Chapter 12
"At any rate," commented Lavendar, "it isn't necessary to search as far as Peter Bell for an analogy for your character, my young friend! You are your grandmother's grandson after all!"
"In some ways I suppose I can't help being," answered Carnaby soberly, "but not in all," he added, and suddenly turning red he fumbled in his pocket and produced a coin which he held out to Lavendar. "It's only ten bob," he said apologetically, "and I wish it was a jolly sight more! But please give it to old Mrs. Prettyman to make up a bit for the loss of her plums. Daresay I'll manage some more by and by. Anyway, I'll make it up to her when I come of age.--I'm nearly sixteen already, you know. Be sure you tell her that!"
But Lavendar refused to take the money.
"Mrs. Prettyman is provided for, my boy," he said. "She has become your cousin's especial care. You need have no fear about that. The poor old woman is very happy and will have a cottage more suited for her rheumatism and her general feebleness than the present one. But I think your cousin will understand your motives and believe that you meant well by old Lizzie in your little piece of midnight madness."
"Though I was a bit rough on the plum tree!" said Carnaby, with a broad smile.
"You think it's a laughing matter?" Lavendar asked indignantly. "I wish you had my father to deal with, and Waller R. A.! It's all very well for you."
But Carnaby only laughed. The blood was still hot in his veins, and the joy of his night's adventure. Mark told him that he and Mrs. Loring were crossing the river at once to see for themselves the extent of his mischief and what effect it had had upon old Mrs. Prettyman. Carnaby observed with diabolical meaning that as he had not been invited to join the party, he would make himself scarce. Gooseberries, he said, were very good fruit, but he wasn't fond of them; so he lounged off with his hands in his pockets. Suddenly he turned. "See here, old Mark! You'll speak a word for me with Cousin Robin, won't you? It's hard on me to have her hate me when I was trying to do my best to please her."
"She won't hate you; she couldn't hate anybody," said Lavendar absently, watching first the door and then the window.
"You say that because you're in love with her! I've a couple of eyes in my head, stupid as you all think me. You can deny it all you like, but you won't convince me!"
"I shan't deny it, Carnaby. I am so much in love with her at this moment that the room is whirling round and round and I can see two of you!"
"Poor old Mark! Do you think she'll take you on?"
"Can't say, Carnaby!"
"You're a lucky beggar if she does; that's my opinion!" said the boy.
"Put it as strong as you like, Carnaby," Lavendar answered. "You can't exaggerate my feelings on that subject!"
"If you hadn't fifteen years' start of me I'd give you a run for your money!" exclaimed Carnaby with a daring look.
XXIII
DEATH AND LIFE
While these incidents were taking place at the Manor House, village life at Wittisham had been stirring for hours. Thin blue threads of smoke were rising from the other cottages into the windless air: only from Nurse Prettyman's there was none. Duckie in the out-house quacked and gabbled as she had quacked and gabbled since the light began, yet no one came to let her out and feed her. The halfpenny jug of milk had been placed on the doorstep long ago, but Mrs. Prettyman had not yet opened the door to take it in.
Outside in the garden, where the plum tree stood yesterday, there was now only a stump, hacked and denuded, and round about it a ruin of broken branches, leaves, and scattered blossoms. Over the wreck the bees were busy still, taking what they could of the honey that remained; and in the air was the strong odour of juicy green wood and torn bark.
The children who brought the milk were the first to discover what had happened, and very soon the news spread amongst the other cottagers. Then came two neighbours to the scene, wondering and exclaiming. They went to the door, but Mrs. Prettyman did not answer their knock or their calling. Mrs. Darke looked in through the tiny window.
"She be sleepin' that peaceful in 'er bed in there," she said, "it 'ud be a shame to wake 'er. She's deaf now, and belike she never 'eard the tree come down, 'ooever's done it. But I'll go and see after Duckie: she's makin' noise enough to rouse 'er, anyway."
Then Duckie was released and fed and departed to gabble her wrongs to the other white ducks that were preening themselves amongst the deep green grass of the adjacent orchard.
"You can 'ear that bird a mile away--she's never done talking!" said Mrs. Darke as the indignant gabble grew fainter in the distance. "But 'ere's my old man a-come to look at the plum tree. Wonder what he'll say to it? This be a queer job, sure enough!"
Old Darke, on two sticks, hobbled towards the scene of desolation with grunts of mingled satisfaction and dismay. 'Twas a rare sensation, though a pity, to be sure!
Mrs. Darke stood by the well at the turn of the road, keeping a sharp eye on the cottage while she gossiped with the neighbour who was filling her pitcher. She did not want to miss the sight of Mrs. Prettyman's face when she opened her door and found out what had happened.
"She be sleepin' too long; I'll go and waken her in a minute," said Mrs. Darke. "'Tis but right she should be told what's come to 'er tree, poor thing."
Then a beggar woman selling bootlaces came along the shore of the river; she mounted the cottage steps and the gossips watched her trailing up the pathway in her loose old shoes, and knocking at the door. She waited for a few minutes: there was no answer, so she turned away resignedly and trailed off along the sun-lit lane, in-shore, leaving the garden gate swinging to and fro.
"There's summat the matter!" Mrs. Darke had just whispered with evident enjoyment, when some one else was seen approaching the cottage from the direction of the pier. It was the young lady from the Manor, this time. She wore a white dress and a green scarf, and her face was tinted with colour. She looked like a young blossoming tree herself, all lacy white and pale green, a strange morning vision in a work-a-day world! Robinette ran quickly up the pathway and knocked at the door, but there was no answer to her knock. She called out in her clear voice:--
"Good morning, Nurse! Good morning! Aren't you ready to let me in? It's quite late!" But there was no answer to her call. She was just trying to open the door, which seemed to be locked, when a gentleman came up from the boat and followed her to the cottage. That, the women who were watching her thought quite natural, for surely such a young lady would be followed by a lover wherever she went! Indeed, Mrs. Darke said so.
"'Tis in that there kind," she observed philosophically, "like the cuckoo and the bird that follows; never sees one wi'out the other!"
"'Tis quite that way, Mrs. Darke," agreed the neighbour, approvingly.
Robinette turned a white face to Lavendar as he approached.
"Nurse won't answer, and I can't get in!" she cried. "Something must have happened. I--I'm afraid to go in alone. The door is locked, too."
"It's not locked," said Lavendar, and exerting a little strength, he pushed it open and gave a quick glance inside. "I'll go in first," he said gently. "Wait here."
He came again to the threshold in a few minutes, a peculiar expression on his face which somehow seemed to tell Robinette what had happened.
"Come in, Mrs. Robin," he said very gravely and gently. "You need not be afraid."
Robinette instinctively held out her hand to him and they entered the little room together.
She need not have feared for the old woman's distress over the ruined plum tree, for nothing would ever grieve Nurse Prettyman again. Just as she had lain down the night before, she lay upon her bed now, having passed away in her sleep. "And they that encounter Death in sleep," says the old writer, "go forth to meet him with desire." The aged face was turned slightly upwards and wore a look of contentment and repose that made life seem almost gaudy; a cheap thing to compare with this attainment....
Robinette came out of the cottage a little later, leaving the neighbours who had gathered in the room to their familiar and not uncongenial duties. She went into the garden, where Mark Lavendar awaited her. He longed to try to comfort her; indeed, his whole heart ran out to her in a warmth and passion that astounded him; but her pale face, stained with weeping, warned him to keep silence yet a little while.
"I just came for one branch of the blossom," Robinette said, "if it is not all withered. Yes, this is quite fresh still." She took a little spray he had found for her and stood holding it as she spoke. "Only yesterday it was all so lovely! Oh! Mr. Lavendar, I needn't cry for my old Nurse, I'm sure! How should I, after seeing her face? She had come to the end of her long life, and she was very tired, and now all that is forgotten, and she will never have a moment of vexation about her tree. I don't know why I should cry for her; but oh, how could Carnaby destroy that beautiful thing!"
"It was a genuine though mistaken act of conscience! You must not be too hard on Carnaby!" pleaded Lavendar. "He would not touch the money that was to come from the sale of Mrs. Prettyman's cottage under the circumstances, so it seemed best to him that the sale should not take place, and he prevented it in the directest and simplest way that occurred to him. It's like some of the things that men have done to please God, Mrs. Robin," Mark added, smiling, "and thought they were doing it, too! But Carnaby only wanted to please you!"
"To _please_ me!" exclaimed Robinette, looking round her at the ruin before them. "Oh dear!" she sighed, "how confusing the world is, at times! I am just going to take this snowy branch and lay it on Nurse's pillow. She so loved her tree! See; it's quite fresh and beautiful, and the dew still upon it, just like tears!"
"That seemed just right," said Robinette softly as she came out into the sunshine again, a few minutes later. "I laid the blossoms in her kind old tired hands, the hands that have known so much work and so many pains. It is over, and after all, her new home is better than any I could have found for her!"
The two walked slowly down the little garden on their way to the gate. As they passed, old Mr. Darke, who had hobbled around again to have another look at the fallen tree, addressed Lavendar solemnly.
"Best tree in Wittisham 'e was, sir," touching the ruin of the branches as he spoke. "'Ooever could ha' thought o' sich a piece of wickedness as to cut 'im down? Murder, I calls it! 'Tis well as Mrs. Prettyman be gone to 'er rest wi'out knowledge of it; 'twould 'ave broken her old 'eart, for certain sure!"
"It nearly breaks mine to see it now, Mr. Darke!" said Robinette in a trembling voice. But the old labourer bent down, moving his creaking joints with difficulty and steadying himself upon his sticks till he could touch the stump of the tree with his rough but skilful hands. He pushed away the long grass that grew about the roots and looked up at Robinette with a wise old smile.
"'Tisn't dead and done for yet, Missy, never fear!" he said. "Give 'im time; give 'im time! 'E's cut above the graft--see! 'E'll grow and shoot and bear blossom and fruit same as ever 'e did, given time. See to the fine stock of 'im; firm as a rock in the good ground! And the roots, they be sound and fresh. 'E'll grow again, Missy; never you cry!"
Robinette looked so beautiful as she lifted her luminous eyes and parted lips to old Darke, and then turned to him with a gesture of hope and joy, that again Lavendar could hardly keep from avowing his love; but the remembrance of the old nurse's still shape in the little cottage hushed the words that trembled on his lips.
XXIV
GRANDMOTHER AND GRANDSON
The disagreeable duty of announcing Mrs. Prettyman's death to the lady of the Manor now lay before Lavendar and his companion, and the thought of it weighed upon their spirits as they crossed the river. Carnaby also must be told. How would he take it? Robinette, still under the shock of the plum tree's undoing, expected perhaps some further exhibition of youthful callousness, but Lavendar knew better.
In their concern and sorrow, the young couple had forgotten all minor matters such as meals, and luncheon had long been over when they reached the house. They could see Mrs. de Tracy's figure in the drawing room as they passed the windows, occupying exactly her usual seat in her usual attitude. It was her hour for reading and disapproving of the daily paper.
Robinette and Lavendar entered quietly, but nothing in the gravity of their faces struck Mrs. de Tracy as strange.
"I have a disturbing piece of news to give you," Mark began, clearing his throat. "Mrs. Prettyman died last night in her cottage at Wittisham."
The erect figure in the widow's weeds remained motionless. Perhaps the old hand that lowered the newspaper trembled somewhat, so that its diamonds quivered a little more than usual.
"So Mrs. Prettyman is dead?" she said. Then, as the young people stood looking at her with an air of some expectancy, she added with a sour glance, "Do you expect me to be very much agitated by the news?"
"The death was unexpected," began Lavendar lamely.
"She was seventy-five; my age!" said Mrs. de Tracy with a wintry smile. "Is death at seventy-five so unexpected an event?"
Lavendar said nothing; he had nothing to say, and Robinette for the same reason was silent. She was gazing at her aunt, almost unconsciously, with a wondering look. "At any rate," continued Mrs. de Tracy, addressing her niece, "your _protégée_ has been fortunate in two ways, Robinette. She will neither be turned out of her cottage nor see the destruction of her plum tree. By the way--" with a perfectly natural change of tone, dismissing at once both Mrs. Prettyman and Death--"the plum tree _is_ down, I suppose? You saw it?"
"Very much down!" answered Lavendar. "And certainly we saw it! Carnaby does nothing by halves!"
A slight change, a kind of shade of softening, passed over Mrs. de Tracy's stern features, as the shadow of a summer cloud may pass over a rocky hill. She turned suddenly to Robinette. "Can you tell me on your word of honour that you had nothing to do with Carnaby's action; that you did not put it into his head to cut the plum tree down!"
"I?" exclaimed Robinette, scarlet with indignation. "_I?_ Why--do you want to know what I think of the action? I think it was perfectly brutal, and the boy who did it next door to a criminal! There!"
Mrs. de Tracy seemed convinced by the energy of this disclaimer. "I have always considered yours a very candid character," she observed with condescension. "I believe you when you say that you did not influence Carnaby in the matter, though I strongly suspected you before."
"Well, upon my word!" ejaculated Robinette when they had got out of the room, too completely baffled to be more original. "What does she mean? Has any one ever understood the workings of Aunt de Tracy's mind?"
"Don't come to me for any more explanations! I've done my best for my client!" cried Lavendar. "I give up my brief! I always told you Mrs. de Tracy's character was entirely singular."
"Let us hope so!" commented Robinette with energy. "I should be sorry for the world if it were plural!"
* * * * *
Carnaby was not in the house, and Lavendar proceeded to look for him out of doors. He knew the boy was often to be found in a high part of the grounds behind the garden, where he had some special resort of his own, and he went there first. The afternoon had clouded over, and a slight shower was falling, as Mark followed the wooded path leading up hill. A rock-garden bordered it, where ferns and flowers were growing, each one of which seemed to be contributing some special and delicate fragrance to the damp, warm air. The beech trees here had low and spreading branches which framed now and again exquisite glimpses of the river far below and the wooded hills beyond it.
Lavendar had not gone far when he found Carnaby, Carnaby intensely perturbed, walking up and down by himself.
"You don't need to tell me!" said the boy, with a quick and agitated gesture of the hand. "Bates told me. Old Mrs. Prettyman's dead!" His merry, square-set face was changed and looked actually haggard, and his eyes searched Lavendar's with an expression oddly different from their usual fearless and straightforward one. They seemed afraid. "Was it my grandmother's--was it our fault?" he asked. "I, I feel like a murderer. Upon my soul, I do!"
"Don't encourage morbid ideas, my dear fellow!" said Lavendar in a matter-of-fact tone. "There's trouble enough in the world without foolish exaggeration. Mrs. Prettyman was 'grave-ripe,' as she often said to your cousin; a very feeble old woman, whose time had come. The doctor's certificate will tell you how rheumatism had affected her heart, and the neighbours would very soon set your mind at rest by describing the number of times poor old Lizzie had nearly died before."
"Think of it, though!" said Carnaby with wondering eyes. "Think of her lying dead in the cottage while I hacked and hewed at the plum tree just outside! By Jove! it makes a fellow feel queer!" He shuddered. The picture he evoked was certainly a strange one enough: a strange picture in the moonlight of a night in spring; the doomed beauty of the blossoming tree, the blind, headstrong human energy working for its destruction, and Death over all, stealthy and strong!
"What an ass I was!" said Carnaby, summing up the situation in the only language in which he could express himself. "Sweating and stewing and hacking away--thinking myself so awfully clever! And all the time things ... things were being arranged in quite a different manner!"
"We are often made to feel our insignificance in ways like this," said Lavendar. "We are very small atoms, Carnaby, in the path of the great forces that sweep us on."
"I should rather think so!" assented the wondering boy. "And yet, can a fellow sit tight all the time and just wait till things happen?"
"Ask me something else!" suggested Lavendar ironically.
There was a short pause. "I'm awfully sorry old Mrs. Prettyman's dead," Carnaby said in a very subdued tone. "I meant to do a lot for her, to try and make up for my grandmother's being such a beast." He stopped short, and to Lavendar's astonishment, his face worked, and two tears squeezed themselves out of his eyes and rolled over his round cheeks as they might have done over a baby's. "It's the j-jam I was thinking of," he sniffed. "Once a pal of mine and I were playing the fool in old Mrs. Prettyman's garden, pretending to steal the plums, and giving her duck bits of bread steeped in beer to make it s-squiffy (a duck can be just as drunk as a chap). She didn't mind a bit. She was a regular old brick, and gave us a jolly good tea and a pot of jam to take away.... And now she's dead and--and...." Carnaby's feelings became too much for him again, and a handkerchief that had seen better and much cleaner days came into play. Lavendar flung an arm round the boy's shoulder.
"This kind of regret comes to us all, Carnaby," he said. "I don't suppose there's a man with a heart in his breast who hasn't sometime had to say to himself, I might have done better: I might have been kinder: it's too late now! But it's never too late!" added Lavendar under his breath--"not where Love is!"
The shower was over, and though the sun had not come out, a pleasant light lay upon the river as the friends walked down; upon the river beyond which old Lizzie Prettyman was sleeping so peacefully, the sleep of kings and beggars, and just and unjust, and rich and poor alike. Carnaby had dried his eyes but continued in a pensive mood.
"Cousin Robin's still angry with me about the tree," he said, uncertainly.
"She won't be angry long!" Lavendar assured him. "You and your Cousin Robin are going to be firm friends, friends for life."
Carnaby seemed a good deal comforted. "Mind you don't tell her I blubbered!" he said in sudden alarm. "Swear!"
"She wouldn't think a bit the worse of you for that!" said Lavendar.
"Swear, though!" repeated Carnaby in deadly earnest.
And Lavendar swore, of course.
* * * * *
But an influence very unlike Lavendar's and a spirit very different from Robinette's enfolded Carnaby de Tracy in his home and fought, as it were, for his soul. That night, after the last lamp had been put out by the careful Bates, and after Benson had bade a respectful good-night to her mistress, a light still burned in Mrs. de Tracy's room. Presently, carried in her hand, it flitted out along the silent passages, past rows of doors which were closed upon empty rooms or upon unconscious sleepers, till it came to Carnaby's door; to the Boys' Room, as that far-away and most unluxurious apartment had always been called. Mrs. de Tracy was making a pilgrimage to the shrine of one of her gods. She opened the door, and closing it gently behind her, she stood beside Carnaby's bed and looked at him, intently and haggardly.
Mrs. de Tracy's was a singular character, as Mark Lavendar had said. The circumstances of her widowhood with its heavy responsibilities had perhaps hardly been fair to her. There had been little room for the kindlier and softer feelings, though it is to be feared that they would not have found much congenial soil in her heart. The personal selfishness in her had long been merged in the greater and harder selfishness of caste; she had become a mere machine for the keeping up of Stoke Revel.
But to-night she was moved by the positively human sentiment which had been stirred in her by Carnaby's startling act of cutting the plum tree down. Ah! let fools believe if they could that she was angry with the boy! She had never felt anger less or pride more. While others talked and argued, shilly-shallied, made love, muddled and made mistakes, her grandson, the man of the race that always ruled, had cut the knot for himself, without hesitation and without compunction, without consulting anyone or asking anyone's leave. That was the way the de Tracys had always acted. And it seemed to Mrs. de Tracy a crowning coincidence, a fitting kind of poetical justice, that Carnaby's action should actually have prevented the sale of the land; that dreaded, detestable sale of the first land that the de Tracys had held upon the banks of the river.
So, since Carnaby was to be a man of the right kind, his grandmother had come to look at him, not in love, as other women come to such bedsides, but in pride of heart. The boy, after his "white night" at Wittisham and the varied emotions of the succeeding day, lay on his side, in the deep, recuperative sleep of youth whence its energies are drawn and in which its vigors are renewed. His round cheek indented the pillow, his rumpled hair stirred in the breeze that blew in at the window, his arm and his open hand, relaxed, lay along the sheet. Another woman would have straightened the bed-clothes above him; another might have touched his hair or hand; another kissed his cheek. But not even because he was like her departed husband, like the man who five and fifty years before had courted a certain cold and proud, handsome and penniless Miss Augusta Gallup, would Mrs. de Tracy do these things. She had had her sensation, such as it was, her secret moment of emotion, and was satisfied. She left the room as she had come, the candle casting exaggerated shadows of herself upon the walls where Carnaby's bats and fishing rods and sporting prints hung.
It is sad to be old as Mrs. de Tracy was old, but her age was of her own making, a shrinkage of the heart, a drying up of the wells of feeling that need not have been.