another would-be sooicide, eh! here, kid,” to a sharp gamin who does errands and odd commissions for the house; “take this mut in where dey kills ’em.”
the speaker is a loud young man, clad in garments of violence. the derby tilted over eye, the black cigar jutting ceilingward at an agle of sixty degrees, the figured shirt whereof a dominating dye is angry red, the high collar and flash tie, with its cheap stone, all declare the bowery. as if to prove the proposition announced of his costume, the young man is perched on a stool, the official ticket-seller of a bowery theatre.
mike menares, whom the bowery person alludes to as the “mut,” is a square-shouldered boy of eighteen; handsome he is as apollo, yet with a slow, good-humored guilelessness of face. he has come on business bent. that mighty pugilist, the dublin terror, is nightly on the stage, offering two hundred dollars to any amateur among boxers who shall remain before him four queensberry rounds. mike menares, he of the candidly innocent countenance, desires to proffer himself as a sacrifice.
“youse is just in time, sport,” remarks the brisk gamin to whom mike has been committed, as he pilots the guileless one to the stage door. “it’s nine o’clock now, an’ d’ terror goes on to do his bag-t’umpin’ turn at ten. after that comes d’ knockin’ out, see! but say! if youse was tired of livin’, why didn’t you jump in d’ east river? i’d try d’ river an’d’ morgue before i’d come here to be murdered be d’ terror.”
mike makes no retort to this, lacking lightness of temper. his gamin conductor throws open the stage door and signals mike to enter.
“tell d’ butcher here’s another calf for him,” vouchsafes the gamin to the stage-hands inside the door.
let us go back four hours to a three-room tenement in pitt street. there are two rooms and a little kennel of a kitchen. the furnishings are rough and cheap and clean. the lady of the tenement, as the floors declare, is a miracle of soap and water. and the lady is little mollie lacy, aged eleven years.
the family of the pitt street tenement is made up of three. there is mike menares, our hero; little mollie; and, lastly, her brother davy, aged nine. little davy is lame. he fell on the tenement stairs four years before and injured his hip. the hospital doctors took up the work where the tenement stairs left off, and davy came from his sick-bed doomed to a crutch for life.
mike menares is half-brother of the younger ones. nineteen years before, mike’s mother, irish, with straw-colored hair and blue eyes, wedded one menares, a spanish jew. this fortunate menares was a well-looking, tall man; with hair black and stiffening in a natural pompadour. he kept a tobacco stall underneath a stair in park row, and was accounted rich by the awfully poor about him. he died, however, within the year following mike’s birth; and thus there was an end to the rather thoroughbred dark spanish jew.
mike’s mother essayed matrimony a second time. she selected as a partner in this experiment a shiftless, idle, easy creature named david lacy, who would have been a plasterer had not his indolence defeated his craft. little mollie, and davy of the clattering crutch, occurred as a kind of penalty of the nuptials.
three years and a half before we encounter this mixed household, lacy, the worthless, sailed away on a china ship without notice or farewell. some say he was “shanghaied,” and some that he went of free will. mrs. lacy adopted the former of the two theories.
“david lacy, too idle to work ashore, assuredly would not go to sea where work and fare are tenfold harder.”
thus argued mrs. lacy. still, a solution of lacy’s reasons for becoming a mariner late in life is not here important. he sailed and he never returned; and as mrs. lacy perished of pneumonia the following winter, they both may be permitted to quit this chronicle to be meddled with by us no further.
mike menares had witnessed fifteen years when his mother died. as suggested, he is a singularly handsome boy, and of an appearance likely to impress. from his conemara mother, he received a yellow head of hair. underneath are a pair of jet black brows, a hawkish nose, double rows of strong white teeth, and deep soft black eyes, as honest as a hound’s, the plain bestowal of his jewish father.
mike was driving a delivery wagon for the great grocers, mark & milford, when his mother died. this brought six dollars a week. after the sad going of his mother, mike found a second situation where he might work evenings, and thereby add six further dollars to that stipend from mark & milford. this until the other day continued. on twelve dollars a week, and with little mollie—a notable housekeeper—to manage for the pitt street tenement, the composite house of menares and lacy fared well.
mike’s evening labors require a description. one sarsfield o’punch, an expert of boxing and an athlete of some eminence, maintains a private gymnasium on fifty-ninth street. this personage is known to his patrons as “professor o’punch.” mike, well-builded and lithe, broad of shoulder, deep of lung, lean of flank, a sort of half-grown hercules, finds congenial employ as aid to professor o’punch. mike’s primal duty is to box with those amateurs of the game who seek fistic enlightenment of his patron, and who have been carried by that scientist into regions of half-wisdom concerning the bruising art for which they moil. from eight o’clock until eleven, mike’s destiny sets him, one after the other, before a full score of these would-be boxers, some small and some big, some good and some bad, some weak and some strong, but all zealous to a perspiring degree. these novices smite and spare not, and move with all their skill and strength to pummel mike. they have, be it said, but indifferent success; for mike, waxing expert among experts, side-steps and blocks and stops and ducks and gets away; and his performances in these defensive directions are the whisper of the school.
now and then he softly puts a glove on some eager face, or over some unguarded heart, or feather-like left-hooks some careless jaw, to the end that the other understand a peril and fend against it. but mike, working lightly as a kitten, hurts no one; such being the private commands of professor o’punch who knows that to pound a pupil is to lose a pupil.
it is to be doubted if the easy-natured mike is aware of his wonderful strength of arm and body, or the cat-like quickness and certainty of his blows. during these three years wherein he has been underling to professor o’punch, mike strikes but two hard blows. one evening several of the followers of professor o’punch are determining their prowess on a machine intended to register the force of a blow. following each other in a fashion of punching procession, these aspiring gymnasts, putting their utmost into the swings, strike with all steam. four hundred to five hundred pounds says the register; this is vaunted as a vastly good account.
mike, with folded arms and stripped to ring costume—his official robes—is looking on, a smile lighting his pleasant face. mike is ever interested and ever silent.
as the others smite, mike beams with approval, but makes no comment. at last one observes:
“menares, how many pounds can you strike?”
“i don’t know,” replies mike, in a surprised way, “i never tried.”
“try now,” says the other; “i’ve a notion you could hit hard enough if you cared to.”
the others second the speaker. much and instant curiosity grows up as to what mike can do with his hands if he puts his soul into it. there is not an amateur about but knows more of mike than does the latter of himself. they know him as one perfect of defensive boxing; also, they recall the precise feather-like taps which mike confers on the best of their muster whenever he chooses; but none has a least of knowledge of how bitterly hard mike’s glove might be sent home should ever his heart be given to the trial.
being urged, mike begins to rouse; he himself grows curious. it has never come to him as a thought to make the experiment. the “punching machine” has stood there as part of the paraphernalia of the gymnasium. but to the fog-witted mike, who comes to work for so many dollars a week and who has not once considered himself in the light of a boxer, whether excellent or the reverse, it held no particular attraction. it could tell him no secrets he cares a stiver to hear.
now, mike for a first time feels moved to a bit of self-enlightenment. poising himself for the effort, mike, with the quickness of light, sends in a right-hand smash that all but topples the contrivance from its base. for the moment the muscles of his back and leg knot and leap in ropelike ridges; and then they as instantly sink away. the machine registers eight hundred and ninety-one pounds.
the on-gazers draw a long breath. then they turn their eyes on mike, whose regular outlines, with muscles retreated again into curves and slopes and shimmering ripples, have no taint of the bruiser, and whose handsome features, innocent of a faintest ferocity, recall some beautiful statue rather than anything more viciously hard.
mike’s second earnest blow comes off in this sort. he is homeward bound from gymnasium work one frosty midnight. not a block from his home, three evil folk of the night are standing beneath an electric light. mike, unsuspicious, passes them. instantly, one delivers a cut at mike’s head with a sandbag. mike, warned by the shadow of uplifted arm, springs forward out of reach, wheels, and then as the footpad blunders towards him, mike’s left hand, clenched and hammerlike, goes straight to his face. bone and teeth are broken with the shock of it; blood spurts, and the footpad comes senseless to the pave. his ally, one of the other two, grasps at mike’s throat. his clutch slips on the stern muscles of the athlete’s neck as if the neck were a column of brass. mike seizes his assailant’s arm with his right hand; there is a twist and a shriek; the second robber rolls about with a dislocated fore-arm. the third, unharmed, flies screeching with the fear of death upon him.
at full speed comes a policeman, warned of his duty by the howls of anguish. he surveys the two on the ground; one still and quiet, the other groaning and cursing with his twisted arm. the officer sends in an ambulance call. then he surveys with pleased intentness the regular face of mike, cool and unperturbed.
“an irish sheeny!” softly comments the officer to himself.
he is expert of faces, is the officer, and deduces mike’s two-ply origin from his yellow hair, dark eye and curved nose.
“you’re part irish and part jew,” observes the policeman.
“my mother was from ireland,” answers mike; “my father was a spanish jew from salamanca. i think that’s what they call it, although i was not old enough when he died to remember much about him.”
“irish crossed on jew!” comments the officer, still in a mood of thoughtful admiration. “it’s the best prize-ring strain in the world!” the officer is in his dim way a patron of sport.
mike thanks the other; for, while by no means clearly understanding, he feels that a compliment is meant. then mike goes homeward to mollie and little davy.
it is the twenty-third of december—two days before christmas—when we are first made friends of mike menares. about a month before, the little family of three fell upon bad days. mike was dismissed by the great grocers, and the six dollars weekly from that quarter came to an end. mike’s delivery wagon was run down and crushed by a car; and, while mike was not to blame, the grocers have no time to discover a justice, and mike was told to go.
for mere food and light and fire, mike’s other six saturday dollars from professor o’punch would with economy provide. but there is the rent on new year’s day! also, and more near, is christmas, with not a penny to spare. it must perforce be a bare festival, this christmas. it will be a blow to little davy of the crutch, who has talked only of christmas for two months past and gone.
mike, as has been intimated, is dull and slow of brain. he has just enough of education to be able to read and write. he owns no bad habits—no habits at all, in fact; and the one great passion of his simple heart is love without a limit for mollie and little davy. he lives for them; the least of their desires is the great concern of mike’s life. therefore, when his income shrinks from twelve dollars to six, it creeps up on him and chills him as a loss to mollie and davy. and peculiarly does this sorrowful business of a ruined christmas for davy prey on poor mike.
“you and i won’t mind,” says housewife mollie, looking up in mike’s face with the sage dignity of her eleven years, “because we’re old enough to understand; but i feel bad about little davy. it’s the first real awful christmas we’ve ever had.”
mollie is as bright and wise as mike is dull. seven years her senior, still mike has grown to believe in and rely altogether on mollie as a guide. he takes her commands without question, and does her will like a slave. to mollie goes every one of mike’s dollars; it is mollie who disposes of them, while mike never gives them a thought. they have been devoted to the one purpose of mike’s labors; they have gone to mollie and little davy of the crutch; why, then, should mike pursue them further?
following housewife mollie’s regrets over a sad christmas that was not because of their poverty to be a christmas, mike sits solemnly by the window looking out on the gathering gloom and hurrying holiday crowds of pitt street. the folk are all poor; yet each seems able to do a bit for christmas. as they hurry by, with small bundles and parcels, and now and then a basket from which protrude mayhap a turkey’s legs or other symptom of the victory of christmas, mike, in the midst of his sluggish amiabilities, discovers a sense of pain—a darkish thought of trouble.
and as if grief were to sharpen his wits, mike has for almost a first and last time an original idea. it is the thought natural enough, when one reflects on mike’s engagements, evening in and evening out, with professor o’punch.
0115
that day mike, in passing through the bowery, read the two hundred dollars offer of the selfconfident terror. at that time mike felt nothing save wonder that so great a fortune might be the reward of so small an effort. but it did not occur to him that he should try a tilt with the terror. in his present stress, however, and with the woe upon him of a bad christmas to dawn for little davy, the notion marches slowly into mike’s intelligence. and it seems simple enough, too, now mike has thought of it; and with nothing further of pro or con, he prepares himself for the enterprise.
for causes not clear to himself he says nothing to housewife mollie of his plans. but he alarms that little lady of the establishment’s few sparse pots and kettles by declining to eat his supper. mollie fears mike is ill. the latter, knowing by experience just as any animal might, that with twelve minutes of violent exercise before him, he is better without, while denying the imputation of illness, sticks to his supperless resolve.
then mike goes into the rear room and dons blue tights, blue sleeveless shirt, canvas trunks, and light shoes; his working costume. over these he draws trousers and a blue sweater; on top of all a heavy double-breasted jacket. thrusting his feet, light shoes and all, into heavy snow-proof overshoes, and pulling on a bicycle cap, mike is arrayed for the street. mollie knows of these several preparations, the ring costume under the street clothes, but thinks naught of it, such being mike’s nightly custom as he departs for the academy of professor o’punch. at the last moment, mike kisses both mollie and little davy; and then, with a sudden original enthusiasm, he says:
“i’ve been thinkin’, mollie; mebby i can get some money. mebby we’ll see a good christmas, after all.”
mollie is dazed by the notion of mike thinking; but she looks in his face, with its honest eyes full of love for her and davy, and as beautiful as a god’s and as unsophisticated, and in spite of herself a hope begins to live and lift up its head. possibly mike may get money; and christmas, and the rent, and many another matter then pinching the baby housekeeper and of which she has made no mention to mike, will be met and considered.
“it’ll be nice if you should get money, mike,” is all mollie trusts herself to say, as she returns mike’s good-bye kiss.
when mike gets into pitt street he moves slowly. there’s the crowd, for one thing. then, too, it’s over early for his contest with the terror. mike prefers to arrive at the theatre just in time to strip and make the required application for those two hundred dollars. it may appear strange, but it never once occurs to mike that he will not last the demanded four rounds. but it seems such a weighty sum! mike doubts if the offer be earnest; hesitates with the fear that the management will refuse to give him the money at the end.
“but surely,” decides mike, “they will feel as though they ought to give me something. i lose a dollar by not going to professor o’punch’s; they must take account of that.”
mike loiters along with much inborn ease of heart. occasionally he pauses to gaze into one of the cheap shop windows, ablaze and garish of the season’s wares. there is no wind; the air has no point; but it is snowing softly, persistently, flakes of a mighty size and softness.
ten minutes before he arrives at that theatre which has been the scene of the terror’s triumphs, mike enters a bakery whereof the proprietor, a german, is known to him. mike has no money but he feels no confusion for that.
“john,” says mike to the german; “i’ve got to spar a little to-night and i want a big plate of soup.”
“sure!” says john, leading the way to a rear room which thrives greasily as a kind of restaurant. “and here, mike,” goes on john, as the soup arrives, “i’ll put a big drink of sherry in it. you will feel good because of it, and the sherry and the hot soup will make you quick and strong already.”
at the finish, mike, with an eye of bland innocence—for he is certain the theatre will give him something, even if it withhold the full two hundred—tells john he will pay for the soup within the hour, when he returns.
“that’s all right, mike,” cries the good-natured baker, “any time will do.”
“this w’y, me cove,” observes a person with a cockney accent, as the sharp gamin delivers mike, together with the message to the terror, at the stage door; “this w’y; ’ere’s a dressin’ room for you to shift your togs.”
later, when mike’s outer husks are off and he stands arrayed for the ring, this person, who is old and gray and wears a scarred and battered visage, looks mike over in approval:
“you seems an amazin’ bit of stuff, lad,” says this worthy man; “the build of tom sayres at his best, but’eavier. i ’opes you’ll do this mick, but i’m afeared on it. you looks too pretty; an’ you ain’t got a fightin’ face. how ’eavy be you, lad?”
“one hundred and eighty-one,” replies mike, smiling on the englishman with his boy’s eyes.
“can you spar a bit?” asks the other.
“why, of course i can!” and mike’s tones exhibit surprise.
“well, laddy,” says the other; “don’t let this dublin bloke rattle you. ’e’s a great blow’ard, i takes it, an’ will quit if he runs ag’in two or three stiff ’uns. a score of years ago, i’d a-give ’im a stone an’ done for ’im myself. i’m to be in your corner, laddy, an’ i trusts you’ll not disgrace me.”
“who are you?” asks mike.
“oh, me?” says the other; “i works for the theayter, laddy, an’, bein’ as ’ow i’m used to fightin’, i goes on to ’eel an’ ’andle the amatoors as goes arter the terror. it’s all square, laddy; i’ll be be’ind you; an’ i’ll ’elp you to win those pennies if i sees a w’y.”
“i have also the honor,” shouts the loud master of ceremonies, “to introduce to you mike men-ares, who will contend with the dublin terror. should he stay four rounds, marquis of queens-berry rules, the management forfeits two hundred dollars to the said menares.”
“what a model for my jason,” says a thin shaving of a man who stands as a spectator in the wings. he is an artist of note, and speaks to a friend at his elbow. “what a model for my jason! i will give him five dollars an hour for three hours a day. what’s his name? mike what?” the battle is about to commence; the friend, tongue-tied of interest, makes no reply.
the dublin terror is a rugged, powerful ruffian, with lumpy shoulders, thick short neck, and a shock gorilla head. his little gray eyes are lighted fiercely. his expression is as savagely bitter as mike’s is gentle. the creature, a fighter by nature, was born meaning harm to other men.
there is a roped square, about eighteen feet each way, on the stage, in which the gladiators will box. the floor is canvas made safe with rosin. the master of cermonies, himself a pugilist of celebration, will act as referee. the old battered man of white chapel is in mike’s corner.
another gentleman, with face similarly marred, but with seven dials as his nesting place, is posted opposite to befriend the terror. there is much buzz in the audience—a rude gathering, it is—and a deal of sympathetic admiration and not a ray of hope for mike in the eyes of those present.
the terror is replete of a riotous confidence and savage to begin. for two nights, such is the awe of him engendered among local bruisers, no one has presented himself for a meeting. this has made the terror hungry for a battle; he feels like a bear unfed. as he stands over from mike awaiting the call of “time,” he looks formidable and forbidding, with his knotted arms and mighty hands.
mike lounges in his place, the perfection of the athlete and picture of grace with power. his face, full of vacant amiability, shows pleased and interested as he looks out on the crowded, rampant house. mike has rather the air of a spectator than a principal. the crowd does not shake him; he is not disturbed by the situation. in a fashion, he has been through the same thing every night, save sunday, for three years. it comes commonplace enough to mike.
in a blurred way mike resents the blood-eagerness which glows in the eyes of his enemy; but he knows no fear. it serves to remind him, however, that no restraints are laid upon him in favor of the brute across the ring, and that he is at liberty to hit with what lust he will.
“time!” suddenly calls the referee.
those who entertained a forbode of trouble ahead for mike are agreeably surprised. with the word “time!” mike springs into tremendous life like a panther aroused. his dark eyes glow and gleam in a manner to daunt.
the terror, a gallant headlong ruffian, throws himself upon mike like a tornado. for full two minutes his blows fall like a storm. it does not seem of things possible that man could last through such a tempest. but mike lasts; more than that, every blow of the terror is stopped or avoided.
it runs off like a miracle to the onlookers, most of whom know somewhat of self-defensive arts. that mike makes no reprisals, essays no counterhits, does not surprise. a cautious wisdom would teach him to feel out and learn his man. moreover, mike is not there to attack; his mere mission is to stay four rounds.
while spectators, with approving comment on mike’s skill and quickness, are reminding one another that mike’s business is “simply to stay,” mike himself is coming to a different thought. he has grown disgusted rather than enraged by the attacks of the terror. his thrice-trained eye notes each detail of what moves as a whirlwind to folk looking on; his arm and foot provide automatically for his defense and without direct effort of the brain. this leaves mike’s mind, dull as it is, with nothing to engage itself about save a contemplation of the terror. in sluggish sort mike begins to hold a vast dislike for that furious person.
as this dislike commences to fire incipiently, he recalls the picture of mollie and little davy of the crutch. mike remembers that it is after ten o’clock, and his two treasures must be deep in sleep. then he considers of christmas, now but a day away; and of the money so necessary to the full pleasure of his sleeping mollie and little davy.
as those home-visions come to mike, and his antipathy to the terror mounting to its height, the grim impulse claims him to attack. tigerlike he steps back to get his distance; then he springs forward. it is too quickly done for eye to follow. the terror’s guard is opened by a feint; and next like a flash mike’s left shoots cleanly in. there is a sharp “spank!” as the six-ounce glove finds the terror’s jaw; that person goes down like an oak that is felled. as he falls, mike’s right starts with a crash for the heart. but there is no need: mike stops the full blow midway—a feat without a mate in boxing. the terror lies as one without life.
“w’y didn’t you let ’im ’ave your right like you started, laddy?” screams the old cockney, as mike walks towards his corner.
mike laughs in his way of gentle, soft goodnature, and points where the terror, white and senseless, bleeds thinly at nose and ear.
“the left did it,” mike replies.
out of his eyes the hot light is already dying. he takes a deep, deep breath, that arches his great breast and makes the muscles clutch and climb like serpents; he stretches himself by extending his arms and standing high on his toes. meanwhile he beams pleasantly on his grizzled adherent.
“it wasn’t much,” says mike.
“you be the coolest cove, laddy!” retorts the other in a rapt whisper. then he towels deftly at the sweat on mike’s forehead.
the decision has been given in mike’s favor. and to his delight, without argument or hesitation, the loud young man of the vociferous garb comes behind the scenes and endows him with two hundred dollars.
“say,” observes the loud young man, admiringly, “you ain’t no wonder, i don’t t’ink!”
“but how did you come to do it, mike?” asks the good-natured baker, as mike lingers over a midnight porterhouse at the latter’s restaurant.
“i had to, john,” says mike, turning his innocent face on the other; “i had to win christmas money for mollie and little davy.”
“and what,” said the sour gentleman, “became of this mike menares?”
“i should suppose,” broke in the red nosed gentleman, who had followed the jolly doctor’s narrative with relish, “i should suppose now he posed for the little sculptor’s jason.”
“it is my belief he did,” observed the jolly doctor, with a twinkle, “and in the end he became full partner of the bruiser, o’punch, and shared the profits of the gymnasium instead of taking a dollar a night for his labors. his sister grew up and married, which, when one reflects on the experience of her mother, shows she owned no little of her brother’s courage.”
“your story,” remarked the red nosed gentleman to the jolly doctor, “and the terrific blow which this menares dealt the dublin terror brings to mv mind a blow my father once struck.” this was a cue to the others and one quickly seized on; the red nosed gentleman was urged to give the story of that paternal blow. first seeing to it that the stock of burgundy at his elbow was ample, and freighting his own and the jolly doctor’s glasses to the brim, the red nosed gentleman coughed, cleared his throat, and then gave us the tale of that stolen ace of hearts.
