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 circumstances. 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 identity 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 noble 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 foreshore 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?"
"No," said Mrs. de Tracy obstinately, "you have no legal claim to compensation, Elizabeth. I cannot undertake to allow you anything for what is not yours. If I did it in your case you know quite well I should have to do it in many others."
There was a long and heavy silence. Elizabeth Prettyman was taking in her sentence of banishment from her old home; Mrs. de Tracy was merely wondering how long it would take her to walk down that nasty steep bit of path to the ferry. At last the old woman looked up.
"When must I be goin' then, ma'am?" she asked meekly.
Mrs. de Tracy considered. "The transfer of land from one person to another generally takes some time: you will have several weeks here still; I shall send you notice later which day to quit."
"Thank you, ma'am," said Elizabeth simply, and added, "The plum tree blossoms 'ul be over by that time."
"I don't see what that has to do with it," said Mrs. de Tracy, in whose heart there was room for no sentiment.
"'T would have been 'arder leavin' it in blossom time," the old woman explained; but her hearer could not see the point. She rose slowly from her chair and looked around the cottage.
"I am glad to see that you keep your place clean and respectable, Elizabeth," she said. "I wish you good afternoon."
Elizabeth never rose from her chair to see her visitor to the door--(an omission which Mrs. de Tracy was not likely to overlook)--she just sat there gazing stupidly around the tiny kitchen and muttering a word or two now and then. At last she got up and tottered to the garden.
"I'll 'ave to leave it all--leave the old bench as me William did put for me with his own 'ands, and leave Duckie, Duckie can't never go to Exeter if I goes there,--and leave the plum tree." She limped across the little bit of sunny turf, and stood under the white canopy of the blossoming tree, leaning against its slender trunk. "Pity 't is we ain't rooted in the ground same as the trees are," she mused. "Then no one couldn't turn us out; only the Lord Almighty cut us down when our time came; Lord knows I'm about ready for that now--grave-ripe as you may say." She leaned her poor weary old head against the tree stem and wept, ready, ah! how ready, at that moment, to lay down the burden of her long and toilsome life.
"Good afternoon, Nursie dear!" a clear voice called out in her ear, and Elizabeth started to find that Robinette had tip-toed across the grass and was standing close beside her. She lifted her tear-stained face up to Robinette's as a child might have done.
"I've to quit, Missie," she sobbed, "to leave me 'ome and Duckie and the plum tree, an' I've no place to go to, and naught but my ten pounds to live on--and 't won't keep me without I've the plum tree, not when I've rent to pay from it; not if I don't eat nothing but tea an' bread never again!"
In a moment Robinette's arms were about her: her soft young cheeks pressed against the withered old face.
"What's this you're saying, Nurse?" she cried. "Leaving your cottage? Who said so?"
"It's true, dear, quite true; 'asn't the lady 'erself been here to tell me so?"
"Was that what Aunt de Tracy was here about? I met her on the road five minutes ago; she said she had been here on business! But tell me, Nurse, why does she want you to leave? Are you going to get a better cottage? Does she think this one isn't healthy for you?"
"No, no, dear, 't isn't that, she 've sold the cottage over me 'ead, that's what 't is, or she's going to sell it, to a gentleman from London--Lord knows what a gentleman from London wants wi' 'en--and I've to quit."
Robinette tried to be a peacemaker.
"Then you'll get a much more comfortable house, that's quite certain. You know, though this one is lovely on fine days like this, that the thatch is all coming off, and I'm sure it's damp inside! Just wait a bit, and see if you don't get some nice cosy little place, with a sound roof and quite dry, that will cure this rheumatism of yours."
But Mrs. Prettyman shook her head.
"No, no, there won't be no cosy place given to me; I'm no more worth than an old shoe now, Missie, and I'm to be turned out, the lady said so 'erself; said as I must go to Exeter to live with me niece Nettie, and 'er don't want us--Nettie don't--and whatever shall I do without I 'ave Duckie and the plum tree?"
"Oh, but"--Robinette began, quite incredulously, and the old woman took up her lament again.
"And I asked the lady, wouldn't I 'ave something allowed me for the plum tree--that 'ave about clothed me for years back? And 'No,' she says, ''t ain't your plum tree, Elizabeth, 't is mine; I can't 'low nothing on me own plum tree.'"
Robinette still refused to believe the story.
"Nurse, dear," she said, "you're a tiny bit deaf now, you know, and perhaps you misunderstood about leaving. Suppose you keep your dear old heart easy for to-night, and I'll come down bright and early to-morrow and tell you what it really is! If you have to leave the plum tree you'll get a fine price put on it that may last you for years; it's such a splendid tree, anyone can see it's worth a good deal."
"That it be, Missie, the finest tree in Wittisham," the old woman said, drying her eyes, a little comforted by the assurance in Robinette's voice and manner.
"There now, we won't have any more tears: I've brought a new canister of tea I sent for to London. I'm just dying to taste if it's good; we'll brew it together, Nursie; I shall carry out the little table from the kitchen and we'll drink our tea under the plum tree," Robinette cried.
She was carrying a great parcel under her arm, and when Mrs. Prettyman opened it, she could scarcely believe that this lovely red tin canister, filled with pounds of fragrant tea, could really be hers! The sight of such riches almost drove away her former fears. Robinette whisked into the kitchen and came out carrying the little round table which she set down under the white canopy of the plum tree. Then together they brought out the rest of the tea things, and what a merry meal they had!
"It's just nonsense and a bit of deafness on your part, Nurse, so we won't remember anything about leaving the house, we are only going to think of enjoyment," Robinette announced. Then the old woman was comforted, as old people are wont to be by the brave assurances of those younger and stronger than themselves, forgot the spectre that seemed to have risen suddenly across her path, and laughed and talked as she sipped the fragrant London tea.
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