Of Human Bondage (97 page)

  "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.

  The social evenings took place on alternate Mondays.
There was one at the beginning of Philip's second week at Lynn's.
He arranged to go with one of the women in his department.

  "Meet 'em 'alf-way," she said, "same as I do."

  This was Mrs. Hodges, a little woman of
five-and-forty, with badly dyed hair; she had a yellow face with a
network of small red veins all over it, and yellow whites to her
pale blue eyes. She took a fancy to Philip and called him by his
Christian name before he had been in the shop a week.

  "We've both known what it is to come down," she
said.

  She told Philip that her real name was not Hodges,
but she always referred to 'me 'usband Misterodges;" he was a
barrister and he treated her simply shocking, so she left him as
she preferred to be independent like; but she had known what it was
to drive in her own carriage, dear – she called everyone dear – and
they always had late dinner at home. She used to pick her teeth
with the pin of an enormous silver brooch. It was in the form of a
whip and a hunting-crop crossed, with two spurs in the middle.
Philip was ill at ease in his new surroundings, and the girls in
the shop called him `sidey.' One addressed him as Phil, and he did
not answer because he had not the least idea that she was speaking
to him; so she tossed her head, saying he was a `stuck-up thing,'
and next time with ironical emphasis called him Mister Carey. She
was a Miss Jewell, and she was going to marry a doctor. The other
girls had never seen him, but they said he must be a gentleman as
he gave her such lovely presents.