AND PHARAOH'S HEART WAS HARDENED
By the wiles of Wagg and a soap diet Frank Vaniman had been able to
secure his modest slice of God's sunlight.
There was aplenty of that sunshine in Egypt. It flooded the bare
hills and the barren valleys; there were not trees enough to trig the
sunlight's flood with effective barriers of shade.
Tasper Britt walked out into it from the door of Files's tavern.
He had just been talking to the landlord about the tavern diet. His
language was vitriolic. Even Vaniman could not have used more bitter
words to express his detestation for soap as a comestible.
Britt's heat in the matter, the manner in which he had plunged into
the diatribe all of a sudden, astonished Mr. Files tremendously. Britt
seemed to be acting out a part, he was so violent. Usually, Britt did
not waste any of the heat in his cold nature unless he had a good
reason for the expenditure. There seemed to be something else than mere
dyspepsia concerned, so Files thought. He followed Mr. Britt and called
to him from the door. Britt had stopped to light his cigar.
“I've had my say. I'm all done here. Let that end it,” declared the
departing guest.
There were listeners, the usual after-dinner loafers of the tavern's
purlieus. Mr. Britt did not seem to mind them. He even looked about, as
if to make sure of their numbers.
“All you needed to do was to complain in a genteel way, and I would have
been just as genteel in rectifying,” pleaded Files.
“The people of this town are still saying that I'm a hard man. If that's
so, I'm waking up to the reason for it--your grub has petrified me.
My real friends have noticed it.” Here was more of Britt's unwonted
garrulity about his private concerns. “Some of those friends have taken
pity on me. I have been invited to board with the Harnden family.”
Mr. Britt did not look around to note the effect of that piece of news.
He gazed complacently up into the sunshine.
He made quite a figure--for Egypt--as he stood there. Mr. Britt had
“togged out.” His toupee, when he first flashed it, had signified much.
But the manner in which he had garbed himself for summer was little less
than hardihood, considering the sort of a community in which he
lived. He was “a native.” The style of his attire declared that he was
completely indifferent to any comments by his townsmen--and such a trait
exposed in a New England village revealed more fully than his usurious
habits the real callousness of the Britt nature. There was not a man in
sight who did not have patches either fore or aft, or both! Mr. Britt
wore a light, checked suit with a fitted waist, garishly yellow shoes,
a puff tie of light blue, and a sailor straw with a sash band. He was
a peacock in a yard full of brown Leghorns. But nobody laughed at Mr.
Britt. Nobody in Egypt felt like laughing at anything, any more. They
were accepting Britt, in his gorgeous plumage, as merely another strange
item in the list of the signs and wonders that marked the latter days in
Egypt.
More tawdry than ever appeared Prophet Elias's robe in that sunshine,
though his umbrella did seem to comport better with the season. He stood
in front of Usial's home. For a long time he had been keeping his tongue
off the magnate of the town. For some weeks he had been away somewhere.
To those who indulgently asked where he had been he replied tartly that
he had volunteered as a scapegoat for the woes and sins of Egypt, had
gone in search of a wilderness, and had come back because all other
wildernesses were only second-rate affairs compared with the town from
which he had started.
The Prophet seemed to feel that the appearance of Mr. Britt required
comment. He raised his voice and made that comment:
“'And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field,
how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto
you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
these.'”
The Prophet bestowed a momentary benefit on gloomy Egypt--the listeners
did manage to crease their countenances with grins; Britt surveyed those
grins before he turned his attention to Elias. But all he did turn was
his attention--silent, bodeful, malicious scrutiny. The onlookers were
considerably surprised by Britt's silence; they wondered what controlled
his tongue; but they were not in doubt on one point--every man of them
knew that when Tasper Britt wore that expression it meant that he
had settled upon the method of his revenge in the case of one who had
offended him.
After a few moments Britt turned from his stare at the Prophet and
dropped what was nigh to being a bombshell; it was more effective
because it had nothing to do with the matter in hand.
“Listen, fellow townsmen! We all know that we ought to put our shoulders
to the wheel and do something for poor Egypt. I propose to start off.”
He pointed to the old Britt mansion. “I'm going to tear down my house.”
The men of Egypt goggled at him.
“Aye! And start off with it?” queried the Prophet. “Good riddance!”
But Mr. Britt was not troubling himself about the mouthings of Elias.
“I shall put a crew on it to-morrow. A city contractor will arrive here
this afternoon with equipment and men. But he can also use all the local
men who want to work. All who will pitch in can hire with him at the
regular scale of wages. As soon as the site is cleared I shall start
work on a new house. The plans are drawn. I have them here.”
He snapped the rubber bands off a roll which he carried under his arm.
He exhibited a watercolor facade elevation, stretching his arms wide and
holding the paper in front of his face. The men came crowding around.
They saw the drawing of a pretentious structure with towers and
porticoes. Britt, holding the architect's broad sheet so that his
features were hidden, explained the details of his project in regard to
rooms and grounds. There was a hateful expression on the hidden face;
it was the face of a man who hoped he was stirring jealous envy in those
whom he wished to punish.
“It will be a mansion to the queen's taste, when you get it done,”
observed one man; he took advantage of the fact that Britt could not see
him and winked at a neighbor. But if the man hoped to get a rise out of
the builder in regard to a possible queen, he was disappointed.
Another citizen was more venturesome: “I'm taking it for granted that
you don't intend to keep old-bach hall in a house like that, Tasper!”
Britt took down the shield. He displayed a countenance of bland
satisfaction. “I don't think I'll be allowed to do it,” he retorted,
answering jest with jest. “You know what women are when they see
a good-looking house needing a mistress.” He rolled the paper up
carefully. “And now, talking of something sensible, I hope you're going
to turn out in good numbers when that contractor begins to hire. And
pass the word!”
Nobody showed much enthusiasm. One man with a querulous mouth suggested:
“It will seem like helping waste money, tearing down a stand of
buildings that ain't in any ways due to be scrapped; I ain't sure but
what it will seem like a worse waste of money, building a palace in a
town like this. Don't you expect to be taxed like Sancho?”
“Until we get some kind of legislation or court action to make our town
acts legal, the taxation question isn't worrying me much,” said Britt,
grimly. “I'll take my chances along with the rest of you on getting an
act allowing us to compound with creditors.”
“Probably can be arranged,” said a man with the malice against the
usurer that prevailed in the oppressed town. “We're sending a good man
to the next legislature.”
But Britt, in that new mood of his, was refusing to be baited. He began
to look about. “Where is that person who calls himself a Prophet?”
The others joined with Britt in making a survey of the landscape. Nobody
had been paying any attention to Elias, whose voice had been stilled
since the one-sided affair with Britt.
“There he is,” announced a man.
The Prophet was patrolling. He was marching to and fro in front of
Britt's house. Then he walked in through a gap in Britt's fence and went
to the house and peered in at one of the windows. He had lowered and
folded his big umbrella and carried it under his arm.
“I call on all of you to note what he did then,” called Britt. “He has
been doing that lately.”
The Prophet returned to the road. Then he seemed to be attacked by
another idea. He went back through the gap in the fence and peered in at
another window.
“I repeat, he has been doing that. I was getting ready to take proper
measures to handle him. Something better than talking back to a lunatic!
But I didn't reckon I'd have such good luck as this! Twelve men right
here for my witnesses! Look hard at him, men!”
They did look, though they did not comprehend what Britt's excited
insistence signified. He pulled out a notebook and pencil and handed it
to the nearest man. “Mark down two! Mark it down--and all of you take
due notice.”
The Prophet returned to the highway and came slowly pacing along toward
the group.
“All of you saw, did you? All of you ready to bear witness?” demanded
the magnate.
He stepped out in front of Elias when the latter came near. Britt shook
the roll of drawings under the Prophet's nose. “Listen here, my man! I
didn't bother to talk to you a few minutes ago. Now I'm talking. You've
been a vagabond in this town for a long time. The only thing that has
protected you from the law in such cases made and provided has been the
roof of a man who ought to be a tramp along with you. Right now, before
the eyes of a dozen citizens, you have committed two separate and
distinct breaches of the law. You have trespassed on my property. In
the past I have sent men to jail for sixty days for one offense of that
sort. On my complaint, backed by these witnesses, you'll see sixty days
on one case--and I'll have you re-arrested on the other count the moment
you step foot out of the jail.” He paused.
“Yes?” said the Prophet, mildly inquiring.
“I'm a fair man, and I call the attention of these witnesses to what I
say now. I'll give you a chance. Walk out of this town and stay out, and
I'll not prosecute.”
The Prophet shook his head.
“Do you refuse to go?”
For a man who dealt so exclusively in texts, the Prophet was rather
vulgarly blunt when he replied, “You bet!”
Britt received that manner of retort with the air of a man who had been
tunked between the eyes. It was some moments before he could go
on. “Don't you realize what the judge will say when I show up your
willfulness?”
The Prophet was even more amazing in his new manners. He stuck out his
tongue, put his thumb to his nose, and wriggled his fingers.
“Well, I'll be condemned!” Britt gasped.
“Sure! When all the evidence is in about you!”
The magnate of Egypt lowered the roll that he had brandished so
constantly. After a few moments of silent challenge with the eyes, he
turned and walked away.
But he heard the mumble of men's laughter behind him, and his anger
and the determination not to be put down in this style in his own town
helped him to get back some of his self-possession. He whirled on his
heels and strode to the enigma of Egypt.
“Who are you, anyway?” he demanded.
But Prophet Elias was his usual self once more. He had assumed that air
which a practical man like Britt found an aggravating, teasing pose or
a kind of lunacy with which common sense could not cope. Elias slowly
spread his umbrella. He stood beneath it and declaimed:
“'And Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh; and the
Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, so that he would not let the children of
Israel go out of his land.'”
“You let me tell you something! There's one man going out of this
land mighty sudden--and he's going to the county jail in charge of a
constable.”
When Britt started away that time he kept on going. He went to the
office of Trial-Justice Bowman and swore out a warrant. A constable
served it and the Prophet was haled before the justice. On the evidence
presented, Bowman sentenced a person known as “the Prophet Elias” to
serve sixty days in the county jail. Within an hour after the Prophet's
defiance he was on his way with the constable in a side-bar buggy.
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.