295

CHAPTER I

THE MISSING BANK MANAGER

Every Monday morning, when the clock of the old parish church in
Scarnham Market-Place struck eight, Wallington Neale asked himself why
on earth he had chosen to be a bank clerk. On all the other mornings of
the week this question never occurred to him: on Sunday he never allowed
a thought of the bank to cross his mind: from Sunday to Saturday he was
firmly settled in the usual rut, and never dreamed of tearing himself
out of it. But Sunday's break was unsettling: there was always an effort
in starting afresh on Monday. The striking of St. Alkmund's clock at
eight on Monday morning invariably found him sitting down to his
breakfast in his rooms, overlooking the quaint old Market-Place, once
more faced by the fact that a week of dull, uninteresting work lay
before him. He would go to the bank at nine, and at the bank he would
remain, more or less, until five. He would do that again on Tuesday, and
on Wednesday, and on Thursday and on Friday, and on Saturday. One
afternoon, strolling in the adjacent country, he had seen a horse
walking round and round and round in a small paddock, turning a crank
which worked some machine or other in an adjoining shed: that horse had
somehow suggested himself to himself.

On this particular Monday morning, Neale, happening to catch sight of
his reflection in the mirror which stood on his parlour mantelpiece,
propounded the usual question with added force. There were reasons. It
was a beautiful morning. It was early spring. There was a blue sky, and
the rooks and jackdaws were circling in a clear air about the church
tower and over the old Market-Cross. He could hear thrushes singing in
the trees in the Vicarage garden, close by. Everything was young. And he
was young. It would have been affectation on his part to deny either his
youth or his good looks. He glanced at his mirrored self without pride,
but with due recognition of his good figure, his strong muscles, his
handsome, boyish face, with its cluster of chestnut hair and steady grey
eyes. All that, he knew, wanted life, animation, movement. At
twenty-three he was longing for something to take him out of the
treadmill round in which he had been fixed for five years. He had no
taste for handing out money in exchange for cheques, in posting up
ledgers, in writing dull, formal letters. He would have been much
happier with an old flannel shirt, open at the throat,