The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Robert Tressell
to meet him.
‘Good afternoon, sir.’
Hunter replied by an inarticulate grunt, without stopping; the man followed.
‘Any chance of a job, sir?’
‘Full up,’ replied Hunter, still without stopping. The man still followed, like a beggar soliciting charity.
‘Be any use calling in a day or so, sir?’
‘Don’t think so,’ Hunter replied. ‘Can if you like; but we’re full up.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said the man, and turned back to his friends.
By this time Hunter was within a few yards of one of the other two men, who also came to speak to him. This man felt there was no hope of getting a job; still, there was no harm in asking. Besides, he was getting desperate. It was over a month now since he had finished up for his last employer. It had been a very slow summer altogether. Sometimes a fortnight for one firm; then perhaps a week doing nothing; then three weeks or a month for another firm, then out again, and so on. And now it was November. Last winter they had got into debt; that was nothing unusual, but owing to the bad summer they had not been able, as in other years, to pay off the debts accumulated in winter. It was doubtful, too, whether they would be able to get credit again this winter. In fact this morning when his wife sent their little girl to the grocer’s for some butter the latter had refused to let the child have it without the money. So although he felt it to be hopeless he accosted Hunter.
This time Hunter stopped: he was winded by his climb up the hill.
‘Good afternoon, sir.’
Hunter did not return the salutation; he had not the breath to spare, but the man was not hurt; he was used to being treated like that.
‘Any chance of a job, sir?’
Hunter did not reply at once. He was short of breath and he was thinking of a plan that was ever recurring to his mind, and which he had lately been hankering to put into execution. It seemed to him that the long waited for opportunity had come. Just now Rushton & Co. were almost the only firm in Mugsborough who had any work. There were dozens of good workmen out. Yes, this was the time. If this man agreed he would give him a start. Hunter knew the man was a good workman, he had worked for Rushton & Co. before. To make room for him old Linden and some other full-price man could be got rid of; it would not be difficult to find some excuse.
‘Well,’ Hunter said at last in a doubtful, hesitating kind of way, ‘I’m afraid not, Newman. We’re about full up.’
He ceased speaking and remained waiting for the other to say something more. He did not look at the man, but stooped down, fidgeting with the mechanism of the bicycle as if adjusting it.
‘Things have been so bad this summer,’ Newman went on. ‘I’ve had rather a rough time of it. I would be very glad of a job even if it was only for a week or so.’
There was a pause. After a while, Hunter raised his eyes to the other’s face, but immediately let them fall again.
‘Well,’ said he, ‘I might – perhaps – be able to let you have a day or two. You can come here to this job,’ and he nodded his head in the direction of the house where the men were working. ‘Tomorrow at seven. Of course you know the figure?’ he added as Newman was about to thank him. ‘Six and a half.’
Hunter spoke as if the reduction were already an accomplished fact. The man was more likely to agree, if he thought that others were already working at the reduced rate.
Newman was taken by surprise and hesitated. He had never worked under price; indeed, he had sometimes gone hungry rather than do so; but now it seemed that others were doing it. And then he was so awfully hard up. If he refused this job he was not likely to get another in a hurry. He thought of his home and his family. Already they owed five weeks’ rent, and last Monday the collector had hinted pretty plainly that the landlord would not wait much longer. Not only that, but if he did not get a job how were they to live? This morning he himself had had no breakfast to speak of, only a cup of tea and some dry bread. These thoughts crowded upon each other in his mind, but still he hesitated. Hunter began to move off.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you like to start you can come here at seven in the morning.’ Then as Newman still hesitated he added impatiently, ‘Are you coming or not?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Newman.
‘All right,’ said Hunter, affably. ‘I’ll tell Crass to have a kit ready for you.’
He nodded in a friendly way to the man, who went off feeling like a criminal.
As Hunter resumed his march, well satisfied with himself, the fifth man, who had been waiting all this time, came to meet him. As he approached, Hunter recognized him as one who had started work for Rushton & Co. early in the summer, but who had left suddenly of his own accord, having taken offence at some bullying remark of Hunter’s.
Hunter was glad to see this man. He guessed that the fellow must be very hard pressed to come again and ask for work after what had happened.
‘Any chance of a job, sir?’
Hunter appeared to reflect.
‘I believe I have room for one,’ he said at length. ‘But you’re such an uncertain kind of chap. You don’t seem to care much whether you work or not. You’re too independent, you know; one can’t say two words to you but you must needs clear off.’
The man made no answer.
‘We can’t tolerate that kind of thing, you know,’ Hunter added. ‘If we were to encourage men of your stamp we should never know where we are.’
So saying, Hunter moved away and again proceeded on his journey.
When he arrived within about three yards of the gate he noiselessly laid his machine against the garden fence. The high evergreens that grew inside still concealed him from the observation of anyone who might be looking out of the windows of the house. Then he carefully crept along till he came to the gate post, and bending down, he cautiously peeped round to see if he could detect anyone idling, or talking, or smoking. There was no one in sight except old Jack Linden, who was rubbing down the lobby doors with pumice-stone and water. Hunter noiselessly opened the gate and crept quietly along the grass border of the garden path. His idea was to reach the front door without being seen, so that Linden could not give notice of his approach to those within. In this he succeeded and passed silently into the house. He did not speak to Linden; to do so would have proclaimed his presence to the rest. He crawled stealthily over the house but was disappointed in his quest, for everyone he saw was hard at work. Upstairs he noticed that the door of one of the rooms was closed.
Old Joe Philpot had been working in this room all day, washing off the old whitewash from the ceiling and removing the old papers from the walls with a broad bladed, square topped knife called a stripper. Although it was only a small room, Joe had had to tear into the work pretty hard all the time, for the ceiling seemed to have had two or three coats of whitewash without ever having been washed off, and there were several thicknesses of paper on the walls. The difficulty of removing these papers was increased by the fact that there was a dado which had been varnished. In order to get this off it had been necessary to soak it several times with strong soda water, and although Joe was as careful as possible he had not been able to avoid getting some of this stuff on his fingers. The result was that his nails were all burnt and discoloured and the flesh round them cracked and bleeding. However, he had got it all off at last, and he was not sorry, for his right arm and shoulder were aching from the prolonged strain and in the palm of the right hand there was a blister as large as a shilling, caused by the handle of the stripping knife.
All the old paper being off, Joe washed down the walls with water, and having swept the paper into a heap in the middle of the floor, he mixed with a small trowel some cement on a small board and proceeded to stop up the cracks and holes in the walls and ceiling. After a while, feeling very tired, it occurred to him that he deserved a spell and a smoke for five minutes. He