Chapter IV: 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.