The two Berties came again next day--they came with their cousins, and
they came without them. They joined the party from the Cottage in their
walks, with an intuitive knowledge where they were going, which was
quite extraordinary. They got up croquet-parties and picnics; they were
always in attendance upon the two girls. Mrs. Anderson had many a
thought on the subject, and wondered much what her duty was in such a
very trying emergency; but there were two things that consoled her--the
first that it was Ombra who was the chief object of the two young men’s
admiration; and the second that they could not possibly stay long. Ombra
was their first object. She assured herself of this with a warm and
pleasant glow at her heart, though she was not a match-making mother,
nor at all desirous of ‘marrying off,’ and ‘getting rid of’ her only
child. Besides, the young men were too young for anything serious--not
very long out of their teens; lads still under strict parental
observation and guidance; they were too young to make matrimonial
proposals to any one, or to carry such proposals out. But, nevertheless,
it was pleasant to Mrs. Anderson to feel that Ombra was their first
object, and that her ‘bairn’ was ‘respected like the lave.’ ‘Thank
Heaven, Kate’s money has nothing to do with it,’ she said to herself;
and where was the use of sending away two handsome young men, whom the
girls liked, and who were a change to them? Besides, they were going
away so soon--in a fortnight--no harm could possibly come.
So Mrs. Anderson tolerated them, invited them, gave them luncheon
sometimes, and often tea, till they became as familiar about the house
as the young Eldridges were, or any other near neighbours. And the girls
did not have their heads at all turned by the new cavaliers, who were so
assiduous in their attentions. Ombra gently ridiculed them both, hitting
them with dainty little arrows of scorn, smiling at their boyish ways,
their impetuosity and self-opinion. Kate, on the contrary, took them up
very gravely, with a motherly, not to say grandmotherly interest in
their future, giving to him whom she called her old friend the very best
of good advice. Mrs. Anderson herself was much amused by this new
development of her charge’s powers. She said to herself, a dozen times
in a day, how ridiculous it was to suppose that boys and girls could not
be in each other’s company without falling in love. Why, here were two
pairs continually in each other’s company, and without the faintest
shadow of any such folly to disturb them! Perhaps a sense that it was to
her own perfect good management that this was owing, increased her
satisfaction. She ‘kept her eye on them,’ never officiously, never
demonstratively, but in the most vigilant way; and a certain gentle
complacency mingled with her content. Had she left them to roam about as
they pleased without her, then indeed trouble might have been looked
for; but Mrs. Anderson was heroic, and put aside her own ease, and was
their companion everywhere. At the same time (but this was done with the
utmost caution) she took a little pains to find out all about Sir
Herbert Eldridge, the father of one of the Berties--his county, and the
amount of his property, and all the information that was possible. She
breathed not a word of this to any one--not even to Ombra; but she put
Bertie Eldridge on her daughter’s side of the table at tea; and perhaps
showed him a little preference, for her own part, a preference, however,
so slight, so undiscernible to the vulgar eye, that neither of the young
men found it out. She was very good to them, quite irrespective of their
family, or the difference in their prospects; and she missed them much
when they went away. For go away they did, at the end of their
fortnight, leaving the girls rather dull, and somewhat satirical. It was
the first invasion of the kind that had been made into their life. The
boys at the Rectory were still nothing but boys; and men did not abound
in the neighbourhood. Even Ombra was slightly misanthropical when the
Berties went away.
‘What it is to be a boy!’ she said; ‘they go where they like, these two,
and arrange their lives as they please. What a fuss everybody makes
about them; and yet they are commonplace enough. If they were girls like
us, how little any one would care----’
‘My dear, Mr. Eldridge will be a great landed proprietor, and have a
great deal in his power,’ said Mrs. Anderson.
‘Because he happens to have been born Sir Herbert’s son; no thanks to
_him_,’ said Ombra, with disdain. ‘And most likely, when he is a great
landed proprietor he will do nothing worth noticing. The other is more
interesting to me; he at least has his own way to make.’
‘I wonder what poor Bertie will do?’ said Kate, with her grandmother
air. ‘I should not like to see him a clergyman. What Ombra says is very
true, auntie. When one is a great Squire, you know, one can’t help one’s
self; one’s life is all settled before one is born. But when one can
choose what to be!---- For my part,’ said Kate, with great gravity, ‘I am
anxious about Bertie, too. I gave him all the advice I could--but I am
not sure that he is the sort of boy to take advice.’
‘He is older than you are, my love, and perhaps he may think he knows
better,’ said Mrs. Anderson with a smile.
‘But that would be a mistake,’ said Kate. ‘Boys have so many things to
do, they have no time to think. And then they don’t consider things as
we do; and besides----’ But here Kate paused, doubting the wisdom of
further explanations. What she had meant to say was that, having no
thinking to do for herself, her own position being settled and
established beyond the reach of fate, she had the more time to give to
the concerns of her neighbours. But it occurred to her that Ombra had
scorned Bertie Eldridge’s position, and might scorn hers also, and she
held her peace.
‘Besides, there is always a fuss made about them, as if they were better
than other people. Don’t let us talk of them any more; I am sick of the
subject,’ said Ombra, withdrawing into a book. The others made no
objection; they acquiesced with a calmness which perhaps scarcely
satisfied Ombra. Mrs. Anderson declared openly that she missed the
visitors much; and Kate avowed, without hesitation, that the boys were
fun, and she was sorry that they were gone. But the chances are that it
was Ombra who missed them most, though she professed to be rather glad
than otherwise. ‘They were a nuisance, interrupting one whatever one was
doing. Boys at that age always are a nuisance,’ she said, with an air of
severity, and she returned to all her occupations with an immense deal
of seriousness.
But this disturbance of their quiet affected her in reality much more
than it affected her companions--the very earnestnest of her resumed
duties testified to this. She was on the edge of personal life,
wondering and already longing to taste its excitements and troubles; and
everything that disturbed the peaceful routine felt like that life which
was surely coming, and stirred her pulses. It was like the first
creeping up of the tide about the boat which is destined to live upon
the waves; not enough yet to float the little vessel off from the stays
which hold it, but enough to rock and stir it with prophetic sensation
of the fuller flood to come.
Ombra was ‘viewy,’ to use a word which has become well-nigh obsolete.
She was full of opinions and speculations, which she called thought; a
little temper, a good deal of unconscious egotism, and a reflective
disposition, united to make her what is called, a ‘thoughtful girl.’ She
mused upon herself, and upon the few varieties of human life she knew,
and upon the world, and all its accidents and misunderstandings, as she
had seen them, and upon the subjects which she read about. But partly
her youth, and partly her character, made her thoughts like the
observations of a traveller newly entered into a strange country, and
feeling himself capable, as superficial travellers often are, to lay
bare its character, and fathom all its problems at a glance. Other
people were, to this young philosopher, as foreigners are to the
inexperienced traveller. She was very curious about them, and marked
their external peculiarities with sufficient quickness; but she had not
imagination enough to feel for them or with them, or to see their life
from their own point of view. Her own standing-point was the only one in
the world to her. She could judge others only by herself.
Curiously enough, however, with this want of sympathetic imagination
there was combined a good deal of fancy. Ombra had written little
stories from her earliest youth. She had a literary turn. At this period
of her life, when she was nearly eighteen, and the world was full of
wonders and delightful mysteries to her, she wrote a great deal,
sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose, and now and then asked herself
whether it was not genius which inspired her. Some of her poems, as she
called them, had been printed in little religious magazines and
newspapers--for Ombra’s muse was as yet highly religious. She had every
reason to believe herself one of the stars that shine unseen--a creature
superior to the ordinary run of humanity. She read more than any one she
knew, and thought, or believed that she thought, deeply on a great many
subjects. And one of these subjects naturally was that of the position
of women. She was girl enough, and had enough of nature in her, to enjoy
the momentary brightness of the firmament which the two Berties had
brought. She liked the movement and commotion as much as the others
did--the walks, the little parties, the expeditions, and even the games;
and she felt the absence of these little excitements when they came to
an end. And thereupon she set herself to reflect upon them. She carried
her little portfolio up to a rustic seat which had been made on the
cliff, sheltered by some ledges of rock, and covered with flowers and
bushes, and set herself to think. And here her thoughts took that turn
which is so natural, yet so hackneyed and conventional. No one would, in
reality, have been less disposed than Ombra to give up a woman’s--a
lady’s privileges. To go forth into the world unattended, without the
shield and guard of honour, which her semi-foreign education made doubly
necessary to her, would have seemed to the girl the utmost misery of
desolation. She would have resented the need as a wrong done her by
fate. But nevertheless she sat up in her rocky bower, and looked over
the blue sea, and the white headlands, and said to herself, bitterly,
what a different lot had fallen to these two Berties from that which was
her own. They could go where they liked, society imposed no restraints
upon them; when they were tired of one place, they could pass on to
another. Heaven and earth was moved for their education, to make
everything known to them, to rifle all the old treasure-houses, to
communicate to them every discovery which human wisdom had ever made.
And for what slight creatures were all these pains taken; boys upon whom
she looked down in the fuller development of her womanhood, feeling them
ever so much younger than she was, less serious in their ideas, less
able to do anything worth living for! It seemed to Ombra, at that
moment, that there was in herself a power such as none of ‘these boys’
had a conception of--genius, the divinest thing in humanity! But that
which would have been fostered and cultivated in them, would be
quenched, or at least hampered and kept down in her. ‘For I am only a
woman!’ said Ombra, with a swelling heart.
All this was perfectly natural; and, at the same time, it was quite
conventional. It was a little overflow of that depression after a feast,
that reaction of excitement, which makes every human creature blaspheme
in one way or other. The sound of Kate’s voice, singing as she came up
the little path to the cliff, made her cousin angry, in this state of
her mind and nerves. Here was a girl no better than the boys, a creature
without thought, who neither desired a high destiny, nor could
understand what it meant.
‘How careless you are, Kate!’ she cried, in the impulse of the moment.
‘Always singing, or some nonsense--and you know you can’t sing! If I
were as young as you are, I would not lose my time as you do! Do you
never think?’
‘Yes,’ said Kate, with a meekness she never showed but to Ombra, ‘a
great deal sometimes. But I can’t on such a morning. There seems nothing
in all the world but sunshine and primroses, and the air is so sweet!
Come up to the top of the cliff, and try how far you can see. I think I
can make out that big ship that kept firing so the other day. Ombra, if
you don’t mind, I shall be first at the top!’
‘As if I cared who was first at the top! Oh! Kate, Kate, you are as
frivolous as--as--the silly creatures in novels--or as these boys
themselves!’
‘The boys were very good boys!’ said Kate. ‘If they are silly, they
can’t help it. Of course they were not as clever as you--no one is; and
Bertie, you know--little Bertie, my Bertie--ought to think more of what
he is going to do. But they were very nice, as boys go. We can’t expect
them to be like _us_. Ombra, do come and try a run for the top.’
‘What a foolish child you are!’ said Ombra, suffering her portfolio to
be taken out of her hands; and then her youth vindicated itself, and she
started off like a young fawn up the little path. Kate could have won
the race had she tried, but was too loyal to outstrip her princess. And
thus the cobwebs were blown away from the young thinker’s brain.