The History of Mr. Polly

Things crowded upon Mr. Polly.  Everyone, he noticed, took sherry with a solemn avidity, and a small portion even was administered sacramentally to the Punt boy.  There followed a distribution of black kid gloves, and much trying on and humouring of fingers. “Good gloves,” said one of Mrs. Johnson’s friends.  “There’s a little pair there for Willie,” said Mrs. Johnson triumphantly.  Everyone seemed gravely content with the amazing procedure of the occasion.  Presently Mr. Podger was picking Mr. Polly out as Chief Mourner to go with Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Larkins and Annie in the first mourning carriage.

“Right O,” said Mr. Polly, and repented instantly of the alacrity of the phrase.

“There’ll have to be a walking party,” said Mrs. Johnson cheerfully.  “There’s only two coaches.  I daresay we can put in six in each, but that leaves three over.”

There was a generous struggle to be pedestrian, and the two other Larkins girls, confessing coyly to tight new boots and displaying a certain eagerness, were added to the contents of the first carriage.

“It’ll be a squeeze,” said Annie.

“I don’t mind a squeeze,” said Mr. Polly.

He decided privately that the proper phrase for the result of that remark was “Hysterial catechunations.”

Mr. Podger re-entered the room from a momentary supervision of the bumping business that was now proceeding down the staircase.

“Bearing up,” he said cheerfully, rubbing his hands together.  “Bearing up!”

That stuck very vividly in Mr. Polly’s mind, and so did the close-wedged drive to the churchyard, bunched in between two young women in confused dull and shiny black, and the fact that the wind was bleak and that the officiating clergyman had a cold, and sniffed between his sentences.  The wonder of life!  The wonder of everything!  What had he expected that this should all be so astoundingly different.

He found his attention converging more and more upon the Larkins cousins.  The interest was reciprocal.  They watched him with a kind of suppressed excitement and became risible with his every word and gesture.  He was more and more aware of their personal quality.  Annie had blue eyes and a red, attractive mouth, a harsh voice and a habit of extreme liveliness that even this occasion could not suppress; Minnie was fond, extremely free about the touching of hands and suchlike endearments; Miriam was quieter and regarded him earnestly.  Mrs. Larkins was very happy in her daughters, and they had the naïve affectionateness of those who see few people and find a strange cousin a wonderful outlet.  Mr. Polly had never been very much kissed, and it made his mind swim.  He did not know for the life of him whether he liked or disliked all or any of the Larkins cousins.  It was rather attractive to make them laugh; they laughed at anything.

There they were tugging at his mind, and the funeral tugging at his mind, too, and the sense of himself as Chief Mourner in a brand new silk hat with a broad mourning band.  He watched the ceremony and missed his responses, and strange feelings twisted at his heartstrings.