And she had never thought of George, somehow, as likely to have any strikingly original ideas on the subject of decoration, although she liked him none the less for that.

But it was something that he had had the good sense to take her mother and Flossie into his confidence: she knew she could trust them to preserve him from any serious mistakes.

"You see," said George, half apologetically, "I would ever so much rather have waited till you came back, only I couldn"t tell when that would be. I really couldn"t help myself. You"re sure you don"t mind about it? If you only knew how I worked over it, rushing about from one place to another, as soon as I could get away from the office, picking up bits of furniture here and there, standing over those beggars of painters and keeping "em at it, and working out estimates and seeing foremen and managers and all kinds of chaps! I used to get home dead-tired of an evening; but I didn"t mind that: I felt it was all bringing you nearer to me, darling, and that made everything a pleasure!"

There was such honest affection in his look and voice; he had so evidently intended to please her, and had been in such manifest dread of any further separation from her, that she was completely disarmed.

"Dear George," she said gently, "I am so sorry you took all the trouble on yourself; it was very, very good of you to care so much, and I know I shall be delighted with the house."

"Well," said George, "I"m not much afraid about that, because I expect our tastes are pretty much the same in most things."

They were by this time at the house, and George, after a little fumbling with his as yet unfamiliar latchkey, threw open the door with a flourish and said, "There you are, little woman! Walk in and you"ll see what you shall see!"

No sooner was Ella inside the hall than her heart sank: "Looks neat and nice, doesn"t it?" said George cheerfully. "You"d almost take that paper for real marble, wouldn"t you? See how well they"ve done those veins. I like this yellowish colour better than green, don"t you? It looks so cool in summer. That"s a good strong hall-lamp--not what you call high art, exactly--but gives a rattling good light, and that"s the main thing. Here, I"ll light it up for you--confound it! they haven"t turned the gas on yet. However, there"s too much sunshine for it to show much, if they had. This linoleum is a capital thing: you might scrub as long as you liked and you"d never get _that_ pattern out!"

"No," Ella agreed, with a tragic little smile, "it--it looks as if it would last."

"Last! I should just think so! And here"s a hatstand--you could almost swear it was carved wood of some sort, but it"s only cast-iron painted; indestructible, you see; they told me that was the latest dodge--wonderful how cheaply they turn them out, isn"t it?"

"I thought you said you were helped?"

"Oh, I didn"t want any help _here_--this is only the pa.s.sage, you know!"

Yes, it was only the pa.s.sage--and yet she had been picturing such a charming entrance, with a draped arch, a graceful lamp, a fresh bright paper, a small buffet of genuine old oak, and so on. She suppressed a sigh as she pa.s.sed on; after all, so long as the rooms themselves were all right, it did not so very much matter, and she knew that her mother"s taste could be trusted.

But on the threshold of the dining-room she stopped aghast. The walls had been distempered a particularly hideous drab; the curtains were mustard yellow; the carpet was a dull brown; the mottled marble mantelpiece, for which she had been intending to subst.i.tute one in walnut wood with tiles, still shone in slabs of petrified brawn; there was a huge mahogany sideboard of a kind she had only seen in old-fashioned hotels.

"Comfortable, eh?" remarked George. "Lots of wear in those curtains!"

Unhappily there was, as Ella was only too well aware. "You did _this_ room yourself too, then, George?" she managed to say, without betraying herself by her voice.

"Yes, I chose everything here. You see, Ella, we shall only use this room for meals."

"Only for meals, yes," she acquiesced with a shudder; "but--George, surely you said mother had helped you with the rooms?"

"What! your mother? No, Ella; her notions are rather too grand for me.

It was Jessie and Carrie I meant. Just come and see what they"ve made of my den."

Ella followed. The window--which had commanded such a cheerful outlook into one of the pretty gardens, with a pink thorn, a laburnum-tree or two, and some sycamores which still flourish fresh and fair on Campden Hill--was obscured now by some detestable contrivance in transparent paper imitating stained gla.s.s.

"That was the girls" notion," said George, following the direction of her eyes; "they fixed it all themselves--it was their present to me.

Pretty of them to think of it, wasn"t it? I call it an immense improvement, and, you see, it"s stuck on with some patent cement varnish, so it can"t rub off. You get the effect better if you stand here--_now_, see how well the colours come out in the sun!"

If only they _would_ come out! But what could she do but stand and admire hypocritically? Her eyes, in spite of herself, seemed drawn to that bright-hued sham intersected by black lines intended to represent leading; of the room itself she only saw vaguely that it was not unworthy of the window.

"Nothing to what they"ve done with the drawing-room!" said innocent George, beaming; "come along, darling, you"ll scarcely know the place."

And Ella, reduced to a condition of stony stupor, followed to the drawing-room. She did not know the place, indeed. It was a quaintly-shaped, irregular room, with French windows opening upon the garden on one side and a deep bow-window on another; when she had last seen it, the walls were covered with a paper so pleasing in tone and design that she had almost decided to retain it. That paper was gone, and in its place a gaudy semi-Chinese pattern of unknown birds, flying and perching on sprawling branches laden with impossible flowers. And then the furniture--the "elegant drawing-room suite" in brilliant plush and shiny satin, the cheap cabinets, and the ready-made black and gilt overmantel, with its panels of swans, hawthorn-blossom, and landscapes sketchily daubed on dead gold--surely it had all been transferred bodily from the stage of some carelessly mounted farcical comedy!

Ella"s horrified gaze gradually took in other features--the china monkeys swinging on cords, the porcelain parrots hanging in great bra.s.s rings, huge misshapen terra-cotta jars and pots, dead gra.s.s in bloated drain-pipes, tambourines, beribboned and painted with kittens and robins, enormous wooden _sabots_, gilded j.a.panese fans, a woolly white rug and a bright Kidderminster carpet.

"_Oh_, George!" burst involuntarily from her lips.

"I knew you"d be pleased!" he said complacently; "but I mustn"t take all the credit myself. It was like this, you see: I felt all right enough about the other rooms, but the drawing-room--that"s _your_ room, and I was awfully afraid of not having it exactly as it ought to be. So I went to the girls, and I said, "_You_ know all about these things--just make it what you think Ella will like, and then we can"t go wrong!" We had that Grosvenor Gallery paper down first of all. "Choose something bright and cheerful," I said, and I don"t think they"ve chosen badly. Then the pottery and china and all that--those are the girls" presents to _you_, with their best love."

"It--it"s very good of them," said poor Ella, on the verge of tears.

"Oh, they think a lot of you! They were rather nervous about doing anything at first, for fear you mightn"t like it; but I told them they needn"t be afraid. "What I like, Ella will like," I said; and, I must say, no one could wish to see a prettier drawing-room than they"ve turned it into--they"ve a good deal of taste, those two girls."

Ella stood there in a kind of dreary dream. What had happened to the world since she came into this house? What was this change in her? She was afraid to speak, lest the intense rebellious anger she felt should gain the mastery. Was it she that had these wicked thoughts of George--poor, kind, unsuspecting, loving George? She felt a little faint, for the windows were closed and the room stuffy with the odour of the new furniture and the atmosphere of the workshop; everything here seemed to her commonplace and repulsive.

"How about those plans of yours now, Ella, eh?" cried George.

This was too much; her overtried patience broke down. "George!" she cried impulsively, and her voice sounded hoa.r.s.e and strange to her own ear; "George! I must speak--I must tell you!----" and then she checked herself. She must keep command of herself, or she could not, without utter loss of dignity, find the words that were to sting him into a sense of what he had done and allowed to be done. Before she could go on, George had drawn her to him, and was patting her shoulder tenderly.

"I know, dear little girl," he said, "I know; don"t try to tell me anything. I"m so awfully glad you"re pleased; but all the money and pains in the world wouldn"t make the place good enough for my Ella!"

She released herself with a little cry of impotent despair. How could she say the sharp, cruel speeches that were struggling to reach her tongue now? It was no use; she was a coward; she simply had not the courage to undeceive him here, on the very first day of their reunion, too!

"You haven"t been upstairs yet," said George, dropping sentiment abruptly; "shall we go up?"

Ella a.s.sented submissively, much as even this cost her; but it was better, she reflected, to get it over and know the very worst. However, she was spared this ordeal for the present; as they returned to the hall, they found themselves suddenly face to face with a dingy man, whose face was surrounded by a fringe of black whiskers and crowned by a shock of fleecy hair.

"Who on earth are you?" demanded George, as the man rose from the kitchen-stairs.

"No offence, sir and lady! Peagrum, that"s _my_ name, fust shop round the corner as you go into Silver Street, plumber and sanitry hengineer, gas-fittin" and hartistic decorating, bell-"anging in all its branches.

I received instructions from Mr. Jones that I was to look into a little matter o" leakage in the back-kitchen sink; also to see what taps, if hany, required seein" to, and gen"ally to put things straight like. So I come round, "aving the keys, jest to cast a heye over them, as I may term it, preliminry to commencing work in the course of a week or so, as soon as I"m at libity to attend to it pussonally."

"Oh, the landlord sent you? All right, then."

"Correct, sir," said the plumber affably. "While I"ve been "ere, I took the freedom of going all over this little "ouse, and a nice cosy little "ouse you"ve made of it, for such a nouse as it is! You"ve done it up very tysty--very tysty you"ve done this little "ouse up; and I"ve some claim to speak, seein" as how I"ve had the decoration throughout of a many "ouses in my time, likewise mansions. You ain"t been too ambitious, which is the error most parties falls into with small "ouses. Now the parties as "ad the place before you--by the name o" Rummles--well, I daresay they satisfied theirselves, but the "ouse never looked right--not to _my_ taste, it didn"t!"

"George, get rid of this person!" said Ella rapidly, under her breath, in French. Unfortunately, George"s acquaintance with that tongue was about on a par with the plumber"s, and he remained pa.s.sive.

The plumber now proceeded to put down his mechanic"s straw-bag upon the hall-table, which he did with great care, as if it were of priceless stuff and contained fragile articles; having done this, he posed himself with one elbow resting on the post at the foot of the staircase, like a grimy statue of Shakespeare.

"Ah," he said, shaking his touzled head, "this ain"t the fust time I"ve been "ere in my puffessional capacity, not by a long way. Not by a long way, it ain"t. Mr. Rummles, him as I mentioned to you afore, and a nice pleasant-spoken gentleman he was, too--in the tea trade--Mr. Rummles, he allus sent round for me whenever there was hany odd jobs as wanted doin", and in course I was allus pleased to get "em, be they hodd or hotherwise."

"Er-exactly," said George, as soon as he could put in a word; "but you see, this lady and I----"

The plumber, however, did not abandon his position, and seemed determined that they should hear him:

"I know, sir--I see how things were with you with "arf a glance; but afore we go any further, it"s right you should know "oo I am and all about me. Jest "ear what I"m goin" to tell you, for it"s somethink out of the common way, though gospel-truth. It"s a melinkly reflection for a man in my station of life, but"--and here he lowered his voice to a solemn pitch--"I"ve never set foot inside of this "ere "ouse without somethink "appens more or less immejit. Ah, it"s true, though. Seems almost like as if I brought a fatality in along o" me. Don"t you interrupt; you wait till I"m done, and see if I"m talking at random or without facks to support me. Well, _fust_ time as ever I was sent for "ere was in regard to drains, as they couldn"t flush satisfactory. I did my work and come away. Not three weeks arter, Miss Rummles, the heldest gell, was took ill with typhoid. Never the same young lady again--nor yet she never won"t be neither, not if she lives to a nundered. "Nothing very hodd about _that_?" says you. Wait a bit. Next time, it was the kitching copper as had got all furred up like. I tinkered that up to rights, and come away. Well, afore I"d even made out my account, that identical copper blew up and scalded the cook dreadful! "Coppers will play these games," you sez. All right, then; but you let me finish.

Third time there was a flaw in one of the gas-brackets in the spare room. I soddered it up and I come away. Soon arterwards, a day or two as it might be, Mrs. Rummles "ad "er mar a-stayin" with her, and the old lady slep in that very room, and was laid up weeks! "Curus," says I, when I come to "ear of it, "_very_ curus!" and it set me a-thinkin".

Last time but one--"ere, lemme see--that was a bell-"anging job, I _think_--no, I"m wrong, it was drains agen, so it were--drains it was agen. And the _next_ thing I "eard was that Mrs. Rummles was a-layin" at death"s door with the diffthery! The last time--ah, I recklect well, I was called in to see if somethink wasn"t wrong with the ballc.o.c.k in the top cistin. I see there _was_ somethink, and I come away as usual. That day week, old Mr. Rummles was took with a fit on the floor in the back droring-room, which broke up the "ouse!

"Now, I think, as fair-minded and unprejudiced parties, you"ll agree with me that there was something more"n hordinary coinside-ency in all that. I declare to you!" avowed the plumber, with a gloomy relish and a candour that was possibly begotten of beer, "I declare to you there"s times when I do honestly believe as I carry a curse along with me whenever I visits this "ere partickler "ouse! and, though it"s agen my own hinterests, I deem it on"y my dooty, as a honest man, to mention it!"

Under any other circ.u.mstances, the plumber"s compliments on her taste and his lugubrious a.s.sumption of character of the Destroying Angel would have sorely tried, if not completely upset, Ella"s gravity; as it was, she was too wretched to have more than a pa.s.sing and quite unappreciative sense of his absurdity. George, having the quality of mind which makes jokes more readily than sees them, took him quite seriously.