4
Of all the learned professions, pugilism is the one in which the trained
expert is most sharply divided from the mere dabbler. In other fields
the amateur may occasionally hope to compete successfully with the man
who has made a business of what is to him but a sport, but at boxing
never: and the whole demeanour of Bugs Butler showed that he had laid
this truth to heart. It would be too little to say that his bearing was
confident: he comported himself with the care-free jauntiness of an
infant about to demolish a Noah's Ark with a tack-hammer. Cyclone
Mullinses might withstand him for fifteen rounds where they yielded to a
K-leg Binns in the fifth, but, when it came to beating up a
sparring-partner and an amateur at that, Bugs Butler knew his
potentialities. He was there forty ways and he did not attempt to
conceal it. Crouching as was his wont, he uncoiled himself like a
striking rattlesnake and flicked Ginger lightly over his guard. Then he
returned to his crouch and circled sinuously about the ring with the
amiable intention of showing the crowd, payers and deadheads alike, what
real footwork was. If there was one thing on which Bugs Butler prided
himself, it was footwork.
The adverb "lightly" is a relative term, and the blow which had just
planted a dull patch on Ginger's cheekbone affected those present in
different degrees. Ginger himself appeared stolidly callous. Sally
shuddered to the core of her being and had to hold more tightly to the
rope to support herself. The two wise guys mocked openly. To the wise
guys, expert connoisseurs of swat, the thing had appeared richly
farcical. They seemed to consider the blow, administered to a third
party and not to themselves, hardly worth calling a blow at all. Two
more, landing as quickly and neatly as the first, left them equally
cold.
"Call that punching?" said the first wise guy.
"Ah!" said the second wise guy.
But Mr. Butler, if he heard this criticism--and it is probable that he
did--for the wise ones had been restrained by no delicacy of feeling
from raising their voices, was in no way discommoded by it. Bugs Butler
knew what he was about. Bright eyes were watching him, and he meant to
give them a treat. The girls like smooth work. Any roughneck could sail
into a guy and knock the daylights out of him, but how few could be
clever and flashy and scientific? Few, few, indeed, thought Mr. Butler
as he slid in and led once more.
Something solid smote Mr. Butler's nose, rocking him on to his heels and
inducing an unpleasant smarting sensation about his eyes. He backed away
and regarded Ginger with astonishment, almost with pain. Until this
moment he had scarcely considered him as an active participant in the
scene at all, and he felt strongly that this sort of thing was bad form.
It was not being done by sparring-partners.
A juster man might have reflected that he himself was to blame. He had
undeniably been careless. In the very act of leading he had allowed his
eyes to flicker sideways to see how Sally was taking this exhibition of
science, and he had paid the penalty. Nevertheless, he was piqued. He
shimmered about the ring, thinking it over. And the more he thought it
over, the less did he approve of his young assistant's conduct. Hard
thoughts towards Ginger began to float in his mind.
Ginger, too, was thinking hard thoughts. He had not had an easy time
since he had come to the training camp, but never till to-day had he
experienced any resentment towards his employer. Until this afternoon
Bugs Butler had pounded him honestly and without malice, and he had gone
through it, as the other sparring-partners did, phlegmatically, taking
it as part of the day's work. But this afternoon there had been a
difference. Those careless flicks had been an insult, a deliberate
offence. The man was trying to make a fool of him, playing to the
gallery: and the thought of who was in that gallery inflamed Ginger past
thought of consequences. No one, not even Mr. Butler, was more keenly
alive than he to the fact that in a serious conflict with a man who
to-morrow night might be light-weight champion of the world he stood no
chance whatever: but he did not intend to be made an exhibition of in
front of Sally without doing something to hold his end up. He proposed
to go down with his flag flying, and in pursuance of this object he dug
Mr. Butler heavily in the lower ribs with his right, causing that expert
to clinch and the two wise guys to utter sharp barking sounds expressive
of derision.
"Say, what the hell d'ya think you're getting at?" demanded the
aggrieved pugilist in a heated whisper in Ginger's ear as they fell into
the embrace. "What's the idea, you jelly bean?"
Ginger maintained a pink silence. His jaw was set, and the temper which
Nature had bestowed upon him to go with his hair had reached white heat.
He dodged a vicious right which whizzed up at his chin out of the
breaking clinch, and rushed. A left hook shook him, but was too high to
do more. There was rough work in the far corner, and suddenly with
startling abruptness Bugs Butler, bothered by the ropes at his back and
trying to side-step, ran into a swing and fell.
"Time!" shouted the scandalized Mr. Burrowes, utterly aghast at this
frightful misadventure. In the whole course of his professional
experience he could recall no such devastating occurrence.
The audience was no less startled. There was audible gasping. The
newspaper men looked at each other with a wild surmise and conjured up
pleasant pictures of their sporting editors receiving this sensational
item of news later on over the telephone. The two wise guys, continuing
to pursue Mr. Butler with their dislike, emitted loud and raucous
laughs, and one of them, forming his hands into a megaphone, urged the
fallen warrior to go away and get a rep. As for Sally, she was conscious
of a sudden, fierce, cave-womanly rush of happiness which swept away
completely the sickening qualms of the last few minutes. Her teeth were
clenched and her eyes blazed with joyous excitement. She looked at
Ginger yearningly, longing to forget a gentle upbringing and shout
congratulation to him. She was proud of him. And mingled with the pride
was a curious feeling that was almost fear. This was not the mild and
amiable young man whom she was wont to mother through the difficulties
of a world in which he was unfitted to struggle for himself. This was a
new Ginger, a stranger to her.
On the rare occasions on which he had been knocked down in the past, it
had been Bugs Butler's canny practice to pause for a while and rest
before rising and continuing the argument, but now he was up almost
before he had touched the boards, and the satire of the second wise guy,
who had begun to saw the air with his hand and count loudly, lost its
point. It was only too plain that Mr. Butler's motto was that a man may
be down, but he is never out. And, indeed, the knock-down had been
largely a stumble. Bugs Butler's educated feet, which had carried him
unscathed through so many contests, had for this single occasion managed
to get themselves crossed just as Ginger's blow landed, and it was to
his lack of balance rather than the force of the swing that his downfall
had been due.
"Time!" he snarled, casting a malevolent side-glance at his manager.
"Like hell it's time!"
And in a whirlwind of flying gloves he flung himself upon Ginger,
driving him across the ring, while Mr. Burrowes, watch in hand, stared
with dropping jaw. If Ginger had seemed a new Ginger to Sally, still
more did this seem a new Bugs Butler to Mr. Burrowes, and the manager
groaned in spirit. Coolness, skill and science--these had been the
qualities in his protégé which had always so endeared him to Mr. Lester
Burrowes and had so enriched their respective bank accounts: and now, on
the eve of the most important fight in his life, before an audience of
newspaper men, he had thrown them all aside and was making an exhibition
of himself with a common sparring-partner.
That was the bitter blow to Mr. Burrowes. Had this lapse into the
unscientific primitive happened in a regular fight, he might have
mourned and poured reproof into Bug's ear when he got him back in his
corner at the end of the round; but he would not have experienced this
feeling of helpless horror--the sort of horror an elder of the church
might feel if he saw his favourite bishop yielding in public to the
fascination of jazz. It was the fact that Bugs Butler was lowering
himself to extend his powers against a sparring-partner that shocked Mr.
Burrowes. There is an etiquette in these things. A champion may batter
his sparring-partners into insensibility if he pleases, but he must do
it with nonchalance. He must not appear to be really trying.
And nothing could be more manifest than that Bugs Butler was trying.
His whole fighting soul was in his efforts to corner Ginger and destroy
him. The battle was raging across the ring and down the ring, and up the
ring and back again; yet always Ginger, like a storm-driven ship,
contrived somehow to weather the tempest. Out of the flurry of swinging
arms he emerged time after time bruised, bleeding, but fighting hard.
For Bugs Butler's fury was defeating its object. Had he remained his
cool and scientific self, he could have demolished Ginger and cut
through his defence in a matter of seconds. But he had lapsed back into
the methods of his unskilled novitiate. He swung and missed, swung and
missed again, struck but found no vital spot. And now there was blood on
his face, too. In some wild mêlée the sacred fount had been tapped, and
his teeth gleamed through a crimson mist.
The Wise Guys were beyond speech. They were leaning against one
another, punching each other feebly in the back. One was crying.
And then suddenly the end came, as swiftly and unexpectedly as the
thing had begun. His wild swings had tired Bugs Butler, and with fatigue
prudence returned to him. His feet began once more their subtle weaving
in and out. Twice his left hand flickered home. A quick feint, a short,
jolting stab, and Ginger's guard was down and he was swaying in the
middle of the ring, his hands hanging and his knees a-quiver.
Bugs Butler measured his distance, and Sally shut her eyes.
