He was springing up to stop me, but was forced to drop back, and I made my way to the drawing-room, where my mother happened to be alone. She was much alarmed, but a glass of wine restored Clarence; and inspection showed that the thick trowser and winter stocking had so protected him that little blood had been drawn, and there was bruise rather than bite in the calf of the leg, where the brute had caught him as he was getting over the stile as the rear-guard. It was painful, though the faintness was chiefly from tension of nerve, for he had kept behind all the way home, and no one had guessed at the hurt. My mother doctored it tenderly, and he begged that nothing should be said about it; he wanted no fuss about such a trifle. My mother agreed, with the proud feeling of not enhancing the obligations of the Fordyce family; but she absolutely kissed Clarence’s forehead as she bade him lie quiet till dinner-time.
We kept silence at table while the girls described the horrors of the monster. ‘A tawny creature, with a hideous black muzzle,’ said Emily. ‘Like a bad dream,’ said Miss Fordyce. The two fathers expressed their intention of remonstrating with the farmer, and Griff declared that it would be lucky if he did not shoot it. Miss Fordyce generously took its part, saying the poor dog was doing its duty, and Griff ejaculated, ‘If I had been there!’
‘It would not have dared to show its teeth, eh?’ said my father, when there was a good deal of banter.
My father, however, came at night with mamma to inspect the hurt and ask details, and he ended with, ‘Well done, Clarence, boy; I am gratified to see you are acquiring presence of mind, and can act like a man.’
Clarence smiled when they were gone, saying, ‘That would have been an insult to any one else.’
Emily perceived that he had not come off unscathed, and was much aggrieved at being bound to silence. ‘Well,’ she broke out, ‘if the dog goes mad, and Clarence has the hydrophobia, I suppose I may tell.’
‘In that pleasing contingency,’ said Clarence smiling. ‘Don’t you see, Emily, it is the worst compliment you can pay me not to treat this as a matter of course?’ Still, he was the happier for not having failed. Whatever strengthened his self-respect and gave him trust in himself was a stepping-stone.
As to rivalry or competition with Griff, the idea seemingly never crossed his mind, and envy or jealousy were equally aloof from it. One subject of thankfulness runs through these recollections—namely, that nothing broke the tie of strong affection between us three brothers. Griffith might figure as the ‘vary parfite knight,’ the St. George of the piece, glittering in the halo shed round him by the bright eyes of the rescued damsel; while Clarence might drag himself along as the poor recreant to be contemned and tolerated, and he would accept the position meekly as only his desert, without a thought of bitterness. Indeed, he himself seemed to have imbibed Nurse Gooch’s original opinion, that his genuine love for sacred things was a sort of impertinence and pretension in such as he—a kind of hypocrisy even when they were the realities and helps to which he clung with all his heart. Still, this depression was only shown by reserve, and troubled no one save myself, who knew him best guessed what was lost by his silence, and burned in spirit at seeing him merely endured as one unworthy.
In one of our varieties of Waverley discussions the crystal hardness and inexperienced intolerance of youth made Miss Fordyce declare that had she been Edith Plantagenet, she would never, never have forgiven Sir Kenneth. ‘How could she, when he had forsaken the king’s banner? Unpardonable!’
Then came a sudden, awful silence, as she recollected her audience, and blushed crimson with the misery of perceiving where her random shaft had struck, nor did either of us know what to say; but to our surprise it was Clarence who first spoke to relieve the desperate embarrassment. ‘Is forgiven quite the right word, when the offence was not personal? I know that such things can neither be repaired nor overlooked, and I think that is what Miss Fordyce meant.’