A moment later when a tall man came up the path and dropped on the top
porch step with an air of being entirely at home, Mrs. Carew was still
dreaming, half-awake and half-asleep.
"Hello, Jeanette!" said the newcomer. "What's new with thee, coz?"
"Don't smoke there, Barry, and get things mussy!" said Mrs. Carew in
return, smiling to soften the command, and to show Barry Valentine that
he was welcome.
Barry was usually welcome everywhere, although not at all approved in
many cases, and criticised even by the people who liked him best. He
was a sort of fourth cousin of Mrs. Carew, who sometimes felt herself
called to the difficult task of defending him because of the distant
kinship. He was very handsome, lean, and dark, with a sleepy smile and
with eyes that all children loved; and he was clever, or, at least,
everyone believed him to be so; and he had charm--a charm of sheer
sweetness, for he never seemed to be particularly anxious to please.
Barry was very gallant, in an impersonal sort of way: he took a keen,
elder-brotherly sort of interest in every pretty girl in the village,
and liked to discuss their own love affairs with them, with a
seriousness quite paternal. He never singled any girl out for
particular attention, or escorted one unless asked, but he was
flatteringly attentive to all the middle-aged people of his
acquaintance and his big helpful hand was always ready for stumbling
old women on the church steps, or tearful waifs in the street--he
always had time to listen to other people's troubles. Barry--everyone
admitted--had his points. But after all--
After all, he was lazy, and shiftless, and unambitious: he was content
to be assistant editor of the Mail; content to be bullied and belittled
by old Rogers; content to go on his own idle, sunny way, playing with
his small, chubby son, foraging the woods with a dozen small boys at
his heels, working patiently over a broken gopher-trap or a rusty
shotgun, for some small admirer. Worst of all, Barry had been
intemperate, years ago, and there were people who believed that his
occasional visits to San Francisco, now, were merely excuses for revels
with his old newspaper friends there.
And yet, he had been such a brilliant, such a fiery and ambitious boy!
All Santa Paloma had taken pride in the fact that Barry Valentine, only
twenty, had been offered the editorship of the one newspaper of Plumas,
a little town some twelve miles away, and had prophesied a triumphant
progress for him, to the newspapers of San Francisco, of Chicago, of
New York! But Barry had not been long in Plumas when he suddenly
married Miss Hetty Scott of that town, and in the twelve years that had
passed since then the golden dreams for his future had vanished one by
one, until to-day found him with no one to believe in him--not even
himself.
Hetty Scott was but seventeen when Barry met her, and already the
winner in two village contests for beauty and popularity. After their
marriage she and Barry went to San Francisco, and shrewd, little,
beautiful Hetty found herself more admired than ever, and began to talk
of the stage. After that, Santa Paloma heard only occasional rumors:
Barry had a position on a New York paper, and Hetty was studying in a
dramatic school; there was a baby; there were financial troubles, and
Barry was drinking again; then Hetty was dead, and Barry, fearing the
severe eastern winters for the delicate baby, was coming back to Santa
Paloma. So back they came, and there had been no indication since, that
the restless, ambitious Barry of years ago was not dead forever.
"No smoking?" said Barry now, good-naturedly. "That's so; you've got
some sort of 'High Jinks' on for to-night, haven't you? I brought up
those hinges for your mixing table, Jen," he went on, "but any time
will do. I suppose the kitchen is right on the fault, as it were."
"The kitchen DOES look earthquakey," admitted Mrs. Carew with a laugh,
"but the girls would be glad to have the extra table; so go right
ahead. I'll take you out in a second. I have been on the GO," she added
wearily, "since seven this morning: my feet are like balls of fire. You
don't know what the details are. Why, just tying up the prizes takes a
good HOUR!"
"Anything go wrong?" asked the man sympathetically.
"Oh, no; nothing particular. But you know how a house has to LOOK! Even
the bathrooms, and our room, and the spare room--the children do get
things so mussed. It all sounds so simple; but it takes such a time."
"Well, Annie--doesn't she do these things?"
"Oh, ordinarily she does! But she was sweeping all morning, we moved
things about so last night, and there was china, and glasses to get
down, and the porches--"
"But, Jeanette," said Barry Valentine patiently, "don't you keep this
house clean enough ordinarily without these orgies of cleaning the
minute anybody comes in? I never knew such a house for women to open
windows, and tie up curtains, and put towels over their hair, and run
around with buckets of cold suds. Why this extra fuss?"
"Well, it's not all cleaning," said Mrs. Carew, a little annoyed. "It's
largely supper; and I'm not giving anything LIKE the suppers Mrs. White
and Mrs. Adams give."
"Why don't they eat at home?" said Mr. Valentine hospitably. "What do
they come for anyway? To see the house or each other's clothes, or to
eat? Women are funny at a card party," he went on, always ready to
expand an argument comfortably. "It takes them an hour to settle down
and see how everyone else looks, and whether there happens to be a
streak of dust under the piano; and then when the game is just well
started, a maid is nudging you in the elbow to take a plate of hot
chicken, and another, on the other side, is holding out sandwiches, and
all the women are running to look at the prizes. Now when men play
cards--
"Oh, Barry, don't get started!" his cousin impatiently implored. "I'm
too tired to listen. Come out and fix the table."
"Wish I could really help you," said Barry, as they crossed the hall;
and as a further attempt to soothe her ruffled feelings, he added
amiably, "The place looks fine. The buttercups came up, didn't they?"
"Beautifully! You were a dear to get them," said Mrs. Carew, quite
mollified.
Welcomed openly by all four maids, Barry was soon contentedly busy with
screws and molding-board, in a corner of the sunny kitchen. He and Mrs.
Binney immediately entered upon a spirited discussion of equal
suffrage, to the intense amusement of the others, who kept him supplied
with sandwiches, cake and various other dainties. The little piece of
work was presently finished to the entire satisfaction of everyone, and
Barry had pocketed his tools, and was ready to go, when Mrs. Carew
returned to the kitchen wide-eyed with news.
"Barry," said she, closing the door behind her, "George is here!"
"Well, George has a right here," said Barry, as the lady cast a
cautious glance over her shoulder.
"But listen," his cousin said excitedly; "he thinks he has sold the
Holly house!"
"Gee whiz!" said Barry simply.
"To a Mrs. Burgoyne," rushed on Mrs. Carew. "She's out there with
George on the porch now; a widow, with two children, and she looks so
sweet. She knows the Hollys. Oh, Barry, if she only takes it; such a
dandy commission for George! He's terribly excited himself. I can tell
by the calm, bored way she's talking about it."
"Who is she? Where'd she come from?" demanded Barry.
"From New York. Her father died last year, in Washington, I think she
said, and she wants to live quietly somewhere with the children. Barry,
will you be an angel?"
"Eventually, I hope to," said Mr. Valentine, grinning, but she did not
hear him.
"Could you, WOULD you, take her over the place this afternoon, Barry?
She seems sure she wants it, and George feels he must get back to the
office to see Tilden. You know he's going to sign for a whole floor of
the Pratt Building to-day. George can't keep Tilden waiting, and it
won't be a bit hard for you, Barry. George says to promise her
anything. She just wants to see about bathrooms, and so on. Will you,
Barry?"
"Sure I will," said the obliging Barry. And when Mrs. Carew asked him
if he would like to go upstairs and brush up a little, he accepted the
delicate reflection upon the state of his hair and hands, and said
"sure" again.