Читать книгу A Canadian Bankclerk - J. P. Buschlen - Страница 10

Miraculous as it seemed to Evan, the ledgers were finally made to balance. Porter lengthened his stride a foot and walked once more well back on his heels—just as if his bad work had not been responsible for a three days' dizzy mixup. A certain Saturday afternoon came round.

"I guess we can do without you till Monday noon," said the manager, over Nelson's shoulder, as the latter pondered over an unwritten money-order.

It was welcome news to Evan. He had come to feel, however, that his presence was indispensable to the well-being of the collection register and other books of record. It appeared to him that in one afternoon and a forenoon the hand of any other but himself must irrevocably "ball" the junior post.

"You mean you don't want me to drive back Sunday night?" he asked Mr. Robb, doubtingly.

"That's what. You'd better take all the holidays you can get now, Nelson; you'll be tied tighter than wax-end before you're in the business long."

Evan seemed still perplexed.

"Who'll take out the drafts Monday morning, Mr. Robb?" he asked, seriously.

The manager looked at him with an expression half humor and half pity.

"Do you suppose," he said with a grin, "that the merchants will be very badly offended at not getting these bills at the earliest moment?"

Evan smiled. Robb still stood beside him.

"Evan! ....."

He looked up, surprised to hear himself addressed so familiarly by the manager; but the latter was speaking:

".... Remember this: extra holidays never save you labor. The work is always waiting for your return, piling up through every hour of your pleasure."

Mr. Robb sighed and walked into his office, leaving the new junior to absorb another impression. The words spoken did impress Nelson. He sat gazing before him at the wall, wondering why the manager was so friendly toward him and so cynical on matters of business. From looking at nothingness his eyes gradually focused on a calendar, and at an "X" mark in pencil thereon. The mark indicated the day when he would make a trip home to tell about "the world": that day had come.

With a smile he laid aside the money-order he had been examining and began straightening up his desk, whistling as he did so. Castle, out in his cash, was annoyed.

"Will you kindly stop that whistling," he commanded in his high tones.

"Excuse me," said the junior quickly, "I wasn't thinking."

"Well you want to think," returned Castle.

"No you don't," called Watson; "you'll get h—l if you dare to think. As the hymn says, 'Trust and obey'—but for heaven's sake don't think. Now I think—"

"Shut up, Bill," interposed Perry, "I've been up this column twice already."

Bill opened his eyes and leered down on the savings man.

"Look who's here," he said, facetiously. "Why, it's the new ledger keeper; the great-grandson of Burroughs, and inventor of the new system of adding—the system which says: Go up a column three times and if the totals agree there is something wrong; mistrust them; get the other man to add it."

Porter scowled. Castle could scarcely repress a smile, but he dug his nose into a bunch of dirty money, and managed to turn his thoughts to microbes and other sober subjects.

Evan, his grip packed, stood apologetically behind the cage, waiting for the teller to turn around.

"What do you want?" said Castle.

"Cash this cheque, will you, please?"

A smile wavered on Watson's lip. Porter felt in his pockets. The teller grinned.

"Hardly worth while keeping that in an account," he said, with the intention of joking. It was a wonder, too, for he seldom tried to be funny with inferiors.

"I wouldn't have even that," replied Evan, "if it weren't for the account."

Bill haw-hawed.

"You're no humorist, Castle," he said.

The teller was red and white in an instant. The ledger keeper never had shown him any respect; he had called him Mister but a few times, and that was just after Bill had come from another branch. Castle was smaller than Watson and possessed an inferior personality. Bill was big and humorous—and reckless. It was the joy of his life to torment the teller; and yet he was not mean; he was not even obstreperous; he got along splendidly with the manager, and showed him respect.

The teller's anger exhausted itself inwardly. Evan still stood with his grip in his hand looking at the boys working behind their desks. He felt that he ought to bid them good-bye, but he did not like to do it individually, and it was almost as hard to say a general farewell.

"Good-bye," he called faintly from the front door. Castle did not raise his head. Porter and Bill lifted theirs, but only to grin. The manager stepped out of his office and extended his hand with a smile.

"Have a good time," he said, and whispered: "Monday night will do, if your mother kicks very hard."

"Thank you, Mr. Robb, I——"

"That's all right."

On the train Evan rejoiced. He thought of the sad day he had landed at the station of Mt. Alban with lonesomeness and misgivings; of the thrills of discouragement and homesickness that had tortured him for the first two weeks; of the blank explanations of "the porter," and ensuing jumbles of figures and bills; and of his first look at that bed above the vault. It all seemed to have happened at a remote period in his life—probably in the pre-existent land; even balance day, but three days past, was remote.

It was not in these seemingly ancient memories that Evan had his rejoicing, but in the realization that they were memories. As the train carried him buoyantly toward Hometon he recounted the accomplishments he had acquired in four or five weeks. He could add twice as rapidly as any high-school student in the average collegiate; he knew the collection register and diary; he could enter up a savings-bank passbook better than Perry—with a clearer hand and a much clearer comprehension; he could draw a draft, reckon dates of maturity without a calendar; and so on. But, what he prized most, he was familiar with a host of technical terms, used in the banking business the world over. And after buying his ticket and purchasing a hat-pin for his sister, Lou, he had two dollars of his own money in his pocket. That would buy up most of the ice-cream in Hometon, for one evening anyway.

Such thoughts and reflections as these kept Evan interested until the brakeman shouted "Hometon next!" Then a lofty and exulting happiness took the place of interest. He looked on the approaching spires and humble cupolas of his home town with an expression possibly similar to that of an eagle in flight over a settlement of earthy creatures. He felt a sudden loyalty for Mt. Alban, and suspected that it would be part of his professionalism to maintain the honor of his business-town in Hometon.

The bankclerk straightened his back and marched down the aisle of the train. Alfred Castle and the interest table seemed a thousand miles away. Two happy faces smiled at him from the station platform. Frankie Arling and Sister Lou ran up to him.

"Gee, but isn't he a sport?" said Lou, sweeping him in from tip to toe, and addressing herself to her companion.

"Yes, indeed," laughed Frankie, taking his raincoat from his arm, and throwing it over her own. Lou seized his suitcase.

He submitted to the hold-up with a kind of dignity; looked about him with the air of a tourist; and paid less attention to the questions of the girls than he might have done.

"The old town's just the same," he soliloquized aloud.

Lou was speaking to a passer-by and did not hear the remark. Frankie had been paying better attention. She smiled and looked into his face coyly.

"Does it seem so very long since you left, Evan?"

"Well—I don't know, Frank." He regarded her critically. Lou was attending now.

"I expected to find you with a moustache," she said.

The remark fitted so well into Frankie's thoughts it amused her very much. Both girls laughed to each other without restraint. In fact, they were not very sedate for the main street of Hometon.

Mrs. Nelson had the house as clean and cheerful as mother and a summer's day can make a home. She sat on the front verandah with the material for a pair of pyjamas on her white-aproned lap. Long before the three youngsters were within hailing distance she waved the light flannelette above her head.

Evan's kiss made the mother blush. There never had been much demonstration of affection in the family: there had been no excuse for it. But now matters were different. Evan, too, was a trifle embarrassed.

"Well, I like that," said Lou; "he never kissed me, mother!"

He caught his sister and bestowed a gentle bite on her cheek; she squirmed and would not let him away without a conventional kiss. When he had satisfied her, Lou glanced at the brother and then at Frankie.

"Someone else to be smacked," she said, stopping Frankie's flight by winding her arms around the twisting waist.

Evan was ready to turn the whole affair into a joke, and shouting "I'm game," he caught Frankie and pressed his lips to hers.

Again Mrs. Nelson blushed. So did Miss Arling.

"Gee!" cried Lou; "I just thought that's what the bank did for fellows."

Evan was thus acknowledged a regular bankclerk, and the laugh he vented was well tinctured with exultation.

Then began a series of questions and answers, recitations and interruptions, commendations and exaggerations. For two hours the mother, the son and the two wide-eyed girls listened and looked, or asked and received. The expressions Evan used puzzled them, but he shook his head deprecatingly when they asked for definitions which he knew would be unintelligible to them. He had not been talking with them long before he discovered how to interest them—by saying mysterious things. From the moment of his discovery he revelled in the clerical technical phrases that he had picked up at the Mt. Alban office, and the women justified the assertion of that circus man who said: "Humanity likes to be humbugged."

Lou, with a new and sudden affection for housework, insisted on getting the supper. Mrs. Nelson, of course, could not consent to it on this the night of her banker's return; nobody's hands but her own must lay the cloth and mix the salad. But Lou was strangely insistent, and the upshot of the competition was co-operation. Evan was left on the verandah with Frankie.

No doubt there is a time for everything. That was the time for Evan to tell how lonesome he had been.... And this is the time to make a brief sketch of Miss Arling. Her face was sweet, then it was thoughtful; her eyes were blue-green, bright. She looked not unlike Love's incarnation. She bore a strong resemblance to a baby. In short, she was—what her best friends called her—a dear.

"You don't know how I have missed you, Frank," said Evan, and when she gave him a scrutinizing look, he hurriedly added: "a fellow gets so lonesome, you know."

"Do you like the bank, Evan?" she asked, fencing.

"You bet. A fellow gets such a good insight into—things."

"You were a dandy at school," she observed seriously.

He eyed her suspiciously. He was no longer a school-boy. He repeated a remark he had heard in the office:

"If a fellow goes to school all his life he misses the education of business. That's how it is so many professional men fall down when it comes to collecting accounts."

Frankie regarded him with a smile in which considerable admiration shone. She was just a girl of seventeen.

"I suppose it must be nice to make your own living," she said, and, after thinking a moment, "awfully nice!"

"You bet. I got tired of seeing Dad come home for meals all tuckered out, to find me playing ball on the lawn or reading literature on the verandah."

He cast his eyes toward Main Street. The village bell announced the evening meal, and a familiar figure walked toward the home of George Nelson, village merchant.

"There he comes, Frankie," said Evan, unconsciously sighing; "that step will always remind me of summer evenings and studious noon hours."

The bankclerk felt a sudden desire to work hard and repay his father for the consideration shown him at school. The village merchant would have been willing to help his boy through any college in the country, and the boy knew it. He felt proud of his start in business, of the paltry two dollars in his pocket, as he watched his father approach.

Mr. Nelson waved his hat when he saw Evan on the verandah; and when he came up,—

"Hey," he laughed, "it's a wonder you wouldn't call into a fellow's store and say good-day."

Evan shook hands heartily, smiling into the blue eyes that had more than once cowed him with a glance, when he was performing some ridiculous feat of boyhood.

"I understand," said the father, before Evan could make an excuse; "it's up to Ma. I'm surprised she leaves you alone out here with a young lady."

Perceiving the effect of his remark on Frankie, George Nelson laughed merrily and pinched the girl's cheek.

Soon the glad family was seated at a supper table, Mrs. Nelson's table—that is description enough. Frankie knew she was not an intruder. She was there as Lou's companion, not as Evan's sweetheart. She knew Evan wanted her to be there, her mother knew it, his mother knew it, everybody knew it. The whole town knew it. Things might as well be done in the open, in Hometon, for they would out anyway.

"How's business, Dad?" asked Evan, in quite a business tone.

"Oh, just the same. We continue to buy butter for twenty-five cents and sell it retail at twenty-three cents. Joe breaks about the same number of eggs a day, and John is still good opposition. Well—how do you like the bank?"

"Fine," said Evan immediately; "the manager says he is going to push me along."

"Isn't that just splendid," exclaimed the mother, joyously.

"That depends," said Mr. Nelson, mischievously, "what is meant by being pushed along. If it means a move some hundreds of miles away——"

Mrs. Nelson sighed after vainly trying to smile. She was singularly quiet for a while. Her husband was enjoying himself immensely. He was an optimist, his wife inclined to pessimism. George Nelson believed in making the best of things that had already happened and making nothing of things to come until they came. Caroline, his wife, lived a great many of her troubles in advance. At the same time, the father was as "sentimental" as the mother in the teeth of happenings. He could suffer as much beneath a smile as she could behind tears. Encouraging the boy, however, was making the best of matters, and Mr. Nelson was going to do his part.

"Perhaps it's just as well you did quit school, Evan," he said cheerfully; "they say the new principal isn't up to much."

After that the conversation alternated between school and the bank, and Evan was enabled to gather valuable material for the institution of comparisons. He launched out in the direction of a bank and kicked back-water schoolward. He managed so well no one had the heart to duck him; his friends had compassion on him in his young enthusiasm. But in spite of the consent silence is supposed to lend, Evan felt that he was scarcely convincing. An atmosphere of good old days was thrown about him; Frankie seemed to be dropping suggestions continually that took him back to the classroom, where Literature and History charmed, or upon the ball field, where Mike Malone swung his long leg and his barnyard boot. A little opposition would have given the bankclerk a keener interest in the conversation; the reiteration of "yes" seemed to make him doubt his own arguments.

But Evan was not to be disheartened by imaginings. He used more of his technical talk on the "Dad," though with less effect than he had observed on the women, and, as a sort of clincher, divulged a little of the bank's business. The father took an interest there.

"Do you mean to say they've got deposits amounting to that?" he said, postponing a bite.

Mrs. Nelson lighted up. Evan was coming out.

"Isn't it grand," she cried, "to think your bank is so strong, Evan. Just think of all those deposits."

"Humph!" grunted the father, "and a fellow can't get a loan to save his neck."

He stole a look at his son, but Evan was not familiar with loans, yet. His first business in that direction was going to be done with Watson, a few days later. Mr. Nelson's hint affecting the management of a bank passed over Evan's head, for Evan was a clerk, not a banker. When it came to actual banking the father knew much more than our banker did, but his knowledge was not comprehensible to the boy, much less to Mrs. Nelson. The "Dad" could only eat his baked potato, look at his dish of strawberries—and trust to the future.

Saturday evening was a small triumph for Evan. He walked up and down the village street with Frankie and Lou, ravaged the refreshment parlors, chatted at every crossing with a bevy of old schoolmates, and spent an enjoyable and typically "village" night.

Sunday morning was bright, and the Nelson family was gay. The word "bank" reverberated throughout the kitchen, the dining-room and parlor, floated around the verandah, tinkled among the Chinese jingles clinking in the breeze, and bounced like a ball on the lawn. Evan was happy all forenoon. And he talked a great deal at dinner.

After dinner, though, Our Banker's mind took a business turn. He thought of what the manager had said to him about work piling up and waiting for the clerk. While he sat for a few moments alone on the verandah he mentally sorted over a bunch of bills, entered them up wrong, heard Castle's squawking voice, and eventually yawned over a heap of mail. He found several envelopes returned from wrong banks and was (still mentally) expecting a memo from head office about them.

His father came quietly out of the house and took a chair beside him, driving away his routine ruminations.

"Evan," he said seriously, "I had a talk with your old teacher not long ago and he said it was a shame for you to quit school just when you did. He said you should have got your matric. at least, so that if ever you tired of the bank you could jump right into college. Now, if ever you feel like quitting, remember I'll be only too glad to send you back to school."

Those words had an effect exactly the contrary to what was intended. Evan felt the force of his father's generosity and unselfishness; he was strengthened in his resolve to be independent; not only independent, but a help to his father.

"No, Dad," he said; "I'm very fond of bank work, and I know I'll succeed."

Both encouragement and discouragement had the effect of spurring Evan on. There was no hope for him: he must go in and play the game—or, rather, fight the fight—to a finish. Then he would know what others knew but could not tell him; what Sam Robb knew and would have been happy to make every prospective bankclerk understand.

In spite of himself and his surroundings Evan felt the old homesickness creeping over him Sunday night. He had decided to take the first train on Monday back to work; he told himself that the hardest way was the best way, and he sought a short cut to success. After church Frankie found it difficult to elicit cheerful words from him.

The two strolled along a side street. Those dear old Ontario villages and towns where the boys and girls walk on Sunday nights along tree-darkened ways, how long will they listen to the repetitions of lovers? Evan's and Frankie's parents had said the same "foolish" things to each other that Evan and Frankie were now saying, and on the very same street. History repeats, but not with the accuracy of Love.

"Some day I'll come home a manager, Frankie," he was saying, "and then you and I will get married."

"Oh, I hope so," she answered.

She went to bed that night with a happy young heart, and Evan retired feeling sure he loved and would some day marry Frankie Arling.