The History of Mr. Polly

He answered the suggestion of a bright junior apprentice in a corner of the dormitory. “What’s the Good of a Cross summons?” he replied; “with old Corks, the chemist, and Mottishead, the house agent, and all that lot on the Bench? Humble Pie, that’s my meal to-morrow, O’ Man. Humble Pie.”

Packing went on for a time.

“But Lord! what a Life it is!” said Parsons, giving his deep notes scope. “Ten-thirty-five a man trying to do his Duty, mistaken perhaps, but trying his best; ten-forty – Ruined! Ruined!” He lifted his voice to a shout. “Ruined!” and dropped it to “Like an earthquake.”

“Heated altaclation,” said Polly.

“Like a blooming earthquake!” said Parsons, with the notes of a rising wind.

He meditated gloomily upon his future and a colder chill invaded Polly’s mind. “Likely to get another crib, ain’t I – with assaulted the guvnor on my reference. I suppose, though, he won’t give me refs. Hard enough to get a crib at the best of times,” said Parsons.

“You ought to go round with a show, O’ Man,” said Mr. Polly.

Things were not so dreadful in the police court as Mr. Polly had expected. He was given a seat with other witnesses against the wall of the court, and after an interesting larceny case Parsons appeared and stood, not in the dock, but at the table. By that time Mr. Polly’s legs, which had been tucked up at first under his chair out of respect to the court, were extended straight before him and his hands were in his trouser pockets. He was inventing names for the four magistrates on the bench, and had got to “the Grave and Reverend Signor with the palatial Boko,” when his thoughts were recalled to gravity by the sound of his name. He rose with alacrity and was fielded by an expert policeman from a brisk attempt to get into the vacant dock. The clerk to the Justices repeated the oath with incredible rapidity.

“Right O,” said Mr. Polly, but quite respectfully, and kissed the book.

His evidence was simple and quite audible after one warning from the superintendent of police to “speak up.” He tried to put in a good word for Parsons by saying he was “naturally of a choleraic disposition,” but the start and the slow grin of enjoyment upon the face of the grave and Reverend Signor with the palatial Boko suggested that the word was not so good as he had thought it. The rest of the bench was frankly puzzled and there were hasty consultations.

“You mean ’E ’As a ’Ot temper,” said the presiding magistrate.

“I mean ’E ’As a ’Ot temper,” replied Polly, magically incapable of aspirates for the moment.

“You don’t mean ’E ketches cholera.”

“I mean – he’s easily put out.”

“Then why can’t you say so?” said the presiding magistrate.

Parsons was bound over.

He came for his luggage while every one was in the shop, and Garvace would not let him invade the business to say good-by. When Mr. Polly went upstairs for margarine and bread and tea, he slipped on into the dormitory at once to see what was happening further in the Parsons case. But Parsons had vanished. There was no Parsons, no trace of Parsons. His cubicle was swept and garnished. For the first time in his life Polly had a sense of irreparable loss.

A minute or so after Platt dashed in.

“Ugh!” he said, and then discovered Polly. Polly was leaning out of the window and did not look around. Platt went up to him.

“He’s gone already,” said Platt. “Might have stopped to say good-by to a chap.”

There was a little pause before Polly replied. He thrust his finger into his mouth and gulped.

“Bit on that beastly tooth of mine,” he said, still not looking at Platt. “It’s made my eyes water, something chronic. Any one might think I’d been doing a blooming Pipe, by the look of me.”

Chapter the Third

Cribs

I

Port Burdock was never the same place for Mr. Polly after Parsons had left it. There were no chest notes in his occasional letters, and little of the “Joy de Vive” got through by them. Parsons had gone, he said, to London, and found a place as warehouseman in a cheap outfitting shop near St. Paul’s Churchyard, where references were not required. It became apparent as time passed that new interests were absorbing him. He wrote of socialism and the rights of man, things that had no appeal for Mr. Polly. He felt strangers had got hold of his Parsons, were at work upon him, making him into someone else, something less picturesque… Port Burdock became a dreariness full of faded memories of Parsons and work a bore. Platt revealed himself alone as a tiresome companion, obsessed by romantic ideas about intrigues and vices and “society women.”

Mr. Polly’s depression manifested itself in a general slackness. A certain impatience in the manner of Mr. Garvace presently got upon his nerves. Relations were becoming strained. He asked for a rise of salary to test his position, and gave notice to leave when it was refused.

It took him two months to place himself in another situation, and during that time he had quite a disagreeable amount of loneliness, disappointment, anxiety and humiliation.

He went at first to stay with a married cousin who had a house at Easewood. His widowed father had recently given up the music and bicycle shop (with the post of organist at the parish church) that had sustained his home, and was living upon a small annuity as a guest with this cousin, and growing a little tiresome on account of some mysterious internal discomfort that the local practitioner diagnosed as imagination. He had aged with mysterious rapidity and become excessively irritable, but the cousin’s wife was a born manager, and contrived to get along with him. Our Mr. Polly’s status was that of a guest pure and simple, but after a fortnight of congested hospitality in which he wrote nearly a hundred letters beginning:

Sir:

Referring to your advt. in the “Christian World” for an improver in Gents’ outfitting I beg to submit myself for the situation. Have had six years’ experience…

and upset a bottle of ink over a toilet cover and the bedroom carpet, his cousin took him for a walk and pointed out the superior advantages of apartments in London from which to swoop upon the briefly yawning vacancy.

“Helpful,” said Mr. Polly; “very helpful, O’ Man indeed. I might have gone on there for weeks,” and packed.

He got a room in an institution that was partly a benevolent hostel for men in his circumstances and partly a high minded but forbidding coffee house and a centre for pleasant Sunday afternoons. Mr. Polly spent a critical but pleasant Sunday afternoon in a back seat, inventing such phrases as:

“Soulful Owner of the Exorbiant Largenial Development.” – An Adam’s Apple being in question.

“Earnest Joy.”

“Exultant, Urgent Loogoobuosity.”

A manly young curate, marking and misunderstanding his preoccupied face and moving lips, came and sat by him and entered into conversation with the idea of making him feel more at home. The conversation was awkward and disconnected for a minute or so, and then suddenly a memory of the Port Burdock Bazaar occurred to Mr. Polly, and with a baffling whisper of “Lill’ dog,” and a reassuring nod, he rose up and escaped, to wander out relieved and observant into the varied London streets.

He found the collection of men he found waiting about in wholesale establishments in Wood Street and St. Paul’s Churchyard (where they interview the buyers who have come up from the country) interesting and stimulating, but far too strongly charged with the suggestion of his own fate to be really joyful. There were men in all degrees between confidence and distress, and in every stage between extravagant smartness and the last stages of decay. There were sunny young men full of an abounding and elbowing energy, before whom the soul of Polly sank in hate and dismay. “Smart Juniors,” said Polly to himself, “full of Smart Juniosity. The Shoveacious Cult.” There were hungry looking individuals of thirty-five or so that he decided must be “Proletelerians” – he had often wanted to find someone who fitted that attractive word. Middle-aged men, “too Old at Forty,” discoursed in the waiting-rooms on the outlook in the trade; it had never been so bad, they said, while Mr. Polly wondered if “De-juiced” was a permissible epithet. There were men with an overweening sense of their importance, manifestly annoyed and angry to find themselves still disengaged, and inclined to suspect a plot, and men so faint-hearted one was terrified to imagine their behaviour when it came to an interview. There was a fresh-faced young man with an unintelligent face who seemed to think himself equipped against the world beyond all misadventure by a collar of exceptional height, and another who introduced a note of gaiety by wearing a flannel shirt and a check suit of remarkable virulence. Every day Mr. Polly looked round to mark how many of the familiar faces had gone, and the deepening anxiety (reflecting his own) on the faces that remained, and every day some new type joined the drifting shoal. He realised how small a chance his poor letter from Easewood ran against this hungry cluster of competitors at the fountain head.

At the back of Mr. Polly’s mind while he made his observations was a disagreeable flavour of dentist’s parlour. At any moment his name might be shouted, and he might have to haul himself into the presence of some fresh specimen of employer, and to repeat once more his passionate protestation of interest in the business, his possession of a capacity for zeal – zeal on behalf of anyone who would pay him a yearly salary of twenty-six pounds a year.

The prospective employer would unfold his ideals of the employee. “I want a smart, willing young man, thoroughly willing – who won’t object to take trouble. I don’t want a slacker, the sort of fellow who has to be pushed up to his work and held there. I’ve got no use for him.”

At the back of Mr. Polly’s mind, and quite beyond his control, the insubordinate phrasemaker would be proffering such combinations as “Chubby Chops,” or “Chubby Charmer,” as suitable for the gentleman, very much as a hat salesman proffers hats.

“I don’t think you’d find much slackness about me, sir,” said Mr. Polly brightly, trying to disregard his deeper self.

“I want a young man who means getting on.”

“Exactly, sir. Excelsior.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said excelsior, sir. It’s a sort of motto of mine. From Longfellow. Would you want me to serve through?”

The chubby gentleman explained and reverted to his ideals, with a faint air of suspicion. “Do you mean getting on?” he asked.

“I hope so, sir,” said Mr. Polly.

“Get on or get out, eh?”