Robinetta Part 16

"I have found the verse from Browning, 'So I shall see her in three days.'

"M. L."

"Tuesday, 19th.

"Dear Mr. Lavendar: First, many thanks for Nurse's armchair, which arrived in perfect order, and is a shining monument to your good taste. She does nothing but look at it, shrouding it when she retires to bed with an old table-cover, to protect it from the night air.

"Whether she will ever make its acquaintance thoroughly enough to sit in it I do not know, but it will give her an enormous amount of pleasure. Perhaps her glow of pride in its possession does her as much good as the comfort she might take in its use.

"Her 'rheumatics' are very painful just now, and I have a good deal to do with Duckie. You remember Duckie? I call her Mrs. Mackenzie, after that lady in The Newcomes who talked the Colonel to death. Mrs.

Mackenzie is heavy, elderly, and strong-willed. I am acquainted with every bone, tendon, and sinew in her body, having to lift her into a coop behind the cottage where she will not wake Nurse at dawn with her eternal quacking. She has heretofore slept under Nurse's bedroom window and dislikes change of any kind. So lucky she has no offspring!

I tremble to think of what maternal example might do in such a talkative family!

"Stoke Revel is as it was and ever will be, world without end; only Aunt de Tracy is crosser than when you are here and life is not as gay, although Carnaby does his dear, cubbish best. If ever you desire your mental jewels to shine at their brightest; if ever you wish a tolerably good disposition to seem like that of an angel; if ever, in a fit of vanity, you would like to appear as a blend of Apollo, Lancelot, Demosthenes, Prince Charlie, Ajax, and Solomon, just fly to Stoke Revel and become part of the household. a.s.sume nothing; simply appear, and the surroundings will do the rest; like the penny-in-the-slot arrangements. Seen upon a background of Bates, William, Benson, Big c.u.mmins, the Curate, Miss Smeardon, and may I dare to add, the lady of the Manor herself,--any living breathing man takes on an Olympian majesty. I shouldn't miss you in Boston nor in London; perhaps even in Weston I might find a wretched subst.i.tute, but here you are priceless!

"I have some news for you. On Sat.u.r.day Miss Smeardon and I went to a garden party. That was what it was called. The thermometer was only slightly below zero when we started, and that luminary masquerading as the sun was pretending to shine. Soon after we arrived at the festive scene, there were gusts of wind and rain. I sought the shelter of a spreading tree, the kitchen fire not being available, and I was joined there by the hostess, who presented her niece, your Miss Meredith.

"Dear Mr. Lavendar, this is a subject we cannot write about, you and I. I am loyal to my s.e.x, and what Miss Meredith said, and looked, and did, are all as sacred to me as they ought to be. I only want to tell you that she is happy; that she has this very week become engaged, and is going to India with her husband in a month. Now that little cankerworm, that has been gnawing at your roots of life for the last year or two, has done its worst, and you are perfectly free to go and make other mistakes. I only hope you'll get 'scot free' from those, too, for I don't like to see nice men burn their fingers. We became such good friends huddled up in that boat when we were stuck in the mud--Ugh! I can smell it now!--that I am glad to be the first to send you pleasant news.

"Sincerely yours, "ROBINETTA LORING."

XVII

MRS. DE TRACY CROSSES THE FERRY

Lavendar's blunt refusal, except under certain conditions, to announce to Mrs. Prettyman her coming ejection from the cottage at Wittisham, was unprofessional enough, as he himself felt; but it was final and categorical. Conveying as it did a sort of tacit remonstrance, this refusal had an unfortunate effect, for it only served to rouse Mrs. de Tracy's formidable obstinacy. She had seized upon one point only in their numberless and wearisome discussions of the matter: Mrs. Prettyman had no legal claim upon Stoke Revel. To give her compensation for the plum tree would be to allow that she had; to create a precedent highly dangerous under the circ.u.mstances. How could one refuse to other old women or old men leaving their cottages what one had weakly granted to her? The demands would be unceasing, the trouble endless. So arguing, Mrs. de Tracy soon brought herself to a state of determination bordering on a sort of mania. She was old, and in exaggerated harshness her life was retreating as it were into its last stronghold, at bay.

As good as her word, for she had vowed she would warn Mrs. Prettyman herself, and she was never one to procrastinate, the lady of the Manor proceeded to plan her visit to Wittisham. She had not crossed the river for years. Wittisham, one of the loveliest villages in England, perhaps, though little known, was a thorn in her side, as it would have been in that of any other landlord with empty pockets.

What you could not deal with to your own advantage, it was better to ignore, and on this autocratic principle, Mrs. de Tracy had left Wittisham to itself.

But now the boat carried her there, alone and fierce--_thrawn_, as the Scotch say--bent upon a course of conduct that she knew would hold her up to the hatred of every right-thinking person of her acquaintance, and bitterly triumphant in the knowledge. The meanness of her errand never struck her. On the contrary, she would have argued it was one well worthy of her, a part of the scheme in the consummation of which she had spent her married life and her whole indomitable energy, losing actually her own ident.i.ty in the process, and becoming an inexorable machine. That scheme was the holding together of Stoke Revel for the de Tracys, the maintenance of family dignity and power, the pre-eminence of a race that had always ruled.

The river beneath her, carrying her to the fulfilment of her duty, the n.o.ble river, widening to the sea, subject to its tides and made turbulent by its storms, typified to Mrs. de Tracy only the greatness of Stoke Revel. From its banks the de Tracys had sent out, generation after generation, men who had commanded fleets, who had upheld the national honour upon the farthest seas, very often at the cost of life. There was no sacrifice of herself at which Mrs.

de Tracy would have hesitated in upholding this ideal, no sacrifice of others, either. What was Lizzie Prettyman in comparison? A bag of old bones, fit for nothing but the workhouse!

"A little faster, William," said the widow, sitting upright in the stern, and William the footman bent to his oars, the beads of perspiration standing on his brow. When Mrs. de Tracy stepped out upon the pier, she had to be reminded where the Prettyman cottage was.

"You'll know it by the plum tree, ma'am," said William respectfully, "everybody does."

It was not far off on the river side. The tide had ebbed and left a stretch of muddy foresh.o.r.e in front of it, where the rotting poles for hanging the fishing nets out to dry stood gauntly up. Mrs. de Tracy approached the steps, which merged into the flagged path before the door, and paused to survey the property she intended to part with. She had no eye for the picturesque. A few white petals from the blossoming plum tree, scattered by the breeze, fell upon her black bonnet and shoulders. A faint scent of honey came from it and the hum of bees, for the day was warm. The tumble-down condition of the cottage engaged Mrs. de Tracy's attention.

"And for this," she thought scornfully, "a man will give hundreds of pounds! There's truth in the adage that a fool and his money are soon parted!"

She mounted the steps that led up to the patch of garden, her keen, cold eyes everywhere at once. "A cat can't sneeze without she 'ears 'im!" her villagers at Stoke Revel were wont to say, disappearing into their houses as rabbits into their burrows at sight of a terrier.

Old Elizabeth Prettyman stood at her door, and it took some time to make her realize who her august visitor was. She was getting blind; she had never been a favourite with Mrs. de Tracy, nor had she entered Stoke Revel Manor since her nursling disgraced it by marrying a Bean.

She curtseyed humbly to the great lady.

"There now, ma'am," she said, "it's not often we have seen you across the river. Will you please to come inside and sit down, ma'am? 'T is very warm this afternoon, it is." She was a good deal fluttered in her welcome, for there was that in Mrs. de Tracy's air that seemed to bode misfortune.

"I shall sit down for a few minutes, Elizabeth," was the reply, "while I explain my visit to you."

Mrs. Prettyman stood aside respectfully, and Mrs. de Tracy swept past her into the cottage and seated herself there. It never occurred to her to ask the old woman to sit down in her own house; she expected her to stand throughout the interview. Without further preamble, then, Mrs. de Tracy came to the point:--

"Elizabeth," she said, "I have come to tell you that I am going to sell the land on which this cottage stands, and that you will have to find some other home."

The old woman did not understand for a minute. "You be going to sell the land, ma'am?" she repeated stupidly.

"Yes, I am. A gentleman from London wishes to buy it; you will need to go."

"A gentleman from London! Lor, ma'am, no gentleman from London wouldn't live 'ere!" Elizabeth cried, perfectly dazed by the statement.

Mrs. de Tracy repeated: "It is not your business, Elizabeth, what he intends to do with the place; all you have to do is to remove from the house."

The old woman sank down on the nearest chair and covered her face with her hands. She was so old and so tired that she had no heart to face life under new conditions, even should they be better than those she left. A younger woman would have snapped her fingers in Mrs. de Tracy's face, so to speak, and wished her joy of her old rattletrap of a house, but Elizabeth Prettyman, after a lifetime of struggles, had not vitality enough for such an action. She had never dreamed of leaving the cottage, and where was she to go? Her furrowed face wore an expression of absolute terror now when she looked up.

"But where be I to live, ma'am?" she cried.

"I do not know, Elizabeth; you must arrange that with your relations,"

said Mrs. de Tracy.

"I don't 'ave but only me niece--'er as married down Exeter way."

"Well, you should write to her then."

"She don't want to keep me, Nettie don't,--she's but a poor man's wife, and five chillen she 'as; it's not like as if she were me daughter, ma'am."

"You have some small sum of money of your own every year, have you not?" Mrs. de Tracy asked.

"Ten pound a year, ma'am; the same that me 'usband left me; two 'undred pounds 'e 'ad saved and 't is in an annuity; that's all I 'ave--that and me plum tree."

"The plum tree is not yours, either, Elizabeth; that belongs to the land," said Mrs. de Tracy curtly.

"'T was me 'usband planted it, ma'am, years ago. We watched 'en and pruned 'en and tended 'en like a child we did--an' now to be told 'er ain't mine!"

"You're forgetting yourself, Elizabeth, I think," said Mrs. de Tracy.

It was simply impossible for her to see with the old woman's eyes; all she remembered was the legal fact that any tree planted in Stoke Revel ground belonged to the owner of the ground.

"But ma'am, 't is a big part of me living is the plum tree; only yesterday I says to the young lady--Miss Cynthia's young lady--I says, 'Dear knows how 't would be with me without I had the plum tree.'"

"I cannot help that, Elizabeth: the plum tree is not yours, it belongs to Stoke Revel."

"Then ma'am, you'll be 'lowing me something for it surely?"