THE HISTORY OF MR POLLY
PART 7
Chapter the Fifth
Mr. Polly Takes a Vacation
I
Mr. Polly
returned to Clapham from the funeral celebration prepared for trouble, and took
his dismissal in a manly spirit.
“You’ve
merely anti-separated me by a hair,” he said politely.
And he
told them in the dormitory that he meant to take a little holiday before his
next crib, though a certain inherited reticence suppressed the fact of the
legacy.
“You’ll do
that all right,” said Ascough, the head of the boot shop. “It’s quite the
fashion just at present. Six Weeks in Wonderful Wood Street. They’re running
excursions....”
“A little
holiday”; that was the form his sense of wealth took first, that it made a
little holiday possible. Holidays were his life, and the rest merely
adulterated living. And now he might take a little holiday and have money for
railway fares and money for meals and money for inns. But—he wanted someone to
take the holiday with.
For a time
he cherished a design of hunting up Parsons, getting him to throw up his
situation, and going with him to Stratford-on-Avon and Shrewsbury and the Welsh
mountains and the Wye and a lot of places like that, for a really gorgeous,
careless, illimitable old holiday of a month. But alas! Parsons had gone from
the St. Paul’s Churchyard outfitter’s long ago, and left no address.
Mr. Polly
tried to think he would be almost as happy wandering alone, but he knew better.
He had dreamt of casual encounters with delightfully interesting people by the
wayside—even romantic encounters. Such things happened in Chaucer and
“Bocashiew,” they happened with extreme facility in Mr. Richard Le Gallienne’s
very detrimental book, The Quest of the Golden Girl, which he had read
at Canterbury, but he had no confidence they would happen in England—to him.
When, a
month later, he came out of the Clapham side door at last into the bright
sunshine of a fine London day, with a dazzling sense of limitless freedom upon
him, he did nothing more adventurous than order the cabman to drive to
Waterloo, and there take a ticket for Easewood.
He
wanted—what did he want most in life? I think his distinctive craving is
best expressed as fun—fun in companionship. He had already spent a pound or two
upon three select feasts to his fellow assistants, sprat suppers they were, and
there had been a great and very successful Sunday pilgrimage to Richmond, by
Wandsworth and Wimbledon’s open common, a trailing garrulous company walking
about a solemnly happy host, to wonderful cold meat and salad at the Roebuck, a
bowl of punch, punch! and a bill to correspond; but now it was a weekday, and
he went down to Easewood with his bag and portmanteau in a solitary
compartment, and looked out of the window upon a world in which every possible
congenial seemed either toiling in a situation or else looking for one with a
gnawing and hopelessly preoccupying anxiety. He stared out of the window at the
exploitation roads of suburbs, and rows of houses all very much alike, either
emphatically and impatiently to let or full of
rather busy unsocial people. Near Wimbledon he had a glimpse of golf links, and
saw two elderly gentlemen who, had they chosen, might have been gentlemen of
grace and leisure, addressing themselves to smite little hunted white balls
great distances with the utmost bitterness and dexterity. Mr. Polly could not
understand them.
Every road
he remarked, as freshly as though he had never observed it before, was bordered
by inflexible palings or iron fences or severely disciplined hedges. He
wondered if perhaps abroad there might be beautifully careless, unenclosed high
roads. Perhaps after all the best way of taking a holiday is to go abroad.
He was
haunted by the memory of what was either a half-forgotten picture or a dream; a
carriage was drawn up by the wayside and four beautiful people, two men and two
women graciously dressed, were dancing a formal ceremonious dance full of bows
and curtseys, to the music of a wandering fiddler they had encountered. They
had been driving one way and he walking another—a happy encounter with this
obvious result. They might have come straight out of happy Theleme, whose motto
is: “Do what thou wilt.” The driver had taken his two sleek horses out; they
grazed unchallenged; and he sat on a stone clapping time with his hands while
the fiddler played. The shade of the trees did not altogether shut out the
sunshine, the grass in the wood was lush and full of still daffodils, the turf
they danced on was starred with daisies.
Mr. Polly,
dear heart! firmly believed that things like that could and did
happen—somewhere. Only it puzzled him that morning that he never saw them
happening. Perhaps they happened south of Guilford. Perhaps they happened in
Italy. Perhaps they ceased to happen a hundred years ago. Perhaps they happened
just round the corner—on weekdays when all good Mr. Pollys are safely shut up
in shops. And so dreaming of delightful impossibilities until his heart ached
for them, he was rattled along in the suburban train to Johnson’s discreet home
and the briskly stimulating welcome of Mrs. Johnson.
II
Mr. Polly
translated his restless craving for joy and leisure into Harold Johnsonese by
saying that he meant to look about him for a bit before going into another
situation. It was a decision Johnson very warmly approved. It was arranged that
Mr. Polly should occupy his former room and board with the Johnsons in
consideration of a weekly payment of eighteen shillings. And the next morning
Mr. Polly went out early and reappeared with a purchase, a safety bicycle,
which he proposed to study and master in the sandy lane below the Johnsons’
house. But over the struggles that preceded his mastery it is humane to draw a
veil.
And also
Mr. Polly bought a number of books, Rabelais for his own, and “The Arabian
Nights,” the works of Sterne, a pile of “Tales from Blackwood,” cheap in a
second-hand bookshop, the plays of William Shakespeare, a second-hand copy of
Belloc’s “Road to Rome,” an odd volume of “Purchas his Pilgrimes” and “The Life
and Death of Jason.”
“Better
get yourself a good book on bookkeeping,” said Johnson, turning over perplexing
pages.
A belated
spring was now advancing with great strides to make up for lost time. Sunshine
and a stirring wind were poured out over the land, fleets of towering clouds
sailed upon urgent tremendous missions across the blue seas of heaven, and
presently Mr. Polly was riding a little unstably along unfamiliar Surrey roads,
wondering always what was round the next corner, and marking the blackthorn and
looking out for the first white flower-buds of the may. He was perplexed and
distressed, as indeed are all right thinking souls, that there is no may in
early May.
He did not
ride at the even pace sensible people use who have marked out a journey from
one place to another, and settled what time it will take them. He rode at
variable speeds, and always as though he was looking for something that,
missing, left life attractive still, but a little wanting in significance. And
sometimes he was so unreasonably happy he had to whistle and sing, and
sometimes he was incredibly, but not at all painfully, sad. His indigestion
vanished with air and exercise, and it was quite pleasant in the evening to
stroll about the garden with Johnson and discuss plans for the future. Johnson
was full of ideas. Moreover, Mr. Polly had marked the road that led to Stamton,
that rising populous suburb; and as his bicycle legs grew strong his wheel with
a sort of inevitableness carried him towards the row of houses in a back street
in which his Larkins cousins made their home together.
He was
received with great enthusiasm.
The street
was a dingy little street, a cul-de-sac of very small houses in a row,
each with an almost flattened bow window and a blistered brown door with a
black knocker. He poised his bright new bicycle against the window, and knocked
and stood waiting, and felt himself in his straw hat and black serge suit a
very pleasant and prosperous-looking figure. The door was opened by cousin
Miriam. She was wearing a bluish print dress that brought out a kind of sallow
warmth in her skin, and although it was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon,
her sleeves were tucked up, as if for some domestic work, above the elbows,
showing her rather slender but very shapely yellowish arms. The loosely pinned
bodice confessed a delicately rounded neck.
For a
moment she regarded him with suspicion and a faint hostility, and then
recognition dawned in her eyes.
“Why!” she
said, “it’s cousin Elfrid!”
“Thought
I’d look you up,” he said.
“Fancy!
you coming to see us like this!” she answered.
They stood
confronting one another for a moment, while Miriam collected herself for the
unexpected emergency.
“Explorations
menanderings,” said Mr. Polly, indicating the bicycle.
Miriam’s
face betrayed no appreciation of the remark.
“Wait a
moment,” she said, coming to a rapid decision, “and I’ll tell Ma.”
She closed
the door on him abruptly, leaving him a little surprised in the street. “Ma!”
he heard her calling, and swift speech followed, the import of which he didn’t
catch. Then she reappeared. It seemed but an instant, but she was changed; the
arms had vanished into sleeves, the apron had gone, a certain pleasing disorder
of the hair had been at least reproved.
“I didn’t
mean to shut you out,” she said, coming out upon the step. “I just told Ma. How
are you, Elfrid? You are looking well. I didn’t know you rode a bicycle.
Is it a new one?”
She leaned
upon his bicycle. “Bright it is!” she said. “What a trouble you must have to
keep it clean!”
Mr. Polly
was aware of a rustling transit along the passage, and of the house suddenly
full of hushed but strenuous movement.
“It’s
plated mostly,” said Mr. Polly.
“What do
you carry in that little bag thing?” she asked, and then branched off to:
“We’re all in a mess to-day you know. It’s my cleaning up day to-day. I’m not a
bit tidy I know, but I do like to ’ave a go in at things now and
then. You got to take us as you find us, Elfrid. Mercy we wasn’t all out.” She
paused. She was talking against time. “I am glad to see you again,” she
repeated.
“Couldn’t
keep away,” said Mr. Polly gallantly. “Had to come over and see my pretty
cousins again.”
Miriam did
not answer for a moment. She coloured deeply. “You do say things!” she
said.
She stared
at Mr. Polly, and his unfortunate sense of fitness made him nod his head
towards her, regard her firmly with a round brown eye, and add impressively: “I
don’t say which of them.”
Her
answering expression made him realise for an instant the terrible dangers he
trifled with. Avidity flared up in her eyes. Minnie’s voice came happily to
dissolve the situation.
“’Ello,
Elfrid!” she said from the doorstep.
Her hair
was just passably tidy, and she was a little effaced by a red blouse, but there
was no mistaking the genuine brightness of her welcome.
He was to
come in to tea, and Mrs. Larkins, exuberantly genial in a floriferous but dingy
flannel dressing gown, appeared to confirm that. He brought in his bicycle and
put it in the narrow, empty passage, and everyone crowded into a small untidy
kitchen, whose table had been hastily cleared of the débris of the
midday repast.
“You must
come in ’ere,” said Mrs. Larkins, “for Miriam’s turning out the front room. I
never did see such a girl for cleanin’ up. Miriam’s ’oliday’s a scrub. You’ve
caught us on the ’Op as the sayin’ is, but Welcome all the same. Pity Annie’s
at work to-day; she won’t be ’ome till seven.”
Miriam put
chairs and attended to the fire, Minnie edged up to Mr. Polly and said: “I am
glad to see you again, Elfrid,” with a warm contiguous intimacy that betrayed a
broken tooth. Mrs. Larkins got out tea things, and descanted on the noble
simplicity of their lives, and how he “mustn’t mind our simple ways.” They
enveloped Mr. Polly with a geniality that intoxicated his amiable nature; he
insisted upon helping lay the things, and created enormous laughter by
pretending not to know where plates and knives and cups ought to go. “Who’m I
going to sit next?” he said, and developed voluminous amusement by attempts to
arrange the plates so that he could rub elbows with all three. Mrs. Larkins had
to sit down in the windsor chair by the grandfather clock (which was dark with
dirt and not going) to laugh at her ease at his well-acted perplexity.
They got
seated at last, and Mr. Polly struck a vein of humour in telling them how he
learnt to ride the bicycle. He found the mere repetition of the word “wabble”
sufficient to produce almost inextinguishable mirth.
“No
foreseeing little accidentulous misadventures,” he said, “none whatever.”
(Giggle
from Minnie.)
“Stout
elderly gentleman—shirt sleeves—large straw wastepaper basket sort of
hat—starts to cross the road—going to the oil shop—prodic refreshment of oil
can—”
“Don’t say
you run ’im down,” said Mrs. Larkins, gasping. “Don’t say you run ’im down,
Elfrid!”
“Run ’im
down! Not me, Madam. I never run anything down. Wabble. Ring the bell. Wabble,
wabble—”
(Laughter
and tears.)
“No one’s going
to run him down. Hears the bell! Wabble. Gust of wind. Off comes the hat smack
into the wheel. Wabble. Lord! what’s going to happen? Hat across the
road, old gentleman after it, bell, shriek. He ran into me. Didn’t ring his
bell, hadn’t got a bell—just ran into me. Over I went clinging to his
venerable head. Down he went with me clinging to him. Oil can blump, blump into
the road.”
(Interlude
while Minnie is attended to for crumb in the windpipe.)
“Well,
what happened to the old man with the oil can?” said Mrs. Larkins.
“We sat
about among the debreece and had a bit of an argument. I told him he oughtn’t
to come out wearing such a dangerous hat—flying at things. Said if he couldn’t
control his hat he ought to leave it at home. High old jawbacious argument we
had, I tell you. ’I tell you, sir—’ ‘I tell you, sir.’ Waw-waw-waw.
Infuriacious. But that’s the sort of thing that’s constantly happening you
know—on a bicycle. People run into you, hens and cats and dogs and things.
Everything seems to have its mark on you; everything.”
“You
never run into anything.”
“Never.
Swelpme,” said Mr. Polly very solemnly.
“Never, ’E
say!” squealed Minnie. “Hark at ’im!” and relapsed into a condition that
urgently demanded back thumping. “Don’t be so silly,” said Miriam, thumping
hard.
Mr. Polly
had never been such a social success before. They hung upon his every word—and
laughed. What a family they were for laughter! And he loved laughter. The
background he apprehended dimly; it was very much the sort of background his
life had always had. There was a threadbare tablecloth on the table, and the
slop basin and teapot did not go with the cups and saucers, the plates were
different again, the knives worn down, the butter lived in a greenish glass
dish of its own. Behind was a dresser hung with spare and miscellaneous
crockery, with a workbox and an untidy work-basket, there was an ailing musk
plant in the window, and the tattered and blotched wallpaper was covered by
bright-coloured grocers’ almanacs. Feminine wrappings hung from pegs upon the
door, and the floor was covered with a varied collection of fragments of
oilcloth. The Windsor chair he sat in was unstable—which presently afforded
material for humour. “Steady, old nag,” he said; “whoa, my friskiacious palfry!”
“The
things he says! You never know what he won’t say next!”
III
“You ain’t
talkin’ of goin’!” cried Mrs. Larkins.
“Supper at
eight.”
“Stay to
supper with us, now you ’ave come over,” said Mrs. Larkins, with
corroborating cries from Minnie. “’Ave a bit of a walk with the gals, and then
come back to supper. You might all go and meet Annie while I straighten up, and
lay things out.”
“You’re
not to go touching the front room mind,” said Miriam.
“Who’s
going to touch yer front room?” said Mrs. Larkins, apparently forgetful for a
moment of Mr. Polly.
Both girls
dressed with some care while Mrs. Larkins sketched the better side of their
characters, and then the three young people went out to see something of
Stamton. In the streets their risible mood gave way to a self-conscious
propriety that was particularly evident in Miriam’s bearing. They took Mr.
Polly to the Stamton Wreckeryation ground—that at least was what they called
it—with its handsome custodian’s cottage, its asphalt paths, its Jubilee
drinking fountain, its clumps of wallflower and daffodils, and so to the new
cemetery and a distant view of the Surrey hills, and round by the gasworks to
the canal to the factory, that presently disgorged a surprised and radiant
Annie.
“El-lo”
said Annie.
It is very
pleasant to every properly constituted mind to be a centre of amiable interest
for one’s fellow creatures, and when one is a young man conscious of becoming
mourning and a certain wit, and the fellow creatures are three young and ardent
and sufficiently expressive young women who dispute for the honour of walking
by one’s side, one may be excused a secret exaltation. They did dispute.
“I’m going
to ’ave ’im now,” said Annie. “You two’ve been ’aving ’im all the
afternoon. Besides, I’ve got something to say to him.”
She had
something to say to him. It came presently. “I say,” she said abruptly. “I did
get them rings out of a prize packet.”
“What
rings?” asked Mr. Polly.
“What you
saw at your poor father’s funeral. You made out they meant something. They
didn’t—straight.”
“Then some
people have been very remiss about their chances,” said Mr. Polly,
understanding.
“They
haven’t had any chances,” said Annie. “I don’t believe in making oneself too
free with people.”
“Nor me,”
said Mr. Polly.
“I may be
a bit larky and cheerful in my manner,” Annie admitted. “But it don’t mean
anything. I ain’t that sort.”
“Right O,”
said Mr. Polly.
To be
continued
