Robin Redbreast: A Story for Girls

'I don't suppose she would speak of those past times to any one but me,' thought Jacinth proudly. 'Except, of course, perhaps to mamma.'

CHAPTER VIII.

DELICATE GROUND

The two days at Robin Redbreast passed most satisfactorily, and long before they came to an end Jacinth felt completely at home. It would have been almost impossible for her or for any girl not to feel grateful for Lady Myrtle's extreme kindness, but besides this, everything in the life suited Jacinth's peculiar character. She liked the perfect order, the completeness of the arrangements, just as – in very different surroundings – she liked and appreciated the same qualities in her aunt's sphere. Mere luxury or display would not have pleased her in the same way, and except in the one matter of flowers and all expenses connected with her garden, Lady Myrtle lived simply. The house itself, though in perfectly good taste, was decidedly plain; the furniture belonged to a severe and unluxurious date. The colouring was harmonious, but unobtrusive.

But Jacinth thought it perfection. Her own room – the one which the old lady had specially chosen for her, and which she impressed upon her she must think of as appropriated to her – was exactly what she liked. The chintz hangings – pale pink rosebuds on a white ground – the quaint spindle-legged dressing-tables and chairs, the comfortably spacious but undecorated wardrobe of dark old mahogany, the three-cornered bookcases fitted in to the angles of the walls with their lozenge-paned glass doors – all was just as she liked.

'It's so beautifully neat,' she said to Lady Myrtle. 'I like a house to be almost primly neat. Frances says she's sure I shall be an old maid, and I daresay I shall be. I shouldn't mind, if I had a house of my own like this to live in.'

Lady Myrtle glanced at her with one of her peculiar but approving smiles.

'That is another point in common between us,' she said. 'I have always felt like you, and when – let me see, it must be fully twenty years ago now – when, for the first time I really was perfectly free to furnish a house to suit myself, you see I carried out my own ideas.'

'Oh, I thought Robin Redbreast was really old – furniture and all,' said Jacinth with a slight tone of disappointment.

'So it is,' said Lady Myrtle. 'A good deal of it was here in the house, and I had it done up – and some things I brought from Goodacre. My brother-in-law who succeeded there kindly let me choose out things of my favourite date. And they did not suit Goodacre, which is very grand and heavy, and, to my mind, ugly.'

'I know what you mean,' said Jacinth, eagerly – 'enormous mirrors with huge gilt frames, and enormous gilt cornices over the window curtains, and great big patterns on the carpets. There was a house near Stannesley like that. It was interesting, something like an old palace, and grand; but I shouldn't like to live in a house of that kind.'

'No, there seems nothing personal about it. One's own little self makes no impression; you feel that you are just passing through it for the time. Elvedon was rather like that, though the present tenants have managed to lighten it a good deal. But our other place – I mean my own family's place, up in the north, where I knew your dear grandmother – though not so grand, is much more homelike than Elvedon. My nephew and his wife live there when they are not in London. It is not so expensive as the place here.'

Jacinth grew a little nervous and said exactly what she did not mean to say.

'Are they not very rich, then?' and instantly blushed crimson, which Lady Myrtle took as an expression of fear lest she had been indiscreet. And she hastened to answer so as to put the girl at ease again.

'No,' she said; 'far from it. But they will be better off some day, and it has been for their good that they have not been rich hitherto. The sins of the fathers are visited on the children, as you cannot fail to see for yourself, my dear, when you come to know more of life.' Lady Myrtle sighed. 'My poor brother Elvedon was very weak and foolish, led into all kinds of wild extravagance by – by another, much, much worse than he;' and here the old lady's face hardened. 'And naturally,' she went on, 'we – my father and I – dreaded what his son might turn out. Poor Elvedon, my nephew I mean, is far from a clever man, but he is sensible and steady, and so are his two sons. So, as I was saying, some day they will be better off.'

Jacinth listened with the utmost attention. She was much gratified by her hostess's confidence, and relieved, too, that no mention had been made of any other Harper relatives.

'Bessie and Margaret are not Lord Elvedon's daughters, of course,' she said to herself, 'so it does not seem as if they were near relations; perhaps, after all, they are not relations at all. So I don't see that I need bother my head about them; I might have mentioned them to Lady Myrtle among the girls at school without her noticing it, I daresay.'

'This is too old talk for you, my dear,' said the old lady, after a little silence.

'No, no indeed,' said Jacinth eagerly. 'I am so pleased you don't treat me as a child, dear Lady Myrtle. And I love to think of you and my grandmother long ago, when your families were almost relations, weren't they?'

'Yes, truly – Jacinth and I often said we loved each other more than if we had been sisters. That reminds me, my dear, that nice little sister of yours must come to see me some day soon, and the boy too, the next time you come. When shall that be?'

'Whenever you like, dear Lady Myrtle,' Jacinth replied.

'Well then, supposing you come again in a fortnight – next Saturday week, that is to say. I will send for you as before, and the two children must come with you and stay till six or seven; then I will send them home again and you will remain with me till Monday morning. I must not be selfish, otherwise I would gladly have you every week. But that would not be fair to your aunt.'

'It wouldn't matter so much for Aunt Alison,' said Jacinth; 'I really don't think she would mind. But Francie and Eugene would not like me to be away every Sunday.'

'Then let us try to make it every other,' said Lady Myrtle. 'My dearest child,' and she pressed the girl's hand, 'how I wish I could have you with me altogether. But no, that would not do – it would not be a right life for her' – she seemed as if she were speaking to herself. 'Tell me, dear,' she went on, 'you do feel already at home at Robin Redbreast? I want you to learn to love the little place as well as its old owner – who can't be its owner for ever,' she added in a lower voice, so that less quick ears than Jacinth's would scarcely have caught the words.

'I love it already dearly,' she replied. 'For your sake first of all, of course, but for its own too. I couldn't imagine a more perfect old house than it is.'

They were walking in the garden, for the weather was mild and Lady Myrtle had been able to go to church that morning. It was Sunday and late afternoon. The long level rays of the evening sun fell on the large lawn – smooth and even as a bowling-green – along one side of which, on the broad terrace, the two were pacing up and down. Lady Myrtle stopped short, she was holding the girl's arm, and looked up at the windows, glinting cheerily in the red glow beginning to be reflected from the sky.

'Yes,' she said, 'it really is a dear old place. And for any one who cared to fit it for a larger family there is plenty of space and convenience for extending it.'

'It seems a very good size already,' said Jacinth, 'though of course I cannot judge very well.'

'You must see it all,' said Lady Myrtle; 'the next time you come I hope I shall be quite well and able to show you all over it. No, it would scarcely need building to; but there are several rooms at the other side in rather an unfinished condition, because I really had no use for them. The last tenant was on the point of completing them when he left. He had a large family, and it was getting too small for them, but he unexpectedly came into a property elsewhere, and then my father gave me this place. There are some very nice rooms you have not seen. Have you been in the one where my old pensioners come for their dinner every Saturday?'

Jacinth shook her head.

'That would make a capital billiard room,' Lady Myrtle went on, Jacinth listening to all she said with the greatest interest. 'Indeed, Robin Redbreast has everything needed for a comfortable roomy house. It is too large for me, unless I had a good many visitors. When your father and mother come from India, Jacinth, I must have you all to stay with me.'

Jacinth's eyes sparkled.

'Oh how delightful that would be!' she said. 'I have often thought how they will miss Stannesley when they come home. For it is let for a long time. And wasn't it funny, Lady Myrtle, that last morning when we were saying good-bye to Uncle Marmy at the gate, we looked in at this garden, and said how lovely it would be if papa and mamma had come home, and we were all living together in a house like this! And to think it may come true, if you ask us all to stay with you.'

Lady Myrtle stroked Jacinth's hand fondly.

'Yes, dear,' she said, 'it may come true, and I trust it will.'

This conversation took place, as I said, on the Sunday afternoon. Very early the next morning the brougham took Jacinth back to Market Square Place, in time for her to start for school with Frances at their usual hour.

Frances did not receive with rapturous delight the news of her invitation to Robin Redbreast.

'Must I go?' she said. 'Wouldn't it do for just Eugene to go with you, Jacinth? He would enjoy it.'

'Yes, I should,' said Eugene, 'pertickerly if we have some of those little brown cakes for tea.'

'Eugene,' said Frances in a tone of disgust, 'I'm sure Lady Myrtle would not have asked you if she had known you were such a greedy little boy.'

They were in the dining-room waiting for their aunt, who, for once, was a few minutes late for dinner. Just then she came in. She greeted Jacinth pleasantly, and seemed glad to hear that she had enjoyed herself. Then she was told of the invitation for the following week, and Frances appealed to her to say she 'needn't go.' But Frances's hopes were speedily disappointed.

'Not go!' said Miss Mildmay; 'of course you must go. It would be most ungrateful to Lady Myrtle, and would, besides, put Jacinth in a very disagreeable position. You are the grand-daughter of Lady Myrtle's old friend as well as Jacinth, even though her special interest may be in Jacinth.'

'It would make me look so selfish too,' said Jacinth, who, now that she felt sure of her own place with the old lady, was far from wishing to deprive Frances of her share in the pleasures and advantages of their acquaintance with Robin Redbreast.

So Frances had to give in.

And when the day came she enjoyed the visit, on the whole, very much.

'If only,' she said to herself before starting, 'if only I could have got mamma's letter in answer to mine before going. I would have known then exactly how to do about the Harpers. Of course I can't tell stories, and they would never have wanted me to do that. I only hope nothing will be said about school or about anything to do with them.'

Then she tried to recall the exact words of Camilla Harper's letter, by this time two-thirds on its way to India to her mother.

Jacinth said nothing at all about the Harpers in connection with Lady Myrtle, and Frances began to think her sister had forgotten all about the question of their possible relationship, which in the meantime at least the younger girl was not sorry for.

It was again a lovely day – the weather seemed to favour the visits to Robin Redbreast – even milder than the Saturday of Jacinth's first stay there. And this time, instead of the brougham, a large roomy pony carriage came to fetch them, a spring cart having already called for Jacinth's portmanteau that morning.

'How lovely!' said Frances, as she and Eugene took their seats with great satisfaction opposite her sister and the coachman; 'I am so glad it is an open carriage. I wish Lady Myrtle would send us home in it again this evening: don't you, Eugene?'