Chapter Six.

Rencontres.

“A boy—no better—with his rosy cheeks
Angelical, keen eye, courageous look,
And conscious step of purity and pride.”
Wordsworth’s Prelude.

A public school man is by no means lonely when he first enters the university. He finds many of his old school-fellows accompanying him, and many who have gone up before him, and he feels united to them all by a bond of fellowship, which at once creates for him a circle of friends. Had Julian merely kept up his Harton acquaintances, he would have known as many Camford men as were at all necessary for the purposes of society.

But although with most or all of the Hartonians Julian remained on pleasant and friendly terms, there were others whom he saw quite as much, and whose society he enjoyed all the more thoroughly because their previous associations and experiences were different from his own. And on looking back in aftertimes, what a delight it was to remember the noble hearts which, during those years of college life, had always beaten in unison with his own. Few enjoyments were more keen than that social equality and unconventional intercourse common among all undergraduates, which might at any time ripen into an earnest and invaluable friendship, or merely stop at the stage of an agreeable acquaintanceship. A great, and not the least useful portion of University education consisted in the intimate knowledge of character and the many-sided sympathies which were thus insensibly acquired.

During the first few weeks of college life, of course, a good deal of time was spent in receiving and returning the visits of acquaintances, old and new. Of the latter, there was one with whom Julian and Lillyston were equally charmed, and who soon became their constant companion. His name was Kennedy, and Julian first got to know him by sitting next him in lecture-room. His lively remarks, his keen and vivid sense of the ludicrous, the quick yet kindly notice he took of men’s peculiarities, his ardent appreciation of the books which occupied their time, and the pleasant, rapid way in which he would dash off a caricature, soon attracted notice, and he rapidly became popular, both among undergraduates and dons. He was known, too, by the warm eulogy of his fellow-Marlbeians, who were never tired of singing his praises among themselves.

“Splendid!” whispered he to Julian warmly, after Julian had just finished construing a difficult clause in the Agamemnon, which he had done with a spirit and fire which even kindled a spark of admiration in the cold breast of Mr Grayson. “Splendidly done, Home! I say, how very reserved you are. Here have I been longing to know you for the last ten days, and we have hardly got beyond a nod to each other yet. Do come in to tea at my rooms to-night at eight. I want to introduce you to a friend of mine—Owen of Roslyn school.”

“With pleasure,” said Julian. “That dark-haired fellow is Owen, is it not? I hear he’s going to do great things!”

“Oh yes! booked for a Fellow and a double-first; so you ought to know him, you know.”

“Silence, gentlemen,” said Mr Grayson, turning his stony gaze on Kennedy, whose bright face instantly assumed a demure expression of deep attention, while the light of laughter which still danced in his eyes might have betrayed to a careful observer the fact that the notes on which he appeared to be so assiduously occupied mainly consisted of replications of Mr Grayson’s placid physiognomy and Roman nose.

“I’ve brought an umbra with me, Kennedy, in the person of Mr Lillyston, who sits next to me at lectures, and wanted to be introduced to you,” said Owen, as he came in to Kennedy’s room that evening.

“I’m delighted,” said Kennedy. “Mr Lillyston, let me introduce you to Mr Home.”

“We hardly need an introduction, Hugh, at this time of day; do we?” said Julian, laughing; and the four were soon as much at home as it was possible for men to be. There was no lack of conversation. I think the rooms of a Camford undergraduate are about the last place where conversation ever flags; and when men like Kennedy, Owen, Julian, and Lillyston meet, it is perhaps more genuinely earnest and interesting than in any other time or place.

The next day, as Kennedy was sitting in Julian’s rooms, glancing over the Aeschylus with him, in strutted Hazlet, whom we have incidentally mentioned as having been the son of a widow lady living at Ildown. He had come up to Camford straight from home, and as he had only received a home-education everything was strangely bewildering to him, and Julian was almost the only friend he knew. Nor was he likely to attract many friends; his manner was strangely self-confident, and his language dictatorial and dogmatic. In his mother’s house he had long been the centre of religious tea-parties, before which he was often called upon to read and even to expound the Scriptures. “At the tip of his subduing tongue” were a number of fantastic phrases, originally misapplied, and long since worn bare of meaning, and the test of his orthodoxy was the universality with which he could reiterate proofs of heresy against every man of genius, honesty, and depth—who loved truth better than he loved the oracles of the prevalent idols. Hazlet practised the duty of Christian charity by dealing indiscriminate condemnation against all except those who belonged to his own exclusive and somewhat ignorant school of religious intolerance. His face was the reflex of his mind; his lank black hair stuck down in stiff dry straightness over a contracted forehead and an ill-shaped head; his spectacles gave additional glassiness to a lack-lustre eye, and the manner in which he carried his chin in the air seemed like an acted representation of “I am holier than thou.”

Far be it from me to hold up to ridicule any body of earnest and honest men, to whatever party they may belong. I am writing of Hazlet, not of those who hold the same opinions as he did. That man must have been unfortunate in life who has not many friends, and friends whom he holds in deep affection, among the adherents of opinions most entirely antagonistic to his own. Hazlet’s repulsiveness was due to a very mistaken education, developing a very foolish idiosyncrasy, and especially to the pernicious system of encouraging sentiments and expressions which in a boy’s mind could not be other than sickly exotics. He had to be taught his own hypocrisy by the painful progress of events, and, above all, he had to learn that religious shibboleths may be no proof of sanctification, and that religious intolerance is usually the hybrid offspring of ignorance and conceit. In many essential matters he held the truth,—but he held it in unrighteousness.

It may be imagined that Hazlet was no favourite companion of Julian Home. But Julian loved and honoured to the utmost of his power the good points of all; he had a deep and real veneration for humanity, and rarely allowed himself an unkind expression, or a look which indicated ennui, even to those associates by whose presence he was most unspeakably bored. Hazlet mistook his courteous manner for a deferential agreement, and was, too often, in Julian’s presence more than usually insufferable in his Pharisaical tendencies.

“Good heavens!” said Kennedy, who saw Hazlet coming across the court. “Who’s this, Home? He looks as if he had been just presiding at three conventicles and a meeting at Philadelphus Hall. Surely he can’t be coming here.”

“Oh, yes,” said Julian, “that’s a compatriot of mine named Hazlet; a very good fellow, I believe, though rather obtrusive perhaps.”

“Good morning, Home,” said Hazlet, in a measured and sanctified tone, as he entered the room and sat down.

Kennedy glanced impatiently at the Aeschylus.

“Ah! I see you’re engaged on that heathen poet. It often strikes me, Home, that we may be wrong after all in spending so much time on these works of men, who, as Saint Paul tells us, were ‘wholly given to idolatry.’ I have just come from a most refreshing meeting at—”

“I say, Home,” cut in Kennedy hastily, “shall I go? I suppose you won’t do over any more of the Agamemnon this morning.”

“I don’t know,” said Julian; “perhaps Hazlet will join us in our construe.”

“No, I think not,” said Hazlet, with a compassionate sigh. “I have looked at it; but some of it appeared to me so pagan in its sentiments that I contented myself with praying that I might not be put on. But you haven’t told me what you think about what I was saying.”

“Botheration,” said Kennedy; “so your theory is that Christianity was intended to put an extinguisher over the light of heaven-born genius, and that the power and passion and wisdom of Aeschylus came from himself or the devil, and not from God? Surely, without any further argument on such an absurd proposition, it ought to be sufficient for you that this kind of learning forms a part of your immediate duty.”

“I find other duties more paramount—now prayer, for instance, and talk with sound friends.”

“Phew!!!” whistled Kennedy, thoroughly disgusted at language which was as new to him as it was distasteful; and, to relieve his feelings, he abandoned the conversation to Julian, and began to turn over the books on the table. Julian, however, seemed quite disinclined to enter into the question, and after a pause, Hazlet, gracefully waiving his little triumph, asked him with a peculiar unction—

“And how goes it, my dear Home, with your immortal soul?”

“My soul!” said Julian carelessly. “Oh! it’s all right.”

Hazlet then began to look at Julian’s pictures.

“Ah,” he observed with a deep sigh, “I’m sorry to see that you have the portrait of so unsound, so dangerous a man as Mr Vere.”

“We’ll drop that topic, please, Hazlet,” said Julian, “as we’re not likely to agree upon it.”

“Have you ever read one word that Mr Vere ever wrote?” asked Kennedy.

“Well, yes; at least no, not exactly: but still one may judge, you know; besides, I’ve seen extracts of his works.”

“Extracts!” answered Kennedy scornfully; “extracts which often attribute to him the very sentiments which he is opposing. But it isn’t worth arguing with one of your school, who have the dishonesty to condemn writers whom you are incapable of understanding, on the faith of extracts which they haven’t even read.”

The wrathful purpling of Hazlet’s sallow countenance portended an explosion of orthodox spleen, but Julian gently interposed in time to save the devoted Kennedy from a few unmeasured anathemas.

“Hush!” he said, “none of the odium theologicum, please, lest the mighty shade of Aeschylus smile at you in scorn. Do drop the subject, Hazlet.”

“Very well, if you like, Home; but I must deliver my conscience, you know. But really, Julian, you are not very Christian in your other pictures.”

This was too much even for Julian’s politeness, and he joined in the shout of laughter with which Kennedy greeted this appeal.

“Fools make a mock at sin,” said Hazlet austerely. “I trust that you will both be brought to a better state of mind. Good morning!”

Kennedy flung himself into an armchair, and after finishing his laugh, exclaimed, “My dear Home, where did you pick up that intolerable hypocrite?”

“Hush, Kennedy, hush! Don’t call him a hypocrite. His mode of religion may be very offensive to us, and yet it may be sincere.”

“Faugh! the idea of asking you, ‘How’s your soul?’ It reminds me of a friend of mine who was suddenly asked by a minister in a train ‘if he didn’t feel an aching void?’ ‘An aching void? Where?’ said Jones, in a tone of alarm, for he was an unimaginative person. ‘Within, sir, within!’ said the stranger. Jones felt anxiously to find whether one of his ribs was accidentally protruding, but finding them all safe, set down the minister for a lunatic, and moved to the further end of the carriage.”

Julian smiled; he was more accustomed to this kind of phraseology than his friend, and knew that outrageous as it was to good taste under the circumstances, it yet might spring from a sincere and honourable motive, or at best must be regarded as the natural result of innate vulgarity and mistaken training.

“Surely at best,” continued Kennedy, “it’s a most unwarrantable impertinence for a fellow like that to want to dabble his ignorant and coarse hand in the hallowed secrets of the microcosm. Not to one’s nearest and dearest friend, not to one’s mother or brother would one babble promiscuously on such awful themes; and to have the soul’s sublime and eternal emotions, its sacred and unspoken communings, lugged out into farcical prominence by such conversational cant as that, is to dry up the very fountain of true religion, and put a premium on the successful grin of an offensive hypocrisy.”

Kennedy seemed quite agitated, and as usual found relief in striding up and down the room. His religious feelings were deep and real—none the less so for being hidden—and Hazlet’s language and manner had given him a rude shock.

“Another hour in that fellow’s company would make me an infidel,” he exclaimed with quivering lip. “Pray for me, indeed, with some of his ‘sound and congenial friends.’ Faugh! ‘sound!’ how does he dare to judge whether his superiors are ‘sound’ or not? and why must he borrow a metaphor from Stilton cheeses when he’s talking of religious convictions.”

“Why really, Kennedy,” said Julian, “to see the contempt written in your face, one would think you were an archangel looking at a black beetle, as a learned judge once observed. If you won’t regard Hazlet as a man and a brother, at least remember that he’s a vertebrate animal.”

But Kennedy was not to be joked out of his indignation, so Julian continued. “I wish you knew more of Lillyston. At one time, I should have been nearly as much bothered by Hazlet as you, but Lillyston’s kind, genial good-humour with every one, and the genuine respectful sympathy which he shows even for things he can least understand, have made me much happier than I should have been. Now, he might have done Hazlet some good, whereas your opposition, my dear fellow, will only make him more rampant than ever. Ah, here Lillyston comes.”

“What an honest open face,” said Kennedy.

“Like the soul which looks through it, sans peur et sans reproche,” said Julian warmly.

“Rather a contrast to the last comer,” murmured Kennedy, as he picked up his cap and gown to walk to the lecture-room.

“There, don’t think of Hazlet any more,” said Julian.

“‘He prayeth best who loveth best
    All things both great and small,
For the dear God who loveth us,
    He made and loveth all.’

“A capital good motto that; isn’t it, Hugh?”

“I must love Hazlet as one of the very small things, then,” said the incorrigible Kennedy as he left the room with the other two.

Hazlet was put on to construe during the lecture, and if anything could have shaken the brazen tower of his self-confidence, it would have been the egregious display of incapacity which followed; but Hazlet rather piqued himself on his indifference to the poor blind heathen poets, on whose names he usually dealt reprobation broadcast. “Like lions that die of an ass’s kick,” those wronged great souls lay prostrate before Hazlet’s wrathful heels.