He thought of him the night before in the company of
those ladies and gentlemen, and he quivered in resentment
of his vulgar, braggart, uncouth nature. He recognised
his own allegiance to the exclusiveness to which he was
born and bred, as a man perceives his duty to his country
when her rights are invaded. His eye fell on the porter
going about in his shirt-sleeves to make the place fast
for the night, and he said to himself that Dennis was not
more plebeian than his master; that the gross appetites,
the blunt sense, the purblind ambition, the stupid arrogance
were the same in both, and the difference was in a brute will
that probably left the porter the gentler man of the two.
The very innocence of Lapham's life in the direction in
which he had erred wrought against him in the young man's
mood: it contained the insult of clownish inexperience.
Amidst the stings and flashes of his wounded pride,
all the social traditions, all the habits of feeling,
which he had silenced more and more by force of will
during the past months, asserted their natural sway,
and he rioted in his contempt of the offensive boor, who was
even more offensive in his shame than in his trespass.
He said to himself that he was a Corey, as if that
were somewhat; yet he knew that at the bottom of his heart
all the time was that which must control him at last,
and which seemed sweetly to be suffering his rebellion,
secure of his submission in the end.
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