III

It was after Canterbury that the universe became really disagreeable

to Mr. Polly. It was brought home to him, not so much vividly as with

a harsh and ungainly insistence, that he was a failure in his trade.

It was not the trade he ought to have chosen, though what trade he

ought to have chosen was by no means clear.

He made great but irregular efforts and produced a forced smartness

that, like a cheap dye, refused to stand sunshine. He acquired a sort

of parsimony also, in which acquisition he was helped by one or two

phases of absolute impecuniosity. But he was hopeless in competition

against the naturally gifted, the born hustlers, the young men who

meant to get on.

He left the Canterbury place very regretfully. He and another

commercial gentleman took a boat one Sunday afternoon at

Sturry-on-the-Stour, when the wind was in the west, and sailed it very

happily eastward for an hour. They had never sailed a boat before and

it seemed simple and wonderful. When they turned they found the river

too narrow for tacking and the tide running out like a sluice. They

battled back to Sturry in the course of six hours (at a shilling the

first hour and six-pence for each hour afterwards) rowing a mile in an

hour and a half or so, until the turn of the tide came to help them,

and then they had a night walk to Canterbury, and found themselves

remorselessly locked out.

The History of Mr Polly