Part 27

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.

"Mr. D.," said a complaining voice from the doorway, "Miss Kippy won't lemme tek her dress off to go to baid. She 'low she gwine sleep in hit."

Mr. Opp abruptly descended from his elocutionary flight, and asked to be excused for a few moments.

"Just a little domestic friction," he assured Hinton; "you can glance over the rest of the poems, and I'll be back soon."

Hinton, left alone, paced restlessly up and down the room. The temporary diversion was over, and he was once more face to face with his problem. He went to the table, and, taking a note from his pocket, bent over the lamp to read it. The lines blurred and ran together, but a word here and there recalled the contents. It was from Mr. Mathews, who preferred writing disagreeable things to saying them. Mr. Mathews, the note said, had been greatly annoyed recently by repeated errors in the reports of his secretary; he was neither as rapid nor as accurate as formerly, and an improvement would have to be made, or a change would be deemed advisable.

"Delicate tact!" sneered Hinton, crushing the paper in his hand. "Courtesy sometimes begets a request, and the shark shrinks from conferring favors. And I've got to stick it out, to go on accepting condescending disapproval until a 'change is deemed advisable.'"

He dropped his head on his arms, and so deep was he in his bitter thoughts that he did not hear Mr. Opp come into the room. That gentleman stood for a moment in great embarrassment; then he stepped noiselessly out, and heralded his second coming by rattling the door-knob.

The wind had risen to a gale, and it shrieked about the old house and tugged at the shutters and rattled the panes incessantly.

"You take the big chair," urged Mr. Opp, who had just put on a fresh log and sent the flames dancing up the chimney; "and here's a pitcher of hard cider whenever you feel the need of a little refreshment. You ain't a married man I would judge, Mr. Hinton."

"Thank the Lord, no!" exclaimed Hinton.

"Well," said Mr. Opp, pursing his lips and smiling, "you know that's just where I think us young men are making a mistake."

"Matrimony," said Hinton, "is about the only catastrophe that hasn't befallen me during my short and rocky career."

"See here," said Mr. Opp, "I used to feel that way, too."

"Before you met her?" suggested Hinton.

Mr. Opp looked pleased but embarrassed. "I can't deny there is a young lady," he said; "but she is quite young as yet. In fact, I don't mind telling you she's just about half my age."

Hinton, instead of putting two and two together, added eighteen to eighteen. "And you are about thirty-six?" he asked.

"Exactly," said Mr. Opp, surprised. "I am most generally considered a long sight younger."

From matrimony the conversation drifted to oil-wells, then to journalism, and finally to a philosophical discussion of life itself. Mr. Opp got beyond his depth again and again, and at times he became so absorbed that he gave a very poor imitation of himself, and showed signs of humility that were rarely if ever visible.

Hinton meantime was taking soundings, and sometimes his plummet stopped where it started, and sometimes it dropped to an unexpected depth.

"Well," he said at last, rising, "we must go to bed. You'll go on climbing a ladder in the air, and I'll go on burrowing like a mole in the ground, and what is the good of it all? What chance have either of us for coming out anywhere? You can fool yourself; I can't: that's the difference."

Mr. Opp's unusual mental exertions had apparently affected his entire body, his legs were tightly wrapped about each other, his arms were locked, and his features were drawn into an amazing pucker of protest.

"That ain't it," he said emphatically, struggling valiantly to express his conviction: "this here life business ain't run on any such small scale as that. According to my notion, or understanding, it's--well--what you might call, in military figures, a fight." He paused a moment and tied himself if possible even into a tighter knot, then proceeded slowly, groping his way: "Of course there's some that just remains around in camp, afraid to fight and afraid to desert, just sort of indulging in conversation, you might say, about the rest of the army. Then there is the cowards and deserters. But a decent sort of a individual, or rather soldier, carries his orders around with him, and the chief and principal thing he's got to do is to follow them. What the fight is concerning, or in what manner the general is a-aiming to bring it all correct in the end, ain't, according to my conclusion, a particle of our business."

Having arrived at this point of the discussion in a somewhat heated and indignant state, Mr. Opp suddenly remembered his duties as host. With a lordly wave of the hand he dismissed the subject, and conducted Hinton in state to his bed-chamber, where he insisted upon lighting the fire and arranging the bed.

Hinton sat for a long time before undressing, listening to the wind in the chimney, to the scrape, scrape of the cedar on the roof, and to the yet more dismal sounds that were echoing in his heart. Everything about the old house spoke of degeneration, decay; yet in the midst of it lived a man who asked no odds of life, who took what came, and who lived with a zest, an abandon, a courage that were baffling. Self-deception, egotism, cheap optimism--could they bring a man to this state of mind? Hinton wondered bitterly what Opp would do in his position; suppose his sight was threatened, how far would his foolish self-delusion serve him then?

But he could not imagine Mr. Opp, lame, halt, or blind, giving up the fight. There was that in the man--egotism, courage, whatever it was--that would never recognize defeat, that quality that wins out of a life of losing the final victory.

Before he retired, Hinton found there was no drinking water in his room, and, remembering a pitcher full in the dining-room, he took the candle and softly opened his door. The sudden cold draft from the hall made the candle flare, but as it steadied, Hinton saw that an old cot had been placed across the door opposite his, as if on guard, and that beside it knelt an ungainly figure in white, with his head clasped in his hands. It was Mr. Opp saying his prayers.

XII