GETTING ACCUSTOMED TO IT.
In the absence of Mrs. Crawford, who for a week or more had been
domesticated in the cottage which Arthur had given her, there was no one
to receive the strangers except the cook and the house-maid, and as Mrs.
Tracy entered the hall the two came forward, bristling with criticism,
and ready to resent anything like interference in the new-comers.
The servants at the park had not been pleased with the change of
administration. That Mr. Arthur was a gentleman whom it was an honor to
serve, they all conceded; but with regard to the new master and
mistress, they had grave doubts. Although none of them had been at the
park on the occasion of Mrs. Tracy's first visit there, many rumors
concerning her had reached them, and she would scarcely have recognized
herself could she have heard the remarks of which she was the subject.
That she had worked in a factory--which was true--was her least offense,
for it was whispered that once, when the winter was unusually severe,
and work scarce, she had gone to a soup-house, and even asked and
procured coal from the poor-master for herself and her mother.
This was not true, and would have argued nothing against her as a woman
if it had been, but the cook and the house-maid believed it, and passed
sundry jokes together while preparing to meet "the pauper," as they
designated her.
In this state of things their welcome could not be very cordial, but
Mrs. Tracy was too tired and too much excited to observe their demeanor
particularly. They were civil, and the house was in perfect order, and
so much larger and handsomer than she had thought it to be, that she
felt bewildered and embarrassed, and said "Yes 'em," and "No, ma'am," to
Martha, and told Sarah, who was waiting at dinner, that she "might as
well sit down in a chair as to stand all the time; she presumed she was
tired with so many extra steps to take."
But Sarah knew her business, and persisted in standing, and inflicting
upon the poor woman as much ceremony as possible, and then, in the
kitchen, she repeated to the cook and the coachman, with sundry
embellishments of her own, the particulars of the dinner, amid peals of
laughter at the expense of the would-be lady.
It was hardly possible that mistress and maids would stay together long,
especially as Mrs. Tracy, when a little more assured, and a little less
in awe of her servants, began to show a disposition to know by personal
observation what was going on in the kitchen, and to hint broadly that
there was too much waste here and expenditure there, and quite too much
company at all hours of the day.
"She didn't propose to keep a boarding-house," she said, "or to support
families outside, and the old woman who came so often to the basement
door with a big basket under her cloak must discontinue her calls."
Then there occurred one of those Hibernian cyclones, which sweep
everything before them, and which in this instance swept Mrs. Tracy out
of the kitchen for the time being, and the cook out of the house. Her
self-respect, she said, would not allow her to stay with a woman who
knew just how much coal was burned, how much butter was used, and how
much bread was thrown away, and who objected to giving a bite now and
then to a poor old woman, who, poor as she was, had never yet been
helped by the poor-master, or gone to a soup-house, like my lady!
Martha's departure was followed by that of Sarah, and then Mrs. Tracy
was alone, and for a few days enjoyed herself immensely, cooking her own
dinner, and eating it when and where she liked--in the kitchen mostly,
as that kept the flies from the dining-room, and saved her many steps,
for Dolly was beginning to find that there was a vast difference between
keeping a house with six rooms and one with thirty or more.
Her husband urged her to try a new servant, saying there was no
necessity for her to make a slave of herself; but she refused to listen.
Economy was a part of her nature, and besides that she meant to show
them that she was perfectly independent of the whole tribe; the _tribe_
and _them_ referring to the hired girls alone, for she knew no one else
in town.
No one had called, and a bow from Mrs. Atherton, whom she had seen at
church was all the recognition she had received from her neighbors up to
the hot July morning, a week or more after the house-maid's departure,
when she was busy in the kitchen canning black raspberries, of which the
garden was full.
Like many housekeepers who do their own work, Dolly was not very
particular with regard to her dress in the morning, and on this occasion
her hair was drawn from her rather high forehead, and twisted into a
hard knot at the back of her head; her calico dress hung straight down,
for she was minus hoops, which in those days were very large; her
sleeves were rolled above her elbows, and, as a protection against the
juice of the berries, she wore an apron made of sacking. In this garb,
and with no thought of being interrupted, she kept on with her work
until the last kettle of fruit was boiling and bubbling on the stove,
and she was just glancing at the clock to see if it were time to put
over the peas for dinner, when there came a quick, decisive ring at the
front door.
"Who can that be?" she said to herself, as she wiped her hands upon her
apron. "Some peddler, I dare say. Why couldn't he come round to the
kitchen door, I'd like to know?"
She had been frequently troubled with peddlers and feeling certain that
this was one--she started for the door in no very amiable frame of mind,
for peddlers were her abomination. Something ailed the key, which
resisted all her efforts to turn it; and at last, putting her mouth to
the keyhole, she called out, rather sharply:
"Go to the back door, I can't open this."
Then, as she caught a whiff of burnt sirup, she hurried to the kitchen,
where she found that her berries had boiled over, and were hissing and
sputtering on the hot stove, raising a cloud of smoke so dense that she
did not see the person who stood on the threshold of the door until a
voice wholly unlike that of any peddler said to her:
"Good-morning, Mrs. Tracy. I hope I am not intruding."
Then she turned, and, to her horror and surprise, saw Grace Atherton,
attired in the coolest and daintiest of morning costumes, with a jaunty
French bonnet set coquettishly upon her head, and a silver card-case in
her hand.
For the moment Dolly's wits forsook her, and she stood looking at her
visitor, who, perfectly at her ease, advanced into the room, and said:
"I hope you will excuse me, Mrs. Tracy, for this morning call. I came--"
But she did not finish the sentence, for by this time Dolly had
recovered herself a little, and throwing off her apron, began nervously:
"Not at all--not at all. I supposed you were some peddler or agent when
I sent you to this door. They are the plague of my life, and think I'll
buy everything and give to everything because Arthur did. I am doing my
own work, you see. Come into the parlor;" and she led the way into the
dark drawing-room, where the chairs and sofas were shrouded in white
linen, and looked like so many ghosts in the dim, uncertain light.
But Dolly opened one of the windows, and pushing back the blinds, let in
a flood of sunshine, so strong and bright that she at once closed the
shutters, saying, apologetically, that she did not believe in fading the
carpets, if they were not her own. Then she sat down upon an ottoman and
faced her visitor, who was regarding her with a mixture of amusement and
wonder.
Grace Atherton was an aristocrat to her very fingertips, and shrank from
contact with anything vulgar and unsightly, and, to her mind, Mrs. Tracy
represented both, and seemed sadly out of place in that handsome room,
with her sleeves rolled up and the berry stains on her hands and face.
Grace knew nothing by actual experience of canning berries, or aprons
made of sacking, or of bare arms, except it were of an evening when they
showed white and fair against her satin gown, with bands of gold and
precious stones upon them, and she felt that there was an immeasurable
distance between herself and this woman, whom she had come to see partly
on business and partly because she thought she must call upon her for
the sake of Arthur Tracy, who was one of her friends.
Her cook, who had been with her seven years, had gone to attend a sick
mother, and had recommended as a fit person to take her place the woman
who had just left Tracy Park.
"I do not like to take a servant without first knowing something of her
from her last employer," she said; "and, if you don't mind, I should
like to ask if Martha left you for anything very bad."
Mrs. Tracy colored scarlet, and for a moment was silent. She could not
tell that fine lady in the white muslin dress with seas of lace and
embroidery, that Martha had called her _second classy_, and _stingy_,
and _snooping_, and _mean_, because she objected to the amount of coal
burned, and bread thrown away, and time consumed at the table. All this
she felt would scarcely interest a person like Mrs. Atherton, who might
sympathize with Martha more than with herself, so she finally said:
"Martha was saucy to me, and on the whole it was better for them all to
go, and so I am doing my own work."
"Doing your own work!" and Grace gave a little cry of surprise, while
her shoulders shrugged meaningly, and made Mrs. Tracy almost as angry as
she had been with Martha when she called her mean and stingy. "It cannot
be possible that you cook, and wash, and iron, and do everything," Mrs.
Atherton continued. "My dear Mrs. Tracy, you can never stand it in a
house like this, and Mr. Arthur would not like it. Why, he kept as many
as six servants, and sometimes more. Pray let me advise you, and commend
to you a good girl, who lived with me three years, and can do
everything, from dressing my hair to making blanc-mange. I only parted
with her because she was sick, and now that she is well, her place is
filled. Try her, and do not make a servant of yourself. It is not
fitting that you should."
Grace was fond of giving advice, and had said more than she intended
saying when she began, but, Mrs. Tracy, though annoyed, was not angry,
and consented to receive the girl who had lived at Brier Hill three
years, and who, she reflected, could be of use to her in many ways.
While sitting there in her soiled working dress talking to Mrs.
Atherton, she had felt her inferiority more keenly than she had ever
done before, while at the same time she was conscious that a new set of
ideas and thoughts had taken possession of her, reawaking in her the
germ of that ambition to be somebody which she had felt so often when a
girl, and which now was to bud and blossom, and bear fruit a hundred
fold. She would take the girl, and from her learn the ways of the world
as practiced at Brier Hill. She would no longer wear sacking aprons, and
open the door herself. She would be more like Grace Atherton, whom she
watched admiringly as she went down the walk to the handsome carriage
waiting for her, with driver and footman in tall hats and long coats on
the box.
This was the beginning of the fine lady into which Dolly finally
blossomed, and when that day Frank went home to his dinner he noticed
something in her manner which he could not understand until she told him
of Mrs. Atherton's call, and the plight in which that lady had found
her.
"Served you right," Frank said, laughing till the tears ran. "You have
no business to be digging round like a slave when we are able to have
what we like. Arthur said we were to keep up the place as he had done,
and that does not mean that you should be a scullion. No, Dolly; have
all the girls you want, and hold up your head with the best of them. Get
a new silk gown, and return Mrs. Atherton's call at once, and take a
card and turn down one corner or the other, I don't know which, but this
girl of hers can tell you. Pump her dry as a powder horn; find out what
the quality do, and then do it, and don't bother about the expense. I am
going in for a good time, and don't mean to work either. I told Colvin
this morning that I thought I ought to draw a salary of about four
thousand a year, besides our living expenses, and though he looked at me
pretty sharp over his spectacles, he said nothing. Arthur is worth a
million, if he is worth a cent. So, go it, Dolly, while you are young,"
and in the exuberance of his joy, Frank kissed his wife on both cheeks,
and then hurried back to his office.
That day they had dined in the kitchen with a leaf of the table turned
up as they had done in Langley, but the next day they had dinner in the
dining-room, and were waited upon by the new girl as well as it was
possible for her to do with her mistress' interference.
"Never mind; Mr. Tracy's in a hurry. Give him his pie at once," she
said, as Susan was about to clear the table preparatory to the dessert;
but she repented the speech when she saw the look of surprise which the
girl gave her, and which expressed more than words could have done.
"Better let her run herself," Frank said, when Susan had left the room,
"and if she wants to take every darned thing off the table and tip it
over to boot, let her do it. If she has lived three years with Mrs.
Atherton, she knows what is what better than we do."
"But it takes so long, and I have so much to see to in this great
house," Dolly objected, and her husband replied:
"Get another girl, then; three of them if you like. What matter how many
girls we have so long as Arthur pays for them; and he is bound to do
that. He said so in his letter. You are altogether too economical. I've
told you so a hundred times, and now there is no need of saving. I want
to see you a lady in silks and satins like Mrs. Atherton. Pump that
girl, I tell you, and find out what ladies do!"
This was Frank's advice to his wife, and as far as in her lay she acted
upon it, and whatever Susan told her was done by Mrs. Atherton at Brier
Hill, she tried to do at Tracy Park: except staying out of the kitchen.
That, from her nature, she could not do. Consequently she was constantly
changing cooks, and frequently took the helm herself, to the great
disgust of her husband, who managed at last to imbue her with his own
idea of things.
In course of time most of the neighbors who had any claim to society
called, and among them Mrs. Crawford. But Mrs. Tracy had then reached a
point from which she looked down upon one who had been housekeeper where
she was now mistress, and whose daughter's good name was under a cloud,
as there were some who did not believe that Harold Hastings had ever
made Amy his wife. When told that Mrs. Crawford had asked for her, Mrs.
Tracy sent word that she was engaged, and that if Mrs. Crawford pleased,
she would give her errand to the girl.
"I have no errand. I came to call," was Mrs. Crawford's reply; and she
never crossed the threshold of her old home again until the March winds
were blowing, and there was a little boy at the park.
At the last moment the expected nurse had fallen sick, and in his
perplexity Mr. Tracy went to the cottage in the lane and begged Mrs.
Crawford to come and care for his wife. Mrs. Crawford was very proud,
but she was poor, too, and as the price per week which Frank offered her
was four times as much as she could earn by sewing, she consented at
last, and went as nurse to the sick woman and the baby, Tom, on whose
little red face she imprinted many a kiss for the sake of her daughter,
who was still abroad, and over whom the shadow of hope and fear was
hanging.
Dolly Tracy's growth, after it fairly commenced, had been very rapid,
and when Mrs. Crawford went to her as nurse she had three servants in
her employ, besides the coachman, and was imitating Mrs. Atherton to the
best of her ability; and when, early in the following summer, they
received the wedding cards of Edith Hastings, the young lady from
Collingwood, who had married a Mr. St. Claire, she felt that her
position was assured, and from that time her progress was onward and
upward until the October morning, ten years later, when our story proper
opens, and we see her standing upon the piazza of her handsome house,
with every sign of wealth and luxury about her person, from the silken
robe to the jewels upon her hands, which once had canned berries in her
kitchen, where she received Grace Atherton with her sleeves above her
elbows.
There were five servants in the house now, and they ran over and against
each other, and quarreled, and gossiped, and worried her life nearly out
of her, until she sometimes wished she could send them away, and do the
work herself. But she was far too great a lady for that. She was
thoroughly up in etiquette, and did not need Susan to tell her what to
do. She knew all about visiting cards, and dinner cards, and cards of
acceptance, and regret, and condolence, and she read much oftener than
she did her Bible a book entitled "Habits of Good Society."
Three children played in the nursery now, Tom, and Jack, and Maude, and
she strove with all her might to instill into their infant minds that
they were the Tracys of Tracy Park, and entitled to due respect from
their inferiors; and Tom had profited by her teaching, and was the
veriest little braggart in Shannondale, boasting of his father's house,
and his father's money, without a word of the Uncle Arthur wandering no
one knew where, or cared particularly, for that matter.
Arthur had never been home since the day he quitted it to look after Amy
Crawford, now lying in the graveyard of Shannondale, under the shadow of
the tall monument which his money had bought. At first he had written
frequently to Mrs. Crawford, and occasionally to his brother, and his
agent, Mr. Colvin; then his letters came very irregularly, and in one he
told them not to feel anxious if they did not hear from him in a long
time, as in case of his death he had arranged to have the news
communicated to them at once. After this letter, nothing had been heard
from him until the morning when his telegram came and so greatly
disturbed the mental equilibrium of both Mr. and Mrs. Frank Tracy.