ROBINETTA
By Kate Douglas Wiggin
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HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Boston and New York
[Illustration]
ROBINETTA
by
Kate Douglas Wiggin
Mary Findlater
Jane Findlater
Allan McAulay
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
Houghton Mifflin Company
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1910 AND 1911, BY KATE DOUGLAS RIGGS
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published February 1911
CONTENTS
I. THE PLUM TREE 1
II. THE MANOR HOUSE 7
III. YOUNG MRS. LORING 19
IV. A CHILLY RECEPTION 29
V. AT WITTISHAM 39
VI. MARK LAVENDAR 54
VII. A CROSS-EXAMINATION 69
VIII. SUNDAY AT STOKE REVEL 87
IX. POINTS OF VIEW 99
X. A NEW KINSMAN 113
XI. THE SANDS AT WESTON 127
XII. LOVE IN THE MUD 151
XIII. CARNABY TO THE RESCUE 170
XIV. THE EMPTY SHRINE 181
XV. "NOW LUBIN IS AWAY" 194
XVI. TWO LETTERS 210
XVII. MRS. DE TRACY CROSSES THE FERRY 217
XVIII. THE STOKE REVEL JEWELS 234
XIX. LAWYER AND CLIENT 250
XX. THE NEW HOME 260
XXI. CARNABY CUTS THE KNOT 273
XXII. CONSEQUENCES 284
XXIII. DEATH AND LIFE 299
XXIV. GRANDMOTHER AND GRANDSON 309
XXV. THE BELLS OF STOKE REVEL 324
ROBINETTA
I
THE PLUM TREE
At Wittisham several of the little houses had crept down very close to
the river. Mrs. Prettyman's cottage was just like a hive made for the
habitation of some gigantic bee; its pointed roof covered with deep,
close-cut thatch the colour of a donkey's hide. There were small
windows under the overhanging eaves, a pathway of irregular flat
stones ran up to the doorway, and a bit of low wall divided the tiny
garden from the river. The Plum Tree grew just beside the wall, so
near indeed that it could look at itself on spring days when the water
was like a mirror. In autumn the branches on that side of the tree
were the first to be shaken, lest any of the fruit should fall down
and be lost. Sometimes a village child treading cautiously on bare
toes amongst the stones along the narrow margin, would pounce upon a
plum with a squeal of joy, for although the village was surrounded
with orchards, the fruit of Mrs. Prettyman's tree had a flavour all
its own.
The tree had been given to her by a nephew who was a gardener in a
great fruit orchard in the North, and her husband had planted and
tended it for years. It began life as a slender thing with two or
three rods of branches, that looked as if the first wind of winter
would blow it away, but before the storms came, it had begun to
trust itself to the new earth, and to root itself with force and
determination. There were good soil and water near it, and plenty of
sunshine, and, as is the way of Nature, it set itself to do its own
business at all seasons, unlike the distracted heart of man. The
traffic of the river came and went; around the headland the big
ships were steering in, or going out to sea; and in the village
the human life went on while the Plum Tree grew high enough to look
over the wall. Its stem by that time had a firm footing; next it took
a charming bend to the side, and then again threw out new branches
in that direction. It turned itself from the prevailing wind, throwing
a new grace into its attitude, and went on growing; returning in
blossom and leaves and fruit an hundredfold for all that it received
from the earth and the sun.
In spring it was enchanting; at first, before the blossoms came out,
with small bright leaves, and buds like pearls, heaped upon the
branches; then, later, when the whole tree was white, imaged like a
bride, in the looking-glass of the river. It only wanted a nightingale
to sing in it by moonlight. There were no nightingales there, but the
thrushes sang in the dawning, and the little birds whose voices were
sweet and thin chirruped about it in crowds, while the larks, trilling
out the ardour of mating time, sometimes rose from their nests in the
grass and soared over its topmost branches on their skyward flight.
Spring, therefore, was its merriest time, for then every passer-by
would cry, "What a beautiful tree!" or "Did ye ever see the likes of
it?"
There were a few days of inevitable sadness a little later when its
million petals fell and made a delicate carpet of snow on the ground.
There they lay in a kind of fairy ring, as if there had been a shower
of mother-of-pearl in the April night; and no human creature would
have dared set a vandal foot on that magic circle, and mar the
perfection of its beauty. All the same the Plum Tree had lost its
petals, and that was hard to bear at first. But though its Wittisham
neighbours often said to summer trippers, "I wish you could have seen
it in blossom!" the Plum Tree did not repine, because of the
secrets--the thousand, thousand secrets--it held under its leaves.
"The blossoms were but a promise," it thought, "and soon everybody
will see the meaning of them."
Then the tiny green globes began to appear on every branch and twig;
crowding, crowding, crowding till it seemed as if there could never be
room for so many to grow; but the weaker ones fell from the boughs or
were blown away when the wind was fierce, so the Plum Tree felt no
anxiety, knowing that it was built for a large family! The little
green globes grew and grew, and drank in sweet mother-juices, and
swelled, and when the summer sun touched their cheeks all day they
flushed and reddened, till when August came the tree was laden with
purpling fruit; fruit so tempting that its rosy beauty had sometimes
to be hidden under a veil of grey fishing net, lest the myriad
bird-friends it had made during the summer should love it too much for
its own good.
So the Plum Tree grew and flourished, taking its part in the pageant
of the seasons, unaware that its existence was to be interwoven with
that of men; or that creatures of another order of being were to owe
some changes in their fortunes to its silent obedience to the motive
of life.
II
THE MANOR HOUSE
The long, low drawing room of the Manor at Stoke Revel was the warmest
and most genial room in the old Georgian house. It was four-windowed
and faced south, and even on this morning of a chilly and backward
spring, the tentative sunshine of April had contrived to put out the
fire in the steel grate. One of the windows opened wide to the garden,
and let in a scent which was less of flowers than of the promise of
flowers--a scent of earth and green leaves, of the leafless daphne
still a-bloom in the shrubbery, of hyacinths and daffodils and tulips
and primroses still sheathed in their buds and awaiting a warmer air.
But this promise of spring borne into the room by the wandering breeze
from the river, was nipped, as it were, by the frigid spirit of age
and formalism in its living occupants. Mrs. de Tracy, a lady of
seventy-five, sat at her writing-table. Her companion, Miss Smeardon,
a person of indeterminate age, nursed the lap-dog Rupert during such
time as her employer was too deeply engaged to fulfil that agreeable
duty. Mrs. de Tracy, as she wrote, was surrounded by countless
photographs of her family and her wide connection, most prominent
among them two--that of her husband, Admiral de Tracy, who had died
many years ago, and that of her grandson, his successor, whose
guardian she was, and whose minority she directed. Her eldest son, the
father of this boy, who had died on his ship off the coast of Africa;
his wife, dead too these many years; her other sons as well (she had
borne four); their wives and children--grown men, fashionable women,
beautiful children, fat babies: the likenesses of them all were around
her, standing amid china and flowers and bric-a-brac on the crowded
tables and what-nots of the not inharmonious and yet shabby Victorian
room. Mrs. de Tracy, it might at a glance be seen, was no innovator,
either in furniture, in dress, or probably in ideas. As she was
dressed now, in the severely simple black of a widow, so she had been
dressed when she first mourned Admiral de Tracy. The muslin ends of
her widow's cap fell upon her shoulders, and its border rested on the
hard lines of iron-grey hair which framed a face small, pale, aquiline
in character and decidedly austere in expression.
She took one from a docketed pile of letters and held it up under her
glasses, the sun suddenly striking a dazzle of blue and green from the
diamond rings on her small, withered hands. Then she read it aloud to
her companion in an even and chilly voice. She had read it before, in
the same way, at the same hour, several times. The letter, couched in
an epistolary style largely dependent upon underlining, appeared to
contain, nevertheless, some matter of moment. It was dated from Eaton
Square, in London, some weeks before, and signed Maria Spalding. ("Her
mother was a Gallup," Mrs. de Tracy would say, if any one asked who
Maria Spalding was; and this was considered sufficient, for Mrs. de
Tracy's maiden name had been Gallup,--not euphonious but nevertheless
aristocratic.)
* * * * *
MY DEAR AUGUSTA (Maria Spalding wrote): I am going to ask you to
help me out of a _difficulty_. There is no _use_ beating about the
bush. You know that Cynthia's daughter Robinetta (Loring is her
_married_ name) has been with me for a month. _American_ or no
_American_, I meant to have had her for a part of the season, and to
_present_ her, if possible (so _good_ for these Americans to learn
what royalty _is_ and to breathe the atmosphere which doth hedge a
_King_ as Shakespeare says, and which they can never _have_, of
course, in a country like theirs). I know you can't _approve_, dear
Augusta, and you will blame me for sentimentality--but I never
_can_ forget what a _sweet_ creature Cynthia was before she ran away
with that odious American--and my _greatest_ friend in girlhood, too,
you must remember. So Robinette, as she is generally called, has
come to my house as a _home_, but a most _unlucky_ thing has
happened. I have had influenza so badly that it has affected my
_heart_ (an old trouble), I am ordered to Nauheim, and Robinette is
_stranded_, poor dear. She has few friends in London and certainly
none who can put her up. Tho' she _is_ a widow, she is only twenty-two
(just _imagine_!), very pretty, and really, tho' you won't believe
it, _quite_ nice. I am _desperate_, and just wondering if you
would let by-gones be by-gones, and receive her at Stoke Revel. She
has set her heart upon seeing the place, and some _picture_ she
was called after (I can't remember it, so it can't be one of the
_famous_ Stoke Revel group--a _copy_, I fancy), and on paying a
visit to Lizzie Prettyman, her mother's old nurse at Wittisham over
the river. She _promised_ her mother she would do this--and such a
promise is _sacred_, don't you think? It's such an _old_ story
now, Cynthia's American marriage, and no fault of _Robinette's_,
poor dear child. Her wish is almost a _pious_ one, don't you agree, to
pay respect to her mother's memory and the family, and is _much_ to
be encouraged in these days of radicalism, when every natural tie
is loosened and people pay no more _respect_ to their parents than if
they hadn't any, but had made themselves and brought themselves up
from the beginning. So don't you think it's a _good_ thing to
encourage the _right_ kind of feeling in Robinette, especially as
she is an _American_, you know....
* * * * *
Mrs. de Tracy paused, and replaced the letter in the package from
which she had withdrawn it.
"Maria Spalding's point of view," she observed, "has, I confess,
helped me to overcome the extreme reluctance I felt to receive the
child of that American here. Cynthia de Tracy's elopement nearly broke
my dear husband's heart. She was the apple of his eye before our
marriage; so much younger than himself that she was like his child
rather than his sister."
"What a shock it must have been!" murmured the companion. "What
ingratitude! Can you really receive her child? Of course you know
best, Mrs. de Tracy; but it seems a risk."
"Hardly a risk," rejoined Mrs. de Tracy with dignity. "But it is a
trial to me, and an effort that I scarcely feel called upon to make."
Miss Smeardon was so well versed in her duties that she knew she
always had to urge her employer to do exactly what she most wanted to
do, and the poor creature had developed a really wonderful ingenuity
in divining what these wishes were. Just now, however, she was, to use
a sporting phrase, "at fault" for a minute. She could not exactly
tell whether Mrs. de Tracy wanted to be urged to ask her niece to
Stoke Revel, or whether she wanted to be supplied with a really
plausible excuse for not doing so. Those of you who have seen a hound
at fault can imagine the companion at this moment: irresolute, tense,
desperately anxious to find and follow up the right scent. Compromise,
that useful refuge, came to her aid.
"It _is_ difficult to know," she faltered. Then Mrs. de Tracy gave her
the lead.
"Maria Spalding is right when she says that my husband's niece
contemplates a duty in visiting Stoke Revel," she announced. "The
young woman is the lawful daughter of Cynthia de Tracy that was: our
solicitors could never discover anything dubious in the marriage,
though we long suspected it. Therefore, though I never could have
invited her here, I admit that the Admiral's niece has a right to
come, in a way."
"Though her maiden name was Bean!" ejaculated the companion, almost
under her breath. "There are Pease in the North, as everyone knows;
perhaps there are Beans somewhere."
"There have never been Beans," said Mrs. de Tracy solemnly and totally
unconscious of a pun. "Look for yourself!"
Miss Smeardon did not need to rise from her seat and fetch Burke: it
lay always close at hand. She merely lifted it on to her knee and ran
her finger down the names beginning with B-e-a.
"Beaton, Beare, Beatty, Beale--" she read out, and she shook her head
in dismal triumph; "but never a Bean! No! we English have no such
dreadful names, thank Heavens!"
"This is the beginning of April," pursued Mrs. de Tracy, referring to
a date-card. "Maria Spalding's course at Nauheim will take three
weeks. We must allow her a week for going and coming. During that time
Mrs. David Loring can be my guest."
"A whole month!" cried the companion, as though in ecstasy at her
employer's generosity. "A whole month at Stoke Revel!"
Mrs. de Tracy took no notice. "Write in my name to Maria Spalding,
please," she commanded. "Be sure that there is no mistake about dates.
Mention the departure and arrival of trains, and say that Mrs. David
Loring will find a fly at the station. That is all, I think."
The companion bent officiously forward. "You remember, of course, that
young Mr. Lavendar comes down next week upon business?"
"Well, what if he does?" asked Mrs. de Tracy shortly.
"Mrs. David Loring is a widow," murmured the companion darkly; "a
young American widow; and they are said to be so dangerous!"
Mrs. de Tracy drew herself up. "Do you insinuate that the Admiral's
niece will lay herself out to attract Mr. Lavendar, a widow in the
house of a widow! You go rather too far, Miss Smeardon, though you are
speaking of an American. Besides, allusions of this character are
extremely distasteful to me. I have been told that the minds of
unmarried women are always running upon love affairs, but I should
hardly have thought it of you."
"I'm sure I never imagined any about myself!" murmured Miss Smeardon
with the pitiable writhe of the trodden-on worm.
"I should suppose not," rejoined Mrs. de Tracy gravely, and the
companion took up her pen obediently to write to Maria Spalding.
"Shall I send your love to the Admiral's niece?" she humbly enquired,
"or--or something of the kind?" There was irony in the last phrase,
but it was quite unconscious.
"Not my love," replied Mrs. de Tracy, "some suitable message. Make no
mistake about the dates, remember."
Thus a letter containing dates, and though not love, the substitute
described by Miss Smeardon as "something of the kind" for an unwanted
niece from an unknown aunt, left Stoke Revel by the afternoon post and
reached Robinette Loring at breakfast next morning.
III
YOUNG MRS. LORING
Young Mrs. Loring thought she had never taken so long a drive as that
from the Weston railway station to Stoke Revel. The way stretched
through narrow winding roads, always up hill, always between high
Devonshire hedges. The rain-soaked lanes were slippery and she was
unpleasantly conscious of the size and weight of the American wardrobe
trunk that reared its mighty frame in front of her almost to the
blotting-out of the driver, who steadied it with one hand as he plied
the whip with the other. It struck her humorously that the trunk was
larger than most of the cottages they were passing.
It was a late spring that year in England,--Robinette was a new-comer
and did not know that England runs to late and wet springs, believing
that they make more conversation than early, fine ones,--and the
trees were just bursting into leaf. The sun had not shone for three
days and the landscape, for all its beautiful greenness, looked gloomy
to an eye accustomed to a good deal of crude sunshine.
As the horse mounted higher and higher Robinette glanced out of the
windows at the dripping boughs and her face lost something of its
sparkle of anticipation. She had little to expect in the way of a warm
welcome, she knew that; or at least her mind knew it, but Robinette's
heart always expected surprises, although she had lived two and twenty
summers and was a widow at that.
Her mother had been a de Tracy of Stoke Revel whose connection with
that ancient family had ceased abruptly when she met an American
architect while traveling on the Continent, married him out of hand
and went to his native New England with him. The de Tracys had no
opinion of America, its government, its institutions, its customs, or
its people, and when they learned that Cynthia de Tracy had not only
allied herself with this undesirable nation, but had selected a native
by the name of Harold Bean, they regarded the incident of the marriage
as closed.
The union had been a happy one, though the de Tracys of Stoke Revel
had always regarded the unfortunately named architect more as a
vegetable than a human being; and the daughter of the marriage was the
young Mrs. Loring now driving in the station fly to the home of her
mother's people.
Her father had died when she was fifteen and her mother followed three
years after, leaving her with a respectable fortune but no relations;
the entire family (happily, Mrs. de Tracy would have said) having died
out with Harold. Robinette was unspeakably lonely, even with her
hundred friends, for there was enough English blood in her to make her
cry out inwardly for kith and kin, for family ties, for all the dear
familiar backgrounds of hearth and home. Had a welcoming hand been
stretched across the sea she would have flown at once to make
acquaintance with the de Tracys, cold and indifferent as they had
always been, but no bidding ever came, and the picture of the Manor
House of Stoke Revel on her dressing-table was the only reminder of
her connection with that ancient and honourable house.
It is not difficult to see, under the circumstances, how the
nineteen-year-old Robinette became the wife of the first man in whom
she inspired a serious passion.
It is incredible that women should confuse the passive process of
being loved with the active process of loving, but it occurs
nevertheless, and Robinette drifted into marriage with the vaguest
possible notions of what it meant; feeling and knowing that she needed
something, and supposing it must be a husband. It was better fortune,
perhaps, than she merited, and equally kind for both parties, that her
husband died before either of them realized the tragic mistake. David
Loring was too absorbed in his own emotions to note the absence of
full response on the part of his wife; Robinette was too much a child
and too inexperienced to be conscious of her own lack of feeling.
It was death, not life, that opened her eyes. When David Loring lay in
his coffin, Robinette's heart was suddenly seized with growing pains.
Her vision widened; words and promises took on a new and larger
meaning, and she became a serious woman for her years, although there
was an ineradicable gaiety of spirit in her that needed only sunshine
to make it the dominant note of her nature.
At the moment, Robinette, in the station fly on her way to Stoke
Revel, was only in the making, although she herself considered her
life as practically finished. The past and the present were moulding
her into something that only the future could determine. Sometimes
April, sometimes July, sometimes witch, sometimes woman; impetuous,
intrepid, romantic, tempestuous, illogical,--these were but the
elements of which the coming years of experience had yet to shape a
character. Young Mrs. Loring had plenty of briars, but she had good
roots and in favorable soil would be certain to bear roses.
But in the immediate present, the fly with the immense American
wardrobe trunk beside the driver, turned into the avenue of Stoke
Revel, and Mrs. David Loring bestowed upon herself those little
feminine attentions which precede arrival--pattings of the hair behind
the ears, twitches of the veil, and pullings down about the waist and
sleeves. A little toy of a purse made of golden chainwork, hanging
from her wrist, was searched for the driver's fare, and it had hardly
snapped to again when the fly drew up before the entrance to the
house. How interesting it looked! Robinette put her head out of the
carriage window and gazed up at the long row of windows, the old
weather-coloured stones, and the carved front of the building. Here
was a house where things might happen, she thought, and her young
heart gave a sudden bound of anticipation.
But the door was shut, alas! and a blank feeling came over Robinette
as she looked at it. Some one perhaps would come out and welcome
her, she thought for a brief moment, but only the butler appeared,
who, with the formal announcement of her name, ushered her into a
long, low room with a row of windows on one side and a pleasant
old-fashioned look of comfort and habitation. She caught a glimpse
of a tea-table with a steaming urn upon it, heard the furious barking
of a little dog, saw that there were two figures in the room and
moved instinctively towards the one beside the window, the figure in
weeds, neither very tall nor very imposing, yet somehow formidable.
"How do you do?" said an icy voice, and a chill hand held hers for a
moment, but did not press it. The colour in Robinette's cheeks paled
and then rushed back, as she drew herself up unconsciously.
"I am very well, thank you, Aunt de Tracy," she answered with
commendable composure.
"This is my friend and companion, Miss Smeardon," continued Mrs. de
Tracy, advancing to the tea-table where that useful personage
officiated. "Mrs. David Loring--Miss Smeardon." Miss Smeardon had the
dog upon her lap, yapping, clashing his teeth together, and obviously
thirsting for the visitor's blood. He was quieted with soothing words,
and Robinette seated herself innocently in the nearest chair, beside
the table.
"Excuse me!" the companion said with a slight cough; "Mrs. de Tracy's
chair! Do you mind taking another?" There was something disagreeable
in her voice, and in Mrs. de Tracy's deliberate scrutiny something so
nearly insulting that a childish impulse to cry then and there
suddenly seized upon Robinette. This was her mother's home--and no
kiss had welcomed her to it, no kind word! There were perfunctory
questions about her journey, references to the coldness and lateness
of the spring, enquiries after the health of Maria Spalding (whose
mother was a Gallup), but no claiming of kinship, no naming of her
mother's name nor of her native country! Robinette's ardent spirit had
felt sorrow, but it had never met rebuff nor known injustice, and the
sudden stir of revolt at her heart was painful with an almost physical
pain.
After a long drawn hour of this social torture, Mrs. de Tracy rang,
and a hard-featured elderly maid appeared.
"Show Mrs. Loring to her room, Benson," said the mistress of the
house, "and help her to unpack."
Robinette followed her conductor upstairs with a sinking heart. Oh!
but the chill of this English spring was in her bones, and the
coldness of a reception so frigid that her passionate young spirit
almost rebelled on the spot, prompting wild ideas and impulsive
impossibilities; even a flight to her mother's old nurse--to Lizzie
Prettyman, so often lovingly described, with her little thatched
cottage beyond the river! Surely she would find the welcome there that
was lacking here, and the touch of human kindness that one craved in a
foreign land. But no! Robinette called to her aid her strong American
common sense and the "grit" that her countrymen admire. Was she to
confess herself routed in the very first onset--the very first attempt
in storming the ancestral stronghold? With a characteristically quick
return of hope, the Admiral's niece exclaimed, "Certainly not!"
IV
A CHILLY RECEPTION
Mrs. Benson approached the wardrobe trunk with the air of a person who
has taken an immediate and violent dislike to an object.
"We have all looked at your box, ma'am, but I am sorry to say we are
not sure that it is set up properly. It is very different from any we
have ever seen at the Manor, and the men had some difficulty in
getting it up to the room. I fancy it is upside down, is it not? No?
We rather thought it was. I would call the boot-and-knife boy to
unlock it, but he jammed his hand in attempting to force the catches,
and I thought you would be kind enough to instruct me how to open it,
perhaps?"
"I am quite able to do it myself," said Robinette, keeping down a
hysterical laugh. "See how easily it goes when you know the secret!"
and she deftly turned her key in two locks one after the other, let
down the mysterious façade of the affair, and pulled out an
extraordinary rack on which hung so many dresses and wraps that Mrs.
Benson lost her breath in surprise.
"Would you like me to carry some of your things into another room,
ma'am?" she asked. "They will never go in the wardrobe; it is only a
plain English wardrobe, ma'am. We have never had any American
guests."
"The things needn't be moved," said Robinette, "many of them will be
quite convenient where they are;--and now you need not trouble about
me; I am well used to helping myself, if you will be kind enough to
come in just before dinner for a moment."
Mrs. Benson disappeared below stairs, where she regaled the injured
boot-and-knife boy and the female servants with the first instalment
of what was destined to be the most dramatic and sensational serial
story ever told at the Manor House.
"The lid of the box don't lift up," she explained, "like all the box
lids as ever I saw, and me with Lady Chitterton for six years,
traveling constantly. The front of the thing splits in the middle and
the bottom half falls on the floor. A heathenish kind of tray lifts
off from its hinges like a door, and a clothes rack pulls out on
runners. 'T is a sight to curdle your blood; and the number of dresses
she's brought would make her out to be richer than Crusoe!--though I
have heard from a cousin of mine who was in service in America that
the ladies over there spend every penny they can rake and scrape on
their clothes. Their husbands may work their fingers to the bone, and
their parents be in the workhouse, but fine frocks they will have!"
"Rather!" said the boot-and-knife boy, nursing his injured thumb.
On the departure of Mrs. Benson from her room, Robinette gave a
stifled shriek in which laughter and tears were equally mingled. Then
she flew like a lapwing to the fire-place and lifted off a fan of
white paper from the grate.
"No possibility of help there!" she exclaimed. "Cold within, cold
without! How shall I unpack? How shall I dress? How shall I live
without a fire? Ah! here is the coal box! Empty! Empty, and it is only
the month of April! 'Oh! to be in England now that April's there!' How
could Browning write that line without his teeth chattering! How well
I understand the desire of the British to keep India and South Africa!
They must have some place to go where they can get warm! Now for
unpacking, or any sort of manual labour which will put my frozen blood
in circulation!"
Slapping her hands, beating her breast, stamping her feet, Mrs. Loring
removed a few dresses from the offending trunk to the mahogany
wardrobe, and disposed her effects neatly in the drawers of bureau and
highboy.
"I have made a mistake at the very beginning," she thought. "I
supposed nothing could be too pretty for the Manor House and now I am
afraid my worst is too fine. The Manor House of Stoke Revel! Wouldn't
that appeal to anyone's imagination? Now what for to-night? White
satin with crystal? Back you go into the trunk! Back goes the
silver grey chiffon! I'll have it re-hung over flannel! Avaunt!
heliotrope velvet with amethyst spangles, made with a view to
ensnaring the High Church clergy! I wish I had a princess dress of
moleskin with a court train of squirrel hanging from the shoulders!
Here is the thing; my black Liberty satin two years old. I will
cover part of my exposed neck and shoulders with a fichu of lace; my
black silk openwork stockings will be drawn on over a pair of
balbriggans, and the number of petticoats I shall don would discourage
a Scotch fishwife! To-morrow I'll write Mrs. Spalding's maid to buy
me two hot-water bottles, mittens, a box of quinine tablets and a
Shetland shawl.... What are these--_fans?_ Retire into the depths of
that tray and never look me in the face again!... _Parasols?_ I
wonder at your impertinence in coming here! I shall give you cod
liver oil and make you grow into umbrellas!"
Presently the dinner gong growled through the house, and Robinette,
still shivering, flung across her shoulders a shimmering scarf of
white and silver. It fell over her simple black dress in just the
right way, adding a last touch to the somewhat exotic grace which made
her a stranger in her mother's home. Then she fled down the darkening
passages, instinctively aware that unpunctuality was a crime in this
house. Yet in spite of her haste, she paused before the window of an
upper lobby, arrested by the scene it framed. Heavy rain still fell,
and the light, made greenish by the nearness of great trees just
coming into leaf, was cheerless and singularly cold. But that could
not mar the majesty of the outlook which made the Manor of Stoke
Revel, on its height, unique. Far below the house, the broad river
slipped towards the sea, between woods that rose tier upon tier above
and beyond--woods of beech and of oak, not yet green, but purplish
under the rainy mist. On the bank, woods too, and here, where the
river, in excess of strength, swirled into a creek--a shining
sand-bank where fishing nets were hung. Then the low, strong tower of
a church, with the sombreness of cypress beside it, and the thatched
roofs of cottages.
Something stirred in the heart of Robinette as she looked, that part
of her blood which her English mother had given her. This scene, so
indescribably English as hardly to be imaginable in another land, had
been painted for her again and again by her mother with all the
retrospective romance of an exile's touch. She knew it, but she did
not know if she could ever love it, beautiful though it was and
noble.
But she banished these misgivings and ran down the twisted stairway
so fast that she was almost panting when she reached the drawing-room
door.
"I will take your arm, please," said the hostess coldly, while Miss
Smeardon wore the virtuous and injured air of one who has been kept
waiting. Mrs. de Tracy laid, on the warm and smooth arm of her guest,
one of her small, dry hands, sparkling with rings, and the procession
closed with the companion and the lap-dog.
In the dining room, the shutters were closed, and the candles, in
branching candlesticks of silver, only partially lit a room long and
low like the other. The walls were darkened with pictures, and
Robinette's bright eyes searched them eagerly.
"The Sir Joshua is not here!" she thought. "And it was not in the
drawing room. Has Aunt de Tracy given, or hidden it away--my very own
name-picture?"
With all her determination, Robinette somehow could not summon courage
enough to ask where this picture was. Such a question would involve
the mention of her mother's name, and from that she shrank. Young Mrs.
Loring had never before found herself in a society where conversation
was apparently regarded as a crime, and to fit herself to her
environment, under the scrutiny of Mrs. de Tracy and the decidedly
inimical looks of the companion, took all her time. A burden of
self-consciousness lay upon her such as her light and elastic spirit
had never known. She found herself morbidly observant of minute
details; the pattern of the tablecloth; the crest upon the spoons; the
curious red knobs upon Miss Smeardon's fingers, and the odd mincing
way she held her fork; the almost athletic efforts of the butler when
he raised an enormous silver dish-cover, and the curiously frugal and
unappetizing nature of the viand it disclosed. The wizened face of the
lap-dog, too, peering over the table's edge, out of Miss Smeardon's
lap, might have acquired its distrustful expression, Robinette
thought, from habitual doubts as to whether enough to eat would ever
be his good fortune. The meal ended with the ceremonious presentation
to each lady in turn, of three wrinkled apples and two crooked bananas
in a probably priceless dish of Crown Derby. Then the procession
re-formed and returned to the drawing room.
"And the evening and the morning were the first day!" sighed Robinette
to herself in the chilly solitude of her own room. How often could she
endure the repetition?
V
AT WITTISHAM
"May I have a fire to dress by, Benson?" Robinette asked rather
timidly that night, her head just peeping above the blankets.
"_Fire_?" returned Benson, in italics, with an interrogation point.
Robinette longed to spell the word and ask Benson if it had ever come
to her notice before, but she stifled her desire and said, "I am quite
ashamed, Benson, but you see I am not used to the climate yet. If
you'll pamper me just a little at the beginning, I shall behave better
presently."
"I will give orders for a fire night and morning, certainly, ma'am,"
said Benson. "I did not offer it because our ladies never have one in
their bedrooms at this time of the year. Mrs. de Tracy is very strong
and active for her age."
"It's my opinion she's a w'eedler," remarked Benson at the housekeeper's
luncheon table. "She asks for what she wants like a child. She has a
pretty way with her, I can't deny that, but is she a w'eedler?"
Wheedler or not, Robinette got her fire to dress by, and so was able
to come down in the morning feeling tolerably warm. It was well that
she was, for the cold tea and tough toast of the de Tracy breakfast
had little in them to warm the heart. Conversation languished during
the meal, and after a walk to the stables Robinette was thankful to
return to her own room again on the pretext of writing letters. There
she piled up the fire, drew her chair close up to the hearth, and
employed herself until noon, when she took her embroidery and joined
her aunt in the drawing room. Luncheon was announced at half past one,
and immediately after it Mrs. de Tracy and Miss Smeardon went to their
respective bedrooms for rest.
"Are there indeed only twelve hours in the day?" Robinette asked
herself desperately as she heard the great, solemn-toned hall clock
strike two. It seemed quite impossible that it could be only two; the
whole afternoon had still to be accounted for, and how? Well, she
might look over her clothes again, re-arranging them in all their
dainty variety in the wardrobe and drawers; she might put tissue paper
into the sleeves of each bodice, smoothing out every crease; she might
even find that some tiny repairs were needed! There were three new
hats, and several pairs of new gloves to be tried on; her accounts
must be made up, her cheque book balanced; yet all these things would
take but a short time. Then the hall clock struck three.
"I must go out," she thought.
Coming through the hall from her room Robinette met her aunt and Miss
Smeardon descending the staircase.
"We are driving this afternoon," said Mrs. de Tracy, "would you not
like to come with us?"
The thought turned Robinette to stone: she had visited the stables,
and seen the coachman lead what seemed to her a palsied horse out into
the yard. Her sympathetic allusion to the supposed condition of the
steed had not been well received, for the man had given her to
understand that this was the one horse of the establishment, but
Robinette had vowed never to sit behind it.
"I think I'd rather walk, Aunt de Tracy," she said, "I'd like to go
and see my mother's old nurse, Mrs. Prettyman. Can I do any errands
for you?"
"None, thank you. To go to Wittisham you have to cross the ferry,
remember."
"Oh! that must be simple! you may be sure I shall not lose myself!"
said Robinette.
Both the older women looked curiously at her for a moment; then Mrs.
de Tracy said:--
"You will kindly not use the public ferry; the footman will row you
across to Wittisham at any hour you may mention to him."
"Oh, but Aunt de Tracy, I'd really prefer the public ferry."
"Nonsense, impossible; the footman shall row you," said Mrs. de Tracy
with finality.
Robinette said nothing; she hated the idea of the footman, but it
seemed inevitable. "Am I never to get away from their dullnesses?" she
thought. "A public ferry sounds quite lively in place of being rowed
by William!"
When the shore was reached, however, Robinette discovered that the
passage across the river in a leaky little boat, rowed by a painfully
inexperienced servant, was almost too much for her. To see him
fumbling with the oars, made her tingle to take them herself; she
could not abide the irritation of a return journey with such a
boatman. This determination was hastened when she saw that instead of
the three-decker steamer of her native land, the ferry at Wittisham
was just like an ordinary row-boat; that one rang a bell hanging from
a picturesque tower; that a nice young man with a sprig of wallflower
in his cap rowed one across, and that each passenger handed out a
penny to him on the farther side.
"How enchantingly quaint!" she cried. "William, you can go home; I
shall return by the public ferry."
William looked surprised but only replied, "Very good, ma'am."
On warm summer afternoons the tiny square of Mrs. Prettyman's garden
made as delightful a place to sit in as one could wish. There was
sunshine on the turf, and a thin shade was cast by the drooping boughs
of the plum tree; just enough to shelter old eyes from the glare. When
she was very tired with doing her work Mrs. Prettyman would totter out
into the garden. She was getting terribly lame now, yet afraid to
acknowledge it, knowing, with the desperate wisdom of poverty, that
once to give in, very often ended in giving up altogether. So her
lameness was 'blamed on the weather,' 'blamed on scrubbing the
floor,' blamed on anything rather than the tragic, incurable fact of
old age. This afternoon her rheumatism had been specially bad: she had
an inclination to cry out when she rose from her chair, and every step
was an effort. Yet the sunshine was tempting; it warmed old and aching
bones through and through as no fire could do; and Mrs. Prettyman
thought she must make the effort to go out.
She had just arrived at this conclusion, when a tap came to the door.
"That you, Mrs. Darke?" she called out in her piping old voice. "Come
in, me dear, I'm that stiff with me rheumatics to-day I can't scarce
rise out of me chair."
"It's not Mrs. Darke," said Robinette, stooping to enter through the
tiny doorway. "It's a stranger, Mrs. Prettyman, come all the way from
America to see you."
"Lor' now, Miss, whoever may you be?" the old woman cried, making as
if she would rise from her chair. But Robinette caught her arm and
made her sit still.
"Don't get up; please sit right there where you are, and I'll take
this chair beside you. Now, Mrs. Prettyman, look at me hard, and tell
me if you know who I am."
The old woman gazed into Robinette's face, and then a light seemed to
break over her.
"It's Miss Cynthia's daughter you are!" she cried. "My Miss Cynthia as
went and married in America!"
She caught Robinette's white ringed hands in hers, and Robinette bent
down and kissed the wrinkled old face.
"I know that mother loved you, Nurse," she said. "She used often,
often to tell me about you."
After the fashion of old people, Mrs. Prettyman was too much moved to
speak. Her face worked all over, and then slow tears began to run down
her furrowed cheeks. She got up from her chair and walked across the
uneven floor, leaning on a stick.
"I've something here, Miss, I've something here; something I never
parts with," she said. A tall chest of drawers stood against the wall,
and the old woman began to search among its contents as she spoke. At
last she found a little kid shoe, laid away in a handkerchief.
"See here, Miss! here's my Miss Cynthia's shoe! 'T was tied on to my
wedding coach the day I got married and left her. My 'usband 'e
laughed at me cruel because I'd have that shoe with me; but I've kept
it ever since."
Robinette came and stood beside her, and they both wept together over
the silly little shoe.
"I want to talk a great deal to you, Nurse; I want to tell you all
about mother and father, and how they died," said Robinette through
her tears. How strange that she should have to come to this cottage
and to this poor old woman before she found anyone to whom she could
speak of her beloved dead! Her heart was so full that she could
scarcely speak. A crowd of memories rushed into her mind; last scenes
and parting words; those innumerable unforgettable details that are
printed once for all upon the heart that loves and feels.
"I'd like to tell you about it out of doors, Nurse dear," she said
tearfully; "can you come out under the plum tree in your garden? It's
lovely there."
"Yes, dearie, yes, we'll come out under the plum tree, we will,"
echoed Mrs. Prettyman.
"See, Nursie, take my arm, I'll help you out into the warm sunshine,"
Robinette said.
They progressed very slowly, the old woman leaning with all her weight
upon the arm of her strong young helper. Then under the flickering
shade of the tree they sat down together for their talk.
So much to tell, so much to hear, the afternoon slipped away unknown
to them, and still they were sitting there hand in hand talking and
listening; sometimes crying a little, sometimes laughing; a queerly
assorted couple, these new-made friends.
But when all the recollections had been talked over and wept over,
when Mrs. Prettyman had told Robinette, with the extraordinary detail
that old people can put into their memories of long ago, all that she
remembered of Cynthia de Tracy's childhood, then Robinette began to
question the old woman about her own life. Was she comfortable? Was
she tolerably well off? Or had she difficulty in making ends meet?
To these questions Mrs. Prettyman made valiant answers: she had a fine
spirit, and no wish to let a stranger see the skeleton in the
cupboard. But Robinette's quick instinct pierced through the veil of
well-meant bravery and touched the truth.
"Nurse dear," she said, "you say you're comfortable, and well off, but
you won't mind my telling you that I just don't quite believe you."
"Oh, my dear heart, what's that you be sayin'? callin' of me a liar?"
chuckled the old woman fondly.
Robinette rose from her seat on the bench and stood back to
scrutinize the cottage. It was exquisitely picturesque, but this
very picturesqueness constituted its danger; for the place was a
perfect death trap. The crumbling cob-walls that had taken on those
wonderful patches of green colour, soaked in the damp like a sponge:
the irregularity of the thatched roof that looked so well, admitted
trickles of rain on wet nights; and the uneven mud floor of the
kitchen revealed the fact that the cottage had been built without any
proper foundation. The door did not fit, and in cold weather a
knife-like draught must run in under it. All this Robinette's
quick, practical glance took in; she gave a little nod or two,
murmuring to herself, "A new thatch roof, a new door, a new cement
floor." Then she came and sat down again.
"Tell me now, how much do you have to live on every week, Nurse?" she
asked.
"Oh, Miss Robinette--ma'am, I should say--'t is wonderful how I gets
on; and then there's the plum tree--just see the flourish on it,
Missie dear! 'T will have a crop o' plums come autumn will about drag
down the boughs! I don't know how 't would be with me without I had
the plum tree."
"Do you really make something by it?" Robinette asked.
The old woman chuckled again. "To be sure I makes; makes jam every
autumn; a sight o' jam. Come inside again, me dear, an' see me jam
cupboard and you'll know."
She hobbled into the kitchen, and opened the door of a wall press in
the corner. There, row above row stood a solid phalanx of jam pots; it
seemed as if a whole town might be supplied out of Mrs. Prettyman's
cupboard.
"'T is well thought of, me jam," the old woman said, grinning with
pleasure. "I be very careful in the preparing of 'en; gets a penny the
pound more for me jam than others, along of its being so fine."
Robinette was charmed to see that here Mrs. Prettyman had a reliable
source of income, however slender.
"How much do you reckon to get from it every year?" she asked.
"Going five pounds, dear: four pounds fifteen shillings and sixpence,
last autumn; and please the Lord there's a better crop this season, so
't will be the clear five pounds. Oh! I do be loving me plum tree like
a friend, I do."
They turned back into the sunshine again, that Robinette should admire
this wonderful tree-friend once more. She stood under its shadow with
great delight, as the Bible says, gazing up through the intricate
network of boughs and blossom to the cloudless blue above her.
"It's heavenly, Nurse, just heavenly!" she sighed as she came and sat
down beside the old woman again.
"Then there's me duck too, Missie! Lard, now I don't know how I'd be
without I had me duck. Duckie I calls 'er and Duckie she is; company
she is, too, to me mornin's, with her 'Quack, Quack,' under the
winder."
So the old woman prattled on, giving Robinette all the history of her
life, with its tiny joys and many struggles, till it seemed to the
listener that she had always known Mrs. Prettyman, the plum tree, and
her duck--known them and loved them, all three.
VI
MARK LAVENDAR
Hundreds of years ago the street of Stoke Revel village, if street it
could be called, and the tower of the ancient church, must have looked
very much the same as now.