Part 28 (2/2)

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 partners.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sion 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 peris.h.i.+ng body for many months, and dies amid the yell of a people's execration,--in sober earnest, before G.o.d, 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 G.o.dliness, and that men only differed in proportion to the weakness or intensity of the temptations which happened to a.s.sail 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 n.o.bleman's abstemiousness wholly defeated and baffled him, as he rarely took more than a single gla.s.s.

”You pa.s.s the wine, De Vayne; don't do that.”

”Thank you, I've had enough.”

”Come, come; allow me,” said Bruce, filling his gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 inst.i.tution. 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.”

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