singing, and the spring sun was hot in a clear sky, a knight riding
down the steep lane would have taken the same turn to the left on his
way to the Manor. Were he a young man, he would probably have reined
up his horse for a moment, and looked, as Mark Lavendar did now, at
the blithe landscape before him. Only then the accessories would have
been so different: the great horse, somewhat tired by long hours of
riding, the armour that glinted in the sun, the casque pushed up to
let the fresh air play upon the rider's face; such a figure must have
often stood just at that turn where the lane wound up the little hill.
The landscape was the same, and young men in all ages are very much
the same, so--although this one had merely arrived by train, and
walked from the nearest station--Mark Lavendar stopped and leaned over
the low wall when he came to the turn of the road, and looked down at
the river.
He boasted no war horse nor armour; none of the trappings of the older
world added to his distinction, and yet he was a very pleasing figure
of a man.
The gaunt brown face was quite hard and solemn in expression; ugly,
but not commonplace, for as a friend once said of him, "His eyes seem
to belong to another person." It was not this, but only that the eyes,
blue as Saint Veronica's flower, showed suddenly a different aspect of
the man, an unexpected tenderness that flatly contradicted the hard
features of his face. He looked very nice when he laughed too, so
that most people when they had found out the trick, tried to make him
laugh as often as possible.
"What a day! Heavens! what a lovely day," he said to himself as he
leaned on the low wall. "I want to be courting Amaryllis somewhere in
these woods, and instead I've got to go and talk business with that
old woman;" and he looked ruefully towards the Manor House; for this
was not his first visit by any means, and he knew only too well the
hours of boredom that awaited him. Mrs. de Tracy, strange to say, had
a soft side towards this young man, the son of her family solicitor.
Mark was invariably sent down by his father when there was any
business to be transacted at Stoke Revel. The older man was fond of a
good dinner, and hated circumlocution about affairs, and it was only
when a death in the family, or some other crucial event, made his
presence absolutely necessary that he came down himself. Mark was
sacrificed instead, and many a wearisome hour had he spent in that
house. However on this occasion he had been glad enough to get out of
London for a while; the country was divine, and even the de Tracy
business did not occupy the whole day. There would be hours on the
river; afternoons spent riding along those green lanes through which
he had just passed, where the banks were starred with little vivid
flowers. Mark had an almost childish delight in such beauty. He had
loitered on the way along, flung himself down on a bank for a few
minutes, and burying his face amongst the flowers, listened with a
smile upon his mouth to the birds that chirruped in the branches of
the oak above him.
Now he leaned on the low wall, and gazed at the shining reaches of the
river. "What a day!" he said to himself again. "What a divine
afternoon"; then he added quite simply, "I wish I were in love;
everyone under eighty ought to be, on such a day!"
Even at the age of thirty most men of any personal attractions have
some romantic memories. Lavendar had his share, but somehow that
morning he was disconcertingly candid to himself. It may have been the
sudden change from London air and London noise; something in the clear
transparency of the April day, in the flute-like melody of the birds'
song, in the dream-like beauty of the scene before him, that made all
the moth and rust that had consumed the remembrances of the past more
apparent. There was little of the treasure of heaven there,--it had
mostly been nonsense or vanity or worse. He wanted, oh, how he wanted,
to be able just for once to surrender himself to what was absolutely
ideal; to have a memory when he was an old man, of something that had
no fault in it.
"No, I've never been really in love," he said to himself, "I may as
well confess it; and I daresay I never shall be, but marry on an
impulse like most men, make the best of it afterwards, and have a
sort of middle-class happiness in the end of the day."
"One, Two, Three," said the church clock from the ancient tower,
booming out the note, and Lavendar started, and rubbed his hands
across his dazzled eyes. "Luncheon is a late meal in that awful house,
if I remember," he said, "but it must be over by this time. I really
must go in. Let me collect my thoughts; the business is 'just things
in general,' but especially the sale of some cottage or other and the
land it stands on. Yes, yes, I remember; the papers are all right. Now
for the old ladies."
He made his entrance into the Manor drawing room a few minutes later
with a charming smile.
Mrs. de Tracy actually walked a few steps to meet him, with a greeting
less frigid than usual.
"I'm glad to see you, Mark," said she. "Bates said you preferred to
walk from the station."
Mark turned his kind eyes on Miss Smeardon, and held her knuckly hand
in his own almost tenderly. It was a very bad habit, which had led to
some mischief in the past, that when he was sorry for a thing he
wanted to be very kind to it; and this made him unusually pleasing,
and dangerous!
"Business first and pleasure afterwards; excellent maxim!" he said to
himself half an hour later, as he removed the dust of travel from his
person, preparatory to an interview with Mrs. de Tracy. "Now for it!"
He liked the drawing room at Stoke Revel and always wished it had
other occupants when he entered it. This afternoon it seemed
particularly agreeable, the open windows letting in the slanting
sunshine and a strong scent of jonquils and sweet briar.
"Well, Mrs. de Tracy," said Mark, "I am my father's spokesman, you
know, and we have serious business to discuss. But tell me first,
how's my young friend Carnaby?"
"Thank you; my grandson has a severe attack of quinsy," replied Mrs.
de Tracy. "He is to have sick-leave whenever the Endymion returns to
Portsmouth."
"Oh! Carnaby will make short work of an attack of quinsy," said
Lavendar, genially.
"It would please me better," retorted Mrs. de Tracy severely, "if my
grandson showed signs of mental improvement as well as bodily health.
His letters are ill-spelled, ill-written, and ill-expressed. They are
the letters of a school-boy."
"He is not much more than a school-boy, is he?" suggested Mark, "only
fifteen! The mental improvement will come; too soon, for my taste. I
like Carnaby as he is!"
The young man had seated himself beside his hostess in an attitude of
perfect ease. Though bored by his present environment, he was entirely
at home in it. Just because he greatly dared towards her and was never
afraid, Mrs. de Tracy liked him. With the mere flicker of an eyelid,
she dismissed the attendant Smeardon.
"There has been an offer for the land at Wittisham," Lavendar said,
when they were alone.
Mrs. de Tracy winced. "That is no matter of congratulation with me,"
she said bleakly.
"But it is with us, for it is a most excellent one!" returned the
young man hardily. "The firm has had the responsibility of advising
the sale, which we consider absolutely unavoidable in the present
financial condition of Stoke Revel. We have advertised for a year, and
advertisement is costly. Now comes an offer of a somewhat peculiar
kind, but sound enough." Lavendar here produced a bundle of documents
tied with the traditional red tape. "An artist," he continued,
"Waller, R. A.--you know the name?"
"I do not," interpolated Mrs. de Tracy grimly.
"Nevertheless, a well known painter," persisted Mark, "and one, as it
happens, of the orchard scenery of this part of England. He has known
Wittisham for a long time, and only last year he made a success with
the painting of a plum tree which grows in front of one of the
cottages. It was sold for a large sum, and, as a matter of sentiment,
I suppose, Waller wishes to buy the cottage and make it into a summer
retreat or studio for himself."
"He cannot buy it," said Mrs. de Tracy with the snort of a war horse.
"He cannot buy it apart from the land," insinuated Mark, "but he is
flush of cash and ready to buy the land too--very nearly as much as we
want to sell, and the bargain merely waits your consent. The sum that
has been agreed upon is of the kind that a man in the height of his
triumph offers for a fancy article. No such sum will ever be offered
for land at Wittisham again; old orchard land, falling into desuetude
as it is and covered with condemned cottages."
Mrs. de Tracy was sternly silent, and Mark awaited her next words with
some curiosity. He felt like a torturer drawing the tooth of a Jew in
the good old days. This sale of land was a bitter pill to the widow,
as it well might be, for it was the beginning of the end, as the de
Tracy solicitors could have told you. There had been de Tracys of
Stoke Revel since Queen Elizabeth's time, but there would not be de
Tracys of Stoke Revel much longer,--unless young Carnaby married an
heiress when he came of age--and that no de Tracy had ever done.
"The land across the river," Mrs. de Tracy said at last, "was the
first land the de Tracys held, but much of it went at the Restoration.
Well, let this go too!" she added harshly.
Mark blessed himself that indecision was no part of the lady's
character and sighed with relief. "My father would like to know," he
said, "what you propose to do with regard to the old woman who is the
present tenant of the cottage."
"Elizabeth Prettyman is not a tenant," said Mrs. de Tracy coldly.
"She is practically a pensioner, since she lives rent-free."
"True, I forgot," said Mark soothingly. "I beg your pardon."
"Do not suppose that it is by my wish," continued Mrs. de Tracy
coldly. "I have never approved of supporting the peasantry in
idleness. This woman happened to be for some years nurse to Cynthia de
Tracy, my husband's younger sister, who deeply offended her family by
marrying an American named Bean. I see no claim in that to a pension
of any kind."
"But your husband saw it, I imagine," interpolated Mark quietly, and
Mrs. de Tracy gave him a fierce look, which he met, however, without a
sign of flinching.
"My husband had a mistaken idea that Prettyman was poor when she
became a widow," said Mrs. de Tracy. "On the contrary she had
relations quite well able to support her, I believe. I never cross the
river, in these days, and the matter has escaped my memory, so that
things have been left as they were."
"No great loss," said Mark candidly, "since the cottage in its present
state is utterly unfit for any tenant. As to Prettyman, is it your
intention to give her notice to quit?"
"Unquestionably, since the cottage is needed," answered Mrs. de Tracy.
"She has occupied it too long as it is." The speaker's lips closed
like a vice over the words.
"God pity Elizabeth Prettyman!" ejaculated Lavendar to himself. "Might
is Right still, apparently, at Stoke Revel!" Aloud he merely said, "A
weak deference to public opinion was never a foible of yours, Mrs. de
Tracy; but I think I would advise you to consider some question of
compensation to Mrs. Prettyman for the loss of the cottage."
"If you can show me that the woman has any legal claim upon the
estate, I will consider the question, but not otherwise," said Mrs. de
Tracy with such an air of finality that Lavendar was inclined to let
the matter drop for the moment.
"The firm," he said, "will communicate your wishes to Mrs. Prettyman
by letter."
"Prettyman cannot read," snapped Mrs. de Tracy. "She must be told, and
the sooner the better."
"Well, Mrs. de Tracy," said the young man with a short laugh,
"provided it is not I who have to tell her, well and good. I warn you
the task would not be to my taste unless compensation were offered
her."
Mrs. de Tracy's features hardened to a degree unusual even to her.
"I am apparently less tender-hearted than you," she said sardonically.
"I shall, if I think fit, deal with Prettyman in person." The subject
was dropped, and Lavendar rose to leave the room, but Mrs. de Tracy
detained him.
"The Admiral's niece, Mrs. David Loring, is my guest at present," she
said. "It happens that she has crossed the river to Wittisham and is
paying a visit to Prettyman. I should be obliged, Mark, if you would
row across and fetch her back, as by some misunderstanding, my servant
has not waited for her. You are an oarsman, I know."
The young man consented with alacrity. "I shall kill two birds with
one stone," he said cheerfully, "I shall visit the famous plum tree
cottage and see Mrs. Prettyman for myself; and I shall have the
privilege of executing your commission as Mrs. Loring's escort. It
sounds a very agreeable one!"
"You have no time to lose," said Mrs. de Tracy with a glance at the
clock.
VII
A CROSS-EXAMINATION
Lavendar escaped from the house, where, even in the smoke-room, it
seemed unregenerate to light a cigar, and took the path to the shore.
"I wonder if one woman staying in a house full of men would find life
as depressing as I do cooped up here under precisely opposite
circumstances," he thought, as he made his way through the little
churchyard. "It cannot be the atmosphere of femininity that bores me,
however, for Mrs. de Tracy has a strongly masculine flavour and Miss
Smeardon is as nearly neuter as a person can be."
He took a couple of oars from the boat-house as he passed, and going
to the little landing stage untied the boat and started for the
farther shore.
It was good to feel the water parting under his vigorous strokes and
delightful to exert his strength after the hours of stifled irritation
at the Manor. It was a bright, calm close of day, when in the rarefied
evening air each sound began to acquire the sharpness that marks the
hour. He could hear the rush of the waters behind the boat and the
voices of the fishers farther up the stream. As he drew up to the bank
and took in his oars the stillness was so great that you could have
heard a pin fall, when suddenly from a tree above him a bird broke
into one little finished song and then was still, as if it had uttered
all it wished to say.
"What a heavenly evening!" thought Lavendar, "and what a lovely spot!
That must be the cottage just above me. Mrs. de Tracy said I should
know it by the plum tree. Ah, there it is!" Tying up the boat he
sprang up the steps and walked along the flagged path. The plum tree
these last few days had begun to look its fairest. The blossoms did
not yet conceal the leaves, but it was a very bower of beauty already.
There was a little table spread for tea under its branches, and an old
woman like thousands of old women in thousands of cottages all over
England, was sitting behind it, precisely as if she had been a
coloured illustration in a summer number of an English weekly. She was
on the typical bench in the typical attitude, but instead of the
typical old man in a clean smock frock who should have occupied the
end of the bench, there sat beside her a distinctly lovely young
woman. What struck Lavendar was the wealth of colour she brought into
the picture: goldy brown hair, brown tweed dress, with a cape of blue
cloth slipping off her shoulders, and a brown toque with a pert
upstanding quill that seemed to express spirit and pluck, and a merry
heart. His quick glance took in the little hands that held the
withered old ones. Both heads were bowed and in the brown tweed lap
was a child's shoe,--a wee, worn, fat shoe. Beside it lay an absurd
bit of crumpled, tear-soaked embroidery that had been intended to do
duty as a handkerchief but had evidently proved quite unseaworthy.
Waddling about on the flags close to the little table was a large fat
duck wearing a look of inexpressible greed. "_Quack, quack, quack_!"
it said, waddling off angrily as Lavendar approached.
At the sound of the duck's raucous voice both the women looked up.
"Is this Mrs. Prettyman's cottage, ma'am?" Lavendar asked with his
charming smile.
"Yes, sir, 't is indeed, and who may you be, if I may be so bold as to
ask?"
"I'm Mr. Lavendar, Mrs. de Tracy's lawyer, Mrs. Prettyman. I'm come to
do some business at Stoke Revel," he added, for the old face had
clouded over, and Mrs. Prettyman's whole expression changed to one of
timid mistrust. "I really was sent by Mrs. de Tracy," he went on,
turning to Robinette, "to take you home; Mrs. Loring, isn't it?"
"Yes, I am Mrs. Loring," she said, frankly holding out her hand to
him. "I knew you were expected at Stoke Revel, but I sent the footman
back myself. He spoils the scenery and the river altogether."
"I've got a boat down there; Mrs. de Tracy doesn't quite like your
taking the ferry; may I have the honour of rowing you across? My
orders were to bring you back as soon as possible."
"I'm blest if I hurry," was his unspoken comment as Robinette gaily
agreed, and, having bidden good-bye to the old woman, with a quick
caress that astonished him a good deal, she laid down the little shoe
gently upon the bench, and turned to accompany him to the boat.
The river was like a looking-glass; the air like balm. "We'll
take some time getting across, against the tide," said Lavendar
reflectively, as he resolved that the little voyage should be
prolonged to its fullest possible extent. He was not going into
the Manor a moment earlier than he could help, when this charming
person was sitting opposite to him. So this was Mrs. Loring! How
different from the stout middle-aged lady whom Mrs. de Tracy's
words had conjured up when he set out to find her!
"Old Mrs. Prettyman was my mother's nurse," Robinette remarked as
Lavendar dipped his oars gently into the stream and began to row. "I
went to see her feeling quite grown up, and she seemed to consider me
still a child; I was feeling about four years old at the moment when
you appeared and woke me to the real world again."
She had dried her eyes now and had pulled her hat down so as to shade
her face, but Lavendar could see the traces of her weeping, and the
dear little ineffectual rag of a handkerchief was still in one hand.
"What on earth was she crying about?" he thought, as with lowered eyes
he rowed very slowly across, only just keeping the boat's head
against the current, and glancing now and then at the young woman.
Was it possible that this lovely person was going to be his
fellow-guest in that dull house? "My word! but she's pretty! and what
were the tears about ... and the little shoe? Did it belong to a child
of her own? Can she be a widow, I wonder," said Lavendar to himself.
"I often think," he said suddenly, raising his head, "that when two
people meet for the first time as utter strangers to each other, they
should be encouraged, not forbidden, to ask plain questions. It may be
my legal training, but I'd like all conversation to begin in that way.
As a child I was constantly reproved for my curiosity, especially when
I once asked a touchy old gentleman, 'Which is your glass eye? The one
that moves, or the one that stands still?'"
The tears had dried, the hat was pushed back again, the young woman's
face broke into an April smile that matched the day and the weather.
"Oh, come, let us do it," she exclaimed. "I'd love to play it like a
new game: we know nothing at all about each other, any more than if we
had dropped from the moon into the boat together. Oh! do be quick!
We've so little time; the river is quite narrow; who's to open the
ball?"
"I'll begin, by right of my profession; put the witness in the box,
please.--What is your name, madam?"
"Robinette Loring," she said demurely, clasping her hands on her knee,
an almost childlike delight in the new game dimpling the corners of
her mouth from time to time.
"What is your age, madam?" Lavendar hesitated just for a moment before
putting this question.
"I refuse to answer; you must guess."
"Contempt of Court--"
"Well, go on; I'm twenty-two and six weeks."
"Thank you, you are remarkably well preserved. I can hardly
believe--those six-weeks! What nationality?"
"American, of course, or half and half; with an English mother and
American ideas."
"Thank you. Where is your present place of residence?"
"Stoke Revel Manor House."
"What is the duration of the visit?"
"Fixed at a month, but may be shortened at any time for bad
behaviour."
"Your purpose in coming to Stoke Revel?"
"A Sentimental Journey, in search of fond relations."
"Have you found these relations?"
"I've found them; but the fondness is still to seek."
"Have you left your family in America?"
"I have no one belonging to me in the world," she answered simply, and
her bright face clouded suddenly.
There was a moment's rather embarrassed silence. "It's getting to be a
sad game"; she said. "It's my turn now. I'll be the cross-examiner,
but not having had your legal training, I'll tell you a few facts
about this witness to begin with. He's a lawyer; I know that already.
Your Christian name, sir?"
"Mark."
"Mark Lavendar. 'Mark the perfect man.' Where have I heard that; in
Pope or in the Bible? Thank you; very good; your age is between thirty
and thirty-five, with a strong probability that it is thirty-three. Am
I right?"
"Approximately, madam."
"You are unmarried, for married men don't play games like this; they
are too sedate."
"You reassure me! Am I expected to acknowledge the truth of all your
observations?"
"You have only to answer my questions, sir."
"I am unmarried, madam."
"Your nationality?"
"English of course. You don't count a French grandmother, I suppose?"
Robinette clapped her hands. "Of course I do; it accounts for this
game; it just makes all the difference.--Why have you come to Stoke
Revel; couldn't you help it?"
A twinkle passed from the blue eyes to the brown ones.
"I am here on business connected with the estate."
"For how long?"
"An hour ago I thought all might be completed in a few days, but these
affairs are sometimes unaccountably prolonged!" (Was there another
twinkle? Robinette could hardly say.) They were half-way across the
river now. She leaned over and looked at herself in the water for a
moment.
Lavendar rested on his oars, and began to rub the palms of his hands,
smiling a little to himself as he bent his head.
"Yours is an odd Christian name," he said. "I've never heard it
before."
"Then you haven't visited your National Gallery faithfully enough,"
said Mrs. Loring. "Robinetta is one of the Sir Joshua pictures there,
you know, and it was a great favourite of my mother's in her girlhood.
Indeed she saved up her pin-money for nearly two years that she might
have a good copy of it made to hang in her bedroom where she could
look at it night and morning."
"Then you were named after the picture?"
"I was named from the memory of it," said Robinette, trailing her hand
through the clear water. "Mother took nothing to America with her but
my father's love (there was so much of that, it made up for all she
left behind), so the picture was thousands of miles away when I was
born. Mother told me that when I was first put into her arms she
thought suddenly, as she saw my dark head, 'Here is my own Robinetta,
in place of the one I left behind,' and fell asleep straight away,
full of joy and content."
"And they shortened the name to Robinette?"
"I was christened properly enough," she answered. "It was the world
that clipped my name's little wings; the world refuses to take me
seriously; I can't think why, I'm sure; I never regarded _it_ as a
joke."
"A joke," said Lavendar reflectively; "it's a sort of grim one at
times; and yet it's funny too," he said, suddenly raising his eyes.
"Now that's the odd thing I was thinking as I looked at you just now,"
Robinette said frankly. "You seem so deadly solemn until you look up
and laugh--and then you _do_ laugh, you know. That's the French
grandmother again! It was nice in her to marry your grandfather! It
helped a lot!"
He laughed then certainly, and so did she, and then pointed out to him
that they were being slowly drifted out of their course, and that if
he meant to get across to the landing-stage he must row a little
harder.
"I have met American women casually;" he said, bending to his oars,
"but I have never known one well."
"It's rather too bad to disturb the tranquillity of your impressions,"
returned Mrs. Loring composedly.