A Canadian Bankclerk Part 49

"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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.s) 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 ma.s.s, 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 ma.s.s, though separated by never-closing s.p.a.ces, were held together by an eternal potentiality. There was a sympathy in the ma.s.s of city-folk, unspoken and even un.o.bserved 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 ma.s.s 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-gla.s.s, the gloomy series of steps down which the teller had come to where he lay, a suicide.

CHAPTER XIX.

_FAR-AWAY GREEN FIELDS._

A germ began to work in Evan's mind. It must have been some relation to the garden-grubs that had infested Jim j.a.pers' vineyard, for it showed a predilection for fresh air and outside work. Two incidents--the firing by the cashier of a clerk ahead of Nelson, and the receiving of a letter from A. P. Henty--did not help matters any.

Henty's handwriting had such a substantial appearance it seemed to indicate that some men were blessed with big fists to fall back on in case their fingers lost employment. A. P.'s composition, too, was solid and matter-of-fact; there were no flourishes, except occasional slang; the letter was plainly the product of a free mind and a steady nerve.

When the clerk who was discharged approached Evan with a smile and said: "Well, kiddo, you're next in line," Evan wondered why the fellow was so unconcerned about it. He asked him.

"Oh," answered the clerk, "we're used to that here, in New York. A fellow can always land another job. I usually manage to get the hook about twice a year; the work gets monotonous, and I suppose I lose ambish."

Evan wondered where one would get to under those circ.u.mstances. If he had stayed in the big city nine years instead of nine months he would have ceased to wonder about position hunters; they would have become a distinct element in urban life. As it was, the impression he received was quite true to the actual condition of affairs: a large city was a very precarious place.

However, the Canadian decided to stay in New York for the winter anyway; it was lively then, he was told, with the presence of returned "seasoners" and other summer absentees. He asked the cashier for promotion, and received it, along with two dollars increase in salary.

He made up his mind to save five dollars a week; he could live and have considerable pleasure on the other twelve dollars.

Mardi Gras was over; not a straw hat was to be seen; the mornings grew chilly; theatres were in full swing. Then Miss Harris got Evan in with a "crowd"; the department stores hauled out their Christmas things; and with the first flurry of snow the whole town slid into winter.

The New York winter looked, at first, like a bluff. The man from Canada refused to wear an overcoat until one day a breeze came sweeping over the Atlantic and took him in hand; after that he had great respect for the climate.

Ethel Harris made good as a comrade. She knew how to keep things going. Evan was astonished at the ease with which he mixed in things; the boys seemed to have a way of fixing up that he could hardly catch, but they were a jovial bunch. An odd one was after the order of Castle, but most of them resembled Bill Watson in manner. The girls all expected to marry Riverside Drive property owners, but aside from that they were sane and congenial. Evan knew about how much money they made, and consequently took considerable delight in their exaggerations. They were practically all stenographers.

It takes New Yorkers to be friendly. The city is so big it resembles the world. In it there are as many countries as the world boasts, and when the members of a social set meet they come like so many travellers from the ends of the earth, bringing stories with them that Park Row reporters never hear about. There is real life and entertainment in a gathering of young Manhattanites.

Evan took great pleasure in those parties. Often he danced with some girl who had gone on the stage (for about one performance), and there was considerable romance in that. As the winter pa.s.sed he wondered if he really wanted to leave those friends and that gaiety. Ethel treated him so well he was glad to spend all his spare money on her, at theatres, suppers and so on. But he always put away the five dollars a week just the same. He was led to believe that not many New York lads did that much for their future.

In February a Southerner came on the scene. The first night of his reception in the crowd he succeeded in breaking the hearts of half the girls; the other half succ.u.mbed the second night. The Southerner was not a flirt--that may have accounted for his elaborate success. He was so far from being a flirt that he fell in love with Ethel Harris and proposed to her.

Now, the real working-out kind of proposal is not so common in New York as, judging from the population, one might suppose. Ethel began to advise Nelson against spending so much money foolishly. For a while her objections to his "friendship" were overruled; but finally she got desperate and candidly told the Canuck he was up against Kentucky. He had to take the hint.

Thus, again, Evan was impressed with the uncertainty of things in the metropolis. He took Ethel's engagement to heart for a day or two, until an office-girl accidentally slipped while pa.s.sing his desk and steadied herself on his neck. She proved to be a married woman, however, and Evan turned his attention to spring.

Appearances are against the ex-bankclerk, but he must not be judged too rashly on the head of his Manhattan experiences. It looks as if he had forgotten all about Toronto and Hometon; but he had not. He had never written Frankie, it is true, but he had heard about her from his sister and had a dim idea that some day he would go back and marry her. It is remarkable how a fellow sticks to his home-town girl! Through jealousies about other girls, like Ethel Harris, through the maze of a dance with actresses, he still sees the face that smiled on him across the school-room hack in the old town.

In March a very exciting letter came from Henty.

"Dear Evan," it read, "wire me at once. Tell me if you'll come. I mean to British Columbia. The Nicola Valley is awaiting our arrival.

There is a homestead there for each of us. My father will give me five hundred dollars, and I'll share with you, on a loan for life, if you'll come. A fellow only needs to pay ten dollars cash and hold down the land six months a year for three years, and make 'reasonable improvements.' I understand they are very lenient about improvements.

Our five hundred dollars will look after that part of it. The soil is very fertile. I'm taking a cow with me and a clucking hen. In the winter months we can get a job bookkeeping or lumbering; or if our crop of onions turns out well this summer we won't need to work at all in winter. Wire. Don't let anything penetrate your nut for the next few hours but the word 'wire.' I must know. Don't let money keep you; if you need some, _wire_. What I have said goes, if you will come. A. P."

Evan was sitting in the elevated when he read the letter. It had come as he started to work and he had not had time to stop and read it at his lodging. Again at the Bridge he read it. Around him the crowds were surging, rushing to work with that morning vigor that looks as though it would last forever. The merry throng about Evan seemed like his friends; the thought that he should leave them made him lonesome.

What would he do without the morning paper? Where would he buy peppermint chocolates at twenty-five cents a pound? Even more trivial questions than these occupied his mind.

Stuffing the letter in his pocket, he boarded the up-town L, and got off at Twenty-third Street. The Metropolitan tower looked disdainfully at him: it was the New York flag-pole, and he was about to desert the colors. At noon-hour he sat in the little restaurant on Twentieth Street West. He had the letter memorized by this time, but he drew a bank-book from his pocket to make sure he was familiar with its contents. Yes, the eighty dollars were still there.

After work he was tired. He was always tired after a day's office work. The hour before supper was always one of yawning, of hurry, dust and reflection. Taking the subway down to the Bridge, he wedged up the steps between two foreigners who had been regaling themselves with garlic, and looked wistfully at Loft's. There was a candy-fiend in his stomach crying for food. He was half way to the candy-shop when he overcame the evil one with a sweet tooth; he turned back toward the Bridge, but seeing a crowd in one of the newspaper offices, stepped in.

His ear caught the click of a telegraph instrument. He forgot the crowd gazing at new aeroplane models, and found himself again on Park Row. The ten-thousands faded from before his sight, the yapping of newsies died away, there was no dust and no yawning: he saw a green valley and heard the birds; he saw Henty in chaps astride of a pony; and a shanty loomed up. The blood of Grandpa Nelson bubbled in his veins; he was a proud son of Adam, doing business direct with Nature.

There was no car to catch on the morrow, and no hash-house to patronize. His horses neighed to him, and he heard the sizzle of frying ham in a clean frying-pan.

The telegraph instrument continued to click in the young book-keeper's ears. He looked once more on the throng around him: it was the evening throng--tired, nervous, hateful. Men climbed in the cars ahead of pale, helpless girls; an old lady clung to the unwilling arm of a convict-faced son; and a little newsboy cried brokenheartedly in the gutter. Tiny girls wrestled with bundles of papers; a bald magnate cursed his chauffeur for refusing to run down a dog and save time; and a policeman chased half a dozen naked urchins who were puddling in City Hall Fountain. When one is tired these things jar on him. The telegraph still ticked in Evan's ear; the valleys still stretched before his imagination. He was aware, now, of a discord in the music of his dreaming: it was the noise around him, the shouting, the brutal rush. He turned toward Broadway.

Evan had made up his mind. He wired Henty that he would go to British Columbia. He asked A. P. to reply by day-message to Twenty-third Street.

About noon next day the answer came: "Meet me in Buffalo in two days, if possible. I will be staying at my cousin's, -- Forest Avenue. If necessary I can wait a week for you."