Mrs. Anderson’s house was situated in one of those nests of warmth and
verdure which are characteristic of the Isle of Wight. There was a white
cliff behind, partially veiled with turf and bushes, the remains of an
ancient landslip. The green slope which formed its base, and which, in
Spring, was carpeted with wild-flowers, descended into the sheltered
sunny garden, which made a fringe of flowers and greenness round the
cottage. On that side there was no need of fence or boundary. A wild
little rustic flight of steps led upward to the winding mountain-path
which led to the brow of the cliff, and the cliff itself thus became the
property of the little house. Both cottage and garden were small, but
the one was a mass of flowers, and the airy brightness and lightness of
the other made up for its tiny size. The windows of the little
drawing-room opened into the rustic verandah, all garlanded with
climbing plants; and though the view was not very great, nothing but
flowers and verdure, a bit of quiet road, a glimpse of blue sea, yet
from the cliff there was a noble prospect--all Sandown Bay, with its
white promontory, and the wide stretch of water, sometimes blue as
sapphire, though grey enough when the wind brought it in, in huge
rollers upon the strand. The sight, and sound, and scent of the sea were
all alike new to Kate. The murmur in her ears day and night, now soft,
like the hu-ush of a mother to a child, now thundering like artillery,
now gay as laughter, delighted the young soul which was athirst for
novelty. Here was something which was always new. There was no limit to
her enjoyment of the sea. She liked it when wild and when calm, and
whatever might be its vagaries, and in all her trials of temper, which
occurred now and then, fled to it for soothing. The whole place, indeed,
seemed to be made especially for Kate. It suited her to climb steep
places, to run down slopes, to be always going up or down, with
continual movement of her blood and stir of her spirits. She declared
aloud that this was what she had wanted all her life--not flat parks and
flowers, but the rising waves to pursue her when she ventured too close
to them, the falling tide to open up sweet pools and mysteries, and
penetrate her with the wholesome breath of the salt, delightful beach.
‘I don’t know how I have lived all this time away from it. I must have
been born for the seaside!’ she cried, as she walked on the sands with
her two companions.
Ombra, for her part, shrugged her shoulders, and drew her shawl closer.
She had already decided that Kate was one of the race of extravagant
talkers, who say more than they feel.
‘The sea is very nice,’ said Mrs. Anderson, who in this respect was not
so enthusiastic as Kate.
‘Very nice! Oh! aunt, it is simply delightful! Whenever I am
troublesome--as I know I shall be--just send me out here. I may talk all
the nonsense I like--it will never tire the sea.’
‘Do you talk a great deal of nonsense, Kate?’
‘I am afraid I do,’ said the girl, with penitence. ‘Not that I mean it;
but what is one to do? Miss Blank, my last governess, never talked at
all, when she could help it, and silence is terrible--anything is better
than that; and she said I chattered, and was always interfering. What
could I do? One must be occupied about something!’
‘But are you fond of interfering, dear?’
‘Auntie!’ said Kate, throwing back her hair, ‘if I tell you the very
worst of myself, you will not give me up, or send me away? Thanks! It is
enough for me to be sure of that. Well, perhaps I am, a little--I mean I
like to be doing something, or talking about something. I like to have
something even to think about. You can’t think of Mangnall’s Questions,
now, can you?--or Mrs. Markham? The village people used to be a great
deal more interesting. I used to like to hear all that was going on, and
give them my advice. Well, I suppose it was not very good advice. But I
was not a nobody there to be laughed at, you know, auntie--I was the
chief person in the place!’
Here Ombra laughed, and it hurt Kate’s feelings.
‘When I am old enough, I shall be able to do as I please in
Langton-Courtenay,’ she said.
‘Certainly, my love,’ said Mrs. Anderson, interposing; ‘and I hope, in
the meantime, dear, you will think a great deal of your
responsibilities, and all that is necessary to make you fill such a
trying position as you ought.’
‘Trying!’ said Kate, with some surprise; ‘do you think it will be
trying? I shall like it better than anything. Poor old people, I must
try to make it up to them, for perhaps I rather bothered them sometimes,
to tell the truth. I am not like you and Ombra, so gentle and nice. And,
then, I had never seen people behave as I suppose they ought.’
‘I am glad you think we behave as we ought, Kate.’
‘Oh! auntie; but then there is something about Ombra that makes me
ashamed of myself. She is never noisy, nor dreadful, like me. She
touches things so softly, and speaks so gently. Isn’t she lovely,
aunt?’
‘She is lovely to me,’ said Mrs. Anderson, with a glow of pleasure. ‘And
I am so glad you like your cousin, Kate.’
‘Like her! I never saw any one half so beautiful. She looks such a lady.
She is so dainty, and so soft, and so nice. Could I ever grow like that?
Ah! auntie, you shake your head--I don’t mean so pretty, only a little
more like her, a little less like a----’
‘My dear child!’ said the gratified mother, giving Kate a hug, though it
was out of doors. And at that moment, Ombra, who had been in advance,
turned round, and saw the hasty embrace, and shrugged her pretty
shoulders, as her habit was.
‘Mamma, I wish very much you would keep these bursts of affection till
you get home,’ said Ombra. ‘The Eldridges are coming down the cliff.’
‘Oh! who are the Eldridges? I know some people called Eldridge,’ said
Kate--‘at least, I don’t know them, but I have heard----’
‘Hush! they will hear, too, if you don’t mind,’ said Ombra. And Kate was
silent. She was changing rapidly, even in these few days. Ombra, who
snubbed her, who was not gracious to her, who gave her no caresses, had,
without knowing it, attained unbounded empire over her cousin. Kate had
fallen in love with her, as girls so often do with one older than
themselves. The difference in this case was scarcely enough to justify
the sudden passion; but Ombra looked older than she was, and was so very
different a being from Kate, that her gravity took the effect of years.
Already this entirely unconscious influence had done more for Kate than
all the educational processes she had gone through. It woke the woman,
the gentlewoman, in the child, who had done, in her brief day, so many
troublesome things. Ombra suddenly had taken the ideal place in her
mind--she had been elevated, all unwitting of the honour, to the shrine
in Kate’s heart. Everything in her seemed perfection to the girl--even
her name, her little semi-reproofs, her gentle coldness. ‘If I could but
be like Ombra, not blurting things out, not saying more than I mean, not
carried away by everything that interests me,’ she said,
self-reproachfully, with rising compunction and shame for all her past
crimes. She had never seen the enormity of them as she did now. She set
up Ombra, and worshipped her in every particular, with the enthusiasm of
a fanatic. She tried to curb her once bounding steps into some
resemblance to the other’s languid pace; and drove herself and Maryanne
frantic by vain endeavours to smoothe her rich crisp chestnut hair into
the similitude of Ombra’s shadowy, dusky locks. This sudden worship was
independent of all reason. Mrs. Anderson herself was utterly taken by
surprise by it, and Ombra had not as yet a suspicion of the fact; but it
had already begun to work upon Kate.
It was not in her, however, to make the acquaintance of this group of
new people without a little stir in her pulses--all the more as Mrs.
Eldridge came up to herself with special cordiality.
‘I am sure this is Miss Courtenay,’ she said. ‘I have heard of you from
my nephew and nieces at Langton-Courtenay. They told me you were coming
to the Island. I hope you will like it, and think it as pretty as I do.
You are most welcome, I am sure, to Shanklin.’
‘Are you their aunt at Langton-Courtenay?’ said Kate, with eyes which
grew round with excitement and pleasure. ‘Oh! how very odd! I did not
think anybody knew me here.’
‘I am aunt to the boys and girls,’ said Mrs. Eldridge. ‘Mrs. Hardwick is
my husband’s sister. We must be like old friends, for the Hardwicks’
sake.’
‘But the Hardwicks are not old friends to me,’ said Kate, with a child’s
unnecessary conscientiousness of explanation. ‘Bertie I know, but I have
only seen the others twice.’
‘Oh! that does not matter,’ said the Rector’s wife; ‘you must come and
see me all the same.’ And then she turned to Mrs. Anderson, and began to
talk of the parish. Kate stood by and listened with wondering eyes as
they discussed the poor folk, and their ways and their doings. They did
not interfere in her way; but perhaps their way was not much better, on
the whole, than Kate’s. She had been very interfering, there was no
doubt; but then she had interfered with everybody, rich and poor alike,
and made no invidious distinction. She stood and listened wondering,
while the Rector added his contribution about the mothers’ meetings, and
the undue expectations entertained by the old women at the almshouses.
‘We must guard against any foolish partiality, or making pets of them,’
Mr. Eldridge said; and his wife added that Mr. Aston, in the next
parish, had quite _spoiled_ his poor people. ‘He is a bachelor; he has
nobody to keep him straight, and he believes all their stories. They
know they have only to send to the Vicarage to get whatever they
require. When one of them comes into our parish, we don’t know what to
do with her,’ she said, shaking her head. Kate was too much occupied in
listening to all this to perceive that Ombra shrugged her shoulders. Her
interest in the new people kept her silent, as they reascended the
cliff, and strolled towards the cottage; and it was not till the Rector
and his wife had turned homewards, once more cordially shaking hands
with her, and renewing their invitation, that she found her voice.
‘Oh! auntie, how very strange--how funny!’ she said. ‘To think I should
meet the Eldridges here!’
‘Why not the Eldridges?--have you any objection to them?’ said Mrs.
Anderson.
‘Oh, no!--I suppose not.’ (Kate put aside with an effort that audacity
of Sir Herbert Eldridge, and false assumption about the size of his
park.) ‘But it is so curious to meet directly, as soon as I arrive,
people whom I have heard of----’
‘Indeed, my dear Kate, it is not at all wonderful,’ said her aunt,
didactically. ‘The world is not nearly such a big place as you suppose.
If you should ever travel as much as we have done (which heaven
forbid!), you would find that you were always meeting people you knew,
in the most unlikely places. Once, at Smyrna, when Mr. Anderson was
there, a gentleman came on business, quite by chance, who was the son of
one of my most intimate friends in my youth. Another time I met a
companion of my childhood, whom I had lost sight of since we were at
school, going up Vesuvius. Our chaplain at Cadiz turned out to be a
distant connection of my husband’s, though we knew nothing of him
before. Such things are always happening. The world looks very big, and
you feel as if you must lose yourself in it; but, on the contrary,
wherever one goes, one falls upon people one knows.’
‘But yet it is so strange about the Hardwicks,’ said Kate, persisting;
‘they are the only people I ever went to see--whom I was allowed to
know.’
‘How very pleasant!’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘Now I shall be quite easy in
my mind. Your uncle must have approved of them, in that case, so I may
allow you to associate with the Eldridges freely. How very nice, my
love, that it should be so!’
Kate made no reply to this speech. She was not, to tell the truth, quite
clear that her uncle approved. He had not cared to hear about Bertie
Hardwick; he had frowned at the mention of him. ‘And Bertie is the
nicest--he is the only one I care for,’ said Kate to herself; but she
said nothing audibly on the subject. To her, notwithstanding her aunt’s
philosophy, it seemed very strange indeed that Bertie Hardwick’s
relatives should be the first to meet her in this new world.