She saw that the anxiety pressed heavily on Mr. Kendal, and though
both shrank from giving their uneasiness force by putting it into
words, each felt that it was ever-present with the other. Mr. Kendal
was deeply grieving over the effects, for the former state of
ignorance and apathy of the evils of which he had only recently
become fully sensible. Living for himself alone, without cognizance
of his membership in one great universal system, he had needed the
sense of churchmanship to make him act up to his duties as father,
neighbour, citizen, and man of property; and when aroused, he found
that the time of his inaction had bound him about with fetters. A
tone of mind had grown up in his family from which only Sophy had
been entirely freed; seeds of ineradicable evil had been sown,
mischiefs had grown by neglect, abuses been established by custom;
and his own personal disadvantages, his mauvaise honte, his reserved,
apparently proud manner, his slowness of speech, dislike to
interruption, and over-vehemence when excited, had so much increased
upon him, as, in spite of his efforts, to be serious hindrances.
Kind, liberal, painstaking, and conscientious as he had become, he
was still looked upon as hard, stern, and tyrannical. His ten years
of inertness had strewn his path with thorns and briars, even beyond
his own household; and when he looked back to his neglect of his son,
he felt that even the worst consequences would be but just
retribution.
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