twinkles; he did not realize he had so many in stock.
"You mean American women are not painted in quite the right colours?"
"I suppose black _is_ a colour?"
"Oh! I see your point of view!" and Lavendar twinkled again.
"I can tell you in five sentences exactly what you have heard about
us. Will you say whether I am right? If you refuse I'll put you in the
witness box and then you'll be forced to speak!"
"Very well; proceed."
"One: We are clever, good conversationalists, and as cold as
icicles."
"Yes."
"Two: We dress beautifully and use extravagant means to compass our
ends in this direction."
"Yes."
"Three: We keep our overworked husbands under strict discipline."
"Yes! I say,--I don't like this game."
"Neither do I, but it's very much played,--"
"Four: We prefer hotels to home life and don't bring up our children
well."
"Yes."
"Five: We interfere with the proper game laws by bagging English
husbands instead of staying on our own preserves. That's about all, I
think. Were not those rumours tolerably familiar to you in the
ha'penny papers and their human counterparts?"
Lavendar was so amused by this direct storming of his opinion that he
could hardly keep his laughter within bounds. "I've heard one other
criticism," he said, "that you were all pretty and all had small feet
and hands! I am now able to declare that to be a base calumny and to
hope that all the others will prove just as false!" Then Robinette
laughed too; eyes, lips, cheeks! When Lavendar looked at her he wished
that his father would keep him at Stoke Revel for a month.
The sun was going down now, and the rising tide came swelling up from
the sea, lifting itself and silently swelling the volume of the river,
in a way that had something awful about it. The whole current of the
great stream was against it, but behind was the force of the sea and
so it filled and filled with hardly a ripple, as the heart is filled
with a new desire. Up from the mouth of the river came a faint breeze
bringing the taste of the ocean into the deeply wooded creeks. It had
freshened into a little wind, as they drew up at the boat-house, that
flapped Robinette's blue cape about her, and dyed the colour in her
cheeks to a livelier tint. As they walked up the narrow pathway to the
house a deep silence fell between them that neither attempted to
break.
At the top of the hill, she paused to take breath, and look across the
river. It was half dark already there, on the other side in the deep
shadow of the hill; and a lamp in the window of the cottage shone like
a star beside the faintly green shape of the budding plum tree.
As Robinette entered the door of the Manor House she took out her
little gold-meshed purse and handed Mark Lavendar a penny.
"It's none too much," she said, meeting his astonished gaze with a
smile. "I should have had to pay it on the public ferry, and you were
ever so much nicer than the footman!"
Lavendar put the penny in his waistcoat pocket and has never spent it
to this day. It is impossible to explain these things; one can only
state them as facts. Another fact, too, that he suddenly remembered,
when he went to his room, was, that the moment her personality touched
his he was filled with curiosity about her. He had met hundreds of
women and enjoyed their conversation, but seldom longed to know on the
instant everything that had previously happened to them.
VIII
SUNDAY AT STOKE REVEL
On Sundays, the Stoke Revel household was expected to appear at church
in full strength, visitors included.
"We meet in the hall punctually at a quarter to eleven," it was Miss
Smeardon's duty to announce to strangers. "Mrs. de Tracy always
prefers that the Stoke Revel guests should walk down together, as it
sets a good example to the villagers."
"What Nelson said about going to church with Lady Hamilton!" Lavendar
had once commented, irrepressibly, but the allusion, rather
fortunately, was lost upon Miss Smeardon. Mark began to picture the
familiar Sunday scene to himself; Miss Smeardon in the hall at a
quarter to eleven punctually, marshalling the church-goers; and Mrs.
Loring,--she would be late of course, and come fluttering downstairs
in some bewitching combination of flowery hat and floating scarf that
no one had ever seen before. What a lover's opportunity in this
lateness, thought the young man to himself; but one could enjoy a walk
to church in charming company, though something less than a lover.
It was Mrs. de Tracy's custom, on Sunday mornings, to precede her
household by half an hour in going to the sanctuary. No infirmities of
old age had invaded her iron constitution, and it was nothing to her
to walk alone to the church of Stoke Revel, steep though the hill was
which led down through the ancient village to the yet more ancient
edifice at its foot. During this solitary interval, Mrs. de Tracy
visited her husband's tomb, and no one knew, or dared, or cared to
enquire, what motive encouraged this pious action in a character so
devoid of tenderness and sentiment. Was it affection, was it duty, was
it a mere form, a tribute to the greatness of an owner of Stoke
Revel, such as a nation pays to a dead king? Who could tell?
The graveyard of Stoke Revel owned a yew tree, so very, very old that
the count of its years was lost and had become a fable or a fairy
tale. It was twisted, gnarled, and low; and its long branches, which
would have reached the ground, were upheld, like the arms of some
dying patriarch, by supports, themselves old and moss-grown. Under the
spreading of this ancient tree were graves, and from the carved,
age-eaten porch of the church, a path led among them, under the green
tunnel, out into the sunny space beyond it. The Admiral lay in a vault
of which the door was at the side of the church, for no de Tracy, of
course, could occupy a mere grave, like one of the common herd; and
here walked the funereal figure of Mrs. de Tracy, fair weather or
foul, nearly every Sunday in the year.
In justice to Mrs. de Tracy, it must be made plain that with all her
faults, small spite was not a part of her character. Yet to-day, her
anger had been stirred by an incident so small that its very
triviality annoyed her pride. It was Mark Lavendar's custom, when his
visits to Stoke Revel included a Sunday, cheerfully to evade
church-going. His Sundays in the country were few, he said, and he
preferred to enjoy them in the temple of nature, generally taking a
long walk before lunch. But to-day he had announced his intention of
coming to service, and well Mrs. de Tracy, versed in men and in human
nature, knew why. Robinette would be there, and Lavendar followed, as
the bee follows a basket of flowers on a summer day. As Mrs. de Tracy,
like the Stoic that she was, accepted all the inevitable facts of
life,--birth, death, love, hate (she had known them all in her day),
she accepted this one also. But in that atrophy of every feeling
except bitterness, that atrophy which is perhaps the only real
solitude, the only real old age, her animosity was stirred. It was as
though a dead branch upon some living tree was angry with the spring
for breathing on it. As she returned, herself unseen in the shadow of
the yew tree, she saw Lavendar and Robinette enter together under the
lych-gate, the figure of the young woman touched with sunlight and
colour, her lips moving, and Lavendar smiling in answer. In the
clashing of the bells--bells which shook the air, the earth, the
ancient stones, the very nests upon the trees--their voices were
inaudible, but in their faces was a young happiness and hope to which
the solitary woman could not blind herself.
Presently in the lukewarm air within, Robinette was finding the
church's immemorial smell of prayer-books, hassocks, decaying wood,
damp stones, matting, school-children, and altar flowers, a harmonious
and suggestive one if not pleasant. What an ancient air it was, she
thought; breathed and re-breathed by slow generations of Stoke
Revellers during their sleepy devotions! The very light that entered
through the dim stained glass seemed old and dusty, it had seen so
much during so many hundred years, seen so much, and found out so many
secrets! Soon the clashing of the bells ceased and upon the still
reverberating silence there broke the small, snoring noises of a
rather ineffectual organ, while the amiable curate, Rev. Tobias Finch,
made his appearance, and the service began.
Mrs. de Tracy had entered the pew first, naturally; Miss Smeardon sat
next, then Robinetta. Lavendar occupied the pew in front, alone, and
through her half-closed eyelids Robinetta could see the line of his
lean cheek and bony temple. He had not wished to sit there at all and
he was so unresigned as to be badly in need of the soothing influences
of Morning Prayer. Robinetta was beginning to wonder dreamily what
manner of man this really was, behind his plain face and non-committal
manner, when the muffled slam of a door behind, startled her, followed
as it was by a quick step upon the matted aisle. Then without further
warning, a big, broad-shouldered boy, in the uniform of a British
midshipman, thrust himself into the pew beside her, hot and breathless
after running hard. Mrs. Loring guessed at once that this must be
Carnaby de Tracy, the young hopeful and heir of Stoke Revel of whom
Mr. Lavendar had so often spoken, but the startling and unconventional
nature of his appearance was not at all what one expected in a member
of his family. Robinette stole more than one look at him as the
offertory went round; a robust boy with a square chin, a fair face
burnt red by the sun, a rollicking eye and an impudent nose; not
handsome certainly, indeed quite plain, but he looked honest and
strong and clean, and Robinette's frolicsome youth was drawn to his,
all ready for fun. Carnaby hitched about a good deal, dropped his
hymn-book, moved the hassock, took out his handkerchief, and on
discovering a huge hole, turned crimson.
Service over, the congregation shuffled out into the sunshine, and
Mrs. de Tracy, after a characteristically cool and disapproving
recognition of her grandson, became occupied with villagers.
Lavendar made known young Carnaby to Mrs. David Loring, but the
midshipman's light grey eyes had discovered the pretty face without
any assistance.
"This lady is your American cousin, Carnaby," said Mark. "Did you know
you had one?"
"I don't think I did," answered the boy, "but it's never too late to
mend!" He attempted a bow of finished grown-upness, failed somewhat,
and melted at once into an engaging boyishness, under which his
frank admiration of his new-found relative was not to be hidden. "I
say, are you stopping at Stoke Revel?" he asked, as though the news
were too good to be true. "Jolly! Hullo--" he broke off with
animation as the cassocked figure of the Rev. Tobias Finch fluttered
out from the porch--"here's old Toby! Watch Miss Smeardon now! She
expects to catch him, you know, but he says he's going to be a
celly--celly-what-d'you-call-'em?"
"Celibate?" suggested Lavendar, with laughing eyes.
"The very word, thank you!" said Carnaby. "Yes: a celibate. Not so
easily nicked, good old Toby--you bet!"
"Do the clergymen over here always dress like that?" inquired
Robinetta, trying to suppress a tendency to laugh at his slang.
"Cassock?" said Carnaby. "Toby wouldn't be seen without it. High, you
know! Bicycles in it. Fact! Goes to bed in it, I believe."
"Carnaby, Carnaby! Come away!" said Lavendar. "Restrain these flights
of imagination! Don't you see how they shock Mrs. Loring?"
Before the Manor was reached, Robinetta and Carnaby had sworn eternal
friendship deeper than any cousinship, they both declared. They met
upon a sort of platform of Stoke Revel, predestined to sympathy upon
all its salient characteristics; two naughty children on a holiday.
"Do you get enough to eat here?" asked Carnaby in a hollow whisper, in
the drawing-room before lunch.
"Of course I have enough, Middy," answered Robinetta with unconscious
reservation. She had rejected "Carnaby" at once as a name quite
impossible: he was "Middy" to her almost from the first moment of
their acquaintance.
"Enough?" he ejaculated, "_I_ don't! I'd never be fed if it weren't
for old Bates and Mrs. Smith and Cooky." Bates was the butler, Mrs.
Smith the housekeeper, and Cooky her satellite. "Nobody gets enough to
eat in this house!" added Carnaby darkly, "except the dog."
At the lunch-table, the antagonism natural between a hot-blooded
impetuous boy and a grandmother such as Mrs. de Tracy became rather
painfully apparent. He had already been hauled over the coals for his
arrival on Sunday and his indecorous appearance in church after
service had begun.
"It does not appear to me that you are at all in need of sick-leave,"
said Mrs. de Tracy suspiciously.
Carnaby, sensitive for all his robustness, flushed hotly, and then
became impertinent. "My pulse is twenty beats too quick still, after
quinsy. If you don't believe the doctor, ma'am, it's not my fault."
"Carnaby has committed indiscretions in the way of growing since I
last saw him," Lavendar broke in hastily. "At sixteen one may easily
outgrow one's strength!"
"Indeed!" said Mrs. de Tracy, frigidly. The situation was saved by the
behaviour of the lap-dog, which suddenly burst into a passion of
barking and convulsive struggling in Miss Smeardon's arms. His enemy
had come, and Carnaby had fifty ways of exasperating his grandmother's
favourite, secrets between him and the bewildered dog. Rupert was a
Prince Charles of pedigree as unquestioned as his mistress's and an
appearance dating back to Vandyke, but Carnaby always addressed him as
"Lord Roberts," for reasons of his own. It annoyed his grandmother and
it infuriated the dog, who took it for a deadly insult.
"Lord Roberts! Bobs, old man, hi! hi!" Carnaby had but to say the
words to make the little dog convulsive. He said them now, and the
results seemed likely to be fatal to a dropsical animal so soon after
a full meal.
"You'll kill him!" whispered Robinette as they left the dining room.
"I mean to!" was the calm reply. "I'd like to wring old Smeardon's
neck too!" but the broad good humour of the rosy face, the twinkling
eyes, belied these truculent words. In spite of infinite powers of
mischief, there was not an ounce of vindictiveness in Carnaby de
Tracy, though there might be other qualities difficult to deal with.
"There's a man to be made there--or to be marred!" said Robinette to
herself.
IX
POINTS OF VIEW
Evenings at Stoke Revel were of a dullness all too deep to be sounded
and too closely hedged in by tradition and observance to be evaded or
shortened by the boldest visitor. Lavendar and the boy would have
prolonged their respite in the smoking room had they dared, but in
these later days Lavendar found he wished to be below on guard. The
thought of Robinette alone between the two women downstairs made him
uneasy. It was as though some bird of bright plumage had strayed into
a barnyard to be pecked at by hens. Not but what he realised that this
particular bird had a spirit of her own, and plenty of courage, but no
man with even a prospective interest in a pretty woman, likes to think
of the object of his admiration as thoroughly well able to look after
herself. She must needs have a protector, and the heaven-sent one is
himself.
He had to take up arms in her defense on this, the first night of his
arrival. Mrs. Loring had gone up to her room for some photographs of
her house in America, and as she flitted through the door her scarf
caught on the knob, and he had been obliged to extricate it. He had
known her exactly four hours, and although he was unconscious of it,
his heart was being pulled along the passage and up the stairway at
the tail-end of that wisp of chiffon, while he listened to her
retreating footsteps. Closing the door he came back to Mrs. de Tracy's
side.
"Her dress is indecorous for a widow," said that lady severely.
"Oh, I don't see that," replied Lavendar. "She is in reality only a
girl, and her widowhood has already lasted two years, you say."
"Once a widow always a widow," returned Mrs. de Tracy sententiously,
with a self-respecting glance at her own cap and the half-dozen dull
jet ornaments she affected. Lavendar laughed outright, but she rather
liked his laughter: it made her think herself witty. Once he had told
her she was "delicious," and she had never forgotten it.
"That's going pretty far, my dear lady," he replied. "Not all women
are so faithful to a memory as you. I understand Americans don't wear
weeds, and to me her blue cape is a delightful note in the landscape.
Her dresses are conventional and proper, and I fancy she cannot
express herself without a bit of colour."
"The object of clothing, Mark, is to cover and to protect yourself,
not to express yourself," said Mrs. de Tracy bitingly.
"The thought of wearing anything bright always makes me shrink,"
remarked Miss Smeardon, who had never apparently observed the tip of
her own nose, "but some persons are less sensitive on these points
than others."
Mrs. de Tracy bowed an approving assent to this. "A widow's only
concern should be to refrain from attracting notice," she said, as
though quoting from a private book of proverbial philosophy soon to be
published.
"Then Mrs. Loring might as well have burned herself on her husband's
funeral pyre, Hindoo fashion!" argued Lavendar. "A woman's life hasn't
ended at two and twenty. It's hardly begun, and I fear the lady in
question will arouse attention whatever she wears."
"Would she be called attractive?" asked Mrs. de Tracy with surprise.
"Oh, yes, without a doubt!"
"In gentlemen's eyes, I suppose you mean?" said Miss Smeardon.
"Yes, in gentlemen's eyes," answered Lavendar, firmly. "Those of women
are apparently furnished with different lenses. But here comes the
fair object of our discussion, so we must decide it later on."
The question of ancestors, a favourite one at Stoke Revel, came up in
the course of the next evening's conversation, and Lavendar found
Robinette a trifle flushed but smiling under a double fire of
questions from Mrs. de Tracy and her companion. Mrs. de Tracy was in
her usual chair, knitting; Miss Smeardon sat by the table with a piece
of fancy-work; Robinette had pulled a foot-stool to the hearthrug and
sat as near the flames as she conveniently could. She shielded her
face with the last copy of _Punch_, and let her shoulders bask in the
warmth of the fire, which made flickering shadows on her creamy neck.
Her white skirts swept softly round her feet, and her favourite
turquoise scarf made a note of colour in her lap. She was one of those
women who, without positive beauty, always make pictures of
themselves.
Lavendar analyzed her looks as he joined the circle, pretending to
read. "She isn't posing," he thought, "but she ought to be painted.
She ought always to be painted, each time one sees her, for
everything about her suggests a portrait. That blue ribbon in her hair
is fairly distracting! What the dickens is the reason one wants to
look at her all the time! I've seen far handsomer women!"
"Do you use Burke and Debrett in your country, Mrs. Loring?" Miss
Smeardon was enquiring politely, as she laid down one red volume after
the other, having ascertained the complete family tree of a lady who
had called that afternoon.
Robinette smiled. "I'm afraid we've nothing but telephone or business
directories, social registers, and 'Who's Who,' in America," she
said.
"You are not interested in questions of genealogy, I suppose?" asked
Mrs. de Tracy pityingly.
"I can hardly say that. But I think perhaps that we are more occupied
with the future than with the past."
"That is natural," assented the lady of the Manor, "since you have so
much more of it, haven't you? But the mixture of races in your
country," she continued condescendingly, "must have made you
indifferent to purity of strain."
"I hope we are not wholly indifferent," said Robinette, as though she
were stopping to consider. "I think every serious-minded person must
be proud to inherit fine qualities and to pass them on. Surely it
isn't enough to give _old_ blood to the next generation--it must be
_good_ blood. Yes! the right stock certainly means something to an
American."
"But if you've nothing that answers to Burke and Debrett, I don't see
how you can find out anybody's pedigree," objected Miss Smeardon. Then
with an air of innocent curiosity and a glance supposed to be arch,
"Are the Red Indians, the Negroes, and the Chinese in your so-called
directories?"
"As many of them as are in business, or have won their way to any
position among men no doubt are there, I suppose," answered Robinette
straightforwardly. "I think we just guess at people's ancestry by the
way they look, act, and speak," she continued musingly. "You can
'guess' quite well if you are clever at it. No Indians or Chinese ever
dine with me, Miss Smeardon, though I'd rather like a peaceful Indian
at dinner for a change; but I expect he'd find me very dull and
uneventful!"
"Dull!--that's a word I very often hear on American lips," broke in
Lavendar as he looked over the top of Henry Newbolt's poems. "I
believe being dull is thought a criminal offence in your country. Now,
isn't there some danger involved in this fear of dullness?"
"I shouldn't wonder," Robinette answered thoughtfully, looking into
the fire. "Yes; I dare say there is, but I'm afraid there are social
and mental dangers involved in _not_ being afraid of it, too!" Her
mischievous eyes swept the room, with Mrs. de Tracy's solemn figure
and Miss Smeardon's for its bright ornaments. "The moment a person or
a nation allows itself to be too dull, it ceases to be quite alive,
doesn't it? But as to us Americans, Mr. Lavendar, bear with us for a
few years, we are so ridiculously young! It is our growing time, and
what you want in a young plant is growth, isn't it?"
"Y-yes," Lavendar replied: then with a twinkle in his blue eyes he
added: "Only somehow we don't like to hear a plant grow! It should
manage to perform the operation quite silently, showing not processes
but results. That's a counsel of perfection, perhaps, but don't slay
me for plain-speaking, Mrs. Loring!"
Robinette laughed. "I'll never slay you for saying anything so wise
and true as that!" she said, and Lavendar, flushing under her praise,
was charmed with her good humour.
"America's a very large country, is it not?" enquired Miss Smeardon
with her usual brilliancy. "What is its area?"
"Bigger than England, but not as big as the British Empire!" suggested
Carnaby, feeling the conversation was drifting into his ken.
"It's just the size of the moon, I've heard!" said Robinette
teasingly. "Does that throw any light on the question?"
"Moonlight!" laughed Carnaby, much pleased with his own wit. "Ha! ha!
That's the first joke I've made this holidays. _Moonlight!_ Jolly
good!"
"If you'd take a joke a little more in your stride, my son," said
Lavendar, "we should be more impressed by your mental sparkles."
"Straighten the sofa-cushions, Carnaby," said his grandmother, "and
don't lounge. I missed the point of your so-called joke entirely. As
to the size of a country or anything else, I have never understood
that it affected its quality. In fruit or vegetables, for instance, it
generally means coarseness and indifferent flavour." Miss Smeardon
beamed at this palpable hit, but Mrs. Loring deprived the situation of
its point by backing up Mrs. de Tracy heartily. She had no opinion of
mere size, either, she declared.
"You don't stand up for your country half enough," objected Carnaby to
his cousin. ("Why don't you give the old cat beans?" was his
supplement, _sotto voce_.)
"Just attack some of my pet theories and convictions, Middy dear, if
you wish to see me in a rage," said Robinette lightly, "but my motto
will never be 'My country right or wrong.'"
"Nor mine," agreed Lavendar. "I'm heartily with you there."
"It's a great venture we're trying in America. I wish every one would
try to look at it in that light," said Robinette with a slight flush
of earnestness.
"What do you mean by a venture?" asked Mrs. de Tracy.