“God bless my soul! Of course I did. When I was nineteen I fell in love with my father’s cook. She was a very pretty woman, and made jam puffs divinely. She married the grocer round the corner,—and somehow I lived through it. I was nearly thirty when I found Letty—and I have loved her ever since.”
Violet pressed his arm but said nothing.
“Now come along,” said the Major cheerfully. “Don’t worry yourself, thin yourself, or lose your looks. Nobody will thank you for that except your kind female friends. We will clear this little matter up somehow. And I am sure you are far too high-spirited and straightforward to care for a man who turns out to be a dishonourable scamp—though mind, I don’t say he is dishonourable till I have proved it. But unless he has been kidnapped for his millions by brigands, I don’t see any excuse for his silence. If he were ill he could send you word,—so there is only one inference to be drawn from his conduct, and that is, that he doesn’t mean to keep his promise to you. It is hard for you to look at it in that light, but you must try, Violet—you must try. If he does turn out a villain, I will take care he gets a jolly good horsewhipping.”
Violet uttered an exclamation.
“Oh no, uncle!”
“‘Oh no, uncle?’—I say ‘Oh yes, uncle!’ Leave this to me, child! There are too many scamps sneaking about in society embittering and spoiling the lives of innocent women, and a few sound thrashings on the backs of such fellows would be pure joy and relief to the feelings of the majority. I should like to thrash a millionaire!—especially if his conduct is on the level of a play-actor, who is the worst kind of unprincipled rogue between this world and the nearest gallows.” And the Major chuckled. “I did thrash one of those painted fellows once, and by Jove!—how I enjoyed it!”
Violet looked up at him timidly with a faint smile.
“It was in India,” said the Major, his eyes twinkling and his cheeks beginning to crease up with wrinkles of satisfaction at the recollection. “There came what was supposed to be a tiptop theatrical company to the place where we were, and among the players there was a thin, white-faced fellow, as conceited as they make them, who ‘made up’ to look a king or a villain, whichever you fancied—though, to my mind, the villain suited his style of beauty best. Well, when he was off the stage, he pretended to be a very fine gentleman indeed,—explained that he had taken to the stage as a freak—that his mother had nearly broken her heart over it, and all that sort of ancient stock-in-trade nonsense; and he pushed himself by degrees into the society of the women, till he came across a little creature who was fascinated by his artful ways, thought him a budding ‘genius,’ and listened to his long stories as if he were an angel singing. And then he poured out more confidences: he told her how he had in an evil hour married a woman he could not love, and that she—the little creature aforesaid—was his own true mate, and all that kind of gibberish. Poor little soul!—she believed him, and was for immolating herself on the altar of what she believed to be an ‘ideal’ passion. Only there happened to be another little creature round, to whom he had told the selfsame tale, and she, having more spirit in her than the first one, came to me and told me all about it. ‘And I have written letters to him!’ she said, stamping her little foot and flashing her pretty eyes—‘and he won’t give them back—the coward!’ ‘What do you want me to do, my dear?’ I said. ‘Thrash him!’ she replied. And of course I did. I went for him one day when he was tripping gingerly out on his tiptoes from the place where he put his rouge and false legs on. I said, ‘Look here, Hamlet—King Richard—As you Like It—or whatever you are,—you are a scoundrel! Make yourself into all the people that ever blessed or disgraced the world, you are an unprincipled cad! I am not Hamlet, thank God!—I am a British officer, and though you are not worth kicking, you are worth whipping for the fun of it. Now, Hamlet, look out!’ He smiled pallidly, and said ‘Sir!’—but the rest of his sentence was lost. I forget what happened afterwards, till I saw him picked up by two coolies, and carried off. He couldn’t act for some time afterwards,—he was ill with a kind of influenza! But I got back the girl’s letters for her.”
The Major laughed heartily over this reminiscence, and enjoyed himself very much for several minutes, till he noticed the pretty pensive face of the girl at his side. Then he scolded himself violently and called himself a brute for not considering her feelings more tenderly.
“Come, come, don’t be downhearted, little woman!” he said kindly. “Take a bright face to Miss Letty. She has her own trouble to bear—and I can see she frets over it too, though she never mentions it, and has asked me not to talk to her about it. But I am sure she had set a good many of her hopes on Boy.”