Chapter II: Part 2

"What I suggest," said Leeson, "is that we do wait, and that we fill up the time by reading one or two poems by a new man that I've just discovered? They're simply wonderful!"

He drew out the book and we all composed ourselves to the ordeal; Mrs. Gaston, who is the insincerest creature on earth and has no thoughts beyond Auction Bridge, even going so far as to say, ecstatically, "A new poet! How heavenly!"

But Mrs. Leeson stopped it. "Oh, no," she said, "don't let us wait. Very likely Captain Cathcart will be later still." And with a sigh of relief that was almost audible we marched down to dinner.

I thought that Leeson cut the time over our cigars rather short, and we had no sooner returned to the drawing-room than he began again. "I won't keep you more than a few moments," he said, "but I very much want your opinion of a new poet I have discovered. I have his work here," and out came the deadly book, "and I want to read one or two brief things."

"Oh, George, dear," said Mrs. Leeson, "do you mind postponing that for a little? Miss Langton is very kindly going to sing for us, and she has to leave early."

Leeson accepted the situation with as much philosophy as he could muster.

As a rule I am bored by amateur, or indeed any, singing after dinner, but I looked at Miss Langton with an expression which a Society paper reporter might easily have misconstrued.

Long before she had finished we were all calling out, "Thank you! Thank you! Encore! Encore!"

Leeson alone was faint in his praises and his face fell to a lower depth when she began again.

No sooner had she finished and gone than he was planning another effort, but during the opportunity afforded by her departure we had, with great address, divided ourselves into such animated groups that Mrs. Leeson, like a tactful hostess, laid her hand on his arm and caused him again to postpone it.

He wandered forlornly from chair to chair, seeking an opening, and at last ventured to clear his throat and again ask if we would like to hear his new poet. "I assure you he's wonderful!"

But at this moment old Lady Thistlewood uttered a little cry and at once bells were rung for sal-volatile. Her ladyship, it seems, is subject to attacks of faintness.

When next Leeson made his proposal the Buntons rose and, expressing every variety of sorrow and regret, stated that they had no idea it was so late and they must really tear themselves away; Mrs. Bunton tactfully taking down the title of this dear new poet's book and its publisher.

This being the signal for the others to leave, I soon found myself alone.

"Now!" said Leeson with a triumphant expression. "Thank goodness they're out of the way and we're quiet and snug. Now you shall hear my poet." He felt for the book. "I tell you----" He stopped in dismay.

"I could have sworn it was in my pocket," he said, and began to hunt about the room.

"Where on earth can it be?" he said.

I helped him to look for it, but in vain.

"Perhaps Mrs. Bunton took it?" I suggested.

"I'm sure she didn't," he replied.

"Perhaps Mrs. Leeson has it?" I said.

But she had not. The last time she had seen it it was on the table after Mrs. Bunton copied the title.

Leeson was so utterly dejected that I felt almost sorry for him.

"Well," he said at last, "that's the strangest thing I ever heard of. What a disappointment! I did want you to hear it."

But it was precisely because I didn't that in my own pocket was the volume's present hiding-place. When the front door had closed behind me half-an-hour later, I slipped it into the letter-box.

* * * * *

THE FOX.

The birds see him first, jay and blackbird and thrush;
They shriek at his coming and curse him, each one;
With the clay of the vale on his pads and his brush,
It's the Fallowfield fox and he's pretty near done;
It's a couple of hours since a whip tally-ho'd him;
Now the rookery's stooping to mob and to goad him;
There's an earth on the hill, but he's cooked past believing,
And his tongue's hanging out and his wet ribs are heaving.
Here he comes up the field at a woebegone trot;
He's stiff as a poker, he's done all he knows;
Now the ploughmen'll view him as likely as not;
There--they run to the paling and yell as he goes:
Here's an end, if we live to be two minutes older;
See, he turns a glazed eye o'er a mud-spattered shoulder;
There's a hound through the hedgerow....
Game's up, and he's beaten,
And he faces about with a snarl to be eaten.

* * * * *

THE HERO WHO TOOK OUT A PARTY OF LADIES FERRETING.]

* * * * *

THE RING.

KEEKS _v._ COCKLES.

I.--OLD STYLE.

_By Tony Shovell._

The much-boomed fight between Nobby Keeks and Bill Cockles ended in something of a _fiasco_, the last named being knocked out with a terrific uppercut in the first round.

The men stripped well, and appeared in excellent fettle. The fight commenced precisely at 11.22, only fifty-two minutes after the advertised time.

_1st Round._--Both men opened warily, sparring for an opening. Presently Cockles stepped in and drove his left hard to the nose, drawing blood. Keeks drew back, and Cockles, following up his advantage, got in a nicely-judged left hook on the eye, which began to swell ominously. Though his supporters were obviously chagrined, Keeks kept his head admirably, and cleverly ducked under a right swing and clinched. At the breakaway Cockles got his left home on the ribs, but in doing so left himself open, and Keeks shook him up badly with a jab to the jaw. Cockles' hands dropped momentarily, and Keeks, whipping in a smashing right uppercut, had his man down and out.

A poor struggle, lost solely through carelessness.

II.--NEW STYLE.

_By Philip Keppermann._

At twenty-two and a-half minutes past eleven last night a man stood looking wistfully over a sea of faces looming whitely through a thin blue haze of tobacco smoke. At his feet lay stretched the limp body of his antagonist. The disappearance of one eye; under a large red swelling, combined with a patulous and rubescent nose, detracted to some extent from the dignity of his appearance. An ugly patch of crimson over his left ribs held the attention fantastically, morbidly. It was blood, human blood, his own blood. The thought fascinated me....

Somewhere a voice was counting slowly, steadily, unhesitatingly--_one_--_two_--_three_.... The voice had in it the inexorable quality of Fate; it brought tears to the eyes like the wail of the Chorus in some Greek drama.

I looked at the man by my side. His regard was fixed intently on the prostrate figure in the ring. His fingers played uneasily with his watch-chain. He wore evening dress, and I noticed that his tie was a little crooked.

Away outside we caught the distant hoot of a motorcar. A dog barked. Then a woman in the audience sneezed; it seemed unwarrantable, impertinent, almost a desecration....

The voice that was counting ceased. The limp figure did not move. The one wistful eye of the victor closed for a moment in relief. There was a sudden incursion of hurrying figures into the ring....

The great fight was over. Nobby Keeks had beaten Bill Cockles.

_By Theresa Chingles._

I was one of forty-four women who witnessed the great battle last night. There were, it was said, over three thousand men.

On my left sat a young girl in a rose-pink evening dress, with a dove-colour opera cloak covering her bare shoulders. Her eyes followed intently the struggling figures on the stage, and I observed that she wore an engagement ring with three diamonds.

A few seats away, surrounded by a swarm of men in evening dress, sat a grey-haired woman, watching the fight with interest through a gold-rimmed lorgnette. Her eyes twinkled as heavy blows were delivered, and when one of the men began to bleed copiously from the nose, she uttered an exclamation of delight. She wore black.

So far as I could observe, no woman present showed any sign of repulsion. It seemed to me significant of the times. I whispered to my neighbour, "_O tempora! O mores!_" but she replied coldly, "Not at all!" I checked my impulse to add "_Autres temps, autres moeurs!_"

Of the actual fight I am not competent to speak. I was most interested in the referee, whose strong mobile face reminded me occasionally of Lord BYRON, at other times of Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL.

_By the Rev. Robert Shackleberry._

I had never seen a boxing contest before I was invited by the enterprising editor of _The Daily Gong_ to witness the encounter last night between "Nobby" Keeks and William Cockles.

I found an excellent seat reserved for me. It was nearing midnight when the two men mounted the platform. Cockles came first, wearing a scarlet dressing-gown with yellow collar and cuffs. He seemed to me a bluff, hearty, good-tempered-looking man, though perhaps unduly prominent in the lower jaw. Keeks, who followed, wore a bright green dressing-gown with a pink sash, and shook hands with six or seven members of the audience. He was taller and heavier than his opponent, and his features, to my mind, more intelligent but less amiable.

There was a long delay, during which I was given to understand that the men's hands were being bandaged for some reason. At length the swarm of seconds and advisers disappeared to the sound of a gong, and the combatants stood up and advanced upon one another. I was embarrassed to observe that they were nearly nude, but my embarrassment did not seem to be shared by any of the ladies present, so perhaps I have no right to complain.

The actual boxing did not last nearly so long as the preliminaries. This was perhaps just as well, since Keeks, afterwards announced the victor, unfortunately sustained considerable damage to his right eye and was also losing blood from his nose--nasty injuries which, in my opinion, should have led to the competition being stopped while he received medical attention. No doubt the injuries were undesigned.

Cockles soon afterwards fell down, and refused to rise while some individual slowly counted ten. This, I was told, indicated that he was desirous of withdrawing from the contest before his antagonist sustained any further damage. In my judgment this generosity merited the award of victory; but no doubt the authorities know their business.

I was glad to have an opportunity of gaining a new experience, but on the whole I must say I prefer a quiet rubber of whist.

* * * * *

THE OPPORTUNIST.

The personal distinctions, experiences, successes, opinions, anecdotes and statistics of Dr. Peterson, F.R.C.S., M.R.C.P., are too many for me to mention here, but are never too many for him to mention anywhere. That was the difficulty with which the Governors of the St. Barnabas Throat and Ear Hospital were confronted from the beginning to the end of their business of administration. As member of their honorary staff he performed his fair share of successful operations, but when it came to speech-making he had no consideration either for his own throat or for anybody else's ears.

"It's my belief," said the Chairman, at the special meeting of the Board called to arrange the programme for the opening of the new wing, "that the whole of this project originated in Peterson's desire to make himself heard."

"I certainly remember his introducing the matter to the Board," said Thompson, "with a brief sketch of his own career."

"And if the foundation stone could only speak," said Vernon-White, "it probably wouldn't be able to recall the name of the man who laid it, but would repeat from memory the whole of Peterson's private history."

"Proposed, seconded and carried unanimously," reported the Secretary, "that at the opening of the new wing no speech be made by Dr. Peterson."

"So much for our resolution," said Bainbridge. "Nevertheless the company will have barely got seated before it hears Peterson wondering whether he may occupy a moment of their valuable time with a little experience which happened to him the other day."

"Even he will give way to Sir Thingummy," said Thompson, referring to the great man who had been invited to make the great speech.

Bainbridge was always a pessimist. "Whether," he said, "the context be the opening of the new wing or the duty of gratitude to the man that opened it, the one subject the meeting will hear all about will be the son of Peter."

"Proposed, seconded and carried unanimously," reported the Secretary, "that the vote of thanks to Sir Frederick Gorton be moved by the Chairman."

"I see myself," said the Chairman, "resuming my seat after a few moments of inaudible confusion, and I hear a ringing voice crying forth: 'In rising on behalf of the Medical and Surgical Staff to propose a vote of thanks to our dear Chairman, I may perhaps be permitted to remind you that I joined that staff in 1887, and that since I----?'"

"Who's the senior member of the staff?" asked the Chairman.

"Peterson," said Bainbridge.

"Who's the oldest in mere age?"

"Peterson."

The Chairman thought hard. "The event is fixed for April 29th," said he. "Whose week on duty is that?"

The Secretary looked up the books. His face fell. "Peterson's," he said.

"Proposed, seconded and carried unanimously," said the Chairman hurriedly, without troubling to take the vote, "that Dr. Wilkes be appointed tomorrow the vote of thanks to the Chairman, and that the Secretary be instructed to explain the matter, with due tact and circumspection, to Dr. Peterson."

"Dear Peterson," wrote the Secretary,--"At the ceremony of the opening of the new wing, my Board is particularly anxious that everything should go with a swing, and that there shall be no possibility of any hitch. I am instructed to ask you if you will be so good as to hold yourself in readiness to make the big technical speech of the day in the unhappy event of Sir Frederick Gorton failing to turn up. One is never safe with these London men, and it is for that reason that the Board hopes you will not mind putting yourself to trouble which may prove wasted. Some of the less eloquent members of the Staff can be got to make the short formal speeches."

Sir Frederick turned up all right, as the Secretary had taken care that he should, and declared the wing open, and thanked the Board for asking him. Thereupon the Board, by its Chairman, thanked him, and he rose again and very briefly thanked the Board for thanking him. Then Dr. Wilkes got up and thanked the Chairman even more briefly still, and the Chairman got up again and thanked Dr. Wilkes for thanking him. In fact, only one man didn't get his share of formal gratitude, for no one thanked Dr. Peterson for rising (if he might) to express a few words of thanks to Dr. Wilkes.

Anticipating this possibility, Dr. Peterson devoted the larger part of his speech to thanking himself.

* * * * *

_Doctor._ "OH, JUST OLD AGE, MRS. MACDOUGALL."

_Grannie._ "HOOTS, MAN; YE'RE HAVERIN'. THE LEFT LEG'S HALE AND SOOND, AND THEY'RE _BAITH_ THE SAME AGE."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)

To read _An Englishman Looks at the World_ (CASSELL), a collection of "unrestrained remarks on contemporary matters"--aeroplanes, CHESTERTON and BELLOC, libraries, labour unrest, the Great State, and the like--by Mr. H. G. WELLS, is to be delighted or infuriated according to your natural habit of mind. If established in tolerable comfort in a world which you judge, for all its blemishes, to be on the whole rather well run, you will resent exceedingly this pert young man (for Mr. WELLS is still astonishingly young) with his preposterous eagerness, his insane passion for questioning and tinkering and most unfairly putting you and your kind in the wrong. You will no doubt find excellent grounds for doubting his ability to reconstruct; for suspecting what you will feel to be his pretentious breadth of view, his assumed omniscience. But if, on the other hand, thinking life in your sombre moments a nightmare of imbecility and in your more expansive moments a high adventure of immeasurable possibilities, you are straitened between cold despairs and immense hopes, you will readily forgive this irreverent, self-confident critic-journalist any crude things he may have said in his haste for sake of his flashes of perception, his happily descriptive phrases, his inspiring anticipations, his uncalculating candour, and above all his generous preoccupation with things that matter enormously. "What we prosperous people who have nearly all the good things of life and most of the opportunities have to do now is to justify ourselves." That is a sentiment and a challenge repeated or implied throughout the book. This Englishman looking at his world looks with quick eyes. He is himself so intensely interested that he can only fail to interest such as find his whole attitude an outrage upon their finally adopted convictions and conventions.

* * * * *

Have you noticed the way in which certain stories bear the mark of a particular place or period? If ever there was a novel that vociferated "Cambridge" in every line, _The Making of a Bigot_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is that one. Well indeed may its paper wrapper display a drawing of King's Chapel, though as a matter of fact only the action of the first chapter passes in the University town. Miss ROSE MACAULAY has based her story upon a quaintly attractive theme. Her hero, _Eddy Oliver_, is a type new to fiction. _Eddy_ saw good in everything to such an extent that he allowed himself to be persuaded into active sympathy with the aims of practically everyone who was aiming at anything, however mutually irreconcilable the aims might be. "He went along with all points of view so long as they were positive; as soon as condemnation or rejection came in, he broke off." Consequently, as you may imagine, his career was pleasantly involved. It embraced the Church, various forms of Socialism, and at one time and another some devotion to the ideals of Nationalism, Disarmament, Imperial Service and the Primrose League. But please don't imagine that all this is told in a spirit of comedy. Miss MACAULAY is, if anything, almost too dry and serious; this, and her disproportionate affection for the word "rather," a little impaired my own enjoyment of the book. It contains some happily sketched types of modernity--all of them Cambridge to the back-bone; and _Eddy's_ final discovery (which makes the bigot), that one can't achieve anything in life without some wholesale hatreds, is genuine enough--more so than the system of card-cutting by which he settles his convictions. Miss MACAULAY has already, I am told, won a thousand pounds with a previous book; this one proves her the possessor of a gift of originality that is both rare and refreshing.

* * * * *

I could imagine a novel with which I could sympathise deeply, based upon the theme of England's regeneration by means of the right type of Tory squire, but it would be a novel with a more credible hero and conceived in a less petty spirit of party bias than Mr. H. N. DICKINSON has given us in _The Business of a Gentleman_ (HEINEMANN). For, in the first place, _Sir Robert Wilton_, who figured of course in _Keddy_ and _Sir Guy and Lady Rannard_--he has, in fact, by this time married _Marion_, late _Sir Guy's_ widow--is far too jumpy and nervy a person to fit my ideal of a paternal landlord, and what is, after all, more important, I feel convinced that his tenants and stable-lads would have thought the same. Secondly, I refuse to believe that a spinster, however soured, however much devoted to the cause of Labour and misguided crusades for social purity, would have behaved as _Miss Baker_ does in this book; and deliberately attempted to father a false scandal on _Sir Robert_ merely because she hated his type. And if the author replies that he knows of such an instance I maintain that it was just one of those things which the art of selection should have prompted him to leave out. I have, of course, no fault to find with Mr. DICKINSON'S style, which as usual is curiously simple yet at the same time attractive, nor with his powers of character-sketching. His schoolboy of seventeen, _Eddie Durwold_, is in this book particularly good. It is the things that these people do that bothers me. And if I might venture to rename _The Business of a Gentleman_ the title I should choose is "The Escapade of an Egoist."

* * * * *

Mr. SIDNEY LOW has paid some visits to Egypt and the Sudan, has kept his eyes very wide open and has written _Egypt in Transition_ (SMITH, ELDER) in consequence. The Earl of CROMER, who has also been there or thereabouts, introduces the book to the notice of the public with an appreciative preface. Am I then in a position to pass judgment? Yes, I am; for I can claim to be literally more informed on the subject than most people, having above my share of friends and relations who have been there. I have the clearest possible picture of the country--a stretch of sand, some pyramids in the background, and, in the centre foreground, smiling enigmatically--not the Sphinx, but my friend or relation. I at once gave Mr. LOW five marks out of ten upon discovering that none of his illustrations reproduced himself on either on or off a camel. On less personal grounds, I have no scruple in giving him the remaining five for the vastly interesting facts, political, international, social and racial, with which he entertained me. It requires no small skill in a dispenser of such facts to make them entertaining. Twice only was I minded to quarrel with him; once when he expressed a general contempt, based upon one egregious example, for the foreign exports of Oxford and Cambridge, and again when he got on to the subject of tourists, who include my nearest and dearest, and abused them from the standpoint of a "visitor." In the first case he was absurd, in the second, common-place; but he made ample compensation for both by his memorable chapter of "Conclusions," in which he gave me clearly to understand why East, being East, will never be joined to West, always West, but yet how the twain have got within measurable distance of one another.

* * * * *

There must have been moments when NAPOLEON found St. Helena a little quiet for a man of his temperament; when the monotony of his life there pressed somewhat hardly upon him. On these occasions I like to think of him saying philosophically to himself, as he remembered what Mr. RUDOLF PICKTHALL calls "the last phase but two," "Well, after all, this isn't Elba. I've got that much to be thankful for." In _The Comic Kingdom_ (LANE) Mr. PICKTHALL shows how everybody on the island struggles to make a bit out of their visitors. Little children rallied round with posies of wild flowers, demanding large sums in payment. Bogus monks waved crosses at him, and, if he pretended not to notice them, rolled in the dust under his carriage wheels. There was never a moment when somebody was not calling with a bust of the Emperor or Empress, price three hundred francs. And itinerant bands played under his windows into the small hours of the morning. I can imagine him saying, in the words of ORESTES, "Dis is a dam country." ORESTES was the guide who conducted Mr. PICKTHALL through the island. It revolted him, but he did it. "I tink we better leave to-morrow," was a sort of refrain with ORESTES. He had a poor opinion of Elba, which I for one do not share. After reading _The Comic Kingdom_ I feel that one of my coming holidays must be spent climbing its hills and supplying its thirsty inhabitants with wine. The scenery is apparently worth while, and the natives appear a friendly lot. I like their enthusiasm for literature. They turned out in their hundreds and insisted on Mr. PICKTHALL'S standing treat, just because they mistook him for a great historian. When I tell them I write for _Punch_ they will be all over me.

* * * * *

LADY OF TITLE TAKING LESSONS IN BUILDING-CONSTRUCTION PRIOR TO PERFORMING THE CEREMONY OF LAYING A FOUNDATION-STONE.]

* * * * *

From a notice of "The New Standard Dictionary" in _The London Teacher_:--

"The Dictionary is arranged in alphabetical order, thus being a great
time saver, and one can find what is required with the greatest ease."

Otherwise it is so awkward, when you want to know how to spell "parallel" in a hurry, to have to go through one volume after another until you come to it.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Changed "there" to "three" in the second to last paragraph
of "At the play" on page 195.