"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."

Mr. Files, left alone to meet Britt, resolved to hand that tyrant a partial sop by having breakfast on the table the moment the regular boarder unfolded his napkin; food might stop Britt's mouth to some extent, the landlord reflected.

Result of this precautionary courtesy! The breakfast was a mess when Britt arrived, a half hour late. Mr. Files had depended on his boarder's invariable punctuality and had been obliged to keep "hotting up" the food, watching the clock with increasing despair.

Britt smiled on the landlord when they faced each other in the dining room. The smile made the landlord shiver. He was dreading the explosion.

He set on the viands as timidly as a child holding out peanuts to an elephant. Mr. Britt beamed blandly and spoke of the change in the weather and said he was hoping that "Old Reliable Ike wouldn't be bothered too much by the soft footing on his way to Levant."

Mr. Files gasped when he heard this consideration expressed for the ringleader of the evening's demonstration. He recovered sufficiently to start in on an explanation of the condition of the food.

"It's all right, Files! It's my fault. I overslept."

Britt ate for a few minutes; then he suspended operations and looked Files hard in the face; that face, as to mouth, was as widely open as the countenance of the office alligator. "I did a whole lot of thinking last night, Files. I'm telling you first, like I propose to tell others in Egypt as I come in contact with 'em during the day--it has been my fault--how things have happened! The night brings counsel! Yes, sir, it surely does." He went on eating.

"Mr. Britt, I was afraid--"

Pharaoh waved his knife expostulatingly. "I know it, Files! Your face told me the whole story when I stepped in here. But I'm a changed man.

I know when I'm down. However, it's my own fault, I repeat. I stubbed my toe over the trigs I had set in the way of my own operations. I deserve what I'm getting--and the lesson will make me a different man from now on."

Mr. Files staggered out into the kitchen in order to be alone with his thoughts.

Britt spent a longer time than usual in the tavern office after breakfast; he smoked two cigars, himself, and gave a cigar to each of the early citizens who dropped in through the front way after they had received certain information from Files, who excitedly had beckoned them to come to him at the ell door. Mr. Britt frankly exposed his new sentiments about living and doing. When he put on his overcoat and went forth, Prophet Elias popped out of the door of Usial's cot like the little gowned figure of a toy barometer. Britt waved his hand in cheerful greeting. "Prophet Elias, hand me that text about the way of the transgressor being a hard one to travel, and I'll take it in a meek and lowly spirit and be much obliged." There was no sarcasm in Britt's tone; on the contrary, his manner agreed with his profession regarding meekness. The Prophet swapped stares with Files, who stood in the tavern door; that Elias was greatly impressed was evident, because he withheld speech.

That situation had enough drawing power to bring the brother to the cottage door; he appeared, his spider in his hand.

"Good morning, Usial," called Tasper. "I own up that you're a convincing writer. According to your request, you see I'm giving you your right name. The voters are giving you honors. Who knows what another issue of _The Hornet_ may get for you?" Britt's tone was one of bluff sincerity.

Egypt's Pharaoh did not seem to be a bit put out because no one replied to him in this astonishing levee. He descended from the porch and strolled off toward Britt Block, puffing his cigar.

He found the cashier alone in the bank. Vaniman hastened to put in the first word. "President Britt, I'm ready to wind up my affairs, and I hope you see the wisdom in holding our talk strictly to the business in hand."

The president walked in past the grille and sat down at the table; by the mere look he gave the young man Britt succeeded in climaxing the succession of the morning's surprises; Vaniman had more reason than the others to be amazed.

"Frank, I'm sorry!" There was wistful fervor in the declaration; for the first time in their a.s.sociation the president had called the cashier by his Christian name.

Vaniman had risen from his stool; he sat down again and goggled at Britt.

"If the two of us begin to apologize, we'll get all snarled up," went on the president. "Real men can get down to cases in a better way. I did a lot of thinking last night; probably you did, too. The h.e.l.l fire I went through yesterday would upset any man. To-day I'm scorched and sensible.

I went after something I couldn't get. Just now I don't ask you to stay here permanently. You can stay right along if you want to, I'll say that here and now! But if you're bound to go--later--go when you can leave on the square, after you have broken another man into the job, if you feel you don't want it. I'll send you away then with my best wishes and a clean bill! Please don't make me crawl any more'n I'm doing!"

It was an appeal to Youth's hale generosity--and generosity dominated all the other qualities in Vaniman's nature. "I'll stay, Mr. Britt," he blurted. "After what you have said I can't help staying."

The banker rose and stretched out his hand. "Men can put more into a grip of the fist than women can into an afternoon of gabble, Frank."

After the vigorous clasp of palm in palm, Britt had something more to say. "Vona was terribly stirred up last night, and n.o.body can blame her.

She served notice on me that she was done in the bank. But she needs the money and you and I need her help. Go up and ask her to walk back in here as if nothing had happened. And tell her that what I said about the raise in her pay holds good."