Free Wild Rover No More: Being the Last Recorded Account of the Life & Times of Jacky Faber by L. A. Meyer Page B

to adjust appearance, takes a deep breath, and enters the august portal of the First Mercantile Bank of Plymouth,Massachusetts, USA, to present herself for employment.

Chapter 8
    The heavy oak doors to the First Mercantile Bank are open to let in what there is of a sultry summer breeze. I stride in with modified Lawson Peabody Look in place—chin up, lips together, teeth apart, eyes hooded. In this case, not overly haughty, but, it is to be hoped, just enough. I know the whole effect is slightly marred by the pince-nez that is clamped to my nose, but so be it.
    Entering, I spy a central aisle that has on its right a female receptionist at a desk. A walkway to the left leads to several glassed-in private offices and terminates in a row of barred teller windows.
    â€œMay I help you?” inquires the person at the desk.
    â€œYes, thank you,” I reply. “I wish to see a Mr. Polk.”
    â€œFor what reason, may I ask? Mr. Polk is the President of this bank. You do have an appointment, I presume?”
    This lowly employee I fry with my gaze. “I am here in answer to the advertisement the President has placed in the newspaper. For a governess.”
    â€œAh, please have a seat over there, and I will inform him of your presence.”
    I see a bench aligned against a sidewall and go seat myself on it to await an audience with the Great Man, while the receptionist, with a rustle of skirts, goes into the first office to tell him of my arrival. I hear the mumble of voices and she reemerges, saying, “He will see you in a few minutes. Please wait.”
    Waiting is something I am not very good at, but I sigh and resign myself, passing the time by looking about the place—the ceilings are high, and there is much dark oak in the furniture and moldings. There is a hush about the interior of the bank—the hush of money, which, after all, must be respected. I chuckle to myself when I see that there is no armed guard.
    Hell, me and my bully boys on the
Emerald
could’ve knocked this place over in a moment. We’d just bring the ship up the harbor to the end of that street as far as she’d go, with her black Jolly Roger flag grinnin’ at the masthead, and then all of us would leap over the sides and charge up the street, screaming horrible threats, waving cutlasses and shooting off pistols into the air, and generally scaring the populace away to the hills in terror. Yes, we’d put those timid-looking tellers over there on the floor right off, their money drawers stripped, the open safe over there emptied, as we went hallooing off with the loot.
    Like that time in the Spanish Port of Santo Domingo, on the Island of Hispaniola, which lay helpless before us on that day back in 1804 . . . I had burst into El Banco de Espania, a bank very much like this, with Arthur McBride on my left and Ian McConnaughey on my right, all of us armed to the teeth and screaming threats of bloody murder . . . Ah, and wasn’t that indeed a time—
heavy sigh
—but that was then and this is now, and I have neither my beautiful
Emerald
nor my brave bully boys by my side, and . . .
    . . . and there is the tinkle of a bell. “Mr. Polk will see you now,” says the receptionist from her desk. I rise, pick up my seabag by the handles, between which rests my new umbrella, and walk in the door.
    Mr. Polk is seated behind a grand mahogany desk that has several important-looking papers upon it. He is a thin man—well-dressed, hair combed back, slick with brilliantine—and is wearing a look of extreme reserve. He does, however, give me the courtesy of rising as I enter. There’s that, at least.
    â€œMiss Leigh, I presume? Please sit down.” He gestures toward a chair, and I place myself in it, my bag by my side. “You are here to apply for the position of governess for my children. I assume you have references?”
    â€œYes, Sir,” I