A Canadian Bankclerk Part 45

During the first week a letter came from Hometon. It had been addressed in care of Mrs. Greig, Toronto, and forwarded by Robb. It was from Evan's mother. She complained of not having received much news lately, and hoped nothing was wrong. Above all things she hoped her son was not working too hard. The son smiled as he read; if his mother could only see him sitting in a lettuce patch, dairied and sleeves up, what would she think? What would Lou and Frankie think?

The letter Evan answered with was diplomatic. It went, in part, like this: "I am feeling better than I have felt for two years. The work I am doing is not hard on me; I like it mighty well. My health was bad for a while after landing in the city, but now it is changing for the better every day. My appet.i.te is past the decent stage. And what do you know about this?--I'm saving money at last!" There were no committals in the letter.

The second Sat.u.r.day of Nelson's engagement with Jim j.a.pers, the old gentleman came around and said: "About time you was ringin' off, Mr.

Nelson." (He always addressed his new man respectfully: could an ordinary mortal come out of a bank?) "It's Sat.u.r.day, you know. Me and wife always goes into town a-Sat.u.r.day, and sometimes the kid. We count it a day off, and now that's what we wants you to do."

A countryman always enjoys getting to anything pleasant in a roundabout manner. Evan felt the good news coming and warmed up to a full appreciation of it. Sat.u.r.day afternoon in the bank had always been a time for cleaning up loose ends of work.

"Thank you, Mr. j.a.pers," he said, warmly; "I believe a show _would_ do me good. I didn't have time to see many in Toronto."

"That's right, my boy, enjoy yourself. They say them Toronto shows isn't as good as we get here. What do you think, now?"

"I don't imagine they are," replied Evan, quickly; and then, in one of those absurd rushes after an idea to make plausible a consciously absurd utterance, "I suppose it sort of--they sort of--"

"Yes, you're right," rejoined j.a.pers, fully believing that he and Nelson between them could outwit most theatrical critics. The gardener and his a.s.sistant blathered away until Miss j.a.pers was obliged to float her ribbons out of the front door in a dazzling hint that the family party was ready.

The j.a.pers did not wait for Evan to dress; Lizzie was constrained to do so, but her mother looked so uncomfortably fussed up that the girl had compa.s.sion, and left the romantic excitement of a bankclerk's presence for the less alluring sensation of Hamilton's main street.

An hour or so later Evan sauntered up town. He did not feel exactly lonesome, there by himself in the Sat.u.r.day crowds, but rather out of his environment. It seemed strange to him to have no immediate task on hand, to have nothing to balance or look up. His mind felt almost vacant, for want of something to burden it; but the vacant feeling was, oh, such a relief! Only the weary clerk can understand this thing; he knows so well what it means to carry a burden with him on a pleasure trip. "Pleasure" is not the adjective to qualify such a trip, where trees and flowers are decked with figures and where the mind sees phantoms of acc.u.mulated and acc.u.mulating work, waiting, waiting like Fate. Stories have been told of criminals carrying the body of a victim around on their backs until they stood on the brink of insanity.

Hundreds of bankboys know what it is to feel the weight of corpse-like figures on their backs. One cannot get away from the horrible burden, it clings until the heart is sick and the stomach nauseated. And these monsters are not victims of the bankclerk's, either; the clerk is their victim; nor does he in any way merit the unnatural attachment--someone else digs them out of their graves (the bank "morgue" of acc.u.mulated back-work) for plunder, and saddles them on him.....

Evan's mind felt vacant; that was much better than having it loaded with worry, worry that could result in nothing but harm to the clerk and nothing but cold dollars to the bank.

The young ex-banker refreshed himself with a solitary sundae and then took steps in the direction of a theatre advertising the old drama, "East Lynne." He bought an economic half-dollar seat and entered while the orchestra was playing one of the reddest rags out. He had read "Mrs. Henry Wood's" great book, but he searched his memory in vain for a clue to the propriety of ragtime as a preface to the story.

A moment before the curtain lifted a girl came into the theatre and was ushered to a lonesome seat beside Evan. He was, gardener fas.h.i.+on, watching for his money's worth, and paid no attention to the person beside him until first intermission, when a squint told him that here was someone very like Hazel Morton of Mt. Alban. Then he looked fully into her eyes and held out his hand. She seemed surprised.

"Don't you know me, Miss Morton?"

"Why--I'm afraid--why, yes I do!"

They regarded each other a minute.

"You seem to have changed, Hazel!"

He was sorry he had said it. She blushed and did not look him squarely in the face as she replied:

"Hard work."

Evan sat wondering, in silence. Hazel had had a nice home in Mt.

Alban. Had she run away from it? And how was it that she looked so subdued?--she used to be a vivacious creature, fond of dresses and gaiety. Now she wore a plain white waist and a skirt of cheap blue serge. The Mt. Alban color was gone, and pensiveness dusked her intelligent face.

It was, doubtless, to break the embarra.s.sing silence creeping between them that Hazel asked Evan if he worked hard in Hamilton. How long had he been in that branch of the bank?

"I'll tell you after the show," he answered, "if you'll have dinner with me at the ---- Hotel. We can go for a paddle afterwards."

She smiled and said it was very kind of him and that she would just love to spend the evening in that way.

In the second act Evan noticed that Hazel wiped her eyes frequently with a miniature handkerchief. He felt like doing it himself in the next act, and Hazel sobbed audibly. Of course, she was not the only weeping woman at that matinee.

At dinner a glow of the girl's old-time color came back, and with it a charm that Evan had noticed in her eyes at Mt. Alban dances, when a certain bankclerk was hovering near.

"Do you know what a boarding-house appet.i.te is, Ev--Mr.--?"

"Did you say 'Mr.'? I've been calling you 'Hazel,' you know."

She laughed. "I meant 'Evan.'"

Evan suddenly recalled the last time he had bandied names with a Mt.

Alban girl.

"Yes," he replied, "you bet I do. But I'm eating farm-meals now."

She looked surprised, and he told her about resigning from the bank, "because the work was too hard," and about coming to the Fruit Belt to recreate.

"You're what I call a sensible boy, Evan.... I wish....."

Hazel did not finish her wish. She blushed instead.

"You don't know how good it seems to meet you here like this, Hazel,"

Nelson observed, to relieve the situation. He knew perfectly well that her wish was about Bill Watson.

"I don't think you can enjoy it half so well as I."

"Why?" His question was curious, but thoughtless.

"Well--I'm lonesome," she hesitated; "I hardly ever go out--except when Billy comes over."

It was out at last, and then they became more intimate. As they walked down the street to the wharf, later, Hazel pressed his arm and cried softly:

"Did you see that? Don't you know her?"

"You mean the girl that just pa.s.sed--the one in green? I was just thinking--wondering if that could be Sadie Hall, Alfy Castle's girl."

"That's who it was."

"Why didn't she speak, Hazel?"

The girl looked up into his eyes as she answered:

"I've met her on the street several times. First time I was with Billy, who had come over for a visit. Sadie nodded, and went on with the friend, at whose home here she is visiting. The second time I was standing in front of a confectionery talking to a girl who--well, who hasn't a very good name in Hamilton; but she works where I do, and anyway I would not snub her for the world."

"And Miss Hall has stopped speaking entirely, eh?"

Hazel smiled impishly.

"I gave her a fine chance to turn up her nose just now; I winked at her."