Ombra

‘Trying!’ cried Kate; and she rose up in the very restlessness of delight, with her eyes shining, and her hair streaming behind her. But what was the use of discussing it? Of course they could not understand. It was easier to show them over the house and the grounds than to explain her feelings to them. And both Mrs. Hardwick and Edith were deeply impressed by the splendour of Langton-Courtenay. They gave little glances at Kate of mingled surprise and admiration. After all, they felt, the possessor of such a place—the owner of the lands which stretched out as far as they could see—ought to be excused if she was a little different from other girls. ‘What a temptation it must be!’ Edith whispered to her mother; and it pleased Mrs. Hardwick to see how tolerant of other people’s difficulties her child was. Kate grew quite excited by their admiration. She rushed over all the house, leading them into a hundred quaint corners. ‘I shall fill it from top to bottom when I am of age,’ she said. ‘All those funny bedrooms have been so dreadfully quiet and lonely since ever I was born; but it shall be gay when my time comes.’

‘Oh! hush, my dear,’ said pious Mrs. Hardwick—‘don’t make so sure of the future, when we don’t know what a day or an hour may bring forth.’

‘Well,’ said Kate, holding her position stoutly, ‘if anything happens, of course there is an end of it; but if nothing happens—if I live, and all that—oh! I just wish I was one-and-twenty, to show you what I should do!’

‘Do you think it will make you happy to be so gay?’ said Edith, but with a certain wistful inquiry in her eyes, which was not like her old superiority.

‘Oh! my dear children, hush!’ repeated her mother—‘don’t talk like this. In the first place, gaiety is nothing—it is good neither for body nor soul; and besides, I cannot let you chatter so about the future. You will forgive me, my dear Miss Courtenay, for I am an old-fashioned person; but when we think how little we know about the future;—and your life will be an important one—a lesson and an example to so many. We ought to try to make ourselves of use to our fellow-creatures—and you must endeavour that the example should be a good one.’

‘Fancy me an example!’ said Kate, half to herself; and then she was silent, with a philosophy beyond her years. She did not attempt to argue; she had wit enough to see that it would be useless, and to pass on to another subject. But as she ran along the corridor, and into all the rooms, the thought of what she would make of them, when she came back, went like wine through her thrilling veins. She was glad to go away—far more glad than any one could imagine who had never lived the grey, monotonous routine of such an existence, uncheered by companions, unwarmed by love. But she would also be glad to come back—glad to enter splendidly, a young queen among her court. Her head was almost turned by this sublime idea. She would come back with new friends, new principles, new laws; she would be Queen absolute, without partner or help; she would be the lawgiver, redresser of wrongs. Her supremacy would be beneficent as the reign of an ideal sovereign; but she would be supreme!

When her visitors left, she stood on the threshold of her own house, looking with shining eyes into that grand future. The shadows had all faded from her mind. She had almost forgotten, in the excitement of her new plans, all about Miss Blank’s sharp words, and the people who hated her. It would have surprised her had any one called that old figment to her recollection. Hate! there was nothing like it in that future. There was power and beneficence, and mirth and brightness. There was everything that was gay, everything that was beautiful; smiles, and bright looks, and wit, and unbounded novelty; and herself the dispenser of everything pleasant, herself always supreme! This was the dream of the future which framed itself in Kate Courtenay’s thoughts.

CHAPTER X

While all this agitation was going on over Kate’s fate on one side, it is not to be supposed that there was no excitement on the other. Her two relations, the mother and daughter to whom she was about to be confided, were nearly as much disturbed as Kate herself by the prospect of receiving her. It might, indeed, be said to have disturbed them more, for it affected their entire life. They had lately returned to England, and settled down, after a wandering life, in a house of their own. They were not rich, but they had enough. They were not humble, but accustomed to think very well of themselves; and the fact was that, though Mrs. Anderson had, for many reasons, accepted Mr. Courtenay’s proposal with enthusiasm, even she felt that the ideal seclusion she had been dreaming of was at once broken up—even she—and still more Ombra, her daughter, who was fanciful, and of a somewhat jealous and contradictory temper, fond of her own way, and of full freedom to carry her fancies out.

Mrs. Anderson, let us say at once, was neither a hypocrite nor a fool, and never, during their whole intercourse, regarded her heiress-niece as a means of drawing advantage to herself, or in a mercenary way. She was a warm-hearted, kind, and just woman; but she had her faults. The chief of these was a very excess of virtue. Her whole soul was set upon not being good only, but appearing so. She could not bear the idea of being deficient in any decorum, in any sentiment which society demanded. No one could have grieved more sincerely than she did for her husband; but a bitterer pang even than that caused her by natural sorrow would have gone through her heart, had she been tempted to smile through her tears a day sooner than public opinion warranted a widow to smile. In every position—even that in which she felt most truly—a sense of what society expected from her was always in her mind. This code of unwritten law went deeper with her even than nature. She had truly longed and yearned over Kate, in her kind heart, from the moment she had reached England; and had she followed her natural instincts, would have rushed at once to Langton-Courtenay, to see the child who was all that remained of a sister whom she had loved. But the world, in that case, would have said that she meant to establish herself at Langton-Courtenay, and that her affection for her niece was feigned or mercenary.

‘Let her alone, then,’ Ombra said. ‘Why should we trouble ourselves? If her friends think we are not good enough for her, let her alone. Why should she think herself better than we?’

‘My love, she is very young,’ said Mrs. Anderson; ‘and, besides, if I took no notice at all of Catherine’s only child, what would people suppose? It would be thought either that I had a guilty conscience in respect to the Courtenays, or that I had been repulsed. Nobody would believe that we had simply let her alone, as you say; and, besides, I am longing to see Kate with all my heart.

‘What does it matter what people say?’ said Ombra. ‘I do not see what any one has to do with our private affairs.’

‘That is a great delusion,’ said Mrs. Anderson, shaking her head; ‘every one has to do with every one else’s private affairs. If you do not wish to lay yourself open to remark, you will always keep this in mind. And our position is very trying, between your cousin’s wealth and our love for her–’

‘I don’t think I have very much love for her, mamma.’

‘My dear child, don’t let any one but me hear you say so. She ought to be like a sister to you,’ said Mrs. Anderson.

And Ombra let the discussion drop, and permitted her mother, in this respect, to have her own way. But she was not in any respect of her mother’s way of thinking. Her temptation was to hate and despise the opinion of society just in proportion to the reverence for it which she had been bred in: a result usual enough with clear-sighted and impetuous young persons, conscious of the defects of their parents. Ombra was a pretty, gentle, soft-mannered girl in outward appearance; but a certain almost fierce independence and determination to guide her own course as she herself pleased, was in her heart. She would not be influenced, as her mother had been, by other people’s ideas. She thought, with some recent writers, that the doctrine of self-sacrifice, as taught specially to women, was altogether false, vain, and miserable. She felt that she herself ought to be first in her home and sphere; and she did not feel disposed even to share with, much less to yield to, the rich cousin whom she had never seen. She shrugged her shoulders over Mrs. Anderson’s letter to Kate, but she did not interfere further, until Mr. Courtenay’s astounding proposal arrived, fluttering the household as a hawk would flutter the dovecots. At the first reading, it drove Ombra frantic. It was impossible, out of the question, not to be thought of for a moment! In this small house, with their two maids, in the quiet of Shanklin, what were they to do with a self-important girl, a creature, no doubt, bred from her cradle to a consciousness of her own greatness, and who wanted all sorts of masters and advantages? Mrs. Anderson knew how to manage her daughter, and for the moment she allowed her to have her way, and pour forth her indignation. The letter came by the early post; and it was only when they were seated at tea in the evening that she brought forward the other side of the question.

‘What you say is all very true, Ombra; but we have two spare bedrooms—there would still be one left for a friend, even if we took in poor dear little Kate.’

‘Poor Kate! Why is she poor? She could buy us over and over,’ said Ombra, in her indignation.

‘Buy what?’ said her clever mother—‘our love?’

‘Mamma, please don’t speak any nonsense about love!’ said Ombra, hastily. ‘I can’t love people at a moment’s notice; because a girl whom I never saw happens to be the child of my aunt, whom I never saw–’

‘Then suppose we leave you out,’ said her mother. ‘She is the child of my sister, whom I knew well, and was very fond of—that alters the question so far as I am concerned.’

‘Oh! of course, mamma,’ said Ombra, with darkened brows, ‘I do not pretend to do more than give my opinion. It is for you to say how it is to be.’

‘Do you think I can make a decision without you?’ said the mother, pathetically. ‘You must try to look at it more reasonably, my dear. Next to you, Kate is the creature most near to me in the world—next to me. Now, listen, Ombra; she is your nearest relation. Think what it will be to have a friend and a sister if anything should happen to me. The house is small, but we cannot truly say that we have not room for a little girl of fifteen in it. And then think of her loneliness—not a soul to care for her, except that old Mr. Courtenay–’

‘Oh! that is nonsense; she must have some one to care for her, or else she must be intensely disagreeable,’ said Ombra. ‘Mamma, remember what I say—if we take her in, we shall repent it all our lives.’

‘Nothing of the sort, my dear,’ said Mrs. Anderson, eagerly following up this softened opposition. ‘Why she is only fifteen—a mere child!—we can mould her as we will. And then, my dearest child, though heaven knows it is not interest I am thinking of, still it will be a great advantage; our income will be doubled. I must say Mr. Courtenay is very liberal, if nothing else. We shall be able to do many things that we could not do otherwise. Why, Ombra, you look as if you thought I meant to rob your cousin–’

‘I would not use a penny of her allowance—it should be all spent upon herself!’ cried the girl, flushing with indignant passion. ‘Our income doubled! Mamma, what can you be thinking of? Do you suppose I could endure to be a morsel the better for that Kate?’

‘You are a little fool, and there is no talking to you,’ said Mrs. Anderson, with natural impatience; and for half an hour they did not speak to each other. This, however, could not last very long, for providentially, as Mrs. Anderson said, one of the Rectory girls came in at the time when it was usual for the ladies to take their morning walk, and she would not for all the Isle of Wight have permitted Elsie to see that her child and she were not on their usual terms. When Elsie had left them, a slight relapse was threatened, but they were then walking together along the cliff, with one of the loveliest of landscapes before them—the sun setting, the ruddy glory lighting up Sandown Bay, and all the earth and sea watching that last crisis and climax of the day.

‘Oh! there is the true daffodil sky!’ Ombra exclaimed, in spite of herself, and the breach was healed. It was she herself who resumed the subject some time later, when they turned towards home. ‘I do not see,’ she said abruptly, ‘what we could do about masters for that girl, if she were to come here. To have them down from town would be ruinous, and to be constantly going up to town with her—to you, who so hate the ferry—would be dreadful!’

‘My love, you forget Miss Story’s school, where they have all the best masters,’ said Mrs. Anderson, mildly.

‘You could not send her to school.’

‘But they would come to us, my dear. Of course they would be very glad to come to us for a little more money, and I should gladly take the opportunity for your music, Ombra. I thought of that. I wish everything could be settled as easily. If you only saw the matter as I do–’

‘There is another thing,’ said Ombra, hastily, ‘which does not matter to me, for I hate society; but if she is to be kept like a nun, and never to see any one–’

Mrs. Anderson smiled serenely. ‘My love, who is there to see?—the Rectory children and a few ladies—people whom we ask to tea. Of course, I would not think of taking her to balls or even dinner-parties; but then, I never go to dinner-parties—there is no one to ask us; and as for balls, Ombra, you know what you said about that nice ball at Ryde.’

‘I hate them!’ said Ombra, vehemently. ‘I hope I shall never be forced to go to another in all my life.’

‘Then that question is settled very easily,’ said Mrs. Anderson, without allowing any signs of triumph to appear in her face. And next day she wrote to Mr. Courtenay, as has been described. When she wrote about ‘our darling niece,’ the tears were in her eyes. She meant it with all her heart; but, at the same time, it was the right thing to say, and to be anxious and eager to receive the orphan were the right sentiments to entertain. ‘It is the most proper arrangement,’ she said afterwards to the Rector’s wife, who was her nearest neighbour. ‘Of course her mother’s sister is her most natural guardian. The property is far best in Mr. Courtenay’s hands; but the child herself–’

‘Poor child!’ said Mrs. Eldridge, looking at her own children, who were many, and thinking within herself that to trust them to any one, even an aunt–

‘Yes, poor child!’ cried Mrs. Anderson, with the tears in her eyes; ‘and my Catherine would have made such a mother! But we must do what we can to make it up to her. She will have some one at least to love her here.’

‘I am sure you will be—good to her,’ said the Rector’s wife, looking wistfully, in her pity, into the face of the woman who, to her simple mind, did protest too much. Mrs. Eldridge felt, as many a straightforward person does, that her neighbour’s extreme propriety, and regard for what was befitting and ‘expected of her,’ was the mask of insincerity. She did not understand the existence of true feeling beneath all that careful exterior. But she was puzzled and touched for the moment by the tears in her companion’s eyes.

‘You can’t get up tears, you know, when you will,’ she said to her husband, when they discussed poor Kate’s prospects of happiness in her aunt’s house, that same night.

‘I can’t,’ said the Rector, ‘nor you; but one has heard of crocodile tears!’

‘Oh! Fred, no—not so bad as that!’

But still both these good people distrusted Mrs. Anderson, through her very anxiety to do right, and show that she was doing it. They were afraid of her excess of virtue. The exaggeration of the true seemed to them false. And they even doubted the amount of Kate’s allowance, because of the aunt’s frankness in telling them of it. They thought her intention was to raise her own and her niece’s importance, and calculated among themselves what the real sum was likely to be. Poor Mrs. Anderson! everybody was unjust to her—even her daughter—on this point.

But it was with no sense of this general distrust, but, on the contrary, with the most genial sense of having done everything that could be required of her, that she left home on a sunny June morning, with her heart beating quicker than usual in her breast, to bring home her charge. Her heart was beating partly out of excitement to see Kate, and partly out of anxiety about the crossing from Ryde, which she hated. The sea looked calm, from Sandown, but Mrs. Anderson knew, by long experience, that the treacherous sea has a way of looking calm until you have trusted yourself to its tender mercies. This thought, along with her eagerness to see her sister’s child, made her heart beat.

CHAPTER XI

Mr. Courtenay had stipulated that Kate was to be met by her aunt, not at his house, but at the railway, and to continue her journey at once. His house, he said, was shut up; but his real reason was reluctance to establish any precedent or pretext for other invasions. Kate started in the very highest spirits, scarcely able to contain herself, running over with talk and laughter, making a perpetual comment upon all that passed before her. Even Miss Blank’s sinister congratulations, when she took leave of the little travelling party, ‘I am sure I wish you joy, sir, and I wish Mrs. Anderson joy!’ did not damp Kate’s spirits. ‘I shall tell my aunt, Miss Blank, and I am sure she will be much obliged to you,’ the girl said, as she took her seat in the carriage. And Maryanne, who, red and excited, was seated by her, tittered in sympathy.

When Mr. Courtenay hid himself behind a newspaper, it was on Maryanne that Kate poured forth the tide of her excitement. ‘Isn’t it delightful!’ she said, a hundred times over. ‘Oh! yes, miss; but father and mother!’ Maryanne answered, with a sob. Kate contemplated her gravely for twenty seconds. Here was a difference, a distinction, which she did not understand. But before the minute was half over her thoughts had gone abroad again in a confusion of expectancy and pleasure. She leant half out of the window, casting eager glances upon the people who were waiting the arrival of the train at the station. The first figure upon which she set her eyes was that of a squat old woman in a red and yellow shawl. ‘Oh! can that be my aunt?’ Kate said to herself, with dismay. The next was a white-haired, substantial old lady, old enough to be Mrs. Anderson’s mother. ‘This is she! She is nice! I shall be fond of her!’ cried Kate to herself. When the white-haired lady found some one else, Kate’s heart sank. Oh! where was the new guardian?

‘Miss Kate! oh! please, Miss Kate!’ said Maryanne; and turning sharply round, Kate found herself in somebody’s arms. She had not time to see who it was; she felt only a warm darkness surround her, the pressure of something which held her close, and a voice murmuring, ‘My darling child! my Catherine’s child!’ murmuring and purring over her. Kate had time to think, ‘Oh! how tall she is! Oh! how warm! Oh! how funny!’ before she was let loose and kissed—which latter process allowed her to see a tall woman, not in the least like the white-haired grandmother whom she had fixed upon—a woman not old, with hair of Kate’s own colour, smiles on her face, and tears in her eyes.

‘Let me look at you, my sweet! I should have known you anywhere. You are so like your darling mother!’ said the new aunt. And then she wept; and then she said, ‘Is it you? Is it really you, my Kate?’ And all this took place at the station, with Uncle Courtenay sneering hard by, and strangers looking on.

‘Yes, aunt, of course it is me,’ said Kate, who scorned grammar; ‘who should it be? I came expressly to meet you; and Uncle Courtenay is there, who will tell you it is all right.’