Маргарет Олифант
Ombra
CHAPTER XXIX
The Berties drove away laughing, but when they had got quite out of the Curate’s sight, Bertie Eldridge turned to his cousin with indignation.
‘How could you be such an ass?’ he said. ‘You were just going to let out that the yacht was bound for the Mediterranean, and then, of course, their plans would have been instantly changed.’
‘You need not snap me up so sharply,’ said the other; ‘I never said a word about the Mediterranean, and if I had he would have taken no notice. What was it to him, one way or another? I see no good in an unnecessary fib.’
‘What was it to him? How blind you are! Why it is as much to him as it is– Did you never find that out?’
‘You don’t mean to say,’ said the other Bertie, with confusion. ‘But, by Jove, I might have known, and that’s how he found out! He is not such a slow beggar as he looks. Did you hear that about my studies? I dare say he said it with a bad motive, but he has reason, heaven knows! My poor studies!’
‘Nonsense! You can’t apply adjectives, my dear fellow, to what does not exist.’
‘That is all very well for you,’ said Bertie Hardwick. ‘You have no occasion to trouble yourself. You can’t come to much harm. But I am losing my time and forming habits I ought not to form, and disappointing my parents, and all that. You know it, Bertie, and I know it, and even such a dull, good-humoured slug as Sugden sees it. I ought not to go with you on this trip—that is as plain as daylight.’
‘Stuff!’ said the other Bertie.
‘It is not stuff. He was quite right. I ought not to go, and I won’t!’
‘Look here,’ said the other; ‘if you don’t, you’ll be breaking faith with me. You know we have always gone halves in everything all our lives. We are not just like any two other fellows; we are not even like brothers. Sometimes I think we have but one soul between us. You are pledged to me, and I to you, for whatever may happen. If it is harm, we will share it; and if it is good, why there is no telling what advantages to you may be involved as well. You cannot forsake me, Bertie; it would be a treachery not only to me, but to the very nature of things.’
Bertie Hardwick shook his head; a shade of perplexity crossed his face.
‘I never was your equal in argument, and never will be,’ he said, ‘and, besides, you have certain stock principles which floor a fellow. But it is no use struggling; I suppose it is my fate. And a very jolly fate, to tell the truth; though what the people at home will say, and all my godfathers and godmothers, who vowed I was to be honest and industrious, and work for my living–’
‘I don’t much believe in that noble occupation,’ said the other; ‘but meantime let us think over what we want at Ryde, which is a great deal more important. Going abroad! I wonder if the old fellow was thinking of you and me when he signed that sentence. It is the best thing, the very best, that could have happened. Everything will be new, and yet there will be the pleasure of bringing back old associations and establishing intercourse afresh. How lucky it is! Cheer up, Bertie. I feel my heart as light as a bird.’
‘Mine is like a bird that is fluttering just before its fall,’ said Bertie, with gravity which was half mock and half real, shaking his head.
‘You envy me my good spirits,’ said his companion, ‘and I suppose there is not very much ground for them. Thank heaven I don’t offend often in that way. It is more your line than mine. But I do feel happier about the chief thing of all than I have done since Easter. Courage, old boy; we’ll win the battle yet.’
Bertie Hardwick shook his head again.
‘I don’t think I shall ever win any battle,’ he said, dolorously; ‘but, in the meantime, here’s the list for fitting out the “Shadow.” I suppose you think more of that now than of anything else.’
The other Bertie laughed long and low at his cousin’s mournful tone; but they were soon absorbed in the lists, as they bowled along towards Ryde, with a good horse, and a soft breeze blowing in their faces. All the seriousness dispersed from Bertie Hardwick’s face as they went on—or rather a far more solemn seriousness came over it as he discussed the necessity of this and that, and all the requirements of the voyage. Very soon he forgot all about the momentary curb that had stopped his imagination in full course. ‘My studies!’ he said, when the business of the day was over, with a joyous burst of laughter more unhesitating even than his cousin’s. He had surmounted that little shock, and his amusement was great at the idea of being reproached with neglect of anything so entirely nominal. He had taken his degree, just saving it, with no honour, nor much blame either; and now for a whole year he had been afloat in the world, running hither and thither, as if that world were but one enormous field of amusement. He ought not to have done so. When he decided to give up the Church, he ought, as everybody said, to have turned his mind to some other profession; and great and many were the lamentations over his thoughtlessness in the Rectory of Langton-Courtenay. But somehow the two Berties had always been as one in the minds of all their kith and kin; and even the Hardwicks regarded with a vague indulgence the pleasant idleness which was thus shared. Sir Herbert Eldridge was rich, and had influence and patronage, and the other Bertie was his only son. It would be no trouble to him to provide ‘somehow’ for his nephew when the right moment came. And thus, though the father and mother shook their heads, and Mrs. Hardwick would sometimes sigh over the waste of Bertie’s abilities and his time, yet they had made no very earnest remonstrances up to this moment; and all had gone on merrily, and all had seemed well.
That evening, however, as it happened, he received an energetic letter on the subject from his father—a letter pointing out to him the folly of thus wasting his best years. Mr. Hardwick reminded his son that he was three-and-twenty, that he had his way to make in the world, and that it was his duty to make up his mind how he was going to do it.
‘I don’t insist upon the Church,’ he said, ‘if your mind is not inclined that way—for that is a thing I would never force; but I cannot see you sink into a state of dependence. Your cousin is very kind; but you ought, and you must know it, to be already in the way of supporting yourself.’
Bertie wrote an answer to this letter at once that evening, without waiting to take counsel of the night; perhaps he felt that it was safe to do it at once, while the idea of work still looked and felt like a good joke. This was his reply:—
‘My dear Father,
‘I am very sorry to see that you feel so strongly about my idleness. I know I am an idle wretch, and always was; but it can’t last, of course; and after this bout I will do my best to mend. The fact is that for this cruise I am pledged to Bertie. I should be behaving very shabbily to him, after all his kindness, if I threw him over at the last moment. And, besides, we don’t go without an object, neither he nor I, of which you will hear anon. I cannot say more now. Give my love to Mamma and the girls; and don’t be vexed if I find there is no time to run home before we start. I shall write from the first port we touch at. Home without fail before Christmas. Good-bye.
‘Yours affectionately, H. H.’
Bertie was much pleased with this effusion; and even when he read it over in the morning, though it did not appear to strike so perfectly the golden line between seriousness and levity as it had appeared to do at night, it was still a satisfactory production. And it pleased him, in the vanity of his youth, to have made the obscure yet important suggestion that his voyage was ‘not without an object.’ What would they all think if they ever found out what that object was? He laughed at the thought, though with a tinge of heightened colour. The people at home would suppose that some great idea had come to the two—that they were going on an antiquarian or a scientific expedition; for Bertie Eldridge was a young man full of notions, and had made attempts in both these branches of learning. Bertie laughed at this very comical idea; but though he was thus satisfied with his own cleverness in baffling his natural guardians, there was a single drop of shame, a germ of bitterness, somewhere at the bottom of his heart. He could fence gaily with his father, and forget the good advice which came to him from those who had a right to give it; but that chance dart thrown by the Curate had penetrated a weak point in his armour. Mr. Sugden’s suggestion, who was a young man on his own level, a fellow whom he had laughed at, and had no lofty opinion of, clung to him like an obstinate bit of thistledown. It was of no consequence, said with an intention to wound—a mere spiteful expression of envy; but it clung to him, and pricked him vaguely, and made him uncomfortable, in spite of himself.
For Bertie was only thoughtless, not selfish. He was running all the risks involved by positive evil in his levity; but he did not mean it. Had he known what real trouble was beginning to rise in the minds of his ‘people’ in respect to him, and how even his uncle Sir Herbert growled at the foolish sacrifice he was making, Bertie had manhood enough to have pulled himself up, and abandoned those delights of youth. And indeed a certain uneasiness had begun to appear faintly in his own mind—a sense that his life was not exactly what it might be, which, of itself, might have roused him to better things. But temptation was strong, and life was pleasant; and at twenty-three there still seems so much of it to come, and such plenty of time to make amends for all one’s early follies. Then there were a hundred specious excuses for him, which even harder judges than he acknowledged. From their cradles, his cousin Bertie and himself had been as one—they had been born on the same day; they had taken every step of their lives together; they resembled each other as twin brothers sometimes do; and something still more subtle, still more fascinating, than the bond between twin-brothers existed between them. This had been the admiration of their respective families when they were children; and it was with some pride that Lady Eldridge and Mrs. Hardwick had told their friends of the curious sympathy between the boys; how when one was ill, the other was depressed and wretched, though his cousin was at a distance from him, and he had no knowledge, except by instinct, of the malady.
‘We know directly when anything is wrong with the other Bertie,’ the respective mothers would say, with that pride which mothers feel in any peculiarity of their children.
This strange tie was strengthened by their education; they went to school together on the same day; they kept side by side all through, and though one Bertie might be at the head of the form and another at the bottom, still in the same form they managed to keep, all tutors, masters, and aids to learning promoting, so far as in them lay, the twinship, which everybody found ‘interesting.’ And they went to the same college, and day for day, and side by side, took every successive step. Bertie Eldridge was the cleverest; it was he who was always at the top; and then he was—a fact which he much plumed himself upon—the eldest by six hours, and accordingly had a right to be the guide and teacher. Thus the very threads of their lives were twisted so close together that it was a difficult thing to pull them asunder; and though all the older people had come by this time to regret the natural weakness which had prompted them to allow this bond to knit itself closer with every year of life, none of them had yet hit upon a plan for breaking it. The reader will easily perceive what a fatal connection this was for the poorer of the two—he who had to make his own way, and had no hereditary wealth to fall back upon. For Bertie Eldridge it was natural and suitable, and as innocent and pleasant as a life without an object can be; but for Bertie Hardwick it was destruction. However, it was difficult, very difficult, for him to realise this. He laughed at his father’s remonstrances, even while he assented to them, and allowed that they were perfectly true; yes, everything that was said was quite true—and yet the life itself was so natural, so inevitable. How could he tear himself from it—‘break faith with Bertie?’ He resolved indefinitely that some time or other it would have to be done, and then plunged, with a light heart, into the victualling and the preparation of the ‘Shadow.’ But, nevertheless, that arrow of Mr. Sugden’s stuck between the joints of his armour. He felt it prick him when he moved; he could not quite forget it, do what he would.
CHAPTER XXX
The next day the whole population of the place surged in and out of the Cottage, full of regrets and wonders. ‘Are you really going?’ the ladies said, ‘so soon? I suppose it was quite a sudden idea? And how delightful for you!—but you can’t expect us to be pleased. On the contrary, we are all inconsolable. I don’t know what we shall do without you. How long do you intend to stay away?’
‘Nothing is settled,’ said Mrs. Anderson, blandly. ‘We are leaving ourselves quite free. I think it is much better not to be hampered by any fixed time for return.’
‘Oh, much better!’ said the chorus. ‘It is such a bore generally; just when one is beginning to know people, and to enjoy oneself, one has to pack up and go away; but there are few people, of course, who are so free as you are, dear Mrs. Anderson—you have no duty to call you back. And then you know the Continent so well, and how to travel, and all about it. How I envy you! But it will be such a loss for us. I don’t know what we shall do all the Summer through without you and dear Ombra and Kate. All our pic-nics, and our water-parties, and our croquet, and everything—I don’t know what we shall do–’
‘I suppose you will let the Cottage for the summer?’ said Mrs. Eldridge, who was of a practical mind; ‘and I hope nice people may come. That will be always some consolation for the rest of us; and we cannot grudge our friends their holiday, can we?’ she added, with fine professional feeling, reading a mild lesson to her parishioners, to which everybody replied, with a flutter of protestation, ‘Oh, of course not, of course not!’
Mr. Courtenay assisted at the little ceremonial. He sat all the afternoon in an easy-chair by the window, noting everything with a smile. The tea-table was in the opposite corner, and from four till six there was little cessation in the talk, and in the distribution of cups of tea. He sat and looked on, making various sardonic remarks to himself. Partly by chance, and partly by intention, he had drawn his chair close to that of Ombra, who interested him. He was anxious to understand this member of the household, who gave Kate no caresses, who did nothing to conciliate or please her, but rather spoke sharply to her when she spoke at all. He set this down frankly and openly as jealousy, and determined to be at the bottom of it. Ombra was not a ‘locust.’ She was much more like a secret enemy. He made up his mind that there was some mischief between them, and that Ombra hated the girl whom everybody else, from interested motives, pretended to love; therefore, he tried to talk to her, first, because her gloom amused him, and second, that he might have a chance of finding something out.
‘I have been under a strange delusion,’ he said. ‘I thought there was but a very small population in the Isle of Wight.’
‘Indeed, I don’t know what the number is,’ said Ombra.
‘I should say it must be legion. The room has been three times filled, and still the cry is, they come! And yet I understand you live very quietly, and this is an out-of-the-way place. Places which are in the way must have much more of it. It seems to be that Mayfair is less gay.’
‘I don’t know Mayfair.’
‘Then you have lived always in the country,’ said Mr. Courtenay, blandly. This roused Ombra. She could have borne a graver imputation better, but to be considered a mere rustic, a girl who knew nothing!–
‘On the contrary, I have lived very little in the country,’ she said, with a tone of irritation. ‘But then the towns I have lived in have belonged to a different kind of society than that which, I suppose, you meet with in Mayfair. I have lived in Madrid, Lisbon, Genoa, and Florence–’
‘Ah! in your father’s time,’ said Mr. Courtenay, gently. And the sound of his voice seemed to say to Ombra, ‘In the Consul’s time! Yes, to be sure. Just the sort of places he would be sure to live in.’ Which exasperated her more than she dared show.
‘Yes, that was our happy time!’ she cried, hotly. ‘The time when we were free of all interference. My father was honoured and loved by everybody.’
‘Oh! I don’t doubt it, I don’t doubt it,’ said Mr. Courtenay, hurriedly, for she looked very much as if she might be going to cry. ‘Spain is very interesting, and so is Italy. It will be pleasant for you to go back.’
‘I don’t think it will,’ she said, bluntly. ‘Things will be so different.’ And then, after a pause, she added, with nervous haste, ‘Kate may like it, perhaps, but not I.’
Mr. Courtenay thought it best to pause. He had no wish to be made a confidant, or to have Ombra’s grievances against Kate poured into his ears. He leaned back in his chair, and watched with grim amusement while the visitors went and came. Mr. Sugden had come in while he had been talking, and was now to be seen standing like a tall shadow by the other side of the window, looking down upon Ombra; and a nervous expectation had become visible in her, which caught Mr. Courtenay’s eye. She did not look up when the door opened, but, on the contrary, kept her eyes fixed on the work she held in her hand with a rigidity which betrayed her more than curiosity would have done. She would not look up, but she listened with a hot, hectic flush on the upper part of her cheeks, just under her drooped eyelids, holding her breath, and sitting motionless in the suspense which devoured her. The needle shook in her hand, and all the efforts she made to keep it steady did but reveal the more the excitement of all her nerves. Mr. Courtenay watched her with growing curiosity; he was not sympathetic; but it was something new to him and entertaining, and he watched as if he had been at a theatre. He did not mean to be cruel; it was to him like a child’s fit of pouting. It was something about love, no doubt, he said to himself. Poor little fool! Somebody had interfered with her love—her last plaything; perhaps Kate, who looked very capable of doing mischief in such matters; and how unhappy she was making herself about nothing at all!
At last the anxiety came to a sudden stop; the hand gave one jerk more violent than before; the eyes shot out a sudden gleam, and then Ombra was suddenly, significantly still. Mr. Courtenay looked up, and saw that two young men had come into the room, so much like each other that he was startled, and did not know what to make of it. As he looked up, with an incipient smile on his face, he caught the eye of the tall Curate on the other side of the window, who was looking at him threateningly. ‘Good heavens! what have I done?’ said Mr. Courtenay to himself, much amazed. ‘I have not fallen in love with the irresistible Ombra!’ He was still more entertained when he discovered that the look which he had thus intercepted was on its way to the new comers, whom Ombra did not look at, but whose coming had affected her so strangely. Here was an entire drama in the smallest possible space. An agitated maiden on the eve of parting with her lover; a second jealous lover looking on. ‘Thank heaven it is not Kate!’ Mr. Courtenay said from the bottom of his heart. The sight of this little scene made him feel more and more the danger from which he had escaped. He had escaped it, but only by a hair’s-breadth; and, thank the kind fates, was looking on with amusement at a story which did not concern him; not with dismay and consternation at a private embarrassment and difficulty of his own. This sense of a hairbreadth escape gave the little spectacle zest. He looked on with genuine amusement, like a true critic, delighted with the show of human emotion which was taking place before his eyes.
‘Who are these two young fellows?’ he asked Ombra, determined to have the whole advantage of the situation, and draw her out to the utmost of his power.
‘What two?’ she said, looking up suddenly, with a dull red flush on her cheek and a choked voice. ‘Oh! they are Mr. Hardwick and Mr. Eldridge; two—gentlemen—mamma knows.’
They were both talking to Kate, standing one on either side of her in the middle of the room. Ombra gave them a long intent look, with the colour deepening in her face, and the breath coming quick from her lips. She took in the group in every detail, as if it had been drawn in lines of fire. How unconscious Kate looked standing there, talking easily, in all the freedom of her unawakened youth. ‘Heaven be praised!’ thought Mr. Courtenay once more, pious for the first time in his life.
‘What! not brothers? What a strange likeness, then!’ he said, tranquilly. ‘I suppose one of them is young Hardwick, from Langton-Courtenay, whom Kate knew at home. He is a parson, like his father, I suppose?’
‘No,’ said Ombra, dropping her eyes once more upon her work.
‘Not a parson? That is odd, for the elder son, I know, has gone to the Bar. I suppose he has relations here? Kate and he have met before?’
‘Yes.’
It was all that Ombra could say; but in her heart she added, ‘Always Kate—Kate knew him—Kate has met him! Is there nobody, then, but Kate in the world to be considered. They think so too.’
The old man, for the first time, had a little pity. He asked no more questions, seeing that she was past all power of answering them; and half in sympathy, half in curiosity, drew his chair back a little, and left the new-comers room to approach. When they did so, after some minutes, Ombra’s feverish colour suddenly forsook her cheeks, and she grew very pale. Bertie Eldridge was the first to speak. He came up with a little air of deprecation and humility, which Mr. Courtenay, not knowing the fin mot of the enigma, did not understand.
‘I am so sorry to hear you are going away,’ he said. ‘Is it not very sudden, Miss Anderson? You did not speak of it on Wednesday, I think.’
‘Did I see you on Wednesday?’ said Ombra. ‘Oh! I beg your pardon, I know you were here; but I did not think we had any talk.’
‘A little, I believe,’ said the young man, colouring. His self-possession seemed to fail him, which was amazing to Mr. Courtenay, for the young men of the period do not often fail in self-possession. He got confused, spoke low, and faltered something about knowing he had no right to be told.
‘No,’ she replied, with nervous colour and a flash of sudden pride; ‘out of our own little cottage I do not know anyone who has a right to be consulted—or cares either,’ she added, in an undertone.
‘Miss Anderson, you cannot think that!’
‘Ah, but I do!’ Then there was a little pause; and after some moments, Ombra resumed: ‘Kate’s movements are important to many people. She will be a great lady, and entitled to have her comings and goings recorded in the newspapers; but we have no such claim upon the public interest. It does not matter to any one, so far as I know, whether we go or stay.’
A silence again. Ombra bent once more over her work, and her needle flew through it, working as if for a wager. The other Bertie, who was behind, had been moving about, in mere idleness, the books on Ombra’s writing-table. At him she suddenly looked up with a smile—
‘Please, Mr. Hardwick! all my poor papers and books which I have just been putting in order—don’t scatter them all over the table again.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, looking up. He had borne the air of the stage-confidant, till that moment, in Mr. Courtenay’s eyes, which were those of a connoisseur in such matters. But now his belief on this subject was shaken. When he glanced up and saw the look which was exchanged by the two, and the gloom with which Mr. Sugden was regarding both, a mist seemed to roll away from the scene. How different the girl’s aspect was now!—soft with a dewy brightness in her eyes, and a voice that trembled with some concealed agitation; and there was a glow upon Bertie’s face, which made him handsomer. ‘My cousins are breaking their hearts over your going,’ he said.
‘Oh, no fear of their hearts!’ said Ombra, lightly; ‘they will mend. If the Cottage is let, the new tenants will probably be gayer people than we are, and do more to amuse their neighbours. And if we come back–’
‘If?’ said the young man.
‘Nothing is certain, I suppose, in this world—or, at least, so people say.’
‘It is very true,’ said Mr. Courtenay. ‘It is seldom a young lady is so philosophical—but, as you say, if you come back in a year, the chances are you will find your place filled up, and your friends changed.’
Ombra turned upon him with sparks of fire suddenly flashing from her eyes. Philosopher, indeed!—say termagant, rather.
‘It is vile and wretched and horrible to say so!’ she cried; ‘but I suppose it is true.’
And all this time the tall Curate never took his eyes off the group, but stood still and listened and watched. Mr. Courtenay began to feel very uncomfortable. The scene was deadly real, and not as amusing as he had hoped.
