Mr. Polly would dream about that (kik) at nights.
It seemed to that undesirable mind of his that Rusper"s head was the most egg-shaped head he had ever seen; the similarity weighed upon him; and when he found an argument growing warm with Rusper he would say: "Boil it some more, O" Man; boil it harder!" or "Six minutes at least," allusions Rusper could never make head or tail of, and got at last to disregard as a part of Mr. Polly"s general eccentricity. For a long time that little tendency threw no shadow over their intercourse, but it contained within it the seeds of an ultimate disruption.
Often during the days of this friendship Mr. Polly would leave his shop and walk over to Mr. Rusper"s establishment, and stand in his doorway and enquire: "Well, O" Man, how"s the Mind of the Age working?" and get quite an hour of it, and sometimes Mr. Rusper would come into the outfitter"s shop with "Heard the (kik) latest?" and spend the rest of the morning.
Then Mr. Rusper married, and he married very inconsiderately a woman who was totally uninteresting to Mr. Polly. A coolness grew between them from the first intimation of her advent. Mr. Polly couldn"t help thinking when he saw her that she drew her hair back from her forehead a great deal too tightly, and that her elbows were angular. His desire not to mention these things in the apt terms that welled up so richly in his mind, made him awkward in her presence, and that gave her an impression that he was hiding some guilty secret from her. She decided he must have a bad influence upon her husband, and she made it a point to appear whenever she heard him talking to Rusper.
One day they became a little heated about the German peril.
"I lay (kik) they"ll invade us," said Rusper.
"Not a bit of it. William"s not the Zerxiacious sort."
"You"ll see, O" Man."
"Just what I shan"t do."
"Before (kik) five years are out."
"Not it."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"Oh! Boil it hard!" said Mr. Polly.
Then he looked up and saw Mrs. Rusper standing behind the counter half hidden by a trophy of spades and garden shears and a knife-cleaning machine, and by her expression he knew instantly that she understood.
The conversation paled and presently Mr. Polly withdrew.
After that, estrangement increased steadily.
Mr. Rusper ceased altogether to come over to the outfitter"s, and Mr.
Polly called upon the ironmonger only with the completest air of casuality. And everything they said to each other led now to flat contradiction and raised voices. Rusper had been warned in vague and alarming terms that Mr. Polly insulted and made game of him; he couldn"t discover exactly where; and so it appeared to him now that every word of Mr. Polly"s might be an insult meriting his resentment, meriting it none the less because it was masked and cloaked.
Soon Mr. Polly"s calls upon Mr. Rusper ceased also, and then Mr.
Rusper, pursuing incomprehensible lines of thought, became afflicted with a specialised shortsightedness that applied only to Mr. Polly. He would look in other directions when Mr. Polly appeared, and his large oval face a.s.sumed an expression of conscious serenity and deliberate happy unawareness that would have maddened a far less irritable person than Mr. Polly. It evoked a strong desire to mock and ape, and produced in his throat a cough of singular scornfulness, more particularly when Mr. Rusper also a.s.sisted, with an a.s.sumed unconsciousness that was all his own.
Then one day Mr. Polly had a bicycle accident.
His bicycle was now very old, and it is one of the concomitants of a bicycle"s senility that its free wheel should one day obstinately cease to be free. It corresponds to that epoch in human decay when an old gentleman loses an incisor tooth. It happened just as Mr. Polly was approaching Mr. Rusper"s shop, and the untoward chance of a motor car trying to pa.s.s a waggon on the wrong side gave Mr. Polly no choice but to get on to the pavement and dismount. He was always accustomed to take his time and step off his left pedal at its lowest point, but the jamming of the free wheel gear made that lowest moment a transitory one, and the pedal was lifting his foot for another revolution before he realised what had happened. Before he could dismount according to his habit the pedal had to make a revolution, and before it could make a revolution Mr. Polly found himself among the various sonorous things with which Mr. Rusper adorned the front of his shop, zinc dustbins, household pails, lawn mowers, rakes, spades and all manner of clattering things. Before he got among them he had one of those agonising moments of helpless wrath and suspense that seem to last ages, in which one seems to perceive everything and think of nothing but words that are better forgotten. He sent a column of pails thundering across the doorway and dismounted with one foot in a sanitary dustbin amidst an enormous uproar of falling ironmongery.
"Put all over the place!" he cried, and found Mr. Rusper emerging from his shop with the large tranquillities of his countenance puckered to anger, like the frowns in the brow of a reefing sail. He gesticulated speechlessly for a moment.
"Kik--jer doing?" he said at last.
"Tin mantraps!" said Mr. Polly.
"Jer (kik) doing?"
"Dressing all over the pavement as though the blessed town belonged to you! Ugh!"
And Mr. Polly in attempting a dignified movement realised his entanglement with the dustbin for the first time. With a low embittering expression he kicked his foot about in it for a moment very noisily, and finally sent it thundering to the curb. On its way it struck a pail or so. Then Mr. Polly picked up his bicycle and proposed to resume his homeward way. But the hand of Mr. Rusper arrested him.
"Put it (kik) all (kik kik) back (kik)."
"Put it (kik) back yourself."
"You got (kik) put it back."
"Get out of the (kik) way."
Mr. Rusper laid one hand on the bicycle handle, and the other gripped Mr. Polly"s collar urgently. Whereupon Mr. Polly said: "Leggo!" and again, "D"you _hear_! Leggo!" and then drove his elbow with considerable force into the region of Mr. Rusper"s midriff. Whereupon Mr. Rusper, with a loud impa.s.sioned cry, resembling "Woo kik" more than any other combination of letters, released the bicycle handle, seized Mr. Polly by the cap and hair and bore his head and shoulders downward. Thereat Mr. Polly, emitting such words as everyone knows and n.o.body prints, b.u.t.ted his utmost into the concavity of Mr. Rusper, entwined a leg about him and after terrific moments of swaying instability, fell headlong beneath him amidst the bicycles and pails.
There on the pavement these inexpert children of a pacific age, untrained in arms and uninured to violence, abandoned themselves to amateurish and absurd efforts to hurt and injure one another--of which the most palpable consequences were dusty backs, ruffled hair and torn and twisted collars. Mr. Polly, by accident, got his finger into Mr.
Rusper"s mouth, and strove earnestly for some time to prolong that aperture in the direction of Mr. Rusper"s ear before it occurred to Mr. Rusper to bite him (and even then he didn"t bite very hard), while Mr. Rusper concentrated his mind almost entirely on an effort to rub Mr. Polly"s face on the pavement. (And their positions bristled with chances of the deadliest sort!) They didn"t from first to last draw blood.
Then it seemed to each of them that the other had become endowed with many hands and several voices and great accessions of strength. They submitted to fate and ceased to struggle. They found themselves torn apart and held up by outwardly scandalised and inwardly delighted neighbours, and invited to explain what it was all about.
"Got to (kik) puttem all back!" panted Mr. Rusper in the expert grasp of Hinks. "Merely asked him to (kik) puttem all back."
Mr. Polly was under restraint of little Clamp, of the toy shop, who was holding his hands in a complex and uncomfortable manner that he afterwards explained to Wintershed was a combination of something romantic called "Ju-jitsu" and something else still more romantic called the "Police Grip."
"Pails," explained Mr. Polly in breathless fragments. "All over the road. Pails. Bungs up the street with his pails. Look at them!"
"Deliber (kik) lib (kik) liberately rode into my goods (kik).
Constantly (kik) annoying me (kik)!" said Mr. Rusper....
They were both tremendously earnest and reasonable in their manner.
They wished everyone to regard them as responsible and intellectual men acting for the love of right and the enduring good of the world.
They felt they must treat this business as a profound and publicly significant affair. They wanted to explain and orate and show the entire necessity of everything they had done. Mr. Polly was convinced he had never been so absolutely correct in all his life as when he planted his foot in the sanitary dustbin, and Mr. Rusper considered his clutch at Mr. Polly"s hair as the one faultless impulse in an otherwise undistinguished career. But it was clear in their minds they might easily become ridiculous if they were not careful, if for a second they stepped over the edge of the high spirit and pitiless dignity they had hitherto maintained. At any cost they perceived they must not become ridiculous.
Mr. Chuffles, the scandalous grocer, joined the throng about the princ.i.p.al combatants, mutely as became an outcast, and with a sad, distressed helpful expression picked up Mr. Polly"s bicycle. Gambell"s summer errand boy, moved by example, restored the dustbin and pails to their self-respect.
""_E_ ought--"_e_ ought (kik) pick them up," protested Mr. Rusper.
"What"s it all about?" said Mr. Hinks for the third time, shaking Mr.
Rusper gently. "As "e been calling you names?"
"Simply ran into his pails--as anyone might," said Mr. Polly, "and out he comes and scrags me!"
"(Kik) a.s.sault!" said Mr. Rusper.
"He a.s.saulted _me_," said Mr. Polly.
"Jumped (kik) into my dus"bin!" said Mr. Rusper. "That a.s.sault? Or isn"t it?"