III
Mr. Polly sat beside the fat woman at one of the little green tables
at the back of the Potwell Inn, and struggled with the mystery of
life. It was one of those evenings, serenely luminous, amply and
atmospherically still, when the river bend was at its best. A swan
floated against the dark green masses of the further bank, the stream
flowed broad and shining to its destiny, with scarce a ripple--except
where the reeds came out from the headland--the three poplars rose
clear and harmonious against a sky of green and yellow. And it was as
if it was all securely within a great warm friendly globe of crystal
sky. It was as safe and enclosed and fearless as a child that has
still to be born. It was an evening full of the quality of tranquil,
unqualified assurance. Mr. Polly's mind was filled with the persuasion
that indeed all things whatsoever must needs be satisfying and
complete. It was incredible that life has ever done more than seemed
to jar, that there could be any shadow in life save such velvet
softnesses as made the setting for that silent swan, or any murmur but
the ripple of the water as it swirled round the chained and gently
swaying punt. And the mind of Mr. Polly, exalted and made tender by
this atmosphere, sought gently, but sought, to draw together the
varied memories that came drifting, half submerged, across the circle
of his mind.
He spoke in words that seemed like a bent and broken stick thrust
suddenly into water, destroying the mirror of the shapes they sought.
"Jim's not coming back again ever," he said. "He got drowned five
years ago."
"Where?" asked the fat woman, surprised.
"Miles from here. In the Medway. Away in Kent."
"Lor!" said the fat woman.
"It's right enough," said Mr. Polly.
"How d'you know?"
"I went to my home."
"Where?"
"Don't matter. I went and found out. He'd been in the water some days.
He'd got my clothes and they'd said it was me."
"_They_?"
"It don't matter. I'm not going back to them."
The fat woman regarded him silently for some time. Her expression of
scrutiny gave way to a quiet satisfaction. Then her brown eyes went to
the river.
"Poor Jim," she said. "'E 'adn't much Tact--ever."
She added mildly: "I can't 'ardly say I'm sorry."
"Nor me," said Mr. Polly, and got a step nearer the thought in him.
"But it don't seem much good his having been alive, does it?"
"'E wasn't much good," the fat woman admitted. "Ever."
"I suppose there were things that were good to him," Mr. Polly
speculated. "They weren't _our_ things."
His hold slipped again. "I often wonder about life," he said weakly.
He tried again. "One seems to start in life," he said, "expecting
something. And it doesn't happen. And it doesn't matter. One starts
with ideas that things are good and things are bad--and it hasn't much
relation to what _is_ good and what is bad. I've always been the
skeptaceous sort, and it's always seemed rot to me to pretend we know
good from evil. It's just what I've _never_ done. No Adam's apple
stuck in _my_ throat, ma'am. I don't own to it."
He reflected.
"I set fire to a house--once."
The fat woman started.
"I don't feel sorry for it. I don't believe it was a bad thing to
do--any more than burning a toy like I did once when I was a baby. I
nearly killed myself with a razor. Who hasn't?--anyhow gone as far as
thinking of it? Most of my time I've been half dreaming. I married
like a dream almost. I've never really planned my life or set out to
live. I happened; things happened to me. It's so with everyone. Jim
couldn't help himself. I shot at him and tried to kill him. I dropped
the gun and he got it. He very nearly had me. I wasn't a second too
soon--ducking.... Awkward--that night was.... M'mm.... But I don't
blame him--come to that. Only I don't see what it's all up to....
"Like children playing about in a nursery. Hurt themselves at
times....
"There's something that doesn't mind us," he resumed presently. "It
isn't what we try to get that we get, it isn't the good we think we do
is good. What makes us happy isn't our trying, what makes others happy
isn't our trying. There's a sort of character people like and stand up
for and a sort they won't. You got to work it out and take the
consequences.... Miriam was always trying."
"Who was Miriam?" asked the fat woman.
"No one you know. But she used to go about with her brows knit trying
not to do whatever she wanted to do--if ever she did want to do
anything--"
He lost himself.
"You can't help being fat," said the fat woman after a pause, trying
to get up to his thoughts.
"_You_ can't," said Mr. Polly.
"It helps and it hinders."
"Like my upside down way of talking."
"The magistrates wouldn't '_ave_ kept on the license to me if I 'adn't
been fat...."
"Then what have we done," said Mr. Polly, "to get an evening like
this? Lord! look at it!" He sent his arm round the great curve of the
sky.
"If I was a nigger or an Italian I should come out here and sing. I
whistle sometimes, but bless you, it's singing I've got in my mind.
Sometimes I think I live for sunsets."
"I don't see that it does you any good always looking at sunsets like
you do," said the fat woman.
"Nor me. But I do. Sunsets and things I was made to like."
"They don't 'elp you," said the fat woman thoughtfully.
"Who cares?" said Mr. Polly.
A deeper strain had come to the fat woman. "You got to die some day,"
she said.
"Some things I can't believe," said Mr. Polly suddenly, "and one is
your being a skeleton...." He pointed his hand towards the neighbour's
hedge. "Look at 'em--against the yellow--and they're just stingin'
nettles. Nasty weeds--if you count things by their uses. And no help
in the life hereafter. But just look at the look of them!"
"It isn't only looks," said the fat woman.
"Whenever there's signs of a good sunset and I'm not too busy," said
Mr. Polly, "I'll come and sit out here."
The fat woman looked at him with eyes in which contentment struggled
with some obscure reluctant protest, and at last turned them slowly to
the black nettle pagodas against the golden sky.
"I wish we could," she said.
"I will."
The fat woman's voice sank nearly to the inaudible.
"Not always," she said.
Mr. Polly was some time before he replied. "Come here always when I'm
a ghost," he replied.
"Spoil the place for others," said the fat woman, abandoning her moral
solicitudes for a more congenial point of view.
"Not my sort of ghost wouldn't," said Mr. Polly, emerging from another
long pause. "I'd be a sort of diaphalous feeling--just mellowish and
warmish like...."
They said no more, but sat on in the warm twilight until at last they
could scarcely distinguish each other's faces. They were not so much
thinking as lost in a smooth, still quiet of the mind. A bat flitted
by.
"Time we was going in, O' Party," said Mr. Polly, standing up. "Supper
to get. It's as you say, we can't sit here for ever."
The End
