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Page 62
The other event which altered Mike's life in the bank was his removal
from Mr Waller's department to the Fixed Deposits. The work in the
Fixed Deposits was less pleasant, and Mr Gregory, the head of the
department was not of Mr Waller's type. Mr Gregory, before joining the
home-staff of the New Asiatic Bank, had spent a number of years with a
firm in the Far East, where he had acquired a liver and a habit of
addressing those under him in a way that suggested the mate of a tramp
steamer. Even on the days when his liver was not troubling him, he was
truculent. And when, as usually happened, it did trouble him, he was a
perfect fountain of abuse. Mike and he hated each other from the first.
The work in the Fixed Deposits was not really difficult, when you got
the hang of it, but there was a certain amount of confusion in it to a
beginner; and Mike, in commercial matters, was as raw a beginner as
ever began. In the two other departments through which he had passed,
he had done tolerably well. As regarded his work in the Postage
Department, stamping letters and taking them down to the post office
was just about his form. It was the sort of work on which he could
really get a grip. And in the Cash Department, Mr Waller's mild
patience had helped him through. But with Mr Gregory it was different.
Mike hated being shouted at. It confused him. And Mr Gregory invariably
shouted. He always spoke as if he were competing against a high wind.
With Mike he shouted more than usual. On his side, it must be admitted
that Mike was something out of the common run of bank clerks. The whole
system of banking was a horrid mystery to him. He did not understand
why things were done, or how the various departments depended on and
dove-tailed into one another. Each department seemed to him something
separate and distinct. Why they were all in the same building at all he
never really gathered. He knew that it could not be purely from motives
of sociability, in order that the clerks might have each other's
company during slack spells. That much he suspected, but beyond that he
was vague.
It naturally followed that, after having grown, little by little, under
Mr Waller's easy-going rule, to enjoy life in the bank, he now suffered
a reaction. Within a day of his arrival in the Fixed Deposits he was
loathing the place as earnestly as he had loathed it on the first
morning.
Psmith, who had taken his place in the Cash Department, reported that
Mr Waller was inconsolable at his loss.
'I do my best to cheer him up,' he said, 'and he smiles bravely every
now and then. But when he thinks I am not looking, his head droops and
that wistful expression comes into his face. The sunshine has gone out
of his life.'
It had just come into Mike's, and, more than anything else, was making
him restless and discontented. That is to say, it was now late spring:
the sun shone cheerfully on the City; and cricket was in the air. And
that was the trouble.
In the dark days, when everything was fog and slush, Mike had been
contented enough to spend his mornings and afternoons in the bank, and
go about with Psmith at night. Under such conditions, London is the
best place in which to be, and the warmth and light of the bank were
pleasant.
But now things had changed. The place had become a prison. With all the
energy of one who had been born and bred in the country, Mike hated
having to stay indoors on days when all the air was full of approaching
summer. There were mornings when it was almost more than he could do to
push open the swing doors, and go out of the fresh air into the stuffy
atmosphere of the bank.
The days passed slowly, and the cricket season began. Instead of being
a relief, this made matters worse. The little cricket he could get only
made him want more. It was as if a starving man had been given a
handful of wafer biscuits.
If the summer had been wet, he might have been less restless. But, as
it happened, it was unusually fine. After a week of cold weather at the
beginning of May, a hot spell set in. May passed in a blaze of
sunshine. Large scores were made all over the country.
Mike's name had been down for the M.C.C. for some years, and he had
become a member during his last season at Wrykyn. Once or twice a week
he managed to get up to Lord's for half an hour's practice at the nets;
and on Saturdays the bank had matches, in which he generally managed to
knock the cover off rather ordinary club bowling. But it was not enough
for him.
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