And in the centre of a circle of jeering, laughing fools, that seemed to take what was passing as part of the fun of the fair, was Tom o’ Bill’s, flushed with drink and his exertions, in whose arms panted and struggled a young lass of some nineteen years.
She was somewhat fantastically dressed in a long scarlet cloak, and her skirt was shorter by an inch or two than a modest maiden’s should be. She wore no headgear, and her long lustrous hair, black as midnight and with ripples that just escaped being curls, fell in wild confusion about a face of purest oval and over a pair of eyes that now gleamed with mingled terror and passion as she panted and writhed in the clasp of the burly gamekeeper, beating with small, brown, clenched fist the mocking lips he sought to press to hers. Near by another woman, an old, dishevelled hag, shrieked, and swore, and hit, and scratched, and kicked in the grasp of that drunken reprobate, Bill Bradbury. She, too, I guessed, was a gipsy, and it was clear she was striving to help the younger woman, while Bill urged his son:
“Stick to it, Tom. I’ll hold the old bitch. Ha’ your will o’ the young ’un.”
“By your leave, no,” I cried, as I inserted my right hand in Tom’s neck gear, and with a sudden wrench sent him reeling on his heels into the crowd. “You’ll reckon with me first.”
“And who the hell are you?” he spluttered, as he recovered his balance. “Oh! it’s th’ parson’s lad o’ Pole Moor. Well, I’ve a score to settle with th’ owd ‘chart-i’-heaven, an’ I reckon I may as well pay it th’ young whelp.” And he came for me with a leap his arm crooked for a blow, and his huge fist clenched.
“A feight a feight,” cried the mob. “Make a ring, and fair do’s.”
A hurried glance showed me the girl, still panting and trembling, and arranging the folds of her disordered dress about a heaving bosom, clinging to the old beldam whom Bill had cast roughly from him when I sent his son whirling.
Now I’m no fighting man, and never was. I had no more notion of the noble art of self-defence than a boy perforce picks up in his schooldays’ scrimmages. Moreover, my reverend father had always impressed upon me that if an adversary smote me on one cheek it was my Christian duty to turn to him the other also. But that was a doctrine I had always regarded as a counsel of perfection, and clearly, unless I had mind to be pounded to a jelly, which I certainly had not, this was no occasion for its practical application, for Tom o’ Bill’s fists were hovering about my head and chest, and I’d much ado to keep clear of them. Of course the odds seemed all against me, for your gamekeeper is ever at home in a brawl.
But I was young and active, my brain and eye were clear, and I was as hard as pin-wire, whilst Tom had been keeping up the Wakes to some tune, and, though the drink had fired his blood, it served neither to steady his arms nor his legs. So I held my own fairly well, though I was conscious that my lips were beginning to swell and an eye to close up; and I think, maybe, I should have come off a little more than conqueror, as my father would have said, had not the old man, despite the protestations of the crowd which cried shame on him, joined in the fray and fetched me a sounding blow on the jowl that made the world spin round me. I almost lost consciousness, and beat my arms feebly in some sort of show of attack, and then became aware in a mazed sort of way that the tide of war had changed. For there was Jim, good old Jim, bristling and growling like a mighty mastiff, by my side. He had dealt Tom a blow that must have been like the kick of a stallion, and just as my senses cleared I saw him pick up the shrieking, cursing Bill o’ Jack’s, raise him high above his head, and hurl him a dozen yards or more into the midst of the cheering crowd.
Tom o’ Bill’s lay on one elbow on the ground his nose streaming, and spitting out his front teeth. “Do yo’ want any more? There’s plenty wheer that came fro’,” quoth Jim to Tom.