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

as if the Prophet had received a psychological hint that his text shafts were no longer penetrating the money king's tough hide, the diminuendo of his orotund marked the progress of his departure.
Usually Mr. Britt went across into the bank and hung around after the girl arrived. On this morning he stayed in his office. According to his notion, his advances to her in the corridor, though he had not intended to be so precipitate in the matter, had given her something to think about--and he decided to keep away and let her think. If she saw him following the usual routine, her thoughts might drop back into routine channels.
He thrilled at the memory of her touch on his arm, even though the touch had been a thrusting of her hands in self-defense and her eyes had been big with fright.
He sat down at his desk and tore the leaf off his pad calendar, starting his business day as usual. He looked at the disclosed date and his eyes became humid. It was February 14th, the day of St. Valentine. An idea came to Mr. Britt. He had been wondering how to approach the question with Vona without blurting the thing and making a mess of it. He determined to do something that he had not attempted since he had beaued Hittie; he set himself to compose a few verses for a valentine--verses that would pave the way for a formal declaration of his love and his hopes.
The determination indicated that Mr. Britt was having a severe run of a second attack of the same malady, and he acknowledged that much to himself as he sat there and chewed the soggy end of an extinguished cigar and gazed aloft raptly, seeking rhymes.
He made slow progress; his pen trailed as sluggishly as a tracking snail--a word at a time. He lost all notion of how the hours were slipping past.
A man walked in. He was Stickney, a cattle buyer, and a minor stockholder in the bank. Mr. Britt, his eyes filmy with prolonged abstraction, hooked his chin over his shoulder and scowled on the intruder; a man bringing business into that office that day was an intruder, according to Mr. Britt's opinion.
Stickney walked close to the desk and displayed a flash of curiosity when Britt laid his forearm over his writing.
"Spring pome, or only a novel?" queried Stickney, genially, figuring that such a question was the height of humor when put to a man of Tasper Britt's flinty, practical nature.
Mr. Britt, like a person touched smartly by a brad, twitched himself in his chair and asked in chilly tone what he could do for Stickney. The caller promptly became considerable of an icicle himself. He laid down a little sheaf of papers beside the shielding forearm.
"If you'll O. K. them notes for discount, I'll be much obliged, and won't take up valuable time."
"We're tightening up on discounts--calling in many loans, too," stated President Britt, with financial frigidity.
"I know all about your calling loans, Mr. Britt. Much obliged. It makes a crackerjack market for me in the cattle business. They've got to raise money, and I'm setting my own prices." Stickney thawed and beamed on Britt with a show of fraternal spirit, as if the banker were a co-conspirator in the job of shaking down the public. "However, my notes there are all good butchers' paper--sound as a pennyroyal hymn! I've got to have the cash so as to steal more cattle while the market is as it is."
Britt pushed away the notes and seized the opportunity to turn his own papers upside down on the desk. "We can't accommodate you at present, Stickney."
The customer stepped back and propped his palms on his hips. "I reckon I've got to call for an explanation."
"We're not in the habit of explaining the details of our business to individuals."
Stickney slipped the leash on his indignation. "'We,' say you? All right! 'We' it is. I'm in on that 'we.' I'm a stockholder in the bank. What sort of investments are 'we' making that have caused money to be so tight here that a regular customer is turned down--and after enough loans have been called to make the vault bulge?"
"The report will show," returned Britt, coldly. "I am not called on to issue that report in installments every time a stockholder turns in here."
The especial stockholder stepped forward and tapped his finger on the desk. "I don't say that you are. But now that this subject is opened up--"
"The subject is closed, Stickney."
"Now that the subject is opened up," insisted the other man, "I'll make mention of what you probably know--that I have regular business 'most every day down in Levant at the railroad terminus. And I'm knowing to it that regular shipments of specie have been coming to the bank. If that specie is in our vaults it ain't sweating off more gold and silver, is it, or drawing interest? I know you're a shrewd operator, Britt. I ain't doubting but what your plans may be good."
"They are!" President Britt's retort was crisp.
"But when those plans put a crimp into _my_ plans--and me a steady customer--I'm opening my mouth to ask questions."
"You--and all other stockholders--will be fully informed by the annual report--and will be pleased." Britt's air was one of finality.
"Let me tell you that the mouth I have opened to ask questions will stay open in regard to hoarding that specie where it ain't drawing interest."
Britt jumped up and shook his fist under Stickney's snub nose. "Don't you dare to go blabbing around the country! You might as well set off a bomb under our bank as to circulate news that will attract robbers."
"Bomb? Britt, I'm safe when I'm handled right, but if I'm handled wrong--" Stickney did not finish his sentence; but his truculent air was pregnant with suggestion.
"Do you think you can blackmail me or this bank into making an exception in your case against our present policy? Go ahead and talk, Stickney, and I'll post the people of this town on your selfish tactics--and you'll see where you get off!"
Stickney did not argue the matter further. He looked like a man who was disgusted because he had wasted so much time trying to get around a Tasper Britt stony "No!" He picked up his papers, stamped out, and slammed the door.
Britt shook himself, like a spiritualist medium trying to induce the trance state, and went back to his writing.
After a time a dull, thrumming sound attracted his attention. It was something like Files's dinner gong, whose summons Mr. Britt was wont to obey on the instant.
Mr. Britt was certain that it was not the gong; however, he glanced up at the clock on the wall, then he leaped out of his chair. In his amazement he rapped out, "Well, I'll be--"
That clock was reliable; it marked the hour of twelve.
Mr. Britt had received convincing evidence that the rhapsody of composition makes morsels of hours and gulps days in two bites.
But he had completed five stanzas. He concluded that they would do, though he had planned on five more. Glancing over his composition, he decided that it might be better to leave the matter a bit vague, just as the poem left it at the end of the fifth stanza. In the corridor that morning Vona had shown that too much precipitateness alarmed her; he might go too far in five more stanzas. The five he had completed would give her a hint--something to think of. He pondered on that point while he stuck the paper into an envelope and sealed it.
Mr. Britt hurried the rest of his movements; Files's kitchen conveniences were archaic, and the guest who was not on time got cold viands.
The lover who had begun to stir Miss Harnden's thoughts into rather unpleasant roiliness of doubts came hustling into the bank, hat and coat on.
The girl and young Vaniman were spreading their respective lunches on the center table inside the grille.
Britt called Vona to the wicket. He slipped the envelope through to her. "There's no hurry, you understand! Take your time. Read it in a slack moment--later! And"--he hesitated and gulped--"I want to see you after bank hours. If you'll step in--I'll be much obliged."
She did not assent orally, nor show especial willingness to respond to his invitation. She took the envelope and turned toward the table after Britt had left the wicket.
She walked to the window and gazed at the retreating back of Mr. Britt, and put the envelope into a velvet bag that was attached by slender chains to her girdle.
When she faced Vaniman, the young cashier was regarding her archly.
"I wonder if congratulations are in order," he suggested.
Her quick flush was followed by a pallor that gave her an appearance of anger. "I don't relish that sort of humor."
"My gracious, Vona, I wasn't trying to be especially humorous," he protested, staring at her so ingenuously that his candor could not be questioned. "I reckoned that the boss was raising your pay, and was being a bit sly about it! What else can it be?"
Then she was truly disconcerted; at a loss for a reply; ashamed of her display of emotion.
He stared hard at her. His face began to show that he was struggling with an emotion of his own. "Vona," he faltered, after a time, "I haven't any right to ask you--but do you have any--is that paper--"
He was unable to go on under the straight and strange gaze she leveled at him. She was plainly one who was taking counsel with herself. She came to a sudden decision, and drew forth the envelope and tore it open, unfolded the paper, and began to read.
When her eyes were not on him Vaniman revealed much of what a discerning person would have known to be love; love that had been pursuing its way quietly, but was now alarmed and up in arms. He narrowed his eyes and studied her face while she read. But she did not reveal what she thought and he became more perturbed. She finished and looked across at him and then she narrowed her eyes to match his expression. Suddenly she leaned forward and gave him the paper. He read it, amazement lifting his eyebrows.
When he met her stare again they were moved by a common impulse--mirth; mirth that was born out of their mutual amazement and was baptized by the tears that their merriment squeezed from their eyes.
"I am not laughing at Tasper Britt," he gasped, checking his hilarity. "I would not laugh at any man who falls in love with you, Vona. I am laughing at the idea of Tasper Britt writing poetry. Let me look out of the window! Has Burkett Hill tipped over? Has the sun turned in the heavens at high noon and started back to the east?"
"What does it mean?" she asked. Her expression excused the banality of her query; her eyes told him that she knew, but her ears awaited his indorsement of her woman's conviction.
He pointed to the big calendar on the wall. "It's a valentine," he said, gravely. But the twinkle reappeared in his eyes when he added, "And valentines have always been used for prefaces in the volume of Love."
She did not reflect any of his amusement. She clasped her hands and gazed down on them, and her forehead was wrinkled with honest distress.
"Of course, you have sort of been guessing," he ventured. "All the renovating process--the way he has been tiptoeing around and squinting at you!"
She looked up suddenly and caught his gaze; his tone had been hard, but his eyes were tender.
Then it happened!
They