Angel flushed with distress.
'Dear father,' he said sadly, 'I wish you would not expose yourself
to such gratuitous pain from scoundrels!'
'Pain?' said his father, his rugged face shining in the ardour of
self-abnegation. 'The only pain to me was pain on his account, poor,
foolish young man. Do you suppose his incensed words could give
me any pain, or even his blows? 'Being reviled we bless; being
persecuted we suffer it; being defamed we entreat; we are made as the
filth of the world, and as the offscouring of all things unto this
day.' Those ancient and noble words to the Corinthians are strictly
true at this present hour.'
'Not blows, father? He did not proceed to blows?'
'No, he did not. Though I have borne blows from men in a mad state
of intoxication.'
'No!'
'A dozen times, my boy. What then? I have saved them from the guilt
of murdering their own flesh and blood thereby; and they have lived
to thank me, and praise God.'
'May this young man do the same!' said Angel fervently. 'But I fear
otherwise, from what you say.'
'We'll hope, nevertheless,' said Mr Clare. 'And I continue to pray
for him, though on this side of the grave we shall probably never
meet again. But, after all, one of those poor words of mine may
spring up in his heart as a good seed some day.'
Now, as always, Clare's father was sanguine as a child; and though
the younger could not accept his parent's narrow dogma, he revered
his practice and recognized the hero under the pietist. Perhaps he
revered his father's practice even more now than ever, seeing that,
in the question of making Tessy his wife, his father had not once
thought of inquiring whether she were well provided or penniless.
The same unworldliness was what had necessitated Angel's getting
a living as a farmer, and would probably keep his brothers in the
position of poor parsons for the term of their activities; yet Angel
admired it none the less. Indeed, despite his own heterodoxy, Angel
often felt that he was nearer to his father on the human side than
was either of his brethren.
XXVII
An up-hill and down-hill ride of twenty-odd miles through a garish
mid-day atmosphere brought him in the afternoon to a detached knoll
a mile or two west of Talbothays, whence he again looked into that
green trough of sappiness and humidity, the valley of the Var or
Froom. Immediately he began to descend from the upland to the fat
alluvial soil below, the atmosphere grew heavier; the languid perfume
of the summer fruits, the mists, the hay, the flowers, formed therein
a vast pool of odour which at this hour seemed to make the animals,
the very bees and butterflies drowsy. Clare was now so familiar with
the spot that he knew the individual cows by their names when, a long
distance off, he saw them dotted about the meads. It was with a
sense of luxury that he recognized his power of viewing life here
from its inner side, in a way that had been quite foreign to him in
