The Crisis | Page 9

of the Colonel passed across the light. He held a newspaper in his hand.
Suddenly, full in the window, he stopped and flung away the paper. A
graceful shadow slipped across the wall. Virginia laid her hands on his
shoulders, and he stooped to kiss her. Now they sat between the
curtains, she on the arm of his chair and leaning on him, together
looking out of the window.
How long this lasted Mr. Hopper could not say. Even the wise forget
themselves. But all at once a wagon backed and bumped against the
curb in front of him, and Eliphalet's head dropped as if it had been
struck by the wheel. Above him a sash screamed as it opened, and he
heard Mr. Renault's voice say, to some person below:
"Is that you, Capitaine Grant?"
"The same," was the brief reply.
"I am charmed that you have brought the wood. I thought that you had
forgotten me."
"I try to do what I say, Mr. Renault."
"Attendez--wait!" cried Mr. Renault, and closed the window.
Now was Eliphalet's chance to bolt. The perspiration had come again,
and it was cold. But directly the excitable little man, Renault, had
appeared on the pavement above him. He had been running.

"It is a long voyage from Gravois with a load of wood, Capitaine--I am
very grateful."
"Business is business, Mr. Renault," was the self-contained reply.
"Alphonse!" cried Mr. Renault, "Alphonse!" A door opened in the back
wall. "Du vin pour Monsieur le Capitaine."
"Oui, M'sieu."
Eliphalet was too frightened to wonder why this taciturn handler of
wood was called Captain, and treated with such respect.
"Guess I won't take any wine to-night, Mr. Renault," said he. "You go
inside, or you'll take cold."
Mr. Renault protested, asked about all the residents of Gravois way,
and finally obeyed. Eliphalet's heart was in his mouth. A bolder spirit
would have dashed for liberty. Eliphalet did not possess that kind of
bravery. He was waiting for the Captain to turn toward his wagon.
He looked down the area instead, with the light from the street lamp on
his face. Fear etched an ineffaceable portrait of him on Mr. Hopper's
mind, so that he knew him instantly when he saw him years afterward.
Little did he reckon that the fourth time he was to see him this man was
to be President of the United States. He wore a close-cropped beard, an
old blue army overcoat, and his trousers were tucked into a pair of
muddy cowhide boots.
Swiftly but silently the man reached down and hauled Eliphalet to the
sidewalk by the nape of the neck.
"What were you doing there?" demanded he of the blue overcoat,
sternly.
Eliphalet did not answer. With one frantic wrench he freed himself, and
ran down Locust Street. At the corner, turning fearfully, he perceived
the man in the overcoat calmly preparing to unload his wood.

CHAPTER III
THE UNATTAINABLE SIMPLICITY
To Mr. Hopper the being caught was the unpardonable crime. And
indeed, with many of us, it is humiliation and not conscience which
makes the sting. He walked out to the end of the city's growth westward,
where the new houses were going up. He had reflected coolly on
consequences, and found there were none to speak of. Many a moralist,
Mr. Davitt included, would have shaken his head at this. Miss Crane's
whole Puritan household would have raised their hands in horror at
such a doctrine.
Some novelists I know of, who are in reality celebrated surgeons in
disguise, would have shown a good part of Mr. Eliphalet Hopper's
mental insides in as many words as I have taken to chronicle his arrival
in St. Louis. They invite us to attend a clinic, and the horrible skill with
which they wield the scalpel holds us spellbound. For God has made all
of us, rogue and saint, burglar and burgomaster, marvellously alike. We
read a patent medicine circular and shudder with seven diseases. We
peruse one of Mr. So and So's intellectual tonics and are sure we are
complicated scandals, fearfully and wonderfully made.
Alas, I have neither the skill nor the scalpel to show the diseases of Mr.
Hopper's mind; if, indeed, he had any. Conscience, when contracted, is
just as troublesome as croup. Mr. Hopper was thoroughly healthy. He
had ambition, as I have said. But he was not morbidly sensitive. He was
calm enough when he got back to the boarding-house, which he found
in as high a pitch of excitement as New Englanders ever reach.
And over what?
Over the prospective arrival that evening of the Brices, mother and son,
from Boston. Miss Crane had received the message in the morning.
Palpitating with the news; she had hurried rustling to Mrs. Abner Reed,
with the paper