Sally Bishop | Page 2

later, there might be seen men with hats on their heads,
moving about--in the light one moment, lost in the darkness the next.
Some of them were pulling gloves on to their hands, or lighting
cigarettes, others would be pinning a bunch of violets into their
button-holes, or brushing the shoulders of their coats. These were the

ones who had finished for the day. It could always be known when they
had taken their departure. The heads of the clerks would twist towards
the interior of the room. You could almost imagine the wistful
expression on their faces from the bare outlines of their attitudes as
they turned in their chairs. Then, a minute later, the main door of the
house would open, the figure of a man emerge; for a moment he would
turn his face up to the sky, then the umbrella would go up and he would
walk away into the darkness of the street, for one brief moment an
individual with an identity; the next, a mere unit in the great herd of
human beings.
There were many departures such as these before, at last, the clerks
rose from their chairs. When finally they did move, it was with a
lethargy that almost concealed the relief which the cessation of work
had brought them. One might have expected to see the slamming of
books and the rushing for hats like children released from school. But
there was no such energy of delight as that. Ledgers were closed
wearily, as though they were weighted with leaden covers; papers were
put in tiny heaps as if they were a pile of death-warrants. Typewriters
were covered with such slowness and such care that one might think
they were delicate instruments of music with silver strings, instead of
treadmills for tired hands.
Some reason must explain why these young men and girls, when their
superiors took their departure, showed so plainly the envy that they felt
and now are apparently unmoved by the prospect of their own freedom.
It is simply this. Vitality is an exhaustible quality. It may last up to a
certain moment, then it burns out like the hungry wick of a candle that
has no more grease to feed it. You can incarcerate a man for such a
length of time that when at last you do give him his liberty he has no
love left for it. It is much the same with these creatures who are
imprisoned in the barred cells of London offices. By the time their
day's work is ended their vitality for enjoyment has been exhausted.
They take their liberty much as a man takes the sentence of penal
servitude when he had expected to be hanged.
Stand for a moment in this street that runs out from the Covent Garden

Market and watch the office windows before the lights are extinguished.
Is there one attitude, one movement, one gesture that betrays the joy of
freedom now that the day's work is over? Scarcely one. That boy with
the long dark hair drooping on his forehead, contrasting so vividly
against his sallow skin--you might imagine from the listlessness of his
actions that the day's work was just beginning. At lunch time, when the
vitality was yet in store, he might have been seen, running out from the
building in the gleeful anticipation of an hour's rest. But now, when all
the hours of the night are before him, his nervous energy has been
sapped away. You get no spirit in a tired horse. It shies at nothing, but
drags one foot wearily after another until the stable door is reached.
This is the actual condition of things that the young men and women
find when they have burnt their boats, have left the country for the
illusory joys of the town. There may be greater possibilities of
enjoyment; but this huge, carnivorous plant--this gigantic city of
London--has only displayed its attractions in order to gain its prey.
They are drawn by the colours of the petals, they come to the honeyed
perfume of its scent; but once caught in the prison of its embrace, there
is only the slow poison of forced labour that eats its deadly way into the
very heart of their vitality.
In one of these offices off Covent Garden, under a green-shaded lamp
that cast its metallic rays on to the typewriting machine before her, sat
one of the young lady clerks in the establishment of Bonsfield & Co., a
firm of book-buyers. They carried on a promiscuous trade with
America and the Colonies, and managed, by the straining of ends, to
meet their expenses and show a small margin of profit. You undertake
the labour of a slave in Egypt, and run the risk of a forlorn hope