IT is a curious sensation to return, after a long interval, to the home of one’s youth, especially if one has had very great ideas of that home, and thought it magnificent. Even a short absence changes most curiously this first conception of grandeur. When Kate ran into Langton-Courtenay on her return, rushing through the row of new servants, who bowed and curtseyed in the hall, her sense of mortification and disappointment was intense. Everything had shrunken somehow; the rooms were smaller, the ceilings lower, the whole place diminished. Were these the rooms which she had compared in her mind with the suite in which the English ambassadress gave her ball? Kate stood aghast, blushing up to the roots of her hair, and felt so mortified that she did not remember to do the honours to her aunt and cousin. When she recollected, she went back to where they had placed themselves in the great old hall, round the great fireplace. There was a comfortable old-fashioned settle by it, and on this Mrs. Anderson had seated herself, to warm her frozen fingers, and give Kate time to recover herself.
‘I have not the least doubt we shall find everything very comfortable,’ she said to the new housekeeper, who stood before her, curtseying in her rustling silk gown, and wondering already whether she was to have three mistresses, or which was to be the ‘lady of the house.’ Mrs. Spigot felt instinctively that the place was not likely to suit her, when Kate ran against the new housemaid, and made the new butler (Mr. Spigot) fall back out of her way. This was not a dignified beginning for a young lady coming home; and if the aunt was to be mistress, it was evident that the situation would not be what the housekeeper thought.
‘My niece is a little excited by coming home,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘To-morrow Miss Courtenay will be rested, and able to notice you all.’ And she nodded to the servants, and waved her hand, dismissing them. If a feeling passed through Mrs. Anderson’s mind, as she did so, that this was truly the position that she ought to have filled, and that Kate, a chit of nineteen, was not half so well endowed for it by nature as she herself would have been, who can blame her? She gave a sigh at this thought, and then smiled graciously as the servants went away, and felt that to have such a house, and so many servants under her control, even provisionally, would be pleasant. The housemaids thought her a very affable lady; but the upper servants were not so enthusiastic. Mrs. Anderson had mounted upon her very highest horse. She had put away all the vagaries of Italian life, and settled down into the very blandest of British matrons. She talked again about proper feeling, and a regard for the opinions of society. She had resumed all the caressing and instructive ways which, at the very beginning of their intercourse, she had adopted with Kate. And all these sentiments and habits came back so readily that there were moments in which she asked herself, ‘Had she ever been in Italy at all?’ But yes, alas, yes! Never, if she lived a thousand years, could she forget the three months just past.
Kate came back with some confusion to the hall, to find Ombra kneeling on the great white sheepskin mat before the fire; while Mrs. Anderson sat benignly on the settle, throwing off her shawls, and loosing her bonnet. Ombra’s veil was thrown quite back; the ruddy glow threw a pink reflection on her face, and her eyes seemed to have thawed in the cheery, warm radiance. They were bright, and there seemed to be a little moisture in them. She held out her hand to her cousin, and drew her down beside her.
‘This is the warmest place,’ said Ombra; ‘and your hands are like ice, Kate. But how warm it feels to be at home in England! and I like your house—it looks as if it had never been anything but a home.’
‘It is delightful!—it is much larger and handsomer than I supposed,’ said Mrs. Anderson, from the settle. ‘With such a place to come home to, dear, I think you may be pardoned a little sensation of pride.’
‘Oh! do you think so?’ said Kate, gratified. ‘I am so very glad you like it. It seems to me so insignificant, after all we have seen. I used to think it was the biggest, the finest, the most delightful house in the world; but if you only knew how the roofs have come down, and the rooms have shrunk!—I feel as if I could both laugh and cry.’
‘That is quite natural—quite natural. Kate, I have sent the servants away. I thought you would be better able to see them to-morrow,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘But when you have warmed yourself, I think we may ask for Mrs. Spigot again, and go over the rooms, and see which we are to live in. It will not be necessary to open the whole house for us three, especially in Winter. Besides our bed-rooms and the dining-room, I think a snug little room that we can make ourselves comfortable in—that will be warm, and not too large——’
It pleased Mrs. Anderson to sit there in the warmth and stillness, and make all these suggestions. The big house gave her a sensible pleasure. It was delicious to think that a small room might be chosen for comfort, while there were miles of larger ones all at her orders. She smiled and beamed upon the two girls on the hearth. And indeed it was a pretty picture—Kate began to glow and brighten, with her hat off, and her bright hair shining in the firelight. Her travelling-dress was trimmed round the throat with white fur, like a bird’s plumage, which caught a pink tinge too from the firelight, and seemed to caress her, nestling against her pretty cheek. The journey, and the arrival, and all the excitement had driven away, for the moment at least, all mists and clouds, and there was a pretty conflict in her face—half pleasure to be at home, half whimsical discontent with home. Ombra with her veil quite back, and her face cleared also of some other mystical veil, had her hand on Kate’s shoulder, and was looking at her kindly, almost tenderly; and one of Ombra’s cheeks was getting more than pink—it was crimson in the genial glow; she held up her hand to shield it, which looked transparent against the firelight. Mrs. Anderson looked very complacently, very fondly at both. Now that everything was over, she said to herself, and they had got home, surely at least a little interval of calm might come. She shut her eyes and her ears, and refused to look forward, refused to think of the seeds sown, and the results that must come from them. She had been carried away to permit and even sanction many things that her conscience disapproved; but perhaps the Fates would exact no vengeance this time—perhaps all would go well. She looked at Ombra, and it seemed to her that her child, after so many agitations, looked happy—yes, really happy—not with feverish joy or excitement, but with a genial quiet that belonged to home. Oh! if it might be so?—and why might it not be so?—at least for a time.
Mr. Courtenay had stayed in town, and the three ladies were alone in the house. They settled down in a few days into ease and comfort which, after their travelling, was very sweet. Things were different altogether from what they had been in the Shanklin cottage; and though Mrs. Anderson was in the place of Kate’s guardian, yet Kate was no longer a child, to be managed for and ruled in an arbitrary way. It was now that the elder lady showed her wisdom. It was a sensible pleasure to her to govern the great house; here at last she seemed to have scope for her powers; but yet, though she ruled, she did so from the background; with heroic self-denial she kept Kate in the position she was so soon to occupy by right, trained her for it, guided her first steps, and taught her what to do.
‘When you are of age, this is how you must manage,’ she would say.
‘But when I am of age, why should not you manage for me?’ Kate replied; and her aunt made no answer.
They had come together again, and the old love had asserted itself once more. The mysteries unexplained had been buried by common consent. Kate lulled her own curiosity to rest, and when various questions came to the very tip of her tongue, she bit and stilled that unruly member, and made a not unsuccessful effort to restrain herself. But it was a hard discipline, and strained her strength. Sometimes, when she saw the continual letters which her aunt and cousin were always receiving, curiosity would give her a renewed pinch. But generally she kept herself down, and pretended not to see the correspondence, which was so much larger than it ever used to be. She was so virtuous even as not to look at the addresses of the letters. What good would it do her to know who wrote them? Of course some must be from the Berties, one, or both—what did it matter? The Berties were nothing to Kate; and, whatever the connection might be, Kate had evidently nothing to do with it, for it had never been told her. With this reasoning she kept herself down, though she was always sore and disposed to be cross about the hour of breakfast. Mrs. Anderson, for her part, would never see the crossness. She petted Kate, and smoothed her down, and read out, with anxious conciliation, scraps from Lady Barker’s letters, and others of a similarly indifferent character; while, in the meantime, the other letters, ones which were not indifferent nor apt for quotation, were read by Ombra. The moment was always a disagreeable one for Kate—but she bore it, and made no sign.
But to live side by side with a secret has a very curious effect upon the mind; it sharpens some faculties and deadens others in the strangest way. Kate had now a great many things to think of, and much to do; people came to call, hearing she had come home; and she made more acquaintances in a fortnight than she had done before in a year. And yet, notwithstanding this, I think it was only a fortnight that the reign of peace and domestic happiness lasted. During that time, she made the most strenuous effort a girl could make to put out of her mind the recollection that there was something in the lives of her companions that had been concealed from her. Sometimes, indeed, when she sat by her cousin’s side, there would suddenly rise up before her a glimpse of that group at the doorway on the Lung-Arno, and the scared look with which Ombra had rushed away; or some one of the many evening scenes when she was left out, and the other four, clustered about the table, would glide across her eyes like a ghost. Why was she left out? What difference would it have made to them, if they had made her one of themselves—was she likely to have betrayed their secret? And then Bertie Hardwick’s troubled face would come before her, and his looks, half-apologetic, half-explanatory; looks, which, now she thought of them, seemed to have been so very frequent. Why was he always looking at her, as if he wanted to explain; as if he were disturbed and ill at ease; as if he felt her to be wronged? Though, of course, she was not in the least wronged, Kate said to herself, proudly; for what was it to her if all the Berties in the world had been at Ombra’s feet?—Kate did not want them! Of that, at least, she was perfectly sure.
Mrs. Anderson’s room was a large one; opening into that of Ombra on the one side, and into an ante-room, which they could sit in, or dress in, or read and write in, for it was furnished for all uses. It was a petit appartement, charmingly shut in and cosy, one of the best set of rooms in the house, which Kate had specially chosen for her aunt. Here the mother and daughter met one night after a very tranquil day, over the fire in the central room. It was a bright fire, and the cosy chairs that stood before it were luxurious, and the warm firelight flickered through the large room, upon the ruddy damask of the curtains, and the long mirror, and all the pretty furnishings. Ombra came in from her own room in her dressing-gown, with her dusky hair over her shoulders. Dusky were her looks altogether, like evening in a Winter’s twilight. Her dressing-gown was of a faint grey-blue—not a pretty colour in itself, but it suited Ombra; and her long hair fell over it almost to her waist. She came in noiselessly to her mother’s room, and it was her voice which first betrayed her presence there. Mrs. Anderson had been sitting thinking, with a very serious face; she started at her child’s voice.
‘I have been trying my very best to bear it—I think I have done my very best; I have smiled, and kept my temper, and tried to look as if I were not ready to die of misery. Oh! mamma, mamma, can this go on for ever? What am I to do?’
‘Oh! Ombra, for God’s sake have patience!’ cried her mother—‘nothing new has happened to-day?’
‘Nothing new!—is it nothing new to have those girls here from the Rectory, jabbering about their brother? and to know that he is coming—next week, they say? We shall be obliged to meet—and how are we to meet? when I think how I took leave of him last! My life is odious to me!’ cried the girl, sinking down in a chair, and covering her face with her hands. ‘I don’t know how to hold up my head and look those people in the face; and it is worse when no one comes. To live for a whole long, endless day without seeing a strange face, with Kate’s eyes going through and through me——’
‘Don’t make things worse than they are,’ said her mother, ‘Oh! Ombra, have a little patience! Kate suspects nothing.’
‘Suspects!’ cried Ombra—‘she knows there is something—not what it is, but that there is something. Do you think I don’t see her looks in the morning, when the letters come? Poor Kate! she will not look at them; she is full of honour—but to say she does not suspect!’
‘I don’t know what to say to satisfy you, Ombra,’ said her mother. ‘Did not I beg you on my knees to take her into your confidence? It would have made everything so much easier, and her so much happier.’
‘Oh! mamma, my life is hard enough of itself—don’t make it harder and harder!’ cried Ombra; and then she laid down her head upon her mother’s shoulder, and wept. Poor Mrs. Anderson bore it all heroically; she kissed and soothed her child, and persuaded her that it could not last long—that Bertie would bring good news—that everything would be explained and atoned for in the end. ‘There can be no permanent harm, dear—no permanent harm,’ she repeated, ‘and everybody will be sorry and forgive.’ And so, by degrees, Ombra was pacified, and put to bed, and forgot her troubles.
This was the kind of scene which took place night after night in the tranquil house, where all the three ladies seemed so quietly happy. Kate heard no echo of it through the thick walls and curtains, yet not without troubles of her own was the heiress. The intimation of Bertie’s coming disturbed her too. She thought she had got quite composed about the whole matter, willing to wait until the secret should be disclosed, and the connection between him and her cousin, whatever it was, made known. But to have him here again, with his wistful looks, and the whole mystery to be resumed, as if there had been no interruption of it—this was more than Kate felt she could bear.