When Egypt Went Broke, Holman Day [free ereaders .txt] 📗

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.


CHAPTER XXI
BLOOD OUT OF TURNIPS
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