Chapter Twenty One.

One of the Simple Ones.

“I tempted his blood and his flesh,
Hid in roses my mesh,
Choicest cates, and the flagon’s best spilth.”
                Robert Browning.

“Faugh,” said Bruce, on his return to Camford, “that fellow Hazlet isn’t worth making an experiment upon—in corpore vili truly; but the creature is so wicked at heart, that even his cherished traditions crumble at a touch. He’s no game; he doesn’t even run cunning.”

“Then I hope you’ll p–p–pay me my p–p–p–ponies,” said Fitzurse.

“By no means; only I shall cut things short; he isn’t worth playing; I shall haul him in at once.”

Accordingly, Hazlet was invited once more to one of Bruce’s parties—this time to a supper. It was one of the regular, reckless, uproarious affairs—D’Acres, Boodle, Tulk, Brogten, Fitzurse, were all there, and the élite of the fast fellow-commoners, and sporting men besides. Bruce had privately entreated them all not to snub Hazlet, as he wanted to have some fun. The supper was soon despatched, and the wine circled plentifully. It was followed by a game of cards, during which the punch-bowl stood in the centre of the table, rich, smoking, and crowned with a concoction of unprecedented strength. Hazlet was quite in his glory. When they had plied him sufficiently—which Bruce took care to do by repeatedly replenishing his cup on the sly, so that he might fancy himself to have taken much less than was really the case—they all drank his health with the usual honours:

“For he’s a jolly good fe–el–low.
For he’s a jolly good fe–el–low,
For he’s a jolly good fe–el–l–ow—
Which nobody can deny,
Which nobody can deny;
For he’s a jolly good fe–el–low,” etcetera.

And so on, ad infinitum, followed by “Hip! hip! hip! hurrah! hurrah!! hurrah!!!” and then the general rattling of plates on the table, and breaking of wine-glass stems with knives of “boys who crashed the glass and beat the floor.”

Hazlet was quite in the seventh heaven of exaltation, and made a feeble attempt at replying to the honour in a speech; but he was in so very oblivious and generally foolish a condition, that, being chiefly accustomed to Philadelphus oratory, he began to address them as “My Christian Friends;” and this produced such shouts of boisterous laughter, that he sat down with his purpose unaccomplished.

Before the evening was over, Bruce, in the opinion of all present, including Fitzurse himself, had fairly won his bet.

“I shan’t mind p–p–paying a bit,” said the excellent young nobleman; “it’s been such r–r–rare f–f–fun.”

Rare fun indeed! The miserable Hazlet, swilled with unwonted draughts, lay brutally comatose in a chair. His head rolled from side to side, his body and arms hung helpless and disjointed, his eyelids dropped—he was completely unconscious, and more than fulfilled the conditions of being “roaring drunk!”

Now for some jolly amusement—the opportunity’s too good to be lost! What exhilaration there is on seeing a human soul imbruted and grovelling hopelessly in the dirt or rather to have a body before you, without a soul for the time being—a coarse animal mass, swinish as those whom the wand of Circe smote, but with the human intelligence quenched besides, and the charactery of reason wiped away. Here, some ochre and lamp-black, quick! There—plaster it well about the whiskers and eyelids, and put a few patches on the hair! Magnificent!—he looks like a Choctaw in his war-paint, after drinking fire-water.

Screams of irrepressible laughter—almost as ghastly, (if the cause of them be considered), as those that might have sounded round a witch’s cauldron over diabolical orgies—accompanied the whole proceeding. So loud were they that all the men on the stair-case heard them, and fully expected the immediate apparition of some bulldog, dean, or proctor. It was nobody’s affair, however, but Bruce’s, and he must do as he liked. Suton, who “kept” near Bruce, was one of those whom the uproar puzzled and disturbed, as he sat down with sober pleasure to his evening’s work. His window was opposite Bruce’s, and across the narrow road he heard distinctly most of what was said. The perpetual and noisy repetition of Hazlet’s name perplexed him extremely, and at last he could have no doubt that they were making Hazlet drunk, and then painting him; nor was it less clear that many of them were themselves half intoxicated.

It had of course been impossible for Suton and others of similar character to avoid noticing the eccentricities of dress, and manner which had been the outward indications of Hazlet’s recent course. When a man who has been accustomed to dress in black, and wear tail coats in the morning, suddenly comes out in gorgeous apparel, and begins to talk about cards, betting and theatres, his associates must be very blind, if they do not observe that his theories are undergoing a tolerably complete revolution. Suton saw with regret mingled with pity, Hazlet’s contemptible weakness, and he had once or twice endeavoured to give him a hint of the ridicule which his metamorphosis occasioned; but Hazlet had met his remarks with such silly arrogance, nay, with such a patronising assumption of superiority, that he determined to leave him to his own experiences. This did not prevent Suton from feeling a strong and righteous indignation against the iniquity of those who were inveigling another to his ruin, and he felt convinced that, as at this moment Hazlet was being unfairly treated, it was his duty in some way to interfere.

He got up quietly, and walked over to Bruce’s rooms. His knock produced instant silence, followed by a general scuffle as the men endeavoured to conceal the worst signs of their recent outrage. When Suton opened the door, he was greeted with a groan of derision.

“Confound you,” said Bruce, “I thought it must be the senior proctor at the very least.”

Without noticing his remark, Suton quietly said, “I see, Bruce, that you have been treating Hazlet in a very unwarrantable way; he is clearly not in a fit condition to be trifled with any more; you must help me to take him home.”

“Ha! ha! rather a good joke. I shall merely shove him into the street, if I do anything. What business has he to make a beast of himself in my rooms?”

“What business have you to do the devil’s work, and tempt others to sin? You will have a terrible reckoning for it, even if no dangerous consequences ensue,” said Suton sternly.

“C–c–c–cant!” said Fitzurse.

“Yes—what you call cant, Fitzurse. You shall hear some more, and tremble, sir, while you hear it,” replied Suton, turning towards him, and raising his hand with a powerful but natural gesture; “it is this ‘Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that putteth thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also—thou art filled with shame for glory.’”

“Bruce,” said D’Acres, the least flushed of the party, “I really think we ought to take the fellow home. Just look at him.”

Bruce looked, and was really alarmed at the grotesque yet ghastly expression of that striped and sodden face, with the straight black hair, and the head lolling and rolling on the shoulder. Without a word, he took Hazlet by one arm, while Suton held the other, and D’Acres carried the legs, and as quickly as they could they hurried along with their lifeless burden to the gates of Saint Werner’s. It was long past the usual hour for locking up, and the porter took down the names of all four as they entered. A large bribe which D’Acres offered was firmly, yet respectfully refused, and they knew that next day they would be called to account.

Having put Hazlet to bed they separated; Suton bade the others a stiff “Good-night;” and D’Acres as he left Bruce, said, “Bruce, we have been doing a very blackguard thing.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Bruce.

“Good,” said D’Acres, “and allow me to add that I have entered your rooms for the last time.”

Next morning Suton spoke privately to the porter, and told him that it would be best for many reasons not to report what had taken place the night before, beyond the bare fact of their having come into college late at night. The man knew Suton thoroughly and respected him; he knew him to be a man of genuine piety, and the most regular habits, and consented, though not without difficulty, to omit all mention of Hazlet’s state. All four had of course to pay the usual gate fine, and D’Acres and Bruce were besides “admonished” by the senior Dean, but Suton and Hazlet were not even sent for. The Dean knew Suton well, and felt that his character was a sufficient guarantee that he had not been in any mischief; Hazlet had been irregular lately, but the Dean considered him a very steady man, and overlooked for the present this breach of rules.

Of course all Saint Werner’s laughed over the story of Hazlet’s escapade. He did not know how to avoid the storm of ridicule which his folly had stirred up. He had already begun to drop his “congenial friends” for the more brilliant society to which Bruce had introduced him, and so far from admitting that he felt any compunction, he professed to regard the whole matter merely as “an amusing lark.” Bruce and the others hardly condescended to apologise, and at first Hazlet, who found it impossible at once to remove all traces of the paint, and who for a day or two felt thoroughly unwell, made a half-resolve to resent their coolness. But now, deserted by his former associates, and laughed at by the majority of men, he found the society of his tempters indispensable for his comfort, and even cringed to them for the notice which at first they felt inclined to withdraw.

“Wasn’t that trick on Hazlet a disgraceful affair, Kennedy?” said Julian, a few days after. “Some one told me you were at the supper party; surely it can’t be true.”

“I was for about an hour,” said Kennedy, blushing, “but I had left before this took place.”

“May I say it, Kennedy?—a friend’s, a brother’s privilege, you know—but it surprises me that you care to tolerate such company as that.”

“Believe me, Julian, I don’t enjoy it.”

“Then why do you frequent it?”

Kennedy sighed deeply and was silent for a time; then he said—

“Not e’en the dearest heart, and next our own,
Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh.”

“True,” said Julian; for he had long observed that some heavy weight lay on Kennedy’s mind, and with deep sorrow noticed that their intercourse was less cordial, less frequent, less intimate than before. Not that he loved Kennedy, or that Kennedy loved him less than of old, for, on the contrary, Kennedy yearned more than ever for the full cherished unreserve of their old friendship; but, alas there was not, there could not be complete confidence between them, and where there is not confidence, the pleasure of friendship grows dim and pale. And, besides this, new tastes were growing up in Edward Kennedy, and, by slow and fatal degrees, were developing into passions.

Hazlet had come to Camford not so much innocent as ignorant. He had never learnt to restrain and control the strong tendencies which, in the quiet shades of Ildown, had been sheltered from temptation. A few months before he would have heard with unmitigated horror the delinquencies which he now committed without a scruple, and defended without a blush. None are so precipitate in the career of sin and folly as backsliders; none so unchecked in the downward course as those to whom the mystery of iniquity is suddenly displayed when they have had none of the gradual training whereby men are armed to resist its seductions.

Who does not know from personal observation that the cycle of sins is bound together by a thousand invisible filaments, and that myriads of unknown connections unite them to one another? Hazlet, when he had once “forsaken the guide of his youth, and forgotten the covenant of his God,” did not stop short at one or two temptations, and yield only to some favourite vice. With a rapidity as amazing as it was disastrous, he developed in the course of two or three months into one of the most shameless and dissipated of the worst Saint Werner’s set. There was something characteristic in the way in which he frothed out his own shame, boasting of his infamous liberty with an arrogance which resembled his former conceit in spiritual superiority.

Julian, who now saw less of him than ever, had no opportunity of speaking to him as to his course of life; but at last an incident happened which persuaded him that further silence would be a culpable neglect of his duty to his neighbour.

Montagu, of Roslyn School, came up to Camford to spend a Sunday with Owen, and Owen asked Julian and Lillyston to meet him. They liked each other very much, and Julian rapidly began to regard Montagu as a real friend. In order to see as much of each other as possible, they all agreed to take a four-oar on the Saturday morning, and row to Elnham; at Elnham they dined, and spent two pleasant hours in visiting the beautiful cathedral, so that they did not get back to Camford till eleven at night.

Their way from the boats to Saint Werner’s lay through a bad part of the town, and they walked quickly, Owen and Montagu being a little way in front.

A few gas-lights were burning at long intervals in the narrow lane through which they had to pass, and as they walked under one of them they observed a group of four standing half in shadow. One of them Julian instantly recognised as the very vilest of the Saint Werner “fast men;” another was Hazlet; there could be no doubt as to the company in which he was.

For one second, Julian turned back to look in sheer astonishment,—he could hardly believe the testimony of his own eyes. The figure which he took to be Hazlet hastily retreated, and Julian half-persuaded himself that he was mistaken.

“Did you see who that was?” asked Lillyston sadly.

“Yes,” said Julian; “one of the simple ones; ‘but he knoweth not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell.’”

“You must speak to him, Julian.”

“I will.”

As Hazlet was out when he called, Julian wrote on his card, “Dear H, will you come to tea at 8? Yours ever, J Home.”

At 8 o’clock accordingly Hazlet was seated, as he had not been for a very long time, by Julian’s fireside. Julian’s conversation interested him, and he could not help feeling a little humbled at the unworthiness which prevented him from more frequently enjoying it. It was not till after tea, when they had pulled their chairs to the fire, that Julian said, “Hazlet, I was sorry to see you in bad company last night.”

“Me!” said Hazlet, feigning surprise.

“You!”

Hazlet saw that all attempt at concealment was useless. “For God’s sake, don’t tell my mother, or any of the Ildown people,” he said, turning pale.

“Is it likely I should? Yet my doing so would be the very least harm that could happen to you, Hazlet, if you adopt these courses. I had rather see you afraid of the sin than of the detection.”

Hazlet stammered out in self-defence one of those commonplaces which he had heard but too often in the society of those who “put evil for good and good for evil.”

Julian very quietly tore the miserable sophism to shreds, and said, “There is but one way to describe these vices, Hazlet,—they are deadly, bitter, ruinous.”

“Oh, they are very common. Lots of men—”

“Tush!” said Julian; “their commonness, if indeed it be so, does not diminish their deadliness. Not to put the question on the religious ground at all, I fully agree with Carlyle that, on the mere consideration of expedience and physical fact, nothing can be more fatal, more calamitous than ‘to burn away in mad waste the divine aromas and celestial elements from our existence; to change our holy of holies into a place of riot; to make the soul itself hard, impious, barren.’”

Hazlet, ashamed and bewildered, confused his present position with old reminiscences, and muttered some balderdash about Carlyle “not being sound.”

“Carlyle not sound?” said Julian; “good heavens! You can still retain the wretched babblements of your sectarianism while your courses are what they are!”

He was inclined to drop the conversation in sheer disgust, but Hazlet’s pride was now aroused, and he began to bluster about the impertinence of interference on Julian’s part, and his right to do what he chose.

“Certainly,” said Julian, sternly, “the choice lies with yourself. Run, if you will, as a bird to the snare of the fowler, till a dart strike you through. But if you are dead and indifferent to your own miserable soul, think that in this sin you cannot sin alone; think that you are dragging down to the nethermost abyss others besides yourself. Remember the wretched victims of your infamous passions, and tremble while you desecrate and deface for ever God’s image stamped on a fair human soul. Think of those whom your vileness dooms to a life of loathliness, a death of shame and anguish, perhaps an eternity of horrible despair. Learn something of the days they are forced to spend, that they may pander to the worst instincts of your degraded nature; days of squalor and drunkenness, disease and dirt; gin at morning, noon, and night; eating infection, horrible madness, and sudden death at the end. Can you ever hope for salvation and the light of God’s presence, while the cry of the souls of which you have been the murderer—yes, do not disguise it, the murderer, the cruel, willing, pitiless murderer—is ringing upwards from the depths of hell?”

“What do you mean by the murderer?” said Hazlet, with an attempt at misconception.

“I mean this, Hazlet; setting aside all considerations which affect your mere personal ruin—not mentioning the atrophy of spiritual life and the clinging sense of degradation which is involved in such a course as yours—I want you to see if you will be honest, that the fault is yet more deadly, because you involve other souls and other lives in your own destruction. Is it not a reminiscence sufficient to kill any man’s hope, that but for his own brutality some who are now perhaps raving in the asylum might have been clasping their own children to their happy breasts, and wearing in unpolluted innocence the rose of matronly honour? Oh, Hazlet, I have heard you talk about missionary societies, and seen your name in subscription lists, but believe me you could not, by myriads of such conventional charities, cancel the direct and awful quota which you are now contributing to the aggregate of the world’s misery and shame.”

It took a great deal to abash a mind like Hazlet’s. He said that he was going to be a clergyman, and that it was necessary for him to see something of life, or he would never acquire the requisite experience.

“Loathly experience!” said Julian with crushing scorn. “And do you ever hope, Hazlet, by centuries of preaching such as yours, to repair one millionth part of the damage done by your bad passions to a single fellow-creature? Such a hateful excuse is verily to carry the Urim with its oracular gems into the very sty of sensuality, and to debase your religion into ‘a procuress to the lords of hell.’ I have done; but let me say, Hazlet, that your self-justification is, if possible, more repulsive than your sin.”

He pushed back his chair from the fire, and turned away, as Hazlet, with some incoherent sentences about “no business of his,” left the room, and slammed the door behind him.

What are words but weak motions of vibrating air? Julian’s words passed by the warped nature of Hazlet like the idle wind, and left no more trace upon him than the snow-flake when it has melted into the purpling sea. As the weeks went on, his ill-regulated passions grew more and more free from the control of reason or manliness, and he sank downwards, downwards, downwards, into the most shameful abysses of an idle, and evil, and dissipated life.

And the germ of that ruin was planted by the hand of the clever, and gay, and handsome Vyvyan Bruce.