Czytaj książkę: «The Pillars of the House; Or, Under Wode, Under Rode, Vol. 1 (of 2)», strona 19

CHAPTER XII
GIANT DESPAIR'S CASTLE

'Who haplesse and eke hopelesse all in vaine,

Did to him pace sad battle to darrayne;

Disarmd, disgraste, and inwardly dismayde,

And eke so faint in every ioynt and vayne,

Through that fraile fountaine which him feeble made.'

Spenser.

Felix's majority made no immediate difference. His thirteenth part of his father's small property remained with the rest, at any rate until his guardian should return from his travels in the East; but in the course of the winter his kind old godfather, Admiral Chester, died, and having no nearer relation, left him the result of his small savings out of his pay, which would, the lawyer wrote, amount to about a thousand pounds; but there was a good deal of business to be transacted, and it would be long before the sum was made over to him.

Wilmet and Geraldine thought it a perfect fortune, leading to the University, and release from trade; and they looked rather crestfallen when they heard that it only meant £30 per annum in the funds, or £50 in some risky investment. Mr. Froggatt's wish was that he should purchase such a share in the business as would really give him standing there; but Wilmet heard this with regret; she did not like his thus binding himself absolutely down to trade.

'You are thinking for Alda,' said Felix, smiling. 'You are considering how Froggatt and Underwood will sound in her ears.'

'In mine, too, Felix; I do not like it.'

'I would willingly endure it to become Redstone's master,' said Felix, quietly.

'Is he still so vexatious?' asked Geraldine; for not above once in six months did Felix speak of any trials from his companions in business.

'Not actively so; but things might be better done, and much ill blood saved. I cannot share W. W.'s peculiar pride in preferring to be an assistant instead of a partner.'

'Then this is what you mean to do with it?'

'Wait till it comes,' he said, oracularly. 'Seriously, though, I don't want to tie it all up. The boys may want a start in life.'

Neither sister thought of observing that the legacy was to one, not to all. Everybody regarded what belonged to Felix as common property; and the 'boys' were far enough into their teens to begin to make their future an anxious consideration. Clement was just seventeen, and though he had outgrown his voice, was lingering on as a sort of adopted child at St. Matthew's, helping in the parish school, and reading under one of the clergy in preparation for standing for a scholarship. He tried for one in the autumn, but failed, so much to his surprise and disgust, that he thought hostility to St. Matthew's must be at the bottom of his rejection; and came home with somewhat of his martyr-like complacency at Christmas, meaning to read so hard as to force his way in spite of prejudice. He was very tall, fair, and slight; and his features were the more infantine from a certain melancholy baby-like gravity, which music alone dispersed. He really played beautifully, and being entrusted with the organ during the schoolmaster's Christmas holidays, made practising his chief recreation. That Lance would often follow him into church for a study, and always made one of the group round the piano when Alice Knevett came to sing with them, was a great grievance to Fulbert, who never loved music, and hated it as a rival for Lance's attention.

These two were generally the closest companions, and were alike in having more boyishness, restlessness, and enterprise than their brothers. This winter their ambition was to be at all the meets within five miles, follow up the hunt, and be able to report the fox's death at the end of the day. Indeed, their appetite for whatever bore the name of sport was as ravenous as it was indiscriminate; and their rapturous communications could not be checked by Clement's manifest contempt, or the discouraging indifference of the rest—all but Robina, who loved whatever Lance loved, and was ready to go to a meet, if Wilmet had not interfered with a high hand.

Before long Felix wished that his authority over the male part of the family were as well established as that in her department.

One hunting day the two brothers came in splashed up to the eyes, recounting how they had found a boy of about their own age in a ditch, bruised and stunned, but not seriously hurt; how with consolation and schoolboy surgery they had cheered him, and found he was Harry Collis, whom they had known as a school-fellow at Bexley; how they had helped him home to Marshlands Hall, and had been amazed at the dreariness and want of all home comfort at the place, so that they did not like to leave him till his father came home; and how Captain Collis had not only thanked them warmly, but had asked them over to come and shoot rabbits the next day.

There was nothing to blame them for, but Felix had much rather it had never happened. Captain Collis was one of a race of squires who had never been very reputable, and had not risen greatly above the farmer. He had been in the army, and had the bearing of a gentleman; but ever since his wife's death, he had lived an unsatisfactory sort of life at the Hall, always forward in sport, but not well thought of, and believed to be a good deal in debt. His only child, this Harry Collis, had been sent somewhat fitfully to the St. Oswald's Grammar School, and had been rather a favourite companion of Lance's; but separation had put an end to the intimacy, and this renewal was not at all to the taste of their eldest brother.

'It can't be helped this time,' he said, when he heard of the invitation; 'I suppose you must go to-morrow, but I don't fancy the concern.'

Fulbert's bristles began to rise, but Lance chatted gaily on. 'But, Fee, you never saw such a place! Stables for nine hunters. Only think! And a horse entered for the Derby! We are to see him to-morrow. It is the jolliest place.'

'Nine hunters!' moralized Clement; 'they cost as much as three times nine orphans.'

'And they are worth a dozen times as much as the nasty little beggars!' said Fulbert.

On which Angela put in the trite remark that the orphans had souls.

'Precious rum ones,' muttered Fulbert; and in the clamour thus raised the subject dropped; but when next morning, in the openness of his heart, Lance invited Clement to go with them to share the untold joys of rabbit-shooting, he met with a decisive reply. 'Certainly not! I should think your Dean would be surprised at you.'

'Oh, the Dean is a kind old chap,' answered Lance, off-hand; 'whenever he has us to sing at a party, he tips us all round, thanks us, and tells us to enjoy ourselves in the supper-room, like a gentleman, as he is.'

'Do you know what this Collis's character is?'

'Hang his character! I want his rabbits.'

And Lance was off with Fulbert; while Clement remained, to make Geraldine unhappy with his opinion of the temptations of Marshlands Hall, returning to the charge when Felix came in before dinner.

'Yes,' said Felix briefly, 'Mr. Froggatt has been telling me. It must be stopped.'

'Have you heard of the mischief that—'

'Don't be such a girl, Tina. I am going to do the thing, and there is no use in keeping on about it.'

Felix had not called Clement Tina since he had been head of the family, and irritability in him was a token of great perplexity; for indeed his hardest task always was the dealing with Fulbert; and he was besides very sorry to balk the poor boys of one of their few chances of manly amusement.

He would have waited to utter his prohibition till the excitement should have worked off, but he knew that Clement would never hold his peace through the narrative of their adventures; so, as they had not come in when his work was over, he took Theodore on his arm, and retreated to the little parlour behind the shop, where he lay in wait, reading, and mechanically whistling tunes to Theodore, till he heard the bell, and went to open the door.

The gas showed them rosy, merry, glorious, and bespattered, one waving a couple of rabbits, and the other of pheasants, and trying to tickle Theodore's cheeks with the long tails of the latter, of course frightening him into a fretful wail.

'Take Theodore upstairs, if you please, Lance,' said Felix, 'and then come down; I want you.'

'The Captain was going to dine at Bowstead's,' said Fulbert, 'so he drove us in his dog-cart. If the frost holds, we are to go out and skate on Monday.'

Felix employed himself in putting away his papers, without answering.

'I had very good luck,' continued Fulbert, 'four out of six; wonderful for so new a hand, the Captain said.'

'Such a lovely animal you never saw,' said Lance, swinging himself downstairs. 'You must walk out and see it, Fee, for you'll have it in the Pursuivant some Saturday.'

'Lance, I am very sorry,' said Felix, standing upright, with his back to the exhausted grate. 'Just attend to me, both of you.'

'Oh!' said Lance, hastily, 'I know there's a lot of old women's gossip about Collis; but nobody minds such stuff. Harry is as good a lad as ever stepped; and there was no harm to be seen about the place;—was there, Ful?'

'The old Frog has been croaking,' hoarsely muttered Fulbert.

Boys of sixteen and fourteen were incapable of coercion by a youth of one-and-twenty, and the only appeal must be to conscience and reason; so Felix went on speaking, though he had seen from the first that Fulbert's antagonism rendered him stolid, deaf, and blind; and Lancelot's flushed cheeks, angry eyes, impatient attempts to interrupt, and scornful gestures told of scarcely-repressed passion.

'You may have seen no harm, I find no fault' (Fulbert scowled); 'but if I had known what I do now I should not have let you go to-day. My father would rather have cut off his right hand than have allowed you to begin an acquaintance which has been ruinous to almost all the young men who have been in that set.'

'But we are not young men,' cried Lance; 'it is only for the holidays; and we only want a little fun with poor Harry, he is so lonely—and just to go out rabbiting and skating. It is very hard we can't be let alone the first time anything worth doing has turned up in this abominable slow place.'

'It is very hard, Lance. No one is more concerned than I; but if this intimacy once begins, there is no guessing where it will lead; and I do not speak without grounds. Listen—'

'If it comes from old Frog, you may as well shut up,' said Lance. 'There's been no peace at Marshlands since he took that cottage—a regular old nuisance and mischief-maker, spiting the Captain because one of the dogs killed his old cock, and bothering Charlie to no end about him.'

'I have heard from others as well,' said Felix; and he briefly mentioned some facts as to the scandals of the dissipated household, some of the imputations under which Captain Collis lay, and named two or three of the young men whose unsatisfactory conduct was ascribed to his influence.

He saw that both lads were startled, and wound up with saying, 'Therefore it is not without reason that I desire that you do not go there again.'

With which words, he opened the door, turned off the gas, and walked upstairs, hearing on the way a growl of Fulbert's—'That's what comes of being cad to a stupid brute of an old tradesman;' and likewise a bouncing, rolling, and tumbling, and a very unchorister-like expletive from Lance; but he hurried up, like the conclave from the vault at Lindisfarn, only with a sinking heart, and looks that made his sisters say how tired he must be. The boys were seen no more, but sent word by Bernard that they were wet through, they should not dress, but should get some supper in the kitchen, and go to bed.

On Sunday Lance had recovered himself and his temper, but in the evening he made another attempt upon Felix in private. His heart was greatly set upon Marshlands, and he argued that there was no evil at all in what they had been doing, and entreated Felix to be content with the promise both were willing to make, to take no share in anything doubtful—not even to play at billiards, or cards—if that would satisfy him, said Lance, 'but we will promise anything you please against playing, or betting, or—'

'I know, Lance, you once made such a promise, and kept it. I trust you entirely. But before, it would have been cruel to keep you from that sick boy; now this would be mere running into temptation for your own amusement.'

'Harry is not much better off than Fernan was,' said Lancelot, wistfully.

'Poor fellow! very likely not; but it would be more certain harm to yourself than good to him. Any way, no respectable person would choose to be intimate there, or to let their boys resort there; and it is my duty not to consent.'

'Ful is in such an awful way,' said Lance, disconsolately. 'Fee, you don't know how hard it is, you always were such a muff.'

'That is true,' said Felix, not at all offended; 'and I had my father and Edgar; but indeed, Lance, nothing ever was so hard to me to do as this. I cannot say how sorry I am.'

'You do really order me not?' said Lance, looking straight up at him.

'I do. I forbid you to go into Captain Collis's grounds, or to do more than exchange a greeting, if you meet him.'

'I will not. There's my word and honour for it, since—since you are so intolerably led by the nose by old Frog;' and Lance flung away, with the remains of his passion worked up afresh, and was as glum as his nature allowed the rest of the evening; but Felix, though much annoyed, saw that the boy had set up voluntarily two barriers between himself and his tempted will—in the command and the promise.

But the command that was a guard to the one, was a goad to the other; for Fulbert had never accepted his eldest brother's authority, and could not brook interference. Still his school character was good, and there was a certain worth about him, which made him sometimes withdraw his resistance, though never submit; and Felix had some hope that it would be so in the present case, when, while speeding to church in the dark winter Monday morning, he overheard Lance say to Clement, 'I say, Clem, 'tis a jolly stinging frost. If you'll take your skates and give us a lesson, we'll be off for the lake at Centry.'

One of the Whittingtonian curates had taken the boys to the ice in the parks, and taught them so effectively, that Clement was one of the best skaters in Bexley; but he was too much inclined to the nayward not to reply, 'I have to practise that anthem for Wednesday.'

'Oh, bother the practice!'

(Which Felix mentally echoed.)

'I can play that anthem, if that's all,' said Lance; 'and I believe you know it perfectly well. Now, Clem, don't be savage; I think, if you will come, we might put that other thing out of Ful's head.'

'Well, if you think it is to be of use—'

'That's right! Thank you,' cried Lance. 'And you won't jaw us all the way? He can't stand that, you know.'

Clement winced; but in compensation, apparently, for this forbidden lecture, he observed, 'I am glad you at least take it properly, Lance, though it would be worse in you than in him, considering your—'

'Bother it!' unceremoniously broke in Lance; and the words of wisdom were silenced.

Lance did his best to organise his party, but it was a failure; Fulbert said he had made an engagement, and would not break it; he was not bound to toady old Froggy, nor in bondage to any old fogeys of a dean and chapter; and he walked off the faster for Clement's protest, leaving Lance to roll on the floor and climb the balusters backwards to exhale his desire to follow. He was too much upset even to follow Clement to the organ, or to settle to the drawing which Cherry was teaching him, and was a great torment to himself and his sisters till dinner-time, when Clement had done his organ and his Greek, and was ready for a rush for the ice; and Robina went joyously with them. 'Between two young ladies one can't well run into harm's way,' said Lance.

So things went on for a fortnight. Fulbert never shuffled, he went openly to Marshlands Hall; and though not boasting of his expeditions, did not treat them as a secret. Wilmet and Geraldine each tried persuasion, but were silenced rudely; and Felix, unable to enforce his authority, held his tongue, but was very unhappy, both for the present and for the future. He did not believe much harm was doing now, but the temptation would increase with every vacation as the boys came nearer to manhood; and he seemed to have lost all influence and moral power over Fulbert.

Good old Mrs. Froggatt gave a small children's party, to which, with many apologies, she invited the lesser Underwoods, under charge of Wilmet. They were to sleep at the cottage, and Wilmet having offered to help in dressing the Christmas-tree, they set out early in the day to walk, escorted by the three brothers. That the trio did not return to tea did not alarm Felix and Geraldine, who suspected that the dislike the two elder expressed to the whole house of Froggatt had melted before the pleasure of working at the tree.

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.'

'Head-ache 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.'