Sons and Lovers
of the two clerks. Then he heard someone cough, and saw in the office
at the end of the room an old, decaying clerk, in a round smoking-cap
of black velvet embroidered with red and green, opening letters. He
waited and waited. One of the junior clerks went to the old man,
greeted him cheerily and loudly. Evidently the old “chief” was deaf.
Then the young fellow came striding importantly down to his counter. He
spied Paul.
“Hello!” he said. “You the new lad?”
“Yes,” said Paul.
“H’m! What’s your name?”
“Paul Morel.”
“Paul Morel? All right, you come on round here.”
Paul followed him round the rectangle of counters. The room was second
storey. It had a great hole in the middle of the floor, fenced as with
a wall of counters, and down this wide shaft the lifts went, and the
light for the bottom storey. Also there was a corresponding big, oblong
hole in the ceiling, and one could see above, over the fence of the top
floor, some machinery; and right away overhead was the glass roof, and
all light for the three storeys came downwards, getting dimmer, so that
it was always night on the ground floor and rather gloomy on the second
floor. The factory was the top floor, the warehouse the second, the
storehouse the ground floor. It was an insanitary, ancient place.
Paul was led round to a very dark corner.
“This is the ‘Spiral’ corner,” said the clerk. “You’re Spiral, with
Pappleworth. He’s your boss, but he’s not come yet. He doesn’t get here
till half-past eight. So you can fetch the letters, if you like, from
Mr. Melling down there.”
The young man pointed to the old clerk in the office.
“All right,” said Paul.
“Here’s a peg to hang your cap on. Here are your entry ledgers. Mr.
Pappleworth won’t be long.”
And the thin young man stalked away with long, busy strides over the
hollow wooden floor.
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 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”,
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, 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.
“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
appliances 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 flesh-pink “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”. 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