CHAPTER XVIII. THE GULF BETWEEN
FOR three months Billy met has-beens, and third- and fourth-ratefighters from New York and its environs. He thrashed them all--usuallyby the knockout route and finally local sports commenced talking abouthim a bit, and he was matched up with second-raters from other cities.
These men he cleaned up as handily as he had the others, so that it wasapparent to fight fandom that the big, quiet "unknown" was a comer;and pretty soon Professor Cassidy received an offer from anothertrainer-manager to match Billy against a real "hope" who stood in theforefront of hopedom.
This other manager stated that he thought the mill would prove excellentpractice for his man who was having difficulty in finding opponents.Professor Cassidy thought so too, and grinned for two hours straightafter reading the challenge.
The details of the fight were quickly arranged. In accordance with thestate regulations it was to be a ten round, no decision bout--the weightof the gloves was prescribed by law.
The name of the "white hope" against whom Billy was to go was sufficientto draw a fair house, and there were some there who had seen Billy inother fights and looked for a good mill. When the "coming champion,"as Billy's opponent was introduced, stepped into the ring he receiveda hearty round of applause, whereas there was but a scattered rippleof handclapping to greet the mucker. It was the first time he ever hadstepped into a ring with a first-rate fighter, and as he saw the hugemuscles of his antagonist and recalled the stories he had heard ofhis prowess and science, Billy, for the first time in his life, felt atremor of nervousness.
His eyes wandered across the ropes to the sea of faces turned up towardhim, and all of a sudden Billy Byrne went into a blue funk. ProfessorCassidy, shrewd and experienced, saw it even as soon as Billy realizedit--he saw the fading of his high hopes--he saw his castles in Spaintumbling in ruins about his ears--he saw his huge giant lying pronewithin that squared circle as the hand of the referee rose and fell incadence to the ticking of seconds that would count his man out.
"Here," he whispered, "take a swig o' this," and he pressed a bottletoward Billy's lips.
Billy shook his head. The stuff had kept him down all his life--he hadsworn never to touch another drop of it, and he never would, whether helost this and every other fight he ever fought. He had sworn to leaveit alone for HER sake! And then the gong called him to the center of thering.
Billy knew that he was afraid--he thought that he was afraid of the big,trained fighter who faced him; but Cassidy knew that it was a plain caseof stage fright that had gripped his man. He knew, too, that it wouldbe enough to defeat Billy's every chance for victory, and after the big"white hope" had felled Billy twice in the first minute of the firstround Cassidy knew that it was all over but the shouting.
The fans, many of them, were laughing, and yelling derogatory remarks atBilly.
"Stan' up an' fight, yeh big stiff!" and "Back to de farm fer youse!"and then, high above the others a shrill voice cried "Coward! Coward!"
The word penetrated Billy's hopeless, muddled brain. Coward! SHE hadcalled him that once, and then she had changed her mind. Theriere hadthought him a coward, yet as he died he had said that he was the bravestman he ever had known. Billy recalled the yelling samurai with theirkeen swords and terrible spears. He saw the little room in the "palace"of Oda Yorimoto, and again he faced the brown devils who had hackedand hewed and stabbed at him that day as he fought to save the woman heloved. Coward! What was there in this padded ring for a man to fearwho had faced death as Billy had faced it, and without an instant'sconsciousness of the meaning of the word fear? What was wrong with him,and then the shouts and curses and taunts of the crowd smote upon hisears, and he knew. It was the crowd! Again the heavy fist of the "comingchampion" brought Billy to the mat, and then, before further damagecould be done him, the gong saved him.
It was a surprised and chastened mucker that walked with bent head tohis corner after the first round. The "white hope" was grinning andconfident, and so he returned to the center of the ring for the secondround. During the short interval Billy had thrashed the whole thing out.The crowd had gotten on his nerves. He was trying to fight the wholecrowd instead of just one man--he would do better in this round; but thefirst thing that happened after he faced his opponent sent the fans intodelirious ecstasies of shouting and hooting.
Billy swung his right for his foe's jaw--a terrible blow that would haveended the fight had it landed--but the man side-stepped it, and Billy'smomentum carried him sprawling upon his face. When he regained his feetthe "white hope" was waiting for him, and Billy went down again to liethere, quite still, while the hand of the referee marked the seconds:One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Billy opened his eyes. Seven. Billysat up. Eight. The meaning of that monotonous count finally percolatedto the mucker's numbed perceptive faculties. He was being counted out!Nine! Like a flash he was on his feet. He had forgotten the crowd.Rage--cool, calculating rage possessed him--not the feverish, hystericalvariety that takes its victim's brains away.
They had been counting out the man whom Barbara Harding had onceloved!--the man she had thought the bravest in the world!--they weremaking a monkey and a coward of him! He'd show them!
The "white hope" was waiting for him. Billy was scarce off his kneesbefore the man rushed at him wickedly, a smile playing about his lips.It was to be the last of that smile, however. Billy met the rush withhis old familiar crouch, and stopped his man with a straight to thebody.
Cassidy saw it and almost smiled. He didn't think that Billy could comeback--but at least he was fighting for a minute in his old form.
The surprised "hope" rushed in to punish his presuming foe. The crowdwas silent. Billy ducked beneath a vicious left swing and put a right tothe side of the "hope's" head that sent the man to his knees. Then camethe gong.
In the third round Billy fought carefully. He had made up his mind thathe would show this bunch of pikers that he knew how to box, so that nonemight say that he had won with a lucky punch, for Billy intended to win.
The round was one which might fill with delight the soul of the fan whoknows the finer points of the game. And when it was over, while littledamage had been done on either side, it left no shadow of a doubt in theminds of those who knew that the unknown fighter was the more skilfulboxer.
Then came the fourth round. Of course there was no question in the mindsof the majority of the spectators as to who would win the fight. Thestranger had merely shown one of those sudden and ephemeral bursts ofform that occasionally are witnessed in every branch of sport; but hecouldn't last against such a man as the "white hope"!--they looked for aknock-out any minute now. Nor did they look in vain.
Billy was quite satisfied with the work he had done in the precedinground. Now he would show them another style of fighting! And he did.From the tap of the gong he rushed his opponent about the ring at will.He hit him when and where he pleased. The man was absolutely helplessbefore him. With left and right hooks Billy rocked the "comingchampion's" head from side to side. He landed upon the swelling opticsof his victim as he listed.
Thrice he rushed him to the ropes, and once the man fell through theminto the laps of the hooting spectators--only now they were not hootingBilly. Until the gong Billy played with his man as a cat might play witha mouse; yet not once had he landed a knock-out blow.
"Why didn't you finish him?" cried Professor Cassidy, as Billy returnedto his corner after the round. "You had 'im goin' man--why in the worlddidn't yeh finish him?"
"I didn't want to," said Billy; "not in that round. I'm reserving thefinish for the fifth round, and if you want to win some money you cantake the hunch!"
"Do you mean it?" asked Cassidy.
"Sure," said Billy. "You might make more by laying that I'd make himtake the count in the first minute of the round--you can place a hundredof mine on that, if you will, please."
Cassidy took the hunch, and a moment later as the two men faced eachother he regretted his act, for to his surprise the
"white hope" came upfor the fifth round smiling and confident once more.
"Someone's been handin' him an earful," grumbled Cassidy, "an' it mightbe all he needed to take 'im through the first minute of the round, andmaybe the whole round--I've seen that did lots o' times."
As the two men met the "white hope" was the aggressor. He rushed into close quarters aiming a stinging blow at Billy's face, and then toCassidy's chagrin and the crowd's wonder, the mucker lowered his guardand took the wallop full on the jaw. The blow seemed never to jar himthe least. The "hope" swung again, and there stood Billy Byrne, likea huge bronze statue taking blow after blow that would have put anordinary man down for the count.
The fans saw and appreciated the spectacular bravado of the act, andthey went wild. Cheer on cheer rose, hoarse and deafening, to therafters. The "white hope" lost his self-control and what little remainedof his short temper, and deliberately struck Billy a foul blow, butbefore the referee could interfere the mucker swung another just suchblow as he had missed and fallen with in the second round; but this timehe did not miss--his mighty fist caught the "coming champion" on thepoint of the chin, lifted him off his feet and landed him halfwaythrough the ropes. There he lay while the referee tolled off the countof ten, and as the official took Billy's hand in his and raised italoft in signal that he had won the fight the fickle crowd cheered andscreamed in a delirium of joy.
Cassidy crawled through the ropes and threw his arms around Billy.
"I knew youse could do it, kid!" he screamed. "You're as good as madenow, an' you're de next champ, or I never seen one."
The following morning the sporting sheets hailed "Sailor" Byrne as thegreatest "white hope" of them all. Flashlights of him filled a quarterof a page. There were interviews with him. Interviews with the man hehad defeated. Interviews with Cassidy. Interviews with the referee.Interviews with everybody, and all were agreed that he was the mostlikely heavy since Jeffries. Corbett admitted that, while in his primehe could doubtless have bested the new wonder, he would have found him atough customer.
Everyone said that Byrne's future was assured. There was not a man insight who could touch him, and none who had seen him fight the nightbefore but would have staked his last dollar on him in a mill with theblack champion.
Cassidy wired a challenge to the Negro's manager, and received an answerthat was most favorable. The terms were, as usual, rather one-sidedbut Cassidy accepted them, and it seemed before noon that a fight wasassured.
Billy was more nearly happy again than he had been since the day he hadrenounced Barbara Harding to the man he thought she loved. He readand re-read the accounts in the papers, and then searching for morereferences to himself off the sporting page he ran upon the very namethat had been constantly in his thoughts for all these months--Harding.
Persistent rumor has it that the engagement of the beautiful MissHarding to Wm. J. Mallory has been broken. Miss Harding could not beseen at her father's home up to a late hour last night. Mr. Malloryrefused to discuss the matter, but would not deny the rumor.
There was more, but that was all that Billy Byrne read. The paperdropped from his hand. Battles and championships faded from histhoughts. He sat with his eyes bent upon the floor, and his mind wasthousands of miles away across the broad Pacific upon a little island inthe midst of a turbulent stream.
And far uptown another sat with the same paper in her hand. BarbaraHarding was glancing through the sporting sheet in search of the scoresof yesterday's woman's golf tournament. And as she searched her eyessuddenly became riveted upon the picture of a giant man, and she forgotabout tournaments and low scores. Hastily she searched the heads andtext until she came upon the name--"'Sailor' Byrne!"
Yes! It must be he. Greedily she read and re-read all that had beenwritten about him. Yes, she, Barbara Harding, scion of an aristocratichouse--ultra-society girl, read and re-read the accounts of a brutalprize fight.
A half hour later a messenger boy found "Sailor" Byrne the center ofan admiring throng in Professor Cassidy's third-floor gymnasium. Withworshiping eyes taking in his new hero from head to foot the youthhanded Byrne a note.
He stood staring at the heavy weight until he had perused it.
"Any answer?" he asked.
"No answer, kid," replied Byrne, "that I can't take myself," and hetossed a dollar to the worshiping boy.
An hour later Billy Byrne was ascending the broad, white steps that ledto the entrance of Anthony Harding's New York house. The servant whoanswered his ring eyed him suspiciously, for Billy Byrne still dressedlike a teamster on holiday. He had no card!
"Tell Miss Harding that Mr. Byrne has come," he said.
The servant left him standing in the hallway, and started to ascend thegreat staircase, but halfway up he met Miss Harding coming down.
"Never mind, Smith," she said. "I am expecting Mr. Byrne," and thenseeing that the fellow had not seated her visitor she added, "He is avery dear friend." Smith faded quickly from the scene.
"Billy!" cried the girl, rushing toward him with out-stretched hands."O Billy, we thought you were dead. How long have you been here? Whyhaven't you been to see me?"
Byrne hesitated.
A great, mad hope had been surging through his being since he had readof the broken engagement and received the girl's note. And now in hereyes, in her whole attitude, he could read, as unmistakably as thoughher lips had formed the words that he had not hoped in vain.
But some strange influence had seemed suddenly to come to work uponhim. Even in the brief moment of his entrance into the magnificence ofAnthony Harding's home he had felt a strange little stricture of thethroat--a choking, half-suffocating sensation.
The attitude of the servant, the splendor of the furnishings, thestateliness of the great hall, and the apartments opening upon it--allhad whispered to him that he did not "belong."
And now Barbara, clothed in some wondrous foreign creation, belied byher very appearance the expression that suffused her eyes.
No, Billy Byrne, the mucker, did not belong there. Nor ever could hebelong, more than Barbara ever could have "belonged" on Grand Avenue.And Billy Byrne knew it now. His heart went cold. The bottom seemedsuddenly to have dropped out of his life.
Bravely he had battled to forget this wonderful creature, or, rather,his hopeless love for her--her he could never forget. But the note fromher, and the sight of her had but served to rekindle the old fire withinhis breast.
He thought quickly. His own life or happiness did not count. Nothingcounted now but Barbara. He had seen the lovelight in her eyes. Hethanked God that he had realized what it all would have meant, before helet her see that he had seen it.
"I've been back several months," he said presently, in answer to herquestion; "but I got sense enough to stay where I belong. Gee! Wouldn'tI look great comin' up here buttin' in, wit youse bunch of highlifes?"
Billy slapped his thigh resoundingly and laughed in stentorian tonesthat caused the eyebrows of the sensitive Smith on the floor above toelevate in shocked horror.
"Den dere was de mills. I couldn't break away from me work, could I, tochase a bunch of skirts?"
Barbara felt a qualm of keen disappointment that Billy had fallen againinto the old dialect that she had all but eradicated during those daysupon distant "Manhattan Island."
"I wouldn't o' come up atal," he went on, "if I hadn't o' read in depoiper how youse an' Mallory had busted. I t'ought I'd breeze in an' seewot de trouble was."
His eyes had been averted, mostly, as he talked. Now he swung suddenlyupon her.
"He's on de square, ain't he?" he demanded.
"Yes," said Barbara. She was not quite sure whether to feel offended, ornot. But the memory of Billy's antecedents came to his rescue. Of coursehe didn't know that it was such terribly bad form to broach such asubject to her, she thought.
"Well, then," continued the mucker, "wot's up? Mallory's de guy feryouse. Youse loved him or youse wouldn't have got engaged to him."
The statemen
t was almost an interrogation.
Barbara nodded affirmatively.
"You see, Billy," she started, "I have always known Mr. Mallory, andalways thought that I loved him until--until--" There was no answeringlight in Billy's eyes--no encouragement for the words that were onher lips. She halted lamely. "Then," she went on presently, "we becameengaged after we reached New York. We all thought you dead," sheconcluded simply.
"Do you think as much of him now as you did when you promised to marryhim?" he asked, ignoring her reference to himself and all that itimplied.
Barbara nodded.
"What is at the bottom of this row?" persisted Billy. He had fallen backinto the decent pronunciation that Barbara had taught him, but neithernoticed the change. For a moment he had forgotten that he was playing apart. Then he recollected.
"Nothing much," replied the girl. "I couldn't rid myself of the feelingthat they had murdered you, by leaving you back there alone and wounded.I began to think 'coward' every time I saw Mr. Mallory. I couldn't marryhim, feeling that way toward him, and, Billy, I really never LOVED himas--as--" Again she stumbled, but the mucker made no attempt to graspthe opportunity opened before him.
Instead he crossed the library to the telephone. Running through thebook he came presently upon the number he sought. A moment later he hadhis connection.
"Is this Mallory?" he asked.
"I'm Byrne--Billy Byrne. De guy dat cracked your puss fer youse on deLotus."
"Dead, hell! Not me. Say, I'm up here at Barbara's."
"Yes, dat's wot I said. She wants youse to beat it up here's swift asyouse kin beat it."
Barbara Harding stepped forward. Her eyes were blazing.
"How dare you?" she cried, attempting to seize the telephone fromBilly's grasp.
He turned his huge frame between her and the instrument. "Git a move!"he shouted into the mouthpiece. "Good-bye!" and he hung up.
Then he turned back toward the angry girl.
"Look here," he said. "Once youse was strong on de sob stuff wit me,tellin' me how noble I was, an' all de different tings youse would dofer me to repay all I done fer youse. Now youse got de chanct."
"What do you mean?" asked the girl, puzzled. "What can I do for you?"
"Youse kin do dis fer me. When Mallory gits here youse kin tell him datde engagement is all on again--see!"
In the wide eyes of the girl Billy read a deeper hurt than he haddreamed of. He had thought that it would not be difficult for her toturn back from the vulgar mucker to the polished gentleman. And when hesaw that she was suffering, and guessed that it was because he had triedto crush her love by brute force he could carry the game no further.
"O Barbara," he cried, "can't you see that Mallory is your kind--that HEis a fit mate for you. I have learned since I came into this house a fewminutes ago the unbridgeable chasm that stretches between Billy Byrne,the mucker, and such as you. Once I aspired; but now I know just as youmust have always known, that a single lifetime is far too short for aman to cover the distance from Grand Avenue to Riverside Drive.
"I want you to be happy, Barbara, just as I intend to be. Back there inChicago there are plenty of girls on Grand Avenue as straight and cleanand fine as they make 'em on Riverside Drive. Girls of my own kind, theyare, and I'm going back there to find the one that God intended for me.You've taught me what a good girl can do toward making a man of a beast.You've taught me pride and self-respect. You've taught me so much thatI'd rather that I'd died back there beneath the spears of Oda Iseka'swarriors than live here beneath the sneers and contempt of servants, andthe pity and condescension of your friends.
"I want you to be happy, Barbara, and so I want you to promise me thatyou'll marry Billy Mallory. There isn't any man on earth quite goodenough for you; but Mallory comes nearer to it than anyone I know. I'veheard 'em talking about him around town since I came back--and thereisn't a rotten story chalked up against him nowhere, and that's a lotmore than you can say for ninety-nine of a hundred New Yorkers that aretalked about at all.
"And Mallory's a man, too--the kind that every woman ought to have, onlythey ain't enough of 'em to go 'round. Do you remember how he stood upthere on the deck of the Lotus and fought fair against my dirty tricks?He's a man and a gentleman, Barbara--the sort you can be proud of, andthat's the sort you got to have. You see I know you.
"And he fought against those fellows of Yoka in the street of OdaIseka's village like a man should fight. There ain't any yellow in him,Barbara, and he didn't leave me until there seemed no other way, evenin the face of the things I told them to make them go. Don't harbor thatagainst him--I only wonder that he didn't croak me; your dad wanted to,and Mallory wouldn't let him."
"They never told me that," said Barbara.
The bell rang.
"Here he is now," said Billy. "Good-bye--I'd rather not see him.Smith'll let me out the servants' door. Guess that'll make him feelbetter. You'll do as I ask, Barbara?"
He had paused at the door, turning toward her as he asked the finalquestion.
The girl stood facing him. Her eyes were dim with unshed tears. BillyByrne swam before them in a hazy mist.
"You'll do as I ask, Barbara!" he repeated, but this time it was acommand.
As Mallory entered the room Barbara heard the door of the servants'entrance slam behind Billy Byrne.
PART II.