He bore it in stoical silence, until he reached his own rooms; and then, do not blame him--my poor Kennedy--if he bowed his head upon his hands, and cried like a little child. There are times when the bravest man feels quite like a boy--feels as if he were unchanged since the day when he sorrowed for boyish trespa.s.ses, and was chidden for boyish faults.
Kennedy was very young, and he was eating the fruits of folly and idleness in painful failure and hope deferred. In public he never showed the faintest signs of vexation, but in the loneliness of his closet do not blame him if he wept--for Violet"s sake as well as for his own.
So once more he was separated from Julian and Lillyston in hall and chapel, for they now sat at the scholars" table and in the scholars"
seats.
He was beginning to get over his feeling of sorrow when he received a letter, which did not need the coronet on the seal to show him that his correspondent was De Vayne. He opened it with eagerness and curiosity, and read--
"_Eaglestower, April_ 30, 18--, _Argyllshire_.
"My Dear Kennedy--How long it is since we saw or heard of each other!
I am getting well now, slowly but surely, and as I am amusing my leisure by reviving my old correspondence with my friends, let me write to you whom I reckon and shall ever reckon among that honoured number.
"I am afraid that you consider me to have been slightly alienated from you by the sad scene which your rooms witnessed when last we met in health, and by the connection into which your name was dragged, by popular rumour, with that unhappy affair. If such a thought has ever troubled you, let me pray that you will banish it. I have long since been sure that you would have been ready to suffer any calamity rather than expose me to the foreseen possibility of such an outrage.
"No, believe me, dear Kennedy, I am as much now as I always have been since I knew you, your sincere and affectionate friend. Nor will I conceal how deep an interest another circ.u.mstance has given me in your welfare. You perhaps did not know that I too loved your affianced Violet; how long, how deeply I can never utter to any living soul. I did not know that you had won her affections, and the information that such was the case, came on me like the death-knell of all my cherished hopes. But I have schooled myself now to the calm contemplation of my failure, and I can rejoice without envy in the knowledge, that in you she has won a lover richly endowed with all the qualities on which future happiness can depend.
"I write to you partly to say good-bye. In a fortnight I am going abroad, and shall not return until I feel that I have conquered a hopeless pa.s.sion, and regained a shattered health. Farewell to dear Old Camford! I little thought that my career there would terminate as it did, but I trust in the full persuasion that G.o.d worketh all things for good to them who love Him.
"Once more good-bye. When I return, I hope that I shall see leaning on your arm, a fair, a divine young bride.--Ever affectionately yours, De Vayne."
Kennedy had written home to announce that his name was _not_ to be found in the list of Saint Werner"s scholars. The information had disgusted his father exceedingly. Mr Kennedy, himself an old Wernerian, loved that royal foundation with an unchanging regard, and ever since that day Edward had been playing in his hall a pretty boy, he determined that he should be a Saint Werner"s scholar at his first trial. He knew his son"s abilities, and felt convinced that there must be some radical fault in his Camford life to produce such a disastrous series of failures and disgraces. Unable to gain any real information on the subject from Edward"s letters, he determined to write up at once, and ask the cla.s.sical and mathematical tutors the points in which his son was most deficient, and the reason of his continued want of success.
The cla.s.sical tutor, Mr Dalton, wrote back that Kennedy"s failure was due solely to idleness; that his abilities were acknowledged to be brilliant, but that at Camford as everywhere else, the notion of success without industry, was a chimera invented by boastfulness and conceit.
"Le Genie c"est la Patience."
"You seem, however," continued Mr Dalton, "to be under the mistaken impression that your son read with me last term, and even "read double."
This is not the case, as he has ceased to read with me since the end of the Christmas term: I was sorry that he did so; for if economy was an object, I would gladly, merely for the sake of the interest I take in him, have afforded gratuitous a.s.sistance to so clever and promising a pupil."
The letter of Mr Baer, the mathematical tutor, was precisely to the same effect. "I can only speak," he said, "from what I observed of your son previous to last Christmas; since then I have not had the pleasure of numbering him among my pupils."
When Mr Dalton"s letter came, Mr Kennedy was exceedingly perplexed to understand what it meant, and a.s.sumed that there must be some unaccountable mistake. He simply could not believe that his son could have asked him for the money on false pretences. But when Mr Baer"s letter confirmed the fact that Kennedy had not been reading with a tutor either in cla.s.sics or mathematics during the previous quarter, it seemed impossible for any one any longer to shut his eyes to the truth.
When the real state of the case forced itself on Mr Kennedy"s conviction, his affliction was so deep that no language can adequately describe what he suffered. In a few days his countenance became sensibly older-looking, and his hair more grey. His favourite and only surviving son had proved unworthy and base. Not only had he wasted time in frivolous company, but clearly he must have sunk very low to be guilty of a crime so heinous in itself, and so peculiarly wounding to a father"s heart, as the one which it was plain that he had committed.
At first Mr Kennedy could not trust himself to write, lest the anger and indignation which usurped the place of sorrow should lead him into a violence which might produce irreparable harm. Meanwhile, he bore in silence the blows which had fallen. Not even to his daughter Eva did he reveal the overwhelming secret of her brother"s shame, but brooded in loneliness over the fair promise of the past, blighted utterly in the disgrace of the present. Often when he had looked at his young son, and seen how glorious and how happy his life might be, he had determined to shelter him from all evil, and endow him with means and opportunities for every success. He had looked to him as a pride and stay in declining manhood, and a comfort in old age. Edward Kennedy had been "a child whom every eye that looked on loved," and now he was--; Mr Kennedy _could_ not apply to him the only name which at once sprang up to his lips. He wrote--
"Dear Edward,--When I tell you that it costs me an _effort_, a _strong_ effort to call you "dear," you may judge of the depth of my anger. I cannot trust myself, nor will I condescend to say much to you. Suffice it for you to know that your shameful transactions are detected, and that I am now aware of the means, the treacherous dishonest means you have adopted to procure money, which, since I give you an ample and liberal allowance, can only be wanted to pander to vice, idleness, and I know not what other forms of sin.
"I tell you that I do not know what to say; if you can act as you have acted, you must be quite deaf to expostulation, and dead to shame.
You have done all you can to cover me and yourself with dishonour, and to bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.
"Oh Edward, Edward! if I could have foreseen this in the days when you were yet a young and innocent and happy boy, I would have chosen rather that you should die.
"It must be a long time before you see my face again. I will not see you in the coming holidays, and I at once reduce your allowance to half of what it was. I cannot, and will not supply money to be wasted in extravagance and folly, nor shall I again be deceived into granting it to you on false pretences--Your indignant, deeply-sorrowing father, T. KENNEDY."
Kennedy read the letter, and re-read it, and laid it down on the table beside his untouched breakfast. There was but one expression in his face, and that was misery, and in his soul no other feeling than that of hopeless shame.
He did not, and could not write to his father. What was to be said? He must bear his burden--the _burden of detection and of punishment_-- alone.
And the thought of Violet added keener poignancy to all his grief. For Kennedy could not but observe that her letters were not so fondly, pa.s.sionately loving as they once had been, and he knew that the fault was his, because his own letters reflected, like a broken mirror, the troubled images of his wandering heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.
KENNEDY"S DESPAIR.
"When all the blandishments from life are gone, The coward slinks to death;--the brave live on!"
Of all the sicknesses that can happen to the human soul, the deadliest and the most incurable is the feeling of despair--and this was the malady which now infected every vein of Kennedy"s moral and intellectual life.
Could he but have conquered his pride so far as to take but one person into his confidence, all might have been well. But Violet--could he ever tell Violet of sins which her n.o.ble heart must render so inconceivable as almost to make it impossible for her to sympathise with one who committed them? And Eva; could he ever wound the tender affection of his sweet sister, by revealing to her the disgrace of the brother whom, from her childhood, she had idolised? He sometimes thought that he would confess to Julian or Lillyston; but his courage failed him when the time came, and he fed on his own heart in solitude, avoiding the society of men.
The sore burden of a self-reproaching spirit wore him down. He had fallen so often now, and swerved so often from the path of temperance, rect.i.tude, and honour, that he began to regard himself as a hopeless reprobate--as one who had been weighed and found wanting--tested of G.o.d, and deliberately set aside.
And so step by step the devil thrust him into desperation, and strove thereby to clinch the hopelessness of his estate. With wild fierce pa.s.sion, Kennedy flung himself into sins he had never known before; angrily he laid waste the beauty and glory of the vineyard whose hedge had been broken down; a little entrance to the sanctuary had been opened to evil thoughts, and they, when once admitted, soon flung back wider and wider the golden gates, till the revelling band of worse wickednesses rushed in and defiled the altar, and trampled on the virgin floors, and defaced the cedarn walls with images of idolatry and picturings of sin. Because he had sunk into the slough of despond, he would be heedless of the mud that gathered on his garments. Was he not ruined already? Could anything much worse befall him than had befallen him already? No; he would sin on now and take his fill.
It was a short period of his life; but in no other period did he suffer so much, or shake more fatally the foundations of all future happiness.
It was emphatically a sin against his own soul, and as such it affected his very look. Those blue laughing eyes were clouded over, and the bloom died away from his cheeks, and the ingenuous beauty from his countenance, as the light of the Shechinah grew pale and dim in the inmost sanctuary. Kennedy was not mastered by impulse, but driven by despair.
Nor did he take any precaution to shield himself from punishment--the punishment of outward circ.u.mstance and natural consequence--as his moral abas.e.m.e.nt proceeded. His acquaintances shunned him, his friends dropped away from him, and the guiltiness of the present received a tinge of deeper horror from the gloom of the future.
All that could be done, Julian did. He warned, he expostulated, he reminded of purer and happier--of pure and happy days. But he did not know the bitter fountain of despondency whence flowed those naphthaline streams of pa.s.sion. At last he said--
"Kennedy, I have not often spoken to you of my dear sister; it is time to speak of her now. Your conduct proves to me that you do not and cannot love her."
Kennedy listened in silence; his face bowed down upon his hands. "You _could_ not go on as you are doing if you loved her, for love allows no meaner, no unhallowed fires to pollute her vestal flame. Your love must be a pretence--a thing of the past. It was only possible, Kennedy, when you were worthier than now you are."
He groaned deeply, but still said nothing.
"Kennedy," continued Julian, "I have loved you as a friend, as a brother; I love you still most earnestly, and you must not be too much pained at what I say; but I have come to a determination which I must tell you, and by which I must abide. Your engagement with Violet must cease."
"Does SHE say so?" he asked in a hollow voice.
"No, she does not know, Kennedy, what I know of you; but she will trust my deep affection, and know that I act solely for her good. The blow may almost kill her, but better that she should die than that her life should be ever connected--oh, that you should have driven me to say it-- with one so stained as yours!"
"Aye!" said Kennedy bitterly, "stab hard, for the knife is in your hand.
Fling dust on those who are down already--it is the world"s way. I see through it all, Julian Home; you would gladly get rid of me, that Violet may wear a coronet. No comparison between a penniless and ruined undergraduate, and a handsome, rich young viscount."
"Unjust! ungenerous!" answered Julian, with indignation; "you have poisoned your own true heart, Kennedy, or you would not utter the lie which you must disbelieve. Edward Kennedy, I will not attempt to rebut your unworthy suspicions; you know neither my character nor Violet"s, or you would not have dared to utter them. No--it is clearer to me than ever that you are no fit suitor for my sister. Pa.s.sion and weakness have dragged you very low. I trust and pray that you may recover yourself again."
A sudden rush of tears came to his eyes as he turned away to leave his earliest and best-loved college friend. But Kennedy stopped him, and said wildly--
"Stop, Julian Home, you shall hear me speak. I can hardly believe that you do this of your own responsibility--without Violet"s--nay, nay, I must not call her so--without your sister"s consent. And if this be so, hear me. Tell her that I scorn the heart which would thus fling away its plighted love: tell her that she has committed a great sin in thus rejecting me: tell her that _she_ is now responsible for all my future,--that whatever errors I may fall into, whatever sins I may commit, whatever disgrace or ruin I may incur, _she_ is the author of them. Tell her that if I ever live to do ungenerous acts, or ever yield to bursts of foolish pa.s.sion, the acts are hers, not mine; _she_ will have caused them; my life lies at her feet. Tell her this before it is too late. What? you still wish to hurry away? Go, then." He almost pushed Julian out, and banged the door after him.
Amazed at this paroxysm of wrath and madness, Julian went down-stairs with a slow step and a heavy, heavy heart; above all, he dreaded the necessity of breaking to Violet the heart-rending intelligence of his decision, and the circ.u.mstances which caused it. He trembled to do it, for he knew not how crushing the weight might prove. At last he determined to write to his mother, and to beg her to bear for him the pain of telling that which her womanly tact and maternal sympathy might make less overwhelming to be borne.
But Kennedy, after Julian"s words, rushed out of his rooms, and it was night. He left the college, and wandered into the fields--he knew not whither, nor with what intent.