Читать книгу Secret Bread - F. Tennyson Jesse - Страница 38

It was growing swiftly dusk, though the amphitheatre of turf where the boys stood, cupped the last of the light from the west, backed as it was by the semi-circle of tall rocks.

Polkinghorne made a quick survey of the place, then placed his men so that the light fell sideways, not directly upon either face.

"Shoes off, Doughty!" he ordered. "None of your nasty Devonshire ways here!" For the Devon rules admit kicking, and that with shoes, while Cornish, though allowing leg-play, insist it should be in stocking-feet, and consist of tripping and locking only. The whole West Country style of wrestling differs enormously from the North Country, in which Ishmael would have stood a poor chance against an opponent so much his superior in size. In the West they play for a hitch, instead of trying for a fall by sheer strength and weight, and if the smaller wrestler has a stock of good holds, and can only get under his opponent quickly enough, he may bring off the "flying mare," the great throw clear over the shoulder. Leg-play is the great feature, even in Cornwall, where prominence is given to the hug, and Ishmael had very strong legs, though his shoulders were not so heavy as Doughty's.

He took his stand opposite Doughty. He had never wrestled with him before, but he had had much practice with boys of all builds. He eyed him closely and knew his best chance lay in trying to rush him so as to get under him and with a good inside lock of the leg trip him up. In shoulder play he would otherwise stand small chance with one so much taller. Doughty's best plan would be to stand off him, a thing not possible in North Country wrestling. In the West a special jacket of strong linen is worn for the taking of hitches, and Polkinghorne made the two boys pull out their shirts as the nearest approach to it. All was arranged to the satisfaction of the three who were acting as "sticklers," and in what seemed to Ishmael the flashing of a moment he and Doughty were crouching, cat-like, opposite each other, legs bent, arms out, hands tense. They stood so for what seemed minutes, though it was only a fraction of the time that had gone in the preparations. Ishmael felt no fear of Doughty; exhilaration was still strong enough within him to eliminate that dread, though the fear of losing that always pricks at the fighter was not quite deadened. He circled, still in that cat-like attitude, Doughty circling also, both waiting to spring. Ishmael was intensely aware of superficial physical sensations—the tense feeling in his skin, and under the soles of his feet the hardness of the ground. He spread his feet a little and moved his toes against the grass. All his muscles were on the alert, and suddenly, from acute consciousness of every fibre of his body, he passed to a splendid lightness, a complete ignoring of anything but poise and spring. In that moment, so swiftly on the edge of the first circling movement that Doughty, the slower of communication from brain to limbs, thought it the same, he had rushed for his hitch.

He got him by the sleeve, and Doughty, surprised at the quick hold, shyed away, but could not twist out of it. He grappled Ishmael more closely to try and get full shoulder-play, but the only result was that each obtained a hitch on the arm and breast of the other's shirt. The "flying mare" was now out of the question for Ishmael this round, but with a dexterous twist of his leg he got an inside lock on his opponent's, and the next moment Doughty was sprawling. He was up the second after, and, since his shoulders had not touched the ground, the fall counted for nothing, and this time he rushed in at Ishmael. He was very angry.

He stooped more, so as to keep his legs out of Ishmael's reach, and the two strained to try and over-balance each other's body, using the ordinary arm and breast hold. Ishmael, after a few moments of this immobile straining, let go Doughty's arm to seize him by the back of the collar, and Doughty, profiting in a flash by the steeper angle of inclination, caught him square under the arms and raised him bodily in the air.

Ishmael hung on grimly, making no effort to disengage himself, which would only have given Doughty the further purchase needed to throw him. Instead he began to work round in the other's arms. As soon as he had sufficient twist on his hips he entwined his feet round Doughty's knees, and with an effort that caused the blood to suffuse his face and neck—for Doughty was fighting the movement with relentless pressure—he got himself, by the hold his legs gave him, round so that his shoulders instead of his chest were against the chest of his upholder. He flung his arms backwards round Doughty's fore-arms, thus keeping himself pressed upon the other, his stomach arched outwards, his legs curled back each side round the other's knees, his arms, also backwards, pressing the other's torso in a curve that followed and supported his own with the disadvantage of having his full weight upon it.

They stayed apparently motionless, breathing heavily, save for that laboured sound seeming like wrestlers of bronze. Slowly Doughty began to feel his balance slipping from him under the full weight of Ishmael upon his chest and stomach; his spine felt as though if it curved a fraction more it would crack. He could not move his feet for the strong coil of Ishmael's legs around his, and he knew that in a moment more he must fall backwards with the weight still upon him. The only joints in which he still had play were his ankles; stiffening them he began to incline forwards. Slowly the interlocked bodies, like a swaying tower, came up and up, till the watchers caught their breath wondering what would happen to the one who was undermost in the fall if both stayed so unyielding.

But Ishmael, whose brain was working with that clarity only attained when it is responding to trained instinct, almost mechanically relaxed his grip on the other's spine when he felt the angle coming forward, then, using all his nerve, he waited—waited till the forward angle, in which he was the underneath, had become acute, till the momentum of the fall had begun. Then he relaxed his grip on one of Doughty's legs, at the same time forcing the other outwards with all the strength of his foot and leg. Doughty had to unstiffen a knee to prevent himself coming taut and prone on the ground, and a hard shove with Ishmael's elbow, thrown backwards against his shoulder, combined with the leg-play to send him spinning sideways. The momentum was too great for him to regulate the fall, and he came fairly on both shoulders, while Ishmael, who had been thrown forwards on one knee, picked himself up and stood reeling slightly but unhurt.

The sticklers ran forward to help Doughty to his feet, but he lay motionless, eyes closed. In his mind, as he lay there, worked the thought that he did not wish either to go on with the fight or to let Ishmael triumph as at an easy victory. He would frighten him, frighten them all, by making out he was very badly hurt. His spine, that would do. … Opening his eyes he murmured, "My back … my back … " and made as though trying to move. A terrible pang shot through his spine as he did so. His next cry was a scream of real pain and fear. The tears gathered in his eyes with his rage and terror. He cried, "You've done for me; you've broken my back! Oh, my back; curse you, my back! … "

The others were terrified. For the second time that evening Ishmael was seized by the awful feeling of irrevocableness, of an impossible thing having happened and of it being still more impossible to undo it.

It had become dark with an effect of suddenness to those who had been intent on other things than the progress of the night; and it seemed to Ishmael that the whole world was narrowed to a circle of dim moor, in the midst of it that white thing crying about its back—always its back. …

Carminow, the least perturbed, insisted on raising the sufferer to his feet, and it was found, after much protest on his part, that he could walk slowly with support on either side. It only remained to get him back to the school somehow and in at the side door to his bed and the ministrations of the matron if not the doctor.

The little procession began to move off, Polkinghorne and Carminow, the two biggest, carrying Doughty on their crossed hands, and progressing with a slow sideways motion, trying not to stumble over the uneven ground. Killigrew ran on ahead to warn the matron and urge her to silence, in case the injury might turn out to be but slight after all.

A miserable loneliness fell upon Ishmael. He had won, and none of the sweets of victory were his. He lagged behind. There was a rustle at his side, and Hilaria's hands were round his arm.

"What on earth—" he began—angry, confused, aware that tears were burning in his eyes.

"Don't be cross. … I had to stay. I was up on the boulders. Oh,

Ishmael, have you killed him?"

The question jangled his frightened nerves, and he answered sharply, telling her he neither knew nor cared, even while he was shaking with the fear lest what she suggested might be true. "I'll say something to those youngsters for having let you stay," he added, catching sight of Polkinghorne minor and Moss, where they hesitated in the shadows.

"As though they could have prevented me!" she said, with swift scorn. He looked at her more closely, struck by a something strange about her, and saw that her skirts no longer swelled triumphantly on either side, but fell limply, and so long that she had to hold them up when she took a step forward by his side.

"I couldn't climb on the boulders in it," she said, answering his look.

"I made the boys turn their backs and I took it off."

"Well, I imagine you can't go home without it," said Ishmael wearily. He supposed he would have to see her home, for it was already past the time for the younger boys to be in. He felt he hated girls and the bother that they were.

"Cut off in, you two," he ordered; "and mind, if you blab about Hilaria having been here I'll baste you."

They promised eagerly, and Hilaria thanked him in a subdued voice. She went through the darkness to where she had left her crinoline. They found it lying, wet with dew, a prostrate system of ugly rings, held together by webbing. It looked incredibly naked, a hollow mockery of the portentous dome it had stood for in the eyes of the world.

He slung it over one shoulder without a word, inwardly resenting bitterly the touch of the ludicrous it gave to the evening's happenings, and almost silently he went with the stumbling girl towards the town, only leaving her at the corner of her lane. She thanked him with a new shyness, and taking the cumbrous emblem of her inferiority over her left arm, held out her strong hard little right hand to him.

"Don't think it horrid of me to have stayed," she pleaded. "It was that

I so wanted you to win … I was afraid … "

"It was very—very unladylike," began Ishmael, then paused. Till that moment he and she had equally despised anything ladylike. … Now he had become a man, with a man's dislike of anything conspicuous in his womenkind. Something of the woman came to Hilaria, but whereas with him adolescence had meant the awakening of the merely male, with her it brought a first touch of the mother. She urged her own cause no more.

"Don't worry, Ishmael," she said. "Father has often told me of people hurting their backs wrestling and doing things like that, and he says it's very seldom anything. If it is they can't walk at all, and he walked quite well. Besides, I know he's pretending it's worse than it is to upset you; he's that sort. … "

Ishmael felt a little pang of gratitude, he gripped her hand, muttered a "good-night," and was off through the darkness. But he did not go back to the school for an hour yet. He was in for such trouble an hour more or less after time made no difference, and he was past thinking in terms of the clock. He had grown up violently and painfully in a short space, and ordinary methods of measuring time mean very little to one who has crowded years of growth into one evening. He walked about the moor till physical exhaustion drove him in, where Old Tring, with a glance at him, gave him hot brandy and water and sent him to bed with hardly a word. Not till next day did Ishmael notice he was lame in one knee.