Perhaps it will be a little hard to see strangers there; our pretty floors ruined, and our pretty walls spotted, but--" an eloquent shrug, and a gesture of her pretty hands finished the sentence with the words, "isn"t that the law?"
And upon whole-hearted applause for Mrs. White, Mrs. Carew tactfully introduced the subject of tea.
They were all chatting amicably enough in the dining-room a few minutes later when George Carew and Barry Valentine came in. Barry, who seemed excited, exhilarated and tired, had come to borrow a typewriter from the Carews. He responded to sympathetic inquiries, that he had been working like a madman since noon, and that there would be an issue of the Mail ready for them in the morning. He said, "everyone had been simply corking about everything," and it began to look like smooth sailing now. In the few minutes that he waited for young George Carew to find the typewriter and bring it down to him, a fresh interruption occurred in the entrance of old Mrs. Apostleman.
Mrs. Apostleman, between being out of breath from hurrying up the hill in the late afternoon heat, and fearful that the gathering would break up before she could say what she wanted to say, and entirely unable to control her gasping and puffing, was a sight at once funny and pitiable. As she sank into a comfortable chair she held up one fat hand to command attention, and with the other laid forcible hold upon Barry Valentine. Three or four of the younger women hurried to her with fans and tea, and in a moment or two she really could manage disconnected words.
"Thanks, me dear. No, no cake. Just a mouthful of tea to--there, that"s better! I was afraid ye"d all be gone--that"ll do, thank ye, Susie!
Well," she set down her tea-cup, "well! I"ve a little piece of news for you all--don"t go, Barry, you"ll be interested in this, and I couldn"t wait to come up and tell ye!" She began to fumble in her bag, and presently produced therefrom her eye-gla.s.ses and a letter. The latter she opened with a great crackling of paper.
"This is from me brother, Alexander Wetherall," said she, with an impressive glance over her gla.s.ses. "As ye know, he"s a family lawyer in New York, he has the histories of half the old families in the country pigeon-holed away in those old offices of his. He doesn"t write me very often; his wife does now and then--stupid woman, but nice.
However, I wrote him in May, and told him Mrs. Burgoyne had bought the Hall, and just asked him what he knew about her and her people. Here--"
marking a certain line with a pudgy, imperative finger, she handed a page of the letter to Barry, "read from there on," she commanded, "this is what he says."
Barry took the paper, but hesitated.
"It"s all right!" said the old lady, impatiently, "n.o.body could say anything that wasn"t good about Sidney Burgoyne."
Thus rea.s.sured, Barry turned obediently to the indicated place.
""You ask me about your new neighbor,"" he read, ""I suppose of course you know that she is Paul Frothingham"s only child by his second marriage. Her mother died while she was a baby, and Frothingham took her all over the world with him, wherever he went. She married very young, Colonel John Burgoyne, of the Maryland family, older than she, but a very fine fellow. As a girl and as his wife she had an extraordinary opportunity for social success, she was a great favorite in the diplomatic circle at Washington, and well known in the best London set, and in the European capitals. She seems to be quite a remarkable young woman, but you are all wrong about her money; she is very far from rich. She--""
Barry stopped short. Mrs. Apostleman cackled delightedly; no one else stirred.
""She got very little of Frothingham"s money,"" Barry presently read on, ""it came to him from his first wife, who was a widow with two daughters when he married her. The money naturally reverted to her girls, Mrs. Fred Senior and Mrs. Spencer Mack, both of this city.""
"Ha! D"ye get that?" said Mrs. Apostleman. "Go on!"
""Frothingham left his own daughter something considerably less than a hundred thousand dollars,"" Barry presently resumed, ""not more than seventy or eighty thousand, certainly. It is still invested in the estate. It must pay her three or four thousand a year. And besides that she has only Burgoyne"s insurance, twenty or twenty-five thousand, for those years of illness pretty well used up his own money. I believe the stepsisters were very anxious to make her a more generous arrangement, but she seems to have declined it. Alice says they are quite devoted--""
"Alice don"t count!" said the old lady "that"s his wife. That"s enough." She stopped the reader and refolded the letter, her mischievous eyes dancing. "Well, what d"ye think of that?" she demanded.
Barry"s bewildered, "Well, I will be darned!" set loose a babel of tongues. Mrs. Apostleman had not counted in vain upon a sensation; everyone talked at once. Mrs. White"s high, merry laugh dominated all the other voices.
"So there is a very much better reason for this simple-dinner-blue-gingham existence than we supposed," said the President of the Santa Paloma Women"s Club amusedly when the first rush of comment died away. "I think that is quite delicious! While all of us were feeling how superior she was not to get a motor, and not to rebuild the Hall, she was simply living within her income, and making the best of it!"
"I don"t know that it makes her any less superior," Mrs. Carew said thoughtfully. "It--it certainly makes her seem--NICER. I never suspected her of--well, of preaching, exactly, but I have sometimes thought that she really couldn"t enter into our point of view, with all that money! I think I"m going to like her more than ever!" she finished laughingly.
"Why, it"s the greatest relief in the world!" exclaimed Mrs. Adams.
"I"ve been rather holding back about going up there, and imitating her, because I honestly didn"t want to be influenced by eight millions, and I was afraid. I WAS. Not a week ago Wayne asked me if I thought she"d like him to donate a sewing machine to her Girls" Club for them to run up their little costumes with--he has the agency, you know--and I said, "Oh, don"t, Wayne, she can buy them a sewing machine apiece if she wants to, and never know it!" But I"m going to make him write her, TO-NIGHT," said Mrs. Adams, firmly, "and I declare I feel as if a weight had dropped off my shoulders. It MEANS so much more now, if we offer her the club. It means that we aren"t merely giving a Lady Bountiful her way, but that we"re all working together like neighbors, and trying to do some good in the world."
"And I don"t think there"s any question that she would live exactly this way," Miss Pratt contributed shyly, "and play with the children, and dress as she does, even if she had fifty millions! She"s simply found out what pays in this life, and what doesn"t pay, and I think a good many of us were living too hard and fast ever to stop and think whether it was really worth while or not. She"s the happiest woman I ever knew; it makes one happy just to be with her, and no money can buy that."
"But it"s curious she never has taken the trouble to undeceive us,"
said Mrs. White beginning to fit on an immaculate pair of white gloves, finger by finger.
"Why--you"ll see!--She never dreamed we thought she was anything but one of ourselves." Mrs. Brown predicted. "Why should she? When did she ever speak of money, or take the least interest in money? She never speaks of it. She says "I can"t afford the time, or I can"t afford the effort," that"s what counts with her. Doesn"t it, Barry?"
"Barry, do you really suppose--" Mrs. Carew was beginning, as she turned to the doorway where he had been standing.
But Barry had gone.
CHAPTER XIX
Barry went straight up to the Hall, but Sidney was not there. Joanna and Ellen, busily murmuring over "Flower Ladies" on the wide terrace steps, told him that Mother was to be late to supper, and, with obviously forced hospitality and one eye upon their little families of inverted roses and hollyhocks, asked him to wait. Barry thanked them, but couldn"t wait.
He went like a man in a dream down River Street, past gardens that glowed with fragrant beauty, and under the great trees and the warm, sunset sky. And what a good world it seemed to be alive in, and what a friendly village in which to find work and love and content. A dozen returning householders, stopping at their gates, wanted the news of his venture, a dozen freshly-clad, interested women, watering lawns in the shade, called out to wish him good fortune. And always, before his eyes, the thought of the vanished millions danced like a star. She was not infinitely removed, she was not set apart by great fortune, she was only the sweetest and best of women, to be wooed and won like any other. He ran upstairs and flung open the door of the little bare new office of the MAIL, like an impetuous boy. There was no one there. But a wide white hat with a yellow rose pinned on it hung above the new oak desk in the corner, and his heart rose at the sight. His own desk had an improvised drop light hung over it; he lowered the typewriter from his cramped arm upon a ma.s.s of clippings and notes. Beyond this room was the great bare loft, where two or three oily men were still toiling in the fading light over the establishing of the old STAR press. Sashes had been taken from one of the big windows to admit the entrance of the heavier parts; thick pulley ropes dangled at the sill. Great unopened bundles of gray paper filled the center of the floor, a slim amused youth was putting the finishing touches to a telephone on the wall, and Sidney, bare-headed, very business-like and keenly interested, was watching everybody and making suggestions. She greeted Barry with a cheerful wave of the hand.
"There you are!" she said, relievedly. "Come and see what you think of this. Do you know this office is going to be much nicer than the old one? How goes everything with you?"
"Like lightning!" he answered. "At this rate, there"s nothing to it at all. Have the press boys showed up yet?"
"They are over at the hotel, getting their dinners," she explained.
"And we have borrowed lamps from the hotel to use here this evening.
Did you hear that Martin, of the Press, you know, has offered to send over the A.P. news as fast as it comes in? Isn"t that very decent of him? Here"s Miss Porter"s stuff."
She sat down, and began to a.s.sort papers on her desk, quite absorbed in what she was doing. Barry, at his own desk, opened and shut a drawer or two noisily, but he was really watching her, with a thumping heart.
Watching the bare brown head, the lowered lashes, the mouth that moved occasionally in time with her busy thoughts--
Suddenly she looked up, and their eyes met.
Without the faintest consciousness of what he did, Barry crossed the floor between them, and as, on an equally unconscious impulse, she stood up, paling and breathless, he laid his hand over hers on the littered desk, and they stood so, staring at each other, the desk between them.
"Sidney," he said incoherently, "who--where--where did your father"s money go--who got it?"
She looked at him in utter bewilderment.
"Where did WHAT--father"s money? Who got it? Are you crazy, Barry?" she stammered.
"Ah, Sidney, tell me! Did it come to you?"
"Why--why--" She seemed suddenly to understand that there was some reason for the question, and answered quite readily: "It belonged to my father"s first wife, Barry, most of it. And it went to her daughters, my step-sisters, they are older than I and both married--"
"Then you"re NOT worth eight million dollars?"
"I--? Why, you know I"m not!" Her eyes were at their widest. "Who ever said I was? _I_ never said so!"
"But everyone in town thinks so!" Barry"s great sigh of relief came from his very soul.
Sidney, pale before, grew very red. She freed her hands, and sat down.
"Well, they are very silly, then!" she said, almost crossly. And as the thought expanded, she added, "But I don"t see how anyone COULD! They must have thought my letting them help me out with the Flower Show and begging for the Old Paloma girls was a nice piece of affectation! If I had eight million dollars, or one million, don"t you suppose I"d be DOING something, instead of puttering away with just the beginning of things!" The annoyed color deepened. "I hope you"re mistaken, Barry,"
said she. "Why didn"t you set them right?"
"I! Why, I thought so too!"