‘My dear Father,‘I am very sorry to see that you feel so strongly about my idleness. I know I am an idle wretch, and always was; but it can’t last, of course; and after this bout I will do my best to mend. The fact is that for this cruise I am pledged to Bertie. I should be behaving very shabbily to him, after all his kindness, if I threw him over at the last moment. And, besides, we don’t go without an object, neither he nor I, of which you will hear anon. I cannot say more now. Give my love to Mamma and the girls; and don’t be vexed if I find thereis no time to run home before we start. I shall write from the first port we touch at. Home without fail before Christmas. Good-bye.‘Yours affectionately, H. H.’
‘My dear Father,
‘I am very sorry to see that you feel so strongly about my idleness. I know I am an idle wretch, and always was; but it can’t last, of course; and after this bout I will do my best to mend. The fact is that for this cruise I am pledged to Bertie. I should be behaving very shabbily to him, after all his kindness, if I threw him over at the last moment. And, besides, we don’t go without an object, neither he nor I, of which you will hear anon. I cannot say more now. Give my love to Mamma and the girls; and don’t be vexed if I find thereis no time to run home before we start. I shall write from the first port we touch at. Home without fail before Christmas. Good-bye.
‘Yours affectionately, H. H.’
Bertie was much pleased with this effusion; and even when he read it over in the morning, though it did not appear to strike so perfectly the golden line between seriousness and levity as it had appeared to do at night, it was still a satisfactory production. And it pleased him, in the vanity of his youth, to have made the obscure yet important suggestion that his voyage was ‘not without an object.’ What would they all think if they ever found out what that object was? He laughed at the thought, though with a tinge of heightened colour. The people at home would suppose that some great idea had come to the two—that they were going on an antiquarian or a scientific expedition; for Bertie Eldridge was a young man full of notions, and had made attempts in both these branches of learning. Bertie laughed at this very comical idea; but though he was thus satisfied with his own cleverness in baffling his natural guardians, there was a single drop of shame, a germ of bitterness, somewhere at the bottom of his heart. He could fence gaily with his father, and forget the good advice which came to him from those who had a right to give it; but that chance dart thrown by the Curate had penetrated a weak point in his armour. Mr. Sugden’s suggestion, who was a young man on his own level, a fellow whom he had laughed at, and had no lofty opinion of, clung to him like an obstinate bit of thistledown. It was of no consequence, said with an intention to wound—a mere spiteful expression of envy; but it clung to him, and pricked him vaguely, and made him uncomfortable, in spite of himself.
For Bertie was only thoughtless, not selfish. He was running all the risks involved by positive evil in his levity; but he did not mean it. Had he known what real trouble was beginning to rise in the minds of his ‘people’ in respect to him, and how even his uncle Sir Herbert growled at the foolish sacrifice he was making, Bertie had manhood enough to have pulled himself up, and abandoned those delights of youth. And indeed a certain uneasiness had begun to appear faintly in his own mind—a sense that his life was not exactly what it might be, which, of itself, might have roused him to better things. But temptation was strong, and life was pleasant; and at twenty-three there still seems so much of it to come, and such plenty of time to make amends for all one’s early follies. Then there were a hundred specious excuses for him, which even harder judges than he acknowledged. From their cradles, his cousin Bertie and himself had been as one—they had been born on the sameday; they had taken every step of their lives together; they resembled each other as twin brothers sometimes do; and something still more subtle, still more fascinating, than the bond between twin-brothers existed between them. This had been the admiration of their respective families when they were children; and it was with some pride that Lady Eldridge and Mrs. Hardwick had told their friends of the curious sympathy between the boys; how when one was ill, the other was depressed and wretched, though his cousin was at a distance from him, and he had no knowledge, except by instinct, of the malady.
‘We know directly when anything is wrong with the other Bertie,’ the respective mothers would say, with that pride which mothers feel in any peculiarity of their children.
This strange tie was strengthened by their education; they went to school together on the same day; they kept side by side all through, and though one Bertie might be at the head of the form and another at the bottom, still in the same form they managed to keep, all tutors, masters, and aids to learning promoting, so far as in them lay, the twinship, which everybody found ‘interesting.’ And they went to the same college, and day for day, and side by side, took every successive step. Bertie Eldridge was the cleverest; it was he who was always at the top; and then he was—a fact which he much plumed himself upon—the eldest by six hours, and accordingly had a right to be the guide and teacher. Thus the very threads of their lives were twisted so close together that it was a difficult thing to pull them asunder; and though all the older people had come by this time to regret the natural weakness which had prompted them to allow this bond to knit itself closer with every year of life, none of them had yet hit upon a plan for breaking it. The reader will easily perceive what a fatal connection this was for the poorer of the two—he who had to make his own way, and had no hereditary wealth to fall back upon. For Bertie Eldridge it was natural and suitable, and as innocent and pleasant as a life without an object can be; but for Bertie Hardwick it was destruction. However, it was difficult, very difficult, for him to realise this. He laughed at his father’s remonstrances, even while he assented to them, and allowed that they were perfectly true; yes, everything that was said was quite true—and yet the life itself was so natural, so inevitable. How could he tear himself from it—‘break faith with Bertie?’ He resolved indefinitely that some time or other it would have to be done, and then plunged, with a light heart, into the victualling and the preparation of the ‘Shadow.’ But, nevertheless, that arrow of Mr. Sugden’s stuck between the joints of his armour. He felt it prick him when he moved; he could not quite forget it, do what he would.
Thenext day the whole population of the place surged in and out of the Cottage, full of regrets and wonders. ‘Are you really going?’ the ladies said, ‘so soon? I suppose it was quite a sudden idea? And how delightful for you!—but you can’t expect us to be pleased. On the contrary, we are all inconsolable. I don’t know what we shall do without you. How long do you intend to stay away?’
‘Nothing is settled,’ said Mrs. Anderson, blandly. ‘We are leaving ourselves quite free. I think it is much better not to be hampered by any fixed time for return.’
‘Oh, much better!’ said the chorus. ‘It is such a bore generally; just when one is beginning to know people, and to enjoy oneself, one has to pack up and go away; but there are few people, of course, who are so free as you are, dear Mrs. Anderson—you have no duty to call you back. And then you know the Continent so well, and how to travel, and all about it. How I envy you! But it will be such a loss for us. I don’t know what we shall do all the Summer through without you and dear Ombra and Kate. All our pic-nics, and our water-parties, and our croquet, and everything—I don’t know what we shall do——’
‘I suppose you will let the Cottage for the summer?’ said Mrs. Eldridge, who was of a practical mind; ‘and I hope nice people may come. That will be always some consolation for the rest of us; and we cannot grudge our friends their holiday, can we?’ she added, with fine professional feeling, reading a mild lesson to her parishioners, to which everybody replied, with a flutter of protestation, ‘Oh, of course not, of course not!’
Mr. Courtenay assisted at the little ceremonial. He sat all the afternoon in an easy-chair by the window, noting everything with a smile. The tea-table was in the opposite corner, and from four till six there was little cessation in the talk, and in the distribution of cups of tea. He sat and looked on, making various sardonic remarks to himself. Partly by chance, and partly by intention, he had drawn his chair close to that of Ombra, who interested him. He was anxious to understand this member ofthe household, who gave Kate no caresses, who did nothing to conciliate or please her, but rather spoke sharply to her when she spoke at all. He set this down frankly and openly as jealousy, and determined to be at the bottom of it. Ombra was not a ‘locust.’ She was much more like a secret enemy. He made up his mind that there was some mischief between them, and that Ombra hated the girl whom everybody else, from interested motives, pretended to love; therefore, he tried to talk to her, first, because her gloom amused him, and second, that he might have a chance of finding something out.
‘I have been under a strange delusion,’ he said. ‘I thought there was but a very small population in the Isle of Wight.’
‘Indeed, I don’t know what the number is,’ said Ombra.
‘I should say it must be legion. The room has been three times filled, and still the cry is, they come! And yet I understand you live very quietly, and this is an out-of-the-way place. Places which are in the way must have much more of it. It seems to be that Mayfair is less gay.’
‘I don’t know Mayfair.’
‘Then you have lived always in the country,’ said Mr. Courtenay, blandly. This roused Ombra. She could have borne a graver imputation better, but to be considered a mere rustic, a girl who knew nothing!——
‘On the contrary, I have lived very little in the country,’ she said, with a tone of irritation. ‘But then the towns I have lived in have belonged to a different kind of society than that which, I suppose, you meet with in Mayfair. I have lived in Madrid, Lisbon, Genoa, and Florence——’
‘Ah! in your father’s time,’ said Mr. Courtenay, gently. And the sound of his voice seemed to say to Ombra, ‘In the Consul’s time! Yes, to be sure. Just the sort of places he would be sure to live in.’ Which exasperated her more than she dared show.
‘Yes, that was our happy time!’ she cried, hotly. ‘The time when we were free of all interference. My father was honoured and loved by everybody.’
‘Oh! I don’t doubt it, I don’t doubt it,’ said Mr. Courtenay, hurriedly, for she looked very much as if she might be going to cry. ‘Spain is very interesting, and so is Italy. It will be pleasant for you to go back.’
‘I don’t think it will,’ she said, bluntly. ‘Things will be so different.’ And then, after a pause, she added, with nervous haste, ‘Kate may like it, perhaps, but not I.’
Mr. Courtenay thought it best to pause. He had no wish to be made a confidant, or to have Ombra’s grievances against Kate poured into his ears. He leaned back in his chair, and watched with grim amusement while the visitors went and came. Mr. Sugden had come in while he had been talking,and was now to be seen standing like a tall shadow by the other side of the window, looking down upon Ombra; and a nervous expectation had become visible in her, which caught Mr. Courtenay’s eye. She did not look up when the door opened, but, on the contrary, kept her eyes fixed on the work she held in her hand with a rigidity which betrayed her more than curiosity would have done. She would not look up, but she listened with a hot, hectic flush on the upper part of her cheeks, just under her drooped eyelids, holding her breath, and sitting motionless in the suspense which devoured her. The needle shook in her hand, and all the efforts she made to keep it steady did but reveal the more the excitement of all her nerves. Mr. Courtenay watched her with growing curiosity; he was not sympathetic; but it was something new to him and entertaining, and he watched as if he had been at a theatre. He did not mean to be cruel; it was to him like a child’s fit of pouting. It was something about love, no doubt, he said to himself. Poor little fool! Somebody had interfered with her love—her last plaything; perhaps Kate, who looked very capable of doing mischief in such matters; and how unhappy she was making herself about nothing at all!
At last the anxiety came to a sudden stop; the hand gave one jerk more violent than before; the eyes shot out a sudden gleam, and then Ombra was suddenly, significantly still. Mr. Courtenay looked up, and saw that two young men had come into the room, so much like each other that he was startled, and did not know what to make of it. As he looked up, with an incipient smile on his face, he caught the eye of the tall Curate on the other side of the window, who was looking at him threateningly. ‘Good heavens! what have I done?’ said Mr. Courtenay to himself, much amazed. ‘Ihave not fallen in love with the irresistible Ombra!’ He was still more entertained when he discovered that the look which he had thus intercepted was on its way to the new comers, whom Ombra did not look at, but whose coming had affected her so strangely. Here was an entire drama in the smallest possible space. An agitated maiden on the eve of parting with her lover; a second jealous lover looking on. ‘Thank heaven it is not Kate!’ Mr. Courtenay said from the bottom of his heart. The sight of this little scene made him feel more and more the danger from which he had escaped. He had escaped it, but only by a hair’s-breadth; and, thank the kind fates, was looking on with amusement at a story which did not concern him; not with dismay and consternation at a private embarrassment and difficulty of his own. This sense of a hairbreadth escape gave the little spectacle zest. He looked on with genuine amusement, like a true critic, delighted with the show of human emotion which was taking place before his eyes.
‘Who are these two young fellows?’ he asked Ombra, determined to have the whole advantage of the situation, and draw her out to the utmost of his power.
‘What two?’ she said, looking up suddenly, with a dull red flush on her cheek and a choked voice. ‘Oh! they are Mr. Hardwick and Mr. Eldridge; two—gentlemen—mamma knows.’
They were both talking to Kate, standing one on either side of her in the middle of the room. Ombra gave them a long intent look, with the colour deepening in her face, and the breath coming quick from her lips. She took in the group in every detail, as if it had been drawn in lines of fire. How unconscious Kate looked standing there, talking easily, in all the freedom of her unawakened youth. ‘Heaven be praised!’ thought Mr. Courtenay once more, pious for the first time in his life.
‘What! not brothers? What a strange likeness, then!’ he said, tranquilly. ‘I suppose one of them is young Hardwick, from Langton-Courtenay, whom Kate knew at home. He is a parson, like his father, I suppose?’
‘No,’ said Ombra, dropping her eyes once more upon her work.
‘Not a parson? That is odd, for the elder son, I know, has gone to the Bar. I suppose he has relations here? Kate and he have met before?’
‘Yes.’
It was all that Ombra could say; but in her heart she added, ‘Always Kate—Kate knew him—Kate has met him! Is there nobody, then, but Kate in the world to be considered.Theythink so too.’
The old man, for the first time, had a little pity. He asked no more questions, seeing that she was past all power of answering them; and half in sympathy, half in curiosity, drew his chair back a little, and left the new-comers room to approach. When they did so, after some minutes, Ombra’s feverish colour suddenly forsook her cheeks, and she grew very pale. Bertie Eldridge was the first to speak. He came up with a little air of deprecation and humility, which Mr. Courtenay, not knowing thefin motof the enigma, did not understand.
‘I am so sorry to hear you are going away,’ he said. ‘Is it not very sudden, Miss Anderson? You did not speak of it on Wednesday, I think.’
‘Did I see you on Wednesday?’ said Ombra. ‘Oh! I beg your pardon, I know you were here; but I did not think we had any talk.’
‘A little, I believe,’ said the young man, colouring. His self-possession seemed to fail him, which was amazing to Mr. Courtenay, for the young men of the period do not often fail in self-possession. He got confused, spoke low, and faltered something about knowing he had no right to be told.
‘No,’ she replied, with nervous colour and a flash of suddenpride; ‘out of our own little cottage I do not know anyone who has a right to be consulted—or cares either,’ she added, in an undertone.
‘Miss Anderson, you cannot thinkthat!’
‘Ah, but I do!’ Then there was a little pause; and after some moments, Ombra resumed: ‘Kate’s movements are important to many people. She will be a great lady, and entitled to have her comings and goings recorded in the newspapers; but we have no such claim upon the public interest. It does not matter to any one, so far as I know, whether we go or stay.’
A silence again. Ombra bent once more over her work, and her needle flew through it, working as if for a wager. The other Bertie, who was behind, had been moving about, in mere idleness, the books on Ombra’s writing-table. At him she suddenly looked up with a smile—
‘Please, Mr. Hardwick! all my poor papers and books which I have just been putting in order—don’t scatter them all over the table again.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, looking up. He had borne the air of the stage-confidant, till that moment, in Mr. Courtenay’s eyes, which were those of a connoisseur in such matters. But now his belief on this subject was shaken. When he glanced up and saw the look which was exchanged by the two, and the gloom with which Mr. Sugden was regarding both, a mist seemed to roll away from the scene. How different the girl’s aspect was now!—soft with a dewy brightness in her eyes, and a voice that trembled with some concealed agitation; and there was a glow upon Bertie’s face, which made him handsomer. ‘My cousins are breaking their hearts over your going,’ he said.
‘Oh, no fear of their hearts!’ said Ombra, lightly; ‘they will mend. If the Cottage is let, the new tenants will probably be gayer people than we are, and do more to amuse their neighbours. And if we come back——’
‘If?’ said the young man.
‘Nothing is certain, I suppose, in this world—or, at least, so people say.’
‘It is very true,’ said Mr. Courtenay. ‘It is seldom a young lady is so philosophical—but, as you say, if you come back in a year, the chances are you will find your place filled up, and your friends changed.’
Ombra turned upon him with sparks of fire suddenly flashing from her eyes. Philosopher, indeed!—say termagant, rather.
‘It is vile and wretched and horrible to say so!’ she cried; ‘but I suppose it is true.’
And all this time the tall Curate never took his eyes off the group, but stood still and listened and watched. Mr. Courtenay began to feel very uncomfortable. The scene was deadly real, and not as amusing as he had hoped.
Inthe little bustle of preparation which ensued, there was, of course, a good deal of dressmaking to do, and Miss Richardson, the dressmaker from the village, who was Mr. Sugden’s landlady, was almost a resident at the Cottage for the following week. She set out every morning in her close black bonnet and black shawl, with her little parcel of properties—including the last fashion book, done up in a very tight roll. She helped Maryanne, and she helped Francesca, who was more difficult to deal with; and she was helped in her turn by the young ladies themselves, who did not disdain the task. It was very pleasant to Miss Richardson, who was a person of refined tastes, to find herself in such refined society. She was never tired remarking what a pleasure it was to talk to ladies who could understand you, and who were not proud, and took an interest in their fellow creatures; and it was during this busy week that Kate acquired that absolute knowledge of Miss Richardson’s private history with which she enlightened her friends at a later period. She sat and sewed and talked in the little parlour which served for Kate’s studies, and for many other miscellaneous purposes; and it was there, in the midst of all the litter of dressmaking, that Mrs. Anderson and the girls took their afternoon tea, and that even Mrs. Eldridge and some other intimate friends were occasionally introduced. Mrs. Eldridge knew Miss Richardson intimately, as was natural, and liked to hear from her all that was going on in the village; but the dressmaker’s private affairs were not of much interest to the Rector’s wife—it required a lively and universal human interest like Kate’s to enter into such details.
It was only on the last evening of her labours, however, that Miss Richardson made so bold as to volunteer a little private communication to Mrs. Anderson. The girls had gone out into the garden, after a busy day. All was quiet in the soft April evening; even Mr. Sugden had not come that night. They were all alone, feeling a little excited by the coming departure, a little wearied with their many occupations, a little sad at the thought of leaving the familiar place. At least, such were Mrs. Anderson’s feelings, as she stood in the verandah looking out. It was a little more than twilight, and less than night. Ombra was standing in a corner of the low garden wall, lookingout upon the sea. Kate was not visible—a certain wistfulness, sadness, farewell feeling, seemed about in the very air. What may have happened before we come back? Mrs. Anderson sighed softly, with this thought in her mind. But she was not unhappy. There was enough excitement in the new step about to be taken to keep all darker shades of feeling in suspense. ‘If I might make so bold, ma’am,’ said Miss Richardson, suddenly, by her side.
Mrs. Anderson started, but composed herself immediately. ‘Surely,’ she said, with her habitual deference to other people’s wishes. The dressmaker coughed, cleared her throat, and made two or three inarticulate beginnings. At length she burst forth—
‘The comfort of speaking to a real lady is, as she don’t mistake your meaning, nor bring it up against you after. I’m not one as interferes in a general way. I do think, Mrs. Anderson, ma’am, as I’m well enough known in Shanklin to take upon me to say that. But my heart does bleed for my poor young gentleman; and I must say, even if you should be angry, whatever he is to do, when you and the young ladies go away, is more than I can tell. When I saw his face this morning, though he’s a clergyman, and as good as gold, the thing as came into my head—and I give you my word for it, ma’am—was as he’d do himself some harm.’
‘You mean Mr. Sugden? I do not understand this at all,’ said Mrs. Anderson, who had found time to collect herself. ‘Why should he do himself any harm? You mean he will work too much, and make himself ill?’
‘No, ma’am,’ said Miss Richardson, with dignity. ‘I don’t apologise for saying it, for you’ve eyes, ma’am, and can see as well as me what’s been a-going on. He’s been here, ma’am, spending the evenings, take one week with another, five nights out of the seven—and now you and the young ladies is going away. And Miss Ombra—but I don’t speak to one as can’t take notice, and see how things is going as well as me.’
‘Miss Richardson, I think we all ought to be very careful how we talk of a young man, and a clergyman. I have been very glad to see him here. I have always thought it was good for a young man to have a family circle open to him. But if any gossip has got up about the young ladies, it is perfectly without foundation. I should not have expected from you——’
‘Oh! Mrs. Anderson, ma’am!’ cried the dressmaker, carried away by her feelings. ‘Talk to me of gossip, when I was speaking as a friend! an ’umble friend, I don’t say different, but still one that takes a deep interest. Foundation or no foundation, ma’am, that poor young gentleman is a-breaking of his heart. I see it before I heard the news. I said to myself, “Miss Ombra’s been and refused him;”and then I heard you and the young ladies were going away. Whether he’s spoken, and been refused, or whether he haven’t had the courage to speak, it ain’t for me to guess; but oh! Mrs. Anderson, ma’am, speak a word of comfort to the poor young gentleman! My heart is in it. I can’t stop, even if I make you angry. I’m not one to gossip, and, when I’m trusted, wild horses won’t drag a word out of me; but I make bold to speak to you—though you’re a lady, and I work for my bread—as one woman to another, ma’am. If you hadn’t been a real lady, I wouldn’t have dared to a-done it. Oh, if you’d but give him a word of good advice! such as we can’t have everything we want; and there’s a deal of good left, even though Miss Ombra won’t have him; and he oughtn’t to be ungrateful to God, and that. He’d take it from you. Oh! ma’am, if you’d give him a word of good advice!’
Miss Richardson wept while she spoke; and at length her emotion affected her companion.
‘You are a good soul,’ said Mrs. Anderson, holding out her hand; ‘you are a kind creature. I will always think better of you for this. But you must not say a word about Miss Ombra. He has never spoken to me; and till a man speaks, you know, a lady has no right to take such a thing for granted. But I will not forget what you have said; and I will speak to him, if I can find an opportunity—if he will give me the least excuse for doing it. He will miss us, I am sure.’
‘Oh! miss you, ma’am!’ cried Miss Richardson; ‘all the parish will miss you, and me among the first, as you’ve always been so good to; but as for my poor young gentleman, what I’m afraid of is as he’ll do himself some harm.’
‘Hush! my daughter is coming!’ said Mrs. Anderson; and she added, in a louder tone, ‘I will see that you have everything you want to-morrow; and you must try to give us two days more. I think two days will be enough, Ombra, with everybody helping a little. Good night. To-morrow, when you come, you must make us all work.’
‘Thank you very kindly, ma’am,’ said the dressmaker, with a curtsey; ‘and good night.’
‘What was she talking to you about, mamma?’ said Ombra’s languid voice, in the soft evening gloom; not that she cared to know—the words came mechanically to her lips.
‘About the trimming of your travelling dress, my dear,’ said her mother, calmly, with that virtuous composure which accompanies so many gentle fibs. (‘And so she was, though not just now,’ Mrs. Anderson added to herself, in self-exculpation.)
And then Kate joined them, and they went indoors and lit the lamp. Mr. Sugden had been taking a long walk, that night. Some one was sick at the other end of the parish, to whom the Rector had sent him; and he was glad. The invalid was sixmiles off, and he had walked there and back. But every piece of work, alas! comes to an end, and so did this; and he found himself in front of the Cottage, he could not tell how, just after this soft domestic light began to shine under the verandah, as under an eyelid. He stood and looked at it, poor fellow! with a sick and sore heart. A few nights more, and that lamp would be lit no longer; and the light of his life would be gone out. He stood and looked at it in a rapture of love and pain. There was no one to see him; but if there had been a hundred, he would not have known nor cared, so lost was he in this absorbing passion and anguish. He had not the heart to go in, though the times were so few that he would see her again. He went away, with his head bent on his breast, saying to himself that if she had been happy he could have borne it; but she was not happy; and he ground his teeth, and cursed the Berties, those two butterflies, those two fools, in his heart!
There was one, however, who saw him, and that was Francesca, who was cutting some salad in the corner of the kitchen-garden, in the faint light which preceded the rising of the moon. The old woman looked over the wall, and saw him, and was sorry. ‘The villains!’ she said to herself. But though she was sorry, she laughed softly as she went in, as people will, while the world lasts, laugh at such miseries. Francesca was sorry for the young man—so sorry, even, that she forgot that he was a priest, and, therefore, a terrible sinner in thinking such thoughts; but she was not displeased with Ombra this time. This was natural. ‘What is the good of being young and beautiful if one has not a few victims?’ she said to herself. ‘Time passes fast enough and then it is all over, and the man has it his own way. IfnostraOmbra did no more harm than that!’ And, on the whole, Francesca went in with the salad for her ladies’ supper rather exhilarated than otherwise by the sight of the hopeless lover. It was the woman’s revenge upon man for a great deal that he makes her suffer; and in the abstract women are seldom sorry for such natural victims.
Next evening, however, Mr. Sugden took heart, and went to the Cottage, and there spent a few hours of very sweet wretchedness, Ombra being unusually good to him—and to the Curate she always was good. After the simple supper had been eaten, and Francesca’s salad, Mrs. Anderson contrived that both the girls should be called away to try on their travelling-dresses, at which Miss Richardson and Maryanne were working with passion. The window was open; the night was warm, and the moon had risen over the sea. Mrs. Anderson stepped out upon the verandah with the Curate, and they exchanged a few sentences on the beauty of the night, such as were consistent with the occasion; then she broke off the unreal, and took up the true. ‘Mr. Sugden,’ she said, ‘I wanted to speak to you. It seemsvain to take such a thing for granted, but I am afraid you will miss us when we go away.’
‘Missyou!’ he cried; and then tears came into the poor fellow’s eyes, and into his voice, and he took her hand with despairing gratitude. ‘Thanks for giving me a chance to speak,’ he said—‘it is like yourself. Miss you!—I feel as if life would cease altogether after Monday—it won’t, I suppose, and most things will go on as usual; but I cannot think it—everything will be over for me.’
‘You must not think so,’ she said; ‘it will be hard upon you at first, but you will find things will arrange themselves better than you expect—other habits will come in instead of this. No, indeed I am not unkind, but I know life better than you do. But for that, you know, we could not go on living, with all the changes that happen to us. We should be killed at the first blow.’
‘And so I shall be killed,’ he said, turning from her with heavier gloom than before, and angry with the consolation. ‘Oh! not bodily, I suppose. One can go on and do one’s work all the same; and one good thing is, it will be of importance to nobody but myself.’
‘Don’t say so,’ said kind Mrs. Anderson, with tears in her eyes. ‘Oh! my dear boy—if you will let me call you so—think what your visionary loss is in comparison with so many losses that people have to bear every day.’
‘It is no visionary loss to me,’ he said, bitterly. ‘But if she were happy, I should not mind. I could bear it, if all were well with her. I hope I am not such a wretch as to think of myself in comparison. Don’t think I am too stupid to see how kind you are to me; but there is one thing—only one that could give me real comfort. Promise that, if the circumstances are ever such as to call for a brother’s interference, you will send for me. It is not what I would have wished, God knows!—not what I would have wished—but I will be a brother to her, if she needs a brother. Promise. There are some things which a man can do best, and if she is wronged, if her brother could set things right——’
‘Dear Mr. Sugden, I don’t understand you,’ said Mrs. Anderson, faltering.
‘But you will, if such a time should come? You will remember that you have promised. I will say good night now. I can’t go in again after this and see her without making a fool of myself, and it is best she should keep some confidence in me. Good night.’
Had she fulfilled Miss Richardson’s commission?—or had she pledged herself to appeal to him instead, in some incomprehensible contingency? Mrs. Anderson looked after him bewildered, and did not know.
Sundaywas their last evening at Shanklin, and they were all rather melancholy—even Kate, who had been to church three times, and to the Sunday school, and over the almshouses, and had filled up the interstices between these occupations by a succession of tearful rambles round the Rectory garden with Lucy Eldridge, whose tears flowed at the smallest provocation. ‘I will remember everything you have told me,’ Lucy protested. ‘I will go to the old women every week, and take them their tea and sugar—for oh! Kate, you know papa doesnotapprove of money—and I will see that the little Joliffes are kept at school—and I will go every week to see after your flowers; but oh! what shall I do without you? I shan’t care about my studies, or anything; and those duets which we used to play together, and our German, which we always meant to take up—I shall not have any heart for them now. Oh! Kate, I wish you were not going! But that is selfish. Of course I wantyouto have the pleasure; only——’
‘I wishyouwere going,’ said Kate—‘I wish everybody was coming; but, as that is impossible, we must just make the best of it; and if anybody should take the Cottage, and you should go and make as great friends with them as you ever did with me——’
‘How can you think so?’ said Lucy, with fresh tears.
‘Well,’ said Kate, ‘if I were very good, I suppose I ought to hope you would make friends with them; but I am not so frightened of being selfish as you are. One must be a little selfish—but for that, people would have no character at all.’
‘Oh! Kate, if mamma were to hear you——’
‘I should not mind. Mrs. Eldridge knows as well as I do. Giving in to other people is all very well; but if you have not the heart or the courage to keep something of your very own, which you won’t give away, what is the good of you? I don’t approve of sacrificing like that.’
‘I am sure you would sacrifice yourself, though you speak so,’ said Lucy. ‘Oh! Kate, you would sacrifice anything—even a—person—you loved—if some one else loved him.’
‘I should do nothing of the sort,’ said Kate, stoutly. ‘In the first place, you mean a man, I suppose, and it is only women who are called persons. I should do nothing of the sort. What right should I have to sacrifice him if he were fond of me, and hand him over to some one else? That is not self-sacrifice—it is the height of impertinence; and if he were not fond of me, of course there would be nothing in my power. Oh, no; I am not that sort of person. I will never give up any one’s love or any one’s friendship to give it to another. Now, Lucy, remember that. And if you are as great friends with the new people as you are with me——’
‘What odd ideas you have!’ said Lucy. ‘I suppose it is because you are so independent and a great lady; and it seems natural that everybody should yield to you.’
Upon which Kate flushed crimson.
‘How mean you must think me! To stand up for my own way because I shall be rich. But never mind, Lucy. I don’t suppose you can understand, and I am fond of you all the same. I am fond of younow; but if you go and forget me, and go off after other people, you don’t know how different I can be. I shall hate you—I shall——’
‘Oh! Kate, don’t be so dreadful!’ cried Lucy. ‘What would mamma say?’
‘Then don’t provoke me,’ said Kate. And then they fell back upon more peaceful details, and the hundred commissions which Lucy undertook so eagerly. I am not sure that Kate was quite certain of the sincerity of her self-sacrificing friend. She made a great many wise reflections on the subject when she had left her, and settled it with a philosophy unusual to her years.
‘She does not mean to be insincere,’ Kate mused to herself. ‘She does not understand. If there is nothing deeper in it, how can she help it? When the new people come, she will be quite sure she will not care for them; and then they will call, and she will change her mind. I suppose I will change my mind too. How queer people are! But, at all events, I don’t pretend to be better than I am.’ And with a little premonitory smart, feeling that her friend was already, in imagination, unfaithful, Kate walked home, looking tenderly at everything.
‘Oh! how lovely the sea is!’ she said to herself—‘how blue, and grey, and green, and all sorts of colours! I hope it will not be rough when we cross to-morrow. I wonder if the voyage from Southampton will be disagreeable, and how Ombra will stand it. Is Ombra really ill now, or is it only her mind? Of course she cannot turn round to my aunt and say it is her mind, or that the Berties had anything to do with it. I wonder what really happenedthatnight; and I wonder which it is. She cannot be in love with them both at once, and they cannot be bothin love with her, or they would not be such friends. I wonder—— but, there, I am doing nothing but wondering, and there are so many things that are queer. How beautiful that white headland is with a little light about it, as if the day had forgotten to carry all that belonged to it away! And perhaps I may never see it any more. Perhaps I may never come back to the Cottage, or the cliffs, or the sea. What a long time I have been here—and what a horrid disagreeable girl I was! I think I must be a little better now. I am not so impertinent, at all events, though I do like to meddle. I suppose I shall always like to meddle. Oh! I wonder how I shall feel when I go back again to Langton-Courtenay? I am eighteenpast, and in three years I shall be able to do whatever I like. Lucy said a great lady—a great lady! I think, on the whole, I like the idea. It is so different from most other people. I shall not require to marry unless I please, or to do anything that is disagreeable. And if I don’t set the parish to rights! The poor folks shall be all as happy as the day is long,’ cried Kate to herself, with energy. ‘They shall have each a nice garden, and a bit of potato-ground, and grass for a cow. And what if I were to buy a quantity of those nice little Brittany cows when we are abroad? Auntie thinks they are the best. How comfortable everybody will be with a cow and a garden! But, oh dear! what a long time it will be first! and I don’t know if I shall ever see this dear Cottage, and the bay, and the headland, and all the cliffs and the landslips, and the ups and the downs again.’
‘Mees Katta, you vill catzh ze cold,’ said Francesca, coming briskly up to her. ‘It is not so beautiful this road, that you should take the long looks, and have the air so dull. Sorry, no, she is not sorry—my young lady is not sorry to go to see Italy, and ze mountains, and ze world—— ’
‘Not quite that, Francesca,’ said Kate; ‘but I have been so happy at the Cottage, and I was thinking what if I should never see it again!’
‘That is what you call non-sense,’ said Francesca. ‘Why should not Mademoiselle, who is verra young, comm back and zee all she lofs? If it was an old, like me—but I think nothink, nothink of ze kind, for I always comms back, like what you call ze bad penny. This is pretty, but were you once to see Italy, Mees Katta, you never would think no more of this—never no more!’
‘Indeed, I should!’ cried Kate, indignantly; ‘and if this was the ugliest place in England, and your Italy as beautiful as heaven, I should still like this best.’
Francesca laughed, and shook her little brown head.
‘Wait till my young lady see,’ she said—‘wait till she see. The air is never damp like this, but sweet as heaven, as Mees Katta says; and the sea blue, all blue; you never see nozinglike it. It makes you well, you English, only to see Italy. What does Mademoiselle say?’
‘Oh! do you think the change of air will cure Ombra?’ cried Kate.
‘No,’ said Francesca, turning round upon her, ‘not the change of air, but the change of mind, will cure Mees Ombra. What she wants is the change of mind.’
‘I do not understand you,’ said Kate. ‘I suppose you mean the change of scene, the novelty, the——’
‘I mean the change of ze mind,’ said Francesca; ‘when she will understand herself, and the ozer people’s; when she knows to do right, and puts away her face of stone, then she will be well—quite well. It is not sickness; it is her mind that makes ill, Mees Katta. When she will put ze ice away and be true, then she shall be well.’
‘Oh, Francesca, you talk like an old witch, and I am frightened for you!’ cried Kate. ‘I don’t believe in illness of the mind; you will see Ombra will get better as soon as we begin to move about.’
‘As soon as she change her mind she will be better,’ said the oracular Francesca. ‘There is nobody that tells her the truth but me. She is my child, and I lof her, and I tell her the trutt.’
‘I think I see my aunt in the garden,’ said Kate, hurrying on; for though she was very curious, she was honourable, and did not wish to discover her cousin’s secrets through Francesca’s revelations.
‘If your aunt kill me, I care not,’ said Francesca, ‘but my lady is the most good, the most sense—— She knows Mees Ombra, and she lets me talk. She is cured when she will change the mind.’
‘I don’t want to hear any more, please,’ said honourable Kate. But Francesca went on nodding her head, and repeating her sentiment: ‘When she change the mind, she will be well,’ till it got to honest Kate’s ears, and mixed with her dreams. The mother and daughter were in the garden, talking not too cheerfully. A certain sadness was in the air. The lamp burned dimly in the drawing-room, throwing a faint, desolate light over the emptiness. ‘This is what it will look like to-morrow,’ said Kate; and she cried. And the others were very much disposed to follow her example. It was the last night—words which are always melancholy; and presently poor Mr. Sugden stole up in the darkness, and joined them, with a countenance of such despair that poor Kate, excited, and tired, and dismal as she herself felt, had hard ado to keep from laughing. The new-comer added no cheer to the little party. He was dismal as Don Quixote, and, poor fellow, as simple-minded and as true.
And next morning they went away. Mr. Courtenay himself, who had lingered in the neighbourhood, paying a visit to some friends, either from excess of kindness, or determination to see the last of them, met them at Southampton, and put them into the boat for Havre, the nearest French port. Kate had her Maryanne, who, confounded by the idea of foreign travel, was already helpless; and the two other ladies were attended by old Francesca, as brisk and busy as a little brown bee, who was of use to everybody, and knew all about luggage and steamboats. Mr. Sugden, who had begged that privilege from Mrs. Anderson, went with them so far, and pointed out the ships of the fleet as they passed, and took them about the town, indicating all its principal wonders to them, as if he were reading his own or their death-warrants.
‘If it goes on much longer, I shall laugh,’ whispered Kate, in her aunt’s ear.
‘It would be very cruel of you,’ said that kind woman. But even her composure was tried. And in the evening they sailed, with all the suppressed excitement natural to the circumstances.
‘You have the very best time of the year for your start,’ said Mr. Courtenay, as he shook hands with them.
‘And, thanks to you, every comfort in travelling,’ said Mrs. Anderson.
Thus they parted, with mutual compliments. Mr. Sugden wrung her hand, and whispered hoarsely, ‘Remember—like her brother!’ He stalked like a ghost on shore. His face was the last they saw when the steamboat moved, as he stood in the grey of the evening, grey as the evening, looking after them as long as they were visible. The sight of him made the little party very silent. They made no explanation to each other; but Kate had no longer any inclination to laugh. ‘Like a brother!—like her brother!’ These words, the Curate, left to himself, said over and over in his heart as he walked back and forward on the pier for hours, watching the way they had gone. The same soft evening breeze which helped them on, blew about him, but refreshed him not. The object of his life was gone.
Thelittle party travelled, as it is in the nature of the British tourist to travel, when he is fairly started, developing suddenly a perfect passion for sight-seeing, and for long and wearisome journeys. Mrs. Anderson, though she was old enough and experienced enough to have known better, took the plunge with the truest national enthusiasm. Even when they paused in Paris, which she knew as well as or better than anything in her own country, she still felt herself a tourist, and went conscientiously over again and saw the sights—for Kate, she said, but also for herself. They rushed across France with the speed of an express train, and made a dash at Switzerland, though it was so early in the year. They had it almost all to themselves, the routes being scarcely open, and the great rush of travellers not yet begun; and who, that does not know it, can fancy how beautiful it is among the mountains in May! Kate was carried entirely out of herself by what she saw. The Spring green brightening and enhancing those rugged heights, and dazzling peaks of snow; the sky of an ethereal blue, all dewy and radiant, and surprised into early splendour, like the blue eyes of a child; the paths sweet with flowers, the streams full with the melting snow, the sense of awakening and resurrection all over the land. Kate had not dreamed of anything so splendid and so beautiful. The weather was much finer than is usual so early in the year, and of course the travellers took it not for an exceptional season, as they ought, but gave the fact that they were abroad credit for every shining day. Abroad! Kate had felt for years (she said all her life) that in that word ‘abroad’ every delight was included; and now she believed herself. The novelty and movement by themselves would have done a great deal; and the wonderful beauty of this virgin country, which looked as if no crowd of tourists had ever profaned it, as if it had kept its stillness, its stateliness and grandeur, and dazzling light and majestic glooms, all for their enjoyment, elevated her into a paradise of inward delight. Even Maryanne was moved, though chiefly by her mistress’s many and oft-repeated efforts to rouse her. When Kate had exhausted everybody else, she rushed upon her handmaid.
‘Oh! Maryanne, look! Did you ever see—did you ever dream of anything so beautiful?’
‘No, miss,’ said Maryanne.
‘Look at that stream rushing down the ravine. It is the melted snow. And look at all those peaks above. Pure snow, as dazzling as—as——’
‘They looks for all the world like the sugar on a bride-cake, miss,’ said Maryanne.
At which Kate laughed, but went on—
‘Those cottages are called châlets, up there among the clouds. Look how green the grass is—like velvet. Oh! Maryanne, shouldn’t you like to live there—to milk the cows in the evening, and have the mountains all round you—nothing but snow-peaks, wherever you turned your eyes?’
Maryanne gave a shudder.
‘Why, miss,’ she said, ‘you’d catch your death of cold!’
‘Wait till Mees Katta see mybella Firenze,’ said old Francesca. ‘There is the snow quite near enough—quite near enough. You zee him on the tops of ze hills.’
‘I never, never shall be able to live in a town. I hate towns,’ said Kate.
‘Ah!’ cried the old woman, ‘my young lady will not always think so. This is pleasant now; but there is no balls, no parties, no croquée on ze mountains! Mees Katta shakes her head; but then the Winter will come, and, oh! how beautiful is Firenze, with all the palaces, and ze people, and processions that pass, and all that is gay! There will be the Opera,’ said Francesca, counting on her fingers, ‘and the Cascine, and the Carnival, and the Veglioni, and the grand Corso with the flowers. Ah! I have seen many young English Mees, I know.’
‘I never could have supposed Francesca would be so stupid,’ cried Kate, returning to the party on the quarter-deck—for this conversation took place in a steamer on the Lake of Lucerne. ‘She does not care for the mountains as much as Maryanne does, even. Maryanne thinks the snow is like sugar on a bride-cake,’ she went on, with a laugh; ‘but Francesca does nothing but rave about Florence, and balls, and operas. As if I cared for such things—and as if we were going there!’
‘But Francesca is quite right, dear,’ said Mrs. Anderson, with hesitation. ‘When the Summer is over, we shall want to settle down again, and see our fellow-creatures; and really, as Francesca has suggested it, we might do a great deal worse. Florence is a very nice place.’
‘In Winter, auntie? Are not we going home?’
‘My dear, I know your uncle would wish you to see as much as possible before returning home,’ said Mrs. Anderson, faltering,and with considerable confusion. ‘I confess I had begun to think that—a few months in Italy—as we are here——’
Kate was taken by surprise. She did not quite know whether she was delighted or disappointed by the idea; but before she could reply, she met the eye of her cousin, whose whole face had kindled into passion. Ombra sprang to her feet, and drew Kate aside with a nervous haste that startled her. She grasped her arm tight, and whispered in her ear, ‘We are to be kept till you are of age—I see it all now—we are prisoners till you are of age. Oh! Kate, will you bear it? You can resist, but I can’t—they will listen to you.’
It is impossible to describe the shock which was given to Kate’s loyalty by this speech. It was the first actual suggestion of rebellion which had been made to her, and it jarred her every nerve. She had not been a submissive child, but she had never plotted—never done anything in secret. She said aloud, in painful wonder—
‘Why should we be prisoners?—and what has my coming of age to do with it?’ turning round, and looking bewildered into her cousin’s face.
Ombra made no reply; she went back to her seat, and retired into herself for the rest of the day. Things had gone smoothly since the journey began up to this moment. She had almost ceased to brood, and had begun to take some natural interest in what was going on about her. But now all at once the gloom returned. She sat with her eyes fixed on the shore of the lake, and with the old flush of feverish red, half wretchedness, half anger, under her eyes. Kate, who had grown happy in the brightening of the domestic atmosphere, was affected by this change in spite of herself. She exchanged mournful looks with her aunt. The beautiful lake and the sunny peaks were immediately clouded over; she was doubly checked in the midst of her frank enjoyment.
‘You are wrong, Ombra,’ said Mrs. Anderson, after a long pause. ‘I don’t know what you have said to Kate, but I am sure you have taken up a false idea. There is no compulsion. We are to go only when we please, and to stay only as long as we like.’
‘But we are not to return home this year?’
‘I did not say so; but I think, perhaps, on the whole, that to go a little further, and see a little more, would be best both for you and Kate.’
‘Exactly,’ said Ombra, with bitterness, nodding her head in a derisive assent.
Kate looked on with wistful and startled eyes. It was almost the first time that the idea of real dissension between these two had crossed her mind; and still more this infinitelystartling doubt whether all that was said to her was true. At least there had been concealment; and was it really, truly the good of Ombra and Kate, or some private arrangement with Uncle Courtenay, that was in her aunt’s mind. This suggestion came suddenly into her very heart, wounding her as with an arrow; and from that day, though sometimes lessening and sometimes deepening, the cloud upon Ombra’s face came back. But as she grew less amiable, she grew more powerful. Henceforward the party became guided by her wayward fancies. She took a sudden liking for one of the quietest secluded places—a village on the little blue lake of Zug—and there they settled for some time, without rhyme or reason. Green slopes, with grey stone-peaks above, and glimpses of snow beyond, shut in this lake-valley. I agree with Ombra that it is very sweet in its stillness, the lake so blue, the air so clear, and the noble nut-bearing trees so umbrageous, shadowing the pleasant châlets. In the centre was a little white-washed village church among its graves, its altar all decked with stately May lilies, the flowers of the Annunciation. The church had no beauty of architecture, no fine pictures—not even great antiquity to recommend it; but Ombra was fond of the sunshiny, still place. She would go there when she was tired, and sit down on one of the rush-bottomed chairs, and sometimes was to be seen kneeling furtively on the white altar steps.
Kate, who roamed up and down everywhere, and had soon all the facility of a young mountaineer, would stop at the open church-door as she came down from the hills, alpenstock in hand, sunburnt and agile as a young Diana.
‘You are not going to turn a Roman Catholic, Ombra?’ she said. ‘I think it would make my aunt very unhappy.’
‘I am not going to turn anything,’ said Ombra. ‘I shall never be different from what I am—never any better. One tries and tries, and it is no good.’
‘Then stop trying, and come up on the hills and shake it off,’ said Kate.
‘Perhaps I might if I were like you; but I am not like you.’
‘Or let us go on, and see people and do things again—do all sorts of things. I like this little lake,’ said Kate. ‘One has a home-feeling. I almost think I should begin to poke about the cottages, and find fault with the people, if we were to stay long. But that is not your temptation, Ombra. Why do you like to stay?’
‘I stay because it is so still—because nobody comes here, nothing can happen here; it must always be the same for ever and for ever and ever!’ cried Ombra. ‘The hills and the deep water, and the lilies in the church—which are artificial, you know, and cannot fade.’
Kate did not understand this little bitter jibe at the end of her cousin’s speech; but was overwhelmed with surprise when Ombra next morning suggested that they should resume their journey. They were losing their time where they were, she said; and as, if they were to go to Italy for the Winter, it would be necessary to return by Switzerland next year, she proposed to strike off from the mountains at this spot, to go to Germany, to the strange old historical cities that were within reach. ‘Kate should see Nuremberg,’ she said; and Kate, to her amazement, found the whole matter settled, and the packing commenced that day. Ombra managed the whole journey, and was a practical person, handy and rational, until they came to that old-world place, where she becamereveuseand melancholy once more.
‘Do you like this better than Switzerland?’ Kate asked, as they looked down from their windows along the three-hundred-years-old street, where it was so strange to see people walking about in ordinary dresses and not in trunkhose and velvet mantles.
‘I don’t care for any place. I have seen so many, and one is so much like another,’ said Ombra. ‘But look, Kate, there is one advantage. Anything might happen here; any one might be coming along those streets and you would never feel surprised. If I were to see my father walking quietly this way, I should not think it at all strange.’
‘But, Ombra—he is dead!’ said Kate, shrinking a little, with natural uneasiness.
‘Yes, he is dead, but that does not matter. Look down that hazy street with all the gables. Any one might be coming—people whom we have forgotten—even,’ she said, pressing Kate’s arm, ‘people who have forgotten us.’
‘Oh! Ombra, how strangely you speak! People that care for you don’t forget you,’ cried Kate.
‘That does not mend the matter,’ said Ombra, and withdrew hurriedly from the window.
Poor Kate tried very hard to make something out of it, but could not; and therefore she shrugged her shoulders and gave her head a little shake, and went to her German, which she was working at fitfully, to make the best of her opportunities. The German, though she thought sometimes it would break her heart, was not so hard as Ombra; and even the study of languages had to her something amusing in it.
One of the young waiters in the hotel kept a dictionary in the staircase window, and studied it as he flew up and down stairs for a new word to experiment with upon the young ladies; and another had, by means of the same dictionary, set up a flirtation with Maryanne; so fun was still possible, notwithstanding all; and whether it was by the mountain paths, or in those hazy strange old streets, Kate walked with her head, as itwere, in the clouds, in a soft rapture of delight and pleasantness, taking in all that was sweet and lovely and good, and letting the rest drop off from her like a shower of rain. She even ceased to think of Ombra’s odd ways—not out of want of consideration, but with the facility which youth has for taking everything for granted, and consenting to whatever is. It was a great pity, but it could not be helped, and one must make the best of it all the same.
And thus the Summer passed on, full of wonders and delights. Mrs. Anderson and her daughter, and even Francesca, were invaluable to the ignorant girl. They knew how everything had to be done; they were acquainted alike with picture-galleries and railway-tickets, and knew even what to say about every work of art—an accomplishment deeply amazing to Kate, who did not know what to say about anything, and who had several times committed herself by praising vehemently some daub which was beyond the reach of praise. When she made such a mistake as this, her mortification and shame were great; but unfortunately her pride made her hold by her opinion. They saw so many pictures, so many churches, so much that was picturesque and beautiful, that her brain was in a maze, and her intellect had become speechless.
They took their way across the mountains in Autumn, getting entangled in the vast common tide of travellers to Italy; and, after all, Francesca’s words came true, and it was a relief to Kate to get back into the stream—it relieved the strain upon her mind. Instead of thinking of more and lovelier pictures still, she was pleased to rest and see nothing; and even—a confession which she was ashamed to make to herself—Kate was as much delighted with the prospect of mundane pleasures as she had been with the scenery. Society had acquired a new charm. She had never been at anything more than ‘a little dance,’ or a country concert, and balls and operas held out their arms to her. One of the few diplomatic friends whom Mrs. Anderson had made in her consular career was at Florence; and even Mr. Courtenay could not object to his niece’s receiving the hospitalities of the Embassy. She was to ‘come out’ at the Ambassador’s ball—not in her full-blown glory, as an heiress and a great lady, but as Mrs. Anderson’s niece, a pretty, young, undistinguished English girl. Kate knew nothing about this, nor cared. She threw herself into the new joys as she had done into the old. A new chapter, however it might begin, was always a pleasant thing in her fresh and genial life.
Florencealtogether was full of pleasant novelty to the young traveller. To find herself living up two pair of stairs, with windows overlooking the Arno, and at a little distance the quaint buildings of the Ponte Vecchio, was as great a change as the first change had been from Langton-Courtenay to the little Cottage at Shanklin. Mrs. Anderson’s apartment on the second floor of the Casa Graziana was not large. There was a drawing-room which looked to the front, and received all the sunshine which Florentine skies could give; and half a mile off, at the other end of the house, there was a grim and spare dining-room, furnished with the indispensable tables and chairs, and with a curious little fireplace in the corner, raised upon a slab of stone, as on a pedestal. It would be difficult to tell how cold it was here as the Winter advanced; but in thesaloneit was genial as Summer whenever the sun shone. The family went, as it were, from Nice to Inverness when they went from the front to the back, for their meals. Perhaps it might have been inappropriate for Miss Courtenay of Langton-Courtenay to live up two pair of stairs; but it was not at all unsuitable for Mrs. Anderson; and, indeed, when Lady Barker, who was Mrs. Anderson’s friend, came to call, she was much surprised by the superior character of the establishment. Lady Barker had been a Consul’s daughter, and had risen immensely in life by marrying the foolish youngattaché, whom she now kept in the way he ought to go. She was not the Ambassadress, but the Ambassadress’s friend, and a member of the Legation; and, though she was now in a manner a great lady herself, she remembered quite well what were the means of the Andersons, and knew that even theterzo pianoof a house on the Lung-Arno was more than they could have ventured on in the ancient days.
‘What a pretty apartment,’ she said; ‘and how nicely situated! I am afraid you will find it rather dear. Florence is so changed since your time. Do you remember how cheap everything used to be in the old days? Well, if you will believe me, you pay just fifteen times as much for every article now.’
‘So I perceive,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘We give a thousandfrancs for these rooms, which ought not to be more than a hundred scudi—and without even the old attraction of a pleasant accessible Court.’
Lady Barker opened her eyes—at once, at the fact of Mrs. Anderson paying a thousand francs a month for her rooms, and at her familiar mention of the pleasant Court.
‘Oh, there are some very pleasant people here now!’ she said; ‘if your young ladies are fond of dancing, I think I can help them to some amusement. Lady Granton will send you cards for her ball. Is Ombra delicate?—do you still call her Ombra? How odd it is that you and I, under such different circumstances, should meet here!’
‘Yes—very odd,’ said Mrs. Anderson; ‘and yet I don’t know. People who have been once in Italy always come back. There is a charm about it—a——’
‘Ah, we didn’t think so once!’ said Lady Barker, with a laugh. She could remember the time when the Andersons, like so many other people compelled to live abroad, looked upon everything that was not English with absolute enmity. ‘You used to think Italy did not agree with your daughter,’ she said; ‘have you brought her for her health now?’
‘Oh no! Ombra is quite well; she is always pale,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘We have come rather on account of my niece—not for her health, but because she had never seen anything out of her own country. We think it right that she should make good use of her time before she comes of age.’
‘Oh! will she come of age?’ said Lady Barker, with a glance of laughing curiosity. She decided that the pretty girl at the window, who had two or three times broken into the conversation, was a great deal too pretty to be largely endowed by fortune; and smiled at her old friend’s grandiloquence, which she remembered so well. She made a very good story of it at the little cosy dinner-party at the Embassy that evening, and prepared the good people for some amusement. ‘A pretty English country girl, with some property, no doubt,’ she said. ‘A cottageornée, most likely, and some fields about it; but her aunt talks as if she were heiress to a Grand Duke. She has come abroad to improve her mind before she comes of age.’
‘And when she goes back there will be a grand assemblage of the tenantry, no doubt, and triumphal arches, and all the rest of it,’ said another of the fine people.
‘So Mrs. Vice-Consul allows one to suppose,’ said Lady Barker. ‘But she is so pretty—prettier than anything I have seen for ages; and Ombra, too, is pretty, the late Vice-Consul’s heiress. They willfar furore—two such new faces, and both so English; so fresh; sogauche!’
This was Lady Barker’s way of backing her friends; but thefriends did not know of it, and it procured them their invitation all the same, and Lady Granton’s card to put on the top of the few other cards which callers had left. And Mrs. Anderson came to be, without knowing it, the favourite joke of the ambassadorial circle. Mrs. Vice-Consul had more wonderful sayings fastened upon her than she ever dreamt of, and became the type and symbol of the heavy British matron to that lively party. Her friend made her out to be a bland and dignified mixture of Mrs. Malaprop and Mrs. Nickleby. Meanwhile, she had a great many things to do, which occupied her, and drove even her anxieties out of her mind. There was the settling down—the hiring of servants and additional furniture, and all the trifles necessary to make their rooms ‘comfortable;’ and then the dresses of the girls to be put in order, and especially the dress in which Kate was to make her first appearance.
Mrs. Anderson had accepted Mr. Courtenay’s conditions; she had acquiesced in the propriety of keeping silent as to Kate’s pretensions, and guarding her from all approach of fortune-hunters. There was even something in this which was not disagreeable to her maternal feelings; for to have Kate made first, and Ombra second, would not have been pleasant. But still, at the same time, she could not restrain a natural inclination to enhance the importance of her party by a hint—an inference. That little intimation about Kate’s coming of age, she had meant to tell, as indeed it did, more than she intended; and now her mind was greatly exercised about her niece’s ball-dress. ‘White tarlatane is, of course, very nice for a young girl,’ she said, doubtfully, ‘it is all my Ombra has ever had; but, for Kate, with her pretensions——’
This was said rather as one talks to one’s self, thinking aloud, than as actually asking advice.
‘But I thought Kate in Florence was to be simply your niece,’ said Ombra, who was in the room. ‘To make her very fine would be bad taste; besides,’ she added, with a little sigh, ‘Kate would look well in white calico. Nature has decked her so. I suppose I never, at my best, was anything like that.’
Ombra had improved very much since their arrival in Florence. Her fretfulness had much abated, and there was no envy in this sigh.
‘At your best, Ombra! My foolish darling, do you think your best is over?’ said the mother, with a smile.
‘I mean the bloom,’ said Ombra. ‘I never had any bloom—and Kate’s is wonderful. I think she gives a pearly, rosy tint to the very air. I was always a little shadow, you know!’
‘You will not do yourself justice,’ cried Mrs. Anderson. ‘Oh! Ombra, if you only knew how it grieves me! You draw back, and you droop into that dreamy, melancholy way; there isalways a mist about you. My darling, this is a new place, you will meet new people, everything is fresh and strange. Could you not make a new beginning, dear, and shake it off!’
‘I try,’ said Ombra, in a low tone.
‘I don’t want to be hard upon you, my own child; but, then, dear, you must blame yourself, not any one else. It was not his fault.’
‘Please don’t speak of it,’ cried the girl. ‘If you could know how humbled I feel to think that it isthatwhich has upset my whole life! Ill-temper, jealousy, envy, meanness—pleasant things to have in one’s heart! I fight with them, but I can’t overcome them. If I could only “not care!” How happy people are who can take things easily, and who don’t care!’
‘Very few people do,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘Those who have command of themselves don’t show their feelings, but most peoplefeelmore or less. The change, however, will do you good. And you must occupy yourself, my love. How nicely you used to draw, Ombra! and you have given up drawing. As for poetry, my dear, it is very pretty—it is very, very pretty—but I fear it is not much good.’
‘It does not sell, you mean, like novels.’
‘I don’t know much about novels; but it keeps you always dwelling upon your feelings. And then, if they were ever published, people would talk. They would say, “Where has Ombra learned all this? Has she been as unhappy as she says? Has she been disappointed?” My darling, I think it does a girl a great deal of harm. If you would begin your drawing again! Drawing does not tell any tales.’
‘There is no tale to tell,’ cried Ombra. Her shadowy face flushed with a colour which, for the moment, was as bright as Kate’s, and she got up hurriedly, and began to arrange some books at a side-table, an occupation which carried her out of her mother’s way; and then Kate came in, carrying a basket of fruit, which she and Francesca had bought in the market. There were scarcely any flowers to be had, she complained, but the grapes, with their picturesque stems, and great green leaves, stained with russet, were almost as ornamental. A white alabaster tazza, which they had bought at Pisa, heaped with them, was almost more effective, more characteristic than flowers.