Part 10 (2/2)

'_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.

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