CHAPTER II

PASSIONATE ATTACHMENT TO LIVER OF A WAGONER

"You're up there, ain't yer?" demanded the wagoner, arrived at the other side of the wagon and bawling from the road. "You're up there, aren't yer? I've got you, my beauty! I'll cut your liver out for yer before I have my blinkin' hair cut! I've got you, my beauty! You're up there, aren't yer?"

Mr. Puddlebox poked his head very timidly over the side, looked down upon their questioner, and remarked in a small thin voice: "Yes--hup!" He then drew back very hastily, for at sight of him the wagoner with a very loud bellow rushed forward and smote upward with his whip in a manner fully calculated, to the minds of his passengers, to cut up a sack or lay open a liver with equal precision. "Come down off out of it!" bellowed this passionate gentleman, flogging upward with appalling whistle and thud of his lash. "Come down off out of it. I'll cut your liver out, my beauty! I'll cut your coat off your back, before I have my blinkin' hair cut."

Perceiving that the angry lash fell safely short of its aim, Mr. Puddlebox again protruded his head.

"Now are you coming down," demanded the flaming wagoner, "or am I coming up for you?"

"I should like to explain--" began Mr. Puddlebox.

"I'll explain you!" roared the wagoner. "I'll explain you, my beauty! Are you coming down off out of it?"

"What are you going to do if I do come?" inquired Mr. Puddlebox.

The carter, in a voice whose violence seemed likely to throttle him, announced as his intention that he proposed to cut out Mr. Puddlebox's liver with his whip and then, having extracted it, to dance upon it.

"Well, I won't come," said Mr. Puddlebox. "In that case, I think I'll stay here," he said, and said it with a nervous little giggle that shot out of the wagoner an inarticulate bellow of fury and a half-dozen of terrific blows towards Mr. Puddlebox's anxious face.

"Come down off out of it!" bellowed the carter. "I'll cut your liver out before I have my blinkin' hair cut, my beauty."

The same nervous giggle again escaped the unfortunate beauty whose liver was thus passionately demanded. "But your hair doesn't want cutting," said Mr. Puddlebox, "really--_hup!_"

"You fool!" Mr. Wriford cried. "You utter fool!" and in dramatic illustration of Mr. Puddlebox's folly, the wagon began to shake with the violence of the wagoner's ascent of it, and there preceded the ascent, increasing in horror as it approached, an eruption of astoundingly distressing oaths mingled in the most blood-curdling way with references to liver and other organs which were to be subjected at one and the same time to step-dances and to a ferocious orgy of surgical and cannibalistic practices.

Mr. Wriford was frightened. There went out of him the reckless glee in mad adventure that had possessed him on the wagon till now. There returned to him, dreadfully as if a hand within him were tugging at his vitals, twirling in his brain, drumming in his heart, the coward fear that well of old he knew.

"Down!" cried Mr. Puddlebox. "Down behind, loony! quick!" and began to scramble backwards.

There came to Mr. Wriford some odd experiences. He looked at Mr. Puddlebox and saw in the little round face where usually was merriment, alarm, white and sickly. Then saw Mr. Puddlebox's eyes search his own, and waver, and then fill with some purpose. Then was pulled and pushed backward by Mr. Puddlebox. Then both were hanging, half over the sacks, half on top. Then over the front of the wagon before them appeared the wagoner's cap and a vast arm clutching the whip. Then Mr. Puddlebox scrambled forward a yard, placing himself between Mr. Wriford and the approaching fury. "Down you go, loony; he's not seen you. Hide yourself, boy." Then Mr. Puddlebox's elbow and then his knee at Mr. Wriford's chest, and Mr. Wriford was slithered down the sacks and fallen in the road.

Now from above, and before yet Mr. Wriford could get to his feet, very quick things. Baleful howl from the flaming wagoner standing on his driver's seat and towering there in omnipotent command of the wagon-top. Appalling whistle-_wup_ of the whip in his mighty and ferocious hand. Pitiful yelps from Mr. Puddlebox, head and shoulders exposed, baggy stern, surmounted by the bulging pockets, suspended above Mr. Wriford in the road and wriggling this way and that as the whip fell. Baleful howl from the flaming wagoner and the whistle-_wup!_ at each loudest word of it: "Now, my beauty, I've GOT yer!"

Pitiful yelp from Mr. Puddlebox: "Yowp! Hup!"

"Now I'll CUT your liver out for yer."--"Yeep! Hup!"

"Before I have my BLINKIN' 'air cut."--"Yowp!"

"Now I'll CUT your liver out, my beauty."--"_Yowp! Yeep! Hup!_ Hell!"

Beneath the blows and the convulsive wrigglings they caused, Mr. Puddlebox's stern slipped lower down the sacks. Mr. Wriford scrambled to his feet from where he was fallen to the road. He was utterly terrified. He turned to run. He stopped, and a cry of new fear escaped him. Figure of Wriford stood there.

Mr. Wriford put a hand before his eyes and went a few steps to the side of the wagon and stopped again, irresolute.

There came from above again that bellow, again whistle-_wup!_ of the whip, again from Mr. Puddlebox in agonized response: "Yowp! Hup!"

Mr. Wriford cried aloud: "Oh, why doesn't he drop down?"

It seemed to him that Figure of Wriford turned upon him with flaming eyes and grinding teeth and for the first time spoke to him: "Why, to give you time to get away and hide--to save you, you filthy coward!"

Mr. Wriford cried: "Oh--oh!"

And at once a dramatic change of scene. In one sudden and tremendous bound the flaming wagoner hurled himself from the seat to the road, rushed bawling around his wagon on the opposite side from where Mr. Wriford trembled, came full beneath the hanging stern of Mr. Puddlebox, and discharged upon it a cut of his whip that made pretty caresses of his former efforts. "Now I've got you, my beauty!"

With a loud and exceeding bitter cry, the beauty released his hold. As thunders the mountain avalanche, so thundered he. As falls the stricken oak so, avalanched, the flaming wagoner fell beneath him.

There was a very loud crash of breaking bottles, and immediately upon the hot summer air a pungent reek of whisky. There were enormous convulsions of Mr. Puddlebox and the wagoner entwined in one great writhing double monster prone in the roadway, and from them a tremendous cloud of dust. There were thuds, oaths, _yawps_, _yeeps_, bellows, and with them the pleasant music of broken bottles jangling. The double monster came to its four knees and writhed there; very laboriously--as if it were a rheumatic giant--writhed to its four legs and there stood and writhed amain; divided suddenly, and there was an appalling wallop from one to the other, and Mr. Puddlebox went reeling, musically jangling, and the flaming wagoner, carried round by the wallop's impetus, came staggering sideways a pace towards Mr. Wriford.

Mr. Wriford put down his head and shut his eyes and rushed at him. Mr. Wriford, as he rushed, saw Figure of Wriford disappear as if swallowed. Mr. Wriford caught his foot in the wheel, was discharged like a butting ram at the backs of the flaming wagoner's knees, clutched, wrenched, was down with the bawling wagoner beating at his head, and then, clutching and struggling, was overturned beneath him. Mr. Wriford heard a yell, first of warning, then of triumph, from Mr. Puddlebox: "Keep out of it, loony! Well done, boy! Well done! Glumph him, boy! Glumph him!" There was a terrible run and kick from Mr. Puddlebox, and a terrible jerk and cry from the flaming wagoner, and in the next moment Mr. Wriford was on his feet and taking share, his eyes mostly shut, in a whirlwind, three-sided battle that spun up the road and down the road and across the road, and in which sometimes Mr. Wriford hit Mr. Puddlebox, and sometimes Mr. Puddlebox hit Mr. Wriford, and sometimes both hit the wagoner and sometimes by him were hit--a whirlwind, three-sided battle, in which, in short, by common intent of the three, the thing to do was simply to _hit_ and to roar. Six arms whirling enormous thumps; six legs lashing tremendous kicks; the air and three bodies receiving them; one mouth bawling curses of the very pit of obscenity; another howling: "Glumph him, boy! Glumph him!" Mr. Wriford's mouth laughing with fierce, exultant, hysterical glee.

The sudden rush that had rid Mr. Wriford of Figure of Wriford had returned him, and returned him with recklessness a hundredfold, to the mood, reckless of what happened to him, that had first embarked him on the wagon. And more than that. Out of the clutch of cowardice and lusting into the lust of action! When swinging his legs over the tail-board of the wagon, he had but gleefully thought of how now he was free, of caring nothing what happened to him, of gleefully throwing himself into any mad adventure. He had but thought of it; now he was in it! in it! in it! and in it! became the slogan of his fighting as he fought. "In it!" and a blind whirling wallop at the flaming wagoner's flaming face. "In it!" and colliding heavily with one of Mr. Puddlebox's glumphing rushes, and laughing aloud. "In it!" and spun staggering with a thump of one of the wagoner's whirling sledge-hammers, and staggering but to come with a fierce glee "In it! In it!" once again. Out of the clutch of cowardice that had him a moment before--cowardice bested for the first time in all these years of its nightmare sovereignty: and at that thought "In it! in it! in it!" with fierce and fiercer lust and fierce and fiercer and fiercest exultation. "In it!" Ah!

This extraordinary battle--extraordinary for a shrinking, gentlemanly, refined, well-dressed, comfortably housed, afternoon-tea-drinking Londoner--raged, if it had any order at all, about the towering person of the liver-cutting wagoner, and now went bawling to its end.

For this gentleman would no sooner get the liver of one antagonist in his fiery clutches than the other would come at him like a runaway horse and require attention that resulted in the escape of the first. And now a liver, heavily embedded in the bulky waist of Mr. Puddlebox, came at him head down with a force and with a fortune of aim that not even a stouter man than the wagoner could have withstood.

A very terrible buffet had just been inflicted upon Mr. Puddlebox. A sledge-hammer wallop from the wagoner had caught him in the throat ("_Ooop!_") and remained there, squeezing ("_Arrp!_"). The other hand had then clawed him like a tiger's bite in close proximity to his coveted liver ("_Arrp! Ooop!_"); and the two hands had finally hurled him ten feet away to end in a most shattering fall ("UMP!"). This manoeuvre was carried out by the flaming wagoner from the side of the ditch to which repeated rushes had driven him, and now he turned and directed a stupendous kick at Mr. Wriford, who came fiercely on his left. Mr. Wriford twisted; the immense boot but scraped him.

Then Mr. Puddlebox--the flaming wagoner on one leg, vitally exposed.

Mr. Puddlebox, head down, eyes shut, arms stretched behind him, hymned on to victory by the music of the broken bottles in his coat-tails, bounding across the road at the highest speed of which he was capable and into the liver-cutting gentleman's own liver and wind with stunning and irresistible force and rich clash of jangling glass.

Prone into the ditch the liver-cutting gentleman and there lay--advertising his presence only by those distressing groans which are at once the symptom of a winding and the only sound of which a winded is capable.

Mr. Puddlebox, also in the ditch, separated himself from the stricken mass and, stepping upon it, emerged upon the victorious battle-field rubbing his head.

A very loud, panting "Hurrah!" from Mr. Wriford; but before further felicitations could be exchanged, attention was demanded by a fourth party to the scene, who had been approaching unobserved for some time, and who now arrived and announced himself with: "Now then--hur!"