Маргарет Олифант
Ombra
CHAPTER LXII
From Pump Court, in the Temple, it is a long way to the banks of a little loch in Scotland, surrounded by hills, covered with heather, and populous with grouse—that is, of course, in the season. The grouse in this early Summer were but babies, chirping among the big roots of the ling, like barndoor chickens; the heather was not purple but only greening over through the grey husks of last year’s bloom. The gorse blossoms were forming; the birch-trees shaking out their folded leaves a little more and more day by day against the sky, which was sometimes so blue, and sometimes so leaden. At that time of the year, or at any other, it is lovely at Loch Arroch. Seated on the high bank behind the little inn, on the soft grass, which is as green as emeralds, but soft as velvet, you can count ten different slopes of hills surrounding the gleaming water, which receives them all impartially; ten distinct ridges, all as various as so many sportsmen, distinct in stature and character—from the kindly birch-crowned heads in front here, away to the solemn distant altitudes, folded in snow-plaids or cloud-mantles, and sometimes in glorious sheen of sunset robes, that dazzle you—which fill up the circle far away. The distant giants are cleft into three peaks, and stand still to have their crowns and garments changed, with a benign patience, greeting you across the loch. There are no tourists, and few strangers, except the fishermen, who spend their days not thinking of you or of the beauties of nature, tossed in heavy cobbles upon the stormy loch, or wading up to their waist in ice-cold pools of the river. The river dashes along its wild channel through the glen, working through rocks, and leaping precipitous corners, shrouding itself, like a coy girl, with the birchen tresses which stream over it, till it comes to another loch—a big silvery clasp upon its foaming chain. Among these woods and waters man is still enough; but Nature is full of commotion. She sings about all the hillsides in a hundred burns, with delicatest treble; she makes her own bass under the riven rocks, among the foam of the greater streams; she mutters over your head with deep, sonorous melancholy utterance in the great pine-trees, and twitters in the leaflets of the birch. Lovely birks!—sweetest of all the trees of the mountains! Never were such haunts for fairies, or for mountain girls as agile and as fair as those sweet birchen woods. ‘Stern and wild,’ do you say? And surely we say it, for so Sir Walter said before us. But what an exquisite idea was that of Nature—what a sweet, fantastic conceit, just like her wayward wealth of resource, to clothe the slopes of those rude hills with the Lady of the Woods! She must have laughed with pleasure, like a child, but with tears of exquisite poet satisfaction in her eyes, when she first saw the wonderful result. And as for you poor people who have never seen Highland loch or river shine through the airy foliage, the white-stemmed grace and lightness of a birch-wood, we are sorry for you, but we will not insult your ignorance; for, soft in your ear, the celebrated Mr. Cook, and all his satellites who make up tours in the holiday season, have never, Heaven be praised! heard of Loch Arroch; and long may it be before the British tourist finds out that tranquil spot.
I cannot tell how Mrs. Anderson and her daughter found it out. The last Consul, it is true, had been from Perthshire, but that of itself gave them little information. They had gone to Edinburgh first, and then, feeling that scarcely sufficiently out of the way, had gone further north, until at last Kinloch-Arroch received them; and they stayed there, they could not tell why, partly because the people looked so kind. The note which Kate received on her birthday had no date, and the post-mark on it was of a distant place, that no distinct clue might be given to their retreat; but Ombra always believed, though without the slightest ground for it, that this note of her mother’s, like all her other injudicious kindnesses to Kate, had done harm, and been the means of betraying them. For it was true that they were now in a kind of hiding, these two women, fearing to be recognised, not wishing to see any one, for reasons which need not be dwelt upon here. They had left Langton-Courtenay with a miserable sense of friendlessness and loneliness, and yet it had been in some respects a relief to them to get away; and the stillness of Loch Arroch, its absolute seclusion, and the kind faces of the people they found there, all concurred in making them decide upon this as their resting-place. They were to stay all the summer, and already they were known to everybody round. Old Francesca had already achieved a great succès in the Perthshire village. The people declared that they understood her much better than if she had been ‘ane o’ thae mincing English.’ She was supposed to be French, and Scotland still remembers that France was once her auld and kind alley. The women in their white mutches wondered a little, it is true, at the little old Italian’s capless head, and knot of scanty hair; but her kind little brown face, and her clever rapid ways, took them by storm. When she spoke Italian to her mistress they gathered round her in admiration. ‘Losh! did you ever hear the like o’ that?’ they cried, with hearty laughs, half restrained by politeness—though half of them spoke Gaelic, and saw nothing wonderful in that achievement.
Ombra, the discontented and unhappy, had never in her life before been so gentle and so sweet. She was not happy still, but for the moment she was penitent, and subdued and at peace, and the admiration and the interest of their humble neighbours pleased her. Mrs. Anderson had given a description of her daughter to the kind landlady of the little inn, which did not tally with the circumstances which the reader knows; but probably she had her own reasons for that, and the tale was such as filled everybody with sympathy. ‘You maunna be doon-hearted, my bonnie lamb,’ the old woman would say to her; and Ombra would blush with painful emotion, and yet would be in her heart touched and consoled by the homely sympathy. Ah! if those kind people had but known how much harder her burden really was! But yet to know how kindly all these poor stranger folk felt towards them was pleasant to the two women, and they clung together closer than ever in the enforced quiet. They were very anxious, restless, and miserable, and yet for a little while they were as nearly happy as two women could be. This is a paradox which some women will understand, but which I cannot pause to explain.
Things were going on in this quiet way, and it was the end of May, a season when as yet few even of the fishers who frequent that spot by nature, and none of the wise wanderers who have discovered Loch Arroch had begun to arrive, when one evening a very tall man, strong and heavy, trudged round the corner into the village, with his knapsack over his shoulders. He was walking through the Highlands alone at this early period of the year. He put his knapsack down on the bench outside the door, and came into the little hall, decorated with glazed cases, in which stuffed trout of gigantic proportions still seemed to swim among the green, green river weeds, to ask kind Mrs. Macdonald, the landlady, if she could put him up. He was ‘a soft-spoken gentleman,’ courteous, such as Highlanders love, and there was a look of sadness about him which moved the mistress of the ‘Macdonald Arms.’ But all at once, while he was talking to her, he started wildly, made a dart at the stair, which Francesca at that moment was leisurely ascending, and upset, as he passed, little Duncan, Mrs. Macdonald’s favourite grandchild.
‘The man’s gane gyte!’ said the landlady.
Francesca for her part took no notice of the stranger. If she saw him, she either did not recognise him, or thought it expedient to ignore him. She went on, carrying high in front of her a tray full of newly-ironed fine linen, her own work, which she was carrying from the kitchen. The stranger stood at the foot of the stairs and watched her, with his face lifted to the light, which streamed from a long window opposite. There was an expression in his countenance (Mrs. Macdonald said afterwards) which was like a picture. He had found what he sought!
‘That is old Francesca,’ he said, coming back to her, ‘Mrs. Anderson’s maid. Then, of course, Mrs. Anderson is here.’
‘Ou ay, sir, the leddies are here,’ said Mrs. Macdonald—‘maybe they are expecting you? There was something said a while ago about a gentleman—a brother, or some near friend to the young goodman.’
‘The young goodman?’
‘Ou ay, sir—him that’s in India, puir gentleman!—at sic a time, too, when he would far rather be at hame. But ye’ll gang up the stair? Kath’rin, take the gentleman up the stair—he’s come to visit the leddies—and put him into No. 10 next door. Being so near the leddies, I never put no man there that I dinna ken something aboot. You’ll find Loch Arroch air, sir, has done the young mistress good.’
The stranger followed upstairs, with a startled sense of other wonders to come; and thus it happened that, without warning, Mr. Sugden suddenly walked into the room where Ombra lay on a sofa by the fireside, with her mother sitting by. Both the ladies started up in dismay. They were so bewildered that neither could speak for a moment. The blood rushed to Ombra’s face in an overpowering blush. He thought he had never seen her look so beautiful, so strange—he did not know how; and her look of bewildered inquiry and suspicion suddenly showed him what he had never thought of till that moment—that he had no right to pry into their privacy—to hunt her, as it were, into a corner—to pursue her here.
‘Mr. Sugden!’ Mrs. Anderson cried in dismay; and then she recovered her prudence, and held out her hand to him, coming between him and Ombra. ‘What a very curious meeting this is!—what an unexpected pleasure! Of all places in the world, to meet a Shanklin friend at Loch Arroch! Ombra, do not disturb yourself, dear; we need not stand on ceremony with such an old friend as Mr. Sugden. My poor child has a dreadful cold.’
And then he took her hand into his own—Ombra’s hand—which he used to sit and watch as she worked—the whitest, softest hand. It felt so small now, like a shadow, and the flush, had gone from her face. He seemed to see nothing but those eyes, watching him with fear and suspicion—eyes which distrusted him, and reminded him that he had no business here.
And he sat down by the sofa, and talked ordinary talk, and told them of Shanklin, which he had left. He had been making a pedestrian tour in Scotland. Yes, it was early, but he did not mind the weather, and the time suited him. It was a surprise to him to see Francesca, but he had heard that Mrs. Anderson had left Langton-Courtenay–
‘Yes,’ she said, briefly, without explanation; and added—‘We were travelling, like you, when Ombra fell in love with this place. You must have seen it to perfection if you walked down the glen to-day—the Glencoe Hills were glorious to-day. Which is your next stage? I am afraid Mrs. Macdonald has scarcely room–’
‘Oh! yes, she has given me a room for to-night,’ he said; and he saw the mother and daughter look at each other, and said to himself, in an agony of humiliation, what a fool he had been—what an intrusive, impertinent fool!
When he took his leave, Mrs. Anderson went after him to the door; she asked, with trepidation in her voice, how long he meant to stay. This was too much for the poor fellow; he led the way along the passage to the staircase window, lest Ombra should hear through the half-open door.
‘Mrs. Anderson,’ he said hoarsely, ‘once you promised me if she should ever want a brother’s help or a brother’s care—not that it is what I could have wished–’
‘Mr. Sugden, this is ridiculous; I can take care of my own child. You have no right to come and hunt us out, when you know—when you can see that we wish—to be private.’ Then, with a sudden change, she added—‘Oh, you are very good—I am sure you are very good, but she wants for nothing. Dear Mr. Sugden, if you care for her or me, go away.
‘I will go away to-morrow,’ he said, with a deep sigh of disappointment and resignation.
She looked out anxiously at the sky. It was clouding over; night was coming on—there was no possibility of sending him away that night.
‘Mr. Sugden,’ she said, wringing her hands, ‘when a gentleman thrusts himself into anyone’s secrets he is bound not to betray them. You will hear news here, which I did not wish to be known at present—Ombra is married.’
‘Married!’ he said, with a groan, which he could not restrain.
‘Yes, her husband is not able to be with her. We are waiting till he can join us—till he can make it public. You have found this out against our will; you must give me your word not to betray us.’
‘Why should I betray you?’ he said; ‘to whom? I came, not knowing. Since ever I knew her I have been her slave, you know. I will be so now. Is she—happy, at least?’
‘She is very happy,’ said Mrs. Anderson; and then her courage failed her, and she cried. She did not burst into tears—such an expression does not apply to women of her age. The tears which were, somehow, near the surface, fell suddenly, leaving no traces. ‘Everything is not so—comfortable as might be wished,’ she said, ‘but, so far as that goes, she is happy.’
‘May I come again?’ he said. His face had grown very long and pale; he looked like a man who had just come back from a funeral. ‘Or would you rather I went away at once?’
She gave another look at the sky, which had cleared; night was more distant than it had seemed ten minutes ago. And Mrs. Anderson did not think that it was selfishness on her part to think of her daughter first. She gave him her hand and pressed his, and said—
‘You are the kindest, the best friend. Oh, for her sake, go!’
And he went away with a heavy heart, striding over the dark unknown hills. It was long past midnight before he got shelter—but what did that matter? He would have done much more joyfully for her sake. But his last hope seemed gone as he went along that mountain way. He had hoped always to serve her sometime or other, and now he could serve her no more!
CHAPTER LXIII
This was the reason why Kate heard no more from Mr. Sugden. He knew, and yet he did not know. That which had been told him was very different from what he had expected to hear. He had gone to seek a deserted maiden, and he had found a wife. He had gone with some wild hope of being able to interpose on her behalf, ‘as her brother would have done,’ and bring her false lover back to her—when, lo! he found that he was intruding upon sacred domestic ground, upon the retreat of a wife whose husband was somewhere ready, no doubt, to defend her from all intrusion. This confounded him for the first moment. He went away, as we have said, without a word, asking no explanation. What right had he to any explanation? Probably Ombra herself, had she known what his mission and what his thoughts were, would have been furious at the impertinence. But her mother judged him more gently, and he, poor fellow, knew in his own soul how different his motives were from those of intrusion or impertinence.
When he came to the homely, lonely little house, where he found shelter in the midst of the night, he stopped there in utter languor, still confused by his discovery and his failure. But when he came to himself he was not satisfied. Next day, in the silence and loneliness of the mountains, he mused and pondered on this subject, which was never absent from his mind ten minutes together. He walked on and on upon the road he had traversed in the dark the night before, till he came to the point where it commanded the glen below, and where the descent to Loch Arroch began. He saw at his feet the silvery water gleaming, the loch, the far lines of the withdrawing village roofs, and that one under which she was. At the sight the Curate’s mournful heart yearned over the woman he loved. Why was she there alone, with only her mother, and she a wife? What was there that was not ‘exactly comfortable,’ as Mrs. Anderson had said?
The result of his musing was that he stayed in the little mountain change-house for some time. There was a desolate little loch near, lying, as in a nook, up at the foot of great Schehallion. And there he pretended to fish, and in the intervals of his sport, which was dreary enough, took long walks about the country, and, without being seen by them, found out a great deal about the two ladies. They were alone. The young lady’s husband was said to be ‘in foreign pairts.’ The good people had not heard what he was, but that business detained him somewhere, though it was hoped he would be back before the Autumn. ‘And I wish he may, for yon bonnie young creature’s sake!’ the friendly wife added, who told him this tale.
The name they told him she was called by was not a name he knew, which perplexed him. But when he remembered his own observations, and Kate’s story, he could not believe that any other lover could have come in. When Mr. Sugden had fully satisfied himself, and discovered all that was discoverable, he went back to England with the heat of a sudden purpose. He went to London, and he sought out Bertie Hardwick’s rooms. Bertie himself was whistling audibly as Mr. Sugden knocked at his door. He was packing his portmanteau, and stopped now and then to utter a mild oath over the things which would not pack in as they ought. He was going on a journey. Perhaps to her, Mr. Sugden thought; and, as he heard his whistle, and saw his levity, his blood boiled in his veins.
‘What, Sugden!’ cried Bertie. ‘Come in, old fellow, I am glad to see you. Why, you’ve been and left Shanklin! What did you do that for? The old place will not look like itself without you.’
‘There are other vacant places that will be felt more than mine,’ said the Curate, in a funereal voice, putting himself sadly on the nearest chair.
‘Oh! the ladies at the Cottage! To be sure, you are quite right. They must be a dreadful loss,’ said Bertie.
Mr. Sugden felt that he flushed and faltered, and these signs of guilt made it doubly clear.
‘It is odd enough,’ he said, with double meaning, ‘that we should talk of that, for I have just come from Scotland, from the Highlands, where, of all people in the world, I met suddenly with Miss Anderson and her mother.’
Bertie faced round upon him in the middle of his packing, which he had resumed, and said, ‘Well!’ in a querulous voice—a voice which already sounded like that of a man put on his defence.
‘Well!’ said the Curate—‘I don’t think it is well. She is not Miss Anderson now. But I see you know that. Mr. Hardwick, if you know anything of her husband, I think you should urge him not to leave her alone there. She looks—not very well. Poor Ombra!’ cried the Curate, warming into eloquence. ‘I have no right to call her by her name, but that I—I was fond of her too. I would have given my life for her! And she is like her name—she is like a shadow, that is ready to flit away.’
Bertie Hardwick listened with an agitated countenance—he grew red and pale, and began to pace about the room; but he made no answer—he was confused and startled by what his visitor said.
‘I daresay my confession does not interest you much,’ Mr. Sugden resumed. ‘I make it to show I have some right—to take an interest, at least. That woman for whom I would give my life, Mr. Hardwick, is pining there for a man who leaves her to pine—a man who must be neglecting her shamefully, for it cannot be long since he married her—a man who–’
‘And pray, Mr. Sugden,’ said Bertie, choking with apparent anger and agitation, ‘where did you obtain your knowledge of this man?’
‘Not from her,’ said the Curate; ‘but by chance—by the inquiries I made in my surprise. Mr. Hardwick, if you know who it is who is so happy, and so negligent of his happiness–’
‘Well?’
‘He has no right to stay away from her after this warning,’ cried the Curate, rising to his feet. ‘Do you understand what a thing it is for me to come and say so?—to one who is throwing away what I would give my life for? But she is above all. If he stays away from her, he will reproach himself for it all his life!’
And with these words he turned to go. He had said enough—his own eyes were beginning to burn and blaze. He felt that he might seize this false lover by the throat if he stayed longer. And he had at least done all he could for Ombra. He had said enough to move any man who was a man. He made a stride towards the door in his indignation; but Bertie Hardwick interrupted him, with his hand on his arm.
‘Sugden,’ he said, with a voice full of emotion, ‘I am not so bad as you think me; but I am not so good as you are. The man you speak of shall hear your warning. But there is one thing I have a right to ask. What you learnt by chance, you will not make any use of—not to her cousin, for instance, who knows nothing. You will respect her secret there?’
‘I do not know that I ought to do so, but I promised her mother,’ said the Curate, sternly. ‘Good morning, Mr. Hardwick. I hope you will act at once on what you have heard.’
‘Won’t you shake hands?’ said Bertie.
The Curate was deeply prejudiced against him—hated him in his levity and carelessness, amusing himself while she was suffering. But when he looked into Bertie’s face, his enmity melted. Was this the man who had done her—and him—so much wrong? He put out his hand with reluctance, moved against his will.
‘Do you deserve it?’ he said, in his deep voice.
‘Yes—so far as honesty goes,’ said the young man, with a broken, agitated laugh.
The Curate went away, wondering and unhappy. Was he so guilty, that open-faced youth, who seemed yet too near boyhood to be an accomplished deceiver?—or was there still more in the mystery than met the eye?
This was how Kate got no news. She looked for it for many a day. As the Summer ripened and went on, a hungry thirst for information of one kind or another possessed her. Her aunt’s birthday letter had been a few tender words only—words which were humble, too, and sad. ‘Poor Ombra,’ she had said, ‘was pretty well.’ Poor Ombra!—why poor Ombra? Kate asked herself the question with sudden fits of anxiety, which she could not explain to herself; and she began to watch for the post with almost feverish eagerness. But the suspense lasted so long, that the keenness of the edge wore off again, and no news ever came.
In July, however, Lady Caryisfort came, having lingered on her way from Italy till it became too late to keep the engagement she had made with Mr. Courtenay for Kate’s first season in town. She was so kind as to go to Langton-Courtenay instead, on what she called a long visit.
‘Your uncle has to find out, like other people, that he will only find aid ready made to his hand when he doesn’t want it,’ she said—‘that is the moment when everything becomes easy. I might have been of use to him, I know, two months ago, and accordingly my private affairs detained me, and it is only now, you see, that I am here.’
‘I don’t see why you should have hurried for my uncle,’ said Kate; ‘he has never come to see me, though he has promised twenty times. But you are welcome always, whenever you please.’
‘Thanks, dear,’ said Lady Caryisfort, who was languid after her journey. ‘He will come now, when you don’t want him. And so the aunt and the cousin are gone, Kate? You must tell me why. I heard, after you left Florence, that Miss Anderson had flirted abominably with both these young men—behind your back, my poor darling, when you were with me, I suppose; though I always thought that young Eldridge would have suited you precisely—two nice properties, nice families—everything that was nice. But an ideal match like that never comes to pass. They tell me she was called la demoiselle à deux cavaliers. Don’t look shocked. Of course, it could only be a flirtation; there could be nothing wrong in it. But, you dear little innocent, is this all new to you?’
‘Mr. Hardwick and Mr. Eldridge used to go with us to a great many places; they were old friends,’ said Kate, with her cheeks and forehead dyed crimson in a moment; ‘but why people should say such disagreeable things—’
‘People always say disagreeable things,’ said Lady Caryisfort; ‘it is the only occupation which is pursued anywhere. But as you did not hear about your cousin, I am glad to think you cannot have heard of me.’
‘Of you!’ Kate’s consternation was extreme.
‘They were so good as to say I was going to marry Antonio Buoncompagni,’ said Lady Caryisfort, calmly, smoothing away an invisible wrinkle from her glove. But she did not look up, and Kate’s renewed blush and start were lost upon her—or perhaps not quite lost. There was a silence for a minute after; for the tone, as well as the announcement, took Kate altogether by surprise.
‘And are you?’ she asked, in a low tone, after that pause.
‘I don’t think it,’ said Lady Caryisfort, slowly. ‘The worst is, that he took it into his head himself—why, heaven knows! for I am—let me see—three, four, five years, at least, older than he is. I think he felt that you had jilted him, Kate. No, it would be too much of a bore. He is very good-natured, to be sure, and too polite to interfere; but still, I don’t think—Besides, you know, it would be utterly ridiculous. How could I call Elena Strozzi aunt? In the meantime, my Kate—my little heiress—I think I had better stay here and marry you.’
‘But I don’t want to be married,’ cried Kate.
‘The very reason why you will be,’ said her new guardian, laughing. But the girl stole shyly away, and got a book, and prepared to read to Lady Caryisfort. She was fond of being read to, and Kate shrank with a repugnance shared by many girls from this sort of talk; and, indeed, I am not sure that she was pleased with the news. It helped to reproduce that impression in her mind which so many other incidents had led to. She had always remembered with a certain amount of gratitude poor Antonio’s last appearance at the railway, with the violets in his coat, and the tender, respectful farewell he waved to her. And all the time he had been thinking of Lady Caryisfort! What a strange world it was, in which everything went on in this bewildering, treacherous way! Was there nobody living who was quite true, quite real, meaning all he or she said? She began to think not, and her very brain reeled under the discovery. Her path was full of shadows, which threatened and circled round her. Oh! Ombra, shadow of shadows, where was she? and where had disappeared with her all that tender, bright life, in which Kate believed everybody, and dreamt of nothing but sincerity and truth? It seemed to have gone for ever, to return no more.
