I admitted that handwriting was not my strong point.
“Nor spelling either,” he added, and with truth. “Who do you think will engage you if I don't?”
“Nobody,” he continued, without waiting for me to reply. “A month hence you will still be looking for a berth, and a month after that. Now, I'm going to do you a good turn; save you from destitution; give you a start in life.”
I expressed my gratitude.
He waived it aside. “That is my notion of philanthropy: help those that nobody else will help. That young fellow in the other room—he isn't a bad worker, he's smart, but he's impertinent.”
I murmured that I had gathered so much.
“Doesn't mean to be, can't help it. Noticed his trick of looking at you with his glass eye, keeping the other turned away from you?”
I replied that I had.
“Always does it. Used to irritate his last employer to madness. Said to him one day: 'Do turn that signal lamp of yours off, Minikin, and look at me with your real eye.' What do you think he answered? That it was the only one he'd got, and that he didn't want to expose it to shocks. Wouldn't have mattered so much if it hadn't been one of the ugliest men in London.”
I murmured my indignation.
“I put up with him. Nobody else would. The poor fellow must live.”
I expressed admiration at Mr. Lott's humanity.
“You don't mind work? You're not one of those good-for-nothings who sleep all day and wake up when it's time to go home?”
I assured him that in whatever else I might fail I could promise him industry.
“With some of them,” complained Mr. Lott, in a tone of bitterness, “it's nothing but play, girls, gadding about the streets. Work, business—oh, no. I may go bankrupt; my wife and children may go into the workhouse. No thought for me, the man that keeps them, feeds them, clothes them. How much salary do you want?”
I hesitated. I gathered this was not a Cheeryble Brother; it would be necessary to be moderate in one's demands. “Five-and-twenty shillings a week,” I suggested.
He repeated the figure in a scream. “Five-and-twenty shillings for writing like that! And can't spell commission! Don't know anything about the business. Five-and-twenty!—Tell you what I'll do: I'll give you twelve.”
“But I can't live on twelve,” I explained.
“Can't live on twelve! Do you know why? Because you don't know how to live. I know you all. One veal and ham pie, one roley-poley, one Dutch cheese and a pint of bitter.”
His recital made my mouth water.
“You overload your stomachs, then you can't work. Half the diseases you young fellows suffer from are brought about by overeating.”
“Now, you take my advice,” continued Mr. Lott; “try vegetarianism. In the morning, a little oatmeal. Wonderfully strengthening stuff, oatmeaclass="underline" look at the Scotch. For dinner, beans. Why, do you know there's more nourishment in half a pint of lentil beans than in a pound of beefsteak—more gluten. That's what you want, more gluten; no corpses, no dead bodies. Why, I've known young fellows, vegetarians, who have lived like fighting cocks on sevenpence a day. Seven times seven are forty-nine. How much do you pay for your room?”
I told him.
“Four-and-a-penny and two-and-six makes six-and-seven. That leaves you five and fivepence for mere foolery. Good God! what more do you want?”
“I'll take eighteen, sir,” I answered. “I can't really manage on less.”
“Very well, I won't beat you down,” he answered. “Fifteen shillings a week.”
“I said eighteen,” I persisted.
“Well, and I said fifteen,” he retorted, somewhat indignant at the quibbling. “That's splitting the difference, isn't it? I can't be fairer than that.”
I dared not throw away the one opportunity that had occurred. Anything was better than return to the Reading Rooms, and the empty days full of despair. I accepted, and it was agreed that I should come the following Monday morning.
“Nabbed?” was Minikin's enquiry on my return to the back office for my hat.
I nodded.
“What's he wasting on you?”
“Fifteen shillings a week,” I whispered.
“Felt sure somehow that he'd take a liking to you,” answered Minikin. “Don't be ungrateful and look thin on it.”
Outside the door I heard Mr. Lott's shrill voice demanding to know where postage stamps were to be found.
“At the Post-office,” was Minikin's reply.
The hours were long—in fact, we had no office hours; we got away when we could, which was rarely before seven or eight—but my work was interesting. It consisted of buying for unfortunate clients in India or the Colonies anything they might happen to want, from a stage coach to a pot of marmalade; packing it and shipping it across to them. Our “commission” was anything they could be persuaded to pay over and above the value of the article. I was not much interfered with. There was that to be said for Lott & Co., so long as the work was done he was quite content to leave one to one's own way of doing it. And hastening through the busy streets, bargaining in shop or warehouse, bustling important in and out the swarming docks, I often thanked my stars that I was not as some poor two-pound-a-week clerk chained to a dreary desk.
The fifteen shillings a week was a tight fit; but that was not my trouble. Reduce your denominator—you know the quotation. I found it no philosophical cant, but a practical solution of life. My food cost me on the average a shilling a day. If more of us limited our commissariat bill to the same figure, there would be less dyspepsia abroad. Generally I cooked my own meals in my own frying-pan; but occasionally I would indulge myself with a more orthodox dinner at a cook shop, or tea with hot buttered toast at a coffee-shop; and but for the greasy table-cloth and the dirty-handed waiter, such would have been even greater delights. The shilling a week for amusements afforded me at least one, occasionally two, visits to the theatre, for in those days there were Paradises where for sixpence one could be a god. Fourpence a week on tobacco gave me half-a-dozen cigarettes a day; I have spent more on smoke and derived less satisfaction. Dress was my greatest difficulty. One anxiety in life the poor man is saved: he knows not the haunting sense of debt. My tailor never dunned me. His principle was half-a-crown down on receipt of order, the balance on the handing over of the goods. No system is perfect; the method avoided friction, it is true; yet on the other hand it was annoying to be compelled to promenade, come Sundays, in shiny elbows and frayed trousers, knowing all the while that finished, waiting, was a suit in which one might have made one's mark—had only one shut one's eyes passing that pastry-cook's window on pay-day. Surely there should be a sumptuary law compelling pastry-cooks to deal in cellars or behind drawn blinds.
Were it because of its mere material hardships that to this day I think of that period of my life with a shudder, I should not here confess to it. I was alone. I knew not a living soul to whom I dared to speak, who cared to speak to me. For those first twelve months after my mother's death I lived alone, thought alone, felt alone. In the morning, during the busy day, it was possible to bear; but in the evenings the sense of desolation gripped me like a physical pain. The summer evenings came again, bringing with them the long, lingering light so laden with melancholy. I would walk into the Parks and, sitting there, watch with hungry eyes the men and women, boys and girls, moving all around me, talking, laughing, interested in one another; feeling myself some speechless ghost, seeing but not seen, crying to the living with a voice they heard not. Sometimes a solitary figure would pass by and glance back at me; some lonely creature like myself longing for human sympathy. In the teeming city must have been thousands such—young men and women to whom a friendly ear, a kindly voice, would have been as the water of life. Each imprisoned in his solitary cell of shyness, we looked at one another through the grating with condoling eyes; further than that was forbidden to us. Once, in Kensington Gardens, a woman turned, then slowly retracing her steps, sat down beside me on the bench. Neither of us spoke; had I done so she would have risen and moved away; yet there was understanding between us. To each of us it was some comfort to sit thus for a little while beside the other. Had she poured out her heart to me, she could have told me nothing more than I knew: “I, too, am lonely, friendless; I, too, long for the sound of a voice, the touch of a hand. It is hard for you, it is harder still for me, a girl; shut out from the bright world that laughs around me; denied the right of youth to joy and pleasure; denied the right of womanhood to love and tenderness.”