THINGS
THE Euston Road, which is perhaps the most funereal thoroughfare in
Europe, furnishes their first glimpse of London to fully fifty per cent
of all who visit our capital.
Philip was no stranger to London, for he had spent his youth in the
wilds of Hampstead; and later on, like most young men, had formed a
tolerably intimate acquaintance with that portion of the metropolis
which lies within a radius of one mile of Piccadilly Circus. Still, as
his cab hurried away from the unspeakable hideousness of Euston Station
and turned into that congeries of tombstone-makers' yards and unsavoury
lodging-houses which constitutes the Euston Road, even Coventry seemed
pleasantly rural by comparison. Most of us are inclined to feel like
this at the outset of a new undertaking. Fortunately we can support
ourselves through this period with the reflection that every success
worth winning is approached by a Euston Road of some kind.
Philip's first few weeks in the London offices were a prolongation of
this journey. The young gentleman in the show-room proved to be
unspeakably offensive and incompetent; the Yorkshireman in the
repairing-shop was incredibly obstinate and secretive. The staff were
slack, and the premises dirty. Letters were not answered promptly, and
the accounts were in a shocking mess. Finally, every soul in the place
(with the possible exception of the lady typist) greeted the intrusion
of the new manager with undisguised hostility.
Philip, reminding himself of the period of time in which Rome was not
built, set to work, in his serious methodical fashion, to master
departmental details. He went through the repair-shop first, and mindful
of Mr. Mablethorpe's admonition to observe People rather than Things,
spent much time in studying the characters of each of the men employed.
As a result of his investigations two mechanics, props of their Union,
were tersely informed that unless their standard of performance was
raised at least one hundred per cent, their services would not be
required after the end of the current month.
Next came a brief but painful interview with Mr. Murgatroyd, the
Yorkshireman, on the subject of perquisites and commissions. The motor
industry lends itself to the acquirement of pickings more, perhaps, than
any other trade of to-day, and the long-headed Mr. Murgatroyd had made
good use of the opportunities thrown in his way for something like ten
years. Henceforth, Philip explained to him, there must be no more
clandestine _douceurs_ from tyre-agents, no more strictly private
rebates on consignments of petrol, and no more piling-up of unconsidered
trifles in customers' bills. Before undertaking a repairing contract of
any magnitude, Mr. Murgatroyd must present a detailed estimate of the
cost, and the work was not to be put in hand until the estimate was
approved and countersigned by the owner of the car.
To this Mr. Murgatroyd replied almost tearfully that if Mr. Meldrum
proposed to run the establishment upon Sunday-school lines, the sooner
they put up the shutters the better.
"Does that mean that you want to resign your post, Mr. Murgatroyd?"
asked Philip hopefully.
Mr. Murgatroyd was not to be caught.
"Not at all, sir," he said. "I dare say we shall take a little time to
get used to one another's ways, that's all; but in the end I'm sure we
shall rub along grandly."
What Mr. Murgatroyd meant was:--
"You are a new broom. In a short time your youthful zeal for reform will
have abated, and we can then slip back unto the old comfortable groove.
For the present I must make a show of complying with your idiotic
commands."
Philip understood this, and calculated that six months of commercial
austerity would set his manager looking for a softer berth. Both sides
having thus decided to wait and see, the interview terminated.
Philip next introduced his broom into the somewhat Augean garage.
Car-washers were straitly informed that their duty was to wash cars and
not to rifle the tool-boxes and door-pockets thereof. The current price
of that fluctuating commodity, petrol, as fixed from day to day by the
brigands who hold the world's supply in the hollow of their unclean
hands, was chalked up in a conspicuous position every morning, in order
that consumers might purchase at the market price and not at one fixed
by the foreman. Sundry members of that well-organized and far-reaching
Society for the Acquisition of Other People's Property--the brotherhood
of chauffeurs who used the garage--were put through a brief but drastic
course of instruction in the elementary laws of _meum and tuum_; and one
particularly enterprising member of the craft, to whose possession a new
and expensive jack, recently the property of a gentleman from the
country who drove his own car, was traced after a systematic and quite
unexpected official enquiry, was directed to remove himself and his
vehicle to other quarters as an alternative to prosecution.
Having in the space of three weeks achieved a degree of unpopularity
almost incredible to a man who has hitherto encountered only the genial
side of his fellow creatures, Philip turned from the garage to the
office. Here his troubles were of a different kind. Commercial
arithmetic had no terrors for him; the systematic filing of
correspondence and the compilation of cross-references appealed readily
to his orderly soul. His difficulties arose not so much from these
mechanical aids to commerce as from the human agents in charge of them.
Mr. Atherton, the young gentleman who presided over the show-room, was,
as already indicated, a square peg. The careers open to a younger son of
a well-connected but impecunious house are strictly limited in number.
Presuming, as is probably the case, that the family resources are
already fully taxed in maintaining his elder brother in the army, and
that he himself is debarred through insufficiency of grey matter from
entering one of the three learned professions, our young English friend
is forced to the inevitable conclusion that he must earn his living in
some less distinguished field of effort.
"Not in _trade_, of course, dear," says his lady mother, with the air of
a female Euclid throwing off an elementary and self-evident axiom. "But
anything else you like."
The unsophisticated observer might be excused for imagining that the
maternal proviso extinguishes our young friend's prospects of a career
altogether. Not so. To the upper classes of England there are trades and
trades. You may become a land-agent, for instance, without loss of
caste; presumably because you cannot possibly make any money out of
being a land-agent. You may also become a stockjobber, possibly because
a stockjobber's earnings cannot by any stretch of the imagination be
regarded as the fruit of honest toil. You may go to Ceylon, or Canada,
or California, and there, in the decent obscurity of a foreign clime,
live by the work of your own hands. You may even go upon the stage, in a
gentlemanly sort of way. But you must not go into trade. You must not
buy or sell merchandise in the open market; though, as stated above, you
are perfectly at liberty to sell what you have not got, and buy what you
could not pay for if you received it, in the world of Bulls and Bears.
However,--no one seems to know why, but the undisputable fact
remains,--you may sell automobiles for a living and remain a gentleman.
It is not known who discovered this providential law of nature, but ever
since its establishment well-born young men have swarmed into the
profession; and now the humblest purchaser of an automobile may quite
reasonably hope to have his cheque endorsed, and mayhap a cigar
accepted, by the descendant of a duke.
The innovation has proved a commercial success, too, or we may be sure
that it would not have endured in the unsentimental economic world for a
twelvemonth. _Pace_ Mr. Mablethorpe, the immaculate young man who
attends to our wants in show-rooms knows his business. He is a fair
mechanic, a fearless driver, and an excellent salesman. Customers of his
own walk of life confide their wants to him as to a brother, while
plutocratic but plebeian patrons frequently purchase a more expensive
car than they originally contemplated through fear of losing his good
opinion.
But there are exceptions, and Mr. Atherton was one. He was grossly
ignorant of the elements of mechanics, he was unbusinesslike in his
management of correspondence, and he was rude to customers without being
impressive. He was also a frequent absentee from his post on matinee
days. The indoor staff, down to the very office-boy, took their tone
from him; with the result that Philip, in the execution of his duty in
the office and show-room, was enabled without any difficulty whatever to
eclipse the degree of unpopularity already achieved by him in the garage
and repair-shop. But he ploughed resolutely on his way.
In order to be near his work he rented a small flat in Wigmore Street,
and furnished it according to his ideals of what was requisite and
necessary. He cooked his own breakfast, and took his other meals at
Frascati's.
Each afternoon an elderly and incompetent female called, and--to employ
her own grim expression--did for him. That is to say, she consumed what
was left of Philip's breakfast, and made his bed by the simple expedient
of restoring the bedclothes to their overnight position.
His bedroom furniture he bought _en suite_ in Tottenham Court Road, for
seven pounds fifteen. In his sitting-room he installed a large table,
upon which to draw up plans and specifications, and an armchair. It did
not occur to him that he required any more furniture. He cooked his food
at a gas-stove and ate it off a corner of this table, sitting on the arm
of the chair. The sole ornament, upon his mantelpiece was a model of the
Meldrum Carburettor, recently perfected and patented. He made no friends
and went nowhere. A woman would have (and ultimately did) shed tears
over his _menage_. But he was happy enough. Things, not People, still
held him bound.
And yet he was not utterly at peace with his world. It is said that a
woman is always happy unless she has something to make her unhappy, but
that a man is never happy unless he has something to make him happy. Up
to this period of his life Philip had never had to hunt for the sources
of happiness. His work, and the ever-developing interests of youth, had
kept him well supplied. But now, at times, he was conscious of a
shortage. Under the increasing cares of existence mere _joie de vivre_
becomes insufficient as a driving-power, and demands augmentation.
Philip's present life--if we except odd hours in the evening devoted to
the perfection of the Meldrum inventions--was an ungrateful business at
best. He had few friends, and was not of the breed which can solace
itself with the companionship that can be purchased in great cities. And
therefore he began, inevitably, to draw his necessary happiness from the
bank of the Future. Most of us come to this in time, for few there be
that are fortunate enough to be able to subsist year in year out upon
current income. When we are young we draw upon the Future, and when we
are old we fall back (please God) upon the Past. So Philip began to live
for the day on which his reforms should come to fruition, and the work
in the London offices find itself running forward on oiled wheels. As
for the Present--it was a rotten business, but difficulties were made to
be overcome. _En avant!_
But beyond these practical aspirations lay a fairer region. Philip was
in love. Not with any material pink-and-white charmer, but, after the
perfectly healthy and natural manner of the young man before he grows
cynical or _blase_ with experience, with Love itself. Only that. At
present he was more concerned with the abstract than the concrete. At
this period he was inclined to regard matrimony much as a child regards
cake--namely, as a consummation to be achieved only after a long
mastication of bread-and-butter. At present he was in the thick of the
bread-and-butter. But when he had worked strenuously for perhaps ten
years, he would assuredly encounter his Lady--he had no clear idea what
she was like, but he was absolutely confident of her existence--and
would marry her. Then he would be paid in full. Troubles would be halved
and joys doubled, and life itself would be the sweeter for the long
years of hard service and clean living and high endeavour that lay at
present between the dream and its fulfilment.
Meanwhile he was content to hitch his wagon to a star and proceed with
the day's work. Business first.