Part 28 (1/2)
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 G.o.d'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 h.e.l.l?”
”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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sions 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 h.e.l.l.' 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sions 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.
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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 circ.u.mstances.”
”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 b.u.t.t of the machinations of such men as Bruce and Brogten!