CHAPTER VTHE BURDICKS
When Rena read Tom’s letter she was very angry for a few moments, and in the height of her passion commenced her reply, cooling somewhat as she wrote, but still feeling very sore because Tom had failed her in this the greatest scheme in which she had ever embarked.
“It is just for fun I’m doing it,” she said, “and the horrid old Tom calls me unwomanly and a lot more names, when I thought he liked me, and I have liked him so much. I hate him now almost as much as I do Mr. Travers—Reginald Travers,” she continued, “what a stiff, stuck-up name, just like its owner, I know, and not a bit rollicking like Tom Giles.” Then she read Tom’s letter again, noting particularly what he said about acting a lie. Rena prided herself upon being truthful to a fault, and began to waver a little with regard to the plan of her campaign. “I’ll give Irene some points,” she said, and after finishing Tom’s letter she began a second one to her cousin.
She had written her very fully on the subject,telling her what she expected her to do, and Irene had replied, “I am yours to the death. Where you lead I follow, your obedient slave; and if you wish me to entice Mr. Travers to make love to me, Delilah was never more seductive than I can be. If you wish me to be simply the Miss Burdick, I can play the grand lady to perfection. Of course I must pose as the head of the Burdicks, the one to whom you defer, and as a starter let me announce our intended arrival to Mrs. Parks.”
Something in the tone of this letter had struck Rena unpleasantly, but her infatuation for Irene and her belief that she could do no wrong was great. Where Rena loved and trusted, she trusted and loved with her whole soul, and she trusted and loved Irene, who, being the stronger character, “twisted her around her fingers,” Tom said, and having no real principle did not always influence her for good. In her second letter to her cousin, Rena began:
“O, Irene! such a horrid letter as I have had from Tom, calling me unwomanly, accusing me of deceit, if not of lying, if I let the people in Oakfield believe I am you and you are me. And he knows Mr. Travers, who was his room-mate in college two years and his best friend. Why didn’t he tell me he knew him? That’s just like a man, and Tom especially, never telling anything we want to know, and Mr.Travers is ten times worse. I am sure he is. Tom says he is a gentleman. As if I didn’t know that, or Sandy McPherson would never have selected him for me. He says, too, he is the soul of honor, and a lot more things. Let me see what he did say.” Here she stopped and re-read some part of Tom’s letter with a rain of tears, which she dashed away and began to write again. “He said he was bashful and reticent, not a bit of a ladies’ man; has no small talk; knows nothing of girls and does not care to. (He must be horrid.) He would never be guilty of a mean act, nor suspect treachery in others; might be easily imposed upon, and isn’t my style, but a clean, splendid man every way. What did he mean by that, I’d like to know? Maybe he takes two baths a day instead of one; and just as if a splendid man couldn’t be my style! I was mad enough at Tom for his letter, and I intend to be very snippy at first in Oakfield, for he is going there ostensibly to visit his best friend, but really to keep an eye on us and see that we do not harm Mr. Travers. In view of all this we must change our programme. We mustn’t try to make them think we are somebody else. We will simply go as Miss Irene Burdick and Miss Rena Burdick, and let them draw their own conclusions; and if any one asks me square if I am the one meant in the will, I shall say yes, and you must do the same. The fun will be spoiled, of course, but Tom will be satisfied and not think me quite so much of an unwomanly liar as he intimated in his letter. You can announce our arrival as you proposed, and I shallnot take my best Paris gowns, which might seem out of place on one who was nobody but Rena. I suppose Tom might say that was a lie, too. Oh, why did that old man make such a ridiculous will and put me in it, and why were you not his great-step-granddaughter instead of me? I fancy you would suit Mr. Travers perfectly. If he has no small talk and does not care for ladies’ society, you are just the one to bring him out. My head aches with crying so much over old Tom’s letter and I must stop. Shall expect you on Saturday. Aunt Mary is off for Saratoga some time next week, and the house will be closed. With love,
“Rena.”
“Rena.”
“Rena.”
“Rena.”
This letter found Irene Burdick at her home in Claremont, which she hated, rebelling against it and the station of life in which she had been born and resolving to get out of it by marrying for money, if she could do so, and marrying without it, if she could not. “And with my face I ought to get money,” she would say, when contemplating herself in her mirror, which showed her a grand specimen of beautiful young womanhood with scarcely a flaw in her makeup. She was very tall and erect, with a splendid physique, telling of perfect health and spirits. Unlike Rena, she was a decided blonde, with regular features and fair hair, which she wore à la Pompadour, with wide braids supplemented with false ones coiled around her head like a coronet. In her neckone or two short loose curls occasionally strayed from the mass of braids as if by accident, and with no hint of the time spent in giving them their careless appearance. Everything Irene did was done for effect, and there was nothing natural about her. Reared in poverty, she early learned to cater to the whims and wishes of people whose notice she wished to attract. What they thought and believed, she believed and thought; while her skilful hands and active, well-balanced brain were always ready to help in any emergency. To Rena’s slightest wish she was a slave—toady, Tom called her, and Rena repaid her with a love which saw no fault in her. Nothing could dissuade her from her faith in and affection for Irene, who seemed to return the love bestowed upon her. She had heard of the will which affected Rena so unpleasantly and like her had wished that she might have been born the step-great-granddaughter of Sandy McPherson, instead of one of many children where there was a constant fight for daily bread. Her father was overseer in a cotton mill, where one of her brothers worked and where she, too, had once been employed for several months. How she loathed the thought of it, with the roar of the machinery, the heat and close air, and the associates around her. “Factory bugs,” some called them, and she was one of them, and despisedherself for it, and when after Rena received her Uncle Reuben’s legacy she wrote offering to pay her cousin’s expenses at the same school with herself, she turned her back on Claremont and the factory, and for three years was a student with Rena at a young ladies’ school in New York. For nearly every good which had come into her life she was indebted to Rena, who had paid for her trip to Europe and the rather elaborate wardrobe she had bought in Paris and which was to do her good service now in the rôle marked out for her. She heard of the plan with a great deal of pleasure. Nothing would suit her better than the excitement of it, and then—. She laughed as she thought, “Give me a chance, and I will win this Mr. Travers, if what I can learn of him is satisfactory.” She was very happy now, for Oakfield opened up to her a wonderful field of adventure, and she was anticipating it greatly when Rena’s second letter came, and put a little different coloring upon the matter.
“It’s all Tom’s work,” she said, “and I dislike him as much as he dislikes me and always has. Acting a lie! Of course it is, if one chooses to give it that harsh name, but are not all our lives a lie? Do any of us declare our inner thoughts and motives upon the housetops, or issue daily bulletins with regard to what we intend to do? If I am to act thepart of the Miss Burdick, the prospective bride of Reginald Travers, I shall do it well, or not at all. There is nothing half-way about me, and if I can win Reginald Travers, I shall do it. Rena will never care for him. She is in love with Tom, much as she says she hates him. I am glad Mr. Travers’ antecedents are all right. Family is something, when one has none to boast of.”
On the receipt of Rena’s first letter she had set on foot inquiries concerning Mr. Travers, and learned more of him than Rena herself knew. He belonged to a fine Virginia family, which became impoverished during the war. He had, however, inherited something from his parents, both of whom were dead. There was a house in Richmond, where he was born, a plantation in tolerably good condition a few miles from the city, and a small income, sufficient for him to lead the life of a gentleman of leisure, if he kept his wants within his means. With this knowledge Irene was ready to take Mr. Travers without Sandy McPherson’s money, if he proved at all desirable. She had the matter fully in hand and was only anxious to commence operations. As to Mr. Travers’ character she had not inquired, nor did she particularly care. An F. F. V. must be correct, and Rena’s description of him did not disconcert her in the least, but rather raised her spirits. Abashful man who had no small talk and did not care for ladies’ society, would be easier to manage than one up to all the tricks of women, she argued, and she had little fear of the result. If she succeeded in interesting Reginald in her for herself she knew exactly the pretty devices she would use in explaining the mistake when he learned who she really was. She had rehearsed it more than once in the privacy of her room. She knew the words she would use, the gestures she would make in her distress, and even the expression of her eyes, which could look unutterable things when she willed to have them. Her mirror showed her all this and she practised before it daily, arguing that it was just as much one’s duty to educate and train the expression of the eyes and face and smile as to walk and speak correctly. She had met a good many gentlemen, but they were either too small fishes for her net, or they saw through her little deceits and tired of a beauty behind which there was so much that was not real. Now, however, she meant to succeed, and laid her plans accordingly. She was twenty-three; she was poor; she hated her humble home. She wanted to marry, and if she could win Reginald Travers she would do so and lay all the blame of the deception on Rena, who had persuaded her to it.
There were a few days spent in New York withRena, whom she thought a little mopish and stupid and not at all like the bright, sunny girl she had always known. Rena was beginning to wish she were not going to Oakfield, and that she had written frankly to Mr. Travers that she withdrew from the marriage proposition, leaving the field to him. Mingled with this was a thought of Tom, whose good opinion was everything to her. She had displeased him and he had scolded her. “Called me a liar,” she said often to herself; “and I hate him, and sometimes I don’t care whether his bosom friend is wronged or not.”
This was Rena’s attitude and feeling when with Irene she took her seat in the train which was to take her to Oakfield, the last place in the world she would have chosen for her summer outing, if it had not been for that wretched will. Irene was in high spirits. Her two large trunks were full of foreign dresses and a number of articles bought in New York with Rena’s money. She wore a tailor-made suit from Redfern’s, London. Her tall collar and shirt-waist and boots were up to date. The feather, or quill in her hat was exquisite in its kind; her manner wasà la duchesseto perfection, and had a stranger been told that here were a grand lady and maid he would have had no hesitancy in identifying Irene as the lady and Rena as the maid, in her travelling-dressof dark-blue serge, her sailor hat with only a plain band of ribbon upon it, and her modest and quiet manner.
Rena was not very happy. The experiment did not look to her as it did before she received Tom’s letter. The word liar kept sounding in her ears, and but for Irene she would have ended the farce. But Irene’s influence was over her, keeping her silent and rather moody until the train stopped before the little way station where the McPherson carriage was waiting. When “Oakfield!” was shouted at the door of the car a young man arose and came forward, offering to take their parcels. It was Sam Walker, who was returning from a neighboring town. He had heard from Lottie of the expected arrivals that day and the moment he entered the car and saw the two young ladies he said, under his breath, “That’s them, and gewhitaker-whiz, ain’t she a stunner!” the “she” referring to Irene, whom he singled out as the Miss Burdick about whom Lottie was so curious.
There was no doubt in his mind as to which was which, and he barely glanced at Rena, who chose to carry her own umbrella and bag, but whose eyes, as she declined his services, flashed upon him a smile which made him think “she ain’t bad, neither; but, my! what a swell t’other one is!”
He had Irene’s belongings and helped her from the car, and when he saw her looking at the McPherson carriage, he said: “That’s the McPhersons. I’ll bet it has come for you, if you are Miss Burdick. There’s nobody else on the train.”
“Oh,” Irene exclaimed, “look, Rena!” and she nodded toward the handsome turnout and the highly respectable-looking coachman advancing toward her and touching his hat as he came.
“Miss Burdick?” he said, without looking at Rena, and Irene answered:
“I am Miss Burdick—yes.”
The man touched his hat again, and said: “Mr. McPherson has sent his carriage for you. This way, please.”
“Oh, thanks! It was very kind in him,” Irene replied, entirely ignoring Rena, who followed meekly to the carriage, which Irene entered before her, while Sam handed in her bag and umbrella, and then stood a moment while Nixon unhitched the horses and prepared to mount to his seat.
Seeing Sam there still, he said to him:
“Jump up, Sam. May as well ride as walk this hot day;” then to the ladies, or rather to Irene, “You don’t mind my givin’ him a lift. This is Sam Walker; lives next to the Widow Parks’, where you are goin’.”
Irene’s head, which was always held high, went up a little higher as she nodded condescendingly, but with an air that would have told Nixon that she resented being introduced to Sam Walker, if it had been in his nature to understand it. Rena on the contrary leaned forward and said: “Certainly, let him ride; he looks tired and warm,” and again her beautiful eyes beamed on Sam a look which made him change his mind a little as to Irene’s superiority over her. In a moment he was on the seat with Nixon, but turned toward the ladies, with whom he was inclined to be sociable, and knowing no reason why he should not be so. Nor was he at all abashed by the coolness with which Irene listened to him. He could see Rena’s eyes and the dimples in her cheeks and her smile at his loquacity, which amused her. He told them who lived in the few houses they passed, and finally pointed out the McPherson place on the brow of a hill in the distance. Both girls were now interested and Irene put up her veil and used her handsome lorgnette, which Sam thought long-handled spectacles, wondering if her sight were poor. In her rôle as the Miss Burdick, Irene thought it hardly becoming to make any comment, especially as Sam was watching her curiously. Rena on the contrary stood up a moment to look at the imposing house, with its spacious grounds sloping down to avalley through which a little brook, sometimes dignified by the name of river, was running.
“It must be very pleasant there,” she said, resuming her seat, while Sam rejoined:
“Well, you bet! and it or’to be, for Mr. McPherson spent piles of money on it while he lived. Got company there now, two of ’em—young men, I mean.”
“Oh, has he come?” Rena asked, impulsively, thinking of Tom, while Irene said, under her breath,
“Don’t give yourself away.”
Sam could not hear the words, but something in Irene’s manner made him think that perhaps he was too familiar, and he at once turned his back to her. He would like to have told them of Nannie’s Well, as they were now on a rise of ground looking down to the pine-grove, but Irene’s face was not encouraging to further conversation, and he kept quiet, while Nixon urged on the horses to a pace which soon brought them to their destination, where Mrs. Parks stood ready to greet them.