"Once more will the wronger, at this last of all.
Dare to say `I did wrong,' rising in his fall?"
Browning.
The story of Brogten's practical joke, and the circumstances which made
it so unusually disgraceful, spread with lightning-like rapidity through
Saint Werner's College; and when he swaggered into hall with his usual
self-confident air, he was surprised to find himself met with cold and
even with frowning looks. Snatches of conversation which went on around
him soon showed him the reason of the general disapprobation; and when
he learnt how violently the current of popular opinion was beginning to
set against him, and how unfavourable a view was taken of his conduct,
he began seriously to regret that he had given the reins to his malice.
"I shouldn't wonder now if Home were to lose the Clerkland; he was
_sure_ of it before this morning," said one.
"What a cursed shame!" echoed another. "I never in my life heard a more
blackguard trick. That fellow Brogten has lost the Hartonians the
scholarship; lucky if he hasn't lost it to Saint Werner's too. Perhaps
that Benedict man will get it."
"I say, Kennedy," said a third, "if I were you or Lillyston, or any
other of Home's particular friends, I'd duck Brogten."
"Let's wait till we see whether Home _does_ lose the scholarship first,"
said Lillyston. "_If_ he does, Brogten deserves anything; but I have
strong hopes yet."
"I know Home," said Kennedy, "and he would never forgive such an
interference, or I declare I should be inclined to do it."
"I should like to see you do it," thundered Brogten, from a farther end
of the table.
"I have just given my reasons for not seeing fit to do it," said
Kennedy, with a curl of the lip. "By the bye, Mr Brogten," he
continued sarcastically, "I hope that you don't, after this, expect to
be paid any of the _bets_ you have made against Home's getting the
Clerkland?"
"There's my betting-book," replied Brogten, flinging it at Kennedy, whom
it struck in the face, and who took no further notice of the insult than
to pick up the book, and throw it into the great brazier, full of
glowing charcoal, which stands in the centre of Saint Werner's hall.
"Don't do that, confound you!" cried Brogten, springing up. "Do you
think there are no bets in it but those about the Clerkland?"
"Keep your missiles to yourself, then," said Kennedy, while Brogten
burnt his fingers in the vain attempt to rescue his book.
"I hope you've at least hedged, or behaved as judiciously in the case of
your other bets as in those about the Clerkland," suggested one of his
sporting friends.
This last sneer and insinuation was too much, and it galled the proud
man to the quick to hear the laugh of scorn which followed it. He
turned round, seized his cap, and flinging at Kennedy a look of intense
and concentrated hatred, left the hall, and rushed up to his rooms.
To do Brogten justice, he had never intended for a moment to affect
Julian's chance of ultimate success, when he enjoyed the mean
satisfaction of screwing up his door. He had regarded him with indeed
dislike, which received a tinge of deeper intensity from the envy, and
even admiration, with which it was largely mingled. But although he had
calculated that his trick might be more telling and offensive if done at
this particular opportunity, and although he had quite sufficient grudge
against his former school-fellow to wish him a deep annoyance, yet he
would never have dreamed of wilfully thwarting his most cherished aims,
or materially affecting his prospects and position. So vile a malice
would have been intolerable to any one, and the thought of it was
thoroughly intolerable to Brogten, in whom all gleams of honourable
feeling were by no means extinguished, however dormant they might seem.
It had never entered into his thoughts to anticipate the violent
consequences which his act had produced; and when told of Julian's
passion and suffering, he had felt such real remorse that he had even
half intended to wait for him as he went to hall, and there, (in a
quasi-public manner, since some men were sure to be standing about on
the hall steps), to endure the mortification of expressing his regret to
the man whom he had chosen to treat as his enemy. But when he found
himself cut and jeered at--when he was even met by the suggestion that
he had intended basely to serve his own pecuniary interests at Julian's
expense--a method of swindling which he had never for one instant
contemplated--all his softer and better feelings vanished at once, and
created a brutal hardness in his heart, which now once more he was
striving in solitude to mollify or remove.
And he succeeded so far that, while brooding savagely over the venomous
shafts of sarcasm and ridicule with which Kennedy had wounded him, he
gradually softened his feelings towards Julian, by transferring them in
tenfold virulence against Julian's nearest friend. Home and he had been
school-fellows after all, and Julian had never done him any wrong; on
the contrary, he liked the boy; he remembered distinctly how the first
seeds of ill-will against him had been sown, by the reserve with which
Julian, as a school-fellow, had received his advances. Without being
rude and uncivil, he had yet managed to hold aloof from him, and as
Brogten was in some repute at Harton, when Home came, and was moreover
an Hartonian of much longer standing, his sensitive pride had been stung
by the fact that the "new fellow," whose pleasant face and manners had
attracted his notice, did not at once and gratefully embrace his
proffered friendship. Circumstances had tended to widen the breach
between them, but secretly he liked Home still, and would have gladly
been his friend. "And, after all," he thought, "Home has never once
retaliated any injury which I have undoubtedly done him; he has never
done me any harm. Even in the affair at the boats, he only did what was
quite justifiable, and I was far more in the wrong than he was when I
struck him. And now they all say I shall have prevented him from
getting this confounded Clerkland. And I know how he longed for it, and
how much all his hopes and wishes were fixed upon it. Upon my word,
when I come to think of it, it was a very blackguard thing of me to do,
and I wish I had been at the bottom of the sea before I did it. I
think--yes--I think I'll go and see Home, and ask his pardon; yes, upon
my word I need his forgiveness, and would give a good deal to get it.
He's a grand fellow after all. I wish he'd take me as a friend. I
should be infinitely better for it; and I _will_ be better, too." And
as he thus reasoned with himself, Brogten began to yearn for better
things, and for Julian's friendship as a means of helping him to higher
aims; and he remembered the lines--
"I would we were boys as of old,
In the field, by the fold;
His outrage. God's patience, man's scorn,
Were so easily borne."
So his thoughts ran on, but when it occurred to him that no such
humiliation on his part would perhaps go very far to mend the general
disgust with which he had been greeted, he began to waver again. "What
business had they to assume that I meant the worst? I may be a bad
fellow, but," (and a mental oath followed), "I'm not a black-leg after
all. That fellow Kennedy--curse him!--I'll be even with him yet. I
swear that he shall rue it. I'll be a very fiend in the vengeance I
take--curse him, curse him!" And stamping his heel furiously on the
floor, he swallowed some raw brandy, and began to pace up and down his
room.
The conflict of his thoughts lasted, almost without intermission, till
evening. Finally, however, his heart softened towards Julian, as he ran
over in his mind all the circumstances of the day. Cheating his
conscience with the fancy that he was conquering his feelings of revenge
and hate, while he was only displacing them with others of a deeper dye,
he at last determined to go up at once to Julian's room, ask his pardon
openly, honestly, and unreservedly, confess his past unworthy malice,
and obtain, if possible, at least, Julian's forgiveness, perhaps even
his friendship, in return for so great a victory over himself.
It _was_ a victory over himself, and no slight one. For at least five
years he had been nursing into dislike an inward feeling of respect for
his enemy, and now to humble himself so completely before him, required
a struggle of which he had hardly supposed himself capable, and of which
he was secretly a little proud. It inspired him with better hopes for
the future, and gave him a pledge of combating successfully other
vicious propensities which had gained an ascendency over him.
Hesitatingly he went up to Julian's rooms; he saw the broken door, and
it made him waver. All was silence inside, but still he hoped that
Julian was in, because he felt sure that he should never persuade his
natural pride to consent to such a sacrifice again. But yet, _what
should he say_? He had been thinking of a thousand set forms of
apology, but they all vanished, as, with beating heart, he knocked, a
little loudly, at the door.
Julian, too, had been brooding on the events of the day, and fanning
every now and then into fierce bursts of flame the dying embers of his
morning's indignation. He took the worst view, and had every reason to
take the worst view, of Brogten's intentions. He had received at his
hands many wrongs, and an incivility as unvarying as it was undeserved.
Of course he could not tell that this rudeness was but the cover of a
real desire for cordiality between them, and now he fully believed that
Brogten had intentionally, deliberately, and with malice prepense,
formed a deep laid scheme to dash from his lips the cup of happiness as
he was in the very act of tasting it. The success which had seemed in
his very grasp would have removed the poverty, which had been one of the
severest trials, not to himself only, but to those whom he most dearly
loved; it was the thing--the _one_ thing--of which he had thought, and
for which he had prayed. "And now it was wrenched from him," so he
thought, "by this mean and dastardly villain."
He had determined to horse-whip Brogten, at all hazards, though he knew
that Brogten was far stronger than himself. De Vayne's manoeuvre had
disconcerted his intention, for he could not carry it out in cold blood;
but even now he felt by no means sure that he was right to take
passively an insult which, if unresented, might, he thought, be
repeated, some other time, and which, if frequently repeated would
render college life wholly intolerable. All this was floating through
his mind, when there came a loud--he took it for an insolent--knock at
the door, and his enemy stood before him.
His enemy stood before him, humbled and remorseful, with the words of
apology on his lips, and his heart full of such emotions as might have
enabled Julian to convert him from an enemy into a lasting and grateful
friend. But when he saw him, in one instant furious, unreasoning,
headlong anger had again seized Julian's mind--the more easily because
he had already yielded to it once. Without stopping to hear a word--
without catching the gentler tone of Brogten's rough voice--without
noticing his downcast expression of countenance--Julian sprang up,
assumed that Brogten had come to ridicule or even insult him, glared at
him, clenched his teeth, and then seizing De Vayne's riding-whip, laid
it without mercy about Brogten's shoulders.
During the first few blows, Brogten was disarmed by intense surprise.
Of all receptions, this was the only one which it had never occurred to
him to contemplate. He had imagined Julian bitter, sarcastic, cold; he
had prepared himself for a torrent of passionate and overwhelming
invective; he had thought how to behave if Julian remained silent, or
rejected with simple contempt his stammered apology; but to be
horse-whipped by one so much weaker than himself--by one whom he
remembered to have pitied and patronised when he came to Harton, a
delicate rosy-cheeked boy--this he had certainly never thought of.
Julian had almost expended his rage in half a dozen wild blows before
Brogten was startled from his surprise into a consciousness of his
position.
But when he did realise it all the demon took possession of his heart.
He seized Julian by the collar, wrenched the whip out of his hand, and
raised the silver knob at the end of the handle. What fearful hurt
Julian might have received from so heavy a weapon in so powerful a hand,
or how far Brogten's fury might have transported him, none can tell; but
at that very moment he heard a step on the stairs, which arrested his
violence, and the moment after Lillyston entered.
"What!" said Lillyston indignantly, as he caught the almost diabolical
expression of Brogten's face. "Not content with doing your best to ruin
Home, you are using personal violence to one not so strong as yourself.
Come, sir, you have felt what I can do before. Drop that whip, or take
the consequences."
"Stop, Hugh," said Julian sullenly; "I horse-whipped him first."
"You!" said Lillyston.
"Yes," answered Brogten slowly, while his voice shook with passion;
"yes, he did horse-whip me, and I took it. Note that, you Lillyston,
and don't think I'm afraid of _you_. And as for you, Home, listen to
me. I came here solely to tell you that though I screwed you in, I
never dreamt that such results would follow. I never dreamt--so help
me, God!--of doing more than causing you ten minutes' annoyance; and
now, when I was told how it had hindered you in the examination, I was
heartily sorry and ashamed of what I had done, and,"--he began to speak
lower and faster, as the remembrance of a better mood came over
him--"and I came here, Home, to ask your forgiveness. _Yes; I to beg
pardon of you, and humbly and honestly too_. And now you see how you
have received me. Yes," he continued fiercely; "no word between us from
henceforth. You have horse-whipped me, sir, and I, who never took a
blow from man yet without returning it, have taken your horse-whipping.
Take your whip," he said, flinging it to the end of the room; "and after
that never dare to say that all accounts are not squared between us."
Lillyston made room for him to pass. With a lowering countenance he
turned from them, and they continued silent till they had heard his last
heavy footfall as he went down the echoing stairs.
Lillyston sat on the sofa, and Julian kept his eyes fixed on the floor.
There seemed nothing to talk about, so Lillyston merely said,
"Good-night, Julian. I came to advise you to go to bed early, and so
get a good night's rest, that you may be _yourself_ to-morrow. You have
not been yourself to-day. Good-night."
But a worse evil had happened to Julian that day than hindrance in his
career of ambition and hope. He had lost a golden opportunity for an
act of Christian forgiveness which might have had the noblest influence
on the life of an erring human soul. He had lost a golden opportunity
of doing lasting good, and that, too, to one who hated him. Alas, it is
too seldom that we have power in life to raise up them that fall!
Julian felt bitterly, he felt even with poignancy, Brogten's closing
words; but it was too late now to offer the forgiveness which would have
been invaluable to his persecutor, and would have had a healing effect
on his own troubled thoughts so short a time before. All this gave
deeper vexation to Julian's heart as he went moodily to bed.
And Brogten? He sat sullenly over his fire till the last spark died
from its ashes, and his lamp flickered out, and he shivered with cold.
"It is of no use to conquer myself," he thought; "it is of no use to do
better or be better if this comes of it. Horse-whipped, and by him!"
But, as he had said, he no longer grieved over Julian's injury. _That_
was wiped off by the horse-whipping, and he had now made himself
understand that his inward respect for Home was deeper than the long
superficial quarrel that had existed between them. It was against
Kennedy that the current of his anger now swept this ever-growing
temptation for revenge. His craving, often yielded to, became terrible
in its virulence, and from this day forward there was in Brogten's
character a marked change for the worse. He ever watched for his
opportunity, certain that it would come in time; and this encouragement
of one bad passion opened the floodgates for a hundred more. And so on
this evening he went on selling himself more and more completely to the
devil, till the anger within him burned with a red heat, and as he went
to bed the last words he muttered to himself were, "That fellow Kennedy
shall rue it; curse him, he shall rue it to his dying day."