Once to Every Man

“I–I ain’t got my ticket yet,” he protested.

Morehouse merely reached in and hustled him over the threshold.

“Your unabridged edition, while it has no doubt saved my sanity, has robbed us both of food and drink,” he stated. “There’s no time left, even for friendly argument, if you want to be there when it happens. You won’t need any ticket this time–you’ll be with me.”

Even at that they were late, for when they paused a moment in the entrance of the huge, bowl-shaped amphitheater, a sharp gust of hand-clapping, broken by shrill whistling and shriller cat-calls, met them. Far out across that room Old Jerry saw two figures, glistening damp under the lights, crawl through the ropes that penned in a high-raised platform in the very center of the building, and disappear up an aisle.

He turned a dismayed face to Morehouse who, with one hand clutching his arm, was deeply engrossed in a whispered conversation with a man at the entrance–too engrossed to see. But when the newspaperman turned at last to lead the way down into the body of the house he explained in one brief word:

“Preliminary,” he said.

Old Jerry did not understand. But half dragged, half led, he followed blindly after his guide, until he found himself wedged into a seat at the very edge of that roped-off, canvas-padded area. It was a single long bench with a narrow board desk, set elbow high, running the entire length in front of it. Peering half fearfully from the corner of his eye Old Jerry realized that there were at least a full dozen men beside themselves wedged in before it, and that, like Morehouse, there was a block of paper before each man.

The awe with which the immensity of the place had stunned him began to lessen a little and allowed him to look around. Wherever he turned a sea of faces met him–faces strangely set and strained. Even under the joviality of those closest to him he saw the tightened sinews of their jaws. Those further away were blurred by the smoke that rose in a never-thinning cloud, blurred until there was nothing but indistinct blotches of white in the outer circles of seats.

And when he lifted his head and looked above him, he gasped. They were there, too, tiny, featureless dots of white, like nothing so much as holes in a black wall, in the smoke-drift that alternately hid and revealed them.

Faces of men–faces of men, wherever he turned his head! Faces strained and tense as they waited. That terrible tensity got under his skin after a while; it crept in upon him until his spine crawled a little, as if from cold. It was quiet, too; oddly quiet in spite of the dull mumble that rose from thousands of throats.

Twice that hush was broken–twice when men laden with pails of water, and bottles and sponges, and thick white towels crowded through the ropes in front of him. Then the whole house was swept by a premature storm of hand-clapping for the men who, stripped save for the flat shoes upon their feet and the trunks about their hips, followed them into the ring.

“Preliminary!” Morehouse had said, and there had been something of disinterested contempt in his voice. Old Jerry felt, too, the entire great crowd’s disinterested, good-natured tolerance. They were waiting for something else.

Twice Morehouse left his place at the long board desk and wended his way off through the maze of aisles. The second time he returned, after the third match had been finished, Old Jerry caught sight of his face while he was a long way off–and Old Jerry’s breath caught in his throat. His plump cheeks were pale when he crowded back into his place. The old man leaned nearer and tried to ask a question and his dry tongue refused. The plump reporter nodded his head.

Again the men came with their bottles of water–their pails–their towels and sponges. There was a third man who slipped agilely into the nearest corner. Old Jerry saw him turn once and nod reassuringly, he thought, at Morehouse. The little mail carrier did not know him; everybody else within a radius of yards had apparently recognized him, but he could not take his eyes off that lean, hard face. There was a kind of satanic, methodical deadliness in Hogarty’s directions to the other two men inside the ropes.

Even while he was staring at him, fascinated, that hand-clapping stormed up again, and then swelled to a hoarse roar that went hammering to the roof. A figure passed Old Jerry, so close that the long robe which wrapped him brushed his knee. When Hogarty had stripped the robe away and the figure went on–on up through the ropes–he recognized him.

As Young Denny seated himself in the corner just above them Morehouse threw out his arm and forced Old Jerry back into his seat. Then the little man remembered and shrank back, but his eyes glowed. He forgot to watch for the coming of the other in dumb amaze at the wide expanse of the boy’s shoulders that rose white as the narrow cloth that encircled his hips. Dazed, he listened to them shouting the name by which they knew him–“The Pilgrim”–and he did not turn away until Jed Conway was in the ring.

He heard first the cheers that greeted the newcomer–broken reiterations of “Oh, you Red!” But the same heartiness was not there, nor the volume. When Old Jerry’s eyes crept furtively across the ring he understood the reason.

It was the same face that he had known before, older and heavier, but the same. And there was no appeal in that face. It was scant of brow, brutish, supercunning, and the swarthy body that rose above the black hip-cloth matched the face. Old Jerry’s eyes clung to the thick neck that ran from his ears straight down into his shoulders until a nameless dread took him by the throat and made him turn away.

Back in Denny’s corner Hogarty was lacing on the gloves, talking softly in the meantime to the big boy before him.

“From the tap of the gong,” he was droning. “From the tap of the gong–from the tap of the gong.”

Young Denny nodded, smiled faintly as he rose to his feet to meet the announcer, who crossed and placed one hand on his shoulder and introduced him. Again the applause went throbbing to the roof; and again the echo of it after Jed The Red had in turn stood up in his corner.

The referee called them to the middle of the ring. It was quiet in an instant–so quiet that Old Jerry’s throat ached with it. The announcer lifted his hand.

“Jed The Red fights at one hundred and ninety-six,” he said, “‘The Pilgrim’ at one hundred and seventy-two.”

Immediately he turned and dropped through the ropes. His going was accompanied by a flurry in each corner as the seconds scuttled after him with stools and buckets.

They faced each other, alone in the ring save for the referee–The Pilgrim and Jed The Red. Then a gong struck. They reached out and each touched the glove of the other.

Old Jerry could not follow it–it came too terribly swift for that–but he heard the thudding impact of gloves as Denny hurtled forward in that first savage rush.

“From the gong,” Hogarty had ordered, “from the gong!” The Red, covering and ducking, blocking and swaying beneath the whirlwind of that attack, broke and staggered and set himself, only to break again, and retreat, foot by foot, around the ring. The whole house had come to its feet with the first rush, screaming to a man. Old Jerry, too, was standing up, giddy, dizzy, as he watched Conway weather that first minute.

He had no chance to swing; with both hands covering he fought wildly to stay on his feet; to live through it; to block that right hand that lashed out again and again and found his face.

Each time that blow went across it shook him to the soles of his feet; it lifted the cheering of the crowd to a higher, madder key; but even Old Jerry, eyes a little quicker already, saw that none of those blows landed flush upon the side of the jaw.

Conway called to his aid all the ring-generalship of which he was capable in that opening round. Once that lightening-like fist reached out and found his mouth. A trickle of blood oozed red from the lips that puffed up, almost before the glove came away; once when he had seen an opening and led for The Pilgrim’s own face, that wicked jolt caught him wide open. He ducked his head between his shoulders then. The shock sent him to his knees, but that upraised shoulder saved him. The force of that glancing smash had spent itself before it reached his unprotected neck.

There was no let-up–no lull in the relentless advance. He was on his feet again, grim, grasping, reeling, hanging on! And again that avalanche of destruction enveloped him.

He fought to drop into a clinch, for one breath’s respite, his huge hairy arms slipping hungrily out about Denny’s white body, but even as he snuggled his body close in, that fist lashed up between them and found his chin again. It straightened him, flung him back. And once more, before the certain annihilation of that blow, he ducked his head in between his shoulders.

Old Jerry heard the crash of the glove against the top of his head; he saw Conway hurled back into the ropes. But not until seconds later, when he realized that the roar of the crowd had hushed, did he see that a change had come over the fight.

Conway was no longer giving ground; he was himself driving in more and more viciously, for that deadly right hand no longer leaped out to check him. Twice just as Denny had rocked him he now jolted his own right over to The Pilgrim’s face. At each blow the boy lashed out with his left hand. Both blows he missed, and the second time the force of his swing whirled him against the barrier. Right and left Conway sent his gloves crashing into his unprotected stomach–right and left!

And then the tap of the gong!

Hogarty was through the ropes with the bell. As Denny dropped upon the stool he stripped the glove from the boy’s right hand and examined it with anxious fingers. The other two were sponging his chest with water–pumping fresh air into his lungs; but Old Jerry’s eyes clung to the calamity written upon Hogarty’s gray features.

Everybody else seemed to understand what had happened–everybody but himself. He turned again to the man next him on the bench. Morehouse, too, had been watching the ex-lightweight’s deft fingers.

“Broken,” he groaned. “His right hand is gone.” And after what seemed hours Old Jerry realized that Morehouse was cursing hoarsely.

In Conway’s corner the activity was doubly feverish. The Red lay sprawled back against the ropes while they kneaded knotty legs, and shoulders. There was blood on his chin, his lips were cut and misshapen, but he had weathered that round without serious damage. Watching him Old Jerry saw that he was smiling–snarling confidently.

Back in Denny’s corner they were still working over him, but the whole house had sensed the dismay in that little knot of men. Hogarty, gnawing his lip, stopped and whispered once to the boy on the stool, but Young Denny shook his head and held out his hand. He laced the gloves back on them, over the purple, puffy knuckles.

And then again that cataclysmic bell.

Just as the first round had started, that second one opened with a rush, but this time it was Conway who forced the fighting. Like some gigantic projectile he drove in and caught Denny in his own corner, and beat him back against the standard. Again that thudding right and left, right and left, into the stomach. And again Old Jerry saw that left hand flash out–and miss.

Just as The Pilgrim had driven him Conway forced Denny around the ring, except that the boy was heart-breaking slow in getting away. The Red stayed with him, beat him back and back, smothered him! With that deadly right no longer hunting for his jaw, he fought with nothing to fear, for Young Denny could not find his face even once with that flashing left swing.

Before the round was half over The Pilgrim had gone down twice–body blows that did little harm; but they were shouting for The Red–shouting as if from a great distance, from the balconies.

Again Conway drove him into a corner of the ropes, feinted for the stomach. Then there came that first blow that found his chin. Old Jerry saw Denny’s body go limp as he crashed his length upon the padded canvas; he saw him try to rise and heard the house screaming for him to take the count.

He rested there for a precious instant, swaying on one knee. But his eyes were still glazed when he rose, and again Conway, rushing, beat down that guarding right, and, swinging with all his shoulder weight behind it, found that same spot and dropped him again.

Pandemonium broke loose in the upper reaches of the seats, but the silence of the body of the house was deathlike as he lay without stirring. Old Jerry gulped and waited–choked back a sobbing breath as he saw him start to lift himself once more. Upon his hands and knees first, then upon his knees alone. And then, with eyes shut, he struggled up, at the count of ten, and shaped up again.

And Conway beat him down.

Even the gallery was quiet now. The thud of that stiff-armed jolt went to every corner of that vast room. And the referee was droning out the count again.

“–Five–six–seven–”

Head sagging between his arms, eyes staring and sightless, The Pilgrim groped out and found the ropes. Once more at the end of the toll he lifted himself–lifted himself by the strength of his shoulders to his legs that tottered beneath him, and then stepped free of the ropes.

That time, before Conway could swing, the gong saved him.

Again it was Hogarty who was first through the ropes. Effortlessly he stooped and lifted that limp body and carried it across to the stool. They tried to stretch him back against the ropes behind him, and each time his head slumped forward over his knees.

Old Jerry turned toward Morehouse and choked–licked his lips and choked again. And Morehouse nodded his head dumbly.

“He–he’s gone!” he said.

Old Jerry sat and stared back at him as though he couldn’t understand. He remembered the bit of a red bow in his pocket then; he fumbled inside and found it. He remembered the eyes of the girl who had given it to him, too, that night when she had knelt at his knees. His old fingers closed, viselike, upon the fat man’s arm.

“But she told me to give him this,” he mumbled dully. “Why, she–she said for me to give him this, when he had Won.”

Morehouse stared at the bit of tinseled silk–stared up at Old Jerry’s face and back again. And then he leaned over suddenly and picked it up. The next moment he was crowding out from behind the desk–was climbing into the ring.

Old Jerry saw him fling fiercely tense words into Hogarty’s face, and Hogarty stood back. He knelt before the slack body on the stool and tried to raise the head; he held the bit of bright web before him, but there was no recognition in Denny’s eyes. And the old man heard the plump reporter’s words, sob-like with excitement:

“She sent it,” he hammered at those deaf ears. “She sent it–she sent it–silk–a little bow of red silk!”

Then the whole vast house saw the change that came over that limp form. They saw the slack shoulders begin to go back; saw the dead-white face come up; they saw those sick eyes beginning to clear. And The Pilgrim smiled a little–smiled into Morehouse’s face.

“Silk,” he repeated softly. “Silk!” and then, as if it had all come back at once: “Silk–next to her skin!”

And they called it a miracle–that recovery. They called it a miracle of the mind over a body already beaten beyond endurance. For in the scant thirty seconds which were left, while the boy lay back with them working desperately above him, it was almost possible to see the strength ebbing back into his veins. They dashed water upon his head, inverted bottles of it into his face, and emptied it from his eyes, but during that long half minute the vague smile never left his lips–nor his eyes the face of Conway across from him.

And he went to meet The Red when the gong called to them again. He went to meet him–smiling!

The bell seemed to pick him up and drop him in the middle of the ring. Set for the shock he stopped Conway’s hurtling attack. And when The Red swung he tightened, took the blow flush on the side of the face, and only rocked a little.

Conway’s chin seemed to lift to receive the blow which he started then from the waist. That right hand, flashing up, found it and straightened The Red back–lifted him to his toes. And while he was still in the air The Pilgrim measured and swung. The left glove caught him flush below the ear; it picked him up and drove him crashing back into the corner from which he had just come.

Old Jerry saw them bend over him–saw them pick him up at last and slip him through the ropes. Then he realized that the referee was holding Young Denny’s right hand aloft; that Hogarty, with arms about him, was holding the boy erect.

The little mail-carrier heard the ex-lightweight’s words, as he edged in beside Morehouse, against the ropes.

“A world-beater,” he was screaming above the tumult. “I’ll make a world-beater of you in a year!”

And The Pilgrim, still smiling vaguely, shook his head a little.

“Maybe,” he answered faintly. “Maybe I’ll come back. I don’t know–yet. But now–now I reckon I’d better be going along home!”

CHAPTER XIX

It was a white night–a night so brilliant that the village lights far below in the hollow all but lost their own identity in the radiance of that huge, pale moon; so white that the yellow flare of the single lamp in its bracket, in the back kitchen of the old Bolton place on the hill seemed shabbily dull by contrast.

Standing at the window in the dark front room of the house, peering out from under cupped palms that hid her eyes, Dryad could almost pick out each separate picket of the straggling old fence that bounded the garden of the little drab cottage across from her. In that searching light she could even make out great patches where the rotting sheathing of the house had been torn away, leaving the framework beneath naked and gaunt and bare.

It was scarcely two months since the day when she had gone herself to Judge Maynard with her offer to sell that unkempt acre or so which he had fought so long and bitterly to force into the market. And it had been a strange one, too–that interview. His acceptance had been quick–instantaneously eager–but the girl was still marvelling a little over his attitude throughout that transaction, whenever her mind turned back to it.

When she mentioned the mortgage which Young Denny had secured only a few days before, he had seemed to understand almost immediately why she had spoken of it, without the explanation which she meant to give.

Once again she found him a different Judge Maynard from all the others she had known, and he had in the years since she could remember, been many different men to her imagination. It puzzled her almost as much as did his opinion upon the value of the old place, which, somehow, she could not bring herself to believe was worth all that he insisted upon paying. But then, too, she did not know either that the town’s great man had been riding a-tilt at his own soul, for several days on end, and just as Old Jerry had done, was seizing upon the first opportunity to salve the wounds resultant.

And yet this was the first day that the girl had seen him so much as inspect his long-coveted property; the first time she had known him to set foot within the sagging gate since he had placed in her hands that sum of money which was greater than any she had ever seen before. Under his directions men had commenced clearing away the rank shrubbery that afternoon–commenced to tear down the house itself.

Time after time since morning she had entered the front room to stand and peer out across the valley at this new activity which the Judge himself was directing with an oddly suppressed lack of his usual violent gestures. There was something akin to apology in his every move.

It brought a little homesick ache into the girl’s throat; it set her lips to curving–made her eyes go damp with pity and tenderness for the little white-haired figure bending over his bench. He had clung so bravely, so stubbornly, to that battered bit of a house; to his garden which he had never realized had long since ceased to be anything but a plot of waist-high bushes and weeds. Once when she recollected those countless rows of poignantly wistful faces on the shelves of that back-room workshop she wondered if she had not been disloyal, after all. And she had argued it out with herself aloud as she went from task to task in that afternoon’s gathering twilight.

“But it was because of her that he stayed,” she reassured herself. “It was because of her that he kept it, all these years. And–and so he couldn’t mind–not very much, I think, now that they don’t need it any longer, if I sold it so that I could keep this place–for him!”

They had been long, those hours of waiting. Not a minute of those entire two days since Old Jerry’s departure but had dragged by on laggard feet. And yet now, with nightfall of that third day she became jealous of every passing minute. She hated to have them pass; dreaded to watch the creeping hands of the clock on the kitchen wall as they drew up, little by little, upon that hour which meant the arrival of the night train in the village.

One moment she wondered if he would come–wondered and touched dry lips with the tip of her tongue. And the very next, when somehow she was so very, very sure that there was no room for doubt, she even wondered whether or not he would be glad–glad to find her there. The gaunt skeleton of a framework showing through the torn sides of John Anderson’s cottage almost unnerved her whenever that thought came, and sent her out again into the lighted back room.

“What if he isn’t?” she whispered, over and over again. “Why, I–I never thought of that before, did I? I just thought I had to be here when he came. But what if he–isn’t glad?”

An hour earlier, when the thought had first come to her, she had carried a big, square package out to the table before the kitchen window and untied with fluttering fingers the string that bound it. The little scarlet blouse and shimmering skirt, alive with tinsel that glinted under the light, still lay there beside the thin-heeled slippers and filmy silk stockings. She bent over them, patting them lovingly with a slim hand, her eyes velvety dark while she considered.

“Oh, you’re pretty–pretty–pretty!” she said in a childishly hushed voice, “the prettiest things in the world!”

The next instant she straightened to scan soberly the old shiny black skirt she was wearing, and the darned stockings and cracked shoes.

“And–and you would help, I think,” she went on musing. “I know you would, but then–then it wouldn’t be me. It would be easy for any one to care for you–almost too easy. I–I think I’ll wear them for him–some other time, maybe–if he wants me to.”

But she turned the very next moment and crossed to the mirror on the wall–that square bit of glass before which Young Denny had stood and stared back into his own eyes and laughed. Oblivious to everything else she was critically scanning her own small reflection–great, tip-tilted eyes, violet in the shadow, and then cheeks and pointed chin–until, even in spite of her preoccupation, she became aware of the hungry tremulousness of the mouth of that reflected image–until the hoarse shriek of an engine’s whistle leaped across the valley and brought her up sharp, her breath going in one long, quavering gasp between wide lips.

It was that moment toward which she had been straining every hour of those two days; the one from which she had been shrinking every minute of those last two hours since dark. She hesitated a second, head thrown to one side, listening; she darted into that dark front room and pressed her face to the cold pane, and again that warning note came shrilling across the quiet from the far side of town.

There in the darkness, a hand on either side of the frame holding her leaning weight, she stood and waited. Below her the house roofs lay like patches of jet against the moon-brightness. She stood and watched its whole length, and no darker figure crept into relief against its lighter streak of background. Minutes after she knew that he had had time to come, and more, she still clung there, staring wide-eyed, villageward.

It wasn’t a recollection of that half dismantled wreck of a house under the opposite ridge that finally drew her dry-lipped gaze from the road; she did not even think of it that moment. It was simply because she couldn’t watch any longer–not even for a minute or two–that her eyes finally fluttered that way. But when she did turn there was a bigger, darker blot there against the leaning picket fence–a big-shouldered figure that had moved slowly forward until it stood full in front of the sagging gate.