A Canadian Bankclerk Part 42

CHAPTER XVI.

_BLACKBALLED._

During the progress of the drama in which Nelson played so conspicuous a part and which he regarded as a tragedy, Sam Robb was at the Receiver-General's exchanging money for the paying-teller. He had not returned before Evan was gone from the office for good.

"What am I to do, Mr. Charon?" Nelson asked the accountant, after Inspector Castle's insult.

"Grin and bear it," repeated the accountant, thinking, no doubt, that he had hit upon a very happy phrase.

Evan felt that it would take all his moral valor to "bear it" without the "grinning." He fulfilled that latter half of Charon's command--it seemed like a command rather than a suggestion, to the bank-trained clerk--three or four years later.

"But what about the fifty dollars I owe the bank?" he asked.

"I suppose you'll have to put it up," said Charon, studying the expression of the face before him.

"But there is three months' salary coming to me, according to the Rules and Regulations," replied Evan.

The accountant did not have to scratch his head; apparently he was prepared to act deliberately.

"Well," he said, "since they haven't said anything about the silver you had better say nothing. We are paying you two weeks in advance; let it go at that."

For a moment Evan figured. There is no crisis where a bankclerk can't figure. Three months' salary would be $90. That was coming to him.

But he owed the bank $50, and they had paid him $15 more than was due, leaving only $25 due him. It would not pay to fight them for so small an amount. In fact, he did not know how to fight; besides, the vim was knocked out of him and he only wanted to get away from that wretched office. A strong revulsion possessed him; he turned away from the accountant without answering, and his eyes wandered about the dark, bad-smelling office. He suddenly discovered that he hated every desk, every book, and the brazen-faced fixtures.

But coming to his own desk he found the work piling up, and mechanically he lifted a pen to straighten things up a bit before leaving. A good bankman, under any circ.u.mstances whatever, cannot endure to see things in a mess. Evan had scarcely taken up his pen to make an entry in the "bank book" when Alfred Castle glided toward him and said in a high-pitched, authoritative tone:

"Never mind that, Nelson; you're through here and we want you to quit."

The fired clerk was too badly wounded, for the moment, to be angry.

Later, he wondered why Fate should have been so spiteful as to send Castle, above all others, on that humiliating errand. He suddenly remembered the way Alfred had greeted him on his arrival in Toronto, and came to the conclusion that from the first he had been under suspicion with that respectable nephew of the "Big Eye's."

Evan went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt for his hat, not quite expecting to find it there; in truth, he would not have been much surprised to find the bas.e.m.e.nt itself gone. Certainly, the foundation had disappeared from under a structure mightier and stronger, as he viewed it, than piles of stone and mortar. He had frequently criticized the office slavery of the bank, but he had never lost faith in the inst.i.tution's magnitude and imperishability. It was the solidity of it that he had banked on and clung to, in spite of blinding work; but now the golden G.o.d had crumbled, like the smitten image of Daniel's dream--so far as Evan was concerned. The idol still stood for idolaters, of course, like that other image in the Prophet's time; but to the enlightened, the awakened, it had perished. And, to carry the a.n.a.logy further, Evan, like Daniel, saw before he understood. He must have his vision interpreted for him. Time would accomplish that. Just now he gazed and wondered. Clearly he saw a ruin, but as yet it was inseparable debris, and the sight of it put his head in a muddle.... While he washed his hands in the bas.e.m.e.nt he stared at the wall, and looking away from that his eyes met those of Bill Watson.

"h.e.l.lo," said Bill, hurriedly, "what are you fooling away your time down here for at this hour of the day? You must have the c. b. down finer than ever I got it, Nelsy. By gum, you've travelled some since you came here; I was on the job six months----"

Watson paused suddenly.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

Evan saw that Bill was uninformed. Such is the rush of a city office that one man does not know what happens to another, until the pipes are lit and "chewing the fat" commences.

In a few words Nelson told his old desk-mate what had happened. Bill was speechless. He did not even swear. He stood looking at Evan, but his eyes seemed too wide-open to see anything. While he was trying to frame words the voice of Charon sounded at the head of the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs.

"Watson, Watson!" A customer was probably waiting to deposit.

Urgent as was the accountant's voice, Bill delayed long enough to shake hands and say:

"Come up and see me at the boarding-house; I want to tell you something."

Evan half promised--but never went. The next time he saw Bill they were far away from Toronto and banking.

As the cash-book man walked through the office with his hat in his hand, Marks, the C man, shouted:

"Hey, the banks are balanced!"

Evidently the accountant had kept the matter quiet. The boys who happened to see Nelson pa.s.s out of the front door probably thought he was taken with one of his violent headaches, and had gone for a druggist's dose. He had done that several times during his cash-book experience. Once he had been taken with an acute indigestion pain and a doctor was called in. The doctor advised him to take a taxi home. A few days later the bankclerk was presented with a bill for $3.50--half a week's salary. The indigestion, needless to say, had been caused by eating a cold lunch under the nervous excitement of waiting work.

Another time he had been searching in the vault for a package of old vouchers and a book had fallen on him, breaking both lenses of his gla.s.ses: cost $4.50--more than half a week's pay. Those things were all "in a day's work," Willis used to say. So were board and bed. The fact of the matter is, Nelson was given nothing and had nothing outside of a day's work; a day's work was what he lived for. And there are hundreds of Nelsons in the banks now.

As Evan pa.s.sed Charon, the accountant did not raise his head; nor did Castle lift his. Evan did not care; they were nothing to him now.

Neither was the bank anything to him. He cursed it; in oaths he had never expected to use he cursed it.

With the very taste of profanity on his lips, Nelson stood absently gazing into a liquor store. The shiny bottles fascinated him. He wondered if the stuff in them was all that it seemed to men to be; would it drown care and disappointment? Above all, would it bring unconsciousness?

He had seen Robb lying drunk, and the sight had interested him. Robb's sprees were not b.e.s.t.i.a.l like Penton's; they were dead, harmless. That was the sort of thing Evan, in his melancholy state of mind, would like. He had tasted liquor and it rather tickled his palate; why not carry a bottle up to the boarding-house and go in soak for the afternoon? He knew it was wrong, but he wanted to do something desperate; also, he wanted to make sure of falling asleep and forgetting everything. He thought of his mother and sister, and of Frankie, as he looked into the liquor store. That was just the trouble, he thought too much about them. What would they think of his dismissal? It would break the mother's heart and the girls could never understand. Evan was in a torture of worry. He wanted to cry, as he would have done ten years before, but that was out of the question--he was twenty; so he repeated an oath that made him shiver and feel penitent, then went deliberately into the wine shop. He bought two flasks of cognac, and slipping one into each hip-pocket turned up Queen Street to University Avenue.

Mrs. Greig was in the kitchen when Nelson reached the boarding-house.

He went quietly up the stairs to his room, which had been done up and would not see the maid again that day, and shut himself in. Uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the top of one flask, he put the neck to his mouth and swallowed two gulps. The room was warm, but he did not think to open the window. He sat back in a wicker chair and concentrated his mind on the liquor.

How much would it take to make him drunk? how long would it take? He looked for immediate results from the first two mouthfuls, and finding none drank again. Feeling a slight nausea the second time he waited several minutes, and a tingling sensation succeeded the nausea. Then he gulped some more, and the flask was half gone. He settled back in his chair and his eyes grew heavy. Afraid the effect might work off he drank again, after which the room swam so that he had difficulty in catching the bed. His mind was acutely alert to everything for quite a while, although his limbs were incredibly heavy. But by and by he seemed to see his soul retire behind a black drape--and came oblivion.

It was after-hours in the bank. The boys worked away as though nothing had happened. It had been whispered that Nelson was fired, but each clerk had something in his own experience which he considered just as sensational as that. Far from philosophizing on the treatment accorded Nelson, some of the boys made his misfortunes serve to emphasize the reckless awfulness of their own careers, the uncertainty of which was a source of pride and self-congratulation. There are bank-fools who take delight in the very unsubstantiality of their occupation; instead of treating their avocation with the seriousness one's life-work deserves, they look upon it as a game or a joke. These fellows are greatly in the minority, of course; but usually a city office harbors several of the type. Two or three of them had their heads together around the cash-book desk, where Marks was now reigning monarch.

"Shut up, will you," bawled the ex-C man, flushed with the worry of a new post; "it's a wonder they wouldn't fire ---- things like you instead of a good man."

Marks was speaking to boys of longer service in the bank than himself; but it is an unwritten law that the cash-book man is supreme in his own circle--and the gabblers mentioned were standing on one of the radii.

They glanced at his red face, his burly figure and small ankles, and gradually moved away.

In the furnace-room three old clerks were solemnly conversing, like the ghosts of departed bank-victims once incarcerated there.

"It's the old story, Sam," said Key, referring to something Robb had been saying about the Banfield affair; "Penton has gone there so recently the bank couldn't transfer him without rousing suspicion in the minds of Banfield customers; so they made Nelson the goat."

"They couldn't do it in Banfield, though," suggested Willis, "because everybody there must know the boy is honest. They moved him to the city to get him out of the way, and then waited a chance to fire him on a trumped-up charge."

Robb turned his head and expectorated on the concrete floor.

"Boys," he said, "it's too dirty to talk about. It's like them, by ----, it's like them! They know that Penton is the thief and crook, but they are afraid of losing business if they move him away. Evans tells me another bank had a man up there and thought of opening. Old Castle knows that, and he's afraid of giving a bad impression by shifting managers. But he wants to make Penton believe that head office trusts him, and in order to do that he fires the poor innocent kid. In cases like this, to justify its bluff about seeing and knowing everything that goes on, the bank _must_ have a suspicion, the wrong _must_ be atoned for. If it will not answer to convict the guilty one look for a goat. It doesn't matter a hang to the bank whether a fellow's reputation is ruined or not. Bah! I'm sick of it."

Willis smiled around the stem of his pipe.

"I wonder," he said, "what they'll do with Penton. They certainly must suspect him. They at least must know he's a booze fighter."

"Oh, don't worry," replied Key, "they're watching him. It doesn't suit their present purpose to fire him, therefore they keep him on; but they know perfectly well he won't try any more of his monkey work for a while. They'll soak him some time, when the psychological moment comes. I used to know the son-of-a-gun; he's a yellow dog, and he'll be good now for a while out of pure cowardice. As for drinking, he's not the only bank manager who souses regularly. They'll stand for him a while, until it will look reasonable to move him."

Robb grunted.

"They know Penton wouldn't take a chance on anything big in the way of a personal loan from the cash, and they'd rather have a teller lose fifty now and then than to lose business."