Robinetta. Findlater Jane Helen
“would you not like to come with us?”
The thought turned Robinette to stone: she had visited the stables, and seen the coachman lead what seemed to her a palsied horse out into the yard. Her sympathetic allusion to the supposed condition of the steed had not been well received, for the man had given her to understand that this was the one horse of the establishment, but Robinette had vowed never to sit behind it.
“I think I’d rather walk, Aunt de Tracy,” she said, “I’d like to go and see my mother’s old nurse, Mrs. Prettyman. Can I do any errands for you?”
“None, thank you. To go to Wittisham you have to cross the ferry, remember.”
“Oh! that must be simple! you may be sure I shall not lose myself!” said Robinette.
Both the older women looked curiously at her for a moment; then Mrs. de Tracy said:–
“You will kindly not use the public ferry; the footman will row you across to Wittisham at any hour you may mention to him.”
“Oh, but Aunt de Tracy, I’d really prefer the public ferry.”
“Nonsense, impossible; the footman shall row you,” said Mrs. de Tracy with finality.
Robinette said nothing; she hated the idea of the footman, but it seemed inevitable. “Am I never to get away from their dullnesses?” she thought. “A public ferry sounds quite lively in place of being rowed by William!”
When the shore was reached, however, Robinette discovered that the passage across the river in a leaky little boat, rowed by a painfully inexperienced servant, was almost too much for her. To see him fumbling with the oars, made her tingle to take them herself; she could not abide the irritation of a return journey with such a boatman. This determination was hastened when she saw that instead of the three-decker steamer of her native land, the ferry at Wittisham was just like an ordinary row-boat; that one rang a bell hanging from a picturesque tower; that a nice young man with a sprig of wallflower in his cap rowed one across, and that each passenger handed out a penny to him on the farther side.
“How enchantingly quaint!” she cried. “William, you can go home; I shall return by the public ferry.”
William looked surprised but only replied, “Very good, ma’am.”
On warm summer afternoons the tiny square of Mrs. Prettyman’s garden made as delightful a place to sit in as one could wish. There was sunshine on the turf, and a thin shade was cast by the drooping boughs of the plum tree; just enough to shelter old eyes from the glare. When she was very tired with doing her work Mrs. Prettyman would totter out into the garden. She was getting terribly lame now, yet afraid to acknowledge it, knowing, with the desperate wisdom of poverty, that once to give in, very often ended in giving up altogether. So her lameness was ‘blamed on the weather,’ ‘blamed on scrubbing the floor,’ blamed on anything rather than the tragic, incurable fact of old age. This afternoon her rheumatism had been specially bad: she had an inclination to cry out when she rose from her chair, and every step was an effort. Yet the sunshine was tempting; it warmed old and aching bones through and through as no fire could do; and Mrs. Prettyman thought she must make the effort to go out.
She had just arrived at this conclusion, when a tap came to the door.
“That you, Mrs. Darke?” she called out in her piping old voice. “Come in, me dear, I’m that stiff with me rheumatics to-day I can’t scarce rise out of me chair.”
“It’s not Mrs. Darke,” said Robinette, stooping to enter through the tiny doorway. “It’s a stranger, Mrs. Prettyman, come all the way from America to see you.”
“Lor’ now, Miss, whoever may you be?” the old woman cried, making as if she would rise from her chair. But Robinette caught her arm and made her sit still.
“Don’t get up; please sit right there where you are, and I’ll take this chair beside you. Now, Mrs. Prettyman, look at me hard, and tell me if you know who I am.”
The old woman gazed into Robinette’s face, and then a light seemed to break over her.
“It’s Miss Cynthia’s daughter you are!” she cried. “My Miss Cynthia as went and married in America!”
She caught Robinette’s white ringed hands in hers, and Robinette bent down and kissed the wrinkled old face.
“I know that mother loved you, Nurse,” she said. “She used often, often to tell me about you.”
After the fashion of old people, Mrs. Prettyman was too much moved to speak. Her face worked all over, and then slow tears began to run down her furrowed cheeks. She got up from her chair and walked across the uneven floor, leaning on a stick.
“I’ve something here, Miss, I’ve something here; something I never parts with,” she said. A tall chest of drawers stood against the wall, and the old woman began to search among its contents as she spoke. At last she found a little kid shoe, laid away in a handkerchief.
“See here, Miss! here’s my Miss Cynthia’s shoe! ’T was tied on to my wedding coach the day I got married and left her. My ’usband ’e laughed at me cruel because I’d have that shoe with me; but I’ve kept it ever since.”
Robinette came and stood beside her, and they both wept together over the silly little shoe.
“I want to talk a great deal to you, Nurse; I want to tell you all about mother and father, and how they died,” said Robinette through her tears. How strange that she should have to come to this cottage and to this poor old woman before she found anyone to whom she could speak of her beloved dead! Her heart was so full that she could scarcely speak. A crowd of memories rushed into her mind; last scenes and parting words; those innumerable unforgettable details that are printed once for all upon the heart that loves and feels.
“I’d like to tell you about it out of doors, Nurse dear,” she said tearfully; “can you come out under the plum tree in your garden? It’s lovely there.”
“Yes, dearie, yes, we’ll come out under the plum tree, we will,” echoed Mrs. Prettyman.
“See, Nursie, take my arm, I’ll help you out into the warm sunshine,” Robinette said.
They progressed very slowly, the old woman leaning with all her weight upon the arm of her strong young helper. Then under the flickering shade of the tree they sat down together for their talk.
So much to tell, so much to hear, the afternoon slipped away unknown to them, and still they were sitting there hand in hand talking and listening; sometimes crying a little, sometimes laughing; a queerly assorted couple, these new-made friends.
But when all the recollections had been talked over and wept over, when Mrs. Prettyman had told Robinette, with the extraordinary detail that old people can put into their memories of long ago, all that she remembered of Cynthia de Tracy’s childhood, then Robinette began to question the old woman about her own life. Was she comfortable? Was she tolerably well off? Or had she difficulty in making ends meet?
To these questions Mrs. Prettyman made valiant answers: she had a fine spirit, and no wish to let a stranger see the skeleton in the cupboard. But Robinette’s quick instinct pierced through the veil of well-meant bravery and touched the truth.
“Nurse dear,” she said, “you say you’re comfortable, and well off, but you won’t mind my telling you that I just don’t quite believe you.”
“Oh, my dear heart, what’s that you be sayin’? callin’ of me a liar?” chuckled the old woman fondly.
Robinette rose from her seat on the bench and stood back to scrutinize the cottage. It was exquisitely picturesque, but this very picturesqueness constituted its danger; for the place was a perfect death trap. The crumbling cob-walls that had taken on those wonderful patches of green colour, soaked in the damp like a sponge: the irregularity of the thatched roof that looked so well, admitted trickles of rain on wet nights; and the uneven mud floor of the kitchen revealed the fact that the cottage had been built without any proper foundation. The door did not fit, and in cold weather a knife-like draught must run in under it. All this Robinette’s quick, practical