III
It was after Canterbury that the universe became really disagreeable
to Mr. Polly. It was brought home to him, not so much vividly as with
a harsh and ungainly insistence, that he was a failure in his trade.
It was not the trade he ought to have chosen, though what trade he
ought to have chosen was by no means clear.
He made great but irregular efforts and produced a forced smartness
that, like a cheap dye, refused to stand sunshine. He acquired a sort
of parsimony also, in which acquisition he was helped by one or two
phases of absolute impecuniosity. But he was hopeless in competition
against the naturally gifted, the born hustlers, the young men who
meant to get on.
He left the Canterbury place very regretfully. He and another
commercial gentleman took a boat one Sunday afternoon at
Sturry-on-the-Stour, when the wind was in the west, and sailed it very
happily eastward for an hour. They had never sailed a boat before and
it seemed simple and wonderful. When they turned they found the river
too narrow for tacking and the tide running out like a sluice. They
battled back to Sturry in the course of six hours (at a shilling the
first hour and six-pence for each hour afterwards) rowing a mile in an
hour and a half or so, until the turn of the tide came to help them,
and then they had a night walk to Canterbury, and found themselves
remorselessly locked out.
The Canterbury employer was an amiable, religious-spirited man and he
would probably not have dismissed Mr. Polly if that unfortunate
tendency to phrase things had not shocked him. "A Tide's a Tide, Sir,"
said Mr. Polly, feeling that things were not so bad. "I've no
lune-attic power to alter that."
It proved impossible to explain to the Canterbury employer that this
was not a highly disrespectful and blasphemous remark.
"And besides, what good are you to me this morning, do you think?"
said the Canterbury employer, "with your arms pulled out of their
sockets?"
So Mr. Polly resumed his observations in the Wood Street warehouses
once more, and had some dismal times. The shoal of fish waiting for
the crumbs of employment seemed larger than ever.
He took counsel with himself. Should he "chuck" the outfitting? It
wasn't any good for him now, and presently when he was older and his
youthful smartness had passed into the dulness of middle age it would
be worse. What else could he do?
He could think of nothing. He went one night to a music hall and
developed a vague idea of a comic performance; the comic men seemed
violent rowdies and not at all funny; but when he thought of the great
pit of the audience yawning before him he realised that his was an
altogether too delicate talent for such a use. He was impressed by the
charm of selling vegetables by auction in one of those open shops near
London Bridge, but admitted upon reflection his general want of
technical knowledge. He made some enquiries about emigration, but none
of the colonies were in want of shop assistants without capital. He
kept up his attendance in Wood Street.
He subdued his ideal of salary by the sum of five pounds a year, and
was taken at that into a driving establishment in Clapham, which dealt
chiefly in ready-made suits, fed its assistants in an underground
dining-room and kept them until twelve on Saturdays. He found it hard
to be cheerful there. His fits of indigestion became worse, and he
began to lie awake at night and think. Sunshine and laughter seemed
things lost for ever; picnics and shouting in the moonlight.
The chief shopwalker took a dislike to him and nagged him. "Nar then
Polly!" "Look alive Polly!" became the burthen of his days. "As smart
a chap as you could have," said the chief shopwalker, "but no _Zest_.
No _Zest_! No _Vim_! What's the matter with you?"
During his night vigils Mr. Polly had a feeling--A young rabbit must
have very much the feeling, when after a youth of gambolling in sunny
woods and furtive jolly raids upon the growing wheat and exciting
triumphant bolts before ineffectual casual dogs, it finds itself at
last for a long night of floundering effort and perplexity, in a
net--for the rest of its life.
He could not grasp what was wrong with him. He made enormous efforts
to diagnose his case. Was he really just a "lazy slacker" who ought to
"buck up"? He couldn't find it in him to believe it. He blamed his
father a good deal--it is what fathers are for--in putting him to a
trade he wasn't happy to follow, but he found it impossible to say
what he ought to have followed. He felt there had been something
stupid about his school, but just where that came in he couldn't say.
He made some perfectly sincere efforts to "buck up" and "shove"
ruthlessly. But that was infernal--impossible. He had to admit himself
miserable with all the misery of a social misfit, and with no clear
prospect of more than the most incidental happiness ahead of him. And
for all his attempts at self-reproach or self-discipline he felt at
bottom that he wasn't at fault.
As a matter of fact all the elements of his troubles had been
adequately diagnosed by a certain high-browed, spectacled gentleman
living at Highbury, wearing a gold _pince_-_nez_, and writing for the
most part in the beautiful library of the Reform Club. This gentleman
did not know Mr. Polly personally, but he had dealt with him generally
as "one of those ill-adjusted units that abound in a society that has
failed to develop a collective intelligence and a collective will for
order, commensurate with its complexities."
But phrases of that sort had no appeal for Mr. Polly.
