Маргарет Олифант - Ombra

‘Why not the Eldridges?—have you any objection to them?’ said Mrs. Anderson.

‘Oh, no!—I suppose not.’ (Kate put aside with an effort that audacity of Sir Herbert Eldridge, and false assumption about the size of his park.) ‘But it is so curious to meet directly, as soon as I arrive, people whom I have heard of–’

‘Indeed, my dear Kate, it is not at all wonderful,’ said her aunt, didactically. ‘The world is not nearly such a big place as you suppose. If you should ever travel as much as we have done (which heaven forbid!), you would find that you were always meeting people you knew, in the most unlikely places. Once, at Smyrna, when Mr. Anderson was there, a gentleman came on business, quite by chance, who was the son of one of my most intimate friends in my youth. Another time I met a companion of my childhood, whom I had lost sight of since we were at school, going up Vesuvius. Our chaplain at Cadiz turned out to be a distant connection of my husband’s, though we knew nothing of him before. Such things are always happening. The world looks very big, and you feel as if you must lose yourself in it; but, on the contrary, wherever one goes, one falls upon people one knows.’

‘But yet it is so strange about the Hardwicks,’ said Kate, persisting; ‘they are the only people I ever went to see—whom I was allowed to know.’

‘How very pleasant!’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘Now I shall be quite easy in my mind. Your uncle must have approved of them, in that case, so I may allow you to associate with the Eldridges freely. How very nice, my love, that it should be so!’

Kate made no reply to this speech. She was not, to tell the truth, quite clear that her uncle approved. He had not cared to hear about Bertie Hardwick; he had frowned at the mention of him. ‘And Bertie is the nicest—he is the only one I care for,’ said Kate to herself; but she said nothing audibly on the subject. To her, notwithstanding her aunt’s philosophy, it seemed very strange indeed that Bertie Hardwick’s relatives should be the first to meet her in this new world.

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.

‘I don’t want to say a word against Kate,’ she would say, keeping up her old rôle . ‘I think there is a great deal of good about her; but you know we have no longer our house to ourselves.’

‘Could we enjoy our house to ourselves, Ombra, knowing that poor child to have no home?’ said Mrs. Anderson, with feeling.

‘Well, mamma, the poor child has a great many advantages over us,’ said Ombra, hesitating. ‘I should like to have had her on a visit; but to be always between you and me–’

‘No one can be between you and me, my child.’

‘That is true, perhaps. But then our little house, our quiet life all to ourselves.’

‘That was a dream, my dear—that was a mere dream of your own. People in our position cannot have a life all to ourselves. We have our duties to society; and I have my duty to you, Ombra. Do you think I could be so selfish as to keep you altogether to myself, and never let you see the world, or have your chance of choosing some one who will take care of you better than I can?’

‘Please don’t,’ said Ombra. ‘I am quite content with you; and there is not much at Shanklin that can be called society or the world.’

‘The world is everywhere,’ said Mrs. Anderson, with dignity. ‘I am not one of those who confine the term to a certain class. Your papa was but a Consul, but I have seen many an ambassador who was very inferior to him. Shanklin is a very nice place, Ombra; and the society, what there is, is very nice also. I like my neighbours very much—they are not lords and ladies, but they are well-bred, and some of them are well-born.’