Robin Redbreast Part 20

Southcliff was a very dull little place, especially so in winter, of course. In fine weather there is always a charm about the seaside, even on the barest and least picturesque coast. There are the endless varieties of sky panorama--the wonderful sunsets, if you are lucky enough to face seawards to the west; the constantly changing effects of light and colour reflected in the water itself. And on a wild or rugged coast, winter and stormy weather bring of course their own grand though terrible displays.

But Southcliff, despite its promising name, was tame in the extreme. The 'cliff' was so meagre and unimposing as to suggest the suspicion of being only an artificial or semi-artificial erection; the sh.o.r.e had no excitement about it, not even that of quicksands. It was the 'safest'

spot all along the coast; even the most suicidally disposed of small boys could _scarcely_ come to mischief there. The tides went out and came in with an almost bourgeois regularity and respectability; there was no possibility of being 'surprised' by the waves; no lifeboat, because within the memory of man no vessel of any description whatever had been wrecked there; no lighthouse, no smugglers' caves of ancient fame, no possibility of adventure of any kind--'no nothing,' Bessie Harper was once heard to say, when she was very little, ''cept the sea and the sky.'

A grand exception those, however, as we have said. And dull though it was, there were some people who loved the little place as their home, and were most ready to be happy in it.

It had some few distinct advantages. It was _very_ healthy, and for these days very cheap. There was a good church, venerable and well cared for; the few, very few residents were all estimable and some interesting. Such as it was, take it all in all, it had seemed a very haven of refuge to Captain Harper and his wife when, some eight or ten years ago, they had pitched their tent there, after the last hopes of recovering any of Mrs Harper's lost money--hopes which for long had every now and then buoyed them up only to prove again delusive--had finally deserted them.

'At anyrate,' the wife, with her irrepressibly sanguine nature, had said, 'we have the comfort of now knowing the worst. And Colin and Bertram are started. _What_ a good thing the boys were the eldest! There is only Fitz to think about, and we'll manage him somehow. For _of course_ the three girls will turn out well. Look at Camilla already.'

Fitz was then about five--the youngest son, the youngest of the family excepting delicate little Margaret. He _was_ 'managed,' and not badly, though a public school was an impossibility; his destination proved to be the navy, and thither at the proper age he made his way in orthodox fashion. The girls, helped by their mother, and by their father too, did their best, and it was far from a bad best. They were naturally intelligent; intensely anxious to seize all opportunities of learning, so that a stray chance of half a dozen lessons in music or French did more for them than as many years will do for most ordinary girls; they were, the two elder ones at least, wonderfully healthy in mind and body, bright-tempered, faithful, unselfish, inheriting from their father the n.o.ble characteristics which in some mysterious way had in him so flourished as to oust all the reckless and contemptible qualities of the Bernard Harper who had half-broken his sister's heart, and brought down in sorrow to the grave his gray-haired father.

But alas! they had _not_ known the worst, as the loving, brave-spirited wife and mother had believed. In some sense, it is true, they had not known the _best_, for the years had brought many satisfactions, many unlooked-for, though unimportant, mitigations of the poverty so hard to bear cheerfully--people had been 'very kind.' But the poverty itself had increased. There were literally unavoidable expenses for 'the boys,' if they were not to be stranded in their careers; there was an unexpected rising of the rent owing to their good landlord's sudden death by accident; there was, worst of all, the terrible strain of Captain Harper's ill-health. In itself this was sad enough for the wife and daughters who adored him: it became almost an agony when, joined to the knowledge that more money, and not so very much more, might both relieve his suffering and hold out a reasonable prospect of comparative restoration.

One operation--now some years ago--had succeeded for the time; but not being followed by the treatment at home and residence abroad prescribed, the improvement had not been lasting. Then it was that Mrs Lyle had written to her aunt, with the result that we know. Her letter was returned unopened.

Then there came a period of comparative comfort, and for two or three years the family at Hedge End (such was the not very euphonious name of the Harpers' house) took heart again, and began to be sure 'father was going to get well all of himself, after all.' And during this time some other cheering things came to pa.s.s. An old acquaintance of long-ago days between Mrs Harper and the Misses Scarlett was renewed by the ladies of Ivy Lodge coming to Southcliff one Midsummer holiday-time for sea-air, and this resulted in their offering to take Camilla, then almost grown-up, and later her younger sisters, on exceptionally moderate terms. The news from and of the far-away 'boys' was regular and good.

The parents began to breathe freely, and to dare to hope that they had pa.s.sed the worst of their troubles.

But alas! it was only an interlude. Scarcely had Bessie and Margaret been settled at Ivy Lodge when there came anxiety about Colin--tidings of his prostration by a bad attack of fever; then, when he was able to write of his recovery, little Fitz broke his leg, and had to be brought home at the cost of much expense as well as distress to be nursed well again. And worst of all, through these many weeks a terrible suspicion was dawning on poor Captain Harper--a suspicion all too soon to be changed into a certainty--that he himself was falling back again, that the very symptoms he had been warned of were reappearing, and that unless something were done he might find himself a hopeless and complete cripple.

He kept it to himself till Fitz was all right again; then it had to be told. And the painful journey to London, which Frances heard of at school, followed, with the great doctor's terribly perplexing verdict.

What was to be done? Every conceivable suggestion was made and discussed, but so far no definite scheme had been hit upon.

It was at this juncture that the mail which brought the letter from her mother so anxiously looked for by Frances Mildmay, brought also tidings from Mrs Lyle to her relations at Southcliff.

_This_ letter came at breakfast-time; there was no mid-day post at the little bathing-place, but it was nearer London than Thetford.

'From Aunt Flora, mother,' said Camilla, the only one besides her young brother now at home. 'I do hope it is cheerful, otherwise----No, I suppose it would not do for you to read it first before giving it to father?'

Mrs Harper shook her head. She was a slight dark-haired woman, at first sight more like her youngest daughter than the others, but with a much more hopeful expression in her eyes, and far greater firmness and determination in all the lines of her face, so that, in spite of superficial dissimilarity, Bessie Harper really resembled her mother more nearly than either Camilla, calm, gentle, by nature possibly, a little indolent, or the nervous, anxious-minded Margaret.

'No,' she replied, 'it is no use keeping anything from your father. He has got an almost magic power of finding out things. Besides, your Aunt Flora always tries to cheer him if she can. Put the letter on the tray beside his breakfast, Camilla. I will take it up myself.'

Camilla and Fitz had almost finished their meal before Mrs Harper returned.

'I do hope there's nothing wrong,' said Camilla, with the apprehensiveness which reiterated experience of ill-tidings begets in even the calmest nature.

'It can't be my having broken my leg again,' said her brother, with a not very successful attempt at a joke; 'it was horrid, but I wouldn't mind breaking the other any day if it would save father's getting worse.'

But at that moment their mother came in. Her face was decidedly brighter than when she had left the room.

'Mother dear, do eat some breakfast. You'll be quite faint,' said Camilla, tenderly; 'I was nearly going after you to see if anything were the matter.'

'No dear, thank you,' replied her mother. 'Your aunt's letter is unusually interesting. Fancy! is it not a curious coincidence?--rather a pleasant one, indeed--the Lyles have just made acquaintance at this new place with Colonel and Mrs Mildmay, the parents of the two girls at Miss Scarlett's.'

Camilla looked up with a little misgiving.

'Aunt Flora is not very discreet always, mother,' she said; 'I hope she won't have confided too much to Mrs Mildmay. It might come round in some disagreeable way to--Robin Redbreast.'

'I think Mrs Mildmay must be particularly nice and sensible,' Mrs Harper replied. 'Of course your aunt has talked to her about Lady Myrtle and all the old story; it would scarcely have been in human nature, certainly not in Flora's nature, not to do so, when she found that her new friend was the daughter of Lady Jacinth Denison; but I don't see that it can do any harm. Mrs Mildmay has seen nothing of Lady Myrtle since she was a little child; it is only quite lately, as we know, that your great-aunt has come across the Mildmay girls, really by accident.

Mrs Mildmay is pleased at it, for her mother's sake, but I am sure she is not a person to make any mischief. Indeed,' she added with some hesitation, 'it is just possible that indirectly it may do good. Not that your aunt suggests anything of the kind.'

Camilla's face flushed.

'I should hope not, indeed,' she said indignantly; 'when you think of the insult she exposed herself and us to, that time, mother, it would be _impossible_ ever to accept any help from Lady Myrtle.'

But Mrs Harper did not at once reply. Her face had grown very grave, and her eyes seemed to be looking far into things.

'I cannot quite say that,' she answered at last. 'There are times when I am afraid to say what I would not accept, for your father's sake. I feel as if I would consent to anything not wrong or sinful that could save him. And remember, we must be just. As things are, Lady Myrtle knows nothing of us except that we are poor. And there is every excuse for her deep-seated prepossessions against her brother Bernard's family. Pride must not blind our fair judgment, Camilla.'

The girl did not reply. She felt the reasonableness of her mother's argument.

'But oh,' she thought to herself, 'I should _hate_ to be indebted to Lady Myrtle for any help. What would I not do--what would we all not do, rather than that!'

Her feelings might almost have been written on her face, for Fitz, who had been listening silently, though intently, to the conversation, here made a remark which might have been a remonstrance with her unspoken protest.

'There's one thing to be said,' began the boy. 'Even though it's all Lady Myrtle's by _law_, it came to her from father's own grandfather. If our grandfather had been good, his share would have been his and then father's and then ours. There's a sort of right about it. It isn't as if it was all Lady Myrtle's own in any other way--through her husband, for instance--and that she did anything for us just out of pity, because we were relations. That _would_ be horrid.'

Fitz was only fifteen, but he and Margaret seemed older than their years, as is not unusual with the youngest members of a large family.

Besides, all the Harpers had grown up in full knowledge of and sympathy with their parents' anxieties. Living as they did, in closest family union, it would have been all but impossible to prevent its being so, save by some forced and unnatural reticence, the evil of which would have been greater than the risk of saddening the children by premature cares.

So neither Mrs Harper nor her daughter felt the least inclined to 'snub'

the boy for his observation, which contained a strong element of common-sense.

'Lady Myrtle's wealth comes _in part_ from her husband,' said Mrs Harper. 'That makes one feel the more strongly that the Harper portion should to some extent return to where it is so needed. But your father has told me that the Elvedons are sure to inherit some of it, and that is quite right.'

'And,' said Camilla, with a little effort, anxious to show her mother that she did wish to be quite 'fair-judging,' 'you know, Fitz, as we have often said, if our grandfather, being what he was, had got his share, it is most improbable that any of it would have come to father.

After all,' she added with an honest smile that lighted up her quiet face and made it almost as bright as Bessie's--'after all, it was better for the money to be kept together by Lady Myrtle, than for it to be thrown away and _n.o.body_ to have any good of it. She is a generous old woman, too, in outside ways. I see her name in connection with several philanthropic inst.i.tutions.'

'And really good and well-managed things, your father says. She must be a wise and considerate woman,' said Mrs Harper.

'All the more pity, then, that she and father have never come together,'

said Camilla with a sigh. 'She would be able to appreciate him. I never could imagine any one wiser and juster than father--though you come pretty near him sometimes, I must say, mother;' and she smiled again.

'Neither of you is ever the least bit unfair to any one, and it does take such a lot of self-control and--and--a wonderfully well-balanced mind, I suppose, to be like that.'

'I have only learned it--if I have learned it--from your father,'

replied Mrs Harper. 'At your age I was dreadfully impetuous and hasty. I often wonder, dear child, how you can be so thoughtful and helpful as you are.'

Camilla's eyes sparkled with pleasure.

'Mother,' she said, 'we mustn't degenerate into a mutual admiration society. I shall tell father how we've been b.u.t.tering each other up all breakfast-time. It will amuse him. I'm going to see if he will have some more tea.'

And she ran off.

By mid-day Captain Harper was established on his sofa in the little drawing-room, which his wife and daughters still strove so _very_ hard to keep fresh and pretty. From this sofa, alas! especially now that winter was in the ascendant even at sheltered Southcliff, the invalid was but seldom able to move. For walking had become exceedingly painful and difficult, and so slow that even a little fresh air at the best part of the day could only be procured at the risk of chill and cold--a risk great and dangerous. And barely six months ago the tap of his crutch had been one of the most familiar sounds in the little town; he had been able to walk two or three miles with perfect ease and the hearty enjoyment which his happy nature seemed to find under all circ.u.mstances.