"Do so, sir. And let me add," said the Master, "that a little more respectfulness of manner would be becoming in your present position."
Kennedy"s lip curled, and without answer he left the room to fetch the wine, grimly chuckling at the effect which the mixture would produce on Mr Norton"s fastidious taste. When he reached his rooms, he stumbled against the table in his hurry, and upset a little gla.s.s dish which held his pencils, one of which rolled away under the fender. In lifting the fender to pick it up, a piece of paper caught his eye, which the bedmaker in cleaning the room had swept out of sight in the morning. He looked at it, and saw in legible characters, "Laudanum, Poison." It was the label which had been loosely tied on Bruce"s phial, and which had slipped off as he hurried it into his pocket.
He read it, and as the horrid truth flashed across his mind, stood for a moment stupefied and dumb. His plan was instantly formed. Instead of returning to the conclave of Seniors he ran straight off to the chemist"s, which was close by Saint Werner"s.
"Do you know anything of this label?" he said, thrusting it into the chemist"s hands.
"Yes," said the man, after looking at it for a moment; "it is the label of a bottle of laudanum which I sold yesterday morning to Mr Bruce of Saint Werner"s."
Without a word, Kennedy s.n.a.t.c.hed it from him, and rushed back to the Seniority, who were already beginning to wonder at his long absence. He threw down the piece of paper before. Mr Norton, who handed it to the Master.
"I found that, sir, on the floor of my room."
"And you know nothing of it?"
"Yes. It belongs to a bottle purchased yesterday by Bruce."
Amazement and horror seemed to struggle in the minds of the old clergymen and lecturers as they sat at the table.
"We must send instantly for this young man," said Mr Norton; and in ten minutes Bruce entered, pale indeed, but in a faultless costume, with a bow of easy grace, and a smile of polite recognition towards such of the board as he personally knew. He was totally unaware of what had been going on during Kennedy"s cross-examination.
"Mr Bruce," said Mr Norton, to whom they all seemed gladly to resign the task of discovering the truth, "do you know anything of the cause of Lord De Vayne"s sudden attack of illness last night?"
"I, sir? Certainly not."
"He sat next to you, did he not?"
"He did, I believe. Yes. I can"t be quite sure--but I think he did."
"You know he did as well as I do," said Kennedy.
"Mr Kennedy, let me request you to be silent. Mr Bruce, had you any designs against Lord De Vayne?"
"Designs, sir? Excuse me, but I am at a loss to understand your meaning."
"You had no intention then of making him drunk?"
"Really, sir, you astonish me by such coa.r.s.e imputations. Is it you,"
he said, turning angrily to Kennedy, "who have been saying such things of me?"
Kennedy deigned no reply.
"I should think the testimony of a man who doesn"t scruple secretly to read examination-papers before they are set, ought not to stand for much." Brogten, as we have already mentioned, had revealed to him the secret of Kennedy"s dishonour. This remark fell quite dead: Kennedy sat unmoved, and Mr Norton replied--
"Pray don"t introduce your personal altercations here, Mr Bruce, on irrelevant topics. Mr Bruce," he continued, suddenly giving him the label, "have you ever seen that before?"
With a cry of agony, Bruce saw the paper, and struck his forehead with his hand. The sudden blow of shameful detection with all its train of consequences utterly unmanned him, and falling on his knees, he cried incoherently--
"Oh! I did it, I did it. I didn"t mean to; my hand slipped: indeed, indeed it did. For G.o.d"s sake forgive me, and let this not be known. I will give you thousands to hush it up--"
A general exclamation of indignation and disgust stopped his prayers, and the Master gave orders that he should be removed and watched. He was dragged away, tearing his hair and sobbing like a child. Kennedy, too, was ordered to retire.
It took the Seniors but a short time to deliberate, and then Bruce was summoned. He would have spoken, but the Master sternly ordered him to be silent, and said to him:
"Vyvyan Bruce, you are convicted by your own confession, extorted after deliberate falsehood, of having wished to drug the wine of a fellow-student for the purpose of entrapping him into a sin, to which you would otherwise have failed to tempt him. What fearful results may follow from your wickedness we cannot yet know, and you may have to answer for this crime before another tribunal. Be that as it may, it is hardly necessary to tell you that your time as a student at Saint Werner"s has ended. You are expelled, and I now proceed to erase your name from the books." (Here the Master ran his pen two or three times through Bruce"s signature in the college register). "Your rooms must be finally vacated to-morrow. You need say nothing in self-defence, and may go." As Bruce seemed determined to plead his own cause, they ordered the attendant to remove him immediately.
Kennedy was then sent for, and they could not help pitying him, for he was a favourite with them all.
"Mr Kennedy," said the senior Dean, "the Master desires me to admonish you for your very culpable connivance--for I have no other name for it-- in the great folly and wickedness of which Bruce has been convicted--"
"I did _not_ connive," said Kennedy.
"Silence, sir!"
"But I will _not_ keep silence; you accuse me falsely."
"We shall be obliged to take further measures, Mr Kennedy, if you behave in this refractory way."
"I don"t care what measures you take. I cannot listen in silence to an accusation which I loathe--of a crime of which I am wholly innocent."
"Why, sir, you confessed that you suspected some unfair design."
"But not this design. Proceed, sir; I will not interrupt you again; but let me say that I am totally indifferent to any blame which you throw on me for a brutality of which the whole responsibility rests on others."
The thread of the Dean"s oration was quite broken by Kennedy"s impetuous interruption, and he merely added--"Well, Mr Kennedy, I am sorry to see you so little penitent for the position in which you have placed yourself. You have disappointed the expectation of all your friends, and however you may brazen it out, your character has contracted a stain."
"You can say so, sir, if you choose," said Kennedy; and he left the room with a formal bow.
A few days after, Mr Grayson asked him to what Bruce had alluded in his insinuation about an examination-paper.
"He alludes, sir, to an event which happened some time ago."
Further questions were useless; nevertheless Kennedy saw that his tutor"s suspicions were not only aroused, but that they had taken the true direction. Mr Grayson despised him, and in Saint Werner"s he had lost caste.
That evening Bruce vanished from Camford, with the regrets of few except his tailors and his duns. To this day he has not paid his college debts or discharged the bill for the gorgeous furniture of his rooms. But we shall hear of him again.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.
DE VAYNE"S CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS.
"He that for love hath undergone The worst that can befall, Is happier thousandfold than one Who never loved at all.
"A grace within his soul hath reigned, Which nothing else can bring; Thank G.o.d for all that I have gained By that high suffering."
Moncton Manes.
For many days Lord De Vayne seemed to be hovering between life and death. The depression of his spirits weighed upon his frame, and greatly r.e.t.a.r.ded his recovery. That he, unconscious as he was of ever having made an enemy--good and gentle to all--with no desire but to love his neighbour as himself, and to devote such talents and such opportunities as had been vouchsafed him to G.o.d"s glory and man"s benefit;--that _he_ should have been made the subject of a disgraceful wager, and the b.u.t.t of an infamous experiment; that in endeavouring to carry out this nefarious plan, any one should have been so wickedly reckless, so criminally thoughtless;--this knowledge lay on his imagination with a depression as of coming death. De Vayne had been but little in Saint Werner"s society, and had rarely seen any but his few chosen friends; and that such a calamity should have happened in the rooms and at the table of one of those friends,--that Kennedy, whom he so much loved and admired, should be suspected of being privy to it;-- this fact was one which made De Vayne"s heart sink within him with anguish and horror, and a weariness of life.