Ombra

At last the day came for the visit to the Buoncompagni palace. They were to walk to Lady Caryisfort’s, to join her, and all had been arranged on the previous night. The ladies were waiting, cloaked and bonneted, when Bertie Eldridge made his appearance alone.

‘I hope I have not kept you waiting,’ he said; ‘that ridiculous cousin of mine won’t come. I don’t know what has come over him; he has taken some absurd dislike to poor Buoncompagni, who is the best fellow in the world. I hope you will accept my company alone.’

Ombra had been the first to advance to meet him, and he stood still holding her hand while he made his explanation. She dropped it, however, with an air of disappointment and annoyance.

‘Bertie will not come—when he knows that I—that we are waiting for him! What a strange thing to do! Bertie, who is always so good; how very annoying—when he knew we depended on him!’

‘I told him so,’ said the other,—‘I told him what you would say; but nothing had any effect. I don’t know what has come to Bertie of late. He is not as he used to be; he has begun to talk of work, and all sorts of nonsense. But to-day he will not come, and there is nothing more to be said. It is humbling to me to see how I suffer without him; but I hope you will try to put up with me by myself for one day.’

‘Oh! I cannot think what Bertie means by it. It is too provoking!’ said Ombra, with a clouded countenance; and when they got into the street their usual order of march was reversed, and Ombra fell behind with Kate, whose mind was full of a very strange jumble of feeling, such as she could not explain to herself. On ordinary occasions one or other of the Berties was always in attendance on Ombra. To-day she indicated, in the most decided manner, that she did not want the one who remained. He had to walk with Mrs. Anderson, while the two girls followed together. ‘I never knew anything so provoking,’ Ombra continued, taking Kate’s arm. ‘It is as if he had done it on purpose—to-day, too, of all days in the world!’

‘What is particular about to-day?’ said Kate, who, to tell the truth, was at this moment less in sympathy with Ombra than she had ever been before.

‘Oh! to-day—why, there is– well,’ said Ombra, pausing suddenly, ‘of course there is nothing particular about to-day. But he must have known how it would put us out—how it would spoil everything. A little party like ours is quite changed when one is left out. You ought to see that as well as I do. It spoils everybody’s pleasure. It changes the feeling altogether.’

‘I don’t think it does so always,’ said Kate. But she was generous even at this moment, when a very great call was made on her generosity. ‘I never heard you call Mr. Hardwick Bertie before,’ she added, not quite generous enough to pass this over without remark.

‘To himself, you mean,’ said Ombra with a slight blush. ‘We have always called them the Berties among ourselves. But I think it is very ridiculous for people who see so much of each other to go on saying Mr. and Miss.’

‘Do they call you Ombra, then?’ said Kate, lifting her eyebrows. Poor child! she had been much, if secretly, exasperated, and it was not in flesh and blood to avoid giving a mild momentary prick in return.

‘I did not say so,’ said Ombra. ‘Kate, you, too, are contradictory and uncomfortable to-day; when you see how much I am put out–’

‘But I don’t see why you should be so much put out,’ said Kate, in an undertone, as they reached Lady Caryisfort’s door.

What did it mean? This little incident plunged her into a sea of thoughts. Up to this moment she had supposed Bertie Eldridge to be her cousin’s favourite, and had acquiesced in that arrangement. Somehow she did not like this so well. Kate had ceased for a long time to call Bertie Hardwick ‘my Bertie,’ as she had once done so frankly; but still she could not quite divest herself of the idea that he was more her own property than anyone else’s—her oldest friend, whom she had known before any of them. And he had been so kind the other morning, when the others had deserted her. It gave her a strange, dull, uncomfortable sensation to find him thus appropriated by her cousin. ‘I ought not to mind—it can be nothing to me,’ she said to herself; but, nevertheless, she did not like it. She was glad when they came to Lady Caryisfort’s door, and her tête-à-tête with Ombra was over; and it was even agreeable to her wounded amour-propre when Count Antonio came to her side, beaming with smiles and self-congratulations at having something to show her. He kept by Lady Caryisfort as they went on to the palazzo, which was close by, with the strictest Italian propriety; but when they had entered his own house the young Count did not hesitate to show that his chief motive was Kate. He shrugged his shoulders as he led them in through the great doorway into the court, which was full of myrtles and greenness. There was a fountain in the centre, which trickled shrilly in the air just touched with frost, and oleanders planted in great vases along a terrace with a low balustrade of marble. The tall house towered above, with all its multitudinous windows twinkling in the sun. There was a handsome loggia, or balcony, over the terrace on the first floor. It was there that the sunshine dwelt the longest, and there it was still warm, notwithstanding the frost. This balcony had been partially roofed in with glass, and there were some chairs placed in it and a small white covered table.

‘This is the best of my old house,’ said Count Antonio, leading them in, hat in hand, with the sun shining on his black hair. ‘Such as it is, it is at the service of ces dames; but its poor master must beg them to be very indulgent—to make great allowances for age and poverty.’ And then he turned and caught Kate’s eye, and bowed to the ground, and said, ‘Sia padrona!’ with the pretty extravagance of Italian politeness, with a smile for the others, but with a look for herself which made her heart flutter. ‘Sia padrona—consider yourself the mistress of everything,’—words which meant nothing at all, and yet might mean so much! And Kate, poor child, was wounded, and felt herself neglected. She was left out by others—banished from the love and confidence that were her due—her very rights invaded. It soothed her to feel that the young Italian, in himself as romantic a figure as heart could desire, who had been ‘out’ for his country, whose pedigree ran back to Noah, and perhaps a good deal further, was laying his half-ruined old house and his noble history at her feet. And the signs of poverty, which were not to be concealed, and which Count Antonio made no attempt to conceal, went to Kate’s heart, and conciliated her. She began to look at him, smiling over the wreck of greatness with respect as well as interest; and when he pointed to a great empty space in one of the noble rooms, Kate’s heart melted altogether.

‘There was our Raphael—the picture he painted for us. That went off in ’48, when my father fitted out the few men who were cut to pieces with him at Novara. I remember crying my eyes out, half for our Madonna, half because I was too small to go with him. Nevare mind’ (he said this in English—it was one of his little accomplishments of which he was proud). ‘The country is all the better; but no other picture shall ever hang in that place—that we have sworn, my mother and I.’

Kate stood and gazed up at the vacant place with an enthusiasm which perhaps the picture itself would scarcely have called from her. Her eyes grew big and luminous, ‘each about to have a tear.’ Something came into her throat which prevented her from speaking; she heard a little flutter of comments, but she could not betray the emotion she felt by trying to add to them. ‘Oh!’ she said to herself with that consciousness of her wealth which was at times a pleasure to her—‘oh! if I could find that Madonna, and buy it and send it back!’ And then other thoughts involuntarily rushed after that one—fancies, gleams of imagination, enough to cover her face with blushes. Antonio turned back when the party went on, and found her still looking up at the vacant place.

‘It is a sad blank, is it not?’ he said.

‘It is the most beautiful thing in all the house,’ said Kate; and one of the tears fell as she looked at him, a big blob of dew upon her glove. She looked at it in consternation, blushing crimson, ashamed of herself.

Antonio did what any young Italian would have done under the circumstances. Undismayed by the presence of an audience, he put one knee to the ground, and touched the spot upon Kate’s little gloved thumb with his lips; while she stood in agonies of shame, not knowing what to do.

‘The Signorina’s tear was for Italy,’ he said, as he rose; ‘and there is not an Italian living who would not thank her for it on his knees.’

He was perfectly serious, without the least sense that there could be anything ridiculous or embarrassing in the situation; but it may be imagined what was the effect upon the English party, all with a natural horror of a scene.

Lady Caryisfort, I am sorry to say, showed herself the most ill-bred upon this occasion—she pressed her handkerchief to her lips, but could not altogether restrain the very slightest of giggles. Ombra opened her eyes, and looked at her mother; while poor Kate, trembling, horrified, and overwhelmed with shame, shrank behind Mrs. Anderson.

‘It was not my fault,’ she gasped.

‘Don’t think anything of it, my love,’ whispered Mrs. Anderson, in consolation. ‘They mean nothing by it—it is the commonest thing in the world.’ A piece of consolation which was not, however, quite so consolatory as it was intended to be.

But she kept her niece by herself after this incident as long as it was practicable; and so it came about that the party divided into three. Lady Caryisfort and Antonio went first, Mrs. Anderson and Kate next, and Ombra and Bertie Eldridge last of all. As Kate moved gradually on, she heard that a very close and low-toned conversation was going on behind her; and Ombra did not now seem so much annoyed by Bertie Hardwick’s absence as she had been a little while ago. Was she—an awful revelation seemed to burst upon Kate—was Ombra a coquette? She dismissed the thought from her mind as fast as possible; but after feeling so uncomfortable about her cousin’s sudden interest in Bertie, she could not help feeling now a certain pity for him, as if he too, like herself, were slighted now. Not so would Kate herself have treated anyone. It was not in her, she said to herself, to take up and cast down, to play with any sentiment, whether friendship or anything else; and in her heart she condemned Ombra, though secretly she was not sorry. She was a coquette—that was the explanation. She liked to have both the young men at her feet, without apparently caring much for either. This was a sad accusation to bring against Ombra, but somehow Kate felt more kindly disposed towards her after she had struck this idea out.

When they reached the loggia, the table was found to be covered with an elegant little breakfast, which reminded Kate of the pretty meals to be seen in a theatre, which form part of so many pretty comedies. It was warm in the sunshine, and there was a scaldina, placed Italian fashion, under the table, for the benefit of the chilly; and an old man, in a faded livery, served the repast, which he had not cooked, solely because it had been ordered from an hotel, to poor old Girolamo’s tribulation. But his master had told him the reason why, and the old servant had allowed that the expenditure might be a wise one. Kate found, to her surprise, that she was the special object of the old man’s attention. He ran off with a whole string of ‘Che! che’s,’ when he had identified her, which he did by consultation of his master’s eye. ‘Bella Signorina, this is from the old Buoncompagni vineyards,’ he said, as he served to her some old wine; and, with another confidential movement, touched her arm when he handed her the fruit, ‘From the gardens, Signorina mia,’ he whispered; and the honey ‘from Count Antonio’s own bees up on the mountains;’ and, ‘Cara Signorina mia, this the Contessa’s own hands prepared for those beautiful lips,’ he said, with the preserves. He hung about her; he had eyes for no one else.

‘What is the old man saying to you, Kate?’ said her aunt.

‘Nothing,’ answered Kate, half amused and half distressed; and she met Count Antonio’s eye, and they both blushed, to the admiration of the beholders.

This was how the visit terminated. Old Girolamo followed them obsequiously down the great staircase, bowing, with his hand upon his breast, and his eyes upon the young English lady, who was as rich as the Queen of Sheba, and as beautiful as the Holy Mother herself. And Kate’s heart beat with all the little magic flutter of possibilities that seemed to gather round her. If her heart had been really touched, she would not have divined what it all meant so readily; but it was only her imagination that was touched, and she saw all that was meant. It was the first time that she had seen a man pose himself before her in the attitude of love, and (though no doubt it is wrong to admit it) the thing pleased her. She was not anxious, as she ought to have been, to preserve Antonio’s peace of mind. She was flattered, amused, somewhat touched. That was what he meant. And for herself, she was not unwilling to breathe this delicate incense, and be, as other women, wooed and worshipped. Her ideas went no further. Up to this moment it was somewhat consolatory, and gave her something pleasant to think of. Poor old Girolamo! Poor old palace! She liked their master all the better for their sake.

CHAPTER XLV

In the few weeks that followed it happened that Kate was thrown very much into the society of Lady Caryisfort. It would have been difficult to tell why; and not one of the party could have explained how it was that Ombra and her mother were always engaged, or tired, or had headaches, when Lady Caryisfort called on her way to the Cascine. But so it happened; and gradually Kate passed into the hands of her new friend. Often she remained with her after the drive, and went with her to the theatre, or spent the evening with her at home. And though Mrs. Anderson sometimes made a melancholy little speech on the subject, and half upbraided Kate for this transference of her society, she never made any real effort to withstand it, but really encouraged—as her niece felt somewhat bitterly—a friendship which removed Kate out of the way, as she had resolved not to take her into her confidence. Kate was but half happy in this strange severance, but it was better to be away, better to be smiled upon and caressed by Lady Caryisfort, than to feel herself one too many, to be left out of the innermost circle at home.

And the more she went to the Via Maggio the more she saw of Count Buoncompagni. Had it been in any other house than her own that Kate had encountered this young, agreeable, attractive, honest fortune-hunter, Lady Caryisfort would have been excited and indignant. But he was an habitué of her own house, an old friend of her own, as well as the relation of her dearest and most intimate Italian friend; and she was too indolent to disturb her own mind and habits by the effort of sending him away.

‘Besides, why should I? Kate cannot have some one to go before her to sweep all the young men out of her path,’ she said, with some amusement at her own idea. ‘She must take her chance, like everybody else; and he must take his chance. ‘By way of setting her conscience at rest, however, she warned them both. She said to Count Antonio seriously,

‘Now, don’t flirt with my young lady. You know I dislike it. And I am responsible for her safety when she is with me; and you must not put any nonsense into her head.’

‘Milady’s commands are my law,’ said Antonio, meaning to take his own way. And Lady Caryisfort said lightly to Kate,

‘Don’t you forget, dear, that all Italians are fortune-hunters. Never believe a word these young men say. They don’t even pretend to think it disgraceful, as we do. And, unfortunately, it is known that you are an heiress.’

All this did not make Kate happier. It undermined gradually her confidence in the world, which had seemed all so smiling and so kind. She had thought herself loved, where now she found herself thrust aside. She had thought herself an important member of a party which it was evident could go on without her; and the girl was humbled and downcast. And now to be warned not to believe what was said to her, to consider all those pleasant faces as smiling, not upon herself, but upon her fortune. It would be difficult to describe in words how depressed she was. And Antonio Buoncompagni, though she had been thus warned against him, had an honest face. He looked like the hero in an opera, and sang like the same; but there was an honest simplicity about his face, which made it very hard to doubt him. He was a child still in his innocent ways, though he was a man of the world, and doubtless knew a great deal of both good and evil which was unknown to Kate. But she saw the simplicity, and she was pleased, in spite of herself, with the constant devotion he showed to her. How could she but like it? She was wounded by other people’s neglect, and he was so kind, so amiable, so good to her. She was pleased to see him by her side, glad to feel that he preferred to come; not like those who had known her all her life, and yet did not care.

So everything went on merrily, and already old Countess Buoncompagni had heard of it at the villa, and meditated a visit to Florence, to see the English girl who was going to build up the old house once more. And even, which was most wonderful of all, a sense that she might have to do it—that it was her fate, not to be struggled against—an idea half pleasant, half terrible, sometimes stole across the mind even of Kate herself.

Lady Caryisfort received more or less every evening, but most on the Thursdays; and one of these evenings the subject was brought before her too distinctly to be avoided. That great, warm-coloured, dark drawing-room, with the frescoes, looked better when it was full of people than when its mistress was alone in it. There were quantities of wax lights everywhere, enough to neutralise the ruby gloom of the velvet curtains, and light up the brown depths of the old frescoes, with the faces looking out of them. All the mirrors, as well as the room itself, were full of people in pretty dresses, seated in groups or standing about, and there were flowers and lights everywhere. Lady Caryisfort herself inhabited her favourite sofa near the fire, underneath that great fresco; she had a little group round her as she always had; but something rather unusual had occurred. Among all the young men who worshipped and served this pretty woman, who treated them as boys and professed not to want them—and the gay young women who were her companions—there had penetrated one British matron, with that devotion to her duties, that absolute virtuousness and inclination to point out their duty to others, which sometimes distinguishes that excellent member of society. She had been putting Lady Caryisfort through a catechism of all her doings and intentions, and then, as ill-luck would have it, her eye lighted upon pretty Kate, with the young man who was the very Count of romance—the primo tenore, the jeune premier, whom anyone could identify at a glance.

‘Ah! I suppose I shall soon have to congratulate you on that,’ she said, nodding her head with airy grace in the direction where Kate was, ‘for you are a relation of Miss Courtenay’s, are you not? I hope the match will be as satisfactory for the lady as for the gentleman—as it must be indeed, when it is of your making, dear Lady Caryisfort. What a handsome couple they will make!’

‘Of my making!’ said Lady Caryisfort. And the crisis was so terrible that there was a pause all round her—a pause such as might occur in Olympus before Jove threw one of his thunderbolts. All who knew her, knew what a horrible accusation this was. ‘A match—of my making!’ she repeated. ‘Don’t you know that I discourage marriages among my friends? I—to make a match!—who hate them, and the very name of them!’

‘Oh, dear Lady Caryisfort, you are so amusing! To hear you say that, with such a serious look! What an actress you would have made!’

‘Actress,’ said Lady Caryisfort, ‘and match-maker! You do not compliment me; but I am not acting just now. I never made a match in my life—I hate to see matches made! I discourage them; I throw cold water upon them. Matches!—if there is a thing in the world I hate–’

‘But I mean a nice match, of course; a thing most desirable; a marriage such as those, you know,’ cried the British matron, with enthusiasm, ‘which are made in heaven.’

‘I don’t believe in anything of the kind,’ said the mistress of the house, who liked to shock her audience now and then.

‘Oh, dear Lady Caryisfort!’

‘I do not believe in anything of the kind. Marriages are the greatest nuisance possible; they have to be, I suppose, but I hate them; they break up society; they disturb family peace; they spoil friendship; they make four people wretched for every two whom they pretend to make happy!’

‘Lady Caryisfort—Lady Caryisfort! with all these young people about!’

‘I don’t think what I say will harm the young people; and, besides, everybody knows my feelings on this subject. I a match-maker! Why, it is my horror! I begin to vituperate in spite of myself. I—throw away my friends in such a foolish way! The moment you marry you are lost—I mean to me. Do you hear, young people? Such of you as were married before I knew you I can put up with. I have accepted you in the lump, as it were. But, good heavens! fancy me depriving myself of that child who comes and puts her pretty arms round my neck and tells me all her secrets! If she were married to-morrow she would be prim and dignified, and probably would tell me that her John did not quite approve of me. No, no; I will have none of that.’

‘Lady Caryisfort is always sublime on this subject,’ said one of her court.’

‘Am I sublime? I say what I feel,’ said Lady Caryisfort, languidly leaning back upon her cushions. ‘When I give my benediction to a marriage, I say, at the same time, bon jour. I don’t want to be surrounded by my equals. I like inferiors—beings who look up to me; so please let nobody call me a match-maker. It is the only opprobrious epithet which I will not put up with. Call me anything else—I can bear it—but not that.’

‘Ah! dear Lady Caryisfort, are not you doing wrong to a woman’s best instincts?’ said her inquisitor, shaking her head with a sigh.

Lady Caryisfort shrugged her shoulders.

‘Will some one please to give me my shawl?’ she said; and half-a-dozen pair of hands immediately snatched at it. ‘Thanks; don’t marry—I like you best as you are,’ she said, with a careless little nod at her subjects before she turned round to plunge into a conversation with Countess Strozzi, who did not understand English. The British matron was deeply scandalised; she poured out her indignant feelings to two or three people in the room before she withdrew, and next day she wrote a letter to a friend in England, asking if it was known that the great heiress, Miss Courtenay, was on the eve of being married to an Italian nobleman—‘or, at least, he calls himself Count Somebody; though of course, one never believes what these foreigners tell one,’ she wrote. ‘If you should happen to meet Mr. Courtenay, you might just mention this, in case he should not know how far things had gone.’

Thus, all unawares, the cloud arose in the sky, and the storm prepared itself. Christmas had passed, and Count Antonio felt that it was almost time to speak. He was very grateful to Providence and the saints for the success which had attended him. Perhaps, after all, his mother’s prayers in the little church at the villa, and those perpetual novenas with which she had somewhat vexed his young soul when she was with him in Florence, had been instrumental in bringing about this result. The Madonna, who, good to everyone, is always specially good to an only son, had no doubt led into his very arms this wealth, which would save the house. So Antonio thought quite devoutly, without an idea in his good-natured soul that there was anything ignoble in his pursuit or in his gratitude. Without money he dared not have dreamed of marrying, and Kate was not one whom he could have ventured to fall in love with apart from the necessity of marriage. But he admired her immensely, and was grateful to her for all the advantages she was going to bring him. He even felt himself in love with her, when she looked up at him with her English radiance of bloom, singling him out in the midst of so many who would have been proud of her favour. There was not a thought in the young Italian’s heart which was not good, and tender, and pleasant towards his heiress. He would have been most kind and affectionate to her had she married him, and would have loved her honestly had she chosen to love him; but he was not impassioned—and at the present moment it was to Antonio a most satisfactory, delightful, successful enterprise, which could bring nothing but good, rather than a love-suit, in which his heart and happiness were engaged.