It was briefly:
"Leave the ring."
The rascal, half bully, half coward, rallied from the startled fear into
which his first recognition by the Guardsman (who had been the chief
witness against him in a very scandalous matter at York, and who had
warned him that if he ever saw him again in the Ring he would have him
turned out of it) had thrown him, and, relying on insolence and the
numbers of his fraternity to back him out of it, stood his ground.
"I've as much right here as you swells," he said, with a hoarse laugh.
"Are you the whole Jockey Club, that you come it to a honest gentleman
like that?"
Cecil looked down on him slightly amused, immeasurably disgusted--of all
earth's terrors, there was not one so great for him as a scene, and the
eager bloodshot eyes of the Ring were turning on them by the thousand,
and the loud shouting of the bookmakers was thundering out, "What's up?"
"My 'honest gentleman,'" he said wearily, "leave this. I tell you; do
you hear?"
"Make me!" retorted the "welsher," defiant in his stout-built square
strength, and ready to brazen the matter out. "Make me, my cock o' fine
feathers! Put me out of the ring if you can, Mr. Dainty Limbs! I've as
much business here as you."
The words were hardly out of his mouth before, light as a deer and
close as steel, Cecil's hand was on his collar, and without any seeming
effort, without the slightest passion, he calmly lifted him off the
ground, as though he were a terrier, and thrust him through the throng;
Ben Davis, as the welsher was named, meantime being so amazed at such
unlooked-for might in the grasp of the gentlest, idlest, most gracefully
made, and indolently tempered of his born foes and prey, "the swells,"
that he let himself be forced along backward in sheer passive paralysis
of astonishment, while Bertie, profoundly insensible to the tumult that
began to rise and roar about him, from those who were not too absorbed
in the business of the morning to note what took place, thrust him
along in the single clasp of his right hand outward to where the running
ground swept past the Stand, and threw him lightly, easily, just as one
may throw a lap-dog to take his bath, into the artificial ditch filled
with water that the Seraph had pointed out as "a teaser.
Pages:
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56