Toppleton

“ Now I will resume the mortal habitation for which I have so long been a trustee, and we can rejoin the ladies."
Ten minutes later Barncastle and the Poet of the Rockies entered the drawing-room.
"Did you enjoy your walk, Mr. Toppleton?" queried Lady Alice.
"Well, I guess!" returned Toppleton. "Your father has one of the finest estates I have ever seen since I left Colorado, and as for your moon, it fairly out-moons any moon I've seen in the Rockies in all my life."
"It's the same moon that everybody else has," said the Duchess of Bangletop with a smile. ”

“ As for Toppleton and the Presence, they found in the Lowther Arcade just what they wanted—an Aunt Sallie with a hollow head, into which the spirit was able to enter, and from which it told its tale of woe, sitting, bodily and visibly, in the rocking-chair, before the eyes of Hopkins Toppleton, the words falling fluently from the open lips of the dusky incubus the spirit had put on. ”

“ 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 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." ”

“ But now, Toppleton, you must sleep, or you will be beyond all hope to-morrow."
"I will," said Toppleton, faintly, and then he closed his eyes and consciousness departed from him.
The fiend regarded him for a moment and turned away with a sigh.
"If I had had the good fortune to operate on you instead of upon Chatford," he said, "well, there'd have been a president of the United States in your family by this time, or, [260] better still, a railway king with an amount of brains equal to the possessions of the best of them. Oh, well! he wasn't to be had, and I haven't done badly with Chatford." ”

“ My body has been stolen from me, and I am at present a shapeless wanderer with nowhere to lay my head, and no head to lay there, if perchance the world held some corner that I might call my own."
"I can't see what you have to complain about on that score," said Toppleton, rising from the floor and seizing a large magnifying glass from his table and gazing searchingly through it into the chair which still rocked violently. "An individual like yourself, if you are an individual, ought to be able to find comfort anywhere. ”

“ UP THE LAKE.
“What do you mean, Wolf?” demanded Tommy Toppleton, turning fiercely toward me. “Have you told your runners to lie to passengers?”
“Certainly not,” I replied. “They are telling only the truth as I understand it.”
“The truth! Don’t you hear them?” angrily interposed Major Toppleton.
“I hear them, sir. They are saying just what they have been told to say. You will notice that they do not utter a word against the railroad line.”
“But they say your boat is going through to Hitaca!” exclaimed the major. ”

“ He followed the fiend, who led the way from Toppleton's room to Barncastle's own quarters, where a log fire blazed fiercely on the hearth. There was no other light than that of the fire in the room, and Hopkins was glad of it, his eyes were too weary for any illumination save the one which made the darkness in which he now sat even blacker than was natural.
"Lie down there on my bed, Toppleton," said the fiend. "Lie down and listen to me."
Toppleton obeyed, and gladly. [257]
"You are a sick man," began the fiend, "though you may not know it. ”

“ Now if I were to look into your eyes at your soul, I'd say to 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, Lord Barncastle, in the body of a man of sixty every time I look into your eyes."
Toppleton's bold words had hardly passed his lips when Lady Alice, who was becoming very uncomfortable because of the personal trend of the conversation, rose from her chair and gave the signal for the ladies to depart into the drawing-room, leaving Barncastle and his guests over their coffee and cigars. ”

“ I shall have a sonnet written in his praise by an intimate friend of mine, a poet of very high standing and little morality, which I shall sign with my own name, and have printed as though it were a clipping from some periodical. This clipping I will send to Lord Barncastle with a note telling him that I am an American admirer of his genius, the author of the sonnet, and have but one ambition, which I travelled from America to gratify—to meet him face to face."
"Aha!" said the spirit. "An appeal to his vanity, eh?"
"Precisely," said Toppleton. "It works every time." ”

“ I exiled him from himself, and I have no regrets for having done so."
"Well, of course," said Toppleton, "you know more about it than I do, but it seems to me it's a mighty rough thing to condemn a soul to perpetual existence on this earth deprived of the only means which can put him in a position to enjoy that life. If you are not joking with me, Barncastle, and your present appearance is pretty good proof that you are not, it seems to me that you have been guilty of a wrong, although your reasons for believing that you have done right are worthy of consideration. ”

“ 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 [203] 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." ”

“ Do you suppose for an instant that had I known how unerringly accurate you are as a reader of mind and face, that I would ever have asked you to lay bare to those people—"
"Dear me, Barncastle," said Toppleton, rising and putting his hand on the other's shoulder in a caressing manner, "really you ought to lie down and rest. This thing will all pass off with a night's sleep. You—you don't [235] seem to be quite yourself to-night. ”

“ Heaven bless you, sir. You will never regret the assistance you are so nobly giving to one you have never seen."
"Don't mention it, Sallie—I should say Chatford," said Toppleton. "I am an American citizen and will ever be found championing the cause of the oppressed against the oppressor. My ears are ever open to the plaint of the [170] plaintiff, nor shall I be deaf to the defendant in case you choose to be the latter. Count on me, Edward, and all will yet be well!"
With these inspiring words, Toppleton lit his cigar and walked jauntily from the room, and the exile relapsed into silence. ”

“ Barncastle laughed with a seeming heartiness at the duchess's remark, though to Toppleton, who was now watching him closely, he paled slightly.
"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 perfect willingness to have you do so, you can have no hesitation in telling me what you read in my face. Eh?"
"I have not," said Toppleton, gulping down a glass of wine to gain a little time as well as to stimulate his nerves. He had not expected to be so boldly met by his host. "I have not ”

“ Darkness is necessary to convince you that what I say is truth; and, above all, Toppleton, look to your nerves."
Barncastle suited his action to his words. He extinguished the light and disappeared. In five minutes, during which time Hopkins sat in the inky darkness alone trying to formulate a plan for future action, a panel in the wainscot was moved softly to one side and Toppleton found himself face to face with the fiend. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then facing about, he gazed into the [37] corner unflinchingly for a moment, following up his glance with one of the hand fire grenades that hung in a wire basket on the wall, which he hurled with all his force into the offending void. To this ebullition of heroic indignation, the only reply was a repetition of the sounds whose origin was so mysterious, but this time they proceeded directly from Toppleton's chair which stood at his side. ”

“ I am really quite interested to know why you find it so."
"Because," said Toppleton nervously yet firmly, "because your face is not consistent with your record. Because you have achieved more than one could possibly read in or predict from your face."
"I always said that myself, Barncastle," said the duchess airily. "I've always said you didn't look like a great man."
"While acknowledging, Duchess, that I nevertheless am?" queried Barncastle with a smile.
"Well, moderately so, Barncastle, moderately so. Fact is," said the Duchess, "you can stir a multitude with your eloquence ”

“ Have you no office hours, say from ten to two, when you may be seen by those desirous of feasting their eyes upon your tangibility?"
"I am afraid you are joking, Hopkins," said the spirit, growing familiar. "If you are, I beg that you will stop. What is a good joke [42] to some eyes is a very serious matter to others."
"That, my dear Presence," returned Toppleton, "is a very true observation, as is borne out by the large percentage of serious matter that appears in comic journals."
"Please do not be flippant," said the voice from the rocking-chair, sadly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The mere absence [172] of my body and presence of my consciousness would almost prove my case," said the exile.
"It would seem as if it ought to," said Toppleton. "But you know what men are. They believe very little that they hear, and not much more than half that they see. You couldn't expect anyone to believe the points of a person unseen. If they can't see you they can't see your hardships, and besides, hearsay evidence unsupported is not worth shucks." ”

“ It strikes me that an omniscient, such as you pretended to be, ought not to have been bothered by the lack of candour of a purely finite mind; and, after all, it was but a bit of superb conceit on your part to think that you could do things differently from those who had gone before you."
"But my motive, Toppleton. Credit me with a proper motive," pleaded the fiend.
"Yes, I do," said Hopkins. "But out in the Rocky Mountains, my lord, we have lynched several thieves who stole to keep their families [247] from starving. ”

“ And then he began his story.
"I was born," he said, breathing forth a cloud of smoke from his right ear, "sixty years ago in a small house within a stone's throw of what is now the band stand in the park at Buxton."
"You must have had human catapults in those days," interrupted Toppleton, for as he remembered the band stand at Buxton, it was situated at some considerable distance from anything which in any degree represented a habitation in which one could begin life comfortably.
"I don't know about that. I am not telling you a sporting tale. ”

“ Hasn't somebody killed an office-boy in this apartment, for whistling?" queried Hopkins, gazing sternly at the shuffling agent.
"I'll take an affidavit that nothing of the kind ever happened," returned the agent, gaining confidence.
"That won't be necessary," said Toppleton. "I am satisfied with your assurance. But, [34] Stubbs, to what do you attribute these beastly disturbances? Ghosts?"
"Of course not, Mr. Toppleton," replied Mr. Stubbs. "I fancy you must have heard some boy whistling in the hall."
"How about the knock and the sigh?" demanded the American. ”