Toppleton's Client: or, A Spirit in Exile

"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?'