The Last Galley by Arthur Conan Doyle (fantasy books to read txt) 📕

There was a sudden interruption to the speculations of the two prize-fighters. The door opened and the lady entered. As her eyes fell upon the two men her dark, handsome face flushed with anger, and she gazed at them silently with an expression of contempt which brought them both to their feet with hangdog faces. There they stood, their long, reeking pipes in their hands, shuffling and downcast, like two great rough mastiffs before an angry mistress.

“So!” said she, stamping her foot furiously. “And this is training!”

“I’m sure we’re very sorry, ma’am,” said the abashed Champion. “I didn’t think—I never for one moment supposed—”

“That I would come myself to see if you were taking my money on false pretences? No, I dare say not. You fool!” she blazed, turning suddenly upon Tom Spring. “You’ll be beat. That will be the end of it.”

The young man looked up with an angry face.

“I’ll trouble you not to call me names, ma’am. I’ve my self-respect, the same as you. I’ll allow that I shouldn’t have smoked when I was in trainin’. But I was saying to Tom Cribb here, just before you came in, that if you would give over treatin’ us as if we were children, and if you would tell us just who it is you want me to fight, and when, and where, it would be a deal easier for me to take myself in hand.”

“It’s true, ma’am,” said the Champion. “I know it must be either the Gasman or Bill Neat. There’s no one else. So give me the office, and I’ll promise to have him as fit as a trout on the day.”

The lady laughed contemptuously.

“Do you think,” said she, “that no one can fight save those who make a living by it?”

“By George, it’s an amateur!” cried Cribb, in amazement. “But you don’t surely ask Tom Spring to train for three weeks to meet a Corinthian?”

“I will say nothing more of who it is. It is no business of yours,” the lady answered fiercely. “All I do say is, that if you do not train I will cast you aside and take some one who will. Do not think you can fool me because I am a woman. I have learned the points of the game as well as any man.”

“I saw that the very first word you spoke,” said Cribb.

“Then don’t forget it. I will not warn you again. If I have occasion to find fault I shall choose another man.”

“And you won’t tell me who I am to fight?”

“Not a word. But you can take it from me that at your very best it will take you, or any man in England, all your time to master him. Now, get back this instant to your work, and never let me find you shirking it again.” With imperious eyes she looked the two strong men down, and then, turning on her heel, she swept out of the room.

The Champion whistled as the door closed behind her, and mopped his brow with his red bandanna handkerchief as he looked across at his abashed companion. “My word, lad,” said he, “it’s earnest from this day on.”

“Yes,” said Tom Spring, solemnly, “it’s earnest from this day on.”

In the course of the next fortnight the lady made several surprise visits to see that her champion was being properly prepared for the contest which lay before him. At the most unexpected moments she would burst into the training quarters, but never again had she to complain of any slackness upon his part or that of his trainer. With long bouts of the gloves, with thirty-mile walks, with mile runs at the back of a mailcart with a bit of blood between the shafts, with interminable series of jumps with a skipping-rope, he was sweated down until his trainer was able to proudly proclaim that “the last ounce of tallow is off him and he is ready to fight for his life.” Only once was the lady accompanied by any one upon these visits of inspection. Upon this occasion a tall young man was her companion. He was graceful in figure, aristocratic in his bearing, and would have been strikingly handsome had it not been for some accident which had shattered his nose and broken all the symmetry of his features. He stood in silence with moody eyes and folded arms, looking at the splendid torso of the prize-fighter as, stripped to the waist, he worked with his dumbbells.

“Don’t you think he will do?” said the lady.

The young swell shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t like it, cara mia. I can’t pretend that I like it.”

“You must like it, George. I have set my very heart on it.”

“It is not English, you know. Lucrezia Borgia and Mediaeval Italy. Woman’s love and woman’s hatred are always the same, but this particular manifestation of it seems to me out of place in nineteenth-century London.”

“Is not a lesson needed?”

“Yes, yes; but one would think there were other ways.”

“You tried another way. What did you get out of that?”

The young man smiled rather grimly, as he turned up his cuff and looked at a puckered hole in his wrist.

“Not much, certainly,” said he.

“You’ve tried and failed.”

“Yes, I must admit it.”

“What else is there? The law?”

“Good gracious, no!”

“Then it is my turn, George, and I won’t be balked.”

“I don’t think any one is capable of balking you, cara mia. Certainly I, for one, should never dream of trying. But I don’t feel as if I could co-operate,”

“I never asked you to.”

“No, you certainly never did. You are perfectly capable of doing it alone. I think, with your leave, if you have quite done with your prize-fighter, we will drive back to London. I would not for the world miss Goldoni in the Opera.”

So they drifted away; he, frivolous and dilettante, she with her face as set as Fate, leaving the fighting men to their business.

And now the day came when Cribb was able to announce to his employer that his man was as fit as science could make him.

“I can do no more, ma’am. He’s fit to fight for a kingdom. Another week would see him stale.”

The lady looked Spring over with the eye of a connoisseur.

“I think he does you credit,” she said at last. “Today is Tuesday. He will fight the day after tomorrow.”

“Very good, ma’am. Where shall he go?”

“I will tell you exactly, and you will please take careful note of all that I say. You, Mr. Cribb, will take your man down to the Golden Cross Inn at Charing Cross by nine o’clock on Wednesday morning. He will take the Brighton coach as far as Tunbridge Wells, where he will alight at the Royal Oak Arms. There he will take such refreshment as you advise before a fight. He will wait at the Royal Oak Arms until he receives a message by word, or by letter, brought him by a groom in a mulberry livery. This message will give him his final instructions.”

“And I am not to come?”

“No,” said the lady.

“But surely, ma’am,” he pleaded, “I may come as far as Tunbridge Wells? It’s hard on a man to train a cove for a fight and then to leave him.”

“It can’t be helped. You are too well known. Your arrival would spread all over the town, and my plans might suffer. It is quite out of the question that you should come.”

“Well, I’ll do what you tell me, but it’s main hard.”

“I suppose,” said Spring, “you would have me bring my fightin’ shorts and my spiked shoes?”

“No; you will kindly bring nothing whatever which may point to your trade. I would have you wear just those clothes in which I saw you first, such clothes as any mechanic or artisan might be expected to wear.”

Tom Cribb’s blank face had assumed an expression of absolute despair.

“No second, no clothes, no shoes—it don’t seem regular. I give you my word, ma’am, I feel ashamed to be mixed up in such a fight. I don’t know as you can call the thing a fight where there is no second. It’s just a scramble—nothing more. I’ve gone too far to wash my hands of it now, but I wish I had never touched it.”

In spite of all professional misgivings on the part of the Champion and his pupil, the imperious will of the woman prevailed, and everything was carried out exactly as she had directed. At nine o’clock Tom Spring found himself upon the box-seat of the Brighton coach, and waved his hand in goodbye to burly Tom Cribb, who stood, the admired of a ring of waiters and ostlers, upon the doorstep of the Golden Cross. It was in the pleasant season when summer is mellowing into autumn, and the first golden patches are seen amid the beeches and the ferns. The young country-bred lad breathed more freely when he had left the weary streets of Southwark and Lewisham behind him, and he watched with delight the glorious prospect as the coach, whirled along by six dapple greys, passed by the classic grounds of Knowle, or after crossing Riverside Hill skirted the vast expanse of the Weald of Kent. Past Tonbridge School went the coach, and on through Southborough, until it wound down a steep, curving road with strange outcrops of sandstone beside it, and halted before a great hostelry, bearing the name which had been given him in his directions. He descended, entered the coffee-room, and ordered the underdone steak which his trainer had recommended. Hardly had he finished it when a servant with a mulberry coat and a peculiarly expressionless face entered the apartment.

“Beg your pardon, sir, are you Mr. Spring—Mr. Thomas Spring, of London?”

“That is my name, young man.”

“Then the instructions which I had to give you are that you wait for one hour after your meal. After that time you will find me in a phaeton at the door, and I will drive you in the right direction.”

The young pugilist had never been daunted by any experience which had befallen him in the ring. The rough encouragement of his backers, the surge and shouting of the multitude, and the sight of his opponent had always cheered his stout heart and excited him to prove himself worthy of being the centre of such a scene. But his loneliness and uncertainty were deadly. He flung himself down on the horse-hair couch and tried to doze, but his mind was too restless and excited. Finally he rose, and paced up and down the empty room. Suddenly he was aware of a great rubicund face which surveyed him from round the angle of the door. Its owner, seeing that he was observed, pushed forward into the room.

“I beg pardon, sir,” said he, “but surely I have the honour of talking to Mr. Thomas Spring?”

“At your service,” said the young man.

“Bless me! I am vastly honoured to have you under my roof! Cordery is my name, sir, landlord of this old-fashioned inn. I thought that my eyes could not deceive me. I am a patron of the ring, sir, in my own humble way, and was present at Moulsey in September last, when you beat Jack Stringer of Rawcliffe. A very fine fight, sir, and very handsomely fought, if I may make bold to say so. I have a right to an opinion, sir, for there’s never been a fight for many a year in Kent or Sussex that you wouldn’t find Joe Cordery at the ring-side. Ask Mr. Gregson at the Chop-house in Holborn and