_A MAN OF THE WORLD._
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.