Robinetta. Findlater Jane Helen
the departure of Mrs. Benson from her room, Robinette gave a stifled shriek in which laughter and tears were equally mingled. Then she flew like a lapwing to the fire-place and lifted off a fan of white paper from the grate.
“No possibility of help there!” she exclaimed. “Cold within, cold without! How shall I unpack? How shall I dress? How shall I live without a fire? Ah! here is the coal box! Empty! Empty, and it is only the month of April! ‘Oh! to be in England now that April’s there!’ How could Browning write that line without his teeth chattering! How well I understand the desire of the British to keep India and South Africa! They must have some place to go where they can get warm! Now for unpacking, or any sort of manual labour which will put my frozen blood in circulation!”
Slapping her hands, beating her breast, stamping her feet, Mrs. Loring removed a few dresses from the offending trunk to the mahogany wardrobe, and disposed her effects neatly in the drawers of bureau and highboy.
“I have made a mistake at the very beginning,” she thought. “I supposed nothing could be too pretty for the Manor House and now I am afraid my worst is too fine. The Manor House of Stoke Revel! Wouldn’t that appeal to anyone’s imagination? Now what for to-night? White satin with crystal? Back you go into the trunk! Back goes the silver grey chiffon! I’ll have it re-hung over flannel! Avaunt! heliotrope velvet with amethyst spangles, made with a view to ensnaring the High Church clergy! I wish I had a princess dress of moleskin with a court train of squirrel hanging from the shoulders! Here is the thing; my black Liberty satin two years old. I will cover part of my exposed neck and shoulders with a fichu of lace; my black silk openwork stockings will be drawn on over a pair of balbriggans, and the number of petticoats I shall don would discourage a Scotch fishwife! To-morrow I’ll write Mrs. Spalding’s maid to buy me two hot-water bottles, mittens, a box of quinine tablets and a Shetland shawl… What are these–fans? Retire into the depths of that tray and never look me in the face again!.. Parasols? I wonder at your impertinence in coming here! I shall give you cod liver oil and make you grow into umbrellas!”
Presently the dinner gong growled through the house, and Robinette, still shivering, flung across her shoulders a shimmering scarf of white and silver. It fell over her simple black dress in just the right way, adding a last touch to the somewhat exotic grace which made her a stranger in her mother’s home. Then she fled down the darkening passages, instinctively aware that unpunctuality was a crime in this house. Yet in spite of her haste, she paused before the window of an upper lobby, arrested by the scene it framed. Heavy rain still fell, and the light, made greenish by the nearness of great trees just coming into leaf, was cheerless and singularly cold. But that could not mar the majesty of the outlook which made the Manor of Stoke Revel, on its height, unique. Far below the house, the broad river slipped towards the sea, between woods that rose tier upon tier above and beyond–woods of beech and of oak, not yet green, but purplish under the rainy mist. On the bank, woods too, and here, where the river, in excess of strength, swirled into a creek–a shining sand-bank where fishing nets were hung. Then the low, strong tower of a church, with the sombreness of cypress beside it, and the thatched roofs of cottages.
Something stirred in the heart of Robinette as she looked, that part of her blood which her English mother had given her. This scene, so indescribably English as hardly to be imaginable in another land, had been painted for her again and again by her mother with all the retrospective romance of an exile’s touch. She knew it, but she did not know if she could ever love it, beautiful though it was and noble.
But she banished these misgivings and ran down the twisted stairway so fast that she was almost panting when she reached the drawing-room door.
“I will take your arm, please,” said the hostess coldly, while Miss Smeardon wore the virtuous and injured air of one who has been kept waiting. Mrs. de Tracy laid, on the warm and smooth arm of her guest, one of her small, dry hands, sparkling with rings, and the procession closed with the companion and the lap-dog.
In the dining room, the shutters were closed, and the candles, in branching candlesticks of silver, only partially lit a room long and low like the other. The walls were darkened with pictures, and Robinette’s bright eyes searched them eagerly.
“The Sir Joshua is not here!” she thought. “And it was not in the drawing room. Has Aunt de Tracy given, or hidden it away–my very own name-picture?”
With all her determination, Robinette somehow could not summon courage enough to ask where this picture was. Such a question would involve the mention of her mother’s name, and from that she shrank. Young Mrs. Loring had never before found herself in a society where conversation was apparently regarded as a crime, and to fit herself to her environment, under the scrutiny of Mrs. de Tracy and the decidedly inimical looks of the companion, took all her time. A burden of self-consciousness lay upon her such as her light and elastic spirit had never known. She found herself morbidly observant of minute details; the pattern of the tablecloth; the crest upon the spoons; the curious red knobs upon Miss Smeardon’s fingers, and the odd mincing way she held her fork; the almost athletic efforts of the butler when he raised an enormous silver dish-cover, and the curiously frugal and unappetizing nature of the viand it disclosed. The wizened face of the lap-dog, too, peering over the table’s edge, out of Miss Smeardon’s lap, might have acquired its distrustful expression, Robinette thought, from habitual doubts as to whether enough to eat would ever be his good fortune. The meal ended with the ceremonious presentation to each lady in turn, of three wrinkled apples and two crooked bananas in a probably priceless dish of Crown Derby. Then the procession re-formed and returned to the drawing room.
“And the evening and the morning were the first day!” sighed Robinette to herself in the chilly solitude of her own room. How often could she endure the repetition?
V
AT WITTISHAM
“May I have a fire to dress by, Benson?” Robinette asked rather timidly that night, her head just peeping above the blankets.
“Fire?” returned Benson, in italics, with an interrogation point.
Robinette longed to spell the word and ask Benson if it had ever come to her notice before, but she stifled her desire and said, “I am quite ashamed, Benson, but you see I am not used to the climate yet. If you’ll pamper me just a little at the beginning, I shall behave better presently.”
“I will give orders for a fire night and morning, certainly, ma’am,” said Benson. “I did not offer it because our ladies never have one in their bedrooms at this time of the year. Mrs. de Tracy is very strong and active for her age.”
“It’s my opinion she’s a w’eedler,” remarked Benson at the housekeeper’s luncheon table. “She asks for what she wants like a child. She has a pretty way with her, I can’t deny that, but is she a w’eedler?”
Wheedler or not, Robinette got her fire to dress by, and so was able to come down in the morning feeling tolerably warm. It was well that she was, for the cold tea and tough toast of the de Tracy breakfast had little in them to warm the heart. Conversation languished during the meal, and after a walk to the stables Robinette was thankful to return to her own room again on the pretext of writing letters. There she piled up the fire, drew her chair close up to the hearth, and employed herself until noon, when she took her embroidery and joined her aunt in the drawing room. Luncheon was announced at half past one, and immediately after it Mrs. de Tracy and Miss Smeardon went to their respective bedrooms for rest.
“Are there indeed only twelve hours in the day?” Robinette asked herself desperately as she heard the great, solemn-toned hall clock strike two. It seemed quite impossible that it could be only two; the whole afternoon had still to be accounted for, and how? Well, she might look over her clothes again, re-arranging them in all their dainty variety in the wardrobe and drawers; she might put tissue paper into the sleeves of each bodice, smoothing out every crease; she might even find that some tiny repairs were needed! There were three new hats, and several pairs of new gloves to be tried on; her accounts must be made up, her cheque book balanced; yet all these things would take but a short time. Then the hall clock struck three.
“I must go out,” she thought.
Coming