Two Years Ago, Volume II. Charles Kingsley

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      "I shall be only too delighted, if you wish it."

      "You will wish it yourself a second time," chimed in Campbell, "if you try it once. Perhaps you know nothing of him but professionally. Unfortunately for professional men, that too often happens."

      "Know anything of him—I! I assure you not, save that he attends Mrs. Vavasour and the children," said Vavasour, looking up at last: but with an expression of anger which astonished both Valencia and Campbell.

      Campbell thought that he was too proud to allow rank as a gentleman to a country doctor; and despised him from that moment, though, as it happened, unjustly. But he answered quietly,—

      "I assure you, that whatever some country practitioners may be, the average of them, as far as I have seen, are cleverer men, and even of higher tone than their neighbours; and Thurnall is beyond the average: he is a man of the world,—even too much of one,—and a man of science; and I fairly confess that, what with his wit, his savoir vivre, and his genial good temper, I have quite fallen in love with him in a single evening; we began last night on the microscope, and ended on all heaven and earth."

      "How I should like to make a third!"

      "My dear Queen Whims would hear a good deal of sober sense, then; at least on one side: but I shall not ask her: for Mr. Thurnall and I have our deep secrets together."

      So spoke the Major, in the simple wish to exalt Tom in a quarter where he hoped to get him practice; and his "secret" was a mere jest, unnecessary, perhaps, as he thought afterwards, to pass off Tom's want of orthodoxy.

      "I was a babbler then," said he to himself the next moment; "how much better to have simply held my tongue!"

      "Ah; yes; I know men have their secrets, as well as women," said Valencia, for the mere love of saying something: but as she looked at Vavasour, she saw an expression in his face which she had never seen before. What was it?—All that one can picture for oneself branded into the countenance of a man unable to repress the least emotion, who had worked himself into the belief that Thurnall had betrayed his secret.

      "My dear Mr. Vavasour," cried Campbell, of course unable to guess the truth, and supposing vaguely that he was 'ill;' "I am sure that—that the sun has overpowered you" (the only possible thing he could think of). "Lie down on the sofa a minute" (Vavasour was actually reeling with rage and terror), "and I will run up to Thurnall's for salvolatile."

      Elsley, who thought him the most consummate of hypocrites, cast on him a look which he intended to have been withering, and rushed out of the room, leaving the two staring at each other.

      Valencia was half inclined to laugh, knowing Elsley's petulance and vanity: but the impossibility of guessing a cause kept her quiet.

      Major Campbell stood for full five minutes; not as one astounded, but as one in deep and anxious thought.

      "What can be the matter, mon Saint Père?" asked she at last, to break the silence.

      "That there are more whims in the world than yours, dear Queen Whims; and I fear darker ones. Let us walk up together after this man. I have offended him."

      "Nonsense! I dare say he wanted to get home to write poetry, as you did not praise what he had written. I know his vanity and flightiness."

      "You do?" asked he quickly, in a painful tone. "However, I have offended him, I can see; and deeply. I must go up, and make things right, for the sake of—for everybody's sake."

      "Then do not ask me anything. Lucia loves him intensely, and let that be enough for us."

      The Major saw the truth of the last sentence no more than Valencia herself did; for Valencia would have been glad enough to pour out to him, with every exaggeration, her sister's woes and wrongs, real and fancied, had not the sense of her own folly with Vavasour kept her silent and conscience-stricken.

      Valencia remarked the Major's pained look as they walked up the street.

      "You dear conscientious Saint Père, why will you fret yourself about this foolish matter? He will have forgotten it all in an hour; I know him well enough."

      Major Campbell was not the sort of person to admire Elsley the more for throwing away capriciously such deep passion as he had seen him show, any more than for showing the same.

      "He must be of a very volatile temperament."

      "Oh, all geniuses are."

      "I have no respect for genius, Miss St. Just; I do not even acknowledge its existence when there is no strength and steadiness of character. If any one pretends to be more than a man, he must begin by proving himself a man at all. Genius? Give me common sense and common decency! Does he give Mrs. Vavasour, pray, the benefit of any of these pretty flights of genius?"

      Valencia was frightened. She had never heard her Saint Père speak so severely and sarcastically; and she feared that if he knew the truth he would be terribly angry. She had never seen him angry; but she knew well enough that that passion, when it rose in him in a righteous cause, would be very awful to see; and she was one of those women who always grow angry when they are frightened. So she was angry at his calling her Miss St. Just; she was angry because she chose to think he was talking at her; though she reasonably might have guessed it, seeing that he had scolded her a hundred times for want of steadiness of character. She was more angry than all, because she knew that her own vanity had caused—at least disagreement—between Lucia and Elsley. All which (combined with her natural wish not to confess an unpleasant truth about her sister) justified her, of course, in answering,—

      "Miss St. Just does not intrude into the secrets of her sister's married life; and if she did, she would not repeat them."

      Major Campbell sighed, and walked on a few moments in silence, then,—

      "Pardon, Miss St. Just; I asked a rude question, and I am sorry for it."

      "Pardon you, my dear Saint Père?" cried she, almost catching at his hand. "Never! I must either believe you infallible, or hate you eternally. It is I that was naughty; I always am; but you will forgive Queen Whims?"

      "Who could help it?" said the Major, in a sad, sweet tone. "But here is the postman. May I open my letters?"

      "You may do as you like, now you have forgiven me. Why, what is it, mon Saint Père?"

      A sudden shock of horror had passed over the Major's face, as he read his letter: but it had soon subsided into stately calm.

      "A gallant officer, whom we and all the world knew well, is dead of cholera, at his post, where a man should die…. And, my dear Miss St. Just, we are going to the Crimea."

      "We?—you?"

      "Yes. The expedition will really sail, I find."

      "But not you?"

      "I shall offer my services. My leave of absence will, in any case, end on the first of September; and even if it did not, my health is quite enough restored to enable me to walk up to a cannon's mouth."

      "Ah, mon Saint Père, what words are these?"

      "The words of an old soldier, Queen Whims, who has been so long at his trade that he has got to take a strange pleasure in it."

      "In killing?"

      "No; only in СКАЧАТЬ