"I mean no disrespect to you, father, believe me," exclaims Felix eagerly; "but everything about me here is so--so different from what I have been accustomed to, that I feel myself almost in a strange land." He might have said more, but he restrains himself. He might have said, "Coming home as I have done, ready and wishful to be upon affectionate terms with a father who never showed any love for me--coming home with a studied resolution to try and conform to my father's wishes, and to gain for myself a place in his affections--I find myself baffled at every turn. When my father met me, after years of absence, he met me with no smile upon his face. He might have been a man of stone for all the warmth he showed to me; a stranger could not have exhibited less tenderness in his greeting. And so it has gone on from the moment I set foot in this house, which is cold enough and gloomy enough to chill one's blood." Felix does not say this, but he thinks it, and much more to the same effect, and at the same time wonders a little whether he is in any way to blame for things being so different from what he hoped and expected.
"The stipulation made by your uncle," proceeds the Reverend Emanuel Creamwell, "has thrown you into scenes and into a way of living that would certainly not meet with my approval; and if you wish to remain here, you must positively conform to my views. It is for you to change, not for me."
"Before we speak of this," says Felix, in as calm a tone as he can command, for the uncompromising bearing of his father grates strongly upon him, "will you be kind enough to tell me something more of my uncle? I have my future to look to now, and although it does not give me any anxiety, for I am sure to be all right"--with a careless wave of his hand to show that all the world was at his feet--"I would like to know what I have to depend on. My uncle must have died very suddenly."
"Sudden death is what we should all prepare ourselves for. I hope you have reflected seriously upon this and other matters not appertaining to this life."
"I don't know that I have, father," says Felix laughingly; "it's bad enough when it comes."
"I feared it!" exclaims the Reverend Emanuel Creamwell. "Not prepared! not prepared!"
The tone in which his father utters this lamentation is so exactly similar to the other lamentations which he has heard in other places, and which he has been in the habit of looking upon as unworthy of regard, that Felix with difficulty suppresses his disdain; but he is of too frank and open a nature not to make upon the instant a confession of faith--a confession so dreadful that the Reverend Emanuel Creamwell listened in undisguised wrath.
"I don't suppose I am prepared, father, in the way you mean, and I must confess that I don't see what necessity there is for it. I am not sent into the world to mourn; there are things in it that I like to enjoy, and that I think I was sent to enjoy; otherwise, they would not be provided. I sha'n't be the worse for enjoying them, if I live till I am seventy, and I shouldn't be the better for avoiding them, or for looking upon them as sinful."
Felix is aware of the bad impression he is producing upon his father, but he deems it a point of honour not to falter, and he goes on to the end with a certain manliness that would be refreshing in any other place than the cheerless study in which he is sitting.
"May I inquire what you call yourself in the matter of religion?" asks the Reverend Emanuel Creamwell gloomily.