Books: The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne
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Kathleen Norris >> The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne
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"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!
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