Chapter 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.