Маргарет Олифант
Ombra
CHAPTER XLIX
Kate had a good deal to think of when she went home that evening, and shut herself up in the room which was full of the sweetness of Antonio’s violets. Francesca, with an Italian’s natural terror of flower-scents, had carried them away; but Kate had paused on her way to her room to rescue the banished flowers.
‘They are enough to kill Mademoiselle in her bed, and leave us all miserable,’ said Francesca.
‘I am not a bit afraid of violets,’ said Kate.
On the contrary, she wanted them to help her. For she did not go into the drawing-room, though it was still early. The two young men, she heard, were there; and Kate felt a little sick at heart, and did not care to go where she was not wanted—‘Where her absence,’ as she said to herself, ‘was never remarked.’ Oh! how different it was from what it had been! Only a few weeks ago she had been unable to form an idea of herself detached from her aunt and cousin, who went everywhere with her, and shared everything. Even Lady Caryisfort had shown no favouritism towards Kate at first. She had been quite as kind to Ombra, quite as friendly to Mrs. Anderson. It was their own doing altogether. They had snatched, as it were, at Lady Caryisfort, as one who would disembarrass them of the inconvenient cousin—‘the third, who was always de trop,’ poor Kate said to herself, with a sob in her throat, and a dull pang in her heart. They still went through all the formulas of affection, but they got rid of her, they did not want her. When she had closed the door of her room even upon Maryanne, and sat down over the fire in her dressing-gown, she reflected upon her position, as she had never reflected on it before. She was nobody’s child. People were kind to her, but she was not necessary to anyone’s happiness; she belonged to no home of her own, where her presence was essential. Her aunt loved her in a way, but, so long as she had Ombra, could do without Kate. And her uncle did not love her at all, only interfered with her life, and turned it into new channels, as suited him. She was of no importance to anyone, except in relation to Langton-Courtenay, and her money, and estates.
This is a painful and dangerous discovery to be made by a girl of nineteen, with a great vase full of violets at her elbow, the offering of such a fortune-hunter as Antonio Buoncompagni, one who was mercenary only because it was his duty to his family, and in reality meant no harm. He was a young man who was quite capable of having fallen in love with her, had she not been so rich and so desirable a match; and as it was he liked her, and was ready to swear that he loved her, so as to deceive not only her, but himself. But perhaps, after all, it was he, and not she, who was most easily deceived. Kate, though she did not know it, had an instinctive inkling of the real state of the case, which was the only thing which saved her from falling at once and altogether into Antonio’s net. Had she been sure that he loved her, nothing could have saved her; for love in the midst of neglect, love which comes spontaneous when other people are indifferent, is the sweetest and most consolatory of all things. Sometimes she had almost persuaded herself that this was the case, and had been ready to rush into Antonio’s arms; but then there would come that cold shudder of hesitation which precedes a final plunge—that doubt—that consciousness that the Buoncompagni were poor, and wanted English money to build them up again. As for the poverty itself, she cared nothing; but she felt that, had her lover been even moderately well off, it would have saved her from that shrinking chill and suspicion. And then she turned, and rent herself, so to speak, remembering the sublime emptiness of that space on the wall where the Madonna dei Buoncompagni used to be.
‘If I can ever find it out anywhere, whatever it may cost, I will buy it, and send it back to him,’ Kate said, with a flush on her cheek. And next moment she cried with real distress, feeling for his disappointment, and asking herself why should not she do it?—why not? To make a man happy, and raise up an old house, is worth a woman’s while, surely, even though she might not be very much in love. Was it quite certain that people were always very much in love when they married? A great many things, more important, were involved in any alliance made by a little princess in her own right; and such was Kate’s character to her own consciousness, and in the eyes of other people. The violets breathed all round her, and the soft silence and loneliness of the night enveloped her; and then she heard the stir in the drawing-room, the movement of the visitors going away, and whispering voices which passed her door, and Ombra’s laugh, soft and sweet, like the very sound of happiness–
Ombra was happy; and what cared anyone for Kate? She was the one alone in this little loving household—and that it should be so little made the desolation all the greater. She was one of three, and yet the others did not care what she was thinking, how she was feeling. Kate crept to bed silently, and put out her light, that her aunt might not come to pity her, after she had said good night to her own happy child, whom everybody thought of. ‘And yet I might have as good,’ Kate said to herself. ‘I am not alone any more than Ombra. I have my violets too—my beau chevalier—if I like.’ Ah! the beau chevalier! Some one had sung that wistful song at Lady Caryisfort’s that night. It came back upon Kate’s mind now in the dark, mingled with the whispering of the voices, and the little breath of chilly night air that came when the door opened.
‘Ne voyez vous pas que la nuit est profonde,
Et que le monde
N’est que souci.’
Strange, at nineteen, in all the sweetness of her youth, the heiress of Langton had come to understand how that might be!
Lady Caryisfort took more urgent measures on her side than Mr. Courtenay had thought it wise to do. She detained her friend, the Countess Strozzi, and her friend’s nephew, when all the other guests were gone. This flattered Antonio, who thought it possible some proposition might be about to be made to him, and made the Countess uncomfortable, who knew the English better than he. Lady Caryisfort made a very bold assault upon the two. She took high ground, and assured them that, without her consent and countenance, to mature a scheme of this kind under her wing, as it were, was a wrong thing to do. She was so very virtuous, in short, that Countess Strozzi woke up to a sudden and lively hope that Lady Caryisfort had more reasons than those which concerned Kate for disliking the match; but this she kept to herself; and the party sat late and long into the night discussing the matter. Antonio was reluctant, very reluctant, to give up the little English maiden, whom he declared he loved.
‘Would you love her if she were penniless—if she had no lands and castles, but was as her cousin?’ said Lady Caryisfort; and the young man paused. He said at last that, though probably he would love her still better in these circumstances, he should not dare to ask her to marry him. But was that possible? And then it was truly that Lady Caryisfort distinguished herself. She told him all that was possible to a ferocious English guardian—how, though he could not take the money away, he could bind it up so that it would advantage no one; how he could make the poor husband no better than a pensioner of the rich wife, or even settle it so that even the rich wife should become poor, and have nothing in her power except the income, which, of course, could not be taken from her. ‘Even that she will not have till she is of age, two long years hence,’ Lady Caryisfort explained; and then gave such a lucid sketch of trustees and settlements that the young Italian’s soul shrank into his boots. His face grew longer and longer as he listened.
‘But I am committed—my honour is involved,’ he said.
‘Ah! pazzo, allora hai parlato?’ cried his kinswoman.
‘No, I have not spoken, not in so many words; but I have been understood,’ said Antonio, with that imbecile smile and blush of vanity which women know so well.
‘I think you may make yourself easy in that respect,’ said Lady Caryisfort. ‘Kate is not in love with you,’ a speech which almost undid what she had been labouring to do; for Antonio’s pride was up, and could scarcely be pacified. He had committed himself; he had given Kate to understand that he was her lover, and how was he now to withdraw? ‘If he proposes, she is a romantic child—no more than a child—and she is capable of accepting him,’ Lady Caryisfort said to his aunt in their last moment of consultation.
‘Leave him to me, cara mia,’ said the Countess—‘leave him to me.’ And that noble lady went away with her head full of new combinations. ‘The girl will not be of age for two years, and in that time anything may happen. It would be hard for you to wait two years, Antonio mio; let us think a little. I know another, young still, very handsome, and with everything in her own power–’
Antonio was indignant, and resented the suggestion; but Countess Strozzi was not impatient. She knew very well that to such arguments, in the long run, all Antonios yield.
Mr. Courtenay entered the drawing room in the Lung-Arno next day at noon, and found all the ladies there. Again the Berties were absent, but there was no cloud that morning upon Ombra’s face. Kate had made her appearance, looking pale and ill, and the hearts of her companions had been touched. They were compunctious and ashamed, and eager to make up for the neglect of which she had never complained. Even Ombra had kissed her a second time after the formal morning salutation, and had said ‘Forgive me!’ as she did so.
‘For what?’ said Kate, with the intention of being proud and unconscious. But when she had looked up, and met her aunt’s anxious look, and Ombra’s eyes with tears in them, her own overflowed. ‘Oh! I am so ill-tempered,’ she said, ‘and ungrateful. Don’t speak to me.’
‘You are just as I was a little while ago,’ said Ombra. ‘But, Kate, with you it is all delusion, and soon, very soon, you will know better. Don’t be as I was.’
As Ombra was! Kate dried her eyes, yet she did not know whether to be gratified or to be angry. Why should she be as Ombra had been? But yet even these few words brought about a better understanding. And the three were seated together, in the old way, when Mr. Courtenay entered. He had the air of a man full of business. In his hand he carried a packet of letters, some of which he had not yet opened.
‘I have just had letters from Langton,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if you take any interest in Langton—or these ladies, who have never even seen it–’
‘Of course I do, uncle,’ cried Kate. ‘Take interest in my own house, my dear old home!’
‘It does not follow that young ladies who are fond of Italy should care about a dull old place in the heart of England,’ said this wily old man. ‘Grieve tells me it is going to rack and ruin, which is not pleasant news. He says it is wicked and shameful to leave it so long without inhabitants; that the village is discontented, and dirty, and wretched, with no one to look after it. In short, ladies, if I look miserable, you must forgive me, for I have not got over Grieve’s letter.’
‘Who is Grieve, uncle?’
‘The new estate-agent, Kate. Didn’t you know? Ah! you must begin to take an interest in the estate. My time is drawing to a close, and I shall be glad, very glad, to be rid of it. If I could go down and live there, I might do something; but as that is impossible, I suppose things must continue going to the bad till you come of age.’
Kate sat upright in her chair; her cheeks began to glow, and her eyes to shine.
‘Why should things go to the bad?’ she said. ‘I would rather they did not, for my part.’
‘How can they do otherwise,’ said Mr. Courtenay, ‘while the house is shut up, and there is no one to see to anything? Grieve is a good fellow, but I can’t give him Langton to live in, or make him into a Courtenay.’
‘I should hope not,’ said Kate, setting her small white teeth. By this time her whole countenance began to gleam with excitement and resolution, and that charm to which she always responded with such delight and readiness, the charm of novelty. Then she made a pause, and drew in her breath. ‘Uncle,’ she said, ‘I am not a child any longer. Why shouldn’t I go home, and open the house, and live as I ought? I want something to do. I want duty, such as other people have. It is my business to look after Langton. Let me go home.’
‘You foolish child!’ he said; which was a proof, though Kate did not see it, that everything was working as he wished. ‘You foolish child! How could you, at nineteen, go and live in that house alone?’
She looked up. Her crimson cheek grew white, her eyes went in one wistful, imploring look from her aunt to Ombra, from Ombra back again to Mrs. Anderson. Her lips parted in her eagerness, her eyes shone out like lights. She was as if about to speak—but stopped short, and referred to them, as it were, for the answer. Mr. Courtenay looked at them too, not without a little anxiety; but the interest in his face was of a very different kind from that shown by Kate.
‘If you mean,’ said Mrs. Anderson, faltering, and, for her part, consulting Ombra with her eyes, ‘that you would like me to go with you—Kate, my darling, thank you for wishing it—oh! thank you, I have not deserved– But most likely your uncle would not like it, Kate.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Mr. Courtenay, with his best bow, ‘if you would entertain the idea—if it suits with your other plans to go to Langton till Kate comes of age, it would be everything that I could desire.’
The three looked at each other for a full moment in uncertainty and wonder. And then Kate suddenly jumped up, overturned the little table by her side, on which stood the remains of her violets, and danced round the room with wild delight.
‘Oh! let us go at once!—let us leave this horrid old picture-gallery! Let us go home, home!’ she cried, in an outburst of joy. The vase was broken, and the dead violets strewed over the carpet. Francesca came in and swept them away, and no one took any notice. That was over. And now for home—for home!
CHAPTER L
The success of this move had gone far beyond Mr. Courtenay’s highest hopes. He was unprepared for the suddenness of its acceptance. He went off and told Lady Caryisfort, with a surprise and satisfaction that was almost rueful. ‘Since that woman came into my niece’s affairs,’ he said, ‘I have had to sacrifice something for every step I have gained; and I find that I have made the sacrifice exactly when it suited her—to buy a concession she was dying to make. I never meant her to set foot in Langton, and now she is going there as mistress; and just, I am certain, at the time it suits her to go. This is what happens to a simple-minded man when he ventures to enter the lists with women. I have a great mind to put everything in her hands and retire from the field.’
‘I don’t think she is so clever as you give her credit for,’ said Lady Caryisfort, who was somewhat languid after the night’s exertions. ‘I suspect it was you who found out the moment that suited you rather than she.’
But she gave him, in her turn, an account of what she had done, and they formed an alliance offensive and defensive—a public treaty of friendship for the world’s inspection, and a secret alliance known only to themselves, by the conditions of which Lady Caryisfort bound herself to repair to London and take Kate under her charge when it should be thought necessary and expedient by the allied powers. She pledged herself to present the heiress and watch over her and guard her from all match-makers, that the humble chaperon might be dismissed, and allowed to go in peace. When he had concluded this bargain Mr. Courtenay went away with a lighter heart, to make preparations for his niece’s return. He had been most successful in his pretence to get her away from Florence; and now this second arrangement to get rid of the relations who would be no longer necessary, seemed to him a miracle of diplomacy. He chuckled to himself over it, and rubbed his hands.
‘Kate must not be treated as a child any longer—she is grown up, she has a judgment of her own,’ he said, with a delicious sense of humour; and then he listened very gravely to all her enthusiastic descriptions of what she was to do when she got to Langton. Kate, however, after the first glow of her resolution, did not feel the matter so easy as it appeared. She had no thought of the violets, which Francesca swept up, at the moment; but afterwards the recollection of them came back to her. She had allowed them to be swept away without a thought. What a cold heart—what an ungrateful nature—she must have! And poor Antonio! In the light of Langton, Antonio looked to her all at once impossible—as impossible as it would be to transplant his old palace to English soil. No way could the two ideas be harmonised. She puckered her brows over it till she made her head ache. Count Buoncompagni and Langton-Courtenay! They would not come together—could not—it was impossible! Indeed the one idea chased the other from her mind. And how was she to intimate this strange and cruel fact to him? How was she to show that all his graceful attentions must be brought to an end?—that she was going home, and all must be over! And the worst was that it could not be done gradually; but one way or another must be managed at once.
The next day Lady Caryisfort came, as usual, on her way to the Cascine; but, to Kate’s surprise and relief, and, it must be owned, also to her disappointment, Antonio was not there. She declined the next invitation to Lady Caryisfort’s, inventing a headache for the occasion, and growing more and more perplexed the longer she thought over that difficult matter. It was while she was musing thus that Bertie Hardwick one day managed to get beside her for a moment, while Ombra was talking to his cousin. Bertie Eldridge had raised a discussion about some literary matter, and the two had gone to consult a book in the little ante-room, which served as a kind of library; the other Bertie was left alone with Kate, a thing which had not happened before for weeks. He went up to her the moment they were gone, and stood hesitating and embarrassed before her.
‘Miss Courtenay,’ he said, and waited till she looked up.
Something moved in Kate’s heart at the sound of his voice—some chord of early recollection—remembrances which seemed to her to stretch so far back—before the world began.
‘Well, Mr. Hardwick?’ she said, looking up with a smile. Why there should be something pathetic in that smile, and a little tightness across her eyelids, as if she could have cried, Kate could not have told, and neither can I.
‘Are you pleased to go home?—is it with your own will? or did your uncle’s coming distress you?’ he said, in a voice which was—yes, very kind, almost more than friendly; brotherly, Kate said to herself.
‘Distress me?’ she said.
‘Yes; I have thought you looked a little troubled sometimes. I can’t help noticing. Don’t think me impertinent, but I can’t bear to see trouble in your face.’
Kate made no reply, but she looked up at him—looked him straight in the eyes. Once more she did not know why she did it, and she did not think of half the meanings which he saw written in her face. He faltered; he turned away; he grew red and grew pale; and then came back to her with an answering look which did not falter; but for the re-entrance of the others he must have said something. But they came back, and he did not speak. If he had spoken, what would he have said?
This gave a new direction to Kate’s thoughts, but still it was with a heavy heart that she entered Lady Caryisfort’s drawing-room, not more than a week after that evening when Antonio had asked for the violets, and she had hesitated whether she would give them. She had hesitated! It was this thought which made her so much ashamed. She had been lonely, and she had been willing to accept his heart as a plaything; and how could she say to him now, ‘I am no longer lonely. I am going home; and I could not take you, a stranger, back, to be master of Langton?’ She could not say this, and what was she to say? Antonio Buoncompagni was not much more comfortable; he had been thoroughly schooled, and he had begun to accept his part. He even saw, and that clearly, that a pretty, independent bird in the hand, able to pipe as he wished, was better than a fluttering, uncertain fledgling in the bush; but he had a lively sense of honour, and he had committed himself. The young lady, he thought, ought at least to have the privilege of refusing him. ‘Go, then, and be refused—pazzo!’ said his aunt. ‘Most people avoid a refusal, but thou wishest it. It is a pity that thou shouldst not be satisfied.’ But, having obtained this permission, the young Count was not, perhaps, so ready to avail himself of it. He did not care to be rejected any more than other men, but he was anxious to reconcile his conscience to his desertion; and he had a tender sense that he himself—Antonio—was not one to be easily forgotten. He watched Kate from the moment of her entry, and persuaded himself that she was pale. ‘Poverina!’ he said, beneath his moustache. Alas! the sacrifice must be made; but then it might be done in a gentle way.
The evening, however, was half over before he had found his way to her side—a circumstance which filled Kate with wonder, and kept her in a curious suspense; for she could not talk freely to anyone else while he was within sight, to whom she had so much (she thought) to say. He came, and Kate was confused and troubled. Somehow she felt he was changed. Was he less handsome, less tall, less graceful? What had happened to him? Surely there was something. He was no longer the young hero who had dropped on his knee, and kissed her hand for Italy. She was confused, and could not tell how it was.
‘You are going to leave Florence?’ he said. ‘It is sudden—it is too sad to think of. Miss Courtenay, I hope it is not you who wish to leave our beautiful Italy—you, who have understood her so well?’
‘No, it is not I,’ said Kate. ‘I should not have gone of my own free will; but yet I am very willing—I am ready to go—it is home,’ she added, hastily, and with meaning. ‘It is the place I love best in the world.’
‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I had thought—I had hoped you loved Italy too.’
‘Oh! so I do, Count Buoncompagni—and I thought I did still more,’ cried the girl, eager to make her hidden and shy, yet brave apology. ‘I thought I could have lived and died here, where people were so good to me. But, you know, whenever I heard the name of home, it made my blood all dance in my veins. I felt I had been making a mistake, and that there was nothing in the world I loved like Langton-Courtenay. I made a great mistake, but I did not mean it. I hope nobody will think it is unkind of me, or that I am fond of change.’
Count Antonio stood and listened to this speech with a grim smile on his face, and a look in his eyes which was new to Kate. He, too, was making a disagreeable discovery, and he did not like it. He made her a bow, but he did not make any answer. He stood by her side a few moments, and then he asked her suddenly, ‘May I get you some tea?—can I bring you anything?’ with a forced quietness; and when Kate said ‘No,’ he went away, and devoted himself for all the rest of the evening to Lady Caryisfort. There was pique in his manner, but there was something more, which she could not make out; and she sat rather alone for the rest of the evening. She was left to feel her mistake, to wonder, to be somewhat offended and affronted; and went back to the Lung-Arno impatient to hurry over all the packing, and get home at once. But she never found out that in thus taking the weight of the breaking off on her own shoulders, she had saved Count Antonio a great deal of trouble.
When Lady Caryisfort found out what had passed, her amusement was very great. ‘She will go now and think all her life that she has done him an injury, and broken his heart, and all kinds of nonsense,’ she said to herself. ‘Poor Antonio! what a horrible thing money is! But he has escaped very cheaply, thanks to Kate, and she will make a melancholy hero of him, poor dear child, for the rest of her life.’
In this, however, Lady Caryisfort, not knowing all the circumstances, was wrong; for Kate felt vaguely that there was something more than the honourable despair of a young Paladin in her Count’s acceptance of her explanation. He accepted it too readily, with too little attempt to resist or remonstrate. She was more angry than pitiful, ignorant as she was. A man who takes a woman so entirely at her first word almost insults her, even though the separation is her own doing. Kate felt this vaguely, and a hot blush rose to her cheek for two or three days after, at the very mention of Antonio’s name.
The person, however, who felt this breaking off most was old Francesca, who had gone to an extra mass for weeks back, to promote the suit she had so much at heart. She cried herself sick when she saw it was all over, and said to herself, she knew something evil would happen as soon as il vecchio came. Il vecchio’s appearance was always the signal for mischief. He had come, and now once more the party was on the wing, and she herself was to be torn from her native place, the Florence she adored, for this old man’s caprice. Francesca thought with a little fierce satisfaction that, when his soul went to purgatory, there would be nobody to pray him out, and that his penance would be long enough. The idea gave her a great deal of satisfaction. She would not help him out, she was certain—not so much as by a single prayer.
But all the time she got on with her packing, and the ladies began to frequent the shops to buy little souvenirs of Florence. It was a busy time, and there was a great deal of movement, and so much occupation that the members of the little party lost sight of each other, as it were, and pursued their different preparations in their own way. ‘She is packing,’ or, ‘she is shopping,’ was said, first of one, and then of another; and no further questions were asked. And thus the days crept on, and the time approached when they were to set out once more on the journey home.
