Chapter 3

"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 circumlocution 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 passed, 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-class 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 attitude 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 advertisement is costly. Now comes an offer of a somewhat peculiar kind, but sound enough." Lavendar here produced a bundle of documents 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."

Mrs. de Tracy was sternly silent, and Mark awaited her next words with some curiosity. He felt like a torturer drawing the tooth of a Jew in the good old days. This sale of land was a bitter pill to the widow, as it well might be, for it was the beginning of the end, as the de Tracy solicitors could have told you. There had been de Tracys of Stoke Revel since Queen Elizabeth's time, but there would not be de Tracys of Stoke Revel much longer,--unless young Carnaby married an heiress when he came of age--and that no de Tracy had ever done.

"The land across the river," Mrs. de Tracy said at last, "was the first land the de Tracys held, but much of it went at the Restoration. Well, let this go too!" she added harshly.

Mark blessed himself that indecision was no part of the lady's character and sighed with relief. "My father would like to know," he said, "what you propose to do with regard to the old woman who is the present tenant of the cottage."

"Elizabeth Prettyman is not a tenant," said Mrs. de Tracy coldly. "She is practically a pensioner, since she lives rent-free."

"True, I forgot," said Mark soothingly. "I beg your pardon."

"Do not suppose that it is by my wish," continued Mrs. de Tracy coldly. "I have never approved of supporting the peasantry in idleness. This woman happened to be for some years nurse to Cynthia de Tracy, my husband's younger sister, who deeply offended her family by marrying an American named Bean. I see no claim in that to a pension of any kind."

"But your husband saw it, I imagine," interpolated Mark quietly, and Mrs. de Tracy gave him a fierce look, which he met, however, without a sign of flinching.

"My husband had a mistaken idea that Prettyman was poor when she became a widow," said Mrs. de Tracy. "On the contrary she had relations quite well able to support her, I believe. I never cross the river, in these days, and the matter has escaped my memory, so that things have been left as they were."

"No great loss," said Mark candidly, "since the cottage in its present state is utterly unfit for any tenant. As to Prettyman, is it your intention to give her notice to quit?"

"Unquestionably, since the cottage is needed," answered Mrs. de Tracy. "She has occupied it too long as it is." The speaker's lips closed like a vice over the words.

"God pity Elizabeth Prettyman!" ejaculated Lavendar to himself. "Might is Right still, apparently, at Stoke Revel!" Aloud he merely said, "A weak deference to public opinion was never a foible of yours, Mrs. de Tracy; but I think I would advise you to consider some question of compensation to Mrs. Prettyman for the loss of the cottage."

"If you can show me that the woman has any legal claim upon the estate, I will consider the question, but not otherwise," said Mrs. de Tracy with such an air of finality that Lavendar was inclined to let the matter drop for the moment.

"The firm," he said, "will communicate your wishes to Mrs. Prettyman by letter."

"Prettyman cannot read," snapped Mrs. de Tracy. "She must be told, and the sooner the better."

"Well, Mrs. de Tracy," said the young man with a short laugh, "provided it is not I who have to tell her, well and good. I warn you the task would not be to my taste unless compensation were offered her."

Mrs. de Tracy's features hardened to a degree unusual even to her.

"I am apparently less tender-hearted than you," she said sardonically. "I shall, if I think fit, deal with Prettyman in person." The subject was dropped, and Lavendar rose to leave the room, but Mrs. de Tracy detained him.

"The Admiral's niece, Mrs. David Loring, is my guest at present," she said. "It happens that she has crossed the river to Wittisham and is paying a visit to Prettyman. I should be obliged, Mark, if you would row across and fetch her back, as by some misunderstanding, my servant has not waited for her. You are an oarsman, I know."

The young man consented with alacrity. "I shall kill two birds with one stone," he said cheerfully, "I shall visit the famous plum tree cottage and see Mrs. Prettyman for myself; and I shall have the privilege of executing your commission as Mrs. Loring's escort. It sounds a very agreeable one!"

"You have no time to lose," said Mrs. de Tracy with a glance at the clock.

VII

A CROSS-EXAMINATION

Lavendar escaped from the house, where, even in the smoke-room, it seemed unregenerate to light a cigar, and took the path to the shore.

"I wonder if one woman staying in a house full of men would find life as depressing as I do cooped up here under precisely opposite circumstances," he thought, as he made his way through the little churchyard. "It cannot be the atmosphere of femininity that bores me, however, for Mrs. de Tracy has a strongly masculine flavour and Miss Smeardon is as nearly neuter as a person can be."

He took a couple of oars from the boat-house as he passed, and going to the little landing stage untied the boat and started for the farther shore.

It was good to feel the water parting under his vigorous strokes and delightful to exert his strength after the hours of stifled irritation at the Manor. It was a bright, calm close of day, when in the rarefied evening air each sound began to acquire the sharpness that marks the hour. He could hear the rush of the waters behind the boat and the voices of the fishers farther up the stream. As he drew up to the bank and took in his oars the stillness was so great that you could have heard a pin fall, when suddenly from a tree above him a bird broke into one little finished song and then was still, as if it had uttered all it wished to say.

"What a heavenly evening!" thought Lavendar, "and what a lovely spot! That must be the cottage just above me. Mrs. de Tracy said I should know it by the plum tree. Ah, there it is!" Tying up the boat he sprang up the steps and walked along the flagged path. The plum tree these last few days had begun to look its fairest. The blossoms did not yet conceal the leaves, but it was a very bower of beauty already. There was a little table spread for tea under its branches, and an old woman like thousands of old women in thousands of cottages all over England, was sitting behind it, precisely as if she had been a coloured illustration in a summer number of an English weekly. She was on the typical bench in the typical attitude, but instead of the typical old man in a clean smock frock who should have occupied the end of the bench, there sat beside her a distinctly lovely young woman. What struck Lavendar was the wealth of colour she brought into the picture: goldy brown hair, brown tweed dress, with a cape of blue cloth slipping off her shoulders, and a brown toque with a pert upstanding quill that seemed to express spirit and pluck, and a merry heart. His quick glance took in the little hands that held the withered old ones. Both heads were bowed and in the brown tweed lap was a child's shoe,--a wee, worn, fat shoe. Beside it lay an absurd bit of crumpled, tear-soaked embroidery that had been intended to do duty as a handkerchief but had evidently proved quite unseaworthy.

Waddling about on the flags close to the little table was a large fat duck wearing a look of inexpressible greed. "_Quack, quack, quack_!" it said, waddling off angrily as Lavendar approached.

At the sound of the duck's raucous voice both the women looked up.

"Is this Mrs. Prettyman's cottage, ma'am?" Lavendar asked with his charming smile.

"Yes, sir, 't is indeed, and who may you be, if I may be so bold as to ask?"

"I'm Mr. Lavendar, Mrs. de Tracy's lawyer, Mrs. Prettyman. I'm come to do some business at Stoke Revel," he added, for the old face had clouded over, and Mrs. Prettyman's whole expression changed to one of timid mistrust. "I really was sent by Mrs. de Tracy," he went on, turning to Robinette, "to take you home; Mrs. Loring, isn't it?"

"Yes, I am Mrs. Loring," she said, frankly holding out her hand to him. "I knew you were expected at Stoke Revel, but I sent the footman back myself. He spoils the scenery and the river altogether."

"I've got a boat down there; Mrs. de Tracy doesn't quite like your taking the ferry; may I have the honour of rowing you across? My orders were to bring you back as soon as possible."

"I'm blest if I hurry," was his unspoken comment as Robinette gaily agreed, and, having bidden good-bye to the old woman, with a quick caress that astonished him a good deal, she laid down the little shoe gently upon the bench, and turned to accompany him to the boat.

The river was like a looking-glass; the air like balm. "We'll take some time getting across, against the tide," said Lavendar reflectively, as he resolved that the little voyage should be prolonged to its fullest possible extent. He was not going into the Manor a moment earlier than he could help, when this charming person was sitting opposite to him. So this was Mrs. Loring! How different from the stout middle-aged lady whom Mrs. de Tracy's words had conjured up when he set out to find her!

"Old Mrs. Prettyman was my mother's nurse," Robinette remarked as Lavendar dipped his oars gently into the stream and began to row. "I went to see her feeling quite grown up, and she seemed to consider me still a child; I was feeling about four years old at the moment when you appeared and woke me to the real world again."

She had dried her eyes now and had pulled her hat down so as to shade her face, but Lavendar could see the traces of her weeping, and the dear little ineffectual rag of a handkerchief was still in one hand.

"What on earth was she crying about?" he thought, as with lowered eyes he rowed very slowly across, only just keeping the boat's head against the current, and glancing now and then at the young woman.

Was it possible that this lovely person was going to be his fellow-guest in that dull house? "My word! but she's pretty! and what were the tears about ... and the little shoe? Did it belong to a child of her own? Can she be a widow, I wonder," said Lavendar to himself.

"I often think," he said suddenly, raising his head, "that when two people meet for the first time as utter strangers to each other, they should be encouraged, not forbidden, to ask plain questions. It may be my legal training, but I'd like all conversation to begin in that way. As a child I was constantly reproved for my curiosity, especially when I once asked a touchy old gentleman, 'Which is your glass eye? The one that moves, or the one that stands still?'"

The tears had dried, the hat was pushed back again, the young woman's face broke into an April smile that matched the day and the weather.

"Oh, come, let us do it," she exclaimed. "I'd love to play it like a new game: we know nothing at all about each other, any more than if we had dropped from the moon into the boat together. Oh! do be quick! We've so little time; the river is quite narrow; who's to open the ball?"

"I'll begin, by right of my profession; put the witness in the box, please.--What is your name, madam?"

"Robinette Loring," she said demurely, clasping her hands on her knee, an almost childlike delight in the new game dimpling the corners of her mouth from time to time.

"What is your age, madam?" Lavendar hesitated just for a moment before putting this question.

"I refuse to answer; you must guess."

"Contempt of Court--"

"Well, go on; I'm twenty-two and six weeks."

"Thank you, you are remarkably well preserved. I can hardly believe--those six-weeks! What nationality?"

"American, of course, or half and half; with an English mother and American ideas."

"Thank you. Where is your present place of residence?"

"Stoke Revel Manor House."

"What is the duration of the visit?"

"Fixed at a month, but may be shortened at any time for bad behaviour."

"Your purpose in coming to Stoke Revel?"

"A Sentimental Journey, in search of fond relations."

"Have you found these relations?"

"I've found them; but the fondness is still to seek."

"Have you left your family in America?"

"I have no one belonging to me in the world," she answered simply, and her bright face clouded suddenly.

There was a moment's rather embarrassed silence. "It's getting to be a sad game"; she said. "It's my turn now. I'll be the cross-examiner, but not having had your legal training, I'll tell you a few facts about this witness to begin with. He's a lawyer; I know that already. Your Christian name, sir?"

"Mark."

"Mark Lavendar. 'Mark the perfect man.' Where have I heard that; in Pope or in the Bible? Thank you; very good; your age is between thirty and thirty-five, with a strong probability that it is thirty-three. Am I right?"

"Approximately, madam."

"You are unmarried, for married men don't play games like this; they are too sedate."