Strange to say, the antic.i.p.ated reproof from Jacinth never came. It was true there was not much time for any private talk between the sisters, for Frances and Eugene went back to Market Square Place that same afternoon with their aunt. But even when, a week later, Jacinth herself rejoined them there a day or two before the reopening of Ivy Lodge school, there was no mention of the Harpers, and no allusion to what had pa.s.sed at luncheon the day of Miss Mildmay's visit to Robin Redbreast.

'Can it be that Lady Myrtle is really going to be kind to them, and that she told Jacinth not to be vexed with me?' thought sanguine little Frances. She would have felt less hopeful had she known that not one word had pa.s.sed between her sister and the old lady on the subject of her unknown relations. And Jacinth had simply made up her mind to think no more about them; her conscience now being, or so at least she told herself, completely at rest--the matter entirely out of her hands.

It was the easier to carry out this resolution that Bessie and Margaret's places were vacant, though no one seemed very clearly to understand why they had not returned, and the Misses Scarlett expressed the heartiest regret that they had not done so. Honor Falmouth too had left, but this had been known by antic.i.p.ation to her companions for some time. And in the little world of a school, as in the bigger world outside, it is not for long that the circles in the waters of daily life mark the spot of any disappearance; it has to be so, and does not necessarily imply either heartlessness or caprice. We are limited as to our powers in all directions--the more marvellous that somewhere, invisible, unsuspected, our innermost self lives on. And far down, below the surface restlessness and change, may we not hope that we shall find again the fibres of loving friendships and pure affections whose roots were deep and true, though at times it may seem that like other precious and beautiful things they were but as a dream?

Frances missed her friends sadly, the more so that not knowing their exact address, and half afraid also to do such a thing on her own responsibility, she could not write to them. But nothing depressed Frances now for very long or very deeply. She had found a panacea. All would be right soon, 'when mamma comes home.'

CHAPTER XIII.

MAMMA.

At Thetford the weeks till Easter--it came in the middle of April that year--pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.sed 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 antic.i.p.ations. Morning and night the faithful, simple-hearted girl added to her other pet.i.tions 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 G.o.d 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 bra.s.ses 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.sed 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 appet.i.te 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.'