Chapter the Fourth
Mr. Polly an Orphan
I
Then a great change was brought about in the life of Mr. Polly by the
death of his father. His father had died suddenly--the local
practitioner still clung to his theory that it was imagination he
suffered from, but compromised in the certificate with the
appendicitis that was then so fashionable--and Mr. Polly found himself
heir to a debateable number of pieces of furniture in the house of his
cousin near Easewood Junction, a family Bible, an engraved portrait of
Garibaldi and a bust of Mr. Gladstone, an invalid gold watch, a gold
locket formerly belonging to his mother, some minor jewelry and
_bric_-a-brac, a quantity of nearly valueless old clothes and an
insurance policy and money in the bank amounting altogether to the sum
of three hundred and ninety-five pounds.
Mr. Polly had always regarded his father as an immortal, as an eternal
fact, and his father being of a reserved nature in his declining years
had said nothing about the insurance policy. Both wealth and
bereavement therefore took Mr. Polly by surprise and found him a
little inadequate. His mother's death had been a childish grief and
long forgotten, and the strongest affection in his life had been for
Parsons. An only child of sociable tendencies necessarily turns his
back a good deal upon home, and the aunt who had succeeded his mother
was an economist and furniture polisher, a knuckle rapper and sharp
silencer, no friend for a slovenly little boy. He had loved other
little boys and girls transitorily, none had been frequent and
familiar enough to strike deep roots in his heart, and he had grown up
with a tattered and dissipated affectionateness that was becoming
wildly shy. His father had always been a stranger, an irritable
stranger with exceptional powers of intervention and comment, and an
air of being disappointed about his offspring. It was shocking to lose
him; it was like an unexpected hole in the universe, and the writing
of "Death" upon the sky, but it did not tear Mr. Polly's heartstrings
at first so much as rouse him to a pitch of vivid attention.
He came down to the cottage at Easewood in response to an urgent
telegram, and found his father already dead. His cousin Johnson
received him with much solemnity and ushered him upstairs, to look at
a stiff, straight, shrouded form, with a face unwontedly quiet and, as
it seemed, with its pinched nostrils, scornful.
"Looks peaceful," said Mr. Polly, disregarding the scorn to the best
of his ability.
"It was a merciful relief," said Mr. Johnson.
There was a pause.
"Second--Second Departed I've ever seen. Not counting mummies," said
Mr. Polly, feeling it necessary to say something.
"We did all we could."
"No doubt of it, O' Man," said Mr. Polly.
A second long pause followed, and then, much to Mr. Polly's great
relief, Johnson moved towards the door.
Afterwards Mr. Polly went for a solitary walk in the evening light,
and as he walked, suddenly his dead father became real to him. He
thought of things far away down the perspective of memory, of jolly
moments when his father had skylarked with a wildly excited little
boy, of a certain annual visit to the Crystal Palace pantomime, full
of trivial glittering incidents and wonders, of his father's dread
back while customers were in the old, minutely known shop. It is
curious that the memory which seemed to link him nearest to the dead
man was the memory of a fit of passion. His father had wanted to get a
small sofa up the narrow winding staircase from the little room behind
the shop to the bedroom above, and it had jammed. For a time his
father had coaxed, and then groaned like a soul in torment and given
way to blind fury, had sworn, kicked and struck at the offending piece
of furniture and finally wrenched it upstairs, with considerable
incidental damage to lath and plaster and one of the castors. That
moment when self-control was altogether torn aside, the shocked
discovery of his father's perfect humanity, had left a singular
impression on Mr. Polly's queer mind. It was as if something
extravagantly vital had come out of his father and laid a warmly
passionate hand upon his heart. He remembered that now very vividly,
and it became a clue to endless other memories that had else been
dispersed and confusing.
A weakly wilful being struggling to get obdurate things round
impossible corners--in that symbol Mr. Polly could recognise himself
and all the trouble of humanity.
He hadn't had a particularly good time, poor old chap, and now it was
all over. Finished....
Johnson was the sort of man who derives great satisfaction from a
funeral, a melancholy, serious, practical-minded man of five and
thirty, with great powers of advice. He was the up-line ticket clerk
at Easewood Junction, and felt the responsibilities of his position.
He was naturally thoughtful and reserved, and greatly sustained in
that by an innate rectitude of body and an overhanging and forward
inclination of the upper part of his face and head. He was pale but
freckled, and his dark grey eyes were deeply set. His lightest
interest was cricket, but he did not take that lightly. His chief
holiday was to go to a cricket match, which he did as if he was going
to church, and he watched critically, applauded sparingly, and was
darkly offended by any unorthodox play. His convictions upon all
subjects were taciturnly inflexible. He was an obstinate player of
draughts and chess, and an earnest and persistent reader of the
_British Weekly_. His wife was a pink, short, wilfully smiling,
managing, ingratiating, talkative woman, who was determined to be
pleasant, and take a bright hopeful view of everything, even when it
was not really bright and hopeful. She had large blue expressive eyes
and a round face, and she always spoke of her husband as Harold. She
addressed sympathetic and considerate remarks about the deceased to
Mr. Polly in notes of brisk encouragement. "He was really quite
cheerful at the end," she said several times, with congratulatory
gusto, "quite cheerful."
She made dying seem almost agreeable.
Both these people were resolved to treat Mr. Polly very well, and to
help his exceptional incompetence in every possible way, and after a
simple supper of ham and bread and cheese and pickles and cold apple
tart and small beer had been cleared away, they put him into the
armchair almost as though he was an invalid, and sat on chairs that
made them look down on him, and opened a directive discussion of the
arrangements for the funeral. After all a funeral is a distinct social
opportunity, and rare when you have no family and few relations, and
they did not want to see it spoilt and wasted.
"You'll have a hearse of course," said Mrs. Johnson. "Not one of them
combinations with the driver sitting on the coffin. Disrespectful I
think they are. I can't fancy how people can bring themselves to be
buried in combinations." She flattened her voice in a manner she used
to intimate aesthetic feeling. "I _do_ like them glass hearses," she
said. "So refined and nice they are."
"Podger's hearse you'll have," said Johnson conclusively. "It's the
best in Easewood."
"Everything that's right and proper," said Mr. Polly.
"Podger's ready to come and measure at any time," said Johnson.
"Then you'll want a mourner's carriage or two, according as to whom
you're going to invite," said Mr. Johnson.
"Didn't think of inviting any one," said Polly.
"Oh! you'll _have_ to ask a few friends," said Mr. Johnson. "You can't
let your father go to his grave without asking a few friends."
"Funerial baked meats like," said Mr. Polly.
"Not baked, but of course you'll have to give them something. Ham and
chicken's very suitable. You don't want a lot of cooking with the
ceremony coming into the middle of it. I wonder who Alfred ought to
invite, Harold. Just the immediate relations; one doesn't want a great
crowd of people and one doesn't want not to show respect."
"But he hated our relations--most of them."
"He's not hating them _now_," said Mrs. Johnson, "you may be sure of
that. It's just because of that I think they ought to come--all of
them--even your Aunt Mildred."
"Bit vulturial, isn't it?" said Mr. Polly unheeded.
"Wouldn't be more than twelve or thirteen people if they _all_ came,"
said Mr. Johnson.
"We could have everything put out ready in the back room and the
gloves and whiskey in the front room, and while we were all at the
ceremony, Bessie could bring it all into the front room on a tray and
put it out nice and proper. There'd have to be whiskey and sherry or
port for the ladies...."
"Where'll you get your mourning?" asked Johnson abruptly.
Mr. Polly had not yet considered this by-product of sorrow. "Haven't
thought of it yet, O' Man."
A disagreeable feeling spread over his body as though he was
blackening as he sat. He hated black garments.
"I suppose I must have mourning," he said.
"Well!" said Johnson with a solemn smile.
"Got to see it through," said Mr. Polly indistinctly.
"If I were you," said Johnson, "I should get ready-made trousers.
That's all you really want. And a black satin tie and a top hat with a
deep mourning band. And gloves."
"Jet cuff links he ought to have--as chief mourner," said Mrs.
Johnson.
"Not obligatory," said Johnson.
"It shows respect," said Mrs. Johnson.
"It shows respect of course," said Johnson.
And then Mrs. Johnson went on with the utmost gusto to the details of
the "casket," while Mr. Polly sat more and more deeply and droopingly
into the armchair, assenting with a note of protest to all they said.
After he had retired for the night he remained for a long time perched
on the edge of the sofa which was his bed, staring at the prospect
before him. "Chasing the O' Man about up to the last," he said.
He hated the thought and elaboration of death as a healthy animal must
hate it. His mind struggled with unwonted social problems.
"Got to put 'em away somehow, I suppose," said Mr. Polly.
"Wish I'd looked him up a bit more while he was alive," said Mr.
Polly.
