When he opened his eyes broad daylight was streaming in upon him. Some one was pounding on the door downstairs. He leaped out of bed and began to pull on his shoes.
Suddenly it occurred to him that by all rights he should be lying there stiff and cold, suffocated by the escaping gas. He sniffed the air. There was no odour of gas. With a gasp of alarm he rushed over and turned off the stopcock, a cold perspiration coming out all over him.
“Gee, I hope I’m in time!” he groaned aloud. “I don’t want to die. I—I—it’s different in the daytime. The darkness did it. I hope I’m––” Then, considerably puzzled, he interrupted himself to turn the thing on again. He stood on his toes to smell the tip. “By jingo, I remember now, that fellow turned it off in the meter yesterday. Oh, Lord; what a close call I’ve had!” 198
He was so full of glee when he opened the door to admit the packers that they neglected, in their astonishment, to growl at him for keeping them standing in the cold for fifteen or twenty minutes.
“Thought maybe you’d gone and done it,” said the foreman. “Took poison or turned on the gas, or something. You was mighty blue yesterday, Mr.—Mr. Duluth.”
With the arrival of the van he set off to pay the bills due the tradespeople in town, returning before noon with all the receipts, and something like $20 left over. The world did not look so dark and dreary to him now. In his mind’s eye he saw himself rehabilitated in the sight of the scoffers, prospering ere long to such an extent that not only would he be able to reclaim Phoebe, but even Nellie might be persuaded to throw herself on his neck and beg for reinstatement in his good graces. With men like Harvey the ill wind never blows long or steadily; it blows the hardest under cover of night. The sunshine takes the keen, bitter edge off it, and it becomes a balmy zephyr.
Already he was planning the readjustment of his fortunes. 199
At length the van was loaded. His suitcase sat on the front porch, puny and pathetic. The owner of the house was there, superintending the boarding up of the windows and doors. Harvey stood in the middle of the walk, looking on with a strange yearning in his heart. All of his worldly possessions reposed in that humble bag, save the cotton umbrella that he carried in his hand. A cotton umbrella, with the mercury down to zero!
“Well, I’m sorry you’re leaving,” said the owner, pocketing the keys as he came up to the little man. “Can I give you a lift in my cutter down to the station?”
“If it isn’t too much bother,” said Harvey, blinking his eyes very rapidly.