The evening was taken up in the discussion of a letter of Edgar's, more than usually discontented with his employment; and another of Alda's, who had been laid under orders to write to her eldest brother, and desire him to remonstrate with Edgar on his inattention, laziness, and pleasure-seeking. The anxiety had long been growing up; Felix had come to write his difficult letter by the light of Geraldine's sympathy, and they were weighing what should be said, when the door-bell rang, some sounds puzzled them, and just as Felix was getting up to see what was the matter, Fulbert put his head in at the door, and said, low but earnestly, 'Step here, Felix, please.'
He thought there must have been some terrible accident; but when from the top of the stairs he beheld Clement's aspect under the gas in the passage, and heard the thick tones in which he was holding forth according to instinct, his consternation was almost greater than at any injury. Fulbert looked pale and astounded. 'I can't get him upstairs,' he said.
However, sense enough remained to Clement to give effect to his eldest brother's stern words, 'Be quiet, and come up;' and they dragged him stumbling upstairs without more words.
'Where's Lance?' then asked Felix.
'Stayed at the Froggatts'. I wish he hadn't. He will walk home by and by.'
'Now, Ful, run and tell Cherry that nobody is hurt. Do not let her get frightened.'
Felix spoke resolutely, but he felt so full of dismay and horror, that he hardly knew what he was doing till Fulbert had returned, and repressing all poor Clement's broken moralities, they had deposited him safely in bed, and shut the door on him. Then Fulbert gazed up at Felix with eyes full of regret and consternation, and he gathered breath to enter his own room, and say, 'What is the meaning of this?'
'His head must be ridiculously weak: or there was some beastly trick. Nobody else was the least queer!'
'Marshlands Hall?'
'Well, he had gone on at me so, that when Lance let himself be persuaded into staying to hang up the lamps, it struck me what a lark it would be to take Tina across the Hall lands, and then tell him he had been on the enemy's ground. So I told him of the old chantry that is turned into a barn, and of course he must go and see it, and take sketches of the windows for his clergy. While he was doing it, up comes young Jackman. You know young Jackman at the Potteries-a regular clever fellow that knows everything?'
'Yes, I know him.'
'Well, they got into early pointed, and late pointed, and billets and dog-tooths, and all the rest, and Clem went on like a house on fire; and by that time we had got to the big pond, where Collis and half a dozen more were, and he had got his skates, and I believe he did surprise them; they called it first rate.'
'Did he know where he was?'
'Not at the beginning of the skating. I only wanted to get him down from his altitudes, and never thought it would come to this. You believe that, Felix?'
'Yes, I do. Go on.'
'It was fine moonlight, and we stayed on ever so long, while Jackman and Clem and two more danced a quadrille on the ice; and when it was over everybody was horribly cold, and Captain Collis said we must all come in and have something hot; and Jackman said he was going to drive home to dinner at eight, and would take us, but every one got talking, and it was half-past eight before we started. It was all in such a scramble, that I had no notion there was anything amiss till Clem began to talk on the way home.'
'What were they drinking?'
'Various things-brandy-and-water chiefly. I don't like it, and had some ale; but I was playing with Harry's puppies, and not much noticing Clem.'
'Do you think it was a trick?'
'I can't tell. He is so innocent, he would have no notion how stiff to make it. If any one meant mischief, it was Jackman; and I did think once or twice he had found out Tina, and was playing him off. On the way home, when I was trying to hinder poor Clem from falling off, he went on chaffing so, that I longed to jump off, and lay the whip about his ears.'
'Poor Clem!' said Felix, more grieved and shocked than angry, and not insensible to Fulbert's being even more appalled, and quite frightened out of his sulkiness.
'It is a bad business,' he sighed. 'It was all Lance's fault for letting himself be lugged into that baby party.'
Even this was a great admission, and Felix would not blight it by a word.
'It is well the girls are not at home,' was all he said.
'I only told Cherry that Clem wasn't well. I can't face her; I shall go to bed. I would not have had this happen for the world.'
'I shall say nothing to her,' said Felix, dejectedly, turning to leave the room, under a horrible sense of disgrace and stain on the whole family; but at the door he was caught hold of by Fulbert, who looked up at him with a face quite unlike anything he had ever seen in the lad.
'Felix, I never was so sorry in my life. I wish you would give me a good rowing.'
Felix half smiled. 'I could not,' he said. 'You did not know what you were doing. Good-night.'
Fulbert gazed after him as he went downstairs, and went back, with a groan, to his own room.
Felix had never before felt so hopeful about Fulbert; but still he was too much overset to talk to Cherry, and hurried her off to bed, soon following her example, for he had not the heart to see Lance that night.
Of course, the first hours of the morning had to be spent in attending on the victim, whose misery, mental and bodily, was extreme, and was aggravated by his engagement to the organ. Lance could supply his place there, and was sent off to do so, but looking as subdued and guilty as if he had been making Fulbert's confession instead of hearing it, and stumbling uncomfortably over the explanation that Clement was not well, and that Felix could not leave him.
For there was a fragility about Clement's long lank frame that made any shock to it very severe, and he was ill enough to alarm his happily inexperienced brothers, and greatly increase Fulbert's penitence; but by the time Mr. Froggatt drove the sisters home, and Wilmet wondered that she could not go out for a night without some one being ill, he had arrived at a state which she could be left to attribute to Mrs. Froggatt's innocent mince-pies.
He burrowed under his blankets, and feigned sleep and discomfort beyond speech, whenever she came into the room, begging only that the light might be kept out, and that nobody would speak to him. He was too utterly miserable for anger with Fulbert, but only showed a sort of broken-hearted forgiveness, which made Fulbert say in desperation to Lance, 'I wish you would just fall upon me. I shall not be myself again till I've been blown up!'
'I suppose you are doing it for yourself, and that is worse,' said Lance.
'And you know it was all your doing, for going to that disgusting old Philistine's tea and cake.'
'What, you and Clem wanted me to lead you about, like two dogs in a string?' said Lance.
'No; Tina would have kept the baby-bunting out of harm's way.'
'More likely he would have bored me into going. Poor Tina! I should almost like to hear him jaw again! After all, you and he never promised, and I did.'
'I wish I had,' said Fulbert; 'I am awfully afraid they are getting hold of it in the town.'
'So am I. Mowbray Smith looked me all over, and asked me after Clement, when I met him just now in the street, as if he had some malice in his head.'
'What did you tell him?'
'I said he was in a state of collapse, and that serious fears were entertained for his life and reason; and then he warned me against the nineteenth-century manners, and I thanked him and made a bow, and now I suppose he is gone to tell my Lady.
When Felix was free in the evening, he found Clement dressed, and sitting over the fire in his room-so well indeed, that he might have been downstairs, but that he shrank from every one; and that fire had been the fruit of such persevering battles of Wilmet and Sibby with the smoke and soot, that it would have been a waste of good labour to have deserted it.
'Well, Clem, you are better?'
'Yes, thank you.'
'Headache
gone?'
'Nearly,' with a heavy sigh.
Felix drew an ancient straw-bottomed chair in front of the fire backwards, placed himself astride on it, laid his arms on the top and his forehead on them, and in this imposing Mentorial attitude began, 'After all, Clem, I don't see that you need be so desperately broken- hearted. It was mere innocence and ignorance. Water-drinkers at home are really not on a level with other people. I always have to be very guarded when I have to dine with the other reporters.'
'No,' said Clement, sadly; 'I do not regard the disgrace as the sin so much as the punishment.'
It was more sensible than Felix had expected. He was conscious of not understanding Clement, who always seemed to him like a girl, but if treated like one, was sure to show himself in an unexpected light.
'You did not know where you were going?'
'Not at first. I found out long before I came off the ice; and then, like an absurd fool as I was, I thought myself showing how to deal courteously and hold one's own with such people.'
'You are getting to the bottom of it,' said Felix.
'I have been thinking it over all day,' said Clement, mournfully. 'I see that such a fall could only be the consequence of long continued error. Have I not been very conceited and uncharitable of late, Felix?'
'Not more than usual,' said Felix, intending to speak kindly.
'I see. I have been treating my advantages as if they were merits, condemning others, and lording it over them. Long ago I was warned that my danger was spiritual pride, but self-complacency blinded me.' And he hid his face and groaned.
Felix was surprised. He could not thus have discussed himself, even with his father; but he perceived that if Clement had no one else to preach to he would preach to himself, and that this anatomical examination was done in genuine sorrow.
'No humility!' continued Clement. 'That is what has brought me to this. If I had distrusted and watched myself, I should have perceived when I grew inflated by their flattery, and never-egregious fool that I was-have thought I was showing that one of our St. Matthew's choir could meet worldly men on their own ground.'
Felix was glad that his posture enabled him to conceal a smile; but perhaps Clement guessed at it, for he exclaimed, 'A fit consequence, to have made myself contemptible to everybody!'
'Come, Clem, that is too strong. Your censorious way was bad for yourself, and obnoxious to us all, and it was very silly to go to that place after what you had heard.'
'After telling Lance it was unworthy of a servant of the sanctuary,' moaned Clement.
'Very silly indeed,' continued the elder brother, 'very wrong; but as to what happened there, it is not reasonable to look at it as more than an accident. It will be forgotten in a week by all but Fulbert and yourself, and you will most likely be the wiser for it all your lives. I never got on so well with Ful before, or saw him really sorry.
Clement only answered by a disconsolate noise; and Felix was becoming a little impatient, thinking the penitence overstrained, when he broke silence with, 'You must let me go up to St. Matthew's!'
'Really, Clement, it is hardly right to let you be always living upon Mr. Fulmort now your occupation is ended, and it would be braver not to run away.'
'I do not mean that!' cried Clement. 'I will not stay there. I would not burthen them; but see the Vicar I must! I will go third class, and walk from the station.'
'The fare of an omnibus will not quite break our backs,' said Felix, smiling. 'If this is needful to settle your mind, you had better go.'
'You do not know what this is to me,' said Clement, earnestly; 'I wish you did.' Then perceiving the recurrence to his old propensity, he sighed pitifully and hung his head, adding, 'It is of no use till Saturday, the Vicar is gone to his sisters.'
'Very well, you can get a return ticket on Saturday-that is, if the organist is come back.'
'Lance must play; I am not worthy.'
'You have no right to break an engagement for fancies about your own worthiness,' said Felix. 'Rouse yourself up, and don't exaggerate the thing, to alarm all the girls, and make them suspicious.'
'They ought to know. I felt myself a wicked hypocrite when Wilmet would come and read me the Psalms, and yet I could not tell her. Tell them, Felix; I cannot bear it without.'
'No, I shall not. You have no right to grieve and disgust them just because you "cannot bear it without." Cannot you bear up, instead of drooping and bemoaning in this way? It is not manly.'
'Manliness is the great temptation of this world.'
'You idiot!' Felix, in his provocation, broke out; then getting himself in hand again, 'Don't you know the difference between true and false manliness?'
'I know men of the world make the distinction,' said Clement; 'I am not meaning any censure, Felix. Circumstances have given you a different standard.'
Felix interrupted rather hotly: 'Only my father's. I have heard him say, that if one is not a man before one is a parson, one brings the ministry into contempt. The things the boys call you Tina for are not what make a good clergyman.'
'I don't feel as if I could presume to seek the priesthood after that.'
'Stuff and nonsense!' cried Felix. 'If no one was ordained who had ever made a fool of himself and repented, we should be badly off for clergy. You were conceited and provoking, and have let yourself be led into a nasty scrape-that's the long and short of the matter; but it is only hugging your own self-importance to sit honing and moaning up here. Come down, and behave like a reasonable being.'
'Let me stay here to-night, Felix, I do need it,' said Clement, with tears in his eyes; 'if I am alone now, I think I can bring myself to bear up outwardly as you wish.'
The affected tone had vanished, and Felix rose, and kindly put his hand on his shoulder, and said, 'Do, Clem. You know it is not only my worldliness-mere man of business as I am-that bids us to hide grief within, and "anoint the head and wash the face."'
Just then an exulting shout rang through the house, many feet scuttled upstairs, knocks hailed upon the door, and many voices shouted, 'Mr Audley! Felix, Clem, Mr. Audley!'
'Won't you come, Clem?'
'Not to-night; I could not.'
Clement shut the door, and Felix hastened down among the dancing exulting little ones. 'I thought you were at Rome!' he said, as the hands met in an eager grasp.
'I was there on Christmas Day; but Dr. White's appointment is settled, and he wants me to go out with him in June. My brother is gone on to London, and I must join him there on Saturday.'
'I am glad it is to-day instead of yesterday,' said Wilmet. 'We were all out but Felix and Cherry, and poor Clement was so ill.'
'Clement ill? Is he better?'
'He will be all right to-morrow,' said Felix.
Mr. Audley detected a desire to elude inquiry, as well as a meaning look between the two younger boys, and he thought care sat heavier on the brow of the young master of the house than when they had parted eighteen months before.
His travels were related, his photographs admired, his lodging arranged in Mr. Froggatt's room, and after the general goodnight, he drew his chair in to the fire, and prepared for a talk with his ex- ward.
'You look anxious, Felix. Have things gone on pretty well?'
'Pretty fairly, thank you, till just now, when there is rather an ugly scrape,'-and he proceeded to disburthen his mind of last night's misadventure; when it must be confessed that the narrative of Clement's overweening security having had a fall provoked a smile from his guardian, and an observation that it might do him a great deal of good.
'Yes,' said Felix, 'if his friends do not let him make much of his penitence, and think it very fine to have so important a thing to repent of.'
'I don't think they will do that. You must not take Clement as exactly the fruit of their teaching.'
'There's no humbug about him, at least,' said Felix. 'He is really cut up exceedingly. Indeed all I have been doing was to get him to moderate his dolefulness. I believe he thinks me a
sort of heathen.'
'Well,' said Mr. Audley, laughing, 'you don't seem to have taken the line of the model head of the family.'
'The poor boys were both so wretched, that one could not say a word to make it worse,' said Felix. 'This satisfies me that Fulbert is all right in that way. He would not have been so shocked if he had ever seen anything like it before; but though he is very sorry now, I am afraid it will not cut the connection with those Collises.'
'You do not find him easier to manage?'
'No; that is the worst. He is not half a bad boy-nay, what is called a well-principled boy-only it is his principle not to mind me. I do not know whether I am donnish with him, or if I bullied him too much when he was little; but he is always counter to me. Then he is one of those boys who want an out-of-door life, and on whom the being shut up in a town falls hard. The giving up sporting is real privation to him and to Lance, and much the hardest on him, for he does not care for music or drawing, or anything of that sort.'
'How old is he?'
'Just sixteen.'
'Suppose I were to take him out to Australia?'
'Fulbert!'
'Yes; I always intended to take one if I went, but I waited till my return to see about it, and I thought Clement was of a more inconvenient age, but you must judge.'
'Poor Tina!' said Felix, smiling, 'he would hardly do in a colony. He is heart and soul a clergyman, and whether he will ever be more of a man I don't know; but I don't think he could rough it as a missionary.'
'Is he going to get a scholarship!'
'He has tried at Corpus, and failed. He is full young, and I suppose he ought to go to a tutor. I am afraid he learnt more music than classics up at that place.'
'Can the tutoring be managed!'
'I suppose a hundred out of that thousand will do it.'
'Is that thousand to go like the famous birthday five?'
'Five hundred is to be put into the business; but the rest I meant to keep in reserve for such things as this.'
'If all are to be helped at this rate, your reserve will soon come to an end.'
The Pillars of the House, V1 Page 30
