Julian Home Part 7

in his rooms that evening. (The verb "to tea" is the property of bedmakers, and, with beautiful elasticity, it even admits of a perfect tense--as "have you tea'd?")

"By all means," said Julian; "lay the table for four this evening at eight o'clock, and get me some bread and b.u.t.ter. You'll stay, Hugh, won't you?"

"I should like to, very much. But won't it be your last evening with your mother and Miss Home?"

"Yes; but never mind that."

Lillyston shook his head, and bidding the ladies a warm good-bye, left them to enjoy with Julian his first quiet evening in Saint Werner's, Camford.

"I must hang my pictures before you go, Violet. I shall want your advice."

"Well, let me see," said Violet. "The water-colour likenesses of Cyril and Frankie ought to go here, one on each side of Mr Vere; at least, I suppose, you mean to put Mr Vere in the place of honour?"

"Oh, certainly," said Julian; "every time I look on that n.o.ble face, so full of strength and love, and so marked with those 'divine hieroglyphics of sorrow,' I shall learn fresh lessons of endurance and wisdom."

"People will certainly call you a heretic, if you do," laughed Violet.

"People!" said Julian scornfully.

"Of whom to be dispraised were no small praise.

"Let them yelp."

Mr Vere was an eminent clergyman, who had been an intimate friend of Mr Home before his death. Julian had only heard him preach, and met him occasionally; but he had read some of his works, and had received from him so much sympathising kindness and intellectual aid, that he regarded him with a love and reverence little short of devotion--as a man distinguished above all others for his gentleness, his eloquence, his honesty, his learning, and his love. This likeness had belonged to Mr Home, and Julian had asked leave to carry it with him whenever he should go to the University.

"Yes, the place of honour for Mr Vere."

"And where shall we hang this?" said Julian, taking up a photograph of Van Dyck's great painting of Jacob's Dream: the Hebrew boy is sleeping on the ground, and his long, dark curls, falling off his forehead, mingle with the rich foliage of the surrounding plants, fanned by the waving of mysterious wings; a cherub is lightly raising the embroidered cap that partially shades his face, and at his feet, blessing him with uplifted hand, stands a majestic angel, on whose flowing robes of white gleams a celestial radiance from the vista, alight with heavenly faces, that opens over his head. A happy and holy slumber seems to breathe from the lad's countenance, and yet you can tell that the light of dreams has dawned under his "closed eyelids," and that the inward eye has caught full sight of that Beatific Epiphany.

"We must hang this in your bedroom, Julian," said Mrs Home. "I shall love to think of you lying under the outstretched hand of this heavenly watcher."

So they hung it there, and the task was over, and they spent a happy happy evening together. Next morning Julian accompanied them to the train, and walked back to the matriculation examination.

CHAPTER SIX.

RENCONTRES.

"A boy--no better--with his rosy cheeks Angelical, keen eye, courageous look, And conscious step of purity and pride."

Wordsworth's _Prelude_.

A public school man is by no means lonely when he first enters the university. He finds many of his old school-fellows accompanying him, and many who have gone up before him, and he feels united to them all by a bond of fellowship, which at once creates for him a circle of friends.

Had Julian merely kept up his Harton acquaintances, he would have known as many Camford men as were at all necessary for the purposes of society.

But although with most or all of the Hartonians Julian remained on pleasant and friendly terms, there were others whom he saw quite as much, and whose society he enjoyed all the more thoroughly because their previous a.s.sociations and experiences were different from his own. And on looking back in aftertimes, what a delight it was to remember the n.o.ble hearts which, during those years of college life, had always beaten in unison with his own. Few enjoyments were more keen than that social equality and unconventional intercourse common among all undergraduates, which might at any time ripen into an earnest and invaluable friendship, or merely stop at the stage of an agreeable acquaintanceship. A great, and not the least useful portion of University education consisted in the intimate knowledge of character and the many-sided sympathies which were thus insensibly acquired.

During the first few weeks of college life, of course, a good deal of time was spent in receiving and returning the visits of acquaintances, old and new. Of the latter, there was one with whom Julian and Lillyston were equally charmed, and who soon became their constant companion. His name was Kennedy, and Julian first got to know him by sitting next him in lecture-room. His lively remarks, his keen and vivid sense of the ludicrous, the quick yet kindly notice he took of men's peculiarities, his ardent appreciation of the books which occupied their time, and the pleasant, rapid way in which he would dash off a caricature, soon attracted notice, and he rapidly became popular, both among undergraduates and dons. He was known, too, by the warm eulogy of his fellow-Marlbeians, who were never tired of singing his praises among themselves.

"Splendid!" whispered he to Julian warmly, after Julian had just finished construing a difficult clause in the Agamemnon, which he had done with a spirit and fire which even kindled a spark of admiration in the cold breast of Mr Grayson. "Splendidly done, Home! I say, how very reserved you are. Here have I been longing to know you for the last ten days, and we have hardly got beyond a nod to each other yet.

Do come in to tea at my rooms to-night at eight. I want to introduce you to a friend of mine--Owen of Roslyn school."

"With pleasure," said Julian. "That dark-haired fellow is Owen, is it not? I hear he's going to do great things!"

"Oh yes! booked for a Fellow and a double-first; so you ought to know him, you know."

"Silence, gentlemen," said Mr Grayson, turning his stony gaze on Kennedy, whose bright face instantly a.s.sumed a demure expression of deep attention, while the light of laughter which still danced in his eyes might have betrayed to a careful observer the fact that the notes on which he appeared to be so a.s.siduously occupied mainly consisted of replications of Mr Grayson's placid physiognomy and Roman nose.

"I've brought an umbra with me, Kennedy, in the person of Mr Lillyston, who sits next to me at lectures, and wanted to be introduced to you,"

said Owen, as he came in to Kennedy's room that evening.

"I'm delighted," said Kennedy. "Mr Lillyston, let me introduce you to Mr Home."

"We hardly need an introduction, Hugh, at this time of day; do we?" said Julian, laughing; and the four were soon as much at home as it was possible for men to be. There was no lack of conversation. I think the rooms of a Camford undergraduate are about the last place where conversation ever flags; and when men like Kennedy, Owen, Julian, and Lillyston meet, it is perhaps more genuinely earnest and interesting than in any other time or place.

The next day, as Kennedy was sitting in Julian's rooms, glancing over the Aeschylus with him, in strutted Hazlet, whom we have incidentally mentioned as having been the son of a widow lady living at Ildown. He had come up to Camford straight from home, and as he had only received a home-education everything was strangely bewildering to him, and Julian was almost the only friend he knew. Nor was he likely to attract many friends; his manner was strangely self-confident, and his language dictatorial and dogmatic. In his mother's house he had long been the centre of religious tea-parties, before which he was often called upon to read and even to expound the Scriptures. "At the tip of his subduing tongue" were a number of fantastic phrases, originally misapplied, and long since worn bare of meaning, and the test of his orthodoxy was the universality with which he could reiterate proofs of heresy against every man of genius, honesty, and depth--who loved truth better than he loved the oracles of the prevalent idols. Hazlet practised the duty of Christian charity by dealing indiscriminate condemnation against all except those who belonged to his own exclusive and somewhat ignorant school of religious intolerance. His face was the reflex of his mind; his lank black hair stuck down in stiff dry straightness over a contracted forehead and an ill-shaped head; his spectacles gave additional gla.s.siness to a lack-l.u.s.tre eye, and the manner in which he carried his chin in the air seemed like an acted representation of "I am holier than thou."

Far be it from me to hold up to ridicule any body of earnest and honest men, to whatever party they may belong. I am writing of Hazlet, not of those who hold the same opinions as he did. That man must have been unfortunate in life who has not many friends, and friends whom he holds in deep affection, among the adherents of opinions most entirely antagonistic to his own. Hazlet's repulsiveness was due to a very mistaken education, developing a very foolish idiosyncrasy, and especially to the pernicious system of encouraging sentiments and expressions which in a boy's mind _could_ not be other than sickly exotics. He had to be taught his own hypocrisy by the painful progress of events, and, above all, he had to learn that religious shibboleths may be no proof of sanctification, and that religious intolerance is usually the hybrid offspring of ignorance and conceit. In many essential matters he held the truth,--but he held it in unrighteousness.

It may be imagined that Hazlet was no favourite companion of Julian Home. But Julian loved and honoured to the utmost of his power the good points of all; he had a deep and real veneration for humanity, and rarely allowed himself an unkind expression, or a look which indicated ennui, even to those a.s.sociates by whose presence he was most unspeakably bored. Hazlet mistook his courteous manner for a deferential agreement, and was, too often, in Julian's presence more than usually insufferable in his Pharisaical tendencies.

"Good heavens!" said Kennedy, who saw Hazlet coming across the court.

"Who's this, Home? He looks as if he had been just presiding at three conventicles and a meeting at Philadelphus Hall. Surely he can't be coming here."

"Oh, yes," said Julian, "that's a compatriot of mine named Hazlet; a very good fellow, I believe, though rather obtrusive perhaps."

"Good morning, Home," said Hazlet, in a measured and sanctified tone, as he entered the room and sat down.

Kennedy glanced impatiently at the Aeschylus.

"Ah! I see you're engaged on that heathen poet. It often strikes me, Home, that we may be wrong after all in spending so much time on these works of men, who, as Saint Paul tells us, were 'wholly given to idolatry.' I have just come from a most refreshing meeting at--"

"I say, Home," cut in Kennedy hastily, "shall I go? I suppose you won't do over any more of the Agamemnon this morning."

"I don't know," said Julian; "perhaps Hazlet will join us in our construe."

"No, I think not," said Hazlet, with a compa.s.sionate sigh. "I have looked at it; but some of it appeared to me so pagan in its sentiments that I contented myself with praying that I might not be put on. But you haven't told me what you think about what I was saying."

"Botheration," said Kennedy; "so your theory is that Christianity was intended to put an extinguisher over the light of heaven-born genius, and that the power and pa.s.sion and wisdom of Aeschylus came from himself or the devil, and not from G.o.d? Surely, without any further argument on such an absurd proposition, it ought to be sufficient for you that this kind of learning forms a part of your immediate duty."

"I find other duties more paramount--now prayer, for instance, and talk with sound friends."

"Phew!!!" whistled Kennedy, thoroughly disgusted at language which was as new to him as it was distasteful; and, to relieve his feelings, he abandoned the conversation to Julian, and began to turn over the books on the table. Julian, however, seemed quite disinclined to enter into the question, and after a pause, Hazlet, gracefully waiving his little triumph, asked him with a peculiar unction--

"And how goes it, my dear Home, with your immortal soul?"

"My soul!" said Julian carelessly. "Oh! it's all right."

Hazlet then began to look at Julian's pictures.