‘To old Stokes!’ cried Mrs. Hardwick. ‘Why, my Bertie was there too.’ And she added, looking grave, after that burst of radiance, ‘The old man was a great favourite with everybody. We all go to see him.’
‘So I hear,’ said Mrs. Anderson, smiling; and next day she put on her best gown, poor soul! and went patiently down to the Rectory to dinner, and made a great many apologies for her girls. She did not enjoy it much, and she had to explain that the first chill of England after Italy had been too much for Kate and Ombra. ‘We had lived in the Isle of Wight for some years before,’ she added, ‘so that this is almost their first experience of the severity of Winter. But a few days indoors I hope will make them all right.’
Edith Hardwick could not believe her eyes when, next day, the day before Bertie left, she saw Miss Anderson walking in the park. ‘Do you think it possible it was not true?’ she and her sister asked each other in consternation; but neither they, nor wiser persons than they, could have determined that question. Ombra was not well, nor was Kate. They were both disturbed in their youthful being almost beyond the limits of self-control. Mrs. Anderson had, in some respects, to bear both their burdens; but she said to herself, with a sigh, that her shoulders were used to it. She had borne the yoke in her youth, she had been trained to bear a great deal, and say very little about it. And so the emotion of the incident gradually died away, growing fainter and larger in the stillness, and the monotony came back as of old!
But, oh! how pleasant the monotony of old would have been, how delightful, had there been nothing but the daily walks, the daily talks, the afternoon drives, the cheerful discussions, and cheerful visits, which had made their simple life at Shanklin so sweet! All that was over, another cycle of existence had come in.
I think another fortnight had elapsed since Bertie’s visit, and everything had been very quiet—and the quiet had been very intolerable. Sometimes almost a semblance of confidential intercourse would be set up among them, and Ombra would lean upon Kate, and Kate’s heart melt towards Ombra. This took place generally in the evening, when they sat together in the firelight before the lamp was brought, and talked the kind of shadowy talk which belongs to that hour.
‘Look at my aunt upon the wall!’ Kate cried, one evening, in momentary amusement. ‘How gigantic she is, and how she nods and beckons at us!’ Mrs. Anderson was chilly, and had placed her chair in front of the fire.
‘She is no more a shadow than we all are,’ said Ombra. ‘When the light comes, that vast apparition will disappear, and she will be herself. Kate, don’t you see the parable? We are all stolen out of ourselves, made into ghosts, till the light comes.’
‘I don’t understand parables,’ said Kate.
‘I wish you did this one,’ said Ombra, with a sigh, ‘for it is true.’ And then there was silence for a time, a silence which Kate broke by saying,
‘There is the new moon. I must go and look at her.’