The Prophet had not opened his mouth to give out even one text. He had not opened his mouth, either, to give his name; the writ designated him merely by his sobriquet. But there was a queer little wrinkle at each corner of that closed mouth.

CHAPTER XX

NO STRAW FOR THE BRICKS

Mr. Harnden banged his pulpy fist on the board at which so he had declared, Tasper Britt was to sit.

"I have ruled a happy home by love in the past. Don't force me to rule it otherwise now."

He was obliged to lower his eyes to a level at last because his neck ached. He was forced to turn those eyes in his daughter's direction, for her gaze was of that compelling quality which causes the object of regard to return the scrutiny.

"I tell you, I'm not lowering myself by taking in boarders," the father insisted. "I have become tied up in a business way with my friend Britt.

We need to be in conference right along. They're going to tear down his house. Shall I let it be said that I left a friend ahungered and without a roof? Shall--"

"Father, I'm no longer patient enough to listen to any more of that nonsense," said Vona.

"But it isn't nonsense," put in the mother. "Poor Tasper is left without a home. Files's vittles have nigh killed him. He was always used to home cooking. He--"

"Please! Please!" protested the girl, impatiently. "We're three grown-ups. Let's be honest with one another. I, at least, have been honest--ever since I declared myself under this roof last winter."

"If you're bound to put your father's and your mother's close friendship for a man strictly on the business basis, we'll have it that way,"

agreed Mr. Harnden, trying to straightedge his little bunghole of a mouth and failing.

"Very well, father! We shall get along better. I'm not in any position to dictate in our home--"

"Well, I should say not!" exploded the master.

"But I have worked and turned in my money to help support it, and I have my personal rights here."

Mr. Harnden had more success in arranging the expression he a.s.sumed then; he looked hurt; he had been very successful with that expression in the past. "Any fa.r.s.eeing man has his ups and downs, Vona. Is it kind to twit your father--"

She protested more impatiently still. "I am simply presenting the business side of the matter. I say, I have earned some rights to be comfortable in my own home. On the plea of friendship for a man whom I detest, you are proposing to destroy that comfort. Is your friendship for that man greater than your love for your daughter?"

Mr. Harnden rose and stuck out his frontal convexity and wagged a forefinger. "Now you're getting off the question of business--just as you accused me of getting off it!" He slapped his breast. "I'm a business man these days. I'm no longer a man with visions, needing a daughter's sacrifices, like you have twitted me of being. Keep still!

I'm talking!" he squealed. He was displaying more of the new and c.o.c.ky demeanor that had been his for some time. He had been especially set up for a few days prior to his announcement that Tasper Britt was coming into the Harnden home as lodger and guest at table. "Business it is!

Britt will pay board enough, seeing that he has come to my--_my_ terms, so that your mother can keep a hired girl for the first time in her life. Are you so selfish as to want to have your mother--my wife--go on potwalloping in the kitchen for the rest of her days? If that's so, you'll find that my pride will override your selfishness."

"Father, I will stay at home and do all the work, if you'll keep our home from being desecrated by that man!"

Mr. Harnden reared his crest and advanced one foot. "I have raised my daughter to be a lady and will keep her so! I'm now in a position to do it without any of her help."

Vona stood up then. But not to fling angry retort at her father! She knew that she was able to conquer the raging self that was urging her to tell both of them what she thought of their idiotic persistency in backing the attentions of Britt. Being victor over herself in that conflict with self where so many fail, she felt courage to battle in another quarter. Since Frank had been penned up where he could not fight, she had felt that she was the champion for their mutual interests, and she was resolved to keep on valiantly. "Father, you know how I stand in the matter of Frank Vaniman."

"I have broken your engagement with that jailbird."

"Vona, I have told you repeatedly that I will never consent to your marrying that man," shrilled Mrs. Harnden. "What does the Bible say about obeying your parents?"

The girl was tensely suppressing her emotions. "The outsiders merely know that I am engaged to marry him. But both of you know that I am married to him."

Mr. Harnden sat down in order to express his emotions; Mrs. Harnden stood up. Their duet of disavowal of any such knowledge was keyed high.

"You heard me when I married him--in your presence--under this roof. The legal formality can wait. But I am married. In my heart I am married.

It is enough for me until he comes back to me. And what G.o.d hath joined together let not man put asunder!" She said it reverently, with all her soul in her tones, all her woman's resolution of loyalty in her eyes.

They tried to say something, but in the face of her demeanor of firmness their opposition was futile, and they probably realized it, for they became silent and allowed her to speak on.

"If you do not choose to consider my feelings in the matter, I'll not complain. You are master and mistress of the home. I tell you now, as I have told you before, that if Tasper Britt had come out with the whole truth Frank would not be in prison. You must not expect that I will sit at table with a man who has so persecuted my--husband!" She hesitated a moment before she spoke the last word. She caressed it with loving inflection. A moment later her cheeks were burning hotly. She went out into the hall, got her sunshade, and left the house.

She still had her work at the bank; the progress of liquidation was slow. Tasper Britt, from his office window, saw her coming. She wore no hat. The parasol framed the face that was still glowing after her battle for the sanct.i.ty 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 billyc.o.c.k 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 d.i.c.kered 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 n.o.body 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. n.o.body had ever heard of a peach tree growing among the rocks of Egypt. On the other hand, n.o.body 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 att.i.tude 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 G.o.d 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 att.i.tude.

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 pa.s.sed 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.