The History of Mr. Polly

Suddenly Parsons got himself dismissed.

He got himself dismissed under circumstances of peculiar violence, that left a deep impression on Mr. Polly’s mind.  He wondered about it for years afterwards, trying to get the rights of the case.

Parsons’ apprenticeship was over; he had reached the status of an Improver, and he dressed the window of the Manchester department.  By all the standards available he dressed it very well.  By his own standards he dressed it wonderfully.  “Well, O’ Man,” he used to say, “there’s one thing about my position here,—­I can dress a window.”

And when trouble was under discussion he would hold that “little Fluffums”—­which was the apprentices’ name for Mr. Garvace, the senior partner and managing director of the Bazaar—­would think twice before he got rid of the only man in the place who could make a windowful of Manchester goods tell.

Then like many a fellow artist he fell a prey to theories.

“The art of window dressing is in its infancy, O’ Man—­in its blooming Infancy.  All balance and stiffness like a blessed Egyptian picture.  No Joy in it, no blooming Joy!  Conventional.  A shop window ought to get hold of people, ’grip ’em as they go along.  It stands to reason.  Grip!”

His voice would sink to a kind of quiet bellow. “Do they grip?”

Then after a pause, a savage roar; “Naw!”

“He’s got a Heavy on,” said Mr. Polly.  “Go it, O’ Man; let’s have some more of it.”

“Look at old Morrison’s dress-stuff windows!  Tidy, tasteful, correct, I grant you, but Bleak!” He let out the word reinforced to a shout; “Bleak!”

“Bleak!” echoed Mr. Polly.

“Just pieces of stuff in rows, rows of tidy little puffs, perhaps one bit just unrolled, quiet tickets.”

“Might as well be in church, O’ Man,” said Mr. Polly.

“A window ought to be exciting,” said Parsons; “it ought to make you say:  El-lo! when you see it.”

He paused, and Platt watched him over a snorting pipe.

“Rockcockyo,” said Mr. Polly.

“We want a new school of window dressing,” said Parsons, regardless of the comment.  “A New School!  The Port Burdock school.  Day after tomorrow I change the Fitzallan Street stuff.  This time, it’s going to be a change.  I mean to have a crowd or bust!”

And as a matter of fact he did both.

His voice dropped to a note of self-reproach.  “I’ve been timid, O’ Man.  I’ve been holding myself in.  I haven’t done myself Justice.  I’ve kept down the simmering, seething, teeming ideas….  All that’s over now.”

“Over,” gulped Polly.

“Over for good and all, O’ Man.”