‘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. Allthese 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.’
‘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. Allthese 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 thecheerful 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 Ombrais 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.
Kate’slife 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 manavoidsa young woman it is much the sameas 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.
‘Never mind—it is nothing. I thought they meant to leave Francesca,’ she said, incoherently. Thus it became evident to her that they were gone, and gone for ever. And Kate went back to her melancholy solitude, and took up her novel; but when she had read the first page, she stopped, and began to think. She had done no wrong to anyone. If there was wrong, it had been done to her. She had tried even to resist all feelings of resentment, and to look as if she had forgotten the wrong done her. Yet it was she who was being punished, as if she were the criminal. Nobody anywhere, whatever harm they might have done, had been punished so sorely. Solitary confinement!—was not that the worst of all—the thing that drives people mad?
Then Mr. Courtenay wrote in a state of great fret and annoyance.What did Mrs. Anderson mean by leaving him in the lurch just then, she and her daughter? She had not even given him an address, that he might write to her and remonstrate (he had intended to supersede her in Spring, to be sure, but he did not think it necessary to mention that); and here he was in town, shut up with a threatening of bronchitis, and it was as much as his life was worth to travel now. Couldn’t she get some one to stay with her, or get along somehow until Lady Caryisfort came home?
Kate wrote him a brave little letter, saying that of course she could get on—that he need not be at all troubled about her—that she was quite happy, and should prefer being left as she was. When she had written it, she lay down on the rug before the fire, and had a cry, and then came to herself, and sent to ask if Minnie Hardwick might spend the evening with her. Minnie’s report brought her mother up next morning, who found that Kate had a bad cold, and sent for the doctor, and kept her in bed; and all the fuss of this little illness—though Kate believed she hated fuss—did her good. Her own room was pleasanter than the drawing-room. It was natural to be alone there; and as she lay on the sofa, and was read to by Minnie, there seemed at times a possibility that life might mend. And next day and the next, though she recovered, this companionship went on. Minnie was not very wise, but she chattered about everything in heaven and earth. She talked of her brother—a subject in which Kate could not help taking an interest, which was half anger, half something else. She asked a hundred questions about Florence—
‘Did you really see a great deal of Bertie? How funny that he should not have told us! Men are so odd!’ cried Minnie. ‘If it had been I, I should have raved about you for ever and ever!’
‘Because you are silly and—warm-hearted,’ said Kate, with a sigh. ‘Yes, I think we saw them pretty often.’
‘Why do you saythem?’
‘Why?—because the two were always together! We never expected to see one without the other.’
‘Like your cousin and you,’ said innocent Minnie. And then she laughed.
‘Why do you laugh?’ said Kate.
‘Oh! nothing—an idea that came into my head. I have heard of two sisters marrying two brothers, but never of two pair of cousins—it would be funny.’
‘But altogether out of the question, as it happens,’ said Kate, growing stately all at once.
‘Oh! don’t be angry. I did not mean anything. Was Bertie very attentive to Miss Anderson in Florence? We wondersometimes. For I am sure he avoided her here; and mamma says she puts no faith in a gentleman avoiding a lady. It is as bad as—what doyouthink?—unless you would rather not say,’ added Minnie, shyly; ‘or if you think I oughtn’t to ask——’
‘I don’t know anything about Mr. Bertie Hardwick’s feelings,’ said Kate. And then she added, with a little sadness which she could not quite conceal, ‘Nor about anybody, Minnie. Don’t ask me, please. I am not clever enough to find things out; and nobody ever confides in me.’
‘I am sure I should confide in you first of all!’ cried Minnie, with enthusiasm. ‘Oh! when I recollect how much we used to be frightened for you, and what a funny girl we thought you; and then to think I should know you so well now, and have got so—fond of you—may I say so?’ said the little girl, who was proud of her post.
Kate made no answer for a full minute, and then she said,
‘Minnie, you are younger than I am, a great deal younger——’
‘I am eighteen,’ said Minnie, mortified.
‘But I am nineteen and a half, and very, very old for my age. At your age one does not know which is the real thing and which is the shadow—there are so many shadows in this world; and sometimes you take them for truth, and when you find it out it is hard.’
Minnie followed this dark saying with a puzzled little face.
‘Yes,’ she said, perplexed, ‘like Narcissus, you mean, and the dog that dropped the bone. No, I don’t mean that—that is too—too—common-place. Oh! did you ever see Bertie Eldridge’s yacht? I think I heard he had it at the Isle of Wight. It was called theShadow. Oh! I would give anything to have a sail in a yacht!’
Ah! that was called theShadowtoo. Kate felt for a moment as if she had found something out; but it was a delusion, an idea which she could not identify—a Will-o’-the-Wisp, which looked like something, and was nothing. ‘I have a shadow too,’ she murmured, half to herself. But before Minnie’s wondering eyes and tongue could ask what it meant, Spigot came solemnly to the door. He had to peer into the darkness to see his young mistress on the sofa.
‘If you please, Miss Courtenay,’ he said, ‘there is a gentleman downstairs wishes to see you; and he won’t take no answer as I can offer. He says if you hear his name——’
‘What is his name?’ cried Kate. She did not know what she expected, but it made her heart beat. She sat up, on her sofa, throwing off her wraps, notwithstanding Minnie’s remonstrances. Who could it be?—or rather, what?
‘The Reverend Mr. Sugden, Miss,’ said Mr. Spigot.
‘Mr. Sugden!’ She said the name two or three times over before she could remember. Then she rose, and directed Spigot to light the candles. She did not know how it was, but new vigour somehow seemed to come into her veins.
‘Minnie,’ she said, ‘this is a gentleman who knows my aunt. He has come, I suppose, about her business. I want you to stay just now; but if I put up my hand so, will you run upstairs and wait for me in my room? Take the book. You will be a true little friend if you will do this.’
‘Leave you alone!—with a gentleman!’ said Minnie. ‘But then of course he must be an old gentleman, as he has come about business,’ she said to herself; and added hastily, ‘Of course I will. And if you don’t put up your hand—so—must I stay?’
‘I am sure to put it up,’ said Kate.
The room by this time was light and bright, and Spigot’s solemn step was heard once more approaching. Kate placed herself in a large chair. She looked as imposing and dignified as she could, poor child!—the solitary mistress of her own house. But how strange it was to see the tall figure come in—the watchful, wistful face she remembered so well! He held out his large hand, in which her little one was drowned, just as he used to do. He glanced round him in the same way, as if Ombra might be somewhere about in the corners. His Shadow too! Kate could not doubt that. But when she gave Minnie her instructions, she had taken it for granted that there would have been certain preliminaries to the conversation—inquiries about herself, or information about what she was doing. But Mr. Sugden was full of excitement and anxiety. He took her small hand into his big one, which swallowed it up, as we have said, and he held it, as some men hold a button.
‘I hear they have left you,’ he said. ‘Tell me, is it true?’
‘Yes,’ said Kate, too much startled to give her signal, ‘they have left me.’
‘And you don’t know where they have gone?’
She remembered now, and Minnie disappeared, curious beyond all description. Then Kate withdrew her hand from that mighty grasp.
‘I don’t know where they have gone. Have you heard anything of them, Mr. Sugden? Have you brought me, perhaps, a message?’
He shook his head.
‘I heard it all vaguely, only vaguely; but you know how I used to feel, Miss Kate. I feel the same still. Though it is not what I should have wished—I am ready to be a brother to her. Will you tell me all that has passed since you went away?’
‘All that has passed?’
‘If you will, Miss Kate—as you would be kind to one who does not care very much what happens to him! You are kind, I know—and you love her!’
The tears came to Kate’s eyes. She grew warm and red all over, throwing off, as it were, in a moment, the palsy of cold and misery that had come over her.
‘Yes,’ she said suddenly, ‘I love her,’ and cried. Mr. Sugden looked on, not knowing why.
Kate felt herself changed as in a moment; she felt—nay, she was herself again. What did it matter whether they loved her?—she loved them. That was, after all, what she had most to do with. She dried her tears, and she told her story, straight off, like a tale she had been taught, missing nothing. And he drank it all in to the end, not missing a word. When she had finished he sat silent, with a sombre countenance, and not a syllable was spoken between them for ten minutes at least. Then he said aloud, as if not talking, but thinking,
‘The question is which?’ Then he raised his eyes and looked at her. ‘Which?’ he repeated.
Kate grew pale again, and felt a choking in her throat. She bowed her head, as if she were accepting her fate.
‘Mr. Bertie Hardwick!’ she said.
Thisstrange little incident, which at the moment it was occurring seemed to be perfectly natural, but as soon as that moment was over became inexplicable, dropped into Kate’s life as a stone drops into water. It made a curious commotion and a bustle for the moment, and stirred faintly for a little while afterwards, and then disappeared, and was thought of no more.
Mr. Sugden would not stay, he would not even eat in the house. He had come down from town to the station six miles off, the nearest station for Langton-Courtenay, and there he meant to return again as soon as he had his information. Kate had been much troubled as to how she, in her unprotected condition, was to ask him to stay; but when she found out he would not stay, an uncomfortable sensation as of want of hospitality came over her. But when he was actually gone, and Minnie Hardwick called back, somehow the entire incident appeared like a dream, and it seemed impossible that anything important had happened. Minnie was not curious; business was to her a sacred word, which covered all difficulties. The Curate was not old, as she had supposed; but otherwise being a friend of Mrs. Anderson’s, and involved in her affairs, his sudden visit seemed perfectly natural. Just so men would come down from town, and be shut up with her father for an hour or two, and then disappear; and Kate as a great lady, as an heiress and independent person, no doubt must have the same kind of visitors.
Kate, however, thought a great deal of it that night—could not sleep, indeed, for thinking of it; but less the next morning, and still less the day after, till at length the tranquillity settled back into its old stillness. Mr. Sugden had done her good, so far that he had roused her to consciousness of a hearty sentiment in herself, independent of anything from without—the natural affection which was her own independent possession, and not a reflection of other people’s love. What though they did not love her even? she loved them; and as soon as she became conscious of this, she was saved from the mental harmthat might have happened to her. It gave Kate pain when day after day passed on, and no word came from those who had departed from her so suddenly. But then she was young, and had been brought up in the persuasion that everything was likely to turn out right at the end, and that permanent unhappiness was a very rare thing. She was not alarmed about the safety of those who had deserted her; they were two, nay, three people together; they were used to taking care of themselves; so far as she knew, they had money enough and all that was required. And then her own life was so strange; it occupied her almost like a fairy-life. She thought she had never heard of any one so forlorn and solitary. The singularity of her position did her good. She was half proud, half amused by it; she smiled when her visitors would remark upon her singular loneliness—‘Yes, it seems strange to you, I suppose,’ she said; but I don’t mind it.’ It was a small compensation, but still it was a kind of compensation, indemnifying her for some at least of her trouble. The Andersons had disappeared into the great darkness of the world; but some day they would turn up again and come back to her and make explanations. And although she had been impressed by Mr. Sugden’s visit, she was not actually anxious about the future of her aunt and cousin; some time or other things naturally would put themselves right.
This, however, did not prevent the feeling of her loneliness from being terrible to her—insupportable; but it removed all complications from her feelings, and made them simple. And thus she lived on for months together, as if in a dream, always assuring Mr. Courtenay that she did very well, that she wanted nothing, getting a little society in the Rectory with the Hardwicks, and with some of her county neighbours who had called upon her. Minnie got used to the carriage, and to making expeditions into Westerton, the nearest town, and liked it. And strangely and stilly as ever Châtelaine lived in an old castle, in such a strange maiden seclusion lived Kate.
Where had the others gone? She ascertained before long that they were not at Shanklin—the Cottage was still let to ‘very nice people,’ about whom Lucy Eldridge wrote very enthusiastic letters to her cousin—letters which Kate would sometimes draw her innocent moral from, not without a little faint pain, which surprised her in the midst of all graver troubles. She pointed out to Minnie how Lucy Eldridge had rejected the very idea of being friendly with the new comers, much less admitting them to a share in the place Kate held in her heart. ‘Whereas now you see I am forgotten altogether,’ Kate said, with a conscious melancholy that was not disagreeable to her. Minnie protested that with her such a thing could never happen—it was impossible; and Kate smiled sadly, and shook her head in her superiorknowledge. She took Minnie into her intimacy with a sense of condescension. But the friendship did her good. And Mrs. Hardwick was very kind to her. They were all anxious to ‘be of use’ to the heiress, to help her through her melancholy hours.
When Bertie came down for his next flying visit, she manœuvred so that she succeeded in avoiding him, though he showed no desire this time to avoid her. But, Kate said to herself, this was something that she could not bear. She could not see him as if he were an indifferent stranger, when she knew well that he could reveal to her everything she wanted to know, and set the tangle right at last. He knew where they were without doubt—he knew everything. She could not meet him calmly, and shake hands with him, and pretend she did not remember the past. She was offended with him, both for their sake and her own—for Ombra’s sake, because of the secret; and for her own, because of certain little words and looks which were an insult to her from Ombra’s lover. No, she could not see him. She had a bad headache when he came with his mother to call; she was not able to go out when she was asked to the Rectory. She saw him only at church, and did nothing but bow when he hurried to speak to her in the churchyard. No, that she would not put up with. There was even a certain contempt mingled with her soreness. Mrs. Anderson had put all the blame upon him—the ‘other party to the secret;’ while he, poor creature, would not even take the responsibility upon his own shoulders bravely, but blamed Ombra. Well! well! Kate resolved that she would keep her solitude unbroken, that she would allow no intrusion upon her of all the old agitations that once had made her unhappy. She would not consent to allow herself to be made unhappy any longer, or even to think of those who had given her so much pain.
Unfortunately, however, after she had made this good resolution, she thought of nothing else, and puzzled herself over the whole business, and especially Bertie’s share in it, night and day. He would suddenly start up into her mind when she was thinking of something else, with a glow over his face, and anxious gleam in his eyes, as she had seen him at the church door. Perhaps, then, though so late, he had meant to explain. Perhaps he intended to lay before her what excuses there might be—to tell her how one thing followed another, how they had been led into clandestine ways.
Kate would make out an entire narrative to herself and then would stop short suddenly, and ask herself what she meant by it? It was not for her to explain for them, but for them to explain to her. But she did not want to think badly of them. Even when her wounds had been deepest, she did not wish to think unkindly; and it would have given her a kind of forlorn pleasureto be able to find out their excuses beforehand. This occupied her many an hour when she sat alone in the stillness, to which she gradually became accustomed. After awhile her own reflection in the glass no longer struck her as looking like a ghost or a thief; she grew used to it. And then the way in which she threw herself into the parish did one good to see. Minnie Hardwick felt that Kate’s activity and Kate’s beneficence took away her breath. She filled the cottages with what Mrs. Hardwick felt to be luxuries, and disapproved of. She rushed into Westerton continually, to buy things for the old women. One had an easy-chair, another a carpet, another curtains to keep out the wind from the draughty cottage room.
‘My dear, you will spoil the people; these luxuries are quite out of their reach. We ought not to demoralize them,’ said the clergywoman, thinking of the awful consequences, and of the expectations and discontents that would follow.
‘If old Widow Morgan belonged to me—if she was my grandmother, for instance,’ said revolutionary Kate, ‘would there be anything in the world too good for her? We should hunt the draughts out of every corner, and pad everything with velvet. And I suppose an old woman of eighty in a cottage feels it just as much.’
Mrs. Hardwick was silenced, but not convinced; she was, indeed, shocked beyond measure at the idea of Widow Morgan requiring as many comforts as Kate’s grandmother. ‘The girl has no discrimination whatever; she does not see the difference; it is of no use trying to explain to her,’ she said, with a troubled countenance. But, except these little encounters, there was no real disagreement between them. Bertie Hardwick’s family, indeed, took an anxious interest in Kate. They were not worldly-minded people, but they could not forget that their son had been thrown a great deal into the society of a great heiress, both in the Isle of Wight and in Italy. The knowledge that he was in Kate’s vicinity had indeed made them much more tolerant, though nobody said so, of his wanderings. They had not the heart, they said, to separate him from his cousin, to whom he was so much attached; but behind this there was perhaps lurking another reason. Not that they would ever have forced their son’s affections, or advised, under any circumstances, a mercenary marriage; but only, all other things being so suitable—Mrs. Hardwick, who liked to manage everybody, and did it very well, on the whole, took Kate into her hands with a glow of satisfaction. She would have liked to form her and mould her, and make her all that a woman in her important position ought to be; and, of course, no one could tell what might happen in the future. It was well to be prepared for all.
Mr. Courtenay, for his part, though not quite so happy abouthis niece, and troubled by disagreeable pricks of conscience in respect to her, made all right by promises. He would come in a week or two—as soon as his cold was better—when he had got rid of the threatening of the gout, which rather frightened his doctor. Finally, he promised without doubt that he would come in the Easter recess, and make everything comfortable. But in the Easter recess it became absolutely necessary for him, for important private affairs, to go down to the Duke of Dorchester’s marine palace, where there were some people going whom it was absolutely essential that he should meet. And thus it came to pass that Kate spent her twentieth birthday all alone at Langton-Courtenay. Nobody knew or remembered that it was her birthday. There was not so much as an old servant about the place to think of it. Maryanne, to be sure, might have remembered, but did not until next morning, when she broke forth with, ‘La, Miss Kate!’ into good wishes and regrets, which Kate, with a flushed face and sore heart, put a stop to at once. No, no one knew. It is a hard thing, even when one is old, to feel that such domestic anniversaries have fallen into oblivion, and no one cares any longer for the milestones of our life; but when one is young—!
Kate went about all day long with this secret bursting in her heart. She would not tell it for pride, though, if she had, all the Hardwick family, at least, would have been ready enough with kisses and congratulations. She carried it about with her like a pain that she was hiding. ‘It is my birthday,’ she said to herself, when she paused before the big glass, and looked at her own solitary figure, and tried to make a little forlorn fun of herself; ‘good morning, Kate, I will give you a present. It will be the only one you will get to-day,’ she said, laughing, and nodding at her representative in the glass, whose eyes were rather red; ‘but I will not wish you many returns, for I am sure you don’t want them. Oh! you poor, poor girl!’ she cried, after a moment—‘I am so sorry for you! I don’t think there is anyone so solitary in all the world.’ And then Kate and her image both sat down upon the floor and cried.
But in the afternoon she went to Westerton, with Minnie Hardwick all unconscious beside her in the carriage, and bought herself the present she had promised. It was a tiny little cross, with the date upon it, which Minnie marvelled at much, wondering if it was to herself that this memento was to be presented. Kate had a strong inclination to place the words ‘Infelicissimo giorno’ over the date, but stopped, feeling that it might look romantic; but it was the unhappiest day to her—the worst, she thought, she had ever yet had to bear.
When she came home, however, a letter was put into her hands. It was from Mrs. Anderson at last.
Kate’sexistence, however, was too monotonous to be dwelt upon for ever, and though all that can be afforded to the reader is a glimpse of other scenes, yet there are one or two such glimpses which may help him to understand how other people were affected by this complication of affairs. Bertie Hardwick went up to London after that second brief visit at the Rectory, when Miss Courtenay had so successfully eluded seeing him, with anything but comfortable feelings. He had never quite known how she looked upon himself, but now it became apparent to him that whatever might be the amount of knowledge which she had acquired, it had been anything but favourable to him. How far he had a right to Kate’s esteem, or whether, indeed, it was a right thing for him to be anxious about it, is quite a different question. He was anxious about it. He wanted to stand well in the girl’s eyes. He had known her all his life, he said to himself. Of course they could only be acquaintances, not even friends, in all probability, so different must their lines of life be; but still it was hard to feel that Kate disliked him, that she thought badly of him. He had no right to care, but he did care. He stopped in his work many and many a day to think of it. And then he would lay down his book or his pen, and gnaw his nails (a bad habit, which his mother vainly hoped she had cured him of), and think—till all the law went out of his head which he was studying.
This was very wrong, and he did not do it any more than he could help; but sometimes the tide of rising thought was too much for him. Bertie was settling to work, as he had great occasion to do. He had lost much time, and there was not a moment to be lost in making up for it. Within the last three months, indeed, his careless life had sustained a change which filled all his friends with satisfaction. It was but a short time to judge by, but yet, if ever man had seen the evil of his ways, and set himself, with true energy, to mend them, it was Bertie, everybody allowed. He had left his fashionable and expensive cousin the moment they had arrived in London. Instead of Bertie Eldridge’s fashionable quarters, in one of the streets offPiccadilly, which hitherto he had shared, he had established himself in chambers in the Temple, up two pair of stairs, where he was working, it was reported, night and day. Bertie Eldridge, indeed, had so frightened all his people by his laughing accounts of the wet towels which bound the other Bertie’s head of nights, while he laboured at his law books, that the student received three several letters on the subject—one from each of his aunts, and one from his mother.
‘My dear, it goes to my heart to hear how you are working,’ the latter said. ‘I thank God that my own boy is beginning to see what is necessary to hold his place in life. But not too much, dearest Bertie, not too much. What would it avail me if my son came to be Lord Chancellor, and lost his health, or even his life, on the way?’
This confusing sentence did not make Bertie ridicule the writer, for he was, strange to say, very fond of his mother, but he wrote her a merry explanation, and set her fears at rest. However, though he did not indulge in wet towels, he had begun to work with an energy no one expected of him. He had a motive. He had seen the necessity, as his mother said. To wander all over the world with Bertie Eldridge, whose purse was carelessly free, but whose way it was, unconsciously, while intending to save his friends from expense, to draw them into greater and ever greater outlay, was not a thing which could be done, or which it would be at all satisfactory to do for life. And many very grave thoughts had come to Bertie on the journey home. Perhaps he had grown just a little disgusted with his cousin, who saw everything from his own point of view, and could not enter into the feelings and anxieties of a poorer man.
‘Oh! bother! All will come right in the end,’ he would say, when his cousin pointed out to him the impossibility for himself of the situation, so far as he himself was concerned.
‘How can it come right for me?’ Hardwick had asked.
‘How you do worry!’ said Bertie Eldridge. ‘Haven’t we always shared everything? And why shouldn’t we go on doing so? I may be kept out of it, of course, for years and years, but not for ever. Hang it, Bertie, you know all must come right in the end; and haven’t we shared everything all our lives?’
This is a sort of speech which it is very difficult to answer. It is so much easier for the richer man to feel benevolent and liberal than for the poorer man to understand his ground of gratitude in such a partnership. Bertie Eldridge, had, no doubt, shared many of his luxuries with his cousin. He had shared his yacht for instance—a delight which Bertie Hardwick could by no means have procured himself—but, while doing this, he had drawn the other into such waste of time and money as he never could have been tempted to otherwise. Bertie Hardwickknew that had he not ‘shared everything’ with his cousin he would have been a wealthier man: and how then could he be grateful for that community of goods which the other Bertie was so lavishly conscious of?
‘He can have spent nothing while we were together,’ the latter was always saying. ‘He must have saved, in short, out of the allowance my uncle gives him.’
Bertie Hardwick knew that the case was very different, but he could not be so ungenerous as to insist upon this in face of his cousin’s delightful sense of liberality. He held his tongue, and this silence did not make him more amiable. In short, the partnership had been broken, as partnerships of the kind are generally broken, with a little discomfort on both sides.
Bertie Eldridge continued his pleasant, idle life—did what he liked, and went where he liked, though, perhaps, with less freedom than of old; while Bertie Hardwick retired to Pump Court and worked—as the other said—night and day. He was hard at work one of those Spring afternoons which Kate spent down at Langton. His impulse towards labour was new, and, as yet, it had many things to struggle against. He had not been brought up to work; he had been an out-of-door lad, fond of any pursuit that implied open air and exercise. Most young men are so brought up now-a-days, whether it is the best training for them or not; and since he took his degree, which had not been accompanied by any distinction, he had been yachting, travelling, amusing himself—none of which things are favourable to work in Pump Court, upon a bright April afternoon. His window was open, and the very air coming in tantalized and tempted him. It plucked at his hair; it disordered his papers; it even blew the book close which he was bending over. ‘Confound the wind!’ said Bertie. But, somehow, he could not shut the window. How fresh it blew! even off the questionable Thames, reminding the solitary student of walks and rides through the budding woods; of the first days of the boating season; of all the delights of the opening year; confound the wind! He opened his book, and went at it again with a valorous and manful heart, a heart full of anxieties, yet with hope in it too, and, what is almost better than hope—determination. The book was very dry, but Bertie applied to it that rule which is so good in war—so good in play—capital for cricket and football, in the hunting-field, and wherever daring and patience are alike necessary—he would not be beat! It is, perhaps, rather a novel doctrine to apply to a book about conveyancing—or, at least, such a use of it was novel to Bertie. But it answered all the same.
And it was just as he was getting the mastery of his own mind, and forgetting, for the moment, the fascinations of thesunshine and the errant breeze, that some one came upstairs with a resounding hasty footstep and knocked at his door. ‘It’s Bertie,’ he said to himself, with a sigh, and opened to the new-comer. Now he was beat, but not by the book—by fate, and the evil angels—not by any fault of his own.
Bertie Eldridge came in, bringing a gust of fresh air with him. He seated himself on his cousin’s table, scorning the chairs. His brow was a little clouded, though he was like one of the butterflies who toil not, neither do they spin.
‘By Jove! to see you there grinding night and day, makes a man open his eyes—you that were no better than other people. What do you think you’ll ever make of it, old fellow? Not the Woolsack, mind you—I give in to you a great deal, but you’re not clever enough for that.’
‘I never thought I was,’ said the other, laughing, but not with pleasure; and then there was a pause, and I leave it to the reader to judge which were the different interlocutors in the dialogue which follows, for to continue writing ‘Bertie,’ and ‘the other Bertie,’ is more than human patience can bear.
‘You said you had something to say to me—out with it! I have a hundred things to do. You never were so busy in your life as I am. Indeed, I don’t suppose you know what being occupied means.’
‘Of course it is the old subject I want to talk of. What could it be else! What is to be done? You know everything that has happened as well as I do. Busy! If you knew what my reflections are early and late, waking and sleeping——’
‘I think I can form an idea. Has something new occurred—or is it the old question, the eternal old business, which you never thought of, unfortunately, till it was too late?’
‘It is no business of yours to taunt me, nor is it a friend’s office. I am driven to my wit’s ends. For anything I can see, things may go on as they are for a dozen years.’
‘Everybody must have felt so from the beginning. How you could be so mad, both she and you; you most, in one way, for you knew the world better; she most, in another, for it is of more importance to a woman.’
‘Shut up, Bertie. I won’t have any re-discussion of that question. The thing is, what is to be done now? I was such a fool as to write to her about going down to Langton, at my father’s desire; and now I dare not go, or she will go frantic. Besides, she says it must be acknowledged before long: she must do it, if I can’t.’
‘Good God!’
‘What is there to be horrified about? It was all natural. The thing is, what is to be done? If she would keep quiet, all would be right. I am sure her mother could manage everything.One place is as good as another to live in. Don’t look at me like that. I am distracted—going mad—and you won’t give me any help.’
‘The question is, what help can I give?’
‘It is easy enough—as easy as daylight. If I were to go, it would only make us both miserable, and lead to imprudences. I know it would. But if you will do it for me——’
‘Do you love her, Bertie?’
‘Love her! Good heavens! after all the sacrifices I have made! Look at me, as I am, and ask me if I love her! But what can I do? If I speak now we are all ruined; but if she could only be persuaded to wait—only to wait, perhaps for a few days, or a few months——’
‘Or a few years! And to wait for what? How can you expect any good to come to you, when you build everything upon your——’
‘Shut up, I tell you! Is it my fault? He ought to treat me differently. I never would have entertained such a thought, but for—— Bertie, listen to me. Will you go? They will hear reason from you.’
‘They ought not to hear reason. It is a cowardly shame! Yes, I don’t mind your angry looks—it is a shame! You and I have been too long together to mince matters between ourselves. I tell you I never knew anything more cowardly and wretched. It is a shame—a——’
‘The question is, not what you think of it,’ said the other sullenly, ‘but will you go?’
‘I suppose I must,’ was the reply.
When the visitor left, half an hour later, after more conversation of this same strain, can it be wondered at if Bertie Hardwick’s studies were no longer so steady as they had been? He shut up his books at last, and went out and walked towards the river. It was black and glistening, and very full with the Spring rains. The tide was coming up—the river was crowded with vessels of all kinds. Bertie walked to Chelsea, and got a boat there, and went up to Richmond with the tide. But he did not go to the ‘Star and Garter,’ where his cousin was dining with a brilliant party. He walked back again to his chambers, turning over in his tired brain a hundred anxieties. And that night he did sit up at work, and for half an hour had recourse to the wet towel. Not because he was working day and night, but because these anxieties had eaten the very heart out of his working day.
FromPump Court, in the Temple, it is a long way to the banks of a little loch in Scotland, surrounded by hills, covered with heather, and populous with grouse—that is, of course, in the season. The grouse in this early Summer were but babies, chirping among the big roots of the ling, like barndoor chickens; the heather was not purple but only greening over through the grey husks of last year’s bloom. The gorse blossoms were forming; the birch-trees shaking out their folded leaves a little more and more day by day against the sky, which was sometimes so blue, and sometimes so leaden. At that time of the year, or at any other, it is lovely at Loch Arroch. Seated on the high bank behind the little inn, on the soft grass, which is as green as emeralds, but soft as velvet, you can count ten different slopes of hills surrounding the gleaming water, which receives them all impartially; ten distinct ridges, all as various as so many sportsmen, distinct in stature and character—from the kindly birch-crowned heads in front here, away to the solemn distant altitudes, folded in snow-plaids or cloud-mantles, and sometimes in glorious sheen of sunset robes, that dazzle you—which fill up the circle far away. The distant giants are cleft into three peaks, and stand still to have their crowns and garments changed, with a benign patience, greeting you across the loch. There are no tourists, and few strangers, except the fishermen, who spend their days not thinking of you or of the beauties of nature, tossed in heavy cobbles upon the stormy loch, or wading up to their waist in ice-cold pools of the river. The river dashes along its wild channel through the glen, working through rocks, and leaping precipitous corners, shrouding itself, like a coy girl, with the birchen tresses which stream over it, till it comes to another loch—a big silvery clasp upon its foaming chain. Among these woods and waters man is still enough; but Nature is full of commotion. She sings about all the hillsides in a hundred burns, with delicatest treble; she makes her own bass under the riven rocks, among the foam of the greater streams; she mutters over your head with deep, sonorous melancholy utterance in the greatpine-trees, and twitters in the leaflets of the birch. Lovely birks!—sweetest of all the trees of the mountains! Never were such haunts for fairies, or for mountain girls as agile and as fair as those sweet birchen woods. ‘Stern and wild,’ do you say? And surely we say it, for so Sir Walter said before us. But what an exquisite idea was that of Nature—what a sweet, fantastic conceit, just like her wayward wealth of resource, to clothe the slopes of those rude hills with the Lady of the Woods! She must have laughed with pleasure, like a child, but with tears of exquisite poet satisfaction in her eyes, when she first saw the wonderful result. And as for you poor people who have never seen Highland loch or river shine through the airy foliage, the white-stemmed grace and lightness of a birch-wood, we are sorry for you, but we will not insult your ignorance; for, soft in your ear, the celebrated Mr. Cook, and all his satellites who make up tours in the holiday season, have never, Heaven be praised! heard of Loch Arroch; and long may it be before the British tourist finds out that tranquil spot.
I cannot tell how Mrs. Anderson and her daughter found it out. The last Consul, it is true, had been from Perthshire, but that of itself gave them little information. They had gone to Edinburgh first, and then, feeling that scarcely sufficiently out of the way, had gone further north, until at last Kinloch-Arroch received them; and they stayed there, they could not tell why, partly because the people looked so kind. The note which Kate received on her birthday had no date, and the post-mark on it was of a distant place, that no distinct clue might be given to their retreat; but Ombra always believed, though without the slightest ground for it, that this note of her mother’s, like all her other injudicious kindnesses to Kate, had done harm, and been the means of betraying them. For it was true that they were now in a kind of hiding, these two women, fearing to be recognised, not wishing to see any one, for reasons which need not be dwelt upon here. They had left Langton-Courtenay with a miserable sense of friendlessness and loneliness, and yet it had been in some respects a relief to them to get away; and the stillness of Loch Arroch, its absolute seclusion, and the kind faces of the people they found there, all concurred in making them decide upon this as their resting-place. They were to stay all the summer, and already they were known to everybody round. Old Francesca had already achieved a greatsuccèsin the Perthshire village. The people declared that they understood her much better than if she had been ‘ane o’ thae mincing English.’ She was supposed to be French, and Scotland still remembers that France was once her auld and kind alley. The women in their white mutches wondered a little, it is true, at the little old Italian’s capless head, and knot of scanty hair; buther kind little brown face, and her clever rapid ways, took them by storm. When she spoke Italian to her mistress they gathered round her in admiration. ‘Losh! did you ever hear the like o’ that?’ they cried, with hearty laughs, half restrained by politeness—though half of them spoke Gaelic, and saw nothing wonderful in that achievement.
Ombra, the discontented and unhappy, had never in her life before been so gentle and so sweet. She was not happy still, but for the moment she was penitent, and subdued and at peace, and the admiration and the interest of their humble neighbours pleased her. Mrs. Anderson had given a description of her daughter to the kind landlady of the little inn, which did not tally with the circumstances which the reader knows; but probably she had her own reasons for that, and the tale was such as filled everybody with sympathy. ‘You maunna be doon-hearted, my bonnie lamb,’ the old woman would say to her; and Ombra would blush with painful emotion, and yet would be in her heart touched and consoled by the homely sympathy. Ah! if those kind people had but known how much harder her burden really was! But yet to know how kindly all these poor stranger folk felt towards them was pleasant to the two women, and they clung together closer than ever in the enforced quiet. They were very anxious, restless, and miserable, and yet for a little while they were as nearly happy as two women could be. This is a paradox which some women will understand, but which I cannot pause to explain.
Things were going on in this quiet way, and it was the end of May, a season when as yet few even of the fishers who frequent that spot by nature, and none of the wise wanderers who have discovered Loch Arroch had begun to arrive, when one evening a very tall man, strong and heavy, trudged round the corner into the village, with his knapsack over his shoulders. He was walking through the Highlands alone at this early period of the year. He put his knapsack down on the bench outside the door, and came into the little hall, decorated with glazed cases, in which stuffed trout of gigantic proportions still seemed to swim among the green, green river weeds, to ask kind Mrs. Macdonald, the landlady, if she could put him up. He was ‘a soft-spoken gentleman,’ courteous, such as Highlanders love, and there was a look of sadness about him which moved the mistress of the ‘Macdonald Arms.’ But all at once, while he was talking to her, he started wildly, made a dart at the stair, which Francesca at that moment was leisurely ascending, and upset, as he passed, little Duncan, Mrs. Macdonald’s favourite grandchild.
‘The man’s gane gyte!’ said the landlady.
Francesca for her part took no notice of the stranger. If shesaw him, she either did not recognise him, or thought it expedient to ignore him. She went on, carrying high in front of her a tray full of newly-ironed fine linen, her own work, which she was carrying from the kitchen. The stranger stood at the foot of the stairs and watched her, with his face lifted to the light, which streamed from a long window opposite. There was an expression in his countenance (Mrs. Macdonald said afterwards) which was like a picture. He had found what he sought!
‘That is old Francesca,’ he said, coming back to her, ‘Mrs. Anderson’s maid. Then, of course, Mrs. Anderson is here.’
‘Ou ay, sir, the leddies are here,’ said Mrs. Macdonald—‘maybe they are expecting you? There was something said a while ago about a gentleman—a brother, or some near friend to the young goodman.’
‘The young goodman?’
‘Ou ay, sir—him that’s in India, puir gentleman!—at sic a time, too, when he would far rather be at hame. But ye’ll gang up the stair? Kath’rin, take the gentleman up the stair—he’s come to visit the leddies—and put him into No. 10 next door. Being so near the leddies, I never put no man there that I dinna ken something aboot. You’ll find Loch Arroch air, sir, has done the young mistress good.’
The stranger followed upstairs, with a startled sense of other wonders to come; and thus it happened that, without warning, Mr. Sugden suddenly walked into the room where Ombra lay on a sofa by the fireside, with her mother sitting by. Both the ladies started up in dismay. They were so bewildered that neither could speak for a moment. The blood rushed to Ombra’s face in an overpowering blush. He thought he had never seen her look so beautiful, so strange—he did not know how; and her look of bewildered inquiry and suspicion suddenly showed him what he had never thought of till that moment—that he had no right to pry into their privacy—to hunt her, as it were, into a corner—to pursue her here.
‘Mr. Sugden!’ Mrs. Anderson cried in dismay; and then she recovered her prudence, and held out her hand to him, coming between him and Ombra. ‘What a very curious meeting this is!—what an unexpected pleasure! Of all places in the world, to meet a Shanklin friend at Loch Arroch! Ombra, do not disturb yourself, dear; we need not stand on ceremony with such an old friend as Mr. Sugden. My poor child has a dreadful cold.’
And then he took her hand into his own—Ombra’s hand—which he used to sit and watch as she worked—the whitest, softest hand. It felt so small now, like a shadow, and the flush, had gone from her face. He seemed to see nothing but those eyes, watching him with fear and suspicion—eyes which distrusted him, and reminded him that he had no business here.
And he sat down by the sofa, and talked ordinary talk, and told them of Shanklin, which he had left. He had been making a pedestrian tour in Scotland. Yes, it was early, but he did not mind the weather, and the time suited him. It was a surprise to him to see Francesca, but he had heard that Mrs. Anderson had left Langton-Courtenay——
‘Yes,’ she said, briefly, without explanation; and added—‘We were travelling, like you, when Ombra fell in love with this place. You must have seen it to perfection if you walked down the glen to-day—the Glencoe Hills were glorious to-day. Which is your next stage? I am afraid Mrs. Macdonald has scarcely room——’
‘Oh! yes, she has given me a room for to-night,’ he said; and he saw the mother and daughter look at each other, and said to himself, in an agony of humiliation, what a fool he had been—what an intrusive, impertinent fool!
When he took his leave, Mrs. Anderson went after him to the door; she asked, with trepidation in her voice, how long he meant to stay. This was too much for the poor fellow; he led the way along the passage to the staircase window, lest Ombra should hear through the half-open door.
‘Mrs. Anderson,’ he said hoarsely, ‘once you promised me if she should ever want a brother’s help or a brother’s care—not that it is what I could have wished——’
‘Mr. Sugden, this is ridiculous; I can take care of my own child. You have no right to come and hunt us out, when you know—when you can see that we wish—to be private.’ Then, with a sudden change, she added—‘Oh, you are very good—I am sure you are very good, but she wants for nothing. Dear Mr. Sugden, if you care for her or me, go away.
‘I will go away to-morrow,’ he said, with a deep sigh of disappointment and resignation.
She looked out anxiously at the sky. It was clouding over; night was coming on—there was no possibility of sending him away that night.
‘Mr. Sugden,’ she said, wringing her hands, ‘when a gentleman thrusts himself into anyone’s secrets he is bound not to betray them. You will hear news here, which I did not wish to be known at present—Ombra is married.’
‘Married!’ he said, with a groan, which he could not restrain.
‘Yes, her husband is not able to be with her. We are waiting till he can join us—till he can make it public. You have found this out against our will; you must give me your word not to betray us.’
‘Why should I betray you?’ he said; ‘to whom? I came, not knowing. Since ever I knew her I have been her slave, you know. I will be so now. Is she—happy, at least?’
‘She is very happy,’ said Mrs. Anderson; and then her courage failed her, and she cried. She did not burst into tears—such an expression does not apply to women of her age. The tears which were, somehow, near the surface, fell suddenly, leaving no traces. ‘Everything is not so—comfortable as might be wished,’ she said, ‘but, so far asthatgoes, she is happy.’
‘May I come again?’ he said. His face had grown very long and pale; he looked like a man who had just come back from a funeral. ‘Or would you rather I went away at once?’
She gave another look at the sky, which had cleared; night was more distant than it had seemed ten minutes ago. And Mrs. Anderson did not think that it was selfishness on her part to think of her daughter first. She gave him her hand and pressed his, and said—
‘You are the kindest, the best friend. Oh, for her sake, go!’
And he went away with a heavy heart, striding over the dark unknown hills. It was long past midnight before he got shelter—but what did that matter? He would have done much more joyfully for her sake. But his last hope seemed gone as he went along that mountain way. He had hoped always to serve her sometime or other, and now he could serve her no more!
Thiswas the reason why Kate heard no more from Mr. Sugden. He knew, and yet he did not know. That which had been told him was very different from what he had expected to hear. He had gone to seek a deserted maiden, and he had found a wife. He had gone with some wild hope of being able to interpose on her behalf, ‘as her brother would have done,’ and bring her false lover back to her—when, lo! he found that he was intruding upon sacred domestic ground, upon the retreat of a wife whose husband was somewhere ready, no doubt, to defend her from all intrusion. This confounded him for the first moment. He went away, as we have said, without a word, asking no explanation. What right had he to any explanation? Probably Ombra herself, had she known what his mission and what his thoughts were, would have been furious at the impertinence. But her mother judged him more gently, and he, poor fellow, knew in his own soul how different his motives were from those of intrusion or impertinence.
When he came to the homely, lonely little house, where he found shelter in the midst of the night, he stopped there in utter languor, still confused by his discovery and his failure. But when he came to himself he was not satisfied. Next day, in the silence and loneliness of the mountains, he mused and pondered on this subject, which was never absent from his mind ten minutes together. He walked on and on upon the road he had traversed in the dark the night before, till he came to the point where it commanded the glen below, and where the descent to Loch Arroch began. He saw at his feet the silvery water gleaming, the loch, the far lines of the withdrawing village roofs, and that one under which she was. At the sight the Curate’s mournful heart yearned over the woman he loved. Why was she there alone, with only her mother, and she a wife? What was there that was not ‘exactly comfortable,’ as Mrs. Anderson had said?
The result of his musing was that he stayed in the little mountain change-house for some time. There was a desolatelittle loch near, lying, as in a nook, up at the foot of great Schehallion. And there he pretended to fish, and in the intervals of his sport, which was dreary enough, took long walks about the country, and, without being seen by them, found out a great deal about the two ladies. They were alone. The young lady’s husband was said to be ‘in foreign pairts.’ The good people had not heard what he was, but that business detained him somewhere, though it was hoped he would be back before the Autumn. ‘And I wish he may, for yon bonnie young creature’s sake!’ the friendly wife added, who told him this tale.
The name they told him she was called by was not a name he knew, which perplexed him. But when he remembered his own observations, and Kate’s story, he could not believe that any other lover could have come in. When Mr. Sugden had fully satisfied himself, and discovered all that was discoverable, he went back to England with the heat of a sudden purpose. He went to London, and he sought out Bertie Hardwick’s rooms. Bertie himself was whistling audibly as Mr. Sugden knocked at his door. He was packing his portmanteau, and stopped now and then to utter a mild oath over the things which would not pack in as they ought. He was going on a journey. Perhaps to her, Mr. Sugden thought; and, as he heard his whistle, and saw his levity, his blood boiled in his veins.
‘What, Sugden!’ cried Bertie. ‘Come in, old fellow, I am glad to see you. Why, you’ve been and left Shanklin! What did you do that for? The old place will not look like itself without you.’
‘There are other vacant places that will be felt more than mine,’ said the Curate, in a funereal voice, putting himself sadly on the nearest chair.
‘Oh! the ladies at the Cottage! To be sure, you are quite right. They must be a dreadful loss,’ said Bertie.
Mr. Sugden felt that he flushed and faltered, and these signs of guilt made it doubly clear.
‘It is odd enough,’ he said, with double meaning, ‘that we should talk of that, for I have just come from Scotland, from the Highlands, where, of all people in the world, I met suddenly with Miss Anderson and her mother.’
Bertie faced round upon him in the middle of his packing, which he had resumed, and said, ‘Well!’ in a querulous voice—a voice which already sounded like that of a man put on his defence.
‘Well!’ said the Curate—‘I don’t think it is well. She is not Miss Anderson now. But I see you know that. Mr. Hardwick, if you know anything of her husband, I think you should urge him not to leave her alone there. She looks—not very well. Poor Ombra!’ cried the Curate, warming into eloquence.‘I have no right to call her by her name, but that I—I was fond of her too. I would have given my life for her! And she is like her name—she is like a shadow, that is ready to flit away.’
Bertie Hardwick listened with an agitated countenance—he grew red and pale, and began to pace about the room; but he made no answer—he was confused and startled by what his visitor said.
‘I daresay my confession does not interest you much,’ Mr. Sugden resumed. ‘I make it to show I have some right—to take an interest, at least. That woman for whom I would give my life, Mr. Hardwick, is pining there for a man who leaves her to pine—a man who must be neglecting her shamefully, for it cannot be long since he married her—a man who——’
‘And pray, Mr. Sugden,’ said Bertie, choking with apparent anger and agitation, ‘where did you obtain your knowledge of this man?’
‘Not from her,’ said the Curate; ‘but by chance—by the inquiries I made in my surprise. Mr. Hardwick, if you know who it is who is so happy, and so negligent of his happiness——’
‘Well?’
‘He has no right to stay away from her after this warning,’ cried the Curate, rising to his feet. ‘Do you understand what a thing it is for me to come and say so?—to one who is throwing away what I would give my life for? But she is above all. If he stays away from her, he will reproach himself for it all his life!’
And with these words he turned to go. He had said enough—his own eyes were beginning to burn and blaze. He felt that he might seize this false lover by the throat if he stayed longer. And he had at least done all he could for Ombra. He had said enough to move any man who was a man. He made a stride towards the door in his indignation; but Bertie Hardwick interrupted him, with his hand on his arm.
‘Sugden,’ he said, with a voice full of emotion, ‘I am not so bad as you think me; but I am not so good as you are. The man you speak of shall hear your warning. But there is one thing I have a right to ask. What you learnt by chance, you will not make any use of—not to her cousin, for instance, who knows nothing. You will respect her secret there?’
‘I do not know that I ought to do so, but I promised her mother,’ said the Curate, sternly. ‘Good morning, Mr. Hardwick. I hope you will act at once on what you have heard.’
‘Won’t you shake hands?’ said Bertie.
The Curate was deeply prejudiced against him—hated him in his levity and carelessness, amusing himself while she was suffering. But when he looked into Bertie’s face, his enmity melted. Was this the man who had done her—and him—somuch wrong? He put out his hand with reluctance, moved against his will.
‘Do you deserve it?’ he said, in his deep voice.
‘Yes—so far as honesty goes,’ said the young man, with a broken, agitated laugh.
The Curate went away, wondering and unhappy. Was he so guilty, that open-faced youth, who seemed yet too near boyhood to be an accomplished deceiver?—or was there still more in the mystery than met the eye?
This was how Kate got no news. She looked for it for many a day. As the Summer ripened and went on, a hungry thirst for information of one kind or another possessed her. Her aunt’s birthday letter had been a few tender words only—words which were humble, too, and sad. ‘Poor Ombra,’ she had said, ‘was pretty well.’ Poor Ombra!—whypoorOmbra? Kate asked herself the question with sudden fits of anxiety, which she could not explain to herself; and she began to watch for the post with almost feverish eagerness. But the suspense lasted so long, that the keenness of the edge wore off again, and no news ever came.
In July, however, Lady Caryisfort came, having lingered on her way from Italy till it became too late to keep the engagement she had made with Mr. Courtenay for Kate’s first season in town. She was so kind as to go to Langton-Courtenay instead, on what she called a long visit.
‘Your uncle has to find out, like other people, that he will only find aid ready made to his hand when he doesn’t want it,’ she said—‘that is the moment when everything becomes easy. I might have been of use to him, I know, two months ago, and accordingly my private affairs detained me, and it is only now, you see, that I am here.’
‘I don’t see why you should have hurried for my uncle,’ said Kate; ‘he has never come to see me, though he has promised twenty times. But you are welcome always, whenever you please.’
‘Thanks, dear,’ said Lady Caryisfort, who was languid after her journey. ‘He will come now, when you don’t want him. And so the aunt and the cousin are gone, Kate? You must tell me why. I heard, after you left Florence, that Miss Anderson had flirted abominably with both these young men—behind your back, my poor darling, when you were with me, I suppose; though I always thought that young Eldridge would have suited you precisely—two nice properties, nice families—everything that was nice. But an ideal match like that never comes to pass. They tell me she was calledla demoiselle à deux cavaliers. Don’t look shocked. Of course, it could only be a flirtation; there could be nothing wrong in it. But, you dear little innocent, is this all new to you?’