Mrs. Athelny lent Philip money to pay his landlady enough of her bill
to let him take his things away. For five shillings and the pawn-ticket
on a suit he was able to get from a pawnbroker a frock coat which
fitted him fairly well. He redeemed the rest of his clothes. He sent
his box to Harrington Street by Carter Patterson and on Monday morning
went with Athelny to the shop. Athelny introduced him to the buyer of
the costumes and left him. The buyer was a pleasant, fussy little man
of thirty, named Sampson; he shook hands with Philip, and, in order to
show his own accomplishment of which he was very proud, asked him if he
spoke French. He was surprised when Philip told him he did.
“Any other language?”
“I speak German.”
“Oh! I go over to Paris myself occasionally. Parlez-vous francais? Ever
been to Maxim’s?”
Philip was stationed at the top of the stairs in the ‘costumes.’ His
work consisted in directing people to the various departments. There
seemed a great many of them as Mr. Sampson tripped them off his tongue.
Suddenly he noticed that Philip limped.
“What’s the matter with your leg?” he asked.
“I’ve got a club-foot,” said Philip. “But it doesn’t prevent my walking
or anything like that.”
The buyer looked at it for a moment doubtfully, and Philip surmised
that he was wondering why the manager had engaged him. Philip knew that
he had not noticed there was anything the matter with him.
“I don’t expect you to get them all correct the first day. If you’re in
any doubt all you’ve got to do is to ask one of the young ladies.”
Mr. Sampson turned away; and Philip, trying to remember where this or
the other department was, watched anxiously for the customer in search
of information. At one o’clock he went up to dinner. The dining-room,
on the top floor of the vast building, was large, long, and well lit;
but all the windows were shut to keep out the dust, and there was a
horrid smell of cooking. There were long tables covered with cloths,
with big glass bottles of water at intervals, and down the centre salt
cellars and bottles of vinegar. The assistants crowded in noisily, and
sat down on forms still warm from those who had dined at twelve-thirty.
“No pickles,” remarked the man next to Philip.
He was a tall thin young man, with a hooked nose and a pasty face; he
had a long head, unevenly shaped as though the skull had been pushed in
here and there oddly, and on his forehead and neck were large acne
spots red and inflamed. His name was Harris. Philip discovered that on
some days there were large soup-plates down the table full of mixed
pickles. They were very popular. There were no knives and forks, but in
a minute a large fat boy in a white coat came in with a couple of
handfuls of them and threw them loudly on the middle of the table. Each
man took what he wanted; they were warm and greasy from recent washing
in dirty water. Plates of meat swimming in gravy were handed round by
boys in white jackets, and as they flung each plate down with the quick
gesture of a prestidigitator the gravy slopped over on to the
table-cloth. Then they brought large dishes of cabbages and potatoes;
the sight of them turned Philip’s stomach; he noticed that everyone
poured quantities of vinegar over them. The noise was awful. They
talked and laughed and shouted, and there was the clatter of knives and
forks, and strange sounds of eating. Philip was glad to get back into
the department. He was beginning to remember where each one was, and
had less often to ask one of the assistants, when somebody wanted to
know the way.
“First to the right. Second on the left, madam.”
One or two of the girls spoke to him, just a word when things were
slack, and he felt they were taking his measure. At five he was sent up
again to the dining-room for tea. He was glad to sit down. There were
large slices of bread heavily spread with butter; and many had pots of
jam, which were kept in the ‘store’ and had their names written on.
Philip was exhausted when work stopped at half past six. Harris, the
man he had sat next to at dinner, offered to take him over to
Harrington Street to show him where he was to sleep. He told Philip
there was a spare bed in his room, and, as the other rooms were full,
he expected Philip would be put there. The house in Harrington Street
had been a bootmaker’s; and the shop was used as a bed-room; but it was
very dark, since the window had been boarded three parts up, and as
this did not open the only ventilation came from a small skylight at
the far end. There was a musty smell, and Philip was thankful that he
would not have to sleep there. Harris took him up to the sitting-room,
which was on the first floor; it had an old piano in it with a keyboard
that looked like a row of decayed teeth; and on the table in a
cigar-box without a lid was a set of dominoes; old numbers of The
Strand Magazine and of The Graphic were lying about. The other rooms
were used as bed-rooms. That in which Philip was to sleep was at the
top of the house. There were six beds in it, and a trunk or a box stood
by the side of each. The only furniture was a chest of drawers: it had
four large drawers and two small ones, and Philip as the new-comer had
one of these; there were keys to them, but as they were all alike they
were not of much use, and Harris advised him to keep his valuables in
his trunk. There was a looking-glass on the chimney-piece. Harris
showed Philip the lavatory, which was a fairly large room with eight
basins in a row, and here all the inmates did their washing. It led
into another room in which were two baths, discoloured, the woodwork
stained with soap; and in them were dark rings at various intervals
which indicated the water marks of different baths.
When Harris and Philip went back to their bed-room they found a tall
man changing his clothes and a boy of sixteen whistling as loud as he
could while he brushed his hair. In a minute or two without saying a
word to anybody the tall man went out. Harris winked at the boy, and
the boy, whistling still, winked back. Harris told Philip that the man
was called Prior; he had been in the army and now served in the silks;
he kept pretty much to himself, and he went off every night, just like
that, without so much as a good-evening, to see his girl. Harris went
out too, and only the boy remained to watch Philip curiously while he
unpacked his things. His name was Bell and he was serving his time for
nothing in the haberdashery. He was much interested in Philip’s evening
clothes. He told him about the other men in the room and asked him
every sort of question about himself. He was a cheerful youth, and in
the intervals of conversation sang in a half-broken voice snatches of
music-hall songs. When Philip had finished he went out to walk about
the streets and look at the crowd; occasionally he stopped outside the
doors of restaurants and watched the people going in; he felt hungry,
so he bought a bath bun and ate it while he strolled along. He had been
given a latch-key by the prefect, the man who turned out the gas at a
quarter past eleven, but afraid of being locked out he returned in good
time; he had learned already the system of fines: you had to pay a
shilling if you came in after eleven, and half a crown after a quarter
past, and you were reported besides: if it happened three times you
were dismissed.
All but the soldier were in when Philip arrived and two were already in
bed. Philip was greeted with cries.
“Oh, Clarence! Naughty boy!”
He discovered that Bell had dressed up the bolster in his evening
clothes. The boy was delighted with his joke.
“You must wear them at the social evening, Clarence.”
“He’ll catch the belle of Lynn’s, if he’s not careful.”
Philip had already heard of the social evenings, for the money stopped
from the wages to pay for them was one of the grievances of the staff.
It was only two shillings a month, and it covered medical attendance
and the use of a library of worn novels; but as four shillings a month
besides was stopped for washing, Philip discovered that a quarter of
his six shillings a week would never be paid to him.
Most of the men were eating thick slices of fat bacon between a roll of
bread cut in two. These sandwiches, the assistants’ usual supper, were
supplied by a small shop a few doors off at twopence each. The soldier
rolled in; silently, rapidly, took off his clothes and threw himself
into bed. At ten minutes past eleven the gas gave a big jump and five
minutes later went out. The soldier went to sleep, but the others
crowded round the big window in their pyjamas and night-shirts and,
throwing remains of their sandwiches at the women who passed in the
street below, shouted to them facetious remarks. The house opposite,
six storeys high, was a workshop for Jewish tailors who left off work
at eleven; the rooms were brightly lit and there were no blinds to the
windows. The sweater’s daughter—the family consisted of father, mother,
two small boys, and a girl of twenty—went round the house to put out
the lights when work was over, and sometimes she allowed herself to be
made love to by one of the tailors. The shop assistants in Philip’s
room got a lot of amusement out of watching the manoeuvres of one man
or another to stay behind, and they made small bets on which would
succeed. At midnight the people were turned out of the Harrington Arms
at the end of the street, and soon after they all went to bed: Bell,
who slept nearest the door, made his way across the room by jumping
from bed to bed, and even when he got to his own would not stop
talking. At last everything was silent but for the steady snoring of
the soldier, and Philip went to sleep.
He was awaked at seven by the loud ringing of a bell, and by a quarter
to eight they were all dressed and hurrying downstairs in their
stockinged feet to pick out their boots. They laced them as they ran
along to the shop in Oxford Street for breakfast. If they were a minute
later than eight they got none, nor, once in, were they allowed out to
get themselves anything to eat. Sometimes, if they knew they could not
get into the building in time, they stopped at the little shop near
their quarters and bought a couple of buns; but this cost money, and
most went without food till dinner. Philip ate some bread and butter,
drank a cup of tea, and at half past eight began his day’s work again.
“First to the right. Second on the left, madam.”
Soon he began to answer the questions quite mechanically. The work was
monotonous and very tiring. After a few days his feet hurt him so that
he could hardly stand: the thick soft carpets made them burn, and at
night his socks were painful to remove. It was a common complaint, and
his fellow ‘floormen’ told him that socks and boots just rotted away
from the continual sweating. All the men in his room suffered in the
same fashion, and they relieved the pain by sleeping with their feet
outside the bed-clothes. At first Philip could not walk at all and was
obliged to spend a good many of his evenings in the sitting-room at
Harrington Street with his feet in a pail of cold water. His companion
on these occasions was Bell, the lad in the haberdashery, who stayed in
often to arrange the stamps he collected. As he fastened them with
little pieces of stamp-paper he whistled monotonously.