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 assumed
then; he looked hurt; he had been very successful with that expression
in the past. “Any farseeing 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 cocky
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 God 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 sanctity 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 billycock 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 dickered 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 nobody 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. Nobody had ever heard of
a peach tree growing among the rocks of Egypt. On the other hand, nobody
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 attitude 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
god 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 attitude.
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 passed
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.
Mr. Harnden did a lot of talking that evening. Every now and then, as if
to fortify his optimistic courage, he declared, “After all, business
is business--and the trend of the times is to make the most of
opportunity.”
Britt was showing interest in what Harnden was saying--interest and
satisfaction, too. But all at once that interest was diverted and the
smooth satisfaction was wrinkled by a scowl. Britt swore roundly and
struggled up from his chair.
Prophet Elias was passing along the street. He flapped his hand in a
greeting contemptuously indifferent and went on his way toward Usial's
cot.
“Oh! I was intending to tell you about him,” avowed Mr. Harnden, “but
I've had more important things to talk over!”
Britt gave to this blunderheaded news purveyor the tail end of the
malevolent stare that he had been bestowing on the Prophet's back.
“I heard about it when I was over to the shire town. A city lawyer
showed up the other day and deposited cash bonds and got out a writ,
and got Elias out, too, and the case has been appealed. Looks like the
Prophet has footed it back here again. But I suppose you can arrest him
on that other case of trespass.”
Britt did not show especial alacrity in starting anything else in the
case of the new arrival in town. He sat down. “Who was the lawyer? Who
sent him?”
“Guess he didn't say. Let the money do the talking for him. And money
can talk! Now, as I was saying, to get back to our regular business,
it's up to you to name the ones that Dowd will tackle. Say, where are
you going?”
Britt was on his feet and moving rapidly. “Somewhere to do some thinking
away from that carpet-loom, shuttle-tongued, infernal mouth of yours!”
Mr. Harnden, astonished and much hurt, watched the usurer till he
tramped into Britt Block.
But Mr. Harnden had too much important business of his own on his mind
to use time in wondering how a Prophet had managed to get out of jail.