Toppleton's Client; Or, A Spirit in Exile

by John Kendrick Bangs

  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 arrangedgrotesquely about his neck, the picture of Americanism "as she is drawn"by British cartoonists. Any other than a well-bred English gatheringwould have received him with hilarious enthusiasm, and Hopkins wasrather staggered as he passed through the doorway to note the evidentinterest, and yet utter lack of surprise, which his appearance inspiredin those who had been bidden to the feast to meet him. He perceived atonce that he no more than fulfilled the expectations of these highlycultivated people, and it was with difficulty that he repressed themirth which was madly endeavouring to take possession of his wholesystem.

  The only portions of his make-up that attracted special attention--ifhe could judge from a whispered comment or two that reached his ears,and the glances directed toward them by the Duchess of Bangletop and thedaughters of the Earl of Whiskerberry--were the carpet-bag and theumbrella. The blue dress coat and tight-fitting trousers were taken as amatter of course. The red necktie and diamond stud were assumed to bethe proper thing in Rocky Mountain society, but the bag and umbrellaseemed to strike the English mind as a case of Ossa piled upon Pelion.

  "Good evening, ladies," said Hopkins with a bow which was graceful inspite of his efforts to make it awkward. "I hope I haven't increasedanybody's appetite uncomfortably by being late. This watch of mine isset to Rocky Mountain time, and it's a little unreliable in thisclimate."

  "He's just the dear delightful creature I have been looking for foryears and years," said the Duchess of Bangletop to Lady MaudeWhiskerberry.

  "So very American," said Lady Cholmondely Persimmon, of PersimmonTowers--a well-preserved young noblewoman of eighteen or twenty socialseasons.

  "Duchess," said Barncastle, coming forward, "permit me to present to youmy friend Hopkins Parkerberry Toppleton, the Poet Laureate of the RockyMountains."

  "Howdy do, Duchess," said Toppleton, dropping his carpet-bag, andextending 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 bothpleased."

  "Lady Maude Whiskerberry, Mr. Toppleton. Lady Persimmon, Mr. Toppleton,"said Barncastle, resuming the introductions after Toppleton had pickedup the carpet-bag again and announced his readiness to meet the otherladies.

  In a very short time Toppleton had been made acquainted with all in theroom, 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 rigidlybound by conventionality, relinquished her claim to the guest of theevening, and when dinner was announced, permitted Toppleton to escortthe Duchess into the dining-room.

  "Don't you think, my dear Mr. Toppleton," said the Duchess as theAmerican offered her his arm, "don't you think you might--ah--leave yourluggage 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 thingsout of my sight. Barncastle's butler looks all right, but I've lived ina country where confidence in your fellow-men is a heaven-born gift. Iwasn'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 theyentered the beautiful dining-room and took their allotted chairs, whenHopkins perceived, much to his delight, that Barncastle was almost thelength of the table distant; that on one side of him was Lady Alice, andon the other the Duchess of Bangletop.

  "These two women are both an inspiration in their way," he said tohimself. "Lady Alice, even if she loves that monster of a father ofhers, ought to be rescued from him. She will inspire me with courage,and this portly Duchess will help me to be outrageous enough in mydeportment to satisfy the thirst of the most rabidly uninformedEnglishman at the board for American unconventionality."

  "Have you been in this country long?" asked the Duchess, as Toppletonslid his umbrella and carpet-bag under his chair, and prepared to sitdown.

  "Yes, quite a time," said Toppleton. "Ten days."

  "Indeed. As long as that?" said the Duchess. "You must have seen a greatdeal of England in that time."

  "Yes, I have," said Hopkins. "I went out to see Shakespeare's house andhis grave and all that. That's enough to last a lifetime; but it seemsto me, Lord Barncastle, you don't give Shakespeare the mausoleum heought to have. Out in the Rockies we'd have had a pile set up over himso high that you could sit on top of it and talk with St. Peter withoutlifting your voice."

  "You are an admirer of Shakespeare, then, Mr. Toppleton?" saidBarncastle with a look of undisguised admiration at Hopkins.

  "Am I? Me? Well, I just guess I am," replied Toppleton. "If it hadn'tbeen for William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon, you'd never haveheard 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 agracious 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 bookcontaining the total works of the bard of Avon; another is a completeconcordance of the works of the same author; and the third is thecomplete works of Hopkins Parkerberry Toppleton, consisting ofeighty-three poems, a table of contents, and a portrait in three coloursof the author. I'd be glad to give you all a copy, ladies, but it'scirculated 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 andyour 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 guidinggenius, Duchess. When I began to get those tired feelings that show aman he's either a poet or a victim to malaria, I began to look about andsee who I'd better take as a model. I dawdled around for a year, readingsome 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 himaltogether, 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 ourbookseller to get me everything he wrote, and to count on me to takeanything new of his that happened to be coming out."

  "Not a costly matter that!" said the Earl of Whiskerberry with thesuggestion of a sneer. He did not quite approve of this original.

  "No, my dear Earl," replied Toppleton. "For you know Shakespeare isdead--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 formiles around.' And it was so. It was not a year before I had a poem of600 lines printed in our county paper, and there wasn't a word in itthat wasn't Shakespearean. I took good care of that, for when I had thepoem written, I bought the concordance, and when I found that I had useda word that was not in the concordance, I took it out and used anotherthat was."

  "That's a very original idea, and, I think, a good one," said LadyAlice. "You are absolutely sure of your English if you do that; butwasn't it laborious, Mr. Toppleton?"

  "It was at first, miss, but as I went along, and began to use wordsover again it got easier and easier, and for the last fifteen pages ofthe poem I hardly had to look up on an average more than six words to apage."

  "But poetry," put in Barncastle, half closing his eyes and gazingsteadfastly at Hopkins as he did so, "poetry is more than verbiage. Didyou become a student of nature?"

  As Barncastle spoke, Toppleton's nerve weakened slightly, for it was thevery question he had desired to have asked. It br
ought him to the pointwhere his winning stroke was possible, and to feel that he was on theverge of the struggle was somewhat disquieting. His uneasiness wasshort-lived, for in a moment when he realized how eminently successfulhad been his every step so far, how everything had transpired even as hehad foreseen it would, he gained confidence in himself and in hiscourse.

  "I did, Barncastle; particularly a student of human nature. I studiedman. I endeavoured to learn what quality in man it was that made himgreat and what quality made him weak. I became an expert in a great manyosophies and ologies that had never been heard of in the Rocky Mountainsbefore," answered Toppleton, forgetting his assumed character under theexcitement of the moment and speaking, flushed of face, with morevehemence than the occasion seemed to warrant. "And I venture toassert, sir, that there is no physiognomy in all creation that I cannotread, save possibly yours which baffles me. I read much in your facethat I would rather not see there."

  Barncastle flushed. The ladies toyed nervously with their fans. LadyAlice appeared slightly perturbed, and Hopkins grew pale. The Duchess ofBangletop alone was unmoved. Toppleton's heat was hardly what wasexpected on an occasion of this sort, but the duchess had made up hermind not to marvel at anything the guest of the evening might do, andshe regarded his vehemence as quite pardonable inasmuch as it must becharacteristic of an unadulterated Americanism.

  "Fancy!" she said. "Do you mean to say, Mr. Toppleton, that you can tellby a face what sort of a life one has led; what his or her character hasbeen, is, and is to be?"

  "I do, Duchess," returned Toppleton. "Though for your comfort as well asfor that of others at this table, let me add that I invariably keep whatI see religiously to myself."

  The humour of this rejoinder and the laughter which followed it clearedthe atmosphere somewhat, but from the gravity of his host and the tenseway in which Barncastle's eye was fastened upon him, Hopkins knew thathis shaft as to the baffling qualities of Barncastle's face had struckhome.

  "You interest me," said the Earl, when the mirth of his guests hadsubsided. "I too have studied physiognomy, but I never observed thatthere was anything baffling about my own. I am really quite interestedto know why you find it so."

  "Because," said Toppleton nervously yet firmly, "because your face isnot consistent with your record. Because you have achieved more than onecould possibly read in or predict from your face."

  "I always said that myself, Barncastle," said the duchess airily. "I'vealways said you didn't look like a great man."

  "While acknowledging, Duchess, that I nevertheless am?" queriedBarncastle with a smile.

  "Well, moderately so, Barncastle, moderately so. Fact is," said theDuchess, "you can stir a multitude with your eloquence; you can write anovel that so will absorb a school-girl that she can't take her eyesfrom its early pages to look into the back of the book and see how it isall going to turn out; you can talk a hostile parliament into doingviolence to its secret convictions; but in some respects you arewanting. You are an atrocious horse-back rider, you never take a runwith the hounds, and I must say I have seen times when you seemed to meto be literally too big for yourself."

  "By Jove!" thought Toppleton. "What a clever fellow I am! If thisduchess is so competent a reader of character as her estimate ofBarncastle 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 paledslightly.

  "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 perfectwillingness to have you do so, you can have no hesitation in telling mewhat you read in my face. Eh?"

  "I have not," said Toppleton, gulping down a glass of wine to gain alittle time as well as to stimulate his nerves. He had not expected tobe so boldly met by his host. "I have not; but truly, my dearBarncastle, I'd rather not, for it's a mighty poor verdict that thelines of your face return for you, and inasmuch as that verdict isutterly opposed to your record, it seems hardly worth--"

  "Oh, do tell it us, Mr. Toppleton," put in Lady Alice. "It will be themore interesting coming from one who has so admired my father that hehas 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, lookingBarncastle straight in the eye, "if I were to judge you by the lines ofyour face, I should say that your character was essentially a weak one.That you possessed no single attribute of greatness. That your wholelife was given over to an almost criminal tendency to avoidresponsibility; to be found wanting at crises; to a desire, almost agenius I might say, for meeting your troubles in a half-hearted,compromising spirit which should have resulted in placing you in theranks of the mediocre. The lines of your head are singularly slight forone of your years. There is hardly a furrow on your brow; on thecontrary your flesh is so tightly drawn over your skull, that it wouldseem to suggest the presence in that skull of a brain too far developedfor its prison; in other words your brain is as badly accommodated byyour skull, I should judge, as a man of majestic proportions would be inthe best Sunday suit of a little Lord Fauntleroy."

  "You are giving me a fine idea of my personal appearance, my dearToppleton," said Lord Barncastle, pouring a tablespoonful of wine into asmall glass into which, if his guests had been watching his handsclosely, they might have seen him place a small white powder.

  "The strange part of it is that it is true, Barncastle," said theduchess. "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 finalstroke. "The eyes, one of our American poets has said, are the windowsof the soul. Now if I were to look into your eyes at your soul, I'd sayto 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, LordBarncastle, in the body of a man of sixty every time I look into youreyes."

  Toppleton's bold words had hardly passed his lips when Lady Alice, whowas becoming very uncomfortable because of the personal trend of theconversation, rose from her chair and gave the signal for the ladies todepart into the drawing-room, leaving Barncastle and his guests overtheir coffee and cigars.

  "What an extraordinary gift that is of yours!" the Earl of Whiskerberrysaid to Toppleton as Barncastle walked with the duchess as far as thedrawing-room door. "D'ye know, my deah sir, it's truly appalling tothink you can do it, you know, because there's so much that--"

  The earl's sentence was never finished, for a heavy fall interrupted himat this point, and Toppleton, turning to see whence it came, washorrified 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 thewainscoting upstairs two hours before, the body of Barncastle ofBurningford.

  "Frightened him out at the very first shot!" said Toppleton gleefully tohimself. "He is easier game than I thought."

  "I believe the man is dead!" said the earl, anxiously putting his handover Barncastle's heart, and standing appalled to find that it hadstopped beating.

  "No," said Toppleton, with an effort at calmness, "this is a case oftrance only--suspended animation. He will revive in a very short time, Ifancy. 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; tellLady Alice that at my request he has started out to show me theBarbundle in the moonlight--in fact, say anything about me you please,only get up a plausible pretext for Barncastle's absence. I do not thinkhis daughter knows he has these attacks, and there is no reason why sheshould know, because they are not dangerous."

  With this the earl repaired to the drawing-room, where he made theexcuses for Hopkins and Lord Barncastle. Toppleton and the butlercarried the prostrate Barncastle up to his room, and then the Ame
rican,utterly worn out with excitement, entered his own apartments to awaitdevelopments.