THE HISTORY OF MR POLLY
PART 15
IV
Her eyes
had not deceived her. Two figures which had emerged from the upper staircase
window of Mr. Rumbold’s and had got after a perilous paddle in his cistern, on
to the fire station, were now slowly but resolutely clambering up the outhouse
roof towards the back of the main premises of Messrs. Mantell and Throbson’s.
They clambered slowly and one urged and helped the other, slipping and pausing
ever and again, amidst a constant trickle of fragments of broken tile.
One was
Mr. Polly, with his hair wildly disordered, his face covered with black smudges
and streaked with perspiration, and his trouser legs scorched and blackened;
the other was an elderly lady, quietly but becomingly dressed in black, with
small white frills at her neck and wrists and a Sunday cap of ecru lace
enlivened with a black velvet bow. Her hair was brushed back from her wrinkled
brow and plastered down tightly, meeting in a small knob behind; her wrinkled
mouth bore that expression of supreme resolution common with the toothless
aged. She was shaky, not with fear, but with the vibrations natural to her
years, and she spoke with the slow quavering firmness of the very aged.
“I don’t
mind scrambling,” she said with piping inflexibility, “but I can’t jump and I wunt
jump.”
“Scramble,
old lady, then—scramble!” said Mr. Polly, pulling her arm. “It’s one up and two
down on these blessed tiles.”
“It’s not
what I’m used to,” she said.
“Stick to
it!” said Mr. Polly, “live and learn,” and got to the ridge and grasped at her
arm to pull her after him.
“I can’t
jump, mind ye,” she repeated, pressing her lips together. “And old ladies like
me mustn’t be hurried.”
“Well,
let’s get as high as possible anyhow!” said Mr. Polly, urging her gently
upward. “Shinning up a water-spout in your line? Near as you’ll get to Heaven.”
“I can’t
jump,” she said. “I can do anything but jump.”
“Hold on!”
said Mr. Polly, “while I give you a boost. That’s—wonderful.”
“So long
as it isn’t jumping....”
The old
lady grasped the parapet above, and there was a moment of intense struggle.
“Urup!”
said Mr. Polly. “Hold on! Gollys! where’s she gone to?...”
Then an ill-mended,
wavering, yet very reassuring spring side boot appeared for an instant.
“Thought
perhaps there wasn’t any roof there!” he explained, scrambling up over the
parapet beside her.
“I’ve
never been out on a roof before,” said the old lady. “I’m all disconnected.
It’s very bumpy. Especially that last bit. Can’t we sit here for a bit and
rest? I’m not the girl I use to be.”
“You sit
here ten minutes,” shouted Mr. Polly, “and you’ll pop like a roast chestnut.
Don’t understand me? Roast chestnut! Roast
chestnut! Pop! There ought to be a limit to
deafness. Come on round to the front and see if we can find an attic window.
Look at this smoke!”
“Nasty!”
said the old lady, her eyes following his gesture, puckering her face into an
expression of great distaste.
“Come on!”
“Can’t
hear a word you say.”
He pulled
her arm. “Come on!”
She paused
for a moment to relieve herself of a series of entirely unexpected chuckles. “Sich
goings on!” she said, “I never did! Where’s he going now?” and came along
behind the parapet to the front of the drapery establishment.
Below, the
street was now fully alive to their presence, and encouraged the appearance of
their heads by shouts and cheers. A sort of free fight was going on round the
fire escape, order represented by Mr. Boomer and the very young policeman, and
disorder by some partially intoxicated volunteers with views of their own about
the manipulation of the apparatus. Two or three lengths of Mr. Rusper’s garden
hose appeared to have twined themselves round the ladder. Mr. Polly watched the
struggle with a certain impatience, and glanced ever and again over his
shoulder at the increasing volume of smoke and steam that was pouring up from
the burning fire station. He decided to break an attic window and get in, and
so try and get down through the shop. He found himself in a little bedroom, and
returned to fetch his charge. For some time he could not make her understand
his purpose.
“Got to
come at once!” he shouted.
“I hain’t
’ad sich a time for years!” said the old lady.
“We’ll
have to get down through the house!”
“Can’t do
no jumpin’,” said the old lady. “No!”
She
yielded reluctantly to his grasp.
She stared
over the parapet. “Runnin’ and scurrying about like black beetles in a
kitchin,” she said.
“We’ve got
to hurry.”
“Mr.
Rumbold ’E’s a very Quiet man. ’E likes everything Quiet. He’ll be surprised to
see me ’ere! Why!—there ’e is!” She fumbled in her garments mysteriously and at
last produced a wrinkled pocket handkerchief and began to wave it.
“Oh, come on!” cried Mr. Polly, and seized her.
He got her
into the attic, but the staircase, he found, was full of suffocating smoke, and
he dared not venture below the next floor. He took her into a long dormitory,
shut the door on those pungent and pervasive fumes, and opened the window to
discover the fire escape was now against the house, and all Fishbourne boiling
with excitement as an immensely helmeted and active and resolute little figure
ascended. In another moment the rescuer stared over the windowsill, heroic, but
just a trifle self-conscious and grotesque.
“Lawks a
mussy!” said the old lady. “Wonders and Wonders! Why! it’s Mr. Gambell! ’Iding
’is ’ed in that thing! I never did!”
“Can we
get her out?” said Mr. Gambell. “There’s not much time.”
“He might
git stuck in it.”
“You’ll
get stuck in it,” said Mr. Polly, “come along!”
“Not for
jumpin’ I don’t,” said the old lady, understanding his gestures rather than his
words. “Not a bit of it. I bain’t no good at jumping and I wunt.”
They urged
her gently but firmly towards the window.
“You lemme
do it my own way,” said the old lady at the sill....
“I could
do it better if e’d take it off.”
“Oh! carm
on!”
“It’s wuss
than Carter’s stile,” she said, “before they mended it. With a cow a-looking at
you.”
Mr.
Gambell hovered protectingly below. Mr. Polly steered her aged limbs from
above. An anxious crowd below babbled advice and did its best to upset the fire
escape. Within, streamers of black smoke were pouring up through the cracks in
the floor. For some seconds the world waited while the old lady gave herself up
to reckless mirth again. “Sich times!” she said, and “Poor
Rumbold!”
Slowly
they descended, and Mr. Polly remained at the post of danger steadying the long
ladder until the old lady was in safety below and sheltered by Mr. Rumbold (who
was in tears) and the young policeman from the urgent congratulations of the
crowd. The crowd was full of an impotent passion to participate. Those nearest
wanted to shake her hand, those remoter cheered.
“The fust
fire I was ever in and likely to be my last. It’s a scurryin’, ’urryin’
business, but I’m real glad I haven’t missed it,” said the old lady as she was
borne rather than led towards the refuge of the Temperance Hotel.
Also she
was heard to remark: “’E was saying something about ’ot chestnuts. I
’aven’t ’ad no ’ot chestnuts.”
Then the
crowd became aware of Mr. Polly awkwardly negotiating the top rungs of the fire
escape. “’Ere ’e comes!” cried a voice, and Mr. Polly descended into the world
again out of the conflagration he had lit to be his funeral pyre, moist,
excited, and tremendously alive, amidst a tempest of applause. As he got lower
and lower the crowd howled like a pack of dogs at him. Impatient men unable to
wait for him seized and shook his descending boots, and so brought him to earth
with a run. He was rescued with difficulty from an enthusiast who wished to
slake at his own expense and to his own accompaniment a thirst altogether
heroic. He was hauled into the Temperance Hotel and flung like a sack,
breathless and helpless, into the tear-wet embrace of Miriam.
V
With the
dusk and the arrival of some county constabulary, and first one and presently
two other fire engines from Port Burdock and Hampstead-on-Sea, the local talent
of Fishbourne found itself forced back into a secondary, less responsible and
more observant rôle. I will not pursue the story of the fire to its ashes, nor
will I do more than glance at the unfortunate Mr. Rusper, a modern Laocoon,
vainly trying to retrieve his scattered hose amidst the tramplings and rushings
of the Port Burdock experts.
In a small
sitting-room of the Fishbourne Temperance Hotel a little group of Fishbourne
tradesmen sat and conversed in fragments and anon went to the window and looked
out upon the smoking desolation of their homes across the way, and anon sat
down again. They and their families were the guests of old Lady Bargrave, who
had displayed the utmost sympathy and interest in their misfortunes. She had
taken several people into her own house at Everdean, had engaged the Temperance
Hotel as a temporary refuge, and personally superintended the housing of
Mantell and Throbson’s homeless assistants. The Temperance Hotel became and
remained extremely noisy and congested, with people sitting about anywhere,
conversing in fragments and totally unable to get themselves to bed. The
manager was an old soldier, and following the best traditions of the service
saw that everyone had hot cocoa. Hot cocoa seemed to be about everywhere, and
it was no doubt very heartening and sustaining to everyone. When the manager
detected anyone disposed to be drooping or pensive he exhorted that person at
once to drink further hot cocoa and maintain a stout heart.
The hero
of the occasion, the centre of interest, was Mr. Polly. For he had not only
caused the fire by upsetting a lighted lamp, scorching his trousers and
narrowly escaping death, as indeed he had now explained in detail about twenty
times, but he had further thought at once of that amiable but helpless old lady
next door, had shown the utmost decision in making his way to her over the yard
wall of the Royal Fishbourne Hotel, and had rescued her with persistence and
vigour in spite of the levity natural to her years. Everyone thought well of
him and was anxious to show it, more especially by shaking his hand painfully
and repeatedly. Mr. Rumbold, breaking a silence of nearly fifteen years,
thanked him profusely, said he had never understood him properly and declared
he ought to have a medal. There seemed to be a widely diffused idea that Mr.
Polly ought to have a medal. Hinks thought so. He declared, moreover, and with
the utmost emphasis, that Mr. Polly had a crowded and richly decorated
interior—or words to that effect. There was something apologetic in this persistence;
it was as if he regretted past intimations that Mr. Polly was internally
defective and hollow. He also said that Mr. Polly was a “white man,” albeit, as
he developed it, with a liver of the deepest chromatic satisfactions.
Mr. Polly
wandered centrally through it all, with his face washed and his hair carefully
brushed and parted, looking modest and more than a little absent-minded, and
wearing a pair of black dress trousers belonging to the manager of the
Temperance Hotel,—a larger man than himself in every way.
He drifted
upstairs to his fellow-tradesmen, and stood for a time staring into the
littered street, with its pools of water and extinguished gas lamps. His
companions in misfortune resumed a fragmentary disconnected conversation. They
touched now on one aspect of the disaster and now on another, and there were
intervals of silence. More or less empty cocoa cups were distributed over the
table, mantelshelf and piano, and in the middle of the table was a tin of
biscuits, into which Mr. Rumbold, sitting round-shoulderedly, dipped ever and
again in an absent-minded way, and munched like a distant shooting of coals. It
added to the solemnity of the affair that nearly all of them were in their
black Sunday clothes; little Clamp was particularly impressive and dignified in
a wide open frock coat, a Gladstone-shaped paper collar, and a large white and
blue tie. They felt that they were in the presence of a great disaster, the
sort of disaster that gets into the papers, and is even illustrated by blurred
photographs of the crumbling ruins. In the presence of that sort of disaster
all honourable men are lugubrious and sententious.
And yet it
is impossible to deny a certain element of elation. Not one of those excellent
men but was already realising that a great door had opened, as it were, in the
opaque fabric of destiny, that they were to get their money again that had
seemed sunken for ever beyond any hope in the deeps of retail trade. Life was
already in their imagination rising like a Phoenix from the flames.
“I suppose
there’ll be a public subscription,” said Mr. Clamp.
“Not for
those who’re insured,” said Mr. Wintershed.
“I was
thinking of them assistants from Mantell and Throbson’s. They must have lost
nearly everything.”
“They’ll
be looked after all right,” said Mr. Rumbold. “Never fear.”
Pause.
“I’m
insured,” said Mr. Clamp, with unconcealed satisfaction. “Royal Salamander.”
“Same
here,” said Mr. Wintershed.
“Mine’s
the Glasgow Sun,” Mr. Hinks remarked. “Very good company.”
“You
insured, Mr. Polly?”
“He
deserves to be,” said Rumbold.
“Ra-ther,”
said Hinks. “Blowed if he don’t. Hard lines it would be—if there wasn’t
something for him.”
“Commercial
and General,” answered Mr. Polly over his shoulder, still staring out of the
window. “Oh! I’m all right.”
The topic
dropped for a time, though manifestly it continued to exercise their minds.
“It’s
cleared me out of a lot of old stock,” said Mr. Wintershed; “that’s one good
thing.”
The remark
was felt to be in rather questionable taste, and still more so was his next
comment.
“Rusper’s
a bit sick it didn’t reach ’im.”
Everyone
looked uncomfortable, and no one was willing to point the reason why Rusper
should be a bit sick.
“Rusper’s
been playing a game of his own,” said Hinks. “Wonder what he thought he was up
to! Sittin’ in the middle of the road with a pair of tweezers he was, and about
a yard of wire—mending somethin’. Wonder he warn’t run over by the Port Burdock
engine.”
Presently
a little chat sprang up upon the causes of fires, and Mr. Polly was moved to
tell how it had happened for the one and twentieth time. His story had now
become as circumstantial and exact as the evidence of a police witness. “Upset
the lamp,” he said. “I’d just lighted it, I was going upstairs, and my foot slipped
against where one of the treads was a bit rotten, and down I went. Thing was
aflare in a moment!...”
He yawned
at the end of the discussion, and moved doorward.
“So long,”
said Mr. Polly.
“Good
night,” said Mr. Rumbold. “You played a brave man’s part! If you don’t get a
medal—”
He left an
eloquent pause.
“’Ear,
’ear!” said Mr. Wintershed and Mr. Clamp. “Goo’night, O’ Man,” said Mr. Hinks.
“Goo’night
All,” said Mr. Polly ...
He went
slowly upstairs. The vague perplexity common to popular heroes pervaded his
mind. He entered the bedroom and turned up the electric light. It was quite a
pleasant room, one of the best in the Temperance Hotel, with a nice clean
flowered wallpaper, and a very large looking-glass. Miriam appeared to be
asleep, and her shoulders were humped up under the clothes in a shapeless,
forbidding lump that Mr. Polly had found utterly loathsome for fifteen years.
He went softly over to the dressing-table and surveyed himself thoughtfully.
Presently he hitched up the trousers. “Miles too big for me,” he remarked.
“Funny not to have a pair of breeches of one’s own.... Like being born again.
Naked came I into the world....”
Miriam
stirred and rolled over, and stared at him.
“Hello!”
she said.
“Hello.”
“Come to
bed?”
“It’s
three.”
Pause,
while Mr. Polly disrobed slowly.
“I been
thinking,” said Miriam, “It isn’t going to be so bad after all. We shall get
your insurance. We can easy begin all over again.”
“H’m,”
said Mr. Polly.
She turned
her face away from him and reflected.
“Get a
better house,” said Miriam, regarding the wallpaper pattern. “I’ve always ’ated
them stairs.”
Mr. Polly
removed a boot.
“Choose a
better position where there’s more doing,” murmured Miriam....
“Not half
so bad,” she whispered....
“You wanted
stirring up,” she said, half asleep....
It dawned
upon Mr. Polly for the first time that he had forgotten something.
He ought
to have cut his throat!
The fact
struck him as remarkable, but as now no longer of any particular urgency. It
seemed a thing far off in the past, and he wondered why he had not thought of
it before. Odd thing life is! If he had done it he would never have seen this
clean and agreeable apartment with the electric light.... His thoughts wandered
into a question of detail. Where could he have put the razor down? Somewhere in
the little room behind the shop, he supposed, but he could not think where more
precisely. Anyhow it didn’t matter now.
He
undressed himself calmly, got into bed, and fell asleep almost immediately.
To be continued
