"Banking Is an Art"

by JOHN P. MARQUAND

10

DOWN there on the floor of the Stuyvesant you worked with the privacy of a goldfish, aware that almost anything extraneous might happen. There might be certain sheltered corners in the neighborhood of the officers’ desks, but there was no shelter at the edge of the green carpet where Charles Gray and Roger Blakesley were stationed. Old Joe, who stood just inside the door, in a neat business suit instead of a uniform, was in the most exposed position with duties roughly like those of a floorwalker in a department store. He was the one who helped find the counter checks and the deposit slips, who answered the first questions and directed traffic. Charles often wondered why this system of everyone working in the open should exist.

It must have been a part of a great tradition, stemming from the medieval days of the goldsmiths and the moneylenders, that all the workings of a bank must be as visible as the wheels and mainspring of a glass-enclosed French clock. It was perhaps a tradition that was deeply rooted in human suspicion regarding money and those who handled it. There must be positively no deception, everything open and aboveboard and nothing up the sleeve. It was democracy; if you had money in a bank, it seemed that you had an inalienable right to see the bankers sweating over it. Then, too, it established confidence to see a roomful of well-dressed, capable individuals sitting behind desks, reading, answering telephones, or moving in bland orbits according to their rank. One got used to it, of course, through time and training, and it was surprising how through sheer discipline one could avoid making mistakes of fact or even of judgment. You learned a lot about people there.

The street doors had been opened at ten o’clock and the trade from the near-by shops was already coming in. There was not much time before the eleven o’clock meeting. Charles had already gone hastily through his mail, which he hoped to have time to answer when the tellers’ cages closed at three.

“That’s all now, Miss Marble,” he said, and he saw that Tom Joyce was coming over to his desk.

Charles thought that morning when Tom Joyce stood beside the desk that he himself had looked much like Tom Joyce once when he was twentyfive or six. Tom had come there fresh out of Harvard Business School but had only worked at the Stuyvesant for about a year before he was drafted, He had returned there from Europe in 1945 as a captain of artillery to take his old place in the statistical department about the time that Charles himself had returned. If that hiatus of the war had made any impression on Tom Joyce, Charles had not been able to discern it. His work had been excellent and now he was one of the bright young men, as Charles had been when he was twenty-six. New York had given Tom the same veneer and the bank had given him the same watchful manner. He could think of Tom Joyce as having the same ambitions, as observing everything and making mental notes for future reference. He was careful, he was steady, he was giving his full attention to the business. He had so much promise that Charles would have liked to give him his place if he should be moved up. The only thing that interfered was age and lack of maturity. Tom Joyce was still too eager and impatient, as he had been once himself, too anxiously, openly competitive. The trouble was that he had as yet no powers to conceal his likes and dislikes, not enough subtlety and patience. That was the trouble with being young.

“Good morning, Colonel,” Tom Joyce said. It was a little joke between them that was wearing rather thin, and besides, military experience did not help at the Stuyvesant.

“That will do, Captain,” Charles said. “Never mind the war.”

“Don’t you ever mind it?” Tom Joyce asked.

“I’m too busy to mind it here this morning,” Charles said, “but I’ll tell you what. We’ll talk about it if you’ll come out some Sunday.”

“That’d be swell,” Tom said.

That was his trouble, overeagerness, but it was very pleasant to have anyone look at him as Tom Joyce did, pleasant and at the same time a little sad.

“It won’t be as swell as all that,” Charles said. “How do you like it here downstairs?”

“It’s swell,” Tom said.

He was glad to hear it, and yet it puzzled him that he found it a little sad. It was that enthusiasm, his own pathetic enthusiasm, his own desire to sacrifice to get ahead, that was staring back at him over a gap of fifteen years.

“Banks are filled with nice boys, particularly up in front,” Charles said, “We’re all delightful fellows.”

“There are quite a lot of bastards, too,” Tom said.

Charles thought, before answering, that this was not good banking talk.

“There are everywhere,” he answered, “and sometimes it pays to be one.”

“You’re not one,” Tom said.

“Thanks,” Charles answered. It was not the way to talk near the front desks of the Stuyvesant, and he was surprised that he allowed himself to go so far. “I’ll tell you what I went right now, Tom. I want the Whitaker security list and I went everything on Smith Chemical. Tell them I’ll be upstairs around noon to look things over.”

“Yes, sir,” Tom Joyce said, “I’ll get them right away.”

But he still lingered by the desk, and his slowness made Charles look up at him. Charles was about to ask what else he wanted, but stopped when he saw the other’s face, and the guileless admiration in it that again showed Tom Joyce’s youth. It was exactly the way Charles had looked at Arthur Slade in the old days.

“I’ve been thinking about Smith, too,” Tom Joyce said. “It was down a point again this morning.”

“Yes,” Charles said.

“I met a friend of mine yesterday,” Joyce went on. “He has a brother on the floor. He said —”

“Run along now,” Charles said. “Never mind what brothers on the floor say —never.”

Sometime, he was thinking, he would have to have a talk with Joyce. He would have to make him see that the trust department was a great machine not governed by anyone’s individual judgment but by the collective decisions of committees and boards. It might be possible to speak out in meeting and to influence the committee’s decision, but that was all. When it came to trends, and the drop in Smith might indicate a trend, these things were being watched by a dozen subordinates. It was all very well to think about them but it was no use to think you were a Napoleon running the trust department.

There was nothing more futile nor more stultifying to sound judgment than being swayed by what other people said. Charles had learned it again and again, and perhaps he was still learning. The truth was that people who knew anything never said a word. The mere fact that they were in a position to know guaranteed their silence. He was thinking that he had never obtained a word of useful information from them except by indirection. You had to work it out yourself. You had to read between facial lines and between the lines of all the market letters and between all the figures, but in the end it all depended on yourself. There were certain rules, of course, but in these days even rules were flexible because they were influenced by personalities. If you were a good investment man, in the end you had to depend upon yourself and upon an instinct developed by training. You had to have a sense of the whole financial balance that came from an accumulation of facts, and that accumulation developed as slowly as a stalagmite in a cave, drop by drop. He was thinking as he read the market letters on the desk before him that they were all written by stupid little people and that no man in a high category would ever dare write one, yet even the dullest inanities could add up to a sum of experience.

Since the upstairs conference room was being redecorated, the meeting was held downstairs in the conference room off the vaults. To the left, before you entered the conference room, you could see the vaults themselves, the barred anteroom with its uniformed attendant at the gate that always reminded Charles of the prison scenes in films when the brave little wife went to visit her erring husband at Sing Sing. There was an efficient smell of oil on all the glittering steelwork, and down the narrow, brightly lighted passages he had a glimpse of the safe deposit boxes and of the private cubicles where individuals could examine the contents of these boxes in an antiseptic seclusion almost as complete as the privacy of the Great Pyramid. The gentle efficient sound of a ventilating system somehow gave an impression of inexorable security.

The Stuyvesant was a small bank, but its vaults were completely modern, shock-proof, dust-proof, and time-proof, the acme of safety, the ultimate sublimation of property and possession. Put your family jewels in the vault, leave your heirlooms for a modest sum, your will, your priceless papers and mementos, your bond and stock certificates. The Stuyvesant would take care of them, and if, for any reason, you did not want to go down there yourself, walking the slightly slippery steel floors to your safe deposit box, if you found it tiring clipping coupons and filling out all those troublesome federal forms, why not let the custodian service of the Stuyvesant do it for you? Why not leave these fatiguing details of ownership to the oversight of careful, conscientious experts? For a purely nominal sum the Stuyvesant would do it for you.

Hugh Garrity, an old Second Division veteran of World War I, dressed now in a Confederate-gray uniform, was on duty at the gate, and Mr. William Poultney, who led clients to their boxes and put both clients and their boxes into the private alcoves, was seated watchfully like a Sing Sing warden, and in a way also like a kindly hotel clerk, at his desk behind the bars. Hugh Garrity and Mr. Poultney both had an air of lynx-like alertness, which was to be expected since bank officers were making this unaccustomed descent into the conference room.

“Good morning, sir,” Hugh said, and he saluted in that heavy, half-formal way common to all civilian guards. If he had been a dog, Charles thought, he would have wagged his tail, slowly and gently.

Charles heard a light, quick step behind him. It was Mr. Anthony Burton, coming down for the conference.

“Come on, Charles,” Tony Burton said.

Charles followed him to the conference room.

That subterranean room had been built some years before the war and Tony Burton, and the directors too, were proud of it, though it was not as large and imposing as the directors’ room upstairs. It had started like all bank interior decoration with dark paneled walls and indirect lighting, with an oval table, and chairs, but then someone had hit upon the idea that the Stuyvesant was old enough to have a tradition and this room, which was also a good place to take large customers, ought to have some of that tradition. Now there were some interesting prints and pictures on the walls, old prints of Broadway, the Seventh Regiment marching down Fifth Avenue in the Civil War, framed pieces of Continental currency, ancient lottery tickets, century-old advertisements, and a shelf with the first books of the Stuyvesant. The State Street Trust in Boston, Tony Burton used to say, went in for ship models. He did not want to go as far as that but at the same time it did not hurt to show that the Stuyvesant had a past.

The group had already gathered in that room with a past, although the subject under discussion, being a specially called trust meeting, was to deal essentially with the future. Steven Merry was there, with his tortoise-shell glasses, and Roger Blakesley with his rimless glasses, and Alfred Brock, from the foreign department, and Tom Joyce, and two other men from the trust department. When the door was closed, everything was friendly because they were one big famity.

“It was an awful rain last night,” Steve Merry said. “We got water in our cellar.”

Then they all sat down and talked for a few moments about cellars and the difficulties of keeping them dry, and Tony Burton began to tell about his own cellar and a heating plant until he checked himself and said they had better get to work.

11

CHARLES sat listening attentively with his eye on Roger Blakesley. In spite of its being a special conference he knew most of the answers already. The general money situation, the condition of certain businesses, the holdings of new accounts, the stability of certain industries. Roger Blakesley, it seemed to Charles, was talking more than usual, and trying almost too hard. Charles could follow the discussions with no difficulty. He could answer and ask his own questions and at the same time remember that he must arrange to have two hundred dollars put in the housekeeping account for Nancy. He could think of the large figures with one part of his mind and also of his own figures, but his main attention never flagged. No matter how dull and how meaningless they were, you had to be very careful at those meetings. You had to remember the arguments and the way the minds had worked around the table.

It was only after half an hour that anything came up at all unusual. It came so unexpectedly and so entirely out of the blue that he had to think carefully what had led up to it. Somehow the thread of the meeting and its purpose had been dropped and Tony Burton had embarked on an extraneous discussion about real estate and loan collateral, subjects which never should have been considered, and it was not usual for Tony to stray from the agenda. Tony Burton had happened to mention that a new depositor, with whom Charles was not acquainted, was applying for a six months’ loan of two hundred thousand dollars. This was entirely out of Charles’s province. He was a man named Godfrey W. Eaton and was the head of a substantial company manufacturing tiling. Roger Blakesley had seen him first and he had taken him to Steven Merry and afterwards to Tony Burton. They had investigated Mr. Eaton through all the ordinary channels and now all his business life was down on a memorandum. This sounded like the dossiers of a hundred other people whose names had come up at loan conferences. He had come from the Middle West. Before coming to New York he had owned a number of small factories. And Mr. Eaton had obviously done well for himself because now he owned two apartment, buildings, free and clear, was a director of a chain of stores, and a part owner of a sugar refinery. Obviously one of those adroit people who coidd move from one enterprise to another. The purpose of the loan was for additions to the tile plant. Part of the collateral was in government bonds and part in stocks. It surprised Charles that the officers had not given him the loan at once on such security, but lately Tony Burton and Steven Merry were exhibiting an unusual slowness in making decisions.

“I wonder why he didn’t go to his own bank,” Charles said, “not that it’s any of my business.”

Clearly Roger Blakesley was delighted by the question.

“Because I met him first, Charles,” Roger said, “and I’m selling him on the personal service of small banks. I met him playing golf. I’ve seen quite a good deal of Godfrey Eaton. He’s a friend of Sam Summerby. You know, Tony, Sam Summerby from Baltimore.”

Perhaps it was Charles’s imagination, perhaps he was becoming unduly sensitive, but it seemed to him that there was a slight rustle around the table. It seemed to him that everyone was watching them, and he was aware that Roger had made a very good point. It seemed to him that Roger was implying, without being obliged to say it although he had undoubtedly said it to Tony Burton, that he had brought in a very nice piece of business to the Stuyvesant, which was more than Charles had done lately. He was implying, without having to say it, that he brought in business because he got around, and sweetened contacts, and played golf with people like Samuel Summerby, and everyone knew the Summerby Corporation. He was implying without saying it that it was too bad Charles played a very poor game of golf, and it seemed to Charles that he had to say something.

“Are you on a first-name basis with him, Roger?” he asked.

Charles was aware that it was a small and sordid little contest. He was implying, without having to say it, that several times in the past Roger had been too prematurely friendly.

“Of course I am,” Roger said. “I’ve known Godfrey Eaton for a year. Everybody at the club knows Godfrey.”

“What club?” Tony Burton asked. “Where does Eaton play golf?”

“Why, the Seneca Club,” Roger said. “I’ve got in the habit of playing there lately, instead of at Oak Knoll. It’s a sportier course.”

Mr. Burton nodded, and made a note on a memorandum pad. Tony Burton was always very careful with customers and loans. He always said that the Stuyvesant was a small family bank and he wanted to know as much as possible about his clients, and now they were all like the Committee on Admissions of a club.

“I rather liked him myself,” Tony Burton said. “He’s breezy, with a rather nice personality, but Charles has put his finger on it. Why should he come around to us?”

“Because he likes us,” Roger said. “He told me he liked you very much, personally.”

“Why shouldn’t he?” Steven Merry asked. “I like Tony personally.”

Roger Blakesley laughed. “As a matter of fact, I do too,” he said. “That’s why the Stuyvesant is a great bank. Everybody likes Tony.”

Charles had to admit that it was bright of Roger.

“I’d love Tony myself,” he said, “if he’d lend me two hundred thousand dollars. That’s the way it is. Love and money.”

Everybody laughed. Even the younger men round the table smiled, and Mr. Burton picked up a piece of paper. “He’s putting up enough,” he said. “There’s only one thing I question.”

“What?” Roger Blakesley asked.

Mr. Burton frowned at the paper he was holding, and he looked very handsome there at the head of the table as everyone’s eyes moved toward him.

“Here’s an unlisted company from Clyde, Massachusetts. You didn’t mention this, did you, Roger? ”

That was how Clyde came into the conference room, suddenly, out of nowhere. It came in by accident, because Tony Burton’s mind had been on a loan when he should have been discussing trust business. It came like a gust of wind through an open window, but there were no windows in the conference room — nothing but air-conditioning.

“May I see that?” Roger Blakesley said. “That wasn’t in the first list he gave me.”

It was not a fortunate statement of Roger’s and Charles could not help hoping that everyone noticed, for it showed that Roger was somewhat careless about detail. Roger should have remembered.

“The Knickerson Boat Company, Clyde, Massachusetts,” Mr. Burton said, “five hundred shares. Does anyone know about the Knickerson Boat Company? Wait a minute—”

Then Charles knew that Tony Burton was going to remember. He could see Tony Burton looking at him.

“Clyde. Let’s see. Charles, don’t I remember that you used to live in a place called Clyde?”

Mr. Burton had a good memory.

“Yes, sir,” Charles said. “I was born there but I haven’t been there for quite a while.”

“Well, what about the Knickerson Boat Company?”

“They used to make small boats,” Charles said, “small sailing boats and fishing boats. They used to build a lot of ships in Clyde in the 1830’s. Some people still build little boats.”

He could see, as he spoke, the Knickerson boatyard beside the river, a small place where boats were hauled out and repaired. He could remember the workshop and the smell of paint and shavings. Mr. Burton was still looking at him and it seemed necessary to go on.

“I didn’t know it was incorporated,” Charles said.

“I’m sure it wasn’t on the list he showed me,” Roger said, “but if Godfrey Eaton has money in it, it must be good.”

It was a very lame remark and Roger must have known it.

“Well, we’ll leave this for now,” Mr. Burton said. His voice was resonant and agreeable, but it seemed to Charles that it had changed slightly.

Charles relaxed in his leather-seated mahogany chair. There was no doubt that Roger Blakesley had made a mistake. Probably already he was thinking of some way to cover it up. But still, it was strange that the name of Clyde should have cropped up at the table. It was peculiar the way things happened all at once. You thought of a name or a face, and then it would appear.

“I remember Clyde,” Steven Merry said. “The road to Bar Harbor used to go t hrough it, but it’s by-passed now. It’s a pretty little town, something like Wiscasset in Maine. Nice houses. Elm trees. I never knew you came from there, Charles.”

“Well,” Charles said, “that was quite a while ago.”

Mr. Burton picked up another paper, but it seemed to Charles that he was still annoyed about the Knickerson Boat Company.

“Never mind it now,” he said. “It’s getting on toward lunchtime.”

Charles only half heard him. The mention of Clyde was taking his attention from the meeting. It was not that he was daydreaming, it was not that anything was vague or ill-defined. He could see the faces about him very clearly and the papers on the table and those inevitable memorandum pads and newly sharpened pencils that were conventionally on every conference table, though you hardly ever used them except to draw squares and pictures if you did not smoke, and no one ever smoked at the Stuyvesant on the banking floor and Tony Burton disapproved of smoking in conferences. Charles was completely in the present. It was only that he no longer accepted that present. For a moment he found himself wondering how he had ever got into that conference room, and whether he really wanted to be there, and he wondered whether anyone else around that table had ever shared those thoughts. Certainly their faces did not show it. Yet if you thought of it in one way, they had all arrived there as he had, through some sort of accident.

Charles glanced at his wrist watch, not surreptitiously as you usually did at conferences, but deliberately. It was ten minutes past twelve and Charles was relieved because that situation with Roger was beginning to be difficult. They were both of them showing off before the bank officers like college boys running for manager of a football team although they were assistant vice-presidents. He knew that Roger was implying that he had unsound, visionary qualities, while he, on his part, was implying that Roger was not accurate. They were doing it in a very nice way, and of course they both were right, but he was glad when it was over. In five minutes everyone was standing up, looking almost carefree because there would be a breathing spell for lunch.

“I didn’t know the Eaton thing was coming up this morning,” Roger Blakesley said.

12

THOUGH common sense told Charles that he should hurry back from lunch, some other inner impulse made him walk with perverse slowness as you sometimes did in a dream when you tried to hurry. In fact when he reached the Avenue, he came to a stop at the corner and looked at the buildings across the street, bright in the early afternoon sun, for the sun had finally broken through the clouds and the sky was almost entirely blue. The yellow cabs and the green and white cabs, and the new buses, so different from the old ones with the open tops, were all moving in that fast, continuous stream, so much faster than the progress of the people on the crowded sidewalks. Everything was changing and Fifth Avenue was, too. But then, Fifth Avenue had always been in a state of flux, with old buildings coming down and new ones going up, the old ones crumbling into rubble and being poured into the wreckers’ trucks. It was always changing, but the spirit of it was the same, as young, confident, and blatant as when Henry James had written of it long ago. It still conveyed the same message, that you could feel but not analyze, as when he had walked along it first, on that visit with his father to New York. The motion of it still had the same strength and eagerness, so different from the more stately motion of Piccadilly and the Strand.

It had been quite a while since anyone had made a remark to him about staying out too long at lunch and there was never the slightest criticism, now that he was downstairs, at a desk near the front window. There was still the compulsion of never being late but at the same time you were privileged to stay out longer. Nevertheless, Charles knew that Miss Marble and Joe had been wondering where he was, and it did not help to see that Roger Blakesley was busy at his desk already. Charles repressed an instinct to hurry and hang up his hat and coat, and instead he walked slowly past the desks and stopped where Miss Marble was typing and asked her if there was anything new.

“Nothing new,” Miss Marble said. “I called up Mrs. Gray and told her you couldn’t catch the five-thirty. She said to remember that you’re going to the country club tonight.”

“It isn’t tonight, is it?” Charles asked.

“You didn’t tell me to put it on the calendar,” Miss Marble said, “but Mrs. Gray said to remind you.”

“Well, call her again and tell her I’ll meet her there,” Charles said. “I’ll get there as soon as I can, but I’ll be late.”

He stopped in front of the washroom mirror to see that his tie was straight. He did not look the way he had at Clyde though even there his mother used to say that he had the Gray high cheekbones and the Gray pointed chin. The roundness had gone out of his face. There were wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and his mouth was tighter, but there was no gray in his hair. It was not the face that he used to have but it still looked young.

The tellers’ cages closed at three and already, as was usual in the afternoon, the pace was growing more leisurely. There were always new problems in the morning, but these always grew old by afternoon, fitting with older problems into an even order so that you had a sense of everything running smoothly, a sense of teamwork if you wanted to call it that, or a sense of what Mr. Burton called a meshing of the gears. You could think of the whole system of capital, of rates, discounts, markets and production, as running without interruption, like the traffic on the Avenue. Charles had devised a system of seeing every trust account personally at least once a month, and now Miss Marble brought to his cleared desk the ones which he was to examine that day. As he thanked her and settled himself in his chair, he glanced across at Roger Blakesley. Roger’s desk was heaped with piles of paper. It was a habit of Roger’s always to shove a great many papers around in the afternoon, especially toward closing time.

“Hello, there, Charlie,” Roger said. “Everything’s backing up on me.”

Charles knew this was not true but it gave the picture that Roger wanted, a picture of heavy and unremitting labor.

“Well, don’t let it get you down,” Charles said. “I thought you were going to have lunch with Tony.”

“He canceled it,” Roger said. “Something came up the last minute.” Roger took off his glasses and polished them. When his glasses were off, his blinking eyes gave him a wide and guileless look. “Are you going to the country club tonight?”

“Yes,” Charles said, “but I’m afraid I’ll be late.”

“The Whitakers?” Roger’s voice was polite and respectful when he mentioned the Whitakers.

Charles smiled and nodded.

13

CHARLES began on the first account. It was the Burrell School for Negroes, in Tennessee, that had been founded by the late Charles Burrell, the moneys for which were to be administered by Mr. Burrell’s own bank, the Stuyvesant, in conjunction with Mr. Burrell’s old law firm, Burrell, Jessup, and Cockburn. Charles would have to meet with Mr. Cockburn the first of the week and the meetings were never agreeable. The trouble with institutional accounts lately was that all institutions were screaming for more income, although they always were demanding a margin of absolute safety. Mr. Cockburn always wanted to lower the bond holdings and to increase the higher-yielding preferred list, and Charles had never liked preferreds. That million-dollar fund had been beautifully invested. Even in the depression it had held up well on income and now the market was considerably above the book value.

Charles was in the middle of the third page of the holdings when habit told him that Miss Marble was waiting by his desk.

“It’s twenty minutes to three,” Miss Marble said. “Mr. Selig is coming in at a quarter of. I thought you’d like to see the memorandum.”

“Selig,” Charles repeated, and his mind ran back sw-iftly from the investments of the Burrell School.

“The matter that Mr. Burton asked you to take up,” Miss Marble said. An anticipatory quiver in her voice showed that Miss Marble was interested, but there was no need for her to tell him. He had been asked to do that job yesterday. He always seemed to be the one who was picked for unpleasant jobs and now he knew why Tony Burton was not yet back from lunch.

“Thanks,” he said, and he took the memorandum. “Does Joe know I’m to see him? You’d better check again, Miss Marble.”

Then his eye traveled over the memorandum. He had learned to read office memoranda quickly, and to pick the salient details out of dull verbiage.

“Burt J. Selig,” he read, “is part owner of the Teddy Club and the La Casita Nightclub, owns real estate at . . . and also in Miami, was indicted for income tax fraud but indictment was quashed. . . .”

There was no use going any further with live memorandum because everything had been concluded. It seemed to Charles that there was no reason for a personal interview and that it might have been done as well by letter, except that Tony Burton had disapproved of a letter. His desk was clear except for a pile of Moody reports when Charles saw Joe moving from the door with a thin, dark man beside him, wearing a bluish-purple overcoat and a lightweight gray felt hat. Except for the shimmering sheen of the overcoat and the unnaturally brilliant polish of his shoes, Mr. Selig was quietly dressed. His tie was dark, like his suit; his face was tanned, probably by the Miami sun, into a smooth, meerschaum color. When he took off his hat, as he did when he approached the desk, Charles saw that his forehead was high and that his closecropped dark hair was receding from his temples. His eyebrows, that might have been trimmed, made a straight, almost Grecian, line. His jaw was heavy, his eyes were gray, but there was nothing heavy about his step.

“This is our Mr. Gray,” Joe said. “Mr. Burton asked Mr. Gray to take care of you.”

Mr. Selig held out a carefully manicured hand.

“I’m happy to meet Mr. Gray,” he said. “My name’s Selig, Burt Selig.”

“Yes, I know,” Charles said. “Mr. Burton asked me to see you and I have all the details. Won’t you sit down, Mr. Selig?”

Mr. Selig’s face had a polished look of things written on it that had been erased without being entirely gone. It was a face of a type that Charles did not know, but it was as marked and distinctive as a soldier’s or a doctor’s — positive, alert, and confident.

“A nice little place you have here,” Mr. Selig said. “Very nice.”

“It’s just a small bank,” Charles answered.

“Yes,” Mr. Selig said, “that’s what draws me to it, Mr. Gray, particularly for Mrs. Selig. I know some lovely people banking here. Some of my best friends. My friend Alf Rockmore banks here. Do you know Alf ? ”

“Yes,” Charles said, “I’ve met him.”

“A very nice fellow, Alf,” Mr. Selig said. “He likes La Casita. Have you been to La Casita, Mr. Gray?”

“I tried once,” Charles said, “but there was a long line waiting.”

“Well, any time,” Mr. Selig said, and he smiled.

“Thanks,” Charles said.

“Well,” Mr. Selig said, “I suppose you’ve looked me over. That’s what the delay was for, wasn’t it?”

Mr. Selig paused and smiled but there was no need to give any answer.

“I’m used to being looked over,” Mr. Selig said, “in my position.”

“Well,” Charles said, “anyone in business always gets looked over.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Mr. Selig said. “How long have you been here, Mr. Gray?”

“Quite a while,” Charles said.

“I suppose it takes time to work up anywhere in a business like this. Nothing can move fast.”

“That’s right,” Charles said, “it takes time.”

“I wouldn’t want any son of mine working in a bank,” Mr. Selig said. “Advancement is too slow.”

“It all depends on temperament,” Charles answered.

“Yes,” Mr. Selig said. “Everybody has a different temperament. I ought to know.”

Charles did not answer. The best way to hurry an interview was to wait, but he was sure that Mr. Selig ought to know.

“Well,” Mr. Selig said, “what’s the story? Do you want my account or don’t you?”

It often surprised Charles how many people considered banking a matter of dull routine. Whatever it might be to the boys in the back of the room, and whatever dull, drowsy hours there might be up front, you could never count on them. It was necessary as soon as Mr. Selig asked that question to change from an investment consultant into a man of the world. It was necessary to remember that he was in a very responsible position, representing in his own person the prestige and dignity of the Stuyvesant, and at the same time protecting the inviolate dignity of its officers. Suddenly, with hardly any time to prepare for it, he had to change from facts to diplomacy and to draw smoothly on a store of meaningless phrases, which were deceitful but which had to stick.

“Our officers have been over that question very carefully,” Charles said, and the smoothness and the consoling tone of his voice surprised him. It reminded him of a hotel clerk saying nicely that there was no room for a certain guest. “We would value your account in .a great many ways, Mr. Selig, and we’ve honestly tried to make room for it. You said yourself this is a small bank, and smallness has its difficulties. Just at the moment, we’re as crowded as New York hotels.” Charles smiled at Mr. Selig and felt still more like a hotel clerk. “Just at the moment, we can’t increase our depositors and do justice to the old ones. I hope you’ll understand, Mr. Selig. Sorry as we are to turn away profitable business.” Charles smiled again. “Mr. Burton asked me to tell you personally that he’s very sorry.”

Of course he was using Mr. Burton’s name unofficially, but still it had a consoling sound, even if it did not have the desired effect.

“So the answer is no, is it?” Mr. Selig asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Charles said, “for the time being. We’re very sorry.”

Something made Charles sit up straighter and something made him feel that it would be unwise to shift his glance from Mr. Selig, for a film had seemed to drop over Mr. Selig’s eyes. It was as though Mr. Selig was trying to suppress an impulse without being able wholly to conceal it. For a second, in spite of all control, Charles had a sense of something close to physical danger.

“So I’m not a nice enough guy to play with you, is that it?” Mr. Selig said.

Charles spoke slowly and very carefully. You had to go on with the act and make no rash statements. You had to be glib and still say nothing.

“There’s nothing personal intended,” Charles said. “When we take a depositor we want to do our best for him, and now we really couldn’t do our best with another checking account.”

“I’m not used to being given the run-around. Why didn’t they say that the first time I came in?” Mr. Selig asked. He had not raised his voice, but there was a disturbing change in his accent.

“I’m sorry you put it that way,” Charles said. “ Mr. Burton was very impressed by your references. We never like to disappoint our friends, Mr. Selig. We hoped we might find a way of working you in.”

“So you’re fronting for the crowd, are you?” Mr. Selig asked.

“If you mean I’m out in front,” Charles said, “I suppose I am. Mr. Burton asked me to attend to the matter, but of course if you’re not satisfied —”

“How much do they pay you for doing it?” Mr. Selig asked. “Ten grand a year?”

“That hasn’t anything to do with your account, has it?” Charles asked. But still, he was fronting for the crowd. He liked the expression, fronting for the crowd. Mr. Selig was looking at him, with a new sort of interest.

“Guys like you fascinate me,” Mr. Selig said. “You fascinate me. I don’t see why you do it, for that money.”

“I suppose I think I’m underpaid,” Charles said. “It’s human nature.”

Mr. Selig lowered his voice. “How would you like twenty-five grand a year?”

“What for?” Charles asked.

“For what you’re doing here,” Mr. Selig said. “Fronting for the crowd.”

It was something, after all it was something. At least it meant that he had not done his job badly. At least it meant that Mr. Selig had seen something in him that was desirable, and he could not help being curious as to why Mr. Selig made the offer.

“Thanks,” Charles said. “I’m afraid I couldn’t use it, but I appreciate your asking.”

“You guys fascinate me,” Mr. Selig said. “Money everywhere, and you don’t want money.”

“Maybe we get too used to it,” Charles said. “Maybe we get tired of seeing so much of it around.”

“That’s what fascinates me,” Mr. Selig said. “AH of it around, and you don’t lake it. Well, no hard feelings.”

They both stood up and then they were shaking hands.

“Oh no,” Charles said, “not at all. We’re very sorry, Mr. Selig.”

“It takes guts,” Mr. Selig said. “I wouldn’t have the guts.”

“I wouldn’t call it guts,” Charles said. “I’d call it temperament and timidity. Good-bye. We’re sorry, Mr. Selig.”

14

THERE was no flagging in the bank’s activity, but Charles was aware of a ripple of excitement, of glances from the cashiers’ cages and from all the smaller desks. They were all like good little boys and girls who had witnessed one of their number having it out with a naughty boy from the street who had trespassed in the schoolyard. The adding machines were still clicking and whirring with the typewriters, the cashiers were still thumbing through their paper currency, but there was still the excitement, that sense of the unusual. Mike Cavanaugh, the bank detective, was stepping toward his desk, not hurriedly but quietly as though he were only making his afternoon rounds, and Roger Blakesley had turned in his swivel chair.

“How was he? ” Mike Cavanaugh asked.

“He was a perfect gentleman,” Charles said. “He asked if I was fronting for the crowd.”

Then Roger Blakesley was asking whether Mr. Selig had been mad, but Charles had no time to answer. Mike Cavanaugh had stiffened to attention and Charles saw that Mr. Burton had come in, still in his overcoat, just back from lunch.

“Has Selig called?” Tony Burton asked.

“He’s just left,” Charles told him.

“Well, I’m glad I missed him,” Tony Burton said. “How did he take it?”

“His feelings were hurt,” Charles said, “but then mine would have been. I wouldn’t say he was angry at me personally.”

“There aren’t any complications, then?” Tony Burton asked.

“No,” Charles said. “I don’t think so.”

“This sort of thing always worries me,” Tony Burton said. He began to move away to the coatroom.

“Oh, Mr. Burton,” Roger Blakesley said, and Mr. Selig and possible complications left Charles’s mind. Roger was like a good boy speaking in one of the classes at the Harvard Business School, careful not to call the president by his first name right in the middle of the bank.

“Yes, Roger,” Tony Burton said, benignly, like a kind teacher.

“Have you got time to see me for a minute?”

“Yes,” Mr. Burton said. “If it’s only for a minute. I’m pretty well behind schedule.”

Charles had rung for Miss Marble and Miss Marble was bringing back the trust accounts. He was careful to show no undue curiosity, but such a request of Roger’s, at such a time, had certain implications. Ordinarily, either he or Roger Blakesley, because of their position, would have risen and walked over to the president’s roll-top desk without asking for any sort of appointment. That request of Roger’s meant that he wanted to see Tony Burton alone and perhaps about something personal. It might even mean that Roger, like himself, was getting tired of it and that Roger was going to step over, as Charles had often thought of doing in the last few weeks, and ask right out about the vice-presidency. It was not like Roger, but it was possible. It was possible that Roger was going to do what he had thought of doing, to ask if a decision couldn’t be made quickly, on the grounds that this sort of waiting was bad for general morale.

Mr. Burton had left his coat and was settling down at his roll-top desk and Roger Blakesley had risen.

That sort of curiosity and suspense was useless and unpleasant, and there was nothing one could do. Charles was back in his personal world again, that little narrow world, yet even so there were the trust accounts. It was time to be going through them because it was after three o’clock.

There was something wrong with his mood that afternoon, something discordant that moved him beyond the control of ingrained habit and system. Ordinarily his ability to concentrate enabled him to suppress his own personality and personal problems during banking hours. He was back again with the trust accounts, but he could not keep his mind on them. His eyes were on a list of common stocks, American Can, American Cyanamid, American Tobacco B, American Telephone & Telegraph. Through wars and rumors of wars, in the midst of panic and depression, out of the maze of taxes and social change, through all the welter of a cracking tradition, American Tobacco B and American Tel & Tel had stood like granite peaks of a half-submerged continent, serene above a swirl of hostile seas, like the values of early life. Other securities might go sour, but not telephone and tobacco, unless you wanted to switch to Liggett & Myers B. But now, though he was surrounded by those trusted symbols, so like the Greek letters in an algebraic equation, his thoughts kept wandering off in tangents.

Roger Blakesley was over in the corner, his chair pulled close to the president’s desk, talking very earnestly. Charles could not get out of his mind what Nancy had told him that morning, that he could go to Tony Burton and put his cards on the table. Even though he dismissed it as just the thing a woman would suggest, Nancy had good business judgment. She understood as well as he did the routine and the jealousies and the discipline of an office, and besides there was the question of personal dignity. It was humiliating, considering his position, to sit, day after day, waiting for Tony Burton to tell him what was on his mind, when he had probably made up his mind already. It was humiliating to have one’s life, and a good part of one’s future, depend on the eccentricity of one man’s mind, but that was the way it always was.

Charles had often thought that it was fortunate for Tony Burton that quick decisions were very seldom necessary. Tony Burton had told him himself that he liked to mull over problems, particularly problems of personnel, but of course it was not the way he, or anyone else, made decisions. These were made quickly and instinctively, out of native intuition and instinct, tempered by training and experience. Generally you were driven to them, and Tony Burton always made up his mind fast when he was driven. All his talk of mulling and weighing and balancing was vacillation, if you wanted to use a harsh word for it. There was that personal element of not wanting to hurt another’s feelings, the qualms that always surrounded a definite negative. That was what was worrying Tony Burton, the certainty that no matter what he did someone would be hurt.

The way to handle Tony Burton was to force him. Years ago, Charles had been horrified by the idea, but the better you knew someone, the more you knew of his weaknesses and his temperament. In a way it was not fair to take advantage of it, just as all friendship in business was not fair, but after all they were not friends except through economic accident.

It would be perfectly possible that afternoon to end suspense and to get the word from Tony Burton. He was surely not afraid of him, and he could even frame just what he would say.

“Listen, Tony,” he would say, “let’s face the facts. There’s a directors’ meeting on the first of the month and everybody here in the bank knows that you are considering proposing either Blakesley or me for the fifth vice-presidency. You know as well as I do, or you ought to, that they’re making bets on it in the washroom. It isn’t dignified. It isn’t fair to Roger or me to keep us waiting. We’re both of us making monkeys of ourselves, running around and polishing apples. You know everything about me, Tony. I’ve been around here long enough. Of course, I was out in the war, but you approved my going, or you said you did, and I’m right where I was when I came back, except the war has made me better. I know it’s hard to step on somebody’s face, but this thing has been going on for two weeks, ever since Arthur was killed, and I’m tired of staying awake at night, and Nancy’s getting tired, too. How about it, Tony?”

It was not a bad speech, either, even though it was out of his usual line and beyond the realms of discipline. In fact, the words were so vivid in his mind that he seemed to be saying them, right now, at the far corner by the window. But already something told him that he would never say them. He was at his desk, and out of the corner of his eye he saw that Roger Blakesley was back again, leafing through a pile of papers with his left hand while he scribbled with his right on a memorandum pad. It may have been that Roger had already talked to Tony. He could even make a savage, unkind parody of Roger’s possible speech which Roger would have called an “approach.”

The shades on the front door were drawn already, showing that the bank was closed to depositors. He knew it because there was the inevitable air of relaxation now that the bank was no longer on public display. Voices were louder. People were assuming more comfortable positions, and far in the back of the room, in that region where there was not so much to gain or lose, he saw some of the boys moving toward the washroom to smoke a cigarette. If he wanted to have that talk with Tony Burton, now was the time, but he still sat at his desk with his accounts in front of him. It was a surprising thing to realize that he too was hesitating and fumbling over a decision. He was sure that, he was not hesitating out of any sort of fear. The thing that held him was a native sort of pride, and he was relieved when he knew it. If they wanted to keep him waiting, he was not going to show that it bothered him; and granted that the whole thing was childish, as long as he knew why he did nothing the rest did not make so much difference.

Just then his desk telephone rang, with a quiet, purring sound. It was Miss Summer, Tony Burton’s secretary.

“Oh, Mr. Gray,” Miss Summer said. Her voice was sweet with the assured authority of being the dean of all secretaries, the repository of all secrets. “Mr. Burton wants to know if you can see him for a moment.”

15

THERE were some things you could not control, and in spite of himself, his heart was beating faster, He deliberately finished the page of his report before he rose, and when he was on his feet he looked at Roger Blakesley.

“Yes, Sug,” Roger was saying over his own telephone. It was short for sugar, which meant that Roger was speaking to his wife. “I’ll be on the five-fifteen. Yes, I’ll pick up the prescription.”

Roger’s concentration on his conversation was not misleading. Charles was sure that Roger knew what was happening, and that Roger knew exactly why Tony Burton wanted to see him for a moment.

Tony Burton looked very fit, in spite of his white hair and his roll-top desk, both of which conspired to put. him in another generation. For years Charles had accepted him as a model and was very willing to do it even though he realized that everyone else above a certain salary rating used Tony Burton for the same unit of measure, and he was pretty sure that Tony himself was conscious of it. Charles never rebelled against it because Tony was just what one should expect of a president of a firstrate bank. It was amusing but not ridiculous to observe that all the minor executives in the Stuyvesant, as well as the more ambitious clerks, wore conservative double-breasted suits like Tony Burton, at the same time allowing undue rigidity to break out into pin-stripes and herringbones just like Tony Burton. They all visited the barber once a week. They all had taken up golf, whether they liked it or not, and they all wore the same square gold type of wrist watch, and the same stainless-steel strap. They had adopted Tony Burton’s posture and his brisk, quick step, and even the deliberate inflection of his voice. In fact once at one of those annual dinners, for officers and minor executives, when everyone said a few words and got off a few local jokes about the bank, Charles had brought the matter up when he had been called upon to speak. Speaking was always an unpleasant ordeal, with which he had finally learned to cope successfully, largely from imitating Tony. He remembered standing up and waiting for silence, just as Tony waited, with the same faint smile and the same deliberate gaze.

“I should like to drink a toast,” he had said, “not to our president but to everyone who tries to look like him. When I walk, I always walk like Tony, because Tony knows just how to walk, and when I talk, I always talk like Tony, because Tony knows just how to talk, and when I dress, I always dress like Tony, in a double-breasted suit. But no matter how I try, I cannot be like Tony. I can never make myself sufficiently astute.”

That was the one time in the year, at that annual dinner, when you could let yourself go, within certain limits, and Tony Burton had loved it. He had stood up and waited for the laughter to die down, and then he had spoken easily, with just the right pause and cadence. He had said that there were always little surprises at those dinners. lie had never realized, for instance, that there could be a poet in the trust department, but poetry had its place. Poetry could teach lessons that transcended pedestrian prose.

“And I’m not too old to learn,” Tony Burton had said, “and I’m humbly glad to learn. Sometimes on a starlit night, I’ve wondered what my function was in the Stuyvesant. I’m very glad to know it is that of a clothing dummy. It’s a patriotic duty. It’s what they want us to be, in Washington.”

That was back in 1938, but Tony Burton still had the same spring to his step, the same unlined, youthful face, and the same florid complexion, and he had the same three pictures on his desk — the first of Mrs. Burton in their garden, the second of their three girls, standing in profile, like a flight of stairs, and the third of his sixty-foot schooner, the Wanderlust, the boat you were invited on once every summer, with Tony Burton in his yachting cap standing at the wheel. Time had marched on. Two of the girls had come out, and one of them was married, and the Wanderlust had been returned by the Navy in deplorable condition, but Tony Burton was just the same.

No matter how well Charles had come to know him, in that half-intimate, half-formal business relationship, he still had a slight feeling of diffidence and constraint. It was the same feeling that one had toward generals in the war, or perhaps toward anyone with power over you. There was always a trace of that subservient desire to please and to be careful. You had to know how far to go, how long to laugh, and how to measure everything you said.

Tony Burton looked up and smiled and waved his hand with a circular motion at the wrist that everyone had tried to imitate.

“Sit down, Charlie,” he said. “Have a cigarette and relax.”

No matter how much you might pretend, it was no time for relaxing and Tony Burton must have known it. It must have been a little hard for Tony, trying to be friends, because there was always that line of demarcation. It might have been different, Charles was thinking, if he had money of his own instead of being dependent on a job. It might have been different, even, if he had received some attractive offer lately, if he had known that there was something waiting for him elsewhere, with the same salary, instead of knowing that times were tight and uncertain.

Everything was uncertain and there was nothing to do but to wait. He shook his head when Tony Burton offered him a club cigarette out of his gold case, because he had given up long ago smoking in the bank.

“What’s on your mind, Tony?” he asked. There was nothing to do but wait, while Tony Burton laid his cigarette case on the desk in front of him. He could read from where he sat the engraving on its gold surface, done in script, in three different specimens of girlish handwriting. “To the most representative daddy, Gladys, Olivia, Babs.”

“The girls gave it to me on Father’s Day,” Tony Burton said. “I didn’t know I was a representative dad.”

“I didn’t know you were either,” Charles answered, “but it must be nice to know.”

There was nothing to do but wait, but it was clear already that they were not going to talk about the future or they would not have started with the cigarette case. At the same time, it was also clear that Tony Burton did have something on his mind. Charles glanced at his cool and almost placid features, set in their assured, easy lines, that came from a career in which everything had always worked out right. It was amazing to think that from the very beginning Tony Burton could have had no doubts about anything. From the very beginning he must have known that he would end where he was sitting.

“I don’t like being representative of anything,” Tony Burton said.

“I don’t see how you can help it very well,” Charles said.

“How do you mean, I can’t help it?” Tony Burton asked.

“Sitting where you are,” Charles said, “you’ve got to represent. That’s all I mean.”

“Well, I was thinking the other day,” Tony Burton said, “that you’re pretty representative yourself.”

“I hope I am, Tony,” Charles answered. “I try to be, in business hours.”

He did not like the conversation because he did not know where it was leading, although he understood that it was all a part of Tony’s technique.

“We ought to call this place the House of Representatives,” Tony Burton said, “but it isn’t, a bad shop, is it?”

“No,” Charles answered. “It isn’t. I’m glad to be back in it, Tony.” And Tony Burton smiled at him, almost as though they were friends.

“Well,” Tony said, “speaking of representatives —” and he paused and Charles sat motionless. For a second he thought that he was wrong about the conversation, and that they were coming to the point at last, but only for a second. “How did you represent things to Selig?”

“I told him we had too many accounts,” Charles said. “I told him there were too many complications.”

“Why didn’t you tell him that we’d have room for him in the quite near future?”

“Because he wouldn’t have believed it,” Charles said. “He had to know, not that he didn’t know already.”

“Did he take it?”

“Yes,” Charles said, “he took it.”

Tony Burton leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head.

“He has a lot of good connections. That’s the trouble with the underworld these days. You don’t know where you’re at any more. The girls keep going to La Casita. It’s a damn funny world, isn’t it? It’s getting curiouser and curiouser.”

“A man told me at lunch today,” Charles said, “that no matter what the world is doing, man remains the same.”

Tony Burton unclasped his hands from behind his head and placed them on the arms of his chair.

“Well, let’s forget it, Charlie. There’s one other thing.”

“Yes, sir,” Charles said. He knew it was the other thing that Tony Burton wanted to talk about, and he knew that informality was over. It was time to be a bright young man again, and to call Tony Burton sir.

“About that loan.”

“Which loan, sir?” Charles asked.

“The one we were talking about this morning. That little boat company. You said you were born up there. What’s the name of the place?”

“You mean Clyde?” Charles answered. He had never dreamed that Clyde would come into the conversation again, yet now that it had, it seemed inevitable. All day, from the moment he had arisen in the morning, Clyde had been behind everything.

“Yes,” Tony Burton said, “that’s it. Clyde. Somebody’s got to see that company, and it just occurred to me,” he raised his hand from the right arm of his chair and rotated it slowly from the wrist, “it just occurred to me if you’ve lived there and know the background, you’d better go up for the day and look things over, just quietly. Talk to people. Find out from the bank. Nothing secret about any business in a small town.”

“No, sir,” Charles said. “Nothing’s secret. Everybody knows about everything.”

“Well, if you want to, take the midnight, or take the plane up to Boston tomorrow morning. Stay as long as you like and see if you can get some figures.”

Charles nodded slowly. He did not want to speak for a moment because the pieces were all beginning to come together, inevitably, as sure as fate. The whole thing was so perfect that it had the quality of destiny, as though it had all been meant to happen long ago. In a way there was retribution and justice in it, a perfect sort of justice. He was going up to Clyde and he could not help it. He was going back to where he had come from because Roger Blakesley had seen Mr. Burton for just a minute.

“I envy your getting away for a few days,” Tony Burton said. “You’re looking a little tired, Charles.”

“Do you want to come along?” Charles asked.

“I wish I could,” Tony Burton said, and he laughed, “but I’m the representative dad.”

Charles’s thoughts were moving smoothly again. For an instant he thought of refusing. He thought of a possible excuse, but a refusal or excuse would have been as bad as going.

“Do you mind if I ask you a question, Tony?” he asked.

“Why, no, of course not, Charlie.”

“Did you think up this idea yourself?”

It was dangerous, impertinent, and out of order, but from the slight narrowing of Tony Burton’s eyes, and from the faint look of surprise, he knew that Tony Burton understood, and that was all he wanted.

“Why no,” Tony Burton said. “Now that you mention it, it wasn’t entirely my idea.”

At least Tony Burton understood. He understood why Roger had suggested it. It would be a chance to get Charles Gray away for a while, out of sight and out of mind in a crucial period. He had to admit that it was clever of Roger Blakesley.

“I suppose Roger ought to go,” Tony Burton said. “It’s his responsibility. But he doesn’t know Clyde. How about riding back with me on the five-thirty?”

“I can’t,” Charles said. “The Whitakers want to see me at half past five. They’re very short of money.”

“You’ll be back by Friday, won’t you?” Tony Burton asked. “Remember, you’re coming to dinner Friday.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Charles said.

When their glances met, there was no doubt that Tony Burton knew what he was thinking. He was smiling in a paternal way, far removed from any trouble of Charles’s but still understanding.

“Well, relax and have a good time, Charlie,” he said, and he leaned forward and slapped Charles’s knee.

“That’s the second time,” Charles said, “that you’ve told me to relax.”

“Well, do it,” Tony Burton said. He seemed to be speaking from a great distance, from Olympic heights of security which Charles had never known. He might have been speaking from the deck of the Wanderlust, with a wet sheet, a flowing tide, and sailors in white drill, swaying as they hauled. He sounded like a doctor in his office, giving advice to a nervous patient.

“Go ahead and relax, Charlie. I’ll see you Friday.” And then his voice had a note of kindly promise in it. “Just you and Nancy are coming, and you and I’ll have a good long talk about everything on Friday.”

(To be concluded)