The elder Opp took his seat by the window, and drummed with impatient fingers on the sill. He was small, like his brother, but of a compact, st.u.r.dy build. His chin, instead of dwindling to a point, was square and stubborn, and his eyes looked straight ahead at the thing he wanted, and neither saw nor cared for what lay outside. He had been trying ever since leaving the cemetery to bring the conversation down to practical matters, but D. Webster, seizing the first opportunity of impressing himself upon his next of kin, had persisted in indulging in airy and time-destroying flights of fancy.
The truth is that our Mr. Opp was not happy. In his secret heart he felt a bit apologetic before the material success of his elder brother. Hence it was necessary to talk a great deal and to set forth in detail the very important business enterprises upon which he was about to embark.
Presently Ben Opp looked at his watch.
"See here," he interrupted, "that boat may be along at any time. We"d better come to some decision about the estate."
D. Webster ran his fingers through his hair, which stood in valiant defense of the small bald spot behind it.
"Yes, yes," he said; "business is business. I"ll have to be off myself the very first thing in the morning. This funeral couldn"t have come at a more unfortunate time for me. You see, my special territory--"
But Ben saw the danger of another bolt, and checked him:
"How much do you think the old house is worth?"
D. Webster drew forth his shiny note-book and pencil and made elaborate calculations.
"I should say," he said, as one financier to another, "that including of the house and land and contents of same, it would amount to the whole sum total of about two thousand dollars."
"That is about what I figured," said Ben; "now, how much money is in the bank?"
D. Webster produced a formidable packet of letters and papers from his inside pocket and, after some searching, succeeded in finding a statement, which set forth the fact that the Ripper County Bank held in trust one thousand dollars, to be divided between the children of Mary Opp Moore at the death of her husband, Curtis V. Moore.
"One thousand dollars!" said Ben, looking blankly at his brother, "Why, for heaven"s sake, what have Mr. Moore and Kippy been living on all these years?"
D. Webster moved uneasily in his chair. "Oh, they"ve managed to get along first rate," he said evasively.
His brother looked at him narrowly. "On the interest of a thousand dollars?" He leaned forward, and his face hardened: "See here, have you been putting up cash all this time for that old codger to loaf on? Is that why you have never gotten ahead?"
D. Webster, with hands in his pockets and his feet stretched in front of him, was blinking in furious embarra.s.sment at the large-eyed elk overhead.
"To think," went on Ben, his slow wrath rising, "of your staying here in Kentucky all these years and handing out what you made to that old sponger. I cut loose and made a neat little sum, married, and settled down. And what have you done? Where have you gotten? Anybody that would let himself be imposed upon like that deserves to fail. Now what do you propose to do about this money?"
Mr. Opp did not propose to do anything. The affront offered his business sagacity was of such a nature that it demanded all his attention. He composed various denunciatory answers with which to annihilate his brother. He hesitated between two courses, whether he should hurl himself upon him in righteous indignation and demand physical satisfaction, or whether he should rise in a calm and manly att.i.tude 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 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 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?"
"Well, who is going to take care of her?" demanded Ben angrily.
"I am," announced D. Webster, striking as fine an att.i.tude as ever his ill.u.s.trious 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 n.o.body. 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 p.r.i.c.k, 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 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."
IV
The 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, 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 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 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.