Landlord Files set forth a boiled dinner that day; he skinched on corned beef and made up on cabbage; but he economized on fuel, and the cabbage was underdone.
Mr. Britt, back in his office, allowing his various affairs to be digested—his dinner, his political project, the valentine—his hopes in general—found that soggy cabbage to be a particularly tough proposition. He was not sufficiently imaginative to view his punishment by the intractable cabbage as a premonitory hint that he was destined to suffer as much in his pride as he did in his stomach. His pangs took his mind off the other affairs. He was pallid and his lips were blue when Emissary Orne came waddling into the office.
Mr. Orne, in addition to other characteristics that suggested a fowl, had a sagging dewlap, and the February nip had colored it into resemblance to a rooster's wattles. When he came in Mr. Orne's face was sagging, in general. It was a countenance that was already ridged into an expression of sympathy. When he set eyes on Britt the expression of woe was touched up with alarm. But that the alarm had to do with the personal affairs of Mr. Orne was shown when he inquired apprehensively whether Mr. Britt would settle then and there for the day's work.
The candidate looked up at the office timepiece. “It ain't three o'clock. I don't call it a day.”
“You call it a day in banking. I've got the same right to call it a day in politics.”
“What infernal notion is afoul of you, Orne, grabbing for my money before you report?”
“I do business with a man according to his own rules—and then he's suited, or ought to be. You collect sharp on the dot after service has been rendered. So do I.” Mr. Orne was displaying more acute nervous apprehension. “And the understanding was that you'd leave it to me as your manager, and wouldn't go banging around, yourself.”
Britt found the agent's manner puzzling. “I haven't been out of this office, except to go to my dinner. I haven't talked politics with anybody.”
“Oh!” remarked Orne, showing relief. “Perhaps, then, it was the way the light fell on your face.” He peered closely at his client. Mr. Britt's color was coming back. Orne's cryptic speeches and his haste to collect had warmed the banker's wrath. “It'll be ten dollars, as we agreed.”
Britt yanked a big wallet from his breast pocket, plucked out a bill, and shoved it at Orne. The latter set the bill carefully into a big wallet of his own, “sunk” the calfskin, and buttoned up his buffalo coat.
“It does beat blazes,” stated “Sniffer” Orne, “what a messed up state all politics is in since this prim'ry business has put the blinko onto caucuses and conventions. Caucuses was sensible, Mr. Britt. Needn't tell me! Voters liked to have the wear and tear off 'em. Now a voter gets into that booth and has to caucus by himself, and he's either so puffed up by importance that he thinks he's the whole party or else—”
Mr. Britt's patience was ground between the millstones of anger and indigestion. He smacked the flat of his hand on his desk. “When I want a stump speech out of you, Orne, I'll drop you a postcard and give you thirty days' notice so that you can get up a good one. You have made a short day of it, as I said, but you needn't feel called on to fill it up with a lecture.” Mr. Britt continued on pompously and revealed that he placed his own favorable construction on the emissary's early return from the field. “You didn't have to go very far, hey, to find out how I stand for that nomination?”
“I went far enough so that you can depend on what I tell you.”
“Go ahead and tell, then.”
Mr. Orne slowly fished a quill toothpick from the pocket of his overcoat, set the end of the quill in his mouth, and “sipped” the air sibilantly, gazing over Britt's head with professional gravity. “Of course, you're the doctor in this case and are paying the money, and if you don't want any soothing facts, like I was intending to throw in free of charge and for good measure, showing how the best of politicians—”
There were ominous sounds from the direction of Britt. Orne checked his discourse, but he did not look at the candidate. “But no matter,” said the agent. “That may be neither here nor there. You're the doctor, I say! When I first came in here I thought you had been disobeying my orders and had dabbled into the thing. Your face looked like you was posted.”
“I'm paying for the goods, not for gobbling, you infernal old turkey! Come out with the facts!”
“Facts is that the whole thing is completely gooly-washed up,” stated Mr. Orne, with an oracle's decisiveness.
But that declaration in Mr. Orne's political terminology did not convey much information to the candidate. Britt, thoroughly incensed by what seemed to be evasion, leaped up, twitched the toothpick from Orne's lips, and flung it away. “I've paid for the English language, and I want it straight and in short words, and not trigged by a toothpick.”
“All right! You're licked before you start.”
It was a bit too straight from the shoulder—that piece of news! Britt blinked as if he had received a blow between the eyes. He sat down and stared at Orne, elbows on the arms of the chair, hands limply hanging from lax wrists.
“It's this way!” Mr. Orne started, briskly, with upraised forefinger; but he shook his head and put down his hand. He turned away. “I forgot. You ordered plain facts.”
“You hold on!” Britt thundered. “How do you dare to tell me that you can go out and in fifteen minutes come back with information of that sort?”
Mr. Orne glanced reproachfully from his detractor to the clock; he had not the same reasons as Mr. Britt had for finding the hours of the day fleeting. “Mr. Britt, a man doesn't need to make a hoss of himself and eat a whole head of cabbage by way of sampling it.” Britt winced at the random simile. “It's the same way with me in sampling politics, being an expert. Your case, to start with, had me gy-poogled and—”
“English language, I tell you!” Britt emphasized his stand as a stickler by a tremendous thump of his fist on the desk.
Orne jabbed his finger back and forth from his breast to the direction of Britt, with the motions of the “eeny, meeny” game. “I was mistook. You was mistook. I figgered on your money. So did you. I figgered you'd go strong in politics like you had infinance. So did you.” Mr. Orne put his hand up sidewise and sliced the air. “Nothing doing in politics, Mr. Britt! You can cash in on straight capital, but there ain't a cent in the dollar for you when you try to collect in what you 'ain't ever invested. A man don't have to be so blamed popular after he is well settled in politics; but you've got to have some real human-nature assets to get a start with. You've got to depend on given votes—not the boughten ones.”
“Orne, you're rasping me mighty hard.”
“You demanded facts—not hair-oil talk.”
“Then the facts are—” Britt hesitated.
“Facts is that, by the usual arrangement in the legislative class of towns, Egypt had the choice this year. You won't get a vote in Egypt.”
“But the men who come in here—” Again Britt halted in a sentence.
“The men who come in here and sit down at that desk and pick up a pen to sign a note have fixed on their grins before they open your door. But the men who get into a voting booth alone with God and a lead pencil, they'll jab down on to that ballot a cross for t'other candidate that'll look like a dent in a tin dipper. Somebody else might lie to you about the situation, Mr. Britt. I've done consid'able lying in politics, too. But when I'm hired by a man to deliver goods—and same has been paid for—my word can be depended on.”
Britt turned around and looked into the depths of his desk, staring vacantly. His rounded shoulders suggested grief. Orne settled his wallet more firmly, pressing on the outside of the buffalo coat. His face again sagged with sympathy. “Mr. Britt, it's only like what most of us do in this life—take smiles without testing 'em with acid—take words-current for what they seem to be worth, and then we do test 'em out and—”
Britt whirled and broke on this fatuous preachment with an oath. Mr. Orne thriftily withheld further sympathy; it was plainly wasted.
“Orne, I hope it's about due to revise the New Testament again. I want to send in some footnotes for that page where Judas Iscariot is mentioned. I want a full roster of his descendants to appear; I'll furnish the voting list of this town. Get out of here and pass that word.”
But a yelp from the candidate halted the departing Orne at the door. “Seeing that you have my ten dollars and are full of political information, perhaps you'll throw in free of charge who it is this town is going to send to the legislature!”
“Only one thing has been decided on so far,” returned the politician. “And, having no desire to rub it in, I'll let you draw your own conclusions.” Mr. Orne had the door open; he dodged out and slammed the door shut.
It was promptly opened—so promptly that Mr. Britt was fairly caught at what he was about. He was standing up, shaking both fists at the door and cursing roundly. Vona was gazing at him in alarm.
“I was waiting in the corridor, sir, till you—till your business—till Mr. Orne went away,” she stammered.
“Come in!” muttered Britt, even more disconcerted than the girl.
Then he wished that he had told her to go away. He realized that he was in no mood or condition to woo; the cabbage had tortured him, but this new sort of indigestion in the very soul of him had left him without poise or courage.
He slumped down in his chair and waved a limp hand in invitation for her to take a seat near him. But she merely came and stood in the middle of the room and surveyed him with an uncompromising air of business. From the velvet toque, with just a suggestion of a coquettish cant on her brown curls, down her healthily round cheeks, a bit flushed, above the fur neckpiece that clasped her throat, Britt's fervent eyes strayed. And some of the words of the Prophet's singsong monotone echoed in the empty chambers of Britt's consciousness, “'Thou hast dove's eyes within thy locks—thy lips are like a thread of scarlet.'”
But she was aloof. She held herself rigidly erect. Her eyes were coldly inquiring. Those lips were set tightly. Mr. Britt had just been reaching out for honors, and his knuckles had been rapped cruelly. He wanted to reach out for love—and he dared not. The girl, as she stood there, was so patently among the things he was not able to possess!
She had come into his presence with expectation keenly alert, with her fears putting her into a mental posture of defense. She felt that she knew just what was going to happen, and she was assuring herself that she would be able to meet the situation. But she was not prepared for what did happen. She did not understand Britt's mental state of that moment. Mr. Britt, himself, did not understand. He had never been up against conditions of that sort. He had not had time to fix his face and his mood, as he did daily before the mirror in his bedroom. He did what nobody had ever seen him do—what neither he nor the girl would have predicted one minute before as among human probabilities—he broke down and blubbered like a whipped urchin.
And after he had recovered some of his composure and was gazing up at her again, sniffling and scrubbing his reddened eyes with the bulge at the base of his thumb, knowing that he must say something by way of legitimate excuse, dreading the ridicule that a girl's gossip might bring upon him, a notion that was characteristic of Mr. Britt came to him: he grimly weighed the idea of telling her that Files's boiled dinner was the cause of his breakdown. However, in his weakness, his love flamed more hotly than ever before.
“Vona, I'm so lonesome!” he gulped.
Miss Harnden had entered behind her shield, nerved like a battling Amazon. She promptly lowered that shield and became all woman, with a woman's instinctive sympathetic understanding, but womanlike, she took the opportunity to introduce for her own defense a bit of guile with her sympathy. “I quite understand how you feel about the loss of Mrs. Britt, sir. And I'm glad because you remain so loyal to her memory.”
Mr. Britt, like a man who had received a dipperful of cold water in the face, backed away from anything like a proposal at that unpropitious moment. But in all his arid nature he felt the need of some sort of consolation from a feminine source. “Vona, I've just had a terrible setback,” he mourned. “There's only one other disappointment that could be any worse—and I don't dare to think of that right now.”
Miss Harnden apprehensively proceeded to keep him away from the prospective disappointment, dwelling on the present, asking him solicitously what had happened.
He told her of his ambition and of what Ossian Orne had reported.
“But why should that be so very important for a man like you—to go to the legislature—Mr. Britt?”
He opened his mouth, hankering to blurt out what he had been treasuring as dreams whose realization would serve as an inducement to her. He had been picturing to himself their honeymoon at the state capital, away from the captious tongues of Egypt—how he would stalk with his handsome bride into the dining room of the capital's biggest hotel; how she would attract the eyes of jealous men, in her finery and with her jewels; how she would sit in the gallery at the State House and survey him making his bigness among the lawmakers; for some weeks he had been laboring on the composition of a speech that he intended to deliver. But her second dash of cold water kept him from the disclosure of his feelings. He went on so far as to ask her if she did not think a session at the state capital would be interesting.
“I have never thought anything about such a matter, of course, Mr. Britt, being only a girl and not a politician.”
“But women who are there get into high society and wear fine clothes and have a grand time, Vona.”
“It must be a tedious life,” she replied, indifferently.
“Wouldn't you like to try it?” Now that he could not offer her the grand inducement he had planned as an essential part of his campaign of love he sought consolation in her assurance that the prospect did not tempt her. His hopes revived. He was reflecting that his money could buy railroad tickets, even if he had not the popularity with which to win votes. She shook her head promptly when he asked the question, and he went on with his new idea. “I suppose what a girl really enjoys is to see the world, after she has been penned up all her life in a town like this.”
“I don't waste my time in foolish longings, Mr. Britt. In fact, I have no time to waste on anything.” She gave him a bit of a smile. “In that connection I'll confess that I must hurry home and help mother with some sewing. Did you want anything especial of me?” Her smile had vanished, and in her tone there was a clink of the metallic that was as subtly suggestive of “On guard” as the click of a trigger.
Mr. Britt had planned upon a radiant disclosing of his projects—expecting to be spurred in his advances by the assurance of what he could offer her as the consort of a legislator—as high an honor as his narrow vision could compass. She had found him cursing, had kept him at bay, and he had already had evidence of the danger of precipitateness in her case. And his tears made him feel foolish. His ardor had been wet down; it took a back seat. His natural good judgment was again boss of the situation.
“I had something on my mind—but it can wait till you're in less of a hurry, Vona. Never neglect a mother. That's my attitude toward women. I'm always considerate where they're concerned. It's my nature. I hope you'll hold that in mind.”
“Yes, Mr. Britt.” She turned and hurried to the door, getting away from a fire that was showing signs of breaking out of its smoldering brands once more.
Britt recovered some of his courage when her back was turned. “You haven't said anything about those verses,” he stammered.
“I think it's a beautiful way of putting aside your business cares for a time. I'm taking them home to read to mother.”
He marched to the window and watched her as long as she was in sight.
Then he glowered on such of the Egyptians as passed to and fro along the street on their affairs. He muttered, spicing his comments with profanity. The girl's disclaimer of personal interest in Britt's ambitions did not soften his rancorous determination to make the voters of Egypt suffer for the stand they had taken—suffer to the bitter limit to which unrelenting persecution could drive them. He gritted his teeth and raved aloud. “From now on! From now on! Anything short of murder to show 'em! And as for that girl—if there's somebody—”
Britt stopped short of what that rival might expect, but his expression indicated that the matter was of even more moment than his affair with the voters of the town.
When Vona left him that afternoon, Vaniman paced the floor.
She had gone bravely to her meeting with Britt, bearing Frank's kiss on her cheek—a caress of encouragement when he had walked with her to the door in order to lock it after her.
It was not worry that caused him to tramp to and fro, frowning. Vona's demeanor of self-reliance had helped his feelings a great deal. But the corollary of devoted love is chivalry, and he felt that he was allowing her to do something that belonged to him to so, somehow. The policy which they had so sanely discussed did not seem to be such a comfortable course when he was alone, wondering what was going on across the corridor.
At last the sound of a door and the click of her heels signaled the end of the interview. He hoped that she would come back into the bank, making an excuse of something forgotten, in order to give him a soothing bulletin. He ran to the door and opened it. But the slam of the outside door informed him that she had gone on her way. Her prompt departure indicated that she was consistently pursuing the level-headed policy they had adopted; but the young man, impatient and wondering, was wishing she had taken a change, for once, even to the prejudice of policy. He shut his door and hurried to the window.
Though two men were watching her going-away, and though she must have been conscious of the fact, she did not turn her head to glance behind her.
At any rate, the thing was over, whatever had happened, the cashier reflected with relief. Nevertheless, curiosity was nagging at him; he felt an impulse to go in and inspect the condition of Tasper Britt by way of securing a hint.
Vaniman, however, shook his head and dropped into the routine of his duties. The ruts of life in Egypt, especially in the winter, were deep ones. The cashier had become contented with his little circle of occupation and recreation.
He carried the books into the vault. He wound the clock that controlled the mechanism of bolts and bars, and pushed the big outer door shut and made certain that it was secure.
Having finished as cashier, he became janitor.
Egypt had no electric lights. Vaniman trimmed the kerosene reflector lamp and set it on the table so that the front of the safe would be illuminated for the benefit of the village's night watchman.
Then he put on his cap and overcoat and locked the grille door and the bank door after he had passed each portal. His last chore of the day was always a trip into the basement to make sure that the dying fire in the wood furnace was carefully closed in for the night.
The basement stairs led from the rear of the corridor. When Vaniman returned up the stairs he had settled on a small matter of business which would serve as a valid excuse for entering the presence of President Britt. But he did not need to employ the excuse. Britt stood in his open door and called to the cashier and walked back to his chair, leaving Vaniman to follow, and the employee obeyed the summons with alacrity; he was consumed with desire to get a line on the situation that had been troubling him.
An observer would have called the contest of mutual inspection a fifty-fifty break—perhaps with a shade in favor of Britt, for the usurer's face was like leather and his goggling marbles of eyes under the lids that resembled little tents did not flicker.
“What can I do for you?” Britt demanded, and the query made for the young man's discomposure.
“Why, you called me in, sir!”
“Uh-huh!” the president admitted, “but somehow I had the impression that you said you wanted to see me after the bank closed.” He was taking account of stock of Vaniman's personality, his eyes going up and down the stalwart figure and dwelling finally and persistently on the young man's hair; it was copper-bronze in hue, it had an attractive wave, there was plenty of it, and it seemed to be very firmly rooted.
“I don't remember that I mentioned it, Mr. Britt, but I do have an errand with you.”
“All right! What is it?” Mr. Britt was not revealing any emotions that Vaniman found illuminating in regard to his particular quest.
“I am being tongue-lashed terribly through the wicket. Men won't believe that I'm obeying the orders of you and the board when accommodation is refused. Won't you take the matter off my hands—let me refer all to you?”
“I don't keep a dog and do my own barking,” rasped the president. He brought his eyes down from the young man's hair and noted that Vaniman stiffened and was displaying resentment.
“That's only a Yankee motto—you needn't take it as personal, Vaniman. I have turned over to you the running of the bank. I say to all that you're running it. You ought to feel pretty well set up!”
“I obey your orders, sir,” returned the cashier, not warming.
“That's all right for an understanding between us two. But I let the public think you're the whole thing. I tell 'em I've got full confidence in you. You don't want the public to think you're only a rubber stamp, do you?”
“The general opinion right now seems to be that I'm either a first-class liar or Shylock sentenced to a second term on earth,” retorted Vaniman, with bitterness.
There was a long silence in the room, where the early dusk was deepening. The two men regarded each other with expressions that did not soften.
After a time Britt turned to his desk, unlocked a compartment, and produced a letter, which he unfolded slowly, again staring hard at the cashier.
“Speaking of being sentenced!” There was something ominous in his drawl. “You told me a whole lot about yourself, Vaniman, when I was talking of hiring you. But there was one important thing you didn't mention—mighty important, seeing that you wanted a job as boss of a bank.” He tapped the open letter. “I've had this letter for a good many weeks, not saying anything about it to you or anybody else. I'm not sure just why I'm saying anything now.”
Vaniman flushed. His face worked with emotion. He put up his hand and started to speak, but Britt put up a more compelling hand and went on. “I reckon I'm bringing this matter up so that you'll know just where you stand—so that you'll mind your eye and look out for my interests in every way from now on—so that—” He hesitated a moment. His eyes flamed. “So that you'll know your place! That's it! Know your place—and be mighty careful how you go against me in anything—anything where I'm interested.” Britt had whipped himself into anger. That anger, fanned by a flame of jealousy after it had been touched off by his inspection of youth and good looks, had carried Mr. Britt far. He shook the letter at the young man. “There's a reliable name signed to this letter; he is a friend of mine, one of the big financiers in the city, and this was in the way of friendly warning.”
“I understand, Mr. Britt.” The cashier had recovered his self-possession. “You are warned that my father was sentenced to the penitentiary for embezzlement. No, I did not mention that to you. It concerned a man who is dead. It has nothing to do with my honesty.”
“Well, there's another motto about 'blood will tell,'” sneered Britt.
Vaniman stepped forward, honestly indignant, manfully resolute. “Let me tell you, sir, that the letter you hold there—no matter who wrote it—concerns agoodman who is dead. He was the scapegoat of one of those big financiers.” Vaniman's lip curled. “My father was railroaded to jail on a track greased with lies—and died because the heart had been ripped out of him and—”
“Hold on! It won't get us anywhere to try that case all over, Vaniman. Let the letter stand as it is—it was probably meant in the right spirit. But I didn't write it. You and I better not fight over it. I've shown, by laying it away and saying nothing, that I have a decent nature in me. I hope I'll never have any need to take it out of this desk again.” He turned and shoved the paper back and locked the compartment.
“I think it is best for me to resign, Mr. Britt.”
“Don't be a fool, young man. Now that this thing is off our minds there's a better understanding between us than ever. I don't think—I hope”—he surveyed Vaniman with leisure in which there was the suggestion of a threat—“I'll never have any occasion to take that letter out again. Er—ah—” Britt joggled a watch charm and inquired, casually, “Would you plan on getting married if I boost your wages a little?”
In spite of an effort to control himself under Britt's basilisk stare, Vaniman showed how much the query had jumped him.
“Of course, a chap like you has had his sweetheart down in the city,” pursued the inquisitor when the young man failed to answer. “Must be one there now.”
“I have no sweetheart in the city, Mr. Britt.”
Then there was a longer silence in the room. The cashier was not enduring inspection with an air that did credit to his promise to keep a secret. Britt had made a breach in the wall of Vaniman's mental defense by the means of that letter and its implied accusation; Britt was taking advantage of that breach. Right then the young man was in a mood that would have prompted him to fling the truth and his defiance at Britt if the latter had kept on to the logical conclusion of his interrogation and had asked whether there was a sweetheart elsewhere; Vaniman had the feeling that by denying his love at that moment—to that man of all others—he would be dealing insult to Vona Harnden, as well as taking from her the protection that his affection gave her.
The attention of Britt was diverted from the quarry he was pursuing.
Outside Britt Block, Prophet Elias raised his voice in his regular “vesper service.” It was his practice, on his way to Usial Britt's cottage from his daily domiciliary visits, to halt in front of the bank and deliver a few texts. The first one—and the two men in the office listened—was of the general tenor of those addressed to “Pharaoh.” Said the Prophet, in resounding tones, “'As a roaring lion and a ranging bear, so is a wicked ruler over the poor people.'”
“Vaniman, go out and tell that old hoot owl to move on! I'm in a dangerous frame of mind to-day.” Britt's lips were pulled tightly against his yellow teeth.
The Prophet's next deliverance was more concretely to the point—indicating that the exhorter was not so much wrapped up in religion that he had no ear out for the political news current in Egypt that day, “'Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.'”
There was a fireplace in the office and Britt leaped to it and grabbed a poker. The cashier was moved to interfere, urged by two compelling motives. He wanted to get away from his own dangerous situation of the moment in that office—and he wanted to protect the old man outside from assault. “I'll attend to him, sir!” But he halted at the door and turned. “Mr. Britt, our talk has driven an important matter from my mind. The men who bellow at me through the wicket have considerable to say about our hoarding specie. It makes me uneasy to have that sort of gossip going the rounds.”
“We'll have the money out of here in a short time, Vaniman, as I have told you. That broker says that foreign money is going lower yet—and seeing that we've taken all this trouble to get the hard cash ready for the deal, we may as well make the clean-up as big as we can.”
“Don't you think we'd better hire a couple of good men with rifles and put 'em in the bank nights, sir?”
President Britt declared with scorn that the expense was not necessary, that putting guards in the bank would only start more talk, and that it also would be essential to hire old Ike Jones to sit in front of the vault and play all night on his trombone to keep awake any two men picked from Egypt. While Britt was expressing his opinion of inefficiency and expense, the Prophet was furnishing this obbligato outside, “'He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth his substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor.'”
Vaniman closed the door on Britt's objurgations.
The young man did not find it necessary to prevail upon the Prophet to give over his discourse. As soon as the emissary appeared Elias folded his ample umbrella, tucked it under his arm, gave Vaniman a friendly greeting, and winked at him. The twilight dimmed the seamed face and the young man wondered whether he had been mistaken about the sly suggestiveness of that wink.
“Joseph, how doth Pharaoh rest on his throne? Doth he sit easy?”
Always in their brief but good-natured interviews the evangelist called the young man “Joseph.” Elias took Vaniman's arm and walked along with him.
“I'm afraid, Prophet Elias, that you'll provoke Mr. Britt too far. Take my advice. Keep away from him for a time.”
“'There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yeah, four which I know not: the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid,'” said the Prophet, placidly. “Furthermore, 'The proud have digged pits for me.' Joseph, the pitfalls encompass thee.”
Vaniman refrained from making a reply; the Prophet was displaying an embarrassing amount of sapience as to conditions.
In front of Usial Britt's cot they halted and the eccentric leaned close to Vaniman's ear. “Joseph, my son, keep thine eye peeled.” He released the cashier's arm and strode to the door of Usial's house.
Vaniman, delaying his departure, noted that the door did not give way when the Prophet wrenched at the knob. The guest banged his fist against a panel. “Let it be opened unto me!” he shouted.
His voice served as his guaranty; Usial Britt opened the door and slammed it shut so suddenly after the Prophet had entered that it was necessary to reopen the portal and release the tail of Elias's robe.
Vaniman did not go on his way at once, though, by his daily routine, he was headed toward his bit of recreation which cheered the end of his day of occupation. Every afternoon he dropped in at the office of Notary Amos Hexter—“Squire” Hexter, the folks of Egypt called him—and played euchre with the amiable old chap. After the euchre, the Squire and Frank trudged over to the Hexter home; the cashier boarded with the Squire and his wife, Xoa.
In his general uneasiness, in his hankering for any sort of information that would help his affairs, the young man was tempted to follow the provocative Elias and pin him down to something definite; the flashes of shrewd sanity in the fanatic's mouthings had encouraged Frank to believe that the Prophet was not quite as much of an ingenuous lunatic as his gab and garb suggested.
Right away, curiosity of another sort added its impulse.
Usial's windows were uncurtained, though the grime on them helped to conceal activities within by a sort of ground-glass effect. But Vaniman could see well enough to understand what was going on. Every once in a while a canvas flap came over in a half circle across Vaniman's line of vision through one of the windows. Then a hairy arm turned a crank briskly; a moment later the arm pulled at a horizontal bar with vigor.
It was plain that Usial Britt was printing.
Vaniman had seen the shoemaker's printing equipment in common with everybody else who dropped into the shop. There were a few cases of worn type; there was a venerable Washington hand press. Vaniman had even been down on his knees, by Usial's invitation, and had peered up at the under surface of the imposing stone.
When Tasper Britt wanted a burial lot in the Egypt cemetery of a size sufficient to set off his statue in good shape, he secured a hillock in which some of the patriarchs of the pioneers had been interred. There was no known descendants to say him nay. A fallen slate slab that had been long concealed in the tangled grass was tossed over the cemetery fence by the men who cleared up the hillock. Usial Britt considered the slab a legitimate find and with it replaced a marble imposing stone that had become gouged and cracked. Vaniman had found the inscription interesting when he knelt and peered up:
Here Lies the Body of THOSPIT WAGG,In Politics a Whig.By Occupation a Cooper in a Hoop-pole Town.Now Food for Worms.Here I Lie, Like an Old Rum Puncheon,Marked, Numbered and Shooked,To be Raised at Last and Finished by the Hand of My Maker.
As Egypt knew, Usial Britt did not print for profit. He accepted no pay of any sort for the product of his press. When the spirit moved, or he felt that the occasion demanded comment in print, he “stuck” the worn type, composing directly from the case without first putting his thoughts on paper, and printed and issued a sheet which he titledThe Hornet. SometimesThe Hornetbuzzed blandly—more often it stung savagely.
Vaniman obeyed his impulse; he went to the door and knocked. He had always found Usial Britt in a sociable mood.
“Who is it?” inquired the shoemaker.
“Vaniman of the bank.”
“Leave your job, whatever it is, on the threshold, sir.”
“I am not bringing you any work, Mr. Britt.”
“Then kindly pass on; I'm in executive session, sir.”
The grumble of the cogs and the squeak of the press went on.
So did Vaniman, after he had waited at the door for a few moments.
Squire Hexter had a corner of his table cleaned of paper litter, in readiness for the euchre game.
He was tilted back in his chair, smoking his blackened T. D. pipe, and a swinging boot was scraping to and fro along the spine of a fuzzy old dog whose head was meditatively lowered while he enjoyed the scratching. The Squire called the old dog “Eli”; that name gave Hexter a frequent opportunity to turn his little joke about having owned another dog that he called “Uli” and presented to a brother lawyer as an appropriate gift.
The Squire had little dabs of whiskers on his cheeks like fluffs of cotton batting, and his wide mouth linked those dabs when he smiled.
He came forward promptly in his chair, slapped his palm on the waiting pack of cards, and cut for the deal while Vaniman was throwing off his coat.
“Judging by signs, as I came past Britt's shop,The Hornetis getting ready to buzz again,” said the cashier.
“Aye! I reckoned as much. I have looked across there from time to time to-day and have seen customers knocking in vain on the door. It's your deal, boy!”
Vaniman shuffled obediently.
“And there was a run-in this morning between your boss and his brother,” observed the Squire, scratching a match. “And Eli, here, called my attention to the fact that two sun dogs, strangers to him, were chasing along with the sun all the forenoon. Signs of trouble, boy—sure signs!” He sorted his cards. It was more of the Squire's regular line of humor to ascribe to Eli various sorts of comment and counsel.
“How crazy do you think Prophet Elias is?” inquired the young man, avoiding further reference to his employer.
“After listening many times to the testimony of expert alienists in court trials I have come to the conclusion that all the folks in the world are crazy, son, or else nobody is ever crazy. I don't think I'll express any opinion on the Prophet. I might find myself qualifying as an alienist expert. I'd hate to!”
After that mild rebuff Vaniman gave all his mind to the game—for when the Squire played euchre he wanted to attend strictly to the business in hand. And in the span of time between dusk and supper the two were rarely interrupted.
But on this afternoon they were out of luck.
Men came tramping up the screaking outside stairs that conducted to the office; the Squire had a room over Ward's general store.
The men were led into the office by Isaac Jones—“Gid-dap Ike,” he was named—the driver of the mail stage between Egypt and the railroad at Levant.
For a moment Squire Hexter looked really alarmed. There were half a dozen men in the party and he was not accustomed to irruptions of numbers. Then his greeting smile linked his whisker tufts. Mr. Jones and his party pulled off their hats and by their demeanor of awkward dignity stood convicted as being members of a delegation formally presenting themselves.
“Hullo, boys! Have chairs. Excuse the momentary hesitation. I was afraid you had come after me with a soaped rope.”
“I reckon we won't set,” stated Mr. Jones. “And we'll be straight and to the point, seeing that a game is on. Squire Hexter, me and these gents represent the voters of Egypt. We ask you to accept the nomination to the legislature from this town for next session. So say I.”
“So say we all!” chorused the other men.
The Squire set the thumb and forefinger of each hand into a whisker fluff and twisted a couple of spills, squinting at them. “The compliment is esteemed, boys. But the previousness is perplexing. This is February, and the primaries are not till June.”
“Squire Hexter, it ain't too early to show a man in this town where he gets off. That man is Tasper Britt. He has had ten dollars' worth of telling to-day by 'Sniffer' Orne. But telling ain't showing. What do you say?”
The Squire gave Jones a whimsical wink and indicated the attentive Vaniman with a jab of the thumb. “S-s-sh! Look out, or the rate of interest will go up.”
Jones and his associates scowled at the cashier, and Vaniman understood with added bitterness the extent of his vicarious atonement as Britt's mouthpiece at the wicket of the bank.
“The interest-payers of this town have been well dreened. But the voters—thevoters, understand, still have assets. The voters have got to the point where they ain't afraid of Tasper Britt. The cashier of his bank can so report to him, if the said cashier so chooses—and, as cashier, probably will.”
“The cashier will attend strictly and exclusively to his bank duties, and to nothing else,” declared Vaniman, with heat.
“Hope you're enjoying 'em, such as they are of late,” Jones retorted. “But once again, what say, Squire Hexter?”
“Boys, you'd better get somebody else to sandpaper Tasper Britt with. I'm not gritty enough.”
“I'll come across with our full idea, Squire. It ain't simply to sandpaper Britt with that we want you to go. But we need some kind of legislation to help this town out of the hole. We don't know where we are. We can't raise money to pay state taxes, and we ain't getting our school money from the state, nor any share of the roads appropriation, nor—”
“I know, Ike,” broke in the Squire, not requiring any legal posting from a layman. “But it's the lobbyist, instead of the legislator, who really counts at the state capital. I've been planning to do a little lobbying at the next session. I'll tell you now that I'll go, and, by hooking a clean collar around each ankle under my socks, I'll be prepared for a two weeks' stay. Send somebody else to work for the state and I'll go and work for Egypt.”
“The voters want you,” Jones insisted.
The Squire rapped his toe against the old dog at his feet. “What say, Eli?”
“Wuff!” the dog replied, emphatically.
“Can't go as a legislator, boys! Eli says 'No.'”
“This ain't no time for joking,” growled the spokesman.
“Certainly not!” The Squire snapped back his retort briskly. He was serious. “I agree with you that this poor old town needs help and a hearing. But when I go to the State House I propose to wear out shoe leather instead of pants cloth. If you must rasp Britt, go get a real file!”
“Who in the blazes can we get?” demanded Jones, helplessly.
The Squire laid down the hand of cards which he had just picked up, thus signaling the end of the interview, impatiently motioning to Vaniman to play; then the notary narrowed his eyes and pondered.
The silence was broken by more screaking of the outside stairs.
Prophet Elias stalked into the office. He carried limp, damp sheets across a forearm—papers that had been well wet down in order to take impressions from the Washington press. The men in the room waited for one of his sonorous promulgations of biblical truth. But he said no word, and his silence was more impressive because it was unwonted. He marched straight to the Squire and gave him one of the sheets. Then the Prophet turned and strode toward the door. Jones put out his hand, asking for one of the papers. Elias shook his head. “Yon scribe has a voice. Let him read aloud. I have but few papers—they must be spent thriftily.” He passed on and went out.
“One of the city newspapers ought to hire him for a newsboy,” remarked Mr. Jones, acridly. “He could scare up a big circulation.”
The only light in the dim room was afforded by the big lamp at the Squire's elbow. He spread the sheet on the table in the lamp's circle of radiance. “Boys,The Hornetis out and it looks as if it has a barb in its stinger,” he stated, and then paused while he fixed his spectacles upon his nose.
Vaniman, sitting close by, felt that a glance at a public sheet was not invading privacy.
A smutted heading in wood type was smeared across the top of the page. It counseled:
VOTE FOR BRITT. GIVE PHARAOH HIS KINGLY CROWN
There was a broad, blank space in one of the upper corners of the sheet. Under the space was this explanation:
Portrait of Tasper Britt, with his latest improvements. But, on second thought, out of regard for the feelings of our readers, we omit the portrait.
The Squire, getting control of emotions which the observing Jones and his associates noted with rising interest, demurely explained to them the layout of the page after he had carefully inspected the sheet.
Then Squire Hexter began to read aloud, in a tone whose twist of satire gave the text its full flavor:
“We hasten to proclaim in the land of Egypt that Pharaoh Britt has reached for the scepter, though he had not loosed his grip on the gouge. You will know him here and hereafter by his everlasting grip on the gouge. He will take that gouge to Tophet with him. Then it will be heated red-hot and he will prance around hell astraddle of it. But in the meantime he is hot after the honors of this world. Give him his crown, say we. He has prepared a nice, new hair mattress on his brow where the diadem will rest easy. Under his coat of arms—to wit, a yellow he-goat rampant in a field of purple thistles—let him write the word 'Victory.'”
The men in that room were Yankees, with a sense of humor as keen as a new bush scythe.
The Squire sat back and wiped his spectacles and beamed on their laughter. Then he read on down the column, through the biting satire to the bitter end, having an audience whose hilarity would have delighted a vaudeville performer's soul.
Therefore, it was with inspired unction that the reader delivered the “tag lines” of the screed.
“We confess that we have a selfish purpose in paying this affectionate, brotherly tribute to Pharaoh. When he has deigned to refer to us in the past he has called us 'Useless' Britt. Now, if this tribute has the effect that we devoutly hope for, Pharaoh may be of a mind to give us back our right name. We ask nothing else in the way of recompense.”
The Squire folded the paper carefully and put it away in his breast pocket with the manner of one caching a treasure. “Boys, what are you waiting for?” he inquired, with an affectation of surprise.
Their wide grins narrowed into the creases of wonderment of their own.
Hexter patted his breast where he had stowed away the paper. “Egypt has a literary light, a journalist who wields a pen of power, a shoemaker philosopher. And modest—not grasping! See how little he asks for himself. Why not give him a real present? Why not—”
Spokesman Jones perceived what the counsel was aiming at and ecstatically shouted, “Gid-dap!”
“Why not use real sandpaper?” urged the squire, with innocent mildness.
Jones whirled and drove his delegation ahead of him from the room, both hands upraised, fingers and thumbs snapping loud cracks as if he were urging his horses up Burkett Hill with snapping whip. The men went tramping down the outside stairs, bellowing the first honest-to-goodness laughter that Egypt had heard for many a day.
Squire Hexter leaped up and grabbed his hat and coat from their hooks. “Come on, boy! It looks as if there's going to be a nominating bee atThe Hornetoffice—and we mustn't miss any of the buzzing.”
The two followed close on the heels of the noisy delegation.
Usial Britt opened his door and stood in the frame of light after Jones had halted his clamorous crowd. The amateur publicist rolled his inky hands in his apron and showed doubt that was growing into alarm.
“Hold your nippety pucket, Usial,” counseled Hexter, calling over the heads of the men. “The boys had me guessing, too, a few minutes ago. But this isn't a lynching bee.”
However, while the crowd laughed and others came hastening to the scene, and while Spokesman Jones was trying to make himself heard above the uproar, an element was added which seemed to discount the Squire's reassuring words.
Tasper Britt rushed out from Files's tavern and stood on the porch. He had one of the papers in his hand. He ripped the paper to tatters and strewed about him the bits and stamped on the litter. He shrieked profanity. Then he leaped off the porch.
In the tavern yard was “Gid-dap” Jones's stage pung. Britt yanked the big whip from its socket and bounced across the street, untangling the lash.
“No, you don't!” bellowed Jones, getting in the way and making grabs at the whip. “Not with my own private persuader! Get aholt of him, men! Down him. Don't let him whale the representative we're going to send from the town of Egypt!”
That declared hint of what was afoot put the last touch on Tasper Britt's fury. He fought savagely to force his way through the men.
The voice of Usial checked the melee. He shouted with a compelling quality in his tone. As the man on whom they proposed to bestow the town's highest honor, he had already acquired new authority. The men loosed Tasper Britt.
“This is between brothers,” said Usial. He had stepped from his doorway. He stood alone. “What outsider dares to interfere?”
Tasper Britt employed his freedom promptly and brutally; he leaped along the avenue the men left for him and began to lash Usial with the whip. The stolid townsfolk of Egypt stood in their tracks.
“That's the best way—let 'em fight it out,” counseled Spokesman Jones. “Tasp Britt will get his, and it'll be in the family!”
But Usial merely tossed his big apron over his head and crouched and took the lashing.
“Isn't somebody going to stop that?” Vaniman demanded.
Nobody moved. Egypt had its own ideas about interference in family matters, it seemed, and had been tartly reminded of those ideas by Usial Britt himself.
But Vaniman was an outlander. He saw his employer disgracing himself; he beheld an unresisting victim cruelly maltreated.
The young man jumped on Tasper Britt and tried to hold his arms. When Britt whirled and broke loose by the twist of his quick turn and struck the cashier with the whip, Vaniman wrested away the weapon, using all his vigorous strength, and threw it far. Then he seized the frothing assailant and forced him back toward the tavern. “Mr. Britt, remember what you are—the president of our bank—a prominent man—” Vaniman gasped, protesting. “When you're yourself you'll thank me!”
But there was no sign of gratitude in Britt's countenance just then. His crazed rage was shifted to this presumptuous person who had interfered and was manhandling him; at that moment the liveliest emotion in Britt was the mordant jealousy that he had been trying to stifle. It awoke and raged, finding real excuse for the venting of its rancor on the man who had made him jealous.
“You damnation spawn of a jailbird—”
The young man had a rancor of his own that he had been holding in leash ever since he had sent Vona to fight her own battle, with his kiss on her cheek. He broke off that vitriolic taunt by dealing Britt an open-handed slap across the mouth, a blow of such force that the man went reeling backward. And when Britt beheld Vaniman's face, as the young man came resolutely along, the magnate of Egypt kept going backward of his own accord, flapping hands of protest. “Vaniman, here and now I discharge you from the bank.”
“Mr. Britt, that's a matter for the vote of the directors—and I'll wait to hear from them.”
Vaniman whirled from Britt, for the impulse was in him to smash his doubled fist into that hateful visage; his palm still itched; the open-handed buffet had not satisfied the tingling nerves of that hand.
Usial Britt had not hurried about raising himself from his crouching position. He was standing with his apron over his head and faced the citizens. He was smiling—an irradiating, genial, triumphant sort of smile! One might readily have taken him for the victor in a contest!
Spokesman Jones gulped. “We came—we was intending—but this hoop-te-doo—”
Usial beamed blandly and helped out Mr. Jones's efforts to express his intentions. “Yes, Brother Jones, it was quite a shower while it lasted. What were you intending to do?”
“Ask you to take the nomination for the legislature.”
The crowd indorsed the request withviva-voceenthusiasm.
“I certainly will. I am pleased and proud,” declared Usial.
Through the circle of men came Prophet Elias, his robe trailing on his heels. He stood beside Usial and faced the bystanders. He proclaimed, “'Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through Him that loved us.'”
Somebody handed to Mr. Jones his whip and he inspected it carefully. “Of course, there's more than one way of fighting a man—and I have my own notions—but maybe I'm wrong.”
“Eli has observed many a dog-fight,” Squire Hexter remarked; “and, so far as he sees, the attacking dog doesn't get much out of the fracas except a ripped ear and a raw reputation in the neighborhood.” He marched to Vaniman, took that perturbed young man by the arm, and said that Xoa would be waiting supper.