“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.