Frances went home that evening feeling very unhappy and terribly full of sympathy, while painfully conscious the while that as yet she must not unburden herself to any one, not even to Jacinth, of her whole thoughts and feelings in connection with the Harpers. And in any case she could not have done so, for Jacinth was away at Robin Redbreast till Monday.
They met at school on Monday morning, but it was not till they were on their way home at dinner-time that the sisters had any opportunity of speaking to each other. Jacinth was looking almost brilliantly well, and, for her, Frances saw in a moment, in extremely good spirits. No wonder—every time she went to Lady Myrtle, the old lady showed her increasing signs of affection and goodwill: she almost hinted that she wished the girl to think of herself as in a sense adopted by her.
'Francie,' said the elder sister, when they at last found themselves alone, 'I have something so lovely to show you,' and she drew out a little velvet-covered case from her pocket. 'See—this is what dear Lady Myrtle has given me; isn't it splendid?'
The 'it' was a small and evidently valuable watch. The back was enamelled and set with diamonds, in the formof a 'J.' It was somewhat old-fashioned, enough to enhance its beauty and uncommonness, and Frances gazed at it in breathless admiration.
'It was Lady Myrtle's own,' explained Jacinth. 'She told me that she and our grandmother once had a fancy—rather a silly one, I think, though I didn't say so—for having each other's initial on their things—things like this, I mean. So when somebody gave them each a watch, two the same, they exchanged them. Lady Myrtle doesn't know what became of our grandmother's, but she thinks it was lost or stolen, otherwise mother would have had it. And she has not worn this for ever so long. She says she always hoped thatsomeday she'd find somebody belonging to grandmother. Oh Francie, isn't it a good thing I was called "Jacinth?"'
Frances murmured something in reply; her eyes were fixed on the watch.
'The works are first-rate—betterthan they make them now,' Jacinth continued; 'and Lady Myrtle has had it thoroughly overhauled by her own watchmaker in London, so she's sure it'll go perfectly, with any one careful; and I am careful, am I not, Francie? Lady Myrtle says she could see I was, almost the first time she spoke to me.'
'Yes,' said Frances, absently, 'I am sure you are, and I am sure Lady Myrtle thinks you almost perfect.'
But still she gazed at the watch, as if it half-mesmerised her.
'I've felt in such a hurry to tell you about it—to show it to you,' said Jacinth. 'It seemed to be burning a hole in my pocket, as they say. I did so wish I could have shown it to some of the girls, but I thought it was better not.'
This last remark seemed to arouse Frances.
'Yes,' she agreed heartily, 'I think it was much better not.' Then, after a moment or two's silence, 'I wonder how much it is worth?' she went on; 'ten or twenty pounds, I daresay?'
'Ten or twenty!' repeated Jacinth; 'oh, much more than that. Forty or fifty at least, I should say.'
Frances gasped.
'What a lot of things one could do with as much money as that!' she said. 'I daresay it would be enough to—to'——
'To what?' said Jacinth, a little impatience in her tone.
'Oh—only something I was thinking of—some one who's ill and can't do what the doctor says,' replied Frances, confusedly.
Jacinth felt irritated.
'I don't understand you, Frances,' she said. 'Do you want to take away my pleasure in my watch? I've never had one before, you know, and lots of girls have watches, quite young. Of course I know the value of it would do lots of things—make some poor family quite rich for a year. But when you get a new frock of some good stuff and nicely made, I don't say to you that you might have had it of common print, run up anyhow, and spent the rest on poor people. You don't see things fairly, Frances.'
Frances recognised the sense of Jacinth's argument, but she could not explain herself.
'I didn't mean that exactly,' she said. 'I know there have to be degrees of things—rich and poor, and I suppose it's not wrong to be rich, if—if one doesn't get selfish.That isn't what I meant. I'm very pleased you've got the watch, Jass, and I wish I hadn't said that.'
'I wish you hadn't too,' said her sister. 'It has taken away a good deal of my pleasure; and somehow, Frances, very often now, I don't understand you. I know you are never the least jealous, you haven't it in you, but yet you don't seem to like to see me happy. I could almost think you are what Aunt Alison would call "morbid."'
'I don't think I know what that means,' said Frances, sadly, though she had a sort of idea what Jacinth wished to express.
'Sometimes,' continued Jacinth, 'I have a feeling that other girls have come between you and me. If it could be—if I really thought it was the Harpers, though they do seem nice, I would almost hate them. One way and another, they do seem to have been the cause of a lot of worry.'
'Oh Jass, it isn't their fault—truly it isn't,' pleaded Frances, almost in tears. 'I haven't been very happy lately, but indeed it isn't that I'm changed to you. Perhaps after a while you'll understand me better. If only mamma was at home'——
'It's no good wishing for that,' replied Jacinth. 'And you are so queer, I really don't know if you'd be pleased if things did happen to make mamma come home. I was going to tell you some things,' she added mysteriously, 'but I think I'd better not.'
And, to her surprise, her hints, instead of whetting her sister's curiosity, seemed rather to alarm her.
'No,' she agreed, 'if it's anything about Lady——or, orplans, I'd rather not know. I hate any sort of secret.'
She said the last few words almost roughly, and Jacinth,in spite of her irritation, felt sorry for her. It was evident that poor little Frances had something on her mind. But the elder sister did not invite her confidence.
'I believe ithasto do with these girls,' she thought, 'and if it has, I don't want to know it. So Frances and I are quits; she doesn't want my secrets and I don't want hers. Honor Falmouth says it is uncertain if the Harpers will stay after Christmas. I'm sure I hope they won't. Frances would forget all about them once they were away. She is such a baby.'
But her own words had suggested some comfort to Frances. 'If only mamma were here!' she had said. And suddenly she remembered that though mamma herself could not be hoped for, a letter—a letter in answer to her own long one enclosing Camilla Harper's—would soon be due.
'It is five—no, six weeks since I sent it,' she thought joyfully. 'I must hear soon. And then I do hope mamma will say it is best to tell Jass all about it, whether Jass is vexed with me or not; and even if there'snochance of making Lady Myrtle kind to them, I'd far rather Jass knew all I know.'
She sighed, but there was relief in her sigh. And when in another moment she began talking cheerfully about Jacinth's visit, and all she had done at Robin Redbreast, her sister almost decided that she herself had been fanciful and exaggerated about Frances—making mountains out of molehills. Jacinth was very anxious to take this view of things; it was much more comfortable to think that the Harpers had had nothing to do with Frances's fits of depression.
'And after all,' thought Jacinth, 'why should we bother about them? As likely as not they're no relation to LadyMyrtle, or so distant that it doesn't count. And it's really not our business.'
It is seldom the case that a looked-for letter—especially from a great distance—arrives when hoped for. And Frances had hoped for her mother's reply by the very first date possible.
She was not disappointed. They came—a good fat letter for her, a thinner one for Jacinth. They lay on the hall table one day when the girls came home from school; having arrived by the mid-day post, in which Thetford now rejoiced.
Frances seized her letter, her cheeks flushing with excitement.
'What a thick letter you've got this time!' said Jacinth. But Frances scarcely heard her.
'Oh, I do so hope I shall have time to read it before dinner!' she said.
'You've half—no, twenty-five minutes,' said Jacinth. 'Run and get ready first; it won't take you any time, and then you can read your letter in peace. That's what I'm going to do.'
Frances took her sister's advice, and she managed to make her appearance in the dining-room punctually, the precious letter in her pocket, its contents already digested. She was rosier than usual, and Jacinth, who knew her ways so well, could see that she was struggling to keep down her excitement. Jacinth herself was not sorry when dinner was over and she was free to talk to Frances, after answering a question or two from her aunt about their Indian news.
'Frances,' said her sister, when they found themselves in their own little sitting-room, 'mamma tells me that she has written a good deal more to you this time than to me, as there was something particular you asked her about. And she says you will tell it me all, or show me her letter.'
Jacinth's brows contracted, and the lines of her delicate face hardened, but she said nothing.Jacinth's brows contracted, and the lines of her delicate face hardened, but she said nothing.
Frances drew out her packet.
'There's more than one letter there, surely,' said Jacinth, with some curiosity.
'Yes,' said Frances, 'there's one I sent on to mamma to read, and she's sent it back, so that you can see it now. I daresay you'll be angry with me for not having told you about it before, but I can't help it if you are. Mamma says I did the best I could; but I am so glad for you to know all about it now,' and she gave a great sigh.
Jacinth, more and more curious, took the letters which Frances gave her, and began to read them eagerly. Rather unfortunately, the first she began was Camilla Harper's, and she went to the end of it in spite of Frances's 'Oh, do read mamma's first, Jass.'
Jacinth's brows contracted, and the lines of her delicate face hardened, but she said nothing—nothing really audible, that is to say, though a murmur escaped her of, 'I knew it had something to do with them; it is too bad.'
When she had finished, she looked up at her sister.
'There is a good deal more for you to explain,' she said, coldly. 'Mamma says you will do so—not that I want to hear it. And as you have got so thoroughly in the way of having secrets from me, and now that you have friends you care for more than me, I really don't see why I need to be mixed up in this affair at all.'
'Oh Jass, dear Jass, don't speak like that,' exclaimed Frances, the ever-ready tears starting to her eyes. 'I couldn't help it. Read again what mamma says.'
'I know what she says,' Jacinth replied. 'I don't needto read it again. I am waiting for you to tell me the whole.'
It was difficult, but Frances was eager to re-establish confidence with her sister. She told the whole—even how the old Christmas card in her pocket had brought up the subject of Robin Redbreast, and how Bessie had asked her to tell no one but her mother, if she could help it; then how Camilla's letter had repeated this, ending up by what had recently come to her knowledge of the increased troubles of the Harper family.
'Oh Jass,' she concluded, 'if we could help them somehow. I am so glad mamma has met that aunt of theirs—isn'tit lucky? Perhaps she'll be able now to manage something without vexing Captain and Mrs Harper.'
Jacinth lifted her head and looked at Frances. She was paler than usual.
'I really do think you must be a sort of an idiot,' she said. 'Otherwise, I should be forced to believe you had no real family affection at all. Surely the Harpers might teach you to havethat, however much mischief they have made in other ways.'
Frances stared at her, dumb with perplexity.
'Whatdoyou mean, Jacinth?' she said at last.
Jacinth for once lost her self-control.
'Do you not care for your own father and mother to get anything good?' she said. 'Papa's life has been hard enough—so has ours—separated almost ever since we can remember from our parents. And it is all a question of money, to put it plainly, though it is horrid of you to force me to say it. Do you think papa, who is far from a young man now, stays out in that climate for pleasure—wearing himself out to be sure of his pension? And if Lady Myrtle choosesto treatusas her relations—mamma, the daughter of her dearest friend—instead of the son of that bad, wretched brother of hers—why shouldn't she? And you would ruin everything by silly interference in behalf of people we have nothing to do with: very likely you'd do no good tothem, and only offend her for ever with us. Do you understandnowwhat I mean?'
Frances was trembling, but she would not cry.
'Mamma does not see it that way,' she said. 'She is pleased and delighted at Lady Myrtle being so kind, but shedoescare about the Harpers too. Read what she says,' and Frances hurriedly unfolded the letter again till she found the passage she wanted.
This was what Mrs Mildmay said, after expressing her sympathy with all Frances had told her, and advising her now to tell the whole to Jacinth. 'I remember vaguely about the Harper family in the old days,' she wrote. 'I know that Lady Myrtle's two brothers caused her much trouble, especially the younger, really embittering her life. But for many years I have heard nothing of her or any of the family till just now, for a curious coincidence has happened. A few days before I got your long letter, enclosing Miss Harper's, and dear Jacinth's too, telling of her invitation to Robin Redbreast, I had met a Mrs Lyle, whose husband has got an appointment here. And Mrs Lyle is Captain Harper's sister. I like her very much, and we have already made great friends. She is very frank, and devoted to her brother and his family; and when she heard of my children being at Thetford, in talking, one thing led to another, so that I really knew all you tell me—and perhaps more. It will be rather difficult for you and Jacinth—for Jassie especially—to avoid all appearance of interference,as that would do harm on both sides. But still you may find opportunities of speaking warmly and admiringly of the Harper girls, whenever your school happens to be mentioned. That can donoharm, and may even help to pave the way for bringing about a better state of things some day. For I do feel most interested in the Harpers, and every time we meet, Mrs Lyle and I talk about them, and all the troubles they have really so nobly borne.'
Then Mrs Mildmay went on to speak of her pleasure in her children's having won Lady Myrtle's kindness, adding that she would look forward eagerly to the next letters, telling of Jacinth's visit.
'Marmy says,' she wrote, 'that it must have been a presentiment which made you all take such a fancy to that quaint old house, even though you only saw it from the outside.'
All this Frances read again boldly to her sister. Jacinth did not interrupt her, but listened in silence.
'Well,' she said, when Frances stopped, 'I told you I had read all mamma said.'
'Then why are you so angry with me?' demanded Frances bluntly. 'If I am a sort of an idiot, mamma is too.'
Jacinth did not reply.
'Mamma says you are not to attempt to interfere,' she said at last.
'I am not going to. I wouldn't do so for the Harpers' sake, much more than for Lady Myrtle's. The Harpers have trusted me, and I won't do anything they wouldn't like.'
'Well,' said Jacinth bitterly, 'you'd better write it all to mamma—all the horrid, calculating, selfish things I've said. You've got quite separated from me now, so that it really doesn't matter what you say of me.'
This was too much. Frances at last dissolved into tears and flung herself upon her sister, entreating her 'not to say such things,' to believe that nobody in the world—not Bessie or Margaret oranybody—could ever make up to her for her own dear Jass.
'You're not selfish,' she said. 'You're far more unselfish, really, than I am. For I never think of things. I see I've never thought enough of poor papa and mamma, and how hard it's been for them in many ways, though I did say to Bessie the other day that, whatever troubles they'd had, they'd not been parted from each other the way we've been.'
'I'm glad you said that,' Jacinth condescended to say, 'just to let them see that they're not the only people in the world who have to bear things.'
'Oh, theydon'tthink that,' said Frances. 'And Jass,' she went on, encouraged by her sister's softer tone, and encircling her neck fondly with her two arms as she sat, half on Jacinth's knee, half on the edge of her chair, 'I don't quite see why being sorry for the poor Harpers, and—and—wishing we could make Lady Myrtle feel so too, need make her leave off being kind to us too. That's how mamma sees it. I am not only thinking of the Harpers, Jass; indeed, I'm not. I'm looking forward more than I can tell you to what you said—that when papa and mamma come home, Lady Myrtle is going to invite us all to stay with her. Oh, it would be lovely!' and the little girl clasped her hands together. 'All the same,' she went on, 'I don't think I want ever to go to Robin Redbreast till that time comes. I can't feel natural there, and I'm afraid of vexing you or doing harm somehow.'
'It is not in our hands—not in mine, any way,' said Jacinthquietly. 'All you have told me makes no difference to me. I am not going to meddle, and I shall not mention the Harpers at all, if I can help it.'
'Not even in the way mamma says we might?' said Frances.
'No—not at all, if I can help it. I do not want to spoil the happiness of being with Lady Myrtle by bringing up disagreeable subjects. I shall tell mamma so when I write.'
Frances was silent. After all, she reflected, perhaps it did not much matter. Jacinth did not know Bessie and Margaret asshedid, and now that her sister understood the whole—the near relationship and the whole story, perhaps itwouldbe very difficult for her to come upon the subject naturally.
'Honor Falmouth says,' remarked Jacinth in a moment or two, 'that she has heard that perhaps the girls are not coming back to school after the Christmas holidays.'
'Oh,' exclaimed Frances, looking greatly troubled, 'oh, Jass, I do hope it's not true.'
'I should not be very sorry,' said Jacinth, 'except,' she added with some effort, 'except for your sake. And of course I have never said that they were not very nice girls. I know they are, only—it has been so tiresome and unlucky. I just wish we had never known them.'
'I wish sometimes we had never known Lady Myrtle,' said Frances. 'You and I haveneverbeen—like this—with each other before, Jass.'
'Well, we needn't quarrel about it,' said her sister. 'Let's try to keep off the subject of the Harper family. ForIcan do them no good.'
'Very well,' said Frances, though rather sadly. 'I wonder,' she went on thinking to herself—'I wonder why Bessieand Margaret are perhaps to leave school; they are getting on so well.'
She was too unpractical to guess at the truth—which Jacinth had thought it useless to mention as a part of Miss Falmouth's information—that their parents could no longer afford to pay for them.
'For to be gentlepeople, as they undoubtedly are in every sense of the word,' the girl had said, 'they are reallyawfullypoor. I have heard so from some people who know them at that place where they live. It is quite a little seaside place, where people who want to be quiet go for bathing in the summer. But the Harpers live there all the year round. It must be fearfully dull.'
'Yes,' Jacinth agreed, 'it can't be lively. Still, being poor isn't the only trouble in the world.'
'No,' Miss Falmouth replied, 'but I fear they have others too. Captain Harper is so delicate.'
Jacinth said no more. Honor Falmouth was a kind-hearted but not particularly thoughtful girl, and she forgot all about the Harpers in five minutes. Her visit to Robin Redbreast had never come to pass, and Jacinth did not very specially regret it. She liked best to be alone with Lady Myrtle. So the relationship of the young Harpers to the old lady had never come to Honor's knowledge, as it might perhaps have done if her attention had been drawn to Lady Myrtle by visiting at her house. And at Christmas Honor was leaving school.
Southcliff was a very dull little place, especially so in winter, of course. In fine weather there is always a charm about the seaside, even on the barest and least picturesque coast. There are the endless varieties of sky panorama—the wonderful sunsets, if you are lucky enough to face seawards to the west; the constantly changing effects of light and colour reflected in the water itself. And on a wild or rugged coast, winter and stormy weather bring of course their own grand though terrible displays.
But Southcliff, despite its promising name, was tame in the extreme. The 'cliff' was so meagre and unimposing as to suggest the suspicion of being only an artificial or semi-artificial erection; the shore had no excitement about it, not even that of quicksands. It was the 'safest' spot all along the coast; even the most suicidally disposed of small boys couldscarcelycome to mischief there. The tides went out and came in with an almost bourgeois regularity and respectability; there was no possibility of being 'surprised' by the waves; no lifeboat, because within the memory of man no vessel of any description whatever had been wrecked there; no lighthouse, no smugglers' caves of ancient fame, no possibility of adventure of any kind—'no nothing,' Bessie Harper was once heard to say, when she was very little, ''cept the sea and the sky.'
A grand exception those, however, as we have said. And dull though it was, there were some people who loved the little place as their home, and were most ready to be happy in it.
It had some few distinct advantages. It wasveryhealthy, and for these days very cheap. There was a good church, venerable and well cared for; the few, very few residents were all estimable and some interesting. Such as it was, take it all in all, it had seemed a very haven of refuge to Captain Harper and his wife when, some eight or ten years ago, they had pitched their tent there, after the last hopes of recovering any of Mrs Harper's lost money—hopes which for long had every now and then buoyed them up only to prove again delusive—had finally deserted them.
'At anyrate,' the wife, with her irrepressibly sanguine nature, had said, 'we have the comfort of now knowing the worst. And Colin and Bertram are started.Whata good thing the boys were the eldest! There is only Fitz to think about, and we'll manage him somehow. Forof coursethe three girls will turn out well. Look at Camilla already.'
Fitz was then about five—the youngest son, the youngest of the family excepting delicate little Margaret. Hewas'managed,' and not badly, though a public school was an impossibility; his destination proved to be the navy, and thither at the proper age he made his way in orthodox fashion. The girls, helped by their mother, and by their father too, did their best, and it was far from a bad best. They were naturally intelligent; intensely anxious to seize all opportunities of learning, so that a stray chance of half a dozen lessons in music or French did more for them than as many years will do for most ordinary girls; they were, the two elder ones at least, wonderfully healthy in mind andbody, bright-tempered, faithful, unselfish, inheriting from their father the noble characteristics which in some mysterious way had in him so flourished as to oust all the reckless and contemptible qualities of the Bernard Harper who had half-broken his sister's heart, and brought down in sorrow to the grave his gray-haired father.
But alas! they hadnotknown the worst, as the loving, brave-spirited wife and mother had believed. In some sense, it is true, they had not known thebest, for the years had brought many satisfactions, many unlooked-for, though unimportant, mitigations of the poverty so hard to bear cheerfully—people had been 'very kind.' But the poverty itself had increased. There were literally unavoidable expenses for 'the boys,' if they were not to be stranded in their careers; there was an unexpected rising of the rent owing to their good landlord's sudden death by accident; there was, worst of all, the terrible strain of Captain Harper's ill-health. In itself this was sad enough for the wife and daughters who adored him: it became almost an agony when, joined to the knowledge that more money, and not so very much more, might both relieve his suffering and hold out a reasonable prospect of comparative restoration.
One operation—now some years ago—had succeeded for the time; but not being followed by the treatment at home and residence abroad prescribed, the improvement had not been lasting. Then it was that Mrs Lyle had written to her aunt, with the result that we know. Her letter was returned unopened.
Then there came a period of comparative comfort, and for two or three years the family at Hedge End (such was the not very euphonious name of the Harpers' house) took heart again, and began to be sure 'father was goingto get well all of himself, after all.' And during this time some other cheering things came to pass. An old acquaintance of long-ago days between Mrs Harper and the Misses Scarlett was renewed by the ladies of Ivy Lodge coming to Southcliff one Midsummer holiday-time for sea-air, and this resulted in their offering to take Camilla, then almost grown-up, and later her younger sisters, on exceptionally moderate terms. The news from and of the far-away 'boys' was regular and good. The parents began to breathe freely, and to dare to hope that they had passed the worst of their troubles.
But alas! it was only an interlude. Scarcely had Bessie and Margaret been settled at Ivy Lodge when there came anxiety about Colin—tidings of his prostration by a bad attack of fever; then, when he was able to write of his recovery, little Fitz broke his leg, and had to be brought home at the cost of much expense as well as distress to be nursed well again. And worst of all, through these many weeks a terrible suspicion was dawning on poor Captain Harper—a suspicion all too soon to be changed into a certainty—that he himself was falling back again, that the very symptoms he had been warned of were reappearing, and that unless something were done he might find himself a hopeless and complete cripple.
He kept it to himself till Fitz was all right again; then it had to be told. And the painful journey to London, which Frances heard of at school, followed, with the great doctor's terribly perplexing verdict.
What was to be done? Every conceivable suggestion was made and discussed, but so far no definite scheme had been hit upon.
It was at this juncture that the mail which brought theletter from her mother so anxiously looked for by Frances Mildmay, brought also tidings from Mrs Lyle to her relations at Southcliff.
Thisletter came at breakfast-time; there was no mid-day post at the little bathing-place, but it was nearer London than Thetford.
'From Aunt Flora, mother,' said Camilla, the only one besides her young brother now at home. 'I do hope it is cheerful, otherwise——No, I suppose it would not do for you to read it first before giving it to father?'
Mrs Harper shook her head. She was a slight dark-haired woman, at first sight more like her youngest daughter than the others, but with a much more hopeful expression in her eyes, and far greater firmness and determination in all the lines of her face, so that, in spite of superficial dissimilarity, Bessie Harper really resembled her mother more nearly than either Camilla, calm, gentle, by nature possibly, a little indolent, or the nervous, anxious-minded Margaret.
'No,' she replied, 'it is no use keeping anything from your father. He has got an almost magic power of finding out things. Besides, your Aunt Flora always tries to cheer him if she can. Put the letter on the tray beside his breakfast, Camilla. I will take it up myself.'
Camilla and Fitz had almost finished their meal before Mrs Harper returned.
'I do hope there's nothing wrong,' said Camilla, with the apprehensiveness which reiterated experience of ill-tidings begets in even the calmest nature.
'It can't be my having broken my leg again,' said her brother, with a not very successful attempt at a joke; 'it was horrid, but I wouldn't mind breaking the other any day if it would save father's getting worse.'
But at that moment their mother came in. Her face was decidedly brighter than when she had left the room.
'Mother dear, do eat some breakfast. You'll be quite faint,' said Camilla, tenderly; 'I was nearly going after you to see if anything were the matter.'
'No dear, thank you,' replied her mother. 'Your aunt's letter is unusually interesting. Fancy! is it not a curious coincidence?—rather a pleasant one, indeed—the Lyles have just made acquaintance at this new place with Colonel and Mrs Mildmay, the parents of the two girls at Miss Scarlett's.'
Camilla looked up with a little misgiving.
'Aunt Flora is not very discreet always, mother,' she said; 'I hope she won't have confided too much to Mrs Mildmay. It might come round in some disagreeable way to—Robin Redbreast.'
'I think Mrs Mildmay must be particularly nice and sensible,' Mrs Harper replied. 'Of course your aunt has talked to her about Lady Myrtle and all the old story; it would scarcely have been in human nature, certainly not in Flora's nature, not to do so, when she found that her new friend was the daughter of Lady Jacinth Denison; but I don't see that it can do any harm. Mrs Mildmay has seen nothing of Lady Myrtle since she was a little child; it is only quite lately, as we know, that your great-aunt has come across the Mildmay girls, really by accident. Mrs Mildmay is pleased at it, for her mother's sake, but I am sure she is not a person to make any mischief. Indeed,' she added with some hesitation, 'it is just possible that indirectly it may do good. Not that your aunt suggests anything of the kind.'
Camilla's face flushed.
'I should hope not, indeed,' she said indignantly; 'when you think of the insult she exposed herself and us to, that time, mother, it would beimpossibleever to accept any help from Lady Myrtle.'
But Mrs Harper did not at once reply. Her face had grown very grave, and her eyes seemed to be looking far into things.
'I cannot quite say that,' she answered at last. 'There are times when I am afraid to say what I would not accept, for your father's sake. I feel as if I would consent to anything not wrong or sinful that could save him. And remember, we must be just. As things are, Lady Myrtle knows nothing of us except that we are poor. And there is every excuse for her deep-seated prepossessions against her brother Bernard's family. Pride must not blind our fair judgment, Camilla.'
The girl did not reply. She felt the reasonableness of her mother's argument.
'But oh,' she thought to herself, 'I shouldhateto be indebted to Lady Myrtle for any help. What would I not do—what would we all not do, rather than that!'
Her feelings might almost have been written on her face, for Fitz, who had been listening silently, though intently, to the conversation, here made a remark which might have been a remonstrance with her unspoken protest.
'There's one thing to be said,' began the boy. 'Even though it's all Lady Myrtle's bylaw, it came to her from father's own grandfather. If our grandfather had been good, his share would have been his and then father's and then ours. There's a sort of right about it. It isn't as if it was all Lady Myrtle's own in any other way—through her husband, for instance—and that she did anything forus just out of pity, because we were relations. Thatwouldbe horrid.'
Fitz was only fifteen, but he and Margaret seemed older than their years, as is not unusual with the youngest members of a large family. Besides, all the Harpers had grown up in full knowledge of and sympathy with their parents' anxieties. Living as they did, in closest family union, it would have been all but impossible to prevent its being so, save by some forced and unnatural reticence, the evil of which would have been greater than the risk of saddening the children by premature cares.
So neither Mrs Harper nor her daughter felt the least inclined to 'snub' the boy for his observation, which contained a strong element of common-sense.
'Lady Myrtle's wealth comesin partfrom her husband,' said Mrs Harper. 'That makes one feel the more strongly that the Harper portion should to some extent return to where it is so needed. But your father has told me that the Elvedons are sure to inherit some of it, and that is quite right.'
'And,' said Camilla, with a little effort, anxious to show her mother that she did wish to be quite 'fair-judging,' 'you know, Fitz, as we have often said, if our grandfather, being what he was, had got his share, it is most improbable that any of it would have come to father. After all,' she added with an honest smile that lighted up her quiet face and made it almost as bright as Bessie's—'after all, it was better for the money to be kept together by Lady Myrtle, than for it to be thrown away andnobodyto have any good of it. She is a generous old woman, too, in outside ways. I see her name in connection with several philanthropic institutions.'
'And really good and well-managed things, your father says. She must be a wise and considerate woman,' said Mrs Harper.
'All the more pity, then, that she and father have never come together,' said Camilla with a sigh. 'She would be able to appreciate him. I never could imagine any one wiser and juster than father—though you come pretty near him sometimes, I must say, mother;' and she smiled again. 'Neither of you is ever the least bit unfair to any one, and it does take such a lot of self-control and—and—a wonderfully well-balanced mind, I suppose, to be like that.'
'I have only learned it—if I have learned it—from your father,' replied Mrs Harper. 'At your age I was dreadfully impetuous and hasty. I often wonder, dear child, how you can be so thoughtful and helpful as you are.'
Camilla's eyes sparkled with pleasure.
'Mother,' she said, 'we mustn't degenerate into a mutual admiration society. I shall tell father how we've been buttering each other up all breakfast-time. It will amuse him. I'm going to see if he will have some more tea.'
And she ran off.
By mid-day Captain Harper was established on his sofa in the little drawing-room, which his wife and daughters still strove soveryhard to keep fresh and pretty. From this sofa, alas! especially now that winter was in the ascendant even at sheltered Southcliff, the invalid was but seldom able to move. For walking had become exceedingly painful and difficult, and so slow that even a little fresh air at the best part of the day could only be procured at the risk of chill and cold—a risk great and dangerous. And barely six months ago the tap of his crutch had been oneof the most familiar sounds in the little town; he had been able to walk two or three miles with perfect ease and the hearty enjoyment which his happy nature seemed to find under all circumstances. It had not proved untrue to itself even now. There was a smile on his somewhat worn face—a smile that was seen in the eyes too, as real smiles should always be—as his daughter came into the room to see that he had everything he wanted about him.
'It is really getting colder at last, father,' she said. 'At Thetford, Bessie writes, they have had some snow. And Margaret was delighted because it made her think of Christmas, and Christmas means coming home.'
'Poor old Mag!' said Captain Harper. 'Mag' was his own special name for his youngest daughter; and no one else was allowed to use it. 'Poor old Mag! I really think she's very happy at school, though—don't you, Camilla? Bessie, I knew, would be all right, but I had my misgivings about Mag. And it is in every way such a splendid chance for them. It would be'——And he hesitated.
'What, father?'
'Such a pity to break it up,' he said, 'as—we have almost come to think must be done.'
'They would be perfectly miserable to stay there, if they understood—as indeed they do now,' Camilla replied, 'that it would be only at the cost of what youmusthave, father dear.'
Her voice, though low, was very resolute. Captain Harper glanced at her half-wistfully.
'I wish you didn't all see things that way,' he said. 'You see it's this, Camilla. If I go up to London to be under Maclean for three months, itmayset me up again to a certain point, but unless it be followed by the "kur" atthe baths, and then by that other "massage" business within a year or so, it would be just the old story, just what it was before, only that I am three or four years older than I was, and—certainly not stronger. So this is the question—is itworth while? It will be at such a cost—stopping Bessie and Mag's schooling, wearing out your mother and you—for what will be more trying than letting this house for the spring, as must be done, and moving you girls into poky lodgings. That, at least, we have hitherto managed not to do. And then the strain on your poor mother being up alone with me in London—so dreary for her too. And at best to think that a partial, temporary cure is all we can hope for. No, my child, I cannot see that it is worth it. I am happy at home, and more than content to bear what must be, after all not so very bad. And Imaynot get worse. Do, darling, try to make your mother see it my way.'
It was not often—very, very seldom indeed—that Captain Harper talked so much or so long of himself. Now he lay back half-exhausted, his face, which had been somewhat flushed, growing paler than before.
Camilla wound her arms round him and hid her face on his shoulder.
'Father dearest,' she whispered, doing her best to hide any sign of tears in her voice, 'don't be vexed or disappointed, but Ican'tsee it that way. It seems presumptuous for me to argue with you, but don't you see?—the first duty seems so clear, to do what wecan. Surely there can be no doubt at all about that? And who knows—somethingmay happen to make the rest of what is prescribed for you possible. And even if not, and if the three months in London only do a little good, at least we should all feel wehad tried everything. Father dearest, if wedidn'tdo it, do you think mother and Bessie and I—and the boys when they hear of it, and even the two little ones—do you think we should ever again feel one moment's peace of mind? Every time you looked paler or feebler, every time we saw you give the least little wince of pain—why, I think we should go out of our minds. It would be unendurable.'
Captain Harper stroked her fair soft hair fondly.
'But, dear, suppose it doesn't do any good, or much? Suppose'—and his voice grew very low and tender—'suppose all this increased suffering and weakness is only the beginning of the end—and sometimes I cannot help thinking it would be best so—my darling, it wouldhaveto be endured.'
Camilla raised her tear-stained face and looked at her father bravely.
'I know,' she said quietly. 'It may be. Mother and I don't deceive ourselves, though it is no use dwelling upon terrible possibilities. But even then, don't you see the difference? We should feel that we had done our best, and—and that more was not God's will.'
'Yes,' said her father, 'I see how you mean. I suppose I should feel the same if it were about your mother or one of you.'
'And father,' Camilla went on more cheerfully, 'don't worry about the girls leaving school; it won't do them lasting harm. They have got a good start, and they are still very young. Some time or other they may have another opportunity, as I had. And Margaret is such a delicate little creature. Father, I wouldn't have said it if they had been going to stay at Thetford, but I have had mymisgivings about her being fit to be so far away. I fear she is very homesick sometimes.'
'Do you really think so?' said Captain Harper with a start. 'Poor little soul! If I thought so—ah dear, my home was not much, but still while my mother lived itwashome, and oh how I remember what I suffered when I left it! Who is it that speaks of "the fiend homesickness?" The mere dread of it would reconcile me to having them back again.'
'Then I am very thankful I told you,' said the girl. 'And father, is it not nice to know that in spite of everything we girls havenotcome off badly? Bessie and Margaret took good places at once, and I did too, you know. Indeed, Miss Scarlett said that if I had thought of being a governess, she would have been very glad to have me.'
'I know,' said her father. 'Well, there is no necessity for that as yet, except for governessing the younger ones as you used to do. And if things go better with me, even if I'm only not worse, when we come home again I can take you all three for Latin and German and mathematics.'
Camilla's eyes sparkled. She was so delighted to have talked him into acquiescence and hopefulness.
'We shall work so hard the three months we are by ourselves that you will be quite astonished,' she said. 'And old Mrs Newing will make us very comfortable; it's there we're to live, you know. It will really be great fun.'
So from this time the move to London was decided upon for Captain and Mrs Harper.
And when Bessie and Margaret bade their companions good-bye at the beginning of the Christmas holidays, they knew, though it had been thought best to say little about it, and the good Misses Scarlett refused to look upon it asanything but a temporary break, that it was good-bye for much longer than was supposed—good-bye perhaps and not improbably for always, to Ivy Lodge and Thetford and all their friends.
Bessie felt it sorely. Little Margaret was all absorbed in the delight of going 'home' again. But both were at one in the real sorrow with which they parted from their companions, among whom no one had won a more lasting place in their affection than blunt, warm-hearted, honest Frances Mildmay.