Two Years Ago, Volume II. Charles Kingsley

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СКАЧАТЬ the chapter. There! let's talk of something else."

      CHAPTER XVI.

      COME AT LAST

      Now, as if in all things Tom Thurnall and John Briggs were fated to take opposite sides, Campbell lost ground with Elsley as fast as he gained it with Thurnall. Elsley had never forgiven himself for his passion that first morning. He had shown Campbell his weak side, and feared and disliked him accordingly. Beside, what might not Thurnall have told Campbell about him? And what use might not the Major make of his secret? Besides, Elsley's dread and suspicion increased rapidly when he discovered that Campbell was one of those men who live on terms of peculiar intimacy with many women; whether for his own good or not, still for the good of the women concerned. For only by honest purity, and moral courage superior to that of the many, is that dangerous post earned; and women will listen to the man who will tell them the truth, however sternly; and will bow, as before a guardian angel, to the strong insight of him whom they have once learned to trust. But it is a dangerous office, after all, for layman as well as for priest, that of father-confessor. The experience of centuries has shown that they must needs exist, wherever fathers neglect their daughters, husbands their wives; wherever the average of the women cannot respect the average of the men. But the experience of centuries should likewise have taught men, that the said father-confessors are no objects of envy; that their temptations to become spiritual coxcombs (the worst species of all coxcombs), if not intriguers, bullies, and worse, are so extreme, that the soul which is proof against them must be either very great, or very small indeed. Whether Campbell was altogether proof, will be seen hereafter. But one day Elsley found out that such was Campbell's influence, and did not love him the more for the discovery.

      They were walking round the garden after dinner; Scoutbush was licking his foolish lips over some commonplace tale of scandal.

      "I tell you, my dear fellow, she's booked; and Mellot knows it as well as I. He saw her that night at Lady A's."

      "We saw the third act of the comi-tragedy. The fourth is playing out now. We shall see the fifth before the winter."

      "Non sine sanguine!" said the Major.

      "Serve the wretched stick right, at least," said Scoutbush. "What right had he to marry such a pretty woman?"

      "What right had they to marry her up to him?" said Claude. "I don't blame poor January. I suppose none of us, gentlemen, would have refused such a pretty toy, if we could have afforded it as he could."

      "Whom do you blame then?" asked Elsley.

      "Fathers and mothers who prate hypocritically about keeping their daughters' minds pure; and then abuse a girl's ignorance, in order to sell her to ruin. Let them keep her mind pure, in heaven's name; but let them consider themselves all the more bound in honour to use on her behalf the experience in which she must not share."

      "Well," drawled Scoutbush, "I don't complain of her bolting; she's a very sweet creature, and always was: but, as Longreach says,—and a very witty fellow he is, though you laugh at him,—'If she'd kept to us, I shouldn't have minded: but as Guardsmen, we must throw her over. It's an insult to the whole Guards, my dear fellow, after refusing two of us, to marry an attorney, and after all to bolt with a plunger.'"

      What bolting with a plunger might signify, Elsley knew not: but ere he could ask, the Major rejoined, in an abstracted voice—

      "God help us all! And this is the girl I recollect, two years ago, singing there in Cavendish Square, as innocent as a nestling thrush!"

      "Poor child!" said Mellot, "sold at first—perhaps sold again now. The plunger has bills out, and she has ready money. I know her settlements."

      "She shan't do it," said the Major quietly: "I'll write to her to-night."

      Elsley looked at him keenly. "You think, then, sir, that you can, by simply writing, stop this intrigue?"

      The Major did not answer. He was deep in thought.

      "I shouldn't wonder if he did," said Scoutbush; "two to one on his baulking the plunger!"

      "She is at Lord –'s now, at those silly private theatricals. Is he there?"

      "No," said Mellot; "he tried hard for an invitation—stooped to work me and Sabina. I believe she told him that she would sooner see him in the Morgue than help him; and he is gone to the moors now, I believe."

      "There is time then: I will write to her to-night;" and Campbell took up his hat and went home to do it.

      "Ah," said Scoutbush, taking his cigar meditatively from his mouth, "I wonder how he does it! It's a gift, I always say, a wonderful gift! Before he has been a week in a house, he'll have the confidence of every woman in it,—and 'gad, he does it by saying the rudest things!—and the confidence of all the youngsters the week after."

      "A somewhat dangerous gift," said Elsley, drily.

      "Ah, yes; he might play tricks if he chose: but there's the wonder, that he don't. I'd answer for him with my own sister. I do every day of my life—for I believe he knows how many pins she puts into her dress—and yet there he is. As I said once in the mess-room—there was a youngster there who took on himself to be witty, and talked about the still sow supping the milk—the snob! You recollect him, Mellot? the attorney's son from Brompton, who sold out;—we shaved his mustachios, put a bear in his bed, and sent him home to his ma—And he said that Major Campbell might be very pious, and all that: but he'd warrant—they were the fellow's own words,—that he took his lark on the sly, like other men— the snob! so I told him, I was no better than the rest, and no more I am; but if any man dared to say that the Major was not as honest as his own sister, I was his man at fifteen paces. And so I am, Claude!"

      All which did not increase Elsley's love to the Major, conscious as he was that Lucia's confidence was a thing which he had not wholly; and which it would be very dangerous to him for any other man to have at all.

      Into the drawing-room they went. Frank Headley had been asked up to tea; and he stood at the piano, listening to Valencia's singing.

      As they came in, the maid came in also. "Mr. Thurnall wished to speak to Major Campbell."

      Campbell went out, and returned in two minutes somewhat hurriedly.

      "Mr. Thurnall wishes Lord Scoutbush to be informed at once, and I think it is better that you should all know it—that—it is a painful surprise:—but there is a man ill in the street, whose symptoms he does not like, he says."

      "Cholera?" said Elsley.

      "Call him in," said Scoutbush.

      "He had rather not come in, he says."

      "What! is it infectious?"

      "Certainly not, if it be cholera, but—"

      "He don't wish to frighten people, quite right:" (with a half glance at Elsley;) "but is it cholera, honestly?"

      "I fear so."

      "Oh, my children!" said poor Mrs. Vavasour.

      "Will five pounds help the poor fellow?" said Scoutbush.

      "How far off is it?" asked Elsley.

      "Unpleasantly near. I was going to advise you to move at once."

      "You hear what they are saying?" asked Valencia of Frank.

      "Yes, СКАЧАТЬ