The wages were paid once a month by the secretary. On pay-day each
batch of assistants, coming down from tea, went into the passage and
joined the long line of people waiting orderly like the audience in a
queue outside a gallery door. One by one they entered the office. The
secretary sat at a desk with wooden bowls of money in front of him, and
he asked the employe’s name; he referred to a book, quickly, after a
suspicious glance at the assistant, said aloud the sum due, and taking
money out of the bowl counted it into his hand.
“Thank you,” he said. “Next.”
“Thank you,” was the reply.
The assistant passed on to the second secretary and before leaving the
room paid him four shillings for washing money, two shillings for the
club, and any fines that he might have incurred. With what he had left
he went back into his department and there waited till it was time to
go. Most of the men in Philip’s house were in debt with the woman who
sold the sandwiches they generally ate for supper. She was a funny old
thing, very fat, with a broad, red face, and black hair plastered
neatly on each side of the forehead in the fashion shown in early
pictures of Queen Victoria. She always wore a little black bonnet and a
white apron; her sleeves were tucked up to the elbow; she cut the
sandwiches with large, dirty, greasy hands; and there was grease on her
bodice, grease on her apron, grease on her skirt. She was called Mrs.
Fletcher, but everyone addressed her as ‘Ma’; she was really fond of
the shop assistants, whom she called her boys; she never minded giving
credit towards the end of the month, and it was known that now and then
she had lent someone or other a few shillings when he was in straits.
She was a good woman. When they were leaving or when they came back
from the holidays, the boys kissed her fat red cheek; and more than
one, dismissed and unable to find another job, had got for nothing food
to keep body and soul together. The boys were sensible of her large
heart and repaid her with genuine affection. There was a story they
liked to tell of a man who had done well for himself at Bradford, and
had five shops of his own, and had come back after fifteen years and
visited Ma Fletcher and given her a gold watch.
Philip found himself with eighteen shillings left out of his month’s
pay. It was the first money he had ever earned in his life. It gave him
none of the pride which might have been expected, but merely a feeling
of dismay. The smallness of the sum emphasised the hopelessness of his
position. He took fifteen shillings to Mrs. Athelny to pay back part of
what he owed her, but she would not take more than half a sovereign.
“D’you know, at that rate it’ll take me eight months to settle up with
you.”
“As long as Athelny’s in work I can afford to wait, and who knows,
p’raps they’ll give you a rise.”
Athelny kept on saying that he would speak to the manager about Philip,
it was absurd that no use should be made of his talents; but he did
nothing, and Philip soon came to the conclusion that the press-agent
was not a person of so much importance in the manager’s eyes as in his
own. Occasionally he saw Athelny in the shop. His flamboyance was
extinguished; and in neat, commonplace, shabby clothes he hurried, a
subdued, unassuming little man, through the departments as though
anxious to escape notice.
“When I think of how I’m wasted there,” he said at home, “I’m almost
tempted to give in my notice. There’s no scope for a man like me. I’m
stunted, I’m starved.”
Mrs. Athelny, quietly sewing, took no notice of his complaints. Her
mouth tightened a little.
“It’s very hard to get jobs in these times. It’s regular and it’s safe;
I expect you’ll stay there as long as you give satisfaction.”
It was evident that Athelny would. It was interesting to see the
ascendency which the uneducated woman, bound to him by no legal tie,
had acquired over the brilliant, unstable man. Mrs. Athelny treated
Philip with motherly kindness now that he was in a different position,
and he was touched by her anxiety that he should make a good meal. It
was the solace of his life (and when he grew used to it, the monotony
of it was what chiefly appalled him) that he could go every Sunday to
that friendly house. It was a joy to sit in the stately Spanish chairs
and discuss all manner of things with Athelny. Though his condition
seemed so desperate he never left him to go back to Harrington Street
without a feeling of exultation. At first Philip, in order not to
forget what he had learned, tried to go on reading his medical books,
but he found it useless; he could not fix his attention on them after
the exhausting work of the day; and it seemed hopeless to continue
working when he did not know in how long he would be able to go back to
the hospital. He dreamed constantly that he was in the wards. The
awakening was painful. The sensation of other people sleeping in the
room was inexpressibly irksome to him; he had been used to solitude,
and to be with others always, never to be by himself for an instant was
at these moments horrible to him. It was then that he found it most
difficult to combat his despair. He saw himself going on with that
life, first to the right, second on the left, madam, indefinitely; and
having to be thankful if he was not sent away: the men who had gone to
the war would be coming home soon, the firm had guaranteed to take them
back, and this must mean that others would be sacked; he would have to
stir himself even to keep the wretched post he had.
There was only one thing to free him and that was the death of his
uncle. He would get a few hundred pounds then, and on this he could
finish his course at the hospital. Philip began to wish with all his
might for the old man’s death. He reckoned out how long he could
possibly live: he was well over seventy, Philip did not know his exact
age, but he must be at least seventy-five; he suffered from chronic
bronchitis and every winter had a bad cough. Though he knew them by
heart Philip read over and over again the details in his text-book of
medicine of chronic bronchitis in the old. A severe winter might be too
much for the old man. With all his heart Philip longed for cold and
rain. He thought of it constantly, so that it became a monomania. Uncle
William was affected by the great heat too, and in August they had
three weeks of sweltering weather. Philip imagined to himself that one
day perhaps a telegram would come saying that the Vicar had died
suddenly, and he pictured to himself his unutterable relief. As he
stood at the top of the stairs and directed people to the departments
they wanted, he occupied his mind with thinking incessantly what he
would do with the money. He did not know how much it would be, perhaps
no more than five hundred pounds, but even that would be enough. He
would leave the shop at once, he would not bother to give notice, he
would pack his box and go without saying a word to anybody; and then he
would return to the hospital. That was the first thing. Would he have
forgotten much? In six months he could get it all back, and then he
would take his three examinations as soon as he could, midwifery first,
then medicine and surgery. The awful fear seized him that his uncle,
notwithstanding his promises, might leave everything he had to the
parish or the church. The thought made Philip sick. He could not be so
cruel. But if that happened Philip was quite determined what to do, he
would not go on in that way indefinitely; his life was only tolerable
because he could look forward to something better. If he had no hope he
would have no fear. The only brave thing to do then would be to commit
suicide, and, thinking this over too, Philip decided minutely what
painless drug he would take and how he would get hold of it. It
encouraged him to think that, if things became unendurable, he had at
all events a way out.
“Second to the right, madam, and down the stairs. First on the left and
straight through. Mr. Philips, forward please.”
Once a month, for a week, Philip was ‘on duty.’ He had to go to the
department at seven in the morning and keep an eye on the sweepers.
When they finished he had to take the sheets off the cases and the
models. Then, in the evening when the assistants left, he had to put
back the sheets on the models and the cases and ‘gang’ the sweepers
again. It was a dusty, dirty job. He was not allowed to read or write
or smoke, but just had to walk about, and the time hung heavily on his
hands. When he went off at half past nine he had supper given him, and
this was the only consolation; for tea at five o’clock had left him
with a healthy appetite, and the bread and cheese, the abundant cocoa
which the firm provided, were welcome.
One day when Philip had been at Lynn’s for three months, Mr. Sampson,
the buyer, came into the department, fuming with anger. The manager,
happening to notice the costume window as he came in, had sent for the
buyer and made satirical remarks upon the colour scheme. Forced to
submit in silence to his superior’s sarcasm, Mr. Sampson took it out of
the assistants; and he rated the wretched fellow whose duty it was to
dress the window.
“If you want a thing well done you must do it yourself,” Mr. Sampson
stormed. “I’ve always said it and I always shall. One can’t leave
anything to you chaps. Intelligent you call yourselves, do you?
Intelligent!”
He threw the word at the assistants as though it were the bitterest
term of reproach.
“Don’t you know that if you put an electric blue in the window it’ll
kill all the other blues?”
He looked round the department ferociously, and his eye fell upon
Philip.
“You’ll dress the window next Friday, Carey. Let’s see what you can
make of it.”
He went into his office, muttering angrily. Philip’s heart sank. When
Friday morning came he went into the window with a sickening sense of
shame. His cheeks were burning. It was horrible to display himself to
the passers-by, and though he told himself it was foolish to give way
to such a feeling he turned his back to the street. There was not much
chance that any of the students at the hospital would pass along Oxford
Street at that hour, and he knew hardly anyone else in London; but as
Philip worked, with a huge lump in his throat, he fancied that on
turning round he would catch the eye of some man he knew. He made all
the haste he could. By the simple observation that all reds went
together, and by spacing the costumes more than was usual, Philip got a
very good effect; and when the buyer went into the street to look at
the result he was obviously pleased.
“I knew I shouldn’t go far wrong in putting you on the window. The fact
is, you and me are gentlemen, mind you I wouldn’t say this in the
department, but you and me are gentlemen, and that always tells. It’s
no good your telling me it doesn’t tell, because I know it does tell.”
Philip was put on the job regularly, but he could not accustom himself
to the publicity; and he dreaded Friday morning, on which the window
was dressed, with a terror that made him awake at five o’clock and lie
sleepless with sickness in his heart. The girls in the department
noticed his shamefaced way, and they very soon discovered his trick of
standing with his back to the street. They laughed at him and called
him ‘sidey.’
“I suppose you’re afraid your aunt’ll come along and cut you out of her
will.”
On the whole he got on well enough with the girls. They thought him a
little queer; but his club-foot seemed to excuse his not being like the
rest, and they found in due course that he was good-natured. He never
minded helping anyone, and he was polite and even tempered.
“You can see he’s a gentleman,” they said.
“Very reserved, isn’t he?” said one young woman, to whose passionate
enthusiasm for the theatre he had listened unmoved.
Most of them had ‘fellers,’ and those who hadn’t said they had rather
than have it supposed that no one had an inclination for them. One or
two showed signs of being willing to start a flirtation with Philip,
and he watched their manoeuvres with grave amusement. He had had enough
of love-making for some time; and he was nearly always tired and often
hungry.