MAMMA.
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 it _is_ going
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 home of 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 seemed to 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 not _shocked_. 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 trust _will_ never 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 must _not_ return 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 for her 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 temporarily without 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, I _wonder_ if 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 baths _must_, they now declared, be followed up by a winter
in a mild, dry climate.
'Of this,' said the mother, 'we are not even _thinking_. 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, he _must_ stay,' 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 ourselves _to_ decide,' said Bessie. 'And we
will write and tell mother that is settled. And what else _can_ we do,
Camilla? Father _must_ stay 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. But _we_ can. Ask her to lend us some money,
whatever is strictly necessary, and tell her that _somehow_ we 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, we _will_ repay it. Can we not save a little on our living?
I suppose we couldn't do with a room less; it would not 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 is
_which_ of 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 at _Thetford_, the very part of the country
our family comes from. And so near to Robin Redbreast too.'
Bessie reared her head. '_I_ don't mind that,' she said. 'I should
rather like it the better.'
'But _father_?' 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 of time--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 Myrtle _hopes_ you 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 in the 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 could _quite_ squeeze
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 who _might_ have been _the_ one. 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 I _shall_ have 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 went away 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, 'I
_must_ tell 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. 'It _is_ wonderful. 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 come back to us
anyway,' said Frances, 'but it wouldn't have been _so_ lovely if we'd
all been going to Aunt Alison's. It's _rather_ a poky place, you know,
mamma, and in India I suppose the houses are all _enormous_. I can only
remember like in a dream, about very big, very white rooms.'
'The last house we've had was far from _enormous_,' 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 mind
_where_ we 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, everything _would_ seem
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't _this_ perfect?'
She seemed full of enthusiasm, which her mother was glad to see and
quick to respond to.
'It _is_ beautiful: I have never seen anything like it,' she replied
warmly. 'And _could_ there 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?'