"One kick in the stummick would settle a chap like me," said Mr.
Polly.
"Oh, G.o.d!" cried Mr. Polly, and lifted his eyes to heaven, and said for the last time in that struggle, "It isn"t my affair!"
And so saying he turned his face towards the Potwell Inn.
He went back neither halting nor hastening in his pace after this last decision, but with a mind feverishly busy.
"If I get killed, I get killed, and if he gets killed I get hung.
Don"t seem just somehow.
"Don"t suppose I shall _frighten_ him off."
VIII
The private war between Mr. Polly and Uncle Jim for the possession of the Potwell Inn fell naturally into three chief campaigns. There was first of all the great campaign which ended in the triumphant eviction of Uncle Jim from the inn premises, there came next after a brief interval the futile invasions of the premises by Uncle Jim that culminated in the Battle of the Dead Eel, and after some months of involuntary truce there was the last supreme conflict of the Night Surprise. Each of these campaigns merits a section to itself.
Mr. Polly re-entered the inn discreetly. He found the plump woman seated in her bar, her eyes a-stare, her face white and wet with tears. "O G.o.d!" she was saying over and over again. "O G.o.d!" The air was full of a spirituous reek, and on the sanded boards in front of the bar were the fragments of a broken bottle and an overturned gla.s.s.
She turned her despair at the sound of his entry, and despair gave place to astonishment.
"You come back!" she said.
"Ra-ther," said Mr. Polly.
"He"s--he"s mad drunk and looking for her."
"Where is she?"
"Locked upstairs."
"Haven"t you sent to the police?"
"No one to send."
"I"ll see to it," said Mr. Polly. "Out this way?"
She nodded.
He went to the crinkly paned window and peered out. Uncle Jim was coming down the garden path towards the house, his hands in his pockets and singing hoa.r.s.ely. Mr. Polly remembered afterwards with pride and amazement that he felt neither faint nor rigid. He glanced round him, seized a bottle of beer by the neck as an improvised club, and went out by the garden door. Uncle Jim stopped amazed. His brain did not instantly rise to the new posture of things. "You!" he cried, and stopped for a moment. "You--_scoot!_"
"_Your_ job," said Mr. Polly, and advanced some paces.
Uncle Jim stood swaying with wrathful astonishment and then darted forward with clutching hands. Mr. Polly felt that if his antagonist closed he was lost, and smote with all his force at the ugly head before him. Smash went the bottle, and Uncle Jim staggered, half-stunned by the blow and blinded with beer.
The lapses and leaps of the human mind are for ever mysterious. Mr.
Polly had never expected that bottle to break. In the instant he felt disarmed and helpless. Before him was Uncle Jim, infuriated and evidently still coming on, and for defence was nothing but the neck of a bottle.
For a time our Mr. Polly has figured heroic. Now comes the fall again; he sounded abject terror; he dropped that ineffectual sc.r.a.p of gla.s.s and turned and fled round the corner of the house.
"Bolls!" came the thick voice of the enemy behind him as one who accepts a challenge, and bleeding, but indomitable, Uncle Jim entered the house.
"Bolls!" he said, surveying the bar. "Fightin" with bolls! I"ll show "im fightin" with bolls!"
Uncle Jim had learnt all about fighting with bottles in the Reformatory Home. Regardless of his terror-stricken aunt he ranged among the bottled beer and succeeded after one or two failures in preparing two bottles to his satisfaction by knocking off the bottoms, and gripping them dagger-wise by the necks. So prepared, he went forth again to destroy Mr. Polly.
Mr. Polly, freed from the sense of urgent pursuit, had halted beyond the raspberry canes and rallied his courage. The sense of Uncle Jim victorious in the house restored his manhood. He went round by the outhouses to the riverside, seeking a weapon, and found an old paddle boat hook. With this he smote Uncle Jim as he emerged by the door of the tap. Uncle Jim, blaspheming dreadfully and with dire stabbing intimations in either hand, came through the splintering paddle like a circus rider through a paper hoop, and once more Mr. Polly dropped his weapon and fled.
A careless observer watching him sprint round and round the inn in front of the lumbering and reproachful pursuit of Uncle Jim might have formed an altogether erroneous estimate of the issue of the campaign.
Certain compensating qualities of the very greatest military value were appearing in Mr. Polly even as he ran; if Uncle Jim had strength and brute courage and the rich toughening experience a Reformatory Home affords, Mr. Polly was nevertheless sober, more mobile and with a mind now stimulated to an almost incredible nimbleness. So that he not only gained on Uncle Jim, but thought what use he might make of this advantage. The word "strategious" flamed red across the tumult of his mind. As he came round the house for the third time, he darted suddenly into the yard, swung the door to behind himself and bolted it, seized the zinc pig"s pail that stood by the entrance to the kitchen and had it neatly and resonantly over Uncle Jim"s head as he came belatedly in round the outhouse on the other side. One of the splintered bottles jabbed Mr. Polly"s ear--at the time it seemed of no importance--and then Uncle Jim was down and writhing dangerously and noisily upon the yard tiles, with his head still in the pig pail and his bottles gone to splinters, and Mr. Polly was fastening the kitchen door against him.
"Can"t go on like this for ever," said Mr. Polly, whooping for breath, and selecting a weapon from among the brooms that stood behind the kitchen door.
Uncle Jim was losing his head. He was up and kicking the door and bellowing unamiable proposals and invitations, so that a strategist emerging silently by the tap door could locate him without difficulty, steal upon him unawares and--!
But before that felling blow could be delivered Uncle Jim"s ear had caught a footfall, and he turned. Mr. Polly quailed and lowered his broom,--a fatal hesitation.
"_Now_ I got you!" cried Uncle Jim, dancing forward in a disconcerting zigzag.
He rushed to close, and Mr. Polly stopped him neatly, as it were a miracle, with the head of the broom across his chest. Uncle Jim seized the broom with both hands. "Lea-go!" he said, and tugged. Mr. Polly shook his head, tugged, and showed pale, compressed lips. Both tugged.
Then Uncle Jim tried to get round the end of the broom; Mr. Polly circled away. They began to circle about one another, both tugging hard, both intensely watchful of the slightest initiative on the part of the other. Mr. Polly wished brooms were longer, twelve or thirteen feet, for example; Uncle Jim was clearly for shortness in brooms. He wasted breath in saying what was to happen shortly, sanguinary, oriental soul-blenching things, when the broom no longer separated them. Mr. Polly thought he had never seen an uglier person. Suddenly Uncle Jim flashed into violent activity, but alcohol slows movement, and Mr. Polly was equal to him. Then Uncle Jim tried jerks, and for a terrible instant seemed to have the broom out of Mr. Polly"s hands.
But Mr. Polly recovered it with the clutch of a drowning man. Then Uncle Jim drove suddenly at Mr. Polly"s midriff, but again Mr. Polly was ready and swept him round in a circle. Then suddenly a wild hope filled Mr. Polly. He saw the river was very near, the post to which the punt was tied not three yards away. With a wild yell, he sent the broom home into his antagonist"s ribs.
"Woosh!" he cried, as the resistance gave.
"Oh! _Gaw_!" said Uncle Jim, going backward helplessly, and Mr. Polly thrust hard and abandoned the broom to the enemy"s despairing clutch.
Splash! Uncle Jim was in the water and Mr. Polly had leapt like a cat aboard the ferry punt and grasped the pole.
Up came Uncle Jim spluttering and dripping. "You (unprofitable matter, and printing it would lead to a censorship of novels)! You know I got a weak _chess_!"
The pole took him in the throat and drove him backward and downwards.
"Lea go!" cried Uncle Jim, staggering and with real terror in his once awful eyes.
Splash! Down he fell backwards into a frothing ma.s.s of water with Mr.
Polly jabbing at him. Under water he turned round and came up again as if in flight towards the middle of the river. Directly his head reappeared Mr. Polly had him between the shoulders and under again, bubbling thickly. A hand clutched and disappeared.
It was stupendous! Mr. Polly had discovered the heel of Achilles.
Uncle Jim had no stomach for cold water. The broom floated away, pitching gently on the swell. Mr. Polly, infuriated with victory, thrust Uncle Jim under again, and drove the punt round on its chain in such a manner that when Uncle Jim came up for the fourth time--and now he was nearly out of his depth, too buoyed up to walk and apparently nearly helpless,--Mr. Polly, fortunately for them both, could not reach him. Uncle Jim made the clumsy gestures of those who struggle insecurely in the water. "Keep out," said Mr. Polly. Uncle Jim with a great effort got a footing, emerged until his arm-pits were out of water, until his waistcoat b.u.t.tons showed, one by one, till scarcely two remained, and made for the camp sheeting.
"Keep out!" cried Mr. Polly, and leapt off the punt and followed the movements of his victim along the sh.o.r.e.
"I tell you I got a weak chess," said Uncle Jim, moistly. "This ain"t fair fightin"."
"Keep out!" said Mr. Polly.
"This ain"t fair fightin"," said Uncle Jim, almost weeping, and all his terrors had gone.