As Squire Hexter and Vaniman walked on together the notary deferred comment on the recent happenings, as if he hoped that the cashier would open up on the topic. But Frank was grimly silent.
Therefore the Squire broke the ice. “What kind of a partner does Tasp Britt make in a polka, son? I saw you and him going at it pretty briskly.”
“I stopped him from making a fool of himself.”
“Quite a contract, boy! Quite a contract! And when you got to the matter of his purple whiskers and his lamp-mat hair—”
“I said nothing to Mr. Britt on such a ridiculous topic—certainly not, sir!”
“And yet you brag that you have stopped him from making a fool of himself,” purred the Squire. “Tut! Tut! He's worse than ever. I heard him tell you that you're discharged from the bank.”
“Yes, I heard him, too!”
“I didn't catch what you answered back.”
“I told him I should ask the directors to decide that matter.”
“Quite right! You're sure of one vote for your side—that's mine! And I think that when President Britt considers that he has no other charge against you except that you took away a horsewhip that he was using not wisely but too well—”
“I struck him across the mouth.”
“Oh, I missed that,” said the Squire, regretfully. “Why the pat?”
“I could not express my feelings in any other way. As to what those feelings were and why he stirred them, I'll have to ask you to excuse me, Squire Hexter. If I were going to stay in the bank I would explain the matter to you and to the directors. But I'm going to resign. Under these conditions, nobody has the right to tear the heart out of me and stick it up for a topic of conversation.”
The Squire glanced sideways at the convulsed face of the cashier and opened his eyes wide; but he promptly hid his wonderment and checked an exclamation that sounded like a question. “I reckon all of us better wait till morning, son—Tasper and you and I and all the rest.” He looked up at the bright stars in a hard sky. “A snappy night like this will cool things off considerable.”
“I'll wait till morning, sir! Then I propose to resign,” Frank insisted.
“Don't say anything like that in front of Xoa,” pleaded Squire Hexter. “I don't ever want to see again on her face the look she wore when she followed our own Frank to the cemetery; now that she has sort of adopted you, boy, I'm afraid she'll have the same look if she had to follow you to Ike Jones's stage.”
The supper was waiting, as the Squire had predicted; but he took no chances on sitting at table at once and having her keen woman's eyes survey Vaniman's somber face; he feared that her solicitude would open up a dangerous topic.
“Leave your biscuits in for a few minutes, Mother,” the Squire urged. “Let's have some literature for an appetizer.”
So he sat down and read the brotherly tribute in the new issue of The Hornet, and Xoa's eyes glistened behind her spectacles, though she decorously deplored the heat of the sting dealt by Usial. Frank, watching her efforts to hide mirth and display womanly concern at this distressing affair between brothers, forgot some of his own troubles in his amusement. Therefore the Squire's tactics were successful, and the talk at the supper table over the hot biscuits and the cold chicken and the damson preserves was concerned merely with the characters of the brothers Britt. Squire Hexter did mention, casually, that Frank had succeeded in inducing Tasper to stop whipping Usial. Xoa reached and patted the young man's arm and blessed him with her eyes.
Frank, as usual, helped Xoa to clear away the supper things. Early in his stay he had been obliged to beg for permission to do it, and she had consented at last when he pleaded that it made him feel less like a boarder in the Hexter home.
While she finished her work in the kitchen Vaniman sat with the Squire in front of the fireplace and smoked his pipe, but not with his customary comfort; the tobacco seemed to be as bitter as his ponderings; he was trying to stiffen his resolution to go away from Egypt.
Squire Hexter chatted. It was hard to keep off the Britt affair, but the notary tactfully kept away from the sore center of it.
“It has been going on a long time—the trouble between 'em, son. For two men who look alike outside, they're about as different inside as any two I've ever known. Tasper has been all for grab! He grabbed away Usial's share of the home place and then he grabbed Mehitable Dole while she was keeping company with Usial. I suppose Hittie reckoned there was no choice in outside looks, but saw considerable inducement in the home place. Plenty of other women for Usial! Yes! But I can't help thinking that I might be keeping bach hall in my law office if I hadn't got hold of Xoa in my young days. So there's Usial! Right in his rut because he's the kind that stays in a rut. Pegs shoes days and reads books nights. No telling how the legislature may develop him. Glad he's going.”
The Squire rapped out his pipe ashes against an andiron. His posture gave him an opportunity to say what he said next without meeting Vaniman's gaze. “Vona Harnden was a mighty smart girl when she was teaching school. I was superintendent and had a chance to know. Does she take hold well in the bank?”
Vaniman had hard work to make his affirmative sound casual.
“Have you met Joe, her father, since you've been in town?”
“No, sir.”
“Not surprising, and no great loss. Joe is on the jump a lot—geniusing around the country. Joe's a real genius.”
The young man looked straight into the fire and returned no comment. He knew well the dry quality of Hexter's satirical humor and perceived that the notary was indulging in that humor.
“Yes, Joe Harnden is quite an operator, son. Jumps, as I have said. A good optimist. Jumps up so high every day that he can see over all the bothersome hills into the Promised Land of Plenty. Only trouble is that Joe's jumping apparatus is so geared that he only jumps straight up and lands back in the same place. Now, if only he could jump ahead.”
Xoa had come in from the kitchen and was setting out a small table on which the pachisi board was ready for the evening's regular recreation. She broke in with protest. “Amos, you shouldn't make fun of the neighbors!”
“I'm complimenting Joe Harnden,” the Squire went on, with serenity. “I'm saying that when he uses that inventive genius of his on his own jumping gear he'll leap ahead and make good. For instance, son, here's an example. Joe invented an anti-stagger shoe—a star-shaped shoe—to be let out at saloons and city clubs like they lend umbrellas for a fee—and then the reformers went and passed that prohibition law. Always a little behind with a grand notion—that's the trouble with Joe!”
“Amos, you're making up that yarn about a shoe!” declared Xoa.
“Well, if it wasn't an anti-stagger shoe, it was—oh—something,” insisted the Squire. “At any rate, Joe was in my office to-day. He's home again. He's all cheered up. He is taking town gossip for face value.” The notary looked away from Vaniman and gave his wife an ingenuous glance. “Of course, I don't need to remind you, Xoa, speaking of gossip, that the folks will have it that Tasp Britt has put on that war paint so as to go on the trail of a Number Two. And Joe says that, in picking Vona, Britt has picked right. Joe's a genius in inventing. I'm expecting that he'll now invent a lie about himself or Britt or somebody else to make that girl either sorry enough or mad enough to carry out what gossip is predicting.”
Xoa had seated herself at the small table and was vigorously rattling the dice in one of the boxes by way of a hint to the laggard menfolks. “Women have a soft side, and men come up on that side and take advantage—and Joe Harnden's mealy mouth has always served him well with his womenfolks—but I do hope Vona Harnden has got done being fool enough to galley-slave and sacrifice for the rest of her life,” sputtered the dame. “Britt for her? Fs-s-sh!” Her hiss of disgust was prolonged. Then she rattled the dice more vigorously.
“It's a mighty good imitation of a—diamond-backed rattler, mother! But come on over to the table, son! She isn't as dangerous as she sounds!” The Squire dragged along his chair.
Vaniman leaped from his seat with a suddenness that was startling in that interior where peace prevailed and composure marked all acts. For the first time in his stay in the Hexter home his mood fought with the serenity of the place. The prospect of that bland contest with disks and dice was hateful, all of a sudden. His rioting feelings needed room—air—somehow there seemed to be something outside that he ought to attend to.
“Dear folks, let me off for to-night,” he pleaded. “It's been a hard day for me—in the bank—I'm nervous—I think a walk will do me good.”
He rushed into the hallway without waiting for any reply. He put on his cap and finished pulling on his overcoat when he was outside the house. His first impulse was to stride away from the village—go out along the country road to avoid the men who scowled at him as Britt's right-hand servitor.
But he noted that some kind of tumult seemed to be going on in the village—and any kind of tumult fitted the state of his emotions right then. He hurried toward the tavern.
Up and down the street men were marching, to and fro before Usial's shop. Vaniman saw tossing torches and the light revealed that some of the marchers wore oilcloth capes, evidently relics of some past and gone political campaign when parades were popular.
There was music, of a sort. A trombone blatted—there was the staccato tuck of a snare drum, and the boom of a bass drum came in with isochronal beats.
Vaniman went to the tavern porch and stood there with other onlookers.
“Give Ike Jones half a chance with that old tramboon of his and he ain't no slouch as a musicianer,” remarked Landlord Files to the young man. “I hope Egypt is waking up to stay so.”
“If we keep on, the town will get to be lively enough to suit even a city chap like you are,” said another citizen. “Hope you're going to stay with us!” But there was no cordiality in that implied invitation; that there was malice which hoped to start something was promptly revealed. “In spite of what is reported about Tasp Britt firing you out of your job!” sneered the man.
The morrow held no promise for Vaniman, no matter what the Squire had said in the way of reassurance. To stay with Britt in that bank would be intolerable punishment. He decided that he might as well talk back to Egypt as Egypt deserved to be talked to, considering what line of contumely had been passed in through that bank wicket. He was obliged to speak loudly in order to be heard over the trombone and the drums. Therefore, everybody in the crowd got what he said; he was young, deeply stirred, and he had held back his feelings for a long time. “I'm going to leave this God-forsaken, cat-fight dump just as soon as I can make my arrangements to get away. Good night!”
He was ashamed of himself the moment that speech was out of his mouth. He was so much ashamed that he immediately became afraid he would be moved to apologize; and he was also ashamed to apologize. He was, therefore, suffering from a peculiar mixture of emotions, and realized that fact, and hurried off before his tongue could get him into any worse scrape.
He suddenly felt an impulse to get back to sanity by a talk with Vona. He had never called at her home. He knew his Egypt all too well—short as his stay had been! A call on a young woman by a young man was always construed by gossip as a process of courtship—and until that day Frank had been keeping his feelings hidden even from Vona herself.
But, having definitely decided to leave the town, he was in a mood to put aside considerations of caution in regard to their mutual affairs, for one evening, at any rate. He was moved also by the reflection that her father was at home—and the Squire and Xoa had dropped broad hints as to that gentleman's methods of operation with his womenkind. Vaniman possessed youth's confidence in his ability to make good in the world. He wondered if it would not be well to have a general show-down in the Harnden family, in order that when he went away from Egypt he might go with the consolation of knowing that Vona was waiting for him, her love sanctioned.
Pondering, he arrived in front of Egypt's humble town hall. Young folks were coming out of the door. He remembered then! For some weeks they had been rehearsing a drama to be presented on the eve of Washington's Birthday, and Vona had the leading role; she had employed him at slack times in the bank to hold the script and prompt her in her lines.
He saw her and stopped, and she hastened to him. “I suppose a political parade on Broadway wouldn't break up a rehearsal, Frank. But that's what has happened in this case. Not one of us could keep our minds on what we were saying.”
“I'm not surprised. Any noise of an evening in this place, except an owl hooting, is a cause for hysterics.”
She walked on at his side. “You're disgusted with our poor old town,” she said, plaintively.
“I'm going to leave. Do you blame me?”
“I've heard about the—whatever it was!”
“That's right! Leave it unnamed—whatever it was!”
She touched his arm timidly. “Please be kind—to me—no matter how much cause you have to dislike others here.”
He stopped, put his arms about her, and drew her into a close embrace. There were shadows of buildings where they stood; no one was near.
“I can't do my best here, Vona. You understand it. But I can't go away and do the best that's in me unless I go with your pledge to me.”
“You have it, Frank! The pledge of all my love.”
“But your folks! They tell me your father is at home.”
“I have said nothing to father and mother—naturally.” She smiled up at him. “I have never had any occasion to say anything to them about my loving anybody, because that matter has never come up till now.”
“I am going home with you,” he said, grimly, and drew her along, his arm linked in hers.
“If you think it is advisable for me to talk with father and mother, I'll do it—I'll do it to-night,” she volunteered, courageously.
“Vona, I never want to feel again as I did this afternoon when I allowed you to go alone on an errand that concerned us both. After this, I'm going to stand up, man fashion, and do the talking for the two of us.”
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