Rodney Stone by Arthur Conan Doyle (best books to read non fiction .TXT) 📕
There was nothing that he liked to talk of more than his oldbattles, but he would stop if he saw his little wife coming, for theone great shadow in her life was the ever-present fear that some dayhe would throw down sledge and rasp and be off to the ring oncemore. And you must be reminded here once for all that that formercalling of his was by no means at that time in the debased conditionto which it afterwards fell. Public opinion has gradually becomeopposed to it, for the reason that it came largely into the hands ofrogues, and because it fostered ringside ruffianism. Even thehonest and brave pugilist was found to draw villainy round him, justas the pure and noble racehorse does. For this reason the Ring isdying in England, and we may hope that when Caunt and Bendigo havepassed away, they may have n
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“It does not become our position to quarrel like two yokels at a fair,” said he; “we shall go further into the matter afterwards.”
“I promise you that we shall,” answered my uncle, grimly.
“Meanwhile, I hold you to the terms of your wager. Unless you produce your nominee within five-and-twenty minutes, I claim the match.”
“Eight-and-twenty minutes,” said my uncle, looking at his watch. “You may claim it then, but not an instant before.”
He was admirable at that moment, for his manner was that of a man with all sorts of hidden resources, so that I could hardly make myself realize as I looked at him that our position was really as desperate as I knew it to be. In the meantime Berkeley Craven, who had been exchanging a few words with Sir Lothian Hume, came back to our side.
“I have been asked to be sole referee in this matter,” said he. “Does that meet with your wishes, Sir Charles?”
“I should be vastly obliged to you, Craven, if you will undertake the duties.”
“And Jackson has been suggested as timekeeper.”
“I could not wish a better one.”
“Very good. That is settled.”
In the meantime the last of the carriages had come up, and the horses had all been picketed upon the moor. The stragglers who had dotted the grass had closed in until the huge crowd was one unit with a single mighty voice, which was already beginning to bellow its impatience. Looking round, there was hardly a moving object upon the whole vast expanse of green and purple down. A belated gig was coming at full gallop down the road which led from the south, and a few pedestrians were still trailing up from Crawley, but nowhere was there a sign of the missing man.
“The betting keeps up for all that,” said Belcher. “I’ve just been to the ringside, and it is still even.”
“There’s a place for you at the outer ropes, Sir Charles,” said Craven.
“There is no sign of my man yet. I won’t come in until he arrives.”
“It is my duty to tell you that only ten minutes are left.”
“I make it five,” cried Sir Lothian Hume.
“That is a question which lies with the referee,” said Craven, firmly. “My watch makes it ten minutes, and ten it must be.”
“Here’s Crab Wilson!” cried Belcher, and at the same moment a shout like a thunderclap burst from the crowd. The west countryman had emerged from his dressing-tent, followed by Dutch Sam and Tom Owen, who were acting as his seconds. He was nude to the waist, with a pair of white calico drawers, white silk stockings, and running shoes. Round his middle was a canary-yellow sash, and dainty little ribbons of the same colour fluttered from the sides of his knees. He carried a high white hat in his hand, and running down the lane which had been kept open through the crowd to allow persons to reach the ring, he threw the hat high into the air, so that it fell within the staked inclosure. Then with a double spring he cleared the outer and inner line of rope, and stood with his arms folded in the centre.
I do not wonder that the people cheered. Even Belcher could not help joining in the general shout of applause. He was certainly a splendidly built young athlete, and one could not have wished to look upon a finer sight as his white skin, sleek and luminous as a panther’s, gleamed in the light of the morning sun, with a beautiful liquid rippling of muscles at every movement. His arms were long and slingy, his shoulders loose and yet powerful, with the downward slant which is a surer index of power than squareness can be. He clasped his hands behind his head, threw them aloft, and swung them backwards, and at every movement some fresh expanse of his smooth, white skin became knobbed and gnarled with muscles, whilst a yell of admiration and delight from the crowd greeted each fresh exhibition. Then, folding his arms once more, he stood like a beautiful statue waiting for his antagonist.
Sir Lothian Hume had been looking impatiently at his watch, and now he shut it with a triumphant snap.
“Time’s up!” he cried. “The match is forfeit.”
“Time is not up,” said Craven.
“I have still five minutes.” My uncle looked round with despairing eyes.
“Only three, Tregellis!”
A deep angry murmur was rising from the crowd.
“It’s a cross! It’s a cross! It’s a fake!” was the cry.
“Two minutes, Tregellis!”
“Where’s your man, Sir Charles? Where’s the man that we have backed?” Flushed faces began to crane over each other, and angry eyes glared up at us.
“One more minute, Tregellis! I am very sorry, but it will be my duty to declare it forfeit against you.”
There was a sudden swirl in the crowd, a rush, a shout, and high up in the air there spun an old black hat, floating over the heads of the ringsiders and flickering down within the ropes.
“Saved, by the Lord!” screamed Belcher.
“I rather fancy,” said my uncle, calmly, “that this must be my man.”
“Too late!” cried Sir Lothian.
“No,” answered the referee. “It was still twenty seconds to the hour. The fight will now proceed.”
Out of the whole of that vast multitude I was one of the very few who had observed whence it was that this black hat, skimming so opportunely over the ropes, had come. I have already remarked that when we looked around us there had been a single gig travelling very rapidly upon the southern road. My uncle’s eyes had rested upon it, but his attention had been drawn away by the discussion between Sir Lothian Hume and the referee upon the question of time. For my own part, I had been so struck by the furious manner in which these belated travellers were approaching, that I had continued to watch them with all sorts of vague hopes within me, which I did not dare to put into words for fear of adding to my uncle’s disappointments. I had just made out that the gig contained a man and a woman, when suddenly I saw it swerve off the road, and come with a galloping horse and bounding wheels right across the moor, crashing through the gorse bushes, and sinking down to the hubs in the heather and bracken. As the driver pulled up his foam-spattered horse, he threw the reins to his companion, sprang from his seat, butted furiously into the crowd, and then an instant afterwards up went the hat which told of his challenge and defiance.
“There is no hurry now, I presume, Craven,” said my uncle, as coolly as if this sudden effect had been carefully devised by him.
“Now that your man has his hat in the ring you can take as much time as you like, Sir Charles.”
“Your friend has certainly cut it rather fine, nephew.”
“It is not Jim, sir,” I whispered. “It is some one else.”
My uncle’s eyebrows betrayed his astonishment.
“Some one else!” he ejaculated.
“And a good man too!” roared Belcher, slapping his thigh with a crack like a pistol-shot. “Why, blow my dickey if it ain’t old Jack Harrison himself!”
Looking down at the crowd, we had seen the head and shoulders of a powerful and strenuous man moving slowly forward, and leaving behind him a long V-shaped ripple upon its surface like the wake of a swimming dog. Now, as he pushed his way through the looser fringe the head was raised, and there was the grinning, hardy face of the smith looking up at us. He had left his hat in the ring, and was enveloped in an overcoat with a blue bird’s-eye handkerchief tied round his neck. As he emerged from the throng he let his great-coat fly loose, and showed that he was dressed in his full fighting kit— black drawers, chocolate stockings, and white shoes.
“I’m right sorry to be so late, Sir Charles,” he cried. “I’d have been sooner, but it took me a little time to make it all straight with the missus. I couldn’t convince her all at once, an’ so I brought her with me, and we argued it out on the way.”
Looking at the gig, I saw that it was indeed Mrs. Harrison who was seated in it. Sir Charles beckoned him up to the wheel of the curricle.
“What in the world brings you here, Harrison?” he whispered. “I am as glad to see you as ever I was to see a man in my life, but I confess that I did not expect you.”
“Well, sir, you heard I was coming,” said the smith.
“Indeed, I did not.”
“Didn’t you get a message, Sir Charles, from a man named Cumming, landlord of the Friar’s Oak Inn? Mister Rodney there would know him.”
“We saw him dead drunk at the George.”
“There, now, if I wasn’t afraid of it!” cried Harrison, angrily. “He’s always like that when he’s excited, and I never saw a man more off his head than he was when he heard I was going to take this job over. He brought a bag of sovereigns up with him to back me with.”
“That’s how the betting got turned,” said my uncle. “He found others to follow his lead, it appears.”
“I was so afraid that he might get upon the drink that I made him promise to go straight to you, sir, the very instant he should arrive. He had a note to deliver.”
“I understand that he reached the George at six, whilst I did not return from Reigate until after seven, by which time I have no doubt that he had drunk his message to me out of his head. But where is your nephew Jim, and how did you come to know that you would be needed?”
“It is not his fault, I promise you, that you should be left in the lurch. As to me, I had my orders to take his place from the only man upon earth whose word I have never disobeyed.”
“Yes, Sir Charles,” said Mrs. Harrison, who had left the gig and approached us. “You can make the most of it this time, for never again shall you have my Jack—not if you were to go on your knees for him.”
“She’s not a patron of sport, and that’s a fact,” said the smith.
“Sport!” she cried, with shrill contempt and anger. “Tell me when all is over.”
She hurried away, and I saw her afterwards seated amongst the bracken, her back turned towards the multitude, and her hands over her ears, cowering and wincing in an agony of apprehension.
Whilst this hurried scene had been taking place, the crowd had become more and more tumultuous, partly from their impatience at the delay, and partly from their exuberant spirits at the unexpected chance of seeing so celebrated a fighting man as Harrison. His identity had already been noised abroad, and many an elderly connoisseur plucked his long net-purse out of his fob, in order to put a few guineas upon the man who would represent the school of the past against the present. The younger men were still in favour of the west-countryman, and small odds were to be had either way in proportion to the number of the supporters of each in the different parts of the crowd.
In the mean time Sir Lothian Hume had come bustling up to
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