The Abysmal Brute, Jack London [readnow .TXT] 📗

position should have been guilty. A match in ten thousand, she remained unmarried. She had sojourned in Europe without bringing home a nobleman for spouse, and had declined a goodly portion of her own set at home. She had gone in for outdoor sports, won the tennis championship of the state, kept the society weeklies agog with her unconventionalities, walked from San Mateo to Santa Cruz against time on a wager, and once caused a sensation by playing polo in a men’s team at a private Burlingame practice game. Incidentally, she had gone in for art, and maintained a studio in San Francisco’s Latin Quarter.

All this had been of little moment until her father’s reform attack became acute. Passionately independent, never yet having met the man to whom she could gladly submit, and bored by those who had aspired, she resented her father’s interference with her way of life and put the climax on all her social misdeeds by leaving home and going to work on the “Courier-Journal.” Beginning at twenty dollars a week, her salary had swiftly risen to fifty. Her work was principally musical, dramatic, and art criticism, though she was not above mere journalistic stunts if they promised to be suffciently interesting. Thus she scooped the big interview with Morgan at a time when he was being futilely trailed by a dozen New York star journalists, went down to the bottom of the Golden Gate in a diver’s suit, and flew with Rood, the bird man, when he broke all records of continuous flight by reaching as far as Riverside.

Now it must not be imagined that Maud Sangster was a hard-bitten Amazon. On the contrary, she was gray-eyed, slender young woman, of three or four and twenty, of medium stature, and possessing uncommonly small hands and feet for an outdoor woman or any other kind of women, she knew how to be daintly feminine.

It was on her own suggestion that she received the editor’s commission to interview Pat Glendon. With the exception of having caught a glimpse, once, of Bob Fitzsimmons in evening dress at the Palace Grill, she had never seen a prize-fighter in her life. Nor was she curious to see one—at least she had not been curious until Young Pat Glendon came to San Francisco to train for his fight with Nat Powers. Then his newspaper reputation had aroused her. The Abysmal Brute!—it certainly must be worth seeing. From what she read of him she gleaned that he was a man-monster, profoundly stupid and with the sullenness and ferocity of a jungle beast. True, his published photographs did not show all that, but they did show the hugeness of brawn that might be expected to go with it. And so, accompanied by a staff photographer, she went out to the training quarters at the Cliff House at the hour appointed by Stubener.

That real estate owner was having trouble. Pat was rebellious. He sat, one big leg dangling over the side of the arm chair and Shakespeare’s Sonnets face downward on his knee, orating against the new woman.

“What do they want to come butting into the game for?” he demanded. “It’s not their place. What do they know about it anyway? The men are bad enough as it is. I’m not a holy show. This woman’s coming here to make me one. I never have stood for women around the training quarters, and I don’t care if she is a reporter.”

“But she’s not an ordinary reporter,” Stubener interposed. “You’ve heard of the Sangsters?—the millionaires?”

Pat nodded.

“Well, she’s one of them. She’s high society and all that stuff. She could be running with the Blingum crowd now if she wanted to instead of working for wages. Her old man’s worth fifty millions if he’s worth a cent.”

“Then what’s she working on a paper for?—keeping some poor devil out of a job.”

“She and the old man fell out, had a tiff or something, about the time he started to clean up San Francisco. She quit. That’s all—left home and got a job. And let me tell you one thing, Pat: she can everlastingly sling English. There isn’t a pen-pusher on the Coast can touch her when she gets going.”

Pat began to show interest, and Stubener hurried on.

“She writes poetry, too—the regular la-de-dah stuff, just like you. Only I guess hers is better, because she published a whole book of it once. And she writes up the shows. She interviews every big actor that hits this burg.”

“I’ve seen her name in the papers,” Pat commented.

“Sure you have. And you’re honored, Pat, by her coming to interview you. It won’t bother you any. I’ll stick right by and give her most of the dope myself. You know I’ve always done that.”

Pat looked his gratitude.

“And another thing, Pat: don’t forget you’ve got to put up with this interviewing. It’s part of your business. It’s big advertising, and it comes free. We can’t buy it. It interests people, draws the crowds, and it’s crowds that pile up the gate receipts.” He stopped and listened, then looked at his watch. “I think that’s her now. I’ll go and get her and bring her in. I’ll tip it off to her to cut it short, you know, and it won’t take long.” He turned in the doorway. “And be decent, Pat. Don’t shut up like a clam. Talk a bit to her when she asks you questions.”

Pat put the Sonnets on the table, took up a newspaper, and was apparently deep in its contents when the two entered the room and he stood up. The meeting was a mutual shock. When blue eyes met gray, it was almost as if the man and the woman shouted triumphantly to each other, as if each had found something sought and unexpected. But this was for the instant only. Each had anticipated in the other something so totally different that the next moment the clear cry of recognition gave way to confusion. As is the way of women, she was the first to achieve control, and she did it without having given any outward sign that she had ever lost it. She advanced most of the distance across the floor to meet Glendon. As for him, he scarcely knew how he stumbled through the introduction. Here was a woman, a WOMAN. He had not known that such a creature could exist. The few women he had noticed had never prefigured this. He wondered what Old Pat’s judgment would have been of her, if she was the sort he had recommended to hang on to with both his hands. He discovered that in some way he was holding her hand. He looked at it, curious and fascinated, marveling at its fragility.

She, on the other hand, had proceeded to obliterate the echoes of that first clear call. It had been a peculiar experience, that was all, this sudden out-rush of her toward this strange man. For was not he the abysmal brute of the prize-ring, the great, fighting, stupid, bulk of a male animal who hammered up his fellow males of the same stupid order? She smiled at the way he continued to hold her hand.

“I’ll have it back, please, Mr. Glendon,” she said. “I… I really need it, you know.”

He looked at her blankly, followed her gaze to her imprisoned hand, and dropped it in a rush of awkwardness that sent the blood in a manifest blush to his face.

She noted the blush, and the thought came to her that he did not seem quite the uncouth brute she had pictured. She could not conceive of a brute blushing anything. And also, she found herself pleased with the fact that he lacked the easy glibness to murmur an apology. But the way he devoured her with his eyes was disconcerting. He stared at her as if in a trance, while his cheeks flushed even more redly.

Stubener by this time had fetched a chair for her, and Glendon automatically sank down into his.

“He’s in fine shape, Miss Sangster, in fine shape,” the manager was saying. “That’s right, isn’t it, Pat? Never felt better in your life?”

Glendon was bothered by this. His brows contracted in a troubled way, and he made no reply.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, Mr. Glendon,” Miss Sangster said. “I never interviewed a pugilist before, so if I don’t go about it expertly you’ll forgive me, I am sure.”

“Maybe you’d better start in by seeing him in action,” was the manager’s suggestion. “While he’s getting into his fighting togs I can tell you a lot about him—fresh stuff, too. We’ll call in Walsh, Pat, and go a couple of rounds.

We’ll do nothing of the sort,” Glendon growled roughly, in just the way an abysmal brute should. “Go ahead with the interview.”

The business went ahead unsatisfactorily. Stubener did most of the talking and suggesting, which was sufficient to irritate Maud Sangster, while Pat volunteered nothing. She studied his fine countenance, the eyes clear blue and wide apart, the well-modeled, almost aquiline, nose, the firm, chaste lips that were sweet in a masculine way in their curl at the corners and that gave no hint of any sullenness. It was a baffling personality, she concluded, if what the papers said of him was so. In vain she sought for earmarks of the brute. And in vain she attempted to establish contacts. For one thing, she knew too little about prize-fighters and the ring, and whenever she opened up a lead it was promptly snatched away by the information-oozing Stubener.

“It must be most interesting, this life of a pugilist,” she said once, adding with a sigh, ” I wish I knew more about it. Tell me: why do you fight?—Oh, aside for money reasons.” (This latter to forestall Stubener). “Do you enjoy fighting? Are you stirred by it, by pitting yourself against other men? I hardly know how to express what I mean, so you must be patient with me.”

Pat and Stubener began speaking together, but for once Pat bore his manager down.

“I didn’t care for it at first—”

“You see, it was to dead easy for him,” Stubener interrupted.

“But later, Pat went on, “when I encountered the better fighters, the real big clever ones, where I was more—”

“On the mettle?” she suggested.

“Yes, that’s it, more on my mettle, I found I did care for it… a great deal, in fact. But still, it’s not so absorbing to me as it might be. You see, while each battle is a sort of problem which I must work out with my wits and muscle, yet to me the issue is never in doubt—”

“He’s never had a fight go to a decision,” Stubener proclaimed. “He’s won every battle by the knockout route.”

“And it ‘s this certainty of the outcome that robs it of what I imagine must be its finest thrills,” Pat concluded.

“Maybe you’ll get some of them thrills when you go against Jim Hanford,” said the manager.

Pat smiled, but did not speak.

“Tell me some more,” she urged, “more about the way you feel when you are fighting.”

And then Pat amazed his manager, Miss Sangster, and himself, by blurting out:

“It seems to me I don’t want to talk with you on such things. It ‘s as if there are things more important for you and me to talk about. I—”

He stopped abruptly, aware of what he was saying but unaware of why he was saying it.

“Yes,” she cried eagerly. “That ‘s it. That is what makes a good interview—the real personality, you know.”

But Pat remained tongue-tied, and Stubener wandered away on a statistical comparison of his champion’s weights, measurments, and expansions with those of Sandow, the Terrible Turk, Jeffries, and the other modern strong