Маргарет Олифант
Ombra
CHAPTER LVIII
They were all very subdued when they met next day. It was now, perhaps, more than at any former time that Kate’s position told. Instinctively, without a word of it to each other, Mrs. Anderson and her daughter felt that on her aspect everything depended. They would not have said it to each other, or even to themselves; but, nevertheless, there could not be any doubt on the subject. There were two of them, and they were perfectly free to go and come as they pleased; but the little one—the younger child—the second daughter, who had been quietly subject to them so long, was the mistress of the situation; she was the lady of the house, and they were but her guests. In a moment their positions were changed, and everything reversed. And Kate felt it too. They were both in the breakfast-room when she came in. She was very quiet and pale, unlike her usual self; but when she made her usual greetings, a momentary glow of red came over her face. It burned as she touched Ombra’s cheek with her own. After all that had passed, these habitual kisses were the most terrible thing to go through. It was so hard to break the bond of custom, and so hard to bestow what means love solely for custom’s sake. The two girls reddened as if they had been lovers as they thus approached each other, though for a very different cause; but no stranger, unless he had been very quick-sighted, would have seen the subtle, unexpressed change which each of them felt dropping into their very soul. Kate left the others as soon as breakfast was over, and was absent the whole morning. At lunch she was again visible, and once more they sat and talked, with walls of glass or ice between them. This time, however, Kate gave more distinct indication of her policy.
‘Would you like to have the carriage this afternoon?’ she said.
‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs. Anderson, doubtfully, trying to read her niece’s pleasure in her eyes. ‘If there is anywhere you want to go to, dear–’
‘Oh! if you don’t think of going out, I shall drive to Westerton, to get some books,’ said Kate. ‘I want some German books. It is a long time since I have done any German; but if you want the carriage, never mind—I can go some other day.’
‘I do not want it,’ said Mrs. Anderson, with a chill of dismay; and she turned to Ombra, and made some anxious suggestion about walking somewhere. ‘It will be a nice opportunity while Kate is occupied,’ said the poor soul, scheming to keep things smooth; ‘you said you wanted to see that part of the park.’
‘Yes,’ said Ombra, depressed too, though she would have been too proud to confess it; and thus it was arranged.
Kate drove away alone, and had a hearty cry in the carriage, and was very unhappy; and the mother and daughter went and walked against time in the frost-bound park. It was a bright Winter afternoon, with a pleasant sharpness in the air, and a gorgeous sunset of red and gold. They stopped and pointed it out to each other, and dwelt on all the different gradations of colour, with an artificial delight. The change had come in a way which they had not expected, and they did not know how to face it. It was the only situation which Mrs. Anderson, in her long musings, had not foreseen, and she did not know how to meet it. There was nothing but dismay in her mind—dismay and wonder. All her sagacity was at fault.
This went on for some time. Kate was very kind to her guests; but more and more every day they came to feel themselves guests in the house. She was scarcely ever with them, except at meals; and they would sit together all the long morning, and sometimes all the long afternoon, silent, saying nothing to each other, and hear Kate’s voice far off, perhaps singing as she went through one of the long passages, perhaps talking to Maryanne, or to a dog whom she had brought in from the stable. They sat as if under a spell, for even Ombra was hushed. Her feelings had somehow changed. Instead of the horror with which she had regarded the probable arrival of her lover, she seemed now possessed with a feverish desire to receive him, to see him when he came, to watch him, perhaps to make sure that he was true to her.
‘How can I go away, and know that he is here, and endure it?’ she said to her mother. ‘I must stay!—I must stay! It is wretched; but it would be more wretched to go.’
This was her mood one day; and the next she would be impatient to leave Langton-Courtenay at once, and found the yoke which was upon her intolerable. These were terrible days, as smiling and smooth as of old to all beholders, but with complete change within. Kate was as brave as a lion in carrying out the rôle she had marked out for herself. Even when her heart failed her, she hid it, and went on stoutly in the almost impossible way.
‘I will not interfere with them—I will not ask anything; but otherwise there shall be no change,’ she said to herself, with something of the arrogance of youth, ready to give all, and to believe that it could be accepted without the return of anything. But sometimes it was very hard for her to keep it up; sometimes the peculiar aspect of the scene would fill her with sudden compunctions, sudden longings. Everything looked so like the old, happy days, and yet it was all so different! Sometimes a tone of her aunt’s voice, a movement or a look of Ombra, would bring some old tender recollection back to her mind, and she would feel driven to the last extremity to prevent herself from bursting into tears, or making a wild appeal to them to let things be as they were again. But she resisted all these impulses, saying to herself, with forlorn pride, that the old love had never existed, that it had been but a delirium of her own, and that consequently there was nothing to appeal to. She resumed her German, and worked at it with tremendous zeal in the library by herself. German is an admirable thing when one has been crossed in love, or mortified in friendship. How often has it been resorted to in such circumstances—and has always afforded a certain consolation! And Kate plunged into parish business, to the great delight and relief of Minnie Hardwick, and showed all her old love of the ‘human interest’ of the village, the poor folk’s stories and their difficulties. She tired herself out, and went back and put off her grey frock, and arrayed herself, and sat down at the table with Ombra, languid and heavy-eyed, and Mrs. Anderson, who greeted her with faint smiles. There was little conversation at the table; and it grew less and less as the days went on. These dinners were not amusing; and yet they had some interest too, for each watched the other, wondering what she would next do or say.
I cannot tell exactly how long this lasted. It seemed to all three an eternity. But one afternoon, when Kate came in from a long walk to the other side of the parish, she found a letter conspicuously placed on the hall-table, where she could not fail to see it. She trembled a little when she saw her aunt’s handwriting. And there were fresh carriage-wheels marking the way down the avenue; she had noticed this as she came up. She sat down on the settle in the hall, where Mrs. Anderson had placed herself on the day of their return, and read the following letter with surprise, and yet without surprise. It gave her a shock as of suddenness and strangeness; and yet she had known that it must happen all along.
‘My dearest Kate,
‘If you can think, when you read this, that I do not mean what I say, you will be very, very wrong. All these years I have loved you as if you were my own child. I could not have done otherwise—it is not in nature. But this is not what I want to say. We are going away. It is not with my will, and yet it is not against my will; for even to leave you alone in the house is better than forcing you to live this unnatural life. Good-bye, my dear, dear child! I cannot tell you—more’s the pity!—the circumstances that have made my poor Ombra bitter with everything, including her best friends; but she is very, very sorry, always, after she has said those dreadful words which she does not mean, but which seem to give a little relief to her suffering and bitterness. This is all I can tell you now. Some time or other you will know everything; and then, though you may blame us, you will pity us too. I want to tell you that it never was my wish to keep the secret from you—nor even Ombra’s. At least, she would have yielded, but the other party to the secret would not. Dearest child, forgive me! I go away from you, however, with a very sore heart, and I don’t know where we shall go, or what we shall do. Ever your most affectionate
‘A. Anderson.
‘P.S.—I have written to your uncle, that unavoidable circumstances, over which I have no control, compelled my leaving. I should prefer that you did not say anything to him about what these circumstances were.’
Kate sat still for some time after she had read her letter. She had expected it—it was inevitable; but, oh! with what loneliness the house began to fill behind her! She sat and gazed into the fire, dumb, bearing the blow as she best could. She had expected it, and yet she never believed it possible. She had felt sure that something would turn up to reconcile them—that one day or another, sooner or later, they would all fall upon each other’s necks, and be at one again. She was seized suddenly by that fatal doubt of herself which always comes too late. Had she done right, after all? People must be very confident of doing right who have such important matters in hand. Had she sufficient reason? Was it not mean and paltry of her, in her own house, to have resented a few unconsidered words so bitterly? In her own house! And then she had been the means of turning these two, whom she loved, whether they loved her or not, out upon the world. Kate sat without stirring while the early darkness fell. It crept about her imperceptibly, dimness, and silence, and solitude. The whole great house was a vast desert of silence—not a sound, not a voice, nothing audible but the fall of the ashes on the hearth. The servants’ rooms were far away, shut off by double doors, that no noises might disturb their mistress. Oh! what would not Kate have given for the cheerful sound of the kitchen, that used to be too audible at Shanklin, which her aunt always complained of. Her aunt! who had been like her mother! And where was she now? She began to gasp and sob hysterically, but could not cry. And there was nobody to take any notice. She heard her own voice, but nobody else heard it. They were gone! Servants, new servants, filled the house, noiseless creatures, decorous and well-bred, shut in with double doors, that nobody might hear any sound of them. And she alone!—a girl not twenty!—alone in a house which could put up fifty people!—in a house where there was no sound, no light, no warmth, no fire, no love!
She sat there till it was dark, and never moved. Why should she move? There was no fireside to go to, no one whose presence made home. She was as well on the settle in the hall as anywhere else. The darkness closed over her. What did she care? She sat stupefied, with the letter in her hand.
And there she was found when Mr. Spigot, the butler, came to light the lamp. He gave a jump when he saw something in the corner of the settle. And that something started too, and drew itself together, and said, ‘Is it so late? I did not know!’ and put her hands across her dazzled eyes.
‘I beg you a thousand pardons, miss,’ said Spigot, confused, for he had been whistling under his breath. ‘I didn’t know as no one wasn’t there.’
‘Never mind,’ said Kate. ‘Give me a candle, please. I suppose I must have dropped asleep.’
Had she dropped asleep really ‘for sorrow?’—had she fainted and come to again, nobody being the wiser? Kate could not tell—but there had been a moment of unconsciousness one way or the other; and when she crept upstairs with her candle, a solitary twinkle like a glow-worm in the big staircase, she felt chilled to the bone, aching and miserable. She crept upstairs into the warmth of her room, and, looking in the glass, saw that her face was as the face of a ghost. Her hair had dropped down on one side, and the dampness of the evening had taken all the curl out of it. It fell straight and limp upon her colourless cheek. She went and kneeled down before the fire and warmed herself, which seemed the first necessity of all. ‘How cold one gets when one is unhappy!’ she said, half aloud; and the murmur of her own voice sounded strange in her ear. Was it the only voice that she was now to hear?
When Maryanne came with the candles, it was a comfort to Kate. She started up from the fire. She had to keep up appearances—to look as if nothing had happened. Maryanne, for her part, was running over with the news.
‘Have you heard, miss, as Mrs. Anderson and Miss Ombra is gone?’ she asked, as soon as decency would permit. The whole house had been moved by this extraordinary departure, and the entire servants’ hall hung upon Maryanne for news.
‘Yes,’ said Kate, calmly. ‘I thought I should be back in time, but I was too late. I hope my aunt had everything comfortable. Maryanne, as I am all alone, you can bring me up some tea here—I can’t take the trouble to dine—alone.’
‘Very well, miss,’ said Maryanne; ‘it will be a deal comfortabler. If Mrs. Spigot had known as the ladies was going, she would have changed the dinner—but it was so sudden-like.’
‘Yes, it was very sudden,’ said Kate. And thus Maryanne carried no news downstairs.
CHAPTER LIX
Kate’s life seemed to stop at this point. For a few days she did not know what she did. She would have liked to give in, and be ill, but dared not, lest her aunt (who did not love her) should be compromised. Therefore she kept up, and walked and went to the parish and chattered with Minnie Hardwick, and even tried her German, though this latter attempt was not very successful.
‘My aunt was called away suddenly on business,’ she explained to Mrs. Hardwick.
‘What! and left you alone—quite alone in that great house?’ cried Mrs. Hardwick. ‘It is not possible! How lonely for you! But I suppose she will only be gone for a few days?’
‘I scarcely know. It is business that has taken her away, and nobody can answer for business,’ said Kate, with an attempt at a laugh. ‘But the servants are very good, and I shall do very well. I am not afraid of being alone.’
‘Not afraid, I daresay, but dreadfully solitary. It ought not to be,’ said Mrs. Hardwick, in a tone of reproof. And the thought passed through her mind that she had never quite approved of Mrs. Anderson, who seemed to know much more of Bertie than was at all desirable, and, no doubt, had attempted to secure him for that pale girl of hers. ‘Though what any gentleman could see in her, or how anyone could so much as look at her while Kate Courtenay was by, I don’t understand,’ she said, after discussing the question in private.
‘Oh, mamma! I think she is so sweet and pretty,’ said Edith. ‘But I am sure Bertie does not like her. Bertie avoided her—he was scarcely civil. I am sure if there is anyone that Bertie admires it is Kate.’
Mrs. Hardwick shook her head.
‘Bertie knows very well,’ she said, ‘that Miss Courtenay is out of his reach—delightful as she is, and everything we could desire—except that she is rather too rich; but that is no reason why he should go and throw himself away on some girl without a penny. I don’t put any faith in his avoiding Miss Anderson. When a young man avoids a young woman it is much the same as when he seeks her society. But, Minnie, run away and look after your club books; you are too young yet to hear such matters discussed.’
‘Edith is only a year older than I am,’ said Minnie, within herself, ‘but then she is almost a married lady.’ And with this she comforted her heart, which was not without its private flutters too.
And Kate kept on her way, very bravely holding up her little flag of resolution. She sat in the room which they had all occupied together, and had coals heaped upon the two fires, and could not get warm. The silence of the place made her sick and faint. She got up and walked about, in the hope of hearing at least her own step, and could not on the soft carpet. When she coughed, it seemed to ring all through the house. She got frightened when she caught a glimpse of herself in the great mirror, and thought it was a ghost. She sent to Westerton for all the novels that were to be had, and these were a help to her; but still, to sit in a quiet room, with yourself now and then seen passing through the glass like a thief, and nothing audible but the ashes falling from the grate, is a terrible experience for a girl. She heard herself breathing; she heard her cough echo down all the long galleries. She had her stable dog washed and brushed, and made fit for good society, in the hope that he would take to the drawing-room, and live with her, and give her some one to speak to. But, after all, he preferred the stables, being only a mongrel, without birth or breeding. This rather overcame Kate’s bravery; but only once did she thoroughly break down. It was the day after her aunt left, and, with a sudden recollection of companionship and solace still remaining, she had said to Maryanne, ‘Go and call old Francesca.’ ‘Francesca, miss!—oh! bless you, she’s gone with her lady,’ said Maryanne; and Kate, who had not expected this, broke down all at once, and had a fit of crying.
‘Never mind—it is nothing. I thought they meant to leave Francesca,’ she said, incoherently. Thus it became evident to her that they were gone, and gone for ever. And Kate went back to her melancholy solitude, and took up her novel; but when she had read the first page, she stopped, and began to think. She had done no wrong to anyone. If there was wrong, it had been done to her. She had tried even to resist all feelings of resentment, and to look as if she had forgotten the wrong done her. Yet it was she who was being punished, as if she were the criminal. Nobody anywhere, whatever harm they might have done, had been punished so sorely. Solitary confinement!—was not that the worst of all—the thing that drives people mad?
Then Mr. Courtenay wrote in a state of great fret and annoyance. What did Mrs. Anderson mean by leaving him in the lurch just then, she and her daughter? She had not even given him an address, that he might write to her and remonstrate (he had intended to supersede her in Spring, to be sure, but he did not think it necessary to mention that); and here he was in town, shut up with a threatening of bronchitis, and it was as much as his life was worth to travel now. Couldn’t she get some one to stay with her, or get along somehow until Lady Caryisfort came home?
Kate wrote him a brave little letter, saying that of course she could get on—that he need not be at all troubled about her—that she was quite happy, and should prefer being left as she was. When she had written it, she lay down on the rug before the fire, and had a cry, and then came to herself, and sent to ask if Minnie Hardwick might spend the evening with her. Minnie’s report brought her mother up next morning, who found that Kate had a bad cold, and sent for the doctor, and kept her in bed; and all the fuss of this little illness—though Kate believed she hated fuss—did her good. Her own room was pleasanter than the drawing-room. It was natural to be alone there; and as she lay on the sofa, and was read to by Minnie, there seemed at times a possibility that life might mend. And next day and the next, though she recovered, this companionship went on. Minnie was not very wise, but she chattered about everything in heaven and earth. She talked of her brother—a subject in which Kate could not help taking an interest, which was half anger, half something else. She asked a hundred questions about Florence—
‘Did you really see a great deal of Bertie? How funny that he should not have told us! Men are so odd!’ cried Minnie. ‘If it had been I, I should have raved about you for ever and ever!’
‘Because you are silly and—warm-hearted,’ said Kate, with a sigh. ‘Yes, I think we saw them pretty often.’
‘Why do you say them?’
‘Why?—because the two were always together! We never expected to see one without the other.’
‘Like your cousin and you,’ said innocent Minnie. And then she laughed.
‘Why do you laugh?’ said Kate.
‘Oh! nothing—an idea that came into my head. I have heard of two sisters marrying two brothers, but never of two pair of cousins—it would be funny.’
‘But altogether out of the question, as it happens,’ said Kate, growing stately all at once.
‘Oh! don’t be angry. I did not mean anything. Was Bertie very attentive to Miss Anderson in Florence? We wonder sometimes. For I am sure he avoided her here; and mamma says she puts no faith in a gentleman avoiding a lady. It is as bad as—what do you think?—unless you would rather not say,’ added Minnie, shyly; ‘or if you think I oughtn’t to ask–’
‘I don’t know anything about Mr. Bertie Hardwick’s feelings,’ said Kate. And then she added, with a little sadness which she could not quite conceal, ‘Nor about anybody, Minnie. Don’t ask me, please. I am not clever enough to find things out; and nobody ever confides in me.’
‘I am sure I should confide in you first of all!’ cried Minnie, with enthusiasm. ‘Oh! when I recollect how much we used to be frightened for you, and what a funny girl we thought you; and then to think I should know you so well now, and have got so—fond of you—may I say so?’ said the little girl, who was proud of her post.
Kate made no answer for a full minute, and then she said,
‘Minnie, you are younger than I am, a great deal younger–’
‘I am eighteen,’ said Minnie, mortified.
‘But I am nineteen and a half, and very, very old for my age. At your age one does not know which is the real thing and which is the shadow—there are so many shadows in this world; and sometimes you take them for truth, and when you find it out it is hard.’
Minnie followed this dark saying with a puzzled little face.
‘Yes,’ she said, perplexed, ‘like Narcissus, you mean, and the dog that dropped the bone. No, I don’t mean that—that is too—too—common-place. Oh! did you ever see Bertie Eldridge’s yacht? I think I heard he had it at the Isle of Wight. It was called the Shadow. Oh! I would give anything to have a sail in a yacht!’
Ah! that was called the Shadow too. Kate felt for a moment as if she had found something out; but it was a delusion, an idea which she could not identify—a Will-o’-the-Wisp, which looked like something, and was nothing. ‘I have a shadow too,’ she murmured, half to herself. But before Minnie’s wondering eyes and tongue could ask what it meant, Spigot came solemnly to the door. He had to peer into the darkness to see his young mistress on the sofa.
‘If you please, Miss Courtenay,’ he said, ‘there is a gentleman downstairs wishes to see you; and he won’t take no answer as I can offer. He says if you hear his name–’
‘What is his name?’ cried Kate. She did not know what she expected, but it made her heart beat. She sat up, on her sofa, throwing off her wraps, notwithstanding Minnie’s remonstrances. Who could it be?—or rather, what?
‘The Reverend Mr. Sugden, Miss,’ said Mr. Spigot.
‘Mr. Sugden!’ She said the name two or three times over before she could remember. Then she rose, and directed Spigot to light the candles. She did not know how it was, but new vigour somehow seemed to come into her veins.
‘Minnie,’ she said, ‘this is a gentleman who knows my aunt. He has come, I suppose, about her business. I want you to stay just now; but if I put up my hand so, will you run upstairs and wait for me in my room? Take the book. You will be a true little friend if you will do this.’
‘Leave you alone!—with a gentleman!’ said Minnie. ‘But then of course he must be an old gentleman, as he has come about business,’ she said to herself; and added hastily, ‘Of course I will. And if you don’t put up your hand—so—must I stay?’
‘I am sure to put it up,’ said Kate.
The room by this time was light and bright, and Spigot’s solemn step was heard once more approaching. Kate placed herself in a large chair. She looked as imposing and dignified as she could, poor child!—the solitary mistress of her own house. But how strange it was to see the tall figure come in—the watchful, wistful face she remembered so well! He held out his large hand, in which her little one was drowned, just as he used to do. He glanced round him in the same way, as if Ombra might be somewhere about in the corners. His Shadow too! Kate could not doubt that. But when she gave Minnie her instructions, she had taken it for granted that there would have been certain preliminaries to the conversation—inquiries about herself, or information about what she was doing. But Mr. Sugden was full of excitement and anxiety. He took her small hand into his big one, which swallowed it up, as we have said, and he held it, as some men hold a button.
‘I hear they have left you,’ he said. ‘Tell me, is it true?’
‘Yes,’ said Kate, too much startled to give her signal, ‘they have left me.’
‘And you don’t know where they have gone?’
She remembered now, and Minnie disappeared, curious beyond all description. Then Kate withdrew her hand from that mighty grasp.
‘I don’t know where they have gone. Have you heard anything of them, Mr. Sugden? Have you brought me, perhaps, a message?’
He shook his head.
‘I heard it all vaguely, only vaguely; but you know how I used to feel, Miss Kate. I feel the same still. Though it is not what I should have wished—I am ready to be a brother to her. Will you tell me all that has passed since you went away?’
‘All that has passed?’
‘If you will, Miss Kate—as you would be kind to one who does not care very much what happens to him! You are kind, I know—and you love her!’
The tears came to Kate’s eyes. She grew warm and red all over, throwing off, as it were, in a moment, the palsy of cold and misery that had come over her.
‘Yes,’ she said suddenly, ‘I love her,’ and cried. Mr. Sugden looked on, not knowing why.
Kate felt herself changed as in a moment; she felt—nay, she was herself again. What did it matter whether they loved her?—she loved them. That was, after all, what she had most to do with. She dried her tears, and she told her story, straight off, like a tale she had been taught, missing nothing. And he drank it all in to the end, not missing a word. When she had finished he sat silent, with a sombre countenance, and not a syllable was spoken between them for ten minutes at least. Then he said aloud, as if not talking, but thinking,
‘The question is which?’ Then he raised his eyes and looked at her. ‘Which?’ he repeated.
Kate grew pale again, and felt a choking in her throat. She bowed her head, as if she were accepting her fate.
‘Mr. Bertie Hardwick!’ she said.
