"O thou goddess,
Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon'st
In these two princely boys; they are as gentle
As zephyrs blowing beneath the violet,
Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as fierce,
Their royal blood enchafed, as the rud'st wind
That by the top doth take the mountain pine,
And makes him bow to the vale."
_Cymbeline, Act 4, scene 2_.
It was but recently, (as will be explained hereafter), that the
circumstances had arisen which had rendered it necessary for Julian Home
to enter Saint Werner's as a sizar and since that necessity had arisen,
he had been far from happy. A peculiar sensitiveness had been from
childhood the distinctive feature of his character. It rendered him
doubly amenable to every emotion of pleasure and pain, and gave birth to
a self-conscious spirit, which made his nature appear weaker, when
a boy, than it really was. While he was at Harton, this
self-consciousness made him keenly, almost tremblingly, alive to the
opinions of others about himself. His self-depreciation arose from real
humility, and there was in his heart so deep a fountain of love towards
all his fellows, and so sympathising an admiration of all their good or
brilliant qualities, that he was far too apt to suffer himself to be
tormented by the indifference or dislike of those who were far his
inferiors.
It was strange that such a boy should have had enemies, but he was sadly
aware that in that light some regarded him. Had it been possible to
conciliate them without any compromise in his line of action, he would
have done so at any cost; but as their enmity arose from that vehement
moral indignation which Julian both felt and expressed against the
iniquities which he despised and disapproved, he knew that all union
with them was out of his power. As a general rule, the best boys are by
no means the most popular.
It was the great delight of Julian's detractors to compare him
unfavourably with their hero, Bruce. Bruce, as a fair scholar and a
good cricketer, with no very marked line of his own--as a fine-looking
fellow, anxious to keep on good terms with everybody, and with an
apparently hearty "well met" for all the world--cut against the grain of
no one's predilections, and had the voice of popular favour always on
his side. While ambition made him work tolerably hard, as far as he
could do so without attracting observation, the line he took was to
disparage industry, and ally himself with the merely cricketing set,
with some of whom he might be seen strolling arm-in-arm, in loud
conversation, at every possible opportunity. Julian, on the other hand,
though a fair cricketer, soon grew weary of the "shop" about that game,
which for three months formed the main staple of conversation among the
boys; and while his countenance was too expressive to conceal this fact,
he in his turn found himself unable to enlist more than a few in any
interest for those intellectual pursuits which were the chief joy of his
own life.
"Home, I've been watching you for the last half-hour," said Bruce, one
day at dinner, "and you haven't opened your lips."
"I've had nothing to say."
"Why not?"
"Because, since we came in, not one word has been said about any human
subject but cricket, cricket, cricket; it's been the same for the last
two months; and as I haven't been playing this morning--"
"Well, no one wants you to talk," interrupted Brogten, one of the
eleven, Julian's especial foe. "I say, Bruce, did you see--"
"I was only going to add," said Julian, with perfect good-humour,
heedless of the interruption, "that I couldn't discuss a game I didn't
see."
"Nobody asked you, sir, she said," retorted Brogten rudely; "if it had
been some sentimental humbug, I dare say you'd have mooned about it long
enough."
"Better, at any rate, than some of your low stories, Brogten," said
Lillyston, firing up on his friend's behalf.
"I don't know. I like something manly."
"Vice and manliness being identical, then, according to your notions?"
said Lillyston.
Brogten muttered an angry reply, in which the only audible words were
"confound" and "milksops."
"Well spoken, advocate of sin and shame;
Known by thy _bleating_, Ignorance thy name,"
thought Julian; but he did not condescend to make any further answer.
"I hate that kind of fellow," said Brogten, loud enough for the friends
to hear, as they rose from the table; "fellows who think themselves
everybody's superiors, and walk with their noses in the air."
"I wonder that you will still be talking, Brogten; nobody marks you,"
said Lillyston, treating with the profoundest indifference a stupid
calumny. But poisoned arrows like these quivered long and rankled
painfully in Julian's heart.
Yet no sensible boy would have given Julian's reputation in exchange for
that of Bruce; for in all except the mean and coarse minority, Julian
excited either affection or esteem, and he had the rare inestimable
treasure of some real and noble-hearted friends; while Bruce was too
vain, too shallow, and too fickle to inspire any higher feeling than a
mere transient admiration.
Latterly it had become known to the boys that Julian was going up to
Saint Werner's as a sizar, and being ignorant of the reasons which
decided him, they had been much surprised. But the little clique of his
enemies made this an additional subject of annoyance, and there were not
wanting those who had the amazing bad taste to repeat to him some of
their speeches. There are some who seem to think that a man must rather
enjoy hearing all the low tittle-tattle of envious backbiters.
"I knew he must be some tailor's son or other," remarked Brogten.
"I say, Bruce, we shall have to cut him at Saint Werner's," observed an
exquisite young exclusive.
Such things--the mere lispings of malicious folly--Julian could not help
hearing; and they galled him so much that he determined to have a talk
on the subject with his tutor, who was a Saint Werner's man. It was his
tutor's custom to devote the hour before lock-up on every half-holiday
to seeing any of his pupils who cared to come and visit him; but as on
the rich summer evenings few were to be tempted from the joyous sounds
of the cricket-field, Julian found him sitting alone in his study,
reading.
"Ha, Julian!" he exclaimed, rising at once, with a frank and cordial
greeting. "Here's a triumph! A boy actually enticed from bats and
balls to pay me a visit!"
Julian smiled. "The fact is, sir," he said, "I've come to ask you about
something. But am I disturbing you? If so, I'll go and `pursue vagrant
pieces of leather again,' as Mr Stokes says when he wants to dismiss us
to cricket."
"Not in the least. I rather enjoy being disturbed during this hour.
But what do you say to a turn in the open air? One can talk so much
better walking than sitting down on opposite sides of a fireplace with
no fire in it."
Julian readily assented, and Mr Carden took his arm as they bent their
way down to the cricket-field. There they stopped involuntarily for a
time, to gaze at the house match which was going on, and the master
entered with the utmost vivacity into the keen yet harmless "chaff"
which was being interchanged between the partisans of the rival houses.
"What a charming place this field is," he said, "on a summer evening,
while the sunset lets fall upon it the last innocuous arrows of its
golden sheaf. When I am wearied to death with work or vexation--which,
alas! is too often--I always run down here, and it gives me a fresh
lease of life."
Julian smiled at his tutor's metaphorical style of speech, which he knew
was in him the natural expressions of a glowing and poetic heart, that
saw no reason to be ashamed of its own warm feelings and changeful
fancies; and Mr Carden, wrapped in the scene before him, and the
sensations it excited, murmured to himself some of his favourite lines--
"Alas that one
Should use the days of summer but to live,
And breathe but as the needful element
The strange superfluous glory of the air
Nor rather stand in awe apart, beside
The untouched time, and murmuring o'er and o'er
In awe and wonder, `These are summer days!'"
"Shall we stroll across the fields, sir, before lock-up?" said Julian,
as a triumphant shout proclaimed that the game was over, and the
Parkites had defeated the Grovians.
"Yes, do. By the bye, what was it that you had to ask me about?"
"Oh, sir, I don't think I've told you before; but I'm going up to Saint
Werner's as a sub-sizar."