Маргарет Олифант
Ombra
Mrs. Anderson’s room was a large one; opening into that of Ombra on the one side, and into an ante-room, which they could sit in, or dress in, or read and write in, for it was furnished for all uses. It was a petit appartement, charmingly shut in and cosy, one of the best set of rooms in the house, which Kate had specially chosen for her aunt. Here the mother and daughter met one night after a very tranquil day, over the fire in the central room. It was a bright fire, and the cosy chairs that stood before it were luxurious, and the warm firelight flickered through the large room, upon the ruddy damask of the curtains, and the long mirror, and all the pretty furnishings. Ombra came in from her own room in her dressing-gown, with her dusky hair over her shoulders. Dusky were her looks altogether, like evening in a Winter’s twilight. Her dressing-gown was of a faint grey-blue—not a pretty colour in itself, but it suited Ombra; and her long hair fell over it almost to her waist. She came in noiselessly to her mother’s room, and it was her voice which first betrayed her presence there. Mrs. Anderson had been sitting thinking, with a very serious face; she started at her child’s voice.
‘I have been trying my very best to bear it—I think I have done my very best; I have smiled, and kept my temper, and tried to look as if I were not ready to die of misery. Oh! mamma, mamma, can this go on for ever? What am I to do?’
‘Oh! Ombra, for God’s sake have patience!’ cried her mother—‘nothing new has happened to-day?’
‘Nothing new!—is it nothing new to have those girls here from the Rectory, jabbering about their brother? and to know that he is coming—next week, they say? We shall be obliged to meet—and how are we to meet? when I think how I took leave of him last! My life is odious to me!’ cried the girl, sinking down in a chair, and covering her face with her hands. ‘I don’t know how to hold up my head and look those people in the face; and it is worse when no one comes. To live for a whole long, endless day without seeing a strange face, with Kate’s eyes going through and through me–’
‘Don’t make things worse than they are,’ said her mother, ‘Oh! Ombra, have a little patience! Kate suspects nothing.’
‘Suspects!’ cried Ombra—‘she knows there is something—not what it is, but that there is something. Do you think I don’t see her looks in the morning, when the letters come? Poor Kate! she will not look at them; she is full of honour—but to say she does not suspect!’
‘I don’t know what to say to satisfy you, Ombra,’ said her mother. ‘Did not I beg you on my knees to take her into your confidence? It would have made everything so much easier, and her so much happier.’
‘Oh! mamma, my life is hard enough of itself—don’t make it harder and harder!’ cried Ombra; and then she laid down her head upon her mother’s shoulder, and wept. Poor Mrs. Anderson bore it all heroically; she kissed and soothed her child, and persuaded her that it could not last long—that Bertie would bring good news—that everything would be explained and atoned for in the end. ‘There can be no permanent harm, dear—no permanent harm,’ she repeated, ‘and everybody will be sorry and forgive.’ And so, by degrees, Ombra was pacified, and put to bed, and forgot her troubles.
This was the kind of scene which took place night after night in the tranquil house, where all the three ladies seemed so quietly happy. Kate heard no echo of it through the thick walls and curtains, yet not without troubles of her own was the heiress. The intimation of Bertie’s coming disturbed her too. She thought she had got quite composed about the whole matter, willing to wait until the secret should be disclosed, and the connection between him and her cousin, whatever it was, made known. But to have him here again, with his wistful looks, and the whole mystery to be resumed, as if there had been no interruption of it—this was more than Kate felt she could bear.
CHAPTER LIV
The news which had made so much commotion in the Hall came from the Rectory in a very simple way. Edith and Minnie had come up to call. Their mother rather wished them to do so frequently. She urged upon them that it might demand a little sacrifice of personal feeling, yet that personal feeling was always a thing that ought to be sacrificed—it was a good moral exercise, irrespective of everything else; and Miss Courtenay was older, and, no doubt, more sensible than when she went away—not likely to shock them as she did then—and that it would be good for her to see a good deal of them, and pleasant for people to know that they went a good deal to the Hall. All this mass of reasoning was scarcely required, yet Edith and Minnie, on the whole, were glad to know that it was their duty to visit Kate. They both felt deeply that a thing which you do as a duty takes a higher rank than a thing you do as a pleasure; and their visits might have taken that profane character had not all this been impressed upon them in time.
‘Oh! Miss Courtenay, we have such news,’ said Edith; and Minnie added, in a parenthesis (‘We are so happy!’) ‘Dear Bertie is coming home for a few days. He wrote that he was so busy, he could not possibly come; but papa insisted’ (‘I am so glad papa insisted,’ from Minnie, who was the accompaniment), ‘and so he is coming—just for two days. He is going to bring us the things he bought for us at Florence.’ (‘Oh! I do so want to see them!’) ‘You saw a great deal of him at Florence, did you not?’
‘Yes, we saw him—a great many times,’ said Kate, noticing, under her eyelids, how Ombra suddenly caught her breath.
‘He used to mention you in his letters at first—only at first. I suppose you made too many friends to see much of each other.’ (‘Bertie is such a fellow for society.’) ‘He is reading up now for the bar. Perhaps you don’t know that he has given up the church?’
‘I think I heard him say so,’ answered Kate.
And then there was a little pause. The Hardwick girls thought their great news was received very coldly, and were indignant at the want of interest shown in ‘our Bertie!’ After awhile Edith explained, with some dignity:
‘Of course my brother is very important to us’ (‘He is just the very nicest boy that ever was!’ from Minnie), ‘though we can’t expect others to take the same interest–’
Kate had looked up by instinct, and she caught Ombra’s eyes, which were opened in a curious little stare, with an elevation of the eyebrows which spoke volumes. Not the same interest! Kate’s heart grew a little sick—she could not tell why—and she turned away, making some conventional answer, she did not know what. A pause again, and then Mrs. Anderson asked, without looking up from her work:
‘Is Mr. Hardwick coming to the Rectory alone?’
‘Oh, yes! At least we think so,’ said the two girls in one.
‘I ask because he and his cousin were so inseparable,’ said Mrs. Anderson, smiling. ‘We used to say that when one was visible the other could not be far off.’
‘Oh! you mean Bertie Eldridge,’ said Edith. ‘No, I am sure he is not coming. Papa does not like our Bertie to be so much with him as he has been. We do not think Bertie Eldridge a nice companion for him,’ said the serious young woman, who rather looked down upon the boys, and echoed her parents’ sentiments, without any sense of inappropriateness. ‘No, we don’t at all like them to be so much together,’ said Minnie. Again Kate turned round instinctively. This time Ombra was smiling, almost laughing, with quite a gay light in her eyes.
‘Of course that is a subject beyond me,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘They seemed much attached to each other.’ And then the matter dropped, and the girls entered upon parish news, which left them full scope for prattle. Edith was engaged to be married to a neighbouring clergyman, and, accordingly, she was more than ever clerical and parochial in all her ways of thinking; while Minnie looked forward with a flutter, half of fear and half of excitement, to becoming the eldest Miss Hardwick, and having to manage the Sunday School and decorate the church by herself.
‘What shall I do when Edith is married?’ was the burden of all the talk she ventured upon alone. ‘Mamma is so much occupied, she can’t give very much assistance,’ she said. ‘Oh! dear Miss Courtenay, if you would come and help me sometimes when Edith goes away!’
‘I will do anything I can,’ said Kate, shortly. And the two girls withdrew at last, somewhat chilled by the want of sympathy. Had they but known what excitement, what commotion, their simple news carried into that still volcano of a house!
He was to come in a week. Kate schooled herself to be very strong, and think nothing of it, but her heart grew sick when she thought of the Florence scenes all over again—perhaps worse, for at Florence at least there were two. And to Ombra the day passed with feverish haste, and all her pretences at tranquillity and good humour began to fail in the rising tide of excitement.
‘I shall be better again when he has gone away,’ she said to her mother. ‘But, oh! how can I—how can I take it quietly? Could you, if you were in my position? Think of all the misery and uncertainty. And he must be coming for a purpose. He would not come unless he had something to say.’
‘Oh! Ombra, if there was anything, why should it not be said in a letter?’ cried her mother. ‘You have letters often enough. I wish you would just put them in your pocket, and not read them at the breakfast table. You keep me in terror lest Kate should see the handwriting or something. After all our precautions–’
‘Can you really suppose that Kate is so ignorant?’ said Ombra. ‘Do you think she does not know well enough whom my letters are from?’
‘Then, for God’s sake, if you think so, let me tell her, and be done with this horrible secret,’ cried her mother. ‘It kills me to keep up this concealment; and if you think she knows, why, why should it go on?’
‘You are so impetuous, mamma!’ said Ombra, with a smile. ‘There is a great difference between her guessing and direct information procured from ourselves. And how can we tell what she might do? She would interfere; it is her nature. You could not trust anything so serious to such a child.’
‘Kate is not a child now,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘And oh! Ombra, if you will consider how ungrateful, how untrue, how unkind it is–’
‘Stop, mamma!’ cried Ombra, with a flush of angry colour. ‘That is enough—that is a great deal too much—ungrateful! Are we expected to be grateful to Kate? You will tell me next to look up to her, to reverence her–’
‘Ombra, you have always been hard upon Kate.’
‘It is not my fault,’ cried Ombra, suddenly giving way to a little burst of weeping. ‘If you consider how different her position is– All this wretched complication—everything that has happened lately—would have been unnecessary if I had had the same prospects as Kate. Everything would have gone on easily then. There would have been no need for concealment—no occasion for deceit.’
‘That is not Kate’s fault,’ said Mrs. Anderson, who was at her wit’s end.
‘Oh! mother, mother, don’t worry me out of my senses. Did I say it was Kate’s fault? It is no one’s fault. But all we poor miserables must suffer as if it were. And there is no help for it; and it is so hard, so hard to bear!’
‘Ombra, I told you to count the cost,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘I told you it would be no easy business. You thought you had strength of mind for the struggle then.’
‘And it turns out that I have no strength of mind,’ cried Ombra, almost wildly. And then she started up and went to her own room again, where her mother could hear her sighing and moaning till she fell asleep.
These night scenes took away from Mrs. Anderson’s enjoyment of the great mansion and the many servants, and that luxurious room which Kate’s affection had selected for her aunt. She sat over the fire when she was left alone, and would wonder and ask herself what would come of it, what could ever come of it, and whether it was possible that she should ever be happy again. She looked back with a longing which she could not subdue upon the humble days at Shanklin, when they were all so happy. The little tiny cottage, the small rooms, all rose up before her. The drawing-room itself was not half so large as Mrs. Anderson’s bed-room at Langton-Courtenay. But what happy days these had been! She was not an old woman, though she was Ombra’s mother. It was not as if life was nearly over for her, as if she could look forward to a speedy end of all her troubles. And she knew better than Ombra that somehow or other the world always exacts punishment, whether immediately or at an after period, from those who transgress its regulations. She said to herself mournfully that things do not come right in life as they do in story-books. Her daughter had taken a weak and foolish step, and she too had shared in the folly by consenting to it. She had done so, she could not explain to herself why, in a moment of excitement. And though Ombra was capable of hoping that some wonderful chain of accidents might occur to solve every difficulty, Mrs. Anderson was not young enough, or inexperienced enough, to think anything of the kind possible. Accidents happen, she was aware, when you do not want them, not when you do. When a catastrophe is foreseen and calculated upon, it never happens. In such a case, the most rotten vessel that ever sunk in a storm will weather a cyclone. Fate would not interfere to help; and when Mrs. Anderson considered how slowly and steadily the ordinary course of nature works, and how little it is likely to suit itself to any pressure of human necessity, her heart grew sick within her. She had a higher opinion of her niece than Ombra had, and she knew that Kate would have been a tower of strength and protection to them, besides all the embarrassment that would have been avoided, and all the pain and shame of deceit. But what could she do? The young people were stronger than she, and had overridden all her remonstrances; and now all that could be done was to carry on as steadily as possible—to conceal the secret—to hope that something might happen, unlikely though she knew that was.
Thus was this gentle household distracted and torn asunder; for there is no such painful thing in the world to carry about with one as a secret;—it will thrust itself to the surface, notwithstanding the most elaborate attempts to heap trifles and the common routine of life over it. It is like a living thing, and moves, or breathes, or cries out at the wrong moment, disclosing itself under the most elaborate covers; and finally, howsoever people may deceive themselves, it is never really hidden. While we are throwing the embroidered veil over it, and flattering ourselves that it is buried in concealment dark as night, our friends all the time are watching it throb under the veil, and wondering with a smile or a sigh, according to their dispositions, how we can be so foolish as to believe that it is hidden from them. The best we can do for our secret is to confuse the reality of it, most often making it look a great deal worse than it is. And this was what Ombra and her mother were doing, while poor Kate looked on wistful, seeing all their transparent manœuvres; and a choking, painful sense of concealment was in the air—a feeling that any moment some volcano might burst forth.
CHAPTER LV
It was a week later before Bertie came. He was brought to call by his mother and sisters in great delight and pomp; and then there ensued the strangest scene, of which only half the company had the least comprehension. The room which Kate had chosen as their sitting-room was an oblong room, with another smaller one opening from it. This small room was almost opposite the fireplace in the larger one, and made a draught which some people—indeed, most people—objected to; but as the broad open doorway was amply curtained, and a great deal of sun came in along with the imaginary draught, the brightness of the place won the day against all objections. The little room was thus preserved from the air of secrecy and retirement common to such rooms. No one could retire to flirt there; no one could listen unseen to conversations not intended for them. The piano was placed in it, and the writing-table, under the broad recessed window, which filled the whole end of it. It was light as a lantern, swept by the daylight from side to side, and the two fires kept it as warm as it was bright. When Mrs. Hardwick sailed in, bearing under her convoy her two blooming girls close behind her, and the tall brother towering over their heads, a more proud or happy woman could not be.
‘I have brought my Bertie to see you,’ she said, all the seriousness of that ‘sense of duty’ which weighed upon her ordinary demeanour melting for the moment in her motherly delight and pride. ‘He was so modest, we could scarcely persuade him to come. He thought you might think he was presuming on your acquaintance abroad, and taking as much liberty as if he had been an intimate–’
‘I think Mr. Hardwick might very well take as much liberty as that,’ cried Kate, moved, in spite of herself, to resentment with this obstinate make-believe. Her aunt looked up at her with such pain in her eyes as is sometimes seen in the eyes of animals, who can make us no other protest.
‘We are very glad to see Mr. Bertie again,’ said Mrs. Anderson, holding out her hand to him with a smile. ‘He is a Shanklin acquaintance, too. We are old friends.’
And he shook hands with all of them solemnly, his face turning all manner of colours, and his eyes fixed on the ground. Ombra was the last to approach, and as she gave him her hand, she did not say a word; neither did she lift her eyes to look at him. They stood by each other for a second, hand in hand, with eyes cast down, and a flush of misery upon both their faces. Was it merely misery? It could not but be painful, meeting thus, they who had parted so differently; but Kate, who could not remove her eyes from them, wondered, out of the midst of the sombre cloud which seemed to have come in with Bertie, and to have wrapped her round—wondered what other feeling might be in their minds. Was it not a happiness to stand together even now, and here?—to be in the same room?—to touch each other’s hands? Even amid all this pain of suppression and concealment was not there something more in it? She felt as if fascinated, unable to withdraw her eyes from them; but they remained together only for a moment; and Bertie’s sisters, who did not think Miss Anderson of much importance, did not even notice the meeting. Bertie himself withdrew to Mrs. Anderson’s side, and began to talk to her and to his mother. The girls, disappointed (for naturally they would have preferred that he should make himself agreeable to the heiress), sat down by Kate. Ombra dropped noiselessly on a chair close to the doorway between the two rooms; and after a few minutes she said to her cousin, ‘Will you pardon me if I finish my letter for the post?’ and went into the inner room, and sat down at the writing-table.
‘She writes a great deal, doesn’t she?’ said Edith Hardwick. ‘Is she literary, Miss Courtenay? I asked Bertie, but he could not tell me. I thought she would not mind doing something perhaps for the “Parish Magazine.”’
‘Edith does most of it herself,’ said Minnie. (‘Oh! Minnie, for shame!’) ‘And do you know, Miss Courtenay, she had something in the last “Monthly Packet.”’ (‘Please don’t, Minnie, please! What do you suppose Miss Courtenay cares?’) ‘I shall bring it up to show you next time I come.’
‘Indeed, you shall do nothing of the kind!’ said Edith, blushing. And Kate made a pretty little civil speech, which would have been quite real and genuine, had not her mind been so occupied with other things; but with the drama actually before her eyes, how could she think of stories in the ‘Monthly Packet?’ Her eyes went from one to another as they sat with the whole breadth of the room between them; and this absorption made her look much more superior and lofty than she was in reality, or had any thought of being. Yes, she said to herself, it was best so—they could not possibly talk to each other as strangers. It was best that they should thus get out of sight of each other almost—avoid any intercourse. But how strange it was!
‘Don’t you think it is odd that Bertie, knowing the world as he does, should be so shy?’ said Edith. (‘Oh! he is so shy!’ cried Minnie.) ‘He made as many excuses as a frightened little girl. “They won’t want to see me,” he said. “Miss Courtenay will know it is not rudeness on my part if I don’t call. Why should I go and bother them?” We dragged him here!’
‘We dragged him by the hair of his head,’ said Minnie, who was the wit of the family.
And Kate did her best to laugh.
‘I did not think he had been so shy,’ she said. ‘He wanted, I suppose, to have you all to himself, and not to lose his time making visits. How long is he to stay?’
Edith and Minnie looked at each other. The question had already been discussed between their mother and themselves whether Bertie would be asked to dinner, or whether, indeed, they might not all be asked, with the addition of Edith’s betrothed, who was visiting also at the Rectory. They all thought it would be a right thing for Kate to do; and, of course, as Mrs. Anderson was there, it would be so easy, and in every way so nice. They looked at each other, accordingly, with a little consciousness.
‘He is to stay till Monday, I think,’ said Edith; ‘or perhaps we might coax him to give us another day, if–’ She was going to say if there was any reason, but that seemed a hint too plain.
‘That is not a very long visit,’ said Kate. And then, without a hint of a dinner-party, she plunged into the parish, that admirable ground of escape in all difficulties.
They had got into the very depths of charities, and coals, and saving-clubs, when Mrs. Hardwick rose.
‘We are such a large party, we must not inflict ourselves upon you too long,’ said Mrs. Hardwick. She, too, was a little disappointed that there was not a word about a dinner. She thought Mrs. Anderson should have known what her duty was in the circumstances, and should have given her niece a hint; ‘but I hope we shall all meet again before my son goes away.’
And then there was a second shaking of hands. When all was over, and the party were moving off, Kate turned to Bertie, who was last.
‘You have not taken leave of Ombra,’ she said, looking full at him.
He coloured to his hair; he made her a confused bow, and hurried into the room where Ombra was. Kate, with a sternness which was very strange to her, watched the two figures against the light. Ombra did not move. She spoke to him apparently without even looking up from her letter. A dozen words or so—no more. Then there came a sudden cry from the other door, by which the mother and daughters were going ‘Oh! we have forgotten Miss Anderson!’ and the whole stream flowed back.
‘Indeed, it is Ombra’s fault; but she was writing for the post,’ exclaimed her mother, calling to her.
Ombra came forward to the doorway, very pale, even to her lips, but smiling, and shook hands three times, and repeated that it was her fault. And then the procession streamed away.
‘That girl looks very unhealthy,’ Mrs. Hardwick said, when they were walking down the avenue. ‘I shall try and find out from her mother if there is consumption in the family, and advise them to try the new remedy. Did you notice what a colour her lips were? She is very retiring, poor thing; and, I must say, never puts herself the least in the way.’
‘Do you think she is pretty, Bertie?’ said the sisters, together.
‘Pretty? Oh! I can’t tell. I am no judge,’ said Bertie. ‘Look here, mamma, I am going to see old Stokes, the keeper. He used to be a great friend of mine. If I don’t make up to you before you reach home, I’ll be back at least before it is dark.’
‘Before it is dark!’ said Mrs. Hardwick, in dismay. But Bertie was gone. ‘I suppose young men must have their way,’ she said, looking after him. ‘But you must not think, girls, that people are any the happier for having their way. On the contrary, you who have been educated to submit have a much better preparation for life. I hope dear Bertie will never meet with any serious disappointment,’ she added, with a sigh.
‘Oh! mamma, serious disappointment! when he has always succeeded in everything!’ cried the girls, in their duet.
‘For he could not bear it,’ said Mrs. Hardwick, shaking her head. ‘It would be doubly, doubly hard upon him; for he has never been trained to bear it—never, I may say, since he left the nursery, and got out of my hands.’
At this time it was nearly three o’clock, a dull Winter afternoon, not severe, but dim and mournful. It was the greyness of frost, however, not of damp, which was in the air; and Kate, who was restless, announced her intention of taking a long walk. She was glad to escape from this heavy atmosphere of home; she said, somewhat bitterly, that it was best to leave them together to unbosom themselves, to tell each other all those secrets which were not to be confided to her; and to compare notes, no doubt, as to how he was looking, and how they were to find favourable opportunities of meeting again, Kate’s heart was sore—she was irritated by the mystery which, after all, was so plain to her. She saw the secret thing moving underneath the cover—the only difficulty she had was to decide what kind of secret it was. What was the relationship between Bertie and Ombra? Were they only lovers?—were they something more?—and what had Bertie Eldridge to do with it? Kate, indignant, would not permit herself to think; but the questions came surging up in her mind against her will. She had a little basket in her hand. She was carrying some grapes and wine to old Stokes, the disabled keeper, who was dying, and whom everybody made much of. On her way to his cottage she had to pass that little nook where the brook was, and where she had first seen Bertie Hardwick. It was the first time she had seen it since her return, and she paused, half in anger and bitterness, half with a softening swell of recollection. How rich, and sweet, and warm, and delicious it had been that Summer evening, with the blossom still on the hawthorns, and the grass like velvet, and the soft little waterfall tinkling! How everything was changed!—the bushes all black with frost, the trees bare of their foliage, with here and there a ragged red leaf at the end of a bough, the brook tinkling with a sharp metallic sound. Everything else was frozen and still—all the insect life of Summer, all the movements and rustlings of grass and leaves and flowers. The flowers and the leaves were gone; the grass bound fast in an icy coat. ‘But not more different,’ Kate thought, ‘than were other matters—more important than the grass and flowers.’
She was roused from her momentary reverie by the sound of a footstep ringing clear and sharp along the frosty road; and before she could get out of the shelter of the little coppice which encircled that haunt of her childhood, Bertie Hardwick came suddenly up to her. The sight of her startled the young man—but in what way? A flush of delight rushed over his face—he brightened all over, as it seemed, eyes and mouth and every feature. He came forward to her with impetuous steps, and took her hand before she was aware.
‘I was thinking of you,’ he cried; ‘longing to meet you just here, not believing it possible—oh, Kate!– Miss Courtenay, I beg your pardon. I—I forget what I was going to say.’
He did not give up her hand, though; he stood and gazed at her with such pleasure in his eyes as could not be misconstrued. And then the most curious phenomenon came into being—a thing most wonderful, not to be explained. All the anger and the suspicion and the bitterness, suddenly, in a moment, fled out of Kate’s heart—they fled like evil spirits exorcised and put to flight by something better than they. Kate was too honest to conceal what was in her mind. She did not draw away her hand; she looked at him full with her candid eyes.
‘Mr. Bertie, I am very glad to have met you here. I can’t help remembering; and I should be glad—very glad to meet you anywhere; but–’
He dropped her hand; he put up both his own to his face, as if to cover its shame; and then, with a totally changed tone, and a voice from which all the gladness had gone, he said slowly:
‘I know; but I am not allowed to explain—I cannot explain. Oh! Kate, you know no harm of me, do you? You have never known or heard that I was without sense of honour? trust me, if you can! Nothing in it, not any one thing, is my fault.’
Kate started as if she had been struck, and everything that had wounded her came back in sevenfold strength. She could not keep even a tone of contempt out of her voice.
‘I have heard,’ she said, ‘that there was honour among thieves: do you throw the blame upon Ombra—all the blame? I suppose it is the way men do. Good-bye, Mr. Hardwick!’ And, before he could say a word, she was gone—flying past him, indignant, contemptuous, wounded to the core.
As she came back from the keeper’s cottage, when the afternoon was duller than ever, and the sky seemed to be dropping over the tree-tops, Kate thought she saw, in one of the roads which crossed the avenue, the flutter of a lady’s shawl. The girl was curious in her excitement, and she paused behind a tree to watch. After a short time the fluttering shawl drew nearer. It was Ombra, clinging close to Bertie Hardwick’s arm—turning to him a pale face full of care and anxiety. They were discussing their dark concerns—their secrets. Kate rushed home without once stopping or drawing breath.
