Again today, at a certain street, on the ragged boundaries of the city, Lawrence Holcombe stopped the trolley car and got off. Holcombe was a handsome, prosperous business man of forty; a man of high social standing and connections. His comfortable suburban residence was some five miles farther out on the car line from the street where so often of late he had dropped off the outgoing car. The conductor winked at a regular passenger, and nodded his head archly in the direction of Holcombe’s hurrying figure.
“Getting to be a regular thing,” commented the conductor.
Holcombe picked his way gingerly down a roughly graded side street infested with ragged urchins and impeded by abandoned tinware. He stopped at a small cottage fenced in with a patch of stony ground with a few stunted shade-trees growing about it. A stout, middle-aged woman was washing clothes in a tub at one side of the door. She looked around, and smiled a smile of fat recognition.
“Good avening, Mr. Holcombe, is it yerself ag’in? Ye’ll find Katie inside, sir.”
“Did you speak to her for me?” asked Holcombe, in a low voice; “did you try to help me gain her consent as you promised to do?”
“Sure, and I did that. But, sir, ye know gyurls will be gyurls. The more ye coax ’em the wilfuller they gets. ’Tis yer own pleadin’ that’ll get her if anything will. An’ I hopes ye may, for I tells her she’ll never get a betther offer than yours, sir. ’Tis a good girl she is, and a tidy hand for anything from the kitchen to the parlour, and she’s never a fault except, maybe, a bit too much likin’ for dances and ruffles and ribbons, but that’s natural to her age and good looks if I do say it meself, bein’ her mither, Mr. Holcombe. Ye can spake ag’in to Katie, sir, and maybe this time ye’ll have luck unless Danny Conlan, the wild gossoon, has been at it ag’in overpersuadin’ her ag’inst ye.”
Holcombe turned slightly pale, and his lips closed tightly for a moment.
“I’ve heard of this fellow Conlan before. Why does he interfere? Why does he stand in the way? Is there anything between him and Katie? Does Katie care for him?”
Mrs. Flynn gave a sigh, like a puff of a locomotive, and a flap upon the washboard with a sodden garment that sent Holcombe, well splashed, six feet away.
“Ask me no questions about what’s in a gyurl’s heart and I’ll tell ye no lies. Her own mither can’t tell any more than yerself, Mr. Holcombe.”
Holcombe stepped inside the cottage. Katie Flynn, with rolled-up sleeves, was ironing a dress of flounced muslin. Criticism of Holcombe’s deviation from his own sphere to this star of lower orbit must have waned at the sight of the girl. Her beauty was of the most solvent and convincing sort. Dusky Irish eyes, one great braid of jetty, shining hair, a crimson mouth, dimpling and shaping itself to every mood of its owner, a figure strong and graceful, seemingly full of imperishable life and action—Katie Flynn was one to be sought after and striven for.
Holcombe went and stood by her side as she ironed, and watched the lithe play of muscles rolling beneath the satiny skin of her rounded forearms.
“Katie,” he said, his voice concealing a certain anxiety beneath a wooing tenderness, “I have come for my answer. It isn’t necessary to repeat what we have talked over so often, but you know how anxious I am to have you. You know my circumstances and position, and that you will have every comfort and every privilege that you could ask for. Say ‘Yes,’ Katie, and I’ll be the luckiest man in this town today.”
Kate set her iron down with a metallic click, and leaned her elbows upon the ironing board. Her great blue-black eyes went, in their Irish way, from sparkling fun to thoughtful melancholy.
“Oh, Mr. Holcombe, I don’t know what to say. I know you’d be kind to me, and give me the best home I could ever expect. I’d like to say ‘yes’—indeed I would. I’d about decided to tell you so, but there’s Danny—he objects so.”
Danny again! Holcombe strode up and down the room impatiently frowning.
“Who is this fellow Conlan, Katie?” he asked. “Every time I nearly get your consent he comes between us. Does he want you to live always in this cottage for the convenience of his mightiness? Why do you listen to him?”
“He wants me,” said Katie, in the voice of a small, spoiled child.
“Well, I want you too,” said Holcombe, masterfully. “If I could see this wonderful Mr. Conlan, of the persuasive tongue, I’d argue the matter with him.”
“He’s been the champion middleweight fighter of this town,” said Katie, a bit mischievously.
“Oh, has he! Well, that doesn’t frighten me, Katie. In fact, I am not sure but what I’d tackle him a few rounds myself, with you for the prize; although I’m somewhat rusty with the gloves.”
“Whist! there he comes now,” exclaimed Katie, her eyes widening a little with apprehension.
Holcombe looked out the door and saw a young man coming up from the gate. He walked with an easy swagger. His face was smooth and truculent, but not bad. He wore a cap pulled down to one eye. He walked inside the house and stopped at the door of the room in which stood his rival and the bone of contention.
“You’re after my girl again, are you?” he grumbled, huskily and ominously. “I don’t like it, do you see? I’ve told her so, and I tell you so. She stays here. For ten cents I’d knock your block off. Do you see?”
“Now Mr. Conlan,” began Holcombe, striving to avoid the argumentum ad hominem, “listen to reason. It is only fair to let Katie choose for herself. Is it quite the square thing to try to prevent her from doing what she prefers to do? If it had not been for your interference I would have had her long ago.”
“For five cents,” pursued the unmoved Mr. Conlan, lowering his terms, “I’d knock your block off.”
Into Holcombe’s eye there came the light of desperate resolve. He saw but one way to clear the obstacle from his path.
“I am told,” he said quietly and firmly, “that you are a fighter. Your mind seems to dwell upon physical combat as the solution to all questions. Now, Conlan, I’m no scrapper, but I’ll fight you to a finish any time within the next three minutes to see who gets the girl. If I win she goes with me. If you win you have your way, and I’ll not trouble her again. Are you game?”
Danny Conlan’s hard, blue eyes looked a sudden admiration.
“You’re all right,” he conceded with gruff candour. “I didn’t think you was that sort. You’re all right. It’s a dead fair sporting prop., and I’m your company. I’ll stand by the results according to terms. Come on, and I’ll show you where it can be pulled off. You’re all right.”
Katie tried to interfere, but Danny silenced her. He led Holcombe down the hill to a deep gully that sheltered them from view. Night was just closing in upon the twilight. They laid aside their coats and hats. Here was a situation in the methodical existence of Lawrence Holcombe, real estate and bond broker, representative business man of unquestionable habits and social position! Fighting with a professional tough in a gully in a squalid settlement for the daughter of an Irish washerwoman!
The combat was a short one. If it had lasted longer, Holcombe would have lost, for both his wind and his science had deteriorated from long lack of training. Therefore, he forced the fighting from the start. It is difficult to say to what he owed his victory over the once champion middleweight. One thing in his favour was that Mr. Conlan’s nerve and judgment had been somewhat shattered by the effects of a recent spree. Another must have been that Holcombe was stimulated to supreme exertion by an absorbing incentive to win—a prompting more powerful than the instinct of the gladiator, deeper than all the motives of gallantry, and more important than the vital influence of love itself. A third fortuitous adjunct was, without doubt, a chance blow upon the projecting chin of the middleweight, under which that warrior sank to the gully’s grime and remained incapable, while Holcombe stood above him and leisurely counted him out.
Danny got shakily to his feet, and proved to be a true sport.
“You’re all right,” he said. “But if we’d had it by rounds ’twould have ended different. The girl goes with you, do you see? I’m on the square.”
They climbed back to the cottage.
“It’s settled,” announced Holcombe. “Mr. Conlan removes his objections.”
“That’s straight,” said Danny. “He’s all right.”
Holcombe had only a scratched and slightly reddened chin from a vicious, glancing uppercut from Danny’s left. Danny showed punishment. One eye was nearly closed. His lip was bleeding.
Katie was a true woman. Such do not at once crown the victor in the tourney for their favour. Pity comes first. The victor must wait for his own. It will come to him. She flew to the vanquished champion and comforted him, ministering to his bruises. Holcombe stood, serene and smiling, without jealousy.
“Tomorrow,” he said to Katie, with head erect and beaming eyes.
“Tomorrow, if you like,” answered Katie.
Holcombe minced his precarious way up the ragged hill among the obsolete tinware. His car came along aglitter with electric lights and jammed with passengers. He jumped to the rear platform and stood there. At his side he found Weatherly, a friend and neighbour, who had also built a house in the suburbs, a few squares from his own.
“Hello, Holcombe,” yelled Weatherly, above the crash of the car. “Been looking over some real estate, out here? How’re Mrs. Holcombe and the young H’s?”
“First rate,” shouted Holcombe, “when I left home this morning. How’s the family with you?”
“Only so-so. Usual suburban troubles. Servants won’t stay so far out; tradesmen object to delivering goods in the country; cars break down, etc. What’s pleasing you so? Made a lucky deal today?”
Holcombe’s face wore an ecstatic look. He was fingering a little scratch on his chin with one hand. He leaned his head towards Weatherly’s ear.
“Say, Bob, do you remember that Irish girl, Katie Flynn, that was with the Spaffords so long a time?”
“I’ve heard of her,” said Weatherly. “They say she stayed a year with them without a single day off. But I don’t believe any fairy story like that.”
“ ’Twas a fact. Well, I engaged her today for a cook. She’s going out to the house tomorrow.”
“Confound you for a lucky dog,” shouted Weatherly, with envy in his tones and his heart, “and you live four blocks further out than we do!”