I
I HAVE been looking through all my old letters to-night. It is a strange
sensation in these days, when the shuttle spins so fast, to re-read the
letters between childhood and manhood. All details seem softened, viewed
through the haze of time. Human nature was (or so it seems to one) so
much kindlier then than now. What pleasant ghosts are raised by these
old letters; what touches that one missed in them in the hurried,
feverish days when they were written! In so very many cases, too, the
hands that penned them are still. I have come upon one from Ronald,
written when he was just twenty-five. It is singularly devoid of
romance, compared with many of the others, and has “brisked me up”
considerably, when I was verging on melancholia.
“DEAR FRED (it runs),
“I shall want you for a wedding a month hence. Guess the name of the
happy lady. No more escapades from—Yours respectably,
“RONALD.”
Who was she? and how had he managed it? were the questions I asked myself
at the time. Somehow or other, I couldn’t imagine Ronald proposing to
his lady-love in a conventional, Christianlike way. True, time had
sobered him considerably. He was now a handsome young fellow, living
quietly and sedately with his uncle at Broadwater; not easy to recognise
as the lad who had discomfited an itinerant preacher, and played the
stable-boy on the race-course at Bayview. But the spirit of Bohemianism
dies hard, and I was possessed with the idea that, even in the act of
“placing himself” for life, Ronald would make opportunity for a final
fling. He was having a really bad time of it with his uncle, and, in
spite of occasional outbursts, when the Viking blood got the better of
him, had been fairly amenable to discipline. The old man, I know, must
have been a constant thorn in his flesh; very selfish, and very dogmatic
on all points, especially politics. If he could have reasoned logically
himself, or have listened to reason in others, he would have been less
objectionable. But he formed his opinions on grounds as strictly
illogical as does the average woman, and, to do him justice, never
abandoned them. For example:
“What a grand speech that was of Gladstone’s yesterday, Ronald!”
“Do you think so, sir? It seemed a trifle commonplace to me in
comparison with Dizzy’s reply.”
“Pshaw! Dizzy’s no speaker at all compared with him.”
“Did you ever hear him, sir?”
“Never—and don’t want to.”
“Then you have read his speeches, sir?”
“Never—and I hope I never may.”
This was his recognised line of argument (Heaven save the mark!) on all
topics. Yet to differ from any of his conclusions was a most serious
offence, which Ronald in time learned how to avoid. His own part in a
conversation became limited to a series of characterless phrases—“Yes,
sir,” “No, sir,” “Of course, sir”—which passed muster as entirely
satisfactory. Occasionally, it is true, they were flavoured with a salt
of sarcasm, but as this only rebounded harmlessly, without piercing his
uncle’s pachydermatous hide, the peace was seldom broken between them.
Outsiders were less merciful.
“Growing a trifle dogmatical is Heyward, isn’t he?”—one club member would
say to another—when a theory, accepted obediently by my uncle’s
household, had been thrust a little prematurely down a stranger’s throat.
“But there: he’s getting on in years—sixty, I should say, if he’s a
day—and we shall all of us like our own way then. Indeed, youngsters
like it too, as a Master of Trinity found with his junior Fellows. ‘Not
one of us is infallible,’ he said to them, ‘not even the youngest.’”
It was a gentlemanly face, was old Heyward’s, though, if you happened to
be a judge of faces, you would probably have added “a weak one.” Yes,
and—No. Not strong, certainly, in intellect or knowledge, though the
features are scored with deep-cut lines, that might be mistaken by the
casual observer for traces of reflective thought. But lines traced by
the hand of intellect ennoble and brighten the face, even in the act of
carving it; these had only soured and embittered it. Such strength as
they show is the strength of a dogged persistency, which clings to an
opinion, right or wrong, because it admits no counter argument, and
always carries its point by a process of blank obstructiveness. But each
victory thus gained is of the nature of a defeat, narrowing and confining
the soul still more within its self-imposed limits, deafening it to the
interests of an outer world, and to the joys and sorrows of humanity at
large.
His sister was a tall, angular woman, with thin, compressed lips and a
cold, grey eye, betokening a far more active and aggressive will. But
probably no two people were ever more entirely in harmony, till Ronald
sowed dissension between them. Even dissimilarities, in their case,
became points of agreement. For instance, the uncle read much and forgot
all that he read, while she read nothing and had consequently nothing to
forget. Then again, they were united in their devotion to comfort, for
which each required the other. Wider forms of attachment they ignored
and dispensed with, as unprofitable for the furtherance of the main
issue. Friends, servants, animals, who were found detrimental, simply
disappeared without comment, as unobtrusively as did the obnoxious
teachers in Madame Beck’s famous _pensionnat_ in the Rue Fossette.
In the art of “nagging” our uncle was supreme, bearing out Sarah Grand’s
theory that women are nowhere in this province, which has been reckoned
peculiarly their own. Curling himself up gracefully in his favourite
armchair, and lighting a cigar, he would prepare himself to enjoy it.
Sometimes the attack would be sudden and wanting in delicacy.
“Ronald, I wish you could manage to be down in time for dinner.” Ronald,
be it observed, had been five minutes late, but yet five minutes prior to
its announcement by the butler.
“My tie was so infern—intolerably hard to fasten, sir. I must get a
_Jemima_.”
“A _Jemima_!” shouted the uncle—scandalised at the idea of Ronald
contemplating the introduction of some rustic handmaid—“What on earth do
you mean?”
“A hand-made tie, sir.” (The pun is yours, old man, not mine. Besides,
the uncle wouldn’t have seen it, even if he’d given me the chance.—R.)
A mollified pause of ten minutes. The next time he would preface his
thrust with a feint, to throw Ronald off his guard.
“What a wonderfully nice young fellow Carter is. Gets himself up as if
he were living in town. I _do_ like to see a fellow wear a tall hat on
Sunday; it’s far and away more respectable than a round one.”
Ronald was incorrigible in this respect, and became as the deaf adder.
Five minutes’ grace.
“How that fellow Stanton did talk at dinner; one couldn’t get a word in
edgeways. By-the-by, I think _you_ talk a little too freely, Ronald, to
men older and wiser than yourself.”
“_Semper ego auditor tantum_?” muttered Ronald.
“What is it you are saying, Ronald? I do wish you would speak up.”
“I said I would only listen in future, sir. _Nunquamne reponam_?” (the
latter _sotto voce_).
“There you are—muttering again.”
“I was only saying I wished I could write a book, sir.”
Miss Heyward couldn’t hold a candle to her brother in this particular
department. She lacked altogether the delicacy of “finesse” which is
essential to its development, and, strange to say, possessed in a high
degree by people of feeble intelligence. But she seconded him bravely in
cases where temper and determination would serve its purpose. Here it
was to advocate stronger measures, and hers was the master mind. She was
not without a suspicion that time and reiteration had blunted the edge of
her brother’s innuendo. When therefore she was called in for
consultation, Ronald knew that it betokened a definite and concerted
campaign. He would be sent to Coventry, or fed on roast pork, and
specialities that his soul abhorred, or (but for his age) have been
whipped. Finally, and in the last resort, his pocket money would be
docked—a punishment that was known to be effective. Spending little upon
himself, he had always a band of pensioners who were dependent on him for
assistance. So it was through them that he could most surely be reached.
“Seething the kid in the mother’s milk,” as we are told in ‘Kenilworth,’
is an occupation that offers a wide field to the ingenuity of the
inventive.
“Two’s company and three’s none,” muttered Ronald, when, on entering a
room suddenly, he found an animated conversation drop suddenly into
silence, while an echo of his own escapades and iniquities lingered in
the air.