Toppleton's Client; Or, A Spirit in Exile by John Kendrick Bangs (popular novels .TXT) 📖
- Author: John Kendrick Bangs
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"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 of that which is yours. He has ousted you from your freehold. He has been guilty of trespass. He has subjected you to a nuisance, that is if it is a nuisance to be deprived of one's body, and I should think it would so appear to any sane person. He has been guilty of subtraction. He has subtracted you from your body and your body from you, leaving apparently no remainder. He has been[179] guilty of an offence against your religion. To an extent he has committed an offence against the public health in that he has haunted citizens of this city and caused you unwittingly to do the same to the detriment of the sanity of those who have been haunted. I think we might even charge him with homicide, for if depriving a man of thirty years of his corporeal existence isn't depriving him of life, I don't know what is. However this may be, I am convinced that he is guilty of mayhem, for he certainly has deprived you of a limb—that is shown by your utter absence of limb. He has been guilty of an offence against your habitation, corporeal and incorporeal, and finally he has been guilty of larceny both grand and petty. Grand in the extent of it, petty in the method. By Jove, Chatford, if we could bring you into Court as a concrete individual, and not as an abstract entity, we could get up an indictment against Lord Barncastle of Burningford that would quash him for ever.
"A body obtained for you, I should carry the case to the Appellate Court at once, for two reasons. First because it would not be appropriate to try so uncommon a cause in the Common Pleas, second because a decision by the Court of Appeals is final, and we should save time by going there at once; but the point[180] with which we must concern ourselves the most is, how shall we bring you before the eyes of the court; how shall we get our plaintiff into shape—visible shape?"
A painful silence followed the conclusion of Toppleton's discussion of the law in the case of Chatford v. Barncastle of Burningford. It was evident that the exile could think of no means of surmounting the unfortunate barrier to a successful prosecution of the case. Finally the exile spoke:
"I perceive the dreadful truth of what you say. Having no physical being, I have no standing in court."
"That's the unfortunate fact," returned Hopkins. "Can't you get a body in some way? Can't you borrow one temporarily?"
"Where?" asked the exile. "You are my only material friend. You wouldn't lend me yours."
"No, I wouldn't," said Toppleton. "If I did, where would your only material 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 your witnesses? You could only assert, and Barncastle could always deny. Strong as your cause is, the courts, under the circumstances, will give you no redress, because you cannot prove your case. We must seek[181] other means; this is a case that requires diplomatic action. Strategy will do more 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 clever dissembling will frighten him into doing the right thing by you. I realize what a tremendous undertaking it is, but failure then would not mean public disgrace, and failure in the courts would put us, and particularly myself, under a cloud. In short, we might be suspected of blackmail, Chatford; Barncastle is so prominent, and liable to just such attacks at all times."
"But how do you propose to reach him? He has the reputation now of being the 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 like myself, and had ten pounds to bet, I would wager you that within forty-eight hours I could have an invitation in autograph from the Prince of Wales himself to dine with him and Prince Battenburg at Sandringham, at any hour, and on any day I choose to set. You don't know what enterprising fellows we Yankees are. I'll know Lord Barncastle intimately[182] inside of one month, if I once set out to do it."
"Excuse me for saying it, Hopkins," said the exile, sadly, "but I must say that what I have liked about you in the past has been your freedom from bluster and brag. To me these statements of yours sound vain and empty. I would speak less plainly were it not that my whole future is in your 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, what you propose to do, if you do not wish me to set this talk down as foolish braggadocio."
"I'll tell you how I propose to meet him," said Hopkins, slightly offended, and yet characteristically forgiving; "but what I shall do after that I shall not tell you, for I may find that he is a politer person than you are, and it's just possible that I shall like him. If I do, I may be impelled to desert you and ally myself with him. I don't like to be called a braggart, Edward."
"Forgive me, Hopkins," said the spirit. "I am so wrought up by my hopes and fears, by the consciousness of the terrible wrongs I have suffered, that I hardly know what I am saying."
"Well, never mind," rejoined Hopkins.[183] "Don't worry. The chances of my deserting you are very slight. But to return to your question. I shall meet Barncastle in this way; 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."
"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 in Hopkins Toppleton after he has known him fifteen minutes, I'll go back home to New York, give up my law practice and become—"
"What?" said the spirit as Hopkins hesitated.
"A sister of charity," said Hopkins, gravely.
[184]
CHAPTER XII."You ought to take out those two extra lines, though," said the exile. "Barncastle is a great stickler for form, and he will be antagonized at once by your violation of the rules."
"Not a bit of it," returned Toppleton. "Those lines stay right there, and I'll tell you why. In the first place Barncastle, as an Englishman, will see in the imperfect sonnet something that will strike him as a bit of American audacity, which will be very pleasing to him, and will give him something to talk[185] about. As a Briton you are probably aware that your countrymen are very fond of discovering outrages of that sort in the work of those over the sea, because it is a sort of convincing proof that the American as a writer is still an inferior, and that England's controlling interest in the Temple of Immortality is in no danger of passing into alien hands. In the second place, he will be so pleased with the extra amount of flattery that is crammed into those two lines that he will not have the heart to criticize them; and thirdly, as one who knows it all, he will be prompted to send for me to come to him, in order that he may point out to me in a friendly spirit one or two little imperfections in what he will call my otherwise exquisite verse. I tell you what it is, Edward," said Toppleton, pausing a moment, "I never devoted myself with any particular assiduity to Latin, Greek, or mathematics, but when it comes to human nature, I am, as we New Yorkers say, a daisy, which means that I am the flower upon which you may safely bet as against the field."
"You certainly have an ingenious mind, Hopkins," returned the exile, "and I hope it will all go as you say, but I fear, Hopkins, I fear."
"Wait and see," was Hopkins' confident[186] reply, and being unable to do otherwise the exile obeyed.
In three days the sonnet was printed, and so fixed that it appeared to be a clipping from the Rocky Mountain Quarterly Review, a Monthly Magazine.
"That'll strike him as another interesting Americanism," said Hopkins, with a chuckle. "There is no people on earth but my own who would dare publish a quarterly twelve times a year."
To the sonnet was appended the name "Hopkins Parkerberry Toppleton;" Parkerberry being a novelty introduced into the signature by the young lawyer, not because he was at all entitled to it, but for the proper reason, as he said, that no American poet was worth a nickel who hadn't three sections to his name. A note with a distinctly western flavour to it was penned, and with the "decoy" sonnet went that night to Burningford Castle addressed to "His Excellency, Lord Barncastle," and then Toppleton and the exile sat down to await the result.
They had not many days to wait, for within a week of the dispatch of the poem and the note Hopkins, on reaching the office one morning, found the exile in a great state of excitement over a square envelope lying on the floor[187] immediately under the letter slot Hopkins had had made in the door.
"It's come, Hopkins, it's come!" cried the exile.
"What's come?" queried Hopkins, calmly.
"The letter from Barncastle. I recognize my handwriting. It came last night about five minutes after you left the office, and I have been in a fever of excitement to learn its contents ever since. Do open it at once. What does he say?"
"Be patient, Edward, don't get so excited. Suppose you were to have an apoplectic stroke!"
"I can't be patient, and I can't have apoplexy, so do hurry. What do I say?"
"Seems to me," returned Hopkins, picking up the letter and slowly opening it, "it seems to me you are getting confused. But let's see; what does Barncastle say? H'm!" he said, reading the note. "'Barncastle Hall, Fenwick Morton, Mascottonton-on-the-Barbundle, December 19th, 189—. Hopkins Parkerberry Toppleton, Esquire, 17, Temple, London. Dear Sir,—I have to thank you for your favour and enclosure of the 13th inst. Your sonnet is but one of a thousand gratifying evidences I am daily receiving that I have managed to win to no inconsiderable degree the good will of[188] your countrymen. It is also evidence to me that you are a young man of much talent in the line of original versification, since, apart from the sentiment you express, your sonnet is one of the most original I have ever seen, not only for its length, but also for the wonderful mixture of your metaphor. It is truly characteristic of your great and growing country, and I cannot resist your naïve appeal to be permitted to meet the unworthy object of its praise. I should be gratified to have you to dinner at Barncastle Hall, at eight o'clock on the evening of December 23rd, 189—. Kindly inform me by return post if your engagements will permit us to have the pleasure of having you with us on that evening. Believe me to be, with sentiments of regard, ever, my dear sir, faithfully yours, Barncastle.'"
"By heavens!" ejaculated the exile, in delighted accents, "you've got there, Hopkins, you've got there. You'll go, of course?"
"Well, rather," returned Toppleton; "and to carry out the illusion, as well as to pique his interest in America, I'll wear a blue dress coat. But first let me reply."
"Dear Barncastle," he wrote. "I'll be there.
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