BUT MR. COURTLAND----AH, NEVER MIND!
Mr. Ayrton entertained his daughter with a description of the scene
in the House incidental to the annihilation of Mr. Apthomas. He rather
thought himself that his counter-question had been neat. He had been
congratulated on it by quite a number of his friends in the tea room,
and six messages had been delivered to him by representatives of the
press to the effect that if he could provide them with the exact text of
his counter-question they would be greatly obliged.
“They mean to report it in full?” said Phyllis. She had an ample
experience of the decimation of his questions as well as speeches by the
members of the press gallery. They had reduced it to a science.
“I am much mistaken if they don’t comment on it as well,” said her
father. “Poor Apthomas! he alone sat glum and mute while everyone around
him was convulsed.”
“I hope that Mr. Courtland will not feel hurt at what has occurred,”
said Phyllis doubtfully.
“Mr. Courtland? Who is Mr. Courtland? What has Mr. Courtland to say to
the matter? What business is it of his, I should like to know.”
“Well, considering that he was the original subject of the questions,
though I must confess that he didn’t remain long so, I don’t think it
altogether unreasonable to wonder what he will think about the whole
episode,” remarked Phyllis.
“Ah, you always do take an original view of such incidents,” said
her father indulgently. “It is so like a woman to try and drag poor
Courtland into the business. You ought to know better than to fancy
that any interest attaches to the original subject of a question in the
House. You’ll be suggesting next that some credit should be given to the
youths who pass brilliant examinations in things, and that all should
not be absorbed by their grinders.”
“I’m not so silly as that, papa,” said she. “No; but Mr.
Courtland----Ah, never mind.”
He did not mind.
It so happened, however, that several of the newspapers which commented
on the questions and counter-questions the next day introduced the name
of Mr. Herbert Courtland and his explorations; though, of course, most
attention was directed to what Mr. Ayrton’s party called the brilliant,
and the other party the flippant, methods of Mr. Ayrton. His reference
to the New Guinea pig some thought a trifle too personal to be in
good taste, but if politicians refrained from personalities and
were punctilious in matters of taste, what chance would they have of
“scoring,” and where would the caricaturists be? The reputation of a
politician is steadily built up nowadays, not by consistency, certainly;
not by brilliant rhetoric; not even by the unscrupulous exercise of
a faculty for organizing impromptu “scenes,” but by the wearing of a
necktie, or a boot, or a waistcoat that is susceptible of caricature.
A very ordinary young man has before now been lifted into fame by the
twists of his mustache, and another of less than mediocre ability has
been prevented from sinking in the flood of forgetfulness by the kindly
efforts of a caricaturist who supported him by a simple lock on his
scalp. Thus it was that Mr. Apthomas found himself famous before a week
had passed, through the circumstance of being represented in the leading
journal of caricature as a guinea pig, flying, with the spoil of bubble
boards of directors under his arm, from the attack of a number of
quaint-looking mammals wearing collars inscribed “ACCURACY,” “CORRECT
BALANCE SHEETS,” “LEGITIMATE SPECULATIONS,” and other phrases that
suggested the need for the old guinea pig to give way to a new breed.
Underneath the picture was printed a portion of the counter-question of
Mr. Ayrton, and opposite to it were some verses with a jingling refrain
that everyone could remember, and which everyone quoted during the next
few days.
The firm of publishers who had been fortunate enough to secure the issue
of Mr. Courtland’s new book were delighted. If Mr. Ayrton could only
have seen his way to introduce their names and their address in his
counter-question, their cup of happiness would have been complete, they
said. They managed, however, to induce the proprietors of a young
lady who was reputed to be the vulgarest and most fascinating of all
music-hall artistes, to introduce Mr. Courtland’s name into one of
the movable stanzas of her most popular lyric: those stanzas which are
changed from week to week, so as to touch upon the topics which are
uppermost in the minds--well, not exactly the minds--of the public. It
is scarcely necessary to say that this form of advertisement is worth
columns of the daily papers; and if Mr. Courtland had only shown himself
appreciative of his best interests and had changed the title of his
book to “The Land of the New Guinea Pig,” instead of “The Quest of
the Meteor-Bird,” they would have gone to press with an extra thousand
copies.
But even as it was they knew that between the member of Parliament and
the music-hall young lady the sale of the book was a certainty.
Their calculations were not at fault. The publishers sent a liberal
subscription to the Nonconformist Eastern Mission, whose agents had
stimulated public curiosity in Mr. Courtland’s new book by suggesting
that he had carried out, single-handed, one of the most atrocious
massacres of recent years; and a diamond brooch to the music-hall young
lady who had so kindly worked in the reference to the book after dancing
one of her most daring hornpipes in the uniform of a midshipman; they
doubled the lines of their announcements in the advertising columns
of the paper that had issued the cartoon of the New Guinea Pig,
and, finally, they sent a presentation copy of “The Quest of the
Meteor-Bird,” to Mr. Ayrton.
Then, as everyone was humming the lines of the music-hall young lady:
“From the land of far New Guinea
Came a little pig-a-ninny,”
the daily papers were bound to give two-column reviews to the book on
the day of its publication; and as the rod which Moses cast down before
Pharaoh swallowed up the wriggling rods of the magicians, the interest
attaching to Mr. Courtland’s book absorbed that which attached to all
the other books of the season, including “Revised Versions,” though the
publishers of the latter moved heaven and earth (that is to say, the
bishop and the people’s churchwarden) to get the Rev. George Holland
prosecuted. If either had been susceptible to reason, and had got up a
case against their author, the publishers declared that Mr. Courtland’s
book would not have had a chance with “Revised Versions.” To be sure
they admitted that the report that Mr. Holland had been thrown over by
the lady who had promised to marry him had given a jerk forward to the
sales; but when Mr. George Holland had been so idiotically blind to his
best interests and (incidentally) the best interests of his publishers,
as to contradict this suggestion of incipient martyrdom, and thus an
excellent advertisement had been lost, and everyone was, in a week or
two, talking about “The Quest of the Meteor-Bird,” while only a few
continued shaking their heads over “Revised Versions.”
Meantime, however, Mr. Courtland thought it well to call upon Mr. Ayrton
in order to thank him for his kindness in replying in the House of
Commons so effectively to the questions put to the various ministers by
Mr. Apthomas; and Mr. Ayrton had asked Mr. Courtland to dinner, and Mr.
Courtland had accepted the invitation, Miss Ayrton begging Mrs. Linton
to be of the party, and Mrs. Linton yielding to her petition without
demur.