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“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.
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“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 the242hint 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 Robinette243discovered 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 suitable244for 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 less245severe 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 Revelcorbeillewould be the better of re-setting by Tiffany or Cartier.
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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.
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“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:248Carnaby, 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 drawing249room 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.”
250XIXLAWYER AND CLIENT
Robinette had a bad night after the jewel exhibition, and a heavy head and aching eyes prompted her to ask Little Cummins to bring her breakfast to her bedroom.
It was touching to see that small person hovering over Robinette: stirring the fire, sweeping the hearth, looping back the curtains, tucking the slippers out of sight, and moving about the room like a mother ministering to an ailing child. Finally she staggered in with the heavy breakfast tray that she had carried through long halls and up the stairs, and put it on the table by the bed.
“There’s a new-laid egg, ma’am, that cook ’ad for the mistress, but I thought you needed it more; an’ I brewed the tea meself, to be sure,” she cooed; “an’ I’ve spread251the loaf same as you like, an’ cut the bread thin, an’ ’ere’s one o’ the roses you allers wears to breakfast; an’ wouldn’t your erming coat be a comfort, ma’am?”
“Dear Little Cummins! How did you know I needed comfort? How did you guess I was homesick?”
Robinette leaned her head against the housemaid’s rough hand, always stained with black spots that would give way to no scrubbing. From morning to night she was in the coal scuttle or the grate or the saucer of black lead, for she did nothing but lay fires, light fires, feed fires, and tidy up after fires, for eight or nine months of the year.
“You mustn’t touch me, ma’am; I ain’t fit; there’s smut on me, an’ hashes, this time o’ day,” said Little Cummins.
“I don’t care. I like you better with ashes than lots of people without. You mustn’t stay in the coal scuttle all your life, Little Cummins; you must be my chambermaid some of these days when we can get a good252substitute for Mrs. de Tracy. Would you like that, if the mistress will let you go?”
Little Cummins put her apron up to her eyes, and from its depths came inarticulate bursts of gratitude and joy. Then peeping from it just enough to see the way to the door, she ran out like a hare and secluded herself in the empty linen-room until she was sufficiently herself to join the other servants.
Robinette finished her breakfast and dressed. She had lacked courage to meet the family party, although she longed for a talk with Mark Lavendar. It was entirely normal, feminine, and according to all law, human and divine, but it appealed also to her sense of humour, that she should feel that this new man-friend could straighten out all the difficulties in the path. She waited patiently at her window until she saw him walk around the corner of the house, under the cedars, and up the twisting path, his head bent and bare, his hands in his253pockets. Then she flung her blue cape over her shoulders and followed him.
“Mr. Lavendar,” she called, as she caught up with his slow step, “you said you would advise me a little. Let us sit on this bench a moment and find out how we can untangle all the knots into which Aunt de Tracy tied us yesterday. I am so afraid of her that I am sure I spoke timidly and respectfully to her at first; but perhaps I showed more feeling at the end than I should. I am willing to apologize to her for any lack of courtesy, but I don’t see how I can retract anything I said.”
“It is hard for you,” Lavendar replied, “because you have a natural affection for your mother’s old nurse; and Mrs. de Tracy, I begin to believe, is more than indifferent to her. She has some active dislike, perhaps, the source of which is unknown to us.”
“But she is so unjust!” cried Robinette. “I never heard of an Irish landlord in a novel who would practice such a piece of eviction.254If I must stand by and see it done, then I shall assert my right to provide for Nurse and move her into a new dwelling. After you left the drawing room last night, I begged as tactfully as I could that Aunt de Tracy would sell me some of the jewels, so that she need not part with the land at Wittisham. She was very angry, and wouldn’t hear of it. Then I proposed buying the plum-tree cottage, that it might be kept in the family, and she was furious at my audacity. Perhaps the Admiral’s niece isnotin the family.”
“She cannot endure anything like patronage, or even an assumption of equality,” said Lavendar. “You must be careful there.”
“Should I be likely to patronize?” asked Robinette reproachfully.
“No; but your acquaintance with your aunt is a very brief one, and she is an extraordinary character; hard to understand. You may easily stumble on a prejudice of hers at every step.”
“I shouldn’t like to understand her any255better than I do now,” and Robinette pushed back her hair rebelliously.
“Will you be my client for about five minutes?” asked Lavendar.
“Yes, willingly enough, for I see nothing before me but to take Nurse Prettyman and depart in the first steamer for America.”
Mrs. Loring looked as if she were quite capable of this rather radical proceeding, and very much, too, as if any growing love for Lavendar that she might have, would easily give way under this new pressure of circumstances.
“This is the situation in a nutshell,” said Lavendar, filling his pipe. “Mrs. de Tracy is entirely within her legal rights when she asks Mrs. Prettyman to leave the cottage; legally right also when she declines to give compensation for the plum tree that has been a source of income; financially right moreover in selling cottage and land at a fancy price to find money for needed improvements on the estate.”
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“None of this can be denied, I allow.”
“All these legal rights could have been softened if Mrs. de Tracy had been willing to soften them, but unfortunately she has been put on the defensive. She did not like it when I opposed her in the first place. She did not like it when my father advised her to make some small settlement, as he did, several days ago. She resented Mrs. Prettyman’s assumption of owning the plum tree; she was outraged at your valiant espousing of your nurse’s cause.”
“I see; we have simply made her more determined in her injustice.”
“Now it is all very well for you to show your mettle,” Lavendar went on, “for you to endure your aunt’s displeasure rather than give up a cause you know to be just; but look where it lands us.”
Robinette raised her troubled eyes to Lavendar’s, giving a sigh to show she realized that her landing-place would be wherever the lawyer fixed it, not where she wished it.
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“Go on,” she sighed patiently.
“Your legal adviser regards it as impossible that you should come over from America and quarrel with your mother’s family;––your only family, in point of fact. If this affair is fought to a finish you will feel like leaving your aunt’s house.”
“I shouldn’t have to wait for that feeling,” said Robinette irrepressibly. “Aunt de Tracy would have it first!”
“In such an event I could and would stand by you, naturally.”
“Wouldyou?” cried Robinette glowing instantly like a jewel.
Lavendar looked at her in amazement. “Pray what do you take me for? On whose side could I, should I be, my dear––my dear Mrs. Loring? But to keep to business. In the event stated above, neither my father nor I could very well continue to have charge of the estate. That is a small matter, but increases the difficulties, owing to a long friendship dating back to the Admiral’s time.258Then we have Carnaby. Carnaby, my dear Mrs. Loring, belongs to you. Do you want to give him up? He adores you and you will have an unbounded influence on him, if you choose to exercise it.”
“How can I influence Carnaby––in America?”
This was a blow, but Lavendar made no sign. “You may not always be in America,” he said. “Now why not let Mrs. de Tracy sell the land and cottage and plum tree in the ordinary course of things? Oh, how I wishIcould buy the blessed thing!” he exclaimed, parenthetically.
“Oh! how I wishIcould buy the plum tree, and keep it, always blossoming, in my morning-room!” sighed Robinette.
“But unfortunately, Waller R. A. will buy the plum tree, confound him! Now, just after Mrs. de Tracy has definitely sold the premises and all their appurtenances, suppose you, in your prettiest and most docile way (docility not being your strong point!) ask259your aunt if she has any objection to your taking care of Mrs. Prettyman during the few years remaining to her. Meantime keep her from irritating Mrs. de Tracy, and make the poor old dear happy with plans for her future. If you are short on docility you are long on making people happy!”
“Never did I hear such an argument! It would make Macduff fall into the arms of Macbeth; it would tranquillize the Kilkenny cats themselves! I’ll run in and apologize abjectly to my thrice guilty aunt, then I’ll reward myself by going over to Wittisham.”
“If you’ll take the ferry over, I’d like to come and fetch you if I may. That shall be my reward.”
“Reward for what?”
“For giving you advice very much against my personal inclinations. Courses of action founded entirely on policy do not appeal to me very strongly.”
260XXTHE NEW HOME
It was in rather a chastened spirit that Robinette set off to see Mrs. Prettyman. “I’ve been foolish, I’ve been imprudent; oh! dear me! I’ve still so much to learn!” she sighed to herself. “No good is ever done by losing one’s temper; it only puts everything wrong. I shall have to try and take Mr. Lavendar’s advice. I must be very prudent with Nurse this morning––never show her that I think Aunt de Tracy is in the wrong; just persuade her ever so gently to move to another home, and arrange with her where it is to be.”
It is always difficult for an impetuous nature like Robinette’s to hold back about anything. She would have liked to run straight into Mrs. Prettyman’s room, and, flinging her arms round the old woman’s neck, cry261out to her that everything was settled. And instead she must come to the point gently, prudently, wisely, “like other people” as she said to herself.
The cottage seemed very still that afternoon, and Robinette knocked twice before she heard the piping old voice cry out to her to come in.
“Why, Nurse dear, where are you? Were you asleep?” Robinette said as she entered, for Mrs. Prettyman was not sitting in the fine new chair. Then she found that the voice answered from the little bedroom off the kitchen, and that the old woman was in bed.
“I ain’t ill, so to speak, dear, just weary in me bones,” she explained, as Robinette sat down beside her. “And Mrs. Darke, me neighbour, she sez to me, ‘You do take the day in bed, Mrs. Prettyman, me dear, an’ I’ll do your bit of work for ’ee’––so ’ere I be, Missie, right enough.”
“I’m afraid you were worried yesterday,”262said Robinette; “worried about leaving the house.”
“I were, Missie, I were,” she confessed.
“That’s why I came to-day; you must stop worrying, for I’ve settled all about it. I spoke to my aunt last night, and it’s true that you have to leave this house; but now I’ve come to make arrangements with you about a new one.”
The old woman covered her face with her hands and gave a little cry that went straight to Robinette’s heart.
“Lor’ now, Miss, ’ow am I ever to leave this place where I’ve been all these years? I thought yesterday as you said ’twas a mistake I’d made.”
“But alas, it wasn’t altogether a mistake,” Robinette had to confess sadly, her eyes filling with tears as she realized how she had only doubled her old friend’s disappointment. Then she sat forward and took Mrs. Prettyman’s hand in hers.
“Nursie dear,” she said, “I don’t want you263to grieve about leaving the old home, for it isn’t an awfully good one; the new one is going to be ever so much better!”
“That’s so, I’m sure, dearie, only ’tisnew,” faltered Mrs. Prettyman. “If you’re spared to my age, Missie, you’ll find as new things scare you.”
“Ah, but not a new house, Nursie! Wait till I describe it! Everything strong and firm about it, not shaking in the storms as this one does; nice bright windows to let in all the sunshine; so no more ‘rheumatics’ and no more tears of pain in your dear old eyes!”
Robinette’s voice failed suddenly, for it struck her all in a moment that her glowing description of the new home seemed to have in it something prophetic. That bent little figure beside her, these shaking limbs and dim old eyes,––all this house of life, once so carefully builded, was crumbling again into the dust, and its tenant indeed wanted a new one, quite, quite different! A sob264rose in Robinette’s throat, but she swallowed it down and went on gaily.
“I’ve settled about another thing, too; you’re to have another plum tree, or life wouldn’t be the same thing to you. And you know they can transplant quite big trees now-a-days and make them grow wonderfully. Some one was telling me all about how it is done only a few days ago. They dig them up ever so carefully, and when they put them into the new hole, every tiny root is spread out and laid in the right direction in the ground, and patted and coaxed in, and made firm, and they just catch hold on the soil in the twinkle of an eye. Isn’t it marvellous? Well, I’ll have a fine new tree planted for you so cleverly that perhaps by next year you’ll be having a few plums, who knows? And the next year more plums! And the next year, jam!”
“’Twill be beautiful, sure enough,” said the old woman, kindling at last under the description of all these joys. “And do you265think, Missie, as the new cottage will really be curing of me rheumatics?”
“Why yes, Nurse. Whoever heard of rheumatism in a dry new house?”
“The house be new, but the rheumatics be old,” said Mrs. Prettyman sagely.
“Well, we can’t makeyouentirely new, but we’ll do our best. I’m going to enquire about a nice cottage not very far from here; there’s plenty of time before this one is sold. It shall be dry and warm and cosy, and you will feel another person in it altogether.”
“These new houses be terrible dear, bain’t they?” the old woman said anxiously.
“Not a bit; besides that’s another matter I want to settle with you, Nursie. I’m going to pay the rent always, and you’re going to have a nice little girl to help you with the work, and there will be something paid to you each month, so that you won’t have any anxiety.”
“Oh, Missie, Missie, whatever be you sayin’?Menever to have no anxiety again!”
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“You never shall, if I can help it; old people should never have worries; that’s what young people are here for, to look after them and keep them happy.”
Mrs. Prettyman lay back on the pillow and gazed at Robinette incredulously; it wasn’t possible that such a solution had come to all her troubles. For seventy odd years she had worked and struggled and sometimes very nearly starved and here was some one assuring her that these struggles were over forever, that she needn’t work hard any more, or ever worry again. Could it be true? And all to come from Miss Cynthia’s daughter!
Robinette bent down and kissed the wrinkled old face softly.
“Good-night, Nursie dear,” she said. “I’m not going to stay any longer with you to-day, because you’re tired. Have a good sleep, and waken up strong and bright.”
“Good-night, Missie, good-night, dear,” the old woman said. Her face had taken on267an expression of such peacefulness as it had never worn before.
She turned over on her pillow and closed her eyes, scarcely waiting for Robinette to leave the room.
“I’ve been allowed to do that, anyway,” Robinette said to herself, standing in the doorway to look back at the quiet sleeper, and then looking forward to a little boat nearing the shore. The cottage sheltered almost the only object that connected her with her past; the boat, she felt, held all her future.
The river, when Lavendar rowed himself across it, was very quiet. “The swelling of Jordan,” as Robinette called the rising tide, was over; now the glassy water reflected every leaf and twig from the trees that hung above its banks and dipped into it here and there.
Mooring his boat at the landing, Mark sauntered up to Mrs. Prettyman’s cottage, and having tapped lightly at the door to let268Mrs. Loring know of his arrival, as they had agreed he should do, he went along the flagged pathway into the garden, and sat down on the edge of the low wall that divided it from the river. Just in front of him was the little worn bench where he had first seen Robinette as she sat beside her old nurse with the tiny shoe on her lap. It was scarcely a fortnight ago; yet it seemed to him that he could hardly remember the kind of man he had been that afternoon; a new self, full of a new purpose, and at that moment of a new hope, had taken the place of the objectless being he had been before.
Everything was very still; there was scarcely a sound from the village or from the shipping farther down the river. Lavendar fancied he heard Robinette’s clear voice within the cottage; then he started suddenly and the blood rushed to his heart as he listened to her light steps coming along the paved footpath.
“Here you are!” she whispered. “Let us not speak too loud, for Nurse was just dropping269asleep when I left her. I’ve put a table-cover and a blanket over ‘Mrs. Mackenzie’ to keep her from quacking. Mrs. Prettyman has not been very well, poor dear, and is in bed. We’ve just talked about the lovely new home she’s going to have, and the transplanted plum tree; small, but warranted to bear in a year or two and give plums and jam like this one. I left her so happy!”
She stopped and looked up. “Oh! can any new tree be as beautiful as this one? Was ever anything in the world more exquisite? It has just come to its hour of perfection, Mr. Lavendar; it couldn’t last,––anything so lovely in a passing world.”
She sat down on the low wall, and looked up at the tree. It stood and shone there in its perfect hour. Another day, and the blossoms, too fully blown, would begin to drift upon the ground with every little shaking wind; now it was at its zenith, a miracle of such white beauty that it caused the heart to stop and consider. Bees and butterflies270hummed and flew around it; it cast a delicate shadow on the grass, and leaning across the wall it was imaged again in the river like a bride in her looking-glass.
Robinette sat gazing at the tree, and Lavendar sat gazing at her. At that moment he “feared his fate too much” to break the silence by any question that might shatter his hope, as the first breeze would break the picture that had taken shape in the glassy water beneath them.
“I feel in a better temper now,” said Robinette. “Who could be angry, and look at that beautiful thing? I’ve left dear old Nurse quite happy again, and I haven’t yet offended Aunt de Tracy irrevocably, and all because you persuaded me not to be unreasonable. All the same I could do it again in another minute if I let myself go. Doesn’t injustice ever make people angry in England?”
Lavendar laughed. “It often makes me feel angry, but I’ve never found that throwing the reins on the horses’ necks when they271wanted to bolt, made one go along the right road any faster in the end.”
“I often think,” said Robinette, “if we could see people really angry and disagreeable before we––” She hesitated and added, “get to know them well, we should be so much more careful.”
“Yes,” said Mark, bending down his head and speaking very deliberately, “that’s why I wish you could have seen me in all my worst moments. I’d stand the shame of it, if you could only know, but, alas, one can’t show off one’s worst moments to order; they must be hit upon unexpectedly.”
“I don’t believe thirty years of life would teach one about some people––they are socrevicey,” said Robinette musingly. She had risen and leaned against the plum tree for a moment, looking up through the white branches.
Lavendar rose and stood beside her. “Thirty years––I shall be getting on to seventy in thirty years.”
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A little gust of wind shook the tree; some petals came drifting down upon them, like white moths, like flakes of summer snow, a warning that the brief hour of perfection would soon be past ... and under it human creatures were talking about thirty years!
273XXICARNABY CUTS THE KNOT
That afternoon, Carnaby was having what he called “an absolutely mouldy time,” and since his leave was running out and his remaining afternoons were few, he considered himself an injured individual. Robinette and Lavendar seemed for ever preoccupied either with each other or with some subject of discussion, the ins and outs of which they had not confided to him.
“It’s partly that blessed plum tree,” he said to himself; “but of course they’re spooning too. Very likely they’re engaged by this time. Didn’t I tell her she’d marry again? Well, if she must, it might as well be old Lavendar as anyone else. He’s a decent chap, or he was, before he fell in love.”
Carnaby sighed. This effort of generosity274towards his rival made him feel peculiarly disconsolate. He had fished and rowed on the river all the morning; he had ferreted; he had fed Rupert with a private preparation of rabbits which infallibly made him sick, the desired result being obtained with almost provoking celerity. Thus even success had palled, and Carnaby’s sharp and idle wits had begun to work on the problem which seemed to be occupying his elders. Neither Robinette nor Lavendar could expatiate to the boy on his grandmother’s peculiarities, but Carnaby had contrived to find out for himself how the land lay.
“Why is Waller R. A. so keen on the plum tree?” he had enquired.
“He wants to make a quartette of studies,” answered Lavendar. “The Plum Tree in spring, summer, autumn, and winter.”
“What a rotten idea!” said Carnaby simply.
“Far from rotten, my young friend, I can assure you!” Lavendar returned. “It275will furnish coloured illustrations for countless summer numbers of theGraphicandThe Lady’s Pictorial, and fill Waller R. A.’s pockets with gold, some of which will shortly filter in advance into the Stoke Revel banking account, we hope.”
“I’m not so sure about that!” said Carnaby; but he said it to himself, while aloud he only asked with much apparent innocence, “Waller R. A. wouldn’t look at the cottage or the land without the plum tree, I suppose?”
“Certainly not,” Lavendar had answered. “The plum tree is safeguarded in the agreement as I’m sure no plum tree ever was before. Waller R. A.’s no fool!”
Digesting this information and much else that he had gleaned, Carnaby now climbed to the top of a tree where he had a favourite perch, and did some serious and simple thinking.
“It’s a beastly shame,” he said to himself, “to turn that old woman out of her276cottage. Cousin Robin thinks it’s a beastly shame, and what’s more, Mark does, and he’s a man, and a lawyer into the bargain.”
Carnaby thought remorsefully of a pot of jam which old Mrs. Prettyman had given him once to take back to college. What good jam it had been, and how large the pot! He had never given her anything––he had never a penny to bless himself with; and now his grandmother was taking away from the poor old creature all that she had. “It’s regular covetousness,” he thought, “and that infernal plum tree’s at the bottom of it all. Naboth’s vineyard is a joke in comparison, and What’s-his-name and the one ewe lamb simply aren’t in it.” He grew hot with mortification. Then he reflected, “If the plum tree weren’t there, Waller R. A. wouldn’t want the cottage, and old Mrs. Prettyman could live in it till the end of the chapter.” A slow grin dawned upon his face, its most mischievous expression, the one which Rupert with canine sagacity had learned277to dread. He felt and pinched the muscle of his arm fondly. (Musslehe always spelled the word himself, upon phonetic principles.)
“I may be a fool and a minor” (generally speltminerby him), he said, as he climbed down from his perch, “but at least I can cut down a tree!”
He became lost to view forthwith in the workshops and tool-sheds attached to the home premises of Stoke Revel, and presently emerged, furnished with the object he had made diligent and particular search for; this he proceeded to carry in an inconspicuous way to a distant cottage where he knew there was a grindstone. He spent a happy hour with the object, the grindstone, and a pail of water.Whirr,whirr,whirr, sang the grindstone, now softly, now loudly––“this is an axe, an axe, an axe, and a strong arm that holds it!”
“You be goin’ to do a bit of forestry on your own, Master Carnaby, eh?” suggested the grinning owner of the grindstone.
278
“I am; a very particular bit, Jones!” replied the young master, lovingly feeling the edge of the tool, which was now nearly as fine as that of a razor.
“You be careful, sir, as you don’t chop off one of your own toes with that there axe,” said the man. “It be full heavy for one o’ your age. But there! you zailor-men be that handy! ’Tis your trade, so to speak!”
“Quite right, Jones, it is!” replied Carnaby. “Good-afternoon and thank you for the use of the grindstone.” He was already planning where he would hide the axe, for he had precise ideas about everything and left nothing to chance.
Carnaby went to bed that night at his usual hour. His profession had already accustomed him to awaking at odd intervals, and he had more than the ordinary boy’s knowledge of moon and tide, night and dawn. When he slipped out of bed after a few hours of sound sleep, he put on a flannel279shirt and trousers and a broad belt, and then, carrying his boots in his hand, crept out of his room and through the sleeping house. He would much rather have climbed out of the window, in a manner more worthy of such an adventure, but his return in that fashion might offer dangers in daylight. So he was content with an unfrequented garden door which he could leave on the latch.
The moon, which had been young when she lighted the lovers in the mud-bank adventure, was now a more experienced orb and shed a useful light. Carnaby intended to cross the river in a small tub which was propelled by a single oar worked at the stern, the rower standing. This craft was intended for pottering about the shore; to cross the river in it was the dangerous feat of a skilled waterman, but Carnaby had a knack of his own with every floating thing. As he balanced himself in the rocking tub, bare-headed, bare-necked, bare-armed, paddling with the grace and ease of strength and training, he280looked a man, but a man young with the youth of the gods. The moon shone in his keen grey eyes and made them sparkle. A cold sea-wind blew up the river, but he did not feel its chill, for blood hot with adventure raced in his veins.
Wittisham was in profound darkness when he landed, and the moon having gone behind a bank of cloud, he had to grope his way to Mrs. Prettyman’s cottage, shouldering the axe. The isolated position of the house alone made the adventure possible, he reflected; he could not have cut down a tree in the hearing of neighbours, and as to old Elizabeth herself, he hoped she was deaf. Most old women were, he reflected, except unfortunately his grandmother!
Soon he was entering the little garden and sniffing the scent of blossom, which was very strong in the night air. He could see the dim outline of the plum tree, and just as he wanted light, the moon came out and shone upon its whiteness, giving a sort of spiritual281beauty to the flowering thing that was very exquisite.
“What price, Waller R. A. now?” thought Carnaby impishly. “The plum tree in moonlight! eh? Wouldn’t he give his eyes to see it! But he won’t! Not if I know it!” The boy was as blind to the tree’s beauty as his grandmother had been, but he had scientific ideas how to cut it down, for he had watched the felling of many a tree.
First, standing on a lower branch, you lopped off all the side shoots as high as you could reach. This made the trunk easy to deal with, and its fall less heavy, and Carnaby set to work.
“She goes through them all as slick as butter!” he said to himself in high satisfaction. The axe had assumed a personality to him and was “she,” not “it.” “She makes no more noise than a pair of scissors cutting flowers; not half so much!” he said proudly. Branch after branch fell down and lay about the tree like the discarded garments of a bathing282nymph. The petals fell upon Carnaby’s face, upon his hair and shoulders; he was a white figure as he toiled. Frightened birds and bats flew about, but he did not notice them. His only care was the cottage itself and its inmate. Ifsheshould awake! But the little habitation, shrouded in thatch and deep in shadow, was dark and silent as the grave.
“She must be sound asleep and deaf,” thought the boy. “Yes, very deaf.” He paused. The first stage in his task was accomplished. Shivering and naked, one absurd tuft of blossom and leaves at the tip––the murdered tree now stood in the moonlight, imploring thecoup de grâcewhich should end its shame.
“Jolly well done,” said the murderer complacently. He stretched his arms, looked at the palms of his hands to see if they had blistered, and addressed himself to the second part of his business. Thud! thud! went the axe on the trunk of the tree, and the sweat283broke out all over Carnaby’s skin, not with exertion but with nervous terror.
“If that doesn’t wake the dead!” he thought––but there was no awaking in the cottage. Its tiny window blinked in the moonlight, and Carnaby thought he heard the drowsy quack of a duck in an out-house. But the danger passed. Thud! went the axe again. The slim severed shaft of the tree was poised a moment, motionless, erect before it fell. Then it subsided gently among its broken and trodden boughs, and Carnaby’s task was done.
284XXIICONSEQUENCES
Early that morning before the sun had risen, when the light was still grey in the coming dawn, Robinette was awakened by a bird that called out from a tree close to her open window, every note like the striking of a golden bell. She jumped up and looked out, but the little singer, silenced, had flown away. Instead, she caught sight of a figure stealing across the lawn towards the side door which opened from the library. Even in the dim light she could distinguish that it was Carnaby, Carnaby with something in his hand. What he carried she could not quite make out, but the sleeves of his flannel shirt were rolled up above his elbows in a fatally business-like way, and he walked with an air of stealth.
“What mischief can that boy have been285up to at this time of day?” thought Robinette as she lay down again, but she was too sleepy to wonder long.
She forgot all about it until she saw Carnaby at the breakfast table some hours later. Sometimes the gloom of that meal––never a favorite or convivial one in the English household, and most certainly neither at Stoke Revel––would be enlivened by some of the boy’s pranks. He would pass over to the sideboard, pepper-pot slyly in hand, and Rupert, whose meal at this hour consisted of grape-nuts and cream, would unaccountably sneeze and snuffle over his plate.
“Bless it, Bobs!” his tormentor would exclaim tenderly. “Is it catching cold? Poor old Kitchener! Hi!Kitch!Kitch!” (like a violent sneeze) and the outraged Rupert would forget grape-nuts and pepper alike in a fit of impotent fury. But this morning the dog fed in peace and Carnaby never glanced at him or his basin. Robinette, looking at the boy and remembering where she286had seen him last, noticed that he was rather silent, that his cheeks were redder than common, and that under his eyes were lines of fatigue not usually there.
“What were you doing on the lawn at four o’clock this morning?” she began, but checked herself, suddenly thinking that if Carnaby had been up to mischief she must not allude to it before his grandmother.
No one had heard her. The meal dragged on. Robinette and Lavendar talked little. Miss Smeardon was preoccupied with the sufferings and the moods of Rupert. Mrs. de Tracy alone seemed in better spirits than usual; she was talkative and even balmy.
“The work at the spinney begins to-day,” she observed complacently, addressing herself to Lavendar and alluding to the rooting up of an old copse and the planting of a new one––an improvement she had long planned, though hitherto in vain. “The young trees have arrived.”
“But where is the money to come from?”287enquired Carnaby suddenly, in a sepulchral tone. (His voice was at the disagreeable breaking stage, an agony and a shame to himself and always a surprise to others.) His grandmother stared: the others, too, looked in astonishment at the boy’s red face.
“I thought it had all been explained to you, Carnaby,” said Mrs. de Tracy, “but you take so little interest in the estate that I suppose what you have been told went in at one ear and out at the other, as usual! It is the sale of land at Wittisham which makes these improvements possible, advantages drawn from a painful necessity,” and the iron woman almost sighed.
“There won’t be any sale of land at Wittisham,––at least, not of Mrs. Prettyman’s cottage,” said Carnaby abruptly.
“It is practically settled. The transfers only remain to be signed; you know that, Carnaby,” said Lavendar curtly. He did not wish the vexed question to be raised again at a meal.