Title: The Game
Author: London, Jack, 1876-1916
Language: English
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Transcribed from the 1913 William Heinemann edition by David Price, email


THE GAME


CHAPTER I


Many patterns of carpet lay rolled out before them on the floor--two of
Brussels showed the beginning of their quest, and its ending in that
direction; while a score of ingrains lured their eyes and prolonged the
debate between desire pocket-book.  The head of the department did them
the honor of waiting upon them himself--or did Joe the honor, as she well
knew, for she had noted the open-mouthed awe of the elevator boy who
brought them up.  Nor had she been blind to the marked respect shown Joe
by the urchins and groups of young fellows on corners, when she walked
with him in their own neighborhood down at the west end of the town.

But the head of the department was called away to the telephone, and in
her mind the splendid promise of the carpets and the irk of the pocket-
book were thrust aside by a greater doubt and anxiety.

"But I don't see what you find to like in it, Joe," she said softly, the
note of insistence in her words betraying recent and unsatisfactory
discussion.

For a fleeting moment a shadow darkened his boyish face, to be replaced
by the glow of tenderness.  He was only a boy, as she was only a girl--two
young things on the threshold of life, house-renting and buying carpets
together.

"What's the good of worrying?" he questioned.  "It's the last go, the
very last."

He smiled at her, but she saw on his lips the unconscious and all but
breathed sigh of renunciation, and with the instinctive monopoly of woman
for her mate, she feared this thing she did not understand and which
gripped his life so strongly.

"You know the go with O'Neil cleared the last payment on mother's house,"
he went on.  "And that's off my mind.  Now this last with Ponta will give
me a hundred dollars in bank--an even hundred, that's the purse--for you
and me to start on, a nest-egg."

She disregarded the money appeal.  "But you like it, this--this 'game'
you call it.  Why?"

He lacked speech-expression.  He expressed himself with his hands, at his
work, and with his body and the play of his muscles in the squared ring;
but to tell with his own lips the charm of the squared ring was beyond
him.  Yet he essayed, and haltingly at first, to express what he felt and
analyzed when playing the Game at the supreme summit of existence.

"All I know, Genevieve, is that you feel good in the ring when you've got
the man where you want him, when he's had a punch up both sleeves waiting
for you and you've never given him an opening to land 'em, when you've
landed your own little punch an' he's goin' groggy, an' holdin' on, an'
the referee's dragging him off so's you can go in an' finish 'm, an' all
the house is shouting an' tearin' itself loose, an' you know you're the
best man, an' that you played m' fair an' won out because you're the best
man.  I tell you--"

He ceased brokenly, alarmed by his own volubility and by Genevieve's look
of alarm.  As he talked she had watched his face while fear dawned in her
own.  As he described the moment of moments to her, on his inward vision
were lined the tottering man, the lights, the shouting house, and he
swept out and away from her on this tide of life that was beyond her
comprehension, menacing, irresistible, making her love pitiful and weak.
The Joe she knew receded, faded, became lost.  The fresh boyish face was
gone, the tenderness of the eyes, the sweetness of the mouth with its
curves and pictured corners.  It was a man's face she saw, a face of
steel, tense and immobile; a mouth of steel, the lips like the jaws of a
trap; eyes of steel, dilated, intent, and the light in them and the
glitter were the light and glitter of steel.  The face of a man, and she
had known only his boy face.  This face she did not know at all.

And yet, while it frightened her, she was vaguely stirred with pride in
him.  His masculinity, the masculinity of the fighting male, made its
inevitable appeal to her, a female, moulded by all her heredity to seek
out the strong man for mate, and to lean against the wall of his
strength.  She did not understand this force of his being that rose
mightier than her love and laid its compulsion upon him; and yet, in her
woman's heart she was aware of the sweet pang which told her that for her
sake, for Love's own sake, he had surrendered to her, abandoned all that
portion of his life, and with this one last fight would never fight
again.

"Mrs. Silverstein doesn't like prize-fighting," she said.  "She's down on
it, and she knows something, too."

He smiled indulgently, concealing a hurt, not altogether new, at her
persistent inappreciation of this side of his nature and life in which he
took the greatest pride.  It was to him power and achievement, earned by
his own effort and hard work; and in the moment when he had offered
himself and all that he was to Genevieve, it was this, and this alone,
that he was proudly conscious of laying at her feet.  It was the merit of
work performed, a guerdon of manhood finer and greater than any other man
could offer, and it had been to him his justification and right to
possess her.  And she had not understood it then, as she did not
understand it now, and he might well have wondered what else she found in
him to make him worthy.

"Mrs. Silverstein is a dub, and a softy, and a knocker," he said good-
humoredly.  "What's she know about such things, anyway?  I tell you it
_is_ good, and healthy, too,"--this last as an afterthought.  "Look at
me.  I tell you I have to live clean to be in condition like this.  I
live cleaner than she does, or her old man, or anybody you know--baths,
rub-downs, exercise, regular hours, good food and no makin' a pig of
myself, no drinking, no smoking, nothing that'll hurt me.  Why, I live
cleaner than you, Genevieve--"

"Honest, I do," he hastened to add at sight of her shocked face.  "I
don't mean water an' soap, but look there."  His hand closed reverently
but firmly on her arm.  "Soft, you're all soft, all over.  Not like mine.
Here, feel this."

He pressed the ends of her fingers into his hard arm-muscles until she
winced from the hurt.

"Hard all over just like that," he went on.  "Now that's what I call
clean.  Every bit of flesh an' blood an' muscle is clean right down to
the bones--and they're clean, too.  No soap and water only on the skin,
but clean all the way in.  I tell you it feels clean.  It knows it's
clean itself.  When I wake up in the morning an' go to work, every drop
of blood and bit of meat is shouting right out that it is clean.  Oh, I
tell you--"

He paused with swift awkwardness, again confounded by his unwonted flow
of speech.  Never in his life had he been stirred to such utterance, and
never in his life had there been cause to be so stirred.  For it was the
Game that had been questioned, its verity and worth, the Game itself, the
biggest thing in the world--or what had been the biggest thing in the
world until that chance afternoon and that chance purchase in
Silverstein's candy store, when Genevieve loomed suddenly colossal in his
life, overshadowing all other things.  He was beginning to see, though
vaguely, the sharp conflict between woman and career, between a man's
work in the world and woman's need of the man.  But he was not capable of
generalization.  He saw only the antagonism between the concrete, flesh-
and-blood Genevieve and the great, abstract, living Game.  Each resented
the other, each claimed him; he was torn with the strife, and yet drifted
helpless on the currents of their contention.

His words had drawn Genevieve's gaze to his face, and she had pleasured
in the clear skin, the clear eyes, the cheek soft and smooth as a girl's.
She saw the force of his argument and disliked it accordingly.  She
revolted instinctively against this Game which drew him away from her,
robbed her of part of him.  It was a rival she did not understand.  Nor
could she understand its seductions.  Had it been a woman rival, another
girl, knowledge and light and sight would have been hers.  As it was, she
grappled in the dark with an intangible adversary about which she knew
nothing.  What truth she felt in his speech made the Game but the more
formidable.

A sudden conception of her weakness came to her.  She felt pity for
herself, and sorrow.  She wanted him, all of him, her woman's need would
not be satisfied with less; and he eluded her, slipped away here and
there from the embrace with which she tried to clasp him.  Tears swam
into her eyes, and her lips trembled, turning defeat into victory,
routing the all-potent Game with the strength of her weakness.

"Don't, Genevieve, don't," the boy pleaded, all contrition, though he was
confused and dazed.  To his masculine mind there was nothing relevant
about her break-down; yet all else was forgotten at sight of her tears.

She smiled forgiveness through her wet eyes, and though he knew of
nothing for which to be forgiven, he melted utterly.  His hand went out
impulsively to hers, but she avoided the clasp by a sort of bodily
stiffening and chill, the while the eyes smiled still more gloriously.

"Here comes Mr. Clausen," she said, at the same time, by some
transforming alchemy of woman, presenting to the newcomer eyes that
showed no hint of moistness.

"Think I was never coming back, Joe?" queried the head of the department,
a pink-and-white-faced man, whose austere side-whiskers were belied by
genial little eyes.

"Now let me see--hum, yes, we was discussing ingrains," he continued
briskly.  "That tasty little pattern there catches your eye, don't it
now, eh?  Yes, yes, I know all about it.  I set up housekeeping when I
was getting fourteen a week.  But nothing's too good for the little nest,
eh?  Of course I know, and it's only seven cents more, and the dearest is
the cheapest, I say.  Tell you what I'll do, Joe,"--this with a burst of
philanthropic impulsiveness and a confidential lowering of
voice,--"seein's it's you, and I wouldn't do it for anybody else, I'll
reduce it to five cents.  Only,"--here his voice became impressively
solemn,--"only you mustn't ever tell how much you really did pay."

"Sewed, lined, and laid--of course that's included," he said, after Joe
and Genevieve had conferred together and announced their decision.

"And the little nest, eh?" he queried.  "When do you spread your wings
and fly away?  To-morrow!  So soon?  Beautiful!  Beautiful!"

He rolled his eyes ecstatically for a moment, then beamed upon them with
a fatherly air.

Joe had replied sturdily enough, and Genevieve had blushed prettily; but
both felt that it was not exactly proper.  Not alone because of the
privacy and holiness of the subject, but because of what might have been
prudery in the middle class, but which in them was the modesty and
reticence found in individuals of the working class when they strive
after clean living and morality.

Mr. Clausen accompanied them to the elevator, all smiles, patronage, and
beneficence, while the clerks turned their heads to follow Joe's
retreating figure.

"And to-night, Joe?" Mr. Clausen asked anxiously, as they waited at the
shaft.  "How do you feel?  Think you'll do him?"

"Sure," Joe answered.  "Never felt better in my life."

"You feel all right, eh?  Good!  Good!  You see, I was just
a-wonderin'--you know, ha! ha!--goin' to get married and the rest--thought
you might be unstrung, eh, a trifle?--nerves just a bit off, you know.
Know how gettin' married is myself.  But you're all right, eh?  Of course
you are.  No use asking _you_ that.  Ha! ha!  Well, good luck, my boy!  I
know you'll win.  Never had the least doubt, of course, of course."

"And good-by, Miss Pritchard," he said to Genevieve, gallantly handing
her into the elevator.  "Hope you call often.  Will be charmed--charmed--I
assure you."

"Everybody calls you 'Joe'," she said reproachfully, as the car dropped
downward.  "Why don't they call you 'Mr. Fleming'?  That's no more than
proper."

But he was staring moodily at the elevator boy and did not seem to hear.

"What's the matter, Joe?" she asked, with a tenderness the power of which
to thrill him she knew full well.

"Oh, nothing," he said.  "I was only thinking--and wishing."

"Wishing?--what?"  Her voice was seduction itself, and her eyes would
have melted stronger than he, though they failed in calling his up to
them.

Then, deliberately, his eyes lifted to hers.  "I was wishing you could
see me fight just once."

She made a gesture of disgust, and his face fell.  It came to her sharply
that the rival had thrust between and was bearing him away.

"I--I'd like to," she said hastily with an effort, striving after that
sympathy which weakens the strongest men and draws their heads to women's
breasts.

"Will you?"

Again his eyes lifted and looked into hers.  He meant it--she knew that.
It seemed a challenge to the greatness of her love.

"It would be the proudest moment of my life," he said simply.

It may have been the apprehensiveness of love, the wish to meet his need
for her sympathy, and the desire to see the Game face to face for
wisdom's sake,--and it may have been the clarion call of adventure
ringing through the narrow confines of uneventful existence; for a great
daring thrilled through her, and she said, just as simply, "I will."

"I didn't think you would, or I wouldn't have asked," he confessed, as
they walked out to the sidewalk.

"But can't it be done?" she asked anxiously, before her resolution could
cool.

"Oh, I can fix that; but I didn't think you would."

"I didn't think you would," he repeated, still amazed, as he helped her
upon the electric car and felt in his pocket for the fare.



CHAPTER II


Genevieve and Joe were working-class aristocrats.  In an environment made
up largely of sordidness and wretchedness they had kept themselves
unsullied and wholesome.  Theirs was a self-respect, a regard for the
niceties and clean things of life, which had held them aloof from their
kind.  Friends did not come to them easily; nor had either ever possessed
a really intimate friend, a heart-companion with whom to chum and have
things in common.  The social instinct was strong in them, yet they had
remained lonely because they could not satisfy that instinct and at that
same time satisfy their desire for cleanness and decency.

If ever a girl of the working class had led the sheltered life, it was
Genevieve.  In the midst of roughness and brutality, she had shunned all
that was rough and brutal.  She saw but what she chose to see, and she
chose always to see the best, avoiding coarseness and uncouthness without
effort, as a matter of instinct.  To begin with, she had been peculiarly
unexposed.  An only child, with an invalid mother upon whom she attended,
she had not joined in the street games and frolics of the children of the
neighbourhood.  Her father, a mild-tempered, narrow-chested, anaemic
little clerk, domestic because of his inherent disability to mix with
men, had done his full share toward giving the home an atmosphere of
sweetness and tenderness.

An orphan at twelve, Genevieve had gone straight from her father's
funeral to live with the Silversteins in their rooms above the candy
store; and here, sheltered by kindly aliens, she earned her keep and
clothes by waiting on the shop.  Being Gentile, she was especially
necessary to the Silversteins, who would not run the business themselves
when the day of their Sabbath came round.

And here, in the uneventful little shop, six maturing years had slipped
by.  Her acquaintances were few.  She had elected to have no girl chum
for the reason that no satisfactory girl had appeared.  Nor did she
choose to walk with the young fellows of the neighbourhood, as was the
custom of girls from their fifteenth year.  "That stuck-up doll-face,"
was the way the girls of the neighbourhood described her; and though she
earned their enmity by her beauty and aloofness, she none the less
commanded their respect.  "Peaches and cream," she was called by the
young men--though softly and amongst themselves, for they were afraid of
arousing the ire of the other girls, while they stood in awe of
Genevieve, in a dimly religious way, as a something mysteriously
beautiful and unapproachable.

For she was indeed beautiful.  Springing from a long line of American
descent, she was one of those wonderful working-class blooms which
occasionally appear, defying all precedent of forebears and environment,
apparently without cause or explanation.  She was a beauty in color, the
blood spraying her white skin so deliciously as to earn for her the apt
description, "peaches and cream."  She was a beauty in the regularity of
her features; and, if for no other reason, she was a beauty in the mere
delicacy of the lines on which she was moulded.  Quiet, low-voiced,
stately, and dignified, she somehow had the knack of dress, and but
befitted her beauty and dignity with anything she put on.  Withal, she
was sheerly feminine, tender and soft and clinging, with the smouldering
passion of the mate and the motherliness of the woman.  But this side of
her nature had lain dormant through the years, waiting for the mate to
appear.

Then Joe came into Silverstein's shop one hot Saturday afternoon to cool
himself with ice-cream soda.  She had not noticed his entrance, being
busy with one other customer, an urchin of six or seven who gravely
analyzed his desires before the show-case wherein truly generous and
marvellous candy creations reposed under a cardboard announcement, "Five
for Five Cents."

She had heard, "Ice-cream soda, please," and had herself asked, "What
flavor?" without seeing his face.  For that matter, it was not a custom
of hers to notice young men.  There was something about them she did not
understand.  The way they looked at her made her uncomfortable, she knew
not why; while there was an uncouthness and roughness about them that did
not please her.  As yet, her imagination had been untouched by man.  The
young fellows she had seen had held no lure for her, had been without
meaning to her.  In short, had she been asked to give one reason for the
existence of men on the earth, she would have been nonplussed for a
reply.

As she emptied the measure of ice-cream into the glass, her casual glance
rested on Joe's face, and she experienced on the instant a pleasant
feeling of satisfaction.  The next instant his eyes were upon her face,
her eyes had dropped, and she was turning away toward the soda fountain.
But at the fountain, filling the glass, she was impelled to look at him
again--but for no more than an instant, for this time she found his eyes
already upon her, waiting to meet hers, while on his face was a frankness
of interest that caused her quickly to look away.

That such pleasingness would reside for her in any man astonished her.
"What a pretty boy," she thought to herself, innocently and instinctively
trying to ward off the power to hold and draw her that lay behind the
mere prettiness.  "Besides, he isn't pretty," she thought, as she placed
the glass before him, received the silver dime in payment, and for the
third time looked into his eyes.  Her vocabulary was limited, and she
knew little of the worth of words; but the strong masculinity of his
boy's face told her that the term was inappropriate.

"He must be handsome, then," was her next thought, as she again dropped
her eyes before his.  But all good-looking men were called handsome, and
that term, too, displeased her.  But whatever it was, he was good to see,
and she was irritably aware of a desire to look at him again and again.

As for Joe, he had never seen anything like this girl across the counter.
While he was wiser in natural philosophy than she, and could have given
immediately the reason for woman's existence on the earth, nevertheless
woman had no part in his cosmos.  His imagination was as untouched by
woman as the girl's was by man.  But his imagination was touched now, and
the woman was Genevieve.  He had never dreamed a girl could be so
beautiful, and he could not keep his eyes from her face.  Yet every time
he looked at her, and her eyes met his, he felt painful embarrassment,
and would have looked away had not her eyes dropped so quickly.

But when, at last, she slowly lifted her eyes and held their gaze
steadily, it was his own eyes that dropped, his own cheek that mantled
red.  She was much less embarrassed than he, while she betrayed her
embarrassment not at all.  She was aware of a flutter within, such as she
had never known before, but in no way did it disturb her outward
serenity.  Joe, on the contrary, was obviously awkward and delightfully
miserable.

Neither knew love, and all that either was aware was an overwhelming
desire to look at the other.  Both had been troubled and roused, and they
were drawing together with the sharpness and imperativeness of uniting
elements.  He toyed with his spoon, and flushed his embarrassment over
his soda, but lingered on; and she spoke softly, dropped her eyes, and
wove her witchery about him.

But he could not linger forever over a glass of ice-cream soda, while he
did not dare ask for a second glass.  So he left her to remain in the
shop in a waking trance, and went away himself down the street like a
somnambulist.  Genevieve dreamed through the afternoon and knew that she
was in love.  Not so with Joe.  He knew only that he wanted to look at
her again, to see her face.  His thoughts did not get beyond this, and
besides, it was scarcely a thought, being more a dim and inarticulate
desire.

The urge of this desire he could not escape.  Day after day it worried
him, and the candy shop and the girl behind the counter continually
obtruded themselves.  He fought off the desire.  He was afraid and
ashamed to go back to the candy shop.  He solaced his fear with, "I ain't
a ladies' man."  Not once, nor twice, but scores of times, he muttered
the thought to himself, but it did no good.  And by the middle of the
week, in the evening, after work, he came into the shop.  He tried to
come in carelessly and casually, but his whole carriage advertised the
strong effort of will that compelled his legs to carry his reluctant body
thither.  Also, he was shy, and awkwarder than ever.  Genevieve, on the
contrary, was serener than ever, though fluttering most alarmingly
within.  He was incapable of speech, mumbled his order, looked anxiously
at the clock, despatched his ice-cream soda in tremendous haste, and was
gone.

She was ready to weep with vexation.  Such meagre reward for four days'
waiting, and assuming all the time that she loved!  He was a nice boy and
all that, she knew, but he needn't have been in so disgraceful a hurry.
But Joe had not reached the corner before he wanted to be back with her
again.  He just wanted to look at her.  He had no thought that it was
love.  Love?  That was when young fellows and girls walked out together.
As for him--And then his desire took sharper shape, and he discovered
that that was the very thing he wanted her to do.  He wanted to see her,
to look at her, and well could he do all this if she but walked out with
him.  Then that was why the young fellows and girls walked out together,
he mused, as the week-end drew near.  He had remotely considered this
walking out to be a mere form or observance preliminary to matrimony.  Now
he saw the deeper wisdom in it, wanted it himself, and concluded
therefrom that he was in love.

Both were now of the same mind, and there could be but the one ending;
and it was the mild nine days' wonder of Genevieve's neighborhood when
she and Joe walked out together.

Both were blessed with an avarice of speech, and because of it their
courtship was a long one.  As he expressed himself in action, she
expressed herself in repose and control, and by the love-light in her
eyes--though this latter she would have suppressed in all maiden modesty
had she been conscious of the speech her heart printed so plainly there.
"Dear" and "darling" were too terribly intimate for them to achieve
quickly; and, unlike most mating couples, they did not overwork the love-
words.  For a long time they were content to walk together in the
evenings, or to sit side by side on a bench in the park, neither uttering
a word for an hour at a time, merely gazing into each other's eyes, too
faintly luminous in the starshine to be a cause for self-consciousness
and embarrassment.

He was as chivalrous and delicate in his attention as any knight to his
lady.  When they walked along the street, he was careful to be on the
outside,--somewhere he had heard that this was the proper thing to
do,--and when a crossing to the opposite side of the street put him on
the inside, he swiftly side-stepped behind her to gain the outside again.
He carried her parcels for her, and once, when rain threatened, her
umbrella.  He had never heard of the custom of sending flowers to one's
lady-love, so he sent Genevieve fruit instead.  There was utility in
fruit.  It was good to eat.  Flowers never entered his mind, until, one
day, he noticed a pale rose in her hair.  It drew his gaze again and
again.  It was _her_ hair, therefore the presence of the flower
interested him.  Again, it interested him because _she_ had chosen to put
it there.  For these reasons he was led to observe the rose more closely.
He discovered that the effect in itself was beautiful, and it fascinated
him.  His ingenuous delight in it was a delight to her, and a new and
mutual love-thrill was theirs--because of a flower.  Straightway he
became a lover of flowers.  Also, he became an inventor in gallantry.  He
sent her a bunch of violets.  The idea was his own.  He had never heard
of a man sending flowers to a woman.  Flowers were used for decorative
purposes, also for funerals.  He sent Genevieve flowers nearly every day,
and so far as he was concerned the idea was original, as positive an
invention as ever arose in the mind of man.

He was tremulous in his devotion to her--as tremulous as was she in her
reception of him.  She was all that was pure and good, a holy of holies
not lightly to be profaned even by what might possibly be the too ardent
reverence of a devotee.  She was a being wholly different from any he had
ever known.  She was not as other girls.  It never entered his head that
she was of the same clay as his own sisters, or anybody's sister.  She
was more than mere girl, than mere woman.  She was--well, she was
Genevieve, a being of a class by herself, nothing less than a miracle of
creation.

And for her, in turn, there was in him but little less of illusion.  Her
judgment of him in minor things might be critical (while his judgment of
her was sheer worship, and had in it nothing critical at all); but in her
judgment of him as a whole she forgot the sum of the parts, and knew him
only as a creature of wonder, who gave meaning to life, and for whom she
could die as willingly as she could live.  She often beguiled her waking
dreams of him with fancied situations, wherein, dying for him, she at
last adequately expressed the love she felt for him, and which, living,
she knew she could never fully express.

Their love was all fire and dew.  The physical scarcely entered into it,
for such seemed profanation.  The ultimate physical facts of their
relation were something which they never considered.  Yet the immediate
physical facts they knew, the immediate yearnings and raptures of the
flesh--the touch of finger tips on hand or arm, the momentary pressure of
a hand-clasp, the rare lip-caress of a kiss, the tingling thrill of her
hair upon his cheek, of her hand lightly thrusting back the locks from
above his eyes.  All this they knew, but also, and they knew not why,
there seemed a hint of sin about these caresses and sweet bodily
contacts.

There were times when she felt impelled to throw her arms around him in a
very abandonment of love, but always some sanctity restrained her.  At
such moments she was distinctly and unpleasantly aware of some unguessed
sin that lurked within her.  It was wrong, undoubtedly wrong, that she
should wish to caress her lover in so unbecoming a fashion.  No
self-respecting girl could dream of doing such a thing.  It was
unwomanly.  Besides, if she had done it, what would he have thought of
it?  And while she contemplated so horrible a catastrophe, she seemed to
shrivel and wilt in a furnace of secret shame.

Nor did Joe escape the prick of curious desires, chiefest among which,
perhaps, was the desire to hurt Genevieve.  When, after long and tortuous
degrees, he had achieved the bliss of putting his arm round her waist, he
felt spasmodic impulses to make the embrace crushing, till she should cry
out with the hurt.  It was not his nature to wish to hurt any living
thing.  Even in the ring, to hurt was never the intention of any blow he
struck.  In such case he played the Game, and the goal of the Game was to
down an antagonist and keep that antagonist down for a space of ten
seconds.  So he never struck merely to hurt; the hurt was incidental to
the end, and the end was quite another matter.  And yet here, with this
girl he loved, came the desire to hurt.  Why, when with thumb and
forefinger he had ringed her wrist, he should desire to contract that
ring till it crushed, was beyond him.  He could not understand, and felt
that he was discovering depths of brutality in his nature of which he had
never dreamed.

Once, on parting, he threw his arms around her and swiftly drew her
against him.  Her gasping cry of surprise and pain brought him to his
senses and left him there very much embarrassed and still trembling with
a vague and nameless delight.  And she, too, was trembling.  In the hurt
itself, which was the essence of the vigorous embrace, she had found
delight; and again she knew sin, though she knew not its nature nor why
it should be sin.

Came the day, very early in their walking out, when Silverstein chanced
upon Joe in his store and stared at him with saucer-eyes.  Came likewise
the scene, after Joe had departed, when the maternal feelings of Mrs.
Silverstein found vent in a diatribe against all prize-fighters and
against Joe Fleming in particular.  Vainly had Silverstein striven to
stay the spouse's wrath.  There was need for her wrath.  All the maternal
feelings were hers but none of the maternal rights.

Genevieve was aware only of the diatribe; she knew a flood of abuse was
pouring from the lips of the Jewess, but she was too stunned to hear the
details of the abuse.  Joe, her Joe, was Joe Fleming the prize-fighter.
It was abhorrent, impossible, too grotesque to be believable.  Her clear-
eyed, girl-cheeked Joe might be anything but a prize-fighter.  She had
never seen one, but he in no way resembled her conception of what a prize-
fighter must be--the human brute with tiger eyes and a streak for a
forehead.  Of course she had heard of Joe Fleming--who in West Oakland
had not?--but that there should be anything more than a coincidence of
names had never crossed her mind.

She came out of her daze to hear Mrs. Silverstein's hysterical sneer,
"keepin' company vit a bruiser."  Next, Silverstein and his wife fell to
differing on "noted" and "notorious" as applicable to her lover.

"But he iss a good boy," Silverstein was contending.  "He make der money,
an' he safe der money."

"You tell me dat!" Mrs. Silverstein screamed.  "Vat you know?  You know
too much.  You spend good money on der prize-fighters.  How you know?
Tell me dat!  How you know?"

"I know vat I know," Silverstein held on sturdily--a thing Genevieve had
never before seen him do when his wife was in her tantrums.  "His fader
die, he go to work in Hansen's sail-loft.  He haf six brudders an'
sisters younger as he iss.  He iss der liddle fader.  He vork hard, all
der time.  He buy der pread an' der meat, an' pay der rent.  On Saturday
night he bring home ten dollar.  Den Hansen gif him twelve dollar--vat he
do?  He iss der liddle fader, he bring it home to der mudder.  He vork
all der time, he get twenty dollar--vat he do?  He bring it home.  Der
liddle brudders an' sisters go to school, vear good clothes, haf better
pread an' meat; der mudder lif fat, dere iss joy in der eye, an' she iss
proud of her good boy Joe.

"But he haf der beautiful body--ach, Gott, der beautiful body!--stronger
as der ox, k-vicker as der tiger-cat, der head cooler as der ice-box, der
eyes vat see eferytings, k-vick, just like dat.  He put on der gloves vit
der boys at Hansen's loft, he put on der gloves vit de boys at der
varehouse.  He go before der club; he knock out der Spider, k-vick, one
punch, just like dat, der first time.  Der purse iss five dollar--vat he
do?  He bring it home to der mudder.

"He go many times before der clubs; he get many purses--ten dollar, fifty
dollar, one hundred dollar.  Vat he do?  Tell me dat!  Quit der job at
Hansen's?  Haf der good time vit der boys?  No, no; he iss der good boy.
He vork efery day.  He fight at night before der clubs.  He say, 'Vat for
I pay der rent, Silverstein?'--to me, Silverstein, he say dat.  Nefer
mind vat I say, but he buy der good house for der mudder.  All der time
he vork at Hansen's and fight before der clubs to pay for der house.  He
buy der piano for der sisters, der carpets, der pictures on der vall.  An'
he iss all der time straight.  He bet on himself--dat iss der good sign.
Ven der man bets on himself dat is der time you bet too--"

Here Mrs. Silverstein groaned her horror of gambling, and her husband,
aware that his eloquence had betrayed him, collapsed into voluble
assurances that he was ahead of the game.  "An' all because of Joe
Fleming," he concluded.  "I back him efery time to vin."

But Genevieve and Joe were preeminently mated, and nothing, not even this
terrible discovery, could keep them apart.  In vain Genevieve tried to
steel herself against him; but she fought herself, not him.  To her
surprise she discovered a thousand excuses for him, found him lovable as
ever; and she entered into his life to be his destiny, and to control him
after the way of women.  She saw his future and hers through glowing
vistas of reform, and her first great deed was when she wrung from him
his promise to cease fighting.

And he, after the way of men, pursuing the dream of love and striving for
possession of the precious and deathless object of desire, had yielded.
And yet, in the very moment of promising her, he knew vaguely, deep down,
that he could never abandon the Game; that somewhere, sometime, in the
future, he must go back to it.  And he had had a swift vision of his
mother and brothers and sisters, their multitudinous wants, the house
with its painting and repairing, its street assessments and taxes, and of
the coming of children to him and Genevieve, and of his own daily wage in
the sail-making loft.  But the next moment the vision was dismissed, as
such warnings are always dismissed, and he saw before him only Genevieve,
and he knew only his hunger for her and the call of his being to her; and
he accepted calmly her calm assumption of his life and actions.

He was twenty, she was eighteen, boy and girl, the pair of them, and made
for progeny, healthy and normal, with steady blood pounding through their
bodies; and wherever they went together, even on Sunday outings across
the bay amongst people who did not know him, eyes were continually drawn
to them.  He matched her girl's beauty with his boy's beauty, her grace
with his strength, her delicacy of line and fibre with the harsher vigor
and muscle of the male.  Frank-faced, fresh-colored, almost ingenuous in
expression, eyes blue and wide apart, he drew and held the gaze of more
than one woman far above him in the social scale.  Of such glances and
dim maternal promptings he was quite unconscious, though Genevieve was
quick to see and understand; and she knew each time the pang of a fierce
joy in that he was hers and that she held him in the hollow of her hand.
He did see, however, and rather resented, the men's glances drawn by her.
These, too, she saw and understood as he did not dream of understanding.



CHAPTER III


Genevieve slipped on a pair of Joe's shoes, light-soled and dapper, and
laughed with Lottie, who stooped to turn up the trousers for her.  Lottie
was his sister, and in the secret.  To her was due the inveigling of his
mother into making a neighborhood call so that they could have the house
to themselves.  They went down into the kitchen where Joe was waiting.
His face brightened as he came to meet her, love shining frankly forth.

"Now get up those skirts, Lottie," he commanded.  "Haven't any time to
waste.  There, that'll do.  You see, you only want the bottoms of the
pants to show.  The coat will cover the rest.  Now let's see how it'll
fit.

"Borrowed it from Chris; he's a dead sporty sport--little, but oh, my!"
he went on, helping Genevieve into an overcoat which fell to her heels
and which fitted her as a tailor-made overcoat should fit the man for
whom it is made.

Joe put a cap on her head and turned up the collar, which was generous to
exaggeration, meeting the cap and completely hiding her hair.  When he
buttoned the collar in front, its points served to cover the cheeks, chin
and mouth were buried in its depths, and a close scrutiny revealed only
shadowy eyes and a little less shadowy nose.  She walked across the room,
the bottom of the trousers just showing as the bang of the coat was
disturbed by movement.

"A sport with a cold and afraid of catching more, all right all right,"
the boy laughed, proudly surveying his handiwork.  "How much money you
got?  I'm layin' ten to six.  Will you take the short end?"

"Who's short?" she asked.

"Ponta, of course," Lottie blurted out her hurt, as though there could be
any question of it even for an instant.

"Of course," Genevieve said sweetly, "only I don't know much about such
things."

This time Lottie kept her lips together, but the new hurt showed on her
face.  Joe looked at his watch and said it was time to go.  His sister's
arms went about his neck, and she kissed him soundly on the lips.  She
kissed Genevieve, too, and saw them to the gate, one arm of her brother
about her waist.

"What does ten to six mean?" Genevieve asked, the while their footfalls
rang out on the frosty air.

"That I'm the long end, the favorite," he answered.  "That a man bets ten
dollars at the ring side that I win against six dollars another man is
betting that I lose."

"But if you're the favorite and everybody thinks you'll win, how does
anybody bet against you?"

"That's what makes prize-fighting--difference of opinion," he laughed.
"Besides, there's always the chance of a lucky punch, an accident.  Lots
of chance," he said gravely.

She shrank against him, clingingly and protectingly, and he laughed with
surety.

"You wait, and you'll see.  An' don't get scared at the start.  The first
few rounds'll be something fierce.  That's Ponta's strong point.  He's a
wild man, with an kinds of punches,--a whirlwind,--and he gets his man in
the first rounds.  He's put away a whole lot of cleverer and better men
than him.  It's up to me to live through it, that's all.  Then he'll be
all in.  Then I go after him, just watch.  You'll know when I go after
him, an' I'll get'm, too."

They came to the hall, on a dark street-corner, ostensibly the quarters
of an athletic club, but in reality an institution designed for pulling
off fights and keeping within the police ordinance.  Joe drew away from
her, and they walked apart to the entrance.

"Keep your hands in your pockets whatever you do," Joe warned her, "and
it'll be all right.  Only a couple of minutes of it."

"He's with me," Joe said to the door-keeper, who was talking with a
policeman.

Both men greeted him familiarly, taking no notice of his companion.

"They never tumbled; nobody'll tumble," Joe assured her, as they climbed
the stairs to the second story.  "And even if they did, they wouldn't
know who it was and they's keep it mum for me.  Here, come in here!"

He whisked her into a little office-like room and left her seated on a
dusty, broken-bottomed chair.  A few minutes later he was back again,
clad in a long bath robe, canvas shoes on his feet.  She began to tremble
against him, and his arm passed gently around her.

"It'll be all right, Genevieve," he said encouragingly.  "I've got it all
fixed.  Nobody'll tumble."

"It's you, Joe," she said.  "I don't care for myself.  It's you."

"Don't care for yourself!  But that's what I thought you were afraid of!"

He looked at her in amazement, the wonder of woman bursting upon him in a
more transcendent glory than ever, and he had seen much of the wonder of
woman in Genevieve.  He was speechless for a moment, and then stammered:--

"You mean me?  And you don't care what people think? or anything?--or
anything?"

A sharp double knock at the door, and a sharper "Get a move on yerself,
Joe!" brought him back to immediate things.

"Quick, one last kiss, Genevieve," he whispered, almost holily.  "It's my
last fight, an' I'll fight as never before with you lookin' at me."

The next she knew, the pressure of his lips yet warm on hers, she was in
a group of jostling young fellows, none of whom seemed to take the
slightest notice of her.  Several had their coats off and their shirt
sleeves rolled up.  They entered the hall from the rear, still keeping
the casual formation of the group, and moved slowly up a side aisle.

It was a crowded, ill-lighted hall, barn-like in its proportions, and the
smoke-laden air gave a peculiar distortion to everything.  She felt as
though she would stifle.  There were shrill cries of boys selling
programmes and soda water, and there was a great bass rumble of masculine
voices.  She heard a voice offering ten to six on Joe Fleming.  The
utterance was monotonous--hopeless, it seemed to her, and she felt a
quick thrill.  It was her Joe against whom everybody was to bet.

And she felt other thrills.  Her blood was touched, as by fire, with
romance, adventure--the unknown, the mysterious, the terrible--as she
penetrated this haunt of men where women came not.  And there were other
thrills.  It was the only time in her life she had dared the rash thing.
For the first time she was overstepping the bounds laid down by that
harshest of tyrants, the Mrs. Grundy of the working class.  She felt
fear, and for herself, though the moment before she had been thinking
only of Joe.

Before she knew it, the front of the hall had been reached, and she had
gone up half a dozen steps into a small dressing-room.  This was crowded
to suffocation--by men who played the Game, she concluded, in one
capacity or another.  And here she lost Joe.  But before the real
personal fright could soundly clutch her, one of the young fellows said
gruffly, "Come along with me, you," and as she wedged out at his heels
she noticed that another one of the escort was following her.

They came upon a sort of stage, which accommodated three rows of men; and
she caught her first glimpse of the squared ring.  She was on a level
with it, and so near that she could have reached out and touched its
ropes.  She noticed that it was covered with padded canvas.  Beyond the
ring, and on either side, as in a fog, she could see the crowded house.

The dressing-room she had left abutted upon one corner of the ring.
Squeezing her way after her guide through the seated men, she crossed the
end of the hall and entered a similar dressing-room at the other corner
of the ring.

"Now don't make a noise, and stay here till I come for you," instructed
her guide, pointing out a peep-hole arrangement in the wall of the room.



CHAPTER IV


She hurried to the peep-hole, and found herself against the ring.  She
could see the whole of it, though part of the audience was shut off.  The
ring was well lighted by an overhead cluster of patent gas-burners.  The
front row of the men she had squeezed past, because of their paper and
pencils, she decided to be reporters from the local papers up-town.  One
of them was chewing gum.  Behind them, on the other two rows of seats,
she could make out firemen from the near-by engine-house and several
policemen in uniform.  In the middle of the front row, flanked by the
reporters, sat the young chief of police.  She was startled by catching
sight of Mr. Clausen on the opposite side of the ring.  There he sat,
austere, side-whiskered, pink and white, close up against the front of
the ring.  Several seats farther on, in the same front row, she
discovered Silverstein, his weazen features glowing with anticipation.

A few cheers heralded the advent of several young fellows, in
shirt-sleeves, carrying buckets, bottles, and towels, who crawled through
the ropes and crossed to the diagonal corner from her.  One of them sat
down on a stool and leaned back against the ropes.  She saw that he was
bare-legged, with canvas shoes on his feet, and that his body was swathed
in a heavy white sweater.  In the meantime another group had occupied the
corner directly against her.  Louder cheers drew her attention to it, and
she saw Joe seated on a stool still clad in the bath robe, his short
chestnut curls within a yard of her eyes.

A young man, in a black suit, with a mop of hair and a preposterously
tall starched collar, walked to the centre of the ring and held up his
hand.

"Gentlemen will please stop smoking," he said.

His effort was applauded by groans and cat-calls, and she noticed with
indignation that nobody stopped smoking.  Mr. Clausen held a burning
match in his fingers while the announcement was being made, and then
calmly lighted his cigar.  She felt that she hated him in that moment.
How was her Joe to fight in such an atmosphere?  She could scarcely
breathe herself, and she was only sitting down.

The announcer came over to Joe.  He stood up.  His bath robe fell away
from him, and he stepped forth to the centre of the ring, naked save for
the low canvas shoes and a narrow hip-cloth of white.  Genevieve's eyes
dropped.  She sat alone, with none to see, but her face was burning with
shame at sight of the beautiful nakedness of her lover.  But she looked
again, guiltily, for the joy that was hers in beholding what she knew
must be sinful to behold.  The leap of something within her and the stir
of her being toward him must be sinful.  But it was delicious sin, and
she did not deny her eyes.  In vain Mrs. Grundy admonished her.  The
pagan in her, original sin, and all nature urged her on.  The mothers of
all the past were whispering through her, and there was a clamour of the
children unborn.  But of this she knew nothing.  She knew only that it
was sin, and she lifted her head proudly, recklessly resolved, in one
great surge of revolt, to sin to the uttermost.

She had never dreamed of the form under the clothes.  The form, beyond
the hands and the face, had no part in her mental processes.  A child of
garmented civilization, the garment was to her the form.  The race of men
was to her a race of garmented bipeds, with hands and faces and
hair-covered heads.  When she thought of Joe, the Joe instantly
visualized on her mind was a clothed Joe--girl-cheeked, blue-eyed, curly-
headed, but clothed.  And there he stood, all but naked, godlike, in a
white blaze of light.  She had never conceived of the form of God except
as nebulously naked, and the thought-association was startling.  It
seemed to her that her sin partook of sacrilege or blasphemy.

Her chromo-trained aesthetic sense exceeded its education and told her
that here were beauty and wonder.  She had always liked the physical
presentment of Joe, but it was a presentment of clothes, and she had
thought the pleasingness of it due to the neatness and taste with which
he dressed.  She had never dreamed that this lurked beneath.  It dazzled
her.  His skin was fair as a woman's, far more satiny, and no rudimentary
hair-growth marred its white lustre.  This she perceived, but all the
rest, the perfection of line and strength and development, gave pleasure
without her knowing why.  There was a cleanness and grace about it.  His
face was like a cameo, and his lips, parted in a smile, made it very
boyish.

He smiled as he faced the audience, when the announcer, placing a hand on
his shoulder, said: "Joe Fleming, the Pride of West Oakland."

Cheers and hand-clappings stormed up, and she heard affectionate cries of
"Oh, you, Joe!"  Men shouted it at him again and again.

He walked back to his corner.  Never to her did he seem less a fighter
than then.  His eyes were too mild; there was not a spark of the beast in
them, nor in his face, while his body seemed too fragile, what of its
fairness and smoothness, and his face too boyish and sweet-tempered and
intelligent.  She did not have the expert's eye for the depth of chest,
the wide nostrils, the recuperative lungs, and the muscles under their
satin sheaths--crypts of energy wherein lurked the chemistry of
destruction.  To her he looked like a something of Dresden china, to be
handled gently and with care, liable to be shattered to fragments by the
first rough touch.

John Ponta, stripped of his white sweater by the pulling and hauling of
two of his seconds, came to the centre of the ring.  She knew terror as
she looked at him.  Here was the fighter--the beast with a streak for a
forehead, with beady eyes under lowering and bushy brows, flat-nosed,
thick-lipped, sullen-mouthed.  He was heavy-jawed, bull-necked, and the
short, straight hair of the head seemed to her frightened eyes the stiff
bristles on a hog's back.  Here were coarseness and brutishness--a thing
savage, primordial, ferocious.  He was swarthy to blackness, and his body
was covered with a hairy growth that matted like a dog's on his chest and
shoulders.  He was deep-chested, thick-legged, large-muscled, but
unshapely.  His muscles were knots, and he was gnarled and knobby,
twisted out of beauty by excess of strength.

"John Ponta, West Bay Athletic Club," said the announcer.

A much smaller volume of cheers greeted him.  It was evident that the
crowd favored Joe with its sympathy.

"Go in an' eat 'm, Ponta!  Eat 'm up!" a voice shouted in the lull.

This was received by scornful cries and groans.  He did not like it, for
his sullen mouth twisted into a half-snarl as he went back to his corner.
He was too decided an atavism to draw the crowd's admiration.
Instinctively the crowd disliked him.  He was an animal, lacking in
intelligence and spirit, a menace and a thing of fear, as the tiger and
the snake are menaces and things of fear, better behind the bars of a
cage than running free in the open.

And he felt that the crowd had no relish for him.  He was like an animal
in the circle of its enemies, and he turned and glared at them with
malignant eyes.  Little Silverstein, shouting out Joe's name with high
glee, shrank away from Ponta's gaze, shrivelled as in fierce heat, the
sound gurgling and dying in his throat.  Genevieve saw the little
by-play, and as Ponta's eyes slowly swept round the circle of their hate
and met hers, she, too, shrivelled and shrank back.  The next moment they
were past, pausing to centre long on Joe.  It seemed to her that Ponta
was working himself into a rage.  Joe returned the gaze with mild boy's
eyes, but his face grew serious.

The announcer escorted a third man to the centre of the ring, a genial-
faced young fellow in shirt-sleeves.

"Eddy Jones, who will referee this contest," said the announcer.

"Oh, you, Eddy!" men shouted in the midst of the applause, and it was
apparent to Genevieve that he, too, was well beloved.

Both men were being helped into the gloves by their seconds, and one of
Ponta's seconds came over and examined the gloves before they went on
Joe's hands.  The referee called them to the centre of the ring.  The
seconds followed, and they made quite a group, Joe and Ponta facing each
other, the referee in the middle, the seconds leaning with hands on one
another's shoulders, their heads craned forward.  The referee was
talking, and all listened attentively.

The group broke up.  Again the announcer came to the front.

"Joe Fleming fights at one hundred and twenty-eight," he said; "John
Ponta at one hundred and forty.  They will fight as long as one hand is
free, and take care of themselves in the breakaway.  The audience must
remember that a decision must be given.  There are no draws fought before
this club."

He crawled through the ropes and dropped from the ring to the floor.
There was a scuttling in the corners as the seconds cleared out through
the ropes, taking with them the stools and buckets.  Only remained in the
ring the two fighters and the referee.  A gong sounded.  The two men
advanced rapidly to the centre.  Their right hands extended and for a
fraction of an instant met in a perfunctory shake.  Then Ponta lashed
out, savagely, right and left, and Joe escaped by springing back.  Like a
projectile, Ponta hurled himself after him and upon him.

The fight was on.  Genevieve clutched one hand to her breast and watched.
She was bewildered by the swiftness and savagery of Ponta's assault, and
by the multitude of blows he struck.  She felt that Joe was surely being
destroyed.  At times she could not see his face, so obscured was it by
the flying gloves.  But she could hear the resounding blows, and with the
sound of each blow she felt a sickening sensation in the pit of her
stomach.  She did not know that what she heard was the impact of glove on
glove, or glove on shoulder, and that no damage was being done.

She was suddenly aware that a change had come over the fight.  Both men
were clutching each other in a tense embrace; no blows were being struck
at all.  She recognized it to be what Joe had described to her as the
"clinch."  Ponta was struggling to free himself, Joe was holding on.

The referee shouted, "Break!"  Joe made an effort to get away, but Ponta
got one hand free and Joe rushed back into a second clinch, to escape the
blow.  But this time, she noticed, the heel of his glove was pressed
against Ponta's mouth and chin, and at the second "Break!" of the
referee, Joe shoved his opponent's head back and sprang clear himself.

For a brief several seconds she had an unobstructed view of her lover.
Left foot a trifle advanced, knees slightly bent, he was crouching, with
his head drawn well down between his shoulders and shielded by them.  His
hands were in position before him, ready either to attack or defend.  The
muscles of his body were tense, and as he moved about she could see them
bunch up and writhe and crawl like live things under the white skin.

But again Ponta was upon him and he was struggling to live.  He crouched
a bit more, drew his body more compactly together, and covered up with
his hands, elbows, and forearms.  Blows rained upon him, and it looked to
her as though he were being beaten to death.

But he was receiving the blows on his gloves and shoulders, rocking back
and forth to the force of them like a tree in a storm, while the house
cheered its delight.  It was not until she understood this applause, and
saw Silverstein half out of his seat and intensely, madly happy, and
heard the "Oh, you, Joe's!" from many throats, that she realized that
instead of being cruelly punished he was acquitting himself well.  Then
he would emerge for a moment, again to be enveloped and hidden in the
whirlwind of Ponta's ferocity.



CHAPTER V


The gong sounded.  It seemed they had been fighting half an hour, though
from what Joe had told her she knew it had been only three minutes.  With
the crash of the gong Joe's seconds were through the ropes and running
him into his corner for the blessed minute of rest.  One man, squatting
on the floor between his outstretched feet and elevating them by resting
them on his knees, was violently chafing his legs.  Joe sat on the stool,
leaning far back into the corner, head thrown back and arms outstretched
on the ropes to give easy expansion to the chest.  With wide-open mouth
he was breathing the towel-driven air furnished by two of the seconds,
while listening to the counsel of still another second who talked with
low voice in his ear and at the same time sponged off his face,
shoulders, and chest.

Hardly had all this been accomplished (it had taken no more than several
seconds), when the gong sounded, the seconds scuttled through the ropes
with their paraphernalia, and Joe and Ponta were advancing against each
other to the centre of the ring.  Genevieve had no idea that a minute
could be so short.  For a moment she felt that this rest had been cut,
and was suspicious of she knew not what.

Ponta lashed out, right and left, savagely as ever, and though Joe
blocked the blows, such was the force of them that he was knocked
backward several steps.  Ponta was after him with the spring of a tiger.
In the involuntary effort to maintain equilibrium, Joe had uncovered
himself, flinging one arm out and lifting his head from beneath the
sheltering shoulders.  So swiftly had Ponta followed him, that a terrible
swinging blow was coming at his unguarded jaw.  He ducked forward and
down, Ponta's fist just missing the back of his head.  As he came back to
the perpendicular, Ponta's left fist drove at him in a straight punch
that would have knocked him backward through the ropes.  Again, and with
a swiftness an inappreciable fraction of time quicker than Ponta's, he
ducked forward.  Ponta's fist grazed the backward slope of the shoulder,
and glanced off into the air.  Ponta's right drove straight out, and the
graze was repeated as Joe ducked into the safety of a clinch.

Genevieve sighed with relief, her tense body relaxing and a faintness
coming over her.  The crowd was cheering madly.  Silverstein was on his
feet, shouting, gesticulating, completely out of himself.  And even Mr.
Clausen was yelling his enthusiasm, at the top of his lungs, into the ear
of his nearest neighbor.

The clinch was broken and the fight went on.  Joe blocked, and backed,
and slid around the ring, avoiding blows and living somehow through the
whirlwind onslaughts.  Rarely did he strike blows himself, for Ponta had
a quick eye and could defend as well as attack, while Joe had no chance
against the other's enormous vitality.  His hope lay in that Ponta
himself should ultimately consume his strength.

But Genevieve was beginning to wonder why her lover did not fight.  She
grew angry.  She wanted to see him wreak vengeance on this beast that had
persecuted him so.  Even as she waxed impatient, the chance came, and Joe
whipped his fist to Ponta's mouth.  It was a staggering blow.  She saw
Ponta's head go back with a jerk and the quick dye of blood upon his
lips.  The blow, and the great shout from the audience, angered him.  He
rushed like a wild man.  The fury of his previous assaults was as nothing
compared with the fury of this one.  And there was no more opportunity
for another blow.  Joe was too busy living through the storm he had
already caused, blocking, covering up, and ducking into the safety and
respite of the clinches.

But the clinch was not all safety and respite.  Every instant of it was
intense watchfulness, while the breakaway was still more dangerous.
Genevieve had noticed, with a slight touch of amusement, the curious way
in which Joe snuggled his body in against Ponta's in the clinches; but
she had not realized why, until, in one such clinch, before the snuggling
in could be effected, Ponta's fist whipped straight up in the air from
under, and missed Joe's chin by a hair's-breadth.  In another and later
clinch, when she had already relaxed and sighed her relief at seeing him
safely snuggled, Ponta, his chin over Joe's shoulder, lifted his right
arm and struck a terrible downward blow on the small of the back.  The
crowd groaned its apprehension, while Joe quickly locked his opponent's
arms to prevent a repetition of the blow.

The gong struck, and after the fleeting minute of rest, they went at it
again--in Joe's corner, for Ponta had made a rush to meet him clear
across the ring.  Where the blow had been over the kidneys, the white
skin had become bright red.  This splash of color, the size of the glove,
fascinated and frightened Genevieve so that she could scarcely take her
eyes from it.  Promptly, in the next clinch, the blow was repeated; but
after that Joe usually managed to give Ponta the heel of the glove on the
mouth and so hold his head back.  This prevented the striking of the
blow; but three times more, before the round ended, Ponta effected the
trick, each time striking the same vulnerable part.

Another rest and another round went by, with no further damage to Joe and
no diminution of strength on the part of Ponta.  But in the beginning of
the fifth round, Joe, caught in a corner, made as though to duck into a
clinch.  Just before it was effected, and at the precise moment that
Ponta was ready with his own body to receive the snuggling in of Joe's
body, Joe drew back slightly and drove with his fists at his opponent's
unprotected stomach.  Lightning-like blows they were, four of them, right
and left; and heavy they were, for Ponta winced away from them and
staggered back, half dropping his arms, his shoulders drooping forward
and in, as though he were about to double in at the waist and collapse.
Joe's quick eye saw the opening, and he smashed straight out upon Ponta's
mouth, following instantly with a half swing, half hook, for the jaw.  It
missed, striking the cheek instead, and sending Ponta staggering
sideways.

The house was on its feet, shouting, to a man.  Genevieve could hear men
crying, "He's got 'm, he's got 'm!" and it seemed to her the beginning of
the end.  She, too, was out of herself; softness and tenderness had
vanished; she exulted with each crushing blow her lover delivered.

But Ponta's vitality was yet to be reckoned with.  As, like a tiger, he
had followed Joe up, Joe now followed him up.  He made another half
swing, half hook, for Ponta's jaw, and Ponta, already recovering his wits
and strength, ducked cleanly.  Joe's fist passed on through empty air,
and so great was the momentum of the blow that it carried him around, in
a half twirl, sideways.  Then Ponta lashed out with his left.  His glove
landed on Joe's unguarded neck.  Genevieve saw her lover's arms drop to
his sides as his body lifted, went backward, and fell limply to the
floor.  The referee, bending over him, began to count the seconds,
emphasizing the passage of each second with a downward sweep of his right
arm.

The audience was still as death.  Ponta had partly turned to the house to
receive the approval that was his due, only to be met by this chill,
graveyard silence.  Quick wrath surged up in him.  It was unfair.  His
opponent only was applauded--if he struck a blow, if he escaped a blow;
he, Ponta, who had forced the fighting from the start, had received no
word of cheer.

His eyes blazed as he gathered himself together and sprang to his
prostrate foe.  He crouched alongside of him, right arm drawn back and
ready for a smashing blow the instant Joe should start to rise.  The
referee, still bending over and counting with his right hand, shoved
Ponta back with his left.  The latter, crouching, circled around, and the
referee circled with him, thrusting him back and keeping between him and
the fallen man.

"Four--five--six--" the count went on, and Joe, rolling over on his face,
squirmed weakly to draw himself to his knees.  This he succeeded in
doing, resting on one knee, a hand to the floor on either side and the
other leg bent under him to help him rise.  "Take the count!  Take the
count!" a dozen voices rang out from the audience.

"For God's sake, take the count!" one of Joe's seconds cried warningly
from the edge of the ring.  Genevieve gave him one swift glance, and saw
the young fellow's face, drawn and white, his lips unconsciously moving
as he kept the count with the referee.

"Seven--eight--nine--" the seconds went.

The ninth sounded and was gone, when the referee gave Ponta a last
backward shove and Joe came to his feet, bunched up, covered up, weak,
but cool, very cool.  Ponta hurled himself upon him with terrific force,
delivering an uppercut and a straight punch.  But Joe blocked the two,
ducked a third, stepped to the side to avoid a fourth, and was then
driven backward into a corner by a hurricane of blows.  He was
exceedingly weak.  He tottered as he kept his footing, and staggered back
and forth.  His back was against the ropes.  There was no further
retreat.  Ponta paused, as if to make doubly sure, then feinted with his
left and struck fiercely with his right with all his strength.  But Joe
ducked into a clinch and was for a moment saved.

Ponta struggled frantically to free himself.  He wanted to give the
finish to this foe already so far gone.  But Joe was holding on for life,
resisting the other's every effort, as fast as one hold or grip was torn
loose finding a new one by which to cling.  "Break!" the referee
commanded.  Joe held on tighter.  "Make 'm break!  Why the hell don't you
make 'm break?" Ponta panted at the referee.  Again the latter commanded
the break.  Joe refused, keeping, as he well knew, within his rights.
Each moment of the clinch his strength was coming back to him, his brain
was clearing, the cobwebs were disappearing from before his eyes.  The
round was young, and he must live, somehow, through the nearly three
minutes of it yet to run.

The referee clutched each by the shoulder and sundered them violently,
passing quickly between them as he thrust them backward in order to make
a clean break of it.  The moment he was free, Ponta sprang at Joe like a
wild animal bearing down its prey.  But Joe covered up, blocked, and fell
into a clinch.  Again Ponta struggled to get free, Joe held on, and the
referee thrust them apart.  And again Joe avoided damage and clinched.

Genevieve realized that in the clinches he was not being beaten--why,
then, did not the referee let him hold on?  It was cruel.  She hated the
genial-faced Eddy Jones in those moments, and she partly rose from her
chair, her hands clenched with anger, the nails cutting into the palms
till they hurt.  The rest of the round, the three long minutes of it, was
a succession of clinches and breaks.  Not once did Ponta succeed in
striking his opponent the deadly final blow.  And Ponta was like a
madman, raging because of his impotency in the face of his helpless and
all but vanquished foe.  One blow, only one blow, and he could not
deliver it!  Joe's ring experience and coolness saved him.  With shaken
consciousness and trembling body, he clutched and held on, while the
ebbing life turned and flooded up in him again.  Once, in his passion,
unable to hit him, Ponta made as though to lift him up and hurl him to
the floor.

"V'y don't you bite him?" Silverstein taunted shrilly.

In the stillness the sally was heard over the whole house, and the
audience, relieved of its anxiety for its favorite, laughed with an
uproariousness that had in it the note of hysteria.  Even Genevieve felt
that there was something irresistibly funny in the remark, and the relief
of the audience was communicated to her; yet she felt sick and faint, and
was overwrought with horror at what she had seen and was seeing.

"Bite 'm!  Bite 'm!" voices from the recovered audience were shouting.
"Chew his ear off, Ponta!  That's the only way you can get 'm!  Eat 'm
up!  Eat 'm up!  Oh, why don't you eat 'm up?"

The effect was bad on Ponta.  He became more frenzied than ever, and more
impotent.  He panted and sobbed, wasting his effort by too much effort,
losing sanity and control and futilely trying to compensate for the loss
by excess of physical endeavor.  He knew only the blind desire to
destroy, shook Joe in the clinches as a terrier might a rat, strained and
struggled for freedom of body and arms, and all the while Joe calmly
clutched and held on.  The referee worked manfully and fairly to separate
them.  Perspiration ran down his face.  It took all his strength to split
those clinging bodies, and no sooner had he split them than Joe fell
unharmed into another embrace and the work had to be done all over again.
In vain, when freed, did Ponta try to avoid the clutching arms and
twining body.  He could not keep away.  He had to come close in order to
strike, and each time Joe baffled him and caught him in his arms.

And Genevieve, crouched in the little dressing-room and peering through
the peep-hole, was baffled, too.  She was an interested party in what
seemed a death-struggle--was not one of the fighters her Joe?--but the
audience understood and she did not.  The Game had not unveiled to her.
The lure of it was beyond her.  It was greater mystery than ever.  She
could not comprehend its power.  What delight could there be for Joe in
that brutal surging and straining of bodies, those fierce clutches,
fiercer blows, and terrible hurts?  Surely, she, Genevieve, offered more
than that--rest, and content, and sweet, calm joy.  Her bid for the heart
of him and the soul of him was finer and more generous than the bid of
the Game; yet he dallied with both--held her in his arms, but turned his
head to listen to that other and siren call she could not understand.

The gong struck.  The round ended with a break in Ponta's corner.  The
white-faced young second was through the ropes with the first clash of
sound.  He seized Joe in his arms, lifted him clear of the floor, and ran
with him across the ring to his own corner.  His seconds worked over him
furiously, chafing his legs, slapping his abdomen, stretching the hip-
cloth out with their fingers so that he might breathe more easily.  For
the first time Genevieve saw the stomach-breathing of a man, an abdomen
that rose and fell far more with every breath than her breast rose and
fell after she had run for a car.  The pungency of ammonia bit her
nostrils, wafted to her from the soaked sponge wherefrom he breathed the
fiery fumes that cleared his brain.  He gargled his mouth and throat,
took a suck at a divided lemon, and all the while the towels worked like
mad, driving oxygen into his lungs to purge the pounding blood and send
it back revivified for the struggle yet to come.  His heated body was
sponged with water, doused with it, and bottles were turned
mouth-downward on his head.



CHAPTER VI


The gong for the sixth round struck, and both men advanced to meet each
other, their bodies glistening with water.  Ponta rushed two-thirds of
the way across the ring, so intent was he on getting at his man before
full recovery could be effected.  But Joe had lived through.  He was
strong again, and getting stronger.  He blocked several vicious blows and
then smashed back, sending Ponta reeling.  He attempted to follow up, but
wisely forbore and contented himself with blocking and covering up in the
whirlwind his blow had raised.

The fight was as it had been at the beginning--Joe protecting, Ponta
rushing.  But Ponta was never at ease.  He did not have it all his own
way.  At any moment, in his fiercest onslaughts, his opponent was liable
to lash out and reach him.  Joe saved his strength.  He struck one blow
to Ponta's ten, but his one blow rarely missed.  Ponta overwhelmed him in
the attacks, yet could do nothing with him, while Joe's tiger-like
strokes, always imminent, compelled respect.  They toned Ponta's
ferocity.  He was no longer able to go in with the complete abandon of
destructiveness which had marked his earlier efforts.

But a change was coming over the fight.  The audience was quick to note
it, and even Genevieve saw it by the beginning of the ninth round.  Joe
was taking the offensive.  In the clinches it was he who brought his fist
down on the small of the back, striking the terrible kidney blow.  He did
it once, in each clinch, but with all his strength, and he did it every
clinch.  Then, in the breakaways, he began to uppercut Ponta on the
stomach, or to hook his jaw or strike straight out upon the mouth.  But
at first sign of a coming of a whirlwind, Joe would dance nimbly away and
cover up.

Two rounds of this went by, and three, but Ponta's strength, though
perceptibly less, did not diminish rapidly.  Joe's task was to wear down
that strength, not with one blow, nor ten, but with blow after blow,
without end, until that enormous strength should be beaten sheer out of
its body.  There was no rest for the man.  Joe followed him up, step by
step, his advancing left foot making an audible tap, tap, tap, on the
hard canvas.  Then there would come a sudden leap in, tiger-like, a blow
struck, or blows, and a swift leap back, whereupon the left foot would
take up again its tapping advance.  When Ponta made his savage rushes,
Joe carefully covered up, only to emerge, his left foot going tap, tap,
tap, as he immediately followed up.

Ponta was slowly weakening.  To the crowd the end was a foregone
conclusion.

"Oh, you, Joe!" it yelled its admiration and affection.

"It's a shame to take the money!" it mocked.  "Why don't you eat 'm,
Ponta?  Go on in an' eat 'm!"

In the one-minute intermissions Ponta's seconds worked over him as they
had not worked before.  Their calm trust in his tremendous vitality had
been betrayed.  Genevieve watched their excited efforts, while she
listened to the white-faced second cautioning Joe.

"Take your time," he was saying.  "You've got 'm, but you got to take
your time.  I've seen 'm fight.  He's got a punch to the end of the
count.  I've seen 'm knocked out and clean batty, an' go on punching just
the same.  Mickey Sullivan had 'm goin'.  Puts 'm to the mat as fast as
he crawls up, six times, an' then leaves an opening.  Ponta reaches for
his jaw, an two minutes afterward Mickey's openin' his eyes an' askin'
what's doin'.  So you've got to watch 'm.  No goin' in an' absorbin' one
of them lucky punches, now.  I got money on this fight, but I don't call
it mine till he's counted out."

Ponta was being doused with water.  As the gong sounded, one of his
seconds inverted a water bottle on his head.  He started toward the
centre of the ring, and the second followed him for several steps,
keeping the bottle still inverted.  The referee shouted at him, and he
fled the ring, dropping the bottle as he fled.  It rolled over and over,
the water gurgling out upon the canvas till the referee, with a quick
flirt of his toe, sent the bottle rolling through the ropes.

In all the previous rounds Genevieve had not seen Joe's fighting face
which had been prefigured to her that morning in the department store.
Sometimes his face had been quite boyish; other times, when taking his
fiercest punishment, it had been bleak and gray; and still later, when
living through and clutching and holding on, it had taken on a wistful
expression.  But now, out of danger himself and as he forced the fight,
his fighting face came upon him.  She saw it and shuddered.  It removed
him so far from her.  She had thought she knew him, all of him, and held
him in the hollow of her hand; but this she did not know--this face of
steel, this mouth of steel, these eyes of steel flashing the light and
glitter of steel.  It seemed to her the passionless face of an avenging
angel, stamped only with the purpose of the Lord.

Ponta attempted one of his old-time rushes, but was stopped on the mouth.
Implacable, insistent, ever menacing, never letting him rest, Joe
followed him up.  The round, the thirteenth, closed with a rush, in
Ponta's corner.  He attempted a rally, was brought to his knees, took the
nine seconds' count, and then tried to clinch into safety, only to
receive four of Joe's terrible stomach punches, so that with the gong he
fell back, gasping, into the arms of his seconds.

Joe ran across the ring to his own corner.

"Now I'm going to get 'm," he said to his second.

"You sure fixed 'm that time," the latter answered.  "Nothin' to stop you
now but a lucky punch.  Watch out for it."

Joe leaned forward, feet gathered under him for a spring, like a foot-
racer waiting the start.  He was waiting for the gong.  When it sounded
he shot forward and across the ring, catching Ponta in the midst of his
seconds as he rose from his stool.  And in the midst of his seconds he
went down, knocked down by a right-hand blow.  As he arose from the
confusion of buckets, stools, and seconds, Joe put him down again.  And
yet a third time he went down before he could escape from his own corner.

Joe had at last become the whirlwind.  Genevieve remembered his "just
watch, you'll know when I go after him."  The house knew it, too.  It was
on its feet, every voice raised in a fierce yell.  It was the blood-cry
of the crowd, and it sounded to her like what she imagined must be the
howling of wolves.  And what with confidence in her lover's victory she
found room in her heart to pity Ponta.

In vain he struggled to defend himself, to block, to cover up, to duck,
to clinch into a moment's safety.  That moment was denied him.  Knockdown
after knockdown was his portion.  He was knocked to the canvas backwards,
and sideways, was punched in the clinches and in the breakaways--stiff,
jolty blows that dazed his brain and drove the strength from his muscles.
He was knocked into the corners and out again, against the ropes,
rebounding, and with another blow against the ropes once more.  He fanned
the air with his arms, showering savage blows upon emptiness.  There was
nothing human left in him.  He was the beast incarnate, roaring and
raging and being destroyed.  He was smashed down to his knees, but
refused to take the count, staggering to his feet only to be met stiff-
handed on the mouth and sent hurling back against the ropes.

In sore travail, gasping, reeling, panting, with glazing eyes and sobbing
breath, grotesque and heroic, fighting to the last, striving to get at
his antagonist, he surged and was driven about the ring.  And in that
moment Joe's foot slipped on the wet canvas.  Ponta's swimming eyes saw
and knew the chance.  All the fleeing strength of his body gathered
itself together for the lightning lucky punch.  Even as Joe slipped the
other smote him, fairly on the point of the chin.  He went over backward.
Genevieve saw his muscles relax while he was yet in the air, and she
heard the thud of his head on the canvas.

The noise of the yelling house died suddenly.  The referee, stooping over
the inert body, was counting the seconds.  Ponta tottered and fell to his
knees.  He struggled to his feet, swaying back and forth as he tried to
sweep the audience with his hatred.  His legs were trembling and bending
under him; he was choking and sobbing, fighting to breathe.  He reeled
backward, and saved himself from falling by a blind clutching for the
ropes.  He clung there, drooping and bending and giving in all his body,
his head upon his chest, until the referee counted the fatal tenth second
and pointed to him in token that he had won.

He received no applause, and he squirmed through the ropes, snakelike,
into the arms of his seconds, who helped him to the floor and supported
him down the aisle into the crowd.  Joe remained where he had fallen.  His
seconds carried him into his corner and placed him on the stool.  Men
began climbing into the ring, curious to see, but were roughly shoved out
by the policemen, who were already there.

Genevieve looked on from her peep-hole.  She was not greatly perturbed.
Her lover had been knocked out.  In so far as disappointment was his, she
shared it with him; but that was all.  She even felt glad in a way.  The
Game had played him false, and he was more surely hers.  She had heard of
knockouts from him.  It often took men some time to recover from the
effects.  It was not till she heard the seconds asking for the doctor
that she felt really worried.

They passed his limp body through the ropes to the stage, and it
disappeared beyond the limits of her peep-hole.  Then the door of her
dressing-room was thrust open and a number of men came in.  They were
carrying Joe.  He was laid down on the dusty floor, his head resting on
the knee of one of the seconds.  No one seemed surprised by her presence.
She came over and knelt beside him.  His eyes were closed, his lips
slightly parted.  His wet hair was plastered in straight locks about his
face.  She lifted one of his hands.  It was very heavy, and the
lifelessness of it shocked her.  She looked suddenly at the faces of the
seconds and of the men about her.  They seemed frightened, all save one,
and he was cursing, in a low voice, horribly.  She looked up and saw
Silverstein standing beside her.  He, too, seemed frightened.  He rested
a kindly hand on her shoulder, tightening the fingers with a sympathetic
pressure.

This sympathy frightened her.  She began to feel dazed.  There was a
bustle as somebody entered the room.  The person came forward,
proclaiming irritably: "Get out!  Get out!  You've got to clear the
room!"

A number of men silently obeyed.

"Who are you?" he abruptly demanded of Genevieve.  "A girl, as I'm
alive!"

"That's all right, she's his girl," spoke up a young fellow she
recognized as her guide.

"And you?" the other man blurted explosively at Silverstein.

"I'm vit her," he answered truculently.

"She works for him," explained the young fellow.  "It's all right, I tell
you."

The newcomer grunted and knelt down.  He passed a hand over the damp
head, grunted again, and arose to his feet.

"This is no case for me," he said.  "Send for the ambulance."

Then the thing became a dream to Genevieve.  Maybe she had fainted, she
did not know, but for what other reason should Silverstein have his arm
around her supporting her?  All the faces seemed blurred and unreal.
Fragments of a discussion came to her ears.  The young fellow who had
been her guide was saying something about reporters.  "You vill get your
name in der papers," she could hear Silverstein saying to her, as from a
great distance; and she knew she was shaking her head in refusal.

There was an eruption of new faces, and she saw Joe carried out on a
canvas stretcher.  Silverstein was buttoning the long overcoat and
drawing the collar about her face.  She felt the night air on her cheek,
and looking up saw the clear, cold stars.  She jammed into a seat.
Silverstein was beside her.  Joe was there, too, still on his stretcher,
with blankets over his naked body; and there was a man in blue uniform
who spoke kindly to her, though she did not know what he said.  Horses'
hoofs were clattering, and she was lurching somewhere through the night.

Next, light and voices, and a smell of iodoform.  This must be the
receiving hospital, she thought, this the operating table, those the
doctors.  They were examining Joe.  One of them, a dark-eyed,
dark-bearded, foreign-looking man, rose up from bending over the table.

"Never saw anything like it," he was saying to another man.  "The whole
back of the skull."

Her lips were hot and dry, and there was an intolerable ache in her
throat.  But why didn't she cry?  She ought to cry; she felt it incumbent
upon her.  There was Lottie (there had been another change in the dream),
across the little narrow cot from her, and she was crying.  Somebody was
saying something about the coma of death.  It was not the foreign-looking
doctor, but somebody else.  It did not matter who it was.  What time was
it?  As if in answer, she saw the faint white light of dawn on the
windows.

"I was going to be married to-day," she said to Lottie.

And from across the cot his sister wailed, "Don't, don't!" and, covering
her face, sobbed afresh.

This, then, was the end of it all--of the carpets, and furniture, and the
little rented house; of the meetings and walking out, the thrilling
nights of starshine, the deliciousness of surrender, the loving and the
being loved.  She was stunned by the awful facts of this Game she did not
understand--the grip it laid on men's souls, its irony and faithlessness,
its risks and hazards and fierce insurgences of the blood, making woman
pitiful, not the be-all and end-all of man, but his toy and his pastime;
to woman his mothering and caretaking, his moods and his moments, but to
the Game his days and nights of striving, the tribute of his head and
hand, his most patient toil and wildest effort, all the strain and the
stress of his being--to the Game, his heart's desire.

Silverstein was helping her to her feet.  She obeyed blindly, the daze of
the dream still on her.  His hand grasped her arm and he was turning her
toward the door.

"Oh, why don't you kiss him?" Lottie cried out, her dark eyes mournful
and passionate.

Genevieve stooped obediently over the quiet clay and pressed her lips to
the lips yet warm.  The door opened and she passed into another room.
There stood Mrs. Silverstein, with angry eyes that snapped vindictively
at sight of her boy's clothes.

Silverstein looked beseechingly at his spouse, but she burst forth
savagely:--

"Vot did I tell you, eh?  Vot did I tell you?  You vood haf a bruiser for
your steady!  An' now your name vill be in all der papers!  At a prize
fight--vit boy's clothes on!  You liddle strumpet!  You hussy!  You--"

But a flood of tears welled into her eyes and voice, and with her fat
arms outstretched, ungainly, ludicrous, holy with motherhood, she
tottered over to the quiet girl and folded her to her breast.  She
muttered gasping, inarticulate love-words, rocking slowly to and fro the
while, and patting Genevieve's shoulder with her ponderous hand.





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