Toppleton's Client: or, A Spirit in Exile

"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?"