Tracy Park. Mary Jane Holmes
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, the former occupant of the park.
Grace and Arthur had been fast friends, and Brier Hill was almost the only place where he had visited on anything like terms of intimacy. Indeed, it was rumored by the busy knowing ones of Shannondale that, had the pretty widow been six years his junior instead of his senior, she would have left no art untried to win him. But here the wise ones were in fault, for though Grace Atherton's heart was not buried in her husband's grave, and, in fact, had never been her husband's at all, it was given to one who, though he cared for it once, did not prize it now, for, with all the intensity of his noble nature, Richard Harrington, of Collingwood; loved the beautiful girl whom, years ago, he had taken to his home as his child, and whom, it was said, he was to marry. But if the belief that the love she once refused and which she would fain recover was lost to her forever rankled in her breast, Grace never made a sign, and laughed as gayly and looked almost as young and handsome as in the days when Richard was wooing her in the pleasant old English town across the sea. She had loved Richard then, but, alas! loved money more, and she chose a richer man, old enough to be her father, who had died when she was twenty-one and left her the possessor of nearly half a million, every dollar of which she would have given to have recalled the days which were gone forever.
Grace had been intending to call upon Mrs. Tracy ever since she came to the park. 'Not,' as she said to her friend, Edith Hastings, 'for the woman's sake, for she knew her to be vulgar: but because she was a neighbor and the sister-in-law of Arthur Tracy,' And so at last she came, partly out of compliment and partly on business, into which last she plunged at once. She was going to the mountains with Mr. Harrington and Miss Hastings: 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 do not mind, I should like to ask if Martha left 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 strooping, and mean, because she objected to the amount of coal burned, and bread thrown away, and time consumed at the table, besides turning down the gas in the kitchen when she thought it too light, to say nothing of turning it off at the meter at ten o'clock, just when the servants were beginning to enjoy themselves. 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 second-class. '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 if he knew. 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 a 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 the elegant 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 presented 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, Dolly,' 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 us 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 not 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 half 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, where he spent most of his time trying to be a gentleman.
That day they 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 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 of 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: all except staying out of the kitchen. That, from her nature, she could not and would 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 ideas of things.
In course of time most of the neighbors who had any claim to society called at the park, 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 her 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.