A Canadian Bankclerk Part 14

_THE VILLAGE MAIDEN._

Months had pa.s.sed. Western Ontario was turning brown; heaps of leaves had already fallen. The village of Creek Bend was sleeping through the Indian Summer day. So was Evan Nelson--he lay sprawled on a hammock swung between two apple-trees behind the bank.

It is not to be inferred, however, that Evan was lazy, or that he had spent the summer lazily. Every morning before seven he had been out for a three-mile run, and every evening it had been football with the village team or a ride on the bicycle. He knew that physical exercise was necessary to health, and he took it as regularly as his mother used to make him take a spring tonic.

The work of the Creek Bend branch was ludicrously light. The manager was not a real one--he signed "acting." The branch had been opened for the sole purpose of keeping another bank out. Evan signed "pro-accountant." The first time he decorated a money order after that fashion a thrill made itself felt along his spine and in his hair.

Nelson's duties at first consisted of doing what little ledger work there was to do, writing settlement drafts and so forth, and attending to the mail. By degrees the manager, E. T. Dunn, initiated him into other work, until at last he did practically everything, even to the writing of returns.

As he sprawled now in the hammock between the apple-trees he gradually became conscious and his mind resumed the thread of thought sleep had broken off. He thought, with his eyes shut, about clerical work.

Mentally he took a deposit from a customer, entered it in his "blotter," wrote it in the supplementary, and posted it in a ledger; it was included in the cash-book total, and from there found its way to the general ledger. So it was with every entry, credit or debit.

"Returns" were merely copies of general-ledger balances, or parts thereof. Evan saw his way from beginning to end of the routine, and wondered that anything so simple as bank work could ever worry a man.

He recalled the first week of his clerkship in Mt. Alban, and a grin crept over his somnolent features.

But Evan was not only musing--he was thinking. He knew the banking system was uniform throughout; and until he should be manager, he saw himself spending years working out some part of the routine now so simple to him. Mr. Dunn had worked at head office, and he told Nelson that there were clerks down there who did nothing from morning till night but add. Others there were who spent every hour of the day "checking" branch figures. What an existence! he thought; what a brainless life! Human automatons!

Thinking in these channels made Evan dissatisfied, and sometimes he offered pointed observations to the acting-manager. Dunn would smile and agree with anything that was said--but invariably settled down to his pipe and paper again, contented to let the business take care of him as it would. Dunn was one of a large cla.s.s, in the bank, who are satisfied with six cigars a day, a bed each night, and seventy-five dollars a month.

The exercise Evan had accustomed himself to gave him increased vitality, and there being neither work nor social life enough in Creek Bend to satisfy this new vim he fell into the habit of reading and studying considerably. Dunn frequently expressed his surprise at seeing a bankclerk labor so, but the junior officer paid no attention, since the senior raised no objection. Evan gave his mind an excursion every day into the large world beyond him; the further he travelled the more ridiculous his present occupation seemed. But he encouraged reaction from these fits of treason and in the end criticized his own imagination more than those things, which, like the bank, are generally recognized to be tangibly great.

A book lay beneath the hammock this dreamy Autumn afternoon. It was "The Strenuous Life," by Roosevelt. One would have thought the reclining figure had grown weary of ambition and had cast the incentive from him. An Indian Summer day is not conducive to aspirations: mellow late-Autumn is more tolerant of beauty and love.

A flesh-and-blood combination of both came upon Evan unawares.

"Wow!" he shouted, rubbing the top of his head.

The girl laughed until she was ashamed of herself; then hid her face and started to run off.

"Don't go 'way, Lily," he called; "I want to say something to you."

She stopped, and eyed him suspiciously.

"What is it, Mr. Nelson?"

"Come here and I'll tell you."

She ventured near.

"Won't you stay a while?" he said, turning his eyes on hers. "I can't empty it all out in a minute, you know."

"Is it important?" asked Lily, slyly.

"Sure," he laughed; "I wouldn't waste your valuable time if it weren't."

She pouted.

"You think I have nothing to do, I suppose, Mr. Nelson!"

Evan was Mr. to her chiefly because he was a bankclerk.

"Oh no, not that. But you don't seem to be cut out for a post-office ornament. Do you ever feel dissatisfied here?"

"Why?"

"I was just wondering--I'm beginning to get sick of it myself."

She laughed.

"So am I," she said; "and it's my home, too."

She had settled down on the gra.s.s, and her eyes were on a level with the bankclerk's.

"Still you'll likely settle down here and get married at last," said Evan, soberly.

"No chance,"--haughtily. "Do you think I would have one of these dubs around here?"

"What's the matter with them?"

"Oh, they're slow. When I get married I'm going to have a smart, up-to-date fellow."

Evan had a smile ready for her when she looked at him. She colored radiantly.

"I must go," she said, rising, and skipped away, not to be stopped this time.

A few minutes later the acting-manager came out with a highly ill.u.s.trated magazine.

"Say, Bo," he yawned, "things are getting pretty thick. You can't do much on that $250, you know."

Evan laughed.

"A bank fellow's not in much danger," he said.

"No," replied Dunn, "but what about the girl?"

Nelson revolved the remark in his mind a while. He decided he would not be so friendly with Lily from that time on.

"It's funny," observed Dunn, again, "how village girls fall for a bankclerk--when we are made of the very stuff their own brothers are made of. Most of us came from a farm or a village. The bank has fitted us out with a shine and a shave, also has made us more useless year after year, and when we degenerate sufficiently the girls begin to adore us. I used to correspond with ten girls in different towns, regularly."

A strange feature of banking life, and which goes to emphasize the peculiar fascination of it, is that every man knows he is degenerating and understands why, but he seldom does anything about it. He sails carelessly along with Ulysses' crew, enjoying the voyage as much as possible, and worrying not about a landing.

"Still you wouldn't be anything but a banker, would you?" asked Nelson.

"I couldn't if I would," said Dunn, lazily; "I've been at it eight years. That's all I know."

"Well, supposing you were back on my salary, do you think you would stay in the bank?"

"I suppose so," answered the other; "I was on $250 once, and I didn't quit."

Dunn's indifferent contentment had considerable influence over Nelson.