MRS. ANDERSON awaited her daughter’s awakening next morning with an anxiety which was indescribable. She wondered even at the deep sleep into which Ombra fell after the agitation of the night—wondered, not because it was new or unexpected, but with that wonder which moves the elder mind at the sight of youth in all its vagaries, capable of such wild emotion at one moment, sinking into profound repose at another. But, after all, Ombra had been for some time awake, ere her watchful mother observed. When Mrs. Anderson looked at her, she was lying with her mouth closely shut and her eyes open, gazing fixedly at the light, pale as the morning itself, which was misty, and rainy, and wan, after the brightness of last night. Her look was so fixed and her lips so firmly shut, that her mother grew alarmed.
‘Ombra!’ she said softly—‘Ombra, my darling, my poor child!’
Ombra turned round sharply, fixing her eyes now on her mother’s face as she had fixed them on the light.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Why are you up so early? I am not ill, am I!’ and looked at her with a kind of menace, forbidding, as it were, any reference to what was past.
‘I hope not, dear,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘You have too much courage and good sense, my darling, to be ill.’
‘Do courage and good sense keep one from being ill?’ said Ombra, with something like a sneer; and then she said, ‘Please, mamma, go away. I want to get up.’
‘Not yet, dear. Keep still a little longer. You are not able to get up yet,’ said poor Mrs. Anderson, trembling for the news which would meet her when she came into the outer world again. What strange change was it that had come upon Ombra? She looked almost derisively, almost threateningly into her mother’s face.
‘One would think I had had a fever, or that some great misfortune had happened to me,’ she said; ‘but I am not aware of it. Leave me alone, please. I have a thousand things to do. I want to get up. Mother, for heaven’s sake, don’t look at me so! You will drive me wild! My nerves cannot stand it; nor—nor my temper,’ said Ombra, with a shrill in her voice which had never been heard there before. ‘Mamma, if you have any pity, go away.’
‘If my lady will permit, I will attend Mees Ombra,’ said old Francesca, coming in with a look of ominous significance. And poor Mrs. Anderson was worn out—she had been up half the night, and during the other half she did not sleep, though Ombra slept, who was the chief sufferer. Vanquished now by her daughter’s unfilial looks, she stole away, and cried by herself for a few moments in a corner, which did her good, and relieved her heart.
But Francesca advanced to the bedside with intentions far different from any her mistress had divined. She approached Ombra solemnly, holding out two fingers at her.
‘I make the horns,’ said Francesca; ‘I advance not to you again, Mademoiselle, without making the horns. Either you are an ice-maiden, as I said, and make enchantments, or you have the evil eye——’
‘Oh! be quiet, please, and leave me alone. I want to get up. I don’t want to be talked to. Mamma leaves me when I ask her, and why should not you?’
‘Because, Mademoiselle,’ said Francesca, with elaborate politeness, ‘my lady has fear of grieving her child; but for me I have not fear. Figure to yourself that I have made you like the child of my bosom for eighteen—nineteen year—and shall I stand by now, and see you drive love from you, drive life from you? You think so, perhaps? No, I am bolder than my dear padrona. I do not care sixpence if I break your heart. You are ice, you are stone, you are worse than all the winters and the frosts! Signorina Ghiaccia, you haf done it now!’
‘Francesca, go away! You have no right to speak to me so. What have I done?’
‘Done!’ cried Francesca, ‘done!—all the evil things you can do. You have driven all away from you who cared for you. Figure to yourself that a little ship went away from the golf last night, and the two young signorini in it. You will say to me that it is not you who have done it; but I believe you not. Who but you, Mees Ombra, Mees Ice and Snow? And so you will do with all till you are left alone, lone in the world—I know it. You turn to ze wall, you cry, you think you make me cry too, but no, Francesca will speak ze trutt to you, if none else. Last night, as soon as you come home, ze little ship go away—cacciato—what you call dreaven away—dreaven away, like by ze Tramontana, ze wind from ze ice-mountains! That is you. Already I haf said it. You are Ghiaccia—you will leave yourself lone, lone in ze world, wizout one zing to lof!’
Francesca’s English grew more and more broken as she rose into fervour. She stood now by Ombra’s bedside, with all the eloquence of indignation in her words, and looks, and gestures; her little uncovered head, with its knot of scanty hair twisted tightly up behind, nodding and quivering; her brown little hands gesticulating; her foot patting the floor; her black eyes flashing. Ombra had turned to the wall, as she said. She could discomfit her gentle mother, but she could not put down Francesca. And then this news which Francesca brought her went like a stone to the depths of her heart.
‘But I will tell you vat vill komm,’ she went on, with sparks of fire, as it seemed, flashing from her eyes—‘there vill komm a day when the ice will melt, like ze torrents in ze mountains. There will be a rush, and a flow, and a swirl, and then the avalanche! The ice will become water—it will run down, it will flood ze contree; but it will not do good to nobody, Mademoiselle. They will be gone the persons who would have loved. All will be over. Ze melting and ze flowing will be too late—it will be like the torrents in May, all will go with it, ze home, ze friends, ze comfort that you love, you English. All will go. Mademoiselle will be sorry then,’ said Francesca, regaining her composure, and making a vindictive courtesy. She smiled at the tremendous picture she was conscious of having drawn, with a certain complacency. She had beaten down with her fierce storm of words the white figure which lay turned away from her with hidden face. But Francesca’s heart did not melt. ‘Now I have told you ze trutt,’ she said, impressively. ‘Ze bath, and all things is ready, if Mademoiselle wishes to get up now.’
‘What have you been saying to my child, Francesca?’ said Mrs. Anderson, who met her as she left the room, looking very grave, and with red eyes.
‘Nozing but ze trutt,’ said Francesca, with returning excitement; ‘vich nobody will say but me—for I lof her—I lof her! She is my bébé too. Madame will please go downstairs, and have her breakfast,’ she added calmly. ‘Mees Ombra is getting up—there is nothing more to say. She will come down in quarter of an hour, and all will be as usual. It will be better that Madame says nothing more.’
Mrs. Anderson was not unused to such interference on Francesca’s part; the only difference was that no such grave crisis had ever happened before. She was aware that, in milder cases, her own caressing and indulgent ways had been powerfully aided by the decided action of Francesca, and her determination to speak ‘ze trutt,’ as she called it, without being moved by Ombra’s indignation, or even by her tears. Her mistress, though too proud to appeal to her for aid, had been but too glad to accept it ere now. But this was such an emergency as had never happened before, and she stood doubtful, unable to make up her mind what she should do, at the door of Ombra’s room, until the sounds within made it apparent that Ombra had really got up, and that there was, for the moment, nothing further to be done. She went away half disconsolate, half relieved, to the bright little dining-room below, where the pretty breakfast-table was spread, with flowers on it, and sunshine straying in through the network of honeysuckles and roses. Kate was at her favourite occupation, arranging flowers in the hall, but singing under her breath, lest she should disturb her cousin.
‘How is Ombra?’ she whispered, as if the sound of a voice would be injurious to her.
‘She is better, dear; I think much better. But oh, Kate, for heaven’s sake, take no notice, not a word! Don’t look even as if you supposed—— ’
‘Of course not, auntie,’ said Kate, with momentary indignation that she should be supposed capable of such unwomanly want of comprehension. They were seated quite cheerfully at breakfast when Ombra appeared. She gave them a suspicious look to discover if they had been talking of her—if Kate knew anything; but Kate (she thanked heaven), knew better than to betray herself. She asked after her cousin’s headache, on the contrary, in the most easy and natural way; she talked (very little) of the events of the preceding day. She propounded a plan of her own for that afternoon, which was to drive along the coast to a point which Ombra had wished to make a sketch of. ‘It will be the very thing for to-day,’ said Kate. ‘The rain is over, and the sun is shining; but it is too misty for sea-views, and we must be content with the land.’
‘Is it true,’ said Ombra, looking her mother in the face, ‘that the yacht went away last night?’
‘Oh yes,’ cried Kate, taking the subject out of Mrs. Anderson’s hands, ‘quite true. They found letters at the railway calling them off—or, at least, so they said. Some of us thought it was your fault for going away, but my opinion is that they did it abruptly to keep up our interest. One cannot go on yachting for ever and ever; for my part, I was beginning to get tired. Whereas, if they come back again, after a month or so, it will all be as fresh as ever.’
‘Are they coming back?’
‘Yes,’ said, boldly, the undaunted Kate.
Mrs. Anderson spoke not a word; she sat and trembled, pitying her child to the bottom of her heart—longing to take her into her arms, to speak consolation to her, but not daring. The mother, who would have tried if she could to get the moon for Ombra, had to stand aside, and let Francesca ‘tell ze trutt,’ and Kate give the consolation. Some women would have resented the interference, but she was heroic, and kept silence. The audacious little fib which Kate had told so gayly, had already done its work; the cloud of dull quiet which had been on Ombra’s face, brightened. All was perhaps not over yet.
Thus after this interruption of their tranquillity they fell back into the old dull routine. Mr. Sugden was once more master of the field. Ombra kept herself so entirely in subjection, that nobody out of the Cottage guessed what crisis she had passed through, except this one observer, whose eyes were quickened by jealousy and by love. The Curate was not deceived by her smiles, by her expressions of content with the restored quietness, by her eagerness to return to all their old occupations. He watched her with anxious eyes, noting all her little caprices, noting the paleness which would come over her, the wistful gaze over the sea, which sometimes abstracted her from her companions.
‘She is not happy as she used to be—she is only making-believe, like the angel she is, to keep us from being wretched,’ he said to Kate.
‘Mr. Sugden, you talk great nonsense; there is nothing the matter with my cousin,’ Kate would reply. On which Mr. Sugden sighed heavily and shook his head, and went off to find Mrs. Anderson, whom he gently beguiled into a corner.
‘You remember what I said,’ he would whisper to her earnestly—‘if you want my services in any way. It is not what I would have wished; but think of me as her—brother; let me act for you, as her brother would, if there is any need for it. Remember, you promised that you would——’
‘What does the man want me to bid him do?’ Mrs. Anderson would ask in perplexity, talking the matter over with Kate—a relief which she sometimes permitted herself; for Ombra forbade all reference to the subject, and she could not shut up her anxieties entirely in her own heart. But Kate could throw no light on the subject. Kate herself was not at all clear what had happened. She could not make quite sure, from her aunt’s vague statement, whether it was Ombra that was in the wrong, or the Berties, or if it was both the Berties, or which it was. There were so many complications in the question, that it was very difficult to come to any conclusion about it. But she held fast by her conviction that they must come back to Shanklin—it was inevitable that they must come back.