Ombra

‘It did not matter,’ said Kate, reproachful and proud.

‘Lying there all in the dark—and it don’t matter! ‘Oh! miss, I know as you ain’t timorsome like me, but if you was once to see something–’

‘Hold your tongue!’ said Kate, peremptorily. ‘See something! The thing is, in this house, that one never sees anything! One might die, and it never would be known. You don’t care enough for one to come and look if one is dead or alive.’

‘Oh! miss!’

‘Don’t say “Oh miss!” to me,’ cried Kate, indignantly, ‘or pretend– Go and fetch me some tea. That is the only thing you can do. You don’t forget your own tea, or anything else you want; but when I am out of sorts, or have a—headache–’

Kate had no headache, except such as her crying had made; but it was the staple malady, the thing that did duty for everything in Miss Blank’s vocabulary, and her pupil naturally followed her example, to this extent, at least.

‘Have you got a headache, miss? I’ll tell Miss Blank—I’ll go and fetch the housekeeper.’

‘If you do, I will ask Uncle Courtenay to send you away to-morrow!’ cried Kate. ‘Go and fetch me some tea.’

But the tea which she had to order for herself was very different, she felt sure, from the tea that Edith Hardwick’s mother would have carried upstairs to her unasked. It was tea made by Maryanne, who was not very careful if the kettle was boiling, and who had filled a large teapot full of water, in order to get this one cup. It was very hot and very washy, and made Kate angry. She sent away Maryanne in a fit of indignation, and did her own hair for the night, and made herself very uncomfortable. How different it must be with Edith and Minnie! If Kate had only known it, however, Edith and Minnie, had they conducted themselves as she was doing, would have been metaphorically whipped and put to bed.

In the morning she came down with pale cheeks, but no one took any notice. Uncle Courtenay was reading his paper, and had other things to think of; and Miss Blank intended to ask what her pupil had been doing with herself when they should be alone together in the school-room. They ate their meal in a solemn silence, broken only now and then by a remark from Miss Blank, which was scarcely less solemn. Uncle Courtenay took no notice—he read his paper, which veiled him even from his companion’s eyes. At last, Miss Blank, having finished her breakfast, made a sign to Kate that it was time to rise; and then Kate took courage.

‘Uncle Courtenay,’ she said very softly, ‘you said you were going to call—at—the Rectory?’

Uncle Courtenay looked at her round the corner of his paper. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what of that? Of course I shall call at the Rectory—after what you have told me, I have no choice.’

‘Then please—may I go with you?’ said Kate. She cast down her eyes demurely as she spoke, and consequently did not see the inquiring glance that he cast at her; but she saw, under her eyelashes, that he had laid down his paper; and this evidence of commotion was a comfort to her soul.

‘Go with me!’ he said. ‘Not to give the Rector any further impertinence, I hope?’

Kate’s eyes flashed, but she restrained herself. ‘I have never been impertinent to any one, uncle. If I mistook what I had a right to, was that my fault? I am willing to make it up, if they are; and I can go alone if I mayn’t go with you.’

‘Oh! you can go with me if you choose,’ said Mr. Courtenay, ungraciously; and then he took up his paper. But he was not so ungracious as he appeared; he was rather glad, on the whole, to have this opportunity of talking to her, and to see that (as he thought) his reproof of the previous night had produced so immediate an effect. He said to himself, cheerfully, ‘Come, the child is not so ungovernable after all;’ and was pleased, involuntarily, by the success of his operation. He was pleased, too, with her appearance when she was dressed, and ready to accompany him. She was subdued in tone, and less talkative a great deal than she had been the day before. He took it for granted that it was his influence that had done this—‘Another proof,’ he said to himself, ‘how expedient it is to show that you are master, and will stand no nonsense.’ He had been so despairing about her the night before, and saw such a vista of troubles before him in the six years of guardianship that remained, that this docility made him at once complacent and triumphant now.

‘I don’t want to be hard upon you, Kate,’ he said; ‘but you must recollect that at present, in the eye of the law, you are a child, and have no right to interfere with anything—neither parish, nor estate, nor even house.’

‘But it is all mine, Uncle Courtenay.’

‘That has nothing to do with it,’ said her guardian, promptly. ‘The deer in the park have about as much right to meddle as you.’

‘Is our park small?’ said Kate. ‘Do you know Sir Herbert Eldridge, Uncle Courtenay? Where does he live?—and has he a very fine place? I can’t believe that there are five hundred acres in his park; and I don’t know how many there are in ours. I don’t understand measuring one’s own places. What does it matter an acre or two? I am sure there is no park so nice as Langton-Courtenay under the sun.’

‘What is all this about parks? You take away my breath,’ said Mr. Courtenay, in dismay.

‘Oh! nothing,’ said Kate; ‘only that I heard a person say—when I was out last night I met one of the Rectory people, Uncle Courtenay—it is partly for that I want to go—his sister, he says, is the same age as I–’

‘His sister!—it was a he, then?’ said Mr. Courtenay, with that prompt suspiciousness which is natural to the guardian of an heiress.

‘It was Bertie, the second son—of course it was a he. A girl could not have jumped over the fence—one might scramble, you know, but one couldn’t jump it with one’s petticoats. He told me one or two things—about his family.’

‘But why did he jump over the fence? And what do you know about him? Do you talk to everybody that comes in your way—about his family?’ cried Mr. Courtenay, with returning dismay.

‘Of course I do, Uncle Courtenay,’ said Kate, looking full at him. ‘You may say I have no right to interfere, but I have always known that Langton was to be mine, and I have always taken an interest in—everybody. Why, it was my duty. What else could I do?’

‘I should prefer that you did almost anything else,’ said Mr. Courtenay, hastily; and then he stopped short, feeling that it was incautious to betray his reasons, or suggest to the lively imagination of this perverse young woman that there was danger in Bertie Hardwick and his talk. ‘The danger’s self were lure alone,’ he said to himself, and plunged, in his dismay, into another subject. ‘Do you remember what I said to you last night about your Aunt Anderson?’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t you like to go and see her, Kate? She has a daughter of your own age, an only child. They have been abroad all their lives, and, I daresay, speak a dozen languages—that sort of people generally do. I think it would be a right thing to visit her–’

‘If it would be a right thing to visit her, Uncle Courtenay, it would be still righter to ask her to come here.’

‘But that I forbid, my dear,’ said the old man.

Then there was a pause. Kate was greatly tempted to lose her temper, but, on the whole, experience taught her that losing one’s temper seldom does much good, and she restrained herself. She tried a different mode of attack.

‘Uncle Courtenay,’ she said, pathetically, ‘is it because you don’t want any one to love me that nobody is ever allowed to stay here?’

‘When you are older, Kate, you will see what I mean,’ said Mr. Courtenay. ‘I don’t wish you to enter the world with any yoke on your neck. I mean you to be free. You will thank me afterwards, when you see how you have been saved from a tribe of locusts—from a household of dependents–’

Kate stopped and gazed at him with a curious, semi-comprehension. She put her head a little on one side, and looked up to him with her bright eyes. ‘Dependents!’ she said—‘dependents, uncle! Miss Blank tells me I have a great number of dependents, but I am sure they don’t care for me.’

‘They never do,’ said Mr. Courtenay—this was, he thought, the one grand experience which he had won from life.

CHAPTER V

Bertie Hardwick was on the lawn in front of the Rectory when the two visitors approached. The Rectory was a pretty, old-fashioned house, large and quaint, with old picturesque wings and gables, and a front much covered with climbing plants. Kate had always been rather proud of it, as one of the ornaments of her estate. She looked at it almost as she looked at the pretty west gate of her park, where the lodge was so commodious and so pleasant, coveted by all the poor people on the estate. It was by Kate’s grace and favour that the west lodge was given to one or another, and so would it be with the Rectory. She looked upon the one in much the same light as the other. It would be hard to tell what magnetic chord of sympathies had moved Bertie Hardwick to some knowledge of what his young acquaintance was about to do; but it is certain that he was there, pretending to play croquet with his sisters, and keeping a very keen eye upon the bit of road which was visible through the break in the high laurel hedge. He had been amused, and indeed somewhat touched and interested, in spite of himself, on the previous night; and somehow he had a feeling that she would come. When he caught a glimpse of her, he threw down the croquet mallet, as if it hurt him, and cried out—‘Edith, run and tell mamma she is coming. I felt quite sure she would.’

‘Who is coming?’ cried the two girls.

‘Oh, don’t chatter and ask questions—rush and tell mamma!’ cried Bertie; and he himself, without thinking of it, went forward to open the garden door. It was a trial of Kate’s steadiness to meet him thus, but she did so with wide-open eyes and a certain serious courage. ‘You saw me at a disadvantage, but I don’t mind,’ Kate’s serious eyes were saying; and as she took the matter very gravely indeed, it was she who had the best of it now. Bertie, in spite of himself, felt confused as he met her look; he grew red, and was ashamed of his own foolish impulse to go and open the door.

‘This is Mr. Bertie Hardwick, uncle,’ said Kate, gravely; ‘and this, Mr. Bertie, is my Uncle Courtenay—whom I told you of,’ she added, with a little sigh.

Her Uncle Courtenay—whom she was obliged to obey, and over whom neither her impetuosity nor her melancholy had the least power. She shook her head to herself, as it were, over her sad fate, and by this movement placed once more in great danger the gravity of poor Bertie, who was afraid to laugh or otherwise misconduct himself under the eyes of Mr. Courtenay. He led the visitors into the drawing-room, through the open windows; and it is impossible to tell what a relief it was to him when he saw his mother coming to the rescue. And then they all sat down; Kate as near Mrs. Hardwick as she could manage to establish herself. Kate did not understand the shyness with which Minnie and Edith, half withdrawn on the other side of their mother, looked at her.

‘I am not a wild beast,’ she said to herself. ‘I wonder do they think I will bite?’

‘Did you tell them about last night?’ she said, turning quickly to Bertie; for Mrs. Hardwick, instead of talking to her, the Lady of the Manor, as Kate felt she ought to have done, gave her attention to Mr. Courtenay instead.

‘I told them I had met you, Miss Courtenay,’ said Bertie.

‘And did they laugh? Did you make fun of me? Why do they look at me so strangely?’ cried Kate, growing red; ‘I am not a wild beast.’

‘You forget that you and my father have quarrelled,’ said Bertie; ‘and the girls naturally take his side.’

‘Oh! is it that?’ cried Kate, clearing up a little. She gave a quick glance at him, with a misgiving as to whether he was entirely serious. But Bertie kept his countenance. ‘For that matter, I have come to say that I did not mean anything wrong; perhaps I made a mistake. Uncle Courtenay says that, till I am of age, I have no power; and if the Rector pleases—oh! there is the Rector—I ought to speak for myself.’

She rose as Mr. Hardwick came up to her. Her sense of her own importance gave a certain dignity to her young figure, which was springy and stately, like that of a young Diana. She threw back the flood of chestnut hair that streamed over her shoulders, and looked straight at him with her bright, well-opened eyes. Altogether she looked a creature of a different species from Edith and Minnie, who kept close together, looking at her with wonder, and a mixture of admiration and repugnance.

‘Isn’t it bold of her to speak to papa like that?’ Minnie whispered to Edith.

‘But she is going to ask his pardon,’ Edith whispered back to Minnie. ‘Oh! hush, and hear what she says.’

As for Bertie, he looked on with a strange feeling that it was he who had introduced this new figure into the domestic circle, and with a little anxiety of proprietorship hoped that she would make a good impression. She was his novelty, his property—and she was, there could be no doubt, a very great novelty indeed.