Ombra

‘Indeed, it is Ombra’s fault; but she was writing for the post,’ exclaimed her mother, calling to her.

Ombra came forward to the doorway, very pale, even to her lips, but smiling, and shook hands three times, and repeated that it was her fault. And then the procession streamed away.

‘That girl looks very unhealthy,’ Mrs. Hardwick said, when they were walking down the avenue. ‘I shall try and find out from her mother if there is consumption in the family, and advise them to try the new remedy. Did you notice what a colour her lips were? She is very retiring, poor thing; and, I must say, never puts herself the least in the way.’

‘Do you think she is pretty, Bertie?’ said the sisters, together.

‘Pretty? Oh! I can’t tell. I am no judge,’ said Bertie. ‘Look here, mamma, I am going to see old Stokes, the keeper. He used to be a great friend of mine. If I don’t make up to you before you reach home, I’ll be back at least before it is dark.’

‘Before it is dark!’ said Mrs. Hardwick, in dismay. But Bertie was gone. ‘I suppose young men must have their way,’ she said, looking after him. ‘But you must not think, girls, that people are any the happier for having their way. On the contrary, you who have been educated to submit have a much better preparation for life. I hope dear Bertie will never meet with any serious disappointment,’ she added, with a sigh.

‘Oh! mamma, serious disappointment! when he has always succeeded in everything!’ cried the girls, in their duet.

‘For he could not bear it,’ said Mrs. Hardwick, shaking her head. ‘It would be doubly, doubly hard upon him; for he has never been trained to bear it—never, I may say, since he left the nursery, and got out of my hands.’

At this time it was nearly three o’clock, a dull Winter afternoon, not severe, but dim and mournful. It was the greyness of frost, however, not of damp, which was in the air; and Kate, who was restless, announced her intention of taking a long walk. She was glad to escape from this heavy atmosphere of home; she said, somewhat bitterly, that it was best to leave them together to unbosom themselves, to tell each other all those secrets which were not to be confided to her; and to compare notes, no doubt, as to how he was looking, and how they were to find favourable opportunities of meeting again, Kate’s heart was sore—she was irritated by the mystery which, after all, was so plain to her. She saw the secret thing moving underneath the cover—the only difficulty she had was to decide what kind of secret it was. What was the relationship between Bertie and Ombra? Were they only lovers?—were they something more?—and what had Bertie Eldridge to do with it? Kate, indignant, would not permit herself to think; but the questions came surging up in her mind against her will. She had a little basket in her hand. She was carrying some grapes and wine to old Stokes, the disabled keeper, who was dying, and whom everybody made much of. On her way to his cottage she had to pass that little nook where the brook was, and where she had first seen Bertie Hardwick. It was the first time she had seen it since her return, and she paused, half in anger and bitterness, half with a softening swell of recollection. How rich, and sweet, and warm, and delicious it had been that Summer evening, with the blossom still on the hawthorns, and the grass like velvet, and the soft little waterfall tinkling! How everything was changed!—the bushes all black with frost, the trees bare of their foliage, with here and there a ragged red leaf at the end of a bough, the brook tinkling with a sharp metallic sound. Everything else was frozen and still—all the insect life of Summer, all the movements and rustlings of grass and leaves and flowers. The flowers and the leaves were gone; the grass bound fast in an icy coat. ‘But not more different,’ Kate thought, ‘than were other matters—more important than the grass and flowers.’

She was roused from her momentary reverie by the sound of a footstep ringing clear and sharp along the frosty road; and before she could get out of the shelter of the little coppice which encircled that haunt of her childhood, Bertie Hardwick came suddenly up to her. The sight of her startled the young man—but in what way? A flush of delight rushed over his face—he brightened all over, as it seemed, eyes and mouth and every feature. He came forward to her with impetuous steps, and took her hand before she was aware.

‘I was thinking of you,’ he cried; ‘longing to meet you just here, not believing it possible—oh, Kate!– Miss Courtenay, I beg your pardon. I—I forget what I was going to say.’

He did not give up her hand, though; he stood and gazed at her with such pleasure in his eyes as could not be misconstrued. And then the most curious phenomenon came into being—a thing most wonderful, not to be explained. All the anger and the suspicion and the bitterness, suddenly, in a moment, fled out of Kate’s heart—they fled like evil spirits exorcised and put to flight by something better than they. Kate was too honest to conceal what was in her mind. She did not draw away her hand; she looked at him full with her candid eyes.

‘Mr. Bertie, I am very glad to have met you here. I can’t help remembering; and I should be glad—very glad to meet you anywhere; but–’

He dropped her hand; he put up both his own to his face, as if to cover its shame; and then, with a totally changed tone, and a voice from which all the gladness had gone, he said slowly:

‘I know; but I am not allowed to explain—I cannot explain. Oh! Kate, you know no harm of me, do you? You have never known or heard that I was without sense of honour? trust me, if you can! Nothing in it, not any one thing, is my fault.’

Kate started as if she had been struck, and everything that had wounded her came back in sevenfold strength. She could not keep even a tone of contempt out of her voice.

‘I have heard,’ she said, ‘that there was honour among thieves: do you throw the blame upon Ombra—all the blame? I suppose it is the way men do. Good-bye, Mr. Hardwick!’ And, before he could say a word, she was gone—flying past him, indignant, contemptuous, wounded to the core.

As she came back from the keeper’s cottage, when the afternoon was duller than ever, and the sky seemed to be dropping over the tree-tops, Kate thought she saw, in one of the roads which crossed the avenue, the flutter of a lady’s shawl. The girl was curious in her excitement, and she paused behind a tree to watch. After a short time the fluttering shawl drew nearer. It was Ombra, clinging close to Bertie Hardwick’s arm—turning to him a pale face full of care and anxiety. They were discussing their dark concerns—their secrets. Kate rushed home without once stopping or drawing breath.

CHAPTER LVI

This incident passed as all incidents do, and the blank of common life returned. How short those moments of action are in existence, and how long are the dull intervals—those intervals which count for nothing, and yet are life itself! Bertie Hardwick went away only after sundry unsuccessful efforts on the part of his family to unite the party from the Hall with that at the Rectory. Mrs. Hardwick would willingly, very willingly, have asked them to dinner, even after the disappointment of discovering that they did not mean to ask Bertie. She was stopped, however, by a very commonplace hindrance—where was she to find gentlemen enough on short notice to balance all those three ladies? Mr. Hardwick, Bertie, and Edith’s betrothed made the tale correct to begin with—but three more gentlemen in a country parish on two days’ notice! It was impossible. All that Mrs. Hardwick could do was to ask, deprecatingly, that the ladies would come to a family dinner, ‘very quiet,’ she said; ‘you must not suppose I mean a party.’ Mrs. Anderson, with her best and most smiling looks, accepted readily. ‘But Ombra is not very well,’ she said; ‘I fear I must ask you to excuse her. And dear Kate has such a bad cold—she caught it walking across the park the other evening to old Stokes the keeper’s cottage.’

‘To old Stokes!’ cried Mrs. Hardwick. ‘Why, my Bertie was there too.’ And she added, looking grave, after that burst of radiance, ‘The old man was a great favourite with everybody. We all go to see him.’

‘So I hear,’ said Mrs. Anderson, smiling; and next day she put on her best gown, poor soul! and went patiently down to the Rectory to dinner, and made a great many apologies for her girls. She did not enjoy it much, and she had to explain that the first chill of England after Italy had been too much for Kate and Ombra. ‘We had lived in the Isle of Wight for some years before,’ she added, ‘so that this is almost their first experience of the severity of Winter. But a few days indoors I hope will make them all right.’

Edith Hardwick could not believe her eyes when, next day, the day before Bertie left, she saw Miss Anderson walking in the park. ‘Do you think it possible it was not true?’ she and her sister asked each other in consternation; but neither they, nor wiser persons than they, could have determined that question. Ombra was not well, nor was Kate. They were both disturbed in their youthful being almost beyond the limits of self-control. Mrs. Anderson had, in some respects, to bear both their burdens; but she said to herself, with a sigh, that her shoulders were used to it. She had borne the yoke in her youth, she had been trained to bear a great deal, and say very little about it. And so the emotion of the incident gradually died away, growing fainter and larger in the stillness, and the monotony came back as of old!

But, oh! how pleasant the monotony of old would have been, how delightful, had there been nothing but the daily walks, the daily talks, the afternoon drives, the cheerful discussions, and cheerful visits, which had made their simple life at Shanklin so sweet! All that was over, another cycle of existence had come in.

I think another fortnight had elapsed since Bertie’s visit, and everything had been very quiet—and the quiet had been very intolerable. Sometimes almost a semblance of confidential intercourse would be set up among them, and Ombra would lean upon Kate, and Kate’s heart melt towards Ombra. This took place generally in the evening, when they sat together in the firelight before the lamp was brought, and talked the kind of shadowy talk which belongs to that hour.

‘Look at my aunt upon the wall!’ Kate cried, one evening, in momentary amusement. ‘How gigantic she is, and how she nods and beckons at us!’ Mrs. Anderson was chilly, and had placed her chair in front of the fire.

‘She is no more a shadow than we all are,’ said Ombra. ‘When the light comes, that vast apparition will disappear, and she will be herself. Kate, don’t you see the parable? We are all stolen out of ourselves, made into ghosts, till the light comes.’

‘I don’t understand parables,’ said Kate.

‘I wish you did this one,’ said Ombra, with a sigh, ‘for it is true.’ And then there was silence for a time, a silence which Kate broke by saying,

‘There is the new moon. I must go and look at her.’

Not through the glass, dear—it is unlucky,’ said Mrs. Anderson; but Kate took no notice. She went into the inner room, and watched the new moon through the great window. A cold, belated, baby moon, looking as if it had lost its way somehow in that blue waste of sky. And the earth looked cold, chilled to the heart, as much as could be seen of it, the tree-tops cowering together, the park frozen. She stood there in a reverie, and forgot about the time, and where she was. The bustle behind her of the lamp being brought in did not disturb Kate, and seeing her at the window, the servant who came with the lights discreetly forbore to disturb her, and left the curtains undrawn. But, from what followed, it was evident that nobody else observed Kate, and she was still deep in her musings, when she was startled, and brought to instant life, by a voice which seemed to ring through the room to her like a trumpet-note of defiance.

‘Mother, this cannot go on!’ Ombra cried out all at once. ‘If it lasts much longer I shall hate her. I shall want to kill her!’

‘Ombra!’

‘It is true, I shall want to kill her! Oh! not actually with my hands! One never knows what one could do till one is tempted. Still I think I would not touch her. But, God help us, mother, God help us! I hate her now!’

‘God help you, indeed, my unhappy child!’ cried her mother. ‘Oh! Ombra, do you know you are breaking my heart?’

‘My own was broken first,’ cried Ombra; and there was a ferocious and wild force in what she said, which thrilled through and through the listener, now just beginning to feel that she should not be here, but unable to stir in her great horror and astonishment. ‘My own was broken first. What does it matter? I thought I could brave everything; but to have him sent here for her sake—because she would be the most fit match for him! to have her come again between him and me–’

‘She never came between him and you—poor Kate!—she never thought of him. Has it not been proved that it was only a fancy? Oh! Ombra, how ungrateful, how unkind you are to her!’

‘What must I be grateful for?’ cried Ombra. ‘She has always been in my way, always! She came between you and me. She took half away from me of what was all mine. Would you hesitate, and doubt, and trouble, as you do, if it were not for Kate? She has always been in my way! She has been my enemy, not my friend. If she did not really come between him and me, then I thought so, and I had all the anguish and sorrow as if it had been true. And now he is to be sent here to meet her—and I am to put up with it, he says, as it will give us means of meeting. But I will not put up with it!’ cried Ombra, her voice rising shrill with passion—‘I cannot; it is asking too much. I would rather not meet him than meet him to be watched by Kate’s eyes. He has no right to come here on such a pretence. I would rather kill her—I would rather never see him again!’

‘Oh! Ombra, how can you tell who may hear you?’ cried her mother, putting up her hand as if to stop her mouth.

‘I don’t care who hears me!’ said Ombra, pale and sullen.

And then there was a rustle and movement, and both started, looking up with one impulse. In the twilight right beyond the circle of the lamplight, white as death, with a piteous gaze that neither could ever forget, stood Kate. Mrs. Anderson sprang to her feet with a cry; Ombra said not a word—she sat back in her chair, and kept her startled eyes upon her cousin—great dilated eyes, awakened all in a minute to what she had done.

‘Kate, you have heard what she has said?’

‘Yes, I have heard it,’ she said, faintly. ‘I did not mean to; but I was there, and I thought you knew. I have heard everything. Oh! it does not matter. It hurts at present, but it will go off after a while.’

She tried to smile, and then she broke down and cried. Mrs. Anderson went to her and threw her arms around her; but Kate put her aunt gently away. She looked up through her tears, and shook her head with the best smile she could muster.

‘No, it is not worth while,’ she said,—‘not any more. I have been wrong all the time. I suppose God did not mean it so. I had no natural mother or sister, and you can’t get such things except by nature. Don’t let us say any more about it,’ she added, hastily brushing the tears from her eyes. ‘I am very sorry you have suffered so much on my account, Ombra. If I had only known– And I never came between you and anyone—never dreamt of doing it—never will, never—you may be sure of that. I wanted my aunt to love me—that was natural—but no one else.’

‘Kate, I did not mean it,’ faltered Ombra, her white face suddenly burning with a blush of passionate shame. She had never realised the meanness of her jealousies and suspicions till this moment. Her mother’s remonstrances had never opened her eyes; but in a moment, in this anguish of being found out, she found out herself, and saw through her cousin’s eyes, as it were, how contemptible it all was.

‘I think you meant it. I don’t think you could have spoken so had you not meant it,’ said Kate, with composure. And then she sat down, and they all looked at each other, Mrs. Anderson standing before the two girls, wringing her hands. I think they realised what had happened better than she did. Her alarm and misery were great. This was a quarrel between her two children—a quarrel which it was very dreadful to contemplate. They had never quarrelled before; little misunderstandings might have arisen between them, but these it was always possible to smooth down; but this was a quarrel. The best thing to do, she felt, was that they should have it out. Thus for once her perception failed her. She stood frightened between them, looking from one to another, not certain on which side the volcano would burst forth. But no volcano burst forth; things had gone too far for that.

As for Kate, she did not know what had come over her. She had become calm without knowing how. All her agitation passed away, and a dead stillness succeeded—a stillness which made her afraid. Two minutes ago her heart and body had been tingling with darts of pain. She had felt the blow everywhere—on her head, which ached and rung as if she had been struck—on her heart, which seemed all over dull pain—even in her limbs, which did not feel able to support her. But now all had altered; a mysterious numbness crept from her feet up to her heart and her head. She did not feel anything; she saw Ombra’s big, startled eyes straining at her, and Mrs. Anderson, standing by, wringing her hands; but neither the one nor the other brought any gleam of feeling to her mind.

‘It is a pity we came here,’ she said, slowly—‘a great pity, for people will discuss everything—I suppose they always do. And I don’t know, indeed, what is best; I am not prepared to propose anything; all seems dark to me. I cannot go on standing in Ombra’s way—that is all I know. I will not do it. And perhaps, if we were all to think it over to-night, and tell what we think to-morrow morning–’ she said, with a smile, which was very faint, and a strong indication to burst forth instead into tears.

‘Oh! my darling!’ said Mrs. Anderson, bewildered by this extraordinary calm.

Kate made a little strange gesture. It was the same with which she had put her aunt away. ‘Don’t!’ she said, under her breath. She could bear what Ombra had said after the first astonishing outburst, but she could not bear that caressing—those sweet names which belong only to those who are loved. Don’t! A touch would have made her recoil—a kiss would have driven her wild and raving, she thought. This was the horror of it all—not that they had quarrelled, but that they had pretended to love her, and all the time had been hating her—or, at the best, had been keeping each other up to the mark by thought of the gratitude and kindness they owed her. Kindness and gratitude!—and yet they had pretended to love.

‘Perhaps it is better I should not say anything,’ said Ombra, with another flush, which this time was that of rising anger. ‘I ought not to have spoken as I did, but I make no apologies—it would be foolish to do so. You must form your own opinion, and nothing that I could say would change it. Of course it is no excuse to say that I would not have spoken as I did had I known you were there.’

‘I did not mean to listen,’ said Kate, colouring a little. ‘You might have seen me all the time; but it is best to say nothing at all now—none of us had better speak. We have to get through dinner, which is a pity. But after that, let us think it over quietly—quite quietly—and in the morning we shall see better. There is no reason,’ she said, very softly, ‘why, because you do not feel for me as I thought you did, we should quarrel; for really there is nothing to quarrel about. One’s love is not in one’s own gift, to be bestowed as one pleases. You have been very kind to me—very kind.’

‘Oh! Kate—oh! my dear child, do you think I don’t love you? Oh! Kate, do not break my heart!’

‘Don’t, aunt, please,’ she said, with a shiver. ‘I don’t feel quite well, and it hurts me. Don’t—any more—now!’

CHAPTER LVII

That was the horrible sting of it—they had made believe to love her, and it had not been true. Now love, Kate reflected (as she went slowly to her room, feeling, somehow, as if every step was a mile), was not like anything else. To counterfeit any other emotion might be pardoned, but to counterfeit love was the last injury anyone could do you. Perhaps it was the wound to her pride which helped the wound to her affections, and made it so bitter. As she thought it all over, she reflected that she had, no doubt, accepted this love much too easily when she went first to her aunt’s charge. She had leapt into their arms, as it were. She had left them no room to understand what their real feelings were; she had taken it for granted that they loved her. She writhed under the humiliation which this recollection brought her. After all it was not, perhaps, they who were in the wrong, but she who had insisted on believing what they had never taken much pains to persuade her of. After all, when she came to think of it, Ombra had made no pretence whatever. The very first time they met, Ombra had repulsed her—she was honest, at least!

To be sure, Mrs. Anderson had been very caressing, but that was her nature. She said dear and darling to every child that came in her way—she petted everybody. Why, then, should Kate have accepted her petting as any sign of special love? It was herself that had been a vain fool, all along. She had taken it for granted: she had assumed it as necessary and certain that they loved her; and they, embarrassed by this faith, had been reluctant to hurt her feelings by undeceiving her; this was how it was. What stings, what tortures of pride and pain, did she give herself as she thought these things over! Gradually she pulled down all the pleasant house that had sheltered her these four—nearly five long years. She plucked it down with her hands. She laid her weary head on her little sofa beside the fire in her room, and watched the flickering shadows, and said to herself that here she was, back in the only home that belonged to her, alone as she had been when she left it. Four cold walls, with so much furniture, new unknown servants, who could not love her—who did not even know her; a cold, cold miserable world outside, and no one in it to whom it would make the difference of a meal or a night’s rest, whether she lived or died. Oh, cold, terrible remorseless fate! back again in Langton-Courtenay, which, perhaps, she ought never to have left, exactly in the same position as when she left it. Kate could not find any solace in tears; they would not come. All her youth of heart, her easy emotions, her childish laughing and crying, were gone. The sunshine of happiness that had lighted up all the world with dazzling lights had been suddenly quenched. She saw everything as it was, natural and true. It was like the sudden enlightenment which came to the dreamer in fairy-land; shrivelled up all the beautiful faces, turning the gold into dross, and the sweetness into corruption.

How far these feelings were exaggerated and overdone, the reader can judge. The spectator, indeed, always sees how much too far the bent bow rebounds when the string is cut, and how far the sufferer goes astray in disappointment and grief, as well as in the extravagances of hope. But, unfortunately, the one who has to go through it never gets the benefit of that tranquilising knowledge. And to Kate all that she saw now seemed too real—more real than anything she had known before—and her desertion complete. She lay on her sofa, and gazed into the fire, and felt her temples beating and her eyes blazing, but could not cry to relieve herself. When Maryanne came upstairs to light her mistress’s candles, and prepare her dress for dinner, she shrieked out to see the flushed face on the sofa-pillow.

‘I have a headache—that is all. Don’t make a fuss,’ cried poor Kate.

‘Miss Kate, you must be going to have a fever. Let me call Mrs. Anderson—let me send for the doctor,’ cried the girl, in dismay. But Kate exerted her authority, and silenced her. She sent her downstairs with messages that she had a headache, and could not come down again, but was going to bed, and would rather not be disturbed.’

Late in the evening, when Mrs. Anderson came to the door, Maryanne repeated the message. ‘I think, ma’am, Miss Kate’s asleep. She said she was not to be disturbed.’