The Fortunes of Oliver Horn Part 31

Miss Clendenning rose from her chair, stood a moment in deep thought, and said, aloud:

"If she loves him, she shall have him. There shall be no more desolate firesides if I can help it."

Early the next morning, she mailed by the first post a letter so dainty in form and so delicate in color that only a turtle-dove should have carried it to Brookfleld Farm, and have dropped it into Margaret's hand. This billet-doux began by inviting Miss Margaret Grant of Brookfield Farm to pa.s.s a week with Miss Lavinia Clendenning, of Kennedy Square, she, Miss Lavinia, desiring to know the better one who had so charmed and delighted "our dear Oliver," and ended with "Please say to your good mother, that I am twice your age, and will take as much care of you as if you were my own daughter. I feel a.s.sured she will waive all ceremony when she thinks of how warm a greeting awaits you."

Margaret looked at the post-mark, and then at the little oval of violet wax bearing the crest of the Clendennings--granted in the time of Queen Elizabeth for distinguished services to the Throne--and after she had read it to her mother, and had shown the seal to her father, who had put on his gla.s.ses, scanned it closely, and tossed it back to her with a dry laugh, and after she had talked it all over with John, who said it was certainly very kind of the woman, and that Oliver's people were evidently "n.o.bs," but, of course, Madge couldn't go, not knowing any of them, Margaret took a sheet of plain white paper from her desk, thanked Miss Clendenning for her kind thought of her, and declined the honor in a firm, round hand. This she closed with a red wafer, and then, with a little bridling of her head and a determined look in her face, she laid the letter on the gate-post, ready for the early stage in the morning.

This missive was duly received by Miss Clendenning, and read at once to Mrs. Horn, who raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips in deep thought.

After some moments she looked over her gla.s.ses at Miss Lavinia and said:

"I must say, Lavinia, I am very greatly astonished. Won't come? She has done perfectly right. I think all the better of her for it. Really, there may be something in the girl after all. Let me look at her handwriting again--writes like a woman of some force. Won't come? What do you think, Lavinia?"

"Merely a question of grandmothers, my dear; she seems to have had one, too," answered the little old maid, with a quizzical smile in her eye, as she folded the letter and slipped it in her pocket.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE LAST HOURS OF A CIVILIZATION

Margaret's decision saddened Oliver's last days at home, and he returned to New York with none of his former buoyancy. Here other troubles began to multiply. Before the autumn was gone, Morton, Slade & Co., unable longer to make headway against the financial difficulties that beset them, went to the wall, involving many of their fellow-merchants. Oliver lost his situation, in consequence, and was forced to support himself during the long dreary winter by making lithographic drawings for Bianchi, at prices that barely paid his board. His loneliness in the garret room became more intense, Fred being much away and the occupants of the other rooms being either strangers to him or so uncongenial that he would not make their acquaintance.

To his own troubles were added other anxieties. The political outlook had become even more gloomy than the financial. The roar of Sumter's guns had reverberated throughout the land, and men of all minds were holding their breath and listening, with ears to the ground, for the sound of the next shot. Even Margaret's letters were full of foreboding. "Father is more bitter against the South than ever," she wrote. "He says if he had ten sons each should shoulder a musket. We must wait, Ollie dear. I can only talk to mother about you. Father won't listen, and I never mention your name before him. Not because it is you, Ollie, but because you represent a cla.s.s whom he hates. Dear John would listen, but he is still in Boston. Even his fellow-cla.s.smen want to fight, he says. I fear all this will hurt my work, and keep me from painting."

These letters of Margaret's, sad as they were, were his greatest and sometimes his only comfort. She knew his ups and downs and they must have no secrets from each other. From his mother, however, he kept all records of his privations during these troublous months. Neither his father nor his dear mother must deprive themselves for his benefit.

During these dreary days he often longed for Kennedy Square and for those whom he loved, but it was not until one warm spring day, when the gra.s.s was struggling into life, and the twigs on the scraggy trees in Union Square were growing pink and green with impatient buds and leaves that he had his wish. Then a startling telegram summoned him. It read as follows:

"Father ill. Come at once.

"Mother"

Instinctively Oliver felt in his pockets for his purse. There was just money enough to take him to Kennedy Square and back.

His mother met him at the door.

"It was only a fainting turn, my son," were her first words. "I am sorry I sent for you. Your father is himself again, so Dr. Wallace says. He has been working too hard lately--sometimes far into the night. I could have stopped you from coming; but, somehow, I wanted you--" and she held him close in her arms, and laid her cheek against his. "I get so lonely, my boy, and feel so helpless sometimes."

The weak and strong were changing places. She felt the man in him now.

Nathan was in the library. He and Malachi had been taking turns at Richard's bedside. Malachi had not closed his eyes all night. Nathan came out into the hall when he heard Oliver's voice, and put his hand on his shoulder.

"We had a great scare, Ollie," he said, "but he's all right again, thank G.o.d! He's asleep now--better not wake him." Then he put on his coat and went home.

Malachi shook his head. "Sumpin's de matter wid him, an' dis ain't de las' ob it. Drapped jes' like a shote when he's. .h.i.t, Ma.r.s.e Oliver," he said, in a low whisper, as if afraid of disturbing his master on the floor above. "I was a-layin' out his clo'es an' he called quick like, 'Malachi! Malachi!' an' when I got dar, he was lyin' on de flo' wid his head on de mat. I ain't nebber seen Ma.r.s.e Richard do like dat befo'--"

The old servant trembled as he spoke. He evidently did not share Nathan's hopeful views. Neither did Dr. Wallace, although he did not say so to anyone.

Their fears, however, were not realized. Richard not only revived, but by the end of the week he was in the drawing-room again, Malachi, in accordance with the time-honored custom, wheeling out his chair, puffing up the cus.h.i.+ons, and, with a wave of the hand and a sweeping bow, saying:

"Yo' ch'ar's all ready, Ma.r.s.e Richard. Hope you'se feelin' fine dis evenin', sah!"

The following day he was in his "li'l' room," Oliver helping him. It was the lifting of the heavy plate of the motor that had hurt Richard, so Nathan told him; not the same motor which Oliver remembered; another, much larger and built on different lines. The inventor now used twenty-four cells instead of ten, and the magnets had been wrapped with finer wire.

These days in the shop were delightful to Oliver. His father no longer treated him as an inexperienced youth, but as his equal. "I hope you will agree with me, my son," he would say; or, "What do you think of the idea of using a 'cam' here instead of a lever?" or, "I wish you would find the last issue of the Review, and tell me what you think of that article of Latrobe's. He puts the case very clearly, it seems to me," etc. And Oliver would bend his head in attention and try to follow his father's lead, wis.h.i.+ng all the time that he could really be of use to the man he revered beyond all others, and so lighten some of the burdens that were weighing him down.

And none the less joyful were the hours spent with his mother. All the old-time affection, the devotion of a lover-son, were lavished upon her. And she was so supremely happy in it all. Now that Richard had recovered, there was no other cloud on her horizon, not even that of the dreaded mortgage which owing to some payments made Richard by a company using one of his patents had been extended and its interest paid for two years in advance in deference to her urgent request. All anxiety as to the Northern girl had happily pa.s.sed out of her mind. If Oliver intended marrying Miss Grant he would have told her, she knew.

Then again, he was so much stronger and wiser now--so much more thoughtful than he had been--so much more able to keep his head in matters of this kind.

As his position was different with his father in the "li'l' room" and with his mother in the stillness of her chamber--for often they talked there together until far into the night--so were his relations altered with his old friends and neighbors in the drawing-room. While the young men and girls filled the house as had always been their custom, the older men, as well, now paid their respects to Richard Horn's son.

"One of our own kind," Judge Bowman said to Richard. "Does you credit, Horn--a son to be proud of."

Even Amos Cobb came to look him over, a courtesy which pleased Richard who greatly admired the Vermonter, and who had not hesitated to express his good opinion of him on more than one occasion before his own and Cobb's friends.

"A man of force, gentlemen," Richard had said, "of great kindness of heart and with a wide range of vision. One who has the clearest ideas of what makes for the good of his country; a man too, not ashamed of his opinions and with ample courage to defend them. He deserves our unqualified respect, not our criticism."

When Cobb heard of Richard's outspoken defence of him he at once called on the inventor at his workshop--a thing he had not done for mouths, and asked to see the motor, and that same night astonished the circles about the club tables, by remarking, in a tone of voice loud enough for everybody to hear: "We have all been wrong about Horn. He has got hold of something that will one day knock steam higher than Gilderoy's kite." A friends.h.i.+p was thus established between the two which had become closer every day--the friends.h.i.+p of a clearer understanding; one which was unbroken during the rest of their lives.

It was quite natural, therefore, that Amos Cobb should be among Oliver's earliest callers. He must have been pleased with his inspection, for he took occasion at the club to say to Colonel Clayton, in his quick, crisp way:

"Dropped in at Horn's last night. His boy's over from New York. Looks like a different man since he quit fooling round here a couple of years ago. Clean cut a young fellow as I've seen for many a day. Got a look out of his eyes like his mother's. Level-headed woman, his mother--no better anywhere. If all the young bloods South had Oliver Horn's ideas we might pull through this crisis."

To which my Lord Chesterfield of Kennedy Square merely replied only with a nod of the head and a drawing together of the eyebrows. He found it difficult to tolerate the Vermonter in these days with his continued tirades against "The epidemic of insanity sweeping over the South," as Cobb would invariably put it.

The scribe now reaches a night in Oliver's career fraught with such momentous consequences that he would be glad to leave its story untold:

An unforgettable night indeed, both for those who were a.s.sembled there, and for him who is the chronicler. He would fain lay down his pen to recall again the charm and the sweetness and the old-time flavor of that drawing-room: the soft lights of the candles; the perfume of the lilacs coming in through the half-open windows; the merry laugh of the joyous girl running through the Square to be ushered by Malachi a moment later into the presence of her hostess, there to make her courtesied obeisance before she joined a group of young people around one of the red damask-covered sofas. And then Richard, dear Richard, with his white hair and his gracious speech, and Miss Clendenning with her manners of foreign courts, and the sweet-voiced hostess of the mansion moving about among her guests; her guests who were her neighbors and her friends; whose children were like her own, and whose joys and sorrows were hers--guests, neighbors, friends many of whom after this fatal night were to be as enemies never to a.s.semble again with the old-time harmony and love.

Malachi had brewed the punch; the little squat gla.s.ses were set out beside the Canton china bowl, for it was the night of the weekly musical and an unusually brilliant company had a.s.sembled in honor of Oliver's arrival and of Richard's recovery.

The inventor was to play his own interpretations of Handel's Largo, a favorite selection of Ole Bull, and one which the inventor and the great virtuoso had played together some years before.

Miss Clendenning had taken her place at the piano, Nathan standing beside her to turn the leaves of the accompaniment.

Richard had picked up his violin, tucked it under his chin, poised the bow, and that peculiar hush which always precedes the sounding of the first notes on evenings of this kind had already fallen upon the room, when there came a loud rap at the front door that startled everyone and the next instant Colonel Clayton burst in, his cheeks flaming, his hat still on his head.

"Ten thousand Yankees will be here in the morning, Horn!" he gasped, out of breath with his run across the Square, holding one hand to his side as he spoke, and waving an open telegram in the other. "Stop! This is no time for fiddling. They're not going round by water; they're coming here by train. Read that," and he held out the bit of paper.

The Colonel's sudden entrance and the startling character of the news, had brought every man to his feet.

Richard laid down his violin, read the telegram quietly, and handed it back.

"Well, suppose they do come, Clayton?"