Chapter 7

"I hope not," said the voice. "I'd hate to be guilty of dress slaughter even in the second degree. Sure you are not hurt? Sit down a minute; here's a chair right behind you, out of the wind."

Guinevere groped about for the chair. "Mother can mend it," she went on, voicing her anxiety, "if it isn't too bad."

"And if it is?" asked the voice.

"I'll have to wear it, anyhow. It's brand splinter new, the first one I ever had made by a sure-enough dressmaker."

"My abominable legs!" muttered the voice.

Guinevere laughed, and all at once became curious concerning the person who belonged to the legs.

He had dropped back into his former position, with feet outstretched, hands in pockets, and cap pulled over his eyes, and he did not seem inclined to continue the conversation.

She drew in deep breaths of the cool air, and watched the big side-wheel churn the black water into foam, and throw off sprays of white into the darkness. She liked to be out there in the sheltered corner, watching the rain dash past, and to hear the wind whistling up the river. She was glad to be in the dark, too, away from all those gentlemen, so ready with their compliments. But the sudden change from the heated saloon to the cold deck chilled her, and she sneezed.

Her companion stirred. "If you are going to stay out here, you ought to put something around you," he said irritably.

"I'm not very cold. Besides, I don't want to go in. I don't want them to make me sing any more. Mother'll be awfully provoked if I take cold, though. Do you think it's too damp?"

"There's my overcoat," said the man, indifferently; "you can put that around you if you want to."

She struggled into the large sleeves, and he made no effort to help her.

"You don't like music, do you?" she asked naïvely as she settled back in her chair.

"Well, yes," he said slowly. "I should say the thing I dislike least in the world is music."

"Then why didn't you come in to hear me play?" asked Guinevere, emboldened by the darkness.

"Oh, I could hear it outside," he assured her; "besides, I have a pair of defective lamps in my head. The electric lights hurt my eyes."

He struck a match as he spoke to relight his pipe, and by its flare she caught her first glimpse of his face, a long, slender, sensitive face, brooding and unhappy.

"I guess you are Mr. Hinton," she said as if to herself.

He turned with the lighted match in his hand. "How did you know that?"

"The captain told me. He pointed out you and Mr. Mathews, but he didn't tell me any of the rest."

"A branch of your education that can afford to remain neglected," said Mr. Hinton as he puffed at his pipe.

The door of the saloon swung open, and the chubby gentleman appeared in the light, shading his eyes, and calling out that they were all waiting for the little canary-bird.

"I don't want to go," whispered Guinevere, shrinking back into the shadow.

The chubby gentleman peered up and down the deck, then, assailed by a gust of wind, beat a hasty retreat.

"I don't like him," announced Guinevere, drawing a breath of relief. "It isn't just because he's fat and ugly; it's the silly way he looks at you."

"What a pity you can't tell him so!" said her companion, dryly. "Such blasphemy might do him good. He is the scion of a distinguished family made wealthy by the glorious sale of pork."

"Are all the gentlemen millionaires?" asked Guinevere in awe.

"Present company excepted," qualified Hinton.

"It'll seem awful small to them down in the Cove. Why, we haven't got room enough at the two hotels to put them all up."

"Oh, you live there, do you?"

"Yes; I've just been up at Coreyville spending the night. I used to hate it down at the Cove, it was so little and stupid; but I like it better now."

There was a long silence, during which each pursued a widely different line of thought.

"We have got a newspaper at the Cove now," announced Guinevere. "It's an awful nice paper, called 'The Opp Eagle.'"

"Opp?" repeated Hinton. "Oh, yes, that was the man I telephoned to. What sort of chap is he, anyhow?"

"He's awfully smart," said Guinevere, her cheeks tingling. "Not so much book learning, but a fine brain. The preacher says he's got a natural gift of language. You ought to see some of his editorials."

"Hiding his light under a bushel, isn't he?"

"That's just it," said Guinevere, glad to expatiate on the subject. "If Mr. Opp could get in a bigger place and get more chances, he'd have a lot more show. But he won't leave Miss Kippy. She's his sister, you know; there is only the two of them, and she's kind of crazy, and has to have somebody take care of her. Mother thinks it's just awful he don't send her to an asylum, but I know how he feels."

"Is he a young man?" asked Mr. Hinton.

"Well--no, not exactly; he's just seventeen years and two months older than I am."

"Oh," said Hinton, comprehensively.

There was another long pause, during which Guinevere turned things over in her mind, and Mr. Hinton knocked the ashes from his pipe.

"I think girls seem a good deal older than they are, don't you?" she asked presently.

"Some girls," Hinton agreed.

"How old would you take me for?"

"In the dark?"

"Yes."

"About twelve."

"Oh, that's not fair," said Guinevere. "I'm eighteen, and lots of people take me for twenty."

"That is when they can see you," said Hinton.

Guinevere decided that she did not like him. She leaned back in her corner and tried not to talk. But this course had its disadvantage, for when she was silent he seemed to forget she was there.

Once he took a turn up and down the deck, and when he came back, he stood for a long time leaning over the rail and gazing into the water. As he turned to sit down she heard him mutter to himself:

"... That no life lives forever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea."

Guinevere repeated the words softly to herself, and wondered what they meant. She was still thinking about them when a dim red light in the distance told her they were approaching the Cove. She slipped off the heavy overcoat and began to put on her gloves.

"Hello! we are getting in, are we?" asked Hinton, shaking himself into an upright position. "Is that Cove City where the big red light bores into the water like a corkscrew?"

They moved to the bow of the boat and watched as it changed its course and made for the opposite shore.

"Did you mean," said Guinevere, absently, "that you wanted it all to end like that? For us to just go out into nothing, like the river gets lost in the ocean?"

Hinton glanced at her in surprise, and discovered that there was an unusually thoughtful face under the sweeping brim of the red hat. The fact that she was pretty was less evident to him than the fact that she was wistful. His mood was sensitive to minor chords.

"I guess you _are_ eighteen," he said, and he smiled, and Guinevere smiled back, and the chubby gentleman, coming suddenly out upon them, went in again and slammed the door.

The lights on the landing twinkled brighter and brighter, and presently figures could be seen moving here and there. The steamer, grumbling with every chug of the wheel, was brought around, and the roustabouts crowded along the rail, ready to make her fast.

Guinevere and Hinton stood on the upper deck under his umbrella and waited.

Directly below them on the dock a small, fantastic figure made frantic efforts to attract their attention. He stood uncovered, regardless of the rain, madly waving his hat.

"Is that anybody you know?" asked Hinton.

Guinevere, who was watching the lights on the water, started guiltily.

"Where?" she asked.

"Down to the right--that comical little codger in the checked suit."

Guinevere looked, then turned upon Hinton eyes that were big with indignation. "Why, of course," she said; "that's Mr. Opp."

XI

As Willard Hinton stood on the porch of Your Hotel and waited for his host for the night to call for him, he was in that state of black dejection that comes to a young man when Ambition has proposed to Fortune, and been emphatically rejected. For six years he had worked persistently and ceaselessly toward a given goal, doing clerical work by day and creative work by night, going from shorthand into longhand, and from numerical figures into figures of speech. For the way that Hinton's soul was traveling was the Inky Way, and at its end lay Authorship.

Hinton had taken himself and his work seriously, and served an apprenticeship of hard study and conscientious preparation. So zealous was he, in fact, that he had arrived at the second stage of his great enterprise with a teeming brain, a practised hand, and a pair of affected eyes over which the oculists shook their heads and offered little encouragement.

For four months he had implicitly obeyed orders, attending only to his regular work, eating and sleeping with exemplary regularity, and spending all of his spare time in the open air. But the ravages made in the long nights dedicated to the Muses were not to be so easily repaired, and his eyes, instead of improving, were growing rapidly worse. The question of holding his position had slipped from a matter of months into weeks.

As he stood on the porch, he could hear the bustle of entertainment going on within the limited quarters of Your Hotel. Jimmy Fallows was in his element. As bartender, head waiter, and jovial landlord he was playing a triple bill to a crowded house. Occasionally he opened the door and urged Hinton to come inside.

"Mr. Opp'll be here 'fore long," he would say. "He's expecting you, but he had to stop by to take his girl home. You better step in and get a julep."

But Hinton, wrapped in the gloom of his own thoughts, preferred to remain where he was. Already he seemed to belong to the dark, to be a thing apart from his fellow-men. He shrank from companionship and sympathy as he shrank from the light. He longed to crawl away like a sick animal into some lonely corner and die. Whichever way he turned, the great specter of darkness loomed before him. At first he had fought, then he had philosophically stood still, now he was retreating. Again and again he told himself that he would meet it like a man, and again and again he shrank back, ready to seek escape anywhere, anyhow.

"O God, if I weren't so damnably young!" he cried to himself, beating his clenched hand against his brow. "More than half my life yet to live, and in the dark!"

The rattle of wheels and the stopping of a light in front of the hotel made him pull himself together.

The small gentleman in the checked suit whom he had seen on the wharf strode in without seeing him. He paused before he opened the door and smoothed his scanty locks and rearranged his pink necktie. Then he drew in his chin, threw out his chest, and with a carefully prepared smile of welcome entered.

The buzz within increased, and it was some minutes before the door opened again and Jimmy Fallows was heard saying:

"He's round here some place. Mr. Hinton! Oh, here you are! Let me make you acquainted with Mr. Opp; he's going to take you out to his house for the night."

No sooner had Hinton's hand been released from Mr. Opp's cordial grasp than he felt that gentleman's arm thrust through his, and was aware of being rapidly conducted down the steps and out to the vehicle.

"On no possible account," Mr. Opp was saying, with Hinton's grip in one hand and two umbrellas in the other, "would I have allowed myself to be late, except that it was what you might consider absolutely necessary. Now, you get right in; just take all that robe. No, the grip can go right here between my feet. We trust that you will not regard the weather in any ways synonymous with the state of our feelings of welcome."

Mr. Hinton remarked rather shortly that the weather never mattered to him one way or another.

"That's precisely like myself," Mr. Opp went on. "I come of very sturdy, enduring stock. For a man of my size I doubt if you'd find a finer constitution in the country. You wouldn't particularly think it to look at me, now would you?"

Hinton looked at the small, stooping figure, and at the peaked, sallow face, and said rather sarcastically that he would not.

"Strong as an ox," declared Mr. Opp.

Just here the horse stumbled, and they were jerked violently forward.

Mr. Opp apologized. "Just at present we are having a little difficulty with our country roads. We have taken the matter up in 'The Opp Eagle' last week. All these things take time to regulate, but we are getting there. This oil boom is going to revolutionize things. It's my firm and abiding conviction that we are on the eve of a great change. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if this town grew to be one of the principalest cities on the Ohio River."

"To be a worthy eyrie for your 'Eagle'?" suggested Hinton.

"'The Opp Eagle,'" corrected Mr. Opp. "I don't know as you know that I am the sole proprietor, as well as being the editor in addition."

"No," said Hinton, "I did not know. How does it happen that a man with such responsibilities can take time to dabble in oil-wells?"

"You don't know me," said Mr. Opp, with a paternal smile at his own ability. "Promoting and organizing comes as natural to me as breathing the atmosphere. I am engineering this scheme with one hand, the Town Improvement League with another, and 'The Opp Eagle' with another. Then, in a minor kind of way, I am a active Odd Fellow, first cornetist in the Unique Orchestra, and a director in the bank. And beside," Mr. Opp concluded with some coyness, "there is the natural personal social diversions that most young men indulge in."

By this time they had reached the gray old house on the river-bank, and Mr. Opp hitched the horse and held the lantern, while Hinton stepped from one stony island to another in the sea of mud.

"Just enter right into the dining-room," said Mr. Opp, throwing open the door. "Unfortunately we are having a temporary difficulty with the parlor heating apparatus. If you'll just pass right on up-stairs, I'll show you the guest-chamber. Be careful of your head, please!"

With pomp and dignity Mr. Hinton was conducted to his apartment, and urged to make known any possible want that might occur to him.

"I'll be obliged to leave you for a spell," said Mr. Opp, "in order to attend to the proper putting up of the horse. If you'll just consider everything you see as yours, and make yourself entirely at home, I'll come up for you in about twenty minutes."

Left alone, Hinton went to the bureau to pin a paper around the lamp, and as he did so he encountered a smiling face in the mirror. The face was undoubtedly his, but the smile seemed almost to belong to a stranger, so long had it been since he had seen it.

He made a hasty toilet, and sat down with his back to the light to await his summons to dinner. The large room, poorly and scantily furnished, gave unmistakable evidence of having been arranged especially for his coming. There was no covering on the floor, there were no pictures on the wall; but the wall-paper was of a sufficiently decorative character to warrant the absence of other adornment. It may be said to have been a botanical paper, for roses and lilies and sunflowers and daisies grew in riotous profusion. The man who hung the paper evidently was of a scientific turn, for in matching the strips he had gained some results in cross-grafting that approached the miraculous.

After sufficient time had elapsed to have stabled half a dozen horses, Hinton, whose appetite was becoming ravenous, went into the hall and started down the steps. When half-way down he heard a crash of china, and saw his host, in his shirt-sleeves, staggering under a large tray overcrowded with dishes.

Beating a hasty retreat, he went quietly up the steps again, but not before he heard a querulous voice remonstrate:

"Now, Mr. D., if you ain't done busted two plates and a tea-cup!"

Retiring to his room until the trouble should be adjusted, Hinton once more contemplated the floral paper. As he sat there, the door creaked slightly, and looking up, he thought he saw some one peeping at him through the crack. Later he distinctly heard the rustle of garments, a stealthy step, and the closing of the door across the hall.

At last Mr. Opp came somewhat noisily up the steps and, flinging wide the door, invited him to descend. In the dining-room below the scene was nothing short of festal. All the candlesticks were filled with lighted candles, an American flag was draped across the top of the clock, and the little schooner that rocked behind the pendulum seemed fired with the determination to get somewhere to-night if it never did again. Even the owls on each end of the mantel wore a benignant look, and seemed to beam a welcome on the honored guest.

But it was the dining-table that held the center of the stage, and that held everything else as well. The dinner, through its sequence of soup, meat, salad, and desert, was displayed in lavish hospitality. Cove etiquette evidently demanded that no square inch of the table-cloth should remain unoccupied.

Seated at the table, with hands demurely folded, was the most grotesque figure that Hinton had ever seen. Clad in a queer, old-fashioned garment of faded blue cloth, with very full skirt and flowing sleeves, with her hair gathered into a tight knot at the back of her head, and a necklace of nutshells about her neck, a strange little lady sat and watched him with parted lips and wide, excited eyes.

"If you'll just sit here opposite my sister," said Mr. Opp, not attempting an introduction, "I'll as usual take my customary place at the head of the board."

It was all done with great éclat, but from the first there were unmistakable signs of nervousness on the part of the host. He left the table twice before the soup was removed, once to get the napkins which had been overlooked, and once to persuade his sister not to put the baked potatoes in her lap.

When the critical moment for the trial of strength between him and the goose arrived, he was not in good condition. It was his first wrestling match with a goose, and his technical knowledge of the art consisted in the meager fact that the strategic point was to become master of the opponent's legs. The fowl had, moreover, by nature of its being, the advantage of extreme slipperiness, an expedient recognized and made use of by the gladiators of old.

Mr. Opp, limited as to space, and aware of a critical audience, rose to the occasion, and with jaw set and the light of conquest in his eye entered the fray. He pushed forward, and pulled back, he throttled, he went through facial and bodily contortions. The match was conducted in "the catch hold, first down to lose style," and the honors seemed equally divided. At last, by the adroit administration of a left-leg stroke, Mr. Opp succeeded in throwing his adversary, but unfortunately he threw it too far.

The victory, though brilliant, was not without its casualties. The goose, in its post-mortem flight, took its revenge, and the overturned cranberries sent a crimson stain across the white cloth, giving a sanguinary aspect to the scene.

When order was restored and Mr. Opp had once more taken his seat, the little lady in the blue dress, who had remained quiet during the recent conflict, suddenly raised her voice in joyous song.

"Now, Kippy," warned Mr. Opp, putting a restraining hand on her arm, and looking at her appealingly. The little lady shrank back in her chair and her eyes filled as she clasped his hand tightly in both of hers.

"As I was remarking," Mr. Opp went steadily on, trying to behave as if it were quite natural for him to eat with his left hand, "the real value of the underground product in this country has been but fairly made apparent, and now that you capitalists are coming in to take a hold, there's no way of forming a idea of the ultimate result."

Hinton, upon whom no phase of the situation had been lost, came valiantly to Mr. Opp's rescue. He roused himself to follow his host's lead in the conversation; he was apparently oblivious to the many irregularities of the dinner. In fact, it was one of the rare occasions upon which Hinton took the trouble to exert himself. Something in the dreary old room, with its brave attempt at cheer, in the half-witted little lady who was making such superhuman efforts to be good, and above all in the bombastic, egotistical, ignorant editor who was trying to keep up appearances against such heavy odds, touched the best and deepest that was in Hinton, and lifted him out of himself. Gradually he began to take the lead in the conversation. With great tact he relieved Mr. Opp of the necessity of entertaining, and gave him a chance to eat his dinner. He told stories so simple that even Miss Kippy loosened her hold on her brother's hand to listen.

When the sunset of the dinner in the form of a pumpkin pie had disappeared, the gentlemen retired to the fire.

"Don't you smoke?" asked Hinton, holding a match to his pipe.

"Why, yes," said Mr. Opp, "I have smoked occasional. It's amazing how it assists you in creating newspaper articles. One of the greatest editorials I ever turned out was when I had a cigar in my mouth."

"Then why don't you smoke?"

Mr. Opp glanced over his shoulders at Aunt Tish, who, with Miss Kippy's doubtful assistance, was clearing the table.

"I don't mind telling you," he said confidentially, "that up to the present time I've experienced a good many business reverses and considerable family responsibility. I hope now in a year or two to be able to indulge them little extra items. The lack of money," he added somewhat proudly, "is no disgrace; but I can't deny it's what you might call limiting."

Hinton smiled. "I think I've got a cigar somewhere about me. Here it is. Will you try it?"

Mr. Opp didn't care if he did, and from the manner in which he lighted it, and from the way in which he stood, with one elbow on the high mantel-shelf and his feet gracefully crossed, while he blew curling wreaths toward the ceiling, it was not difficult to reckon the extent of his self-denial.

"Do you indulge much in the pleasure of reading?" he asked, looking at Hinton through the cloud of smoke.

"I did," said Hinton, drawing a deep breath.

"It's a great pastime," said Mr. Opp. "I wonder if you are familiar with this here volume." He took from the shelf "The Encyclopedia of Wonder, Beauty, and Wisdom."

"Hardly a thumb-nail edition," said Hinton, receiving it with both hands.

"Say, it's a remarkable work," said Mr. Opp, earnestly; "you ought to get yourself one. Facts in the first part, and the prettiest poetry you ever read in the back: a dollar down and fifty cents a month until paid for. Here, let me show you; read that one."

"I can't see it," said Hinton.

"I'll get the lamp."

"Never mind, Opp; it isn't that. You read it to me."

Mr. Opp complied with great pleasure, and having once started, he found it difficult to stop. From "Lord Ullin's Daughter" he passed to "Curfew," hence to "Barbara Frietchie" and "Young Lochinvar," and as he read Hinton sat with closed eyes and traveled into the past.

He saw a country school-house, and himself a youngster of eight competing for a prize. He was standing on a platform, and the children were below him, and behind him was a row of visitors. He was paralyzed with fear, but bursting with ambition. With one supreme effort he began his speech:

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.