CHAPTER XII.
Flops's Gymnasium belonged to Shoreditch; the entrance was from Kingsland Road, where a passage led to the club, members of which were gentlemen interested in sport generally, and the racing of horses in particular. Flops's nights occurred twice a month, and a good many patrons went into them for nothing, in spite of the announcement on the bills outside, "No Admittance on the Nod!" which, being interpreted, meant that the shilling was indispensable, and that mere amiability of manner was not to be considered an adequate substitute for coin. Mr. Flops himself had been a music-hall singer in his green youth, but a fervour of patriotism, and a desire to baulk the designs of Russia, had resulted in his voice shouting itself away, and he spoke now in a hoarse whisper. At confidential moments, he admitted that he knew as much about the foreign policy of his country as most people, and in Hoxton and Shoreditch he possessed much influence on this account, because what Flops said to-day fifty people repeated, with an equally wise air, in their various workshops and public resorts to-morrow. Thus, when Flops had once said, in a mysterious way, at the bar of his club, that he distrusted the Dardanelles, the members who heard shook their heads rather sadly, to intimate that they, too, were forced to come to a similar conclusion, and, going home, mentioned, in confidence, to people whom they met that the Dardanelles were up to some hanky-panky or other, and wanted a lot of watching.
Mord Em'ly was at Flops's because Henry Barden had told her definitely that it was not a place for girls. It seemed to the independent little woman that any assumption of responsibility on the part of Mr. Barden was something to be resented, and she had come to the Shoreditch club at inconvenience, in order that this attitude should be plainly indicated. Near a zinc-covered bar, one or two young women, dressed in a fiercely attractive manner, were leaning against barrels which stood in the corners. Mord Em'ly felt relieved to find some of her own sex; it had occurred to her, on entering, that she might, perhaps, be the only woman present.
"And he won a bit over the Grand National," said one of the girls to the other, "and now he's imyable; but if he loses over the City and Sub, 'Eaven only knows what'll 'appen."
"Men are a rum lot," said the other. "You never know, with 'em, from one minute to another."
Mord Em'ly went up to the first speaker, and tapped her shoulder. It was Ronicker Hall, altered as much as dabs of powder on her eccentric nose, and brown hair that was making a partial effort to turn itself into golden, could contrive to change her. Ronicker was delighted to see Mord Em'ly; Ronicker told her how to get into the gymnasium, and where to stand to avoid being seen, and chattered away about the old days with a nervous anxiety to keep on talking. Ronicker dismissed her friend, and, as the two walked through to the gymnasium, explained rather awkwardly her present position.
"I've bin a fool to meself," confessed Ronicker self-reproachfully. "I might 'ave settled down quiet if I hadn't been so flighty-'eaded. People complain about a 'umdrum existence, but you take my word for it, Mord Em'ly, it's possible not to be 'umdrum enough."
"And does he knock you about?"
Ronicker glanced at herself in a mirror on the wall.
"He cert'in'y does," she admitted, "now and again. But, mind you, I will say this for him, he never nags."
"Oh!" said Mord Em'ly.
"If he's got anything to say to me," continued Ronicker, becoming enthusiastic, "he never has a lot of argiment like some would. He jest gives me a clip side the ear, and has done with it."
"And don't you object?"
"Me object?" echoed Ronicker amazedly. "Why, what should I object for?"
"I wouldn't stand it, not at no price. No 'usband's got any right to—"
"Well," whispered Ronicker confidentially, as they stood at the door of the gymnasium, "that's where I'm 'alf inclined to think I've been silly. As a matter of fact, we ain't married, and, consequently, he's only got to say "Outside!" and out I shall 'ave to go." Ronicker shook her head. "I'm one of the jays," she added dolefully.
Mr. Flops, in frock-coat, white tie, and a general appearance of being over-oiled, came up and bowed.
"Ladies," said Mr. Flops hoarsely, "your presence would make any ordinary evening perfect, and the bright eyes of lovely women, like the stars in the firmament, would—in a casual way—serve to illuminate the scene. But on this occasion-"
"This way, Mord Em'ly," said Ronicker. "Never mind Flops".
The gymnasium was a railway arch, fitted with seats on tiers, built up against three sides. In the centre, a ring, which was not a ring, but a square space, marked out by a red rope. The seats were filled by eager-eyed men, arguing with each other, their faces flushed with entertainment; the pale smoke from their pipes and cigars floated distractedly about the curved ceiling of the arch, and went to the further end to try to find exit, and, being unsuccessful, came slowly back, and hung about until the door opened, when, making a rush, some of it managed to get out. The shrieking whistles of engines came now and again; the thunder of a train passing overhead made patrons raise their voices. On the wall of the arch were a few framed photographs of half-stripped men presenting their fists to each other; also a number of portraits of gloomy, important-looking boxers on pink paper, taken from a New York illustrated journal. The square space on the floor was, excepting for the presence of two wooden chairs, empty. Mord Em'ly stood with Ronicker on the topmost form at the back, where they had to crane their heads to avoid contact with the curved roof, and Ronicker pointed out to her the gangway through which Henry Barden would arrive. Some betting was going on in a furtive kind of way, and, apparently, the local man in the coming contest was, of the two, in greater favour. The scene being new to Mord Em'ly, her big eyes grew bigger than usual, her cheeks flushed.
"Jolly fine, isn't it, Ronicker?"
"It's middling," said Ronicker, without enthusiasm. "For my part, I'd sooner be 'alf be at home, quiet and"—Ronicker sighed—"and respectable."
The Arch began to applaud. Through the gangway, made wider by the appeals of Mr. Flops—"Do stand a-one side, gentlemen, if you please, and let them come into the ring"—came two loosely-clothed young men. They bobbed underneath the cord; each was followed by a middle-aged man, who at once assisted them in taking off their short coats and jerseys, found the giant brown gloves, and fixed them on. Bare to the waist, they stood up, their arms hanging at their sides. They looked modestly on the sanded floor, whilst Mr. Flops, hat off, with his most important air, introduced them.
"Gentlemen," shouted Mr. Flops, as master of ceremonies, "Most important contest now to draw your notice to, between Wag Mills, otherwise Teddy Mills, of Shoreditch—"
Cheers. Mr. Flops waited until these had finished.
"And Henry Barden, well-known light weight of Walworth."
"Camberwell," whispered Mr. Barden correctingly.
"Of, as I say, Camberwell," went on Mr. Flops. "This is a knock-out contest for twenty pounds a-side, the money having been found for our young friend Mills by three local friends of the noble art, who pursue the honourable and distinguished occupation of licensed victuallers—"
"That's a lie," murmured Wag Mills. "They keep pubs, all three of 'em."
"The money for Henry Barden, of Camberwell, has been found by a gentleman hailing from what I may go so far as to describe the Antipodes, the home of the kangaroo, and one of the many colonies of which this England of ours, built up, gentlemen, by our forefathers, and handed down to us as a proud heritage, has reason to be proud; I mean"—Mr. Flops here seemed to throw off all reserve, as one who declined to keep secrets from the world—"I mean New South Wales."
Cheers again. Mord Em'ly asked Ronicker where New South Wales was, exactly, and Ronicker, after some thought, replied that she was pretty sure it was abroad somewheres.
"They both have good records, gentlemen, and I am prepared to wager my reputation that we shall see an excellent, an admirable, a delectable—nay, a commendable contest. Gentlemen!"
A wave of the hand to the Shoreditch man.
"Wag Mills, of Shoreditch!"
A wave of the hand to the Camberwell man.
"Henry Barden, of Camberwell!"
"Seconds out of the ring!"
Mord Em'ly clutched Ronicker's elbow as the two men in the ring suddenly discarded their air of not having anything particular to do, and, turning, gripped each other's huge gloved hands. As they took up position and eyed each other, the muscles of their bare arms and of their bare legs stood out, their smooth skins shone in the light from the big gas jets. Wag Mills, dancing near to Henry Barden, got in the first blow—a loud whack on the chest, which left a dull red mark, that faded away quickly. Mord Em'ly gave a whistle of despair, and told Ronicker that she wished she could leave the place without seeing any more. Ronicker told her to pull herself together.
"Your friend 'll 'ave a remark or two to make," remarked Ronicker encouragingly, "if he gets 'alf the chance."
A short, middle-aged man, with a lean, curiously white face, and dressed in a new suit, standing on the form beside them, looked at Mord Em'ly, and seemed amused, in a grim, unpleasant way, at noting her distress. Turning to his neighbour, he made some remark. After that, he glanced more than once at Mord Em'ly, and was obviously disappointed to find that she recovered herself, and showed no further signs of nervousness. A smart punch by Henry Barden on the side of his opponent's jaw, which made Wag Mills's friends roar strenuous advice, gave her heart, and the desire to go resigned, giving place to an intense anxiety to see Henry win.
Wag Mills, dodging his head, made a feint of giving a blow at Henry Barden's side, recovered quickly, gave his opponent a blow for which he was not prepared, then, by an adroit movement that was not quite clear to Mord Em'ly, appeared to have him in a position where blow after blow rained upon him. Barden got free, gave Wag Mills a back blow with his left glove that made that earnest and hard-working youth stagger, and was about to follow this up, when—
"Time!"
"What a shame!" complained Mord Em'ly through the loud cheering of the Arch. "They might 'ave given another five seconds."
"What rot you do talk!" said Ronicker impatiently. "Rules is rules, and two minutes is two minutes."
"But 'Enry was just beginning—"
"’Ush!" said Ronicker.
The seconds attended to their men in the fashion of assiduous valets. In opposite corners, the youths seated, with arms outstretched, respired vehemently; the seconds dabbed at their faces with wet sponges, and waved a towel in front of them. Wag Mills's second took a mouthful of water from a bottle, and squirted it over his charge's face. The Arch became noisy with shouted argument.
"Gentlemen," shouted Mr. Flopps appealingly, "do keep silence for the timekeeper, if you please."
"Seconds out!"
The attendants gave a final wave of towels, and stepped under the red rope.
"Time!"
Wag Mills, still in a desperate hurry, still with determination to get the business over as speedily as possible, still with an evident relish for the applause which the Arch gave when he managed to score a punch or to dodge a blow, still with the eager gaze into Henry Barden's eyes, as though intensely desirous of finding there some indication of the next move; Wag Mills, so convinced, too, of his own superiority, that he received an occasional punch with the look of pained surprise that a Cabinet Minister gives when a question is launched at him from the Opposition benches without the usual previous notice; on receiving two sounding blows in succession, Wag Mills blushed redly and frowned. Henry Barden took punishment and dodged punishment, now and again gave punishment, all with a calm, stolid manner that annoyed and exasperated the Arch, and made it satirical.
"Nah, then, Kemberwell! Time for bed!"
"He's sleepy, that's what he is."
"Baby go to by-bye!"
"Gentlemen," cried Mr. Flops, "if you are gentlemen, do behave as such. You're only interrupting your own amusement."
Wag Mills, breathing loudly, aimed a blow with his giant hand, and, missing, said "Ugh!" He slipped once, and Henry Barden was close upon him instantly with a swift blow upwards that caught Mr. Mills's jaw; he slipped again, and only escaped further disaster by dodging half-way around the ring.
"Stand up to him, you—"
"Gu it, Wag! Gu on, Wag!"
"Don't get dancing a blanky 'ornpipe, Wag!"
"Ime at his dial, you silly—"
Mr. Mills appeared braced by these cries. He turned so suddenly that Henry Barden went a step in front of him; Wag's huge, gloved left-hand fist came round and caught his opponent's nose, and the Arch roared its approval at the sight of blood. A punch with the same glove on Henry Barden's chest left a scarlet mark there. Mord Em'ly turned white. She clenched Ronicker's hand tightly.
"Time!"
Careful sponging of Mr. Barden's face this time by his valet; a drink for him from the bottle, to be sent back into the wooden pail; the valet, as he waved the towel, gave Mr. Barden fierce counsel, to which that youth, leaning back, with outstretched arms, his mouth open, inhaling and expelling the air, listened with apparently no interest. The Arch shouted its congratulations to Wag Mills, and he, panting, looked around with a smile, and nodded.
"Seconds out!"
The seconds did not obey until the next warning was given. Wag Mills's man whispered to him to save himself up.
"Time!"
Was Mr. Mills waving his long arms with some wildness, or was it only that Mord Em'ly hoped this to be the case? Was Mr. Mills breathing stertorously, and was Henry Barden becoming more active It seemed so. Wag Mills's body, down to the waist of his blue pants, looked pink now; the perspiration gathered on his forehead; he grunted more frequently his impatient exclamation. Mord Em'ly's grip on Ronicker's hand relaxed. She leaned forward eagerly, and the middle-aged man in the very new suit looked at her again, and told her, with free use of a popular adjective, that she would something well fall off the something seat if she were not something careful. Mord Em'ly, absorbed in watching Round Three, did not reply; but Ronicker told the lean-faced man to mind his own business, and to go and pawn his head, to which the white faced man replied surlily that for half a pint he would kick Ronicker as far as next Michaelmas. When "Time!" was called, Mord Em'ly, withdrawing her gaze from the ring, and clapping her hands because Henry Barden had punished Wag Mills rather severely, found that she had to intervene between Ronicker and the quarrelsome, lean-faced man.
"Make her shut her head, then," said the lean-faced man aggrievedly. "I don't want no truck with her. Make the—"
"Less language," commanded Mord Em'ly. "Don't forget you're in the presence of ladies."
The lean-faced man laughed ironically.
"You!" he said vehemently. "You call yourselves ladies! You're what I call—well, I won't say what I call you. I've got gentlemanly feelings beneath a 'omely exterior, and I know how to be'ave as well as anyone."
"You cert'n'y are 'omely."
"If I meet with ceevility," said the lean-faced man, in a dogged way, "I give ceevility back. If I meet with inceevility, I give inceevility back. If I've got a single fault—"
"Who's been telling you that?"
"If I've got a single fault, it is that I've give way to other people too much. I've 'ad to suffer for it, too, in me time. Fourteen years ago—"
"Look 'ere," said Ronicker, "when we want a history of your life and crimes, we'll buy it in the Police News. Meanwhile go away, and talk to yourself."
"Talk to meself," said the lean-faced man, with another outbreak of passion. "You dare to tell me to talk to meself! Why, you—"
The companion of the lean-faced man stopped him by the simple expedient of asking him to come out and have a drink. The remedying of public or private grievances weighs as nothing compared with the value of this invitation, and he went down the seats clumsily.
"Seconds out!"
"Time!"
Wag Mills, is this really you? Can this be the confident man of Round One, and Two, and even Three? You grunt loudly now, Wag Mills; you retire backward around the ring. You slip down, your opponent stands over you, and you refuse to get up, until the Arch screams insistently, and orders you to do so. There is blood on your nose, too, now, Wag Mills; you hiss through your teeth, as though imitating the music of the locomotives over head. You do not look so steadily as before into your opponent's eyes; but he still directs at you the same persistent stare as he gives you blow after blow. Why does your second, down on his knees outside the rope, make appealing remarks to you, and why does he suddenly drop this tone, and swear at you softly, and shake his head in a despairing way? Your second glances now up to the curved ceiling of the arch, and his lips move silently, and he tries to look as though he has really no further concern in the affair, and, therefore, declines responsibility. Now you are down again, Wag Mills, and up again, and down again, and this time you stay prone on the floor, with Henry Barden near you, and you decide not to accept the advice of the noisy, tempestuous, roaring Arch, but to remain there until ten seconds are registered by the timekeeper's watch.
"Gentlemen," cries Mr. Flops, stepping into the ring, and holding up both hands to quell the excitement of his roaring, red-faced clients. "Gentlemen! Gen—tle—men!"
Mr. Flops looks round despairingly to the form whereon are seated the timekeeper and the referee. The referee hands up a small card, and this Mr. Flops holds in the air, with no effect. The Arch knows the result of the match, and, not being in the best of tempers, resents Mr. Flops's attempt to make the announcement. Presently a joke is shouted, and its annoyance goes as the annoyance of a London crowd always goes—swiftly and completely.
"The winner," cries Mr. Flops now, in his loud, hoarse voice, "is Henry Barden, of Camberwell."
Wag Mills, in his short coat, hurries across the ring, and congratulates his stolid conqueror; then, taking somebody's bowler hat, runs out along the crowded seats, catching in the hat adroitly the copper shower that comes down upon him. Henry Barden's backer, the Australian, steps into the ring, and Mr. Flops, at his request, presents to the winner a purse. The Australian says that Henry Barden is a real man all the way through, and whenever he wants a good job he must come out down under, and take charge of a little boxing place that the Australian runs. "The berth," adds the Australian, "would fit him, gentlemen, like a glove, because, you see, he's a steady chap."
"Friends all" (Mord Em'ly's eyes are quite full of tears, for some reason, as she listens to Henry's voice), "I'm no spokesman, but I thank you, sir, and you, gentlemen, not forgetting Flops. I only—only wish to add one remark, and that is that I—well, that I thank you."
Mord Em'ly hastened through the passage to Kingsland Road. Her first intention had been to let Henry Barden see that she had not accepted his advice; now she was so proud of his success, that she desired, in order to remain in his favour, that he should not know of her presence. It was raining lazily, and she opened her umbrella. The short, lean-faced man, in a brand-new suit, walked along in front of Mord Em'ly with his. companion.
"It's the blanky meenotony of it that gives you beans," said the short man strenuously; "otherwise, it ain't a bad life. I feel twice the man I was when I went in." He paused, and then added, "Only that I'm fourteen year older."
"Old gel still alive?"
"Alive?" The short man kicked a stone viciously, and sent it against the wall. "Course she's alive. She's the sort that couldn't die if they wanted to."
"Ain't been to see her, I spose?"
"Oh, ain't I?" asked the short man cunningly. "P'r'aps I didn't find out, the first thing, where she lived; p'r'aps I didn't trot straight off down to Pandora Buildings, Walworth, and make inquiries for Mrs.?"
Mord Em'ly stumbled as she heard her mother's name, and recovered herself. She put her hand to her throat, and coughed noiselessly.
"And p'raps I didn't let her understand with me two fists that I'd returned to be her faithful and affectionate 'usband? Pr'aps I didn't lock her out the other night for a hour or two when it was rainin'? 'Oh, James,' she says"—the short man mimicked a high, complaining voice. He stopped to do this, and his companion stopped also, and Mord Em'ly walked past them. "‘Oh, James, I didn't expect you!' Expect me!" The short man laughed ironically. "Didn't expect me, and didn't want me, that's about the truth. I'll learn her! She ain't going to 'ave it all her own way. I've been put away in Pentonville, and Dover, and Portland, and Gawd knows where, for this fourteen year, and I tell you I'm going to get me own back again. I'm going to take my little three-ha'peth of revenge." He raised his voice to a scream. "I'll finish her off if she ain't careful. I don't care if swing for the—"
Mord Em'ly, walking slowly, listened, with a feverish anxiety, in order not to miss a word of the conversation. She felt glad that she had no one with her.
"Give out, she had, that she was a widder-woman, and her poor, dear 'usbin gone to Kingdom-come. Oh, she's had a rare old pantomime all to herself, she has. Now it's my turn. I'm coming on in this scene."
"Warn't there a kid?"
"Of course there was a kid," he said, with acerbity, "and she had the impudence to look me in the face, and tell me she didn't know where it was. I paid her for that lie. I let her know! She screamed, and well she might, the—"
Mord Em'ly, in the train to New Cross, her breath still coming quickly, stared at her white face in the window of the compartment, and tried to realise facts. It was too late to go to Walworth that night. She would run up to Pandora the next evening.
"Poor old mother!" said Mord Em'ly.