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.