My Lord Duke

by E. W. Hornung

"No, mister—no!" declared the Duke. "Claude is right. I can't do it. I might if I hadn't given that fellow a hiding. After that I simply can't; it would look too bad."

The agent said no more, but his look and shrug were perhaps neither politic nor polite. A strapping sportsman himself, and a person of some polish into the bargain, he was in a position, as it were, to look down on Claude with one eye, and on the Duke with the other. And he did so with a freedom extraordinary in one of his wisdom and understanding.

"One of these days," said Jack, "I shall give that joker his cheque. He's not my notion of an overseer at all; if he's too good for the billet let him roll up his swag and clear out; if he isn't, let him treat the bosses as a blooming overseer should."

"Why, what's the head and chief of his offending now?" asked Claude; for this was one night in the billiard-room, when the agent had been making an example of both cousins at pyramids; it was after he was gone, and while the Duke was still tearing off his collar.

"What has he said to-night?" continued the poet, less poetically. "I heard nothing offensive."

"You wouldn't," said the Duke; "you're such a good sort yourself. You'd never see when a chap was pulling your leg, but I see fast enough, and I won't have it. What did he say to-night? He talked through his neck when we missed our shots. That about billiards in the bush I didn't mind; me and the bush, we're fair game; but when he got on to your poetry, old man, I felt inclined to run my cue through his gizzard. 'A poet's shot,' he says, when you put yourself down; and 'you should write a sonnet about that,' when you got them three balls in together. I don't say it wasn't a fluke. That has nothing at all to do with it. The way the fellow spoke is what I weaken on. He wouldn't have done for my old boss, and I'm blowed if he'll do for me. One of these days I shall tell him to come outside and take his coat off; and, by the looks of him, I shouldn't be a bit surprised to see him put me through."

Claude's anxiety overcame every other feeling. He implored the Duke not to make another scene, least of all with such a man as the agent, whose chaff, he truly protested, did not offend him in the least. Jack shook his head, and was next accused of being more sensitive about the "wretched poems" than was the poet himself. This could not have been. But Claude was not so very far wrong.

His slender book was being widely reviewed, or rather "noticed," for the two things are not quite the same. The "notices," on the whole, were good and kind, but "uninstructed," so Claude said with a sigh; nevertheless, he appeared to obtain a sneaking satisfaction from their perusal; and as for Jack, he would read them aloud, capering round the room and shaking Claude by both hands in his delighted enthusiasm. To him every printed compliment was a loud note blown from the trumpet of fame into the ears of all the world. He would hear not a word against the paper in which it appeared, but attributed every qualifying remark of Claude's to the latter's modesty, and each favourable paragraph to some great responsible critic voicing the feeling of the country in the matter of these poems. Claude himself, however, though frequently gratified, was not deceived; for the sweetest nothings came invariably from the provincial press; and he at least knew too much to mistake a "notice" for a "real review."

The real reviews were a sadly different matter. There were very few of them, in the first place; their scarcity was worse than their severity. And they were generally very severe indeed; or they did not take the book seriously, which, as Claude said, was the unkindest cut of all.

"Only show me the skunk who wrote that," exclaimed Jack one morning, looking over Claude's shoulder as he opened his press-cuttings, "and I'll give him the biggest hiding ever he had in his life!"