The Fortunes of Oliver Horn

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

As the joyous weeks flew by, even the slight reserve which had marked their earlier intercourse began to wear off. It was "Oliver" and "Margaret" now, and even "Ollie" and "Madge" when they forgot themselves and each other in their work.

To Margaret this free and happy life together seemed natural enough. She had decided on the day of their first meeting that Oliver's interest in her was due wholly to his love of companionship, and not because of any special liking he might feel for her. Had she not seen him quite as cordial and as friendly to the men he knew? Satisfied on this point, Oliver began to take the place of a brother, or cousin, or some friend of her youth who loved another woman, perhaps, and was, therefore, safe against all contingencies, while she gave herself up to the enjoyment of that rare luxury—the rarest that comes to a woman—daily association with a man who could be big and strong and sympathetic, and yet ask nothing in return for what she gave him but her companionship and confidence.

In the joy of this new intercourse, and with his habit of trusting implicitly everyone whom he loved—man, woman, or child—Oliver, long before the first month was over, had emptied his heart to Margaret as completely as he had ever done to Miss Clendenning. He had told her of Sue and of Miss Lavinia's boudoir, and of Mr. Crocker and his pictures; and of his poor father's struggles and his dear mother's determination to send him from home—not about the mortgage, that was his mother's secret, not his own—and of the great receptions given by his Uncle Tilghman, and of all the other wonderful doings in Kennedy Square.

She had listened at first in astonishment, and then with impatience. Many of the things that seemed so important to him were valueless in her more practical eyes. Instead of a regime which ennobled those who enjoyed its privileges, she saw only a slavish devotion to worn-out traditions, and a clannish provincialism which proved to her all the more clearly the narrow-mindedness of the people who sustained and defended them. So far as she could judge, the qualities that she deemed necessary in the make-up of a robust life, instinct with purpose and accomplishment, seemed to be entirely lacking in Kennedy Square formulas. She saw, too, with a certain undefined pain, that Oliver's mind had been greatly warped by these influences. Mrs. Horn's domination over him, strange to say, greatly disturbed her; why, she could not tell. "She must be a proud, aristocratic woman," she had said to herself after one of Oliver's outbursts of enthusiasm over his mother; "wedded to patrician customs and with no consideration for anyone outside of her class."

And yet none of these doubts and criticisms made the summer days less enjoyable.

One bright, beautiful morning when the sky was a turquoise, the air a breath of heaven, and the brooks could be heard laughing clear out on the main road, Oliver and Margaret, who had been separated for some days while she paid a visit to her family at home, started to find a camp that Hank had built the winter before as a refuge while he was hunting deer. They had reached a point in the forest where two paths met, when Margaret's quick ear caught the sound of a human voice, and she stopped to listen.

"Quick—" she cried—"get behind these spruces, or he will see us and stop singing. It's old Mr. Burton. He is such a dear! He spends his summers here. I often meet him and he always bows to me so politely, although he doesn't know me."

A man of sixty—bare-headed, dressed in a gray suit, with his collar and coat over his arm and hands filled with wild-flowers, was passing leisurely along, singing at the top of his voice. Once he stopped, and, bending over, picked a bunch of mountain-berries which he tucked into a buttonhole of his flannel shirt, just before disappearing in a turn of the path.

Oliver looked after him for a moment. He had caught the look of sweet serenity on the idler's face, and the air of joyousness that seemed to linger behind him like a perfume, and it filled him with delight.

"There, Margaret! that's what I call a happy man. I'll wager you he has never done anything all his life but that which he loved to do—just lives out here and throws his heart wide open for every beautiful thing that can crowd into it. That's the kind of a man I want to be. Oh! I'm so glad I saw him."