The History of Mr. Polly

But the disgust that overshadowed Mr. Polly’s being as he sat upon the stile, had other and profounder justification than his quarrel with Rusper and the indignity of appearing before the county bench.  He was for the first time in his business career short with his rent for the approaching quarter day, and so far as he could trust his own bandling of figures he was sixty or seventy pounds on the wrong side of solvency.  And that was the outcome of fifteen years of passive endurance of dulness throughout the best years of his life!  What would Miriam say when she learnt this, and was invited to face the prospect of exile—­heaven knows what sort of exile!—­from their present home?  She would grumble and scold and become limply unhelpful, he knew, and none the less so because he could not help things.  She would say he ought to have worked harder, and a hundred such exasperating pointless things.  Such thoughts as these require no aid from undigested cold pork and cold potatoes and pickles to darken the soul, and with these aids his soul was black indeed.

“May as well have a bit of a walk,” said Mr. Polly at last, after nearly intolerable meditations, and sat round and put a leg over the stile.

He remained still for some time before he brought over the other leg.

“Kill myself,” he murmured at last.

It was an idea that came back to his mind nowadays with a continually increasing attractiveness—­more particularly after meals.  Life he felt had no further happiness to offer him.  He hated Miriam, and there was no getting away from her whatever might betide.  And for the rest there was toil and struggle, toil and struggle with a failing heart and dwindling courage, to sustain that dreary duologue.  “Life’s insured,” said Mr. Polly; “place is insured.  I don’t see it does any harm to her or anyone.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets.  “Needn’t hurt much,” he said.  He began to elaborate a plan.

He found it quite interesting elaborating his plan.  His countenance became less miserable and his pace quickened.

There is nothing so good in all the world for melancholia as walking, and the exercise of the imagination in planning something presently to be done, and soon the wrathful wretchedness had vanished from Mr. Polly’s face.  He would have to do the thing secretly and elaborately, because otherwise there might be difficulties about the life insurance.  He began to scheme how he could circumvent that difficulty….

He took a long walk, for after all what is the good of hurrying back to shop when you are not only insolvent but very soon to die?  His dinner and the east wind lost their sinister hold upon his soul, and when at last he came back along the Fishbourne High Street, his face was unusually bright and the craving hunger of the dyspeptic was returning.  So he went into the grocer’s and bought a ruddily decorated tin of a brightly pink fishlike substance known as “Deep Sea Salmon.”  This he was resolved to consume regardless of cost with vinegar and salt and pepper as a relish to his supper.

He did, and since he and Miriam rarely talked and Miriam thought honour and his recent behaviour demanded a hostile silence, he ate fast, and copiously and soon gloomily.  He ate alone, for she refrained, to mark her sense of his extravagance.  Then he prowled into the High Street for a time, thought it an infernal place, tried his pipe and found it foul and bitter, and retired wearily to bed.

He slept for an hour or so and then woke up to the contemplation of Miriam’s hunched back and the riddle of life, and this bright attractive idea of ending for ever and ever and ever all the things that were locking him in, this bright idea that shone like a baleful star above all the reek and darkness of his misery….