"Come along!"
She followed him without a word. And presently, behold, in another field, whistling meditatively and regardless of impending ill, Albert Parsons.
In everything that he did Tom was a man of method. He did not depart from his chosen formula.
"Albert," he said, "there's been a mistake."
And Albert gaped, as Ted had gaped.
Tom kissed Sally with the gravity of one performing a ritual.
The uglinesses of life, as we grow accustomed to them, lose their power to shock, and there is no doubt that Sally looked with a different eye upon this second struggle. She was conscious of a thrill of excitement, very different from the shrinking horror which had seized her before. Her stunned vanity began to tingle into life again. The fight was raging furiously over the trampled turf, and quite suddenly, as she watched, she was aware that her heart was with Tom.
It was no longer two strange brutes fighting in a field. It was her man battling for her sake.
She desired overwhelmingly that he should win, that he should not be hurt, that he should sweep triumphantly over Albert Parsons as he had swept over Ted Pringle.
Unfortunately, it was evident, even to her, that he was being hurt, and that he was very far from sweeping triumphantly over Albert Parsons. He had not allowed himself time to recover from his first battle, and his blows were slow and weary. Albert, moreover, was made of sterner stuff than Ted. Though now a peaceful tender of cows, there had been a time in his hot youth when, travelling with a circus, he had fought, week in, week out, relays of just such rustic warriors as Tom. He knew their methods-their headlong rushes, their swinging blows. They were the merest commonplaces of life to him. He slipped Tom, he side-stepped Tom, he jabbed Tom; he did everything to Tom that a trained boxer can do to a reckless novice, except knock the fight out of him, until presently, through the sheer labour of hitting, he, too, grew weary.
Now, in the days when Albert Parsons had fought whole families of Toms in an evening, he had fought in rounds, with the boss holding the watch, and half-minute rests, and water to refresh him, and all orderly and proper. To-day there were no rounds, no rests, no water, and the peaceful tending of cows had caused flesh to grow where there had been only muscle. Tom's headlong rushes became less easy to sidestep, his swinging blows more swift than the scientific counter that shot out to check them. As he tired Tom seemed to regain strength. The tide of the battle began to ebb. He clinched, and Tom threw him off. He feinted, and while he was feinting Tom was on him. It was the climax of the battle-the last rally. Down went Albert, and stayed down. Physically, he was not finished; but in his mind a question had framed itself-the question, "Was it worth it?"-and he was answering, "No." There were other girls in the world. No girl was worth all this trouble.
He did not rise.
"Come along!" said Tom.
He spoke thickly. His breath was coming in gasps. He was a terrible spectacle, but Sally was past the weaker emotions. She was back in the Stone Age, and her only feeling was one of passionate pride. She tried to speak, She struggled to put all she felt into words, but something kept her dumb, and she followed him in silence.
In the lane outside his cottage, down by the creek, Joe Blossom was clipping a hedge. The sound of footsteps made him turn.
He did not recognise Tom till he spoke.
"Joe, there's been a mistake," said Tom.
"Been a gunpowder explosion, more like," said Joe, a simple, practical man. "What you been doin' to your face?"
"She's going to marry me, Joe."
Joe eyed Sally inquiringly.
"Eh? You promised to marry me."
"She promised to marry all of us. You, me, Ted Pringle, and Albert Parsons."
"Promised-to-marry-all-of-us!"
"That's where the mistake was. She's only going to marry me. I-I've arranged it with Ted and Albert, and now I've come to explain to you, Joe."
"You promised to marry-!"
The colossal nature of Sally's deceit was plainly troubling Joe Blossom. He expelled his breath in a long note of amazement. Then he summed up.
"Why, you're nothing more nor less than a Joshua!"
The years that had passed since Joe had attended the village Sunday-school had weakened his once easy familiarity with the characters of the Old Testament. It is possible that he had somebody else in his mind.
Tom stuck doggedly to his point.
"You can't marry her, Joe."
Joe Blossom raised his shears and clipped a protruding branch. The point under discussion seemed to have ceased to interest him.
"Who wants to?" he said. "Good riddance!"
They went down the lane. Silence still brooded over them. The words she wanted continued to evade her.
They came to a grassy bank. Tom sat down. He was feeling unutterably tired.
"Tom!"
He looked up. His mind was working dizzily.
"You're going to marry me," he muttered.
She sat down beside him.
"I know," she said. "Tom, dear, lay your head on my lap and go to sleep."
If this story proves anything (beyond the advantage of being in good training when you fight), it proves that you cannot get away from the moving pictures even in a place like Millbourne; for as Sally sat there, nursing Tom, it suddenly struck her that this was the very situation with which that "Romance of the Middle Ages" film ended. You know the one I mean. Sir Percival Ye Something (which has slipped my memory for the moment) goes out after the Holy Grail; meets damsel in distress; overcomes her persecutors; rescues her? gets wounded, and is nursed back to life in her arms. Sally had seen it a dozen times. And every time she had reflected that the days of romance are dead, and that that sort of thing can't happen nowadays.
Deep Waters
Historians of the social life of the later Roman Empire speak of a certain young man of Ariminum, who would jump into rivers and swim in 'em. When his friends said, "You fish!" he would answer, "Oh, pish! Fish can't swim like me, they've no vim in 'em."
Just such another was George Barnert Callender.
On land, in his land clothes, George was a young man who excited little remark. He looked very much like other young men. He was much about the ordinary height. His carriage suggested the possession of an ordinary amount of physical strength. Such was George-on shore. But remove his clothes, drape him in a bathing-suit, and insert him in the water, and instantly, like the gentleman in The Tempest, he "suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange." Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George's mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breast-stroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did the crawl, strong men gasped. When he swam on his back, you felt that that was the only possible method of progression.
George came to Marvis Bay at about five o'clock one evening in July. Marvis Bay has a well-established reputation as a summer resort, and, while not perhaps in every respect the paradise which the excitable writer of the local guidebook asserts it to be, on the whole it earns its reputation. Its sands are smooth and firm, sloping almost imperceptibly into the ocean. There is surf for those who like it, and smoother water beyond for those whose ideals in bathing are not confined to jumping up and down on a given jelly-fish. At the northern end of the beach there is a long pier. It was to this that George made his way on his arrival.
It was pleasant on the pier. Once you had passed the initial zareba of fruit stands, souvenir stands, ice- cream stands, and the lair of the enthusiast whose aim in life it was to sell you picture post cards, and had won through to the long walk where the seats were, you were practically alone with Nature. At this hour of the day the place was deserted; George had it to himself. He strolled alowly along. The water glittered under the sun-rays, breaking into a flurry of white foam as it reached the beach. A cool breeze blew. The whole scenic arrangements were a great improvement on the stuffy city he had left. Not that George had come to Marvis Bay with the single aim of finding an antidote to metropolitan stuffiness. There was a more important reason. In three days Marvis Bay was to be the scene of the production of Fate's Footballs, a comedy in four acts by G. Barnert Callender. For George, though you would not have suspected it from his exterior, was one of those in whose cerebra the grey matter splashes restlessly about, producing strong curtains and crisp dialogue. The company was due at Marvis Bay on the following evening for the last spasm of rehearsals.