MR. AND MRS. FRANK TRACY.
Mr. Frank, in his small grocery at Langley, was weighing out a pound of
butter for the Widow Simpson, who was haggling with him about the price,
when his brother's letter was brought to him by the boy who swept his
store and did errands for him. But Frank was too busy just then to read
it. There was a circus in the village that day, and it brought the
country people into the town in larger numbers than usual. Naturally,
many of them paid Frank a visit in the course of the morning, so that it
was not until he went home to his dinner that he thought of the letter,
which was finally brought to his mind by his wife's asking if there were
any news.
Mrs. Frank was always inquiring for and expecting news, but she was not
prepared for what this day brought her. Neither was her husband; and
when he read his brother's letter, which he did twice to assure himself
that he was not mistaken, he sat for a moment perfectly bewildered, and
stared at his wife, who was putting his dinner upon the table.
"Dolly," he gasped at last, when he could speak at all--"Dolly, what do
you think? Just listen. Arthur is going to Europe, to stay forever,
perhaps, and has left us Tracy Park. We are going there to live, and you
will be as grand a lady as Mrs. Atherton, of Brier Hill, or that young
girl at Collingwood."
Dolly had a platter of ham and eggs in her hand, and she never could
tell, though she often tried to do so, what prevented her from dropping
the whole upon the floor. She did spill some of the fat upon her clean
table-cloth, she put the dish down so suddenly, and then sinking into a
chair, she demanded what her husband meant. Was he crazy, or what?
"Not a bit of it," he replied, recovering himself, and beginning to
realize the good fortune which had come to him. "We are rich people,
Dolly. Read for yourself;" and he passed her the letter, which she
seemed to understand better than he had done.
"Why, yes," she said. "We are going to Tracy Park to live; but that
doesn't make us rich. It is not ours."
"I know that," her husband replied. "But we shall enjoy it all the same,
and hold our heads with the best of them. Besides, don't you see, Arthur
gives me _carte blanche_ as to pay for my services, and, though I shall
do right, it is not in human nature that I should not feather my nest
when I have a chance. Some of that money ought to have been mine. I
shall sell out at once if I can find a purchaser, and if I can't, I
shall rent the grocery and move out of this hole double-quick."
His ideas were growing faster than those of his wife, who was attached
to Langley and its people, and shrank a little from the grand life
opening before her. She had once spent a few days at Tracy Park, as
Arthur's guest, and had felt great restraint even in the presence of
Mrs. Crawford and Amy, whom she recognized as ladies, notwithstanding
their position in the house. On that occasion she had, with her
brother-in-law, been invited to dine at Brier Hill, the country-seat of
Mrs. Grace Atherton, where she had been so completely overawed, that she
did not know what half the dishes were, or what she was expected to do.
But, by watching Arthur, and declining some things which she felt sure
were beyond her comprehension, she managed tolerably well, though when
the dinner was over, and she could breathe freely again, she found that
the back of her new silk gown was wet with perspiration, which had oozed
from every pore during the hour and a half she had sat at the table.
"Such folderol!" she said to a friend, to whom she was describing the
dinner. "Such folderol! Changing your plates all the time--eating peas
in the winter, with nothing under the sun with them, and drinking
coffee out of a cup about as big as a thimble. Give me the good
old-fashioned way, I say, with peas and potatoes, and meat, and things,
and cups that will hold half a pint and have some thickness that you can
feel in your mouth."
And now she was to exchange the good, old-fashioned way for what she
termed "folderol," and for a time she did not like it. But her husband
was so delighted and eager, that he succeeded in impressing her with
some of his enthusiasm, and after he had returned to his grocery, and
her dishes were washed, she removed her large kitchen apron, and pulling
down the sleeves of her dress, went and stood before the mirror, where
she examined herself critically, and not without some degree of
complacency.
Her hair was black and glossy, or would be if she had time to care for
it as it ought to be cared for; her eyes were large and bright, and
perhaps in time she might learn to use them as Mrs. Atherton used hers.
"She is older than I am," she said to herself; "there are crow-tracks
around her eyes, and her complexion is not a bit better than mine was
before I spoiled it with soap-suds, and stove-heat, and everything
else."
Then she looked at her hands, but they were red and rough, and the nails
were broken, and not at all like the nails which an expert has polished
for an hour or more. Mrs. Atherton's diamond rings would be sadly out of
place on Dolly's fingers, but time and abstinence from work would do
much for them, she reflected, and after all it would be nice to live in
a grand house, ride in a handsome carriage, and keep a hired girl to do
the heavy work. So, on the whole, she began to feel quite reconciled,
and to wonder how she ought to conduct herself in view of her future
position. She had intended going to the circus that night, but she gave
that up, telling her husband that it was a second-class amusement any
way, and she did not believe that either Mrs. Atherton or the young lady
at Collingwood patronized such places. So they stayed at home and talked
together of what they should do at Tracy Park, and wondered if it was
their duty to ask all their Langley friends to visit them. Mrs. Frank
decided that it was. She was not going to begin by being _stuck up_, she
said; and when she left Langley four weeks later, every man, woman, and
child of her familiar acquaintance in town, had been heartily invited to
call upon her at Tracy Park, if ever they came that way.
Frank had disposed of his business at a reasonable price, and had rented
his house with all the furniture, except such articles as his wife
insisted upon taking with her. The bureau, and bedstead, and chairs
which she and Frank had bought together in Springfield just before their
marriage, the Boston rocker in which her old mother had sat until the
day she died, the cradle in which she had rocked her baby boy who was
lying in the Langley graveyard, were dear to the wife and mother, and
though her husband told her she could have no use for them, there was
enough of sentiment in her nature to make her cling to them as something
of the past, and so they were boxed up and forwarded by freight to Tracy
Park, whither Mr. and Mrs. Tracy followed them a week later.
The best dressmaker in Langley had been employed upon the wardrobe of
Mrs. Frank, who, in her traveling dress of some stuff goods of a plaided
pattern, too large and too bright to be quite in good taste, felt
herself perfectly _au fait_, until she reached Springfield, where Mrs.
Grace Atherton, accompanied by a tall, elegant-looking young lady,
entered the car and took a seat in front of her. Neither of the ladies
noticed her, but she recognized Mrs. Atherton at once, and guessed that
her companion was the young lady from Collingwood.
Dolly scanned both the ladies very closely, noticing every article of
their costumes, from their plain linen collars and cuffs to their quiet
dresses of gray, which seemed so much more in keeping with the dusty
cars than her buff and purple plaid.
"I ain't like them, and never shall be," she said to herself, with a
bitter sense of her inferiority pressing upon her. "I ain't like them,
and never shall be, if I live to be a hundred. I wish we were not going
to be grand. I shall never get used to it," and the hot tears sprang to
her eyes as she longed to be back in the kitchen where she had worked so
hard.
But Dolly did not know how readily people can forget the life of toil
behind them, and adapt themselves to one of luxury and ease; and with
her the adaptability commenced in some degree the moment Shannondale
station was reached, and she saw the handsome carriage waiting for them.
A carriage finer far and more modern than the one from Collingwood, in
which Mrs. Atherton and the young lady took their seats, laughing and
chatting so gayly that they did not see the woman in the big plaids who
stood watching them with a rising feeling of jealousy and resentment,
because she was not noticed.
But when the Tracy carriage drew up, Grace Atherton saw and recognized
her, and whispered, in an aside to her companion:
"For goodness' sake, Edith, look! There are the Tracys, our new
neighbors." Then she bowed to Mrs. Tracy, and said: "Ah, I did not know
you were on the train."
"I sat right behind you," was Mrs. Tracy's rather ungracious reply; and
then, not knowing whether she ought to do it or not, she introduced her
husband.
"Yes, Mr. Tracy--how do you do?" was Mrs. Atherton's response; but she
did not in return introduce the young girl, whose dark eyes were
scanning the strangers so curiously; and this Dolly took as a slight,
and inwardly resented.
But Mrs. Atherton had spoken to her, and that was something, and helped
to keep her spirits up as she was driven along the turnpike to the
entrance of the park.
On the occasion of Mrs. Frank's first and only visit to her
brother-in-law it was winter, and everything was covered with snow. But
it was summer now, the month of roses, and fragrance, and beauty, and as
the carriage passed up the broad, smooth avenue which led to the house,
and Dolly's eye wandered over the well-kept grounds, sweet with the
scent of newly-mown grass, and filled with every adornment which taste
can devise or money procure, she felt within her the first stirring of
the pride, and satisfaction, and self-assertion which were to grow upon
her so rapidly and transform her from the plain, unpretentious woman who
had washed, and ironed, and baked, and mended in the small house in
Langley, into the arrogant, haughty lady of fashion, who courted only
the rich, and looked down upon her less fortunate neighbors. Now,
however, she was very meek and humble, and trembled as she alighted
from the carriage before the great stone house which was to be her home.
"Isn't this grand, Dolly?" her husband said, rubbing his hands together,
and looking about him complacently.
"Yes, very grand," Dolly answered him; "but somehow it makes me feel
weaker than water. I suppose, though, I shall get accustomed to it."