THE ACHE OF RAPPED KNUCKLES
Landlord Files set forth a boiled dinner that day; he skinched on corned
beef and made up on cabbage; but he economized on fuel, and the cabbage
was underdone.
Mr. Britt, back in his office, allowing his various affairs to be
digested--his dinner, his political project, the valentine--his hopes
in general--found that soggy cabbage to be a particularly tough
proposition. He was not sufficiently imaginative to view his punishment
by the intractable cabbage as a premonitory hint that he was destined to
suffer as much in his pride as he did in his stomach. His pangs took his
mind off the other affairs. He was pallid and his lips were blue when
Emissary Orne came waddling into the office.
Mr. Orne, in addition to other characteristics that suggested a
fowl, had a sagging dewlap, and the February nip had colored it into
resemblance to a rooster's wattles. When he came in Mr. Orne's face was
sagging, in general. It was a countenance that was already ridged into
an expression of sympathy. When he set eyes on Britt the expression of
woe was touched up with alarm. But that the alarm had to do with the
personal affairs of Mr. Orne was shown when he inquired apprehensively
whether Mr. Britt would settle then and there for the day's work.
The candidate looked up at the office timepiece. “It ain't three
o'clock. I don't call it a day.”
“You call it a day in banking. I've got the same right to call it a day
in politics.”
“What infernal notion is afoul of you, Orne, grabbing for my money
before you report?”
“I do business with a man according to his own rules--and then he's
suited, or ought to be. You collect sharp on the dot after service has
been rendered. So do I.” Mr. Orne was displaying more acute nervous
apprehension. “And the understanding was that you'd leave it to me as
your manager, and wouldn't go banging around, yourself.”
Britt found the agent's manner puzzling. “I haven't been out of this
office, except to go to my dinner. I haven't talked politics with
anybody.”
“Oh!” remarked Orne, showing relief. “Perhaps, then, it was the way the
light fell on your face.” He peered closely at his client. Mr. Britt's
color was coming back. Orne's cryptic speeches and his haste to collect
had warmed the banker's wrath. “It'll be ten dollars, as we agreed.”
Britt yanked a big wallet from his breast pocket, plucked out a bill,
and shoved it at Orne. The latter set the bill carefully into a big
wallet of his own, “sunk” the calfskin, and buttoned up his buffalo
coat.
“It does beat blazes,” stated “Sniffer” Orne, “what a messed up state
all politics is in since this prim'ry business has put the blinko onto
caucuses and conventions. Caucuses was sensible, Mr. Britt. Needn't tell
me! Voters liked to have the wear and tear off 'em. Now a voter gets
into that booth and has to caucus by himself, and he's either so puffed
up by importance that he thinks he's the whole party or else--”
Mr. Britt's patience was ground between the millstones of anger and
indigestion. He smacked the flat of his hand on his desk. “When I want
a stump speech out of you, Orne, I'll drop you a postcard and give you
thirty days' notice so that you can get up a good one. You have made a
short day of it, as I said, but you needn't feel called on to fill it up
with a lecture.” Mr. Britt continued on pompously and revealed that he
placed his own favorable construction on the emissary's early return
from the field. “You didn't have to go very far, hey, to find out how I
stand for that nomination?”
“I went far enough so that you can depend on what I tell you.”
“Go ahead and tell, then.”
Mr. Orne slowly fished a quill toothpick from the pocket of his
overcoat, set the end of the quill in his mouth, and “sipped” the air
sibilantly, gazing over Britt's head with professional gravity. “Of
course, you're the doctor in this case and are paying the money, and if
you don't want any soothing facts, like I was intending to throw in free
of charge and for good measure, showing how the best of politicians--”
There were ominous sounds from the direction of Britt. Orne checked his
discourse, but he did not look at the candidate. “But no matter,” said
the agent. “That may be neither here nor there. You're the doctor, I
say! When I first came in here I thought you had been disobeying my
orders and had dabbled into the thing. Your face looked like you was
posted.”
“I'm paying for the goods, not for gobbling, you infernal old turkey!
Come out with the facts!”
“Facts is that the whole thing is completely gooly-washed up,” stated
Mr. Orne, with an oracle's decisiveness.
But that declaration in Mr. Orne's political terminology did not convey
much information to the candidate. Britt, thoroughly incensed by what
seemed to be evasion, leaped up, twitched the toothpick from Orne's
lips, and flung it away. “I've paid for the English language, and I want
it straight and in short words, and not trigged by a toothpick.”
“All right! You're licked before you start.”
It was a bit too straight from the shoulder--that piece of news! Britt
blinked as if he had received a blow between the eyes. He sat down and
stared at Orne, elbows on the arms of the chair, hands limply hanging
from lax wrists.
“It's this way!” Mr. Orne started, briskly, with upraised forefinger;
but he shook his head and put down his hand. He turned away. “I forgot.
You ordered plain facts.”
“You hold on!” Britt thundered. “How do you dare to tell me that you can
go out and in fifteen minutes come back with information of that sort?”
Mr. Orne glanced reproachfully from his detractor to the clock; he had
not the same reasons as Mr. Britt had for finding the hours of the day
fleeting. “Mr. Britt, a man doesn't need to make a hoss of himself and
eat a whole head of cabbage by way of sampling it.” Britt winced at the
random simile. “It's the same way with me in sampling politics, being an
expert. Your case, to start with, had me gy-poogled and--”
“English language, I tell you!” Britt emphasized his stand as a stickler
by a tremendous thump of his fist on the desk.
Orne jabbed his finger back and forth from his breast to the direction
of Britt, with the motions of the “eeny, meeny” game. “I was mistook.
You was mistook. I figgered on your money. So did you. I figgered you'd
go strong in politics like you had in _finance_. So did you.” Mr. Orne
put his hand up sidewise and sliced the air. “Nothing doing in politics,
Mr. Britt! You can cash in on straight capital, but there ain't a cent
in the dollar for you when you try to collect in what you 'ain't ever
invested. A man don't have to be so blamed popular after he is well
settled in politics; but you've got to have some real human-nature
assets to get a start with. You've got to depend on given votes--not the
boughten ones.”
“Orne, you're rasping me mighty hard.”
“You demanded facts--not hair-oil talk.”
“Then the facts are--” Britt hesitated.
“Facts is that, by the usual arrangement in the legislative class of
towns, Egypt had the choice this year. You won't get a vote in Egypt.”
“But the men who come in here--” Again Britt halted in a sentence.
“The men who come in here and sit down at that desk and pick up a pen
to sign a note have fixed on their grins before they open your door. But
the men who get into a voting booth alone with God and a lead pencil,
they'll jab down on to that ballot a cross for t'other candidate that'll
look like a dent in a tin dipper. Somebody else might lie to you about
the situation, Mr. Britt. I've done consid'able lying in politics, too.
But when I'm hired by a man to deliver goods--and same has been paid
for--my word can be depended on.”
Britt turned around and looked into the depths of his desk, staring
vacantly. His rounded shoulders suggested grief. Orne settled his wallet
more firmly, pressing on the outside of the buffalo coat. His face again
sagged with sympathy. “Mr. Britt, it's only like what most of us do in
this life--take smiles without testing 'em with acid--take words-current
for what they seem to be worth, and then we do test 'em out and--”
Britt whirled and broke on this fatuous preachment with an oath. Mr.
Orne thriftily withheld further sympathy; it was plainly wasted.
“Orne, I hope it's about due to revise the New Testament again. I
want to send in some footnotes for that page where Judas Iscariot is
mentioned. I want a full roster of his descendants to appear; I'll
furnish the voting list of this town. Get out of here and pass that
word.”
But a yelp from the candidate halted the departing Orne at the
door. “Seeing that you have my ten dollars and are full of political
information, perhaps you'll throw in free of charge who it is this town
is going to send to the legislature!”
“Only one thing has been decided on so far,” returned the politician.
“And, having no desire to rub it in, I'll let you draw your own
conclusions.” Mr. Orne had the door open; he dodged out and slammed the
door shut.
It was promptly opened--so promptly that Mr. Britt was fairly caught at
what he was about. He was standing up, shaking both fists at the door
and cursing roundly. Vona was gazing at him in alarm.
“I was waiting in the corridor, sir, till you--till your business--till
Mr. Orne went away,” she stammered.
“Come in!” muttered Britt, even more disconcerted than the girl.
Then he wished that he had told her to go away. He realized that he was
in no mood or condition to woo; the cabbage had tortured him, but this
new sort of indigestion in the very soul of him had left him without
poise or courage.
He slumped down in his chair and waved a limp hand in invitation for her
to take a seat near him. But she merely came and stood in the middle of
the room and surveyed him with an uncompromising air of business. From
the velvet toque, with just a suggestion of a coquettish cant on her
brown curls, down her healthily round cheeks, a bit flushed, above the
fur neckpiece that clasped her throat, Britt's fervent eyes strayed. And
some of the words of the Prophet's singsong monotone echoed in the empty
chambers of Britt's consciousness, “'Thou hast dove's eyes within thy
locks--thy lips are like a thread of scarlet.'”
But she was aloof. She held herself rigidly erect. Her eyes were coldly
inquiring. Those lips were set tightly. Mr. Britt had just been reaching
out for honors, and his knuckles had been rapped cruelly. He wanted to
reach out for love--and he dared not. The girl, as she stood there, was
so patently among the things he was not able to possess!
She had come into his presence with expectation keenly alert, with her
fears putting her into a mental posture of defense. She felt that she
knew just what was going to happen, and she was assuring herself that
she would be able to meet the situation. But she was not prepared for
what did happen. She did not understand Britt's mental state of that
moment. Mr. Britt, himself, did not understand. He had never been up
against conditions of that sort. He had not had time to fix his face and
his mood, as he did daily before the mirror in his bedroom. He did what
nobody had ever seen him do--what neither he nor the girl would have
predicted one minute before as among human probabilities--he broke down
and blubbered like a whipped urchin.
And after he had recovered some of his composure and was gazing up at
her again, sniffling and scrubbing his reddened eyes with the bulge
at the base of his thumb, knowing that he must say something by way
of legitimate excuse, dreading the ridicule that a girl's gossip might
bring upon him, a notion that was characteristic of Mr. Britt came
to him: he grimly weighed the idea of telling her that Files's boiled
dinner was the cause of his breakdown. However, in his weakness, his
love flamed more hotly than ever before.
“Vona, I'm so lonesome!” he gulped.
Miss Harnden had entered behind her shield, nerved like a battling
Amazon. She promptly lowered that shield and became all woman, with a
woman's instinctive sympathetic understanding, but womanlike, she took
the opportunity to introduce for her own defense a bit of guile with her
sympathy. “I quite understand how you feel about the loss of Mrs. Britt,
sir. And I'm glad because you remain so loyal to her memory.”
Mr. Britt, like a man who had received a dipperful of cold water in the
face, backed away from anything like a proposal at that unpropitious
moment. But in all his arid nature he felt the need of some sort of
consolation from a feminine source. “Vona, I've just had a terrible
setback,” he mourned. “There's only one other disappointment that could
be any worse--and I don't dare to think of that right now.”
Miss Harnden apprehensively proceeded to keep him away from the
prospective disappointment, dwelling on the present, asking him
solicitously what had happened.
He told her of his ambition and of what Ossian Orne had reported.
“But why should that be so very important for a man like you--to go to
the legislature--Mr. Britt?”
He opened his mouth, hankering to blurt out what he had been treasuring
as dreams whose realization would serve as an inducement to her. He had
been picturing to himself their honeymoon at the state capital, away
from the captious tongues of Egypt--how he would stalk with his handsome
bride into the dining room of the capital's biggest hotel; how she would
attract the eyes of jealous men, in her finery and with her jewels; how
she would sit in the gallery at the State House and survey him making
his bigness among the lawmakers; for some weeks he had been laboring on
the composition of a speech that he intended to deliver. But her second
dash of cold water kept him from the disclosure of his feelings. He
went on so far as to ask her if she did not think a session at the state
capital would be interesting.
“I have never thought anything about such a matter, of course, Mr.
Britt, being only a girl and not a politician.”
“But women who are there get into high society and wear fine clothes and
have a grand time, Vona.”
“It must be a tedious life,” she replied, indifferently.
“Wouldn't you like to try it?” Now that he could not offer her the grand
inducement he had planned as an essential part of his campaign of love
he sought consolation in her assurance that the prospect did not tempt
her. His hopes revived. He was reflecting that his money could buy
railroad tickets, even if he had not the popularity with which to win
votes. She shook her head promptly when he asked the question, and he
went on with his new idea. “I suppose what a girl really enjoys is to
see the world, after she has been penned up all her life in a town like
this.”
“I don't waste my time in foolish longings, Mr. Britt. In fact, I have
no time to waste on anything.” She gave him a bit of a smile. “In that
connection I'll confess that I must hurry home and help mother with some
sewing. Did you want anything especial of me?” Her smile had vanished,
and in her tone there was a clink of the metallic that was as subtly
suggestive of “On guard” as the click of a trigger.
Mr. Britt had planned upon a radiant disclosing of his
projects--expecting to be spurred in his advances by the assurance of
what he could offer her as the consort of a legislator--as high an honor
as his narrow vision could compass. She had found him cursing, had
kept him at bay, and he had already had evidence of the danger of
precipitateness in her case. And his tears made him feel foolish. His
ardor had been wet down; it took a back seat. His natural good judgment
was again boss of the situation.
“I had something on my mind--but it can wait till you're in less of a
hurry, Vona. Never neglect a mother. That's my attitude toward women.
I'm always considerate where they're concerned. It's my nature. I hope
you'll hold that in mind.”
“Yes, Mr. Britt.” She turned and hurried to the door, getting away from
a fire that was showing signs of breaking out of its smoldering brands
once more.
Britt recovered some of his courage when her back was turned. “You
haven't said anything about those verses,” he stammered.
“I think it's a beautiful way of putting aside your business cares for a
time. I'm taking them home to read to mother.”
He marched to the window and watched her as long as she was in sight.
Then he glowered on such of the Egyptians as passed to and fro along
the street on their affairs. He muttered, spicing his comments with
profanity. The girl's disclaimer of personal interest in Britt's
ambitions did not soften his rancorous determination to make the voters
of Egypt suffer for the stand they had taken--suffer to the bitter limit
to which unrelenting persecution could drive them. He gritted his teeth
and raved aloud. “From now on! From now on! Anything short of murder to
show 'em! And as for that girl--if there's somebody--”
Britt stopped short of what that rival might expect, but his expression
indicated that the matter was of even more moment than his affair with
the voters of the town.