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
