Toppleton's Client Part 13

"If I were called upon suddenly to rescue a young woman from drowning, and possessed nothing but an anchor and a capstan bar to do it with, my duty clearly would be to do the best I could with those tools, however awkward they might be. I could not ease my conscience after neglecting to do all that I could with those tools, by saying that I hadn't a lifeboat and a cork suit handy. Here is a parallel case. I must do the best I can with the tools I have, and I guess I can find enough law in Blackstone and that tree calf copy of the sixteenth volume of Abbott's 'Digest' I picked up the other day to cover this case. If I can't, I'll have to use the sense that Nature gave me, and go ahead anyhow."

To his delight, Hopkins found it utterly unnecessary for him to read the tree calf sixteenth volume of Abbott's "Digest," he found so much in the "Comic Blackstone" that applied.

"Why, do you know," he said to the exile when they met, the one to explain the law, the other to listen, "do you know you have the finest case in all Christendom, without leaving the very fundamental principles of the law? It's really extraordinary what a case you have, or rather, would have, if you could devise some means of appearing in court. That's the uncrackable nut in the case. How the deuce to have you appear on the witness stand, I can't see. The court would not tolerate any such makeshift as the Aunt Sallie scheme you and I have adopted, it would be so manifestly absurd, and would give the counsel for the defence--for you must be the plaintiff after all, can't help yourself--it would give the counsel for the defence the finest chance to annihilate us by the use of his satirical powers he had ever had, and before a jury that would simply ruin our cause at the outset."

"I don't see why I can't testify as I am--bodiless as I have been left.

The mere absence 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."

"I don't know what shucks are," returned the exile, "but I see your point."

"It's a serious point," said Toppleton. "And then there is another most embarra.s.sing side to it. We can't afford to have our case weakened by putting ourselves in a position where countercharges can be brought against us, and I am very much afraid our opponents would charge vagrancy against you, for the very obvious and irrefutable reason that you have absolutely no visible means of support. You wouldn't have a leg to stand on if they did that, and yet it does seem a pity that something cannot be done to enable you to appear, for as I said a minute ago, you have otherwise a perfectly magnificent cause of action. Why, Edward, there isn't a page in the Comic Blackstone that does not contain something that applies to your case, and that ought to make you a winner if we could get around this horrible lack of body of yours.

"For instance," continued Toppleton, opening A'Beckett's famous contribution to legal lore, "in the very first chapter we find that Blackstone divides rights into rights of _persons_ and rights of things.

Clearly you have a right to your own person, and no judge on a sane bench would dare deny it. Absolute rights, it says here, belong to man in a state of nature, which being so, you have been wronged, because in being deprived of your state of nature you have been robbed of your absolute rights. Clear as crystal, eh?"

"That's so," said the exile. "You are a marvel at law, Hopkins."

"In section six reference is made to the _habeas corpus_ act of Charles the Second, and unless I have forgotten my Latin, that is a distinct reference to a man's right to the possession of his own body. Section eight, same chapter, announces man's right to personal security, and a.s.serts his legal claim to the enjoyment of _life, limbs, health and reputation_. Have you enjoyed your life? No! Have you enjoyed your limbs? Not for thirty years. Have you enjoyed your health. No!

Barncastle of Burningford has enjoyed that as well as your reputation. I think on the whole though, we would better not say anything about your reputation if we get into court, for while it is undoubtedly _yours_, and has been by no means enjoyed by you, you didn't make it for yourself. That was his work, and he is ent.i.tled to it."

"True," said the exile. "I do not wish to claim anything I am not ent.i.tled to."

"That's the proper spirit," said Toppleton. "You want what belongs to you and nothing more. You are ent.i.tled to your property, for which section eleven of this same chapter provides, saying that the law will not allow a man to be deprived of his property except by the law itself.

If a man's own body isn't his, I'd like to know to whom it belongs in a country that professes to be free!"

Toppleton paused at this point to make a few notes and to reinforce his own spirit by means of others.

"Now, under the head of real property, Chatford," he said, "I find that in England property is real or personal. I think that in this case, that of which you have been deprived comes under both heads. One's body is certainly real and unquestionably personal, and if a man has a right to the possession of each, he has a right to the possession of both, and he who robs him of both is guilty of a crime under each head. Real property consists of lands, tenements and hereditaments. Lands we must perforce exclude because you have lost no lands. Tenements may be alluded to, however, with absolute fairness because the body is the tenement of the soul. Of hereditaments I am not sure. I don't know what hereditaments are, and I haven't had time to find out anything about them except that they are corporeal or incorporeal, which leads me to infer that you have been wronged under this head also, for I must a.s.sume that a hereditament is something that may or may not have a body according to circ.u.mstances, which is your case exactly.

"Now a man's right to the possession of an estate is called his t.i.tle, if I am not mistaken," continued Hopkins, "and it is only reasonable to suppose that this refers to bodily estate as well as to landed estate.

What we must dispute is Barncastle's t.i.tle to your bodily estate. Our case is referred to in section two, chapter nine, part second of this book, which deals with joint tenancy in which two or more persons have one and the same interest in an estate, but it must be held by both at the same time. Now, even granting, as the other side may say, that you entered into a partnership with the fiend, we could knock him right off his pins on the sole fact that in declining to admit you to your own bodily estate, he has not only deprived you of an undoubted right, but has in reality forfeited his own claim to possession, since he has violated the only principle of law upon which he could claim entrance to the estate under any circ.u.mstances."

"Superb!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the exile.

"Now we come to an apparent difficulty," continued Hopkins. "Possession is, according to my authority, five points of the law. The fiend has possession, and in consequence tallies five points; out of how many I do not know. What the maximum number of points in the law is, the book does not say, but even a.s.suming that they form a good half, I think we can bring forward five more with a dozen subst.i.tutes for each of the five in support of our position. Some of these points will evolve themselves when we come to consider whence Barncastle's t.i.tle was derived.

"Did he acquire his t.i.tle by descent? No; unless it was by a descent to unworthy tricks which, I fear, are outside of the meaning of the law. By purchase? If so, let him show a receipt. By occupancy? Yes, and by a forcible occupancy which was as justifiable as his occupation of the throne would be, an occupancy which can be shown in court to be an entire subversion of the right of a prior occupant whose t.i.tle was acquired by inheritance."

"That's a strong point," said the exile.

"Yes, it is," said Hopkins, "especially in a country where birth means so much. But that isn't all we have to say on this question of t.i.tle. A t.i.tle can be held by prescription. Barncastle may claim that he got his this way, but we can meet that by showing that he compounded his own prescription, and originally got you to swallow it by a trick. He also has a t.i.tle by alienation, and there I think we may be weak since you were a party to the final alienation, though we may be able to pull through on even that point by showing that you consented only in the expectation of an early return of the premises. It was an alienation by deed, an innocent deed on your part, an infamous one on his. It was not an alienation of record, which weakens his claim, but one of special custom, which by no means weakens yours.

"And so, Edward, we might go on through the whole subject of the right of property, and on every point we are strong, and on few can Barncastle of Burningford put in the semblance of a defence."

"It's simply glorious," said the exile. "I don't believe there ever was a case like it."

"I don't believe so either," said Toppleton. "And on the whole I'm glad there never was. I should hate to think that a crime like this could ever become a common one.

"Now," he said, resuming the discussion of the legal aspect of the exile's case, "let us see what we can find under the head of 'Private and Public Wrongs and their Remedies!' I suppose yours would come under the head of a civil wrong, though your treatment has been very far from civil. As such your redress lies in the Courts. You are forbidden to take back what has been taken from you by a force which amounts to a breach of the peace,--that is, it would not be lawful for you to seize your own body and shake the life out of it for the purpose of yourself becoming once more its animating spirit.

"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 trespa.s.s. 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 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 ent.i.ty, 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 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 a.s.sert, and Barncastle could always deny.

Strong as your cause is, the courts, under the circ.u.mstances, will give you no redress, because you cannot prove your case. We must seek 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 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 bl.u.s.ter 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. "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 bl.u.s.ter; 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.