"Banking Day" is a solemn occasion in the Brink household. It happens once a fortnight. It affords the doctor an excuse for making holiday—a two hours holiday—the only regular holiday in which he permits himself to indulge. And of this regular and recurrent festival, the cap is an outward and visible sign: the cap and golfing shoes and a poacher's jacket. And a solemn black bag. The solemn black bag is filled with sixpenny pieces. Thus equipped, the doctor goes into the City—"giving'em a treat in Gracechurch Street," he calls it—and deposits the toll which he has extracted from human misery upon some banker's table. He then returns to Bovingdon Street, wearing your right usurer's leer and a shilling cigar. And having in his right hand—the hand he pulls the teeth out with—a fat, white book. It is his vulgar custom, upon such occasions, to publish loudly a statement of accounts, as thus—
"Forty-eight pounds fourteen and sixpence. Do you hear that, my friend? Do you hear it, Baffin? One thousand nine hundred and forty-nine sixpences. Does this compete with literature, young man? Does it equal the material gains of your art, Mr. Baffin? Nineteen hundred sixpences, James, my dear, nineteen hundred and forty-nine. All screwed out of the working man. Damn the working man. What's he made for? Where's that bottle of Burgundy?"
The doctor, in this mood, presents an absurdly human appearance. His cap—-it is an old-fashioned neck-freezer, and a trifle small for him at that—sits usually upon one side, and he rolls the cigar between his lips in an unctuous manner, and has even been known to wear his feet upon the mantel-piece. It is always his pleasure under these circumstances to toy with Baffin, who, being so closely related to the Leicestershire Baffins, is quite unjustly credited with a secret sympathy for despotism. In point of fact, however, Baffin has no time to sympathise with anything, except the Baffin School of Impressionist Art. But the doctor, when his cap and the cares beneath it sit lightly on him, chooses to exhibit a cordial sympathy for the supposed convictions of Baffin.
"Dirty beggars, these working men: what, Baffin?" the doctor will observe. "Have to be kept in their places. Eh? What? Sixpence a go, Baffin. Nineteen hundred and forty-nine sixpences. A very reasonable tribute, Baffin; a tribute to education and elegance and the cultivated mind. The feudal system, Baffin, was a fool to our system. You must write and explain it all to the Leicestershire Baffins. What, Baffin?"
Baffin always offered the same reply—
"You are a silly fool, Brink."
Even the surrounding helots recognised and responded to the psychological significance of the doctor's City costume. I shall always remember an observation uttered by Ma Levinsky, who kept the fish shop at the corner.
It was Banking Day, and the doctor, suitably apparelled and accompanied by the bag, was walking West, accompanied by your servant, to whom he had promised to exhibit the interior of a real bank, and also to show how one conducts an operation called "paying in." And when we passed her, Ma Levinsky spoke to us, saying, "Cheero, Doctor, ole love. Got a baby in the bag?" This to THE DOCTOR, mind you! You perceive the weird magic of this cap.
But even the two hours of holiday which the doctor "stood himself" on Banking Days would come to an end, although it was not the least remarkable fact connected with the whole absurd proceeding that the two hours in question began at two o'clock and did not end till half-past six. But when they did end, the doctor's sudden masquerade would also end. The poacher's coat, the golfing shoes, would vanish, and in their place appeared the solemn calf—gent's heavy walking—the not less solemn morning coat—a somewhat tarnished vestment, but of undeniable solemnity—and, lastly, the solemnest thing of all, the final token, the apotheosis—the doctor's black silk hat.
It was a profoundly aged hat. A hat of many lustres, the which had swallowed up its own. But it was a hat—a black silk hat, and being such it complied with all the conditions: it sufficed: it left no room for criticism. And you did not catch the doctor looking human when he had that hat on.