The H.G. Wells Reader (83 page)

Afterwards he found his face was wet with blood—which was none the less red stuff from the heart because it came from slight abrasions.

It is an illogical consequence of one human being's ill-treatment that we should fly immediately to another, but that is the way with us. It seemed to Mr. Polly that only a human touch could assuage the smart of his humiliation. Moreover it had for some undefined reason to be a feminine touch, and the number of women in his world was limited.

He thought of the Larkins family—the Larkins whom he had not been near now for ten long days. Healing people they seemed to him now—healing, simple people. They had good hearts, and he had neglected them for a mirage. If he rode over to them he would be able to talk nonsense and laugh and forget the whirl of memories and thoughts that was spinning round and round so unendurably in his brain.

“Law!” said Mrs. Larkins, “come in! You're quite a stranger, Elfrid!””

“Been seeing to business,” said the unveracious Polly.

“None of 'em ain't at 'ome, but Miriam's just out to do a bit of shopping. Won't let me shop, she won't, because I'm so keerless. She's a wonderful manager, that girl. Minnie's got some work at the carpet place. 'Ope it won't make 'er ill again. She's a loving deliket sort, is Minnie. . . . Come into the front parlour. It's a bit untidy, but you got to take us as you find us. Wot you been doing to your face?”

“Bit of a scrase with the bicycle,” said Mr. Polly.

“ 'Ow?”

“Trying to pass a carriage on the wrong side, and he drew up and ran me against a wall.”

Mrs. Larkins scrutinised it. “You ought to 'ave someone look after your scrases,” she said. “That's all red and rough. It ought to be cold-creamed. Bring your bicycle into the passage and come in.”

She “straightened up a bit,” that is to say she increased the dislocation of a number of scattered articles, put a workbasket on the top of several books, swept two or three dogs'-eared numbers of the
Lady's Own Novelist
from the table into the broken armchair, and proceeded to sketch together the tea-things with various such interpolations as: “Law, if I ain't forgot the butter!” All the while she talked of Annie's good spirits and cleverness with her millinery, and of Minnie's affection and Miriam's relative love of order and management. Mr. Polly stood by the window uneasily and thought how good and sincere was the Larkins tone. It was well to be back again.

“You're a long time finding that shop of yours,” said Mrs. Larkins.

“Don't do to be precipitous,” said Mr. Polly.

“No,” said Mrs. Larkins, “once you got it you got it. Like choosing a 'usband. You better see you got it good. I kept Larkins 'esitating two years I did, until I felt sure of him. A 'ansom man 'e was as you can see by the looks of the girls, but 'ansom does. You'd like a bit of jam to your tea, I expect? I 'ope they'll keep their men waiting when the time comes. I tell them if they think of marrying it only shows they don't know when they're well off. Here's Miriam!”

Miriam entered with several parcels in a net, and a peevish expression. “Mother,” she said, “you might 'ave prevented my going out with the net with the broken handle. I've been cutting my fingers with the string all the way 'ome.” Then she discovered Mr. Polly and her face brightened.

“Ello, Elfrid!” she said. “Where you been all this time?”

“Looking round,” said Mr. Polly.

“Found a shop?”

“One or two likely ones. But it takes time.”

“You've got the wrong cups, Mother.”

She went into the kitchen, disposed of her purchases, and returned with the right cups. “What you done to your face, Elfrid?” she asked, and came and scrutinised his scratches. “All rough it is.”

He repeated his story of the accident, and she was sympathetic in a pleasant homely way.

“You are quiet to-day,” she said as they sat down to tea.

“Mediatious,” said Mr. Polly.

Quite by accident he touched her hand on the table, and she answered his touch.

“Why not?” thought Mr. Polly, and looking up, caught Mrs. Larkins' eye and flushed guiltily. But Mrs. Larkins, with unusual restraint, said nothing. She merely made a grimace, enigmatical, but in its essence friendly.

Presently Minnie came in with some vague grievance against the manger of the carpet-making place about his method of estimating piece work. Her account was redundant, defective and highly technical, but redeemed by a certain earnestness. “I'm never within sixpence of what I reckon to be,” she said. “It's a bit too 'ot.” Then Mr. Polly, feeling that he was being conspicuously dull, launched into a description of the shop he was looking for and the shops he had seen. His mind warmed up as he talked.

“Found your tongue again,” said Mrs. Larkins.

He had. He began to embroider the subject and work upon it. For the first time it assumed picturesque and desirable qualities in his mind. It stimulated him to see how readily and willingly they accepted his sketches. Bright ideas appeared in his mind from nowhere. He was suddenly enthusiastic.

“When I get this shop of mine I shall have a cat. Must make a home for a cat, you know.”

“What, to catch the mice?' said Mrs. Larkins.

“No—sleep in the window. A venerable signor of a cat. Tabby. Cat's no good if it isn't tabby. Cat I'm going to have, and a canary! Didn't think of that before, but a cat and a canary seem to go, you know. Summer weather I shall sit at breakfast in the little room behind the shop, sun streaming in the window to rights, cat on a chair, canary singing and—Mrs. Polly. . . .”

“Ello!” said Mrs. Larkins.

“Mrs. Polly frying an extra bit of bacon. Bacon singing, cat singing, canary singing. Kettle singing. Mrs. Polly—”

“But who's Mrs. Polly going to be?” said Mrs. Larkins.

“Figment of the imagination, ma'am,” said Mr. Polly. “Put in to fill up picture. No face to figure as yet. Still, that's how it will be, I can assure you. I think I must have a bit of garden. Johnson's the man for a garden of course,” he said, going off at a tangent, “but I don't mean a fierce sort of garden. Earnest industry. Anxious moments. Fervious digging. Shan't go in for that sort of garden, ma'am. No! Too much backache for me. My garden will be just a patch of ‘sturtiums and sweet pea. Red brick yard, clothes' line. Trellis put up in odd time. Humorous wind vane. Creeper up the back of the house.”

“Virginia creeper?” asked Miriam.

“Canary creeper,” said Mr. Polly.

“You
will
'ave it nice,” said Miriam, desirously.

“Rather,” said Mr. Polly. “Ting-a-ling-a-ling.
Shop
!”

He straightened himself up and then they all laughed.

“Smart little shop,” he said. “Counter. Desk. All complete. Umbrella stand. Carpet on the floor. Cat asleep on the counter. Ties and hose on a rail over the counter. All right.”

“I wonder you don't set about it right off,” said Miriam.

“Mean to get it exactly right, m'am,” said Mr. Polly.

“Have to have a tomcat,” said Mr. Polly, and paused for an expectant moment. “Wouldn't do to open shop one morning, you know, and find the window full of kittens. Can't sell kittens. . . .”

When tea was over he was left alone with Minnie for a few minutes, and an odd intimation of an incident occurred that left Mr. Polly rather scared and shaken. A silence fell between them—an uneasy silence. He sat with his elbows on the table looking at her. All the way from Easewood to Stamton his erratic imagination had been running upon neat ways of proposing marriage. I don't know why it should have done, but it had. It was a kind of secret exercise that had not had any definite aim at the time, but which now recurred to him with extraordinary force. He couldn't think of anything in the world that wasn't the gambit to a proposal. It was almost irresistibly fascinating to think how immensely a few words from him would excite and revolutionise Minnie. She was sitting at the table with a workbasket among the tea things, mending a glove in order to avoid her share of clearing away.

“I like cats,” said Minnie after a thoughtful pause. “I'm always saying to mother, ‘I wish we 'ad a cat.' But we couldn't 'ave a cat 'ere—not with no yard.”

“Never had a cat myself,” said Mr. Polly. “No!”

“I'm fond of them,” said Minnie.

“I like the look of them,” said Mr. Polly. “Can't exactly call myself fond.”

“I expect I shall get one some day. When about you get your shop.”

“I shall have my shop all right before long,” said Mr. Polly. “Trust me. Canary bird and all.”

She shook her head. “I shall get a cat first,” she said. “You never mean anything you say.”

“Might get 'em together,” said Mr. Polly, with his sense of a neat thing outrunning his discretion.

“Why! 'ow d'you mean?” said Minnie, suddenly alert.

“Shop and cat thrown in,” said Mr. Polly in spite of himself, and his head swam and he broke out into a cold sweat as he said it.

He found her eyes fixed on him with an eager expression. “Mean to say—” she began as if for verification. He sprang to his feet, and turned to the window. “Little dog!” he said, and moved forward hastily. “Eating my bicycle tire, I believe,” he explained. And so escaped.

He saw his bicycle in the hall and cut it dead.

He heard Mrs. Larkins in the passage behind him as he opened the front door.

He turned to her. “Thought my bicycle was on fire,” he said. “Outside. Funny fancy! All right, reely. Little dog outside. . . . Miriam ready?”

“What for?”

“To go and meet Annie.”

Mrs. Larkins stared at him. “You're stopping for a bit of supper?”

“If I may,” said Mr. Polly.

“You're a rum un,” said Mrs. Larkins, and called: “Miriam!”

Minnie appeared at the door of the room looking infinitely perplexed. “There ain't a little dog anywhere, Elfrid,” she said.

Mr. Polly passed his hand over his brow. “I had a most curious sensation. Felt exactly as though something was up somewhere. That's why I said Little Dog. All right now.”

He bent down and pinched his bicycle tire.

“You was saying something about a cat, Elfrid,” said Minnie.

“Give you one,” he answered without looking up. “The very day my shop is opened.”

He straightened himself up and smiled reassuringly. “Trust me,” he said.

When, after imperceptible manaeuvers by Mrs. Larkins, he found himself starting circuitously through the inevitable recreation ground with Miriam to meet Annie, he found himself quite unable to avoid the topic of the shop that had now taken such a
grip upon him. A sense of danger only increased the attraction. Minnie's persistent disposition to accompany them had been crushed by a novel and violent and urgently expressed desire on the part of Mrs. Larkins to see her do something in the house sometimes. . . .

“You really think you'll open a shop?” asked Miriam.

“I hate cribs,” said Mr. Polly, adopting a moderate tone. “In a shop there's this drawback and that, but one is one's own master.”

“That wasn't all talk?”

“Not a bit of it.”

“After all,” he went on, “a little shop needn't be so bad.”

“It's a 'ome,” said Miriam.

“It's a home.”

Pause.

“There's no need to keep accounts and that sort of thing if there's no assistant. I dare say I could run a shop all right if I wasn't interfered with.”

“I should like to see you in your shop,” said Miriam. “I expect you'd keep everything tremendously neat.”

The conversation flagged.

“Let's sit down on one of those seats over there,” said Miriam. “Where we can see those blue flowers.”

They did as she suggested, and sat down in a corner where a triangular bed of stock and delphinium brightened the asphalted traceries of the Recreation Ground.

“I wonder what they call those flowers,” she said. “I always like them. They're handsome.”

“Delphicums and larkspurs,” said Mr. Polly. “They used to be in the park at Port Burdock.”

“Floriferous corner,” he added approvingly.

He put an arm over the back of the seat, and assumed a more comfortable attitude. He glanced at Miriam, who was sitting in a lax, thoughtful pose with her eyes on the flowers. She was wearing her old dress, she had not had time to change, and the blue tones of her old dress brought out a certain warmth in her skin, and her pose exaggerated whatever was feminine in her rather lean and insufficient body, and rounded her flat chest delusively. A little line of light lay along her profile. The afternoon was full of transfiguring sunshine, children were playing noisily in the adjacent sandpit, some Judas trees were brightly abloom in the villa gardens that bordered the Recreation Ground, and all the place was bright with touches of young summer colour. It all merged with the effect of Miriam in Mr. Polly's mind.

Her thoughts found speech. “One did ought to be happy in a shop,” she said with a note of unusual softness in her voice.

It seemed to him that she was right. One did ought to be happy in a shop. Folly not to banish dreams that made one ache of townless woods and bracken tangles and red-haired linen-clad figures sitting in dappled sunshine upon grey and crumbling
walls and looking queenly down on one with clear blue eyes. Cruel and foolish dreams they were, that ended in one's being laughed at and made a mock of. There was no mockery here.

“A shop's such a respectable thing to be,” said Miriam thoughtfully.

“I could be happy in a shop,” he said.