They were both dutiful and attentive sons, and were regular in their
visits to their parents. Felix, though an offshoot from a far more
recent point in the devolution of theology than his father, was less
self-sacrificing and disinterested. More tolerant than his father of
a contradictory opinion, in its aspect as a danger to its holder, he
was less ready than his father to pardon it as a slight to his own
teaching. Cuthbert was, upon the whole, the more liberal-minded,
though, with greater subtlety, he had not so much heart.
As they walked along the hillside Angel's former feeling revived
in him--that whatever their advantages by comparison with himself,
neither saw or set forth life as it really was lived. Perhaps, as
with many men, their opportunities of observation were not so good
as their opportunities of expression. Neither had an adequate
conception of the complicated forces at work outside the smooth and
gentle current in which they and their associates floated. Neither
saw the difference between local truth and universal truth; that what
the inner world said in their clerical and academic hearing was quite
a different thing from what the outer world was thinking.
"I suppose it is farming or nothing for you now, my dear fellow,"
Felix was saying, among other things, to his youngest brother, as
he looked through his spectacles at the distant fields with sad
austerity. "And, therefore, we must make the best of it. But I do
entreat you to endeavour to keep as much as possible in touch with
moral ideals. Farming, of course, means roughing it externally; but
high thinking may go with plain living, nevertheless."
"Of course it may," said Angel. "Was it not proved nineteen hundred
years ago--if I may trespass upon your domain a little? Why should
you think, Felix, that I am likely to drop my high thinking and my
moral ideals?" "Well, I fancied, from the tone of your letters and our
conversation--it may be fancy only--that you were somehow losing
intellectual grasp. Hasn't it struck you, Cuthbert?"
"Now, Felix," said Angel drily, "we are very good friends, you
know; each of us treading our allotted circles; but if it comes to
intellectual grasp, I think you, as a contented dogmatist, had
better leave mine alone, and inquire what has become of yours."
They returned down the hill to dinner, which was fixed at any time at
which their father's and mother's morning work in the parish usually
concluded. Convenience as regarded afternoon callers was the last
thing to enter into the consideration of unselfish Mr and Mrs Clare;
though the three sons were sufficiently in unison on this matter to
wish that their parents would conform a little to modern notions.