"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 Pere, 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 pa.s.sion 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 Pere 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 pa.s.sion, 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 Pere?" 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 Pere?"
A sudden shock of horror had pa.s.sed 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 Pere, 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 the chance of----. But I will not cast an unnecessary shadow over your bright soul. There will be shadows enough over it soon, without my help."
"What do you mean?"
"That you, and thousands more as delicate, if not as fair as you, will see, ere long, what the realities of human life are; and in a way of which you have never dreamed."
And he murmured, half to himself, the words of the prophet,--""Thou saidst, I shall sit as a lady for ever: but these two things shall come upon thee in one day, widowhood and the loss of children. They shall even come upon thee,"--No! not in their fulness! There are n.o.ble elements beneath the crust, which will come out all the purer from the fire; and we shall have heroes and heroines rising up among us as of old, sincere and earnest, ready to face their work, and to do it, and to call all things by their right names once more; and Queen Whims herself will become what Queen Whims might be!"
Valencia was awed, as well she might have been; for there was a very deep sadness about Campbell"s voice.
"You think there will be def--disasters?" said she, at last.
"How can I tell? That we are what we always were, I doubt not. Scoutbush will fight as merrily as I. But we owe the penalty of many sins, and we shall pay it."
It would be as unfair, perhaps, as easy, to make Major Campbell a prophet after the fact, by attributing to him any distinct expectation of those mistakes which have been but too notorious since. Much of the sadness in his tone may have been due to his habitual melancholy; his strong belief that the world was deeply diseased, and that some terrible purgation would surely come, when it was needed. But it is difficult, again, to conceive that those errors were altogether unforeseen by many an officer of Campbell"s experience and thoughtfulness.
"We will talk no more of it just now." And they walked up to Penalva Court, seriously enough.
"Well, Scoutbush, any letters from town?" said the Major.
"Yes."
"You have heard what has happened at D---- Barracks?"
"Yes."
"You had better take care then, that the like of it does not happen here."
"Here?"
"Yes. I"ll tell you all presently. Have you heard from head-quarters?"
"Yes; all right," said Scoutbush, who did not like to let out the truth before Valencia.
Campbell saw it and signed to him to speak out.
"A11 right?" asked Valencia. "Then you are not going?"
"Ay, but I am! Orders to join my regiment by the first of October, and to be shot as soon afterwards as is fitting for the honour of my country. So, Miss Val, you must be quick in making good friends with the heir-at-law; or else you won"t get your bills paid any more."
"Oh, dear, dear!" And Valencia began to cry bitterly. It was her first real sorrow.
Strangely enough, Major Campbell, instead of trying to comfort her, took Scoutbush out with him, and left her alone with her tears. He could not rest till he had opened the whole cholera question.
Scoutbush was honestly shocked. Who would have dreamed it? No one had ever told him that the cholera had really been there before. What could he do? Send for Thurnall?