The Talking Horse, and Other Tales, F. Anstey [best ebook reader android TXT] 📗

to her as if she heard them actually spoken. Did he not say that the house had been furnished out of his savings?

What was she asking him to do? To dismantle it entirely; to humiliate himself by going round to all the people he had dealt with, asking them as a favour to take back their goods, or else he must sell them as best he could for a fraction of their cost. Who was to refund him all he had so uselessly spent? Could she[Pg 101] ask her mother to do so? Would he even consent to such an arrangement if it was proposed?

Then his sisters—how could she avoid offending them irreparably, perhaps involving George in a quarrel with his family, if she were to carry her point?

As she realised, for the first time, the inevitable consequences of success, she asked herself in despair what she ought to do—where her plain duty lay?

Did she love George—or was it all delusion, and was he less to her than mere superfluities, the fringe of life?

She did love him, in spite of any passing disloyalty of thought. She felt his sterling worth and goodness, even his weaknesses had something lovable in them for her.

And he had been planning, spending, working all this time to give her pleasure, and this was his reward! She had been within an ace of letting him see the cruel ingratitude that was in her heart! 'What a selfish wretch I have been!' she thought; 'but I won't be—no, I won't! George shall not be snubbed, hurt, estranged from his family on my account!'

No, she would suffer—she alone—and in silence. Never by a word would she betray to him the pain his well-intentioned action cost her. Not even to her mother and Flossie would she permit herself to utter[Pg 102] the least complaint, lest they should insist upon opening George's eyes!

So, having arrived at this heroic resolve, in which she found a touch of the sublime that almost consoled her, the tears dried on her cheeks and Ella fell asleep at last.

Some readers, no doubt—though possibly few of our heroine's sex—will smile scornfully at this crumpled rose-leaf agony, this tempest in a Dresden teacup; and the writer is not concerned to deny that the situation has its ludicrous side.

But, for a girl brought up as Ella Hylton had been, in an artistic milieu, her eye insensibly trained to love all that was beautiful in colour and form, to be almost morbidly sensitive to ugliness and vulgarity—it was a very real and bitter struggle, a hard-won victory to come to such a decision as she formed. Life, Heaven knows, contains worse trials and deeper tragedies than this; but at least Ella's happy life had as yet known no harder.

And, so far, she must be given the credit of having conquered.

Resolution is, no doubt, half the battle. Unfortunately, Ella's resolution, though she hardly perceived this at present, could not be effected by one isolated and final act, but by a long chain of daily and hourly forbearances, the first break in which would undo all that had gone before.

How she bore the test we are going to see.

[Pg 103]

She woke the next morning to a sense that her life had somehow lost its savour; the exaltation of her resolve overnight had gone off and left her spirits flat and dead; but she came down, nevertheless, determined to be staunch and true to George under all provocations.

'Have you and George decided when you would like your wedding to be?' asked her mother, after breakfast, 'because we ought to have the invitations printed very soon.'

'Not yet,' faltered Ella, and the words might have passed either as an answer or an appeal.

'I think it should be some time before the end of next month, or people will be going out of town.'

'I suppose so,' was the reply, so listlessly given that Mrs. Hylton glanced keenly at her daughter.

'What do you feel about it yourself, Ella?'

'I? oh, I—I've no feeling. Perhaps, if we waited—no, it doesn't matter—let it be when you and George wish, mother, please!'

Mrs. Hylton gave a sharp, annoyed little laugh: 'Really, my dear, if you can't get up any more interest in it than that, I think it would certainly be wiser to wait!'

It was more than indifference that Ella felt—a wild aversion to beginning the new life that but lately had seemed so mysteriously sweet and strange; she was frightened by it, ashamed of it, but she could not help herself. She made no answer, nor did Mrs. Hylton again refer to the subject.

[Pg 104]

But Ella's worst tribulations had yet to come. That afternoon, as she and her mother and Flossie were sitting in the drawing-room, 'Mrs. and the Miss Chapmans' were announced. Evidently they had deemed it incumbent on them to pay a state visit as soon as possible after Ella's return.

Ella returned their effusive greetings as dutifully as she could. She had never succeeded in cultivating a very lively affection for them; to-day she found them barely endurable.

Mrs. Chapman was a stout, dewlapped old lady, with dull eyes and pachydermatous folds in her face. She had a husky voice and a funereal manner. Jessie, her eldest daughter, was not altogether uncomely in a commonplace way: she was dark-haired, high-coloured, loud-voiced—generally sprightly and voluble and overpowering; she was in such a hurry to speak that her words tripped one another up, and she had a meaningless and, to Ella, highly irritating little laugh.

Carrie was plain and colourless, content to admire and echo her sister.

After some conversation on Ella's Continental experiences, Jessie suddenly, as Ella's uneasy instinct foresaw, turned to Mrs. Hylton. 'Of course, Ella told you what a surprise she had at Campden Hill yesterday? Weren't you electrified?'

'No doubt I should have been,' said Mrs. Hylton,[Pg 105] who detested Jessie, 'only Ella did not think fit to mention it.'

'Oh, I wonder at that! I hope I wasn't going to betray the secrets of the prison-house?' Jessie was fond of using stock phrases to give lightness and sparkle to her conversation. 'Ella, the idea of your keeping it all to yourself, you sly puss! But tell me—would you ever have believed Tumps'—his sisters called George 'Tumps'—'could be capable of such independent behaviour?'

'No,' said Ella, 'I—indeed I never should!'

'Ha, ha! nor should we! You would have screamed to see him fussing about—wasn't he killing over it, Carrie?'

'Oh, he was, Jessie!'

'My son,' explained Mrs. Chapman to Mrs. Hylton, 'is so wonderfully energetic and practical. I have never known him fail to carry through anything he has once undertaken—he inherits that from his poor dear father.'

'I don't quite gather what your brother George has been doing, even now?' said Mrs. Hylton to Jessie.

'Oh, but my lips are sealed. Wild horses sha'n't drag any more from me! Don't be afraid, Ella, I won't spoil sport!'

'There is no sport to spoil,' said Ella. 'Mother, it is only that—that George has furnished the house while I have been away.'

[Pg 106]

'Really?' said Mrs. Hylton politely; 'that is energetic of him, indeed!'

'Poor dear Tumps came home so proud of your approval,' said Jessie to Ella, 'and we were awfully relieved to find you didn't think we'd made the house quite too dreadful—weren't we, Carrie?'

'Yes, indeed, Jessie.'

'Of course,' observed the latter young lady, 'it's always so hard to hit upon another person's taste exactly—especially in furnishing.'

'Impossible, I should have thought,' from Mrs. Hylton.

'I hope Ella is of a different opinion—what do you say, dearest?'

'Oh,' cried Ella hastily, with splendid mendacity, 'I—I liked it all very much, and—and it was so much too kind of you and Carrie. I've never thanked you for—for all the things you gave me!'

'Oh, those! they ain't worth thanking for—just a few little artistic odds and ends. They set off a room, you know—give it a finish.'

'Young people nowadays,' croaked old Mrs. Chapman lugubriously in Mrs. Hylton's courteously inclined ear, 'think so much of luxury and ornament. I'm sure when I married my dear husband, we——'

'Now, mater dear, you really mustn't!' interrupted the irrepressible Jessie; 'Mrs. Hylton is on our side, you know. She likes pretty things about her—don't you, Mrs. Hylton? And, talking of that, Ella,[Pg 107] I hope you thought our glyco-vitrine decoration a success? We were perfectly surprised ourselves to see how well it came out! Just transparent coloured paper, Mrs. Hylton, and you cut it into sheets, and gum it on the window-panes, and really, unless you were told or came quite close, you would declare it was real stained glass! You ought to try some of it on your windows, Mrs. Hylton. I'll tell you where you can get it—you go down——'

'I'm afraid I'm old-fashioned, my dear,' said Mrs. Hylton, stiffly; 'if I cannot have the reality, I prefer to do without even the best imitations.'

'Why, you're deserting us, I declare! Ella, you must take her to see the window, and then perhaps she will change her opinion.'

'I always tell my girls,' said Mrs. Chapman, in her woolly voice, 'when I am dead and gone they can make any alterations they please, but while I am spared to them I like everything about the house to be kept exactly as it was in their poor father's lifetime.'

'Isn't she a dear conservative old mummy?' said Jessie to Ella in an audible aside. 'Why, I do believe she won't see anything to admire in your little house—at least, if she does, the dear old lady, she'd sooner die than admit it!'

The Chapmans went at last, and before they were out of the house Mrs. Hylton, with an effort to seem unconcerned, said: 'And so, Ella, you and George[Pg 108] have done without my help? Of course you know your own affairs best; still, I should have thought—I should certainly have thought—that I might have been of some assistance to you—if only in pecuniary matters.'

'George preferred that you should not be troubled,' stammered Ella.

'I am not blaming him. I respect him for wishing to be independent. I own to being a little surprised that you should not have told me of this before, though, Ella. But for that chattering girl, I presume I should have been left to discover it for myself. I wonder you cannot bring yourself to be a little more open with your mother, my dear.'

'Oh, mother!' cried Ella in despair, 'indeed I was going to tell you—only, I did not know myself till yesterday. At least, that is——' she broke off lamely, fearing to reflect on George.

'I find it hard to believe that George would act without consulting you in any way. It is strange enough that he should have undertaken to furnish the house in your absence.'

'But if I couldn't be there!' pleaded Ella—'and I couldn't.'

'Naturally, as you were on the Continent, you couldn't be on Campden Hill at the same time; you need not be absurd, Ella. But what I want to know is this—have you had a voice in the matter, or have you not?'

[Pg 109]

'N—not much,' confessed Ella, hanging her head.

'So I suspected, and I think George ought to be ashamed of himself. I never heard of such a thing, and I shall make a point of seeing the house and satisfying myself that it is fit for a daughter of mine to inhabit.'

'Mother!' exclaimed Ella, springing up excitedly, 'you don't understand. Why should you choose to suppose that the house is not pretty? It is not done as you would do it, because poor George hadn't much money to spend; but if I am satisfied, why should you come between us? And I am satisfied—quite, quite satisfied; he has done it all beautifully, and I will not have a single thing altered! After all, it is his house—our house—and nobody else has any right to interfere—not even you, mother!'

Mrs. Hylton shrugged her shoulders. 'Oh, my dear, if that is the way you think proper to speak to me, it is time to change the subject. Pray understand that I shall not dream of interfering. I am very glad that you are so satisfied.' And by-and-by she left the room majestically.

When she had gone, Flossie, who had been listening open-eyed to all that had taken place, came and stood in front of Ella's chair.

'Ella, tell me,' she said, 'has George really furnished the house exactly as you like—really now?'

'Haven't I said so, Flossie? Why should you doubt it?'

[Pg 110]

'Oh, I don't know; I was wondering, that was all!'

'Really!' cried Ella angrily, 'anyone would think poor George was a sort of barbarian, who couldn't be expected to know anything, or trusted to do anything!'

'I'm sure I never said so, Ella. But how clever