Psmith in the City, Page 3

  3. The New Era Begins

  Details of what were in store for him were given to Mike next morning.During his absence at Ilsworth a vacancy had been got for him in thatflourishing institution, the New Asiatic Bank; and he was to enter uponhis duties, whatever they might be, on the Tuesday of the followingweek. It was short notice, but banks have a habit of swallowing theirvictims rather abruptly. Mike remembered the case of Wyatt, who had hadjust about the same amount of time in which to get used to the prospectof Commerce.

  On the Monday morning a letter arrived from Psmith. Psmith was stillperturbed. 'Commerce,' he wrote, 'continues to boom. My pater referredto Comrade Bickersdyke last night as a Merchant Prince. Comrade B. andI do not get on well together. Purely for his own good, I drew himaside yesterday and explained to him at great length the frightfulnessof walking across the bowling-screen. He seemed restive, but I wasfirm. We parted rather with the Distant Stare than the Friendly Smile.But I shall persevere. In many ways the casual observer would say thathe was hopeless. He is a poor performer at Bridge, as I was compelledto hint to him on Saturday night. His eyes have no animated sparkle ofintelligence. And the cut of his clothes jars my sensitive soul to itsfoundations. I don't wish to speak ill of a man behind his back, but Imust confide in you, as my Boyhood's Friend, that he wore a made-up tieat dinner. But no more of a painful subject. I am working away at himwith a brave smile. Sometimes I think that I am succeeding. Then heseems to slip back again. However,' concluded the letter, ending on anoptimistic note, 'I think that I shall make a man of him yet--someday.'

  Mike re-read this letter in the train that took him to London. By thistime Psmith would know that his was not the only case in which Commercewas booming. Mike had written to him by return, telling him of thedisaster which had befallen the house of Jackson. Mike wished he couldhave told him in person, for Psmith had a way of treating unpleasantsituations as if he were merely playing at them for his own amusement.Psmith's attitude towards the slings and arrows of outrageous Fortunewas to regard them with a bland smile, as if they were part of anentertainment got up for his express benefit.

  Arriving at Paddington, Mike stood on the platform, waiting for his boxto emerge from the luggage-van, with mixed feelings of gloom andexcitement. The gloom was in the larger quantities, perhaps, but theexcitement was there, too. It was the first time in his life that hehad been entirely dependent on himself. He had crossed the Rubicon. Theoccasion was too serious for him to feel the same helplessly furiousfeeling with which he had embarked on life at Sedleigh. It was possibleto look on Sedleigh with quite a personal enmity. London was too big tobe angry with. It took no notice of him. It did not care whether he wasglad to be there or sorry, and there was no means of making it care.That is the peculiarity of London. There is a sort of coldunfriendliness about it. A city like New York makes the new arrivalfeel at home in half an hour; but London is a specialist in what Psmithin his letter had called the Distant Stare. You have to buy London'sgood-will.

  Mike drove across the Park to Victoria, feeling very empty and small.He had settled on Dulwich as the spot to get lodgings, partly because,knowing nothing about London, he was under the impression that roomsanywhere inside the four-mile radius were very expensive, butprincipally because there was a school at Dulwich, and it would be acomfort being near a school. He might get a game of fives theresometimes, he thought, on a Saturday afternoon, and, in the summer,occasional cricket.

  Wandering at a venture up the asphalt passage which leads from Dulwichstation in the direction of the College, he came out into Acacia Road.There is something about Acacia Road which inevitably suggestsfurnished apartments. A child could tell at a glance that it wasbristling with bed-sitting rooms.

  Mike knocked at the first door over which a card hung.

  There is probably no more depressing experience in the world than theprocess of engaging furnished apartments. Those who let furnishedapartments seem to take no joy in the act. Like Pooh-Bah, they do it,but it revolts them.

  In answer to Mike's knock, a female person opened the door. Inappearance she resembled a pantomime 'dame', inclining towards therestrained melancholy of Mr Wilkie Bard rather than the joyous abandonof Mr George Robey. Her voice she had modelled on the gramophone. Hermost recent occupation seemed to have been something with a good dealof yellow soap in it. As a matter of fact--there are no secrets betweenour readers and ourselves--she had been washing a shirt. A usefuloccupation, and an honourable, but one that tends to produce a certainhomeliness in the appearance.

  She wiped a pair of steaming hands on her apron, and regarded Mike withan eye which would have been markedly expressionless in a boiled fish.

  'Was there anything?' she asked.

  Mike felt that he was in for it now. He had not sufficient ease ofmanner to back gracefully away and disappear, so he said that there wassomething. In point of fact, he wanted a bed-sitting room.

  'Orkup stays,' said the pantomime dame. Which Mike interpreted to mean,would he walk upstairs?

  The procession moved up a dark flight of stairs until it came to adoor. The pantomime dame opened this, and shuffled through. Mike stoodin the doorway, and looked in.

  It was a repulsive room. One of those characterless rooms which areonly found in furnished apartments. To Mike, used to the comforts ofhis bedroom at home and the cheerful simplicity of a school dormitory,it seemed about the most dismal spot he had ever struck. A sort ofSargasso Sea among bedrooms.

  He looked round in silence. Then he said: 'Yes.' There did not seemmuch else to say.

  'It's a nice room,' said the pantomime dame. Which was a black lie. Itwas not a nice room. It never had been a nice room. And it did not seemat all probable that it ever would be a nice room. But it looked cheap.That was the great thing. Nobody could have the assurance to chargemuch for a room like that. A landlady with a conscience might even havegone to the length of paying people some small sum by way ofcompensation to them for sleeping in it.

  'About what?' queried Mike. Cheapness was the great consideration. Heunderstood that his salary at the bank would be about four pounds ten amonth, to begin with, and his father was allowing him five pounds amonth. One does not do things _en prince_ on a hundred andfourteen pounds a year.

  The pantomime dame became slightly more animated. Prefacing her remarksby a repetition of her statement that it was a nice room, she went onto say that she could 'do' it at seven and sixpence per week 'forhim'--giving him to understand, presumably, that, if the Shah of Persiaor Mr Carnegie ever applied for a night's rest, they would sigh in vainfor such easy terms. And that included lights. Coals were to be lookedon as an extra. 'Sixpence a scuttle.' Attendance was thrown in.

  Having stated these terms, she dribbled a piece of fluff under the bed,after the manner of a professional Association footballer, and relapsedinto her former moody silence.

  Mike said he thought that would be all right. The pantomime dameexhibited no pleasure.

  ''Bout meals?' she said. 'You'll be wanting breakfast. Bacon, aigs,an' that, I suppose?'

  Mike said he supposed so.

  'That'll be extra,' she said. 'And dinner? A chop, or a nice steak?'

  Mike bowed before this original flight of fancy. A chop or a nice steakseemed to be about what he might want.

  'That'll be extra,' said the pantomime dame in her best Wilkie Bardmanner.

  Mike said yes, he supposed so. After which, having put down seven andsixpence, one week's rent in advance, he was presented with a grubbyreceipt and an enormous latchkey, and the _seance_ was at an end.Mike wandered out of the house. A few steps took him to the railingsthat bounded the College grounds. It was late August, and the eveningshad begun to close in. The cricket-field looked very cool and spaciousin the dim light, with the school buildings looming vague and shadowythrough the slight mist. The little gate by the railway bridge was notlocked. He went in, and walked slowly across the turf towards the bigclump of trees which marked the division between the cricket andfootball fields. I
t was all very pleasant and soothing after thepantomime dame and her stuffy bed-sitting room. He sat down on a benchbeside the second eleven telegraph-board, and looked across the groundat the pavilion. For the first time that day he began to feel reallyhome-sick. Up till now the excitement of a strange venture had bornehim up; but the cricket-field and the pavilion reminded him so sharplyof Wrykyn. They brought home to him with a cutting distinctness, theabsolute finality of his break with the old order of things. Summerswould come and go, matches would be played on this ground with all theglory of big scores and keen finishes; but he was done. 'He was a jollygood bat at school. Top of the Wrykyn averages two years. But didn't doanything after he left. Went into the city or something.' That was whatthey would say of him, if they didn't quite forget him.

  The clock on the tower over the senior block chimed quarter afterquarter, but Mike sat on, thinking. It was quite late when he got up,and began to walk back to Acacia Road. He felt cold and stiff and verymiserable.