The old gentleman drew up a chair to the stove, then deliberately removed his overcoat and gloves.It was when he took off his overshoes, however, that Mr. Opp and Nick exchanged looks of despair. They had a signal code which they habitually employed when storms swept the office, but in a calm like this they were powerless.“Mighty sorry to hear about that uprisin’ in Guatemala,” said Mr. Tucker, who took a vivid interest in foreign affairs, but remained quite neutral about questions at home.Mr. Opp moved about the office[p144]restlessly, knowing from experience that to sit down in the presence of Mr. Tucker was fatal. The only chance of escape lay in motion. He sharpened his pencils, straightened his desk, and tied up two bundles of papers while Mr. Tucker’s address on the probable future of the Central American republics continued. Then Mr. Opp was driven to extreme measures. He sent himself a telegram. This ruse was occasionally resorted to, to free the office from unwelcome visitors without offending them, and served incidentally to produce an effect which was not unpleasant to the editor.Scribbling a message on a telegraph-blank procured for the purpose from Mr. Gallop, Mr. Opp handed it secretly to Nick, who in turn vanished out of the back door only to reappear at the front. Then the editor, with much ostentation, opened the envelop, and, after reading the contents, declared that he had business that would require immediate action. Would Mr. Tucker excuse him? If so, Nick would hold his coat.[p145]“But,” protested Mr. Tucker, resisting the effort to force him into his overcoat, “I want to talk over this oil business. We don’t want to take any risks with those fellows. As I was a-saying to Mr. Hager—”“Yes,” said Mr. Opp, taking his own hat from a nail, and apparently in great haste, “I know, of course. You are exactly right about it. We’ll just talk it over as we go up-street,” and linking his arm through Mr. Tucker’s, he steered him up the muddy channel of Main Street, and safely into the harbor of Our Hotel, where he anchored him breathless, but satisfied.Having thus disposed, to the best of his ability, of his business for the week, Mr. Opp turned his attention to his yet more arduous domestic affairs. The menu for the guest’s dinner had weighed rather heavily upon him all day, for he had never before entertained in his own home. His heart had been set on turkey; but as that was out of the question, he compromised on a goose,[p146]adhering tenaciously to the cranberry sauce.It was easier to decide on the goose than it was to procure it, and some time was consumed in the search. Mr. Opp brought all his mental powers to bear on the subject, and attacked the problem with a zeal that merited success.When he reached home at noon with his arm full of bundles, Aunt Tish met him with lamentations.“Dey ain’t but one clean table-cloth, an’ hit’s got a hole in hit, an’ I can’t find no sheets to put on de company baid, an’ dere ain’t three cups an’ saucers in de house what belongs to theyselves. I shorely doan know what you thinkin’ ’bout, Mr. D., to go an’ ast company fer. We-all never does hab company. An’ Miss Kippy she be’n habin’ a sort er spell, too, cryin’ to herself, an’ won’t tell me whut’s de matter.”Mr. Opp shook the raindrops from his hat-brim, and laid the goose tenderly on the table; then he stepped inside the dining-room door, and stood watching the[p147]childish figure that sat on the floor before the fire. She was putting artificial flowers on her head, and every time they fell off, she dropped her head on her knees and sobbed softly to herself. Again and again she made the experiment, and again and again the faded roses came tumbling into her lap.“I’ll fix ’em,” said Mr. Opp, coming up behind her; “don’t you cry about it, Kippy; I can make them stay, easy.” He searched around in the clothes-press until he found a paper box, which he tied securely upon Miss Kippy’s head.“Now try it,” he cried; “put the flowers on your head; they’ll stay.”Timidly, as if afraid of another disappointment, she tried, and when the flowers were caught in the box, she gave a sigh of satisfaction and delight.“Well, sence I j’ined de church!” exclaimed Aunt Tish, who had been watching proceedings from the doorway; then she added, as Mr. Opp came into the hall: “Hit beats my time de way you handles dat pore chile. Sometimes she[p148]got jes good sense as you an’ me has. She ast me t’other day if she wasn’t crazy. I ’lowed no indeedy, dat crazy folks was lock up in a lunatic asylum. An’ she says ‘Where?’ ‘Up at Coreyville,’ I say. She went on playin’ jes as nice and happy. De chile’s all right ef she don’t git a fool notion; den dey ain’t nobody kin make out what she wants inceptin’ you. She been cryin’ over dem flowers ever sence breakfast.”“Why didn’t you come after me?” demanded Mr. Opp.“Jes to tie a box on her haid?” asked Aunt Tish. “Lor’, I thought you was busy makin’ dem newspapers.”“So I am,” said Mr. Opp, “but whenever Miss Kippy gets to crying, I want you to come direct after me, do you hear? There ain’t anything more important than in keeping her from getting worried. Now, let’s have a look at that there table-cloth.”All afternoon Mr. Opp encountered difficulties that would have disheartened a less courageous host. With the limited[p149]means at hand it seemed impossible to entertain in a manner befitting the dignity of the editor of “The Opp Eagle.” But Mr. Opp, though sorely perplexed, was not depressed, for beneath the disturbed surface of his thoughts there ran an undercurrent of pure joy. It caused him to make strange, unnatural sounds in his throat which he meant for song; it made him stop every now and then in his work to glance tenderly and reminiscently at the palm of his right hand, once even going so far as to touch it softly with his lips. For since the last sun had set there had been no waking moment but had held for him the image of a golden world inhabited solely by a pair of luminous eyes, one small hand, and, it must be added, a band-box.Through the busy afternoon Mr. Opp referred constantly to his watch, and in spite of the manifold duties to be performed, longed impatiently for evening to arrive. At five o’clock he had moved the furniture from one bedroom to another, demonstrated beyond a possibility[p150]of doubt that a fire could not be made in the parlor grate without the chimney smoking, mended two chairs, hung a pair of curtains, and made three errands to town. So much accomplished, he turned his attention to the most difficult task of all.“Kippy,” he said, going to the window where she was gleefully tracing the course of the raindrops as they chased down the pane. “Stop a minute, Kippy. Listen; I want to talk to you.”Miss Kippy turned obediently, but her lips continued the dumb conversation she was having with the rain.“How would you like,” said Mr. Opp, approaching the subject cautiously, “to play like you was a grown-up lady—just for to-night, you know?”Miss Kippy looked at him suspiciously, and her lips stopped moving. Heretofore she had resisted all efforts to change her manner of dress.“There’s a gentleman a-coming,” continued Mr. Opp, persuasively; “he’s going to remain over till to-morrow, and[p151]Aunt Tish is cooking that large goose for him, and I’ve been fixing up the spare room. We are all endeavoring to give him a nice time. Don’t you want to dress up for him?”“Will it make him glad?” asked Miss Kippy.Mr. Opp expiated on the enjoyment it would give the unknown guest to see Kippy in the blue merino dress which Aunt Tish had gotten out of Mrs. Opp’s old trunk up-stairs.“And you’ll let Aunt Tish arrange your hair up like a lady?” went on Mr. Opp, pushing the point.“Yes,” said Miss Kippy, after a moment, “Oxety will. She will make him glad.”“Good!” said Mr. Opp. “And if you will sit nice and quiet and never say a word all through supper, I’ll get you a book with pictures in it, representing flowers and things.”“Roses?” asked Miss Kippy, drawing a quick breath of delight; and when Mr. Opp nodded, she closed her eyes and[p152]smiled as if heaven were within sight. For Miss Kippy was like a harp across which some rough hand had swept, snapping all the strings but two, the high one of ecstasy and the low one of despair.At six o’clock Mr. Opp went up to make his toilet. The rain, which had been merely rehearsing all day, was now giving a regular performance, and it played upon the windows, and went trilling through the gutters on the roof, while the old cedar-tree scraped an accompaniment on the corner of the porch below. But, nothing daunted, Mr. Opp donned his bravest attire. Cyclones and tornadoes could not have deterred him from making the most elaborate toilet at his command. To be sure, he turned up the hem of his trousers and tied a piece of oilcloth securely about each leg, and he also spread a handkerchief tenderly over his pink necktie; but these could be easily removed after he heard the boat whistle.He dressed by the light of a sputtering candle before a small mirror the veracity of which was more than questionable. It[p153]presented him to himself as a person with a broad, flat face, the nose of which appeared directly between his eyes, and the mouth on a line with the top of his ears. But he made allowances for these idiosyncrasies on the part of the mirror; in fact, he made such liberal allowances that he was quite satisfied with the reflection.“I’ll procure the hack to bring the company back in,” he said to Aunt Tish rather nervously as he passed through the kitchen. “You assist Miss Kippy to get arranged, and I’ll carry up the coal and set the table after I return back home. I can do it while the company is up in his room.”All the way into town, as he splashed along the muddy road, he was alternately dreading the arrival of one passenger, and anticipating joyfully, the arrival of another. For as the time approached the impending presence of the company began to take ominous form, and Mr. Opp grew apprehensive.At the landing he found everything[p154]dark and quiet. Evidently the packet was unusually late, and the committee appointed to meet it and conduct the guests to their various destinations was waiting somewhere uptown, probably at Your Hotel. Mr. Opp paused irresolute: his soul yearned for solitude, but the rain-soaked dock offered no shelter except the slight protection afforded by a pile of empty boxes. Selecting the driest and largest of these, he turned it on end, and by an adroit adjustment of his legs, succeeded in getting inside.Below, the river rolled heavily past in the twilight, sending up tiny juts of water to meet the pelting rain. A cold, penetrating mist clung to the ground, and the wind carried complaining tales from earth to heaven. Everything breathed discomfort, but Mr. Opp knew it not.His soul was sailing sunlit seas of bliss, fully embarked at last upon the most magic and immortal of all illusions. Sitting cramped and numb in his narrow quarters, he peered eagerly into the darkness, watching for the first lights of[p155]theSunny Southto twinkle through the gloom. And as he watched he chanted in a sing-song ecstasy:“She is coming, my own, my sweet;Were it ever so airy a tread,My heart would hear her and beat,Were it earth in an earthy bed;My dust would hear her and beat,Had I lain for a century dead;Would start and tremble under her feet,And blossom in purple and red.”[p156]XWhenMiss Guinevere Gusty tripped up the gang-plank of theSunny Southlate that afternoon, vainly trying to protect herself from the driving rain, she was met half-way by the gallant old captain.Tradition had it that the captain had once cast a favorable eye upon her mother; but Mrs. Gusty, being cross-eyed, had looked elsewhere.“We are a pudding without plums,” he announced gaily, as he held the umbrella at an angle calculated to cause a waterspout in the crown of her hat—“not a lady on board. All we needed was a beautiful young person like you to liven us up. You haven’t forgotten those pretty tunes you played for me last trip, have you?”[p157]Guinevere laughed, and shook her head. “That was just for you and the girls,” she said.“Well, it’ll be for me and the boys this time. I’ve got a nice lot of gentlemen on board, going down to your place, by the way, to buy up all your oil-lands. Now I know you are going to play for us if I ask you to.”“My goodness! are they on this boat?” asked Guinevere, in a flutter. “I am so glad; I just love to watch city people.”“Yes,” said the captain; “that was Mr. Mathews talking to me as you came aboard—the one with the white beard. Everything that man touches turns to money. That glum-looking young fellow over there is his secretary. Hinton is his name; curious sort of chap.”Guinevere followed his glance with eager interest. “The solemn one with the cap pulled over his eyes?” she asked.The captain nodded. “All the rest are inside playing cards and having a good time; but he’s been moping around like[p158]that ever since they got on board. I’ve got to go below now, but when I come back, you’ll play some for me, won’t you?”Guinevere protested violently, but something within her whispered that if the captain was very insistent she would render the selection which had won her a gold medal at the last commencement.Slipping into the saloon, she dropped quietly into one of the very corpulent chairs which steamboats particularly affect, and, unobserved, proceeded to give herself up to the full enjoyment of the occasion. The journey from Coreyville to the Cove, in the presence of the distinguished strangers, had assumed the nature of an adventure. Giving her imagination free rein, Miss Gusty, without apology, transported the commonplace group of business men at the card-table into the wildest realms of romance. The fact that their language, appearance, and manner spoke of the city, was for her a sufficient peg upon which to hang innumerable conjectures. So deep[p159]was she in her speculations that she did not hear the captain come up behind her.“Where have you been hiding?” he asked in stentorian tones. “I was afraid you’d gotten out on deck and the wind had blown you overboard. Don’t you think it’s about time for that little tune? We are forty minutes late now, and we’ll lose another half-hour taking on freight at Smither’s Landing. I’ve been banking on hearing that little dance-piece you played for me before.”“I can’t play—before them,” said Guinevere, nervously.The captain laughed. “Yes, you can; they’ll like it. Mr. Mathews said something mighty pretty about you when you came on board.”“He didn’t—honest?” said Guinevere, blushing. “Oh, truly, Captain, I can’t play!” But even as she spoke she unbuttoned her gloves. Her accomplishment was clamoring for an exhibition, and though her spirit failed her, she twirled the piano-stool and took her seat.[p160]The group of men at the table, heretofore indifferent to proceedings, looked up when a thundering chord broke the stillness. A demure young girl, with gentle, brown eyes, was making a furious and apparently unwarranted attack upon the piano. Her one desire evidently was to get inside of the instrument. With insinuating persistence she essayed an entrance through the treble, and, being unable to effect it, fell upon the bass, and exhausted a couple of rounds of ammunition there. The assault on both flanks being unsuccessful, she resorted to strategy, crossing her hands and assailing each wing of the enemy from an unexpected quarter. When this move failed, she evidently became incensed, and throwing aside diplomacy, rallied all her forces, charging her artillery up to the highest note, then thundering down to the lowest, beating down the keys as fast as they dared to rise. In the midst of the carnage, when the clamor was at its height and victory seemed imminent, she[p161]suddenly paused, with one hand in air and her head gently inclined, and, tapping out two silvery bugle-notes of truce, raised the siege.The appalling silence that ensued might have hung above a battle-field of slain and wounded. The captain bit his mustache.“That wasn’t exactly the one I meant,” he said. “I want that little dance-tune with the jingle to it.”Miss Gusty, disappointed and surprised at the effect which her masterpiece had failed to produce, was insisting with flushed cheeks that she could play no more, when the gentleman who was called Mr. Mathews rose from the table and came toward her. His hair and pointed beard were white, but his eyes were still young, and he looked at her while he spoke to the captain.“I beg your pardon, Captain,” he was saying in smooth, even tones, “can’t you persuade the young lady to sing something for us?”“I never took vocal,” said Guinevere,[p162]looking at him frankly. “I’m making a specialty of instrumental.”The gentleman looked sidewise at his companions and stroked his beard gravely. “But youdosing?” he persisted.“Just popular music,” said Guinevere. “I was going to take ‘The Holy City’ and ‘The Rosary’ last year, but the vocal teacher got sick.”In response to a very urgent invitation, she took her seat again, and this time sang a sentimental ditty concerning the affairs of one “Merry Little Milly in the Month of May.”This selection met with prompt favor, and the men left their cards, and gathered about the piano, demanding an encore.Miss Guinevere’s voice was very small, and her accompaniment very loud, but, in her effort to please, she unconsciously became dramatic in her expression, and frowned and smiled and lifted her brows in sympathy with the emotions of the damsel in the song. And Miss Guinevere’s eyes being[p163]expressive and her lips very red, the result proved most satisfactory to the audience.One stout young man in particular expressed himself in such unrestrained terms of enthusiasm, that Guinevere, after singing several songs, became visibly embarrassed. Upon the plea of being too warm she made her escape, half-promising to return and sing again later on.Flushed with the compliments and the excitement, and a little uncertain about the propriety of it all, she hurried through the swing-door and, turning suddenly on the deck, stumbled over something in the darkness.It proved to be a pair of long legs that were stretched out in front of a silent figure, who shot a hand out to restore Miss Gusty to an upright position. But the deck was slippery from the rain, and before he could catch her, she went down on her knees.“Did it hurt you?” a voice asked anxiously.[p164]“It don’t matter about me,” answered Guinevere, “just so it didn’t spoil my new dress. I’m afraid there’s an awful tear in it.”“I hope not,” said the voice. “I’d hate to be guilty of dress slaughter even in the second degree. Sure you are not hurt? Sit down a minute; here’s a chair right behind you, out of the wind.”Guinevere groped about for the chair. “Mother can mend it,” she went on, voicing her anxiety, “if it isn’t too bad.”“And if it is?” asked the voice.“I’ll have to wear it, anyhow. It’s brand splinter new, the first one I ever had made by a sure-enough dressmaker.”“My abominable legs!” muttered the voice.Guinevere laughed, and all at once became curious concerning the person who belonged to the legs.He had dropped back into his former position, with feet outstretched, hands in[p165]pockets, and cap pulled over his eyes, and he did not seem inclined to continue the conversation.She drew in deep breaths of the cool air, and watched the big side-wheel churn the black water into foam, and throw off sprays of white into the darkness. She liked to be out there in the sheltered corner, watching the rain dash past, and to hear the wind whistling up the river. She was glad to be in the dark, too, away from all those gentlemen, so ready with their compliments. But the sudden change from the heated saloon to the cold deck chilled her, and she sneezed.Her companion stirred. “If you are going to stay out here, you ought to put something around you,” he said irritably.“I’m not very cold. Besides, I don’t want to go in. I don’t want them to make me sing any more. Mother’ll be awfully provoked if I take cold, though. Do you think it’s too damp?”“There’s my overcoat,” said the[p166]man, indifferently; “you can put that around you if you want to.”She struggled into the large sleeves, and he made no effort to help her.“You don’t like music, do you?” she asked naïvely as she settled back in her chair.“Well, yes,” he said slowly. “I should say the thing I dislike least in the world is music.”“Then why didn’t you come in to hear me play?” asked Guinevere, emboldened by the darkness.“Oh, I could hear it outside,” he assured her; “besides, I have a pair of defective lamps in my head. The electric lights hurt my eyes.”He struck a match as he spoke to relight his pipe, and by its flare she caught her first glimpse of his face, a long, slender, sensitive face, brooding and unhappy.“I guess you are Mr. Hinton,” she said as if to herself.He turned with the lighted match in his hand. “How did you know that?”[p167]“The captain told me. He pointed out you and Mr. Mathews, but he didn’t tell me any of the rest.”“A branch of your education that can afford to remain neglected,” said Mr. Hinton as he puffed at his pipe.The door of the saloon swung open, and the chubby gentleman appeared in the light, shading his eyes, and calling out that they were all waiting for the little canary-bird.“I don’t want to go,” whispered Guinevere, shrinking back into the shadow.The chubby gentleman peered up and down the deck, then, assailed by a gust of wind, beat a hasty retreat.“I don’t like him,” announced Guinevere, drawing a breath of relief. “It isn’t just because he’s fat and ugly; it’s the silly way he looks at you.”“What a pity you can’t tell him so!” said her companion, dryly. “Such blasphemy might do him good. He is the scion of a distinguished family made wealthy by the glorious sale of pork.”[p168]“Are all the gentlemen millionaires?” asked Guinevere in awe.“Present company excepted,” qualified Hinton.“It’ll seem awful small to them down in the Cove. Why, we haven’t got room enough at the two hotels to put them all up.”“Oh, you live there, do you?”“Yes; I’ve just been up at Coreyville spending the night. I used to hate it down at the Cove, it was so little and stupid; but I like it better now.”There was a long silence, during which each pursued a widely different line of thought.“We have got a newspaper at the Cove now,” announced Guinevere. “It’s an awful nice paper, called ‘The Opp Eagle.’”“Opp?” repeated Hinton. “Oh, yes, that was the man I telephoned to. What sort of chap is he, anyhow?”“He’s awfully smart,” said Guinevere, her cheeks tingling. “Not so much[p169]book learning, but a fine brain. The preacher says he’s got a natural gift of language. You ought to see some of his editorials.”“Hiding his light under a bushel, isn’t he?”“That’s just it,” said Guinevere, glad to expatiate on the subject. “If Mr. Opp could get in a bigger place and get more chances, he’d have a lot more show. But he won’t leave Miss Kippy. She’s his sister, you know; there is only the two of them, and she’s kind of crazy, and has to have somebody take care of her. Mother thinks it’s just awful he don’t send her to an asylum, but I know how he feels.”“Is he a young man?” asked Mr. Hinton.“Well—no, not exactly; he’s just seventeen years and two months older than I am.”“Oh,” said Hinton, comprehensively.There was another long pause, during which Guinevere turned things over in[p170]her mind, and Mr. Hinton knocked the ashes from his pipe.“I think girls seem a good deal older than they are, don’t you?” she asked presently.“Some girls,” Hinton agreed.“How old would you take me for?”“In the dark?”“Yes.”“About twelve.”“Oh, that’s not fair,” said Guinevere. “I’m eighteen, and lots of people take me for twenty.”“That is when they can see you,” said Hinton.Guinevere decided that she did not like him. She leaned back in her corner and tried not to talk. But this course had its disadvantage, for when she was silent he seemed to forget she was there.Once he took a turn up and down the deck, and when he came back, he stood for a long time leaning over the rail and gazing into the water. As he turned to sit down she heard him mutter to himself:[p171]“… That no life lives forever;That dead men rise up never;That even the weariest riverWinds somewhere safe to sea.”Guinevere repeated the words softly to herself, and wondered what they meant. She was still thinking about them when a dim red light in the distance told her they were approaching the Cove. She slipped off the heavy overcoat and began to put on her gloves.“Hello! we are getting in, are we?” asked Hinton, shaking himself into an upright position. “Is that Cove City where the big red light bores into the water like a corkscrew?”They moved to the bow of the boat and watched as it changed its course and made for the opposite shore.“Did you mean,” said Guinevere, absently, “that you wanted it all to end like that? For us to just go out into nothing, like the river gets lost in the ocean?”Hinton glanced at her in surprise, and[p172]discovered that there was an unusually thoughtful face under the sweeping brim of the red hat. The fact that she was pretty was less evident to him than the fact that she was wistful. His mood was sensitive to minor chords.“I guess youareeighteen,” he said, and he smiled, and Guinevere smiled back, and the chubby gentleman, coming suddenly out upon them, went in again and slammed the door.The lights on the landing twinkled brighter and brighter, and presently figures could be seen moving here and there. The steamer, grumbling with every chug of the wheel, was brought around, and the roustabouts crowded along the rail, ready to make her fast.Guinevere and Hinton stood on the upper deck under his umbrella and waited.Directly below them on the dock a small, fantastic figure made frantic efforts to attract their attention. He stood uncovered, regardless of the rain, madly waving his hat.[p173]“Is that anybody you know?” asked Hinton.Guinevere, who was watching the lights on the water, started guiltily.“Where?” she asked.“Down to the right—that comical little codger in the checked suit.”Guinevere looked, then turned upon Hinton eyes that were big with indignation. “Why, of course,” she said; “that’s Mr. Opp.”[p174]XIAsWillard Hinton stood on the porch of Your Hotel and waited for his host for the night to call for him, he was in that state of black dejection that comes to a young man when Ambition has proposed to Fortune, and been emphatically rejected. For six years he had worked persistently and ceaselessly toward a given goal, doing clerical work by day and creative work by night, going from shorthand into longhand, and from numerical figures into figures of speech. For the way that Hinton’s soul was traveling was the Inky Way, and at its end lay Authorship.Hinton had taken himself and his work seriously, and served an apprenticeship of hard study and conscientious[p175]preparation. So zealous was he, in fact, that he had arrived at the second stage of his great enterprise with a teeming brain, a practised hand, and a pair of affected eyes over which the oculists shook their heads and offered little encouragement.For four months he had implicitly obeyed orders, attending only to his regular work, eating and sleeping with exemplary regularity, and spending all of his spare time in the open air. But the ravages made in the long nights dedicated to the Muses were not to be so easily repaired, and his eyes, instead of improving, were growing rapidly worse. The question of holding his position had slipped from a matter of months into weeks.As he stood on the porch, he could hear the bustle of entertainment going on within the limited quarters of Your Hotel. Jimmy Fallows was in his element. As bartender, head waiter, and jovial landlord he was playing a triple bill to a crowded house. Occasionally he[p176]opened the door and urged Hinton to come inside.“Mr. Opp’ll be here ’fore long,” he would say. “He’s expecting you, but he had to stop by to take his girl home. You better step in and get a julep.”But Hinton, wrapped in the gloom of his own thoughts, preferred to remain where he was. Already he seemed to belong to the dark, to be a thing apart from his fellow-men. He shrank from companionship and sympathy as he shrank from the light. He longed to crawl away like a sick animal into some lonely corner and die. Whichever way he turned, the great specter of darkness loomed before him. At first he had fought, then he had philosophically stood still, now he was retreating. Again and again he told himself that he would meet it like a man, and again and again he shrank back, ready to seek escape anywhere,anyhow.“O God, if I weren’t so damnably young!” he cried to himself, beating his clenched hand against his brow. “More[p177]than half my life yet to live, and in the dark!”The rattle of wheels and the stopping of a light in front of the hotel made him pull himself together.The small gentleman in the checked suit whom he had seen on the wharf strode in without seeing him. He paused before he opened the door and smoothed his scanty locks and rearranged his pink necktie. Then he drew in his chin, threw out his chest, and with a carefully prepared smile of welcome entered.The buzz within increased, and it was some minutes before the door opened again and Jimmy Fallows was heard saying:“He’s round here some place. Mr. Hinton! Oh, here you are! Let me make you acquainted with Mr. Opp; he’s going to take you out to his house for the night.”No sooner had Hinton’s hand been released from Mr. Opp’s cordial grasp than he felt that gentleman’s arm thrust[p178]through his, and was aware of being rapidly conducted down the steps and out to the vehicle.“On no possible account,” Mr. Opp was saying, with Hinton’s grip in one hand and two umbrellas in the other, “would I have allowed myself to be late, except that it was what you might consider absolutely necessary. Now, you get right in; just take all that robe. No, the grip can go right here between my feet. We trust that you will not regard the weather in any ways synonymous with the state of our feelings of welcome.”Mr. Hinton remarked rather shortly that the weather never mattered to him one way or another.“That’s precisely like myself,” Mr. Opp went on. “I come of very sturdy, enduring stock. For a man of my size I doubt if you’d find a finer constitution in the country. You wouldn’t particularly think it to look at me, now would you?”Hinton looked at the small, stooping[p179]figure, and at the peaked, sallow face, and said rather sarcastically that he would not.“Strong as an ox,” declared Mr. Opp.Just here the horse stumbled, and they were jerked violently forward.Mr. Opp apologized. “Just at present we are having a little difficulty with our country roads. We have taken the matter up in ‘The Opp Eagle’ last week. All these things take time to regulate, but we are getting there. This oil boom is going to revolutionize things. It’s my firm and abiding conviction that we are on the eve of a great change. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if this town grew to be one of the principalest cities on the Ohio River.”“To be a worthy eyrie for your ‘Eagle’?” suggested Hinton.“‘The Opp Eagle,’” corrected Mr. Opp. “I don’t know as you know that I am the sole proprietor, as well as being the editor in addition.”“No,” said Hinton, “I did not know. How does it happen that a man with such[p180]responsibilities can take time to dabble in oil-wells?”“You don’t know me,” said Mr. Opp, with a paternal smile at his own ability. “Promoting and organizing comes as natural to me as breathing the atmosphere. I am engineering this scheme with one hand, the Town Improvement League with another, and ‘The Opp Eagle’ with another. Then, in a minor kind of way, I am a active Odd Fellow, first cornetist in the Unique Orchestra, and a director in the bank. And beside,” Mr. Opp concluded with some coyness, “there is the natural personal social diversions that most young men indulge in.”By this time they had reached the gray old house on the river-bank, and Mr. Opp hitched the horse and held the lantern, while Hinton stepped from one stony island to another in the sea of mud.“Just enter right into the dining-room,” said Mr. Opp, throwing open the door. “Unfortunately we are having a[p181]temporary difficulty with the parlor heating apparatus. If you’ll just pass right on up-stairs, I’ll show you the guest-chamber. Be careful of your head, please!”With pomp and dignity Mr. Hinton was conducted to his apartment, and urged to make known any possible want that might occur to him.“I’ll be obliged to leave you for a spell,” said Mr. Opp, “in order to attend to the proper putting up of the horse. If you’ll just consider everything you see as yours, and make yourself entirely at home, I’ll come up for you in about twenty minutes.”Left alone, Hinton went to the bureau to pin a paper around the lamp, and as he did so he encountered a smiling face in the mirror. The face was undoubtedly his, but the smile seemed almost to belong to a stranger, so long had it been since he had seen it.He made a hasty toilet, and sat down with his back to the light to await his summons to dinner. The large room,[p182]poorly and scantily furnished, gave unmistakable evidence of having been arranged especially for his coming. There was no covering on the floor, there were no pictures on the wall; but the wall-paper was of a sufficiently decorative character to warrant the absence of other adornment. It may be said to have been a botanical paper, for roses and lilies and sunflowers and daisies grew in riotous profusion. The man who hung the paper evidently was of a scientific turn, for in matching the strips he had gained some results in cross-grafting that approached the miraculous.After sufficient time had elapsed to have stabled half a dozen horses, Hinton, whose appetite was becoming ravenous, went into the hall and started down the steps. When half-way down he heard a crash of china, and saw his host, in his shirt-sleeves, staggering under a large tray overcrowded with dishes.Beating a hasty retreat, he went quietly up the steps again, but not before he heard a querulous voice remonstrate:[p183]“Now, Mr. D., if you ain’t done busted two plates and a tea-cup!”Retiring to his room until the trouble should be adjusted, Hinton once more contemplated the floral paper. As he sat there, the door creaked slightly, and looking up, he thought he saw some one peeping at him through the crack. Later he distinctly heard the rustle of garments, a stealthy step, and the closing of the door across the hall.At last Mr. Opp came somewhat noisily up the steps and, flinging wide the door, invited him to descend. In the dining-room below the scene was nothing short of festal. All the candlesticks were filled with lighted candles, an American flag was draped across the top of the clock, and the little schooner that rocked behind the pendulum seemed fired with the determination to get somewhere to-night if it never did again. Even the owls on each end of the mantel wore a benignant look, and seemed to beam a welcome on the honored guest.[p184]But it was the dining-table that held the center of the stage, and that held everything else as well. The dinner, through its sequence of soup, meat, salad, and desert, was displayed in lavish hospitality. Cove etiquette evidently demanded that no square inch of the table-cloth should remain unoccupied.Seated at the table, with hands demurely folded, was the most grotesque figure that Hinton had ever seen. Clad in a queer, old-fashioned garment of faded blue cloth, with very full skirt and flowing sleeves, with her hair gathered into a tight knot at the back of her head, and a necklace of nutshells about her neck, a strange little lady sat and watched him with parted lips and wide, excited eyes.“If you’ll just sit here opposite my sister,” said Mr. Opp, not attempting an introduction, “I’ll as usual take my customary place at the head of the board.”It was all done with great éclat, but[p185]from the first there were unmistakable signs of nervousness on the part of the host. He left the table twice before the soup was removed, once to get the napkins which had been overlooked, and once to persuade his sister not to put the baked potatoes in her lap.When the critical moment for the trial of strength between him and the goose arrived, he was not in good condition. It was his first wrestling match with a goose, and his technical knowledge of the art consisted in the meager fact that the strategic point was to become master of the opponent’s legs. The fowl had, moreover, by nature of its being, the advantage of extreme slipperiness, an expedient recognized and made use of by the gladiators of old.Mr. Opp, limited as to space, and aware of a critical audience, rose to the occasion, and with jaw set and the light of conquest in his eye entered the fray. He pushed forward, and pulled back, he throttled, he went through facial and bodily contortions. The match was[p186]conducted in “the catch hold, first down to lose style,” and the honors seemed equally divided. At last, by the adroit administration of a left-leg stroke, Mr. Opp succeeded in throwing his adversary, but unfortunately he threw it too far.The victory, though brilliant, was not without its casualties. The goose, in its post-mortem flight, took its revenge, and the overturned cranberries sent a crimson stain across the white cloth, giving a sanguinary aspect to the scene.When order was restored and Mr. Opp had once more taken his seat, the little lady in the blue dress, who had remained quiet during the recent conflict, suddenly raised her voice in joyous song.“Now, Kippy,” warned Mr. Opp, putting a restraining hand on her arm, and looking at her appealingly. The little lady shrank back in her chair and her eyes filled as she clasped his hand tightly in both of hers.“As I was remarking,” Mr. Opp went steadily on, trying to behave as if it were[p187]quite natural for him to eat with his left hand, “the real value of the underground product in this country has been but fairly made apparent, and now that you capitalists are coming in to take a hold, there’s no way of forming a idea of the ultimate result.”Hinton, upon whom no phase of the situation had been lost, came valiantly to Mr. Opp’s rescue. He roused himself to follow his host’s lead in the conversation; he was apparently oblivious to the many irregularities of the dinner. In fact, it was one of the rare occasions upon which Hinton took the trouble to exert himself. Something in the dreary old room, with its brave attempt at cheer, in the half-witted little lady who was making such superhuman efforts to be good, and above all in the bombastic, egotistical, ignorant editor who was trying to keep up appearances against such heavy odds, touched the best and deepest that was in Hinton, and lifted him out of himself. Gradually he began to take the lead in the conversation. With great tact[p188]he relieved Mr. Opp of the necessity of entertaining, and gave him a chance to eat his dinner. He told stories so simple that even Miss Kippy loosened her hold on her brother’s hand to listen.When the sunset of the dinner in the form of a pumpkin pie had disappeared, the gentlemen retired to the fire.“Don’t you smoke?” asked Hinton, holding a match to his pipe.“Why, yes,” said Mr. Opp, “I have smoked occasional. It’s amazing how it assists you in creating newspaper articles. One of the greatest editorials I ever turned out was when I had a cigar in my mouth.”“Then why don’t you smoke?”Mr. Opp glanced over his shoulders at Aunt Tish, who, with Miss Kippy’s doubtful assistance, was clearing the table.“I don’t mind telling you,” he said confidentially, “that up to the present time I’ve experienced a good many business reverses and considerable family responsibility. I hope now in a year or[p189]two to be able to indulge them little extra items. The lack of money,” he added somewhat proudly, “is no disgrace; but I can’t deny it’s what you might call limiting.”Hinton smiled. “I think I’ve got a cigar somewhere about me. Here it is. Will you try it?”Mr. Opp didn’t care if he did, and from the manner in which he lighted it, and from the way in which he stood, with one elbow on the high mantel-shelf and his feet gracefully crossed, while he blew curling wreaths toward the ceiling, it was not difficult to reckon the extent of his self-denial.“Do you indulge much in the pleasure of reading?” he asked, looking at Hinton through the cloud of smoke.“I did,” said Hinton, drawing a deep breath.“It’s a great pastime,” said Mr. Opp. “I wonder if you are familiar with this here volume.” He took from the shelf “The Encyclopedia of Wonder, Beauty, and Wisdom.”[p190]“Hardly a thumb-nail edition,” said Hinton, receiving it with both hands.“Say, it’s a remarkable work,” said Mr. Opp, earnestly; “you ought to get yourself one. Facts in the first part, and the prettiest poetry you ever read in the back: a dollar down and fifty cents a month until paid for. Here, let me show you; read thatone.”“I can’t see it,” said Hinton.“I’ll get the lamp.”“Never mind, Opp; it isn’t that. You read it to me.”Mr. Opp complied with great pleasure, and having once started, he found it difficult to stop. From “Lord Ullin’s Daughter” he passed to “Curfew,” hence to “Barbara Frietchie” and “Young Lochinvar,” and as he read Hinton sat with closed eyes and traveled into the past.He saw a country school-house, and himself a youngster of eight competing for a prize. He was standing on a platform, and the children were below him, and behind him was a row of visitors.[p191]He was paralyzed with fear, but bursting with ambition. With one supreme effort he began his speech:
The old gentleman drew up a chair to the stove, then deliberately removed his overcoat and gloves.
It was when he took off his overshoes, however, that Mr. Opp and Nick exchanged looks of despair. They had a signal code which they habitually employed when storms swept the office, but in a calm like this they were powerless.
“Mighty sorry to hear about that uprisin’ in Guatemala,” said Mr. Tucker, who took a vivid interest in foreign affairs, but remained quite neutral about questions at home.
Mr. Opp moved about the office[p144]restlessly, knowing from experience that to sit down in the presence of Mr. Tucker was fatal. The only chance of escape lay in motion. He sharpened his pencils, straightened his desk, and tied up two bundles of papers while Mr. Tucker’s address on the probable future of the Central American republics continued. Then Mr. Opp was driven to extreme measures. He sent himself a telegram. This ruse was occasionally resorted to, to free the office from unwelcome visitors without offending them, and served incidentally to produce an effect which was not unpleasant to the editor.
Scribbling a message on a telegraph-blank procured for the purpose from Mr. Gallop, Mr. Opp handed it secretly to Nick, who in turn vanished out of the back door only to reappear at the front. Then the editor, with much ostentation, opened the envelop, and, after reading the contents, declared that he had business that would require immediate action. Would Mr. Tucker excuse him? If so, Nick would hold his coat.
[p145]“But,” protested Mr. Tucker, resisting the effort to force him into his overcoat, “I want to talk over this oil business. We don’t want to take any risks with those fellows. As I was a-saying to Mr. Hager—”
“Yes,” said Mr. Opp, taking his own hat from a nail, and apparently in great haste, “I know, of course. You are exactly right about it. We’ll just talk it over as we go up-street,” and linking his arm through Mr. Tucker’s, he steered him up the muddy channel of Main Street, and safely into the harbor of Our Hotel, where he anchored him breathless, but satisfied.
Having thus disposed, to the best of his ability, of his business for the week, Mr. Opp turned his attention to his yet more arduous domestic affairs. The menu for the guest’s dinner had weighed rather heavily upon him all day, for he had never before entertained in his own home. His heart had been set on turkey; but as that was out of the question, he compromised on a goose,[p146]adhering tenaciously to the cranberry sauce.
It was easier to decide on the goose than it was to procure it, and some time was consumed in the search. Mr. Opp brought all his mental powers to bear on the subject, and attacked the problem with a zeal that merited success.
When he reached home at noon with his arm full of bundles, Aunt Tish met him with lamentations.
“Dey ain’t but one clean table-cloth, an’ hit’s got a hole in hit, an’ I can’t find no sheets to put on de company baid, an’ dere ain’t three cups an’ saucers in de house what belongs to theyselves. I shorely doan know what you thinkin’ ’bout, Mr. D., to go an’ ast company fer. We-all never does hab company. An’ Miss Kippy she be’n habin’ a sort er spell, too, cryin’ to herself, an’ won’t tell me whut’s de matter.”
Mr. Opp shook the raindrops from his hat-brim, and laid the goose tenderly on the table; then he stepped inside the dining-room door, and stood watching the[p147]childish figure that sat on the floor before the fire. She was putting artificial flowers on her head, and every time they fell off, she dropped her head on her knees and sobbed softly to herself. Again and again she made the experiment, and again and again the faded roses came tumbling into her lap.
“I’ll fix ’em,” said Mr. Opp, coming up behind her; “don’t you cry about it, Kippy; I can make them stay, easy.” He searched around in the clothes-press until he found a paper box, which he tied securely upon Miss Kippy’s head.
“Now try it,” he cried; “put the flowers on your head; they’ll stay.”
Timidly, as if afraid of another disappointment, she tried, and when the flowers were caught in the box, she gave a sigh of satisfaction and delight.
“Well, sence I j’ined de church!” exclaimed Aunt Tish, who had been watching proceedings from the doorway; then she added, as Mr. Opp came into the hall: “Hit beats my time de way you handles dat pore chile. Sometimes she[p148]got jes good sense as you an’ me has. She ast me t’other day if she wasn’t crazy. I ’lowed no indeedy, dat crazy folks was lock up in a lunatic asylum. An’ she says ‘Where?’ ‘Up at Coreyville,’ I say. She went on playin’ jes as nice and happy. De chile’s all right ef she don’t git a fool notion; den dey ain’t nobody kin make out what she wants inceptin’ you. She been cryin’ over dem flowers ever sence breakfast.”
“Why didn’t you come after me?” demanded Mr. Opp.
“Jes to tie a box on her haid?” asked Aunt Tish. “Lor’, I thought you was busy makin’ dem newspapers.”
“So I am,” said Mr. Opp, “but whenever Miss Kippy gets to crying, I want you to come direct after me, do you hear? There ain’t anything more important than in keeping her from getting worried. Now, let’s have a look at that there table-cloth.”
All afternoon Mr. Opp encountered difficulties that would have disheartened a less courageous host. With the limited[p149]means at hand it seemed impossible to entertain in a manner befitting the dignity of the editor of “The Opp Eagle.” But Mr. Opp, though sorely perplexed, was not depressed, for beneath the disturbed surface of his thoughts there ran an undercurrent of pure joy. It caused him to make strange, unnatural sounds in his throat which he meant for song; it made him stop every now and then in his work to glance tenderly and reminiscently at the palm of his right hand, once even going so far as to touch it softly with his lips. For since the last sun had set there had been no waking moment but had held for him the image of a golden world inhabited solely by a pair of luminous eyes, one small hand, and, it must be added, a band-box.
Through the busy afternoon Mr. Opp referred constantly to his watch, and in spite of the manifold duties to be performed, longed impatiently for evening to arrive. At five o’clock he had moved the furniture from one bedroom to another, demonstrated beyond a possibility[p150]of doubt that a fire could not be made in the parlor grate without the chimney smoking, mended two chairs, hung a pair of curtains, and made three errands to town. So much accomplished, he turned his attention to the most difficult task of all.
“Kippy,” he said, going to the window where she was gleefully tracing the course of the raindrops as they chased down the pane. “Stop a minute, Kippy. Listen; I want to talk to you.”
Miss Kippy turned obediently, but her lips continued the dumb conversation she was having with the rain.
“How would you like,” said Mr. Opp, approaching the subject cautiously, “to play like you was a grown-up lady—just for to-night, you know?”
Miss Kippy looked at him suspiciously, and her lips stopped moving. Heretofore she had resisted all efforts to change her manner of dress.
“There’s a gentleman a-coming,” continued Mr. Opp, persuasively; “he’s going to remain over till to-morrow, and[p151]Aunt Tish is cooking that large goose for him, and I’ve been fixing up the spare room. We are all endeavoring to give him a nice time. Don’t you want to dress up for him?”
“Will it make him glad?” asked Miss Kippy.
Mr. Opp expiated on the enjoyment it would give the unknown guest to see Kippy in the blue merino dress which Aunt Tish had gotten out of Mrs. Opp’s old trunk up-stairs.
“And you’ll let Aunt Tish arrange your hair up like a lady?” went on Mr. Opp, pushing the point.
“Yes,” said Miss Kippy, after a moment, “Oxety will. She will make him glad.”
“Good!” said Mr. Opp. “And if you will sit nice and quiet and never say a word all through supper, I’ll get you a book with pictures in it, representing flowers and things.”
“Roses?” asked Miss Kippy, drawing a quick breath of delight; and when Mr. Opp nodded, she closed her eyes and[p152]smiled as if heaven were within sight. For Miss Kippy was like a harp across which some rough hand had swept, snapping all the strings but two, the high one of ecstasy and the low one of despair.
At six o’clock Mr. Opp went up to make his toilet. The rain, which had been merely rehearsing all day, was now giving a regular performance, and it played upon the windows, and went trilling through the gutters on the roof, while the old cedar-tree scraped an accompaniment on the corner of the porch below. But, nothing daunted, Mr. Opp donned his bravest attire. Cyclones and tornadoes could not have deterred him from making the most elaborate toilet at his command. To be sure, he turned up the hem of his trousers and tied a piece of oilcloth securely about each leg, and he also spread a handkerchief tenderly over his pink necktie; but these could be easily removed after he heard the boat whistle.
He dressed by the light of a sputtering candle before a small mirror the veracity of which was more than questionable. It[p153]presented him to himself as a person with a broad, flat face, the nose of which appeared directly between his eyes, and the mouth on a line with the top of his ears. But he made allowances for these idiosyncrasies on the part of the mirror; in fact, he made such liberal allowances that he was quite satisfied with the reflection.
“I’ll procure the hack to bring the company back in,” he said to Aunt Tish rather nervously as he passed through the kitchen. “You assist Miss Kippy to get arranged, and I’ll carry up the coal and set the table after I return back home. I can do it while the company is up in his room.”
All the way into town, as he splashed along the muddy road, he was alternately dreading the arrival of one passenger, and anticipating joyfully, the arrival of another. For as the time approached the impending presence of the company began to take ominous form, and Mr. Opp grew apprehensive.
At the landing he found everything[p154]dark and quiet. Evidently the packet was unusually late, and the committee appointed to meet it and conduct the guests to their various destinations was waiting somewhere uptown, probably at Your Hotel. Mr. Opp paused irresolute: his soul yearned for solitude, but the rain-soaked dock offered no shelter except the slight protection afforded by a pile of empty boxes. Selecting the driest and largest of these, he turned it on end, and by an adroit adjustment of his legs, succeeded in getting inside.
Below, the river rolled heavily past in the twilight, sending up tiny juts of water to meet the pelting rain. A cold, penetrating mist clung to the ground, and the wind carried complaining tales from earth to heaven. Everything breathed discomfort, but Mr. Opp knew it not.
His soul was sailing sunlit seas of bliss, fully embarked at last upon the most magic and immortal of all illusions. Sitting cramped and numb in his narrow quarters, he peered eagerly into the darkness, watching for the first lights of[p155]theSunny Southto twinkle through the gloom. And as he watched he chanted in a sing-song ecstasy:
“She is coming, my own, my sweet;Were it ever so airy a tread,My heart would hear her and beat,Were it earth in an earthy bed;My dust would hear her and beat,Had I lain for a century dead;Would start and tremble under her feet,And blossom in purple and red.”
“She is coming, my own, my sweet;Were it ever so airy a tread,My heart would hear her and beat,Were it earth in an earthy bed;My dust would hear her and beat,Had I lain for a century dead;Would start and tremble under her feet,And blossom in purple and red.”
“She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.”
WhenMiss Guinevere Gusty tripped up the gang-plank of theSunny Southlate that afternoon, vainly trying to protect herself from the driving rain, she was met half-way by the gallant old captain.
Tradition had it that the captain had once cast a favorable eye upon her mother; but Mrs. Gusty, being cross-eyed, had looked elsewhere.
“We are a pudding without plums,” he announced gaily, as he held the umbrella at an angle calculated to cause a waterspout in the crown of her hat—“not a lady on board. All we needed was a beautiful young person like you to liven us up. You haven’t forgotten those pretty tunes you played for me last trip, have you?”
[p157]Guinevere laughed, and shook her head. “That was just for you and the girls,” she said.
“Well, it’ll be for me and the boys this time. I’ve got a nice lot of gentlemen on board, going down to your place, by the way, to buy up all your oil-lands. Now I know you are going to play for us if I ask you to.”
“My goodness! are they on this boat?” asked Guinevere, in a flutter. “I am so glad; I just love to watch city people.”
“Yes,” said the captain; “that was Mr. Mathews talking to me as you came aboard—the one with the white beard. Everything that man touches turns to money. That glum-looking young fellow over there is his secretary. Hinton is his name; curious sort of chap.”
Guinevere followed his glance with eager interest. “The solemn one with the cap pulled over his eyes?” she asked.
The captain nodded. “All the rest are inside playing cards and having a good time; but he’s been moping around like[p158]that ever since they got on board. I’ve got to go below now, but when I come back, you’ll play some for me, won’t you?”
Guinevere protested violently, but something within her whispered that if the captain was very insistent she would render the selection which had won her a gold medal at the last commencement.
Slipping into the saloon, she dropped quietly into one of the very corpulent chairs which steamboats particularly affect, and, unobserved, proceeded to give herself up to the full enjoyment of the occasion. The journey from Coreyville to the Cove, in the presence of the distinguished strangers, had assumed the nature of an adventure. Giving her imagination free rein, Miss Gusty, without apology, transported the commonplace group of business men at the card-table into the wildest realms of romance. The fact that their language, appearance, and manner spoke of the city, was for her a sufficient peg upon which to hang innumerable conjectures. So deep[p159]was she in her speculations that she did not hear the captain come up behind her.
“Where have you been hiding?” he asked in stentorian tones. “I was afraid you’d gotten out on deck and the wind had blown you overboard. Don’t you think it’s about time for that little tune? We are forty minutes late now, and we’ll lose another half-hour taking on freight at Smither’s Landing. I’ve been banking on hearing that little dance-piece you played for me before.”
“I can’t play—before them,” said Guinevere, nervously.
The captain laughed. “Yes, you can; they’ll like it. Mr. Mathews said something mighty pretty about you when you came on board.”
“He didn’t—honest?” said Guinevere, blushing. “Oh, truly, Captain, I can’t play!” But even as she spoke she unbuttoned her gloves. Her accomplishment was clamoring for an exhibition, and though her spirit failed her, she twirled the piano-stool and took her seat.
[p160]The group of men at the table, heretofore indifferent to proceedings, looked up when a thundering chord broke the stillness. A demure young girl, with gentle, brown eyes, was making a furious and apparently unwarranted attack upon the piano. Her one desire evidently was to get inside of the instrument. With insinuating persistence she essayed an entrance through the treble, and, being unable to effect it, fell upon the bass, and exhausted a couple of rounds of ammunition there. The assault on both flanks being unsuccessful, she resorted to strategy, crossing her hands and assailing each wing of the enemy from an unexpected quarter. When this move failed, she evidently became incensed, and throwing aside diplomacy, rallied all her forces, charging her artillery up to the highest note, then thundering down to the lowest, beating down the keys as fast as they dared to rise. In the midst of the carnage, when the clamor was at its height and victory seemed imminent, she[p161]suddenly paused, with one hand in air and her head gently inclined, and, tapping out two silvery bugle-notes of truce, raised the siege.
The appalling silence that ensued might have hung above a battle-field of slain and wounded. The captain bit his mustache.
“That wasn’t exactly the one I meant,” he said. “I want that little dance-tune with the jingle to it.”
Miss Gusty, disappointed and surprised at the effect which her masterpiece had failed to produce, was insisting with flushed cheeks that she could play no more, when the gentleman who was called Mr. Mathews rose from the table and came toward her. His hair and pointed beard were white, but his eyes were still young, and he looked at her while he spoke to the captain.
“I beg your pardon, Captain,” he was saying in smooth, even tones, “can’t you persuade the young lady to sing something for us?”
“I never took vocal,” said Guinevere,[p162]looking at him frankly. “I’m making a specialty of instrumental.”
The gentleman looked sidewise at his companions and stroked his beard gravely. “But youdosing?” he persisted.
“Just popular music,” said Guinevere. “I was going to take ‘The Holy City’ and ‘The Rosary’ last year, but the vocal teacher got sick.”
In response to a very urgent invitation, she took her seat again, and this time sang a sentimental ditty concerning the affairs of one “Merry Little Milly in the Month of May.”
This selection met with prompt favor, and the men left their cards, and gathered about the piano, demanding an encore.
Miss Guinevere’s voice was very small, and her accompaniment very loud, but, in her effort to please, she unconsciously became dramatic in her expression, and frowned and smiled and lifted her brows in sympathy with the emotions of the damsel in the song. And Miss Guinevere’s eyes being[p163]expressive and her lips very red, the result proved most satisfactory to the audience.
One stout young man in particular expressed himself in such unrestrained terms of enthusiasm, that Guinevere, after singing several songs, became visibly embarrassed. Upon the plea of being too warm she made her escape, half-promising to return and sing again later on.
Flushed with the compliments and the excitement, and a little uncertain about the propriety of it all, she hurried through the swing-door and, turning suddenly on the deck, stumbled over something in the darkness.
It proved to be a pair of long legs that were stretched out in front of a silent figure, who shot a hand out to restore Miss Gusty to an upright position. But the deck was slippery from the rain, and before he could catch her, she went down on her knees.
“Did it hurt you?” a voice asked anxiously.
[p164]“It don’t matter about me,” answered Guinevere, “just so it didn’t spoil my new dress. I’m afraid there’s an awful tear in it.”
“I hope not,” said the voice. “I’d hate to be guilty of dress slaughter even in the second degree. Sure you are not hurt? Sit down a minute; here’s a chair right behind you, out of the wind.”
Guinevere groped about for the chair. “Mother can mend it,” she went on, voicing her anxiety, “if it isn’t too bad.”
“And if it is?” asked the voice.
“I’ll have to wear it, anyhow. It’s brand splinter new, the first one I ever had made by a sure-enough dressmaker.”
“My abominable legs!” muttered the voice.
Guinevere laughed, and all at once became curious concerning the person who belonged to the legs.
He had dropped back into his former position, with feet outstretched, hands in[p165]pockets, and cap pulled over his eyes, and he did not seem inclined to continue the conversation.
She drew in deep breaths of the cool air, and watched the big side-wheel churn the black water into foam, and throw off sprays of white into the darkness. She liked to be out there in the sheltered corner, watching the rain dash past, and to hear the wind whistling up the river. She was glad to be in the dark, too, away from all those gentlemen, so ready with their compliments. But the sudden change from the heated saloon to the cold deck chilled her, and she sneezed.
Her companion stirred. “If you are going to stay out here, you ought to put something around you,” he said irritably.
“I’m not very cold. Besides, I don’t want to go in. I don’t want them to make me sing any more. Mother’ll be awfully provoked if I take cold, though. Do you think it’s too damp?”
“There’s my overcoat,” said the[p166]man, indifferently; “you can put that around you if you want to.”
She struggled into the large sleeves, and he made no effort to help her.
“You don’t like music, do you?” she asked naïvely as she settled back in her chair.
“Well, yes,” he said slowly. “I should say the thing I dislike least in the world is music.”
“Then why didn’t you come in to hear me play?” asked Guinevere, emboldened by the darkness.
“Oh, I could hear it outside,” he assured her; “besides, I have a pair of defective lamps in my head. The electric lights hurt my eyes.”
He struck a match as he spoke to relight his pipe, and by its flare she caught her first glimpse of his face, a long, slender, sensitive face, brooding and unhappy.
“I guess you are Mr. Hinton,” she said as if to herself.
He turned with the lighted match in his hand. “How did you know that?”
[p167]“The captain told me. He pointed out you and Mr. Mathews, but he didn’t tell me any of the rest.”
“A branch of your education that can afford to remain neglected,” said Mr. Hinton as he puffed at his pipe.
The door of the saloon swung open, and the chubby gentleman appeared in the light, shading his eyes, and calling out that they were all waiting for the little canary-bird.
“I don’t want to go,” whispered Guinevere, shrinking back into the shadow.
The chubby gentleman peered up and down the deck, then, assailed by a gust of wind, beat a hasty retreat.
“I don’t like him,” announced Guinevere, drawing a breath of relief. “It isn’t just because he’s fat and ugly; it’s the silly way he looks at you.”
“What a pity you can’t tell him so!” said her companion, dryly. “Such blasphemy might do him good. He is the scion of a distinguished family made wealthy by the glorious sale of pork.”
[p168]“Are all the gentlemen millionaires?” asked Guinevere in awe.
“Present company excepted,” qualified Hinton.
“It’ll seem awful small to them down in the Cove. Why, we haven’t got room enough at the two hotels to put them all up.”
“Oh, you live there, do you?”
“Yes; I’ve just been up at Coreyville spending the night. I used to hate it down at the Cove, it was so little and stupid; but I like it better now.”
There was a long silence, during which each pursued a widely different line of thought.
“We have got a newspaper at the Cove now,” announced Guinevere. “It’s an awful nice paper, called ‘The Opp Eagle.’”
“Opp?” repeated Hinton. “Oh, yes, that was the man I telephoned to. What sort of chap is he, anyhow?”
“He’s awfully smart,” said Guinevere, her cheeks tingling. “Not so much[p169]book learning, but a fine brain. The preacher says he’s got a natural gift of language. You ought to see some of his editorials.”
“Hiding his light under a bushel, isn’t he?”
“That’s just it,” said Guinevere, glad to expatiate on the subject. “If Mr. Opp could get in a bigger place and get more chances, he’d have a lot more show. But he won’t leave Miss Kippy. She’s his sister, you know; there is only the two of them, and she’s kind of crazy, and has to have somebody take care of her. Mother thinks it’s just awful he don’t send her to an asylum, but I know how he feels.”
“Is he a young man?” asked Mr. Hinton.
“Well—no, not exactly; he’s just seventeen years and two months older than I am.”
“Oh,” said Hinton, comprehensively.
There was another long pause, during which Guinevere turned things over in[p170]her mind, and Mr. Hinton knocked the ashes from his pipe.
“I think girls seem a good deal older than they are, don’t you?” she asked presently.
“Some girls,” Hinton agreed.
“How old would you take me for?”
“In the dark?”
“Yes.”
“About twelve.”
“Oh, that’s not fair,” said Guinevere. “I’m eighteen, and lots of people take me for twenty.”
“That is when they can see you,” said Hinton.
Guinevere decided that she did not like him. She leaned back in her corner and tried not to talk. But this course had its disadvantage, for when she was silent he seemed to forget she was there.
Once he took a turn up and down the deck, and when he came back, he stood for a long time leaning over the rail and gazing into the water. As he turned to sit down she heard him mutter to himself:
[p171]“… That no life lives forever;That dead men rise up never;That even the weariest riverWinds somewhere safe to sea.”
[p171]“… That no life lives forever;That dead men rise up never;That even the weariest riverWinds somewhere safe to sea.”
[p171]“… That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.”
Guinevere repeated the words softly to herself, and wondered what they meant. She was still thinking about them when a dim red light in the distance told her they were approaching the Cove. She slipped off the heavy overcoat and began to put on her gloves.
“Hello! we are getting in, are we?” asked Hinton, shaking himself into an upright position. “Is that Cove City where the big red light bores into the water like a corkscrew?”
They moved to the bow of the boat and watched as it changed its course and made for the opposite shore.
“Did you mean,” said Guinevere, absently, “that you wanted it all to end like that? For us to just go out into nothing, like the river gets lost in the ocean?”
Hinton glanced at her in surprise, and[p172]discovered that there was an unusually thoughtful face under the sweeping brim of the red hat. The fact that she was pretty was less evident to him than the fact that she was wistful. His mood was sensitive to minor chords.
“I guess youareeighteen,” he said, and he smiled, and Guinevere smiled back, and the chubby gentleman, coming suddenly out upon them, went in again and slammed the door.
The lights on the landing twinkled brighter and brighter, and presently figures could be seen moving here and there. The steamer, grumbling with every chug of the wheel, was brought around, and the roustabouts crowded along the rail, ready to make her fast.
Guinevere and Hinton stood on the upper deck under his umbrella and waited.
Directly below them on the dock a small, fantastic figure made frantic efforts to attract their attention. He stood uncovered, regardless of the rain, madly waving his hat.
[p173]“Is that anybody you know?” asked Hinton.
Guinevere, who was watching the lights on the water, started guiltily.
“Where?” she asked.
“Down to the right—that comical little codger in the checked suit.”
Guinevere looked, then turned upon Hinton eyes that were big with indignation. “Why, of course,” she said; “that’s Mr. Opp.”
AsWillard Hinton stood on the porch of Your Hotel and waited for his host for the night to call for him, he was in that state of black dejection that comes to a young man when Ambition has proposed to Fortune, and been emphatically rejected. For six years he had worked persistently and ceaselessly toward a given goal, doing clerical work by day and creative work by night, going from shorthand into longhand, and from numerical figures into figures of speech. For the way that Hinton’s soul was traveling was the Inky Way, and at its end lay Authorship.
Hinton had taken himself and his work seriously, and served an apprenticeship of hard study and conscientious[p175]preparation. So zealous was he, in fact, that he had arrived at the second stage of his great enterprise with a teeming brain, a practised hand, and a pair of affected eyes over which the oculists shook their heads and offered little encouragement.
For four months he had implicitly obeyed orders, attending only to his regular work, eating and sleeping with exemplary regularity, and spending all of his spare time in the open air. But the ravages made in the long nights dedicated to the Muses were not to be so easily repaired, and his eyes, instead of improving, were growing rapidly worse. The question of holding his position had slipped from a matter of months into weeks.
As he stood on the porch, he could hear the bustle of entertainment going on within the limited quarters of Your Hotel. Jimmy Fallows was in his element. As bartender, head waiter, and jovial landlord he was playing a triple bill to a crowded house. Occasionally he[p176]opened the door and urged Hinton to come inside.
“Mr. Opp’ll be here ’fore long,” he would say. “He’s expecting you, but he had to stop by to take his girl home. You better step in and get a julep.”
But Hinton, wrapped in the gloom of his own thoughts, preferred to remain where he was. Already he seemed to belong to the dark, to be a thing apart from his fellow-men. He shrank from companionship and sympathy as he shrank from the light. He longed to crawl away like a sick animal into some lonely corner and die. Whichever way he turned, the great specter of darkness loomed before him. At first he had fought, then he had philosophically stood still, now he was retreating. Again and again he told himself that he would meet it like a man, and again and again he shrank back, ready to seek escape anywhere,anyhow.
“O God, if I weren’t so damnably young!” he cried to himself, beating his clenched hand against his brow. “More[p177]than half my life yet to live, and in the dark!”
The rattle of wheels and the stopping of a light in front of the hotel made him pull himself together.
The small gentleman in the checked suit whom he had seen on the wharf strode in without seeing him. He paused before he opened the door and smoothed his scanty locks and rearranged his pink necktie. Then he drew in his chin, threw out his chest, and with a carefully prepared smile of welcome entered.
The buzz within increased, and it was some minutes before the door opened again and Jimmy Fallows was heard saying:
“He’s round here some place. Mr. Hinton! Oh, here you are! Let me make you acquainted with Mr. Opp; he’s going to take you out to his house for the night.”
No sooner had Hinton’s hand been released from Mr. Opp’s cordial grasp than he felt that gentleman’s arm thrust[p178]through his, and was aware of being rapidly conducted down the steps and out to the vehicle.
“On no possible account,” Mr. Opp was saying, with Hinton’s grip in one hand and two umbrellas in the other, “would I have allowed myself to be late, except that it was what you might consider absolutely necessary. Now, you get right in; just take all that robe. No, the grip can go right here between my feet. We trust that you will not regard the weather in any ways synonymous with the state of our feelings of welcome.”
Mr. Hinton remarked rather shortly that the weather never mattered to him one way or another.
“That’s precisely like myself,” Mr. Opp went on. “I come of very sturdy, enduring stock. For a man of my size I doubt if you’d find a finer constitution in the country. You wouldn’t particularly think it to look at me, now would you?”
Hinton looked at the small, stooping[p179]figure, and at the peaked, sallow face, and said rather sarcastically that he would not.
“Strong as an ox,” declared Mr. Opp.
Just here the horse stumbled, and they were jerked violently forward.
Mr. Opp apologized. “Just at present we are having a little difficulty with our country roads. We have taken the matter up in ‘The Opp Eagle’ last week. All these things take time to regulate, but we are getting there. This oil boom is going to revolutionize things. It’s my firm and abiding conviction that we are on the eve of a great change. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if this town grew to be one of the principalest cities on the Ohio River.”
“To be a worthy eyrie for your ‘Eagle’?” suggested Hinton.
“‘The Opp Eagle,’” corrected Mr. Opp. “I don’t know as you know that I am the sole proprietor, as well as being the editor in addition.”
“No,” said Hinton, “I did not know. How does it happen that a man with such[p180]responsibilities can take time to dabble in oil-wells?”
“You don’t know me,” said Mr. Opp, with a paternal smile at his own ability. “Promoting and organizing comes as natural to me as breathing the atmosphere. I am engineering this scheme with one hand, the Town Improvement League with another, and ‘The Opp Eagle’ with another. Then, in a minor kind of way, I am a active Odd Fellow, first cornetist in the Unique Orchestra, and a director in the bank. And beside,” Mr. Opp concluded with some coyness, “there is the natural personal social diversions that most young men indulge in.”
By this time they had reached the gray old house on the river-bank, and Mr. Opp hitched the horse and held the lantern, while Hinton stepped from one stony island to another in the sea of mud.
“Just enter right into the dining-room,” said Mr. Opp, throwing open the door. “Unfortunately we are having a[p181]temporary difficulty with the parlor heating apparatus. If you’ll just pass right on up-stairs, I’ll show you the guest-chamber. Be careful of your head, please!”
With pomp and dignity Mr. Hinton was conducted to his apartment, and urged to make known any possible want that might occur to him.
“I’ll be obliged to leave you for a spell,” said Mr. Opp, “in order to attend to the proper putting up of the horse. If you’ll just consider everything you see as yours, and make yourself entirely at home, I’ll come up for you in about twenty minutes.”
Left alone, Hinton went to the bureau to pin a paper around the lamp, and as he did so he encountered a smiling face in the mirror. The face was undoubtedly his, but the smile seemed almost to belong to a stranger, so long had it been since he had seen it.
He made a hasty toilet, and sat down with his back to the light to await his summons to dinner. The large room,[p182]poorly and scantily furnished, gave unmistakable evidence of having been arranged especially for his coming. There was no covering on the floor, there were no pictures on the wall; but the wall-paper was of a sufficiently decorative character to warrant the absence of other adornment. It may be said to have been a botanical paper, for roses and lilies and sunflowers and daisies grew in riotous profusion. The man who hung the paper evidently was of a scientific turn, for in matching the strips he had gained some results in cross-grafting that approached the miraculous.
After sufficient time had elapsed to have stabled half a dozen horses, Hinton, whose appetite was becoming ravenous, went into the hall and started down the steps. When half-way down he heard a crash of china, and saw his host, in his shirt-sleeves, staggering under a large tray overcrowded with dishes.
Beating a hasty retreat, he went quietly up the steps again, but not before he heard a querulous voice remonstrate:
[p183]“Now, Mr. D., if you ain’t done busted two plates and a tea-cup!”
Retiring to his room until the trouble should be adjusted, Hinton once more contemplated the floral paper. As he sat there, the door creaked slightly, and looking up, he thought he saw some one peeping at him through the crack. Later he distinctly heard the rustle of garments, a stealthy step, and the closing of the door across the hall.
At last Mr. Opp came somewhat noisily up the steps and, flinging wide the door, invited him to descend. In the dining-room below the scene was nothing short of festal. All the candlesticks were filled with lighted candles, an American flag was draped across the top of the clock, and the little schooner that rocked behind the pendulum seemed fired with the determination to get somewhere to-night if it never did again. Even the owls on each end of the mantel wore a benignant look, and seemed to beam a welcome on the honored guest.
[p184]But it was the dining-table that held the center of the stage, and that held everything else as well. The dinner, through its sequence of soup, meat, salad, and desert, was displayed in lavish hospitality. Cove etiquette evidently demanded that no square inch of the table-cloth should remain unoccupied.
Seated at the table, with hands demurely folded, was the most grotesque figure that Hinton had ever seen. Clad in a queer, old-fashioned garment of faded blue cloth, with very full skirt and flowing sleeves, with her hair gathered into a tight knot at the back of her head, and a necklace of nutshells about her neck, a strange little lady sat and watched him with parted lips and wide, excited eyes.
“If you’ll just sit here opposite my sister,” said Mr. Opp, not attempting an introduction, “I’ll as usual take my customary place at the head of the board.”
It was all done with great éclat, but[p185]from the first there were unmistakable signs of nervousness on the part of the host. He left the table twice before the soup was removed, once to get the napkins which had been overlooked, and once to persuade his sister not to put the baked potatoes in her lap.
When the critical moment for the trial of strength between him and the goose arrived, he was not in good condition. It was his first wrestling match with a goose, and his technical knowledge of the art consisted in the meager fact that the strategic point was to become master of the opponent’s legs. The fowl had, moreover, by nature of its being, the advantage of extreme slipperiness, an expedient recognized and made use of by the gladiators of old.
Mr. Opp, limited as to space, and aware of a critical audience, rose to the occasion, and with jaw set and the light of conquest in his eye entered the fray. He pushed forward, and pulled back, he throttled, he went through facial and bodily contortions. The match was[p186]conducted in “the catch hold, first down to lose style,” and the honors seemed equally divided. At last, by the adroit administration of a left-leg stroke, Mr. Opp succeeded in throwing his adversary, but unfortunately he threw it too far.
The victory, though brilliant, was not without its casualties. The goose, in its post-mortem flight, took its revenge, and the overturned cranberries sent a crimson stain across the white cloth, giving a sanguinary aspect to the scene.
When order was restored and Mr. Opp had once more taken his seat, the little lady in the blue dress, who had remained quiet during the recent conflict, suddenly raised her voice in joyous song.
“Now, Kippy,” warned Mr. Opp, putting a restraining hand on her arm, and looking at her appealingly. The little lady shrank back in her chair and her eyes filled as she clasped his hand tightly in both of hers.
“As I was remarking,” Mr. Opp went steadily on, trying to behave as if it were[p187]quite natural for him to eat with his left hand, “the real value of the underground product in this country has been but fairly made apparent, and now that you capitalists are coming in to take a hold, there’s no way of forming a idea of the ultimate result.”
Hinton, upon whom no phase of the situation had been lost, came valiantly to Mr. Opp’s rescue. He roused himself to follow his host’s lead in the conversation; he was apparently oblivious to the many irregularities of the dinner. In fact, it was one of the rare occasions upon which Hinton took the trouble to exert himself. Something in the dreary old room, with its brave attempt at cheer, in the half-witted little lady who was making such superhuman efforts to be good, and above all in the bombastic, egotistical, ignorant editor who was trying to keep up appearances against such heavy odds, touched the best and deepest that was in Hinton, and lifted him out of himself. Gradually he began to take the lead in the conversation. With great tact[p188]he relieved Mr. Opp of the necessity of entertaining, and gave him a chance to eat his dinner. He told stories so simple that even Miss Kippy loosened her hold on her brother’s hand to listen.
When the sunset of the dinner in the form of a pumpkin pie had disappeared, the gentlemen retired to the fire.
“Don’t you smoke?” asked Hinton, holding a match to his pipe.
“Why, yes,” said Mr. Opp, “I have smoked occasional. It’s amazing how it assists you in creating newspaper articles. One of the greatest editorials I ever turned out was when I had a cigar in my mouth.”
“Then why don’t you smoke?”
Mr. Opp glanced over his shoulders at Aunt Tish, who, with Miss Kippy’s doubtful assistance, was clearing the table.
“I don’t mind telling you,” he said confidentially, “that up to the present time I’ve experienced a good many business reverses and considerable family responsibility. I hope now in a year or[p189]two to be able to indulge them little extra items. The lack of money,” he added somewhat proudly, “is no disgrace; but I can’t deny it’s what you might call limiting.”
Hinton smiled. “I think I’ve got a cigar somewhere about me. Here it is. Will you try it?”
Mr. Opp didn’t care if he did, and from the manner in which he lighted it, and from the way in which he stood, with one elbow on the high mantel-shelf and his feet gracefully crossed, while he blew curling wreaths toward the ceiling, it was not difficult to reckon the extent of his self-denial.
“Do you indulge much in the pleasure of reading?” he asked, looking at Hinton through the cloud of smoke.
“I did,” said Hinton, drawing a deep breath.
“It’s a great pastime,” said Mr. Opp. “I wonder if you are familiar with this here volume.” He took from the shelf “The Encyclopedia of Wonder, Beauty, and Wisdom.”
[p190]“Hardly a thumb-nail edition,” said Hinton, receiving it with both hands.
“Say, it’s a remarkable work,” said Mr. Opp, earnestly; “you ought to get yourself one. Facts in the first part, and the prettiest poetry you ever read in the back: a dollar down and fifty cents a month until paid for. Here, let me show you; read thatone.”
“I can’t see it,” said Hinton.
“I’ll get the lamp.”
“Never mind, Opp; it isn’t that. You read it to me.”
Mr. Opp complied with great pleasure, and having once started, he found it difficult to stop. From “Lord Ullin’s Daughter” he passed to “Curfew,” hence to “Barbara Frietchie” and “Young Lochinvar,” and as he read Hinton sat with closed eyes and traveled into the past.
He saw a country school-house, and himself a youngster of eight competing for a prize. He was standing on a platform, and the children were below him, and behind him was a row of visitors.[p191]He was paralyzed with fear, but bursting with ambition. With one supreme effort he began his speech: