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Page 33
He paused. Mr Bickersdyke's eyes, which even in their normal state
protruded slightly, now looked as if they might fall out at any moment.
His face had passed from the plum-coloured stage to something beyond.
Every now and then he made the clucking noise, but except for that he
was silent. Psmith, having waited for some time for something in the
shape of comment or criticism on his remarks, now rose.
'It has been a great treat to me, this little chat,' he said affably,
'but I fear that I must no longer allow purely social enjoyments to
interfere with my commercial pursuits. With your permission, I will
rejoin my department, where my absence is doubtless already causing
comment and possibly dismay. But we shall be meeting at the club
shortly, I hope. Good-bye, sir, good-bye.'
He left the room, and walked dreamily back to the Postage Department,
leaving the manager still staring glassily at nothing.
13. Mike is Moved On
This episode may be said to have concluded the first act of the
commercial drama in which Mike and Psmith had been cast for leading
parts. And, as usually happens after the end of an act, there was a
lull for a while until things began to work up towards another climax.
Mike, as day succeeded day, began to grow accustomed to the life of the
bank, and to find that it had its pleasant side after all. Whenever a
number of people are working at the same thing, even though that thing
is not perhaps what they would have chosen as an object in life, if
left to themselves, there is bound to exist an atmosphere of
good-fellowship; something akin to, though a hundred times weaker
than, the public school spirit. Such a community lacks the main motive
of the public school spirit, which is pride in the school and its
achievements. Nobody can be proud of the achievements of a bank. When
the business of arranging a new Japanese loan was given to the New
Asiatic Bank, its employees did not stand on stools, and cheer. On the
contrary, they thought of the extra work it would involve; and they
cursed a good deal, though there was no denying that it was a big thing
for the bank--not unlike winning the Ashburton would be to a school.
There is a cold impersonality about a bank. A school is a living thing.
Setting aside this important difference, there was a good deal of the
public school about the New Asiatic Bank. The heads of departments were
not quite so autocratic as masters, and one was treated more on a
grown-up scale, as man to man; but, nevertheless, there remained a
distinct flavour of a school republic. Most of the men in the bank,
with the exception of certain hard-headed Scotch youths drafted in from
other establishments in the City, were old public school men. Mike
found two Old Wrykinians in the first week. Neither was well known to
him. They had left in his second year in the team. But it was pleasant
to have them about, and to feel that they had been educated at the
right place.
As far as Mike's personal comfort went, the presence of these two
Wrykinians was very much for the good. Both of them knew all about his
cricket, and they spread the news. The New Asiatic Bank, like most
London banks, was keen on sport, and happened to possess a cricket team
which could make a good game with most of the second-rank clubs. The
disappearance to the East of two of the best bats of the previous
season caused Mike's advent to be hailed with a good deal of
enthusiasm. Mike was a county man. He had only played once for his
county, it was true, but that did not matter. He had passed the barrier
which separates the second-class bat from the first-class, and the bank
welcomed him with awe. County men did not come their way every day.
Mike did not like being in the bank, considered in the light of a
career. But he bore no grudge against the inmates of the bank, such as
he had borne against the inmates of Sedleigh. He had looked on the
latter as bound up with the school, and, consequently, enemies. His
fellow workers in the bank he regarded as companions in misfortune.
They were all in the same boat together. There were men from Tonbridge,
Dulwich, Bedford, St Paul's, and a dozen other schools. One or two of
them he knew by repute from the pages of Wisden. Bannister, his
cheerful predecessor in the Postage Department, was the Bannister, he
recollected now, who had played for Geddington against Wrykyn in his
second year in the Wrykyn team. Munroe, the big man in the Fixed
Deposits, he remembered as leader of the Ripton pack. Every day brought
fresh discoveries of this sort, and each made Mike more reconciled to
his lot. They were a pleasant set of fellows in the New Asiatic Bank,
and but for the dreary outlook which the future held--for Mike, unlike
most of his follow workers, was not attracted by the idea of a life in
the East--he would have been very fairly content.
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