The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne, by Kathleen Norris
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Title: The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne
Author: Kathleen Norris
Posting Date: July 23, 2009 [EBook #4288]
Release Date: July, 2003
First Posted: December 30, 2001
Language: English
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THE RICH MRS. BURGOYNE
KATHLEEN NORRIS
TO KATHLEEN MARY THOMPSON
Lover of books, who never fails to find
Some good in every book, your namesake sends
This book to you, knowing you always kind
To small things, timid and in need of friends.
O friend! I know not which way I must look
For comfort, being, as I am, opprest,
To think that now our life is only drest
For show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook,
Or groom!--We must run glittering like a brook
In the open sunshine, or we are unblest;
The wealthiest man among us is the best:
No grandeur now in nature or in book
Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense,
This is idolatry; and these we adore:
Plain living and high thinking are no more:
The homely beauty of the good old cause
Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence.
And pure religion breathing household laws.
--WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
CHAPTER I
"Annie, what are you doing? Polishing the ramekins? Oh, that's right.
Did the extra ramekins come from Mrs. Brown? Didn't! Then as soon as
the children come back I'll send for them; I wish you'd remind me. Did
Mrs. Binney come? and Lizzie? Oh, that's good. Where are they? Down in
the cellar! Oh, did the extra ice come? Will you find out, Annie? Those
can wait. If it didn't, the mousse is ruined, that's all! No, wait,
Annie, I'll go out and see Celia myself."
Little Mrs. George Carew, flushed and excited, crossed the pantry as
she spoke, and pushed open the swinging door that connected it with the
kitchen. She was a pretty woman, even now when her hair, already
dressed, was hidden under snugly pinned veils and her trim little
figure lost under a flying kimono. Mrs. Carew was expecting the
twenty-eight members of the Santa Paloma Bridge Club on this particular
evening, and now, at three o'clock on a beautiful April afternoon, she
was almost frantic with fatigue and nervousness. The house had been
cleaned thoroughly the day before, rugs shaken, mirrors polished,
floors oiled; the grand piano had been closed, and pushed against the
wall; the reading-table had been cleared, and wheeled out under the
turn of the stairway; the pretty drawing-room and square big entrance
hall had been emptied to make room for the seven little card-tables
that were already set up, and for the twenty-eight straight-back chairs
that Mrs. Carew had collected from the dining-room, the bedrooms, the
halls, and even the nursery, for the occasion. All this had been done
the day before, and Mrs. Carew, awakening early in the morning to
uneasy anticipations of a full day, had yet felt that the main work of
preparation was out of the way.
But now, in mid-afternoon, nothing seemed done. There were flowers
still to arrange; there was the mild punch that Santa Paloma affected
at card parties to be finished; there was candy to be put about on the
tables, in little silver dishes; and new packs of cards, and pencils
and score-cards to be scattered about. And in the kitchen--But Mrs.
Carew's heart failed at the thought. True, her own two maids were being
helped out to-day by Mrs. Binney from the village, a tower of strength
in an emergency, and by Lizzie Binney, a worthy daughter of her mother;
but there had been so many stupid delays. And plates, and glasses, and
punch-cups, and silver, and napkins for twenty-eight meant such a lot
of counting and sorting and polishing! And somehow George and the
children must have dinner, and the Binneys and Celia and Annie must
eat, too.
"Well," thought Mrs. Carew, with a desperate glance at the kitchen
clock, "it will all be over pretty soon, thank goodness!"
A pleasant stir of preparation pervaded the kitchen. Mrs. Binney,
enormous, good-natured, capable, was opening crabs at one end of the
table, her sleeves rolled up, and her gingham dress, in the last stage
of age and thinness, protected by a new stiff white apron; Celia, Mrs.
Carew's cook, was sitting opposite her, dismembering two cold roasted
fowls; Lizzie Binney, as trim and pretty as her mother was shapeless
and plain, was filling silver bonbon-dishes with salted nuts.
"How is everything going, Celia?" said Mrs. Carew, sampling a nut.
"Fine," said Celia placidly. "He didn't bring but two bunches of
sullery, so I don't know will I have enough for the salad. They sent
the cherries. And Mrs. Binney wants you should taste the punch."
"It's sweet now," said Mrs. Binney, as Mrs. Carew picked up the big
mixing-spoon, "but there's the ice to go in."
"Delicious! not one bit too sweet," Mrs. Carew pronounced. "You know
that's to be passed around in the little glasses, Lizzie, while we're
playing; and a cherry and a piece of pineapple in every glass. Did
Annie find the doilies for the big trays? Yes. I got the bowl down;
Annie's going to wash it. Oh, the cakes came, didn't they? That's good.
And the cream for coffee; that ought to go right on ice. I'll telephone
for more celery."
"There's some of these napkins so mussed, laying in the drawer," said
Lizzie, "I thought I'd put a couple of irons on and press them out."
"If you have time, I wish you would," Mrs. Carew said, touching the
frosted top of an angel-cake with a tentative finger. "I may have to
play to-night, Celia," she went on, to her own cook, "but you girls can
manage everything, can't you? Dinner really doesn't matter--scrambled
eggs and baked potatoes, something like that, and you'll have to serve
it on the side porch."
"Oh, yes'm, we'll manage!" Celia assured her confidently. "We'll clear
up here pretty soon, and then there's nothing but the sandwiches to do."
Mrs. Carew went on her way comforted. Celia was not a fancy cook, she
reflected, passing through the darkened dining-room, where the long
table had been already set with a shining cloth, and where silver and
glass gleamed in the darkness, but Celia was reliable. And for a woman
with three children, a large house, and but one other maid, Celia was a
treasure.
She telephoned the grocer, her eyes roving critically over the hall as
she did so. The buttercups, in a great bowl on the table, were already
dropping their varnished yellow leaves; Annie must brush those up the
very last thing.
"So far, so good!" said Mrs. Carew, straightening the rug at the door
with a small heel and dropping wearily into a porch rocker. "There must
be one thousand things I ought to be doing," she said, resting her head
and shutting her eyes.
It was a warm, delicious afternoon. The little California town lay
asleep under a haze of golden sunshine. The Carews' pretty house, with
its lawn and garden, was almost the last on River Street, and stood on
the slope of a hill that commanded all Santa Paloma Valley. Below it,
the wide tree-shaded street descended between other unfenced lawns and
other handsome homes.
This was the aristocratic part of the town. The Willard Whites' immense
colonial mansion was here; and the Whites, rich, handsome, childless,
clever, and nearing the forties, were quite the most prominent people
of Santa Paloma. The Wayne Adamses, charming, extravagant young people,
lived near; and the Parker Lloyds, who were suspected of hiding rather
serious money troubles under their reckless hospitality and unfailing
gaiety, were just across the street. On River Street, too, lived
dignified, aristocratic old Mrs. Apostleman and nervous, timid Anne
Pratt and her brother Walter, whose gloomy, stately old mansion was one
of the finest in town. Up at the end of the street were the Carews, and
the shabby comfortable home of Dr. and Mrs. Brown, and the neglected
white cottage where Barry Valentine and his little son Billy and a
studious young Japanese servant led a rather shiftless existence. And
although there were other pretty streets in town, and other pleasant
well-to-do women who were members of church and club, River Street was
unquestionably THE street, and its residents unquestionably THE people
of Santa Paloma.
Beyond these homes lay the business part of the town, the railway
station, and post-office, the library, and the women's clubhouse, with
its red geraniums, red-tiled roof, and plaster arches.
And beyond again were blocks of business buildings, handsome and
modern, with metal-sheathed elevators, and tiled vestibules, and heavy,
plate-glass windows on the street. There was a drug store quite modern
enough to be facing upon Forty-second Street and Broadway, instead of
the tree-shaded peace of Santa Paloma's main street. At its cool and
glittering fountain indeed, a hundred drinks could be mixed of which
Broadway never even heard. And on Broadway, three thousand miles away,
the women who shopped were buying the same boxed powders, the same
bottled toilet waters, the same patented soaps and brushes and candies
that were to be found here. And in the immense grocery store nearby
there were beautifully spacious departments worthy of any great city,
devoted to rare fruits, and coffees and teas, and every pickle that
ever came in a glass bottle, and every little spiced fish that ever
came in a gay tin. A white-clad young man "demonstrated" a cake-mixer,
a blue-clad young woman "demonstrated" jelly-powders.
Nearby were the one or two big dry-goods stores, with lovely gowns in
their windows, and milliners' shops, with French hats in their smart
Paris boxes--there was even a very tiny, very elegant little shop where
pastes and powders and shampooing were the attraction; a shop that had
a French name "et Cie" over the door.
In short, there were modern women, and rich women, in Santa Paloma, as
these things unmistakably indicated. Where sixty years ago there had
been but a lonely outpost on a Spanish sheep-ranch, and where thirty
years after that there was only a "general store" at a crossroads, now
every luxury in the world might be had for the asking.
All this part of the town lay northeast of the sleepy little Lobos
River, which cut Santa Paloma in two. It was a pretty river, a boiling
yellow torrent in winter, but low enough in the summer-time for the
children to wade across the shallows, and shaded all along its course
by overhanging maples, and willows, and oaktrees, and an undergrowth of
wild currant and hazel bushes and blackberry vines. Across the river
was Old Paloma, where dust from the cannery chimneys and soot from the
railway sheds powdered an ugly shabby settlement of shanties and cheap
lodging-houses. Old Paloma was peppered thick with saloons, and
flavored by them, and by the odor of frying grease, and by an ashy
waste known as the "dump." Over all other odors lay the sweet, cloying
smell of crushed grapes from the winery and the pungent odor from the
tannery of White & Company. The men, and boys, and girls of the
settlement all worked in one or another of these places, and the women
gossiped in their untidy doorways. Above the Carew house and Doctor
Brown's, opposite, River Street came perforce to an end, for it was
crossed at this point by an old-fashioned wooden fence of slender,
rounded pickets. In the middle of the fence was a wide carriage gate,
with a smaller gate for foot passengers at each side, and beyond it the
shabby, neglected garden and the tangle of pepper, and eucalyptus, and
weeping willow trees that half hid the old Holly mansion. Once this had
been the great house of the village, but now it was empty and forlorn.
Captain Holly had been dead for five or six years, and the last of the
sons and daughters had gone away into the world. The house, furnished
just as they had left it, was for sale, but the years went by, and no
buyer appeared; and meantime the garden flowers ran wild, the lawns
were dry and brown, and the fence was smothered in coarse rose vines
and rampant wild blackberry vines. Dry grass and yarrow and hollow
milkweed grew high in the gateways, and when the village children went
through them to prowl, as children love to prowl, about the neglected
house and orchard, they left long, dusty wakes in the crushed weeds.
Further up than the children usually ventured, there was an old bridge
across the Lobos, Captain Holly's private road to the mill town; but it
was boarded across now, and hundreds of chipmunks nested in it, and
whisked about it undisturbed. The great stables and barns stood empty;
the fountains were long gone dry. Only the orchard continued to bear
heavily.
The Holly estate ran up into the hill behind it, one of the wooded
foothills that encircled all Santa Paloma, as they encircle so many
California towns. Already turning brown, and crowned with dense, low
groves of oak, and bay, and madrona trees, they shut off the world
outside; although sometimes on a still day the solemn booming of the
ocean could be heard beyond them, and a hundred times a year the
Pacific fogs came creeping over them long before dawn, and Santa Paloma
awakened in an enveloping cloud of soft mist. Here and there the slopes
of these hills were checkered with the sharp oblongs and angles of
young vineyards, and hidden by the thickening green of peach and apple
orchards. A few low, brown dairy ranch-houses were perched high on the
ridges; the red-brown moving stream of the cattle home-coming in
mid-afternoon could be seen from the village on a clear day. And over
hill and valley, on this wonderful afternoon in late spring, the most
generous sunlight in the world lay warm and golden, and across them the
shadows of high clouds--for there had been rain in the night--traveled
slowly.
"I declare," said little Mrs. Carew lazily, "I could go to sleep!"
CHAPTER II
A moment later when a tall man came up the path and dropped on the top
porch step with an air of being entirely at home, Mrs. Carew was still
dreaming, half-awake and half-asleep.
"Hello, Jeanette!" said the newcomer. "What's new with thee, coz?"
"Don't smoke there, Barry, and get things mussy!" said Mrs. Carew in
return, smiling to soften the command, and to show Barry Valentine that
he was welcome.
Barry was usually welcome everywhere, although not at all approved in
many cases, and criticised even by the people who liked him best. He
was a sort of fourth cousin of Mrs. Carew, who sometimes felt herself
called to the difficult task of defending him because of the distant
kinship. He was very handsome, lean, and dark, with a sleepy smile and
with eyes that all children loved; and he was clever, or, at least,
everyone believed him to be so; and he had charm--a charm of sheer
sweetness, for he never seemed to be particularly anxious to please.
Barry was very gallant, in an impersonal sort of way: he took a keen,
elder-brotherly sort of interest in every pretty girl in the village,
and liked to discuss their own love affairs with them, with a
seriousness quite paternal. He never singled any girl out for
particular attention, or escorted one unless asked, but he was
flatteringly attentive to all the middle-aged people of his
acquaintance and his big helpful hand was always ready for stumbling
old women on the church steps, or tearful waifs in the street--he
always had time to listen to other people's troubles. Barry--everyone
admitted--had his points. But after all--
After all, he was lazy, and shiftless, and unambitious: he was content
to be assistant editor of the Mail; content to be bullied and belittled
by old Rogers; content to go on his own idle, sunny way, playing with
his small, chubby son, foraging the woods with a dozen small boys at
his heels, working patiently over a broken gopher-trap or a rusty
shotgun, for some small admirer. Worst of all, Barry had been
intemperate, years ago, and there were people who believed that his
occasional visits to San Francisco, now, were merely excuses for revels
with his old newspaper friends there.
And yet, he had been such a brilliant, such a fiery and ambitious boy!
All Santa Paloma had taken pride in the fact that Barry Valentine, only
twenty, had been offered the editorship of the one newspaper of Plumas,
a little town some twelve miles away, and had prophesied a triumphant
progress for him, to the newspapers of San Francisco, of Chicago, of
New York! But Barry had not been long in Plumas when he suddenly
married Miss Hetty Scott of that town, and in the twelve years that had
passed since then the golden dreams for his future had vanished one by
one, until to-day found him with no one to believe in him--not even
himself.
Hetty Scott was but seventeen when Barry met her, and already the
winner in two village contests for beauty and popularity. After their
marriage she and Barry went to San Francisco, and shrewd, little,
beautiful Hetty found herself more admired than ever, and began to talk
of the stage. After that, Santa Paloma heard only occasional rumors:
Barry had a position on a New York paper, and Hetty was studying in a
dramatic school; there was a baby; there were financial troubles, and
Barry was drinking again; then Hetty was dead, and Barry, fearing the
severe eastern winters for the delicate baby, was coming back to Santa
Paloma. So back they came, and there had been no indication since, that
the restless, ambitious Barry of years ago was not dead forever.
"No smoking?" said Barry now, good-naturedly. "That's so; you've got
some sort of 'High Jinks' on for to-night, haven't you? I brought up
those hinges for your mixing table, Jen," he went on, "but any time
will do. I suppose the kitchen is right on the fault, as it were."
"The kitchen DOES look earthquakey," admitted Mrs. Carew with a laugh,
"but the girls would be glad to have the extra table; so go right
ahead. I'll take you out in a second. I have been on the GO," she added
wearily, "since seven this morning: my feet are like balls of fire. You
don't know what the details are. Why, just tying up the prizes takes a
good HOUR!"
"Anything go wrong?" asked the man sympathetically.
"Oh, no; nothing particular. But you know how a house has to LOOK! Even
the bathrooms, and our room, and the spare room--the children do get
things so mussed. It all sounds so simple; but it takes such a time."
"Well, Annie--doesn't she do these things?"
"Oh, ordinarily she does! But she was sweeping all morning, we moved
things about so last night, and there was china, and glasses to get
down, and the porches--"
"But, Jeanette," said Barry Valentine patiently, "don't you keep this
house clean enough ordinarily without these orgies of cleaning the
minute anybody comes in? I never knew such a house for women to open
windows, and tie up curtains, and put towels over their hair, and run
around with buckets of cold suds. Why this extra fuss?"
"Well, it's not all cleaning," said Mrs. Carew, a little annoyed. "It's
largely supper; and I'm not giving anything LIKE the suppers Mrs. White
and Mrs. Adams give."
"Why don't they eat at home?" said Mr. Valentine hospitably. "What do
they come for anyway? To see the house or each other's clothes, or to
eat? Women are funny at a card party," he went on, always ready to
expand an argument comfortably. "It takes them an hour to settle down
and see how everyone else looks, and whether there happens to be a
streak of dust under the piano; and then when the game is just well
started, a maid is nudging you in the elbow to take a plate of hot
chicken, and another, on the other side, is holding out sandwiches, and
all the women are running to look at the prizes. Now when men play
cards--
"Oh, Barry, don't get started!" his cousin impatiently implored. "I'm
too tired to listen. Come out and fix the table."
"Wish I could really help you," said Barry, as they crossed the hall;
and as a further attempt to soothe her ruffled feelings, he added
amiably, "The place looks fine. The buttercups came up, didn't they?"
"Beautifully! You were a dear to get them," said Mrs. Carew, quite
mollified.
Welcomed openly by all four maids, Barry was soon contentedly busy with
screws and molding-board, in a corner of the sunny kitchen. He and Mrs.
Binney immediately entered upon a spirited discussion of equal
suffrage, to the intense amusement of the others, who kept him supplied
with sandwiches, cake and various other dainties. The little piece of
work was presently finished to the entire satisfaction of everyone, and
Barry had pocketed his tools, and was ready to go, when Mrs. Carew
returned to the kitchen wide-eyed with news.
"Barry," said she, closing the door behind her, "George is here!"
"Well, George has a right here," said Barry, as the lady cast a
cautious glance over her shoulder.
"But listen," his cousin said excitedly; "he thinks he has sold the
Holly house!"
"Gee whiz!" said Barry simply.
"To a Mrs. Burgoyne," rushed on Mrs. Carew. "She's out there with
George on the porch now; a widow, with two children, and she looks so
sweet. She knows the Hollys. Oh, Barry, if she only takes it; such a
dandy commission for George! He's terribly excited himself. I can tell
by the calm, bored way she's talking about it."
"Who is she? Where'd she come from?" demanded Barry.
"From New York. Her father died last year, in Washington, I think she
said, and she wants to live quietly somewhere with the children. Barry,
will you be an angel?"
"Eventually, I hope to," said Mr. Valentine, grinning, but she did not
hear him.
"Could you, WOULD you, take her over the place this afternoon, Barry?
She seems sure she wants it, and George feels he must get back to the
office to see Tilden. You know he's going to sign for a whole floor of
the Pratt Building to-day. George can't keep Tilden waiting, and it
won't be a bit hard for you, Barry. George says to promise her
anything. She just wants to see about bathrooms, and so on. Will you,
Barry?"
"Sure I will," said the obliging Barry. And when Mrs. Carew asked him
if he would like to go upstairs and brush up a little, he accepted the
delicate reflection upon the state of his hair and hands, and said
"sure" again.
CHAPTER III
Mrs. Burgoyne was a sweet-faced, fresh-looking woman about thirty-two
or-three years old, with a quick smile, like a child's, and blue eyes,
set far apart, with a little lift at the corners, that, under level
heavy brows, gave a suggestion of something almost Oriental to her
face. She was dressed simply in black, and a transparent black veil,
falling from her wide hat and flung back, framed her face most
becomingly in square crisp folds.
She and Barry presently walked up River Street in the mellow afternoon
sunlight, and through the old wooden gates of the Holly grounds. On
every side were great high-flung sprays of overgrown roses, dusty and
choked with weeds, ragged pepper tassels dragged in the grass, and
where the path lay under the eucalyptus trees it was slippery with the
dry, crescent-shaped leaves. Bees hummed over rank poppies and tangled
honeysuckle; once or twice a hummingbird came through the garden on
some swift, whizzing journey, and there were other birds in the trees,
little shy brown birds, silent but busy in the late afternoon. Close to
the house an old garden faucet dripped and dripped, and a noisy,
changing group of the brown birds were bathing and flashing about it.
The old Hall stood on a rise of ground, clear of the trees, and bathed
in sunshine. It was an ugly house, following as it did the fashion of
the late seventies; but it was not undignified, with its big door
flanked by bay-windows and its narrow porch bounded by a fat wooden
balustrade and heavy columns. The porch and steps were weather-stained
and faded, and littered now with fallen leaves and twigs.
Barry opened the front door with some difficulty, and they stepped into
the musty emptiness of the big main hall. There was a stairway at the
back of the house with a colored glass window on the landing, and
through it the sunlight streamed, showing the old velvet carpet in the
hall below, and the carved heavy walnut chairs and tables, and the old
engravings in their frames of oak and walnut mosaic. The visitors
peeped into the old library, odorous of unopened books, and with great
curtains of green rep shutting out the light, and into the music room
behind it, cold even on this warm day, with a muffled grand piano drawn
free of the walls, and near it two piano-stools, upholstered in
blue-fringed rep, to match the curtains and chairs. They went across
the hall to the long, dim drawing room, where there was another velvet
carpet, dulled to a red pink by time, and muffled pompous sofas and
chairs, and great mirrors, and "sets" of candlesticks and vases on the
mantels and what-nots. The windows were shuttered here, the air
lifeless. Barry, in George Carew's interest, felt bound to say that
"they would clear all this up, you know; a lot of this stuff could be
stored."
"Oh, why store it? It's perfectly good," the lady answered absently.
Presently they went out to the more cheerful dining-room, which ran
straight across the house, and was low-ceiled, with pleasant
square-paned windows on two sides.
"This was the old house," explained Barry; "they added on the front
part. You could do a lot with this room."
"Do you still smell spice, and apples, and cider here?" said Mrs.
Burgoyne, turning from an investigation of the china-closet, with a
radiant face. A moment later she caught her breath suddenly, and walked
across the room to stand, resting her hands on a chair back, before a
large portrait that hung above the fireplace. She stood so, gazing at
the picture--the portrait of a woman--for a full minute, and when she
turned again to Barry, her eyes were bright with tears.
"That's Mrs. Holly," said she. "Emily said that picture was here." And
turning back to the canvas, she added under her breath, "You darling!"
"Did you know her?" Barry asked, surprised.
"Did I know her!" Mrs. Burgoyne echoed softly, without turning. "Yes, I
knew her," she added, almost musingly. And then suddenly she said,
"Come, let's look upstairs," and led the way by the twisted sunny back
stairway, which had a window on every landing and Crimson Rambler roses
pressing against every window. They looked into several bedrooms, all
dusty, close, sunshiny. In the largest of these, a big front corner
room, carpeted in dark red, with a black marble fireplace and an
immense walnut bed, Mrs. Burgoyne, looking through a window that she
had opened upon the lovely panorama of river and woods, said suddenly:
"This must be my room, it was hers. She was the best friend, in one
way, that I ever had--Mrs. Holly. How happy I was here!"
"Here?" Barry echoed.
At his tone she turned, and looked keenly at him, a little smile
playing about her lips. Then her face suddenly brightened.
"Barry, of course!" she exclaimed. "I KNEW I knew you, but the 'Mr.
Valentine' confused me." And facing him radiantly, she demanded, "Who
am I?"
Barry shook his head slowly, his puzzled, smiling eyes on hers. For a
moment they faced each other; then his look cleared as hers had done,
and their hands met as he said boyishly:
"Well, I will be hanged! Jappy Frothingham!"
"Jappy Frothingham!" she echoed joyously. "But I haven't heard that
name for twenty years. And you're the boy whose father was a doctor,
and who helped us build our Indian camp, and who had the frog, and fell
off the roof, and killed the rattlesnake."
"And you're the girl from Washington who could speak French, and who
put that stuff on my freckles and wouldn't let 'em drown the kittens."
"Oh, yes, yes!" she said, and, their hands still joined, they laughed
like happy children together.
Presently, more gravely, she told him a little of herself, of the early
marriage, and the diplomat husband whose career was so cruelly cut
short by years of hopeless invalidism. Then had come her father's
illness, and years of travel with him, and now she and the little girls
were alone. And in return Barry sketched his own life, told her a
little of Hetty, and his unhappy days in New York, and of the boy, and
finally of the Mail. Her absorbed attention followed him from point to
point.
"And you say that this Rogers owns the newspaper?" she asked
thoughtfully, when the Mail was under discussion.
"Rogers owns it; that's the trouble. Nothing goes into it without the
old man's consent." Barry tested the spring of a roller shade, with a
scowl. "Barnes, the assistant editor he had before me, threw up his job
because he wouldn't stand having his stuff cut all to pieces and
changed to suit Rogers' policies," he went on, as Mrs. Burgoyne's eyes
demanded more detail. "And that's what I'll do some day. In the six
years since the old man bought it, the circulation has fallen off about
half; we don't get any 'ads'; we're not paying expenses. It's a crime
too, for it's a good paper. Even Rogers is sick of it now; he'd sell
for a song. I'd borrow the money and buy it if it weren't for the
presses; I'd have to have new presses. Everything here is in pretty
good shape," he finished, with an air of changing the subject.
"And what would new presses cost?" Sidney Burgoyne persisted, pausing
on the big main stairway, as they were leaving the house a few minutes
later.
"Oh, I don't know." Barry opened the front door again, and they stepped
out to the porch. "Altogether," he said vaguely, snapping dead twigs
from the heavy unpruned growth of the rose vines, "altogether, I
wouldn't go into it without ten thousand. Five for the new presses,
say, and four to Rogers for the business and good-will, and something
to run on--although," Barry interrupted himself with a vehemence that
surprised her, "although I'll bet that the old Mail would be paying her
own rent and salaries within two months. The Dispatch doesn't amount to
much, and the Star is a regular back number!" He stood staring gloomily
down at the roofs of the village; Mrs. Burgoyne, a little tired, had
seated herself on the top step.
"I wish, in all seriousness, you'd tell me about it," she said. "I am
really interested. If I buy this place, it will mean that we come here
to stay for years perhaps, and I have some money I want to invest here.
I had thought of real estate, but it needn't necessarily be that. It
sounds to me as if you really ought to make an effort to buy the paper,
Barry, Have you thought of getting anyone to go into it with you?"
The man laughed, perhaps a little embarrassed.
"Never here, really. I went to Walter Pratt about it once," he
admitted, "but he said he was all tied up. Some of the fellows down in
San Francisco might have come in--but Lord! I don't want to settle
here; I hate this place."
"But why do you hate it?" Her honest eyes met his in surprise and
reproof. "I can't understand it, perhaps because I've thought of Santa
Paloma as a sort of Mecca for so many years myself. My visit here was
the sweetest and simplest experience I ever had in my life. You see I
had a wretchedly artificial childhood; I used to read of country homes
and big families and good times in books, but I was an only child, and
even then my life was spoiled by senseless formalities and conventions.
I've remembered all these years the simple gowns Mrs. Holly used to
wear here, and the way she played with us, and the village women coming
in for tea and sewing; it was all so sane and so sweet!"
"Our coming here was the merest chance. My father and I were on our way
home from Japan, you know, and he suddenly remembered that the Hollys
were near San Francisco, and we came up here for a night. That," said
Mrs. Burgoyne in a lower tone, as if half to herself, "that was twenty
years ago; I was only twelve, but I've never forgotten it. Fred and
Oliver and Emily and I had our supper on the side porch; and afterward
they played in the garden, but I was shy--I had never played--and Mrs.
Holly kept me beside her on the porch, and talked to me now and then,
and finally she asked me if I would like to spend the summer with her.
Like to!--I wonder my heart didn't burst with joy! Father said no; but
after we children had gone to bed, they discussed it again. How Emily
and I PRAYED! And after a while Fred tiptoed down to the landing, and
came up jubilant. 'I heard mother say that what clothes Sidney needed
could be bought right here,' he said. Emily began to laugh, and I to
cry--!" She turned her back on Barry, and he, catching a glimpse of her
wet eyes, took up the conversation himself.
"I don't remember her very well," he said; "a boy wouldn't. She died
soon after that summer, and the boys went off to school."
"Yes, I know," the lady said thoughtfully. "I had the news in Rome--a
hot, bright, glaring day. It was nearly a month after her death, then.
And even then, I said to myself that I'd come back here, some day. But
it's not been possible until now; and now," her voice was bright and
steady again, "here I am. And I don't like to hear an old friend
abusing Santa Paloma."
"It's a nice enough place," Barry admitted, "but the people are--well,
you wait until you meet the women! Perhaps they're not much worse than
women everywhere else, but sometimes it doesn't seem as if the women
here had good sense. I don't mean the nice quiet ones who live out on
the ranches and are bringing up a houseful of children, but this River
Street crowd."
"Why, what's the matter with them?" asked Mrs. Burgoyne with vivacity.
"Oh, I mean this business of playing bridge four afternoons a week, and
running to the club, and tearing around in motor-cars all day Sunday,
and entertaining the way they think people do it in New York, and
getting their dresses in San Francisco instead of up here," Barry
explained disgustedly. "Some of them would be nice enough if they
weren't trying to go each other one better all the time; when one gets
a thing the others have all got to have it, or have something nicer.
Take the Browns, now, your neighbors there--"
"In the shingled house, with the babies swinging on the gate as we came
by?"
"Yes, that's it. They've got four little boys. Doctor Brown is a king;
everybody worships him, and she's a sweet little woman; but of course
she's got to strain and struggle like the rest of them. There's a Mrs.
Willard White in this town--that big gray-shingled place down there is
their garage--and she runs the whole place. She's always letting the
others know that hobbles are out, and everything's got to hang from the
shoulder--"
"Very good!" laughed Mrs. Burgoyne, "you've got that very nearly right."
"Willard White's a nice fellow," Barry went on, "except that he's a
little cracked about his Packard. They give motoring parties, and of
course they stop at hotels way up the country for lunch, and the women
have got to have veils and special hats and coats, and so on. Wayne
Adams told me it stood him in about thirty dollars every time he went
out with the Whites. Wayne's got his own car now; his wife kept at him
day and night to get it. But he can't run it, so it's in the garage
half the time."
"That's the worst of motoring," said the lady with a thoughtful nod,
"the people who sell them think they've answered you when they say,
'But you don't run it economically. If you understood it, it wouldn't
cost you half so much!' And the alternative is, 'Get a man at
seventy-five dollars a month and save repairing and replacing bills.'
Nice for business, Barry, but very much overdone for pleasure, I think.
I myself hate those days spent with five people you hardly know," she
went on, "rushing over beautiful roads that you hardly see, eating too
much in strange hotels, and paying too much for it. I sha'n't have a
car. But tell me more about the people. Who are the Adamses? Didn't you
say Adams?"
"Wayne Adams; nice people, with two nice boys," he supplied; "but she's
like the rest. Wayne lies awake nights worrying about bills, and she
gives silver photograph-frames for bridge prizes. That white stucco
house where they're putting in an Italian garden, is the Parker Lloyds.
Mrs. Lloyd's a clever woman, and pretty too; but she doesn't seem to
have any sense. They've got a little girl, and she'll tell you that
Mabel never wore a stitch that wasn't hand-made in her life. Lloyd had
a nervous breakdown a few months ago--we all knew it was nothing but
money worry--but yesterday his wife said to me in all good faith that
he was too unselfish, he was wearing himself out. She was trying to
persuade him to put Mabel in school and go abroad for a good rest."
Mrs. Burgoyne laughed.
"That's like Jeanette Carew showing me her birthday present," Barry
went on with a grin. "It seems that George gave her a complete set of
bureau ivory--two or three dozen pieces in all, I guess. When I asked
her she admitted that she had silver, but she said she wanted ivory,
everybody has ivory now. Present!" he repeated with scorn, "why, she
just told George what she wanted, and went down and charged it to him!
She's worried to death about bills now, but she started right in
talking motor-cars; and they'll have one yet. I'd give a good deal," he
finished disgustedly, "to know what they get out of it."
"I don't believe they're as bad as all that," said the lady. "There
used to be some lovely people here, and there was a whist club too, and
it was very nice. They played for a silver fork and spoon every
fortnight, and I remember that Mrs. Holly had nearly a dozen of the
forks. There was a darling Mrs. Apostleman, and Mrs. Pratt with two shy
pretty daughters--"
"Mrs. Apostleman's still here," he told her. "She's a fine old lady.
When a woman gets to be sixty, it doesn't seem to matter if she wastes
time. Mrs. Pratt is dead, and Lizzie is married and lives in San
Francisco, but Anne's still here. She and her brother live in that
vault of a gray house; you can see the chimneys. Anne's another," his
tone was cynical again, "a shy, nervous woman, always getting new
dresses, and always on club reception committees, with white gloves and
a ribbon in her hair, frightened to death for fear she's not doing the
correct thing. They've just had a frieze of English tapestries put in
the drawing-room and hall,--English TAPESTRIES!"
"Perhaps you don't appreciate tapestries," said Mrs. Burgoyne, with her
twinkling smile. "You know there is a popular theory that such things
keep money in circulation."
"You know there's hardly any form of foolishness or vice of which you
can't say that," he reminded her soberly; and Mrs. Burgoyne, serious in
turn, answered quickly:
"Yes, you're quite right. It's too bad; we American women seem somehow
to have let go of everything real, in the last few generations. But
things are coming around again." She rose from the steps, still facing
the village. "Tell me, who is my nearest neighbor there, in the white
cottage?" she demanded.
"I am," Barry said unexpectedly. "So if you need--yeast is it, that
women always borrow?"
"Yeast," she assented laughing. "I will remember. And now tell me about
trains and things. Listen!" Her voice and look changed suddenly:
softened, brightened. "Is that children?" she asked, eagerly.
And a moment later four children, tired, happy and laden with orchard
spoils, came around the corner of the house. Barry presented them as
the Carews--George and Jeanette, a bashful fourteen and a
self-possessed twelve, and Dick, who was seven--and his own small dusty
son, Billy Valentine, who put a fat confiding hand in the strange
lady's as they all went down to the gate together.
"You are my Joanna's age, Jeanette," said Mrs. Burgoyne, easily. "I
hope you will be friends."
"Who will I be friends with?" said little Billy, raising blue expectant
eyes. "And who will George?"
"Why, I hope you will be friends with me," she answered laughing; "and
I will be so relieved if George will come up sometimes and help me with
bonfires and about what ought to be done in the stable. You see, I
don't know much about those things." At this moment George, hoarsely
muttering that he wasn't much good, he guessed, but he had some good
tools, fell deeply a victim to her charms.
Mrs. Carew came out of her own gate as they came up, and there was time
for a little talk, and promises, and goodbyes. Then Barry took Mrs.
Burgoyne to the station, and lifted his hat to the bright face at the
window as the train pulled out in the dusk. He went slowly to his
office from the train and attacked the litter of papers and clippings
on his desk absent-mindedly. Once he said half aloud, his big scissors
arrested, his forehead furrowed by an unaccustomed frown, "We were only
kids then; and they all thought I was the one who was going to do
something big."
CHAPTER IV
Barry appeared at Mrs. Carew's house a little after midnight to find
the card-players enjoying a successful supper, and the one topic of
conversation the possible sale of Holly Hall. Barry, suspected of
having news of it, was warmly welcomed by the tired, bright-eyed women
and the men in their somewhat rumpled evening clothes, and supplied
with salad and coffee.
"Is she really coming, Barry?" demanded Mrs. Lloyd eagerly. "And how
soon? We have been saying what WONDERS could be done for the Hall with
a little money."
"The price didn't seem to worry her," said George Carew.
"Oh, she's coming," Barry assured them; "you can consider it settled."
"Good!" said old Mrs. Apostleman in her deep, emphatic voice. "She'll
have to make the house over, of course; but the stable ought to make a
very decent garage. Mark my words, me dears, ye'll see some very
startling changes up there, before the summer's out."
"The house could be made colonial," submitted Mrs. Adams, "or mission,
for that matter."
"No, you couldn't make it mission," Mrs. Willard White decided, and
several voices murmured, "No, you couldn't do that." "But colonial--it
would be charming," the authority went on. "Personally, I'd tear the
whole thing down and rebuild," said Mrs. White further; "but with
hardwood floors throughout, tapestry papers, or the new grass
papers--like Amy's library, Will--white paint on all the woodwork,
white and cream outside, some really good furniture, and the garden
made over--you wouldn't know the place."
"But that would take months," said Mrs. Carew ruefully.
"And cost like sixty," added Dr. Brown, at which there was a laugh.
"Well, she won't wait any six months, or six weeks either," Barry
predicted. "And don't you worry about the expense, Doctor. Do you know
who she IS?"
They all looked at him. "Who?" said ten voices together.
"Why, her father was Frothingham--Paul Frothingham, the inventor. Her
husband was Colonel John Burgoyne;--you all know the name. He was quite
a big man, too--a diplomat. Their wedding was one of those big
Washington affairs. A few years later Burgoyne had an accident, and he
was an invalid for about six years after that--until his death, in
fact. She traveled with him everywhere."
"Sidney Frothingham!" said Mrs. Carew. "I remember Emily Holly used to
have letters from her. She was presented at the English court when she
was quite young, I remember, and she used to visit at the White House,
too. So THAT'S who she is!"
"I remember the child's visit here perfectly," Mrs. Apostleman said,
"tall, lanky girl with very charming manners. Her husband was at St.
Petersburg for a while; then in London--was it? You ought to know,
Clara, me dear--I'm not sure--Even after his accident they went on some
sort of diplomatic mission to Madrid, or Stockholm, or somewhere,
remember it perfectly."
"Colonel Burgoyne must have had money," said Mrs. White, tentatively.
"Some, I think," Barry answered; "but it was her father who was rich,
of course--"
"Certainly!" approved Mrs. Apostleman, fanning herself majestically.
"Rich as Croesus; multi-millionaire."
"Heavens alive!" said Mrs. Lloyd unaffectedly.
"Yes," Willard White eyed the tip of a cigar thoughtfully, "yes, I
remember he worked his own patents; had his own factories. Paul
Frothingham must have left something in the neighborhood of--well, two
or three millions--"
"Two or three!" echoed Mrs. Apostleman in regal scorn. "Make it eight!"
"Eight!" said Mrs. Brown faintly.
"Well, that would be about my estimate," Barry agreed.
"He was a big man, Frothingham," Dr. Brown said reflectively. "Well,
well, ladies, here's a chance for Santa Paloma to put her best foot
forward."
"What WON'T she do to the Hall!" Mrs. Adams remarked; Mrs. Carew sighed.
"It--it rather staggers one to think of trying to entertain a woman
worth eight millions, doesn't it?" said she.
CHAPTER V
From the moment of her arrival in Santa Paloma, when she stood on the
station platform with a brisk spring wind blowing her veil about her
face, and a small and chattering girl on each side of her, Mrs.
Burgoyne seemed inclined to meet the friendly overtures of her new
neighbors more than half-way. She remembered the baggage-agent's name
from her visit two weeks before--"thank Mr. Roberts for his trouble,
Ellen"--and met the aged driver of the one available carriage with a
ready "Good afternoon, Mr. Rivers!" Within a week she had her pew in
church, her box at the post-office, her membership in the library, and
a definite rumor was afloat to the effect that she had invested several
thousand dollars in the Mail, and that Barry Valentine had bought the
paper from old Rogers outright; and had ordered new rotary presses, and
was at last to have a free hand as managing editor. The pretty young
mistress of Holly Hall, with her two children dancing beside her, and
her ready pleased flush and greeting for new friends, became a familiar
figure in Santa Paloma's streets. She was even seen once or twice
across the river, in the mill colony, having, for some mysterious
reason, immediately opened the bridge that led from her own grounds to
that unsavory region.
She was not formal, not unapproachable, as it had been feared she might
be. On the contrary, she was curiously democratic. And, for a woman
straight from the shops of Paris and New York, her clothes seemed to
the women of Santa Paloma to be surprising, too. She and her daughters
wore plain ginghams for every day, with plain wide hats and trim serge
coats for foggy mornings. And on Sundays it was certainly extraordinary
to meet the Burgoynes, bound for church, wearing the simplest of dimity
or cross-barred muslin wash dresses, with black stockings and shoes,
and hats as plain--far plainer!--as those of the smallest children.
Except for the amazing emeralds that blazed beside her wedding ring,
and the diamonds she sometimes wore, Mrs. Burgoyne might have been a
trained nurse in uniform.
"It is a pose," said Mrs. Willard White, at the club, to a few intimate
friends. "She's probably imitating some English countess. Englishwomen
affect simplicity in the country. But wait until we see her evening
frocks."
It was felt that any formal calling upon Mrs. Burgoyne must wait until
the supposedly inevitable session with carpenters, painters,
paper-hangers, carpet-layers, upholsterers, decorators, furniture
dealers, and gardeners was over at the Hall. But although the old house
had been painted and the plumbing overhauled before the new owner's
arrival, and although all day long and every day two or three
Portuguese day-laborers chopped and pruned and shouted in the garden, a
week and then two weeks slipped by, and no further evidences of
renovation were to be seen.
So presently callers began to go up to the Hall; first Mrs. Apostleman
and Mrs. White, as was fitting, and then a score of other women. Mrs.
Apostleman had been the social leader in Santa Paloma when Mrs. White
was little Clara Peck, a pretty girl in the High School, whose rich
widowed mother dressed her exquisitely, and who was studying French,
and could play the violin. But Mrs. Apostleman was an old woman now,
and had been playing the game a long time, and she was glad to put the
sceptre into younger hands. And she could have put it into none more
competent than those of Mrs. Willard White.
Mrs. White was a handsome, clever woman, of perhaps six-or
seven-and-thirty. She had been married now for seventeen years, and for
all that time, and even before her marriage, she had been the most
envied, the most admired, and the most copied woman in the village. Her
mother, an insipid, spoiled, ambitious little woman, whose fondest hope
was realized when her dashing daughter made a financially brilliant
match, had lost no time in warning the bride that the agonies of
motherhood, and the long ensuing slavery, were avoidable, and Clara had
entirely agreed with her mother's ideas, and used to laughingly assure
the few old friends who touched upon this delicate topic, that she
herself "was baby enough for Will!" Robbed in this way of her natural
estate, and robbed by the size of her husband's income from the
exhilarating interest of making financial ends meet, Mrs. White, for
seventeen years, had led what she honestly considered an enviable and
carefree existence. She bought beautiful clothes for herself, and
beautiful things for her house, she gave her husband and her mother
very handsome gifts. She was a perfect hostess, although it must be
admitted that she never extended the hospitalities of her handsome home
to anyone who did not amuse her, who was not "worth while". She ruled
her servants well, made a fine president for the local Women's Club,
ran her own motor-car very skillfully, and played an exceptionally good
game of bridge. She was an authority upon table-linens, fancy
needlework, fashions in dress, new salads, new methods in serving the
table.
Willard White, as perfect a type in his own way as she was in hers, was
very proud of her, when he thought of her at all, which was really much
less often than their acquaintances supposed. He liked his house to be
nicely managed, spent his money freely upon it, wanted his friends
handsomely entertained, and his wine-cellar stocked with every
conceivable variety of liquid refreshment. If Clara wanted more
servants, let her have them, if she wanted corkscrews by the gross,
why, buy those, too. Only let a man feel that there was a maid around
to bring him a glass when he came in from golfing or motoring, and a
corkscrew with the glass!
As a matter of fact, his club and his office, and above all, his
motor-cars, absorbed him. His natural paternal instinct had been
diverted toward these latter, and, quite without his knowing it, his
cars were his nursery. Willard White had owned the first electric car
ever seen in Santa Paloma. Later, there had been half-a-dozen machines,
and he loved them all, and spoke of them as separate entities. He spoke
of the runs they had made, of the strains they had triumphantly
sustained, and he and his chauffeur held low-toned conferences over any
small breakage, with the same seriousness that he might have used had
Willard Junior--supposing there to have been such a little
person--developed croup, and made the presence of a physician
necessary. He liked to glance across his lawn at night to the
commodious garage, visible in the moonlight, and think of his
treasures, locked up, guarded, perfect in every detail, and safe.
He and Mrs. White always spoke of Santa Paloma as a "jay" town, and
compared it, to its unutterable disadvantage, to other and larger
cities, but still, business reasons would always keep them there for
the greater part of the year, and they were both glad to hear that a
fabulously wealthy widow, and a woman prominent in every other respect
as well, had come to live in Santa Paloma. Mrs. White determined to
play her game very carefully with Mrs. Burgoyne; there should be no
indecent hurry, there should be no sudden overtures at friendship.
"But, poor thing! She will certainly find our house an oasis in the
desert!" Mrs. White comfortably decided, putting on the very handsomest
of her afternoon gowns to go and call formally at the Hall.
Mrs. Burgoyne and the little girls were always most cordial to
visitors. They spent these first days deep in gardening, great heaps of
fragrant dying weeds about them, and raw vistas through the pruned
trees already beginning to show the gracious slopes of the land, and
the sleepy Lobos down beneath the willows. The Carew children and the
little Browns were often there, fascinated by the outdoor work, as
children always are, and little Billy Valentine squirmed daily through
his own particular gap in the hedge, and took his share of the fun with
a deep and silent happiness. Billy gave Mrs. Burgoyne many a heartache,
with his shock of bright, unbrushed hair, his neglected grimed little
hands, his boyish little face that was washed daily according to his
own small lights, with surrounding areas of neck and ears wholly
overlooked, and his deep eyes, sad when he was sad, and somehow
infinitely more pathetic when he was happy. Sometimes she stealthily
supplied Billy with new garters, or fastened the buttons on his blue
overalls, or even gave him a spoonful of "meddy" out of a big bottle,
at the mere sight of which Ellen shuddered sympathetically; a dose
which was always followed by two marshmallows, out of a tin box, by way
of consolation. But further than this she dared not go, except in the
matter of mugs of milk, gingerbread, saucer-pies, and motherly kisses
for any bump or bruise.
The village women, coming up to the Hall, in the pleasant summer
afternoons, were puzzled to find the old place almost unchanged. Why
any woman in her senses wanted to live among those early-Victorian
horrors, the women of Santa Paloma could not imagine. But Mrs. Burgoyne
never apologized for the old walnut chairs and tables, and the old
velvet carpets, and the hopelessly old-fashioned white lace curtains
and gilt-framed mirrors. Even Captain Holly's big clock--"an impossibly
hideous thing," Mrs. White called the frantic bronze horses and the
clinging tiger, on their onyx hillside--was serenely ticking, and the
pink china vases were filled with flowers. And there was an air of such
homely comfort, after all, about the big rooms, such a fragrance of
flowers, and flood of sunny fresh air, that the whole effect was not
half as bad as it might be imagined; indeed, when Mammy Curry, the
magnificent old negress who was supreme in the kitchen and respected in
the nursery as well, came in with her stiff white apron and silver
tea-tray, she seemed to fit into the picture, and add a completing
touch to the whole.
Very simply, very unpretentiously, the new mistress of Holly Hall
entered upon her new life. She was a woman of very quiet tastes,
devoted to her little girls, her music, her garden and her books. With
the negress, she had one other servant, a quiet little New England
girl, with terrified, childish eyes, and a passionate devotion to her
mistress and all that concerned her mistress. Fanny had in charge a
splendid, tawny-headed little boy of three, who played happily by
himself, about the kitchen door, and chased chickens and kittens with
shrieks of delight. Mrs. Burgoyne spoke of him as "Fanny's little
brother," and if the two had a history of any sort, it was one at which
she never hinted. She met an embarrassing question with a readiness
which rather amused Mrs. Brown, on a day when the two younger ladies
were having tea with Mrs. Apostleman, and the conversation turned to
the subject of maids.
"--but if your little girl Fanny has had her lesson, you'll have no
trouble keepin' her," said Mrs. Apostleman.
"Oh, I hope I shall keep Fanny," said Mrs. Burgoyne, "she comes of such
nice people, and she's such a sweet, good girl."
"Why, Lord save us!" said the old lady, repentantly, "and I was almost
ready to believe the child was hers!"
"If Peter was hers, she couldn't be fonder of him!" Mrs. Burgoyne said
mildly, and Mrs. Brown choked on her tea, and had to wipe her eyes.
In the matter of Fanny, and in a dozen other small matters, the
independence of the great lady was not slow in showing itself in Mrs.
Burgoyne. Santa Paloma might be annoyed at her, and puzzled by her, but
it had perforce to accept her as she stood, or ignore her, and she was
obviously not a person to ignore. She declined all invitations for
daytime festivities; she was "always busy in the daytime," she said. No
cards, no luncheons, no tea-parties could lure her away from the Hall,
although, if she and the small girls walked in for mail or were down in
the village for any other reason, they were very apt to stop somewhere
for a chat on their way home. But the children were allowed to go
nowhere alone, and not the smartest of children's parties could boast
of the presence of Joanna and Ellen Burgoyne.
Santa Paloma children were much given to parties, or rather their
parents were; and every separate party was a separate great event. The
little girls wore exquisite hand-made garments, silken hose and white
shoes. Professional entertainers, in fashionably darkened rooms, kept
the little people amused, and professional caterers supplied the supper
they ate, or perhaps the affair took the shape of a box-party for a
matinee, and a supper at the town's one really pretty tea-room
followed. These affairs were duly chronicled in the daily and weekly
papers, and perhaps more than one matron would have liked the
distinction of having Mrs. Burgoyne's little daughters listed among her
own child's guests. Joanna and Ellen were pretty children, in a
well-groomed, bright-eyed sort of way, and would have been popular even
without the added distinction of their ready French and German and
Italian, their charming manners, their naive references to other
countries and peoples, and their beautiful and distinguished mother.
But in answer to all invitations, there came only polite, stilted
little letters of regret, in the children's round script. "Mother would
d'rather we shouldn't go to a sin-gul party until we are young ladies!"
Ellen would say cheerfully, if cross-examined on the subject, leaving
it to the more tactful Joanna to add, "But Mother thanks you JUST as
much." They were always close to their mother when it was possible, and
she only banished them from her side when the conversation grew
undeniably too old in tone for Joanna and Ellen, and then liked to keep
them in sight, have them come in with the tea-tray, or wave to her
occasionally from the river bank.
"We've been wondering what you would do with this magnificent
drawing-room," said Mrs. White, on her first visit. "The house ought to
take a colonial treatment wonderfully--there's a remarkable man in San
Francisco who simply made our house over for us last year!"
"It must have been a fearful upheaval," said Mrs. Burgoyne,
sympathetically.
"Oh, we went away! Mr. White and I went east, and when we came back it
was all done."
"Well, fortunately," said the mistress of Holly Hall cheerfully, as she
sugared Mrs. Apostleman's cup of tea, "fortunately all these things of
Mrs. Holly's were in splendid condition, except for a little cleaning
and polishing. They used to make things so much more solid, don't you
think so? Why, there are years of wear left in these carpets, and the
chairs and tables are like rocks! Captain Holly apparently got the very
best of everything when he furnished this place, and I reap the
benefit. It's so nice to feel that one needn't buy a chair or a bed for
ten years or more, if one doesn't want to!"
"Dear, sweet people, the Hollys," said Mrs. White, pleasantly, utterly
at a loss. Did people of the nicer class speak of furniture as if it
were made merely to be useful? "But what a distinct period these things
belong to, don't they?" she asked, feeling her way. "So--so solid!"
"Yes, in a way it was an ugly period," said Mrs. Burgoyne, placidly.
"But very comfortable, fortunately. Fancy if he had selected Louis
Quinze chairs, for example!"
Mrs. White gave her a puzzled look, and smiled.
"Come now, Mrs. Burgoyne," said she, good-naturedly, "Confess that you
are going to give us all a surprise some day, and change all this. One
sees," said Mrs. White, elegantly, "such lovely effects in New York."
"In those upper Fifth Avenue shops--ah, but don't you see lovely
things!" the other woman assented warmly. "Of course, one could be
always changing," she went on. "But I like associations with
things--and changing takes so much time! Some day we may think all this
quite pretty," she finished, with a contented glance at the comfortable
ugliness of the drawing-room.
"Oh, do you suppose we shall REALLY!" Mrs. White gave a little
incredulous laugh. She was going pretty far, and she knew it, but as a
matter of fact, she was entirely unable to believe that there was a
woman in the world who could afford to have what was fashionable and
expensive in household furnishings or apparel, and who deliberately
preferred not to have it. That her own pretty things were no sooner
established than they began to lose their charm for her, never occurred
to Mrs. White: she was a woman of conventional type, perfectly
satisfied to spend her whole life in acquiring things essentially
invaluable, and to use a naturally shrewd and quick intelligence in
copying fashions of all sorts, small and large, as fast as advanced
merchants and magazines presented them to her. She was one of the great
army of women who help to send the sale of an immoral book well up into
the hundreds of thousands; she liked to spend long afternoons with a
box of chocolates and a book unfit for the touch of any woman; a book
that she would review for the benefit of her friends later, with a
shocked wonder that "they dare print such things!" She liked to tell a
man's story, and the other women could not but laugh at her, for she
was undeniably good company, and nobody ever questioned the taste of
anything she ever said or did. She was a famous gossip, for like all
women, she found the private affairs of other people full of
fascination, and, having no legitimate occupation, she was always at
liberty to discuss them.
Yet Mrs. White was not at all an unusual woman, and, like her
associates, she tacitly assumed herself to be the very flower of
American womanhood. She quoted her distinguished relatives on all
occasions, the White family, in all its ramifications, supplied the
correct precedent for all the world; there was no social emergency to
which some cousin or aunt of Mrs. White's had not been more than equal.
Having no children of her own, she still could silence and shame many a
good mother with references to Cousin Ethel Langstroth's "kiddies", or
to Aunt Grace Thurston's wonderful governess.
Personally, Mrs. White vaguely felt that there was something innately
indecent about children anyway, the smaller they were the less
mentionable she found them. The little emergencies, of nose-bleeds and
torn garments and spilled porridge, that were constantly arising in the
neighborhood of children, made her genuinely sick and faint. And she
had so humorous and so assured an air of saying "Disgusting!" or
"Disgraceful!" when the family of some other woman began to present
itself with reasonable promptness, that other women found themselves
laughing and saying "Disgusting!" too.
Mrs. Burgoyne, like Mrs. White, was a born leader. Whether she made any
particular effort to influence her neighbors or not, they could not but
feel the difference in her attitude toward all the various tangible
things that make a woman's life. She was essentially maternal, wanted
to mother all the little living and growing things in the world, wanted
to be with children, and talk of them and study them. And she was
simple and honest in her tastes, and entirely without affectation in
her manner, and she was too great a lady to be either laughed at or
ignored. So Santa Paloma began to ask itself why she did this or that,
and finding her ways all made for economy and comfort and simplicity,
almost unconsciously copied them.
CHAPTER VI
When Mrs. Apostleman invited several of her friends to a formal dinner
given especially for Mrs. Burgoyne everyone realized that the newcomer
was accepted, and the event was one of several in which the women of
Santa Paloma tried with more than ordinary eagerness to outshine each
other. Mrs. Apostleman herself never entered into competition with the
younger matrons, nor did they expect it of her. She gave heavy, rich,
old-fashioned dinners in her own way, in which her servants were
perfectly trained. It was a standing joke among her friends that they
always ate too much at Mrs. Apostleman's house, there were always seven
or eight substantial courses, and she liked to have the plates come
back for more lobster salad or roast turkey. In this, as in all things,
she was a law unto herself.
But for the other women, Mrs. White set the pace, and difficult to keep
they often found it. But they never questioned it. They admired the
richer woman's perfect house-furnishing, and struggled blindly to
accumulate the same number and variety of napkins and fingerbowls,
ramekins and glasses and candlesticks and special forks and special
knives. The first of the month with its bills, became a horror to them,
and they were continually promising their husbands, in all good faith,
that expenses should positively be cut down.
But what use were good resolves; when one might find, the very next
day, that there were no more cherries for the grapefruit, that one had
not a pair of presentable white gloves for the club, or that the
motor-picnic that the children were planning was to cost them five
dollars apiece? To serve grapefruit without cherries, to wear colored
gloves, or no gloves at all to the club, and to substitute some
inexpensive pleasure for the ride was a course that never occurred to
Mrs. Carew, that never occurred to any of her friends. Mrs. Carew might
have a very vague idea of her daughter's spiritual needs, she might be
an entire stranger to the delicately adjusted and exquisitely
susceptible entity that was the real Jeanette, but she would have gone
hungry rather than have Jeanette unable to wear white shoes to Sunday
School, rather than tie Jeanette's braids with ribbons that were not
stiff and new. She was so entirely absorbed in pursuit of the "correct
thing," so anxious to read what was "being read," to own what was
"right", that she never stopped to seriously consider her own or her
daughter's place in the universe. She was glad, of course when the
children "liked their teacher," just as she had been glad years before
when they "liked their nurse." The reasons for such likings or
dislikings she never investigated; she had taken care of the children
herself during the nurse's regular days "off", but she always regarded
these occasions as so much lost time. Mrs. Carew kept her children, as
she kept her house, well-groomed, and she gave about as much thought to
the spiritual needs of the one as the other. She had been brought up to
believe that the best things in life are to be had for money, and that
earthly happiness or unhappiness falls in exact ratio with the
possession or non-possession of money. She met the growing demands of
her family as well as she could, and practised all sorts of harassing
private economies so that, in the eyes of the world, the family might
seem to be spending a great deal more money than was actually the case.
Mrs. Carew's was not an analytical mind, but sometimes she found
herself genuinely puzzled by the financial state of affairs.
"I don't know where the money GOES to!" she said, in a confidential
moment, to Mrs. Lloyd. They had met in the market, where Mrs. Carew was
consulting a long list of necessary groceries.
"Oh, don't speak of it!" said Mrs. Lloyd, feelingly. "That's so, your
dinner is tomorrow night, isn't it?" she added with interest. "Are you
going to have Lizzie?"
"Oh, dear me, yes! For eight, you know. Shan't you have her?" For Mrs.
Lloyd's turn to entertain Mrs. Burgoyne followed Mrs. Carew's by only a
few days.
"Lizzie and her mother, too," said the other woman. "I don't know
what's the matter with maids in these days," she went on, "they simply
can't do things, as my mother's maids used to, for example. Now the
four of them will be working all day over Thursday's dinner, and, dear
me! it's a simple enough dinner."
"Well, you have to serve so much with a dinner, nowadays," Mrs. Carew
said, in a mildly martyred tone. "Crackers and everything else with
oysters--I'm going to have cucumber sandwiches with the soup--"
"Delicious!" said Mrs. Lloyd.
"'Cucumbers, olives, salted nuts, currant jelly'", Mrs. Carew was
reading her list, "'ginger chutney, saltines, bar-le-duc, cream
cheese', those are for the salad, you know, 'dinner rolls, sandwich
bread, fancy cakes, Maraschino cherries, maple sugar,' that's to go hot
on the ice, I'm going to serve it in melons, and 'candy'--just pink and
green wafers, I think. All that before it comes to the actual dinner at
all, and it's all so fussy!"
"Don't say one word!" said Mrs. Lloyd, sympathetically. "But it sounds
dee-licious!" she added consolingly, and little Mrs. Carew went
contentedly home to a hot and furious session in her kitchen; hours of
baking, boiling and frying, chopping and whipping and frosting,
creaming and seasoning, freezing and straining.
"I don't mind the work, if only everything goes right!" Mrs. Carew
would say gallantly to herself, and it must be said to her credit that
usually everything did "go right" at her house, although even the maids
in the kitchen, heroically attacking pyramids of sticky plates, were
not so tired as she was, when the dinner was well over.
But there was a certain stimulus in the mere thought of entertaining
Mrs. Burgoyne, and there was the exhilarating consciousness that one of
these days she would entertain in turn; so the Santa Paloma housewives
exerted themselves to the utmost of their endurance, and one delightful
dinner party followed another.
But a dispassionate onlooker from another planet might have found it
curious to notice, in contrast to this uniformity, that no two women
dressed alike on these occasions, and no woman who could help it wore
the same gown twice. Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Carew, to be sure, wore their
"little old silks" more than once, but each was secretly consoled by
the thought that a really "smart" new gown awaited Mrs. White's dinner;
which was naturally the climax of all the affairs. Only the wearers and
their dress-makers knew what hours had been spent upon these costumes,
what discouraged debates attended their making, what muscular agonies
their fitting. Only they could have estimated, and they never did
estimate--the time lost over pattern books, the nervous strain of
placing this bit of spangled net or that square inch of lace, the
hurried trips downtown for samples and linings, for fringes and
embroideries and braids and ribbons. The gown that she wore to her own
dinner, Mrs. White had had fitted in the Maison Dernier Mot, in
Paris;--it was an enchanting frock of embroidered white illusion, over
pink illusion, over black illusion, under a short heavy tunic of silver
spangles and threads. The yoke was of wonderful old lace, and there was
a girdle of heavy pink cords, and silver clasps, to match the aigrette
that was held by pink and silver cords in Mrs. White's beautifully
arranged hair.
Mrs. Burgoyne's gowns, or rather gown, for she wore exactly the same
costume to every dinner, could hardly have been more startling than
Santa Paloma found it, had it gone to any unbecoming extreme. Yet it
was the simplest of black summer silks, soft and full in the skirt,
short-sleeved, and with a touch of lace at the square-cut neck. She
arranged her hair in a becoming loose knot, and somehow managed to look
noticeably lovely and distinguished, in the gay assemblies. To brighten
the black gown she wore a rope of pearls, looped twice about her white
throat, and hanging far below her waist; pearls, as Mrs. Adams remarked
in discouragement later, that "just made you feel what's the use! She
could wear a kitchen apron with those pearls if she wanted to, everyone
would know she could afford cloth of gold and ermine!"
With this erratic and inexplicable simplicity of dress she combined the
finish of manner, the poise, the ready sympathies of a truly cultivated
and intelligent woman. She could talk, not only of her own personal
experiences, but of the political, and literary, and scientific
movements of the day. Certain proposed state legislation happened to be
interesting the men of Santa Paloma at this time, and she seemed to
understand it, and spoke readily of it.
"But, George," said Mrs. Carew, walking home in the summer night, after
the Adams dinner, "you have often said you hated women to talk about
things they didn't understand."
"But she does understand, dearie. That's just the point."
"Yes; but you differed with her, George!"
"Well, but that's different, Jen. She knew what she was talking about."
"I suppose she has friends in Washington who keep her informed," said
Mrs. Carew, a little discontentedly, after a silence. And there was
another pause before she said, "Where do men get their information,
George?"
"Papers, dear. And talking, I suppose. They're interested, you know."
"Yes, but--" little Mrs. Carew burst out resentfully, "I never can make
head or tail of the papers! They say 'Aldrich Resigns,' or 'Heavy Blow
to Interests,' or 'Tammany Scores Triumph,' and _I_ don't know what
it's about!"
George Carew's big laugh rang out in the night, and he put his arm
about her, and said, "You're great, Jen!"
Shortly after Mrs. White's dinner a certain distinguished old artist
from New York, and his son, came to stay a night or two at Holly Hall,
on their way home from the Orient, and Mrs. Burgoyne took this occasion
to invite a score of her new friends to two small dinners, planned for
the two nights of the great Karl von Praag's stay in Santa Paloma.
"I don't see how she's going to handle two dinners for ten people each,
with just that colored cook of hers and one waitress," said Mrs.
Willard White, late one evening, when Mr. White was finishing a book
and a cigar in their handsome bedroom, and she was at her
dressing-table.
"Caterers," submitted Mr. White, turning a page.
"I suppose so," his wife agreed. After a thoughtful silence she added,
"Sue Adams says that she supposes that when a woman has as much money
as that she loses all interest in spending it! Personally, I don't see
how she can entertain a great big man like Von Praag in that
old-fashioned house. She never seems to think of it at all, she never
apologizes for it, and she talks as if nobody ever bought new things
until the old were worn out!"
Her eyes went about her own big bedroom as she spoke. Nothing
old-fashioned here! Even eighteen years ago, when the Whites were
married, their home had been furnished in a manner to make the Holly
Hall of to-day look out of date. Mrs. White shuddered now at the mere
memory of what she as a bride had thought so beautiful: the pale green
carpet, the green satin curtains, the white-and-gold chairs and tables
and bed, the easels, the gilded frames! Seven or eight years later she
had changed all this for a heavy brass bedstead, and dark rugs on a
polished floor, and bird's-eye maple chests and chairs, and all
feminine Santa Paloma talked of the Whites' new things. Six or seven
years after that again, two mahogany beds replaced the brass one, and
heavy mahogany bureaus with glass knobs had their day, with plain net
curtains and old-fashioned woven rugs. But all these were in the
guest-rooms now, and in her own bedroom Mrs. White had a complete set
of Circassian walnut, heavily carved, and ornamented with cunningly
inset panels of rattan. On the beds were covers of Oriental cottons,
and the window-curtains showed the same elementary designs in pinks and
blues.
"She dresses very prettily, I thought," observed Mr. White, apropos of
his wife's last remark.
"Dresses!" echoed his wife. "She dresses as your mother might!"
"Very pretty, very pretty!" said the man absently, over his book.
There was a silence. Then:
"That just shows how much men notice," Mrs. White confided to her
ivory-backed brush. "I believe they LIKE women to look like frumps!"
CHAPTER VII
These were busy days in the once quiet and sleepy office of the Santa
Paloma Morning Mail. A wave of energy and vigor swept over the place,
affecting everybody from the fat, spoiled office cat, who found himself
pushed out of chairs, and bounced off of folded coats with small
courtesy, to the new editor-manager and the lady whose timely
investment had brought this pleasant change about. Old Kelly, the
proof-reader, night clerk, Associated Press manager, and assistant
editor, shouted and swore with a vim unknown of late years; Miss
Watson, who "covered" social events, clubs, public dinners, "dramatic,"
and "hotels," cleaned out her desk, and took her fancy-work home, and
"Fergy," a freckled youth who delighted in calling himself a "cub,"
although he did little more than run errands and carry copy to the
press-room, might even be seen batting madly at an unused typewriter
when actual duties failed, so inspiring was the new atmosphere.
Mrs. Burgoyne had a desk and a corner of her own, where her trim figure
might be seen daily for an hour or two, from ten o'clock until the
small girls came in to pick her up on their way home from school for
luncheon. Barry found her brimming with ideas. She instituted the
"Women's Page," the old familiar page of answered questions, and
formulas for ginger-bread, and brief romances, and scraps of poetry,
and she offered through its columns a weekly cash prize for
contributions on household topics. An exquisite doll appeared in the
window of the Mail office, a doll with a flower-wreathed hat, and a
ruffled dress, and a little parasol to match the dress, and loitering
little girls, drawn from all over the village to study this dream of
beauty, learned that they had only to enter a loaf of bread of their
own making in the Mail contest, to stand a chance of carrying the
little lady home. Beside the doll stood a rifle, no toy, but a genuine
twenty-two Marlin, for the boy whose plans for a vegetable garden
seemed the best and most practical, Mrs. Burgoyne herself talked to the
children when they came shyly in to investigate. "She seems to want to
know every child in the county, the darling!" said Miss Watson to Fergy.
The Valentines, father and son, came into the Mail office one warm June
morning, to find the editor of the "Women's Page" busy at her desk,
with the sunlight lying in a bright bar across her uncovered hair, and
a vista of waving green boughs showing through the open window behind
her.
"What are you two doing here at this hour?" said Sidney, laying down
her pen and leaning back in her chair as if glad of a moment's rest.
"Why, Billy!" she added in admiring tones, "let me see you! How very,
VERY nice you look!"
For the little fellow was dressed in a new sailor suit that was a full
size too large for him, his wild mop had been cut far too close, and a
large new hat and new shoes were much in evidence.
"D'you think he looks all right?" said Barry with an anxious
wistfulness that went straight to her heart. "He looks better, doesn't
he? I've been fixing him up."
"And free sailor waists, and stockings, and nighties," supplemented
Billy, also anxious for her approval.
"He looks lovely!" said Sidney, enthusiastically, even while she was
mentally raising the collar of his waist, and taking an inch or two off
the trousers. She lifted the child up to sit on his father's desk, and
kissed the top of his little cropped head.
"We may not express ourselves very fluently," said Barry, who was
seated in his own revolving chair and busily opening and shutting the
drawers of his desk, "but we appreciate the interest beautiful ladies
take in our manners and morals, and the new tooth-brushes they buy us--"
"My dear!" protested Mrs. Burgoyne, between laughter and tears, "Ellen
used his old one up, cleaning out their paint-boxes!" And she put her
warm hand on his shoulder, and said, "Don't be a goose, Barry!" as
unselfconsciously as a sister might. "Where are you two boys going,
Billy?" she asked, going back to her own desk.
"'Cool," Billy said.
"He's going over to the kindergarten. I've got some work I ought to
finish here," Barry supplemented. "I'll take you across the street,
Infant, I'll be right back, Sidney."
"But, Barry, why are you working now?" asked the lady a few minutes
later when he took his place at his desk.
"Oh, don't you worry," he answered, smiling; "I love it. The thought of
old Rogers' face when he opens his paper every morning does me good,
I'm writing this appeal for the new reservoir now, and I've got to play
up the Flower Festival."
"I'm not interested in the Flower Festival," said Mrs. Burgoyne
good-naturedly, "and the minute it's over I'm going to start a crusade
for a girls' clubhouse in Old Paloma. Conditions over there for the
girls are something hideous. But I suppose we'll have to go on with the
Festival for the present. It's a great occasion, I suppose?"
"Oh, tremendous! The Governor's coming, and thousands of visitors
always pour into town. We'll have nearly a hundred carriages in the
parade, simply covered with flowers, you know. It's lovely! You wait
until things get fairly started!"
"That'll be Fourth of July," Sidney said thoughtfully, turning back to
her exchanges, "I'll begin my clubhouse crusade on the fifth!" she
added firmly.
For a long time there was silence in the office, except for the
rustling of paper and the scratch of pens. From the sunny world
out-of-doors came a pleasant blending of many noises, passing wagons,
the low talk of chickens, the slamming of gates, and now and then the
not unmusical note of a fish-horn. Footsteps and laughing voices went
by, and died into silence. The clock from Town Hall Square struck
eleven slowly.
"This is darned pleasant," said Barry presently, over his work.
"Isn't it?" said the editor of the "Women's Page," and again there was
silence.
After a while Barry said "Finished!" with a great breath, and, leaning
back in his chair, wheeled about to find the lady quietly watching him.
"Barry, are you working too hard?" said she, quite unembarrassed.
"Am I? Lord, not I wish the days were twice as long. I"--Barry rumpled
his thick hair with a gesture that was familiar to Sidney now--"I guess
work agrees with me. By George, I hate to eat, and I hate to sleep; I
want to be down here all the time, or else rustling up subscriptions
and 'ads.',"
"And I thought you were lazy," said Sidney, finding herself, for the
first time in their friendship, curiously inclined to keep the
conversation personal, this warm June morning. It was a thing extremely
difficult to do, with Barry. "You certainly gave me that impression,"
she said.
"Yes; but that was two months ago," said Barry, off guard. A second
later he changed the topic abruptly by asking, "Did your roses come?"
"All of them," answered Sidney pleasantly. And vaguely conscious of
mischief in the air, but led on by some inexplicable whim, she pursued,
"Do you mean that it makes such a difference to you, Rogers being gone?"
Barry trimmed the four sides of a clipping with four clips of his
shears.
"Exactly," said he briefly. He banged a drawer shut, closed a book and
laid it aside, and stuck the brush into his glue-pot. "Getting enough
of dinner parties?" he asked then, cheerfully.
"Too much," said Sidney, wondering why she felt like a reprimanded
child. "And that reminds me: I am giving two dinners for the Von
Praags, you know. I can't manage everybody at once; I hate more than
ten people at a dinner. And you are asked to the first."
"I don't go much to dinners," Barry said.
"I know you don't; but I want you to come to this one," said Sidney.
"You'll love old Mr. von Praag. And Richard, the son, is a dear! I
really want you."
"He's an artist, too, isn't he?" said Barry without enthusiasm.
"Who, Richard?" she asked, something in his manner putting her a little
at a loss. "Yes; and he's very clever, and so nice! He's like a brother
to me."
Barry did not answer, but after a moment he said, scowling a little,
and not looking up:
"A fellow like that has pretty smooth sailing. Rich, the son of a big
man, traveling all he wants to, studio in New York, clubs--"
"Oh, Richard has his troubles," Sidney said. "His wife is very
delicate, and they lost their little girl... Are you angry with me
about anything, Barry?" she broke off, puzzled and distressed, for this
unresponsive almost sullen manner was unlike anything she had ever seen
in him.
But a moment later he turned toward her with his familiar sunny smile.
"Why didn't you say so before?" he said sheepishly.
"Say--?" she echoed bewilderedly. Then, with a sudden rush of
enlightenment, "Why, Barry, you're not JEALOUS?"
A second later she would have given much to have the words unsaid. They
faced each other in silence, the color mounting steadily in Sidney's
face.
"I didn't mean of ME," she stammered uncomfortably; "I meant of
everything. I thought--but it was a silly thing to say. It sounded--I
didn't think--"
"I don't know why you shouldn't have thought it, since I was fool
enough to show it," said Barry after a moment, coming over to her desk
and facing her squarely. Sidney stood up, opposite him, her heart
beating wildly. "And I don't know why I shouldn't be jealous," he went
on steadily, "at the idea that some old friend might come in here and
take you away from Santa Paloma. You asked me if it was old Rogers'
going that made a difference to me--"
"I know," interrupted Sidney, scarlet-cheeked. "PLEASE"--
"But you know better than that," Barry went on, his voice rising a
little. "You know what you have done for me. If ever I try to speak of
it, you say, as you said about the kid just now, 'My dear boy, I like
to do it.' But I'm going to say what I mean now, once and for all. You
loaned me money, and it was through your lending it that I got credit
to borrow more; you gave me a chance to be my own master; you showed
you had faith in me; you reminded me of the ambition I had as a kid,
before Hetty and all that trouble had crushed it out of me; you came
down here to the office and talked and planned, and took it for granted
that I was going to pull myself together and stop idling, and kicking,
and fooling away my time; and all through these six weeks of rough
sailing, you've let me go up there to the Hall and tell you
everything--and then you wonder if I could ever be jealous!" His tone,
which had risen almost to violence, fell suddenly. He went back to his
desk and began to straighten the papers there, not seeing what he did.
"I never can say anything more to you, Sidney, I've said too much now,"
he said a little huskily; "but I'm glad to have you know how I feel."
Sidney stood quite still, her breath coming and going quickly. She was
fundamentally too honest a woman to meet the situation with one of the
hundred insincerities that suggested themselves to her. She knew she
was to blame, and she longed to undo the mischief, and put their
friendship back where it had been only an hour ago. But the right words
did not suggest themselves, and she could only stand silently watching
him. Barry had opened a book, and, holding it in both hands, was
apparently absorbed in its contents.
Neither had spoken or moved, and Sidney was meditating a sudden,
wordless departure, when Ellen Burgoyne burst noisily into the room.
Ellen was a square, splendid child, always conversationally inclined,
and never at a loss for a subject.
"You look as if you wanted to cry, Mother," said she. "Perhaps you
didn't hear the whistle; school's out. We've been waiting ever so long.
Mother, I know you said you hoped Heaven would not send any more dogs
our way for a long while, but Jo and Jeanette and I found one by the
school fence. Mother, you will say it has the most pathetic face you
ever saw when you see it. Its ear was bloody, and it licked Jo's hand
so GENTLY, and it's such a lit-tul dog! Jo has it wrapped up in her
coat. Mother, may we have it? Please, PLEASE--"
Barry wheeled about with his hearty laugh, and Mrs. Burgoyne, laughing
too, stopped the eager little mouth with a kiss.
"It sounds as if we must certainly have him, Baby!" said she.
CHAPTER VIII
The new mistress of the Hall, in her vigorous young interest in all
things, included naturally a keen enjoyment of the village love
affairs, she liked to hear the histories of the old families all about,
she wanted to know the occupants of every shabby old surrey that drew
up at the post-office while the mail was being "sorted." But if the
conversation turned to mere idle talk and speculation, she was
conspicuously silent. And upon an occasion when Mrs. Adams casually
referred to a favorite little piece of scandal, Mrs. Burgoyne gave the
conversation a sudden twist that, as Mrs. White, who was present, said
later, "made you afraid to call your soul your own."
"Do you tell me that that pretty little Thorne girl is actually meeting
this young man, whoever he is, while her mother thinks she is taking a
music lesson?" demanded Mrs. Burgoyne, suddenly entering into the
conversation. "There's nothing against him, I suppose? She COULD see
him at home."
"Oh, no, he's a nice enough little fellow," Mrs. White said, "but she's
a silly little thing, and I imagine her people are very severe with
her; she never goes to dances or seems to have any fun."
"I wonder if we couldn't go see the mother, and hint that there is
beginning to be a little talk about Katherine," mused Mrs. Burgoyne.
"Don't you think so, Mrs. Adams?"
"Oh, my goodness!" Mrs. Adams said nervously, "I don't KNOW anything
about it! I wouldn't for the world--I never dreamed--one would hate to
start trouble--Mr. Adams is very fond of the Thornes--"
"But we ought to save her if we can, we married women who know how
mischievous that sort of thing is," Mrs. Burgoyne urged.
"Why, probably they've not met but once or twice!" Mrs. White said,
annoyed, but with a comfortable air of closing the subject, and no more
was said at the time. But both she and Mrs. Adams were a little uneasy
two or three days later, when, returning from a motor trip, they saw
Mrs. Burgoyne standing at the Thornes' gate, in laughing conversation
with pretty little Katherine and her angular, tall mother.
"And there is nothing in that story at all," said Mrs. Burgoyne later,
to Mrs. Carew.
"I suppose you walked up and said, 'If you are Miss Thorne, you are
clandestinely meeting Joe Turner down by the old mill every week!'"
laughed Mrs. Carew.
"I managed it very nicely," Mrs. Burgoyne said, "I admired their yellow
rose one day, as I passed the gate. Mrs. Thorne was standing there, and
I asked if it wasn't a Banksia. Then the little girl came out of the
house, and she happened to know who I am--"
"Astonishingly bright child!" said Mrs. Carew.
"Well, and then we talked roses, and the father came home--a nice old
man. And I asked him if he'd lend me Miss Thorne now and then to play
duets--and he agreed. So the child's been up to the Hall once or twice,
and she's a nice little thing. She doesn't care tuppence for the Turner
boy, but he's musical, and she's quite music-mad, and now and then they
'accidentally' meet. Her father won't let anyone see her at the house.
She wants to study abroad, but they can't afford it, I imagine, so I've
written to see if I can interest a friend of mine in Berlin--But why do
you smile?" she broke off to ask innocently.
"At the thought of your friend in Berlin!" said Mrs. Carew audaciously.
For she was not at all awed by Mrs. Burgoyne now.
Indeed, she and Mrs. Brown were growing genuinely fond of their new
neighbor, and the occupants of the Hall supplied them with constant
amusement and interest. Great lady and great heiress Sidney Burgoyne
might be, but she lived a life far simpler than their own, and loved to
have them come in for a few minutes' talk even if she were cutting out
cookies, with Joanna and Ellen leaning on the table, or feeding the
chickens whose individual careers interested her so deeply. She walked
with the little girls to school every morning, and met them near the
school at one o'clock. In the meantime she made a visit to the Mail
office, and perhaps spent an hour or two there, or in the markets; but
at least three times a week she wandered over to Old Paloma, and spent
the forenoon in the dingy streets across the river. What she did there,
perhaps no one but Doctor Brown, who came to have a real affection and
respect for her, fully appreciated. Mrs. Burgoyne would tell him, when
they met in some hour of life or death, that she was "making friends."
It was quite true. She was the type of woman who cannot pass a small
child in the street. She must stop, and ask questions, decide disputes
and give advice. And through the children she won the big brothers and
sisters and fathers and mothers of Old Paloma. Even a deep-rooted
prejudice against the women of her class and their method of dealing
with the less fortunate could not prevail against her disarming,
friendly manner, her simple gown and hat, her eagerness to get the new
baby into her arms; all these told in her favor, and she became very
popular in the shabby little settlement across the bridge. She would
sit at a sewing-machine and show old Mrs. Goodspeed how to turn a
certain hem, she would prescribe barley-water and whey for the Barnes
baby, she would explain to Mrs. Ryan the French manner of cooking tough
meat, it is true; but, on the other hand, she let pale little
discouraged Mrs. Weber, of the Bakery, show her how to make a German
potato pie, and when Mrs. Ryan's mother, old Mrs. Lynch, knitted her a
shawl, with clean, thin old work-worn hands, the tears came into her
bright eyes as she accepted the gift. So it was no more than a
neighborly give-and-take after all. Mrs. Burgoyne would fall into step
beside a factory girl, walking home at sunset. "How was it today,
Nellie? Did you speak to the foreman about an opening for your sister?"
the rich, interested voice would ask. Or perhaps some factory lad would
find her facing him in a lane. "Tell me, Joe, what's all this talk of
trouble between you and the Lacy boys at the rink?"
"I'm a widow, too," she reminded poor little Mrs. Peevy, one day, "I
understand." "Do let me send you the port wine I used to take after
Ellen was born," she begged one little sickly mother, and when she
loaned George Manning four hundred dollars to finish his new house, and
get his wife and babies up from San Francisco, the transaction was made
palatable to George by her encouraging: "Everyone borrows money for
building, I assure you. I know my father did repeatedly."
When more subtle means were required, she was still equal to the
occasion. It was while Viola Peet was in the hospital for a burned
wrist that Mrs. Burgoyne made a final and effective attempt to move
poor little Mrs. Peet out of the bedroom where she had lain
complaining, ever since the accident that had crippled her and killed
her husband five years before. Mrs. Burgoyne put it as a "surprise for
Viola," and Mrs. Peet, whose one surviving spark of interest in life
centred in her three children, finally permitted carpenters to come and
build a porch outside her dining-room, and was actually transferred,
one warm June afternoon, to the wide, delicious hammock-bed that Mrs.
Burgoyne had hung there. Her eyes, dulled with staring at a chocolate
wall-paper, and a closet door, for five years, roved almost angrily
over the stretch of village street visible from the porch; the
perspective of tree-smothered roofs and feathery elm and locust trees.
"'Tisn't a bit more than I'd do for you if I was rich and you poor,"
said Mrs. Peet, rebelliously.
"Oh, I know that!" said Mrs. Burgoyne, busily punching pillows.
"An', as you say, Viola deserves all I c'n do for her," pursued the
invalid. "But remember, every cent of this you git back."
"Every cent, just as soon as Lyman is old enough to take a job," agreed
Mrs. Burgoyne. "There, how's that? That's the way Colonel Burgoyne
liked to be fixed."
"You're to make a note of just what it costs," persisted Mrs. Peet,
"this wrapper, and the pillers, and all."
"Oh, let the wrapper be my present to you, Mrs. Peet!"
"No, MA'AM!" said Mrs. Peet, firmly. And she told the neighbors, later,
in the delightfully exciting afternoon and evening that followed her
installation on the porch, that she wasn't an object of charity, and
she and Mrs. Burgoyne both knew it. Mrs. Burgoyne would not stay to see
Viola's face, when she came home from the hospital to find her mother
watching the summer stars prick through the warm darkness, but Viola
came up to the Hall that same evening, and tried to thank Mrs.
Burgoyne, and laughed and cried at once, and had to be consoled with
cookies and milk until the smiles had the upper hand, and she could go
home, with occasional reminiscent sobs still shaking her bony little
chest.
"What are you trying to do over there?" asked Dr. Brown, coming in with
his wife for a rubber of bridge, as Viola departed. "Whereever I go, I
come across your trail. Are we nursing a socialist in our bosom?"
"No-o-o, I don't think I'm that," said Sidney laughing, and pushing the
porch-chairs into comfortable relation. "Let's sit out here until Mr.
Valentine comes. No, I'm not a socialist. But I can't help feeling that
there's SOME solution for a wretched problem like that over there," a
wave of the hand indicated Old Paloma, "and perhaps, dabbling aimlessly
about in all sorts of places, one of us may hit upon it."
"But I thought the modern theory was against dabbling," said Mrs.
Brown, a little timidly, for she held a theory that she was not
"smart." "I thought everything was being done by institutions, and by
laws--by legislation."
"Nothing will ever be done by legislation, to my thinking at least,"
Mrs. Burgoyne said. "A few years ago we legislated some thousands of
new babies into magnificent institutions. Nurses mixed their bottles,
doctors inspected them, nurses turned them and washed them and watched
them. Do you know what percentage survived?"
"Doesn't work very well," said the doctor, shaking a thoughtful head
over his pipe.
"Just one hundred per cent didn't survive!" said Mrs. Burgoyne. "Now
they take a foundling or an otherwise unfortunate baby, and give it to
a real live mother. She nurses it if she can, she keeps near to it and
cuddles it, and loves it. And so it lives. In all the asylums, it's the
same way. Groups are getting smaller and smaller, a dozen girls with a
matron in a cottage, and hundreds of girls 'farmed out' with good,
responsible women, instead of enormous refectories and dormitories and
schoolrooms. And the ideal solution will be when every individual woman
in the world extends her mothering to include every young thing she
comes in contact with; one doll for her own child and another doll for
the ashman's little girl, one dimity for her own debutante, and another
just as dainty for the seventeen-year-old who brings home the laundry
every week."
"Yes, but that's puttering here and there," asserted Mrs. Brown,
"wouldn't laws for a working wage do all that, and more, too?"
"In the first place, a working wage doesn't solve it," Mrs. Burgoyne
answered vigorously, "because in fully half the mismanaged and dirty
homes, the working people HAVE a working wage, have an amount of money
that would amaze you! Who buys the willow plumes, and the phonographs,
and the enlarged pictures, and the hair combs and the white shoes that
are sold by the million every year? The poor people, girls in shops,
and women whose babies are always dirty, and always broken out with
skin trouble, and whose homes are hot and dirty and miserable and
mismanaged."
"Well, make some laws to educate 'em then, if it's education they all
need," suggested the doctor, who had been auditing every clause of the
last remark with a thoughtful nod.
"No, wages aren't the question," Mrs. Burgoyne reiterated. "Why, I knew
a little Swedish woman once, who raised three children on three hundred
dollars a year."
"She COULDN'T!" ejaculated Mrs. Brown.
"Oh, but she did! She paid one dollar a week for rent, too. One son is
a civil engineer, now, and the daughter is a nurse. The youngest is
studying medicine."
"But what did they EAT, do you suppose?"
"Oh, I don't know. Potatoes, I suppose, and oatmeal and baked cabbage,
and soup. I know she got a quart of buttermilk every day, for three
cents. They were beautiful children. They went to free schools, and
lectures, and galleries, and park concerts, and free dispensaries, when
they needed them. Laws could do no more for her, she knew her business."
"Well, education WOULD solve it then," concluded Mrs. Brown.
"I don't know." Mrs. Burgoyne answered, reflectively, "Book education
won't certainly. But example might, I believe example would."
"You mean for people of a better class to go and live among them?"
suggested the doctor.
"No, but I mean for people of a better class to show them that what
they are striving for isn't vital, after all. I mean for us to so order
our lives that they will begin to value cleanliness, and simplicity,
and the comforts they can afford. You know, Mary Brown," said Mrs.
Burgoyne, turning suddenly to the doctor's wife, with her gay,
characteristic vehemence, "it's all our fault, all the misery and
suffering and sin of it, everywhere!"
"Our fault! You and me!" cried Mrs. Brown, aghast.
"No, all the fault of women, I mean!" Mrs. Burgoyne laughed too as Mrs.
Brown settled back in her chair with a relieved sigh. "We women," she
went on vigorously, "have mismanaged every separate work that was ever
put into our hands! We ought to be ashamed to live. We cumber--"
"Here!" said the doctor, smiling in lazy comfort over his pipe, "that's
heresy! I refuse to listen to it. My wife is a woman, my mother, unless
I am misinformed, was another--"
"Don't mind him!" said Mrs. Brown, "but go on! What have we all done?
We manage our houses, and dress our children, and feed our husbands, it
seems to me."
"Well, there's the big business of motherhood," began Mrs. Burgoyne,
"the holiest and highest thing God ever let a mortal do. We evade it
and ignore it to such an extent that the nation--and other
nations--grows actually alarmed, and men begin to frame laws to coax us
back to the bearing of children. Then, if we have them, we turn the
entire responsibility over to other people. A raw little foreigner of
some sort answers the first questions our boys and girls ask, until
they are old enough to be put under some nice, inexperienced young girl
just out of normal school, who has fifty or sixty of them to manage,
and of whose ideas upon the big questions of life we know absolutely
nothing. We say lightheartedly that 'girls always go through a trying
age,' and that we suppose boys 'have to come in contact with things,'
and we let it go at that! We 'suppose there has always been vice, and
always will be,' but we never stop to think that we ourselves are
setting the poor girls of the other world such an example in the
clothes we wear, and the pleasures we take, that they will sell even
themselves for pretty gowns and theatre suppers. We regret sweat-shops,
even while we patronize the stores that support them, and we bemoan
child-labor, although I suppose the simplest thing in the world would
be to find out where the cotton goes that is worked by babies, and
refuse to buy those brands of cotton, and make our merchants tell us
where they DO get their supply! We have managed our household problem
so badly that we simply can't get help--"
"You CANNOT do your own work, with children," said Mrs. Brown firmly.
"Of course you can't. But why is it that our nice young American girls
won't come into our homes? Why do we have to depend upon the most
ignorant and untrained of our foreign people? Our girls pour into the
factories, although our husbands don't have any trouble in getting
their brothers for office positions. There is always a line of boys
waiting for a possible job at five dollars a week."
"Because they can sleep at home," submitted the doctor.
"You know that, other things being equal, young people would much
rather not sleep at home," said Mrs. Burgoyne, "it's the migrating age.
They love the novelty of being away at night."
"Well, when a boy comes into my office," the doctor reasoned slowly,
"he knows that he has certain unimportant things to do, but he sees me
taking all the real responsibility, he knows that I work harder than he
does."
"Exactly," said Mrs. Burgoyne. "Men do their own work, with help. We
don't do ours. Not only that, but every improvement that comes to ours
comes from men. They invent our conveniences, they design our stoves
and arrange our sinks. Not because they know anything about it, but
because we're not interested."
"One would think you had done your own work for twenty years!" said
Mrs. Brown.
"I never did it," Mrs. Burgoyne answered smiling, "but I sometimes wish
I could. I sometimes envy those busy women who have small houses, new
babies, money cares--it must be glorious to rise to fresh emergencies
every hour of your life. A person like myself is handicapped. I can't
demonstrate that I believe what I say. Everyone thinks me merely a
little affected about it. If I were such a woman, I'd glory in clipping
my life of everything but the things I needed, and living like one of
my own children, as simply as a lot of peasants!"
"And no one would ever be any the wiser," said Mrs. Brown.
"I don't know. Quiet little isolated lives have a funny way of getting
out into the light. There was that little peasant girl at Domremy, for
instance; there was that gentle saint who preached poverty to the
birds; there was Eugenie Guerin, and the Cure of Ars, and the few
obscure little English weavers--and there was the President who split--"
"I thought we'd come to him!" chuckled the doctor.
"Well," Mrs. Burgoyne smiled, a little confused at having betrayed
hero-worship. "Well, and there was one more, the greatest of all, who
didn't found any asylums, or lead any crusade--" She paused.
"Surely," said the doctor, quietly. "Surely. I suppose that curing the
lame here, and the blind there, and giving the people their fill of
wine one day, and of bread and fishes the next, might be called
'dabbling' in these days. But the love that went with those things is
warming the world yet!"
"Well, but what can we DO?" demanded Mrs. Brown after a short silence.
"That's for us to find out," said Mrs. Burgoyne, cheerfully.
"A correct diagnosis is half a cure," ended the doctor, hopefully.
CHAPTER IX
Barry was the last guest to reach Holly Hall on the evening of Mrs.
Burgoyne's first dinner-party, and came in to find the great painter
who was her guest the centre of a laughing and talking group in the
long drawing-room. Mrs. Apostleman, with an open book of reproductions
from Whistler on her broad, brocade lap, had the armchair next to the
guest of honor, and Barry's quick look for his hostess discovered her
on a low hassock at the painter's knee, looking very young and fresh,
in her white frock, with a LaMarque rose at her belt and another in her
dark hair. She greeted him very gravely, almost timidly, and in the new
self-consciousness that had suddenly come to them both it was with
difficulty that even the commonplace words of greeting were
accomplished, and it was with evident relief that she turned from him
to ask her guests to come into the dining-room.
Warm daylight was still pouring into the drawing-room at seven o'clock,
and in the pleasant dining-room, too, there was no other light. The
windows here were wide open, and garden scents drifted in from the
recently watered flower-beds. The long table, simply set, was
ornamented only by low bowls of the lovely San Rafael roses.
Guided and stimulated by the hostess, the conversation ran in a gay,
unbroken stream, for the painter liked to talk, and Santa Paloma
enjoyed him. But under it all the women guests were aware of an almost
resentful amazement at the simplicity of the dinner. When, after nine
o'clock, the ladies went into the drawing-room and settled about a
snapping wood fire, Mrs. Lloyd could not resist whispering to Mrs.
Apostleman, "For a COMPANY dinner!" Mrs. Adams was entirely absorbed in
deciding just what position she would take when Mrs. White alluded to
the affair the next day; but Mrs. White had come primed for special
business this evening, and she took immediate advantage of the absence
of the men to speak to Mrs. Burgoyne.
"As president of our little club," said she, when they were all seated,
"I am authorized to ask you if I may put your name up for membership,
Mrs. Burgoyne. We are all members here, and in this quiet place our
meetings are a real pleasure, and I hope an education as well."
"Oh, really--!" Mrs. Burgoyne began, but the other went on serenely:
"I brought one of our yearly programs, we have just got them out, and
I'm going to leave it with you. I think Mr. White left it here on the
table. Yes; here it is. You see," she opened a dainty little book and
flattened it with a white, jeweled hand, "our work is all laid out, up
to the president's breakfast in March. I go out then, and a week later
we inaugurate the new president. Let me just run over this for you, for
I KNOW it will interest you. Now here, Tuesdays. Tuesday is our regular
meeting day. We have a program, music, and books suggested for the
week, reports, business, and one good paper--the topics vary; here's
'Old Thanksgiving Customs,' in November, then a debate, 'What is
Friendship,' then 'Christmas Spirit,' and then our regular Christmas
Tree and Jinks. Once a month, on Tuesday, we have some really fine
speaker from the city, and we often have fine singers, and so on. Then
we have a monthly reception for our visitors, and a supper; usually we
just have tea and bread-and-butter after the meetings. Then, first
Monday, Directors' Meeting; that doesn't matter. Every other Wednesday
the Literary Section meets, they are doing wonderful work; Miss Foster
has that; she makes it very interesting. 'What English Literature Owes
to Meredith,' 'Rossetti, the Man,'--you see I'm just skimming, to give
you some idea. Then the Dramatic Section, every other Thursday; they
give a play once a year; that's great fun! 'Ibsen--Did he Understand
Women?' 'Please Explain--Mr. Shaw?'--Mrs. Moore makes that very
amusing. Then alternate Thursdays the Civic and Political Section--"
"Ah! What does that do?" said Mrs. Burgoyne.
"Why," said Mrs. White hesitating, "I haven't been--however, I think
they took up the sanitation of the schools; Miss Jewett, from
Sacramento, read a splendid paper about it. There's a committee to look
into that, and then last year that section planted a hundred trees. And
then there's parliamentary drill."
"Which we all need," said Mrs. Adams, and there was laughter.
"Then there's the Art Department once a month," resumed Mrs. White,
"Founders' Day, Old-Timers' Day, and, in February, we think Judge
Lindsey may address us--"
"Oh, are you doing any juvenile-court work?" said the hostess.
"We wanted his suggestions about it," Mrs. White said. "We feel that if
we COULD get some of the ladies interested--! Then here's the French
class once a week; German, Spanish, and the bridge club on Fridays."
"Gracious! You use your clubhouse," said Mrs. Burgoyne.
"Nearly every day. So come on Tuesday," said the president winningly,
"and be our guest. A Miss Carroll is to sing, and Professor Noyesmith,
of Berkeley, will read a paper on: 'The City Beautiful.' Keep that
year-book; I butchered it, running through it so fast."
"Well, just now," Mrs. Burgoyne began a little hesitatingly, "I'm
rather busy. I am at the Mail office while the girls are in school, you
know, and we have laid out an enormous lot of gardening for afternoons.
They never tire of gardening if I'm with them, but, of course, no
children will do that sort of thing alone; and it's doing them both so
much good that I don't want to stop it. Then they study German and
Italian with me, and on Saturday have a cooking lesson. You see, my
time is pretty full."
"But a good governess would take every bit of that off your hands, me
dear," said Mrs. Apostleman.
"Oh, but I love to do it!" protested Mrs. Burgoyne with her wide-eyed,
childish look. "You can't really buy for them what you can do yourself,
do you think so? And now the other children are beginning to come in,
and it's such fun! But that isn't all. I have editorial work to do,
besides the Mail, you know. I manage the 'Answers to Mothers' column in
a little eastern magazine. I daresay you've never seen it; it is quite
unpretentious, but it has a large circulation. And these mothers write
me, some of them factory-workers, or mothers of child-workers even, or
lonely women on some isolated ranch; you've no idea how interesting it
is! Of course they don't know who I am, but we become good friends,
just the same. I have the best reference books about babies and
sickness, and I give them the best advice I can. Sometimes it's a boy's
text-book that is wanted, or a second-hand crib, or some dear old
mother to get into a home, and they are so self-respecting about it,
and so afraid they aren't paying fair--I love that work! But, of
course, it takes time. Then I've been hunting up a music-teacher for
the girls. I can't teach them that--"
"I meant to speak to you of that," Mrs. White said. "There's a Monsieur
Posti, Emil Posti, he studied with Leschetizky, you know, who comes up
from San Francisco every other week, and we all take from him. In
between times--"
"Oh, but I've engaged a nice little Miss Davids from Old Paloma," said
Mrs. Burgoyne.
"From Old Paloma!" echoed three women together. And Mrs. Apostleman
added heavily, "Never heard of her!"
"I got a good little Swedish sewing-woman over there," the hostess
explained, "and she told me of this girl. She's a sweet girl; no
mother, and a little sister to bring up. She was quite pleased."
"But, good heavens! What does she know? What's her method?" demanded
Mrs. White in puzzled disapproval.
"She has a pretty touch," Mrs. Burgoyne said mildly, "and she's
bristling with ambition and ideas. She's not a genius, perhaps; but,
then, neither is either of the girls. I just want them to play for
their own pleasure, read accompaniments; something of that sort. Don't
you know how popular the girl who can play college songs always is at a
house-party?"
"Well, really--" Mrs. White began, almost annoyed; but she broke her
sentence off abruptly, and Mrs. Apostleman filled the pause.
"Whatever made ye go over there for a dress-maker?" she demanded. "We
never think of going there. There's a very good woman here, in the Bank
Building--"
"Madame Sorrel," supplemented Mrs. Adams.
"She's fearfully independent," Mrs. Lloyd contributed; "but she's good.
She made your pink, didn't she, Sue? Wayne said she did."
Mrs. Adams turned pink herself; the others laughed suddenly.
"Oh, you naughty girl!" Mrs. White said. "Did you tell Wayne you got
that frock in Santa Paloma?"
"What Wayne doesn't know won't hurt him," said his wife. "Sh! Here they
come!" And the conversation terminated abruptly, with much laughter.
Mrs. Burgoyne's dinner-party dispersed shortly after ten o'clock, so
much earlier than was the custom in Santa Paloma that none of the
ordered motor-cars were in waiting. The guests walked home together,
absorbed in an animated conversation; for the gentlemen, who were
delighted to be getting home early, delighted with a dinner that, as
Wayne Adams remarked, "really stood for something to eat, not just
things passed to you, or put down in dabs before you," and delighted
with the pleasant informality of sitting down in daylight, were
enthusiastic in their praise of Mrs. Burgoyne. The ladies differed with
them.
"She knows how to do things," said Parker Lloyd. "Old Von Praag himself
said that she was a famous dinner-giver."
"I don't know what you'd say, Wayne," said Mrs. Adams patiently, "if
_I_ asked people to sit down to the dinner we had to-night! Of course
we haven't eight millions, but I would be ashamed to serve a cocktail,
a soup--I frankly admit it was delicious--steaks, plain lettuce salad,
and fruit. I don't count coffee and cheese. No wines, no entrees; I
think it was decidedly QUEER."
"I wish some of you others would try it," said Willard White
unexpectedly. "I never get dinners like that, except at the club, down
in town. The cocktail was a rare sherry, the steaks were broiled to a
turn, and the salad dressing was a wonder. She had her cheese just ripe
enough, and samovar coffee to wind up with--what more do you want? I
serve wine myself, but champagne keeps you thirsty all night, and other
wines put me to sleep. I don't miss wine! I call it a bang-up dinner,
don't you, Parker?"
Parker Lloyd, with his wife on his arm, felt discretion his part.
"Well," he said innocently selecting the one argument most distasteful
to the ladies, "it was a man's dinner, Will. It was just what a man
likes, served the way he likes it. But if the girls like flummery and
fuss, I don't see why they shouldn't have it."
"Really!" said Mrs. White with a laugh that showed a trace of something
not hilarious, "really, you are all too absurd! We are a long way from
the authorities here, but I think we will find out pretty soon that
simple dinners have become the fad in Washington, or Paris, and that
your marvelous Mrs. Burgoyne is simply following the fashion like all
the rest of us."
CHAPTER X
Barry had murmured something about "rush of work at the office" when he
came in a few minutes late for Mrs. Burgoyne's dinner, but as the
evening wore on, he seemed in no hurry to depart. Sidney was delighted
to see him really in his element with the Von Praags, father and son,
the awakened expression that was so becoming to him on his face, and
his curiously complex arguments stirring the old man over and over
again to laughter. She had been vexed at herself for feeling a little
shyness when he first came in; the unfamiliar evening dress and the
gravity of his handsome face had made him seem almost a stranger, but
this wore off, and after the other guests had gone these four still sat
laughing and talking like the best of old friends together.
When the Von Praags had gone upstairs, she walked with him to the
porch, and they stood at the top of the steps for a moment, the rich
scent of the climbing LaMarque and Banksia roses heavy about them, and
the dark starry arch of the sky above. Sidney, a little tired, but
pleased with her dinner and her guests, and ready for a breath of the
sweet summer night before going upstairs, was confused by having her
heart suddenly begin to thump again. She looked at Barry, his figure
lost in the shadow, only his face dimly visible in the starlight, and
some feeling, new, young, terrifying, and yet infinitely delicious,
rushed over her. She might have been a girl of seventeen instead of a
sober woman fifteen years older, with wifehood, and motherhood, and
widowhood all behind her.
"A wonderful night!" said Barry, looking down at the dark mass of
tree-tops that almost hid the town, and at the rising circle of shadows
that was the hills.
"And a good place to be, Santa Paloma," Sidney added, contentedly.
"It's my captured dream, my own home and garden!" With her head resting
against one of the pillars of the porch, her eyes dreamily moving from
the hills to the sky and over the quiet woods, she went on
thoughtfully: "You know I never had a home, Barry; and when I visited
here, I began to realize what I was missing. How I longed for Santa
Paloma, the creek, and the woods, and my little sunny room after I went
away! But even when I was eighteen, and we took a house in Washington,
what could I do? I 'came out,' you know. I loved gowns and parties
then, as I hope the girls will some day; but I knew all the while it
wasn't living." She paused, but Barry did not speak. "And, then, before
I was twenty, I was married," Sidney went on presently, "and we started
off for St. Petersburg. And after that, for years and years, I posed
for dressmakers; I went the round of jewelers, and milliners, and
manicures; I wrote notes and paid calls. I let one strange woman come
in every day and wash my hands for me, and another wash my hair, and a
third dress me! I let men--who were in the business simply to make
money, and who knew how to do it!--tell me that my furs must be recut,
or changed, and my jewels reset, and my wardrobe restocked and my
furniture carried away and replaced. And in the cities we lived in it's
horrifying to see how women slave, and toil, and worry to keep up. Half
the women I knew were sick over debts and the necessity for more debts.
I felt like saying, with Carlyle, 'Your chaos-ships must excuse me';
I'm going back to Santa Paloma, to wear my things as long as they are
whole and comfortable, and do what I want to do with my spare time!"
"You missed your playtime," Barry said; "now you make the most of it."
"Oh, no!" she answered, giving him a glimpse of serious eyes in the
half-dark, "playtime doesn't come back. But, at least, I know what I
want to do, and it will be more fun than any play. One of the wisest
men I ever knew set me thinking of these things. He's a sculptor, a
great sculptor, and he lives in an olive garden in Italy, and eats what
his peasants eat, and befriends them, and stands for their babies in
baptism, and sits with them when they're dying. My father and I visited
him about two years ago, and one day when he and I were taking a tramp,
I suddenly burst out that I envied him. I wanted to live in an olive
garden, too, and wear faded blue clothes, and eat grapes, and tramp
about the hills. He said very simply that he had worked for twenty
years to do it. 'You see, I'm a rich man,' he said, 'and it seems that
one must be rich in this world before one dare be poor from choice. I
couldn't do this if people didn't know that I could have an apartment
in Paris, and servants, and motor-cars, and all the rest of it. It
would hurt my daughters and distress my friends. There are hundreds and
thousands of unhappy people in the world who can't afford to be poor,
and if ever you get a chance, you try it. You'll never be rich again.'
So I wrote him about a month ago that I had found MY olive garden,"
finished Sidney contentedly, "and was enjoying it."
"Captain Burgoyne was older than you, Sid?" Barry questioned. "Wouldn't
he have loved this sort of life?"
"Twenty years older, yes; but he wouldn't have lived here for one DAY!"
she answered vivaciously. "He was a diplomat, a courtier to his
finger-tips. He was born to the atmosphere of hothouse flowers, and
salons, and delightful little drawing-room plots and gossip. He loved
politics, and power, and women in full dress, and men with orders. Of
course I was very new to it all, but he liked to spoil me, draw me out.
If it hadn't been for his accident, I never would have grown up at all,
I dare say. As it was, I was more like his mother. We went to
Washington for the season, New York for the opera, England for autumn
visits, Paris for the spring: I loved to make him happy, Barry, and he
wasn't happy except when we were going, going, going. He was
exceptionally popular; he had exceptional friends, and he couldn't go
anywhere without me. My babies were with his mother--"
She paused, turning a white rose between her fingers. "And afterwards,"
she said presently, "there was Father. And Father never would spend two
nights in the same place if he could help it."
"I wasn't drawn back here as you were," said Barry thoughtfully, "I
liked New York; I could have made good there if I'd had a chance. It
made me sick to give it up, then; but lately I've been feeling
differently. A newspaper's a pretty influential thing, wherever it is.
I've been thinking about that clubhouse plan of yours; I wish to the
Lord that we could do something for those poor kids over there. You're
right. Those girls have rotten homes. The whole family gathers in the
parlor right after dinner. Pa takes his shoes off, and props his socks
up before the stove; Ma begins to hear a kid his spelling; and other
kids start the graphophone, and Aggie is expected to ask her young man
to walk right in. So after that she meets him in the street, and the
girls begin to talk about Aggie."
"Oh, Barry, I'm so glad you're interested!" Standing a step above him,
Sidney's ardent face was very close to his own. "Of course we can do
it," she said.
"We!" he echoed almost bitterly. "YOU'LL do it; you're the one--" He
broke off with a short, embarrassed laugh. "I was going to cut that
sort of thing out," he said gruffly, "but all roads lead to Rome, it
seems. I can't talk to you five minutes without--and I've got to go. I
said I'd look in at the office."
"You seem to be afraid to be friendly lately, Barry," said Mrs.
Burgoyne in a hurt voice, flinging away the rose she had been holding,
"but don't you think our friendship means something to me, too? I don't
like you to talk as if I did all the giving and you all the taking. I
don't know how the girls and I would get along without your advice and
help here at the Hall. I think," her voice broke into a troubled laugh,
"I think you forget that the quality of friendship is not strained."
"Sidney," he said with sudden resolution, turning to face her bravely,
"I can't be just friends with you. You're so much the finest, so much
the best--" He left the sentence unfinished, and began again: "You have
a hundred men friends; you can't realize what you mean to me. You--but
you know what you are, and I'm the editor of a mortgaged country paper,
a man who has made a mess of things, who can't take care of his kid, or
himself, on his job without help--"
"Barry--" she began breathlessly, but he interrupted her.
"Listen to me," he said huskily, taking both her warm hands in his, "I
want to tell you something. Say that I WAS weak enough to forget all
that, your money and my poverty, your life and my life, everything that
puts you as far above me as the moon and stars; say that I could do
that--although I hope it's not true--even then--even then I'm not free,
Sidney. There is Hetty, you know; there is Billy's mother--"
There was a silence. Sidney slowly freed her hands, laid one upon her
heart as unconsciously as a hurt child, and the other upon his
shoulder. Her troubled eyes searched his face.
"Barry," she said with a little effort, "have I been mistaken in
thinking Billy's mother was dead?"
"Everyone thinks so," he answered with a quick rush of words that
showed how great the relief of speech was. "Even up in Hetty's home
town, Plumas, they think so. I wrote home that Hetty had left me, and
they drew their own conclusions. It was natural enough; she was never
strong. She was always restless and unhappy, wanted to go on the stage.
She did go on the stage, you know; her mother advised it, and she--just
left me. We were in New York, then; Bill was a little shaver; I was
having a hard time with a new job. It was an awful time! After a few
months I brought Bill back here--he wasn't very well--and then I found
that everyone thought Hetty was dead. Then her mother wrote me, and
said that Hetty had taken a stage-name, and begged me to let people go
on thinking she was dead, and, more for the kid's sake than Hetty's, I
let things stand. But Hetty's in California now; she and her mother
live in San Francisco; she is still studying singing, I believe. She
gets the rent from two flats I have there. But she never writes. And
that," he finished grimly, "is the last chapter of my history."
Sidney still stood close to him, earnest, fragrant, lovely, in her
white gown. And even above the troubled tumult of his thoughts Barry
had time to think how honest, how unaffected she was, to stand so,
making no attempt to disguise the confusion in her own mind. For a long
time there was no sound but the vague stir of the night about them, the
faint breath of some wandering breeze, the rustling flight of some
small animal in the dark, the far-hushed, village sounds.
"Thank you, Barry," Sidney said at length. "I'm sorry. I am glad you
told me. Good-night."
"Good-night," he said almost inaudibly. He ran down the steps and
plunged into the dark avenue without a backward look. Sidney turned
slowly, and slowly entered the dimly lighted hall, and shut the door.
CHAPTER XI
"Come down here--we're down by the river!" called Mrs. Burgoyne, from
the shade of the river bank, where she and Mrs. Lloyd were busy with
their sewing. "The American History section is entertaining the club."
"You look studious!" laughed Mrs. Brown, coming across the grass, to
put the Brown baby upon his own sturdy legs from her tired arms, and
sink into a deep lawn chair. The June afternoon was warm, but it was
delightfully cool by the water. "Is that the club?" she asked, waving
toward the group of children who were wading and splashing in the
shallows of the loitering river.
"That's the American History Club," responded Mrs. Burgoyne, as she
flung her sewing aside and snatched the baby. "Paul," said she, kissing
his warm, moist neck, "do you truly love me a little bit?"
"Boy ge' down," said Paul, struggling violently.
"Yes, you shall, darling. But listen, do you want to hear the
tick-tock? Oh, Paul, sit still just one minute!"
"Awn ge' DOWN," said Paul, distinctly, every fibre of his small being
headed, as it were, for the pebbly shingle where it was daily his
delight to dig.
"But say 'deck' first, sweetheart, say 'Deck, I love you,'" besought
the mistress of the Hall.
"Deck!" shouted Paul obediently, eyes on the river.
"And a sweet kiss!" further stipulated Mrs. Burgoyne, and grabbed it
from his small, red, unresponsive mouth before she let him toddle away.
"Yes," she resumed, going on with the tucking of a small skirt, "Joanna
and Jeanette and the Adams boy have to write an essay this week about
the Battle of Bunker Hill, so I read them Holmes' poem, and they acted
it all out. You never saw anything so delicious. Mrs. Lloyd came up
just in time to see Mabel limping about as the old Corporal! The cherry
tree was the steeple, of course, and both your sons, you'll be ashamed
to hear, were redcoats. Next week they expect to do Paul Revere, and I
daresay we'll have the entire war, before we're through. You are both
cordially invited."
"I'll come," said the doctor's wife, smiling. "I love this garden. And
to take care of the boys and have a good time myself is more than I
ever thought I'd do in this life!"
"I live on this bank," said Mrs. Burgoyne, leaning back luxuriously in
her big chair, to stare idly up through the apple-tree to the blue sky.
"I'm going to teach the children all their history and poetry and
myths, out here. It makes it so real to them, to act it. Jo and Ellen
and I read Barbara Frietchie out here a few weeks ago, and they've
wanted it every day or two, since."
"We won't leave anything for the schools to do," said little Mrs. Brown.
"All the better," Mrs. Burgoyne said, cheerfully.
"Well, excuse me!" Mrs. Lloyd, holding the linen cuff she was
embroidering at arm's length, and studying it between half-closed lids.
"I am only too glad to turn Mabel over to somebody else part of the
time. You don't know what she is when she begins to ask questions!"
"I don't know anything more tiring than being with children day in and
day out," said Mrs. Brown, "it gets frightfully on your nerves!"
"Oh, I'd like about twelve!" said Mrs. Burgoyne.
"Oh, Mrs. Burgoyne! You WOULDN'T!"
"Yes, I would, granted a moderately secure income, and a rather roomy
country home. Although," added Mrs. Burgoyne, temperately, "I do
honestly think twelve children is too big a family. However, one may be
greedy in wishes!"
"Would you want a child of yours to go without proper advantages," said
Mrs. Lloyd, a little severely, "would you want more than one or two, if
you honestly felt you couldn't give them all that other children have?
Would you be perfectly willing to have your children feel at a
disadvantage with all the children of your friends? I wouldn't," she
answered herself positively, "I want to do the best by Mabel, I want
her to have everything, as she grows up, that a girl ought to have.
That's why all this nonsense about the size of the American family
makes me so tired! What's the use of bringing a lot of children into
the world that are going to suffer all sorts of privations when they
get here?"
"Privations wouldn't hurt them," said Mrs. Burgoyne, sturdily, "if it
was only a question of patched boots and made-over clothes and plain
food. They could even have everything in the world that's worth while."
"How do you mean?" said Mrs. Lloyd, promptly defensive.
"I'd gather them about me," mused Sidney Burgoyne, dreamily, her eyes
on the sky, a whimsical smile playing about her mouth, "I'd gather all
seven together--"
"Oh, you've come down to seven?" chuckled Mrs. Brown.
"Well, seven's a good Biblical number," Mrs. Burgoyne said serenely,
"--and I'd say 'Children, all music is yours, all art is yours, all
literature is yours, all history and all philosophy is waiting to prove
to you that in starting poor, healthy, and born of intelligent and
devoted parents, you have a long head-start in the race of life. All
life is ahead of you, friendships, work, play, tramps through the green
country in the spring, fires in winter, nights under the summer stars.
Choose what you like, and work for it, your father and I can keep you
warm and fed through your childhoods, and after that, nothing can stop
you if you are willing to work and wait."
"And then suppose your son asks you why he can't go camping with the
other boys in summer school, and your daughter wants to join the
cotillion?" asked Mrs. Lloyd.
"Why, it wouldn't hurt them to hear me say no," said Mrs. Burgoyne, in
surprise. "I never can understand why parents, who practise every
imaginable self-denial themselves, are always afraid the first
renunciation will kill their child. Sooner or later they are going to
learn what life is. I know a little girl whose parents are
multi-millionaires, and who is going to be told some day soon that her
two older sisters aren't living abroad, as she thinks, but shut up for
life, within a few miles of her. What worse blow could life give to the
poorest girl?"
"Horrors!" murmured Mrs. Brown.
"And those are common cases," Mrs. Burgoyne said eagerly, "I knew of so
many! Pretty little girls at European watering-places whose mothers are
spending thousands, and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get out of
their blood what no earthly power can do away with. Sons of rich
fathers whose valets themselves wouldn't change places with them! And
then the fine, clean, industrious middle-classes--or upper classes,
really, for the blood in their veins is the finest in the world--are
afraid to bring children into the world because of dancing cotillions
and motor-cars!"
"Well, of course I have only four," said Mrs. Brown, "but I've been
married only seven years--"
Mrs. Burgoyne laughed, came to a full stop, and reddened a little as
she went back busily to her sewing.
"Why do you let me run on at such a rate; you know my hobbies now!" she
reproached them. "I am not quite sane on the subject of what ought to
be done--and isn't--in that good old institution called woman's sphere."
"That sounds vaguely familiar," said Mrs. Lloyd.
"Woman's sphere? Yes, we hate the sound of it," said Mrs. Burgoyne,
"just as a man who has left his family hates to talk of home ties, and
just as a deserter hates the conversation to come around to the army.
But it's true. Our business is children, and kitchens, and husbands,
and meals, and we detest it all--"
"I like my husband a little," said Mrs. Brown, in a meek little voice.
They all laughed. Then said Mrs. Lloyd, gazing sentimentally toward the
river bank, where her small daughter's twisted curls were tossing madly
in a game of "tag":
"I shall henceforth regard Mabel as a possible Joan of Arc."
"One of those boys MAY be a Lincoln, or a Thomas Edison, or a Mark
Twain," Sidney Burgoyne added, half-laughing, "and then we'll feel just
a little ashamed for having turned him complacently over to a nurse or
a boarding school. Of course, it leaves us free to go to the club and
hear a paper on the childhood of Napoleon, carefully compiled years
after his death. Why, men take heavy chances in their work, they follow
up the slightest opening, but we women throw away opportunities to be
great, every day of our lives! Scientists and theorists are spending
years of their lives pondering over every separate phase of the
development of children, but we, who have the actual material in our
hands, turn it over to nursemaids!"
"Yes, but lots of children disappoint their parents bitterly," said
Mrs. Brown, "and lots of good mothers have bad children!"
"I never knew a good mother to have a bad child--" began Mrs. Burgoyne.
"Well, I have. Thousands," Mrs. Lloyd said promptly.
"Oh, no! Not a BAD child," her hostess said, quickly. "A disappointing
child perhaps, or a strong-willed child, you mean. But no good
mother--and that doesn't mean merely a good woman, or a church-going
woman!--could possibly have a really bad child. 'By their fruits,' you
know. And then of course we haven't a perfect system of nursery
training yet; we expect angels. We judge by little, inessential things,
we're exacting about unimportant trifles. We don't want our sons to
marry little fluffy-headed dolls, although the dolls may make them very
good wives. We don't want them to make a success of real estate, if the
tradition of the house is for the bar or the practice of medicine. And
we lose heart at the first suspicion of bad company, or of drinking;
although the best men in the world had those temptations to fight! But,
anyway, I would rather try at that and fail, than do anything else in
the world. My failures at least might save some other woman's children.
And it's just that much more done for the world than guarding the
valuable life of a Pomeranian, or going to New York for new furs!" They
all laughed, for Mrs. Willard White's latest announcement of her plans
had awakened some comment among them.
"Mother, am I interrupting you?" said a patient voice at this point.
Ellen Burgoyne, rosy, dishevelled, panting, stood some ten feet away,
waiting patiently a chance to enter the conversation.
"No, my darling." Her mother held out a welcoming hand. "Oh, I see,"
she added, glancing at her watch. "It's half-past four. Yes, you can go
up for the gingerbread now. You mustn't carry the milk, you know,
Ellen."
"Mother," said Ellen, flashing into radiance at the slightest
encouragement, "have you told them about our Flower Festibul plans?"
"Oh, not yet!" Mrs. Burgoyne heaved a great sigh. "I'm afraid I've
committed myself to an entry for the parade," she told the others
ruefully.
"Oh, don't tell me you're going to compete!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown.
"Well, we're rather afraid we are!" Mrs. Burgoyne's voice, if fearful,
was hopeful too, for Ellen's face was a study. "Why, is it such a
terrible effort?"
"Oh, yes, it's an appalling amount of struggle and fuss, there's all
sorts of red tape, and the flowers are so messy," answered the doctor's
wife warningly, "and this year will be worse than ever. The Women's
Club of Apple Creek is going to enter a carriage, and you know our club
is to have the White's motor; it will be perfectly exquisite! It's to
be all pink carnations, and Mr. White's nephew, a Berkeley boy, and
some of his friends, all in white flannels, are going to run it. Doctor
says there'll be a hundred entries this year."
"Well, I'm afraid I'm in for it," said Mrs. Burgoyne, with a sigh. "I
haven't the least idea in the world what I'm going to do. It isn't as
if we even had a surrey. But I really was involved before I had time to
think. You know I've been trying, with some of my spare time," her eyes
twinkled, "to get hold of these little factory and cannery girls over
in Old Paloma."
"You told me," said Mrs. Brown, "but I don't see how that--"
"Well, you see, their ringleader has been particularly ungracious to
me. A fine, superb, big creature she is, named Alice Carter. This Alice
came up to the children and me in the street the other day, and told
me, in the gruffest manner, that she was interested in a little
crippled girl over there, and had promised to take her to see the
Flower Festival. But it seems the child's mother was afraid to trust
her to Alice in the crowd and heat. Quite simply she asked me if I
could manage it. I was tremendously touched, and we went to see the
child. She's a poor, brave little scrap--twelve years old, did she say,
Baby?"
"Going on thirteen," said Ellen rapidly; "and her father is dead, and
her mother works, and she takes care of such a fat baby, and she is
very gen-tul with him, isn't she, Mother? And she cried when Mother
gave her books, and she can't eat her lunch because her back aches, but
she gave the baby his lunch, and Mother asked her if she would let a
doctor fix her back, and she said, 'Oh, no!'--didn't she, Mother? She
just twisted and twisted her hands, and said, 'I can't.' And Mother
said, 'Mary, if you will be a brave girl about the doctor, I will make
you a pink dress and a wreath of roses, and you shall ride with the
others in the Flower Festibul!' And she just said, 'Oo-oo!'--didn't
she, Mother? And she said she thought God sent you, didn't she, Mother?"
"She did." Mrs. Burgoyne smiled through wet lashes. Mrs. Brown wiped
her own eyes against the baby's fluffy mop. "She's a most pathetic
little creature, this Mary Scott," went on the other woman when Ellen
had dashed away, "and I'm afraid she's not the only one. There's my
Miss Davids' little sister; if I took her in, Miss Davids would be free
for the day; and there's a little deaf-mute whose mother runs the
bakery. And I told Mary we'd manage the baby, too, and that if she knew
any other children who positively couldn't come any other way, she must
let me know. Of course the school children are cared for, they will
have seats right near the grand stand, and sing, and so on. But I am
really terrified about it, you'll have to help me out."
"I'll do anything," Mrs. Brown promised.
"I'll do anything I CAN," said Mrs. Lloyd, modestly, "I loathe and
abominate children unless they're decently dressed and smell of
soap--but I'll run a machine, if some one'll see that they don't swarm
over me."
"I'll put a barbed wire fence around you!" promised Mrs. Burgoyne,
gaily.
Mrs. Carew, coming up, as she expressed it, "to gather up some
children," was decidedly optimistic about the plan. "Nobody ever uses
hydrangeas, because you can't make artificial ones to fill in with,"
she said, "so you can get barrels of them." Mrs. Burgoyne was
enthusiastic over hydrangeas, "But it's not the fancy touches that
scare me," she confessed; "it's the awful practical side."
"What does Barry think?" Mrs. Carew presently asked innocently. Mrs.
Burgoyne's suddenly rosy face was not unobserved by any of the others.
"I haven't seen him for several days, not since the night of my
dinner," she admitted; "I've been lazy, sending my work down to the
office. But I will see him right away."
"He's the one really to have ideas," Mrs. Brown assured her.
CHAPTER XII
So Barry was invited up to the Hall to dinner, and found himself so
instantly swept into the plan that he had no time to be self-conscious.
Dinner was served on the side porch, and the sunlight filtered across
the white cloth, and turned the garden into a place of enchantment.
When Billy and the small girls had seized two cookies and two peaches
apiece, and retired to the lawn to enjoy them, he and Sidney sat
talking on in the pleasant dusk.
"You've asked eight, so far," he said, as she was departing for the
office an hour or so after dinner was finished, "but do you think
that's all?"
"Oh, it positively must be!" Sidney said virtuously, but there was a
wicked gleam in her eye that prepared him for her sudden descent upon
the office two days later, with the startling news that now she had
positively STOPPED, but fourteen children had been asked!
Barry, rather to her surprise, remained calm.
"Well, I've got an idea," he said presently, "that will make that all
right, fourteen children or twenty, it won't make any difference. Only,
it may not appeal to you."
"Oh, it will--and you are an angel!" said the lady fervently.
"I've got a friend up the country here in a lumber-mill," Barry
explained, "Joe Painter--he hauls logs down from the forest to the
river, with a team of eight oxen. Now, if he'd lend them, and you got a
hay-wagon from Old Paloma, you wouldn't have any trouble at all."
"Oh, but Barry," she gasped, her face radiant, "would he lend them?"
"I think he would; he'd have to come too, you know, and drive them.
I'll ride up and see, anyway."
"Oxen," mused Mrs. Burgoyne, "how perfectly glorious! The children will
go wild with joy. And, you see, my Indian boys--"
"Your WHAT?"
"I didn't mention them," said Sidney serenely, "because they'll walk
alongside, and won't count in the load. But, you see, some of those
nice little mill-boys who don't go to school heard the girls talking
about it, and one of them asked me--so wistfully!--if there was
anything THEY could do. I immediately thought of Indian costumes."
"But how the deuce will you get the costumes made?" said Barry, drawing
a sheet of paper toward him, and beginning some calculations, with an
anxious eye.
"Why, it's just cheese-cloth for the girls. Mrs. Brown and I have our
machines up in the barn, and Mrs. Carew and Mrs. Adams will come up and
help, there's not much to THAT! Barry, if you will really get us
this--this ox-man--nothing else will worry me at all."
"You'll have to put the beasts up in your barn."
"Oh, surely! Ask him what they eat. Oh, Barry, we MUST have them! Think
how picturesque they'll be! I've been thinking my entry would be a
disgrace to the parade, but I don't believe it will be so bad. Barry,
when will we know about it?"
"You can count on it, I guess. Joe won't refuse," Barry said, with his
lazy smile.
"Oh, you're an angel! I'm going shopping this instant. Barry, there
will be room now for my Ellen, and Billy, and Dicky Carew, won't there?
It seems their hearts are bursting with the desire. Bunting," murmured
Sidney, beginning a list, "cheese-cloth, pink, blue, and cream, bolts
of it; twine, beads, leather, feathers; some big white hats; ice-cream,
extra milk--"
"Hold on! What for?"
"Why, they have to have something to eat afterward," she reproached
him. "We're going to have a picnic up at the Hall. Then those that can
will join their people for the fireworks, and the others will be taken
home to Old Paloma. The little Scott girl will stay with Ellen and Jo
overnight; Mammy Currey will look after them, and they'll watch the
fireworks from my porch. I've written to ask Doctor Young--he's the
best in San Francisco--to come up from the city next day to see what he
thinks can be done for Mary Scott."
"You get a lot of fun out of your money, don't you, Sidney?" said
Barry, watching her amusedly, as she tucked the list into her purse and
arose with a great air of business.
"More than any one woman deserves," she answered soberly.
"Walter," said Anne Pratt to her brother, one evening about this time,
as she decorously filled his plate from the silver tureen, "have you
heard that Mrs. Burgoyne has gathered up about twenty children in Old
Paloma--cripples, and orphans, and I don't know what all!--and is
getting up a wagon for the Flower Festival? I was up at the Hall
to-day, and they're working like beavers."
"Carew said something about it," said Walter Pratt. "Seems a good idea.
Those poor little kids over there don't have much fun."
"You never said so before, Walter," his sister returned almost
resentfully.
"I don't know why I shouldn't have," said Walter literally. "It's true."
"If we did anything for any children, it ought to be Lizzie's," said
Miss Pratt uncomfortably, after a pause.
"I wish to the Lord we COULD do something for Lizzie's kids," her
brother observed suddenly. "I suppose it would kill you to have 'em up
here?"
"Kill me!" Miss Anne echoed with painful eagerness, and with a sudden
tremble of her thin, long hand. "I don't know why it should; there
never were better behaved children born. I don't like Lizzie's husband,
and never shall;" she rushed on, "but seeing those children up at the
Hall to-day made me think of Betty, and Hope, and Davy, cooped up down
there in town. They'd love the Flower Festival, and I could take them
up to the Hall, and Nanny would be wild with joy to have Lizzie's
children here; she'd bake cookies and gingerbread--" A flush had come
into her faded, cool cheek. "Wouldn't they be in your way? You really
wouldn't mind--you won't change your mind about it, Walt?" she said
timidly.
"Change my mind! Why, I'll love to have them running round here," he
answered warmly. "Write Lizzie to-night, and tell her I've got to go
down Tuesday, and I'll bring 'em up."
"I'll tell her that just the things they have will be quite good
enough," said Miss Pratt. "The Burgoyne children just wear
play-ginghams--I'll get them anything else they need!"
"It won't interfere with your club work, Anne?"
"Not in the least!" She was sure of that, "And anyway," she went on
decidedly, "I'm not going to the club so much this summer. Mary Brown
and I went yesterday, and there was--well, I suppose it was a good
paper on 'The Mind of the Child,' by Miss Sarah Rich. But it seemed so
flat. And Mary Brown said, coming away, 'I think Doctor and I will
still come to the monthly receptions, but I believe I won't listen to
any more papers like that. They're all very well for people who have no
children--'"
"Well, by Tuesday night you'll have three!" said Walter, with what was
for him great gaiety of manner.
"Walter," his sister suggested nervously, "you'll be awfully
affectionate with Lizzie, won't you? Be sure to tell her that we WANT
them; and tell her that they'll be playing up at the Hall all summer,
as we used to. You know, I've been thinking, Walter," went on the poor
lady, with her nose suddenly growing red and her eyes watering, "that
I've not been a very good sister to Lizzie. She's the youngest, and
Mother--Mother wasn't here to advise her about her marriage, and--and
now I don't write her; and she wrote me that Betty had a cough, and
Davy was so noisy indoors in wet weather--and I just go to the Club to
hear papers upon 'Napoleon' and 'The Mind of the Child.'" And Miss
Anne, beginning to cry outright, leaned back in her chair, and covered
her face with her handkerchief.
"Well, Anne--well, Anne," her brother said huskily, "we'll make it up
now. Where are you going to put them?" he presently added, with an
inspiration.
Miss Pratt straightened up, blew her nose, wiped her eyes, and rang for
the maid.
"Betty and Hope in the big front room--" she began happily.
Another brief conversation, this time between George Carew and his
wife, was indicative of a certain change of view-point that was
affecting the women of Santa Paloma in these days. Mr. Carew, coming
home one evening, found a very demure and charming figure seated on the
porch. Mrs. Carew's gown was simplicity itself: a thin, dotted, dark
blue silk, with a deep childish lace collar and cuffs.
"You look terribly sweet, Jen," said Mr. Carew; "you look out of
sight." And when he came downstairs again, and they were at dinner, he
returned to the subject with, "Jen, I haven't seen you look so sweet
for a long time. What is that, a new dress? Is that for the reception
on the Fourth? Jen, didn't you have a dress like that when we were
first married?"
"Sorrel made this, and it only cost sixty dollars," said Mrs. Carew.
"Well, get her to make you another," her husband said approvingly. At
which Mrs. Carew laughed a little shakily, and came around the table,
and put her arms about him and said:
"Oh, George, you dear old BAT! Miss Pomeroy made this, upstairs here,
in three days, and the silk cost nine dollars. I DID have a dress like
this in my trousseau--my first silk--and I thought it was wonderful;
and I think you're a darling to remember it; and I AM going to wear
this on the Fourth. It's nice enough, isn't it?"
"Nice enough! You'll be the prettiest woman there," stated Mr. Carew
positively.
CHAPTER XIII
The earliest daylight of July Fourth found Santa Paloma already astir.
Dew was heavy on the ropes of flowers and greens, and the flags and
bunting that made brilliant all the line of the day's march; and long
scarfs of fog lingered on the hills, but for all that, and despite the
delicious fragrant chill of the morning air, nobody doubted that the
day would be hot and cloudless, and the evening perfect for fireworks.
Lawn-sprinklers began to whir busily in the sweet shaded gardens long
before the sunlight reached them; windows and doors were flung open to
the air; women, sweeping garden-paths and sidewalks with gay energy,
called greetings up and down the street to one another. Chairs were
dragged out-of-doors; limp flags began to stir in the sunny air; other
flags squeakily mounted their poles. At every window bunting showed;
the schoolhouse was half-hidden in red, white, and blue; the women's
clubhouse was festooned with evergreens and Japanese lanterns; and the
Mail office, the grand stand opposite, the shops, and the bank, all
fluttered with gay colors. Children shouted and scampered everywhere;
gathered in fascinated groups about the ice-cream and candy and popcorn
booths that sprang up at every corner; met arriving cousins and aunts
at the train; ran on last-minute errands. Occasionally a whole package
of exploding firecrackers smote the warm still air.
By half-past ten every window on the line of march, every dooryard and
porch, had its group of watchers. Wagons and motor-cars, from the
surrounding villages and ranches, blocked the side streets. It was very
warm, and fans and lemonade had a lively sale.
From the two available windows of the Mail office, three persons, as
eager as the most eager child, watched the gathering crowds, and waited
for the Flower Parade. They were Mrs. Apostleman, stately in black
lace, and regally fanning, Sidney Burgoyne, looking her very prettiest
in crisp white, with a scarlet scarf over her arm, and Barry Valentine,
who looked unusually festive himself in white flannels. All three were
in wild spirits.
"Hark, here they come!" said Sidney at last, drawing her head in from a
long inspection of the street. She had been waving and calling
greetings in every direction for a pleasant half-hour. Now eleven had
boomed from the town-hall clock, and a general restlessness and
wiltedness began to affect the waiting crowds.
Barry immediately dangled almost his entire length across the window
sill, and screwed his person about for a look.
"H'yar dey come, li'l miss, sho's yo' bawn!" he announced joyfully.
"There's the band!"
Here they came, sure enough, under the flags and garlands, through the
noonday heat. Only vague brassy notes and the general craning of necks
indicated their approach now; but in another five minutes the uniformed
band was actually in view, and the National Guard after it,
tremendously popular, and the Native Sons, with another band, and the
veterans, thin, silver-headed old men in half a dozen carriages, and
more open carriages. One held the Governor and his wife, the former
bowing and smiling right and left, and saluted by the rising school
children, when he seated himself in the judges' stand, with the shrill,
thrilling notes of the national anthem.
And then another band, and--at last!--the slow-moving, flower-covered
carriages and motors, a long, wonderful, brilliant line of them.
White-clad children in rose-smothered pony-carts, pretty girls in a
setting of scarlet carnations, more pretty girls half-hidden in bobbing
and nodding daisies--every one more charming than the last. There were
white horses as dazzling as soap and powder could make them; horses
whose black flanks glistened as dark as coal, and there was a tandem of
cream-colored horses that tossed rosettes of pink Shirley poppies in
their ears. The Whites' motor-car, covered with pink carnations, and
filled with good-looking lads flying the colors of the Women's Club and
the nation's flag, won a special round of applause. Mrs. Burgoyne and
Barry loyally clapped for the Pratt motor-car, from which Joanna
Burgoyne and Lizzie Pratt's children were beaming upon the world.
"But what are they halting for, and what are they clapping?" Sidney
presently demanded, when a break in the line and a sudden outburst of
cheering and applause interrupted the parade. Barry again hung at a
dangerous angle from the window. Presently he sat back, his face one
broad smile.
"It's us," he remarked simply. "Wait until you see us; we're the cream
of the whole show!"
Too excited to speak, Sidney knelt breathless at the sill, her eyes
fixed upon the spot where the cause of the excitement must appear. She
was perhaps the only one of all the watchers who did not applaud, as
the eight powerful oxen came slowly down the sunshiny street, guided by
the tall, lean driver who walked beside them, and dragging the great
wagon and its freight of rapturous children.
Only an old hay-wagon, after all; only a team of shabby oxen, such as a
thousand lumber-camps in California might supply; only a score or more
of the ill-nourished, untrained children of the very poor; but what an
enchantment of love and hope and summer-time had been flung over them
all! The body of the wagon was entirely hidden by exquisite hydrangeas;
the wheels were moving disks of the pale pink and blue blossoms; the
oxen, their horns gilded, their polished hoofs twinkling as they moved,
wore yokes that seemed solidly made of the flowers, and great ropes of
blossoms hid the swinging chains. Over each animal a brilliant cover
had been flung; and at the head of each a young Indian boy, magnificent
in wampum and fringed leather, feathers and beads, walked sedately. The
children were grouped, pyramid-fashion, on the wagon, in a nest of
hydrangea blooms, the pink, and cream, and blue of their gowns blending
with the flowers all about them, the sunlight shining full in their
happy eyes. Over their shoulders were garlands of poppies, roses,
sweet-peas, daisies, carnations, lilies, or other blossoms; their hands
were full of flowers. But it was the radiance of their faces that shone
brightest, after all. It was the little consumptive's ecstatic smile,
as she sat resting against an invisible support; it was the joy in Mary
Scott's thin eager face, framed now in her loosened dark hair, and with
the shadow, like her crutch, laid aside for a while, that somehow
brought tears to the eyes that watched. Santa Paloma cheered and
applauded these forgotten children of hers; and the children laughed
and waved their hands in return.
Youth and happiness and summer-time incarnate, the vision went on its
way, down the bright street; and other carriages followed it, and were
praised as those that had gone before had been. But no entry in any
flower parade that Santa Paloma had ever known, was as much discussed
as this one. Indeed, it began a new era; but that was later on. When
Mrs. Burgoyne's plain white frock appeared among the elaborate gowns
worn at the club luncheon that afternoon, she was quite overwhelmed by
congratulations. She went away very early, to superintend the
children's luncheon at the Hall, and then Mrs. White had a chance to
tell the distinguished guests who she was, and that she could well
afford to play Lady Bountiful to the Santa Paloma children.
"One wouldn't imagine it, she seems absolutely simple and unspoiled,"
said Mrs. Governor.
"She is!" said Mrs. Lloyd unexpectedly.
"I told her how scared most of us had been at the mere idea of her
coming here, Parker," Mrs. Lloyd told her husband later, "and how
friendly she is, and that she always wears little wash dresses, and
that the other girls are beginning to wear checked aprons and things,
because her girls do! Of course, I said it sort of laughingly, you
know, but I don't think Clara White liked it ONE BIT, and I don't care!
Clara is rather mad at me, anyway," she went on, musingly, "because
yesterday she telephoned that she was going to send that Armenian
peddler over here, with some Madeira lunch cloths. They WERE beauties,
and only twenty-three dollars; you'd pay fifty for them at Raphael
Weil's--they're smuggled, I suppose! But I simply said, 'Clara, I can't
afford it!' and let it go at that. She laughed--quite cattily,
Parker!--and said, 'Oh, that's rather funny!' But I don't care whether
Clara White thinks I'm copying Mrs. Burgoyne or not! I might as well
copy her as somebody else!"
Mrs. Burgoyne and Barry Valentine went down-town on the evening of the
great day, to see the fireworks and the crowds, and to hear the
announcements of prize-winners. Santa Paloma was in holiday mood, and
the two entered into the spirit of the hour like irresponsible
children. It was a warm, wonderful summer night; the sky was close and
thickly spangled with stars. Main Street bobbed with Japanese lanterns,
rang with happy voices and laughter. The jostling, pushing currents of
men in summer suits, and joyous girls in thin gowns, were all
good-natured. Sidney found friends on all sides, and laughed and called
her greetings as gaily as anyone.
Barry had a rare opportunity to watch her unobserved, as she went her
happy way; the earnest happy brightness in her eyes, when some shabby
little woman from Old Paloma laid a timid hand on her arm, her adoring
interest in the fat babies that slumbered heavily on paternal
shoulders, her ready use of names, "Isn't this fun, Agnes?"--"You
haven't lost Harry, have you, Mrs. O'Brien?"--"Don't you and your
friend want to come and have some ice-cream with us, Josie?"
"But we mustn't waste too much time here, Barry," she would say now and
then; for at eight o'clock a "grand concert program and distribution of
prizes" was scheduled to take place at the town hall, and Sidney was
anxious not to miss an instant of it. "Don't worry, I'll get you
there!" Barry would answer reassuringly, amused at her eagerness.
And true to his word, he stopped her at the wide doorway of the concert
hall, fully five minutes before the hour, and they found themselves
joining the slow stream of men and women and children that was pouring
up the wide, dingy stairway. Everyone was trying, in all good humor, to
press ahead of everyone else, inspired with the sudden agonizing
conviction that in the next two minutes every desirable seat would
certainly be gone. Even Sidney, familiar as she was with every grand
opera house in the world, felt the infection, and asked rather
nervously if any of the seats were reserved.
"Don't worry; we'll get seats," said the imperturbable Barry, and
several children in their neighborhood laughed out in sudden exquisite
relief.
Seats indeed there were, although the front rows were filling fast, and
all the aisle-chairs were taken by squirming, restless small children.
Mrs. Burgoyne sat down, and studied the hall with delighted eyes. It
was ordinarily only a shabby, enormous, high-ceiled room, filled with
rows of chairs, and with an elevated stage at the far end. But, like
all Santa Paloma, it was in holiday trim to-night. All the
windows--wide open to the summer darkness--were framed in bunting and
drooping flowers, and on the stage were potted palms and crossed flags.
Great masses of bamboo and California ferns were tied with red, white
and blue streamers between the windows, and, beside these decorations,
which were new for the occasion, were purple and yellow banners, left
from the night of the Native Sons' Grand Ball and Reception, a month
ago, and, arched above the stage the single word "Welcome" in letters
two feet high, which dated back to the Ladies of Saint Rose's Parish
Annual Fair and Entertainment, in May. If the combined effect of these
was not wholly artistic, at least it was very gay, and the murmur of
voices and laughter all over the hall was gay, too, and gay almost to
intoxication it was to hear the musicians tentatively and subduedly
trying their instruments up by the piano, with their sleek heads close
together.
Presently every chair in the house had its occupant, and the younger
element began a spasmodic sort of clapping, as a delicate hint to the
agitated managers, who were behind the scenes, running blindly about
with worn scraps of scribbled paper in their hands, desperately
attempting to call the roll of their performers. When Joe, the janitor,
came out onto the stage, he was royally applauded, although he did no
more than move a tin stand on which there were numbered cards, from one
side of the stage to the other, and change the number in view from "18"
to "1."
Fathers and mothers, perspiring, clean and good-natured, smiled upon
youthful impatience and impertinence to-night, as they sat fanning and
discussing the newcomers, or leaned forward or backward for hilarious
scraps of conversation with their neighbors. Lovers, as always
oblivious of time, sat entirely indifferent to the rise or fall of the
curtain, the girls with demurely dropped lashes, the men deep in low
monotones, their faces close to the lovely faces so near, their arms
flung, in all absent-mindedness, across the backs of the ladies'
chairs. And any motherly heart might have been stirred with an aching
sort of tenderness, as Sidney Burgoyne's was, at the sight of so much
awkward, budding manliness, so many shining pompadours, and carefully
polished shoes and outrageous cravats--so many silky, filleted little
heads, and innocent young bosoms half-hidden by all sorts of dainty
little conspiracies of lace and lawn. Youth, enchanting, self-absorbed,
important, had coolly taken possession of the hall, as it does of
everything, for its own happy plans, and something of the gossamer
beauty of it seemed to be clouding older and wiser eyes to-night.
Sidney found her eyes resting upon Barry's big, shapely hand, as he
leaned forward, deep in conversation with Dr. Brown, in the chair
ahead, and she was conscious that she wanted to sit back and shut her
eyes, and draw a deep breath of sheer irrational happiness because this
WAS Barry next to her, and that he liked to be there.
Presently the hall thrilled to see two modest-looking and obviously
embarrassed men come out to seat themselves in the half-circle of
chairs that lined the stage, and a moment later applause broke out for
the Mayor and his wife, and the members of the Flower Parade Committee
of Arrangements, and for the nondescript persons who invariably fill in
such a group, and for the kindly, smiling Governor, and the ladies of
his party, and for the Willard Whites, who, with the easiest manners in
the world, were in actual conversation with the great people as they
came upon the stage.
At the sight of them, Mrs. Carew, still vigorously clapping, leaned
over to say to Mrs. Burgoyne:
"Look at Clara White! And we were wondering why they didn't come in!
Wouldn't she make you TIRED!"
"You might kiss her hand, when you go up to get your prize, Mrs.
Burgoyne," suggested Barry, and a general giggle went the rounds.
"If I get a prize," said Sidney, in alarm, "you've got to go up, I
couldn't!"
"We'll see--" Barry began, his voice drowned by the opening crash of
the band.
There followed what the three papers of Santa Paloma were unanimous the
next day in describing as the most brilliant and enjoyable concert ever
given in Santa Paloma. It was received with immense enthusiasm,
entirely unaffected by the fact that everyone present had heard Miss
Emelie Jeanne Foster sing "Twickenham Ferry" before, with "Dawn" as an
encore, and was familiar also with the selections of the Stringed
Instrument Club, and had listened to young Doctor Perry's impassioned
tenor many times. As for George O'Connor, with his irresistible
laughing song, and the song about the train that went to Morro to-day,
he was more popular every time he appeared, and was greeted now by mad
applause, and shouts of "There's George!" and "Hello, George!"
And the Home Boys' Quartette from Emville was quite new, and various
solo singers and a "lady elocutionist" from San Francisco were heard
for the first time. The latter, who was on the program merely for a
"Recitation--Selected," was so successful with "Pauline Pavlovna," and
"Seein' Things at Night" that it was nearly ten o'clock before the
Governor was introduced.
However, he was at last duly presented to the applauding hundreds, and
came forward to the footlights to address them, and made everyone laugh
and feel friendly by saying immediately that he knew they hadn't come
out that evening to hear an old man make a long speech.
He said he didn't believe in speechmaking much, he believed in DOING
things; there were always a lot of people to stand around and make
speeches, like himself--and there was more laughter.
He said that he knew the business of the evening was the giving out of
these prizes here--he didn't know what was in these boxes--he indicated
the daintily wrapped and tied packages that stood on the little table
in the middle of the stage--but he thought every lady in the hall would
know before she went home, and perhaps some one of them would tell
him--and there was more laughter. He said he hoped that there was
something mighty nice in the largest box, because he understood that it
was to go to a fairy-godmother; he didn't know whether the good people
in the hall believed in fairies or not, but he knew that some of the
children in Old Paloma did, and he had seen and heard enough that day
to make him believe in 'em too! He'd heard of a fairy years ago who
made a coach-and-four out of a pumpkin, but he didn't think that was
any harder than to make a coach-and-six out of a hay-wagon, and put
twenty Cinderellas into it instead of one. He said it gave him great
pride and pleasure to announce that the first prize for to-day's
beautiful contest had been unanimously awarded to--
Sidney Burgoyne, watching him with fascinated eyes, her breath coming
fast and unevenly, her color brightening and fading, heard only so
much, and then, with a desperate impulse to get away, half rose to her
feet.
But she was too late. Long before the Governor reached her name, a
sudden outburst of laughter and clapping shook the hall, there was a
friendly stir and murmur about her; a hundred voices came to her ears,
"It's Mrs. Burgoyne, of course!--She's got it! She's got the first
prize!--Go on up, Mrs. Burgoyne! You've got it!--Isn't that
GREAT,--she's got it! Go up and get it!"
"You've got first prize, I guess. You'll have to go up for it," Barry
urged her.
"He didn't say so!" Sidney protested nervously. But she let herself be
half-pushed into the aisle, and somehow reached the three little steps
that led up to the platform, and found herself facing His Excellency,
in an uproar of applause.
The Governor said a few smiling words as he put a large box into her
hands; Sidney knew this because she saw his lips move, but the house
had gone quite mad by this time, and not a word was audible. Everyone
in the hall knew that a tall loving-cup was in the box, for it had been
on exhibition in the window of Postag's jewelry store for three weeks.
It was of silver, and lined with gold, both metals shining with an
unearthly and flawless radiance; and there was "Awarded--as a First
Prize--in the Twelfth Floral Parade--of Santa Paloma, California" cut
beautifully into one side, and a scroll all ready, on the other side,
to be engraved with the lucky winner's name.
She had been joking for two or three weeks about the possibility of
this very occurrence, had been half-expecting it all day, but now
suddenly all the joke seemed gone out of it, and she was only curiously
stirred and shaken. She looked confusedly down at the sea of faces
below her, smiles were everywhere, the eyes that were upon her were
full of all affection and pride--She had done so little after all, she
said to herself, with sudden humility, almost with shame. And it was so
poignantly sweet to realize that they loved her, that she was one of
themselves, they were glad she had won, she who had been a stranger to
all of them only a few months ago!
Her eyes full of sudden tears, her lip shaking, she could only bow and
bow again, and then, just as her smile threatened to become entirely
eclipsed, she managed a husky "Thank you all so much!" and descended
the steps rapidly, to slip into her chair between Barry and George
Carew.
"You know, you oughtn't to make a long tedious speech like that on an
occasion like this, Sid," Barry said, when she had somewhat recovered
her equilibrium, and the silver loving cup was unwrapped, and was being
passed admiringly from hand to hand.
"Don't!" she said warningly, "or you'll have me weeping on your
shoulder!"
Instead of which she was her gayest self, and accepted endless
congratulations with joyous composure, as the audience streamed out
into the reviving festivity of Main Street. The tide was turning in one
direction now, for there were to be "fireworks and a stupendous band
concert" immediately following the concert, in a vacant lot not far
away.
And presently they all found themselves seated on the fragrant grass,
under the stars. George Carew, at Sidney's feet, solemnly wrapped
sections of molasses popcorn in oiled paper, and passed them to the
ladies. Barry's coat made a comfortable seat for Mrs. Burgoyne and
little Mrs. Brown; Barry himself was just behind, and Mrs. Carew and
her big son beside them. All about, in the darkness, were other groups:
mothers and fathers and alert, chattering children. Alice Carter, the
big mill-girl, radiant now, and with a hoarse, inarticulate, adoring
young plumber in tow, went by them, and stooped to whisper something to
Mrs. Burgoyne. "I wish you WOULD come, Alice!" the lady answered
eagerly, as they went on.
Then the rockets began to hiss up toward the stars, each falling shower
of light greeted with a long rapturous "Ah-h-h!" Catherine-wheels
sputtered nearer the ground; red lights made eerie great spots of
illumination here and there, against which dark little figures moved.
"I don't know that I ever had a happier day in my life!" said Sidney
Burgoyne.
CHAPTER XIV
More happy days followed; for Santa Paloma, after the Fourth of July,
felt only friendliness for the new owner of the Hall, and Mrs.
Burgoyne's informal teas on the river bank began to prove a powerful
attraction, even rivaling the club in feminine favor. Sometimes the
hostess enlisted all their sympathies for a newly arrived Old Paloma
baby, and they tore lengths of flannel, and busily stitched at tiny
garments, under the shade of the willow and pepper trees. Sometimes she
had in her care one or more older babies whose busy mother was taking a
day's rest, or whose father was perhaps ill, needing all the wife's
care. Always there was something to read and discuss; an editorial in
some eastern magazine that made them all indignant or enthusiastic, or
a short story worth reading aloud. And almost always the children were
within call, digging great holes in the pebbly shallows of the river,
only to fill them up again, toiling over bridges and dams, climbing out
to the perilous length of the branches that hung above the water.
Little Mary Scott, released from the fear of an "op'ration," and facing
all unconsciously a far longer journey than the dreaded one to a San
Francisco hospital, had her own cushioned chair near the bank, where
she could hear and see, and laugh at everything that went on, and revel
in consolation and bandages when the inevitable accidents made them
necessary. Mary had no cares now, no responsibility more serious than
to be sure her feet didn't get cold, and to tell Mrs. Burgoyne the
minute her head ached; there was to be nothing but rest and comfort and
laughter for her in life now. "I don't know why we should pity her,"
little Mrs. Brown said thoughtfully, one day, as they watched her with
the other children; "we can't ever hope to feel that any of our
children are as safe as she is."
Mrs. Burgoyne's method of entertaining the children was simple. She
always made them work as hard as possible. One day they begged her to
let them build a "truly dam" that would really stop the Lobos in its
placid course. She consulted gravely with George Carew: should they
attempt it? George, after serious consideration, thought they should.
As a result, twenty children panted and toiled through a warm Saturday
afternoon, George and the Adams boys shouting directions as they
handled planks and stones; everybody wet, happy, and excited. Not the
least glorious moment was when the dam was broken at five o'clock, just
before refreshments were served.
"We'll do that better next Saturday," said George. But a week later
they wanted to clean the barn and organize a club. Mrs. Burgoyne was
sure they couldn't. All that space, she said, and those bins, and the
little rooms, and all? Very well, then, they could try. Later they
longed for a picnic supper in the woods, with an open fire, and
potatoes, and singing. Their hostess was dubious: entreated them to
consider the WORK involved, dragging stones for the fire, and carrying
potatoes and bacon and jam and all the rest of it 'way up there'. This
was at two o'clock, and at six she was formally asked to come up and
inspect the cleared camping ground, and the fireplace with its
broilers, and the mammoth stack of fuel prepared.
"I knew you'd do it!" said the lady delightedly. "Now we'll really have
a fine supper!" And a memorable supper they had, and Indian stories,
and singing, and they went home well after dusk, to end the day
perfectly.
"They like this sort of thing much better than white dresses, and a
professional entertainer, and dancing, and too much ice-cream," said
Mrs. Burgoyne to Mrs. Adams.
"Of course they do," said Mrs. Adams, who had her own reasons for
turning rather red and speaking somewhat faintly. "And it's much less
work, and much less expense," she added.
"Now it is, when they can be out-of-doors," said Mrs. Burgoyne; "but in
winter they do make awful work indoors. However, there is tramping for
dry weather, and I mean to have a stove set up in the old billiard-room
down-stairs and turn them all loose in there when it's wet.
Theatricals, and pasting things, and singing, and now and then
candy-making, is all fun. And one knows that they're safe, and piling
up happy memories of their home."
"You make a sort of profession of motherhood," said Mrs. White dryly.
"It IS my profession," said the hostess, with her happy laugh.
But her happiness had a sudden check in mid-August; Sidney found
herself no more immune from heartache than any other woman, no more
philosophical over a hurt. It was, she told herself, only a trifle,
after all. She was absurd to let it cloud the bright day for her and
keep her restless and wakeful at night. It was nothing. Only--
Only it was the first time that Barry had failed her. He was gone. Gone
without a word of explanation to anyone, leaving his work at the Mail
unfinished, leaving even Billy, his usual confidant, quite in the dark.
Sidney had noticed for days a certain moodiness and unresponsiveness
about him; had tried rather timidly to win him from it; had got up
uneasily half a dozen times in the night just past to look across the
garden to his house, and wonder why Barry's light burned on and on.
She had meant to send for him in the morning, but Billy, artlessly
appearing when the waffles came on at breakfast, remarked that Dad was
gone to San Francisco.
"To the city, Billy?" Sidney asked. "Didn't he say why?"
"He didn't even say goodbye," Billy replied cheerfully. "He just left a
note for Hayashi. It said he didn't know how long he would be gone."
Sidney tried with small success to deceive herself into thinking that
it was the mere mysteriousness of this that cut her. She presently went
down to see Mrs. Carew, and was fretted because that lady would for
some time discuss nothing but the successful treatment of insects on
the rose-bushes.
"Barry seems to have disappeared," said Sidney finally, in a casual
tone.
Mrs. Carew straightened up, forgot hellebore and tobacco juice for the
moment.
"Did I tell you what Silva told me?" she asked.
"Silva?" echoed Sidney, at a loss.
"The milkman. He told me that when he came up at five o'clock this
morning, Barry came out of the gate, and that he looked AWFULLY. He
said he was pale, and that his eyes looked badly, and that he hardly
seemed to know what he was doing. And oh, my dear, I'm afraid that he's
drinking again! I'm sure of it. It's two years now since he has done
this. I think it's too bad. But you know he used to go down to town
every little while for a regular TIME with those newspaper men. He
doesn't like Santa Paloma, you know. He gets very bored here. He'll be
back in a day or two, thoroughly ashamed of himself."
Sidney did not answer, because she could not. Resentment and loyalty,
shame and heartache, kept her lips dumb. She walked to and fro in the
garden, alone in the sweet early darkness, for an hour. Then she went
indoors, and tried to amuse herself at the piano. Suddenly her face
twisted, she laid her arm along the rack, and her face on her arm; but
it was only for a moment; then she straightened up resolutely, piled
the music, closed the piano, and went upstairs.
"But perhaps I'm not old enough yet for an olive garden," she told the
stars from her window an hour later.
CHAPTER XV
Another day went by, and still there was no news from Barry. The early
autumn weather was exquisite, and Sidney, with the additional work for
the Mail that the editor's absence left for her, found herself very
busy. But life seemed suddenly to taste flat and uninteresting to her.
The sunlight was glaring, the afternoons dusty and windy, and under all
the day's duties and pleasures--the meeting of neighbors, the
children's confidences, her busy coming and going up and down the
village streets--ran a sick undercurrent of disappointment and
heartache. She went to the post-office twice, in that first long day,
for the arriving mail, and Miss Potter, pleased at these glimpses of
the lady from the Hall, chatted blithely as she pushed Italian letters,
London letters, letters from Washington and New York, through the
little wicket.
But there was not a line from Barry. On the second day Sidney began to
think of sending him a note; it might be chanced to the Bohemian Club--
But no, she wouldn't do that. If he did not care enough to write her,
she certainly wouldn't write him.
She began to realize how different Santa Paloma was without his big
figure, his laughter, his joyous comment upon people and things. She
had taken his comradeship for granted, taken it as just one more
element of the old childish days regained, never thought of its rude
interruption or ending.
Now she felt ashamed and sore, she had been playing with fire, she told
herself severely; she had perhaps hurt him; she had certainly given
herself needless heartache. No romantic girl of seventeen ever suffered
a more unreasoning pang than did Sidney when she came upon Barry's
shabby, tobacco-scented office coat, hanging behind his desk, or found
in her own desk one of the careless notes he so frequently used to
leave there at night for her to find in the morning.
However, in the curious way that things utterly unrelated sometimes
play upon each other in this life, these days of bewilderment and
chagrin bore certain good fruit. Sidney had for some weeks been
planning an attack upon the sympathies of the Santa Paloma Women's
Club, but had shrunk from beginning it, because life was running very
smoothly and happily, and she was growing too genuinely fond of her new
neighbors to risk jeopardizing their affection for her by a move she
suspected would be unpopular.
But now she was unhappy, and, with the curious stoicism that is born of
unhappiness, she plunged straight into the matter. On the third day
after Barry's disappearance she appeared at the regular meeting of the
club as Mrs. Carew's guest.
"I hope this means that you are coming to your senses, ye bad girl!"
said Mrs. Apostleman, drawing her to the next chair with a fat
imperative hand.
"Perhaps it does," Sidney answered, with a rather nervous smile. She
sat attentive and appreciative, through the reading of a paper entitled
"Some Glimpses of the Real Burns," and seemed immensely to enjoy the
four songs--Burns's poems set to music--and the clever recitation of
several selections from Burns that followed.
Then the chairman announced that Mrs. Burgoyne, "whom I'm sure we all
know, although she isn't one of us yet (laughter), has asked permission
to address the club at the conclusion of the regular program." There
was a little applause, and Sidney, very rosy, walked rapidly forward,
to stand just below the platform. She was nervous, obviously, and spoke
hurriedly and in a rather unnatural voice.
"Your chairman and president," she began, with a little inclination
toward each, "have given me permission to speak to you today for five
minutes, because I want to ask the Santa Paloma Women's Club a favor--a
great favor, in fact. I won't say how much I hope the club will decide
to grant it, but just tell you what it is. It has to do with the
factory girls across the river. I've become interested in some of them;
partly I suppose because some friends of mine are working for just such
girls, only under infinitely harder circumstances, in some of the
eastern cities, I feel, we all feel, I know, that the atmosphere of Old
Paloma is a dangerous one for girls. Every year certain ones among them
'go wrong,' as the expression is; and when a girl once does that, she
is apt to go very wrong indeed before she stops. She doesn't care what
she does, in fact, and her own people only make it harder, practically
drive her away. Or even if she marries decently, and tries to live down
all the past it comes up between her and her neighbors, between her and
her children, perhaps, and embitters her whole life. And so finally she
goes to join that terrible army of women that we others try to pretend
we never see or hear of at all. These girls work hard all day, and
their homes aren't the right sort of homes, with hot dirty rooms,--full
of quarreling and crowding; and so they slip out at night and meet
their friends in the dancehalls, and the moving-picture shows. And
we--we can't blame them." Her voice had grown less diffident, and rang
with sudden longing and appeal. "They want only what we all wanted a
few years ago," she said. "They want good times, lights and music, and
pretty gowns, something to look forward to in the long, hot
afternoons--dances, theatricals, harmless meetings of all sorts. If we
could give them safe clean fun--not patronizingly, and not too
obviously instructive--they'd be willing to wait for it; they'd talk
about it instead of more dangerous things; they'd give up dangerous
things for it. They are very nice girls, some of them, and their
friends are very nice fellows, for the most part, and they are--they
are so very young.
"However, about the club--I am wondering if it could be borrowed for a
temporary meeting-place for them, if we form a sort of club among them.
I say temporary, because I hope we will build them a clubhouse of their
own some day. But meantime there is only the Grand Opera House, which
all the traveling theatrical companies rent; Hansen's Hall, which is
over a saloon, so that won't do; and the Concert Hall, which costs
twenty-five dollars a night. We would, of course, see that the club was
cleaned after every meeting, and pay for the lights. I--I think that's
about all," finished Sidney, feeling that she had put her case rather
ineloquently, and coming to a full stop. She sat down, her eyes
nowhere, her cheeks very red.
There was the silence of utter surprise in the room. After a pause,
Mrs. White raised a gloved hand. Permission from the chair was given
Mrs. White to speak.
"Your idea would be to give the Old Paloma girls a dance here, Mrs.
Burgoyne?"
"Regular dances, yes," said Sidney, standing up. "To let them use the
clubhouse, say, two nights a week. Reading, and singing, and sewing one
night, perhaps, and a dance another. Or we could get good
moving-picture films, or have a concert or play, and ask the mothers
and fathers now and then; charades and Morris dances, something like
that."
"Dancing and moving-pictures--oh, dear, dear!" said Mrs. White, with a
whimsical smile and a shake of her head, and there was laughter.
"All those things take costuming, and that takes money," said the
chairman, after a silence, rather hesitatingly.
"Money isn't the problem," Mrs. Burgoyne rejoined eagerly; "you'll find
that they spend a good deal now, even for the wretched pleasures they
have."
There was another silence. Then Mrs. White again gained permission to
speak, and rose to do so.
"I think perhaps Mrs. Burgoyne, being a newcomer here, doesn't quite
understand our feeling toward our little club," she said very
pleasantly. "We built it," she went on, with a slight touch of emotion,
"as a little refuge from everything jarring and unpleasant; we meant it
to stand for something a little BETTER and FINER than the things of
everyday life can possibly be. Perhaps we felt that there are already
too many dances and too many moving-picture shows in the world; perhaps
we felt that if we COULD forget those things for a little while--I
don't mean," said Mrs. White smilingly reasonable, "that the reform of
wayward girls isn't a splendid and ennobling thing; I believe heartily
in the work institutions and schools are doing along those lines,
but--" and with a pretty little gesture of helplessness she flung out
her hands--"but we can't have a Hull House in every little town, you
know, and I'm afraid we shouldn't find very many Jane Addamses if we
did! Good girls don't need this sort of thing, and bad girls--well,
unfortunately, the world has always had bad girls and always will have!
We would merely turn our lovely clubhouse over to a lot of little
romping hoydens."
"But--" began Mrs. Burgoyne eagerly.
"Just ONE moment," said the President, sweetly, and Mrs. Burgoyne sat
down with blazing cheeks. "I only want to say that I think this is
outside the purpose for which the club was formed," added Mrs. White.
"If the club would care to vote on this, it seems to me that would be
the wisest way of settling the matter; but perhaps we could hear from a
few more members first?"
There was a little rustle of applause at this, and Sidney felt her
heart give a sick plunge, and raged within herself because her own act
had placed her at so great a disadvantage. In another moment, however,
general attention was directed to a tall, plainly dressed, gentle
woman, who rose and said rather shyly:
"Since you suggested our discussing this a little, Mrs. President, I
would like to say that I like this idea very much myself. I've often
felt that we weren't doing very much good, just uplifting ourselves, as
it were, and I hope Mrs. Burgoyne will let me help her in any way I
can, whether the club votes for or against this plan. I--I have four
girls and boys of my own at home, as you know, and I find that even
with plenty of music, and all the library books and company they want,
it's hard enough to keep those children happy at night. And, ladies,
there must be plenty of mothers over there in Old Paloma who worry
about it as we do, and yet have no way of helping themselves. It seems
to me we couldn't put our clubhouse to better use, or our time either,
for that matter. I would vote decidedly 'yes' to such a plan. I've
often felt that we--well, that we rather wasted some of our time here,"
she ended mildly.
"Thank you, Mrs. Moore," said Mrs. White politely.
"I hope it is part of your idea to let our own children have a part in
the entertainments you propose," briskly added another woman, a
clergyman's wife, rising immediately. "I think Doctor Babcock would
thoroughly approve of the plan, and I am sure I do. Every little
while," she went on smilingly, "my husband asks me what GOOD the club
is doing, and I never can answer--"
"Men's clubs do so much good!" said some loud, cheerful voice at the
back of the hall, and there was laughter.
"A great many of them do good and have side issues, like this one, that
are all for good," the clergyman's wife responded quickly, "and
personally I would thank God to be able to save even ten--to save even
one--of those Old Paloma girls from a life of shame and suffering. I
wish we had begun before. Mrs. Burgoyne may propose to build them their
own clubhouse entirely herself; but if not, I hope we can all help in
that too, when the time comes."
"Thank you, Mrs. Babcock," said the President coldly. "What do you
think, Miss Pratt?"
"Oh, Mrs. Carew, and Mrs. Brown, and I all feel as Mrs. Burgoyne does,"
admitted Anne Pratt innocently, a little fluttered.
It was Mrs. White's turn to color.
"I didn't know that the matter had been discussed," she said stiffly.
"Only generally; not in reference to the club," Mrs. Burgoyne supplied
quickly.
"I myself will propose an affirmative vote," said Mrs. Apostleman's
rich old voice. Mrs. Apostleman was entirely indifferent to
parliamentary law, and was never in order. "How d'ye do it? The ayes
rise, is that it?"
She pulled herself magnificently erect by the chair-back in front of
her, and with clapping and laughter the entire club rose to its feet.
"This is entirely out of order," said Mrs. White, very rosy. Everyone
sat down suddenly, and the chairman gave two emphatic raps of her gavel.
The President then asked permission to speak, and moved, with great
dignity, that the matter be laid before the board of directors at the
next meeting, and, if approved, submitted in due order to the vote of
the club.
The motion was briskly seconded, and a few minutes later Sidney found
herself freed from the babel of voices and walking home with nervous
rapidity. "Well, that's over!" she said once or twice aloud. "Thank
Heaven, it's over!"
"Is your head better, Mother?" said Joanna, who had been hanging on the
Hall gate waiting for her mother, and who put an affectionate arm about
her as they walked up the path. "You LOOK better."
"Jo," said Mrs. Burgoyne seriously, "there's one sure cure for the
blues in this world. I recommend it to you, for it's safer than
cocaine, and just as sure. Go and do something you don't want to--for
somebody else."
CHAPTER XVI
It was no pleasant prospect of a reunion at the club, or an evening
with his old friends, that had taken Barry Valentine so suddenly to San
Francisco, but a letter from his wife--or, rather, from his wife's
mother, for Hetty herself never wrote--which had stirred a vague
distrust and discomfort in his mind. Mrs. Scott, his mother-in-law, was
a worldly, shrewd little person, but good-hearted, and as easily moved
or stirred as a child. This was one of her characteristic letters,
disconnected, ill-spelled, and scrawled upon scented lavender paper.
She wrote that she and Hetty were sick of San Francisco, and they
wanted Barry's permission to sell the Mission Street flats that
afforded them a living, and go away once and for all. Het, her mother
wrote, had had a fine offer for the houses; Barry's signature only was
needed to close the deal.
All this might be true; it sounded reasonable enough; but, somehow,
Barry fancied that it was not true, or at least that it was only partly
so. What did Hetty want the money for, he wondered. Why should her
mother reiterate so many times that if Barry for any possible reason
disapproved, he was not to give the matter another thought; they most
especially wanted only his simple yes or no. Why this consideration?
Hetty had always been persistent enough about the things she wanted
before. "I know you would consent if you could see how our hearts are
set on this," wrote Mrs. Scott, "but if you say 'no,' that ends it."
"Sure, I'll sell," Barry said, putting the letter in his pocket. But it
came persistently between him and his work. What mischief was Hetty in,
he wondered. Had some get-rich-quick shark got hold of her; it was
extremely likely. He could not shake the thought of her from his mind,
her voice, her pretty, sullen little face, rose again and haunted him.
What a child she had been, and what a boy he was, and how mistaken the
whole bitter experience!
Walking home late at night, the memory of old days rode him like a
hateful nightmare. He saw the little untidy flat they had had in New
York; the white winter outside, and a deeper chill within; little Billy
coughing and restless; Hetty practising her scales, and he, Barry,
trying to write at one end of the dining-room table. He remembered how
disappointment and restless ambition had blotted out her fresh, babyish
beauty; how thin and sharp her voice had grown as the months went on.
Barry tried to read, but the book became mere printed words. He went
softly into Billy's room, and sat down by the tumbled bed and the small
warm sleeper. Billy, even asleep, snuggled his hand appreciatively into
his father's, and brought its little fellow to lie there too, and
pushed his head up against Barry's arm.
And there the father sat motionless, while the clock outside in the
hall struck two, and three, and four. This was Hetty's baby, and where
was Hetty? Alone with her little fretful mother, moving from
boarding-house to boarding-house. Pretty no longer, buoyed up by the
hope of an operatic career no longer, pinched--as they must be
pinched--in money matters.
The thought came to him suddenly that he must see her; and though he
fought it as unwelcome and distasteful, it grew rapidly into a
conviction. He must see her again, must have a long talk with her, must
ascertain that nothing he could do for the woman who had been his wife
was left undone. He was no longer the exacting, unsuccessful boy she
had left so unceremoniously; he was a man now, standing on his own
feet, and with a recognized position in the community. The little
fretful baby was a well-brushed young person who attended kindergarten
and Sunday School. A new era of respectability and prosperity had set
in. Hetty, his newly awakened sense of justice and his newly aroused
ambition told him, must somehow share it. Not that there could ever be
a complete reconciliation between them, but there could be good-will,
there could be a readjustment and a friendlier understanding.
The thought of Sidney came suddenly upon his idle musings with a shock
that made his heart sick. Gracious, beautiful, and fresh, although she
was older than Hetty, how far she was removed from this sordid story of
his, this darker side of his life! Perhaps months from now, his
troubled thoughts ran on, he would tell her of his visit to Hetty. For
he had determined to visit her.
Just at dawn he left the house and went out of his own gate. His face
was pale, his eyes deeply ringed and his head ached furiously, but it
was with a sort of content that he took his seat in the early train for
San Francisco. He sank into a reverie, head propped on hand, that
lasted until his journey was almost over; but once in the city, his old
dread of seeing his wife came over him again, and it was only after a
leisurely luncheon at the club that Barry took a Turk Street car to the
dingy region where Hetty lived.
The row of dirty bay-windowed houses on either side of the street, and
the dust and papers blowing about in the hot afternoon wind, somehow
reminded him forcibly of old days and ways. With a sinking heart he
went up one of the flights of wooden steps and asked at the door for
Mrs. Valentine. A Japanese boy in his shirt-sleeves ushered him into a
front room. This was evidently the "parlor"; hot sunlight streamed
through the bay windows; there was an upright piano against the closed
folding doors, and a graphophone on a dusty cherry table; wind whined
at the window-casing; one or two big flies buzzed against the glass.
After a while Mrs. Smiley, the widow who conducted this little
boarding-house, who was a cousin of Hetty and whom Barry had known
years ago, came in. She was a tall, angular blonde, cheerlessly
resigned to a cheerless existence. With her came a keen-faced, freckled
boy of fourteen or fifteen, with his finger still marking a place in
the book he had been reading aloud.
Hetty and her mother were out, it appeared. Mrs. Smiley didn't think
they would be back to dinner; in fact, she reiterated nervously, she
was sure they wouldn't. She was extremely and maddeningly
non-committal. No, she didn't know why they wanted to sell the Mission
Street flats. She had warned them it was a silly thing to bother Barry
about it. No, she didn't know when he could see them tomorrow; she
guessed, almost any time.
Barry went away full of uneasy suspicions, and more than ever convinced
that something was wrong. He went back again the next morning, but
nobody but the Japanese boy appeared to be at home. But a visit in the
late afternoon was more successful, for he found Mrs. Smiley and the
tall son again.
"Hetty IS here, isn't she?" he burst out suddenly, in the middle of a
meaningless conversation. Mrs. Smiley turned pale and tried to laugh.
"Where else would she be?" she demanded, and she went back to her
interrupted dissertation upon the unpleasantness of several specified
boarders then under her roof.
"It is funny," Barry mused. "What did she say when she went out?"
"Why--" Mrs. Smiley began uncomfortably, "But, my gracious, I wish you
would ask Aunt Ide, Barry!" she interrupted herself uncomfortably.
"She'll tell you. She's the one to ask." Aunt Ide was Mrs. Scott.
"Tell me WHAT?" he persisted. "You tell me, Lulu; that's a dear."
"Auntie 'll tell you," she repeated, adding suddenly, to the boy,
"Russy, wasn't Aunt Ide in her room when you went up? You run up and
see."
"Nome," said Russell positively; but nevertheless he went.
"Nice kid, Lulu," said Barry in his idle way, "but he looks thin."
"He's the finest little feller God ever sent a woman," the mother
answered with sudden passionate pride. Color leaped to her sallow
cheeks. "But this house is no place for him to be cooped up reading all
day," she went on in a worried tone, after a moment, "and I can't let
him run with the boys around here; it's a regular gang. I don't know
what I AM going to do with him. 'Tisn't as if he had a father."
"He wouldn't like to come up to me, and get broken on the Mail?" Barry
queried in his interested way. "He'd get lots of fresh air, and he
could sleep at my house. I'll keep an eye on him, if you say so."
"Go on the newspaper! I think he'd go crazy with joy," his mother said.
Tears came into her faded eyes. "Barry, you're real good-hearted to
offer it," she said gratefully. "Of all things in the world, that's the
one Russ wants to do. But won't he be in your way?"
"He'll fit right in," Barry said. "Pack him up and send him along. If
he doesn't like it, I guess his mother'll let him come home."
"Like it!" she echoed. Then in a lower tone she added, "You don't know
what a load you're taking off my mind, Barry." She paused, colored
again, and, to his surprise, continued rapidly, with a quick glance at
the door, "Barry, I never did a thing like this before in my life, and
I can't do it now. You know how much I owe Aunt Ide: she took me in,
and did for me just as she did for Het, when I was a baby; she made my
wedding dress, and she came right to me when Gus died, but I can't let
you go back to Santa Paloma not knowing."
"Not knowing what?" Barry said, close upon the mystery at last.
"You know what Aunt Ide is," Mrs. Smiley said pleadingly. "There's not
a mite of harm in her, but she just--You know she'd been signing
Hetty's checks for a long time, Barry--"
"Go on," Barry said, as she paused distressedly.
"And she just went on--" Mrs. Smiley continued simply.
"Went on WHAT?" Barry demanded.
"After Het--went. Barry," the woman interrupted herself, "I oughtn't be
the one to tell you, but don't you see--Don't you see Het's--"
"Dead," Barry heard his own voice say heavily. The cheap little room
seemed to be closing in about him, he gripped the back of the chair by
which he was standing. Mrs. Smiley began to cry quietly. They stood so
for a long time.
After a while he sat down, and she told him about it, with that
faithfulness to inessential detail that marks her class. Barry listened
like a man in a dream. Mrs. Smiley begged him to stay to dinner to see
"Aunt Ide," but he refused, and in the gritty dusk he found himself
walking down the street, alone in silence at last. He took a car to the
ocean beach, and far into the night sat on the rocks watching the dark
play of the rolling Pacific, and listening to the steady rush and fall
of the water.
The next day he saw his wife's mother, and at the sight of her
frightened, fat little face, and the sound of the high voice he knew so
well, the last shred of his anger and disgust vanished, and he could
only pity her. He remembered how welcome she had made him to the little
cottage in Plumas, those long years ago; how she had laughed at his
youthful appreciation of her Sunday fried chicken and cherry pie, and
the honest tears she had shed when he went, with the dimpled Hetty
beside him, to tell her her daughter was won. She was Billy's
grandmother, after all, and she had at least seen that Hetty was
protected all through her misguided little career from the breath of
scandal, and that Hetty's last days were made comfortable and serene.
He assured her gruffly that it was "all right," and she presently
brightened, and told him through tears that he was a "king," when it
was finally arranged that she should go on drawing the rents of the
Mission Street property for the rest of her life. She and Mrs. Smiley
persuaded him to dine with them, and he thought it quite characteristic
of "Aunt Ide" to make a little occasion of it, and take them to a
certain favored little French restaurant for the meal. But Mrs. Smiley
was tremulous with gratitude and relief, Russell's face was radiant,
his adoring eyes all for Barry, and Barry, always willing to accept a
situation gracefully, really enjoyed his dinner.
He stayed in San Francisco another day and went to Hetty's grave, high
up in the Piedmont Hills, and took a long lonely tramp above the
college town afterward. Early the next morning he started for home,
fresh from a bath and a good breakfast, and feeling now, for the first
time, that he was free, and that it was good to be free--free to work
and to plan his life, and free, his innermost consciousness exulted to
realize, to go to her some day, the Lady of his Heart's Desire, and
take her, with all the fragrance and beauty that were part of her, into
his arms. And oh, the happy years ahead; he seemed to feel the
sweetness of spring winds blowing across them, and the glow of winter
fires making them bright! What of her fabulous wealth, after all, if he
could support her as she chose to live, a simple country gentle-woman,
in a little country town?
Barry stared out at the morning fields and hills, where fog and
sunshine were holding their daily battle, and his heart sang within him.
Fog held the field at Santa Paloma when he reached it, the station
building dripped somberly. Main Street was but a line of vague shapes
in the mist. No grown person was in sight, but Barry was not ten feet
from the train before a screaming horde of small boys was upon him,
with shouted news in which he recognized the one word, over and over:
"Fire!"
It took him a few minutes to get the sense of what they said. He stared
at them dully. But when he first repeated it to himself aloud, it
seemed already old news; he felt as if he had known it for a very long
time: "The MAIL office caught fire yesterday, and the whole thing is
burned to the ground."
"Caught fire yesterday, and the whole thing is burned to the ground:
yes, of course," Barry said. He was not conscious of starting for the
scene, he was simply there. A fringe of idle watchers, obscured in the
fog, stood about the sunken ruins of what had been the MAIL building.
Barry joined them.
He did not answer when a dozen sympathetic murmurs addressed him,
because he was not conscious of hearing a single voice. He stood
silently, looking down at the twisted great knots of metal that had
been the new presses, the great wave of soaked and half-burned
newspapers that had been the last issue of the MAIL. The fire had been
twenty-four hours ago, but the ruins were still smoking. Lengths of
charred woodwork, giving forth a sickening odor, dripped water still;
here and there brave little spurts of flame still sucked noisily. A
twisted typewriter stood erect in steaming ashes; a lunch-basket, with
a red, fringed napkin in it, had somehow escaped with only a wetting.
Barry noticed that the walls of the German bakery next door were badly
singed, that one show-window was cracked across, and that the frosted
wedding-cake inside stood in a pool of dirty water.
He was presently aware that someone was telling him that nobody was to
blame. Details were volunteered, and he listened quietly, like a
dispassionate onlooker. "Hits you pretty hard, Barry," sympathetic
voices said.
"Ruins me," he answered briefly.
And it dawned upon him sickly and certainly that it was true. He was
ruined now. All his hopes had been rooted here, in what was now this
mass of wet ashes steaming up into the fog. Here had been his chance
for a livelihood, and a name; his chance to stand before the community
for what was good, and strong, and helpful. He had been proud because
his editorials were beginning to be quoted here and there; he had been
keenly ambitious for Sidney's plans, her hopes for Old Paloma. How vain
it all was now, and how preposterous it seemed that only an hour ago he
had let his thoughts of the future include her--always so far above
him, and now so infinitely removed!
She would be sympathetic, he knew; she would be all kindness and
generosity. And perhaps, six months ago, he would have accepted more
generosity from her; but Barry had found himself now, and he knew that
she had done for him all he would let her do.
He smiled suddenly and grimly as he remembered another bridge, just
burned behind him. If he had not promised Hetty's mother that her
income should go on uninterruptedly, he might have pulled something out
of this wreckage, after all. For a moment he speculated: he COULD sell
the Mission Street property now; he might even revive the MAIL, after a
while--
But no, what was promised was promised, after all, and poor little Mrs.
Scott must be left to what peace and pleasure the certainty of an
income gave her. And he must begin again, somehow, somewhere, burdened
with a debt, burdened with a heartache, burdened with--His heart turned
with sudden warmth to the thought of Billy; Billy at least, staunch
little partner of so many dark days, and bright, should not be counted
a burden.
Even as he thought of his son, a small warm hand slid into his with a
reassuring pressure, and lie looked down to see the little figure
beside him. Moment after moment went by, timid shafts of gold sunshine
were beginning to conquer the mist now, and still father and son stood
silent, hand in hand.
CHAPTER XVII
The mischief was done; no use to stand there by the smoking ruins of
what had been his one real hope for himself and his life. After a while
Barry roused himself. There seemed to be nothing to do at the moment,
no more to be said. He and Billy walked up River Street to their own
gate, but when they reached it, Barry, obeying an irresistible impulse,
merely left his coat and suit-case there, and went on through the Hall
gateway, and up to the house.
The sun was coming out bravely now, and already he felt its warmth in
the garden. Everywhere the fog was rising, was fading against the green
of the trees. He followed a delicious odor of wood smoke and the sound
of voices, to the barnyard, and here found the lady of the house, with
her inevitable accompaniment of interested children. Sidney was
managing an immense brush fire with a long pole; her gingham skirt
pinned back trimly over a striped petticoat, her cheeks flushed, her
hair riotous under a gipsy hat.
At Barry's first word she dropped her pole, her whole face grew
radiant, and she came toward him holding out both her hands.
"Barry!" she said eagerly, her eyes trying to read his face, "how glad
I am you've come! We didn't know how to reach you. You've heard, of
course--! You've seen--?"
"The poor old MAIL? Yes, I'm just from there," he said soberly. "Can we
talk?"
"As long as you like," she answered briskly. And after some directions
to the children, she led him to the little garden seat below the side
porch, and they sat down. "Barry, you look tired," she said then. "Do
you know, I don't know where you've been all these days, or what you
went for? Was it to San Francisco?"
"San Francisco, yes," he assented, "I didn't dream I'd be there so
long." He rubbed his forehead with a weary hand. "I'll tell you all
about it presently," he said. "I had a letter from my wife's mother
that worried me, and I started off at half-cock, I got worrying--but of
course I should have written you--"
"Don't bother about that now, if it distresses you," she said quickly
and sympathetically. "Any time will do for that. I--I knew it was
something serious," she went on, relief in her voice, "or you wouldn't
have simply disappeared that way! I--I said so. Barry, are you hungry?"
He tried to laugh at the maternal attitude that was never long absent
in her, but the tears came into his eyes instead. After all the strain
and sleeplessness and despondency, it was too poignantly sweet to find
her so simply cheering and trustful, in her gipsy dress, with the
brightening sunlight and the sweet old garden about her. Barry could
have dropped on his knees to bury his face in her skirts, and feel the
motherly hands on his hair, but instead he admitted honestly to hunger
and fatigue.
Sidney vanished at once, and presently came back followed by her black
cook, both carrying a breakfast that Barry was to enjoy at once under
the rose vines. Sidney poured his coffee, and sat contentedly nibbling
toast while he fell upon the cold chicken and blackberries.
"Now," said her heartening voice, "we'll talk! What is to be done first
about the MAIL?"
"No insurance, you know," he began at once. "We never did carry any in
the old days and I suppose that's why I didn't. So that makes it a dead
loss. Worse than that--for I wasn't clear yet, you know. The safe they
carried out; so the books are all right, I suppose, although they say
we had better not open it for a few days. Then I can settle everything
up as far as possible. And after that--well, I've been thinking that
perhaps Barker, of the San Francisco TELEGRAM might give me a start of
some sort--" He rumpled his hair with a desperate gesture. "The thing's
come on me like such a thunderbolt that I really haven't thought it
out!" he ended apologetically.
"The thing's come on you like such a thunderbolt," she echoed
cheerfully, "that you aren't taking it like yourself at all! The
question, is if we work like Trojans from now on, can we get an issue
of the MAIL out tomorrow?"
"Get an issue out tomorrow!" he repeated, staring at her.
"Certainly. I would have done what I could about it," said Sidney
briskly, "but not knowing where you were, or when you were coming back,
my hands were absolutely tied. Now, Barry, LISTEN!" she broke off, not
reassured by his expression, "and don't jump at the conclusion that
it's impossible. What would it mean?"
"To get an issue of the MAIL out tomorrow? Why, great Scott, Sid, you
don't seem to realize that there's not a stick left standing!"
"I do realize. I was there until the fire was out," she said calmly.
And for a few minutes they talked of the fire. Then she said abruptly:
"Would Ferguson let you use the old STAR PRESS for a few weeks, do you
think?"
"I don't see why he should," Barry said perversely.
"I don't see why he shouldn't. I'll tell you something you don't know.
Night before last, Barry, while I was down in the office, old Ferguson
himself came in, and poked about, and asked various questions. Finally
he asked me what I thought the chances were of your wanting to buy out
the Star. What do you think at THAT?"
"He's sick of it, is he?" Barry said, with kindling eyes. "Well, we've
seen that coming, haven't we? I will be darned!" He shook his head
regretfully. "That would have been a big thing for the MAIL" he said,
"but it's all up now!"
"Not necessarily," the lady undauntedly rejoined. "I've been thinking,
Barry," she went on, "if you reordered the presses, they'd give you
plenty of time to pay for them, wouldn't they? Might even take
something off the price, under the circumstances?"
"I suppose they might." He made an impatient gesture. "But that's just
one--"
"One item, I know. But it's the main item. Then you could rent the
office and loft over the old station, couldn't you? And move the old
Star press in there this afternoon."
"This afternoon," said Barry calmly.
"Well, we don't gain anything by waiting. You can write a manly and
affecting editorial,"--her always irrepressible laughter broke out,
"full of allusions to the phoenix, you know! And my regular Saturday
column is all done, and Miss Porter can send in something, and there's
any amount of stuff about the Folsom lawsuit. And Young, Mason and
Company ought to take at least a page to advertise their premium day
to-morrow. I'll come down as soon as you've moved--"
Barry reached for his hat.
"The thing can't be done," he announced firmly, "but, by George, Sid,
you would give a field mouse courage! And what a grandstand play, if we
COULD put it through! There's not a second to be lost, though. But look
here," and with sudden gravity he took both her hands, "it'll take some
more money, you know."
"I have some more money," she answered serenely.
"Well, I'll GET some!" he declared emphatically. "It won't be so much,
either, once we get started. And so old Ferguson wanted to sell, did
he?"
"He did. And we'll buy the STAR yet." They were on the path now.
"Telephone me when you can," she said, "and don't lose a minute now!
Good luck!"
And Barry's great stride had taken him half-way down River Street, his
hands in his pockets, his mind awhirl with plans, before it occurred to
him that he had not told her the news of Hetty, after all.
CHAPTER XVIII
On that same afternoon, several of the most influential members of the
Santa Paloma Woman's Club met informally at Mrs. Carew's house. Some of
the directors were there, Miss Pratt, Mrs. Lloyd and Mrs. Adams, and of
course Mrs. White, who had indeed been instrumental in arranging the
meeting. They had met to discuss Mrs. Burgoyne's plan of using the
clubhouse as a meeting place for the Old Paloma factory girls. All
these ladies were quite aware that their verdict, however unofficial,
would influence the rest of the club, and that what this group of a
dozen or fifteen decided upon to-day would practically settle the
matter.
Mrs. Willard White, hitherto serenely supreme in this little world, was
curiously upset about the whole thing, openly opposed to Mrs.
Burgoyne's suggestion, and surprised that her mere wish in the matter
was not sufficient to carry a negative vote. Her contention was that
the clubhouse had been built for very different purposes than those
Mrs. Burgoyne proposed, and that charity to the Old Paloma girls had no
part in the club's original reasons for being. She meant, in the course
of the argument, to hint that while so many of the actual necessities
of decent living were lacking in the factory settlement homes, mere
dancing and moving-pictures did not appeal to her as reasonable or
right; and although uneasily aware that she supported the unpopular
argument, still she was confident of an eventual triumph.
But despite the usual laughter, and the pleasantries and compliments,
there was an air of deadly earnestness about the gathered club-women
today that bespoke a deeper interest than was common in the matter up
for discussion. The President's color rose and deepened steadily, as
the afternoon wore on, and one voice after another declared for the new
plan, and her arguments became a little less impersonal and a little
more sharp. This was especially noticeable when, as was inevitable, the
name of Mrs. Burgoyne was introduced.
"I personally feel," said Mrs. White finally, "that perhaps we Santa
Paloma women are just a little bit undignified when we allow a perfect
stranger to come in among us, and influence our lives so materially,
JUST because she happens to be a multi-millionaire. Are we so swayed by
mere money? I hope not. I hope we all live our lives as suits US best,
not to please--or shall I say flatter, and perhaps win favor with?--a
rich woman. We--some of us, that is!"--her smile was all
lenience--"have suddenly decided we can dress more simply, have
suddenly decided to put our girls into gingham rompers, and instead of
giving them little dancing parties, let them play about like boys! We
wonder why we need spend our money on imported hats and nice dinners
and hand-embroidered underwear, and Oriental rugs, although we thought
these things very well worth having a few months ago--and why? Just
because we are easily led, I'm afraid, and not quite conscious enough
of our own dignity!"
There had been a decided heightening of color among the listening women
during this little speech, and, as the President finished, more than
one pair of eyes rested upon her with a slightly resentful steadiness.
There was a short silence, in which several women were gathering their
thoughts for speech, but Mrs. Brown, always popular in Santa Paloma,
from the days of her short braids and short dresses, and quite the
youngest among them to-day, was the first to speak.
"I daresay that is quite true, Mrs. White," said Mrs. Brown, with
dignity, "except that I don't think Mrs. Burgoyne's money influences
me, or any of us! I admit that she herself, quite apart from her great
fortune, has influenced me tremendously in lots of ways, but I don't
think she ever tried to do it, or realizes that she has. And as far as
copying goes, don't we women always copy somebody, anyway? Aren't we
always imitating the San Francisco women, and don't they copy New York,
and doesn't New York copy London or Paris? We read what feathers are
in, and how skirts are cut, and how coffee and salads are served, and
we all do it, or try to. And when Mrs. Burgoyne came to the Hall, and
never took one particle of interest in that sort of thing, I just
thought it over and wondered why I should attempt to impress a woman
who could buy this whole town and not miss the money?"
Laughter interrupted her, and some sympathetic clapping, but she
presently went on seriously:
"I took all the boys' white socks one day, and dyed them dark brown.
And I dyed all their white suits dark blue. I've gotten myself some
galatea dresses that nothing tears or spoils, and that come home fresh
and sweet from the wash every week. And, as a result, I actually have
some time to spare, for the first time since I was married. We are
going to try some educational experiments on the children this winter,
and, if that leaves any leisure, I am heart and soul for this new plan.
Doctor Brown feels as I do. Of course, he's a doctor," said the loyal
little wife, "and he KNOWS! And he says that all those Old Paloma girls
want is a little mothering, and that when there are mothers enough to
go round, there won't be any charity or legislation needed in this
world."
"I think you've said it all, for all of us, Mary!" Mrs. Carew said,
when some affectionate applause had subsided. "I think things were
probably different, a few generations ago," she went on, "but nowadays
when fashions are so arbitrary, and change so fast, really and
honestly, some of us, whose incomes are limited, will have to stop
somewhere. Why, the very children expect box-parties, and motor-trips,
and caterers' suppers, in these days. And one wouldn't mind, if it left
time for home life, and reading, and family intercourse, but it
doesn't. We don't know what our children are studying, what they're
thinking about, or what life means to them at all, because we are too
busy answering the telephone, and planning clothes, and writing formal
notes, and going to places we feel we ought to be seen in. I'm having
more fun than I had in years, helping our children plan some abridged
plays from Shakespeare, with the Burgoyne girls, for this winter, and
I'm perfectly astonished, even though I'm their mother, at their
enjoyment of it, and at my own. Mr. Carew himself, who NEVER takes much
interest in that sort of thing, asked me why they couldn't give them
for the Old Paloma Girls' Club, if they get a club room. I didn't know
he even knew anything about our club plans. I said, 'George, are you
willing to have Jeannette get interested in that crowd?' and he said,
'Finest thing in the world for her!' and I don't know," finished Mrs.
Carew, thoughtfully, "but what he's right."
"I'm all for it," said breezy Mrs. Lloyd, "I don't imagine I'd be any
good at actually talking to them, but I would go to the dances, and
introduce people, and trot partners up to the wallflowers--"
There was more laughter, and then Mrs. Adams said briskly:
"Well, let's take an informal vote!"
"I don't think that's necessary, Sue," said Mrs. White, generously, "I
think I am the only one of us who believes in preserving the tradition
of the dear old club, and I must bow to the majority, of course.
Perhaps it will be a little hard to see strangers there; our pretty
floors ruined, and our pretty walls spotted, but--" an eloquent shrug,
and a gesture of her pretty hands finished the sentence with the words,
"isn't that the law?"
And upon whole-hearted applause for Mrs. White, Mrs. Carew tactfully
introduced the subject of tea.
They were all chatting amicably enough in the dining-room a few minutes
later when George Carew and Barry Valentine came in. Barry, who seemed
excited, exhilarated and tired, had come to borrow a typewriter from
the Carews. He responded to sympathetic inquiries, that he had been
working like a madman since noon, and that there would be an issue of
the Mail ready for them in the morning. He said, "everyone had been
simply corking about everything," and it began to look like smooth
sailing now. In the few minutes that he waited for young George Carew
to find the typewriter and bring it down to him, a fresh interruption
occurred in the entrance of old Mrs. Apostleman.
Mrs. Apostleman, between being out of breath from hurrying up the hill
in the late afternoon heat, and fearful that the gathering would break
up before she could say what she wanted to say, and entirely unable to
control her gasping and puffing, was a sight at once funny and
pitiable. As she sank into a comfortable chair she held up one fat hand
to command attention, and with the other laid forcible hold upon Barry
Valentine. Three or four of the younger women hurried to her with fans
and tea, and in a moment or two she really could manage disconnected
words.
"Thanks, me dear. No, no cake. Just a mouthful of tea to--there, that's
better! I was afraid ye'd all be gone--that'll do, thank ye, Susie!
Well," she set down her tea-cup, "well! I've a little piece of news for
you all--don't go, Barry, you'll be interested in this, and I couldn't
wait to come up and tell ye!" She began to fumble in her bag, and
presently produced therefrom her eye-glasses and a letter. The latter
she opened with a great crackling of paper.
"This is from me brother, Alexander Wetherall," said she, with an
impressive glance over her glasses. "As ye know, he's a family lawyer
in New York, he has the histories of half the old families in the
country pigeon-holed away in those old offices of his. He doesn't write
me very often; his wife does now and then--stupid woman, but nice.
However, I wrote him in May, and told him Mrs. Burgoyne had bought the
Hall, and just asked him what he knew about her and her people. Here--"
marking a certain line with a pudgy, imperative finger, she handed a
page of the letter to Barry, "read from there on," she commanded, "this
is what he says."
Barry took the paper, but hesitated.
"It's all right!" said the old lady, impatiently, "nobody could say
anything that wasn't good about Sidney Burgoyne."
Thus reassured, Barry turned obediently to the indicated place.
"'You ask me about your new neighbor,'" he read, "'I suppose of course
you know that she is Paul Frothingham's only child by his second
marriage. Her mother died while she was a baby, and Frothingham took
her all over the world with him, wherever he went. She married very
young, Colonel John Burgoyne, of the Maryland family, older than she,
but a very fine fellow. As a girl and as his wife she had an
extraordinary opportunity for social success, she was a great favorite
in the diplomatic circle at Washington, and well known in the best
London set, and in the European capitals. She seems to be quite a
remarkable young woman, but you are all wrong about her money; she is
very far from rich. She--'"
Barry stopped short. Mrs. Apostleman cackled delightedly; no one else
stirred.
"'She got very little of Frothingham's money,'" Barry presently read
on, '"it came to him from his first wife, who was a widow with two
daughters when he married her. The money naturally reverted to her
girls, Mrs. Fred Senior and Mrs. Spencer Mack, both of this city.'"
"Ha! D'ye get that?" said Mrs. Apostleman. "Go on!"
"'Frothingham left his own daughter something considerably less than a
hundred thousand dollars,'" Barry presently resumed, "'not more than
seventy or eighty thousand, certainly. It is still invested in the
estate. It must pay her three or four thousand a year. And besides that
she has only Burgoyne's insurance, twenty or twenty-five thousand, for
those years of illness pretty well used up his own money. I believe the
stepsisters were very anxious to make her a more generous arrangement,
but she seems to have declined it. Alice says they are quite devoted--'"
"Alice don't count!" said the old lady "that's his wife. That's
enough." She stopped the reader and refolded the letter, her
mischievous eyes dancing. "Well, what d'ye think of that?" she demanded.
Barry's bewildered, "Well, I will be darned!" set loose a babel of
tongues. Mrs. Apostleman had not counted in vain upon a sensation;
everyone talked at once. Mrs. White's high, merry laugh dominated all
the other voices.
"So there is a very much better reason for this
simple-dinner-blue-gingham existence than we supposed," said the
President of the Santa Paloma Women's Club amusedly when the first rush
of comment died away. "I think that is quite delicious! While all of us
were feeling how superior she was not to get a motor, and not to
rebuild the Hall, she was simply living within her income, and making
the best of it!"
"I don't know that it makes her any less superior," Mrs. Carew said
thoughtfully. "It--it certainly makes her seem--NICER. I never
suspected her of--well, of preaching, exactly, but I have sometimes
thought that she really couldn't enter into our point of view, with all
that money! I think I'm going to like her more than ever!" she finished
laughingly.
"Why, it's the greatest relief in the world!" exclaimed Mrs. Adams.
"I've been rather holding back about going up there, and imitating her,
because I honestly didn't want to be influenced by eight millions, and
I was afraid. I WAS. Not a week ago Wayne asked me if I thought she'd
like him to donate a sewing machine to her Girls' Club for them to run
up their little costumes with--he has the agency, you know--and I said,
'Oh, don't, Wayne, she can buy them a sewing machine apiece if she
wants to, and never know it!' But I'm going to make him write her,
TO-NIGHT," said Mrs. Adams, firmly, "and I declare I feel as if a
weight had dropped off my shoulders. It MEANS so much more now, if we
offer her the club. It means that we aren't merely giving a Lady
Bountiful her way, but that we're all working together like neighbors,
and trying to do some good in the world."
"And I don't think there's any question that she would live exactly
this way," Miss Pratt contributed shyly, "and play with the children,
and dress as she does, even if she had fifty millions! She's simply
found out what pays in this life, and what doesn't pay, and I think a
good many of us were living too hard and fast ever to stop and think
whether it was really worth while or not. She's the happiest woman I
ever knew; it makes one happy just to be with her, and no money can buy
that."
"But it's curious she never has taken the trouble to undeceive us,"
said Mrs. White beginning to fit on an immaculate pair of white gloves,
finger by finger.
"Why--you'll see!--She never dreamed we thought she was anything but
one of ourselves." Mrs. Brown predicted. "Why should she? When did she
ever speak of money, or take the least interest in money? She never
speaks of it. She says 'I can't afford the time, or I can't afford the
effort,' that's what counts with her. Doesn't it, Barry?"
"Barry, do you really suppose--" Mrs. Carew was beginning, as she
turned to the doorway where he had been standing.
But Barry had gone.
CHAPTER XIX
Barry went straight up to the Hall, but Sidney was not there. Joanna
and Ellen, busily murmuring over "Flower Ladies" on the wide terrace
steps, told him that Mother was to be late to supper, and, with
obviously forced hospitality and one eye upon their little families of
inverted roses and hollyhocks, asked him to wait. Barry thanked them,
but couldn't wait.
He went like a man in a dream down River Street, past gardens that
glowed with fragrant beauty, and under the great trees and the warm,
sunset sky. And what a good world it seemed to be alive in, and what a
friendly village in which to find work and love and content. A dozen
returning householders, stopping at their gates, wanted the news of his
venture, a dozen freshly-clad, interested women, watering lawns in the
shade, called out to wish him good fortune. And always, before his
eyes, the thought of the vanished millions danced like a star. She was
not infinitely removed, she was not set apart by great fortune, she was
only the sweetest and best of women, to be wooed and won like any
other. He ran upstairs and flung open the door of the little bare new
office of the MAIL, like an impetuous boy. There was no one there. But
a wide white hat with a yellow rose pinned on it hung above the new oak
desk in the corner, and his heart rose at the sight. His own desk had
an improvised drop light hung over it; he lowered the typewriter from
his cramped arm upon a mass of clippings and notes. Beyond this room
was the great bare loft, where two or three oily men were still toiling
in the fading light over the establishing of the old STAR press. Sashes
had been taken from one of the big windows to admit the entrance of the
heavier parts; thick pulley ropes dangled at the sill. Great unopened
bundles of gray paper filled the center of the floor, a slim amused
youth was putting the finishing touches to a telephone on the wall, and
Sidney, bare-headed, very business-like and keenly interested, was
watching everybody and making suggestions. She greeted Barry with a
cheerful wave of the hand.
"There you are!" she said, relievedly. "Come and see what you think of
this. Do you know this office is going to be much nicer than the old
one? How goes everything with you?"
"Like lightning!" he answered. "At this rate, there's nothing to it at
all. Have the press boys showed up yet?"
"They are over at the hotel, getting their dinners," she explained.
"And we have borrowed lamps from the hotel to use here this evening.
Did you hear that Martin, of the Press, you know, has offered to send
over the A.P. news as fast as it comes in? Isn't that very decent of
him? Here's Miss Porter's stuff."
She sat down, and began to assort papers on her desk, quite absorbed in
what she was doing. Barry, at his own desk, opened and shut a drawer or
two noisily, but he was really watching her, with a thumping heart.
Watching the bare brown head, the lowered lashes, the mouth that moved
occasionally in time with her busy thoughts--
Suddenly she looked up, and their eyes met.
Without the faintest consciousness of what he did, Barry crossed the
floor between them, and as, on an equally unconscious impulse, she
stood up, paling and breathless, he laid his hand over hers on the
littered desk, and they stood so, staring at each other, the desk
between them.
"Sidney," he said incoherently, "who--where--where did your father's
money go--who got it?"
She looked at him in utter bewilderment.
"Where did WHAT--father's money? Who got it? Are you crazy, Barry?" she
stammered.
"Ah, Sidney, tell me! Did it come to you?"
"Why--why--" She seemed suddenly to understand that there was some
reason for the question, and answered quite readily: "It belonged to my
father's first wife, Barry, most of it. And it went to her daughters,
my step-sisters, they are older than I and both married--"
"Then you're NOT worth eight million dollars?"
"I--? Why, you know I'm not!" Her eyes were at their widest. "Who ever
said I was? _I_ never said so!"
"But everyone in town thinks so!" Barry's great sigh of relief came
from his very soul.
Sidney, pale before, grew very red. She freed her hands, and sat down.
"Well, they are very silly, then!" she said, almost crossly. And as the
thought expanded, she added, "But I don't see how anyone COULD! They
must have thought my letting them help me out with the Flower Show and
begging for the Old Paloma girls was a nice piece of affectation! If I
had eight million dollars, or one million, don't you suppose I'd be
DOING something, instead of puttering away with just the beginning of
things!" The annoyed color deepened. "I hope you're mistaken, Barry,"
said she. "Why didn't you set them right?"
"I! Why, I thought so too!"
"Oh, Barry! What a hypocrite you must have thought me!" She buried her
rosy face in her hand for a moment. Presently she rushed on, half
indignantly, "--With all my talk about the sinfulness of American
women, who persistently attempt a scheme of living that is far beyond
their incomes! And talking of the needs of the poor all over the world,
with all that money lying idle!"
"I thought of it chiefly as an absolute and immovable barrier between
us," Barry said honestly, "and that was as far as my thinking went."
Her eyes met his with that curious courage she had when a difficult
moment had to be faced.
"There is a more serious barrier than that between us," she reminded
him gravely.
"Hetty!" he said stupidly. "But I TOLD you--"
But he stopped short, realizing that he had not yet told her, and
rather at a loss.
"You didn't tell me anything," she said, eyeing him steadily.
"Why," Barry's tone was much lower, "I meant to tell you first of all,
but--you know what a day I have had! It seems impossible that I only
left San Francisco this morning."
He brought his chair from his own desk, and sat opposite her, and,
while the summer twilight outside deepened into dusk, unmindful of
time, he went over the pitiful little story. Sidney listened, her
serious eyes never leaving his face, her fine hands locked idly before
her. The telephone boy and the movers had gone now, and there was
silence all about.
"You have suffered enough, Barry; thank God it is all over!" she said,
at the end, "and we know," she went on, with one of her rare
revelations of the spiritual deeps that lay so close to the surface of
her life, "we know that she is safe and satisfied at last, in His
care." For a moment her absent eyes seemed to fathom far spaces. Barry
abruptly broke the silence.
"For one year, Sidney," he said, in a purposeful, steady voice that was
new to her, and that brought her eyes, almost startled, to his face,
"for one year I'm going to show you what I can do. In that time the
Mail will be where it was before the fire, if all goes well. And then--"
"Then--" she said, a little unsteadily, rising and gathering hat and
gloves together, "then you shall come to me and tell me anything you
like! But--but not now! All this is so new and so strange--"
"Ah, but Sidney!" he pleaded, taking her hands again, "mayn't I speak
of it just this one day, and then never again? Let me think for this
whole year that PERHAPS you will marry a country editor, and that we
shall spend the rest of our lives together, writing and planning, and
tramping through the woods, and picnicking with the kiddies on the
river, and giving Christmas parties for every little rag-tag and
bob-tail in Old Paloma!"
"But you don't want to settle down in this stupid village," she laughed
tremulously, tears on her lashes, "at the ugly old Hall, and among
these superficial empty-headed women?"
"Just here," he said, smiling at his own words, "in the sweetest place
in the world, among the best neighbors! I never want to go anywhere
else. Our friends are here, our work is here--"
"And we are here!" she finished it for him, laughing. Barry, with a
great rising breath, put his arms about the white figure, and crushed
her to him, and Sidney laid her hand on his shoulder, and raised her
face honestly for his first kiss.
"And now let me go home to my neglected girls," she said, after an
interval. "You have a busy night ahead of you, and your press boys will
be here any minute."
But first she took a sheet of yellow copy paper, and wrote on it, "One
year of silence. August thirtieth to August thirtieth." "Is this
inclusive?" she asked, looking up.
"Exclusive," said Barry, firmly.
"Exclusive," she echoed obediently. And when she had added the word,
she folded the sheet and gave it to Barry. "There is a little reminder
for you," said she.
Barry went down to the street door with her, to watch her start
homeward in the sweet summer darkness.
"Oh, one more thing I meant to say," she said, as they stood on the
platform of what had been the old station, "I don't know why I haven't
said it already, or why you haven't."
"And that is, Madam--?" he asked attentively.
"It's just this," she swayed a little nearer to him--her laughing voice
was no more than a whisper. "I love you, Barry!"
"Haven't I said that?" he asked a little hoarsely.
"Not yet."
"Then I say it," he answered steadily, "I love you, my darling!"
"Oh, not here, Barry--in the street!" was Mrs. Burgoyne's next remark.
But there was no moon, and no witnesses but the blank walls and
shuttered windows of neighboring storehouses. And the silent year had
not, after all, fairly begun.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne, by Kathleen Norris
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