THE reason of Kate’s strange paleness and agitation was afterwards explained to be the fact that she had suddenly heard, no one knew how, of the death of Mrs. Hardwick’s brother; while that lady was sitting by her, happy and undisturbed, and knowing nothing. This was the reason Lady Caryisfort gave to several of the ladies in the house, who remarked next morning on Miss Courtenay’s looks.
‘Poor Kate did not know what to do; and the feelings are strong at her age. I daresay Mrs. Hardwick, when she heard of it, took the news with perfect composure, said Lady Caryisfort; ‘but then at twenty it is difficult to realise that.’
‘Ah! now I understand,’ said one of the ladies. ‘It was told her, no doubt, by that tall young man, like a clergyman, who appeared in the drawing-room all of a sudden, after the gentlemen came downstairs, and disappeared again directly after.’
‘Yes, you are quite right,’ said Lady Caryisfort. She said so because she was aware that to have any appearance of mystery about Kate would be fatal to that brilliant début which she intended her to make; but in her own mind she was much disturbed about this tall young man like a clergyman. She had questioned Kate about him in vain.
‘He is an old friend, from where we lived in the Isle of Wight,’ the girl explained.
‘But old friends from the Isle of Wight don’t turn up everywhere like this. Did he come about Sir Herbert Eldridge?’
‘He knows nothing about Sir Herbert Eldridge. He came to tell me about—my cousin.’
‘Oh! your cousin! La demoiselle aux deux chevaliers,’ said Lady Caryisfort. ‘And did he bring you news of her?’
‘A little,’ said Kate, faintly, driven to her wit’s end; but she was not a weak-minded young woman, to be driven to despair; and here she drew up and resisted. ‘So little, that it is not worth repeating,’ she added, firmly. ‘I knew it almost all before, but he was not aware of that. He meant it very kindly.’
‘Did he come on purpose, dear?’
‘Yes, I suppose so, the good fellow,’ said Kate, gracefully.
‘My dear, he may be a very good fellow; but curates are like other men, and don’t do such things without hope of reward,’ said Lady Caryisfort, doubtfully. ‘So I would not encourage him to go on secret missions—unless I meant to reward him,’ she added.
‘He does not want any of my rewards,’ said Kate, with that half bitterness of still resentment which she occasionally showed at the suspicions which were so very ready to enter the minds of all about her. ‘I at least have no occasion to think as they do,’ she added to herself, with a feeling of sore humility. ‘Of all the people I have ever known, no one has given me this experience—they have all preferred her, without thinking of me.’
It was with this thought in her mind that she withdrew herself from Lady Caryisfort’s examination. She had nothing more to say, and she would not be made to say any more. But when she was in the sanctuary of her own room, she went over and over, with a heart which beat heavily within her breast, Mr. Sugden’s information. That Ombra should have married Bertie did not surprise her—that she had foreseen, she said to herself. But that they should have married so long ago, under her very eyes, as it were, gave her a strange thrill of pain through and through her. They had not told her even a thing so important as that. Her aunt and Ombra, her dearest friends, had lived with her afterwards, and kissed her night and morning, and at last had broken away from her, and given her up, and yet had never told her. The one seemed to Kate as wonderful as the other. Not in their constant companionship, not when that companionship came to a breach—neither at one time nor the other did they do her so much justice. And Bertie!—that was worst of all. Had his look of gladness to see her at the brook in the park, when they last met, been all simulation?—or had it been worse than simulation?—a horrible disrespect, a feeling that she did not deserve the same observance as men were forced to show to other girls! When she came to this question her brain swam so with wrath and a sense of wrong that she became unable to discriminate. Poor Kate!—and nothing of this did she dare to confide to a creature round her. She who had been so outspoken, so ready to disclose her thoughts—she had to lock them up in her own bosom, and never breathe a word.
Unconnected with this, but still somehow connected with it, was the extraordinary message she had received. On examining it afterwards in her own room, she found it was sent to her by ‘Bertie.’ What did it mean? How did he dare to send such a message to her, and what had she to do with it? Had it been a mistake? Could it have been sent to her, instead of to the Rectory? But Kate ascertained that a similar telegram had been received by the Hardwicks the same night when they went home from her dinner-party. Minnie Hardwick stole up two days later to tell her about it. Minnie was very anxious to do her duty, and to feel sad, as a girl ought whose uncle has just died; but though the blinds were all down in the Rectory, and the village dress-maker and Mrs. Hardwick’s maid were labouring night and day at ‘the mourning,’ Minnie found it hard to be so heart-broken as she thought necessary.
‘It is so strange to think that one of one’s own relations has gone away to—to the Better Land,’ said Minnie, with a very solemn face. ‘I know I ought not to have come out, but I wanted so to see you; and when we are sorrowful, it is then our friends are dearest to us. Don’t you think so, dear Kate?’
‘Were you very fond of your uncle, Minnie?’
‘I—I never saw much of him. He has been thought to be going to die for ever so long,’ said Minnie. ‘He was very stout, and had not a very good temper. Oh! how wicked it is to remember that now! And he did not like girls; so that we never met. Mamma is very, very unhappy, of course.’
‘Yes, it is of course,’ Kate said to herself, with again that tinge of bitterness which was beginning to rise in her mind; ‘even when a man dies, it is of course that people are sorry. If I were to die they would try how sorrowful they could look, and say how sad it was, and care as little about me as they do now.’ This thought crossed her mind as she sat and talked to Minnie, who was turning her innocent little countenance as near as possible into the expression of a mute at a funeral, but who, no doubt, in reality, cared much more for her new mourning than for her old uncle—a man who had neither kindness to herself nor general goodness to commend him. It was she who told Kate of the telegram which had been found waiting at the Rectory when they went home, and how she had remembered that Kate had got one too, and how strange such a coincidence was (but Minnie knew nothing of the news contained in Kate’s), and how frightened she always was at telegrams.
‘They always bring bad news,’ said Minnie, squeezing one innocent little tear into the corner of her eye. Her father had gone off immediately, and Bertie was already with his cousin. ‘It is he who will be Sir Herbert now,’ Minnie said, with awe; ‘and oh! Kate, I am so much afraid he will not be very sorry! His father was not very kind to him. They used to quarrel sometimes—I ought not to say so, but I am sure you will never, never tell anyone. Uncle Herbert used to get into dreadful passions whenever Bertie was silly, and did anything wrong. Uncle Herbert used to storm so; and then it would bring on fits. Oh! Kate, shouldn’t we be thankful to Providence that we have such a dear, kind papa!’
Thus this incident, which she had no connection with, affected Kate’s life, and gave a certain colour to her thoughts. She lived, as it were, for several days within the shadow of the blinds, which were drawn down at the Rectory, and the new mourning that was being made, and her own private trouble, which was kept carefully hidden in her heart of hearts. This gave her such abundant food for thought, that the society of her guests was too much for her, and especially Lady Caryisfort’s lively observations. She had to attend to them, and to look as cheerful as she could in the evenings; but they all remarked what depression had stolen over her. ‘She does not look the same creature,’ the other ladies said to Lady Caryisfort; and that lively person, who had thought Kate’s amusing company her only indemnification for putting up with all this respectability, yawned half her time away, and felt furious with Mr. Courtenay for having deluded her into paying this visit at this particular time. It does not do, she reflected, to put off one’s engagements. Had she kept her tryst in Spring, and brought Kate out, and done all she had promised to do for her, probably she would have been married by this time, and the trouble of taking care of her thrown on other shoulders. Whereas, if she went and threw away her good looks, and settled into pale quietness and dulness, as she seemed about to do, there was no telling what a burden she might be on her friends. With these feelings in her mind, she told Mr. Courtenay that she thought that he had been very unwise in letting the Andersons slip through his fingers. ‘They were exactly what she wanted; people who were amenable to advice; who would do what you wished, and would take themselves off when you were done with them—they were the very people for Kate, with her variable temper. It was a weakness which I did not expect in you, Mr. Courtenay, who know the world.’
‘I never saw any signs of variable temper in Kate,’ said Mr. Courtenay, who felt it necessary to keep his temper when he was talking to Lady Caryisfort.
‘Look at me now!’ said that dissatisfied woman. And she added to herself that it was vain to tell her that Kate knew nothing about Sir Herbert Eldridge, or that the strange appearance for half an hour, in the drawing-room, of the young man who was like a clergyman had no connection with the change of demeanour which followed it. This was an absurd attempt to hoodwink her, a woman who had much experience in society and was not easily deceived. And, by way of showing her sense of the importance of the subject, she began to talk to Kate of Bertie Eldridge, who had always been her favourite of the two cousins.
‘Now his father is dead, he is worth your consideration,’ she said. ‘His father was an ill-tempered wretch, I have always heard; but the young man is very well, as young men go, and has a very nice estate. I have always thought nothing could be more suitable. For my own part, I always liked him best—why? I don’t know, except, perhaps, because most people preferred his cousin. I should think, by the way, that after knocking about the world with Bertie Eldridge, that young man will hardly be very much disposed to drop into the Rectory here, like his father before him, which, I suppose, is his natural fate.’
At that moment there came over Kate’s mind a recollection of the time when she had gravely decided to oppose Mr. Hardwick in the parish, and not to give his son the living. The idea brought an uneasy blush to her cheek.
‘Mr. Bertie Hardwick is not going into the Church; he is reading for the bar,’ she said.
‘Well, I suppose the one will need as much work as the other,’ said Lady Caryisfort. ‘Reading for the bar!—that sounds profitable; but, Kate, if I were you, I would seriously consider the question about Bertie Eldridge. He is not bad-looking, and, unless that old tyrant has been wicked as well as disagreeable, he ought to be very well off. The title is not much, but still it is something; and it is a thoroughly good old family—as good as your own. I would not throw such a chance away.’
‘But I never had the chance, as you call it, Lady Caryisfort,’ said Kate, with indignation, ‘and I don’t want to have it; and I would not accept it, if it was offered to me. Bertie Eldridge is nothing to me. I don’t even care for him as an acquaintance, and never did.’
‘Well, my love, you know what a good authority has said—“that a little aversion is a very good thing to begin upon,”’ said Lady Caryisfort, laughing; but in her heart she did not believe these protestations. Why should Kate have got that telegram if Sir Herbert was nothing to her? Thus, over-wisdom led the woman of the world astray.
Before long, Kate had forgotten all about Sir Herbert Eldridge. It was not half so important to her as the other news which nobody knew of—indeed, it was simply of no interest at all in comparison. Where was Ombra now?—and how must Bertie have deceived his family, who trusted in him; as much as his—wife—was that the word?—his wife had deceived herself. Where were they living? or were they together, or what had become of these two women? Then Kate’s heart melted, and she cried within herself—What had become of them? An unacknowledged wife!—a woman who had to hide herself, and bear a name and assume a character which was not hers! In all the multitude of her thoughts, she at last stopped short upon the ground of deep pity for her cousin, who had so sinned against her. Where was she?—under what name?—in what appearance? The thought of her position, after all this long interval, with no attempt made to own her or set her right with the world, made Kate’s heart sick with compassion in the midst of her anger. And how was she to find Ombra out?—and when she had found her out, what was she to do?