Julian Home Part 10

"Just look at these cards," he said to Julian one day; "there is not one of them which hasn't an invitation scribbled on it. These engagements really leave one no time for work. What a bore it is! How do you manage to escape them?"

"Well--first, I haven't such a large acquaintance as you; that makes a great deal of difference. But, besides, I make a point of leaving breakfast parties at ten, and wines at chapel-time--so that I really don't find them any serious hindrance. No hindrance, I mean, in comparison with the delight and profit of the society itself."

"I wish I could make the same resolution," said Kennedy; "but the fact is, I find company so thoroughly amusing, that I'm always tempted to stay."

"But why not decline sometimes?"

"I don't know--it looks uncivil. Here, which of these shall I cut?" he said, tossing three or four notes and cards to Julian.

"This for one," said Julian, as he read the first:--

"Dear Kennedy--Come to supper and cards at ten. Bruce wants to be introduced to you. Yours,

"'C Brogten.'"

"Yes, I think I shall. I don't like that fellow Brogten, who is always thrusting himself in my way," said Kennedy. "Heigh ho!" and Kennedy leant his head on his arm, and fell into a reverie, thinking that after all his three years at college might be over almost before he was aware of how much time he lost.

"I hope you don't play cards much," said Julian.

"Why? I hear Hazlet has been denouncing them in hall with unctuous fervour, and I do think it was that which led me to join in a game which was instantly proposed by some of the men who sat near."

"I don't say that there's anything diabolical," said Julian, smiling, "in paint and pasteboard, or that I should have the least objection to play them myself if I wanted amus.e.m.e.nt, but I think them--except very occasionally, and in moderation--a waste of time; and if you play for money I don't think it does you any good."

"Well, I've never played for money yet. By the bye, do you know Bruce?

He has the character and manner of a very gentlemanly fellow."

"Yes, I know him," said Julian, who made a point of holding his tongue about a man when he had nothing favourable to say.

"Oh, ay, I forgot; of course; he's a Hartonian. But didn't you think him gentlemanly?"

"He has an easy manner, and is accustomed to good society, which is usually all that is intended by the word," said Julian.

"I think I must go just this one evening. I like to see a variety of men; one learns something from it."

Kennedy went. The supper took place in Brogten's rooms, and the party then adjourned to Bruce's, where they immediately began a game at whist for half-a-crown points, and then "unlimited loo." Kennedy was induced to play "just to see what it was like." As the game proceeded he became more and more excited; the others were accustomed to the thing, and concealed their eagerness; but Kennedy, who was younger and more inexperienced than any of them, threw himself into the game, and drank heedlessly of the wine that freely circulated. Surely if guardian spirits attend the footsteps of youth, one angel must have wept that evening "tears such as angels weep" to see him with his flushed face and sparkling eyes, eagerly seizing the sums he won, or, with clenched hand and contracted brow, anxiously awaiting the result of some adverse turn in the chances of the game. I remember once to have accidentally entered a scene like this in going to borrow something from a neighbour's room; and I shall never forget the almost tiger-like eagerness and haggard anxiety depicted on the countenances of the men who were playing for sums far too extravagant for an undergraduate's purse.

How Kennedy got home he never knew, but next morning he awoke headachy and feverish, and the first thing he saw on his table was a slip of paper on which was written, "Kennedy _admonished_ by the senior Dean for being out after twelve o'clock." The notice annoyed and ashamed him.

He lay in bed till late, was absent from lecture, and got up to an unrelished breakfast, at which he was disturbed by the entrance of Bruce, to congratulate him on his winnings of the evening before.

While Bruce was talking to him, Lillyston also strolled in on his way from lecture to ask what had kept Kennedy away. He was surprised to see the pale and weary look on his face, and catching sight of Bruce seated in the armchair by the fire, he merely made some commonplace remarks and left the room. But he met Julian in the court, and told him that Kennedy didn't seem to be well.

"I'm not surprised," said Julian; "he supped with Brogten, and then went to play cards with Bruce, and I hear that Bruce's card parties are not very steady proceedings."

"Can't we manage to keep him out of that set, Julian? It will be the ruin of his reading."

"Ay, and worse, Hugh. But what can one say? It will hardly do to read homilies to one's fellow undergraduates."

"You might at least give him a hint."

"I will. I suppose he'll come and do some Euripides to-night."

He did come, and when they had read some three hundred lines, and the rest were separating, he proposed to Julian a turn in the great court.

The stars were crowding in their bright myriads, and the clear silvery moonlight bathed the court, except where the hall and chapel flung fantastic and mysterious shadows across the green smooth-mown lawns of the quadrangle. The soft light, the cool exhilarating night air were provocative of thought, and they walked up and down for a time in silence.

Many thoughts were evidently working in Kennedy's mind, and they did not all seem to be bright or beautiful as the thoughts of youth should be.

Julian's brain was busy, too; and as they paced up and down, arm in arm, the many-coloured images of hope and fancy were flitting thick and fast across his vision. He was thinking of his own future and of Kennedy's, whom he was beginning to love as a brother, and for whose moral weakness he sometimes feared.

"Julian," said Kennedy, suddenly breaking the silence; "were you ever seized by an uncontrollable, unaccountable, irresistible presentiment of coming evil,--a feeling as if a sudden gulf of blackness and horror yawned before you--a dreadful _something_ haunting you, you knew not what, but only knew that it was there?"

"I have had presentiments, certainly; though hardly of the kind you describe."

"Well, Julian, I have such a presentiment now, overshadowing me with the sense of guilt, of which I was never guilty; as though it were the shadow of some crime committed in a previous state of existence, forgotten yet unforgotten, incurred yet unavenged."

"Probably the mere result of a headache this morning, and the night air now," said Julian, smiling at the energetic description, yet pained by the intensity of Kennedy's tone of voice.

"Hush, Julian! I hate all that stupid materialism. Depend upon it, some evil thing is over me. I wonder whether crimes of the future can throw their crimson shadow back over the past. My life, thank G.o.d, has been an innocent one, yet now I feel like the guiltiest thing alive."

"One oughtn't to yield to such feelings, or to be the victim of a heated imagination, Kennedy. In my own case at least, half the feelings I have fancied to be presentiments have turned out false in the end-- presentiments, I mean, which have been suggested, as perhaps this has, by pa.s.sing circ.u.mstances."

"G.o.d grant this may be false," said Kennedy, "but something makes me feel uneasy."

"It will be a lying prophet, if you so determine, Kennedy. The only enemy who has real power to hurt us is ourselves. Why should you be agitated by an idle forecast of uncertain calamity? Be brave, and honest, and pure, and G.o.d will be with you."

"Don't be surprised," continued Julian, "if you've heard me say the same words before; they were my father's dying bequest to his eldest son."

"Be brave, and honest, and pure--" repeated Kennedy; "yes, you _must_ be right, Julian. Look what a glorious sky, and what numberless 'patines of bright gold.'"

Julian looked up, and at that moment a meteor shot across the heaven, plunging as though from the galaxy into the darkness, and after the white and dazzling l.u.s.tre of the trail had disappeared, seeming to leave behind the glory of it a deeper gloom. It gave too true a type of many a young man's destiny.

Kennedy said nothing, but although it is not the Camford custom to shake hands, he shook Julian's hand that night with one of those warm and loving grasps, which are not soon forgotten. And each walked slowly back to his own room.

CHAPTER NINE.

THE BOAT-RACE.

"And caught once more the distant shout, The measured pulse of racing oars Between the willows."

_In Memoriam_.

The banks of "silvery-winding Iscam" were thronged with men; between the hours of two and four the sculls were to be tried for, and some 800 of the thousand undergraduates poured out of their colleges by twos and threes to watch the result from the banks on each side.

The first and second guns had been fired, and the scullers in their boats, each some ten yards apart from the other, are anxiously waiting the firing of the third, which is the signal for starting. That strong splendid-looking young man, whose arms are bared to the shoulder, and "the muscles all a-ripple on his back," is almost quivering with anxious expectation. The very instant the sound of the gun reaches his ear, those oar-blades will flash like lightning into the water, and "smite the sounding furrows" with marvellous regularity and speed. He is the favourite, and there are some heavy bets on his success; Bruce and Brogten and Lord Fitzurse will be richer or poorer by some twenty pounds each from the result of this quarter of an hour.

The three are standing together on the towing-path opposite that little inn where the river suddenly makes a wide bend, and where, if the rush of men were not certain to sweep them forward, they might see a very considerable piece of the race. But directly the signal is given, and the boats start, everybody will run impetuously at full speed along the banks to keep up with the boats, and cheer on their own men, and it will be necessary for our trio to make the best possible use of their legs, before the living cataract pours down upon them. Indeed, they would not have been on the towing-path at all, but among the rather questionable occupants of the gra.s.s plot before the inn on the other side of the river, were it not for their desire to run along with the boats, and inspirit the rowers on whom they have betted.

But what is this? A great odious slow-trailing barge looms into sight, nearly as broad as the river itself, black as the ferrugineous ferryboat of Charon, and slowly dragged down the stream by two stout cart horses, beside which a young bargee is plodding along in stolid independence.