"Look here," he said sharply, "this noise has got to stop. What are you doing here, Brower? Can't they keep you in C's? What's the matter with the clearing anyway? ..... Nelson, I'm going to put this in your charge, and I want you to see that the ledgers have their stuff by ten-thirty at latest."
Thus another responsibility was loaded on the creaking shoulders of the cash-book man; but nothing was said of added remuneration. Every week or month, as a man increases his speed or loses his power of resisting imposition, he is screwed more and more tightly to the "wall," which, in banking, means a desk.
"Do you know what you are?" said Johnson to Evan, when the accountant had gone. "You're a darn idiot. Why don't you kick?"
"Aw, shut up," Marks butted in, "how's a fellow going to get out of it? Why, Johnsy, you'd have a hemorrhage if you ever let yourself dream of talking back to the accountant."
Mr. Charon might stop the noise, but he could never put an end to the conversation of the clearing men. They rattled on, like their adding machines, jabbing back and forth and getting off speeches that are never heard in vaudeville, but still turning out the figures at a rapid rate. They worked mechanically, and their minds had to find diversion. That it was not valuable diversion was due to the environment. In the first place the work was monotonous, and the mind naturally sought a channel of entertainment, rather than of thought; in the second place, one got accustomed to the line of talk popular with the boys and unless he mixed with them he was out of the swim and in a cold, silent current of his own.
Sometimes the diversion Evan permitted himself took the form of Frankie Arling. It was not often, now, that he thought of her seriously—that is, as his wife. Seven years was too long a time to look ahead. He could not, after a good many months in the world of business, realize Frankie as he had done in those old school-days; but he could still think of her, in an ideal way.
Would Frankie be proud of him if she could see him handling that mysterious jumble of figures called the "cash book?" He wondered how the "city" way, which he believed himself to be acquiring, would appeal to the sweet country girl. He smiled as he thought of summer vacation—not such a great while off—when he should go back to Hometon and—and what? He did not know. He couldn't carry back tales of success, for his salary was only four hundred dollars a year. He couldn't go back well dressed, because he was fifty dollars in debt to the bank, and owed a tailor's bill in Banfield.... Invariably thoughts of the girl he knew he loved brought him misery and despondency. Thoughts of home brought him little less. He might have known, from that, that either he or the bank was a failure; but a fellow of nineteen looks through a smoked glass. To say that Evan did not think is scarcely the fact. He did think, but spasmodically. The mind is a dual thing: the superficial mind can be employed on an adding machine and leave the thinking function free to operate in any direction; but before that is possible the superficial mind must be familiar with the object that engages it. It is not an easy matter to figure sterling exchange, for instance, and at the same time think about irrelevant things; but it is easy to run an adding machine, or even to add, and think simultaneously. On the cash book Evan found himself engaged in all kinds of work; on some of it he had to concentrate (although no "brain power" was necessary), while on some of it he worked mechanically. Whenever a period of serious dissatisfaction, brought on by something Robb or Key had said, troubled him, it was of short duration: something always broke into his mind and scattered the argument framing there. By the time he was free to resume the argument foreign thoughts had intervened, and his brain was in a muddle. Before the muddle could be dissipated by a cold point of common sense, something else had come along. And so things went. So the days and weeks went.
When Evan got a night off, sick and tired of struggling with figures and fancies, he indulged in some of the exciting amusements of the city, which were new and attractive to him, and in "quiet little games." He was slipping into a rut, and probably he would have stayed there for months or even years, like hundreds of other young Canadian bankboys, had not the poverty of his existence driven him to the temporary form of relief known among bankclerks as "kiting."
"Bankclerks are always hard up." This is one of the public's chestnuts. It is not a horse-chestnut, however; this one is digestible. It is a fact. The reason is, chiefly—poor pay. It is absolutely necessary for a fellow to either get money from home (even after three years' service) or to borrow and fly kites. Kite-flying is the last resort. It is simply a matter of cashing a cheque on your own bank through some other bank whose clerks are known to you, or through some outlying branch of your own bank, and keeping that cheque out (keeping the kite flying) until pay-day comes and you can deposit to meet it. There is nothing dishonest in the transaction: customers float cheques all the time. The bank cannot lose through the kiting of clerks; only tellers who cash the kite can lose, and they know the "flyer" before taking a chance.
Sometimes a floated cheque floats home sooner than expected, and then there is some sudden high-financing to be done.