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 const.i.tuted 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 old woman 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!" she 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.
VI
MARK 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 pushed up 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. He looked 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 circ.u.mlocution about affairs, and it was only when a death in the family, or some other crucial event, made his presence absolutely necessary that he came down 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 pa.s.sed, 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 of it afterwards, and have a sort of middle-cla.s.s 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 severe attack 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 att.i.tude 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt is costly. Now comes an offer of a somewhat peculiar kind, but sound enough." Lavendar here produced a bundle of doc.u.ments 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. He 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."