The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson: The Dream Of X & Other Fantastic Visions (18 page)

She dried her eyes, and going over to the pile of garments, began tenderly but methodically to fold them; in the midst of which occupation she was suddenly disturbed by a storm of cheering, quite close at hand. She ran to the window and discovered with a vast shock that it looked right down on to the green; and that she was actually but a short distance from the fight. She stared in a sort of fearful fascination, and saw to her horror that her husband lay flat in the ring, with the great smith standing over him, ready to strike, whilst near at hand was another man, who seemed to be saying something as he stooped over her husband.

In a very agony of distress, she threw up the window, and thrust her head and shoulders out. She heard the man’s voice now; he was counting—“seven—eight—ni—” She did not hear the end of the count, for suddenly her husband’s still figure came to life, and dashed up at the great smith.

She saw the big man strike at her husband twice, and miss him; then again, and knock him staggering across the ring. She saw the smith leap at the staggering man, and strike a tremendous blow, but her husband ducked his head with strange quickness, and the next instant there came the dull thud of a blow, and she saw the big smith sag in suddenly at the waist, and her husband, close up to him now, standing, and hitting with both hands. There was a tremendous roar of hoarse shouting from the audience, and fierce cries of both execration and applause; and suddenly she commenced to dance up and down, with clenched hands, and fierce, bright eyes, and shout: “Hit him, Billy! Hit him! Hit him, Billy! The great brute! Hit him! Oh, kill him!”

She saw the great smith strike a wild blow, and saw her husband knocked backward a couple of paces; she screamed fiercely again to her husband, amid the noise of the shouting, to play the executioner. She saw her husband leap forward, as the smith struck at him again; they seemed to strike together, but surely the Honourable Billy must have timed his blow a hundredth part of a second earlier than Dankley’s, for the blacksmith’s grizzled head went upward, sharply, and he lurched backward, splaying his arms, and so came with a dull thump to the floor of the ring.

Mary stared out, wide-eyed now, though her fists were still clenched intensely. She saw her husband spring forward, and stand ready, near to the fallen man, saw the other man (the referee) stoop towards the fallen smith, watch in hand, counting. As in a dream she heard the count mounting up—“seven—eight—” Still the man upon the floor of the ring never stirred, and still her husband kept his tense attitude of watchfulness. “Nine”—and absolute silence from the audience, broken suddenly by a fierce shouting of “Get up! Get up, man! Get up!” “Ten!”

The match was won, and her husband had won the match. At first, Mary Darrell did not realise that the fight was ended, but when she saw her husband being clapped on the back by every man who could get near to him, and saw Mr. Jackson pump-handling one of his gloved hands excitedly, whilst Bellett, the trainer did likewise with the other, she came out of her dream, and stood there in the window, white and silent, and extraordinarily proud of her man, who had beaten the enormous smith.

But when the Honourable William Darrell came into the room presently to dress, he found his diminutive wife mechanically folding and refolding his garments, blindly, whilst she wept, utterly unstrung. The men who had followed him to his dressing-room, gave back and left them when they saw that his wife was there, and the Honourable Billy caught her into his arms;

“It’s all over, little woman,” he assured her, “and we can pay every penny we owe, and I’m all right, lassie; look up, look up, and see for yourself. It’s all over and done with, dear.”

“I—I know” whispered Mary, looking up at him through her tears, and fumbling for her handkerchief. “I—I saw. I wanted you to kill him—the great, horrible brute, hitting you like that!”

The Honourable William Darrell roared, though with somewhat painful laughter, for his features were more than a little tender and swollen, owing to the force of the big smith’s punches. His body also was badly bruised in places, where Dankley’s immense blows had got home; and as Mary dried her eyes, and was able to see with more clearness, her indignation broke out afresh. Yet, presently, being a thoroughly sensible little woman, she admitted that it was not fair to blame Dankley.

“But, oh! I’m so glad you knocked him down, too!” she said.

“What a bloodthirsty young madam I’ve married,” said the Honourable Billy. “But I’ll admit I’m jolly glad, too. You see, what you describe, dear, as a knock-down, was really a knock-out, and by that same knockout, all our debts are paid, and there’ll be money in the bank as well. Now dance, you war-like fairy!” And with that, and part-dressed as he was, he insisted on waltzing gravely round the room with her, after which he resumed his clothes and sedateness together, and so hastened out to inquire after the well-being of the great blacksmith.

He found him dressed, and apparently very little the worse for his knock-out, for he rose at once to shake hands quietly with the young man.

“I’m proud, lad, to ha’ foughten wi’ thee,” he said gravely. “The god o’ battles ha’ seen fit for thee to win, yet ’twas thy fight an’ my fight, lad, while it lasted. But thou art a strong and clever lad, an’ better for thy years I never saw, an’ proud am I to own it, an’ to give thee credit and wish thee God’s luck.

“And to thee, lass,” he added, stepping forward to Mary Darrell, “I give thee my respect, an’ may God bless thee an’ thy lad through the years; and see thou stand strong for him always, lass, in the trouble of life, as to-day in the game that is now done, and thou do likewise wi’ her, lad.”

And with that, he patted each of them seriously upon the shoulder, as though he gave them a blessing. And afterwards called to his striker, and the two of them went home, and so passed out of this tale.

Perhaps one of the Honourable Billy’s greatest surprises of that day came to him as he was making a slow way through the immense crowd of his newly won admirers, with his wife upon his arm. For, suddenly, a big, dishevelled-looking man came scrambling and shouting huskily through the crowd, and stopped before the Honourable Billy. He had no hat on, and his face was all bandaged up.

“Hey!” he said, rubbing two great, red hands, with a kind of excited humility, “ I ha’ coom to beg thy pardon, Mr. Darrell, an’ thy missus’s. Tha’rt greatest boxer Aa’ve ever seed, Mr. Darrell, an’ Aa’m proud to think tha have poonched my head wi’ thy own hands, an’ I ax thy pardon humbly for all as I said.”

“Yes,” said Mary Darrell, answering for her husband. “We forgive you, Mr. Jenkins, but you ought to be ashamed of yourself. We shall pay you every farthing we owe you, and perhaps you’ll learn to know honest people when you meet them. You were a horrible man that day!”

“I am fair ’shamed, missus,” said the big grocer awkwardly. “But Mr. Darrell gave me what for”—and he pointed to his bandages—“an’ I’m coom now to beg pardon—”

“That’s all right, Jenkins,” interrupted the Honourable Billy, and delighted the grocer and made him his friend for life by warmly shaking one of his big red hands, there, in token of amity, before the onlookers.

I will take this opportunity to tell that within three days the Honourable Billy and his wife owed not a farthing to anyone, and could have had credit unlimited only that this was against the Honourable Mrs. William Darrell’s ideas.

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The Getting Even of
“Parson” Guyles

I

I
s Mr. Magee in?” shouted a burly, thick-necked, very self-assured looking man.

The self-assured looking man rapped heavily with his stick on the counter of the small book shop, as he shouted; and at the same moment a door opened noiselessly, away among the shadows, at the back of the shop.

A lean, grim face, with clean-shaven mouth, and wearing a grey goatee, Dundrearys and blue glasses, stared out from the shadows.

“Is Mr. Magee in, confound your rotten business ways!” shouted the burly man. And beat angrily again upon the counter.

The man who owned the grim, clean-shaven mouth, came forward, with a curiously noiseless step, out of the darkness that lay in the back portion of the long, narrow shop.

“I’m Mr. Magee,” he said, quietly. “Ye’ll kindly stop that sort of noise in my shop.”

“My time’s money,” said the stout man. “I can’t wait all day in a hole like this, while you play dominoes in the back parlour. I don’t wonder your business is rotten. Your methods are rotten. And I consider the offer I have to make you is far above the mark. I’m the agent for Mr. James Henshaw. I’ve been instructed to offer you £50 for your business, and your stock at valuation. If you like to take £100 down and clear out this week-end, I’ll give you a cheque now, and you can sign this agreement.”

The stout Agent drew a foolscap envelope from his pocket; but Mr. Andrew Magee intervened.

“The door, Sir,” he said, quietly, “is to your left. I’ll thank you to be going now.”

“You mean,” said the Agent, “that you’ll fight, like a lot of other silly fools have tried to do. You know what that’ll mean; we are opening a thirty yard frontage right next door to this hole of yours. Your potty business’ll be dead in a fortnight. It’s a present I’m offering you; that’s what it is.”

Mr. Andrew Magee came round the counter. He was tall, and had a lean, hard figure. He touched the other man on the elbow.

“The door, Sir,” he remarked, gently, “is to your left—”

“Be damned to you and your door!” roared the Agent. “You smug, ignorant, unbusinesslike fool. Take my offer, or out of this hole we’ll have you in a couple of weeks.”

“I allow no man to call me that, Sir,” said Mr. Andrew Magee, as he hit the Agent hard and solid on the side of the jaw. “That’s not to give you the dope,” he said; “but to teach you to mend your manners. Out of my shop!”

The last four words came with a queer metallic-sounding rip of cold passion, that somehow fitted well the grimness of face and figure of Mr. Magee. And the Agent stayed for no further argument. He rose, staggering; gripped the side of his fleshy jaw, and ran wordless out of the shop.

“Damn a’ bloodsuckers an’ them as useth their power to oppress!” said Mr. Magee, solemnly, as he stood by the counter. “Am I never to live honest, or must the sins of my youth wither always the chances of my age?”

Such phrases as these may be better understood when we realise that Mr. Andrew Magee’s proper name was Andrew McGuyles, and that in his young manhood he had been a Presbyterian minister, and had never, despite his deviations from the “narrow path,” ceased to have a deep feeling for all matters of religion. Many a time, had he fought to gain back to an honest life, and each time he had fallen, either when his own particular “devil” entered him, or because, as now threatened, the Fates were minded to deal him one more unkindly clout of misfortune.

“Professionally,” Mr. Andrew Magee, or McGuyles, was known always as either “The Parson” or “Parson” Guyles. The title was a respected one on both sides of the water; for a cleverer safe-blower (i.e., safe-breaker) there had never been in either country.

II

The Agent was quite right, in the main, when he said they would run the “Parson” out of his shop, in quick time.

The Agent, and Millionaire James Henshaw (who had made his first money by curious methods on the other side, and was now increasing it by methods equally undesirable) had a few words about the dour Scotsman, whose premises they wished to annex.

“Yes,” said Millionaire Henshaw, when the Agent had told his story. “Run him out. Make an example of him, by all means. We can’t let that sort of thing pass. We’ve got to put the fear of God into them, and then buy ’em out at skim-milk prices.”

Parson Guyles did not get even a “skim-milk” price. He was ruined utterly within three months, by being totally undersold, until he did not have half a dozen customers into his little dark shop in a day.

The hour in which he put his shutters up for the last time over the little window, would have been a bad time for the Millionaire or his Agent to have met him. However, he had a little money saved, and he disappeared quietly, having paid all his debts; for Parson Guyles, when he was living honestly, lived honestly, because of the grim Puritan blood that was in him.

III

When Parson Guyles at any time ceased to be found at any address known to the Profession, it was generally concluded among his expert friends that “the Parson was on the honest lay again,” and no attempt would be made to discover his whereabouts, until he chose to re-discover himself. Perhaps this consideration for what many of them must have regarded as nothing more than a recurrent peculiarity of the Parson’s, may have been partly prompted by the complete and efficient unpleasantness that followed upon any intrusion, by his expert acquaintances, into what might be termed his “hours of honesty.”

But now, three months after he had put up the shutters in the little book shop, the Parson appeared once more among people who knew and appreciated him for his record of “work accomplished”; and because of this, accorded him a welcome, that had in it a respect that rose above any criticism of his peculiar instincts for, and lapses into, what our spiritual advisers term the Narrow Path.

During the months which lay between the closing of the little shop and Parson Guyles’ re-appearance, he must have put in a great deal of professional work, in the way of expert Inspection of Premises; for when he convened a meeting of three (John Vardon, engineer; Sandy Mech, expert “spade and shovel” man, and himself) the proposition he had to lay before the meeting, backed up by the very exact and appropriate information that he had to offer on all needful or disputable points, produced amazing, though professionally subdued, enthusiasm.