Ombra

by Mrs. Oliphant

Mr. Courtenay had stayed in town, and the three ladies were alone in the house. They settled down in a few days into ease and comfort which, after their travelling, was very sweet. Things were different altogether from what they had been in the Shanklin cottage; and though Mrs. Anderson was in the place of Kate’s guardian, yet Kate was no longer a child, to be managed for and ruled in an arbitrary way. It was now that the elder lady showed her wisdom. It was a sensible pleasure to her to govern the great house; here at last she seemed to have scope for her powers; but yet, though she ruled, she did so from the background; with heroic self-denial she kept Kate in the position she was so soon to occupy by right, trained her for it, guided her first steps, and taught her what to do.

‘When you are of age, this is how you must manage,’ she would say.

‘But when I am of age, why should not you manage for me?’ Kate replied; and her aunt made no answer.

They had come together again, and the old love had asserted itself once more. The mysteries unexplained had been buried by common consent. Kate lulled her own curiosity to rest, and when various questions came to the very tip of her tongue, she bit and stilled that unruly member, and made a not unsuccessful effort to restrain herself. But it was a hard discipline, and strained her strength. Sometimes, when she saw the continual letters which her aunt and cousin were always receiving, curiosity would give her a renewed pinch. But generally she kept herself down, and pretended not to see the correspondence, which was so much larger than it ever used to be. She was so virtuous even as not to look at the addresses of the letters. What good would it do her to know who wrote them? Of course some must be from the Berties, one, or both—what did it matter? The Berties were nothing to Kate; and, whatever the connection might be, Kate had evidently nothing to do with it, for it had never been told her. With this reasoning she kept herself down, though she was always sore and disposed to be cross about the hour of breakfast. Mrs. Anderson, for her part, would never see the crossness. She petted Kate, and smoothed her down, and read out, with anxious conciliation, scraps from Lady Barker’s letters, and others of a similarly indifferent character; while, in the meantime, the other letters, ones which were not indifferent nor apt for quotation, were read by Ombra. The moment was always a disagreeable one for Kate—but she bore it, and made no sign.

But to live side by side with a secret has a very curious effect upon the mind; it sharpens some faculties and deadens others in the strangest way. Kate had now a great many things to think of, and much to do; people came to call, hearing she had come home; and she made more acquaintances in a fortnight than she had done before in a year. And yet, notwithstanding this, I think it was only a fortnight that the reign of peace and domestic happiness lasted. During that time, she made the most strenuous effort a girl could make to put out of her mind the recollection that there was something in the lives of her companions that had been concealed from her. Sometimes, indeed, when she sat by her cousin’s side, there would suddenly rise up before her a glimpse of that group at the doorway on the Lung-Arno, and the scared look with which Ombra had rushed away; or some one of the many evening scenes when she was left out, and the other four, clustered about the table, would glide across her eyes like a ghost. Why was she left out? What difference would it have made to them, if they had made her one of themselves—was she likely to have betrayed their secret? And then Bertie Hardwick’s troubled face would come before her, and his looks, half-apologetic, half-explanatory; looks, which, now she thought of them, seemed to have been so very frequent. Why was he always looking at her, as if he wanted to explain; as if he were disturbed and ill at ease; as if he felt her to be wronged? Though, of course, she was not in the least wronged, Kate said to herself, proudly; for what was it to her if all the Berties in the world had been at Ombra’s feet?—Kate did not want them! Of that, at least, she was perfectly sure.

Mrs. Anderson’s room was a large one; opening into that of Ombra on the one side, and into an ante-room, which they could sit in, or dress in, or read and write in, for it was furnished for all uses. It was a petit appartement, charmingly shut in and cosy, one of the best set of rooms in the house, which Kate had specially chosen for her aunt. Here the mother and daughter met one night after a very tranquil day, over the fire in the central room. It was a bright fire, and the cosy chairs that stood before it were luxurious, and the warm firelight flickered through the large room, upon the ruddy damask of the curtains, and the long mirror, and all the pretty furnishings. Ombra came in from her own room in her dressing-gown, with her dusky hair over her shoulders. Dusky were her looks altogether, like evening in a Winter’s twilight. Her dressing-gown was of a faint grey-blue—not a pretty colour in itself, but it suited Ombra; and her long hair fell over it almost to her waist. She came in noiselessly to her mother’s room, and it was her voice which first betrayed her presence there. Mrs. Anderson had been sitting thinking, with a very serious face; she started at her child’s voice.

‘I have been trying my very best to bear it—I think I have done my very best; I have smiled, and kept my temper, and tried to look as if I were not ready to die of misery. Oh! mamma, mamma, can this go on for ever? What am I to do?’

‘Oh! Ombra, for God’s sake have patience!’ cried her mother—‘nothing new has happened to-day?’

‘Nothing new!—is it nothing new to have those girls here from the Rectory, jabbering about their brother? and to know that he is coming—next week, they say? We shall be obliged to meet—and how are we to meet? when I think how I took leave of him last! My life is odious to me!’ cried the girl, sinking down in a chair, and covering her face with her hands. ‘I don’t know how to hold up my head and look those people in the face; and it is worse when no one comes. To live for a whole long, endless day without seeing a strange face, with Kate’s eyes going through and through me——’

‘Don’t make things worse than they are,’ said her mother, ‘Oh! Ombra, have a little patience! Kate suspects nothing.’