Julian Home Part 8

"Ah," he observed with a deep sigh, "I'm sorry to see that you have the portrait of so unsound, so dangerous a man as Mr Vere."

"We'll drop that topic, please, Hazlet," said Julian, "as we're not likely to agree upon it."

"Have you ever read one word that Mr Vere ever wrote?" asked Kennedy.

"Well, yes; at least no, not exactly: but still one may judge, you know; besides, I've seen extracts of his works."

"Extracts!" answered Kennedy scornfully; "extracts which often attribute to him the very sentiments which he is opposing. But it isn't worth arguing with one of your school, who have the dishonesty to condemn writers whom you are incapable of understanding, on the faith of extracts which they haven't even read."

The wrathful purpling of Hazlet's sallow countenance portended an explosion of orthodox spleen, but Julian gently interposed in time to save the devoted Kennedy from a few unmeasured anathemas.

"Hus.h.!.+" he said, "none of the odium theologic.u.m, please, lest the mighty shade of Aeschylus smile at you in scorn. Do drop the subject, Hazlet."

"Very well, if you like, Home; but I must deliver my conscience, you know. But really, Julian, you are not very Christian in your other pictures."

This was too much even for Julian's politeness, and he joined in the shout of laughter with which Kennedy greeted this appeal.

"Fools make a mock at sin," said Hazlet austerely. "I trust that you will both be brought to a better state of mind. Good morning!"

Kennedy flung himself into an armchair, and after finis.h.i.+ng his laugh, exclaimed, "My dear Home, where did you pick up that intolerable hypocrite?"

"Hush, Kennedy, hus.h.!.+ Don't call him a hypocrite. His mode of religion may be very offensive to us, and yet it may be sincere."

"Faugh! the idea of asking you, 'How's your soul?' It reminds me of a friend of mine who was suddenly asked by a minister in a train 'if he didn't feel an aching void?' 'An aching void? Where?' said Jones, in a tone of alarm, for he was an unimaginative person. 'Within, sir, within!' said the stranger. Jones felt anxiously to find whether one of his ribs was accidentally protruding, but finding them all safe, set down the minister for a lunatic, and moved to the further end of the carriage."

Julian smiled; he was more accustomed to this kind of phraseology than his friend, and knew that outrageous as it was to good taste under the circ.u.mstances, it yet might spring from a sincere and honourable motive, or at best must be regarded as the natural result of innate vulgarity and mistaken training.

"Surely at best," continued Kennedy, "it's a most unwarrantable impertinence for a fellow like that to want to dabble his ignorant and coa.r.s.e hand in the hallowed secrets of the microcosm. Not to one's nearest and dearest friend, not to one's mother or brother would one babble promiscuously on such awful themes; and to have the soul's sublime and eternal emotions, its sacred and unspoken communings, lugged out into farcical prominence by such conversational cant as that, is to dry up the very fountain of true religion, and put a premium on the successful grin of an offensive hypocrisy."

Kennedy seemed quite agitated, and as usual found relief in striding up and down the room. His religious feelings were deep and real--none the less so for being hidden--and Hazlet's language and manner had given him a rude shock.

"Another hour in that fellow's company would make me an infidel," he exclaimed with quivering lip. "Pray for me, indeed, with some of his 'sound and congenial friends.' Faugh! 'sound!' how does he dare to judge whether his superiors are 'sound' or not? and why must he borrow a metaphor from Stilton cheeses when he's talking of religious convictions."

"Why really, Kennedy," said Julian, "to see the contempt written in your face, one would think you were an archangel looking at a black beetle, as a learned judge once observed. If you won't regard Hazlet as a man and a brother, at least remember that he's a vertebrate animal."

But Kennedy was not to be joked out of his indignation, so Julian continued. "I wish you knew more of Lillyston. At one time, I should have been nearly as much bothered by Hazlet as you, but Lillyston's kind, genial good-humour with every one, and the genuine respectful sympathy which he shows even for things he can least understand, have made me much happier than I should have been. Now, _he_ might have done Hazlet some good, whereas your opposition, my dear fellow, will only make him more rampant than ever. Ah, here Lillyston comes."

"What an honest open face," said Kennedy.

"Like the soul which looks through it, _sans peur et sans reproche_,"

said Julian warmly.

"Rather a contrast to the last comer," murmured Kennedy, as he picked up his cap and gown to walk to the lecture-room.

"There, don't think of Hazlet any more," said Julian.

"'He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small, For the dear G.o.d who loveth us, He made and loveth all.'

"A capital good motto that; isn't it, Hugh?"

"I must love Hazlet as one of the very small things, then," said the incorrigible Kennedy as he left the room with the other two.

Hazlet was put on to construe during the lecture, and if anything could have shaken the brazen tower of his self-confidence, it would have been the egregious display of incapacity which followed; but Hazlet rather piqued himself on his indifference to the poor blind heathen poets, on whose names he usually dealt reprobation broadcast. "Like lions that die of an a.s.s's kick," those wronged great souls lay prostrate before Hazlet's wrathful heels.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE SCORN OF SCORN.

"And not a man, for being simply man, Hath any honour, but honour for those honours That are without him--as place, riches, favour, Prizes of accident as oft as merit."

_Shakespeare_.

Very different in all respects were Julian's rencontres with others of his old schoolfellows. There were some, indeed, among them who had left Harton while they were still in low forms, and some whose tastes and pursuits were so entirely different from his own, that it was hardly likely that he should maintain any other intercourse with them than such as was demanded by a slight acquaintance. But of Bruce, at any rate, it might have been expected that he would see rather more than proved to be the case. Bruce, as having been head of the school during the period when Julian was a monitor, had been thrown daily into his company, and, as inmates of the same house, they had acted together in the thousand little scenes which diversify the bright and free monotony of a schoolboy's life.

But the first fortnight pa.s.sed by, and Bruce had not called on Julian, and as they were on different "sides," they had not chanced to meet, either in lecture-room or elsewhere. Julian, not knowing whether his position as sizar would make any difference in Bruce's estimation of him, had naturally left him to take the initiative in calling; while Bruce, on the other hand, always a little jealous of his brilliant contemporary, and not too anxious to be familiar with a sizar, pretended to himself that it was as much Julian's place as his to be first in calling. Hence it was that, for the first fortnight, the two did not happen to come across each other.

Meanwhile Bruce also had made many fresh acquaintances. His reputation for immense wealth and considerable talent--his das.h.i.+ng easy manner--his handsome person and elaborate style of dress, attracted notice, and very soon threw him into the circle of all the young fas.h.i.+onables of Saint Werner's. His style of life cannot be better described than by saying that he affected the fine gentleman. Hardly a day had pa.s.sed during which he had not been at some large breakfast or wine-party, or formed one of a select little body of supping aristocrats. He did very little work, and pretended to do none, (for Bruce was a first-rate specimen of the never-open-a-book genus), although at unexpected hours he took care to get up the lecture-room subjects sufficiently well to make a display when he was put on. Even in this he was unsuccessful, for scholars.h.i.+p cannot be acquired _per saltum_, and Mr Serjeant, the lecturer on his side, looked on him with profound contempt as a puppy who was all the more offensive from pretending to some knowledge. He told him that he might distinguish himself by hard steady work, but would never do so without infinitely more pains than he took the trouble to apply. His quiet and caustic strictures, and the easy sarcasm with which he would allow Bruce to flourish his way through a pa.s.sage, and then go through it himself, pointing out how utterly Bruce had "hopped with airy and fastidious levity" above all the nicer shades of meaning, and slurred over his ignorance of a difficulty by some piece of sonorous nonsense, made him peculiarly the object of the young man's disgust. But though Mr Serjeant wounded his vanity, the irony of "a musty old don," as Bruce contemptuously called him, was amply atoned for by the compliments of the fast young admirers whom Bruce soon gathered round him, and some of whom were always to be found after hall-time sipping his claret or lounging in his gorgeous rooms. To them Bruce's genius was incontestably proved by the faultless evenness with which he parted his hair behind, the dapperness of his boots, and the merit of his spotless s.h.i.+rts.

Sir Rollo Bruce, Vyvyan's father, was a man of no particular family, who had been knighted on a deputation, and contrived to glitter in the most splendid circles of London society. His magnificent entertainments, his exquisite appointments, his apparently fabulous resources, were a sufficient pa.s.sport into the saloons of dukes; and, although ostensibly Sir Rollo had nothing to live on but his salary as the chairman of a bank, n.o.body who had the entree of his house cared particularly to inquire into the sources of his wealth. Vyvyan imitated his father in his expensive tastes, and cultivated, with vulgar a.s.siduity, the society of the n.o.blemen at his college. In a short time he knew them all, and all of them had been at his rooms except a young Lord De Vayne, of whom we shall hear more hereafter, and whose retiring manners made him shrink with dislike from Bruce's fawning familiarity.

The sizars at Saint Werner's do not dine at the same hour as the rest of the undergraduates, but the hour after, and their dinner consists of the dishes which have previously figured on the Fellows' table. It seems to me that the time may come when the authorities of that royal foundation will see reason to regret so unnecessary an arrangement, the relic of a long, obsolete, and always undesirable system. Many of Saint Werner's most distinguished alumni have themselves sat at the sizars' table, and if any of them were blessed or cursed with sensitive dispositions, they will not be dead to the justice of these remarks. The sizars are, by birth and education, invariably, so far as I know, the sons of gentlemen, and perhaps most often of clergymen whose means prevent them from bearing una.s.sisted the heavy burden of University expenses. After a short time many of these sizars become scholars, and eventually a large number of them win for themselves the honours of a fellows.h.i.+p.

Why put on these young students a gratuitous indignity? Why subject them to the unpleasant remarks which some are quite coa.r.s.e enough to make on the subject? The authorities of Saint Werner's are full of real courtesy and kindness, and that the arrangement is not intended as an indignity I am well aware; it is, as I have said, the accidental fragment of an obsolete period--a period when scholars dined on "a penny piece of beef," and slept two or three in a room at the foot of the Fellows' beds. All honour to Saint Werner's; all honour to the great, and the wise, and the learned, and the n.o.ble whom she has sent forth into all lands; all honour to the bravery and the truthfulness of her sons; all honour to the profound scholars, and able teachers, and eloquent orators who preside at her councils; she is a Queen of colleges, and may wield her sceptre with a strong hand and a proud. But are there not some among her subjects who are deaf to the sounds of calm advice?--some who are so blind as to love her faults and prop up her abuses?--some who daub her walls with the untempered mortar of their blind prejudice, and treat every one as an enemy who would aid in removing here and there a bent pillar, and here and there a crumbling stone? (These words were written some time ago. I trust that since then all causes of offence, if they ever existed, have long been forgiven and forgotten.)

And now let all defenders of present inst.i.tutions, however bad they may be--let all violent supporters of their old mumpsimus against any new sumpsimus whatever, listen to a conversation among some undergraduates.

It may convince them, or it may not--I cannot tell; but I know that it had a powerful influence on me.

Bruce was standing in the b.u.t.teries, where he had just been joined by Lord Fitzurse and Sir John D'Acres, who by virtue of their t.i.tles-- certainly not by any other virtue--sat among reverend Professors and learned Doctors at the high table, far removed from the herd of common undergraduates. With the three were _Mr_. Boodle and _Mr_. Tulk, (the "Mister" is given them in the college-lists out of respect for the long purses which have purchased them, the privilege of fellow-commoners or ballantiogennaioi), who enjoyed the same enviable distinction and happy privilege. By the screens were four or five sizars; a few more were scattered about in the pa.s.sage waiting, whilst the servants hurriedly placed the dishes on the table set apart for them; and Julian was chatting to Lillyston, who chanced at the moment to have been pa.s.sing by.

"Who is that table for?" asked D'Acres, pointing through the open door of the hall.

"Oh, that's for the sizars," t.i.ttered the feeble-minded Boodle, who t.i.ttered at everything.

"S-s-sizars!" stammered Lord Fitzurse. "What's that mean? Are they v-v-very big f-f-fellows?"

"Ha! ha! ha!" said Bruce. "No; they're sons of gyps and that kind of thing, who feed on the semese fragments of the high table."

"They must be g-g-ghouls!" said his lords.h.i.+p, shudderingly.

"Hush," said D'Acres, who was a thorough gentleman, "some of the sizars may be here;" and he dropped Bruce's arm.

"Pooh! they'll feel flattered," said Bruce carelessly, as D'Acres walked off.

"Indeed!" said Julian, striding indignantly forward, for the conversation was so loud that he had heard every word of it. "Flattered to be the b.u.t.t for the insolence of puppyism and every fool who is coa.r.s.e enough to insult them publicly."

"Who the d-d-d-deuce are you?" said Lord Fitzurse, "for you're coming it r-r-rather strong."

"Who is he?" said Lillyston, breaking in, "your equal, sir, in birth, as he is your superior in intellect, and in every moral quality.