The Fortunes of Oliver Horn Part 7

The farm saved, she would give her attention to Oliver's future career.

On one point her mind was firmly made up--he should never, in spite of what his father said, become a painter.

Oliver hurried through his breakfast, cut short Malachi's second relay of waffles to the great disappointment of that excellent servitor, and with his mother's message for the moment firmly fixed in his mind, tilted his hat on one side of his head and started across Kennedy Square, whistling as he went.

Mrs. Horn moved her seat to the window and looked out upon the brick-paved yard. The door of the shop was shut. Richard was already at work, for a thin curl of blue smoke was rising from the chimney. As she sat looking out upon the tulip-tree and the ivy-covered wall beyond, a strange, unaccountable sense of loneliness new in her experience came over her. The lines about her mouth settled more firmly, and the anxious look that had filled her eyes changed to one of determination.

"n.o.body can help," she said to herself with a sigh. "I must do it all myself;" and picking up her basket of keys she mounted slowly to her room.

Once outside the front door, with the fresh, clear air stirring to a silver-white the leaves of the maples, the birds singing in the branches and the sky glistening overhead, one of those sudden changes of mood to which our young hero was subject swept over him. The picture of the dear mother whom he loved and whose anxious face had at last filled his thoughts, by some shifting of the gray matter of this volatile young gentleman's brain had suddenly become replaced by another.

Pretty Sue Clayton, her black eyes snapping with fun, her hand so soon to be outstretched in welcome, was now the dominating figure in his mental horizon. Even Sir Peter Lely's girl in pink and the woodc.o.c.k shooting with Tom Pitts, and all the other delights that had filled his brain had become things of the past as he thought of Sue's greeting.

For the time being this black-eyed little witch with the ringlets about her face had complete possession of him.

He had not thought of her, it is true, for five consecutive minutes since he had bidden her good-night ten hours ago; and he would, I am quite sure, have forgotten even his promise to see her this morning had not his mother's message made his going to her house imperative. And yet, now that the prospect of having a glimpse of her face was a.s.sured, he could hardly wait until he reached her side.

Not that he had some new thing to tell her--something that had bubbled up fresh from the depths of his heart over-night. Indeed, had that portion of this young gentleman's anatomy been searched with a dark lantern, it can safely be said that not the slightest suggestion of this fair inamorata's form or lineaments would have been found lurking in any one of its recesses. Furthermore, I can state positively--and I knew this young gentleman quite well at the time--that it was not Sue at all that he longed for at this precise moment, even though he hurried to meet her. It was more the WOMAN IN HER--the something that satisfied his inner nature when he was with her--her coy touches of confidence, her artless outbursts of admiration, looking up in his face as she spoke, the dimples playing about the corners of her mouth. He revelled in all those subtle flatteries and cajoleries, and in all the arts to please of which she was past mistress. He loved to believe her--she intended that he should--when she told him how different he was from anybody about Kennedy Square, and how n.o.body swam or rode or danced as he did; nor wore their hair so becomingly, nor their clothes--especially the gray jacket b.u.t.toned up close under the chin, not carried themselves as they walked; nor--

Why go on? We all know exactly how she said it, and how sincere she seemed, and how we believed it all (and do now, some of us), and how blissful it was to sit beside her and hear her voice and know that this most adorable of women really believed that the very sun itself rose and set in our own adorable persons.

Because of all this and of many other things with which we have nothing to do, our young hero saw only Sue's eyes when that maiden, who had been watching for him at the library window, laid her hand on the lapel of his coat in her coaxing way. No wonder he had forgotten everything which his mother had asked him to do. I can forgive him under the circ.u.mstances--and so can you. Soft hands are very beguiling, sometimes--and half-closed lids--Well! It is a good many years ago, but there are some things that none of us ever forget.

Blinded by such fascinations it is not at all astonishing that long before Oliver regained his senses the Colonel had left the house for the day. That distinguished gentleman would, no doubt, have waited the young prince's pleasure in his library had he known of his errand. But since the Colonel had unfortunately taken himself off, there was nothing, of course, for our Oliver to do but to remain where he was until noon--this was Sue's way out of the difficulty--and then to catch the Colonel at the bank where he could always be found between twelve and one o'clock, or where Mr. Stiger, the cashier, could lay his hands on him if he was anywhere in the neighborhood, a suggestion of Sue's which at once relieved Oliver from further anxiety, Mr. Stiger being one of his oldest and dearest friends.

By the time, however, that Oliver had reached the bank the Colonel had left for the club, where he would have been too happy, no doubt--being the most courteous of colonels, etc., etc.--"if his dear young friend had only sent him word," etc.

All this our breathless young Mercury--Oliver never walked when he could run--learned some hours later from old Mr. Stiger, the cashier, who punched him in the ribs at the end of every sentence in which he conveyed the disappointing information, calling him "Creeps," at short intervals, and roaring with laughter at the boy's account of the causes leading up to his missing the Colonel.

"Gone to the club, Creeps, don't I tell you (--punch in the ribs--); gone to get a little sip of Madeira and a little bit of woodc.o.c.k (--punch over the heart--), and a little--oh, I tell you, you young dog--" (this punch straight on the breast-bone)--"you ought to be a bank director--you hear!--a big fat bank director, and own a big house up in the Square, if you want to enjoy yourself--and have a pretty daughter--Oh, you young rascal!" This last punch bent Oliver double, and was followed by an outburst of uncontrollable laughter from Stiger.

These same punchings and outbursts had gone on since the days that Oliver was in short trousers and Stiger was superintendent of the Sunday-school which the boy had attended in his early years--Stiger was still superintendent and of the same school: cashiers had to have certificates of character in those days. A smooth-shaven, round-headed old fellow was Stiger, with two little dabs of side-whiskers, a pair of eyes that twinkled behind a pair of gold spectacles, and a bald head kept polished by the constant mopping of a red silk handkerchief. His costume in the bank was a black alpaca coat and high black satin stock, which grabbed him tight around the neck, and held in place the two points of his white collar struggling to be free. Across his waist-line was a square of cloth. This, in summer, replaced his waistcoat, and, in winter, protected it from being rubbed into holes by constant contact with the edge of the counter.

His intimacy with Oliver dated from one hot Sunday morning years before, when Oliver had broken in upon the old gentleman's long prayers by sundry sc.r.a.pings of his finger-nails down the whitewashed wall of the school-room, producing a blood-cooling and most irreverent sound, much to the discomfort of the worshippers.

"Who made that noise?" asked Mr. Stiger, when the amen was reached.

"Me, sir."

"What for?"

"To get cool. It makes creeps go down my back." From that day the old cashier had never called Oliver anything but "Creeps."

Oliver, in a spirit of playful revenge, made caricatures of his prosecutor in these later years, enlarging his nose, puffing out his cheeks, and dressing him up in impossible clothes. These sketches he would mail to the cashier as anonymous communications, always stopping at the bank the next day to see how Stiger enjoyed them. He generally found them tacked up over the cashier's desk. Some of them were still there when Stiger died.

Carried away by the warm greetings of the old cashier, and the hearty, whole-souled spirit of companionship inherent in the man--a spirit always dear to Oliver--he not only stayed to make another caricature of the old fellow, over which the original laughed until the tears ran down his fat cheeks, but until all the old sketches were once more taken from the drawer or examined on the wall and laughed at over again, Stiger praising him for his cleverness and predicting all kinds of honors and distinctions for him when his talents become recognized.

It was just the atmosphere of general approval in which our young hero loved to bask, and again the hours slipped away and three o'clock came and went and his mother's message was still undelivered. Nor had he been at Judge Ellicott's office. This fact was not impressed upon him by the moon-faced clock that hung over the cashier's desk--time made no difference to Oliver--but by the cashier himself, who began stuffing the big books into a great safe built into the wall, preparatory to locking it with a key that could have opened the gate of a walled town, and which the old gentleman took home with him every night and hung on a nail by his bed.

Thus it came to pa.s.s that another half hour had struck before Oliver mounted the steps of the Chesapeake Club in search of the elusive Colonel.

The fat, mahogany-colored porter, who sat all day in the doorway of the club, dozing in his lobster-sh.e.l.l bath-chair, answered his next inquiry. This ancient relic; who always boasted that no gentleman member of the club, dead or alive, could pa.s.s him without being recognized, listened to Oliver's request with a certain lifeless air--a manner always shown to strangers--and shuffled away to the reading-room to find the Colonel.

The occupant of this bath-chair was not only one of the characters of the club but one of the characters of the town. He was a squat, broken-kneed old darky, with white eyebrows arching over big bra.s.s spectacles, a flat nose, and two keen, restless monkey eyes. His hands, like those of many negroes of his age, were long and shrivelled, the palms wrinkled as the inside, of a turkey's foot and of the same color and texture. His two feet, always in evidence, rested on their heels, and were generally encased in carpet slippers--shoes being out of the question owing to his life-long habit of storing inside his own person the drainings of the decanters, an idiosyncrasy which produced a form of gout that only carpet slippers could alleviate. In his earlier life he had carried General Washington around in his arms, had waited on Henry Clay, and had been body-servant to Lafayette, besides holding the horses of half the generals of the War of 1812--at, least, he said so, and no man of his color dared contradict him.

The years of service of this guardian of the front door dated back to the time when the Chippendale furniture of Colonel Ralph Coston, together with many of the portraits covering the walls, and the silver chafing-dishes lining the sideboard, had come into the possession of the club through that gentleman's last will and testament. Coston was the most beloved of all the epicures of his time, and his famous terrapin-stew--one of the marvellous, delicacies of the period--had been cooked in these same chafing-dishes. The mahogany-colored Cerberus had been Coston's slave as well as butler, and still belonged to the estate. It was eminently proper, therefore, that he should still maintain his position at the club as long as his feet held out.

While he was gone in search of the Colonel, Oliver occupied himself for a moment in examining one of the old English sporting prints that ornamented the side-walls of the bare, uncarpeted, dismal hall. It was the second time that he had entered these sacred doors--few men of his own age had ever done as much. He had stopped there once before in search of his father, when his mother had been taken suddenly ill. He recalled again the curious spiral staircase at the end of the hall where his father had met him and which had impressed him so at the time. He could see, too, the open closet out of which Mr. Horn had taken his overcoat, and which was now half-filled with hats and coats.

From the desolate, uninviting hall, Oliver pa.s.sed into the large meeting-room of the club fronting the street, now filled with members, many of whom had dropped in for half an hour on their way back to their offices. Of these some of the older and more sedate men, like Judge Bowman and Mr. Pancoast, were playing chess; others were seated about the small tables, reading, sipping toddies, or chatting together. A few of the younger bloods, men of forty or thereabouts, were standing by the uncurtained windows watching the belles of the town in their flounced dresses and wide leghorn hats, out for an afternoon visit or promenade. Among these men Oliver recognized Howard Thom, son of the Chief-Justice, poor as a church mouse and fifty years of age if a day.

Oliver was not surprised to find Thom craning his neck at the window.

He remembered the story they told of this perennial beau--of how he had been in love with every woman in and around Kennedy Square, from Miss Clendenning down to the latest debutante, and of how he would tell you over his first toddy that he had sown his wild oats and was about to settle down for life, and over his last--the sixth, or seventh, or eighth--that the most adorable woman in town, after a life devoted to her service, had thrown him over, and that henceforth all that was left to him was a load of buckshot and six feet of earth.

Oliver bowed to those of the members he knew, and wheeling one of the clumsy mahogany chairs into position, sat down to await the arrival of Colonel Clayton.

Meanwhile his eyes wandered over the desolate room with its leather-covered chairs and sofas and big marble mantel bare of every ornament but another moon-faced clock--a duplicate of the one at the bank--and two bronze candelabra flanking each end, and then on the portraits of the dead and gone members which relieved the sombre walls--one in a plum-colored coat with hair tied in a queue being no other than his own ancestor. He wondered to himself where lay the charm and power to attract in a place so colorless, and he thought, as was his habit with all interiors, how different he would want it to be if he ever became a member. His fresh young nature revolted at the dinginess and bareness of the surroundings. He couldn't understand why the men came here and what could be the fascination of sitting round these cold tables talking by the hour when there was so much happiness outside--so much of light and air and sunshine free to everybody.

He was, moreover, a little constrained and uncomfortable. There was none of the welcome of Mr. Crocker's studio about this place, nor any of the comforting companionship of the jolly old cashier, who made the minutes fly as if they had wings; and that, too, in a musty bank far more uninviting even than the club. He remembered his mother's message now--and he remembered her face and the anxious expression--as we always remember duties when we are uncomfortable. He meant to hurry home to her as soon as the Colonel dismissed him, and tell her how it had all happened, and how sorry he was, and what a stupid he had been, and she would forgive him as she had a hundred times before.

As he sat absorbed in these thoughts his attention was attracted by a conversation at the adjoining table between that dare-devil cross-country rider, Tom Gunning of Calvert County, old General McTavish of the Mexican War, and Billy Talbot the exquisite. Gunning was in his corduroys and hunting-boots. He always wore them when he came to town, even when dining with his friends. He had them on now, the boots being specially in evidence, one being hooked over the chair on which he sat and within a foot of Oliver's elbow. None of these peculiarities, however, made the slightest difference in Kennedy Square, so far as Gunning's social position was concerned--Tom's mother having been a Carroll and his grandfather once Governor of the State.

The distinguished cross-country rider was telling General McTavish, immaculate in black wig, blue coat, pepper-and-salt trousers and patent-leather shoes, and red-faced Billy Talbot, of an adventure that he, Gunning, had had the night before while driving home to his plantation. The exquisite's costume was in marked contrast to those of the other two--it was his second change that day. At this precise moment he was upholstered in peg-top, checker-board trousers, bob-tail Piccadilly coat, and a one-inch brim straw hat, all of the latest English pattern. Everything, in fact, that Billy possessed was English, from a rimless monocle decorating his left eye, down to the animated door-mat of a skye-terrier that followed at his heels.

Oliver saw from the way in which McTavish leaned over the table, protecting the tray with his two arms, that he was in command of the decanter, and that the duty of alleviating the thirst of his companions had devolved upon the General. Billy Talbot sat with his hat tipped back on his head, his chin resting on his abbreviated cane, his eyes fixed on Gunning. Both McTavish and Talbot were listening intently to the cross-country rider's story.

"And you say you were sober, Gunning?" Oliver heard the General ask, with a scrutinizing look at Tom. Not with any humorous intent--more with the manner of a presiding officer at a court-martial, determined to establish certain essential facts.

"As a clock, General. The first thing I knew the mare shied and I came pretty near landin' in the dirt." (The lower county men always dropped their g's.) "He was lyin', I tell you, right across the road. If it hadn't been for Kitty, I would have run him down. I got out and held onto the reins, and there he was, sir, stretched out as drunk as a lord, flat on his back and sound asleep. I saw right away that he was a gentleman, and I tied the mare to a tree, picked him up with the greatest care, laid him on the side of the road, put his hat under his head, and made him as comfortable as I could, when, by George, sir! I hadn't any more than got back to my buggy, when bang! went a ball within a foot of my head!"

The General, who, as he listened, had been repointing the waxed ends of his dyed mustache with his lemon-colored kid gloves, now leaned back in his chair.

"Fired at you, sir?" The General had served both at Chapultepec and Buena Vista, and was an authority where gunpowder was concerned.

"That's just what he did. Came near takin' the top of my head off!

Hadn't been so dark he would have done it."

"Good G.o.d! you don't tell me so!" exclaimed the General, mopping his lips with his perfumed handkerchief. "Were you armed, Gunning?"

"No, sir, I was entirely at his mercy and absolutely defenceless. Well, I grabbed the reins to quiet the mare and then I hollered out--'What the devil do you mean, sir, by tryin' to blow the top of my head off?'

I could see now that he had raised himself up on his elbow and was lookin' at me in a way I did not like.

"'What do you mean by disturbin' my rest, sir,' he called back.

"'Well, but my dear sir, you were lyin' in the middle of the road and might have been run over.'

"'It's none of your business where I lie,' he hollered back. 'I go to sleep where I d.a.m.n please, sir. I consider it a very great liberty.'

"'I, beg your pardon, sir,' I said. 'I did not intend any trespa.s.s--' I was walkin' toward him now. I did not want him to shoot again.

"'That's sufficient, sir,' he said. 'No gentleman can do more. There's my hand, sir. Allow me, sir, to offer you a drink. If you will roll me over, you will find my flask in my coat-tail pocket.'

"Well, I rolled him over, took a drink, and then I brought the mare alongside, helped him in and drove him home to my house. He was a most delightful gentleman. Didn't leave my place until four o'clock in the mornin'. He lives about fifteen miles below me. He told me his name was Toffington. Do you happen to know him, Talbot?" said Gunning, turning to Billy.