The fact was that Ombra, as she said, had not given her confidence to
any one; she had betrayed herself to her mother in her first excitement,
when she had lost command of herself; but that was all. A real and full
confidence she had never given. Ombra’s love of sympathy was great, but
it was not accompanied, as it generally is, by that open heart which
finds comfort in disclosing its troubles. Her heart was not open. She
neither revealed herself nor divined others; she was not selfish, nor
harsh in temper and disposition; but all that she was certain of was her
own feelings. She did not know how to find out what other people were
feeling or thinking, consequently she had a very imperfect idea of those
about her, and seldom found out for herself what was going on in their
minds. This limited her powers of sympathy in a wonderful way, and it
was this which was at the root of all her trouble. She had been wooed,
but only when it came to a conclusion had she really known what that
wooing meant. In her ignorance she had refused the man whom she was
already beginning to love, and then had gone on to think about him,
after he had revealed himself--to understand all he had been meaning--to
love him, with the consciousness that she had rejected him, and with the
fear that his affections were being transferred to her cousin. This was
what gave the sting to it all, and made poor Ombra complain so
mournfully of her temper. She did not divine what her love meant till it
was too late; and then she resented the fact that it was too
late--resented the reserve which she had herself imposed upon him, the
friendly demeanour she had enjoined. She had begged him, when she
rejected him, as the greatest of favours, to keep up his intercourse
with the family, and be as though this episode had never been. And when
the poor fellow obeyed her she was angry with him. I do not know whether
the minds of men are ever similarly affected, but this is a weakness not
uncommon with women. And then she took his subdued tone, his wistful
looks, his seldom approaches to herself, as so many instances that he
had got over what she called his folly. Why should he continue to
nourish his folly when she had so promptly announced her indifference?
And then it was that it became apparent to her that he had transferred
his affections to Kate. As it happened, by the fatality which sometimes
attends such matters, the unfortunate young man never addressed Kate,
never looked at her, but Ombra found him out. When Kate was occupied by
others, her cousin took no notice; but when that one step approached,
that one voice addressed her, Ombra’s eyes and ears were like the lynx.
Kate was unconscious of the observation, by means of being absolutely
innocent; and the hero himself was unconscious for much the same reason,
and because he felt sure that his hopeless devotion to his first love
must be so plain to her as to make any other theory on the subject out
of the question. But Ombra, who was unable to tell what eyes meant, or
to judge from the general scope of action, set up her theory, and made
herself miserable. She had been wretched when watching ‘them;’ she was
wretched to go away and be able to watch them no longer. She had left
home with a sense of relief, and yet the news that they were not to
return home for the winter smote her like a catastrophe. Even the fact
that he had loved her once seemed a wrong to her, for then she did not
know it; and since then had he not done her the cruel injury of ceasing
to love her?
Poor Ombra! this was how she tormented herself; and up to this moment
any effort she had made to free herself, to snap her chains, and be once
more rational and calm, seemed but to have dug the iron deeper into her
soul. Nothing cuts like an imaginary wrong. The sufferer would pardon a
real injury a hundred times while nursing and brooding over the supposed
one. She hated herself, she was ashamed, disgusted, revolted by the new
exhibitions of unsuspected wickedness, as she called it, in her nature.
She tried and tried, but got no better. But in the meantime all outward
possibilities of keeping the flame alight being withdrawn, her heart had
melted towards Kate. It was evident that in Kate’s lighter and more
sunshiny mind there was no room for such cares as bowed down her own;
and with a yearning for love which she herself scarcely understood, she
took her young cousin, who was entirely guiltless, into her heart.
Kate and she were sitting together, the morning of the ball to which the
younger girl looked forward so joyfully. Ombra was not unmoved by its
approach, for she was just one year over twenty, an age at which balls
are still great events, and not unapt to influence life. Her heart was a
little touched by Kate’s anxious desire that her dress and ornaments
should be as fresh and pretty and valuable as her own. It was good of
her; to be sure, there was no reason why one should wish to outshine the
other; but still Kate had been brought up a great lady, and Ombra was
but the Consul’s daughter. Therefore her heart was touched, and she
spoke.
‘It does not matter what dress I have, Kate; I shall look like a shadow
all the same beside you. You are sunshine--that was what you were born
to be, and I was born in the shade.’
‘Don’t make so much of yourself, Ombra mia,’ said Kate. ‘Sunshine is all
very well in England, but not here. Am I to be given over to the
Englishmen and the dogs, who walk in the sun?’
A cloud crossed Ombra’s face at this untoward suggestion.
‘The Englishmen as much as you please,’ she said; and then, recovering
herself with an effort, ‘I wonder if I shall be jealous of you, Kate? I
am a little afraid of myself. You so bright, so fresh, so ready to make
friends, and I so dull and heavy as I am, besides all the other
advantages on your side. I never was in society with you before.’
‘Jealous of me!’ Kate thought it was an admirable joke. She laughed till
the tears stood in her bright eyes. ‘But then there must be love before
there is jealousy--or, so they say in books. Suppose some prince
appears, and we both fall in love with him? But I promise you, it is I
who shall be jealous. I will hate you! I will pursue you to the ends of
the world! I will wear a dagger in my girdle, and when I have done
everything else that is cruel, I will plunge it into your treacherous
heart! Oh! Ombra, what fun!’ cried the heroine, drying her dancing eyes.
‘That is foolish--that is not what I mean,’ said serious Ombra. ‘I am
very much in earnest. I am fond of you, Kate----’
This was said with a little effort; but Kate, unconscious of the effort,
only conscious of the love, threw her caressing arm round her cousin’s
waist, and kissed her.
‘Yes,’ she said, softly; ‘how strange it is, Ombra! I, who had nobody
that cared for me,’ and held her close and fast in the tender gratitude
that filled her heart.
‘Yes, I am fond of you,’ Ombra continued; ‘but if I were to see you
preferred to me--always first, and I only second, more thought of, more
noticed, better loved! I feel--frightened, Kate. It makes one’s heart so
sore. One says to oneself, “It is no matter what I do or say. It is of
no use trying to be amiable, trying to be kind--she is sure to be always
the first. People love her the moment they see her; and at me they never
look.” You don’t know what it is to feel like that.’
‘No,’ said Kate, much subdued; and then she paused. ‘But, Ombra, I am
always so pleased--I have felt it fifty times; and I have always been so
proud. Auntie and I go into a corner, and say to each other, “What nice
people these are--they understand our Ombra--they admire her as she
should be admired!” We give each other little nudges, and nod at each
other, and are so happy. You would be the same, of course, if--though it
don’t seem likely----’ And here Kate broke off abruptly, and blushed
and laughed.
‘You are the youngest,’ said Ombra--‘that makes it more natural in your
case. And mamma, of course, is--mamma--she does not count. I wonder--I
wonder how I shall take it--in my way or in yours?’
‘Are you so sure it will happen?’ said Kate, laughing. Kate herself did
not dislike the notion very much. She had not been brought up with that
idea of self-sacrifice which is inculcated from their cradles on so many
young women. She felt that it would be pleasant to be admired and made
much of; and even to throw others into the shade. She did not make any
resolutions of self-renunciation. The visionary jealousy which moved
Ombra, which arose partly from want of confidence in herself, and partly
from ignorance of others, could never have arisen in her cousin. Kate
did not think of comparing herself with any one, or dwelling upon the
superior attractions of another. If people did not care for her, why,
they did not care for her, and there was an end of it; so much the worse
for them. To be sure she never yet had been subjected to the temptation
which had made Ombra so unhappy. The possibility of anything of the kind
had never entered her thoughts. She was eighteen and a half, and had
lived for years on terms of sisterly amity with all the Eldridges,
Hardwicks, and the ‘neighbours’ generally; but as yet she had never had
a lover, so far as she was aware. ‘The boys,’ as she called them, were
all as yet the same to Kate--she liked some more than others, as she
liked some girls more than others; but to be unhappy or even annoyed
because one or another devoted himself to Ombra more than to her, such
an idea had never crossed the girl’s mind. She was fancy free; but it
did not occur to her to make any pious resolution on the subject, or to
decide beforehand that she would obliterate herself in a corner, in
order to give the first place and all the triumph to Ombra. There are
young saints capable of doing this; but Kate Courtenay was not one of
them. Her eyes shone; her rose-lips parted with just the lightest breath
of excitement. She wanted her share of the triumphs too.
Ombra shook her head, but made no reply. ‘Oh,’ she said, to herself,
‘what a hard fate to be always the shadow!’ She exerted all the
imagination she possessed, and threw herself forward, as it were, into
the evening which was coming. Kate was in all the splendour of her first
bloom--that radiance of youth and freshness which is often the least
elevated kind of beauty, yet almost always the most irresistible. The
liquid brightness of her eyes, the wild-rose bloom of her complexion,
the exquisite softness, downiness, deliciousness of cheek and throat and
forehead, might be all as evanescent as the dew upon the sunny grass, or
the down on a peach. It was youth--youth supreme and perfect in its most
delicate fulness, the _beauté de diable_, as our neighbours call it.
Ombra, being still so young herself, did not characterise it so; nor,
indeed, was she aware of this glory of freshness which, at the present
moment, was Kate’s crowning charm. But she wondered at her cousin’s
beauty, and she did not realise her own, which was so different. ‘Shall
I be jealous--shall I hate her?’ she asked herself. At home she had
hated her for a moment now and then. Would it be the same again?--was
her own mind so mean, her character so low, as that? Thinking well of
one’s self, or thinking ill of one’s self, requires only a beginning;
and Ombra’s experience had not increased her respect for her own nature.
Thus she prepared for the Ambassadress’s ball.
It was a strange manner of preparation, the reader will think. Our
sympathy has been trained to accompany those who go into battle without
a misgiving--who, whatever jesting alarm they may express, are never
really afraid of running away; but, after all, the man who marches
forward with a terrible dread in his mind that when the moment comes he
will fail, ought to be as interesting, and certainly makes a much
greater claim upon our compassion, than he who is tolerably sure of his
nerves and courage. The battle of the ball was to Ombra as great an
event as Alma or Inkermann. She had never undergone quite the same kind
of peril before, and she was afraid as to how she should acquit herself.
She represented to herself all the meanness, misery, contemptibleness,
of what she supposed to be her besetting sin--that did not require much
trouble. She summed it all up, feeling humiliated to the very heart by
the sense that under other circumstances she had yielded to that
temptation before, and she asked herself--shall I fail again? She was
afraid of herself. She had strung her nerves, and set her soul firmly
for this struggle, but she was not sure of success. At the last moment,
when the danger was close to her, she felt as if she must fail.