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CHAPTER XV
BARNCASTLE CONFIDES IN HOPKINS
Toppleton had not long to wait. His nerves had hardly resumed their normal condition when he heard a tottering step in the hall outside, followed by a soft tapping at the door.
"Who's there?" he cried.
"It is I, Toppleton – Barncastle. Let me in and be quick. I have something very important to say to you."
Hopkins ran to the door and opened it, and Barncastle entered, his face pale and his general aspect that of a man who had passed through a terrible ordeal.
"By Jove! I've landed my man!" said Toppleton to himself. Then he added aloud, "My dear Barncastle, you don't know what a turn you gave me downstairs. I sincerely hope you are not ill?"
"I am ill, Toppleton; ill almost unto death, and it is you who have made me so."
"I?" cried Hopkins, with well-feigned surprise. "I don't quite catch your drift."
"Your accursed faculty for reading character in the face, and searching out the soul of man in the depths of his eyes has made you the only man I have ever feared. We must come to some understanding in this matter. I want to know what your object is in coming here to expose me before my friends, to lay bare – "
"Object? What is my object?" returned Hopkins, with capital dissemblance. "Why, my dear fellow, what object could I have? I read your face and searched your eyes for indications of your character at your own request, and with your permission made known what I saw there – for it is there, Barncastle, plain as any material object in this room."
"It is dreadful! dreadful!" said Barncastle, covering his eyes with his hands and quivering with emotion and fear. "I had no idea your power was so great. Do you suppose for an instant that had I known how unerringly accurate you are as a reader of mind and face, that I would ever have asked you to lay bare to those people – "
"Dear me, Barncastle," said Toppleton, rising and putting his hand on the other's shoulder in a caressing manner, "really you ought to lie down and rest. This thing will all pass off with a night's sleep. You – you don't seem to be quite yourself to-night. You mustn't mind what I have said."
"You do not know, Toppleton, you do not know. You have done that to-night which has shown me that a dreadful secret which I have carried locked in my breast for thirty years, is as easily to be wrested from me by you as my jewels by a house-breaker."
"But, my dear fellow," said Toppleton, his spirit growing with pride at his success in bringing down his game with so little effort, "I – I understand that this is only one of the exceptions to the rules which govern the mind-reader's art. I do not really believe, of course, that what I seem to see beneath the surface is actually there. I – "
"Do not try to deceive me, Mr. Toppleton," sobbed Barncastle. "I, too, am something of a reader of character, as I told you, and I know exactly what you believe and what you do not believe. Had I been in such a position at dinner as would have permitted me to look as deeply into your eyes as you looked into mine, I should not have asked you to divulge what you saw. In fact, Toppleton, as you have probably seen for yourself, I have all along under-estimated your abilities, which do not, I confess, show up as advantageously as they might. You Americans are a cleverer people than you appear to be, and you have a faculty of dissemblance that is baffling to us in the older world, who have acquired candour through our conceit. We are so conscious of our superiority and ultimate ability to gain the upper hand in all that we undertake, that we do not consider it necessary to cloak our real feelings. The whole world speaks of the Briton's brutal frankness, and speaks justly. We are candid often against our best interests. We are impulsively frank where you Americans are diplomatically reserved. It is this trait in my people that makes it difficult for our Government to find suitable diplomats to fill the various foreign missions that must be filled, while your Government finds it difficult to find missions for all the diplomats who must be provided for. We have to train our Ministers and Ambassadors in the hard school of experience, as attachés to legations, while you have only to go to your newspaper offices, to your great political organizations, or to your flourishing business concerns to find all the Envoys Extraordinary you need with a comfortable reserve force standing always ready to step into any shoes that death, advancement, or revulsion of popular sentiment may make vacant. You are a great people; greater far than you seem on the surface, and it is this fact, unheeded by me who should have known better, that deceived me. I judged you from the standpoint of your exterior; I saw that you were a character, but beyond the green umbrella and carpet-bag indications I failed to look, and I thought I might safely venture the act which has come so nearly to my undoing. I see you now as you are. I apologize for underrating your ability, and I say to you frankly, that I rejoice all the more greatly in your proffered friendship since I have come to see that it is an honour not lightly to be worn."
"My dear Barncastle," ejaculated Hopkins, breathless with wonder and pride. "I assure you that your words overwhelm me. Your kind heart, I fear, has led you into over-estimating my poor character as much as you claim to have under-estimated it. I am by no means all that – "
"Ah, Toppleton!" said Barncastle, "let us not waste words. I know you as you are at last, and you need cloak your real self from me no more. I feared for an instant that you might be my enemy, though why you should be I do not know, and to have you read my secret as though it were printed upon an open page before you, filled my soul with terror. You have found me out, but you do not and you cannot know what has brought me to this unless I tell you, and I must insist that you become acquainted with my story, that you may the better judge of my innocence in the matter. When I have told you this story, I wish to exact from you a promise never to reveal it, for once revealed it would be my ruin."
"I do not wish, my dear Barncastle," said Toppleton, burning with anxiety to hear the other's story, and yet desirous of appearing unconcerned in order that Barncastle might throw himself unreservedly in his hands. "I have no desire to pry into another man's secrets, to wrest unwilling confidences from any man. If I have discovered one of your secrets, I have done so unwittingly, and I do not wish you to feel that I am holding you up, to use one of our Western expressions, for confidences. Keep your secret if it is one you wish to hold inviolate. I shall never tell what I have seen or what you have said to me."
"You are a generous, high-minded person, Toppleton. A poet at soul and a gentleman as well; but you must hear my story, for it is my justification in your eyes, and that is as necessary to my happiness, now that I know you for the man you are, as justification in the eyes of the world would become were the world to suspect what you have seen. I did not mind any portion of what you said at the table to-night, Toppleton, until you delivered yourself of the opinion that the soul of a man of a hundred and more years was dwelling in this body of mine, a body many years younger. Mr. Toppleton, I do not want you to think me mad. I want you to believe me when I say that what you saw is absolutely a fact. My soul has lived precisely one hundred and twenty-six years, my body sixty-one!"
Toppleton's expression of surprise as Barncastle spoke would have done credit to a tragedian of the highest rank.
"Excuse me, Barncastle," he said, kindly. "I really think you'd better let me send for Lady Alice and have the family physician summoned. Your mind is somewhat affected."
"Come with me," said Barncastle, rising from his chair and leading Toppleton out through the door into and along the hallway until they reached his private apartment. "I want you on entering this room to swear never to divulge what you shall see within, for I shall prove the truth of my assertion respecting my soul before you leave it, and, Toppleton, the maintenance of my secret is a matter of life and death to me."
"Of course, my lord, I shall not tell anyone of this interview except for your good. It is truly painful to me, for in spite of your apparent clearness of head I cannot help feeling that the excitement of this evening, together with the responsibilities a man of your position must necessarily assume, have made you feverish and slightly delirious."
"I shall dispel all such ideas as that," said Barncastle, opening the door and ushering Hopkins into his room. "Pray be seated," he said, "and do not leave your seat until I request you to."
"I hear and obey," quoted Toppleton, his mind reverting to the Arabian Tales, the splendour of his surroundings and the generally uncanny quality of his experience reminding him forcibly of the land of the Genii.
"I am going to prove to you now," said Barncastle, "that what I have said about my soul is true. Excuse me for being absent from the room for just five minutes, and also pardon me if I extinguish the light here. Darkness is necessary to convince you that what I say is truth; and, above all, Toppleton, look to your nerves."
Barncastle suited his action to his words. He extinguished the light and disappeared. In five minutes, during which time Hopkins sat in the inky darkness alone trying to formulate a plan for future action, a panel in the wainscot was moved softly to one side and Toppleton found himself face to face with the fiend.
For a moment he was numb with fear, but when the green shadow moved toward him and spoke in soft insinuating tones and appeared to fear him quite as much as he feared it, his courage returned.
"What the deuce is this?" he cried, springing to his feet.
"I am the soul of Barncastle. Barncastle lies prostrate as in death in the den beyond the wall. I am also the soul of Horace Calderwood who died forty-five years ago at the age of eighty, whose body lies buried in the yard of Monckton Chapel, at Kennelly Manor, Kent."
"What is the meaning of it – how – how has it come that you – that you are here?" cried Hopkins, with well-feigned terror. "What awful power have you that you can leave your body and appear as you do now?"
"Calm yourself, Toppleton. There is no awful power about it," said the fiend. "It is a simple enough matter when you understand it. I am simply an immortal soul with mortal cravings. I love this world. It delights me to live in this sphere, and it is given to the soul to return here if it sees fit. That is what makes heaven heaven. The soul is free to do whatsoever it wills."
"But how is it," said Toppleton, "that this has never happened before?"
"It has happened before. It is happening all the time, only you mortals never find it out. You want instances? The soul of Macchiavelli returned to earth and entered the body of a Jew; result, Beaconsfield. The soul of Cæsar returned to earth and entered the body of a puny Corsican; result, Bonaparte. The soul of Horace returned to earth and entered the body of an English boy; therefore, Thackeray. The soul of Diogenes returned to earth and entered the body of another English boy; result, Thomas Carlyle. Six souls, those of Terence, Plato, Æsculapius, Cicero, Cæsar, Chaucer, combined and, returning to earth, took possession of the body of a wayward child of Warwickshire; whence, Shakespeare."
"And the real souls of these men?" cried Hopkins.
"Became a part of space, and still so remain. How else account for the evolution of genius? Did you ever know a genius in his infancy?"
"No; I can't say that I ever did," said Toppleton.
"Well, with very rare exceptions geniuses are the stupidest of babies, or, supposing that in youth they give great promise, the valedictorian of his college class ends his life oftener than not without distinction, a third-rate lawyer, perhaps a poor doctor, a prosy clergyman, or as Mrs. Somebody's husband. The man who is graduated at the foot of his class has oftener won the laurels than he. How is it accounted for? How did Keats, son of a stableman, become the sweetest of our sonneteers? In your own country, how did Lincoln and Grant spring from nothing to greatness? Was the germ of greatness discoverable in them in their youth? Would the most reckless of prophets have dared assert that the heavy tanner's boy would become the immortal hero of the Wilderness, the saviour of the Republic, the uncrowned ruler of fifty millions of people even with a thousand years of life to live? I tell you, Toppleton, the mystery of this life is more mysterious than you think. There are things happening every minute of the day, every second of the minute, the knowledge of which would drive a mortal mind – that is, a mind which has never put on immortality by passing into the other world – to despair."
"But, Barncastle," said Hopkins, his knees growing weak and his blood running cold, this time in actual terror, "how comes it that I, a mortal, inspire you, an immortal, with fear, as you claim I have done?"
"There is a point beyond which an immortal mind cannot with safety indulge in mortal habiliments. Have you never observed how men of genius outlive their genius? Did Bonaparte die at the height of his glory? Did Grant die at the zenith of his power?"
"D'Israeli did."
"D'Israeli embodied Macchiavelli, and Macchiavelli made no mistakes. I have made a mistake. I have lived too long as Barncastle, and every day beyond the day on which I should have left this body has lessened my greatness, my power, until I am become as weak as though I had never put on immortality. It is my craving to be among men, that has been my weakening, if not my ruin. The love of contact with mankind is as strong with me as is the love of drink with others. I cannot give it up."
"And the poor soul whose place you took?" said Toppleton.
"Don't speak of him," said the fiend. "I have made his name a great one. I have suffered more than he in my efforts to lift his personality to a plane it would never have reached had he been left to go his own way, to occupy his own person. He is my debtor, Toppleton. I have no feelings of regret for him. I went to him in a spirit of fairness and honesty, and offered to make him a famous man. He declined the offer. I assumed the risk of compelling him, and after the first compulsion he was acquiescent but not candid. When Horace Calderwood died, and I, his soul, for the first time learned that it was possible for a spirit to return to earth and do these things, the idea of depriving a fellow-soul of material existence was repellent to me, and seemed not to be strictly honest. He should enjoy, it seemed to me, something more than the consciousness of his greatness. He should be permitted to taste in propriâ personâ the delights of fame. And I resolved that I would not do as these others before me had done, and drive the real spirit of my, – ah – well, call him my victim if you choose – I resolved that I would not drive the real spirit of my victim out into space, leaving him to sigh and bewail his unhappy estate throughout all eternity. My plan was to go shares. To assume possession only so far as was necessary to insure the winning of the laurel; to let the other return to his corporeal estate in hours of leisure. I should have continued of this mind until to-day had I not had the misfortune to select for my operations an uncandid person, who had no genius, save that for tearing down what I was up-building. It became necessary for me to exile him for ever to save him from himself. He had been made a great man, and had I deserted him he would have become a conspicuous failure; his name would have been disgraced in proportion to the greatness it had had thrust upon it, and the soul of that one would have lived a life of humiliation and misery. What I did was the humane thing. I exiled him from himself, and I have no regrets for having done so."
"Well, of course," said Toppleton, "you know more about it than I do, but it seems to me it's a mighty rough thing to condemn a soul to perpetual existence on this earth deprived of the only means which can put him in a position to enjoy that life. If you are not joking with me, Barncastle, and your present appearance is pretty good proof that you are not, it seems to me that you have been guilty of a wrong, although your reasons for believing that you have done right are worthy of consideration. It strikes me that an omniscient, such as you pretended to be, ought not to have been bothered by the lack of candour of a purely finite mind; and, after all, it was but a bit of superb conceit on your part to think that you could do things differently from those who had gone before you."
"But my motive, Toppleton. Credit me with a proper motive," pleaded the fiend.
"Yes, I do," said Hopkins. "But out in the Rocky Mountains, my lord, we have lynched several thieves who stole to keep their families from starving. Their motives were all right, but they were suspended just the same. But let me ask you one question. To what extent do you retain that remarkable omniscient quality? I want to know, for candidly, much as I admire you, Barncastle, it rather awes me to think that you can penetrate to the innermost recesses of my brain – "
"I can no longer do that," said Barncastle. "My power through long confinement to mortal habitations has materially lessened, as I have already told you. Do you suppose, my dear sir, that, were it not so, I should be here, at this moment, unbosoming myself to you, and begging you in the name of humanity never to utter one word of what has passed between us? Do you think that I, who was once able to destroy a mortal's reason by one glance of my eye, would be so overcome by the words of a mind-reading American poet if I still had the power to subject his will to mine?"
"No one would believe me were I to tell him your horrible secret," said Hopkins. "Indeed, I don't know that I believe it myself. There is, of course plenty of evidence of which I have had ocular demonstration, but this may be all a dream. I may wake up to-morrow and find myself in my hammock in Blue-bird Gulch."
"No, it is no dream," said the fiend. "It is all too real, but you will not expose me, Toppleton. There are those who would believe it, some who half suspect me even now would gain re-enforcement in their suspicions. My daughter would be shocked beyond expression and – "
"That, my lord," said Hopkins "is your convincing argument. Lady Alice's peace of mind must be held inviolate, and I shall be dumb; but I think you might let the exiled spirit enter once more into bodily life. The allotted days of the body you have wrested from him must be growing few in number. Why not atone for the past by admitting him once more?"
"There are two reasons, Toppleton," said Barncastle, fixing his eye with great intensity upon Hopkins, who maintained his composure with great difficulty. "In the first place, there are responsibilities which still devolve upon the Lord of Burningford which he would be utterly unable to assume. You might assume them, for you are a clever man. You have the making of a brilliant man in you, but he has not, and never will have. He is the most pusillanimous soul in the universe, and with him in charge, that body would die in less than six months. In the second place I have lost sight of him of late years, or rather lost consciousness of him, for he has been visible at no time since he departed from his normal condition, and since the day of my marriage, whose happiness he made a mad public endeavour to destroy, I have had no dealings with him. Where he is now, I have not the slightest idea."
"Well, I know!" ejaculated Toppleton, forgetting himself and throwing caution to the winds.
"You know what? Where he is?" returned the fiend, with a look that restored Toppleton's senses and showed him that he had made a mistake.
"Oh, no!" he replied, his face getting red with confusion. "Oh, no, not that. You interrupted me. I was going to say that I know – er – I know how difficult your – er – your position is in the matter, and – er – that I hardly knew what to advise."
"Ah!" returned the fiend, with a smile that to Toppleton's eyes betokened relief. "You have taken a load off my mind. Do you know, my dear fellow, that for one instant I half believed that you really knew of the original Chatford's whereabouts, and that perhaps you were in league with him against me. I see, however, how unfounded the impression was."
"How could you suspect me of that?" said Toppleton, reproachfully, his heart beating wildly at the narrowness of the escape. "But you don't intend to let him back?"
"Not if I can help myself, Toppleton," said the fiend. "I shall hang on here as long as I can, not only for my own sake and for that of my daughter, but also for the peace of mind of the exiled soul. You will respect my confidence, will you not?"
"I shall, Barncastle. You may count on me," said Toppleton.
"Good. Now I will resume the mortal habitation for which I have so long been a trustee, and we can rejoin the ladies."
Ten minutes later Barncastle and the Poet of the Rockies entered the drawing-room.
"Did you enjoy your walk, Mr. Toppleton?" queried Lady Alice.
"Well, I guess!" returned Toppleton. "Your father has one of the finest estates I have ever seen since I left Colorado, and as for your moon, it fairly out-moons any moon I've seen in the Rockies in all my life."
"It's the same moon that everybody else has," said the Duchess of Bangletop with a smile.
"Yes, Duchess," returned Toppleton, sitting beside her. "But you've furnished it better than we have. That Barbundle River gives it a setting beside which the creek in Blue-bird Gulch is as a plate-glass window to a sea of diamonds."