I am extremely fond of sitting and looking on; but I do not care about
taking part in anything. There are some people who cannot even witness
a cab accident without wanting to be the horse or the man who is
sitting on the horse's head. They walk round the prostrate animal
and give advice; and if they are allowed to help in any way, they are
quite happy. If such people watch a game of any sort, they always wish
they were taking part in it. I once went to a cricket-ground to eat
luncheon, and I went with an enthusiast of this kind. We noticed that
his attention seemed distracted, that he only replied in monosyllables
when we spoke to him, and that there was something on his mind. "I
would give," he exclaimed, at last--and it was the only remark that he
had volunteered for half-an-hour--"I would give a year of my life for
twenty minutes with that bowling." He was evidently deeply affected.
"_Why_ don't they take him off?" he moaned. There were tears in his
eyes. I do not quite understand that feeling. I can watch absolutely
anything, but I never want to do more. I was not made to undertake
principal parts--I can witness amateur theatricals without wishing to
be the prompter. I review novels, but I do not write them.
The other day I watched a game of tennis. I had placed the
lounge-chair in a safe and shady position. I had got a paper-knife and
the third volume with me. The cat had followed me out of the library,
and sat down in a convenient position so that I could scratch it
gently behind the ear if I wanted to. I was smoking a pipe that had
just reached the right stage of maturity, and, in some indefinable
way, made life seem richer and better. Everything was well arranged
for the watching of tennis.
There were two players--BILL, a young son of the house, whom I knew
intimately, and TOMMY, a boy of the same age, who had just come up
from the Rectory. I had not seen TOMMY before. He was a nice-looking
little boy, and wore a black necktie in the collar of his silk
tennis-shirt. BILL is not good-looking; he is red and freckled, and
grins vastly. He was wearing rather unclean flannels, and did not look
quite so refined and delicate as TOMMY. I compared the two boys, and
thought that I preferred BILL. In the first game of the set, BILL, who
plays wonderfully well, won easily; after that, my attention got fixed
on that third volume. I turned down a corner of the page whenever I
came across anything that was at all conventional. I was reading the
book for review, and my notice of it was to appear in _The Scalpel_
on the following Saturday. It was, on the whole, a capital novel, but
it was by an author who had been, I thought, more successful than was
good for him. He had been elected freely to the best Clubs. During
the season he had gone everywhere. Many editions of his book had been
sold. He had acquired a little cult who said extravagant things about
him in the literary papers. It is sickening to see a man reverenced
during his lifetime. I could imagine him posing before his cult and
being pleased; even before I had read a page of his novel, I had made
up my mind to administer to him a wholesome corrective in the pages of
_The Scalpel_. I was rather sorry to find that it was really a capital
novel; but it had enough faults for my purpose.
I had read for some time before I turned my attention to the game
again. When I did so, I was startled, for it was perfectly obvious
that BILL was giving the game away. His usual service is a little
like invisible lightning with a bend in it; he was now serving in a
modified manner, which he generally uses only when he is playing with
girls who are not his sisters. It was also obvious that TOMMY, who
looked very elated, fully believed that he was winning on his own
merits, and had no idea that BILL was merely allowing him to win.
[Illustration]
"My game--and set!" cried TOMMY, joyously.
"You've improved awfully," said BILL.
I could not imagine why BILL had intentionally lost that set, for
I knew that he hated losing. When TOMMY had gone home again to the
Rectory, BILL came up to me to ask how old I thought a man ought to
be before he began smoking. I said that I thought thirty-six was about
the right age, and asked BILL why he had let TOMMY win.
"Oh, nothing particular," said BILL, in his matter-of-fact way; "only
I'd never seen him wear that kind of tie before, and I asked him what
he was doing it for, and he said it was for his aunt; she died a few
weeks back; so I thought I might as well give him the set to make up
for it."