"Good-morning," he said, kindly and impressively. "You wantthe letters for the Spiral department, Thomas?"
Paul resented being called "Thomas". But he took the lettersand returned to his dark place, where the counter made an angle,where the great parcel-rack came to an end, and where therewere three doors in the corner. He sat on a high stool and readthe 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 spiralthigh-hose, without feet, such as I had from you last year;length, thigh to knee, etc." Or, "Major Chamberlain wishesto repeat his previous order for a silk non-elastic suspensory bandage."
CHAPTER V
PAUL LAUNCHES INTO LIFE （III）
Many of these letters, some of them in French or Norwegian,were a great puzzle to the boy. He sat on his stool nervously awaitingthe 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 abouttwenty to nine, when all the other men were at work. He was a thin,sallow man with a red nose, quick, staccato, and smartly butstiffly dressed. He was about thirty-six years old. There wassomething 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 pronouncedthe 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 overa thin and hairy arm. Then he slipped into his coat. Paul noticedhow 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 seizedthe letters, snatched a long entry-book out of a rack in frontof 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 ata 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. Pappleworthdisappeared. 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 smellingof 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 numberson 'em. Here, look! Get on!"
Paul ground away at the letters, whilst Mr. Pappleworth fussedover various jobs. Suddenly the boy started as a shrill whistlesounded 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 ofthe 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 Pollycrying out for them orders. Can't you buck up a bit? Here, come out!"
He took the book, to Paul's immense chagrin, and beganthe 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 thewhile 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 flyingin 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 beenbuilt on to the main building. In this room a small woman witha 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 girlshave been here nearly half an hour waiting. Just think of thetime 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 Pony, 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 lotof ruining, we do. My word, a lad would TAKE some ruining afterhe'd been with you."
"It's time for work now, not for talk," said Mr. Pappleworthseverely and coldly.
"It was time for work some time back," said Polly, marching awaywith her head in the air. She was an erect little body of forty.
In that room were two round spiral machines on the bench underthe window. Through the inner doorway was another longer room,with six more machines. A little group of girls, nicely dressedin 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 somechecking and invoicing to do. He stood at the desk, labouring in hisexecrable handwriting. Presently Mr. Jordan came strutting down fromthe 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 justbehind 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 disposingof honours, hesitated, and with trembling fingers, scratched outthe "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 haveto write better than that. Lads learn nothing nowadays, but howto 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 divinedthat his master's bark was worse than his bite. Indeed, the littlemanufacturer, although he spoke bad English, was quite gentlemanenough 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 thingson 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 havingto pronounce their own names.
"Paul Morel, is it? All right, you Paul-Morel through themthings 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 somenewly-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 thefarther end half a dozen girls sitting bending over the benches inthe light from the window, sewing. They were singing together "TwoLittle Girls in Blue". Hearing the door opened, they all turned round,to see Mr. Pappleworth and Paul looking down on them from the farend 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 heavyface 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 sucha short body on her high stool that her head, with itsgreat 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 putdown her work nervously. He showed her something that was wrongwith 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 snatchedthe 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, 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 comingto speak to Mr. Pappleworth. Paul was writing or learning to makeup 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 adventurousand happy. But at two o'clock he was back in the corner of thebig room. Soon the work-girls went trooping past, making remarks. It was the commoner girls who worked upstairs at the heavy tasksof truss-making and the finishing of artificial limbs. He waitedfor Mr. Pappleworth, not knowing what to do, sitting scribblingon the yellow order-paper. Mr. Pappleworth came at twenty minutesto three. Then he sat and gossiped with Paul, treating the boyentirely as an equal, even in age.
In the afternoon there was never very much to do, unless itwere 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 thetable on trestles, and there they had tea, eating bread-and-butteron the bare, dirty boards, talking with the same kind of uglyhaste and slovenliness with which they ate their meal. And yetupstairs 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 warmand newly pressed from the workrooms. Paul had made out the invoices. Now he had the packing up and addressing to do, then he hadto weigh his stock of parcels on the scales. Everywhere voiceswere calling weights, there was the chink of metal, the rapidsnapping 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-basketand ran to the station to catch the eight-twenty train. The dayin the factory was just twelve hours long.
His mother sat waiting for him rather anxiously. He had towalk from Keston, so was not home until about twenty past nine. And he left the house before seven in the morning. Mrs. Morelwas rather anxious about his health. But she herself had had to put upwith 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 thedarkness and lack of air and the long hours.
He came in pale and tired. His mother looked at him. She saw he was rather pleased, and her anxiety all went.
"Well, and how was it?" she asked.
"Ever so funny, mother," he replied. "You don't have to worka bit hard, and they're nice with you."
