The Wrong Twin Part 29

"Don't tell me!" protested shuddering Winona. She wondered if Patricia's people shouldn't be warned. She was now persuaded that golf endangered the morals of the young. It had been bad enough when it seemed merely to encourage the wearing of nondescript clothes. But if it led to language--?

Yet she was fated to discover that the world offered worse than golf, for Wilbur Cowan had not yet completed, in the process of his desultory education, the out-of-doors curriculum offered by even the little world of Newbern. He was to take up an entirely new study, with the whole-hearted enthusiasm that had made him an adept at linotypes, gas engines, and the sport of kings. Not yet, in Winona's view, had he actually gone down into the depths of social obliquity; but she soon knew he had made the joyous descent.

The dreadful secret was revealed when he appeared for his supper one evening with a black eye. That is, it would have been known technically as a black eye--even Winona knew what to call it. Actually it was an eye of many colours, shading delicately from pale yellow at the edge to richest variegated purple at the centre. The eye itself--it was the right--was all but closed by the gorgeously puffed tissue surrounding it, and of no practical use to its owner. The still capable left eye, instead of revealing concern for this ignominy, gleamed a lively pride in its overwhelming completeness. The malign eye was worn proudly as a badge of honour, so proudly that the wearer, after Winona's first outcry of horror, bubbled vaingloriously of how he had achieved the stigma by stepping into one of Spike Brennon's straight lefts. Nothing less than that!

Winona, conceiving that this talk was meant to describe an accident of the most innocent character, demanded further details; wishing to be told what a straight left was; why a person named Spike Brennon kept such things about; and how Wilbur had been so careless as to step into one. She instinctively pictured a straight left to be something like an open door into which the victim had stepped in the dark. Her enlightenment was appalling. When the boy had zestfully pictured with pantomime of the most informing sort she not only knew what a straight left was, but she knew that Wilbur Cowan, in stepping into one--in placing himself where by any chance he could step into one--had flung off the ultimate restraint of decency.

It amounted to nothing less, she gathered, than that her charge had formed a sinister alliance with a degraded prize-fighter, a low bully who for hire and amid the foulest surroundings pandered to the basest instincts of his fellowmen by disgusting exhibitions of brute force. As if that were not enough, this low creature had fallen lower in the social scale, if that were possible, by tending bar in the unspeakable den of Pegleg McCarron. It was of no use for Wilbur to explain to her that his new hero chose this humble avocation because it afforded him leisure for training between his fights; that he didn't drink or smoke, but kept himself in good condition; that it was a fine chance to learn how to box, because Spike needed sparring partners.

"Oh, it's terrible!" cried Winona. "A debased creature like that!"

"You ought to see him stripped!" rejoined the boy in quick pride.

This closed the interview. Later she refused more than a swift glance of dismay at the photograph of the bully proudly displayed to her by the recipient. With one eye widened in admiration, he thrust it without warning full into her gaze, whereupon she had gaspingly fled, not even noting the inscription of which the boy was especially proud: "To my friend, Mr. Wilbur Cowan, from his friend, Eddie--Spike--Brennon, 133 lbs. ringside." It was a spirited likeness of the hero, though taken some years before, when he was in the prime of a ring career now, alas, tapering to obscurity.

Spike stood with the left shoulder slightly raised, the left foot advanced, the slightly bent left arm with its clenched fist suggestively extended. His head was slanted to bring his chin down and in. The right shoulder was depressed, and the praiseworthy right arm lay in watchful repose across his chest. The tense gaze expressed absolute singleness of purpose--a hostile purpose. These details were lost upon Winona. She had noted only that the creature's costume consisted of the flags of the United States and Ireland tastefully combined to form a simple loin cloth. Had she raised the boy for this?

The deplored intimacy had begun on a morning when Wilbur was early abroad salvaging golf b.a.l.l.s from certain obscure nooks of the course where Newbern's minor players were too likely to abandon the search for them on account of tall gra.s.s, snakes, poison ivy, and other deterrents.

Along the course at a brisk trot had come a sweatered figure, with cap pulled low, a man of lined and battered visage, who seemed to trot with a purpose, and yet with a purpose not to be discerned, for none pursued him and he appeared to pursue no one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE MALIGN EYE WAS WORN SO PROUDLY THAT THE WEARER BUBBLED VAINGLORIOUSLY OF HOW HE HAD ACHIEVED THE STIGMA BY STEPPING INTO ONE OF SPIKE BRENNON'S STRAIGHT LEFTS."]

He had stopped amiably to chat with the boy. He was sweating profusely, and chewed gum. It may be said that he was not the proud young Spike Brennon of the photograph. He was all of twenty-five, and his later years had told. Where once had been the bridge of his nose was now a sharp indentation. One ear was weirdly enlarged; and his mouth, though he spoke through narrowly opened lips, glittered in the morning sun with the sheen of purest gold. Wilbur Cowan was instantly enmeshed by this new personality.

The runner wished to know what he was looking for. Being told golf b.a.l.l.s, he demanded "What for?" It seemed never to have occurred to him that there would be an object in looking for golf b.a.l.l.s. He curiously handled and weighed a ball in his brown and hairy hand.

"So that's the little joker, is it? I often seen 'em knockin' up flies with it, but I ain't never been close to one. Say, that pill could hurt you if it come right!"

He was instructed briefly in the capacity of moving b.a.l.l.s to inflict pain, and more particularly as to their market value. As the boy talked the sweating man looked him over with shrewd, half-shut eyes.

"Ever had the gloves on, kid?" he demanded at last.

It appeared in a moment that he meant boxing gloves; not gloves in which to play golf.

"No, sir," said Wilbur.

"You look good. Come down to the store at three o'clock. Mebbe you can give me a work-out."

Quite astonishingly it appeared then that when he said the store he was meaning the low saloon of Pegleg McCarron; that he did road work every morning and wanted quick young lads to give him a work-out with the gloves in the afternoon, because even dubs was better than shadow boxing or just punching the bag all the time. If they couldn't box-fight they could wrestle.

So Wilbur had gone to the store that afternoon, and for many succeeding afternoons, to learn the fascinating new game in a shed that served McCarron as storeroom. The new hero had here certain paraphernalia of his delightful calling--a punching bag, small dumb-bells, a skipping rope, boxing gloves. Here the neophyte had been taught the niceties of feint and guard and lead, of the right cross, the uppercut, the straight left, to duck, to side-step, to shift lightly on his feet, to stop protruding his jaw in cordial invitation, to keep his stomach covered.

He proved attentive and willing and quick. He was soon chewing gum as Spike Brennon chewed it, and had his hair clipped in Brennon manner. He lived his days and his nights in dreams of delivering or evading blows.

Often while dressing of a morning he would stop to punish an invisible opponent, doing an elaborate dance the while. It was better than linotypes or motor busses.

In the early days of this new study he had been fearful of hurting Spike Brennon. He felt that his blows were too powerful, especially that from the right fist when it should curve over Spike's left shoulder to stop on his jaw. But he learned that when his glove reached the right place Spike's jaw had for some time not been there. Spike scorned his efforts.

"Stop it, kid! You might as well send me a pitcher postcard that it's comin'. You got to hit from where you are--you can't stop to draw back.

Use your left more. G'wan now, mix it! Mix it!"

They would mix it until the boy was panting. Then while he sat on a beer keg until he should be in breath again the unwinded Spike would skip the rope--a girl's skipping rope--or shadow-box about the room with intricate dance steps, raining quick blows upon a ghostly boxer who was invariably beaten; or with smaller gloves he would cause the inflated bag to play lively tunes upon the ceiling of its support. After an hour of this, when both were sweating, they would go to a sheltered spot beyond the shed to play cold water upon each other's soaped forms.

There had been six weeks of this before the boy's dreadful secret was revealed to Winona; six weeks before he appeared to startle her with one eye radiating the rich hues of a ripened eggplant. It had been simple enough. He had seen his chance to step in and punish Spike, and he had stepped--and Spike's straight left had been there.

"You handed yourself that one, kid," Spike had said, applying raw beef to it after their rubdown.

Wilbur had removed the beef after leaving the store. He didn't want the thing to go down too soon. It was an honourable mark, wasn't it? Nothing to make the fuss about that Winona had made. Of course you had to go to Pegleg McCarron's to do the boxing, but Spike had warned him never to drink if he expected to get anywhere in this particular trade; not even to smoke. That he had entirely abandoned the use of tobacco at Spike's command should--he considered--have commended his hero to Winona's favourable notice. He wore the eye proudly in the public gaze; regretted its pa.s.sing as it began to pale into merely rainbow tints.

But Winona took steps. She was not going to see him die, perish morally, without an effort to save him. She decided that Sharon Whipple would be the one to consult. Sharon liked the boy--had taken an interest in him.

Perhaps words in time from him might avert the calamity, especially after her father had refused to be concerned.

"Prize fighting!" said the judge, scornfully. "What'll he be doing next?

Never settles down to anything. Jack-of-all-trades and good at none."

It was no use hoping for help from a man who thought fighting was foolish for the boy merely because he would not earnestly apply himself to it.

She went to Sharon Whipple, and Sharon listened even more sympathetically than she had hoped he would. He seemed genuinely shocked that such things had been secretly going on in the life of his young friend. He clicked deprecatingly with his tongue as Winona became detailed in her narrative.

"My great glory!" he exclaimed at last. "You mean to say they mix it down there every afternoon?"

"Every single day," confirmed Winona. "He's been going to that low dive for weeks and weeks. Think of the debasing a.s.sociations!"

"Just think of it!" said Sharon, impatiently. "Every afternoon--and me not hearing a word of it!"

"If you could only say a word to him," besought Winona. "Coming from you it might have an influence for good."

"I will, I will!" promised Sharon, fervently, and there was a gleam of honest determination in his quick old eyes.

That very afternoon, in Pegleg McCarron's shed, he said words to Wilbur that might have an influence for good.

"Quit sticking your jaw out that way or he'll knock it off!" had been his first advice. And again: "Cover up that stomach--you want to get killed?" He was sitting at one end of the arena, on a plank supported by the ends of two beer kegs, and he held open a large, thick, respectable gold watch. "Time!" he called.

Beside him sat the red-eyed and disreputable Pegleg McCarron, who whacked the floor with the end of his crutch from time to time in testimony of his low pleasure.

The round closed with one of Wilbur Cowan's right crosses--started from not too far back--landing upon the jaw of Spike Brennon with what seemed to be a shattering impact. Sharon Whipple yelled and Pegleg McCarron pounded the floor in applause. Spike merely shook his head once.

"The kid's showing speed," he admitted, cordially. "If he just had something back of them punches!"

"It was a daisy!" exclaimed Sharon. "My suffering stars, what a daisy!"

"'Twas neatly placed!" said Pegleg.

"I'm surprised at you!" said Sharon later to the panting apprentice.

"I'm surprised and grieved! You boys mixing it here every day for weeks and never letting on!"

"I never thought you'd like it," said Wilbur.

"Like it!" said Sharon. He said it unctuously. "And say, don't you let on to Miss Penniman that I set here and held the watch for you. I ain't wanting that to get out on me."