Barry had murmured something about "rush of work at the office" when he
came in a few minutes late for Mrs. Burgoyne's dinner, but as the
evening wore on, he seemed in no hurry to depart. Sidney was delighted
to see him really in his element with the Von Praags, father and son,
the awakened expression that was so becoming to him on his face, and
his curiously complex arguments stirring the old man over and over
again to laughter. She had been vexed at herself for feeling a little
shyness when he first came in; the unfamiliar evening dress and the
gravity of his handsome face had made him seem almost a stranger, but
this wore off, and after the other guests had gone these four still sat
laughing and talking like the best of old friends together.
When the Von Praags had gone upstairs, she walked with him to the
porch, and they stood at the top of the steps for a moment, the rich
scent of the climbing LaMarque and Banksia roses heavy about them, and
the dark starry arch of the sky above. Sidney, a little tired, but
pleased with her dinner and her guests, and ready for a breath of the
sweet summer night before going upstairs, was confused by having her
heart suddenly begin to thump again. She looked at Barry, his figure
lost in the shadow, only his face dimly visible in the starlight, and
some feeling, new, young, terrifying, and yet infinitely delicious,
rushed over her. She might have been a girl of seventeen instead of a
sober woman fifteen years older, with wifehood, and motherhood, and
widowhood all behind her.
"A wonderful night!" said Barry, looking down at the dark mass of
tree-tops that almost hid the town, and at the rising circle of shadows
that was the hills.
"And a good place to be, Santa Paloma," Sidney added, contentedly.
"It's my captured dream, my own home and garden!" With her head resting
against one of the pillars of the porch, her eyes dreamily moving from
the hills to the sky and over the quiet woods, she went on
thoughtfully: "You know I never had a home, Barry; and when I visited
here, I began to realize what I was missing. How I longed for Santa
Paloma, the creek, and the woods, and my little sunny room after I went
away! But even when I was eighteen, and we took a house in Washington,
what could I do? I 'came out,' you know. I loved gowns and parties
then, as I hope the girls will some day; but I knew all the while it
wasn't living." She paused, but Barry did not speak. "And, then, before
I was twenty, I was married," Sidney went on presently, "and we started
off for St. Petersburg. And after that, for years and years, I posed
for dressmakers; I went the round of jewelers, and milliners, and
manicures; I wrote notes and paid calls. I let one strange woman come
in every day and wash my hands for me, and another wash my hair, and a
third dress me! I let men--who were in the business simply to make
money, and who knew how to do it!--tell me that my furs must be recut,
or changed, and my jewels reset, and my wardrobe restocked and my
furniture carried away and replaced. And in the cities we lived in it's
horrifying to see how women slave, and toil, and worry to keep up. Half
the women I knew were sick over debts and the necessity for more debts.
I felt like saying, with Carlyle, 'Your chaos-ships must excuse me';
I'm going back to Santa Paloma, to wear my things as long as they are
whole and comfortable, and do what I want to do with my spare time!"
"You missed your playtime," Barry said; "now you make the most of it."
"Oh, no!" she answered, giving him a glimpse of serious eyes in the
half-dark, "playtime doesn't come back. But, at least, I know what I
want to do, and it will be more fun than any play. One of the wisest
men I ever knew set me thinking of these things. He's a sculptor, a
great sculptor, and he lives in an olive garden in Italy, and eats what
his peasants eat, and befriends them, and stands for their babies in
baptism, and sits with them when they're dying. My father and I visited
him about two years ago, and one day when he and I were taking a tramp,
I suddenly burst out that I envied him. I wanted to live in an olive
garden, too, and wear faded blue clothes, and eat grapes, and tramp
about the hills. He said very simply that he had worked for twenty
years to do it. 'You see, I'm a rich man,' he said, 'and it seems that
one must be rich in this world before one dare be poor from choice. I
couldn't do this if people didn't know that I could have an apartment
in Paris, and servants, and motor-cars, and all the rest of it. It
would hurt my daughters and distress my friends. There are hundreds and
thousands of unhappy people in the world who can't afford to be poor,
and if ever you get a chance, you try it. You'll never be rich again.'
So I wrote him about a month ago that I had found MY olive garden,"
finished Sidney contentedly, "and was enjoying it."
"Captain Burgoyne was older than you, Sid?" Barry questioned. "Wouldn't
he have loved this sort of life?"
"Twenty years older, yes; but he wouldn't have lived here for one DAY!"
she answered vivaciously. "He was a diplomat, a courtier to his
finger-tips. He was born to the atmosphere of hothouse flowers, and
salons, and delightful little drawing-room plots and gossip. He loved
politics, and power, and women in full dress, and men with orders. Of
course I was very new to it all, but he liked to spoil me, draw me out.
If it hadn't been for his accident, I never would have grown up at all,
I dare say. As it was, I was more like his mother. We went to
Washington for the season, New York for the opera, England for autumn
visits, Paris for the spring: I loved to make him happy, Barry, and he
wasn't happy except when we were going, going, going. He was
exceptionally popular; he had exceptional friends, and he couldn't go
anywhere without me. My babies were with his mother--"
She paused, turning a white rose between her fingers. "And afterwards,"
she said presently, "there was Father. And Father never would spend two
nights in the same place if he could help it."
"I wasn't drawn back here as you were," said Barry thoughtfully, "I
liked New York; I could have made good there if I'd had a chance. It
made me sick to give it up, then; but lately I've been feeling
differently. A newspaper's a pretty influential thing, wherever it is.
I've been thinking about that clubhouse plan of yours; I wish to the
Lord that we could do something for those poor kids over there. You're
right. Those girls have rotten homes. The whole family gathers in the
parlor right after dinner. Pa takes his shoes off, and props his socks
up before the stove; Ma begins to hear a kid his spelling; and other
kids start the graphophone, and Aggie is expected to ask her young man
to walk right in. So after that she meets him in the street, and the
girls begin to talk about Aggie."
"Oh, Barry, I'm so glad you're interested!" Standing a step above him,
Sidney's ardent face was very close to his own. "Of course we can do
it," she said.
"We!" he echoed almost bitterly. "YOU'LL do it; you're the one--" He
broke off with a short, embarrassed laugh. "I was going to cut that
sort of thing out," he said gruffly, "but all roads lead to Rome, it
seems. I can't talk to you five minutes without--and I've got to go. I
said I'd look in at the office."
"You seem to be afraid to be friendly lately, Barry," said Mrs.
Burgoyne in a hurt voice, flinging away the rose she had been holding,
"but don't you think our friendship means something to me, too? I don't
like you to talk as if I did all the giving and you all the taking. I
don't know how the girls and I would get along without your advice and
help here at the Hall. I think," her voice broke into a troubled laugh,
"I think you forget that the quality of friendship is not strained."
"Sidney," he said with sudden resolution, turning to face her bravely,
"I can't be just friends with you. You're so much the finest, so much
the best--" He left the sentence unfinished, and began again: "You have
a hundred men friends; you can't realize what you mean to me. You--but
you know what you are, and I'm the editor of a mortgaged country paper,
a man who has made a mess of things, who can't take care of his kid, or
himself, on his job without help--"
"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.