the testimony and making notes for
his great oratorical effort. Hardly a poet in the history of literature
was there who did not contribute some little line or two to make the
speech more interesting, or to emphasize some point in a manner certain
to appeal to a polished mind or overawe an uncultivated one. Greek and
Latin authors were levied upon for tribute. Parallels in ancient and
modern history utterly unknown to me were instituted for the elucidation
of the arguments advanced--in short, a more polished bit of oratory than
that prepared for my tongue to utter never fell from mortal lips before,
and as for the peroration--well, it would require the consummate art of
the fiend himself adequately to describe it. It was simply dazzling.
"'There is only one drawback, one thing I fear for to-morrow,' said the
fiend, as he finished his preparations, 'and that is that these
miserable mortal lungs of yours will not be able to do justice to that
speech, and some of these quotations rasp on your unpractised tongue, so
that I fear their effect may be weakened. However, I'll do the best I
can with poor tools; but one thing is certain, you must make a sacrifice
to me who have sacrificed time and comfort to you.'
"'What is that?' I asked.
"'I cannot properly accent my words with your teeth in their present
condition. For instance these words here: _And, gentlemen of the jury,
what have we to say of the plaintiff in this action, the brother of the
defendant and the firstborn son of the decedent whose desires he now
seeks to have over-ridden by the laws of this land, what have we to say
of him? What palliation can he offer for his unfraternal conduct in thus
dragging his own brother into the courts of this land in a mad effort to
recover the paltry sum of thirty thousand pounds? History affords no
parallel, gentlemen of the jury, to this cause of son living arrayed
against his parent gone before, of brother fighting brother for a
miserable pittance_, and so on. Don't you see that to be spoken
impressively these words demand a certain venomous hiss? I want to
electrify the jury by that hiss, but I can't do it unless I have out two
of your back teeth and this front one.'
"Here he tapped the left of my two front teeth--pearls they were,
Hopkins, pearls beyond price. Of course I objected.
"'I can't let you do that,' I said, 'it'll ruin my personal appearance.'
"'Bah, man!' he said. 'What is personal appearance to pre-eminent
success? What are looks compared to immortality? I must again take
advantage of your helplessness and rescue you from the effects of your
own indecision. I have arranged to have a dentist here to-morrow morning
at eight. In five minutes he will have the teeth out, and by noon your
seething voice will have turned twelve good men and true into a mass of
goose flesh that will be utterly unable to resist you.'"
Hopkins was heartless enough to laugh at this unexpected development.
"I wish I could appreciate the joke, Hopkins," said the spirit
indignantly. "What is fun for you was tragedy for me. I had always
prided myself on the vigour of my voice. There was nothing weak or
affected about it, nor would I, had I been in control of my being, have
permitted such vandalism as was perpetrated by that dentist the next
morning, just for the sake of making a _coup_ with the jury. I can't
deny, however, that when the speech was delivered the general effect was
heightened by the sibilant tone in which the words were spoken. To me
the dreadful spirit within my body was apparent from introduction to
peroration. The deadly greenness of the fiend shone out through every
vein in my body. My eyes, once a beautiful blue, became like the eyes of
an adder, and my cheeks took on a pallor that was horrible to look upon,
and yet which so fascinated all beholders that they could not take their
eyes away from it. The jurors sat petrified, terror depicted on every
line of their faces; the judge himself, a florid, phlegmatic person
ordinarily, was pale as a sheet and uneasy as an exposed nerve, and when
my poor innocent finger, once so prettily pink of hue, was pointed,
absolutely livid with the scorn that that creature alone could throw
into it, at the terror-stricken plaintiff, he actually fell backward
into convulsions, and was carried shrieking profanely from the
court-room.
"As for me, I sat cowering directly behind the jury-box fearful for the
future, fearful for the effect upon my poor body of the terrible strain
that was put upon it, and wondering what I could possibly do upon
resuming my normal condition to maintain the reputation which that
morning's achievement had brought to me. So absorbed was I in these
reflections that the judge's faltering charge at the conclusion of the
proceedings fell upon my consciousness unheard, save as the monotonous
roar of the vehicles in the street outside was heard; but the verdict of
the jury, rendered without leaving the box, in favour of my client did
reach my ears, and almost simultaneously came the announcement that
there would be no appeal, since the plaintiff in the cause had been
frightened into imbecility by the fearful indictment of his character in
the summing-up of the counsel for the defendant."
CHAPTER VIII.
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN THE MAKING OF A NAME.
"YOU must have felt like a vest-pocket Byron, to wake up and find
yourself famous that way," said Toppleton; "or, perhaps you found
yourself _in_famous, eh? I don't know how it is here in England, but in
America a lawyer who'd browbeat a poor innocent litigant into a state
bordering upon lunacy, would be requested to move out of town."
"It all depends," returned the spirit. "If my substituted self had
limited his brow-beating to the plaintiff, it might have made the
reputation which I found awaiting me upon my return to my remains, one
of infamy, but that was by no means the case. The judge himself
succumbed to nervous prostration a week later, the jurors vanished like
a pack of frightened hares immediately they were discharged, and even my
client shook like a leaf when he felt my eyes resting upon him. As for
my own proper self, I was the worst scared man of the lot; so, you see,
it was a sort of universal awe that was inspired by the demeanour of my
body that day, and one which commanded rather than invited respect."
"Did you find your head a little stretched when you got back into
yourself again, or did he break his word and refuse to let you back?"
queried Toppleton.
"Oh, he kept his word that time," replied the spirit. "After the trial
was over he took a cab and drove rapidly out to Regent's Park and back,
returning to my chambers about six o'clock. I was there waiting for him,
ready to enter upon my usual anatomical ways once more. My client was
also there, though, of course, unaware that I was present in spirit. I
was very much amused to see how utterly unnerved poor Baskins was by the
strange events of the day. Several times he muttered to himself remarks
like, '_I didn't know he had it in him_,' and '_If I'd thought he was
that kind of a man I'd have kept blessed clear of him. I wonder what
he'll charge._' And then every time there was a step or noise of any
kind out in the corridor, he would straighten up nervously and stare at
the door in a tense sort of fashion which showed that he dreaded meeting
me. Once he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a big duelling
pistol which I was alarmed to note was loaded to the muzzle. It was
evident that the awe which my new self had inspired in him amounted to
positive fear.
"That duelling pistol put an end to my enjoyment of the situation,"
continued the spirit. "I was afraid he might be goaded into discharging
a load of cold lead into my body. Of course, I didn't care to have that
happen, and under the agitation of the moment I uttered an ejaculation
of consternation. I never saw in all my experience a man so thoroughly
frightened as Baskins was when the sound for which he could not account
greeted his ear. He went on his knees and shook like a leaf, clasping
his hands, as if in prayer, before his face, which turned a blue white.
The pistol fell from his hands to the floor, and, as it did so, the door
opened, and I saw myself standing on the sill, haggard of face, but not
worn of spirit, for the supernatural brilliance of my eye as it caught
sight of the pistol and realized at a flash just what the situation was,
showed that the soul within was still unwearied by its effort.
"Then," added the spirit, his voice husky with the remembrance of his
dishonour, "came an interview that makes me blush, even though I have no
cheek on which to display that manifestation of shame. My body sprang
forward as the pistol met my eye, and, snatching the weapon from the
floor, flung it out through the window into the court, where it
exploded, the jar of contact with the stone walk being sufficient to
discharge it. As the sharp report of the pistol echoed through the court
my client threw himself flat on his face, and prostrate there at my feet
began to utter a string of incoherent lamentations and despairing
requests for mercy at my hands which were painful to hear, and I judged
from what meaning I could patch together from his jumble of words, that
he deemed me an emissary of Satan,--and I think he was right.
"'What does this mean?' queried the fiend within me. 'Murder or suicide?
If you contemplated suicide, I forgive you; if murder--'
"'I was afraid,' gasped my unhappy client. 'Your power was so terrible;
the effect of your words so awful, that I--'
"'Ah!' interrupted the fiend. 'I see. It was murder you were prepared to
do in case we should not agree, and the power of my eye should chance to
be exerted to win you from your determination whatever it may have
been.'
"'No--not that--not that!' shrieked my client. 'It was but the natural
instinct of self-preservation that led me to--'
"'You weaken your cause by your loquacity, my friend,' said the fiend.
'You suspected me of contemplating some dishonourable or cowardly act,
and for that reason you entered the office of him who has saved your
good name and your purse alike from them who would have robbed you of
both, having so little sense of gratitude that you bring with you an
instrument of death. Very well, let it be so. I am satisfied if you are.
I might do that to you now which would place you in far worse estate
than your poor brother is in. If you had your pistol in your hand, aimed
at my heart, you would still be powerless to do me an injury, for with
one glance of my eye I could force you to turn the muzzle to your own
head, and with another compel you to empty its leaden load into your own
brains. Your suspicions are insulting, but an insult from one of your
calibre to one of mine is as the sting of a fly to the elephant; I pass
it over and charge it on the bill. Ten thousand pounds for trying the
case, two thousand five hundred for accepting your insult, two thousand
five hundred for condoning it, and in one hour must this money be in my
hands with a letter--a letter written and signed by you, expressing your
satisfaction with the manner of my conducting the case, and concluding
with an allusion to your surprise that my charge is so moderate."
"'And if I refuse to submit to this outrage?' queried my client, lashed
into a show of courage which he really did not feel.
"'You leave this room a raving maniac, for I have the power to make you
so,' I was appalled to hear myself reply."
"And do you mean to tell me," said Hopkins, his bosom heaving with
indignation, "that you sat there like a zero on a pedestal, and kept
silent with this blackmailing infamy going on under your very eyes?"
"I was speechless with rage," returned the spirit, "or I should have
interfered. Before I could recover my composure the letter had been
written and the money paid, for my client still had the sixty thousand
pounds in their original form, in the one thousand pound banknotes. The
struggle he went through was terrible to witness, and as the notes
passed from his hands into mine he sighed like one who was heart-broken.
The fiend dictated the letter commending my efforts, and expressing
surprise that the amount asked for my services was so moderate, and then
he opened the door and ushered the unfortunate victim out. As the latter
left the room the fiend whispered to him in withering tones to beware
of his vengeance if he ever attempted to reveal what had passed since he
entered the room.
"'For,' said he, 'if you are not careful, it matters not in what part of
this or any other world you may be, you must forever be within my reach,
and forever subject to the consequences of my resentment.'
"Then," said the spirit, "he slammed the door violently and turned and
fixed my eyes upon the corner wherein I sat aghast with the
mortification of having my name identified in any man's mind with such a
diabolical act as that I had just witnessed.
"'Now,' he said, 'you may have this carcass of yours back and welcome.
It's lucky for you I have the power I have. If I hadn't, your body would
be riddled with bullets within twenty-four hours.'
"'Bah!' I replied. 'That man had no more intention of using that pistol
without provocation than I have, and considering the terror with which
you have managed to inspire everyone with whom you have come in contact
to-day, I don't wonder he came armed.'
"'I never thought of that,' said my substitute, 'though what you say
about everybody's terror is true; you might apply it even more broadly
than you do, because as I drove down the Strand just now even the
omnibus horses shied, and the driver of my cab had all he could do to
keep his ramshackle steed from running away. But hurry up and get ready
to relieve me of this mortal incubus of yours, and take your money--it's
a nice little sum, eh?'
"'Magnificent,' I returned. 'And when you and I have changed places I am
going to return all but five hundred pounds to that poor fellow you have
just robbed in such a conscienceless fashion.'
"The moment I said this," said the spirit, "I regretted it, for he
grasped the money with my right hand, and holding it over the fire,
which was blazing merrily in the grate, he said. 'My friend, I exact
from you an oath that you will not return one penny of this sum to Mr.
Baskins. If you refuse, I shall cast every one of these bank notes into
that fire, nor shall I admit you once more to your form until the very
ashes of those notes have disappeared into the air.'
"Now what could I do under the circumstances, Toppleton?" asked the
spirit earnestly. "Could I do anything but swear to what he asked?"
"Yes," returned Hopkins, "you could. I don't believe so vile a creature
as he could have distinguished between a bible and a city directory. I'd
have taken the oath on the city directory."
"Alas!" said the spirit sadly, and with such evident sincerity that it
jostled the Aunt Sallie from the chair to the floor. "As I said to you
before, I am only an enduring Briton where you have the inventive genius
of the Yankee. I never thought of the substitution of the directory for
the bible, and the consequent elimination of moral responsibility from
the oath. I simply swore as he desired me to, and in an hour I was alone
in my office, the occupant of a frame so exhausted that I could scarcely
lift my head, and in my pockets were those miserable bank notes, more
burning to my conscience than had they been sovereign for sovereign in
gold coin hot from the mint."
"Of course," suggested Hopkins, "you devoted them to the cause of
charity; subscribed all but your just due to the House for Imbeciles, in
which that wronged unfortunate the plaintiff was incarcerated?"
"I intended something of the sort," returned the spirit, extricating
himself from the head of Aunt Sallie, and ensconcing himself on the
paper-weight on Hopkins' desk. "But I didn't have time. You see,
immediately after the trial a perfect avalanche of litigants from other
offices slid into mine, and within a week I was so overwhelmed with
business that I had to hire the rest of this floor here to find room for
my papers. It was painful to me, too, to observe that those who had
heard of my fame, but who had never seen me, were manifestly
disappointed, when taking their departure at the close of a first
interview, at having found me so much less great than they had been led
to believe by the public estimate of my abilities. Nevertheless, cases
of the most intricate sort were fairly dumped into my hands by the
cart-load, and, worst of all, I found that eminence brought with it
other responsibilities which I was ill-prepared to meet. I was
constantly in receipt of requests to lecture on subjects of a variety
that would have appalled the fiend himself, and worse than all I was
called into consultation by the Crown in certain litigation of
international importance. For a time I tried to go it alone, and by
assiduous devotion to study to fit myself for the responsibilities which
my fame had brought me, but it was impossible. I broke down in less than
a month; but having tasted the joys of prominence I was not strong
enough to resist the temptation to prolong it indefinitely, and, without
thinking of the means, I committed myself to certain undertakings which
were utterly beyond my intellectual strength to accomplish, and then,
when brought face to face with failure and disgrace, there was but one
thing left for me to do, and that I did.
"I summoned the fiend. The mere expression of a desire to see him was
sufficient to bring him into my presence, and time and time again did I
subject my poor body for ambition's sake to the dreadful interchange of
spirits.
"From without I watched my development from mediocrity to fame with a
joyous interest, not unmixed, however, with regret, for, at such moments
as were permitted me to enjoy the undivided possession of myself, I
could not but feel conscious of a diminution of physical strength which
detracted materially from my happiness; and yet when day after day I saw
my name in print, and noted that I was regarded as one of the most
marvellous intellectual products of the day, I could not bring myself to
the point where I could renounce everything I had gained, and withdraw
to the contented life of the recluse. Let a man once taste a living
immortality, Hopkins, and I care not how strong his character may be, he
would part with all that he holds most dear sooner than he would
renounce that.
"And so it went on for a full year. I became the leading light of the
English bar; I astonished the world as a public orator; so potent were
my arguments that in court or on the hustings none were able to resist
me. At public dinners I was the speaker who alone could hold the
feasters when the seductions of the wine cup awaited the cessation of my
eloquence. Had I been able to extend the hours of my days from
twenty-four to ten times twenty-four, I could not have responded to all
the calls that were made upon my time. Then as if to show the world that
one profession was too small to hold the boundless qualities of my
genius, I startled the English reading public with a novel, the depth
and power of which stirred the soul of the most _blasé_ of
novel-readers, and the presses of my publisher were taxed to the utmost
to supply the demand for my work; then came a volume of poems which
caused my name to be mentioned as a possible successor to the
laureateship; then a series of essays on scientific and philosophical
subjects which were nearly my undoing, since my omniscient self, as I
came to call the fiend who was responsible for my greatness, was absent
upon one occasion when I was called upon unexpectedly to receive a
delegation of Scottish scientists, who had travelled from Edinburgh to
London to consult with me in regard to certain propositions advanced in
my book. What they thought of me Heaven only knows. You see, Hopkins, as
far as my original self was concerned there wasn't an atom of scientific
knowledge in my body, and to tell you the truth I hadn't even read my
book, concerning which these unwelcome grey beards had come from
Edinburgh to speak."
"I should like to have been on hand to hear you," said Hopkins with a
laugh. "You must have felt like Damocles!"
"I was worse off than Damocles. He was face to face with nothing but
death. I was having a _tête-à-tête_ with dishonour. Damocles had a sword
suspended over his head, held in place by a hair, I had a Krupp cannon
over mine, held in place by Heaven knows what."
"How did you get out of it?" queried Hopkins. "Summon the fiend?"
"What, summon that deadly green thing before those men, and change
places with him in the presence of witnesses? I fancy not. I have been a
complete hall-marked fool in many respects, Hopkins, but my idiocy never
went as far as that. The only thing left for me to do was to acquiesce
in nine things that those fellows said, and look doubtful at the tenth
and say I didn't know about that; my inherent love of compromise and my
ingenuity in that direction stood me in good stead upon that occasion.
It was a narrow squeak, but I got through all right. The _savants_ went
back to Edinburgh somewhat disappointed, I presume, with the new sun on
the scientific horizon. And you ought to have seen how the fiend
laughed when I told him about it the next time I saw him! He fixed it
all right, however, by sitting down and writing a letter to my late
visitors and answering every one of their questions, and asking them a
few additional ones, to answer which I fancy put them to their trumps.
"After making me famous as scientist, novelist and lawyer, the fiend
induced a political bee to enter my cap, and one day after an absence of
a week from my body, during which period of time I was utterly in the
dark as to its whereabouts, I was appalled to see it reel in at the door
in a maudlin state that revolted me.
"'Well,' I said as soon as I was able to speak,' what new disgrace is
this you have put upon me? Am I to make my mark now as an inebriate, or
is this simply a little practical joke you are putting upon my
sensibilities? If it is the latter, it is a mighty poor joke.'
"'No,' returned the fiend, who I am pleased to say showed some sense of
shame at the plight he had got me into this time. 'No, this is not a
practical joke, nor do I wish to ruin your reputation for sobriety. I
regret this apparent liquidation of your system quite as much as you do,
not because I care what others say, though. It is because I find it
much harder to manage your body under these present circumstances. When
one leg wants to go dancing down Pall Mall, and the other evinces a
strange desire to walk gravely off in the direction of Scotland Yard, it
is a most difficult thing for a mind not thoroughly in sympathy with
either of them to drive them down the Strand in that modest, unassuming
fashion which alone enables one to avoid police supervision. I've had
the devil's own time with this weak corse of yours, and if I had known
how abominably light-headed and airy-legged a little strong drink made
you, I never should have had you stand for Parliament--'
"'Stand for Parliament?' I cried, aghast at the new honour which was
being thrust upon me. 'Have I been standing for Parliament?'
"'Well, not exactly' laughed the fiend. 'You've been sort of held up for
Parliament; you haven't been able to stand up without wobbling for five
days; in fact, not since you tried to do your duty by your constituency,
and take a little something at your own expense with a few rounds of
doubtful voters. You were nearly defeated, my boy, because of your
disgusting inability to cope with the flowing bowl, but I managed to
pull you through. The temperance people voted to a man against you, but
the other interests stood by you pretty well, and you now represent your
old neighbours in--'
"'My old neighbours,' I moaned. 'Have I been made to appear to my old
neighbours in the light of a dissipated politician when all my life long
I had been known to them as a sober--'
"'Don't dwell on that point, my good fellow,' interrupted the fiend.
'Forget it. In forgetfulness of what you have been, and in consideration
of what you have become, lies happiness. By the way--have you a mother
living?'
"'Yes,' I answered, numb with anxiety for fear of what was coming. 'You
haven't disgraced me in her eyes, have you?'
"'Oh, no,' returned the fiend. 'But a lady claiming to be your mother
visited me during the campaign, and was very indignant because I failed
to recognize her--that cost you some votes, but not enough to change the
result. She didn't look a bit like you, and I was afraid the opposition
was putting up some game on us, so I just laughed her off.'
"'You--you laughed her off--you mean to tell me,' I stammered, 'that
when my mother came to my political headquarters to see her son, he
refused to recognize her, and laughed her off?'
"'Oh, come,' said the fiend indignantly, 'don't get angry. Remember one
thing, please. You are now a member of Parliament, a great Lawyer, a
famous Scientist, a Novelist and an Orator. It is I who have made you
so. If you don't like what I've done, we'll call the arrangement off,
and you can make a spectacle of yourself in the eyes of the world. I
hate an ingrate. You couldn't expect me to know a lady whom I never even
saw before, and when I have a big scheme on foot I do not intend to have
it spoiled for want of caution. If I made you seem an undutiful son, I
am sorry for it, and will strive to make amends next time I meet your
mother. I'll write a formal apology if you desire, but I don't wish to
hear any more of your sentimental nonsense. Much has to be sacrificed in
achieving greatness, and you have got therewith just about as little
personal inconvenience as any man in history. Stop your snivelling, or
I'll desert your cause, and what that means even you can grasp.'
"With these words," concluded the spirit, "he departed, and left me to
sleep off the effects of a seven days' campaign in which my moral
welfare had been sacrificed to the thirst of at least four hundred
doubtful voters. Credited with a seat in Parliament, I found my name
debited with the crime of intemperance, lack of self-respect, and a
gross affront to my own mother; a fine record for one week in which in
my own consciousness I was unable to recollect doing anything that could
not have been done with propriety by a candidate for canonization."
"Humph!" ejaculated Toppleton, deeply moved by the horror of the weary
spirit's story. "It strikes me that canonization in the form in which it
was used on the Sepoys in '57 would be mild punishment for that
Nile-green brute that got you into this. To tell you the truth, Sallie,
the fearful justice of your cause is almost enough to make me withdraw
entirely. I should hate to be called upon to prosecute a defendant of
the nature of your verdant visitor."
CHAPTER IX.
THE CROWNING ACT OF INFAMY.
"HEAR me to the end, Hopkins, I beseech you," said the exile earnestly.
"Of course the fiend strikes you as a being to be avoided, but I do not
believe that he is now as powerful and as terrible as he was in the days
gone by. Long confinement to a purely mortal sphere must necessarily
have weakened his supernatural powers, and it strikes me that properly
managed by a young and aggressive lawyer, our case against him would be
won in an instant. At all events, do not compel me to leave my story
unfinished. I am sure that when you hear of the crowning act of infamy
of which my evil genius was guilty, you will not hesitate a moment in
making up your mind that duty summons you to aid me."
"Very well," rejoined Hopkins. "Go on with the tale, only do not be too
sanguine as to its results in convincing me that I am the man to
extricate you from this horrid plight."
"After I had attended one or two meetings of the House of Commons," said
the exile, resuming the thread of his story, "I enjoyed the experience
so much that I almost forgave the fiend for having so nearly ruined me
with all my old friends; and having written, in accordance with his
promise, a truly beautiful letter to my mother, explaining away the
harsh treatment she had suffered at the hands of her now illustrious son
on the ground of his not being quite himself on that occasion--a state
of mind due to too close attention to work and study--I quite forgave
him for that unpleasant episode in my campaign. My mother too overlooked
the affront, and wrote me a most affectionate epistle, stating that I
might trample upon her most cherished ideals with her entire
acquiescence if my taking that course would ensure to her the receipt of
so loving and touching a letter as the one I had sent her. The fiend and
I both had to smile, on receiving my mother's note, to observe that the
dear old lady attributed my ability to express myself in such beautiful
terms to the poetic traits I had inherited from her.
"'She's very proud of her dear boy,' sneered the fiend.
"'In spite of his brutality at the committee-room,' I retorted; and then
we both grinned, for each truly believed that he had got the better of
the other."
"It was a pretty close contest," said Hopkins. "But on the whole the
laugh seems to be on you."
"It certainly was the first time I tried to speak in Parliament,"
returned the spirit. "Such a failure was never seen. I was to take part
in a very important debate, and when the hour came for me to get on my
feet and talk, I was my weak-kneed self and utterly unacquainted even
with the side I was expected to take. The fiend had promised to do all
the talking, and on this occasion failed to materialize. I spoke for ten
minutes in an incoherent fashion, mouthing my words so that no one could
understand a syllable that I uttered. It was a fearful disappointment to
my friends in the House and in the galleries; the latter being packed
when it was understood that I was to speak. Of course, when the fiend
appeared later on, he straightened it all out, and the printed speech
which he dictated and which I wrote was really a fine effort and did our
party much good. But these little embarrassments were tragedies to me,
and at every new success I quailed before the possibilities of
disastrous failure at the next effort. In but one respect was I entirely
free from the fiendish influence, and that was in the matter of my
love. From that phase of my life the fiend kept himself apart, and it
was the only joyous oasis to be found in the boundless desert of my
misery. To the fiend, Sunday was literally a day of rest, for upon that
day he never approached me, and I devoted it to calling upon the woman I
loved.
"She was a beautiful woman, the only daughter of a retired city
merchant, and fond of the admiration of successful men. That she loved
me before I attained to eminence in the various professions in which the
fiend had compelled me to dabble, I had much reason to believe; but I
had never ventured to make love to her in dead earnest, because I feared
for the result. She had often said to me that while she should never
marry for riches and position, she did not intend to fall in love with
any man just because he had neither, and that no man need ever propose
marriage to her who was not reasonably sure of a successful career. It
was not selfishness that led her to think and speak in this manner, but
a realizing sense of the unhappy fact that mediocrity married is as
hopeless as a broken-winded race-horse in harness. There is plenty of
ambition but no future, and as she often said, 'Where hopelessness
comes, happiness dwelleth not!'"
"A daughter of Solomon, I wot," interrupted Toppleton.
"Yes," said the spirit, with a sigh for her he had lost, "and rather
superior to the old gentleman in a great many ways. Of course I
understood, and, lacking achievement in my profession, discreetly held
my tongue on the subject of matrimony, taking good care, however, when I
called never to let any other fellow outstay me, unless perchance he was
some poor drivelling idiot from whose immediate present the laurel was
further removed than from my own. She understood me, I think, though I
never put that point to a practical test by a proposal of marriage. This
was the state of affairs at the time of my first meeting with the fiend,
and for a year subsequent to that ill-starred night upon which he first
crossed my path I let matters take their own course, waiting a
favourable opportunity to ask the great question, upon the answer to
which hung all my future happiness. I could see that with my increasing
fame, her interest in me waxed; but as every passing day brought new and
undreamed-of distinctions she grew more and more reserved toward me--a
most feminine trait that, Hopkins. When a woman begins to love a man in
dead earnest, in nine cases out of ten she will make him feel that he is
utterly abhorrent to her, and it's a good thing she does, because it
makes him look carefully into his own character in an endeavour to
discover and to root out all the undesirable features thereof. It is
this that enables love to redeem men whom the world considers
irredeemable, so, of course, I had no feeling of discouragement at her
growing coldness, for, understanding women, I knew exactly what it
meant. I think I was more or less of an enigma to her."
"I should think it likely," said Toppleton. "If she really knew you, she
must have been mightily surprised at your sudden strides towards
universal genius. It's a wonder to me that she did not suspect the
enigma, and give it up."
"Yes," returned the spirit. "It was very embarrassing to me when she
expressed her surprise at my progress, and asked me how I did it, and
other questions equally hard to answer. And then her father, who was
always more or less insufferable, now became absolutely insulting--that
is, his new found appreciation of my virtues led him into making
assertions which galled me, he little knew how much--assertions to the
effect that to look at me no one would suspect that I had more than
ordinary intelligence; that to hear me talk one would never suppose I
could make a speech of any kind, much less set the world on fire by my
eloquence; and finally, that no man after this could tell him that it
was possible to judge of the future by the past, or the past by the
present, for he had always thought me foredoomed to failure, and I had
achieved success, and, having achieved success, gave no present evidence
that I deserved it."
"He had the making of the accepted mother-in-law in him," said Hopkins.
"What could have induced you to fall in love with the daughter of a man
like that?"
"She was a superb woman, that's what," rejoined the spirit with
enthusiasm, "and when I think of the happiness that the Nile-green shade
first placed within my reach and then snatched from me, I regret that
the soul is immortal, and that I am not all-powerful, for it would
please me to grind his soul into absolute nothingness.
"It was at least a year and two months subsequent to my first meeting
with him," continued the spirit as soon as his overwrought feelings
would permit, "that he first broached the subject of matrimony. He had
attended a grand ball at the house of the Earl of Piccadilly and was the
lion of the occasion owing to his stand in certain recent Parliamentary
crises. His readiness in debate had gained him a high position, and his
natural grace of manner--that is, _my_ natural grace of manner--had
helped him to a hold on the affections of those with whom he was
associated, for, as he grew more accustomed to my figure and got his
angles comfortably rounded off to fit my curves, he managed to subdue
that horrible aspect he had assumed with such fearful effect in the
trial of Baskins _v._ Baskins, and when geniality was the attribute most
likely to help him on he was geniality personified. The ball was
ostensibly one of the Earl of Piccadilly's usual series of annual
functions, but in reality it was given for the purpose of introducing me
into society. From all accounts, it was a grand affair, and I seemed to
have made as fine an impression as a social debutant as I had in the law
courts, in the field of literature, and in the House of Commons. If the
fiend spoke truly that night, when he returned and handed my fatigued
body over to me for a rest, I made a marked success; all the ladies were
raving about me; I was a divine dancer, though before that night my feet
had never tripped to the strains of a waltz, polka, or any other
terpsichorean exercise. I pleased the dowagers as well as the maids, and
had, in short, become an eligible--that is I had become as desirable a
matrimonial _parti_ as an untitled person could hope to be, and the
fiend remarked with a sly wink that it was not beyond the range of
possibilities that the Premier would bestow upon me one of the peerages
at his disposal when the proper time came.
"'Bachelorhood is pardonable in a young man,' said my evil genius upon
this occasion, 'but we must marry if we are to reach the pinnacle of
success. There is a solidity about the married man's estate that
bachelorhood lacks, and I rather think I can make a match that will push
us ahead.'
"'I don't think I need your assistance,' I replied. 'In fact I prefer
that some of the things which pertain to myself shall be left entirely
in my own hands. In matters of the affections I can take care of
myself.'
"'Very well,' was the fiend's response. 'Have your own way about it,
only take my advice and get married. We need a wife.'
"'We?' I cried. 'We! I just want you to understand, my dear sir, that
the pronoun doesn't fit the case. _I_ may need a wife and _you_ may need
a wife, but if you think I'm going into any co-operative scheme with you
in that matter you are less omniscient than usual. Remember that please
and let us have nothing more to say on the subject.'"
"That was a very proper stand for you to take," said Hopkins, gravely.
"Though I think that, under the circumstances, you should have given up
all ideas of marriage. No woman would have you, knowing that you were
not yourself at times; and then having as little control over your other
self as you seem to have had, you would often have found yourself in hot
water for flirting with other women, when, in reality, your own self was
as innocent as a mountain daisy."
"I know I did wrong in thinking of marriage, Hopkins," returned the
spirit, "but if you had ever met the woman I loved, you would have loved
her too--yes, even if you were a confirmed celibate. I don't believe a
Cardinal, sir, would have hesitated between his hat and her. My sole
justification was her loveliness, and then the fiend's ready
acquiescence in my statement that in that matter he must hold aloof gave
me confidence that I might safely take the step I had so long and so
ardently desired to take.
"Weeks passed by, and in everything save the courtship of Miss
Hicksworthy-Johnstone I gave myself unreservedly over to the fiend, who
began suddenly to take an interest in my personal appearance which he
had never before manifested. He laid in a fine supply of clothes--dress
suits, walking suits, lounging suits--suits in fact of every description
and of the finest texture. Shirts and collars, and ties of the choicest
sort were imported by him from Paris, and on my hands I now observed he
was beginning to wear kid gloves of fashionable type. His hats and shoes
were distinctly in the mode, and his jewelry, as far as it went, was of
unexceptionable taste and quiet elegance. In fact, Toppleton, I began to
be something of a dandy. This I attributed to the natural vanity of my
other self. I, too, was proud of that graceful form, but I never thought
enough about it to go about arraying it in a fashion which neither
Solomon nor the lily of the field could ever have approached. I cared
nothing for gloves save as a means to a warm finger's end, and it made
no difference to me whether my hat was of the style of '48, or plucked
fresh from the French Emperor's own block. As long as my head was
covered I was satisfied. Patent leather shoes I could never bring myself
to buy, because they had always seemed to me to go hand in hand either
with poverty or laziness. To a man who cannot afford shoe blacking or
who is too lazy to black his own boots, patent leathers, I thought, were
a boon; but I never classed myself under either head, and wore the
regular foot gear of the plain but honest son of toil.
"But now all was changed. My other self was vain, and unexpectedly gave
himself over to dandyism. At first he rather disturbed my equanimity by
wearing somewhat loud patterns, but he soon got over that, and between
us, after a very little while, two or three months perhaps, my body had
the best clothes there were to be had in all London. I had not realized
all this time that I was fast becoming a millionaire, and when my
tailor's bill for fifteen hundred pounds came home one night I was in a
great stew, but the fiend came in and relieved my conscience very much
by showing me my balance in the bank. It amounted, Toppleton, to one
hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds, with an income still running
evenly along from my law practice of ten thousand pounds per annum, not
to mention the revenues from my books, which in six months had amounted
to two thousand pounds. I was a rich man, and when I observed that this
was my condition, I made up my mind to ask Miss Hicksworthy-Johnstone's
hand in marriage the very next time I saw her. I hoped this would be
soon, but, alas for human expectations, it was not. The Christmas
holidays were about to begin, and I bethought me that at the season of
goodwill toward men I might ask the possessor of my heart to accept it
as a permanent gift, a decision which I unfortunately kept to myself,
for from one end of the holidays to the other I never laid eyes upon my
mortal habitation. The fiend was off with it for one whole month,
Hopkins."
"Didn't you know where?" asked Toppleton.
"I did not," returned the spirit. "He went off with it as usual one
night late in November to attend a meeting of the leaders of our party,
telling me not to worry if he did not return for twenty-four hours,
since there was important business on hand. What the business was he did
not inform me, nor did I seek to know it, since under our arrangement it
was not necessary that I should familiarize myself with parliamentary
matters, which were usually as dry as they were weighty anyhow, and
hence distasteful to me.
"Well, I waited twenty-four hours and no fiend appeared. Another day
passed with no sign of him. A third day moved into the calendar of the
past; a week elapsed, then a second, a third, a fourth, and finally a
month had gone. I was growing sick with apprehension. What if something
dreadful had happened and my lovely, only body was lying dead somewhere,
too shattered for the fiend to remain longer within it, and gone for
ever from me? What if the present occupant of my corse had again yielded
to the seductive influence of the cup, and was off somewhere upon a
prolonged spree? I floated uneasily in and about my quarters here,
sleepless, worried to distraction. I searched my papers, as best I could
without hands, to see if there was not some clue as to my whereabouts
among them, and found none. I went through the contents of the waste
basket even, and found nothing to relieve my dreadful anxiety, and then
I went to the wardrobe to search the pockets of my clothes for possible
evidence to calm my agitated soul.
"Toppleton, there was not one vestige of a garment in that clothes press
from top to bottom. Not a shoe, not a coat, absolutely nothing. It was
bare even as Mother Hubbard's cupboard was bare. This was an additional
shock, and I became giddy with fear. I floated madly across to the
bureau and peered into the drawers thereof. Beyond the ties I had
formerly worn and the collars, frayed at the edges, of my negligée days,
nothing remained, and then for the first time I noticed that my trunk
was gone from the room.
"'What can it mean?' I asked myself, though I might as well have spared
the question, for it was one I could not answer. Days came and went,
leaving me still pondering. Christmas Eve came and found me here moping
in a cheerless apartment, friendless, forlorn, clothesless and
bodiless--a fine way to pass what should have been the happiest night of
the year."
"Elegant!" said Toppleton. "It might have been worse though. If you had
had your body and still been clothesless you would have found it rather
cold, I fancy."
"I had almost given up all hope of ever seeing myself again," continued
the exile, ignoring Hopkins' interruption, "when on the evening of
January second I heard a step coming along the hall which I at once
recognized as my own, my latch-key was inserted in the lock and the door
was opened, and at last I stood before myself again, the picture of
health and happiness.
"'Are you there?' my lips said with a broad smile, as my body entered
the room.
"'I am,' I replied shortly; 'and I've been here, Heaven knows how long,
worried sick to know what had become of you. I don't think you are the
most considerate fiend in the world to take me off for weeks without
letting me know anything of my whereabouts.'
"'I am very sorry,' said the fiend, throwing himself down on the lounge.
'I meant to have told you, but you were not here when I returned. Lord
Smitherton invited me out to his house at Snorley Farms for the
Christmas holidays along with the Earl of Pupley, General
Carlingberry-Jimpson, and a half-dozen members of the Birmingham Society
of Fine Arts. It was an invitation I could not well refuse, and,
besides, our carcass here was beginning to feel the need of an outing,
so I accepted. I came back here to tell you about it, but you must have
been floating about somewhere else. At all events, you are much better
for the outing, and your purely mortal self has had a good time. And, by
the way, I want to warn you about one point. When you are the occupant
of this corse, I think you would better not walk down Rotten Row, or go
anywhere in fact where I am accustomed to going, because you don't know
my friends any more than I know yours, and that is apt to lead to
misunderstanding. Lady Romaine Cushing, who was visiting Lady
Smitherton, told me that I had cut her dead in the Row one afternoon,
although she had stopped her carriage particularly to speak to me. It
was you who cut her, but, of course, you were not to blame, because you
never saw Lady Romaine Cushing; but it is hard to explain away little
matters of that sort, and I had the deuce of a time getting her to
believe that her eye must have deceived her. We can't afford to offend
our friends of the fair sex, you know; they can make or mar a man these
days.'
"'And I am to be kept away from the haunts of polite society,' I said,
with some natural indignation, 'just because it embarrasses _you_ to
explain why I don't bow to people I don't know.'
"'But it's all for your good,' he replied. 'You seem to forget that I am
actuated entirely by the best of motives.'
"'No doubt,' I said, 'but I think it's rather hard on me to be excluded
from the most attractive quarter of London.'
"'You are not excluded. You can walk there if you choose at night or
very early in the morning, or when Society is out of town, or, better
still, you can float there in your invisible state at anytime. In fact,'
added the fiend, 'it would be very enjoyable for you, I should think, to
do that last. You can poise yourself over a tree for instance, and watch
yourself hobnobbing with the illustrious. You can sit in your
invisibility in any one of the carriages that roll to and fro, and, as
long as you do not obtrude yourself on the occupants, there is not an
equipage in London, high or low, in which you cannot ride. You are
better off than I am in that respect. While I have no particular shape I
am visible like a bit of sea-fog, but you being invisible can go
anywhere without making trouble. The theatres are open to you free of
charge. The best seats are at your disposal. If you choose to do it you
could even sit on the throne of England, and nobody would be the wiser.'
"'That's all very well,' I said; 'but I don't care to travel about in
that impersonal fashion. I prefer the incarnate manner of doing things,
and if you will kindly permit me to assume bodily form once more, I'll
be very much obliged.'
"'Certainly!' he replied, and with that we changed places.
"The sensation of getting back to my accustomed figure once more was
delightful, and there was no denying the fact that I was better off for
the outing I had so unceremoniously taken. My step was elastic, my head
felt clear as a bell, and, altogether, I had never before enjoyed the
consciousness of so great a physical strength as now was mine.
"This feeling gave me courage to do many things which I had hitherto put
off, and among them was the making of a proposal of marriage to the
admired Miss Hicksworthy-Johnstone. It was seven o'clock when the fiend
had left me to the personal enjoyment of my complete self, and at eight
o'clock I was in a hansom cab speeding out to the dwelling-place of the
woman I loved. At eight thirty I was on my knees before her, and by
eleven o'clock I was her accepted suitor. Such happiness as was mine,
Hopkins, no man ever knew. The only trouble known to my soul at the
moment was the consciousness that Arabella, as I was now permitted to
call Miss Hicksworthy-Johnstone, was in the dark as to the methods by
which my greatness had been achieved. I could not confess my dreadful
secret to her, for that would have put an end entirely to our relations,
and I loved her so that I could not bring myself to give her up. She
asked me numberless questions of a most embarrassing sort, as if she
suspected there was something wrong, but I managed in some way, I know
not how, to give a plausible answer to every one of them."
"Possibly the fiend left a little of his brain in your head when he got
out," suggested Toppleton.
"Perhaps so," returned the exile. "However it was, I managed to make out
a satisfactory case for myself, and at the close of a cross-examination
such as no man ever went through before, lasting two and a half hours,
Arabella threw herself into my arms and called me by my first name. She
was mine, and all the world seemed bright.
"I walked home," continued the spirit, "and in a condition of ecstasy
that almost compensates for all I have suffered since. My feet seemed
hardly to touch the ground, and I whistled from the time I left Arabella
until I entered my room here,--a reprehensible habit, perhaps, but one
which had always been my method of expressing satisfaction with the
world. As I entered this room I was brought down from my ecstatic
heights to an appreciation of my actual state, for the first thing to
greet my eyes was the fiend, greener than ever, sitting by the fire
ruminating apparently, for it was at least five minutes before he took
note of my presence, although I addressed him politely as soon as I saw
him.
"'Hallo,' he said finally. 'Where have you been?'
"The question was as unexpected as it was natural, and I was unprepared
for it, so I made no reply, covering my silence by taking off my shoes
and preparing for bed.
"'Where have you been?' he asked again, this time in a tone so
peremptory that I decided in an instant not to tell him.
"'Out,' I answered. 'Where have you?'
"At this he laughed.
"'Don't be impudent,' he said. 'I do not wish to pry into your affairs.
I only wanted to know where you had been because I am interested in
you, and I want to help you to avoid pitfalls.'
"'That's all right,' I responded graciously. 'I appreciate your
kindness, but you need not be interested in where I have been to-night,
because I have been engaged in a little matter that concerns you not at
all.'
"'Very well,' he replied, turning once more to the fire. 'I'll take your
word for it; only you and I must be perfectly candid with each other, or
complications may arise, that's all. By the way, I'll have to borrow you
again to-morrow morning. There are a half-dozen members of Parliament
coming here to discuss certain matters of state, and you would be
somewhat embarrassed if you undertook to meet them.'
"'That suits me,' I said, happy enough to acquiesce in anything. 'Only
I'll want to get back here to-morrow evening. I have an engagement.'
"The fiend eyed me narrowly for a moment, and I winced beneath his gaze.
"'All right,' he said, 'you can get back, but this Parliamentary
business is very important, and I _must_ have the semblance of a mortal
being every morning this week.'
"'That can be arranged,' I replied. Arabella could have my evenings,
and he could have my mornings. That was fair enough, I thought, and so
it happened. Every night for a week I spent in the company of my
_fiancée_,--whose name, by the way, I never mentioned in the fiend's
presence--and every morning for the same period he was in charge,
conducting negotiations which only served to make me more famous.
"Finally the dreadful morning came. It was Saturday, and the fiend and I
were sitting together in my quarters. We had just changed places. I was
in my present disembodied state, and the fiend had taken possession for
the day, when there was heard in the corridor a quick nervous step which
stopped as he who directed it came to my door, and a voice, which to my
consternation I recognized at once as that of Arabella's father
following close upon a resounding knock, cried out,--
"'This is the place. This is the kennel in which the hound lives. Open
the door!'
"There was not time for the fiend and me to change places. Indeed, I had
hardly recognized the old gentleman's voice, when the fiend in answer to
his demand opened the door.
"A madder man than my prospective father-in-law appeared to be I never
saw, Hopkins," said the spirit, his voice trembling with emotion. "He
was livid, and when the door opened, and he saw the man he supposed to
be me standing before him showing absolutely no signs of recognition, he
fairly foamed at the mouth.
"'How do you do, sir?' said the fiend, polite as Chesterfield.
"'Don't speak to me, you puppy,' roared the old gentleman. 'Don't you
dare to address me until I address you.'
"'This is most extraordinary,' said the fiend, seemingly nonplussed at
Mr. Hicksworthy-Johnstone's inexplicable wrath; for he could understand
it no better than I, and to me it was absolutely incomprehensible, for I
was not aware of anything that I had done that could possibly give rise
to so violent an ebullition of rage. 'I am at a loss, sir, to understand
why you enter the office of a gentleman in a fashion so unbecoming to
one of your years; you must have made some mistake.'
"'Mistake!' shrieked Arabella's father. 'Mistake, you snivelling
hypocrite? What mistake can there be? Do you see that note in this
week's _Vanity Fair_, you vile deceiver? Do you see me? Do you see
anything?'
"'I see you,' replied the fiend calmly, 'and I wish I didn't.'
"'I'll go bond you wish you didn't,' howled the enraged visitor. 'And
when I get through with you you'll wish I hadn't brought this oak stick
along with me. Now I want to know what explanation you have to make of
that paragraph in the paper.'
"'I cannot explain what I have not read,' returned the fiend. 'Nor shall
I attempt to read what you wish to have explained until I know who you
are, and what possible right you can have to demand an explanation of
anything from me. What are you, anyhow, a retired maniac or simply an
active imbecile?'
"As the fiend spoke these words," said the spirit, "I tried to arrest
him; but he was so angry that he either could not or would not hear my
whispered injunction that he be silent. As for the old gentleman, he sat
gasping in his chair, glaring at my poor self, a perfect picture of
apoplectic delirium. The fiend returned the glare unflinchingly.
"'Well!' gasped Mr. Hicksworthy-Johnstone after a minute's steady
glance, 'if you aren't the coolest hand in Christendom. Who am I, eh?
What am I here for, eh? What's my name, eh? What claim have I on you,
eh? Young man, you are the most consummate Lothario on the footstool.
You are a Don Juan with the hide of a rhinoceros and the calmness of a
snow-clad Alp, but I can just tell you one thing. You can't trifle with
Arabella!'
"And then, Hopkins, that infernal fiend looked my father-in law elect
square in the eye and asked,--
"'Who the devil is Arabella?'
"As the words fell from my lips, the old gentleman with an oath started
from his chair, and grasping the inkstand from the table, hurled it with
all his force at my waistcoat, which received it with breathless
surprise; and then, Toppleton, it breaks my heart to say it, but my
foot--the foot of him who loved Arabella to distraction,--was lifted
against her father, and the man to whom he had promised his daughter's
hand, appeared to kick him forcibly, despite his grey hairs, out into
and along the corridor to the head of the stairs. Then, as I watched,
the two men grappled and went crashing down the stairs, head over heels
together.
"Sick with fear and mortification, I flew back into the room, where,
lying upon the floor, I saw the copy of _Vanity Fair_ that Mr.
Hicksworthy-Johnstone had brought, and marked with blue pencil upon the
page before me was printed the announcement of the engagement of myself
to Ariadne Maude, second daughter of John Edward Fackleton, Earl of
Pupley, of Castle Marrowfat, Sauceton Downs, Worcestershire."
CHAPTER X.
THE SPIRIT'S STORY IS CONCLUDED.
"I SHOULD say," volunteered Hopkins, with a shake of his head, "that
that was about the most unpleasant situation he had got you into yet;
and yet he was not entirely to blame. He requested candour from you, and
you declined to be candid. You should have told him of your engagement
to Miss Hicksworthy-Johnstone. That would at least have prevented his
kicking her father out of your office and rolling downstairs with him."
"It is easy enough to say now what ought to have been done," sobbed the
exile. "I do not think you would have done very differently if you had
been in my position. I was jealous of the fiend, I suppose, and I didn't
know but what he would insist upon doing some of the courting--which
would have been intolerable."
"Better that than to be set down by your _fiancée_ as a heartless
trifler," returned Hopkins. "But what happened next? Was the old
gentleman hurt?"
"Not he," replied the exile. "When he and I, as he supposed me to be,
reached the bottom of the stairs he landed on top, and was the first to
get on his feet again. And then, Hopkins, I was glad not to be in my
normal condition; for as the fiend attempted to rise my Arabella's
father, who still retained his grip upon that oak stick, gave me the
worst licking I ever had in my life, and I--well, I really enjoyed the
spectacle, because I knew that I deserved it. The fiend, hampered
somewhat by the corse to which he was not yet entirely accustomed was at
a tremendous disadvantage, and I know Mr. Hicksworthy-Johnstone's blows
caused him considerable pain. The only possible escape for him was to
leave the body, which he did just as the attacking party landed a
resounding thwack upon the back of my neck. Of course, the minute the
fiend evacuated the premises, I appeared to Mr. Hicksworthy-Johnstone to
have been killed, because there was in reality no slightest bit of
animation left in my body. It was the horror of this discovery that
covered the retreat of the fiend, who, more horribly green than
ever--the green that comes from rage--mounted the steps he had so
summarily descended a moment before, and hurried into my room, dragging
me by sheer force of will, which I was unable to resist, after him. You
see, Hopkins, we were now nothing more than two consciousnesses; two
minds, one mortal, the other immortal; one infinitely strong, the other
finite in its limitations, and I was of course as powerless in the
presence of the fiend as a babe in the arms of its nurse. Mr.
Hicksworthy-Johnstone, thinking that he had killed me, after a vain
endeavour to restore my stricken body to consciousness--in which he
would have succeeded had the fiend permitted me to take possession
again, for I did not wish Arabella's father to suppose for one instant
that he was a murderer--sneaked on tip-toes from the building, and,
mumbling to himself in an insane fashion, disappeared in the crowd of
pedestrians on the street.
"'This is a pretty mess you've got us into,' said the fiend. 'I should
like to know what excuse you can have for such infernal duplicity as you
have been guilty of?'
"'I cannot discuss this matter with you,' I answered. 'The duplicity is
not mine, but yours. You have endeavoured to exercise rights which were
clearly not yours to exercise. I informed you that in matters of love--'
"'Matters of love!' he ejaculated. 'Do you call this a matter of love?
Do you think it's a matter of love for an entire stranger to throw a
two-pound crystal inkstand loaded with ink at the very core of my
waistcoat? Is it a matter of love for a grey-haired villain like that to
drag me or you, whichever way you choose to put it, down a flight of
stairs and then knock the life out of us? It seems to me, you have a
strange idea of love.'
"'Don't you understand!' I cried. 'That man was only doing his duty. He
is Arabella's father!'
"'Again, I must ask,' said the fiend, in a manner that aggravated me as
it had aggravated the old gentleman, 'who, in all creation, is
Arabella?'
"'My _fiancée_!' I yelled. 'My _fiancée_, you poor blind omniscient!
Whom did you suppose?'
"As I uttered these words, Hopkins, the fiend's whole manner changed. He
was no longer flustered and angry merely; he was a determined and very
angry being. He rose from his chair, and fixing his eye upon the point
where he thought I was--and he had a faculty of establishing that point
accurately at all times--and pointing that horrible finger of his at me,
fairly hissed with rage.
"'That settles it, sir,' he cried. 'You and I part for ever. You, by
your foolish perversity, by your inexplicable lack of candour, by your
sinful refusal to trust your welfare to my hands, who have done so much
for you, have nearly overthrown the whole structure of the greatness I
have builded up. Your idiotic behaviour has decided me to do that which
from the very beginning I have most feared. I have been haunted by the
fear that you would want to marry some woman simply for the empty,
mortal reason that you loved her, utterly ignoring the fact that by a
judicious matrimonial step you could attain to heights that otherwise
could never be yours. Having your interests entirely in view, I had
arranged a match which would strengthen into permanence your, at
present, rather uncertain hold upon society. Lady Ariadne Maude
Fackleton, to whom you are at present engaged, as the daughter of the
Earl of Pupley, can give you the _entrée_ to the best circles in London
or out of it; while this Arabella of yours can serve only to assist you
in spending your income and keeping your parlour free from dust. Now,
what earthly use was there in your philandering--'
"'I fancy I have a right to select my own wife,' I said.
"'You always were strong on fancies,' he retorted. 'You might have
known that with the career opening up before you a plain Arabella would
never do. Do you suppose you could take her to a ball at the Earl of
Mawlberry's? Do you suppose that any woman, in fact, who would consent
to marry you as your weak inefficient self could go anywhere and do me
justice? I guess not; and your behaviour has settled our partnership for
ever. We part for good.'
"'Well, I'm glad of it,' I retorted, goaded to anger by his words. 'Get
out. I don't want to see you again. You've ruined me by putting me in
false positions from the time we met until now, and I am sick of it. You
can't leave too soon to suit me.'
"When I had spoken these words he darted one final venomous glance at
me, and walked whistling from the room. As long as his whistle was
perceptible I remained quiet--quiet as my agitation would permit; and
then, when the last flute-like note died away in the distance, I floated
from the room and down the stairs to get my poor bruised body and put it
in shape to call on Arabella.
"Hopkins, when I reached the foot of the stairs my body had disappeared!
I was frantic with fear. I did not know whether it had been found by the
janitor and conveyed to the morgue, whether Arabella's father had
returned to conceal it, and so conceal his fancied crime, or whether the
fiend had finally crowned his infamous work by stealing it. I sought for
it in vain. Forgetful of my invisibility, I asked the janitor if he had
seen it, and he fled shrieking with fear from the building, and declined
ever thereafter to enter it again. Every nook and corner in the Temple I
searched and found it not, and then I floated dejectedly to Arabella's
home, where I found her embracing her father in a last fond farewell.
The old gentleman was about leaving the country to escape the
consequences of his crime.
"'Arabella!' I cried, as I entered the room.
"The girl turned a deadly white, and her father fell cringing upon his
knees, and then I realized that, recognizing my voice, they feared my
ghost had come to haunt them, and with this realization came to my
consciousness the overwhelming thought that both would go insane were I
to persist in speaking while invisible.
"The situation, Hopkins, was absolutely terrible, and if I had had my
teeth I should have gnashed them for the very helplessness of my
condition."
"Did the old gentleman persist in his determination to leave the
country?" asked Hopkins.
"He did. He sailed for the United States on a small freight schooner
that night, and reached New York in time to hear in that far-off clime
of the marriage of his supposed victim; but I must not anticipate," said
the exile.
"For three weeks after that horrible day I never caught sight of my
missing person, nor did I discover the slightest clue as to its
whereabouts. It never turned up at my quarters that I could learn, but
that it was not dead or buried I had good reason to believe; for one
morning, while I was away from my rooms floating along Rotten Row,
hoping to catch sight of myself if perchance I still lived, four
truckmen arrived at the Temple here and moved all my clothes and
furniture, whither I never discovered, in consequence of which act, upon
my return here, I found the room cold and bare as a barn."
"That was rank robbery," said Toppleton.
"We should have trouble in establishing that fact in court," returned
the exile. "I could not deny on oath that my hand had penned the order
for the removal of the goods, and as for the clothes and other things,
most of them had been bought by the money I had earned through the
fiend's instrumentality."
"That is so," said Toppleton, hastily acquiescing in the exile's words,
lest he should seem to his visitor less acute than a full-fledged lawyer
should be. "And how long was it before you encountered yourself once
more?"
"Three weeks," returned the exile. "And where do you suppose the meeting
took place?"
"I don't know," said Hopkins. "At Buckingham Palace?"
"No, sir. In Arabella's parlour! It was just three weeks from the hour
in which Mr. Hicksworthy-Johnstone appeared at my office door in the
Temple that, for the want of something better to do, I floated into
Arabella's parlour again, and was filled with consternation to see
standing there before the mirror, adjusting his tie, the fiend in full
possession of my treasured self. I was about to utter a cry of delight
when I heard an ejaculation of fear behind me, and turning saw Arabella
herself entering the room, pale as a sheet. I tell you Hopkins, it was
dramatic; though, as far as the fiend was concerned, he was as
nonchalant as could be.
"'You are not dead!' cried Arabella, hoarsely.
"'Not that I am aware of, madam,' said the fiend coolly.' Have I the
honour of addressing Miss Arabella Hicksworthy-Johnstone?'
"'Oh, Edward, Edward,' she cried--'I forgot to tell you, Hopkins,'
explained the spirit, 'my name was Edward'--'oh, Edward, what does this
mean?' she cried. 'My father has fled to America, thinking that in that
unhappy moment of Saturday three weeks ago he had killed you.'
"'Indeed!' returned the fiend. 'I sincerely hope he will enjoy the trip,
though he did inflict injuries upon me from which I shall be a long time
in recovering. But tell me, madame, are you Miss Arabella
Hicksworthy-Johnstone?'
"'Edward,' she replied, 'are you mad?'
"'I have a right to be indignant at your father's treatment of me, if
that vilely vindictive old person was your father, but I am not what you
might call mad. I cherish no vindictive feelings. But as my time is
limited I should like to proceed at once to the business I have in hand,
if you will permit me.'
"Arabella sat aghast as the man she deemed her _fiancé_ spoke these
words to her. She was utterly unable to comprehend the situation, and I
could not clarify the cloud upon her understanding without imperilling
her reason. Oh, Hopkins, Hopkins, were the fires of Hades to become
extinguished to-day, there are other tortures for the spirit close at
hand more hideously unbearable even than they!"
"It would seem so," said Hopkins. "If I had my choice between your
experience and Hades, I think I should warm up to the latter. But go on.
What did Arabella say?"
"She drew herself up proudly after a moment of hesitation, and said, 'I
have no desire to hinder you in going about your business.'
"'Thanks,' said the fiend. 'Assuming that you are Miss Arabella
Hicksworthy-Johnstone, I would say to you that I should like to know
upon what your father's claim that you and I are engaged rests.'
"'Really, Edward,' she returned impatiently, 'I cannot comprehend your
singular behaviour this afternoon. You know how we became engaged. You
know you asked me to be your wife, and you know that after keeping you
on your knees for several hours I consented.'
"'Madam,' observed the fiend, 'I never went on my knees to a woman in my
life. I never asked but one woman in this world to be my wife, and you
are not she.'
"'What!' cried Arabella. 'Do you mean to say to me, Edward, that you did
_not_ ask me to be your wife?'
"'I meant to say exactly what I said. That I am engaged to be married to
Lady Ariadne Maude Fackleton, daughter of the Earl of Pupley, the only
woman to whom I ever spoke or thought of speaking a word of love in my
life. I mean to say that Lady Ariadne Maude Fackleton and I expect to be
married before the month is up. I mean to say that I never saw you
before in my life, and I should like to know what your intentions are
concerning this absurd claim that I am engaged to you may be, for I do
not intend to have my future marred by any breach of promise suits. In
short, madam, do you intend to claim me as your matrimonial prize or
not? If not, all well and good. If so, I shall secure an injunction
restraining you from doing anything of the sort. Even should you force
me to the altar itself I should then and there forbid the banns.'
"'Sir,' said my Arabella, drawing herself up like a queen, 'you may
leave this house, and never set foot again within its walls. I should as
soon think of claiming that celebrated biblical personage, of whom you
remind me, Ananias, for a husband as you. Do not flatter yourself that I
shall ever dispute the Lady Ariadne's possession of so accomplished a
lord and master as yourself,--though I should do so were I more
philanthropically disposed. If it be the duty of one woman to protect
the happiness of another, I should do all that lies in my power to
prevent this marriage; but inasmuch as my motive in so doing would, in
all likelihood, be misconstrued, I must abstain; I must hold myself
aloof, though the whole future happiness of one of my own sex be at
stake. Farewell, sir, and good riddance. If you will leave me Lady
Ariadne's address, I will send her my sympathy as a wedding gift.'
"'Madam,' returned the fiend, bowing low, 'your kind words have taken a
heavy load from my heart. You deserve a better fate; but farewell.'
"Then as the fiend departed Arabella swooned away. My first impulse was
to follow the fiend, and to discover if possible his address; but I
could not bring myself to leave Arabella at that moment, she was so
overcome. I floated to the prostrate woman, and whispered the love I
felt for her in her ear.
"'Arabella,' I said. 'Arabella--my love--it is all a mistake. Open your
eyes and see. I am here ready to explain all if you will only listen.'
"Her answer was a moan and a fluttering of the eyelids.
"'Arabella,' I repeated. 'Don't you hear me, sweetheart? Open your eyes
and look at me. It is I, Edward.'
"'Edward!' she gasped, her eyes still closed. 'What _does_ it all mean?
Why have you treated me so?'
"'It is not I who have done this Arabella; it is another vile being over
whose actions I have no control. He is a fiend who has me in his power.
He is--oh, Arabella, do not ask me, do not insist upon knowing all, only
believe that I am not to blame!'
"'Kiss me, Edward,' she murmured. 'One little kiss.'
"Hopkins," moaned the exile, "just think of that! One little kiss was
all she asked, and I--I hadn't anything to kiss her with--not the
vestige of a lip.
"'Kiss me, Edward,' she repeated.
"'I cannot,' I cried out in anguish.
"'Why not?' she demanded, sitting up on the floor and gazing wildly
around her, and then seeing that she was absolutely alone in the room,
and had been conversing with--"
"Oh!" ejaculated Hopkins, wringing his hands. "Dear me! The poor girl
must have been nearly crazy."
"Nearly, Hopkins?" said the exile, in a sepulchral tone. "Nearly?
Arabella never did anything by halves or by nearlies. She became quite
crazy, and as far as I know has remained so until this day, for with the
restoration of consciousness, and the shock of opening her eyes to see
nothing that could speak with her, and yet had spoken, her mind gave
way, and she fled chattering like an imbecile from the room. I have
never seen her since!"
"And the fiend?" queried Toppleton.
"I saw him at St. George's on the following Wednesday," returned the
exile. "I had been wandering aimlessly and distractedly about London for
four days since the dreadful episode at Arabella's, when I came to St.
George's Church. There was an awning before the door, and from the
handsome equipages drawn up before the edifice I knew that some notable
function was going on within. The crowds, the usual London crowds, were
being kept back by the police, but I, of course, being invisible,
floated over their heads, past the guards, through the awning into the
church. There was a wedding in progress, and the groom's back seemed
familiar, though I could not place it at first, and naturally,
Toppleton, for it was my own, as I discovered, a moment later. When the
last irrevocable words binding me to a woman I had never before seen had
been spoken, and the organ began to peal forth the melodious measures of
the Lohengrin March, the bride and groom, made one, turned and faced
the brilliant assemblage of guests, among whom were the premier and the
members of his cabinet, and as complete a set of nabobs, mentioned in
Burke, as could be gathered in London at that time of the year, and I
recognized my own face wreathed in smiles, my own body dressed in
wedding garb, standing on the chancel steps ready to descend.
"I was married, Hopkins, at last. Married to a woman of beauty and
wealth and high position, utterly unknown to me, and not only were my
own mother and my best friends absent, but I myself had only happened in
by accident.
"My rage knew no bounds, and as the fiend and his bride passed down the
aisle amid the showered congratulations of the aristocratic multitude, I
impotently endeavoured to strike him, of which he was serenely
unconscious; but as he left the church my voice, which had been stifled
with indignation, at last grew clear, and I howled out high above the
crowds,--
"'You vile scoundrel, restore me to myself! Give me back the presence of
which you have robbed me, or may every curse in all the universe fall
upon you and your house for ever.'
"He heard me, Toppleton, and his answer was a smile--a green
smile--seeing which his bride, the Lady Ariadne Maude Fackleton, fainted
as they drove away.
"That, Hopkins, is substantially the tale of villainy I have come to
tell. Little remains to be told. The fiend has been true to his promise
to make me famous, for every passing year has brought some new honour to
my name. I have been elevated to the peerage; I have been ambassador to
the most brilliant courts of Europe; I have been all that one could hope
to be, and yet I have not been myself. I ask your assistance. Will you
not give it to me?"
"Edward," said Toppleton warmly, "I will. I will be candid with you,
Edward. I am almost as ignorant of law as a justice of the peace, but
for your sake I will study and see what can be done. I will fight your
case for you to the very last, but first tell me one thing. Your name is
what?"
"Edward Pompton Chatford."
"What!" cried Toppleton, "the famous novelist?"
"He made me so," said the exile.
"And the fiend's present title is?"
"Lord Barncastle of Burningford."
"He?" said Toppleton, incredulously, recognizing the name as that of one
who fairly bent beneath the honours of the world.
"None other," returned the exile.
"Heavens!" ejaculated Toppleton. "How Morley, Harkins, Perkins, Mawson,
Bronson, Smithers, and Hicks will open their eyes when I tell them that
I have been retained to institute _habeas corpus_ proceedings in the
case of Chatford v. Barncastle of Burningford! Morley particularly, I am
afraid will die of fright!"
CHAPTER XI.
TOPPLETON CONSULTS THE LAW AND FORMS AN OPINION.
AT the conclusion of the exile's story Hopkins glanced at his watch, and
discovered that he had barely time to return to his lodging and dress
for a little dinner he had promised to attend that evening.
"I will look up the law in this case of yours, Chatford," he said,
rising from his chair and putting on his hat and coat, "and in about a
week I rather think we shall be able to decide upon some definite line
of action. It will be difficult, I am afraid, to find any precedent to
guide us in a delicate matter of this sort, but as a lay lawyer, if I
may be allowed the expression, it seems to me that there ought to be
some redress for one who has been made the victim of so many different
kinds of infamy at once as you have. The weak part of our case is that
you were yourself an accessory to every single one of the fiend's
crimes, and in instituting a suit at law we cannot get around the fact
that in a measure you are both plaintiff and defendant. I believe those
are the terms usually employed to designate the two parties to a suit,
except in the case of an appeal, when there is an appellant and a
repellant if my memory serves me."
"It may be as you say," returned the exile, sadly. "I'll have to take
your word for it entirely, since, as I have already told you, all the
law I ever knew I have forgotten, and then, too, my business being
purely one of adjudication, I used to distinguish my clients one from
another--representing, as I did, both sides--by calling them,
respectively, the compromisee and the compromisor."
"Well," Toppleton said, "I'll find out all about it and let you know,
say, by Friday next. We'll first have to decide in what capacity you
shall appear in court, whether as a plaintiff or defendant. I think
under the circumstances you will have to go as a plaintiff, though in a
case in which my father was interested some years ago, I know that it
was really the plaintiff who was put on the defensive as soon as the old
gentleman took him in hand to cross-examine him. It was said by experts
to have been the crossest examination on the calendar that year; and
between you and me, Edward, the plaintiff never forgave his attorneys
for not retaining the governor on his side in the beginning. If you
would rather go as a defendant, I suppose I could arrange to have it so,
but it strikes me as a disadvantageous thing to do in these days,
because in most cases, it is the defendant who has committed the wrong
upon which the suit is based, and a man who starts in as the underdog,
has to combat the prejudices of judge, jury and general public, with
whom it is a time-honoured custom to believe a man guilty until he has
proven his innocence. I think, on the whole, it would be easier for you
to prove Lord Barncastle's guilt than your own innocence."
"I know from the lucid manner in which you talk, Toppleton," said the
exile, with a deep sigh indicating satisfaction, "from the readiness and
extemporaneousness with which you grasp the situation, not losing sight
of side issues, that I have made no mistake in coming to you. Heaven
bless you, sir. You will never regret the assistance you are so nobly
giving to one you have never seen."
"Don't mention it, Sallie--I should say Chatford," said Toppleton. "I am
an American citizen and will ever be found championing the cause of the
oppressed against the oppressor. My ears are ever open to the plaint of
the plaintiff, nor shall I be deaf to the defendant in case you choose
to be the latter. Count on me, Edward, and all will yet be well!"
With these inspiring words, Toppleton lit his cigar and walked jauntily
from the room, and the exile relapsed into silence.
Faithful to his promise, Toppleton applied himself assiduously to the
study of the law as it seemed to him to bear upon the case of his
mysterious client. To be sure, his library was not quite as extensive as
it might have been, and there may have been points in other books than
the ones he had, which would have affected his case materially, but the
young lawyer was more or less self-reliant, and what he had to read he
read intelligently.
"If I were called upon suddenly to rescue a young woman from drowning,
and possessed nothing but an anchor and a capstan bar to do it with, my
duty clearly would be to do the best I could with those tools, however
awkward they might be. I could not ease my conscience after neglecting
to do all that I could with those tools, by saying that I hadn't a
lifeboat and a cork suit handy. Here is a parallel case. I must do the
best I can with the tools I have, and I guess I can find enough law in
Blackstone and that tree calf copy of the sixteenth volume of Abbott's
'Digest' I picked up the other day to cover this case. If I can't, I'll
have to use the sense that Nature gave me, and go ahead anyhow."
To his delight, Hopkins found it utterly unnecessary for him to read the
tree calf sixteenth volume of Abbott's "Digest," he found so much in the
"Comic Blackstone" that applied.
"Why, do you know," he said to the exile when they met, the one to
explain the law, the other to listen, "do you know you have the finest
case in all Christendom, without leaving the very fundamental principles
of the law? It's really extraordinary what a case you have, or rather,
would have, if you could devise some means of appearing in court. That's
the uncrackable nut in the case. How the deuce to have you appear on the
witness stand, I can't see. The court would not tolerate any such
makeshift as the Aunt Sallie scheme you and I have adopted, it would be
so manifestly absurd, and would give the counsel for the defence--for
you must be the plaintiff after all, can't help yourself--it would give
the counsel for the defence the finest chance to annihilate us by the
use of his satirical powers he had ever had, and before a jury that
would simply ruin our cause at the outset."
"I don't see why I can't testify as I am--bodiless as I have been left.
The mere absence of my body and presence of my consciousness would
almost prove my case," said the exile.
"It would seem as if it ought to," said Toppleton. "But you know what
men are. They believe very little that they hear, and not much more than
half that they see. You couldn't expect anyone to believe the points of
a person unseen. If they can't see you they can't see your hardships,
and besides, hearsay evidence unsupported is not worth shucks."
"I don't know what shucks are," returned the exile, "but I see your
point."
"It's a serious point," said Toppleton. "And then there is another most
embarrassing side to it. We can't afford to have our case weakened by
putting ourselves in a position where countercharges can be brought
against us, and I am very much afraid our opponents would charge
vagrancy against you, for the very obvious and irrefutable reason that
you have absolutely no visible means of support. You wouldn't have a leg
to stand on if they did that, and yet it does seem a pity that something
cannot be done to enable you to appear, for as I said a minute ago, you
have otherwise a perfectly magnificent cause of action. Why, Edward,
there isn't a page in the Comic Blackstone that does not contain
something that applies to your case, and that ought to make you a
winner if we could get around this horrible lack of body of yours.
"For instance," continued Toppleton, opening A'Beckett's famous
contribution to legal lore, "in the very first chapter we find that
Blackstone divides rights into rights of _persons_ and rights of things.
Clearly you have a right to your own person, and no judge on a sane
bench would dare deny it. Absolute rights, it says here, belong to man
in a state of nature, which being so, you have been wronged, because in
being deprived of your state of nature you have been robbed of your
absolute rights. Clear as crystal, eh?"
"That's so," said the exile. "You are a marvel at law, Hopkins."
"In section six reference is made to the _habeas corpus_ act of Charles
the Second, and unless I have forgotten my Latin, that is a distinct
reference to a man's right to the possession of his own body. Section
eight, same chapter, announces man's right to personal security, and
asserts his legal claim to the enjoyment of _life, limbs, health and
reputation_. Have you enjoyed your life? No! Have you enjoyed your
limbs? Not for thirty years. Have you enjoyed your health. No!
Barncastle of Burningford has enjoyed that as well as your reputation. I
think on the whole though, we would better not say anything about your
reputation if we get into court, for while it is undoubtedly _yours_,
and has been by no means enjoyed by you, you didn't make it for
yourself. That was his work, and he is entitled to it."
"True," said the exile. "I do not wish to claim anything I am not
entitled to."
"That's the proper spirit," said Toppleton. "You want what belongs to
you and nothing more. You are entitled to your property, for which
section eleven of this same chapter provides, saying that the law will
not allow a man to be deprived of his property except by the law itself.
If a man's own body isn't his, I'd like to know to whom it belongs in a
country that professes to be free!"
Toppleton paused at this point to make a few notes and to reinforce his
own spirit by means of others.
"Now, under the head of real property, Chatford," he said, "I find that
in England property is real or personal. I think that in this case, that
of which you have been deprived comes under both heads. One's body is
certainly real and unquestionably personal, and if a man has a right to
the possession of each, he has a right to the possession of both, and he
who robs him of both is guilty of a crime under each head. Real
property consists of lands, tenements and hereditaments. Lands we must
perforce exclude because you have lost no lands. Tenements may be
alluded to, however, with absolute fairness because the body is the
tenement of the soul. Of hereditaments I am not sure. I don't know what
hereditaments are, and I haven't had time to find out anything about
them except that they are corporeal or incorporeal, which leads me to
infer that you have been wronged under this head also, for I must assume
that a hereditament is something that may or may not have a body
according to circumstances, which is your case exactly.
"Now a man's right to the possession of an estate is called his title,
if I am not mistaken," continued Hopkins, "and it is only reasonable to
suppose that this refers to bodily estate as well as to landed estate.
What we must dispute is Barncastle's title to your bodily estate. Our
case is referred to in section two, chapter nine, part second of this
book, which deals with joint tenancy in which two or more persons have
one and the same interest in an estate, but it must be held by both at
the same time. Now, even granting, as the other side may say, that you
entered into a partnership with the fiend, we could knock him right off
his pins on the sole fact that in declining to admit you to your own
bodily estate, he has not only deprived you of an undoubted right, but
has in reality forfeited his own claim to possession, since he has
violated the only principle of law upon which he could claim entrance to
the estate under any circumstances."
"Superb!" ejaculated the exile.
"Now we come to an apparent difficulty," continued Hopkins. "Possession
is, according to my authority, five points of the law. The fiend has
possession, and in consequence tallies five points; out of how many I do
not know. What the maximum number of points in the law is, the book does
not say, but even assuming that they form a good half, I think we can
bring forward five more with a dozen substitutes for each of the five in
support of our position. Some of these points will evolve themselves
when we come to consider whence Barncastle's title was derived.
"Did he acquire his title by descent? No; unless it was by a descent to
unworthy tricks which, I fear, are outside of the meaning of the law. By
purchase? If so, let him show a receipt. By occupancy? Yes, and by a
forcible occupancy which was as justifiable as his occupation of the
throne would be, an occupancy which can be shown in court to be an
entire subversion of the right of a prior occupant whose title was
acquired by inheritance."
"That's a strong point," said the exile.
"Yes, it is," said Hopkins, "especially in a country where birth means
so much. But that isn't all we have to say on this question of title. A
title can be held by prescription. Barncastle may claim that he got his
this way, but we can meet that by showing that he compounded his own
prescription, and originally got you to swallow it by a trick. He also
has a title by alienation, and there I think we may be weak since you
were a party to the final alienation, though we may be able to pull
through on even that point by showing that you consented only in the
expectation of an early return of the premises. It was an alienation by
deed, an innocent deed on your part, an infamous one on his. It was not
an alienation of record, which weakens his claim, but one of special
custom, which by no means weakens yours.
"And so, Edward, we might go on through the whole subject of the right
of property, and on every point we are strong, and on few can Barncastle
of Burningford put in the semblance of a defence."
"It's simply glorious," said the exile. "I don't believe there ever was
a case like it."
"I don't believe so either," said Toppleton. "And on the whole I'm glad
there never was. I should hate to think that a crime like this could
ever become a common one.
"Now," he said, resuming the discussion of the legal aspect of the
exile's case, "let us see what we can find under the head of 'Private
and Public Wrongs and their Remedies!' I suppose yours would come under
the head of a civil wrong, though your treatment has been very far from
civil. As such your redress lies in the Courts. You are forbidden to
take back what has been taken from you by a force which amounts to a
breach of the peace,--that is, it would not be lawful for you to seize
your own body and shake the life out of it for the purpose of yourself
becoming once more its animating spirit.
"First we must decide, 'What is the wrong that has been put upon you?'
Well, it's almost any crime you can think of. He has dispossessed you of
that which is yours. He has ousted you from your freehold. He has been
guilty of trespass. He has subjected you to a nuisance, that is if it is
a nuisance to be deprived of one's body, and I should think it would so
appear to any sane person. He has been guilty of subtraction. He has
subtracted you from your body and your body from you, leaving apparently
no remainder. He has been guilty of an offence against your religion.
To an extent he has committed an offence against the public health in
that he has haunted citizens of this city and caused you unwittingly to
do the same to the detriment of the sanity of those who have been
haunted. I think we might even charge him with homicide, for if
depriving a man of thirty years of his corporeal existence isn't
depriving him of life, I don't know what is. However this may be, I am
convinced that he is guilty of mayhem, for he certainly has deprived you
of a limb--that is shown by your utter absence of limb. He has been
guilty of an offence against your habitation, corporeal and incorporeal,
and finally he has been guilty of larceny both grand and petty. Grand in
the extent of it, petty in the method. By Jove, Chatford, if we could
bring you into Court as a concrete individual, and not as an abstract
entity, we could get up an indictment against Lord Barncastle of
Burningford that would quash him for ever.
"A body obtained for you, I should carry the case to the Appellate Court
at once, for two reasons. First because it would not be appropriate to
try so uncommon a cause in the Common Pleas, second because a decision
by the Court of Appeals is final, and we should save time by going there
at once; but the point with which we must concern ourselves the most
is, how shall we bring you before the eyes of the court; how shall we
get our plaintiff into shape--visible shape?"
A painful silence followed the conclusion of Toppleton's discussion of
the law in the case of Chatford _v_. Barncastle of Burningford. It was
evident that the exile could think of no means of surmounting the
unfortunate barrier to a successful prosecution of the case. Finally the
exile spoke:
"I perceive the dreadful truth of what you say. Having no physical
being, I have no standing in court."
"That's the unfortunate fact," returned Hopkins. "Can't you get a body
in some way? Can't you borrow one temporarily?"
"Where?" asked the exile. "You are my only material friend. You wouldn't
lend me yours."
"No, I wouldn't," said Toppleton. "If I did, where would your only
material friend be? It's hopeless, Edward; and now that I think of it,
even if you did get a form and should go to court, where are your
witnesses? You could only assert, and Barncastle could always deny.
Strong as your cause is, the courts, under the circumstances, will give
you no redress, because you cannot prove your case. We must seek other
means; this is a case that requires diplomatic action. Strategy will do
more for us than law, and I think I have a scheme."
"Which is?"
"I will go to Lord Barncastle, and by means of a little clever
dissembling will frighten him into doing the right thing by you. I
realize what a tremendous undertaking it is, but failure then would not
mean public disgrace, and failure in the courts would put us, and
particularly myself, under a cloud. In short, we might be suspected of
blackmail, Chatford; Barncastle is so prominent, and liable to just such
attacks at all times."
"But how do you propose to reach him? He has the reputation now of being
the haughtiest and most unapproachable member of the aristocracy."
"Oh, dear!" laughed Hopkins. "You don't understand Americans. Why,
Chatford, we can push ourselves in anywhere. If you were a being like
myself, and had ten pounds to bet, I would wager you that within
forty-eight hours I could have an invitation in autograph from the
Prince of Wales himself to dine with him and Prince Battenburg at
Sandringham, at any hour, and on any day I choose to set. You don't know
what enterprising fellows we Yankees are. I'll know Lord Barncastle
intimately inside of one month, if I once set out to do it."
"Excuse me for saying it, Hopkins," said the exile, sadly, "but I must
say that what I have liked about you in the past has been your freedom
from bluster and brag. To me these statements of yours sound vain and
empty. I would speak less plainly were it not that my whole future is in
your hands, and I do not want you to imperil my chances by rashness.
Tell me how you propose to meet Barncastle, and, having met him, what
you propose to do, if you do not wish me to set this talk down as
foolish braggadocio."
"I'll tell you how I propose to meet him," said Hopkins, slightly
offended, and yet characteristically forgiving; "but what I shall do
after that I shall not tell you, for I may find that he is a politer
person than you are, and it's just possible that I shall like him. If I
do, I may be impelled to desert you and ally myself with him. I don't
like to be called a braggart, Edward."
"Forgive me, Hopkins," said the spirit. "I am so wrought up by my hopes
and fears, by the consciousness of the terrible wrongs I have suffered,
that I hardly know what I am saying."
"Well, never mind," rejoined Hopkins. "Don't worry. The chances of my
deserting you are very slight. But to return to your question. I shall
meet Barncastle in this way; I shall have a sonnet written in his praise
by an intimate friend of mine, a poet of very high standing and little
morality, which I shall sign with my own name, and have printed as
though it were a clipping from some periodical. This clipping I will
send to Lord Barncastle with a note telling him that I am an American
admirer of his genius, the author of the sonnet, and have but one
ambition, which I travelled from America to gratify--to meet him face to
face."
"Aha!" said the spirit. "An appeal to his vanity, eh?"
"Precisely," said Toppleton. "It works every time."
"And when you meet him?"
"We shall see," rejoined Toppleton. "I have given up brag and bluster;
but if Lord Barncastle of Burningford does not take an interest in
Hopkins Toppleton after he has known him fifteen minutes, I'll go back
home to New York, give up my law practice and become--"
"What?" said the spirit as Hopkins hesitated.
"A sister of charity," said Hopkins, gravely.
CHAPTER XII.
TOPPLETON MAKES A FAIR START.
A FEW weeks later Toppleton was able to report progress to his invisible
client. He had the sonnet to Barncastle of Burningford and was much
pleased with it, because, in spite of the fact that it was two lines too
long, he was confident that it would prove very fetching to the man to
whom it was addressed.
"You ought to take out those two extra lines, though," said the exile.
"Barncastle is a great stickler for form, and he will be antagonized at
once by your violation of the rules."
"Not a bit of it," returned Toppleton. "Those lines stay right there,
and I'll tell you why. In the first place Barncastle, as an Englishman,
will see in the imperfect sonnet something that will strike him as a bit
of American audacity, which will be very pleasing to him, and will give
him something to talk about. As a Briton you are probably aware that
your countrymen are very fond of discovering outrages of that sort in
the work of those over the sea, because it is a sort of convincing proof
that the American as a writer is still an inferior, and that England's
controlling interest in the Temple of Immortality is in no danger of
passing into alien hands. In the second place, he will be so pleased
with the extra amount of flattery that is crammed into those two lines
that he will not have the heart to criticize them; and thirdly, as one
who knows it all, he will be prompted to send for me to come to him, in
order that he may point out to me in a friendly spirit one or two little
imperfections in what he will call my otherwise exquisite verse. I tell
you what it is, Edward," said Toppleton, pausing a moment, "I never
devoted myself with any particular assiduity to Latin, Greek, or
mathematics, but when it comes to human nature, I am, as we New Yorkers
say, a daisy, which means that I am the flower upon which you may safely
bet as against the field."
"You certainly have an ingenious mind, Hopkins," returned the exile,
"and I hope it will all go as you say, but I fear, Hopkins, I fear."
"Wait and see," was Hopkins' confident reply, and being unable to do
otherwise the exile obeyed.
In three days the sonnet was printed, and so fixed that it appeared to
be a clipping from the _Rocky Mountain Quarterly Review, a Monthly
Magazine_.
"That'll strike him as another interesting Americanism," said Hopkins,
with a chuckle. "There is no people on earth but my own who would dare
publish a quarterly twelve times a year."
To the sonnet was appended the name "Hopkins Parkerberry Toppleton;"
Parkerberry being a novelty introduced into the signature by the young
lawyer, not because he was at all entitled to it, but for the proper
reason, as he said, that no American poet was worth a nickel who hadn't
three sections to his name. A note with a distinctly western flavour to
it was penned, and with the "decoy" sonnet went that night to
Burningford Castle addressed to "His Excellency, Lord Barncastle," and
then Toppleton and the exile sat down to await the result.
They had not many days to wait, for within a week of the dispatch of the
poem and the note Hopkins, on reaching the office one morning, found the
exile in a great state of excitement over a square envelope lying on the
floor immediately under the letter slot Hopkins had had made in the
door.
"It's come, Hopkins, it's come!" cried the exile.
"What's come?" queried Hopkins, calmly.
"The letter from Barncastle. I recognize my handwriting. It came last
night about five minutes after you left the office, and I have been in a
fever of excitement to learn its contents ever since. Do open it at
once. What does he say?"
"Be patient, Edward, don't get so excited. Suppose you were to have an
apoplectic stroke!"
"I can't be patient, and I can't have apoplexy, so do hurry. What do I
say?"
"Seems to me," returned Hopkins, picking up the letter and slowly
opening it, "it seems to me you are getting confused. But let's see;
what _does_ Barncastle say? H'm!" he said, reading the note.
"'Barncastle Hall, Fenwick Morton, Mascottonton-on-the-Barbundle,
December 19th, 189--. Hopkins Parkerberry Toppleton, Esquire, 17,
Temple, London. Dear Sir,--I have to thank you for your favour and
enclosure of the 13th inst. Your sonnet is but one of a thousand
gratifying evidences I am daily receiving that I have managed to win to
no inconsiderable degree the good will of your countrymen. It is also
evidence to me that you are a young man of much talent in the line of
original versification, since, apart from the sentiment you express,
your sonnet is one of the most original I have ever seen, not only for
its length, but also for the wonderful mixture of your metaphor. It is
truly characteristic of your great and growing country, and I cannot
resist your naïve appeal to be permitted to meet the unworthy object of
its praise. I should be gratified to have you to dinner at Barncastle
Hall, at eight o'clock on the evening of December 23rd, 189--. Kindly
inform me by return post if your engagements will permit us to have the
pleasure of having you with us on that evening. Believe me to be, with
sentiments of regard, ever, my dear sir, faithfully yours, BARNCASTLE.'"
"By heavens!" ejaculated the exile, in delighted accents, "you've got
there, Hopkins, you've got there. You'll go, of course?"
"Well, rather," returned Toppleton; "and to carry out the illusion, as
well as to pique his interest in America, I'll wear a blue dress coat.
But first let me reply."
"Dear Barncastle," he wrote. "I'll be there. Yours for
keeps,--TOPPLETON."
"How's that?" he asked, reading it aloud to the exile.
"You're not going to send that, are you?" said the exile in disgust.
"I'm not, eh? Well just you watch me and see," said Toppleton. "Why,
Edward, that will be the biggest _coup_ of the lot. He will get that
letter, and he will be amused by it, and the more he thinks of it the
more he'll like it, and then he'll say to himself, 'why, this man is a
character;' and then do you know what will happen, Chatford?"
"I'll be hanged if I do," growled the exile.
"Well, I'll tell you. He will invite all the high panjandrums he knows
to that dinner to meet me, and he will tell them that I am an original,
and they'll all come, Chatford, just as they would flock to see a
seven-humped camel or a dwarf eight feet high, and then I will have Lord
Barncastle of Burningford just where I want him. I could browbeat him
for weeks alone and never frighten him, but once I let him know that I
know his secret, in the presence of his wife and a brilliant company,
_he_ will be apprehensive, and, if I mistake not, will be more or less
within my reach."
"Lady Barncastle is no longer living," said the exile. "His household is
presided over by his daughter."
"Very well," said Hopkins. "We'll dazzle the daughter too."
"Is this the way American lawyers do business generally?" sneered the
exile.
"No," returned Toppleton; "there is probably not another American lawyer
who would take a case like yours. That's the one respect in which they
resemble your English lawyers, but I'll tell you one thing. When they
start in to do a thing they do it, unless their clients get too fresh,
and then they stop _in medias res_."
"I hope there is nothing personal in your remarks, Hopkins," said the
exile, uneasily.
"That all depends on you," retorted Hopkins. "Despite your croakings and
fears, the first step we have taken has proven justifiable. We have
accomplished what we set out to accomplish. I am invited to meet the
fiend. Score one point for us. Now, when I advance a proposition for the
scoring of a second point, you sneer. Well, sneer. I'll win the case for
you, just to spite you. This despised note posted to Barncastle, I shall
order a blue dress coat with brass buttons on it. I shall purchase, if
it is to be found in London, one of those beaver hats on which the fur
is knee deep, a red necktie, and a diamond stud. My trousers I shall
have cut to fit the contour of my calves like a glove. I shall sport the
largest silver watch to be found on the Strand, with a gold chain heavy
enough to sustain a weight of five hundred pounds; in short, Chatford,
you won't be able to distinguish me from one of Teniel's caricatures of
Uncle Sam."
"You won't be able to deceive Barncastle that way. He's seen New Yorkers
before."
"Barncastle doesn't know I'm a New Yorker, and he won't find it out. He
thinks I'm from the Rocky Mountains, and he knows enough about geography
to be aware that the Rocky Mountains aren't within two hours' walk of
Manhattan Island. He knows that there is a vast difference between a
London gentleman and a son of the soil of Yorkshire, and he doesn't know
but what there are a million citizens of our great republic who go about
dressed up in fantastic garments similar to those I shall wear to his
dinner. If he is surprised, his surprise will add to his interest, and
materially contribute to the pleasure of those whom he invites to see
the animal the untamed poet of the Rockies. See?"
"Yes, I see," said the exile. "But clothes won't make the illusion
complete. You look too much like a gentleman; your manners are too
polished. A man like Barncastle will see through you in a minute."
"Again, Chatford, I am sorry that your possessions are nil, for I would
like to wager you that your noble other self will do nothing of the
sort. I have not been an amateur actor for nothing, and as for manners I
can be as bad mannered as any nabob in creation if I try. Don't you
worry on that score."
The acceptance of Lord Barncastle's invitation was therefore sent as
Hopkins wrote it, and the ensuing days were passed by the young lawyer
in preparing the extraordinary dinner suit he had described to his
anxious client, who could hardly be persuaded that in taking this step
Toppleton was not committing a bit of egregious folly. He could not
comprehend how Barncastle upon receipt of Hopkins' note could be
anything but displeased at the familiarity of its tone. The idea of a
common untitled mortal like Toppleton even assuming to be upon familiar
terms with a member of the aristocracy, and especially one so high as
Barncastle of Burningford, oppressed him. He would as soon expect an
ordinary tradesman to slap the Prince of Wales on the back, and call him
by one of his first names, without giving offence, as that Barncastle
should tolerate Toppleton's behaviour, and he in consequence was fearful
of the outcome.
Toppleton, on the other hand, went ahead with his extraordinary
sartorial preparations, serenely confident that the events of the next
few days would justify his course. The exile was relieved to find that
the plan was of necessity modified, owing to Toppleton's inability to
find a typical Uncle Sam beaver in London; but his relief was
short-lived, for Hopkins immediately proceeded to remedy this defect by
purchasing a green cotton umbrella, which, he said, was perhaps better
than the hat as an evidence of eccentricity.
"If I cling to that umbrella all through dinner, Chatford," said
Toppleton, with a twinkle in his eye, "preferring rather to part with
life, honour, or virtue than lose sight of it, I will simply make an
impression upon the minds of that assembled multitude that they'll not
forget in a hurry."
"They'll think as I do," sighed the exile. "They'll think you are a
craz--"
"What?" asked Toppleton, sharply.
"They'll think you are a genius," returned the exile humbly and quickly
too, fearing lest Toppleton should take offence. "Have you--er--have you
considered what Barncastle's servants will think of this strange
performance? They won't let you into the house, in the first place," he
added, to cover his retreat.
"I shall be admitted to the house by Barncastle himself; for I prophesy
that his curiosity to meet this Rocky Mountain poet will be so great
that he will be at the railway station to greet me in person. Besides,"
continued Toppleton, "why should I care what his servants think? I never
had nor ever knew any one who had a servant whose thoughts were worth
thinking. A servant who can think becomes in my country a servant of the
people, not the lackey of the individual. Furthermore, I am after high
game, and servants form no part of my plan. They are not in it. When I
go out on a lion hunt I don't bother my head about or waste my
ammunition upon beasts of burden. I am loaded to the muzzle for the
purpose of bringing down Barncastle. If he can't be brought down without
the humbling of his butler, why, then, his butler must bite the dust. If
I become an object of suspicion to the flunkies, I shall not concern
myself about it unless they become unpleasant, and if they become
unpleasant I shall corrupt them. I'll buy every flunkey in the house, if
it costs a five-pound note."
"Well, go your own gait," said the exile, not much impressed by
Toppleton's discourse. "If you are not clapped into a lunatic asylum, I
shall begin to believe that the age of miracles is still extant; not
that _I_ think you crazy, Hopkins, but these others do not know you as
well as I do. For my part, I think that by going to Barncastle's as your
own handsome, frank, open-hearted self, you will accomplish more than
you will in this masquerade."
"Your flattery saves your cause," said Hopkins. "I cannot be indignant,
as I ought, with a man who calls me handsome, frank, and open-hearted,
but you must remember this: in spite of your long absence from your
body, you retain all the commonplace weakness of your quondam
individuality. You would have me do the commonplace thing you yourself
would have done thirty years ago. If there is a common, ordinary,
uninteresting individual in the world, it is the handsome, frank, and
open-hearted man. You find him everywhere--in hut and in palace, in
village, town, and city. He is the man who goes through life unobserved,
who gets his name in the paper three times in his lifetime, and always
at somebody else's expense. Once when he is born, once when he marries,
and once when he dies, and it is a paid advertisement, not an earned
one, each time. The first is paid for by his parents, the second by his
father-in-law, the third by his executors. People like him well enough,
but no one ever cares enough about him to hate him. His conversation
ranges from babies--if he has any himself--through the weather to
politics. Beyond these subjects he has nothing to say, and he rarely
dines out, save with the parson, the candidate, or the man who wants to
get the best of him in a business transaction. He is an idol at home, a
zero abroad. Nobody is interested in him, and he would as likely be
found dining with the Khedive of Egypt as with Lord Barncastle, and I'll
wager that, even if he should in some mysterious manner receive an
invitation to lend his gracious presence to the Barncastle board, he
would be as little in evidence as an object of interest as the
scullery-maid. Were I to accept your advice, Chatford, Barncastle's
guests would be bored, Barncastle himself would be disappointed, and
your chance of ever becoming the animating spirit of your own body would
correspondingly diminish. Only by a bold stroke is success to be
obtained. The means I am about adopting are revolting to me as a man of
taste, but for the sake of our cause I am willing to stifle my natural
desire to appear as a gentleman, to sink my true individuality, and to
go as a freak."
"But why do you think you will succeed, Hopkins? Even granting that you
make a first-class freak, has it really ever happened that idiocy--I say
idiocy here not to imply that I think you are an idiot, understand
me--has it ever happened that a freak succeeds with us where that
better, truer standard which is represented by you as you really are has
failed?"
"Not exactly that way," replied Hopkins. "But this has happened. Your
Englishmen have flocked by the tens of thousands to see, and have been
interested by an American Wild West show, where tens of hundreds have
straggled in to witness the thoughtful Shakespearian productions of our
most intellectual tragedians. Barncastle can have a refined, quiet,
gentlemanly appearing person at his table three hundred and sixty-five
times a year. He can get what I am going to give him but once in a
lifetime, so say no more about it. I am set in my determination to stand
or fall in the manner I have indicated."
"All right," said the exile. "I've nothing more to say; but there's one
thing mighty certain. I'm going with you. I want to witness your
triumph."
"Very well," said Toppleton. "Come along. But if you do, leave that
infernal whistle of yours home, or there'll be trouble."
"I'm hardly anything else but a whistle. I can't help whistling, you
know."
"Then there are only two things to be done. You must either get yourself
set to the tune of Yankee Doodle, or stay right here. I'm not going to
have my plans upset by any such buoy like tootle-toot as you are when
you get excited."
"Perhaps, on the whole, I'd better stay home."
"I think you had," said Toppleton. "You would be sure to whistle before
we were out of the woods."
Hopkins and his invisible client had hardly finished this interview when
the tailor's boy arrived, bringing with him the fantastic garments
Hopkins had ordered, and almost simultaneously there came a second
letter from Barncastle of Burningford, which set many of the exile's
fears at rest, and gave Toppleton good reason to believe that for the
first part of his plan all was plain sailing. Barncastle's note was very
short, but it was a welcome one, for it acknowledged the receipt of
Toppleton's "characteristically American acceptance to dine," and closed
with an expression of Barncastle's hope that Hopkins would become one of
his guests for the Christmas holidays at the Hall.
"See, there!" said Hopkins, triumphantly. "That is the way my plans
work."
"You are a Napoleon!" ejaculated the exile.
"Not quite," returned Hopkins, drily. "I won't have any Waterloo in
mine; but say, Edward, let's try on our Uncle Sam's."
"Let's!" echoed the exile. "I am anxious to see how we look."
"There!" said Toppleton, ten minutes later, as he grasped the green
cotton umbrella, and arrayed in the blue dress coat and red tie and
other peculiar features of the costume he had adopted, stood awaiting
the verdict of the exile.
"You look it, Toppleton; but I think there is one thing missing. Where
is your chin whisker?"
"By Jove!" ejaculated Hopkins, with a gesture of impatience. "How could
I forget that? And it's too late now, for if there is one thing a Yankee
can't do, Chatford, it is to force a goatee inside of forty-eight hours.
I'll have to cook up some explanation for that--lost it in an Indian
fight in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, or some equally plausible theory,
eh?"
"I think that might work," said the exile, in an acquiescent mood since
the receipt of Barncastle's second note.
"I thought you would," returned Hopkins. "The little detail that there
aren't any Indians in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, doesn't affect the
result, of course. But tell me, Chatford, how do I look?"
"Like the very devil!" answered the exile with enthusiasm.
"Good," said Toppleton. "If I look like him I've got Barncastle down,
for if the devil is not his twin brother, he is his master. In either
event I shall be a _persona grata_ at the court of Barncastle of
Burningford."
CHAPTER XIII.
AT BARNCASTLE HALL.
TOPPLETON'S surmises as to Barncastle's method of receiving him appeared
to be correct, for upon his arrival, green umbrella and carpet bag in
hand, at the Fenwick Merton station he was met by no less a person than
his host himself, who recognized him at once.
"I knew it was you," said Barncastle, as he held out his hand to grasp
Toppleton's. "I knew it was you as soon as I saw you. Your carpet bag,
and the fact that you are the only person on the train who travelled
first class, were the infallible signs which guided me."
"And I knew you, Barncastle, the minute I saw you," said Hopkins,
returning the compliment, "because you looked less like a lord than any
man on the platform. How goes it, anyhow?"
The Englishman's countenance wore a puzzled expression as Toppleton put
the question.
"How goes it?" he repeated slowly. "How goes what? The train?"
"Oh, no," laughed Hopkins. "How goes it is Rocky Mountain for how's
things, all your family well, and your creditors easy?"
"Ah! I see," said Barncastle with a smile. "All is well with us, thank
you. My daughter is awaiting your coming with very great interest; and
as for my creditors, my dear sir, I am really uncertain as to whether I
have any. My steward can tell you better than I how they feel."
"It's a great custom, ain't it?" said Hopkins with enthusiasm, "that of
being dunned by proxy, eh? I wish we could work it out my way. If you
don't ante up right off out in the Mountains, your grocer comes around
and collects at the point of his gun, and if you pay him in promises, he
gives you back your change in lead."
"Fancy!" said Barncastle. "How unpleasant it must be for the poor."
"Poor!" laughed Toppleton; "there's none of them in the Rockies. You
don't get a chance to get poor in a country where boys throw nuggets at
birds, and cats are removed from back-yard fences with silver
boot-jacks. Ever been in the Rockies, Barncastle?"
"No," returned the lord, "I have not, but if all you say is true, I
should like to visit that section very much."
"True, Barncastle?" said Toppleton, bristling up. "Why, my dear lord,
that if of yours would have dug your grave out near Pike's Peak."
"I meant no offence, my dear fellow," returned Barncastle,
apologetically.
"No need to tell me that," said Toppleton, affably. "The fact that you
still survive shows I knew it. What time is dinner? I'm ravenous."
"Eight o'clock," replied Lord Barncastle, looking at his watch. "It is
now only three."
"Phew!" ejaculated Toppleton. "Five hours to wait!"
"I thought we might take a little drive around the country until six,
and then we could return to the Hall and make ready for dinner," said
Barncastle.
"That suits me," returned Toppleton. "But I wish you'd send that
gentleman with the mutton-chop whiskers that drives your waggon to the
lunch counter and get me a snack before we start."
"No," said Barncastle, ushering Toppleton into his dog-cart. "We'll do
better than that. We'll give up the drive until later. I take you
directly to the Hall, and send a cold bird and a glass of wine to your
apartment."
"Good!" ejaculated Toppleton, with a smack of the lips. "You must live
pretty near as fine here as we do in our big hotels at home. They're the
only other places I know where you can get your appetite satisfied at
five minutes' notice."
Toppleton and his host then entered the carriage, and in a short time
they reached the Hall--a magnificently substantial structure, with
ivy-clad towers, great gables, large arched windows looking out upon
seductive vistas, and an air of comfortable antiquity about it that
moved Hopkins' tongue to an utterance somewhat at variance with his
assumed character.
"How beautiful and quiet it all is," he said, gazing about him in
undisguised admiration. "A home like this, my lord, ought to make a poet
of a man. The very air is an inspiration."
Barncastle shrugged his shoulders and laughed; and had Toppleton not
been looking in rapt silence out through the large bowed window at the
end of the hall they had entered, along an avenue of substantial oak
trees to the silver waters of the Barbundle at its other end, he might
have seen a strange greenish light come into the eyes of his host,
which would have worried him not a little. He did not see it, however,
and in a moment he remembered his mission and the means he had adopted
to bring it to a successful issue.
"It beats the deck!" he ejaculated, with a nervous glance at Barncastle,
fearful lest his enthusiasm had led him to betray himself.
"I find it a pleasant home," said Barncastle, quietly, ushering him into
a spacious and extremely comfortable room which Toppleton perceived in a
moment was the library, at the other end of which was a large open
fireplace, large enough to accommodate a small family, within whose
capacious depths three or four huge logs were blazing fiercely. Before
the fire sat a stately young woman, about twenty-five years of age, who
rose as the Lord of Burningford and his guest entered.
As she approached Toppleton would have given all he possessed to be rid
of the abominable costume he had on; and when the young heiress of
Burningford's eye rested upon the fearfully green cotton umbrella, he
felt as if nothing would so have pleased his soul as the casting of that
adjunct to an alleged Americanism into the fire; for Lady Alice was, if
he could judge from appearances, a woman for whose good opinion any man
might be willing to sacrifice immortality itself. But circumstances
would not permit him to falter, and, despite the fact that it hurt his
self-respect to do it, Hopkins remained true to the object he had in
view.
"Alice, this is Mr. Toppleton. My daughter, Lady Alice Chatford, Mr.
Toppleton," said Barncastle.
"Howdy," said Hopkins, making an awkward bow to Lady Alice. "She don't
need her title to show she's a lady," he added, turning to Barncastle,
who seemingly acquiesced in all that he said.
"My friend Toppleton, my dear," said Barncastle, "has paid me the
compliment of travelling all the way from his home in the Rocky
Mountains in the United States to see me. He is the author of that
wonderful sonnet I showed you the other night."
"Yes, I remember," said Lady Alice, with a gracious smile, which won
Toppleton's heart completely, "it was delightful. Lord Barncastle and I
are great admirers of your genius, Mr. Toppleton, and we sincerely hope
that we shall be able to make your stay with us here as pleasant for you
as it is for us."
Again Hopkins would have disappeared through the floor had he been able
to act upon the promptings of his own good taste. It made him feel
unutterably small to think that he had come here, under the guise of an
uncultivated, boorish clod with poetical tendencies, to work the
overthrow of the genius of the house.
"Thank you," he said, his voice husky with emotion. "I had not expected
so cordial a reception. In fact," he added, remembering his true
position, "I had a bet of ten to one with a friend of mine who is doing
the Lakes this afternoon that I'd get frozen stiff by a glance of your
ladyship's eye. I'm mighty glad I've lost the bet."
"He has some courtliness beneath his unpolished exterior," said Lady
Alice later, when recounting the first interview between them to some of
her friends. "I quite forgave his boorishness when he said he was glad
to lose his wager."
"Now, Mr. Toppleton," said his host, "if you care to go to your
apartment I will see that you get what you want. Just leave your
umbrella in the coat room, and let Parker take your bag up to your
room."
"Thanks, Barncastle, old fellow," said the Rocky Mountain poet, "I'll go
to my room gladly; but as for leaving that umbrella out of my sight, or
transferring the handle of that carpet bag to any other hand than my
own, I can't do it. They're my treasures, my lady," he added, turning
to Lady Alice. "That bag and I have been inseparable companions for
eight consecutive years, and as for the umbrella we haven't been parted
for five. It's my protector and friend, and since it saved my life in a
shooting scrape at the Papyrus Club dinner in Denver, I haven't wanted
to let it get away from me."
"How odd he is," said Lady Alice a moment later to her father, Toppleton
having gone to his room. "Are you sure he is not an impostor?"
"No, I'm not," returned Barncastle with a strange smile; "but I know he
is not a thief. I fancy he is amusing, and I believe he will be a
valuable acquisition to my circle of acquaintances. Have you heard from
the Duchess of Bangletop?"
"Yes, she will be here. I told her you had a real American this
time--not an imitation Englishman--a poet, and, as far as we could
judge, a character who would surely become a worthy addition to her
collection of oddities; a match, in fact, for her German worshipper of
Napoleon and that other strange freak of nature she had at her last
reception, the young Illinois widow who whistled the score of Parsifal."
"The duchess must have been pleased," said Barncastle with a laugh.
"This Toppleton will prove a perfect godsend to her, for she has
absolutely nothing that is _bizarre_ for her next reception."
Toppleton, upstairs in a magnificently appointed chamber, from the
windows of which were to be seen the most superb distances that he had
ever imagined, was a prey alternately to misery and to joy. He
felicitated himself upon the apparent success of his plan, while
bemoaning his unhappy lot in having to keep his true self under in a
society he felt himself capable of adorning, and to enter which he had
always aspired.
"It's too late to back out now, though," he said. "If I were to strike
my colours at this stage of the battle, I should deserve to be put in a
cask and thrown into the Barbundle yonder. When I look about me and see
all these magnificent acres, when I observe the sumptuous furnishing of
this superb mansion, when I see unequalled treasures of art scattered in
profusion about this castle, and then think of that poor devil of a
Chatford roaming about the world without a piece of bric-a-brac to his
name, or an acre, or a house, or bed, or chair, or table, of any kind,
without even a body, it makes me mad. Here his body, the inferior part
of man, the purely mortal section of his being, is living in affluence,
while his immortal soul is a very tramp, an outcast, a wanderer on the
face of the earth. Barncastle, Barncastle, you are indeed a villain of
the deepest--"
Here Toppleton paused, and looked apprehensively about him. He seemed to
be conscious of an eye resting upon him. A chill seized upon his heart,
and his breath came short and quick as it had done but once before when
his invisible client first betrayed his presence in No. 17.
"I wonder if this is one of those beastly castles with secret doors in
the wainscot and peep-holes in the pictures," he said nervously to
himself. "It would be just like Barncastle to have that sort of a house,
and of course nothing would please him better than to try a haunted
chamber on me. The conjunction of a ghost and a Rocky Mountain poet
would be great, but after my experience with Chatford, I don't believe
there is a ghost in all creation that could frighten me. Nevertheless, I
don't like being gazed at by an unseen eye. I'll have to investigate."
Then Toppleton investigated. He mounted chairs and tables to gaze into
the stolid, unresponsive oil-painted faces of somebody's ancestry, he
knew not whose. Not Barncastle's, he was sure, for Barncastle was an
upstart. Nothing wrong could be found there. The eyes were absolutely
proof against peeping Toms. Then he rolled the heavy bureau and several
antique chests away from the massive oak wainscoting that ran about the
room, eight feet in height and superbly carved. He tapped every panel
with his knuckles, and found them all solid as a rock.
"No secret door in that," he said; and then for a second time he
experienced that nervous sensation which comes to him who feels that he
is watched, and as the sensation grew more and more intense and
terrifying, an idea flashed across Toppleton's mind which heightened his
anxiety.
"By Jove!" he said; "I wonder if I am going mad. Can it be that Chatford
is an illusion, a fanciful creation of a weak mind? Am I become a prey
to hallucinations, and if so, am I not in grave danger of my personal
liberty here if Barncastle should discover my weakness?"
It was rather strange, indeed, that this had not occurred to Hopkins
before. It was the natural explanation of his curious experience, and
the sudden thought that he had foolishly lent himself to the impulses of
a phantasm, and was carrying on a campaign of destruction against one of
the world's most illustrious men, based solely upon a figment of a
diseased imagination, was prostrating. He staggered to the side of a
large tapestried easy-chair, and limp with fear, toppled over its broad
arm into its capacious depths an almost nerveless mass of flesh and
bones. He would have given worlds to be back in the land of the midnight
sun, in New York, in London, anywhere but here in the house of
Barncastle of Burningford, and he resolved then and there that he would
return to London the first thing in the morning, place himself in the
hands of a competent physician, and trifle with the creations of his
fancy no more.
A prey to these disquieting reflections, Toppleton lay in the chair for
at least an hour. The last rays of a setting sun trembled through the
leaves of the tree that shaded the western side of the room, and
darkness fell over all; and with the darkness there came into
Toppleton's life an experience that scattered his fears of a moment
since to the winds, and so tried and exercised his courage, that that
fast fading quality gained a renewed strength for the fearful battle
with a supernatural foe, in which he had, out of his goodness of heart,
undertaken to engage.
A clock in the hall outside began to strike the hour of six in deep
measured tones, that to Toppleton in his agitated state of mind was
uncomfortably suggestive of the bell in Coleridge's line that "Knells us
back to a world of death." At the last stroke of the hammer the tone
seemed to become discordant, and in a frenzy of nervous despair
Toppleton opened his eyes and sprang to his feet. As he did so, his
whole being became palpitant with terror, for staring at him out of the
darkness he perceived a small orb-like something whose hue was that of
an emerald in combustion. He clapped his hands over his eyes for a
moment, but that phosphorescent gleam penetrated them, and then he
perceived that it was not an eye that rested upon him, but a ray of
light shining through a small hole that had escaped his searching glance
in the wainscoting. The relief of this discovery was so great that it
gave him courage to investigate, and stepping lightly across the room,
noiseless as a particle of dust, he climbed upon a chair and peeped
through the aperture, though it nearly blinded him to do so. To shade
his eyes from the blinding light, he again covered them with his hand,
and again observed that its intensity was sufficient to pierce through
the obstruction and dazzle his vision. The hand so softened the light,
however, that he could see what there was on the other side of the wall,
though it was far from being a pretty sight that met his gaze.
What he saw was a small oblong room in which there was no window, and,
at first glance, no means of entrance or exit. It was high-ceiled like
the room in which he stood, and, with the exception of a narrow couch
covered with a black velvet robe, with a small pillow of the same
material at the far end, the room was bare of furniture. There was no
fire, no fixture of any kind, lamp or otherwise, from which illumination
could come, and yet the room was brilliant with that same green light
that Chatford had described to Hopkins at his office in the Temple. So
dazzling was it, that for a moment Hopkins had difficulty in
ascertaining just what there was in the apartment, but as he looked he
became conscious of forms which grew more and more distinct as his eye
accustomed itself to the light. On the couch in a moment appeared, rigid
as in death, the body of Barncastle; the eyes lustreless and staring,
the hands characterless and bluish even in the green light, the cheeks
sunken and the massive forehead white and cold as marble. The sight
chilled Toppleton to the marrow, and he averted his eyes from the
horrible spectacle only to see one even more dreadful, for on the other
side of the apartment, grinning fiendishly, the source of the wonderful
light that flooded the room, he now perceived the fiend, making ready
to assume once more the habiliments of mortality. He was stirring a
potion, and, as Hopkins watched him, he began to whistle a combination
of discords that went through Toppleton's ears like a knife.
The watcher became sick at heart. This was the frightful thing he had to
cope with! So frightful was it that he tried to remove his eye from the
peep-hole, and seek again the easy chair, when to his horror he found
that he could not move. If his eye had in reality been glued to the
aperture, he would not have found it more firmly fixed than it was at
present. As he struggled to get away from the vision that was every
moment being burned more and more indelibly into his mind, the fiend's
fearful mirth increased, at the close of one of the paroxysms of which
he lifted the cup in which the potion had been mixed to his lips, and
quaffed its contents to the very dregs. As the last drop trickled down
the fiend's throat, Hopkins was startled further to see the light
growing dim, and then he noticed that the fiend was rapidly decreasing
in size, shrinking slowly from a huge spectral presence into a hardly
visible ball of green fire which rolled across the apartment to where
the body lay; up the side of the couch to the pillow; along the pillow
to that marble white forehead, where it paused. A tremor passed through
the human frame lying prostrate there, and in a moment all was dark as
night. The ball of fire had disappeared through the forehead, and a deep
groan told Toppleton that the body of Barncastle was once more a living
thing having the semblance of humanity. A moment later another light
appeared in the apartment into which Toppleton still found himself
compelled to gaze. This time the light was more natural, for it was the
soft genial light of a lamp shining through a sliding panel at the other
end of the room, through which the Lord of Burningford passed. It lasted
but a moment, for as the defendant in this fearful case of Chatford _v._
Burningford passed into the room beyond, the slide flew back and all was
black once more.
With the departure of Barncastle, Toppleton was able to withdraw from
his uncomfortable position, and in less than a moment lay gasping in his
chair.
"It is too real!" he moaned to himself. "Chatford did not deceive me. I
am not the victim of hallucination. Alas! I wish I were."
A knock at the door put an end to his soliloquizing, and he was relieved
to hear it. Here was something earthly at last. He flew from his chair
across the room through the darkness to the door and threw it wide open.
"Come in," he cried, and Barncastle himself, still pale from the effects
of the ordeal he had passed through, entered the room.
"I have come to see if there is anything I can do for you," he said
pleasantly, touching an electric button which dissipated the darkness of
the room by lighting a hundred lamps. "The Duchess of Bangletop has
arrived and is anxious to meet you; but you look worn, Toppleton. You
are not ill, I hope?"
"No," stammered Toppleton, slightly overcome by Barncastle's coolness
and affability, "but I--I've been taking a nap and I've had the--the
most horrible dream I ever had."
"Which was?"
"That I--ah--why, that I was writing an obituary poem on--"
"Me?" queried Barncastle, calmly.
"No," said Toppleton. "On myself."
CHAPTER XIV.
THE DINNER AND ITS RESULT.
A HALF-HOUR later Toppleton entered the drawing room of Barncastle Hall,
umbrella in one hand, carpet-bag in the other; his red necktie arranged
grotesquely about his neck, the picture of Americanism "as she is drawn"
by British cartoonists. Any other than a well-bred English gathering
would have received him with hilarious enthusiasm, and Hopkins was
rather staggered as he passed through the doorway to note the evident
interest, and yet utter lack of surprise, which his appearance inspired
in those who had been bidden to the feast to meet him. He perceived at
once that he no more than fulfilled the expectations of these highly
cultivated people, and it was with difficulty that he repressed the
mirth which was madly endeavouring to take possession of his whole
system.
The only portions of his make-up that attracted special attention--if
he could judge from a whispered comment or two that reached his ears,
and the glances directed toward them by the Duchess of Bangletop and the
daughters of the Earl of Whiskerberry--were the carpet-bag and the
umbrella. The blue dress coat and tight-fitting trousers were taken as a
matter of course. The red necktie and diamond stud were assumed to be
the proper thing in Rocky Mountain society, but the bag and umbrella
seemed to strike the English mind as a case of Ossa piled upon Pelion.
"Good evening, ladies," said Hopkins with a bow which was graceful in
spite of his efforts to make it awkward. "I hope I haven't increased
anybody's appetite uncomfortably by being late. This watch of mine is
set to Rocky Mountain time, and it's a little unreliable in this
climate."
"He's just the dear delightful creature I have been looking for for
years and years," said the Duchess of Bangletop to Lady Maude
Whiskerberry.
"So very American," said Lady Cholmondely Persimmon, of Persimmon
Towers--a well-preserved young noblewoman of eighteen or twenty social
seasons.
"Duchess," said Barncastle, coming forward, "permit me to present to you
my friend Hopkins Parkerberry Toppleton, the Poet Laureate of the Rocky
Mountains."
"Howdy do, Duchess," said Toppleton, dropping his carpet-bag, and
extending his hand to grasp that of the Duchess.
"So pleased," said the Duchess with a smile and an attempt at hauteur,
which was hardly successful.
"Glad you're pleased," said Toppleton, "because that means we're both
pleased."
"Lady Maude Whiskerberry, Mr. Toppleton. Lady Persimmon, Mr. Toppleton,"
said Barncastle, resuming the introductions after Toppleton had picked
up the carpet-bag again and announced his readiness to meet the other
ladies.
In a very short time Toppleton had been made acquainted with all in the
room, and inasmuch as he seemed so taken with the Duchess of Bangletop,
Lady Alice, who was a young woman of infinite tact, and not too rigidly
bound by conventionality, relinquished her claim to the guest of the
evening, and when dinner was announced, permitted Toppleton to escort
the Duchess into the dining-room.
"Don't you think, my dear Mr. Toppleton," said the Duchess as the
American offered her his arm, "don't you think you might--ah--leave your
luggage here? It's rather awkward to carry an umbrella, a carpet-bag,
and a Duchess into dinner all at once."
"Nothing is too awkward for an American, Duchess," said Toppleton.
"Besides," he added in a stage whisper, "I don't dare leave these things
out of my sight. Barncastle's butler looks all right, but I've lived in
a country where confidence in your fellow-men is a heaven-born gift. I
wasn't born with it, and there hasn't any of it been sent down since."
"Aren't you droll!" said the Duchess.
"If you say it I'll bet on it," said Toppleton, gallantly, as they
entered the beautiful dining-room and took their allotted chairs, when
Hopkins perceived, much to his delight, that Barncastle was almost the
length of the table distant; that on one side of him was Lady Alice, and
on the other the Duchess of Bangletop.
"These two women are both an inspiration in their way," he said to
himself. "Lady Alice, even if she loves that monster of a father of
hers, ought to be rescued from him. She will inspire me with courage,
and this portly Duchess will help me to be outrageous enough in my
deportment to satisfy the thirst of the most rabidly uninformed
Englishman at the board for American unconventionality."
"Have you been in this country long?" asked the Duchess, as Toppleton
slid his umbrella and carpet-bag under his chair, and prepared to sit
down.
"Yes, quite a time," said Toppleton. "Ten days."
"Indeed. As long as that?" said the Duchess. "You must have seen a great
deal of England in that time."
"Yes, I have," said Hopkins. "I went out to see Shakespeare's house and
his grave and all that. That's enough to last a lifetime; but it seems
to me, Lord Barncastle, you don't give Shakespeare the mausoleum he
ought to have. Out in the Rockies we'd have had a pile set up over him
so high that you could sit on top of it and talk with St. Peter without
lifting your voice."
"You are an admirer of Shakespeare, then, Mr. Toppleton?" said
Barncastle with a look of undisguised admiration at Hopkins.
"Am I? Me? Well, I just guess I am," replied Toppleton. "If it hadn't
been for William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon, you'd never have
heard of Hopkins P. Toppleton, of Blue-bird Gulch."
"How poetic! Blue-bird Gulch," simpered Lady Persimmon.
"He was your inspiration, Mr. Toppleton?" suggested Lady Alice with a
gracious smile.
"That's what he was," said Toppleton. "I might say he's my library.
There's three volumes in my library all told. One's a fine thick book
containing the total works of the bard of Avon; another is a complete
concordance of the works of the same author; and the third is the
complete works of Hopkins Parkerberry Toppleton, consisting of
eighty-three poems, a table of contents, and a portrait in three colours
of the author. I'd be glad to give you all a copy, ladies, but it's
circulated by subscription only."
"I should so like to see the book," said Lady Maude Whiskerberry.
"I'd be mighty proud to show it to you," said Toppleton, "and if you and
your father here, the earl, ever pass my way out there in the Rockies,
just look me up and you shall see it. But Shakespeare was my guiding
genius, Duchess. When I began to get those tired feelings that show a
man he's either a poet or a victim to malaria, I began to look about and
see who I'd better take as a model. I dawdled around for a year, reading
some of Milton's things, but they didn't take me under the eighth rib,
which with me is the rib of appreciation, so I bought a book called
'Household Poetry,' and I made up my mind that Shakespeare, taking him
altogether, was my poet. He was a little old-fangled in some things,
but in the main he seemed to strike home, and I sent word to our
bookseller to get me everything he wrote, and to count on me to take
anything new of his that happened to be coming out."
"Not a costly matter that!" said the Earl of Whiskerberry with the
suggestion of a sneer. He did not quite approve of this original.
"No, my dear Earl," replied Toppleton. "For you know Shakespeare is
dead--though I didn't know it at the time, either. But I got the book,
and I tell you it made a new man of me. 'Here' I said, 'is my model.
I'll be like him, and if I succeed, H. P. T.'s name will be known for
miles around.' And it was so. It was not a year before I had a poem of
600 lines printed in our county paper, and there wasn't a word in it
that wasn't Shakespearean. I took good care of that, for when I had the
poem written, I bought the concordance, and when I found that I had used
a word that was not in the concordance, I took it out and used another
that was."
"That's a very original idea, and, I think, a good one," said Lady
Alice. "You are absolutely sure of your English if you do that; but
wasn't it laborious, Mr. Toppleton?"
"It was at first, miss, but as I went along, and began to use words
over again it got easier and easier, and for the last fifteen pages of
the poem I hardly had to look up on an average more than six words to a
page."
"But poetry," put in Barncastle, half closing his eyes and gazing
steadfastly at Hopkins as he did so, "poetry is more than verbiage. Did
you become a student of nature?"
As Barncastle spoke, Toppleton's nerve weakened slightly, for it was the
very question he had desired to have asked. It brought him to the point
where his winning stroke was possible, and to feel that he was on the
verge of the struggle was somewhat disquieting. His uneasiness was
short-lived, for in a moment when he realized how eminently successful
had been his every step so far, how everything had transpired even as he
had foreseen it would, he gained confidence in himself and in his
course.
"I did, Barncastle; particularly a student of human nature. I studied
man. I endeavoured to learn what quality in man it was that made him
great and what quality made him weak. I became an expert in a great many
osophies and ologies that had never been heard of in the Rocky Mountains
before," answered Toppleton, forgetting his assumed character under the
excitement of the moment and speaking, flushed of face, with more
vehemence than the occasion seemed to warrant. "And I venture to
assert, sir, that there is no physiognomy in all creation that I cannot
read, save possibly yours which baffles me. I read much in your face
that I would rather not see there."
Barncastle flushed. The ladies toyed nervously with their fans. Lady
Alice appeared slightly perturbed, and Hopkins grew pale. The Duchess of
Bangletop alone was unmoved. Toppleton's heat was hardly what was
expected on an occasion of this sort, but the duchess had made up her
mind not to marvel at anything the guest of the evening might do, and
she regarded his vehemence as quite pardonable inasmuch as it must be
characteristic of an unadulterated Americanism.
"Fancy!" she said. "Do you mean to say, Mr. Toppleton, that you can tell
by a face what sort of a life one has led; what his or her character has
been, is, and is to be?"
"I do, Duchess," returned Toppleton. "Though for your comfort as well as
for that of others at this table, let me add that I invariably keep what
I see religiously to myself."
The humour of this rejoinder and the laughter which followed it cleared
the atmosphere somewhat, but from the gravity of his host and the tense
way in which Barncastle's eye was fastened upon him, Hopkins knew that
his shaft as to the baffling qualities of Barncastle's face had struck
home.
"You interest me," said the Earl, when the mirth of his guests had
subsided. "I too have studied physiognomy, but I never observed that
there was anything baffling about my own. I am really quite interested
to know why you find it so."
"Because," said Toppleton nervously yet firmly, "because your face is
not consistent with your record. Because you have achieved more than one
could possibly read in or predict from your face."
"I always said that myself, Barncastle," said the duchess airily. "I've
always said you didn't look like a great man."
"While acknowledging, Duchess, that I nevertheless am?" queried
Barncastle with a smile.
"Well, moderately so, Barncastle, moderately so. Fact is," said the
Duchess, "you can stir a multitude with your eloquence; you can write a
novel that so will absorb a school-girl that she can't take her eyes
from its early pages to look into the back of the book and see how it is
all going to turn out; you can talk a hostile parliament into doing
violence to its secret convictions; but in some respects you are
wanting. You are an atrocious horse-back rider, you never take a run
with the hounds, and I must say I have seen times when you seemed to me
to be literally too big for yourself."
"By Jove!" thought Toppleton. "What a clever fellow I am! If this
duchess is so competent a reader of character as her estimate of
Barncastle shows her to be, it's a marvel she hasn't found me out."
Barncastle laughed with a seeming heartiness at the duchess's remark,
though to Toppleton, who was now watching him closely, he paled
slightly.
"One of us is more than he expected, and two of us simply shock him,"
said Hopkins to himself.
"Of course, Mr. Toppleton," said Barncastle, "in view of my perfect
willingness to have you do so, you can have no hesitation in telling me
what you read in my face. Eh?"
"I have not," said Toppleton, gulping down a glass of wine to gain a
little time as well as to stimulate his nerves. He had not expected to
be so boldly met by his host. "I have not; but truly, my dear
Barncastle, I'd rather not, for it's a mighty poor verdict that the
lines of your face return for you, and inasmuch as that verdict is
utterly opposed to your record, it seems hardly worth--"
"Oh, do tell it us, Mr. Toppleton," put in Lady Alice. "It will be the
more interesting coming from one who has so admired my father that he
has travelled thousands of miles to see him. Do go on."
Hopkins blushed, hesitated a minute and then began.
"Very well," he said, "let it be as you say. My lord," he added, looking
Barncastle straight in the eye, "if I were to judge you by the lines of
your face, I should say that your character was essentially a weak one.
That you possessed no single attribute of greatness. That your whole
life was given over to an almost criminal tendency to avoid
responsibility; to be found wanting at crises; to a desire, almost a
genius I might say, for meeting your troubles in a half-hearted,
compromising spirit which should have resulted in placing you in the
ranks of the mediocre. The lines of your head are singularly slight for
one of your years. There is hardly a furrow on your brow; on the
contrary your flesh is so tightly drawn over your skull, that it would
seem to suggest the presence in that skull of a brain too far developed
for its prison; in other words your brain is as badly accommodated by
your skull, I should judge, as a man of majestic proportions would be in
the best Sunday suit of a little Lord Fauntleroy."
"You are giving me a fine idea of my personal appearance, my dear
Toppleton," said Lord Barncastle, pouring a tablespoonful of wine into a
small glass into which, if his guests had been watching his hands
closely, they might have seen him place a small white powder.
"The strange part of it is that it is true, Barncastle," said the
duchess. "I've thought pretty much the same thing many a time."
"Anything more, Toppleton?" queried Barncastle.
"Yes, one thing, my lord," said Hopkins, nerving himself up to the final
stroke. "The eyes, one of our American poets has said, are the windows
of the soul. Now if I were to look into your eyes at your soul, I'd say
to myself, 'Hopkins, my boy, there's an old man living in a new house,'
for I'll take my oath that _I_ see the soul of a centenarian, Lord
Barncastle, in the body of a man of sixty every time I look into your
eyes."
Toppleton's bold words had hardly passed his lips when Lady Alice, who
was becoming very uncomfortable because of the personal trend of the
conversation, rose from her chair and gave the signal for the ladies to
depart into the drawing-room, leaving Barncastle and his guests over
their coffee and cigars.
"What an extraordinary gift that is of yours!" the Earl of Whiskerberry
said to Toppleton as Barncastle walked with the duchess as far as the
drawing-room door. "D'ye know, my deah sir, it's truly appalling to
think you can do it, you know, because there's so much that--"
The earl's sentence was never finished, for a heavy fall interrupted him
at this point, and Toppleton, turning to see whence it came, was
horrified and yet not altogether displeased to see prostrate on the rug,
white and lifeless as it had been in the room on the other side of the
wainscoting upstairs two hours before, the body of Barncastle of
Burningford.
"Frightened him out at the very first shot!" said Toppleton gleefully to
himself. "He is easier game than I thought."
"I believe the man is dead!" said the earl, anxiously putting his hand
over Barncastle's heart, and standing appalled to find that it had
stopped beating.
"No," said Toppleton, with an effort at calmness, "this is a case of
trance only--suspended animation. He will revive in a very short time, I
fancy. This sort of thing is common among men of his peculiar character;
I've seen it happen dozens of times. Have him carried to his room; tell
Lady Alice that at my request he has started out to show me the
Barbundle in the moonlight--in fact, say anything about me you please,
only get up a plausible pretext for Barncastle's absence. I do not think
his daughter knows he has these attacks, and there is no reason why she
should know, because they are not dangerous."
With this the earl repaired to the drawing-room, where he made the
excuses for Hopkins and Lord Barncastle. Toppleton and the butler
carried the prostrate Barncastle up to his room, and then the American,
utterly worn out with excitement, entered his own apartments to await
developments.
CHAPTER XV.
BARNCASTLE CONFIDES IN HOPKINS.
TOPPLETON had not long to wait. His nerves had hardly resumed their
normal condition when he heard a tottering step in the hall outside,
followed by a soft tapping at the door.
"Who's there?" he cried.
"It is I, Toppleton--Barncastle. Let me in and be quick. I have
something very important to say to you."
Hopkins ran to the door and opened it, and Barncastle entered, his face
pale and his general aspect that of a man who had passed through a
terrible ordeal.
"By Jove! I've landed my man!" said Toppleton to himself. Then he added
aloud, "My dear Barncastle, you don't know what a turn you gave me
downstairs. I sincerely hope you are not ill?"
"I am ill, Toppleton; ill almost unto death, and it is you who have made
me so."
"I?" cried Hopkins, with well-feigned surprise. "I don't quite catch
your drift."
"Your accursed faculty for reading character in the face, and searching
out the soul of man in the depths of his eyes has made you the only man
I have ever feared. We must come to some understanding in this matter. I
want to know what your object is in coming here to expose me before my
friends, to lay bare--"
"Object? What is my object?" returned Hopkins, with capital
dissemblance. "Why, my dear fellow, what object could I have? I read
your face and searched your eyes for indications of your character at
your own request, and with your permission made known what I saw
there--for it is there, Barncastle, plain as any material object in this
room."
"It is dreadful! dreadful!" said Barncastle, covering his eyes with his
hands and quivering with emotion and fear. "I had no idea your power was
so great. Do you suppose for an instant that had I known how unerringly
accurate you are as a reader of mind and face, that I would ever have
asked you to lay bare to those people--"
"Dear me, Barncastle," said Toppleton, rising and putting his hand on
the other's shoulder in a caressing manner, "really you ought to lie
down and rest. This thing will all pass off with a night's sleep.
You--you don't seem to be quite yourself to-night. You mustn't mind
what I have said."
"You do not know, Toppleton, you do not know. You have done that
to-night which has shown me that a dreadful secret which I have carried
locked in my breast for thirty years, is as easily to be wrested from me
by you as my jewels by a house-breaker."
"But, my dear fellow," said Toppleton, his spirit growing with pride at
his success in bringing down his game with so little effort, "I--I
understand that this is only one of the exceptions to the rules which
govern the mind-reader's art. I do not really believe, of course, that
what I seem to see beneath the surface is actually there. I--"
"Do not try to deceive me, Mr. Toppleton," sobbed Barncastle. "I, too,
am something of a reader of character, as I told you, and I know exactly
what you believe and what you do not believe. Had I been in such a
position at dinner as would have permitted me to look as deeply into
your eyes as you looked into mine, I should not have asked you to
divulge what you saw. In fact, Toppleton, as you have probably seen for
yourself, I have all along under-estimated your abilities, which do not,
I confess, show up as advantageously as they might. You Americans are a
cleverer people than you appear to be, and you have a faculty of
dissemblance that is baffling to us in the older world, who have
acquired candour through our conceit. We are so conscious of our
superiority and ultimate ability to gain the upper hand in all that we
undertake, that we do not consider it necessary to cloak our real
feelings. The whole world speaks of the Briton's brutal frankness, and
speaks justly. We are candid often against our best interests. We are
impulsively frank where you Americans are diplomatically reserved. It is
this trait in my people that makes it difficult for our Government to
find suitable diplomats to fill the various foreign missions that must
be filled, while your Government finds it difficult to find missions for
all the diplomats who must be provided for. We have to train our
Ministers and Ambassadors in the hard school of experience, as
_attachés_ to legations, while you have only to go to your newspaper
offices, to your great political organizations, or to your flourishing
business concerns to find all the Envoys Extraordinary you need with a
comfortable reserve force standing always ready to step into any shoes
that death, advancement, or revulsion of popular sentiment may make
vacant. You are a great people; greater far than you seem on the
surface, and it is this fact, unheeded by me who should have known
better, that deceived me. I judged you from the standpoint of your
exterior; I saw that you were a character, but beyond the green umbrella
and carpet-bag indications I failed to look, and I thought I might
safely venture the act which has come so nearly to my undoing. I see you
now as you are. I apologize for underrating your ability, and I say to
you frankly, that I rejoice all the more greatly in your proffered
friendship since I have come to see that it is an honour not lightly to
be worn."
"My dear Barncastle," ejaculated Hopkins, breathless with wonder and
pride. "I assure you that your words overwhelm me. Your kind heart, I
fear, has led you into over-estimating my poor character as much as you
claim to have under-estimated it. I am by no means all that--"
"Ah, Toppleton!" said Barncastle, "let us not waste words. I know you as
you are at last, and you need cloak your real self from me no more. I
feared for an instant that you might be my enemy, though why you should
be I do not know, and to have you read my secret as though it were
printed upon an open page before you, filled my soul with terror. You
have found me out, but you do not and you cannot know what has brought
me to this unless I tell you, and I must insist that you become
acquainted with my story, that you may the better judge of my innocence
in the matter. When I have told you this story, I wish to exact from you
a promise never to reveal it, for once revealed it would be my ruin."
"I do not wish, my dear Barncastle," said Toppleton, burning with
anxiety to hear the other's story, and yet desirous of appearing
unconcerned in order that Barncastle might throw himself unreservedly in
his hands. "I have no desire to pry into another man's secrets, to wrest
unwilling confidences from any man. If I have discovered one of your
secrets, I have done so unwittingly, and I do not wish you to feel that
I am holding you up, to use one of our Western expressions, for
confidences. Keep your secret if it is one you wish to hold inviolate. I
shall never tell what I have seen or what you have said to me."
"You are a generous, high-minded person, Toppleton. A poet at soul and a
gentleman as well; but you must hear my story, for it is my
justification in your eyes, and that is as necessary to my happiness,
now that I know you for the man you are, as justification in the eyes of
the world would become were the world to suspect what you have seen. I
did not mind any portion of what you said at the table to-night,
Toppleton, until you delivered yourself of the opinion that the soul of
a man of a hundred and more years was dwelling in this body of mine, a
body many years younger. Mr. Toppleton, I do not want you to think me
mad. I want you to believe me when I say that what you saw is absolutely
a fact. My soul has lived precisely one hundred and twenty-six years, my
body sixty-one!"
Toppleton's expression of surprise as Barncastle spoke would have done
credit to a tragedian of the highest rank.
"Excuse me, Barncastle," he said, kindly. "I really think you'd better
let me send for Lady Alice and have the family physician summoned. Your
mind is somewhat affected."
"Come with me," said Barncastle, rising from his chair and leading
Toppleton out through the door into and along the hallway until they
reached his private apartment. "I want you on entering this room to
swear never to divulge what you shall see within, for I shall prove the
truth of my assertion respecting my soul before you leave it, and,
Toppleton, the maintenance of my secret is a matter of life and death to
me."
"Of course, my lord, I shall not tell anyone of this interview except
for your good. It is truly painful to me, for in spite of your apparent
clearness of head I cannot help feeling that the excitement of this
evening, together with the responsibilities a man of your position must
necessarily assume, have made you feverish and slightly delirious."
"I shall dispel all such ideas as that," said Barncastle, opening the
door and ushering Hopkins into his room. "Pray be seated," he said, "and
do not leave your seat until I request you to."
"I hear and obey," quoted Toppleton, his mind reverting to the Arabian
Tales, the splendour of his surroundings and the generally uncanny
quality of his experience reminding him forcibly of the land of the
Genii.
"I am going to prove to you now," said Barncastle, "that what I have
said about my soul is true. Excuse me for being absent from the room for
just five minutes, and also pardon me if I extinguish the light here.
Darkness is necessary to convince you that what I say is truth; and,
above all, Toppleton, look to your nerves."
Barncastle suited his action to his words. He extinguished the light and
disappeared. In five minutes, during which time Hopkins sat in the inky
darkness alone trying to formulate a plan for future action, a panel in
the wainscot was moved softly to one side and Toppleton found himself
face to face with the fiend.
For a moment he was numb with fear, but when the green shadow moved
toward him and spoke in soft insinuating tones and appeared to fear him
quite as much as he feared it, his courage returned.
"What the deuce is this?" he cried, springing to his feet.
"I am the soul of Barncastle. Barncastle lies prostrate as in death in
the den beyond the wall. I am also the soul of Horace Calderwood who
died forty-five years ago at the age of eighty, whose body lies buried
in the yard of Monckton Chapel, at Kennelly Manor, Kent."
"What is the meaning of it--how--how has it come that you--that you are
here?" cried Hopkins, with well-feigned terror. "What awful power have
you that you can leave your body and appear as you do now?"
"Calm yourself, Toppleton. There is no awful power about it," said the
fiend. "It is a simple enough matter when you understand it. I am simply
an immortal soul with mortal cravings. I love this world. It delights me
to live in this sphere, and it is given to the soul to return here if it
sees fit. That is what makes heaven heaven. The soul is free to do
whatsoever it wills."
"But how is it," said Toppleton, "that this has never happened before?"
"It has happened before. It is happening all the time, only you mortals
never find it out. You want instances? The soul of Macchiavelli returned
to earth and entered the body of a Jew; result, Beaconsfield. The soul
of Cæsar returned to earth and entered the body of a puny Corsican;
result, Bonaparte. The soul of Horace returned to earth and entered the
body of an English boy; therefore, Thackeray. The soul of Diogenes
returned to earth and entered the body of another English boy; result,
Thomas Carlyle. Six souls, those of Terence, Plato, Æsculapius, Cicero,
Cæsar, Chaucer, combined and, returning to earth, took possession of the
body of a wayward child of Warwickshire; whence, Shakespeare."
"And the real souls of these men?" cried Hopkins.
"Became a part of space, and still so remain. How else account for the
evolution of genius? Did you ever know a genius in his infancy?"
"No; I can't say that I ever did," said Toppleton.
"Well, with very rare exceptions geniuses are the stupidest of babies,
or, supposing that in youth they give great promise, the valedictorian
of his college class ends his life oftener than not without distinction,
a third-rate lawyer, perhaps a poor doctor, a prosy clergyman, or as
Mrs. Somebody's husband. The man who is graduated at the foot of his
class has oftener won the laurels than he. How is it accounted for? How
did Keats, son of a stableman, become the sweetest of our sonneteers? In
your own country, how did Lincoln and Grant spring from nothing to
greatness? Was the germ of greatness discoverable in them in their
youth? Would the most reckless of prophets have dared assert that the
heavy tanner's boy would become the immortal hero of the Wilderness, the
saviour of the Republic, the uncrowned ruler of fifty millions of people
even with a thousand years of life to live? I tell you, Toppleton, the
mystery of this life is more mysterious than you think. There are things
happening every minute of the day, every second of the minute, the
knowledge of which would drive a mortal mind--that is, a mind which has
never put on immortality by passing into the other world--to despair."
"But, Barncastle," said Hopkins, his knees growing weak and his blood
running cold, this time in actual terror, "how comes it that I, a
mortal, inspire you, an immortal, with fear, as you claim I have done?"
"There is a point beyond which an immortal mind cannot with safety
indulge in mortal habiliments. Have you never observed how men of
genius outlive their genius? Did Bonaparte die at the height of his
glory? Did Grant die at the zenith of his power?"
"D'Israeli did."
"D'Israeli embodied Macchiavelli, and Macchiavelli made no mistakes. I
have made a mistake. I have lived too long as Barncastle, and every day
beyond the day on which I should have left this body has lessened my
greatness, my power, until I am become as weak as though I had never put
on immortality. It is my craving to be among men, that has been my
weakening, if not my ruin. The love of contact with mankind is as strong
with me as is the love of drink with others. I cannot give it up."
"And the poor soul whose place you took?" said Toppleton.
"Don't speak of him," said the fiend. "I have made his name a great one.
I have suffered more than he in my efforts to lift his personality to a
plane it would never have reached had he been left to go his own way, to
occupy his own person. He is my debtor, Toppleton. I have no feelings of
regret for him. I went to him in a spirit of fairness and honesty, and
offered to make him a famous man. He declined the offer. I assumed the
risk of compelling him, and after the first compulsion he was
acquiescent but not candid. When Horace Calderwood died, and I, his
soul, for the first time learned that it was possible for a spirit to
return to earth and do these things, the idea of depriving a fellow-soul
of material existence was repellent to me, and seemed not to be strictly
honest. He should enjoy, it seemed to me, something more than the
consciousness of his greatness. He should be permitted to taste _in
propriâ personâ_ the delights of fame. And I resolved that I would not
do as these others before me had done, and drive the real spirit of
my,--ah--well, call him my victim if you choose--I resolved that I would
not drive the real spirit of my victim out into space, leaving him to
sigh and bewail his unhappy estate throughout all eternity. My plan was
to go shares. To assume possession only so far as was necessary to
insure the winning of the laurel; to let the other return to his
corporeal estate in hours of leisure. I should have continued of this
mind until to-day had I not had the misfortune to select for my
operations an uncandid person, who had no genius, save that for tearing
down what I was up-building. It became necessary for me to exile him for
ever to save him from himself. He had been made a great man, and had I
deserted him he would have become a conspicuous failure; his name would
have been disgraced in proportion to the greatness it had had thrust
upon it, and the soul of that one would have lived a life of humiliation
and misery. What I did was the humane thing. I exiled him from himself,
and I have no regrets for having done so."
"Well, of course," said Toppleton, "you know more about it than I do,
but it seems to me it's a mighty rough thing to condemn a soul to
perpetual existence on this earth deprived of the only means which can
put him in a position to enjoy that life. If you are not joking with me,
Barncastle, and your present appearance is pretty good proof that you
are not, it seems to me that you have been guilty of a wrong, although
your reasons for believing that you have done right are worthy of
consideration. It strikes me that an omniscient, such as you pretended
to be, ought not to have been bothered by the lack of candour of a
purely finite mind; and, after all, it was but a bit of superb conceit
on your part to think that you could do things differently from those
who had gone before you."
"But my motive, Toppleton. Credit me with a proper motive," pleaded the
fiend.
"Yes, I do," said Hopkins. "But out in the Rocky Mountains, my lord, we
have lynched several thieves who stole to keep their families from
starving. Their motives were all right, but they were suspended just the
same. But let me ask you one question. To what extent do you retain that
remarkable omniscient quality? I want to know, for candidly, much as I
admire you, Barncastle, it rather awes me to think that you can
penetrate to the innermost recesses of my brain--"
"I can no longer do that," said Barncastle. "My power through long
confinement to mortal habitations has materially lessened, as I have
already told you. Do you suppose, my dear sir, that, were it not so, I
should be here, at this moment, unbosoming myself to you, and begging
you in the name of humanity never to utter one word of what has passed
between us? Do you think that I, who was once able to destroy a mortal's
reason by one glance of my eye, would be so overcome by the words of a
mind-reading American poet if I still had the power to subject his will
to mine?"
"No one would believe me were I to tell him your horrible secret," said
Hopkins. "Indeed, I don't know that I believe it myself. There is, of
course plenty of evidence of which I have had ocular demonstration, but
this may be all a dream. I may wake up to-morrow and find myself in my
hammock in Blue-bird Gulch."
"No, it is no dream," said the fiend. "It is all too real, but you will
not expose me, Toppleton. There are those who would believe it, some who
half suspect me even now would gain re-enforcement in their suspicions.
My daughter would be shocked beyond expression and--"
"That, my lord," said Hopkins "is your convincing argument. Lady Alice's
peace of mind must be held inviolate, and I shall be dumb; but I think
you might let the exiled spirit enter once more into bodily life. The
allotted days of the body you have wrested from him must be growing few
in number. Why not atone for the past by admitting him once more?"
"There are two reasons, Toppleton," said Barncastle, fixing his eye with
great intensity upon Hopkins, who maintained his composure with great
difficulty. "In the first place, there are responsibilities which still
devolve upon the Lord of Burningford which he would be utterly unable to
assume. You might assume them, for you are a clever man. You have the
making of a brilliant man in you, but he has not, and never will have.
He is the most pusillanimous soul in the universe, and with him in
charge, that body would die in less than six months. In the second place
I have lost sight of him of late years, or rather lost consciousness of
him, for he has been visible at no time since he departed from his
normal condition, and since the day of my marriage, whose happiness he
made a mad public endeavour to destroy, I have had no dealings with him.
Where he is now, I have not the slightest idea."
"Well, I know!" ejaculated Toppleton, forgetting himself and throwing
caution to the winds.
"You know what? Where he is?" returned the fiend, with a look that
restored Toppleton's senses and showed him that he had made a mistake.
"Oh, no!" he replied, his face getting red with confusion. "Oh, no, not
that. You interrupted me. I was going to say that I know--er--I know how
difficult your--er--your position is in the matter, and--er--that I
hardly knew what to advise."
"Ah!" returned the fiend, with a smile that to Toppleton's eyes
betokened relief. "You have taken a load off my mind. Do you know, my
dear fellow, that for one instant I half believed that you really knew
of the original Chatford's whereabouts, and that perhaps you were in
league with him against me. I see, however, how unfounded the impression
was."
"How could you suspect me of that?" said Toppleton, reproachfully, his
heart beating wildly at the narrowness of the escape. "But you don't
intend to let him back?"
"Not if I can help myself, Toppleton," said the fiend. "I shall hang on
here as long as I can, not only for my own sake and for that of my
daughter, but also for the peace of mind of the exiled soul. You will
respect my confidence, will you not?"
"I shall, Barncastle. You may count on me," said Toppleton.
"Good. Now I will resume the mortal habitation for which I have so long
been a trustee, and we can rejoin the ladies."
Ten minutes later Barncastle and the Poet of the Rockies entered the
drawing-room.
"Did you enjoy your walk, Mr. Toppleton?" queried Lady Alice.
"Well, I guess!" returned Toppleton. "Your father has one of the finest
estates I have ever seen since I left Colorado, and as for your moon, it
fairly out-moons any moon I've seen in the Rockies in all my life."
"It's the same moon that everybody else has," said the Duchess of
Bangletop with a smile.
"Yes, Duchess," returned Toppleton, sitting beside her. "But you've
furnished it better than we have. That Barbundle River gives it a
setting beside which the creek in Blue-bird Gulch is as a plate-glass
window to a sea of diamonds."
CHAPTER XVI.
MR. HOPKINS TOPPLETON MAKES A DISCOVERY.
IT is hardly to be wondered at that Toppleton did not sleep much that
night at Barncastle Hall. The state of his nerves was not calculated to
permit him to sleep even had he been willing to do so. The experiences
of the day were not of a nature to give him such confidence in his
surroundings as would have enabled him to woo rest with a serene sense
of safety. Furthermore, it was his desire to push his endeavour through
to as immediate a conclusion as was possible, and time was too precious
to waste in rest. Hence it was that the dawning of another day found him
utterly fagged out, awake, and still meditating upon the means most
likely to crown his efforts with success.
"I am afraid," he said, as he turned the matter over and over in his
mind, "I am afraid it's going to be a harder task than I thought. My
plan has worked admirably up to a certain point, but there it has ceased
to result as I had anticipated. He is frightened, that is certain; but
he cannot be frightened into a restitution. He is too selfish to give up
Chatford's body and take his chances of getting another, and his rather
natural distrust of Chatford's ability to sustain the greatness of the
name of Barncastle re-enforces his selfishness. I can't blame him
either. I haven't a doubt that Chatford's spirit would prove too weak to
keep the body going a year at the outside, and yet it is his, and he
ought to have it. He ought to--have--"
Here wearied Nature asserted herself, and Hopkins' head dropped back on
the soft cushion of his couch, and he lost consciousness in a sleep that
knew no dreams.
The morning hours passed away and still he slept. Afternoon gave place
to night, and as the moon rose over the Barbundle and bathed the
beautiful scene as with silver, Hopkins opened his eyes again and looked
about him. He was annoyed to find that his vision had in some manner
become slightly obscured; he seemed to see everything through a faint
suggestion of a haze, and an object ten feet distant that he remembered
admiring as he lay on his couch the afternoon before, its every detail
clear cut and distinct to the eye, was now a confused jumble of lines
only, suggestive of nothing in particular, though the moonlight
streaming in through the window shone directly upon it.
"Dear me!" he said, passing his hands over his eyes as if to sweep away
the filmy web that interfered with his sight. "I seem to have a slight
vertigo, and yet I cannot understand why I should. I hardly drank
anything last night, and as for what I ate it was simplicity itself. But
I wonder how long I have been asleep; let me see." Here he consulted his
watch, the great silver timepiece he had brought with him.
"Humph," he said; "half-past seven. I must have slept nearly thirteen
hours; unlucky number that. No wonder I have vertigo."
He rose from the couch and walked, or rather tottered, to the window to
look out upon the beautifully serene Barbundle.
"Mercy! How weak I am!" he cried, grasping the sill for support. "This
trouble seems to have gone to my knees as well. I can hardly stand,
and--ow--there is a touch of rheumatism in my right arm! I shall have to
ring for Parker to bring me a little resolution in the form of a stiff
horn of whiskey. These old English homes I'm afraid are a little damp."
He touched the bell at the side of the doorway and staggered back to the
couch, falling upon it in a heap in sheer weakness, and as he did so he
again became conscious of someone gazing at him from the other side of
the room, and as he looked, the fiend in his emerald disembodiment took
shape and approached him.
"Ah, Barncastle," said Toppleton, to whom custom had rendered the
fiend's appearance less terrible. "I am glad to see you. I'm afraid I am
ill. I have the most unaccountable weakness in my knees. My eyesight
seems to have grown dim, and I am conscious of my head which is really a
new sensation to me. I wish you'd send your butler up here with some
whiskey."
"All right, I'll send him," returned the fiend with, or so it seemed to
Toppleton, a lack of friendly interest in his tone which rather
surprised him, for Barncastle had hitherto been the quintessence of
politeness. "I fancy you'll be better in the morning; and between you
and me I'd let whiskey alone. Brandy and soda is my drink, and I think
it will do you more good in your present state than whiskey."
"Very well, Barncastle," Hopkins began.
"Don't call me Barncastle," returned the fiend, impatiently. "Your
discovery of my secret has made all that intolerable to me, and I intend
hereafter to spend as little of my time in that form as is consistent
with propriety. I did not realize until you came here how long
confinement within anatomical limits had weakened my powers, and to find
myself at this period of my existence almost, if not quite, as
incompetent to meet the grave crises of life as any mortal, is galling
in the extreme. Call me anything you please, but drop Barncastle."
"Very well," again replied Toppleton. "I will call you my friend
Greene."
"Humorous to the last, Toppleton," laughed the fiend. "That's a truly
American characteristic. I believe you'll jest with your dying breath."
"Quite likely," said Hopkins, lightly. "That is if I ever draw it."
"Ah! Have you discovered an Elixir of Life, then?" queried the fiend.
"Not yet," returned Hopkins. "But I am sure I cannot see why, with your
assistance, I should not do so. If you know all the secrets of the
universe, I think you might confide at least one of them to me, and the
only one I ask is, what shall I do to live for ever?"
"You are an insinuating young man," returned the fiend. "And I must say
I like you, Toppleton, in spite of your abominable poetry, for now I am
going to be candid with you."
"So much, then, is gained," said Hopkins, cheerfully. "If you like me,
give me the recipe of life."
"I would, my boy," the fiend replied with a harsh laugh, "I would do it
gladly, if I hadn't forgotten it. Some day I shall take a day off from
these mundane operations of mine, and return to the spirit vale and
freshen up my formulæ. Then perhaps I can help you. But I have something
very important to say to you, and if you will come with me to my own
quarters I will say it. This room is too chilly for a spirit with
nothing on."
Toppleton readily acquiesced. His other sensations had been so acute
since his awakening, that he did not realize until the fiend spoke of
the chill in the atmosphere that he was himself cold to the very marrow
of his bones; that his blood seemed hardly to run in his veins, so
congealed had it become. He followed the fiend, who led the way from
Toppleton's room to Barncastle's own quarters, where a log fire blazed
fiercely on the hearth. There was no other light than that of the fire
in the room, and Hopkins was glad of it, his eyes were too weary for any
illumination save the one which made the darkness in which he now sat
even blacker than was natural.
"Lie down there on my bed, Toppleton," said the fiend. "Lie down and
listen to me."
Toppleton obeyed, and gladly.
"You are a sick man," began the fiend, "though you may not know it. You
have no more than an even chance of living beyond this night. If you do
live until to-morrow morning I see no reason why you should not continue
to do so for many years to come; in fact I confidently anticipate that
such will be the case, but you have got to be careful."
"If you were not one of the supernatural element, Mr. Greene," said
Toppleton, nervously tapping his fingers together, "I should be inclined
to laugh at your notions respecting my health. A man of my habits and
physique doesn't go to pieces after a single late supper, to be brought
up standing at the doors of death uncertain as to whether he will be
invited in or requested to move on, all in a single night."
"For an acute man you are an obtuse sort of a person," returned the
fiend, gravely. "I do not mean that you are in immediate danger of
physical collapse, though that will come shortly unless you take care of
yourself. It is a worse than physical death that I refer to. You are on
the verge of intellectual death, Toppleton. You need twenty-four hours
of wakefulness to put you in an insane asylum, an incurable, hopelessly
mad for the balance of your days. You remarked a moment since that you
were conscious of your head. By that you meant that you felt the weight
of it, and it is a leaden weight unless my eyes deceive me. I have
experienced it, and I know what it means."
Hopkins' face blanched as the fiend spoke. It was too easy for him to
believe all that had been said; and why should it not be so, he asked
himself. Here was a case of mortal arrayed in combat against a
supernatural being, and in the nature of things it was a contest of the
intellectuals and not one of the sort in which Toppleton's training
would have made him an easy victor. In a bout at arms Barncastle would
have been a prey to Toppleton with scarce an effort on the American's
part, but mind for mind, the young lawyer was fighting against terrible
odds. He had proven to a very considerable extent a winner, and yet his
victory was quite as hollow as the victory of a trotting horse who has
won only the preliminary heats and still has the final test to undergo;
but to win even the trial heat was a great thing, and that his mind
should be well-nigh used up was to have been expected. Realizing this,
and realizing also that it was his defeated adversary who was advising
him as to what was necessary to be done for the preservation of his
sanity, he was quite overcome. He nearly fainted, in fact he would have
done so had not the fiend seeing his condition applied restoratives to
his head and feet, and poured between his open lips a concoction which
made every drop of blood in his body glow as with health, which imparted
strength to his weary limbs, and which seemed to clear his aching head
with its magical potence.
"You have had a narrow escape, my dear fellow," said the fiend, as
Hopkins revived. "If I hadn't saved you, you would have stepped over the
line."
"You--are--very--very kind," murmured Hopkins, raising himself on his
elbow and then dropping wearily back into the pillows again. "You place
me under very deep obli--"
"Don't speak of that," said the fiend with a smile. "The obligation you
have placed me under is still greater. But now, Toppleton, you must
sleep, or you will be beyond all hope to-morrow."
"I will," said Toppleton, faintly, and then he closed his eyes and
consciousness departed from him.
The fiend regarded him for a moment and turned away with a sigh.
"If I had had the good fortune to operate on you instead of upon
Chatford," he said, "well, there'd have been a president of the United
States in your family by this time, or, better still, a railway king
with an amount of brains equal to the possessions of the best of them.
Oh, well! he wasn't to be had, and I haven't done badly with Chatford."
With which reflection the fiend passed from the room, and left Toppleton
breathing heavily in sleep.
When next Toppleton opened his eyes consciously to himself, he was lying
on a great oak bed with a tapestry canopy over his head. The sun was
streaming in through the broad mullioned windows. The world without was
white with snow, the tall evergreens down by the now ice-covered
Barbundle presenting the only vestige of green in sight.
"Ah!" he sighed, as he looked wearily out of the window. "We shall have
a white Christmas after all, but," he added, gazing about him, "how the
dickens did I ever come to be here, I wonder? In Barncastle's own
room--oh, yes, I remember. I fell asleep here last night and I suppose
he has--Hello!--Who's that?"
The last words were addressed to whomsoever it was that entered the room
at the moment, for the door had opened and closed softly.
"It is I," came a soft, sweet voice, and before Hopkins had time to
place it, Lady Alice entered the room.
"Good morning!" said Toppleton, slightly embarrassed at the unexpected
appearance of his hostess.
"Good morning!" she replied, coming to his side and stroking his
forehead lightly. "And I can say with all my heart, after these awful
days of suspense, that it is a good morning. You have been very ill."
"Oh, it was nothing," said Hopkins, endeavouring to conceal his surprise
at the way things were going. "Only a little headache and rackety
feeling generally. It will pass off. Barncastle was very good to let me
have his quarters."
Lady Alice's face took on a troubled look.
"How beautiful it is out," said Toppleton, turning his eyes toward the
snow-clad landscape again. "I was just thinking that we should have a
white Christmas after all."
"Why, my dear, Christmas is over by two weeks. You have been ill here
for three weeks yesterday."
"What?" cried Toppleton. "I?"
"Why, certainly," said Lady Alice. "Of course, you didn't know it, but
it is so. You haven't had a lucid moment in all that time."
A sudden fear clutched at Toppleton's heart.
"But--but tell me, have I--what do--what have the doctors said--that I
had lost my mind, was in danger of a living death; that--"
"Don't get so excited," returned Lady Alice, softly, still retaining the
look of anxiety on her face. "Here, read this. It is a letter from your
Rocky Mountain friend, I think, and I fancy it will amuse you. It has
only just come."
"My Rocky Mountain friend!" ejaculated Hopkins under his breath. "What
devilish complication does this mean, I wonder?"
"Shall I open it for you?" asked Lady Alice.
"Yes," said Hopkins mechanically; "I'll be very much obliged to you if
you will do so. Thank you," he added, staring wildly at the foot of the
bed as the young woman opened and handed him the letter.
"While you are reading it," said she, "I'll run downstairs a moment, and
tell Parker to prepare you a little breakfast."
"You are very kind," said Toppleton, faintly; and then as Lady Alice
went softly from the room he began to read the letter. "'17, The Temple,
London, January 2nd. My dear Barncastle--' Why, she must have made a
mistake," he said; "this is for Barn--by Jove! it's in my handwriting,
and signed--Hopkins--Top--ple--ton. What in the name of Heav--"
Here he ceased his soliloquizing and began to read the letter which was
as follows:--
"MY DEAR BARNCASTLE,--I understood your game from
the beginning. It was audacious, but unavailing,
as the attack of a finite upon an infinite mind
must always be. I led you on to your own undoing
if you so regard it. I removed gladly every
obstacle from your path, and let you think in your
own conceit that you were an easy victor in the
fight. By so doing I put your caution asleep, and
when your caution slept you became a victim to my
ambition just as did Chatford, with this
exception, that I have left you in a position to
enjoy life, while circumstances made it necessary
for me to place him in perpetual exile. Perhaps
when you get this letter and realize what I have
done, you will curse me. Do not do so. You are not
a loser in the premises. You have gained the
Burningford estates, you have gained the enjoyment
of the honours which I have won, at the expense of
the difference of strength between the body I have
put off and this one of yours which I now occupy.
The latter, let me say to you, is a superb
specimen, the ideal habitation for a soul like
mine. Aided by it a still greater future than the
one, to be paradoxical, I have left behind me,
will be mine, and not mine only, but yours also,
since it is under your name that my future
greatness is to be achieved. I repeat, do not
curse me, for in cursing me you but curse
yourself, and when you get over the first
sensation of horror at the changes I have wrought
in our respective destinies, and can think upon it
calmly and dispassionately, you will not find me
so much to blame. Nor are you to be deprived of
any of your years by my act. The infusion of a
younger spirit into the corse of Barncastle will
make it young again, and gradually you will
recover the physical ground you now seem to have
lost.
"I sail for New York on the _City of Paris_
to-morrow, and you may rest assured that the name
that now flies at the mast-head in the firm of
Toppleton, Morley, Bronson, Mawson, Perkins,
Harkins, Smithers and Hicks will no longer be a
mere figurehead, a minimum among maxima; it will
become once more what it used to be, a tower of
strength in the legal profession, and, permit me
to say, a tower of such height that beside it the
famous structure erected by your illustrious
father will become but as an ant hill to the
pyramid of Cheops.
"Good-bye, Barncastle, for that is now your name.
In the years to come we may meet again, and when
we do, may it be in friendship, for as Barncastle
I loved myself, and as Toppleton I love you. May
you go and do likewise, and above all, give up
masquerading as a Broncho poet, and get down to
the business for which you were fitted by nature,
if not by birth: that of a member of the noblest
aristocracy in the world; that of a peer of the
British realm.
"Faithfully yours,
"HOPKINS TOPPLETON, _alias_ BARNCASTLE,
"_Né_ CALDERWOOD.
"P.S.--I have had an interview with the original
Chatford, and have informed him that it is
impossible for him to return to his former
corporeal state, because Barncastle no longer
knows the formula by which the re-entrance can be
effected, which is true. He believes it, and has
gone off into space with his whistle and his
sigh."
For a moment Toppleton was overcome. This unexpected denouement was
almost too much for him, but the indignation that surged up in his
breast gave him strength to withstand the shock; and then, singular to
relate, he laughed.
"To think that I should be born a Yankee and at my time of life become a
peer surrounded by everything that wealth can procure, and loaded down
with every honour that man can devise; oh, nonsense! it's all a joke,
and a good one. Barncastle saw through my trick, and is paying me back
in my own coin."
Here Hopkins laughed till the room echoed with his mirth, and as his
laugh died away the door opened and the heiress of Burningford entered.
"Why, father!" she cried, exultantly, "do you feel as well--"
At the word "father," Hopkins' heart gave a great throb.
"My dear," he said in a moment, "I have been ill you say for three
weeks, and with no lucid intervals?"
"Yes."
"And my hallucination was what?"
"That you were that ridiculous American poet."
"Bring me the glass, my child," said Hopkins, gravely. "I--I'd just like
to see my face in the mirror."
The glass was brought and Hopkins looked into it. The face of Barncastle
in very truth gazed back at him from its silver depths.
"Ah!" he said. "I have changed; have I not?"
"Yes, indeed," said the Lady of Burningford. "But really I think your
illness has done you good, for I do believe you look ten years younger."
"It is well," said the new Barncastle, with a sigh of resignation. "I
have worked too hard. I shall now retire from public life and devote my
remaining years to--to the accomplishment of my one great ambition."
"And what is that?" asked his daughter.
"To becoming a leader in the busy world of leisure, my child," said
Toppleton, falling back to his pillow once more, and again losing
consciousness in sleep.
This time fortunately the sleep was that of one who had fought a good
fight, had lost, but whose conscience was clear; and to whom, after many
days, had been restored a sound mind in a body sound enough to last
through many years of unremitting rest.
CHAPTER XVII.
EPILOGUE.
A SINGLE year has passed since the episode which brought our last
chapter to a close.
The new Barncastle of Burningford is well and happy in the paths of
pleasantness and peace, into which he was so unexpectedly and so
unwittingly brought. His daughter has become engaged to a promising
scion of a neighbouring house of large means and high estate in the
social world. Hopkins Toppleton is in New York, busy at the practice of
the law, developing a genius in the profession he had adopted for the
convenience of his partners at which they stand amazed; steadily forging
his way to the front, his energy, his aggressiveness, and extraordinary
fertility of resource dazzling all beholders.
As for the weary spirit,--alas for him! He still whistles, wearily,
through space, hopeless and forlorn, but at all times a welcome visitor
to Burningford, whither he personally went, shortly after Toppleton's
departure for New York, to lay his petition at the feet of Barncastle
himself. He knows now what has happened to his young counsel, and his
regret for himself is tempered by his regret for what he has brought
upon him who so nobly undertook to champion his cause, for the quondam
Toppleton has concealed from his first client the happiness that he
feels over the strange metamorphosis in his fortunes, lest, comparing it
with his own miserable condition, the exile may become more unhappy than
ever.
THE END.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page viii, Table of Contents, "232" changed to "233" to reflect actual
place of Chapter XV.
Page 11, "depature" changed to "departure" (preparations for departure)
Page 60, "irrefragible" changed to "irrefragable" (an absolutely
irrefragable)
Page 96, "n" changed to "in" (in the face of)
Page 177, "stong" changed to "strong" (a strong point)
Page 188, "sentitiments" changed to "sentiments" (to be, with
sentiments)
Page 229, "thousand" changed to "thousands" (has travelled thousands)
End of Project Gutenberg's Toppleton's Client, by John Kendrick Bangs
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