CHAPTER XIV.
Kate settled down into her new life with an ease and facility which nobody had expected. She wrote to her uncle that she was perfectly happy; that she never could be sufficiently thankful to him for freeing her from the yoke of Miss Blank, and placing her among people who were fond of her. ‘Little fool!’ Mr. Courtenay muttered to himself. ‘They have flattered her, I suppose.’ This was the easiest and most natural explanation to one who knew, or thought he knew, human nature so well.
But Kate was not flattered, except by her aunt’s caressing ways and habitual fondness. Nobody in the Cottage recognised her importance as the heiress of Langton-Courtenay. Here she was no longer first, but second—nay third, taking her place after her cousin, as nature ordained. ‘Ombra and Kate,’ was the new form of her existence—first Ombra, then the new-comer, the youngest of all. She was spoiled as a younger child is spoiled, not in any other way. Mrs. Anderson’s theory in education was indulgence. She did not believe in repression. She was always caressing, always yielding. For one thing, it was less troublesome than a continual struggle; but that was not her motive. She took high ground. ‘What we have got to do is to ripen their young minds,’ she said to the Rector’s wife, who objected to her as ‘much too good,’ a reproach which Mrs. Anderson liked; ‘and it is sunshine that ripens, not an east wind!’ This was almost the only imaginative speech she had ever made in her life, and consequently she liked to repeat it. ‘Depend upon it, it is sunshine that ripens them, and not east wind!’
‘The sunshine ripens the wheat and the tares alike, as we are told in Scripture,’ said Mrs. Eldridge, with professional seriousness.
‘That shows that Providence is of my way of thinking,’ said her antagonist. ‘Why should one cross one’s children, and worry them? They will have enough of that in their lives! Besides, I have practical proof on my side. Look, at Ombra! There is a child that never was crossed since she was born; and if I had scolded till I made myself ill, do you think I could have improved upon that?’
Mrs. Eldridge stood still for a moment, not believing her ears. She had daughters of her own, and to have Ombra set up as a model of excellence! But she recovered herself speedily, and gave vent to her feelings in a more courteous way.
‘Ah! it is easy to see you never had any boys,’ she said, with that sense of superiority which the mother of both sections of humanity feels over her who has produced but one. ‘Ombra, indeed!’ Mrs. Eldridge said, within herself. And, indeed, it was a want of ‘proper feeling,’ on Mrs. Anderson’s part, to set up so manifestly her own daughter above other people’s. She felt it, and immediately did what she could to atone.
‘Boys, of course, are different,’ she said; ‘but I am sure you will agree with me that a poor child who has never had any one to love her, who has been brought up among servants, a girl who is motherless——’
‘Oh! poor child! I can only say you are too good—too good! With such a troublesome disposition, too. I never could be half as good!’ cried the Rector’s wife.
Thus Mrs. Anderson triumphed in the argument. And as it happened that ripening under the sunshine was just what Kate wanted, the system answered in the most perfect way, especially as a gently chilling breeze, a kind of moral east wind, extremely subdued, but sufficiently keen, came from Ombra, checking Kate’s irregularities, without seeming to do so, and keeping her high spirit down. Ombra’s influence over her cousin increased as time went on. She was Kate’s model of all that was beautiful and sweet. The girl subdued herself with all her might, and clipped and snipped at her own character, to bring it to the same mould as that of her cousin. And as such worship cannot go long unnoted, Ombra gradually grew aware of it, and softened under its influence. The Cottage grew very harmonious and pleasant within doors. When Kate went to bed, the mother and daughter would still linger and have little conversations about her, conversations in which the one still defended and the other attacked—or made a semblance of attacking—the new-comer; but the acrid tone had gone out of Ombra’s remarks.