Mr. Opp Part 20

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 t.i.tan, 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!" and Mr. Opp, opening one swollen eye, gazed down into the mild but b.l.o.o.d.y features of little Mr. Tucker!

With the instinct that always prompted him to apologize when any one b.u.mped 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns. 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 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.

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.

XIV

Those who have pursued the coy G.o.ddess 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 hara.s.sing the editor these days, d.o.g.g.i.ng 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.

Since the halcyon days that had wafted Miss Guinevere Gusty back to the sh.o.r.e of the Cove, Mr. Opp had not pa.s.sed 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 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 a.s.sured 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 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 sc.r.a.ps 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; 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 gla.s.s 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 rea.s.sure 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, 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 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 antic.i.p.ated 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, a.s.serting 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 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. 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 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 pa.s.sive in the power of his jailer. He had tried to run his own life in his own way, and the matter had been 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.