William Banks

“ She would have left the stage then, but the audience would not have it. Again and again she advanced and bowed her thanks, and again and again the cheering rolled out. Finally the lights went up, once more she stepped to the front of the stage, nodded to the orchestra leader, who waved his baton, and began "Loch Lomond." Sweet and clear the voice rose and fell; they cheered after the first verse; they cheered again at the close of the second; and then—she saw Tommy Watson, who was staring straight at her, his face brighter now, his eyes aflame, his lips slightly parted. ”

“ Whimple stirred uneasily, and Tommy Watson, whose cheeks were wet with tears, shook a warning finger at him. The old man looked up again. "The shadow came again," he said quietly, "and somewhere—somewhere—they are waiting for me. Men differ on religion, and fight over the future state. What do I know of it? I don't know. A Jew, though a British subject born, a comedian—some say I have no religion, and never had. I don't know. But, oh! I know they wait for me—and where they wait is home."
For a long time there was silence; Epstein was the first to break it. ”

“ Your first-class office boy inspires fear. He knows his indispensability; he knows that more than anything else the boss loathes the trouble of hiring an office boy; he knows—oh! what does he not know? You who have never had to do with him, or depend upon him, go sit at the feet of him who has and try to grasp the outer rim of understanding as to the depth and height and width of the wisdom and learning, the profound knowledge of the only human being to whom the Kings of Finance and Commerce (see any daily paper) appear as they really are—just men. ”

“ Miss Whimple appeared in the hallway and extended a hand to William, who squeezed it heartily and hoped the lady was well. She was, she said.
"Well, I'm glad to hear it," said William.
"Umph—it doesn't take the boys long to follow the example of the men. Now, you don't really care a cent about my health, and you know it!"
"You're wrong, Miss Whimple," he answered, and there was earnestness in his tone. "I like people I know to be well—most of them anyway." ”

“ I am a husband and a father. God knows how much he has to forgive in me—God—knows. Those I love best—my wife—my little girl—they could never dream. But—will you try to remember, sometimes, some of these things?"
William put out his hand and the judge shook it warmly. The boy was late getting back to the office, and Whimple was testy. "Where on earth have you been, William?" he asked, sharply; "there's a good deal of work to do, and we can hardly catch up to it to-day."
"I'm sorry. I've been listening to a man," said William, quietly. ”

“ William laughed happily. "Oh, but he's a pippin, a real pippin; and me thinking he was a dub. If he wakes up, and I'm asleep, nurse, you can tell him from me that I'm a mutt. He's the real thing, is Lucien." Then he looked down at his hands, swathed in bandages, and grinned. "Kinder early for winter mitts," he said. "Gee, but my hands sting! Has my Ma and Pa been here?" ”

“ They entered the airy dining-room, crowding around "Chuck," all begging to be allowed to sit next him, and the argument grew so heated that William had to settle it. "Dolly on one side," he said with emphasis, "and Bessie on the other, and everybody keeps quiet or gets out," and then in a loud whisper to Pete and Joey, "Don't you be makin' hogs of yourselves. No more'n three pieces of cake, mind."
But the terror of William's threats faded before the hunger of "the bunch," and the determination of Miss Whimple and the maid, to say nothing of Epstein, to see that it was appeased. ”

“ His father had tried once or twice, but his evident embarrassment, his halting sentences, and his fear lest William should misunderstand, had frightened, rather than impressed, the boy. But the judge was saying the things William knew his father had tried to say, and he was losing none of them. The sacredness of the body, his lordship was emphasising this, and dilating upon it: the purity of the heart and mind; respect of woman; the honour of a man; reverence to God. William afterwards wrote the words out almost as fully as though he had taken them all down at the time. ”

“ CHAPTER IX
"When I feel gloomy, I'm good and gloomy," said William to Lucien Torrance one sunshiny afternoon in June, as they sat together in Whimple's office, their respective "bosses" being out "on business," another way of saying that they had gone to the baseball match.
"This is one day when I'm gloomy, and I just gotter gloom—it ain't no good your buttin' in and telling me to cheer up and all that kinder rot. No, sir, I just gotter gloom till it's all over." ”

“ Whimple agreed. Twice he made as though to go, and after the second attempt he asked bluntly, "Does William come here every morning yet?"
"Yes," answered Tommy.
"Well, I—that is——" he did not finish the sentence, and did not know how he could, but Tommy saved him. "That's all right," he said, "I'll send him over right after his lesson to-morrow. Whimple, you know what the good book says: it's more blessed to take a man on again than to refuse to give him another chance." ”

“ In all the time I have known him he's looked upon his 'Pa' as the smartest man he knows."
"Yes," said Sally, smiling. "Whenever he wants to impress one as to the cleverness of some other person he brings in 'Pa,' and he always adds, 'It's a wise guinea who can put one over on my Pa.'"
"It is, too," said Miss Whimple. 'Pa' Turnpike is one of the shrewdest men I ever met, and one of the kindliest too. William and 'the bunch'—can't you imagine you hear him saying it, Sally?—'the bunch' are proud of 'Pa,' and they have a right to be." ”

“ Tommy commented, "confound the kid. Sometimes he drives me frantic, but all the time I like him. He hasn't got the faintest notion of ever being anything but a comedian. He's almost uncanny. What he doesn't think of hasn't been thought of by anybody yet, I'll bet. He can't find words, often, to tell what his thoughts are, and then he falls back on the greatest line of slang I've ever heard. Only yesterday he said to 'Chuck' Epstein, 'Many's the time when things all go wrong I've felt like going home and crying, honest. ”

“ Well, presently he became very quiet, his mouth set firmly, as it does when he is thinking hard, and he looked straight at me. 'Miss Whimple, you know what real love is,' he said. 'I hope when it comes to me I'll be as worthy of it and as true as you have been,' and then—why, he was the real William again in a flash. 'Say,' he said, 'why don't you go out to a ball game once in a while? Lots of ladies go, and the way the Torontos are playing this season it looks like they'd be champions again for the second time in four years. Honest, they've got me wild, and Tommy Watson's crazier than I am. ”

“ He was able to pay William a fairly good salary, and the lad was earning it, for he had adopted as his motto one of Tommy Watson's proverbs: "The man who earns what he gets is a dub; the fellow who always does more than he's paid for gets to the winning post first." Whimple himself, on the shrewd advice of his aunt, had bought and re-sold to excellent advantage pieces of property in the rapidly developing suburbs, and was beginning to be known as an expert on law in regard to property. ”

“ The judge enjoyed those performances, and he rather surprised Epstein and William both by making suggestions in respect to some of them that were valuable and illuminating. "How did you come to think of that?" asked Epstein curiously, in regard to one idea advanced by the judge.
"I think," answered his lordship, slowly, "that a court is the best of dramatic schools. It is so real, too; there is much of tragedy and a great deal of comedy too—unconscious, a lot of it. I have always been rather keenly interested in the study of the people who came before me, particularly in criminal cases. ”

“ You, dear reader, know it, of course.
"Outer books," William said, all slang and smiles again. "Say, Walter, it beats the band and the good stuff some of them guys had in their think-tanks, and it fits in, a lot of it, like they were toddlin' around Toronto to-day."
"It certainly does—some of it," said Walter. "I wonder if they ever played baseball in those days?"
"Not so far as I can make out," answered William. "Half their time they were fighting, and the other half making love: that is, most of 'em. Our friend Bill Shakespeare and a few others were writing plays and acting them too." ”

“ The batsman again set himself for a swing, and the pitcher once more tried to make a human knot; again the ball shot, this time straight and true for the plate, and as it did, William, with a volume of agonised pleading in his voice, yelled, "Mind your head." Instinctively the batter ducked and, of course, missed the ball, while the umpire dispassionately cried, "Strike two." The batter grieved loudly and bitterly. He accused the umpire of having eyes like a codfish, and of being stampeded by "some guy in the stand." ”

“ To many it may seem remarkable, to others amusing, and to the minority a thing unbelievable, that before the end of the first week William should have been manager of the office so far as its routine was concerned. Every one who has had the honour of acquaintance with a first-class office boy will understand. Those who have not had that experience will not, and to them is added those who do not regard boys, office or otherwise, as having the remotest bearing upon, connection with, or part in the working of the world of to-day. ”

“ Epstein smiled happily. The old comedian did not seem to have aged very much in the five years. He declared he felt younger, in fact. Between him and William there had grown a friendship strong and complete. The lad trusted implicitly in the man: his gratitude to him was unbounded, he evinced it by his attention to the lessons, still continued, by every little thing he could do to show that the tuition, so unselfishly given, was bearing good fruit. ”

“ It was then that William, burning to distinguish himself, and having a vague notion that "Chuck" Epstein, who was in the audience, had once declared that the actor who could interpolate telling lines in his part was on a fair way to fame, advanced solemnly to the front, regardless of the dropping curtain which landed on his shoulders and flopped ungracefully around him, to declare in his loudest voice, "And I wish to say, that the man what hits a woman is a coward." ”

“ But, as Tommy Watson himself was wont to say, "Facts are real, facts are earnest, facts are very stubborn things, facts are facts where'er you find 'em, facts are what gives truth its wings." Therefore, it is here set down in black and white that William himself engineered that additional hour, and the wise men who thought they had initiated it patted themselves on the back because it was a success. ”

“ Honest, the way he curses about those people is awful. I told Tommy Watson about him one day, and Tommy says the Good Book is dead against wasting anything. A man like that, he says, could make a great hit by saving all his curses for one year, and then letting them loose on one of the people he don't love. Whoever got them would never forget, and they'd think more of Mister Jonas than they do with him throwing curses around as though they were cheaper than newspapers. ”

“ Reformations are slow—except when they're sudden. Some reformations—of individuals as well as nations—have followed upon years of effort, toil, and suffering: others have been materially accelerated by the use of the axe. William's acquaintance with the axe was limited to its use as an instrument for occasional spells of firewood-chopping: but at heart he was a reformer, and, unlike most reformers—judging them, of course, by the doubtful value of histories—he started upon himself. ”

“ For the youthful mind sees easily through the most of them, intuitively perhaps, and not by methods of reasoning, and decides for itself whether it shall accept or reject them. And office boys constitute a particularly abnormal department—if such it may be termed—of the youthful mind. This is merely a roundabout way of preparing the readers, if any, of this veracious chronicle with the fact that William had not, as Tommy Watson supposed, "walked into" the plan whereby he was to receive an additional hour of tuition from that prince of tutors, "Chuck" Epstein. ”

“ Three of the firemen, with a hose, rushed up the front stairs of Whimple's office and to the window through which the girls were coming.
"Well, I'll be swizzled," said one of them, excitedly, "who made the bridge?"
One of the girls paused a moment before leaving the office. "Two boys," she cried, hysterically, "they're in the factory helping the other girls."
"Bully for them," shouted one of the firemen. ”

“ That was a rare luncheon. William ate heartily and praised the cooking, two things that pleased both Miss Whimple and the maid. "I'm good and hungry," he said by way of explanation, "and Pa always says it ain't no disgrace to be hungry, and it's only a chump what won't eat all he can when he gets next to it. There's enough as can't get what they want to eat, he says, when they need it most, without anybody's what's hungry playing manners when they can get it." ”

“ Lucien and William were fast friends now. The former was still with Simmons, the architect, who, like Whimple, was beginning to achieve success, and now occupied a separate office suite. He was growing fast; was stouter than William, much slower in action and speech, and was giving promise of developing into a successful business man. William had confided his plans to Lucien long ago, and had been delighted with the real interest with which they had been received. They often talked about them, and Lucien had even given some suggestions that William had acted upon and found to be good. ”

“ She laid a hand on his arm. "I know—I know," she said. "I'm a foolish old maid. You are right about William, but, sometimes, those who have lost much dream pleasant dreams and build fairy castles for those who help to make their sorrow easier to bear." And then they talked of other things, of William's future, of Epstein's success, of Tommy Watson's boy.
Meanwhile, Sally was sitting on the verandah of Miss Whimple's home, going over again to herself all the memories of her first meeting with Lucien. ”

“ He sometimes worried over his lack of graceful movements. "I've stood in front of the glass many a time," he said to Epstein, "and practised trying to be graceful, but it's no go. I'm as awkward as a duck; what'll I do?"
"Nothing," said Epstein, gravely, "nothing, my boy. It will be best for you if you are always naturally as awkward as you are to-day. Many comedians have tried for years to acquire what you have as a gift of nature. It's a great asset." And William took the old man's word for it. ”