Robinetta Part 13

"You _are_ a pretty pair!" he remarked. "What have you been and done?"

"We just went for a row after tea, Middy dear," said Robinette, "and look at the result."

"You're not rowing now," observed Carnaby pointedly.

"No," said Mark, "we gave up rowing when the water left us, Carnaby.

Conversation is more interesting in the mud."

"But how did you get here? I thought you were going to the Flag Rock?"

demanded Carnaby.

"Is there a Flag Rock, Middy dear? I didn't know," said Robinette innocently. "It shows we shouldn't go anywhere without our first cousin once removed. We just began to talk, here in the boat, and the water went away and left us." Then she laughed, and Mark laughed too, and Carnaby's look of unutterable scorn seemed to have no effect upon them. They might almost have been laughing at him, their mirth was so senseless, viewed in any other light.

"It's nearly eight o'clock," he said solemnly. "Perhaps you can form some idea as to what grandmother's saying, and Bates."

"Well, you're going to be our rescuer, Middy darling, so it doesn't matter," said Robinette. "Look! the water's coming up."

But Carnaby seemed in no mood for waiting. He had taken off his boots, and rolled up his trousers above his knees.

"I'd let Lavendar wade ash.o.r.e the best way he could!" he said, "but I s'pose I've got to save you or there'd be a howl."

"No one would howl any louder than you, dear, and you know it. Don't step in!" shrieked Robinette, "I've confided a shoe already to the river-mud! I just put my foot in a bit, to test it, and down the poor foot went and came up without its shoe. Oh, Middy dear, if your young life--"

"Blow my young life!" retorted Carnaby. He was performing gymnastics on the edge of his boat, letting himself down and heaving himself up, by the strength of his arms. His legs were covered with mud.

"No go!" he said. "It's as deep as the pit here; sometimes you can find a rock or a hard bit. We must just wait."

They had not long to wait after all, for presently a rush of the tide sent the water swirling round the stranded boat, and carried Carnaby's craft to it.

"Now it'll be all right," said he. "You push with the boat-hook, Mark, and I'll pull"; but it took a quarter of an hour's pushing and pulling to get the boat free of the mud.

Except for the moon it would have been quite dark when the party reached the pier. They mounted the hill in some silence. It was difficult for Robinette to get along with her shoeless foot; Lavendar wanted to help her, but she demanded Carnaby's arm. He was sulking still. There was something he felt, but could not understand, in the subtle atmosphere of happiness by which the truant couple seemed to be surrounded; a something through which he could not reach; that seemed to put Robinette at a distance from him, although her shoulder touched his and her hand was on his arm. Growing pangs of his manhood a.s.sailed him, the male's jealousy of the other male. For the moment he hated Mark; Mark talking joyous nonsense in a way rather unlike himself, as if the night air had gone to his head.

"I am glad you had the ferrets to amuse you this afternoon," said Robinette, in a propitiatory tone. "Ferrets are such darlings, aren't they, with their pink eyes?"

"O! _darlings_," a.s.sented Carnaby derisively. "One of the darlings bit my finger to the bone, not that that's anything to you."

"Oh! Middy dear, I am sorry!" cried Robinette. "I'd kiss the place to make it well, if we weren't in such a hurry!"

Carnaby began to find that a dignified reserve of manner was very difficult to keep up. His grandmother could manage it, he reflected, but he would need some practice. When they came to a place where there were sharp stones strewn on the road, he became a mere boy again quite suddenly, and proposed a "queen's chair" for Robinette. And so he and Lavendar crossed hands, and one arm of Robinette encircled the boy's head, while the other just touched Lavendar's neck enough to be steadied by it. Their laughter frightened the sleepy birds that night.

The demoralized remnant of a Bank Holiday party would have been, Lavendar observed, respectability itself in comparison with them; and certainly no such group had ever approached Stoke Revel before. They were to enter by a back door, and Carnaby was to introduce them to the housekeeper's room, where he undertook that Bates would feed them.

Lavendar alone was to be amba.s.sador to the drawing room.

"The only one of us with a boot on each foot, of course we appoint him by a unanimous vote," said Robinette.

But the chief thing that Carnaby remembered, after all, of that evening's adventure, was Robinette's sudden impulsive kiss as she bade him good-night, Lavendar standing by. She had never kissed him before, for all her cousinliness, but she just brushed his cool, round cheek to-night as if with a swan's-down puff.

"That's a shabby thing to call a kiss!" said the embarra.s.sed but exhilarated youth.

"Stop growling, you young cub, and be grateful; half a loaf is better than no bread," was Lavendar's comment as he watched the draggled and muddy but still charming Robinette up the stairway.

XIV

THE EMPTY SHRINE

Lavendar had discovered, much to his dismay, that he must return to London upon important business; it was even a matter of uncertainty whether his father could spare him again or would consent to his returning to Stoke Revel to conclude Mrs. de Tracy's arrangements about the sale of the land.

Affairs of the heart are like thunderstorms; the atmosphere may sometimes seem charged with electricity, and yet circ.u.mstances, like a sudden wind that sweeps the clouds away before they break, may cause the lovers to drift apart. Or all in a moment may come thunder, lightning, and rain from a clear sky, and there is nothing that is apt to precipitate matters like an unexpected parting.

When Lavendar announced that he had to leave Stoke Revel, two pairs of eyes, Miss Smeardon's and Carnaby's, instantly looked at Robinette to see how she received the news, but she only smiled at the moment.

She was just beginning her breakfast, and like the famous Charlotte, "went on cutting bread and b.u.t.ter," without any sign of emotion.

"Hurrah!" thought the boy. "Now we can have some fun, and I'll perhaps make her see that old Lavendar isn't the only companion in the world."

"She minds," thought Miss Smeardon, "for she b.u.t.tered that piece of bread on the one side a minute ago, and now she's just done it on the other--and eaten it too."

"She doesn't care a bit," thought Lavendar. "She's not even changed colour; my going or staying is nothing to her; I needn't come back."

He had made up his mind to return just the same, if it were at all possible, and he told Mrs. de Tracy so. She remarked graciously that he was a welcome guest at any time, and Carnaby, hearing this, pinched Lord Roberts till he howled like a fiend, and fled for comfort to his mistress's lap.

"You little coward," said Carnaby, "you should be ashamed to bear the name of a hero."

"I've mentioned to you before, Carnaby, I think, that I dislike that jest," said his grandmother, and Carnaby advancing to the injured beast said, "Yes, ma'am, and so does Bobs, doesn't he, Bobs?" reducing the lap-dog to paroxysms of fury. "Would it be any better if I called him _Kitchener_?" hissing the word into the animal's face. "Jealous, Bobs? Eh? _Kitchener_." This last word had a rasping sound that irritated the little creature more than ever; his teeth jibbered with anger, and Miss Smeardon had to offer him a saucer of cream before he could be calmed down enough for the rest of the party to hear themselves speak.

"Had you nice letters this morning? Mine were very uninteresting,"

Robinette remarked to Lavendar as they stood together at the doorway in the sunshine, while Carnaby chased the lap-dog round and round the lawn.

"I had only two letters; one was from my sister Amy, the candid one!

her letters are not generally exhilarating."

"Oh, I know, home letters are usually enough to send one straight to bed with a headache! They never sound a note of hope from first to last; although if you had no home, but only a house, like me, with no one but a caretaker in it, you'd be very thankful to get them, doleful or not."

"I doubt it," Mark answered, for Amy's letter seemed to be burning a hole in his pocket at that moment. He had skimmed it hurriedly through, but parts of it were already only too plain.

When the others had gone into the house, he went off by himself, and jumping the low fence that divided the lawn from the fields beyond, he flung himself down under a tree to read it over again. Carnaby, spying him there, came rushing from the house, and was soon pouring out a tale of something that had happened somewhere, and throwing stones as he talked, at the birds circling about the ivied tower of the little church.

The field was full of b.u.t.tercups up to the very churchyard walls. "I must get away by myself for a bit," Lavendar thought. "That boy's chatter will drive me mad." At this point Carnaby's volatile attention was diverted by the sight of a gardener mounting a ladder to clear the sparrows' nests from the water chutes, and he jumped up in a twinkling to take his part in this new joy. Lavendar rose, and strolled off with his hands in his pockets and his bare head bent. The gra.s.s he walked in was a very Field of the Cloth of Gold. His shoes were gilded by the pollen from the b.u.t.tercups, his eyes dazzled by their colour; it was a relief to pa.s.s through the stone archway that led into the little churchyard. To his spirit at that moment the chill was refreshing. He loitered about for a few minutes, and then seeing that the door was open, he entered the church, closing the door gently behind him.

It was very quiet in there and even the chirping of the sparrows was softened into a faint twitter. Here at last was a place set apart, a moment of stillness when he might think things out by himself.

He took out Amy's letter, smoothing it flat on the prayer books before him, and forced himself to read it through. The early paragraphs dealt with some small item of family news which in his present state of mind mattered to Lavendar no more than the distant chirruping of the birds, out there in the sunshine. "You seem determined to stay for some time at Stoke Revel," his sister wrote. "No doubt the pretty American is the attraction. She sounds charming from your description, but my dear man, that's all froth! How many times have I heard this sort of thing from you before! Remember I know everything about your former loves."

"You _don't_, then," said Lavendar to himself. Down, down, down at the bottom of the well of the heart where truth lies, there is always some remembrance, generally a very little one, that can never be told to any confidant.