“It is pathetic,” I admitted—“but—but it’ll soon grow again.”
Uncle Dudley laughed a bitter laugh. “By Jove,” he cried, “I’ve more than half a mind not to let it. It would serve ‘em right if I didn’t. Why, do you know—you’d hardly believe it! My sister had a dinner party on here for Saturday night, and after I’d—I’d done it—she cancelled the invitations—some excuse about a family loss—a bereavement, my boy. Well, you know, treatment of that sort puts a man on his mettle. I’m entitled to resent it. And besides—you know—of course it does make a great change—but somehow I fancy that when you get used to it—come now—the straight griffin, as they say—what do you think?”
“I’m on oath not to encourage you,” I made answer.
“There you have it!” cried Uncle Dudley: “the old tyrannical conspiracy against the unusual, the individual, the true! Let nobody dare to be himself! Let us have uniformity, if all else perishes. The frames must be alike in the Royal Academy, that’s the great thing; the pictures don’t matter so much. You see our women-folk now, this very month, getting ready to case themselves in ugly hoops which they hate, at the bidding of they know not whom, because, if they did not, the hideous possibility of one woman being different from another woman would darken the land. A man is not to be permitted the pitiful privilege of seeing his own mouth, not even once in fifteen years, simply because it temporarily inconveniences the multitude in their notions as to how he is in the habit of looking! What rubbish it is!”
“It is rubbish,” I assented—“and you are talking it. Your sister who fainted, your niece who wept, your friends who averted their gaze in anguish, the hordes of casual jackasses who asked why you did it, the kindly little Jew cigar man who broke forth in lamentations—these are the world’s jury. They have convicted you—sorrowfully but firmly. You yourself, for all your bravado, realise the heinousness of your crime. You are secretly ashamed, remorseful, penitent. I answer for you—you will never do it again.”
“And yet it isn’t such a bad mouth, either,” mused Uncle Dudley, with a lingering glance at the mirror over the mantel. “There is humour, delicacy of perception, affection, gentleness—ever so many nice qualities about it which were all hidden up before. The world ought to welcome the revelation—and it throws stones instead. Ah well!—pass the matches—let us yield gracefully to the inevitable! It shall grow again.”
“Mrs Albert will be so glad,” I remarked.