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