Chapter 20 The New Home

It was in rather a chastened spirit that Robinette set off to see Mrs. Prettyman. "I've been foolish, I've been imprudent; oh! dear me! I've still so much to learn!" she sighed to herself. "No good is ever done by losing one's temper; it only puts everything wrong. I shall have to try and take Mr. Lavendar's advice. I must be very prudent with Nurse this morning--never show her that I think Aunt de Tracy is in the wrong; just persuade her ever so gently to move to another home, and arrange with her where it is to be."

It is always difficult for an impetuous nature like Robinette's to hold back about anything. She would have liked to run straight into Mrs. Prettyman's room, and, flinging her arms round the old woman's neck, cry out to her that everything was settled. And instead she must come to the point gently, prudently, wisely, "like other people" as she said to herself.

The cottage seemed very still that afternoon, and Robinette knocked twice before she heard the piping old voice cry out to her to come in.

"Why, Nurse dear, where are you? Were you asleep?" Robinette said as she entered, for Mrs. Prettyman was not sitting in the fine new chair. Then she found that the voice answered from the little bedroom off the kitchen, and that the old woman was in bed.

"I ain't ill, so to speak, dear, just weary in me bones," she explained, as Robinette sat down beside her. "And Mrs. Darke, me neighbour, she sez to me, 'You do take the day in bed, Mrs. Prettyman, me dear, an' I'll do your bit of work for 'ee'--so 'ere I be, Missie, right enough."

"I'm afraid you were worried yesterday," said Robinette; "worried about leaving the house."

"I were, Missie, I were," she confessed.

"That's why I came to-day; you must stop worrying, for I've settled all about it. I spoke to my aunt last night, and it's true that you have to leave this house; but now I've come to make arrangements with you about a new one."

The old woman covered her face with her hands and gave a little cry that went straight to Robinette's heart.

"Lor' now, Miss, 'ow am I ever to leave this place where I've been all these years? I thought yesterday as you said 'twas a mistake I'd made."

"But alas, it wasn't altogether a mistake," Robinette had to confess sadly, her eyes filling with tears as she realized how she had only doubled her old friend's disappointment. Then she sat forward and took Mrs. Prettyman's hand in hers.

"Nursie dear," she said, "I don't want you to grieve about leaving the old home, for it isn't an awfully good one; the new one is going to be ever so much better!"

"That's so, I'm sure, dearie, only 'tis _new_," faltered Mrs. Prettyman. "If you're spared to my age, Missie, you'll find as new things scare you."

"Ah, but not a new house, Nursie! Wait till I describe it! Everything strong and firm about it, not shaking in the storms as this one does; nice bright windows to let in all the sunshine; so no more 'rheumatics' and no more tears of pain in your dear old eyes!"

Robinette's voice failed suddenly, for it struck her all in a moment that her glowing description of the new home seemed to have in it something prophetic. That bent little figure beside her, these shaking limbs and dim old eyes,--all this house of life, once so carefully builded, was crumbling again into the dust, and its tenant indeed wanted a new one, quite, quite different! A sob rose in Robinette's throat, but she swallowed it down and went on gaily.

"I've settled about another thing, too; you're to have another plum tree, or life wouldn't be the same thing to you. And you know they can transplant quite big trees now-a-days and make them grow wonderfully. Some one was telling me all about how it is done only a few days ago. They dig them up ever so carefully, and when they put them into the new hole, every tiny root is spread out and laid in the right direction in the ground, and patted and coaxed in, and made firm, and they just catch hold on the soil in the twinkle of an eye. Isn't it marvellous? Well, I'll have a fine new tree planted for you so cleverly that perhaps by next year you'll be having a few plums, who knows? And the next year more plums! And the next year, jam!"

"'Twill be beautiful, sure enough," said the old woman, kindling at last under the description of all these joys. "And do you think, Missie, as the new cottage will really be curing of me rheumatics?"

"Why yes, Nurse. Whoever heard of rheumatism in a dry new house?"

"The house be new, but the rheumatics be old," said Mrs. Prettyman sagely.

"Well, we can't make _you_ entirely new, but we'll do our best. I'm going to enquire about a nice cottage not very far from here; there's plenty of time before this one is sold. It shall be dry and warm and cosy, and you will feel another person in it altogether."

"These new houses be terrible dear, bain't they?" the old woman said anxiously.

"Not a bit; besides that's another matter I want to settle with you, Nursie. I'm going to pay the rent always, and you're going to have a nice little girl to help you with the work, and there will be something paid to you each month, so that you won't have any anxiety."

"Oh, Missie, Missie, whatever be you sayin'? _Me_ never to have no anxiety again!"

"You never shall, if I can help it; old people should never have worries; that's what young people are here for, to look after them and keep them happy."

Mrs. Prettyman lay back on the pillow and gazed at Robinette incredulously; it wasn't possible that such a solution had come to all her troubles. For seventy odd years she had worked and struggled and sometimes very nearly starved and here was some one assuring her that these struggles were over forever, that she needn't work hard any more, or ever worry again. Could it be true? And all to come from Miss Cynthia's daughter!

Robinette bent down and kissed the wrinkled old face softly.

"Good-night, Nursie dear," she said. "I'm not going to stay any longer with you to-day, because you're tired. Have a good sleep, and waken up strong and bright."

"Good-night, Missie, good-night, dear," the old woman said. Her face had taken on an expression of such peacefulness as it had never worn before.

She turned over on her pillow and closed her eyes, scarcely waiting for Robinette to leave the room.

"I've been allowed to do that, anyway," Robinette said to herself, standing in the doorway to look back at the quiet sleeper, and then looking forward to a little boat nearing the shore. The cottage sheltered almost the only object that connected her with her past; the boat, she felt, held all her future.

* * * * *

The river, when Lavendar rowed himself across it, was very quiet. "The swelling of Jordan," as Robinette called the rising tide, was over; now the glassy water reflected every leaf and twig from the trees that hung above its banks and dipped into it here and there.

Mooring his boat at the landing, Mark sauntered up to Mrs. Prettyman's cottage, and having tapped lightly at the door to let Mrs. Loring know of his arrival, as they had agreed he should do, he went along the flagged pathway into the garden, and sat down on the edge of the low wall that divided it from the river. Just in front of him was the little worn bench where he had first seen Robinette as she sat beside her old nurse with the tiny shoe on her lap. It was scarcely a fortnight ago; yet it seemed to him that he could hardly remember the kind of man he had been that afternoon; a new self, full of a new purpose, and at that moment of a new hope, had taken the place of the objectless being he had been before.

Everything was very still; there was scarcely a sound from the village or from the shipping farther down the river. Lavendar fancied he heard Robinette's clear voice within the cottage; then he started suddenly and the blood rushed to his heart as he listened to her light steps coming along the paved footpath.

"Here you are!" she whispered. "Let us not speak too loud, for Nurse was just dropping asleep when I left her. I've put a table-cover and a blanket over 'Mrs. Mackenzie' to keep her from quacking. Mrs. Prettyman has not been very well, poor dear, and is in bed. We've just talked about the lovely new home she's going to have, and the transplanted plum tree; small, but warranted to bear in a year or two and give plums and jam like this one. I left her so happy!"

She stopped and looked up. "Oh! can any new tree be as beautiful as this one? Was ever anything in the world more exquisite? It has just come to its hour of perfection, Mr. Lavendar; it couldn't last,--anything so lovely in a passing world."

She sat down on the low wall, and looked up at the tree. It stood and shone there in its perfect hour. Another day, and the blossoms, too fully blown, would begin to drift upon the ground with every little shaking wind; now it was at its zenith, a miracle of such white beauty that it caused the heart to stop and consider. Bees and butterflies hummed and flew around it; it cast a delicate shadow on the grass, and leaning across the wall it was imaged again in the river like a bride in her looking-glass.

Robinette sat gazing at the tree, and Lavendar sat gazing at her. At that moment he "feared his fate too much" to break the silence by any question that might shatter his hope, as the first breeze would break the picture that had taken shape in the glassy water beneath them.

"I feel in a better temper now," said Robinette. "Who could be angry, and look at that beautiful thing? I've left dear old Nurse quite happy again, and I haven't yet offended Aunt de Tracy irrevocably, and all because you persuaded me not to be unreasonable. All the same I could do it again in another minute if I let myself go. Doesn't injustice ever make people angry in England?"

Lavendar laughed. "It often makes me feel angry, but I've never found that throwing the reins on the horses' necks when they wanted to bolt, made one go along the right road any faster in the end."

"I often think," said Robinette, "if we could see people really angry and disagreeable before we--" She hesitated and added, "get to know them well, we should be so much more careful."

"Yes," said Mark, bending down his head and speaking very deliberately, "that's why I wish you could have seen me in all my worst moments. I'd stand the shame of it, if you could only know, but, alas, one can't show off one's worst moments to order; they must be hit upon unexpectedly."

"I don't believe thirty years of life would teach one about some people--they are so _crevicey_," said Robinette musingly. She had risen and leaned against the plum tree for a moment, looking up through the white branches.

Lavendar rose and stood beside her. "Thirty years--I shall be getting on to seventy in thirty years."

A little gust of wind shook the tree; some petals came drifting down upon them, like white moths, like flakes of summer snow, a warning that the brief hour of perfection would soon be past ... and under it human creatures were talking about thirty years!