"I feel acutely the position in which I am forced to leave your mother. I do _not_ pity _you_ in the least. I gave you the amplest opportunity to save yourself from this ruin, if you had not been a fool. You cared for nothing and for n.o.body but yourself. You never worked hard, though you knew it to be my wish; you a.s.sumed an air of spurious independence, and affected the fine gentleman. Your conceit and idleness will be their own punishment. You have made your own bed; now you will have to lie in it.
"ROLLO BRUCE."
The truth was soon known to the world. Numberless executions were put into Vyvyan House. Every available fragment of property was seized by Sir Rollo"s creditors; and as Lady Bruce"s private fortune had long been spent, she and her son were left all but penniless. The gay and gilded friends of their summer hours were the first to desert them, and Sir Rollo"s wickedness had created such a gust of indignation, that few came forward to lend his family the slightest a.s.sistance.
When Bruce found himself in this most distressing position--when he sat with his mother in shame and retirement in obscure lodgings, which had been taken for them by one of their former servants, and with no immediate means of livelihood--then first the folly of his past career revealed itself to his mind in its full proportions. Lady Bruce"s health was dreadfully affected by the mental anguish through which she had pa.s.sed, and it became a positive necessity that Bruce should work with his head or hands to earn their daily bread.
He found no difficulty in procuring a temporary post in a lawyer"s office as a clerk. The drudgery was terrible. Daily, from nine in the morning to six in the evening, he found himself chained to the desk, and obliged to go through the dullest and most mechanical routine, the only respite being half an hour in the middle of the day, which he spent in dining at an eating-house. Nursed on the lap of luxury, habituated to the choicest viands, and accustomed to find every whim fulfilled, this kind of life was intolerable to him. The steaming recesses of a squalid eating-house gave him a sensation of loathing and sickness, and the want of exercise made him look haggard and wan. In vain he appealed to men who had called themselves his father"s friends; he found to his cost that the son of a detected swindler has no friends, and more especially if his own life have been tainted with suspicion or dishonour. Poor Bruce was driven to the very verge of despair.
He applied for a situation in a bank, but he was informed that it could not be granted him unless he could obtain a certificate of good character from his college, which, of course, was out of the question.
He tried writing for the press, but his shallow intellectual resources soon ran dry. The pittance he could thus earn did not remunerate him for the toil and wasted health, and even this pittance was too often cruelly held back. He made applications in answer to all sorts of advertis.e.m.e.nts, but one after another the replies were unfavourable, until his whole heart died within him. No intelligence could be obtained of his father"s hiding-place, and before a year had elapsed since Sir Rollo"s bankruptcy and felony had been made known, Lady Bruce died at her son"s lodgings, worn out with misery and shame.
This climax of the young man"s misfortunes awoke at last the long dormant sympathy in his favour. An effort was made by his few remaining and unalienated friends to provide for him the means of emigration, which seemed the only course likely to give him once more a fair start in life. But to pay his pa.s.sage, and provide him with the means of settling in New Zealand required a considerable sum, and Bruce had to suffer for weeks the agonies of hope deferred. And when he glanced over his past life, he found nothing to help him. He could not look back with any comfort; the past was haunted by the phantoms of regret. His violent and wilful infancy, his proud, pa.s.sionate boyhood, his wandering and wicked youth, afforded him few green spots whereon the eye of retrospect could rest with calm. As the wayworn traveller who on some bright day sat down by the fringed bank of clear fountain or silver lake, and while he leant to look into its waters, was suddenly dazzled into madness by the flashing upwards upon him, from the unknown depths, of some startling image; so Bruce, as he rested by the dusty wayside of life, and gazed into the dark abysses of recollection, was startled and horrified, with a more fearful nympholepsy, by the crowding images and sullen glare of unforgotten and half-forgotten sins.
But in dwelling on his past life, Bruce bethought him that he might still find friends at school; and not long after his mother"s funeral, he determined to call on his old masters, and get such pecuniary aid as he could from them and his schoolboy friends. To come to such a resolution was the very bitterness of humiliation; but Bruce was now all eagerness to escape from England, and recommence a new life in other lands.
He took a third cla.s.s ticket to Harton, and when he arrived there, was so overcome with shame that he well-nigh determined to return by the next train, and leave the town unvisited, at whatever cost; but on inquiry he found that the next train would not start for some hours, and meanwhile he fully expected to be seen and recognised by those whom he had known before. And yet it was not easy, in that stooping figure, with the pale cheek and dimmed eye, to recognise the bright and audacious Vyvyan Bruce, who had been captain of Harton barely three years before. Poverty, ruin, disappointment, confinement, guilt, and sorrow had done their work with marvellous quickness.
Nerving himself to the effort, he turned his face towards Harton, and walked slowly up the hill. The reminiscences which the walk recalled were not happy--rather, far from happy. It was not because formerly when he was a flattered, and rich, and handsome, and popular Harton boy, all the prospects of his life had looked as bright as now they seemed full of gloom; it was not that then both his parents were living, and now one was dead, the other disgraced; it was not that then he was full of health and vigour, and now was feeble and wearied; it was not that then he seemed to have many friends, and now he hardly knew of one; no, it was none of these things that affected him most deeply as he caught sight of the well-known chapel, and strolled up the familiar hill; but it was the thought, the bitter thought, the cursed thought that there, as at Camford, _the voice of his brother"s blood was crying against htm from the ground_.
By the time he reached the school buildings, it happened to be just one o"clock, and from the various school-rooms, the boys were pouring out in gay and noisy throngs. The faces were new to him for the most part, and at first he began to fancy that he should recognise no one. But at last he observed a boy looking hard at him, who at length came up and shook him warmly by the hand.
"How do you do, Bruce? Ah, I see you don"t remember me; true, I was only in the Sh.e.l.l when you left, but you ought at least to remember your old f.a.gs."
The change of countenance between fifteen and eighteen is however very great, and it was not without an effort that Bruce recalled in the tall strong fellow who was talking to him his quondam f.a.g, little Walter Thornley, now in his turn captain of the eleven, and Head of the school, whose admiration of Bruce we have already recorded in the first chapter of this eventful history.
"Where are you off to now?" said Thornley.
"To the Doctor"s."
"Well, you"ll come and see me afterwards?"
Bruce promised and then walked to see the Doctor, and his old tutor. To both he opened his piteous tale, and both of them gave him the most generous and liberal a.s.sistance; they promised also to procure him such other aid as might lie in their power. A little lighter in heart, he went to pay his visit to Thornley, whom he found occupying his old rooms. As Bruce recrossed the familiar threshold, the contrasts of past and present were almost too much for him, and he found it difficult to restrain his tears. He stayed but a short time, and then returned to London to his poor and lonely lodgings.
Walter Thornley heard his story from the tutor, and besides getting a large subscription for him among his own friends, wrote to ask if Julian could procure for the emigrant any a.s.sistance in Camford. Julian received the letter about the middle of the October term in his third year, and it ran thus:--
"DEAR HOME--Beyond knowing by rumour that I am head of the school, you will, I suppose, hardly remember a boy who was so low in the school as I was when you were monitor. But though you will perhaps have forgotten me, I have not forgotten you, or the many kinds acts I experienced from you and Lillyston when I was a little new fellow.
Remembering these, I am emboldened to write, and ask if you or any of the old Hartonians are willing to a.s.sist poor Bruce to settle in New Zealand, now that he has no chance of succeeding well in England? I am sure that _you_ personally will be glad of any opportunity to help an old school-fellow in his distress and difficulty, for report tells me that Julian Home is as kind-hearted and generous as he was when he won the Newry scholarship at Harton.--Believe me to be, my dear Home, yours very truly,--WALTER THORNLEY."
Julian had almost forgotten the very existence of Thornley when this letter recalled him to his mind; but it was one of the pleasures of Julian"s life constantly to receive letters of this kind from former school-fellows, thanking him for past kindnesses of which he was wholly unconscious from the simple and natural manner in which they had been done. It need hardly be said that he at once complied with the request which the letter contained, and that, (next to De Vayne"s), his own was the largest contribution towards the handsome sum which the Hartonians and other Saint Werner"s men cheerfully subscribed to a.s.sist their former comrade in his hour of need.
To avoid all unnecessary wounding of Bruce"s feelings, the money thus collected was transmitted to the Doctor to be placed at Bruce"s disposal. It completed the sum requisite for his outfit, and there was no longer any obstacle in the way of his immediate departure from England. He at once booked his pa.s.sage by an emigrant ship, and sailed from England. The day after his departure, Julian received from him the following letter:--
"Dear Julian--Although you are one of those who would "do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame," I am not ignorant of the debt of grat.i.tude which I owe to you for providing me with the means of recovering my fortunes, and beginning life afresh in another hemisphere.
"Our lots in life, since at Harton we ran a neck and neck race, have been widely different, and while the happy months have been rolling for _you_ on silver wheels, and the happy hours speeding by you with white feet, to me Time has been:--
""A maniac scattering dust, And Life a Fury slinging flame."
"How much I have gone through in the last year--the acc.u.mulated agony of remorse, bereavement, and ruin--no human soul can tell. No wonder my bark was wrecked after such mad and careless navigation; but, thank G.o.d, the blow of the tempest that staggered and shattered it, and drove it on the reefs, has not sunk it utterly, and now, like a waif or stray, it is being carried to be refitted across a thousand leagues of sea.
"I am not the Bruce you knew, but a wiser, sadder, and better man. I have not yet lost all hope. The old book of my life was so s.m.u.tched and begrimed--torn, dogs-eared, and scrawled over--that it was scarcely worth while to turn over a new leaf. I have rather began a new volume altogether, and trust, by G.o.d"s blessing, that when "Finis"
comes to be written in it, some few of the pages will bear re-perusal.
""De Vayne!" how that name haunts me; how full it is of horror--De Vayne and Hazlet; and yet I hear that both have contributed to my help. It gives me new life to know that human hearts can be so full of forgiveness and of love.
"Starting almost for another world--without fortune, without friends, with nothing but head and heart, the wreck of what I was--I sometimes feel so sad that I could wish myself out of the world altogether.
Forgive me, then, for once more bringing before you a name which you can only connect with the most unpleasant and sombre thoughts, and pray for me that my efforts, (this time they are genuine and sincere), to improve my life, my talents, and my fortune, may be crowned with success.
"We sail in an hour or sooner, for I hear them weighing anchor now.
Good-bye. Accept my warmest thanks for all your kindnesses, and my wishes, (ah! that they were worthier!) for your happiness in life, and believe me, my dear Julian, your sincere and grateful friend--
"Vyvyan Bruce.
"_P S_--I am positively alone; not one soul is here even to bid me good-bye. Eheu! jam serus vitam ingemo relictam!"
Julian read the letter many times; he was touched by its delicate and eloquent sorrow--its fine and chastened thoughtfulness. He was no longer in a mood to work, but closed his books, and watched the faces in the fire. One thought filled him with joy and thankfulness; it was the thought that, though of his friends and acquaintances so many had gone wrong, yet G.o.d was leading them back again, by rough and th.o.r.n.y roads it might be, but still by sure roads to the right path once more. Hazlet, Bruce, Brogten--above all, his friend and brother Kennedy--were returning to the fold they had deserted, were learning that for him who has sinned and suffered, REPENTANCE IS THE WORK OF LIFE. And as these thoughts floated through Julian"s mind, the words of an old prayer came back upon his lips--"That it may please Thee to strengthen such as do stand; and to _comfort and help the weak-hearted, and to raise up them that fall_; and finally, to beat down Satan under our feet."
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.
A QUIET PROSPECT.
"Patet omnibus veritas; nondum est prorsus occupata."
Seneca, Epistolae 33.
Julian"s third year at Camford was by no means the happiest period of his life there, because the sad absence of Kennedy and De Vayne made a gap in his circle of friends which could not easily be filled up; but this was the _annus mirabilis_ of his university career. He gained prize after prize; he was always first cla.s.s in the college examinations; he won the chancellor"s medals for Latin and English verse, and, indeed, almost divided with Owen the honours of the place.
To crown all, he gained the Ireford University scholarship, which Owen had won the year before.
Of all the men of his year, he was the most honoured and respected; he wore the weight both of his honours and his learning "lightly like a flower," and there was a graceful humility, joined with his self-dependence, which won every heart, and prevented that jealousy which sometimes accompanies success.
The most important event in his intellectual progress was the attention which he began to turn at this time to biblical and theological studies.
He was thankful in later years that he had deferred such inquiries to a time when he was capacitated for them by a calm and sound judgment, and a solid basis of linguistic and historical knowledge. He had always looked forward to holy orders, and regarding the life of a clergyman as his appointed work, he considered that an honest, a critical, and an impartial study of the Bible was his first duty. In setting about it, he came to it as a little child; all he sought for was the simple truth, uncrushed by human traditions, unmingled with human dogmas, untrammelled by human interpretations, unadulterated by human systems. He found that he had a vast amount to unlearn, and saw clearly that if he fearlessly pursued his inquiries they would lead him so far from the belief of popular ignorance, as very probably to bar all worldly success in the sacred profession which he had chosen. But he knew that the profession _was_ sacred, and, fearless by nature, he determined to seek for truth and truth only, honestly following the prayerful conclusions of his clearest and most deliberate judgment. Even in these early days the freedom and honesty of his research drew on him slight sibilations of those whose religion was shallow and sectarian; in after years they were destined to bring on him open and positive persecution.
Not that Julian was ever in the least degree obtrusive in stating his beliefs when they widely and materially differed from the expressed opinions of the majority; except, indeed, in the cases when such opinions appeared to him dishonest or dangerous. He was scrupulously careful not to wound the conscience of those who would have been unable to understand the ground of his arguments, even when they could not resist their logical statement; and in whom long custom was so inveterate that the weed of system could not be torn out of their hearts without endangering the flower of belief. With men like Hazlet--I mean the reformed and now sincere Hazlet--he either confined himself wholly to subjects on which differences were impossible, or, if questioned, stated his views with caution and consideration. It was only with the noisy and violent upholders of long-grounded error--error which they were too feeble to maintain except by mean invective or ignorant declamation--that Julian used the keen edge of his sarcasm, or the weighty sword of his moral indignation. He was not the man to bow down before the fool"s-cap of tyrannous and blatant ignorance. If he could have chosen one utterance from the holy Scriptures, which to him was more precious in its full meaning than another, it was that promise, rich with inexhaustible blessing, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
Perhaps there is no greater want in this age than a full, fair, _fearless_ religio clerici; the men who _could_ write it, dare not; and the men who dare write it, cannot. They say the age is not ripe for it; and if they mean that it would cause violent offence to the potent rulers of fashionable religious dogmatism, they are right. But I wander from my theme, and meddle with the subjects which this is not the place to touch upon.
The close of Julian"s undergraduate life was as honourable as its promise had been. He obtained a brilliant first cla.s.s, and was bracketed with Owen as the best cla.s.sic of his year. Lillyston also distinguished himself, and all three determined to read for Fellowships, which, before a year was over, they had the honour to obtain.
Meanwhile a circ.u.mstance had happened which changed the course of Kennedy"s intentions. After his conversation with Violet, he had often thought of his plans for the future, and written to her about them.
Reconciled to the plan, of returning to Camford after the year of his rustication, he was now trying to settle his future profession. His way seemed by no means clear; he had never thought of being a clergyman, and now, more than ever, deemed himself unfitted for such a life. The long tedious delay of the bar to a man without any special interest; the sickness of hope deferred during the prime years of life the weariness of a distasteful study, and the heavy trial of dusky chambers in a city to a man who loved the sea and the country with a pa.s.sionate love, deterred him from choosing the law. He had no liking for the army, except in time of war; the life of the officers whom he knew was not altogether to his mind, and he was neither inclined to gaiety nor fond of an occupation which offered so many temptations to listlessness and indolence. There was no immediate necessity to decide finally, because in any case he meant to take his degree, and looked forward with some hope, after his year of unswerving diligence in the retirement of Orton, to honours in the Tripos and the pleasant aid of a Saint Werner"s Fellowship as the crown of his career. But on the whole, he began to think that he might be both useful and successful as a physician. He had a deep reverence for this earthly tabernacle of the immortal soul, and a hallowed and reverend curiosity about that "harp of a thousand strings," which, if it be untuned by sickness, mars every other melody of life. Violet entered into all his views, and they determined to leave the matter thus until Kennedy should have donned his B A gown.
But about this period that public step was taken of throwing open to compet.i.tion the Indian civil service appointments, which has been of such enormous advantage to the "middle-cla.s.ses" of England by offering to them, as the reward of industry, the opportunity of a new and honourable profession, and which seems likely to be prolific of good results to the future of our Empire in the East. Directly Kennedy saw the announcement of the examination, he grasped with avidity the chance of a provision for life which it afforded, and easily obtained the a.s.sent both of his own and of Julian"s family to offer himself as a candidate. Of course they contemplated with sorrow the prospect of so long a separation as the plan involved, but they saw that he himself was strongly desirous to win their approval of his proposition, and of course his wishes were Violet"s too.
So Kennedy went in for the civil service examination, and acquitted himself so admirably that his name headed the list of successful compet.i.tors, and he was told that he must prepare himself to leave England in a year for the post to which they appointed him.