Feeling recklessly secure behind his beard Mr. Polly surveyed the
Fishbourne High Street once again. The north side was much as he had
known it except that Rusper had vanished. A row of new shops replaced
the destruction of the great fire. Mantell and Throbson's had risen
again upon a more flamboyant pattern, and the new fire station was in
the Swiss-Teutonic style and with much red paint. Next door in the
place of Rumbold's was a branch of the Colonial Tea Company, and then
a Salmon and Gluckstein Tobacco Shop, and then a little shop that
displayed sweets and professed a "Tea Room Upstairs." He considered
this as a possible place in which to prosecute enquiries about his
lost wife, wavering a little between it and the God's Providence Inn
down the street. Then his eye caught a name over the window, "Polly,"
he read, "& Larkins! Well, I'm--astonished!"
A momentary faintness came upon him. He walked past and down the
street, returned and surveyed the shop again.
He saw a middle-aged, rather untidy woman standing behind the counter,
who for an instant he thought might be Miriam terribly changed, and
then recognised as his sister-in-law Annie, filled out and no longer
hilarious. She stared at him without a sign of recognition as he
entered the shop.
"Can I have tea?" said Mr. Polly.
"Well," said Annie, "you _can_. But our Tea Room's upstairs.... My
sister's been cleaning it out--and it's a bit upset."
"It _would_ be," said Mr. Polly softly.
"I beg your pardon?" said Annie.
"I said _I_ didn't mind. Up here?"
"I daresay there'll be a table," said Annie, and followed him up to a
room whose conscientious disorder was intensely reminiscent of Miriam.
"Nothing like turning everything upside down when you're cleaning,"
said Mr. Polly cheerfully.
"It's my sister's way," said Annie impartially. "She's gone out for a
bit of air, but I daresay she'll be back soon to finish. It's a nice
light room when it's tidy. Can I put you a table over there?"
"Let _me_," said Mr. Polly, and assisted. He sat down by the open
window and drummed on the table and meditated on his next step while
Annie vanished to get his tea. After all, things didn't seem so bad
with Miriam. He tried over several gambits in imagination.
"Unusual name," he said as Annie laid a cloth before him. Annie looked
interrogation.
"Polly. Polly & Larkins. Real, I suppose?"
"Polly's my sister's name. She married a Mr. Polly."
"Widow I presume?" said Mr. Polly.
"Yes. This five years--come October."
"Lord!" said Mr. Polly in unfeigned surprise.
"Found drowned he was. There was a lot of talk in the place."
"Never heard of it," said Mr. Polly. "I'm a stranger--rather."
"In the Medway near Maidstone. He must have been in the water for
days. Wouldn't have known him, my sister wouldn't, if it hadn't been
for the name sewn in his clothes. All whitey and eat away he was."
"Bless my heart! Must have been rather a shock for her!"
"It _was_ a shock," said Annie, and added darkly: "But sometimes a
shock's better than a long agony."
"No doubt," said Mr. Polly.
He gazed with a rapt expression at the preparations before him. "So
I'm drowned," something was saying inside him. "Life insured?" he
asked.
"We started the tea rooms with it," said Annie.
Why, if things were like this, had remorse and anxiety for Miriam been
implanted in his soul? No shadow of an answer appeared.
"Marriage is a lottery," said Mr. Polly.
"_She_ found it so," said Annie. "Would you like some jam?"
"I'd like an egg," said Mr. Polly. "I'll have two. I've got a sort of
feeling--. As though I wanted keeping up.... Wasn't particularly good
sort, this Mr. Polly?"
"He was a _wearing_ husband," said Annie. "I've often pitied my
sister. He was one of that sort--"
"Dissolute?" suggested Mr. Polly faintly.
"No," said Annie judiciously; "not exactly dissolute. Feeble's more
the word. Weak, 'E was. Weak as water. 'Ow long do you like your eggs
boiled?"
"Four minutes exactly," said Mr. Polly.
"One gets talking," said Annie.
"One does," said Mr.-Polly, and she left him to his thoughts.
What perplexed him was his recent remorse and tenderness for Miriam.
Now he was back in her atmosphere all that had vanished, and the old
feeling of helpless antagonism returned. He surveyed the piled
furniture, the economically managed carpet, the unpleasing pictures on
the wall. Why had he felt remorse? Why had he entertained this
illusion of a helpless woman crying aloud in the pitiless darkness for
him? He peered into the unfathomable mysteries of the heart, and
ducked back to a smaller issue. _Was_ he feeble?
The eggs came up. Nothing in Annie's manner invited a resumption of
the discussion.
"Business brisk?" he ventured to ask.