Ombra

Ombra made no reply; she shrugged her shoulders, and began to let down her hair out of its bands—the worst of the storm was over.

But Francesca had reserved herself for one parting blaze, ‘And know you, my young lady, what will come to you, if thus you proceed in your life?’ she said. ‘When one wanders too mooch on the snowy mountains, one falls into an ice-pit, and one dies. It will so come to you. You will grow colder and colder, colder and colder. When it is for your good to be warm, you will be ice: you will not be able more to help yourself. You will make love freeze up like the water in the torrent; you will lay it in a tomb of snow, you will build the ice-monument over it, and then all you can do will be vain—it will live no more. Signorina Ghiaccia, if thus you go on, this is what will come to you.’

And with this parting address, Francesca darted forth, not disdaining, like a mere mortal and English domestic, to shut the door with some violence. Ombra had her cry out by herself, while Kate sat wondering in the next room. The elder girl asked herself, was it true?—was she really a snow-maiden, or was it some mysterious influence from her name that threw this shade over her, and made her so contradictory and burdensome even to herself?

For Ombra was not aware that she had been christened by a much more sober name. She stood as Jane Catherine in the books of the Leghorn chaplain—a conjunction of respectable appellatives which could not have any sinister influence. I doubt, however, whether she would have taken any comfort from this fact; for it was pleasant to think of herself as born under some wayward star—a shadowy creature, unlike common flesh and blood, half Italian, half spirit. ‘How can I help it?’ she said to herself. The people about her did not understand her—not even her mother and Francesca. They put the commonplace flesh-and-blood girl on a level with her—this Kate, with half-red hair, with shallow, bright eyes, with all that red and white that people rave about in foolish books. ‘Kate will be the heroine wherever we go,’ she said, with a smile, which had more pain than pleasure in it. She was a little jealous, a little cross, disturbed in her fanciful soul; and yet she was not heartless and cold, as people thought. The accusation wounded her, and haunted her as if with premonitions of reproaches to come. It was not hard to bear from Francesca, who was her devoted slave; but it occurred dimly to Ombra, as if in prophecy, that the time would come when she should hear the same words from other voices. Not Ombra-Ghiaccia! Was it possible? Could that fear ever come true?

Mrs. Anderson, for her part, was less easy about this change in her household than she would allow. When she was alone, the smiles went off her countenance. Kate, though she had been so glad to see her, though the likeness to herself had made so immediate a bond between them, was evidently enough not the kind of girl who could be easily managed, or who was likely to settle down quietly into domestic peace and order. She had the makings of a great lady in her, an independent, high-spirited princess, to whom it was not necessary to consider the rules which are made for humbler maidens. Already she had told her aunt what she meant to do at Langton when she went back; already she had inquired with lively curiosity all about Shanklin. Mrs. Anderson thought of her two critics at the Rectory, who, she knew by instinct, were ready to pick holes in her, and be hard upon her ‘foreign ways,’ and trembled for her niece’s probable vagaries. It was ‘a great responsibility,’ a ‘trying position,’ for herself. Many a ‘trying position’ she had been in already, the difficulties of which she had surmounted triumphantly. She could only hope that ‘proper feeling,’ ‘proper respect’ for the usages of society, would bring her once more safely through. When Francesca darted in upon her, fresh from the lecture she had delivered, Mrs. Anderson’s disturbed look at once betrayed her.

‘My lady looks as she used to look when the big letters came, saying Go,’ said Francesca; ‘but, courage, Signora mia, the big letters come no more.’

‘No; nor he who received them, Francesca,’ said the mistress, sadly. ‘But it was not that I was thinking of—it was my new care, my new responsibility.’

‘Bah!’ cried Francesca; ‘my lady will pardon me, I did not mean to be rude. Ah! if my lady was but a Christian like us other Italians! Why there never came an orphan into a kind house, but she brought a blessing. The dear Madonna will never let trouble come to you from her child; and, besides, the little angel is exactly like you. Just so must my lady have looked at her age—beautiful as the day.’

‘Ah! Francesca, you are partial,’ said Mrs. Anderson, with, however, a returning smile. ‘I never was so pretty as Kate.’

‘My lady will pardon me,’ said Francesca, with quiet gravity; ‘in my eyes, senza complimenti, there is no one so beautiful as my lady even now.’

This statement was much too serious and superior to compliment-making, to be answered, especially as Francesca turned at once to the window, to close the shutters, and make all safe for the night.

CHAPTER XIII

Mrs. Anderson’s house was situated in one of those nests of warmth and verdure which are characteristic of the Isle of Wight. There was a white cliff behind, partially veiled with turf and bushes, the remains of an ancient landslip. The green slope which formed its base, and which, in Spring, was carpeted with wild-flowers, descended into the sheltered sunny garden, which made a fringe of flowers and greenness round the cottage. On that side there was no need of fence or boundary. A wild little rustic flight of steps led upward to the winding mountain-path which led to the brow of the cliff, and the cliff itself thus became the property of the little house. Both cottage and garden were small, but the one was a mass of flowers, and the airy brightness and lightness of the other made up for its tiny size. The windows of the little drawing-room opened into the rustic verandah, all garlanded with climbing plants; and though the view was not very great, nothing but flowers and verdure, a bit of quiet road, a glimpse of blue sea, yet from the cliff there was a noble prospect—all Sandown Bay, with its white promontory, and the wide stretch of water, sometimes blue as sapphire, though grey enough when the wind brought it in, in huge rollers upon the strand. The sight, and sound, and scent of the sea were all alike new to Kate. The murmur in her ears day and night, now soft, like the hu-ush of a mother to a child, now thundering like artillery, now gay as laughter, delighted the young soul which was athirst for novelty. Here was something which was always new. There was no limit to her enjoyment of the sea. She liked it when wild and when calm, and whatever might be its vagaries, and in all her trials of temper, which occurred now and then, fled to it for soothing. The whole place, indeed, seemed to be made especially for Kate. It suited her to climb steep places, to run down slopes, to be always going up or down, with continual movement of her blood and stir of her spirits. She declared aloud that this was what she had wanted all her life—not flat parks and flowers, but the rising waves to pursue her when she ventured too close to them, the falling tide to open up sweet pools and mysteries, and penetrate her with the wholesome breath of the salt, delightful beach.

‘I don’t know how I have lived all this time away from it. I must have been born for the seaside!’ she cried, as she walked on the sands with her two companions.

Ombra, for her part, shrugged her shoulders, and drew her shawl closer. She had already decided that Kate was one of the race of extravagant talkers, who say more than they feel.

‘The sea is very nice,’ said Mrs. Anderson, who in this respect was not so enthusiastic as Kate.

‘Very nice! Oh! aunt, it is simply delightful! Whenever I am troublesome—as I know I shall be—just send me out here. I may talk all the nonsense I like—it will never tire the sea.’

‘Do you talk a great deal of nonsense, Kate?’

‘I am afraid I do,’ said the girl, with penitence. ‘Not that I mean it; but what is one to do? Miss Blank, my last governess, never talked at all, when she could help it, and silence is terrible—anything is better than that; and she said I chattered, and was always interfering. What could I do? One must be occupied about something!’

‘But are you fond of interfering, dear?’

‘Auntie!’ said Kate, throwing back her hair, ‘if I tell you the very worst of myself, you will not give me up, or send me away? Thanks! It is enough for me to be sure of that. Well, perhaps I am, a little—I mean I like to be doing something, or talking about something. I like to have something even to think about. You can’t think of Mangnall’s Questions, now, can you?—or Mrs. Markham? The village people used to be a great deal more interesting. I used to like to hear all that was going on, and give them my advice. Well, I suppose it was not very good advice. But I was not a nobody there to be laughed at, you know, auntie—I was the chief person in the place!’

Here Ombra laughed, and it hurt Kate’s feelings.

‘When I am old enough, I shall be able to do as I please in Langton-Courtenay,’ she said.

‘Certainly, my love,’ said Mrs. Anderson, interposing; ‘and I hope, in the meantime, dear, you will think a great deal of your responsibilities, and all that is necessary to make you fill such a trying position as you ought.’

‘Trying!’ said Kate, with some surprise; ‘do you think it will be trying? I shall like it better than anything. Poor old people, I must try to make it up to them, for perhaps I rather bothered them sometimes, to tell the truth. I am not like you and Ombra, so gentle and nice. And, then, I had never seen people behave as I suppose they ought.’

‘I am glad you think we behave as we ought, Kate.’

‘Oh! auntie; but then there is something about Ombra that makes me ashamed of myself. She is never noisy, nor dreadful, like me. She touches things so softly, and speaks so gently. Isn’t she lovely, aunt?’

‘She is lovely to me,’ said Mrs. Anderson, with a glow of pleasure. ‘And I am so glad you like your cousin, Kate.’

‘Like her! I never saw any one half so beautiful. She looks such a lady. She is so dainty, and so soft, and so nice. Could I ever grow like that? Ah! auntie, you shake your head—I don’t mean so pretty, only a little more like her, a little less like a–’

‘My dear child!’ said the gratified mother, giving Kate a hug, though it was out of doors. And at that moment, Ombra, who had been in advance, turned round, and saw the hasty embrace, and shrugged her pretty shoulders, as her habit was.

‘Mamma, I wish very much you would keep these bursts of affection till you get home,’ said Ombra. ‘The Eldridges are coming down the cliff.’

‘Oh! who are the Eldridges? I know some people called Eldridge,’ said Kate—‘at least, I don’t know them, but I have heard–’

‘Hush! they will hear, too, if you don’t mind,’ said Ombra. And Kate was silent. She was changing rapidly, even in these few days. Ombra, who snubbed her, who was not gracious to her, who gave her no caresses, had, without knowing it, attained unbounded empire over her cousin. Kate had fallen in love with her, as girls so often do with one older than themselves. The difference in this case was scarcely enough to justify the sudden passion; but Ombra looked older than she was, and was so very different a being from Kate, that her gravity took the effect of years. Already this entirely unconscious influence had done more for Kate than all the educational processes she had gone through. It woke the woman, the gentlewoman, in the child, who had done, in her brief day, so many troublesome things. Ombra suddenly had taken the ideal place in her mind—she had been elevated, all unwitting of the honour, to the shrine in Kate’s heart. Everything in her seemed perfection to the girl—even her name, her little semi-reproofs, her gentle coldness. ‘If I could but be like Ombra, not blurting things out, not saying more than I mean, not carried away by everything that interests me,’ she said, self-reproachfully, with rising compunction and shame for all her past crimes. She had never seen the enormity of them as she did now. She set up Ombra, and worshipped her in every particular, with the enthusiasm of a fanatic. She tried to curb her once bounding steps into some resemblance to the other’s languid pace; and drove herself and Maryanne frantic by vain endeavours to smoothe her rich crisp chestnut hair into the similitude of Ombra’s shadowy, dusky locks. This sudden worship was independent of all reason. Mrs. Anderson herself was utterly taken by surprise by it, and Ombra had not as yet a suspicion of the fact; but it had already begun to work upon Kate.

It was not in her, however, to make the acquaintance of this group of new people without a little stir in her pulses—all the more as Mrs. Eldridge came up to herself with special cordiality.

‘I am sure this is Miss Courtenay,’ she said. ‘I have heard of you from my nephew and nieces at Langton-Courtenay. They told me you were coming to the Island. I hope you will like it, and think it as pretty as I do. You are most welcome, I am sure, to Shanklin.’

‘Are you their aunt at Langton-Courtenay?’ said Kate, with eyes which grew round with excitement and pleasure. ‘Oh! how very odd! I did not think anybody knew me here.’

‘I am aunt to the boys and girls,’ said Mrs. Eldridge. ‘Mrs. Hardwick is my husband’s sister. We must be like old friends, for the Hardwicks’ sake.’

‘But the Hardwicks are not old friends to me,’ said Kate, with a child’s unnecessary conscientiousness of explanation. ‘Bertie I know, but I have only seen the others twice.’

‘Oh! that does not matter,’ said the Rector’s wife; ‘you must come and see me all the same.’ And then she turned to Mrs. Anderson, and began to talk of the parish. Kate stood by and listened with wondering eyes as they discussed the poor folk, and their ways and their doings. They did not interfere in her way; but perhaps their way was not much better, on the whole, than Kate’s. She had been very interfering, there was no doubt; but then she had interfered with everybody, rich and poor alike, and made no invidious distinction. She stood and listened wondering, while the Rector added his contribution about the mothers’ meetings, and the undue expectations entertained by the old women at the almshouses. ‘We must guard against any foolish partiality, or making pets of them,’ Mr. Eldridge said; and his wife added that Mr. Aston, in the next parish, had quite spoiled his poor people. ‘He is a bachelor; he has nobody to keep him straight, and he believes all their stories. They know they have only to send to the Vicarage to get whatever they require. When one of them comes into our parish, we don’t know what to do with her,’ she said, shaking her head. Kate was too much occupied in listening to all this to perceive that Ombra shrugged her shoulders. Her interest in the new people kept her silent, as they reascended the cliff, and strolled towards the cottage; and it was not till the Rector and his wife had turned homewards, once more cordially shaking hands with her, and renewing their invitation, that she found her voice.

‘Oh! auntie, how very strange—how funny!’ she said. ‘To think I should meet the Eldridges here!’

‘Why not the Eldridges?—have you any objection to them?’ said Mrs. Anderson.

‘Oh, no!—I suppose not.’ (Kate put aside with an effort that audacity of Sir Herbert Eldridge, and false assumption about the size of his park.) ‘But it is so curious to meet directly, as soon as I arrive, people whom I have heard of–’

‘Indeed, my dear Kate, it is not at all wonderful,’ said her aunt, didactically. ‘The world is not nearly such a big place as you suppose. If you should ever travel as much as we have done (which heaven forbid!), you would find that you were always meeting people you knew, in the most unlikely places. Once, at Smyrna, when Mr. Anderson was there, a gentleman came on business, quite by chance, who was the son of one of my most intimate friends in my youth. Another time I met a companion of my childhood, whom I had lost sight of since we were at school, going up Vesuvius. Our chaplain at Cadiz turned out to be a distant connection of my husband’s, though we knew nothing of him before. Such things are always happening. The world looks very big, and you feel as if you must lose yourself in it; but, on the contrary, wherever one goes, one falls upon people one knows.’

‘But yet it is so strange about the Hardwicks,’ said Kate, persisting; ‘they are the only people I ever went to see—whom I was allowed to know.’

‘How very pleasant!’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘Now I shall be quite easy in my mind. Your uncle must have approved of them, in that case, so I may allow you to associate with the Eldridges freely. How very nice, my love, that it should be so!’

Kate made no reply to this speech. She was not, to tell the truth, quite clear that her uncle approved. He had not cared to hear about Bertie Hardwick; he had frowned at the mention of him. ‘And Bertie is the nicest—he is the only one I care for,’ said Kate to herself; but she said nothing audibly on the subject. To her, notwithstanding her aunt’s philosophy, it seemed very strange indeed that Bertie Hardwick’s relatives should be the first to meet her in this new world.

CHAPTER XIV

Kate settled down into her new life with an ease and facility which nobody had expected. She wrote to her uncle that she was perfectly happy; that she never could be sufficiently thankful to him for freeing her from the yoke of Miss Blank, and placing her among people who were fond of her. ‘Little fool!’ Mr. Courtenay muttered to himself. ‘They have flattered her, I suppose.’ This was the easiest and most natural explanation to one who knew, or thought he knew, human nature so well.

But Kate was not flattered, except by her aunt’s caressing ways and habitual fondness. Nobody in the Cottage recognised her importance as the heiress of Langton-Courtenay. Here she was no longer first, but second—nay third, taking her place after her cousin, as nature ordained. ‘Ombra and Kate,’ was the new form of her existence—first Ombra, then the new-comer, the youngest of all. She was spoiled as a younger child is spoiled, not in any other way. Mrs. Anderson’s theory in education was indulgence. She did not believe in repression. She was always caressing, always yielding. For one thing, it was less troublesome than a continual struggle; but that was not her motive. She took high ground. ‘What we have got to do is to ripen their young minds,’ she said to the Rector’s wife, who objected to her as ‘much too good,’ a reproach which Mrs. Anderson liked; ‘and it is sunshine that ripens, not an east wind!’ This was almost the only imaginative speech she had ever made in her life, and consequently she liked to repeat it. ‘Depend upon it, it is sunshine that ripens them, and not east wind!’

‘The sunshine ripens the wheat and the tares alike, as we are told in Scripture,’ said Mrs. Eldridge, with professional seriousness.