Of Human Bondage
there was a great deal of laughing and shouting, as people moved from
table to table. Miss Bennett grew hotter and hotter.
“Look at me,” she said. “I’m all of a perspiration.”
In due course one of the more dashing of the young men remarked that if
they wanted to dance they’d better begin. The girl who had played the
accompaniments sat at the piano and placed a decided foot on the loud
pedal. She played a dreamy waltz, marking the time with the bass, while
with the right hand she ‘tiddled’ in alternate octaves. By way of a
change she crossed her hands and played the air in the bass.
“She does play well, doesn’t she?” Mrs. Hodges remarked to Philip. “And
what’s more she’s never ’ad a lesson in ’er life; it’s all ear.”
Miss Bennett liked dancing and poetry better than anything in the
world. She danced well, but very, very slowly, and an expression came
into her eyes as though her thoughts were far, far away. She talked
breathlessly of the floor and the heat and the supper. She said that
the Portman Rooms had the best floor in London and she always liked the
dances there; they were very select, and she couldn’t bear dancing with
all sorts of men you didn’t know anything about; why, you might be
exposing yourself to you didn’t know what all. Nearly all the people
danced very well, and they enjoyed themselves. Sweat poured down their
faces, and the very high collars of the young men grew limp.
Philip looked on, and a greater depression seized him than he
remembered to have felt for a long time. He felt intolerably alone. He
did not go, because he was afraid to seem supercilious, and he talked
with the girls and laughed, but in his heart was unhappiness. Miss
Bennett asked him if he had a girl.
“No,” he smiled.
“Oh, well, there’s plenty to choose from here. And they’re very nice
respectable girls, some of them. I expect you’ll have a girl before
you’ve been here long.”
She looked at him very archly.
“Meet ’em ’alf-way,” said Mrs. Hodges. “That’s what I tell him.”
It was nearly eleven o’clock, and the party broke up. Philip could not
get to sleep. Like the others he kept his aching feet outside the
bed-clothes. He tried with all his might not to think of the life he
was leading. The soldier was snoring quietly.
CV
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.