He went on in this way for several days. He had very little food and began to feel weak and ill, so that he had hardly enough energy to go on looking for the work which seemed so desperately hard to find. He was growing used now to the long waiting at the back of a shop on the chance that he would be taken on, and the curt dismissal. He walked to all parts of London in answer to the advertisements, and he came to know by sight men who applied as fruitlessly as himself. One or two tried to make friends with him, but he was too tired and too wretched to accept their advances. He did not go any more to Lawson, because he owed him five shillings. He began to be too dazed to think clearly and ceased very much to care what would happen to him. He cried a good deal. At first he was very angry with himself for this and ashamed, but he found it relieved him, and somehow made him feel less hungry. In the very early morning he suffered a good deal from cold. One night he went into his room to change his linen; he slipped in about three, when he was quite sure everyone would be asleep, and out again at five; he lay on the bed and its softness was enchanting; all his bones ached, and as he lay he revelled in the pleasure of it; it was so delicious that he did not want to go to sleep. He was growing used to want of food and did not feel very hungry, but only weak. Constantly now at the back of his mind was the thought of doing away with himself, but he used all the strength he had not to dwell on it, because he was afraid the temptation would get hold of him so that he would not be able to help himself. He kept on saying to himself that it would be absurd to commit suicide, since something must happen soon; he could not get over the impression that his situation was too preposterous to be taken quite seriously; it was like an illness which must be endured but from which he was bound to recover. Every night he swore that nothing would induce him to put up with such another and determined next morning to write to his uncle, or to Mr. Nixon, the solicitor, or to Lawson; but when the time came he could not bring himself to make the humiliating confession of his utter failure. He did not know how Lawson would take it. In their friendship Lawson had been scatter-brained and he had prided himself on his common sense. He would have to tell the whole history of his folly. He had an uneasy feeling that Lawson, after helping him, would turn the cold shoulder on him. His uncle and the solicitor would of course do something for him, but he dreaded their reproaches. He did not want anyone to reproach him: he clenched his teeth and repeated that what had happened was inevitable just because it had happened. Regret was absurd.
The days were unending, and the five shillings Lawson had lent him would not last much longer. Philip longed for Sunday to come so that he could go to Athelny’s. He did not know what prevented him from going there sooner, except perhaps that he wanted so badly to get through on his own; for Athelny, who had been in straits as desperate, was the only person who could do anything for him. Perhaps after dinner he could bring himself to tell Athelny that he was in difficulties. Philip repeated to himself over and over again what he should say to him. He was dreadfully afraid that Athelny would put him off with airy phrases: that would be so horrible that he wanted to delay as long as possible the putting of him to the test. Philip had lost all confidence in his fellows.
Saturday night was cold and raw. Philip suffered horribly. From midday on Saturday till he dragged himself wearily to Athelny’s house he ate nothing. He spent his last twopence on Sunday morning on a wash and a brush up in the lavatory at Charing Cross.
CI
When Philip rang a head was put out of the window, and in a minute he heard a noisy clatter on the stairs as the children ran down to let him in. It was a pale, anxious, thin face that he bent down for them to kiss. He was so moved by their exuberant affection that, to give himself time to recover, he made excuses to linger on the stairs. He was in a hysterical state and almost anything was enough to make him cry. They asked him why he had not come on the previous Sunday, and he told them he had been ill; they wanted to know what was the matter with him; and Philip, to amuse them, suggested a mysterious ailment, the name of which, double-barrelled and barbarous with its mixture of Greek and Latin (medical nomenclature bristled with such), made them shriek with delight. They dragged Philip into the parlour and made him repeat it for their father’s edification. Athelny got up and shook hands with him. He stared at Philip, but with his round, bulging eyes he always seemed to stare, Philip did not know why on this occasion it made him self-conscious.
“We missed you last Sunday,” he said.
Philip could never tell lies without embarrassment, and he was scarlet when he finished his explanation for not coming. Then Mrs. Athelny entered and shook hands with him.
“I hope you’re better, Mr. Carey,” she said.
He did not know why she imagined that anything had been the matter with him, for the kitchen door was closed when he came up with the children, and they had not left him.
“Dinner won’t be ready for another ten minutes,” she said, in her slow drawl. “Won’t you have an egg beaten up in a glass of milk while you’re waiting?”
There was a look of concern on her face which made Philip uncomfortable. He forced a laugh and answered that he was not at all hungry. Sally came in to lay the table, and Philip began to chaff her. It was the family joke that she would be as fat as an aunt of Mrs. Athelny, called Aunt Elizabeth, whom the children had never seen but regarded as the type of obscene corpulence.
“I say, what HAS happened since I saw you last, Sally?” Philip began.
“Nothing that I know of.”
“I believe you’ve been putting on weight.”
“I’m sure you haven’t,” she retorted. “You’re a perfect skeleton.”
Philip reddened.
“That’s a tu quoque, Sally,” cried her father. “You will be fined one golden hair of your head. Jane, fetch the shears.”
“Well, he is thin, father,” remonstrated Sally. “He’s just skin and bone.”
“That’s not the question, child. He is at perfect liberty to be thin, but your obesity is contrary to decorum.”
As he spoke he put his arm proudly round her waist and looked at her with admiring eyes.
“Let me get on with the table, father. If I am comfortable there are some who don’t seem to mind it.”
“The hussy!” cried Athelny, with a dramatic wave of the hand. “She taunts me with the notorious fact that Joseph, a son of Levi who sells jewels in Holborn, has made her an offer of marriage.”
“Have you accepted him, Sally?” asked Philip.
“Don’t you know father better than that by this time? There’s not a word of truth in it.”
“Well, if he hasn’t made you an offer of marriage,” cried Athelny, “by Saint George and Merry England, I will seize him by the nose and demand of him immediately what are his intentions.”
“Sit down, father, dinner’s ready. Now then, you children, get along with you and wash your hands all of you, and don’t shirk it, because I mean to look at them before you have a scrap of dinner, so there.”
Philip thought he was ravenous till he began to eat, but then discovered that his stomach turned against food, and he could eat hardly at all. His brain was weary; and he did not notice that Athelny, contrary to his habit, spoke very little. Philip was relieved to be sitting in a comfortable house, but every now and then he could not prevent himself from glancing out of the window. The day was tempestuous. The fine weather had broken; and it was cold, and there was a bitter wind; now and again gusts of rain drove against the window. Philip wondered what he should do that night. The Athelnys went to bed early, and he could not stay where he was after ten o’clock. His heart sank at the thought of going out into the bleak darkness. It seemed more terrible now that he was with his friends than when he was outside and alone. He kept on saying to himself that there were plenty more who would be spending the night out of doors. He strove to distract his mind by talking, but in the middle of his words a spatter of rain against the window would make him start.
“It’s like March w
eather,” said Athelny. “Not the sort of day one would like to be crossing the Channel.”
Presently they finished, and Sally came in and cleared away.
“Would you like a twopenny stinker?” said Athelny, handing him a cigar.
Philip took it and inhaled the smoke with delight. It soothed him extraordinarily. When Sally had finished Athelny told her to shut the door after her.
“Now we shan’t be disturbed,” he said, turning to Philip. “I’ve arranged with Betty not to let the children come in till I call them.”
Philip gave him a startled look, but before he could take in the meaning of his words, Athelny, fixing his glasses on his nose with the gesture habitual to him, went on.
“I wrote to you last Sunday to ask if anything was the matter with you, and as you didn’t answer I went to your rooms on Wednesday.”
Philip turned his head away and did not answer. His heart began to beat violently. Athelny did not speak, and presently the silence seemed intolerable to Philip. He could not think of a single word to say.
“Your landlady told me you hadn’t been in since Saturday night, and she said you owed her for the last month. Where have you been sleeping all this week?”
It made Philip sick to answer. He stared out of the window.
“Nowhere.”
“I tried to find you.”
“Why?” asked Philip.
“Betty and I have been just as broke in our day, only we had babies to look after. Why didn’t you come here?”
“I couldn’t.”
Philip was afraid he was going to cry. He felt very weak. He shut his eyes and frowned, trying to control himself. He felt a sudden flash of anger with Athelny because he would not leave him alone; but he was broken; and presently, his eyes still closed, slowly in order to keep his voice steady, he told him the story of his adventures during the last few weeks. As he spoke it seemed to him that he had behaved inanely, and it made it still harder to tell. He felt that Athelny would think him an utter fool.
“Now you’re coming to live with us till you find something to do,” said
Athelny, when he had finished.
Philip flushed, he knew not why.
“Oh, it’s awfully kind of you, but I don’t think I’ll do that.”
“Why not?”
Philip did not answer. He had refused instinctively from fear that he would be a bother, and he had a natural bashfulness of accepting favours. He knew besides that the Athelnys lived from hand to mouth, and with their large family had neither space nor money to entertain a stranger.
“Of course you must come here,” said Athelny. “Thorpe will tuck in with one of his brothers and you can sleep in his bed. You don’t suppose your food’s going to make any difference to us.”
Philip was afraid to speak, and Athelny, going to the door, called his wife.
“Betty,” he said, when she came in, “Mr. Carey’s coming to live with us.”
“Oh, that is nice,” she said. “I’ll go and get the bed ready.”
She spoke in such a hearty, friendly tone, taking everything for granted, that Philip was deeply touched. He never expected people to be kind to him, and when they were it surprised and moved him. Now he could not prevent two large tears from rolling down his cheeks. The Athelnys discussed the arrangements and pretended not to notice to what a state his weakness had brought him. When Mrs. Athelny left them Philip leaned back in his chair, and looking out of the window laughed a little.
“It’s not a very nice night to be out, is it?”
CII
Athelny told Philip that he could easily get him something to do in the large firm of linendrapers in which himself worked. Several of the assistants had gone to the war, and Lynn and Sedley with patriotic zeal had promised to keep their places open for them. They put the work of the heroes on those who remained, and since they did not increase the wages of these were able at once to exhibit public spirit and effect an economy; but the war continued and trade was less depressed; the holidays were coming, when numbers of the staff went away for a fortnight at a time: they were bound to engage more assistants. Philip’s experience had made him doubtful whether even then they would engage him; but Athelny, representing himself as a person of consequence in the firm, insisted that the manager could refuse him nothing. Philip, with his training in Paris, would be very useful; it was only a matter of waiting a little and he was bound to get a well-paid job to design costumes and draw posters. Philip made a poster for the summer sale and Athelny took it away. Two days later he brought it back, saying that the manager admired it very much and regretted with all his heart that there was no vacancy just then in that department. Philip asked whether there was nothing else he could do.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Are you quite sure?”
“Well, the fact is they’re advertising for a shop-walker tomorrow,” said
Athelny, looking at him doubtfully through his glasses.
“D’you think I stand any chance of getting it?”
Athelny was a little confused; he had led Philip to expect something much more splendid; on the other hand he was too poor to go on providing him indefinitely with board and lodging.
“You might take it while you wait for something better. You always stand a better chance if you’re engaged by the firm already.”
“I’m not proud, you know,” smiled Philip.
“If you decide on that you must be there at a quarter to nine tomorrow morning.”
Notwithstanding the war there was evidently much difficulty in finding work, for when Philip went to the shop many men were waiting already. He recognised some whom he had seen in his own searching, and there was one whom he had noticed lying about the park in the afternoon. To Philip now that suggested that he was as homeless as himself and passed the night out of doors. The men were of all sorts, old and young, tall and short; but every one had tried to make himself smart for the interview with the manager: they had carefully brushed hair and scrupulously clean hands. They waited in a passage which Philip learnt afterwards led up to the dining-hall and the work rooms; it was broken every few yards by five or six steps. Though there was electric light in the shop here was only gas, with wire cages over it for protection, and it flared noisily. Philip arrived punctually, but it was nearly ten o’clock when he was admitted into the office. It was three-cornered, like a cut of cheese lying on its side: on the walls were pictures of women in corsets, and two poster-proofs, one of a man in pyjamas, green and white in large stripes, and the other of a ship in full sail ploughing an azure sea: on the sail was printed in large letters ‘great white sale.’ The widest side of the office was the back of one of the shop-windows, which was being dressed at the time, and an assistant went to and fro during the interview. The manager was reading a letter. He was a florid man, with sandy hair and a large sandy moustache; from the middle of his watch-chain hung a bunch of football medals. He sat in his shirt sleeves at a large desk with a telephone by his side; before him were the day’s advertisements, Athelny’s work, and cuttings from newspapers pasted on a card. He gave Philip a glance but did not speak to him; he dictated a letter to the typist, a girl who sat at a small table in one corner; then he asked Philip his name, age, and what experience he had had. He spoke with a cockney twang in a high, metallic voice which he seemed not able always to control; Philip noticed that his upper teeth were large and protruding; they gave you the impression that they were loose and would come out if you gave them a sharp tug.
“I think Mr. Athelny has spoken to you about me,” said Philip.
“Oh, you are the young feller who did that poster?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No good to us, you know, not a bit of good.”
He looked Philip up and down. He seemed to notice that Philip was in some way different from the men who had preceded him.
Delphi Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Illustrated) Page 219