Next morning about half-past ten Mr. Polly found himself seated under
a clump of fir trees by the roadside and about three miles and a half
from the Potwell Inn. He was by no means sure whether he was taking a
walk to clear his mind or leaving that threat-marred Paradise for good
and all. His reason pointed a lean, unhesitating finger along the
latter course.
For after all, the thing was not _his_ quarrel.
That agreeable plump woman, agreeable, motherly, comfortable as she
might be, wasn't his affair; that child with the mop of black hair who
combined so magically the charm of mouse and butterfly and flitting
bird, who was daintier than a flower and softer than a peach, was no
concern of his. Good heavens! what were they to him? Nothing!...
Uncle Jim, of course, _had_ a claim, a sort of claim.
If it came to duty and chucking up this attractive, indolent,
observant, humorous, tramping life, there were those who had a right
to him, a legitimate right, a prior claim on his protection and
chivalry.
Why not listen to the call of duty and go back to Miriam now?...
He had had a very agreeable holiday....
And while Mr. Polly sat thinking these things as well as he could, he
knew that if only he dared to look up the heavens had opened and the
clear judgment on his case was written across the sky.
He knew--he knew now as much as a man can know of life. He knew he had
to fight or perish.
Life had never been so clear to him before. It had always been a
confused, entertaining spectacle, he had responded to this impulse and
that, seeking agreeable and entertaining things, evading difficult and
painful things. Such is the way of those who grow up to a life that
has neither danger nor honour in its texture. He had been muddled and
wrapped about and entangled like a creature born in the jungle who has
never seen sea or sky. Now he had come out of it suddenly into a great
exposed place. It was as if God and Heaven waited over him and all the
earth was expectation.
"Not my business," said Mr. Polly, speaking aloud. "Where the devil do
_I_ come in?"
And again, with something between a whine and a snarl in his voice,
"not my blasted business!"
His mind seemed to have divided itself into several compartments, each
with its own particular discussion busily in progress, and quite
regardless of the others. One was busy with the detailed
interpretation of the phrase "Kick you ugly." There's a sort of French
wrestling in which you use and guard against feet. Watch the man's
eye, and as his foot comes up, grip and over he goes--at your mercy if
you use the advantage right. But how do you use the advantage rightly?
When he thought of Uncle Jim the inside feeling of his body faded away
rapidly to a blank discomfort....
"Old cadger! She hadn't no business to drag me into her quarrels.
Ought to go to the police and ask for help! Dragging me into a quarrel
that don't concern me."
"Wish I'd never set eyes on the rotten inn!"
The reality of the case arched over him like the vault of the sky, as
plain as the sweet blue heavens above and the wide spread of hill and
valley about him. Man comes into life to seek and find his sufficient
beauty, to serve it, to win and increase it, to fight for it, to face
anything and dare anything for it, counting death as nothing so long
as the dying eyes still turn to it. And fear, and dulness and
indolence and appetite, which indeed are no more than fear's three
crippled brothers who make ambushes and creep by night, are against
him, to delay him, to hold him off, to hamper and beguile and kill him
in that quest. He had but to lift his eyes to see all that, as much a
part of his world as the driving clouds and the bending grass, but he
kept himself downcast, a grumbling, inglorious, dirty, fattish little
tramp, full of dreads and quivering excuses.
"Why the hell was I ever born?" he said, with the truth almost winning
him.
What do you do when a dirty man who smells, gets you down and under in
the dirt and dust with a knee below your diaphragm and a large hairy
hand squeezing your windpipe tighter and tighter in a quarrel that
isn't, properly speaking, yours?
"If I had a chance against him--" protested Mr. Polly.
"It's no Good, you see," said Mr. Polly.
He stood up as though his decision was made, and was for an instant
struck still by doubt.
There lay the road before him going this way to the east and that to
the west.
Westward, one hour away now, was the Potwell Inn. Already things might
be happening there....
Eastward was the wise man's course, a road dipping between hedges to a
hop garden and a wood and presently no doubt reaching an inn, a
picturesque church, perhaps, a village and fresh company. The wise
man's course. Mr. Polly saw himself going along it, and tried to see
himself going along it with all the self-applause a wise man feels.
But somehow it wouldn't come like that. The wise man fell short of
happiness for all his wisdom. The wise man had a paunch and round
shoulders and red ears and excuses. It was a pleasant road, and why
the wise man should not go along it merry and singing, full of summer
happiness, was a miracle to Mr. Polly's mind, but confound it! the
fact remained, the figure went slinking--slinking was the only word
for it--and would not go otherwise than slinking. He turned his eyes
westward as if for an explanation, and if the figure was no longer
ignoble, the prospect was appalling.
"One kick in the stummick would settle a chap like me," said Mr.
Polly.
"Oh, God!" 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."