Chapter Twenty Two.

De Vayne’s Temptation.

“And felt how awful goodness is, and virtue
In her own shape how lovely.”
        Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Shall I confess it? Pitiable and melancholy as was Hazlet’s course, I liked him so little as to feel for him far less than I otherwise should have done. His worst error never caused me half the pain of Kennedy’s most venial fault. Must I then tell a sad tale of Kennedy too—my brave, bright, beautiful, light-hearted Kennedy, whom I always loved so well? May I not throw over the story of his college days the rosy colourings of romance and fancy, the warm sunshine of prosperity and hope? I wish I might. But I am writing of Camford—not of a divine Utopia or a sunken Atalantis.

Bruce, so far from being troubled by his own evil deeds, was proud of a success which supported a pet theory of his infidel opinions. He made no sort of secret of it, and laughed openly at the fool whom he had selected for his victim.

“But after all,” said Brogten, who had plenty of common sense, “your triumph was very slight.”

“How do you mean? I chose the most obtrusively religious man in Saint Werner’s, and, in the course of a very short time, I had him, of his own will, roaring drunk.”

“And what’s the inference?”

“That what men call religion is half cant, half the accident of circumstances.”

“Pardon me, you’re out in your conclusion; it only shows that Hazlet was a hypocrite, or at the best a weak, vain, ignorant fellow. The very obtrusiveness and uncharitableness of his religion proved its unreality. Now I could name dozens of men who would see you dead on the floor rather than do as you have taught Hazlet to do—men, in fact, with whom you simply daren’t try the experiment.”

“Daren’t! why not?”

“Why, simply because they breathe such a higher and better atmosphere than either you or I, that you would be abashed by their mere presence.”

“Pooh! I don’t believe it,” said Bruce, with an uneasy laugh; “mention any such man.”

“Well, Suton for instance, or Lord De Vayne.”

“Suton is an unpleasant fellow, and I shouldn’t choose to try him, because he’s a bore. But I bet you what you like that I make De Vayne drunk before a month’s over.”

“Done! I bet you twenty pounds you don’t.”

Disgusting that the young, and pure-hearted, and amiable De Vayne should be made the butt of the machinations of such men as Bruce and Brogten! But so it was. So it was; I could not invent facts like these. They never could float across my imagination, or if they did, I should reject them as the monstrous chimeras of a heated brain. I can conceive a man’s private wickedness,—the wickedness which he confines within his own heart, and only brings to bear upon others so far as is demanded by his own fancied interests; I can imagine, too, an open and willing partnership in villainy, where hand joins in hand, and face answereth to face. But that any knowing the plague of their own hearts, should deliberately endeavour to lead others into sin, coolly and deliberately, without even the blinding mist of passion to hide the path which they are treading,—this, if I had not known that it was so, I could not have conceived. The murderer who, atom by atom, continues the slow poisoning of a perishing body for many months, and dies amid the yell of a people’s execration,—in sober earnest, before God, I believe he is less guilty than he who, drop by drop, pours into the soul of another the curdling venom of moral pollution, than he who feeds into full-sized fury the dormant monsters of another’s evil heart. Surely the devil must welcome a human tempter with open arms.

Of course Bruce had to proceed with Lord De Vayne in a manner totally different from that which he had applied to Jedediah Hazlet. He felt himself that the task was far more difficult and delicate, especially as it was by no means easy to get access to De Vayne’s company at all. Julian, Lillyston, Kennedy, and a few others, formed the circle of his only friends, and although he was constantly with them, he was rarely to be found in other society. But this was a difficulty which a man with so large an acquaintance as Bruce could easily surmount, and for the rest he trusted to the conviction which he had adopted, that there was no such thing as sincere godliness, and that men only differed in proportion to the weakness or intensity of the temptations which happened to assail them.

So Bruce managed, without any apparent manoeuvring, to see more of De Vayne at various men’s rooms, and he generally made a point of sitting next to him when he could. He had naturally a most insinuating address and a suppleness of manner which enabled him to adapt himself with facility to the tastes and temperaments of the men among whom he was thrown. There were few who could make themselves more pleasant and plausible when it suited them than Vyvyan Bruce.

De Vayne soon got over the shrinking with which he had at first regarded him, and no longer shunned the acquaintance of which he seemed desirous. It was not until this stage that Bruce made any serious attempt to take some steps towards winning his wager. He asked De Vayne to a dessert, and took care that the wines should be of an insidious strength. But the young nobleman’s abstemiousness wholly defeated and baffled him, as he rarely took more than a single glass.

“You pass the wine, De Vayne; don’t do that.”

“Thank you, I’ve had enough.”

“Come, come; allow me,” said Bruce, filling his glass for him.

De Vayne drank it out of politeness, and Bruce repeated the same process soon after.

“Come, De Vayne, no heel-taps,” he said playfully, as he filled his glass for him.

“Thank you, I’d really rather not have any more.”

“Why, you must have been lending your ears to—

“‘Those budge doctors of the Stoic fur,
Praising the lean and sallow abstinence;’

“You take nothing. I shall abuse my wine-merchant.”

“You certainly seem as anxious as Comus that I should drink, Bruce,” said De Vayne, smiling; “but really I mean that I wish for no more.”

Bruce saw that he had overstepped the bounds of politeness, and also made a mistake by going a little too far. He pressed De Vayne no longer, and the conversation passed to other subjects.

“Anything in the papers to-day?” asked Brogten.

“Yes, another case of wife-beating and wife-murder. What a dreadful increase of those crimes there has been lately,” said De Vayne.

“Another proof,” said Bruce, “of the gross absurdity of the marriage-theory.”

De Vayne opened his eyes wide in astonishment. Knowing very little of Bruce, he was not aware that this was a very favourite style of remark with him,—indeed, a not uncommon style with other clever young undergraduates. He delighted to startle men by something new, and dazzle them with a semblance of insight and reasoning. “The gross absurdity of the marriage-theory,” thought De Vayne to himself; “I wonder what on earth he can mean?” Fancying he must have misheard, he said nothing; but Bruce, disappointed that his remark had fallen flat, (for the others were too much used to the kind of thing to take any notice of it), continued—

“How curious it is that the whole of the arguments should be against marriage, and yet that it should continue to be an institution. You never find a person to defend it.”

“‘At quis vituperavit?’ as the man remarked, on hearing of a defence of Hercules,” said De Vayne. “I should have thought that marriage, like the Bible, ‘needed no apology.’”

“My dear fellow, it surely is an absurdity on the face of it? See how badly it succeeds.”

Without choosing to enter on that question, De Vayne quietly remarked, “You ask why marriage exists. Don’t you believe that it was originally appointed by divine providence, and afterwards sanctioned by divine lips?”

“Oh, if you come to that kind of ground, you know, and abandon the aspect of the question from the side of pure reason, you’ve so many preliminaries to prove; e g, the genuineness and authenticity of the Pentateuch and the Gospels; the credibility of the narrators; the possibility of their being deceived; the—”

“In fact,” said De Vayne, “the evidences of Christianity. Well, I trust that I have studied them, and that they satisfy alike my reason and my conscience.”

“Ah, yes! Well, it’s no good entering on those questions, you know. I shouldn’t like to shock your convictions, as I should have to do if I discussed with you. It’s just as well after all—even in the nineteenth century—not to expose the exotic flower of men’s belief to the rude winds of fair criticism. Picciola! it might be blighted, poor thing, which would be a pity. Perhaps one does more harm than good by exposing antiquated errors.” And with a complacent shrug of the shoulders, and a slight smile of self-admiration, Bruce leant back in his armchair.

This was Bruce’s usual way, and he found it the most successful. There were a great many minds on whom it created the impression of immense cleverness. “That kind of thing, you know, it’s all exploded now,” he would say among the circle of his admirers, and he would give a little wave of the hand, which was vastly effective—as if he “could an if he would” puff away the whole system of Christianity with quite a little breath of objection, but refrained from such tyrannous use of a giant’s strength. “It’s all very well, you know, for parsons—though, by the way, not half of the cleverest believe what they preach—but really for men of the world, and thinkers, and acute reasoners”—(oh, how agreeable it was to the Tulks and Boodles to be included in such a category)—“why, after such books as Frederic of Suabia ‘De Tribus Impostoribus,’ and Strauss’ ‘Leben Jesu,’ and De Wette, and Feuerbach, and Van Bohlen, and Nork, one can’t be expected, you know, to believe such a mass of traditionary rubbish.” (Bruce always professed acquaintance with German writers, and generally quoted the titles of their books in the original; it sounded so much better; not that he had read one of them, of course.) And they did think him so clever when he talked in this way. Only think how wise he must be to know such profound truths!

But so far from Bruce’s hardly-concealed contempt for the things which Christians hold sacred producing any effect on Lord De Vayne, he regarded it with a silent pity. “I hate,” thought he, “when Vice can bolt her arguments, and Virtue has no tongue to check her pride.” The annoying impertinence, so frequent in argument, which leads a man to speak as though, from the vantage-ground of great intellectual superiority to his opponent, the graceful affectation of dropping an argument out of respect for prejudices which the arguer despises, or an incapacity which the arguer implies—this merely personal consideration did not ruffle for a moment the gentle spirit of De Vayne. But that a young man—conceited, shallow, and ignorant—should profess to settle with a word the controversies which had agitated the profoundest reasons, and to settle with a sneer, the mysteries before which the mightiest thinkers had veiled their eyes in reverence and awe; that he should profess to set aside Christianity as a childish fable not worthy a wise man’s acceptance, and triumph over it as a defeated and deserted cause; this indeed filled De Vayne’s mind with sorrow and disgust. So far from being impressed or dazzled by Bruce’s would-be cleverness, he sincerely grieved over his impudence and folly.

“Thank you, Bruce,” he said, after a slight pause, and with some dignity, “thank you for your kind consideration of my mental inferiority, and for the pitying regard which you throw, from beside your nectar, on my delicate and trembling superstitions. But don’t think, Bruce, that I admit your—may I call it?—impertinent assumption that all thinking men have thrown Christianity aside as an exploded error. Some shadow of proof, some fragment of reason, would be more satisfactory treatment of a truth which has regenerated the world, than foolish assertion or insolent contempt. Good-night.”

There was something in the manner of De Vayne’s reproof which effectually quelled Bruce, while it galled him; yet, at the same time, it was delivered with such quiet good taste, that to resent it was impossible. He saw, too, not without vexation, that it had told powerfully on the little knot of auditors. The wine-party soon broke up, for Bruce could neither give new life to the conversation, nor recover his chagrin.

“So-ho!” said Brogten, when they were left alone, “I shall win my bet.”

“Hanged if you shall,” said Bruce, with an oath of vexation. In fact, not only was he determined not to be foiled in proving his wisdom and power of reading men’s characters, but he was wholly unable to afford any payment of the bet. Bruce could get unlimited credit for goods, on the reputation of his father’s wealth, but money-dealers were very sharp-eyed people, and he found it much less easy to get his promissory-notes cashed. It was a matter of etiquette to pay at once “debts of honour,” and his impetuous disposition led him to take bets so freely that his ready money was generally drained away very soon after his return. Not long before he had written to his father for a fresh supply, but, to his great surprise, the letter had only produced an angry and even indignant reproof. “Vyvyan,” (his father had written—not even ‘dear Vyvyan’), “I allow you 500 pounds a year, a sum totally out of proportion with your wants, and yet you are so shamefully extravagant as to write without a blush to ask me for more. Don’t presume to do it again on pain of my heavy displeasure.” This letter had so amazed him that he did not even answer it, nor, in spite of his mother’s earnest, urgent, and almost heart-rending entreaties, post by post, would he even condescend to write home for many weeks. It was the natural result of the way in which at home they had pampered his vanity, and never checked his faults.

But, for these reasons, it was wholly out of Bruce’s power to pay Brogten the bet, if he failed in trying to shake the temperance of De Vayne. He saw at once that he had mistaken his subject; he took De Vayne for a man whose goodness and humility would make him pliant to all designs.

A dark thought entered Bruce’s mind.

He went alone into a druggist’s shop, and said, with a languid air, “I have been suffering very much from sleeplessness lately, Mr Brent; I want you to give me a little laudanum.”

“Very well, sir. You must be careful how you use it.”

“Oh, of course. How many drops would make one drowsy, now?”

“Four or five, sir, I should think.”

“Well, you must give me one of those little bottles full. I want to have some by me, to save trouble.”

The chemist filled the bottle, and then said, “I’m afraid I’m out of my poison labels, sir. I’ll just write a little ticket and tie it on.”

“All right;” and putting it in his pocket, Bruce strolled away.

But how to see De Vayne again? He thought over their common acquaintances, and at last fixed on Kennedy as the likeliest man on whom he could depend to secure another meeting. Yet he hardly liked to suggest that Kennedy should give a wine-party, and ask De Vayne and himself; so that he was rather puzzled.

“I say, Brogten, how is it that we are always asking Kennedy to our rooms, and he so very seldom asks us?”

“I suppose because he isn’t over-partial to our company.”

“Why not?” said Bruce, who considered himself very fascinating, and quite a person whose society was to be courted; “and if so, why does he come to our rooms?”

Brogten might, perhaps, have thrown light on the subject had he chosen.

“Well,” he said, “I’ll give him a hint.”

“Do; and get him to ask De Vayne.”

Brogten did so; Kennedy assented to asking Bruce, though he listened to Brogten’s hints, (which he instantly understood), with a sullenness which but a short time before had no existence, not even a prototype, in his bright and genial character. But when it came to asking De Vayne, he simply replied to Brogten’s suggestion flatly:

“I will not.”

“Won’t you? but why?”

“Why? because I suspect you and that fellow Bruce of wishing to treat him as you treated Hazlet.”

“I’ve no designs against him whatever.”

“Well, I won’t ask him,—that’s flat.”

“Whew–ew–ew–ew–ew!” Brogten began to whistle, and Kennedy relieved his feelings by digging the poker into the fire. And then there was a pause.

“I want you to ask De Vayne.”

“And I tell you I won’t ask him.”

“Whew–w–w–w!” Another long whistle, during which Kennedy mashed and battered the black lumps that smouldered in the grate.

“Whew–ew–ew–ew! Oh, very well.” Brogten left the room. At hall that day, Brogten took care to sit near Kennedy again, and the old scene was nearly re-enacted. He turned the conversation to the Christmas examination. “I suppose you’ll be very high again, Kennedy.”

“No,” said he, curtly. “I’ve not read, and you know that as well as I do.”

“Oh, but you hadn’t read much last time, and you may do some particular paper very well, you know. I wish there was an Aeschylus paper; you might be first, you know, again.”

Kennedy flung down his knife and fork with a curse, and left the hall. Men began to see clearly that there must have been some mystery attached to the Aeschylus paper, known to Brogten and Kennedy, and very discomfiting to the latter. But as Kennedy was concerned, they did not suspect the truth.

Brogten went straight from hall to Kennedy’s rooms. He found the door sported, but knew as well as possible that Kennedy was in. He hammered and thumped at the door a long time with sundry imprecations, but Kennedy, moodily resolute, heard all the noise inside, and would not stir. Then Brogten took out a card and wrote on the back, “I think you’ll ask De Vayne,” and dropped it into the letter-box.

That evening he found in his own letter-box a slip of paper. “De Vayne is coming to wine with me to-morrow. Come, and the foul fiend take you. I have filled my decanters half-full of water, and won’t bring out more than one bottle. E K.”

Brogten read the note and chuckled,—partly with the thought of Kennedy, partly of Bruce, partly of De Vayne. Yet the chuckle ended in a very heavy sigh.