“What do you mean by everything?” she said. “You mean a good bit of money, I suppose; you told me so yesterday. As for the house, I don’t much care for the house, Kate. It is rococo, you know; it is in dreadful taste. You can keep it if you like. It could never be of any use to us.”
“It isn’t a bad house,” said Sir Charles. He had begun to walk up and down the room. “By Jove,” he said, “Stella is a cool one, but I’m not so cool. Everything left to her? Do you mean all the money, all old Tredgold’s fortune—all! I say, by Jove, don’t you know. That isn’t fair!”
“I don’t see why it isn’t fair,” said Stella; “I always knew that was what papa meant. He was very fond of me, poor old papa! Wasn’t he, Kate? He used to like me to have everything I wanted: there wasn’t one thing, as fantastic as you please, but he would have let me have it—very different from now. Don’t you remember that yacht—that we made no use of but to run away from here? Poor old man!” Here Stella laughed, which Katherine took for a sign of grace, believing and hoping that it meant the coming of tears. But no tears came. “He must have been dreadfully sorry at the end for standing out as he did, and keeping me out of it,” she said with indignation, “all these years.”
Sir Charles kept walking up and down the room, swearing softly into his moustache. He retained some respect for ladies in this respect, it appeared, for the only imprecation which was audible was a frequent appeal to the father of the Olympian gods. “By Jove!” sometimes “By Jupiter!” he said, and tugged at his moustache as if he would have pulled it out. This was the house in which, bewildered, he had taken all the shillings from his pocket and put them down on the table by way of balancing Mr. Tredgold’s money. And now all Mr. Tredgold’s money was his. He was not cool like Stella; a confused vision of all the glories of this world—horses, race-meetings, cellars of wine, entertainments of all kinds, men circling about him, not looking down upon him as a poor beggar but up at him as no end of a swell, servants to surround him all at once like a new atmosphere. He had expected something of the kind at the time of his marriage, but those dreams had long abandoned him; now they came back with a rush, not dreams any longer. Jove, Jupiter, George (whoever that deity may be) he invoked in turns; his blood took to coursing in his veins, it felt like quicksilver, raising him up, as if he might have floated, spurning with every step the floor on which he trod.
“I who had always been brought up so different!” cried Stella, with a faint whimper in her voice. “That never had been used to it! Oh, what a time I have had, Kate, having to give up things—almost everything I ever wanted—and to do without things, and to be continually thinking could I afford it. Oh, I wonder how papa had the heart! You think I should be grateful, don’t you? But I can’t help remembering that I’ve been kept out of it, just when I wanted it most, all these years——”
She made a pause, but nobody either contradicted or agreed with her. Stella expected either the one or the other. Sir Charles went up and down swearing by Jupiter and thinking in a whirl of all the fine things before him, and Katherine sat at the end of the sofa saying nothing. In sheer self-defence Stella had to begin again.
“And nobody knows what it is beginning a house and all that without any money. I had to part with my diamonds—those last ones, don’t you remember, Kate? which he gave me to make me forget Charlie. Oh, how silly girls are! I shouldn’t be so ready, I can tell you, to run away another time. I should keep my diamonds. And I have not had a decent dress since I went to India—not one. The other ladies got boxes from home, but I never sent to Louise except once, and then she did so bother me about a bill to be paid, as if it were likely I could pay bills when we had no money for ourselves! Tradespeople are so unreasonable about their bills, and so are servants, for that matter, going on about wages. Why, there is Pearson—she waits upon me with a face like a mute at a funeral all because she has not got her last half year’s wages! By the way, I suppose she can have them now? They have got such a pull over us, don’t you know, for they can go away, and when a maid suits you it is such a bore when she wants to go away. I have had such experiences, all through the want of money. And I can’t help feeling, oh how hard of him, when he hadn’t really changed his mind at all, to keep me out of it for those seven years! Seven years is a dreadful piece out of one’s life,” cried Stella, “and to have it made miserable and so different to what one had a right to expect, all for the caprice of an old man! Why did he keep me out of it all these years?” And Stella, now thoroughly excited, sobbed to herself over the privations that were past, from which her father could have saved her at any moment had he pleased.
“You ought to be pleased now at least,” said her husband. “Come, Stella, my little girl, let’s shake hands upon it. We’re awfully lucky, and you shall have a good time now.”
“I think I ought to have a good time, indeed!” cried Stella. “Why, it’s all mine! You never would have had a penny but for me. Who should have the good of it, if not I? And I am sure I deserve it, after all I have had to go through. Pearson, is that you?” she cried. “Bring me my jewel-box. Look here,” she said, taking out a case and disclosing what seemed to Katherine a splendid necklace of diamonds, “that’s what I’ve been driven to wear!” She seized the necklace out of the case and flung it to the other end of the room. The stones swung from her hand, flashing through the air, and fell in a shimmer and sparkle of light upon the carpet. “The odious, false things!” cried Stella. “Paris—out of one of those shops, don’t you know? where everything is marked ‘Imitation.’ Charlie got them for me for about ten pounds. And that is what I had to go to Government House in, and all the balls, and have compliments paid me on my diamonds. ‘Yes, they are supposed to be of very fine water,’ I used to say. I used to laugh at first—it seemed a capital joke; but when you go on wearing odious glass things and have to show them off as diamonds—for seven years!”
Sir Charles paused in his walk, and stooped and picked them up. “Yes,” he said, “I gave ten pounds for them, and we had a lot of fun out of them, and you looked as handsome in them, Stella, as if they had been the best. By Jove! to be imitation, they are deuced good imitation. I don’t think I know the difference, do you?” He placed the glittering thing on Katherine’s knee. He wanted to bring her into the conversation with a clumsy impulse of kindness, but he did not know how to manage it. Then, leaving them there, he continued his walk. He could not keep still in his excitement, and Stella could not keep silence. The mock diamonds made a great show upon Katherine’s black gown.