FOXY PINSENT _V._ JAPHRA's GENTLEMAN
I
Visitors to the booths who had stayed late that night went home
complaining of the abruptness with which the shows were closed and of
the uncouth way in which showmen who had fawned and flattered for their
patronage suddenly seemed no more occupied with them than to bustle
them off the ground and set their faces townwards.
But visitors were not in the line of communication that flashed that
amazing news around the camp:
"Heard it?"
"No!"
"Foxy Pinsent's to fight Japhra's Gentleman in the marquee!"
"What of it?"
"What of it, yer muddy thick? What of it? Not a show--private! Had a
scrap and to fight it out!"
"Eh? Fac'? No! When?"
"One o'clock. When the ground's clear." And, with a nod at the
sightseers, "Get 'em out, mate! Get 'em out! Stars and stripes! What
a knock-out!"
So, as the Fiery Cross among the Highland glens rushed with incredible
swiftness, leaving in its wake a trail of mad commotion, the message
flashed from mouth to mouth, booth to booth, van to van--received with
utter incredulity, grasped with wildest excitement, relished with a
zeal that caused every other thought and object to be abandoned, and
resulted in a tide of feverish agitation to be at leisure for details
and for the business that drove out naphtha flares and visitors alike
as it swept across the ground. For there was more in the fight than
the rare thrill of fight itself. It was accepted everywhere as the
meeting by champion of the two factions; and the bickerings of many
months, the final poison of that day's events, rushed a savage zest
into the appetites that waited the encounter. Foxy Pinsent was Boss
Maddox's party, coat off to put that Stingo crowd properly in its
place; Japhra's Gentleman was the Stingo following, girt at last to
collect a little on account for much outstanding debt. When, towards
one o'clock, the surging crowd outside the marquee made a sudden
movement forward and into the tent, it entered with rival cries,
taunts, faction jeers--and separated, as a barrier had divided it, into
two bodies that faced in mutual mock across the ring that had been
formed.
They found preparations at the point of completion, done by half a
dozen principles that Boss Maddox had called in, who stood conferring
with him now on final arrangements--Stingo, with Ginger Cronk and
Snowball White of Japhra's booth; Foxy Pinsent, hands in the pockets of
his long yellow coat, with Buck Osborn and others of his Academy of
Boxing and School of Arms--Pink Harman, Dingo Spain, Nut Harris. At a
little distance Japhra stood with Percival. He had towels on his arm,
a sponge in his hand, and as the crowd took up their places he turned
and called a single word across the arena to the group within the ring.
"Gloves?" he called.
Pinsent answered him. Pinsent took his hands from the pockets of his
coat and curved up two brown fists. "There's no gloves between us," he
called back; and at his words the two groups of spectators drew as it
were one long breath of relish--"Ah-h-h!" that hardened to murmurs of
grim satisfaction, each man to his neighbour--"The raw 'uns!" "The
knuckle!" "The knuckle!" "The raw 'uns!" and broke into individual
bickerings, cries of derision, across the ring; and thence into a
sudden wordless shouting, one party against the other--a blaring vent
of old antagonism fermented by new cause that made the animals in the
menagerie cages at the end of the arena leap from uneasy slumber to
spring against their bars and join their chorus to a chorus brutish as
their own.
II
To a renewed outburst of that clamour--the thing was on the tick of
beginning--Ima raised the flap that covered the entrance to the marquee
and stepped within. Simultaneously the shouting stilled with a sudden
jerk that left an immense silence--Foxy Pinsent had stepped into the
ring.
She stopped as if the sudden stillness struck her; and she took in the
scene, her hands clasped against her breast.
The ring had been contrived within the inner circle that forms the
working part of a circus arena. The canvas belt, some two feet high,
that surrounded this circle during a performance, had been taken up as
to the arc farthest from where she stood and brought forward to the
great pole of the marquee. The wide half circle thus bounded was made
the ring for the fight. Around the tent the lights above the seats had
been extinguished; the great lamp of many burners that encircled the
mast enclosed the ring in its arc of clear light. In the surrounding
dimness, as Ima paused and watched, were the high tiers of red-draped,
empty benches. Within the light's arc she saw the rival crowds on
either hand; straight before her the gap that separated the two
clusters and declared their enmity. At the centre front of each,
against the canvas that bounded the ring, was a little caving-in of the
throng where men in their shirt-sleeves knelt. Pinsent had just
stepped out from this knot on the one side: in the other she saw
Percival seated on her father's knee. A hundred men and more were
behind Pinsent, behind Percival forty or fewer; there was significance
in how each throng stood closely packed, refusing the accommodation
that the ample space between them offered--hatred was deep that
preferred the discomfort of jostling and tiptoe standing to easier view
at the price of mingling. Every face was beneath a peaked cap or
dented bowler hat and above a scarfed neck; a pipe in most caused, as
it were, a grey, shifting bank of smoke, cut flat by the darkness above
the lamp's reflection, to be swaying above the caps as though they
balanced it. Here and there were clumps of colour where women in
blouses of red or white clustered together. Sweat, for the place was
hot, glistened on this face and on that as if the grey, shifting bank
above them exuded drops of water. There was something very sinister,
very eerie, in the complete silence that for a moment held the scene;
and Ima started to hear a sound of breathing and of restless movement.
She looked around. On either hand of where she stood the menagerie
cages were banked. Dark or tawny forms were coiled or stretched there;
in one cage was a big wolf, head down, nose at the bars, that watched
the light as she watched it.
She went quickly forward to where she saw her father. Impatient way
was made for her. Japhra was talking earnestly to Percival, and they
scarcely seemed to notice her. She slipped down beside them, her knees
against the canvas, and sat on her heels, her hands clasped at their
full extension. She had said she would not come. She had found she
must. While she had been with Percival waiting Japhra's return after
the scene with Pinsent he had begun the contrition he had come to her
to express. She suffered him nothing of it. "That is left where we
laid it among the bracken," she told him. "Let it abide there. Look
already what has come of it. If I had stayed with thee, this had not
happened."
But her leaving him, and why she left, and his following her, and what
came then, were of the train of the tricks and chances that shaped for
him this day.
III
Boss Maddox spoke. "They're going to fight," he said, taking up a
position against the mast and addressing the gathering in his dry,
authoritative way--"They're going to fight, and you can count
yourselves lucky to see it. If any one interferes--out he goes.
Everything's settled. If any one sees anything he don't think right or
according to rule he can go outside and look for it--keep his mouth
shut while he's going and go quick. Three minute rounds. One minute
breathers. Ten count for the knock-out. Stingo 'll stand here with
the watch. I'm referee. And I'm boss--bite on that. Come along,
Foxy."
Pinsent, who had stepped over the canvas and strolled to the centre of
the ring as Ima entered, was still in the long yellow coat, still with
his hands in his pockets. He liked to have all those eyes upon him.
He liked to give pause and opportunity for the thought that this fine
figure standing here had fought in class rings and bore a reputation
that gentlemen in shirt-fronts had paid gold to see at battle. He
suffered usually a slight nervousness at the first moment of stepping
into those class rings: to-night and here he had an exultant feeling,
and he carried it with a most effective swagger. He knew Percival
could box. He had watched him spar in Japhra's booth. He knew, to
express his own thoughts, there 'd be a little bit of mixin' up at the
outset; but he knew, as only Japhra among them all also knew, that to
his own skill that had put him in a good rank of his weight he added
the experience, the craft, the morale of a score and more class fights,
and that such a quality is to be reckoned as a third arm against that
poor thing--a "novice." "A novice, Boss!" he had said to Boss Maddox
an hour before. "A novice--I lay there's more'n a few 'ud stop this
fight if they knew what I was fighting. 'Strewth! I'd not do it
myself but for what I've been saving up against the whelp!"
What he had been saving up came poisonously to his mind as he stood
there, driving away even the flavour of the admiration he felt he was
receiving. At last the price for that "Foxy" he had been dubbed and
had endured. At last that price! Folk had come to the booths to see
Japhra's Gentleman, had they!--A price for that! That smack in the
mouth an hour ago!--A price for that! a big price and he would have it
to the full!
The foxy smile contracted his mouth and eyes as he began to draw the
scarf from his neck, slipped the long yellow coat, and peeled a
sweater. A delighted cry went up from his supporters--good old Foxy
had done them the honour of appearing in his class ring kit! Japhra,
whispering last earnest words in Percival's ear, looked up at the cry,
and twisted up his face at what he saw. Naked but for the tight boxing
trunks and boxing boots, Pinsent declared himself a rare figure of a
fighting machine. Japhra knew the points. Pinsent threw out his arms
at right angles to his sides and drew a long breath. Japhra saw the
big round chest spring up and expand as a soap bubble at a breath
through the pipe--the cleft down the bone between the big chest
muscles; the tense, drumlike look of the skin where it swept into waist
from the lower ribs; the ridge from neck to shoulder on either side
where the head of the back muscles showed; the immense span of the
arms, rooted in great hitting shoulders that, at such length and along
such well-packed arms, would drive the fists like engine rods. He
scaled a shade over ten stone, Japhra guessed. Percival would be
little above nine-and-a-half; and in Pinsent's uncommonly long
legs--their length accentuated by the brief boxing-drawers--Japhra saw
a further and most dangerous quality in his armoury. He swung an arm
and side-stepped to his left as Japhra watched; and Japhra's lips
twitched. The left leg not slid the foot but lifted it and put it away
and down, more with the ease of an arm action than of a leg--as a
spider lifts and places; up, two feet away, the body perfectly poised
on the right; down, and in a flash the body alert upon it--down, and in
a flash the arm extended and back again with the stab of a serpent's
tongue. There went up a murmur of applause at the consummate ease of
the action, and Japhra turned to Percival with whispered repetition of
last words.
"Thou seest that?" he whispered. "Thou must follow, follow; press him;
give him no rest. In-fighting, in-fighting, quick as thou canst hit!"
Earnest anxiety was in his voice as he spoke and in his lined face that
was all twisted up so that every line became a pucker, as a withered
apple that is squeezed in the hand.
"Now bide me a last time," he said. "He hath no bowels for punishment.
There is a coward streak in him--I have seen it. That thou must find
by following, following--quick as thou canst sling them. Good for thee
that he has chosen the knuckle. Thou hast used thy hands. That fox
yonder hath been too fine a swell these years to pull and carry, shift
and load as thou hast done. He will rue his choice when his knuckles
bruise; thine like stone. He will use his tongue on thee, mocking
thee. Pay no heed to that. He will use his ring tricks. Watch for
them. Up now! they are ready for thee. My life is in this fight,
little master--punish, punish, punish; give him no peace--it resteth on
that. All the luck!"
He slipped Percival's coat, and Percival stepped across the canvas and
went where Pinsent waited him in the centre. He wore the dress in
which he boxed in the booth--white flannel trousers, a vest of thin
gauze, white canvas shoes with rubber soles. He carried his arms at
his sides, twisting up his fingers to make toughest those fists that
Japhra had said were like stone. He held his head high, looking
straightly at Pinsent; stopped within an arm's length of him and turned
his eyes informatively to Boss Maddox, then direct into Pinsent's again.
His covered limbs joined with his few pounds' lesser weight to make him
appear the slighter figure of the two. "Going to eat him!" a voice
behind Pinsent broke out.
"Going to muddy well eat him!" and Pinsent's mouth and eyes contracted
into their foxy smile at the words.
"Ready?" from Boss Maddox. "All right, Stingo. Get along with it."
"Time!" said Stingo's husky whisper; and, as a hand laid to the wire of
dancing puppets, the word jerked both figures into movement.