Mike found himself, by degrees, growing quite attached to the New Asiatic Bank.
One morning, early in February, he noticed a curious change in Mr. Waller. The head of the Cash Department was, as a rule, mildly cheerful on arrival, and apt (excessively, Mike thought, though he always listened with polite interest) to relate the most recent sayings and doings of his snub-nosed son, Edward. No action of this young prodigy was withheld from Mike. He had heard, on different occasions, how he had won a prize at his school for General Information (which Mike could well believe); how he had trapped young Mr. Richards, now happily reconciled to Ada, with an ingenious verbal catch; and how he had made a sequence of diverting puns on the name of the new curate, during the course of that cleric’s first Sunday afternoon visit.
On this particular day, however, the cashier was silent and absentminded. He answered Mike’s good morning mechanically, and sitting down at his desk, stared blankly across the building. There was a curiously grey, tired look on his face.
Mike could not make it out. He did not like to ask if there was anything the matter. Mr. Waller’s face had the unreasonable effect on him of making him feel shy and awkward. Anything in the nature of sorrow always dried Mike up and robbed him of the power of speech. Being naturally sympathetic, he had raged inwardly in many a crisis at this devil of dumb awkwardness which possessed him and prevented him from putting his sympathy into words. He had always envied the cooing readiness of the hero on the stage when anyone was in trouble. He wondered whether he would ever acquire that knack of pouring out a limpid stream of soothing words on such occasions. At present he could get no farther than a scowl and an almost offensive gruffness.
The happy thought struck him of consulting Psmith. It was his hour for pottering, so he pottered round to the Postage Department, where he found the old Etonian eyeing with disfavour a new satin tie which Bristow was wearing that morning for the first time.
“I say, Smith,” he said, “I want to speak to you for a second.”
Psmith rose. Mike led the way to a quiet corner of the Telegrams Department.
“I tell you, Comrade Jackson,” said Psmith, “I am hard pressed. The fight is beginning to be too much for me. After a grim struggle, after days of unremitting toil, I succeeded yesterday in inducing the man Bristow to abandon that rainbow waistcoat of his. Today I enter the building, blythe and buoyant, worn, of course, from the long struggle, but seeing with aching eyes the dawn of another, better era, and there is Comrade Bristow in a satin tie. It’s hard, Comrade Jackson, it’s hard, I tell you.”
“Look here, Smith,” said Mike, “I wish you’d go round to the Cash and find out what’s up with old Waller. He’s got the hump about something. He’s sitting there looking absolutely fed up with things. I hope there’s nothing up. He’s not a bad sort. It would be rot if anything rotten’s happened.”
Psmith began to display a gentle interest.
“So other people have troubles as well as myself,” he murmured musingly. “I had almost forgotten that. Comrade Waller’s misfortunes cannot but be trivial compared with mine, but possibly it will be as well to ascertain their nature. I will reel round and make inquiries.”
“Good man,” said Mike. “I’ll wait here.”
Psmith departed, and returned, ten minutes later, looking more serious than when he had left.
“His kid’s ill, poor chap,” he said briefly. “Pretty badly too, from what I can gather. Pneumonia. Waller was up all night. He oughtn’t to be here at all today. He doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time. He’s absolutely fagged out. Look here, you’d better nip back and do as much of the work as you can. I shouldn’t talk to him much if I were you. Buck along.”
Mike went. Mr. Waller was still sitting staring out across the aisle. There was something more than a little gruesome in the sight of him. He wore a crushed, beaten look, as if all the life and fight had gone out of him. A customer came to the desk to cash a cheque. The cashier shovelled the money to him under the bars with the air of one whose mind is elsewhere. Mike could guess what he was feeling, and what he was thinking about. The fact that the snub-nosed Edward was, without exception, the most repulsive small boy he had ever met in this world, where repulsive small boys crowd and jostle one another, did not interfere with his appreciation of the cashier’s state of mind. Mike’s was essentially a sympathetic character. He had the gift of intuitive understanding, where people of whom he was fond were concerned. It was this which drew to him those who had intelligence enough to see beyond his sometimes rather forbidding manner, and to realize that his blunt speech was largely due to shyness. In spite of his prejudice against Edward, he could put himself into Mr. Waller’s place, and see the thing from his point of view.
Psmith’s injunction to him not to talk much was unnecessary. Mike, as always, was rendered utterly dumb by the sight of suffering. He sat at his desk, occupying himself as best he could with the driblets of work which came to him.
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.
