MORE COLLECTIONS
There was a door in the middle of the facade of the low brick building;
there were two windows on either side of the door. On the left-hand
windows was painted in black letters, “Egypt Trust Company.” On the
right-hand windows was painted, “T. Britt.” There was no legend to
indicate what the business of T. Britt might be. None was required. The
mere name carried full information for all Egypt.
Mr. Britt glanced in at the left-hand windows as he approached the door.
Cashier Frank Vaniman was sweeping out.
When President Britt of the new Egypt Trust company went down to
a business college in the city in search of a cashier, he quizzed
candidates in quest of what he termed “foolish notions.” Young Mr.
Vaniman, who had supported himself ever since he was fourteen years old,
and had done about everything in the ten years since then in the way of
work, grabbing weeks or months for his schooling when he had a bit of
money ahead, passed the test very well, according to Mr. Britt's notion.
Young Mr. Vaniman had secured a business education piecemeal, and was a
bit late in getting it, but Mr. Britt promptly perceived that the young
man had not been hung up by stupidity or sloth. So he hired Vaniman,
finding him a strapping chap without foolish notions.
Vaniman was cashier, receiving teller, paying teller, swept out, tended
the furnace, and kept the books of the bank until Britt hired Vona
Harnden for that job. Vona had been teaching school to help out her
folks, in the prevailing Egyptian famine in finance.
But folks stopped paying taxes, and the town orders by the school
committee on the treasurer were not honored; therefore, Vona gratefully
took a place in the bank when Mr. Britt called her into his office one
day and offered the job to her. He said that the work was getting to
be too much for Frank. That consideration for hired help impressed Miss
Harnden and she smiled very sweetly indeed, and Mr. Britt beamed back at
her in a fashion that entirely disarranged for the rest of the day
the set look that he creased into his features before his mirror every
morning. Several clients took advantage of his blandness and renewed
notes without paying the premium that Britt exacted when he loaned his
own money as a private venture.
President Britt entered the door, but he did not go into the bank at
once. He marched along the corridor and unlocked his office and toasted
himself over the furnace register while he finished his cigar; Vaniman
was a good fireman and was always down early. Mr. Britt kept his ear
cocked; he knew well the tap of certain brisk boot heels that sounded in
the corridor every morning and he timed his movements accordingly.
By being on the alert for sounds, he heard what did not comport with the
comfort of his office. Prophet Elias was engaged in his regular
morning tour of duty, picketing T. Britt's domains, giving an hour to
deliverance of taunting texts before going abroad through the town on
his mission to the people with texts of comfort; the Prophet carried
plenty of penetrating, textual ammunition, but he carried poultices for
the spirit as well.
Mr. Britt heard: “'Will he esteem thy riches? No, not gold, nor all the
forces of strength.'”
The usurer commented under his breath with remarks that were not
scriptured. He threw away his cigar and went to a case where he kept
some law books which contained the statutes that were concerned
with money and debts and dependence; he had been hunting through the
legislative acts regarding vagrants and paupers and had been hoping
to light on some legal twist that would serve him. The Prophet kept on
proclaiming. But all at once he shifted from taunts about riches. His
voice was mellow with sincere feeling.
Said the Prophet: “'Behold, thou art fair, my love; thou hast doves'
eyes within thy locks. Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep which came up
from the washing. Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech
is comely. Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.'”
Mr. Britt did not wait in his office for the completion of the
panegyric. He knew well enough what arriving personage it heralded. He
hurried out into the corridor and faced the radiant girl who came in
from the sunshine. Even one who might question the Prophet's tact would
not have blamed his enthusiasm.
“Vona, you swear out a warrant and I'll have him arrested,” stammered
the employer.
She checked a chirrup of laughter and her smile faded when she opened
her eyes on Britt's sourness.
“There's a law about hectoring and insulting a female person on the
street--some kind of a law--and we'll invoke it in this case,” Britt
insisted.
“Why, Mr. Britt, he's only a harmless old man with extremely poor
judgment about most things, including a girl's looks,” she protested.
“Don't you call that gabble an insult to you, walking along and minding
your own business?” His heat was alarming; he shook his fist to indicate
the Prophet.
She was unable to restrain her demure smile. “The specifications, sir,
are overflattering; but I'm sure I don't feel insulted.”
In the past Britt had purred paternally in her presence and had stared
at her in a way that often disconcerted her. Now his expression alarmed
her. His face grew red. At first she thought he was embarrassed by
the reflection that he had been terming the Prophet's compliments an
insult--intimating that she had no claim to such compliments. But Mr.
Britt did not bother to deal with that phase of the matter. The flame
was shifted from his face to his eyes; his cheeks grew pale. He tried
to put his arm about her. She set her gloved hands against the arm and
pushed it away, fright popping her eyelids wide apart.
“I want to protect you,” Britt stuttered. “I don't want any harm or
trouble to come to you.”
He stepped back and gazed at her imploringly. His abashed obedience, his
promptness in desisting, restored her self-possession immediately. She
had the air of one who had misunderstood friendly interest. “Oh, Mr.
Britt, I know you have a kind heart underneath your--I mean that folks
don't realize how good you are unless they are near to you, as Frank
and I are. We often speak of it.” She hurried on. She opened the door
admitting to the bank from the corridor and cheerily called her “Good
morning!” to the cashier as she crossed the threshold.
Mr. Britt stood in his tracks in the corridor after she closed the door.
He stared at the floor with eyes that saw nothing. He slowly raised
his hand and set his right index finger upon the toupee and scratched
meditatively through the mesh--scratched carefully, having accustomed
himself to handling his boughten hair with cautious touch. He had not
liked her intonation when she said “Frank and I.” He muttered something
about his feelings. He had never thought of Frank as belonging in Vona's
calculations. He had never considered even the linking of their names,
much less their interests.
But Mr. Britt, having made money his idol, could not understand worship
directed to any other shrine. His face cleared while he pondered. A girl
who frankly declared at all times that she would do 'most anything to
help her family out of their troubles was not of a mind to hitch up with
another pauper--a combination of choreman and cashier--even though
she had linked their names casually in speech. And Mr. Britt mouthed
mumblingly some of the sentiments he had put into words that morning
when he arose. He smoothed down the top piece and looked more at ease.
He smiled when he reflected on what he would have to say to her after
Emissary Orne had returned with something in the line of fruits from
the Promised Land. His self-assurance revived; nevertheless, he tiptoed
along the corridor and listened at the door of the bank.
The reassuring swish of a broom and their casual chatter--he heard only
those commonplace sounds!
She was asking Vaniman if he had mislaid her dustcloth.
Vaniman replied in a tone which indicated that the two were at some
distance from each other. There was no subdued conference--no murmuring
of mushiness such as a meeting in the morning might be expected to
elicit in case there was any sort of an understanding between them. Mr.
Britt tiptoed away from the door and braced back his shoulders and gave
himself a shake of satisfied confidence, and went serenely into his
office, plucking a cigar from his vest pocket. By permitting himself to
smoke again he was breaking the habit of confining himself to one cigar
after breakfast. But many men in moments of exaltation seek tobacco or
alcohol.
Mr. Britt felt that he had broken the ice, at any rate. Mr. Britt
decided that the girl was heart-free and entertained sensible ideas
about the main chance--and she had had a good word to say about Britt's
kind heart. Mr. Britt was sure that Frank Vaniman knew his place and was
keeping it. Therefore, Mr. Britt lighted a fresh cigar and blew visible
smoke rings and inflated invisible mental bubbles and did not pay any
more attention to what Prophet Elias was saying outside. And 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 had been hiding their deeper feelings under the thin coating
of comradeship for a long time. As in the instance of other pent-up
explosives, only the right kind of a jar was needed to “trip” the mass.
The threat of a rival--even of such a preposterous rival as Tasper
Britt--served as detonator in the case of Frank Vaniman, and the
explosion of his emotions produced sympathetic results in the girl
across the table from him. He leaped up, strode around to her and put
out his arms, and she rushed into the embrace he offered.
But their mutual consolations were denied them--he was obliged to dam
back his choking speech and she her blessed tears.
A depositor came stamping in.
They were calm, with their customary check on emotions, when they were
free to talk after the man had gone away.
“Vona, I did not mean to speak out to you so soon,” he told her. “Not
but what it was in here”--he patted his breast--“and fairly boiling all
the time!”
She assured him, with a timid look, that her own emotions had not been
different from his.
“But I have respected your obligations,” he went on, with earnest
candor. “And this is the first real job I've ever had. It's best to be
honest with each other.”
She agreed fervently.
“I wish we could be just as honest with Britt. But we both know what
kind of a man he is. The sentiment of 'Love, and the world well lost' is
better in a book than it is in this bank just now, as matters stand with
us. I have had so many hard knocks in life that I know what they mean,
and I want to save you from them. Isn't it best to go along as we
are for a little while, till I can see my way to get my feet placed
somewhere else?”
“We must do so, Frank--for the time being.” Her candor matched his. “I
do need this employment for the sake of my folks. Both of us must be
fair to ourselves--not silly. Only--”
Her forehead wrinkled again.
“I know, Vona! Britt's attentions! I'll take it on myself--”
“No,” she broke in, with dignity. “I must make that my own affair.
It can be easily settled. It's pure folly on his part. I'll make him
understand it when I talk with him this afternoon.”
“But I'll feel like a coward,” he protested, passionately.
She put up her hand and smiled. “You're not a coward, dear! Nor am I a
hypocrite. We're just two poor toilers who must do the best we can till
the clouds clear away.”
She went to him, and when her hands caressed his cheeks he bent down and
kissed her.
Then they applied themselves to their tasks in Mr. Britt's bank.