Chapter XI Mr. Fogo is Shocked
‘Frosty-face’ very naturally looked to it that this little encounter of rustics should have some useful bearing on his own affairs. He was a poor man and could not afford to ignore opportunities. With Mr. Shillabeer he set about reviving all the glories of the twenty-four-foot square, and he was determined that nothing should be omitted which could make the approaching fight a dignified and successful entertainment, worthy, in its small way, of the best traditions.
Before a full bar Mr. Fogo spoke at length. He had sold thirteen of his poems that evening, and he was now about to unfasten a parcel that day received from London; but, before doing so, he outlined the situation.
“I’m very pleased to find you know a bit down here,” he began. “There’s more of the right sort in these parts than we might have expected, and there’ll be a good sprinkling of Corinthians at the ring-side too. The doctor from Tavistock, who is going to referee, is as spicy a dare-devil as I wish to meet at any mill; and he knows his job; and afterwards, if either of you chaps want to be blooded, he can do it for you.”
“We shall judge of the patronage by the number of fogies the swells take up,” said Mr. Shillabeer. “You see, the old rule is that a fighter gives his colours to all who’ll take ’em; and it’s understood that if he’s beat, the colours cost nought; but if he wins, everybody as took a handkerchief be expected to pay a guinea for it.”
“Well, here they are,” answered ‘Frosty-face.’ “I got ’em myself so cheap as they could be got through a friend. Fifty there are—twenty-five for each of the men—and if they go off, I can get more at the same low figure.”
He opened his parcel and revealed the colours. Bartley and several of his friends were present; but David, who was to call that night with his father, had not yet arrived. Mr. Crocker’s handkerchief was much admired. It showed a rich orange centre bordered with three inches of purple.
Both Fogo and Shillabeer took one, though not on the usual understanding, and Bartley calculated that he knew about twenty sportsmen, including Sir Guy, who would be glad to possess this memento of the battle.
Then came the Bowdens, and the future combatants shook hands in a friendly spirit and compared their colours. David’s were simpler and quieter—a blue ‘bird’s-eye’ with a white spot. Both parties could number a good handful of patrons, and the encounter, albeit date and place were still kept a dark secret, promised to be well attended.
“I’m painting the true blue stakes myself,” said ‘Frosty-face,’ “and we’ll have a nobby ring if we don’t have a nobby fight in it.”
“And where is it to be, Mr. Fogo?” asked Simon Snell.
“I wouldn’t tell everybody, but you shall know,” answered the old man, assuming a grim expression, which always preceded his finest jokes. “We’ll have our turn up in the bull-ring, Mr. Snell. It have seen many a bit of fun, they tell me, so why not a bit more?”
Everybody laughed, because Sheepstor bull-ring was the most public spot for many miles round. It lay under the churchyard wall at the centre of the hamlet.
“Couldn’t choose a better place, all the same,” said Reuben Shillabeer, “that is, if they’d let us alone. The burying-ground runs eight feet above the ring; and there’s good grass there, and a nice tilt to the ground, and proper trees all round for the sporting public to climb into. However, that’s rather too warm a corner for modest men. We don’t want the eyes of the nation on us.”
“Leave it to me,” said the Londoner. “There are certain people we shan’t have no use for on the morning of the fight. And if they stop at Sheepstor, ’tis clear we must go somewhere else. However, look to me; I’ll give you the office in plenty of time.”
“You’ll never get round parson and Mr. Moses and p’liceman and Mrs. Crocker,” foretold Tim Mattacott.
“I fear but one of ’em,” answered Mr. Fogo. “They are all harmless men, and I can handle ’em as easy as a mother handles her tenth babby. ’Tis that spry lady will take some stopping. I’ve not got the length of her foot yet—to say it with all respect. But all in good time.”
“There’s to be a sermon preached by Mr. Merle next Sunday against this here fight,” said Mr. Bowden. “I’m sorry to the bone that he’s taken this view, because I never like to quarrel with my betters; but to the House of the Lord me and mine go as usual next Sunday, and whatever he may preach won’t change my opinions.”
“And I’ll go too,” declared Fogo. “Yes, I’ll go and hear his argeyments. ’Tis a good few years since I was in a place of prayer—in fact, never since I stood best man when Alec Reid, ‘the Chelsea Snob,’ was married. But on Sunday I shall be there, and you’ll see I can shut my eyes and sniff my hat with the best among ye.”
“You shall come along of me,” said the ‘Dumpling.’ “I go most times and get a deal of good from it. My wife was a steady church member, for though she’d fling off to chapel for change now and again, as women will, yet she comed back again and again to the Establishment; and she died in it, and Parson Merle will tell you ’twas so.”
Then exploded suddenly a piece of news that quite staggered and shocked the renowned visitor. It also cast down Mr. Shillabeer, for he felt that Fogo, as a man, and the P.R., as an institution, were alike insulted by such an astounding assertion from the rival camp.
The question of seconds had been raised and Mr. Fogo explained that he and Shillabeer proposed to look after Crocker.
“I shall carry the bottle and offer advice as it’s called for, and Reuben will pick him up and give him a knee,” he declared.
“If he wants it,” added the ‘Dumpling’; “but unless David here be cleverer than we think he is, Bartley won’t ask for much picking up.”
“And who are going to look after you?” asked Fogo of David.
“My father and—”
“He can’t pick you up. Who else?”
“And my sister, Rhoda Bowden—a strong maiden. She and father will do all that’s got to be done.”
“Blow my dickey!” said Mr. Fogo, “that’s the first knock-down for you anyway. A woman—a woman in the P.R.! You really thought that? That’s the best joke I’ve heard since ’45.”
“It’s settled,” said David, calmly.
“A woman in the P.R.!” repeated Fogo. “Well, I’ve seen most things during the last seventy years, but not that. Why don’t you ax your sister to fight for you?”
“Look here,” said the elder Bowden, “I won’t have nothing said in this matter by you or anybody, Mr. Fogo, till you see for yourselves. Anyway it’s going to happen.”
“I quite agree!” declared Mr. Snell, suddenly. “Miss Rhoda’s a born wonder and a most renowned creature for courage. None ever was like her. A female no more feared to look on blood than we be to count our wages. And as to picking him up, she could pick him up—and you too, Mr. Fogo, as easily as I can turn a stop-cock.”
“Can such things be?” asked Mr. Fogo. “This bangs Bannagher! A woman—a young, female woman inside the P.R.! ’Tis enough to provoke the anger of Heaven. May I die like a trundle-tailed cur, with a brick round my neck, if I could ever stand it!”
“’Tis my girl that you saw up to the Warren House,” said Mr. Bowden, “her you said was a very fine woman, and you wished you’d got such a pair of arms.”
“Her with the chin?”
“She have a chin, I grant you.”
“And who haven’t?” asked Mr. Snell.
“You must know ’tisn’t a common case,” explained David. “My sister and me be very close friends, and she’s terrible interested in this fight, and, in short, she’ll have to be there—there’s no law against it.”
“I’m shocked,” said the old man. “’Tis a very indecent, outrageous thing, and I protest with all my might. A petticoat in the P.R.! Can’t everybody in this bar see it’s all wrong and disgraceful and disorderly?”
“In a general way it would be,” admitted Shillabeer; “but she ain’t no common young woman, ‘Frosty,’ and I’m not surprised to hear she means it. She was axing me what a bottle-holder be expected to do a bit back-along; and I half twigged that she’d got this idea in her noddle.”
“Then it’s the end of the world,” declared Mr. Fogo. “I ask for nothing more. Perhaps our man wants his mother in his corner—also his aunt? I’m sure they very much wish to be there by all accounts.”
“Since the fight be in part about my sister, she’s a right on the spot,” said David; “and this I’ll tell you, Mr. Fogo: though you laugh, you’ll see what she’s like in the Ring; and if she does one thing—one single thing—she shouldn’t, and fails of aught where a man could do better, then I’ll give you the stakes if I win ’em.”
“It’s contrary to all history and law and decency and nature. It isn’t possible, I tell you. Here am I trying to revive the P.R. in a first chop, gentlemanly fashion, and then you yokels plan a sin and a shame like this,” said Mr. Fogo. He was very much annoyed and returned again and again to the threatened female incursion. Most of the company agreed with him; indeed, only the Bowdens and Simon Snell supported Rhoda as a second. Mr. Shillabeer was doubtful.
“Be there any law against it? That’s the question,” he said. “Well, I can’t say there is, ‘Frosty.’ Of course there’s nought in the rules about it.”
“Because the rules was drawn for respectable, law-abiding people,” answered Mr. Fogo.
They wrangled on, while David and Bartley spoke aside.
“Did you say that Miss Rhoda was really interested?” asked Crocker. “I shouldn’t like to think that, David. I know I kissed her, like a silly fool, in the Pixies’ House that day of the storm; but she don’t bear malice, I hope, any more than you do?”
“Oh, no—no malice. It angered her cruel all the same, as it did me; and she won’t be sorry to see you lose—though there’s no malice—certainly not.”
“You’re in luck with such a sister and such a wife to be.”
David changed the subject.
“Have they settled where ’tis to come off?”
“No—only the day.”
“Monday week?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going down to Plymouth Monday to practise with the boxers there,” said David, and Bartley nodded.
“They’ll larn you a lot,” he said.
Mr. Fogo’s voice again rose in wrath.
“The Fancy won’t stand it. Mark me; they’ll hiss her out of the Ring. Such a thing won’t be suffered in a Christian land.”
The hour grew late and Mr. Maunder looked in somewhat coldly. Since his vital difference of opinion on the subject of the prize-fight, he had withdrawn his patronage from ‘The Corner House.’ It was felt that he could hardly be present in the camp of a combatant until the matter of the pending battle was at an end.
“Closing time, Mr. Shillabeer,” he said, and the ‘Dumpling’ nodded.
“Right you are, Ernest. Come in and take a thimbleful along with me, won’t ’e?”
“No, thank you. Not till this business is over. I’m against you, and I won’t have bit or sup along with the enemy. I speak as the law, Shillabeer, and not as a man. Of course afterwards I shall come back again; but not till I’ve bested you, or you’ve bested me.”
“Nobody could speak fairer,” declared Mr. Shillabeer.
Then the company departed; Bartley Crocker went to bed; and Reuben asked his friend what steps he proposed to take with respect to evading the police on Monday week. But Fogo was in no amiable or communicative mood. His feelings had that night been much lacerated and the prospect of seeing a woman in a prize-ring affected him acutely. He would not talk about the matter, and when Mr. Shillabeer, according to custom, brought conversation round to his vanished partner over the last glass, Mr. Fogo failed of that tact for which he was renowned and refused even to speak well of the deceased.
“I’ve heard enough about women to make me sick of the name of female this night,” he said. “I won’t utter a word more about ’em, living or dead. Thank my stars I kept single anyway. They may be all right in their proper place, but they don’t know the meaning of fair play, and are worse than useless in every branch of sport that man ever invented. You mark me: this man’s sister will come across the ring and try to gouge our eyes out if her brother’s getting worsted!”
“Not she,” promised the ‘Dumpling.’ “I grant ’tis a sign the P.R.’s coming to nought that a chap should have his sister to second him in a fight; but since it had to be, never was a woman built more likely to give a good account of herself in that place than Rhoda Bowden.”
“Well, I hope to God the Fancy will rise like one man,” answered Mr. Fogo. “And now I’ll go to my bed; and if I don’t have a nightmare and dream that I’m in a Ring along with the Queen of England and a few duchesses and other high female characters, may I be blowed from here to the top of Paul’s cathedral and back again.”
He then retired.
Bowden and Crocker had both paid for their colours and Mr. Shillabeer called his friend back to hand him the money, which, in his misery, Mr. Fogo had forgotten.