Mr. Opp
Copyright© 2024 by Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
Chapter 15
The warning note sounded by Mrs. Fallows at the beginning of the oil boom was echoed by many before the summer was over. The coldest thing in the world is an exhausted enthusiasm, and when weeks slipped into months, and notes fell due, and the bank became cautious about lending money, a spirit of distrust got abroad, and a financial frost settled upon the community.
Notwithstanding these conditions, “The Opp Eagle” persistently screamed prosperity. It attributed the local depression to the financial disturbance that had agitated the country at large, and assured the readers that the Cove was on the eve of the greatest period in its history.
“The ascending, soaring bubble of inflated prices cannot last much longer,” one editorial said; “the financial flurry in the Wall Streets of the North were pretty well over before we become aware of it, in a major sense. ‘The Opp Eagle’ has in the past, present, and future waged noble warfare against the calamity jays. Panic or no panic, Cove City refuses to remain in the backgrounds. There has been a large order for job-work in this office within the past ten days, also several new and important subscribers, all of which does not make much of a showing for hard times, at least not from our point of looking at it.”
But in the same issue, in an inconspicuous corner, were a couple of lines to the effect that “the editor would be glad to take a load of wood on subscription.”
The truth was that it required all of Mr. Opp’s diplomacy to rise to the occasion. The effort to meet his own obligations was becoming daily more embarrassing, and he was reduced to economies entirely beneath the dignity of the editor of “The Opp Eagle.” But while he cheerfully restricted his diet to two meals a day, and wore shirt-fronts in lieu of the genuine article, he was, according to Nick’s ideas, rashly extravagant in other ways.
“What did you go and buy Widow Green’s oil-shares back for?” Nick demanded upon one of these occasions.
“Well, you see,” explained Mr. Opp, “it was purely a business proposition. Any day, now, things may open up in a way that will surprise you. I have good reason to believe that those shares are bound to go up; and besides,” he added lamely in an undertone, “I happen to know that that there lady was in immediate need of a little ready money.”
“So are we,” protested Nick; “we need every cent we can get for the paper. If we don’t get ahead some by the first of the year, we are going under, sure as you live.”
Mr. Opp laid a hand upon his shoulder and smiled tolerantly. “Financiers get used to these fluctuations in money circles. Don’t you worry, Nick; you leave that to the larger brains in the concern.”
But in spite of his superior attitude of confidence, Nick’s words rankled in his mind, and the first of the year became a time which he preferred not to consider.
One day in September the mail-packet brought two letters of great importance to Mr. Opp. One was from Willard Hinton, the first since his operation, and the other was from Mr. Mathews, stating that he would arrive at the Cove that day to lay an important matter of business before the stock-holders of the Turtle Creek Land Company.
Mr. Opp rushed across the road, a letter in each hand, to share the news with Guinevere.
“It’s as good as settled,” he cried, bursting in upon her, where she sat at the side door wrestling with a bit of needlework. “Mr. Mathews will be here to-day. He is either going to open up work or sell out to a syndicate. I’m going to use all my influence for the latter; it’s the surest and safest plan. Miss Guin-never,”—his voice softened, — “this is all I been waiting for to make my last and final arrangement with your mother. It was just yesterday she was asking me what I’d decided to do, and I don’t mind telling you, now it’s all over, I never went to bed all last night—just sat up trying to figure it out. But this will settle it. I’ll be in a position to have a little home of my own and take care of Kippy, too. I don’t know as I ever was so happy in all my life put together before.” He laughed nervously, but his eyes anxiously studied her averted face.
“Then there’s more news,” he plunged on, when she did not speak—”a letter from Mr. Hinton. I thought maybe you’d like to hear what he had to say.”
Guinevere’s scissors dropped with a sharp ring on the stepping-stone below, and as they both stooped to get them, their fingers touched. Mr. Opp ardently seized her hand in both of his, but unfortunately he seized her needle as well.
“Oh, I am so sorry!” she said. “Wait, let me do it,” and with a compassion which he considered nothing short of divine she extricated the needle, and comforted the wounded member. Mr. Opp would have gladly suffered the fate of a St. Sebastian to have elicited such sympathy.
“Is—is Mr. Hinton better?” she asked, still bending over his hand.
“Hinton?” asked Mr. Opp. “Oh, I forgot; yes. I’ll read you what he says. He got his nurse to write this for him.
Dear Opp: The die is cast; I am a has-been. I did not expect anything, so I am not disappointed. The operation was what they called successful. The surgeon, I am told, did a very brilliant stunt; something like taking my eyes out, playing marbles with them, and getting them sewed back again all in three minutes and a half. The result to the patient is of course purely a minor consideration, but it may interest you to know that I can tell a biped from a quadruped, and may in time, by the aid of powerful glasses, be able to distinguish faces.
With these useful and varied accomplishments I have decided to return to the Cove. My modest ambition now is to get out of the way, and the safest plan is to keep out of the current.
You will probably be a Benedick by the time I return. My heartiest congratulations to you and Miss Guinevere. Words cannot thank either of you for what you have done for me. All I can say is that I have tried to be worthy of your friendship.
What’s left of me is
Yours,
Willard Hinton.”
Mr. Opp avoided looking at her as he folded the sheets and put them back in the envelop. The goal was bright before his eyes, but quicksands dragged at his feet.
“And he will find us married, won’t he, Miss Guin-never? You’ll be ready just as soon as I and your mother come to a understanding, won’t you? Why, it seems more like eleven years than eleven months since you and me saw that sunset on the river! There hasn’t been a day since, you might say, that hasn’t been occupied with you. All I ask for in the world is just the chance for the rest of my life of trying to make you happy. You believe that, don’t you, Miss Guin-never?”
“Yes,” she said miserably, gazing out at the little arbor Hinton had made for her beneath the trees.
“Well, I’ll stop by this evening after the meeting, if it ain’t too late,” said Mr. Opp. “You’ll—you’ll be—glad if everything culminates satisfactory, won’t you?”
“I’m glad of everything good that comes to you,” said Guinevere so earnestly that Mr. Opp, who had lived on a diet of crumbs all his life, looked at her gratefully, and went back to the office assuring himself that all would be well.
The visit of Mr. Mathews, while eagerly anticipated, could not have fallen on a less auspicious day. Aunt Tish, the arbiter of the Opp household, had been planning for weeks to make a visit to Coreyville, and the occasion of an opportune funeral furnished an immediate excuse.
“No, sir, Mr. D., I can’t put hit off till to-morrow,” she declared in answer to Mr. Opp’s request that she stay with Miss Kippy until after the stock-holders’ meeting. “I’s ‘bleeged to go on dat night boat. De funeral teks place at ten o’clock in de mawnin’, an’ I’s gwine be dar ef I has to swim de ribber.”
“Was he a particular friend, the one that died?” asked Mr. Opp.
“Friend? Bunk Bivens? Dat onery, good-fer-nothin’ ole half-strainer? Naw, sir; he ain’t no friend ob mine.”
“Well, what makes you so pressing and particular about attending his funeral?” asked Mr. Opp.
“‘Ca’se I ‘spise him so. I been hating dat nigger fer pretty nigh forty year, an’ I ain’t gwine lose dis chanst ob seein’ him buried.”
“But, Aunt Tish,” persisted Mr. Opp, impatiently, “I’ve got a very important and critical meeting this afternoon. The business under consideration may be wound up in the matter of a few minutes, and then, again, it may prolong itself into several consecutive hours. You’ll have to stay with Kippy till I get home.”
The old woman looked at him strangely. “See dis heah hole in my haid, honey? ‘Member how you and Ben uster ast Aunt Tish what mek hit? Dat nigger Bunk Bivens mek hit. He was a roustabout on de ribber, an’ him an’ yer paw fell out, an’ one night when you was a baby he follow yer paw up here, an’ me an’ him had hit out.”
“But where was my father?” asked Mr. Opp.
“Dey was ‘sputin’ right heah in dis heah kitchen where we’s standin’ at, an’ dat mean, bow-laigged nigger didn’t have no better manners den to ‘spute wif a gentleman dat was full. An’ pore Miss she run in so skeered an’ white an’ she say, ‘Aunt Tish, don’t let him hurt him; he don’t know what he’s sayin’,’ she baig, an’ I tell her to keep yer paw outen de way an’ I tek keer ob Bunk.”
“And did he fight you?” asked Mr. Opp, indignantly.
“Naw, sir; I fit him. We put nigh tore up de floor ob de kitchen. Den he bust my haid open wif de poker, an’ looks lak I been losing my knowledge ever sence. From dat day I ‘low I’s gwine to git even if it took me till I died, an’ now dat spiteful old devil done died fust. But I’s gwine see him buried. I want to see ‘em nail him up in a box and th’ow dirt on him.”
Aunt Tish ended the recital in a sing-song chant, worked up to a state of hysteria by the recital of her ancient wrong.
Mr. Opp sighed both for the past and the present. He saw the futility of arguing the case.
“Well, you’ll stay until the boat whistles?” he asked. “Sometimes it is two hours late.”
“Yas, sir; but when dat whistle toots I’s gwine. Ef you is heah, all right; ef you ain’t, all right: I’s gwine!”
As Mr. Opp passed through the hall he saw Miss Kippy slip ahead of him and conceal herself behind the door. She carried something hidden in her apron.
“Have you learned your reading lesson to say to brother D. to-night?” he asked, ignoring her behavior. “You are getting so smart, learning to read handwriting just as good as I can!”
But Miss Kippy only peeped at him through the crack in the door and refused to be friendly. For several days she had been furtive and depressed, and had not spoken to either Aunt Tish or himself.
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