Julian Home Part 43

This happened about the time that Julian took his degree, and before the year was over Julian had been elected a Fellow, and the living of Elstan was offered to him. Being of small value--200 pounds a year--it had been rejected by all the Fellows of older standing, and had "come down"

to Julian, who, to the surprise of his friends, left Camford and accepted it without hesitation.

"My dear fellow," said Mr Admer, "how in the world can you be so insane as to bury yourself alive, at the age of twenty-two, in so obscure a place as the vicarage of Elstan?"

"Oh, Elstan is a charming place," said Julian; "I visited it before accepting it, and found it to be one of those dear little English villages in the greenest fields of Wilts.h.i.+re. The house is a very pretty one, and the parish is in perfect order. My predecessor was an excellent man: his population, of one thousand souls, were perhaps as well attended to as any in all England."

"Yes, yes," said Mr Admer, impatiently, "I know all that; but who will ever hear of you again if you go and become what Sydney Smith calls 'a kind of holy vegetable' in the cabbage-gardens of a Wilts.h.i.+re hamlet?"

"Why, what would you have me do, Mr Admer?"

"Oh, I don't know; stay up here, edit a Greek play, or one of the epistles; bestir yourself for some rising university member in a contested election; set yourself to get a bishopric or a deanery; you could easily do it if you tried. I'll give you a receipt for it any day you like. Or go to some London church; with such sermons as you could preach you might have London at your heels in no time, and as you would superadd learning to effectiveness, your fortune would be made."

Julian was sorry to hear him talk like this; it was the language of a disappointed and half-believing man.

"I don't care for such aims," he said. "A _mere_ popular preacher I would not be, and as for preferment it doesn't depend much on me, but for the most part on purely accidental causes. All I care for at present is to be useful and happy. Obscurity is no trial to me; neither success nor failure can make me different from what I am."

"Well then, at least, write a book or something to keep yourself in men's memory."

"I don't feel inclined. There are too many books in the world, and I have nothing particular to say. Besides, the annoyance and spite to which an author subjects himself are endless--to hear ignorant and often malicious criticisms, to see his views misrepresented, his motives calumniated, and his name aspersed. No, for the present, I prefer the peace and the dignity of silence."

"What on earth will you find to do, then, if you have no ambition?"

"Nay, I don't want you to think that I'm so virtuous or so phlegmatic as to have no ambition. I _have_ a pa.s.sionate ambition, whether known or unknown, so to live as to lead on the coming golden age, and prepare the next generation to be truer and wiser than ours. If it be my destiny never to be called to a wider sphere of work than Elstan, I shall be content to do it there."

"And how will you occupy your time?" asked Mr Admer, who had long loved Julian too well even to smile at what were to himself mere unintelligible enthusiasms.

"Oh, no fear on that score. My profession will give me plenty of work; besides, what is the use of education, if it be not to render it _impossible_ for a man to know the meaning of the word ennui? Put me alone in the waiting-room of some little wayside station to wait three hours for a train, and I should still be perfectly happy, even if there were no such thing as a book to be got for miles."

"Well, well, if you must vanish to Elstan, do. At any rate, remember your old Camford friends, and let us hear of you sometimes? I suppose you'll keep on your Fellows.h.i.+p at least for a year?"

"Insidious questioner!" said Julian; "no, I hope to be married very soon. You shall come down and see love in a cottage."

"Aha, I see it all now," said Mr Admer, with a sigh.

"Nay, you mustn't sigh. I expect to be congratulated, not pitied," said Julian, gaily. "A wife will sweeten all the cares and sorrows of life, and instead of withering away my prime in selfish isolation, and spending these still half-youthful years in loneliness, and without a real home, I shall feel myself complete in the materials of happiness.

After all, ambition such as yours is a loveless bride."

So Julian accepted Elstan, and Lillyston went with him to London to help him in selecting furniture for the vicarage which was so soon to receive a bride.

"Are you really going to venture on matrimony with only 200 pounds a year?" asked Lillyston.

"I have some more of my own, you know, Hugh; Mr Carden's legacy, you remember; but even if I hadn't, I would still marry even on a hundred a year if I wished and the lady consented."

"And repent at leisure."

"Not a bit of it. If I were a man to whom lavender-coloured kid gloves and unlimited eau-de-cologne were necessaries of life, it might be folly to think of it. But if a man be brave, and manly, and fearless of convention, let him marry by all means, and not make his life bitter and his love cold by long delay."

"But how about his children?"

"Well, it may be fanaticism, but I believe that G.o.d never sends a soul into the world without providing ample means for its sustenance. Of course, such an a.s.sertion will set the tongues of our would-be philosophers waggling in scornful cachinnation; but, in spite of that, I do believe that if a man have faith, and a strong heart, and common sense, he may depend upon it his children will not starve. Some of the very happiest people I know are to be found among the large families of country clergymen. Besides, very often the children succeed in life, and improve their father's position. I haven't the shadow of a doubt that I am doing the right thing. I only wish, Hugh, that you would follow my example."

"Perhaps I shall, some day," said Lillyston.

"And meanwhile you will be my bridegroom's man, will you not?"

"Joyfully--if it be only to see Miss Kennedy's face again."

"And do you know that Kennedy is to be married to Violet the same day?"

"Is he? happy fellow! As for me, I am going to resign my fellows.h.i.+p, and to make myself useful at Lillyston Court. When is the wedding to be?"

"_Both_ weddings, you mean, Hugh. On the tenth of next June at Orton-on-the-Sea--the loveliest spot in the world, I think."

So in due time Julian packed up all his books and prizes, and bade farewell to his friends, and turned his back on Camford. It is as impossible to leave one's college without emotion as it is to enter it, and the tears often started to Julian's eyes as the train whirled him off to Elstan. He had cause, if any man ever had, to look back to Camford with regret and love. His course had been singularly successful, singularly happy. He had entered Saint Werner's as a sizar, he left it as a Fellow, and not "With academic laurels unbestowed."

He had grown in calmness, in strength, in wisdom; he had learnt many practical lessons of life; he had gained new friends, without losing the old. He had learnt to honour all men, and to be fearless for the truth.

His mind had become a well-managed instrument, which he could apply to all purposes of discovery, research, and thought; he was wiser, better, braver, nearer the light. In a word, he had learnt the great purpose of life--sympathy and love to further man's interest--faith and prayer to live ever for G.o.d's glory. And not a few of these lessons he owed to his college, to its directing influence, its enn.o.bling a.s.sociations, its studies--all bent towards that which is permanent and eternal, not to the transitory and superficial. To the latest day of his life, the name of Saint Werner's remained to Julian Home an incentive to all that is n.o.ble and manly in human effort. He felt the same duty with regard to it as the generous scion of an ill.u.s.trious house feels towards the ancient name which he has inherited, and the n.o.ble lineage whence he has sprung.

The few months which were to elapse before his marriage, Julian spent in preparing the vicarage for his young betrothed, and he stored it with everything which could delight a simple yet refined and educated taste.

There was an indefinable charm about it--the charm of home. You felt on entering it that its owner destined it as the place around which his fondest affections were to centre, and his work in life was to be done.

Julian had not the restless mind which sighs for continual change; happy in himself and his own resources, and the honest endeavour to do good, the glory of the green fields, the changes of the varying year supplied him with a wealth of beauty which was sufficient for all his needs, and when--after some long day's work amid the cottages, reading to the sick at their lonely bedsides, listening to the prattle of the children in the infant schools, talking to the labourers as they rested at their work--he refreshed himself by a gallop across the free fresh downs, or a quiet stroll under the rosy apple-blossoms of his orchard or garden, Julian might have said with more truth than most men can, that he was a happy and a contented man.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.

FAREWELL.

"Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells!

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!

Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously swells!"

Edgar Poe.

Merrily, merrily, rang out the sweet bells of Orton-on-the-Sea; more merrily than they ever rang before; so merrily that it seemed as if they would concentrate into every single clash and clang of their joyous peal a tumult of inexpressible happiness greater than they would ever be able to enjoy again. If you look up at the belfry, you will see them swing and dance in a very delirium of ecstasy, such as made everybody laugh while he listened, and chased away the possibility of sorrow, and thrilled the very atmosphere with an impression of hilarity and triumph.

All Orton is a-stir. Mr Kennedy is the squire of the parish, and the villagers may well love him as they do. The son and daughter of the squire are not often married on the same day; and besides the double wedding with its promise of an evening banquet, and dance on the hall lawn to all the people of Orton, Eva and Edward are known well to every cottager, and loved as well as known.

The hall is quite full, and the village inn is quite full, and all the neighbouring gentry who are invited, are hospitably entertaining such members of the two families as can find room nowhere else. Never had Orton seen such grand doings; the very stables and coach-houses are insufficient to receive the mult.i.tude of carriages.

Several Saint Wernerians are invited; and, (as both Julian and Kennedy prefer to be alone on that morning), Lillyston, who has visited the place before, is lionising them in the neighbourhood, and with Willie, Kennedy's orphan cousin, rows them over to the little islet in the bay.

As they come back, the hour for the wedding approaches, and Lillyston says to Owen--"How I wish De Vayne were here!"

"But he is in Florence, is he not?" says Owen.

They have hardly spoken when a carriage with a coronet on the panels dashes up to the Lion Inn; a young man alights, hands out a lady, and enters the inn.

"Surely that must be De Vayne himself," says Suton running forward.

Meanwhile the young man, after taking the lady into a private room, asks if he may see Mr Home or Mr Kennedy, and is showed up to the parlour in which they are sitting.