Chapter Twenty Two.
De Vayne’s Temptation.
“And felt how awful goodness is, and virtue
In her own shape how lovely.”
Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Shall I confess it? Pitiable and melancholy as was Hazlet’s course, I liked him so little as to feel for him far less than I otherwise should have done. His worst error never caused me half the pain of Kennedy’s most venial fault. Must I then tell a sad tale of Kennedy too—my brave, bright, beautiful, light-hearted Kennedy, whom I always loved so well? May I not throw over the story of his college days the rosy colourings of romance and fancy, the warm sunshine of prosperity and hope? I wish I might. But I am writing of Camford—not of a divine Utopia or a sunken Atalantis.
Bruce, so far from being troubled by his own evil deeds, was proud of a success which supported a pet theory of his infidel opinions. He made no sort of secret of it, and laughed openly at the fool whom he had selected for his victim.
“But after all,” said Brogten, who had plenty of common sense, “your triumph was very slight.”
“How do you mean? I chose the most obtrusively religious man in Saint Werner’s, and, in the course of a very short time, I had him, of his own will, roaring drunk.”
“And what’s the inference?”
“That what men call religion is half cant, half the accident of circumstances.”
“Pardon me, you’re out in your conclusion; it only shows that Hazlet was a hypocrite, or at the best a weak, vain, ignorant fellow. The very obtrusiveness and uncharitableness of his religion proved its unreality. Now I could name dozens of men who would see you dead on the floor rather than do as you have taught Hazlet to do—men, in fact, with whom you simply daren’t try the experiment.”
“Daren’t! why not?”
“Why, simply because they breathe such a higher and better atmosphere than either you or I, that you would be abashed by their mere presence.”
“Pooh! I don’t believe it,” said Bruce, with an uneasy laugh; “mention any such man.”
“Well, Suton for instance, or Lord De Vayne.”
“Suton is an unpleasant fellow, and I shouldn’t choose to try him, because he’s a bore. But I bet you what you like that I make De Vayne drunk before a month’s over.”
“Done! I bet you twenty pounds you don’t.”
Disgusting that the young, and pure-hearted, and amiable De Vayne should be made the butt of the machinations of such men as Bruce and Brogten! But so it was. So it was; I could not invent facts like these. They never could float across my imagination, or if they did, I should reject them as the monstrous chimeras of a heated brain. I can conceive a man’s private wickedness,—the wickedness which he confines within his own heart, and only brings to bear upon others so far as is demanded by his own fancied interests; I can imagine, too, an open and willing partnership in villainy, where hand joins in hand, and face answereth to face. But that any knowing the plague of their own hearts, should deliberately endeavour to lead others into sin, coolly and deliberately, without even the blinding mist of passion to hide the path which they are treading,—this, if I had not known that it was so, I could not have conceived. The murderer who, atom by atom, continues the slow poisoning of a perishing body for many months, and dies amid the yell of a people’s execration,—in sober earnest, before God, I believe he is less guilty than he who, drop by drop, pours into the soul of another the curdling venom of moral pollution, than he who feeds into full-sized fury the dormant monsters of another’s evil heart. Surely the devil must welcome a human tempter with open arms.
Of course Bruce had to proceed with Lord De Vayne in a manner totally different from that which he had applied to Jedediah Hazlet. He felt himself that the task was far more difficult and delicate, especially as it was by no means easy to get access to De Vayne’s company at all. Julian, Lillyston, Kennedy, and a few others, formed the circle of his only friends, and although he was constantly with them, he was rarely to be found in other society. But this was a difficulty which a man with so large an acquaintance as Bruce could easily surmount, and for the rest he trusted to the conviction which he had adopted, that there was no such thing as sincere godliness, and that men only differed in proportion to the weakness or intensity of the temptations which happened to assail them.
So Bruce managed, without any apparent manoeuvring, to see more of De Vayne at various men’s rooms, and he generally made a point of sitting next to him when he could. He had naturally a most insinuating address and a suppleness of manner which enabled him to adapt himself with facility to the tastes and temperaments of the men among whom he was thrown. There were few who could make themselves more pleasant and plausible when it suited them than Vyvyan Bruce.
De Vayne soon got over the shrinking with which he had at first regarded him, and no longer shunned the acquaintance of which he seemed desirous. It was not until this stage that Bruce made any serious attempt to take some steps towards winning his wager. He asked De Vayne to a dessert, and took care that the wines should be of an insidious strength. But the young nobleman’s abstemiousness wholly defeated and baffled him, as he rarely took more than a single glass.
“You pass the wine, De Vayne; don’t do that.”
“Thank you, I’ve had enough.”
“Come, come; allow me,” said Bruce, filling his glass for him.
De Vayne drank it out of politeness, and Bruce repeated the same process soon after.
“Come, De Vayne, no heel-taps,” he said playfully, as he filled his glass for him.
“Thank you, I’d really rather not have any more.”
“Why, you must have been lending your ears to—
“‘Those budge doctors of the Stoic fur,
Praising the lean and sallow abstinence;’
“You take nothing. I shall abuse my wine-merchant.”
“You certainly seem as anxious as Comus that I should drink, Bruce,” said De Vayne, smiling; “but really I mean that I wish for no more.”
Bruce saw that he had overstepped the bounds of politeness, and also made a mistake by going a little too far. He pressed De Vayne no longer, and the conversation passed to other subjects.
“Anything in the papers to-day?” asked Brogten.
“Yes, another case of wife-beating and wife-murder. What a dreadful increase of those crimes there has been lately,” said De Vayne.
“Another proof,” said Bruce, “of the gross absurdity of the marriage-theory.”
De Vayne opened his eyes wide in astonishment. Knowing very little of Bruce, he was not aware that this was a very favourite style of remark with him,—indeed, a not uncommon style with other clever young undergraduates. He delighted to startle men by something new, and dazzle them with a semblance of insight and reasoning. “The gross absurdity of the marriage-theory,” thought De Vayne to himself; “I wonder what on earth he can mean?” Fancying he must have misheard, he said nothing; but Bruce, disappointed that his remark had fallen flat, (for the others were too much used to the kind of thing to take any notice of it), continued—
“How curious it is that the whole of the arguments should be against marriage, and yet that it should continue to be an institution. You never find a person to defend it.”
“‘At quis vituperavit?’ as the man remarked, on hearing of a defence of Hercules,” said De Vayne. “I should have thought that marriage, like the Bible, ‘needed no apology.’”
“My dear fellow, it surely is an absurdity on the face of it? See how badly it succeeds.”
Without choosing to enter on that question, De Vayne quietly remarked, “You ask why marriage exists. Don’t you believe that it was originally appointed by divine providence, and afterwards sanctioned by divine lips?”
“Oh, if you come to that kind of ground, you know, and abandon the aspect of the question from the side of pure reason, you’ve so many preliminaries to prove; e g, the genuineness and authenticity of the Pentateuch and the Gospels; the credibility of the narrators; the possibility of their being deceived; the—”
“In fact,” said De Vayne, “the evidences of Christianity. Well, I trust that I have studied them, and that they satisfy alike my reason and my conscience.”
“Ah, yes! Well, it’s no good entering on those questions, you know. I shouldn’t like to shock your convictions, as I should have to do if I discussed with you. It’s just as well after all—even in the nineteenth century—not to expose the exotic flower of men’s belief to the rude winds of fair criticism. Picciola! it might be blighted, poor thing, which would be a pity. Perhaps one does more harm than good by exposing antiquated errors.” And with a complacent shrug of the shoulders, and a slight smile of self-admiration, Bruce leant back in his armchair.
This was Bruce’s usual way, and he found it the most successful. There were a great many minds on whom it created the impression of immense cleverness. “That kind of thing, you know, it’s all exploded now,” he would say among the circle of his admirers, and he would give a little wave of the hand, which was vastly effective—as if he “could an if he would” puff away the whole system of Christianity with quite a little breath of objection, but refrained from such tyrannous use of a giant’s strength. “It’s all very well, you know, for parsons—though, by the way, not half of the cleverest believe what they preach—but really for men of the world, and thinkers, and acute reasoners”—(oh, how agreeable it was to the Tulks and Boodles to be included in such a category)—“why, after such books as Frederic of Suabia ‘De Tribus Impostoribus,’ and Strauss’ ‘Leben Jesu,’ and De Wette, and Feuerbach, and Van Bohlen, and Nork, one can’t be expected, you know, to believe such a mass of traditionary rubbish.” (Bruce always professed acquaintance with German writers, and generally quoted the titles of their books in the original; it sounded so much better; not that he had read one of them, of course.) And they did think him so clever when he talked in this way. Only think how wise he must be to know such profound truths!
But so far from Bruce’s hardly-concealed contempt for the things which Christians hold sacred producing any effect on Lord De Vayne, he regarded it with a silent pity. “I hate,” thought he, “when Vice can bolt her arguments, and Virtue has no tongue to check her pride.” The annoying impertinence, so frequent in argument, which leads a man to speak as though, from the vantage-ground of great intellectual superiority to his opponent, the graceful affectation of dropping an argument out of respect for prejudices which the arguer despises, or an incapacity which the arguer implies—this merely personal consideration did not ruffle for a moment the gentle spirit of De Vayne. But that a young man—conceited, shallow, and ignorant—should profess to settle with a word the controversies which had agitated the profoundest reasons, and to settle with a sneer, the mysteries before which the mightiest thinkers had veiled their eyes in reverence and awe; that he should profess to set aside Christianity as a childish fable not worthy a wise man’s acceptance, and triumph over it as a defeated and deserted cause; this indeed filled De Vayne’s mind with sorrow and disgust. So far from being impressed or dazzled by Bruce’s would-be cleverness, he sincerely grieved over his impudence and folly.
“Thank you, Bruce,” he said, after a slight pause, and with some dignity, “thank you for your kind consideration of my mental inferiority, and for the pitying regard which you throw, from beside your nectar, on my delicate and trembling superstitions. But don’t think, Bruce, that I admit your—may I call it?—impertinent assumption that all thinking men have thrown Christianity aside as an exploded error. Some shadow of proof, some fragment of reason, would be more satisfactory treatment of a truth which has regenerated the world, than foolish assertion or insolent contempt. Good-night.”
There was something in the manner of De Vayne’s reproof which effectually quelled Bruce, while it galled him; yet, at the same time, it was delivered with such quiet good taste, that to resent it was impossible. He saw, too, not without vexation, that it had told powerfully on the little knot of auditors. The wine-party soon broke up, for Bruce could neither give new life to the conversation, nor recover his chagrin.
“So-ho!” said Brogten, when they were left alone, “I shall win my bet.”
“Hanged if you shall,” said Bruce, with an oath of vexation. In fact, not only was he determined not to be foiled in proving his wisdom and power of reading men’s characters, but he was wholly unable to afford any payment of the bet. Bruce could get unlimited credit for goods, on the reputation of his father’s wealth, but money-dealers were very sharp-eyed people, and he found it much less easy to get his promissory-notes cashed. It was a matter of etiquette to pay at once “debts of honour,” and his impetuous disposition led him to take bets so freely that his ready money was generally drained away very soon after his return. Not long before he had written to his father for a fresh supply, but, to his great surprise, the letter had only produced an angry and even indignant reproof. “Vyvyan,” (his father had written—not even ‘dear Vyvyan’), “I allow you 500 pounds a year, a sum totally out of proportion with your wants, and yet you are so shamefully extravagant as to write without a blush to ask me for more. Don’t presume to do it again on pain of my heavy displeasure.” This letter had so amazed him that he did not even answer it, nor, in spite of his mother’s earnest, urgent, and almost heart-rending entreaties, post by post, would he even condescend to write home for many weeks. It was the natural result of the way in which at home they had pampered his vanity, and never checked his faults.
But, for these reasons, it was wholly out of Bruce’s power to pay Brogten the bet, if he failed in trying to shake the temperance of De Vayne. He saw at once that he had mistaken his subject; he took De Vayne for a man whose goodness and humility would make him pliant to all designs.
A dark thought entered Bruce’s mind.
He went alone into a druggist’s shop, and said, with a languid air, “I have been suffering very much from sleeplessness lately, Mr Brent; I want you to give me a little laudanum.”
“Very well, sir. You must be careful how you use it.”
“Oh, of course. How many drops would make one drowsy, now?”
“Four or five, sir, I should think.”
“Well, you must give me one of those little bottles full. I want to have some by me, to save trouble.”
The chemist filled the bottle, and then said, “I’m afraid I’m out of my poison labels, sir. I’ll just write a little ticket and tie it on.”
“All right;” and putting it in his pocket, Bruce strolled away.
But how to see De Vayne again? He thought over their common acquaintances, and at last fixed on Kennedy as the likeliest man on whom he could depend to secure another meeting. Yet he hardly liked to suggest that Kennedy should give a wine-party, and ask De Vayne and himself; so that he was rather puzzled.
“I say, Brogten, how is it that we are always asking Kennedy to our rooms, and he so very seldom asks us?”
“I suppose because he isn’t over-partial to our company.”
“Why not?” said Bruce, who considered himself very fascinating, and quite a person whose society was to be courted; “and if so, why does he come to our rooms?”
Brogten might, perhaps, have thrown light on the subject had he chosen.
“Well,” he said, “I’ll give him a hint.”
“Do; and get him to ask De Vayne.”
Brogten did so; Kennedy assented to asking Bruce, though he listened to Brogten’s hints, (which he instantly understood), with a sullenness which but a short time before had no existence, not even a prototype, in his bright and genial character. But when it came to asking De Vayne, he simply replied to Brogten’s suggestion flatly:
“I will not.”
“Won’t you? but why?”
“Why? because I suspect you and that fellow Bruce of wishing to treat him as you treated Hazlet.”
“I’ve no designs against him whatever.”
“Well, I won’t ask him,—that’s flat.”
“Whew–ew–ew–ew–ew!” Brogten began to whistle, and Kennedy relieved his feelings by digging the poker into the fire. And then there was a pause.
“I want you to ask De Vayne.”
“And I tell you I won’t ask him.”
“Whew–w–w–w!” Another long whistle, during which Kennedy mashed and battered the black lumps that smouldered in the grate.
“Whew–ew–ew–ew! Oh, very well.” Brogten left the room. At hall that day, Brogten took care to sit near Kennedy again, and the old scene was nearly re-enacted. He turned the conversation to the Christmas examination. “I suppose you’ll be very high again, Kennedy.”
“No,” said he, curtly. “I’ve not read, and you know that as well as I do.”
“Oh, but you hadn’t read much last time, and you may do some particular paper very well, you know. I wish there was an Aeschylus paper; you might be first, you know, again.”
Kennedy flung down his knife and fork with a curse, and left the hall. Men began to see clearly that there must have been some mystery attached to the Aeschylus paper, known to Brogten and Kennedy, and very discomfiting to the latter. But as Kennedy was concerned, they did not suspect the truth.
Brogten went straight from hall to Kennedy’s rooms. He found the door sported, but knew as well as possible that Kennedy was in. He hammered and thumped at the door a long time with sundry imprecations, but Kennedy, moodily resolute, heard all the noise inside, and would not stir. Then Brogten took out a card and wrote on the back, “I think you’ll ask De Vayne,” and dropped it into the letter-box.
That evening he found in his own letter-box a slip of paper. “De Vayne is coming to wine with me to-morrow. Come, and the foul fiend take you. I have filled my decanters half-full of water, and won’t bring out more than one bottle. E K.”
Brogten read the note and chuckled,—partly with the thought of Kennedy, partly of Bruce, partly of De Vayne. Yet the chuckle ended in a very heavy sigh.
Chapter Twenty Three.
Kennedy’s Wine-Party, and what came of it.
“Et je n’ai moi
Par la sang Dieu!
Ni foi, ni loi,
Ni jeu, ni lieu,
Ni roi, ni Dieu.”
Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris.
“Nay, that’s certain but yet the pity of it,
Iago!—O Iago, the pity of it, Iago!”
Othello, Act 4, Scene 1.
“Are you going to Kennedy’s, Julian?” asked De Vayne.
“No.”
“I wish he’d asked you.”
Julian a little wondered why he had not, but remembered, with a sigh, that there was something, he knew not what, between him and Kennedy. Yet Kennedy was engaged to Violet! The thought carried him back to the beautiful memories of Grindelwald and Mürrem,—perhaps of Eva Kennedy: I will not say.
As De Vayne glanced round at the men assembled at Kennedy’s rooms, he felt a little vexation, and half wished he had not come. Why on earth did Kennedy see so much of these Bruces and Brogtens when he was so thoroughly unlike them? But De Vayne consoled himself with the reflection that the evening could not fail to be pleasant, as Kennedy was there; for he liked Kennedy both for Julian’s sake and for his own. Happily for him he did not know as yet that Kennedy was affianced to Violet Home.
Kennedy sat at the end of the table with a gloomy cloud on his brow. “Here, De Vayne,” he said; “I’m so really glad to see you at last. Sit by me—here’s a chair.”
De Vayne took the proffered seat, and Bruce immediately seated himself at his left hand. At first, as the wine was passed round, there seemed likely to be but little conversation, but suddenly some one started the subject of a “cause célèbre” which was then filling the papers, and Kennedy began at once to discuss it with some interest with De Vayne, who sat nearly facing him, almost with his back turned to Bruce, who did not seem particularly anxious to attract De Vayne’s attention.
“What execrable wash,” said Brogten, emptying his glass.
De Vayne, surprised and disgusted at the rudeness of the remark, turned hastily round, and, while Bruce as hastily withdrew his hand, raised the wine-glass to his lips.
“Stop, stop, De Vayne,” said Bruce eagerly; “there’s a fly in your glass.”
“I see no fly,” said De Vayne, glancing at it, and immediately draining it, with the intention of saying something to smooth Kennedy’s feelings, which he supposed would have been hurt by Brogten’s want of common politeness.
“I think it very—” Why did his words fail, and what was the reason of that scared look with which he regarded the blank faces of the other undergraduates? And what is the meaning of that gasp, and the rapid dropping of the head upon the breast, and the deadly pallor that suddenly put out the fair colour in his cheeks? There was no fly—but, good heavens! was there death in the glass?
The whole party leapt up from their places, and gathered round him.
“What is the matter, De Vayne?” said Kennedy tenderly, as he knelt down and supported the young man in his arms. But there was no answer. “Here D’Acres, or somebody, for heaven’s sake fetch a doctor; he must have been seized with a fit.”
“What have you been doing, Bruce?” thundered Brogten.
“Bruce doing!” said Kennedy wildly, as he sprang to his feet. “By the God above us, if I thought this was any of your devilish machinations, I would strike you to the earth!”
“Doing? I?” stammered Bruce. “What do you mean?” He trembled in every limb, and his face was as pale as that of his victim; yet, though perhaps De Vayne’s life depended on it, the young wretch would not say what he had done. He had meant but to put four or five drops into his glass, but De Vayne had turned round suddenly and startled him in the very act, and in the hurried agitation of the moment, his hand had slipped, and he had poured in all the contents of the bottle, with barely time to hurry it empty into his pocket, or to prevent the consequences of what he had done, when De Vayne lifted the glass to his lips.
The men all stood round De Vayne and Kennedy in a helpless crowd, and Kennedy said, “Here, fetch a doctor, somebody, and let all go except D’Acres; so many are only in the way.”
The little group dispersed, and two of them ran off to find a doctor; but Bruce stood there still with open mouth, and a countenance as pale in its horror as that of the fainting viscount. He was anxious to tell the truth about the matter in order to avert worse consequences, and yet he dared not—the words died away upon his lips.
“Don’t stand like that, Bruce,” said Brogten indignantly, “the least you can do is to make yourself useful. Go and get the key of De Vayne’s rooms from the porter’s lodge. Stop, though! it will probably be in his pocket. Yes, here it is. Run and unlock his door, while we carry him to bed.”
Bruce took the key with trembling hand, and shook so violently with nervous agitation that he could hardly make his way across the court. The others carried De Vayne to his bedroom as quickly as they could, and anxiously awaited the doctor’s arrival. The livid face, with the dry foam upon the lips, filled them with alarm, but they had not any conception what to do, and fancied that De Vayne was in a fit.
It took Dr Masham a very short time to see that his patient was suffering from the influence of some poison, and when he discovered this, he cleared the room, and at once applied the proper remedies. But time had been lost already, and he was the less able to set to work at first from his complete ignorance of what had happened. He sat up all night with his patient, but was more than doubtful whether it was not too late to save his life.
The news that De Vayne had been seized with a fit at Kennedy’s rooms soon changed into a darker rumour. Men had not forgotten the affair of Hazlet, and they suspected that some foul play had been practised on one whom all who knew him loved, and whom all, though personally unacquainted with him, heartily respected. That this was really the fact soon ceased to be a secret; but who was guilty, and what had been the manner or motives of the crime remained unknown, and this uncertainty left room for the wildest surmises.
The dons were not slow to hear of what had happened, and they regarded the matter in so serious a light, that they summoned a Seniority for its immediate investigation. Kennedy was obviously the first person of whom to make inquiries, and he told them exactly what had occurred, viz, that De Vayne after drinking a single glass of wine, fell back in his chair in the condition wherein he still continued. “Was anything the matter with the wine, Mr Kennedy?” asked Mr Norton, who, as one of the tutors, had a seat on the board.
“Nothing, sir; it was the same which we were all drinking.”
“And without any bad effects?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But, Mr Kennedy, there seems strong reason to believe that some one drugged Lord De Vayne’s wine. Were you privy to any such plan?”
“No, sir—not exactly,” said Kennedy slowly, and with hesitation.
“Really, sir,” said the Master of Saint Werner’s, “such an answer is grossly to your discredit. Favour us by being more explicit; what do you mean by ‘not exactly’?”
Kennedy’s passionate and fiery pride, which had recently increased with the troubles and self-reprobation of his life, could ill brook such questioning as this, and he answered haughtily:
“I was not aware that anything of this kind was intended.”
“Anything of this kind; you did then expect something to take place?”
“I thought I had taken sufficient precautions against it.”
“Against it; against what?” asked Mr Norton.
Kennedy looked up at his questioner, as though he read in his face the decision as to whether he should speak or not. He would hardly have answered the Master or any of the others, but Mr Norton was his friend, and there was something so manly and noble about his look and character, that Kennedy was encouraged to proceed, and he said slowly:
“I suspected, sir, that there was some intention of attempting to make De Vayne drunk.”
“You suspected that,” said Mr Norton with astonishment and scorn, “and yet you lent your rooms for such a purpose. I am ashamed of you, Kennedy; heartily, and utterly ashamed.”
Kennedy’s spirit was roused by this bitter and public apostrophe. “I lent my rooms for no such purpose; on the contrary, if it existed, I did my best to defeat it.”
“What made you suspect it?” asked Dr Rhodes, the Master.
“Because a similar attempt was practised on another.”
“At which it seems that you were present?”
“I was not.” Kennedy was too fiercely angry to answer in more words than were absolutely required.
“I am sorry to say, Mr Kennedy, you have not cleared yourself from the great disgrace of giving an invitation, though you supposed that it would be made the opportunity for perpetrating an infamous piece of mischief. Can you throw no more light on the subject?”
“None.”
“Will you bring the decanter out of which Lord De Vayne drank?” said one of the seniors after a pause, and with an intense belief in the acuteness of the suggestion.
“I don’t see what good it will do, but I will order my gyp to carry it here if you wish.”
“Do so, sir. And let me add,” said the Master, “that a little more respectfulness of manner would be becoming in your present position.”
Kennedy’s lip curled, and without answer he left the room to fetch the wine, grimly chuckling at the effect which the mixture would produce on Mr Norton’s fastidious taste. When he reached his rooms, he stumbled against the table in his hurry, and upset a little glass dish which held his pencils, one of which rolled away under the fender. In lifting the fender to pick it up, a piece of paper caught his eye, which the bedmaker in cleaning the room had swept out of sight in the morning. He looked at it, and saw in legible characters, “Laudanum, Poison.” It was the label which had been loosely tied on Bruce’s phial, and which had slipped off as he hurried it into his pocket.
He read it, and as the horrid truth flashed across his mind, stood for a moment stupefied and dumb. His plan was instantly formed. Instead of returning to the conclave of Seniors he ran straight off to the chemist’s, which was close by Saint Werner’s.
“Do you know anything of this label?” he said, thrusting it into the chemist’s hands.
“Yes,” said the man, after looking at it for a moment; “it is the label of a bottle of laudanum which I sold yesterday morning to Mr Bruce of Saint Werner’s.”
Without a word, Kennedy snatched it from him, and rushed back to the Seniority, who were already beginning to wonder at his long absence. He threw down the piece of paper before. Mr Norton, who handed it to the Master.
“I found that, sir, on the floor of my room.”
“And you know nothing of it?”
“Yes. It belongs to a bottle purchased yesterday by Bruce.”
Amazement and horror seemed to struggle in the minds of the old clergymen and lecturers as they sat at the table.
“We must send instantly for this young man,” said Mr Norton; and in ten minutes Bruce entered, pale indeed, but in a faultless costume, with a bow of easy grace, and a smile of polite recognition towards such of the board as he personally knew. He was totally unaware of what had been going on during Kennedy’s cross-examination.
“Mr Bruce,” said Mr Norton, to whom they all seemed gladly to resign the task of discovering the truth, “do you know anything of the cause of Lord De Vayne’s sudden attack of illness last night?”
“I, sir? Certainly not.”
“He sat next to you, did he not?”
“He did, I believe. Yes. I can’t be quite sure—but I think he did.”
“You know he did as well as I do,” said Kennedy.
“Mr Kennedy, let me request you to be silent. Mr Bruce, had you any designs against Lord De Vayne?”
“Designs, sir? Excuse me, but I am at a loss to understand your meaning.”
“You had no intention then of making him drunk?”
“Really, sir, you astonish me by such coarse imputations. Is it you,” he said, turning angrily to Kennedy, “who have been saying such things of me?”
Kennedy deigned no reply.
“I should think the testimony of a man who doesn’t scruple secretly to read examination-papers before they are set, ought not to stand for much.” Brogten, as we have already mentioned, had revealed to him the secret of Kennedy’s dishonour. This remark fell quite dead: Kennedy sat unmoved, and Mr Norton replied—
“Pray don’t introduce your personal altercations here, Mr Bruce, on irrelevant topics. Mr Bruce,” he continued, suddenly giving him the label, “have you ever seen that before?”
With a cry of agony, Bruce saw the paper, and struck his forehead with his hand. The sudden blow of shameful detection with all its train of consequences utterly unmanned him, and falling on his knees, he cried incoherently—
“Oh! I did it, I did it. I didn’t mean to; my hand slipped: indeed, indeed it did. For God’s sake forgive me, and let this not be known. I will give you thousands to hush it up—”
A general exclamation of indignation and disgust stopped his prayers, and the Master gave orders that he should be removed and watched. He was dragged away, tearing his hair and sobbing like a child. Kennedy, too, was ordered to retire.
It took the Seniors but a short time to deliberate, and then Bruce was summoned. He would have spoken, but the Master sternly ordered him to be silent, and said to him:
“Vyvyan Bruce, you are convicted by your own confession, extorted after deliberate falsehood, of having wished to drug the wine of a fellow-student for the purpose of entrapping him into a sin, to which you would otherwise have failed to tempt him. What fearful results may follow from your wickedness we cannot yet know, and you may have to answer for this crime before another tribunal. Be that as it may, it is hardly necessary to tell you that your time as a student at Saint Werner’s has ended. You are expelled, and I now proceed to erase your name from the books.” (Here the Master ran his pen two or three times through Bruce’s signature in the college register). “Your rooms must be finally vacated to-morrow. You need say nothing in self-defence, and may go.” As Bruce seemed determined to plead his own cause, they ordered the attendant to remove him immediately.
Kennedy was then sent for, and they could not help pitying him, for he was a favourite with them all.
“Mr Kennedy,” said the senior Dean, “the Master desires me to admonish you for your very culpable connivance—for I have no other name for it—in the great folly and wickedness of which Bruce has been convicted—”
“I did not connive,” said Kennedy.
“Silence, sir!”
“But I will not keep silence; you accuse me falsely.”
“We shall be obliged to take further measures, Mr Kennedy, if you behave in this refractory way.”
“I don’t care what measures you take. I cannot listen in silence to an accusation which I loathe—of a crime of which I am wholly innocent.”
“Why, sir, you confessed that you suspected some unfair design.”
“But not this design. Proceed, sir; I will not interrupt you again; but let me say that I am totally indifferent to any blame which you throw on me for a brutality of which the whole responsibility rests on others.”
The thread of the Dean’s oration was quite broken by Kennedy’s impetuous interruption, and he merely added—“Well, Mr Kennedy, I am sorry to see you so little penitent for the position in which you have placed yourself. You have disappointed the expectation of all your friends, and however you may brazen it out, your character has contracted a stain.”
“You can say so, sir, if you choose,” said Kennedy; and he left the room with a formal bow.
A few days after, Mr Grayson asked him to what Bruce had alluded in his insinuation about an examination-paper.
“He alludes, sir, to an event which happened some time ago.”
Further questions were useless; nevertheless Kennedy saw that his tutor’s suspicions were not only aroused, but that they had taken the true direction. Mr Grayson despised him, and in Saint Werner’s he had lost caste.
That evening Bruce vanished from Camford, with the regrets of few except his tailors and his duns. To this day he has not paid his college debts or discharged the bill for the gorgeous furniture of his rooms. But we shall hear of him again.
Chapter Twenty Four.
De Vayne’s Christmas Holidays.
“He that for love hath undergone
The worst that can befall,
Is happier thousandfold than one
Who never loved at all.
“A grace within his soul hath reigned,
Which nothing else can bring;
Thank God for all that I have gained
By that high suffering.”
Moncton Manes.
For many days Lord De Vayne seemed to be hovering between life and death. The depression of his spirits weighed upon his frame, and greatly retarded his recovery. That he, unconscious as he was of ever having made an enemy—good and gentle to all—with no desire but to love his neighbour as himself, and to devote such talents and such opportunities as had been vouchsafed him to God’s glory and man’s benefit;—that he should have been made the subject of a disgraceful wager, and the butt of an infamous experiment; that in endeavouring to carry out this nefarious plan, any one should have been so wickedly reckless, so criminally thoughtless;—this knowledge lay on his imagination with a depression as of coming death. De Vayne had been but little in Saint Werner’s society, and had rarely seen any but his few chosen friends; and that such a calamity should have happened in the rooms and at the table of one of those friends,—that Kennedy, whom he so much loved and admired, should be suspected of being privy to it;—this fact was one which made De Vayne’s heart sink within him with anguish and horror, and a weariness of life.
And in those troubled waters of painful thought floated the broken gleams of a golden phantasy, the rainbow-coloured memories of a secret love. They came like a light upon the darkened waves, yet a light too feeble to dissipate the under gloom. Like the phosphorescent flashes in the sea at midnight, which the lonely voyager, watching with interest as they glow in the white wake of the keel, guesses that they may be the heralds of a storm,—so these bright reminiscences of happier days only gave a weird beauty to the tumult of the sick boy’s mind; and the mother, as she sat by him night and day during the crisis of his suffering, listened with a deeper anxiety for future trouble to the delirious revelations of his love.
For Lady De Vayne had come from Other Hall to nurse her sick son. She slept on a sofa in his sitting-room, and nursed him with such tenderness as only a mother can. There was no immediate possibility of removing him; deep, unbroken quiet was his only chance of life. The silence of his sick-room was undisturbed save by the softest whispers and the lightest footfalls, and the very undergraduates hushed their voices, and checked their hasty steps as they passed in the echoing cloisters underneath, and remembered that the flame of life was flickering low in the golden vase.
De Vayne was much beloved, and nothing could exceed the delicacy of the attention shown him. Choice conservatory flowers were left almost daily at his door, and men procured rare and rich fruits from home or from London, not because De Vayne needed any such luxuries, which were easily at his command, but that they might show him their sympathy and distress. Several ladies more or less connected with Saint Werner’s offered their services to Lady De Vayne, but she would not leave her son, in whose welfare and recovery her whole thoughts were absorbed.
And so, gloomily for the son and mother, the Christmas holidays came on, and Saint Werner’s was deserted. Scarcely even a stray undergraduate lingered in the courts, and the chapel was closed; no sound of choir or organ came sweetly across the lawns at morning or evening; the ceaseless melancholy plash of the great fountain was almost the only sound that broke the stillness. Julian, Lillyston, and Owen had all gone down for the holidays, full of grief at the thought of leaving their friend in such a precarious state, but as yet not permitted to see or serve him. Lady De Vayne promised to write to Julian regular accounts of Arthur’s health, and told him how often her son spoke of him, both in his wanderings, and in his clearer moments.
It was touching to see the stately and beautiful lady walking alone at evening about the deserted college, to gain a breath of the keen winter air, while her son had sunk for a few moments to fitful rest. She was pale with long watchings and deep anxiety, and in her whole countenance, and in her deep and often uplifted eyes, was that look of prayerfulness and holy communion with an unseen world which they acquire whose abode has long been in the house of mourning, and removed from the follies and frivolities of life.
Well-loved grounds of Saint Werner’s by the quiet waves of the sedgy Iscam, with smooth green grass sloping down to the edge, and trim quaint gardens, and long avenues of chestnut and ancient limes! Though winter had long whirled away the last red and golden leaf, there was pleasure in the air of quiet and repose, which is always to be found in those memory-hallowed walks; and while Lady De Vayne could pace among them in solitude, she needed no other change, nor any rest from thinking over her sick son.
She was surprised one evening, very soon after the men had gone down, to see an undergraduate slowly approaching her down the long and silent avenue. He was tall and well made, and his face would have been a pleasant one, but for the deep look of sadness which clouded it. He hesitated and took off his cap as she came near, and returning his salute, she would have passed him, but he stopped her and said:
“Lady De Vayne.”
Full of surprise she looked at him, and with his eyes fixed on the ground he continued, “You do not know my name; if I tell you, I fear you will hate me, because I fear you will have heard calumnies about me. But may I speak to you?”
“You are not Mr Bruce?” she said with a slight shudder.
“No; my name is Edward Kennedy. Ah, madam! do not look at me so reproachfully, I cannot endure it. Believe me, I would have died—I would indeed—rather than that this should have happened to Lord De Vayne.”
“Nay, Mr Kennedy, I cannot believe that you were more than thoughtless. I have very often heard Julian Home speak of you, and I cannot believe that his chosen friend could be so vile as some reports would make you.”
“They are false as calumny itself,” he said passionately. “Oh, Lady De Vayne, none could have honoured and loved your son more than I did; I cannot explain to you the long story of my exculpation, but I implore you to believe my innocence.”
“I forgive you, Mr Kennedy,” she said, touched with pity, “if there be anything to forgive; and so will Arthur. A more forgiving spirit than his never filled any one I think. Excuse me, it is time for me to return to him.”
“But will you not let me see him, and help you in nursing him? It was for this purpose alone that I stayed here when all the others went. Let me at least be near him, that I may feel myself to be making such poor reparation as my heedlessness requires.”
She could hardly resist his earnest entreaty, and besides, she was won by compassion for his evident distress.
“You may come, Mr Kennedy, as often as you like; whenever Arthur is capable of seeing you, you shall visit his sick-room.”
“Thank you,” he said, and she perceived the tremble of deep emotion in his voice.
He came the next morning, and she allowed him to see De Vayne. He entered noiselessly, and gazed for a moment as he stood at the door on the pale wasted face, looking still paler in contrast with the long dark hair that flowed over the pillow. He was awake, but there was no consciousness in his dark dreamy eyes.
As De Vayne murmured to himself in low sentences, Kennedy heard repeatedly the name of Violet, and once of Violet Home. He sat still as death, and soon gathered from the young lord’s broken words, his love, his deep love for Julian’s sister.
And when Kennedy first recognised this fact, which had hitherto been quite unknown to him, for a moment a flood of jealousy and bitter envy filled his heart. What if Violet should give up her troth in favour of a wealthier, perhaps worthier lover? What if her family should think his own poor claims no barrier to the hope that Violet should one day wear a coronet? The image of Julian and Violet rose in his fancy, and with one more pang of self-reproach, he grew ashamed of his unworthy suspicions.
Yet the thought that De Vayne, too, had fixed his affections on Violet filled him with uneasiness and foreboding, and he determined, on some future occasion, to save pain to all parties, by getting Julian to break to De Vayne the secret of his sister’s betrothal.
For several days he came to the sick-room, and a woman could hardly have been more thoughtful and tender than he was to his friend. It was on about the fourth evening that De Vayne awoke to complete consciousness. He became aware that some one besides his mother was seated in the room, and without asking he seemed slowly to recognise that it was Kennedy.
“Is that Kennedy?” he asked, in a weak voice.
“It is I,” said Kennedy, but the patient did not answer, and seemed restless and uneasy and complained of cold.
When Kennedy went, De Vayne whispered to his mother, “Mother, I am very weak and foolish, but it troubles me somehow to see Kennedy sitting there; it shocks my nerves, and fills me with images of something dreadful happening. I had rather not see him, mother, till I am well.”
“Very well, Arthur. Don’t talk so much, love; I alone will nurse you. Soon I hope you will be able to return to Other.”
“And leave this dreadful place,” he said, “for ever.”
“Hush, my boy; try to sleep again.”
He soon slept, and then Lady De Vayne wrote to Kennedy a short note, in which she explained as kindly and considerately as she could, that Arthur was not yet strong enough to allow of any more visits to his sick-room.
“He shuns me,” thought Kennedy, with a sigh, and packing up some books and clothes, he prepared to go home.
Of course he was to spend part of the vacation at Ildown. Violet wondered that he did not come at once; she was not exactly jealous of him, but she thought that he might have been more eager for her company than he seemed to be, and she would have liked it better had he come earlier. Poor Kennedy! his very self-denials turned against him for the sole reason why he kept away from Ildown was, that he feared to disturb the freedom of Frank and Cyril by the presence of a stranger all the time of their holidays, and he hesitated to intrude on the united happiness which always characterised the Ildown circle.
Eva, too, was invited, and the brother and sister arrived at Ildown by a late train, and drove to the house. What a glowing welcome they received! Julian introduced them to Mrs Home, and Kennedy kissed affectionately the hand of his future mother. Frank and Cyril had gone to bed, but Frank was so determined to see Violet’s lover that night, that he made Julian bring him into their bedroom, and he was more than satisfied with the first glimpse.
“And where is Violet?” asked Kennedy, in a matter-of-fact tone, for he well knew that she would not choose to meet him in the presence of others.
“In her own little room,” said Julian, smiling; “I will show you the way.” He led Kennedy up-stairs, and left him at the door; he well knew that her heart would be fluttering as much as his.
A light knock at the door, and a moment after they saw each other again.
She sat on the sofa, and the firelight flickered on the amethyst—his gift—which she wore on her white neck; and her bright eyes danced with tears and laughter, and her bosom heaved and fell as he clasped her to his breast and printed a long, long kiss upon her cheek.
In silence, more exquisite than speech, they gazed on each other; and as though her beauty were reflected on his own face, all trace of sorrow and shame fled like a cloud from his forehead; and who would not have said, looking upon the pair, that he was worthy of her, as she of him?
“My own Violet,” he said, “you are beautiful as a vision to-night.”
“Hush, flatterer!” and she placed her little hand upon his mouth:—no wonder that he seized and kissed it.
“And what a thrice-charming dress.”
“Ah, I meant you to admire it,” she said, laughing.
“‘And thinking, this will please him best,
She takes a ribbon or a rose,’”
he whispered to her.
“Come,” she replied, “no ill-omened words, Edward. You know the sad context of those lines.”
“No! no sadness to-night, my own Violet, my beautiful, beautiful Violet; you quite dazzle me, my child. I really can’t sit by your side; come, let me sit on your foot-stool here, and look up in your face.”
“Silly boy,” she said, “come along, we shall keep them all waiting for supper.”
While poor De Vayne languished on the bed of sickness, his sufferings were almost the only shadow which chequered the brightness of those weeks at Ildown. In the morning, Julian and Kennedy worked steadily; the afternoon and evening they devoted to amusement and social life. The Kennedys soon became great favourites among the Ildown people, and went out to many cheery Christmas parties; but they enjoyed more the quiet evenings at home when they all sat and talked after dinner round the dining-room fire, and while the two boys played at chess, and Violet and Eva worked or sketched, Julian and Kennedy would read aloud to them in turns. How often those evenings recurred to all their memories in future days.
Soon after the Kennedys had come, Julian received from Camford the Christmas college-list. He had again won a first class, but Kennedy’s name, much to his vexation, appeared only in the third.
“How is it that Edward is only in the third class?” asked Violet of Julian—for, of course, she had seen the list. “He is very clever—is he not?”
“Very; one of the cleverest fellows in Saint Werner’s.”
“Then is he idle?”
“I’m afraid so, Vi. You must get him to work more.”
So when he was seated by her on the sofa in her little boudoir, she said, “You must work more, Edward, at Camford, to please me.”
“Ah, do not talk to me of Camford,” he said, with a heavy sigh. “Let me enjoy unbroken happiness for a time, and leave the bitter future to itself.”
“Bitter, Edward? but why bitter? Julian always seems to me so happy at Camford.”
“Yes, Julian is, and so are all who deserve to be.”
“Then you must be happy too, Edward.”
His only answer was a sigh. “Ah, Violet, pray talk to me of anything but Camford.”
The visit came to an end, as all things, whether happy or unhappy, must; and Julian rejoiced that confidence seemed restored between him and Kennedy once more. Of course, he told Violet none of the follies which had cost poor Kennedy the loss both of popularity and self-respect. Soon afterwards Lord De Vayne was brought back to Other Hall, and Violet and Julian were invited, with their mother, to stay there till the Camford term commenced. The boys had returned to school, so that they all acceded to Lady De Vayne’s earnest request that they would come.
It was astonishing how rapidly the young viscount recovered when once Violet had come to Other Hall. Her presence seemed to fill him with fresh life, and he soon began to get down-stairs, and even to venture on a short walk in the park. His constitution had suffered a serious and permanent injury, but he was pronounced convalescent before the Homes finished their visit.
The last evening before their departure, he was seated with Violet on a rustic seat on the terrace, looking at the sun as it set behind the distant elms of the park, and at the deer as they grazed in lovely groups on the rich undulating slopes that swept down from the slight eminence on which his house was built. He felt that the time had come to speak his love.
“Violet,” he said, as he looked earnestly at her, and took her hand, “you have, doubtless, seen that I love you. Can you ever return my love? I am ready to live and die for you, and to give you my whole affection.” His voice was still low and weak through illness, and he could hardly speak the sentences which were to win for him a decision of his fate.
Violet was taken by surprise; she had known Lord De Vayne so long and so intimately, and their stations were so different, that the thought of his loving her had never entered her head. She regarded him familiarly as her brother’s friend.
“Dear De Vayne,” she said, “I shall always love you as a friend, as a brother. But did you not know that I have been for some months engaged?”
“Engaged?” he said, turning very pale.
“I am betrothed,” she answered, “to Edward Kennedy. Nay, Arthur, dear Arthur,” she continued, as he nearly fainted at her feet, “you must not suffer this disappointment to overcome you. Love me still as a sister; regard me as though I were married already, and let us enjoy a happy friendship for many years.”
He was too weak to bear up, too weak to talk; only the tears coursed each other fast down his cheeks as he murmured, “Oh, forgive me, forgive me, Violet.”
“Forgive you,” she said kindly; “nay, you honour me too much. Marry one of your own high rank, and not the orphan of a poor clergyman. I am sure you will not yield to this sorrow, and suffer it to make you ill. Bear up, Arthur, for your mother’s sake—for my sake; and let us be as if these words had never passed between us.”
She lent him her arm as he walked faintly to his room, and as he turned round and stooped to kiss her hand, she felt it wet with many tears.
They went home next day, and soon after received a note from Lady De Vayne, informing them that Arthur was worse, and that they intended removing for some time to a seat of his in Scotland; after which they meant to travel on the Continent for another year, if his health permitted it. “But,” she said, “I fear he has had a relapse, and his state is very precarious. Dear friends, think of us sometimes, and let us hope to meet again in happier days.”