полная версия

Маргарет Олифант
Ombra

CHAPTER LX

This strange little incident, which at the moment it was occurring seemed to be perfectly natural, but as soon as that moment was over became inexplicable, dropped into Kate’s life as a stone drops into water. It made a curious commotion and a bustle for the moment, and stirred faintly for a little while afterwards, and then disappeared, and was thought of no more.

Mr. Sugden would not stay, he would not even eat in the house. He had come down from town to the station six miles off, the nearest station for Langton-Courtenay, and there he meant to return again as soon as he had his information. Kate had been much troubled as to how she, in her unprotected condition, was to ask him to stay; but when she found out he would not stay, an uncomfortable sensation as of want of hospitality came over her. But when he was actually gone, and Minnie Hardwick called back, somehow the entire incident appeared like a dream, and it seemed impossible that anything important had happened. Minnie was not curious; business was to her a sacred word, which covered all difficulties. The Curate was not old, as she had supposed; but otherwise being a friend of Mrs. Anderson’s, and involved in her affairs, his sudden visit seemed perfectly natural. Just so men would come down from town, and be shut up with her father for an hour or two, and then disappear; and Kate as a great lady, as an heiress and independent person, no doubt must have the same kind of visitors.

Kate, however, thought a great deal of it that night—could not sleep, indeed, for thinking of it; but less the next morning, and still less the day after, till at length the tranquillity settled back into its old stillness. Mr. Sugden had done her good, so far that he had roused her to consciousness of a hearty sentiment in herself, independent of anything from without—the natural affection which was her own independent possession, and not a reflection of other people’s love. What though they did not love her even? she loved them; and as soon as she became conscious of this, she was saved from the mental harm that might have happened to her. It gave Kate pain when day after day passed on, and no word came from those who had departed from her so suddenly. But then she was young, and had been brought up in the persuasion that everything was likely to turn out right at the end, and that permanent unhappiness was a very rare thing. She was not alarmed about the safety of those who had deserted her; they were two, nay, three people together; they were used to taking care of themselves; so far as she knew, they had money enough and all that was required. And then her own life was so strange; it occupied her almost like a fairy-life. She thought she had never heard of any one so forlorn and solitary. The singularity of her position did her good. She was half proud, half amused by it; she smiled when her visitors would remark upon her singular loneliness—‘Yes, it seems strange to you, I suppose,’ she said; but I don’t mind it.’ It was a small compensation, but still it was a kind of compensation, indemnifying her for some at least of her trouble. The Andersons had disappeared into the great darkness of the world; but some day they would turn up again and come back to her and make explanations. And although she had been impressed by Mr. Sugden’s visit, she was not actually anxious about the future of her aunt and cousin; some time or other things naturally would put themselves right.

This, however, did not prevent the feeling of her loneliness from being terrible to her—insupportable; but it removed all complications from her feelings, and made them simple. And thus she lived on for months together, as if in a dream, always assuring Mr. Courtenay that she did very well, that she wanted nothing, getting a little society in the Rectory with the Hardwicks, and with some of her county neighbours who had called upon her. Minnie got used to the carriage, and to making expeditions into Westerton, the nearest town, and liked it. And strangely and stilly as ever Châtelaine lived in an old castle, in such a strange maiden seclusion lived Kate.

Where had the others gone? She ascertained before long that they were not at Shanklin—the Cottage was still let to ‘very nice people,’ about whom Lucy Eldridge wrote very enthusiastic letters to her cousin—letters which Kate would sometimes draw her innocent moral from, not without a little faint pain, which surprised her in the midst of all graver troubles. She pointed out to Minnie how Lucy Eldridge had rejected the very idea of being friendly with the new comers, much less admitting them to a share in the place Kate held in her heart. ‘Whereas now you see I am forgotten altogether,’ Kate said, with a conscious melancholy that was not disagreeable to her. Minnie protested that with her such a thing could never happen—it was impossible; and Kate smiled sadly, and shook her head in her superior knowledge. She took Minnie into her intimacy with a sense of condescension. But the friendship did her good. And Mrs. Hardwick was very kind to her. They were all anxious to ‘be of use’ to the heiress, to help her through her melancholy hours.

When Bertie came down for his next flying visit, she manœuvred so that she succeeded in avoiding him, though he showed no desire this time to avoid her. But, Kate said to herself, this was something that she could not bear. She could not see him as if he were an indifferent stranger, when she knew well that he could reveal to her everything she wanted to know, and set the tangle right at last. He knew where they were without doubt—he knew everything. She could not meet him calmly, and shake hands with him, and pretend she did not remember the past. She was offended with him, both for their sake and her own—for Ombra’s sake, because of the secret; and for her own, because of certain little words and looks which were an insult to her from Ombra’s lover. No, she could not see him. She had a bad headache when he came with his mother to call; she was not able to go out when she was asked to the Rectory. She saw him only at church, and did nothing but bow when he hurried to speak to her in the churchyard. No, that she would not put up with. There was even a certain contempt mingled with her soreness. Mrs. Anderson had put all the blame upon him—the ‘other party to the secret;’ while he, poor creature, would not even take the responsibility upon his own shoulders bravely, but blamed Ombra. Well! well! Kate resolved that she would keep her solitude unbroken, that she would allow no intrusion upon her of all the old agitations that once had made her unhappy. She would not consent to allow herself to be made unhappy any longer, or even to think of those who had given her so much pain.

Unfortunately, however, after she had made this good resolution, she thought of nothing else, and puzzled herself over the whole business, and especially Bertie’s share in it, night and day. He would suddenly start up into her mind when she was thinking of something else, with a glow over his face, and anxious gleam in his eyes, as she had seen him at the church door. Perhaps, then, though so late, he had meant to explain. Perhaps he intended to lay before her what excuses there might be—to tell her how one thing followed another, how they had been led into clandestine ways.

Kate would make out an entire narrative to herself and then would stop short suddenly, and ask herself what she meant by it? It was not for her to explain for them, but for them to explain to her. But she did not want to think badly of them. Even when her wounds had been deepest, she did not wish to think unkindly; and it would have given her a kind of forlorn pleasure to be able to find out their excuses beforehand. This occupied her many an hour when she sat alone in the stillness, to which she gradually became accustomed. After awhile her own reflection in the glass no longer struck her as looking like a ghost or a thief; she grew used to it. And then the way in which she threw herself into the parish did one good to see. Minnie Hardwick felt that Kate’s activity and Kate’s beneficence took away her breath. She filled the cottages with what Mrs. Hardwick felt to be luxuries, and disapproved of. She rushed into Westerton continually, to buy things for the old women. One had an easy-chair, another a carpet, another curtains to keep out the wind from the draughty cottage room.

‘My dear, you will spoil the people; these luxuries are quite out of their reach. We ought not to demoralize them,’ said the clergywoman, thinking of the awful consequences, and of the expectations and discontents that would follow.

‘If old Widow Morgan belonged to me—if she was my grandmother, for instance,’ said revolutionary Kate, ‘would there be anything in the world too good for her? We should hunt the draughts out of every corner, and pad everything with velvet. And I suppose an old woman of eighty in a cottage feels it just as much.’

Mrs. Hardwick was silenced, but not convinced; she was, indeed, shocked beyond measure at the idea of Widow Morgan requiring as many comforts as Kate’s grandmother. ‘The girl has no discrimination whatever; she does not see the difference; it is of no use trying to explain to her,’ she said, with a troubled countenance. But, except these little encounters, there was no real disagreement between them. Bertie Hardwick’s family, indeed, took an anxious interest in Kate. They were not worldly-minded people, but they could not forget that their son had been thrown a great deal into the society of a great heiress, both in the Isle of Wight and in Italy. The knowledge that he was in Kate’s vicinity had indeed made them much more tolerant, though nobody said so, of his wanderings. They had not the heart, they said, to separate him from his cousin, to whom he was so much attached; but behind this there was perhaps lurking another reason. Not that they would ever have forced their son’s affections, or advised, under any circumstances, a mercenary marriage; but only, all other things being so suitable—Mrs. Hardwick, who liked to manage everybody, and did it very well, on the whole, took Kate into her hands with a glow of satisfaction. She would have liked to form her and mould her, and make her all that a woman in her important position ought to be; and, of course, no one could tell what might happen in the future. It was well to be prepared for all.

Mr. Courtenay, for his part, though not quite so happy about his niece, and troubled by disagreeable pricks of conscience in respect to her, made all right by promises. He would come in a week or two—as soon as his cold was better—when he had got rid of the threatening of the gout, which rather frightened his doctor. Finally, he promised without doubt that he would come in the Easter recess, and make everything comfortable. But in the Easter recess it became absolutely necessary for him, for important private affairs, to go down to the Duke of Dorchester’s marine palace, where there were some people going whom it was absolutely essential that he should meet. And thus it came to pass that Kate spent her twentieth birthday all alone at Langton-Courtenay. Nobody knew or remembered that it was her birthday. There was not so much as an old servant about the place to think of it. Maryanne, to be sure, might have remembered, but did not until next morning, when she broke forth with, ‘La, Miss Kate!’ into good wishes and regrets, which Kate, with a flushed face and sore heart, put a stop to at once. No, no one knew. It is a hard thing, even when one is old, to feel that such domestic anniversaries have fallen into oblivion, and no one cares any longer for the milestones of our life; but when one is young—!

Kate went about all day long with this secret bursting in her heart. She would not tell it for pride, though, if she had, all the Hardwick family, at least, would have been ready enough with kisses and congratulations. She carried it about with her like a pain that she was hiding. ‘It is my birthday,’ she said to herself, when she paused before the big glass, and looked at her own solitary figure, and tried to make a little forlorn fun of herself; ‘good morning, Kate, I will give you a present. It will be the only one you will get to-day,’ she said, laughing, and nodding at her representative in the glass, whose eyes were rather red; ‘but I will not wish you many returns, for I am sure you don’t want them. Oh! you poor, poor girl!’ she cried, after a moment—‘I am so sorry for you! I don’t think there is anyone so solitary in all the world.’ And then Kate and her image both sat down upon the floor and cried.

But in the afternoon she went to Westerton, with Minnie Hardwick all unconscious beside her in the carriage, and bought herself the present she had promised. It was a tiny little cross, with the date upon it, which Minnie marvelled at much, wondering if it was to herself that this memento was to be presented. Kate had a strong inclination to place the words ‘Infelicissimo giorno’ over the date, but stopped, feeling that it might look romantic; but it was the unhappiest day to her—the worst, she thought, she had ever yet had to bear.

When she came home, however, a letter was put into her hands. It was from Mrs. Anderson at last.

CHAPTER LXI

Kate’s existence, however, was too monotonous to be dwelt upon for ever, and though all that can be afforded to the reader is a glimpse of other scenes, yet there are one or two such glimpses which may help him to understand how other people were affected by this complication of affairs. Bertie Hardwick went up to London after that second brief visit at the Rectory, when Miss Courtenay had so successfully eluded seeing him, with anything but comfortable feelings. He had never quite known how she looked upon himself, but now it became apparent to him that whatever might be the amount of knowledge which she had acquired, it had been anything but favourable to him. How far he had a right to Kate’s esteem, or whether, indeed, it was a right thing for him to be anxious about it, is quite a different question. He was anxious about it. He wanted to stand well in the girl’s eyes. He had known her all his life, he said to himself. Of course they could only be acquaintances, not even friends, in all probability, so different must their lines of life be; but still it was hard to feel that Kate disliked him, that she thought badly of him. He had no right to care, but he did care. He stopped in his work many and many a day to think of it. And then he would lay down his book or his pen, and gnaw his nails (a bad habit, which his mother vainly hoped she had cured him of), and think—till all the law went out of his head which he was studying.

This was very wrong, and he did not do it any more than he could help; but sometimes the tide of rising thought was too much for him. Bertie was settling to work, as he had great occasion to do. He had lost much time, and there was not a moment to be lost in making up for it. Within the last three months, indeed, his careless life had sustained a change which filled all his friends with satisfaction. It was but a short time to judge by, but yet, if ever man had seen the evil of his ways, and set himself, with true energy, to mend them, it was Bertie, everybody allowed. He had left his fashionable and expensive cousin the moment they had arrived in London. Instead of Bertie Eldridge’s fashionable quarters, in one of the streets off Piccadilly, which hitherto he had shared, he had established himself in chambers in the Temple, up two pair of stairs, where he was working, it was reported, night and day. Bertie Eldridge, indeed, had so frightened all his people by his laughing accounts of the wet towels which bound the other Bertie’s head of nights, while he laboured at his law books, that the student received three several letters on the subject—one from each of his aunts, and one from his mother.

‘My dear, it goes to my heart to hear how you are working,’ the latter said. ‘I thank God that my own boy is beginning to see what is necessary to hold his place in life. But not too much, dearest Bertie, not too much. What would it avail me if my son came to be Lord Chancellor, and lost his health, or even his life, on the way?’

This confusing sentence did not make Bertie ridicule the writer, for he was, strange to say, very fond of his mother, but he wrote her a merry explanation, and set her fears at rest. However, though he did not indulge in wet towels, he had begun to work with an energy no one expected of him. He had a motive. He had seen the necessity, as his mother said. To wander all over the world with Bertie Eldridge, whose purse was carelessly free, but whose way it was, unconsciously, while intending to save his friends from expense, to draw them into greater and ever greater outlay, was not a thing which could be done, or which it would be at all satisfactory to do for life. And many very grave thoughts had come to Bertie on the journey home. Perhaps he had grown just a little disgusted with his cousin, who saw everything from his own point of view, and could not enter into the feelings and anxieties of a poorer man.

‘Oh! bother! All will come right in the end,’ he would say, when his cousin pointed out to him the impossibility for himself of the situation, so far as he himself was concerned.

‘How can it come right for me?’ Hardwick had asked.

‘How you do worry!’ said Bertie Eldridge. ‘Haven’t we always shared everything? And why shouldn’t we go on doing so? I may be kept out of it, of course, for years and years, but not for ever. Hang it, Bertie, you know all must come right in the end; and haven’t we shared everything all our lives?’

This is a sort of speech which it is very difficult to answer. It is so much easier for the richer man to feel benevolent and liberal than for the poorer man to understand his ground of gratitude in such a partnership. Bertie Eldridge, had, no doubt, shared many of his luxuries with his cousin. He had shared his yacht for instance—a delight which Bertie Hardwick could by no means have procured himself—but, while doing this, he had drawn the other into such waste of time and money as he never could have been tempted to otherwise. Bertie Hardwick knew that had he not ‘shared everything’ with his cousin he would have been a wealthier man: and how then could he be grateful for that community of goods which the other Bertie was so lavishly conscious of?

‘He can have spent nothing while we were together,’ the latter was always saying. ‘He must have saved, in short, out of the allowance my uncle gives him.’

Bertie Hardwick knew that the case was very different, but he could not be so ungenerous as to insist upon this in face of his cousin’s delightful sense of liberality. He held his tongue, and this silence did not make him more amiable. In short, the partnership had been broken, as partnerships of the kind are generally broken, with a little discomfort on both sides.

Bertie Eldridge continued his pleasant, idle life—did what he liked, and went where he liked, though, perhaps, with less freedom than of old; while Bertie Hardwick retired to Pump Court and worked—as the other said—night and day. He was hard at work one of those Spring afternoons which Kate spent down at Langton. His impulse towards labour was new, and, as yet, it had many things to struggle against. He had not been brought up to work; he had been an out-of-door lad, fond of any pursuit that implied open air and exercise. Most young men are so brought up now-a-days, whether it is the best training for them or not; and since he took his degree, which had not been accompanied by any distinction, he had been yachting, travelling, amusing himself—none of which things are favourable to work in Pump Court, upon a bright April afternoon. His window was open, and the very air coming in tantalized and tempted him. It plucked at his hair; it disordered his papers; it even blew the book close which he was bending over. ‘Confound the wind!’ said Bertie. But, somehow, he could not shut the window. How fresh it blew! even off the questionable Thames, reminding the solitary student of walks and rides through the budding woods; of the first days of the boating season; of all the delights of the opening year; confound the wind! He opened his book, and went at it again with a valorous and manful heart, a heart full of anxieties, yet with hope in it too, and, what is almost better than hope—determination. The book was very dry, but Bertie applied to it that rule which is so good in war—so good in play—capital for cricket and football, in the hunting-field, and wherever daring and patience are alike necessary—he would not be beat! It is, perhaps, rather a novel doctrine to apply to a book about conveyancing—or, at least, such a use of it was novel to Bertie. But it answered all the same.

And it was just as he was getting the mastery of his own mind, and forgetting, for the moment, the fascinations of the sunshine and the errant breeze, that some one came upstairs with a resounding hasty footstep and knocked at his door. ‘It’s Bertie,’ he said to himself, with a sigh, and opened to the new-comer. Now he was beat, but not by the book—by fate, and the evil angels—not by any fault of his own.

Bertie Eldridge came in, bringing a gust of fresh air with him. He seated himself on his cousin’s table, scorning the chairs. His brow was a little clouded, though he was like one of the butterflies who toil not, neither do they spin.

‘By Jove! to see you there grinding night and day, makes a man open his eyes—you that were no better than other people. What do you think you’ll ever make of it, old fellow? Not the Woolsack, mind you—I give in to you a great deal, but you’re not clever enough for that.’

‘I never thought I was,’ said the other, laughing, but not with pleasure; and then there was a pause, and I leave it to the reader to judge which were the different interlocutors in the dialogue which follows, for to continue writing ‘Bertie,’ and ‘the other Bertie,’ is more than human patience can bear.

‘You said you had something to say to me—out with it! I have a hundred things to do. You never were so busy in your life as I am. Indeed, I don’t suppose you know what being occupied means.’

‘Of course it is the old subject I want to talk of. What could it be else! What is to be done? You know everything that has happened as well as I do. Busy! If you knew what my reflections are early and late, waking and sleeping–’

‘I think I can form an idea. Has something new occurred—or is it the old question, the eternal old business, which you never thought of, unfortunately, till it was too late?’

‘It is no business of yours to taunt me, nor is it a friend’s office. I am driven to my wit’s ends. For anything I can see, things may go on as they are for a dozen years.’

‘Everybody must have felt so from the beginning. How you could be so mad, both she and you; you most, in one way, for you knew the world better; she most, in another, for it is of more importance to a woman.’

‘Shut up, Bertie. I won’t have any re-discussion of that question. The thing is, what is to be done now? I was such a fool as to write to her about going down to Langton, at my father’s desire; and now I dare not go, or she will go frantic. Besides, she says it must be acknowledged before long: she must do it, if I can’t.’

‘Good God!’

‘What is there to be horrified about? It was all natural. The thing is, what is to be done? If she would keep quiet, all would be right. I am sure her mother could manage everything. One place is as good as another to live in. Don’t look at me like that. I am distracted—going mad—and you won’t give me any help.’

‘The question is, what help can I give?’

‘It is easy enough—as easy as daylight. If I were to go, it would only make us both miserable, and lead to imprudences. I know it would. But if you will do it for me–’

‘Do you love her, Bertie?’

‘Love her! Good heavens! after all the sacrifices I have made! Look at me, as I am, and ask me if I love her! But what can I do? If I speak now we are all ruined; but if she could only be persuaded to wait—only to wait, perhaps for a few days, or a few months–’

‘Or a few years! And to wait for what? How can you expect any good to come to you, when you build everything upon your–’

‘Shut up, I tell you! Is it my fault? He ought to treat me differently. I never would have entertained such a thought, but for– Bertie, listen to me. Will you go? They will hear reason from you.’

‘They ought not to hear reason. It is a cowardly shame! Yes, I don’t mind your angry looks—it is a shame! You and I have been too long together to mince matters between ourselves. I tell you I never knew anything more cowardly and wretched. It is a shame—a–’

‘The question is, not what you think of it,’ said the other sullenly, ‘but will you go?’

‘I suppose I must,’ was the reply.

When the visitor left, half an hour later, after more conversation of this same strain, can it be wondered at if Bertie Hardwick’s studies were no longer so steady as they had been? He shut up his books at last, and went out and walked towards the river. It was black and glistening, and very full with the Spring rains. The tide was coming up—the river was crowded with vessels of all kinds. Bertie walked to Chelsea, and got a boat there, and went up to Richmond with the tide. But he did not go to the ‘Star and Garter,’ where his cousin was dining with a brilliant party. He walked back again to his chambers, turning over in his tired brain a hundred anxieties. And that night he did sit up at work, and for half an hour had recourse to the wet towel. Not because he was working day and night, but because these anxieties had eaten the very heart out of his working day.