THE BURDICKS
When Rena read Tom’s letter she was very angry for a few moments, and in
the height of her passion commenced her reply, cooling somewhat as she
wrote, but still feeling very sore because Tom had failed her in this
the greatest scheme in which she had ever embarked.
“It is just for fun I’m doing it,” she said, “and the horrid old Tom
calls me unwomanly and a lot more names, when I thought he liked me, and
I have liked him so much. I hate him now almost as much as I do Mr.
Travers—Reginald Travers,” she continued, “what a stiff, stuck-up name,
just like its owner, I know, and not a bit rollicking like Tom Giles.”
Then she read Tom’s letter again, noting particularly what he said about
acting a lie. Rena prided herself upon being truthful to a fault, and
began to waver a little with regard to the plan of her campaign. “I’ll
give Irene some points,” she said, and after finishing Tom’s letter she
began a second one to her cousin.
She had written her very fully on the subject, telling her what she
expected her to do, and Irene had replied, “I am yours to the death.
Where you lead I follow, your obedient slave; and if you wish me to
entice Mr. Travers to make love to me, Delilah was never more seductive
than I can be. If you wish me to be simply the Miss Burdick, I can play
the grand lady to perfection. Of course I must pose as the head of the
Burdicks, the one to whom you defer, and as a starter let me announce
our intended arrival to Mrs. Parks.”
Something in the tone of this letter had struck Rena unpleasantly, but
her infatuation for Irene and her belief that she could do no wrong was
great. Where Rena loved and trusted, she trusted and loved with her
whole soul, and she trusted and loved Irene, who, being the stronger
character, “twisted her around her fingers,” Tom said, and having no
real principle did not always influence her for good. In her second
letter to her cousin, Rena began:
“O, Irene! such a horrid letter as I have had from Tom, calling me
unwomanly, accusing me of deceit, if not of lying, if I let the
people in Oakfield believe I am you and you are me. And he knows Mr.
Travers, who was his room-mate in college two years and his best
friend. Why didn’t he tell me he knew him? That’s just like a man,
and Tom especially, never telling anything we want to know, and Mr.
Travers is ten times worse. I am sure he is. Tom says he is a
gentleman. As if I didn’t know that, or Sandy McPherson would never
have selected him for me. He says, too, he is the soul of honor, and
a lot more things. Let me see what he did say.” Here she stopped and
re-read some part of Tom’s letter with a rain of tears, which she
dashed away and began to write again. “He said he was bashful and
reticent, not a bit of a ladies’ man; has no small talk; knows
nothing of girls and does not care to. (He must be horrid.) He would
never be guilty of a mean act, nor suspect treachery in others;
might be easily imposed upon, and isn’t my style, but a clean,
splendid man every way. What did he mean by that, I’d like to know?
Maybe he takes two baths a day instead of one; and just as if a
splendid man couldn’t be my style! I was mad enough at Tom for his
letter, and I intend to be very snippy at first in Oakfield, for he
is going there ostensibly to visit his best friend, but really to
keep an eye on us and see that we do not harm Mr. Travers. In view
of all this we must change our programme. We mustn’t try to make
them think we are somebody else. We will simply go as Miss Irene
Burdick and Miss Rena Burdick, and let them draw their own
conclusions; and if any one asks me square if I am the one meant in
the will, I shall say yes, and you must do the same. The fun will be
spoiled, of course, but Tom will be satisfied and not think me quite
so much of an unwomanly liar as he intimated in his letter. You can
announce our arrival as you proposed, and I shall not take my best
Paris gowns, which might seem out of place on one who was nobody but
Rena. I suppose Tom might say that was a lie, too. Oh, why did that
old man make such a ridiculous will and put me in it, and why were
you not his great-step-granddaughter instead of me? I fancy you
would suit Mr. Travers perfectly. If he has no small talk and does
not care for ladies’ society, you are just the one to bring him out.
My head aches with crying so much over old Tom’s letter and I must
stop. Shall expect you on Saturday. Aunt Mary is off for Saratoga
some time next week, and the house will be closed. With love,
“Rena.”
This letter found Irene Burdick at her home in Claremont, which she
hated, rebelling against it and the station of life in which she had
been born and resolving to get out of it by marrying for money, if she
could do so, and marrying without it, if she could not. “And with my
face I ought to get money,” she would say, when contemplating herself in
her mirror, which showed her a grand specimen of beautiful young
womanhood with scarcely a flaw in her makeup. She was very tall and
erect, with a splendid physique, telling of perfect health and spirits.
Unlike Rena, she was a decided blonde, with regular features and fair
hair, which she wore à la Pompadour, with wide braids supplemented with
false ones coiled around her head like a coronet. In her neck one or two
short loose curls occasionally strayed from the mass of braids as if by
accident, and with no hint of the time spent in giving them their
careless appearance. Everything Irene did was done for effect, and there
was nothing natural about her. Reared in poverty, she early learned to
cater to the whims and wishes of people whose notice she wished to
attract. What they thought and believed, she believed and thought; while
her skilful hands and active, well-balanced brain were always ready to
help in any emergency. To Rena’s slightest wish she was a slave—toady,
Tom called her, and Rena repaid her with a love which saw no fault in
her. Nothing could dissuade her from her faith in and affection for
Irene, who seemed to return the love bestowed upon her. She had heard of
the will which affected Rena so unpleasantly and like her had wished
that she might have been born the step-great-granddaughter of Sandy
McPherson, instead of one of many children where there was a constant
fight for daily bread. Her father was overseer in a cotton mill, where
one of her brothers worked and where she, too, had once been employed
for several months. How she loathed the thought of it, with the roar of
the machinery, the heat and close air, and the associates around her.
“Factory bugs,” some called them, and she was one of them, and despised
herself for it, and when after Rena received her Uncle Reuben’s legacy
she wrote offering to pay her cousin’s expenses at the same school with
herself, she turned her back on Claremont and the factory, and for three
years was a student with Rena at a young ladies’ school in New York. For
nearly every good which had come into her life she was indebted to Rena,
who had paid for her trip to Europe and the rather elaborate wardrobe
she had bought in Paris and which was to do her good service now in the
rôle marked out for her. She heard of the plan with a great deal of
pleasure. Nothing would suit her better than the excitement of it, and
then—. She laughed as she thought, “Give me a chance, and I will win
this Mr. Travers, if what I can learn of him is satisfactory.” She was
very happy now, for Oakfield opened up to her a wonderful field of
adventure, and she was anticipating it greatly when Rena’s second letter
came, and put a little different coloring upon the matter.
“It’s all Tom’s work,” she said, “and I dislike him as much as he
dislikes me and always has. Acting a lie! Of course it is, if one
chooses to give it that harsh name, but are not all our lives a lie? Do
any of us declare our inner thoughts and motives upon the housetops, or
issue daily bulletins with regard to what we intend to do? If I am to
act the part of the Miss Burdick, the prospective bride of Reginald
Travers, I shall do it well, or not at all. There is nothing half-way
about me, and if I can win Reginald Travers, I shall do it. Rena will
never care for him. She is in love with Tom, much as she says she hates
him. I am glad Mr. Travers’ antecedents are all right. Family is
something, when one has none to boast of.”
On the receipt of Rena’s first letter she had set on foot inquiries
concerning Mr. Travers, and learned more of him than Rena herself knew.
He belonged to a fine Virginia family, which became impoverished during
the war. He had, however, inherited something from his parents, both of
whom were dead. There was a house in Richmond, where he was born, a
plantation in tolerably good condition a few miles from the city, and a
small income, sufficient for him to lead the life of a gentleman of
leisure, if he kept his wants within his means. With this knowledge
Irene was ready to take Mr. Travers without Sandy McPherson’s money, if
he proved at all desirable. She had the matter fully in hand and was
only anxious to commence operations. As to Mr. Travers’ character she
had not inquired, nor did she particularly care. An F. F. V. must be
correct, and Rena’s description of him did not disconcert her in the
least, but rather raised her spirits. A bashful man who had no small
talk and did not care for ladies’ society, would be easier to manage
than one up to all the tricks of women, she argued, and she had little
fear of the result. If she succeeded in interesting Reginald in her for
herself she knew exactly the pretty devices she would use in explaining
the mistake when he learned who she really was. She had rehearsed it
more than once in the privacy of her room. She knew the words she would
use, the gestures she would make in her distress, and even the
expression of her eyes, which could look unutterable things when she
willed to have them. Her mirror showed her all this and she practised
before it daily, arguing that it was just as much one’s duty to educate
and train the expression of the eyes and face and smile as to walk and
speak correctly. She had met a good many gentlemen, but they were either
too small fishes for her net, or they saw through her little deceits and
tired of a beauty behind which there was so much that was not real. Now,
however, she meant to succeed, and laid her plans accordingly. She was
twenty-three; she was poor; she hated her humble home. She wanted to
marry, and if she could win Reginald Travers she would do so and lay all
the blame of the deception on Rena, who had persuaded her to it.
There were a few days spent in New York with Rena, whom she thought a
little mopish and stupid and not at all like the bright, sunny girl she
had always known. Rena was beginning to wish she were not going to
Oakfield, and that she had written frankly to Mr. Travers that she
withdrew from the marriage proposition, leaving the field to him.
Mingled with this was a thought of Tom, whose good opinion was
everything to her. She had displeased him and he had scolded her.
“Called me a liar,” she said often to herself; “and I hate him, and
sometimes I don’t care whether his bosom friend is wronged or not.”
This was Rena’s attitude and feeling when with Irene she took her seat
in the train which was to take her to Oakfield, the last place in the
world she would have chosen for her summer outing, if it had not been
for that wretched will. Irene was in high spirits. Her two large trunks
were full of foreign dresses and a number of articles bought in New York
with Rena’s money. She wore a tailor-made suit from Redfern’s, London.
Her tall collar and shirt-waist and boots were up to date. The feather,
or quill in her hat was exquisite in its kind; her manner was _à la
duchesse_ to perfection, and had a stranger been told that here were a
grand lady and maid he would have had no hesitancy in identifying Irene
as the lady and Rena as the maid, in her travelling-dress of dark-blue
serge, her sailor hat with only a plain band of ribbon upon it, and her
modest and quiet manner.
Rena was not very happy. The experiment did not look to her as it did
before she received Tom’s letter. The word liar kept sounding in her
ears, and but for Irene she would have ended the farce. But Irene’s
influence was over her, keeping her silent and rather moody until the
train stopped before the little way station where the McPherson carriage
was waiting. When “Oakfield!” was shouted at the door of the car a young
man arose and came forward, offering to take their parcels. It was Sam
Walker, who was returning from a neighboring town. He had heard from
Lottie of the expected arrivals that day and the moment he entered the
car and saw the two young ladies he said, under his breath, “That’s
them, and gewhitaker-whiz, ain’t she a stunner!” the “she” referring to
Irene, whom he singled out as the Miss Burdick about whom Lottie was so
curious.
There was no doubt in his mind as to which was which, and he barely
glanced at Rena, who chose to carry her own umbrella and bag, but whose
eyes, as she declined his services, flashed upon him a smile which made
him think “she ain’t bad, neither; but, my! what a swell t’other one
is!”
He had Irene’s belongings and helped her from the car, and when he saw
her looking at the McPherson carriage, he said: “That’s the McPhersons.
I’ll bet it has come for you, if you are Miss Burdick. There’s nobody
else on the train.”
“Oh,” Irene exclaimed, “look, Rena!” and she nodded toward the handsome
turnout and the highly respectable-looking coachman advancing toward her
and touching his hat as he came.
“Miss Burdick?” he said, without looking at Rena, and Irene answered:
“I am Miss Burdick—yes.”
The man touched his hat again, and said: “Mr. McPherson has sent his
carriage for you. This way, please.”
“Oh, thanks! It was very kind in him,” Irene replied, entirely ignoring
Rena, who followed meekly to the carriage, which Irene entered before
her, while Sam handed in her bag and umbrella, and then stood a moment
while Nixon unhitched the horses and prepared to mount to his seat.
Seeing Sam there still, he said to him:
“Jump up, Sam. May as well ride as walk this hot day;” then to the
ladies, or rather to Irene, “You don’t mind my givin’ him a lift. This
is Sam Walker; lives next to the Widow Parks’, where you are goin’.”
Irene’s head, which was always held high, went up a little higher as she
nodded condescendingly, but with an air that would have told Nixon that
she resented being introduced to Sam Walker, if it had been in his
nature to understand it. Rena on the contrary leaned forward and said:
“Certainly, let him ride; he looks tired and warm,” and again her
beautiful eyes beamed on Sam a look which made him change his mind a
little as to Irene’s superiority over her. In a moment he was on the
seat with Nixon, but turned toward the ladies, with whom he was inclined
to be sociable, and knowing no reason why he should not be so. Nor was
he at all abashed by the coolness with which Irene listened to him. He
could see Rena’s eyes and the dimples in her cheeks and her smile at his
loquacity, which amused her. He told them who lived in the few houses
they passed, and finally pointed out the McPherson place on the brow of
a hill in the distance. Both girls were now interested and Irene put up
her veil and used her handsome lorgnette, which Sam thought long-handled
spectacles, wondering if her sight were poor. In her rôle as the Miss
Burdick, Irene thought it hardly becoming to make any comment,
especially as Sam was watching her curiously. Rena on the contrary stood
up a moment to look at the imposing house, with its spacious grounds
sloping down to a valley through which a little brook, sometimes
dignified by the name of river, was running.
“It must be very pleasant there,” she said, resuming her seat, while Sam
rejoined:
“Well, you bet! and it or’to be, for Mr. McPherson spent piles of money
on it while he lived. Got company there now, two of ’em—young men, I
mean.”
“Oh, has he come?” Rena asked, impulsively, thinking of Tom, while Irene
said, under her breath,
“Don’t give yourself away.”
Sam could not hear the words, but something in Irene’s manner made him
think that perhaps he was too familiar, and he at once turned his back
to her. He would like to have told them of Nannie’s Well, as they were
now on a rise of ground looking down to the pine-grove, but Irene’s face
was not encouraging to further conversation, and he kept quiet, while
Nixon urged on the horses to a pace which soon brought them to their
destination, where Mrs. Parks stood ready to greet them.