Chapter 4

_"Dê tot' anaschomenô, ho men êlase dexion ômon Iros, ho d' auchen' elassen hup' ouatos, ostea d' eisô Ethlasen; autika d' êlthen ana stoma phoinion haima."_

Toward the end of my second year an event came off in which we were all much interested--a steeplechase in which both Universities were to take part. The stakes were worth winning--twenty sovs. entrance, h.f., and a hundred sovs. added; besides, the _esprit de corps_ was strong, and men backed their opinions pretty freely. The venue was fixed at B----; the time, the beginning of the Easter vacation.

The old town was crowded like Vanity Fair. There was a railway in progress near, and the navvies and other "roughs" came flocking in by hundreds, so that the municipal authorities, justly apprehensive of a row, concentrated the cohorts of their police, and swore in no end of specials as a reserve.

The great event came off duly, a fair instance of the "glorious uncertainty" which backers of horses execrate and ring-men adore. All the favorites were out of the race early. Our best man, Barlowe, the centre of many hopes, and carrying a heavy investment of Oxford money, was floored at the second double post-and-rail. The Cambridge cracks, too, by divers casualties, were soon disposed of. At the last fence, an Oxford man was leading by sixty yards; but it was his maiden race, and he lost his head when he found himself looking like a winner so near home. Instead of taking the stake-and-bound at the weakest place, he rode at the strongest; his horse swerved to the gap, took the fence sideways, and came down heavily into the ditch of the winning field. The representative of Cambridge, who came next, riding a good steady hunter, not fast, but safe at his fences, cantered in by himself. I remember he was so bewildered by his unexpected victory that one of his backers had to hold him fast in the saddle, or he would have dismounted before riding to scale, and so lost the stakes.

Well, the race was over and the laurels lost, so we had nothing to do but pay and look pleasant, and then adjourn to the inevitable banquet at "The George." There was little to distinguish the proceedings from the routine of such festivals. The winners stood Champagne, and the losers drank it--to any amount. The accidents of flood and field were discussed over and over again; and, I believe, every man of the twenty-three who had ridden that day could and did prove, to his own entire satisfaction, that he must have won but for some freak of fortune totally unavoidable, and defying human calculation.

About nine o'clock I went out with another man to get some fresh air, and something I wanted in the town. At the corner of every street there was a group of heavy, sullen faces, looking viciously ready for a row, while out of the windows of the frequent public houses gushed bursts of revelry hideously discordant, from the low-browed rooms where the wild Irish sat howling and wrangling over their liquor. However, we got what we wanted, and were returning, when, in a street on our left, we heard cries and a trampling of many feet. Two figures, looking like University men, passed us at speed, and, throwing something down before us, dived into an alley opposite, and were lost to sight. My companion picked up the object; and we had just time to make out that it was a bell-handle and name-plate, when the pursuers came up--six or seven "peelers" and specials, with a ruck of men and boys. We were collared on the instant. The fact of the property being found in our possession constituted a _flagrans delictum_--we were caught "red-handed." It was vain to argue that, had we been the delinquents, we should scarcely have been standing there still, awaiting discovery. The idea of arguing with a rural policeman, when, by a rare coincidence, popular feeling is with him! The mob regarded our capture, exulting like the Romans over Jugurtha in chains. It was decided "we were to go before the Inspector." We were placed in the centre of a phalanx of specials, each guarded by two regulars; and so the triumph, followed by a train that swelled at every turning, moved slowly along the Sacred Way toward the temple of the station-house, where the municipal Jupiter Capitolinus sat in his glory.

Before we had proceeded three hundred yards there was a shout from the crowd, "Look out! here come the 'Varsity!" and down a cross street leading from the inn, two hundred gownsmen, wild with wrath and wassail, came leaping to the rescue.

In the van of all I caught sight of two figures--one that I knew very well, towering, bareheaded, a hand's-breadth above the throng; the other, something below the middle height, but shaggy, vast-chested, and double-jointed as a red Highland steer--M'Diarmid of Trinity, glory of the Cambridge gymnasium, and "5" in the University eight. They were not shouting like the rest, but hitting out straight and remorselessly; and before those two strong Promachi, townsman and navvy, peeler and special, went down like blades of corn. Close at their shoulder I distinguished Lovell, his clear blue eyes lightening savagely; and stout Tom Lynton, a deeper flush on his honest face, hewing away with all the unscientific strength of his nervous arm.

But my two guards, very Abdiels in their duty, never let me go; on the contrary, one tightened his gripe on my throat suffocatingly, while the other, though I remained perfectly quiescent, kept giving me gentle hints to keep the peace with the end of his staff. I was getting sick and dizzy, when something passed my cheek like the wind of a ball; there was a dull, crashing sound close at my ear; the grasp on my neck relaxed all at once; I felt something across my feet, and saw a dark blue mass, topped by the ruin of a shiny hat, lying there quite still; an arm was round my waist like the coil of a cable, and I heard Guy's voice laughing loud,

"My dear Frank," he said, as he dragged me away toward the inn, "the centre of a row, as usual. _Que, diable, allait il faire dans cette bagarre?_"

I hardly heard him, for my senses were still confused; but in thirty seconds I was under the archway of "The George." As the heroines of the Radcliffe romances say, "I turned to thank my preserver, but he was gone."

When I recovered my breath, I went up to a balcony on the first floor and looked out. The tide of the affray was surging gradually back into the wide open space before the inn, and very shortly this was filled with a chaos of furious faces and struggling arms. The University were evidently recoiling, pressed back by the sheer weight of their opponents; but soon came a re-enforcement of grooms and stable-men, lightweights, active and wiry; and these, with their hunting-crops and heavy cutting-whips used remorselessly--like Cæsar's legionaries, they struck only at the face--once more re-established the balance of the battle.

Suddenly the _melée_ seemed to converge to one point--the mid-eddy, as it were, of the whirlpool; then came a lull, almost a hush; and then fifty strong arms, indiscriminately of town and gownsmen, were locked to keep the ground, while a storm of voices shouted for "A ring!"

In that impromptu arena two men stood face to face under the full glare of the gas-lamps--one was Guy Livingstone; the other a denizen of the Potteries, yclept "Burn's Big 'un," who had selected B---- as his training quarters, in preparation for his fight to come off in the ensuing week with the third best man in England for £100 a side.

They made a magnificent contrast. Guy, apparently quite composed, but the lower part of his face set stern and pitiless; an evil light in his eyes, showing how all the gladiator in his nature was roused; his left hand swaying level with his hip; all the weight of his body resting on the right foot; his lofty head thrown back haughtily; his guard low. The professional, three inches shorter than his adversary, but a rare model of brute strength; his arms and neck, where the short jersey left them exposed, clear-skinned and white as a woman's, through the perfection of his training; his hair cropped close round a low, retreating forehead; his thick lips parted in a savage grin, meant to represent a smile of confidence. So they stood there--fitting champions of the races that have been antagonistic for four thousand years--Patrician and Proletarian.

Suddenly there was a commotion at one corner of the ring, and I saw a small, bullet-headed man, with a voice like a fractious child, striving frantically to force his way through. "Don't let 'em fight!" he screamed: "it's robbery, I tell you. There's hundreds of pounds on him for Thursday next, I'm his trainer; and I daren't show him with a scratch on him."

A great roar of laughter answered his entreaties, and twenty arms thrust the little man back; but his interesting charge seemed to ponder and hesitate, when a drawling nasal voice spoke from the opposite corner: "Ah! you're right; take him away; don't show his white feather till you're druv to it." That turned the wavering scale. The Big 'un ground his teeth with blasphemy, and set-to.

I need not go through the minutiæ of the fight; it was all one way. The professional did his best, and took his punishment like a glutton; but he could do nothing against the long reach of his adversary, who stopped and countered as coolly as if he had only the gloves on.

It was the beginning of the sixth round; our champion bore only one mark, showing where a tremendous right-hander had almost come home--a cut on his lower lip, whence the bright Norman blood was flowing freely. I will not attempt to describe the hideous changes that ten minutes had wrought in his opponent's countenance; but I think I was not the only spectator who felt a thrill of fear mingling with disgust as the Big 'un made his despairing effort, and fought his way in to the terrible "half-arm rally." In truth, there was something unearthly and awful in the sight of the maimed and mangled Colossus; his huge breast heaving with wrath and pain; his one unblinded eye glaring unutterably; his crushed lips churning the crimson foam. It was the last rash of the Cordovan bull goaded to madness by picador and chulo; but Guy's fatal left met him, straight, unyielding as the blade of the matador; twice he reeled back wellnigh stunned; the third time he dropped his head cleverly, so as to avoid the blow, and grappled. For some seconds the two were locked together, undistinguishably; then we saw Guy's right hand, never used till then save as a guard, rise and fall twice with a dull, smashing sound, which was bad to hear; then the huge form of the prize-fighter was whirled up unresistingly over his antagonist's hip, and fell crashing down at his feet, a heap of blind, senseless, bleeding humanity.

"Time!" You must call louder yet before he will hear, and lance a vein in the throat before he will answer.

Then, in the old market-place of B----, there went up such a shout as I think it has never heard since Vikings and Berserkyr caroused there after storming the town. The gownsmen, as they will do on slighter provocation, screamed themselves hoarse and voiceless with delight; and their late opponents--the honest Saxon's love of a fair fight overcoming the spirit of the partisan--echoed and prolonged the cheer.

There was no more thought of battle or broil; and there were as many navvies as University men among the enthusiasts who bore the champion on their shoulders into "The George."

How we reveled on that night of victory, especially when Guy, after necessary ablutions and change of raiment, joined us, calm and self-possessed as ever, only slightly swelled about the lower lip, and a dark red flush on his forehead! He had satisfactory accounts of his adversary, the said amiable individual having so far recovered, under the surgeon's hands, as to swear thrice--"quite like hisself," the messenger said--and to call for cold brandy and water.

Livingstone's health was proposed twice--the first time by a fellow of King's, with a neat talent for classical allusions, who remarked that, "if the olive-crown of the Hippodrome had fallen to the lot of Cambridge, none would deny her sister's claim to the parsley of the cæstus." The second time was very late in the evening, by M'Diarmid. It must be confessed that gallant chieftain was somewhat incoherent, and amid protestations of admiration and eternal friendship, much to our astonishment, wept profusely. Still later, he got very maudlin indeed, and was heard to murmur, looking at his scarred knuckles, that "he was afraid he must have hurt some one that night," with an accent of heartfelt sorrow and contrition which was inimitable.

We heard afterward that the taunt which made the fight a certainty came from the commissioner of the party who stood heavily against the Big 'un, sent down to watch him in his training, and spy out the joints in his harness.