Sons and Lovers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 15

  “They’re looking at you,” he said, trying to draw his mother away.

  “But what is it?” she exclaimed, refusing to be moved.

  “Stocks!” he answered, sniffing hastily. “Look, there’s a tubful.”

  “So there is—red and white. But really, I never knew stocks to smell like it!” And, to his great relief, she moved out of the doorway, but only to stand in front of the window.

  “Paul!” she cried to him, who was trying to get out of sight of the elegant young lady in black—the shop-girl. “Paul! Just look here!”

  He came reluctantly back.

  “Now, just look at that fuchsia!” she exclaimed, pointing.

  “H’m!” He made a curious, interested sound. “You’d think every second as the flowers was going to fall off, they hang so big an’ heavy.”

  “And such an abundance!” she cried.

  “And the way they drop downwards with their threads and knots!”

  “Yes!” she exclaimed. “Lovely!”

  “I wonder who’ll buy it!” he said.

  “I wonder!” she answered. “Not us.”

  “It would die in our parlour.”

  “Yes, beastly cold, sunless hole; it kills every bit of a plant you put in, and the kitchen chokes them to death.”

  They bought a few things, and set off towards the station. Looking up the canal, through the dark pass of the buildings, they saw the Castle on its bluff of brown, green-bushed rock, in a positive miracle of delicate sunshine.3

  “Won’t it be nice for me to come out at dinner-times?” said Paul. “I can go all round here and see everything. I s’ll love it.”

  “You will,” assented his mother.

  He had spent a perfect afternoon with his mother. They arrived home in the mellow evening, happy, and glowing, and tired.

  In the morning he filled in the form for his season-ticket and took it to the station. When he got back, his mother was just beginning to wash the floor. He sat crouched up on the sofa.

  “He says it’ll be here on Saturday,” he said.

  “And how much will it be?”

  “About one pound eleven,” he said.

  She went on washing her floor in silence.

  “Is it a lot?” he asked.

  “It’s no more than I thought,” she answered.

  “An’ I s’ll earn eight shillings a week,” he said.

  She did not answer, but went on with her work. At last she said:

  “That William promised me, when he went to London, as he’d give me a pound a month. He has given me ten shillings—twice; and now I know he hasn’t a farthing if I asked him. Not that I want it. Only just now you’d think he might be able to help with this ticket, which I’d never expected.”

  “He earns a lot,” said Paul.

  “He earns a hundred and thirty pounds. But they’re all alike. They’re large in promises, but it’s precious little fulfilment you get.”

  “He spends over fifty shillings a week on himself,” said Paul.

  “And I keep this house on less than thirty,” she replied; “and am supposed to find money for extras. But they don’t care about helping you, once they’ve gone. He’d rather spend it on that dressed-up creature.”

  “She should have her own money if she’s so grand,” said Paul.

  “She should, but she hasn’t. I asked him. And I know he doesn’t buy her a gold bangle for nothing. I wonder whoever bought me a gold bangle.”

  William was succeeding with his “Gipsy,” as he called her. He asked the girl—her name was Louisa Lily Denys Western—for a photograph to send to his mother. The photo came—a handsome brunette, taken in profile, smirking slightly—and, it might be, quite naked, for on the photograph not a scrap of clothing was to be seen, only a naked bust.

  “Yes,” wrote Mrs. Morel to her son, “the photograph of Louie is very striking, and I can see she must be attractive. But do you think, my boy, it was very good taste of a girl to give her young man that photo to send to his mother—the first? Certainly the shoulders are beautiful, as you say. But I hardly expected to see so much of them at the first view.”

  Morel found the photograph standing on the chiffonier in the parlour. He came out with it between his thick thumb and finger.

  “Who dost reckon this is?” he asked of his wife.

  “It’s the girl our William is going with,” replied Mrs. Morel.

  “H’m! ’Er’s a bright spark, from th’ look on ‘er, an’ one as wunna do him owermuch good neither. Who is she?”

  “Her name is Louisa Lily Denys Western.”

  “An’ come again to-morrer!” ci exclaimed the miner. “An’ is ’er an actress?”

  “She is not. She’s supposed to be a lady.”

  “I’ll bet!” he exclaimed, still staring at the photo. “A lady, is she? An’ how much does she reckon ter keep up this sort o’ game on?”

  “On nothing. She lives with an old aunt, whom she hates, and takes what bit of money’s given her.”

  “H‘m!” said Morel, laying down the photograph. “Then he’s a fool to ha’ ta’en up wi’ such a one as that.”

  “Dear Mater,” William replied. “I’m sorry you didn’t like the photograph. It never occurred to me when I sent it, that you mightn’t think it decent. However, I told Gyp that it didn’t quite suit your prim and proper notions, so she’s going to send you another, that I hope will please you better. She’s always being photographed ; in fact, the photographers ask her if they may take her for nothing.”

  Presently the new photograph came, with a little silly note from the girl. This time the young lady was seen in a black satin evening bodice, cut square, with little puff sleeves, and black lace hanging down her beautiful arms.

  “I wonder if she ever wears anything except evening clothes,” said Mrs. Morel sarcastically. “I’m sure I ought to be impressed.”

  “You are disagreeable, mother,” said Paul. “I think the first one with bare shoulders is lovely.”

  “Do you?” answered his mother. “Well, I don’t.”

  On the Monday morning the boy got up at six to start work. He had the season-ticket, which had cost such bitterness, in his waistcoatpocket. He loved it with its bars of yellow across. His mother packed his dinner in a small, shut-up basket, and he set off at a quarter to seven to catch the 7.15 train. Mrs. Morel came to the entry-end to see him off.

  It was a perfect morning. From the ash tree the slender green fruits that the children call “pigeons” were twinkling gaily down on a little breeze, into the front gardens of the houses. The valley was full of a lustrous dark haze, through which the ripe corn shimmered, and in which the steam from Minton pit melted swiftly. Puffs of wind came. Paul looked over the high woods of Aldersley, where the country gleamed, and home had never pulled at him so powerfully.

  “Good-morning, mother,” he said, smiling, but feeling very unhappy.

  “Good-morning,” she replied cheerfully and tenderly.

  She stood in her white apron on the open road, watching him as he crossed the field. He had a small, compact body that looked full of life. She felt, as she saw him trudging over the field, that where he determined to go he would get. She thought of William. He would have leaped the fence instead of going round the stile. He was away in London, doing well. Paul would be working in Nottingham. Now she had two sons in the world. She could think of two places, great centres of industry, and feel that she had put a man into each of them, that these men would work out what she wanted; they were derived from her, they were of her, and their works also would be hers. All the morning long she thought of Paul.

  At eight o’clock he climbed the dismal stairs of Jordan’s Surgical Appliance Factory, and stood helplessly against the first great parcel-rack, waiting for somebody to pick him up. The place was still not awake. Over the counters were great dust sheets. Two men only had arrived, and were heard talking in a corner, as they took off their coats and rolled up their shirt-sleeves. It was
ten past eight. Evidently there was no rush of punctuality. Paul listened to the voices 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 chlorodynecj 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,”ck 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,cl 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.cm

  “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.