Read Ebook: When Egypt Went Broke: A Novel by Day Holman

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Ebook has 1943 lines and 83032 words, and 39 pages

The aspect was not uninviting, seen under the charitable cloak of February's snow, sun-touched by the freshly risen luminary, the white expanses glinting; all the rocks and ledges and the barren shapes were covered. But under summer's frank sunlight Egypt was as disheartening a spectacle as a racked old horse, ribs and hip bones outthrust, waiting for the knacker's offices.

There were men in Egypt--men whose reverses had put them in a particularly ugly mood--who said out loud in places where Britt could not hear them that the money-grabber could not get much more than twelve-per-cent blood out of the nag he had ridden for so long, and might as well set knife to neck and put the town out of its misery.

Right behind Britt, as he stood on the porch, was a sheaf of yellowed papers nailed to the side of the tavern. Nobody in Egypt bothered to look at the papers; all the taxpayers knew what they were; the papers were signed by the high sheriff of the county and represented that all the real estate of Egypt had been sold over and over for taxes and had been bid in by the town as a municipality--and there the matter rested. Egypt, in other words, had been trying to lift itself by the bootstraps and was not merely still standing on the ground, but was considerably sunk in the hole that had been dug by the boot heels while Egypt was jumping up and down. Mr. Britt was not troubled by the sight of the yellowed papers; he owned mortgages and pulled in profit by the legal curiosities known as "Holmes notes"--leeches of particular drawing power. Mr. Britt did not own real estate. Egypt, in its financial stress and snarl of litigation, was a wonderful operating field for a man with loose money and a tight nature.

From far swamps the whack of axes sounded. Mr. Britt knew that men were cutting hoop poles and timber for shooks; Egypt earned ready money with which to pay interest, getting out shooks and hoop poles. That occupation had been the resource of the pioneers, and the descendants stuck to the work, knowing how to do it better than anything else. There was not enough soil for farming on a real money-making scale. The old sheep, so cynics said, were trained to hold the lambs by their tails and lower them head downward among the rocks to graze. Poor men usually own dogs. But dogs would not live long in Egypt, the cynics went on to assert; the dogs ran themselves to death hustling over the town line to find dirt enough to bury a bone.

Mr. Britt could see his statue in the cemetery.

Down the street was a one-story brick building, the only brick structure in the town. Set into the front of this building was a replica of the statue in the cemetery. Britt had secured special rates by ordering two statues from the stonecutter. Britt possessed vanity. He had hidden it, begrudging the cost of gratifying it. The crust of his nature, hardening through the years, had pressed upon that vanity. The statues, his refurbished beard, and his rehaired head had relieved the pressure somewhat, but the vanity was still sore. In his new mood he was dreading a blow on that sore spot. He realized what kind of a grudge he was carrying around. A vague sense of an unjust deal in life is more dangerous to the possessor than an acute and concrete knowledge of specific injury. The vagueness causes it to be correlated to insanity. Britt, putting his belated aspirations to the test, hoped that nobody would presume to hit on that sore spot. He knew that such an adventure might be dangerous for the person or persons who went up against him.

He buttoned his overcoat, settled the cigar rigidly into one corner of his mouth, stared with approval at the stone image of himself in the facade of Britt Block, and walked to the edge of the porch.

Across the street sat a little building above the door of which was a sign inscribed, "Usial Britt, Shoemaker." That it was a dwelling as well as a shop was indicated when a bare and hairy arm was thrust from a side window and the refuse in a smoking iron spider was dumped upon the snow. Simultaneously it was shown that more than one person tenanted the building: a man, bareheaded, but with a shaggy mat of roached hair that served in lieu of a hat, issued from the door. The wanton luxuriance of the hair would have stirred envy in any baldheaded man; but Tasper Britt exhibited a passion that was more virulent than envy.

The man who came forth was "Prophet Elias." It was the newcomer, the religious fanatic, the exhorter against oppression of the people by usury, the fearless declaimer who named Tasper Britt in diatribe and was setting the folks by the ears.

The Prophet's morning greeting did not make for amity. He stood straight and pointed in turn to the visible statues and then to Tasper Britt, in person. "Baal, and the images of Baal!" he shouted. "Stone, all three!"

Then he stepped from the door and spread a prodigiously big umbrella--an umbrella striped in dingy colors and of the size of the canopies seen over the drivers of delivery wagons. The employment of such a shield from the sun in midwinter indicated that the Prophet was rather more than eccentric; his garb conveyed the same suggestion. He wore a frayed purple robe that hung on his heels when he came striding across the street. On a broad band of cloth that once had been white, reaching from shoulder to waist, diagonally across his breast, were the words, "The Light of the World."

Tasper Britt surveyed him with venomous gaze as he advanced. But Britt shifted his stare and put additional venom into the look he gave a man who came to the door and stood there, leaning against the jamb and surveying the scene with a satisfied grin. There was no need of the name "Britt" above his head to proclaim his kinship with the man who stood on the tavern porch. The beard of the Britt in the door was gray, and his head was bald. But he was Tasper Britt, in looks, as Britt unadorned ought to have been. There was something like subtle reproach in his sticking to nature as nature had ordained. And the folks of Egypt had been having much to say about Usial Britt putting this new touch of malice into the long-enduring feud between twin brothers--even though he merely went on as he had been going, bald and gray. But because Usial had taken to going about in public places wherever Tasper appeared, and unobtrusively got as near his brother as possible on those occasions, and winked and pointed to himself and suggested "Before using!" the malice was apparent.

Usial, in the door, stroked his smooth poll complacently and grinned.

Tasper, on the porch, shook his fist.

Prophet Elias marched close to the porch and struck an attitude. "Hear ye! Hath not Job said, 'The triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment'?"

A man who was humped over a sawbuck in a nearby yard straightened up and began to pay strict attention. A driver halted a sled loaded with unshaved hoop poles, and listened. The commercial drummer came out on the porch.

"Look here, you crazy coot, haven't I given you fair warning about tongue-whaling me in public?" demanded the man who was pilloried.

"'Behold, all they that are incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded,'" quoted the Prophet, pounding his fist against the lettered breast. "'They shall be as nothing; and they that strive with thee shall perish.'"

Mr. Britt leaped off the porch, thrust the Prophet from his path, and strode across the street toward the man in the door. The brother did not lose his smile. He maintained his placid demeanor even when an angry finger slashed through the air close under his nose.

"I never intended to pass speech with you again, you renegade," stormed Tasper. "But I'm talking to-day for a town that I propose to represent in the legislature, and I won't have it shamed any longer by a lunatic that you're harboring."

Usial Britt lifted his eyebrows. "The legislature?" He puckered his lips and whistled a few bars of "Hail to the Chief."

Candidate Britt waggled the monitory finger more energetically. "You are sheltering and ste'boying on a crazy man who is making the rest of the people in this town crazy. If they hadn't grown loony they'd ride him out over the line on a rail."

The Prophet had arrived at Britt's shoulder. "'But God has chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.'"

"I don't guarantee my guest's brains," said the Britt in the door, "but I do vouch for the correctness of his memory when it comes to the matter of Gospel quotations. And a cracked record doesn't always spoil a good tune."

"I'll have him in the lockup as a tramp, or on the poor farm as a lunatic."

"You mean, that's where you would have him if the shelter of my roof didn't give him legal protection," returned Usial, calm in the face of wrath.

"'I was a stranger, and ye took me in,'" declaimed the Prophet.

"And I'm keeping you on," stated the cynical Usial, speaking for his brother's benefit, "because you're a self-operating, red-hot gad that is helping me torment yon pirate with texts after I had run out of cuss words. Go ahead, Prophet! Shoot anything. It's a poor text that will not hit him some place."

Obediently, the fanatic began to mouth Holy Writ in orotund. Tasper Britt raised his fist. But the devil himself shrinks before The Word. Britt did not strike. His face revealed his emotions; he could not bring himself to assault this fountain of sacred aphorisms.

He turned and marched away down the middle of the road, stamping hard into the snow.

One of the listeners was a man who came bearing a pair of shoes. Usial Britt took them from the man's hand. "You can have 'em to-morrow night."

"But there's only a little patch needed--"

"To-morrow night, I said. I've got other business for to-day." He went into the house and slammed the door.

The Prophet set his umbrella over his head and went away on the trail of Egypt's Pharaoh.

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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.

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."

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