Robinetta. Findlater Jane Helen

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СКАЧАТЬ 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,” СКАЧАТЬ