Oh, the young Lochinvar has came out of the west!He got no further; a shout from the big boys and a word from the teacher, and he burst into tears and fled for refuge to his mother. How the lines brought it all back! He could feel her arms about him now, and her cheek against his, and hear again her words of comfort. In all the years since she had been taken from him he had never wanted her so insistently as during those few moments that Mr. Opp’s high voice was doing its worst for the long-suffering Lochinvar.“Mr. D.,” said a complaining voice from the doorway, “Miss Kippy won’t lemme tek her dress off to go to baid. She ’low she gwine sleep in hit.”Mr. Opp abruptly descended from his elocutionary flight, and asked to be excused for a few moments.[p192]“Just a little domestic friction,” he assured Hinton; “you can glance over the rest of the poems, and I’ll be back soon.”Hinton, left alone, paced restlessly up and down the room. The temporary diversion was over, and he was once more face to face with his problem. He went to the table, and, taking a note from his pocket, bent over the lamp to read it. The lines blurred and ran together, but a word here and there recalled the contents. It was from Mr. Mathews, who preferred writing disagreeable things to saying them. Mr. Mathews, the note said, had been greatly annoyed recently by repeated errors in the reports of his secretary; he was neither as rapid nor as accurate as formerly, and an improvement would have to be made, or a change would be deemed advisable.“Delicate tact!” sneered Hinton, crushing the paper in his hand. “Courtesy sometimes begets a request, and the shark shrinks from conferring favors. And I’ve got to stick it out, to go on[p193]accepting condescending disapproval until a ‘change is deemed advisable.’”He dropped his head on his arms, and so deep was he in his bitter thoughts that he did not hear Mr. Opp come into the room. That gentleman stood for a moment in great embarrassment; then he stepped noiselessly out, and heralded his second coming by rattling the door-knob.The wind had risen to a gale, and it shrieked about the old house and tugged at the shutters and rattled the panes incessantly.“You take the big chair,” urged Mr. Opp, who had just put on a fresh log and sent the flames dancing up the chimney; “and here’s a pitcher of hard cider whenever you feel the need of a little refreshment. You ain’t a married man I would judge, Mr. Hinton.”“Thank the Lord, no!” exclaimed Hinton.“Well,” said Mr. Opp, pursing his lips and smiling, “you know that’s just where I think us young men are making a mistake.”[p194]“Matrimony,” said Hinton, “is about the only catastrophe that hasn’t befallen me during my short and rocky career.”“See here,” said Mr. Opp, “I used to feel that way, too.”“Before you met her?” suggested Hinton.Mr. Opp looked pleased but embarrassed. “I can’t deny there is a young lady,” he said; “but she is quite young as yet. In fact, I don’t mind telling you she’s just about half my age.”Hinton, instead of putting two and two together, added eighteen to eighteen. “And you are about thirty-six?” he asked.“Exactly,” said Mr. Opp, surprised. “I am most generally considered a long sight younger.”From matrimony the conversation drifted to oil-wells, then to journalism, and finally to a philosophical discussion of life itself. Mr. Opp got beyond his depth again and again, and at times he became so absorbed that he gave a very poor imitation of himself, and showed[p195]signs of humility that were rarely if ever visible.Hinton meantime was taking soundings, and sometimes his plummet stopped where it started, and sometimes it dropped to an unexpected depth.“Well,” he said at last, rising, “we must go to bed. You’ll go on climbing a ladder in the air, and I’ll go on burrowing like a mole in the ground, and what is the good of it all? What chance have either of us for coming out anywhere? You can fool yourself; I can’t: that’s the difference.”Mr. Opp’s unusual mental exertions had apparently affected his entire body, his legs were tightly wrapped about each other, his arms were locked, and his features were drawn into an amazing pucker of protest.“That ain’t it,” he said emphatically, struggling valiantly to express his conviction: “this here life business ain’t run on any such small scale as that. According to my notion, or understanding, it’s—well—what you might call, in military[p196]figures, a fight.” He paused a moment and tied himself if possible even into a tighter knot, then proceeded slowly, groping his way: “Of course there’s some that just remains around in camp, afraid to fight and afraid to desert, just sort of indulging in conversation, you might say, about the rest of the army. Then there is the cowards and deserters. But a decent sort of a individual, or rather soldier, carries his orders around with him, and the chief and principal thing he’s got to do is to follow them. What the fight is concerning, or in what manner the general is a-aiming to bring it all correct in the end, ain’t, according to my conclusion, a particle of our business.”Having arrived at this point of the discussion in a somewhat heated and indignant state, Mr. Opp suddenly remembered his duties as host. With a lordly wave of the hand he dismissed the subject, and conducted Hinton in state to his bed-chamber, where he insisted upon lighting the fire and arranging the bed.[p197]“It was Mr. Opp saying his prayers”[p199]Hinton sat for a long time before undressing, listening to the wind in the chimney, to the scrape, scrape of the cedar on the roof, and to the yet more dismal sounds that were echoing in his heart. Everything about the old house spoke of degeneration, decay; yet in the midst of it lived a man who asked no odds of life, who took what came, and who lived with a zest, an abandon, a courage that were baffling. Self-deception, egotism, cheap optimism—could they bring a man to this state of mind? Hinton wondered bitterly what Opp would do in his position; suppose his sight was threatened, how far would his foolish self-delusion serve him then?But he could not imagine Mr. Opp, lame, halt, or blind, giving up the fight. There was that in the man—egotism, courage, whatever it was—that would never recognize defeat, that quality that wins out of a life of losing the final victory.Before he retired, Hinton found there was no drinking water in his room, and,[p200]remembering a pitcher full in the dining-room, he took the candle and softly opened his door. The sudden cold draft from the hall made the candle flare, but as it steadied, Hinton saw that an old cot had been placed across the door opposite his, as if on guard, and that beside it knelt an ungainly figure in white, with his head clasped in his hands. It was Mr. Opp saying his prayers.[p201]XIIThevisit of the capitalists marked the beginning of a long and profitable spell of insomnia for the Cove. The little town had gotten a gnat in its eye when Mr. Opp arrived, and now that it had become involved in a speculation that threatened to develop into a boom, it found sleep and tranquillity a thing of the past.The party of investigators had found such remarkable conditions that they were eager to buy up the ground at once; but they met with unexpected opposition.At a meeting which will go down to posterity in the annals of Cove City, the Turtle Creek Land Company, piloted by the intrepid Mr. Opp, had held its course[p202]against persuasion, threats, and bribes. There was but one plank in the company’s platform, and that was a determination not to sell. To this plank they clung through the storm of opposition, through the trying calm of indifference that followed, until a truce was declared.Finally an agreement was reached by which the Turtle Creek Land Company was to lease its ground to the capitalists, receive a given per cent. of the oil produced, and maintain the right to buy stock up to a large and impossible amount at any time during the ensuing year.Close upon this contract came men and machinery to open up a test well. For weeks hauling was done up the creek bottom, there being no road leading to the oil spring where the first drilling was to be done.The town watched the operations with alternate scorn and interest. It was facetious when water and quicksands were encountered, and inclined to be sarcastic when work was suspended on account of[p203]the weather. But one day, after the pipe had been driven to a considerable depth and the rock below had been drilled for six inches, the drill suddenly fell into a crevice, and upon investigation the hole was found to be nearly full of petroleum.The Cove promptly went into a state of acute hysteria. Speculation spread like the measles, breaking out in all manner of queer and unexpected places. Everybody who could command a dollar promptly converted it into oil stock. Miss Jim Fenton borrowed money from her cousin in the city, and plunged recklessly; the Missionary Band raffled off three quilts and bought a share with the proceeds; Mr. Tucker foreclosed two mortgages on life-long friends in order to raise more money; while the amount of stock purchased by Mr. D. Webster Opp was limited only by his credit at the bank.The one note of warning that was sounded came from Mrs. Fallows, who sat on the porch of Your Hotel, and, like the Greek Chorus, foretold the disasters[p204]that would befall, and prophesied nothing but evil for the entire enterprise. Even the urbane Jimmy became ruffled by her insistent iteration, and declared that she “put him in mind of a darned old whip-o’-will.”But Mrs. Fallows’s piping note was lost in the gale of enthusiasm. Farmers coming into town on Saturday became infected and carried the fever into the country. The entire community suspended business to discuss the exciting situation.These were champagne days for Mr. Opp. Life seemed one long, sparkling, tingling draft and he was drinking it to Guinevere. If her eyes drooped and she met his smile with a sigh, he saw it not, for the elixir had gone to his head.Compelled to find some outlet for his energy, he took advantage of the Cove’s unwonted animation and plunged into municipal reform. “The Opp Eagle” demanded streets, it demanded lamp-posts, it demanded temperance. The right of pigs to take their daily siesta in[p205]the middle of Main Street was questioned and fiercely denied. Dry-goods boxes, which for years had been the only visible means of support for divers youths of indolent nature, were held up to such scathing ridicule that the owners were forced to remove them.The policies suggested by Mr. Opp, the editor, were promptly acted upon by Mr. Opp, the citizen. So indignant did he become when he read his own editorials that nothing short of immediate action was to be considered. He arranged a reform party and appointed himself leader. Mat Lucas, he made Superintendent of Streets; Mr. Gallop, chairman of the Committee on City Lights. In fact, he formed enough committees to manage a Presidential campaign.The attitude of the town toward him was that of a large lump of dough to a small cake of yeast. It was willing to be raised, but doubtful of the motive power.“I’d feel surer,” said Jimmy Fallows, “if his intellect was the standard[p206]size. It appears so big to him he can’t get his language ready-made; he has to have it made to order.”But since the successful management of the oil-wells, Mr. Opp’s opinion was more and more considered. In the course of a short time the office of “The Opp Eagle” became the hub about which the township revolved.One afternoon in March the editor was sitting before his deal table, apparently in the most violent throes of editorial composition.Nick, who was impatiently waiting for copy, had not dared to speak for an hour, for fear of slipping a cog in the intricate machinery of creation. The constant struggle to supply “The Opp Eagle” with sufficient material to enable it to fly every Thursday was telling upon the staff; he was becoming irritable.“Well?” he said impatiently, as Mr. Opp finished the tenth page and gathered the large sheets into his hand.“Yes, yes, to be sure,” said Mr. Opp, guiltily; “I am at your disposal. Just[p207]finishing a little private correspondence of a personal nature that couldn’t wait over.”“Ain’t that copy?” demanded Nick, fixing him with an indignant eye.“Well, no,” said Mr. Opp, uneasily. “The fact is, I haven’t been able to accomplish any regular editorial this week. Unusual pressure of outside business and—er—”“How long is she going to stay down in Coreyville?” Nick asked, with a contemptuous curl of his lip.Mr. Opp paused in the act of addressing the envelop, and gave Nick a look that was designed to scorch.“May I inquire to who you refer?” he asked with dignity.Nick’s eyes dropped, and he shuffled his feet. “I just wanted to put it in the paper. We got to fill up with something.”“Well,” said Mr. Opp, slightly conciliated, “you can mention that she has gone back to attend the spring term at the Young Ladies’ Seminary.”[p208]“Gone back to school again?” exclaimed Nick, unable to control his curiosity. “What for?”“To attend the spring term,” repeated Mr. Opp, guardedly. Then he added in a burst of confidence: “Nick, has it ever occurred to you that Mrs. Gusty was what you might term a peculiar woman?”But Nick was not interested in the psychological idiosyncrasies of the Gusty family. “The Opp Eagle” was crying for food, and Nick would have sacrificed himself and his chief to fill the vacancy.“See here, Mr. Opp, do you know what day it is? It’s Monday, and we’ve got two columns to fill. New subscriptions are coming in all the time. We’ve got to live up to our reputation.”“Extremely well put,” agreed Mr. Opp; “the reputation of the paper must be guarded above all things. I like to consider that after my mortal remains has returned to dust, my name will be perpetuated in this paper. That no monument in marble will be necessary, so[p209]long as ‘The Opp Eagle’ continues to circulate from home to home, and to promulgate those—”“Can’t you write some of it down?” suggested Nick; “it would fill up a couple of paragraphs. Part of it you used before, but we might change it around some.”“Never,” said Mr. Opp. “On no consideration would I repeat myself in print. I’ll just run through my box here, and see what new material I have. Here’s something; take it down as I dictate.“‘Pastor Joe Tyler is holding divine service every second Sunday in Cove City. He has had thirty conversions, and on Saturday was presented with a $20.00 suit of clothing from and by this community, and a barrel of flour, which fully attests what a general church awakening will accomplish in the direction of good. No one should think of endeavoring to rear their children or redeem society without the application of the gospel twice per month.’”[p210]“Now, if you can keep that up,” said Nick, hopefully, “we’ll get through in no time.”But Mr. Opp had gone back to his letter, and was trying to decide whether it would take one stamp or two. When he felt Nick’s reproachful eye upon him, he put the envelop resolutely in his pocket.“You’ve already said that work would be resumed at the oil-wells as early as the inclemency of the weather would permit, haven’t you?”“We’ve had it in every issue since last fall,” said Nick.“Well, now, let’s see,” said Mr. Opp, diving once more into his reserve box. “Here, take this down: ‘Mr. Jet Connor had his house burnt last month, it being the second fire he has had in ten years. Misfortunes never come single.’”“All right,” encouraged Nick. “Now can’t you work up that idea about the paper offering a prize?”Mr. Opp seized his brow firmly between his palms and made an heroic effort[p211]to concentrate his mind upon the business at hand.“Just wait a minute till I get it arranged. Now write this: ‘“The Opp Eagle” has organized a club called the B.B.B. Club, meaning the Busy Bottle-Breakers Club. A handsome prize of a valued nature will be awarded the boy or girl which breaks the largest number of whisky and beer bottles before the first of May.’ The boats to Coreyville run different on Sunday, don’t they, Nick?”Nick, who had unquestioningly taken the dictation until he reached his own name, glanced up quickly, then threw down his pen and sighed.“I’m going up to Mr. Gallop’s,” he said in desperation; “he’s got his mind on things here in town. I’ll see what he can do for me.”Mr. Opp remorsefully allowed him to depart, and gazed somewhat guiltily at the unaccomplished work before him. But instead of making reparation for recent delinquency, he proceeded to[p212]make even further inroads into the time that belonged to “The Opp Eagle.”Moving stealthily to the door, he locked it, then pulled down the shade until only a strip of light fell across his table. These precautions having been observed, he took from his pocket a number of letters, and, separating a large typewritten one from several small blue ones, arranged the latter in a row before him according to their dates, and proceeded, with evident satisfaction, to read them through twice. Then glancing around to make quite sure that no one had crawled through the key-hole, he unlocked a drawer, and took out a key which in turn unlocked a box from which he carefully took a small object, and contemplated it with undisguised admiration.It was an amethyst ring, and in the center of the stone was set a pearl. He held it in the narrow strip of light, and read the inscription engraved within: “Guinevere forever.”For Miss Guinevere Gusty, ever plastic[p213]to a stronger will, had succumbed to the potent combination of absence and ardor, and given her half-hearted consent for Mr. Opp to speak to her mother. Upon that lady’s unqualified approval everything would depend.Mr. Opp had received the letter a week ago, and he had immediately written to the city for a jeweler’s circular, made his selection, and received the ring. He had written eight voluminous and eloquent epistles to Guinevere, but he had not yet found the propitious moment in which to call upon Mrs. Gusty. Every time he started, imperative business called him elsewhere.As he sat turning the stone in the sunlight and admiring every detail, the conviction oppressed him that he could no longer find any excuse for delay. But even as he made the decision to face the ordeal, his eye involuntarily swept the desk for even a momentary reprieve. The large typewritten letter arrested his attention; he took it up and reread it.[p214]Dear Opp: Do you know any nice, comfortable place in your neighborhood for a man to go blind in? I’ll be in the hospital for another month, and after that I am to spend the summer out of doors, in joyful anticipation of an operation which I am assured beforehand will probably be unsuccessful. Under the peculiar circumstances I am not particular about the scenery, human or natural; the whole affair resolves itself into a matter of flies and feather-beds. If you know of any place where I can be reasonably comfortable, I wish you’d drop me a line. The ideal place for me would be a neat pine box underground, with a dainty bunch of daisies overhead.Yours gratefully,Willard Hinton.P.S. I sent you a box of my books last week. Chuck out what you don’t want. The candy was for your sister.Mr. Opp, with the letter still in his hand, suddenly saw a way out of his difficulty: he would make Hinton’s request an excuse for a call upon Mrs.[p215]Gusty. No surer road to her good graces could he travel than by seeking her advice.Replacing the ring in the drawer and the letters in his pocket, he buttoned up his coat, and with a stern look of determination went out of the office. At the Gusty gate he encountered Val, who was on all fours by the fence, searching for something.“What’s the matter, Val?” asked Mr. Opp. “Lost something?”Val raised a pair of mournful eyes. “Yas, sir; you bet I is. Done lost a penny Mr. Jimmy Fallows gimme for puttin’ my fisty in my mouf.”“Putting your fist in your mouth!” repeated Mr. Opp, surprised. “Can you perform that act?”Val promptly demonstrated; but just as he was midway, a peremptory voice called from a rear window:“Val! You Val! You better answer me this minute!”Val cowered lower behind the fence, and violently motioned Mr. Opp to go on.[p216]“Is—er—is Mrs. Gusty feeling well to-day?” asked Mr. Opp, still lingering at the gate.“Jes tolerable,” said Val, lying flat on his back and speaking in guarded tones. “Whenever she gits to beatin’ de carpets, an’ spankin’ de beds, and shakin’ de curtains, I keeps outen de way.”“Do you think—er—that—er—I better go in?” asked Mr. Opp, sorely in need of moral support.“Yas, sir; she’s ’spectin’ yer.”This surprising announcement nerved Mr. Opp to open the gate.It is said that the best-drilled soldiers dodge when they first face the firing-line, and if Mr. Opp’s knees smote together and his body became bathed in profuse perspiration, it should not be attributed to lack of manly courage.In response to his knock, Mrs. Gusty herself opened the door. The signs that she had been interrupted in the midst of her toilet were so unmistakable that Mr. Opp promptly averted his eyes. A shawl had been hastily drawn about her shoulders,[p217]on one cheek a streak of chalk awaited distribution, and a single bristling curl-paper, rising fiercely from the top of her forehead, gave her the appearance of a startled unicorn.“You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Opp,” she said firmly, putting the door between them. “I can’t come out, and you can’t come in. Did you want anything?”“Well, yes,” said Mr. Opp, looking helplessly at the blank door. “You see, there is a matter I have been considering discussing with you for a number of weeks. It’s a—”“If it’s waited this long, I should think it could wait till to-morrow,” announced the lady with decision.Mr. Opp felt that his courage could never again stand the strain of the last few moments. He must speak now or never.“It’s immediate,” he managed to gasp out. “If you could arrange to give me five or ten minutes, I won’t occupy more than that.”Mrs. Gusty considered. “I am looking[p218]for company myself at five o’clock. That wouldn’t give you much time.”“Ample,” urged Mr. Opp; “it’s just a little necessary transaction, as it were.”Mrs. Gusty reluctantly consented.“You go on in the parlor, then,” she said. “I’ll be in as quick as I can. You won’t more than have time to get started, though.”Mr. Opp passed into the parlor and hung his hat on the corner of a large, unframed canvas that stood on the floor with its face to the wall. The room had evidently been prepared for a visitor, for a fire was newly kindled and a vase of flowers adorned the table. But Mr. Opp was not making observations. He alternately warmed his cold hands at the fire, and fanned his flushed face with his handkerchief. He was too nervous to sit still, yet his knees trembled when he moved about. It was only when he touched the little packet of letters in his breast pocket that his courage revived.[p219]At last Mrs. Gusty came in with a rustle of garments suggestive of Sunday. Even in his confusion Mr. Opp was aware that there was something unusual in her appearance. Her hair, ordinarily drawn taut to a prim knot at the rear, had burst forth into curls and puffs of an amazing complexity. Moreover, her change of coiffure had apparently affected her spirits, for she, too, was flurried and self-conscious and glanced continually at the clock on the mantel.“I’ll endeavor not to intrude long on your time,” began Mr. Opp, politely, when they were seated side by side on the horse-hair sofa. “You—er—can’t be in total ignorance of the subject that—er—I mean to bring forward.” He moistened his lips, and glanced at her for succor, but she was adamant. “I want to speak with you,” he plunged on desperately—“that is, I thought I had better talk with you about Mr. Hinton.”“Who?” blazed forth Mrs. Gusty in indignant surprise.“Mr. Hinton,” said Mr. Opp, breathlessly,[p220]“a young friendly acquaintance of mine. Wants to get board for the summer, you know; would like a nice, quiet place and all that, Mrs. Gusty. I thought I’d consult you about it, Mrs. Gusty, if you don’t mind.”She calmly fixed one eye upon him and one upon the clock while he went into particulars concerning Mr. Hinton. When he paused for breath, she folded her arms and said:“Mr. Opp, if you want to say what you come to say, you haven’t got but four minutes to do it in.”“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Opp, gratefully, but helplessly; “I was just coming to that point. It’s a matter—that—er—well you might say it is in a way pertaining—to—”“Guin-never!” snapped Mrs. Gusty, unable longer to stand his hesitation. “I’d have been a deaf-mute and a fool to boot not to have known it long ago. Not that I’ve been consulted in the matter.” She lifted a stiffened chin, and turned her gaze upward.[p221]“You have,” declared Mr. Opp, earnestly; “that is, you will be. Everything is pending on you. There has been no steps whatever taken by Miss Guinnever or I—rather I might say by her. I can’t say but what I have made some slight preliminary arrangements.” He paused, then went on anxiously: “I trust there ain’t any personal objections to the case.”Mrs. Gusty made folds in her black-silk skirt and creased them down with her thumb-nail. “No,” she said shortly; “far as I can see, Guin-never would be doing mighty well to get you. You’d be a long sight safer than a good-looking young fellow. Of course a man being so much older than a girl is apt to leave her a widow. But, for my part, I believe in second marriages.”Mr. Opp felt as if he had received a hot and cold douche at the same time; but the result was a glow.“Then you don’t oppose it, Mrs. Gusty,” he cried eagerly. “You’ll write her you are willing?”[p222]“Not yet,” said Mrs. Gusty; “there’s a condition.”“There ain’t any condition in the world I won’t meet to get her,” he exclaimed recklessly, his fervor bursting its bounds. “You don’t know how I feel about that young lady. Why, I’d live on bread and water all the rest of my life if it would make her happy. There hasn’t been a hour since I met her that she hasn’t held my soul—as you might say—in the pa’m of her hand.”“People don’t often get it so bad at our age,” remarked Mrs. Gusty, sarcastically, and Mr. Opp winced.“The condition,” went on Mrs. Gusty, “that I spoke about, was your sister. Of course I never would consent to Guin-never living under the same roof with a crazy person.”The hope which was carrying Mr. Opp to the dizziest heights dropped to earth at this unexpected shaft, and for a moment he was too stunned to speak.“Kippy?” he began at last, and his voice softened at the name. “Why, you[p223]don’t understand about her. She’s just similar to a little child. I told Miss Guin-never all about her; she never made any objections. You—you—wouldn’t ask me to make any promises along that line?” Abject entreaty shone from Mr. Opp’s eyes; it was a plea for a change of sentence. She had asked of him the only sacrifice in the world at which he would have faltered. “Don’t—don’t put it like that!” he pleaded, laying his hand on her arm in his earnestness. “I’m all she’s got in the world; I’ve kind of become familiar with her ways, you know, and can manage her. She’ll love Miss Guin-never if I tell her to. She shan’t be a bit of care or trouble; I and Aunt Tish will continue on doing everything for her. You won’t refuse your consent on that account, will you? You’ll promise to say yes, now won’t you, Mrs. Gusty?”A slight and ominous cough in the doorway caused them both to start. Mr. Tucker, in widower’s weeds, but with a jonquil jauntily thrust through his buttonhole,[p224]stood with his hand still on the knob, evidently transfixed by the scene he had witnessed.For a moment the company was enveloped in a fog of such dense embarrassment that all conversation was suspended. Mrs. Gusty was the first to emerge.“Howdy, Mr. Tucker,” she said, rustling forward in welcome. “I didn’t think you’d get here before five. Mr. Opp just dropped in to consult me about—about boarding a friend of his. Won’t you draw up to the fire?”Mr. Tucker edged forward with a suspicious eye turned upon Mr. Opp, who was nervously searching about for his hat.“There it is, by the door,” said Mrs. Gusty, eager to speed his departure; and as they both reached for it, the picture upon which it hung toppled forward and fell, face upward, on the floor. It was the portrait of Mr. Tucker mourning under the willow-tree which Miss Jim had left with Mrs. Gusty for safe-keeping.[p225]Mr. Opp went home across the fields that evening instead of through the town. He was not quite up to any of his rôles—editor, promoter, or reformer. In fact, he felt a desperate need of a brief respite from all histrionic duties. A reaction had set in from the excitement of the past week, and the complication involved in Mrs. Gusty’s condition puzzled and distressed him. Of course, he assured himself repeatedly, there was a way out of the difficulty; but he was not able to find it just yet. He had observed that Mrs. Gusty’s opinions became fixed convictions under the slightest opposition, whereas Guinevere’s firmest decision trembled at a breath of disapproval. He sighed deeply as he meditated upon the vagaries of the feminine mind.Overhead the bare trees lifted a network of twigs against a dull sky, a cold wind stirred the sedge grass, and fluttered the dry leaves that had lain all winter in the fence corners. Everything looked old and worn and gray, even Mr. Opp, as he leaned against a gaunt, white[p226]sycamore, his head bent, and his brows drawn, wrestling with his problem.Suddenly he lifted his head and listened, then he smiled. In the tree above him a soft but animated conversation was in progress. A few daring birds had braved the cold and the wind, and had ventured back to their old trysting-place to wait for the coming of the spring. No hint of green had tinged the earth, but a few, tiny, pink maple-buds had given the secret away, and the birds were cuddled snugly together, planning, in an ecstasy of subdued enthusiasm, for the joyous days to come.Mr. Opp listened and understood. They were all whispering about one thing, and he wanted to whisper about it, too. It was the simple theme of love without variations—love, minus problems, minus complications, minus consequences. He took out his little packet of letters and read them through; then, unmindful of the chill, he stretched himself under the tree and listened to the birds until the twilight silenced them.[p227]When he reached home at last, Miss Kippy met him at the door with a happy cry of welcome.“D.,” she said, with her arm through his, and her cheek rubbing his sleeve, “I’ve been good. I’ve let my hair stay up all day, and Aunt Tish is making me a long dress like a lady.” She looked at him shyly and smiled, then she pulled his head down and whispered, “If I’m very good, when I grow up, can I marry Mr. Hinton?”Miss Kippy, too, had been listening to the bird-song.[p228]XIIIItwas May when Willard Hinton arrived at the Cove and took up his abode at Mrs. Gusty’s. For the first week he kept to his bed, but at the end of that time he was able to crawl down to the porch and, under the protection of dark glasses and a heavy shade, sit for hours at a time in the sunshine. The loss of his accustomed environment, the ennui that ensues from absolute idleness, the consciousness that the light was growing dimmer day by day, combined to plunge him into abysmal gloom.He shrank from speaking to any one, he scowled at a suggestion of sympathy, he treated Mr. Opp’s friendly overtures with open discourtesy. Conceiving himself on the rack of torture, he set his[p229]teeth and determined to submit in silence, but without witnesses.One endless day dragged in the wake of another, and between them lay the black strips of night that were heavy with the suggestion of another darkness pending. When sleep refused to come, he would go out into the woods and walk for hours, moody, wretched, and sick to his innermost soul with loneliness.The one thing in the whole dreary round of existence that roused in him a spark of interest was his hostess. She bestowed upon him the same impersonal attention that she gave her fowls. She fed him and cared for him and doctored him as she saw fit, and after these duties were performed, she left him to himself, pursuing her own vigorous routine in her own vigorous way.Hinton soon discovered that Mrs. Gusty was temperamental. Her intensely energetic nature demanded an emotional as well as a physical outlet. Sometime during the course of each day she indulged in emotional fireworks,[p230]bombs of anger, rockets of indignation, or set pieces of sulks and pouts.These periodic spells of anger acted upon her like wine: they warmed her vitals and exhilarated her; they made her talk fluently and eloquently. As a toper will accept any beverage that intoxicates, so Mrs. Gusty accepted any cause that would rouse her. At stated intervals her feelings demanded a stimulant, and obeying the call of nature, she went forth and got angry.Hinton came to consider these outbursts as the one diversion in a succession of monotonous hours. He tabulated the causes, and made bets with himself as to the strength and duration of each.Meanwhile the sun and the wind and the silence were working their miracle. Hinton was introduced to nature by a warlike old rooster whose Hellenic cast of countenance had suggested the name of Menelaus. A fierce combat with a brother-fowl had inevitably recalled the great fight with Paris, and upon investigation Hinton found that the speckled[p231]hen was Helen of Troy! This was but the beginning of a series of discoveries, and the result was an animated and piquant version of Greek history, which boldly set aside tradition, and suggested many possibilities heretofore undreamed of.Early one morning as Hinton was wandering listlessly about the yard he heard the gate click, and, looking up, saw Mr. Opp hurrying up the walk with a large bunch of lilacs in one hand and a cornet in the other.“Good morning,” said that gentleman, cheerily. “Mighty glad to see you out enjoying the beauties of nature. I haven’t got but a moment in which to stop; appointment at eight-fifteen. We are arranging for a concert soon up in Main Street, going to practise this afternoon. I’ll be glad to call by for you if you feel able to enjoy some remarkable fine selections.”Hinton accepted the proffered bouquet, but made a wry face at the invitation.[p232]“None of your concerts for me,” he said brusquely. “It would interfere too seriously with my own musical job of getting in tune with the infinite.”“Mornin’, Mr. Opp,” said Mrs. Gusty from the dining-room window. “There ain’t many editors has time to stand around and talk this time of day.”“Just paused a moment in passing,” said Mr. Opp. “Wanted to see if I couldn’t induce our young friend here to give us a’ article for ‘The Opp Eagle.’ Any nature, you know; we are always metropolitan in our taste. Thought maybe he’d tell us some of his first impressions of our city.”Hinton smiled and shook his head. “You’d better not stir up my impressions about anything these days; I am apt to splash mud.”“We can stand it,” said Mr. Opp, affably. “If Cove City needs criticism and rebuke, ‘The Opp Eagle’ is the vehicle to administer it. You dictate a few remarks to my reporter, and I’ll feature it on the front editorial column.”[p233]Hinton’s eyes twinkled wickedly behind his blue glasses. “I’ll give you an article,” he said, “but no name is to be signed.”Mr. Opp, regretting the stipulation, but pleased with the promise, was turning to depart when Mrs. Gusty appeared once more at the window.“What’s the matter with the oil-wells?” she demanded, as she dusted off the sill. “Why don’t they open up? You can’t use bad weather for an excuse any longer.”“It wasn’t the weather,” said Mr. Opp, with the confident and superior manner of one who is conversant with the entire situation. “This here delay has been arranged with a purpose. I and Mr. Mathews has a plan that will eventually yield every stock-holder in the Cove six to one for what he put into it.”“Intend selling out to a syndicate?” asked Hinton.Mr. Opp looked at him in surprise.“Well, yes; I don’t mind telling you two, but it mustn’t go any farther. The[p234]oil prospects in this region are of such a great magnitude that we can’t command sufficient capital to do ’em justice. I and Mr. Mathews are at present negotiating with several large concerns with a view to selling out the entire business at a large profit. You can’t have any conception of the tac’ and patience it takes to manage one of these large deals.”“Who was that man Clark that was down here last week?” asked Mrs. Gusty, impressed, in spite of herself, at being taken into the confidence of such a man of affairs.Mr. Opp’s face clouded. “Now that was a very unfortunate thing about Clark. He was sent down by the Union Syndicate of New York city to make a report on the region, and he didn’t get the correct ideas in the case at all. If they hadn’t sent such a poor man, the whole affair might have been settled by now.”“Wasn’t his report favorable?” asked Hinton.[p235]“He hasn’t made it yet,” said Mr. Opp; “but he let drop sundry casual remarks to me that showed he wasn’t a man of fine judgment at all. I went over the ground with him, and pointed out some of the places where we calculated on drilling; but he was so busy making measurements and taking notes that he didn’t half hear what I was saying.”“He stayed at Our Hotel,” said Mrs. Gusty. “Mr. Tucker said he had as mean a face as ever he looked into.”“Who said so?” asked Hinton.She tossed her head and flipped her duster at him, but it was evident that she was not displeased.“By the way, Mr. Opp,” she said, “I’m thinking about letting Guin-never come home week after next. Guess you ain’t sorry to hear that.”On the contrary, Mr. Opp was overcome with joy. Letters were becoming less and less satisfying, and the problem suggested by Mrs. Gusty was still waiting solution.[p236]“If you’ll just mention the date,” he said, trying to keep his countenance from expressing an undue amount of rapture, “I’ll make a business trip down to Coreyville on purpose to accompany her back home.”But Mrs. Gusty declined to be explicit. She deemed it unwise to allow a mere man to know as much as she did upon any given subject.Hinton’s editorial appeared in the next issue of “The Opp Eagle.” It was a clever and cutting satire on the impressions of a foreigner visiting America for the first time. Hinton interviewed himself concerning his impressions of the Cove. He approached the subject with great seriousness, handling village trifles as if they were municipal cannon-balls. He juggled with sense and nonsense, with form and substance. The result shot far over the heads of the country subscribers, and hit the bull’s-eye of a big city daily.Mr. Opp’s excitement was intense when he found that an editorial from[p237]“The Opp Eagle” had been copied in a New York paper. The fact that it was not his own never for a moment dimmed the glory of the compliment.“We are getting notorious,” he said exultingly to Hinton. “There are few, if any, papers that in less than a year has extended its influence as far as the Atlantic Ocean. Now I am considering if it wouldn’t be a wise and judicious thing to get you on the staff permanent—while you are here, that is. Of course you understand I am invested up pretty close; but I’d be willing to let you have a little of my oil stock in payment for services.”Hinton laughingly shook his head. “Whenever you run short of material, you can call on me. The honor of seeing my humble efforts borne aloft on the wings of ‘The Opp Eagle’ will be sufficient reward.”Having once conceived it as a favor that was in his power to bestow, Mr. Opp lost no opportunity for inviting contributions from the aspiring author.[p238]As Hinton’s strength returned, Mr. Opp adopted him as a protégé, at first patronizing him, then consulting him, and finally frankly appealing to him. For during the long afternoon walks which they got into the habit of taking together, Mr. Opp, in spite of bluster and brag and evasion, found that he was constantly being embarrassed by a question, a reference, a statement from his young friend. It was the first time he had ever experienced any difficulty in keeping his head above the waves of his own ignorance.“You see,” he said one day by way of explanation, “my genius was never properly tutored in early youth. It’s what some might regard as a remarkable brain that could cope with all the different varieties of enterprises that I have engaged in, with no instruction or guidance but just the natural elements that God give it in the beginning.”But in spite of Mr. Opp’s lenient attitude toward his intellectual short-comings, it was evident that upon the serene[p239]horizon of his egotism small clouds of humility were threatening to gather.Hinton, restlessly seeking for something to fill the vacuum of his days, found Mr. Opp and his paper a growing source of diversion. “The Opp Eagle,” at first an object of ridicule, gradually became a point of interest in his limited range of vision. Under his suggestions it was enlarged and improved, and induced to publish news not strictly local.Mr. Opp, meanwhile, was buzzing as persistently and ineffectually as a fly on a window-pane. The night before Guinevere’s return, he found that, in order to accomplish all that he was committed to, it would be necessary to spend the night at the office.The concert for which the Unique Orchestra had been making night hideous for two weeks had just come to a successful close, and the editor found himself at a late hour tramping out the lonely road that led to the office with the prospect of a couple of hours’ work to[p240]do before he could seek a well-earned rest upon the office bench.He was flushed with his double triumph as director and cornet soloist, and still thrilled by the mighty notes he had breathed into his beloved instrument.The violin sobs, the flute complains, the drum insists, but the cornet brags, and Mr. Opp found it the instrument through which he could best express himself.It was midnight, and the moon, one moment shining brightly and the next lost behind a flying cloud, sent all sorts of queer shadows scurrying among the trees. Mr. Opp thought once that he saw the figure of a man appear and disappear in the road before him, but he was so engrossed in joyful anticipation of the morrow that he gave the incident no attention. As he was passing the Gusty house, he was rudely plunged from sentiment into suspicion by the sight of a figure stealthily moving along the wall beneath the front windows.Mr. Opp crouched behind the fence to[p241]watch him, but the moon took that inopportune moment to sink into a bank of clouds, and the yard was left in darkness. No sound broke the stillness save the far-off bark of a dog or an occasional croak from a bullfrog. Mr. Opp waited and listened in a state of intense suspense. Presently he heard the unmistakable sound of a window being cautiously raised, and then just as cautiously lowered. Summoning all his courage, he skirted the yard and hid in the bushes near the house. Nothing was to be seen or heard. He watched for a light at any of the windows, but none came.The rash desire to capture the burglar single-handed, and thus distinguish himself in the eyes of Guinevere’s mother, caused Mr. Opp to stiffen his knees and assume a fierce and determined expression. But he was armed only with his cornet, which, though often deadly as an instrument of attack, has never been recognized as a weapon of defense. There seemed no alternative but to[p242]waken Hinton and effect a simultaneous attack from within and without.After throwing a few unsuccessful pebbles at Hinton’s window, Mr. Opp remembered a ladder he had seen at the back of the barnyard. Shaking as if with the ague, but breathing dauntless courage, he departed in great excitement to procure it.Unfortunately another party was in possession. A dozen guinea-fowls were roosting on the rungs, and when he gave them to understand they were to vacate they raised an outcry that would have quelled the ardor of a less valiant knight.But the romantic nature of the adventure had fired Mr. Opp’s imagination. He already saw himself lightly dusting his hands after throttling the intruder, and smiling away Mrs. Gusty’s solicitude for his safety. Meanwhile he staggered back to the house with his burden, dodging fearfully at every shadow, and painfully aware that his heart was beating a tattoo on his ear-drums.Placing the ladder as quietly as possible[p243]under Hinton’s window, he cautiously began the ascent. The sudden outburst of the guineas had set his nerves a-quiver, and what with his breathless condition, and a predisposition to giddiness, he found some difficulty in reaching the sill. When at last he succeeded, he saw, by the light of the now refulgent moon, the figure of Hinton lying across the foot of the bed, dressed, but asleep. The opening not being sufficiently large to admit him, he thrust in his head and whispered hoarsely through his chattering teeth:“Hinton! I say, Hinton, there’s a burglar in the house!”Hinton started up, and stared dully at the excited apparition.“Hush!” whispered Mr. Opp, dramatically, lifting a warning hand. “I’ve been tracking the scoundrel for half an hour. He’s in the house now. We’ll surround him. We’ll bind him hand and foot. You get the front door open, and I’ll meet you on the outside. It’s all planned; just do as I say.”[p244]Hinton, who was springing for the door, paused with his hand on the knob. “What’s that?”It was Mrs. Gusty’s commanding tones from a front window: “He’s round at the side of the house. He’s been after my guineas! I saw him a minute ago going across the yard with a ladder. Shoot him if you can. Shoot him in the leg, so he can’t get away. Quick! Quick!”Mr. Opp had only time to turn from the window when he felt the ladder seized from below and jerked violently forward. With a terrific crash he came down with it, and found himself locked in a close struggle with the supposed burglar. To his excited imagination his adversary seemed a Titan, with sinews of steel and breath of fire. The combatants rolled upon the ground and fought for possession of each other’s throats. The conflict, while fierce, was brief. As Hinton and Mrs. Gusty rushed around the corner of the house, the fighters shouted in unison, “I’ve got him!”[p245]and Mr. Opp, opening one swollen eye, gazed down into the mild but bloody features of little Mr. Tucker!With the instinct that always prompted him to apologize when any one bumped into him, he withdrew his hands immediately from Mr. Tucker’s throat and began vehement explanations. But Mr. Tucker still clung to his collar, sputtering wrathful ejaculations. Mrs. Gusty, wrapped in a bed-quilt, and with her unicorn horn at its most ferocious angle, held the lamp on high while Hinton rushed between the belligerents.Excited and incoherent explanations followed, and it was not until Mr. Opp, who was leaning limply against a tree, regained his breath that the mystery was cleared up.“If you will just listen here at me a moment,” he implored, holding a handkerchief to his bruised face. “We are one and all laboring under a grave error. It’s my belief that there ain’t any burglar whatsoever here at present. Mr. Hinton forgot his key and had to[p246]climb in the window. I mistaken him for the burglar, and Mrs. Gusty, here, from what she relates, mistaken me for him, and not knowing Mr. Hinton had come in, telephoned our friend Mr. Tucker, and me and Mr. Tucker might be said, in a general way, to have mistaken each other for him.”“A pretty mess to get us all into!” exclaimed Mrs. Gusty. “A man made his fortune once ’tending to his own business.”“But, Mrs. Gusty—” began Mr. Opp, indignantly.Hinton interrupted. “You would better put something on that eye of yours. It will probably resemble a Whistler ‘Nocturne’ by morning. What are you looking for?”The object lost proved to be Mr. Opp’s cherished cornet, and the party became united in a common cause and joined in the search. Some time elapsed before the horn was found under the fallen ladder, having sustained internal injuries which subsequently proved fatal.[p247]When dawn crept into the dingy office of “The Opp Eagle,” the editor was watching for it. He was waiting to welcome the day that would bring back Guinevere. As Hope with blindfold eyes bends over her harp and listens to the faint music of her one unbroken string, so Mr. Opp, with bandaged head, bent over his damaged horn and plaintively evoked the only note that was left therein.[p248]XIVThosewho have pursued the coy goddess of happiness through the mazes of the labyrinth of life, know well how she invites her victim on from point to point, only to evade capture at the end. Mr. Opp rose with each summer dawn, radiant, confident, and expectant, and each night he sat in his window with his knees hunched, and his brows drawn, and wrestled with that old white-faced fear.Two marauders were harassing the editor these days, dogging his footsteps, and snapping at him from ambush. One was the wolf that howls at the door, and the other was the monster whose eyes are green.[p249]Since the halcyon days that had wafted Miss Guinevere Gusty back to the shore of the Cove, Mr. Opp had not passed a serene hour out of her presence. His disposition, though impervious to the repeated shafts of unkind fortune, was not proof against the corrosive effect of jealousy.If he could have regarded Willard Hinton in the light of a hated rival, and met him in fair and open fight, the situation would have been simplified. But Hinton was the friend of his bosom, the man who, he had declared to the town, “possessed the grandest intelligence he had ever encountered in a human mind.” He admired him, he respected him, and, in direct contradiction to the emotion that was consuming him, he trusted him.Concerning Miss Guinevere Gusty’s state of mind, Mr. Opp permitted himself only one opinion. He fiercely denied that she was absent-minded and listless when alone with him; he refused to believe his own eyes when he saw a light in her face when she looked at Hinton[p250]that was never there for him. He preferred to exaggerate to himself her sweetness, her gentleness, her loyalty, demanding nothing, and continuing to give all.His entire future happiness, he assured himself, hung upon the one question of little Miss Kippy. For four months the problem had been a matter for daily, prayerful consideration, but he was still in the dark.When he was with Guinevere the solution seemed easy. In explaining away the difficulties to her, he explained them away to himself, also. It was only a matter of time, he declared, before the oil-well would yield rich profit. When that time arrived, he would maintain two establishments, the old one for Miss Kippy, and a new and elegant one for themselves. Mr. Opp used the hole in the ground as a telescope through which he viewed the stars of the future.But when he was alone with Kippy, struggling with her whims, while he tried to puzzle out the oldest and most universal[p251]of conundrums,—that of making ends meet,—the future seemed entirely blotted out by the great blank wall of the present.The matter was in a way complicated by the change that had come over Miss Kippy herself. Two ideas alternately depressed and elated her. The first was a fixed antipathy to the photograph of Miss Guinevere Gusty which Mr. Opp had incased in a large hand-painted frame and installed upon his dresser. At first she sat before it and cried, and later she hid it and refused for days to tell where it was. The sight of it made her so unhappy that Mr. Opp was obliged to keep it under lock and key. The other idea produced a different effect. It had to do with Hinton. Ever since his visit she had talked of little else. She pretended that he came to see her every day, and she spread her doll dishes, and repeated scraps of his conversation, and acted over the events of the dinner at which he had been present. The short gingham dresses no longer pleased her;[p252]she wanted long ones, with flowing sleeves like the blue merino. She tied her hair up in all manner of fantastic shapes, and stood before the glass smiling and talking to herself for hours. But there were times when her mind paused for a moment at the normal, and then she would ask frightened, bewildered questions, and only Mr. Opp could soothe and reassure her.“D.,” she said one night suddenly, “how old am I?”Mr. Opp, whose entire mental and physical powers were concentrated upon an effort to put a new band on his old hat, was taken off his guard. “Twenty-six,” he answered absently.A little cry brought him to her side.“No,” she whispered, shivering away from him, yet clinging to his sleeve, “that’s a lady that’s grown up! Ladies don’t play with dolls. But I want to be grown up, too. D., why am I different? I want to be a lady; show me how to be a lady!”Mr. Opp gathered her into his arms,[p253]along with his hat, a pair of scissors, and a spool of thread.“Don’t, Kippy!” he begged. “Now, don’t cry like that! You are getting on elegant. Hasn’t brother D. learned you to read a lot of pieces in your first reader? And ain’t we going to begin on handwriting next? Wouldn’t you like to have a slate, and a sponge to rub out with?”In an instant her mood veered.“And a basket?” she cried eagerly. “The children carry a basket, too. I see them when I peep through the shutters. Can I have a basket, too?”The network of complexities that was closing in upon Mr. Opp apparently affected his body more than his spirits. He seemed to shrivel and dwindle as the pressure increased; but the fire in his eyes shone brighter than before.“None of his folks live long over forty,” said Mrs. Fallows, lugubriously; “they sorter burn themselves out.”Hinton, meanwhile, utterly unaware of being the partial cause of the seismic[p254]disturbance in the editorial bosom, pursued the monotonous routine of his days. It had taken him only a short time to adapt himself to the changes that the return of the daughter of the house had brought about. He had anticipated her arrival with the dread a nervous invalid always feels toward anything that may jolt him out of his habitual rut. He held a shuddering remembrance of her musical accomplishments, and foresaw with dread the noisy crowd of young people she might bring about the house.But Guinevere had slipped into her place, an absent-minded, dreamy, detached damsel, asserting nothing, claiming nothing, bending like a flower in the high winds of her mother’s wrath.Hinton watched the dominating influence nip every bud of individuality that the girl ventured to put forth, and he determined to interfere. During the long months he had spent with Mrs. Gusty he had discovered a way to manage her. The weak spot in her armor was pride of intellect; she acknowledged no man[p255]her superior. By the use of figurative language, and references to esoteric matters, he was always able to baffle and silence her. His joy in handling her in one of her tempers was similar to that of controlling a cat-boat in squally weather. Both experiences redounded to his masculine supremacy.One hot August day, he and Mrs. Gusty had just had an unusually sharp round, but he had succeeded, by alternate compliment and sarcasm, in reducing her to a very frustrated and baffled condition.It was Sunday, the day the Cove elected for a spiritual wash-day. In the morning the morals of the community were scrubbed and rinsed in the meeting-house, and in the afternoon they were hung out on the line to dry. The heads of the families sat in their front yards and dutifully tended the children, while their wives flitted from house to house, visiting the sick and the afflicted, and administering warnings to the delinquent. It was a day in which Mrs.[p256]Gusty’s soul reveled, and she demanded that Guinevere’s soul should revel likewise.It was with the determination that Guinevere should occasionally be allowed the privilege of following her own inclinations that Hinton hurled himself into the breach.“I’ll go, Mother,” said Guinevere; “but it’s so hot. We went to see everybody last Sunday. I thought I’d rather stay home and read, if you didn’t mind.”Mrs. Gusty tossed her head in disgust, and turned to Hinton.“Now, ain’t that a Gusty for you! I never saw one that didn’t want to set down to the job of living. Always moping around with their nose in a book. I never was a reader, never remember wasting a’ hour on a book in my life, and yet I never saw the time that I wasn’t able to hold my own with any Gusty living.”“In short,” said Hinton, sympathetically, “to quote a noted novelist, you[p257]have never considered it necessary to add the incident of learning to the accident of brains.”Mrs. Gusty tied her bonnet-strings in a firmer knot as she looked at him uncertainly, then, not deigning to cast another glance in the direction of her daughter, who was disappearing up the stairs, swept out of the house.Hinton looked at his watch; it was not yet two o’clock. The afternoon threatened to be a foretaste of eternity. He went out on the porch and lay in the hammock, with his hands clasped across his eyes. He could no longer see to read or to write. The doctor said the darkness might close in now at any time, after that the experiment of an operation would be made, and there was one chance in a hundred for the partial restoration of the sight.Having beaten and bruised himself against the bars of Fate, he now lay exhausted and passive in the power of his jailer. He had tried to run his own life in his own way, and the matter had been[p258]taken out of his hands. He must lie still now and wait for orders from headquarters. The words of Mr. Opp, spoken in the low-ceiled, weird old dining-room, came vividly back to him: “What the fight is concerning, or in what manner the general is a-aiming to bring it all correct in the end, ain’t, according to my conclusion, a particle of our business.”And Hinton, after a year of rebellion and struggle and despair, had at last acknowledged a superior officer and declared himself ready to take whatever orders came.As he lay in the hammock he turned his head at every noise within the house, and listened. He had become amazingly dependent upon a soft, drawling voice which day after day read to him for hours at a time. At first he had met Guinevere’s offers of help with moody irritability.“Pray, don’t bother about me,” he had said. “I am quite able to look after myself; besides, I like to be alone.”But her unobtrusive sympathy and[p259]childish frankness soon conquered his pride. She read to him from books she did not understand, played games with him, and showed him new walks in the woods. And incidentally, she revealed to him her struggling, starving, wistful soul that no one else had ever discovered.She never talked to him of her love affair, but she dwelt vaguely on the virtues of duty and loyalty and self-sacrifice. The facts in the case were supplied by Mrs. Gusty.Hinton looked at his watch again, and groaned when he found it was only a quarter past two. Feeling his way cautiously along the porch and down the steps, he moved idly about the yard. He could not distinguish Menelaus from Paris now, and Helen of Troy was no longer to be recognized.At long intervals a vehicle rattled past, leaving a cloud of dust behind. The air shimmered with the heat, and the low, insistent buzzing of bees beat on his ears mercilessly. He wondered[p260]impatiently why Guinevere did not come down, then checked himself as he remembered the constant demands he made upon her time.At three o’clock he could stand it no longer. He felt a queer, dull sensation about his head, and he constantly drew his hand across his eyes to dispel the impression of a mist before them.“Oh, Miss Guinevere!” he called up to her window. “Would you mind coming down just for a little while!”Guinevere’s head appeared so promptly that it was evident it had been lying on the window-sill.“Is it time for your medicine?” she asked guiltily. “Mother said it didn’t come till four.”“Oh, no,” said Hinton, with forced cheerfulness; “it isn’t that. You remember the old song, don’t you, ‘When a man’s afraid, a beautiful maid is a cheering sight to see’?”She disappeared from the window, and in a moment joined him behind the screen of honeysuckles on the porch.[p261]The hammock hung, inviting ease, but neither of them took it. She sat primly on the straight-backed, green settee, and he sat on the step at her feet with his hat pulled over his eyes.“What an infernal nuisance I have been to you!” he said ruefully; “but no more than I have been to myself. The only difference was that I had to stand it, and you stood it out of the goodness of that kind little heart of yours. Well, it’s nearly over now; I’m expecting to go to the city any day. I guess you’ll not be sorry to get rid of me, will you, Miss Guinevere?”Instead of answering, she drew a quick breath and turned her head away. When she did speak, it was after a long pause.“I like the way you say my name. Nobody says it like that down here.”“Guinevere?” he repeated.She nodded. “When you say it like that, I feel like I was another person. It makes me think of flowers, and poetry, and the wind in the trees, and all those[p262]things I’ve been reading you out of your books. Guin-never and Guineveredon’tseem the same at all, do they?”
Oh, the young Lochinvar has came out of the west!
Oh, the young Lochinvar has came out of the west!
Oh, the young Lochinvar has came out of the west!
He got no further; a shout from the big boys and a word from the teacher, and he burst into tears and fled for refuge to his mother. How the lines brought it all back! He could feel her arms about him now, and her cheek against his, and hear again her words of comfort. In all the years since she had been taken from him he had never wanted her so insistently as during those few moments that Mr. Opp’s high voice was doing its worst for the long-suffering Lochinvar.
“Mr. D.,” said a complaining voice from the doorway, “Miss Kippy won’t lemme tek her dress off to go to baid. She ’low she gwine sleep in hit.”
Mr. Opp abruptly descended from his elocutionary flight, and asked to be excused for a few moments.
[p192]“Just a little domestic friction,” he assured Hinton; “you can glance over the rest of the poems, and I’ll be back soon.”
Hinton, left alone, paced restlessly up and down the room. The temporary diversion was over, and he was once more face to face with his problem. He went to the table, and, taking a note from his pocket, bent over the lamp to read it. The lines blurred and ran together, but a word here and there recalled the contents. It was from Mr. Mathews, who preferred writing disagreeable things to saying them. Mr. Mathews, the note said, had been greatly annoyed recently by repeated errors in the reports of his secretary; he was neither as rapid nor as accurate as formerly, and an improvement would have to be made, or a change would be deemed advisable.
“Delicate tact!” sneered Hinton, crushing the paper in his hand. “Courtesy sometimes begets a request, and the shark shrinks from conferring favors. And I’ve got to stick it out, to go on[p193]accepting condescending disapproval until a ‘change is deemed advisable.’”
He dropped his head on his arms, and so deep was he in his bitter thoughts that he did not hear Mr. Opp come into the room. That gentleman stood for a moment in great embarrassment; then he stepped noiselessly out, and heralded his second coming by rattling the door-knob.
The wind had risen to a gale, and it shrieked about the old house and tugged at the shutters and rattled the panes incessantly.
“You take the big chair,” urged Mr. Opp, who had just put on a fresh log and sent the flames dancing up the chimney; “and here’s a pitcher of hard cider whenever you feel the need of a little refreshment. You ain’t a married man I would judge, Mr. Hinton.”
“Thank the Lord, no!” exclaimed Hinton.
“Well,” said Mr. Opp, pursing his lips and smiling, “you know that’s just where I think us young men are making a mistake.”
[p194]“Matrimony,” said Hinton, “is about the only catastrophe that hasn’t befallen me during my short and rocky career.”
“See here,” said Mr. Opp, “I used to feel that way, too.”
“Before you met her?” suggested Hinton.
Mr. Opp looked pleased but embarrassed. “I can’t deny there is a young lady,” he said; “but she is quite young as yet. In fact, I don’t mind telling you she’s just about half my age.”
Hinton, instead of putting two and two together, added eighteen to eighteen. “And you are about thirty-six?” he asked.
“Exactly,” said Mr. Opp, surprised. “I am most generally considered a long sight younger.”
From matrimony the conversation drifted to oil-wells, then to journalism, and finally to a philosophical discussion of life itself. Mr. Opp got beyond his depth again and again, and at times he became so absorbed that he gave a very poor imitation of himself, and showed[p195]signs of humility that were rarely if ever visible.
Hinton meantime was taking soundings, and sometimes his plummet stopped where it started, and sometimes it dropped to an unexpected depth.
“Well,” he said at last, rising, “we must go to bed. You’ll go on climbing a ladder in the air, and I’ll go on burrowing like a mole in the ground, and what is the good of it all? What chance have either of us for coming out anywhere? You can fool yourself; I can’t: that’s the difference.”
Mr. Opp’s unusual mental exertions had apparently affected his entire body, his legs were tightly wrapped about each other, his arms were locked, and his features were drawn into an amazing pucker of protest.
“That ain’t it,” he said emphatically, struggling valiantly to express his conviction: “this here life business ain’t run on any such small scale as that. According to my notion, or understanding, it’s—well—what you might call, in military[p196]figures, a fight.” He paused a moment and tied himself if possible even into a tighter knot, then proceeded slowly, groping his way: “Of course there’s some that just remains around in camp, afraid to fight and afraid to desert, just sort of indulging in conversation, you might say, about the rest of the army. Then there is the cowards and deserters. But a decent sort of a individual, or rather soldier, carries his orders around with him, and the chief and principal thing he’s got to do is to follow them. What the fight is concerning, or in what manner the general is a-aiming to bring it all correct in the end, ain’t, according to my conclusion, a particle of our business.”
Having arrived at this point of the discussion in a somewhat heated and indignant state, Mr. Opp suddenly remembered his duties as host. With a lordly wave of the hand he dismissed the subject, and conducted Hinton in state to his bed-chamber, where he insisted upon lighting the fire and arranging the bed.
[p197]“It was Mr. Opp saying his prayers”
[p199]Hinton sat for a long time before undressing, listening to the wind in the chimney, to the scrape, scrape of the cedar on the roof, and to the yet more dismal sounds that were echoing in his heart. Everything about the old house spoke of degeneration, decay; yet in the midst of it lived a man who asked no odds of life, who took what came, and who lived with a zest, an abandon, a courage that were baffling. Self-deception, egotism, cheap optimism—could they bring a man to this state of mind? Hinton wondered bitterly what Opp would do in his position; suppose his sight was threatened, how far would his foolish self-delusion serve him then?
But he could not imagine Mr. Opp, lame, halt, or blind, giving up the fight. There was that in the man—egotism, courage, whatever it was—that would never recognize defeat, that quality that wins out of a life of losing the final victory.
Before he retired, Hinton found there was no drinking water in his room, and,[p200]remembering a pitcher full in the dining-room, he took the candle and softly opened his door. The sudden cold draft from the hall made the candle flare, but as it steadied, Hinton saw that an old cot had been placed across the door opposite his, as if on guard, and that beside it knelt an ungainly figure in white, with his head clasped in his hands. It was Mr. Opp saying his prayers.
Thevisit of the capitalists marked the beginning of a long and profitable spell of insomnia for the Cove. The little town had gotten a gnat in its eye when Mr. Opp arrived, and now that it had become involved in a speculation that threatened to develop into a boom, it found sleep and tranquillity a thing of the past.
The party of investigators had found such remarkable conditions that they were eager to buy up the ground at once; but they met with unexpected opposition.
At a meeting which will go down to posterity in the annals of Cove City, the Turtle Creek Land Company, piloted by the intrepid Mr. Opp, had held its course[p202]against persuasion, threats, and bribes. There was but one plank in the company’s platform, and that was a determination not to sell. To this plank they clung through the storm of opposition, through the trying calm of indifference that followed, until a truce was declared.
Finally an agreement was reached by which the Turtle Creek Land Company was to lease its ground to the capitalists, receive a given per cent. of the oil produced, and maintain the right to buy stock up to a large and impossible amount at any time during the ensuing year.
Close upon this contract came men and machinery to open up a test well. For weeks hauling was done up the creek bottom, there being no road leading to the oil spring where the first drilling was to be done.
The town watched the operations with alternate scorn and interest. It was facetious when water and quicksands were encountered, and inclined to be sarcastic when work was suspended on account of[p203]the weather. But one day, after the pipe had been driven to a considerable depth and the rock below had been drilled for six inches, the drill suddenly fell into a crevice, and upon investigation the hole was found to be nearly full of petroleum.
The Cove promptly went into a state of acute hysteria. Speculation spread like the measles, breaking out in all manner of queer and unexpected places. Everybody who could command a dollar promptly converted it into oil stock. Miss Jim Fenton borrowed money from her cousin in the city, and plunged recklessly; the Missionary Band raffled off three quilts and bought a share with the proceeds; Mr. Tucker foreclosed two mortgages on life-long friends in order to raise more money; while the amount of stock purchased by Mr. D. Webster Opp was limited only by his credit at the bank.
The one note of warning that was sounded came from Mrs. Fallows, who sat on the porch of Your Hotel, and, like the Greek Chorus, foretold the disasters[p204]that would befall, and prophesied nothing but evil for the entire enterprise. Even the urbane Jimmy became ruffled by her insistent iteration, and declared that she “put him in mind of a darned old whip-o’-will.”
But Mrs. Fallows’s piping note was lost in the gale of enthusiasm. Farmers coming into town on Saturday became infected and carried the fever into the country. The entire community suspended business to discuss the exciting situation.
These were champagne days for Mr. Opp. Life seemed one long, sparkling, tingling draft and he was drinking it to Guinevere. If her eyes drooped and she met his smile with a sigh, he saw it not, for the elixir had gone to his head.
Compelled to find some outlet for his energy, he took advantage of the Cove’s unwonted animation and plunged into municipal reform. “The Opp Eagle” demanded streets, it demanded lamp-posts, it demanded temperance. The right of pigs to take their daily siesta in[p205]the middle of Main Street was questioned and fiercely denied. Dry-goods boxes, which for years had been the only visible means of support for divers youths of indolent nature, were held up to such scathing ridicule that the owners were forced to remove them.
The policies suggested by Mr. Opp, the editor, were promptly acted upon by Mr. Opp, the citizen. So indignant did he become when he read his own editorials that nothing short of immediate action was to be considered. He arranged a reform party and appointed himself leader. Mat Lucas, he made Superintendent of Streets; Mr. Gallop, chairman of the Committee on City Lights. In fact, he formed enough committees to manage a Presidential campaign.
The attitude of the town toward him was that of a large lump of dough to a small cake of yeast. It was willing to be raised, but doubtful of the motive power.
“I’d feel surer,” said Jimmy Fallows, “if his intellect was the standard[p206]size. It appears so big to him he can’t get his language ready-made; he has to have it made to order.”
But since the successful management of the oil-wells, Mr. Opp’s opinion was more and more considered. In the course of a short time the office of “The Opp Eagle” became the hub about which the township revolved.
One afternoon in March the editor was sitting before his deal table, apparently in the most violent throes of editorial composition.
Nick, who was impatiently waiting for copy, had not dared to speak for an hour, for fear of slipping a cog in the intricate machinery of creation. The constant struggle to supply “The Opp Eagle” with sufficient material to enable it to fly every Thursday was telling upon the staff; he was becoming irritable.
“Well?” he said impatiently, as Mr. Opp finished the tenth page and gathered the large sheets into his hand.
“Yes, yes, to be sure,” said Mr. Opp, guiltily; “I am at your disposal. Just[p207]finishing a little private correspondence of a personal nature that couldn’t wait over.”
“Ain’t that copy?” demanded Nick, fixing him with an indignant eye.
“Well, no,” said Mr. Opp, uneasily. “The fact is, I haven’t been able to accomplish any regular editorial this week. Unusual pressure of outside business and—er—”
“How long is she going to stay down in Coreyville?” Nick asked, with a contemptuous curl of his lip.
Mr. Opp paused in the act of addressing the envelop, and gave Nick a look that was designed to scorch.
“May I inquire to who you refer?” he asked with dignity.
Nick’s eyes dropped, and he shuffled his feet. “I just wanted to put it in the paper. We got to fill up with something.”
“Well,” said Mr. Opp, slightly conciliated, “you can mention that she has gone back to attend the spring term at the Young Ladies’ Seminary.”
[p208]“Gone back to school again?” exclaimed Nick, unable to control his curiosity. “What for?”
“To attend the spring term,” repeated Mr. Opp, guardedly. Then he added in a burst of confidence: “Nick, has it ever occurred to you that Mrs. Gusty was what you might term a peculiar woman?”
But Nick was not interested in the psychological idiosyncrasies of the Gusty family. “The Opp Eagle” was crying for food, and Nick would have sacrificed himself and his chief to fill the vacancy.
“See here, Mr. Opp, do you know what day it is? It’s Monday, and we’ve got two columns to fill. New subscriptions are coming in all the time. We’ve got to live up to our reputation.”
“Extremely well put,” agreed Mr. Opp; “the reputation of the paper must be guarded above all things. I like to consider that after my mortal remains has returned to dust, my name will be perpetuated in this paper. That no monument in marble will be necessary, so[p209]long as ‘The Opp Eagle’ continues to circulate from home to home, and to promulgate those—”
“Can’t you write some of it down?” suggested Nick; “it would fill up a couple of paragraphs. Part of it you used before, but we might change it around some.”
“Never,” said Mr. Opp. “On no consideration would I repeat myself in print. I’ll just run through my box here, and see what new material I have. Here’s something; take it down as I dictate.
“‘Pastor Joe Tyler is holding divine service every second Sunday in Cove City. He has had thirty conversions, and on Saturday was presented with a $20.00 suit of clothing from and by this community, and a barrel of flour, which fully attests what a general church awakening will accomplish in the direction of good. No one should think of endeavoring to rear their children or redeem society without the application of the gospel twice per month.’”
[p210]“Now, if you can keep that up,” said Nick, hopefully, “we’ll get through in no time.”
But Mr. Opp had gone back to his letter, and was trying to decide whether it would take one stamp or two. When he felt Nick’s reproachful eye upon him, he put the envelop resolutely in his pocket.
“You’ve already said that work would be resumed at the oil-wells as early as the inclemency of the weather would permit, haven’t you?”
“We’ve had it in every issue since last fall,” said Nick.
“Well, now, let’s see,” said Mr. Opp, diving once more into his reserve box. “Here, take this down: ‘Mr. Jet Connor had his house burnt last month, it being the second fire he has had in ten years. Misfortunes never come single.’”
“All right,” encouraged Nick. “Now can’t you work up that idea about the paper offering a prize?”
Mr. Opp seized his brow firmly between his palms and made an heroic effort[p211]to concentrate his mind upon the business at hand.
“Just wait a minute till I get it arranged. Now write this: ‘“The Opp Eagle” has organized a club called the B.B.B. Club, meaning the Busy Bottle-Breakers Club. A handsome prize of a valued nature will be awarded the boy or girl which breaks the largest number of whisky and beer bottles before the first of May.’ The boats to Coreyville run different on Sunday, don’t they, Nick?”
Nick, who had unquestioningly taken the dictation until he reached his own name, glanced up quickly, then threw down his pen and sighed.
“I’m going up to Mr. Gallop’s,” he said in desperation; “he’s got his mind on things here in town. I’ll see what he can do for me.”
Mr. Opp remorsefully allowed him to depart, and gazed somewhat guiltily at the unaccomplished work before him. But instead of making reparation for recent delinquency, he proceeded to[p212]make even further inroads into the time that belonged to “The Opp Eagle.”
Moving stealthily to the door, he locked it, then pulled down the shade until only a strip of light fell across his table. These precautions having been observed, he took from his pocket a number of letters, and, separating a large typewritten one from several small blue ones, arranged the latter in a row before him according to their dates, and proceeded, with evident satisfaction, to read them through twice. Then glancing around to make quite sure that no one had crawled through the key-hole, he unlocked a drawer, and took out a key which in turn unlocked a box from which he carefully took a small object, and contemplated it with undisguised admiration.
It was an amethyst ring, and in the center of the stone was set a pearl. He held it in the narrow strip of light, and read the inscription engraved within: “Guinevere forever.”
For Miss Guinevere Gusty, ever plastic[p213]to a stronger will, had succumbed to the potent combination of absence and ardor, and given her half-hearted consent for Mr. Opp to speak to her mother. Upon that lady’s unqualified approval everything would depend.
Mr. Opp had received the letter a week ago, and he had immediately written to the city for a jeweler’s circular, made his selection, and received the ring. He had written eight voluminous and eloquent epistles to Guinevere, but he had not yet found the propitious moment in which to call upon Mrs. Gusty. Every time he started, imperative business called him elsewhere.
As he sat turning the stone in the sunlight and admiring every detail, the conviction oppressed him that he could no longer find any excuse for delay. But even as he made the decision to face the ordeal, his eye involuntarily swept the desk for even a momentary reprieve. The large typewritten letter arrested his attention; he took it up and reread it.
[p214]Dear Opp: Do you know any nice, comfortable place in your neighborhood for a man to go blind in? I’ll be in the hospital for another month, and after that I am to spend the summer out of doors, in joyful anticipation of an operation which I am assured beforehand will probably be unsuccessful. Under the peculiar circumstances I am not particular about the scenery, human or natural; the whole affair resolves itself into a matter of flies and feather-beds. If you know of any place where I can be reasonably comfortable, I wish you’d drop me a line. The ideal place for me would be a neat pine box underground, with a dainty bunch of daisies overhead.Yours gratefully,Willard Hinton.P.S. I sent you a box of my books last week. Chuck out what you don’t want. The candy was for your sister.
[p214]Dear Opp: Do you know any nice, comfortable place in your neighborhood for a man to go blind in? I’ll be in the hospital for another month, and after that I am to spend the summer out of doors, in joyful anticipation of an operation which I am assured beforehand will probably be unsuccessful. Under the peculiar circumstances I am not particular about the scenery, human or natural; the whole affair resolves itself into a matter of flies and feather-beds. If you know of any place where I can be reasonably comfortable, I wish you’d drop me a line. The ideal place for me would be a neat pine box underground, with a dainty bunch of daisies overhead.
Yours gratefully,
Willard Hinton.
P.S. I sent you a box of my books last week. Chuck out what you don’t want. The candy was for your sister.
Mr. Opp, with the letter still in his hand, suddenly saw a way out of his difficulty: he would make Hinton’s request an excuse for a call upon Mrs.[p215]Gusty. No surer road to her good graces could he travel than by seeking her advice.
Replacing the ring in the drawer and the letters in his pocket, he buttoned up his coat, and with a stern look of determination went out of the office. At the Gusty gate he encountered Val, who was on all fours by the fence, searching for something.
“What’s the matter, Val?” asked Mr. Opp. “Lost something?”
Val raised a pair of mournful eyes. “Yas, sir; you bet I is. Done lost a penny Mr. Jimmy Fallows gimme for puttin’ my fisty in my mouf.”
“Putting your fist in your mouth!” repeated Mr. Opp, surprised. “Can you perform that act?”
Val promptly demonstrated; but just as he was midway, a peremptory voice called from a rear window:
“Val! You Val! You better answer me this minute!”
Val cowered lower behind the fence, and violently motioned Mr. Opp to go on.
[p216]“Is—er—is Mrs. Gusty feeling well to-day?” asked Mr. Opp, still lingering at the gate.
“Jes tolerable,” said Val, lying flat on his back and speaking in guarded tones. “Whenever she gits to beatin’ de carpets, an’ spankin’ de beds, and shakin’ de curtains, I keeps outen de way.”
“Do you think—er—that—er—I better go in?” asked Mr. Opp, sorely in need of moral support.
“Yas, sir; she’s ’spectin’ yer.”
This surprising announcement nerved Mr. Opp to open the gate.
It is said that the best-drilled soldiers dodge when they first face the firing-line, and if Mr. Opp’s knees smote together and his body became bathed in profuse perspiration, it should not be attributed to lack of manly courage.
In response to his knock, Mrs. Gusty herself opened the door. The signs that she had been interrupted in the midst of her toilet were so unmistakable that Mr. Opp promptly averted his eyes. A shawl had been hastily drawn about her shoulders,[p217]on one cheek a streak of chalk awaited distribution, and a single bristling curl-paper, rising fiercely from the top of her forehead, gave her the appearance of a startled unicorn.
“You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Opp,” she said firmly, putting the door between them. “I can’t come out, and you can’t come in. Did you want anything?”
“Well, yes,” said Mr. Opp, looking helplessly at the blank door. “You see, there is a matter I have been considering discussing with you for a number of weeks. It’s a—”
“If it’s waited this long, I should think it could wait till to-morrow,” announced the lady with decision.
Mr. Opp felt that his courage could never again stand the strain of the last few moments. He must speak now or never.
“It’s immediate,” he managed to gasp out. “If you could arrange to give me five or ten minutes, I won’t occupy more than that.”
Mrs. Gusty considered. “I am looking[p218]for company myself at five o’clock. That wouldn’t give you much time.”
“Ample,” urged Mr. Opp; “it’s just a little necessary transaction, as it were.”
Mrs. Gusty reluctantly consented.
“You go on in the parlor, then,” she said. “I’ll be in as quick as I can. You won’t more than have time to get started, though.”
Mr. Opp passed into the parlor and hung his hat on the corner of a large, unframed canvas that stood on the floor with its face to the wall. The room had evidently been prepared for a visitor, for a fire was newly kindled and a vase of flowers adorned the table. But Mr. Opp was not making observations. He alternately warmed his cold hands at the fire, and fanned his flushed face with his handkerchief. He was too nervous to sit still, yet his knees trembled when he moved about. It was only when he touched the little packet of letters in his breast pocket that his courage revived.
[p219]At last Mrs. Gusty came in with a rustle of garments suggestive of Sunday. Even in his confusion Mr. Opp was aware that there was something unusual in her appearance. Her hair, ordinarily drawn taut to a prim knot at the rear, had burst forth into curls and puffs of an amazing complexity. Moreover, her change of coiffure had apparently affected her spirits, for she, too, was flurried and self-conscious and glanced continually at the clock on the mantel.
“I’ll endeavor not to intrude long on your time,” began Mr. Opp, politely, when they were seated side by side on the horse-hair sofa. “You—er—can’t be in total ignorance of the subject that—er—I mean to bring forward.” He moistened his lips, and glanced at her for succor, but she was adamant. “I want to speak with you,” he plunged on desperately—“that is, I thought I had better talk with you about Mr. Hinton.”
“Who?” blazed forth Mrs. Gusty in indignant surprise.
“Mr. Hinton,” said Mr. Opp, breathlessly,[p220]“a young friendly acquaintance of mine. Wants to get board for the summer, you know; would like a nice, quiet place and all that, Mrs. Gusty. I thought I’d consult you about it, Mrs. Gusty, if you don’t mind.”
She calmly fixed one eye upon him and one upon the clock while he went into particulars concerning Mr. Hinton. When he paused for breath, she folded her arms and said:
“Mr. Opp, if you want to say what you come to say, you haven’t got but four minutes to do it in.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Opp, gratefully, but helplessly; “I was just coming to that point. It’s a matter—that—er—well you might say it is in a way pertaining—to—”
“Guin-never!” snapped Mrs. Gusty, unable longer to stand his hesitation. “I’d have been a deaf-mute and a fool to boot not to have known it long ago. Not that I’ve been consulted in the matter.” She lifted a stiffened chin, and turned her gaze upward.
[p221]“You have,” declared Mr. Opp, earnestly; “that is, you will be. Everything is pending on you. There has been no steps whatever taken by Miss Guinnever or I—rather I might say by her. I can’t say but what I have made some slight preliminary arrangements.” He paused, then went on anxiously: “I trust there ain’t any personal objections to the case.”
Mrs. Gusty made folds in her black-silk skirt and creased them down with her thumb-nail. “No,” she said shortly; “far as I can see, Guin-never would be doing mighty well to get you. You’d be a long sight safer than a good-looking young fellow. Of course a man being so much older than a girl is apt to leave her a widow. But, for my part, I believe in second marriages.”
Mr. Opp felt as if he had received a hot and cold douche at the same time; but the result was a glow.
“Then you don’t oppose it, Mrs. Gusty,” he cried eagerly. “You’ll write her you are willing?”
[p222]“Not yet,” said Mrs. Gusty; “there’s a condition.”
“There ain’t any condition in the world I won’t meet to get her,” he exclaimed recklessly, his fervor bursting its bounds. “You don’t know how I feel about that young lady. Why, I’d live on bread and water all the rest of my life if it would make her happy. There hasn’t been a hour since I met her that she hasn’t held my soul—as you might say—in the pa’m of her hand.”
“People don’t often get it so bad at our age,” remarked Mrs. Gusty, sarcastically, and Mr. Opp winced.
“The condition,” went on Mrs. Gusty, “that I spoke about, was your sister. Of course I never would consent to Guin-never living under the same roof with a crazy person.”
The hope which was carrying Mr. Opp to the dizziest heights dropped to earth at this unexpected shaft, and for a moment he was too stunned to speak.
“Kippy?” he began at last, and his voice softened at the name. “Why, you[p223]don’t understand about her. She’s just similar to a little child. I told Miss Guin-never all about her; she never made any objections. You—you—wouldn’t ask me to make any promises along that line?” Abject entreaty shone from Mr. Opp’s eyes; it was a plea for a change of sentence. She had asked of him the only sacrifice in the world at which he would have faltered. “Don’t—don’t put it like that!” he pleaded, laying his hand on her arm in his earnestness. “I’m all she’s got in the world; I’ve kind of become familiar with her ways, you know, and can manage her. She’ll love Miss Guin-never if I tell her to. She shan’t be a bit of care or trouble; I and Aunt Tish will continue on doing everything for her. You won’t refuse your consent on that account, will you? You’ll promise to say yes, now won’t you, Mrs. Gusty?”
A slight and ominous cough in the doorway caused them both to start. Mr. Tucker, in widower’s weeds, but with a jonquil jauntily thrust through his buttonhole,[p224]stood with his hand still on the knob, evidently transfixed by the scene he had witnessed.
For a moment the company was enveloped in a fog of such dense embarrassment that all conversation was suspended. Mrs. Gusty was the first to emerge.
“Howdy, Mr. Tucker,” she said, rustling forward in welcome. “I didn’t think you’d get here before five. Mr. Opp just dropped in to consult me about—about boarding a friend of his. Won’t you draw up to the fire?”
Mr. Tucker edged forward with a suspicious eye turned upon Mr. Opp, who was nervously searching about for his hat.
“There it is, by the door,” said Mrs. Gusty, eager to speed his departure; and as they both reached for it, the picture upon which it hung toppled forward and fell, face upward, on the floor. It was the portrait of Mr. Tucker mourning under the willow-tree which Miss Jim had left with Mrs. Gusty for safe-keeping.
[p225]Mr. Opp went home across the fields that evening instead of through the town. He was not quite up to any of his rôles—editor, promoter, or reformer. In fact, he felt a desperate need of a brief respite from all histrionic duties. A reaction had set in from the excitement of the past week, and the complication involved in Mrs. Gusty’s condition puzzled and distressed him. Of course, he assured himself repeatedly, there was a way out of the difficulty; but he was not able to find it just yet. He had observed that Mrs. Gusty’s opinions became fixed convictions under the slightest opposition, whereas Guinevere’s firmest decision trembled at a breath of disapproval. He sighed deeply as he meditated upon the vagaries of the feminine mind.
Overhead the bare trees lifted a network of twigs against a dull sky, a cold wind stirred the sedge grass, and fluttered the dry leaves that had lain all winter in the fence corners. Everything looked old and worn and gray, even Mr. Opp, as he leaned against a gaunt, white[p226]sycamore, his head bent, and his brows drawn, wrestling with his problem.
Suddenly he lifted his head and listened, then he smiled. In the tree above him a soft but animated conversation was in progress. A few daring birds had braved the cold and the wind, and had ventured back to their old trysting-place to wait for the coming of the spring. No hint of green had tinged the earth, but a few, tiny, pink maple-buds had given the secret away, and the birds were cuddled snugly together, planning, in an ecstasy of subdued enthusiasm, for the joyous days to come.
Mr. Opp listened and understood. They were all whispering about one thing, and he wanted to whisper about it, too. It was the simple theme of love without variations—love, minus problems, minus complications, minus consequences. He took out his little packet of letters and read them through; then, unmindful of the chill, he stretched himself under the tree and listened to the birds until the twilight silenced them.
[p227]When he reached home at last, Miss Kippy met him at the door with a happy cry of welcome.
“D.,” she said, with her arm through his, and her cheek rubbing his sleeve, “I’ve been good. I’ve let my hair stay up all day, and Aunt Tish is making me a long dress like a lady.” She looked at him shyly and smiled, then she pulled his head down and whispered, “If I’m very good, when I grow up, can I marry Mr. Hinton?”
Miss Kippy, too, had been listening to the bird-song.
Itwas May when Willard Hinton arrived at the Cove and took up his abode at Mrs. Gusty’s. For the first week he kept to his bed, but at the end of that time he was able to crawl down to the porch and, under the protection of dark glasses and a heavy shade, sit for hours at a time in the sunshine. The loss of his accustomed environment, the ennui that ensues from absolute idleness, the consciousness that the light was growing dimmer day by day, combined to plunge him into abysmal gloom.
He shrank from speaking to any one, he scowled at a suggestion of sympathy, he treated Mr. Opp’s friendly overtures with open discourtesy. Conceiving himself on the rack of torture, he set his[p229]teeth and determined to submit in silence, but without witnesses.
One endless day dragged in the wake of another, and between them lay the black strips of night that were heavy with the suggestion of another darkness pending. When sleep refused to come, he would go out into the woods and walk for hours, moody, wretched, and sick to his innermost soul with loneliness.
The one thing in the whole dreary round of existence that roused in him a spark of interest was his hostess. She bestowed upon him the same impersonal attention that she gave her fowls. She fed him and cared for him and doctored him as she saw fit, and after these duties were performed, she left him to himself, pursuing her own vigorous routine in her own vigorous way.
Hinton soon discovered that Mrs. Gusty was temperamental. Her intensely energetic nature demanded an emotional as well as a physical outlet. Sometime during the course of each day she indulged in emotional fireworks,[p230]bombs of anger, rockets of indignation, or set pieces of sulks and pouts.
These periodic spells of anger acted upon her like wine: they warmed her vitals and exhilarated her; they made her talk fluently and eloquently. As a toper will accept any beverage that intoxicates, so Mrs. Gusty accepted any cause that would rouse her. At stated intervals her feelings demanded a stimulant, and obeying the call of nature, she went forth and got angry.
Hinton came to consider these outbursts as the one diversion in a succession of monotonous hours. He tabulated the causes, and made bets with himself as to the strength and duration of each.
Meanwhile the sun and the wind and the silence were working their miracle. Hinton was introduced to nature by a warlike old rooster whose Hellenic cast of countenance had suggested the name of Menelaus. A fierce combat with a brother-fowl had inevitably recalled the great fight with Paris, and upon investigation Hinton found that the speckled[p231]hen was Helen of Troy! This was but the beginning of a series of discoveries, and the result was an animated and piquant version of Greek history, which boldly set aside tradition, and suggested many possibilities heretofore undreamed of.
Early one morning as Hinton was wandering listlessly about the yard he heard the gate click, and, looking up, saw Mr. Opp hurrying up the walk with a large bunch of lilacs in one hand and a cornet in the other.
“Good morning,” said that gentleman, cheerily. “Mighty glad to see you out enjoying the beauties of nature. I haven’t got but a moment in which to stop; appointment at eight-fifteen. We are arranging for a concert soon up in Main Street, going to practise this afternoon. I’ll be glad to call by for you if you feel able to enjoy some remarkable fine selections.”
Hinton accepted the proffered bouquet, but made a wry face at the invitation.
[p232]“None of your concerts for me,” he said brusquely. “It would interfere too seriously with my own musical job of getting in tune with the infinite.”
“Mornin’, Mr. Opp,” said Mrs. Gusty from the dining-room window. “There ain’t many editors has time to stand around and talk this time of day.”
“Just paused a moment in passing,” said Mr. Opp. “Wanted to see if I couldn’t induce our young friend here to give us a’ article for ‘The Opp Eagle.’ Any nature, you know; we are always metropolitan in our taste. Thought maybe he’d tell us some of his first impressions of our city.”
Hinton smiled and shook his head. “You’d better not stir up my impressions about anything these days; I am apt to splash mud.”
“We can stand it,” said Mr. Opp, affably. “If Cove City needs criticism and rebuke, ‘The Opp Eagle’ is the vehicle to administer it. You dictate a few remarks to my reporter, and I’ll feature it on the front editorial column.”
[p233]Hinton’s eyes twinkled wickedly behind his blue glasses. “I’ll give you an article,” he said, “but no name is to be signed.”
Mr. Opp, regretting the stipulation, but pleased with the promise, was turning to depart when Mrs. Gusty appeared once more at the window.
“What’s the matter with the oil-wells?” she demanded, as she dusted off the sill. “Why don’t they open up? You can’t use bad weather for an excuse any longer.”
“It wasn’t the weather,” said Mr. Opp, with the confident and superior manner of one who is conversant with the entire situation. “This here delay has been arranged with a purpose. I and Mr. Mathews has a plan that will eventually yield every stock-holder in the Cove six to one for what he put into it.”
“Intend selling out to a syndicate?” asked Hinton.
Mr. Opp looked at him in surprise.
“Well, yes; I don’t mind telling you two, but it mustn’t go any farther. The[p234]oil prospects in this region are of such a great magnitude that we can’t command sufficient capital to do ’em justice. I and Mr. Mathews are at present negotiating with several large concerns with a view to selling out the entire business at a large profit. You can’t have any conception of the tac’ and patience it takes to manage one of these large deals.”
“Who was that man Clark that was down here last week?” asked Mrs. Gusty, impressed, in spite of herself, at being taken into the confidence of such a man of affairs.
Mr. Opp’s face clouded. “Now that was a very unfortunate thing about Clark. He was sent down by the Union Syndicate of New York city to make a report on the region, and he didn’t get the correct ideas in the case at all. If they hadn’t sent such a poor man, the whole affair might have been settled by now.”
“Wasn’t his report favorable?” asked Hinton.
[p235]“He hasn’t made it yet,” said Mr. Opp; “but he let drop sundry casual remarks to me that showed he wasn’t a man of fine judgment at all. I went over the ground with him, and pointed out some of the places where we calculated on drilling; but he was so busy making measurements and taking notes that he didn’t half hear what I was saying.”
“He stayed at Our Hotel,” said Mrs. Gusty. “Mr. Tucker said he had as mean a face as ever he looked into.”
“Who said so?” asked Hinton.
She tossed her head and flipped her duster at him, but it was evident that she was not displeased.
“By the way, Mr. Opp,” she said, “I’m thinking about letting Guin-never come home week after next. Guess you ain’t sorry to hear that.”
On the contrary, Mr. Opp was overcome with joy. Letters were becoming less and less satisfying, and the problem suggested by Mrs. Gusty was still waiting solution.
[p236]“If you’ll just mention the date,” he said, trying to keep his countenance from expressing an undue amount of rapture, “I’ll make a business trip down to Coreyville on purpose to accompany her back home.”
But Mrs. Gusty declined to be explicit. She deemed it unwise to allow a mere man to know as much as she did upon any given subject.
Hinton’s editorial appeared in the next issue of “The Opp Eagle.” It was a clever and cutting satire on the impressions of a foreigner visiting America for the first time. Hinton interviewed himself concerning his impressions of the Cove. He approached the subject with great seriousness, handling village trifles as if they were municipal cannon-balls. He juggled with sense and nonsense, with form and substance. The result shot far over the heads of the country subscribers, and hit the bull’s-eye of a big city daily.
Mr. Opp’s excitement was intense when he found that an editorial from[p237]“The Opp Eagle” had been copied in a New York paper. The fact that it was not his own never for a moment dimmed the glory of the compliment.
“We are getting notorious,” he said exultingly to Hinton. “There are few, if any, papers that in less than a year has extended its influence as far as the Atlantic Ocean. Now I am considering if it wouldn’t be a wise and judicious thing to get you on the staff permanent—while you are here, that is. Of course you understand I am invested up pretty close; but I’d be willing to let you have a little of my oil stock in payment for services.”
Hinton laughingly shook his head. “Whenever you run short of material, you can call on me. The honor of seeing my humble efforts borne aloft on the wings of ‘The Opp Eagle’ will be sufficient reward.”
Having once conceived it as a favor that was in his power to bestow, Mr. Opp lost no opportunity for inviting contributions from the aspiring author.
[p238]As Hinton’s strength returned, Mr. Opp adopted him as a protégé, at first patronizing him, then consulting him, and finally frankly appealing to him. For during the long afternoon walks which they got into the habit of taking together, Mr. Opp, in spite of bluster and brag and evasion, found that he was constantly being embarrassed by a question, a reference, a statement from his young friend. It was the first time he had ever experienced any difficulty in keeping his head above the waves of his own ignorance.
“You see,” he said one day by way of explanation, “my genius was never properly tutored in early youth. It’s what some might regard as a remarkable brain that could cope with all the different varieties of enterprises that I have engaged in, with no instruction or guidance but just the natural elements that God give it in the beginning.”
But in spite of Mr. Opp’s lenient attitude toward his intellectual short-comings, it was evident that upon the serene[p239]horizon of his egotism small clouds of humility were threatening to gather.
Hinton, restlessly seeking for something to fill the vacuum of his days, found Mr. Opp and his paper a growing source of diversion. “The Opp Eagle,” at first an object of ridicule, gradually became a point of interest in his limited range of vision. Under his suggestions it was enlarged and improved, and induced to publish news not strictly local.
Mr. Opp, meanwhile, was buzzing as persistently and ineffectually as a fly on a window-pane. The night before Guinevere’s return, he found that, in order to accomplish all that he was committed to, it would be necessary to spend the night at the office.
The concert for which the Unique Orchestra had been making night hideous for two weeks had just come to a successful close, and the editor found himself at a late hour tramping out the lonely road that led to the office with the prospect of a couple of hours’ work to[p240]do before he could seek a well-earned rest upon the office bench.
He was flushed with his double triumph as director and cornet soloist, and still thrilled by the mighty notes he had breathed into his beloved instrument.
The violin sobs, the flute complains, the drum insists, but the cornet brags, and Mr. Opp found it the instrument through which he could best express himself.
It was midnight, and the moon, one moment shining brightly and the next lost behind a flying cloud, sent all sorts of queer shadows scurrying among the trees. Mr. Opp thought once that he saw the figure of a man appear and disappear in the road before him, but he was so engrossed in joyful anticipation of the morrow that he gave the incident no attention. As he was passing the Gusty house, he was rudely plunged from sentiment into suspicion by the sight of a figure stealthily moving along the wall beneath the front windows.
Mr. Opp crouched behind the fence to[p241]watch him, but the moon took that inopportune moment to sink into a bank of clouds, and the yard was left in darkness. No sound broke the stillness save the far-off bark of a dog or an occasional croak from a bullfrog. Mr. Opp waited and listened in a state of intense suspense. Presently he heard the unmistakable sound of a window being cautiously raised, and then just as cautiously lowered. Summoning all his courage, he skirted the yard and hid in the bushes near the house. Nothing was to be seen or heard. He watched for a light at any of the windows, but none came.
The rash desire to capture the burglar single-handed, and thus distinguish himself in the eyes of Guinevere’s mother, caused Mr. Opp to stiffen his knees and assume a fierce and determined expression. But he was armed only with his cornet, which, though often deadly as an instrument of attack, has never been recognized as a weapon of defense. There seemed no alternative but to[p242]waken Hinton and effect a simultaneous attack from within and without.
After throwing a few unsuccessful pebbles at Hinton’s window, Mr. Opp remembered a ladder he had seen at the back of the barnyard. Shaking as if with the ague, but breathing dauntless courage, he departed in great excitement to procure it.
Unfortunately another party was in possession. A dozen guinea-fowls were roosting on the rungs, and when he gave them to understand they were to vacate they raised an outcry that would have quelled the ardor of a less valiant knight.
But the romantic nature of the adventure had fired Mr. Opp’s imagination. He already saw himself lightly dusting his hands after throttling the intruder, and smiling away Mrs. Gusty’s solicitude for his safety. Meanwhile he staggered back to the house with his burden, dodging fearfully at every shadow, and painfully aware that his heart was beating a tattoo on his ear-drums.
Placing the ladder as quietly as possible[p243]under Hinton’s window, he cautiously began the ascent. The sudden outburst of the guineas had set his nerves a-quiver, and what with his breathless condition, and a predisposition to giddiness, he found some difficulty in reaching the sill. When at last he succeeded, he saw, by the light of the now refulgent moon, the figure of Hinton lying across the foot of the bed, dressed, but asleep. The opening not being sufficiently large to admit him, he thrust in his head and whispered hoarsely through his chattering teeth:
“Hinton! I say, Hinton, there’s a burglar in the house!”
Hinton started up, and stared dully at the excited apparition.
“Hush!” whispered Mr. Opp, dramatically, lifting a warning hand. “I’ve been tracking the scoundrel for half an hour. He’s in the house now. We’ll surround him. We’ll bind him hand and foot. You get the front door open, and I’ll meet you on the outside. It’s all planned; just do as I say.”
[p244]Hinton, who was springing for the door, paused with his hand on the knob. “What’s that?”
It was Mrs. Gusty’s commanding tones from a front window: “He’s round at the side of the house. He’s been after my guineas! I saw him a minute ago going across the yard with a ladder. Shoot him if you can. Shoot him in the leg, so he can’t get away. Quick! Quick!”
Mr. Opp had only time to turn from the window when he felt the ladder seized from below and jerked violently forward. With a terrific crash he came down with it, and found himself locked in a close struggle with the supposed burglar. To his excited imagination his adversary seemed a Titan, with sinews of steel and breath of fire. The combatants rolled upon the ground and fought for possession of each other’s throats. The conflict, while fierce, was brief. As Hinton and Mrs. Gusty rushed around the corner of the house, the fighters shouted in unison, “I’ve got him!”[p245]and Mr. Opp, opening one swollen eye, gazed down into the mild but bloody features of little Mr. Tucker!
With the instinct that always prompted him to apologize when any one bumped into him, he withdrew his hands immediately from Mr. Tucker’s throat and began vehement explanations. But Mr. Tucker still clung to his collar, sputtering wrathful ejaculations. Mrs. Gusty, wrapped in a bed-quilt, and with her unicorn horn at its most ferocious angle, held the lamp on high while Hinton rushed between the belligerents.
Excited and incoherent explanations followed, and it was not until Mr. Opp, who was leaning limply against a tree, regained his breath that the mystery was cleared up.
“If you will just listen here at me a moment,” he implored, holding a handkerchief to his bruised face. “We are one and all laboring under a grave error. It’s my belief that there ain’t any burglar whatsoever here at present. Mr. Hinton forgot his key and had to[p246]climb in the window. I mistaken him for the burglar, and Mrs. Gusty, here, from what she relates, mistaken me for him, and not knowing Mr. Hinton had come in, telephoned our friend Mr. Tucker, and me and Mr. Tucker might be said, in a general way, to have mistaken each other for him.”
“A pretty mess to get us all into!” exclaimed Mrs. Gusty. “A man made his fortune once ’tending to his own business.”
“But, Mrs. Gusty—” began Mr. Opp, indignantly.
Hinton interrupted. “You would better put something on that eye of yours. It will probably resemble a Whistler ‘Nocturne’ by morning. What are you looking for?”
The object lost proved to be Mr. Opp’s cherished cornet, and the party became united in a common cause and joined in the search. Some time elapsed before the horn was found under the fallen ladder, having sustained internal injuries which subsequently proved fatal.
[p247]When dawn crept into the dingy office of “The Opp Eagle,” the editor was watching for it. He was waiting to welcome the day that would bring back Guinevere. As Hope with blindfold eyes bends over her harp and listens to the faint music of her one unbroken string, so Mr. Opp, with bandaged head, bent over his damaged horn and plaintively evoked the only note that was left therein.
Thosewho have pursued the coy goddess of happiness through the mazes of the labyrinth of life, know well how she invites her victim on from point to point, only to evade capture at the end. Mr. Opp rose with each summer dawn, radiant, confident, and expectant, and each night he sat in his window with his knees hunched, and his brows drawn, and wrestled with that old white-faced fear.
Two marauders were harassing the editor these days, dogging his footsteps, and snapping at him from ambush. One was the wolf that howls at the door, and the other was the monster whose eyes are green.
[p249]Since the halcyon days that had wafted Miss Guinevere Gusty back to the shore of the Cove, Mr. Opp had not passed a serene hour out of her presence. His disposition, though impervious to the repeated shafts of unkind fortune, was not proof against the corrosive effect of jealousy.
If he could have regarded Willard Hinton in the light of a hated rival, and met him in fair and open fight, the situation would have been simplified. But Hinton was the friend of his bosom, the man who, he had declared to the town, “possessed the grandest intelligence he had ever encountered in a human mind.” He admired him, he respected him, and, in direct contradiction to the emotion that was consuming him, he trusted him.
Concerning Miss Guinevere Gusty’s state of mind, Mr. Opp permitted himself only one opinion. He fiercely denied that she was absent-minded and listless when alone with him; he refused to believe his own eyes when he saw a light in her face when she looked at Hinton[p250]that was never there for him. He preferred to exaggerate to himself her sweetness, her gentleness, her loyalty, demanding nothing, and continuing to give all.
His entire future happiness, he assured himself, hung upon the one question of little Miss Kippy. For four months the problem had been a matter for daily, prayerful consideration, but he was still in the dark.
When he was with Guinevere the solution seemed easy. In explaining away the difficulties to her, he explained them away to himself, also. It was only a matter of time, he declared, before the oil-well would yield rich profit. When that time arrived, he would maintain two establishments, the old one for Miss Kippy, and a new and elegant one for themselves. Mr. Opp used the hole in the ground as a telescope through which he viewed the stars of the future.
But when he was alone with Kippy, struggling with her whims, while he tried to puzzle out the oldest and most universal[p251]of conundrums,—that of making ends meet,—the future seemed entirely blotted out by the great blank wall of the present.
The matter was in a way complicated by the change that had come over Miss Kippy herself. Two ideas alternately depressed and elated her. The first was a fixed antipathy to the photograph of Miss Guinevere Gusty which Mr. Opp had incased in a large hand-painted frame and installed upon his dresser. At first she sat before it and cried, and later she hid it and refused for days to tell where it was. The sight of it made her so unhappy that Mr. Opp was obliged to keep it under lock and key. The other idea produced a different effect. It had to do with Hinton. Ever since his visit she had talked of little else. She pretended that he came to see her every day, and she spread her doll dishes, and repeated scraps of his conversation, and acted over the events of the dinner at which he had been present. The short gingham dresses no longer pleased her;[p252]she wanted long ones, with flowing sleeves like the blue merino. She tied her hair up in all manner of fantastic shapes, and stood before the glass smiling and talking to herself for hours. But there were times when her mind paused for a moment at the normal, and then she would ask frightened, bewildered questions, and only Mr. Opp could soothe and reassure her.
“D.,” she said one night suddenly, “how old am I?”
Mr. Opp, whose entire mental and physical powers were concentrated upon an effort to put a new band on his old hat, was taken off his guard. “Twenty-six,” he answered absently.
A little cry brought him to her side.
“No,” she whispered, shivering away from him, yet clinging to his sleeve, “that’s a lady that’s grown up! Ladies don’t play with dolls. But I want to be grown up, too. D., why am I different? I want to be a lady; show me how to be a lady!”
Mr. Opp gathered her into his arms,[p253]along with his hat, a pair of scissors, and a spool of thread.
“Don’t, Kippy!” he begged. “Now, don’t cry like that! You are getting on elegant. Hasn’t brother D. learned you to read a lot of pieces in your first reader? And ain’t we going to begin on handwriting next? Wouldn’t you like to have a slate, and a sponge to rub out with?”
In an instant her mood veered.
“And a basket?” she cried eagerly. “The children carry a basket, too. I see them when I peep through the shutters. Can I have a basket, too?”
The network of complexities that was closing in upon Mr. Opp apparently affected his body more than his spirits. He seemed to shrivel and dwindle as the pressure increased; but the fire in his eyes shone brighter than before.
“None of his folks live long over forty,” said Mrs. Fallows, lugubriously; “they sorter burn themselves out.”
Hinton, meanwhile, utterly unaware of being the partial cause of the seismic[p254]disturbance in the editorial bosom, pursued the monotonous routine of his days. It had taken him only a short time to adapt himself to the changes that the return of the daughter of the house had brought about. He had anticipated her arrival with the dread a nervous invalid always feels toward anything that may jolt him out of his habitual rut. He held a shuddering remembrance of her musical accomplishments, and foresaw with dread the noisy crowd of young people she might bring about the house.
But Guinevere had slipped into her place, an absent-minded, dreamy, detached damsel, asserting nothing, claiming nothing, bending like a flower in the high winds of her mother’s wrath.
Hinton watched the dominating influence nip every bud of individuality that the girl ventured to put forth, and he determined to interfere. During the long months he had spent with Mrs. Gusty he had discovered a way to manage her. The weak spot in her armor was pride of intellect; she acknowledged no man[p255]her superior. By the use of figurative language, and references to esoteric matters, he was always able to baffle and silence her. His joy in handling her in one of her tempers was similar to that of controlling a cat-boat in squally weather. Both experiences redounded to his masculine supremacy.
One hot August day, he and Mrs. Gusty had just had an unusually sharp round, but he had succeeded, by alternate compliment and sarcasm, in reducing her to a very frustrated and baffled condition.
It was Sunday, the day the Cove elected for a spiritual wash-day. In the morning the morals of the community were scrubbed and rinsed in the meeting-house, and in the afternoon they were hung out on the line to dry. The heads of the families sat in their front yards and dutifully tended the children, while their wives flitted from house to house, visiting the sick and the afflicted, and administering warnings to the delinquent. It was a day in which Mrs.[p256]Gusty’s soul reveled, and she demanded that Guinevere’s soul should revel likewise.
It was with the determination that Guinevere should occasionally be allowed the privilege of following her own inclinations that Hinton hurled himself into the breach.
“I’ll go, Mother,” said Guinevere; “but it’s so hot. We went to see everybody last Sunday. I thought I’d rather stay home and read, if you didn’t mind.”
Mrs. Gusty tossed her head in disgust, and turned to Hinton.
“Now, ain’t that a Gusty for you! I never saw one that didn’t want to set down to the job of living. Always moping around with their nose in a book. I never was a reader, never remember wasting a’ hour on a book in my life, and yet I never saw the time that I wasn’t able to hold my own with any Gusty living.”
“In short,” said Hinton, sympathetically, “to quote a noted novelist, you[p257]have never considered it necessary to add the incident of learning to the accident of brains.”
Mrs. Gusty tied her bonnet-strings in a firmer knot as she looked at him uncertainly, then, not deigning to cast another glance in the direction of her daughter, who was disappearing up the stairs, swept out of the house.
Hinton looked at his watch; it was not yet two o’clock. The afternoon threatened to be a foretaste of eternity. He went out on the porch and lay in the hammock, with his hands clasped across his eyes. He could no longer see to read or to write. The doctor said the darkness might close in now at any time, after that the experiment of an operation would be made, and there was one chance in a hundred for the partial restoration of the sight.
Having beaten and bruised himself against the bars of Fate, he now lay exhausted and passive in the power of his jailer. He had tried to run his own life in his own way, and the matter had been[p258]taken out of his hands. He must lie still now and wait for orders from headquarters. The words of Mr. Opp, spoken in the low-ceiled, weird old dining-room, came vividly back to him: “What the fight is concerning, or in what manner the general is a-aiming to bring it all correct in the end, ain’t, according to my conclusion, a particle of our business.”
And Hinton, after a year of rebellion and struggle and despair, had at last acknowledged a superior officer and declared himself ready to take whatever orders came.
As he lay in the hammock he turned his head at every noise within the house, and listened. He had become amazingly dependent upon a soft, drawling voice which day after day read to him for hours at a time. At first he had met Guinevere’s offers of help with moody irritability.
“Pray, don’t bother about me,” he had said. “I am quite able to look after myself; besides, I like to be alone.”
But her unobtrusive sympathy and[p259]childish frankness soon conquered his pride. She read to him from books she did not understand, played games with him, and showed him new walks in the woods. And incidentally, she revealed to him her struggling, starving, wistful soul that no one else had ever discovered.
She never talked to him of her love affair, but she dwelt vaguely on the virtues of duty and loyalty and self-sacrifice. The facts in the case were supplied by Mrs. Gusty.
Hinton looked at his watch again, and groaned when he found it was only a quarter past two. Feeling his way cautiously along the porch and down the steps, he moved idly about the yard. He could not distinguish Menelaus from Paris now, and Helen of Troy was no longer to be recognized.
At long intervals a vehicle rattled past, leaving a cloud of dust behind. The air shimmered with the heat, and the low, insistent buzzing of bees beat on his ears mercilessly. He wondered[p260]impatiently why Guinevere did not come down, then checked himself as he remembered the constant demands he made upon her time.
At three o’clock he could stand it no longer. He felt a queer, dull sensation about his head, and he constantly drew his hand across his eyes to dispel the impression of a mist before them.
“Oh, Miss Guinevere!” he called up to her window. “Would you mind coming down just for a little while!”
Guinevere’s head appeared so promptly that it was evident it had been lying on the window-sill.
“Is it time for your medicine?” she asked guiltily. “Mother said it didn’t come till four.”
“Oh, no,” said Hinton, with forced cheerfulness; “it isn’t that. You remember the old song, don’t you, ‘When a man’s afraid, a beautiful maid is a cheering sight to see’?”
She disappeared from the window, and in a moment joined him behind the screen of honeysuckles on the porch.[p261]The hammock hung, inviting ease, but neither of them took it. She sat primly on the straight-backed, green settee, and he sat on the step at her feet with his hat pulled over his eyes.
“What an infernal nuisance I have been to you!” he said ruefully; “but no more than I have been to myself. The only difference was that I had to stand it, and you stood it out of the goodness of that kind little heart of yours. Well, it’s nearly over now; I’m expecting to go to the city any day. I guess you’ll not be sorry to get rid of me, will you, Miss Guinevere?”
Instead of answering, she drew a quick breath and turned her head away. When she did speak, it was after a long pause.
“I like the way you say my name. Nobody says it like that down here.”
“Guinevere?” he repeated.
She nodded. “When you say it like that, I feel like I was another person. It makes me think of flowers, and poetry, and the wind in the trees, and all those[p262]things I’ve been reading you out of your books. Guin-never and Guineveredon’tseem the same at all, do they?”