Маргарет Олифант
Ombra
CHAPTER XV
It was summer when Kate arrived at the Cottage, and it was not till the Easter after that any disturbing influences came into the quiet scene. Easter was so late that year that it was almost summer again. The rich slopes of the landslip were covered with starry primroses, and those violets which have their own blue-eyed beauty only to surround them, and want the sweetness of their rarer sisters. The landslip is a kind of fairyland at that enchanted moment. Everything is coming—the hawthorn, the wild roses, all the flowers of early summer, are, as it were, on tiptoe, waiting for the hour of their call; and the primroses have come, and are crowding everywhere, turning the darkest corners into gardens of delight. Then there is the sea, now matchless blue, now veiled with mists, framing in every headland and jutting cliff, without any margin of beach to break its full tone of colour; and above, the new-budded trees, the verdure that grows and opens every day, the specks of white houses everywhere, dotted all over the heights. Spring, which makes everything and every one gay, which brings even to the sorrowful a touch of that reaction of nature that makes pain sorer for the moment, yet marks the new springing of life—fancy what it was to the sixteen-year-old girl, now first emancipated, among people who loved her, never judged her harshly, nor fretted her life with uncalled-for opposition!
Kate felt as if the primroses were a crowd of playmates, suddenly come to her out of the bountiful heart of nature. She gathered baskets full every day, and yet they never decreased. She passed her mornings in delicious idleness making them into enormous bouquets, which gave the Cottage something of the same aspect as the slopes outside. She had a taste for this frivolous but delightful occupation. I am free to confess that to spend hours putting primroses and violets together, in the biggest flat dishes which the Cottage could produce, was an extremely frivolous occupation; most likely she would have been a great deal better employed in improving her mind, in learning verbs, or practising exercises, or doing something useful. But youth has a great deal of leisure, and this bright fresh girl, in the bright little hall of the Cottage, arranging her flowers in the spring sunshine, made a very pretty picture. She put the primroses in, with their natural leaves about them, with sweet bunches of blue violets to heighten the effect, touching them as if she loved them; and, as she did it, she sang as the birds do, running on with unconscious music, and sweetness, and gladness. It was Spring with her as with them. Nothing was as yet required of her but to bloom and grow, and make earth fairer. And she did this unawares and was as happy over her vast, simple bouquet, and took as much sweet thought how to arrange it, as if that had been the great aim of life. She was one with her flowers, and both together they belonged to Spring—the Spring of the year, the Spring of life, the sweet time which comes but once, and never lasts too long.
She was thus employed one morning when steps came through the garden, steps which she did not much heed. For one thing, she but half heard them, being occupied with her ‘work,’ as she called it, and her song, and having no fear that anything unwelcome would appear at that sunny, open door. No one could come who did not know everybody in the little house, who was not friendly, and smiling, and kind, whose hand would not be held out in pleasant familiarity. Here were no trespassers, no strangers. Therefore Kate heard the steps as though she heard them not, and did not even pause to ask herself who was coming. She was roused, but then only with the mildest expectation, when a shadow fell across her bit of sunshine. She looked up with her song still on her lip, and her hands full of flowers. She stopped singing. ‘Oh! Bertie!’ she cried, half to herself, and made an eager step forward. But then suddenly she paused—she dropped her flowers. Curiosity, wonder, amazement came over her face. She went on slowly to the door, gazing, and questioning with her eyes.
‘Are there two of you?’ she said gravely. ‘I heard that Bertie Hardwick was coming. Oh! which is you? Stop—don’t tell me. I am not going to be mystified. I can find it out for myself.’
There were two young men standing in the hall, who laughed and blushed as they stood submitting to her inspection; but Kate was perfectly serious. She stood and looked at them with an unmoved and somewhat anxious countenance. A certain symbolical gravity and earnestness was in her face; but there was indeed occasion to hesitate. The two who stood before her seemed at the first glance identical. They had the same eyes, the same curling brown hair, the same features, the same figure. Gradually, however, the uncertainty cleared away from Kate’s face.
‘It must be you,’ she said, still very seriously. ‘You are not quite so tall, and I think I remember your eyes. You must be Bertie, I am sure.’
‘We are both Bertie,’ said the young man, laughing.
‘Ah! but you must be my Bertie; I am certain of it,’ said Kate. Not a gleam of maiden consciousness was in her; she said it with all simplicity and seriousness. She did not understand the colour that came to one Bertie’s face or the smile that flashed over the other; and she held out her hand to the one whom she had selected. ‘I am so glad to see you. Come in, and tell me all about Langton. Dear old Langton! Though you were so disagreeable about the size of the park–’
‘I will never be disagreeable again.’
‘Oh, nonsense!’ cried Kate, interrupting him. ‘As if one could stop being anything that is natural! My aunt is somewhere about, and Ombra is in the drawing-room. Come in. Perhaps, though, you had better tell me who this—other gentleman– Why, Mr. Bertie, I am not quite sure, after all, which is the other and which is you!’
‘This is my cousin, Bertie Eldridge,’ said her old friend. ‘You will soon know the difference. You remember what an exemplary character I am, and he is quite the reverse. I am always getting into trouble on his account.’
‘Miss Courtenay will soon know better than to believe you,’ said the other; at which Kate started and clapped her hands.
‘Oh! I know now that is not your voice. Ombra, please, here are two gentlemen–’
This is how the two cousins were introduced into the Cottage. They had been there before separately; but neither Mrs. Anderson nor her daughter knew how slight was the acquaintance which entitled Kate to qualify one of the new-comers as ‘my Bertie.’ They were both young, not much over twenty, and their likeness was wonderful; it was, however, a likeness which diminished as they talked, for their expression was as different as their voices. Kate had no hesitation in appropriating the one she knew.
‘Tell me about Langton,’ she said—‘all about it. I have heard nothing for nearly a year. Oh! don’t laugh. I know the house stands just where it used to stand, and no one dares to cut down the trees. But itself– Don’t you know what Langton means to me?’
‘Home?’ said Bertie Hardwick, but with a little doubt in his tone.
‘Home!’ repeated Kate; and then she, too, paused perplexed. ‘Not exactly home, for there is no one there I care for—much. Oh! but can’t you understand? It is not home; I am much happier here; but, in a kind of a way, it is me!’
Bertie Hardwick was puzzled, and he was dazzled too. His first meeting with her had made no small impression upon him; and now Kate was almost a full-grown woman, and the brightness about her dazzled his eyes.
‘It cannot be you now,’ he said. ‘It is—let.’
Kate gave a fierce little cry, and clenched her hands.
‘Oh! Uncle Courtenay, I wish I could just kill you!’ she said, half to herself.
‘It is let, for four or five years, to the only kind of people who can afford to have great houses now—to Mr. Donkin, who has a large—shop in town.’
Kate moaned again, but then recovered herself.
‘I don’t see that it matters much about the shop. I think if I were obliged to work, I should not mind keeping a shop. It would be such fun! But, oh! if Uncle Courtenay were only here!’
‘It is better not. There might be bloodshed, and you would regret it after,’ said Bertie, gravely.
‘Don’t laugh at me; I mean it. And, if you won’t tell me anything about Langton, tell me about yourself. Who is he? What does he mean by being so like you? He is different when he talks; but at the first glance– Why do you allow any one to be so like you, Mr. Bertie? If he is not nice, as you said–’
‘I did not mean you to believe me,’ said Bertie. ‘He is the best fellow going. I wish I were half as good, or half as clever. He is my cousin, and just like my brother. Why, I am proud of being like him. We are taken for each other every day.’
‘I should not like it,’ said Kate. ‘Ombra and I are not like each other, though we are cousins too. Do you know Ombra? I think there never was any one like her; but, on the whole, I think it is best to be two people, not one. Are you still at Oxford?—and is he at Oxford? Mr. Bertie, if I were you, I don’t think I should be a clergyman.’
‘Why?’ said Bertie, who, unfortunately for himself, was much of her mind.
‘You might not get a living, you know,’ said Kate.
This she said conscientiously, to prepare him for the fact that he was not to have Langton-Courtenay; but his laugh disconcerted her, and immediately brought before her eyes the other idea that his objectionable uncle, who had a park larger than Langton, might have a living too. She coloured high, having begun to find out, by means of her education in the Cottage, when she had committed herself.
‘Or,’ she went on, with all the calmness she could command, ‘when you had a living you might not like it. The Rector here– Oh! of course he must be your uncle too. He is very good, I am sure, and very nice,’ said Kate, floundering, and feeling that she was getting deeper and deeper into the mire; ‘but it is so strange to hear him talk. The old women in the almshouses, and the poor people, and all that, and mothers’ meetings– Of course, it must be very right and very good; but, Mr. Bertie, nothing but mothers’ meetings, and old women in almshouses, for all your life–’
‘I suppose he has something more than that,’ said Bertie, half affronted, half amused.
‘I suppose so—or, at least, I hope so,’ said Kate. ‘Do you know what a mothers’ meeting is? But to go to Oxford, you know, for that–! If I were you, I would be something else. There must be a great many other things that you could be. Soldiers are not much good in time of peace, and lawyers have to tell so many lies—or, at least, so people say in books. I will tell you what I should advise, Mr. Bertie. Doctors are of real use in the world—I would be a doctor, if I were you.’
‘But I should not at all like to be a doctor,’ said Bertie. ‘Of all trades in the world, that is the last I should choose. Talk of mothers’ meetings! a doctor is at every fool’s command, to run here and there; and besides– I think, Miss Courtenay, you have made a mistake.’
‘I am only saying what I would do if it was me,’ said Kate, softly folding her hands. ‘I would rather be a doctor than any of the other things. And you ought to decide, Mr. Bertie; you will not be a boy much longer. You have got something here,’ and she put up her hand to her own soft chin, and stroked it gently, ‘which you did not have the last time I saw you. You are almost—a man.’
This for Bertie to hear, who was one-and-twenty, and an Oxford man—who had felt himself full grown, both in frame and intellect, for these two years past! He was wroth—his cheek burned, and his eye flashed. But, fortunately, Mrs. Anderson interposed, and drew her chair towards them, putting an end to the tête-à-tête. Mrs. Anderson was somewhat disturbed, for her part. Here were two young men—two birds of prey—intruding upon the stillness which surrounded the nest in which she had hidden an heiress. What was she to do? Was it safe to permit them to come, fluttering, perhaps, the nestling? or did stern duty demand of her to close her doors, and shut out every chance of evil? As soon as she perceived that the conversation between Kate and her Bertie was special and private, she trembled and interposed. She asked the young man all about his family, his sisters, his studies—anything she could think of—and so kept her heiress, as she imagined, safe, and the wild beast at bay.
‘You are sure your uncle approved of the Hardwicks as friends for you, Kate?’ she said that evening, when the visit had been talked over in full family conclave. Mrs. Anderson might make what pretence she pleased that they were only ordinary visitors, but the two Berties had made a commotion much greater than the Rector and his wife did, or even the schoolboy and schoolgirl Eldridges, noisy and tumultuous as their visits often were.
‘He made me go to the Rectory with him,’ said Kate, very demurely. ‘It was not my doing at all; he wanted me to go.’
And, after that, what could there be to say?
CHAPTER XVI
The two Berties came again next day—they came with their cousins, and they came without them. They joined the party from the Cottage in their walks, with an intuitive knowledge where they were going, which was quite extraordinary. They got up croquet-parties and picnics; they were always in attendance upon the two girls. Mrs. Anderson had many a thought on the subject, and wondered much what her duty was in such a very trying emergency; but there were two things that consoled her—the first that it was Ombra who was the chief object of the two young men’s admiration; and the second that they could not possibly stay long. Ombra was their first object. She assured herself of this with a warm and pleasant glow at her heart, though she was not a match-making mother, nor at all desirous of ‘marrying off,’ and ‘getting rid of’ her only child. Besides, the young men were too young for anything serious—not very long out of their teens; lads still under strict parental observation and guidance; they were too young to make matrimonial proposals to any one, or to carry such proposals out. But, nevertheless, it was pleasant to Mrs. Anderson to feel that Ombra was their first object, and that her ‘bairn’ was ‘respected like the lave.’ ‘Thank Heaven, Kate’s money has nothing to do with it,’ she said to herself; and where was the use of sending away two handsome young men, whom the girls liked, and who were a change to them? Besides, they were going away so soon—in a fortnight—no harm could possibly come.
So Mrs. Anderson tolerated them, invited them, gave them luncheon sometimes, and often tea, till they became as familiar about the house as the young Eldridges were, or any other near neighbours. And the girls did not have their heads at all turned by the new cavaliers, who were so assiduous in their attentions. Ombra gently ridiculed them both, hitting them with dainty little arrows of scorn, smiling at their boyish ways, their impetuosity and self-opinion. Kate, on the contrary, took them up very gravely, with a motherly, not to say grandmotherly interest in their future, giving to him whom she called her old friend the very best of good advice. Mrs. Anderson herself was much amused by this new development of her charge’s powers. She said to herself, a dozen times in a day, how ridiculous it was to suppose that boys and girls could not be in each other’s company without falling in love. Why, here were two pairs continually in each other’s company, and without the faintest shadow of any such folly to disturb them! Perhaps a sense that it was to her own perfect good management that this was owing, increased her satisfaction. She ‘kept her eye on them,’ never officiously, never demonstratively, but in the most vigilant way; and a certain gentle complacency mingled with her content. Had she left them to roam about as they pleased without her, then indeed trouble might have been looked for; but Mrs. Anderson was heroic, and put aside her own ease, and was their companion everywhere. At the same time (but this was done with the utmost caution) she took a little pains to find out all about Sir Herbert Eldridge, the father of one of the Berties—his county, and the amount of his property, and all the information that was possible. She breathed not a word of this to any one—not even to Ombra; but she put Bertie Eldridge on her daughter’s side of the table at tea; and perhaps showed him a little preference, for her own part, a preference, however, so slight, so undiscernible to the vulgar eye, that neither of the young men found it out. She was very good to them, quite irrespective of their family, or the difference in their prospects; and she missed them much when they went away. For go away they did, at the end of their fortnight, leaving the girls rather dull, and somewhat satirical. It was the first invasion of the kind that had been made into their life. The boys at the Rectory were still nothing but boys; and men did not abound in the neighbourhood. Even Ombra was slightly misanthropical when the Berties went away.
‘What it is to be a boy!’ she said; ‘they go where they like, these two, and arrange their lives as they please. What a fuss everybody makes about them; and yet they are commonplace enough. If they were girls like us, how little any one would care–’
‘My dear, Mr. Eldridge will be a great landed proprietor, and have a great deal in his power,’ said Mrs. Anderson.
‘Because he happens to have been born Sir Herbert’s son; no thanks to him,’ said Ombra, with disdain. ‘And most likely, when he is a great landed proprietor he will do nothing worth noticing. The other is more interesting to me; he at least has his own way to make.’
‘I wonder what poor Bertie will do?’ said Kate, with her grandmother air. ‘I should not like to see him a clergyman. What Ombra says is very true, auntie. When one is a great Squire, you know, one can’t help one’s self; one’s life is all settled before one is born. But when one can choose what to be!– For my part,’ said Kate, with great gravity, ‘I am anxious about Bertie, too. I gave him all the advice I could—but I am not sure that he is the sort of boy to take advice.’
‘He is older than you are, my love, and perhaps he may think he knows better,’ said Mrs. Anderson with a smile.
‘But that would be a mistake,’ said Kate. ‘Boys have so many things to do, they have no time to think. And then they don’t consider things as we do; and besides–’ But here Kate paused, doubting the wisdom of further explanations. What she had meant to say was that, having no thinking to do for herself, her own position being settled and established beyond the reach of fate, she had the more time to give to the concerns of her neighbours. But it occurred to her that Ombra had scorned Bertie Eldridge’s position, and might scorn hers also, and she held her peace.
‘Besides, there is always a fuss made about them, as if they were better than other people. Don’t let us talk of them any more; I am sick of the subject,’ said Ombra, withdrawing into a book. The others made no objection; they acquiesced with a calmness which perhaps scarcely satisfied Ombra. Mrs. Anderson declared openly that she missed the visitors much; and Kate avowed, without hesitation, that the boys were fun, and she was sorry that they were gone. But the chances are that it was Ombra who missed them most, though she professed to be rather glad than otherwise. ‘They were a nuisance, interrupting one whatever one was doing. Boys at that age always are a nuisance,’ she said, with an air of severity, and she returned to all her occupations with an immense deal of seriousness.
But this disturbance of their quiet affected her in reality much more than it affected her companions—the very earnestnest of her resumed duties testified to this. She was on the edge of personal life, wondering and already longing to taste its excitements and troubles; and everything that disturbed the peaceful routine felt like that life which was surely coming, and stirred her pulses. It was like the first creeping up of the tide about the boat which is destined to live upon the waves; not enough yet to float the little vessel off from the stays which hold it, but enough to rock and stir it with prophetic sensation of the fuller flood to come.
Ombra was ‘viewy,’ to use a word which has become well-nigh obsolete. She was full of opinions and speculations, which she called thought; a little temper, a good deal of unconscious egotism, and a reflective disposition, united to make her what is called, a ‘thoughtful girl.’ She mused upon herself, and upon the few varieties of human life she knew, and upon the world, and all its accidents and misunderstandings, as she had seen them, and upon the subjects which she read about. But partly her youth, and partly her character, made her thoughts like the observations of a traveller newly entered into a strange country, and feeling himself capable, as superficial travellers often are, to lay bare its character, and fathom all its problems at a glance. Other people were, to this young philosopher, as foreigners are to the inexperienced traveller. She was very curious about them, and marked their external peculiarities with sufficient quickness; but she had not imagination enough to feel for them or with them, or to see their life from their own point of view. Her own standing-point was the only one in the world to her. She could judge others only by herself.
Curiously enough, however, with this want of sympathetic imagination there was combined a good deal of fancy. Ombra had written little stories from her earliest youth. She had a literary turn. At this period of her life, when she was nearly eighteen, and the world was full of wonders and delightful mysteries to her, she wrote a great deal, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose, and now and then asked herself whether it was not genius which inspired her. Some of her poems, as she called them, had been printed in little religious magazines and newspapers—for Ombra’s muse was as yet highly religious. She had every reason to believe herself one of the stars that shine unseen—a creature superior to the ordinary run of humanity. She read more than any one she knew, and thought, or believed that she thought, deeply on a great many subjects. And one of these subjects naturally was that of the position of women. She was girl enough, and had enough of nature in her, to enjoy the momentary brightness of the firmament which the two Berties had brought. She liked the movement and commotion as much as the others did—the walks, the little parties, the expeditions, and even the games; and she felt the absence of these little excitements when they came to an end. And thereupon she set herself to reflect upon them. She carried her little portfolio up to a rustic seat which had been made on the cliff, sheltered by some ledges of rock, and covered with flowers and bushes, and set herself to think. And here her thoughts took that turn which is so natural, yet so hackneyed and conventional. No one would, in reality, have been less disposed than Ombra to give up a woman’s—a lady’s privileges. To go forth into the world unattended, without the shield and guard of honour, which her semi-foreign education made doubly necessary to her, would have seemed to the girl the utmost misery of desolation. She would have resented the need as a wrong done her by fate. But nevertheless she sat up in her rocky bower, and looked over the blue sea, and the white headlands, and said to herself, bitterly, what a different lot had fallen to these two Berties from that which was her own. They could go where they liked, society imposed no restraints upon them; when they were tired of one place, they could pass on to another. Heaven and earth was moved for their education, to make everything known to them, to rifle all the old treasure-houses, to communicate to them every discovery which human wisdom had ever made. And for what slight creatures were all these pains taken; boys upon whom she looked down in the fuller development of her womanhood, feeling them ever so much younger than she was, less serious in their ideas, less able to do anything worth living for! It seemed to Ombra, at that moment, that there was in herself a power such as none of ‘these boys’ had a conception of—genius, the divinest thing in humanity! But that which would have been fostered and cultivated in them, would be quenched, or at least hampered and kept down in her. ‘For I am only a woman!’ said Ombra, with a swelling heart.
All this was perfectly natural; and, at the same time, it was quite conventional. It was a little overflow of that depression after a feast, that reaction of excitement, which makes every human creature blaspheme in one way or other. The sound of Kate’s voice, singing as she came up the little path to the cliff, made her cousin angry, in this state of her mind and nerves. Here was a girl no better than the boys, a creature without thought, who neither desired a high destiny, nor could understand what it meant.
‘How careless you are, Kate!’ she cried, in the impulse of the moment. ‘Always singing, or some nonsense—and you know you can’t sing! If I were as young as you are, I would not lose my time as you do! Do you never think?’
‘Yes,’ said Kate, with a meekness she never showed but to Ombra, ‘a great deal sometimes. But I can’t on such a morning. There seems nothing in all the world but sunshine and primroses, and the air is so sweet! Come up to the top of the cliff, and try how far you can see. I think I can make out that big ship that kept firing so the other day. Ombra, if you don’t mind, I shall be first at the top!’
‘As if I cared who was first at the top! Oh! Kate, Kate, you are as frivolous as—as—the silly creatures in novels—or as these boys themselves!’
‘The boys were very good boys!’ said Kate. ‘If they are silly, they can’t help it. Of course they were not as clever as you—no one is; and Bertie, you know—little Bertie, my Bertie—ought to think more of what he is going to do. But they were very nice, as boys go. We can’t expect them to be like us. Ombra, do come and try a run for the top.’
‘What a foolish child you are!’ said Ombra, suffering her portfolio to be taken out of her hands; and then her youth vindicated itself, and she started off like a young fawn up the little path. Kate could have won the race had she tried, but was too loyal to outstrip her princess. And thus the cobwebs were blown away from the young thinker’s brain.
