Oh, would you cast the treasure of your mind,
The thousands at your bank, and, above all,
Your unassailable social position
Before this soulless mass of beef and brawn?
Nay, coz: you’re prejudiced.
Without.
Liar and slave!
What words were those?
The man is drunk with slaughter.
Save yourselves: at the staircase foot the champion
Sprawls on the mat, by trick of wrestler tripped;
But when he rises, woe betide us all!
Who bade you treat my visitor with violence?
He would not take my answer; thrust the door
Back in my face; gave me the lie i’ the throat;
Averred he felt your presence in his bones.
I said he should feel mine there too, and felled him;
Then fled to bar your door.
O lover’s instinct!
He felt my presence. Well, let him come in.
We must not fail in courage with a fighter.
Unlock the door.
Stop. Like all women, Lydia,
You have the courage of immunity.
To strike you were against his code of honor;
But me, above the belt, he may perform on
T’ th’ height of his profession. Also Bashville.
Think not of me, sir. Let him do his worst.
Oh, if the valor of my heart could weigh
The fatal difference twixt his weight and mine,
A second battle should he do this day:
Nay, though outmatched I be, let but my mistress
Give me the word: instant I’ll take him on
Here—now—at catchweight. Better bite the carpet
A man, than fly, a coward.
Bravely said:
I will assist you with the poker.
No:
I will not have him touched. Open the door.
Destruction knocks thereat. I smile, and open.
You know my secret?
Yes.
And thereupon
You bade your servant fling me from your door.
I bade my servant say I was not here.
To Bashville.
Why didst thou better thy instruction, man?
Hadst thou but said, “She bade me tell thee this,”
Thoudst burst my heart. I thank thee for thy mercy.
Oh, Lucian, didst thou call him “drunk with slaughter”?
Canst thou refrain from weeping at his woe?
To Lucian.
The unwritten law that shields the amateur
Against professional resentment, saves thee.
O coward, to traduce behind their backs
Defenceless prizefighters!
Thou dost avow
Thou art a prizefighter.
It was my glory.
I had hoped to offer to my lady there
My belts, my championships, my heaped-up stakes,
My undefeated record; but I knew
Behind their blaze a hateful secret lurked.
Another secret?
Is there worse to come?
Know ye not then my mother is an actress?
How horrible!
Nay, nay: how interesting!
A thousand victories cannot wipe out
That birthstain. Oh, my speech bewrayeth it:
My earliest lesson was the player’s speech
In Hamlet; and to this day I express myself
More like a mobled queen than like a man
Of flesh and blood. Well may your cousin sneer!
What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?
Injurious upstart: if by Hecuba
Thou pointest darkly at my lovely cousin,
Know that she is to me, and I to her,
What never canst thou be. I do defy thee;
And maugre all the odds thy skill doth give,
Outside I will await thee.
I forbid
Expressly any such duello. Bashville:
The door. Put Mr. Webber in a hansom,
And bid the driver hie to Downing Street.
No answer: ’tis my will.
And now, farewell.
You must not come again, unless indeed
You can some day look in my eyes and say:
Lydia: my occupation’s gone.
Ah, no:
It would remind you of my wretched mother.
O God, let me be natural a moment!
What other occupation can I try?
What would you have me be?
A gentleman.
A gentleman! I, Cashel Byron, stoop
To be the thing that bets on me! the fool
I flatter at so many coins a lesson!
The screaming creature who beside the ring
Gambles with basest wretches for my blood,
And pays with money that he never earned!
Let me die brokenhearted rather!
But
You need not be an idle gentleman.
I call you one of Nature’s gentlemen.
That’s the collection for the loser, Lydia.
I am not wont to need it. When your friends
Contest elections, and at foot o’ th’ poll
Rue their presumption, ’tis their wont to claim
A moral victory. In a sort they are
Nature’s M.P.’s. I am not yet so threadbare
As to accept these consolation stakes.
You are offended with me.
Yes, I am.
I can put up with much; but—“Nature’s gentleman”!
I thank your ladyship of Lyons, but
Must beg to be excused.
But surely, surely,
To be a prizefighter, and maul poor mariners
With naked knuckles, is no work for you.
Thou dost arraign the inattentive Fates
That weave my thread of life in ruder patterns
Than these that lie, antimacassarly,
Asprent thy drawing room. As well demand
Why I at birth chose to begin my life
A speechless babe, hairless, incontinent,
Hobbling upon all fours, a nurse’s nuisance?
Or why I do propose to lose my strength,
To blanch my hair, to let the gums recede
Far up my yellowing teeth, and finally
Lie down and moulder in a rotten grave?
Only one thing more foolish could have been,
And that was to be born, not man, but woman.
This was thy folly, why rebuk’st thou mine?
These are not things of choice.
And did I choose
My quick divining eye, my lightning hand,
My springing muscle and untiring heart?
Did I implant the instinct in the race
That found a use for these, and said to me,
Fight for us, and be fame and fortune thine?
But there are other callings in the world.
Go tell thy painters to turn stockbrokers,
Thy poet friends to stoop o’er merchants’ desks
And pen prose records of the gains of greed.
Tell bishops that religion is outworn,
And that the Pampa to the horsebreaker
Opes new careers. Bid the professor quit
His fraudulent pedantries, and do i’ the world
The thing he would teach others. Then return
To me and say: Cashel: they have obeyed;
And on that pyre of sacrifice I,
