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Brave Tom: The Battle That Won, a fiction by Edward Sylvester Ellis |
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Chapter 20 |
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_ Chapter XX And now let's take a big jump forward. Hold your breath while we gather our muscles for the effort, for when we land, it is at a point four years from the day when Tom Gordon entered the employ of Josiah Warmore, the leading merchant in the town of Bellemore, on the Hudson. There have been many changes in those years, but in some respects slight differences could be noted. It would be hard to tell from looking at Mr. Warmore that he was one day older than when he stopped at the home of Farmer Pitcairn and hired Tom Gordon. His hair and whiskers were so white at that time that they could not grow any whiter. The face wears the same kindly expression, the shoulders are no more stooped than they were then, and his walk is as brisk and sprightly as ever. Few of his clerks are more alert of movement than he. Much the same may be said of Farmer Pitcairn and his wife. Possibly there is an additional wrinkle or two on their homely faces, but their hearts are as genial and as kindly as ever. They love Tom Gordon as if he were their own son, and he fully returns the affection they feel for him. And how has it been with Tom during those four years? Well, he has had his shadow and sunshine, like the rest of us, but there has been far more of the latter than the former. How could it be otherwise, when I tell you that he has stood as firm as a rock upon the principles that were implanted in his heart and soul by his noble mother? He could never forget her teachings, which were added to by other wise and good persons with whom he was thrown in contact later. Now, Tom Gordon became what I call a healthy, sensible Christian youth. He was not the good boy we used to read about in the Sunday-school books, who mopes around, forever preaching a sermon whenever he opens his lips, and finding a "lesson" in everything, even the leap of a grasshopper. When those boys become so good that they can be no better, they generally lie down, call all their playmates around them, deliver a farewell sermon, and then depart. The mistake of that sort of life is that it makes religion unattractive. It gives the idea that "the good die young," and that a jolly, genial, fun-loving boy, bubbling over sometimes with mischief, cannot be a Christian, when he is the very one that most pleases his heavenly Father. Tom had his fun, his enjoyment, and now and then his crosses. Such things are inevitable and must be looked for. A thorn appeared in his side from the first. A young clerk that had entered the store a few weeks ahead of him was a sly, mean, gnarly fellow, who showed a dislike to the new-comer and annoyed him in every way possible. He was larger and apparently stronger than Tom, and seemed determined to provoke a quarrel with him. Tom would have been glad to challenge him to a bout at fisticuffs, for he was confident he could vanquish him in short order. He often yearned to do so. More than once the hot defiance was tugging at his lips; but the memory of poor Jim Travers's parting words, "Tom, try to be better: I tell you, you won't be sorry when you come to die," restrained the angry utterance and the hasty blow. Max Zeigler was one of those young men that are inherently mean. He was born that way, and his ugly disposition increased with his years. You occasionally meet such persons, whose nature it seems impossible to affect by any method of treatment. What was specially aggravating in Tom Gordon's place was that Zeigler seemed to feel no dislike of any one in the store besides himself. He slurred him the first day he met him, and kept it up unremittingly. Tom's first course was to accept these slurs in silence. His face often flushed, when he saw the smiles on the countenances of the other clerks, excited by some cutting witticism of Zeigler at the expense of himself. His tormentor accepted the silence as proof of the timidity or rather cowardice of the new employee, and rattled off his insults faster than ever. While kindness as a rule will disarm a foe, there are some ingrates so constituted that it moves them the other way. When Tom replied gently to Zeigler, and asked him privately why he annoyed him without cause, the fellow sneered the more at him. He took pains to indulge in profanity and obscenity before Tom, and received the full reward he sought when he saw how much his course grieved him. Finally Tom struck the remedy. It was simple. He showed perfect indifference toward his persecutor. When Zeigler made a cutting remark, he acted as if he did not hear him. He continued his conversation with another; and though his enemy repeated his words, they did not seem to enter the ears of Tom. Even when Zeigler put a question direct to him, it was ignored. It then became the turn of Zeigler to flush at the general smile that went round. At last he had been rebuffed. One afternoon, when there was little custom in the store, Tom entered one of the rear rooms, where were Zeigler and two other clerks. The fellow's heart rankled at the snubbing he had received, and he was plotting some way of "getting even" with the sanctimonious fellow, who would never swear or indulge in a coarse word. "This is just the place for a wrestling match," remarked Zeigler. "Gordon, I will go you." There was no ignoring this challenge. Tom was a wonderfully fine wrestler, but none present knew it. He affected to be timid. "You are bigger than I, and it would hardly be fair," replied Tom, surveying the bulky form of his challenger. "O pshaw! you are as heavy as I; besides, I will let you down easy." "Try him, Gordon," whispered one of the clerks. "If you will promise not to throw me too hard," said Tom doubtfully, "I will take one turn with you." "Of course I won't hurt you," grinned Zeigler, eager for the chance to humiliate the fellow whom he despised. All saw his purpose, and none more plainly than Tom himself. The two doffed their coats and vests, and took their station in the middle of the room, with their arms interlocked. Tom pretended an awkwardness which deceived the others, and convinced Zeigler, to use a common expression, he had a "cinch" in this little affair. They struggled for a minute, and then, with the suddenness seemingly of a flash of lightning, Zeigler's heels shot toward the ceiling, and he came down on his back with a crash that shook the windows. "I thought you knew something about wrestling," remarked Tom, standing erect, and looking down on him with a smile, "but you don't know anything at all." The two spectators were convulsed with laughter. Zeigler's face was a fiery crimson, and he scrambled to his feet in a fury. "That was a slip; you can't do it again!" he exclaimed, springing at Tom and hastily locking arms with him. "All right; we'll see. Now do your best, for I mean to throw you just as I did a minute ago. Are you ready?" "Of course I am; go ahead." Zeigler was not lacking in a certain skill. The lesson he had just received was not lost on him. He was cautious, tricky, and alert--more so than Tom suspected, and he put forth the utmost cunning of which he was capable. They twisted, swayed back and forth, and once Tom came within a hair of falling, owing to a slight slip of one foot. But he was on his mettle, and, putting forth his whole might and ability, he flung his antagonist on his back with a violence that almost drove the breath from his body. "Fudge!" remarked Tom, turning away in disgust; "I'll give you a few lessons if you wish to learn how to wrestle. Any way, you had better take lessons of some person before you bother _me_ again." The other two clerks had dropped upon the nearest stools, and were holding their sides with mirth. "Zeigler," said one, when he recovered speech, "that's too big a contract for you; you can't deliver the goods." "You'll have to pay for those window-panes you shook out," added the other. "I've got a set of boxing-gloves here," growled Zeigler, who tried to assume an indifference, as he brushed off his clothes and looked up with flaming face. "I'd like to try you with them." "I'm agreeable," replied Tom, who had seen Zeigler bang the other clerks around with the gloves as he pleased. "I learned something of the business when I was a newsboy. I hope you are better at it than you are at wrestling." While Tom was speaking he was drawing on a pair of gloves and fixing the strings at the wrist. Zeigler was a little uneasy at the coolness of his opponent, and his readiness in accepting his challenge. Then, too, when he took his position, with his left foot advanced, his right glove in front of his chest, his left arm extended, the pose was so like a professional, that Zeigler's misgivings increased. Still he felt great confidence in his own skill, and there was no criticism to be made upon his position when he faced the youth, for whose vanquishment he would have given half his year's salary. "Now," said Tom, with his exasperating coolness, "I propose that _each do his best_. I don't suppose you want any baby play. I don't. I invite you to hit me as often and as hard as you can. I'm going to do the same with you. _Time_!" They began dancing about a common center, sawing their arms back and forth, each looking sharply in the other's eye and on the alert for an opening. Tom meant to make the other lead; for, before assuming the aggressive, he wished to know more about Zeigler. It might be he possessed greater skill than Tom believed. He meant to learn something of his style. They had circled round several times, when Zeigler thought he saw his chance, and feinting quickly, let fly with his left. Instead of parrying the blow, Tom dodged it by throwing his head back. The opportunity was a capital one to counter on Zeigler, but Tom made no effort to do so. It looked as if he lacked the quickness and skill, and failed to see his chance. Zeigler now began edging nearer. He had come within an inch of reaching the face of Tom, when he failed to counter. A little closer, and he was sure he could "knock him out." At any rate, if he failed to do so, he had nothing to fear from a foe who did not know enough to use an elemental advantage. A quick step forward at the instant of feinting with his right, and Zeigler again let fly with his left straight from the shoulder. It was a vicious blow, and, had it landed, would have done damage; but a flirt of the head allowed it to glide harmlessly over the shoulder. At the instant of doing so, Tom cross-countered with a quickness and force that could not have been excelled. That is to say, as Zeigler's left glove was darting past Tom's left ear, and the momentum of the young man's body was throwing him forward, Tom's right hand shot across the extended arm of the other, and landed with fearful force on the nose and mouth of his opponent. It was a fierce drive; for its effect was intensified by the fact that Tom's glove met the head of the other as it was coming toward him. It would have been bad enough had it landed on a stationary object, but the object was approaching from the opposite direction. Tom and the two clerks were startled by the effect of the blow, for Zeigler went down like a log, rolling over on his back, his hands flapping full length above his head, while he lay perfectly unconscious. But when water was dashed in his face he revived. It was some time before he freed his mouth and nose of the crimson result of colliding with the glove; but, aided by the clerks, he donned his coat and vest, and assumed something like a presentable condition. While this was going on, Tom Gordon sat in a chair a few feet away, looking on as though he felt little interest in the matter. He did not help shape the other up, for two reasons. His aid was not necessary, and, again, he knew it would not be acceptable to his discomfited antagonist. "A rather neat blow, Zeigler," remarked Tom; "when you wish to even up matters, I will be ready to accommodate you." It sounded strange to the other clerks to hear the gentle Tom Gordon speak thus to the young man who had played the bully so long over him. They concluded that the crushed worm had at last turned. The vanquished one made no reply except to give the other a look of hatred, and leave the room. Now, there is not one person in a thousand who would not have been conquered morally as well as physically by an experience like that of Max Zeigler. Such an utter overthrow would have made the bully the close friend and champion of the other; but it was altogether different with Zeigler. Before his swelled lip and bulging nose had resumed their normal appearance, he resumed his petty persecutions as before. Those who knew of the bout in the back room (and, indeed, every clerk quickly learned the particulars) urged Tom to lay out his enemy so effectually that he would stay laid out. Young Gordon, however, chose the better course. He affected the same indifference as before, and frequently did not seem to hear the words of his enemy. The hardest duty Tom had to do was to keep back the scathing retorts of which he thought so often, and which would have silenced Zeigler. Nothing, indeed, is more difficult for a high-spirited person than to bridle his tongue under the lashings of another. _How_ few of us are equal to the task! _ |
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