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Updated: June 20, 2025
He is no friend of hers; being a high churchman, while she is a little inclined to be schismatic; but an enemy's opinion will be all the more honest." "She must be a wonderful woman," said Scoutbush; "I should like to see her." "And I too," said Campbell, "I passed a lovely girl on the stairs last night, and thought no more of it. Lovely girls are common enough in West Country ports."
Scoutbush kissed Lucia, shook hands with Elsley, hugged the children, and then settled himself in an arm-chair, and talked about the weather, exactly as if he had been running in and out of the house every week for the last three years, and so the matter was done; and for the first time a partie carrée was assembled in the dining-room.
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?
And, my dear," she went on, relapsing into her usual arch tone, "there is no fear but his uncle will be glad enough to patronise him again, when he finds that he has married a viscount's sister." Scoutbush laughed. "You scheming little Irish rogue! But I won't! I've said it, and I won't. It's enough to have one sister married to a poor poet, without having another married to a poor parson.
"Quaint old beetle-hunter you are, for a man who has fought in half-a-dozen battles!" and Scoutbush walked on silently for five minutes. Suddenly he broke out "I cannot! By George, I cannot; and what's more, I won't!" "What?" "Run away. It will look so so cowardly, and there's the truth of it, before those fine fellows down there: and just as I am come among them, too!
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.
"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.
On the whole, he was right, no doubt, in being as indulgent as he dared to the publicans and sinners like Scoutbush; and in being as severe as he dared on all Pharisees, and pretentious persons whatsoever: but he was too much inclined to draw between the two classes one of those strong lines of demarcation which exist only in the fancies of the human brain; for sins, like all diseased matters, are complicated and confused matters; many a seeming Pharisee is at heart a self-condemned publican, and ought to be comforted, and not cursed; while many a publican is, in the midst of all his foul sins, a thorough exclusive and self-complacent Pharisee, and needs not the right hand of mercy, but the strong arm of punishment.
That indeed was not very easy to discover at first; for Scoutbush felt so strongly the oddity of taking a pretty young woman into his counsel on a question of sanitary reform, that he felt mightily inclined to laugh, and began beating about the bush, in a sufficiently confused fashion.
However, both Scoutbush and Campbell send as cheerful reports as they honestly can; and gradually the exceeding beauty of the scenery, and the amusing bustle of the village, make them forget, perhaps, a good deal which they ought to have remembered.
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