Mr. Opp. Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice

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СКАЧАТЬ and wither him with blighting sarcasm. And while the decision was pending, he still sat with his hands in his pockets, and his feet stretched forth, and blinked indignantly at the ornate elk.

      “The estate,” continued Ben, contempt still in his face, “amounts at most to three thousand dollars, after the house [p32] is sold. Part of this, of course, will go to the maintenance of Kippy.”

      At mention of her name, Mr. Opp’s gaze dropped abruptly to his brother’s face.

      “What about Kippy? She’s going to live with you, ain’t she?” he asked anxiously.

      Ben Opp shook his head emphatically. “She certainly is not. I haven’t the slightest idea of burdening myself and family with that feeble-minded girl.”

      “But see here,” said Mr. Opp, his anger vanishing in the face of this new complication, “you don’t know Kippy; she’s just similar to a little child, quiet and gentle-like. Never give anybody any trouble in her life. Just plays with her dolls and sings to herself all day.”

      “Exactly,” said Ben; “twenty-five years old and still playing with dolls. I saw her yesterday, dressed up in all sorts of foolish toggery, talking to her hands, and laughing. Aunt Tish humors her, and her father humored her, but I’m not going to. I feel sorry for her [p33] all right, but I am not going to take her home with me.”

      D. Webster nervously twisted the large seal ring which he wore on his forefinger. “Then what do you mean,” he said hesitatingly—“what do you want to do about it?”

      “Why, send her to an asylum, of course. That’s where she ought to have been all these years.”

      Mr. Opp, sitting upon the small of his back, with one leg wrapped casually about the leg of the chair, stared at him for a moment in consternation, then, gathering himself together, rose and for the first time since we have met him seemed completely to fill his checked ready-made suit.

      “Send Kippy to a lunatic asylum!” he said in tones so indignant that they made his chin tremble. “You will do nothing whatever of the kind! Why, all she’s ever had in the world was her pa and Aunt Tish and her home; now he’s gone, you ain’t wanting to take the others away from her too, are you?”

      [p34]

      “Well, who is going to take care of her?” demanded Ben angrily.

      “I am,” announced D. Webster, striking as fine an attitude as ever his illustrious predecessor struck; “you take the money that’s in the bank, and leave me the house and Kippy. That’ll be her share and mine. I can take care of her; I don’t ask favors of nobody. Suppose I do lose my job; I’ll get me another. There’s a dozen ways I can make a living. There ain’t a man in the State that’s got more resources than me. I got plans laid now that’ll revolutionize—”

      “Yes,” said Ben, quietly, “you always could do great things.”

      D. Webster’s egotism, inflated to the utmost, burst at this prick, and he suddenly collapsed. Dropping limply into the chair by the table, he held his hand over his mouth to hide his agitation.

      “There’s—there’s one thing,” he began, swallowing violently, and winking after each word, “that I—I can’t [p35] do—and that’s to leave a—sister—to die—among strangers.”

      And then, to his mortification, his head went unexpectedly down upon his arms, and a flood of tears bedimmed the radiance of his twenty-five-cent four-in-hand.

      From far down the river came the whistle of the boat, and, in the room below, Jimmy Fallows removed a reluctant ear from the stove-pipe hole.

      “Melindy,” he said confidentially, entirely forgetting the late frost, “I never see anybody in the world that stood as good a show of gittin’ the fool prize as that there D. Opp.”

[p36]

      IV

       Table of Contents

      

he old Opp House stood high on the river-bank and gazed lonesomely out into the summer night. It was a shabby, down-at-heel, dejected-looking place, with one side showing faint lights, above and below, but the other side so nailed up and empty and useless that it gave the place the appearance of being paralyzed down one side and of having scarcely enough vitality left to sustain life in the other.

      To make matters worse, an old hound howled dismally on the door-step, only stopping occasionally to paw at the iron latch and to whimper for the master whose unsteady footsteps he had followed for thirteen years.

      In the front room a shaded lamp, [p37] turned low, threw a circle of light on the table and floor, leaving the corners full of vague, uncertain shadows. From the wide, black fireplace a pair of rusty and battered andirons held out empty arms, and on the high stone shelf above the opening, flanked on each side by a stuffed owl, was a tall, square-faced clock, with the hour-hand missing. The minute-hand still went on its useless round, and behind it, on the face of the clock, a tiny schooner with all sail set rocked with the swinging of the pendulum.

      The loud ticking of the clock, and the lamentations of the hound without, were not the only sounds that disturbed the night. Before the empty fireplace, in a high-backed, cane-bottomed chair, slept an old negress, with head bowed, moaning and muttering as she slept. She was bent and ashen with age, and her brown skin sagged in long wrinkles from her face and hands. On her forehead, reaching from brow to faded turban, was a hideous testimony to some ancient conflict. A large, irregular hole, over which [p38] the flesh had grown, pulsed as sentiently and imperatively as a naked, living heart.

      A shutter slammed sharply somewhere in the house above, and something stirred fearfully in the shadow of the room. It was a small figure that crouched against the wall, listening and watching with the furtive terror of a newly captured coyote—the slight figure of a woman dressed as a child, with short gingham dress, and heelless slippers, and a bright ribbon holding back the limp, flaxen hair from her strange, pinched face.

      Again and again her wide, frightened eyes sought the steps leading to the room above, and sometimes she would lean forward and whisper in agonized expectancy, “Daddy?” Then when no answer came, she would shudder back against the wall, cold and shaking and full of dumb terrors.

      Suddenly the hound’s howling changed to a sharp bark, and the old negress stirred and stretched herself.

      “What ails dat air dog?” she [p39] mumbled, going to the window, and shading her eyes with her hand. “You’d ’low to hear him tell it he done heared old master coming up de road.”

      That somebody was coming was evident from the continued excitement of the hound, and when the gate slammed and a man’s voice sounded in the darkness, Aunt Tish opened the door, throwing a long, dim patch of light out across the narrow porch and over the big, round stepping-stones beyond.

      Into the light came Mr. Opp, staggering under the load of his baggage, his coat over his arm, his collar off, thoroughly spent with the events of the day.

      “Lord ’a’ mercy!” said Aunt Tish, “if hit ain’t Mr. D.! I done give you up long ago. I certainly is glad you come. Miss Kippy’s jes carrying on СКАЧАТЬ