OMBRA, however, did not set her face against it. What difficulty the mother might have had with her, no one knew, and she appeared no more that day, having ‘a bad headache,’ that convenient cause for all spiritual woes. But next morning, when she came down, though her face was pale, there was no other trace in her manner of the struggle her submission had cost her, and the whole business was settled, and even the plan of the journey had begun to be made. Already, in this day of Ombra’s retirement, the news had spread far and wide. Kate had put on her hat directly, and had flown across to the Rectory to tell this wonderful piece of news. It was scarcely less interesting there than in the Cottage, though the effect was different. The Eldridges raised a universal wail.
‘Oh, what shall we do without you?’ cried the girls and the boys—a reflection which almost brought the tears to Kate’s own eyes, yet pleased her notwithstanding.
‘You will not mind so much when you get used to it. We shall miss you as much as you miss us—oh, I wish you were all coming with us!’ she cried; but Mrs. Eldridge poured cold water on the whole by suggesting that probably Mrs. Anderson would let the Cottage for the Summer, and that some one who was nice might take it and fill up the vacant place till they came back; which was an idea not taken in good part by Kate.
On her way home she met Mr. Sugden and told him; she told him in haste, in the lightness of her heart and the excitement of the moment; and then, petrified by the effect she had produced, stood still and stared at him in alarm and dismay.
‘Oh, Mr. Sugden! I am sure I did not mean—I did not think——’
‘Going away?’ he said, in a strange, dull, feelingless way. ‘Ah! for six months—I beg your pardon—I am a little confused. I have just heard some—some bad news. Did you say going away?’
‘I am so sorry,’ said Kate, faltering, ‘so very sorry. I hope it is not anything I have said——’
‘You have said?’ he answered, with a dull smile, ‘oh, no! I have had bad news, and I am a little upset. You are going away? It is sudden, is it not?—or perhaps you thought it best not to speak. Shanklin will look odd without you,’ he went on, looking at her. He looked at her with a vague defiance, as if daring her to find him out. He tried to smile; his eyes were very lacklustre and dull, as if all the vision had suddenly been taken out of them; and his very attitude, as he stood, was feeble, as if a sudden touch might have made him fall.
‘Yes,’ said Kate, humbly, ‘I am sorry to leave Shanklin and all my friends; but my uncle wishes it for me, and as Ombra is so poorly, we thought it might do her good.’
‘Ah!’ he said, drawing a long breath; and then he added hurriedly, ‘Does she like it? Does she think it will do her good?’
‘I don’t think she likes it at all,’ said Kate, ‘she is so fond of home; but we all think it is the best thing. Good-bye, Mr. Sugden. I hope you will come and see us. I must go home now, for I have so much to do.’
‘Yes, thanks. I will come and see you,’ said the Curate. And then he walked on mechanically—straight on, not knowing where he was going. He was stunned by the blow. Though he knew very well that Ombra was not for him, though he had seen her taken, as it were, out of his very hands, there was a passive strength in his nature which made him capable of bearing this. So long as no active step was taken, he could bear it. It had gone to his heart with a penetrating anguish by times to see her given up to the attentions of another, receiving, as he thought, the love of another, and smiling upon it. But all the while she had smiled also upon himself; she had treated him with a friendly sweetness which kept him subject; she had filled his once unoccupied and languid soul with a host of poignant emotions. Love, pain, misery, consolation—life itself, seemed to have come to him from Ombra. Before he knew her, he had thought pleasantly of cricket and field-sports, conscientiously of his duties, piteously of the mothers’ meetings, which were so sadly out of his way, and yet were supposed to be duty too.
But Ombra had opened to him another life—an individual world, which was his, and no other man’s. She had made him very unhappy and very glad; she had awakened him to himself. There was that in him which would have held him to her with a pathetic devotion all his life. It was in him to have served the first woman that woke his heart with an ideal constancy, the kind of devotion—forgive the expression, oh, intellectual reader!—which makes a dull man sublime, and which dull men most often exhibit. He was not clever, our poor Curate, but he was true as steel, and had a helpless, obstinate way of clinging to his loves and friendships. Never, whatever happened, though she had married, and even though he had married, and the world had rolled on, and all the events of life had sundered them, could Ombra have been to him like any other woman; and now she was the undisputed queen and mistress of his life. She was never to be his; but still she was his lady and his queen. He was ready to have saved her even by the sacrifice of all idea of personal happiness on his own part. His heart was glowing at the present moment with indignant sorrow over her, with fury towards one of the Berties—he did not know which—who had brought a mysterious shadow over her life; and yet he was capable of making an heroic effort to bring back that Bertie, and to place him by Ombra’s side, though every step he took in doing so would be over his own heart.
All this was in him; but it was not in him to brave this altogether unthought-of catastrophe. To have her go away; to find himself left with all life gone out of him; to have the heart torn, as it were, out of his breast; and to feel the great bleeding, aching void which nothing could fill up. He had foreseen all the other pain, and was prepared for it; but for this he was not prepared. He walked straight on, in a dull misery, without the power to think. Going away!—for six months! Which meant simply for ever and ever. Where he would have stopped I cannot tell, for he was young and athletic, and capable of traversing the entire island, if he had not walked straight into the sea over the first headland which came in his way—a conclusion which would not have been disagreeable to him in the present state of his feelings, though he could scarcely have drowned had he tried. But fortunately he met the Berties ere he had gone very far. They were coming from Sandown Pier.
‘Have you got the yacht here?’ he asked, mechanically; and then, before they could understand, broke into the subject of which his heart and brain were both full. ‘Have you heard that the ladies of the Cottage are going away?’
This sudden introduction of the subject which occupied him so much was indeed involuntary. He could not have helped talking about it; but at the same time it was done with a purpose—that he might, if possible, make sure which it was.
‘The ladies at the Cottage!’ They both made this exclamation in undeniable surprise. And he could not help, even in his misery, feeling a little thrill of satisfaction that he knew better than they.
‘Yes,’ he said, made bolder by this feeling of superiority, ‘they are going to leave Shanklin for six months.’
The two Berties exchanged looks. He caught their mutual consultation with his keen and jealous eyes. What was it they said to each other? He was not clever enough to discover; but Bertie Hardwick drew a long breath, and said, ‘It is sudden, surely,’ with an appearance of dismay which Mr. Sugden, in his own suffering, was savagely glad to see.
‘Very sudden,’ he said. ‘I only heard it this morning. It will make a dreadful blank to us.’
And then the three stood gazing at each other for nearly a minute, saying nothing; evidently the two cousins did not mean to commit themselves. Bertie Eldridge switched his boot with his cane. ‘Indeed!’ had been all he said; but he looked down, and did not meet the Curate’s eye.
‘Have you got the yacht here!’ Mr. Sugden repeated, hoping that if he seemed to relax his attention something might be gained.
‘Yes, she is lying at the pier, ready for a long cruise,’ said Bertie Hardwick. ‘We are more ambitious than last year. We are going to——’
‘Norway, I think,’ said Eldridge, suddenly. ‘There is no sport to be had now but in out-of-the-way places. We are bound for Scandinavia, Sugden. Can you help us? I know you have been there.’
‘Scandinavia!’ the other Bertie echoed, with a half whistle, half exclamation; and an incipient smile came creeping about the corners of the brand-new moustache of which he was so proud.
‘I am rather out of sorts to-day,’ said the Curate. ‘I have had disagreeable news from home; but another time I shall be very glad. Scandinavia! Is the “Shadow” big enough and steady enough for the northern seas?’
And then, as he pronounced the name, it suddenly occurred to him why the yacht was called the ‘Shadow.’ The thought brought with it a poignant sense of contrast, which went through and through him like an arrow. They could call their yacht after her, paying her just such a subtle, inferred compliment as girls love. And they could go away now, lucky fellows, to new places, to savage seas, where they might fight against the elements, and delude their sick hearts (if they possessed such things) by a struggle with nature. Poor Curate!—he had to stay and superintend the mothers’ meetings—which also was a struggle with nature, though after a different kind.
‘Oh! she will do very well,’ said Bertie Eldridge, hastily. ‘Look sharp, Bertie, here is the dogcart. We are going to Ryde for a hundred things she wants. I shall send her round there to-morrow. Will you come!’
‘I can’t,’ said the Curate, almost rudely. And then even his unoffending hand seized upon a dart that lay in his way. ‘How does all this yachting suit your studies?’ he said.
Bertie Hardwick laughed. ‘It does not suit them at all,’ he said, jumping into the dogcart. ‘Good-bye, old fellow. I think you should change your mind, and come with us to-morrow!’
‘I won’t,’ said the Curate, under his breath. But they did not hear him; they dashed off in very good spirits, apparently nowise affected by his news. As for Mr. Sugden, he ground his teeth in secret. That which he would have given his life, almost his soul for, had been thrown away upon one of these two—and to them it was as nothing. It did not cloud their looks for more than a minute, if indeed it affected them at all; whereas to him it was everything. They were the butterflies of life; they had it in their power to pay pretty compliments, to confer little pleasures, but they were not true to death, as he was. And yet Ombra would never find that out; she would never know that his love—which she did not even take the trouble to be conscious of—was for life and death, and that the other’s was an affair of a moment. They had driven off laughing; they had not even pretended to be sorry for the loss which the place was about to suffer. It was no loss to them. What did they care? They were heartless, miserable, without sense or feeling; yet one of them was Ombra’s choice.
This incident, however, made Mr. Sugden take his way back to the village. He had walked a great deal further than he had any idea of, and had forgotten all about the poor women who were waiting with their subscriptions for the penny club. And it chafed him, poor fellow, to have to go into the little dull room, and to take the pennies. ‘Good heavens! is this all I am good for?’ he said to himself. ‘Is there no small boy or old woman who could manage it better than I? Was this why the good folks at home spent so much money on me, and so much patience?’ Poor young Curate, he was tired and out of heart, and he was six feet high and strong as a young lion; yet there seemed nothing in heaven or earth for him to do but to keep the accounts of the penny club and visit the almshouses. He had done that very placidly for a long time, having the Cottage always to fall back upon, and being a kindly, simple soul at bottom—but now! Were there no forests left to cut down? no East-end lanes within his reach to give him something to fight with and help him to recover his life?