Chapter 2

The truth is that our Mr. Opp was not happy. In his secret heart he felt a bit apologetic before the material success of his elder brother. Hence it was necessary to talk a great deal and to set forth in detail the very important business enterprises upon which he was about to embark.

Presently Ben Opp looked at his watch.

"See here," he interrupted, "that boat may be along at any time. We'd better come to some decision about the estate."

D. Webster ran his fingers through his hair, which stood in valiant defense of the small bald spot behind it.

"Yes, yes," he said; "business is business. I'll have to be off myself the very first thing in the morning. This funeral couldn't have come at a more unfortunate time for me. You see, my special territory--"

But Ben saw the danger of another bolt, and checked him:

"How much do you think the old house is worth?"

D. Webster drew forth his shiny note-book and pencil and made elaborate calculations.

"I should say," he said, as one financier to another, "that including of the house and land and contents of same, it would amount to the whole sum total of about two thousand dollars."

"That is about what I figured," said Ben; "now, how much money is in the bank?"

D. Webster produced a formidable packet of letters and papers from his inside pocket and, after some searching, succeeded in finding a statement, which set forth the fact that the Ripper County Bank held in trust one thousand dollars, to be divided between the children of Mary Opp Moore at the death of her husband, Curtis V. Moore.

"One thousand dollars!" said Ben, looking blankly at his brother, "Why, for heaven's sake, what have Mr. Moore and Kippy been living on all these years?"

D. Webster moved uneasily in his chair. "Oh, they've managed to get along first rate," he said evasively.

His brother looked at him narrowly. "On the interest of a thousand dollars?" He leaned forward, and his face hardened: "See here, have you been putting up cash all this time for that old codger to loaf on? Is that why you have never gotten ahead?"

D. Webster, with hands in his pockets and his feet stretched in front of him, was blinking in furious embarrassment at the large-eyed elk overhead.

"To think," went on Ben, his slow wrath rising, "of your staying here in Kentucky all these years and handing out what you made to that old sponger. I cut loose and made a neat little sum, married, and settled down. And what have you done? Where have you gotten? Anybody that would let himself be imposed upon like that deserves to fail. Now what do you propose to do about this money?"

Mr. Opp did not propose to do anything. The affront offered his business sagacity was of such a nature that it demanded all his attention. He composed various denunciatory answers with which to annihilate his brother. He hesitated between two courses, whether he should hurl himself upon him in righteous indignation and demand physical satisfaction, or whether he should rise in a calm and manly attitude and wither him with blighting sarcasm. And while the decision was pending, he still sat with his hands in his pockets, and his feet stretched forth, and blinked indignantly at the ornate elk.

"The estate," continued Ben, contempt still in his face, "amounts at most to three thousand dollars, after the house is sold. Part of this, of course, will go to the maintenance of Kippy."

At mention of her name, Mr. Opp's gaze dropped abruptly to his brother's face.

"What about Kippy? She's going to live with you, ain't she?" he asked anxiously.

Ben Opp shook his head emphatically. "She certainly is not. I haven't the slightest idea of burdening myself and family with that feeble-minded girl."

"But see here," said Mr. Opp, his anger vanishing in the face of this new complication, "you don't know Kippy; she's just similar to a little child, quiet and gentle-like. Never give anybody any trouble in her life. Just plays with her dolls and sings to herself all day."

"Exactly," said Ben; "twenty-five years old and still playing with dolls. I saw her yesterday, dressed up in all sorts of foolish toggery, talking to her hands, and laughing. Aunt Tish humors her, and her father humored her, but I'm not going to. I feel sorry for her all right, but I am not going to take her home with me."

D. Webster nervously twisted the large seal ring which he wore on his forefinger. "Then what do you mean," he said hesitatingly--"what do you want to do about it?"

"Why, send her to an asylum, of course. That's where she ought to have been all these years."

Mr. Opp, sitting upon the small of his back, with one leg wrapped casually about the leg of the chair, stared at him for a moment in consternation, then, gathering himself together, rose and for the first time since we have met him seemed completely to fill his checked ready-made suit.

"Send Kippy to a lunatic asylum!" he said in tones so indignant that they made his chin tremble. "You will do nothing whatever of the kind! Why, all she's ever had in the world was her pa and Aunt Tish and her home; now he's gone, you ain't wanting to take the others away from her too, are you?"

"Well, who is going to take care of her?" demanded Ben angrily.

"I am," announced D. Webster, striking as fine an attitude as ever his illustrious predecessor struck; "you take the money that's in the bank, and leave me the house and Kippy. That'll be her share and mine. I can take care of her; I don't ask favors of nobody. Suppose I do lose my job; I'll get me another. There's a dozen ways I can make a living. There ain't a man in the State that's got more resources than me. I got plans laid now that'll revolutionize--"

"Yes," said Ben, quietly, "you always could do great things."

D. Webster's egotism, inflated to the utmost, burst at this prick, and he suddenly collapsed. Dropping limply into the chair by the table, he held his hand over his mouth to hide his agitation.

"There's--there's one thing," he began, swallowing violently, and winking after each word, "that I--I can't do--and that's to leave a--sister--to die--among strangers."

And then, to his mortification, his head went unexpectedly down upon his arms, and a flood of tears bedimmed the radiance of his twenty-five-cent four-in-hand.

From far down the river came the whistle of the boat, and, in the room below, Jimmy Fallows removed a reluctant ear from the stove-pipe hole.

"Melindy," he said confidentially, entirely forgetting the late frost, "I never see anybody in the world that stood as good a show of gittin' the fool prize as that there D. Opp."

IV

The old Opp House stood high on the river-bank and gazed lonesomely out into the summer night. It was a shabby, down-at-heel, dejected-looking place, with one side showing faint lights, above and below, but the other side so nailed up and empty and useless that it gave the place the appearance of being paralyzed down one side and of having scarcely enough vitality left to sustain life in the other.

To make matters worse, an old hound howled dismally on the door-step, only stopping occasionally to paw at the iron latch and to whimper for the master whose unsteady footsteps he had followed for thirteen years.

In the front room a shaded lamp, turned low, threw a circle of light on the table and floor, leaving the corners full of vague, uncertain shadows. From the wide, black fireplace a pair of rusty and battered andirons held out empty arms, and on the high stone shelf above the opening, flanked on each side by a stuffed owl, was a tall, square-faced clock, with the hour-hand missing. The minute-hand still went on its useless round, and behind it, on the face of the clock, a tiny schooner with all sail set rocked with the swinging of the pendulum.

The loud ticking of the clock, and the lamentations of the hound without, were not the only sounds that disturbed the night. Before the empty fireplace, in a high-backed, cane-bottomed chair, slept an old negress, with head bowed, moaning and muttering as she slept. She was bent and ashen with age, and her brown skin sagged in long wrinkles from her face and hands. On her forehead, reaching from brow to faded turban, was a hideous testimony to some ancient conflict. A large, irregular hole, over which the flesh had grown, pulsed as sentiently and imperatively as a naked, living heart.

A shutter slammed sharply somewhere in the house above, and something stirred fearfully in the shadow of the room. It was a small figure that crouched against the wall, listening and watching with the furtive terror of a newly captured coyote--the slight figure of a woman dressed as a child, with short gingham dress, and heelless slippers, and a bright ribbon holding back the limp, flaxen hair from her strange, pinched face.

Again and again her wide, frightened eyes sought the steps leading to the room above, and sometimes she would lean forward and whisper in agonized expectancy, "Daddy?" Then when no answer came, she would shudder back against the wall, cold and shaking and full of dumb terrors.

Suddenly the hound's howling changed to a sharp bark, and the old negress stirred and stretched herself.

"What ails dat air dog?" she mumbled, going to the window, and shading her eyes with her hand. "You'd 'low to hear him tell it he done heared old master coming up de road."

That somebody was coming was evident from the continued excitement of the hound, and when the gate slammed and a man's voice sounded in the darkness, Aunt Tish opened the door, throwing a long, dim patch of light out across the narrow porch and over the big, round stepping-stones beyond.

Into the light came Mr. Opp, staggering under the load of his baggage, his coat over his arm, his collar off, thoroughly spent with the events of the day.

"Lord 'a' mercy!" said Aunt Tish, "if hit ain't Mr. D.! I done give you up long ago. I certainly is glad you come. Miss Kippy's jes carrying on like ever'thing. She ain't been to baid for two nights, an' I can't do nothin' 't all wif her."

Mr. Opp deposited his things in a corner, and, tired as he was, assumed an air of authority. It was evident that a man was needed, a person of firmness, of decision.

"I'll see that she goes to bed at once," he said resolutely. "Where is she at?"

"She's behind de door," said Aunt Tish; "she's be'n so skeered ever sence her paw died I can't do nothin' wif her."

"Kippy," said Mr. Opp, sternly, "come out here this minute."

But there was no response. Going to the corner where his coat lay, he took from the pocket a brown-paper parcel.

"Say, Kippy," he said in a greatly mollified tone, "I wish you would come on out here and see me. You remember brother D., don't you? You ought to see what I brought you all the way from the city. It's got blue eyes."

At this the small, grotesque figure, distrustful, suspicious, ready to take flight at a word, ventured slowly forth. So slight she was, and so frail, and so softly she moved, it was almost as if the wind blew her toward him. Every thought that came into her brain was instantly reflected in her hypersensitive face, and as she stood before him nervously plucking her fingers, fear and joy struggled for supremacy. Suddenly with a low cry she snatched the doll from him and clasped it to her heart.

Meanwhile Aunt Tish had spread a cloth on the table and set forth some cold corn dodger, a pitcher of foaming butter-milk, and a plate of cold corned beef. The milk was in a battered pewter pitcher, but the dish that held the corn bread was of heavy silver, with intricate chasings about the rim.

Mr. Opp, with his head propped on his hand, ate wearily. He had been up since four o'clock that morning, and to-morrow he must be up at daybreak if he was to keep his engagements to supply the dealers with the greatest line of shoes ever put upon the market. Between now and then he must decide many things: Kippy must be planned for, the house gone over, and arrangements made for the future. Being behind the scenes, as it were, and having no spectator to impress, he allowed himself to sink into an attitude of extreme dejection. And Mr. Opp, shorn of the dignity of his heavily padded coat, and his imposing collar and tie, and with even his pompadour limp upon his forehead, failed entirely to give a good imitation of himself.

As he sat thus, with one hand hanging limply over the back of the chair, he felt something touch it softly, dumbly, as a dog might. Looking down, he discovered Miss Kippy sitting on the floor, close behind him, watching him with furtive eyes. In one arm she cradled the new doll, and in the other she held his coat.

Mr. Opp patted her cheek: "Whatever are you doing with my coat?" he asked.

Miss Kippy held it behind her, and nodded her head wisely: "Keeping it so you can't go away," she whispered. "I'll hold it tight all night. To-morrow I'll hide it."

"But I'm a business man," said Mr. Opp, unconsciously straightening his shoulders. "A great deal of responsibility depends on me. I've got to be off early in the morning; but I'm coming back to see you real often--every now and then."

Miss Kippy's whole attitude changed. She caught his hand and clung to it, and the terror came back to her eyes.

"You mustn't go," she whispered, her body quivering with excitement. "It'll get me if you do. Daddy kept It away, and you can keep It away; but Aunt Tish can't: she's afraid of It, too! She goes to sleep, and then It reaches at me through the window. It comes down the chimney, there--where you see the brick's loose. Don't leave me, D. Hush, don't you hear It?"

Her voice had risen to hysteria, and she clung to him, cold and shaken by the fear that possessed her.

Mr. Opp put a quieting arm about her. "Why, see here, Kippy," he said, "didn't you know It was afraid of me? Look how strong I am! I could kill It with my little finger."

"Could you?" asked Miss Kippy, fearfully.

"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Opp. "Don't you ever be scared of anything whatsoever when Brother D.'s round. I'm going to take care of you from now on."

"This me is bad," announced Miss Kippy; "the other me is good. Her name is Oxety; she has one blue eye and one brown."

"Well, Oxety must go to bed now," said Mr. Opp; "it must be getting awful late."

But Miss Kippy shook her head. "You might go 'way," she said.

Finding that he could not persuade her, Mr. Opp resorted to strategy: "I'll tell you what let's me and you do. Let's put your slippers on your hands."

This proposition met with instant approval. It appealed to Miss Kippy as a brilliant suggestion. She assisted in unbuttoning the single straps and watched with glee as they were fastened about her wrists.

"Now," said Mr. Opp, with assumed enthusiasm, "we'll make the slippers walk you up-stairs, and after Aunt Tish undresses you, they shall walk you to bed. Won't that be fun?"

Miss Kippy's fancy was so tickled by this suggestion that she put it into practice at once, and went gaily forth up the steps on all fours. At the turn she stopped, and looked at him wistfully:

"You'll come up before I go to sleep?" she begged; "Daddy did."

Half an hour later Aunt Tish came down the narrow stairway: "She done gone to baid now, laughin' an' happy ag'in," she said; "she never did have dem spells when her paw was round, an' sometimes dat chile jes as clear in her mind as you an' me is."

"What is it she's afraid of?" asked Mr. Opp.

Aunt Tish leaned toward him across the table, and the light of the lamp fell full upon her black, bead-like eyes, and her sunken jaws, and on the great palpitating scar.

"De ghosties," she whispered; "dey been worriting dat chile ever' chance dey git. _I_ hear 'em! Dey wait till I take a nap of sleep, den dey comes sneakin' in to pester her. She says dey ain't but one, but I hears heaps ob 'em, some ob 'em so little dey kin climb onder de crack in de door."

"Look a-here, Aunt Tish," said Mr. Opp, sternly, "don't you ever talk a word of this foolishness to her again. Not one word, do you hear?"

"Yas, sir; dat's what Mr. Moore allays said, an' I _don't_ talk to her 'bout hit, I don't haf to. She done knows I know. I been livin' heah goin' on forty years, sence 'fore you was borned, an' you can't fool me, chile; no, sir, dat you can't."

"Well, you must go to bed now," said Mr. Opp, looking up at the clock and seeing that it was half-past something though he did not know what.

"I never goes to baid when I stays here," announced Aunt Tish; "I sets up in de kitchen an' sleeps. I's skeered dat chile run away; she 'low she gwine to some day. Her paw ketched her oncet gittin' in a boat down on de river-bank. She ain't gwine, while I's here, no sir-ee! I never leaves her in de daytime an' her paw never leaves her at night, dat is, when he's livin'."

After she had gone, Mr. Opp ascended the stairway, and entered the room above. A candle sputtered on the table, and in its light he saw the wide, four-poster bed that had been his mother's, and in it the frail figure of little Miss Kippy. Her hair lay loose upon the pillow, and on her sleeping face, appealing in its helplessness, was a smile of perfect peace. The new doll lay on the table beside the candle, but clasped tightly in her arms was the coat of many checks.

For a moment Mr. Opp stood watching her, then he drew his shirt-sleeve quickly across his eyes. As he turned to descend, his new shoes creaked painfully and, after he had carefully removed them, he tiptoed down, passed through the sitting-room and out upon the porch, where he sank down on the step and dropped his head on his arms.

The night was very still, save for the croaking of a bullfrog, and the incessant scraping of a cedar-tree against the corner of the roof. From across the river, faint sparks of light shone out from cabin windows, and, below, a moving light now and then told of a passing scow. Once a steamboat slipped weirdly out of the darkness, sparkling with lights, and sending up faint sounds of music; but before the waves from the wheel had ceased to splash on the bank below, she was swallowed up in the darkness, leaving lonesomeness again.

Mr. Opp sat staring out into the night, outwardly calm, but inwardly engaged in a mortal duel. The aggressive Mr. Opp of the gorgeous raiment and the seal ring, the important man of business, the ambitious financier, was in deadly combat with the insignificant Mr. Opp, he of the shirt-sleeves and the wilted pompadour, the delicate, sensitive, futile Mr. Opp who was incapable of everything but the laying down of his life for the sake of another.

A dull line of light hovered on the horizon, and gradually the woods on the opposite shore took shape, then the big river itself, gray and shimmering, with streaks on the water where a snag broke the swift current.

"Mr. D.," he heard Aunt Tish calling up the back stairs, "you better git out of baid; hit's sun-up."

He rose stiffly and started back to the kitchen. As he passed through the front room, his eyes fell upon his new suit-case full of the treasured drummers' samples. Stooping down, he traced the large black letters with his finger and sighed deeply.

Then he got up resolutely and marched to the kitchen door.

"Aunt Tish," he said with authority, "you needn't mind about hurrying breakfast. I find there's very important business will keep me here in the Cove for the present."

V

There were two methods of communication in Cove City, both of which were equally effective. One was the telephone, which from a single, isolated case had developed into an epidemic, and the other, which enjoyed the dignity of precedence and established custom, was to tell Jimmy Fallows.

Both of these currents of information soon overflowed with the news that Mr. D. Webster Opp had given up a good position in the city, and expected to establish himself in business in his native town. The nature of this business was agitating the community at large in only a degree less than it was agitating Mr. Opp himself.

One afternoon Jimmy Fallows stood with his back to his front gate, suspended by his armpits from the pickets, and conducted business after his usual fashion. As a general retires to a hill-top to organize his forces and issue orders to his subordinates, so Jimmy hung upon his front fence and conducted the affairs of the town. He knew what time each farmer came in, where the "Helping Hands" were going to sew, where the doctor was, and where the services would be held next Sunday. He was coroner, wharf-master, undertaker, and notary, and the only thing in the heavens above or the earth below concerning which he did not attempt to give information was the arrival of the next steamboat.

As he stood whittling a stick and cheerfully humming a tune of other days, he descried a small, alert figure coming up the road. The pace was so much brisker than the ordinary slow gait of the Cove that he recognized the person at once as Mr. Opp. Whereupon he lifted his voice and hailed a boy who was just vanishing down the street in the opposite direction:

"Nick!" he called. "Aw, Nick Fenny! Tell Mat Lucas that Mr. Opp's uptown."

Connection being thus made at one end of the line, he turned to effect it at the other. "Howdy, Brother Opp. Kinder dusty on the river, ain't it?"

"Well, we _are_ experiencing considerable of warm weather at this juncture," said Mr. Opp, affably.

"Mat Lucas has been hanging round here all day," said Jimmy. "He wants you to buy out a half-interest in his dry-goods store. What do you think about it?"

"Well," said Mr. Opp, thrusting his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, "I am considering of a great variety of different things. I been in the dry-goods business twice, and I can't say but what it ain't a pretty business. Of course," he added with a twinge, "my specialty are shoes."

"Yes," said Jimmy; "but the folks here all gets their shoes at the drug store. Mr. Toddlinger's been carrying a line of shoes along with his pills and plasters ever sence he went into business."

Mr. Opp looked up at the large sign overhead. "If you and Mr. Tucker wasn't both in the hotel business, I might be thinking of considering that."

This proposition tickled Jimmy immensely. Chuckles of amusement agitated his rotund figure.

"Why don't you buy us both out?" he asked. "We could sell out for nothing and make money."

"Why, there's three boarders sitting over at Our Hotel now," said Mr. Opp, who rather fancied himself in the rôle of a genial host.

"Yes," said Jimmy. "Old man Tucker's had 'em hanging out on the line all morning. I don't guess they got strength enough to walk around much after the meals he give 'em."

"Of course," said Mr. Opp, wholly absorbed in his own affairs, "this is just temporarily for the time being, as it were. In a year or so, when my financial condition is sorter more established in a way, I intend to put through that oil-wells proposition. The fact that I am aiming at arriving to is what would you think the Cove was at present most in need of?"

"Elbow-grease," said Jimmy, promptly. "The only two things that we ain't got that a city has, is elbow-grease and a newspaper."

For a moment there was a silence, heavy with significance. Mr. Fallows's gaze penetrated the earth, while Mr. Opp's scanned the heavens; then they suddenly looked at each other, and the great idea was born.