‘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.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Kate thought she had never imagined anything so stately, so beautiful, so gay, so like a place for princes and princesses to meet, as the suite of rooms in the Palazzo occupied by the English Embassy, where the ball was held. The vista which stretched before her, one room within another, the lines of light infinitely reflected by the great mirrors—the lofty splendid rooms, rich in gold and velvet; the jewels of the ladies, the glow of uniforms and decorations; the beautiful dresses—all moved her to interest and delight. Delight was the first feeling; and then there came the strangest sensation of insignificance, which was not pleasant to Kate. For three years she had lived in little cottage rooms, in limited space, with very simple surroundings. But the first glance at this new scene brought suddenly before the girl’s eyes her native dwelling-place, her own home, which, of course, was but an English country-house, yet was more akin to the size and splendour of the Palazzo than to the apartments on the Lung-Arno, or the little Cottage on the Undercliff. Kate found herself, in spite of herself, making calculations how the rooms at Langton-Courtenay would look in comparison; and from that she went on to consider whether any one here knew of Langton-Courtenay, or was aware that she herself was anything but Mrs. Anderson’s niece. She was ashamed of herself for the thought, and yet it went quick as lightning through her excited mind.
Lady Granton smiled graciously upon them, and even shook hands with the lady whom she knew as Mrs. Vice-Consul, with more cordiality than usual, with a gratitude which would have given Mrs. Anderson little satisfaction had she known it, to the woman who had already amused her so much; but then the group passed on like the other groups, a mother and two unusually pretty daughters, as people thought, but strangers, nobodies, looking a little gauche, and out of place, in the fine rooms, where they were known to no one. Ombra knew what the feeling was of old, and was not affronted by it; but Kate had never been deprived of a certain shadow of distinction among her peers. The people at Shanklin had, to their own consciousness, treated her just as they would have done any niece of Mrs. Anderson’s; but, unconsciously to themselves, the fact that she was Miss Courtenay, of Langton-Courtenay, had produced a certain effect upon them. No doubt Kate’s active and lively character had a great deal to do with it, but the fact of her heiress-ship, her future elevation, had much to do with it also. A certain pre-eminence had been tacitly allowed to her; a certain freedom of opinion, and even of movement, had been permitted, and felt to be natural. She was the natural leader in half the pastimes going, referred to and consulted by her companions. This had been her lot for these three years past. She never had a chance of learning that lesson of personal insignificance which is supposed to be so salutary. All at once, in a moment, she learned it now. Nobody looked up to her, nobody considered her, nobody knew or cared who she was. For the first half-hour Kate was astonished, in spite of all her philosophy, and then she tried to persuade herself that she was amused. But the greatest effort could not persuade her that she liked it. It made her tingle all over with the most curious mixture of pain, and irritation, and nervous excitement. The dancing was going on merrily, and there was a hum of talking and soft laughter all around; people passing and repassing, greeting each other, shaking hands, introducing to each other their common friends. But the three ladies who knew nobody stood by themselves, and felt anything but happy.
‘If this is what you call a ball, I should much rather have been at home,’ said Kate, with indignation.