Part 42

Mr. Opp shrugged his shoulders, and pursed his lips. "It's a matter that I cannot yet bring myself to talk about. After a whole year and more of associating with me in business and social ways, to think they wouldn't be willing to take my word for what I said."

"But it wasn't to their advantage," said Hinton, smiling. "You forget the amount of money involved."

"No," declared Mr. Opp with some heat, "you do those gentlemen a injustice. There ain't a individual of them that is capable of a dishonest act, any more than you or me. They just lacked the experience in dealing with a man like Mr. Mathews."

Hinton's smile broadened; he reached over and grasped Mr. Opp's hand.

"Do you know you are a rattling good fellow? I am sorry things have gotten so balled up with you."

"I'll pay out," said the editor. "It'll take some time, but I've got a remarkable ability for work in me. I don't mind telling you, though I'll have to ask you not to mention the fact to no one at present, that I am considering inventing a patent. It's a sort of improved type-setter, one of the most remarkable things you ever witnessed. I never knew till about six months ago what a scientific turn my mind could take. I've worked this whole thing out in my brain without the aid of a model of any sort."

"In the meanwhile," said Hinton, "I hear you will have to sell your paper."

Mr. Opp winced, and the lines in his face deepened. "Well, yes," he said, "I have about decided to sell, provided I keep the editorship, of course. After my patent gets on the market I will soon be in a position to buy it back."

"Mr. Opp," said Hinton, "I've got a proposition to make to you. I have a moderate sum of money in bank which I want to invest in business. How would you like to sell out the paper to me, lock, stock, and barrel?"

Mr. Opp, whose eyes had been resting on the bills that strewed his table, looked up eagerly.

"You to own it, and me to run it?" he asked hopefully.

"No," said Hinton; "you would help me to run it, I hope, but I would be the editor. I have thought the matter over seriously, and I believe, with competent help, I can make the paper an up-to-date, self-supporting newspaper, in spite of my handicap."

Mr. Opp sat as if stunned by a blow. He had known for some time that he must sell the paper in order to meet his obligations, but the thought of relinquishing his control of it never dawned upon him. It was the pride of his heart, the one tangible achievement in a wilderness of dreams. Life without Guinevere had seemed a desert; life without "The Opp Eagle" seemed chaos. He looked up bewildered.

"We'd continue on doing business here in the regular way?" he asked.

"No," said Hinton; "I would build a larger office uptown, and put in new presses; we could experiment with your new patent type-setter as soon as you got it ready."

But Mr. Opp was beyond pleasantries. "You'd keep Nick?" he asked. "I wouldn't consider anything that would cut Nick out."

"By all means," said Hinton. "I'm counting on you and Nick to initiate me into the mysteries of the profession. You could be city editor, and Nick--well, we could make him foreman."

One last hope was left to Mr. Opp, and he clung to it desperately, not daring to voice it until the end.

"The name," he said faintly, "would of course remain 'The Opp Eagle'?"

Hinton dropped his eyes; he could not stand the wistful appeal in the drawn face opposite.

"No," he said shortly; "that's a--little too personal. I think I should call my paper 'The Weekly News.'"

Mr. Opp could never distinctly remember what happened after that. He knew that he had at first declined the offer, that he had been argued with, had reconsidered, and finally accepted a larger sum than he had asked for; but the details of the transaction were like the setting of bones after an accident.

He remembered that he had sat where Hinton left him, staring at the floor until Nick came to close the office; then he had a vague impression of crossing the fields and standing with his head against the old sycamore-tree where the birds had once whispered of love. After that he knew that he had met Hinton and Guinevere coming up the river road hand in hand, that he had gotten home after supper was over, and had built a bridge of blocks for Miss Kippy.

Then suddenly he had wakened to full consciousness, staggered out of the house to the woodshed, and shivered down into a miserable heap. There in the darkness he seemed to see things, for the first time in his life, quite as they were. His gaze, accustomed to the glittering promise of the future, peered fearfully into the past, and reviewed the long line of groundless hopes, of empty projects, of self-deceptions. Shorn of its petty shams and deceits, and stripped of its counterfeit armor of conceit, his life lay naked before him, a pitiful, starved, futile thing.

"I've just been similar to Kippy," he sobbed, with his face in his hands, "continually pretending what wasn't so. I acted like I was young, and good-looking, and--and highly educated; and look at me! Look at me!" he demanded fiercely of the kindling-wood.

Mr. Opp had been fighting a long duel--a duel with Circumstance, and Mr. Opp was vanquished. The acknowledgment of defeat, even to himself, gave it the final stamp of verity. He had fought valiantly, with what poor weapons he had, but the thrusts had been too many and too sure. He lay clothed in his strange new garment of humility, and wondered why he did not want to die. He did not realize that in losing everything else, he had won the greater stake of character for which he had been unconsciously fighting all along.

The kitchen door opened, and he saw Miss Kippy's figure silhouetted against the light.

"Brother D.," she called impatiently, "ain't you coming back to play with me?"