Маргарет Олифант
Ombra
CHAPTER XXVII
Long after Kate’s little bedchamber had fallen into darkness, the light still twinkled in the windows of the Cottage drawing-room. The lamp was still alight at midnight, and Ombra and her mother sat together, with the marks of tears on their cheeks, still talking, discussing, going over their difficulties.
‘I could bear him to go away,’ Ombra had said, in her passion; ‘I could bear never to see him again. Sometimes I think I should be glad. Oh! I am ashamed—ashamed to the bottom of my heart to care for one who perhaps cares no longer for me! if he would only go away; or if I could run away, and never more see him again! It is not that, mamma—it is not that. It is my own fault that I am unhappy. After what he said to me, to see him with—her! Yes, though I should die with shame, I will tell you the truth. He comes and looks at me as if I were a naughty child, and then he goes and smiles and talks to her—after all he said. Oh! it is temper, mamma, vile temper and jealousy, and I don’t know what! I hate her then, and him; and I detest myself. I could kill myself, so much am I ashamed!’
‘Ombra! Ombra! my darling, don’t speak so!—it is so unlike you!’
‘Yes,’ she said, with a certain scorn, ‘it is so unlike me that I was appalled at myself when I found it out. But what do you know about me, mother? How can you tell I might not be capable of anything that is bad, if I were only tempted, as well as this?’
‘My darling! my darling!’ said the mother, in her consternation, not knowing what to say.
‘Yes,’ the girl went on, ‘your darling, whom you have brought up out of the reach of evil, who was always so gentle, and so quiet, and so good. I know—I remember how I have heard people speak of me. I was called Ombra because I was such a shadowy, still creature, too gentle to make a noise. Oh! how often I have heard that I was good; until I was tempted. If I were tempted to murder anybody, perhaps I should be capable of it. I feel half like it sometimes now.’
Mrs. Anderson laid her hand peremptorily on her daughter’s arm.
‘This is monstrous!’ she said. ‘Ombra, you have talked yourself into a state of excitement. I will not be sorry for you any longer. It is mere madness, and it must be brought to a close.’
‘It is not madness!’ she cried—‘I wish it were. I sometimes hope it will come to be. It is temper!—temper! and I hate it! And I cannot struggle against it. Every time he goes near her—every time she speaks to him! Oh! it must be some devil, do you think—like the devils in the Bible—that has got possession of me?’
‘Ombra, you are ill—you must go to bed,’ said her mother. ‘Why do you shake your head? You will wear yourself into a fever; and what is to become of me? Think a little of me. I have troubles, too, though they are not like yours. Try to turn your mind, dear, from what vexes you, and sympathise with me. Think what an unpleasant surprise to me to see that disagreeable old man; and that he should have come to-day, of all days; and the interview I shall have to undergo to-morrow–’
‘Mamma,’ said Ombra, with reproof in her tone, ‘how strange it is that you should think of such trifles. What is he to you? A man whom you care nothing for—whom we have nothing to do with.’
‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Anderson, with eyes steadily fixed upon her daughter, ‘I have told you before it is for Kate’s sake.’
‘Oh! Kate!’ Ombra made a gesture of impatience. In her present mood, she could not bear her cousin’s name. But her mother had been thinking over many things during this long afternoon, which had been so gay, and dragged so heavily. She had considered the whole situation, and had made up her mind, so far as it was practicable, to a certain course of action. Neither for love’s sake, nor for many other considerations, could she spare Kate. Even Ombra’s feelings must yield, though she had been so indiscreet even as to contemplate the idea of sacrificing Kate for Ombra’s feelings. But now she had thought better of it, and had made up her mind to take it for granted that Ombra too could only feel as a sister to Kate.
‘Ombra, you are warped and unhappy just now; you don’t do justice either to your cousin or yourself. But even at this moment, surely you cannot have thrown aside everything; you cannot be devoid of all natural feeling for Kate.’
‘I have no natural feeling,’ she said, hoarsely. ‘Have not I told you so? I would not allow myself to say it till you put it into my head. But, mamma, it is true. I want her out of my way. Oh! you need not look so horrified; you thought so yourself this morning. From the first, I felt she was in my way. She deranged all our plans—she came between you and me. Let her go! she is richer than we are, and better off. Why should she stay here, interfering with our life? Let her go! I want her out of my way!’
‘Ombra!’ said Mrs. Anderson, rising majestically from her chair. She was so near breaking down altogether, and forgetting every other consideration for her child’s pleasure, that it was necessary to her to be very majestic. ‘Ombra, I should have thought that proper feeling alone– Yes, proper feeling! a sense of what was fit and becoming in our position, and in hers. You turn away—you will not listen. Well, then, it is for me to act. It goes to my heart to feel myself alone like this, having to oppose my own child. But, since it must be so, since you compel me to act by myself, I tell you plainly, Ombra, I will not give up Kate. She is alone in the world; she is my only sister’s only child; she is–’
Ombra put her hands to her ears in petulance and anger.
‘I know,’ she cried; ‘spare me the rest. I know all her description, and what she is to me.’
‘She is five hundred a year,’ said Mrs. Anderson, secretly in her heart, with a heavy sigh, for she was ashamed to acknowledge to herself that this fact would come into the foreground. ‘I will not give the poor child up,’ she said, with a voice that faltered. Bitter to her in every way was this controversy, almost the first in which she had ever resisted Ombra. Though she looked majestic in conscious virtue, what a pained and faltering heart it was which she concealed under that resolute aspect! She put away the books and work-basket from the table, and lighted the candles, and screwed down the lamp with indescribable inward tremors. If she considered Ombra alone in the matter, and Ombra was habitually, invariably her first object, she would be compelled to abandon Kate, whom she loved—and loved truly!—and five hundred a year would be taken out of their housekeeping at once.
Poor Mrs. Anderson! she was not mercenary, she was fond of her niece, but she knew how much comfort, how much modest importance, how much ease of mind, was in five hundred a year. When she settled in the Cottage at first, she had made up her mind and arranged all her plans on the basis of her own small income, and had anxiously determined to ‘make it do,’ knowing that the task would be difficult enough. But Kate’s advent had changed all that. She had brought relief from many petty cares, as well as many comforts and elegancies with her. They could have done without them before she came, but now what a difference this withdrawal would make! Ombra herself would feel it. ‘Ombra would miss her cousin a great deal more than she supposes,’ Mrs. Anderson said to herself, as she went upstairs; ‘and, as for me, how I should miss her!’ She went into Kate’s room that night with a sense in her heart that she had something to make up to Kate. She had wronged her in thinking of the five hundred a year; but, for all that, she loved her. She stole into the small white chamber very softly, and kissed the sleeping face with most motherly fondness. Was it her fault that two sets of feelings—two different motives—influenced her? The shadow of Kate’s future wealth, of the splendour and power to come, stood by the side of the little white bed in which lay a single individual of that species of God’s creation which appeals most forcibly to all tender sympathies—an innocent, unsuspecting girl; and the shadow of worldly disinterestedness came into the room with the kind-hearted woman, who would have been good to any motherless child, and loved this one with all her heart. And it is so difficult to discriminate the shadow from the reality; the false from the true.
Mr. Courtenay came to the Cottage next morning, and had a solemn and long interview with Mrs. Anderson. Kate watched about the door, and hovered in the passages, hoping to be called in. She would have given a great deal to be able to listen at the keyhole, but reluctantly yielded to honour, which forbade such an indulgence. When she saw her uncle go away without asking for her, her heart sank; and still more did her heart sink when she perceived the solemn aspect with which her aunt came into the drawing-room. Mrs. Anderson was very solemn and stately, as majestic as she had been the night before, but there was relief and comfort in her eyes. She looked at the two girls as she came in with a smile of tenderness which looked almost like pleasure. Ombra was writing at the little table in the window—some of her poetry, no doubt. Kate, in a most restless state, had been dancing about from her needlework to her music, and from that to three or four books, which lay open, one here and one there, as she had thrown them down. When her aunt came in she stopped suddenly in the middle of the room, with a yellow magazine in her hand, almost too breathless to ask a question; while Mrs. Anderson seated herself at the table, as if in a pulpit, brimful of something to say.
‘What is it, auntie?’ cried Kate.
‘My dear children, both of you,’ said Mrs. Anderson, ‘I have something very important to say to you. You may have supposed, Kate, that I did not appreciate your excellent uncle; but now that I know his real goodness of heart, and the admirable feeling he has shown—Ombra, do give up your writing for a moment. Kate, your uncle is anxious to give us all a holiday—he wishes me to take you abroad.’
‘Abroad!’ cried both the girls together, one in a shrill tone, as of bewilderment and desperation, one joyous as delight could make it. Mrs. Anderson expanded gradually, and nodded her head.
‘For many reasons,’ she said, significantly, ‘your uncle and I, on talking it over, decided that the very best thing for you both would be to make a little tour. He tells me you have long wished for it, Kate. And to Ombra, too, the novelty will be of use–’
‘Novelty!’ said Ombra, in a tone of scorn. ‘Where does he mean us to go, then? To Japan, or Timbuctoo, I suppose.’
‘Not quite so far,’ said her mother, trying to smile. ‘We have been to a great many places, it is true, but not all the places in the world; and to go back to Italy, for instance, will be novelty, even though we have been there before. We shall go with every comfort, taking the pleasantest way. Ombra, my love!’
‘Oh! you must settle it as you please,’ cried Ombra, rising hastily. She put her papers quickly together; then, with her impetuous movements, swept half of them to the ground, and rushed to the door, not pausing to pick them up. But there she paused, and turned round, her face pale with passion. ‘You know you don’t mean to consult me,’ she said, hurriedly. ‘What is the use of making a pretence? You must settle it as you please.’
‘What is the matter?’ said Kate, after she had disappeared, growing pale with sympathy. ‘Oh! auntie dear, what is the matter? She was never like this before.’
‘She is ill, poor child,’ said the mother, who was distracted, but dared not show it. And then she indulged herself in a few tears, giving an excuse for them which betrayed nothing. ‘Oh! Kate, what will become of me if there is anything serious the matter? She is ill, and I don’t know what to do!’
‘Send for the doctor, aunt,’ suggested Kate.
‘The doctor can do nothing, dear. It is a—a complaint her father had. She would not say anything to the doctor. She has been vexed and bothered–’
‘Then this is the very thing for her,’ said Kate. ‘This will cure her. They say change is good for every one. We have been so long shut up in this poky little place.’
On other occasions Kate had sworn that the island and the cottage were the spots in all the world most dear to her heart. This was the first effect of novelty upon her. She felt, in a moment, that her aspirations were wide as the globe, and that she had been cooped up all her life.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Anderson, fervently, ‘I have felt it. We have not been living, we have been vegetating. With change she will be better. But it is illness that makes her irritable. You must promise me to be very gentle and forbearing with her, Kate.’
‘I gentle and forbearing to Ombra!’ cried Kate, half laughing, half crying—‘I! When I think what a cub of a girl I must have been, and how good—how good you both were! Surely everybody in the world should fail you sooner than I!’
‘My dear child,’ said Mrs. Anderson, kissing her with true affection; and once more there was a reason and feasible excuse for the tears of pain and trouble that would come to her eyes.
The plan was perfect—everything that could be desired; but if Ombra set her face against it, it must come to nothing. It was with this thought in her mind that she went upstairs to her troublesome and suffering child.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Ombra, however, did not set her face against it. What difficulty the mother might have had with her, no one knew, and she appeared no more that day, having ‘a bad headache,’ that convenient cause for all spiritual woes. But next morning, when she came down, though her face was pale, there was no other trace in her manner of the struggle her submission had cost her, and the whole business was settled, and even the plan of the journey had begun to be made. Already, in this day of Ombra’s retirement, the news had spread far and wide. Kate had put on her hat directly, and had flown across to the Rectory to tell this wonderful piece of news. It was scarcely less interesting there than in the Cottage, though the effect was different. The Eldridges raised a universal wail.
‘Oh, what shall we do without you?’ cried the girls and the boys—a reflection which almost brought the tears to Kate’s own eyes, yet pleased her notwithstanding.
‘You will not mind so much when you get used to it. We shall miss you as much as you miss us—oh, I wish you were all coming with us!’ she cried; but Mrs. Eldridge poured cold water on the whole by suggesting that probably Mrs. Anderson would let the Cottage for the Summer, and that some one who was nice might take it and fill up the vacant place till they came back; which was an idea not taken in good part by Kate.
On her way home she met Mr. Sugden and told him; she told him in haste, in the lightness of her heart and the excitement of the moment; and then, petrified by the effect she had produced, stood still and stared at him in alarm and dismay.
‘Oh, Mr. Sugden! I am sure I did not mean—I did not think–’
‘Going away?’ he said, in a strange, dull, feelingless way. ‘Ah! for six months—I beg your pardon—I am a little confused. I have just heard some—some bad news. Did you say going away?’
‘I am so sorry,’ said Kate, faltering, ‘so very sorry. I hope it is not anything I have said–’
‘You have said?’ he answered, with a dull smile, ‘oh, no! I have had bad news, and I am a little upset. You are going away? It is sudden, is it not?—or perhaps you thought it best not to speak. Shanklin will look odd without you,’ he went on, looking at her. He looked at her with a vague defiance, as if daring her to find him out. He tried to smile; his eyes were very lacklustre and dull, as if all the vision had suddenly been taken out of them; and his very attitude, as he stood, was feeble, as if a sudden touch might have made him fall.
‘Yes,’ said Kate, humbly, ‘I am sorry to leave Shanklin and all my friends; but my uncle wishes it for me, and as Ombra is so poorly, we thought it might do her good.’
‘Ah!’ he said, drawing a long breath; and then he added hurriedly, ‘Does she like it? Does she think it will do her good?’
‘I don’t think she likes it at all,’ said Kate, ‘she is so fond of home; but we all think it is the best thing. Good-bye, Mr. Sugden. I hope you will come and see us. I must go home now, for I have so much to do.’
‘Yes, thanks. I will come and see you,’ said the Curate. And then he walked on mechanically—straight on, not knowing where he was going. He was stunned by the blow. Though he knew very well that Ombra was not for him, though he had seen her taken, as it were, out of his very hands, there was a passive strength in his nature which made him capable of bearing this. So long as no active step was taken, he could bear it. It had gone to his heart with a penetrating anguish by times to see her given up to the attentions of another, receiving, as he thought, the love of another, and smiling upon it. But all the while she had smiled also upon himself; she had treated him with a friendly sweetness which kept him subject; she had filled his once unoccupied and languid soul with a host of poignant emotions. Love, pain, misery, consolation—life itself, seemed to have come to him from Ombra. Before he knew her, he had thought pleasantly of cricket and field-sports, conscientiously of his duties, piteously of the mothers’ meetings, which were so sadly out of his way, and yet were supposed to be duty too.
But Ombra had opened to him another life—an individual world, which was his, and no other man’s. She had made him very unhappy and very glad; she had awakened him to himself. There was that in him which would have held him to her with a pathetic devotion all his life. It was in him to have served the first woman that woke his heart with an ideal constancy, the kind of devotion—forgive the expression, oh, intellectual reader!—which makes a dull man sublime, and which dull men most often exhibit. He was not clever, our poor Curate, but he was true as steel, and had a helpless, obstinate way of clinging to his loves and friendships. Never, whatever happened, though she had married, and even though he had married, and the world had rolled on, and all the events of life had sundered them, could Ombra have been to him like any other woman; and now she was the undisputed queen and mistress of his life. She was never to be his; but still she was his lady and his queen. He was ready to have saved her even by the sacrifice of all idea of personal happiness on his own part. His heart was glowing at the present moment with indignant sorrow over her, with fury towards one of the Berties—he did not know which—who had brought a mysterious shadow over her life; and yet he was capable of making an heroic effort to bring back that Bertie, and to place him by Ombra’s side, though every step he took in doing so would be over his own heart.
All this was in him; but it was not in him to brave this altogether unthought-of catastrophe. To have her go away; to find himself left with all life gone out of him; to have the heart torn, as it were, out of his breast; and to feel the great bleeding, aching void which nothing could fill up. He had foreseen all the other pain, and was prepared for it; but for this he was not prepared. He walked straight on, in a dull misery, without the power to think. Going away!—for six months! Which meant simply for ever and ever. Where he would have stopped I cannot tell, for he was young and athletic, and capable of traversing the entire island, if he had not walked straight into the sea over the first headland which came in his way—a conclusion which would not have been disagreeable to him in the present state of his feelings, though he could scarcely have drowned had he tried. But fortunately he met the Berties ere he had gone very far. They were coming from Sandown Pier.
‘Have you got the yacht here?’ he asked, mechanically; and then, before they could understand, broke into the subject of which his heart and brain were both full. ‘Have you heard that the ladies of the Cottage are going away?’
This sudden introduction of the subject which occupied him so much was indeed involuntary. He could not have helped talking about it; but at the same time it was done with a purpose—that he might, if possible, make sure which it was.
‘The ladies at the Cottage!’ They both made this exclamation in undeniable surprise. And he could not help, even in his misery, feeling a little thrill of satisfaction that he knew better than they.
‘Yes,’ he said, made bolder by this feeling of superiority, ‘they are going to leave Shanklin for six months.’
The two Berties exchanged looks. He caught their mutual consultation with his keen and jealous eyes. What was it they said to each other? He was not clever enough to discover; but Bertie Hardwick drew a long breath, and said, ‘It is sudden, surely,’ with an appearance of dismay which Mr. Sugden, in his own suffering, was savagely glad to see.
‘Very sudden,’ he said. ‘I only heard it this morning. It will make a dreadful blank to us.’
And then the three stood gazing at each other for nearly a minute, saying nothing; evidently the two cousins did not mean to commit themselves. Bertie Eldridge switched his boot with his cane. ‘Indeed!’ had been all he said; but he looked down, and did not meet the Curate’s eye.
‘Have you got the yacht here!’ Mr. Sugden repeated, hoping that if he seemed to relax his attention something might be gained.
‘Yes, she is lying at the pier, ready for a long cruise,’ said Bertie Hardwick. ‘We are more ambitious than last year. We are going to–’
‘Norway, I think,’ said Eldridge, suddenly. ‘There is no sport to be had now but in out-of-the-way places. We are bound for Scandinavia, Sugden. Can you help us? I know you have been there.’
‘Scandinavia!’ the other Bertie echoed, with a half whistle, half exclamation; and an incipient smile came creeping about the corners of the brand-new moustache of which he was so proud.
‘I am rather out of sorts to-day,’ said the Curate. ‘I have had disagreeable news from home; but another time I shall be very glad. Scandinavia! Is the “Shadow” big enough and steady enough for the northern seas?’
And then, as he pronounced the name, it suddenly occurred to him why the yacht was called the ‘Shadow.’ The thought brought with it a poignant sense of contrast, which went through and through him like an arrow. They could call their yacht after her, paying her just such a subtle, inferred compliment as girls love. And they could go away now, lucky fellows, to new places, to savage seas, where they might fight against the elements, and delude their sick hearts (if they possessed such things) by a struggle with nature. Poor Curate!—he had to stay and superintend the mothers’ meetings—which also was a struggle with nature, though after a different kind.
‘Oh! she will do very well,’ said Bertie Eldridge, hastily. ‘Look sharp, Bertie, here is the dogcart. We are going to Ryde for a hundred things she wants. I shall send her round there to-morrow. Will you come!’
‘I can’t,’ said the Curate, almost rudely. And then even his unoffending hand seized upon a dart that lay in his way. ‘How does all this yachting suit your studies?’ he said.
Bertie Hardwick laughed. ‘It does not suit them at all,’ he said, jumping into the dogcart. ‘Good-bye, old fellow. I think you should change your mind, and come with us to-morrow!’
‘I won’t,’ said the Curate, under his breath. But they did not hear him; they dashed off in very good spirits, apparently nowise affected by his news. As for Mr. Sugden, he ground his teeth in secret. That which he would have given his life, almost his soul for, had been thrown away upon one of these two—and to them it was as nothing. It did not cloud their looks for more than a minute, if indeed it affected them at all; whereas to him it was everything. They were the butterflies of life; they had it in their power to pay pretty compliments, to confer little pleasures, but they were not true to death, as he was. And yet Ombra would never find that out; she would never know that his love—which she did not even take the trouble to be conscious of—was for life and death, and that the other’s was an affair of a moment. They had driven off laughing; they had not even pretended to be sorry for the loss which the place was about to suffer. It was no loss to them. What did they care? They were heartless, miserable, without sense or feeling; yet one of them was Ombra’s choice.
This incident, however, made Mr. Sugden take his way back to the village. He had walked a great deal further than he had any idea of, and had forgotten all about the poor women who were waiting with their subscriptions for the penny club. And it chafed him, poor fellow, to have to go into the little dull room, and to take the pennies. ‘Good heavens! is this all I am good for?’ he said to himself. ‘Is there no small boy or old woman who could manage it better than I? Was this why the good folks at home spent so much money on me, and so much patience?’ Poor young Curate, he was tired and out of heart, and he was six feet high and strong as a young lion; yet there seemed nothing in heaven or earth for him to do but to keep the accounts of the penny club and visit the almshouses. He had done that very placidly for a long time, having the Cottage always to fall back upon, and being a kindly, simple soul at bottom—but now! Were there no forests left to cut down? no East-end lanes within his reach to give him something to fight with and help him to recover his life?
