Part 9 (1/2)

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 c.r.a.pe, 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 the three daughters became confusingly active between the front room and the back.

”I hope everyone'll take a gla.s.s 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 squas.h.i.+ng 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 by-gones 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 gla.s.s of sherry. They 'old to it, you see.”

He took the gla.s.s Mrs. Johnson handed him, and poised it critically between a h.o.r.n.y 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 s.h.i.+llin'

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 pa.s.sed.

”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 a.s.sistant. He conversed for a time with Johnson in the pa.s.sage 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.

IV

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 daresay 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 b.u.mping business that was now proceeding down the staircase.

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