MRS. ANDERSON was waiting in Kate’s room, when Maryanne, sympathetic, weeping, and delighted, introduced her carefully. ‘Oh, mayn’t I carry it, ma’am?’ she cried, longing; and when that might not be, drew a chair to the fire—the most comfortable chair—and placed a footstool, and lingered by in adoring admiration. What was it that this foolish maiden wanted so much to go down upon her knees before and do fetish worship to? Mrs. Anderson sat and pondered over this one remaining secret, with a heart that was partly joyful and partly heavy. This woman was a compound of worldliness and of something better. In her worldly part she was happy and triumphant, but in her higher part she was more humbled, almost more sad, than when she went away in what she had felt to be shame from Langton-Courtenay. She felt for the shock that this discovery would give to Kate’s spotless maiden imagination, unaware of the possibility of such mysteries. She felt more for Kate than for her own child, who was happy and victorious. She sent Maryanne away to watch, and waited very nervously, with a tremble in her frame. How would Kate take it? How would she take this, which lay upon Mrs. Anderson’s knee? She would not have the candles lighted. The dark, which half concealed and half revealed her, was kinder, and would keep her secret best. A film seemed to come over her eyes when she saw the two young women come into the room together. The first thing she was sure of was Kate’s arms, which crept round her, and Kate’s voice in her ear crying, ‘Oh! auntie, how could you leave me—oh! how could you leave me? I have wanted you so!’
‘Take it!’ cried Mrs. Anderson, with sudden energy; and when the white bundle had been removed from her knee, she clasped her second child in her arms. It is not often that a mother gets to love an adopted child in competition with her own; but during all this past year, Kate had appeared before her many a day, in the sweet docility and submission of her youth, when Ombra was fretful, and exacting, and dissatisfied. The poor mother had not acknowledged it to herself but she wanted those arms round her—she wanted her other child.
‘Oh!’ she said, but in a whisper, ‘my darling! I can never, never tell you how I have wanted you!’
‘Here it is!’ cried Ombra, gaily. ‘Mamma, let her look at him; you can kiss her after. Kate, here is my other secret. Light the candles, Maryanne—quick, that your mistress may see my boy.’
‘Yes, my lady,’ cried Maryanne, full of awe.
A little laugh of unbounded happiness and exultation came from Ombra’s lips. To come back thus triumphant, vindicated from all reproaches; to have the delight of showing her child; to be reconciled, and at last at liberty to love her cousin without any jealousy or painful sense of contrast; and, finally, to hear herself called my lady—all combined to fill up the measure of her content.
Up to this moment it had not occurred to Kate what the other secret was. Mrs. Anderson felt the girl’s arms tighten round her, felt the sudden leap of her heart. Who will not understand what that movement of shame meant? It silenced Kate’s very heart for the moment. This shock was greater than the first shock. She blushed crimson on her aunt’s shoulder, where happily no one saw her. Her thoughts wandered back over the past, and she felt as if there was something shameful in it. This was absurd, of course; but it was some moments before she could so far overcome herself as to raise her head in answer to her cousin’s repeated demands.
‘Look at him, Kate!—look at him! Mamma will keep—you can have her afterwards. Look at my boy!’
Ombra was disinterring the baby out of cloaks and veils and shawls, in which it was lost. Her cheeks were sparkling, her eyes glowing with happiness. In her heart there was no sense of shame.
But we need not linger over this scene. Kate was glad, very glad, to get free from her duties that evening—to escape from the dinner and the people, as well as from the baby, and get time to think of it all. What were her feelings when she sat down alone, after all this flood of new emotions, and realised what had happened? The shock was over. The tingling of wonder, of pleasure, of pain, and even of shame, which had confused her senses, was over. She could look at everything, and see it as it was. And as the past rose out of the mists elucidated by the present, of course it became apparent to her that she ought to have seen the true state of affairs all the time. She ought to have seen that there was no affinity between Bertie Hardwick and her cousin, no natural fitness, no likelihood, even, that they could choose each other. Of course she ought to have seen that he had been made a victim of, as she herself had been made a victim of, though in a less degree. She ought to have known that Bertie, he whom she had once called her Bertie, in girlish, innocent freedom (though she blushed to recall it), could not have been disrespectful to herself, nor treacherous, nor anything but what he was. She owed him an apology, she said to herself, with cheeks which glowed with generous shame. She owed him an apology, and she would make it, whenever it should be in her power.
As for all the other wonderful events, they gradually stole off into the background, compared with this central fact that she owed an apology to Bertie. She fell asleep with this thought in her mind, and, waking in the morning, felt so happy that she asked herself instinctively what it was. And the answer was, ‘I must make an apology to Bertie!’ Ombra and her mysteries, and her new grandeur, and even her baby, faded off into nothing in comparison with this. Somehow that double secret seemed to be almost a hundred years old. The revelation of Bertie Hardwick’s blamelessness, and the wrong she had done him, was the only thing that was new.
Sir Herbert and Lady Eldridge stayed at Langton-Courtenay for about a week before they went home, and all the minor steps in the matter were explained by degrees. He had rushed down to Loch Arroch, where she had been all this time, to fetch his wife, as soon as his father’s death set him free. With so much depending on that event, Bertie Eldridge could scarcely, with a good grace, pretend to be sorry for his father; but the fact that Sir Herbert’s death had been a triumph, and not a sorrow to him, was chiefly known away from home, and when he went back he went in full pomp of mourning. The baby even wore a black ribbon round its unconscious waist, for the grandpapa who would have disinherited it had he known of its existence. Probably nobody made much comment upon ‘the Eldridges.’ They were accepted, all things having come right, without much censure, if with a great deal of surprise. It was bitter for Mrs. Hardwick to realise that ‘that insignificant Miss Anderson’ was the wife of the head of her house, the mistress of all the honours and riches of the Eldridges; but she had to swallow it, as bitter pills must always be swallowed.
‘Heaven be praised, my Bertie did not fall into her snares! Though I always said his taste was too good for such a piece of folly!’ she said, taking the best piece of comfort which remained to her.
Bertie Hardwick came down to spend Christmas with his family, and it was not an uncheerful one, though they were all in mourning. It was not he, but his cousin, who had sent the telegram to Kate, in the confusion of the moment, not remembering that to her it would convey no information. But when the little party who had been together in Florence met again now, they talked of every subject on earth but that. Instinctively they avoided the recollection of these confused months, which had brought so much suffering in their train. The true history came to Kate in confidential interviews with her aunt, and was revealed little by little. It was to shield Bertie Eldridge from the possibility of discovery that Bertie Hardwick had been forced to make one of their party continually, and to devote himself, in appearance, to Ombra as much as her real lover did. He had yielded to his cousin’s pleadings, having up to that time had no thought nor desire which the other Bertie had not shared. But this service which had been exacted from him had broken his bonds. He had separated from his cousin immediately on their return, and begun his independent life, though he had still continued to be, when it was not safe for them to meet, the mode of communication between Ombra and her husband.
All this Kate learned, partly from Mrs. Anderson, partly at a later period. She did not learn, however, what a dreary time had passed between the flight of the two ladies from Langton-Courtenay and their return. Her aunt did not tell her what wretched doubts had beset them, what sense of neglect, what terrors for the future. Bertie Eldridge had not been so anxious to shield his wife from the consequences of their imprudence as he ought to have been. But all is well that ends well. His father had died in the nick of time, and in Ombra’s society he was the best of young husbands—proud, and fond, and happy. There was no fault to be found in him now.
When ‘the Eldridges’ went to their house, in great pomp and state, they left Mrs. Anderson with Kate; and to Kate, after they were gone, the whole seemed like a dream. She could scarcely believe that they had been there—that all the strange story was true. But she had perfectly recovered of her cold, and of her despondency, and was in such bloom, when she took leave of her departing guests, that all sorts of compliments were paid to her.
‘Your niece has blossomed into absolute beauty,’ said one of the old fogies to Mr. Courtenay. ‘You have shut her up a great deal too long. What a sensation she will make with her fortune, and with that face!’
Mr. Courtenay shrugged his shoulders, and made a grimace.
‘I don’t see what good that face can do her,’ he said, gruffly. He was suspicious, though he scarcely knew what he was suspicious of. There seemed to him something more than met the eye in this Eldridge business. Why the deuce had not that girl with the ridiculous name married young Hardwick, as she ought to have done? He was the first who had troubled Mr. Courtenay’s mind with previsions of annoyance respecting his niece. And, lo! the fellow was coming back again, within reach, and Kate was almost her own mistress, qualified to execute any folly that might come into her head.
There was, however, a lull in all proceedings till Christmas, when, as we have prematurely announced, but as was very natural, Bertie Hardwick came home. Mr. Courtenay, too, being suspicious, came again to Langton-Courtenay, feeling it necessary to be on the spot. It was a very quiet Christmas, and nothing occurred to alarm anyone until the evening of Twelfth Day, when there was a Christmas-tree in the school-room for the school-children. It had been all planned before Sir Herbert’s death; and Mrs. Hardwick decided that it was not right the children should suffer ‘for our affliction—with such an object in view I hope I can keep my feelings in check,’ she said. And indeed the affliction of the Rectory was kept very properly in check, and did not appear at all in the school-room. Kate enjoyed this humble festivity, with the most thorough relish. She was a child among the children. Her spirits were overflowing. To be sure, she was not even in mourning; and when all was over, she declared her intention of walking home up the avenue, which, all in its Winter leaflessness, was beautiful in the moonlight. It was a very clear, still Winter night—hard frost and moonlight, and air which was sharp and keen as ice, and a great deal more exhilarating than champagne to those whose lungs were sound, and their hearts light. Bertie walked with her, after she had been wrapped up by his sisters. Her heart beat fast, but she was glad of the opportunity. No appropriate moment had occurred before; she would make her apology now.
They had gone through the village side by side, talking of the school-children and their delight; but as they entered the avenue they grew more silent. ‘Now is my time!’ cried Kate to herself; and, though her heart leaped to her mouth, she began bravely.
‘Mr. Bertie, there is something I have wished to say to you ever since Ombra came back. I did you a great deal of injustice. I want to make an apology.’
‘An apology!—to me!’
‘Yes, to you. I don’t know that I ever did anybody so much wrong. I do not want to blame Bertie Eldridge. It is all right now, I suppose; but I thought once that you were her——’
Bertie Hardwick turned quickly round upon her, as if in resentment; his gesture felt like a moral blow. Wounded surprise and resentment—was it resentment? And somehow, though the white moonlight did not show it, Kate felt that she blushed.
‘Please don’t be angry. I am confessing that I was wrong; and I never felt that you could have done it,’ said Kate, in a low voice. ‘I believed it, and yet I did not believe it. That was the sting. To think you could have so little faith in me—could have deceived me, when we are such old friends!’
‘And was that all?’ he said. ‘Was it only the concealment you thought me incapable of?’
‘The concealment was the only thing wicked about it, I suppose,’ said Kate, ‘now that it has turned out all right.’
Bertie took no notice of the unconscious humour of this definition. He turned to her again with a certain vehemence, which seemed to have some anger in it.
‘Nay,’ he said, almost sharply, ‘there was more than that. You knew I did not love Ombra—you knew she was nothing to me.’
‘I did not—know—anything about it,’ faltered Kate.
‘How can you say so? Do you mean that you have ever doubted for a moment—that you have not known—every day we have been together since that day at the brook-side? Bah! you want to make a fool of me. You tempt me to put things into words that ought not to be spoken.’
‘But, Mr. Bertie,’ said Kate, after a pause to make sure that he had stopped—and her voice was child-like in its simplicity—‘I like things to be put into words—I don’t like people to break off in the middle. You were saying since that day by the brook-side?’
He turned to her with a short, agitated laugh. ‘Perhaps you don’t remember about it,’ he said. ‘I do—everything that happened—every word that was said—every one of the tears. You don’t cry now as you used to do, or open your heart.’
‘I don’t cry when people can see me,’ said Kate. ‘I have cried enough, if you had been in the way to perceive it, this last year.’
‘My poor, sweet——’ Here he stopped; his voice had melted and changed. But all of a sudden he stopped short, with quite a different kind of alteration. ‘Should you be afraid to go the rest of the way alone?’ he said, abruptly. ‘I will stand here till I see you on the steps, and you can call to me if you are afraid.’
‘I am not in the least afraid,’ said Kate, proudly. ‘I was quite able to walk up the avenue by myself, if that was all.’ And then she laughed. ‘Mr. Bertie,’ she said, demurely, ‘it is you who are afraid, not I.’
‘I suppose you are right,’ he said. ‘Well, then, as you are strong, be merciful—don’t tempt me. If you like to know that there is some one to be dragged at your chariot wheels, it would be easy to give you that satisfaction. Perhaps, indeed, as we have begun upon this subject, it is better to have it out.’
‘Much better, I think,’ said Kate, with a glibness and ease which surprised herself. Was it because she was heartless? The fact was rather that she was happy, which is a demoralising circumstance in some cases.
‘Well,’ he said, with a hard breath, ‘since you prefer to have it in plain words, Miss Courtenay, you may as well know, once for all, that since that day at the brook-side I have thought of no one but you. I don’t suppose it is likely I shall ever think of anyone else all my life in that way. It can be no pleasure to me to speak, or to you to hear, of any such hopeless and insane notion. It is more your fault than mine, after all; for if you had not cried, I should not have leaped over the hedge, and trespassed, and——’
‘What would you do?’ said Kate, softly, ‘if you saw the same sight again now?’
‘Do?’ he said, with an unsteady laugh—‘make an utter fool of myself, I suppose—as, indeed, I have done all along. I am such a fool still, that I can’t bear to be cross-examined about my folly. Don’t say any more about it, please.’
‘But, if I were you, I would say a great deal more about it,’ said Kate, growing breathless with her resolution. ‘Look here, Bertie—don’t start like that—of course I have always called you Bertie within myself. I wonder how the Queen felt, when—— I am very, very much ashamed of myself; but you can’t see me, which is one good thing. Is it because I am rich you are afraid? For if that is all——’
‘What then?—what then, Kate?’
Half an hour after, Kate walked into the little drawing-room, where so many things had happened, where her aunt was sitting alone, waiting for her return. Her eyes were like two stars, and blazed in the light which dazzled them, and filled them with moisture. A red scarf, which had been wrapped round her throat, hung loosely over her shoulders. Her face was all aglow with the clear, keen night air. She came in quietly, and came up to Mrs. Anderson, and knelt down by her side in front of the fire. ‘Aunt,’ she said, ‘don’t be angry. I have been doing a very strange thing. I hope you will not think it wicked. I have proposed to Bertie Hardwick.’
‘Kate, my darling, are you mad?—are you out of your senses?’
‘No,’ said the girl, quietly, and with a sigh. ‘But I am a kind of a princess. What can I do? He gave me encouragement, auntie, or I would not have done it; and I think he has accepted me,’ she said, with a laugh; then, putting down her crimsoned face upon the lap of the woman who had been a mother to her, burst into a tempest of tears.