Mr. Opp. Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
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.
[p44]
“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.
[p45]
“Now,” said Mr. Opp, with assumed enthusiasm, “we’ll make the slippers [p47] 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 [p48] 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 [p49] 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.
[p50]
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.
[p51]
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.”
[p52]
V
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 [p53] 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