The Kennedys soon became great favourites among the Ildown people, and went out to many cheery Christmas parties; but they enjoyed more the quiet evenings at home when they all sat and talked after dinner round the dining-room fire, and while the two boys played at chess, and Violet and Eva worked or sketched, Julian and Kennedy would read aloud to them in turns. How often those evenings recurred to all their memories in future days.
Soon after the Kennedys had come, Julian received from Camford the Christmas college-list. He had again won a first cla.s.s, but Kennedy"s name, much to his vexation, appeared only in the third.
"How is it that Edward is only in the third cla.s.s?" asked Violet of Julian--for, of course, she had seen the list. "He is very clever--is he not?"
"Very; one of the cleverest fellows in Saint Werner"s."
"Then is he idle?"
"I"m afraid so, Vi. You must get him to work more."
So when he was seated by her on the sofa in her little boudoir, she said, "You must work more, Edward, at Camford, to please me."
"Ah, do not talk to me of Camford," he said, with a heavy sigh. "Let me enjoy unbroken happiness for a time, and leave the bitter future to itself."
"Bitter, Edward? but why bitter? Julian always seems to me so happy at Camford."
"Yes, _Julian_ is, and so are all who deserve to be."
"Then you must be happy too, Edward."
His only answer was a sigh. "Ah, Violet, pray talk to me of anything but Camford."
The visit came to an end, as all things, whether happy or unhappy, must; and Julian rejoiced that confidence seemed restored between him and Kennedy once more. Of course, he told Violet none of the follies which had cost poor Kennedy the loss both of popularity and self-respect.
Soon afterwards Lord De Vayne was brought back to Other Hall, and Violet and Julian were invited, with their mother, to stay there till the Camford term commenced. The boys had returned to school, so that they all acceded to Lady De Vayne"s earnest request that they would come.
It was astonishing how rapidly the young viscount recovered when once Violet had come to Other Hall. Her presence seemed to fill him with fresh life, and he soon began to get down-stairs, and even to venture on a short walk in the park. His const.i.tution had suffered a serious and permanent injury, but he was p.r.o.nounced convalescent before the Homes finished their visit.
The last evening before their departure, he was seated with Violet on a rustic seat on the terrace, looking at the sun as it set behind the distant elms of the park, and at the deer as they grazed in lovely groups on the rich undulating slopes that swept down from the slight eminence on which his house was built. He felt that the time had come to speak his love.
"Violet," he said, as he looked earnestly at her, and took her hand, "you have, doubtless, seen that I love you. Can you ever return my love? I am ready to live and die for you, and to give you my whole affection." His voice was still low and weak through illness, and he could hardly speak the sentences which were to win for him a decision of his fate.
Violet was taken by surprise; she had known Lord De Vayne so long and so intimately, and their stations were so different, that the thought of his loving her had never entered her head. She regarded him familiarly as her brother"s friend.
"Dear De Vayne," she said, "I shall always love you as a friend, as a brother. But did you not know that I have been for some months engaged?"
"Engaged?" he said, turning very pale.
"I am betrothed," she answered, "to Edward Kennedy. Nay, Arthur, dear Arthur," she continued, as he nearly fainted at her feet, "you must not suffer this disappointment to overcome you. Love me still as a sister; regard me as though I were married already, and let us enjoy a happy friendship for many years."
He was too weak to bear up, too weak to talk; only the tears coursed each other fast down his cheeks as he murmured, "Oh, forgive me, forgive me, Violet."
"Forgive you," she said kindly; "nay, you honour me too much. Marry one of your own high rank, and not the orphan of a poor clergyman. I am sure you will not yield to this sorrow, and suffer it to make you ill.
Bear up, Arthur, for your mother"s sake--for _my_ sake; and let us be as if these words had never pa.s.sed between us."
She lent him her arm as he walked faintly to his room, and as he turned round and stooped to kiss her hand, she felt it wet with many tears.
They went home next day, and soon after received a note from Lady De Vayne, informing them that Arthur was worse, and that they intended removing for some time to a seat of his in Scotland; after which they meant to travel on the Continent for another year, if his health permitted it. "But," she said, "I fear he has had a relapse, and his state is very precarious. Dear friends, think of us sometimes, and let us hope to meet again in happier days."
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.
MEMORY THE BOOK OF G.o.d.
"At Trompyngtoun, nat fer fra Cantebrigg, Ther goth a brook, and over that a brigge, Upon the whiche brook then stant a melle; _And this is verray sothe that I you telle_."
Chaucer, _The Reeve"s Tale_.
There is little which admits of external record in Julian"s life at this period of his university career. It was the usual uneventful, quiet life of a studious Camford undergraduate. Happy it was beyond any other time, except perhaps a few vernal days of boyhood, but it was unmarked by any incidents. He read, and rowed, and went to lectures, and worked at cla.s.sics, mathematics, and philosophy, and dropped in sometimes to a debate or a private-business squabble at the Union, and played racquets, fives, and football, and talked eagerly in hall and men"s rooms over the exciting topics of the day, and occasionally went to wine or to breakfast with a don, and, (absorbed in some grand old poet or historian), lingered by his lamp over the lettered page from chapel-time till the grey dawn, when he would retire to pure and refreshful sleep, humming a tune out of very cheerfulness.
Happy days, happy friendships, happy study, happy recreation, happy exemption from the cares of life! The bright visions of a scholar, the bright hilarity of a youth, the bright acquaintanceship with many united by a brotherly bond within those grey walls, were so many mingled influences that ran together "like warp and woof" in the web of a singularly enviable life. And every day he felt that he was knowing more, and acquiring a strength and power which should fit him hereafter for the more toilsome business and sterner struggles of common life.
Well may old Cowley exclaim--
"O pulerae sine luxes aedes, vitaeque decore Splendida paupertas ingenuusque pudor!"
All the reading men of his year were now anxiously occupied in working for the Saint Werner"s scholarships. They were the blue ribbon of the place. In value they were not much more than 50 pounds a year, but as the scholars had an honourable distinctive seat both in hall and chapel, and as from _their_ ranks alone the Fellows were selected, all the most intelligent and earnest men used their best efforts to obtain them on the earliest possible occasion. At the scholars" table were generally to be found the most distinguished among the alumni of Saint Werner"s.
Julian still moved chiefly among his old friends, although he had a large acquaintance, and by no means confined himself to the society of particular cla.s.ses. But De Vayne"s illness made a sad gap in the circle of his most intimate a.s.sociates, and he was not yet sufficiently recovered to attempt a correspondence. Among the dons, Julian began to like Mr Admer more and more, and found that his cynicism of manner was but the result of disappointed ambition and unsteady aims, while his heart was sound and right.
Kennedy, as well as Julian, had always hoped to gain a scholarship at his first trial, but now, with only one term left him to read in, his chance seemed to fade away to nothing. Poor fellow, he had returned with the strongest possible intention of working, and of abandoning at once and for ever all objectionable acquaintances and all dangerous ways. Hourly the sweet face of Violet looked in upon his silent thoughts, and filled him with shame as he thought of lost opportunities and wasted hours.
"Kennedy," said Mr Admer, "how can you be so intolerably idle? I saw some of your Christmas papers, and they were wholly unworthy of your abilities."
"I know it well. But what could you expect? The Pindar I had read once over with a crib; the morality I had not looked at; the mathematics I did not touch."
"But what excuse have you? I really feel quite angry with you. You are wholly throwing away everything. What have you to show for your time and money? Only think, my dear fellow, that an opportunity like this comes only once in life, and soon your college days will be over with nothing to remember."
"True, too true."
"Well, I am glad that you see and own it. I began to fear that you were one of that contemptible would-be fine gentleman cla.s.s that affects forsooth to despise work as a thing unworthy of their eminence."
"No, Mr Admer," said Kennedy, "my idleness springs from very different causes."
"And then these Brogtens and people, whom you are so often seen with; which of them do you think understands you, or can teach you anything worth knowing? and which of them do you think you will ever care to look back to as acquaintances in after days?"
"Not one of them. I hate the whole set."
"And then, my dear Kennedy--for I speak to you out of real good-will--I would say it with the utmost delicacy, but you must know that your name has suffered from the company you frequent."
"Can I not see it to be so?" he answered moodily; "no need to tell me that, when I read it in the faces of nearly every man I see. The men have not yet forgiven me De Vayne"s absence, though really and truly that sin does not lie at my door. Except Julian and Lillyston there is hardly a man I respect, who does not look at me with averted eyes. Of course Grayson and the dons detest me to a man; but I don"t care for them."
"Then, you mysterious fellow, seeing all this so clearly, why do you suffer it to be so?"
Kennedy only shook his head; already there had begun to creep over him a feeling of despair; already it seemed to him as though the gate of heaven were a lion-haunted portal guarded by a fiery sword.
For he had soon found that his intense resolutions to do right met with formidable checks. There are two stern facts--facts which it does us all good to remember--which generally lie in the path of repentance, and look like crouching lions to the remorseful soul. First, the fact that we become so entangled by habit and circ.u.mstance, so enslaved by a.s.sociation and custom, that the very atmosphere around us seems to have become impregnated with a poison which we cannot cease to breathe; secondly, the fact that "_in the physical world there is no forgiveness of sins_;" to abandon our evil courses is not to escape the punishment of them, and although we may have relinquished them wholly in the present, we cannot escape the consequences of the past. Remission of sin is _not_ the remission of their results. The very monsters we dread, and the dread of which terrifies us into the consideration of our ways, glare upon us out of the future darkness, as large, as terrible, as irresistible, whether we approach them on the road to ruin, or whether we seem to fly from them through the hardly attained and narrow wicket of genuine repentance.
Both these difficulties acted with their full force on the mind of Kennedy. His error was its own punishment, and its heaviest punishment.
The hours he had lost were lost so utterly, that he could never hope to recover them; the undesirable acquaintances he had formed were so far ripe as to render it no light task to abandon them; and above all, the fleck on his character, the connection of his name with the outrage on De Vayne, had injured his reputation in a manner which he never hoped, by future endeavours, to obviate or remove.