The History of Mr. Polly. Герберт Уэллс

the storm: “We don’t want old scores dug up on such a day as this—”

      “Old scores you may call them, but worth a dozen of them that put them to their rest, poor dears.”

      “Elfrid!”—with a note of remonstrance.

      “If you choke yourself, my lord, not another mouthful do you ’ave. No nice puddin’! Nothing!”

      “And kept us in, she did, every afternoon for a week!”

      It seemed to be the end, and Mr. Polly replied with an air of being profoundly impressed: “Really!”

      “Elfrid!”—a little disheartened.

      “And then they ’ad it! They found he’d swallowed the very key to unlock the drawer—”

      “Then don’t let people go casting snacks!”

      “Who’s casting snacks!”

      “Elfrid! This lady wants to know, ’ave the Prossers left Canterbury?”

      “No wish to make myself disagreeable, not to God’s ’umblest worm—”

      “Alf, you aren’t very busy with that brawn up there!”

      And so on for the hour.

      The general effect upon Mr. Polly at the time was at once confusing and exhilarating; but it led him to eat copiously and carelessly, and long before the end, when after an hour and a quarter a movement took the party, and it pushed away its cheese plates and rose sighing and stretching from the remains of the repast, little streaks and bands of dyspeptic irritation and melancholy were darkening the serenity of his mind.

      He stood between the mantel shelf and the window—the blinds were up now—and the Larkins sisters clustered about him. He battled with the oncoming depression and forced himself to be extremely facetious about two noticeable rings on Annie’s hand. “They ain’t real,” said Annie coquettishly. “Got ’em out of a prize packet.”

      “Prize packet in trousers, I expect,” said Mr. Polly, and awakened inextinguishable laughter.

      “Oh! the things you say!” said Minnie, slapping his shoulder.

      Suddenly something he had quite extraordinarily forgotten came into his head.

      “Bless my heart!” he cried, suddenly serious.

      “What’s the matter?” asked Johnson.

      “Ought to have gone back to shop—three days ago. They’ll make no end of a row!”

      “Lor, you are a Treat!” said cousin Annie, and screamed with laughter at a delicious idea. “You’ll get the Chuck,” she said.

      Mr. Polly made a convulsing grimace at her.

      “I’ll die!” she said. “I don’t believe you care a bit!”

      Feeling a little disorganized by her hilarity and a shocked expression that had come to the face of cousin Miriam, he made some indistinct excuse and went out through the back room and scullery into the little garden. The cool air and a very slight drizzle of rain was a relief—anyhow. But the black mood of the replete dyspeptic had come upon him. His soul darkened hopelessly. He walked with his hands in his pockets down the path between the rows of exceptionally cultured peas and unreasonably, overwhelmingly, he was smitten by sorrow for his father. The heady noise and muddle and confused excitement of the feast passed from him like a curtain drawn away. He thought of that hot and angry and struggling creature who had tugged and sworn so foolishly at the sofa upon the twisted staircase, and who was now lying still and hidden, at the bottom of a wall-sided oblong pit beside the heaped gravel that would presently cover him. The stillness of it! the wonder of it! the infinite reproach! Hatred for all these people—all of them—possessed Mr. Polly’s soul.

      “Hen-witted gigglers,” said Mr. Polly.

      He went down to the fence, and stood with his hands on it staring away at nothing. He stayed there for what seemed a long time. From the house came a sound of raised voices that subsided, and then Mrs. Johnson calling for Bessie.

      “Gowlish gusto,” said Mr. Polly. “Jumping it in. Funererial Games. Don’t hurt him of course. Doesn’t matter to him. …”

      Nobody missed Mr. Polly for a long time.

      When at last he reappeared among them his eye was almost grim, but nobody noticed his eye. They were looking at watches, and Johnson was being omniscient about trains. They seemed to discover Mr. Polly afresh just at the moment of parting, and said a number of more or less appropriate things. But Uncle Pentstemon was far too worried about his rush basket, which had been carelessly mislaid, he seemed to think with larcenous intentions, to remember Mr. Polly at all. Mrs. Johnson had tried to fob him off with a similar but inferior basket—his own had one handle mended with string according to a method of peculiar virtue and inimitable distinction known only to himself—and the old gentleman had taken her attempt as the gravest reflection upon his years and intelligence. Mr. Polly was left very largely to the Larkins trio. Cousin Minnie became shameless and kept kissing him good-by—and then finding out it wasn’t time to go. Cousin Miriam seemed to think her silly, and caught Mr. Polly’s eye sympathetically. Cousin Annie ceased to giggle and lapsed into a nearly sentimental state. She said with real feeling that she had enjoyed the funeral more than words could tell.