The History of Mr. Polly

When, after imperceptible manoeuvres by Mrs. Larkins, he found himself starting circuitously through the inevitable recreation ground with Miriam to meet Annie, he found himself quite unable to avoid the topic of the shop that had now taken such a grip upon him.  A sense of danger only increased the attraction.  Minnie’s persistent disposition to accompany them had been crushed by a novel and violent and urgently expressed desire on the part of Mrs. Larkins to see her do something in the house sometimes….

“You really think you’ll open a shop?” asked Miriam.

“I hate cribs,” said Mr. Polly, adopting a moderate tone.  “In a shop there’s this drawback and that, but one is one’s own master.”

“That wasn’t all talk?”

“Not a bit of it.”

“After all,” he went on, “a little shop needn’t be so bad.”

“It’s a ’ome,” said Miriam.

“It’s a home.”

Pause.

“There’s no need to keep accounts and that sort of thing if there’s no assistant.  I daresay I could run a shop all right if I wasn’t interfered with.”

“I should like to see you in your shop,” said Miriam.  “I expect you’d keep everything tremendously neat.”

The conversation flagged.

“Let’s sit down on one of those seats over there,” said Miriam.  “Where we can see those blue flowers.”

They did as she suggested, and sat down in a corner where a triangular bed of stock and delphinium brightened the asphalted traceries of the Recreation Ground.

“I wonder what they call those flowers,” she said.  “I always like them.  They’re handsome.”

“Delphicums and larkspurs,” said Mr. Polly.  “They used to be in the park at Port Burdock.

“Floriferous corner,” he added approvingly.

He put an arm over the back of the seat, and assumed a more comfortable attitude.  He glanced at Miriam, who was sitting in a lax, thoughtful pose with her eyes on the flowers.  She was wearing her old dress, she had not had time to change, and the blue tones of her old dress brought out a certain warmth in her skin, and her pose exaggerated whatever was feminine in her rather lean and insufficient body, and rounded her flat chest delusively.  A little line of light lay along her profile.  The afternoon was full of transfiguring sunshine, children were playing noisily in the adjacent sandpit, some Judas trees were brightly abloom in the villa gardens that bordered the Recreation Ground, and all the place was bright with touches of young summer colour.  It all merged with the effect of Miriam in Mr. Polly’s mind.

Her thoughts found speech.  “One did ought to be happy in a shop,” she said with a note of unusual softness in her voice.

It seemed to him that she was right.  One did ought to be happy in a shop.  Folly not to banish dreams that made one ache of townless woods and bracken tangles and red-haired linen-clad figures sitting in dappled sunshine upon grey and crumbling walls and looking queenly down on one with clear blue eyes.  Cruel and foolish dreams they were, that ended in one’s being laughed at and made a mock of.  There was no mockery here.

“A shop’s such a respectable thing to be,” said Miriam thoughtfully.

“I could be happy in a shop,” he said.

His sense of effect made him pause.

“If I had the right company,” he added.

She became very still.

Mr. Polly swerved a little from the conversational ice-run upon which he had embarked.

“I’m not such a blooming Geezer,” he said, “as not to be able to sell goods a bit.  One has to be nosy over one’s buying of course.  But I shall do all right.”

He stopped, and felt falling, falling through the aching silence that followed.

“If you get the right company,” said Miriam.

“I shall get that all right.”

“You don’t mean you’ve got someone—­”

He found himself plunging.

“I’ve got someone in my eye, this minute,” he said.

“Elfrid!” she said, turning on him.  “You don’t mean—­”

Well, did he mean?  “I do!” he said.

“Not reely!” She clenched her hands to keep still.

He took the conclusive step.

“Well, you and me, Miriam, in a little shop—­with a cat and a canary—­” He tried too late to get back to a hypothetical note.  “Just suppose it!”

“You mean,” said Miriam, “you’re in love with me, Elfrid?”

What possible answer can a man give to such a question but “Yes!”

Regardless of the public park, the children in the sandpit and everyone, she bent forward and seized his shoulder and kissed him on the lips.  Something lit up in Mr. Polly at the touch.  He put an arm about her and kissed her back, and felt an irrevocable act was sealed.  He had a curious feeling that it would be very satisfying to marry and have a wife—­only somehow he wished it wasn’t Miriam.  Her lips were very pleasant to him, and the feel of her in his arm.

They recoiled a little from each other and sat for a moment, flushed and awkwardly silent.  His mind was altogether incapable of controlling its confusion.

“I didn’t dream,” said Miriam, “you cared—.  Sometimes I thought it was Annie, sometimes Minnie—­”

“Always liked you better than them,” said Mr. Polly.

“I loved you, Elfrid,” said Miriam, “since ever we met at your poor father’s funeral.  Leastways I would have done, if I had thought.  You didn’t seem to mean anything you said.

“I can’t believe it!” she added.

“Nor I,” said Mr. Polly.

“You mean to marry me and start that little shop—­”

“Soon as ever I find it,” said Mr. Polly.

“I had no more idea when I came out with you—­”

“Nor me!”

“It’s like a dream.”

They said no more for a little while.

“I got to pinch myself to think it’s real,” said Miriam.  “What they’ll do without me at ’ome I can’t imagine.  When I tell them—­”

For the life of him Mr. Polly could not tell whether he was fullest of tender anticipations or regretful panic.

“Mother’s no good at managing—­not a bit.  Annie don’t care for ’ouse work and Minnie’s got no ’ed for it.  What they’ll do without me I can’t imagine.”

“They’ll have to do without you,” said Mr. Polly, sticking to his guns.

A clock in the town began striking.

“Lor’!” said Miriam, “we shall miss Annie—­sitting ’ere and love-making!”

She rose and made as if to take Mr. Polly’s arm.  But Mr. Polly felt that their condition must be nakedly exposed to the ridicule of the world by such a linking, and evaded her movement.

Annie was already in sight before a flood of hesitation and terrors assailed Mr. Polly.

“Don’t tell anyone yet a bit,” he said.

“Only mother,” said Miriam firmly.