The History of Mr. Polly

With the dusk and the arrival of some county constabulary, and first one and presently two other fire engines from Port Burdock and Hampstead-on-Sea, the local talent of Fishbourne found itself forced back into a secondary, less responsible and more observant rôle.  I will not pursue the story of the fire to its ashes, nor will I do more than glance at the unfortunate Mr. Rusper, a modern Laocoon, vainly trying to retrieve his scattered hose amidst the tramplings and rushings of the Port Burdock experts.

In a small sitting-room of the Fishbourne Temperance Hotel a little group of Fishbourne tradesmen sat and conversed in fragments and anon went to the window and looked out upon the smoking desolation of their homes across the way, and anon sat down again.  They and their families were the guests of old Lady Bargrave, who had displayed the utmost sympathy and interest in their misfortunes.  She had taken several people into her own house at Everdean, had engaged the Temperance Hotel as a temporary refuge, and personally superintended the housing of Mantell and Throbson’s homeless assistants.  The Temperance Hotel became and remained extremely noisy and congested, with people sitting about anywhere, conversing in fragments and totally unable to get themselves to bed.  The manager was an old soldier, and following the best traditions of the service saw that everyone had hot cocoa.  Hot cocoa seemed to be about everywhere, and it was no doubt very heartening and sustaining to everyone.  When the manager detected anyone disposed to be drooping or pensive he exhorted that person at once to drink further hot cocoa and maintain a stout heart.

The hero of the occasion, the centre of interest, was Mr. Polly.  For he had not only caused the fire by upsetting a lighted lamp, scorching his trousers and narrowly escaping death, as indeed he had now explained in detail about twenty times, but he had further thought at once of that amiable but helpless old lady next door, had shown the utmost decision in making his way to her over the yard wall of the Royal Fishbourne Hotel, and had rescued her with persistence and vigour in spite of the levity natural to her years.  Everyone thought well of him and was anxious to show it, more especially by shaking his hand painfully and repeatedly.  Mr. Rumbold, breaking a silence of nearly fifteen years, thanked him profusely, said he had never understood him properly and declared he ought to have a medal.  There seemed to be a widely diffused idea that Mr. Polly ought to have a medal.  Hinks thought so.  He declared, moreover, and with the utmost emphasis, that Mr. Polly had a crowded and richly decorated interior—­or words to that effect.  There was something apologetic in this persistence; it was as if he regretted past intimations that Mr. Polly was internally defective and hollow.  He also said that Mr. Polly was a “white man,” albeit, as he developed it, with a liver of the deepest chromatic satisfactions.

Mr. Polly wandered centrally through it all, with his face washed and his hair carefully brushed and parted, looking modest and more than a little absent-minded, and wearing a pair of black dress trousers belonging to the manager of the Temperance Hotel,—­a larger man than himself in every way.

He drifted upstairs to his fellow-tradesmen, and stood for a time staring into the littered street, with its pools of water and extinguished gas lamps.  His companions in misfortune resumed a fragmentary disconnected conversation.  They touched now on one aspect of the disaster and now on another, and there were intervals of silence.  More or less empty cocoa cups were distributed over the table, mantelshelf and piano, and in the middle of the table was a tin of biscuits, into which Mr. Rumbold, sitting round-shoulderedly, dipped ever and again in an absent-minded way, and munched like a distant shooting of coals.  It added to the solemnity of the affair that nearly all of them were in their black Sunday clothes; little Clamp was particularly impressive and dignified in a wide open frock coat, a Gladstone-shaped paper collar, and a large white and blue tie.  They felt that they were in the presence of a great disaster, the sort of disaster that gets into the papers, and is even illustrated by blurred photographs of the crumbling ruins.  In the presence of that sort of disaster all honourable men are lugubrious and sententious.

And yet it is impossible to deny a certain element of elation.  Not one of those excellent men but was already realising that a great door had opened, as it were, in the opaque fabric of destiny, that they were to get their money again that had seemed sunken for ever beyond any hope in the deeps of retail trade.  Life was already in their imagination rising like a Phoenix from the flames.

“I suppose there’ll be a public subscription,” said Mr. Clamp.

“Not for those who’re insured,” said Mr. Wintershed.

“I was thinking of them assistants from Mantell and Throbson’s.  They must have lost nearly everything.”

“They’ll be looked after all right,” said Mr. Rumbold.  “Never fear.”

Pause.

“I’m insured,” said Mr. Clamp, with unconcealed satisfaction.  “Royal Salamander.”

“Same here,” said Mr. Wintershed.

“Mine’s the Glasgow Sun,” Mr. Hinks remarked.  “Very good company.”

“You insured, Mr. Polly?”

“He deserves to be,” said Rumbold.

“Ra-ther,” said Hinks.  “Blowed if he don’t.  Hard lines it would be—­if there wasn’t something for him.”

“Commercial and General,” answered Mr. Polly over his shoulder, still staring out of the window.  “Oh!  I’m all right.”

The topic dropped for a time, though manifestly it continued to exercise their minds.

“It’s cleared me out of a lot of old stock,” said Mr. Wintershed; “that’s one good thing.”

The remark was felt to be in rather questionable taste, and still more so was his next comment.

“Rusper’s a bit sick it didn’t reach ’im.”

Everyone looked uncomfortable, and no one was willing to point the reason why Rusper should be a bit sick.

“Rusper’s been playing a game of his own,” said Hinks.  “Wonder what he thought he was up to!  Sittin’ in the middle of the road with a pair of tweezers he was, and about a yard of wire—­mending somethin’.  Wonder he warn’t run over by the Port Burdock engine.”

Presently a little chat sprang up upon the causes of fires, and Mr. Polly was moved to tell how it had happened for the one and twentieth time.  His story had now become as circumstantial and exact as the evidence of a police witness.  “Upset the lamp,” he said.  “I’d just lighted it, I was going upstairs, and my foot slipped against where one of the treads was a bit rotten, and down I went.  Thing was aflare in a moment!...”

He yawned at the end of the discussion, and moved doorward.

“So long,” said Mr. Polly.

“Good night,” said Mr. Rumbold.  “You played a brave man’s part!  If you don’t get a medal—­”

He left an eloquent pause.

“’Ear, ‘ear!” said Mr. Wintershed and Mr. Clamp.  “Goo’night, O’ Man,” said Mr. Hinks.

“Goo’night All,” said Mr. Polly ...

He went slowly upstairs.  The vague perplexity common to popular heroes pervaded his mind.  He entered the bedroom and turned up the electric light.  It was quite a pleasant room, one of the best in the Temperance Hotel, with a nice clean flowered wallpaper, and a very large looking-glass.  Miriam appeared to be asleep, and her shoulders were humped up under the clothes in a shapeless, forbidding lump that Mr. Polly had found utterly loathsome for fifteen years.  He went softly over to the dressing-table and surveyed himself thoughtfully.  Presently he hitched up the trousers.  “Miles too big for me,” he remarked.  “Funny not to have a pair of breeches of one’s own….  Like being born again.  Naked came I into the world….”

Miriam stirred and rolled over, and stared at him.

“Hello!” she said.

“Hello.”

“Come to bed?”

“It’s three.”

Pause, while Mr. Polly disrobed slowly.

“I been thinking,” said Miriam, “It isn’t going to be so bad after all.  We shall get your insurance.  We can easy begin all over again.”

“H’m,” said Mr. Polly.

She turned her face away from him and reflected.

“Get a better house,” said Miriam, regarding the wallpaper pattern.  “I’ve always ’ated them stairs.”

Mr. Polly removed a boot.

“Choose a better position where there’s more doing,” murmured Miriam….

“Not half so bad,” she whispered….

“You wanted stirring up,” she said, half asleep….

It dawned upon Mr. Polly for the first time that he had forgotten something.

He ought to have cut his throat!

The fact struck him as remarkable, but as now no longer of any particular urgency.  It seemed a thing far off in the past, and he wondered why he had not thought of it before.  Odd thing life is!  If he had done it he would never have seen this clean and agreeable apartment with the electric light….  His thoughts wandered into a question of detail.  Where could he have put the razor down?  Somewhere in the little room behind the shop, he supposed, but he could not think where more precisely.  Anyhow it didn’t matter now.

He undressed himself calmly, got into bed, and fell asleep almost immediately.