Books: The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne

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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.

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