252CHAPTER XVII
It rained that next day––a dull, steady downpour that slanted in upon a warm, south wind. Old Jerry was glad of the storm. The leaden grayness of the low-hanging clouds matched perfectly his own frame of mind, and the cold touch of the rain soothed his hot head, too, as it swept in under the buggy hood, and helped him to think a little better. There was much that needed readjusting.
Throughout the early hours of that morning he drove with a newspaper spread flat upon his knees––the afternoon edition of the previous day, which, in the face of other matters, he had had neither the necessary time nor enthusiasm to examine until it was an entire twelve hours old. At any other time the contents of that red-headlined sheet would have set his pulses throbbing in a veritable ecstasy of excitement.
For two whole weeks he had been watching for it, scanning every inch of type for the news it brought, but now that account of Young Denny’s first match, with a little, square picture of him inset at the column head, fell woefully flat so far as he was concerned.
Not that the plump newspaperman who had253written the account of that first victorious bout had achieved anything but a masterpiece of sensationalism. Every line was alive with action, every phrase seemed to thud with the actual shock of contest. And there was that last paragraph, too, which hailed Denny––“The Pilgrim,” they called him in the paper, but that couldn’t deceive Old Jerry––as the newcomer for whom the public had been waiting so long, and, toward the end, so hopelessly.
It was really a perfect thing of its kind––but Old Jerry could not enjoy it that morning, even though it was Denny Bolton’s first triumph, to be shared by him alone in equal proportion. Instead of sending creepy thrills chasing up and down his spine it merely intensified his doleful bitterness of spirit. Long before noon he breathed a leaden heavy sigh, refolded the sodden sheet and put it away in the box beneath the seat.
The old mare took her own pace that day. In a brain that was already burdened until it fairly ached there was no room for the image of the silver-haired stone-cutter which had made for speed on other occasions. He had plenty to occupy his mind which was of a strictly immediate nature.
A dozen times that morning Old Jerry asked himself what he would tell Dryad Anderson that night, when he stopped at the little drab cottage at the route’s end, ostensibly to bid her good-by. He asked254himself, in desperate reiteration,howhe would tell, for he knew that the long delay in the delivery of Denny’s message was going to need more than a little explanation. And when he had wrestled with the question until his eyes stung and his temples throbbed, and still could find no solution for it, he turned helplessly to the consideration of another phase of the problem.
He fell to tormenting himself with the possibility of her having gone already. Everything in those bare rooms had been packed––there was no real reason for the girl to remain another hour. Perhaps she had reconsidered, changed her mind, and departed even earlier than she had planned, and if she had––if she had–––
Whenever he reached that point, dumbly he bowed his head.
It was dark when he turned off the main road and started up the long hill toward the Bolton place––not just dark, but a blackness so profound that the mare between the shafts was only a half formless splotch of gray as she plodded along ahead. Even his dread of the place, which formerly had been so acute, did not penetrate the mental misery that wrapped him; he did not vouchsafe so much as one uneasy glance ahead until a glimmer of light which seemed to flash out from the rear of the house fairly shocked him into conscious recollection of it all.
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He sprang erect then, spilling a cataract of water from his hat brim in a chill trickle down the back of his neck, and barked a shrilly staccato command at the placid horse. The creaking buggy came to a standstill.
He tried to persuade himself it was a reflection of the village lights upon the window panes which had startled him, but it was only a half-hearted effort. No one could mistake the glow that filtered out of the black bulk of the rear of the house for anything save the thing it was. Half way up the hill he sat there, hunched forward in a hopeless huddle, his eyes protected by cupped palms, and stared and stared.
Once before, the evening of that day when the Judge’s exhibition of Young Denny’s bruised face had been more than his curiosity could endure, he had approached that bleak farmhouse in fear and trembling, but the trepidation of that night, half real, half a child of his own erratic imagination, bulked small beside the throat-tightening terror of this moment.
And yet he did not turn back. The thought that he had only to wheel his buggy and beat as silent a retreat as his ungreased axles would permit never occurred to him. It was much as if his harrowed spirit, driven hither and yon without mercy throughout the whole day long, had at last backed into a corner, in a mood of last-ditch, crazy desperation, and bared its teeth.
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“If he is up there,” he stated doggedly, “if he is up there, a-putterin’ with his everlasting lump o’ clay, he ain’t got no more right up there than I hev! He’s just a-trespassin’, that’s what he’s a-doin’. I’m the legal custodian of the place––it was put into my hands––and I’ll tell him so. I’ll give him a chance to git out––or––or I’ll hev the law on him!”
The plump mare went forward again. There was something terribly uncanny, even in her relentless advance, but the old man clung to the reins and let her go without a word. When she reached the top she slumped lazily to a standstill and fell contentedly to nibbling grass.
The light in the window was much brighter, viewed from that lessened distance––thin, yellow streaks of brightness that quivered a little from the edges of a drawn shade. An uneven wick might easily have accounted for the unsteadiness, but in that flickering pallor Old Jerry found something ominously unhealthy––almost uncanny.
But he went on. He clambered down from his high seat and went doggedly across––steadily––until his hand found the door-latch. And he gave himself no time for reconsideration or retreat. The metal catch yielded all too readily under the pressure of his fingers, and when the door swung in he followed it over the threshold.
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The light blinded him for a moment––dazzled him––yet not so completely but that he saw, too clearly for any mistake, the figure that had turned from the stove to greet him. Dryad Anderson’s face was pink-tinted from forehead to chin by the heat of the glowing lids––her lips parted a little until the small teeth showed white beyond their red fullness.
In her too-tight, boyish blouse, gaping at the throat, she stood there in the middle of the room, hands bracketed on delicate hips, and smiled at him. And behind her the lamp in its socket on the wall smoked a trifle from a too-high wick.
Old Jerry stood and gazed at her, one hand still clutching the door latch. In one great illuminating flash he saw it all––understood just what it meant––and with that understanding a hot wave of rage began to well up within him––a fierce and righteous wrath, borne of all that day’s unnecessary agony and those last few minutes of fear.
It was a hoax on her part. She had been trifling with him the day before, just as she had been playing fast and loose with his peace of mind for days. An ejaculation bordering close upon actual profanity trembled upon his lips, but a draft of cold air sweeping in at the open doorway set the lamp flickering wildly and brought him back a little to himself. His eyes went again to the girl in the middle of the floor. She was rocking to and fro upon the balls of her258feet, every inch of her fairly pulsing with mocking, malicious delight.
She waited for him to speak, and he, stiff of back and grim of face, stood stonily silent. She seemed all innocently unaware of his unconcealed disgust. The quizzical smile only widened before the chilly threat of his beady eyes and ruffled forehead. And then, all in one breath, her little pouted chin went up and she burst into a low gurgle of utter enjoyment of the tableau.
“Well,” she demanded, “aren’t you ever going to say anything? Here I am! I––I decided to move today––there really wasn’t any use of waiting. Aren’t you surprised––just a little?”
The meekness of her voice, so wholly belied by her eyes and lips and swaying boy-like body, only tightened the old man’s mouth. He was still reviewing all that long day’s mental torment, counting the wasted hours which might have been applied to a soul-satisfying feast upon Morehouse’s red-headlined account in the paper. No veteran had ever marched more hopelessly into a cannon’s mouth than he had approached the door of that kitchen.
And yet a flood of thankfulness, the direct reflex of his first impotent rage, threatened to sweep up and drown the fires of his wrath. Already he wanted to slump down into a chair and rest weary body and wearier, relieved brain; he wanted a minute or two259in which to realize that she was there––that his unfulfilled promise was still far from being actual catastrophe––and he would not let himself. Not yet!
She had been playing with him––playing with him cat-and-mouse fashion. The birdlike features which had begun to relax hardened once more.
“Maybe I be,” he answered her question with noncommittal grimness. “Maybe I be––and maybe I ain’t!” And then, almost belligerently: “Your lamp’s a-smokin’!”
She turned and strained on tiptoe and lowered it.
“I thought you would be,” she agreed, too gravely for his complete comfort, when she had accomplished the readjustment of the wick to her entire satisfaction. “For, you know, you seemed a little worried and––well, not just happy, yesterday, when I told you I was going to move I––I felt sure you would be glad to find that I hadn’t gone far!”
Old Jerry remembered at that moment and he removed his soaked hat. He turned, too, and drew up a chair. It gave him an opportunity to avoid those moistly mirthful eyes for a moment. Seated and comfortably tilted back against the wall he felt less ill at ease––felt better able to deal with the situation as it should be dealt with.
For a moment her presence there had only confounded him––that was when the wave of righteous wrath had swept him––but at the worst he had260counted it nothing more than a too far-fetched bit of fantastic mischief conceived to tantalize him.
Her last statement awakened in him a preposterously impossible suspicion which, now that he had a chance to glance about the room, was confirmed instantly––absolutely. It was astounding––utterly unbelievable––and yet on all the walls, in every corner, there were the indisputable evidences of her intention to remain indefinitely––permanently.
At least it gave him an opening.
“You don’t mean to say,” he began challengingly, “you don’t mean to tell me that you’re a-figurin’ on stayin’ here––for good?”
She pursed her lips and nodded vigorously at him until the loosened wisps of hair half hid her eyes. It was quite as though she were pleased beyond belief that he had got at the gist of it all so speedily.
“Yes, for good,” she explained ecstatically, “or,” more slowly, “or at least for quite a while. You see I like it here! It’s just like home already––just like I always imagined home would be when I really had one, anyway. There’s so much room––and it’s warm, too. And then, the floors don’t squeak, either. I don’t think I care for squeaky floors––do you?”
A quick widening of those almost purple eyes accompanied the last question.
The little white-haired figure in the back-tilted chair snorted. He tried to disguise it behind a belated261cough, but it was quite palpably a snort of outraged patience and dignity. She couldn’t fool him any longer––not even with that wide-eyed appealingly infantile stare. He knew, without looking closer, that there was a flare of mirth hidden within its velvet duskiness. And there was only one way to deal with such shallowness––that was with firm and unmistakable severity. He leaned forward and pounded one meager knee for emphasis as Judge Maynard had often done.
“You can’t do it!” he emphasized flatly, his thin voice almost gloatingly triumphant. “Whatever put it into your head I don’t know––but don’t you realize what you’re a-doin’, comin’ up here like this and movin’ in, high-handed, without speaking to nobody? Well, you’ve made yourself liable to trespass––that’s what you’ve done! Trespass and house-breaking, too, I guess, without interviewin’ me first!”
The violet eyes flew wider. Old Jerry was certain that he caught a gleam of apprehension in them. She took one faltering step toward him and then stopped, irresolute, apparently. Somehow the mute appeal in that whole poise was too much, even for his outraged dignity. Maybe he had gone a little too far. He attempted to temper the harshness of it.
“Not a-course,” he added deprecatingly, “meanin’ that anything like that would be likely to happen to262you. Seein’ as you didn’t exactly understand, I wouldn’t take no steps against you.” And, even more encouragingly, “I doubt if I’d hev any legal right to proceed against anybody without seeing Den––without seeing the rightful owner first.”
He bit his tongue painfully in covering that slip, but Dryad had not seemed to notice it. She crossed back to the stove and in an absolute silence fell to prodding with a fork beneath steaming lids.
“I really should have thought of that myself,” she murmured pensively. “After seeing you return from here every afternoon, I should have known he––the place had been left in your care.”
It rather startled him––that half absent-minded statement of hers––it disturbed his confidence in his command of the situation. Sitting there he told himself that he should have realized long ago that she could easily watch the hill road from the door of the little drab cottage huddled at the end of Judge Maynard’s acres.
He began to feel guilty again––began to wonder just how much his daily visits to Denny’s place had led her to suspect. But Dryad did not wait for any reply. She had turned once more until she was facing him, her lips beginning to curl again, petal-like, at the corners.
“But you would have to interview the real owner first?” she inquired insistently. “You do think that263would be necessary before you could make me leave, don’t you?”
He nodded––nodded warily. Something in her bearing put him on his guard. And then, before he knew how it had happened, a little rush had carried her across the room and she was kneeling at his feet, her face upflung to him.
“Then you’ll have to interview me,”––the words trembled madly, breathlessly, from her lips. “You’ll have to interview me––because––because I own it all––all––every bit of it!”
And she laughed up at him––laughed with a queer, choking, strained note catching in her throat up into his blankly incredulous face. He felt her thin young arms tighten about him; he even half caught her next hysterical words in spite of his amazement, and for all that they were quite meaningless to him.
“You dear,” she rushed on. “O, you dear, dear stubborn old fraud! I punished you, didn’t I? You were frightened––afraid I’d go! You know you were! As if I’d ever leave until––until––” She failed to finish that sentence. “But I’ll never, never tease you so again!”
Then there came that lightning-like change of mood which always left him breathless in his inability to follow it. The mirth went out of her eyes––her lips drooped and began to work strangely as she knelt and gazed up at him.
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“I bought his mortgage,” she told him slowly. “I bought it from Judge Maynard a week ago with part of the money he gave me for our place there below his. He was very generous. Somehow I feel that he paid me––much more than it was worth. He’s always wanted it and––and I––there wasn’t any need for me to stay there any more, was there?”
Old Jerry had never seen a face so terribly earnest before––so hungrily wistful––but it was the light that glowed in that kneeling girl’s eyes that held him dumb. It left him completely incapable of coherent thought, yet mechanically his mind leaped back to that night, two weeks before, when Young Denny had stumbled and gone floundering to his knees before her, there on that very threshold. The boy’s own words had painted that picture for him too vividly for him to forget. And he knew, without reasoning it out, just from the world of pain there in her eyes, that she, too, at that moment was thinking of that limp figure––of the great red gash across its chin.
“I didn’t help him,” she went on, and now her voice was little more than a whisper. “I went and left him here alone––and hurt––when I should have stayed, that night when he went away. And so I bought it––I bought it because I thought some day he might come back––and need me even more. I thought if he did come––he’d feel as though he had just––come back home! And––and just to be here265waiting, I thought, too, might somehow help me to have faith that he would come, some day––safe!”
The old man felt the fiercely tense little arms go slack then. Her head went forward and lay heavy, pillowed in her hands upon his knees. But he sat there for a full minute, staring down at the thick, shimmering mass of her hair, swallowing an unaccountable lump that bothered his breathing preparatory to telling her all that he had kept waiting for just that opportunity, before he realized that she was crying. And for an equally long period he cast desperately about for the right thing to say. It came to him finally––a veritable inspiration.
“Why, you don’t want to cry,” he told her slowly. “They––they ain’t nothing to worry about now! For if that’s the case––if you’ve gone to work and bought it, why, I ain’t got no more jurisdiction over it––none whatever!”
Immediately she lifted her head and gazed long and questioningly at him, but Old Jerry’s face was only guilelessly grave. It was more than that––benevolent reassurance lit up every feature, and little by little her brimming eyes began to clear; they began to glisten with that baffling delight that had irritated him so before. She slipped slowly to her feet and stood and gazed down at him. Old Jerry knew then that he would never again see so radiant a face as hers was at that moment.
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“I wasn’t crying because I was worried,” she said, and she managed not to laugh. “I’ve been doing that every night, all night long, for two weeks. That was before I understood––things! But today––this afternoon I found something––read something––that made me understand better. I––I’m just crying a little tonight because I am so glad.”
Old Jerry couldn’t quite fathom the whole meaning of those last words of hers. They surprised him so that all the things he had meant to tell her right then of Young Denny’s departure once more went totally out of mind. He wondered if it was the red-headlined account of his first battle that she had seen. No matter how doubtful it was he felt it was very, very possible, for at each day’s end he had been leaving Denny’s roll of papers there just as he had when the boy was at home.
But the rest of it he understood in spite of the wonder of it all. Whenever he remembered Young Denny asprawl upon the floor it seemed to him a thing too marvelous for belief, and yet, recalling the light that had glowed radiant in that girl’s eyes, he knew it was the only thing left to believe.
He talked it over with himself that night on the way home.
“She bought it so’s if he ever did want to come back, he’d feel as if he had come back home,” he267repeated her words, and he pondered long upon them. There was only one possible deduction.
“She thought he wouldn’t have nothing left to buy it back when he did come––that he’d be started on the road all the rest of ’em traveled and pretty well––shot––to––pieces! That’s what she thought,” he decided.
He shook his head over it.
“And she didn’t know,” he marveled. “She didn’t know how that old jug really got broke––because I ain’t told her yet! But she’s waitin’ for him just the same––just a-waitin’ for him, no matter how he comes. Figurin’ on takin’ care of him, too––that’s what she was doin’––her that ain’t no bigger’n his little finger!”
The storm had blown over long before his buggy went rattling down that long hill, and he sat with the reins dangling neglected between his knees and squinted up at the stars.
“I always did consider I’d been pretty lucky,” he confided after a time to the plump mare’s lazily flopping ears, “never gettin’ mixed up in any matrimonial tangle, so to speak. But now––now I ain’t quite so sure.” A lonesome note crept into the querulous voice. “Maybe I’d hev kept my eyes open a little mite wider’n I did if I’d ever a-dreamed anybody could care like that.... Don’t happen very often though, I reckon. Just about once in a lifetime,268maybe. Maybe, if he ain’t too blind to see it when it does come ... maybe once to every man!”
That next week marked the beginning of an intimacy unlike anything which Old Jerry had ever before known in all his life, for in spite of the girl’s absolute proprietorship he continued his daily trips up the long hill, not only for the purpose of leaving Young Denny’s bundle of papers and seed catalogues, but to attend to the stock which the boy had left in his care as well. It never occurred to him that that duty was only optional with him now.
He never again attempted either, after that night, to explain his delinquency and deliver Young Denny’s message to her. There seemed to him absolutely no need now to open a subject which was bound to be embarrassing to him. And then, too, a sort of tacit understanding appeared to have sprung up between them that needed no further explanation.
Only once was the temptation to confess to her the real reason for Denny’s sudden going almost stronger than he could resist. That was quite a month later, when the news of the boy’s second battle was flaunted broadcast by the same red-headlined sheet. Then for days he considered the advisability of such a move.
It was not some one to share his hot pride that he269wanted; he had lived his whole life almost entirely within himself, and so his elation was no less keen because he had no second person with whom to discuss the victory. He wanted her opinion on a quite different question––a question which he felt utterly incapable of deciding for himself. It was no less a plan than that he should be present at the match which was already hinted at between “The Pilgrim” and Jed The Red––Jeddy Conway, from that very village.
There were days when he almost felt that she knew of this new perplexity of his, felt that she really had seen that account of Young Denny’s first fight and had been watching for the second, and at such times only a mumbled excuse and a hasty retreat saved him from baring his secret desire.
“She’d think I’d gone stark crazy,” he excused his lack of courage. “She’d say I was a-goin’ into my second childhood!”
Yet in the end it was the girl with the tip-tilted eyes who decided it for him.
Spring had slipped into early summer when the day came which made the gossip of “The Pilgrim’s” possible bid for the championship a certainty. It was harder than ever for Old Jerry after that. Each fresh day’s issue brought forth a long and exhaustive comparison of the two men’s chances––of their strength and weaknesses. The technical discussion the old270man skipped; it was undecipherable to him and enough that Young Denny was hailed as a certain winner.
And then as the day set for the match crept nearer and nearer, he began to notice a new and alarming change in the tone of that daily column. At first it was only fleeting––too intangible for one to place one’s finger upon it. But by the end of another week it was openly inquiring whether “The Pilgrim” had as much as an even chance of winning after all.
It bewildered Old Jerry; it was beyond his comprehension, and had he not been so depressed himself he would have noted the change that came over the girl, too, these days. He never entered the big back kitchen now to hear her humming softly to herself, and sometimes he had to speak several times before she even heard him.
That continued for almost a week, and then there came a day, a scant three days before the date which he had hungrily underlined in red upon a mental calendar, which brought the whole vexing indecision to a precipitate head.
Old Jerry read that day’s column in the sporting extra with weazened face going red with anger––read it with fists knotted. Those others had been merely skeptical––doubtful of “The Pilgrim’s” willingness to meet the champion––and now it openly scoffed at him; it laughed at his ability, lashed him271with ridicule. And, to cap it all, it accused him openly of having already “sold out” to his opponent.
When the little white-haired driver of the buggy reached the house on the hill that night he was as pale as he had been red, hours before, and he pleaded fatigue to excuse his too hasty departure. He did not see that she was almost as openly eager to have him go or that she almost ran across to the table under the light with the packet of papers as he turned away.
Had he noticed he would have been better prepared the next night for the scene that met him when he opened her door at dusk. One step was all he took, and then he stopped, wide-eyed, aghast. Dryad was standing in the middle of the room, her hair loose about her shoulders, lips drawn dangerously back from tight little teeth, fists clenched at her throat, and her eyes flaming.
Old Jerry had never before seen her in a rage; he had never before seen anybody so terribly, pallidly violent. As he entered her eyes shot up to his. He heard her breath come and go, come and go, between dry lips. And suddenly she lifted her feet and stamped upon the newspaper strewn about her on the floor––infinitesimal shreds which she had torn and flung from her.
“It’s a lie!” she gasped. “It’s a lie––a lie! They said he couldn’t win anyway; they said he had sold––sold272his chance to win––and they lie! He’s never been whipped. He’s never––been––whipped––yet!”
It frightened him. The very straining of her throat and the mad rise and fall of her breast made him afraid for her. In his effort to quiet her he hardly reckoned what he was saying.
“Why, it––it don’t mean nothin’,” he stated mildly. “That newspaper trash ain’t no account, anyway you look at it.”
“Then why do they print it?” she stormed. “How do they dare to print it? They’ve been doing it for days––weeks!”
He felt more equal to that question. The answer fairly popped into his brain.
“They hev to, I reckon,” he said with a fine semblance of cheerfulness. “If they didn’t maybe everybody’d be so sure he’d win that they wouldn’t even bother to go to see it.” And then, very carelessly, as though it was of little importance: “Don’t know’s I would hev thought of goin’ myself if it hadn’t been for that. It’s advertisin’ I reckon––just advertisin’!”
Her fists came down from her chin; her whole body relaxed. It was that bewildering change of mood which he could never hope to follow. She even started toward him.
“Wouldn’t have thought of it!” she repeated. “Why––why, you don’t mean that youaren’tgoing?”
It was quite as though she had never considered273the possibility of such a contingency. Old Jerry’s mouth dropped open while he stared at her.
“Go,” he stammered, “me go! Why, it’s goin’ to happen tomorrow night!”
She nodded her head in apparent unconsciousness of his astonishment.
“You’ll have to leave on the early train,” she agreed, “and––and so I won’t see you again.”
She turned her back upon him for a moment. He realized that she was fumbling inside the throat of the little, too-tight blouse. When she faced him again there was something in the palm of her outstretched hand.
“I’ve been waiting for you to come tonight,” she went on, “and it was hard waiting. That’s why I tore the paper up, I think. And now, will you––will you give him this for me––give it to him when he has won? You won’t have to say anything.” She hesitated. “I––I think he’ll understand!”
Old Jerry reached out and took it from her––a bit of a red silk bow, dotted with silver spangles. He gazed at it a moment before he tucked it away in an inside pocket, and in that moment of respite his brain raced madly.
“Of course I figured on goin’,” he said, when his breath returned, “but I been a little undecided––jest a trifle! But I ought to be there; he might be a mite anxious if they wasn’t somebody from home.274And I’ll give it to him then––I’ll give it to him when he’s won!”
He went a bit unsteadily back to his waiting buggy.
“She had that all ready to give me,” he said to himself as he climbed up to the high seat. Tentatively his fingers touched the little lump that the spangly bow of red made inside his coat. “She’s had it all ready for me––mebby for days! But how’d she know I was a-goin’?” he asked himself. “How’dsheknow, when I didn’t know myself?”
He gave it up as a feminine whimsicality too deep for mere male wisdom. Once on the way back he thought of the route that would go mailless the next day.
“’Twon’t hurt ’em none to wait a day or so,” he stated, and his voice was just a little tinged with importance. “Maybe it’ll do ’em good. And there ain’t no way out of it, anyhow––for I surely got to be there!”
275CHAPTER XVIII
Morehouse did not hear the door in the opaque glass partition that walled his desk off from the outer editorial offices open and close, for all that it was very quiet. Ever since the hour which followed the going to press of the afternoon edition of the paper the huge room, with its littered floor and flat-topped tables, had been deserted, so still that the buzzing of a blue-bottle fly against the window pane at Morehouse’s side seemed irritatingly loud by contrast.
The plump newspaperman in brown was too deeply preoccupied to hear anything so timidly unobtrusive as was that interruption, and only after the intruder had plucked nervously at the elbow that supported his chin did he realize that he was not alone. His head came up then, slowly, until he was gazing back into the eyes of the little, attenuated old man who, head tilted birdlike to one side, was standing beside him in uncomfortable, apologetic silence.
It surprised Morehouse more than a little. For the life of him he couldn’t have told just whom he had expected to see when he looked up, but nothing could have startled him more than the presence of276that white-haired wisp of a man with the beady eyes who fitted almost uncannily into the perplexing puzzle which had held him there at his desk until dusk. He forgot to greet the newcomer. Instead he sat gazing at him, wide-mouthed, and after Old Jerry had borne the scrutiny as long as he could he took the initiative himself.
“Well, I got here,” he quavered. “I been a-tryin’ to get upstairs to see you ever since about three o’clock, and they wouldn’t let me in. Said you was too busy to be bothered, even when I told ’em I belonged to the Gov’mint service. But I managed to slip by ’em at last!”
He paused and waited for some word of commendation. Morehouse merely nodded. He was thinking––thinking hard! The voice was almost as familiar to him as was his own, and yet it persisted in tantalizing his memory. He couldn’t quite place it. Old Jerry sensed something of his difficulty.
“I’m from Boltonwood,” he introduced himself, not quite so uncertainly. “I’m Old Jerry. Maybe you remember me––I sat just next the stove that night you was in town a-huntin’ news.”
Then Morehouse remembered. Old Jerry had not had much to say that night, but his face and his shrill eagerness to snatch a little of the spotlight was unforgettable. And it was of that very night Morehouse had been thinking––that and the face of the277big boy silent there on the threshold––when the interruption came. But still he uttered no welcome; instead there was something close akin to distinct aversion in his manner as he drew up a chair for the old man.
Old Jerry felt the chill lack of cordiality, but he sat down. And after a long period of silence, in which Morehouse made no move to put him more at ease, he swallowed hard and went on with his explanation.
“I come down to––to see Denny fight,” he stated. “It kinda seemed to us––to me––that he’d think it strange if somebody from his home town wa’n’t there. So I come along. And I wouldn’t a bothered you at all today––it’s gettin’ late and I ain’t got my ticket to get in yet––only––only I was worried a mite––jest a trifle––and I thought I’d better see you if I could.”
Morehouse tilted his head again.
Old Jerry gave up any attempt of further excusing his intrusion and went straight to the heart of the matter. He unfolded a paper that bulged from the side pocket of his coat and spread it out on the desk.
“It’s this,” he said, indicating the column that had scoffed so openly at Young Denny’s chances. “You––you wrote it, I suppose, didn’t you?”
Again that impersonal nod.
“Well, I just wanted to ask you if––if you really thought it was––if you think he ain’t got no chance at all?”
278
The eagerness of that trembling old voice was not to be ignored any longer. But Morehouse couldn’t help but recollect the eager circle of “Ayes” which had flanked the Judge that other night.
“What of it?” he inquired coolly. “What if he hasn’t? I though Jed Conway was the particular pride of your locality!”
Old Jerry’s beady eyes widened. There was no mistaking the positive dislike in that round face, any more than one could misunderstand the antagonism of that round-faced man’s words.
For weeks Morehouse had been puzzling over a question which he could not answer––something which, for all the intimacy that had sprung up between himself and Denny Bolton, he had never felt able to ask of the boy with the grave eyes and graver lips. Even since the conference in Hogarty’s little office, when he had agreed to the ex-lightweight’s plan, it had been vexing him, no nearer solution than it had been that day when he assured Hogarty that there was more behind young Denny’s eagerness to meet Jed Conway than the prize-money could account for.
Now, that afternoon, on the very eve of that battle, he sat there in the thickening dusk, unconscious of the passage of time, and listened to the explanation that came pouring from Old Jerry’s lips, haltingly at first, and then in a steady falsetto stream, and learned the answer to it.
279
The old mail carrier didn’t know what he was doing. His one desire was to vindicate himself in the cold eyes of the man before him. But he told it well and he did not spare himself.
Once he though he caught a glimpse of thawing mirth in that face when he had finished relating how Denny had led him, reluctant and fearful, from the kitchen of the farmhouse to the spot of blood on the stable wall, and from there to the jug in a heap of fragments against the tree-butt. And that fleeting mirth became a warm, all-enveloping grin when he had detailed the climax of the Judge’s prearranged sensation that same night.
He knew then that he had set himself right, and he did not mean to go into it any more fully. It was the changed attitude of Morehouse that led him on and on. So he told, too, of Dryad Anderson’s purchase of the bleak old place on the hill and her reason. But when it came to her wild fury against the paper that had dared to scoff at the boy he paused. For a second he calculated the wisdom of exhibiting the bit of a red bow that had been entrusted him. It, without a doubt, would be the only passport he could hope for to a share of the glory, when it was all over. For the time being he jealously decided to let it wait, and he turned back to the rumpled sheet upon the desk.
“She––she’d be mighty disappointed,” he finished280a little lamely. “She’s so sure, somehow, it kinda worries me. You––you do think he’s got a little chance, don’t you––jest a trifle?”
It took a long time––Old Jerry’s confession. It was dark before he finished, but Morehouse did not interrupt him by so much as the lifting of a finger. And he sat silent, gazing straight ahead of him, after the old man had finished. Old Jerry, watching him, wondered vaguely what made his eyes so bright now.
“So that’s it, is it?” the plump man murmured at last. “So that’s it. And I never dreamed of it once. I must be going stale.”
He wheeled in his chair until he faced Old Jerry full.
“I don’t know,” he said. “A half-hour before you came in I didn’t like even to think of it. But now––chance? Well, this deadly waiting is over anyhow, and we’ll soon know. And I wonder––now––I wonder!”
With his watch flat in the palm of his hand Morehouse sat and whistled softly. And then he shot hastily to his feet. Old Jerry understood that whistle, but he hung back.
“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 doubt281saved 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 realized282that 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 by283a 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 deadliness284in 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,285supercunning, 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 for286the 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 his287mouth. 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 that288deadly 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 without289serious 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;290but 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 and291sightless, 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 hadWon.”
Morehouse stared at the bit of tinseled silk––stared up at Old Jerry’s face and back again. And292then 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 his293veins. 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.