Toppleton's Client; Or, A Spirit in Exile

by John Kendrick Bangs

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 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 eyes were absolutely proof against peeping Toms. Then he rolled the heavy bureau and several antique chests away from the massive oak wainscoting that ran about the room, eight feet in height and superbly carved. He tapped every panel with his knuckles, and found them all solid as a rock.

"No secret door in that," he said; and then for a second time he experienced that nervous sensation which comes to him who feels that he is watched, and as the sensation grew more and more intense and terrifying, an idea flashed across Toppleton's mind which heightened his anxiety.

"By Jove!" he said; "I wonder if I am going mad. Can it be that Chatford is an illusion, a fanciful creation of a weak mind? Am I become a prey to hallucinations, and if so, am I not in grave danger of my personal liberty here if Barncastle should discover my weakness?"

It was rather strange, indeed, that this had not occurred to Hopkins before. It was the natural explanation of his curious experience, and the sudden thought that he had foolishly lent himself to the impulses of a phantasm, and was carrying on a campaign of destruction against one of the world's most illustrious men, based solely upon a figment of a diseased imagination, was prostrating. He staggered to the side of a large tapestried easy-chair, and limp with fear, toppled over its broad arm into its capacious depths an almost nerveless mass of flesh and bones. He would have given worlds to be back in the land of the midnight sun, in New York, in London, anywhere but here in the house of Barncastle of Burningford, and he resolved then and there that he would return to London the first thing in the morning, place himself in the hands of a competent physician, and trifle with the creations of his fancy no more.

A prey to these disquieting reflections, Toppleton lay in the chair for at least an hour. The last rays of a setting sun trembled through the leaves of the tree that shaded the western side of the room, and darkness fell over all; and with the darkness there came into Toppleton's life an experience that scattered his fears of a moment since to the winds, and so tried and exercised his courage, that that fast fading quality gained a renewed strength for the fearful battle with a supernatural foe, in which he had, out of his goodness of heart, undertaken to engage.

A clock in the hall outside began to strike the hour of six in deep measured tones, that to Toppleton in his agitated state of mind was uncomfortably suggestive of the bell in Coleridge's line that "Knells us back to a world of death." At the last stroke of the hammer the tone seemed to become discordant, and in a frenzy of nervous despair Toppleton opened his eyes and sprang to his feet. As he did so, his whole being became palpitant with terror, for staring at him out of the darkness he perceived a small orb-like something whose hue was that of an emerald in combustion. He clapped his hands over his eyes for a moment, but that phosphorescent gleam penetrated them, and then he perceived that it was not an eye that rested upon him, but a ray of light shining through a small hole that had escaped his searching glance in the wainscoting. The relief of this discovery was so great that it gave him courage to investigate, and stepping lightly across the room, noiseless as a particle of dust, he climbed upon a chair and peeped through the aperture, though it nearly blinded him to do so. To shade his eyes from the blinding light, he again covered them with his hand, and again observed that its intensity was sufficient to pierce through the obstruction and dazzle his vision. The hand so softened the light, however, that he could see what there was on the other side of the wall, though it was far from being a pretty sight that met his gaze.