CHAPTER XVII.
A BANKCLERK'S GIRL.
After three days' sickness Evan realized, and the doctor emphasized it, that he had been near to nervous collapse.
"The country and outside work for you now, young man," said the physician; "leave offices to men with broad shoulders, like Mr. Robb's."
"Yes," observed Robb, present at the consultation, "let them kill the man who wants to die. I think you're right, doctor; Nelson needs a dose of farming. I have it, Evan! .... I know a fine fellow on a fruit and vegetable farm near Hamilton. He'll be tickled to death to have you, as long as you want to stay; and you'll save money, too."
"A good idea," added the physician, to whose profession money usually looks good.
In a day or two Evan was ready to go in search of health. A telegram from Robb to the Hamilton man brought a phone response that fixed a salary of thirty dollars a month with board. It looked like a fortune to the ex-bankclerk, and he was eager to begin work.
"Before I go, Mr. Robb," he said, somewhat backwardly, "I want to ask you to do something for me."
"Name it," said Sam.
"I don't want my folks to know I'm out of the bank. If they knew I was farming for my health they'd be offended because I didn't go to Hometon. But I can't bear the thoughts of going back home down-and-out—-you know how it is."
Sam nodded. "I understand how you feel about it."
"Well, I'm going to forward the weekly letter I write to mother and let you re-mail it from Toronto, addressed on the typewriter. I'll only be a month getting in shape, and then I'll have an office job somewhere."
An "office job" embodied Evan's conception of success, as it did that of his relatives, and many another golden-calf worshipper. He had yet to be weaned.
"I'll do it, my lad," replied Robb, cheerfully; "now then, off with you. And don't forget to write. If, after a month or so, I run across anything in town that I think would appeal to you, I'll wire. Japers lives right in the suburbs of Hamilton, and has a telephone."
The "T. H. & B." carried westward a considerably happier mortal than had been in Evan Nelson's shoes for many a day.
Japers' farm showed up to advantage on a fine May morning. So did his daughter, Lizzie. She was plump, pretty, and peasant-like. Her efforts to sneak cream and sugar into the new "hand's" tea a second and third time were evidence of her normal good nature, if nothing more.
The first day out the ex-bankclerk did not do much. He was busy admiring the symmetry of gardens and orchards, though not of daughters. In his part of the country those who took any interest in fruit raising allowed the trees to grow up, out, and into each other without molestation, believing in the ever-lasting benevolence of Providence and the frailty of pests; with the result that fruit became wormier and scarcer every year. But in the "Fruit Belt" conditions were different; everywhere was order and care; the budding blossoms made the well-ordered fruit patches fairy groves for beauty. The first day of his sojourn Evan opened his nostrils, closed his eyes, forgot the bank, and thanked God some doctors knew their business.
His employer would have had him rest a second day, and particularly would Miss Japers have done so, but Evan wanted to show that he was a worker, and also had an eye on the coming dollar per day. So he walked manfully up the rhubarb patch and set to work. Occasionally a muscle slipped and he jerked a whole root out of the ground; but this error was remedied immediately by clawing a little dirt around the root and leaving it—to die. Evan, of course, was innocent of harm done: he saw no reason why rhubarb should not grow in loose dirt as well as tight.
In his sleep, the second night, he wandered in a field of burdocks, plucking the largest stalks for Burdock Blood Bitters. He stopped to chat with a buxom girl possessed of an innocent, rustic manner, and thought she laughed at his white, feminine hands. Next day, as a coincidence with his dream, Lizzie Japers did remark about the ex-clerk's hands, but the stains on them and not their whiteness elicited her observations—and decided her to telephone to the grocer's for a box of snap.
When his back got used to bending Evan began to enjoy gardening. He felt like a bird that had flown out of a cellar into a garden. Lake Ontario sent a breeze up to him, to carry his mind away on its wings. Peach blossoms were turning more pink; sight of them and the smell of them made the world irresistibly charming. Was it really he who had wallowed in janitor's dust and vault damps with a monster called "Cash Book?" Was not that but a figment of those vague nightmares he had had as a child, when he fell asleep with his clothes on?
Anyway, it did not exist now; and the superb happiness of that realization made the days fly—and days brought dollars. Of course, money did not matter so much now that he had no landlady to pacify; he would have been satisfied with fifty cents a day and board. Such meals as he got!—onions, radishes, lettuce, cream, butter made from real cream, eggs still bearing traces of the hen, and everything to build without poisoning.
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 appetite 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 Saturday of Nelson's engagement with Jim Japers, 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 Saturday, you know. Me and wife always goes into town a-Saturday, 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. Saturday afternoon in the bank had always been a time for cleaning up loose ends of work.
"Thank you, Mr. Japers," 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 Japers, fully believing that he and Nelson between them could outwit most theatrical critics. The gardener and his assistant blathered away until Miss Japers was obliged to float her ribbons out of the front door in a dazzling hint that the family party was ready.
The Japers 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 compassion, 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 Saturday 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 accumulated and accumulating 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 accumulated 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 fashion, 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 embarrassing 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 appetite 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 passed—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."
Evan laughed until his companion caught the contagion.
"They're well mated, Hazel—Castle and she."
"Yes, indeed."
When they were skimming through the bay in a canoe, Miss Morton's mind again reverted to Castle.
"Hasn't he always been a snob?" she asked.
"Don't mention him—it makes me sick to think of him. He takes it after his uncle, I think."
Nevertheless, Evan kept on thinking about the Castles, as he faced Hazel in the canoe, until at last and by degrees his story came out.
"Oh, the criminals!" cried Hazel. "Why do so many boys put up with it!.... Evan," she said earnestly, after a pause, "you have confided in me, now I want to confide in you." A canoe, it is said, affects people like that.
"It's something about Billy," she continued. "Will you tell me what I want to know?"
"If you ought to know, Hazel."
"Well, I should.... I—he—" The tears filled her eyes, and she seemed undecided whether to give them vent or wipe them away and be brave. She wiped them away.
"I left a good home and came here to work just so that I could be near him and help him. I've told him that I'll wait as long as I need to. I didn't want to go to Toronto, because I knew everyone in Mt. Alban would then say I tagged Billy. I'm willing to wait, but Billy seems so discouraged at times I am often afraid he'll run away or do something rash. Tell me, Evan, is he all right? Does he drink or—anything?"
Evan tried to recall something Bill had said that would cheer the waiting girl, but could not think of anything. He did remember the lectures Watson had delivered on the follies of clerkship; but to Hazel they would only indicate recklessness and dissatisfaction. And, too, Bill did take a drink frequently; in fact, Evan suspected that he made a night of it occasionally to "drown his sorrow."
"Hazel," he said seriously, "Bill is one of the finest fellows I ever worked with. I'm sure he's honest and true. He hates Castle and Castle hates him: that's something to his credit—but it may keep him back in the bank. But he'll never be false to a friend or a girl, I'm sure of that."
The girl in the canoe looked wistfully at Nelson. "Somehow I wish you were working in the same office with him. I always felt as though you were—a solid sort of a chap, Evan."
The last few words were accompanied by a little laugh, to counteract the suspicion of flattery that clung to them. But for that feminine interpretation Evan might not have so fully appreciated her meaning. He got a suggestion from her words: would it not be a good idea to write Bill and tell him of the evening spent with Hazel? It might give the slaving city-teller new vim for the eternity of figures and celibacy before him.
On Sunday Evan did write to Watson. He described Saturday's pleasure excursions with Hazel, dwelling on the enjoyment it gave himself and upon the sincerity with which she spoke of "Billy." Evan meant the letter to appeal. He knew that Bill knew him and would not resent perfect candor, when properly mixed with the right brand of sympathy. He thought, as he wrote, of the peculiar independence of character and cynicism of Watson; the combined traits amounting almost to recklessness. But he could not conceive of Bill's going wrong. He reflected that Hazel must love Bill, in spite of her fear that he was weak, and wondered at the tenderness of woman. Why was she so little considered in this world of business?
The Morton girl's companionship, quite naturally, took Nelson back to Mt. Alban, and Mt. Alban was only a few miles from Hometon and Frankie. He did not consider it likely that Julia Watersea or Lily Allen were still thinking of him; but he sighed when a vision of Frankie, with blue skirt and cheap white waist like Hazel's, rose before him. He wrote her a letter, the first in months, wishing her well, but saying nothing of love. A dollar a day with board wasn't much, truly, to apply against the great debit of matrimony, and why mention love at all if it could not be consummated?
To Robb, the vegetable-man also wrote, and to A. P. Henty at his home village.
Sunday night Lizzie Japers again fluttered her ribbons, and dropped a hint about church. Afraid of losing his job, Evan accepted the bait and walked with the fair Liz toward the altar. It must have been hard for the organist to keep his fingers off a wedding march when he saw, in his mirror, the pair walking up the aisle.
Days sped again. June was come. Blossoms were falling and berries grew larger on the vines and bushes. A forwarded note came from Hometon, rejoicing in the promotion Mrs. Nelson had read between the lines of her son's letter, and in the miraculous recuperation spoken of. Lou had enclosed a slip of paper confiding to her brother the opinion that she should have a fellow, being now eighteen, and asking him to seek out an eligible and bring him home for the summer holidays. There was no word from Frankie. A fat, scrawly letter came from Henty.
"Dear Evan," it said, "after you left Banfield, old Penton was like a bear-cat. He tore around the office like something with the pip, took to chewing tobacco and spitting in the waste-baskets, and raised proper —— with the pups. He came up to me one day with Uncle Harry looking out of his eyes and gave me a short biography of myself. I stood it as long as I could, and then I seemed to be pitching in an exciting ball game. My right hand shot out, and before I knew it Penton was lying down at my feet. When he got up he almost cried, and tried to tell me he was just fooling. I noticed that night that the guns were missing from the cage drawer, and fearing that Penton had them in store for me, I packed my grip and beat it. A fellow's foolish to take a chance with a guy like W. W. My father was glad to have me home. He consulted a lawyer about my bond, and the lawyer said the bank wouldn't dare do anything about it under the circumstances; he said it would make too much of a stir and would hurt business. I imagine they'll fire Penton over the head of it; but I hope Filter doesn't lose his job—it would kill him. I wish you were farming like me; it feels mighty good after office work. Write soon. A. P."
When his muscles had grown until he felt the vigor of school days returning, Evan began to look higher than rhubarb and asparagus tops; he even looked beyond the Mountain, and saw himself in an easy chair with a telephone at his elbow and a stenographer in front of him. He wrote an answer to quite a few advertisements in Toronto papers; those to which he got a reply asked for references, as did those written in answer to his own insertions. Disgusted, he stopped advertising and answering ads.
"By Japers," he said to himself one day, "I'll beat it to Buffalo—there are no Canadian Banks over there!"
The idea took root in him. Also, he was counselled to leave the happy home of the Hamilton gardener by the actions of Elizabeth. She not only persisted in her cream-and-sugar attentions, but wheedled the "hired man" into taking her places, and finally began to speak of him as her "friend." Evan was willing to be friendly with most people, but the significant proprietorship implied in the tone with which Liz said "friend" was extremely discomfiting. The ex-clerk saw plainly that he must make a get-away.
Toronto offered nothing, neither did Hamilton; they were both bank strongholds. Buffalo, on the other hand, was in another country—a country to which almost every young Canadian turns his face, if not his steps, at one time or another. It was free from Canadian influence, a new world in fact, and yet only a short distance away. Inquiring at the ticket office as to fare, Evan learned that in two days there was an excursion to New York for only twice as much as the regular fare to Buffalo. New York! The name suggested adventure. Why not go there instead of Buffalo? It was only a night's or a day's journey from Toronto!
New York it would be! Evan sent the news sailing to Henty and Robb, but not home. Hometon would find it out when he had a position in the American metropolis. He called and bade Hazel Morton good-bye, and insisted on taking her out to the theatre. On their way home they dropped into a cafe for ice-cream. Again they met Miss Hall of Mt. Alban. She stared hard at Evan while he was not looking, and kept whispering to her lady companion.
"We don't care, Hazel, do we?" said Nelson.
Miss Morton smiled:
"What if she should go back to the Mount and tell Julia?"
Evan felt his heart sink.
"Hazel," he said, with awe, "you're not serious, are you?"
"Are you, Evan?"
"No. Why, I haven't heard from her in months."
The Morton girl looked at him in surprise.
"Do you think," she asked, wide-eyed, "that months mean anything to a woman?"
He showed his distress unmistakably. Hazel at last began to laugh, softly, with increasing merriment.
"My dear boy," she said, "what a serious fellow you are! The girl who falls in love with you for good and all, well—"
He gazed at her questioningly, gradually feeling a load leave him, a load that he did not know he carried. Hazel was speaking:
"Julia had a habit of juggling with bankers' hearts. She's married now, you know."