Ombra

‘Why shouldn’t my aunt come if I wish it?’ cried Kate, furious. ‘Uncle Courtenay, I tell you again you are only my guardian, and Langton-Courtenay belongs to me!’

‘And I reply, my dear, that you are fifteen, and nothing belongs to you,’ said the old man, with a smile. ‘It is hard to repress so much noble independence, but still that is the truth.’

‘You are a tyrant—you are a monster, Uncle Courtenay! I won’t submit to it! I will appeal to some one. I will take it into my own hands.’

‘The most sensible thing you can do, in the meantime, is to retire to your own room, and try to bring yourself back to common sense,’ said Mr. Courtenay, contemptuously. ‘Not another word, Kate. Where is your governess, or your nurse, or whoever has charge of you? Little fool! do you think, because you rule over a pack of obsequious servants, that you can manage me.’

‘I will not be your slave! I will never, never be your slave!’ cried Kate, springing to her feet, and raising her flushed face over the flowers. Her eyes blazed, her little rosy hand was clenched so tight that the soft knuckles were white. Her lips were apart, her breath burned, her soul was on fire. Quite ready for a fight, ready to meet any enemy that might come against her—breathing fire and flame!

‘Pho! pho! child, don’t be a fool!’ said Mr. Courtenay; and he calmly rang the bell, and ordered Giles to remove the wine to a small table which stood in the window, where he removed himself presently, without taking the least notice of her.

Kate stood for a moment, like a young goddess of war, thunder-stricken by the calm of her adversary; and then rushed out, flinging down her napkin, and dragging a corner of the table-cloth, so as to upset the great dish of ruby strawberries which she had not tasted. They fell on the floor like a heavy shower, scattering over all the carpet; and Kate closed the door after her with a thud which ran through the whole house. She paused a moment in the hall, irresolute. Poor untrained, unfriended child, she had no one to go to, to seek comfort from. She knew how Miss Blank would receive her passion; and she was too proud to acknowledge to her maid, Maryanne, how she had been beaten. She caught the broad-brimmed garden-hat which hung in the hall, and a shawl to wrap herself in, and rushed out, a forlorn, solitary young creature, into the noble park that was her own. There was not a child in the village but had some one to fly to when it had received a blow; but Kate had no one—she had to calm herself down, and bear her passion and its consequences alone. She rushed across the park, forgetting even that her uncle Courtenay could see her from the window, and unconscious of the chuckle with which he perceived her discomfiture. ‘Little passionate idiot!’ he said to himself, as he sipped his wine. But yet perhaps had he known what was to come of it, Mr. Courtenay would not have been quite so contented with himself. He had forgotten all about the feelings and sufferings of her age, if indeed he had ever known them. He did not care a jot for the mortification and painful rage with which he had filled her. ‘Serve her right!’ he would have said. He was old himself, and far beyond the reach of such tempests; and he had no pity for them. But all the more he thought with a sense of comfort of this Mrs. Anderson, with her plebeian name, and sentimental anxiety about ‘the only child of a beloved sister.’ The beloved sister herself had not been very welcome in Langton-Courtenay. The Consul’s widow should never be allowed to enter here, that was very certain; but, still, use might be made of her to train this ungovernable child.

CHAPTER III

Kate Courtenay rushed across the park in a passion of mortification and childish despair, and fled as fast as her swift feet could carry her to a favourite spot—a little dell, through which the tiniest of brooks ran trickling, so hidden under the trees and copse that even Summer never quite dried it up. There was a little semi-artificial waterfall, just where the brook descended into the depths of this little dell. In Spring it was a wilderness of primroses and violets; and so long as wild flowers would blow, they were always to be found in this sunny nook. The only drawback was that a footpath ran within sight of it, and that the village had an often-contested right of way skirting the bank. Kate had issued arbitrary orders more than once that no one was to be suffered to pass; but the law was too strong for Kate, as it had been for her grandfathers before her; and, on the whole, perhaps the occasional passenger had paid for his intrusion by the additional liveliness he had given to the landscape. It was one of Kate’s ‘tricks,’ her governess once went so far as to say, to take her evening walk here, in order to detect the parties of lovers with whom this footway was a favourite resort. All this, however, was absent from Kate’s mind now. She rushed through the trees and bushes, and threw herself on the sunny grass by the brookside; and at fifteen passion is not silent, as it endeavours to be at a more advanced age. Kate did not weep only, but cried, and sobbed, and made a noise, so that some one passing by in the footway on the other side of the bushes was arrested by the sound, and drew near.

It is hard to hear sounds of weeping in a warm Summer evening, when the air is sweet with sounds of pleasure. There is something incongruous in it, which wounds the listener. The passenger in this case was young and tender-hearted, and he was so far like Kate herself, that when he heard sounds of trouble, he felt that he had a right to interfere. He was a clergyman’s son, and in the course of training to be a clergyman too. His immediate destination was, as soon as he should be old enough to be ordained, the curacy of Langton-Courtenay, of which his father was Rector. Whether he should eventually succeed his father was of course in the hands of Providence and Miss Courtenay; he had not taken his degree yet, and was at least two years off the time when he could take orders; but still the shadow of his profession was upon him, and, in right of that, Herbert Hardwick felt that it was his business to interfere.

What he saw, when he looked through the screen of trees, was the figure of a girl in a light Summer dress, half seated, half lying on the grass. Her head was bent down between her hands; and even had this not been the case, it is probable Bertie, who had scarcely seen Miss Courtenay, would not have recognised her. Of course, had he taken time to think, he must have known at once that nobody except Kate, or some visitor at the Hall, was likely to be there; but he never took time to think. It was not his way. He stepped at once over the fence, walking through the brushwood, and strode across the brook without pause or hesitation.

‘What is the matter?’ he said, in his boyish promptitude. ‘Have you hurt yourself?—have you lost your way?—what is wrong?’

For a moment she took no notice of him, except to turn her back more completely on him. Herbert had sisters, and he was not so ceremonious to young womankind generally as might otherwise have happened. He laid his hand quite frankly on her shoulder, and knelt down beside her on the grass. ‘No,’ he said, with a certain authority, ‘my poor child, whoever you may be, I can’t leave you to cry your eyes out. What is the matter? Look up and tell me. Have you lost yourself? If you will tell me where you have come from, I will take you home. Or have you hurt yourself? Now, pray don’t be cross, but answer, and let me know what I can do.’

Kate had almost got her weeping-fit over, and surprise had wakened a new sentiment in her mind. Surprise and curiosity, and the liveliest desire to know whose the voice was, and whose the hand laid so lightly, yet with a certain authority, upon her shoulder. She made a dash with her handkerchief across her face to clear away the tears, and then she suddenly turned round and confronted her comforter. She looked up at him with tears hanging on her eyelashes, and her face wet with them, yet with all the soul of self-will which was natural to her looking out of her eyes.

‘Do you know,’ she said hastily, ‘that you are trespassing? This is private property, and you have no right to be here.’

The answer which Bertie Hardwick made to this was, first, an astonished stare, and then a burst of laughter. The sudden change from sympathy and concern to amusement was so great that it produced an explosion of merriment which he could not restrain. He was a handsome lad of twenty—blue-eyed, with brown hair curling closely about his head, strongly built, and full of life, though not gigantic in his proportions. Even now, though he had heard of the imperious little Lady of the Manor, it did not occur to him to connect her with this stranger. He laughed with perfect heartiness and abandon; she looking on quite gravely and steadily, the while, assisting at the outburst—a fact which did not diminish the amusing character of the scene.

‘I came to help you,’ he said. ‘I hope you will not give information. Nobody will know I have trespassed unless you tell, and that would be ungrateful; for I thought there was something the matter, and came to be of use to you.’

‘There is nothing the matter,’ said Kate, very gravely, making a photograph of him with the keen, inquisitive eyes, from which, by this time, all tears were gone.

‘I am glad to hear it,’ he said; and then, with another laugh—‘I suppose you are trespassing too. Can I help you over the fence?—or is there anything that I can do?’

‘I am not trespassing—I am at home—I am Miss Courtenay,’ said Kate, with infinite dignity, rising from the grass. She stood thus looking at him with the air of a queen defending her realm from invasion; she felt, to tell the truth, something like Helen Macgregor, when she starts up suddenly, and demands of the Sassenach how they dare to come into Macgregor’s country. But the young man was not impressed; the muscles about his mouth quivered with suppressed laughter and the strenuous effort to keep it down. He made her a bow—the best he could under the circumstances—and stood with the evening sunshine shining upon his uncovered head and crisp curls, a very pleasant object to look upon, in an attitude of respect which was half fun and half mockery, though Kate did not find that out.

‘Then I have been mistaken, and there is nothing for it but to apologise, and take myself off,’ said Bertie. ‘I am very sorry, I am sure. I thought something had gone wrong. To tell the truth I thought you were—crying.’

‘I was crying,’ said Kate. She did not in the least want him to go. He was company—he was novelty—he was something quite fresh, and already had altogether driven away her passion and her tears. Her heart quite leapt up at this agreeable diversion. ‘I was crying, and something had gone very wrong,’ she said in a subdued tone, and with a gentle sigh.

‘I am very sorry,’ said Bertie. ‘I don’t suppose it is anything in which I could be of use—?’

She looked at him again. ‘I think I know who you are,’ she said. ‘You must be the second son at the Rectory—the one whom they call Bertie. At least I don’t know who else you could be.’

‘Yes, I am the one they call Bertie,’ he said, laughing. ‘Herbert Hardwick, at your service. And I did not mean to trespass.’

The laugh rang pleasantly through all the echoes. It was infectious. Kate felt that, but for her dignity, she would like to laugh too. And yet it was a serious matter; and to aid and abet a trespasser, and at the same time ‘encourage’ the Rectory people, was, she felt, a thing which she ought not to do. But then it had been real concern for herself, the Lady of the Manor, which had been at the bottom of it; and that deserved to be considered on the other side.

‘I suppose not,’ she said, seriously. ‘Indeed, I am very particular about it. I don’t see why you should laugh. I should not think of going to walk in your grounds without leave, and why should you in mine? But since you are here, you must not go all that way back. If you like to come with me, I will show you a nearer way. Don’t you think it is a very fine park? Were you ever in one like it before?’

‘Yes,’ said Herbert, calmly, ‘a great many. Langton-Courtenay is very nice, but it wants size. The glades are pretty, and the trees are charming, but everything is on a small scale.’

‘On a small scale!’ Kate cried, half-choking with indignation. This unparalleled presumption took away even her voice.

‘Yes, decidedly small. How many acres are there in it? My uncle, Sir Herbert Eldridge, has five hundred acres in his. I am called after him, and I have been a great deal with him, you know. That is why I think your park so small. But it is very pretty!’ said Herbert, condescendingly, with a sense of the humour of the situation. As for Kate, she was crushed. She looked up at him first in a blaze of disdain, intending to do battle for her own, but the number of acres in Sir Herbert Eldridge’s park made an end of Kate.

‘I thought you were going to be a clergyman,’ she said.

‘So I am, I suppose; but what then?’

‘Oh! I thought—I didn’t know,’ cried Kate. ‘I supposed perhaps you were not very well off. But if you have such a rich uncle, with such a beautiful park–’

‘I don’t know what that has to do with it,’ said Bertie, with a mischievous light in his eyes. ‘We are not so very poor. We have dinners three or four times a week, and bread and cheese on the other days. A great many people are worse off than that.’

‘If you mean to laugh at me,’ said Kate, stopping short, with an angry gesture, ‘I think you had better turn back again. I am not a person to be made fun of.’ And then instantly the water rushed to her eyes, for she was as susceptible as any child is to ridicule. The young man checked himself on the verge of laughter, and apologised.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I did not mean to make myself disagreeable. Besides, I don’t think you are quite well. I hope you will let me walk with you as far as the Hall.’

‘Oh! no,’ said Kate. But the suppressed tears, which had come to her eyes out of rage and indignation, suddenly grew blinding with self-pity, and recollection of her hard fate. ‘Oh! you can’t think how unhappy I am,’ she said, suddenly clasping her hands together—and a big tear came with a rush down her innocent nose, and fell, throwing up a little shower of salt spray from the concussion, upon her ungloved hand. This startled her, and her sense of dignity once more awoke; but she struggled with difficulty against her desire for sympathy. ‘I ought not to talk to a stranger,’ she said; ‘but, oh! you can’t think how disagreeable Uncle Courtenay can make himself, though he looks so nice. And Miss Blank does not mind if I were dead and buried! Oh!’ This exclamation was called forth by another great blot of dew from her eyes, which once more dashed and broke upon her hand, as a wave does on a rock. Kate looked at it with a silent concern which absorbed her. Her own tears! What was there in the world more touching or more sad?

‘I am so sorry,’ said Bertie Hardwick, moved by compassion. ‘Was that what you were crying for? You should come to the Rectory, to my mother, who always sets everybody right.’

‘Your mother would not care to see me,’ said Kate, looking at him wistfully. ‘She does not like me—she thinks I am your enemy. People should consider, Mr. Bertie—they should consider my position–’

‘Yes, you poor little thing,’ said Bertie, with the utmost sympathy; ‘that is quite true—you have neither father nor mother to keep you right—people ought to make allowance for that.’

To describe Kate’s consternation at this speech would be impossible. She a poor little thing!—she without any one to set her right! Was the boy mad? She was so stunned for the moment that she could make no reply—so many new emotions overwhelmed her. To make the discovery that Bertie Hardwick was nice, that he had an uncle with a park larger than the park at Langton-Courtenay; to learn that Langton-Courtenay was ‘small,’ and that she herself was a poor little thing. ‘What next?’ Kate asked herself. For all this had come to her knowledge in the course of half an hour. If life was to bring a succession of such surprises, how strange, how very strange it must be!

‘And I do wish you knew my mother,’ he went on innocently, not having the least idea that Kate’s silence arose from the fact that she was dumb with indignation; ‘she has the gift of understanding everybody. Isn’t it a pity that you should not know us, Miss Courtenay? My little sister Minnie is about your age, I should think.’

‘It is not my fault I don’t know you,’ burst forth Kate; ‘it is because you have not behaved properly to me—because your father would not pay any attention. Is it right for a clergyman to set a bad example, and teach people to rebel? He never even took any notice of my letter, though I am the natural head of the parish–’

‘You poor child!’ cried Bertie; and then he laughed.

Kate could not bear it—this was worse than her Uncle Courtenay. She stood still for a moment, and looked at him with things unspeakable in her eyes; and then she turned round, and rushed off across the green sward to the Hall, leaving him bewildered and amazed in the middle of the park, this time most evidently a trespasser, not even knowing his way back. He called after her, but received no answer; he stood and gazed round him in his consternation. Finally he laughed, though this time it was at himself, thus left in the lurch. But Kate was not aware of that fact. She heard the laugh, and it gave her wings; she fled to her melancholy home, where there was nobody to comfort her, choking with sobs and rage. Oh! how forlorn she was!—oh! how insulted, despised, trodden upon by everybody, she who was the lawful lady of the land! He would go and tell the Rectory girls, and together they would laugh at her. Kate would have sent a thunderbolt on the Rectory, or fire from Heaven, if she could.

CHAPTER IV

Kate rushed upstairs to her own room when she reached the Hall; she was wild with mortification and the sense of downfall. It was the first time she had come into collision with her fellow-creatures of a class equal to her own. Servants and poor people in the village had been impertinent to her ere now; but these were accidents, which Kate treated with the contempt they deserved, and which she could punish by the withdrawal of privileges and presents. She could scold, and did so soundly; and she could punish. But she could neither scold nor punish in the present case. Her Uncle Courtenay would only look at her in that exasperating way, with that cool smile on his face, as if she were a kitten; and this new being, with whom already she felt herself so well acquainted—Bertie would laugh, and be kind, and sorry for her. ‘Poor child!—poor little thing!’ These were the words he had dared to use. ‘Oh!’ Kate thought, I would like to kill him! I would like to–’ And then she asked herself what would he say at home? and writhed on the bed on which she had thrown herself in inextinguishable shame. They would laugh at her; they would make fun of her. ‘Oh! I would like to kill myself,’ cried Kate, in her thoughts. She cried her eyes out in the silence of her room. There was no Bertie to come there with sympathetic eyes to ask what she was doing. Miss Blank did not care; neither did any one in the house—not even her own maid, who was always about her, and to whom she would talk for hours together. Kate buried her head in her pillow, and tried to picture to herself the aspect of the Rectory. There would be the mother—who, Bertie said, understood everybody—seated somewhere near the table; and Edith and Minnie in the room—one of them, perhaps, doing worsted-work, one at the piano, or copying music, or drawing, as young ladies do in novels. Now and then, no doubt Mrs. Hardwick would give them little orders; she would say, perhaps, ‘Play me one of the Lieder, Minnie,’ or ‘that little air of Mozart’s.’ And she would say something about her work to Edith. Involuntarily that picture rose before lonely Kate. She seemed to see them seated there, with the windows open, and sweet scents coming in from the garden. She heard the voices murmuring, and a soft little strain, andante pianissimo, tinkling like the soft flow of a stream through the pleasant place. Oh! how pleasant it must be—even though she did not like the Rectory people, though Mr. Hardwick had been so rebellious, though they did not believe in her (Kate’s) natural headship of Church and Slate in Langton-Courtenay.

She sobbed as she lay and dreamed, and developed her new imagination. She had wondered, half angrily, half wistfully, about the Rectory people before, but Bertie seemed to give a certain reality to them. He was the brother of the girl whom Kate had so often inspected with keen eyes, but did not know; and he said ‘Mamma’ to that unknown Mrs. Hardwick. ‘Mamma!’ What a curious word it was, when you came to think of it! Not so serious, nor full of meaning as mother was, but soft and caressing—as of some one who would always feel for you, always put her arm round you, say ‘dear’ to you, ask what was the matter? Miss Blank never asked what was the matter! She took it for granted that Kate was cross, that it was ‘her own fault,’ or, as the very kindest hypothesis, that she had a headache, which was not in Kate’s way.

She lay sobbing, as I have said; but sobbing softly, as her emotion wore itself out, without tears. Her eyes were red, and her temples throbbed a little. She was worn out; she would not rouse herself and go downstairs to tempt another conflict with her uncle, as, had it not been for this last event, she would have felt disposed to do. And yet, poor child, she wanted her tea. Dinner had not been a satisfactory meal, and Kate could not help saying to herself that if Minnie and Edith had been suffering as she was, their mamma would have come to them in the dark, and kissed them, and bathed their hot foreheads, and brought them cups of tea. But there was no one to bring a cup of tea, without being asked, to a girl who had no mother. Kate had but to ring her bell, and she could have had whatever she pleased; but what did that matter? No one came near her, as it happened. The governess and her maid both supposed her to be with her uncle, and it was only when Maryanne came in at nine o’clock to prepare her young mistress’s hair-brushes and dressing-gown, that the young mistress was found, to Maryanne’s consternation, stretched on her bed, with a face as white as her dress, and eyes surrounded with red rings. And in the dark, of all things in the world, in a place like Langton-Courtenay, where it was well known the Blue Lady walked, and turned folks to stone! At the first glance Maryanne felt certain that the Blue Lady only could be responsible for the condition in which her young mistress was found.

‘Oh! miss,’ she cried, ‘and why didn’t you ring the bell?’