She hurried to the peep-hole, and found herself against the ring. She
could see the whole of it, though part of the audience was shut off. The
ring was well lighted by an overhead cluster of patent gas-burners. The
front row of the men she had squeezed past, because of their paper and
pencils, she decided to be reporters from the local papers up-town. One
of them was chewing gum. Behind them, on the other two rows of seats,
she could make out firemen from the near-by engine-house and several
policemen in uniform. In the middle of the front row, flanked by the
reporters, sat the young chief of police. She was startled by catching
sight of Mr. Clausen on the opposite side of the ring. There he sat,
austere, side-whiskered, pink and white, close up against the front of
the ring. Several seats farther on, in the same front row, she
discovered Silverstein, his weazen features glowing with anticipation.
A few cheers heralded the advent of several young fellows, in
shirt-sleeves, carrying buckets, bottles, and towels, who crawled through
the ropes and crossed to the diagonal corner from her. One of them sat
down on a stool and leaned back against the ropes. She saw that he was
bare-legged, with canvas shoes on his feet, and that his body was swathed
in a heavy white sweater. In the meantime another group had occupied the
corner directly against her. Louder cheers drew her attention to it, and
she saw Joe seated on a stool still clad in the bath robe, his short
chestnut curls within a yard of her eyes.
A young man, in a black suit, with a mop of hair and a preposterously
tall starched collar, walked to the centre of the ring and held up his
hand.
"Gentlemen will please stop smoking," he said.
His effort was applauded by groans and cat-calls, and she noticed with
indignation that nobody stopped smoking. Mr. Clausen held a burning
match in his fingers while the announcement was being made, and then
calmly lighted his cigar. She felt that she hated him in that moment.
How was her Joe to fight in such an atmosphere? She could scarcely
breathe herself, and she was only sitting down.
The announcer came over to Joe. He stood up. His bath robe fell away
from him, and he stepped forth to the centre of the ring, naked save for
the low canvas shoes and a narrow hip-cloth of white. Genevieve's eyes
dropped. She sat alone, with none to see, but her face was burning with
shame at sight of the beautiful nakedness of her lover. But she looked
again, guiltily, for the joy that was hers in beholding what she knew
must be sinful to behold. The leap of something within her and the stir
of her being toward him must be sinful. But it was delicious sin, and
she did not deny her eyes. In vain Mrs. Grundy admonished her. The
pagan in her, original sin, and all nature urged her on. The mothers of
all the past were whispering through her, and there was a clamour of the
children unborn. But of this she knew nothing. She knew only that it
was sin, and she lifted her head proudly, recklessly resolved, in one
great surge of revolt, to sin to the uttermost.
She had never dreamed of the form under the clothes. The form, beyond
the hands and the face, had no part in her mental processes. A child of
garmented civilization, the garment was to her the form. The race of men
was to her a race of garmented bipeds, with hands and faces and
hair-covered heads. When she thought of Joe, the Joe instantly
visualized on her mind was a clothed Joe--girl-cheeked, blue-eyed, curly-
headed, but clothed. And there he stood, all but naked, godlike, in a
white blaze of light. She had never conceived of the form of God except
as nebulously naked, and the thought-association was startling. It
seemed to her that her sin partook of sacrilege or blasphemy.
Her chromo-trained aesthetic sense exceeded its education and told her
that here were beauty and wonder. She had always liked the physical
presentment of Joe, but it was a presentment of clothes, and she had
thought the pleasingness of it due to the neatness and taste with which
he dressed. She had never dreamed that this lurked beneath. It dazzled
her. His skin was fair as a woman's, far more satiny, and no rudimentary
hair-growth marred its white lustre. This she perceived, but all the
rest, the perfection of line and strength and development, gave pleasure
without her knowing why. There was a cleanness and grace about it. His
face was like a cameo, and his lips, parted in a smile, made it very
boyish.
He smiled as he faced the audience, when the announcer, placing a hand on
his shoulder, said: "Joe Fleming, the Pride of West Oakland."
Cheers and hand-clappings stormed up, and she heard affectionate cries of
"Oh, you, Joe!" Men shouted it at him again and again.
He walked back to his corner. Never to her did he seem less a fighter
than then. His eyes were too mild; there was not a spark of the beast in
them, nor in his face, while his body seemed too fragile, what of its
fairness and smoothness, and his face too boyish and sweet-tempered and
intelligent. She did not have the expert's eye for the depth of chest,
the wide nostrils, the recuperative lungs, and the muscles under their
satin sheaths--crypts of energy wherein lurked the chemistry of
destruction. To her he looked like a something of Dresden china, to be
handled gently and with care, liable to be shattered to fragments by the
first rough touch.
John Ponta, stripped of his white sweater by the pulling and hauling of
two of his seconds, came to the centre of the ring. She knew terror as
she looked at him. Here was the fighter--the beast with a streak for a
forehead, with beady eyes under lowering and bushy brows, flat-nosed,
thick-lipped, sullen-mouthed. He was heavy-jawed, bull-necked, and the
short, straight hair of the head seemed to her frightened eyes the stiff
bristles on a hog's back. Here were coarseness and brutishness--a thing
savage, primordial, ferocious. He was swarthy to blackness, and his body
was covered with a hairy growth that matted like a dog's on his chest and
shoulders. He was deep-chested, thick-legged, large-muscled, but
unshapely. His muscles were knots, and he was gnarled and knobby,
twisted out of beauty by excess of strength.
"John Ponta, West Bay Athletic Club," said the announcer.
A much smaller volume of cheers greeted him. It was evident that the
crowd favored Joe with its sympathy.
"Go in an' eat 'm, Ponta! Eat 'm up!" a voice shouted in the lull.
This was received by scornful cries and groans. He did not like it, for
his sullen mouth twisted into a half-snarl as he went back to his corner.
He was too decided an atavism to draw the crowd's admiration.
Instinctively the crowd disliked him. He was an animal, lacking in
intelligence and spirit, a menace and a thing of fear, as the tiger and
the snake are menaces and things of fear, better behind the bars of a
cage than running free in the open.
And he felt that the crowd had no relish for him. He was like an animal
in the circle of its enemies, and he turned and glared at them with
malignant eyes. Little Silverstein, shouting out Joe's name with high
glee, shrank away from Ponta's gaze, shrivelled as in fierce heat, the
sound gurgling and dying in his throat. Genevieve saw the little
by-play, and as Ponta's eyes slowly swept round the circle of their hate
and met hers, she, too, shrivelled and shrank back. The next moment they
were past, pausing to centre long on Joe. It seemed to her that Ponta
was working himself into a rage. Joe returned the gaze with mild boy's
eyes, but his face grew serious.
The announcer escorted a third man to the centre of the ring, a genial-
faced young fellow in shirt-sleeves.
"Eddy Jones, who will referee this contest," said the announcer.
"Oh, you, Eddy!" men shouted in the midst of the applause, and it was
apparent to Genevieve that he, too, was well beloved.
Both men were being helped into the gloves by their seconds, and one of
Ponta's seconds came over and examined the gloves before they went on
Joe's hands. The referee called them to the centre of the ring. The
seconds followed, and they made quite a group, Joe and Ponta facing each
other, the referee in the middle, the seconds leaning with hands on one
another's shoulders, their heads craned forward. The referee was
talking, and all listened attentively.
The group broke up. Again the announcer came to the front.
"Joe Fleming fights at one hundred and twenty-eight," he said; "John
Ponta at one hundred and forty. They will fight as long as one hand is
free, and take care of themselves in the breakaway. The audience must
remember that a decision must be given. There are no draws fought before
this club."
He crawled through the ropes and dropped from the ring to the floor.
There was a scuttling in the corners as the seconds cleared out through
the ropes, taking with them the stools and buckets. Only remained in the
ring the two fighters and the referee. A gong sounded. The two men
advanced rapidly to the centre. Their right hands extended and for a
fraction of an instant met in a perfunctory shake. Then Ponta lashed
out, savagely, right and left, and Joe escaped by springing back. Like a
projectile, Ponta hurled himself after him and upon him.
The fight was on. Genevieve clutched one hand to her breast and watched.
She was bewildered by the swiftness and savagery of Ponta's assault, and
by the multitude of blows he struck. She felt that Joe was surely being
destroyed. At times she could not see his face, so obscured was it by
the flying gloves. But she could hear the resounding blows, and with the
sound of each blow she felt a sickening sensation in the pit of her
stomach. She did not know that what she heard was the impact of glove on
glove, or glove on shoulder, and that no damage was being done.
She was suddenly aware that a change had come over the fight. Both men
were clutching each other in a tense embrace; no blows were being struck
at all. She recognized it to be what Joe had described to her as the
"clinch." Ponta was struggling to free himself, Joe was holding on.
The referee shouted, "Break!" Joe made an effort to get away, but Ponta
got one hand free and Joe rushed back into a second clinch, to escape the
blow. But this time, she noticed, the heel of his glove was pressed
against Ponta's mouth and chin, and at the second "Break!" of the
referee, Joe shoved his opponent's head back and sprang clear himself.
For a brief several seconds she had an unobstructed view of her lover.
Left foot a trifle advanced, knees slightly bent, he was crouching, with
his head drawn well down between his shoulders and shielded by them. His
hands were in position before him, ready either to attack or defend. The
muscles of his body were tense, and as he moved about she could see them
bunch up and writhe and crawl like live things under the white skin.
But again Ponta was upon him and he was struggling to live. He crouched
a bit more, drew his body more compactly together, and covered up with
his hands, elbows, and forearms. Blows rained upon him, and it looked to
her as though he were being beaten to death.
But he was receiving the blows on his gloves and shoulders, rocking back
and forth to the force of them like a tree in a storm, while the house
cheered its delight. It was not until she understood this applause, and
saw Silverstein half out of his seat and intensely, madly happy, and
heard the "Oh, you, Joe's!" from many throats, that she realized that
instead of being cruelly punished he was acquitting himself well. Then
he would emerge for a moment, again to be enveloped and hidden in the
whirlwind of Ponta's ferocity.