“There’s imagination for you!” cried Molyneux; “invention, the most daring fancy. I did not know you were a poet. ‘Aurora Leigh’ is nothing to it, nor even ‘Cinderella.’ Now, I confess my curiosity is awakened. When is this course of cruelty to begin?”
“Yes, mamma, it is getting quite night,” cried Nelly, springing up. “We have been left long enough in the dark, haven’t we? Have you settled about the stables? Oh, Major Railton, if you would be so very good! It is only a book I want. A book is a simple sort of commission. Now please tell me if it is troublesome, for of course I could order it at Clarke’s; but then it would not come for a week. We are supposed to be in London here, but it is a week’s post to Regent Street.”
“What is the good of me but to run errands?” said the gallant Major, changing his seat in the corner for another chair more near to Nelly. “I like it. Good heavens, I beg your pardon, Winks, how was I to see you were there?”
Winks jumped down out of the chair on which he had been lying, in the highest dudgeon; he took no notice of the criminal. Too much a gentleman to say anything uncivil beyond the momentary snap and snarl which betrayed his disinclination to be sat upon, a thing abhorrent both to dogs and men, he hobbled to the rug, holding up one paw with a demonstration of patient suffering, which might have melted the hardest heart. It was Winks’s favourite paw which he never ran upon under any circumstances; but this was a little fact which he did not mention. He took it to the matting, and licked it, and made much of it, with a heroic abstinence from any complaint. The Major went down on his knees, and felt the injured limb carefully, with every expression of penitence. “The bone is not hurt, I assure you,” he said tenderly, half to Winks and half to his mistress. The sufferer turned his head aside during this examination, to conceal, I believe, the smile upon his countenance.
“He is a little humbug,” said Mrs. Eastwood, but she was relieved to know there was not much the matter. As for young Molyneux, he took a base advantage of the incident.
“Railton is getting rather stout,” he whispered aside to Nelly, “I don’t wonder Winks did not like it. He is broadening, one can’t deny it. Look what a shadow he throws, blotting out you and me together.” And, indeed, the excellent Major, foreshortened by the firelight, did throw a portentous shade up to the very ceiling. And Nelly laughed out like a foolish girl, unable to restrain herself, and could give no account of her laughter; but declared it was because of Winks, who was an accomplished actor, and had taken the Major in. “Winks, come, I am going up-stairs,” she cried; upon which the invalid bounded from the rug, nearly upsetting the Major. And then Brownlow came in with the two lamps, and the hour of reception was over. Major Railton, however, lingered still for a last word about the stables, while young Molyneux was forced to go away. To have a settled appointment, so to speak, about the house in which dwells the young lady of your affections is an unquestionable advantage. It secures the last word.
“Nelly, how could you talk in that wild way?” cried Mrs. Eastwood when both were gone. “There is nothing men like so much as to think that women are jealous of each other. It flatters their vanity. They will think you meant every word of all that nonsense, and a pretty account they will give of us to all our friends.”
“I did mean it,” said Nelly, “I was quite in earnest. If you will read ‘Aurora Leigh’ as I have been doing——”
“Aurora Fiddlestick,” cried Mrs. Eastwood, which, after all, was no argument; “don’t let me hear any more such nonsense. As if any girl that was ever born could alter one’s position in one’s own house! I am surprised at you, Ellinor. Make haste now and dress; we are much later than usual in consequence of your foolish talk. I suppose I must go to this fresh expense about the stables after what the Major says,” she added, with care on her brow; “though I am sure Frederick will no more be able to keep horses when I die than I am now. And I don’t see why I should keep them up for remote posterity—my great grandson, perhaps, who, if he is able to afford it at all, should be able to build stables for himself. I don’t think I will do it, Nelly. I will send for old Sclater to-morrow, and have the roof looked to. These men talk as if we were made of money, especially men who have the public money to fall back upon. It is very pleasant, I don’t doubt, to see work done and places kept up when you never have any bills to pay.”
This little speech was delivered partly on the stairs as Mrs. Eastwood went up to dress, followed by her daughter. Nelly, I am afraid, was not much interested about the stables, and made no reply; but she put her head into the little room before she began to dress, and contemplated it, admiring yet doubtful. She had been reading “Aurora Leigh” all the morning, and the poetry had gone to Nelly’s head, as poetry is apt to do when one is twenty. She wondered if English nature, as represented by the elms and the lime trees, with no hills at all, not even a green slope for a background, would seem as tame to her cousin as English scenery in general had done to Aurora. Nelly herself had never yet been farther than Paris, and had seen no scenery to speak of. The blue spring sky and the primrose-covered grass,—the play of sunshine and shadow further on in the year through the silken green of the limes—the moonlight pouring down the avenue—filled her own heart with a flood of soft delight. That was because she knew no better, she argued humbly with herself; but the other, who had seen Alps and Apennines, and snowy peaks and Italian skies! “I wonder if she will think us tame too,” Nelly said to herself with a little shiver, as she went back to her own room and applied herself to the work of dressing. She reflected that in books the stranger, the orphan, the dependent, generally has it all her own way; but that, at the same time, there was something to be said on the other side for the tame, stay-at-home people, who did their best to satisfy the poetic nature, even if they did not succeed. Perhaps Miss Leigh herself, Aurora’s aunt, who had not bargained for a poet, might have had her story too. On the whole Nelly, having completed the little room, was somewhat depressed about its inmate. It was pretty, but she had not been able to give quite the ideal effect she had intended. In furnishing and decoration, as well as other matters, the highest ideal is not always the one that succeeds best.