make her realize who her august visitor was. She was getting blind;
she had never been a favourite with Mrs. de Tracy, nor had she entered
Stoke Revel Manor since her nursling disgraced it by marrying a Bean.
She curtseyed humbly to the great lady.
"There now, ma'am," she said, "it's not often we have seen you across
the river. Will you please to come inside and sit down, ma'am? 'T is
very warm this afternoon, it is." She was a good deal fluttered in her
welcome, for there was that in Mrs. de Tracy's air that seemed to bode
misfortune.
"I shall sit down for a few minutes, Elizabeth," was the reply, "while
I explain my visit to you."
Mrs. Prettyman stood aside respectfully, and Mrs. de Tracy swept past
her into the cottage and seated herself there. It never occurred to
her to ask the old woman to sit down in her own house; she expected
her to stand throughout the interview. Without further preamble,
then, Mrs. de Tracy came to the point:--
"Elizabeth," she said, "I have come to tell you that I am going to
sell the land on which this cottage stands, and that you will have to
find some other home."
The old woman did not understand for a minute. "You be going to sell
the land, ma'am?" she repeated stupidly.
"Yes, I am. A gentleman from London wishes to buy it; you will need to
go."
"A gentleman from London! Lor, ma'am, no gentleman from London
wouldn't live 'ere!" Elizabeth cried, perfectly dazed by the
statement.
Mrs. de Tracy repeated: "It is not your business, Elizabeth, what he
intends to do with the place; all you have to do is to remove from the
house."
The old woman sank down on the nearest chair and covered her face with
her hands. She was so old and so tired that she had no heart to face
life under new conditions, even should they be better than those she
left. A younger woman would have snapped her fingers in Mrs. de
Tracy's face, so to speak, and wished her joy of her old rattletrap of
a house, but Elizabeth Prettyman, after a lifetime of struggles, had
not vitality enough for such an action. She had never dreamed of
leaving the cottage, and where was she to go? Her furrowed face wore
an expression of absolute terror now when she looked up.
"But where be I to live, ma'am?" she cried.
"I do not know, Elizabeth; you must arrange that with your relations,"
said Mrs. de Tracy.
"I don't 'ave but only me niece--'er as married down Exeter way."
"Well, you should write to her then."
"She don't want to keep me, Nettie don't,--she's but a poor man's
wife, and five chillen she 'as; it's not like as if she were me
daughter, ma'am."
"You have some small sum of money of your own every year, have you
not?" Mrs. de Tracy asked.
"Ten pound a year, ma'am; the same that me 'usband left me; two
'undred pounds 'e 'ad saved and 't is in an annuity; that's all I
'ave--that and me plum tree."
"The plum tree is not yours, either, Elizabeth; that belongs to the
land," said Mrs. de Tracy curtly.
"'T was me 'usband planted it, ma'am, years ago. We watched 'en and
pruned 'en and tended 'en like a child we did--an' now to be told 'er
ain't mine!"
"You're forgetting yourself, Elizabeth, I think," said Mrs. de Tracy.
It was simply impossible for her to see with the old woman's eyes; all
she remembered was the legal fact that any tree planted in Stoke Revel
ground belonged to the owner of the ground.
"But ma'am, 't is a big part of me living is the plum tree; only
yesterday I says to the young lady--Miss Cynthia's young lady--I
says, 'Dear knows how 't would be with me without I had the plum
tree.'"
"I cannot help that, Elizabeth: the plum tree is not yours, it belongs
to Stoke Revel."
"Then ma'am, you'll be 'lowing me something for it surely?"
"No," said Mrs. de Tracy obstinately, "you have no legal claim to
compensation, Elizabeth. I cannot undertake to allow you anything for
what is not yours. If I did it in your case you know quite well I
should have to do it in many others."
There was a long and heavy silence. Elizabeth Prettyman was taking in
her sentence of banishment from her old home; Mrs. de Tracy was merely
wondering how long it would take her to walk down that nasty steep bit
of path to the ferry. At last the old woman looked up.
"When must I be goin' then, ma'am?" she asked meekly.
Mrs. de Tracy considered. "The transfer of land from one person to
another generally takes some time: you will have several weeks here
still; I shall send you notice later which day to quit."
"Thank you, ma'am," said Elizabeth simply, and added, "The plum tree
blossoms 'ul be over by that time."
"I don't see what that has to do with it," said Mrs. de Tracy, in
whose heart there was room for no sentiment.
"'T would have been 'arder leavin' it in blossom time," the old woman
explained; but her hearer could not see the point. She rose slowly
from her chair and looked around the cottage.
"I am glad to see that you keep your place clean and respectable,
Elizabeth," she said. "I wish you good afternoon."
Elizabeth never rose from her chair to see her visitor to the door--(an
omission which Mrs. de Tracy was not likely to overlook)--she just sat
there gazing stupidly around the tiny kitchen and muttering a word or
two now and then. At last she got up and tottered to the garden.
"I'll 'ave to leave it all--leave the old bench as me William did put
for me with his own 'ands, and leave Duckie, Duckie can't never go to
Exeter if I goes there,--and leave the plum tree." She limped across
the little bit of sunny turf, and stood under the white canopy of the
blossoming tree, leaning against its slender trunk. "Pity 't is we
ain't rooted in the ground same as the trees are," she mused. "Then no
one couldn't turn us out; only the Lord Almighty cut us down when our
time came; Lord knows I'm about ready for that now--grave-ripe as you
may say." She leaned her poor weary old head against the tree stem and
wept, ready, ah! how ready, at that moment, to lay down the burden of
her long and toilsome life.
"Good afternoon, Nursie dear!" a clear voice called out in her ear,
and Elizabeth started to find that Robinette had tip-toed across the
grass and was standing close beside her. She lifted her tear-stained
face up to Robinette's as a child might have done.
"I've to quit, Missie," she sobbed, "to leave me 'ome and Duckie and
the plum tree, an' I've no place to go to, and naught but my ten
pounds to live on--and 't won't keep me without I've the plum tree,
not when I've rent to pay from it; not if I don't eat nothing but tea
an' bread never again!"
In a moment Robinette's arms were about her: her soft young cheeks
pressed against the withered old face.
"What's this you're saying, Nurse?" she cried. "Leaving your cottage?
Who said so?"
"It's true, dear, quite true; 'asn't the lady 'erself been here to
tell me so?"
"Was that what Aunt de Tracy was here about? I met her on the road
five minutes ago; she said she had been here on business! But tell me,
Nurse, why does she want you to leave? Are you going to get a better
cottage? Does she think this one isn't healthy for you?"
"No, no, dear, 't isn't that, she 've sold the cottage over me 'ead,
that's what 't is, or she's going to sell it, to a gentleman from
London--Lord knows what a gentleman from London wants wi' 'en--and
I've to quit."
Robinette tried to be a peacemaker.
"Then you'll get a much more comfortable house, that's quite certain.
You know, though this one is lovely on fine days like this, that the
thatch is all coming off, and I'm sure it's damp inside! Just wait a
bit, and see if you don't get some nice cosy little place, with a
sound roof and quite dry, that will cure this rheumatism of yours."
But Mrs. Prettyman shook her head.
"No, no, there won't be no cosy place given to me; I'm no more worth
than an old shoe now, Missie, and I'm to be turned out, the lady said
so 'erself; said as I must go to Exeter to live with me niece Nettie,
and 'er don't want us--Nettie don't--and whatever shall I do without I
'ave Duckie and the plum tree?"
"Oh, but"--Robinette began, quite incredulously, and the old woman
took up her lament again.
"And I asked the lady, wouldn't I 'ave something allowed me for the
plum tree--that 'ave about clothed me for years back? And 'No,' she
says, ''t ain't your plum tree, Elizabeth, 't is mine; I can't 'low
nothing on me own plum tree.'"
Robinette still refused to believe the story.
"Nurse, dear," she said, "you're a tiny bit deaf now, you know, and
perhaps you misunderstood about leaving. Suppose you keep your dear
old heart easy for to-night, and I'll come down bright and early
to-morrow and tell you what it really is! If you have to leave the
plum tree you'll get a fine price put on it that may last you for
years; it's such a splendid tree, anyone can see it's worth a good
deal."
"That it be, Missie, the finest tree in Wittisham," the old woman
said, drying her eyes, a little comforted by the assurance in
Robinette's voice and manner.
"There now, we won't have any more tears: I've brought a new canister
of tea I sent for to London. I'm just dying to taste if it's good;
we'll brew it together, Nursie; I shall carry out the little table
from the kitchen and we'll drink our tea under the plum tree,"
Robinette cried.
She was carrying a great parcel under her arm, and when Mrs. Prettyman
opened it, she could scarcely believe that this lovely red tin
canister, filled with pounds of fragrant tea, could really be hers!
The sight of such riches almost drove away her former fears. Robinette
whisked into the kitchen and came out carrying the little round table
which she set down under the white canopy of the plum tree. Then
together they brought out the rest of the tea things, and what a merry
meal they had!
"It's just nonsense and a bit of deafness on your part, Nurse, so we
won't remember anything about leaving the house, we are only going to
think of enjoyment," Robinette announced. Then the old woman was
comforted, as old people are wont to be by the brave assurances of
those younger and stronger than themselves, forgot the spectre that
seemed to have risen suddenly across her path, and laughed and talked
as she sipped the fragrant London tea.
XVIII
THE STOKE REVEL JEWELS
"Hullo! Cousin Robin, hurry up, you'll need all your time!" It was
Carnaby of course who saluted Robinette thus, as she came towards the
house on her return from Wittisham.
"I'm not late, am I?" she said, consulting her watch.
"I thought you'd be making a tremendous toilette; one of your killing
ones to-night," Carnaby said. "Do! I love to see you all dressed up
till old Smeardon's eyes look as if they would drop out when you come
into the room."
"I'll wear my black dress, and her eyes may remain in her head,"
Robinette laughed.
"And what about Mark's eyes? Wouldn't you like them to drop out?" the
boy asked mischievously. "He's come back by the afternoon train while
you were away at Wittisham."
"Oh, has he?" Robinette said, and Carnaby stared so hard at her, that
to her intense annoyance she blushed hotly.
"Horrid lynx-eyed boy," she said to herself as she ran upstairs, "He's
growing up far too quickly. He needs to be snubbed." She dashed to the
wardrobe, pulled out the black garment, and gave it a vindictive shake.
"Old, dowdy, unbecoming, deaconess-district-visitor-bible-woman,
great-grand-auntly thing!" she cried.
Then her eye lighted on a cherished lavender satin. She stood for a
moment deliberating, the black dress over her arm, her eyes fixed upon
the lavender one that hung in the wardrobe.
"I don't care," she cried suddenly: "I'll wear the lavender, so here
goes! Men are all colour blind, so he'll merely notice that I look
nice. I must conceal from myself and everybody else how depressed I am
over the interview with Nurse, and how I dread discussing the cottage
with Aunt de Tracy. That must be done the first thing after dinner, or
I shall lose what little courage I have."
Lavendar thought he had never seen her look so lovely as when he met
her in the drawing room a quarter of an hour later. There was nothing
extraordinary about the dress but its exquisite tint and the sheen of
the soft satin. The suggestion that lay in the colour was entirely
lost upon him, however: if asked to name it he would doubtless have
said "purplish." How he wished that he might have escorted her into
the dining room, but Mrs. de Tracy was his portion as usual, and
Robinette was waiting for Carnaby, who seemed unaccountably slow.
"Your arm, Middy, when you are quite ready," she said to him at last.
Carnaby's extraordinary unreadiness seemed to arise from his trying to
smuggle some object up his sleeve. This proved, a few moments later,
to be a bundle of lavender sticks tied with violet ribbon that he had
discovered in his bureau drawer. He laid it by Robinette's plate with
a whispered "My compliments."
"What does your cousin want that bunch of lavender for, at the table?"
Mrs. de Tracy enquired.
"She likes lavender anywhere, ma'am," Carnaby said with a wink on the
side not visible by his grandmother. "It's a favourite of hers."
Robinette could only be thankful that Lavendar was occupied in a
_sotto voce_ discussion of wine with Bates, and she was able to
conceal the bundle of herbs before his eyes met hers, for the fury she
felt against her precious young kinsman at that moment she could have
expressed only by blows.
Dinner seemed interminably long. Robinette, for more reasons than one,
was preoccupied; Lavendar made few remarks, and Carnaby was possessed
by a spirit of perfectly fiendish mischief, saying and doing
everything that could most exasperate his grandmother, put her guests
to the blush, and shock Miss Smeardon.
But at last Mrs. de Tracy rose from the table, and the ladies followed
her from the room, leaving Lavendar to cope alone with Carnaby.
"My fair American cousin is more than usually lovely to-night, eh, Mr.
Lavendar?" the boy said, with his laughable assumption of a man of the
world.
"There, my young friend; that will do! you're talking altogether too
much," said Lavendar, as he poured himself out a glass of wine and sat
down by the open window to drink it. Carnaby, perhaps not unreasonably
offended, lounged out of the room, and left the older man to his own
meditations.
Robinette in the meantime went into the drawing room with her aunt,
and they sat down together in the dim light while Miss Smeardon went
upstairs to write a letter.
"Aunt de Tracy," Robinette began, "I was calling on Mrs. Prettyman
just after you had been with her this afternoon, and do you know the
dear old soul had taken the strangest idea into her head! She says you
are going to ask her to leave the cottage."
"The land on which her cottage stands is about to be sold," said Mrs.
de Tracy. "It is necessary that she should move."
"Yes, she quite understood that; but she thinks she is not going to
get another house; that was what was distressing her, naturally. Of
course she hates to leave the old place, but I believe if she gets
another nicer cottage, that will quite console her," said Robinette
quickly.
"I have no vacant cottage on the estate just now," said Mrs. de Tracy
quietly.
"Then what is she to do? Isn't it impossible that she should move
until another place is made ready for her?" Robinette rose and stood
beside the table, leaning the tips of her fingers on it in an attitude
of intense earnestness. She was trying to conceal the anger and dismay
she felt at her aunt's reply.
"Mrs. Prettyman has relatives at Exeter," said Mrs. de Tracy without
the quiver of an eyelid.
"Yes; but they are poor. They aren't very near relations, and they
don't want her. O Aunt de Tracy, is it necessary to make her leave?
She depends upon the plum tree so! She makes twenty-five dollars a
year from the jam!"
"Dollars have no significance for me," said Mrs. de Tracy with an icy
smile.
"Well, pounds then: five pounds she makes. How is she ever going to
live without that, unless you give her the equivalent? It's half her
livelihood! I promised you would consider it? Was I wrong?"
Old bitternesses rose in Mrs. de Tracy's heart, the prejudices and the
grudges of a lifetime. Everything connected with Robinette's mother
had been wrong in her eyes, and now everything connected with
Robinette was wrong too, and becoming more so with startling
rapidity.
"You had no right whatsoever to make any promises on my behalf," she
now said harshly. "You have acted foolishly and officiously. This is
no business of yours."
"I'll gladly make it my business if you'll let me, Aunt de Tracy!"
pleaded Robinette. "If you don't feel inclined to provide for Mrs.
Prettyman, mayn't I? She is my mother's old nurse and she shan't want
for anything as long as I have a penny to call my own!" Robinette's
eyes filled with tears, but Mrs. de Tracy was not a whit moved by this
show of emotion, which appeared to her unnecessary and theatrical.
"You are forgetting yourself a good deal in your way of speaking to me
on this subject," she said coldly. "When I behaved unbecomingly in my
youth, my mother always recommended me to go upstairs, shut myself up
alone in my room, and collect my thoughts. The process had invariably
a calming effect. I advise you to try it."
Robinette did not need to be proffered the hint twice. She rushed out
of the room like a whirlwind, not looking where she went. In the hall,
she came face to face with Lavendar, who had just left the dining
room.
"Mr. Lavendar!" she cried. "Do go into the drawing room and speak to
my aunt. Preach to her! Argue with her! Convince her that she can't
and mustn't act in this way; can't go and turn Mrs. Prettyman out, and
rob her of the plum tree, and leave her with hardly a penny in the
world or a roof over her head!"
"It's not a very pretty or a very pleasant business, Mrs. Loring, I
admit," said Lavendar quietly.
"Is it English law?" cried Robinette with indignation. "If it is, I
call it mean and unjust!"
"Sometimes the laws seem very hard," said Lavendar. "I'd like to
discuss this affair with you quietly another time."
As he spoke, Carnaby appeared and wanted to be told what the matter
was, but Robinette discovered that it is not very easy to criticise a
grandmother to her youthful grandson, more especially when the lady in
question is your hostess.
"Aunt de Tracy and I have had a little difference of opinion about
Mrs. Prettyman and her cottage, and the plum tree," she said to the
boy quietly, and Lavendar nodded approval.
"Prettyman's got the sack, hasn't she?" Carnaby enquired with a boy's
carelessness.
Robinette looked very grave. "My dear old nurse is to leave her
cottage," she said with a quiver in her voice. "She's to lose her plum
tree--"
"But of course she'll get compensation," cried Carnaby.
"No, Middy; she's to get no compensation," said Robinette in a low
voice.
"Well, I call that jolly hard! It's a beastly shame," said Carnaby,
evidently pricking up his ears and with a sudden frown that changed
his face. "I say, Mark--" But Lavendar did not think the moment
suitable for a discussion of Mrs. Prettyman's wrongs. Besides, he did
not wish Robinette to be banished from the drawing room for a whole
interminable evening. He contrived to silence Carnaby for the time
being.
"Let's bury the hatchet for a little while," he suggested. "Have you
forgotten, Mrs. Loring, that I made Mrs. de Tracy promise to show off
the Stoke Revel jewels for your benefit this very night?"
"O! but now I'm in disgrace, she won't!" said Robinette.
"Yes, she will!" said Carnaby. "Nothing puts the old lady in such a
heavenly temper as showing off the jewels. Don't you miss it, Cousin
Robin! It's like the Tower of London and Madam Tussaud's rolled into
one, this show, I can assure you. Come on! Come back into the drawing
room. Needn't be afraid when Mark's there!"
Robinette found that a black look or two was all that she had to fear
from Mrs. de Tracy at present, and even these became less severe
under the alchemy of Lavendar's tact. A reminder that an exhibition of
the jewelry had been promised was graciously received. Bates and
Benson were summoned, and armed with innumerable keys, they descended
to subterranean regions where safes were unlocked and jewel-boxes
solemnly brought into the drawing room. Mrs. de Tracy wore an air
almost devotional, as she unlocked the final receptacles with keys
never allowed to leave her own hands.
"If the proceedings had begun with prayer and ended with a hymn, it
wouldn't have surprised me in the least!" Robinette said to herself,
looking silently on. Her silence, luckily for her, was taken for the
speechlessness of awe, and did a good deal to make up, in the eyes of
her august relative, for her late indiscretions. As a matter of fact,
her irreverent thoughts were mostly to the effect that all but the
historical pieces of the Stoke Revel _corbeille_ would be the better
of re-setting by Tiffany or Cartier.
Mrs. de Tracy opened an old shagreen case and the firelight flickered
on the diamonds of a small tiara.
"This is a part of the famous Montmorency set," she announced proudly,
with the tone of a Keeper of Regalia. Then she took out a rope of
pearls ending in tassels. "These belonged to Marie Antoinette," she
said.
An emerald set was next produced, and the emeralds, it was explained,
had once adorned a crown. Deep green they were, encrusted in their
diamond setting; costly, unique; but they left Robinette cold, though
like most American women, she loved precious stones as an adornment.
One of those emeralds, she was thinking, was worth fifty times more
than old Lizzie Prettyman's cottage: the sale of one of them would
have averted that other sale which was to cause so much distress to a
poor harmless old woman.
"When do you wear your jewels, Aunt de Tracy?" she asked gravely.
"I have not worn them since the Admiral's death," was the virtuous
reply, "and I have never called or considered them mine, Robinetta.
They are the de Tracy jewels. When Carnaby takes his place as the head
of the house, they will be his. He will see that his wife wears them
on the proper occasions."
"Carnaby's wife!" thought Robinette. "Why! she mayn't be born! He may
never have a wife! And to think of all those precious stones hiding
their brightness in these boxes like prisoners in a dungeon for years
and years, only to be let out now and then by Bates and Benson,
jingling their keys like jailers! And this house is a prison too!" she
said to herself; "a prison for souls!" and the thought of its hoarded
wealth made her indignant; all this hidden treasure in a house where
there was never enough to eat, where guests shivered in fireless
bedrooms, where servants would not stay because they were starved! And
Carnaby, too, whose youth was being embittered by unnecessary
economies: Carnaby, who had so little pocket-money that he was a
laughing-stock among his fellows--it was for Carnaby these sacrifices
were being made! Strange traditions! Fetiches of family pride almost
as grotesque to her thinking as those of any savages under the sun.
"My poor dear Middy!" she thought. "What chance has he, brought up in
an atmosphere like this?" But she happened to raise her eyes at the
moment, and to see the actual Carnaby of the moment, not the Carnaby
her gloomy imagination was evoking from the future with the "petty
hoard of maxims preaching down" his heart. He had contrived to get
hold of the Marie Antoinette pearls without his grandmother's
knowledge and to hang them around his neck; he had poised the
Montmorency tiara on his own sleek head; he had forced a heavy
bracelet by way of collar round Rupert's throat, and now with that
choking and goggling unfortunate held partner-wise in his arms, he was
waltzing on tiptoe about the farther drawing room behind the
unconscious backs of Mrs. de Tracy and Miss Smeardon.
"He's only a careless boy," thought Robinette, "a happy-go-lucky,
devil-may-care, hare-brained youngster. They can't have poisoned his
nature yet, and I'm sure he has a good heart. If he were at the head
of affairs at Stoke Revel instead of his grandmother, I wonder what
would be done in the matter of my poor old nurse?" Robinette stood in
the doorway for a moment before going up to her room. Her whole
attitude spoke depression as Carnaby stole up behind her.
"See here, Cousin Robin, I can't bear to have you go on like this.
Don't take Prettyman's trouble so to heart. We'll do something! I'll
do something myself! I have a happy thought."
XIX
LAWYER AND CLIENT