He could not combine the brutal
judge and the industrious, dispassionate student; the connecting link
escaped him; from such a dual nature, it was impossible he should
predict behaviour; and he asked himself if he had done well to plunge
into a business of which the end could not be foreseen? and presently
after, with a sickening decline of confidence, if he had done loyally to
strike his father? For he had struck him - defied him twice over and
before a cloud of witnesses - struck him a public buffet before crowds.
Who had called him to judge his father in these precarious and high
questions? The office was usurped. It might have become a stranger; in
a son - there was no blinking it - in a son, it was disloyal. And now,
between these two natures so antipathetic, so hateful to each other,
there was depending an unpardonable affront: and the providence of God
alone might foresee the manner in which it would be resented by Lord
Hermiston.
These misgivings tortured him all night and arose with him in the
winter's morning; they followed him from class to class, they made him
shrinkingly sensitive to every shade of manner in his companions, they
sounded in his ears through the current voice of the professor; and he
brought them home with him at night unabated and indeed increased.
Pages:
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69