Bessie: "Scuse me, sir, passing so soon again, but--" Rest
inaudible. Mr. Polly, accommodating himself: "Urr-oo! Right? Right
O."
The knives and forks, probably by some secret common agreement, clash
and clatter together and drown every other sound.
"Nobody 'ad the least idea 'ow 'E died,--nobody.... Willie, don't
_golp_ so. You ain't in a 'urry, are you? You don't want to ketch a
train or anything,--golping like that!"
"D'you remember, Grace, 'ow one day we 'ad writing lesson...."
"Nicer girls no one ever 'ad--though I say it who shouldn't."
Mrs. Johnson in a shrill clear hospitable voice: "Harold, won't Mrs.
Larkins '_ave_ a teeny bit more fowl?"
Mr. Polly rising to the situation. "Or some brawn, Mrs. Larkins?"
Catching Uncle Pentstemon's eye: "Can't send _you_ some brawn, sir?"
"Elfrid!"
Loud hiccup from Uncle Pentstemon, momentary consternation followed by
giggle from Annie.
The narration at Mr. Polly's elbow pursued a quiet but relentless
course. "Directly the new doctor came in he said: 'Everything must be
took out and put in spirits--everything.'"
Willie,--audible ingurgitation.
The narration on the left was flourishing up to a climax. "Ladies,"
she sez, "dip their pens _in_ their ink and keep their noses out of
it!"
"Elfrid!"--persuasively.
"Certain people may cast snacks at other people's daughters, never
having had any of their own, though two poor souls of wives dead and
buried through their goings on--"
Johnson ruling the storm: "We don't want old scores dug up on such a
day as this--"
"Old scores you may call them, but worth a dozen of them that put them
to their rest, poor dears."
"Elfrid!"--with a note of remonstrance.
"If you choke yourself, my lord, not another mouthful do you '_ave_.
No nice puddin'! Nothing!"
"And kept us in, she did, every afternoon for a week!"
It seemed to be the end, and Mr. Polly replied with an air of being
profoundly impressed: "Really!"
"Elfrid!"--a little disheartened.
"And then they 'ad it! They found he'd swallowed the very key to
unlock the drawer--"
"Then don't let people go casting snacks!"
"_Who's_ casting snacks!"
"Elfrid! This lady wants to _know_, '_ave_ the Prossers left
Canterbury?"
"No wish to make myself disagreeable, not to God's 'umblest worm--"
"Alf, you aren't very busy with that brawn up there!"
And so on for the hour.
The general effect upon Mr. Polly at the time was at once confusing
and exhilarating; but it led him to eat copiously and carelessly, and
long before the end, when after an hour and a quarter a movement took
the party, and it pushed away its cheese plates and rose sighing and
stretching from the remains of the repast, little streaks and bands of
dyspeptic irritation and melancholy were darkening the serenity of his
mind.
He stood between the mantel shelf and the window--the blinds were up
now--and the Larkins sisters clustered about him. He battled with the
oncoming depression and forced himself to be extremely facetious about
two noticeable rings on Annie's hand. "They ain't real," said Annie
coquettishly. "Got 'em out of a prize packet."
"Prize packet in trousers, I expect," said Mr. Polly, and awakened
inextinguishable laughter.
"Oh! the things you say!" said Minnie, slapping his shoulder.
Suddenly something he had quite extraordinarily forgotten came into
his head.
"Bless my heart!" he cried, suddenly serious.
"What's the matter?" asked Johnson.
"Ought to have gone back to shop--three days ago. They'll make no end
of a row!"
"Lor, you _are_ a Treat!" said cousin Annie, and screamed with
laughter at a delicious idea. "You'll get the Chuck," she said.
Mr. Polly made a convulsing grimace at her.
"I'll die!" she said. "I don't believe you care a bit!"
Feeling a little disorganized by her hilarity and a shocked expression
that had come to the face of cousin Miriam, he made some indistinct
excuse and went out through the back room and scullery into the little
garden. The cool air and a very slight drizzle of rain was a
relief--anyhow. But the black mood of the replete dyspeptic had come
upon him. His soul darkened hopelessly. He walked with his hands in
his pockets down the path between the rows of exceptionally cultured
peas and unreasonably, overwhelmingly, he was smitten by sorrow for
his father. The heady noise and muddle and confused excitement of the
feast passed from him like a curtain drawn away. He thought of that
hot and angry and struggling creature who had tugged and sworn so
foolishly at the sofa upon the twisted staircase, and who was now
lying still and hidden, at the bottom of a wall-sided oblong pit
beside the heaped gravel that would presently cover him. The stillness
of it! the wonder of it! the infinite reproach! Hatred for all these
people--all of them--possessed Mr. Polly's soul.
"Hen-witted gigglers," said Mr. Polly.
He went down to the fence, and stood with his hands on it staring away
at nothing. He stayed there for what seemed a long time. From the
house came a sound of raised voices that subsided, and then Mrs.
Johnson calling for Bessie.
"Gowlish gusto," said Mr. Polly. "Jumping it in. Funererial Games.
Don't hurt _him_ of course. Doesn't matter to _him_...."
Nobody missed Mr. Polly for a long time.
When at last he reappeared among them his eye was almost grim, but
nobody noticed his eye. They were looking at watches, and Johnson was
being omniscient about trains. They seemed to discover Mr. Polly
afresh just at the moment of parting, and said a number of more or
less appropriate things. But Uncle Pentstemon was far too worried
about his rush basket, which had been carelessly mislaid, he seemed to
think with larcenous intentions, to remember Mr. Polly at all. Mrs.
Johnson had tried to fob him off with a similar but inferior
basket,--his own had one handle mended with string according to a
method of peculiar virtue and inimitable distinction known only to
himself--and the old gentleman had taken her attempt as the gravest
reflection upon his years and intelligence. Mr. Polly was left very
largely to the Larkins trio. Cousin Minnie became shameless and kept
kissing him good-by--and then finding out it wasn't time to go.
Cousin Miriam seemed to think her silly, and caught Mr. Polly's eye
sympathetically. Cousin Annie ceased to giggle and lapsed into a
nearly sentimental state. She said with real feeling that she had
enjoyed the funeral more than words could tell.