Ombra

But Maryanne did not know how to keep this visitor out. She dared not oppose her, as she stole in on noiseless foot, and went to the bedside. Kate was lying with all her pretty hair in a mass on the pillow, with her eyes closed, and the flush which had frightened Maryanne still on her face. Was she asleep? Mrs. Anderson would have thought so, but for seeing two big teardrops just stealing from her closed eyelashes. She stooped over and kissed her softly on the forehead. ‘God bless you, my dear child, my dear child!’ she whispered, almost wishing she might not be heard; and then stole away to her own room, to the other child, much more tumultuous and exciting, who awaited her. Poor Mrs. Anderson! of all the three she was the one who had the most to bear.

Ombra was pacing up and down the large bed-room, so luxurious and wealthy, her breath coming quick with excitement, her whole frame full of pulses and tinglings of a hundred pains. She, too, had gone through a sharp pang of humiliation; but it had passed over. She was not lonely, like Kate. She had her mother to fall back upon in the meantime; and even failing her mother, she had some one else, another who would support her, upon whom she could lean, and who would give her moral sacking and sympathy. All this makes a wonderful difference in the way people receive a downfall. Ombra had been thunderstruck at first at her own recklessness, and the wounds she had given; but now a certain irritation possessed her, inflaming all the sore places in her mind, and they were not few. She was walking up and down, thinking what she would do, what she would say, how she would no longer be held in subjection, and forced to consider Kate’s ways and Kate’s feelings, Kate this and that. She was sorry she had said what she did—that she could avow without hesitation. She had not meant to hurt her cousin, and of course she had not meant really that she hated her, but only that she was irritated and unhappy, and not in a position to choose her words. Kate was rich, and could have whatever she pleased; but Ombra had nothing but the people who loved her, and she could not bear any interference with them. It was the parable of the ewe-lamb over again, she said to herself; and thus was exciting herself, and swelling her excitement to a higher and higher pitch, when her mother went in—her mother, for whom all this tempest was preparing and upon whom it was about to fall.

‘You have been to see her, mamma! You never think of your own dignity! You have been petting her, and apologising to her!’

‘She is asleep,’ said Mrs. Anderson, sitting down, and leaning her head on her hand. She did not feel able for any more contention. Kate, she felt sure, was not really asleep, but she accepted the semblance, that no more might be said.

Ombra laughed, and, though the laugh sounded mocking, there was a great deal of secret relief in it.

‘Oh! she is asleep! Did not I say she was no more than a child? She has got over it already. When she wakes up she will have forgotten all about it. How excellent those easy-going natures are! I knew it was only for the moment. I knew she had no feelings to speak of. For once, mama, you must acknowledge yourself in the wrong!’

And Ombra sat down too, with an immense weight lifted from her mind. She had not owned it even to herself, but the relief was so great that she felt now what her anxiety had been. ‘Little foolish thing,’ she said, ‘to be so heroical, and make such a noise—’ Ombra laughed almost hysterically—‘and then to go to bed and fall asleep, like a baby! She is little more than a baby—I always told you so, mamma.’

‘You have always been wrong, Ombra, in your estimation of Kate, and you are wrong now. Whether she was asleep or not, I can’t say; she looked like it. But this is a very serious matter all the same. It will not be so easily got over as you think.’

‘I don’t wish it to be got over!’ cried Ombra. ‘It is a kind of life I cannot endure, and it ought not to be asked of me—it is too much to ask of me. You saw the letter. He is to be sent here, with the object of paying his addresses to her, because she is an heiress, and it is thought he ought to marry money. To marry—her! Oh! mamma! he ought not to have said it to me. It was wicked and cruel to make such an explanation.’

‘I think so too,’ said Mrs. Anderson, under her breath.

‘And he does not seem to be horrified by the thought. He says we shall be able to meet– Oh! mother, before this happens let us go away somewhere, and hide ourselves at the end of the earth!’

‘Ombra, my poor child, you must not hide yourself. There are your rights to be considered. It is not that I don’t see how hard it is; but you must not be the one to judge him harshly. We must make allowances. He was alone—he was not under good influence, when he wrote.’

‘Oh! mother, and am I to believe of him that bad influences affect him so? This is making it worse—a thousand times worse! I thought I had foreseen everything that there could be to bear; but I never thought of this.’

‘Alas! poor child, how little did you foresee!’ said Mrs. Anderson, in a low voice—‘not half nor quarter part. Ombra, let us take Kate’s advice. La nuit porte conseil—let us decide nothing to-night.’

‘You can go and sleep, like her,’ said Ombra, somewhat bitterly. ‘I think she is more like you than I am. You will say your prayers, and compose yourself, and go to sleep.’

Mrs. Anderson smiled faintly. ‘Yes, I could have done that when I was as young as you,’ she said, and made no other answer. She was sick at heart, and weary of the discussion. She had gone over the same ground so often, and how often soever she might go over it, the effect was still the same. For what could anyone make of such a hopeless, dreary business?

After all, it was Ombra, with all her passion, who was asleep the first. Her sighs seemed to steal through the room like ghosts, and sometimes a deeper one than usual would cause her mother to steal through the open doorway to see if her child was ill. But after a time the sighs died away, and Mrs. Anderson lay in the darkness of the long Winter night, watching the expiring fire, which burned lower and lower, and listening to the wind outside, and asking herself what was to be the next chapter—where she was to go and what to do. She blamed herself bitterly for all that had happened, and went over it step by step and asked herself how it could have been helped. Of itself, had it been done in the light of day, and with consent of all parties, there had been no harm. She had her child’s happiness to consider chiefly, and not the prejudices of a family with whom she had no acquaintance. How easy it is to justify anything that is done and cannot be undone! and how easy and natural the steps seem by which it was brought about! while all the time something keeps pricking the casuist, whispering, ‘I told you so.’ Yes, she had not been without her warnings; she had known that she ought not to have given that consent which had been wrung from her, as it were, at the sword’s point. She had known that it was weak of her to let principle and honour go, lest Ombra’s cheek should be pale, and her face averted from her mother.

‘It was not Ombra’s fault,’ she said to herself. ‘It was natural that Ombra should do anything she did; but I who am older, who know the world, I should have known better—I should have had the courage to bear even her unhappiness, for her good. Oh, my poor child! and she does not know yet, bad as she thinks it, half of what she may have to bear.’

Thus the mother lay and accused herself, taking first one, and then the other, upon her shoulders, shedding salt tears under the veil of that darkness, wondering where she should next wander to, and what would become of them, and whether light could ever come out of this darkness. How her heart ached!—what fears and heaviness overwhelmed her! while Ombra slept and dreamed, and was happy in the midst of the wretchedness which she had brought upon herself!

CHAPTER LVIII

They were all very subdued when they met next day. It was now, perhaps, more than at any former time that Kate’s position told. Instinctively, without a word of it to each other, Mrs. Anderson and her daughter felt that on her aspect everything depended. They would not have said it to each other, or even to themselves; but, nevertheless, there could not be any doubt on the subject. There were two of them, and they were perfectly free to go and come as they pleased; but the little one—the younger child—the second daughter, who had been quietly subject to them so long, was the mistress of the situation; she was the lady of the house, and they were but her guests. In a moment their positions were changed, and everything reversed. And Kate felt it too. They were both in the breakfast-room when she came in. She was very quiet and pale, unlike her usual self; but when she made her usual greetings, a momentary glow of red came over her face. It burned as she touched Ombra’s cheek with her own. After all that had passed, these habitual kisses were the most terrible thing to go through. It was so hard to break the bond of custom, and so hard to bestow what means love solely for custom’s sake. The two girls reddened as if they had been lovers as they thus approached each other, though for a very different cause; but no stranger, unless he had been very quick-sighted, would have seen the subtle, unexpressed change which each of them felt dropping into their very soul. Kate left the others as soon as breakfast was over, and was absent the whole morning. At lunch she was again visible, and once more they sat and talked, with walls of glass or ice between them. This time, however, Kate gave more distinct indication of her policy.

‘Would you like to have the carriage this afternoon?’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs. Anderson, doubtfully, trying to read her niece’s pleasure in her eyes. ‘If there is anywhere you want to go to, dear–’

‘Oh! if you don’t think of going out, I shall drive to Westerton, to get some books,’ said Kate. ‘I want some German books. It is a long time since I have done any German; but if you want the carriage, never mind—I can go some other day.’

‘I do not want it,’ said Mrs. Anderson, with a chill of dismay; and she turned to Ombra, and made some anxious suggestion about walking somewhere. ‘It will be a nice opportunity while Kate is occupied,’ said the poor soul, scheming to keep things smooth; ‘you said you wanted to see that part of the park.’

‘Yes,’ said Ombra, depressed too, though she would have been too proud to confess it; and thus it was arranged.

Kate drove away alone, and had a hearty cry in the carriage, and was very unhappy; and the mother and daughter went and walked against time in the frost-bound park. It was a bright Winter afternoon, with a pleasant sharpness in the air, and a gorgeous sunset of red and gold. They stopped and pointed it out to each other, and dwelt on all the different gradations of colour, with an artificial delight. The change had come in a way which they had not expected, and they did not know how to face it. It was the only situation which Mrs. Anderson, in her long musings, had not foreseen, and she did not know how to meet it. There was nothing but dismay in her mind—dismay and wonder. All her sagacity was at fault.

This went on for some time. Kate was very kind to her guests; but more and more every day they came to feel themselves guests in the house. She was scarcely ever with them, except at meals; and they would sit together all the long morning, and sometimes all the long afternoon, silent, saying nothing to each other, and hear Kate’s voice far off, perhaps singing as she went through one of the long passages, perhaps talking to Maryanne, or to a dog whom she had brought in from the stable. They sat as if under a spell, for even Ombra was hushed. Her feelings had somehow changed. Instead of the horror with which she had regarded the probable arrival of her lover, she seemed now possessed with a feverish desire to receive him, to see him when he came, to watch him, perhaps to make sure that he was true to her.

‘How can I go away, and know that he is here, and endure it?’ she said to her mother. ‘I must stay!—I must stay! It is wretched; but it would be more wretched to go.’

This was her mood one day; and the next she would be impatient to leave Langton-Courtenay at once, and found the yoke which was upon her intolerable. These were terrible days, as smiling and smooth as of old to all beholders, but with complete change within. Kate was as brave as a lion in carrying out the rôle she had marked out for herself. Even when her heart failed her, she hid it, and went on stoutly in the almost impossible way.

‘I will not interfere with them—I will not ask anything; but otherwise there shall be no change,’ she said to herself, with something of the arrogance of youth, ready to give all, and to believe that it could be accepted without the return of anything. But sometimes it was very hard for her to keep it up; sometimes the peculiar aspect of the scene would fill her with sudden compunctions, sudden longings. Everything looked so like the old, happy days, and yet it was all so different! Sometimes a tone of her aunt’s voice, a movement or a look of Ombra, would bring some old tender recollection back to her mind, and she would feel driven to the last extremity to prevent herself from bursting into tears, or making a wild appeal to them to let things be as they were again. But she resisted all these impulses, saying to herself, with forlorn pride, that the old love had never existed, that it had been but a delirium of her own, and that consequently there was nothing to appeal to. She resumed her German, and worked at it with tremendous zeal in the library by herself. German is an admirable thing when one has been crossed in love, or mortified in friendship. How often has it been resorted to in such circumstances—and has always afforded a certain consolation! And Kate plunged into parish business, to the great delight and relief of Minnie Hardwick, and showed all her old love of the ‘human interest’ of the village, the poor folk’s stories and their difficulties. She tired herself out, and went back and put off her grey frock, and arrayed herself, and sat down at the table with Ombra, languid and heavy-eyed, and Mrs. Anderson, who greeted her with faint smiles. There was little conversation at the table; and it grew less and less as the days went on. These dinners were not amusing; and yet they had some interest too, for each watched the other, wondering what she would next do or say.

I cannot tell exactly how long this lasted. It seemed to all three an eternity. But one afternoon, when Kate came in from a long walk to the other side of the parish, she found a letter conspicuously placed on the hall-table, where she could not fail to see it. She trembled a little when she saw her aunt’s handwriting. And there were fresh carriage-wheels marking the way down the avenue; she had noticed this as she came up. She sat down on the settle in the hall, where Mrs. Anderson had placed herself on the day of their return, and read the following letter with surprise, and yet without surprise. It gave her a shock as of suddenness and strangeness; and yet she had known that it must happen all along.

‘My dearest Kate,

‘If you can think, when you read this, that I do not mean what I say, you will be very, very wrong. All these years I have loved you as if you were my own child. I could not have done otherwise—it is not in nature. But this is not what I want to say. We are going away. It is not with my will, and yet it is not against my will; for even to leave you alone in the house is better than forcing you to live this unnatural life. Good-bye, my dear, dear child! I cannot tell you—more’s the pity!—the circumstances that have made my poor Ombra bitter with everything, including her best friends; but she is very, very sorry, always, after she has said those dreadful words which she does not mean, but which seem to give a little relief to her suffering and bitterness. This is all I can tell you now. Some time or other you will know everything; and then, though you may blame us, you will pity us too. I want to tell you that it never was my wish to keep the secret from you—nor even Ombra’s. At least, she would have yielded, but the other party to the secret would not. Dearest child, forgive me! I go away from you, however, with a very sore heart, and I don’t know where we shall go, or what we shall do. Ever your most affectionate

‘A. Anderson.

‘P.S.—I have written to your uncle, that unavoidable circumstances, over which I have no control, compelled my leaving. I should prefer that you did not say anything to him about what these circumstances were.’

Kate sat still for some time after she had read her letter. She had expected it—it was inevitable; but, oh! with what loneliness the house began to fill behind her! She sat and gazed into the fire, dumb, bearing the blow as she best could. She had expected it, and yet she never believed it possible. She had felt sure that something would turn up to reconcile them—that one day or another, sooner or later, they would all fall upon each other’s necks, and be at one again. She was seized suddenly by that fatal doubt of herself which always comes too late. Had she done right, after all? People must be very confident of doing right who have such important matters in hand. Had she sufficient reason? Was it not mean and paltry of her, in her own house, to have resented a few unconsidered words so bitterly? In her own house! And then she had been the means of turning these two, whom she loved, whether they loved her or not, out upon the world. Kate sat without stirring while the early darkness fell. It crept about her imperceptibly, dimness, and silence, and solitude. The whole great house was a vast desert of silence—not a sound, not a voice, nothing audible but the fall of the ashes on the hearth. The servants’ rooms were far away, shut off by double doors, that no noises might disturb their mistress. Oh! what would not Kate have given for the cheerful sound of the kitchen, that used to be too audible at Shanklin, which her aunt always complained of. Her aunt! who had been like her mother! And where was she now? She began to gasp and sob hysterically, but could not cry. And there was nobody to take any notice. She heard her own voice, but nobody else heard it. They were gone! Servants, new servants, filled the house, noiseless creatures, decorous and well-bred, shut in with double doors, that nobody might hear any sound of them. And she alone!—a girl not twenty!—alone in a house which could put up fifty people!—in a house where there was no sound, no light, no warmth, no fire, no love!

She sat there till it was dark, and never moved. Why should she move? There was no fireside to go to, no one whose presence made home. She was as well on the settle in the hall as anywhere else. The darkness closed over her. What did she care? She sat stupefied, with the letter in her hand.

And there she was found when Mr. Spigot, the butler, came to light the lamp. He gave a jump when he saw something in the corner of the settle. And that something started too, and drew itself together, and said, ‘Is it so late? I did not know!’ and put her hands across her dazzled eyes.

‘I beg you a thousand pardons, miss,’ said Spigot, confused, for he had been whistling under his breath. ‘I didn’t know as no one wasn’t there.’

‘Never mind,’ said Kate. ‘Give me a candle, please. I suppose I must have dropped asleep.’

Had she dropped asleep really ‘for sorrow?’—had she fainted and come to again, nobody being the wiser? Kate could not tell—but there had been a moment of unconsciousness one way or the other; and when she crept upstairs with her candle, a solitary twinkle like a glow-worm in the big staircase, she felt chilled to the bone, aching and miserable. She crept upstairs into the warmth of her room, and, looking in the glass, saw that her face was as the face of a ghost. Her hair had dropped down on one side, and the dampness of the evening had taken all the curl out of it. It fell straight and limp upon her colourless cheek. She went and kneeled down before the fire and warmed herself, which seemed the first necessity of all. ‘How cold one gets when one is unhappy!’ she said, half aloud; and the murmur of her own voice sounded strange in her ear. Was it the only voice that she was now to hear?

When Maryanne came with the candles, it was a comfort to Kate. She started up from the fire. She had to keep up appearances—to look as if nothing had happened. Maryanne, for her part, was running over with the news.

‘Have you heard, miss, as Mrs. Anderson and Miss Ombra is gone?’ she asked, as soon as decency would permit. The whole house had been moved by this extraordinary departure, and the entire servants’ hall hung upon Maryanne for news.

‘Yes,’ said Kate, calmly. ‘I thought I should be back in time, but I was too late. I hope my aunt had everything comfortable. Maryanne, as I am all alone, you can bring me up some tea here—I can’t take the trouble to dine—alone.’

‘Very well, miss,’ said Maryanne; ‘it will be a deal comfortabler. If Mrs. Spigot had known as the ladies was going, she would have changed the dinner—but it was so sudden-like.’

‘Yes, it was very sudden,’ said Kate. And thus Maryanne carried no news downstairs.

CHAPTER LIX

Kate’s life seemed to stop at this point. For a few days she did not know what she did. She would have liked to give in, and be ill, but dared not, lest her aunt (who did not love her) should be compromised. Therefore she kept up, and walked and went to the parish and chattered with Minnie Hardwick, and even tried her German, though this latter attempt was not very successful.

‘My aunt was called away suddenly on business,’ she explained to Mrs. Hardwick.

‘What! and left you alone—quite alone in that great house?’ cried Mrs. Hardwick. ‘It is not possible! How lonely for you! But I suppose she will only be gone for a few days?’

‘I scarcely know. It is business that has taken her away, and nobody can answer for business,’ said Kate, with an attempt at a laugh. ‘But the servants are very good, and I shall do very well. I am not afraid of being alone.’

‘Not afraid, I daresay, but dreadfully solitary. It ought not to be,’ said Mrs. Hardwick, in a tone of reproof. And the thought passed through her mind that she had never quite approved of Mrs. Anderson, who seemed to know much more of Bertie than was at all desirable, and, no doubt, had attempted to secure him for that pale girl of hers. ‘Though what any gentleman could see in her, or how anyone could so much as look at her while Kate Courtenay was by, I don’t understand,’ she said, after discussing the question in private.

‘Oh, mamma! I think she is so sweet and pretty,’ said Edith. ‘But I am sure Bertie does not like her. Bertie avoided her—he was scarcely civil. I am sure if there is anyone that Bertie admires it is Kate.’

Mrs. Hardwick shook her head.

‘Bertie knows very well,’ she said, ‘that Miss Courtenay is out of his reach—delightful as she is, and everything we could desire—except that she is rather too rich; but that is no reason why he should go and throw himself away on some girl without a penny. I don’t put any faith in his avoiding Miss Anderson. When a young man avoids a young woman it is much the same as when he seeks her society. But, Minnie, run away and look after your club books; you are too young yet to hear such matters discussed.’

‘Edith is only a year older than I am,’ said Minnie, within herself, ‘but then she is almost a married lady.’ And with this she comforted her heart, which was not without its private flutters too.

And Kate kept on her way, very bravely holding up her little flag of resolution. She sat in the room which they had all occupied together, and had coals heaped upon the two fires, and could not get warm. The silence of the place made her sick and faint. She got up and walked about, in the hope of hearing at least her own step, and could not on the soft carpet. When she coughed, it seemed to ring all through the house. She got frightened when she caught a glimpse of herself in the great mirror, and thought it was a ghost. She sent to Westerton for all the novels that were to be had, and these were a help to her; but still, to sit in a quiet room, with yourself now and then seen passing through the glass like a thief, and nothing audible but the ashes falling from the grate, is a terrible experience for a girl. She heard herself breathing; she heard her cough echo down all the long galleries. She had her stable dog washed and brushed, and made fit for good society, in the hope that he would take to the drawing-room, and live with her, and give her some one to speak to. But, after all, he preferred the stables, being only a mongrel, without birth or breeding. This rather overcame Kate’s bravery; but only once did she thoroughly break down. It was the day after her aunt left, and, with a sudden recollection of companionship and solace still remaining, she had said to Maryanne, ‘Go and call old Francesca.’ ‘Francesca, miss!—oh! bless you, she’s gone with her lady,’ said Maryanne; and Kate, who had not expected this, broke down all at once, and had a fit of crying.