by Unknown
‘The Bar? Well—’
‘I fancy I should make a pretty considerable hit as a barrister.’
Mr Smith reflected. The idea had not occurred to him before. Now that it was suggested, his always easily-fired imagination took hold of it readily. There was a good deal to be said for the Bar as a career. Psmith knew his father, and he knew that the thing was practically as good as settled. It was a new idea, and as such was bound to be favourably received.
‘What I should do, if I were you,’ he went on, as if he were advising a friend on some course of action certain to bring him profit and pleasure, ‘is to take me away from the bank at once. Don’t wait. There is no time like the present. Let me hand in my resignation tomorrow. The blow to the management, especially to Comrade Bickersdyke, will be a painful one, but it is the truest kindness to administer it swiftly. Let me resign tomorrow, and devote my time to quiet study. Then I can pop up to Cambridge next term, and all will be well.’
‘I’ll think it over—’ began Mr Smith.
‘Let us hustle,’ urged Psmith. ‘Let us Do It Now. It is the only way. Have I your leave to shoot in my resignation to Comrade Bickersdyke tomorrow morning?’
Mr Smith hesitated for a moment, then made up his mind.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I really think it is a good idea. There are great opportunities open to a barrister. I wish we had thought of it before.’
‘I am not altogether sorry that we did not,’ said Psmith. ‘I have enjoyed the chances my commercial life has given me of associating with such a man as Comrade Bickersdyke. In many ways a master-mind. But perhaps it is as well to close the chapter. How it happened it is hard to say, but somehow I fancy I did not precisely hit it off with Comrade Bickersdyke. With Psmith, the worker, he had no fault to find; but it seemed to me sometimes, during our festive evenings together at the club, that all was not well. From little, almost imperceptible signs I have suspected now and then that he would just as soon have been without my company. One cannot explain these things. It must have been some incompatibility of temperament. Perhaps he will manage to bear up at my departure. But here we are,’ he added, as the cab drew up. ‘I wonder if Comrade Jackson is still going strong.’
They passed through the turnstile, and caught sight of the telegraph-board.
‘By Jove!’ said Psmith, ‘he is. I don’t know if he’s number three or number six. I expect he’s number six. In which case he has got ninety-eight. We’re just in time to see his century.’
29. And Mike’s
For nearly two hours Mike had been experiencing the keenest pleasure that it had ever fallen to his lot to feel. From the moment he took his first ball till the luncheon interval he had suffered the acutest discomfort. His nervousness had left him to a great extent, but he had never really settled down. Sometimes by luck, and sometimes by skill, he had kept the ball out of his wicket; but he was scratching, and he knew it. Not for a single over had he been comfortable. On several occasions he had edged balls to leg and through the slips in quite an inferior manner, and it was seldom that he managed to hit with the centre of the bat.
Nobody is more alive to the fact that he is not playing up to his true form than the batsman. Even though his score mounted little by little into the twenties, Mike was miserable. If this was the best he could do on a perfect wicket, he felt there was not much hope for him as a professional.
The poorness of his play was accentuated by the brilliance of Joe’s. Joe combined science and vigour to a remarkable degree. He laid on the wood with a graceful robustness which drew much cheering from the crowd. Beside him Mike was oppressed by that leaden sense of moral inferiority which weighs on a man who has turned up to dinner in ordinary clothes when everybody else has dressed. He felt awkward and conspicuously out of place.
Then came lunch—and after lunch a glorious change.
Volumes might be written on the cricket lunch and the influence it has on the run of the game; how it undoes one man, and sends another back to the fray like a giant refreshed; how it turns the brilliant fast bowler into the sluggish medium, and the nervous bat into the masterful smiter.
On Mike its effect was magical. He lunched wisely and well, chewing his food with the concentration of a thirty-three-bites a mouthful crank, and drinking dry ginger-ale. As he walked out with Joe after the interval he knew that a change had taken place in him. His nerve had come back, and with it his form.
It sometimes happens at cricket that when one feels particularly fit one gets snapped in the slips in the first over, or clean bowled by a full toss; but neither of these things happened to Mike. He stayed in, and began to score. Now there were no edgings through the slips and snicks to leg. He was meeting the ball in the centre of the bat, and meeting it vigorously. Two boundaries in successive balls off the fast bowler, hard, clean drives past extra-cover, put him at peace with all the world. He was on top. He had found himself.
Joe, at the other end, resumed his brilliant career. His century and Mike’s fifty arrived in the same over. The bowling began to grow loose.
Joe, having reached his century, slowed down somewhat, and Mike took up the running. The score rose rapidly.
A leg-theory bowler kept down the pace of the run-getting for a time, but the bowlers at the other end continued to give away runs. Mike’s score passed from sixty to seventy, from seventy to eighty, from eighty to ninety. When the Smiths, father and son, came on to the ground the total was ninety-eight. Joe had made a hundred and thirty-three.
Mike reached his century just as Psmith and his father took their seats. A square cut off the slow bowler was just too wide for point to get to. By the time third man had sprinted across and returned the ball the batsmen had run two.
Mr Smith was enthusiastic.
‘I tell you,’ he said to Psmith, who was clapping in a gently encouraging manner, ‘the boy’s a wonderful bat. I said so when he was down with us. I remember telling him so myself. “I’ve seen your brothers play,” I said, “and you’re better than any of them.” I remember it distinctly. He’ll be playing for England in another year or two. Fancy putting a cricketer like that into the City! It’s a crime.’
‘I gather,’ said Psmith, ‘that the family coffers had got a bit low. It was necessary for Comrade Jackson to do something by way of saving the Old Home.’
‘He ought to be at the University. Look, he’s got that man away to the boundary again. They’ll never get him out.’
At six o’clock the partnership was broken, Joe running himself out in trying to snatch a single where no single was. He had made a hundred and eighty-nine.
Mike flung himself down on the turf with mixed feelings. He was sorry Joe was out, but he was very glad indeed of the chance of a rest. He was utterly fagged. A half-day match once a week is no training for first-class cricket. Joe, who had been playing all the season, was as tough as india-rubber, and trotted into the pavilion as fresh as if he had been having a brief spell at the nets. Mike, on the other hand, felt that he simply wanted to be dropped into a cold bath and left there indefinitely. There was only another half-hour’s play, but he doubted if he could get through it.
He dragged himself up wearily as Joe’s successor arrived at the wickets. He had crossed Joe before the latter’s downfall, and it was his turn to take the bowling.
Something seemed to have gone out of him. He could not time the ball properly. The last ball of the over looked like a half-volley, and he hit out at it. But it was just short of a half-volley, and his stroke arrived too soon. The bowler, running in the direction of mid-on, brought off an easy c.-and-b.
Mike turned away towards the pavilion. He heard the gradually swelling applause in a sort of dream. It seemed to him hours before he reached the dressing-room.
He was sitting on a chair, wishing that somebody would come along and take off his pads, when Psmith’s card was brought to him. A few moments later the old Etonian appeared in person.
‘Hullo, Smith,’ said Mike, ‘By
Jove! I’m done.’
‘“How Little Willie Saved the Match,”’ said Psmith. ‘What you want is one of those gin and ginger-beers we hear so much about. Remove those pads, and let us flit downstairs in search of a couple. Well, Comrade Jackson, you have fought the good fight this day. My father sends his compliments. He is dining out, or he would have come up. He is going to look in at the flat latish.’
‘How many did I get?’ asked Mike. ‘I was so jolly done I didn’t think of looking.’
‘A hundred and forty-eight of the best,’ said Psmith. ‘What will they say at the old homestead about this? Are you ready? Then let us test this fruity old ginger-beer of theirs.’
The two batsmen who had followed the big stand were apparently having a little stand all of their own. No more wickets fell before the drawing of stumps. Psmith waited for Mike while he changed, and carried him off in a cab to Simpson’s, a restaurant which, as he justly observed, offered two great advantages, namely, that you need not dress, and, secondly, that you paid your half-crown, and were then at liberty to eat till you were helpless, if you felt so disposed, without extra charge.
Mike stopped short of this giddy height of mastication, but consumed enough to make him feel a great deal better. Psmith eyed his inroads on the menu with approval.
‘There is nothing,’ he said, ‘like victualling up before an ordeal.’
‘What’s the ordeal?’ said Mike.
‘I propose to take you round to the club anon, where I trust we shall find Comrade Bickersdyke. We have much to say to one another.’
‘Look here, I’m hanged—’ began Mike.
‘Yes, you must be there,’ said Psmith. ‘Your presence will serve to cheer Comrade B. up. Fate compels me to deal him a nasty blow, and he will want sympathy. I have got to break it to him that I am leaving the bank.’
‘What, are you going to chuck it?’
Psmith inclined his head.
‘The time,’ he said, ‘has come to part. It has served its turn. The startled whisper runs round the City. “Psmith has had sufficient.”’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I propose to enter the University of Cambridge, and there to study the intricacies of the Law, with a view to having a subsequent dash at becoming Lord Chancellor.’
‘By Jove!’ said Mike, ‘you’re lucky. I wish I were coming too.’
Psmith knocked the ash off his cigarette.
‘Are you absolutely set on becoming a pro?’ he asked.
‘It depends on what you call set. It seems to me it’s about all I can do.’
‘I can offer you a not entirely scaly job,’ said Smith, ‘if you feel like taking it. In the course of conversation with my father during the match this afternoon, I gleaned the fact that he is anxious to secure your services as a species of agent. The vast Psmith estates, it seems, need a bright boy to keep an eye upon them. Are you prepared to accept the post?’
Mike stared.
‘Me! Dash it all, how old do you think I am? I’m only nineteen.’
‘I had suspected as much from the alabaster clearness of your unwrinkled brow. But my father does not wish you to enter upon your duties immediately. There would be a preliminary interval of three, possibly four, years at Cambridge, during which I presume, you would be learning divers facts concerning spuds, turmuts, and the like. At least,’ said Psmith airily, ‘I suppose so. Far be it from me to dictate the line of your researches.’
‘Then I’m afraid it’s off,’ said Mike gloomily. ‘My pater couldn’t afford to send me to Cambridge.’
‘That obstacle,’ said Psmith, ‘can be surmounted. You would, of course, accompany me to Cambridge, in the capacity, which you enjoy at the present moment, of my confidential secretary and adviser. Any expenses that might crop up would be de-frayed from the Psmith family chest.’
Mike’s eyes opened wide again.
‘Do you mean,’ he asked bluntly, ‘that your pater would pay for me at the ‘Varsity? No I say—dash it—I mean, I couldn’t—’
‘Do you suggest,’ said Psmith, raising his eyebrows, ‘that I should go to the University without a confidential secretary and adviser?’
‘No, but I mean—’ protested Mike.
‘Then that’s settled,’ said Psmith. ‘I knew you would not desert me in my hour of need, Comrade Jackson. “What will you do,” asked my father, alarmed for my safety, “among these wild undergraduates? I fear for my Rupert.” “Have no fear, father,” I replied. “Comrade Jackson will be beside me.” His face brightened immediately. “Comrade Jackson,” he said, “is a man in whom I have the supremest confidence. If he is with you I shall sleep easy of nights.” It was after that that the conversation drifted to the subject of agents.’
Psmith called for the bill and paid it in the affable manner of a monarch signing a charter. Mike sat silent, his mind in a whirl. He saw exactly what had happened. He could almost hear Psmith talking his father into agreeing with his scheme. He could think of nothing to say. As usually happened in any emotional crisis in his life, words absolutely deserted him. The thing was too big. Anything he could say would sound too feeble. When a friend has solved all your difficulties and smoothed out all the rough places which were looming in your path, you cannot thank him as if he had asked you to lunch. The occasion demanded some neat, polished speech; and neat, polished speeches were beyond Mike.
‘I say, Psmith—’ he began.
Psmith rose.
‘Let us now,’ he said, ‘collect our hats and meander to the club, where, I have no doubt, we shall find Comrade Bickersdyke, all unconscious of impending misfortune, dreaming pleasantly over coffee and a cigar in the lower smoking-room.’
30. The Last Sad Farewells
As it happened, that was precisely what Mr Bickersdyke was doing. He was feeling thoroughly pleased with life. For nearly nine months Psmith had been to him a sort of spectre at the feast inspiring him with an ever-present feeling of discomfort which he had found impossible to shake off. And tonight he saw his way of getting rid of him.
At five minutes past four Mr Gregory, crimson and wrathful, had plunged into his room with a long statement of how Psmith, deputed to help in the life and thought of the Fixed Deposits Department, had left the building at four o’clock, when there was still another hour and a half’s work to be done.
Moreover, Mr Gregory deposed, the errant one, seen sliding out of the swinging door, and summoned in a loud, clear voice to come back, had flatly disobeyed and had gone upon his ways ‘Grinning at me,’ said the aggrieved Mr Gregory, ‘like a dashed ape.’ A most unjust description of the sad, sweet smile which Psmith had bestowed upon him from the doorway.
Ever since that moment Mr Bickersdyke had felt that there was a silver lining to the cloud. Hitherto Psmith had left nothing to be desired in the manner in which he performed his work. His righteousness in the office had clothed him as in a suit of mail. But now he had slipped. To go off an hour and a half before the proper time, and to refuse to return when summoned by the head of his department—these were offences for which he could be dismissed without fuss. Mr Bickersdyke looked forward to tomorrow’s interview with his employee.
Meanwhile, having enjoyed an excellent dinner, he was now, as Psmith had predicted, engaged with a cigar and a cup of coffee in the lower smoking-room of the Senior Conservative Club.
Psmith and Mike entered the room when he was about half through these luxuries.
Psmith’s first action was to summon a waiter, and order a glass of neat brandy. ‘Not for myself,’ he explained to Mike. ‘For Comrade Bickersdyke. He is about to sustain a nasty shock, and may need a restorative at a moment’s notice. For all we know, his heart may not be strong. In any case, it is safest to have a pick-me-up handy.’
He paid the waiter, and advanced across the room, followed by Mike. In his hand, extended at arm’s length, he bore the glass of brandy.
Mr Bickersdyke caught sight of the procession, and started. Psmith set the
brandy down very carefully on the table, beside the manager’s coffee cup, and, dropping into a chair, regarded him pityingly through his eyeglass. Mike, who felt embarrassed, took a seat some little way behind his companion. This was Psmith’s affair, and he proposed to allow him to do the talking.
Mr Bickersdyke, except for a slight deepening of the colour of his complexion, gave no sign of having seen them. He puffed away at his cigar, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.
‘An unpleasant task lies before us,’ began Psmith in a low, sorrowful voice, ‘and it must not be shirked. Have I your ear, Mr Bickersdyke?’
Addressed thus directly, the manager allowed his gaze to wander from the ceiling. He eyed Psmith for a moment like an elderly basilisk, then looked back at the ceiling again.
‘I shall speak to you tomorrow,’ he said.
Psmith heaved a heavy sigh.
‘You will not see us tomorrow,’ he said, pushing the brandy a little nearer.
Mr Bickersdyke’s eyes left the ceiling once more.
‘What do you mean?’ he said.
‘Drink this,’ urged Psmith sympathetically, holding out the glass. ‘Be brave,’ he went on rapidly. ‘Time softens the harshest blows. Shocks stun us for the moment, but we recover. Little by little we come to ourselves again. Life, which we had thought could hold no more pleasure for us, gradually shows itself not wholly grey.’
Mr Bickersdyke seemed about to make an observation at this point, but Psmith, with a wave of the hand, hurried on.
‘We find that the sun still shines, the birds still sing. Things which used to entertain us resume their attraction. Gradually we emerge from the soup, and begin—’
‘If you have anything to say to me,’ said the manager, ‘I should be glad if you would say it, and go.’
‘You prefer me not to break the bad news gently?’ said Psmith. ‘Perhaps you are wise. In a word, then,’—he picked up the brandy and held it out to him—’Comrade Jackson and myself are leaving the bank.’
‘I am aware of that,’ said Mr Bickersdyke drily.