From the moment of her arrival in Santa Paloma, when she stood on the
station platform with a brisk spring wind blowing her veil about her
face, and a small and chattering girl on each side of her, Mrs.
Burgoyne seemed inclined to meet the friendly overtures of her new
neighbors more than half-way. She remembered the baggage-agent's name
from her visit two weeks before--"thank Mr. Roberts for his trouble,
Ellen"--and met the aged driver of the one available carriage with a
ready "Good afternoon, Mr. Rivers!" Within a week she had her pew in
church, her box at the post-office, her membership in the library, and
a definite rumor was afloat to the effect that she had invested several
thousand dollars in the Mail, and that Barry Valentine had bought the
paper from old Rogers outright; and had ordered new rotary presses, and
was at last to have a free hand as managing editor. The pretty young
mistress of Holly Hall, with her two children dancing beside her, and
her ready pleased flush and greeting for new friends, became a familiar
figure in Santa Paloma's streets. She was even seen once or twice
across the river, in the mill colony, having, for some mysterious
reason, immediately opened the bridge that led from her own grounds to
that unsavory region.
She was not formal, not unapproachable, as it had been feared she might
be. On the contrary, she was curiously democratic. And, for a woman
straight from the shops of Paris and New York, her clothes seemed to
the women of Santa Paloma to be surprising, too. She and her daughters
wore plain ginghams for every day, with plain wide hats and trim serge
coats for foggy mornings. And on Sundays it was certainly extraordinary
to meet the Burgoynes, bound for church, wearing the simplest of dimity
or cross-barred muslin wash dresses, with black stockings and shoes,
and hats as plain--far plainer!--as those of the smallest children.
Except for the amazing emeralds that blazed beside her wedding ring,
and the diamonds she sometimes wore, Mrs. Burgoyne might have been a
trained nurse in uniform.
"It is a pose," said Mrs. Willard White, at the club, to a few intimate
friends. "She's probably imitating some English countess. Englishwomen
affect simplicity in the country. But wait until we see her evening
frocks."
It was felt that any formal calling upon Mrs. Burgoyne must wait until
the supposedly inevitable session with carpenters, painters,
paper-hangers, carpet-layers, upholsterers, decorators, furniture
dealers, and gardeners was over at the Hall. But although the old house
had been painted and the plumbing overhauled before the new owner's
arrival, and although all day long and every day two or three
Portuguese day-laborers chopped and pruned and shouted in the garden, a
week and then two weeks slipped by, and no further evidences of
renovation were to be seen.
So presently callers began to go up to the Hall; first Mrs. Apostleman
and Mrs. White, as was fitting, and then a score of other women. Mrs.
Apostleman had been the social leader in Santa Paloma when Mrs. White
was little Clara Peck, a pretty girl in the High School, whose rich
widowed mother dressed her exquisitely, and who was studying French,
and could play the violin. But Mrs. Apostleman was an old woman now,
and had been playing the game a long time, and she was glad to put the
sceptre into younger hands. And she could have put it into none more
competent than those of Mrs. Willard White.
Mrs. White was a handsome, clever woman, of perhaps six-or
seven-and-thirty. She had been married now for seventeen years, and for
all that time, and even before her marriage, she had been the most
envied, the most admired, and the most copied woman in the village. Her
mother, an insipid, spoiled, ambitious little woman, whose fondest hope
was realized when her dashing daughter made a financially brilliant
match, had lost no time in warning the bride that the agonies of
motherhood, and the long ensuing slavery, were avoidable, and Clara had
entirely agreed with her mother's ideas, and used to laughingly assure
the few old friends who touched upon this delicate topic, that she
herself "was baby enough for Will!" Robbed in this way of her natural
estate, and robbed by the size of her husband's income from the
exhilarating interest of making financial ends meet, Mrs. White, for
seventeen years, had led what she honestly considered an enviable and
carefree existence. She bought beautiful clothes for herself, and
beautiful things for her house, she gave her husband and her mother
very handsome gifts. She was a perfect hostess, although it must be
admitted that she never extended the hospitalities of her handsome home
to anyone who did not amuse her, who was not "worth while". She ruled
her servants well, made a fine president for the local Women's Club,
ran her own motor-car very skillfully, and played an exceptionally good
game of bridge. She was an authority upon table-linens, fancy
needlework, fashions in dress, new salads, new methods in serving the
table.
Willard White, as perfect a type in his own way as she was in hers, was
very proud of her, when he thought of her at all, which was really much
less often than their acquaintances supposed. He liked his house to be
nicely managed, spent his money freely upon it, wanted his friends
handsomely entertained, and his wine-cellar stocked with every
conceivable variety of liquid refreshment. If Clara wanted more
servants, let her have them, if she wanted corkscrews by the gross,
why, buy those, too. Only let a man feel that there was a maid around
to bring him a glass when he came in from golfing or motoring, and a
corkscrew with the glass!
As a matter of fact, his club and his office, and above all, his
motor-cars, absorbed him. His natural paternal instinct had been
diverted toward these latter, and, quite without his knowing it, his
cars were his nursery. Willard White had owned the first electric car
ever seen in Santa Paloma. Later, there had been half-a-dozen machines,
and he loved them all, and spoke of them as separate entities. He spoke
of the runs they had made, of the strains they had triumphantly
sustained, and he and his chauffeur held low-toned conferences over any
small breakage, with the same seriousness that he might have used had
Willard Junior--supposing there to have been such a little
person--developed croup, and made the presence of a physician
necessary. He liked to glance across his lawn at night to the
commodious garage, visible in the moonlight, and think of his
treasures, locked up, guarded, perfect in every detail, and safe.
He and Mrs. White always spoke of Santa Paloma as a "jay" town, and
compared it, to its unutterable disadvantage, to other and larger
cities, but still, business reasons would always keep them there for
the greater part of the year, and they were both glad to hear that a
fabulously wealthy widow, and a woman prominent in every other respect
as well, had come to live in Santa Paloma. Mrs. White determined to
play her game very carefully with Mrs. Burgoyne; there should be no
indecent hurry, there should be no sudden overtures at friendship.
"But, poor thing! She will certainly find our house an oasis in the
desert!" Mrs. White comfortably decided, putting on the very handsomest
of her afternoon gowns to go and call formally at the Hall.
Mrs. Burgoyne and the little girls were always most cordial to
visitors. They spent these first days deep in gardening, great heaps of
fragrant dying weeds about them, and raw vistas through the pruned
trees already beginning to show the gracious slopes of the land, and
the sleepy Lobos down beneath the willows. The Carew children and the
little Browns were often there, fascinated by the outdoor work, as
children always are, and little Billy Valentine squirmed daily through
his own particular gap in the hedge, and took his share of the fun with
a deep and silent happiness. Billy gave Mrs. Burgoyne many a heartache,
with his shock of bright, unbrushed hair, his neglected grimed little
hands, his boyish little face that was washed daily according to his
own small lights, with surrounding areas of neck and ears wholly
overlooked, and his deep eyes, sad when he was sad, and somehow
infinitely more pathetic when he was happy. Sometimes she stealthily
supplied Billy with new garters, or fastened the buttons on his blue
overalls, or even gave him a spoonful of "meddy" out of a big bottle,
at the mere sight of which Ellen shuddered sympathetically; a dose
which was always followed by two marshmallows, out of a tin box, by way
of consolation. But further than this she dared not go, except in the
matter of mugs of milk, gingerbread, saucer-pies, and motherly kisses
for any bump or bruise.
The village women, coming up to the Hall, in the pleasant summer
afternoons, were puzzled to find the old place almost unchanged. Why
any woman in her senses wanted to live among those early-Victorian
horrors, the women of Santa Paloma could not imagine. But Mrs. Burgoyne
never apologized for the old walnut chairs and tables, and the old
velvet carpets, and the hopelessly old-fashioned white lace curtains
and gilt-framed mirrors. Even Captain Holly's big clock--"an impossibly
hideous thing," Mrs. White called the frantic bronze horses and the
clinging tiger, on their onyx hillside--was serenely ticking, and the
pink china vases were filled with flowers. And there was an air of such
homely comfort, after all, about the big rooms, such a fragrance of
flowers, and flood of sunny fresh air, that the whole effect was not
half as bad as it might be imagined; indeed, when Mammy Curry, the
magnificent old negress who was supreme in the kitchen and respected in
the nursery as well, came in with her stiff white apron and silver
tea-tray, she seemed to fit into the picture, and add a completing
touch to the whole.
Very simply, very unpretentiously, the new mistress of Holly Hall
entered upon her new life. She was a woman of very quiet tastes,
devoted to her little girls, her music, her garden and her books. With
the negress, she had one other servant, a quiet little New England
girl, with terrified, childish eyes, and a passionate devotion to her
mistress and all that concerned her mistress. Fanny had in charge a
splendid, tawny-headed little boy of three, who played happily by
himself, about the kitchen door, and chased chickens and kittens with
shrieks of delight. Mrs. Burgoyne spoke of him as "Fanny's little
brother," and if the two had a history of any sort, it was one at which
she never hinted. She met an embarrassing question with a readiness
which rather amused Mrs. Brown, on a day when the two younger ladies
were having tea with Mrs. Apostleman, and the conversation turned to
the subject of maids.
"--but if your little girl Fanny has had her lesson, you'll have no
trouble keepin' her," said Mrs. Apostleman.
"Oh, I hope I shall keep Fanny," said Mrs. Burgoyne, "she comes of such
nice people, and she's such a sweet, good girl."
"Why, Lord save us!" said the old lady, repentantly, "and I was almost
ready to believe the child was hers!"
"If Peter was hers, she couldn't be fonder of him!" Mrs. Burgoyne said
mildly, and Mrs. Brown choked on her tea, and had to wipe her eyes.
In the matter of Fanny, and in a dozen other small matters, the
independence of the great lady was not slow in showing itself in Mrs.
Burgoyne. Santa Paloma might be annoyed at her, and puzzled by her, but
it had perforce to accept her as she stood, or ignore her, and she was
obviously not a person to ignore. She declined all invitations for
daytime festivities; she was "always busy in the daytime," she said. No
cards, no luncheons, no tea-parties could lure her away from the Hall,
although, if she and the small girls walked in for mail or were down in
the village for any other reason, they were very apt to stop somewhere
for a chat on their way home. But the children were allowed to go
nowhere alone, and not the smartest of children's parties could boast
of the presence of Joanna and Ellen Burgoyne.
Santa Paloma children were much given to parties, or rather their
parents were; and every separate party was a separate great event. The
little girls wore exquisite hand-made garments, silken hose and white
shoes. Professional entertainers, in fashionably darkened rooms, kept
the little people amused, and professional caterers supplied the supper
they ate, or perhaps the affair took the shape of a box-party for a
matinee, and a supper at the town's one really pretty tea-room
followed. These affairs were duly chronicled in the daily and weekly
papers, and perhaps more than one matron would have liked the
distinction of having Mrs. Burgoyne's little daughters listed among her
own child's guests. Joanna and Ellen were pretty children, in a
well-groomed, bright-eyed sort of way, and would have been popular even
without the added distinction of their ready French and German and
Italian, their charming manners, their naive references to other
countries and peoples, and their beautiful and distinguished mother.
But in answer to all invitations, there came only polite, stilted
little letters of regret, in the children's round script. "Mother would
d'rather we shouldn't go to a sin-gul party until we are young ladies!"
Ellen would say cheerfully, if cross-examined on the subject, leaving
it to the more tactful Joanna to add, "But Mother thanks you JUST as
much." They were always close to their mother when it was possible, and
she only banished them from her side when the conversation grew
undeniably too old in tone for Joanna and Ellen, and then liked to keep
them in sight, have them come in with the tea-tray, or wave to her
occasionally from the river bank.
"We've been wondering what you would do with this magnificent
drawing-room," said Mrs. White, on her first visit. "The house ought to
take a colonial treatment wonderfully--there's a remarkable man in San
Francisco who simply made our house over for us last year!"
"It must have been a fearful upheaval," said Mrs. Burgoyne,
sympathetically.
"Oh, we went away! Mr. White and I went east, and when we came back it
was all done."
"Well, fortunately," said the mistress of Holly Hall cheerfully, as she
sugared Mrs. Apostleman's cup of tea, "fortunately all these things of
Mrs. Holly's were in splendid condition, except for a little cleaning
and polishing. They used to make things so much more solid, don't you
think so? Why, there are years of wear left in these carpets, and the
chairs and tables are like rocks! Captain Holly apparently got the very
best of everything when he furnished this place, and I reap the
benefit. It's so nice to feel that one needn't buy a chair or a bed for
ten years or more, if one doesn't want to!"
"Dear, sweet people, the Hollys," said Mrs. White, pleasantly, utterly
at a loss. Did people of the nicer class speak of furniture as if it
were made merely to be useful? "But what a distinct period these things
belong to, don't they?" she asked, feeling her way. "So--so solid!"
"Yes, in a way it was an ugly period," said Mrs. Burgoyne, placidly.
"But very comfortable, fortunately. Fancy if he had selected Louis
Quinze chairs, for example!"
Mrs. White gave her a puzzled look, and smiled.
"Come now, Mrs. Burgoyne," said she, good-naturedly, "Confess that you
are going to give us all a surprise some day, and change all this. One
sees," said Mrs. White, elegantly, "such lovely effects in New York."
"In those upper Fifth Avenue shops--ah, but don't you see lovely
things!" the other woman assented warmly. "Of course, one could be
always changing," she went on. "But I like associations with
things--and changing takes so much time! Some day we may think all this
quite pretty," she finished, with a contented glance at the comfortable
ugliness of the drawing-room.
"Oh, do you suppose we shall REALLY!" Mrs. White gave a little
incredulous laugh. She was going pretty far, and she knew it, but as a
matter of fact, she was entirely unable to believe that there was a
woman in the world who could afford to have what was fashionable and
expensive in household furnishings or apparel, and who deliberately
preferred not to have it. That her own pretty things were no sooner
established than they began to lose their charm for her, never occurred
to Mrs. White: she was a woman of conventional type, perfectly
satisfied to spend her whole life in acquiring things essentially
invaluable, and to use a naturally shrewd and quick intelligence in
copying fashions of all sorts, small and large, as fast as advanced
merchants and magazines presented them to her. She was one of the great
army of women who help to send the sale of an immoral book well up into
the hundreds of thousands; she liked to spend long afternoons with a
box of chocolates and a book unfit for the touch of any woman; a book
that she would review for the benefit of her friends later, with a
shocked wonder that "they dare print such things!" She liked to tell a
man's story, and the other women could not but laugh at her, for she
was undeniably good company, and nobody ever questioned the taste of
anything she ever said or did. She was a famous gossip, for like all
women, she found the private affairs of other people full of
fascination, and, having no legitimate occupation, she was always at
liberty to discuss them.
Yet Mrs. White was not at all an unusual woman, and, like her
associates, she tacitly assumed herself to be the very flower of
American womanhood. She quoted her distinguished relatives on all
occasions, the White family, in all its ramifications, supplied the
correct precedent for all the world; there was no social emergency to
which some cousin or aunt of Mrs. White's had not been more than equal.
Having no children of her own, she still could silence and shame many a
good mother with references to Cousin Ethel Langstroth's "kiddies", or
to Aunt Grace Thurston's wonderful governess.
Personally, Mrs. White vaguely felt that there was something innately
indecent about children anyway, the smaller they were the less
mentionable she found them. The little emergencies, of nose-bleeds and
torn garments and spilled porridge, that were constantly arising in the
neighborhood of children, made her genuinely sick and faint. And she
had so humorous and so assured an air of saying "Disgusting!" or
"Disgraceful!" when the family of some other woman began to present
itself with reasonable promptness, that other women found themselves
laughing and saying "Disgusting!" too.
Mrs. Burgoyne, like Mrs. White, was a born leader. Whether she made any
particular effort to influence her neighbors or not, they could not but
feel the difference in her attitude toward all the various tangible
things that make a woman's life. She was essentially maternal, wanted
to mother all the little living and growing things in the world, wanted
to be with children, and talk of them and study them. And she was
simple and honest in her tastes, and entirely without affectation in
her manner, and she was too great a lady to be either laughed at or
ignored. So Santa Paloma began to ask itself why she did this or that,
and finding her ways all made for economy and comfort and simplicity,
almost unconsciously copied them.