Part 21

At six o'clock Mr. Opp went up to make his toilet. The rain, which had been merely rehearsing all day, was now giving a regular performance, and it played upon the windows, and went trilling through the gutters on the roof, while the old cedar-tree scraped an accompaniment on the corner of the porch below. But, nothing daunted, Mr. Opp donned his bravest attire. Cyclones and tornadoes could not have deterred him from making the most elaborate toilet at his command. To be sure, he turned up the hem of his trousers and tied a piece of oilcloth securely about each leg, and he also spread a handkerchief tenderly over his pink necktie; but these could be easily removed after he heard the boat whistle.

He dressed by the light of a sputtering candle before a small mirror the veracity of which was more than questionable. It presented him to himself as a person with a broad, flat face, the nose of which appeared directly between his eyes, and the mouth on a line with the top of his ears. But he made allowances for these idiosyncrasies on the part of the mirror; in fact, he made such liberal allowances that he was quite satisfied with the reflection.

"I'll procure the hack to bring the company back in," he said to Aunt Tish rather nervously as he passed through the kitchen. "You assist Miss Kippy to get arranged, and I'll carry up the coal and set the table after I return back home. I can do it while the company is up in his room."

All the way into town, as he splashed along the muddy road, he was alternately dreading the arrival of one passenger, and anticipating joyfully, the arrival of another. For as the time approached the impending presence of the company began to take ominous form, and Mr. Opp grew apprehensive.

At the landing he found everything dark and quiet. Evidently the packet was unusually late, and the committee appointed to meet it and conduct the guests to their various destinations was waiting somewhere uptown, probably at Your Hotel. Mr. Opp paused irresolute: his soul yearned for solitude, but the rain-soaked dock offered no shelter except the slight protection afforded by a pile of empty boxes. Selecting the driest and largest of these, he turned it on end, and by an adroit adjustment of his legs, succeeded in getting inside.

Below, the river rolled heavily past in the twilight, sending up tiny juts of water to meet the pelting rain. A cold, penetrating mist clung to the ground, and the wind carried complaining tales from earth to heaven. Everything breathed discomfort, but Mr. Opp knew it not.

His soul was sailing sunlit seas of bliss, fully embarked at last upon the most magic and immortal of all illusions. Sitting cramped and numb in his narrow quarters, he peered eagerly into the darkness, watching for the first lights of the Sunny South to twinkle through the gloom. And as he watched he chanted in a sing-song ecstasy:

"She is coming, my own, my sweet; Were it ever so airy a tread, My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat, Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red."

When Miss Guinevere Gusty tripped up the gang-plank of the Sunny South late that afternoon, vainly trying to protect herself from the driving rain, she was met half-way by the gallant old captain.

Tradition had it that the captain had once cast a favorable eye upon her mother; but Mrs. Gusty, being cross-eyed, had looked elsewhere.

"We are a pudding without plums," he announced gaily, as he held the umbrella at an angle calculated to cause a waterspout in the crown of her hat--"not a lady on board. All we needed was a beautiful young person like you to liven us up. You haven't forgotten those pretty tunes you played for me last trip, have you?"

Guinevere laughed, and shook her head. "That was just for you and the girls," she said.

"Well, it'll be for me and the boys this time. I've got a nice lot of gentlemen on board, going down to your place, by the way, to buy up all your oil-lands. Now I know you are going to play for us if I ask you to."

"My goodness! are they on this boat?" asked Guinevere, in a flutter. "I am so glad; I just love to watch city people."

"Yes," said the captain; "that was Mr. Mathews talking to me as you came aboard--the one with the white beard. Everything that man touches turns to money. That glum-looking young fellow over there is his secretary. Hinton is his name; curious sort of chap."

Guinevere followed his glance with eager interest. "The solemn one with the cap pulled over his eyes?" she asked.

The captain nodded. "All the rest are inside playing cards and having a good time; but he's been moping around like that ever since they got on board. I've got to go below now, but when I come back, you'll play some for me, won't you?"

Guinevere protested violently, but something within her whispered that if the captain was very insistent she would render the selection which had won her a gold medal at the last commencement.

Slipping into the saloon, she dropped quietly into one of the very corpulent chairs which steamboats particularly affect, and, unobserved, proceeded to give herself up to the full enjoyment of the occasion. The journey from Coreyville to the Cove, in the presence of the distinguished strangers, had assumed the nature of an adventure. Giving her imagination free rein, Miss Gusty, without apology, transported the commonplace group of business men at the card-table into the wildest realms of romance. The fact that their language, appearance, and manner spoke of the city, was for her a sufficient peg upon which to hang innumerable conjectures. So deep was she in her speculations that she did not hear the captain come up behind her.

"Where have you been hiding?" he asked in stentorian tones. "I was afraid you'd gotten out on deck and the wind had blown you overboard. Don't you think it's about time for that little tune? We are forty minutes late now, and we'll lose another half-hour taking on freight at Smither's Landing. I've been banking on hearing that little dance-piece you played for me before."

"I can't play--before them," said Guinevere, nervously.

The captain laughed. "Yes, you can; they'll like it. Mr. Mathews said something mighty pretty about you when you came on board."

"He didn't--honest?" said Guinevere, blushing. "Oh, truly, Captain, I can't play!" But even as she spoke she unbuttoned her gloves. Her accomplishment was clamoring for an exhibition, and though her spirit failed her, she twirled the piano-stool and took her seat.

The group of men at the table, heretofore indifferent to proceedings, looked up when a thundering chord broke the stillness. A demure young girl, with gentle, brown eyes, was making a furious and apparently unwarranted attack upon the piano. Her one desire evidently was to get inside of the instrument. With insinuating persistence she essayed an entrance through the treble, and, being unable to effect it, fell upon the bass, and exhausted a couple of rounds of ammunition there. The assault on both flanks being unsuccessful, she resorted to strategy, crossing her hands and assailing each wing of the enemy from an unexpected quarter. When this move failed, she evidently became incensed, and throwing aside diplomacy, rallied all her forces, charging her artillery up to the highest note, then thundering down to the lowest, beating down the keys as fast as they dared to rise. In the midst of the carnage, when the clamor was at its height and victory seemed imminent, she suddenly paused, with one hand in air and her head gently inclined, and, tapping out two silvery bugle-notes of truce, raised the siege.

The appalling silence that ensued might have hung above a battle-field of slain and wounded. The captain bit his mustache.

"That wasn't exactly the one I meant," he said. "I want that little dance-tune with the jingle to it."

Miss Gusty, disappointed and surprised at the effect which her masterpiece had failed to produce, was insisting with flushed cheeks that she could play no more, when the gentleman who was called Mr. Mathews rose from the table and came toward her. His hair and pointed beard were white, but his eyes were still young, and he looked at her while he spoke to the captain.

"I beg your pardon, Captain," he was saying in smooth, even tones, "can't you persuade the young lady to sing something for us?"