Ombra

CHAPTER V

Bertie Hardwick was on the lawn in front of the Rectory when the two visitors approached. The Rectory was a pretty, old-fashioned house, large and quaint, with old picturesque wings and gables, and a front much covered with climbing plants. Kate had always been rather proud of it, as one of the ornaments of her estate. She looked at it almost as she looked at the pretty west gate of her park, where the lodge was so commodious and so pleasant, coveted by all the poor people on the estate. It was by Kate’s grace and favour that the west lodge was given to one or another, and so would it be with the Rectory. She looked upon the one in much the same light as the other. It would be hard to tell what magnetic chord of sympathies had moved Bertie Hardwick to some knowledge of what his young acquaintance was about to do; but it is certain that he was there, pretending to play croquet with his sisters, and keeping a very keen eye upon the bit of road which was visible through the break in the high laurel hedge. He had been amused, and indeed somewhat touched and interested, in spite of himself, on the previous night; and somehow he had a feeling that she would come. When he caught a glimpse of her, he threw down the croquet mallet, as if it hurt him, and cried out—‘Edith, run and tell mamma she is coming. I felt quite sure she would.’

‘Who is coming?’ cried the two girls.

‘Oh, don’t chatter and ask questions—rush and tell mamma!’ cried Bertie; and he himself, without thinking of it, went forward to open the garden door. It was a trial of Kate’s steadiness to meet him thus, but she did so with wide-open eyes and a certain serious courage. ‘You saw me at a disadvantage, but I don’t mind,’ Kate’s serious eyes were saying; and as she took the matter very gravely indeed, it was she who had the best of it now. Bertie, in spite of himself, felt confused as he met her look; he grew red, and was ashamed of his own foolish impulse to go and open the door.

‘This is Mr. Bertie Hardwick, uncle,’ said Kate, gravely; ‘and this, Mr. Bertie, is my Uncle Courtenay—whom I told you of,’ she added, with a little sigh.

Her Uncle Courtenay—whom she was obliged to obey, and over whom neither her impetuosity nor her melancholy had the least power. She shook her head to herself, as it were, over her sad fate, and by this movement placed once more in great danger the gravity of poor Bertie, who was afraid to laugh or otherwise misconduct himself under the eyes of Mr. Courtenay. He led the visitors into the drawing-room, through the open windows; and it is impossible to tell what a relief it was to him when he saw his mother coming to the rescue. And then they all sat down; Kate as near Mrs. Hardwick as she could manage to establish herself. Kate did not understand the shyness with which Minnie and Edith, half withdrawn on the other side of their mother, looked at her.

‘I am not a wild beast,’ she said to herself. ‘I wonder do they think I will bite?’

‘Did you tell them about last night?’ she said, turning quickly to Bertie; for Mrs. Hardwick, instead of talking to her, the Lady of the Manor, as Kate felt she ought to have done, gave her attention to Mr. Courtenay instead.

‘I told them I had met you, Miss Courtenay,’ said Bertie.

‘And did they laugh? Did you make fun of me? Why do they look at me so strangely?’ cried Kate, growing red; ‘I am not a wild beast.’

‘You forget that you and my father have quarrelled,’ said Bertie; ‘and the girls naturally take his side.’

‘Oh! is it that?’ cried Kate, clearing up a little. She gave a quick glance at him, with a misgiving as to whether he was entirely serious. But Bertie kept his countenance. ‘For that matter, I have come to say that I did not mean anything wrong; perhaps I made a mistake. Uncle Courtenay says that, till I am of age, I have no power; and if the Rector pleases—oh! there is the Rector—I ought to speak for myself.’

She rose as Mr. Hardwick came up to her. Her sense of her own importance gave a certain dignity to her young figure, which was springy and stately, like that of a young Diana. She threw back the flood of chestnut hair that streamed over her shoulders, and looked straight at him with her bright, well-opened eyes. Altogether she looked a creature of a different species from Edith and Minnie, who kept close together, looking at her with wonder, and a mixture of admiration and repugnance.

‘Isn’t it bold of her to speak to papa like that?’ Minnie whispered to Edith.

‘But she is going to ask his pardon,’ Edith whispered back to Minnie. ‘Oh! hush, and hear what she says.’

As for Bertie, he looked on with a strange feeling that it was he who had introduced this new figure into the domestic circle, and with a little anxiety of proprietorship hoped that she would make a good impression. She was his novelty, his property—and she was, there could be no doubt, a very great novelty indeed.

‘Mr. Hardwick, please,’ said Kate, reddening, yet confronting him with her head very erect, and her eyes very open, ‘I find that I made a mistake. Uncle Courtenay tells me I had no right at my age to interfere. I shall not be of age for six years, and don’t you think it would be best to be friendly—till then? If you are willing, I should be glad. I thought I had a right—but I understand now that it was all a mistake.’

Mr. Hardwick looked round upon the company, questioning and puzzled. He was a tall man, spare, but of a large frame, with deep-set blue eyes looking out of a somewhat brown face. His eyes looked like a bit of sky, which had strayed somehow into that brown, ruddy framework. They were the same colour as his son’s, Bertie’s; but Bertie’s youthful countenance was still white and red, and the contrast was not so great. The Rector’s face was very grave when in repose, and its expression had almost daunted Kate; but gradually he caught the joke (which was intended to be so profoundly serious) and lighted up. He had looked at his wife first, with a man’s natural instinct, asking an explanation; and perhaps the suppressed laughter in Mrs. Hardwick’s eyes was what gave him the clue. He made the little Lady of the Manor a profound bow. ‘Let us understand each other, Miss Courtenay,’ he said, with mock solemnity—‘are we to be friendly only till you come of age? Six years is a long time. But if after that hostilities are to be resumed–’

‘When I am of age of course I must do my duty,’ said Kate.

She was so serious, standing there in the midst of them, grave as twenty judges, that nobody could venture to laugh. Uncle Courtenay, who was getting impatient, and who had no feeling either of chivalry or admiration for his troublesome ward, uttered a hasty exclamation; but the Rector took her hand, and shook it, with a smile which at once conciliated his two girls, who were looking on.

‘That is just the feeling you ought to have,’ he said. ‘I see we shall be capital friends—I mean for six years; and then whatever you see to be your duty—Is it a bargain? I am delighted to accept these terms.’

‘And I am very glad,’ said Kate, sedately. She sat down again when he released her hand—giving her head a little shake, as was customary with her, and looked round with a certain majestic composure on the little assembly. As for Bertie, though he could not conceal from himself the fact that his father and mother were much amused, he still felt very proud of his young lady. He went up to her, and stood behind her chair, and made signs to his mother that she was to talk; which Mrs. Hardwick did to such good purpose that Kate, who wanted little encouragement, and to whom a friendly face was sweet, soon stood fully self-revealed to her new acquaintances. They took her out upon the lawn, and instructed her in croquet, and grew familiar with her; and, before half an hour had passed, Minnie and Edith, one on each side, were hanging about her, half in amazement, half in admiration. She was younger than both, for even Minnie, the little one, was sixteen; but then neither of them was a great lady—neither the head and mistress of her own house.

‘Isn’t it dreadfully dreary for you to live in that great house all by yourself?’ said Edith. They were so continually together, and so apt to take up each other’s sentiments, one repeating and continuing what the other had said, that they could scarcely get through a question except jointly. So that Minnie now added her voice, running into her sister’s. ‘It must be so dull, unless your governess is very nice indeed.’

‘My governess—Miss Blank?’ said Kate. ‘I never thought whether she was nice or not. I have had so many. One comes for a year, and then another, and then another. I never could make out why they liked to change so often. Uncle Courtenay thinks it is best.’

‘Oh! our governess stayed for years and years,’ said Edith; added Minnie, ‘We were nearly as fond of her as of mamma.’

‘But then I suppose,’ said Kate, with a little sigh, ‘she was fond of you?’

‘Why, of course,’ cried the two girls together. ‘How could she help it, when she had known us all our lives?’

‘You think a great deal of yourselves,’ said Kate, with dreary scorn, ‘to think people must be fond of you! If you were like me you would know better. I never fancy anything of the kind. If they do what I tell them, that is all I ask. You are very different from me. You have father, and mother, and brothers, and all sorts of things. But I have nobody, except Uncle Courtenay—and I am sure I should be very glad to make you a present of him.’

‘Have you not even an aunt?’ said Minnie, with big round eyes of wonder. ‘Nor a cousin?’ said Edith, equally surprised.

‘No—that is, oh! yes, I have one of each—Uncle Courtenay was talking of them as we came here—but I never saw them. I don’t know anything about them,’ said Kate.

‘What curious people, not to come to see you!’ ‘And what a pity you don’t know them!’ said the sisters.

‘And how curiously you talk,’ said uncompromising Kate; ‘both together. Please, is there only one of you, or are there two of you? I suppose it is talking in the same voice, and being dressed alike.’

‘We are considered alike,’ said Edith, the eldest, with an air of suppressed offence. As for Minnie, she was too indignant to make any reply.

‘And so you are alike,’ said Kate; ‘and a little like your brother, too; but he speaks for himself. I don’t object to people being alike; but I should try very hard to make you talk like two people, not like one, and not always to hang together and dress the same, if you were with me.’

Upon this there was a dead pause. The Rectory girls were good girls, but not quite prepared to stand an assault like this. Minnie, who had a quick temper, and who had been taught that it was indispensable to keep it down, shut her lips tight, and resisted the temptation to be angry. Edith, who was more placid, gazed at the young censor with wonder. What a strange girl!

‘Because,’ said Kate, endeavouring to be explanatory, ‘your voices have just the same sound, and you are just the same height, and your blue frocks are even made the same. Are there so many girls in the world,’ she said suddenly, with a pensive appeal to human nature in general, ‘that people can afford to throw them away, and make two into one?’

Deep silence followed. Mrs. Hardwick had been called away, and Bertie was talking to the gardener at the other end of the lawn. This was the first unfortunate result of leaving the girls to themselves. They walked on a little, the two sisters falling a step behind in their discomfiture. ‘How dare she speak to us so?’ Minnie whispered through her teeth. ‘Dare!—she is our guest!’ said Edith, who had a high sense of decorum. A minute after, Kate perceived that something was amiss. She turned round upon them, and gazed into their faces with serious scrutiny. ‘Are you angry?’ she said—‘have I said anything wrong?’

‘Oh! not angry,’ said Edith. ‘I suppose, since you look surprised, you don’t—mean—any harm.’

‘I?—mean harm?– Oh! Mr. Bertie,’ cried Kate, ‘come here quick—quick!—and explain to them. You know me. What have I done to make them angry? One may surely say what one thinks.’

‘I don’t know that it is good to say all one thinks,’ said Edith, who taught in the Sunday-schools, and who was considered very thoughtful and judicious—‘at least, when it is likely to hurt other people’s feelings.’

‘Not when it is true?’ said the remorseless Kate.

And then the whole group came to a pause, Bertie standing open-mouthed, most anxious to preserve the peace, but not knowing how. It was the judicious Edith who brought the crisis to a close by acting upon one of the maxims with which she was familiar as a teacher of youth.

‘Should you like to walk round the garden?’ she said, changing the subject with an adroitness which was very satisfactory to herself, ‘or come back into the drawing-room? There is not much to see in our little place, after your beautiful gardens at Langton-Courtenay; but still, if you would like to walk round—or perhaps you would prefer to go in and join mamma?’

‘My uncle must be ready to go now,’ said Kate, with responsive quickness, and she stalked in before them through the open window. As good luck would have it, Mr. Courtenay was just rising to take his leave. Kate followed him out, much subdued, in one sense, though all in arms in another. The girls were not nearly so nice as she thought they would be—reality was not equal to anticipation—and to think they should have quarrelled with her the very first time for nothing! This was the view of the matter which occurred to Kate.

CHAPTER VI

I cannot undertake to say how it was, but it is certain that Bertie Hardwick met Kate next day, as she took her walk into the village, accompanied by Miss Blank. At the sight of him, that lady’s countenance clouded over; but Kate was glad, and the young man took no notice of Miss Blank’s looks. As it happened, the conversation between the governess and her pupil had flagged—it often flagged. The conversation between Kate and Miss Blank consisted generally of a host of bewildering questions on the one side, and as few answers as could be managed on the other. Miss Blank no doubt had affairs of her own to think of; and then Kate’s questions were of everything in heaven and earth, and might have troubled even a wise counsellor. Mr. Courtenay was still at Langton, but had sent out his niece for her usual walk—a thing by which she felt humiliated—and she had met with a rebuff in the village in consequence of some interference. She was in low spirits, and Miss Blank did not mind. Accordingly, Bertie was a relief and comfort to her, more than can be described.

‘Why don’t your sisters like me?’ said Kate. ‘I wonder, Mr. Bertie, why people don’t like me? If they would let me, I should like to be friends; but you saw they would not.’

‘I don’t think—perhaps—that they quite understood–’

‘But it is so easy to understand,’ said Kate, with a little impatient sigh. She shook her head, and tossed back her shining hair, which made an aureole round her. ‘Don’t let us speak of it,’ she said; ‘but you understood from the very first?’

Bertie was pleased, he could not have told why. The fact was, he, too, had been extremely puzzled at first; but now, after three meetings, he felt himself an old friend and privileged interpreter of the strange girl whom his sisters were so indignant with, and who certainly was a more important personage at Langton-Courtenay than any other fifteen-year-old girl in England. Both Mr. Hardwick and Bertie had to some extent made themselves Kate’s champions, moved thereto by that strange predisposition to take the side of a feminine stranger (at least, when she is young and pleasant) against the women of their own house, which almost all men are moved by. Women take their father’s, their husband’s, their brother’s side through thick and thin, with a natural certainty that their own must be in the right; but men invariably take it for granted that their own must be wrong. Thus, not only Bertie, who might be moved by other arguments, but even Mr. Hardwick, secretly believed that ‘the girls’ had taken offence foolishly, and maintained the cause of Kate.

‘They have seen nothing out of their own sphere,’ their brother said, apologetically—‘they don’t know much—they are very much petted and spoiled at home.’

‘Ah!’ said Kate, feeling as if a chilly douche had suddenly been administered in her face. She drew a long, half-sobbing breath, and then she said, with a pathetic tone in her voice, ‘Oh! I wonder why people don’t like me!’

‘You are wrong, Miss Courtenay—I am sure you are wrong,’ said Bertie, warmly. ‘Not like you!—that must be their stupidity alone. And I can’t believe, even, that any one is so stupid. You must be making a mistake.’

‘Oh! Mr. Bertie, how can you say so? Why, your sisters!’ cried Kate, returning to the charge.

‘But it is not that they—don’t like you,’ said Bertie. ‘How could you think it? It is only a misunderstanding—a—a—want of knowing–’

‘You are trying to save my feelings,’ said Kate; ‘but never mind my feelings. No, Mr. Bertie, it is quite true. I do not want to deceive myself—people do not like me.’ These words she produced singly, as if they had been so many stones thrown at the world. ‘Oh! please don’t say anything—perhaps it is my fate; perhaps I am never to be any better. But that is how it is—people don’t like me; I am sure I don’t know why.’