Sons and Lovers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (20 page)

After a minute or two Paul went down and stood in the door of the glass office. The old clerk in the smoking-cap looked down over the rim of his spectacles.

“Good-morning,” he said, kindly and impressively. “You want the letters for the Spiral department, Thomas?”

Paul resented being called “Thomas.” But he took the letters and returned to his dark place, where the counter made an angle, where the great parcel-rack came to an end, and where there were three doors in the corner. He sat on a high stool and read the letters—those whose handwriting was not too difficult. They ran as follows:

“Will you please send me at once a pair of lady’s silk spiral thigh-hose, without feet, such as I had from you last year; length, thigh to knee, etc.” Or, “Major Chamberlain wishes to repeat his previous order for a silk non-elastic suspensory bandage.”

Many of these letters, some of them in French or Norwegian, were a great puzzle to the boy. He sat on his stool nervously awaiting the arrival of his “boss.” He suffered tortures of shyness when, at half-past eight, the factory girls for upstairs trooped past him.

Mr. Pappleworth arrived, chewing a chlorodyne
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gum, at about twenty to nine, when all the other men were at work. He was a thin, sallow man with a red nose, quick, staccato, and smartly but stiffly dressed. He was about thirty-six years old. There was something rather “doggy,”
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rather smart, rather ’cute and shrewd, and something warm, and something slightly contemptible about him.

“You my new lad?” he said.

Paul stood up and said he was.

“Fetched the letters?”

Mr. Pappleworth gave a chew to his gum.

“Yes.”

“Copied ’em?”

“No.”

“Well, come on then, let’s look slippy. Changed your coat?”

“No.”

“You want to bring an old coat and leave it here.” He pronounced the last words with the chlorodyne gum between his side teeth. He vanished into the darkness behind the great parcel-rack, reappeared coatless, turning up a smart striped shirt-cuff over a thin and hairy arm. Then he slipped into his coat. Paul noticed how thin he was, and that his trousers were in folds behind. He seized a stool, dragged it beside the boy’s, and sat down.

“Sit down,” he said.

Paul took a seat.

Mr. Pappleworth was very close to him. The man seized the letters, snatched a long entry-book out of a rack in front of him, flung it open, seized a pen, and said:

“Now look here. You want to copy these letters in here.” He sniffed twice, gave a quick chew at his gum, stared fixedly at a letter, then went very still and absorbed, and wrote the entry rapidly, in a beautiful flourishing hand. He glanced quickly at Paul.

“See that?”

“Yes.”

“Think you can do it all right?”

“Yes.”

“All right then, let’s see you.”

He sprang off his stool. Paul took a pen. Mr. Pappleworth disappeared. Paul rather liked copying the letters, but he wrote slowly, laboriously, and exceedingly badly. He was doing the fourth letter, and feeling quite busy and happy, when Mr. Pappleworth reappeared.

“Now then, how‘r’ yer getting on? Done ’em?”

He leaned over the boy’s shoulder, chewing, and smelling of chlorodyne.

“Strike my bob,
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lad, but you’re a beautiful writer!” he exclaimed satirically. “Ne‘er mind, how many h’yer done? Only three! I’d’a eaten ‘em. Get on, my lad, an’ put numbers on ’em. Here, look! Get on!”

Paul ground away at the letters, whilst Mr. Pappleworth fussed over various jobs. Suddenly the boy started as a shrill whistle sounded near his ear. Mr. Pappleworth came, took a plug out of a pipe, and said, in an amazingly cross and bossy voice:

“Yes?”

Paul heard a faint voice, like a woman’s, out of the mouth of the tube. He gazed in wonder, never having seen a speaking-tube before.

“Well,” said Mr. Pappleworth disagreeably into the tube, “you’d better get some of your back work done, then.”

Again the woman’s tiny voice was heard, sounding pretty and cross.

“I’ve not time to stand here while you talk,” said Mr. Pappleworth, and he pushed the plug into the tube.

“Come, my lad,” he said imploringly to Paul, “there’s Polly crying out for them orders. Can’t you buck up a bit? Here, come out!”

He took the book, to Paul’s immense chagrin, and began the copying himself He worked quickly and well. This done, he seized some strips of long yellow paper, about three inches wide, and made out the day’s orders for the work-girls.

“You’d better watch me,” he said to Paul, working all the while rapidly. Paul watched the weird little drawings of legs, and thighs, and ankles, with the strokes across and the numbers, and the few brief directions which his chief made upon the yellow paper. Then Mr. Pappleworth finished and jumped up.

“Come on with me,” he said, and the yellow papers flying in his hands, he dashed through a door and down some stairs, into the basement where the gas was burning. They crossed the cold, damp storeroom, then a long, dreary room with a long table on trestles, into a smaller, cosy apartment, not very high, which had been built on to the main building. In this room a small woman with a red serge blouse, and her black hair done on top of her head, was waiting like a proud little bantam.
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“Here y’are!” said Pappleworth.

“I think it is ‘here you are’!” exclaimed Polly. “The girls have been here nearly half an hour waiting. Just think of the time wasted!”

“
You
think of getting your work done and not talking so much,” said Mr. Pappleworth. “You could ha’ been finishing off.”

“You know quite well we finished everything off on Saturday!” cried Polly, flying at him, her dark eyes flashing.

“Tu-tu-tu-tu-terterter!” he mocked. “Here’s your new lad. Don’t ruin him as you did the last.”

“As we did the last!” repeated Polly. “Yes,
we
do a lot of ruining, we do. My word, a lad would
take
some ruining after he’d been with you.

“It’s time for work now, not for talk,” said Mr. Pappleworth severely and coldly.

“It was time for work some time back,” said Polly, marching away with her head in the air. She was an erect little body of forty.

In that room were two round spiral machines on the bench under the window. Through the inner doorway was another longer room, with six more machines. A little group of girls, nicely dressed in white aprons, stood talking together.

“Have you nothing else to do but talk?” said Mr. Pappleworth.

“Only wait for you,” said one handsome girl, laughing.

“Well, get on, get on,” he said. “Come on, my lad. You’ll know your road down here again.”

And Paul ran upstairs after his chief He was given some checking and invoicing to do. He stood at the desk, labouring in his execrable handwriting. Presently Mr. Jordan came strutting down from the glass office and stood behind him, to the boy’s great discomfort. Suddenly a red and fat finger was thrust on the form he was filling in.

“
Mr.
J. A. Bates, Esquire!” exclaimed the cross voice just behind his ear.

Paul looked at “Mr. J. A. Bates, Esquire” in his own vile writing, and wondered what was the matter now.

“Didn’t they teach you any better than
that
while they were at it? If you put ‘Mr.’ you don’t put ‘Esquire’—a man can’t be both at once.

The boy regretted his too-much generosity in disposing of honours, hesitated, and with trembling fingers, scratched out the “Mr.” Then all at once Mr. Jordan snatched away the invoice.

“Make another! Are you going to send that to a gentleman?” And he tore up the blue form irritably.

Paul, his ears red with shame, began again. Still Mr. Jordan watched.

“I don’t know what they
do
teach in schools. You’ll have to write better than that. Lads learn nothing nowadays, but how to recite poetry and play the fiddle. Have you seen his writing?” he asked of Mr. Pappleworth.

“Yes; prime isn’t it?” replied Mr. Pappleworth indifferently.

Mr. Jordan gave a little grunt, not unamiable. Paul divined that his master’s bark was worse than his bite. Indeed, the little manufacturer, although he spoke bad English, was quite gentleman enough to leave his men alone and to take no notice of trifles. But he knew he did not look like the boss and owner of the show, so he had to play his role of proprietor at first, to put things on a right footing.

“Let’s see,
what’s
your name?” asked Mr. Pappleworth of the boy.

“Paul Morel.”

It is curious that children suffer so much at having to pronounce their own names.

“Paul Morel, is it? All right, you Paul-Morel through them things there, and then—”

Mr. Pappleworth subsided on to a stool, and began writing. A girl came up from out of a door just behind, put some newly-pressed elastic web applicances on the counter, and returned. Mr. Pappleworth picked up the whitey-blue knee-band, examined it, and its yellow order-paper quickly, and put it on one side. Next was a fleshpink “leg.” He went through the few things, wrote out a couple of orders, and called to Paul to accompany him. This time they went through the door whence the girl had emerged. There Paul found himself at the top of a little wooden flight of steps, and below him saw a room with windows round two sides, and at the farther end half a dozen girls sitting bending over the benches in the light from the window, sewing. They were singing together “Two Little Girls in Blue.”
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Hearing the door opened, they all turned round, to see Mr. Pappleworth and Paul looking down on them from the far end of the room. They stopped singing.

“Can’t you make a bit less row?” said Mr. Pappleworth. “Folk’ll think we keep cats.”

A hunchback woman on a high stool turned her long, rather heavy face towards Mr. Pappleworth, and said, in a contralto voice:

“They’re all tom-cats then.”

In vain Mr. Pappleworth tried to be impressive for Paul’s benefit. He descended the steps into the finishing-off room, and went to the hunchback Fanny. She had such a short body on her high stool that her head, with its great bands of bright brown hair, seemed over large, as did her pale, heavy face. She wore a dress of green-black cashmere, and her wrists, coming out of the narrow cuffs, were thin and flat, as she put down her work nervously. He showed her something that was wrong with a knee-cap.

“Well,” she said, “you needn’t come blaming it on to me. It’s not my fault.” Her colour mounted to her cheek.

“I never said it was your fault. Will you do as I tell you?” replied Mr. Pappleworth shortly.

“You don’t say it’s my fault, but you’d like to make out as it was,” the hunchback woman cried, almost in tears. Then she snatched the knee-cap from her “boss,” saying: “Yes, I’ll do it for you, but you needn’t be snappy.”

“Here’s your new lad,” said Mr. Pappleworth.

Fanny turned, smiling very gently on Paul.

“Oh!” she said.

“Yes; don’t make a softy of him between you.”

“It’s not us as ’ud make a softy of him,” she said indignantly.

“Come on then, Paul,” said Mr. Pappleworth.

“
Au revoy
,
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Paul,” said one of the girls.

There was a titter of laughter. Paul went out, blushing deeply, not having spoken a word.

The day was very long. All morning the work-people were coming to speak to Mr. Pappleworth. Paul was writing or learning to make up parcels, ready for the midday post. At one o‘clock, or, rather, at a quarter to one, Mr. Pappleworth disappeared to catch his train: he lived in the suburbs. At one o’clock, Paul, feeling very lost, took his dinner-basket down into the stockroom in the basement, that had the long table on trestles, and ate his meal hurriedly, alone in that cellar of gloom and desolation. Then he went out of doors. The brightness and the freedom of the streets made him feel adventurous and happy. But at two o’clock he was back in the corner of the big room. Soon the work-girls went trooping past, making remarks. It was the commoner girls who worked upstairs at the heavy tasks of truss-making and the finishing of artificial limbs. He waited for Mr. Pappleworth, not knowing what to do, sitting scribbling on the yellow order-paper. Mr. Pappleworth came at twenty minutes to three. Then he sat and gossiped with Paul, treating the boy entirely as an equal, even in age.

In the afternoon there was never very much to do, unless it were near the week-end, and the accounts had to be made up. At five o’clock all the men went down into the dungeon with the table on trestles, and there they had tea, eating bread-and-butter on the bare, dirty boards, talking with the same kind of ugly haste and slovenliness with which they ate their meal. And yet upstairs the atmosphere among them was always jolly and clear. The cellar and the trestles affected them.

After tea, when all the gases were lighted,
work
went more briskly. There was the big evening post to get off. The hose came up warm and newly pressed from the workrooms. Paul had made out the invoices. Now he had the packing up and addressing to do, then he had to weigh his stock of parcels on the scales. Everywhere voices were calling weights, there was the chink of metal, the rapid snapping of string, the hurrying to old Mr. Melling for stamps. And at last the postman came with his sack, laughing and jolly. Then everything slacked off, and Paul took his dinner-basket and ran to the station to catch the eight-twenty train. The day in the factory was just twelve hours long.

His mother sat waiting for him rather anxiously. He had to walk from Keston, so was not home until about twenty past nine. And he left the house before seven in the morning. Mrs. Morel was rather anxious about his health. But she herself had had to put up with so much that she expected her children to take the same odds. They must go through with what came. And Paul stayed at Jordan’s, although all the time he was there his health suffered from the darkness and lack of air and the long hours.