Robinetta

“It isn’t necessary to gossip, is it?–but I’ve a wholesome interest in my fellow creatures.”

“And it is well to know about people a little; when one comes among strangers as you do, Mrs. Loring; one can’t be too careful–an American, particularly.”

Miss Smeardon’s voice trailed off upon a note of insinuation; but Robinette took no notice of the remark. She did not seem to have anything to say, so Miss Smeardon took up another subject.

“What a pity that Mr. Lavendar had to leave before this afternoon; he would have been such an addition to our party!”

“Yes, wouldn’t he?” Robinette agreed, though she carefully kept out of her voice the real passion of assent that was in her heart.

“Mr. Lavendar is so agreeable, I always think,” Miss Smeardon went on. “Everyone likes him; he almost carries his pleasant ways too far. I suppose that was how–” She paused, and added again, “Oh, but as I said, I never talk scandal!”

“Do you think it’s possible to be too pleasant?” Robinette remarked, stupidly enough, scarcely caring what she said.

“Well, when it leads a poor girl to imagine that she is loved! I hear that Dolly Meredith is just heart-broken. The engagement kept on for quite a year, I believe, and then to break it off so heartlessly!–I was reminded of it all by coming here. Miss Meredith is a cousin of our hostess, and they met first at Revelsmere when they were quite young.”

“There is always a certain amount of talk when an engagement has to be broken off,” said Robinette in a cold voice.

“They seemed quite devoted at first,” Miss Smeardon began; but Robinette interrupted her.

“The sooner such things are forgotten the better, I think,” she said. “No one, except the two people concerned, ever knows the real truth.–Tell me, Miss Smeardon, whom we are likely to meet at Revelsmere? Who is our hostess? What sort of parties does she give?”

Being so firmly switched off from the affairs of Mr. Lavendar and Miss Meredith, it was impossible for Miss Smeardon to talk about them any more, and she had to turn to a less congenial theme.

“We shall meet the neighbours,” she told Robinette, “but I am afraid they may not interest you very much. I understand that in America you are accustomed to a great deal of the society of gentlemen. Here there are so few, and all of them are married.”

“All?” laughed Robinette.

“Well, there is Mr. Finch, the curate, but he is a celibate; and young Mr. Tait of Strewe, but he is slightly paralysed.”

“Why, Carnaby must be quite an eligible bachelor in these parts,” said Robinette; but Miss Smeardon was so deadly literal that she accepted the remark as a serious one.

“Not quite yet; in a few years’ time we shall need to be very careful, there are so many girls here, but not all of them desirable, of course.”

“There are? What a dull time they must have with the Married Men, the Celibate, the Paralytic, and Carnaby! I’m glad my girlhood wasn’t spent in Devonshire.”

Conversation ended here, for the carriage rumbled up the avenue, and Robinette looked about her eagerly. Revelsmere was a nice old house, surrounded by fine sloping lawns and a background of sombre beechwoods. The lawns to-day were dotted with groups of people, mainly women, and elderly at that. As Robinette and Miss Smeardon alighted at the door an elderly hostess welcomed them, and an elderly host led them across the lawn and straightly they fell into the clutches of more and more elderlies.

“It is fairly bewildering!” Robinette cried in her heart; then she saw a bevy of girls approaching; such nice-looking girls, happy, well dressed, but all unattended by their suitable complement of young men.

“For whom do they dress, here? They’ve a deal of self-respect, I think, to go on getting themselves up so nicely for themselves and the Celibate, the Paralytic, and Carnaby,” thought Robinette, as she watched them.

Presently another couple came across the lawn; the young woman was by no means a girl, rather heavily built, with a high fixed colour. She was attended by a man. “Not the Celibate certainly,” thought Mrs. Loring with a glance at his bullock-like figure, his thick neck, and glossy black hair, “nor the Paralytic; and it’s not Carnaby. It must be a new arrival!”

At that moment it began to rain, but nothing daunted, their hostess approached her, and saying pleasantly that she wished to introduce her to Miss Meredith, she left Robinette and the young woman standing together under a spreading tree, and took the gentleman away with her.

The moment that she heard the name, Robinette realized who Miss Meredith was. They seated themselves side by side on a garden bench, and Miss Meredith remarked upon the heat, planting a rather fat hand upon the arm of the garden seat, and surveying it complacently, especially the very bright diamond ring upon the third finger.

After a few preliminary remarks, she asked Mrs. Loring if she were stopping in the neighbourhood.

“Yes, I am staying at Stoke Revel for a short time,” Robinette replied; “Mrs. de Tracy is my aunt, or at least I am Admiral de Tracy’s niece.”

Her companion did not seem to take the least interest in this part of the information, only when Stoke Revel was mentioned she looked around suddenly as if surprised.

They talked upon indifferent subjects, while Robinette, as she watched Miss Meredith, was saying a good deal to herself, although she only spoke aloud about the weather and the Devonshire scenery.

“I will be just, if I can’t be generous,” she thought. “She has (or she must once have had) a fine complexion. I dare say she is sincere enough; she may be sensible; she might be good-humoured,–when pleased.”

“There is going to be a shower,” said Miss Meredith, “but I’ve nothing on to spoil,” she added, glancing at Robinette’s hat.

Sitting there on the bench, hearing the spitting rain upon the water below them and watching the leaden mists that slowly gathered over the landscape, Robinette fell upon a moment of soul sickness very unusual to her. Miss Meredith too was silent, absorbed in her own thoughts.

“If she had looked even a little different it would have been so much easier to explain,” thought Robinette. Then suddenly she glanced up. She saw that her companion’s face had softened, and changed. There was a look,–Robinette caught it just for one moment,–such as a proud angry child might have worn: sulky, hurt to the heart, but determined not to cry. Instantly a chord was struck in Robinette’s soul. “She has suffered, anyway,” she thought. “May I be forgiven for my harsh judgment!”

With a shiver she drew her wrap about her shoulders, and Miss Meredith turned towards her. The expression Robinette had noticed passed from the high-coloured face and left it as before, self-complacent and slightly patronizing. “You seem to feel cold,” she said. “I never do; which is rather unfortunate, as I’m just going out to India!”

“Indeed? How soon are you going?”

“In about six weeks. I’m just going to be married, and we sail directly afterwards,” said Miss Meredith. “You saw Mr. Joyce, I think, when we came up together a few minutes ago?”

A weight as if of a ton of lead was lifted from Robinette’s heart as she spoke. She could scarcely refrain from jumping up to throw her arms about Dolly Meredith’s neck and kiss her. As it was, she bubbled over with a kind of sympathetic interest that astonished the other woman. It is only too easy to lead an approaching bride to talk about her own affairs, for she can seldom take in the existence of even her nearest and dearest at such a time, and in a few minutes the two young women were deep in conversation. When a quarter of an hour later Miss Smeardon appeared to tell Robinette that they must be going, she looked up with a start at the sound of footsteps on the gravel path. “Oh, you are here, Mrs. Loring; we couldn’t think where you had gone,” said Miss Smeardon, acidly.

“And here is Miss Meredith of all people!” she continued, “I thought you were sure to be on the tennis court, Miss Meredith; Mr. Joyce is playing now.”

“Oh, we have had such a delightful talk,” said Dolly, so flushed with pleasure that Miss Smeardon gazed at her in astonishment.

“If only I knew her well enough to send her a munificent wedding present! How I should love to do so; just to register my own joy,” said Robinette to herself. As it was she shook hands very warmly with Miss Meredith before they parted, and when half way across the lawn, looked back again, and waved her hand gaily. Miss Meredith was pacing the grass, and treading heavily beside her, with a very gallant air, was her bullock-like young man.

“Mr. Joyce is quite wealthy,” said Miss Smeardon. “I understand that he is an only son too, and will some day inherit a fine property. Miss Meredith is most fortunate, at her age and with her history.”

Robinette said nothing. She looked out at the glistening reaches of the river, now shining through the silver mist; at the fields yellow with buttercups, and the folds of the distant hills. As they drove up the lane to the house, the birds, refreshed by the rain, were singing like angels. In her heart too, something was singing as blithely as any bird amongst them all.

“Sometimes, sometimes our mistakes do not come home to roost!” she thought, “but fly away and make nests elsewhere–rich nests in India too!”

“How did you enjoy the party, Cousin Robin?” said Carnaby, who was waiting for them in the doorway. “I had a good tuck-in of strawberries. The ladies were a little young for my taste; just immature girls; no one under sixty, and rather frisky, don’t you think? By the way did you see Number One and her millionaire?”

“I don’t know what you mean by Number One,” said Robinette, haughtily, as she passed in at the door.

“You will, when you’re Number Two!” rejoined Carnaby, stooping to pinch Lord Roberts’ tail till the hero yelped aloud.

XVI

TWO LETTERS

Lavendar tore up his fourth sheet of paper and began afresh. “Dear Mrs. Loring.” No, that would not do; he took another sheet, and began again:–

“My dear Mrs. Loring,–Your commission for old Mrs. Prettyman has taken some little time to execute, for I had to go to two or three shops before finding a chair ‘with green cushions, and a wide seat, so comfortable that it would almost act as an anæsthetic if her rheumatism happened to be bad, and yet quite suitable for a cottage room.’ These were my orders, I think, and like all your orders they demand something better than the mere perfunctory observance. My own proportions differing a good deal from those of the old lady, it is still an open question whether what seemed comfortable to me will be quite the same to her. I can but hope so, and the chair will be dispatched at once.

“London is noisy and dusty, and grimy and stuffy, and, to one man at least, very, very dull. A boat on Greenshaw ferry seems the only spot in the world where any gaiety is to be found. You can hear the cuckoos calling across the river as you read this, no doubt, and Carnaby is rendered happier than he deserves by being allowed to row you down to tell Mrs. Prettyman about the chair. I feel as if, like the Japanese, I could journey a hundred miles to worship that wonderful tree.–Don’t let the blossoms fall until I come!

“There seems a good deal of business to be done. My father unfortunately is no better, so he cannot come down to Stoke Revel, and I shall probably return upon Wednesday morning. A poem of Browning’s runs in my head–something about three days–I can’t quote exactly.

“If my sister were writing this letter, she would say that I have been very hard to please, and uninterested in everything since I came home. Indeed it seems as if I were. London in this part of it, in hot weather, makes a man weary for green woods, a sliding river, and a Book of Verses underneath a Bough. Well, perhaps I shall have all of them by Wednesday afternoon. You will think I can do nothing but grumble. All the same, into what was the mere dull routine of uncongenial work before, your influence has come with a current of new energy; like the tide from the sea swelling up into the inland river.–I’m at it again! Rivers on the brain evidently.

“I hope meanwhile that Carnaby behaves himself, and is not too much of a bore, and that England,–England in spring at least, is gaining a corner in your heart? Your mother called it home, remember. Yes, do try to remember that!

“Did you go to the garden party? Did you walk? Did you drive? Did you like it? Who was there? Were you dull?”

There was a postscript:–

“I have found the verse from Browning, ‘So I shall see her in three days.’

“M. L.”“Tuesday, 19th.

“Dear Mr. Lavendar: First, many thanks for Nurse’s armchair, which arrived in perfect order, and is a shining monument to your good taste. She does nothing but look at it, shrouding it when she retires to bed with an old table-cover, to protect it from the night air.

“Whether she will ever make its acquaintance thoroughly enough to sit in it I do not know, but it will give her an enormous amount of pleasure. Perhaps her glow of pride in its possession does her as much good as the comfort she might take in its use.

“Her ‘rheumatics’ are very painful just now, and I have a good deal to do with Duckie. You remember Duckie? I call her Mrs. Mackenzie, after that lady in The Newcomes who talked the Colonel to death. Mrs. Mackenzie is heavy, elderly, and strong-willed. I am acquainted with every bone, tendon, and sinew in her body, having to lift her into a coop behind the cottage where she will not wake Nurse at dawn with her eternal quacking. She has heretofore slept under Nurse’s bedroom window and dislikes change of any kind. So lucky she has no offspring! I tremble to think of what maternal example might do in such a talkative family!

“Stoke Revel is as it was and ever will be, world without end; only Aunt de Tracy is crosser than when you are here and life is not as gay, although Carnaby does his dear, cubbish best. If ever you desire your mental jewels to shine at their brightest; if ever you wish a tolerably good disposition to seem like that of an angel; if ever, in a fit of vanity, you would like to appear as a blend of Apollo, Lancelot, Demosthenes, Prince Charlie, Ajax, and Solomon, just fly to Stoke Revel and become part of the household. Assume nothing; simply appear, and the surroundings will do the rest; like the penny-in-the-slot arrangements. Seen upon a background of Bates, William, Benson, Big Cummins, the Curate, Miss Smeardon, and may I dare to add, the lady of the Manor herself,–any living breathing man takes on an Olympian majesty. I shouldn’t miss you in Boston nor in London; perhaps even in Weston I might find a wretched substitute, but here you are priceless!

“I have some news for you. On Saturday Miss Smeardon and I went to a garden party. That was what it was called. The thermometer was only slightly below zero when we started, and that luminary masquerading as the sun was pretending to shine. Soon after we arrived at the festive scene, there were gusts of wind and rain. I sought the shelter of a spreading tree, the kitchen fire not being available, and I was joined there by the hostess, who presented her niece, your Miss Meredith.

“Dear Mr. Lavendar, this is a subject we cannot write about, you and I. I am loyal to my sex, and what Miss Meredith said, and looked, and did, are all as sacred to me as they ought to be. I only want to tell you that she is happy; that she has this very week become engaged, and is going to India with her husband in a month. Now that little cankerworm, that has been gnawing at your roots of life for the last year or two, has done its worst, and you are perfectly free to go and make other mistakes. I only hope you’ll get ‘scot free’ from those, too, for I don’t like to see nice men burn their fingers. We became such good friends huddled up in that boat when we were stuck in the mud–Ugh! I can smell it now!–that I am glad to be the first to send you pleasant news.

“Sincerely yours,“Robinetta Loring.”

XVII

MRS. DE TRACY CROSSES THE FERRY

Lavendar’s blunt refusal, except under certain conditions, to announce to Mrs. Prettyman her coming ejection from the cottage at Wittisham, was unprofessional enough, as he himself felt; but it was final and categorical. Conveying as it did a sort of tacit remonstrance, this refusal had an unfortunate effect, for it only served to rouse Mrs. de Tracy’s formidable obstinacy. She had seized upon one point only in their numberless and wearisome discussions of the matter: Mrs. Prettyman had no legal claim upon Stoke Revel. To give her compensation for the plum tree would be to allow that she had; to create a precedent highly dangerous under the circumstances. How could one refuse to other old women or old men leaving their cottages what one had weakly granted to her? The demands would be unceasing, the trouble endless. So arguing, Mrs. de Tracy soon brought herself to a state of determination bordering on a sort of mania. She was old, and in exaggerated harshness her life was retreating as it were into its last stronghold, at bay.

As good as her word, for she had vowed she would warn Mrs. Prettyman herself, and she was never one to procrastinate, the lady of the Manor proceeded to plan her visit to Wittisham. She had not crossed the river for years. Wittisham, one of the loveliest villages in England, perhaps, though little known, was a thorn in her side, as it would have been in that of any other landlord with empty pockets.

What you could not deal with to your own advantage, it was better to ignore, and on this autocratic principle, Mrs. de Tracy had left Wittisham to itself.

But now the boat carried her there, alone and fierce–thrawn, as the Scotch say–bent upon a course of conduct that she knew would hold her up to the hatred of every right-thinking person of her acquaintance, and bitterly triumphant in the knowledge. The meanness of her errand never struck her. On the contrary, she would have argued it was one well worthy of her, a part of the scheme in the consummation of which she had spent her married life and her whole indomitable energy, losing actually her own identity in the process, and becoming an inexorable machine. That scheme was the holding together of Stoke Revel for the de Tracys, the maintenance of family dignity and power, the pre-eminence of a race that had always ruled. The river beneath her, carrying her to the fulfilment of her duty, the noble river, widening to the sea, subject to its tides and made turbulent by its storms, typified to Mrs. de Tracy only the greatness of Stoke Revel. From its banks the de Tracys had sent out, generation after generation, men who had commanded fleets, who had upheld the national honour upon the farthest seas, very often at the cost of life. There was no sacrifice of herself at which Mrs. de Tracy would have hesitated in upholding this ideal, no sacrifice of others, either. What was Lizzie Prettyman in comparison? A bag of old bones, fit for nothing but the workhouse!

“A little faster, William,” said the widow, sitting upright in the stern, and William the footman bent to his oars, the beads of perspiration standing on his brow. When Mrs. de Tracy stepped out upon the pier, she had to be reminded where the Prettyman cottage was.

“You’ll know it by the plum tree, ma’am,” said William respectfully, “everybody does.”

It was not far off on the river side. The tide had ebbed and left a stretch of muddy foreshore in front of it, where the rotting poles for hanging the fishing nets out to dry stood gauntly up. Mrs. de Tracy approached the steps, which merged into the flagged path before the door, and paused to survey the property she intended to part with. She had no eye for the picturesque. A few white petals from the blossoming plum tree, scattered by the breeze, fell upon her black bonnet and shoulders. A faint scent of honey came from it and the hum of bees, for the day was warm. The tumble-down condition of the cottage engaged Mrs. de Tracy’s attention.

“And for this,” she thought scornfully, “a man will give hundreds of pounds! There’s truth in the adage that a fool and his money are soon parted!”

She mounted the steps that led up to the patch of garden, her keen, cold eyes everywhere at once. “A cat can’t sneeze without she ’ears ’im!” her villagers at Stoke Revel were wont to say, disappearing into their houses as rabbits into their burrows at sight of a terrier.

Old Elizabeth Prettyman stood at her door, and it took some time to make her realize who her august visitor was. She was getting blind; she had never been a favourite with Mrs. de Tracy, nor had she entered Stoke Revel Manor since her nursling disgraced it by marrying a Bean. She curtseyed humbly to the great lady.

“There now, ma’am,” she said, “it’s not often we have seen you across the river. Will you please to come inside and sit down, ma’am? ’T is very warm this afternoon, it is.” She was a good deal fluttered in her welcome, for there was that in Mrs. de Tracy’s air that seemed to bode misfortune.

“I shall sit down for a few minutes, Elizabeth,” was the reply, “while I explain my visit to you.”

Mrs. Prettyman stood aside respectfully, and Mrs. de Tracy swept past her into the cottage and seated herself there. It never occurred to her to ask the old woman to sit down in her own house; she expected her to stand throughout the interview. Without further preamble, then, Mrs. de Tracy came to the point:–

“Elizabeth,” she said, “I have come to tell you that I am going to sell the land on which this cottage stands, and that you will have to find some other home.”

The old woman did not understand for a minute. “You be going to sell the land, ma’am?” she repeated stupidly.

“Yes, I am. A gentleman from London wishes to buy it; you will need to go.”

“A gentleman from London! Lor, ma’am, no gentleman from London wouldn’t live ’ere!” Elizabeth cried, perfectly dazed by the statement.

Mrs. de Tracy repeated: “It is not your business, Elizabeth, what he intends to do with the place; all you have to do is to remove from the house.”

The old woman sank down on the nearest chair and covered her face with her hands. She was so old and so tired that she had no heart to face life under new conditions, even should they be better than those she left. A younger woman would have snapped her fingers in Mrs. de Tracy’s face, so to speak, and wished her joy of her old rattletrap of a house, but Elizabeth Prettyman, after a lifetime of struggles, had not vitality enough for such an action. She had never dreamed of leaving the cottage, and where was she to go? Her furrowed face wore an expression of absolute terror now when she looked up.

“But where be I to live, ma’am?” she cried.

“I do not know, Elizabeth; you must arrange that with your relations,” said Mrs. de Tracy.

“I don’t ’ave but only me niece–’er as married down Exeter way.”

“Well, you should write to her then.”

“She don’t want to keep me, Nettie don’t,–she’s but a poor man’s wife, and five chillen she ’as; it’s not like as if she were me daughter, ma’am.”

“You have some small sum of money of your own every year, have you not?” Mrs. de Tracy asked.

“Ten pound a year, ma’am; the same that me ’usband left me; two ’undred pounds ’e ’ad saved and ’t is in an annuity; that’s all I ’ave–that and me plum tree.”

“The plum tree is not yours, either, Elizabeth; that belongs to the land,” said Mrs. de Tracy curtly.

“’T was me ’usband planted it, ma’am, years ago. We watched ’en and pruned ’en and tended ’en like a child we did–an’ now to be told ’er ain’t mine!”

“You’re forgetting yourself, Elizabeth, I think,” said Mrs. de Tracy. It was simply impossible for her to see with the old woman’s eyes; all she remembered was the legal fact that any tree planted in Stoke Revel ground belonged to the owner of the ground.

“But ma’am, ’t is a big part of me living is the plum tree; only yesterday I says to the young lady–Miss Cynthia’s young lady–I says, ‘Dear knows how ’t would be with me without I had the plum tree.’”

“I cannot help that, Elizabeth: the plum tree is not yours, it belongs to Stoke Revel.”

“Then ma’am, you’ll be ’lowing me something for it surely?”

“No,” said Mrs. de Tracy obstinately, “you have no legal claim to compensation, Elizabeth. I cannot undertake to allow you anything for what is not yours. If I did it in your case you know quite well I should have to do it in many others.”