Chapter XI: With Japhra on the Road

I

It was two years--near enough--before Percival came again to Burdon Village. Egbert Hunt found work with old One Eye who had the Wild West Rifle Range. Percival became "Japhra's Gentleman" (as the van folk called him), living with Japhra and Ima in the van, and earning his way in Japhra's booth.

A tough life, a quick life, a good life; and he "trained on," as they said in the vans of beast or man or show that, starting fresh, slipped into stride and did well. He trained on. Little room for trouble or for brooding thoughts. Up while yet the day was grey; stiff work in boots and vest and trousers in taking down the booth and loading-up, harnessing and getting your van away before too many kept the dust stirring ahead of you. Keen appetite for the breakfasts Ima cooked, eaten on the forward platform with the van wheels grinding the road beneath. The long, long trail to the next pitch,--now with Ima as she sat, one eye on the horse, the other on her needle, sewing, darning, making; now plodding alongside with Japhra, drinking his quaint philosophy, hearing his strange tales of men and countries, fights and hard trades he had seen. Now forward along the long line of waggons, now dropping back where they trailed a mile down the road; joining this party or that, chaffing with the brown-faced girls or walking with the men and listening to their tales of their craft and of their lives. Sometimes the road from pitch to pitch was short; then the midday meal would be taken at the new site and there would be an hour's doze before the booths were set up and business begun. Usually the journey took the greater part of the day--frequently without a halt--and work must begin immediately on arrival; the boxing booth built up--first the platform on which Percival and Japhra, Ginger Cronk and Snowball White paraded to attract the crowd--a thing of boards and trestles, the platform, that by sheer sweating labour must be made to lie even and stable whatever the character of the ground; three uprights at either end that sometimes must be forced into soil iron hard and sometimes must be coaxed to hold firm in marshy bog. The booth itself to be rigged then--the wooden framework that must be lashed and nailed and screwed; the wide lengths of canvas eyeletted for binding together; stakes for the ring to be driven in; seats to be bolted together and covered--and all at top, top speed with a mouthful of nails and screws and "Who in hell's got that mallet?" and "A hand here! a hand sharp! Blast her! she's slipped again!" and many a bruised finger and always a sweating back. And then sharp, sharp into the flannels, and out with the gloves; and parade till the booth was full; and spar exhibition rounds alleged to be for weighty purses; and fight all the challengers from the crowd four rounds apiece, any weight; and top-up with a stiff six rounds announced by Snowball White: "A sporting gentleman having put up a purse for knock-out or win on points match between Ginger Cronk, ten stun champion of the west,--who beat Curly Hawkins in eight rounds, knocked out Alf Jacobs after a desperate ding-dong o' fourteen rounds, defeated Young Philipps in five rounds, and Jew Isaacs in sixteen,--and Gentleman Percival, a lad with a future before him, whom you'll be proud to have seen, gentlemen, discovered this summer by Gipsy Japhra, the man who held the lightweight champion belt for four years in America and who has trained with all the great ring heroes, bare-knuckle men, gentlemen, of a glorious Prize Ring period of the past. You are requested to pass no remarks during the progress of this desperate encounter, but to signify appreciation in the usual manner. Gentlemen, Mr. Ginger Cronk, Mr. Gentleman Percival--TIME!--" And so on; and winding up with "a remarkable exhibition in which Gipsy Japhra, partnered by Gentleman Percival, will show the style and methods of the old P. R. gentlemen"--and then back to the platform again, to parade, to fill the booth, to fight--and so till the last visitor had left the fair to night and to its hoarse and worn-out workers.

A tough life, a quick life, a good life; ... and Percival trained on. At first he had been considerably tasked by the rough and tumble, ding-dong work in the boxing booth following the strenuous labour of the day, with no time lost between pitch and pitch. Aching limbs he had dropped on his couch when at last rest came, and tender face, bruised from six or seven hours' punching, that even the soft pillow seemed to hurt. But he trained on. In a few weeks it was tired to bed but unaching, unhurt--only deliciously weary with the wearyness of perfect muscles and nerves relaxed to delicious rest; early afoot, keen, and sound, and vigorous; brisk, ready smiling to jump into the ring for the last P. R. exhibition with old Japhra as for the first spar with Ginger Cronk or Snowball White. "Thou art the fighting type," wise Japhra had told him years before; and those exhibition rounds with the old man were each of them lessons that brought him to rare skill with his fists.

While they sat together before their turn Japhra would instruct what was to be learnt this time, and while they sparred "Remember!" Japhra would call, "Remember! Good! Good!--Weak! Weak!--Follow it! Follow it!--Speed's thy game!--Quick as thou canst sling them!--See how that hook leaves thee unguarded!--Again!--All open to me again!--Again!--ah, take it, then!" and _clip!_ to the unprotected stomach, savage as he could drive it, would come old Japhra's left; and Percival go gasping, and Ginger Cronk to the spectators: "With that terrible punch, gentlemen, Gipsy Japhra knocked out Boy Duggan and took the championship belt at Los Angeles. Put your hands together, gentlemen, and give 'em a 'earty clap." When the round was ended Japhra would go over it point by point. When they sat or walked together, at meals or on the road, he was forever imparting his advice, his knowledge, his experience. He waas never tired of teaching ... and Percival trained on.

II

There came a day when "Thou must go slow with me," Japhra said after they had finished their round. "I have put skill to thy youth and strength. Thou must go slow with me or the folks will see nothing of the parts I am to show them." There came a day when he was given demonstration--if he had cared to recognise it for such--that the van folk knew him for a clever one with his fists. Foxy Pinsent supplied it.

In all the crowd of tough characters that made up Maddox's Royal Circus and Monster Menagerie with its attendant booths Foxy Pinsent alone gave him a supercilious lip or darkling scowl where others gave him smile and welcome. Foxy Pinsent had an old grudge against him--as Japhra had said--and lost no opportunity to rub it. The fact that "Japhra's Gentleman" was in the way of becoming a rival attraction to his own fame among the crowds that flocked to the fairs sharpened his spleen. The ever increasing bad blood between the two factions--Maddox's and Stingo's--gave him chance to exercise it.

Percival came hot to Japhra one day: "Damn that man Pinsent, Japhra. He's going too far with me. He's been putting it about the vans that I am too much the gentleman to go with a Maddox man--that I said in his hearing I refused to go with Dingo Spain to buy bread yesterday because I would not be seen in his company by decent people."

Japhra looked up at the angry face: "Let him bide. Let him bide."

"I'm not afraid of him."

"Nor I of adders, but I do not disturb their nests--nor lie in their ways."

On a day the reason came for Percival to cross the adder's way. Egbert Hunt knocked over a bucket in which one of Pinsent's negro pugilists was about to wash. The man used his fists, then his boots, on Hunt, sending him back brutally used. Percival sought out the black, outfought him completely, and administered a punishing that appeared to him to meet the case. Then came Pinsent.

"You've put your hands to one of my men, I hear--to Buck Osborn?"

"An infernal bully," said Percival.

"You've put your hands to one of my men!"

"And will again if he gives me cause!"

Foxy Pinsent came nearer, thin mouth and narrow eyes contracted in his ring expression. "Watch me, my gentleman; my lads' quarrels are mine. Watch out how you go your ways."

Percival glanced behind to see he had room: "You can leave that to me. I'll not have my friends knocked about."

"It's you in danger of the knocking about, my gentleman! That fine face of yours would take a bloody mark."

Percival slipped back his right foot six inches and glanced behind him again: "Try it, Pinsent."

Foxy Pinsent noticed the action. He moved his left fist upwards a trifle, then dropped it to his side and turned away with a laugh: "I don't fight boys; I thrash 'em."

"You know where to find me," Percival said.

III

So and in this wise he trained on to the tough, quick, good life; and in spirit developed as in body. The deeper he knew Japhra, the wider became his comprehension of life. He had failed once in the struggle with self, and that on the very night of Japhra's instruction of how that struggle should be fought: he was training on now not to fail again if ever the Big Fight should come. "What, art thou vexed again?" Japhra would say when sometimes he fell to brooding. "Get at the littleness of it--get at the littleness of it. It will pass. Remember what endureth. Not man nor man's work--only the green things that fade but come again Spring by Spring; only the brown earth that to-day humbly supports thee, to-morrow obscurely covers thee; only the hills yonder that shoulder aside the wind; only the sea that changeth always but changeth never; only the wind on our cheeks here, that to-day suffers itself to go in harness to yonder mill and to-morrow will wreck it and encourage the grass where it stood. Lay hold on that when aught vexeth thee; all else passeth...."

He trained on. Trifle by trifle and more and more he received and held, understood and stored for profit the little man's philosophy; trifle by trifle, more and more, developed qualities that made for the quality of self-restraint that ripened within him. Whatever his mood there was always peace and balm for him in the van. Many signs discovered to him that he was not merely an accepted part of Japhra's life and Ima's but a very active part; the little stir of welcome told him that--the little stir that always greeted him when he came on them sitting together.

They called him "Percival" now, at his desire. To Japhra he was still sometimes Little Master; to Ima never. But in Ima's ways and in her speech he noticed altogether a change in these days. The "Thou" and "Thee" and "Thine" of her former habit were gone: she never appeared now with naked feet, but always neatly hosed and shod. Gentle in her movements too, and seemly in her dress, Percival noticed, and he came to find her strange--a thing apart--in her rough surroundings; strange to them and remote from them when she sat plying her needle, attending to his hungry wants and Japhra's, or mothering some baby from a neighbour's van. He came to think her--contrasted thus with all the sights and sounds about her--the gentlest creature that could be; her voice wonderfully soft, her touch most kind when she dressed a bruise or nursed him, as once when he lay two days sick. She mended his clothes; made some shirts for him; passed all his things through her hands before he might wear them; and never permitted him clothes soiled, or lacking buttons, or wanting the needle.

He was leaving the van once to go into the town against which they were pitched. She called him back. The scarf he wore was soiled, she said, and she came to him with a clean one.

He laughed at her: "It's absolutely good enough."

"No, soiled," she said, and took it from his neck and placed the other.

He playfully prevented her fingers. "I'm like a child with a strict nurse--the way you look after me."

She replied, smiling but serious: "It is not for you to get into rough ways."

"They're good enough for me."

She shook her head. "You are not always for such."