The History of Mr. Polly

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!”