Robin Redbreast: A Story for Girls

'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.

'How like 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 so decidedly, 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 propos of 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? —have you 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 done something, 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 their present terrible 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 have liked to 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:

Robin Redbreast, Thetford,

May 4, 187-.

My dear Mrs Harper – I write to you instead of to your husband, Captain Harper, who is by birth my nephew, as I understand that he might be upset by an unexpected letter, being at present in a critical state of health. I regret that it should be so, and that your anxieties should be increased by other difficulties, and I enclose a draft on my London bankers for £500, which will, I trust, relieve you from your most pressing cares. I ask you to accept this in a kindly spirit, though from a complete stranger. It is the gift of an aged woman who is always glad to have the privilege of helping those whose difficulties may become privately known to her, as well as of responding to the many public appeals for assistance. But it is not the gift of a relative. From a certain date, now many years ago, my brother Bernard Harper and all connected with him died to me as completely as though he had never existed, and I feel it only honest to put the matter in its true light at the risk of wounding not unnatural susceptibilities. I ask you also to accept my sincere good wishes for Captain Harper's restoration to health, and I remain, yours faithfully,

Myrtle Camilla Goodacre.

It was a strange letter. And strange as it was, it had been more eccentric still, but for Mrs Mildmay's strenuous efforts to soften its expressions and accentuate the real sympathy which had dictated the gift. It was a strange position altogether. The tears had risen into the old lady's bright eyes when her old friend Jacinth Moreland's daughter laid before her the sad facts of the case, and the life or death that not improbably hung upon her response. Never had good cause a better advocate. She read aloud the letter written by Camilla Harper to her aunt in India, and confided by Mrs Lyle to Mrs Mildmay; she told of Captain Harper's honourable career, and of the brave struggle made by him and his wife against the overwhelming difficulties which had come upon them through no fault – no imprudence even – of their own; she described the good promise of their children, how the sons were all already more or less 'distinguished, the daughters models of girlish excellence.'

'I quite believe it all,' the old lady calmly replied. 'It is very wonderful; there must be a good strain somewhere in the blood, and struggle and adversity are grand teachers, we are told. It is very interesting, and I am most ready to help them in any way you advise, my dear Eugenia, or that you think would be accepted. But understand me, I would do the same if I had never heard their name till to-day. It is not as relations; Bernard Harper's descendants are neither kith nor kin of mine, and this must be understood.'

Mrs Mildmay seemed about to speak, but hesitated.

'What is it, my dear? Do not be afraid of vexing me: do say what is in your mind,' said the old lady.

'You are so good, dear Lady Myrtle, so good and kind, that it seems impertinence for me to differ from you,' the younger woman replied. 'It was only that your words struck me curiously. Can we decide and alter things in that way? Our relations are our relations; can we, when it suits us, say they are not? Can we throw off the duties and responsibilities of relationship? Of course they vary enormously; sometimes they scarcely exist, and one can lay down no rule. But still, in the present case, it is because the Harpers are your relations, and yet by no fault of their own entirely alienated from you, that I have told you about them. These are solid substantial facts; we cannot undo facts.'

Lady Myrtle was silent. Mrs Mildmay glanced at her anxiously, very anxiously. But there was no sign of irritation in the quiet old face – only of thought, deep thought. And there was a grave softness in the usually keen eyes, as if they were reviewing far distant or far past scenes.

At last, 'Thank you, my dear, for your candour,' she said. 'Well, leave that question alone. I will help this family and at once, because it seems to me a clear duty to do so. Can you not be satisfied with this practical response to your appeal, my dear?'

'I thank you with all my heart,' said Mrs Mildmay earnestly, 'both for your generosity and for your patience with my presumption.'

But she evaded a direct reply to Lady Myrtle's question, and her friend did not press her farther.

The result of this conversation we have seen in the letter with its enclosure which was posted that very evening. The former was not a source of unmitigated satisfaction to Mrs Mildmay. For Lady Myrtle insisted on the insertion of the last few lines.

It would not be honest, she maintained, to withhold the expression of her true sentiments.

So with what she had achieved, Mrs Mildmay was forced to be content, though there were times during the next day or two in which she asked herself if perhaps she had not done more harm than good? And times again, when with the rebound of her naturally buoyant nature, she allowed herself to hope that she had succeeded in inserting the thin edge of the wedge; in 'making,' as she had expressed it to Francie, 'a beginning towards more.'

CHAPTER XV.

LADY MYRTLE'S INTENTIONS

And Francie, during those few days, was her mother's only confidante. Various reasons made Mrs Mildmay decide not as yet to come upon the subject with Jacinth. While still to all intents and purposes so much of a stranger to her daughter, she felt anxious to avoid all sore or fretted ground; all discussion which might lead her prematurely to judge or misjudge Jacinth. To Lady Myrtle, of course, she said nothing of this; but she suspected, as was indeed the case, that the old lady would feel no inclination to talk about the Harpers to her young companion. There were plenty of pleasanter things to talk about during the long drives on which, on most alternate afternoons, Jacinth accompanied their hostess; there were reminiscences of the past, always interesting to the girl, awakened to fresh vividness by Mrs Mildmay's own recollections of her mother and her own childhood; there were, more engrossing still, plans for the future, when 'papa' should return and be skilfully persuaded into renouncing India. And Lady Myrtle was nearly as great at castle-in-the-air building as Jacinth herself, and though too wise to discuss as yet with any one, especially with a girl who was really, notwithstanding her precocity, little more than a child, her still immatured intentions, Jacinth was far too acute, and Lady Myrtle too open and affectionate, for her young favourite not to be well aware how much her own future occupied and interested the old lady. Yet Jacinth was scarcely selfish in the common sense. She was capable, on the contrary, of great self-sacrifice for those she loved; her happy visions for days to come were by no means confined to, even though they might to a great extent revolve around, Jacinth Mildmay.

As seems often to happen when a looked-for letter, or reply to a letter, is of any peculiar importance, there was some delay in the acknowledgment of Lady Myrtle's communication by Mrs Harper. The old lady herself took it calmly enough. 'It should, as a business letter, have been replied to at once, but perhaps they are not business-like people, and are thinking it over,' was all she said.

Mrs Mildmay, on the contrary, and, so far as she understood it all, Frances, felt uneasy and perplexed. Mrs Mildmay was sorry for the Harpers to lay themselves open to the slightest appearance of disrespect or unpunctuality, and at the same time she had attacks of fear that Lady Myrtle's letter had hurt and wounded her relatives so deeply that they had decided to ignore it. Only, in that case, they would have returned the cheque.

'It is very absurd,' she said one evening to Frances. 'I don't generally "worry" about things at all, and I am quite sure I have never worried about any matter of our own as much. Except, perhaps, that time you all had scarlet fever at Stannesley, and somehow Marmy's letter missed the mail, and we were out of reach of telegraphing. Oh dear, I shall never forget that week!'

'Dear mamma,' said Francie, 'I quite know how you feel. I was so fidgety that time I sent on Camilla Harper's letter to you, though it wasn't anything like as important.'

But the very next morning the mystery was explained, and quite simply.

After breakfast Lady Myrtle sent for Mrs Mildmay to her boudoir, where she always interviewed her steward and transacted her business for the day.

'I have just got this, my dear,' she said, handing a letter to her guest, 'and I knew you would be anxious to see it. The delay, you see, was accidental.'

Her tone of voice somewhat reassured Mrs Mildmay; it was calm and unruffled. Nevertheless it was not without considerable anxiety that she took the sheet of paper from the old lady's hands and began to read it. It was from Mrs Harper – a touching yet dignified letter, and the cheque was not returned. Mrs Harper began by thanking Lady Myrtle warmly for her kindness; the money she had sent seemed indeed a 'godsend' in the real sense of the word, and no secondary considerations could make her think it would be right to refuse what might – what, she trusted and almost believed, would save her husband's life and restore him to health – 'even,' she went on to say, 'if it were possible after this, for us to think of you as an utter stranger, even then I would not dare to refuse this wonderful help. But at the same time you will allow us, I feel sure, to accept it as a loan, even though several years may pass before it is possible for us to repay it. Your agreeing to this will only immeasurably deepen, instead of lessening our inexpressible obligation.' The letter then went on to give a few details of her husband's condition, and the hopes and fears attendant on it. 'I am writing in my lodgings,' Mrs Harper went on, 'before going to him as usual at the hospital. So he does not yet know of this wonderful gift. And I think, as in your kind thoughtfulness you wrote to me, not to him, I am justified in accepting your aid without consulting him, so that I may tell him it is done. Not that in my heart I have any misgiving as to the view he will take of my action.' And lastly came a simple explanation of the delay. Mrs Harper had been for a day or two at Southcliff, as little Margaret was not well, and the rather stupid landlady of her London lodgings had never thought of forwarding the letter, knowing she was so soon to return. This with a few earnest words of repeated thanks made the whole.

Mrs Mildmay looked up eagerly after she had finished it.

'You are pleased, dear Lady Myrtle?' she said. 'At least I mean,' and she grew a little confused, for the old lady remained rather ominously silent, 'you think it is a nice letter, don't you? It seems to me to show peculiarly good feeling and good taste, for it cannot have been an easy letter to write.'

'Oh yes, my dear, I quite agree with you,' said Lady Myrtle with just a faint touch of impatience. 'I don't see how any one could think otherwise of the letter. I am perfectly satisfied that – she,' as if she shrank from naming the old name, 'is an excellent woman; refined and cultivated, and everything she should be. And I have no doubt they are all thoroughly deserving of the high character they bear. I thank you – I really do – for having given me the opportunity of serving people who so clearly deserve help. And these cases of bravely endured, almost unsuspected poverty among the gently born appeal to one almost more than the sufferings of the recognised "poor," though, of course, it is right to help both.'

'Yes,' said Mrs Mildmay, 'I often feel it so. And it is very good of you to put things in this way, Lady Myrtle. It takes away my qualms about having interfered,' and she smiled a little.

'But, my dear, I have not done,' Lady Myrtle went on, a trifle testily, 'you must quite understand me. It is not the very least– no, no; quite the other way – not the very least because they are Harpers that I am glad to be of use to them. Neither this letter, nor your own arguments – nothing, my dear, will alter the facts I stated to you the other day.'

'No,' agreed Mrs Mildmay, and she could scarcely repress a little smile; 'that was what I said myself, dear Lady Myrtle; nothing can alter facts.'

'Your facts and mine are scarcely synonymous,' said Lady Myrtle, drily, a little annoyed with herself perhaps, for having unconsciously made use of Mrs Mildmay's own expression. But the annoyance was not deep, for in another moment she added cheerfully, 'We are quite together on one point, however, and that is in rejoicing that this help has come in time, as we may hope, to save a valuable life and much sorrow to those who cherish it. If this prove a fact, I think, my dear Eugenia, we may rest content.'

'Yes, indeed,' replied Mrs Mildmay, touched by her old friend's gentleness, though to herself she added, 'for the present, that is to say.'

And when to eager little Frances she related the upshot of her intervention, she did not retract her former words about having made a beginning.

'I think,' she said, 'I have got in the thin end of the wedge. When honest-minded people are a little shaken in anything, they try hard to persuade themselves by extra vehemence that they are not so.'

'Mamma, dear,' said Frances, 'I am beginning to believe not only that you are the best but the very cleverest woman in the world.'

And Mrs Mildmay laughed the joyous laugh which was one of her charms. The success which had attended this attempt of hers so far, did seem a happy omen with which to begin again her home life.

It would be interesting here to shift the scene and follow the reception of the good news by the three anxious girls at Southcliff. It would – to me at least it would – be so pleasant to tell of the happy faces that looked at each other with questioning eyes, as if the tidings in their mother's letter were almost too good to be true. It would be gratifying to watch the progress made by Captain Harper towards the recovery of greater health and strength than had been his for so many years, but even in telling a story – and the simplest of stories – one cannot always do as one is inclined. The time has not yet come for visiting the Harpers again. I must hurry on with some necessary explanations before leaving Thetford and dear old Robin Redbreast for very different surroundings.

That spring and early summer passed on the whole very happily for Mrs Mildmay and her three children. As far as Frances and her little brother were concerned, there were, I think, no drawbacks, except the fear – not, however, a very great one – that this delightful state of things might not last if papa should be obliged to return to India. But to a great extent their mother was able to reassure them, for in every letter Colonel Mildmay wrote more and more strongly of his earnest desire to settle at home, even though his doing so should lead to some privations falling on his family.

'Everything would be made up for by being together,' said Frances over and over again. 'I wouldn't care if we all had to live in quite a tiny cottage; would you, Jass?'

But Jacinth replied rather coldly that Frances was a silly child who didn't know what she was talking about. And Mrs Mildmay smiled, and endeavoured to prevent any approach to quarrelling, as she assured Frances that at all events they would be able to afford a comfortable house.

'I should rather think so,' said Jacinth in an authoritative and yet mysterious tone. 'I do wish, mamma, you would make Frances leave off speaking as if we were paupers.'

It is scarcely necessary to say that this conversation and others of a similar kind did not take place in Lady Myrtle's presence.

And towards the end of July, sooner than he had hoped for, Colonel Mildmay arrived. They were all still at Robin Redbreast to receive him, for on hearing how much earlier his leave was to begin than had been anticipated, Mrs Mildmay gave in to their kind hostess's earnest wish that they should remain there at least till her husband's coming.