CHAPTER XVI. IN WHICH THE BRIDE FROM FOREIGN PARTS IS GIVEN A TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND
Cheers at an open gate of a field saluted the familiar scarlet of the Earl of Fleetwood’s coach in Kentish land. They were chorister cheers, the spontaneous ringing out of English country hearts in homage to the nobleman who brightened the heaviness of life on English land with a spectacle of the noble art distinguishing their fathers. He drove along over muffling turf; ploughboys and blue butcher-boys, and smocked old men, with an approach to a hundred-weight on their heels, at the trot to right and left; all hoping for an occasional sight of the jewel called Kitty, that he carried inside. Kitty was there.
Kitty’s eyes are shut. Think of that: cradled innocence and angels’ dreams and the whole of the hymn just before ding-dong-bang on noses and jaws! That means confidence? Looks like it. But Kitty’s not asleep you try him. He’s only quiet because he has got to undergo great exertion. Last fight he was knocked out of time, because he went into it honest drunk, they tell. And the earl took him up, to give him a chance of recovering his good name, and that’s Christian. But the earl, he knows a man as well as a horse. He’s one to follow. Go to a fayte down at Esslemont, you won’t forget your day. See there, he’s brought a lady on the top o’ the coach. That seems for to signify he don’t expect it’s going to be much of a bloody business. But there’s no accounting. Anyhow, Broadfield ‘ll have a name in the papers for Sunday reading. In comes t’ other lord’s coach. They’ve timed it together closes they have.
They were pronounced to be both the right sort of noblemen for the country. Lord Brailstone’s blue coach rattled through an eastern gate to the corner of the thirty-acre meadow, where Lord Fleetwood had drawn up, a toss from the ring. The meeting of the blue and scarlet coaches drew forth Old England’s thunders; and when the costly treasures contained in them popped out heads, the moment was delirious. Kit Ines came after his head on a bound. Ben Todds was ostentatiously deliberate: his party said he was no dancing-master. He stepped out, grave as a barge emerging from a lock, though alive to the hurrahs of supporters and punctilious in returning the formal portion of his rival’s too roguish nod. Their look was sharp into the eyes, just an instant.
Brailstone and Fleetwood jumped to the grass and met, talking and laughing, precise upon points of business, otherwise cordial: plenipotentiaries of great powers, whom they have set in motion and bind to the ceremonial opening steps, according to the rules of civilized warfare. They had a short colloquy with newspaper reporters;—an absolutely fair, square, upright fight of Britons was to be chronicled. Captain Abrane, a tower in the crowd, registered bets whenever he could. Curricles, gigs, carts, pony-traps, boys on ponies, a swarm on legs, flowed to the central point and huddled there.
Was either champion born in Kent? An audacious boy proclaimed Kit Ines a man of Kent. Why, of course he was! and that was why the Earl of Fleetwood backed our cocky Kitty, and means to land him on the top of his profession. Ben Todds was shuffled aside; as one of their Londoners, destitute of county savour.
All very well, but have a spy at Benny Todds. Who looks the square man? And hear what that big gentleman of the other lord’s party says. A gentleman of his height and weight has a right to his opinion. He ‘s dead against Kit Ines: it’s fists, not feet, he says, ‘ll do it to-day; stamina, he says. Benny has got the stamina.
Todds’ possession of the stamina, and the grand voice of Captain Abrane, and the Father Christmas, roast-beef-of-Old England face of the umpire declared to be on the side of Lord Brailstone’s colour blue, darkened the star of Kit Ines till a characteristic piece of behaviour was espied. He dashed his cap into the ring and followed it, with the lightest of vaults across the ropes. There he was, the first in the ring: and that stands for promise of first blow, first blood, first flat knock-down, and last to cry for quarter. His pair of seconds were soon after him. Fleetwood mounted his box.
‘Is it to fight?’ said Carinthia.
‘To see which is the master.’