Kitabı oku: «Robin Redbreast: A Story for Girls», sayfa 17

CHAPTER XVIII.
'I WILL THINK IT OVER.'

The very faint hope which the Mildmays – Jacinth especially – had cherished that, after all, the coming Christmas might 'somehow' be spent by them and Lady Myrtle together, soon faded.

There was no question of the old lady's coming north, though in one of her letters she spoke of the gladness with which she would have made the effort had it been possible; and there was even no question of their all joining her at Robin Redbreast, though but for a short visit, for in November the fiat went forth which each winter she had secretly for some years past been dreading – she must not remain in England. For her chronic bronchitis was on her again, and a premature taste of winter in the late autumn threatened for a week or two to turn this into something worse.

'For myself,' she wrote, 'I would rather stay at home and take the risk, but I suppose it would be wrong, though really at my age I have little sympathy with that excessive clinging to life one sees where one would little expect it. But there is nothing to detain me here specially, and it may be that I shall benefit by the change. I want to choose one of the winter places I was so happy at more than once long ago, with your mother, when she and I travelled together with my parents.'

For the letter was to Mrs Mildmay.

And a fortnight or so later came another, which threw great excitement into the house in St Wilfred's Place, where the children were doing their best to give something of a festive and country look to the rather dark rooms with the help of plenty of holly and mistletoe, which had come in a Christmas hamper from Robin Redbreast, by Lady Myrtle's orders, though she was no longer there. For by this time it was Christmas Eve.

This new letter was from abroad. The old lady was already settled in her winter quarters. Which of the many southern resorts she had chosen matters little, as it is no part of this simple story to describe continental towns or foreign travel. And in this particular case there would be little interest in either, seeing that these places are so well known nowadays to the mass of English folk of the well-to-do classes, that accounts of them are pretty sure to be monotonous repetitions. We will call the spot selected 'Basse.'

Lady Myrtle wrote cheerfully. She was better, and she was enjoying, as old people learn to do, the chastened pleasure of recalling happy days in the scenes she was now revisiting.

'It is all wonderfully little changed,' she wrote. 'I drive along the same roads, and walk slowly up and down the same terraces, where Lady Jacinth and I used to talk together by the hour in our light-hearted girlhood. I even fancy I recognise some of the shops we pass, for I am able to stroll about the quieter streets a little with the help of my good Clayton's arm. I have actually done a little shopping, the results of which will, I trust, please you, trifling as they are. I am sending off a little box by the Globe Express, which will, I hope, reach you by Christmas Day. And now, dear Eugenia, for the point of my letter. It is Clayton's idea; she burst out with it the other day when we were busy about this same shopping. "Oh, my lady, if only Miss Jacinth – Miss Mildmay I should say – were here it would be nice! She's just the young lady to enjoy the change and not mind the quiet life, and she would brighten you up." So will you spare her to me for the three or four months I shall be here? I hesitate to ask it; you will miss her so. But I am emboldened by the belief that it might be for the dear child's own good. She could have excellent lessons of any or every kind, and some amount of French talking, as I have a few old French friends in the neighbourhood, near enough to spend a day with now and then. Her father would bring her out, and, for my sake, I trust, not grudge the time and fatigue. The whole expenses you would surely let me defray? You cannot be hard-hearted enough to refuse this, dearest Eugenia.'

Mrs Mildmay thought it over and talked it over with her husband: then they laid it before Jacinth herself, giving her indeed the letter itself to read. Jacinth's face crimsoned with pleasure and excitement, and her eyes glistened. But in a moment or two they grew dewy.

'Oh, mamma,' she exclaimed, 'it would be delightful. But – I cannot bear to think of leaving you for so long.'

These were sweet and grateful words to the mother's ears. But, as ever, she took the cheerful and sensible view of the matter. The separation would be but a short one, and it might really be of great advantage to Jacinth. Besides which – and this argument, I think, had the most weight with them all – was it not a duty to do what they could to please their dear old friend?

So a favourable and grateful answer was sent without much delay, and before the new year was many days old, Jacinth and her father found themselves speeding across France as fast as the train de luxe could take them, to join Lady Myrtle in her winter home.

Jacinth enjoyed it all, and there was a considerable amount of freshness to her in the experience, though it was not entirely unknown ground. For, as a young child, she had spent some time in the south of France with her mother on her way to England, and she had once in later years passed a week or two in Paris with Uncle Marmy and 'Granny.' But the special place which Lady Myrtle had chosen was quite new to her, and it had its own peculiar beauties and attractions.

'Tell mamma,' she said to her father the morning before he was to leave, 'tell dear mamma and Francie that I am as happy as I can be anywhere away from them. And I will work really hard at French and music, so that I may be able to help Francie with hers. And it will please mamma, won't it, papa, to hear how glad Lady Myrtle seems to have me?'

'Yes, dear, I am sure it will,' said Colonel Mildmay cordially. 'I cannot help feeling, personally, great pleasure in having been able to do anything to gratify her. It was generous of her to give us the opportunity of doing so.'

'She is so generous,' said Jacinth warmly, 'so large hearted about everything, isn't she, papa?'

'She is indeed,' her father agreed with a little sigh, 'about everything except one thing. It is curious and sad to see how very deep down are her prepossessions on that subject. And I am the more hopeless about them, because there is really no personal vindictiveness, or even, I may say, prejudice mixed up with these convictions.'

'It is sad,' Jacinth agreed.

The next morning saw Colonel Mildmay's departure for home.

Then began for Jacinth a quiet, regular, but far from unenjoyable life. Lady Myrtle had already made inquiries about the best teachers, and such of these as undertook the special subjects the girl wished to give her time to were engaged for her. So several hours of each day were soon told off for lessons and preparation for them. As a rule, Lady Myrtle drove out in the afternoon, her young guest accompanying her, sometimes to pay calls to such of the visitors to the place as were old friends, or in some few cases new acquaintances of hers; sometimes out into the beautiful country in the neighbourhood, beautiful even in mid-winter, where the views were as varied as charming.

And as a rule, between twelve and one o'clock, sometimes too in the afternoon if the old lady were not feeling well enough for a drive, Jacinth went for a brisk walk with Clayton as her duenna.

It was during one of these walks that something most unexpected happened one day. Lady Myrtle had caught a slight cold and been forbidden to go out. It was a bright but somewhat treacherous day, for though the sunshine was warm there was a sharp, almost icy, 'under air' painfully perceptible in the shade.

'I feel roasted and frozen at once; don't you, Clayton?' said Jacinth laughingly, as they crossed the road to get into the warmth, such as it was, again.

'Yes, indeed, Miss Mildmay,' the maid agreed. 'It's a day when you need both a parasol and a muff together. For there is such a glare.'

A glare there was, truly. Snow had been falling now and then during the last day or two, and though but in light and short showers, the ground was sufficiently frozen for it to 'lie;' so that the sunshine, not powerful enough to melt it, save here and there very superficially, was reflected from the gleaming surface with extraordinary brilliancy.

'We really should have snow spectacles,' Jacinth was saying, when a sudden shock made her aware that in her dazzled state she had run foul of some one or something standing on the pathway just in front of her.

'I beg your pardon,' she exclaimed instinctively, and the stranger turning sharply – for she had been looking in the forward direction – almost at the same moment made the same apology, adding quickly, when she heard Jacinth's English voice, 'I should not be blocking up the' – But her sentence was never completed. 'Oh, can it be you? Jacinth – Jacinth Mildmay? Is Frances here? Oh, how delightful. – Camilla,' as an older girl came across the road in her direction, 'Camilla, just fancy – this is Jacinth. I can scarcely believe it,' and before Jacinth had had time to say a word, she felt two clinging arms thrown round her neck, and kisses pressed on her burning cheeks, by the sweet, loving lips of Bessie Harper.

The blood had rushed to Jacinth's face in a torrent, and for a moment she almost gasped for breath.

'Bessie, Bessie dear, you are such a whirlwind. You have startled Miss Mildmay terribly.'

'I am so sorry,' said Bessie penitently, and then at last Jacinth was able to answer the girl's inquiries, and explain how it had come about that she alone of her family was here so far from home.

'And are you all here?' she asked in return.

'Yes,' Miss Harper answered, 'all of us except my eldest brother. The two others are here temporarily; the little one who is going into the navy got his Christmas holidays, and the other has his long leave just now. And my father is so wonderfully better; you heard, you saw Bessie's letter to Frances?' and Camilla's face grew rosy in its turn.

'Oh yes,' Jacinth replied. 'We were very, very glad. Frances wrote almost at once.'

Bessie shook her head.

'I never got the letter,' she said; 'but we have missed several, I am afraid. We have been moving about so. Cannot you come to see us, Jacinth? Mother, and father too, would love to see you. We are living a little way out in the country at the village of St Rémi; we have got a dear little house there. Camilla and I came in for shopping this morning. Couldn't you come back with us to luncheon? We could bring you home this afternoon, and your maid would take back word to – to Lady Myrtle Goodacre.'

'I am afraid I cannot,' said Jacinth, with some constraint in her voice. 'I never go out anywhere without asking Lady Myrtle's leave.'

'Of course not,' Camilla interposed. 'It would not do at all. You must do as you think best, Miss Mildmay, about getting permission to come to see us. I beg you to believe that, if you think it better not to ask it,' she spoke in a lowered tone, so as to be unheard by Clayton, 'we shall neither blame you nor misunderstand you. And now, perhaps, we had best not keep you waiting longer.'

She held out her hand with the same quiet friendliness as appeared in her words; not perhaps quite without a touch of dignity almost approaching to hauteur in the pose of her pretty head as she gave the unasked assurance. Jacinth thanked her – what else could she do? – feeling curiously small. There was something refreshing in the parting hug which Bessie bestowed upon her, ere they separated to follow their respective roads, but Jacinth was very silent all the way home.

'Nice young ladies,' remarked Clayton. 'They are old friends of yours, Miss Jacinth, no doubt?'

'The younger one was at school with my sister and me,' the girl replied, for Clayton's position as a very old and valued servant removed all flavour of freedom or presumingness from her observations. 'But I scarcely know the older one.'

And for the rest of the way home she was unusually silent. Her mind was hard at work. Jacinth was passing through a crisis. Should she tell Lady Myrtle of the Harpers being in the near neighbourhood, or should she not? There was no obligation upon her to do so; their name had not been alluded to, even if Clayton should mention to her mistress the meeting with the young ladies, nothing would be easier than for Jacinth to pass it off with some light remark. And with the temptation to act this negatively unfriendly part awoke again the sort of jealous irritation at the whole position, which she believed herself to have quite overcome.

'They perfectly haunt us,' she said to herself: 'why in the world should they have chosen Basse out of all the quantity of places there are? And to think' – this was a very ugly thought – 'that but for mamma they wouldn't have been able to come abroad at all! Why should they spoil my little happy time with Lady Myrtle? And very likely no good would come to them of my telling her that they are here. She would be sure to refuse to see them.'

But what if it were so? Did that affect her own present duty?

'It might annoy Lady Myrtle,' whispered an insidious voice; but had not Mrs Mildmay risked far more in her outspoken appeal, when still almost a stranger to her mother's friend? Would not the concealment of so simple a circumstance as her meeting the Harper girls be more than negative unfriendliness? would it not savour of want of candour and selfish calculation, such as in after years Jacinth would blush to remember? And again there sounded in her ears the old north-country woman's quaint words: 'It do seem to me, ma'am, as there's two kinds of honesty.'

And Jacinth lifted her head and took her resolution.

That afternoon there was to be no drive, as the old lady had caught a slight cold. And after luncheon Jacinth came and sat beside her in her favourite position, a low stool beside Lady Myrtle's chair, whence she could rest one elbow on her friend's knee and look up into her kind old face with the strangely familiar dark eyes, which were dearer to Robin Redbreast's owner than even the girl herself suspected.

'I want to talk to you, dear Lady Myrtle,' she began. 'I want to tell you whom I met this morning,' and she related simply what had occurred.

The old lady started a little as Jacinth spoke the names 'Camilla and Bessie Harper.' But then she answered quietly: 'It was right of you to tell me, dear,' she said. 'And you need not fear its annoying me. It is strange that they should have chosen Basse, but really it does not matter to us in the least. I am very glad the father is so much better. Now let us talk of something else, dear.'

Now came the hard bit of Jacinth's task.

'Dear Lady Myrtle, that isn't all; it's only the first part of what I have to say,' she began tremulously. 'I want to tell you everything, more even than I told mamma, for till to-day I don't think I saw it quite so plainly. I have not been as good and true as you have thought me; nothing like Frances, or mamma, of course. And I feel now that you must know the worst of me. I shall never be happy till you do, even though it is horrible to own how mean I have been.'

Lady Myrtle sat silent, too bewildered at first to speak. What had come to Jacinth, so quiet and self-controlled as she usually was? But she held the girl's hand and said gently, 'Tell me anything that is on your mind, dear child, though I think – I cannot help thinking – that you are exaggerating whatever it is that you think you have done wrong.'

Then out it all came: the confession that many would hardly have understood – would have called morbid and fanciful, perhaps. But Lady Myrtle's perceptions were keen, her moral ideal very high, her sympathy great; and she did not make the mistake of crushing back the girl's confidence by making light of the feelings and even actions which Jacinth's own conscience told her had been wrong. One thing only she could not resist suggesting as a touch of comfort.

'I think, latterly at any rate, dear, you were influenced by the fear of troubling me. You must allow that.'

'Well, yes,' Jacinth agreed. 'But even then I should not have let even that make me uncandid and – and – almost plotting against them.'

'No, no, dear; don't say such things of yourself. And now you may put it quite out of your mind for ever. You have been only too severe on yourself. But try to understand one thing, dear; no child could be to me what you are. Even – even if these young people had been in happy relations with me, as of course, but for past miseries, might have been the case, they would not have been Jacinth.'

'No; I know it is for grandmother's sake you care for me so much more than I deserve,' said the girl, as she wiped away her tears, 'and even in that way I should not have been jealous. I did not know it was jealousy. I have never realised before that I could be jealous. But I cannot put it quite off my mind till you let me feel I have done something to make up. Lady Myrtle, dear Lady Myrtle, may I ask them to come to see you? I know they are longing to thank you. And oh, it would make me so happy!'

'I will think it over, my dear,' was all Lady Myrtle would commit herself to. But even that was something.

CHAPTER XIX.
UNCLE MARMY'S GATES

When people really and thoroughly want to do right, and do not content themselves by saying they want to do so, I doubt if they are ever for long left in perplexity. Jacinth Mildmay had found it so. She had courageously dismissed all the specious arguments about 'troubling Lady Myrtle,' 'not going out of her way to dictate to her elders,' or 'interfering in their affairs,' and had simply and honestly done what her innermost conscience dictated. And now, as to how she was to act about and towards the Harpers, she was content to wait.

But Lady Myrtle did not keep her very long in suspense. She too had put aside every consideration but the one – what was her duty to the Harper family? – and she had found solid ground.

'My dear Jacinth,' she said, the second morning after the unexpected meeting of the former school-fellows, 'I have decided that it would be unkind and ungracious to keep Captain and Mrs Harper and their children at arm's length, if – if it would be any satisfaction to them to see me, as they like to think I have been of help to them. So I intend to drive out to St Rémi to call upon them.'

Jacinth looked up with a bright smile.

'I am so glad, Lady Myrtle,' she added impulsively; 'I do think you are so very good.'

The old lady shook her head sadly.

'My dear,' she said, 'the bitterest part of approaching the end of life is the realising how terribly, how overwhelmingly other than "good" one has been, and how little time remains in which to make amends. As regards one's self the recognising this is salutary; the more one feels it, the more thankful one should be. But it is about others: it is terrible to think of the harm one has done, the good one has left undone. If I had been more patient – more pitiful – more ready to make allowance for their strange weakness of character – with – with my poor brothers' —

Her voice broke; the last words were almost inaudible: it was very wonderful for her to say so much. And a new ray of light seemed to flash on Jacinth's path as she listened. If such a thing were possible, if it could come to pass that Lady Myrtle should reinstate her nephew and his family in their natural place in her affection and regard, what happiness, what softening of past sorrows might such a change not bring to the sorely tried heart of her old friend. And a rush of unselfish enthusiasm came over the young girl.

'Anything I can do to further it, I shall do,' she determined, and at that moment died away the last fast-withering remains of jealousy in her heart that the Harpers might in any way replace her in Lady Myrtle's regard.

It seemed like an encouragement – an endorsement of this secretly registered vow – when Lady Myrtle spoke again.

'Does it make you happy, dear child, to hear what I have resolved to do? I hope so; for your feelings, your self-blame so honestly avowed, though I think you exaggerate the need of it, have helped to influence me. I know how bitter such self-blame may grow to be, and my darling Jacinth, I want to feel, when I come to die, that at least I have brought nothing but good into your young life.'

'Dear Lady Myrtle,' said Jacinth, 'what you tell me makes me happier than I can express; far, far happier than I have deserved to be.'

They went the next day. Lady Myrtle's cold was better, and for the season, the weather was wonderfully mild. Jacinth had hesitated about accompanying her old friend, but Lady Myrtle insisted upon her doing so.

'It will make it far easier and less constrained for me,' she said, 'and considering everything it seems to me only natural.'

They had luncheon early, and set off immediately after. Less than half an hour's drive brought them to the picturesque little village, which was in fact scarcely more than a suburb of the town of Basse.

'Villa Malmaison' was the direction, and soon the coachman drew up at a gate opening on to the road, for there was no drive up to the house. The footman was preparing to enter, but when he came round for his instructions, Lady Myrtle stopped him.

'No,' she said, 'you can wait here. We will get out at once. – I have a fancy,' she said to Jacinth, 'for going straight up to the house without being announced.'

It was a small and simple place; a balcony ran round the ground floor, and there in a long chair – a deck chair – a gentleman was half lying, half sitting, for the day was mild, and the house had a south exposure. At the sound of their slow footsteps – for Lady Myrtle was feebler than of yore – he looked up, then rose courteously, and came forward to meet them. He was a tall thin man with gray hair, and with evident traces of delicate health and suffering upon him, and he walked lame. But his smile was both bright and sweet; his keen dark eyes not unlike Lady Myrtle's own.

'Can I' – he began, for the first instant's glance revealed to him that the new-comers were English, but a sort of exclamation from Lady Myrtle arrested him.

'Jacinth,' she had just whispered, and for a second she leant so heavily on the girl's arm that Jacinth feared she was going to faint, 'it must be he – my nephew – he is so, so wonderfully like my father.'

And before Jacinth could reply, the old lady straightened herself again, and drawing her arm away from her young guide, seemed to hurry forward with a little cry.

'Are you Reginald?' she said. 'My nephew? You must be. Oh Reginald, I am your old Aunt Myrtle.'

And then – all the plans and formalities were set at naught. The two tall figures enfolded each other in an embrace like that of an aged mother and a long absent son.

'Aunt Myrtle, my dear aunt!' Jacinth heard the kind, cheery voice exclaim, though in accents broken by sudden emotion. 'You who have been so good to us, to whom I owe my life. But this – this coming yourself is the kindest of all.'

Then Jacinth turned and fled – fled down a path leading somewhere or nowhere, till she found herself at the other side of the house, and ran full tilt against Bessie, who was coming out to see what was happening. For sounds carried far in the clear frosty air, and visitors were an event at the little St Rémi villa.

'Jacinth,' she exclaimed, catching hold of the flying girl, 'what is it?'

'Oh Bessie, it's everything – everything beautiful and wonderful. But we mustn't interrupt them. Take me into the house and call Camilla and your mother, and I'll explain it all.'

That was the beginning, but by no means the end. Far from it indeed. For even if Jacinth lives to be a very old woman, I think she will always look back upon the next few weeks at Basse – the weeks before the Harpers returned to England, which they did before the doctors considered it quite safe for Lady Myrtle to face the northern spring – as among the happiest she ever knew. There were several reasons for this. There was the great and unselfish pleasure of seeing the quiet restful content on her dear old friend's face, and knowing that in some measure she had been the means of bringing it there; there was the delight of writing home with the news of the happy state of things that had come about, and receiving her full meed of sympathy and appreciation from her father and mother and faithful little Frances; and lastly, there was the, to Jacinth, really new pleasure of thoroughly congenial companionship of her own age. For at school her habit of reserve and self-dependence had come in the way of her making friends, and she was so accustomed to taking the lead and being the elder, that she was slow to enter into the give and take on more or less equal ground that is an essential condition of pleasant and profitable intercourse between the young.

And her ideal friend – much as she learned to love and esteem hearty generous Bessie and gentle little Margaret – Jacinth's friend of friends came to be Camilla, whose two or three years' seniority seemed only to bring them closer, for Jacinth was in many ways 'old for her age.'

Yes, it was a happy time, even though now and then some twinges of self-reproach made Jacinth feel how little she had at one time merited the loving confidence with which her new friends treated her.

'But that you must bear, my dear,' said Lady Myrtle, when on one or two occasions this feeling grew so acute that she had to express it to some one. 'Take it as your punishment if you think you deserve it. For it would be cruel to distress these candid, unselfish girls by confessions of ill-will or prejudice which no longer exist. For my sake, dear Jacinth, for my sake too, try now to "let the dead past bury its dead."'

And the girl did so.

Some happy years followed this good beginning. Years not untouched by trouble and trials, but with an undercurrent of good. Barmettle never became a congenial home, but Jacinth as she grew older lost her extreme dislike to it, in the happiness of being all together, and knowing that not only was her father satisfied with his work, but that many opportunities for helping others were open to herself and Frances, as well as to their active unselfish mother.

And bright holidays with Lady Myrtle, when old Robin Redbreast stretched his wings in some wonderful way so as to take in his kind owner's grand-nephews and nieces as well as the Mildmay party, went far to reconcile Jacinth and Frances to the gloom and chill of their home in the north.

Perhaps Christmas was the most trying time. For a merry family party would have been something to look forward to at that season. But the dear old lady, alas! had spent her last Christmas in England that year – that first year at Thetford – when Jacinth and Frances and Eugene were her guests. For her health grew more and more fragile, and every season her time at Robin Redbreast had to be cut shorter and shorter, till at length barely six months of the twelve could be spent by her in England.

Most winters Jacinth spent some part of with her at Basse, and sometimes Camilla or Bessie replaced her. One year the whole Mildmay family joined her for two months. So there were many pleasant mitigations of her enforced banishment, though it gradually became impossible for those who had learned to love her so dearly to blind themselves to the fact that the gentle old woman was not far from the end of her chequered and at one time lonely life.

And one day in the early spring-time, when the sunshine was already warm and the sky already deeply blue in the genial south, when the snowdrops were raising their pretty timid heads in the garden at Robin Redbreast, and the birds were beginning to hope that the winter was over and gone, Lady Myrtle died. There was no one with her at the time. Captain Harper had left her but the week before, and Jacinth Mildmay was to have joined her a few days later.

'If I could but have been with her, mamma,' said the girl among her tears.

But perhaps it was better not. To some natures the sorrow of others is very hard to see, and I think Lady Myrtle was one of those. Jacinth was nineteen at the time of her old friend's death. Two years of Colonel Mildmay's time at Barmettle had yet to expire.

'We shall miss our summers at Robin Redbreast sadly, mamma, shall we not?' she said one day. 'What is to be done about it? Is it to be sold, or are the Harpers to have it? I hope so. Does papa know?'

'He has only heard about it recently,' said her mother. 'He and Captain Harper are Lady Myrtle's executors, but there has been a good deal of trouble and delay, for owing to her death having taken place abroad, some difficulties occurred about proving the will. But now I believe all is right, and your father is going to tell you about it.'

At that moment the door opened and Colonel Mildmay came in. He glanced at his wife with a half-inquiry in his eyes when he saw that she and his daughter were talking seriously.

'Yes,' replied Mrs Mildmay to his unspoken question, 'I was just saying to Jacinth that you were going to explain to her about our dear old friend's disposal of things.'

'I happened to ask mamma if the Harpers were going to live at Robin Redbreast,' said Jacinth. 'Somehow I hadn't thought about it before.'

'It must have been a "brain wave,"' said her father, 'for only this morning I decided to have a talk with you about it.'

Jacinth looked up with a slight feeling of apprehension. Colonel Mildmay's tone was very grave. But she had no reason for misgiving: she knew she had never – since her eyes had been awakened to the prejudice and jealousy she was in danger of yielding to – never felt or expressed anything but sincere esteem and affection for Lady Myrtle's relations.

'I don't want to hear anything in particular, papa,' she said gently, 'but just as you like, of course. It was only,' and her voice faltered a little, 'the associations with Robin Redbreast. We have been so happy there: I shouldn't like strangers to have it.'