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