The suburban trains slid into the darkness of the tunnel at Cleveland Street,and,as they emerged into daylight on the other side,paused for a moment like intelligent animals before the spider's web of shining rails that curved into the terminus,as if to choose the pair that would carry them in safety to the platform.It was in this pause that the passengers on the left looked out with an upward jerk of the head,and saw that the sun had found a new plaything in Regent Street.
It was the model of a shoe,fifteen feet long,the hugest thing within sight,covered with silver leaf that glittered like metal in the morning sun.A gang of men had hoisted it into position last night by the flare of naphtha lamps,and now it trod securely on air above the new bootshop whose advertisement sprawled across half a page of the morning paper.
In Regent Street a week of painting and hammering had prepared them for surprises;two shops had been knocked into one,with two plate-glass windows framed in brass,and now the shop with its triumphant sign caught the eye like a check suit or a red umbrella.Every inch of the walls was covered with lettering in silver leaf,and across the front in huge characters ran the sign:
JONAH'S SILVER SHOE EMPORIUM
Meanwhile,the shop was closed,the windows obscured by blinds;but the children,attracted by the noise of hammering,flattened their noses against the plate glass,trying to spy out the busy privacy within.
Evening fell,and the hammering ceased.Then,precisely on the stroke of seven,the electric lights flashed out,the curtains were withdrawn,and the shop stood smiling like a coquette at her first ball.
Everything was new.The fittings glistened with varnish,mirrors and brass rods reflected the light at every angle,and the building was packed from roof to floor with boots.The shelves were loaded with white cardboard boxes containing the better sort of boot.But there was not room enough on the shelves,and boots and shoes hung from the ceiling like bunches of fruit;they clung to brass rods like swarming bees.The strong,peculiar odour of leather clogged the air.The shopmen stood about,whispering to one another or changing the position of a pair of boots as they waited for the customers.
A crowd had gathered round the window on the left,which was fitted out like a workshop.On one side a clicker was cutting uppers from the skin;beside him a girl sat at a machine stitching the uppers together at racing speed.On the other side a man stood at a bench lasting the uppers to the insoles,and then pegging for dear life;near him sat a finisher,who shaved and blackened the rough edges,handing the finished article to a boy,who gave it a coat of gloss and placed it in the front of the window for inspection.A placard invited the public to watch the process of making Jonah's Famous Silver Shoes.The people crowded about as if it were a play,delighted with the novelty,following the stages in the growth of a boot with the pleasure of a boy examining the inside of a watch.
At eight o'clock another surprise was ready.A brass band began to play popular airs on the balcony,hung about with Chinese lanterns,and a row of electric bulbs flashed out,marking the outline of the wonderful silver shoe,glittering and gigantic in the white light.
The crowd looked up,and made bets on the length of the shoe,and recalled the time,barely five years ago,when the same man--Jonah the hunchback--had astonished Botany Road with his flaring signs in red and white.True,his shop was still on the Road,for Regent Street is but the fag end of a long,dusty road where it saunters into town,snobbishly conscious of larger buildings and higher rents.Since then his progress had been marked by removals,and each step had carried him nearer to the great city.
He had outgrown his shops as a boy outgrows his trousers.
It was reported that everything turned to gold that he touched.It was certain that he had captured the trade of the Road,and this move meant that he had fastened his teeth in the trade of the roaring city.And not so long ago people could remember when he was a common larrikin,reputed leader of the Cardigan Street Push,and working for old Paasch,whose shop was now empty,his business absorbed by Jonah with the ease one swallows a lozenge.And they say he began life as a street-arab,selling papers and sleeping in the gutter.Well,some people's luck was marvellous!
The crowd became so dense that the police cleared a passage through it,and the carts and buses slackened to a walk as they passed the shop,where the electric lights glittered,the Chinese lanterns swung gaily in the breeze,and the band struck noisily into the airs from a comic opera.
Meanwhile the shop was crowded with customers,impatient to be served,each carrying a coupon cut from the morning paper,which entitled the holder to a pair of Jonah's Famous Silver Shoes at cost price.And near the door,in an interval of business,stood the proprietor,a hunchback,his grey eyes glittering with excitement at seeing his dream realized,the huge shop,spick and span as paint could make it,the customers jostling one another as they passed in and out,and the coin clinking merrily in the till.
Yes,they were quite right.Everything that he touched turned to gold.
Outsiders confused his fortune with the luck of the man who draws the first prize in a sweep,enriched without effort by a chance turn of Fortune's wrist.They were blind to the unresting labour,the ruthless devices that left his rivals gaping,and the fixed idea that shaped everything to its needs.In five years he had fought his way down the Road,his line of march dotted with disabled rivals.
