Toppleton's Client; Or, A Spirit in Exile, John Kendrick Bangs [best romantic books to read .txt] 📗

Toppleton's surmises as to Barncastle's method of receiving him appeared to be correct, for upon his arrival, green umbrella and carpet bag in hand, at the Fenwick Merton station he was met by no less a person than his host himself, who recognized him at once.

"I knew it was you," said Barncastle, as he held out his hand to grasp Toppleton's. "I knew it was you as soon as I saw you. Your carpet bag, and the fact that you are the only person on the train who travelled first class, were the infallible signs which guided me."

"And I knew you, Barncastle, the minute I saw you," said Hopkins, returning the compliment, "because you looked less like a lord than any man on the platform. How goes it, anyhow?"

The Englishman's countenance wore a puzzled expression as Toppleton put the question.[202]

"How goes it?" he repeated slowly. "How goes what? The train?"

"Oh, no," laughed Hopkins. "How goes it is Rocky Mountain for how's things, all your family well, and your creditors easy?"

"Ah! I see," said Barncastle with a smile. "All is well with us, thank you. My daughter is awaiting your coming with very great interest; and as for my creditors, my dear sir, I am really uncertain as to whether I have any. 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. 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."

"I meant no offence, my dear fellow," returned Barncastle, apologetically.

"No need to tell me that," said Toppleton, affably. "The fact that you still survive shows I knew it. What time is dinner? I'm ravenous."

"Eight o'clock," replied Lord Barncastle, looking at his watch. "It is now only three."

"Phew!" ejaculated Toppleton. "Five hours to wait!"

"I thought we might take a little drive around the country until six, and then we could return to the Hall and make ready for dinner," said Barncastle.

"That suits me," returned Toppleton. "But I wish you'd send that gentleman with the mutton-chop whiskers that drives your waggon to the lunch counter and get me a snack before we start."

"No," said Barncastle, ushering Toppleton into his dog-cart. "We'll do better than that. We'll give up the drive until later. I take you[204] directly to the Hall, and send a cold bird and a glass of wine to your apartment."

"Good!" ejaculated Toppleton, with a smack of the lips. "You must live pretty near as fine here as we do in our big hotels at home. They're the only other places I know where you can get your appetite satisfied at five minutes' notice."

Toppleton and his host then entered the carriage, and in a short time they reached the Hall—a magnificently substantial structure, with ivy-clad towers, great gables, large arched windows looking out upon seductive vistas, and an air of comfortable antiquity about it that moved Hopkins' tongue to an utterance somewhat at variance with his assumed character.

"How beautiful and quiet it all is," he said, gazing about him in undisguised admiration. "A home like this, my lord, ought to make a poet of a man. The very air is an inspiration."

Barncastle shrugged his shoulders and laughed; and had Toppleton not been looking in rapt silence out through the large bowed window at the end of the hall they had entered, along an avenue of substantial oak trees to the silver waters of the Barbundle at its other end, he might have seen a strange greenish light[205] come into the eyes of his host, which would have worried him not a little. He did not see it, however, and in a moment he remembered his mission and the means he had adopted to bring it to a successful issue.

"It beats the deck!" he ejaculated, with a nervous glance at Barncastle, fearful lest his enthusiasm had led him to betray himself.

"I find it a pleasant home," said Barncastle, quietly, ushering him into a spacious and extremely comfortable room which Toppleton perceived in a moment was the library, at the other end of which was a large open fireplace, large enough to accommodate a small family, within whose capacious depths three or four huge logs were blazing fiercely. Before the fire sat a stately young woman, about twenty-five years of age, who rose as the Lord of Burningford and his guest entered.

As she approached Toppleton would have given all he possessed to be rid of the abominable costume he had on; and when the young heiress of Burningford's eye rested upon the fearfully green cotton umbrella, he felt as if nothing would so have pleased his soul as the casting of that adjunct to an alleged Americanism into the fire; for Lady Alice was, if he could judge from appearances, a woman for whose good opinion any man might be willing[206] to sacrifice immortality itself. But circumstances would not permit him to falter, and, despite the fact that it hurt his self-respect to do it, Hopkins remained true to the object he had in view.

"Alice, this is Mr. 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."

"Yes, I remember," said Lady Alice, with a gracious smile, which won Toppleton's heart completely, "it was delightful. Lord Barncastle and I are great admirers of your genius, Mr. Toppleton, and we sincerely hope that we shall be able to make your stay with us here as pleasant for you as it is for us."

Again Hopkins would have disappeared through the floor had he been able to act upon the promptings of his own good taste. It made[207] him feel unutterably small to think that he had come here, under the guise of an uncultivated, boorish clod with poetical tendencies, to work the overthrow of the genius of the house.

"Thank you," he said, his voice husky with emotion. "I had not expected so cordial a reception. In fact," he added, remembering his true position, "I had a bet of ten to one with a friend of mine who is doing the Lakes this afternoon that I'd get frozen stiff by a glance of your ladyship's eye. I'm mighty glad I've lost the bet."

"He has some courtliness beneath his unpolished exterior," said Lady Alice later, when recounting the first interview between them to some of her friends. "I quite forgave his boorishness when he said he was glad to lose his wager."

"Now, Mr. Toppleton," said his host, "if you care to go to your apartment I will see that you get what you want. Just leave your umbrella in the coat room, and let Parker take your bag up to your room."

"Thanks, Barncastle, old fellow," said the Rocky Mountain poet, "I'll go to my room gladly; but as for leaving that umbrella out of my sight, or transferring the handle of that carpet bag to any other hand than my own, I can't do it. They're my treasures, my lady,"[208] he added, turning to Lady Alice. "That bag and I have been inseparable companions for eight consecutive years, and as for the umbrella we haven't been parted for five. It's my protector and friend, and since it saved my life in a shooting scrape at the Papyrus Club dinner in Denver, I haven't wanted to let it get away from me."

"How odd he is," said Lady Alice a moment later to her father, Toppleton having gone to his room. "Are you sure he is not an impostor?"

"No, I'm not," returned Barncastle with a strange smile; "but I know he is not a thief. I fancy he is amusing, and I believe he will be a valuable acquisition to my circle of acquaintances. Have you heard from the Duchess of Bangletop?"

"Yes, she will be here. I told her you had a real American this time—not an imitation Englishman—a poet, and, as far as we could judge, a character who would surely become a worthy addition to her collection of oddities; a match, in fact, for her German worshipper of Napoleon and that other strange freak of nature she had at her last reception, the young Illinois widow who whistled the score of Parsifal."

"The duchess must have been pleased," said Barncastle with a laugh. "This Toppleton[209] will prove a perfect godsend to her, for she has absolutely nothing that is bizarre for her next reception."

Toppleton, upstairs in a magnificently appointed chamber, from the windows of which were to be seen the most superb distances that he had ever imagined, was a prey alternately to misery and to joy. He felicitated himself upon the apparent success of his plan, while bemoaning his unhappy lot in having to keep his true self under in a society he felt himself capable of adorning, and to enter which he had always aspired.

"It's too late to back out now, though," he said. "If I were to strike my colours at this stage of the battle, I should deserve to be put in a cask and thrown into the Barbundle yonder. When I look about me and see all these magnificent acres, when I observe the sumptuous furnishing of this superb mansion, when I see unequalled treasures of art scattered in profusion about this castle, and then think of that poor devil of a Chatford roaming about the world without a piece of bric-a-brac to his name, or an acre, or a house, or bed, or chair, or table, of any kind, without even a body, it makes me mad. Here his body, the inferior part of man, the purely mortal section of his being, is living in affluence, while his immortal[210] soul is a very tramp, an outcast, a wanderer on the face of the earth. Barncastle, Barncastle, you are indeed a villain of the deepest—"

Here Toppleton paused, and looked apprehensively about him. He seemed to be conscious of an eye resting upon him. A chill seized upon his heart, and his breath came short and quick as it had done but once before when his invisible client first betrayed his presence in No. 17.

"I wonder if this is one of those beastly castles with secret doors in the wainscot and peep-holes in the pictures," he said nervously to himself. "It would be just like Barncastle to have that sort of a house, and of course nothing would please him better than to try a haunted chamber on me. The conjunction of a ghost and a Rocky Mountain poet would be great, but after my experience with Chatford, I don't believe there is a ghost in all creation that could frighten me. Nevertheless, I don't like being gazed at by an unseen eye. I'll have to investigate."

Then Toppleton investigated. He mounted chairs and tables to gaze into the stolid, unresponsive oil-painted faces of somebody's ancestry, he knew not whose. Not Barncastle's, he was sure, for Barncastle was an upstart. Nothing wrong could be found there. The[211] eyes were absolutely proof against peeping Toms.