CHAPTER XVIII
THE GULF BETWEEN
FOR three months Billy met has-beens, and third- and fourth-rate
fighters from New York and its environs. He thrashed
them all--usually by the knockout route and finally local
sports commenced talking about him 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 was apparent to fight fandom that the big, quiet
"unknown" was a comer; and pretty soon Professor Cassidy
received an offer from another trainer-manager to match Billy
against a real "hope" who stood in the forefront of hopedom.
This other manager stated that he thought the mill would
prove excellent practice for his man who was having difficulty
in finding opponents. Professor Cassidy thought so too, and
grinned for two hours straight after reading the challenge.
The details of the fight were quickly arranged. In accordance
with the state regulations it was to be a ten round, no
decision bout--the weight of the gloves was prescribed by
law.
The name of the "white hope" against whom Billy was to
go was sufficient to draw a fair house, and there were some
there who had seen Billy in other fights and looked for a
good mill. When the "coming champion," as Billy's opponent
was introduced, stepped into the ring he received a hearty
round of applause, whereas there was but a scattered ripple
of handclapping to greet the mucker. It was the first time he
ever had stepped into a ring with a first-rate fighter, and
as he saw the huge muscles of his antagonist and recalled the
stories he had heard of his prowess and science, Billy, for the
first time in his life, felt a tremor of nervousness.
His eyes wandered across the ropes to the sea of faces
turned up toward him, and all of a sudden Billy Byrne went
into a blue funk. Professor Cassidy, shrewd and experienced,
saw it even as soon as Billy realized it--he saw the fading of
his high hopes--he saw his castles in Spain tumbling in ruins
about his ears--he saw his huge giant lying prone within that
squared circle as the hand of the referee rose and fell in
cadence to the ticking of seconds that would count his man
out.
"Here," he whispered, "take a swig o' this," and he pressed
a bottle toward Billy's lips.
Billy shook his head. The stuff had kept him down all his
life--he had sworn never to touch another drop of it, and he
never would, whether he lost this and every other fight he ever
fought. He had sworn to leave it alone for HER sake! And then
the gong called him to the center of the ring.
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 case of stage fright that had gripped
his man. He knew, too, that it would be 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 first round Cassidy
knew that it was all over but the shouting.
The fans, many of them, were laughing, and yelling derogatory
remarks at Billy.
"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 had called him that once, and then she had changed
her mind. Theriere had thought him a coward, yet as he died
he had said that he was the bravest man he ever had known.
Billy recalled the yelling samurai with their keen swords and
terrible spears. He saw the little room in the "palace" of Oda
Yorimoto, and again he faced the brown devils who had
hacked and hewed and stabbed at him that day as he fought
to save the woman he loved. Coward! What was there in this
padded ring for a man to fear who had faced death as Billy
had faced it, and without an instant's consciousness 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 his ears, and he knew. It was the crowd! Again the
heavy fist of the "coming champion" brought Billy to the mat,
and then, before further damage could be done him, the gong
saved him.
It was a surprised and chastened mucker that walked with
bent head to his corner after the first round. The "white
hope" was grinning and confident, and so he returned to the
center of the ring for the second round. During the short
interval Billy had thrashed the whole thing out. The crowd
had gotten on his nerves. He was trying to fight the whole
crowd instead of just one man--he would do better in this
round; but the first thing that happened after he faced his
opponent sent the fans into delirious ecstasies of shouting and
hooting.
Billy swung his right for his foe's jaw--a terrible blow that
would have ended the fight had it landed--but the man side-stepped
it, and Billy's momentum carried him sprawling upon
his face. When he regained his feet the "white hope" was
waiting for him, and Billy went down again to lie there, quite
still, while the hand of the referee marked the seconds: One.
Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Billy opened his eyes. Seven.
Billy sat up. Eight. The meaning of that monotonous count
finally percolated to 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, hysterical variety that takes
its victim's brains away.
They had been counting out the man whom Barbara Harding
had once loved!--the man she had thought the bravest
in the world!--they were making a monkey and a coward of
him! He'd show them!
The "white hope" was waiting for him. Billy was scarce off
his knees before 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 with his old familiar crouch, and
stopped his man with a straight to the body.
Cassidy saw it and almost smiled. He didn't think that Billy
could come back--but at least he was fighting for a minute in
his old form.
The surprised "hope" rushed in to punish his presuming
foe. The crowd was silent. Billy ducked beneath a vicious left
swing and put a right to the side of the "hope's" head that sent
the man to his knees. Then came the gong.
In the third round Billy fought carefully. He had made up
his mind that he would show this bunch of pikers that he knew
how to box, so that none might 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 who knows the finer points of the game. And when it
was over, while little damage had been done on either side, it
left no shadow of a doubt in the minds of those who knew
that the unknown fighter was the more skilful boxer.
Then came the fourth round. Of course there was no
question in the minds of the majority of the spectators as to
who would win the fight. The stranger had merely shown one
of those sudden and ephemeral bursts of form that occasionally
are witnessed in every branch of sport; but he couldn't last
against such a man as the "white hope'!--they looked for a
knock-out any minute now. Nor did they look in vain.
Billy was quite satisfied with the work he had done in the
preceding round. 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 helpless before him. With
left and right hooks Billy rocked the "coming champion's"
head from side to side. He landed upon the swelling optics of
his victim as he listed.
Thrice he rushed him to the ropes, and once the man fell
through them into the laps of the hooting spectators--only
now they were not hooting Billy. Until the gong Billy played
with his man as a cat might play with a mouse; yet not once
had he landed a knock-out blow.
"Why didn't you finish him?" cried Professor Cassidy, as
Billy returned to his corner after the round. "You had 'im
goin' man--why in the world didn't yeh finish him?"
"I didn't want to," said Billy; "not in that round. I'm
reserving the finish for the fifth round, and if you want to win
some money you can take the hunch!"
"Do you mean it?" asked Cassidy.
"Sure," said Billy. "You might make more by laying that
I'd make him take the count in the first minute of the
round--you can place a hundred of mine on that, if you
will, please."
Cassidy took the hunch, and a moment later as the two
men faced each other he regretted his act, for to his surprise
the "white hope" came up for the fifth round smiling and
confident once more.
"Someone's been handin' him an earful," grumbled Cassidy,
"an' it might be all he needed to take 'im through the first
minute of the round, and maybe the whole round--I've seen
that did lots o' times."
As the two men met the "white hope" was the aggressor.
He rushed in to close quarters aiming a stinging blow at
Billy's face, and then to Cassidy's chagrin and the crowd's
wonder, the mucker lowered his guard and took the wallop
full on the jaw. The blow seemed never to jar him the least.
The "hope" swung again, and there stood Billy Byrne, like a
huge bronze statue taking blow after blow that would have
put an ordinary man down for the count.
The fans saw and appreciated the spectacular bravado of
the act, and they went wild. Cheer on cheer rose, hoarse and
deafening, to the rafters. The "white hope" lost his self-control
and what little remained of his short temper, and deliberately
struck Billy a foul blow, but before the referee could interfere
the mucker swung another just such blow as he had missed
and fallen with in the second round; but this time he did not
miss--his mighty fist caught the "coming champion" on the
point of the chin, lifted him off his feet and landed him
halfway through the ropes. There he lay while the referee
tolled off the count of ten, and as the official took Billy's hand
in his and raised it aloft in signal that he had won the fight
the fickle crowd cheered and screamed 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 made now, an' you're de next champ, or I never seen
one."
The following morning the sporting sheets hailed "Sailor"
Byrne as the greatest "white hope" of them all. Flashlights of
him filled a quarter of a page. There were interviews with him.
Interviews with the man he had defeated. Interviews with
Cassidy. Interviews with the referee. Interviews with everybody,
and all were agreed that he was the most likely heavy
since Jeffries. Corbett admitted that, while in his prime he
could doubtless have bested the new wonder, he would have
found him a tough customer.
Everyone said that Byrne's future was assured. There was
not a man in sight who could touch him, and none who had
seen him fight the night before but would have staked his last
dollar on him in a mill with the black champion.
Cassidy wired a challenge to the Negro's manager, and
received an answer that was most favorable. The terms were,
as usual, rather one-sided but Cassidy accepted them, and it
seemed before noon that a fight was assured.
Billy was more nearly happy again than he had been since
the day he had renounced Barbara Harding to the man he
thought she loved. He read and re-read the accounts in the
papers, and then searching for more references to himself off
the sporting page he ran upon the very name that had been
constantly in his thoughts for all these months--Harding.
Persistent rumor has it that the engagement of the beautiful
Miss Harding to Wm. J. Mallory has been broken. Miss
Harding could not be seen at her father's home up to a late
hour last night. Mr. Mallory refused to discuss the matter, but
would not deny the rumor.
There was more, but that was all that Billy Byrne read. The
paper dropped from his hand. Battles and championships
faded from his thoughts. He sat with his eyes bent upon the
floor, and his mind was thousands of miles away across the
broad Pacific upon a little island in the midst of a turbulent
stream.
And far uptown another sat with the same paper in her
hand. Barbara Harding was glancing through the sporting
sheet in search of the scores of yesterday's woman's golf
tournament. And as she searched her eyes suddenly became
riveted upon the picture of a giant man, and she forgot
about tournaments and low scores. Hastily she searched the
heads and text until she came upon the name--"'Sailor'
Byrne!"
Yes! It must be he. Greedily she read and re-read all that
had been written about him. Yes, she, Barbara Harding, scion
of an aristocratic house--ultra-society girl, read and re-read
the accounts of a brutal prize fight.
A half hour later a messenger boy found "Sailor" Byrne
the center of an admiring throng in Professor Cassidy's third-floor
gymnasium. With worshiping eyes taking in his new hero
from head to foot the youth handed 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 he tossed a dollar to the worshiping boy.
An hour later Billy Byrne was ascending the broad, white
steps that led to the entrance of Anthony Harding's New
York house. The servant who answered his ring eyed him
suspiciously, for Billy Byrne still dressed like 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 the great staircase, but halfway up he met Miss Harding
coming down.
"Never mind, Smith," she said. "I am expecting Mr. Byrne,"
and then seeing that the fellow had not seated her visitor she
added, "He is a very 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? Why haven't you been to see me?"
Byrne hesitated.
A great, mad hope had been surging through his being
since he had read of the broken engagement and received the
girl's note. And now in her eyes, in her whole attitude, he
could read, as unmistakably as though her lips had formed the
words that he had not hoped in vain.
But some strange influence had seemed suddenly to come to
work upon him. Even in the brief moment of his entrance into
the magnificence of Anthony Harding's home he had felt a
strange little stricture of the throat--a choking, half-suffocating
sensation.
The attitude of the servant, the splendor of the furnishings,
the stateliness of the great hall, and the apartments opening
upon it--all had whispered to him that he did not "belong."
And now Barbara, clothed in some wondrous foreign creation,
belied by her very appearance the expression that suffused her eyes.
No, Billy Byrne, the mucker, did not belong there. Nor ever
could he belong, more than Barbara ever could have "belonged"
on Grand Avenue. And Billy Byrne knew it now. His
heart went cold. The bottom seemed suddenly 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 from her, and the sight of her had but served to
rekindle the old fire within his breast.
He thought quickly. His own life or happiness did not
count. Nothing counted now but Barbara. He had seen the
lovelight in her eyes. He thanked God that he had realized
what it all would have meant, before he let her see that he
had seen it.
"I've been back several months," he said presently, in
answer to her question; "but I got sense enough to stay where
I belong. Gee! Wouldn't I look great comin' up here buttin' in,
wit youse bunch of highlifes?"
Billy slapped his thigh resoundingly and laughed in
stentorian tones that caused the eyebrows of the sensitive Smith on
the floor above to elevate in shocked horror.
"Den dere was de mills. I couldn't break away from me
work, could I, to chase a bunch of skirts?"
Barbara felt a qualm of keen disappointment that Billy bad
fallen again into the old dialect that she had all but eradicated
during those days upon distant "Manhattan Island."
"I wouldn't o' come up atal," he went on, "if I hadn't o'
read in de poiper how youse an' Mallory had busted. I
t'ought I'd breeze in an' see wot de trouble was."
His eyes had been averted, mostly, as he talked. Now he
swung suddenly upon her.
"He's on de square, ain't he?" he demanded.
"Yes," said Barbara. She was not quite sure whether to feel
offended, or not. But the memory of Billy's antecedents came
to his rescue. Of course he didn't know that it was such
terribly bad form to broach such a subject to her, she
thought.
"Well, then," continued the mucker, "wot's up? Mallory's
de guy fer youse. Youse loved him or youse wouldn't have
got engaged to him."
The statement was almost an interrogation.
Barbara nodded affirmatively.
"You see, Billy," she started, "I have always known Mr.
Mallory, and always thought that I loved him until--until--"
There was no answering light in Billy's eyes--no encouragement
for the words that were on her lips. She halted lamely.
"Then," she went on presently, "we became engaged after we
reached New York. We all thought you dead," she concluded
simply.
"Do you think as much of him now as you did when you
promised to marry him?" he asked, ignoring her reference to
himself and all that it implied.
Barbara nodded.
"What is at the bottom of this row?" persisted Billy. He
had fallen back into the decent pronunciation that Barbara
had taught him, but neither noticed the change. For a
moment he had forgotten that he was playing a part. Then he
recollected.
"Nothing much," replied the girl. "I couldn't rid myself of
the feeling that 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 marry him, feeling that way
toward him, and, Billy, I really never LOVED him as--as--"
Again she stumbled, but the mucker made no attempt to
grasp the opportunity opened before him.
Instead he crossed the library to the telephone. Running
through the book he came presently upon the number he
sought. A moment later he had his connection.
"Is this Mallory?" he asked.
"I'm Byrne--Billy Byrne. De guy dat cracked your puss fer
youse on de Lotus."
"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 as youse kin beat it."
Barbara Harding stepped forward. Her eyes were blazing.
"How dare you?" she cried, attempting to seize the telephone
from Billy'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 do fer 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 dat de engagement is all on again--see!"
In the wide eyes of the girl Billy read a deeper hurt than he
had dreamed of. He had thought that it would not be difficult
for her to turn back from the vulgar mucker to the polished
gentleman. And when he saw that she was suffering, and
guessed that it was because he had tried to 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 HE is a fit mate for you. I have learned since I
came into this house a few minutes ago the unbridgeable
chasm that stretches between Billy Byrne, the mucker, and
such as you. Once I aspired; but now I know just as you
must have always known, that a single lifetime is far too short
for a man 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 in Chicago there are plenty of girls on Grand
Avenue as straight and clean and fine as they make 'em on
Riverside Drive. Girls of my own kind, they are, 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 that I'd rather that I'd died back
there beneath the spears of Oda Iseka's warriors than live here
beneath the sneers and contempt of servants, and the pity and
condescension of your friends.
"I want you to be happy, Barbara, and so I want you to
promise me that you'll marry Billy Mallory. There isn't any
man on earth quite good enough for you; but Mallory comes
nearer to it than anyone I know. I've heard 'em talking about
him around town since I came back--and there isn't a rotten
story chalked up against him nowhere, and that's a lot more
than you can say for ninety-nine of a hundred New Yorkers
that are talked about at all.
"And Mallory's a man, too--the kind that every woman
ought to have, only they ain't enough of 'em to go 'round.
Do you remember how he stood up there 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, and
that's the sort you got to have. You see I know you.
"And he fought against those fellows of Yoka in the street
of Oda Iseka'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, even in the face of the things I told
them to make them go. Don't harbor that against 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 feel better. You'll do as I ask, Barbara?"
He had paused at the door, turning toward her as he asked
the final question.
The girl stood facing him. Her eyes were dim with unshed
tears. Billy Byrne swam before them in a hazy mist.
"You'll do as I ask, Barbara!" he repeated, but this time it
was a command.
As Mallory entered the room Barbara heard the door of
the servants' entrance slam behind Billy Byrne.
