The next 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 of the 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. ‘_I_ have 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. _They_ think 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 the _fin mot_ of 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 sudden pride;
‘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 think _that_!’
‘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.