Robinetta

There was a long and heavy silence. Elizabeth Prettyman was taking in her sentence of banishment from her old home; Mrs. de Tracy was merely wondering how long it would take her to walk down that nasty steep bit of path to the ferry. At last the old woman looked up.

“When must I be goin’ then, ma’am?” she asked meekly.

Mrs. de Tracy considered. “The transfer of land from one person to another generally takes some time: you will have several weeks here still; I shall send you notice later which day to quit.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Elizabeth simply, and added, “The plum tree blossoms ’ul be over by that time.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” said Mrs. de Tracy, in whose heart there was room for no sentiment.

“’T would have been ’arder leavin’ it in blossom time,” the old woman explained; but her hearer could not see the point. She rose slowly from her chair and looked around the cottage.

“I am glad to see that you keep your place clean and respectable, Elizabeth,” she said. “I wish you good afternoon.”

Elizabeth never rose from her chair to see her visitor to the door–(an omission which Mrs. de Tracy was not likely to overlook)–she just sat there gazing stupidly around the tiny kitchen and muttering a word or two now and then. At last she got up and tottered to the garden.

“I’ll ’ave to leave it all–leave the old bench as me William did put for me with his own ’ands, and leave Duckie, Duckie can’t never go to Exeter if I goes there,–and leave the plum tree.” She limped across the little bit of sunny turf, and stood under the white canopy of the blossoming tree, leaning against its slender trunk. “Pity ’t is we ain’t rooted in the ground same as the trees are,” she mused. “Then no one couldn’t turn us out; only the Lord Almighty cut us down when our time came; Lord knows I’m about ready for that now–grave-ripe as you may say.” She leaned her poor weary old head against the tree stem and wept, ready, ah! how ready, at that moment, to lay down the burden of her long and toilsome life.

“Good afternoon, Nursie dear!” a clear voice called out in her ear, and Elizabeth started to find that Robinette had tip-toed across the grass and was standing close beside her. She lifted her tear-stained face up to Robinette’s as a child might have done.

“I’ve to quit, Missie,” she sobbed, “to leave me ’ome and Duckie and the plum tree, an’ I’ve no place to go to, and naught but my ten pounds to live on–and ’t won’t keep me without I’ve the plum tree, not when I’ve rent to pay from it; not if I don’t eat nothing but tea an’ bread never again!”

In a moment Robinette’s arms were about her: her soft young cheeks pressed against the withered old face.

“What’s this you’re saying, Nurse?” she cried. “Leaving your cottage? Who said so?”

“It’s true, dear, quite true; ’asn’t the lady ’erself been here to tell me so?”

“Was that what Aunt de Tracy was here about? I met her on the road five minutes ago; she said she had been here on business! But tell me, Nurse, why does she want you to leave? Are you going to get a better cottage? Does she think this one isn’t healthy for you?”

“No, no, dear, ’t isn’t that, she ’ve sold the cottage over me ’ead, that’s what ’t is, or she’s going to sell it, to a gentleman from London–Lord knows what a gentleman from London wants wi’ ’en–and I’ve to quit.”

Robinette tried to be a peacemaker.

“Then you’ll get a much more comfortable house, that’s quite certain. You know, though this one is lovely on fine days like this, that the thatch is all coming off, and I’m sure it’s damp inside! Just wait a bit, and see if you don’t get some nice cosy little place, with a sound roof and quite dry, that will cure this rheumatism of yours.”

But Mrs. Prettyman shook her head.

“No, no, there won’t be no cosy place given to me; I’m no more worth than an old shoe now, Missie, and I’m to be turned out, the lady said so ’erself; said as I must go to Exeter to live with me niece Nettie, and ’er don’t want us–Nettie don’t–and whatever shall I do without I ’ave Duckie and the plum tree?”

“Oh, but”–Robinette began, quite incredulously, and the old woman took up her lament again.

“And I asked the lady, wouldn’t I ’ave something allowed me for the plum tree–that ’ave about clothed me for years back? And ‘No,’ she says, ‘’t ain’t your plum tree, Elizabeth, ’t is mine; I can’t ’low nothing on me own plum tree.’”

Robinette still refused to believe the story.

“Nurse, dear,” she said, “you’re a tiny bit deaf now, you know, and perhaps you misunderstood about leaving. Suppose you keep your dear old heart easy for to-night, and I’ll come down bright and early to-morrow and tell you what it really is! If you have to leave the plum tree you’ll get a fine price put on it that may last you for years; it’s such a splendid tree, anyone can see it’s worth a good deal.”

“That it be, Missie, the finest tree in Wittisham,” the old woman said, drying her eyes, a little comforted by the assurance in Robinette’s voice and manner.

“There now, we won’t have any more tears: I’ve brought a new canister of tea I sent for to London. I’m just dying to taste if it’s good; we’ll brew it together, Nursie; I shall carry out the little table from the kitchen and we’ll drink our tea under the plum tree,” Robinette cried.

She was carrying a great parcel under her arm, and when Mrs. Prettyman opened it, she could scarcely believe that this lovely red tin canister, filled with pounds of fragrant tea, could really be hers! The sight of such riches almost drove away her former fears. Robinette whisked into the kitchen and came out carrying the little round table which she set down under the white canopy of the plum tree. Then together they brought out the rest of the tea things, and what a merry meal they had!

“It’s just nonsense and a bit of deafness on your part, Nurse, so we won’t remember anything about leaving the house, we are only going to think of enjoyment,” Robinette announced. Then the old woman was comforted, as old people are wont to be by the brave assurances of those younger and stronger than themselves, forgot the spectre that seemed to have risen suddenly across her path, and laughed and talked as she sipped the fragrant London tea.

XVIII

THE STOKE REVEL JEWELS

“Hullo! Cousin Robin, hurry up, you’ll need all your time!” It was Carnaby of course who saluted Robinette thus, as she came towards the house on her return from Wittisham.

“I’m not late, am I?” she said, consulting her watch.

“I thought you’d be making a tremendous toilette; one of your killing ones to-night,” Carnaby said. “Do! I love to see you all dressed up till old Smeardon’s eyes look as if they would drop out when you come into the room.”

“I’ll wear my black dress, and her eyes may remain in her head,” Robinette laughed.

“And what about Mark’s eyes? Wouldn’t you like them to drop out?” the boy asked mischievously. “He’s come back by the afternoon train while you were away at Wittisham.”

“Oh, has he?” Robinette said, and Carnaby stared so hard at her, that to her intense annoyance she blushed hotly.

“Horrid lynx-eyed boy,” she said to herself as she ran upstairs, “He’s growing up far too quickly. He needs to be snubbed.” She dashed to the wardrobe, pulled out the black garment, and gave it a vindictive shake. “Old, dowdy, unbecoming, deaconess-district-visitor-bible-woman, great-grand-auntly thing!” she cried.

Then her eye lighted on a cherished lavender satin. She stood for a moment deliberating, the black dress over her arm, her eyes fixed upon the lavender one that hung in the wardrobe.

“I don’t care,” she cried suddenly: “I’ll wear the lavender, so here goes! Men are all colour blind, so he’ll merely notice that I look nice. I must conceal from myself and everybody else how depressed I am over the interview with Nurse, and how I dread discussing the cottage with Aunt de Tracy. That must be done the first thing after dinner, or I shall lose what little courage I have.”

Lavendar thought he had never seen her look so lovely as when he met her in the drawing room a quarter of an hour later. There was nothing extraordinary about the dress but its exquisite tint and the sheen of the soft satin. The suggestion that lay in the colour was entirely lost upon him, however: if asked to name it he would doubtless have said “purplish.” How he wished that he might have escorted her into the dining room, but Mrs. de Tracy was his portion as usual, and Robinette was waiting for Carnaby, who seemed unaccountably slow.

“Your arm, Middy, when you are quite ready,” she said to him at last. Carnaby’s extraordinary unreadiness seemed to arise from his trying to smuggle some object up his sleeve. This proved, a few moments later, to be a bundle of lavender sticks tied with violet ribbon that he had discovered in his bureau drawer. He laid it by Robinette’s plate with a whispered “My compliments.”

“What does your cousin want that bunch of lavender for, at the table?” Mrs. de Tracy enquired.

“She likes lavender anywhere, ma’am,” Carnaby said with a wink on the side not visible by his grandmother. “It’s a favourite of hers.”

Robinette could only be thankful that Lavendar was occupied in a sotto voce discussion of wine with Bates, and she was able to conceal the bundle of herbs before his eyes met hers, for the fury she felt against her precious young kinsman at that moment she could have expressed only by blows.

Dinner seemed interminably long. Robinette, for more reasons than one, was preoccupied; Lavendar made few remarks, and Carnaby was possessed by a spirit of perfectly fiendish mischief, saying and doing everything that could most exasperate his grandmother, put her guests to the blush, and shock Miss Smeardon.

But at last Mrs. de Tracy rose from the table, and the ladies followed her from the room, leaving Lavendar to cope alone with Carnaby.

“My fair American cousin is more than usually lovely to-night, eh, Mr. Lavendar?” the boy said, with his laughable assumption of a man of the world.

“There, my young friend; that will do! you’re talking altogether too much,” said Lavendar, as he poured himself out a glass of wine and sat down by the open window to drink it. Carnaby, perhaps not unreasonably offended, lounged out of the room, and left the older man to his own meditations.

Robinette in the meantime went into the drawing room with her aunt, and they sat down together in the dim light while Miss Smeardon went upstairs to write a letter.

“Aunt de Tracy,” Robinette began, “I was calling on Mrs. Prettyman just after you had been with her this afternoon, and do you know the dear old soul had taken the strangest idea into her head! She says you are going to ask her to leave the cottage.”

“The land on which her cottage stands is about to be sold,” said Mrs. de Tracy. “It is necessary that she should move.”

“Yes, she quite understood that; but she thinks she is not going to get another house; that was what was distressing her, naturally. Of course she hates to leave the old place, but I believe if she gets another nicer cottage, that will quite console her,” said Robinette quickly.

“I have no vacant cottage on the estate just now,” said Mrs. de Tracy quietly.

“Then what is she to do? Isn’t it impossible that she should move until another place is made ready for her?” Robinette rose and stood beside the table, leaning the tips of her fingers on it in an attitude of intense earnestness. She was trying to conceal the anger and dismay she felt at her aunt’s reply.

“Mrs. Prettyman has relatives at Exeter,” said Mrs. de Tracy without the quiver of an eyelid.

“Yes; but they are poor. They aren’t very near relations, and they don’t want her. O Aunt de Tracy, is it necessary to make her leave? She depends upon the plum tree so! She makes twenty-five dollars a year from the jam!”

“Dollars have no significance for me,” said Mrs. de Tracy with an icy smile.

“Well, pounds then: five pounds she makes. How is she ever going to live without that, unless you give her the equivalent? It’s half her livelihood! I promised you would consider it? Was I wrong?”

Old bitternesses rose in Mrs. de Tracy’s heart, the prejudices and the grudges of a lifetime. Everything connected with Robinette’s mother had been wrong in her eyes, and now everything connected with Robinette was wrong too, and becoming more so with startling rapidity.

“You had no right whatsoever to make any promises on my behalf,” she now said harshly. “You have acted foolishly and officiously. This is no business of yours.”

“I’ll gladly make it my business if you’ll let me, Aunt de Tracy!” pleaded Robinette. “If you don’t feel inclined to provide for Mrs. Prettyman, mayn’t I? She is my mother’s old nurse and she shan’t want for anything as long as I have a penny to call my own!” Robinette’s eyes filled with tears, but Mrs. de Tracy was not a whit moved by this show of emotion, which appeared to her unnecessary and theatrical.

“You are forgetting yourself a good deal in your way of speaking to me on this subject,” she said coldly. “When I behaved unbecomingly in my youth, my mother always recommended me to go upstairs, shut myself up alone in my room, and collect my thoughts. The process had invariably a calming effect. I advise you to try it.”

Robinette did not need to be proffered the hint twice. She rushed out of the room like a whirlwind, not looking where she went. In the hall, she came face to face with Lavendar, who had just left the dining room.

“Mr. Lavendar!” she cried. “Do go into the drawing room and speak to my aunt. Preach to her! Argue with her! Convince her that she can’t and mustn’t act in this way; can’t go and turn Mrs. Prettyman out, and rob her of the plum tree, and leave her with hardly a penny in the world or a roof over her head!”

“It’s not a very pretty or a very pleasant business, Mrs. Loring, I admit,” said Lavendar quietly.

“Is it English law?” cried Robinette with indignation. “If it is, I call it mean and unjust!”

“Sometimes the laws seem very hard,” said Lavendar. “I’d like to discuss this affair with you quietly another time.”

As he spoke, Carnaby appeared and wanted to be told what the matter was, but Robinette discovered that it is not very easy to criticise a grandmother to her youthful grandson, more especially when the lady in question is your hostess.

“Aunt de Tracy and I have had a little difference of opinion about Mrs. Prettyman and her cottage, and the plum tree,” she said to the boy quietly, and Lavendar nodded approval.

“Prettyman’s got the sack, hasn’t she?” Carnaby enquired with a boy’s carelessness.

Robinette looked very grave. “My dear old nurse is to leave her cottage,” she said with a quiver in her voice. “She’s to lose her plum tree–”

“But of course she’ll get compensation,” cried Carnaby.

“No, Middy; she’s to get no compensation,” said Robinette in a low voice.

“Well, I call that jolly hard! It’s a beastly shame,” said Carnaby, evidently pricking up his ears and with a sudden frown that changed his face. “I say, Mark–” But Lavendar did not think the moment suitable for a discussion of Mrs. Prettyman’s wrongs. Besides, he did not wish Robinette to be banished from the drawing room for a whole interminable evening. He contrived to silence Carnaby for the time being.

“Let’s bury the hatchet for a little while,” he suggested. “Have you forgotten, Mrs. Loring, that I made Mrs. de Tracy promise to show off the Stoke Revel jewels for your benefit this very night?”

“O! but now I’m in disgrace, she won’t!” said Robinette.

“Yes, she will!” said Carnaby. “Nothing puts the old lady in such a heavenly temper as showing off the jewels. Don’t you miss it, Cousin Robin! It’s like the Tower of London and Madam Tussaud’s rolled into one, this show, I can assure you. Come on! Come back into the drawing room. Needn’t be afraid when Mark’s there!”

Robinette found that a black look or two was all that she had to fear from Mrs. de Tracy at present, and even these became less severe under the alchemy of Lavendar’s tact. A reminder that an exhibition of the jewelry had been promised was graciously received. Bates and Benson were summoned, and armed with innumerable keys, they descended to subterranean regions where safes were unlocked and jewel-boxes solemnly brought into the drawing room. Mrs. de Tracy wore an air almost devotional, as she unlocked the final receptacles with keys never allowed to leave her own hands.

“If the proceedings had begun with prayer and ended with a hymn, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least!” Robinette said to herself, looking silently on. Her silence, luckily for her, was taken for the speechlessness of awe, and did a good deal to make up, in the eyes of her august relative, for her late indiscretions. As a matter of fact, her irreverent thoughts were mostly to the effect that all but the historical pieces of the Stoke Revel corbeille would be the better of re-setting by Tiffany or Cartier.

Mrs. de Tracy opened an old shagreen case and the firelight flickered on the diamonds of a small tiara.

“This is a part of the famous Montmorency set,” she announced proudly, with the tone of a Keeper of Regalia. Then she took out a rope of pearls ending in tassels. “These belonged to Marie Antoinette,” she said.

An emerald set was next produced, and the emeralds, it was explained, had once adorned a crown. Deep green they were, encrusted in their diamond setting; costly, unique; but they left Robinette cold, though like most American women, she loved precious stones as an adornment. One of those emeralds, she was thinking, was worth fifty times more than old Lizzie Prettyman’s cottage: the sale of one of them would have averted that other sale which was to cause so much distress to a poor harmless old woman.

“When do you wear your jewels, Aunt de Tracy?” she asked gravely.

“I have not worn them since the Admiral’s death,” was the virtuous reply, “and I have never called or considered them mine, Robinetta. They are the de Tracy jewels. When Carnaby takes his place as the head of the house, they will be his. He will see that his wife wears them on the proper occasions.”

“Carnaby’s wife!” thought Robinette. “Why! she mayn’t be born! He may never have a wife! And to think of all those precious stones hiding their brightness in these boxes like prisoners in a dungeon for years and years, only to be let out now and then by Bates and Benson, jingling their keys like jailers! And this house is a prison too!” she said to herself; “a prison for souls!” and the thought of its hoarded wealth made her indignant; all this hidden treasure in a house where there was never enough to eat, where guests shivered in fireless bedrooms, where servants would not stay because they were starved! And Carnaby, too, whose youth was being embittered by unnecessary economies: Carnaby, who had so little pocket-money that he was a laughing-stock among his fellows–it was for Carnaby these sacrifices were being made! Strange traditions! Fetiches of family pride almost as grotesque to her thinking as those of any savages under the sun.

“My poor dear Middy!” she thought. “What chance has he, brought up in an atmosphere like this?” But she happened to raise her eyes at the moment, and to see the actual Carnaby of the moment, not the Carnaby her gloomy imagination was evoking from the future with the “petty hoard of maxims preaching down” his heart. He had contrived to get hold of the Marie Antoinette pearls without his grandmother’s knowledge and to hang them around his neck; he had poised the Montmorency tiara on his own sleek head; he had forced a heavy bracelet by way of collar round Rupert’s throat, and now with that choking and goggling unfortunate held partner-wise in his arms, he was waltzing on tiptoe about the farther drawing room behind the unconscious backs of Mrs. de Tracy and Miss Smeardon.

“He’s only a careless boy,” thought Robinette, “a happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care, hare-brained youngster. They can’t have poisoned his nature yet, and I’m sure he has a good heart. If he were at the head of affairs at Stoke Revel instead of his grandmother, I wonder what would be done in the matter of my poor old nurse?” Robinette stood in the doorway for a moment before going up to her room. Her whole attitude spoke depression as Carnaby stole up behind her.

“See here, Cousin Robin, I can’t bear to have you go on like this. Don’t take Prettyman’s trouble so to heart. We’ll do something! I’ll do something myself! I have a happy thought.”

XIX

LAWYER AND CLIENT

Robinette had a bad night after the jewel exhibition, and a heavy head and aching eyes prompted her to ask Little Cummins to bring her breakfast to her bedroom.

It was touching to see that small person hovering over Robinette: stirring the fire, sweeping the hearth, looping back the curtains, tucking the slippers out of sight, and moving about the room like a mother ministering to an ailing child. Finally she staggered in with the heavy breakfast tray that she had carried through long halls and up the stairs, and put it on the table by the bed.

“There’s a new-laid egg, ma’am, that cook ’ad for the mistress, but I thought you needed it more; an’ I brewed the tea meself, to be sure,” she cooed; “an’ I’ve spread the loaf same as you like, an’ cut the bread thin, an’ ’ere’s one o’ the roses you allers wears to breakfast; an’ wouldn’t your erming coat be a comfort, ma’am?”

“Dear Little Cummins! How did you know I needed comfort? How did you guess I was homesick?”

Robinette leaned her head against the housemaid’s rough hand, always stained with black spots that would give way to no scrubbing. From morning to night she was in the coal scuttle or the grate or the saucer of black lead, for she did nothing but lay fires, light fires, feed fires, and tidy up after fires, for eight or nine months of the year.

“You mustn’t touch me, ma’am; I ain’t fit; there’s smut on me, an’ hashes, this time o’ day,” said Little Cummins.

“I don’t care. I like you better with ashes than lots of people without. You mustn’t stay in the coal scuttle all your life, Little Cummins; you must be my chambermaid some of these days when we can get a good substitute for Mrs. de Tracy. Would you like that, if the mistress will let you go?”

Little Cummins put her apron up to her eyes, and from its depths came inarticulate bursts of gratitude and joy. Then peeping from it just enough to see the way to the door, she ran out like a hare and secluded herself in the empty linen-room until she was sufficiently herself to join the other servants.

Robinette finished her breakfast and dressed. She had lacked courage to meet the family party, although she longed for a talk with Mark Lavendar. It was entirely normal, feminine, and according to all law, human and divine, but it appealed also to her sense of humour, that she should feel that this new man-friend could straighten out all the difficulties in the path. She waited patiently at her window until she saw him walk around the corner of the house, under the cedars, and up the twisting path, his head bent and bare, his hands in his pockets. Then she flung her blue cape over her shoulders and followed him.

“Mr. Lavendar,” she called, as she caught up with his slow step, “you said you would advise me a little. Let us sit on this bench a moment and find out how we can untangle all the knots into which Aunt de Tracy tied us yesterday. I am so afraid of her that I am sure I spoke timidly and respectfully to her at first; but perhaps I showed more feeling at the end than I should. I am willing to apologize to her for any lack of courtesy, but I don’t see how I can retract anything I said.”

“It is hard for you,” Lavendar replied, “because you have a natural affection for your mother’s old nurse; and Mrs. de Tracy, I begin to believe, is more than indifferent to her. She has some active dislike, perhaps, the source of which is unknown to us.”

“But she is so unjust!” cried Robinette. “I never heard of an Irish landlord in a novel who would practice such a piece of eviction. If I must stand by and see it done, then I shall assert my right to provide for Nurse and move her into a new dwelling. After you left the drawing room last night, I begged as tactfully as I could that Aunt de Tracy would sell me some of the jewels, so that she need not part with the land at Wittisham. She was very angry, and wouldn’t hear of it. Then I proposed buying the plum-tree cottage, that it might be kept in the family, and she was furious at my audacity. Perhaps the Admiral’s niece is not in the family.”