A Canadian Bankclerk Part 36

Mrs. Greig played on the piano, at Robb's request, after the other boarders had dispersed. She was a young widow, good-looking and clever. Robb seemed to like her.

Before long Evan showed signs of restlessness.

"I'll go on down, Mr. Robb," he said, "you can come later, if you wish."

Robb consented. Mrs. Greig's music seemed more suited to a man of forty-two than to one of nineteen, anyway. But the elder clerk was not long in putting in an appearance at the bank. He found the cash-book man in a state of siege. Evan was, in fact, hemmed in on all sides by warlike figures, obstinate and invincible.

Several clerks were working at "night jobs." They looked sideways at Robb and Nelson working with their heads together over at the cash-book desk.

"Sam's taken a notion to Banfield, I guess," said Marks, who was still out in the morning's clearing.

"You boneheaded mutt!" cried Cantel, glaring at his desk-mate.

"What's the matter with you--did you ever see an ex-manager come back to help the cash-book before? Next time we have to tick off we'll press him into our service."

"Get wise," returned Cantel, "or I'll press your mitts into service.

Do you see that?"

He held up a cheque, which at first glance looked like $3.74. Its resemblance to that amount had caused all the trouble: the cheque was for $37.40.

"Every cent of our difference!" exclaimed Marks. "By heck, let's all go out and celebrate."

Accepting his suggestion as an invitation, the other "C" man, a junior, and a "supplementary" man banged their books shut and accompanied Marks to the nearest hotel. "Celebrating" is a favorite pastime of bankboys.

Every balance found, every inspection finished, almost anything accomplished, requires a celebration. It is easy to get in the swim, and then one makes a fish of himself.

Sam Robb, the ex-manager, was almost as much at sea over the cash-book as Nelson was; but he had been a clerk longer than the young man, and he plodded ahead methodically, without that nervous anxiety that gets young clerks "up in the air." Robb's frequent remarks rendered the strain less intense to Evan; he worked with greater freedom and a.s.surance than he would have done alone. Between them they struck a balance within a reasonable time, and locking up the vault went out to the street.

The lights of Yonge Street, the city environment, the pleasant April air, all revived Evan's spirits. For a while he forgot that he was a bankclerk living in danger of concussion of the brain.

"Let's take in a picture show," he suggested, with interest.

Robb smiled, and agreed. They entered a picture house called "The Rand," in the middle of a film (who ever entered at any other time?).

It was one of a popular series of crooked clerk pictures then going the rounds; one of those in which some fellow robs the till and somebody else gets the blame: a woman comes on the screen, s.n.a.t.c.hes her heart out of the villain's hands, and throws herself on the hero's neck.

"I wonder if those things ever really happen," said Evan, when they were on the street again.

"Sure," said Robb. "There isn't anything that can't happen--to a clerk."

Evan laughed. He was now chumming with his old manager; why not be more familiar and confiding?

"You don't think much of a clerical job, do you?" he ventured.

Robb regarded him seriously and with a certain amount of satisfaction.

"No, Evan," he replied, "I do not. I've seen too much of this dependent life. That's what a clerk's life is--dependent. He never knows the day or the hour when the axe will fall. Besides being in constant suspense, he is in danger of actually losing his job, any day.

Now, life is too short to spend in dread of losing a position. If I were a young man again I would build on a solid foundation. As it is all I know is the bank. It would keep me guessing, after all these years of banking, to make my present salary anywhere else; and yet I'm not sure, at that, that I will always remain in the business."

They were walking up University Avenue.

"I'm awfully glad to get staying with you," said Evan, suddenly. "I believe I would have had a renewal of homesickness down in that hotel."

"It's a pleasure for me to have you, old man," returned Robb. "That homesickness you speak of is bad, while it lasts. It doesn't last long, though. When you come to my time of life and realize that you have had a different kind of lonesomeness for years and years, you'll begin to think ordinary homesickness wasn't in it."

The ice was broken: Evan asked a question he had long wanted to ask:

"Why didn't you ever marry, Mr. Robb?"

The old bankclerk showed neither annoyance nor surprise. One does not mind being asked a frank personal question out of friendship.

"It was like this," said Robb, unhesitatingly, "I couldn't afford it until I was thirty. I mean to say, the bank wouldn't let me afford it till then. The girl was from my home town, down in Quebec. We wrote to each other for two or three years, but I got discouraged and quit.

I figured that it wasn't fair to spoil her chances; it isn't right for a man to do it. There were lots of men as good as I that she could care for, and what right had I to ask her to wait until she was on the shelf? It happened she married a bank man after all, but he was one of those guys with a pull; he drew two hundred dollar increases and that sort of thing. Well, when a fellow gives up in the love-game he usually begins to booze or do something just as danged foolish.

Although I might have known she could not wait for me, still it hurt to have her marry somebody else--especially a bank man--and it took me years to get over it. And," he seemed to breathe the memory of it away in a sigh, "you'll find scores and scores of men in the bank in my fix exactly."[1]

Robb's reference to drink reminded Evan that he had not told him about Penton and the Banfield trouble. Why not tell him? As they sat before a grate fire he related the tale of the silver, of Penton's strange actions, and of the inspection.

"Take it from me," said Robb, when the story was finished, "you're a dead one in the bank's eyes from now on. To-morrow the increases come out. Just watch yourself get a lemon. Penton has blackballed you to Castle. Why couldn't it have been Inspector Ward?--he's a good head.

I'll bet they give you a measly fifty to-morrow, Evan."

"In that case I'd be justified in quitting the bank, wouldn't I?"

Robb snorted.

"If you don't quit, increase or no increase, you're crazy. If I get you a job somewhere else in town, will you leave the bank?"

"Perhaps," said Evan; "but I'm low in energy now, you know, and I doubt if I would make much of a hit with a strange man on a new line of work."

"If you're feeling like that you'd better go on a farm for the summer and get your feet on solid earth."

The following morning Nelson put in his expense account covering cost of moving from Banfield to Toronto. He did not charge the bank with three days at a hotel, as he might have done. They might be unfair to him, but at least he would be honest with them. Robb saw the debit slip among the charges vouchers lying in the cash-book dish. He walked over to the cash-book man.

"You're hopeless, Evan," he said. "You deserve to be fired."

"What's the matter?" asked Key, who was always nosing around in his good-natured way, trying to find things out and dig clerks out.

Robb told him about the expense voucher.

"G.o.d bless the bank," said Key; "it seems to have a faculty for picking honest boys. I wish a few professional crooks or gunmen would slip one over on them occasionally."

Evan smiled and began to say something, when Castle came sailing along and cried, in his high voice:

"It's pretty near time, Nelson, that you knew how to draw a sterling draft. I don't want to have to cross one of these again."

One draft out of fourteen had escaped being red-inked. It was that gigantic omission that brought Castle back from the front of the office. He loved to show authority.

Robb and Key looked at one another, the a.s.sistant accountant gone, then burst out laughing simultaneously. Evan joined them.

"There you are," said Robb, turning to the cash-book man; "that's the kind of things the bank soaks you for. They've got a pick against you, Nelson. I have a hunch you and I'll be left out on the increases."

The ex-manager's hunch was not quite strong enough. Evan received an increase of $50, bringing his salary up to $400 per year, less guarantee premiums. Robb was cut down from $1,400 to $1,250, "until he manifested a willingness to accept what head office considered to his interests."