The Banker and the Bear

CHAPTER I-2

“ I’ll take it Thank you.”

“ I’m glad you decided that way,” said Spon- ley. “ Dawson and I lunch together to-morrow at one. You’d better join us, and then you and he can talk over details. Come, Alice and Harriet are waiting for us. We’ll have some music.”

When at last it occurred to John that it was time to go home, they urged him so heartily to stay a little longer that without another thought he forgave himself for having forgotten to go earlier.

Just before noon next day, John left his desk and walked into his father’s office. Old Mr. Bagsbury looked up to see who his visitor was, then turned back to his writing. After a minute, however, he laid down his pen and waited for his son to speak.

And to his great surprise John found that a difficult thing to do. When he did begin, an- other word was on his lips than the one he had expected to use.

“Father “ he said. The old man’s brows contracted, and John knew he had made a mistake. In his desire that John should be on the same terms as the other clerks, the father

had barred that form of address in banking hours.

“ Mr. Bagsbury,” John began again, and now the words came easily, “I was offered another position last night. It’s a better one than I hold here, and I think it will be to my advantage to take it.”

Mr. Bagsbury’s hard, thin old face expressed nothing, even of surprise. He sat quite still for a moment, then he clasped his hands tightly under the desk, for they were quivering.

“ You wish to take this position at once ? “

“ I haven’t arranged that. I waited till I could speak to you about it. I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

“ You can go at once if you choose. We can arrange for your work.”

“Very well, sir.”

As his father bowed assent, John turned to leave the office. But at the door he stopped and looked back. Mr. Bagsbury had not moved, save that his head, so stiffly erect during the in- terview, was bowed over the desk. From where he stood John could not see his face. Acting on an impulse he did not understand, John re- traced his steps and stood at the old man’s side.

“ Father,” he said, “ I may have been incon- siderate of your feelings in this matter. If there’s anything personal about it, that is, if it’s worth any more to you to have me here than just my my commercial value; I’ll be glad to stay.”

“ Not at all,” returned the father ; “ our rela- tion here in the bank is a purely commercial one. I cannot offer you a better position because you are not worth it to me. But if some one else has offered you a better one, you are right to take it, quite right.”

And John, much relieved, though, be it said, feeling rather foolish over that incomprehensible impulse of his, again turned to the door. He went back to his desk and finished his morning’s work. Then he slipped on his overcoat, but before going out he paused to look about the big, dreary droning room.

“ I’ll come back here some day,” he thought, “and then “

Old Mr. Bagsbury never had but one child; that was Bagsbury and Company’s Savings Bank. John was not, in his mind, the heir to it, but the one who should be its guardian after he was gone ; his son was no more to him than

that. But that was everything ; and so the old man sat with bowed head and clasped hands, wondering dully how the bank would live when he was taken away from it.

John paid his dinner call promptly, though Mark Tapley would have said there was no great credit in that; it could hardly be termed a call either, for it lasted from eight till eleven. But what, after all, did the hours matter so long as they passed quickly ? And then a few nights later they went together to the play, and a little after that was a long Sunday afternoon which ended with their compelling John to stay to tea.

His time was fully occupied, for he found a day’s work at the Atlantic very different from anything he had experienced under the stately regime of Bagsbury and Company. Dawson paid for every ounce there was in a man, and he used it. “ They’ve piled it on him pretty thick,” the cashier told the president after a month or two ; “ but he carries it without a stagger. If he can keep up this pace, he’s a gold mine.”

He did keep the pace, though it left him few free evenings. Those he had were spent, nearly all of them, with the Sponleys. The fair-

haired girl seemed to John, each time he saw her, sweeter and more adorable than she had ever been before, and he saw her often enough to make the progression a rapid one. The hos- pitality of the Sponleys never flagged. The number of things they thought of that “ it would be larks to do,” was legion; and when there was no lark, there was always the long evening in the big firelit room, when Harriet played the piano, and Sponley put his feet on the fender and smoked cigars, and there was nothing to prohibit a boy and a girl from sitting close to- gether on the wide sofa and looking over port- folios of steel engravings from famous paintings and talking of nothing in particular, or at least not of the steel engravings.

At last one Sunday afternoon in early spring, after months of suspense that seemed years to John, Alice consented to marry him, and John was so happy that he did not blush or stammer, as they had been sure he would, when he told the Sponleys about it. There never was such an illumination as the street lamps made that evening when John walked back to his father’s house ; and something in his big dismal room, the single faint-hearted

gas-jet, perhaps, threw a rosy glow even over that.

When he had left Bagsbury and Company to go to work for Dawson, there had occurred no change in John’s personal relation with his father. That relation had never amounted to much, but they continued to live on not un- friendly terms. Quite unconscious that he was misusing the word, John would have told you that he lived at home. Once on a time, when Martha was a baby, before the loneli- ness of his mother’s life had made her old, before the commercial crust had grown so thick over the spark of humanity that lurked some- where in old John Bagsbury, the old house may have been a home; but John had never known it as anything but a place where one might sleep and have his breakfast and his dinner without paying for them. When he and his father met, there was generally some short-lived attempt at conversation, consisting in a sort of set form like the responses in the prayer-book. But one night, as soon as they were seated, John spoke what was on his mind, without waiting for the wonted exchange of

“ Father,” he said, “ I’m planning to be mar- ried in a few months.”

“ If your means are sufficient,” the old man answered, “ and if you have chosen wisely, as I make no doubt you have, why that is very well, very well.”

A little later the father asked abruptly,

“ Are you planning to live here ? “

Perhaps, in the silent moments just past, there had quickened in his mind a mouldy old memory of a girlish face, and then of a baby’s wailing, a memory that brought a momentary glow into the ashes of his soul, and a hope, gone in the flicker of an eyelash, that a child might again play round his knees. But when John’s answer came, and it came quickly, the father was relieved to hear him say,

“ Oh, no, sir, we’re going to look up a place of our own.”

They were to be married next April, and though that time seemed far away to John, thanks to the economy of the Atlantic National, and to the hours he had with Alice, which merged one into the other, forming in his memory a beatific haze, it passed quickly enough. The only thing that troubled John

was Alice’s total ignorance of banking and her indifference to matters of business gener- ally. One evening, in Harriet’s presence, he offered, half jestingly, to teach her how to manage a bank; but the older woman turned the conversation to something else, and he did not think of it again for a long time.

When John had gone that evening, and Alice was making ready for bed, her door opened unceremoniously and Harriet came in. She was so pale that Alice cried out to know what was the matter.

“Nothing; I’m tired, that’s all. It’s been a hard day for Melville, and that always leaves me a wreck. No, I’ve been waiting for John to go because I want to have a talk with you. I feel like it to-night, and I may not again.”

She walked across the room and fumbled nervously the scattered articles on the dressing- table. Her words, and the action which fol- lowed them, were so unlike Harriet that Alice stared at her wonderingly. At last Harriet turned and faced her, leaning back against the table, her hands clutching the ledge of it tightly.

“I’m going to give you some advice,” she

said ; “ I don’t suppose you’ll like it, either. You didn’t like my interrupting John to-night when he was going to explain about banking. But, Alice, dear,” the voice softened as she spoke, and her attitude relaxed a little, “you don’t want to know about such things; truly, you don’t ! If you’re going to be happy with John, you mustn’t know anything about his business about what he does in the day- time.”

“What a way to talk for you, too, of all people ! You’re happy, aren’t you ? “

“ Perhaps I’m different,” said Harriet, slowly ; “but I know what I’m talking about. I shouldn’t be saying these things to you, if I didn’t. How will you like having John come home and tell you all about some tight place he’s in that he doesn’t know how he’s going to get out of, and then waiting all the next day and wondering how it’s coming out, and not being able to do anything but worry?”

“But I thought the banking business was perfectly safe,” said Alice, vaguely alarmed, but still more puzzled.

“ Safe ! “ echoed Harriet ; “ any business is safe if a man is willing to wall himself up in

a corner and just stay, and not want to do anything or get anywhere. But if a man is ambitious, like John or Melville, and means to get up to the top, why it’s just one long fight for him whatever business he goes into.”

She was not looking at Alice, nor, indeed, speaking to her, but seemed rather to be think- ing aloud.

“ That is the one great purpose in John’s life,” she said. “ His father’s bank is the only thing that really counts. Everything else is only inci- dental to that.”

She turned about again, and her hands re- sumed their purposeless play over the table. “ He’ll succeed, too. He isn’t afraid of any- thing ; and he won’t lose his nerve ; he can stand the strain. But you can’t, and if you try, your face will get wrinkled,” she was star- ing into themirror that hung above the table, “ and your nerves will fly to pieces, and you’ll just worry your heart out.”

She was interrupted by a movement behind her. Alice had thrown herself upon the bed, sobbing like a frightened child.

“You’re very unkind and cruel to tell me that John’s business was dangerous

and that he didn’t care for anything even me and that I’d get wrinkled “

Harriet sat down beside her on the bed. Her manner had changed instantly when she had seen the effect of her words. When she spoke, her voice was very gentle.

“ Forgive me, dear. I spoke very foolishly ; because I was tired, I suppose. But you didn’t understand me exactly. John loves you very, very much; you know that. When I said he didn’t care, I wasn’t thinking of you at all, but of other things : books, you know, and plays, and politics. And he’s perfectly sure to come out right, just as I said he was, no matter what he goes through. Only I think both of you will be happier if you keep quite out of his business world, and don’t let him bring it home with him, but try to interest him in other things when you’re with him, and make him forget all about his business ; and theonly way to do that is not to know. Don’t you see, dear ? “

She paused, and for a moment stroked the flushed forehead. Then she went on, speak- ing almost playfully :

“ So I want you to promise me that you won’t ask John about those things, or let him explain

Beginnings 23

them, even if he wants to. It may be hard some- times, but it’s better that way. Will you ? “

Alice nodded uncomprehendingly ; Harriet kissed her good night, and rose to leave the room.

“ Are you quite sure he loves me better than the bank ? “ the young girl asked, smiling, albeit somewhat tremulously.

“Quite sure,” laughed Harriet; “whole lots better.”

When Sponley came in, still later that even- ing, she told him of John’s offer.

“ How did he come out with his explanation ?” he asked.

“ I didn’t let him begin. I changed the sub- ject.”

“ It’s just as well. He’s lucky if he can ever make her understand how to indorse a check, let alone anything more complicated.”

“ I fancy that’s true,” Harriet said, and she added to herself, “ of course it’s true. I’ve had all my worries for nothing, and have frightened Alice half to death. But then, she didn’t under- stand it.”

“Anyway, I’m glad that you understand,” Sponley was saying.

“ I’m glad, too,” she answered, and kissed him.

John and Alice were married, as they had planned, in April ; but the wedding trip was cut short by a telegram from Dawson, direct- ing John to go to Howard City, to assume the management of the First National Bank there ; and the house they had chosen and partly fur- nished had to be given up to some one else. Alice cried over it a good deal, and John was sorely puzzled to understand why she should feel badly over his promotion.

Ah, well, that was long ago ; fifteen seven- teen years ago. They have been comfortable, uneventful years to John and Alice; whether or not you call them happy must depend on what you think happiness means. They have brought prosperity and more promotions, and John is back in the city, vice-president of the great Atlantic National. But his ambition has not been satisfied, for, on the Christmas Eve when we again pick up the thread of his life, his father, old John Bagsbury, crustier and more withered than ever, and more than ever distrust- ful of his son’s ability, is still president of Bags- bury and Company’s Savings Bank.