Toppleton's Client Part 17

"Don't you think, my dear Mr. Toppleton," said the d.u.c.h.ess as the American offered her his arm, "don't you think you might--ah--leave your luggage here? It's rather awkward to carry an umbrella, a carpet-bag, and a d.u.c.h.ess into dinner all at once."

"Nothing is too awkward for an American, d.u.c.h.ess," said Toppleton.

"Besides," he added in a stage whisper, "I don't dare leave these things out of my sight. Barncastle's butler looks all right, but I've lived in a country where confidence in your fellow-men is a heaven-born gift. I wasn't born with it, and there hasn't any of it been sent down since."

"Aren't you droll!" said the d.u.c.h.ess.

"If you say it I'll bet on it," said Toppleton, gallantly, as they entered the beautiful dining-room and took their allotted chairs, when Hopkins perceived, much to his delight, that Barncastle was almost the length of the table distant; that on one side of him was Lady Alice, and on the other the d.u.c.h.ess of Bangletop.

"These two women are both an inspiration in their way," he said to himself. "Lady Alice, even if she loves that monster of a father of hers, ought to be rescued from him. She will inspire me with courage, and this portly d.u.c.h.ess will help me to be outrageous enough in my deportment to satisfy the thirst of the most rabidly uninformed Englishman at the board for American unconventionality."

"Have you been in this country long?" asked the d.u.c.h.ess, as Toppleton slid his umbrella and carpet-bag under his chair, and prepared to sit down.

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

"Indeed. As long as that?" said the d.u.c.h.ess. "You must have seen a great deal of England in that time."

"Yes, I have," said Hopkins. "I went out to see Shakespeare's house and his grave and all that. That's enough to last a lifetime; but it seems to me, Lord Barncastle, you don't give Shakespeare the mausoleum he ought to have. Out in the Rockies we'd have had a pile set up over him so high that you could sit on top of it and talk with St. Peter without lifting your voice."

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

"Am I? Me? Well, I just guess I am," replied Toppleton. "If it hadn't been for William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon, you'd never have heard 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 a gracious 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 book containing the total works of the bard of Avon; another is a complete concordance of the works of the same author; and the third is the complete works of Hopkins Parkerberry Toppleton, consisting of eighty-three poems, a table of contents, and a portrait in three colours of the author. I'd be glad to give you all a copy, ladies, but it's circulated 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 and your father here, the earl, ever pa.s.s my way out there in the Rockies, just look me up and you shall see it. But Shakespeare was my guiding genius, d.u.c.h.ess. When I began to get those tired feelings that show a man he's either a poet or a victim to malaria, I began to look about and see who I'd better take as a model. I dawdled around for a year, reading some 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 him altogether, 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 our bookseller to get me everything he wrote, and to count on me to take anything new of his that happened to be coming out."

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

"No, my dear Earl," replied Toppleton. "For you know Shakespeare is dead--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 for miles around.' And it was so. It was not a year before I had a poem of 600 lines printed in our county paper, and there wasn't a word in it that wasn't Shakespearean. I took good care of that, for when I had the poem written, I bought the concordance, and when I found that I had used a word that was not in the concordance, I took it out and used another that was."

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

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

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

As Barncastle spoke, Toppleton's nerve weakened slightly, for it was the very question he had desired to have asked. It brought him to the point where his winning stroke was possible, and to feel that he was on the verge of the struggle was somewhat disquieting. His uneasiness was short-lived, for in a moment when he realized how eminently successful had been his every step so far, how everything had transpired even as he had foreseen it would, he gained confidence in himself and in his course.

"I did, Barncastle; particularly a student of human nature. I studied man. I endeavoured to learn what quality in man it was that made him great and what quality made him weak. I became an expert in a great many osophies and ologies that had never been heard of in the Rocky Mountains before," answered Toppleton, forgetting his a.s.sumed character under the excitement of the moment and speaking, flushed of face, with more vehemence than the occasion seemed to warrant. "And I venture to a.s.sert, sir, that there is no physiognomy in all creation that I cannot read, save possibly yours which baffles me. I read much in your face that I would rather not see there."

Barncastle flushed. The ladies toyed nervously with their fans. Lady Alice appeared slightly perturbed, and Hopkins grew pale. The d.u.c.h.ess of Bangletop alone was unmoved. Toppleton's heat was hardly what was expected on an occasion of this sort, but the d.u.c.h.ess had made up her mind not to marvel at anything the guest of the evening might do, and she regarded his vehemence as quite pardonable inasmuch as it must be characteristic of an unadulterated Americanism.

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

"I do, d.u.c.h.ess," returned Toppleton. "Though for your comfort as well as for that of others at this table, let me add that I invariably keep what I see religiously to myself."

The humour of this rejoinder and the laughter which followed it cleared the atmosphere somewhat, but from the gravity of his host and the tense way in which Barncastle's eye was fastened upon him, Hopkins knew that his shaft as to the baffling qualities of Barncastle's face had struck home.

"You interest me," said the Earl, when the mirth of his guests had subsided. "I too have studied physiognomy, but I never observed that there was anything baffling about my own. 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 d.u.c.h.ess airily. "I've always said you didn't look like a great man."

"While acknowledging, d.u.c.h.ess, that I nevertheless am?" queried Barncastle with a smile.

"Well, moderately so, Barncastle, moderately so. Fact is," said the d.u.c.h.ess, "you can stir a mult.i.tude with your eloquence; you can write a novel that so will absorb a school-girl that she can't take her eyes from its early pages to look into the back of the book and see how it is all going to turn out; you can talk a hostile parliament into doing violence to its secret convictions; but in some respects you are wanting. You are an atrocious horse-back rider, you never take a run with the hounds, and I must say I have seen times when you seemed to me to be literally too big for yourself."

"By Jove!" thought Toppleton. "What a clever fellow I am! If this d.u.c.h.ess is so competent a reader of character as her estimate of Barncastle shows her to be, it's a marvel she hasn't found me out."

Barncastle laughed with a seeming heartiness at the d.u.c.h.ess'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 gla.s.s 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; but truly, my dear Barncastle, I'd rather not, for it's a mighty poor verdict that the lines of your face return for you, and inasmuch as that verdict is utterly opposed to your record, it seems hardly worth--"

"Oh, do tell it us, Mr. Toppleton," put in Lady Alice. "It will be the more interesting coming from one who has so admired my father that he has 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, looking Barncastle straight in the eye, "if I were to judge you by the lines of your face, I should say that your character was essentially a weak one.

That you possessed no single attribute of greatness. That your whole life was given over to an almost criminal tendency to avoid responsibility; to be found wanting at crises; to a desire, almost a genius I might say, for meeting your troubles in a half-hearted, compromising spirit which should have resulted in placing you in the ranks of the mediocre. The lines of your head are singularly slight for one of your years. There is hardly a furrow on your brow; on the contrary your flesh is so tightly drawn over your skull, that it would seem to suggest the presence in that skull of a brain too far developed for its prison; in other words your brain is as badly accommodated by your skull, I should judge, as a man of majestic proportions would be in the best Sunday suit of a little Lord Fauntleroy."

"You are giving me a fine idea of my personal appearance, my dear Toppleton," said Lord Barncastle, pouring a tablespoonful of wine into a small gla.s.s into which, if his guests had been watching his hands closely, they might have seen him place a small white powder.

"The strange part of it is that it is true, Barncastle," said the d.u.c.h.ess. "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 final stroke. "The eyes, one of our American poets has said, are the windows of the soul. 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 pa.s.sed 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.

"What an extraordinary gift that is of yours!" the Earl of Whiskerberry said to Toppleton as Barncastle walked with the d.u.c.h.ess as far as the drawing-room door. "D'ye know, my deah sir, it's truly appalling to think you can do it, you know, because there's so much that--"

The earl's sentence was never finished, for a heavy fall interrupted him at this point, and Toppleton, turning to see whence it came, was horrified 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 the wainscoting upstairs two hours before, the body of Barncastle of Burningford.