Toppleton's Client; Or, A Spirit in Exile

by John Kendrick Bangs

  CHAPTER XIII.

  AT BARNCASTLE HALL.

  TOPPLETON'S surmises as to Barncastle's method of receiving him appearedto be correct, for upon his arrival, green umbrella and carpet bag inhand, at the Fenwick Merton station he was met by no less a person thanhis host himself, who recognized him at once.

  "I knew it was you," said Barncastle, as he held out his hand to graspToppleton'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 travelledfirst 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 anyman on the platform. How goes it, anyhow?"

  The Englishman's countenance wore a puzzled expression as Toppleton putthe question.

  "How goes it?" he repeated slowly. "How goes what? The train?"

  "Oh, no," laughed Hopkins. "How goes it is Rocky Mountain for how'sthings, all your family well, and your creditors easy?"

  "Ah! I see," said Barncastle with a smile. "All is well with us, thankyou. My daughter is awaiting your coming with very great interest; andas for my creditors, my dear sir, I am really uncertain as to whether Ihave 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 ofbeing dunned by proxy, eh? I wish we could work it out my way. If youdon't ante up right off out in the Mountains, your grocer comes aroundand collects at the point of his gun, and if you pay him in promises, hegives 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. Youdon't get a chance to get poor in a country where boys throw nuggets atbirds, and cats are removed from back-yard fences with silverboot-jacks. Ever been in the Rockies, Barncastle?"

  "No," returned the lord, "I have not, but if all you say is true, Ishould 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 youstill survive shows I knew it. What time is dinner? I'm ravenous."

  "Eight o'clock," replied Lord Barncastle, looking at his watch. "It isnow 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," saidBarncastle.

  "That suits me," returned Toppleton. "But I wish you'd send thatgentleman with the mutton-chop whiskers that drives your waggon to thelunch counter and get me a snack before we start."

  "No," said Barncastle, ushering Toppleton into his dog-cart. "We'll dobetter than that. We'll give up the drive until later. I take youdirectly to the Hall, and send a cold bird and a glass of wine to yourapartment."

  "Good!" ejaculated Toppleton, with a smack of the lips. "You must livepretty near as fine here as we do in our big hotels at home. They're theonly other places I know where you can get your appetite satisfied atfive minutes' notice."

  Toppleton and his host then entered the carriage, and in a short timethey reached the Hall--a magnificently substantial structure, withivy-clad towers, great gables, large arched windows looking out uponseductive vistas, and an air of comfortable antiquity about it thatmoved Hopkins' tongue to an utterance somewhat at variance with hisassumed character.

  "How beautiful and quiet it all is," he said, gazing about him inundisguised admiration. "A home like this, my lord, ought to make a poetof a man. The very air is an inspiration."

  Barncastle shrugged his shoulders and laughed; and had Toppleton notbeen looking in rapt silence out through the large bowed window at theend of the hall they had entered, along an avenue of substantial oaktrees to the silver waters of the Barbundle at its other end, he mighthave 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 adoptedto 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 intoa spacious and extremely comfortable room which Toppleton perceived in amoment was the library, at the other end of which was a large openfireplace, large enough to accommodate a small family, within whosecapacious depths three or four huge logs were blazing fiercely. Beforethe fire sat a stately young woman, about twenty-five years of age, whorose as the Lord of Burningford and his guest entered.

  As she approached Toppleton would have given all he possessed to be ridof the abominable costume he had on; and when the young heiress ofBurningford's eye rested upon the fearfully green cotton umbrella, hefelt as if nothing would so have pleased his soul as the casting of thatadjunct to an alleged Americanism into the fire; for Lady Alice was, ifhe could judge from appearances, a woman for whose good opinion any manmight be willing to sacrifice immortality itself. But circumstanceswould not permit him to falter, and, despite the fact that it hurt hisself-respect to do it, Hopkins remained true to the object he had inview.

  "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'tneed 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 thecompliment of travelling all the way from his home in the RockyMountains in the United States to see me. He is the author of thatwonderful sonnet I showed you the other night."

  "Yes, I remember," said Lady Alice, with a gracious smile, which wonToppleton's heart completely, "it was delightful. Lord Barncastle and Iare great admirers of your genius, Mr. Toppleton, and we sincerely hopethat we shall be able to make your stay with us here as pleasant for youas it is for us."

  Again Hopkins would have disappeared through the floor had he been ableto act upon the promptings of his own good taste. It made him feelunutterably small to think that he had come here, under the guise of anuncultivated, boorish clod with poetical tendencies, to work theoverthrow of the genius of the house.

  "Thank you," he said, his voice husky with emotion. "I had not expectedso cordial a reception. In fact," he added, remembering his trueposition, "I had a bet of ten to one with a friend of mine who is doingthe Lakes this afternoon that I'd get frozen stiff by a glance of yourladyship's eye. I'm mighty glad I've lost the bet."

  "He has some courtliness beneath his unpolished exterior," said LadyAlice later, when recounting the first interview between them to some ofher friends. "I quite forgave his boorishness when he said he was gladto lose his wager."

  "Now, Mr. Toppleton," said his host, "if you care to go to yourapartment I will see that you get what you want. Just leave yourumbrella in the coat room, and let Parker take your bag up to yourroom."

  "Thanks, Barncastle, old fellow," said the Rocky Mountain poet, "I'll goto my room gladly; but as for leaving that umbrella out of my sight, ortransferring the handle of that carpet bag to any other hand than myown, I can't do it. They're my treasures, my lady," he added, turningto Lady Alice. "That bag and I have been inseparable companions foreight consecutive years, and as for the umbrella we haven't been partedfor five. It's my protector and friend, and since it saved my life in ashooting scrape at the Papyrus Club dinner in Denver, I haven't wantedto let it get away from me."

  "How odd he is," said Lady Alice a moment later to her father, Toppletonhaving 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 heis not a thief. I fancy he is amusing, and I believe he will be avaluable acquisition to my circle of acquaintances. Have you heard fromthe Duchess of Bangletop?"

  "Yes, she will be here. I told her you had a real American thistime--not an imitation Englishman--a poet, and, as far as we couldjudge, a character who would surely become a worthy addition to hercollection of oddities; a match, in fact, for her German worshipper ofNapoleon and that other strange freak of nature she had at her lastreception, 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 hasabsolutely nothing that is _bizarre_ for her next reception."

  Toppleton, upstairs in a magnificently appointed chamber, from thewindows of which were to be seen the most superb distances that he hadever imagined, was a prey alternately to misery and to joy. Hefelicitated himself upon the apparent success of his plan, whilebemoaning his unhappy lot in having to keep his true self under in asociety he felt himself capable of adorning, and to enter which he hadalways aspired.

  "It's too late to back out now, though," he said. "If I were to strikemy colours at this stage of the battle, I should deserve to be put in acask and thrown into the Barbundle yonder. When I look about me and seeall these magnificent acres, when I observe the sumptuous furnishing ofthis superb mansion, when I see unequalled treasures of art scattered inprofusion about this castle, and then think of that poor devil of aChatford roaming about the world without a piece of bric-a-brac to hisname, 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 partof 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 theface of the earth. Barncastle, Barncastle, you are indeed a villain ofthe deepest--"

  Here Toppleton paused, and looked apprehensively about him. He seemed tobe 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 whenhis invisible client first betrayed his presence in No. 17.

  "I wonder if this is one of those beastly castles with secret doors inthe wainscot and peep-holes in the pictures," he said nervously tohimself. "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 hauntedchamber on me. The conjunction of a ghost and a Rocky Mountain poetwould be great, but after my experience with Chatford, I don't believethere is a ghost in all creation that could frighten me. Nevertheless, Idon't like being gazed at by an unseen eye. I'll have to investigate."

  Then Toppleton investigated. He mounted chairs and tables to gaze intothe stolid, unresponsive oil-painted faces of somebody's ancestry, heknew not whose. Not Barncastle's, he was sure, for Barncastle was anupstart. Nothing wrong could be found there. The eyes were absolutelyproof against peeping Toms. Then he rolled the heavy bureau and severalantique chests away from the massive oak wainscoting that ran about theroom, eight feet in height and superbly carved. He tapped every panelwith his knuckles, and found them all solid as a rock.

  "No secret door in that," he said; and then for a second time heexperienced that nervous sensation which comes to him who feels that heis watched, and as the sensation grew more and more intense andterrifying, an idea flashed across Toppleton's mind which heightened hisanxiety.

  "By Jove!" he said; "I wonder if I am going mad. Can it be that Chatfordis an illusion, a fanciful creation of a weak mind? Am I become a preyto hallucinations, and if so, am I not in grave danger of my personalliberty here if Barncastle should discover my weakness?"

  It was rather strange, indeed, that this had not occurred to Hopkinsbefore. It was the natural explanation of his curious experience, andthe sudden thought that he had foolishly lent himself to the impulses ofa phantasm, and was carrying on a campaign of destruction against one ofthe world's most illustrious men, based solely upon a figment of adiseased imagination, was prostrating. He staggered to the side of alarge tapestried easy-chair, and limp with fear, toppled over its broadarm into its capacious depths an almost nerveless mass of flesh andbones. He would have given worlds to be back in the land of the midnightsun, in New York, in London, anywhere but here in the house ofBarncastle of Burningford, and he resolved then and there that he wouldreturn to London the first thing in the morning, place himself in thehands of a competent physician, and trifle with the creations of hisfancy no more.

  A prey to these disquieting reflections, Toppleton lay in the chair forat least an hour. The last rays of a setting sun trembled through theleaves of the tree that shaded the western side of the room, anddarkness fell over all; and with the darkness there came intoToppleton's life an experience that scattered his fears of a momentsince to the winds, and so tried and exercised his courage, that thatfast fading quality gained a renewed strength for the fearful battlewith 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 deepmeasured tones, that to Toppleton in his agitated state of mind wasuncomfortably suggestive of the bell in Coleridge's line that "Knells usback to a world of death." At the last stroke of the hammer the toneseemed to become discordant, and in a frenzy of nervous despairToppleton opened his eyes and sprang to his feet. As he did so, hiswhole being became palpitant with terror, for staring at him out of thedarkness he perceived a small orb-like something whose hue was that ofan emerald in combustion. He clapped his hands over his eyes for amoment, but that phosphorescent gleam penetrated them, and then heperceived that it was not an eye that rested upon him, but a ray oflight shining through a small hole that had escaped his searching glancein the wainscoting. The relief of this discovery was so great that itgave him courage to investigate, and stepping lightly across the room,noiseless as a particle of dust, he climbed upon a chair and peepedthrough the aperture, though it nearly blinded him to do so. To shadehis eyes from the blinding light, he again covered them with his hand,and again observed that its intensity was sufficient to pierce throughthe 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 likethe room in which he stood, and, with the exception of a narrow couchcovered with a black velvet robe, with a small pillow of the samematerial at the far end, the room was bare of furniture. There was nofire, no fixture of any kind, lamp or otherwise, from which illuminationcould come, and yet the room was brilliant with that same green lightthat Chatford had described to Hopkins at his office in the Temple. Sodazzling was it, that for a moment Hopkins had difficulty inascertaining just what there was in the apartment, but as he looked hebecame conscious of forms which grew more and more distinct as his eyeaccustomed itself to the light. On the couch in a moment appeared, rigidas in death, the body of Barncastle; the eyes lustreless and staring,the hands characterless and bluish even in the green light, the cheekssunken and the massive forehead white and cold as marble. The sightchilled Toppleton to the marrow, and he averted his eyes from thehorrible spectacle only to see one even more dreadful, for on the otherside of the apartment, grinning fiendishly, the source of the wonderfullight that flooded the room, he now perceived the fiend, making readyto assume once more the habiliments of mortality. He was stirring apotion, and, as Hopkins watched him, he began to whistle a combinationof discords that went through Toppleton's ears like a knife.

  The watcher became sick at heart. This was the frightful thing he had tocope with! So frightful was it that he tried to remove his eye from thepeep-hole, and seek again the easy chair, when to his horror he foundthat he could not move. If his eye had in reality been glued to theaperture, he would not have found it more firmly fixed than it was
atpresent. As he struggled to get away from the vision that was everymoment being burned more and more indelibly into his mind, the fiend'sfearful mirth increased, at the close of one of the paroxysms of whichhe lifted the cup in which the potion had been mixed to his lips, andquaffed its contents to the very dregs. As the last drop trickled downthe fiend's throat, Hopkins was startled further to see the lightgrowing dim, and then he noticed that the fiend was rapidly decreasingin size, shrinking slowly from a huge spectral presence into a hardlyvisible ball of green fire which rolled across the apartment to wherethe body lay; up the side of the couch to the pillow; along the pillowto that marble white forehead, where it paused. A tremor passed throughthe human frame lying prostrate there, and in a moment all was dark asnight. The ball of fire had disappeared through the forehead, and a deepgroan told Toppleton that the body of Barncastle was once more a livingthing having the semblance of humanity. A moment later another lightappeared in the apartment into which Toppleton still found himselfcompelled to gaze. This time the light was more natural, for it was thesoft genial light of a lamp shining through a sliding panel at the otherend of the room, through which the Lord of Burningford passed. It lastedbut 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 wasblack once more.

  With the departure of Barncastle, Toppleton was able to withdraw fromhis uncomfortable position, and in less than a moment lay gasping in hischair.

  "It is too real!" he moaned to himself. "Chatford did not deceive me. Iam not the victim of hallucination. Alas! I wish I were."

  A knock at the door put an end to his soliloquizing, and he was relievedto hear it. Here was something earthly at last. He flew from his chairacross the room through the darkness to the door and threw it wide open.

  "Come in," he cried, and Barncastle himself, still pale from the effectsof the ordeal he had passed through, entered the room.

  "I have come to see if there is anything I can do for you," he saidpleasantly, touching an electric button which dissipated the darkness ofthe room by lighting a hundred lamps. "The Duchess of Bangletop hasarrived and is anxious to meet you; but you look worn, Toppleton. Youare not ill, I hope?"

  "No," stammered Toppleton, slightly overcome by Barncastle's coolnessand affability, "but I--I've been taking a nap and I've had the--themost 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."