Julian Home Part 9

Gentlemen," he continued, "let me warn you not to have the impertinence to talk in this way again."

"Warn us!" said Bruce, trying to hide under bravado his crestfallen temper; "why, what'll you do if we choose to continue?"

"Make a few counter-remarks to begin with, Bruce, on parasites and parvenus, tuft-hunting freshmen, and the tenth transmitters of a foolish face," retorted Lillyston, glowing with honest indignation.

"And turn you out of the b.u.t.teries by the shoulders," said a strong undergraduate, who had chanced to be a witness of the scene. "A somewhat boyish proceeding, perhaps, but exactly suited to some capacities."

Bruce and his friends, seeing that they were beginning to have the worst of it, thought it about time to swagger off, and for the future learnt to confine their remarks to a more exclusive circle.

There had been another silent spectator of the scene in the person of Lord De Vayne. He was a young viscount whose estate bordered on the grounds of Lonstead Abbey, and he had known Julian since both of them were little boys. He had been entirely educated at home with an excellent tutor, who had filled his mind with all wise and generous sentiments; but his widowed mother lived in such complete seclusion that he had rarely entered the society of any of his own age, and was consequently timid and bashful. Meeting sometimes with Julian, he had conceived a warm admiration for his genius and character, and at one time had earnestly wished to join him at Harton. But his mother was so distressed at the proposition that he at once abandoned it, while he eagerly looked forward to the time when he should meet his friend at Saint Werner's, on the books of which college he had entered his name partly for this very reason. He had not been an undergraduate many days before he called on Julian, who had received him indeed very kindly, but who seemed rather shy of being much in his company for fear of the remarks which he had not yet learnt entirely to disregard. This was a great source of vexation to De Vayne, though the reason of it was partly explained after the remarks which he had just overheard.

"Home," he whispered, "I wish you'd come into my rooms after hall, I should so much like to have a talk. Do," he said, as he saw that Julian hesitated, "I a.s.sure you I have felt quite lonely here."

Accordingly, after hall, Julian strolled into Warwick's Court, and found his way to Lord De Vayne's rooms.

"I am so glad to see you, Julian, at last. As I have told you," he said, with a glistening eye, "I have been very lonely. I have never left home before, and have made no friend here as yet;" and he heaved a deep sigh.

Julian felt his heart full of friendliness for the gentle boy whose total inexperience made him seem younger than he really was. He glanced round the rooms; they were richly furnished, but full of memorials of home, that gave them a melancholy aspect. Over the fireplace was a water-colour likeness of his lady-mother in her widow's weeds, and on the opposite side of the room another picture of a beautiful young child--De Vayne's only brother, who had died in infancy. The handsomely-bound books on the shelves had been transferred from their well-known places in the library of Uther Hall, and the regal antlers which were fastened over the door had once graced the dining-room.

Thousands would have envied Lord De Vayne's position; but he had caught the shadow of his mother's sadness, his relations were few, at Saint Werner's as yet he had found none to lean upon, and he felt unhappy and alone.

"I was so ashamed, Julian," he said, "so utterly and unspeakably ashamed to hear the rudeness of these men as we came out of hall. I'm afraid you must have felt deeply hurt."

"Yes, for the moment; but I'm sorry that I took even a moment's notice of it. Why should one be ruffled because others are unfeeling and impertinent; it is their misfortune, not ours."

"But why did you come up as a sizar, Julian? Surely with Lonstead Abbey as your inheritance--"

"No," said Julian with a smile; "I am lord of my leisure, and no land beside."

"Really! I had always looked on you as a future neighbour and helper."

He was too delicate to make any inquiries on the subject, but while a bright airy vision rose for an instant before Julian's fancy, and then died away, his friend said, with ingenuous embarra.s.sment:

"You know, Home, I am very rich. In truth, I have far more money than I know what to do with. It only troubles me. I wish--"

"Oh, dear no!" said Julian hastily; "I got the Newry scholarship, you know, at Harton, and I really need no a.s.sistance whatever."

"I hope I haven't offended you; how unlucky I am," said De Vayne blushing.

"Not a whit, De Vayne; I know your kind heart."

"Well, do let me see something of you. Won't you come a walk sometimes, or let me come in of an evening when you're taking tea, and not at work?"

"Do," said Julian, and they agreed to meet at his rooms on the following Sunday evening.

Sunday at Camford was a happy day for Julian Home. It was a day of perfect leisure and rest; the time not spent at church or in the society of others, he generally occupied in taking a longer walk than usual, or in the luxuries of solemn and quiet thought. But the greatest enjoyment was to revel freely in books, and devote himself unrestrained to the gorgeous scenes of poetry, or the pa.s.sionate pages of eloquent men; on that day he drank deeply of pure streams that refreshed him for his weekly work; nor did he forget some hour of commune, in the secrecy of his chamber and the silence of his heart, with that G.o.d and Father in whom alone he trusted, and to whom alone he looked for deliverance from difficulty, and guidance under temptation. Of all hours his happiest and strongest were those in which he was alone--alone except for a heavenly presence, sitting at the feet of a Friend, and looking face to face upon himself.

He had been reading Wordsworth since hall-time, when the ringing of the chapel-bell summoned him to put on his surplice, and walk quietly down to chapel. As there was plenty of time, he took a stroll or two across the court before going in. While doing so, he met De Vayne, and in his company suddenly found himself vis-a-vis with his old enemy Brogten.

"Hm!" whispered Brogten to his companion; "the sizars are getting on. A sizar and a viscount arm-in-arm!"

Julian only heard enough of this sentence to be aware that it was highly insolent; and the flush on De Vayne's cheek showed that he too had caught something of its meaning.

"Never mind that boor's rudeness," he said. "I feel more than honoured to be in the sizar's company. How admirably quiet you are, Julian, under such conduct!"

"I try to be; not always with success, though," he answered, as his breast swelled, and his lip quivered with indignation

"Scorn!--to be scorned by one that I scorn: Is that a matter to make me fret?

Is that a matter to cause regret?

Stop! let's come into chapel."

They went into chapel together. De Vayne walked into the n.o.blemen's seats, and Julian, hot and angry, and with the words, "Scorn!--to be scorned by one that I scorn," still ringing in his ears, strode up the whole length of the chapel to the obscure corner set apart--is it not very needlessly set apart?--for the sizars' use.

Saint Werner's chapel on a Sunday evening is a moving sight. Five hundred men in surplices thronging the chapel from end to end--the very flower of English youth, in manly beauty, in strength, in race, in courage, in mind--all kneeling side by side, bound together in a common bond of union by the grand historic a.s.sociations of that n.o.ble place-- all mingling their voices together with the trebles of the choir and the thunder-music of the organ. This is a spectacle not often equalled; and to take a share in it, as one for whose sake in part it has been established, is a privilege not to be forgotten. The music, the devotion, the spirit of the place, smoothed the swelling thoughts of Julian's troubled heart. "Are we not all brethren? Hath not one Father begotten us?" Such began to be the burden of his thoughts, rather than the old "Scorn!--to be scorned by one that I scorn." And when the glorious tones of the anthem ceased, and the calm steady voice of the chaplain was heard alone, uttering in the sudden hush the grand overture to the n.o.ble prayer--

"_O Lord, our heavenly Father, high and mighty, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the only Ruler of princes, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth_."

Then the last demon of wrath was exorcised, and Julian thought to himself--

"No; from henceforth I scorn no one, and am indifferent alike to the proud man's scorn and the base man's sneer."

The two incidents that we have narrated made Julian fear that his position as a sizar would be one of continual annoyance. He afterwards gratefully acknowledged that in such a supposition he was quite mistaken. Never again while he remained a sizar did he hear the slightest unkind allusions to the circ.u.mstance, and but for the external regulations imposed by the college, he might even have forgotten the fact. Those regulations, especially the hall arrangements, were indeed sufficiently disagreeable at times. It could not be pleasant to dine in a hall which had just been left by hundreds of men, and to make the meal amid the prospect of slovenly servants employed in the emptying of wine-gla.s.ses and the ligurrition of dishes, sometimes even in pa.s.sages of coquetry or noisy civilities, on the interchange of which the presence of these undergraduates seemed to impose but little check.

These things may be better now, and in spite of them Julian felt hearty reason to be grateful for the real kindness of the Saint Werner's authorities. In other respects he found that the fact of his being a sizar made no sort of difference in his position; he found that the majority of men either knew or cared nothing about it, and sought his society on terms of the most unquestioned equality, for the sake of the pleasure which his company afforded them, and the thoughts which it enabled them to ventilate or interchange.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

STUDY AND IDLENESS.

"Then what golden hours were for us, While we sate together there!

How the white vests of the chorus Seemed to wave up a live air.

How the cothurns trod majestic, Down the deep iambic lines, And the rolling anapaestic Curled like vapour over shrines!"

_E Barrett Browning_.

The incentives which lead young men to work are as various as the influences which tend to make them idle. One toils on, however hopelessly, from a sense of duty, from a desire to please his parents, and satisfy the requirements of the place; another because he has been well trained into habits of work, and has a notion of educating the mind; a third because he has set his heart on a fellowship; a fourth, because he is intensely ambitious, and looks on a good degree as the stepping-stone to literary or political honours. The fewest perhaps pursue learning for her own sake, and study out of a simple eagerness to know what _may_ be known, as the best means of cultivating their intellectual powers for the attainment of at least a personal solution of those great problems, the existence of which they have already begun to realise. But of this rare cla.s.s was Julian Home. He studied with an ardour and a pa.s.sion, before which difficulties vanished, and in consequence of which, he seemed to progress not the less surely, because it was with great strides. For the first time in his life, Julian found himself entirely alone in the great wide realm of literature--alone, to wander at his own will, almost without a guide. And joyously did that brave young spirit pursue its way--now resting in some fragrant glen, and by some fountain mirror, where the boughs which bent over him were bright with blossom, and rich with fruit--now plunging into some deep thicket, where at every step he had to push aside the heavy branches and tangled weeds--and now climbing with toilful progress some steep and rocky hill, on whose summit, hardly attained, he could rest at last, and gaze back over perils surmounted, and precipices pa.s.sed, and mark the thunder rolling over the valleys, or gaze on kingdoms full of peace and beauty, slumbering in the broad sunshine beneath his feet.

Julian read for the sake of knowledge, and because he intensely enjoyed the great authors, whose thoughts he studied. He had read parts of Homer, parts of Thucydides, parts of Tacitus, parts of the tragedians, at school, but now he had it in his power to study a great author entire, and as a whole. Never before did he fully appreciate the "thunderous lilt" of Greek epic, the touching and voluptuous tenderness of Latin elegy, the regal pomp of history, the gorgeous and philosophic mystery of the old dramatic fables. Never before had he learnt to gaze on "the bright countenance of truth, in the mild and dewy air of delightful studies." Those who decry cla.s.sical education, do so from inexperience of its real character and value, and can hardly conceive the sense of strength and freedom which a young and ingenuous intellect acquires in all literature, and in all thought, by the laborious and successful endeavour to enter into that n.o.ble heritage which has been left us by the wisdom of bygone generations. Those hours were the happiest of Julian's life; often would he be beguiled by his studies into the "wee small" hours of night; and in the grand old company of eloquent men, and profound philosophers, he would forget everything in the sense of intellectual advance. Then first he began to understand Milton's n.o.ble exclamation--

"How charming is divine philosophy!

Not harsh and rugged as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, Where no crude surfeit reigns."

He studied accurately, yet with appreciation; sometimes the two ways of study are not combined, and while one man will be content with a cold and barren estimate of _ge_'s and _pon_'s derived from wading through the unutterable tedium of interminable German notes, of which the last always contradicted all the rest; another will content himself with eviscerating the general meaning of a pa.s.sage, without any attempt to feel the finer pulses of emotion, or discriminate the nicer shades of thought. Eschewing commentators as much as he could, Julian would first carefully go over a long pa.s.sage, solely with a view to the clear comprehension of the author's language, and would then re-read the whole for the purpose of enjoying and appreciating the thoughts which the words enshrined; and finally, when he had finished a book or a poem, would run through it again as a whole, with all the glow and enthusiasm of a perfect comprehension.

Sometimes Kennedy, or Owen, or Lord De Vayne, would read with him. This was always in lighter and easier authors, read chiefly for practice, and for the sake of the poetry or the story, which lent them their attraction. It was necessary to pursue in solitude all the severer paths of study; but he found these evenings, spent at once in society and yet over books, full both of profit and enjoyment. Lillyston, although not a first-rate cla.s.sic, often formed one of the party; Owen and Julian contributed the requisite scholarship and the accurate knowledge, while Lillyston and De Vayne would often throw out some literary ill.u.s.tration or historical parallel, and Kennedy gave life and brightness to them all, by the flow and sparkle of his gaiety and wit.

But it must be admitted that Kennedy was the least studious element in the party, and was too often the cause of digressions, and conversations which led them to abandon altogether the immediate object of their evening's work.

Kennedy had a tendency to idleness, which was developed by the freedom with which he plunged into society of all kinds. His company was so agreeable, and his bright young face was so happy an addition to all parties, that he was in a round of constant engagements--breakfast parties, wines, supper parties, and dinners--that encroached _far_ too much on the hours of work. At school the perpetual examinations kept alive an emulous spirit, which counteracted his fondness for mental vagrancy; but at college the examinations--at least those of any importance--are few and far between; and he always flattered himself that he meant soon to make up for lost time, for three years looks an immense period to a young man at the entrance of his university career.

It was nearly as necessary, (even in a pecuniary point of view), for him as for Julian to make the best use of his time; for although he was an only son, he was not destined to inherit a fortune sufficient for his support.