Robin Redbreast: A Story for Girls

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 is so good 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 is all I 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.

'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 can scarcely remember 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 first evening 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 much younger than 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 tree tops, 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 it is you, to think I really and truly have you. Oh, can I ever be so happy again! Oh, mamma darling, I don't know how to 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 you everything. 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 first rush of 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 anything quite lately, 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'm sure it's because they've got poorer with 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.'

'And don't you 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 seem righter? I mean as if we were meant to do it.'

'I am going 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 you do think 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 feel the 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 certainly painful, a possibly offensive topic with the dear old 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 understood her perfectly. 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.

'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.