The History of Mr. Polly

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.”