The H.G. Wells Reader (79 page)

“Oh, I came,” said Uncle Pentstemon. “I came.”

He turned on Mrs. Larkins. “Gals in service?” he asked.

“They aren't and they won't be,” said Mrs. Larkins.

“No,” he said with infinite meaning and turned his eye on Mr. Polly.

“You Lizzie's boy?” he said.

Mr. Polly was spared much self-exposition by the tumult occasioned by further arrivals.

“Ah! Here's May Punt!” said Mrs. Johnson, and a small woman dressed in the borrowed mourning of a large woman and leading a very small long-haired observant little boy—it was his first funeral—appeared, closely followed by several friends of Mrs. Johnson who had come to swell the display of respect and made only vague, confused impressions upon Mr. Polly's mind. (Aunt Mildred, who was an unexplained family scandal, had declined Mrs. Johnson's hospitality.)

Everybody was in profound mourning, of course, mourning in the modern English style, with the dyer's handiwork only too apparent, and hats and jackets of the
current cut. There was very little crape, and the costumes had none of the goodness and specialisation and genuine enjoyment of mourning for mourning's sake that a similar continental gathering would have displayed. Still that congestion of strangers in black sufficed to stun and confuse Mr. Polly's impressionable mind. It seemed to him much more extraordinary than anything he had expected.

“Now, gals,” said Mrs. Larkins, “see if you can help,” and their three daughters became confusingly active between the front room and the back.

“I hope everyone'll take a glass of sherry and a biscuit,” said Mrs. Johnson. “We don't stand on ceremony,” and a decanter appeared in the place of Uncle Pentstemon's vegetables.

Uncle Pentstemon had refused to be relieved of his hat; he sat stiffly down on a chair against the wall with that venerable headdress between his feet, watching the approach of anyone jealously. “Don't you go squashing my hat,” he said. Conversation became confused and general. Uncle Pentstemon addressed himself to Mr. Polly. “You're a little chap,” he said, “a puny little chap. I never did agree to Lizzie marrying him, but I suppose bygones must be bygones now. I suppose they made you a clerk or something.”

“Outfitter,” said Mr. Polly.

“I remember. Them girls pretend to be dressmakers.”

“They are dressmakers,” said Mrs. Larkins across the room.

“I will take a glass of sherry. They 'old to it, you see.”

He took the glass Mrs. Johnson handed him, and poised it critically between a horny finger and thumb. “You'll be paying for this,” he said to Mr. Polly. “Here's
to
you. . . . Don't you go treading on my hat, young woman. You brush your skirts against it and you take a shillin' off its value. It ain't the sort of 'at you see nowadays.”

He drank noisily.

The sherry presently loosened everybody's tongue, and the early coldness passed.

“There ought to have been a
post-mortem
,” Polly heard Mrs. Punt remarking to one of Mrs. Johnson's friends, and Miriam and another were lost in admiration of Mrs. Johnson's decorations. “So very nice and refined,” they were both repeating at intervals.

The sherry and biscuits were still being discussed when Mr. Podger, the undertaker, arrived, a broad, cheerfully sorrowful, clean-shaven little man, accompanied by a melancholy-faced assistant. He conversed for a time with Johnston in the passage outside; the sense of his business stilled the rising waves of chatter and carried off everyone's attention in the wake of his heavy footsteps to the room above.

Things crowded upon Mr. Polly. Everyone, he noticed, took sherry with a solemn avidity, and a small portion even was administered sacramentally to the Punt boy.
There followed a distribution of black kid gloves, and much trying on and humouring of fingers. “Good gloves,” said one of Mrs. Johnson's friends. “There's a little pair there for Willie,” said Mrs. Johnson triumphantly. Everyone seemed gravely content with the amazing procedure of the occasion. Presently Mr. Podger was picking Mr. Polly out as Chief Mourner to go with Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Larkins and Annie in the first mourning carriage.

“Right O,” said Mr. Polly, and repented instantly of the alacrity of the phrase.

“There'll have to be a walking party,” said Mrs. Johnson cheerfully. “There's only two coaches. I dare say we can put in six in each, but that leaves three over.”

There was a generous struggle to be pedestrian, and the two other Larkins girls, confessing coyly to tight new boots and displaying a certain eagerness, were added to the contents of the first carriage.

“It'll be a squeeze,” said Annie.

“I don't mind a squeeze,” said Mr. Polly.

He decided privately that the proper phrase for the result of that remark was “Hysterial catechunations.”

Mr. Podger re-entered the room from a momentary supervision of the bumping business that was now proceeding down the staircase.

“Bearing up,” he said cheerfully, rubbing his hands together. “Bearing up!”

That stuck very vividly in Mr. Polly's mind, and so did the close-wedged drive to the churchyard, bunched in between two young women in confused dull and shiny black, and the fact that the wind was bleak and that the officiating clergyman had a cold, and sniffed between his sentences. The wonder of life! The wonder of everything! What had he expected that this should all be so astoundingly different.

He found his attention converging more and more upon the Larkins cousins. The interest was reciprocal. They watched him with a kind of suppressed excitement and became risible with his every word and gesture. He was more and more aware of their personal quality. Annie had blue eyes and a red, attractive mouth, a harsh voice and a habit of extreme liveliness that even this occasion could not suppress; Minnie was fond, extremely free about the touching of hands and suchlike endearments; Miriam was quieter and regarded him earnestly. Mrs. Larkins was very happy in her daughters, and they had the naïve affectionateness of those who see few people and find a strange cousin a wonderful outlet. Mr. Polly had never been very much kissed, and it made his mind swim. He did not know for the life of him whether he liked or disliked all or any of the Larkins cousins. It was rather attractive to make them laugh; they laughed at anything.

There they were tugging at his mind, and the funeral tugging at his mind, too, and the sense of himself as Chief Mourner in a brand new silk hat with a broad mourning band. He watched the ceremony and missed his responses, and strange feelings twisted at his heart-strings.

Mr. Polly walked back to the house because he wanted to be alone. Miriam and Minnie would have accompanied him, but finding Uncle Pentstermon beside the Chief Mourner they went on in front.

“You're wise,” said Uncle Pentstemon.

“Glad you think so,” said Mr. Polly, rousing himself to talk.

“I likes a bit of walking before a meal,” said Uncle Pentstemon, and made a kind of large hiccup. “That sherry rises,” he remarked. “Grocer's stuff, I expect.”

He went on to ask how much the funeral might be costing, and seemed pleased to find Mr. Polly didn't know.

“In that case,” he said impressively, “it's pretty certain to cost more'n you expect, my boy.”

He mediated for a time. “I've seen a mort of undertakers,” he declared; “a mort of undertakers.”

The Larkins girls attracted his attention.

“Let's lodgin's and chars,” he commented. “Least-ways she goes out to cook dinners. And look at 'em!

“Dressed up to the nines. If it ain't borryd clothes, that is. And they goes out to work at a factory!”

“Did you know my father much, Uncle Pentstemon?” asked Mr. Polly.

“Couldn't stand Lizzie throwin' herself away like that,” said Uncle Pentstemon, and repeated his hiccup on a larger scale.

“That
weren't
good sherry,” said Uncle Pentstemon with the first note of pathos Mr. Polly had detected in his quavering voice.

The funeral in the rather cold wind had proved wonderfully appetising, and every eye brightened at the sight of the cold collation that was now spread in the front room. Mrs. Johnson was very brisk, and Mr. Polly, when he re-entered the house found everybody sitting down. “Come along, Alfred,” cried the host cheerfully. “We can't very well begin without you. Have you got the bottled beer ready to open, Betsy? Uncle, you'll have a drop of whiskey, I expect.”

“Put it where I can mix for myself,” said Uncle Pentstemon, placing his hat very carefully out of harm's way on the bookcase.

There were two cold boiled chickens, which Johnson carved with great care and justice, and a nice piece of ham, some brawn and a steak and kidney pie, a large bowl of salad and several sorts of pickles, and afterwards came cold apple tart, jam roll and a good piece of Stilton cheese, lots of bottled beer, some lemonade for the ladies and milk for the Master Punt; a very bright and satisfying meal. Mr. Polly found himself seated between Mrs. Punt, who was much preoccupied with Master Punt's table manners, and one of Mrs. Johnson's school friends, who was exchanging reminiscences of school days and news of how various common friends had changed and married with Mrs. Johnson. Opposite him was Miriam and another of the Johnson circle, and also
he had brawn to carve and there was hardly room for the helpful Betsy to pass behind his chair, so that altogether his mind would have been amply distracted from any mortuary broodings, even if a wordy warfare about the education of the modern young woman had not sprung up between Uncle Pentstemon and Mrs. Larkins and threatened for a time, in spite of a word or so in season from Johnson, to wreck all the harmony of the sad occasion.

The general effect was after this fashion:

First an impression of Mrs. Punt on the right speaking in a refined undertone: “You didn't, I suppose, Mr. Polly, think to 'ave your poor dear father postmortemed—”

Lady on the left side breaking in: “I was just reminding Grace of the dear dead days beyond recall—”

Attempted replay to Mrs. Punt: “Didn't think of it for a moment. Can't give you a piece of this brawn, can I?”

Fragment from the left: “Grace and Beauty they used to call us and we used to sit at the same desk—”

Mrs. Punt, breaking out suddenly: “Don't swaller your fork, Willy. You see, Mr. Polly, I used to 'ave a young gentleman, a medical student, lodging with me—”

Voice from down the table: “ 'Am, Alfred? I didn't give you very much.”

Bessie became evident at the back of Mr. Polly's chair, struggling wildly to get past. Mr. Polly did his best to be helpful. “Can you get past? Lemme sit forward a bit. Urr-oo! Right O.”

Lady to the left going on valiantly and speaking to everyone who cares to listen, while Mrs. Johnson beams beside her: “There she used to sit as bold as brass, and the fun she used to make of things no one could believe—knowing her now. She used to make faces at the mistress through the—”

Mrs. Punt keeping steadily on: “The contents of the stummik at any rate ought to be examined.”

Voice of Mr. Johnson. “Elfrid, pass the mustid down.”

Miriam leaning across the table: “Elfrid!”

“Once she got us all kept in. The whole school!”

Miriam, more insistently: “Elfrid!”

Uncle Pentstemon, raising his voice defiantly: “Trounce 'er again I would if she did as much now. That I would! Dratted mischief!”

Miriam, catching Mr. Polly's eye: “Elfrid! This lady knows Canterbury. I been telling her you been there.”

Mr. Polly: “Glad you know it.”

The lady shouting: “I like it.”

Mrs. Larkins, raising her voice: “I won't 'ave my girls spoken of, not by nobody, old or young.”

POP! imperfectly located.

Mr. Johnson at large: “
Ain't
the beer up! It's the 'eated room.”

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!”