By the wiles of Wagg and a soap diet Frank Vaniman had been able to secure his modest slice of God's sunlight.
There was aplenty of that sunshine in Egypt. It flooded the bare hills and the barren valleys; there were not trees enough to trig the sunlight's flood with effective barriers of shade.
Tasper Britt walked out into it from the door of Files's tavern.
He had just been talking to the landlord about the tavern diet. His language was vitriolic. Even Vaniman could not have used more bitter words to express his detestation for soap as a comestible.
Britt's heat in the matter, the manner in which he had plunged into the diatribe all of a sudden, astonished Mr. Files tremendously. Britt seemed to be acting out a part, he was so violent. Usually, Britt did not waste any of the heat in his cold nature unless he had a good reason for the expenditure. There seemed to be something else than mere dyspepsia concerned, so Files thought. He followed Mr. Britt and called to him from the door. Britt had stopped to light his cigar.
“I've had my say. I'm all done here. Let that end it,” declared the departing guest.
There were listeners, the usual after-dinner loafers of the tavern's purlieus. Mr. Britt did not seem to mind them. He even looked about, as if to make sure of their numbers.
“All you needed to do was to complain in a genteel way, and I would have been just as genteel in rectifying,” pleaded Files.
“The people of this town are still saying that I'm a hard man. If that's so, I'm waking up to the reason for it—your grub has petrified me. My real friends have noticed it.” Here was more of Britt's unwonted garrulity about his private concerns. “Some of those friends have taken pity on me. I have been invited to board with the Harnden family.”
Mr. Britt did not look around to note the effect of that piece of news. He gazed complacently up into the sunshine.
He made quite a figure—for Egypt—as he stood there. Mr. Britt had “togged out.” His toupee, when he first flashed it, had signified much. But the manner in which he had garbed himself for summer was little less than hardihood, considering the sort of a community in which he lived. He was “a native.” The style of his attire declared that he was completely indifferent to any comments by his townsmen—and such a trait exposed in a New England village revealed more fully than his usurious habits the real callousness of the Britt nature. There was not a man in sight who did not have patches either fore or aft, or both! Mr. Britt wore a light, checked suit with a fitted waist, garishly yellow shoes, a puff tie of light blue, and a sailor straw with a sash band. He was a peacock in a yard full of brown Leghorns. But nobody laughed at Mr. Britt. Nobody in Egypt felt like laughing at anything, any more. They were accepting Britt, in his gorgeous plumage, as merely another strange item in the list of the signs and wonders that marked the latter days in Egypt.
More tawdry than ever appeared Prophet Elias's robe in that sunshine, though his umbrella did seem to comport better with the season. He stood in front of Usial's home. For a long time he had been keeping his tongue off the magnate of the town. For some weeks he had been away somewhere. To those who indulgently asked where he had been he replied tartly that he had volunteered as a scapegoat for the woes and sins of Egypt, had gone in search of a wilderness, and had come back because all other wildernesses were only second-rate affairs compared with the town from which he had started.
The Prophet seemed to feel that the appearance of Mr. Britt required comment. He raised his voice and made that comment:
“'And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.'”
The Prophet bestowed a momentary benefit on gloomy Egypt—the listeners did manage to crease their countenances with grins; Britt surveyed those grins before he turned his attention to Elias. But all he did turn was his attention—silent, bodeful, malicious scrutiny. The onlookers were considerably surprised by Britt's silence; they wondered what controlled his tongue; but they were not in doubt on one point—every man of them knew that when Tasper Britt wore that expression it meant that he had settled upon the method of his revenge in the case of one who had offended him.
After a few moments Britt turned from his stare at the Prophet and dropped what was nigh to being a bombshell; it was more effective because it had nothing to do with the matter in hand.
“Listen, fellow townsmen! We all know that we ought to put our shoulders to the wheel and do something for poor Egypt. I propose to start off.” He pointed to the old Britt mansion. “I'm going to tear down my house.”
The men of Egypt goggled at him.
“Aye! And start off with it?” queried the Prophet. “Good riddance!”
But Mr. Britt was not troubling himself about the mouthings of Elias.
“I shall put a crew on it to-morrow. A city contractor will arrive here this afternoon with equipment and men. But he can also use all the local men who want to work. All who will pitch in can hire with him at the regular scale of wages. As soon as the site is cleared I shall start work on a new house. The plans are drawn. I have them here.”
He snapped the rubber bands off a roll which he carried under his arm. He exhibited a watercolor facade elevation, stretching his arms wide and holding the paper in front of his face. The men came crowding around. They saw the drawing of a pretentious structure with towers and porticoes. Britt, holding the architect's broad sheet so that his features were hidden, explained the details of his project in regard to rooms and grounds. There was a hateful expression on the hidden face; it was the face of a man who hoped he was stirring jealous envy in those whom he wished to punish.
“It will be a mansion to the queen's taste, when you get it done,” observed one man; he took advantage of the fact that Britt could not see him and winked at a neighbor. But if the man hoped to get a rise out of the builder in regard to a possible queen, he was disappointed.
Another citizen was more venturesome: “I'm taking it for granted that you don't intend to keep old-bach hall in a house like that, Tasper!”
Britt took down the shield. He displayed a countenance of bland satisfaction. “I don't think I'll be allowed to do it,” he retorted, answering jest with jest. “You know what women are when they see a good-looking house needing a mistress.” He rolled the paper up carefully. “And now, talking of something sensible, I hope you're going to turn out in good numbers when that contractor begins to hire. And pass the word!”
Nobody showed much enthusiasm. One man with a querulous mouth suggested: “It will seem like helping waste money, tearing down a stand of buildings that ain't in any ways due to be scrapped; I ain't sure but what it will seem like a worse waste of money, building a palace in a town like this. Don't you expect to be taxed like Sancho?”
“Until we get some kind of legislation or court action to make our town acts legal, the taxation question isn't worrying me much,” said Britt, grimly. “I'll take my chances along with the rest of you on getting an act allowing us to compound with creditors.”
“Probably can be arranged,” said a man with the malice against the usurer that prevailed in the oppressed town. “We're sending a good man to the next legislature.”
But Britt, in that new mood of his, was refusing to be baited. He began to look about. “Where is that person who calls himself a Prophet?”
The others joined with Britt in making a survey of the landscape. Nobody had been paying any attention to Elias, whose voice had been stilled since the one-sided affair with Britt.
“There he is,” announced a man.
The Prophet was patrolling. He was marching to and fro in front of Britt's house. Then he walked in through a gap in Britt's fence and went to the house and peered in at one of the windows. He had lowered and folded his big umbrella and carried it under his arm.
“I call on all of you to note what he did then,” called Britt. “He has been doing that lately.”
The Prophet returned to the road. Then he seemed to be attacked by another idea. He went back through the gap in the fence and peered in at another window.
“I repeat, he has been doing that. I was getting ready to take proper measures to handle him. Something better than talking back to a lunatic! But I didn't reckon I'd have such good luck as this! Twelve men right here for my witnesses! Look hard at him, men!”
They did look, though they did not comprehend what Britt's excited insistence signified. He pulled out a notebook and pencil and handed it to the nearest man. “Mark down two! Mark it down—and all of you take due notice.”
The Prophet returned to the highway and came slowly pacing along toward the group.
“All of you saw, did you? All of you ready to bear witness?” demanded the magnate.
He stepped out in front of Elias when the latter came near. Britt shook the roll of drawings under the Prophet's nose. “Listen here, my man! I didn't bother to talk to you a few minutes ago. Now I'm talking. You've been a vagabond in this town for a long time. The only thing that has protected you from the law in such cases made and provided has been the roof of a man who ought to be a tramp along with you. Right now, before the eyes of a dozen citizens, you have committed two separate and distinct breaches of the law. You have trespassed on my property. In the past I have sent men to jail for sixty days for one offense of that sort. On my complaint, backed by these witnesses, you'll see sixty days on one case—and I'll have you re-arrested on the other count the moment you step foot out of the jail.” He paused.
“Yes?” said the Prophet, mildly inquiring.
“I'm a fair man, and I call the attention of these witnesses to what I say now. I'll give you a chance. Walk out of this town and stay out, and I'll not prosecute.”
The Prophet shook his head.
“Do you refuse to go?”
For a man who dealt so exclusively in texts, the Prophet was rather vulgarly blunt when he replied, “You bet!”
Britt received that manner of retort with the air of a man who had been tunked between the eyes. It was some moments before he could go on. “Don't you realize what the judge will say when I show up your willfulness?”
The Prophet was even more amazing in his new manners. He stuck out his tongue, put his thumb to his nose, and wriggled his fingers.
“Well, I'll be condemned!” Britt gasped.
“Sure! When all the evidence is in about you!”
The magnate of Egypt lowered the roll that he had brandished so constantly. After a few moments of silent challenge with the eyes, he turned and walked away.
But he heard the mumble of men's laughter behind him, and his anger and the determination not to be put down in this style in his own town helped him to get back some of his self-possession. He whirled on his heels and strode to the enigma of Egypt.
“Who are you, anyway?” he demanded.
But Prophet Elias was his usual self once more. He had assumed that air which a practical man like Britt found an aggravating, teasing pose or a kind of lunacy with which common sense could not cope. Elias slowly spread his umbrella. He stood beneath it and declaimed:
“'And Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh; and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, so that he would not let the children of Israel go out of his land.'”
“You let me tell you something! There's one man going out of this land mighty sudden—and he's going to the county jail in charge of a constable.”
When Britt started away that time he kept on going. He went to the office of Trial-Justice Bowman and swore out a warrant. A constable served it and the Prophet was haled before the justice. On the evidence presented, Bowman sentenced a person known as “the Prophet Elias” to serve sixty days in the county jail. Within an hour after the Prophet's defiance he was on his way with the constable in a side-bar buggy.
The Prophet had not opened his mouth to give out even one text. He had not opened his mouth, either, to give his name; the writ designated him merely by his sobriquet. But there was a queer little wrinkle at each corner of that closed mouth.
Mr. Harnden banged his pulpy fist on the board at which so he had declared, Tasper Britt was to sit.
“I have ruled a happy home by love in the past. Don't force me to rule it otherwise now.”
He was obliged to lower his eyes to a level at last because his neck ached. He was forced to turn those eyes in his daughter's direction, for her gaze was of that compelling quality which causes the object of regard to return the scrutiny.
“I tell you, I'm not lowering myself by taking in boarders,” the father insisted. “I have become tied up in a business way with my friend Britt. We need to be in conference right along. They're going to tear down his house. Shall I let it be said that I left a friend ahungered and without a roof? Shall—”
“Father, I'm no longer patient enough to listen to any more of that nonsense,” said Vona.
“But it isn't nonsense,” put in the mother. “Poor Tasper is left without a home. Files's vittles have nigh killed him. He was always used to home cooking. He—”
“Please! Please!” protested the girl, impatiently. “We're three grown-ups. Let's be honest with one another. I, at least, have been honest—ever since I declared myself under this roof last winter.”
“If you're bound to put your father's and your mother's close friendship for a man strictly on the business basis, we'll have it that way,” agreed Mr. Harnden, trying to straightedge his little bunghole of a mouth and failing.
“Very well, father! We shall get along better. I'm not in any position to dictate in our home—”
“Well, I should say not!” exploded the master.
“But I have worked and turned in my money to help support it, and I have my personal rights here.”
Mr. Harnden had more success in arranging the expression he assumed then; he looked hurt; he had been very successful with that expression in the past. “Any farseeing man has his ups and downs, Vona. Is it kind to twit your father—”
She protested more impatiently still. “I am simply presenting the business side of the matter. I say, I have earned some rights to be comfortable in my own home. On the plea of friendship for a man whom I detest, you are proposing to destroy that comfort. Is your friendship for that man greater than your love for your daughter?”
Mr. Harnden rose and stuck out his frontal convexity and wagged a forefinger. “Now you're getting off the question of business—just as you accused me of getting off it!” He slapped his breast. “I'm a business man these days. I'm no longer a man with visions, needing a daughter's sacrifices, like you have twitted me of being. Keep still! I'm talking!” he squealed. He was displaying more of the new and cocky demeanor that had been his for some time. He had been especially set up for a few days prior to his announcement that Tasper Britt was coming into the Harnden home as lodger and guest at table. “Business it is! Britt will pay board enough, seeing that he has come to my—myterms, so that your mother can keep a hired girl for the first time in her life. Are you so selfish as to want to have your mother—my wife—go on potwalloping in the kitchen for the rest of her days? If that's so, you'll find that my pride will override your selfishness.”
“Father, I will stay at home and do all the work, if you'll keep our home from being desecrated by that man!”
Mr. Harnden reared his crest and advanced one foot. “I have raised my daughter to be a lady and will keep her so! I'm now in a position to do it without any of her help.”
Vona stood up then. But not to fling angry retort at her father! She knew that she was able to conquer the raging self that was urging her to tell both of them what she thought of their idiotic persistency in backing the attentions of Britt. Being victor over herself in that conflict with self where so many fail, she felt courage to battle in another quarter. Since Frank had been penned up where he could not fight, she had felt that she was the champion for their mutual interests, and she was resolved to keep on valiantly. “Father, you know how I stand in the matter of Frank Vaniman.”
“I have broken your engagement with that jailbird.”
“Vona, I have told you repeatedly that I will never consent to your marrying that man,” shrilled Mrs. Harnden. “What does the Bible say about obeying your parents?”
The girl was tensely suppressing her emotions. “The outsiders merely know that I am engaged to marry him. But both of you know that I am married to him.”
Mr. Harnden sat down in order to express his emotions; Mrs. Harnden stood up. Their duet of disavowal of any such knowledge was keyed high.
“You heard me when I married him—in your presence—under this roof. The legal formality can wait. But I am married. In my heart I am married. It is enough for me until he comes back to me. And what God hath joined together let not man put asunder!” She said it reverently, with all her soul in her tones, all her woman's resolution of loyalty in her eyes.
They tried to say something, but in the face of her demeanor of firmness their opposition was futile, and they probably realized it, for they became silent and allowed her to speak on.
“If you do not choose to consider my feelings in the matter, I'll not complain. You are master and mistress of the home. I tell you now, as I have told you before, that if Tasper Britt had come out with the whole truth Frank would not be in prison. You must not expect that I will sit at table with a man who has so persecuted my—husband!” She hesitated a moment before she spoke the last word. She caressed it with loving inflection. A moment later her cheeks were burning hotly. She went out into the hall, got her sunshade, and left the house.
She still had her work at the bank; the progress of liquidation was slow. Tasper Britt, from his office window, saw her coming. She wore no hat. The parasol framed the face that was still glowing after her battle for the sanctity of her love.
“It's worth it!” he muttered; but not even to himself did Britt mention what the price was.
Mr. Harnden's comment, delayed for some minutes, was that the girl was putting it almighty strong.
“It's her loyalty. She can't help it. She takes it from me,” declared the mother, pouring another cup of tea for her shaken nerves.
“She does, hey?” Mr. Harnden's voice indicated that he was not commending the quality mentioned.
His wife was decidedly tart in her retort that he ought to be thankful for the loyalty that enabled her to put up with all the privations of the past.
“Well, let the past be the past. I've got my feet placed now—and that hired girl is coming to-morrow.” The idea of his new prosperity revived Mr. Harnden's natural optimism. “That jailbird hasn't been away from her long enough for her to be weaned from her foolishness about him. He's safe away for seven years, and a whole lot can happen in that time—even to that loyalty that women seem to set such store by. My friend Britt comes here—into our family! That's understood. If Vona wants to eat off'n the mantelshelf in her room, well and good till she's tamed. And now—to work—to work!”
Mr. Harnden was truly very much up-and-coming those days. He rose and shook out first one leg and then the other, with the manner of a scratching rooster. The movements settled the legs of his trousers. He had a new suit of his own. It resembled Tasper Britt's. That new suit and the yellow gloves and the billycock hat excited some interest in Egypt; the new hitch that Harnden possessed excited much more interest. He was driving a “trappy” bay nag, and his new road wagon had rubber tires. Nor was Mr. Harnden doing any more inventing, so he declared to the public. The public, however, did declare behind his back that he must have invented something in the way of a system to be able to wear those clothes and drive that hitch. To be sure, there were some who insisted that the matter of Vona was still potent with Britt and that Britt's money was behind Harnden. But there were more who were certain that it was not the style of Britt to invest in any such remote possibility as a girl who openly declared that she proposed to wait seven years for the man of her choice.
Harnden had a new business; he was selling nursery stock. But that business did not account for his prosperity. He was taking town orders for his goods—taking orders on the town treasury, orders that had long been creased in wallets or had grown yellow in bureau drawers or had been dickered about at a few cents on the dollar and accepted when a debtor had nothing else with which to pay. Mr. Harnden said he was ready to take town orders at any time. He optimistically declared that his faith in the old town was firmly fixed. That optimism was entirely in accord with Mr. Harnden's past professions; and nobody wondered much, because he was so foolish. But he was not wholly a fool in that matter. He had only about a fifty-per-cent faith in Egypt—he insisted on that much discount when he took in a town order. Even at that rate, Ossian Orne did insist that Harnden was a complete fool. Orne would not take town orders for his nursery stock. But Orne's nose was out of joint, it was generally agreed. Harnden's lithographs showed apples twice as big as Orne's book did; the pears fairly oozed sweetness from their plump, pictured mellowness; there were peaches that provoked folks to make funny noises at the corners of their mouths when the optimistic Harnden flipped a page and brought the fruit to view. Nobody had ever heard of a peach tree growing among the rocks of Egypt. On the other hand, nobody supposed that a town order on the Egypt treasury was worth anything, as things stood. There were folks who bought peach trees!
And in the meantime there was much clatter in and about the old Britt house, tumble of timbers and rip of wainscotings and snarl of drawing nails. Out from the gaping windows floated the powdery drift of the plastering which the broad shovels had tackled. The satirists said that it was noticeable that the statue of Tasper Britt in the cemetery had settled down heavier on its heels, as if making grimly sure that Hittie was staying where she could not interfere.
In the meantime, also, Tasper Britt and a hired girl had become fixtures in the Harnden home—and the hired girl was quite in love with Vona and in entire sympathy with her stand; the girl brought to Vona's room the tidbits of all the meals and offered to put tacks in Britt's doughnuts if that would help matters any.
Vona was entirely serene in her companionship with her father and her mother. As for Tasper Britt, in sitting room or hall, on the street or on the lawn of the Harndens, he was ignored as completely, yet sweetly, as if he were an innocuous dweller in the so-called Fourth Dimension—to be seen through—even walked through—a mere shade, uninterred, unhonored, and unwarranted.
Tasper Britt, relentlessly on the job of punishing those who had poisoned his pride and his peace of mind, acknowledged to himself that the attitude of this girl was reacting on him in the way of more acute punishment than he was dealing out to anybody just then, except to Vaniman. Through the latter the girl was punished. But that punishment had steeled her to the stand she was making in the case of Britt. The god of the machine pondered on the case and constantly found himself in a more parlous state of mind because he did ponder.
Mr. Harnden tried his best to cheer the morose Britt. Some days the usurer-suitor wanted to cuff the optimist; some days he felt that he would go crazy unless Harnden could extend some hope, suggest some way of changing the girl's attitude.
All the time Mr. Harnden was very cheerful and extremely busy; his nag kicked up the dust along all the roads. His book of lithographs was dog's-eared with much thumbing, but he had served as a human vacuum cleaner in sucking up most of the town orders. Mr. Harnden was very free with information, customarily. But when folks asked him whatever in the world he expected to do with those town orders he was reticent as to any details of his plans. He considered that his optimism of faith in the future of the town covered the matter. He said so. He let it go at that.
One day Harnden roamed far afield and went to the shire.
The next day he came back from the shire.
After supper he sat in a wicker chair on the lawn with Tasper Britt, who was wearing a new suit of white flannel and who scowled when Vona passed along the walk without even a glance in that direction, though Britt had twitched up his trousers leg to show a particularly handsomely clocked sock.
Mr. Harnden did a lot of talking that evening. Every now and then, as if to fortify his optimistic courage, he declared, “After all, business is business—and the trend of the times is to make the most of opportunity.”
Britt was showing interest in what Harnden was saying—interest and satisfaction, too. But all at once that interest was diverted and the smooth satisfaction was wrinkled by a scowl. Britt swore roundly and struggled up from his chair.
Prophet Elias was passing along the street. He flapped his hand in a greeting contemptuously indifferent and went on his way toward Usial's cot.
“Oh! I was intending to tell you about him,” avowed Mr. Harnden, “but I've had more important things to talk over!”
Britt gave to this blunderheaded news purveyor the tail end of the malevolent stare that he had been bestowing on the Prophet's back.
“I heard about it when I was over to the shire town. A city lawyer showed up the other day and deposited cash bonds and got out a writ, and got Elias out, too, and the case has been appealed. Looks like the Prophet has footed it back here again. But I suppose you can arrest him on that other case of trespass.”
Britt did not show especial alacrity in starting anything else in the case of the new arrival in town. He sat down. “Who was the lawyer? Who sent him?”
“Guess he didn't say. Let the money do the talking for him. And money can talk! Now, as I was saying, to get back to our regular business, it's up to you to name the ones that Dowd will tackle. Say, where are you going?”
Britt was on his feet and moving rapidly. “Somewhere to do some thinking away from that carpet-loom, shuttle-tongued, infernal mouth of yours!”
Mr. Harnden, astonished and much hurt, watched the usurer till he tramped into Britt Block.
But Mr. Harnden had too much important business of his own on his mind to use time in wondering how a Prophet had managed to get out of jail.
In the past Mr. Harnden had regularly referred to Egypt as a good jumping-off place; he emphasized the jest by pointing to the ledge outcroppings which indicated that the landscape would not sag under the weight of the most energetic jumper. Then away he would go!
His detractors said that he was in the habit of coming home when affairs were in such a bad way with him that he could not stay anywhere else.
His wife and daughter had never admitted anything of the sort, even to each other. They affectionately welcomed Mr. Harnden when he came; after he had stoked the fires of his faith, and they had darned his socks and mended his shirts, they gave him the accustomed encouraging and loving Godspeed when he went away again under a full head of optimism. They always agreed with him, on each going-away, that this was surely the time when Opportunity was waiting outside.
But for many weeks Opportunity had seemed to be camping with Mr. Harnden right in his own home town. He was brisk, radiant, and apparently prosperous.
Therefore, when he announced in the bosom of his family that he proposed to go away for a time, his wife and daughter were frankly astonished.
It was directly after breakfast on the morning following Mr. Harnden's return from the shire town.
He did not display his usual jocose manner when he referred to Egypt as a jumping-off place. Vona found a sort of furtive uneasiness in the way he glanced out of the window and fingered his vest-pocket equipment. And he trod to and fro with the air of a man stepping on hot bricks.
“But you have said you are doing so well in your new business, father!” Vona's straightforward gaze was disconcerting.
Mr. Harnden kept on with his patrol. “Confound it. I've got to get into towns where there's more dirt if I'm going to sell any more nursery stock!”
“Oh, is that it? But I happened to go up in the attic and I found your sample books thrown behind a trunk, and I was afraid—”
“Afraid of what?” he demanded, with childish temper.
“Afraid you were giving up what seems to be a sure thing. The other ventures have been such uncertainties!” she returned, her business woman's composure unaffected by his reproachful stare.
“The books were all smutched up—too many dirty fingers afoul of them. I shall get new ones—providing I stay in that line.” He was not convincing. “We'll see—we'll see! I've got to be moving. These are busy times for me.”
“But you don't say when you're coming back, Joe!” quavered his wife.
“Why should I begin to set dates now, when I never have in past times?”
“Oh, I suppose it's because we've got so used to having you at home,” she confessed.
“I'm leaving matters in better shape than I ever did before,” said Mr. Harnden, pompously. “I have been worried about my home in the past when I have had to be absent on my business. We have Tasper in the house now. And he will not only guard and protect, but he will pay as he goes. I may not go far or stay long. Just let it stand that way. Tell inquiring friends that. I'll keep you posted. You know what my business is; it takes me here—it takes me there.” He gave his wife a peck of a kiss and patted Vona's shoulder when he passed her. He picked up a valise in the hallway.
The girl followed him. “Father, always when you have been away, mother and I have felt perfectly comfortable and safe here in our home. If Mr. Britt hasn't the sense or the good taste to go somewhere else to board, won't you suggest to him that he'd better do so?”
“Nothing of the sort, Vona!” declared Harnden. “That contractor has brought a lot of strangers here to work on Britt's house, seeing that the men of this town are biting off their noses to spite their faces! I wouldn't take a minute's peace, knowing that my home is unprotected, unless I felt that a friend of mine was here as guardian. Oh, I know what you mean! But I have the safety of my family to consider instead of a girl's whims.”
She did not argue the matter. His peppery impatience was increasing. This time he was not departing with his customary bland hopefulness. She knew the sort of selfishness her father possessed and how he avoided scenes that troubled his smug serenity. But on this occasion he seemed to be impelled by some urgent reason outside of mere anxiety to be away from complaining tongues.
He hurried out of the house and went to the stable, and she said no further word.
Ten minutes later he drove away, flinging a kiss to his womenfolks from the finger tips of the yellow gloves.
He headed directly out of the village and drove at a good clip.
However, one might have concluded that Mr. Harnden's destination was not as clearly settled in his mind as the haste of his departure suggested. When he came to four corners he pulled up and looked to right and to left and to the straight ahead. Mr. Harnden was too well acquainted with all the roads of Egypt and its environs to be confused by anything except strictly personal and peculiar doubts which had nothing to do with the matter of destination. He looked up into the heavens, as if he really wished that he might be able to escape from Egypt by flight. Then he did literally what the Yankee phrase suggests by way of synonym for taking counsel—“he looked between the horse's ears.” He narrowed his eyes in meditation and spoke aloud. “I reckon it's only general nervousness on account of overwork and women's foolishness. There ain't one chance in ten that they'll get around to it to-day.”
Arriving at that comfortable conclusion, Mr. Harnden lighted a cigar and chirruped to his horse and drove straight on.
The road zigzagged through an alder swamp for some distance, and the horse footed along slowly because a portion of the way was patched with sapling “corduroy.” And with the impulse of a man who had been obliged to waste time, and saw an opportunity to get on, Harnden whipped up when he was again facing a smooth road. Therefore he came suddenly around the bend of the alders into cleared country and abreast a farm. It was a farm made up of the alluvial soil of the lowlands and was a rather pretentious tract of tillage, compared with the other hillside apologies of Egypt. And the buildings were in fairly good repair. It was the home of Jared Sparks Grant, the first selectman of the town.
Mr. Harnden did not look to right or left as his horse trotted past. He did not appear to be interested in the affairs of Egyptians that day—even in the case of the town's chief executive. When Harnden was hailed raucously he did not pull up, though he heard his name. After a few moments a gun banged behind him.
“I'm saving the other barrel,” the voice announced, after Harnden had steered his horse from the gutter into the road; the animal had been frightened by the pattering of shot in the foliage of a tree overhead. “You'll get it straight, Harnden, unless you drive back here!”
When Harnden wheeled the horse and returned he perceived a dooryard group which he had affected not to see a few moments before.
There were Jared Sparks Grant, his son, his womenfolks, his hired man; Mr. Harnden recognized all of them, of course. He also recognized Deputy-sheriff Wagner Dowd from the shire town. Dowd had a couple of helpers with him. It was plain that the shotgun which had halted Mr. Harnden had been very nigh at hand and ready for use; there was a look about the folks in the dooryard which suggested an armed truce, now prolonged, for the handling of the new arrival.
“Don't you realize what's going on here?” demanded Selectman Grant, his weapon in the hook of his arm.
“No!” asserted Mr. Harnden.
“I know a blamed sight better! You can't look at this deputy sheriff without turning redder than one of the apples in that fake picture book of yours. You know what you have been doing in this town.”
The selectman's tone was offensively harsh and loud. Mr. Harnden was moved to show a little spirit, having been cornered—and feeling protected by the presence of an officer of the law. “I have been doing business!”
“Scooping in town orders, you mean!”
“Taking them in the due course of my business, Mr. Selectman. I had a right to do it!”
“And what did you do with those orders?”
“I passed them on—still in the course of my business.”
“And you don't know into whose hands they have come?”
“Oh no!”
The selectman stepped close to the carriage and brandished his gun. “While this town was staggering along, trying to find a way out, only a hellion would take and make a club out of those orders and hit us the last and final clip with 'em. You've done it, Harnden! For the sake of the dirty money you've done it. They were letting those orders rest easy till we could get the legislature and have things put into some condition where we'd know what's what. Through your work some land pirate has got hold of those town orders. There isn't a cent in the town treasury. You know it.”
He whirled away from Harnden and shook the gun at the deputy sheriff.
“I sha'n't believe your law, Dowd, till I've been and talked with Squire Hexter.”
“Go and talk! But in the meantime a good lawyer has told me what to do and has given me the documents, and I'm not trying the case in your dooryard. I have levied on those oxen and I shall take 'em along.”
“Do you hear that, Harnden? That's what you have done to your town,” bellowed the infuriated selectman. “He says there's a law allowing a creditor to levy on the property of any citizen of a town to satisfy a judgment. Judgment has been secured on those town orders. They are jumping on me first.”
“It's what the lawyer told me to do,” insisted the officer. “'Start with the selectman,' says he. 'That shows the others where they get off.' Grant, I'm here with the papers and the right to act.” He advanced close to the selectman, waggling admonitory forefinger. “I've been excusing your feelings. I don't blame you! This is tough. It's the penalty you pay for living in such a town. But I don't propose to stand for any more of that gunplay. Hand it over!”
Grant hesitated. The officer snatched away the gun, broke it down, and pulled out the undischarged shell. He put that into his pocket and shoved the gun under the seat of a wagon. “You can have this gun back after the war is over. Now to business! You claim that the oxen are exempt because you have no horses. All right! I see you have a dozen cows. I'll take three of those. I'm fair, you see! You're only entitled to one cow. But keep nine. I'm going to spread the thing around town till I have enough to satisfy this judgment. It's for one hundred and ninety dollars. What say, now? Do you want to pay a fine for obstructing an officer?”
Selectman Grant shook his head. The flame of his rage had died down into sullen rancor. He went along to Harnden's carriage and suddenly nipped that gentleman's nose between toil-calloused index and middle fingers. “They tell me there's no law against doing this,” he said between his yellow, hard-set teeth, as he twisted at the nose, while Harnden's eyes ran water. “If there is a law, I hope you'll stay handy by in this town and prosecute while we're heating the tar and getting the feathers ready.”
Sheriff Dowd took advantage of Selectman Grant's preoccupation with Harnden. He gave off orders to his helpers and they lowered the bars of the barnyard and started away with the cows.
There was a general disintegration of the group. Mrs. Grant led the lamenting womenfolk into the house. Mr. Harnden did not really extricate his nose; Grant twisted so violently that he broke his own grip, and his victim laced the whip under the horse's belly and escaped.
Within ten minutes Selectman Grant was whipping his own horse in a direction opposite to that which Harnden had taken. Mr. Grant was hot after law.
Squire Hexter gave him the law, and cold comfort.
“They can do it, Jared. Outsiders can get hold of unpaid town orders and put on the screws if they're that heartless. It isn't done once in a dog's age. But, as I say, it can be done when a creditor is ugly enough. Harnden didn't say, did he, just who brought the orders?”
“I wouldn't have believed him if he did say! But he didn't say.”
“And you don't know the man who secured judgment?”
“Never heard of him.”
“I will try to trace the matter, Jared. No, keep your wallet in your pocket. There's no charge. It's a case where the interests of the citizens in general are concerned. I'm the regularly elected town agent, as you know!” The Squire smiled. “I'll take a town order for my pay.” He looked out of the window. “It's about time for somebody else to come larruping up here after law! Don't hurry, Jared! Wait and hear what's happened to the neighbors!”
The selectman sat gloomily, elbows squared on his knees, and waited. Almost opposite the Squire's office the rattle-te-bang business on Britt's premises was going on.
“I wonder whether Tasper will dare to go ahead and build his palace after he hears the latest news,” suggested the Squire. “You must be told, Jared, that after the live stock of the town has been thinned down to the essentials permitted by law, then the farms and general real estate can be levied on.”
Grant lifted his haggard face and stared at the Squire. “Then, outside of the cook stove and my clothes, I don't know whether I'm worth a blasted cent, hey? They can dreen me slow with a gimlet, or let it out all at once with a pod auger, can they? That's what the law can dotome, you say! What can it doforme, Squire Hexter?”
“Well, Jared, they'll take your cows over to the shire and auction them off for what they'll bring. You can sue this town and recover the real value of the cows, along with interest at twelve per cent. That is to say, you can get judgment against the town for that amount.”
“And then I can go over to my neighbor's and grab away any loose property I can find of his?”
“You can do it!”
“Look here, Squire, that makes it nothing except a game of 'tag, you're it,' and a case of 'I've got my fingers crossed'! The whole of us running around in circles, and the lawyers picking up all the loose change we drop from our pockets. Where do we wind up?”
The Squire shook his head slowly and reached down and stroked one of Eli's ears. “Eli was telling me that Jones thought he had invented perpetual motion when he tied a piece of liver to a pup's tail and set the pup to revolving; but the pup wore out.”
Grant sat for some minutes and harkened to the bang of the hammers across the way. “I don't understand how a farseeing man like Tasp Britt dares to build a good house here,” he growled.
“Oh, the pup may be worn out by the time it is finished—or those towers may mean that he intends to list it as a meetinghouse and have it exempted from taxation, Jared. We shall see!”
But whatever it was that the selectman saw, as he sat there and stared at the wall of Squire Hexter's office, it evidently was not serving in the way of comfort.
The Squire's prediction about other seekers for law was fulfilled before long. The deputy sheriff had proceeded on his travels. The afflicted parties came up the Squire's stairs. Arden Young reported that three of his best cows were driven away. George Jordan and his cousin J. O. Jordan each surrendered two faithful moolies. It was plain that Sheriff Dowd proposed to make sure that there was auction material enough to yield one hundred and ninety dollars, along with the costs.
“Jared,” suggested the notary, “you'd better have an accounting and find out how many of those town orders were issued when the reckless spirit was on. Somebody has decided to milk the old town. It is being done scientifically, seeing that this first mess is so modest. But we need to know about how many messes we're expected to give down.”
Inside of a fortnight there were two more milkings.
At about that time Tasper Britt started proceedings to foreclose a couple of mortgages. The debtors despondently declared that they would not attempt to redeem the property; they told Britt that he could have it for what he could get out of it. The usurer tried to show disinclination to take over real estate in Egypt, but he did not make a very good job of the pretense. He had the air of a man who expected to be obliged to tussle for something, but had had the something dropped into his grasp when he merely touched the holder's knuckles.
Britt had a map of the town in his office desk. He began to color sections with a red crayon. According to Mr. Britt's best judgment in the matter, he was in a fine way to own a whole town—a barony six miles square—at an extremely reasonable figure. From the selectman down, nobody seemed to feel that Egypt property was worth anything. As to beginning suits against the town, nobody felt like paying lawyers' fees and piling up costs. It was like tilting against a fog bank. And in a veritable fog bank of doubt and despair the unhappy Egyptians wandered around and around.