Ombra. Маргарет Олифант

‘Why she is only fifteen—a mere child!—we can mould her as we will. And then, my dearest child, though heaven knows it is not interest I am thinking of, still it will be a great advantage; our income will be doubled. I must say Mr. Courtenay is very liberal, if nothing else. We shall be able to do many things that we could not do otherwise. Why, Ombra, you look as if you thought I meant to rob your cousin–’

      ‘I would not use a penny of her allowance—it should be all spent upon herself!’ cried the girl, flushing with indignant passion. ‘Our income doubled! Mamma, what can you be thinking of? Do you suppose I could endure to be a morsel the better for that Kate?’

      ‘You are a little fool, and there is no talking to you,’ said Mrs. Anderson, with natural impatience; and for half an hour they did not speak to each other. This, however, could not last very long, for providentially, as Mrs. Anderson said, one of the Rectory girls came in at the time when it was usual for the ladies to take their morning walk, and she would not for all the Isle of Wight have permitted Elsie to see that her child and she were not on their usual terms. When Elsie had left them, a slight relapse was threatened, but they were then walking together along the cliff, with one of the loveliest of landscapes before them—the sun setting, the ruddy glory lighting up Sandown Bay, and all the earth and sea watching that last crisis and climax of the day.

      ‘Oh! there is the true daffodil sky!’ Ombra exclaimed, in spite of herself, and the breach was healed. It was she herself who resumed the subject some time later, when they turned towards home. ‘I do not see,’ she said abruptly, ‘what we could do about masters for that girl, if she were to come here. To have them down from town would be ruinous, and to be constantly going up to town with her—to you, who so hate the ferry—would be dreadful!’

      ‘My love, you forget Miss Story’s school, where they have all the best masters,’ said Mrs. Anderson, mildly.

      ‘You could not send her to school.’

      ‘But they would come to us, my dear. Of course they would be very glad to come to us for a little more money, and I should gladly take the opportunity for your music, Ombra. I thought of that. I wish everything could be settled as easily. If you only saw the matter as I do–’

      ‘There is another thing,’ said Ombra, hastily, ‘which does not matter to me, for I hate society; but if she is to be kept like a nun, and never to see any one–’

      Mrs. Anderson smiled serenely. ‘My love, who is there to see?—the Rectory children and a few ladies—people whom we ask to tea. Of course, I would not think of taking her to balls or even dinner-parties; but then, I never go to dinner-parties—there is no one to ask us; and as for balls, Ombra, you know what you said about that nice ball at Ryde.’

      ‘I hate them!’ said Ombra, vehemently. ‘I hope I shall never be forced to go to another in all my life.’

      ‘Then that question is settled very easily,’ said Mrs. Anderson, without allowing any signs of triumph to appear in her face. And next day she wrote to Mr. Courtenay, as has been described. When she wrote about ‘our darling niece,’ the tears were in her eyes. She meant it with all her heart; but, at the same time, it was the right thing to say, and to be anxious and eager to receive the orphan were the right sentiments to entertain. ‘It is the most proper arrangement,’ she said afterwards to the Rector’s wife, who was her nearest neighbour. ‘Of course her mother’s sister is her most natural guardian. The property is far best in Mr. Courtenay’s hands; but the child herself–’

      ‘Poor child!’ said Mrs. Eldridge, looking at her own children, who were many, and thinking within herself that to trust them to any one, even an aunt–

      ‘Yes, poor child!’ cried Mrs. Anderson, with the tears in her eyes; ‘and my Catherine would have made such a mother! But we must do what we can to make it up to her. She will have some one at least to love her here.’

      ‘I am sure you will be—good to her,’ said the Rector’s wife, looking wistfully, in her pity, into the face of the woman who, to her simple mind, did protest too much. Mrs. Eldridge felt, as many a straightforward person does, that her neighbour’s extreme propriety, and regard for what was befitting and ‘expected of her,’ was the mask of insincerity. She did not understand the existence of true feeling beneath all that careful exterior. But she was puzzled and touched for the moment by the tears in her companion’s eyes.

      ‘You can’t get up tears, you know, when you will,’ she said to her husband, when they discussed poor Kate’s prospects of happiness in her aunt’s house, that same night.

      ‘I can’t,’ said the Rector, ‘nor you; but one has heard of crocodile tears!’

      ‘Oh! Fred, no—not so bad as that!’

      But still both these good people distrusted Mrs. Anderson, through her very anxiety to do right, and show that she was doing it. They were afraid of her excess of virtue. The exaggeration of the true seemed to them false. And they even doubted the amount of Kate’s allowance, because of the aunt’s frankness in telling them of it. They thought her intention was to raise her own and her niece’s importance, and calculated among themselves what the real sum was likely to be. Poor Mrs. Anderson! everybody was unjust to her—even her daughter—on this point.

      But it was with no sense of this general distrust, but, on the contrary, with the most genial sense of having done everything that could be required of her, that she left home on a sunny June morning, with her heart beating quicker than usual in her breast, to bring home her charge. Her heart was beating partly out of excitement to see Kate, and partly out of anxiety about the crossing from Ryde, which she hated. The sea looked calm, from Sandown, but Mrs. Anderson knew, by long experience, that the treacherous sea has a way of looking calm until you have trusted yourself to its tender mercies. This thought, along with her eagerness to see her sister’s child, made her heart beat.

      CHAPTER XI

      Mr. Courtenay had stipulated that Kate was to be met by her aunt, not at his house, but at the railway, and to continue her journey at once. His house, he said, was shut up; but his real reason was reluctance to establish any precedent or pretext for other invasions. Kate started in the very highest spirits, scarcely able to contain herself, running over with talk and laughter, making a perpetual comment upon all that passed before her. Even Miss Blank’s sinister congratulations, when she took leave of the little travelling party, ‘I am sure I wish you joy, sir, and I wish Mrs. Anderson joy!’ did not damp Kate’s spirits. ‘I shall tell my aunt, Miss Blank, and I am sure she will be much obliged to you,’ the girl said, as she took her seat in the carriage. And Maryanne, who, red and excited, was seated by her, tittered in sympathy.

      When Mr. Courtenay hid himself behind a newspaper, it was on Maryanne that Kate poured forth the tide of her excitement. ‘Isn’t it delightful!’ she said, a hundred times over. ‘Oh! yes, miss; but father and mother!’ Maryanne answered, with a sob. Kate contemplated her gravely for twenty seconds. Here was a difference, a distinction, which she did not understand. But before the minute was half over her thoughts had gone abroad again in a confusion of expectancy and pleasure. She leant half out of the window, casting eager glances upon the people who were waiting the arrival of the train at the station. The first figure upon which she set her eyes was that of a squat old woman in a red and yellow shawl. ‘Oh! can that be my aunt?’ Kate said to herself, with dismay. The next was a white-haired, substantial old lady, old enough to be Mrs. Anderson’s mother. ‘This is she! She is nice! I shall be fond of her!’ cried Kate to herself. When the white-haired lady found some one else, Kate’s heart sank. Oh! where was the new guardian?

      ‘Miss Kate! oh! please, Miss Kate!’ said Maryanne; and turning sharply round, Kate found herself in somebody’s arms. She had not time to see who it was; she felt only a warm darkness surround her, the pressure of something which held her close, and a voice murmuring, ‘My darling child! my Catherine’s child!’ murmuring and purring over her. Kate had time to think, ‘Oh! how tall she is! Oh! how warm! Oh! how funny!’ before she was let loose and kissed—which latter process allowed her to see a tall woman, not in the least like the white-haired grandmother whom she had fixed upon—a woman not old, with hair of Kate’s