Robin Redbreast: A Story for Girls

Lady Myrtle seemed pleased.

'Thank you,' she said. 'Well, yes then; I will tell you what I want to know.'

This conversation took place at luncheon. That afternoon Jacinth sought her mother in her own room.

'Mamma,' she said, 'are you busy? May I talk to you a little?'

Mrs Mildmay laid down her pen.

'I was writing to Marmy,' she said, 'but I have plenty of time. What is it, dear? I am glad to have a little quiet talk together. I have been wishing for it, too.'

But Jacinth scarcely seemed to listen.

'Mamma,' she began again, somewhat irrelevantly it might have seemed. 'Brook Street isn't a very grand part of London, is it? At least all the houses in it are not tremendously grand, are they? I was thinking about Lady Myrtle's house. Couldn't it be arranged for us to be her tenants? I'm sure she would like it if she thought we would. Mightn't I say something about it to her? She likes me to say whatever I think of, but I thought – for such a thing as a house, perhaps I had better ask you first.'

'But, my dearest child, we don't want any house in London,' said Mrs Mildmay with a smile which she strove to make unconstrained. 'You forget, dear, the choice was never between Barmettle and London, but between Barmettle and India again, and' —

'But mamma,' interrupted Jacinth, 'please answer my question first. Is Brook Street very grand? Would a house there be out of the question for us, even if we – if we had one there for nothing?'

'Yes; unless we had another thousand a year at least, we could not possibly live there on our income with any comfort or consistency,' Mrs Mildmay replied quietly.

The girl's face fell.

'A thousand a year! that's a good deal,' she said. 'I had thought' —

'But why worry yourself about things that can never be, dear Jassie?' said her mother. 'We were going to tell you – even your Aunt Alison does not know yet – that it is all decided, and oh, I am so thankful that the long separation is over at last. Your father wrote yesterday to accept the Barmettle appointment.'

Jacinth grew scarlet, then very, very pale.

'Mamma,' she exclaimed, and the low repression in her tone was more unnatural – more alarming, I had almost said – in one so young, than any even violent ebullition of temper. 'Mamma, it can't be true. You are saying it to tease me. You – you and papa would never have settled it without telling me, without consulting Lady Myrtle, after all her goodness?'

'No,' replied Mrs Mildmay, arming herself for the contest by a resolute determination not to lose her self-control, however it might be tried; 'no, though a little reflection would show you that you should have more trust in your parents, dear Jacinth; it was not done without consulting our kind old friend. And however she may regret it, I know she respects your father's decision.'

Jacinth looked up eagerly; a reaction of hope came over her.

'Mamma,' she said breathlessly, 'believe me, I don't mean to be either disrespectful or distrustful, but did Lady Myrtle say nothing against it? Is she perhaps going to do so when – when she has thought everything over?'

'She did say everything she could; she did use the strongest arguments she had: but she could not but see that your father's motives were right, and so she saw it must be as he said,' replied Mrs Mildmay.

A harder look crept over Jacinth's face; the eager, almost nervous, anxiety died out of it.

'There is something about all this that I do not understand,' she said. 'Unless you and papa mean to treat me as a baby, I think I have a right to know. I think Lady Myrtle would say so.'

Mrs Mildmay felt much perplexed. Any approach to diplomacy, anything but perfect candour and frankness, was so foreign to her nature, that it was difficult for her not at once to speak out and explain the whole. But then, if she did so, she might be only sowing seeds of future bitterness. It was improbable, to say the least, that Jacinth had realised in any definite way Lady Myrtle's intentions with regard to her, seeing that the old lady had not announced them to her.

'All she can know is only that Lady Myrtle meant to do something,' reflected Jacinth's mother. 'It would be for her happiness, and for that of us all, that she should never know more.'

Jacinth saw the trouble in her mother's face.

'Mamma,' she said, 'if you won't speak to me openly, I will ask Lady Myrtle herself.'

Mrs Mildmay flushed.

'Jassie,' she said quietly, 'you do not mean it, but your tone sounds almost like a threat – to me – to your mother?' And in spite of herself, her voice trembled a little.

But still Jacinth repeated coldly, 'I think I have a right to know.'

At that moment the door opened, and to Mrs Mildmay's immense relief her husband entered.

'What is the matter?' he asked quickly. 'Am I interrupting you?'

'On the contrary,' said his wife, 'I am very glad you have come. Jacinth is, as I half feared she would be, exceedingly upset by the news about Barmettle, and she seems to think we have not treated her with the confidence she deserves.'

'You cannot feel that, when I tell you that my decision was only made yesterday,' said her father to Jacinth.

'Yes. I think you might have – have consulted me a little before making it,' the girl replied. 'It is something to me personally; to have to live at a place like that now I am nearly grown up.'

She seemed to be purposely emphasising the selfish part of her dissatisfaction out of a kind of reckless defiance.

'Do you quite understand that it was a choice between this appointment and an indefinite return to India?' said Colonel Mildmay.

'I understand that you think so. But I don't see it. There was the London thing. And even if not, I would rather have had India.'

'No, no, Jassie, don't do yourself injustice,' exclaimed her mother. 'Not when you think of the risk to your father's health.'

Jacinth hesitated.

'But there was a choice,' she said; and now there was a touch of timidity in her voice.

Colonel Mildmay considered; they were approaching the crucial point, and he took his resolution.

'No, Jacinth,' he said. 'To my mind, as an honourable man, there was no choice. I should have forfeited for ever my own self-respect had I agreed to Lady Myrtle's proposal.'

And then he rapidly, but clearly, put before her the substance of their old friend's intentions and wishes, and his reasons for refusing to fall in with them.

'Lady Myrtle is too good a woman to sow discord in a family,' he said, 'between a child and her parents. And it was impossible for us to approve of the apportionment of her property she proposed, knowing that there exist at this very time those who have a claim on her, who most thoroughly deserve the restoration of what should have been theirs always; who have suffered, indeed, already only too severely for the sin and wrong-doing of another.'

Jacinth started, and the lines of her face hardened again.

'I thought it was that,' she exclaimed. 'Those people – they are at the bottom of it, then.'

'Jacinth!' said her mother.

'I beg your pardon, mamma,' said the girl quickly. 'It must sound very strange for me to speak like that; but, you don't know how I have been teased about these Harpers. And mamma, Lady Myrtle doesn't look upon them as you and papa do, so why should you expect me to do so? Do you suppose she will leave them anything she would have left us – me?'

'Very likely not,' said Colonel Mildmay.

'Then for everybody's sake, why not have left things as Lady Myrtle meant? I – we, I mean,' and Jacinth's face crimsoned, 'could have been good to them; it would have been better for them in the end.'

'Do you suppose they would have accepted help – money, to put it coarsely – from strangers?' said Colonel Mildmay. 'It is not help they should have, but actual practical restoration of what should be theirs. And even supposing our decision does them no good, can't you see, Jacinth, that anything else would be wrong?'

'No,' said Jacinth, 'I don't see it.'

'Then I am sorry for you,' said her father coldly.

'I know,' said Jacinth, 'that Lady Myrtle likes things one way or another. I suppose she will give us up altogether now. I suppose she will leave off caring anything about me. You think very badly of me, papa, I can see; you think me mercenary and selfish and everything horrid; but – it wasn't only for myself, and it isn't only because of what she was doing for us, and meant to do for us. I have got to love Lady Myrtle very much, and I shall feel dreadfully the never seeing her any more, and – and' —

Here, not altogether to her mother's distress, Jacinth broke down and began to sob bitterly. Mrs Mildmay got up from her seat, and came close to where the girl was sitting by the table.

'My poor dear child,' she said, 'we have never thought you selfish in that sort of way.'

'No,' agreed her father; 'that you may believe. You have had of late too much responsibility thrown upon you, and it has given you the feeling that the whole fortunes of your family depended upon you in some sense. Be content to be a child a little longer, my Jacinth, and to trust your parents. And there is no need for you to anticipate any change with Lady Myrtle. She will care for you, and for us all, as much as ever – more perhaps; and as much time as it will be right for you to spend away from your own home, you shall have our heartiest consent to spending with her. If you can in any way give her pleasure – and I know you can – it will be the very least we can do in return for her really wonderful goodness to us.'

'I should like to see her; to be with her sometimes,' said Jacinth, whose sobs had now calmed down into quiet crying. 'But I don't want – once we go away to that place – I don't want ever to see Robin Redbreast again. Ever since' – and here she had to stop a moment – 'ever since that first day when we passed it with Uncle Marmy, I have had a sort of feeling to this house – a kind of presentiment. I can't bear to think of its going to strangers, or – or people that know nothing about Lady Myrtle. And very likely, if she leaves all she has to big hospitals or something like that, very likely this place will be sold.'

'It may be so,' said Colonel Mildmay; and he added with a smile, 'I wish for your sake I were rich enough to buy it, my poor dear child.'

So Jacinth's castles in the air were somewhat rudely destroyed. There was but one consolation to her. Lady Myrtle was even more loving than hitherto, though she said nothing about the collapse of her plans. For Mrs Mildmay gave her to understand that matters, so far as was fitting, had been explained to her elder daughter.

'Humph!' said the old lady. 'That seals my lips. For of course I cannot express disapproval of her parents to the child.'

But her tenderness and marked affection went some way to soothe the smarting of the girl's sore feelings.

'She understands me far better than papa and mamma do,' thought Jacinth. 'If they meant me to see everything through their eyes, they shouldn't have left me away from them all these years.'

Still a curious strain of pride in her father's stern honesty, in his utter disinterestedness, now and then mingled with her feelings of disappointment. She could not help feeling proud of him! Nevertheless the tears were many and bitter which Jacinth shed when the last night of their stay at Robin Redbreast came.

CHAPTER XVII.

TWO DEGREES OF HONESTY

Barmettle is not an attractive place; though like most places in this varied world it has its interests and even no doubt its charm for many of its inhabitants – its bright and happy homes, as well as its thousands of hard, if not overworked, pale-faced artisans, men and women, of many grades and classes.

And the sun can shine there sometimes; and not so many miles from the very centre of the town, you can escape from the heavy pall of smoke-filled air, into fresh and picturesque country, whose beauties, to my thinking, strike one all the more vividly from the force of contrast with the ugliness and griminess which you cannot forget are so near.

There had been some talk – when the Mildmay family first contemplated the pitching of their tent in this unknown land – there had been some talk of a house in the neighbourhood of the town, a few miles out, where a garden and a field or two would have been possible, to reconcile the children and their mother, to some extent, to the great change from all their former experiences. But Colonel Mildmay had been obliged to give up hopes of this. There were several difficulties in the way, and the house which sometimes at such crises turns up with such undeniable advantages as to over-ride the less immediate objections, had not offered itself. So, considering the inconvenience of scanty communication between the barracks and the 'pretty' side of the outskirts, the impossibility of day-school arrangements for Eugene, and a very certain amount of loneliness and isolation, especially in the winter months, the fairly desirable house in St Wilfred's Place which did offer itself carried the day.

It was but five minutes' walk from Colonel Mildmay's official quarters, and conveniently near Eugene's school; it was very much in the minds of the teachers who now replaced the Misses Scarlett's institution as regarded the girls; it was not duller as to outlook and surroundings than had to be at Barmettle, for it faced St Wilfred's Church, one of the oldest and most interesting structures in the modern town, which had once been a pleasant straggling north-country village; and last, though not least, its rent was moderate.

And Mrs Mildmay, unspoilt by her long residence in the East – as full of energy and resources as when she arranged the drawing-rooms at Stannesley in her careless girlish days, and laughed merrily at her kind step-mother's old-fashioned notions – exerted herself to make the house as pretty as she possibly could.

'I am glad it is cheap,' she said to her husband, 'for we can afford to spend rather more in making it comfortable and nice, especially for Jassie.'

And Jacinth's room was all a girl could wish, and at night, when the outer world was shut off, and the dark square hall and wide quaint staircase, which had attracted the new tenants in their house-hunting, were lighted up, looking bright and cheerful with the crimson carpets and curtains which Barmettle smoke had not as yet had time to dull, Frances's expression of approval, 'Really it looks so nice that you might fancy it wasn't Barmettle at all,' could scarcely be contradicted.

But Frances, like her mother, was born with the happy faculty for seeing the best side of things. It was all, naturally, much harder on Jacinth. And as Jacinth stood one morning in November looking out into the dreary street, where rain had been pouring down ever since daybreak, and was still dripping monotonously, she did feel that her lines had not of late fallen in pleasant places. Yet she was not so selfish as this sounds. She had made a struggle to see things as her parents did, and in this she had not been entirely unsuccessful, and the constant love and watchful sympathy which were now a part of her daily life, unconsciously influenced her in good and gentle ways which she scarcely realised.

Some ground she had gained. She had come to see that if her father and mother felt about the Harper family as they did, they could not have acted otherwise. And her own conscience was not, it will be remembered, entirely clear. 'Of course,' she said to herself, 'if Lady Myrtle had been left to do as she wished, I should have felt it my duty to do something for the Harpers. I'm sure I should have found some way of managing it.' But no doubt there was a kind of relief in feeling it was taken out of her hands, for Jacinth was growing gradually less confident in her own powers: for the first time in her life she was realising the delight and privilege of having others wiser than herself to whom she could look up.

'Mamma,' she said, on the morning in question, 'do you think there really are places where it rains ever so much more than at others? or is it only that we notice it more at some? I really could almost think that it rains here every day.'

Mrs Mildmay smiled.

'No, dear, it really does not. I don't think the rainfall here is much greater than in London or at Thetford, but the heavy air and the grayness make us, as you say, notice it more. In many places where there actually is more rain than the average, the country is peculiarly bright and fresh. Think of the grass in Ireland.'

But Jacinth's thoughts were already wandering elsewhere.

'Mamma,' she began again, 'do you think we shall have to stay here for Christmas?'

'I suppose so,' replied Mrs Mildmay. 'Even if Lady Myrtle wished it – as indeed I am sure she does – it would hardly be worth while for us to go to her for only two or three days, which is all the leave your father could get. And there are a good many things we have to see to here.'

'Yes,' said Frances, 'there's the Christmas treat for the barracks children. It's never been properly done. And Miss Lettice Piers is going to invite us to their treat at St Wilfred's first, so that we may see. I'd like best to have our visits to Robin Redbreast in the summer, except that it must be rather dull for Lady Myrtle. She was so pleased to have us there last Christmas.'

'I wish we could have her here,' said Mrs Mildmay. 'But she would never be allowed to come up north in the winter.'

Jacinth sighed.

'It seems a good while since we heard from Lady Myrtle,' she said. 'I hope she's not ill. I did think she would have tried to get us there for Christmas.'

'I don't think she can be ill,' said Mrs Mildmay, 'for your aunt would have known it. She goes to see Lady Myrtle regularly. I shall be hearing from Alison in a day or two, however.'

'Jassie,' said Frances, a moment or two later, when their mother had left the room, 'I wish you wouldn't look so melancholy. Just think what a lot of nice things have come to us, as well as the sad ones. Just fancy how we should have been ready to jump out of our skins for joy if we had known, when we left Stannesley, how soon papa and mamma would be at home with us.'

'I know,' said Jacinth. 'I do try to think of all that. But I do so dislike this gloomy place, Francie, and I think papa looks so fagged, and we have scarcely any friends we care for; the people are all so stupid, and so' —

'So what?'

'So rich,' said Jacinth, rather at a loss apparently what crime to lay at the doors of the good folk of the manufacturing town who had incurred her displeasure.

Frances laughed.

'That's not a sin,' she said. 'Lady Myrtle's rich, and so in a way, I suppose, is Uncle Marmy.'

'I mean they seem to think of it so. Once or twice, when I've paid calls with mamma, they were so fussy and show-off. You know how I mean,' said Jacinth.

'Well, there are plenty of poor too, if that would make you like Barmettle any better. Amy Piers says there are some dreadfully poor, and she says that even the ones who get very big wages don't save at all, and then if there comes a bad time – a bad time for trade, when some of the people have to be turned off: it does come like that now and then, she says, though I don't understand why – they are really starving.'

'They should be taught to save, then,' said Jacinth. 'Why don't the Piers teach them? If I were the vicar, I'd preach sermons about it. If people are so silly, they must expect to suffer for it.'

'But think of the poor little children!' said Frances, whose sympathy was readier than her sister's. 'It isn't their fault, and they suffer the most. Amy says it's a good deal owing to the people spending so much on beer and brandy and horrid tipsifying things. I'm sure the Piers do all they possibly can, and you know how papa says that, even with all the strict rules in the army, it's awfully difficult to keep the men sober. If I were the Queen, Jass, I'd make a law against having so many public-houses; I would indeed.'

'The Queen can't make laws all by herself like that, Frances. You don't understand. If the people were taught how horrid it is to get drunk, they'd leave off wanting to buy too much beer and things like that, and then the public-houses would have to give up because they wouldn't have customers enough. That's the best way.'

'Well, I think it should be done both ways,' said Frances. 'If there weren't so many public-houses, there wouldn't be so much temptation;' and the little reformer nodded her head sagely.

Just then Mrs Mildmay re-entered the room.

'Jassie dear,' she said, 'it's Saturday morning. You have no lessons, and though it's so rainy I know you're not afraid of the weather. Frances has a cold, so she mustn't come out. Will you wrap yourself up well, and come a little way with me to help me to carry some things to Mrs Wake? She has gone to stay with her mother, you know, for a little change, but they are very poor people, and I must help them as much as I can.'

Jacinth sprang to her feet eagerly.

'Oh yes, mamma,' she exclaimed, 'I should like very much to come. I'll be ready directly. I'll put on a thick jacket and my waterproof cape over that.'

And in a few minutes the mother and daughter were making their way, each laden with some parcels as well as the unavoidable umbrella, along the muddy pavement in the direction of a poorer part of the town. Mrs Wake was the wife of one of Colonel Mildmay's soldier servants; she happened to belong to a Barmettle family, which was just now very fortunate for her, as she had had a most serious illness in the barracks, and had lately been moved for greater quiet to her own old home.

'Francie and I were just talking about the poor people here,' said Jacinth. 'Amy Piers tells her about them. I shall be very glad to see one of the homes they live in.'

'It will be rather a good specimen, though they are very poor people,' said Mrs Mildmay; 'for they are thrifty and most respectable. But for many years the father has not been able to earn full wages, as he was crippled by an accident. Indeed, but for the kindness of the head of the factory where he worked, he would have been turned off altogether on a very small pension. It was true kindness to let him stay on to do what work he could, for it kept up his spirits.'

'The master must be a good man,' said Jacinth.

'I believe he is – one of the best in Barmettle,' said Mrs Mildmay. 'But here we are, Jassie,' and as she spoke she turned down a small passage, not wide enough to be called by a more important name, leading out of the already poor and narrow street they were in, and knocked at a door a few steps on.

It was quickly opened. A rather gaunt and careworn, but clean and honest-looking, elderly woman stood before them. Her eyes were red with crying, but she welcomed Mrs Mildmay very civilly, though with a sort of reserve of manner which struck Jacinth as very different from the extremely hearty, though respectful, deference with which, as her grandmother's messenger, she used to be received by their own villagers at Stannesley.

'You'll be come to ask for my daughter,' said the woman. She had been a domestic servant, and had but little north-country accent. 'You're welcome, I'm sure, and she'll take it kindly. Take a seat,' and she led them into the little kitchen, tidy and clean, though encumbered with some pieces of treasured furniture decidedly too big for it. 'Yes, she's fairly – th' doctor's main content.'

'Oh,' said Mrs Mildmay, 'I am glad to hear it. I was afraid when I saw you' – But she stopped suddenly, for before she could say more the old woman had sunk into a chair, and, flinging her apron over her head, was giving way to bitter weeping. Jacinth felt both distressed and alarmed. Like her mother she had noticed the signs of tears on Mrs Burton's face.

'I am so sorry,' said Mrs Mildmay, getting up as she said the words, and standing beside the woman, she gently laid her hand on her arm. 'Is it some new trouble – your husband?'

'Nay, nay,' sobbed the poor thing. 'Burton is finely – for him, that's to say. But have ye not heard th' ill news?' and she raised her head in surprise. 'Th' measter,' and as she grew absorbed in what she had to tell, she fell back into the kind of talk she had accustomed herself to discard when with 'gentry.' 'He's gone!' and her sobs broke out again.