Chapter V: Japhra's Lessons

I

Japhra took up Ima's words when she had left them. "Nay, but the boxing is my business," Japhra said, filling his pipe. "I'm for the boxing again this summer. Money's short and old Pilgrim yonder has full earned his rest and must have another take up his shafts. Another horse is to be bought, wherefore a sparring booth again for me."

Percival asked: "When are you going?"

"To-morrow. I pick up the circus by Dorchester. My lads are waiting me. Ginger Cronk, I have--thou mind'st Ginger?--and Snowball White, a useful one. Stingo seeketh another for me. A good lad, I must have, if the money's to be made, for Foxy Pinsent hath a brave show that will draw the company--two coloured lads and four more with himself."

Percival was silent. "I wish I could go with you," he said presently: "And you're going to-morrow, you say?--to-morrow?"

"At daybreak, master."

"Ah!" Percival gave a hard exclamation as though feelings that were pent up in him escaped him. "Now I had found you again, I hoped I was going to see you often for a bit. My luck's right out," and he gave a little laugh.

Japhra lit his pipe. "So we come back to thy trouble," he said.

His voice and a motion that he made invited confidence. Percival watched through the dusk the glow from his pipe, now lighting his face, now leaving it in shadow. He had longed to tell Japhra; he found it hard.

After a moment: "Hard to tell!" he jerked.

"How to bear? That is the measure of a grief."

"Impossible to bear!"

"Tell, then."

"There's little to be told. That's it! That's the sting of it--so little, so much. A man must do something with his life, Japhra!"

"Ay, that must he, else life will use him, breaking him."

"Why, that's just it! That's what will happen to me! I'm a man--they think I'm not; there, that's the pith of it!" He was easier now and in the way of words that would express his feelings. He went on: "Look, Japhra, it's like this--" and told how he was growing up idler, how Aunt Maggie answered all his protestations for work for his hands to do by bidding him only wait--and he ended as he had begun: "A man must do something with his life!"

He stopped,--aware, and somehow, as he looked through the dusk at Japhra, a little ashamed, that his feelings had run his voice to a note of petulance. He stopped, but a space of silence came where he had looked for answer. Evening by now was full about the camp. Night that evening heralded pressed on her feet, and was already to be seen against the light in the windows of the van where Ima had lit the lamp. From the pool was the intermittent whirring of a warbler; somewhere a distant cuckoo called its engaging note that drowsy birds should not make bedtime yet. In the pines a song-thrush had its psalm to make; at intervals it paused and the air took a night-jar's whirr and catch and whirr again. Old Pilgrim cropped the grass.

II

Percival said: "What are you thinking of, Japhra?"

"Of life."

"What of life?"

"How hot it runs."

"Meaning me--I'm in a vile temper, I daresay you think."

"How hot it runs, master--how cold it comes and how little the profit of it."

Percival said heavily: "What is the use of it, then?"

Japhra bent forward to him and Percival saw the little man's tight-lipped, firm-lined countenance with the tranquil strength of mind that abode in the steady aspect of the bright eyes, deep beneath their strong brows.

"The use?" Japhra said. "Nay, that is the wrong way of estimate. For thee in thy mood, for all men when life presses them, inquire rather what is the hurt of it. How shall so small a thing as life, a thing so profitless, that soon becomes so cold, returneth to earth and is nothing remembered nor required--how shall so small a thing offend thee and make shipwreck of thy content? Thus shouldst thou judge of it."

"Some men are not soon forgotten, Japhra."

"Ay, master, and what men? They that have seen how small a thing is life and have recked nothing of it."

"How have they done great things, then?--fought battles, written books?"

"Why, master, how wrote Bunyan in chains or Milton in blindness?"

"They didn't mind."

"Even so. Profitless they knew life to be, and cared not how it tasked them."

"But, Japhra, that's--that's all upside down. Are there two things in a man, then--life and--?"

Japhra said: "So we come to it--and to thee. Truly there are two things: life which is here in the green leaf, and gone in the dry; and the spirit which goeth God knows where--into the sea that ever moves, the wind that ever blows, the sap that ever rises--who shall say? But knoweth not death and haply endureth forever if it were mighty enough--as Milton, as Bunyan. Look at me, master, for that is the plain fact of it and the balsam for all thy hurts."

He stopped and drew slowly at his pipe with little puffs that floated to Percival like grey thistledown dropping through the night.

"Go on," Percival said. "Go on, Japhra."

"Why, there thou hast it," Japhra told him. "Lay hold on thy spirit--let that be thy charge; and of what cometh against thee take no heed save to rebuke it as a boxer rebuketh the cunning of him that is matched against him. So was the way of Crusoe, of old Bunyan's Pilgrim, and of the Bible men, and that is why I call them the books for a fighting man. Here's my way of it, master--there's force in the world that moves the tides and blows the winds and maketh the green things grow. Out of that force I unriddle it we come, and back to it return. In some the spirit is utterly swallowed up in life, and at death crawleth back suffocated and befouled and only fit to come again in some rank growth--so much a lesser thing than when it came springing to a human breast that the force of the world whence it came is by so much lessened and can give birth to a flower less and a toadstool more."

"And then there's the other way about," said Percival, attracted by this argument.

"Ay, truly the other way about, master. The way of the mighty men in whom the spirit rebuketh life and increaseth, and at death goeth shouting back--so quickening the force of the world that, just as the cup spilleth when much is added, so there be mighty storms when great men die--thunders and rushing winds, great lightnings and vast seas."

Percival drew a long breath. "Why, it's a fine idea, Japhra--fine."

"Look at a case of it," Japhra said. "My Bible in the van there hath one. I have it by heart. Look when Christ died. Never a man than He cared less how life tasked Him; and at His death--when there went shouting back the spirit that He had increased beyond the increase of any man--look thou what came: 'And behold the veil of the Temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth quaked; and the rocks rent and the graves were opened.' And again: 'And it was about the sixth hour; and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour; and the sun was darkened.'"

He stopped; and Percival breathed long and deep again: "Fine, Japhra--fine. I never thought of it like that. Fine--I think I see."

"Surely thou dost, master; or any man that giveth thought to it. Take it to thine own case--that is my word to thee. Reck nothing how life assaileth--hold on only to thy spirit. Thou wouldst be doing something and art irked by the bonds that hold thee--never fear but that in its time the thing will come. I have seen men--I know the fashion of them. Thou art of the mould and mind to which adventures come. See to it thou art ready for them when they arrive--trained as the boxer is against the big fight."

Percival said heavily: "What's the prize, Japhra?" Now that the application of this engaging view was pressed to his own case he had a dark vision of what it required of him. "What's the prize?"

"Why, content! Look, little master, here's happiness, here's content--and content is all the world's gold and all its dreams. Whatever cometh against thee, whether through the flesh or through the mind, get thou the mastery of it. How? Every man according to his craft. The philosophers, the reckoners--theirs to judge bad against good and find content that way. That was old Crusoe's manner of it. Thou art the fighting type--the Ring for thee."

Percival got abruptly to his feet. At the same moment Ima opened the door of the van and stood above them--held, as it were, upon the light that streamed from the interior.

"The Ring for thee," Japhra repeated, "there to meet and conquer all thy vexations. Make a boxer of thy spirit. Step back through the ropes then and take up the champion belt marking thee thine own man, thine own master: a proud and jewelled thing to wear--content."

Ima's voice broke in upon them. "The champion belt?" she said. "What, is it still boxing, thy talk?"

Japhra turned his face up to her and the lamplight showed the twinkling with which he met the reproach in her voice. "Why, it is my trade," he said, "and thine. In two days thou'lt be taking the money at the door of my booth."

"Not his trade, though," she answered.

Percival said: "Japhra, would I be a likely one for your booth, do you think?"

He was holding out his hand in the action of farewell. Japhra got up and took it and held it. "Why, if I get as proper a build as thine for my third lad I will put a polish to it that would vex Foxy Pinsent himself. Keep up the boxing, master. Art thou going?"

Percival said abruptly, "Yes, I'm going." He released the hand and went away a step. "I'm going. I've a longish way home and things to do before bedtime. You'll be gone at daybreak?"

"At dawn, little master."

"On the Dorchester road?"

"Ay, to Dorchester."

"All the luck with you, Japhra. I'm better for seeing you." He spoke jerkily as though his throat were full and speech difficult. He stopped abruptly, and half turned away; then, recollecting Ima, went back to the van and stretched up his hand to where she stood: "Good night, Ima."

She stooped down to him. The action brought her face into the darkness and he noticed how her wide eyes, as she stooped, seemed actually to light it. "Farewell!" she said.

It was perhaps that he had so obviously only attended to her as an afterthought that her throat, for all the sound her word had, might have been as full as his. Some thought of the kind--that he had been churlish to her--crossed him. He said more kindly: "I say, though! your hand is cold, Ima."

She withdrew her fingers, giving him no reply. But as he turned away and went a step, "What of thy way home?" she cried, and cried it on a sudden note as though it went against her will.

"By the Ridge," he told her. "By Plowman's Ridge and then along."

She answered him: "Yes, I am cold. I will warm me to the Ridge with thee--if thou wilt suffer me."

In the mood that was on him he had preferred to be alone. But under the same apprehension of having been churlish to her, "Why, that's jolly of you," he said.

III

She went within the van a few moments; and while he waited he had a last exchange with Japhra: "You've helped me, Japhra. But I shall disappoint you if I'm tried too hard. Content--I'll make a fight for it. But I shall not endure it very well if I am still to be idler." He gave a hard little laugh. "When it's a fight for mastery of myself I shall disappoint you, I believe."

Japhra told him: "I have seen men, master, and know the fashion of them. Thou wilt not disappoint me."

"You can't say that of any one--for certain."

"I say it of thee. Though thou failest a score times thine is the mould that comes again--for that I shall look. Listen to me, little master--that name clings: I cannot shake it from me. Listen to me. Thy type runneth hot through life till at last it cometh to the big fight. Send me news of that." He struck a match to relight his pipe and cupped the flame against his face. "Send only 'The Big Fight, Japhra,'" he said.

The flame of his match built up the dusky night in walls of immense blackness. In their heart Percival saw the kindly face with its tight lines and keen eyes. "I shall know the winner," Japhra said; and the cup of light within his hands shadowed and lit again his face as he nodded.

The Big Fight was drawing towards Percival. Aunt Maggie had the very date of it, and the articles reckoned and ready. When it rushed suddenly upon him and he was in its stress and agony, he remembered the lighted face, the confident nod and the message that was to be sent.