A few days later Philip went to London. The curate had recommended
rooms in Barnes, and these Philip engaged by letter at fourteen
shillings a week. He reached them in the evening; and the landlady, a
funny little old woman with a shrivelled body and a deeply wrinkled
face, had prepared high tea for him. Most of the sitting-room was taken
up by the sideboard and a square table; against one wall was a sofa
covered with horsehair, and by the fireplace an arm-chair to match:
there was a white antimacassar over the back of it, and on the seat,
because the springs were broken, a hard cushion.
After having his tea he unpacked and arranged his books, then he sat
down and tried to read; but he was depressed. The silence in the street
made him slightly uncomfortable, and he felt very much alone.
Next day he got up early. He put on his tail-coat and the tall hat
which he had worn at school; but it was very shabby, and he made up his
mind to stop at the Stores on his way to the office and buy a new one.
When he had done this he found himself in plenty of time and so walked
along the Strand. The office of Messrs. Herbert Carter & Co. was in a
little street off Chancery Lane, and he had to ask his way two or three
times. He felt that people were staring at him a great deal, and once
he took off his hat to see whether by chance the label had been left
on. When he arrived he knocked at the door; but no one answered, and
looking at his watch he found it was barely half past nine; he supposed
he was too early. He went away and ten minutes later returned to find
an office-boy, with a long nose, pimply face, and a Scotch accent,
opening the door. Philip asked for Mr. Herbert Carter. He had not come
yet.
“When will he be here?”
“Between ten and half past.”
“I’d better wait,” said Philip.
“What are you wanting?” asked the office-boy.
Philip was nervous, but tried to hide the fact by a jocose manner.
“Well, I’m going to work here if you have no objection.”
“Oh, you’re the new articled clerk? You’d better come in. Mr.
Goodworthy’ll be here in a while.”
Philip walked in, and as he did so saw the office-boy—he was about the
same age as Philip and called himself a junior clerk—look at his foot.
He flushed and, sitting down, hid it behind the other. He looked round
the room. It was dark and very dingy. It was lit by a skylight. There
were three rows of desks in it and against them high stools. Over the
chimney-piece was a dirty engraving of a prize-fight. Presently a clerk
came in and then another; they glanced at Philip and in an undertone
asked the office-boy (Philip found his name was Macdougal) who he was.
A whistle blew, and Macdougal got up.
“Mr. Goodworthy’s come. He’s the managing clerk. Shall I tell him
you’re here?”
“Yes, please,” said Philip.
The office-boy went out and in a moment returned.
“Will you come this way?”
Philip followed him across the passage and was shown into a room, small
and barely furnished, in which a little, thin man was standing with his
back to the fireplace. He was much below the middle height, but his
large head, which seemed to hang loosely on his body, gave him an odd
ungainliness. His features were wide and flattened, and he had
prominent, pale eyes; his thin hair was sandy; he wore whiskers that
grew unevenly on his face, and in places where you would have expected
the hair to grow thickly there was no hair at all. His skin was pasty
and yellow. He held out his hand to Philip, and when he smiled showed
badly decayed teeth. He spoke with a patronising and at the same time a
timid air, as though he sought to assume an importance which he did not
feel. He said he hoped Philip would like the work; there was a good
deal of drudgery about it, but when you got used to it, it was
interesting; and one made money, that was the chief thing, wasn’t it?
He laughed with his odd mixture of superiority and shyness.
“Mr. Carter will be here presently,” he said. “He’s a little late on
Monday mornings sometimes. I’ll call you when he comes. In the meantime
I must give you something to do. Do you know anything about
book-keeping or accounts?”
“I’m afraid not,” answered Philip.
“I didn’t suppose you would. They don’t teach you things at school that
are much use in business, I’m afraid.” He considered for a moment. “I
think I can find you something to do.”
He went into the next room and after a little while came out with a
large cardboard box. It contained a vast number of letters in great
disorder, and he told Philip to sort them out and arrange them
alphabetically according to the names of the writers.
“I’ll take you to the room in which the articled clerk generally sits.
There’s a very nice fellow in it. His name is Watson. He’s a son of
Watson, Crag, and Thompson—you know—the brewers. He’s spending a year
with us to learn business.”
Mr. Goodworthy led Philip through the dingy office, where now six or
eight clerks were working, into a narrow room behind. It had been made
into a separate apartment by a glass partition, and here they found
Watson sitting back in a chair, reading The Sportsman. He was a large,
stout young man, elegantly dressed, and he looked up as Mr. Goodworthy
entered. He asserted his position by calling the managing clerk
Goodworthy. The managing clerk objected to the familiarity, and
pointedly called him Mr. Watson, but Watson, instead of seeing that it
was a rebuke, accepted the title as a tribute to his gentlemanliness.
“I see they’ve scratched Rigoletto,” he said to Philip, as soon as they
were left alone.
“Have they?” said Philip, who knew nothing about horse-racing.
He looked with awe upon Watson’s beautiful clothes. His tail-coat
fitted him perfectly, and there was a valuable pin artfully stuck in
the middle of an enormous tie. On the chimney-piece rested his tall
hat; it was saucy and bell-shaped and shiny. Philip felt himself very
shabby. Watson began to talk of hunting—it was such an infernal bore
having to waste one’s time in an infernal office, he would only be able
to hunt on Saturdays—and shooting: he had ripping invitations all over
the country and of course he had to refuse them. It was infernal luck,
but he wasn’t going to put up with it long; he was only in this
internal hole for a year, and then he was going into the business, and
he would hunt four days a week and get all the shooting there was.
“You’ve got five years of it, haven’t you?” he said, waving his arm
round the tiny room.
“I suppose so,” said Philip.
“I daresay I shall see something of you. Carter does our accounts, you
know.”
Philip was somewhat overpowered by the young gentleman’s condescension.
At Blackstable they had always looked upon brewing with civil contempt,
the Vicar made little jokes about the beerage, and it was a surprising
experience for Philip to discover that Watson was such an important and
magnificent fellow. He had been to Winchester and to Oxford, and his
conversation impressed the fact upon one with frequency. When he
discovered the details of Philip’s education his manner became more
patronising still.
“Of course, if one doesn’t go to a public school those sort of schools
are the next best thing, aren’t they?”
Philip asked about the other men in the office.
“Oh, I don’t bother about them much, you know,” said Watson. “Carter’s
not a bad sort. We have him to dine now and then. All the rest are
awful bounders.”
Presently Watson applied himself to some work he had in hand, and
Philip set about sorting his letters. Then Mr. Goodworthy came in to
say that Mr. Carter had arrived. He took Philip into a large room next
door to his own. There was a big desk in it, and a couple of big
arm-chairs; a Turkey carpet adorned the floor, and the walls were
decorated with sporting prints. Mr. Carter was sitting at the desk and
got up to shake hands with Philip. He was dressed in a long frock coat.
He looked like a military man; his moustache was waxed, his gray hair
was short and neat, he held himself upright, he talked in a breezy way,
he lived at Enfield. He was very keen on games and the good of the
country. He was an officer in the Hertfordshire Yeomanry and chairman
of the Conservative Association. When he was told that a local magnate
had said no one would take him for a City man, he felt that he had not
lived in vain. He talked to Philip in a pleasant, off-hand fashion. Mr.
Goodworthy would look after him. Watson was a nice fellow, perfect
gentleman, good sportsman—did Philip hunt? Pity, THE sport for
gentlemen. Didn’t have much chance of hunting now, had to leave that to
his son. His son was at Cambridge, he’d sent him to Rugby, fine school
Rugby, nice class of boys there, in a couple of years his son would be
articled, that would be nice for Philip, he’d like his son, thorough
sportsman. He hoped Philip would get on well and like the work, he
mustn’t miss his lectures, they were getting up the tone of the
profession, they wanted gentlemen in it. Well, well, Mr. Goodworthy was
there. If he wanted to know anything Mr. Goodworthy would tell him.
What was his handwriting like? Ah well, Mr. Goodworthy would see about
that.
Philip was overwhelmed by so much gentlemanliness: in East Anglia they
knew who were gentlemen and who weren’t, but the gentlemen didn’t talk
about it.