scolded, “that’s what fifty dollars is worth—as anyone working in a bank ought to know by now.”
Harris pointed out that they were already half an hour late in opening and that it was high time to get some of the new notes into circulation.
Later in the morning, he glanced out his office window and noticed Dick Ogilvie sweeping the back stoop while waiting for other commissions. Harris pulled up the sash and beckoned him over.
“Don’t let people make you feel ashamed for asking questions,” said the cashier. “I ask a lot myself.”
The boy’s curly brown hair would have looked very well if he had not tried to plaster it flat with water. “May I ask another then, sir?” he said.
He wanted to know why the bank could not let him keep the fifty-dollar note. It would cost them so little in ink and paper to print a replacement. Harris told him that the gentlemen who owned the bank were putting half a million pounds into it and that the government allowed them to print paper to a face value of no more than three times that amount.
Ogilvie’s lips moved soundlessly as he did the arithmetic. “So once they’ve printed their six million dollars, they can’t print any more?”
Harris nodded. “By the time you are cashier, the preponderance of north-south trade under the Reciprocity Treaty will have made pounds and shillings obsolete. We’re just fortunate that the States uses yards and feet instead of metres or we should have two systems of linear measurement as well.”
“I should like to be cashier.” Ogilvie straightened his broadening shoulders inside his short black jacket. “Only when I’m older, I’m supposed to go into business with my dad.”
“What business is that, Dick?” Harris was surprised to find he did not know.
“Undertaking—he’s quite prominent. He arranged the funeral you attended yesterday, sir. It’s just that I can’t see myself taking orders for caskets day in day out.”
“I suppose that’s what your father was doing Sunday afternoon.” Harris recollected that funeral arrangements had been Crane’s excuse for not riding with Theresa.
Again the boy looked puzzled. “Oh no, sir.”
Although Murdock had come into the office to announce a visitor, Harris was suddenly unwilling to let Ogilvie go.
“Did Mr. Crane not call on Sunday?” he asked.
“That was Saturday night.”
“You saw him then?” Harris was sure Crane had said Sunday. It was too soon to have forgotten.
“Not only that, Mr. Harris. He would not have been received on Sunday. My dad’s very strict about the Sabbath.”
“To be sure.” Harris pulled the window down to within three inches of the sill and took, without really seeing it, the letter of introduction Murdock handed him.
The sight of the president’s signature at the bottom of the page brought Harris back to the business at hand. The letter asked him to extend every courtesy to Mr. Joshua Newbiggins, whom he invited in without further delay.
The cashier’s office was well-appointed for courteous reception. Oil copies of notable European paintings hung about in gilt frames. Two deeply upholstered armchairs and a matching ottoman faced the cashier’s desk, beside which a cabinet held a bottle of vintage port and a box of tea.
Newbiggins drank neither, appearing to derive his principal stimulus from his own conversation. He was short, round, flashily dressed and talkative. He talked about the desirability of new industries now that Toronto was becoming a rail hub. At present an importer of Pennsylvania coal, he proposed setting up an iron works, for which he had already acquired a property on Front Street. Demolished the Georgian villa that had occupied it too.
Harris received his loan application and promised it the promptest possible consideration.
“I believe the president’s letter mentioned that I am a substantial shareholder in this bank,” said Newbiggins, making no move to leave.
“Yes, indeed.”
“You realize, Mr. Harris, Kingston has become a backwater. Routing the Grand Trunk railroad three miles back of the port just nailed the lid on the coffin.”
“A hard blow to be sure,” said Harris, unable to see where this was leading.
Newbiggins sat back in his armchair and laced his ring-laden fingers over his stomach. “It can’t be long before head office moves to Toronto,” he said. “You could be head cashier.”
Harris owned real estate himself, a few residential properties acquired before the current boom. Their value had already doubled and bid fair to do so again, while their sites better suited any sort of commercial venture than the site Newbiggins had picked out for himself. Harris had, in short, prospects beyond the bank. Meanwhile, he considered himself as well housed and as honourably employed as any man his age in the city. He smiled politely.
“In point of fact,” Newbiggins confided, “I plan to discuss the whole question with the officers of the bank in the next few days. It would be a great help to me if you could have your accountant show me the records of your recent loans.”
“You had best discuss that with the president, sir. He’s kept fully informed.”
“My eye might pick up some significant details that his would miss. I know it’s somewhat irregular, Mr. Harris, but I should be working very much in your interest.”
The spacious office felt suffocatingly close. Through the barely opened window slid smells of dust and horse manure. Up and down Bay Street, carters on their way to and from the docks called to their weary teams.
“Let me be candid,” said Harris. His situation was unpleasant, but not difficult. “To be appointed to my present position, I had to post a bond. I have the strongest possible interest in transactions that are regular.”
Happily Newbiggins did not persist. His patent leather boots squeaked cheerily as he got up and adjusted his boldly checked jacket.
In the course of the leave-taking, it occurred to Harris that the little man had said railroad instead of railway. “How do you find life in Canada, Mr. Newbiggins?” he asked affably.
“Very much to my taste. People here aren’t as tall as in New York, but they have almost as much culture. Why, the very first week I was in the country, I was able to hear Miss Jenny Lind sing down at the St. Lawrence Hall. What drama she put into Bellini’s Sonnambula! Were you there?”
Harris nodded. He had been there with Theresa—four years ago, perhaps five, or even six. Time with her had been taken so much for granted. Somehow he assumed Theresa would wait for his elevation to cashier, assumed he had asked her to. He never actually had.
Miss Lind’s singing should have swept him into a declaration. If only he had let it! He recalled the soprano’s heart-piercing sweetness rather than, like Newbiggins, individual selections. The only detail of the evening to come back to him was that of Theresa at his side—eyes closed, lips parted as she soared with the Swedish nightingale—holding her bracelet of silver medallions to keep it from rattling.
