The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne Read online

  Produced by Charles Franks and the Online DistributedProofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.

  THE RICH MRS. BURGOYNE

  KATHLEEN NORRIS

  TO KATHLEEN MARY THOMPSON

  Lover of books, who never fails to find Some good in every book, your namesake sends This book to you, knowing you always kind To small things, timid and in need of friends.

  O friend! I know not which way I must look For comfort, being, as I am, opprest, To think that now our life is only drest For show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook, Or groom!--We must run glittering like a brook In the open sunshine, or we are unblest; The wealthiest man among us is the best: No grandeur now in nature or in book Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore: Plain living and high thinking are no more: The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence. And pure religion breathing household laws. --WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

  CHAPTER I

  "Annie, what are you doing? Polishing the ramekins? Oh, that's right.Did the extra ramekins come from Mrs. Brown? Didn't! Then as soon asthe children come back I'll send for them; I wish you'd remind me. DidMrs. Binney come? and Lizzie? Oh, that's good. Where are they? Down inthe cellar! Oh, did the extra ice come? Will you find out, Annie? Thosecan wait. If it didn't, the mousse is ruined, that's all! No, wait,Annie, I'll go out and see Celia myself."

  Little Mrs. George Carew, flushed and excited, crossed the pantry asshe spoke, and pushed open the swinging door that connected it with thekitchen. She was a pretty woman, even now when her hair, alreadydressed, was hidden under snugly pinned veils and her trim littlefigure lost under a flying kimono. Mrs. Carew was expecting thetwenty-eight members of the Santa Paloma Bridge Club on this particularevening, and now, at three o'clock on a beautiful April afternoon, shewas almost frantic with fatigue and nervousness. The house had beencleaned thoroughly the day before, rugs shaken, mirrors polished,floors oiled; the grand piano had been closed, and pushed against thewall; the reading-table had been cleared, and wheeled out under theturn of the stairway; the pretty drawing-room and square big entrancehall had been emptied to make room for the seven little card-tablesthat were already set up, and for the twenty-eight straight-back chairsthat Mrs. Carew had collected from the dining-room, the bedrooms, thehalls, and even the nursery, for the occasion. All this had been donethe day before, and Mrs. Carew, awakening early in the morning touneasy anticipations of a full day, had yet felt that the main work ofpreparation was out of the way.

  But now, in mid-afternoon, nothing seemed done. There were flowersstill to arrange; there was the mild punch that Santa Paloma affectedat card parties to be finished; there was candy to be put about on thetables, in little silver dishes; and new packs of cards, and pencilsand score-cards to be scattered about. And in the kitchen--But Mrs.Carew's heart failed at the thought. True, her own two maids were beinghelped out to-day by Mrs. Binney from the village, a tower of strengthin an emergency, and by Lizzie Binney, a worthy daughter of her mother;but there had been so many stupid delays. And plates, and glasses, andpunch-cups, and silver, and napkins for twenty-eight meant such a lotof counting and sorting and polishing! And somehow George and thechildren must have dinner, and the Binneys and Celia and Annie musteat, too.

  "Well," thought Mrs. Carew, with a desperate glance at the kitchenclock, "it will all be over pretty soon, thank goodness!"

  A pleasant stir of preparation pervaded the kitchen. Mrs. Binney,enormous, good-natured, capable, was opening crabs at one end of thetable, her sleeves rolled up, and her gingham dress, in the last stageof age and thinness, protected by a new stiff white apron; Celia, Mrs.Carew's cook, was sitting opposite her, dismembering two cold roastedfowls; Lizzie Binney, as trim and pretty as her mother was shapelessand plain, was filling silver bonbon-dishes with salted nuts.

  "How is everything going, Celia?" said Mrs. Carew, sampling a nut.

  "Fine," said Celia placidly. "He didn't bring but two bunches ofsullery, so I don't know will I have enough for the salad. They sentthe cherries. And Mrs. Binney wants you should taste the punch."

  "It's sweet now," said Mrs. Binney, as Mrs. Carew picked up the bigmixing-spoon, "but there's the ice to go in."

  "Delicious! not one bit too sweet," Mrs. Carew pronounced. "You knowthat's to be passed around in the little glasses, Lizzie, while we'replaying; and a cherry and a piece of pineapple in every glass. DidAnnie find the doilies for the big trays? Yes. I got the bowl down;Annie's going to wash it. Oh, the cakes came, didn't they? That's good.And the cream for coffee; that ought to go right on ice. I'll telephonefor more celery."

  "There's some of these napkins so mussed, laying in the drawer," saidLizzie, "I thought I'd put a couple of irons on and press them out."

  "If you have time, I wish you would," Mrs. Carew said, touching thefrosted top of an angel-cake with a tentative finger. "I may have toplay to-night, Celia," she went on, to her own cook, "but you girls canmanage everything, can't you? Dinner really doesn't matter--scrambledeggs and baked potatoes, something like that, and you'll have to serveit on the side porch."

  "Oh, yes'm, we'll manage!" Celia assured her confidently. "We'll clearup here pretty soon, and then there's nothing but the sandwiches to do."

  Mrs. Carew went on her way comforted. Celia was not a fancy cook, shereflected, passing through the darkened dining-room, where the longtable had been already set with a shining cloth, and where silver andglass gleamed in the darkness, but Celia was reliable. And for a womanwith three children, a large house, and but one other maid, Celia was atreasure.

  She telephoned the grocer, her eyes roving critically over the hall asshe did so. The buttercups, in a great bowl on the table, were alreadydropping their varnished yellow leaves; Annie must brush those up thevery last thing.

  "So far, so good!" said Mrs. Carew, straightening the rug at the doorwith a small heel and dropping wearily into a porch rocker. "There mustbe one thousand things I ought to be doing," she said, resting her headand shutting her eyes.

  It was a warm, delicious afternoon. The little California town layasleep under a haze of golden sunshine. The Carews' pretty house, withits lawn and garden, was almost the last on River Street, and stood onthe slope of a hill that commanded all Santa Paloma Valley. Below it,the wide tree-shaded street descended between other unfenced lawns andother handsome homes.

  This was the aristocratic part of the town. The Willard Whites' immensecolonial mansion was here; and the Whites, rich, handsome, childless,clever, and nearing the forties, were quite the most prominent peopleof Santa Paloma. The Wayne Adamses, charming, extravagant young people,lived near; and the Parker Lloyds, who were suspected of hiding ratherserious money troubles under their reckless hospitality and unfailinggaiety, were just across the street. On River Street, too, liveddignified, aristocratic old Mrs. Apostleman and nervous, timid AnnePratt and her brother Walter, whose gloomy, stately old mansion was oneof the finest in town. Up at the end of the street were the Carews, andthe shabby comfortable home of Dr. and Mrs. Brown, and the neglectedwhite cottage where Barry Valentine and his little son Billy and astudious young Japanese servant led a rather shiftless existence. Andalthough there were other pretty streets in town, and other pleasantwell-to-do women who were members of church and club, River Street wasunquestionably THE street, and its residents unquestionably THE peopleof Santa Paloma.

  Beyond these homes lay the business part of the town, the railwaystation, and post-office, the library, and the women's clubhouse, withits red geraniums, red-tiled roof, and plaster arches.

  And beyond again were blocks of business
buildings, handsome andmodern, with metal-sheathed elevators, and tiled vestibules, and heavy,plate-glass windows on the street. There was a drug store quite modernenough to be facing upon Forty-second Street and Broadway, instead ofthe tree-shaded peace of Santa Paloma's main street. At its cool andglittering fountain indeed, a hundred drinks could be mixed of whichBroadway never even heard. And on Broadway, three thousand miles away,the women who shopped were buying the same boxed powders, the samebottled toilet waters, the same patented soaps and brushes and candiesthat were to be found here. And in the immense grocery store nearbythere were beautifully spacious departments worthy of any great city,devoted to rare fruits, and coffees and teas, and every pickle thatever came in a glass bottle, and every little spiced fish that evercame in a gay tin. A white-clad young man "demonstrated" a cake-mixer,a blue-clad young woman "demonstrated" jelly-powders.

  Nearby were the one or two big dry-goods stores, with lovely gowns intheir windows, and milliners' shops, with French hats in their smartParis boxes--there was even a very tiny, very elegant little shop wherepastes and powders and shampooing were the attraction; a shop that hada French name "et Cie" over the door.

  In short, there were modern women, and rich women, in Santa Paloma, asthese things unmistakably indicated. Where sixty years ago there hadbeen but a lonely outpost on a Spanish sheep-ranch, and where thirtyyears after that there was only a "general store" at a crossroads, nowevery luxury in the world might be had for the asking.

  All this part of the town lay northeast of the sleepy little LobosRiver, which cut Santa Paloma in two. It was a pretty river, a boilingyellow torrent in winter, but low enough in the summer-time for thechildren to wade across the shallows, and shaded all along its courseby overhanging maples, and willows, and oaktrees, and an undergrowth ofwild currant and hazel bushes and blackberry vines. Across the riverwas Old Paloma, where dust from the cannery chimneys and soot from therailway sheds powdered an ugly shabby settlement of shanties and cheaplodging-houses. Old Paloma was peppered thick with saloons, andflavored by them, and by the odor of frying grease, and by an ashywaste known as the "dump." Over all other odors lay the sweet, cloyingsmell of crushed grapes from the winery and the pungent odor from thetannery of White & Company. The men, and boys, and girls of thesettlement all worked in one or another of these places, and the womengossiped in their untidy doorways. Above the Carew house and DoctorBrown's, opposite, River Street came perforce to an end, for it wascrossed at this point by an old-fashioned wooden fence of slender,rounded pickets. In the middle of the fence was a wide carriage gate,with a smaller gate for foot passengers at each side, and beyond it theshabby, neglected garden and the tangle of pepper, and eucalyptus, andweeping willow trees that half hid the old Holly mansion. Once this hadbeen the great house of the village, but now it was empty and forlorn.Captain Holly had been dead for five or six years, and the last of thesons and daughters had gone away into the world. The house, furnishedjust as they had left it, was for sale, but the years went by, and nobuyer appeared; and meantime the garden flowers ran wild, the lawnswere dry and brown, and the fence was smothered in coarse rose vinesand rampant wild blackberry vines. Dry grass and yarrow and hollowmilkweed grew high in the gateways, and when the village children wentthrough them to prowl, as children love to prowl, about the neglectedhouse and orchard, they left long, dusty wakes in the crushed weeds.Further up than the children usually ventured, there was an old bridgeacross the Lobos, Captain Holly's private road to the mill town; but itwas boarded across now, and hundreds of chipmunks nested in it, andwhisked about it undisturbed. The great stables and barns stood empty;the fountains were long gone dry. Only the orchard continued to bearheavily.

  The Holly estate ran up into the hill behind it, one of the woodedfoothills that encircled all Santa Paloma, as they encircle so manyCalifornia towns. Already turning brown, and crowned with dense, lowgroves of oak, and bay, and madrona trees, they shut off the worldoutside; although sometimes on a still day the solemn booming of theocean could be heard beyond them, and a hundred times a year thePacific fogs came creeping over them long before dawn, and Santa Palomaawakened in an enveloping cloud of soft mist. Here and there the slopesof these hills were checkered with the sharp oblongs and angles ofyoung vineyards, and hidden by the thickening green of peach and appleorchards. A few low, brown dairy ranch-houses were perched high on theridges; the red-brown moving stream of the cattle home-coming inmid-afternoon could be seen from the village on a clear day. And overhill and valley, on this wonderful afternoon in late spring, the mostgenerous sunlight in the world lay warm and golden, and across them theshadows of high clouds--for there had been rain in the night--traveledslowly.

  "I declare," said little Mrs. Carew lazily, "I could go to sleep!"