14 Psmith in the City Read online

  That the recognition was mutual was evident from Mr Bickersdyke’s look. But apart from this, he gave no sign of having already had the pleasure of making Mike’s acquaintance. He merely stared at him as if he were a blot on the arrangement of the furniture, and said, ‘Well?’

  The most difficult parts to play in real life as well as on the stage are those in which no ‘business’ is arranged for the performer. It was all very well for Mr Bickersdyke. He had been ‘discovered sitting’. But Mike had had to enter, and he wished now that there was something he could do instead of merely standing and speaking.

  ‘I’ve come,’ was the best speech he could think of. It was not a good speech. It was too sinister. He felt that even as he said it. It was the sort of thing Mephistopheles would have said to Faust by way of opening conversation. And he was not sure, either, whether he ought not to have added, ‘Sir.’

  Apparently such subtleties of address were not necessary, for Mr Bickersdyke did not start up and shout, ‘This language to me!’ or anything of that kind. He merely said, ‘Oh! And who are you?’

  ‘Jackson,’ said Mike. It was irritating, this assumption on Mr Bickersdyke’s part that they had never met before.

  ‘Jackson? Ah, yes. You have joined the staff?’

  Mike rather liked this way of putting it. It lent a certain dignity to the proceedings, making him feel like some important person for whose services there had been strenuous competition. He seemed to see the bank’s directors being reassured by the chairman. (‘I am happy to say, gentlemen, that our profits for the past year are 3,000,006-2-2 1/2 pounds—(cheers)—and’—impressively—’that we have finally succeeded in inducing Mr Mike Jackson—(sensation)—to—er—in fact, to join the staff! (Frantic cheers, in which the chairman joined.’)

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Mr Bickersdyke pressed a bell on the table beside him, and picking up a pen, began to write. Of Mike he took no further notice, leaving that toy of Fate standing stranded in the middle of the room.

  After a few moments one of the men in fancy dress, whom Mike had seen hanging about the gangway, and whom he afterwards found to be messengers, appeared. Mr Bickersdyke looked up.

  ‘Ask Mr Bannister to step this way,’ he said.

  The messenger disappeared, and presently the door opened again to admit a shock-headed youth with paper cuff-protectors round his wrists.

  ‘This is Mr Jackson, a new member of the staff. He will take your place in the postage department. You will go into the cash department, under Mr Waller. Kindly show him what he has to do.’

  Mike followed Mr Bannister out. On the other side of the door the shock-headed one became communicative.

  ‘Whew!’ he said, mopping his brow. ‘That’s the sort of thing which gives me the pip. When William came and said old Bick wanted to see me, I said to him, “William, my boy, my number is up. This is the sack.” I made certain that Rossiter had run me in for something. He’s been waiting for a chance to do it for weeks, only I’ve been as good as gold and haven’t given it him. I pity you going into the postage. There’s one thing, though. If you can stick it for about a month, you’ll get through all right. Men are always leaving for the East, and then you get shunted on into another department, and the next new man goes into the postage. That’s the best of this place. It’s not like one of those banks where you stay in London all your life. You only have three years here, and then you get your orders, and go to one of the branches in the East, where you’re the dickens of a big pot straight away, with a big screw and a dozen native Johnnies under you. Bit of all right, that. I shan’t get my orders for another two and a half years and more, worse luck. Still, it’s something to look forward to.’

  ‘Who’s Rossiter?’ asked Mike.

  ‘The head of the postage department. Fussy little brute. Won’t leave you alone. Always trying to catch you on the hop. There’s one thing, though. The work in the postage is pretty simple. You can’t make many mistakes, if you’re careful. It’s mostly entering letters and stamping them.’

  They turned in at the door in the counter, and arrived at a desk which ran parallel to the gangway. There was a high rack running along it, on which were several ledgers. Tall, green-shaded electric lamps gave it rather a cosy look.

  As they reached the desk, a little man with short, black whiskers buzzed out from behind a glass screen, where there was another desk.

  ‘Where have you been, Bannister, where have you been? You must not leave your work in this way. There are several letters waiting to be entered. Where have you been?’

  ‘Mr Bickersdyke sent for me,’ said Bannister, with the calm triumph of one who trumps an ace.

  ‘Oh! Ah! Oh! Yes, very well. I see. But get to work, get to work. Who is this?’

  ‘This is a new man. He’s taking my place. I’ve been moved on to the cash.’

  ‘Oh! Ah! Is your name Smith?’ asked Mr Rossiter, turning to Mike.

  Mike corrected the rash guess, and gave his name. It struck him as a curious coincidence that he should be asked if his name were Smith, of all others. Not that it is an uncommon name.

  ‘Mr Bickersdyke told me to expect a Mr Smith. Well, well, perhaps there are two new men. Mr Bickersdyke knows we are short-handed in this department. But, come along, Bannister, come along. Show Jackson what he has to do. We must get on. There is no time to waste.’

  He buzzed back to his lair. Bannister grinned at Mike. He was a cheerful youth. His normal expression was a grin.

  ‘That’s a sample of Rossiter,’ he said. ‘You’d think from the fuss he’s made that the business of the place was at a standstill till we got to work. Perfect rot! There’s never anything to do here till after lunch, except checking the stamps and petty cash, and I’ve done that ages ago. There are three letters. You may as well enter them. It all looks like work. But you’ll find the best way is to wait till you get a couple of dozen or so, and then work them off in a batch. But if you see Rossiter about, then start stamping something or writing something, or he’ll run you in for neglecting your job. He’s a nut. I’m jolly glad I’m under old Waller now. He’s the pick of the bunch. The other heads of departments are all nuts, and Bickersdyke’s the nuttiest of the lot. Now, look here. This is all you’ve got to do. I’ll just show you, and then you can manage for yourself. I shall have to be shunting off to my own work in a minute.’

  5. The Other Man

  As Bannister had said, the work in the postage department was not intricate. There was nothing much to do except enter and stamp letters, and, at intervals, take them down to the post office at the end of the street. The nature of the work gave Mike plenty of time for reflection.

  His thoughts became gloomy again. All this was very far removed from the life to which he had looked forward. There are some people who take naturally to a life of commerce. Mike was not of these. To him the restraint of the business was irksome. He had been used to an open-air life, and a life, in its way, of excitement. He gathered that he would not be free till five o’clock, and that on the following day he would come at ten and go at five, and the same every day, except Saturdays and Sundays, all the year round, with a ten days’ holiday. The monotony of the prospect appalled him. He was not old enough to know what a narcotic is Habit, and that one can become attached to and interested in the most unpromising jobs. He worked away dismally at his letters till he had finished them. Then there was nothing to do except sit and wait for more.

  He looked through the letters he had stamped, and re-read the addresses. Some of them were directed to people living in the country, one to a house which he knew quite well, near to his own home in Shropshire. It made him homesick, conjuring up visions of shady gardens and country sounds and smells, and the silver Severn gleaming in the distance through the trees. About now, if he were not in this dismal place, he would be lying in the shade in the garden with a book, or wandering down to the river to boat or bathe. That envelope addressed to the man in Shropshire gave him the worst mom
ent he had experienced that day.

  The time crept slowly on to one o’clock. At two minutes past Mike awoke from a day-dream to find Mr Waller standing by his side. The cashier had his hat on.

  ‘I wonder,’ said Mr Waller, ‘if you would care to come out to lunch. I generally go about this time, and Mr Rossiter, I know, does not go out till two. I thought perhaps that, being unused to the City, you might have some difficulty in finding your way about.’

  ‘It’s awfully good of you,’ said Mike. ‘I should like to.’

  The other led the way through the streets and down obscure alleys till they came to a chop-house. Here one could have the doubtful pleasure of seeing one’s chop in its various stages of evolution. Mr Waller ordered lunch with the care of one to whom lunch is no slight matter. Few workers in the City do regard lunch as a trivial affair. It is the keynote of their day. It is an oasis in a desert of ink and ledgers. Conversation in city office deals, in the morning, with what one is going to have for lunch, and in the afternoon with what one has had for lunch.

  At intervals during the meal Mr Waller talked. Mike was content to listen. There was something soothing about the grey-bearded one.

  ‘What sort of a man is Bickersdyke?’ asked Mike.

  ‘A very able man. A very able man indeed. I’m afraid he’s not popular in the office. A little inclined, perhaps, to be hard on mistakes. I can remember the time when he was quite different. He and I were fellow clerks in Morton and Blatherwick’s. He got on better than I did. A great fellow for getting on. They say he is to be the Unionist candidate for Kenningford when the time comes. A great worker, but perhaps not quite the sort of man to be generally popular in an office.’

  ‘He’s a blighter,’ was Mike’s verdict. Mr Waller made no comment. Mike was to learn later that the manager and the cashier, despite the fact that they had been together in less prosperous days—or possibly because of it—were not on very good terms. Mr Bickersdyke was a man of strong prejudices, and he disliked the cashier, whom he looked down upon as one who had climbed to a lower rung of the ladder than he himself had reached.

  As the hands of the chop-house clock reached a quarter to two, Mr Waller rose, and led the way back to the office, where they parted for their respective desks. Gratitude for any good turn done to him was a leading characteristic of Mike’s nature, and he felt genuinely grateful to the cashier for troubling to seek him out and be friendly to him.

  His three-quarters-of-an-hour absence had led to the accumulation of a small pile of letters on his desk. He sat down and began to work them off. The addresses continued to exercise a fascination for him. He was miles away from the office, speculating on what sort of a man J. B. Garside, Esq, was, and whether he had a good time at his house in Worcestershire, when somebody tapped him on the shoulder.

  He looked up.

  Standing by his side, immaculately dressed as ever, with his eyeglass fixed and a gentle smile on his face, was Psmith.

  Mike stared.

  ‘Commerce,’ said Psmith, as he drew off his lavender gloves, ‘has claimed me for her own. Comrade of old, I, too, have joined this blighted institution.’

  As he spoke, there was a whirring noise in the immediate neighbourhood, and Mr Rossiter buzzed out from his den with the esprit and animation of a clock-work toy.

  ‘Who’s here?’ said Psmith with interest, removing his eyeglass, polishing it, and replacing it in his eye.

  ‘Mr Jackson,’ exclaimed Mr Rossiter. ‘I really must ask you to be good enough to come in from your lunch at the proper time. It was fully seven minutes to two when you returned, and—’

  ‘That little more,’ sighed Psmith, ‘and how much is it!’

  ‘Who are you?’ snapped Mr Rossiter, turning on him.

  ‘I shall be delighted, Comrade—’

  ‘Rossiter,’ said Mike, aside.

  ‘Comrade Rossiter. I shall be delighted to furnish you with particulars of my family history. As follows. Soon after the Norman Conquest, a certain Sieur de Psmith grew tired of work—a family failing, alas!—and settled down in this country to live peacefully for the remainder of his life on what he could extract from the local peasantry. He may be described as the founder of the family which ultimately culminated in Me. Passing on—’

  Mr Rossiter refused to pass on.

  ‘What are you doing here? What have you come for?’

  ‘Work,’ said Psmith, with simple dignity. ‘I am now a member of the staff of this bank. Its interests are my interests. Psmith, the individual, ceases to exist, and there springs into being Psmith, the cog in the wheel of the New Asiatic Bank; Psmith, the link in the bank’s chain; Psmith, the Worker. I shall not spare myself,’ he proceeded earnestly. ‘I shall toil with all the accumulated energy of one who, up till now, has only known what work is like from hearsay. Whose is that form sitting on the steps of the bank in the morning, waiting eagerly for the place to open? It is the form of Psmith, the Worker. Whose is that haggard, drawn face which bends over a ledger long after the other toilers have sped blithely westwards to dine at Lyons’ Popular Cafe? It is the face of Psmith, the Worker.’

  ‘I—’ began Mr Rossiter.

  ‘I tell you,’ continued Psmith, waving aside the interruption and tapping the head of the department rhythmically in the region of the second waistcoat-button with a long finger, ‘I tell you, Comrade Rossiter, that you have got hold of a good man. You and I together, not forgetting Comrade Jackson, the pet of the Smart Set, will toil early and late till we boost up this Postage Department into a shining model of what a Postage Department should be. What that is, at present, I do not exactly know. However. Excursion trains will be run from distant shires to see this Postage Department. American visitors to London will do it before going on to the Tower. And now,’ he broke off, with a crisp, businesslike intonation, ‘I must ask you to excuse me. Much as I have enjoyed this little chat, I fear it must now cease. The time has come to work. Our trade rivals are getting ahead of us. The whisper goes round, “Rossiter and Psmith are talking, not working,” and other firms prepare to pinch our business. Let me Work.’

  Two minutes later, Mr Rossiter was sitting at his desk with a dazed expression, while Psmith, perched gracefully on a stool, entered figures in a ledger.

  6. Psmith Explains

  For the space of about twenty-five minutes Psmith sat in silence, concentrated on his ledger, the picture of the model bank-clerk. Then he flung down his pen, slid from his stool with a satisfied sigh, and dusted his waistcoat. ‘A commercial crisis,’ he said, ‘has passed. The job of work which Comrade Rossiter indicated for me has been completed with masterly skill. The period of anxiety is over. The bank ceases to totter. Are you busy, Comrade Jackson, or shall we chat awhile?’

  Mike was not busy. He had worked off the last batch of letters, and there was nothing to do but to wait for the next, or—happy thought—to take the present batch down to the post, and so get out into the sunshine and fresh air for a short time. ‘I rather think I’ll nip down to the post-office,’ said he, ‘You couldn’t come too, I suppose?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Psmith, ‘I could, and will. A stroll will just restore those tissues which the gruelling work of the last half-hour has wasted away. It is a fearful strain, this commercial toil. Let us trickle towards the post office. I will leave my hat and gloves as a guarantee of good faith. The cry will go round, “Psmith has gone! Some rival institution has kidnapped him!” Then they will see my hat,’—he built up a foundation of ledgers, planted a long ruler in the middle, and hung his hat on it—’my gloves,’—he stuck two pens into the desk and hung a lavender glove on each—’and they will sink back swooning with relief. The awful suspense will be over. They will say, “No, he has not gone permanently. Psmith will return. When the fields are white with daisies he’ll return.” And now, Comrade Jackson, lead me to this picturesque little post-office of yours of which I have heard so much.’

  Mike picked up the long basket into which he
had thrown the letters after entering the addresses in his ledger, and they moved off down the aisle. No movement came from Mr Rossiter’s lair. Its energetic occupant was hard at work. They could just see part of his hunched-up back.

  ‘I wish Comrade Downing could see us now,’ said Psmith. ‘He always set us down as mere idlers. Triflers. Butterflies. It would be a wholesome corrective for him to watch us perspiring like this in the cause of Commerce.’

  ‘You haven’t told me yet what on earth you’re doing here,’ said Mike. ‘I thought you were going to the ‘Varsity. Why the dickens are you in a bank? Your pater hasn’t lost his money, has he?’

  ‘No. There is still a tolerable supply of doubloons in the old oak chest. Mine is a painful story.’

  ‘It always is,’ said Mike.

  ‘You are very right, Comrade Jackson. I am the victim of Fate. Ah, so you put the little chaps in there, do you?’ he said, as Mike, reaching the post-office, began to bundle the letters into the box. ‘You seem to have grasped your duties with admirable promptitude. It is the same with me. I fancy we are both born men of Commerce. In a few years we shall be pinching Comrade Bickersdyke’s job. And talking of Comrade B. brings me back to my painful story. But I shall never have time to tell it to you during our walk back. Let us drift aside into this tea-shop. We can order a buckwheat cake or a butter-nut, or something equally succulent, and carefully refraining from consuming these dainties, I will tell you all.’

  ‘Right O!’ said Mike.

  ‘When last I saw you,’ resumed Psmith, hanging Mike’s basket on the hat-stand and ordering two portions of porridge, ‘you may remember that a serious crisis in my affairs had arrived. My father inflamed with the idea of Commerce had invited Comrade Bickersdyke—’

  ‘When did you know he was a manager here?’ asked Mike.

  ‘At an early date. I have my spies everywhere. However, my pater invited Comrade Bickersdyke to our house for the weekend. Things turned out rather unfortunately. Comrade B. resented my purely altruistic efforts to improve him mentally and morally. Indeed, on one occasion he went so far as to call me an impudent young cub, and to add that he wished he had me under him in his bank, where, he asserted, he would knock some of the nonsense out of me. All very painful. I tell you, Comrade Jackson, for the moment it reduced my delicately vibrating ganglions to a mere frazzle. Recovering myself, I made a few blithe remarks, and we then parted. I cannot say that we parted friends, but at any rate I bore him no ill-will. I was still determined to make him a credit to me. My feelings towards him were those of some kindly father to his prodigal son. But he, if I may say so, was fairly on the hop. And when my pater, after dinner the same night, played into his hands by mentioning that he thought I ought to plunge into a career of commerce, Comrade B. was, I gather, all over him. Offered to make a vacancy for me in the bank, and to take me on at once. My pater, feeling that this was the real hustle which he admired so much, had me in, stated his case, and said, in effect, “How do we go?” I intimated that Comrade Bickersdyke was my greatest chum on earth. So the thing was fixed up and here I am. But you are not getting on with your porridge, Comrade Jackson. Perhaps you don’t care for porridge? Would you like a finnan haddock, instead? Or a piece of shortbread? You have only to say the word.’