Toppleton's Client; Or, A Spirit in Exile

by John Kendrick Bangs

  CHAPTER XI.

  TOPPLETON CONSULTS THE LAW AND FORMS AN OPINION.

  AT the conclusion of the exile's story Hopkins glanced at his watch, anddiscovered that he had barely time to return to his lodging and dressfor 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 aweek I rather think we shall be able to decide upon some definite lineof action. It will be difficult, I am afraid, to find any precedent toguide us in a delicate matter of this sort, but as a lay lawyer, if Imay be allowed the expression, it seems to me that there ought to besome redress for one who has been made the victim of so many differentkinds of infamy at once as you have. The weak part of our case is thatyou were yourself an accessory to every single one of the fiend'scrimes, and in instituting a suit at law we cannot get around the factthat in a measure you are both plaintiff and defendant. I believe thoseare 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 arepellant if my memory serves me."

  "It may be as you say," returned the exile, sadly. "I'll have to takeyour word for it entirely, since, as I have already told you, all thelaw I ever knew I have forgotten, and then, too, my business beingpurely one of adjudication, I used to distinguish my clients one fromanother--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 youshall appear in court, whether as a plaintiff or defendant. I thinkunder the circumstances you will have to go as a plaintiff, though in acase in which my father was interested some years ago, I know that itwas really the plaintiff who was put on the defensive as soon as the oldgentleman took him in hand to cross-examine him. It was said by expertsto have been the crossest examination on the calendar that year; andbetween you and me, Edward, the plaintiff never forgave his attorneysfor not retaining the governor on his side in the beginning. If youwould 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 wrongupon 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, withwhom it is a time-honoured custom to believe a man guilty until he hasproven his innocence. I think, on the whole, it would be easier for youto prove Lord Barncastle's guilt than your own innocence."

  "I know from the lucid manner in which you talk, Toppleton," said theexile, with a deep sigh indicating satisfaction, "from the readiness andextemporaneousness with which you grasp the situation, not losing sightof side issues, that I have made no mistake in coming to you. Heavenbless you, sir. You will never regret the assistance you are so noblygiving to one you have never seen."

  "Don't mention it, Sallie--I should say Chatford," said Toppleton. "I aman American citizen and will ever be found championing the cause of theoppressed against the oppressor. My ears are ever open to the plaint ofthe plaintiff, nor shall I be deaf to the defendant in case you chooseto be the latter. Count on me, Edward, and all will yet be well!"

  With these inspiring words, Toppleton lit his cigar and walked jauntilyfrom the room, and the exile relapsed into silence.

  Faithful to his promise, Toppleton applied himself assiduously to thestudy of the law as it seemed to him to bear upon the case of hismysterious client. To be sure, his library was not quite as extensive asit might have been, and there may have been points in other books thanthe ones he had, which would have affected his case materially, but theyoung lawyer was more or less self-reliant, and what he had to read heread 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, myduty clearly would be to do the best I could with those tools, howeverawkward they might be. I could not ease my conscience after neglectingto do all that I could with those tools, by saying that I hadn't alifeboat and a cork suit handy. Here is a parallel case. I must do thebest I can with the tools I have, and I guess I can find enough law inBlackstone 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'llhave to use the sense that Nature gave me, and go ahead anyhow."

  To his delight, Hopkins found it utterly unnecessary for him to read thetree 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 toexplain the law, the other to listen, "do you know you have the finestcase in all Christendom, without leaving the very fundamental principlesof 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'sthe uncrackable nut in the case. How the deuce to have you appear on thewitness stand, I can't see. The court would not tolerate any suchmakeshift as the Aunt Sallie scheme you and I have adopted, it would beso manifestly absurd, and would give the counsel for the defence--foryou must be the plaintiff after all, can't help yourself--it would givethe counsel for the defence the finest chance to annihilate us by theuse of his satirical powers he had ever had, and before a jury thatwould 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 wouldalmost prove my case," said the exile.

  "It would seem as if it ought to," said Toppleton. "But you know whatmen are. They believe very little that they hear, and not much more thanhalf that they see. You couldn't expect anyone to believe the points ofa 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 yourpoint."

  "It's a serious point," said Toppleton. "And then there is another mostembarrassing side to it. We can't afford to have our case weakened byputting ourselves in a position where countercharges can be broughtagainst us, and I am very much afraid our opponents would chargevagrancy against you, for the very obvious and irrefutable reason thatyou have absolutely no visible means of support. You wouldn't have a legto stand on if they did that, and yet it does seem a pity that somethingcannot be done to enable you to appear, for as I said a minute ago, youhave otherwise a perfectly magnificent cause of action. Why, Edward,there isn't a page in the Comic Blackstone that does not containsomething that applies to your case, and that ought to make you awinner if we could get around this horrible lack of body of yours.

  "For instance," continued Toppleton, opening A'Beckett's famouscontribution to legal lore, "in the very first chapter we find thatBlackstone divides rights into rights of _persons_ and rights of things.Clearly you have a right to your own person, and no judge on a sanebench would dare deny it. Absolute rights, it says here, belong to manin a state of nature, which being so, you have been wronged, because inbeing deprived of your state of nature you have been robbed of yourabsolute 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 Charlesthe Second, and unless I have forgotten my Latin, that is a distinctreference to a man's right to the possession of his own body. Sectioneight, same chapter, announces man's right to personal security, andasserts his legal claim to the enjoyment of _life, limbs, health andreputation_. Have you enjoyed your life? No! Have you enjoyed yourlimbs? Not for thirty years. Have you enjoyed your health. No!Barncastle of Burningford has enjoyed that as well as your reputation. Ithink on the whole though, we would better not say anything about yourreputation 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 foryourself. That was
his work, and he is entitled to it."

  "True," said the exile. "I do not wish to claim anything I am notentitled to."

  "That's the proper spirit," said Toppleton. "You want what belongs toyou and nothing more. You are entitled to your property, for whichsection eleven of this same chapter provides, saying that the law willnot 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 acountry that professes to be free!"

  Toppleton paused at this point to make a few notes and to reinforce hisown spirit by means of others.

  "Now, under the head of real property, Chatford," he said, "I find thatin England property is real or personal. I think that in this case, thatof which you have been deprived comes under both heads. One's body iscertainly real and unquestionably personal, and if a man has a right tothe possession of each, he has a right to the possession of both, and hewho robs him of both is guilty of a crime under each head. Realproperty consists of lands, tenements and hereditaments. Lands we mustperforce exclude because you have lost no lands. Tenements may bealluded to, however, with absolute fairness because the body is thetenement of the soul. Of hereditaments I am not sure. I don't know whathereditaments are, and I haven't had time to find out anything aboutthem except that they are corporeal or incorporeal, which leads me toinfer that you have been wronged under this head also, for I must assumethat a hereditament is something that may or may not have a bodyaccording 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 tosuppose that this refers to bodily estate as well as to landed estate.What we must dispute is Barncastle's title to your bodily estate. Ourcase is referred to in section two, chapter nine, part second of thisbook, which deals with joint tenancy in which two or more persons haveone and the same interest in an estate, but it must be held by both atthe same time. Now, even granting, as the other side may say, that youentered into a partnership with the fiend, we could knock him right offhis pins on the sole fact that in declining to admit you to your ownbodily estate, he has not only deprived you of an undoubted right, buthas in reality forfeited his own claim to possession, since he hasviolated the only principle of law upon which he could claim entrance tothe estate under any circumstances."

  "Superb!" ejaculated the exile.

  "Now we come to an apparent difficulty," continued Hopkins. "Possessionis, according to my authority, five points of the law. The fiend haspossession, and in consequence tallies five points; out of how many I donot know. What the maximum number of points in the law is, the book doesnot say, but even assuming that they form a good half, I think we canbring forward five more with a dozen substitutes for each of the five insupport of our position. Some of these points will evolve themselveswhen we come to consider whence Barncastle's title was derived.

  "Did he acquire his title by descent? No; unless it was by a descent tounworthy tricks which, I fear, are outside of the meaning of the law. Bypurchase? If so, let him show a receipt. By occupancy? Yes, and by aforcible occupancy which was as justifiable as his occupation of thethrone would be, an occupancy which can be shown in court to be anentire subversion of the right of a prior occupant whose title wasacquired by inheritance."

  "That's a strong point," said the exile.

  "Yes, it is," said Hopkins, "especially in a country where birth meansso much. But that isn't all we have to say on this question of title. Atitle can be held by prescription. Barncastle may claim that he got histhis way, but we can meet that by showing that he compounded his ownprescription, and originally got you to swallow it by a trick. He alsohas a title by alienation, and there I think we may be weak since youwere a party to the final alienation, though we may be able to pullthrough on even that point by showing that you consented only in theexpectation of an early return of the premises. It was an alienation bydeed, an innocent deed on your part, an infamous one on his. It was notan alienation of record, which weakens his claim, but one of specialcustom, which by no means weakens yours.

  "And so, Edward, we might go on through the whole subject of the rightof property, and on every point we are strong, and on few can Barncastleof Burningford put in the semblance of a defence."

  "It's simply glorious," said the exile. "I don't believe there ever wasa case like it."

  "I don't believe so either," said Toppleton. "And on the whole I'm gladthere never was. I should hate to think that a crime like this couldever become a common one.

  "Now," he said, resuming the discussion of the legal aspect of theexile's case, "let us see what we can find under the head of 'Privateand Public Wrongs and their Remedies!' I suppose yours would come underthe head of a civil wrong, though your treatment has been very far fromcivil. As such your redress lies in the Courts. You are forbidden totake back what has been taken from you by a force which amounts to abreach of the peace,--that is, it would not be lawful for you to seizeyour own body and shake the life out of it for the purpose of yourselfbecoming 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 ofthat which is yours. He has ousted you from your freehold. He has beenguilty of trespass. He has subjected you to a nuisance, that is if it isa nuisance to be deprived of one's body, and I should think it would soappear to any sane person. He has been guilty of subtraction. He hassubtracted you from your body and your body from you, leaving apparentlyno remainder. He has been guilty of an offence against your religion.To an extent he has committed an offence against the public health inthat he has haunted citizens of this city and caused you unwittingly todo the same to the detriment of the sanity of those who have beenhaunted. I think we might even charge him with homicide, for ifdepriving a man of thirty years of his corporeal existence isn'tdepriving him of life, I don't know what is. However this may be, I amconvinced that he is guilty of mayhem, for he certainly has deprived youof a limb--that is shown by your utter absence of limb. He has beenguilty of an offence against your habitation, corporeal and incorporeal,and finally he has been guilty of larceny both grand and petty. Grand inthe extent of it, petty in the method. By Jove, Chatford, if we couldbring you into Court as a concrete individual, and not as an abstractentity, we could get up an indictment against Lord Barncastle ofBurningford that would quash him for ever.

  "A body obtained for you, I should carry the case to the Appellate Courtat once, for two reasons. First because it would not be appropriate totry so uncommon a cause in the Common Pleas, second because a decisionby the Court of Appeals is final, and we should save time by going thereat once; but the point with which we must concern ourselves the mostis, how shall we bring you before the eyes of the court; how shall weget our plaintiff into shape--visible shape?"

  A painful silence followed the conclusion of Toppleton's discussion ofthe law in the case of Chatford _v_. Barncastle of Burningford. It wasevident that the exile could think of no means of surmounting theunfortunate barrier to a successful prosecution of the case. Finally theexile spoke:

  "I perceive the dreadful truth of what you say. Having no physicalbeing, I have no standing in court."

  "That's the unfortunate fact," returned Hopkins. "Can't you get a bodyin some way? Can't you borrow one temporarily?"

  "Where?" asked the exile. "You are my only material friend. You wouldn'tlend me yours."

  "No, I wouldn't," said Toppleton. "If I did, where would your onlymaterial 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 yourwitnesses? You could only assert, and Barncastle could always deny.Strong as your cause is, the courts, under the circumstances, will giveyou no redress, because you cannot prove your case. We must seek othermeans; this is a case that requires diplomatic action. Strategy will domore 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 cleverdissembling will frighten him into doing the right thing by you. Irealize what a tremendous undertaking it is, but failure then would notmean public disgrace, and failure in the courts would put us, andparticularly myself, under a cloud. In short, we might be suspected ofblackmail, Chatford; Barncastle is so prominent, and liable to just suchattacks at all times."

  "But how do you propose to reach him? He has the reputation now of beingthe 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 likemyself, and had ten pounds to bet, I would wager you that withinforty-eight hours I could have an invitation in autograph from thePrince of Wales himself to dine with him and Prince Battenburg atSandringham, at any hour, and on any day I choose to set. You don't knowwhat enterprising fellows we Yankees are. I'll know Lord Barncastleintimately inside of one month, if I once set out to do it."

  "Excuse me for saying it, Hopkins," said the exile, sadly, "but I mustsay that what I have liked about you in the past has been your freedomfrom bluster and brag. To me these statements of yours sound vain andempty. I would speak less plainly were it not that my whole future is inyour 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, whatyou propose to do, if you do not wish me to set this talk down asfoolish braggadocio."

  "I'll tell you how I propose to meet him," said Hopkins, slightlyoffended, and yet characteristically forgiving; "but what I shall doafter that I shall not tell you, for I may find that he is a politerperson than you are, and it's just possible that I shall like him. If Ido, I may be impelled to desert you and ally myself with him. I don'tlike to be called a braggart, Edward."

  "Forgive me, Hopkins," said the spirit. "I am so wrought up by my hopesand 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 mydeserting you are very slight. But to return to your question. I shallmeet Barncastle in this way; I shall have a sonnet written in his praiseby an intimate friend of mine, a poet of very high standing and littlemorality, which I shall sign with my own name, and have printed asthough it were a clipping from some periodical. This clipping I willsend to Lord Barncastle with a note telling him that I am an Americanadmirer of his genius, the author of the sonnet, and have but oneambition, which I travelled from America to gratify--to meet him face toface."

  "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 inHopkins Toppleton after he has known him fifteen minutes, I'll go backhome to New York, give up my law practice and become--"

  "What?" said the spirit as Hopkins hesitated.

  "A sister of charity," said Hopkins, gravely.