The great first day at the Apollo Fire Office soon came, and my Aunt
Augusta seemed to be quite moved as, having discussed two poached eggs,
a roll, butter, toast, and marmalade, and two cups of coffee, I went
forth in my top-hat and tail-coat to earn my living. Women are rum.
She’d worked like anything to get me this great appointment, and yet,
when I started off in the best possible style to begin, Aunt Augusta
seemed distinctly sniffy! I took an omnibus from Oxford Street, having
previously walked down Harley Street, which is a great haunt of the
medical profession. Merely to walk down it and read the names is a
solemn thing to do, and makes you thank God for being pretty well.
In due course I arrived at my destination, in Threadneedle Street in the
very heart of the City of London. First you come to the Bank of
England—an imposing edifice quite black with centuries of London fog—and
opposite this is the Royal Exchange, whose weather-vane is a grasshopper
covered with gold and of enormous size. Often and often, from the
Country Department of the Apollo I used to look up at it and long to be
in the green places where real grasshoppers occur so freely.
But, to return, I walked into the Apollo, which comes next to the Bank
of England, and found there was a book on the first floor of the office,
in which every member of the staff had to sign his name on arriving.
When the hour of ten struck, a clerk came forward, dipped his pen into
the red ink, picked up a ruler and drew a line across the page. This was
to separate the clerks who were in time from those who were late. If you
were under the red line more than once or twice in a month, you heard
about it unfavourably.
There was an amazing record of a wonderful old clerk who had worked in
the office for forty-five years and never once been under the line! But
at last there came a day when the hour of ten rang out and the old clerk
had not come. Everybody was very excited over it, and they actually gave
him ten minutes’ grace, which was not lawful, but a sporting and a
proper thing to do in my opinion. However, all was without avail; for he
did not come, and the red line had to be reluctantly drawn. Everybody
almost trembled to know what the old clerk would do when he arrived to
find the record of forty-five years was ended; but the old clerk never
did arrive, because a telegram came, a few minutes after the drawing of
the line, to say that he had died in his sleep at his wife’s side, and
therefore could not get up at six o’clock, which was his rule. It was
rather sad in a way.
To show, however, that everybody didn’t feel the same rare spirit of
punctuality as the old clerk, there was another interesting story of the
red line and a chap who arrived late on his very first day. He actually
began his official career under the red line. He must have been a man
like the great Napoleon in some ways. A very self-willed sort of man, in
fact. He only stopped in the Apollo a fortnight, and then was invited to
seek another sphere of activity. He was a nephew of one of the Directors
and died in the Zulu War. A pity for him he had not been of a clerk-like
turn of mind.