The Merivale banks

by Mary Jane Holmes

“No,” she answered, “but I’ll put one on ’em, so if they are not good I can bring them back. Give me a pencil.”

He gave her one, and, wetting it with her lips, she made a little cross on each of her twenty dollars, and stood aside for the women crowding against her. Within ten or fifteen minutes her account in the Grey Bank was increased by twenty dollars, and rather reluctantly she went back to her washing, finding the fire out and her water cold. But she did not mind it. She was safe, and cared but little how the tide of battle ebbed and flowed, although she would like to have stayed and seen it out.

It was moving briskly now and very satisfactorily on both sides, although for a few moments there had been a tremendous panic when a rumor went through the crowd that the cashier had deserted his post and the bank had stopped paying. This arose from the fact that Herbert had asked the cashier to step into the rear office, while they explained more fully to him what was being done, and how they were doing it.

Seeing his place vacant, and no one in the room but the office boy and the judge, who, having got his coat on, was sitting quietly by himself, the whispered words “The bank has bust” went from lip to lip, eliciting something like an angry growl from those who fancied themselves left out in the run. But this ceased as soon as the cashier returned, more bland, more smiling than ever, and business began again, while Herbert and the boy made frequent trips to the rear office without any one suspecting what they were doing, or that their money was scarcely deposited in the Grey Bank before it was carried out by Louie, who was entering heart and soul into the matter.

It was fortunate that the rear doors of the banks opened into the same yard, which was shut in from the street by a close high fence over which no one could look. And thus no one saw Louie hurrying back and forth with flushed cheeks and eyes like stars as they confronted Fred Lansing, who, in watching her, sometimes came near forgetting what he was doing, until her voice, asking if he understood and had it down all right, made him pull himself together and go on with his business of keeping account of all the money which passed through his hands into the bank beyond, with the names of the owners.

“Tom Carson, one hundred dollars,” she would say to him, and he would write it down and report “Tom Carson, one hundred dollars.” “John Brown, two hundred dollars;” “John Brown, two hundred dollars;” “Sarah Jones, fifty dollars;” “Sarah Jones, fifty dollars;” “Joel Carpenter, twenty-five dollars;” “Joel Carpenter, twenty-five dollars;” “Nancy Sharp, twenty dollars;” “Nancy Sharp, twenty dollars—all in silver, too,” Fred said, as he received and recorded the amount.

Louie had said to her father’s cashier, “Give me silver when you can. Some of the women ask for it;” so Nancy’s twenty dollars, with the pencil cross upon them went through four times, till they were as familiar to Fred as an old friend. At last, “Godfrey Sheldon, one thousand dollars,” was reported to him, with the whispered words, “He has four thousand more we can have, but father thought he’d better start with one. Aren’t they nearly through?”

She was very tired—not so much with fatigue as with the pitch of excitement, to which she was strung up, and she wondered if it would never end, and the last depositor depart.

The end came at last, as the town clock struck twelve, and the crowd began to disperse rapidly—some with their money in their hands, while others left it in the Grey Bank, and others still, when they saw how readily the payments were made, had concluded to leave what they had in the White Bank, which had shown no signs of giving out.

Not so many had demanded their money as would seem from this written account, but the withdrawal and transfer had all taken time, and three hours had elapsed between the opening of the doors and the closing of them upon the last claimant for forty dollars. Quiet was restored. The run was over, and Judge White was listening with wonder to the cashier’s account of the manner in which the bank had been saved.