“It’s a secret, little woman,” said the Honourable Billy; “but I’ve got hopes of making some money soon. I shall know by Saturday night, and then we’ll pay off all these debts and go away for a nice little holiday.”
He nodded his head vigorously and patted her arm, but the memory of the gigantic blacksmith made him feel terribly unsure of winning.
“I will!” he said suddenly, aloud. “By the lord, I will!”
“What is it, dear?” asked his wife, looking up at him with a sense of vague fright. “Tell me what you are going to do? Tell me, dear? I’m bothered, and I shall only worry all the more if I don’t know. Tell me, dear?”
But the Honourable Billy only gave her a hug, and told her there was nothing at all to worry about.
“I’ll tell you on Saturday, dear,” he said. “I shall know all about it then.” And with that, seeing that he did not wish to say any more, she asked no further.
But she turned it over continually in her mind, with a slight sense of worry that grew, as she thought, putting this fact to that fact. Yet a day or two had passed before she had reasoned to the truth.
The following morning the Honourable Billy was chased into town by a couple of his creditors, and had fairly to run for it.
“Tha’s had a breather!” was Bellett’s critical comment as he entered, breathless. “What hasta bin doin’?”
“I’m worried to death with those confounded duns! They’re following me everywhere!” said the Honourable Billy. “It’s sickening!”
“They can’t do nowt,” said Bellett, “so as you keep ’em from gettin’ into the ’ouse ! They can’t gaol you, not till you’ve bin through th’ coort, an’ shown contempt o’ the order to pay!”
“Is that so?” said the Honourable Billy. “All the same, it’s deuced unpleasant; and if I let them come close, and they sling any of their dirty abuse, I shall be plugging them! Then I guess I shall get gaoled quick enough for assault!”
“Tha’s reet there, lad!” replied Bellett sympathetically. “Th’ judge never shows no mercy on a fightin’ man, not so how he’ve done his best to keep out o’ trouble!”He spoke with deep feeling that told much to the Honourable Billy, who remembered Bellett’s early attitude to him. “Wot tha’s got to do.” continued the trainer, “is to lick Blacksmith Dankley, an’ thou’ll ha’ brass an’ to spare, lad. But tha mun mind his left, lad; he’ve a turrible quick left punch!”
“You can bet I’ll do my best,” said the Honourable Billy quietly, as he drew on his gloves for the bout. “But he’s the hardest-looking case I’ve ever set eyes on, and he runs two stone nine heavier than I, and not an ounce of waste on him!”
“He’s older, lad,” said Bellett reassuringly, “and he’s slower nor thee on ’s feet, an’ a trifle slower nor thee wi’ his punch. But he’s a turrible good man, he is that, an’ I guess he’ve the reach o’ thee ; an’ he’ll take more punishment, I’m thinkin’, than tha con stand, lad. But thee keep up tha pecker! Tha’s a s’prisin’ strong lad, an’ thee strips as big agin as thee looks i’ tha clo’es!”
And with that they began the usual bout.
That night, the fight being on the morrow, Bellett wanted the young man to sleep down at his quarters, for a number of reasons which he stated plainly. But the Honourable Billy declared that his wife would worry if he did not go home, and promised to get to bed early and come down in good time in the morning, so as to escape meeting any of his creditors.
This he did, and got down to the trainer’s room without trouble, where Bellett met him, and looked him over with an anxious and critical eye, declaring at the end that he was fit to fight for his life.
“And I need to be, Bellett!” replied the Honourable Billy soberly. “Wait till you see Dankley in the ring!”
“Ay, I knows Dankley!” replied Bellett. “He’s a tur’ble good fighter, but I b’lieves tha’lt out un. Tha’s quicker an’ cleverer nor ’im wi’ thy feet; but he’s wonnerful clever wi’ his ’ands, an’ a tur’ble good two-’anded fighter. Lucky for thee there’s to be no clinchin’ an’ wrastlin’, for Dankley ’ud do thee out i’ no time that way, lad; he wou’d that!”
The fight was arranged to begin at three o’clock prompt that afternoon, and at two-thirty Bellett came in to help the Honourable Billy to get into his fighting gear, which consisted of short, loose black drawers, striped at the sides with bright orange silk ribbon, and belted with a light elastic belt of the same colour. On his feet he had light boxing-pumps, with very short-legged socks. Over all he drew on his dressing-gown, and at ten minutes to three he followed Bellett out on to the bowling green, where his appearance was greeted by a loud cheer. For seats had been built up roughly all round the green, and at least three to four thousand people were there, awaiting the great match.
In the ring the Honourable Billy saw that the big smith already waited, dressed in a huge overcoat. He was sitting contentedly in his chair, and seemed entirely without concern or excitement of any kind. Behind him stood his striker and another man, who were evidently to act as his seconds. On his part, the Honourable Billy was seconded by Bellett and—by his own request—big Tom Holden, the lurry-man.
The Honourable Billy climbed into the ring, and the big smith rose and bowed gravely to him, with a curious old-fashioned courtesy that surprised and pleased the Honourable Billy; then re-seated himself, and seemed once more to resume his calm meditation.
“The man’s a born gentleman!” muttered the young man. “I’ve never met a man I could like better!”
The preliminaries were speedily arranged, and a Mr. Ritter, who was to act as referee, inspected the ring.
“One minute!” called the timekeeper. And the two principals rose from their chairs and took off their outer wraps, each looking curiously to learn how the other would “strip.”
The blacksmith had his coat off first, and stood revealed in a pair of short, blood-red drawers, buttoned loosely at the knees. He wore a plain leather belt, and had on the regulation pumps.
As he showed himself, a murmur of admiration and astonishment came from the on-looking thousands; for the man was a kind of gaunt Hercules. I mean that, whilst spare of muscular tissue about the wrists, hips, knees, shins, and elbows, he was yet tremendously muscled, in such, a fashion as to suggest that his muscular system consisted of immense masses of muscle, gathered into compact, rugged heaps, and possessing very little taper to the sinews, which seemed to show covered only by the hard, brown skin for half the length of his forearms and lower legs.
The effect was that though enormously muscular, he yet gave to the eye, through his great bony wrists and legs, an impression of gauntness, which was not lessened by the huge, gnarled neck, entirely void of any “grace-flesh” to give it beauty.
“Like a blessed ’orse and a rock rolled into one!” said a man in the crowd; and this certainly expressed somewhat the sense of gaunt but huge strength that the big blacksmith gave.
Very easily the Honourable Billy slipped out of his long dressing-gown, and stood strong and beautiful in the sunlight. Like the enormous blacksmith, he was naked except for his loose black silk running knickers, and the short socks and boxing pumps on his feet. But the difference in the two men was extraordinary.
Where the blacksmith showed the great bones and massive sinews, seeming covered only by the skin, the younger man tapered by beautiful degrees from the working mass of his muscles down to the steel-like tendons into which they blended.
Yet, for all that this beauty of outline was his, there was no mistaking the marvellous development of the torso; of the deltoids of the shoulders; of the great biceps that bunched up grandly as he bent his arms a time or two; and of the huge triceps at the back of the upper arms, that rippled and stood out strangely as he straightened his elbows. Even Dankley nodded in commendation, and reproved his striker calmly for some apparently disparaging remark.
As the younger man had removed his wrap, there had been a murmur from the enormous crowd,
which had grown almost instantly to a silence, as they looked him over in an ever-growing wonder of appreciation, that finally burst out into a roar of applause. And through the deep note of the men’s voices it was possible to detect the shriller interest of the gentler sex in the young gladiator. And directly the air was full of yellow roses—this being his colour—which were showered into the ring; and which one of the attendants at once proceeded unemotionally to sweep out with a broom.
Dankley, on his part, glanced round at the onlookers with a touch of grim humour, for never a red rose had been thrown. They took the point, and there came a burst of cheers and laughter, and immediately there came a storm of red roses, with renewed cheers and laughter.
As the attendant proceeded to sweep the red roses after the yellow, the crowd calmed down to an expectant silence and hum of undertalk, in which it was possible to hear odd remarks.
“T’ blegsmith ’ll out un sure!” the younger man heard one burly local assuring all within his vicinity; and directly afterwards Mr. Jackson’s voice delightedly:
“Look at that abdominal development, sir; look at it! No waste weight there!” gleefully punning, and booking bets as fast as he could pencil them down.
“Sunshine trained, by the look of his skin. Looks like a blessed Greek god done in bronze,” the Honourable Billy heard a tall, intellectual man remark to a friend; and suddenly realised that they were referring to him.
“Blacksmith Dankley’s no beauty, but he’s a heap stronger than the young chap,” were the last words the Honourable Billy caught; for the next thing he knew the chairs and attendants were out of the ring, and he was shaking hands with the great blacksmith in the centre.
“Now, lad,” said the big smith, as they gripped, “it’s thee or me. An’ God Almighty let the best man win!” he concluded, with a solemnity that was almost a prayer. Then they stepped back, and faced each other with their hands up.
For perhaps five complete seconds the two stood there, making no more movement than two statues of gladiators; the while they looked at each other, and tensioned each his nature to the first act in the rough game. Whilst round about them a tingling silence of suspense and fierce interest held the vast audience almost to breathlessness.
Abruptly the great blacksmith lowered his hands somewhat, and spoke to the Honourable Billy:
“Lead off, lad! Lead off!” he said. “My blood runs slower nor thine.”
The Honourable Billy nodded, and stepping in swiftly, flicked Dankley twice on the right cheek with his glove, sufficiently hard to stir the big man’s blood to retaliate. Then back out of distance. There came a touch of brightness into the older man’s eyes, and a sudden alertness into his shoulders and knees; and the fight had begun.
The Honourable Billy circled swiftly to the right, and the other pivoted easily to cover him; then, like a flash, the young man stepped in. Smash! The Honourable Darrell found himself on his back half a dozen yards away.
He had altogether under-rated the speed of the big man’s foot-work. He had been thinking of the smith’s notorious left, and had not conceived that he would attempt to block him off with his right; for he had edged so much to Dankley’s left, that it had not appeared to him a possibility in the time, owing to the smith’s method of standing. And, lo! the great blacksmith had pushed up his lead with his enormous wrist like lightning, and punched him off his feet with the right.
He felt like the veriest amateur; shame and pain and sickness all shaking him towards losing his balance to get out of his difficulty; for already the big smith was standing over him, waiting to give the knock-out the instant he should rise.
And somewhere to his left he heard dully, and seemingly at a considerable distance, the monotonous sound of a man counting—“three, four, five.” And abruptly it came to him that it was the voice of the referee counting him out. “Six.” In another four seconds the fight would be at an end, unless he could rise and avoid the waiting smith, and he would have lost—knocked out of time like some village youth standing up to a professional pug in a travelling boxing-booth.
“Seven.” And the money that would be lost by those who had backed him. “Eight.” And the creditors and his little wife—their debts, their—His chance to earn the money was almost gone. “Nine!”
His life and his wits came back into him suddenly with a kind of such fierce abruptness that in one instant of time he had passed from the inert, sagging, almost lifeless man upon the floor of the ring into a man almost mad with the fierce determination yet to win; and in that same instant he had bounded to his feet, and with one terrific upper-cut jolted back the big smith’s head, following it with a left and right on the body that drove the huge man backwards, almost staggering. All round the ring the young athlete pursued his man, driving in right and left, like a madman, more than a trained boxer, hulling his man time after time, and pasting him severely about the face with three flush hits in succession. For he was in those brief moments almost above himself physically and psychically, with the enormous revulsion from total despair to bright hope; and his blows and his movements were scarcely possible to follow, so utterly swift and vehement were they.
Of course, it is easily understood that, normally, the big blacksmith would never thus have been taken off his guard, but he had so entirely considered his man “done out” that he had relaxed his watchfulness in the last moments of the count, and so had been utterly taken aback when the “miracle” occurred. Yet, though he was thus temporarily at a disadvantage, he was far too clever and practised a boxer to allow his opponent long to have it all his own way, and before many seconds had passed, and whilst still the excited shouting and yelling of the audience at the rally filled the green with sound, the Honourable Billy received a couple of “propping-off” hits that took a lot of steam out of his mad rush, and reduced him to something like sanity and a realisation of where he was and what he was fighting for.
There followed a short passage of cautious work on both sides, for the big smith had received some very punishing blows, and one of the face hits had puffed up the flesh around his left eye, whilst the young man, on his part, was a little distressed and shaken, both by the effects of the primary blow and the combined results of his mad boring of his opponent, and the heavy jolts with which the smith had propped him off.
Time was called, and both men went to their corners, breathing heavily, the smith marked in several places upon his iron-like body, in addition to the puffed-up flesh about his left eye, whilst the Honourable Billy had a great, angry red blotch upon his ribs below his left arm, where he had received the smith’s right, in the blow that had so nearly knocked him out. But, apart from this, he had no other marks, though his head was singing a little from one or two half-escaped punches of Dankley’s.
“Ee, lad, aa thowt tha’ wor done that time, sure!” whispered big Tom Holden, as he helped the young man into his chair and whipped open his towel.
Bellett, however, was grimly silent, doctoring the “punch”; after which, as he plied the sponge, he gave way to terse and pointed comment and advice.
“Tha’s geet thyself plugged proper, lad,” said Bellett almost fiercely. “Maybe’s tha’lt feight now, an’ quit foolin’. Dost tha’think Dankley’s a fule or a babby? Thee larn thy man afore tha’ goes to close feightin’, or thee’s as good as licked now this moment. Now, mind thee what I says. Use thy feet an’ thy brains, if so be as they bain’t all addled. Not but you come out of it better than might be,” he concluded, with a faint note of encouragement as the call came for seconds out of the ring.
And directly afterwards, “Time!”
The Honourable Billy walked swiftly to the centre of the ring, and faced the big smith, who suddenly took the offensive with a speed of movement truly astonishing in so big a man, for he circled the younger man twice, almost as nimbly as a great cat, and twice managed to get his left home on to the young man’s face, owing to his greater reach. Thrice in almost as many seconds the Honourable Billy tempt
ed his opponent by uncovering himself somewhat, and thrice the smith’s ponderous fist came almost home, but always a little to the left, so that a swift movement of the head or the feet, as the case might be, carried him into safety; and the third time he countered with his right, making Dankley grunt suddenly.
This was the only blow that he got home that round, and the audience kept a rather disappointed silence as each man walked to his corner, for they considered it to have been rather a tame spell, though the few more knowing ones had followed the game with the most severe appreciation, and clapped warmly a somewhat diminutive applause to the young man.
“Tha’s done reet weel, lad!” was Bellett’s approving comment. “Aa’m proud of thee, lad! Tha’s larnin’ tha’ man, an’ aa con see as tha’ve foun’ summat to help thee.”
“Yes,” muttered the Honourable Billy, as they tended him with sponge and towel, “he’s as quick on his feet as I am, though you said he wasn’t, Bellett. But he doesn’t hit quite straight. He hits just a trifle to the left always, and also I’m pretty sure his timing’s a bit off. I b’lieve I can hit quicker, an’ I’ll prop him off good if I’m right.”
Bellett nodded intelligently, but warned him:
“He’ve the reach o’ thee, lad. Mind what thee’s doin’! If tha’ mistimes tha’ poonch he’ll get thee first wi’ yon long reach, an’ out tha’ like a bullock!”
And with this solemn warning there came the cry for seconds out of the ring, and then the call of “Time!”
The big smith was first to the centre of the ring, and met his man with a quick and skilful rush, which showed that he meant to force the fighting. He made the full use of his tremendous reach of arm, and kept the Honourable Billy hard at work on the retreat, trying both to avoid punishment and the ropes. Eventually Dankley got home a powerful left-hand punch that seemed to stagger the younger man, and immediately followed it with a tremendous right-hand swing at the jaw. But the Honourable Darrell was less harmed than he had allowed to appear, and slipped swiftly under the prodigious swing, at the same time driving home his own right with a fierce half-arm jab into the great smith’s short ribs that made Dankley gasp suddenly.
The Dream of X and Other Fantastic Visions Page 12