The History of Mr. Polly, H. G. Wells [room on the broom read aloud TXT] 📗

all, of this remarkable phenomenon she had discovered on the other side of the wall.

“Look here,” said Mr. Polly, “I’m wild for the love of you! I can’t keep up this gesticulations game any more! I’m not a Knight. Treat me as a human man. You may sit up there smiling, but I’d die in torments to have you mine for an hour. I’m nobody and nothing. But look here! Will you wait for me for five years? You’re just a girl yet, and it wouldn’t be hard.”

“Shut up!” said Christabel in an aside he did not hear, and something he did not see touched her hand.

“I’ve always been just dilletentytating about till now, but I could work. I’ve just woke up. Wait till I’ve got a chance with the money I’ve got.”

“But you haven’t got much money!”

“I’ve got enough to take a chance with, some sort of a chance. I’d find a chance. I’ll do that anyhow. I’ll go away. I mean what I say⁠—I’ll stop trifling and shirking. If I don’t come back it won’t matter. If I do⁠—”

Her expression had become uneasy. Suddenly she bent down towards him.

“Don’t!” she said in an undertone.

“Don’t⁠—what?”

“Don’t go on like this! You’re different! Go on being the knight who wants to kiss my hand as his⁠—what did you call it?” The ghost of a smile curved her face. “Gurdrum!”

“But⁠—!”

Then through a pause they both stared at each other, listening.

A muffled tumult on the other side of the wall asserted itself.

“Shut up, Rosie!” said a voice.

“I tell you I will see! I can’t half hear. Give me a leg up!”

“You idiot! He’ll see you. You’re spoiling everything.”

The bottom dropped out of Mr. Polly’s world. He felt as people must feel who are going to faint.

“You’ve got someone⁠—” he said aghast.

She found life inexpressible to Mr. Polly. She addressed some unseen hearers. “You filthy little beasts!” she cried with a sharp note of agony in her voice, and swung herself back over the wall and vanished. There was a squeal of pain and fear, and a swift, fierce altercation.

For a couple of seconds he stood agape.

Then a wild resolve to confirm his worst sense of what was on the other side of the wall made him seize a log, put it against the stones, clutch the parapet with insecure fingers, and lug himself to a momentary balance on the wall.

Romance and his goddess had vanished.

A red-haired girl with a pigtail was wringing the wrist of a schoolfellow who shrieked with pain and cried: “Mercy! mercy! Ooo! Christabel!”

“You idiot!” cried Christabel. “You giggling idiot!”

Two other young ladies made off through the beech trees from this outburst of savagery.

Then the grip of Mr. Polly’s fingers gave, and he hit his chin against the stones and slipped clumsily to the ground again, scraping his cheek against the wall and hurting his shin against the log by which he had reached the top. Just for a moment he crouched against the wall.

He swore, staggered to the pile of logs and sat down.

He remained very still for some time, with his lips pressed together.

“Fool,” he said at last; “you blithering fool!” and began to rub his shin as though he had just discovered its bruises.

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.

VI Miriam I

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 scraze with the bicycle,” said Mr. Polly.

“ ’Ow?”

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

Mrs. Larkins scrutinised it. “You ought to ’ave someone look after your scrazes,” 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