Toppleton's Client; Or, A Spirit in Exile Read online

  CHAPTER V.

  HOPKINS BECOMES BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THE WEARY SPIRIT.

  "I DO not know," said the weary spirit, as he entered the head of theAunt Sallie and endeavoured to make himself comfortable therein, "I donot know whether I can do justice to my story in these limitedheadquarters or not, but I can try. It isn't a good fit, this bodyisn't, and I cannot help being conscious that to your eyes I must appearas a blackamoor, which, to an English spirit of cultivation andrefinement such as I am, is more or less discomfiting."

  "I shouldn't mind if I were you," returned Hopkins. "It's very becomingto you; much more so, indeed, than that airy nothingness you had on whenI first perceived you, and while your tale may be more or less affectedby your consciousness of the strange, ready-made physiognomy you haveassumed, I, nevertheless, can grasp it better than I might if youpersisted in sounding off your woes from an empty rocking-chair, or fromthe edge of my cloisonne rose jar."

  "Oh, I don't blame you, Toppleton," returned the spirit. "I am, on thecontrary, very grateful to you for what you have done for me. I shallalways appreciate your generosity, for instance, in buying me this shapein order to give me at least a semblance of individuality, and I assureyou that if I can ever get back into my real body, I will work it to theverge of nervous prostration to serve you, should you stand in need ofassistance in any way."

  Hopkins' scrutiny of the Aunt Sallie, as these words issued from theround aperture in the red lips made originally to hold the pipe stem,but now used as a tubal exit for the tale of woe, was so searching thatanything less stolid than the wooden head would have flinched. The AuntSallie stood it, however, without showing a trace of emotion, gazingsteadfastly with her bright blue eyes out of the window, her eyelidsmore fixed than the stars themselves, since no sign of a wink or atwinkle did they give.

  "I wish," said Toppleton, experiencing a slight return of his awedchilliness as he observed the unyielding fixity of Sallie's expression,"in fact, I earnestly wish we could have secured a ventriloquist'smarionette instead of that thing you've got on. It would really be ablessing to me if you could wink your eyes, or wag your ears, or changeyour expression in some way or other."

  "I don't see how it can be done," returned the spirit from behindToppleton's back. "I cannot exercise any control over these woodenfeatures."

  Hopkins jumped two or three feet across the room, the unexpectedlocality of the voice gave him such a shock, and the pulsation of hisheart leaped madly from the normal to the triply abnormal.

  "Wh--whuh--what the devil did you do tha--that for?" he cried, as soonas he was calm enough to speak. "Do y--you want to give me heartfailure?"

  "Not I!" replied the spirit, once more returning to the Sallie. "Thatwould be a very unbusiness-like proceeding on my part at a time likethis, when, after thirty years of misery, I find at last one who iswilling to champion my cause. I only wanted to see how my second selflooked in this chair. To my eyes I appear rather plain anddusky-looking, but what's the odds? The figure will serve its purpose,and after all that's what we want. I'm sorry to have frightened you,Toppleton, honestly sorry."

  "Oh, never mind," rejoined Toppleton, graciously. "Only don't do itagain. Let's have the tale now."

  "Very well," said the spirit. "If you will kindly shove me further backinto the chair, and arrange my overskirt for me, I'll begin--that'sanother uncomfortable thing about my situation at present. It's somewhattrying to a spirit of masculine habits to find himself arrayed in ashape wearing the habiliments of the other sex."

  Hopkins did as he was requested, and, throwing himself down on hislounge, lit his pipe, and announced himself as ready to listen.

  "I think I'd like a pipe myself," said the Sallie. "I've got a fineplace for one, I see."

  "How can you talk if you stop your mouth up with a pipe?" asked Hopkins.

  "Through my nose," replied the spirit. "Or there are holes in the ears,I can talk through them quite as well."

  "Well, I guess not," returned Hopkins. "I have had enough of your weirdvocal exercises to-day without having you talk with your ears, but ifyou'll smoke with one or both of them, you're welcome to do it."

  "Very well," replied the spirit. "I fancy you're right, and inasmuch asI haven't had a pipe for thirty years, I'll let you fill up two for me,and I'll try 'em both."

  Accordingly Hopkins filled two of the clay pipes, three dozen of whichhad come with the Aunt Sallie, and lighting them for the spirit, placedthem in the ears of his vis-a-vis as requested.

  "Ah," said the spirit as he began to puff, "this is what I callcomfort." And then he began his story.

  "I was born," he said, breathing forth a cloud of smoke from his rightear, "sixty years ago in a small house within a stone's throw of what isnow the band stand in the park at Buxton."

  "You must have had human catapults in those days," interruptedToppleton, for as he remembered the band stand at Buxton, it wassituated at some considerable distance from anything which in any degreerepresented a habitation in which one could begin life comfortably.

  "I don't know about that. I am not telling you a sporting tale. I amsimply narrating the events of my career, such as they are," returnedthe spirit, "and my father has assured me that the house in which Ifirst saw light was, as I have said, within a stone's throw of what isnow the band stand in the Buxton Park. The band stand may have beennearer the house in the old days than it is now,--that is aninsignificant sort of a detail anyhow, and if you'd prefer it I will putit in this way: I was born at Buxton sixty years ago in a small house,no longer standing, from whose windows the band stand in the park mighthave been seen if there had been one there. How is that?"

  "Perfectly satisfactory," replied Hopkins. "A statement of that kindwould be accepted in any court in the land as veracious on the face ofit, whereas we might be called upon to prove that other tale, whichbetween you and me had about it a distinctly Munchausenesque flavour."

  The spirit was evidently much impressed with this reasoning, for heforgot himself for a moment, and inhaled some of the smoke, so that itcame out between his lips instead of from his ears as before.

  "I am glad to see you take such interest in the matter," he said after amoment's reflection. "We must indeed have an absolutely irrefragablestory if we are to take it to court. I had not thought of that. But toresume. My parents were like most others of their class, poor buthonest. My mother was a poetess with an annuity. My father was anon-resistant, a sort of forerunner of Tolstoi, with none of thelatter's energy. He was content to live along on my mother's annuity,leaving her for her own needs an undivided interest in the earnings ofher pen."

  "He was a gentleman of leisure, then," returned Hopkins, "withpronounced leanings towards the sedentary school of philosophy."

  "That's it," replied the spirit. "That was my father in a nut-shell. Hetook things as they came--indeed that was his chief fault. As motherused to say, he not only took things as they came, but took all therewas to take, so that there was never anything left for the rest of us.His non-resistant tendencies were almost a curse to the family. Why,he'd even listen to mother's poetry and not complain. If there wereweeds in the garden, he would submit tamely, rather than take a hoe anderadicate them. He used to sigh once in awhile and condemn my mother'sparents for leaving her so little that she could not afford to hire aman to keep our place in order, but further than this he did not murmur.My mother, on the other hand, was energetic in her special line. I'veknown that woman to turn out fifteen poems in a morning, and, at onetime, I think it was the day of Victoria's coronation, she wrote anelegy on William the Fourth of sixty-eight stanzas, and a coronationode that reached from one end of the parlour to the other,--doing it allbetween luncheon and dinner. Dinner was four hours late to be sure, buteven that does not affect the wonderful quality of the achievement."

  "Didn't your father resist that?" queried Toppleton, sympathetically.

  "No," replied the spirit, "never uttered a complaint."

  "He must have been an extrao
rdinary man," observed Toppleton, shakinghis head in wonder.

  "He was," assented the spirit. "Father was a genius in his way; but hewas born tired, and he never seemed able to outgrow it."

  Here the spirit requested Toppleton's permission to leave the AuntSallie for a moment. The head was getting too full of smoke for comfort.

  "I'll just sit over here on the waste basket until the smoke has achance to get out," he said. "If I don't, it will be the ruin of me."

  "All right," returned Toppleton. "I suppose when a man is reduced tonothing but a voice, it is rather destructive to his health to getdiluted with tobacco smoke. But, I say, that was a pretty toughcondition of affairs in your house I should say. Poetic mother,do-nothing father, small income and a baby. How did you manage tolive?"

  "Oh, we lived well enough," replied the spirit. "The income waslarge enough to pay the rent and keep father from hunger andthirst--particularly the latter. Mother, being a poet, didn't eatanything to speak of, and I fed on cow's milk. We had a cow chieflybecause her appetite kept the grass cut, and when I came along sheserved an additional useful purpose. In the matter of clothing we didfirst rate. Mother's trousseau lasted as long as she did, and fathernever needed anything more than the suit he was married in. Inheritingmy mother's poetic traits, and my father's tendency to let things comeas they might and go as they would, it is hardly strange that as I grewolder I became addicted to habits of indecision; that I lacked couragewhen a slight display of that quality meant success; that I wasinvariably found wanting in the little crises which make up existence inthis sphere; that I always let slip the opportunities which were mine,and that at those tides of my own affairs which taken at the flood wouldhave led on to fortune, I was always high and dry somewhere out ofreach, and that, in consequence, all the voyage of my life has beenbound in shallows and in miseries, as my mother would have said."

  "Your mother must have been a diligent student of Shakespeare,"Toppleton retorted, resenting the spirit's appropriation to his motherof the great singer's words, and also taking offence at the impliedreflection upon his own reading.

  "Yes, she was," replied the spirit unabashed. "In fact, my mother was sosaturated--she was more than imbued--with the spirit of Shakespeare,that she was frequently unable to distinguish her own poems from his, acondition of affairs which was the cause, at one time, of her beingcharged with plagiarism, when she was in reality guilty of nothing worsethan unconscious cerebration."

  "That is an unfortunate disease when it develops into verbatimappropriation," said Toppleton, drily.

  "Precisely my father's words," returned the spirit. "But the effect ofsuch parental causes, as I have already said," continued the exiledsoul, "was a pusillanimous offspring, which for the offspring inquestion, myself, was extremely disastrous. The poet in me was justsufficiently well developed to give me a malarious idea of life. Inspite of my sex I was a poetess rather than a poet. I could begin anepic or a triolet without any trouble; but I never knew when to stop, afailing not necessarily fatal to an epic, but death to a triolet. Thetrue climaxes of my lucubrations were generally avoided, and miserablyinadequate compromises adopted in their stead. My muse was a snivelling,weak-kneed sort of creature, who, had she been of this earth, would havebelonged to the ranks of those who are addicted to smelling-salts,influenza and imaginary troubles, and not the strong, picturesque,helpful female, calculated to goad a man on to immortality. I generallyknew what was the right thing to do, but never had the courage to do it.That was my peculiarity, and it has brought me to this--to the level ofa soul with no habitation save the effigy of a negress, provided for meby a charitably disposed chance acquaintance."

  "You do not appear to have had a single redeeming feature," saidToppleton, some disgust manifested on his countenance, for to tell thetruth he was thoroughly disappointed to learn that the spirit's moralcowardice had brought his trouble upon him.

  "Oh, yes, I had," replied the spirit hastily, as if anxious torehabilitate himself in his host's eyes. "I was strong in oneparticular. In matters pertaining to religion I was unusually strong. Myvery meekness rendered me so."

  "Your kind of meekness isn't the kind that inherits the earth, though,"retorted Toppleton. "Meekness that means the abandonment of right forthe sake of peace is a crime. Meekness that subverts self-respect is anoffence against society. Meekness which is synonymous with pusillanimityis not the meekness which develops into true religious feeling."

  "No; that is very true," said the spirit. "I do not deny one word ofwhat you say; but I, nevertheless, was an extremely religious boy, nordid I change when I entered upon man's estate; and it is that strongreligious fervour with which my spirit is still imbued that has made mycup so much the more bitter, since, as I have hinted, he who robbed meof my body has written pamphlets of the most shocking sort over my name,denouncing the Church and attempting to upset the whole fabric ofChristianity."

  "I am anxious to get to the details of the robbery," said Toppleton,with a smile of sympathy; "pass over your extreme youth and come tothat."

  "I will do so," replied the spirit, returning to the figure Toppletonhad provided for him, the smoke having by this time evacuated his newhabitation. "I will omit the details of my life up to the time when Ibecame a lawyer and--"

  "You don't mean to say you _ever_ became a lawyer?" interrupted Hopkins,incredulously.

  "Why, certainly," replied the spirit; "I became a lawyer, and at thetime I lost my body I was getting to be considered a famous one."

  "How on earth, with your meekness, did you ever have the courage to takeup a profession that requires nerve and an aggressive nature if successis to be sought after?" asked the American.

  "It was that same fatal inability to make up my mind to do what myconscience prompted. It was another one of my compromises," returned thespirit, sadly. "I couldn't make up my mind between the pulpit andliterature, so I compromised on the law, mastered it to a sufficientextent to be admitted to practice, and opened an office--the same room,by the way, as that in which you and I are seated at this moment."

  "Do you remember any of your law now?" Toppleton asked uneasily, for hewas afraid the spirit might discover how ignorant he was on the subject.

  "Not a line of it," returned the spirit. "It has gone from me ascompletely as my name, my body, my auburn hair and my teeth. But I _was_a lawyer, and by slow degrees I built up a fair practice. People seemedto recognize how strong I was in matters of compromise, and cases thatwere not considered strong enough to take into court were brought to mein order that I might suggest methods of adjustment satisfactory to bothparties. For three years I did a thriving business here, and for onewhose knowledge of the law was limited I got along very well. I was oneof the few barristers in London who had become well-known to litigantswithout ever having appeared in court, and I was very well satisfiedwith my prospects.

  "Everything went smoothly with me until a few weeks after I had passedmy thirtieth birthday, when a man came into my office and retained me inan inheritance case, in which the amount involved was thirty thousandpounds. He had been made defendant in a suit brought against him by hisown brother for the recovery of that sum. It was a very complicatedcase, but the brother really had no valid claim to the money. The fatherof the two men, ten minutes before his death, had told my client inconfidence that it was his desire that he should inherit sixty thousandpounds more than the other brother, telling him, however, that he mustget it for himself, since the written will of the dying man providedthat the two sons should share and share alike. In spasmodic gasps theold man added that he would find the money concealed in a secret drawerin an old desk up in the attic, in sixty one-thousand pound notes. Myclient, realizing that his father could not last many minutes longer,and feeling that his dying wishes should not be thwarted, rushed fromthe room to the attic, and after rummaging about for nine minutes, foundthe drawer and touched the secret spring. Unfortunately the day was avery damp one, and the drawer stuck, so that it was fully eleven minutesbefore th
e money was really in my client's hands. He shoved it into hispocket and went downstairs again, where he learned that his father hadexpired one minute before, or just ten minutes after he had left him.

  "The other son not long after discovered what had been done, and afterlistening to my client's story, decided to contest his title to hisshare of the sixty thousand pounds, alleging that the money not havingpassed into my client's hands until after the testator's death, belongedto the estate, and could only be diverted therefrom upon the productionof an instrument in writing over the deceased man's signature, dulywitnessed. You see," added the spirit, "that was a very fine point."

  "Yes, indeed!" said Toppleton; "it's the kind of a point that I hopeand pray may never puncture my professional epidermis, for I'll behanged if I'd know what to advise. What did you do?"

  "Ah!" sighed the spirit, "there's where the trouble came in. I studiedthat case diligently. I consulted every law book I could find. Everyleading case on inheritance matters I read, marked, learned and inwardlydigested, and I made up my mind that if we could prove that my client'swatch was fast upon that occasion, and that the money was in his handsone minute before his father's death instead of one minute after it, theplaintiff would not have a leg to stand on. Then it occurred to me 'thismeans trouble.' It means a long and tedious litigation. It means defeat,appeal, victory, appeal, defeat, appeal, on, on through all the courtsin Great Britain, and finally the House of Lords, the result being theloss to my client of every penny of the amount involved, even though heshould ultimately win the suit, and the loss to me of sleep, thedevelopment of nerves and a career of unrelieved anxiety. Compromise wasthe proper course to be recommended."

  "A proper conclusion, I should say," said Toppleton.

  "I think so, too," replied the spirit, "and if I had only remained trueto my instincts my client would have compromised, and I should havebeen spared all that followed. It would have been better for allconcerned, for I should have been in possession of myself to-day, and myclient by compromising would in the end have lost no more than he had topay me for my services--fifteen thousand pounds."

  "Phe--e--ew!" whistled Hopkins. "That was a swindle!"

  "Yes, but I wasn't party to it, as you will shortly see. When I made upmy mind that compromise was the best settlement of the case, all thingsconsidered, I sat down right here by this window to write to Mr. Baskinsto that effect. It was a beastly night out. The wind shrieked throughthe court there, and it was cold enough to freeze the marrow in agrilled bone. I was just about to sign my communication to Mr. Baskins,when I heard a knock at the door.

  "'Come in,' I said.

  "And then, Mr. Toppleton, as sure as I am sitting here in this AuntSallie talking to you, the door opened and then slowly closed, a lightstep was perceptible to the ear, moving across the carpet, and in amoment a rocking-chair owned by me began to sway to and fro, just asthis one sways when I or you are sitting in it, but to my eyes there wasabsolutely nothing visible that had not always been in the room."

  Hopkins began to feel chilly again.

  "You mean to say that to all intents and purposes, an invisible beinglike yourself called on you as you have called on me?" he said in aminute, his breath coming in short, quick gasps.

  "Precisely," returned the incumbent of the Aunt Sallie. "I was visited,even as you have been visited, by an invisible being, only my visitordid not remain invisible, for as I sprang to my feet, my whole beingpalpitant with terror, the lamp on my table sputtered and went out; andthen I saw, sitting luminous in the dark, gazing at me with large,gaping, unfathomably deep green eyes, a creature having the semblance ofa man, but of a man no longer of this earth."