Chapter Eighteen.
The Alpen-Gluhen.
“And, last of all,
Love, like an Alpine harebell, hung with tears,
By some cold morning glacier.”
The Princess.
Violet’s fluttered nerves and wearied frame rendered it necessary for the party of English travellers to stay for a few days at Mürrem, and afterwards it was decided that they should all go down to Grindelwald, and spend there the remainder of the time which they had set apart for the Swiss tour. The landlord of the Jungfrau treated them with the utmost consideration, and amused Kennedy by paying him as much deference as if he had been Tell or Arnold himself. Leaving in his hands all endeavours to discover the two scoundrels, who had entirely decamped, Kennedy gave him one of the guns, while he carried with him the other to keep as a trophy in his rooms at Camford.
There are few sights more pleasant than that of two families bound together by the ties of friendship and affection, and living together as though they were all brothers and sisters of a common home. For long years afterwards the Homes and the Kennedys looked back on those days at Grindelwald as among the happiest of their lives, and, indeed, they glided by like a dream of unbroken pleasure. How is it that there can be such a thing as ennui, or that people ever can be at a loss what to do? In the morning they took short excursions to the glaciers or the roots of the great mountains, and Cyril made adventurous expeditions with his fishing-rod to the mountain-streams. And at evening they sat in the long twilight in the balcony of their room, while Eva and Violet sang them sweet, simple English songs, which rang so softly through the air, that the crowd of guides and porters which always hang about a Swiss hotel used to gather in the streets to listen, and the English visitors collected in the garden to catch the familiar tones. Julian and Kennedy always gave some hours every day to their books, and Cyril, though he could be persuaded to do little else, spent some of his unemployed time on his much-abused holiday task for the ensuing quarter at Marlby.
And when the candles were lit, the girls would sketch or work, and Julian or Kennedy would read or translate to them aloud. Sometimes they spent what Mr Kennedy used to call “an evening with the immortals,” and taking some volume of the poets, would each choose a favourite passage to read aloud in turn. This was Mr Kennedy’s great delight, and he got quite enthusiastic when the well-remembered lines came back to him with fresh beauty, borne on the pleasant voices of Eva, Julian, or Cyril, like an old jewel when new facets are cut on its lustrous surface.
“Stop there; that’s an immortal, lad—an immortal,” he would say to Cyril, when the boy seemed to be passing over some flower of poetic thought without sufficient admiration; and then he would repeat the passage from memory with such just emphasis, that on these evenings all felt that they were laying up precious thoughts for happy future hours.
“Now, Mrs Dudley, and you young ladies, we’re going to translate you part of a Greek novel to-night,” said Julian.
“A Greek novel!” said Cyril, with a touch of incredulous suspicion. “Those old creatures didn’t write novels, did they?”
“Only the best novel that ever was written, Cyril.”
“What’s it called?”
“The Odyssey.”
“Oh, what a chouse! You don’t mean to call that a novel, do you?”
“Well, let the ladies decide.”
So he read to them how Ulysses returned in the guise of a beggar, after twenty years of war and wandering to his own palace-door, and saw the haughty suitors revelling in his halls; and how, as he reached the door, Argus, the hunting-dog, now old and neglected, and full of fleas, recollected him, when all had forgotten him, and fawned upon him, and licked his hand and died; and how the suitors insulted him, and one of them threw a foot-stool at him, which by one quick move he avoided, and said nothing, and another flung a shin-bone at his head, which he caught in his hand, and said nothing, but only smiled grimly in his heart—ever so little, a grim, sardonic smile and how the old nurse recognised him by the scar of the boar’s tusk on his leg, but he quickly repressed the exclamation of wonderment which sprang to her lips; and how he sat, ragged but princely, by the fire in his hall, and the red light flickered over him, and he spake to the suitors words of solemn warning; and how, when Agelaus warned them, a strange foreboding seized their souls, and they looked at each other with great eyes, and smiled with alien lips, and burst into quenchless laughter, though their eyes were filled with tears; and how Ulysses drew his own mighty bow, which not one of them could use, and how he handled it, and twanged the string till it sang like a swallow in his ear, and sent the arrow flying with a whiz through the twelve iron rings of the line of axes; and then, lastly, how, like to a god, he leapt on his own threshold with a shout, and gathered his rags about him, and aided by the young Telemachus and the divine Swineherd, sent hurtling into the band of wine-stained rioters the swift arrows of inevitable death.
Pleased with the tale, which the girls decided, in spite of Cyril’s veto, to be a genuine novel, they asked for a new Greek romance, and Julian read to them from Herodotus about the rise and fall of empires, and “Strange stories of the deaths of kings.” One of his stories was the famous one of Croesus, and the irony of his fate, and the warning words of Solon, all of which, rendered into quaint rich English, struck Cyril so much, that, mingling up the tale with reminiscences of Longfellow’s “Blind Bartimeus,” he produced, with much modesty at the breakfast-table next morning, the following very creditable boyish imitation:—
“Speak Grecia’s wisest, thou, ’tis said,
Full deeply in Life’s page hast read,
And many a clime hath known my tread;
Tis pantoon olbiotatos?
“The monarch raised his eager eye,
Gazed on the sage exultingly,
And slow came forth the calm reply
Tellos ho Atheenaios.
“Upon his funeral pyre he lay
Crownless, his sceptre passed away,
The shade of Solon seem to say,
oudeis toon zoontoon holbios.
“How little thought that Grecian sage
Those words should live from aye to aye,
Tis pantoon olbiotatos?
Tellos ho Atheenaios,
oudeis toon zoontoon holbios.”
(Note. These verses were really written by a boy of fourteen.)
In a manner such as this the summer hours glided happily away. But all things, happy or mournful, must come to an end, lest we should forget God in our prosperity, or curse Him in our despair. Too quickly for all their wishes their last Sunday in Switzerland had come. Most of them had spent the day in thoughtful retirement or quiet occupations, and both morning and evening they assembled together in their pleasant sitting-room for matins and evensong. Their thoughts were full of the coming separation, and it gave a deep interest to these last services; for the Homes, unwilling to leave their mother and Frank so long alone at Ildown, were to start for England on the following day, and the Kennedys intended to visit Chamounix for two weeks more.
On the Sunday evening they strolled down to the glacier to look once again, for the last time, into its crevices, and wonder at its fairy caverns, fringed with icicles, like rows of silver daggers, and ceiled with translucent sapphire, beneath whose blue fretwork the stray sunbeams lost their way amid ice-blocks of luminous green, and pillars of lapis-lazuli and crystal. They sat on a huge boulder of granite, which some avalanche had torn down, and tumbled from the mountain’s side, and there enjoyed the icy wind which tempered the warm evening air, as it swept over the leaping waves of the glacier stream.
“What a mixture of terror and beauty these monstrous glaciers are,” said Julian; “crawling down the valleys, and shearing away the solid rocks before them like gigantic ploughshares.”
“Yes,” said Eva. “When you look up at the tumbled pinnacles of those séracs, does it not seem as if Summer had rent in anger with some great ice-axe the huge enemy whom she could not quite destroy?”
“And see,” said Mr Kennedy, “how Nature gets out of these terrible heaps of shattered ice both use and beauty; and since she must leave them as the eternal fountains of her rivers, see how she tinges them with her loveliest blue.”
They talked on until it was time to return, but Violet and Kennedy still lingered, sitting on the vast boulder, under pretence of seeing the sunset.
“Well, don’t get lost again, that’s all,” said Cyril sagely.
“Oh no, we shall be back very soon,” answered Violet, but she felt instinctively that the “very soon” in time might measure an eternity of emotion.
Need we say that Kennedy and Violet had, since that night of wild adventure, loved each other, hour by hour, with deeper affection? He was young, and brave, and light-hearted, and of a pleasant countenance; and she was a young, and confiding, and graceful, and lovely girl, and they were drawn to one another with a love which absorbed all other thoughts, and overpowered all other considerations; and it was unspeakable happiness for each to know how lovely were all their acts, and how dear were all their words in the other’s eyes. And now that the time was come to declare the love in words, and ratify it by a plighted troth, there was something in the act so solemn as almost to disturb their dream of a lover’s paradise.
They sat silent on the rock until the sun had set behind the peaks of snow, and their eyes were filled with idle yet delicious tears. Ripples of luminous sunshine, and banks of primrose-coloured cloud still lingered on the path which the sun had traversed, and, when even these began to fade, there stole along the hill crests above them a film of tender colour, flinging a veil of the softest carnation over their cold grey rocks, and untrodden fields of perpetual snow.
“Look, Violet, at that rose-colour on the hills; does it not seem as it rests on those chill ledges, as though Nature had said that her last act to-day should be a triumph of glory, and her last thought a thought of love?”
Violet murmured an assent.
“Oh, Violet,” he continued, “you know that I love you, and I know that you love me;—is it not so, Violet?”
He hardly heard the “Yes,” which came half like a sigh from her lips.
“Violet, dear Violet, we part to-morrow; let me hear you say ‘Yes’ more clearly still.”
“You know I love you, Edward—did you not save my life?”
“I know you love me,” he repeated slowly, “but, oh Violet, I am not worthy of you—I am not all you think me.” There passed over his fair forehead the expression of humiliation and pain which she had seen there with wonder once or twice before.
“You are good and noble, Edward,” she answered; “I see you to be good and noble, or I could not love you as I do.”
“No,” he said, “alas! not good, not noble, Violet—in no wise worthy of one so pure, and bright, and beautiful as you are.” He bent his face over her hand, and his warm tears fell fast upon it. “But,” he continued, “I will strive to be so hereafter, Violet, for your sweet sake. Oh, can you take me as I am? Will you make me good and noble, Violet, as Julian is? Can you let the sunshine of your life fall on the shadow of mine?”
She did not understand his passion as he raised to her his face, not bright and laughing as it generally was, but stained with the traces of many tears; she only knew that he had won her whole heart, and for one moment she let her hand rest in the curls of the head which he had bent once more.
“Oh, Violet,” he said, looking up again, “I can be anything if you love me.” In an instant the cloud had passed away from his face, and the old sunshine brightened his blue eyes. For one instant their eyes met with that lustrous and dewy love-gleam that only lovers know, but during that instant it seemed as if their souls had flowed together into a common fount. With a happy look she suffered him to take her hand, and draw off from her finger a sapphire ring; this he put on his own finger, while on hers he replaced it by the gold-set ruby, his mother’s gift, which he usually wore.
The crescent moon had risen as they walked home, and they found the rest of the party seated in the hotel garden, under her soft silver light; but nobody seemed to be much in a mood for talking, until that little monkey Cyril, who observed everything, exclaimed—
“Why, Julian, do look; Violet has got Kennedy’s ring on, and—well, I declare if he hasn’t got hers.”
“Let us all come up-stairs,” said Kennedy hastily and then, before them all, he drew Violet to his side, and said—
“Julian, Violet and I are betrothed to each other.”
“As I thought,” said Julian with a smile, as a rush of sudden emotion made his eyes glisten, and he warmly grasped Kennedy’s hand.
“And as I hoped, Julian,” said Mr Kennedy, as he turned away to wipe his spectacles, which somehow had grown dim.
The moonlight streamed over them as the two stood there together, young, happy, hopeful, beautiful, and while Cyril held Kennedy’s hand, Eva and Violet exchanged a sister’s kiss.
And Julian looked on with a glow of happiness—happiness that had one drawback only—a passing shadow of sorrow for the possible feelings of De Vayne.
Chapter Nineteen.
Only a Blush.
“Erubuit! salva res est!”—Plautus.
Back from the glistening snow-fields, where every separate crystal flashes with a separate gleam of light—back from the Alpine pastures, embroidered with their tissue of innumerable flowers, over which, like winged flowers, the butterflies flutter continually—back from the sunlit silver mantle of the everlasting hills, and the thunder of the avalanche, and the wild leap of the hissing cataract—back to the cold grey flats and ancient towers of Camford, and the lazy windings of the muddy Iscam, and the strife and struggle of a university career.
Kennedy arrived at Camford at mid-day, and as but few men had yet come up, he beguiled the time by going out to make the usual formal call on his tutor. As he passed the door of the room where temptation had brought on him so many heavy hours, he could hardly repress an involuntary shudder; but on the whole, he was in high spirits, and Mr Grayson received him with something almost approaching to cordiality.
“You did very well in the examination, Mr Kennedy; very well indeed. With diligence you might have been head of your year—as it was, you were in the first ten.”
“Was Owen head of the year, sir?”
“No, Home was head; his brilliant composition, and thorough knowledge of the books, brought him to the top. Either he or Owen were first in all the papers except one.”
“Which was that, sir?”
“The Aeschylus paper, in which you were first, Mr Kennedy; you did it remarkably accurately. If you had seen the paper, you could hardly have done it better.”
“Indeed! Would you give me a library order, sir?” said Kennedy, rising abruptly, to change the subject. Mr Grayson was offended at this sudden change of subject, and, silently writing the order, bade Kennedy a cold “good morning.” All that Kennedy hoped was that he would not tell others as well as himself, the odious fact of his success.
The thought damped his spirits, but he shook it off. The novelty of returning as a junior soph, the pleasure of meeting the familiar faces once more, the consciousness of that bright change of existence, which, during the past vacation, had bound the golden thread of Violet’s destiny with his, filled him with inward exultation. And then there was real delight in the warmth with which he was greeted by all alike.
He found himself, very unexpectedly, a hero in the general estimation. The romantic adventure on the Schilthorn had been rumoured about among the numerous English visitors to the Valley of Lauterbrunnen, until it had reached the editor of a local paper, and so had flowed through Galignani into the general stream of the English journals. True, the names had been suppressed, but all the Saint Werner’s men knew who was intended by “Mr K dash y,” and as he entered the hall there was a murmur of applause.
He was greeted on all sides with eager questions.
“I say, Mr K dash y,” said one, “did the fellow whom you shot die of his wound?”
“It was rather a chouse to shoot a cretin, though,” said another, in chaff.
“I didn’t shoot him,” said Kennedy.
“No, you very leerily managed to make the other fellow shoot him. Preserve me from my friends, must have been his secret reflections.”
“Have you kept the guns, Kennedy? You must let me have a look after hall.”
While this kind of talk was going on, Brogten, who was nearly opposite to Kennedy, sat silent, and watched him.
He did not join in the remarks about the night adventure in Switzerland, but when there was a slight pause in the fire of questions, he turned the conversation to the subject of the May examination.
“Those are not your only triumphs, Kennedy, it appears. You seem to have been doing uncommonly well in the examination, too.”
“Oh aye, you were in the first ten,” said Suton; “Mr Grayson told me so.”
“Who was first?” asked Lillyston.
“Oh, Home of course; except in one paper, and Kennedy was first in that.”
“I believe that was the Aeschylus paper,” said Brogten, throwing the slightest unusual emphasis into his tone; “you were first in that, weren’t you, Kennedy?”
The men were surprised to hear Brogten address him with such careless familiarity, knowing the old quarrel that existed between them; and they were still more surprised to hear Brogten interest himself about a topic usually so indifferent to him as the result of an examination. It seemed particularly strange that he should give himself any trouble to inquire about the present list, because he himself had been posted, in company with Hazlet and Lord Fitzurse, i e, their names had been written up below the eighth class, as “unworthy to be classed.”
“Was I?” said Kennedy in the most careless tone he could assume.
“Yes—really, didn’t you know it? You did it so well that Grayson said, you couldn’t have done the paper better if you had seen it beforehand.”
“I say, Kennedy, you must have come out swell, then,” said D’Acres, “for Grayson said just the same thing to me.”
“How very odd,” said Brogten, affectedly. “You didn’t see the papers beforehand, Kennedy—did you?”
The last few moments had been torture to Kennedy; he had moved uneasily; the bright look of gratified triumph, which the allusions to his courage had called forth, had gone out the moment the examination was mentioned, and it was only by a painful and violent exercise of the will that he was able to keep back the blood which had begun to rush towards his cheeks. In the endeavour to check or suppress the blush, he had grown ashy pale; but now that Brogten’s dark and cruel eye was upon him—now that the protruding underlip curled with a sneer that left no more room to doubt that he was master of Kennedy’s guilty secret—the effort was useless, and spite of will, the burning crimson of an uncontrollable shame burst and flashed over Kennedy’s usually clear and open face. It was no ordinary blush—no common passage of colour over the cheeks. Over face, and neck, and brow the guilty blood seemed to be crowding tumultuously, and when it had filled every vein and fibre till it swelled, then the rich scarlet seemed to linger there as though it would never die away again, and if for an instant it began to fade, then the hidden thought sent new waves of hot agony in fresh pulses to supply its place. And all the while the conscious victim made matters worse by his attempts to seem unconcerned, until his forehead was wet with heavy perspiration. By that time the men had turned to other topics, and were talking about Bruce’s laziness, and the utter manner in which he must have fallen off for his name to appear, as it had done, in the second class; and, in course of time, Kennedy’s face was as pale and cold as it before had burned and glowed.
And all this while, though he would not look—though he looked at his plate, and at the busts over his head, and the long portraits of Saint Werner’s worthies on the walls, and on this side and on that—Kennedy knew full well that Brogten’s eye had been on him from beginning to end, and that Brogten was enjoying, with devilish malignity, the sense of power which he had gained from the knowledge of another’s sin. The thought was intolerable to him, and, finishing his dinner with hasty gulps, he left the hall.
“Brogten, how rude you were to Kennedy,” said Lillyston.
“Was I?” said Brogten, in a tone of sarcasm and defiance.
“No wonder he blushed at your coarse insinuations.”
“No wonder,” said Brogten, in the same tone; “am I the only person who makes coarse insinuations, as you call them?”
“It is just like you to do so.”
“Is it? Oh well, I shall have to make some more, perhaps, before I have done.”
“Well, you’d better look out what you say to Kennedy, at any rate. He is a fiery subject.”
“Thank you, I will.”
This wrangling was very unprofitable, and Lillyston gladly dropped it, not however without feeling somewhat puzzled at the air which Brogten assumed.
That night Kennedy was sitting miserably in his room alone; he had refused all invitations, and had asked nobody to take tea with him. He was just making tea for himself, when Brogten came to see him.
“May I stay to tea?” he asked, in mock humility.
“If you like,” said Kennedy.
He stayed to tea, and talked about all kinds of subjects rather than the one which was prominent in the thoughts of both. He told Kennedy old Harton stories, and asked him about Marlby; he turned the subject to Home, and really interested Kennedy by telling him what kind of a boy Julian had been, and what inseparable friends he had always been with Lillyston, and how admirably he had recited on speech-day, and how stainless his whole life had been, and how vice and temptation seemed to skulk away at his very look.
“You are reconciled to him, then,” said Kennedy in surprise.
“Oh, yes. At heart, I always respected him. He wasn’t a fellow to take the worst view of one’s character, you know, or to make nasty innuendoes—” He stopped, and eyed Kennedy as a parrot eyes a finger put into his cage, which he could peck if he would. “He wasn’t, you know, a kind of fellow who would force you to leave the table by sneering at you in hall—” He still continued to eye Kennedy, but in vain, for Kennedy kept his moody glance on the table and was silent, and would not look at him or speak to him. Brogten could not help being struck with his appearance as he sat there motionless,—the noble and perfectly formed head, the well-cut features, the cheek a little pale now, so boyishly smooth and round, the latent powers of fire and sarcasm and strength in the bright eye and beautiful lip. It was a base source of triumph that made Brogten exult in the knowledge that this youth was in his power; that he held for a time at least the strings of his happiness or misery; that at any time by a word in any public place he could bring on his fine features that hue of shame; that for his own purposes he could at any time ruin his reputation, and put an end to his popularity.
Not that he intended to do so. He had the power, but unless provoked, he did not wish or mean to use it. It was far more luxurious to keep it to himself, and use it as occasion might serve. Everybody’s secret is nobody’s secret, and it was enough for Brogten to enjoy privately the triumph he had longed for, and which accident had put into his hands.
“Come, come, Kennedy,” he said, “this is nonsense; we understand each other. I saw you coolly read over the whole examination-paper, you know, which wasn’t the most honourable thing in the world to do—”
He paused and half relented as he saw a solitary tear on Kennedy’s cheek, which was indignantly brushed away almost as soon as it had started.
“Come,” he said, “cheer up, man. I’m not going to tell of you; neither Grayson nor any of the men shall know it, and at present not a soul has a suspicion of such a thing except ourselves. Come—I’ve had my triumph over you, for your sharp words in hall last term, before all the men, and that’s all I wanted. Don’t let’s be enemies any longer. Good-night.”
But Kennedy sat there passively, and when Brogten had gone away whistling “The Rat-catcher’s Daughter,” he leant his head upon his hand, and his thoughts wandered away to Violet Home.
O holy, ennobling, purifying love! He felt that if he had known Violet before, he should not now have been in Brogten’s power. He fancied that the secret had oozed out; he fancied that men eyed him sometimes with strange glances; he pictured to himself the degradation he should feel if Julian, or De Vayne, or Lillyston ever knew of what weakness he was capable. This one error rode like a night-mare on his breast.
But none of his gloomy presentiments on the score of detection were fulfilled. Except to Bruce, and that under pledge of secrecy, Brogten never betrayed what he knew, and the only immediate way in which he exercised the influence which his knowledge gave him, was by claiming with Kennedy a tone of familiarity, and asking him to card parties, suppers, and idle riots of all kinds, in which Bruce and Fitzurse were frequent visitors.
Chapter Twenty.
Bruce the Tempter.
“Oui autrefois; mais nous avons changé tout cela.”—Molière.
Bruce was disgusted with his second class in the Saint Werner’s May examination. He had quite flattered himself that he could not fail to be among the somewhat large number who annually obtained the pleasant and easy distinction of a first. He had not been nearly so idle as men supposed, although he had managed to waste a large amount of time; and if he could have foreseen that his name would only appear in the Second class, he would have endeavoured to be lower still, so as to make it appear that he had not condescended to give a thought to the subject. As it was, he hoped that if he got a first, men would remark, “Clever fellow that Bruce! Never opened a book, and yet got a first class;” whereas now he knew that the general judgment would be, “Bruce can’t be half such a swell as one fancied. He’s only taken a second.”
His vanity was wounded, and he determined to throw up reading altogether. “What good would it do him to grind? His father was rolling in money, and of course he should cut a very good figure in London when he had left Camford, which was a mere place for crammers and crammed, etcetera.”
So Bruce became more and more confirmed as a trifler and an idler, and he suffered that terrible ennui, which dogs the shadow of wasted time. Associating habitually with men who were his inferiors in ability, and whose tastes were lower than his own, the vacuity of mind and lassitude of body, which at times crept over him, were the natural assistants of every temptation to extravagance, frivolity, and sin.
An accidental conversation gave a mischievous turn to his idle propensities. Coming into hall one evening, he found himself seated next to Suton, and observing from the goose on the table, and the audit ale which was circling in the loving cup that it was a feast, he turned to his neighbour, and asked:—
“Is it a saint’s-day to-day?”
“Yes,” said Suton, “and the most memorable of them all—All Saints’ Day.”
“Oh, really,” said Bruce with an expression of half contemptuous interest, “then I suppose chapel’s at a quarter past six, and we shall have one of those long winded choral services.”
“Don’t you like them?”
“Like them? I should think not! Since one’s forced to do a certain amount of chapels, the shorter they are the better.”
“Of course, if you regard it in the light of ‘doing’ so many chapels, you won’t find it pleasant.”
“Do you mean to tell me now,” said Bruce, turning round and looking full at Suton, “that you regard chapels as anything but an unmitigated nuisance?”
“Most certainly I do mean to tell you so, if you ask me.”
“Ah! I see—a Sim!” said Bruce, with the slightest possible shrug of the shoulders.
“I don’t know what you mean by a ‘Sim,’ Mr Bruce,” said Suton, slightly colouring; “but whether a Sim or not, I at least expect to be treated as a gentleman.”
“Oh, I beg pardon,” said Bruce; “but I couldn’t help recognising the usual style of—”
“Of cant, I suppose you would say. Thank you. You must find it a cold faith to disbelieve in all sincerity.”
“Well, I don’t know. At any rate, I don’t believe that all your saints put together were really a bit better than their neighbours; so I can’t get up an annual enthusiasm in their honour. All men are really alike at the bottom.”
“Nero’s belief,” said Owen, who had overheard the conversation.
“It doesn’t matter whether it was Nero’s or Neri’s or Neander’s,” answered Bruce; “experience proves it to be true.”
Suton had finished dinner, and as he did not relish Bruce’s off-hand and patronising manner, he left the discussion in Owen’s hand. But between Owen and Bruce there was an implacable dissimilarity, and neither of them cared to pursue the subject.
Bruce, who went to wine with D’Acres, repeated there the subject of the conversation, and found that most of his audience affected to agree with him. In fact, he had himself set the fashion of a semi-professed infidelity; and amid his most intimate associates there were many to adopt with readiness a theory which saved them from the trouble and expense of a scrupulous conscience. With Bruce this infidelity was rather the decay of faith than the growth of positive disbelief. He had dipped with a kind of wilful curiosity into Strauss’s Life of Jesus, and other books of a similar description, together with such portions of current literature as were most clever in sneering at Christianity, or most undisguised in rejecting it.
Such reading—harmless, or even desirable, as it might have been to a strong mind sincere in its search for truth, and furnished with that calm capacity for impartial thought which is the best antidote against error—was fatal to one whose superficial knowledge and irregular life gave him already a powerful bias towards getting rid of everything which stood in the way of his tendencies and pursuits. Bruce was not in earnest in the desire for knowledge and wisdom: he grasped with avidity at a popular objection, or a sceptical argument, without desiring to understand or master the principles which rendered them nugatory; and he was ignorant and untaught enough to fancy that the very foundations of religion were shaken if he could attack the authenticity of some Jewish miracle, or impugn the genuineness of some Old Testament book.
When all belief was shaken down in his shallow and somewhat feeble understanding, the structure of his moral convictions was but a baseless fabric. Error in itself is not fatal to the inner sense of right; but Bruce’s error was not honest doubt, it was wilful self-deception, blindness of heart, first deliberately induced, then penally permitted.
In Bruce’s character there was not only the error in intellectu, but also the pertinacia in voluntate. All sense of honour, all delicacy of principle, all perception of sin and righteousness, all the landmarks of right and wrong, were obliterated in the muddy inundation of flippant irreverence and ignorant disbelief.
“For when we in our viciousness grow hard,
O, misery on’t! the wise gods seal our eyes:
In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us
Adore our errors, laugh at us while we strut
To our confusion.”
“I’m sometimes half inclined to agree with what you were saying about would-be saints,” said Brogten, as they left D’Acres’ wine-party.
“What fun it would be to try the experiment of a saint’s peccability on some living subject,” said Bruce.
“Rather! Suppose you try on that fellow Hazlet?”
“Oh, you mean the lank party who snuffles the responses with such oleaginous sanctimony. Well, I bet you 2 to 1 in ponies that I have him roaring drunk before a month’s over.”
“I won’t take the bet,” said Brogten, “because I believe you’ll succeed.”
“I’ll t–t–take it for the fun,” said Fitzurse.
“Done, then!” said Bruce.
So Bruce, pour passer le temps, deliberately undertook the corruption of a human soul. That soul might have been low enough already; for Hazlet was, as we have seen, mean-hearted and malicious, and in him, although unknown to himself, the garb of the Pharisee but concealed the breast of the hypocrite. But yet Hazlet was free, and if Bruce had not undertaken the devil’s work, might have been free to his life’s end, from all gross forms of transgression—from all the more flagrant and open delinquencies that lay waste the inner sanctities of a fallen human soul.
He was an easy subject for Bruce’s machinations, and those machinations were conceived and carried on with consummate and characteristic cleverness. Bruce did not spread his net in the sight of the bird, but set to work with wariness and caution. He determined to try the arts of fascination, not of force. The thought of the desperate wickedness involved in his attempt either never crossed his mind, or, if it did, was rejected as the feeble suggestion of an over-scrupulous conscience. Bruce pretended at least to fancy that the basis of all men’s characters was identical, and that, as they only differed in external manifestations, it made very little difference whether Hazlet became “fast” or continued “slow.” “Fast” and “slow” were the mild euphemisms with which Bruce expressed the slight distinction between a vicious and a virtuous life.
At hall—the grand place for rencontres—he managed to get a seat next to his victim, and began at once to treat him with that appearance of easy and well-bred familiarity which he had learnt in London circles. He threw a gentle expression of interest into his face and voice, he listened with deference to Hazlet’s remarks, he addressed several questions to him, thanked him politely for all his information, and then adroitly introduced some delicate compliments on the agreeableness of Hazlet’s society. His bait took completely; Hazlet, whom most men snubbed, was quite flustered with gratified vanity at the condescending notice of so unexceptionable a man of fashion as the handsome and noted Vyvyan Bruce. “At last,” thought Hazlet, “men are beginning to appreciate my intellectual powers.”
After continuing this process for some days, until Hazlet was unalterably convinced that he must be a vastly agreeable and attractive person, Bruce asked him to come to breakfast, and invited Brogten and Fitzurse to meet him. He calculated justly that Hazlet, accustomed only to the very quiet neighbourhood of a country village, would be duly impressed with the presence and acquaintance of a live lord; and he instructed both his guests in the manner in which they should treat the subject of their experiment. Hazlet thought he had never enjoyed a breakfast party so much. There was a delicious spice of worldliness in the topics of conversation which was quite refreshing to him, accustomed as he was to the somewhat droning moralisms of his “congenial friends.” Nothing which could deeply shock his prejudices was ever alluded to, but the discussions which were introduced came to him with all the charm of novelty and awakened curiosity.
Hazlet never could endure being a silent or inactive listener while a conversation was going forward. No matter how complete his ignorance of the subject, he generally managed to hazard some remarks. Bruce talked a good deal about actors and theatres, and Hazlet had never seen a theatre in his life. He did not like, however, to confess this fact, and, after a little hesitation, began to talk as if he were an habitué. The dramatic criticisms, which he occasionally saw in the papers, furnished him with just materials enough to amuse Bruce and the others at his assumption of “savoir vivre,” and to furnish a laugh at his expense the moment he was gone; but of this he was blissfully unconscious, and he rather plumed himself on his knowledge of the world. He had yet to learn the lesson that consistency alone can secure respect. He had indeed ventured at first to remark, “Don’t you think the stage a little—just a little—objectionable?”
“Objectionable,” said Bruce, with a bland smile; “oh, my dear fellow, what can you mean? Why, the stage is a mirror of the world, and to show virtue her own image is one of its main objects.”
“Yes,” said Hazlet, “I am inclined to think so. I should like to see a theatre, I confess.”
He had let slip unintentionally the implied admission that he had never been to a theatre; but when Fitzurse asked in astonishment, “What, have you never been to a theatre?” he merely replied, “Well, I can hardly say I have; at least not for a long time.”
“Oh, then we must all run down to London some night very soon,” said Bruce, “and we’ll go together to the Regent.”
“But I’ve no friend in London, except—except a clergyman or two, who perhaps might object, you know.”
“Oh, never mind the clergymen,” said Bruce; “you shall all come and stay with me at Vyvyan House.”
Here was a triumph!—to go to the celebrated Vyvyan House, and that in company with a lord, and to be a partaker of Bruce’s hospitality! Of course it would be very rude and wrong to refuse so eligible an invitation. How pleasant it would be to remark casually at hall-time, “I’m just going to run down for the Sunday to Vyvyan House with Bruce and Lord Fitzurse!”
“Let me see,” said Bruce, “to-day’s Monday; supposing you come to wine with me on Thursday, and then we’ll see if we can’t manage to get to London from Saturday to Monday.”
“Thursday—I’m afraid I’ve an engagement on Thursday to—”
“To what?” asked Bruce.
The more Hazlet coloured and hung back, the more Bruce, in his agreeable way, pressed to know, till at last Hazlet, unable to escape such genial importunity, reluctantly confessed that it was to a prayer-meeting in a friend’s rooms.
“Oh,” said Bruce, with the least little laugh, “tea and hassocks, eh?” He said no more, but the little, scornful laugh, and the few scornful words had done their work more effectually than a volume of ridicule. It need not be added that Hazlet came, not to the prayer-meeting, but to the wine-party. Cards were introduced in the evening, and one of the players was Kennedy. Kennedy played often now, but he certainly did feel a qualm of intense and irrepressible disgust as, with great surprise, he found himself vis à vis with the spectacled visage of Jedediah Hazlet.
“But how shall I get my exeat to go to London?” said Hazlet.
“Oh, say a particular friend has invited you to spend the Sunday with him. Say you want to hear Starfish preach.”
Mr Norton, Hazlet’s tutor, who did not expect him to fall into mischief, and thought that very likely Mr Starfish’s eloquence might be the operating attraction, granted him the exeat without any difficulty, and on Saturday Hazlet was reclining in a first-class carriage, with Bruce, Brogten, and Fitzurse, on his way to Vyvyan House. A change was observable in his dress. Bruce had hinted to him that his usual garb might look a little formal and odd at a theatre, and had persuaded him to come to his own egregious Camford tailor, Mr Fitfop, who, as a particular favour to his customer Bruce, produced with suspicious celerity the cut-away coat and mauve-coloured pegtops, in which unwonted splendour Hazlet was now arrayed. It was a pity that his ears were so obturated with vanity as not to have heard the shrieks of half-stifled laughter created by his first public appearance in this fashionable guise, which only required to be completed by the death’s-head pin with which Bruce presented him, (and which therefore he was obliged to wear), to make it perfect.
The sumptuous and voluptuous richness of all the appointments in Vyvyan House introduced Hazlet to a new world. Sir Rollo and Lady Bruce were not in town, so that the four young men had the house entirely to themselves, and Bruce ordered about the servants with royal energy. Soon after their arrival they sat down to a choice dinner, and Bruce took care, although the champagne had been abundant at dinner, to pass pretty freely, at dessert, the best claret and amontillado of his father’s cellars. Hazlet was not slow to follow the example which the others set him; he helped himself plentifully to everything, and after dinner, lolling in an easy attitude, copied from Fitzurse, he even ventured to exhibit his very recently acquired accomplishment of smoking a weed. Very soon he imagined that he had quite made an impression on the most fashionable members of the Saint Werner’s world.
They went to the Regent, and between the acts, Bruce, who knew everything, introduced them behind the scenes. Hazlet, rather amazed at his own boldness, but in reality entirely ignorant which way to turn, necessarily followed his guides, and, exultant with the influence of mellow wine, imitated the others, and tried to look and feel at home. Within a month of Bruce’s manipulation this excellent and gifted young man, this truly gracious light in the youthful band of confessors, was seated, talking to a fascinating young danseuse who wore a gossamer dress, behind the scenes of a petty London theatre. Bruce looked on with a smile, and hummed to himself—
“Jene Tänzerinn
Fliegt, mit leichtem Sinn
Und noch leichtern Kleide
Durch den Saal der Freude
Wie ein Zephyr bin, etcetera.”
The head of Jedediah Hazlet was somewhat confused, when, after the play and an oyster supper in the cider cellars, it sank deep into the reposeful down of a spare chamber in the gay Sir Rollo Bruce’s London house.
The next morning was Sunday. They none of them got up till twelve to a languid breakfast, and then read novels. Hazlet, who was rather shocked at this, did indeed faintly suggest going to church. “Oh yes,” said Bruce, looking up with a smile from his Balzac, “we’ll do that, or some other equally harmless amusement.” The dinner hour, however, coincided with the time of evening service, so that it was impossible to go then, and finally they spent the evening in what they all agreed to call “a perfectly quiet game at cards.”
Chapter Twenty One.
One of the Simple Ones.
“I tempted his blood and his flesh,
Hid in roses my mesh,
Choicest cates, and the flagon’s best spilth.”
Robert Browning.
“Faugh,” said Bruce, on his return to Camford, “that fellow Hazlet isn’t worth making an experiment upon—in corpore vili truly; but the creature is so wicked at heart, that even his cherished traditions crumble at a touch. He’s no game; he doesn’t even run cunning.”
“Then I hope you’ll p–p–pay me my p–p–p–ponies,” said Fitzurse.
“By no means; only I shall cut things short; he isn’t worth playing; I shall haul him in at once.”
Accordingly, Hazlet was invited once more to one of Bruce’s parties—this time to a supper. It was one of the regular, reckless, uproarious affairs—D’Acres, Boodle, Tulk, Brogten, Fitzurse, were all there, and the élite of the fast fellow-commoners, and sporting men besides. Bruce had privately entreated them all not to snub Hazlet, as he wanted to have some fun. The supper was soon despatched, and the wine circled plentifully. It was followed by a game of cards, during which the punch-bowl stood in the centre of the table, rich, smoking, and crowned with a concoction of unprecedented strength. Hazlet was quite in his glory. When they had plied him sufficiently—which Bruce took care to do by repeatedly replenishing his cup on the sly, so that he might fancy himself to have taken much less than was really the case—they all drank his health with the usual honours:
“For he’s a jolly good fe–el–low.
For he’s a jolly good fe–el–low,
For he’s a jolly good fe–el–l–ow—
Which nobody can deny,
Which nobody can deny;
For he’s a jolly good fe–el–low,” etcetera.
And so on, ad infinitum, followed by “Hip! hip! hip! hurrah! hurrah!! hurrah!!!” and then the general rattling of plates on the table, and breaking of wine-glass stems with knives of “boys who crashed the glass and beat the floor.”
Hazlet was quite in the seventh heaven of exaltation, and made a feeble attempt at replying to the honour in a speech; but he was in so very oblivious and generally foolish a condition, that, being chiefly accustomed to Philadelphus oratory, he began to address them as “My Christian Friends;” and this produced such shouts of boisterous laughter, that he sat down with his purpose unaccomplished.
Before the evening was over, Bruce, in the opinion of all present, including Fitzurse himself, had fairly won his bet.
“I shan’t mind p–p–paying a bit,” said the excellent young nobleman; “it’s been such r–r–rare f–f–fun.”
Rare fun indeed! The miserable Hazlet, swilled with unwonted draughts, lay brutally comatose in a chair. His head rolled from side to side, his body and arms hung helpless and disjointed, his eyelids dropped—he was completely unconscious, and more than fulfilled the conditions of being “roaring drunk!”
Now for some jolly amusement—the opportunity’s too good to be lost! What exhilaration there is on seeing a human soul imbruted and grovelling hopelessly in the dirt or rather to have a body before you, without a soul for the time being—a coarse animal mass, swinish as those whom the wand of Circe smote, but with the human intelligence quenched besides, and the charactery of reason wiped away. Here, some ochre and lamp-black, quick! There—plaster it well about the whiskers and eyelids, and put a few patches on the hair! Magnificent!—he looks like a Choctaw in his war-paint, after drinking fire-water.
Screams of irrepressible laughter—almost as ghastly, (if the cause of them be considered), as those that might have sounded round a witch’s cauldron over diabolical orgies—accompanied the whole proceeding. So loud were they that all the men on the stair-case heard them, and fully expected the immediate apparition of some bulldog, dean, or proctor. It was nobody’s affair, however, but Bruce’s, and he must do as he liked. Suton, who “kept” near Bruce, was one of those whom the uproar puzzled and disturbed, as he sat down with sober pleasure to his evening’s work. His window was opposite Bruce’s, and across the narrow road he heard distinctly most of what was said. The perpetual and noisy repetition of Hazlet’s name perplexed him extremely, and at last he could have no doubt that they were making Hazlet drunk, and then painting him; nor was it less clear that many of them were themselves half intoxicated.
It had of course been impossible for Suton and others of similar character to avoid noticing the eccentricities of dress, and manner which had been the outward indications of Hazlet’s recent course. When a man who has been accustomed to dress in black, and wear tail coats in the morning, suddenly comes out in gorgeous apparel, and begins to talk about cards, betting and theatres, his associates must be very blind, if they do not observe that his theories are undergoing a tolerably complete revolution. Suton saw with regret mingled with pity, Hazlet’s contemptible weakness, and he had once or twice endeavoured to give him a hint of the ridicule which his metamorphosis occasioned; but Hazlet had met his remarks with such silly arrogance, nay, with such a patronising assumption of superiority, that he determined to leave him to his own experiences. This did not prevent Suton from feeling a strong and righteous indignation against the iniquity of those who were inveigling another to his ruin, and he felt convinced that, as at this moment Hazlet was being unfairly treated, it was his duty in some way to interfere.
He got up quietly, and walked over to Bruce’s rooms. His knock produced instant silence, followed by a general scuffle as the men endeavoured to conceal the worst signs of their recent outrage. When Suton opened the door, he was greeted with a groan of derision.
“Confound you,” said Bruce, “I thought it must be the senior proctor at the very least.”
Without noticing his remark, Suton quietly said, “I see, Bruce, that you have been treating Hazlet in a very unwarrantable way; he is clearly not in a fit condition to be trifled with any more; you must help me to take him home.”
“Ha! ha! rather a good joke. I shall merely shove him into the street, if I do anything. What business has he to make a beast of himself in my rooms?”
“What business have you to do the devil’s work, and tempt others to sin? You will have a terrible reckoning for it, even if no dangerous consequences ensue,” said Suton sternly.
“C–c–c–cant!” said Fitzurse.
“Yes—what you call cant, Fitzurse. You shall hear some more, and tremble, sir, while you hear it,” replied Suton, turning towards him, and raising his hand with a powerful but natural gesture; “it is this ‘Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that putteth thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also—thou art filled with shame for glory.’”
“Bruce,” said D’Acres, the least flushed of the party, “I really think we ought to take the fellow home. Just look at him.”
Bruce looked, and was really alarmed at the grotesque yet ghastly expression of that striped and sodden face, with the straight black hair, and the head lolling and rolling on the shoulder. Without a word, he took Hazlet by one arm, while Suton held the other, and D’Acres carried the legs, and as quickly as they could they hurried along with their lifeless burden to the gates of Saint Werner’s. It was long past the usual hour for locking up, and the porter took down the names of all four as they entered. A large bribe which D’Acres offered was firmly, yet respectfully refused, and they knew that next day they would be called to account.
Having put Hazlet to bed they separated; Suton bade the others a stiff “Good-night;” and D’Acres as he left Bruce, said, “Bruce, we have been doing a very blackguard thing.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Bruce.
“Good,” said D’Acres, “and allow me to add that I have entered your rooms for the last time.”
Next morning Suton spoke privately to the porter, and told him that it would be best for many reasons not to report what had taken place the night before, beyond the bare fact of their having come into college late at night. The man knew Suton thoroughly and respected him; he knew him to be a man of genuine piety, and the most regular habits, and consented, though not without difficulty, to omit all mention of Hazlet’s state. All four had of course to pay the usual gate fine, and D’Acres and Bruce were besides “admonished” by the senior Dean, but Suton and Hazlet were not even sent for. The Dean knew Suton well, and felt that his character was a sufficient guarantee that he had not been in any mischief; Hazlet had been irregular lately, but the Dean considered him a very steady man, and overlooked for the present this breach of rules.
Of course all Saint Werner’s laughed over the story of Hazlet’s escapade. He did not know how to avoid the storm of ridicule which his folly had stirred up. He had already begun to drop his “congenial friends” for the more brilliant society to which Bruce had introduced him, and so far from admitting that he felt any compunction, he professed to regard the whole matter merely as “an amusing lark.” Bruce and the others hardly condescended to apologise, and at first Hazlet, who found it impossible at once to remove all traces of the paint, and who for a day or two felt thoroughly unwell, made a half-resolve to resent their coolness. But now, deserted by his former associates, and laughed at by the majority of men, he found the society of his tempters indispensable for his comfort, and even cringed to them for the notice which at first they felt inclined to withdraw.
“Wasn’t that trick on Hazlet a disgraceful affair, Kennedy?” said Julian, a few days after. “Some one told me you were at the supper party; surely it can’t be true.”
“I was for about an hour,” said Kennedy, blushing, “but I had left before this took place.”
“May I say it, Kennedy?—a friend’s, a brother’s privilege, you know—but it surprises me that you care to tolerate such company as that.”
“Believe me, Julian, I don’t enjoy it.”
“Then why do you frequent it?”
Kennedy sighed deeply and was silent for a time; then he said—
“Not e’en the dearest heart, and next our own,
Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh.”
“True,” said Julian; for he had long observed that some heavy weight lay on Kennedy’s mind, and with deep sorrow noticed that their intercourse was less cordial, less frequent, less intimate than before. Not that he loved Kennedy, or that Kennedy loved him less than of old, for, on the contrary, Kennedy yearned more than ever for the full cherished unreserve of their old friendship; but, alas there was not, there could not be complete confidence between them, and where there is not confidence, the pleasure of friendship grows dim and pale. And, besides this, new tastes were growing up in Edward Kennedy, and, by slow and fatal degrees, were developing into passions.
Hazlet had come to Camford not so much innocent as ignorant. He had never learnt to restrain and control the strong tendencies which, in the quiet shades of Ildown, had been sheltered from temptation. A few months before he would have heard with unmitigated horror the delinquencies which he now committed without a scruple, and defended without a blush. None are so precipitate in the career of sin and folly as backsliders; none so unchecked in the downward course as those to whom the mystery of iniquity is suddenly displayed when they have had none of the gradual training whereby men are armed to resist its seductions.
Who does not know from personal observation that the cycle of sins is bound together by a thousand invisible filaments, and that myriads of unknown connections unite them to one another? Hazlet, when he had once “forsaken the guide of his youth, and forgotten the covenant of his God,” did not stop short at one or two temptations, and yield only to some favourite vice. With a rapidity as amazing as it was disastrous, he developed in the course of two or three months into one of the most shameless and dissipated of the worst Saint Werner’s set. There was something characteristic in the way in which he frothed out his own shame, boasting of his infamous liberty with an arrogance which resembled his former conceit in spiritual superiority.
Julian, who now saw less of him than ever, had no opportunity of speaking to him as to his course of life; but at last an incident happened which persuaded him that further silence would be a culpable neglect of his duty to his neighbour.
Montagu, of Roslyn School, came up to Camford to spend a Sunday with Owen, and Owen asked Julian and Lillyston to meet him. They liked each other very much, and Julian rapidly began to regard Montagu as a real friend. In order to see as much of each other as possible, they all agreed to take a four-oar on the Saturday morning, and row to Elnham; at Elnham they dined, and spent two pleasant hours in visiting the beautiful cathedral, so that they did not get back to Camford till eleven at night.
Their way from the boats to Saint Werner’s lay through a bad part of the town, and they walked quickly, Owen and Montagu being a little way in front.
A few gas-lights were burning at long intervals in the narrow lane through which they had to pass, and as they walked under one of them they observed a group of four standing half in shadow. One of them Julian instantly recognised as the very vilest of the Saint Werner “fast men;” another was Hazlet; there could be no doubt as to the company in which he was.
For one second, Julian turned back to look in sheer astonishment,—he could hardly believe the testimony of his own eyes. The figure which he took to be Hazlet hastily retreated, and Julian half-persuaded himself that he was mistaken.
“Did you see who that was?” asked Lillyston sadly.
“Yes,” said Julian; “one of the simple ones; ‘but he knoweth not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell.’”
“You must speak to him, Julian.”
“I will.”
As Hazlet was out when he called, Julian wrote on his card, “Dear H, will you come to tea at 8? Yours ever, J Home.”
At 8 o’clock accordingly Hazlet was seated, as he had not been for a very long time, by Julian’s fireside. Julian’s conversation interested him, and he could not help feeling a little humbled at the unworthiness which prevented him from more frequently enjoying it. It was not till after tea, when they had pulled their chairs to the fire, that Julian said, “Hazlet, I was sorry to see you in bad company last night.”
“Me!” said Hazlet, feigning surprise.
“You!”
Hazlet saw that all attempt at concealment was useless. “For God’s sake, don’t tell my mother, or any of the Ildown people,” he said, turning pale.
“Is it likely I should? Yet my doing so would be the very least harm that could happen to you, Hazlet, if you adopt these courses. I had rather see you afraid of the sin than of the detection.”
Hazlet stammered out in self-defence one of those commonplaces which he had heard but too often in the society of those who “put evil for good and good for evil.”
Julian very quietly tore the miserable sophism to shreds, and said, “There is but one way to describe these vices, Hazlet,—they are deadly, bitter, ruinous.”
“Oh, they are very common. Lots of men—”
“Tush!” said Julian; “their commonness, if indeed it be so, does not diminish their deadliness. Not to put the question on the religious ground at all, I fully agree with Carlyle that, on the mere consideration of expedience and physical fact, nothing can be more fatal, more calamitous than ‘to burn away in mad waste the divine aromas and celestial elements from our existence; to change our holy of holies into a place of riot; to make the soul itself hard, impious, barren.’”
Hazlet, ashamed and bewildered, confused his present position with old reminiscences, and muttered some balderdash about Carlyle “not being sound.”
“Carlyle not sound?” said Julian; “good heavens! You can still retain the wretched babblements of your sectarianism while your courses are what they are!”
He was inclined to drop the conversation in sheer disgust, but Hazlet’s pride was now aroused, and he began to bluster about the impertinence of interference on Julian’s part, and his right to do what he chose.
“Certainly,” said Julian, sternly, “the choice lies with yourself. Run, if you will, as a bird to the snare of the fowler, till a dart strike you through. But if you are dead and indifferent to your own miserable soul, think that in this sin you cannot sin alone; think that you are dragging down to the nethermost abyss others besides yourself. Remember the wretched victims of your infamous passions, and tremble while you desecrate and deface for ever God’s image stamped on a fair human soul. Think of those whom your vileness dooms to a life of loathliness, a death of shame and anguish, perhaps an eternity of horrible despair. Learn something of the days they are forced to spend, that they may pander to the worst instincts of your degraded nature; days of squalor and drunkenness, disease and dirt; gin at morning, noon, and night; eating infection, horrible madness, and sudden death at the end. Can you ever hope for salvation and the light of God’s presence, while the cry of the souls of which you have been the murderer—yes, do not disguise it, the murderer, the cruel, willing, pitiless murderer—is ringing upwards from the depths of hell?”
“What do you mean by the murderer?” said Hazlet, with an attempt at misconception.
“I mean this, Hazlet; setting aside all considerations which affect your mere personal ruin—not mentioning the atrophy of spiritual life and the clinging sense of degradation which is involved in such a course as yours—I want you to see if you will be honest, that the fault is yet more deadly, because you involve other souls and other lives in your own destruction. Is it not a reminiscence sufficient to kill any man’s hope, that but for his own brutality some who are now perhaps raving in the asylum might have been clasping their own children to their happy breasts, and wearing in unpolluted innocence the rose of matronly honour? Oh, Hazlet, I have heard you talk about missionary societies, and seen your name in subscription lists, but believe me you could not, by myriads of such conventional charities, cancel the direct and awful quota which you are now contributing to the aggregate of the world’s misery and shame.”
It took a great deal to abash a mind like Hazlet’s. He said that he was going to be a clergyman, and that it was necessary for him to see something of life, or he would never acquire the requisite experience.
“Loathly experience!” said Julian with crushing scorn. “And do you ever hope, Hazlet, by centuries of preaching such as yours, to repair one millionth part of the damage done by your bad passions to a single fellow-creature? Such a hateful excuse is verily to carry the Urim with its oracular gems into the very sty of sensuality, and to debase your religion into ‘a procuress to the lords of hell.’ I have done; but let me say, Hazlet, that your self-justification is, if possible, more repulsive than your sin.”
He pushed back his chair from the fire, and turned away, as Hazlet, with some incoherent sentences about “no business of his,” left the room, and slammed the door behind him.
What are words but weak motions of vibrating air? Julian’s words passed by the warped nature of Hazlet like the idle wind, and left no more trace upon him than the snow-flake when it has melted into the purpling sea. As the weeks went on, his ill-regulated passions grew more and more free from the control of reason or manliness, and he sank downwards, downwards, downwards, into the most shameful abysses of an idle, and evil, and dissipated life.
And the germ of that ruin was planted by the hand of the clever, and gay, and handsome Vyvyan Bruce.