_IN THE COUNTRY OF OUR COUSINS._
Hall's lawn was decorated with Japanese lanterns. The little Mt. Alban
boys who passed in the dusk wondered if the time would ever come in
their lives when they should be eligible for a real garden-party. Such
a wondrous condition seemed very far off, like Heaven. And the little
girls who passed peeked through the hedge, like fairies seeking
admittance to a nymph gathering. There was no music as yet, for the
evening had scarcely set in, but the tables were set and the lanterns
threw a glimmer over the flower-beds and through the trees.
The party was, ostensibly, a welcome to the newly-married couple, James
and Julia Watersea Simpson; actually it was to announce that Miss Sadie
Hall had returned from Hamilton to accept the boredom of Mt. Alban
again for a little season.
It is not for this bank story to enter upon details of that garden
party; to spy on the sons of villagers behind dark balsams devouring
cigarettes borrowed from the village cut-up; to play dictagraph to the
gossips, or to hang around where the girls are chattering. However,
there were characters at that lawn social more or less concerned in our
story, and of whom we therefore ought to make mention.
Those characters occupied a place of prominence at the function, being
seated close to Miss Hall herself. She was paying them flattering
attention.
"Mr. Perry," she said, smilingly, "who would have thought you were
going to turn out such a sport?"
Far from being offended, Porter grinned gleefully, and incidentally
wondered where the money was coming from to pay the rent of the
roadster that had brought him up to see his Hometon girl visiting in
Mt. Alban.
"Well," he replied, "I never was what you'd call a willy, eh?"
"No," said Sadie, "but--well, you were so young, you know."
Porter's "girl" was talking in a low tone with a new bank junior who
was beginning to realize what a juvenile and unromantic affair school
had been. Sadie nudged Perry.
"You want to watch out," she whispered, so that the others could hear,
"or you'll be losing your friend."
Frankie Arling blushed. The junior did too.
"N-n-no danger," he stammered, without knowing exactly what he said.
"Why no danger?" asked Miss Hall, anxious to say something interesting.
For answer the junior looked at Perry with the deference due a teller.
Porter pouted--not like a child, but like a pigeon.
"Have some ice-cream, girls," he suggested, determined to convert the
junior's respect into awe.
No one declining, the "porter" played a part long before assigned him
in the Mt. Alban bank, and brought back a tray that had cost him eighty
cents.
"Do you remember, Miss Hall," he said, to still a beating of the heart
occasioned by the admiring glances of two strange girls in the circle,
"the social we had here just two years ago?"
"Oh, yes," replied Sadie, after pretending to look backward through a
great many sumptuous entertainments; "yes."
"All the boys were here. There was Bill Watson, myself, Mr. Castle,
Nel--"
"Yes, that reminds me," interrupted Sadie, "I saw Mr. Nelson on the
street in Hamilton the other day, and met him again in a cafe. Both
times he was with--"
Sadie hesitated. Frankie was looking astonishedly at her.
"Why, Ev--Mr. Nelson hasn't been moved, has he?"
The question and the expression of voice behind it seemed to give Sadie
an idea.
"I forgot--he comes from your town, does he not, Miss Arling?"
"Yes."
"Who was he with?" asked Perry, stupidly, "anyone we know?"
"Why--yes. Hazel Morton."
Frankie's question was not answered; but now she did not care to have
it answered. She had been in Mt. Alban three days, therefore she had
heard all about the Morton girl leaving a nice home to "be in a city
where she can act as she likes,"--which, Mt. Alban females ruled, was
wickedly.
It takes a girl, and especially one of Sadie Hall's stamp, to notice
embarrassment or disappointment in another girl. Frankie was rather
silent and downcast. She never talked much at any time, but even to
Perry, with whom she was sometimes quite speechless, she seemed more
than commonly quiet during the remainder of the evening. Of course,
Porter may have been considerably on the alert.
"Is she related to him or anything?" Sadie asked Perry, on the side.
"Well--no," he hesitated; "their families are old friends, though."
"I could tell her something very interesting about him," replied Sadie;
"he's been dismissed from the bank."
"What!"
"Sh-sh! Alfred wrote me about it. And that's not the worst of
it--he's suspected of being a crook."
"For G--'s sake!" murmured Perry; and thought a while.
"Had I better tell her?" asked Sadie.
"I guess so; she'll soon find out, anyway."
Miss Hall found Frankie admiring a flower-bed, lonesomely, and
approached her with the news she had. She knew that her Alfred hated
Evan, who in his turn hated Alfred, and it was quite a satisfaction to
circulate the truth about an enemy when it was unpleasant. To give her
credit, Sadie was rather sorry she had done it, when she saw the effect
produced on Frankie.
The following day Miss Hall met the girl whom Frankie Arling, of
Hometon, had been visiting.
"Where's your friend?" she asked.
"Gone," replied the other girl. "She took it into her head to go home
on the noon train, and we couldn't coax her out of it. I think she was
lonesome."
"No doubt," replied Sadie, abstractedly.
Mrs. Nelson sat reading a letter, with tears in her eyes; another
letter lay on the table. The one she read was from a woman-friend in
Toronto. One paragraph of it puzzled Mrs. Nelson; it read: "One of the
bankboys who boards here told me that your son had been discharged from
the S---- Bank on suspicion. I think my boarder has made a mistake; he
declares it was Evan Nelson of Hometon, though. Let me hear from you,
Caroline, for I'm anxious to know that there has been a blunder."
The letter on the table was from Evan; one of those garden compositions
sent through Sam Robb. It spoke about health, a good time and good
board.
Frankie and Lou entered the kitchen where Mrs. Nelson sat in misery.
She showed them the letter from Evan and the other one from Toronto.
Frankie was silent, but Lou exclaimed:
"Why, mother! I'm surprised! Do you think for a minute that Evan
would deceive us like that?"
"I can't believe it, dear; but what am I to do?"
"There's a mistake somewhere," replied Lou; "why, even if they have
fired him it's all a mistake. 'On suspicion'--imagine! Why brother
wouldn't take a--a--"
The thought was too much for Lou. What with lonesomeness for her
brother and anger at the mere thought of anyone suspecting him, she
gave way to a June storm.
Frankie was not free from signs of lamentation, either. She filled up
more and more until there were raindrops from that quarter, too, and
Sadie Hall's story came out.
Mrs. Nelson was overcome. Why had not her boy written about the
trouble?
"Oh, Louie," she cried, "it's terrible! They suspect him of stealing!
And he's discharged! Whatever are we to do?"
Lou raised her lovely face and forced a smile.
"Mother, dear," she said, "you know what a fellow Evan is. He doesn't
want us to know about it until the thing is straightened out. It must
straighten out, because we know he isn't guilty."
Such is a sister's logic. Mrs. Nelson telephoned her husband to come
up at once. He came, and was told the news.
"Good!" he said.
"Why, George, how can you say that? They've ruined our boy."
Mrs. Nelson was taking it badly.
"Tut tut," said her husband, kindly, "don't get all worked up about it.
He'll come around. There'll be an explanation from him some of these
days. Jerusalem! but I'm glad he's out of it. I knew he'd get a
lesson. Blast the banks!"
After this mild explosion Nelson walked to the water-pail and drank a
dipper of water.
"But what's he doing in Hamilton?" asked the mother.
"That's only a fifty-cent trip from Toronto," answered Nelson; "the lad
was probably over for a boat-ride."
"Well, what's he doing now?"
"I've got no more idea than you have, Carrie. But he won't do anything
desperate, be sure of that. If he gets down-and-out he knows we're
here."
At last Mrs. Nelson was consoled. She made her husband wire Evan at
Toronto to come home. The telegraph operator surmised enough from the
telegram to invent a story; it was supplemented by whisperings from Mt.
Alban; and eventually the town gabs were wondering where Evan could
have deposited the $50,000 he stole.
Besides the telegram, George Nelson sent a letter, telling his son not
to worry, and enclosing a cheque for fifty dollars. Frankie Arling, in
her little room at home, also wrote a letter:
"Dear Evan,--We have heard that you are out of the bank. I think you
were foolish to ever go into it. There are ridiculous rumors floating
around that you were dismissed on suspicion. I know they're not true,
and everybody else does; but still we are surprised you didn't write
home something about it.
"I don't suppose Hometon matters very much to you any more. The town
is not so dull as it used to be, though. There is a new bunch of
bankboys here, and we have plenty of good times. Mr. Perry rents a car
occasionally and gives us girls a ride. He surely is a good-hearted
chap. We all like him.
"You will be surprised when I tell you that he has proposed to me. I
don't think he'll ever make much money, but he'll always be free with
what he has, and mighty good to a girl. He wants me to visit in London
during summer vacation; he lives there. If I go he says he'll see that
I meet a nice crowd. I haven't asked mother yet.
"I guess you won't be coming home for vacation this summer, now you're
out of the bank. It wouldn't be like you to come back a failure. It
seems funny that you shouldn't have got along in banking as well as
Porter: you are just as smart as he is. That fellow surprises me
sometimes, though! I've been at him to quit the bank and go into
something else. He shouldn't be proposing on six hundred dollars a
year, should he? Well, good-bye. Yours sincerely,
"FRANK."
After signing the letter Frankie dropped the pen and rested her chin on
her hands. She gazed into space until the tears rolled down her
cheeks; then she hid her face lest the looking-glass might see her.
"To think," she murmured, "that Evan sees girls like _that_!"
Girl-like, she had said nothing about Hamilton or Hazel Morton in the
letter. She wanted to wound. Perry had helped her make Evan jealous
once before. She was afraid mention of Hamilton would call forth
explanations from Evan, and she didn't want him to explain. Even
though he were innocent, she felt that she must hate him now, for she
was jealous.
While the Mt. Alban garden party was in progress Evan attended one in
New York--the Madison Square Garden party. There were no Chinese
lanterns in evidence (although there were some Chinese), and the
creatures who participated were not particularly young or care-free:
there were the burning lights of Broadway and the Square, and wretched
figures huddling on, beside, and under, the benches.
"And this is New York!" murmured Evan.
The melancholy sight fascinated him; he found it hard to leave Madison
Gardens, although the White Way called to the youth and love of gaiety
within him. He had never before seen so plainly the line of
demarcation between sunlight and shadow. The startling proximity of
riches to poverty, gladness to sadness, shocked him; he had a vague
fear of something, he did not know what. Maybe it was the readjustment
to come.
It is quite evident, from his loitering, that Evan was not worrying
about himself. He had a job, therefore he sat and pitied those who did
not have--and who did not want--work. Realizing at last that it was
folly to pity without aiding, and that he was too poor to actually aid
the wretches around him, he wandered across to Fifth Avenue and stared
in the windows of a book store.
He had come to "town" (his room was in Brooklyn) with the intention of
seeing a play, but the Madison garden party had taken away his breath,
and left him without a desire to squander money on himself, when he had
deliberately held it back from the hungry and the naked. Further
reflection brought about a reaction in his mind, and eventually he
compromised with himself by going to a ten-cent picture show.
Afterwards he took subway and surface cars back to Eastern Parkway and
found himself sitting thoughtfully in his little room.
Like a writer who gets "copy" on the streets and fixes it up in his
garret, Evan thought the environment of his room would help him to
arrange the impressions a trip to town had created, but--again like the
writer--he found his head so full of notions that he could not think,
and he understood perfectly that ideas apart from thought were poor
things. So he turned in, bidding Madison Square and memories of
Hometon good-night.
Quite early next morning he arose, fresh and eager, all vain
philosophizing gone, prepared to hold his own in a big city. New York
had not, from the moment he landed, frightened him. Like the child
that looks into the fire, he saw only wonders. He had his health back,
he knew he was a good bookkeeper, board in New York was cheap--why
worry? He hadn't worried, and he had got work first crack! It is not
hard to get a job in New York, unless you are in rags; but it is hard
to get a good salary.
For a week now Evan had been engaged. The cashier, Phillips, told him
he was going to be a good man for the firm. Phillips did not ask him
where he had received his training: New Yorkers have no time for
life-stories or autobiographies. Evan was surprised that they did not
ask him more about himself, and for recommendations. Instead of
saying: "What are your references, sir?" the boss had said: "What can
you do?"
"I'm a bookkeeper."
"What experience?"
"Two years and a half in Canadian banking."
"Sounds good. What made you come over here?"
"Like every young Canadian," replied Evan, "I wanted to see New York."
Conscious of no guilt, he felt bold and spoke without fear.
"Well," replied the employer, "we'll give you a chance."
"Do you want a recommendation?" asked the Canadian.
"Nah," grunted the boss; "what good is that? If you can deliver the
goods, all right; if you can't, out you go. As for your honesty, we
depend on our ability to read character; after all, wouldn't you rather
have your own opinion of a fellow than somebody else's? If ever you
get to be cashier here we'll know you all right; not from Toronto
references, but from daily observation. We learn to spot honesty here
in Noo Yo'k: it's so dawn rare."
Evan smiled in spite of a desire to look solemn. He liked the "old
man," and knew work with him would be pleasant. The office staff he
liked, too, for they were free and easy, though mightily busy. It was
a great change from the bank. No one seemed to be afraid of anybody
else. The cashier was no bullier; although there was occasional
friction, there was no subordination.
Everybody worked fast, but, for Evan, there was not the strain of a
Canadian city bank. He knew there was no Alfred Castle watching him,
and he knew that if a ledger went wrong requiring night work, the man
who worked on it would be paid for every minute of overtime. Already
he made fifteen dollars a week, and that was just as big as fifteen
dollars would be in Toronto--it was bigger; it would buy more food and
pleasure in New York than in any other city on the continent. Evan
found it ample.
"If you keep on," said the cashier one day, "we'll be giving you more
work to do."
Evan was surprised, and gratified. "I'll keep on," he said.
A few days after determining to keep on he asked for a half-day off to
humor a headache. He was allowed an afternoon's leave.
On the way down to the ocean beach, where he hoped to soothe his
palpitating cerebellum, he called at the Brooklyn room and found two
letters and a telegram awaiting him. They had been forwarded by Sam,
who had scribbled on the back of the telegram: "I knew you would have
it in a few hours or I would have re-despatched the message." Evan
smiled at his mother's anxiety--a letter had gone to her explaining
everything; he had told her he was afraid his father would want to
fight the bank in the courts, so he had kept the matter quiet until
another position turned up. "No one ever wins in a suit against the
bank," he said, "and Dad needs his money."
The cheque from home for fifty dollars looked good to Evan, but he
hesitated before accepting it. Suddenly, however, he recollected a few
little Ontario debts, and slipping the cheque in his pocket he thought
what an unbusinesslike father he had. He sent a special letter of
thanks, just as he would have done to any benefactor; he was not of the
persuasion that everything is coming to the man who happens to be a son.
As a child saves the best bite of cake till the last, the New York
clerk stowed Frankie's letter in his pocket until he reached Coney
Island. He opened it as he sat on the sand, not far away from a group
of attractive girls. Frankie's mention of Perry caused Evan to take
note of a chilly breeze that was blowing over the surf. When the
letter persisted and persisted in Porter, he suddenly thought the sun
was mighty hot for June.
"Let her have him," the reader muttered; "she's welcome to him!"
Evan tried to make himself believe he had meant to say: "Let _him_ have
_her_," but that was not what he had said, and he knew it. He knew,
too, that he could not coax himself to say it.
"She makes me mad," he muttered again; "what does she see in that mutt?
Confound my head, what's the matter with it, anyway?"
Tearing the letter to bits, he ran into the surf. The girls had been
watching him read and had been laughing over the expression on his
face. They followed him into the water, and one of them managed to
slip over the ropes beside him. The others made a fuss; and, not being
used to swimming flirtations, Evan thought a real accident had
happened. He bravely swam under the rope and rescued the water-nymph.
An hour later, when they were all acquainted, he discovered that she
could out-do him thrice over as a swimmer. But he was glad to know
somebody in big, busy New York, and Ethel Harris was both pretty and
smart.
Thus it was that the ex-bankclerk came to pass over Frankie Arling's
letter, which had hurt him, and to take an interest in the pleasures of
the present. Frankie and Perry, like the Past, were gone into eclipse.
In the course of months Evan became fairly familiar with New York, and
with Miss Harris. The city stood scrutiny, and the girl--she was
mighty fine. There was this difference between Ethel and New York,
however: she was fathomable, as a girl should not be, and the city was
not. Madison Square always reminded Evan of a dream he had dreamt in
every fever of childhood--a nightmare in which a great wheel ran
smoothly and little wheels crookedly; ran until the sleeper's brain was
ready to burst with a sort of frenzy.
The people of New York turned out to be like the people of Toronto--and
Hometon. Some were clever, and some were ignorant and dull. All of
them were trying to make a living (except the predatory class) just as
the farmers in Ontario were. Young men fell in love with girls and
married them (occasionally), three meals a day were eaten, and sleep
was popular.
And yet there was something about New York that was new and mysterious;
its life was extraordinarily exhilarating. So many ten-thousands went
to work and came from work every day at the same hours, it was like
gazing upon the Creation to watch them. They lost their individuality,
their human, insignificant (?) individuality, in the mass, and became a
part of Adam's seed. Country people were less interesting than these
New Yorkers, because country people were more independent. New Yorkers
never looked at each other, but they felt each other; the atoms of the
great mass, though separated by never-closing spaces, were held
together by an eternal potentiality. There was a sympathy in the mass
of city-folk, unspoken and even unobserved by many, but mighty--it was
much more wonderful than the simple, verbal friendship between Jake
Zeigler and Mat Carrol, neighbors at Bill's Corners. The power that
held the atoms of the great mass together was the very same that gave
each atom its individuality. Evan was impressed with the magnetism of
New York, but he did not comprehend its strength. He came across atoms
that had strayed off gradually, and been drawn back like lightning; but
he understood but vaguely how the force operated, and why. In fact,
who does understand?
The life he led, which was the New York life, kept the Canadian
ex-clerk stimulated to a point beyond his power of physical resistance;
he worked harder than the cashier wanted him to work. Those crowds
that surged in every thoroughfare seemed to be behind him pushing him,
and he could not take things easy. The strain was telling on him,
though he tried to convince himself that it was not. Probably the lure
of a great city would have held him up to the point of a break-down,
had not a letter from his father set him thinking thoughts that changed
his life once more.
"When you build a house, Evan," said the letter, "you always want to
have a solid foundation. So it is with a career. I hope you will,
after a while, find your niche--I'm quite sure you have not found it
yet. But don't worry--you'll get there: you have Grandpa Nelson in you.
"P.S.--I forgot to tell you that the bank's guarantee company and the
general manager of the bank itself have dunned me for your part of the
Banfield loss, fifty dollars. I laughed at them and told them to sue."
The postscript took Evan's mind back. It caused a burning in him that
he knew must some day flare up. Unable to quench the resentment that
filled him he bought some fruit and ate it as he walked along Wall
Street, westward.
"Great heavens!" he muttered, waving his hand toward the marble halls
of finance around him, "my country's got you backed into East River
when it comes to a combination of Trusts!"
A few minutes after muttering this soliloquy he was in the crowds on
Broad Street, directly opposite the Stock Exchange. A newsy thrust a
paper into his hand, which he took and glanced at automatically. The
first thing to catch his eye was a small headline over a news-item in
one corner of the front page:
"CANADIAN BANKCLERK SUICIDES."
Evan felt his heart stop and a sickening shudder ran through him as he
read:
"Because he lost at the races and could not return money secretly
borrowed from his cash, Sidney Levison, of the S---- Bank, Toronto,
shot himself last night."
Of all the many thousands of New Yorkers who read that paragraph Evan
Nelson, perhaps, was the only one who fully comprehended the meaning of
it. He saw, as in a looking-glass, the gloomy series of steps down
which the teller had come to where he lay, a suicide.