GEORGE SHAW - The Complete Works

“I will see him in the library,” said Lydia, composedly. “Tell him so; and let him wait there for me — if you can approach him without running any risk.”

“Oh, pray let him call the police,” urged Alice. “Don’t attempt to go to that man.”

“Nonsense!” said Lydia, goodhumoredly. “I am not in the least afraid. We must not fail in courage when we have a prizefighter to deal with.”

Bashville, white, and preventing with difficulty his knees from knocking together, went downstairs and found Cashel leaning upon the balustrade, panting, and looking perplexedly about him as he wiped his dabbled brow. Bashville approached him with the firmness of a martyr, halted on the third stair, and said,

“Miss Carew will see you in the library. Come this way, please.”

Cashel’s lips moved, but no sound came from them; he followed Bashville in silence. When they entered the library Lydia was already there. Bashville withdrew without a word. Then Cashel sat down, and, to her consternation, bent his head on his hand and yielded to an hysterical convulsion. Before she could resolve how to act he looked up at her with his face distorted and discolored, and tried to speak.

“Pray be calm,” said Lydia. “I am told that you wish to speak to me.”

“I don’t wish to speak to you ever again,” said Cashel, hoarsely. “You told your servant to throw me down the steps. That’s enough for me.”

Lydia caught from him the tendency to sob which he was struggling with; but she repressed it, and answered, firmly, “If my servant has been guilty of the least incivility to you, Mr. Cashel Byron, he has exceeded his orders.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Cashel. “He may thank his luck that he has his head on. If I had planted on him that time — but HE doesn’t matter. Hold on a bit — I can’t talk — I shall get my second wind presently, and then—” Cashel stopped a moment to pant, and then asked, “Why are you going to give me up?”

Lydia ranged her wits in battle array, and replied,

“Do you remember our conversation at Mrs. Hoskyn’s?”

“Yes.”

“You admitted then that if the nature of your occupation became known to me our acquaintance should cease. That has now come to pass.”

“That was all very fine talk to excuse my not telling you. But I find, like many another man when put to the proof, that I didn’t mean it. Who told you I was a fighting man?”

“I had rather not tell you that.”

“Aha!” said Cashel, with a triumph that was half choked by the remnant of his hysteria. “Who is trying to make a secret now, I should like to know?”

“I do so in this instance because I am afraid to expose a friend to your resentment.”

“And why? He’s a man, of course; else you wouldn’t be afraid. You think that I’d go straight off and murder him. Perhaps he told you that it would come quite natural to a man like me — a ruffian like me — to smash him up. That comes of being a coward. People run my profession down; not because there is a bad one or two in it — there’s plenty of bad bishops, if you come to that — but because they’re afraid of us. You may make yourself easy about your friend. I am accustomed to get well paid for the beatings I give; and your own commonsense ought to tell you that any one who is used to being paid for a job is just the last person in the world to do it for nothing.”

“I find the contrary to be the case with firstrate artists,” said Lydia.

“Thank you,” retorted Cashel, sarcastically. “I ought to make you a bow for that. I’m glad you acknowledge that it IS an art.”

“But,” said Lydia seriously, “it seems to me that it is an art wholly anti-social and retrograde. And I fear that you have forced this interview on me to no purpose.”

“I don’t know whether it’s anti-social or not. But I think it hard that I should be put out of decent society when fellows that do far worse than I are let in. Who did I see here last Friday, the most honored of your guests? Why, that Frenchman with the gold spectacles. What do you think I was told when I asked what HIS little game was? Baking dogs in ovens to see how long a dog could live red hot! I’d like to catch him doing it to a dog of mine. Ay; and sticking a rat full of nails to see how much pain a rat could stand. Why, it’s just sickening. Do you think I’d have shaken hands with that chap? If he hadn’t been a guest of yours I’d have given him a notion of how much pain a Frenchman can stand without any nails in him. And HE’S to be received and made much of, while I am kicked out! Look at your relation, the general. What is he but a fighting man, I should like to know? Isn’t it his pride and boast that as long as he is paid so much a day he’ll ask no questions whether a war is fair or unfair, but just walk out and put thousands of men in the best way to kill and be killed? — keeping well behind them himself all the time, mind you. Last year he was up to his chin in the blood of a lot of poor blacks that were no more a match for his armed men than a featherweight would be for me. Bad as I am, I wouldn’t attack a featherweight, or stand by and see another heavy man do it. Plenty of your friends go pigeon-shooting to Hurlingham. THERE’S a humane and manly way of spending a Saturday afternoon! Lord Worthington, that comes to see you when he likes, though he’s too much of a man or too little of a shot to kill pigeons, thinks nothing of foxhunting. Do you think foxes like to be hunted, or that the people that hunt them have such fine feelings that they can afford to call prizefighters names? Look at the men that get killed or lamed every year at steeple-chasing, foxhunting, cricket, and football! Dozens of them! Look at the thousands killed in battle! Did you ever hear of any one being killed in the ring? Why, from first to last, during the whole century that prizefighting has been going on, there’s not been six fatal accidents at really respectable fights. It’s safer than dancing; many a woman has danced her skirt into the fire and been burned. I once fought a man who had spoiled his constitution with bad living; and he exhausted himself so by going on and on long after he was beaten that he died of it, and nearly finished me, too. If you’d heard the fuss that even the oldest fighting men made over it you’d have thought that a baby had died from falling out of its cradle. A good milling does a man more good than harm. And if all these — dog-bakers, and soldiers, and pigeon-shooters, and foxhunters, and the rest of them — are made welcome here, why am I shut out like a brute beast?”

“Truly I do not know,” said Lydia, puzzled; “unless it be that your colleagues have failed to recommend themselves to society by their extra-professional conduct as the others have.”

“I grant you that fighting men ar’n’t gentlemen, as a rule. No more were painters, or poets, once upon a time. But what I want to know is this: Supposing a fighting man has as good manners as your friends, and is as well born, why shouldn’t he mix with them and be considered their equal?”

“The distinction seems arbitrary, I confess. But perhaps the true remedy would be to exclude the vivisectors and soldiers, instead of admitting the prizefighters. Mr. Cashel Byron,” added Lydia, changing her manner, “I cannot discuss this with you. Society has a prejudice against you. I share it; and I cannot overcome it. Can you find no nobler occupation than these fierce and horrible encounters by which you condescend to gain a living?”

“No,” said Cashel, flatly. “I can’t. That’s just where it is.”

Lydia looked grave, and said nothing.

“You don’t see it?” said Cashel. “Well, I’ll just tell you all about myself, and then leave you to judge. May I sit down while I talk?” He had risen in the course of his remarks on Lydia’s scientific and military acquaintances.