Psmith in the City quotes

Considering what a prominent figure Mr. John Bickersdyke was to be in Mike Jackson’s life, it was only appropriate that he should make a dramatic entry into it.

This he did by walking behind the bowler’s arm when Mike had scored ninety-eight, causing him thereby to be clean bowled by a long-hop.

He had crossed the Rubicon. The occasion was too serious for him to feel the same helplessly furious feeling with which he had embarked on life at Sedleigh. It was possible to look on Sedleigh with quite a personal enmity.

London was too big to be angry with.

It took no notice of him. It did not care whether he was glad 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 cold unfriendliness about it.

There is a sort of cold unfriendliness about it. A city like New York makes the new arrival feel at home in half an hour; but London is a specialist in what Psmith in his letter had called the Distant Stare.

You have to buy London’s goodwill.

Mike drove across the Park to Victoria, feeling very empty and small.

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

There is probably no more depressing experience in the world than the process of engaging furnished apartments.

Those who let furnished apartments seem to take no joy in the act. Like Pooh-Bah, they do it, but it revolts them.

These reunions are very awkward. Mike was frankly unequal to the situation. Psmith, in his place, would have opened the conversation, and relaxed the tension with some remark on the weather or the state of the crops.

Mike merely stood wrapped in silence, as in a garment.

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.

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.

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.

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

“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 clockwork toy.

“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;

When a genuine heckler interrupts, the orator either ignores him, or says haughtily that he can find him arguments but cannot find him brains. Or, occasionally, when the question is an easy one, he answers it.

A quietly conducted political meeting is one of England’s most delightful indoor games.

When the meeting is rowdy, the audience has more fun, but the speaker a good deal less.

That is what is carving these lines of care on my forehead, Comrade Jackson. That is what is painting these purple circles beneath my eyes. Quite inadvertently to be disturbing Comrade Bickersdyke, annoying him, preventing him from enjoying life. How sad this is.

Life bulges with these tragedies.

”

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 grownup scale, as man to man;

Mistaking the other for an enemy, he proceeded to smite him in the parts about the jaw. He had just upset him, when a stern official voice observed, “ ’Ere, now, what’s all this?”

There is no more unfailing corrective to a scene of strife than the “What’s all this?” of the London policeman.

Bill abandoned his intention of stamping on the prostrate one, and the latter, sitting up, blinked and was silent.

Fortunately, before Mr. Waller had time to ask any further questions, the supper bell sounded, and they went into the dining room.

Sunday supper, unless done on a large and informal scale, is probably the most depressing meal in existence. There is a chill discomfort in the round of beef, an icy severity about the open jam tart. The blancmange shivers miserably.

Spirituous liquor helps to counteract the influence of these things, and so does exhilarating conversation. Unfortunately, at Mr. Waller’s table there was neither. The cashier’s views on temperance were not merely for the platform; they extended to the home.

His host was all courtesy and consideration. He passed the matter off genially.

But life can never be quite the same after you have upset a water jug into an open jam tart at the table of a comparative stranger.

Mike’s nerve had gone. He ate on, but he was a broken man.

Mr. Waller’s silence and absentness continued unchanged. The habit of years had made his work mechanical. Probably few of the customers who came to cash cheques suspected that there was anything the matter with the man who paid them their money.

After all, most people look on the cashier of a bank as a sort of human slot machine. You put in your cheque, and out comes money.

It is no affair of yours whether life is treating the machine well or ill that day.

Psmith dropped into the next seat with a cheery “Good evening.” The manager started as if some firm hand had driven a bradawl into him. He looked at Psmith with what was intended to be a dignified stare.

But dignity is hard to achieve in a couple of parti-coloured towels.

The stare did not differ to any great extent from the conventional boiled-fish look, alluded to above.

“There’s something pleasantly mysterious, to my mind,” said he chattily, “in a Turkish Bath. It seems to take one out of the hurry and bustle of the everyday world.

It is a quiet backwater in the rushing river of Life.

I like to sit and think in a Turkish Bath. Except, of course, when I have a congenial companion to talk to. As now. To me—”

There is a certain sinister air about the attendants. They glide rather than walk. They say little. Who knows what they may be planning and plotting? That drip-drip again. It may be merely water, but how are we to know that it is not blood?

It would be so easy to do away with a man in a Turkish Bath. Nobody has seen him come in. Nobody can trace him if he disappears.

These are uncomfortable thoughts, Mr. Bickersdyke.”

The evening paper hid the manager’s expressive face, but from the fact that the hands holding it tightened their grip Psmith deduced that Mr. Bickersdyke’s attention was not wholly concentrated on the City news. Moreover, his toes wriggled.

And when a man’s toes wriggle, he is interested in what you are saying.

“All these petty breezes,” continued Psmith sympathetically, “must be very trying to a man in your position, a man who wishes to be left alone in order to devote his entire thought to the niceties of the higher Finance.

Naturally, you were annoyed. Your giant brain, wrenched temporarily from its proper groove, expended its force in one tremendous reprimand of Comrade Jackson.

It was as if one had diverted some terrific electric current which should have been controlling a vast system of machinery, and turned it on to annihilate a black-beetle.

In the present case, of course, the result is as might have been expected. Comrade Jackson, not realizing the position of affairs, went away with the absurd idea that all was over, that you meant all you said—briefly, that his number was up.

It is bracing and comforting. As for these excellent speeches,” he added, “I shall, of course, no longer have any need of their consolation. I can lay them aside. The sunlight can now enter and illumine my life through more ordinary channels.

The cry goes round, ‘Psmith is himself again.’

”

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.

I note a certain wanness of the cheek. The peach-bloom of your complexion is no longer up to sample. Your eye is wild; your merry laugh no longer rings through the bank, causing nervous customers to leap into the air with startled exclamations.

You have the manner of one whose only friend on earth is a yellow dog, and who has lost the dog.

Why is this, Comrade Jackson?”

“What rot it all is!” went on Mike, sitting down again. “What’s the good of it all? You go and sweat all day at a desk, day after day, for about twopence a year. And when you’re about eighty-five, you retire.

It isn’t living at all. It’s simply being a bally vegetable.

”

I understand that being in a bank in the Far East is one of the world’s softest jobs. Millions of natives hang on your lightest word. Enthusiastic rajahs draw you aside and press jewels into your hand as a token of respect and esteem.

When on an elephant’s back you pass, somebody beats on a booming brass gong! The Banker of Bhong!

Isn’t your generous young heart stirred to any extent by the prospect? I am given to understand—”

“I don’t know who the dickens you are—” he began.

“I am Psmith,” said the old Etonian.

“Oh, you’re Smith, are you?”

“Oh, you’re Smith, are you?”

“With a preliminary P. Which, however, is not sounded.”

“And what’s all this dashed nonsense about Jackson?”

“And what’s all this dashed nonsense about Jackson?”

“He is gone. Gone like the dew from the petal of a rose.”

“Gone! Where’s he gone to?”

A moment back, and your life was a blank. Comrade Jackson, that prince of Fixed Depositors, had gone. How, you said to yourself despairingly, can his place be filled? Then the cloud broke, and the sun shone out again. I came to help you.

What you lose on the swings, you make up on the roundabouts.

Now show me what I have to do, and then let us make this department sizzle. You have drawn a good ticket, Comrade Gregory.”

Mike changed, and went out into the little balcony at the top of the pavilion. He had it to himself. There were not many spectators in the pavilion at this early stage of the game.

There are few more restful places, if one wishes to think, than the upper balconies of Lord’s pavilion.

Mike, watching the game making its leisurely progress on the turf below, set himself seriously to review the situation in all its aspects.

Where’s a cab? Hi, cabby! No, that one’s got someone in it. There’s another. Hi! Here, lunatic! Are you blind? Good, he’s seen us. That’s right. Here he comes. Lord’s Cricket Ground, cabby, as quick as you can. Jump in, Rupert, my boy, jump in.”

Psmith rarely jumped. He entered the cab with something of the stateliness of an old Roman Emperor boarding his chariot, and settled himself comfortably in his seat.

Mr. Smith dived in like a rabbit.

“Well,” he said at last, “hang me if I blame the boy.

It’s a sin cooping up a fellow who can bat like that in a bank.

I should have done the same myself in his place.”