Of Human Bondage (98 page)

  "Never you mind what they say, dear," said Mrs.
Hodges. "I've 'ad to go through it same as you 'ave. They don't
know any better, poor things. You take my word for it, they'll like
you all right if you 'old your own same as I 'ave."

  The social evening was held in the restaurant in the
basement. The tables were put on one side so that there might be
room for dancing, and smaller ones were set out for progressive
whist.

  "The 'eads 'ave to get there early," said Mrs.
Hodges.

  She introduced him to Miss Bennett, who was the
belle of Lynn's. She was the buyer in the `Petticoats,' and when
Philip entered was engaged in conversation with the buyer in the
`Gentlemen's Hosiery;' Miss Bennett was a woman of massive
proportions, with a very large red face heavily powdered and a bust
of imposing dimensions; her flaxen hair was arranged with
elaboration. She was overdressed, but not badly dressed, in black
with a high collar, and she wore black glace gloves, in which she
played cards; she had several heavy gold chains round her neck,
bangles on her wrists, and circular photograph pendants, one being
of Queen Alexandra; she carried a black satin bag and chewed
Sen-sens.

  "Please to meet you, Mr. Carey," she said. "This is
your first visit to our social evenings, ain't it? I expect you
feel a bit shy, but there's no cause to, I promise you that."

  She did her best to make people feel at home. She
slapped them on the shoulders and laughed a great deal.

  "Ain't I a pickle?" she cried, turning to Philip.
"What must you think of me? But I can't 'elp meself."

  Those who were going to take part in the social
evening came in, the younger members of the staff mostly, boys who
had not girls of their own, and girls who had not yet found anyone
to walk with. Several of the young gentlemen wore lounge suits with
white evening ties and red silk handkerchiefs; they were going to
perform, and they had a busy, abstracted air; some were
self-confident, but others were nervous, and they watched their
public with an anxious eye. Presently a girl with a great deal of
hair sat at the piano and ran her hands noisily across the
keyboard. When the audience had settled itself she looked round and
gave the name of her piece.

  "A Drive in Russia."

  There was a round of clapping during which she
deftly fixed bells to her wrists. She smiled a little and
immediately burst into energetic melody. There was a great deal
more clapping when she finished, and when this was over, as an
encore, she gave a piece which imitated the sea; there were little
trills to represent the lapping waves and thundering chords, with
the loud pedal down, to suggest a storm. After this a gentleman
sang a song called Bid me Good-bye, and as an encore obliged with
Sing me to Sleep. The audience measured their enthusiasm with a
nice discrimination. Everyone was applauded till he gave an encore,
and so that there might be no jealousy no one was applauded more
than anyone else. Miss Bennett sailed up to Philip.

  "I'm sure you play or sing, Mr. Carey," she said
archly. "I can see it in your face."

  "I'm afraid I don't."

  "Don't you even recite?"

  "I have no parlour tricks."

  The buyer in the `gentleman's hosiery' was a
well-known reciter, and he was called upon loudly to perform by all
the assistants in his department. Needing no pressing, he gave a
long poem of tragic character, in which he rolled his eyes, put his
hand on his chest, and acted as though he were in great agony. The
point, that he had eaten cucumber for supper, was divulged in the
last line and was greeted with laughter, a little forced because
everyone knew the poem well, but loud and long. Miss Bennett did
not sing, play, or recite.

  "Oh no, she 'as a little game of her own," said Mrs.
Hodges.

  "Now, don't you begin chaffing me. The fact is I
know quite a lot about palmistry and second sight."

  "Oh, do tell my 'and, Miss Bennett," cried the girls
in her department, eager to please her.

  "I don't like telling 'ands, I don't really. I've
told people such terrible things and they've all come true, it
makes one superstitious like."

  "Oh, Miss Bennett, just for once."

  A little crowd collected round her, and, amid
screams of embarrassment, giggles, blushings, and cries of dismay
or admiration, she talked mysteriously of fair and dark men, of
money in a letter, and of journeys, till the sweat stood in heavy
beads on her painted face.

  "Look at me," she said. "I'm all of a
perspiration."

  Supper was at nine. There were cakes, buns,
sandwiches, tea and coffee, all free; but if you wanted mineral
water you had to pay for it. Gallantry often led young men to offer
the ladies ginger beer, but common decency made them refuse. Miss
Bennett was very fond of ginger beer, and she drank two and
sometimes three bottles during the evening; but she insisted on
paying for them herself. The men liked her for that.

  "She's a rum old bird," they said, "but mind you,
she's not a bad sort, she's not like what some are."

  After supper progressive whist was played. This was
very noisy, and 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.

  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.