Mr. Opp
Copyright© 2024 by Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
Chapter 7
It is no small undertaking to embark in an untried ship, upon unknown waters, in the teeth of opposing gales. But Mr. Opp sailed the sea of life as a valiant mariner should, self-reliant, independent, asking advice of nobody. He steered by the guidance of his own peculiar moral compass, regardless of the rough waters through which it led him.
Having invested the major portion of his savings in the present venture, it was necessary to begin operations at once; but events conspired to prevent him. Miss Kippy made many demands upon his time both by day and night; she had transferred her affection and dependence from her father to him, and he found himself sorely encumbered by this new responsibility. Moreover, the attitude of the town toward the innovation of a newspaper was one of frank skepticism, and it proved a delicate and arduous task to create the proper public sentiment. In addition to these troubles, Mr. Opp had a yet graver matter to hinder him: with all his valor and energy he was suffering qualms of uncertainty as to the proper method of starting a weekly journal.
To be sure, he had achieved a name for the paper—a name so eminently satisfactory that he had already had it emblazoned upon a ream of office paper. “The Opp Eagle” had sprung full-syllabled from his teeming brain, and had been accepted over a hundred competitors.
But naming the fledgling was an easy matter compared with getting it out of the nest; and it was not until the instalment of his competent staff that Mr. Opp accomplished the task.
This important transaction took place one morning as he sat in his new office and struggled with his first editorial. The bare room, with the press in the center, served as news-room, press-room, publication office, and editorial sanctum. Mr. Opp sat at a new deal table, with one pen behind his ear, and another in his hand, and gazed for inspiration at the brown wrapping-paper with which he had neatly covered the walls. His mental gymnastics were interrupted by the appearance at the door of Miss Jim Fenton and her brother Nick.
Miss Jim was an anomaly in the community, being by theory a spinster, and by practice a double grass-widow. Capable and self-supporting, she attracted the ne’er-do-wells as a magnet attracts needles, but having been twice induced to forego her freedom and accept the bonds of wedlock, she had twice escaped and reverted to her original type and name. Miss Jim was evidently a victim of one of Nature’s most economical moods; she was spare and angular, with a long, wrinkled face surmounted by a scant fluff of pale, frizzled hair. Her mouth slanted upward at one corner, giving her an expression unjustly attributed to coquetry, when in reality it was due to an innocent and pardonable pride in an all-gold eye-tooth.
But it was her clothes that brought misunderstanding, misfortune, and even matrimony upon Miss Jim. They were sent her by the boxful by a cousin in the city, and the fact was unmistakable that they were clothes with a past. The dresses held an atmosphere of evaporated frivolity; flirtations lingered in every frill, and memories of old larks lurked in every furbelow. The hats had a jaunty list to port, and the colored slippers still held a dance within their soles. One old bird of paradise on Miss Jim’s favorite bonnet had a chronic wink for the wickedness he had witnessed.
It was this wink that attracted Mr. Opp as he looked up from his arduous labors. For a disconcerting moment he was uncertain whether it belonged to Miss Jim or to the bird.
“Howdy, Mr. Opp,” said the lady in brisk, businesslike tones. “I was taking a crayon portrait home to Mrs. Gusty, and I just stopped in to see if I couldn’t persuade you to take my brother to help you on the newspaper. You remember Nick, don’t you?”
Mr. Opp glanced up. A skeleton of a boy, with a shaven head, was peering eagerly past him into the office, his keen, ferret-like eyes devouring every detail of the printing-presses.
“He knows the business,” went on Miss Jim, anxiously pulling at the fingers of her gloves. “He’s been in it over a year at Coreyville. He wants to go back; but I ain’t willing till he gets stronger. He ain’t been up but two weeks.”
Mr. Opp turned impressively in his revolving chair, the one luxury which he had deemed indispensable, and doubtfully surveyed the applicant. The mere suggestion of his leaning upon this broken reed seemed ridiculous; yet the boy’s thin, sallow face, and Miss Jim’s imploring eyes, caused him to hesitate.
“Well, you see,” he said, with thumbs together and his lips pursed, after the manner of the various employers before whom he had stood in the past, “we are just making a preliminary start, and we haven’t engaged our staff yet. I am a business man and a careful one. I don’t feel justified in going to no extra expense until ‘The Opp Eagle’ is, in a way, on its feet.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said the boy; “I’ll work a month for nothing. Lots of fellows do that on the big papers.”
Miss Jim plucked warningly at his sleeve, and Mr. Opp, seeing that Nick’s enthusiasm had led him beyond his depth, went gallantly to the rescue.
“Not at all,” he said hastily; “that ain’t my policy. I think I might contrive to pay you a small, reasonable sum down, and increase it in ratio as the paper become more prosperous. Don’t you think you better sit down?”
“No, sir; I’m all right,” said the boy, impatiently. “I can do ‘most anything about a paper, setting type, printing, reporting, collecting, ‘most anything you put me at.”
Such timely knowledge, in whatever guise it came, seemed Heaven-sent. Mr. Opp gave a sigh of satisfaction.
“If you feel that you can’t do any better than accepting the small sum that just at present I’ll have to offer you, why, I think we can come to some arrangement.”
“That’s mighty nice in you,” said Miss Jim, jerking her head forward in order to correct an undue backward gravitation of her bonnet. “If ever you want a crayon portrait, made from life or enlarged from a photograph, I’ll make you a special price on it. I’m just taking this here one home to Mrs. Gusty; she had it done for Guin-never’s birthday.”
Miss Jim removed the wrappings and disclosed a portrait of Miss Guinevere Gusty, very large as to eyes and very small as to mouth. She handed it to Mr. Opp, and called attention to its fine qualities.
“Just look at the lace on that dress! Mrs. Fallows picked a whole pattern off on her needles from one of my portraits. And did you notice the eyelashes; you can actually count ‘em! She had four buttons on her dress, but I didn’t get in but three; but I ain’t going to mention it to Mrs. Gusty. Don’t you think it’s pretty?”
Mr. Opp, who had been smiling absently at the portrait, started guiltily. “Yes,” he said confusedly; “yes, ma’am, I think she is.” Then he felt a curious tingling about his ears and realized, to his consternation, that he was blushing.
“She’s too droopin’ a type for me,” said Miss Jim, removing an ostrich tip from her angle of vision; then she continued in a side whisper: “Say, would you mind making Nick take this bottle of milk at twelve o’clock, and resting a little? He ain’t as strong as he lets on, and he has sort of sinking spells ‘long about noon.”
Receiving the bottle thus surreptitiously offered, and assisting the lady to gather up her bundles, Mr. Opp bowed her out, and turned to face the embarrassing necessity of giving instructions to his new employee. He was relieved to find, however, that the young gentleman in question possessed initiative; for Nick had promptly removed his coat, and fallen to work, putting things to rights with an energy and ability that caused Mr. Opp to offer up a prayer of heartfelt gratitude.
All the morning they worked silently, Mr. Opp toiling over his editorial, with constant references to a small dictionary which he concealed in the drawer of the table, and Nick giving the presses a thorough and much-needed overhauling.
At the noon-hour they shared their lunch, and Mr. Opp, firm in the authority invested in him by Miss Jim, demanded that Nick should drink his milk, and recline at length upon the office bench for twenty minutes. It was with great difficulty that Nick was persuaded to submit to this transferred coddling; but he evidently realized that insubordination at the start of his career would be fatal, and, moreover, his limbs ached and his hands trembled.
It was in the intimacy of this, their first, staff meal, that they discussed the policy of the paper.
“Of course,” said Mr. Opp, “we have got a vast undertaking in front of us. For the next few months we won’t scarcely have time to draw a natural breath. I am going to put every faculty I own on to making ‘The Opp Eagle’ a fine paper. I expect to get here at seven o’clock A.M., and continue to pursue my work as far into the midnight hours as may need be. Nothing in the way of pleasure or anything else is going to pervert my attention. Of course you understand that my mind will be taken up with the larger issues of things, and I’ll have to risk a dependence on you to attend to the smaller details.”
“All right,” said Nick, gratefully; “you won’t be sorry you trusted me, Mr. Opp. I’ll do my level best. When will we get out the first issue?”
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