The Fortune Hunter by Vance, Louis Joseph, 1879-1933

Duncan nervously fingered the stem of his glass. "God help the future Mrs. Duncan!" he said, and drank.

IV

TRIUMPH OF MR. HOMER LITTLEJOHN

The twenty-first of June was a day of memorable triumph to me, a day of memorable events for Radville.

Only the evening previous Will Bigelow and I had indulged in acrimonious argument in the office of the Bigelow House, the subject of contention being the importance of the work to which I am devoting my declining years, to wit, the recording of _The History of Radville Township, Westerly County, Pennsylvania_; Will maintaining with that obstinacy for which he is famous, that nothing ever had happened, does happen, can or will happen in our community, I insisting gently but firmly that it knows no day unmarked by important occurrence (for it would ill become me, as the only literary man in Radville, to yield a point in dispute with the proprietor of the town tavern). Besides, he was wrong, even as I was indisputably right--only he had not the grace to admit it. We ended vulgarly with a bet, Will wagering me the best five-cent Clear Havana in the Bigelow House sample-room that nothing worth mentioning would take place in Radville before sundown of the following day.

I left him, returning to my room at Miss Carpenter's (Will and I are old friends, but I refuse to eat the food he serves his guests), warmed by the prospect of certain triumph if a little appalled by the prospect of winning the stake; and sympathising a little with Will, who, for all his egregious stubborness, has some excuse for upholding his unreasonable and ridiculous views. He knows no better, having never had the opportunity to find out for himself how utterly absurd are his claims for the outside world. Whereas I have.

He's an adventurer at heart, Will Bigelow, a romantic soul crusted heavily with character--like a volcano smouldering beneath its lava. For many years he has managed the Bigelow House, with his thoughts apart from it, his eyes ever seeking the horizon that recedes beyond the soaring rim of our encircling cup of hills, his heart forever yearning forth to the outer world; which he erroneously conceives to be a theatre of events--as if outside of Radville only could there be things worth seeing, considering, or doing, or matters of any sort that move momentously! As long as I've known the man (and we played truant together fifty years ago--hookey, we called it then) he's had his heart set on going forth from Radville, "for to admire and for to see, for to view this wide world o'er"; always he has presented himself to me as one poised on the pinnacle of purpose, ready the next instant to dive and strike out into the teeming unknown beyond the barrier hills. But this promise he has never fulfilled. He still maintains that he will surely go--next week--after the hayin's over--as soon as the ice is in--the minute Mary graduates from High School. ... But I know he never will.