POLLY'S WRATH
Polly posted her letter on the way to the theatre. This evening she had
a private engagement for ten o'clock, and on setting forth to the
appointed place she looked carefully about her to make sure that no one
watched or followed her. Christopher Parish was not the only young man
who had a habit of standing to wait for her at the theatre door. Upon
him she could lay her commands with some assurance that they would be
observed, but others were less submissive, and at times had given her
trouble. To be sure, she could always get rid of importunate persons by
the use of her special gift, that primitive sarcasm which few cared to
face for more than a minute or two; but with admirers Polly wished to
be as far as possible gracious, never coming to extremities with one of
them until she was quite certain that she thoroughly disliked him.
Finding the coast clear (which after all slightly disappointed her) she
walked sharply into another street, where she hailed a passing hansom,
and was driven to Lincoln's Inn Fields.
Here, on the quiet pavement shadowed by the College of Surgeons, she
lingered in expectancy. Ten was striking, but she looked in vain for
the figure she would recognize--that of a well-dressed, middle-aged
man, with a white silk comforter about his neck, and drawn up so as to
hide his mouth. Twice she had met him here, and on each occasion he was
waiting for her when she arrived. Five minutes passed--ten minutes. She
grew very impatient and, as a necessary consequence, very angry. To
avoid unpleasant attention from the few people who walked by, she had
to pace backwards and forwards as if going about her business. When the
clocks chimed the first quarter Polly was in a turmoil of anger,
blended with disappointment and apprehension. She could not have made a
mistake. The message she had received was "W. S. T.," which meant
"Wednesday same time." Some accident must have interfered. At twenty
minutes past ten she had lost all hope. She must go home, and wait for
a possible communication on the morrow.
Swinging her skirts, clenching her fists, and talking silently at a
great rate, she walked in the direction of Chancery Lane. At a corner
someone going in the opposite direction caught sight of her and
stopped. Polly was so preoccupied that she would not have noticed the
figure had it merely passed; by stopping it drew her attention, and she
beheld Christopher Parish.
"Why, Miss Sparkes!"
He held out his hand, but to no purpose. Polly had her eyes fixed upon
him, and they flashed with hostility.
"What do you mean by it?"
"Mean by what?"
The young man was astonished; his hand dropped, and he trembled before
her.
"How dare you spy after me? Nasty little wretch!"
"Spy after you, Miss Sparkes? Why, I hadn't the least idea of anything
of the kind; I swear I hadn't! I was just taking a walk--"
"Oh, yes! Of course! You're always taking a walk, aren't you? And you
always come just this way 'cause it's nice and convenient for Lambeth
Road, ain't it? I've a good mind to call a p'liceman and give you in
charge for stopping me in the street!"
"Well, did ever anybody hear such a thing as this?" exclaimed Mr.
Parish, faint in voice and utterly at a loss for protestations at all
effective. "I tell you I was only taking a walk--that's to say, I've
been with a friend."
"A friend? Oh, yes, of course. What friend?"
"It's somebody you don't know; his name--"
"Oh, of course, I don't know him! And I don't know you either after
to-night, so just remember that, Mr. Parish. The idea! If I can't take
two steps without being followed and spied upon! And you call yourself
a gentleman. Get out of my way, please. If you want to follow and spy,
you're quite at liberty to do so. P'r'aps it'll ease your nasty little
mind. Don't talk to me! What business have you got to stop me in the
street, I'd like to know? If you're not careful I shall send a
complaint to your employers, and then you'll have plenty of time to go
taking walks."
She turned from him and pursued her way, but not so quickly as before.
Christopher, limp with misery, tried to move off in another direction,
but in spite of himself he was drawn after her. By Chancery Lane and
along the Strand he kept her in sight, often with difficulty, for he
durst not draw nearer than some twenty yards. At Charing Cross she
stopped, and by her movements showed that she was looking for an
omnibus. Parish longed to approach, quivered with the ever-recurrent
impulse, but his fear prevailed. In a more lucid state of mind he would
probably have remarked that Polly allowed a great many omnibuses to go
by, and that she was surely waiting much longer than she need have
done. But at length she jumped in and disappeared, whereupon Mr. Parish
spent all the money he had with him on a large brandy and soda, hoping
it would make him drunk.
The door of the house in Kennington Road stood open; in the passage Mr.
Gammon and Mr. Cheeseman were conversing genially. They nodded to
Polly, but did not speak. Passing them to the head of the kitchen
stairs she called to Mrs. Bubb, and that lady's voice summoned her to
descend.
"Are you alone?" asked Miss Sparkes sharply.
"There's only Mrs. Cheeseman."
Polly went down into the kitchen, where Mrs. Cheeseman, a stout woman
of slatternly appearance, was sitting with her legs crossed and a plate
of shrimps in her lap.
"Have a srimp, Polly?" began Mrs. Bubb, anxious to dismiss the memory
of recent discord.
"Thank you, Mrs. Bubb, if I have a fancy for srimps I can afford to buy
them for myself."
"Well, you _are_ nasty! Ain't she real obstropolous, Mrs. Cheeseman? I
never knew a nastier-tempered girl in all my life, that I never did.
There's actially no living with her."
"Now set down, Polly," urged the stout woman in an unctuous voice. "Set
down, do, an' tike things easy. You'll worrit your sweet self to death
before you're many years older if you go on like this."
"I'm much obliged to you, Mrs. Cheeseman," answered Polly, holding
herself very stiff; "but I didn't come here to set down, nor to talk
neither. But I'm glad you're here, because you'll be a witness to what
I say. I've come to give Mrs. Bubb a week's notice. She's often enough
told me that she wants to keep her house respectable, and I'm sure
she'll be glad to get rid of people as don't suit her. It's the first
time I was ever told that I disgraced a 'ouse, and I hope it'll be the
last time too. When I pay my rent to-morrow morning you'll please to
understand, Mrs. Bubb, that I've given a week's notice. I may be a
disgrace, but I dare say there's people as won't be ashamed to let me a
room. And that's what I came to say, and now I've said it, and Mrs.
Cheeseman is a witness."
This was spoken so rapidly that it left Polly breathless and with a
very high colour. The elder women looked at each other, and Mrs.
Cheeseman, with a shrimp in her mouth, resumed the attempt at
pacification.
"Now, see 'ere, Polly. You're a young gyell, my dear, and a 'andsome
gyell, as we all know, and you've only one fault, which there ain't no
need to mention it. And we're all fond of you, Polly, that's the fact.
Ain't we all fond of her, Mrs. Bubb?"
"Oh, yes, she's very fond of me!" exclaimed the girl. "And so is my
Aunt Louisa. And to show it they go telling everybody that I ain't
respectable, that I'm a disgrace to a decent 'ouse. D'you think I'll
stand it?" Of a sudden she changed from irony to fierceness. "What do
you mean by it, Mrs. Bubb? Did you never hear of people being
prosecuted for taking away people's characters? Just you mind what
you're about, Mrs. Bubb. I give you fair warning, and that's all I have
to say to you."
Having relieved her feelings with these and a few more verbal missiles,
Polly ran up the kitchen steps. In the passage the two men were still
conversing; at sight of Polly they stopped with an abruptness which did
not escape her observation. No doubt, she said to herself, they had
been talking about her. No doubt, too, they had their reasons for
letting her go by as before without a word. Only when she was half-way
up the first flight of stairs did Mr. Cheeseman call to her a
"Goodnight, Miss Sparkes," to which she made no reply whatever.
On the morrow she called at the little stationer's shop, but no letter
awaited her. She decided to be again at the rendezvous that evening,
lest there should have been some mistake in her cipher message; but she
lingered near the College of Surgeons in vain. Polly's heart sank as
she went home, for to-night there was no one to quarrel with. Mrs. Bubb
and all the lodgers had shown that they meant to hold aloof; not even
Moggie would look at her or speak a word. It was quite an unprecedented
state of things, and Polly found it disagreeable.
There was only one consolation, and that a poor one. She had received a
letter from Christopher Parish, a letter of abject remonstrance and
entreaty. He grovelled at her feet. He talked frantically of poison and
the river. If she would but meet him and hear him in his own defence!
And Polly quite meaning to do so, gave herself the pleasure of
appearing obdurate for a couple of days.
At the theatre she examined every row of spectators in stalls and
dress-circle, having he own reason for thinking that she might discover
certain face. But no such fortune befell her, and still no letter came.
At home she suffered increasing discomfort. For one thing she had to
seek her meals in the nearest coffee-shop instead of going down into
Mrs. Bubb's kitchen and gossiping as she ate at the family deal table,
amid the dirt and disorder which custom had made pleasant. When in the
house she locked herself in her bedroom, reading the kind of print that
interested her, or lying in sullen idleness on the bed. Numerous as
were her acquaintances elsewhere, they did not compensate her for the
loss of domestic habit, As the week drew on she bethought herself that
she must look for new lodgings. In giving notice to Mrs. Bubb she had
not believed for a moment that it would come to this she felt, sure
that her old friend would make up the quarrel and persuade her to stay.
Nothing of the kind; for once she was taken most literally at her word.
There were moments when Polly felt disposed to cry.
It vexed her much more than she would have thought to miss the jocose
greetings of her neigh hour Mr. Gammon. As usual he sang in his bedroom
of a morning, as usual be shouted orders and questions to Moggie, but
for her he had never a word. She listened for him as he came out of the
room, and once so far humbled herself as to affect a cough in his
bearing. Mr. Gammon paid no attention.
Then she raged at him--of course, _sotto voce_. Many were the phrases
of abuse softly hurled at him as he passed her door. The worst of it
was that none of them seemed really applicable; her vision of the man
defeated all such contumely. She had never disliked Mr. Gammon; oddly
enough, she seemed to think of him with a more decided friendliness now
that his conduct demanded her enmity. She asked herself whether he
really believed any harm of her. It looked very much as if he did, and
the thought sometimes kept her awake for fully a quarter of an hour.
It was the last day but one of her week. To-morrow she must either
submit to the degradation of begging Mrs. Bubb's leave to remain, or
pack her boxes and have them removed before nightfall. Worry had ended
by giving her a slight headache, a very rare thing indeed. Moreover, it
rained, and breakfast was only obtainable by walking some distance.
"Oh, the beasts!" Polly exclaimed to herself, as she pulled on her
boots, meaning the inhabitants of the house all together.
Mr. Gammon opened his door and shouted down the staircase.
"Moggie! Fry me three eggs this morning with the bacon--do you hear?"
Three eggs! Fried with bacon! And all comfortably set out at the end of
the kitchen table. And to think that she might be going down to
breakfast at the same time, with Mr. Gammon's jokes for a relish!
"Oh, the wretches! The mean, selfish brutes!"
She stamped about the floor to ease her nerves as she put on a common
hat and an old jacket. She unlocked her door with violence, banged it
open, and slammed it to again. From the staircase window she saw that
the rain was falling more heavily, and she could not wait, for she felt
hungry--after hearing about those three eggs. If she met anyone down
below!
And, as chance had it, she met Mrs. Cheeseman just coming up to her
room from the kitchen with a dish of sausages. The woman grinned and
turned her head away. Polly had never been so tempted to commit an
assault; she thought with a burning brain how effective would be one
smart stroke on the dish of sausages with the handle of her umbrella.
Still hot from this encounter in the passage she came face to face with
Mrs. Bubb. The landlady seemed to hesitate, but before Polly had gone
by she addressed her with exaggerated politeness.
"Good morning, Miss Sparkes. So I s'pose we're losing you to-morrow?"
"Yes, you are," Polly replied, from a parched throat, glaring at her
enemy.
"Oh, then I'll put the card up!"
"Do! I wouldn't lose no time about it. And listen to this, Mrs. Bubb.
Next time you see your friend Mrs. Clover, you may tell her that if she
wants to know where her precious 'usband is she's not to ask _me_, 'cos
I wouldn't let her know, not if she was on her death-bed!"
Having uttered this surprising message, with point and emphasis worthy
of its significance, Polly hastened from the house. And Mrs. Bubb stood
looking after her in bewilderment.