In another moment the outer door slammed upon her. "Good riddance!"
said Mr. Polly.
He turned about. "I"ve had my whack," he said.
He reflected. "I don"t see she"ll have any cause to holler," he said. "Beastly Home! Beastly Life!"
For a s.p.a.ce he remained thoughtful. "Here goes!" he said at last.
II
For twenty minutes Mr. Polly busied himself about the house, making his preparations very neatly and methodically.
He opened the attic windows in order to make sure of a good draught through the house, and drew down the blinds at the back and shut the kitchen door to conceal his arrangements from casual observation. At the end he would open the door on the yard and so make a clean clear draught right through the house. He hacked at, and wedged off, the tread of a stair. He cleared out the coals from under the staircase, and built a neat fire of firewood and paper there, he splashed about _paraffine_ and arranged the lamps and can even as he had designed, and made a fine inflammable pile of things in the little parlour behind the shop. "Looks pretty arsonical," he said as he surveyed it all. "Wouldn"t do to have a caller now. Now for the stairs!"
"Plenty of time," he a.s.sured himself, and took the lamp which was to explain the whole affair, and went to the head of the staircase between the scullery and the parlour. He sat down in the twilight with the unlit lamp beside him and surveyed things. He must light the fire in the coal cellar under the stairs, open the back door, then come up them very quickly and light the _paraffine_ puddles on each step, then sit down here again and cut his throat.
He drew his razor from his pocket and felt the edge. It wouldn"t hurt much, and in ten minutes he would be indistinguishable ashes in the blaze.
And this was the end of life for him!
The end! And it seemed to him now that life had never begun for him, never! It was as if his soul had been cramped and his eyes bandaged from the hour of his birth. Why had he lived such a life? Why had he submitted to things, blundered into things? Why had he never insisted on the things he thought beautiful and the things he desired, never sought them, fought for them, taken any risk for them, died rather than abandon them? They were the things that mattered. Safety did not matter. A living did not matter unless there were things to live for....
He had been a fool, a coward and a fool, he had been fooled too, for no one had ever warned him to take a firm hold upon life, no one had ever told him of the littleness of fear, or pain, or death; but what was the good of going through it now again? It was over and done with.
The clock in the back parlour pinged the half hour.
"Time!" said Mr. Polly, and stood up.
For an instant he battled with an impulse to put it all back, hastily, guiltily, and abandon this desperate plan of suicide for ever.
But Miriam would smell the _paraffine_!
"No way out this time, O" Man," said Mr. Polly; and he went slowly downstairs, matchbox in hand.
He paused for five seconds, perhaps, to listen to noises in the yard of the Royal Fishbourne Hotel before he struck his match. It trembled a little in his hand. The paper blackened, and an edge of blue flame ran outward and spread. The fire burnt up readily, and in an instant the wood was crackling cheerfully.
Someone might hear. He must hurry.
He lit a pool of _paraffine_ on the scullery floor, and instantly a nest of snaky, wavering blue flame became agog for prey. He went up the stairs three steps at a time with one eager blue flicker in pursuit of him. He seized the lamp at the top. "Now!" he said and flung it smashing. The chimney broke, but the gla.s.s receiver stood the shock and rolled to the bottom, a potential bomb. Old Rumbold would hear that and wonder what it was!... He"d know soon enough!
Then Mr. Polly stood hesitating, razor in hand, and then sat down. He was trembling violently, but quite unafraid.
He drew the blade lightly under one ear. "Lord!" but it stung like a nettle!
Then he perceived a little blue thread of flame running up his leg. It arrested his attention, and for a moment he sat, razor in hand, staring at it. It must be _paraffine_ on his trousers that had caught fire on the stairs. Of course his legs were wet with _paraffine_! He smacked the flicker with his hand to put it out, and felt his leg burn as he did so. But his trousers still charred and glowed. It seemed to him necessary that he must put this out before he cut his throat. He put down the razor beside him to smack with both hands very eagerly.
And as he did so a thin tall red flame came up through the hole in the stairs he had made and stood still, quite still as it seemed, and looked at him. It was a strange-looking flame, a flattish salmon colour, redly streaked. It was so queer and quiet mannered that the sight of it held Mr. Polly agape.
"Whuff!" went the can of _paraffine_ below, and boiled over with stinking white fire. At the outbreak the salmon-coloured flames shivered and ducked and then doubled and vanished, and instantly all the staircase was noisily ablaze.
Mr. Polly sprang up and backwards, as though the uprushing tongues of fire were a pack of eager wolves.
"Good Lord!" he cried like a man who wakes up from a dream.
He swore sharply and slapped again at a recrudescent flame upon his leg.
"What the Deuce shall I do? I"m soaked with the confounded stuff!"
He had nerved himself for throat-cutting, but this was fire!
He wanted to delay things, to put them out for a moment while he did his business. The idea of arresting all this hurry with water occurred to him.
There was no water in the little parlour and none in the shop. He hesitated for a moment whether he should not run upstairs to the bedrooms and get a ewer of water to throw on the flames. At this rate Rumbold"s would be ablaze in five minutes! Things were going all too fast for Mr. Polly. He ran towards the staircase door, and its hot breath pulled him up sharply. Then he dashed out through his shop. The catch of the front door was sometimes obstinate; it was now, and instantly he became frantic. He rattled and stormed and felt the parlour already ablaze behind him. In another moment he was in the High Street with the door wide open.
The staircase behind him was crackling now like horsewhips and pistol shots.
He had a vague sense that he wasn"t doing as he had proposed, but the chief thing was his sense of that uncontrolled fire within. What was he going to do? There was the fire brigade station next door but one.
The Fishbourne High Street had never seemed so empty.
Far off at the corner by the G.o.d"s Providence Inn a group of three stiff hobbledehoys in their black, best clothes, conversed intermittently with Taplow, the policeman.
"Hi!" bawled Mr. Polly to them. "Fire! Fire!" and struck by a horrible thought, the thought of Rumbold"s deaf mother-in-law upstairs, began to bang and kick and rattle with the utmost fury at Rumbold"s shop door.
"Hi!" he repeated, "_Fire!_"
III
That was the beginning of the great Fishbourne fire, which burnt its way sideways into Mr. Rusper"s piles of crates and straw, and backwards to the petrol and stabling of the Royal Fishbourne Hotel, and spread from that basis until it seemed half Fishbourne would be ablaze. The east wind, which had been gathering in strength all that day, fanned the flame; everything was dry and ready, and the little shed beyond Rumbold"s in which the local Fire Brigade kept its manual, was alight before the Fishbourne fire hose could be saved from disaster. In marvellously little time a great column of black smoke, shot with red streamers, rose out of the middle of the High Street, and all Fishbourne was alive with excitement.
Much of the more respectable elements of Fishbourne society was in church or chapel; many, however, had been tempted by the blue sky and the hard freshness of spring to take walks inland, and there had been the usual disappearance of loungers and conversationalists from the beach and the back streets when at the hour of six the shooting of bolts and the turning of keys had ended the British Ramadan, that weekly interlude of drought our law imposes. The youth of the place were scattered on the beach or playing in back yards, under threat if their clothes were dirtied, and the adolescent were disposed in pairs among the more secluded corners to be found upon the outskirts of the place. Several G.o.dless youths, seasick but fishing steadily, were tossing upon the sea in old Tarbold"s, the infidel"s, boat, and the Clamps were entertaining cousins from Port Burdock. Such few visitors as Fishbourne could boast in the spring were at church or on the beach. To all these that column of smoke did in a manner address itself. "Look here!" it said, "this, within limits, is your affair; what are you going to do?"
The three hobbledehoys, had it been a weekday and they in working clothes, might have felt free to act, but the stiffness of black was upon them and they simply moved to the corner by Rusper"s to take a better view of Mr. Polly beating at the door. The policeman was a young, inexpert constable with far too lively a sense of the public house. He put his head inside the Private Bar to the horror of everyone there. But there was no breach of the law, thank Heaven!
"Polly"s and Rumbold"s on fire!" he said, and vanished again. A window in the top story over Boomer"s shop opened, and Boomer, captain of the Fire Brigade, appeared, staring out with a blank expression. Still staring, he began to fumble with his collar and tie; manifestly he had to put on his uniform. Hinks" dog, which had been lying on the pavement outside Wintershed"s, woke up, and having regarded Mr. Polly suspiciously for some time, growled nervously and went round the corner into Granville Alley. Mr. Polly continued to beat and kick at Rumbold"s door.
Then the public houses began to vomit forth the less desirable elements of Fishbourne society, boys and men were moved to run and shout, and more windows went up as the stir increased. Tashingford, the chemist, appeared at his door, in shirt sleeves and an ap.r.o.n, with his photographic plate holders in his hand. And then like a vision of purpose came Mr. Gambell, the greengrocer, running out of Clayford"s Alley and b.u.t.toning on his jacket as he ran. His great bra.s.s fireman"s helmet was on his head, hiding it all but the sharp nose, the firm mouth, the intrepid chin. He ran straight to the fire station and tried the door, and turned about and met the eye of Boomer still at his upper window. "The key!" cried Mr. Gambell, "the key!"
Mr. Boomer made some inaudible explanation about his trousers and half a minute.
"Seen old Rumbold?" cried Mr. Polly, approaching Mr. Gambell.
"Gone over Downford for a walk," said Mr. Gambell. "He told me! But look "ere! We "aven"t got the key!"
"Lord!" said Mr. Polly, and regarded the china shop with open eyes. He _knew_ the old woman must be there alone. He went back to the shop front and stood surveying it in infinite perplexity. The other activities in the street did not interest him. A deaf old lady somewhere upstairs there! Precious moments pa.s.sing! Suddenly he was struck by an idea and vanished from public vision into the open door of the Royal Fishbourne Tap.
And now the street was getting crowded and people were laying their hands to this and that.