Part 25 (1/2)

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 friends.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+p 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.'