"'Very well,' was the fiend's response. 'Have your own way about it, only take my advice and get married. We need a wife.'
"'We?' I cried. 'We! I just want you to understand, my dear sir, that the pronoun doesn't fit the case. I may need a wife and you may need a wife, but if you think I'm going into any co-operative scheme with you in that matter you are less omniscient than usual. Remember that please and let us have nothing more to say on the subject.'"
"That was a very proper stand for you to take," said Hopkins, gravely. "Though I think that, under the circumstances, you should have given up all ideas of marriage. No woman would have you, knowing that you were not yourself at times; and then having as little control over your other self as you seem to have had, you would often have found yourself in hot water for flirting with other women, when, in reality, your own self was as innocent as a mountain daisy."
"I know I did wrong in thinking of marriage, Hopkins," returned the spirit, "but if you had ever met the woman I loved, you would have loved her too—yes, even if you were a confirmed celibate. I don't believe a Cardinal, sir, would have hesitated between his hat and her. My sole justification was her loveliness, and then the fiend's ready acquiescence in my statement that in that matter he must hold aloof gave me confidence that I might safely take the step I had so long and so ardently desired to take.
"Weeks passed by, and in everything save the courtship of Miss Hicksworthy-Johnstone I gave myself unreservedly over to the fiend, who began suddenly to take an interest in my personal appearance which he had never before manifested. He laid in a fine supply of clothes—dress suits, walking suits, lounging suits—suits in fact of every description and of the finest texture. Shirts and collars, and ties of the choicest sort were imported by him from Paris, and on my hands I now observed he was beginning to wear kid gloves of fashionable type. His hats and shoes were distinctly in the mode, and his jewelry, as far as it went, was of unexceptionable taste and quiet elegance. In fact, Toppleton, I began to be something of a dandy. This I attributed to the natural vanity of my other self. I, too, was proud of that graceful form, but I never thought enough about it to go about arraying it in a fashion which neither Solomon nor the lily of the field could ever have approached. I cared nothing for gloves save as a means to a warm finger's end, and it made no difference to me whether my hat was of the style of '48, or plucked fresh from the French Emperor's own block. As long as my head was covered I was satisfied. Patent leather shoes I could never bring myself to buy, because they had always seemed to me to go hand in hand either with poverty or laziness. To a man who cannot afford shoe blacking or who is too lazy to black his own boots, patent leathers, I thought, were a boon; but I never classed myself under either head, and wore the regular foot gear of the plain but honest son of toil.
"But now all was changed. My other self was vain, and unexpectedly gave himself over to dandyism. At first he rather disturbed my equanimity by wearing somewhat loud patterns, but he soon got over that, and between us, after a very little while, two or three months perhaps, my body had the best clothes there were to be had in all London. I had not realized all this time that I was fast becoming a millionaire, and when my tailor's bill for fifteen hundred pounds came home one night I was in a great stew, but the fiend came in and relieved my conscience very much by showing me my balance in the bank. It amounted, Toppleton, to one hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds, with an income still running evenly along from my law practice of ten thousand pounds per annum, not to mention the revenues from my books, which in six months had amounted to two thousand pounds. I was a rich man, and when I observed that this was my condition, I made up my mind to ask Miss Hicksworthy-Johnstone's hand in marriage the very next time I saw her. I hoped this would be soon, but, alas for human expectations, it was not. The Christmas holidays were about to begin, and I bethought me that at the season of goodwill toward men I might ask the possessor of my heart to accept it as a permanent gift, a decision which I unfortunately kept to myself, for from one end of the holidays to the other I never laid eyes upon my mortal habitation. The fiend was off with it for one whole month, Hopkins."
"Didn't you know where?" asked Toppleton.
"I did not," returned the spirit. "He went off with it as usual one night late in November to attend a meeting of the leaders of our party, telling me not to worry if he did not return for twenty-four hours, since there was important business on hand. What the business was he did not inform me, nor did I seek to know it, since under our arrangement it was not necessary that I should familiarize myself with parliamentary matters, which were usually as dry as they were weighty anyhow, and hence distasteful to me.
"Well, I waited twenty-four hours and no fiend appeared. Another day passed with no sign of him. A third day moved into the calendar of the past; a week elapsed, then a second, a third, a fourth, and finally a month had gone. I was growing sick with apprehension. What if something dreadful had happened and my lovely, only body was lying dead somewhere, too shattered for the fiend to remain longer within it, and gone for ever from me? What if the present occupant of my corse had again yielded to the seductive influence of the cup, and was off somewhere upon a prolonged spree? I floated uneasily in and about my quarters here, sleepless, worried to distraction. I searched my papers, as best I could without hands, to see if there was not some clue as to my whereabouts among them, and found none. I went through the contents of the waste basket even, and found nothing to relieve my dreadful anxiety, and then I went to the wardrobe to search the pockets of my clothes for possible evidence to calm my agitated soul.
"Toppleton, there was not one vestige of a garment in that clothes press from top to bottom. Not a shoe, not a coat, absolutely nothing. It was bare even as Mother Hubbard's cupboard was bare. This was an additional shock, and I became giddy with fear. I floated madly across to the bureau and peered into the drawers thereof. Beyond the ties I had formerly worn and the collars, frayed at the edges, of my negligée days, nothing remained, and then for the first time I noticed that my trunk was gone from the room.