At Thetford the weeks till Easter—it came in the middle of April that year—passed quickly. It is true that every morning, when Frances scored out one of the long row of little lines she had made to represent the days till that of her mother's arrival, she could not repress a sigh at the number yet remaining. But still the time, even for her, passed quickly. For she was busy—working more steadily at her lessons than ever before, in the hope of having satisfactory progress to show—and full of the happiest anticipations. Morning and night the faithful, simple-hearted girl added to her other petitions the special one that things might be so over-ruled as to prevent the necessity of further separation.
'It can't be wrong to ask it,' she said to herself, 'for God made fathers and mothers and children to be together. It's something wrong somewhere when they can't be. And I've got a feeling that itisgoing to be like that for us now. I don't care a bit where we live—that place in the north or anywhere—if only we're with them.'
Jacinth, too, on the whole was happy in her own way. Personally, perhaps, she longed less for her mother's presence and sympathy than Frances did, for she was by nature more self-sufficing. And when one scarcely knows till one is fifteen or sixteen what it is to have a mother and a real homeof one's own, small wonder if the inestimable blessings of such possessions are barely realised. Then, too, Jacinth's frequent visits to Lady Myrtle, and the old lady's ever-increasing affection for and interest in her had almost filled up the voids the girl had at first felt bitterly enough in her new life. She would in many ways have been quite content for things to go on as they were for a year or two. And if she built castles in the air, it must be allowed that Lady Myrtle was to a great extent responsible for their construction.
'I can scarcely fancy feeling as if mamma were more of a mother to me than you seem now,' she said one day to her old friend.
'Nay,' Lady Myrtle replied, 'I must represent a grandmother. You really do not know what a mother feels like, dear child.'
'Well,' Jacinth went on, 'perhaps that's it. But somehow I think mamma will seem more a sort of elder sister to me. And I hope she will take it that way. We shall get on better if she does. I—I'm afraid I shouldn't be very good about giving in. You see I've never had to do it much.'
She smiled a little as she made the confession.
'I can scarcely imagine you anything but docile, my dear,' said Lady Myrtle; 'but then, of course, I know I have not seen you really tested. I fancy, however, there will be a mingling of the elder-sisterly feeling in your relations to your mother, and I hope there will be. I think she has a high opinion of your good sense and judgment, and I don't expect that she will have any cause to change her opinion.'
Jacinth sat silent for a moment or two. She seemedto be thinking deeply; her eyes were fixed on the fire, where the wooden logs were throwing out brilliant gleams of varying colours, reflected on the bright brasses of the grate and fender.
'How pretty everything here always is!' she said at last. 'Even to the burning wood. Look, Lady Myrtle, it is blue and purple and even green.'
'They are old ship logs,' her friend replied. 'It is the brine in them that makes the colours.'
'Oh dear,' said Jacinth again with a little sigh, 'how I should love a pretty home. Lady Myrtle, I am afraid you will be shocked at me, but do you know I sometimes almost feel I would rather papa and mamma went back to India next year than that we should have to go to live at that horrible dingy Barmettle.'
Lady Myrtle was notshocked. Still, she was too unselfish by nature herself not to be quick to check any symptoms of an opposite character in one she really cared for, glad though she was to have Jacinth's full confidence.
'I think you would bear such a trial as that, readily and cheerfully, if it were for your father and mother's good,' she said. 'And after all, where we live is not of the importance that I daresay it seems to you. Some of the truly happiest people I have ever known have been so in spite of the most uncongenial surroundings you can imagine.'
'I'm not as good as that,' said Jacinth in a melancholy voice. 'I can't bear ugly, messy places; above all, messy, untidy places make me perfectly cross and miserable.'
Lady Myrtle could not help laughing a little at her tragic tone.
'I don't see that, even if you had to live at Barmettle, your home need be ugly and untidy,' she said.
'I don't know. I've been thinking a good deal about it,' Jacinth replied. 'You see, mamma will have been so long in India that she will have got out of English ways. She must be accustomed to lots of servants and to have everything done for her. I'm afraid it will be very difficult and uncomfortable.'
'But she would have you and Frances to help her,' said Lady Myrtle. 'At least—no, dear Jacinth, you really must not anticipate troubles that may never, that I trustwillnever come.'
Then she hesitated and stopped short, and seemed to be thinking deeply.
'My dearest child,' she said at last, 'you are very young, and I have a great dread of forgetting how young you are. I have too, as you know, a very great respect for parental authority. I would never take upon myself to interfere in any real way with your life, unless I had your father and mother's approval. But this I may say, so far as I can possibly influence them and the whole circumstances, you may rely upon it that this nightmare of Barmettle shall never be anything but a nightmare. Though at the same time I am most strongly of opinion that your father mustnotreturn to India.'
'Oh, thank you, dear Lady Myrtle, thank you a thousand times for what you say,' said Jacinth.
'It is your father's health I am thinking of too,' said the old lady. 'Your aunt feels sure that it is time for him to come home for good. He has been out there so long, and he is not a young man. He is a good deal older than your mother.'
'Yes,' Jacinth replied. 'He is fifteen years older; and mamma has always been wonderfully strong. But even forher it would be much nicer to come home now. Seventeen years is a long time, and only one year and one six-months at home! Oh, I do feel so much happier since you have spoken so to me—even though it makes me rather frightened about papa. It would be terrible for his health to fail.'
'We must make him take it in time,' said Lady Myrtle cheerfully. 'I don't think there is any cause for immediate anxiety. Yes—nothing is sadder than when the head of a house breaks down prematurely.'
Her words, following upon her own, struck Jacinth curiously. What was it they made her think of? What family had she been hearing of whose father was in bad health? Ah—yes, it was these Harpers! How tiresome it was that they seemed always to be 'turning up,' as Jacinth expressed it to herself! There were scores and scores of other families in as bad trouble as they; the world was full of such cases.
'If Frances had been here,' thought Jacinth, 'she would have been certain to begin about them and their father—only annoying Lady Myrtle and doing no good. Not but that I'm very sorry for them. I hope their father is better, I'm sure.'
Alas! these two or three months had not passed so quickly or so brightly in the—no, I must not say in the Harpers' pleasant though plain old house at Southcliff, for Hedge End was let, and the three girls were living in Mrs Newing's tiny rooms in Harbour Street—the rooms where Camilla had declared they would be so cosy and comfortable, enjoying a rest from all housekeeping cares.
And as far as the material details of their life was concerned they would have been more than content, though it was a new experience to them to be even temporarilywithout a home; and now and then Camilla and Bessie grew a little anxious about Margaret, and wondered if they were taking as good care of her as mother would have done. For the little girl looked very pale and delicate sometimes, and her appetite was fitful.
'I wonder if it is Mrs Newing's cooking,' said Camilla to her confidante, Bessie. 'At home we could always get some nice little thing; mother is so clever in that way, with father having been so long ill. But here it would be impossible to try to cook anything ourselves.'
'And whatever we do, we mustn't worry mother about Margaret,' said Bessie. 'Mother needs all the cheering possible to keep up her spirits, with dear father being so suffering still. Oh, Camilla, Iwonderif we shall soon have better news?'
Things had not improved, even to the limited extent which was all that Captain Harper had counted upon, as rapidly as the former time that he had been an inmate of the private hospital for three months. He was weaker than then, and perhaps his intense anxiety to benefit by the effort that had in every sense cost them all so dear, was against him.
The doctors, so wrote Mrs Harper to her elder girls, now spoke of three months more, not as desirable but as a necessity. And how it was to be managed she could not see. Furthermore, to give a chance of anything approaching cure, or rather lasting improvement, the regulation visit to the German bathsmust, they now declared, be followed up by a winter in a mild, dry climate.
'Of this,' said the mother, 'we are not eventhinking. The three more months here are all we can contemplate, and I dare not tell your father how impossible even that seems.It is out of the question, as he is, to move him to an ordinary hospital where I could not be with him. I believe if we did so he would give up the struggle and quietly resign himself to leaving us.'
'Camilla, hemuststay,' said Bessie. 'There is one thing, these people do want to keep on the house longer?'
'For two months—not three,' said Camilla, 'and we have not yet given them a decided answer.'
'Then let us take it upon ourselvestodecide,' said Bessie. 'And we will write and tell mother that is settled. And what elsecanwe do, Camilla? Fathermuststay as long as the doctors think necessary. It is the middle of March now; he has been there two months. I suppose he should stay till the middle or end of July.'
'And then go abroad,' said Camilla.
'Ah well, we scarcely can hope for that. But I think, Camilla, you should write to Aunt Flora: father will never do it, and mother would not without his leave. Butwecan. Ask her to lend us some money, whatever is strictly necessary, and tell her thatsomehowwe will repay her. She is very generous, and she would never forgive us if we let father lose the last chance, for want of anything she could do.'
'But she has so little ready money,' said Camilla. 'I don't know if they are bad managers, for they have a good income, but it all seems to go.'
'Father says they cannot help it. Uncle Lyle has so much to keep up out there—entertaining and all sorts of things,' said Bessie. 'But I am sure they would manage to lend us—how much?—fifty or a hundred pounds? And Camilla, wewillrepay it. Can we not save a little on our living? I suppose we couldn't do with a room less; it wouldnot be wholesome for Margaret. And for her sake too we must not attempt still plainer food.'
'No,' said Camilla, 'I fear that is impossible. You see Margaret is so quick. She would notice in a moment if you and I eat less or at all differently from her. But—yes, perhaps the time has come when we must apply definitely to Aunt Flora. I will write by the next mail.'
'And Camilla, if we tide over this present trouble,' said Bessie, 'I think you or I must do something—something to earn money by. I am too young to be a governess yet, but I know—she almost said it to me—that Miss Scarlett would take me even now as a sort of pupil-teacher, and two years hence I think I might be a governess—to young children.'
'It may have to be,' the elder sister agreed. 'But the question iswhichof us should go. I could be a governess already, but then that stops your and Margaret's education. And, Bessie, it would be rather additionally trying to father and mother—father especially—for you to be in that kind of position atThetford, the very part of the country our family comes from. And so near to Robin Redbreast too.'
Bessie reared her head. 'Idon't mind that,' she said. 'I should rather like it the better.'
'Butfather?' said Camilla gently. And brave Bessie was silent.
The letter to Mrs Lyle was written and sent. It reached her in her new Indian quarters about ten days before Mrs Mildmay started on her return home.
It was May; the charming capricious month we dream of all the year round, always believing—thanks to poets and childish remembrances rose-coloured by the lapse oftime—that if the weather is cold and gray and generally disappointing this year, it is quite an exception and never has been so before: it was May before the day came on which Lady Myrtle Goodacre's landau set off in state for Thetford railway station, with Jacinth, Frances, and Eugene already occupying it, and a vacant seat for Miss Alison Mildmay whom they were to call for on the way.
Frances and even Eugene were almost speechless with excitement: Jacinth, though wound up to a tremendous pitch, was too proud and too self-contained by habit to show what she was feeling.
'Lady Myrtlehopesyou will come back with us, Aunt Alison,' she said quietly, 'at least to spend the rest of the day, as you wouldn't consent to come to stay for two or three.'
Miss Mildmay, before replying, glanced at her niece with a curious sort of admiration, not altogether free from disappointment.
'Jacinth certainly is extraordinarily self-controlled,' she thought. Very self-controlled, like very reserved people do not always entirely appreciate their own characteristics in another! But aloud she replied much in the same matter-of-fact tone.
'It is very good of her, but I would rather find my own way home from the station. I will come out to Robin Redbreast to-morrow or the day after to have a talk with your mother. She will have more than enough to occupy her to-day.'
Jacinth secretly commended her aunt's good sense, but the younger ones seemed a little sorry. They wanted everybody to be as happy as themselves.
'It isn't that you don't think there'd be room enough inthe carriage, Aunt Alison, is it?' said Frances, anxiously. 'For the closed wagonette is coming too for mamma's maid and the luggage, and I wouldn't mind the least bit getting into it.'
'Or I could go on the box,' suggested Eugene. 'I couldquitesqueeze in between Bailey and Fred, and I'm sure they wouldn't mind.'
'Thank you, dears,' said Miss Mildmay, more warmly than she had spoken to Jacinth; 'thank you very much. No; it is not on that account. And indeed there is plenty of room in here for Eugene extra. But I shall enjoy more, coming to-morrow or the day after, and then you must all spare me your mother for an hour or so.'
The train was late of course. There was that strange odd bit of time we all know so well—of waiting and expectancy, intensified of course in the present case by the fact that the mother they were about to meet was literally a stranger to the three children. Even Jacinth was a good deal paler than her wont, when at last the train slowly steamed into the station and drew up beside the platform where they were standing.
Would she have known her mother, she asked herself afterwards? Scarcely; there were several passengers whomighthave beentheone. She felt almost bewildered when Aunt Alison turned from all, to hurry forward to greet a slight, girlish-looking figure—girlish in herself, though not in attire or bearing—who was gazing about her with eager eyes.
'Eugenia.'
'Alison,' and the two sisters-in-law had caught each other's hands and kissed each other before Jacinth had really taken in that this was 'mamma!'
Then Miss Mildmay drew back without another word than 'Here they are! I did want to give them over to you, myself, you see,' and her usually calm voice trembled a little.
And Jacinth felt an arm thrown round her, and the words whispered into her ear, 'My darling child!' and for almost the first time in her life a choking sensation that was not pain, and a rush to her eyes of tears that were not sorrow, made her dimly conscious that she knew her own nature and its depths less fully than she had imagined.
And then in turn she fell back a little while the two younger ones, with a glad cry from Francie of 'Mamma, mamma!' and a solemn 'It's me; I'm Eugene,' from the small brother, were drawn close, close, by the arms that had not held them for so long, and kissed as they never remembered having been kissed before.
And somehow—I don't think any of them could ever clearly have told how; perhaps Mrs Mildmay's maid had a head on her shoulders and was equal to the occasion—they all found themselves in the landau again; all, that is to say, except Aunt Alison, who stood waving good-bye to them all from the curbstone, her face for once actually rosy with excitement.
'Mamma!' said Frances, and then she stopped short. 'It's too lovely, I can't speak.'
Eugene was stroking his mother's mantle. It was of soft downy material, rich in colour and texture.
'How pretty!' he said.
Jacinth glanced at it and the rest of her mother's attire, and at her mother herself. She felt proud of her, of her undeniable beauty and air of distinction—proud to present her to Lady Myrtle—and yet——
'I wonder if mamma is very much taken up with her clothes,' she thought. 'I wonder if she is extravagant. I expect Ishallhave to take a good deal upon me, as Lady Myrtle said. I suppose people in India really grow very unpractical.'
Poor Lady Myrtle! Little had she intended her words to be thus travestied.
But the reflection was not disagreeable to Jacinth, to whom a position of responsibility and management was always congenial. She took her mother's hand in hers, and smiling at Eugene replied: 'Yes indeed. What lovely fur trimming, mamma! And what a pretty bonnet! You couldn't have had that in India, surely?'
'No,' said Mrs Mildmay, smiling back at her children, 'I got one or two things in London yesterday. I thought you would like me to look nice, especially as I was going straight to Robin Redbreast. I don't believe poor dear Aunt Alison would have seen any difference if I had come back in the same clothes I went away in all those years ago.'
'No,' agreed Frances, 'I don't believe she would.'
But Jacinth looked a little grave; she could not quite 'make out' her mother.
'Aunt Alison spends almost nothing on herself,' she said. 'She gives away every farthing she possibly can.'
'I know she does, dear. She is the most self-denying person in those ways that I have ever met,' said Mrs Mildmay heartily, though mentally hoping to herself that Jacinth was not very matter-of-fact. But Eugene was looking very solemn.
'What are you thinking of, my boy? his mother asked.
'Those clothes,' he said, 'those clothes what you wentaway with. They must be wored out. I was only two when you went away, mamma?'
This made them all laugh, which was perhaps a good thing—a slight relief to the over-excitement which in their different ways all had been experiencing.
'Mamma,' said Frances earnestly, when the laughter had calmed down, 'Imusttell you, I had no idea you were so pretty. I think you are the very prettiest person I ever saw.'
'So do I,' Eugene chimed in.
Mrs Mildmay could not resist kissing again the two sweet flushed faces.
'My darlings,' she said, 'I hope you will always think so, in one way, even when my hair is white and my face old and wrinkled.'
'I hope,' thought Jacinth to herself, 'I hope mamma isn't—not vain, it's such a contemptible word—but I hope she doesn't care too much for looks and outside things of that kind.'
But the very defining her thoughts startled her. She knew she had no right to begin criticising her mother in this way, and she pulled herself up.
'Mamma,' she said, and her tone was both perfectly natural and simple, and more unconstrained than Mrs Mildmay had yet heard it—'mamma, isn't it really delightful, and isn't it almost wonderful that we should be all staying with Lady Myrtle and taking you to her? Isn't it really like a fairy story?'
'It is indeed,' said Mrs Mildmay. 'Itiswonderful. The way that she seemed to start up just when—so soon after we had lost dear granny, and in a sense our home.'
'It would have been lovely, of course, for you to comeback to us anyway,' said Frances, 'but it wouldn't have beensolovely if we'd all been going to Aunt Alison's. It'srathera poky place, you know, mamma, and in India I suppose the houses are allenormous. I can only remember like in a dream, about very big, very white rooms.'
'The last house we've had was far fromenormous,' said her mother with a smile, 'still it was very nice. I often wished you and Jassie could have been with us there.'
'But—oh mamma, you'll never go back again,' pleaded Frances. 'We've got dear papa's coming to look forward to now, and after that—never mindwherewe live, if only we stay together.'
Mrs Mildmay smiled, though for the first time with a touch of sadness.
'Don't let us spoil to-day by looking forward, dear; except, as you say, to your father's coming. If he were here, everythingwouldseem perfect.'
'And here's Robin Redbreast,' exclaimed Jacinth, as they turned the corner of the lane, 'and "Uncle Marmy's gates" wide open in your honour. Generally we drive in at the side. Now, mamma, take a good look. First impressions are everything, you know. Isn'tthisperfect?'
She seemed full of enthusiasm, which her mother was glad to see and quick to respond to.
'Itisbeautiful: I have never seen anything like it,' she replied warmly. 'Andcouldthere have been a more exquisite day?'
'And mamma, mamma,' cried Eugene, 'you know, don't you, it was all me that got friends with Lady Myrtle; me, with getting—wursty, that day, you know?'
Lady Myrtle was standing in the porch. It seemed to her only fitting that she should come thus far to welcome such a guest, and something in her almost tremulously affectionate greeting touched Mrs Mildmay keenly.
'It issogood of you—meeting me like this,' the younger woman whispered, as she threw her arms round her old friend. 'And, oh, how delightful it is to have you and this to come to!'
'My dear, my dear,' said Lady Myrtle, 'don't thank me. Only let me see that you and your children are happy and at home with me; that isallI care about.'
And again she kissed the Eugenia she had not seen since her childhood.
Mrs Mildmay was very like Frances; correctly speaking, one should put it the other way, but as a new actor on the scene of this little story it is natural thus to express it. Her face had something indescribably childlike about it; her blue eyes were almost wistful, though the whole expression was bright and happy and very changeful. Yet there was plenty of 'character'—no dearth of good firm lines, with yet an entire absence of anything denoting hardness or obstinacy; the whole giving from the first candid glance an impression of extreme ingenuousness and single-mindedness.
'It is so good of you, meeting me like this,' the younger woman whispered, as she threw her arms round her old friend.'It is so good of you, meeting me like this,' the younger woman whispered, as she threw her arms round her old friend.
'You are not like your mother,' said Lady Myrtle, when the little group had made its way into the drawing-room where tea was already waiting. 'I knew you were not. Yet something in your voice recalls her. I suppose you canscarcelyremember her,' she went on, 'not well enough to see the really marvellous resemblance between her and my child here—my child as well as yours?' and she smiled at Jacinth who was standing by, and laid her hand affectionately on the girl's arm.
'Oh yes,' Mrs Mildmay replied, 'I remember enough for that. And then I have one or two excellent portraits, besides the large one at Stannesley; at least my father always told me they were excellent. And even when Jassie was quite tiny, he saw the likeness and was delighted at it. But I—I am quite "Denison" I know, and so are Francie and Eugene. The odd thing is that Jassie is also in some ways more like the Mildmays than the two others.'
'I have never seen your husband, you know,' said Lady Myrtle. 'I can't say that the likeness to good Miss Alison Mildmay has ever struck me.'
The quaint way in which the old lady said it made them all smile a little—all, that is to say, except Jacinth. She had not altogether relished her mother's remark.
But that evening was a most happy one—perhaps the very happiest the two younger children had ever known—and one certainly to be marked with a white stone in the memory of all the five who spent it together. By a tacit agreement no uncertain or anxious questions were touched upon. Mrs Mildmay was able to give a good account of their father's health at the time of her leaving him, to the children, and made them all laugh by her account of her brother Marmaduke's description of the terrible formality of that firstevening at Market Square Place. She seemed gifted with a wonderful amount of fun and merriment: Jacinth caught herself laughing after a fashion which was very rare with her.
'Mamma is ever so muchyoungerthan I,' she said to herself when she found herself alone for the night. 'She is as charming and sweet as she can be. But I can foresee some things pretty clearly. It is a good thing I am of a different character. What would happen if we were all as impulsive and'—'childish' was the word in her thoughts, but again she felt a little startled at the length to which her criticism of her mother was going, and pulled herself up—'as impulsive as Francie, and as mamma must be by nature?'
And she fell asleep in the midst of a not unpleasing picture of herself as the wise, considerate prop of the whole family, looked up to by her parents, leant upon by Lady Myrtle, a Lady Bountiful to all within her reach, a——But here I think her imaginings probably faded into the phantasmagoria of dreams.
Mrs Mildmay had bidden her elder girl a fond good-night; then she hastened along the passage for a moment's peep into Frances's little room.
'The child will be asleep, I daresay,' she thought to herself. 'It is almost selfish of me to risk waking her. But I will be very careful, and I really cannot resist the delight of seeing them in bed, of knowing they are under the same roof again at last.'
And she stole in. It was a moonlight night. Francie had been in bed some little time, but she was not asleep. She was lying with her eyes wide open gazing out through the unshaded window, which was within her view, at the treetops, illumined by the silvery radiance, and swaying gently in the soft night breeze; her shaggy hair making a background on the pillow for her sweet, childish face. And at the faint sound her mother made on entering she started up.
'Mamma, mamma!' she cried, as Mrs Mildmay knelt down and threw her arms round the little figure. 'My own little mamma, my own, my own! to think itisyou, to think I really and truly have you. Oh, can Ieverbe so happy again! Oh, mamma darling, I don't knowhowto thank God enough; that was what I was thinking about when you came in. No, no, you didn't wake me. I haven't been asleep.'
'My darling, my own little girl!' whispered Mrs Mildmay.
'Mamma dear,' Frances went on, after a moment's beautiful silence. 'I feel already that I can tell youeverything. Now there's one thing; it's come into my mind again since I've been in bed; I'm afraid I forgot about it in the firstrushof happiness, you know, but now I've remembered. Mamma, don't you think when we're awfully happy we should try to do something for other people—that God means us to? Well, it's about the Harpers. Oh, mamma, I'm afraid they are having such very bad troubles just now.'
Mrs Mildmay started a little.
'You don't mean, dear—you haven't heard anythingquitelately, about the father, Captain Harper, have you?'
'No,' said Frances, 'I've not heard anything. Miss Falmouth was the only girl who knew about them away from school, and she has left. But you remember I wrote to you that Bessie and Margaret mightn't come back, and they haven't. And I'msureit's because they've got poorerwith their father being so ill. Mamma, did you hear anything more from their aunt before you left?'
'Yes,' said Mrs Mildmay sadly. 'I heard a good deal. All there is to hear, indeed. A letter from the eldest daughter, Camilla Harper—the one who wrote to you—came to Mrs Lyle just before I left. She showed it to me. I am afraid it is as you say, Francie; they have very heavy troubles and anxieties indeed.'
'Anddon'tyou think they're good, really very good people, mamma?' asked the child eagerly.
'I think they seem quite wonderfully good,' said her mother, warmly. 'I cannot understand; I mean I can scarcely realise, how they can all be so brave and cheerful, when one thing after another—one misfortune after another—has come to try them so terribly. Yes, it almost frightens me to think of our happiness in comparison with their troubles, Francie.'
'But mamma,' and Frances hesitated. 'If we can do anything to help them? Wouldn't that make it seemrighter? I mean as if we were meant to do it.'
'Iamgoing to try,' said Mrs Mildmay. Her voice was low and quiet, but it carried assurance with it. 'Your father and I talked a great deal about it after we heard the worst of things from Mrs Lyle. And we decided that it would be only right, even at the risk of annoying or even offending Lady Myrtle. It seems "meant" as you say, Francie—the coincidences of it all—my coming straight here, and that letter reaching Mrs Lyle just before I left. So we quite made up our minds about it.'
Frances drew a deep breath of thankfulness.
'It does seem as if everything I have most wanted was going to come,' she said.
Then, as her mother, after kissing her again, was turning to leave the room, telling her she really 'must go to sleep,' the little girl called her back for a moment.
'Mamma, dear,' she said. 'If you don't mind, would you please not say anything to Jass about what we've been talking of.'
Mrs Mildmay looked a little surprised.
'Why not, dear? Why should I not tell her as well as you?'
'Oh well, because Jass didn't know Bessie and Margaret nearly as well as I did, and you must have seen by her letters that she didn't care about them like me,' said Frances.
'But that does not, in one way, much signify,' replied her mother. 'Once Jacinth knows all about them she will feel as we do: your father and I do not know any of them personally. It is not as friends of ours that I would in any way plead their cause with their own near relation.'
'No, of course not,' said Frances. But still she did not seem satisfied. 'Jacinth has always been so afraid of vexing Lady Myrtle by seeming to interfere,' she said. 'And even Aunt Alison said it was better not.'
'Very likely not. You are both too young to have it in your power to do anything. Still, I am sure you have lost no opportunity of speaking highly of the girls whom youdothink so highly of.'
'Yes,' said Frances, quietly. 'I have done that. But somehow, mamma, I have vexed Jass about it several times. I shouldn't like her to think I had "spoilt" your first evening, by beginning about the Harpers. That's what she might say.'
'I will give her no reason for being vexed with you, dear. I can understand her fear of vexing Lady Myrtle—I feelthe same myself—and when I tell her, Jacinth, all about it, it will be in no way mixed up with you, Francie. She will only need to understand the whole thing thoroughly to agree with us.'
And Frances fell asleep in happy confidence that 'mamma' would put it all right. How delightful it was to have her at hand to lean upon!
But Mrs Mildmay had spoken rather more confidently about Jacinth than she quite felt. Frances's words reminded her of the cold, unsympathising way in which her elder daughter had alluded in her letters to the Harpers; after knowing all that Frances had written to her mother.
'Jacinth is thoughtful and considerate beyond her years,' thought she, 'but I do trust she is no way selfish or calculating. Oh no, that is impossible. I must not be fanciful. Marmy warned me that I might find her self-contained and even self-opinionated, but that is very different from anything mean or selfish. It is sad, all the same, to know nothing of one's own child for one's self, at first hand. Whatever the poor Harpers' trials have been,' she went on, as Frances had once said to Bessie, 'at least they have been spared this terrible, unnatural separation.'
And the thought brought back to her again the task that was before her on the morrow. She was not a little nervous about it. 'But I must not delay,' she said to herself. 'If anything is to be done to help them in this present crisis, it must be at once. And I promised Mrs Lyle not to put off. I wonder when I shall have the best chance of a good talk with Lady Myrtle. Alison is coming over in the morning, she said. Naturally she is anxious to hear all about Frank. I wish it had not happened that I was obliged to begin upon a certainlypainful, a possibly offensive topic with the dearold lady just at the very first! And when she is so very, very good to us!'
But Eugenia Mildmay was not the type of woman to shrink from what she believed to be an undoubted duty because it was painful to herself, or even to others.
'Dear little Frances,' was almost her last waking thought, 'I feel as if I already understoodherperfectly. And oh, I do hope I shall be wise and judicious with my Jassie too.'
Every trace of fatigue had vanished from Mrs Mildmay's bright face when they all met at breakfast the next morning; the 'all' including Lady Myrtle, who had now begun again to come down early, since the fine mild weather had, for the time, dispelled her chronic bronchitis. She looked round the table with a beaming face.
'It is long since I have had such a party at breakfast,' she said. 'Never before, I think, indeed, since I have been settled at Robin Redbreast, and that is a good while ago. To make it perfect we only want your husband, Eugenia, whom you know, I have never seen.'
'Well, I hope it will not be very long before you do see him; and I can assure you he is very eager to see you, dear Lady Myrtle,' replied Mrs Mildmay.
'Howlike mamma is to Frances!' thought Jacinth. It struck her even more forcibly this morning than the day before.
'Is Colonel Mildmay dark or fair? Does he resemble his sister?' inquired the old lady.
Mrs Mildmay considered.
'No; I scarcely think so,' she said. 'And yet there is a family likeness. The odd thing is, as I was saying, that though Jacinth "takes after" my mother's family sodecidedly, yet she is more like the Mildmays than either Francie or Eugene.'
'I don't see it, I confess,' said Lady Myrtle drily, and Mrs Mildmay caught for the first time a glimpse of the cold manner the old lady could assume if not altogether well pleased. But in less than an instant Lady Myrtle seemed herself to regret it. 'I mean to say I see no resemblance in Jacinth to Miss Alison Mildmay. Of course I cannot judge as to her having any to her father.'
'Papa has dark hair, like Jass,' said Frances. 'But he's very nice-looking.'
'The "but" doesn't sound very complimentary to me, Francie,' said Jacinth laughingly; and her mother, glancing at her, was struck by the wonderful charm of the smile that overspread her face.
'I wasn't thinking of you that way,' said Frances, bluntly. 'I was thinking of Aunt Alison.'
'Aunt Alison's not pretty,' said Eugene. 'Her's too—not smiley enough, not like mamma.'
'Eugene!' said his mother. But Eugene did not seem at all snubbed.
'À proposof Miss Alison Mildmay,' said Lady Myrtle, 'she is coming to see you to-day, is she not? She must be anxious to hear all about her brother.'
'Yes,' said Mrs Mildmay, 'she will be coming quite early. Jassie told us you are often busy in the morning, so I thought that would be the best time for me to be with her.'
'Jacinth knows all my ways,' said Lady Myrtle with a smile of approval. 'Yes, that will do nicely; Miss Mildmay must stay to luncheon, and then you and I, Eugenia, can drive her back. Will you drive with me this afternoon?I always enjoy a talk in a carriage along our quiet roads.'
'Thank you; that will be very pleasant,' said Mrs Mildmay. And no one would have suspected the slight sinking of heart with which she said to herself that this would clearly be the best opportunity for what she had to lay before her kind hostess as to the poor Harpers.
'We begin school again on Monday,' said Frances. 'I do hope it will be fine till then. Jass, won't you stay with Eugene and me this afternoon? We do so want to get the house we are building finished so that we can have tea in it on Lady Myrtle's birthday.'
'Yes,' Mrs Mildmay interposed quickly, 'that will do very well, and to-morrow perhaps Jassie may drive with you, Lady Myrtle, and then I will invite myself to spend the afternoon with you two, shall I?'
Her quick tact, founded on sympathy, warned her of the possibility of the elder girl feeling herself thrown out of the place she had naturally come to feel as her own beside the old lady.
'And Lady Myrtle is so devoted to Jacinth too. She would miss her, even though she would not like to seem to prefer her to me,' thought the mother; and the expression in the two faces rewarded her for her consideration.
Frances had her own ideas as to her mother's intentions in connection with the proposed drive that afternoon. But she was already perfectly at rest in the delightful certainty that 'mamma would know what was best to do.' So, though deeply interested and in a sense anxious, she had no nervous misgiving as to the result of the effort which she felt sure was going to be made in behalf of her friends, and she spent the afternoon very happily with her sister and brother,working at the famous house they had been allowed to build in a corner of the garden. It was very interesting, and even Jacinth, in some ways less 'grown-up' than she liked to fancy herself, found it very absorbing. By half-past four o'clock they had all worked so hard that they really began to be very tired and rather hot.
'I wish it was tea-time,' said Jacinth. 'We are all to have tea together while the holidays last. Lady Myrtle thought mamma would like it. And, of course, you and Eugene, Francie, will come in at the end of dinner as you did last night. I wonder why Lady Myrtle and mamma are so long. I suppose they've gone a long drive.'
'They started rather late,' said Frances. 'Aunt Alison was talking to Lady Myrtle a good while after the carriage was at the door. But I wonder they're not back by now. Don't you think we'd better go in now and get tidy, so as to be quite ready when they come?'
They did so. But for once Frances was the more expeditious of the two. When Mrs Mildmay entered her own room on returning from the drive, a little figure, unexceptionably neat as to hair and hands and garments, darted out from behind the window-curtains whence she had been watching the drive up to the house.
'Mamma, dear,' she exclaimed, 'don't ring for Syme. Mayn't I help you to take off your things for once? I do so want to ask you—you don't mind, do you?—haveyou been able to say anything to Lady Myrtle? I had a feeling that you meant to speak about it the very first chance you could.'
Mrs Mildmay looked a little agitated.
'Francie, dear,' she said, 'I haven't time to tell you about it just now. We must hurry down to tea. But I have donesomething, and I almost hope I have made a beginning towards more. All I can, all it would be right for me to tell you, I will. But I scarcely think I can do so to-day. Come to my room quite early to-morrow morning, half an hour or so before breakfast. As soon as we have had tea just now, I have promised to help—at least she puts it so—Lady Myrtle to write a rather difficult letter.'
'Is it to the Harpers?' half whispered Frances.
Her mother nodded.
Frances gave a sort of skip of joy.
'Oh, mamma, how lovely!' she exclaimed. 'How clever you are! I do believe everything's going to come right.'
'Don't be too hopeful, dear. But at least theirpresentterrible difficulties will be a little smoothed, I trust.
And it was no use telling Frances not to be too hopeful. She seemed almost to dance as she followed her mother down-stairs, and the drawing-room at Robin Redbreast had rarely, if ever, heard brighter talk and merrier laughter than went on this afternoon round the tea-table, where Jacinth did the honours as if she were the recognised daughter of the house.
It went perhaps somewhat against the grain with her to be told, though in the kindest manner, that Lady Myrtle and Mrs Mildmay had some business letters to write in the boudoir, and must not be disturbed till post-time. But she was a sensible girl on the whole, and really glad to see the cordial understanding between her mother and the friend who seemed to her now by adoption almost a second mother. And she was without the slightest suspicion that the letters in question concerned the Harpers, of whom indeed for some time past she had almost left off thinking at all.
'Possibly it's already something about the London appointment for papa,' she thought. 'Lady Myrtle is always so energetic and business-like. I daresay she would havelikedto consult me about it, but then it would scarcely have seemed right not to make mamma the first of course.'
And she answered so pleasantly that she and Frances had a duet they wanted to practise before playing it to their mother, that Mrs Mildmay's slight instinctive misgiving as to her elder daughter's docility and reasonableness was for the time completely dispersed.
'To-morrow, you know, dear Jacinth, you are to drive with me,' said Lady Myrtle, 'while your mother is going to have Francie and Eugene all to herself.'
Perhaps the result of Mrs Mildmay's conversation with her hostess during their drive that afternoon will be best shown by one of the letters which the Robin Redbreast postbag carried off that very evening. It was addressed to Mrs Harper at a certain number in a quiet bye-street in the north-west of London, and ran thus: