Winner Take All

"Time!"

She thanked God, out loud, for that.

Perry stood for a while, his back toward her, sagging against the ropes. And English, one hand on his shoulder, was talking to him.

"Is he hurt?" she weakly asked the trainer.

He gave her a fleet glance.

"Some. Not bad." And louder to the other two:

"That's plenty."

A second later Perry nodded across the room to her and went to dress. But Jack English slid through the ropes and approached. There was some blood on his lip, and he wiped it away. She marveled at so little sign of conflict. He came straight to her, glistening with sweat. The trainer threw him a robe, which he wrapped about him to his very chin. She thought the welter-weight was bashful, too. And Irish—that without a doubt from his bright eyes.

"Your lad?" he asked.

"My—my what?"

She'd hardly been ready for the abrupt question. It confused her.

"Your steady?" This time he nodded toward the door through which Perry had disappeared.

Jack English was almost thirty—an old man for the prize-ring—and had a family. Under his bright regard Cecille stammered, and stammered a lie.

"Yes," she said, not steadily, and very softly indeed. "Yes, my—my lad."

English nodded sagely.

"Been worried about him lately, I suppose? Bothered by what folks are saying?"

"I—I haven't heard much," she said, and this was all the truth.

"Don't you!" he advised her. "Don't you listen. And don't you believe, either."

Still that bright regard. And thereupon Cecille realized that she had been troubled deeply by one thing which she had heard. Felicity had passed it on to her.

"They say he cheated," she voiced it, wide-eyed. "That he has a—yellow streak."

"So's a Bengal tiger." Such succinctness was reassuring. "A whole lot of 'em. And a man like him don't cheat. You'd oughta know that." Laconic, but good to listen to. And again:

"Don't you worry. I never saw a man so fast—so quick! That's why I'm using him. And some day—some day when he's in earnest—he's going to find out that he can hit. And they? They've said words that they'll choke then to swallow."

"I hope so." Her voice was meek and small.

"I know so," said English. "Don't you worry. You've picked a game guy. He can take punishment. You stick!"

"I—I mean to." Her voice was smaller still.

She wanted to cry.

And that night when they were riding home together upon a bus-top she tried an experiment. How long they had been riding thus she did not know, but all in a breath she was conscious of the contact of his knee. That was what she had been avoiding—trying to make herself avoid—ever since she'd grown aware of her impulse to stay always close. But now she tried an experiment. She contemplated the contact contentedly for a time. Then drew away.

Perry had been thinking of Felicity.

"Crowding you?" he asked.

She shook her head. And a minute later she let her knee move back against him. Proved! Instantly the tiny pulse had picked up its throbbing in her throat. Yet she let the contact endure. Defiant, she rode all the way home that way.

But the inevitable reaction came. Revulsion might be the more accurate word applied to Cecille. That night she had stripped off one stocking in preparation for bed; she had sat longer than she could have told, broodingly studying her bare knee.

"No smoother than he," she murmured at last.

The sound of her own voice smote her, the thing that she had said.

As her head flung up she encountered in a mirror her own reflection. She stared, transfixed, at her image; her moist, curling mouth, her dusky cheeks and eyelids drooping down. Then she closed her eyelids tight to shut it out. She groped and found the light and snapped it off. And she lay hours upon her face, her hair fanwise on her pillow, sick and debased.

She laid it to the pitch that she had touched. You had to be defiled. But she didn't blame Felicity. She wasn't that kind of a coward. It must be the slow poison of her frank creed. She'd fight it. Game? She'd be game. But this time she refused to wonder why she didn't pack her bag and get out. She couldn't. She knew she couldn't go. She wondered why she couldn't cry.

Thus she found a private little hell in what should have been pure glory.

But she fought. After she had admitted to herself that she loved him, she crouched from it like something in a corner. Love? That wasn't love! And yet Felicity in all her passionless calculation had never once—

It baffled her, bowed her down. It was too snarled now. She'd never make it out. But she wouldn't go again to the gymnasium. No! But what of that? She had only to close her eyes to see. She fought it.

It was a very hot though private little hell.

CHAPTER IX

DUNHAM TALKS BUSINESS

And presently Perry learned why he had been keeping in shape. Something did turn up. It happened in this wise:

Felicity had been very canny; she'd made each trump card tell. And with Perry Blair waved always in his face, Dunham had grown ugly.

"You know I'm crazy about you," he complained. "Give that four-flusher the gate."

"A million Johns have told me that," Felicity answered. "Talk business."

But Dunham had refused to talk business. He was ugly about it. And then he thought to see a way around. He sent for Perry Blair, and Perry came. That surprised Dunham. He had expected in the end to have to go to Blair. He did not know how Felicity, unwittingly, had helped him.

For Felicity, unable not to enjoy a little the boy's inarticulate devotion, had indulged herself. With artistry that would have called down from Hamilton even hotter sarcasm, she had let Perry glimpse her soul; not the cheap and tawdry thing which unsympathetic persons were likely to think it, but her real one, a little saddened, a little forlorn!

"I wish I could get away from all this," she'd said, with appropriate wistfulness. "I'm dead sick of it—sick of it all. I wish I could go away—somewhere—anywhere where things are clean. Where there are trees and growing grass—"

It was a very good speech. She knew it must be because she had heard a high-priced leading lady utter it in a three-dollar-and-a-half Broadway success.

And it proved effective uttered by Felicity. For it fooled Perry. Fooled him badly just when he had begun to speculate a little concerning her soul himself. Perry believed her. But then it is easy for any woman to fool any man. Twice as easy when he wants so badly to be fooled.

Perry cursed his lack of ready money. And then Dunham sent for him. And he went, hiding his eagerness.

They held the conversation in Dunham's book-lined office. The books were never used; the office saw strange usage. And the conference was short.

"Ready to be a good boy?" Dunham asked.

Perry rose to leave.

"Sit down," said Dunham. "That was intended as a joke. My mistake."

But it angered him; angered him almost as much as it did to look upon the boy's unsquandered youth.

"I've got something for you at last," he offered. "If you care to take it."

"I'll listen," said Perry.

So Dunham drew readily upon invention.

"We've talked it over," he said. "Devereau and I and some of the other boys. And we've decided that there's nothing in it for any of us as the situation now stands. The title's too obscured. You claim it. So does Montague. So we've decided to offer you a match with—"

"I've challenged Montague," Perry interrupted. "He paid no attention to it."

"Not Montague," Dunham corrected silkily. "Holliday."

And instantly Perry knew what Dunham hoped to do.

"Why not Montague?" he asked.

"Why not Holliday?" countered Dunham, his voice silkier still.

And Perry couldn't very well say because Montague was a boxer first and a fighter afterward. He couldn't say because he knew they considered Holliday, young, wicked, punishing, even more certain to whip him. He hesitated.

"But you're going to whip Holliday," Dunham went on tentatively, as if sure of what was in the other's mind.

Perry watched him.

"We're going to see to that. It'll be a twenty-round fight to a decision. Somewhere in the South. But you'll stop Holliday in the eighth round."

"I fight fair," said Perry, "or I don't fight at all."

"Don't get excited." Dunham was laughing at him a little, not pleasantly. "You'll be no party to anything—ah—iniquitous. Beat him before that if you're able. But it'll come in the eighth, don't doubt that. I'm just telling you beforehand so that you'll lose no sleep in case you're afraid of Holliday." That was a thrust. "I'm telling you so you needn't kill yourself training to get ready, though you don't look over-fed." That was another. Yet Perry felt that he had balanced them both when he looked the huge man's jelly-bulk up and down.

"Holliday's going to be champion some day," Dunham went unconcernedly on. "He's bound to be, whether we want him or not. But Montague comes first. Montague's been a good boy. We merely require your agreement to meet him should you dispose of Holliday, that is all. And since that is assured—" He waved a fat hand. "Personally I believe that Montague is very much better than you are—no offense intended—and against him you can take care of yourself."

Rapidly Perry cast it up. They were that confident of Holliday's superiority! And they didn't care whether he suspected their game or not; they weren't even bothering to work carefully. He could take it or leave it. He'd have to. That rank! That coarse! It was an easy sum. Two and two made four.

"Whatever agreement is fixed between you and Holliday is no affair of mine," he decided at last. "When?"

"A month—five weeks."

"How much?"

Dunham pondered.

"Twenty thousand. We'll give you five for your share."

They were that cool!

"Not me."

"A twenty-thousand-dollar purse seems reasonable," ruminated Dunham. "It may not be a popular match. And Holliday'll come high."

"That's your affair. I'll fight one way."

Dunham lifted an eyebrow.

"Well?"

"Winner take all."

"But you're certain to win! The fight'll be fixed!"

Perry sensed then how greatly the gross man wanted to laugh. Not bother to train? That old one! Did Dunham really think he was taking him at his word? Why, his mind in all the days to come would be riveted on just one thing—that eighth round. He wanted to laugh, too, bitterly. Did they think he was that innocent!

"That's your affair," he repeated. "I fight winner take all."

There are some who insist that Pig-iron Dunham was not without a virtue. His next words seem to prove it.

"Better take your five thousand," he suggested good-naturedly. "It's better than nothing. Holliday could double-cross us."

That cool!

"Winner take all," droned Perry.

"Winner take all!" Dunham snapped.

And that afternoon they signed articles, Hamilton acting for Blair.

The same night Perry told Felicity what he had done.

"So I—I'll either have twenty thousand dollars in a month or so," he made bad work of it, "or I'll know that I'm never likely to have it. If you—if you'll wait … I'm glad you like the country. I've always wanted a ranch."

Felicity was needlessly callous, either because it made her despise herself a little for the part she had played, or because she was just Felicity. Surely she was more brutal than she need have been.

For she sat, chin propped upon one hand, and stared derisively into the boy's self-conscious eyes.

"You poor hick!" she said deliberately. "You poor cross-roads hick! Twenty thousand dollars? Why, that's chicken-feed compared with my price."

In one way it was merciful. It was quickly over. Perry's self-consciousness passed. Calm as she had been impudent he surveyed her. Once his lip twitched; he half-opened his mouth as if to speak, and then thought better of it. He'd talk to no woman like that. He left her without a word.

And she sat biting her lip a little while, till Dunham came to the table.

"Honey—" he began.

"Don't honey me!" The words lashed back at him. "I'm sick of honeying. Talk cash!"

And Dunham was sick of temporizing.

He talked.

So when Cecille came in the next day, Saturday, at noon, and found Felicity with her bag packed, few words were necessary. She knew the moment had come.

CHAPTER X

CECILLE PLAYS THE GAME

Cecille had tried often to imagine what that moment was going to be like.

More than once she had dreaded that it would find her cheaply dramatic; that nervous sentiment would surprise her and break her down. Now she met it, unconcerned, without the slightest sense of shock. She had never doubted that Felicity would be anything but matter-of-fact and jaunty, right up to the end. Now it was the other girl who displayed unexpected feeling.

For Cecille had learned that morning that Perry was leaving at midnight for the South. With Felicity gone she realized how little chance there was of his ever returning again to frequent the apartment. And nothing else in the world much mattered. She was too deep sunk in misery even to try to dissemble her apathy. But Felicity had not forgotten a single night when she had waked to hear the other girl crying; she missed nothing of her present dejection.

"Well, I'm off!" This without even turning from the mirror.

Cecille failed to answer. She crossed the room and dropped heavily into a chair.

"We're catching the three-thirty this afternoon for the West."

Again silence for a while, and then a dry, strained question.

"Aren't you afraid?"

She'd made up her mind to ask at least that question. She had admitted to herself that she had to ask it. And her tone made Felicity wheel.

"Of what?" Felicity demanded, a little blank.

Cecille laughed. It was a woeful, croaking attempt at flippancy.

"Oh, the old line of stuff!" She had never before employed Felicity's brand of slang. It came unpleasantly from her tongue. "The wages of sin and all that sort of thing."

That brought Felicity across the room until she stood, hands bracketed on hips, above her.

"Don't you worry about me, Cele," she said slowly. "Don't you nor any one else spend any pennies buying extras, expecting to strike news of my violent and untimely end. Safety First; that's my maiden name. I let Dunham drive thirty-five when he's sober. When he isn't, I walk. And I'm going to be that careful about deep water that I'll bathe always under a shower. Don't you worry about me." She paused soberly.

"It's you," she stated, "I'm worried about."

It was Felicity who displayed feeling at the end.

She stood quite a while staring down at the other girl's bright hair. Then with an air of definite purpose she drew up a chair for herself.

"I don't get you," she mused. "You're a queer kid.

". . . From the country?"

"I suppose so," Cecille admitted. "I didn't use to think so. I used to think we were quite—"

"That'll do," cut in Felicity. "I get it from that much description.

". . . Raised strict?"

"I guess so—pretty strict."

"Rigid church people?"

"Yes."

A little time of silence.

"Gee, that's tough!"

And Felicity's gravity at last had caught at the other girl's attention. Slowly she looked up.

"Why?" she asked dully.

Felicity sat and studied her—pondered her. Felicity's face was harder than Cecille had ever seen it before, and infinitely more tender.

"I hate to leave you," she said. "I wouldn't mind so much if I could get you. If I could once get it through my nut what you're waiting for—what you expect there's going to be in it for you—it wouldn't be so hard. But I can't."

"I don't know what you mean." She had caught Cecille's interest now.

"Neither do I," she admitted. "Not exactly. That's why I'm talking. That's what I'm trying to get at." Her voice became half-absent-minded, ruminative, as though she were thinking aloud.

"They caught me young, too," she murmured. "Oh, that was a long time ago. Not measured in years, measured in time. There's a difference.

"A mission-school got hold of me. Good women, not brainless velvet pets from the younger set, looking for a new sensation. Good women, sincere women that wanted to help. Well, I was sincere, too. I wanted to be helped. I told 'em so; but I also told 'em I doubted if they could do much.

"I'd begun to get wise to one thing that early. I was seventeen, but I'd begun to see that all you got in this world was what you helped yourself to. But I was willing to try; I'd try anything once. If learning things out of a book would do it; if studying how to shoot the right language in the right spot and how to live sweet and pretty, inside and out, was going to get me what I wanted, well and good. Also, soft! There couldn't be any easier way, several well-known draymas to the contrary. So I gave 'em a chance.

"'Show me,' I said. And I stuck it out two years."

She stared at the ceiling, her eyes sardonic with reminiscence.

"Two years. Get that. Not two days, nor two weeks, nor two months. Two years. And did I see myself at the end of that time any nearer what I was after? I hadn't slacked, mind you. I'd worked! Everything they'd ever spilled I'd sopped up like a sponge. And did it finally bring me a chance? Sure it did, believe you me. A whiskey drummer with false teeth!"

Here she laughed, a slurring note or two.

"That cured me, I guess. I did stay a little longer, but I knew! I knew I was through. I stayed another week, and then I went to the mat.

"'Show me,' I said again. That was what I wanted, a show-down. And did they? Could they? Bah! They talked! They told me I was making wonderful progress.

"'Sure,' I admitted. 'I'm on my way. I see that.' But what I wanted 'em to slip me was a little info as to where was I going.

"Well, they talked. What did I hope for? What did I want? What did I expect to get out of it? And I told 'em. Well, that was a pretty large order for a girl of my station. My station didn't figure, I told 'em; we'd leave that out of it. And I told 'em so plainly that they neglected to refer to that any more.

"But they took another tack instead. The things that I'd mentioned were mere material things! Like that—scornful—as if they weren't worth mentioning at all. 'Merely material!' And there was a better world to live in—oh, my, yes—the world of the spirit.

"'Do you live in it?' I asked. 'Do you?' They wore sealskin coats, when it wasn't mink or chinchilla. They were driving downtown every day in their own closed cars to urge me to be content with the things of the spirit. And when I realized that—No, I wasn't sore. I was just hep, that's all.

"'I'll try Broadway,' I said then. 'If there's nothing, after all, in this climb-though-the-rocks-be-rugged stuff, no great harm done. I'm still young. But why waste more valuable time? I'll try Broadway,' I said. 'I'll have a whirl at the primrose path.'

"They didn't believe me at first. They thought I was just bluffing, just talking because I was discouraged. So they talked themselves some more—a whole lot more. Beautiful words—but they didn't mean anything. Not to me.

"Did any of 'em say: 'Sure, I understand. You're young and pretty, and it's natural you should crave such things. Here's my last year's coat and a perfectly miserable old last year's model car'? Did they? Don't make me laugh! Not that they woulda missed them. Nothing like that!

"And if they'd only come out flat in the beginning and admitted: 'Sure, it's a fight—we know that—a finish fight between women like you and women like us,' I could have liked 'em for it. If they'd said: 'We want these things, so do you, and only men can buy 'em—take 'em if you can,' that woulda been all right with me. But did they? You know the answer. They were telling me not to rough it, while they all the while, every chance they got, were hitting in the clinches! They were chirping to me, 'Oh, see how lovely the things of the spirit are,' while they were hanging with a death grip to everything material that they could get their hands on. I'd been honest with them—sincere. And with me they had been as hypocritical as hell!

"But when finally I made 'em see that I was on, and that I was in earnest, it sobered them. They quit then that line of chatter. They were battling now, and they pulled another one. Sure, just what you called it a minute ago. The old line of stuff. They pulled that. They tried to scare me. Me! But I wouldn't scare, not for a cent. I was already scared half crazy—scared of matrimony with a drummer with false teeth.

"'Hell!' That was what they threatened me with. 'Hell,' they tried to warn me. "'How do you know?' I came back at 'em. 'How do you know? Maybe there's been slander here. Maybe it's not so hot. Maybe it's only semitropical!' And they couldn't beat that. They couldn't even tie it. But they went right on trying.

"'The wages of sin,'—they began. But I beat 'em to that punch.

"'They're damned fine wages,' I said. The cuss-word slipped out. I was always sorry about that. I always aimed to be awful respectful. 'They're damned fine wages! A car to ride around in,—sure, merely material just like yours, but better than a strap in the subway with all the men sitting down. And clothes—not shoddy rags. Clothes! Silk things, with lace on 'em, and rosebuds. And a place to live in with trees in the lobby and a tub level with the bath-room floor, and a chaise-something-or-other.' Oh, I'd been reading! I hadn't been studying for nothing. I knew!

"'I want to live in a world where things smell better,' I said. 'I'm dead tired of a world that stinks!'

"Well, they kept a'trying. I'll say that for 'em. Game—you bet. I don't believe they overlooked much either. 'The gutter,' they said. 'I'm in it now,' I came back. 'Your self-respect,' they said. 'Nobody else respects me,' I trumped that, 'or even cares that I'm alive.' And then I went after 'em strong. 'But give me the car,' I said, 'and the apartment and the clothes, and see. Why, I'll have 'em walking the length of every hotel dining-room in town, just to be recognized by me!' 'The men,' they said. 'Sure,' I agreed, 'the men. Isn't that what counts? Don't try to tell me that this isn't a man's world. I know! And won't they?'

"That stopped 'em for a minute. They didn't want to answer. They thought an awful lot of the truth at times, for folks that'd lie to themselves all day long. 'Won't they?' I wouldn't quit it. I made 'em come through.

"'Perhaps,' they admitted then. Alas, that was the way of the world. But it was wrong!

"'Sure,' I agreed again. 'Sure. You're telling me no news. But if the whole world's wrong, who am I to stand out? Who am I?' I wanted to know. 'Let's make it unanimous.'

"'The wages of sin,' they tried it again. They'd expected to put me down for the count with that one, and they hated to see it go to waste.

"'Can you show me something just as good?' I asked. 'Half as good? A tenth as good? I want to be straight. I'd rather be straight. Here's a proposition. You folks have got more than you can ever spend on yourselves. Pool a little of it—ten of you—and give me a job that you don't figure sinful. I'm willing to work. I've proved that to you. Guarantee me something a tenth as good as the wages I've mentioned, at the end of ten years—I'll not be thirty then; I'll take a chance on still being able to enjoy 'em—guarantee me that and I'll scrub floors for you in the meantime.'

"And then they pulled the prize crack of them all. I hadn't heard it before. It was a new one on me.

"'Virtue,' they said, 'virtue is its own reward.'

"Honest, I laughed. I couldn't help it. I didn't want them to see that I was wise to them. I didn't even want to hurt their feelings. It was pretty serious to them, this step that I was taking. But I couldn't help it. I laughed. And then I got mad.

"'Virtue is its own reward? Is it?' I asked. 'Is it? Go out there and stand on Fifth Avenue,' I said, 'and watch 'em roll by. Your daughter! And yours! And yours! Ten thousand of 'em, no younger than I am, no prettier, and no more moral right now. Go out and watch them roll by and then try to tell me that. Violets and silver fox! Is virtue their only reward?'

"Well, they'd not meant it the same way, in my case. I kept getting 'em wrong, they said. They'd meant it in the abstract, applied to me. 'But what about the wages of sin, in my case?' Had they been abstract there? 'Death—the gutter.' That was concrete, wasn't it? It sounded like bedrock to me. Then they wanted to explain. I wouldn't let 'em.