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

he dressed it very well. By his own standards he dressed it wonderfully. “Well, O’ Man,” he used to say, “there’s one thing about my position here⁠—I can dress a window.”

And when trouble was under discussion he would hold that “little Fluffums”⁠—which was the apprentices’ name for Mr. Garvace, the senior partner and managing director of the Bazaar⁠—would think twice before he got rid of the only man in the place who could make a windowful of Manchester goods tell.

Then like many a fellow artist he fell a prey to theories.

“The art of window dressing is in its infancy, O’ Man⁠—in its blooming infancy. All balance and stiffness like a blessed Egyptian picture. No joy in it, no blooming Joy! Conventional. A shop window ought to get hold of people, grip ’em as they go along. It stands to reason. Grip!”

His voice would sink to a kind of quiet bellow. “Do they grip?”

Then after a pause, a savage roar; “Naw!”

“He’s got a heavy on,” said Mr. Polly. “Go it, O’ Man; let’s have some more of it.”

“Look at old Morrison’s dress-stuff windows! Tidy, tasteful, correct, I grant you, but bleak!” He let out the word reinforced to a shout; “Bleak!”

“Bleak!” echoed Mr. Polly.

“Just pieces of stuff in rows, rows of tidy little puffs, perhaps one bit just unrolled, quiet tickets.”

“Might as well be in church, O’ Man,” said Mr. Polly.

“A window ought to be exciting,” said Parsons; “it ought to make you say: El-lo! when you see it.”

He paused, and Platt watched him over a snorting pipe.

“Rockcockyo,” said Mr. Polly.

“We want a new school of window dressing,” said Parsons, regardless of the comment. “A New School! The Port Burdock school. Day after tomorrow I change the Fitzallan Street stuff. This time, it’s going to be a change. I mean to have a crowd or bust!”

And as a matter of fact he did both.

His voice dropped to a note of self-reproach. “I’ve been timid, O’ Man. I’ve been holding myself in. I haven’t done myself Justice. I’ve kept down the simmering, seething, teeming ideas.⁠ ⁠… All that’s over now.”

“Over,” gulped Polly.

“Over for good and all, O’ Man.”

II

Platt came to Polly, who was sorting up collar boxes. “O’ Man’s doing his Blooming Window.”

“What window?”

“What he said.”

Polly remembered.

He went on with his collar boxes with his eye on his senior, Mansfield. Mansfield was presently called away to the counting house, and instantly Polly shot out by the street door, and made a rapid transit along the street front past the Manchester window, and so into the silkroom door. He could not linger long, but he gathered joy, a swift and fearful joy, from his brief inspection of Parsons’ unconscious back. Parsons had his tail coat off and was working with vigour; his habit of pulling his waistcoat straps to the utmost brought out all the agreeable promise of corpulence in his youthful frame. He was blowing excitedly and running his fingers through his hair, and then moving with all the swift eagerness of a man inspired. All about his feet and knees were scarlet blankets, not folded, not formally unfolded, but⁠—the only phrase is⁠—shied about. And a great bar sinister of roller towelling stretched across the front of the window on which was a ticket, and the ticket said in bold black letters: look!

So soon as Mr. Polly got into the silk department and met Platt he knew he had not lingered nearly long enough outside. “Did you see the boards at the back?” said Platt.

He hadn’t. “The High Egrugious is fairly On,” he said, and dived down to return by devious subterranean routes to the outfitting department.

Presently the street door opened and Platt, with an air of intense devotion to business assumed to cover his adoption of that unusual route, came in and made for the staircase down to the warehouse. He rolled up his eyes at Polly. “Oh Lor!” he said and vanished.

Irresistible curiosity seized Polly. Should he go through the shop to the Manchester department, or risk a second transit outside?

He was impelled to make a dive at the street door.

“Where are you going?” asked Mansfield.

“Lill Dog,” said Polly with an air of lucid explanation, and left him to get any meaning he could from it.

Parsons was worth the subsequent trouble. Parsons really was extremely rich. This time Polly stopped to take it in.

Parsons had made a huge symmetrical pile of thick white and red blankets twisted and rolled to accentuate their woolly richness, heaped up in a warm disorder, with large window tickets inscribed in blazing red letters: “Cosy Comfort at Cut Prices,” and “Curl up and Cuddle below Cost.” Regardless of the daylight he had turned up the electric light on that side of the window to reflect a warm glow upon the heap, and behind, in pursuit of contrasted bleakness, he was now hanging long strips of grey silesia and chilly coloured linen dusterings.

It was wonderful, but⁠—

Mr. Polly decided that it was time he went in. He found Platt in the silk department, apparently on the verge of another plunge into the exterior world. “Cosy Comfort at Cut Prices,” said Polly. “Allittritions Artful Aid.”

He did not dare go into the street for the third time, and he was hovering feverishly near the window when he saw the governor, Mr. Garvace, that is to say, the managing director of the Bazaar, walking along the pavement after his manner to assure himself all was well with the establishment he guided.

Mr. Garvace was a short stout man, with that air of modest pride that so often goes with corpulence, choleric and decisive in manner, and with hands that looked like bunches of fingers. He was red-haired and ruddy, and after the custom of such complexions, hairs sprang from the tip of his nose. When he wished to bring the power of the human eye to bear upon an assistant, he projected his chest, knitted one brow and partially closed the left eyelid.

An expression of speculative wonder overspread the countenance of Mr. Polly. He felt he must see.