Маргарет Олифант - Ombra

‘The sea is very nice,’ said Mrs. Anderson, who in this respect was not so enthusiastic as Kate.

‘Very nice! Oh! aunt, it is simply delightful! Whenever I am troublesome—as I know I shall be—just send me out here. I may talk all the nonsense I like—it will never tire the sea.’

‘Do you talk a great deal of nonsense, Kate?’

‘I am afraid I do,’ said the girl, with penitence. ‘Not that I mean it; but what is one to do? Miss Blank, my last governess, never talked at all, when she could help it, and silence is terrible—anything is better than that; and she said I chattered, and was always interfering. What could I do? One must be occupied about something!’

‘But are you fond of interfering, dear?’

‘Auntie!’ said Kate, throwing back her hair, ‘if I tell you the very worst of myself, you will not give me up, or send me away? Thanks! It is enough for me to be sure of that. Well, perhaps I am, a little—I mean I like to be doing something, or talking about something. I like to have something even to think about. You can’t think of Mangnall’s Questions, now, can you?—or Mrs. Markham? The village people used to be a great deal more interesting. I used to like to hear all that was going on, and give them my advice. Well, I suppose it was not very good advice. But I was not a nobody there to be laughed at, you know, auntie—I was the chief person in the place!’

Here Ombra laughed, and it hurt Kate’s feelings.

‘When I am old enough, I shall be able to do as I please in Langton-Courtenay,’ she said.

‘Certainly, my love,’ said Mrs. Anderson, interposing; ‘and I hope, in the meantime, dear, you will think a great deal of your responsibilities, and all that is necessary to make you fill such a trying position as you ought.’

‘Trying!’ said Kate, with some surprise; ‘do you think it will be trying? I shall like it better than anything. Poor old people, I must try to make it up to them, for perhaps I rather bothered them sometimes, to tell the truth. I am not like you and Ombra, so gentle and nice. And, then, I had never seen people behave as I suppose they ought.’

‘I am glad you think we behave as we ought, Kate.’

‘Oh! auntie; but then there is something about Ombra that makes me ashamed of myself. She is never noisy, nor dreadful, like me. She touches things so softly, and speaks so gently. Isn’t she lovely, aunt?’

‘She is lovely to me,’ said Mrs. Anderson, with a glow of pleasure. ‘And I am so glad you like your cousin, Kate.’

‘Like her! I never saw any one half so beautiful. She looks such a lady. She is so dainty, and so soft, and so nice. Could I ever grow like that? Ah! auntie, you shake your head—I don’t mean so pretty, only a little more like her, a little less like a–’

‘My dear child!’ said the gratified mother, giving Kate a hug, though it was out of doors. And at that moment, Ombra, who had been in advance, turned round, and saw the hasty embrace, and shrugged her pretty shoulders, as her habit was.

‘Mamma, I wish very much you would keep these bursts of affection till you get home,’ said Ombra. ‘The Eldridges are coming down the cliff.’

‘Oh! who are the Eldridges? I know some people called Eldridge,’ said Kate—‘at least, I don’t know them, but I have heard–’

‘Hush! they will hear, too, if you don’t mind,’ said Ombra. And Kate was silent. She was changing rapidly, even in these few days. Ombra, who snubbed her, who was not gracious to her, who gave her no caresses, had, without knowing it, attained unbounded empire over her cousin. Kate had fallen in love with her, as girls so often do with one older than themselves. The difference in this case was scarcely enough to justify the sudden passion; but Ombra looked older than she was, and was so very different a being from Kate, that her gravity took the effect of years. Already this entirely unconscious influence had done more for Kate than all the educational processes she had gone through. It woke the woman, the gentlewoman, in the child, who had done, in her brief day, so many troublesome things. Ombra suddenly had taken the ideal place in her mind—she had been elevated, all unwitting of the honour, to the shrine in Kate’s heart. Everything in her seemed perfection to the girl—even her name, her little semi-reproofs, her gentle coldness. ‘If I could but be like Ombra, not blurting things out, not saying more than I mean, not carried away by everything that interests me,’ she said, self-reproachfully, with rising compunction and shame for all her past crimes. She had never seen the enormity of them as she did now. She set up Ombra, and worshipped her in every particular, with the enthusiasm of a fanatic. She tried to curb her once bounding steps into some resemblance to the other’s languid pace; and drove herself and Maryanne frantic by vain endeavours to smoothe her rich crisp chestnut hair into the similitude of Ombra’s shadowy, dusky locks. This sudden worship was independent of all reason. Mrs. Anderson herself was utterly taken by surprise by it, and Ombra had not as yet a suspicion of the fact; but it had already begun to work upon Kate.

It was not in her, however, to make the acquaintance of this group of new people without a little stir in her pulses—all the more as Mrs. Eldridge came up to herself with special cordiality.

‘I am sure this is Miss Courtenay,’ she said. ‘I have heard of you from my nephew and nieces at Langton-Courtenay. They told me you were coming to the Island. I hope you will like it, and think it as pretty as I do. You are most welcome, I am sure, to Shanklin.’

‘Are you their aunt at Langton-Courtenay?’ said Kate, with eyes which grew round with excitement and pleasure. ‘Oh! how very odd! I did not think anybody knew me here.’

‘I am aunt to the boys and girls,’ said Mrs. Eldridge. ‘Mrs. Hardwick is my husband’s sister. We must be like old friends, for the Hardwicks’ sake.’

‘But the Hardwicks are not old friends to me,’ said Kate, with a child’s unnecessary conscientiousness of explanation. ‘Bertie I know, but I have only seen the others twice.’

‘Oh! that does not matter,’ said the Rector’s wife; ‘you must come and see me all the same.’ And then she turned to Mrs. Anderson, and began to talk of the parish. Kate stood by and listened with wondering eyes as they discussed the poor folk, and their ways and their doings. They did not interfere in her way; but perhaps their way was not much better, on the whole, than Kate’s. She had been very interfering, there was no doubt; but then she had interfered with everybody, rich and poor alike, and made no invidious distinction. She stood and listened wondering, while the Rector added his contribution about the mothers’ meetings, and the undue expectations entertained by the old women at the almshouses. ‘We must guard against any foolish partiality, or making pets of them,’ Mr. Eldridge said; and his wife added that Mr. Aston, in the next parish, had quite spoiled his poor people. ‘He is a bachelor; he has nobody to keep him straight, and he believes all their stories. They know they have only to send to the Vicarage to get whatever they require. When one of them comes into our parish, we don’t know what to do with her,’ she said, shaking her head. Kate was too much occupied in listening to all this to perceive that Ombra shrugged her shoulders. Her interest in the new people kept her silent, as they reascended the cliff, and strolled towards the cottage; and it was not till the Rector and his wife had turned homewards, once more cordially shaking hands with her, and renewing their invitation, that she found her voice.

‘Oh! auntie, how very strange—how funny!’ she said. ‘To think I should meet the Eldridges here!’