Part 13 (1/2)
”Your pay is raised ten dollars a week, starting to-morrow,”
supplemented Britt, appealingly.
But there was no compromise in the girl's mien. ”Mr. Britt, I realize perfectly well that I ought to give you due notice--the usual two weeks.
That would be the honorable business way. But you have set the example of disregarding business methods, in your treatment of Mr. Vaniman. You mustn't blame others for doing as you're doing. Therefore I positively will not come into the bank, as conditions are. As I feel to-night I shall feel to-morrow! If you, or my father and mother, think you can change my mind on the matter, you'll merely waste your arguments.”
That time she did not run away. She surveyed them in turn, leisurely and perfectly self-possessed. Even the optimist recognized inflexibility when he was b.u.mped against it hard enough! She stepped backward, challenging reply, but they were silent, and she went upstairs.
”Still, n.o.body knows what the morning may bring forth,” persisted Harnden, after waiting for somebody else to speak. ”As I have said, I have a knack--”
”Of blowing up paper bags and listening to 'em bust!” snarled the banker, permitting himself, at least, to express his real opinion of a man whom he had always held to be an impractical nincomp.o.o.p. ”If you count cash the way you count chickens before they're hatched, you'd make a paper bag out of my bank. I'll bid you good night!”
He wrenched away from Harnden's restraining hands and shook himself under the shower of the optimist's pattering words, as a dog would shake off rain. In the hall he pulled on his overcoat and turned up the collar, for the words still pattered. He went out into the night and slammed the door.
Britt began his program of general anathema by shaking his fist at the Harnden house after he had reached the street. He shook his fist at the other houses along the way as he went tramping in the middle of the road toward his home. He even brandished his fist at his own statue in the facade of Britt Block. The moonlight revealed the complacent features; the c.o.c.ky pose of serene confidence presented by the effigy affected the disheartened original with as acute a sense of exasperation as he would have felt if the statue had set thumb to nose and had wriggled the stone fingers in impish derision.
”Gid-dap” Jones and a few citizens who could not make up their minds to go to bed till they had sucked all the sweetness out of an extraordinary evening in Egypt, were walking up and down the tavern porch, cooling off. Mr. Britt, tramping past, shook his fist at them, too.
”Hope you enjoyed the music!” suggested Jones, wrought up to a pitch where he would not be bull-dozed even by ”Phay-ray-oh.”
”Yes, and I hope we'll have some more to-morrow night,” retorted the banker. ”You still have the poorhouse, the cattle pound, and the lockup to serenade.”
”All right! Which one of 'em do you expect to be in?” inquired Jones.
”We wouldn't have you miss a tune for the world!”
When Britt arrived in the shadows of his own porch he stood and looked out over Egypt and cursed the people, in detail and in toto. He had become a monomaniac. He had set himself to accomplish one fell purpose.
In his office, earlier that day, he had resolved upon revenge; but his natural caution had served as a leash, and he had pondered on no definite plans that might prove dangerous. Now only one fear beset him--the fear that he would not be able to think up and put through a sufficiently devilish program.
He banged his door behind him and lighted a lamp which he kept on a stand in the hall. He creaked upstairs in the lonely house. His sense of loneliness was increased when he reflected that Vona would not be at her desk in the morning.
The village watchman noted that the reflector lamp shone all night on the door of the vault in the Egypt Trust Company; it was the watchman's business to keep track of that light. But he noted also, outside of his regular business, that there was a light for most of the night in Tasper Britt's bedroom.
CHAPTER X
THE MAN WHO WAS SORRY
It was a heavy dawn, next day; a thaw had set in and a drizzle of rain softened the snow; gray clouds trailed their draperies across the top of Burkett Hill.
Landlord Files had trouble in getting his kitchen fire started--in the sluggish air the draught was bad. Mr. Files's spirits were as heavy as the air. He knew it was up to him to be the first man in Egypt to come in contact with Tasper Britt that morning.
Stage-driver Jones had an early breakfast, for he had to be off with the mail. Mr. Jones had been up late, for him, and he was grouchy. In the matter of the warfare on Pharaoh his mood seemed to be less a.s.sertive than it had been the night before. Mr. Files detected that much after some conversation while the breakfast was served.
”All you have to do is 'gid-dap' and get away,” said Files, sourly. ”I have to stay here on my job and be the first to meet him and get the brunt of the whole thing. And I condoned, as you might say, and as he'll probably feel. I let my porch be used for meeting and mobbing, as you might say. And he ketched me grinning over his shoulder when I read them heading words after that old lunkhead of a Prophet pa.s.sed him the paper.”
”Shut up!” remarked Driver Jones, stabbing a potato.
”I owe him money--and I let my porch be used--”
”Figure out the wear and tear on the planks and pa.s.s me the bill. Now shut up and don't spoil my vittles any morn'n you have done in the way of cooking 'em.”