Fortitude | Page 6

III
All the room seemed to cease moving and talking at the moment when
Stephen Brant said that. They stood where they were like the people in
the _Sleeping Beauty_, and Peter climbed up on to his chair again to
see what was going to happen. He pulled up his stockings, and then sat
forward in his chair with his eyes gazing at Stephen and his hands very
tightly clenched. When, afterwards, he grew up and thought at all about
his childhood, this scene always remained, over and beyond all the
others. He wondered sometimes why it was that he remembered it all
so clearly, that he had it so dramatically and forcibly before him, when
many more recent happenings were clouded and dull, but when he was
older he knew that it was because it stood for so much of his life, it was
because that Christmas Eve in those dim days was really the beginning
of everything, and in the later interpretation of it so much might be
understood.
But, to a boy of that age, the things that stood out were not, of necessity,
the right things and any unreality that it might have had was due
perhaps to his fastening on the incidental, fantastic things that a small
child notices, always more vividly than a grown person. In the very
first instant of Stephen's speaking to the man with the muffler it was
Dicky the Fool's open mouth and staring eyes that showed Peter how
important it was. The Fool had risen from his chair and was standing
leaning forward, his back black against the blazing fire, his silly mouth
agape and great terror in his eyes. Being odd in his mind, he felt
perhaps something in the air that the others did not feel, and Peter
seemed to catch fright from his staring eyes.
The man at the door had turned round when Stephen Brant spoke to
him, and had pushed his way out of the crowd of men and stood alone
fingering his neck.

"I'm here, Stephen Brant, if yer want me."
Sam Figgis came forward then and said something to Stephen, and then
shrugged his shoulders and went back to his wife. He seemed to feel
that no one could interfere between the two men--it was too late for
interference. Then things happened very quickly. Peter saw that they
had all--men and women--crowded back against the benches and the
wall and were watching, very silently and with great excitement. He
found it very difficult to see, but he bent his head and peered through
the legs of a big fisherman in front of him. He was shaking all over his
body. Stephen had never before appeared so terrible to him; he had
seen him when he was very angry and when he was cross and
ill-tempered, but now he was very ominous in his quiet way, and his
eyes seemed to have changed colour. The small boy could only see the
middle of the floor and pieces of legs and skirts and trousers, but he
knew by the feeling in the room that Stephen and the little man were
going to fight. Then he moved his head round and saw between two
shoulders, and he saw that the two men were stripping to the waist. The
centre of the room was cleared, and Sam Figgis came forward to speak
to Stephen again, and this time there was more noise, and the people
began to shout out loud and the men grew more and more excited.
There had often been fights in that room before, and Peter had
witnessed one or two, but there had never been this solemnity and
ceremony--every one was very grave. It did not occur to Peter that it
was odd that it should be allowed; no one thought of policemen twenty
years ago in Treliss and Sam Figgis was more of a monarch in The
Bending Mule than Queen Victoria. And now two of the famous old
chairs were placed at opposite corners, and quite silently two men, with
serious faces, as though this were the most important hour of their life,
stood behind them. Stephen and the other man, stripped to their short
woollen drawers, came into the middle of the room. Stephen had hair
all over his chest, and his arms and his neck were tremendous; and
Peter as he looked at him thought that he must be the strongest man in
the world. His enemy was smooth and shiny, but he seemed very strong,
and you could see the muscles of his arms and legs move under his skin.
Some one had marked a circle with chalk, and all the men and women,
quite silent now, made a dark line along the wall. The lamp in the

middle