Roland listened carefully to all that Arnold Marston said, both during dinner and afterwards when the ladies had gone upstairs and the port had been passed for the second time round the table. He was hard, dogmatic and, at the same time, petulant in his talk. He quickly assumed that everyone who did not agree with him was ignorant and a fool. As he talked his fingers performed small gestures of annoyance; they plucked at the table cloth, fingered the water bowl, heaped the salt into small pyramids upon his plate. They were discussing the pull shot, then something of an innovation, and Roland maintained that it was absurd for school coaches not to allow boys to hit across long hops. “Why, do you know that at Fernhurst you are expected to apologize to the bowler if you make a pull shot.”
“But, why?” Roland answered him. “The pull’s perfectly safe; it’s a four every time and you can’t get more than a single if you play back to it with a straight bat.”
“I daresay, I daresay, but cricket’s cricket, and you have got to play it with a straight bat. You’ve got to play according to rules.”
“But there’s no rule that says you mayn’t hit a long hop with a crooked bat.”
“My dear boy, it’s no good arguing. I’ve been playing cricket and watching cricket for forty years, and the good batsmen always played a straight ball with a straight bat.”
“That means nothing. A big man’s a rule to himself. The pull’s a dangerous stroke; it’s all right in village cricket perhaps, but no one who doesn’t play with a straight bat would get into a county side.”
“But isn’t it the object of the game to make runs?”
“Not altogether--even if you do get four runs from it instead of one, which I am prepared to doubt. We wear our clothes to keep our bodies warm, but you wouldn’t be pleased if your tailor made your coat button up to the throat, and said: ‘It covers more of you, sir; you’ll be warmer that way, and the object of clothes is to keep you warm.’”
There was a general laugh at Roland’s expense, and before it had subsided Mr. Marston had introduced another subject. Roland was annoyed; he had a distaste for anything that savored of cleverness. He regarded it as an unfair weapon in an argument. An argument should be a weighing of facts. Each side should produce its facts, and an impartial witness should give judgment. It was not fair to obscure the issue with an untrue, if amusing, simile. And once the laugh is against you it is no good continuing an argument. Arnold Marston had learned this on his election platform. He had once been asked what his party proposed to do for the unemployed; it was an awkward question, that gave many opportunities for adverse heckling. But he had obscured the issue with a laugh: “When my party gets in there will be no unemployment.” And the meeting had gone home with the opinion that he was a jolly fellow--not too serious--the sort of man that anyone could understand. It was a good trick on the platform, but it was very annoying at the dinner table, at least so the discomfited found. And Roland felt even more aggrieved as they were leaving the room and the silly ass in the Harrow XI. slapped him on the back and informed him that, “The old man got in a good one on you there.” He could understand Beatrice hating him.