THE DINNER AND ITS RESULT.
A HALF-HOUR later Toppleton entered the drawing room of Barncastle Hall,
umbrella in one hand, carpet-bag in the other; his red necktie arranged
grotesquely about his neck, the picture of Americanism "as she is drawn"
by British cartoonists. Any other than a well-bred English gathering
would have received him with hilarious enthusiasm, and Hopkins was
rather staggered as he passed through the doorway to note the evident
interest, and yet utter lack of surprise, which his appearance inspired
in those who had been bidden to the feast to meet him. He perceived at
once that he no more than fulfilled the expectations of these highly
cultivated people, and it was with difficulty that he repressed the
mirth which was madly endeavouring to take possession of his whole
system.
The only portions of his make-up that attracted special attention--if
he could judge from a whispered comment or two that reached his ears,
and the glances directed toward them by the Duchess of Bangletop and the
daughters of the Earl of Whiskerberry--were the carpet-bag and the
umbrella. The blue dress coat and tight-fitting trousers were taken as a
matter of course. The red necktie and diamond stud were assumed to be
the proper thing in Rocky Mountain society, but the bag and umbrella
seemed to strike the English mind as a case of Ossa piled upon Pelion.
"Good evening, ladies," said Hopkins with a bow which was graceful in
spite of his efforts to make it awkward. "I hope I haven't increased
anybody's appetite uncomfortably by being late. This watch of mine is
set to Rocky Mountain time, and it's a little unreliable in this
climate."
"He's just the dear delightful creature I have been looking for for
years and years," said the Duchess of Bangletop to Lady Maude
Whiskerberry.
"So very American," said Lady Cholmondely Persimmon, of Persimmon
Towers--a well-preserved young noblewoman of eighteen or twenty social
seasons.
"Duchess," said Barncastle, coming forward, "permit me to present to you
my friend Hopkins Parkerberry Toppleton, the Poet Laureate of the Rocky
Mountains."
"Howdy do, Duchess," said Toppleton, dropping his carpet-bag, and
extending his hand to grasp that of the Duchess.
"So pleased," said the Duchess with a smile and an attempt at hauteur,
which was hardly successful.
"Glad you're pleased," said Toppleton, "because that means we're both
pleased."
"Lady Maude Whiskerberry, Mr. Toppleton. Lady Persimmon, Mr. Toppleton,"
said Barncastle, resuming the introductions after Toppleton had picked
up the carpet-bag again and announced his readiness to meet the other
ladies.
In a very short time Toppleton had been made acquainted with all in the
room, and inasmuch as he seemed so taken with the Duchess of Bangletop,
Lady Alice, who was a young woman of infinite tact, and not too rigidly
bound by conventionality, relinquished her claim to the guest of the
evening, and when dinner was announced, permitted Toppleton to escort
the Duchess into the dining-room.
"Don't you think, my dear Mr. Toppleton," said the Duchess 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 Duchess into dinner all at once."
"Nothing is too awkward for an American, Duchess," 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 Duchess.
"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 Duchess 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 Duchess 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 Duchess, 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 Duchess. "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 pass my way out there in the Rockies,
just look me up and you shall see it. But Shakespeare was my guiding
genius, Duchess. 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 assumed 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
assert, 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 Duchess of
Bangletop alone was unmoved. Toppleton's heat was hardly what was
expected on an occasion of this sort, but the duchess 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, Duchess," 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 duchess airily. "I've
always said you didn't look like a great man."
"While acknowledging, Duchess, that I nevertheless am?" queried
Barncastle with a smile.
"Well, moderately so, Barncastle, moderately so. Fact is," said the
Duchess, "you can stir a multitude 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
duchess 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 duchess'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 glass 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 glass 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
duchess. "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 passed 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 duchess 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.
"Frightened him out at the very first shot!" said Toppleton gleefully to
himself. "He is easier game than I thought."
"I believe the man is dead!" said the earl, anxiously putting his hand
over Barncastle's heart, and standing appalled to find that it had
stopped beating.
"No," said Toppleton, with an effort at calmness, "this is a case of
trance only--suspended animation. He will revive in a very short time, I
fancy. This sort of thing is common among men of his peculiar character;
I've seen it happen dozens of times. Have him carried to his room; tell
Lady Alice that at my request he has started out to show me the
Barbundle in the moonlight--in fact, say anything about me you please,
only get up a plausible pretext for Barncastle's absence. I do not think
his daughter knows he has these attacks, and there is no reason why she
should know, because they are not dangerous."
With this the earl repaired to the drawing-room, where he made the
excuses for Hopkins and Lord Barncastle. Toppleton and the butler
carried the prostrate Barncastle up to his room, and then the American,
utterly worn out with excitement, entered his own apartments to await
developments.