_"Dê tot' anaschomenô, ho men êlase dexion ômon
Iros, ho d' auchen' elassen hup' ouatos, ostea d' eisô
Ethlasen; autika d' êlthen ana stoma phoinion haima."_
Toward the end of my second year an event came off in which we were all
much interested--a steeplechase in which both Universities were to take
part. The stakes were worth winning--twenty sovs. entrance, h.f., and a
hundred sovs. added; besides, the _esprit de corps_ was strong, and men
backed their opinions pretty freely. The venue was fixed at B----; the
time, the beginning of the Easter vacation.
The old town was crowded like Vanity Fair. There was a railway in
progress near, and the navvies and other "roughs" came flocking in by
hundreds, so that the municipal authorities, justly apprehensive of a
row, concentrated the cohorts of their police, and swore in no end of
specials as a reserve.
The great event came off duly, a fair instance of the "glorious
uncertainty" which backers of horses execrate and ring-men adore. All
the favorites were out of the race early. Our best man, Barlowe, the
centre of many hopes, and carrying a heavy investment of Oxford money,
was floored at the second double post-and-rail. The Cambridge cracks,
too, by divers casualties, were soon disposed of. At the last fence, an
Oxford man was leading by sixty yards; but it was his maiden race, and
he lost his head when he found himself looking like a winner so near
home. Instead of taking the stake-and-bound at the weakest place, he
rode at the strongest; his horse swerved to the gap, took the fence
sideways, and came down heavily into the ditch of the winning field. The
representative of Cambridge, who came next, riding a good steady hunter,
not fast, but safe at his fences, cantered in by himself. I remember he
was so bewildered by his unexpected victory that one of his backers had
to hold him fast in the saddle, or he would have dismounted before
riding to scale, and so lost the stakes.
Well, the race was over and the laurels lost, so we had nothing to do
but pay and look pleasant, and then adjourn to the inevitable banquet at
"The George." There was little to distinguish the proceedings from the
routine of such festivals. The winners stood Champagne, and the losers
drank it--to any amount. The accidents of flood and field were discussed
over and over again; and, I believe, every man of the twenty-three who
had ridden that day could and did prove, to his own entire satisfaction,
that he must have won but for some freak of fortune totally unavoidable,
and defying human calculation.
About nine o'clock I went out with another man to get some fresh air,
and something I wanted in the town. At the corner of every street there
was a group of heavy, sullen faces, looking viciously ready for a row,
while out of the windows of the frequent public houses gushed bursts of
revelry hideously discordant, from the low-browed rooms where the wild
Irish sat howling and wrangling over their liquor. However, we got what
we wanted, and were returning, when, in a street on our left, we heard
cries and a trampling of many feet. Two figures, looking like University
men, passed us at speed, and, throwing something down before us, dived
into an alley opposite, and were lost to sight. My companion picked up
the object; and we had just time to make out that it was a bell-handle
and name-plate, when the pursuers came up--six or seven "peelers" and
specials, with a ruck of men and boys. We were collared on the instant.
The fact of the property being found in our possession constituted a
_flagrans delictum_--we were caught "red-handed." It was vain to argue
that, had we been the delinquents, we should scarcely have been standing
there still, awaiting discovery. The idea of arguing with a rural
policeman, when, by a rare coincidence, popular feeling is with him! The
mob regarded our capture, exulting like the Romans over Jugurtha in
chains. It was decided "we were to go before the Inspector." We were
placed in the centre of a phalanx of specials, each guarded by two
regulars; and so the triumph, followed by a train that swelled at every
turning, moved slowly along the Sacred Way toward the temple of the
station-house, where the municipal Jupiter Capitolinus sat in his glory.
Before we had proceeded three hundred yards there was a shout from the
crowd, "Look out! here come the 'Varsity!" and down a cross street
leading from the inn, two hundred gownsmen, wild with wrath and wassail,
came leaping to the rescue.
In the van of all I caught sight of two figures--one that I knew very
well, towering, bareheaded, a hand's-breadth above the throng; the
other, something below the middle height, but shaggy, vast-chested, and
double-jointed as a red Highland steer--M'Diarmid of Trinity, glory of
the Cambridge gymnasium, and "5" in the University eight. They were not
shouting like the rest, but hitting out straight and remorselessly; and
before those two strong Promachi, townsman and navvy, peeler and
special, went down like blades of corn. Close at their shoulder I
distinguished Lovell, his clear blue eyes lightening savagely; and stout
Tom Lynton, a deeper flush on his honest face, hewing away with all the
unscientific strength of his nervous arm.
But my two guards, very Abdiels in their duty, never let me go; on the
contrary, one tightened his gripe on my throat suffocatingly, while the
other, though I remained perfectly quiescent, kept giving me gentle
hints to keep the peace with the end of his staff. I was getting sick
and dizzy, when something passed my cheek like the wind of a ball; there
was a dull, crashing sound close at my ear; the grasp on my neck relaxed
all at once; I felt something across my feet, and saw a dark blue mass,
topped by the ruin of a shiny hat, lying there quite still; an arm was
round my waist like the coil of a cable, and I heard Guy's voice
laughing loud,
"My dear Frank," he said, as he dragged me away toward the inn, "the
centre of a row, as usual. _Que, diable, allait il faire dans cette
bagarre?_"
I hardly heard him, for my senses were still confused; but in thirty
seconds I was under the archway of "The George." As the heroines of the
Radcliffe romances say, "I turned to thank my preserver, but he was
gone."
When I recovered my breath, I went up to a balcony on the first floor
and looked out. The tide of the affray was surging gradually back into
the wide open space before the inn, and very shortly this was filled
with a chaos of furious faces and struggling arms. The University were
evidently recoiling, pressed back by the sheer weight of their
opponents; but soon came a re-enforcement of grooms and stable-men,
lightweights, active and wiry; and these, with their hunting-crops and
heavy cutting-whips used remorselessly--like Cæsar's legionaries, they
struck only at the face--once more re-established the balance of the
battle.
Suddenly the _melée_ seemed to converge to one point--the mid-eddy, as
it were, of the whirlpool; then came a lull, almost a hush; and then
fifty strong arms, indiscriminately of town and gownsmen, were locked to
keep the ground, while a storm of voices shouted for "A ring!"
In that impromptu arena two men stood face to face under the full glare
of the gas-lamps--one was Guy Livingstone; the other a denizen of the
Potteries, yclept "Burn's Big 'un," who had selected B---- as his
training quarters, in preparation for his fight to come off in the
ensuing week with the third best man in England for £100 a side.
They made a magnificent contrast. Guy, apparently quite composed, but
the lower part of his face set stern and pitiless; an evil light in his
eyes, showing how all the gladiator in his nature was roused; his left
hand swaying level with his hip; all the weight of his body resting on
the right foot; his lofty head thrown back haughtily; his guard low. The
professional, three inches shorter than his adversary, but a rare model
of brute strength; his arms and neck, where the short jersey left them
exposed, clear-skinned and white as a woman's, through the perfection of
his training; his hair cropped close round a low, retreating forehead;
his thick lips parted in a savage grin, meant to represent a smile of
confidence. So they stood there--fitting champions of the races that
have been antagonistic for four thousand years--Patrician and
Proletarian.
Suddenly there was a commotion at one corner of the ring, and I saw a
small, bullet-headed man, with a voice like a fractious child, striving
frantically to force his way through. "Don't let 'em fight!" he
screamed: "it's robbery, I tell you. There's hundreds of pounds on him
for Thursday next, I'm his trainer; and I daren't show him with a
scratch on him."
A great roar of laughter answered his entreaties, and twenty arms thrust
the little man back; but his interesting charge seemed to ponder and
hesitate, when a drawling nasal voice spoke from the opposite corner:
"Ah! you're right; take him away; don't show his white feather till
you're druv to it." That turned the wavering scale. The Big 'un ground
his teeth with blasphemy, and set-to.
I need not go through the minutiæ of the fight; it was all one way. The
professional did his best, and took his punishment like a glutton; but
he could do nothing against the long reach of his adversary, who stopped
and countered as coolly as if he had only the gloves on.
It was the beginning of the sixth round; our champion bore only one
mark, showing where a tremendous right-hander had almost come home--a
cut on his lower lip, whence the bright Norman blood was flowing freely.
I will not attempt to describe the hideous changes that ten minutes had
wrought in his opponent's countenance; but I think I was not the only
spectator who felt a thrill of fear mingling with disgust as the Big 'un
made his despairing effort, and fought his way in to the terrible
"half-arm rally." In truth, there was something unearthly and awful in
the sight of the maimed and mangled Colossus; his huge breast heaving
with wrath and pain; his one unblinded eye glaring unutterably; his
crushed lips churning the crimson foam. It was the last rash of the
Cordovan bull goaded to madness by picador and chulo; but Guy's fatal
left met him, straight, unyielding as the blade of the matador; twice he
reeled back wellnigh stunned; the third time he dropped his head
cleverly, so as to avoid the blow, and grappled. For some seconds the
two were locked together, undistinguishably; then we saw Guy's right
hand, never used till then save as a guard, rise and fall twice with a
dull, smashing sound, which was bad to hear; then the huge form of the
prize-fighter was whirled up unresistingly over his antagonist's hip,
and fell crashing down at his feet, a heap of blind, senseless, bleeding
humanity.
"Time!" You must call louder yet before he will hear, and lance a vein
in the throat before he will answer.
Then, in the old market-place of B----, there went up such a shout as I
think it has never heard since Vikings and Berserkyr caroused there
after storming the town. The gownsmen, as they will do on slighter
provocation, screamed themselves hoarse and voiceless with delight; and
their late opponents--the honest Saxon's love of a fair fight overcoming
the spirit of the partisan--echoed and prolonged the cheer.
There was no more thought of battle or broil; and there were as many
navvies as University men among the enthusiasts who bore the champion on
their shoulders into "The George."
How we reveled on that night of victory, especially when Guy, after
necessary ablutions and change of raiment, joined us, calm and
self-possessed as ever, only slightly swelled about the lower lip, and a
dark red flush on his forehead! He had satisfactory accounts of his
adversary, the said amiable individual having so far recovered, under
the surgeon's hands, as to swear thrice--"quite like hisself," the
messenger said--and to call for cold brandy and water.
Livingstone's health was proposed twice--the first time by a fellow of
King's, with a neat talent for classical allusions, who remarked that,
"if the olive-crown of the Hippodrome had fallen to the lot of
Cambridge, none would deny her sister's claim to the parsley of the
cæstus." The second time was very late in the evening, by M'Diarmid. It
must be confessed that gallant chieftain was somewhat incoherent, and
amid protestations of admiration and eternal friendship, much to our
astonishment, wept profusely. Still later, he got very maudlin indeed,
and was heard to murmur, looking at his scarred knuckles, that "he was
afraid he must have hurt some one that night," with an accent of
heartfelt sorrow and contrition which was inimitable.
We heard afterward that the taunt which made the fight a certainty came
from the commissioner of the party who stood heavily against the Big
'un, sent down to watch him in his training, and spy out the joints in
his harness.