V

39VAT 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 in41the 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; that44one 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 lameness45was ‘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 would46rise 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!48Her 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 hand49talking 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 old52woman 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!”53she 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.

54VIMARK 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.

On such a day, when the oak woods were budding, and the English birds 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 pushed55up 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. He56looked 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 came57down 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 of59it 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 severe61attack 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.63He 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.64He 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,”65said 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 escaped66my 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 finality67that 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 Wittisham68and 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.

69VIIA 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 did71not 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 absurd72bit 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,73“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 voyage74should 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 rowed75very 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 broke76into 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”;78she 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 of81the 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 regardeditas 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 youdolaugh, 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 their82course, 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.

Lavendar looked up with another twinkle. She seemed to provoke 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 blackisa 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 hardly84keep 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 flapped85Robinette’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. It86is 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.

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