III
All the preparations for the funeral ran easily and happily under Mrs.
Johnson's skilful hands. On the eve of the sad event she produced a
reserve of black sateen, the kitchen steps and a box of tin-tacks, and
decorated the house with festoons and bows of black in the best
possible taste. She tied up the knocker with black crape, and put a
large bow over the corner of the steel engraving of Garibaldi, and
swathed the bust of Mr. Gladstone, that had belonged to the deceased,
with inky swathings. She turned the two vases that had views of Tivoli
and the Bay of Naples round, so that these rather brilliant landscapes
were hidden and only the plain blue enamel showed, and she anticipated
the long-contemplated purchase of a tablecloth for the front room, and
substituted a violet purple cover for the now very worn and faded
raptures and roses in plushette that had hitherto done duty there.
Everything that loving consideration could do to impart a dignified
solemnity to her little home was done.
She had released Mr. Polly from the irksome duty of issuing
invitations, and as the moments of assembly drew near she sent him and
Mr. Johnson out into the narrow long strip of garden at the back of
the house, to be free to put a finishing touch or so to her
preparations. She sent them out together because she had a queer
little persuasion at the back of her mind that Mr. Polly wanted to
bolt from his sacred duties, and there was no way out of the garden
except through the house.
Mr. Johnson was a steady, successful gardener, and particularly good
with celery and peas. He walked slowly along the narrow path down the
centre pointing out to Mr. Polly a number of interesting points in the
management of peas, wrinkles neatly applied and difficulties wisely
overcome, and all that he did for the comfort and propitiation of that
fitful but rewarding vegetable. Presently a sound of nervous laughter
and raised voices from the house proclaimed the arrival of the earlier
guests, and the worst of that anticipatory tension was over.
When Mr. Polly re-entered the house he found three entirely strange
young women with pink faces, demonstrative manners and emphatic
mourning, engaged in an incoherent conversation with Mrs. Johnson. All
three kissed him with great gusto after the ancient English fashion.
"These are your cousins Larkins," said Mrs. Johnson; "that's Annie
(unexpected hug and smack), that's Miriam (resolute hug and smack),
and that's Minnie (prolonged hug and smack)."
"Right-O," said Mr. Polly, emerging a little crumpled and breathless
from this hearty introduction. "I see."
"Here's Aunt Larkins," said Mrs. Johnson, as an elderly and stouter
edition of the three young women appeared in the doorway.
Mr. Polly backed rather faint-heartedly, but Aunt Larkins was not to
be denied. Having hugged and kissed her nephew resoundingly she
gripped him by the wrists and scanned his features. She had a round,
sentimental, freckled face. "I should '_ave_ known 'im anywhere," she
said with fervour.
"Hark at mother!" said the cousin called Annie. "Why, she's never set
eyes on him before!"
"I should '_ave_ known 'im anywhere," said Mrs. Larkins, "for Lizzie's
child. You've got her eyes! It's a Resemblance! And as for _never
seeing 'im_-- I've _dandled_ him, Miss Imperence. I've dandled him."
"You couldn't dandle him now, Ma!" Miss Annie remarked with a shriek
of laughter.
All the sisters laughed at that. "The things you say, Annie!" said
Miriam, and for a time the room was full of mirth.
Mr. Polly felt it incumbent upon him to say something. "_My_ dandling
days are over," he said.
The reception of this remark would have convinced a far more modest
character than Mr. Polly that it was extremely witty.
Mr. Polly followed it up by another one almost equally good. "My turn
to dandle," he said, with a sly look at his aunt, and convulsed
everyone.
"Not me," said Mrs. Larkins, taking his point, "_thank_ you," and
achieved a climax.
It was queer, but they seemed to be easy people to get on with anyhow.
They were still picking little ripples and giggles of mirth from the
idea of Mr. Polly dandling Aunt Larkins when Mr. Johnson, who had
answered the door, ushered in a stooping figure, who was at once
hailed by Mrs. Johnson as "Why! Uncle Pentstemon!" Uncle Pentstemon
was rather a shock. His was an aged rather than venerable figure; Time
had removed the hair from the top of his head and distributed a small
dividend of the plunder in little bunches carelessly and impartially
over the rest of his features; he was dressed in a very big old frock
coat and a long cylindrical top hat, which he had kept on; he was very
much bent, and he carried a rush basket from which protruded coy
intimations of the lettuces and onions he had brought to grace the
occasion. He hobbled into the room, resisting the efforts of Johnson
to divest him of his various encumbrances, halted and surveyed the
company with an expression of profound hostility, breathing hard.
Recognition quickened in his eyes.
"_You_ here," he said to Aunt Larkins and then; "You _would_ be....
These your gals?"
"They are," said Aunt Larkins, "and better gals----"
"That Annie?" asked Uncle Pentstemon, pointing a horny thumb-nail.
"Fancy your remembering her name!"
"She mucked up my mushroom bed, the baggage!" said Uncle Pentstemon
ungenially, "and I give it to her to rights. Trounced her I
did--fairly. I remember her. Here's some green stuff for you, Grace.
Fresh it is and wholesome. I shall be wanting the basket back and mind
you let me have it.... Have you nailed him down yet? You always was a
bit in front of what was needful."
His attention was drawn inward by a troublesome tooth, and he sucked
at it spitefully. There was something potent about this old man that
silenced everyone for a moment or so. He seemed a fragment from the
ruder agricultural past of our race, like a lump of soil among things
of paper. He put his basket of vegetables very deliberately on the new
violet tablecloth, removed his hat carefully and dabbled his brow, and
wiped out his hat brim with a crimson and yellow pocket handkerchief.
"I'm glad you were able to come, Uncle," said Mrs. Johnson.
"Oh, I _came_" said Uncle Pentstemon. "I _came_."
He turned on Mrs. Larkins. "Gals in service?" he asked.
"They aren't and they won't be," said Mrs. Larkins.
"No," he said with infinite meaning, and turned his eye on Mr. Polly.
"You Lizzie's boy?" he said.
Mr. Polly was spared much self-exposition by the tumult occasioned by
further arrivals.
"Ah! here's May Punt!" said Mrs. Johnson, and a small woman dressed in
the borrowed mourning of a large woman and leading a very small
long-haired observant little boy--it was his first funeral--appeared,
closely followed by several friends of Mrs. Johnson who had come to
swell the display of respect and made only vague, confused impressions
upon Mr. Polly's mind. (Aunt Mildred, who was an unexplained family
scandal, had declined Mrs. Johnson's hospitality.)
Everybody was in profound mourning, of course, mourning in the modern
English style, with the dyer's handiwork only too apparent, and hats
and jackets of the current cut. There was very little crape, and the
costumes had none of the goodness and specialisation and genuine
enjoyment of mourning for mourning's sake that a similar continental
gathering would have displayed. Still that congestion of strangers in
black sufficed to stun and confuse Mr. Polly's impressionable mind. It
seemed to him much more extraordinary than anything he had expected.
"Now, gals," said Mrs. Larkins, "see if you can help," and the three
daughters became confusingly active between the front room and the
back.
"I hope everyone'll take a glass of sherry and a biscuit," said Mrs.
Johnson. "We don't stand on ceremony," and a decanter appeared in the
place of Uncle Pentstemon's vegetables.
Uncle Pentstemon had refused to be relieved of his hat; he sat stiffly
down on a chair against the wall with that venerable headdress between
his feet, watching the approach of anyone jealously. "Don't you go
squashing my hat," he said. Conversation became confused and general.
Uncle Pentstemon addressed himself to Mr. Polly. "You're a little
chap," he said, "a puny little chap. I never did agree to Lizzie
marrying him, but I suppose by-gones must be bygones now. I suppose
they made you a clerk or something."
"Outfitter," said Mr. Polly.
"I remember. Them girls pretend to be dressmakers."
"They _are_ dressmakers," said Mrs. Larkins across the room.
"I _will_ take a glass of sherry. They 'old to it, you see."
He took the glass Mrs. Johnson handed him, and poised it critically
between a horny finger and thumb. "You'll be paying for this," he said
to Mr. Polly. "Here's _to_ you.... Don't you go treading on my hat,
young woman. You brush your skirts against it and you take a shillin'
off its value. It ain't the sort of 'at you see nowadays."
He drank noisily.
The sherry presently loosened everybody's tongue, and the early
coldness passed.
"There ought to have been a _post-mortem_," Polly heard Mrs. Punt
remarking to one of Mrs. Johnson's friends, and Miriam and another
were lost in admiration of Mrs. Johnson's decorations. "So very nice
and refined," they were both repeating at intervals.
The sherry and biscuits were still being discussed when Mr. Podger,
the undertaker, arrived, a broad, cheerfully sorrowful, clean-shaven
little man, accompanied by a melancholy-faced assistant. He conversed
for a time with Johnson in the passage outside; the sense of his
business stilled the rising waves of chatter and carried off
everyone's attention in the wake of his heavy footsteps to the room
above.
