Mr. Polly was particularly charmed by the ducklings.
They were piping about among the vegetables in the company of their
foster mother, and as he and the plump woman came down the garden path
the little creatures mobbed them, and ran over their boots and in
between Mr. Polly's legs, and did their best to be trodden upon and
killed after the manner of ducklings all the world over. Mr. Polly had
never been near young ducklings before, and their extreme blondness
and the delicate completeness of their feet and beaks filled him with
admiration. It is open to question whether there is anything more
friendly in the world than a very young duckling. It was with the
utmost difficulty that he tore himself away to practise punting, with
the plump woman coaching from the bank. Punting he found was
difficult, but not impossible, and towards four o'clock he succeeded
in conveying a second passenger across the sundering flood from the
inn to the unknown.
As he returned, slowly indeed, but now one might almost say surely, to
the peg to which the punt was moored, he became aware of a singularly
delightful human being awaiting him on the bank. She stood with her
legs very wide apart, her hands behind her back, and her head a little
on one side, watching his gestures with an expression of disdainful
interest. She had black hair and brown legs and a buff short frock and
very intelligent eyes. And when he had reached a sufficient proximity
she remarked: "Hello!"
"Hello," said Mr. Polly, and saved himself in the nick of time from
disaster.
"Silly," said the young lady, and Mr. Polly lunged nearer.
"What are you called?"
"Polly."
"Liar!"
"Why?"
"I'm Polly."
"Then I'm Alfred. But I meant to be Polly."
"I was first."
"All right. I'm going to be the ferryman."
"I see. You'll have to punt better."
"You should have seen me early in the afternoon."
"I can imagine it.... I've seen the others."
"What others?" Mr. Polly had landed now and was fastening up the punt.
"What Uncle Jim has scooted."
"Scooted?"
"He comes and scoots them. He'll scoot you too, I expect."
A mysterious shadow seemed to fall athwart the sunshine and
pleasantness of the Potwell Inn.
"I'm not a scooter," said Mr. Polly.
"Uncle Jim is."
She whistled a little flatly for a moment, and threw small stones at a
clump of meadow-sweet that sprang from the bank. Then she remarked:
"When Uncle Jim comes back he'll cut your insides out.... P'raps, very
likely, he'll let me see."
There was a pause.
"_Who's_ Uncle Jim?" Mr. Polly asked in a faded voice.
"Don't you know who Uncle Jim is? He'll show you. He's a scorcher, is
Uncle Jim. He only came back just a little time ago, and he's scooted
three men. He don't like strangers about, don't Uncle Jim. He _can_
swear. He's going to teach me, soon as I can whissle properly."
"Teach you to swear!" cried Mr. Polly, horrified.
"_And_ spit," said the little girl proudly. "He says I'm the gamest
little beast he ever came across--ever."
For the first time in his life it seemed to Mr. Polly that he had come
across something sheerly dreadful. He stared at the pretty thing of
flesh and spirit in front of him, lightly balanced on its stout little
legs and looking at him with eyes that had still to learn the
expression of either disgust or fear.
"I say," said Mr. Polly, "how old are you?"
"Nine," said the little girl.
She turned away and reflected. Truth compelled her to add one other
statement.
"He's not what I should call handsome, not Uncle Jim," she said. "But
he's a scorcher and no mistake.... Gramma don't like him."
V
Mr. Polly found the plump woman in the big bricked kitchen lighting a
fire for tea. He went to the root of the matter at once.
"I say," he asked, "who's Uncle Jim?"
The plump woman blanched and stood still for a moment. A stick fell
out of the bundle in her hand unheeded.
"That little granddaughter of mine been saying things?" she asked
faintly.
"Bits of things," said Mr. Polly.
"Well, I suppose I must tell you sooner or later. He's--. It's Jim.
He's the Drorback to this place, that's what he is. The Drorback. I
hoped you mightn't hear so soon.... Very likely he's gone."
"_She_ don't seem to think so."
"'E 'asn't been near the place these two weeks and more," said the
plump woman.
"But who is he?"
"I suppose I got to tell you," said the plump woman.
"She says he scoots people," Mr. Polly remarked after a pause.
"He's my own sister's son." The plump woman watched the crackling fire
for a space. "I suppose I got to tell you," she repeated.
She softened towards tears. "I try not to think of it, and night and
day he's haunting me. I try not to think of it. I've been for
easy-going all my life. But I'm that worried and afraid, with death
and ruin threatened and evil all about me! I don't know what to do! My
own sister's son, and me a widow woman and 'elpless against his
doin's!"
She put down the sticks she held upon the fender, and felt for her
handkerchief. She began to sob and talk quickly.
"I wouldn't mind nothing else half so much if he'd leave that child
alone. But he goes talking to her--if I leave her a moment he's
talking to her, teaching her words and giving her ideas!"
"That's a Bit Thick," said Mr. Polly.
"Thick!" cried the plump woman; "it's 'orrible! And what am I to do?
He's been here three times now, six days and a week and a part of a
week, and I pray to God night and day he may never come again.
Praying! Back he's come sure as fate. He takes my money and he takes
my things. He won't let no man stay here to protect me or do the boats
or work the ferry. The ferry's getting a scandal. They stand and shout
and scream and use language.... If I complain they'll say I'm helpless
to manage here, they'll take away my license, out I shall go--and it's
all the living I can get--and he knows it, and he plays on it, and he
don't care. And here I am. I'd send the child away, but I got nowhere
to send the child. I buys him off when it comes to that, and back he
comes, worse than ever, prowling round and doing evil. And not a soul
to help me. Not a soul! I just hoped there might be a day or so.
Before he comes back again. I was just hoping--I'm the sort that
hopes."
Mr. Polly was reflecting on the flaws and drawbacks that seem to be
inseparable from all the more agreeable things in life.
"Biggish sort of man, I expect?" asked Mr. Polly, trying to get the
situation in all its bearings.
But the plump woman did not heed him. She was going on with her
fire-making, and retailing in disconnected fragments the fearfulness
of Uncle Jim.
"There was always something a bit wrong with him," she said, "but
nothing you mightn't have hoped for, not till they took him and
carried him off and reformed him....
"He was cruel to the hens and chickings, it's true, and stuck a knife
into another boy, but then I've seen him that nice to a cat, nobody
could have been kinder. I'm sure he didn't do no 'arm to that cat
whatever anyone tries to make out of it. I'd never listen to that....
It was that reformatory ruined him. They put him along of a lot of
London boys full of ideas of wickedness, and because he didn't mind
pain--and he don't, I will admit, try as I would--they made him think
himself a hero. Them boys laughed at the teachers they set over them,
laughed and mocked at them--and I don't suppose they was the best
teachers in the world; I don't suppose, and I don't suppose anyone
sensible does suppose that everyone who goes to be a teacher or a
chapl'in or a warder in a Reformatory Home goes and changes right away
into an Angel of Grace from Heaven--and Oh, Lord! where was I?"
"What did they send him to the Reformatory for?"
"Playing truant and stealing. He stole right enough--stole the money
from an old woman, and what was I to do when it came to the trial but
say what I knew. And him like a viper a-looking at me--more like a
viper than a human boy. He leans on the bar and looks at me. 'All
right, Aunt Flo,' he says, just that and nothing more. Time after
time, I've dreamt of it, and now he's come. 'They've Reformed me,' he
says, 'and made me a devil, and devil I mean to be to you. So out with
it,' he says."
"What did you give him last time?" asked Mr. Polly.
"Three golden pounds," said the plump woman.
"'That won't last very long,' he says. 'But there ain't no hurry. I'll
be back in a week about.' If I wasn't one of the hoping sort--"
She left the sentence unfinished.
Mr. Polly reflected. "What sort of a size is he?" he asked. "I'm not
one of your Herculaceous sort, if you mean that. Nothing very
wonderful bicepitally."
"You'll scoot," said the plump woman with conviction rather than
bitterness. "You'd better scoot now, and I'll try and find some money
for him to go away again when he comes. It ain't reasonable to expect
you to do anything but scoot. But I suppose it's the way of a woman in
trouble to try and get help from a man, and hope and hope. I'm the
hoping sort."
"How long's he been about?" asked Mr. Polly, ignoring his own outlook.
"Three months it is come the seventh since he come in by that very
back door--and I hadn't set eyes on him for seven long years. He stood
in the door watchin' me, and suddenly he let off a yelp--like a dog,
and there he was grinning at the fright he'd given me. 'Good old Aunty
Flo,' he says, 'ain't you dee-lighted to see me?' he says, 'now I'm
Reformed.'"
The plump lady went to the sink and filled the kettle.
"I never did like 'im," she said, standing at the sink. "And seeing
him there, with his teeth all black and broken--. P'raps I didn't give
him much of a welcome at first. Not what would have been kind to him.
'Lord!' I said, 'it's Jim.'"
"'It's Jim,' he said. 'Like a bad shillin'--like a damned bad
shilling. Jim and trouble. You all of you wanted me Reformed and now
you got me Reformed. I'm a Reformatory Reformed Character, warranted
all right and turned out as such. Ain't you going to ask me in, Aunty
dear?'
"'Come in,' I said, 'I won't have it said I wasn't ready to be kind to
you!'
"He comes in and shuts the door. Down he sits in that chair. 'I come
to torment you!' he says, 'you Old Sumpthing!' and begins at me.... No
human being could ever have been called such things before. It made me
cry out. 'And now,' he says, 'just to show I ain't afraid of 'urting
you,' he says, and ups and twists my wrist."
Mr. Polly gasped.
"I could stand even his vi'lence," said the plump woman, "if it wasn't
for the child."
Mr. Polly went to the kitchen window and surveyed his namesake, who
was away up the garden path with her hands behind her back, and whisps
of black hair in disorder about her little face, thinking, thinking
profoundly, about ducklings.
"You two oughtn't to be left," he said.
The plump woman stared at his back with hard hope in her eyes.
"I don't see that it's _my_ affair," said Mr. Polly.
The plump woman resumed her business with the kettle.
"I'd like to have a look at him before I go," said Mr. Polly, thinking
aloud. And added, "somehow. Not my business, of course."
"Lord!" he cried with a start at a noise in the bar, "who's that?"
"Only a customer," said the plump woman.